The Rivers Run Dry

by Sibella Giorello

  “How bad is Courtney’s gambling problem?”

  “Not that bad.”

  “Kermit . . .”

  “Okay. It wasn’t that bad at first.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “The Vegas trips got out of hand, so when Stacee got the job, it seemed like a fun place.”

  “Still not enough.”

  “I told you about Steve Wynn in Vegas, how Daddy took care of things down there. It was a full repeat. Daddy did the same thing at the Indian casino.”

  “I take it you’ve got fake IDs.”

  “No. We, uh, we . . .”

  “Stacee made sure you got in?”

  “I’m old enough. We’re all old enough.”

  “Kermit, you’re barely old enough to vote.” I didn’t really care about the fake IDs, not at this point. But he did and it gave me leverage. “I’ll come back to the IDs,” I said. “What I’m wondering is, did Daddy pay your debt too?”

  “You’re a jerk.”

  “It must have been humiliating.”

  “I’m over her, I told you. If she wants to play the big leagues, what do I care? Let somebody else clean up after her.”

  “Big leagues—you mean Vegas? She went back to Vegas?”

  “She doesn’t need Vegas. She shot to the top right here.”

  “At the casino?”

  “Are you paying me for this?”

  “How’s the hand?”

  “You’re a mean woman.”

  “Kermit, you have no idea.”

  He sniffed, making me wait. But he described a secret high-roller poker game that played every other week near Sea-Tac Airport. The minimum wager was $10K and players closed out the night with hundreds of thousands in the pot, or in the hole. Seats were by invitation only.

  “Courtney plays in this game?”

  Even in the murky light, his wistfulness was evident, washing over his face like a bright unsatisfied hope. “She’s the second girl to make the table.”

  “Does she win or lose?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “She broke up with you when she got in there?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “Or because you couldn’t pay your own debt?”

  “Are you done?”

  “No,” I said. “If Courtney’s the second girl in the game, who’s the first?”

  “Kit Carson.”

  “Kit Carson—that’s a woman?”

  “Far as we know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve never heard of her?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then you’re the only one,” he said. “She’s the Queen of Queen Anne Hill.”

  chapter twelve

  I used the white pages hanging under the pay phone in Mama Mia’s while Kermit Simms danced in agitation behind me, asking me to leave. Under the name Carson, I found seven Kathleens, eleven Kathys, six Kathies, and sixteen K. Carsons. One K. Carson had the word unlisted after it.

  “Is that her?” I asked.

  “How would I know?” Kermit said.

  Back outside, I used my cell phone to call the FBI agent at Sea-Tac Airport, the so-called troglodyte named Marvin Larsen. He sounded happy to hear from me.

  “I see those vultures at the Times got a hold of your missing,” he said. “Maybe it’ll scare up some clues. Why’re the parents saying no to the media anyway?”

  “We’re not sure,” I said. “They seem to think it will make her kidnapper torture her.”

  “Kidnapped? Who said anything about kidnapped?”

  “Nobody. Listen, Marvin, speaking of help . . .” I described the high-stakes poker game, how the girl played at the table, and how it was a secret gathering. “It’s every other week, down near the airport.”

  “You want me to check it out?”

  I could hear the thrill in his gravelly voice and it triggered mixed emotions. Mostly, the hope that I would never have to find out what it was like to spend every day asking harried travelers if they’d left their luggage unattended at any time.

  “Maybe later,” I said. “Right now I need to locate the only other female in the game. Kit Carson, she lives in the Queen Anne area. I found one K. Carson, unlisted, in the phone book. Any chance you can do a quick rundown?”

  “Give me ten minutes.” He hung up.

  I found a Mexican drivethru just down the street and ordered something with “supreme” and “combo” in the name because it sounded like my cheeseburger gone south of the border, Coke, no crushed ice, and before I’d opened the bag, Marvin Larsen called back.

  “Home phone and address,” he said. “You need directions to get there?”

  “I really appreciate this, Marvin. Thank you.”

  “One call to my buddy in the county tax office. He owes me.”

  “I’m guessing you’ve got contacts all over this city.”

  “And you,” he said, “can call me anytime.”

  Kit Carson lived in the shadow of the Space Needle, in a neighborhood that spread like a tree skirt over the hilly terrain with a jumble of houses that ranged from French Chateaux to Prairie to Colonial Revivals. But Kit Carson’s condo building, just off Denny Avenue, was a five-story brick structure with a lobby that smelled of lemon oil and dust. The front desk guard wore a blue uniform the color of a robin’s egg, her black hair buzzed within a quarter-inch of her scalp. Her eyes were crystal gray.

  “I’m here to see Kit Carson,” I said.

  “You got an appointment?” Her voice sounded like sand sluicing through an oak barrel.

  When I flashed my Bureau credentials, she picked up the phone on the desk and punched in two numbers. She told who-ever was on the other end that the FBI was in the lobby. “FBI” came with a sneer. Then she lowered the phone several inches. “What’s this about, Ms. Carson wants to know.”

  “I need to ask her some questions.”

  “She ain’t saying,” the guard said into the phone. “Thinks she’s cute or something.”

  Ten minutes later, after I’d had examined the sepia photos on the walls that showed half-naked women from the early 1900s wearing whale-bone bustiers and expressions of longing, the elevator began descending. It was a whirring, clanking antiquity, and its progress was recorded by a tarnished brass arrow above the polished brass doors. Inside, a tall female held the door open, her hair bleached to a shade so pale the strands had the transparent quality of dead quills.

  “There isn’t gonna be another car,” she said. “You getting in or not?”

  She punched a black enamel button marked “Penthouse,” and we clattered to the top floor. The elevator opened in a living room. No hallway, no entrance. Just a wide expanse of wood and windows that framed ferryboats crossing Puget Sound like toy ships in an enormous pond.

  “Take a seat. Ms. Carson’ll be with you momentarily.”

  The last word was pronounced carefully, as though adverbs rarely tread on her tongue, and she waited for me to sit. Three red leather chairs faced a white suede couch under the windows, a zebra rug thrown between them. I took one of the chairs. Outside, clouds marbled the sky and the wind brushed the water with an invisible hand.

  Kit Carson walked into the room wearing silk pajamas, the material alternating between blue and green, glimmering against her slender body. Her handshake was powerful but her dark brown hair was cut into a delicate shag, like the one Jane Fonda kissed good-bye thirty years ago. She held a cigarillo and smiled, her teeth gleaming like polished alabaster. She sat on the white couch.

  “I presume you checked out my background, so you know I give generously to police funds. What can I do for you, Miss Harmon?”

  “Special Agent Harmon.”

  “Yes, of course. Agent Harmon.”

  “Ma’am, can you tell me the last time you saw Courtney VanAlstyne?”

  Her brown eyes gazed up at the coffered ceiling. It was painted pink, with hidden lights illuminating the corners. “Ma’am.”
She turned the word over. “Well, I’ve been called worse.”

  “Have you seen Courtney VanAlstyne in the last week?”

  “No. And I read the story in today’s paper, about her going missing. I called her parents, offering my sympathies. Naturally, they hung up.”

  “Naturally?”

  “Don’t pretend to be obtuse. It doesn’t become you.”

  “Why do you say ‘naturally’?”

  “Be that way.” She puffed the cigarillo twice. “I don’t qualify as even a distant satellite in the VanAlstyne universe.”

  “Miss VanAlstyne plays in a high-stakes game down at Sea-Tac. But you were there first.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Does her father know about the game?”

  “It isn’t that big a secret, if you want to know the truth. We’ve been paying off the local cops for years, and, really, what’s the harm? Police officers don’t make enough to feed their house plants. And it’s not like we’re pushing crack on babies.”

  “About her father . . . ?”

  “Yes, Daddy knew everything.”

  When I asked about the other players, Kit Carson spoke as though they were nothing more than some loosely affiliated church congregation—paroled embezzlers, money launderers, drug mules, rich kids with gambling addictions—and as I listened to her throaty voice, I admired her nerve. A federal agent showed up at her home, asking questions about an illegal game that could’ve brought double-digit years behind bars, and she pretended to tip her hand by mentioning all the other players. But that was her bluff, because if we already knew about the table and Courtney VanAlstyne’s involvement, any information Kit Carson offered now would play to her advantage later, when she would need to beat the other guys to the plea agreement.

  I wrote down the names she offered and tried to guess how many years she’d been clawing her way to the top. Surgical updates made her face appear close to forty-five, but the liver spots on her hands were the size of nickels. Nearer to sixty-five, I guessed.

  “Let me offer a wager,” she said. “The FBI thinks one of these players had something to do with Courtney’s disappearance.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “And odds are you don’t suspect me, or you wouldn’t be here asking the early questions. You could be tailing me or bugging my phone or putting the squeeze on one of my bodyguards, perhaps with incriminating photos from my private life.” She tapped the cigarillo against the cut crystal ashtray. “You’d be right to suspect the men. They’re pigs, every last one.” She smiled. “Of course, I’ve made a fortune playing with swine. But they’re still pigs. All men are.”

  “When’s the next game?”

  “They called me this morning, after the story ran in the paper. They’re assuming Courtney won’t show. The game must go on. Swine, I tell you, pure swine.”

  “The game?”

  “Tomorrow night.” She arched an eyebrow, a painted feature resting above her eye as though applied by template. “I will gladly forfeit my place so you can stare into the trough.”

  “I’ve never played poker.”

  “Are you good with numbers?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Pity. You’re cute enough to make a killing.” She revealed the perfect teeth again. “Bad choice of words. But the offer stands. I’m not particularly eager to play. I leave for Monte Carlo later this month.”

  “Business or pleasure?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  When I stood, offering my business card, Kit Carson remained seated on the white couch. She looked up at me, placing the cigarillo in the ashtray, tilting her head coquettishly.

  “Have you ever shot anybody?”

  “No.”

  “I’m disappointed,” she said, almost pouting.

  The female bodyguard escorted me to the elevator, the rattling metal dropping to the lobby. She held the door for my exit, bracing the brass lattice with her forearm, where a blue tattoo shaped like a cross stretched down her arm. As I passed the desk, the security guard wished me a good afternoon.

  The light on Denny Way felt dreamlike, intangible. Traffic roared down the street, but the sound was muted, as though the automobiles were nothing more than schools of fish passing silently underwater, the metallic doors flashing like scales. I climbed into my car, the surreal sensation pervading my mind, as though I’d just stepped off a legendary Greek island where all the warrior women had perished.

  At 2:40 p.m., Lucia Lutini whipped the Italian wool cape around her shoulders and walked past the dusty cubicles, the stacks of worn paper, the bulletin boards layered with curling memos. She looked like Mediterranean nobility gliding through the bean fields full of serfs.

  I shrugged into my blazer and followed her out to Spring Street. In front of us, two administrative clerks walked twenty-five feet from the building’s entrance, per the law, and stopped where crushed cigarette butts littered the sidewalk.

  “Ah,” Lucia said as we passed. “They’re gone.”

  “Smoke bothers you?” I asked.

  “On the contrary. I enjoy a good cigarette now and then. What I don’t care for is the company of young female smokers. They smoke cheap brands, use cigarettes for dieting, and it’s tire-some watching such a futile struggle.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. One of the clerks was leaning against a parking meter, the other crossed her arms over a paunch of stomach. They were squeezed into straight skirts, their stretchy blouses gripping all the wrong places. They puffed like locomotives.

  “This is what I wanted to talk to you about,” I said.

  “Smoking?”

  “Profiling.”

  As we crossed Pioneer Square, I told her about the poker game and that a seat was open for us in tomorrow night’s game. The wind was swirling dry leaves, stirring, stopping, stirring again. We crossed South Jackson Street where the sign in Danato’s window said closed. But Lucia keyed open the side door, waving to the Italian dishwasher with the smoldering eyes, and called out to her father.

  “Lucia!” He said her name with five syllables. “And you bring your friend with you. So good, so good!”

  In the back room, we sat on the upturned buckets. Lucia’s elderly uncle shuffled past, a gaunt man with the bent posture of perpetual suffering. After she introduced me, the two of them spoke in rapid Italian while I wondered about my experience with great meals. They could never be repeated. And yet when Danato Lutini carried in the sausage sandwiches, the sheer fragrance caused me to reconsider.

  “Mangia!” he said.

  The first bite closed my eyes. A hum fluttered from the back of my throat, involuntary as a moan. Danato laughed, then left, and Lucia and I ate without words. When we finished, he brought espresso and almond biscotti. I tried to beg off. But he lifted his hands, the fingers gathering on each thumb, the wrists circling the air. A small emphatic gesture.

  “Eh, Raleigh,” he said. “You gotta eat for the hunger that’s coming.”

  I snapped the biscotti, hints of lemon and cinnamon dancing on my tongue. I watched Lucia, elegant even on an upturned plastic bucket.

  “You know who Kit Carson is?” I asked.

  “First female to take the World Poker Championship. May 1989.”

  “One night at that poker table, Lucia, you could read all those guys. You’d have them profiled before the first hand was over.”

  “You really believe they have something to do with the girl’s disappearance?”

  “She’s a gambling addict, from what I can tell.” I pulled out the green plastic disk from the casino, telling Lucia about the roommate’s reaction when she saw me, what the ex-boyfriend said about Courtney playing the big leagues. “There’s something wrong here, I just can’t figure out what.”

  “So, why not check out the casino?” Lucia said. “Why bother with this high roller game?”

  “I put in a request for a search on the casino,” I said. “But the poker game is tomorrow night and there won’t
be another for two weeks. Kit Carson might not be in that game. And after that, she leaves for Monte Carlo. In the meantime, the girl is still missing and I’ve got nothing else. Lucia, it has to be this game, this week. I can’t play it. But you can.”

  We finished our espresso and walked back to the kitchen. Danato was scraping down the wide steel grill with a metal brush, his short thick torso working under the chef ’s jacket. Lucia leaned down, kissing his forehead.

  “My Lucia.” He looked at me. “She needs a good friend.”

  “Papa!”

  “The truth, Lucia. You work too much crime, nobody gets close. You gonna wind up a rose with only the thorns. And Raleigh, she got the same problem.”

  Lucia’s uncle sat on a kitchen stool beneath the pot rack, scorched pans and old tongs hanging over his head. He read a folded newspaper in his lap and Lucia stepped over to him, kissing his cheek. He didn’t react, except to mutter under his breath, his eyes remaining on the newspaper, his thick brows pulled down in concentration.

  Danato shrugged his shoulders.

  “Family,” he said, “what’re you gonna do?”

  chapter thirteen

  You, my dear, will have an enormous advantage at the table,” Kit Carson was saying to Lucia. “These men either idolize you or hate you, or they want you in bed. Any of those motivations will help you beat them. Are you with me?”

  It was Tuesday night and Kit Carson had changed from her aqua pajamas into a black tuxedo with a satin cummerbund red as polished rubies. A full-size poker table was set up in her loft, and Kit Carson stood in the divot of the dealer’s position. Behind her the windows framed the night, the saltwater below spreading like ink, the city lights twinkling along the waterfront.

  My cell phone rang.

  She glared at me.

  My aunt’s number was displayed on the caller ID. I silenced the phone’s ring. “Sorry.”

  “As I was saying,” Kit Carson growled, giving me a sharp look before turning to Lucia. Her expression softened. “You’re going to manipulate their emotions.”