by Ryan Stygar
Adam stubbornly clung to the hope that he would soon be able to give his little girl the kind of home she deserved, no matter how bad things seemed to be at the time.
Adam read the rest of “The Coral Princess” to Lily and played dolls with her until she fell asleep. As she curled up in her little bed he emptied the old flowers from the vase on her nightstand and replaced them with a fresh arrangement of bright sunflowers.
Visiting hours were coming to a close, so he set “The Coral Princess” beside her stack of books and leaned down to kiss her on the forehead. Goodbyes were hard, but at least Lily had a place to live.
St. Judith’s Home was a step up from the Chevy S10 as far as living conditions were concerned. That was pretty much the only nice thing Adam had to say about it. The facility was run down; it was built in the early 1960’s and looked as if it hadn’t had so much as a light bulb replaced since. On the bright side, the nurses were always especially kind to Lily Friend. They often talked about how lucky she was to have a father who paid such dutiful attention to her.
In all honesty Adam wished he could get her into a better facility, but no matter how many hours he worked he was barely able to keep up with payments as it was. For now St. Judith’s would have to do.
Adam walked out of his daughter’s room and into the white and green hallway. The caretakers were busy herding children into their rooms for nap time, which made him confident he could escape without having to speak with anyone at the billing office. With no eyes on him he made a beeline toward the exit. He was nearly running when a woman’s voice rose up from the reception desk behind him.
“Excuse me, Mr. Friend?”
Dammit, I was so close.
It was Nancy, a sixty-something year old woman with curly, red-dyed hair. A week of successfully dodging her had now come to an end – it was time to face the music.
“You’re three months past due, did you get the notices?”
Yep, got all three of them.
“No, I’m sorry I didn’t”
“This isn’t the first time we’ve had a problem like this.”
“I know, I’m very sorry Nancy. My check wasn’t enough to cover everything this month. Can I give you a couple hundred dollars tomorrow and pay the rest next month?”
Nancy shook her head. “We’ve already tried that and we’re still waiting on the balance from last time. I know how hard you’re trying to take care of her but my hands are tied, we can’t play this game forever.”
Please don’t do this Nancy, I’ll do anything. You can take me into your office and have your way with me. I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t do this.
“I’m sorry, but you’ve breached the payment policy too many times. You have ten business days to pay the delinquent amount, plus the penalty, and also next month’s bill. I know it’s a lot of money but we’ve made too many exceptions for you as it is. Sign here please,”
“What’s this?”
“It’s your acknowledgement that you’ve been counseled on the situation and that you agree to make the payment. Otherwise, and really I hate to say this, we’ll have no choice but to hand Lily over to CPS. I’m so sorry.”
“This is horseshit,” Adam fumed. He scribbled his name on that stupid clipboard and left without a word.
Desperate and completely ignoring every statistical fact he had ever heard, he scraped together three hundred dollars, the last of his cash, and headed to the nearest casino downtown.
Roulette was the game of the day.
It had some of the worst odds in the casino, but it also had the highest payouts. Doubling and re-doubling his money fast enough to keep a roof over Lily’s head before the deadline was going to take a miracle, but he couldn’t think of another way. Brushing by a pair of men in suits, Adam laid out his cash and accepted a pile of chips.
“Three hundred on Black,” the dealer announced as Adam slid his chips across the felt. A waitress offered him a cocktail and he declined. This was about business.
Cold sweat dripped down his forehead as the roulette wheel spun. At the last moment, he couldn’t stand to watch the little white ball bounce into its slot. He squeezed his eyes shut as he listened to the little ball plink into its slot.
“Eleven Black!” he heard the dealer say.
“Yes!” Adam roared, eliciting a few chuckles at the table. A man with a heavy Russian accent patted his back.
“Congratulations,” the man said with a smile. The dealer signaled that it was time to collect his jackpot, but Adam needed more than six hundred bucks to get out of the mess he was in. He took a deep breath and told the dealer to let it ride.
“Six hundred on Black,” the dealer called. The Russian at Adam’s side placed his chips across the numbers on the felt. When he was done the dealer spun the wheel. Adam clenched his eyes shut.
He listened while the ball plinked into its little slot.
Come on baby!
“Twenty one Red!” the dealer called.
It was like Adam had been punched in the gut. He didn’t even look to see all his chips getting swept into the house pot.
“Better luck next round, eh?” the Russian said.
“I’m afraid not,” Adam muttered before slinking away.
The Russian watched with interest as Adam left. He nudged his partner and then cashed out his chips to follow.
“You think he could do?” his partner asked. “I’d rather use a professional.”
“Professionals can be traced, but a man with nothing won’t be missed. Let’s go and talk to him.”
The Russians accepted their cash and headed out the doors.
Adam sat pitifully on the curb outside the Four Queens Casino Sulking over his loss, he watched the crowd walking up and down Fremont Street. Street performers were singing and dancing for tips and he wondered how much money he could make if he painted himself gold and did the robot for a few hours a day.
A voice boomed from behind him.
“Times are not good?” the stranger asked.
He turned and met the dark, calculating eyes of the Russian from the roulette table. He wore a clean white dress shirt under a blue blazer.
“Yeah, they’ve been better. How could you tell?” Adam said, nodding toward the casino that had just gobbled up the last of his cash.
The man chuckled. “I think I can help you, let’s go for a ride.”
He gestured toward a black S-Class Mercedes idling near the front of the casino.
“Umm… thanks for the offer, but I’d better not,” Adam started to walk away. He was only four or five steps away when the man promised to pay him ten thousand dollars for his time.
Adam stopped in his tracks. Furious, he whipped around and took a hard look at the man’s face. Ten thousand dollars? That kind of money meant that this perv was looking for some very specific services. Adam was desperate, but wasn’t that desperate!
“Do I look like a fucking prostitute to you? Piss off!”
The stranger was shocked and embarrassed by Adam’s misunderstanding.
“No! Oh heavens no! Please, it is nothing of that nature I assure you. I believe we can be of mutual benefit to each other. Come with me, I promise I will not take much of your time,”
Adam wasn’t sure he believed him. He eyed the mysterious stranger suspiciously. This is the weirdest shit that’s ever happened to me… and I grew up in Las Vegas.
The stranger leaned closer. “I just watched you lose a lot of money. I am offering you a chance to make it all back with significant interest. Won’t you hear what I have to say?”
Adam’s heart was beating pretty fast. This man spoke like a Bond villain and he found it kind of unnerving. But he didn’t have many options left. The guy could be nuts, but on the other hand, if he was legitimate, there was a life-changing payday on the line. Adam agreed.
The man whistled at the Mercedes, which pulled forward to meet them by the curb. He opened the rear door and made a gesture to welcome Adam inside. “Wh
at is your name?” the Russian asked.
“Adam, Adam Friend.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Friend,” he said with a smile.
“And you are?”
“Joe. You can just call me Joe. Please, have a seat.”
8
The Day After the Fire, Sunset View Motel, 7:00am
“I didn’t ask how you guys put out the fire,” the police sergeant said, interrupting the old fireman’s story.
The fire department had just allowed him entry into what was left of the Sunset View Motel. Although the flames were gone, an oppressive, humid kind of heat lingered in the burnt remains of the building. The policeman sidestepped the ashes of what was once the concierge desk and addressed the fire investigator directly. “You didn’t call the Gangs and Narc Bureau just to tell me a story did you?”
Sergeant Adrian Ramirez of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, formerly known as Corporal Adrian Ramirez of the United States Marine Corps, was a no-nonsense kind of guy. None of that seemed to faze Battalion Chief Thomas O’Hanlon. The wiry old smoke eater probably should have retired years ago, but seeing as a salary was better than a pension, he figured he’d stick around the department a while longer.
“Oh no, wouldn’t dream of it,” O’Hanlon drawled, he turned and walked deeper into the building. “Legally I’m ‘sposed to turn the scene over to the forensics office once the fire’s been fully contained. But I know how much you like chasing them gangster fellas around, so I figured I’d give ya’ a look first,”
“How thoughtful,” Ramirez said.
Twenty paces later O’Hanlon stopped at a ladder that extended up to the second floor.
“I’m afraid the stairs are entirely unstable; this is the only way up.”
“Hold my flashlight,” Ramirez said and handed his light to the fireman. He then climbed up through the burnt ceiling to the second story. O’Hanlon’s voice trailed behind him.
“She didn’t go down easy. I’ve seen some real stubborn blazes in my day, but this was a real bitch.”
“Yes you’re all very brave, chief,” Ramirez said dryly. O’Hanlon chuckled at the sarcasm. If anyone had earned the right to a shitty attitude, surely a war hero like Ramirez would be one of them.
Sergeant Adrian Ramirez was a living legend in Las Vegas. Seven years ago, the entire country watched as the President of the United States awarded him the Congressional Medal of Honor. Tales of his bravery against the Taliban were still whispered throughout the city.
The scar on his face was a frightful reminder that, even after years of neglect, the Soviet-era shrapnel grenades favored by Taliban fighters hadn’t lost their bite. Ramirez survived the ambush and killed nearly a dozen enemy fighters before rescuing a fellow Marine. Although the man he rescued later died from his injuries, Adrian Ramirez was still hailed as a hero for his selfless courage. A week later he was whisked to the White House and paraded in front of the lights and cameras. Everyone wanted to hear how he survived the Taliban ambush, but Ramirez refused to entertain people with any glorious battle stories.
“No one survived,” he would say. “We all died that night. I just died differently.”
Not many people knew what sense to make of that, most didn’t try. Sergeant Adrian Ramirez was a restless policeman, driven by his insatiable need to avenge his dead Marine Corps buddies. If he couldn’t do it in the sands of the Middle East, then he would do it on the streets of Las Vegas.
Sergeant Ramirez followed O’Hanlon’s lead along the ruined corridor of the Sunset View Motel. O’Hanlon hummed a cheery little tune to himself as he side-stepped over bundles of wet fire hose and debris.
“Ah let’s see here, room two-oh-two… two-oh-three… here we go; room two-oh-four,” O’Hanlon extended an arm toward the entrance.
“After you, Captain America,” he said with a grin.
“I told you I don’t like that nickname,”
“That’s what makes it fun,” O’Hanlon teased.
Ramirez brushed O’Hanlon aside and craned his neck inward to assess the scene. Dirty water formed hundreds of little droplets against the blackened ceiling and hissed into puffs of acrid steam as they fell against the hot floor.
Ramirez sighed. “I’m surprised the place is still standing,”
“The load-bearin’ members are holdin’ up for now, but this whole place will have to be condemned.”
O’Hanlon clicked on his flashlight then ran the brilliant white beam along the charred walls. Ramirez eyed the remains of the furnishings along the walls with a professional level of suspicion.
“See the uneven burns along them walls over there?” O’Hanlon began. “Fire ain’t ‘sposed to do shit like that. A good natural fire runs along predictable channels. This here fire just took off in every direction like paint splatter. It’s not natural, you see, not natural at all. Makes me certain someone’s done somethin’ funny with it.”
“Is there any evidence that the fire sprinklers were tampered with?”
“No,” the old investigator replied. “Not that it would have mattered. This place was in violation of almost every code in the book. If you want my opinion, I think someone was bribed to rubber-stamp the permits.”
Ramirez sighed. “There seems to be a lot of that going around these days.”
Corruption was nothing new in law enforcement. Even an elite agency like the LVMPD wasn’t immune to the seductive charm of dirty money. Ramirez liked to believe that no one ever joined the department with the intent of abusing their power. But he was also a realist. It was inevitable that a few desperate officers would succumb to accepting bribes. It would start small, accepting a few hundred bucks in exchange for turning a blind eye to a minor crime for example. But it was a deadly habit, and even the noblest officers, once corrupted, quickly transformed into monsters with badges.
“Don’t look at me,” O’Hanlon said defensively, noticing the chill in Ramirez’s stare. “I’d never sign off on a sprinkler system in this state of disrepair. I’m a fireman first, always will be.”
“Alright Chief, you’re not on trial here,” Ramirez said. “So we have an arsonist, but not a very good one, that’s what you’re telling me?”
“Bingo,” O’Hanlon said, his tone cheering up a bit. “Whoever did this was an amateur. Professional fire-bugs tend to be more meticulous about this stuff, especially when there’s something so important to hide.”
“You found something?”
O’Hanlon nodded. “Sure did. Would you like to meet them?” he asked. He walked deeper into the room and beckoned for Ramirez to follow. Ramirez coughed from the noxious fumes that puffed up from the floor.
O’Hanlon chuckled. “Give it a few minutes, you’ll get used to it.”
The fireman swung his flashlight downward to illuminate a smoking pile on the floor. Ramirez squinted his eyes; a charred human hand curled up from beneath the ashes.
“There’s your motive; apparently the arsonist was hoping to turn these two fellas into ash before we could get to them.”
Ramirez snapped on a pair of latex gloves. “Aim your light on the head please,” he instructed.
Crouching down he examined the crispy remains, first by gently guiding his fingers along the length of the bodies and then by performing a detailed inspection of the skulls. O’Hanlon couldn’t help but admire the way Ramirez jumped right into his investigation. With a hand cradling the back of one of the victim’s skulls, Ramirez traced his finger along a massive trench of cooked flesh. Blunt trauma, he concluded.
“Are there any other bodies?” Ramirez asked.
“Just these two guys.”
“Missing occupants?”
“A lot of the guest files were ruined in the fire,” O’Hanlon answered. “Luckily the rescue team had a clever solution. They cross-checked the registration info for all the vehicles in the parking lot to get a rough idea of who might have been inside. All the guests were accounted for except for one. A vehicle registered to Andre
w Kremenski was found unattended in this room’s parking space. I suspect one of these crispy boys on the floor might be him.”
Ramirez hummed thoughtfully. “Kremenski you say?”
“You know him?”
“I arrested a man named Andrew Kremenski about a year ago. We should have gotten a conviction but he was able to walk free with a deal. Makes me sick when that sort of stuff happens.”
O’Hanlon pulled a cigarette from his sweater pocket lit it. “Nice to have friends in the business isn’t it?” he said as he smoked.
“Sometimes,” Ramirez answered. “friendships don’t last very long with these gangster types.”
“I can see that,” O’Hanlon replied.
Ramirez’s trained eyes surveyed the blackened bodies.
“Both of these guys both have wounds consistent with the same weapon; some sort of club or maybe a crow bar.”
“Good eye,” O’Hanlon said, impressed by Ramirez’s abilities. “We found a tire iron under the mattress there, thing was all bent outta shape too.”
“Okay then,” Ramirez said. “Assuming that one of these victims truly is Andrew Kremenski, then that leaves two unknowns in the room at the time of the murder –
A shadow near the closet caught his attention.
“What’s that?” Ramirez said. He pointed across the room. “Keep a light right next to the dresser over there.”
O’Hanlon kept the suspicious-looking area illuminated while Ramirez carefully stepped over the bodies to get a closer look.
“What is it?” The old fireman asked.
“Pants,” Ramirez concluded.
“Pants?”
“What’s left of them at least.”
Ramirez spotted something under the incinerated remains of the garment. He reached down and plucked a piece of metal from the debris. It was completely blackened by flames, with engravings on one side and a magnetic bar on the other. It was about the length and width of two fingers, what was it?
“Find something interesting over there, Sherlock?”