Fatal Flaw

by William Lashner

  Feeling like a little lamb?

  They braise a nice shank at the Bellagio.

  Nine o’clock reservation in your name.

  Jacket required. Bring your wallet.

  It wasn’t signed, but it didn’t need to be. I knew who had written it, the same man who’d set up the accident, I now was certain, the same man who had in all likelihood killed Hailey Prouix.

  Phil Frigging Skink.

  27

  “WHERE THE fuck is my money, you scabrous piece of shit?”

  Skink was already sitting at a table, beside a thick gray curtain, beneath a painting of a naked woman with her hand demurely covering her crotch. The joint was papered with maroon velvet, the corners were graced with great metal urns filled with ivy and denuded branches in arresting arrays. The chairs, upholstered also in velvet, had large brass rings hanging from their backs. It felt, the Prime Steakhouse on the lower level of the Bellagio, Roman and gangsterish at the same time, a place where Tiberius Caesar and Sam Giancana could dine together on great chunks of charred oxen and laugh about conquered provinces and rigged elections. A place where grasping lieutenants who had skimmed the empire’s profits could be taken care of with a single blow from a pepper mill the size of a baseball bat.

  Sitting before Skink on the peach-colored tablecloth was a huge crystal shell filled with ice, covered with an array of plump fresh oysters. Skink eyed me calmly as he sucked out the insides of a nacreous shell. The maître d’ had brought me through the fabulously decadent dining room to the table and was standing aside as I ignored the proffered seat and confronted the slurping Skink to no great effect. It was disconcerting that Skink seemed to be enjoying himself immensely despite my rage. It was doubly disconcerting that he was wearing the same gold lamé lucky jacket as I was.

  “You’re a bit late, Vic, so I hope you don’t mind I started without you.”

  “I want my money and my documents, and I want them now.”

  “We look like a backup singing group here, don’t we, Vic? You and I in the same jacket, like a couple of Pips. Or maybe like two homosexual types with the same taste in clothes. I wonder if everyone here thinks we’re a couple of poofs having ourselves a lover’s spat.”

  “Hand it over.”

  “Calm down,” he said. “Sit. Eat first, talk later. That’s a plan, innit? Let’s keep things all clean and private.”

  He glanced to the side and I did, too, glanced at the maître d’, still holding my chair. I felt a stern French disapproval of my table manners, which was interesting, because the maître d’ was neither stern nor French. She instead was a lovely American with long, straight hair who calmly waited for my diatribe to conclude. There was no shock in her face—her restaurant served meat in the bowels of a casino, there wasn’t much I expect she hadn’t seen—still, her presence there settled me enough that I finally dropped down into the chair and accepted the great burgundy menu.

  “You like shrimp, Vic?” asked Skink. “Who don’t, right? Bring him an order of the grilled prawns to start with while he reads the bill of fare, will you, sweetheart?”

  The maître d’ smiled, nodded, swayed away.

  “Lovely girl, that. Wouldn’t mind ordering her right off the menu.”

  “There’s enough to buy in this town, if that’s what you need to do.”

  “I don’t need to do a thing,” he said. “Just like I don’t need to pick up my skim milk in the 7-Eleven. It’s the convenience, is all.”

  “I want my money and I want my documents.”

  He picked up another oyster and slurped. “There’s the root of the problem, innit? None of thems is yours. You pocketed it all from a dead girl’s bank deposit box, didn’t you?”

  “Jonah Peale promised you’d leave me alone?”

  “He told me to go on vacation, and here I am. But even so, I’m nobody’s boy. I’m what they call an independent contractor. Key word being ‘independent.’ I do whatever I want, work for whoever I damn please.”

  “For whom exactly do you work? Lawrence Cutlip? Is that why you took the insurance policy? The receptionist at Desert Winds said Cutlip was having a busy day. I’d bet you were the other visitor. I’d bet you showed up there before I did. I’d bet you were squatting there behind the mesquite tree, eavesdropping on our meeting.”

  Skink smiled as he sucked down another oyster.

  “And Guy’s father-in-law, Jonah Peale? That’s who you took the Juan Gonzalez file for, isn’t it?”

  “It would be a violation of my ethical duties to be disclosing the names of my clients.”

  “It’s so nice to see you concerned about your ethical duties.”

  “At least one of us is.” He peered at me over the great crystal shell.

  “What about the money? Who was that for?”

  “A man’s got to eat, don’t he? You want an oyster? I could order more.”

  I shook my head no. He lifted one of the shells, elbow pointing high, and slurped. He chewed and swallowed and let out a soft sigh.

  “There’s nature’s goodness, right there,” he said. “It’s like taking in a swallow of the sea.”

  “You almost killed me. You almost killed Beth, which is even worse.”

  “Is that where all this hostility comes from? You think it was me what ran you off the highway?” He seemed surprised, even hurt. “I had nothing to do with it. I was as shocked as anyone to see the carcass of your car tilting there on the side of the road. In fact, I was thinking it was I who saved your life. And what thanks does I get? Nothing but this diatribe of accusation.”

  “If it wasn’t you who tried to kill me, who was it?”

  “That’s a question, innit? Though that cute little copper thought it was just an accident. Said you was speeding, driving reckless.”

  “But neither of us believes that, do we? You threatened me if I didn’t take the plea, said something awful would happen.”

  “Come now, Vic, that’s right there in the private detection handbook, technique number nineteen: the idle threat. It gets the juices flowing, gets the pot stirred. Make the threat, stir the pot, follow the mark until he leads you to something worth your while.”

  “And that’s why you’re in Vegas, following me.”

  “I even gave you a hint of what I wanted you to look for.”

  “The key.”

  “I knew it was missing, and I suspected where it might be. By the way, you done terrific work in finding the box. My compliments. But all the time, the threat was idle. It’s one thing to put a scare in a person, quite another to actually back it up with murder.”

  “And you’re not capable of that?”

  I stared at his eyes, beady, ugly things, stared at his eyes to see whether there might be murder there. He stared back for a moment as if he understood where lay my deepest suspicions and then shrugged.

  “Didn’t say that, only said it was quite a thing. You should gander the menu, Vic. They’ve got nine different types of potato. Unfortunately, with my cholesterol problem, I can’t order a one of them. Nothing for me but the oysters and a single filet mignon, well done. A lean cut of beef that is, and after they burn it, not a scrap of fat left. But you, you should help yourself there, since it’s you who’s treating.”

  “Why me? You have the money.”

  “True, true, but it’s mostly earmarked already, expenses and such. How about some creamed spinach, Vic, some rack of lamb? A bargain, too, the whole thing costing less than a proper craps spread at a ten-dollar table. You play craps?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, maybe you should learn. I gots myself a system.”

  “You’ve got a system?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes I do. Yes, yes. With a few quick lessons maybe you could earn it all back and more. You know what the good book says: Give a man thirty thou, he’s rich for a day, but teach a man to play craps, well, then, he’s got something for the rest of his life, don’t he?”

  Just then a waiter laid a plate in front
of me. It held four large crustaceans, split and grilled, a wild assortment of antennae and legs sticking helter-skelter from the shells, the whole thing looking like some bizarre Klingon meal served to interstellar diplomats on the USS Enterprise.

  “How do I eat this?” I said.

  “With the saffron mayonnaise, I would suppose,” said Skink.

  I reached my fork into one of the shells, pulled out the meat, dipped it into the yellow sauce.

  “Oh, my.”

  “I hear they’re quiet good,” said Skink. “Although on my diet, I’m afraid…”

  I didn’t wait to hear what he had to say, and I didn’t offer him one either. I pulled out another, dipped it in the sauce, snapped it clean between my teeth—marvelous. All day I’d been running around like a crazy man, stealing into a safe-deposit box, interrogating Cutlip, getting sideswiped in the desert, being examined at the hospital, sitting by Beth’s bedside, taking a cab back to the hotel, checking back in, performing a quick run-through of what had been left me in the briefcase. With all that running, I hadn’t eaten since the morning and wasn’t aware how hungry I was until I bit into that first prawn. Then the second, then the third. I was ravenous, starved. I stopped only long enough to scan the menu and choose what else I wanted to stuff inside my gullet. Skink was wrong about the potatoes, there weren’t nine choices, there were ten: shoestring and gaufrettes, ginger sweet and mashed, roasted fingerlings, french fries, truffle mashed, grati dauphinion, St. Florentine, and the simple, classic baked. With the waiter hovering, I ordered the lamb, the spinach, both the shoestrings and the ginger sweets. Then I attacked the final prawn.

  “You want mint jelly with that lamb, Vic? My mamma, she always served mint jelly with her lamb.”

  I nodded.

  “And how about some wine? Something red, good for the heart. A little merlot? How does that sound? This is a business meeting, it’s all tax deductible. Let’s have some wine.”

  I nodded again. Skink ordered. The waiter took away the menu and bowed.

  “You surprise me, Vic. I had taken you for the tightest of arses, but you’re more fun than I expected. I’m beginning to see what it was she saw.”

  I had come into the restaurant homicidally angry at Phil Frigging Skink, angry at him for trying to kill us, angry at him for stealing my files, strongly suspecting that he had been the one to shoot Hailey Prouix. Hatred is a soft word for what I felt toward him, but while I was sitting at that table, eating prawns and then lamb, the spinach and potatoes, drinking the Merlot, which was excellent by the way, smooth and dark, while I was sitting at that table, my emotions softened. He was a creep, clearly, but a pleasant little creep, pleasanter still as we started into the second bottle of wine. And I had to admit, I admired his taste in jackets. It would be a shame if I were right about him.

  “Tell me something, Phil.” He was no longer Phil Frigging Skink, he now was just Phil. “Did you ever in your life sell cars for a living?”

  “Never.” He laughed, and I laughed with him. “That would be a honest day’s work.”

  “And who the hell needs that?”

  “There you go.”

  “Well, you’d be good at it nonetheless. Most of sales is bullshit and you’re a master. But something confuses me. How many people are you representing, and how do you stop from getting all their differing agendas confused?”

  He paused, took a sip of Merlot. “It’s all a matter of lines and angles, of anticipation.”

  “Like billiards.”

  “Now you’re getting it, yes you are. You like stories?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “Well, fill your glass, Vic, sit back, and listen up. I got me a story you might want to hear. Yes, you might at that.”

  28

  “A MAN sets up a meeting, wants me to spy on his wife. Oldest story in the world, but with a twist. He’s a fancy-dressing man, you know what I mean, handkerchief sticking out his suit jacket, his fingernails manicured and glossy. I hate him at sight. And here’s the thing, not a whit of nervousness or upset about him. Generally a Joe thinks some other Joe is doing his wife, he’s all flippy, but this Joe he’s an absolute cuke, an arrogant cuke, if you catch my drift. It doesn’t feel right. But like Sam says, never believe the client, believe the money. So’s I take the retainer, write the information in my little book, and sets about tailing the wife.

  “She was once a pretty thing, I can tell, but she’d gotten no younger over the years and the things what happen to women as they get older, the thickening thing, happened to her just as you would expect. But, see, with her I can tell she knows it, with her you can see the vulnerability. She shops, plays tennis, lunches at the club with the other ladies, la-di-da. Don’t know why that’s the life all the birds want, it’d be enough to bore my pants right off, I was them, and I figure maybe that’s the trouble. So Thursday is lawn day, the boys in their cutoffs, whipping the mowers over the client’s three football fields, and there’s one boy wearing no shirt, who I tell you is frigging gorgeous. Dark complexion, thick curled lips, straight narrow nose, a perfect nose, with a ballplayer’s arse and a swimmer’s body, thin but with muscles chiseled and abs, oh, my, the abs.

  “Now, I ain’t that way, I want you to know, don’t be getting no ideas, me in this jacket and all, but I can still appreciate the male figure and I can tell you he’s a frigging rock star. And next thing you know, he’s talking to the missus. She brings him a lemonade. Sweat’s dripping from his tits as he takes the glass. He lifts his chin to drain the drink, his Adam’s apple bobs, one of his pecs twitches. She reaches out and almost touches his shoulder but pulls back. Obvious, innit? The attraction between ’em is so thick you could lubricate your dick with it. So they all leave, all the lawn boys, but at three he comes back in a ratty old car and starts searching around like he lost something. She comes out to help him, they search around together, side by side. And when he happens to find it, the shirt he planted there that morning, he doesn’t put it on as you would expect, but tosses it over his shoulder and waits there, like waiting for an invitation in, and she gives it, how could she not? Next thing you know I got myself a roll of film, job done, fee earned.

  “But something’s not right, and I don’t like it. So I gives off following the lady and start to following the lawn boy. I meet up with him in a bar on Twelfth Street, a funny bar, you know, where we with our jackets would fit right in. I buy him a beer, buy him another, he thinks I’m an old poof interested in that swimmer’s bod, and I can tell that he’s willing to be interested, too, as long as I’m paying. So I go out back with him, into the alley behind the bar. It’s dark, damp, rubber johnnies littering the asphalt, a place where if it could talk, you’d cover your ears and run out screaming. Lawn boy puts his hand on my hip and smiles his charming smile. I lift my elbow and break his nose. Sounded like someone snacking on a taco. So much for perfect. Now he’s on the ground, hands covering his face, blood leaking through his fingers. I leans down and I tell him what I want to know, and he spills. Everything. It was the husband what put him up to it, the husband what paid off this trick to do his wife while I was there whole time with my camera.

  “I figure the bastard, he wants a divorce on his terms, wants the pictures either as bargaining leverage, hoping to unsettle her so she’ll agree to poverty, or to show the judge in a custody fight when he grabs for the kids. Either way a nasty piece of business. So of course I goes back to the missus and shows her the pictures, and she breaks down, begging me not to give them to her husband. I tell her how I got no choice, I was paid for them in advance, I got my ethics to consider, but then I tell her about lawn boy and about how her husband paid him off and how she ought to get herself checked, because there’s no telling what kind of vile organisms lawn boy passed on to her. She’s collapsed into a heap, sniveling, crying, moaning out, ‘What am I going to do? What am I going to do?’ Beautiful, right? So’s I go and tell her what it is she is going to do, and she spots me another retainer.
r />   “I’m back on the road, following husband this time. Is this a great job or what? It turns out husband, he’s a lawyer, surprise, surprise, driving a Jaguar, lunching at the Palm with political heavies, and spending stray afternoons in the Bellevue with some little chippy from his law firm. It’s harder getting pictures from a hotel like that as compared to a private home, but with the right equipment, including a pinch of cash for the staff, you can get yourself anything, and it ain’t long before I can a roll of that son of a bitch with his arse hanging out and his socks on giving that chippy his prima facie best.

  “Now the two parties, husband and wife, they’re back on level turf, and I’m feeling pretty good about things, but why stop there, why stop with two? It’s a triangle, innit? So I decide on following the bird from the husband’s law firm, a good-looking thing, I must say. I was just curious, mind you, not knowing what I’d find, but just trying to figure out what pitch to make and where to make it. I read her as a typical spoiled brat, never wanting for nothing, fancy college, ambition driving her into the law, setting up her yuppie lifestyle, not minding grabbing another woman’s husband if it helps her climb a peg or two. A little pressure and she’d be willing to pay anything to make it go away. It all seems so obvious, except this girl, she ain’t obvious.

  “One night I follow her to a dive of a bar in South Philly, where she meets up with some shady sailor type. Next night I follow her into some church, where she stays an hour before rushing off to meet the husband. Night after she has dinner in some ragged seafood joint alongside some scumbucket from Kensington with but three teeth to his name, and after that she ends up again in the church. I go in behind her this time. She slips a buck or two into the box, buys herself a candle, then it’s off to a pew by herself. She doesn’t hit her knees, she’s no papist, I can tell, but I look around, seeing who she’s meeting, and there’s no one. Might as well have been praying, for all I know. And then I trail her until she disappears into some lesbo bar in Old City. That’s a switch, huh? But I can’t go in there without getting marked, so I wait outside in my car. An hour later she’s on the street with some bull dyke in a black leather vest, and while they’re clinching and kissing, and not like cousins neither, while they’re chewing each other’s tongues, she opens her eyes and gives me the stare from across the street. Then she’s off, alone, heading away from me. I gets out of my car and follow.