by Chris Holm
Hendricks didn’t like it.
Assuming the setup on Thursday was the same, the hall was too full—of people and furniture both. It had too few exits and too much security. Not to mention the half-domes of tinted plastic that protruded downward at regular intervals from the ceiling—security cameras, watching every inch of the place.
But like it or not, he had six million reasons to make it work.
So he fixed himself a plate and grabbed a seat up near the front, where a corner table was vacant by virtue of the fact that it afforded an awkward view of the stage. Fine by him. He didn’t care to see the performance, and from his perch in the nine-o’clock position at the table, he had sight lines on the bar; the crowd seated at the tables; the room’s main entrance; and, in the reflection of the chromed water pitcher on his table, the buffet patrons behind him.
As Hendricks settled into his seat and draped his napkin across his lap, the overhead lights dimmed, signaling that the show was about to begin. Hendricks didn’t pay any mind to the tired old man who took the stage with his dummy.
He had a job to do.
Albert Tuschbaum was having a lousy day.
For one, his throat was killing him. Thirty shows in thirty days will do that to you. Well, that and the sinus infection he’d picked up somewhere between here and San Antonio. He’d spent the last month snaking upward through the country on Greyhound after Greyhound: north on I-35 to Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Oklahoma City, then east on 44 to Tulsa and Joplin. To get to the gig in Branson, he got stuck on a local bus instead of an express, which meant stops every other mile it seemed, and damn near twice the travel time—all while wedged between a grubby, ponytailed biker-type too long since his last shower, and a woman whose snot-crusted toddler kept coughing like he had the plague. On the leg from Branson to Springfield, they’d lost his dummy, Mickey—though they claimed they’d loaded him into the luggage compartment before departing, he wasn’t there when they arrived—which meant he had to go onstage with the backup dummy he kept stuffed into the bottom of his other suitcase, whose threadbare clothes and chipping paint seemed to mirror Albert’s own sorry state. And from Springfield to his Pendleton’s gigs, his bus’s toilet had backed up, meaning that he not only couldn’t pee—his cholesterol meds made him piss like a racehorse—but he also couldn’t eat, the foul stench of human waste ensuring the lunch he bought at the station went untouched. Hell, he’d been in town for hours now, and still he felt as though the awful reek of chemical toilet clung to his clothes, his hair, his skin.
Then again, maybe that was the smell of his career.
How could he have let it come to this? Time was, he played the Vegas strip, warming up the sold-out crowds for acts like Tom Jones and Neil Diamond. Twice, he’d appeared on Carson, once even getting invited over to the couch. But that was years ago—decades. Two divorces and countless hip flasks of Canadian Club. The booze had eaten through his stomach, his marriage, and his reputation, etching its mark deep into the lines of his face, into the broken corpuscles draped like lace across his nose and cheeks. It drove away his wife and friends, and left his children flinching every time the phone rang, not knowing if the voice at the other end would be that of their maudlin old man, or the inevitable rote sympathy of some faraway police officer, informing them they needn’t flinch any longer.
Then Grace came and changed everything.
Five weeks early, she showed up. Her lungs were weak, her body bruised from the trauma of early labor and a breech presentation. Ultimately, the doctors were forced to perform an emergency Cesarean on Albert’s daughter Rachel—herself the baby of the family. In the end, mother and daughter were fine, though the first few days were touch-and-go for both. And though Albert’s ex managed to put aside years of heartache and resentment to wire him money for an airline ticket so he could be there should both or neither wake, Albert wasn’t man enough to make the trip—the thought of losing both his daughter and his grandchild in one fell swoop proved too much. He stopped off at some shitty cocktail lounge on his way to the airport for one steadying drink and woke up days later in a flea-ridden motel, the rumble of landing aircraft shaking the four empty bottles on his nightstand, with no memory of what had transpired in the interim—without even knowing if his child and grandchild had survived.
That’s when he decided to get clean.
The first month was the worst—the shakes, the sweats, the horrid clarity that ensured each unendurable minute proceeded directly to the next, with no fast-forward, no blissful blackout time-jump. Gone was the soft amber whiskey filter through which he experienced his life, and all he was left with was the cold reality of the pathetic existence it had become.
So he resolved to change it. To make amends. To glue back together what he’d broken, as best he could.
Now he peddled his dying art in two-bit rooms in two-bit towns, to crowds who didn’t give a shit if he moved his lips or not, let alone said anything funny. But he didn’t do it for the laughs, or the accolades, or even for himself. He did it for Grace. Albert was determined that when she was old enough to look at him with any kind of understanding, it would be love he saw reflected there, not pity or disappointment.
It was a damn good thing he didn’t do it for himself. Because these assholes in the crowd wouldn’t know talent if it got up in front of them and sang “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” while gargling a glass of water.
Take the fellow stage right, for example. The wannabe cowboy in the Stetson and the BluBlockers, sitting to one side of an otherwise empty table and pointedly ignoring him. Guy’d barely even glanced his way when Albert took the stage—and he’d spent the whole time since staring at the rest of the audience. Apparently, every other person here was more interesting than Albert’s set.
Then there was the old-timer who’d fallen asleep in his mashed potatoes, a rail-thin guy with a wispy horseshoe of too-long white hair and a week’s dusting of white stubble. Albert saw him swaying gently as if to music only he could hear as Albert was going into his knot/not riff on “Who’s on First?” Then his eyes closed, and down he went. Albert was inclined to give that guy a pass—it was doubtless drink and not boredom that knocked him out, and as the sixmonth chip in Albert’s front pocket reminded him, drink
was one thing over which some folks had little control.
The prick at the bar was another matter.
He’d come in twenty minutes into the set, long after everyone else was seated. The banquet hall’s main double doors had been closed at the start of his performance, but this flannel-clad oaf banged them open and headed straight for the bar. There, he got into an argument with the bartender regarding the proper ratio of ice to Jack Daniel’s— loudly enough that Albert could hear the dropped Rs and nasal As of his Masshole accent.
And Albert wasn’t the only person who noticed. A good quarter of the crowd was now training their attention on this blowhard idiot instead of Albert—including, it dismayed him to discover, Stetson-and-BluBlockers on the far side of the room. Apparently, a skilled rendition of a classic vaudevillian act in the vein of Bergen and Winchell wasn’t enough to interest him, but a boorish oaf berating the wait-staff was downright riveting.
That was it. Albert had had enough. Family show or not, it was time to teach this man—and this crowd—some manners.
“Hey, pal! Yeah, you at the bar!” It was not Albert who spoke, but his backup dummy, Rickey. “Is this guy’s act bothering you? ’Cause I could ask him to cool it for a sec while you get this business with the barkeep figured out!” Rickey always was a bit of a dick.
The crowd responded with titters of discomfort. It was always that way when a comic first engaged a heckler; they never knew which horse to back. But Albert wasn’t some novice. He knew how to handle himself in front of hostile audiences. The fact was, he hadn’t felt this alive in decades.
The big man turned his attention from the bar to the stage, flushing with anger but saying nothing.
“W
hatsamatter, Tons-of-Fun,” continued Rickey, “fat got your tongue?”
That drew a bigger laugh. The man’s fists balled at his sides, and he seemed to shrink a bit from the attention of the crowd, but still he remained silent.
“Come on now, Rickey,” Albert said, good cop to his dummy’s bad. “Give the man a break. He’s just trying to get a drink.”
“Oh, sure. Take his side,” Rickey replied, and then baited the hook: “Hey, barkeep, what’s his poison?”
The bartender looked at the man, and then the crowd, and then at Albert. After a moment’s hesitation, she said, shaky-voiced from nerves, “J-jack Daniel’s.”
Rickey continued: “Tell you what—how ’bout you give it to him on old Albert here. ’Cause without the Jack, he’d just be an ass.”
The crowd went nuts. Albert smiled. And for just a moment, as he stepped closer to the stage, the man smiled, too, but it was a feral smile—a wild animal baring its teeth in warning. Albert’s stomach clenched at the sight.
When he was a few feet from the stage, the man spoke, low enough so that only Albert could hear. “You’re lucky I’m working, old man, or I swear to Christ I’d shove that doll a yours so far down your fucking throat you’d hafta clench your asshole to make his mouth move. And you can keep your goddamn drink.”
Albert blinked at him, paralyzed in the no-man’s-land between pride and fear. The casino security guards who flanked the stage weren’t quite close enough to hear, but they got the gist and closed in to defuse the situation. But before they reached the man, he shrugged them off, turning toward the exit and storming out. One of the guards spoke briefly into his walkie.
As the crowd settled down, and Albert resumed his set, the man in the Stetson and BluBlockers rose and followed.
20
Alexander Engelmann stood at a roulette table outside the Fountain Room, alternating bets of red and black. Engelmann was not much of a gambler; he chose this game both because its odds were such that one could play for quite some time without requiring additional chips— roughly forty-seven percent on any red or black bet—and because it afforded him an unobstructed view of the entrance to the ballroom in which Purkhiser was to be killed. Engelmann was certain his quarry would reconnoiter the room—but he’d not yet seen anyone who matched the description Morales had given him.
Still, he thought, that did not mean his quarry was not here.
Engelmann absently fingered the cell phone in his pocket. He was tempted to dial his quarry’s burner phone, to see if he could hear it ring nearby—but he knew the potential upside to so brazen an act was too slight, and the downside too great. Cell-phone usage was forbidden on the gaming floor, to discourage cheating; it would be difficult to use his here without running afoul of casino security. And by every indication, Engelmann’s quarry was a cautious man—it was doubtful he would make so egregious an error as to leave his ringer on while on a job. But mostly, Engelmann could not because to do so might tip his quarry to the fact that something was amiss.
“Thirty-five,” called the croupier as the ball rattled to a stop. Engelmann’s fellow players sighed with disappoint-ment—the corresponding patch of felt was empty. “Nobody home.”
A flurry of betting as the wheel was spun again; Engelmann slid one chip, the table minimum, onto red. Then the croupier waved his hand over the table and said, “No more bets.”
That was fine by Engelmann. He was eager for the real games to begin.
When Leonwood burst, red-faced, out of the Fountain Room, Engelmann raised an eyebrow. For a moment it looked like Leonwood was headed straight toward him, and though Engelmann understood rationally that Leon-wood knew nothing of his existence or of his mission, a jolt of adrenaline pricked at his limbs at the perceived threat. But then Leonwood veered left toward the casino’s main entrance, and the moment passed.
Four security guards materialized as if from the cardinal points of the lobby’s inlaid compass rose, flanking Leon-wood but not engaging. Leonwood tried to duck past them, but one stepped in front of him, hands raised in a placating gesture. The guard said something to Leonwood, but his words were lost to Engelmann thanks to the clamor of the gaming floor. Leonwood responded angrily. Engelmann drifted away from the roulette table to better hear their exchange.
“Sir—” the croupier objected because the ball was still in play, but Engelmann ignored him. Anger blossomed in his mind. Anger, and a hint of fear. He couldn’t fathom what this stupid hunk of flannel-draped beef was thinking, making such a spectacle of himself, and he was all too aware that if Leonwood was thrown out, his last-gasp effort to eliminate the Council’s pest was as dead as Engelmann himself would be once the Council got wind that he had failed.
“Sir, I understand you’re upset,” said the guard as Engelmann got within earshot.
“You’re goddamn right I’m upset,” growled Leonwood. “All I wanted was a fucking drink before dinner, and that creepy guy with the dummy started heckling me! What kinda establishment are you running here?”
“Please realize, sir, that the views expressed by Mr. Tuschbaum do not in any way reflect those of Pendleton’s or her employees. I’m very sorry if he offended—”
“If?” Leonwood interrupted.
“—and, if you’ll just calm down, we’d like to make this right, so we could avoid any further unpleasantness.”
“Make this right how?” Dubious. Interested.
“You mentioned you hadn’t eaten dinner yet?”
“That’s right.”
“Then perhaps we could arrange for you a table at Gasparini’s, where I suspect the steak will be to your liking. We will of course refund the cost of the buffet, and tonight’s dinner will be on the house.”
Leonwood’s expression softened. “I suppose that’d be all right,” he said.
The guard led Leonwood to the concierge’s desk. Engelmann—satisfied that his plan hadn’t been derailed— turned back toward the gaming floor, only to run into a ridiculous Roy Rogers of a man in sunglasses, a silly mustache, and a garishly outsized Stetson.
“Pardon me,” said the man, a hint of drawl to his voice. “Just lookin’ for the head. Any chance you could point me in the right direction?”
That drawl was more Virginia South than Western cowboy twang, but Engelmann was unaware of the difference. “I’m afraid not,” Engelmann replied, and continued on his way.
The cowboy lingered a moment, watching Leonwood, the guard, and the concierge converse. Leonwood, ever the professional hitter, scanned the crowd surreptitiously a time or two while they spoke, and by suspicion or mere happenstance, his gaze settled briefly on the cowboy.
Then he turned his attention back to the concierge, flashing a polite smile at some solicitous, unfunny joke— and when he glanced up again, the cowboy was gone.
21
A voice in his ear, crackly and delayed—the telephone connection terrible. Henry Garfield strained to hear over the clamor of the FBI’s St. Louis field office on Market Street. Then his eyes went wide. “You serious?” he asked. “Hell yeah, I’ll wait.” He covered the mouthpiece of the office-issue landline and shouted to his partner, one cubicle away: “Hey, Thompson—you’re not gonna fuckin’ believe this.”
Charlie Thompson wearily removed her glasses and closed her eyes, but the ghostly image of the traffic camera footage she’d been staring at remained. She massaged at the knot of tension where nose met forehead that had twisted her handsome features into a scowl, but it did nothing to relieve the march of her headache. “Garfield,” she said, “I swear to God, if you’re calling me over there to see another sleazeball bang some floozy in an alley, I’m going to put a bullet through your monitor. Or you.”
“Right,” Garfield said, “like there’s two guys in one day that lucky in all of Saint Louis. Look around—the lucky people in this town have done moved out. I never seen a city this big this empty.”
About that, at least, Garfield was right. The population of St. Louis had decl
ined by two-thirds since its peak. The results were broad sidewalks and multilane arterials that sat empty, or damn near. Which, theoretically, should have made their current task easier, but in practice made it dull enough to render it unbearable.
Thompson and Garfield were looking for a late-model metallic blue Nissan Versa sedan, rented Monday evening from Reliant Auto Rental—less than a mile’s walk from the airport—by a Mr. Lawrence Landry. Landry was one of Leonwood’s go-to aliases. They’d been at it for going on twenty-four hours—since midday Tuesday, when the footage from the traffic cams, ATMs, and private security feeds started rolling in. Reliant, like most auto rental companies across the country, didn’t bother placing tracking systems inside their compacts or economies—just their luxury options. Paying monthly premiums to track a fleet of low-rent cars unlikely to be stolen wasn’t worth the cost. And either Leonwood was wise to the fact or he was just a tightwad, because moose of a man that he was, when it came time to rent a ride, he opted to cram himself into a compact rather than fork over the dough for something he might actually fit into. And that left Thompson and Garfield hoping somebody somewhere had eyes on him, so they could figure out where he was headed. Even in a town as sparsely populated as St. Louis, it was like trying to find a needle in a pile of other needles—and the St. Louis field office was understaffed, so they were on their own sifting through the literally thousands of hours of video and reams of digital stills. With twenty trained agents, it might have been doable. With two, it was a waste of time.
“So what have you got?” Thompson said.
“What I’ve got is a call from our office in KC. They got a nibble on the pic of Leonwood we’ve been circulating. Seems ol’ Leon got himself into an argument with a fucking ventriloquist of all things at some cheap-ass casino buffet, and security had to step in to talk him down.”