Stripped

by Brian Freeman

“We know that MJ was having an affair with Tierney Dargon,” Stride said.

  “Moose’s wife?”

  Stride wondered how many Tierney Dargons there could be in Las Vegas. “There was video in MJ’s apartment of the two of them together. We heard about the affair from Karyn Westermark and Rex Terrell, so the word was out.”

  Sawhill leaned back in his chair and tugged at his pointed chin. “Moose is a wild man. He always has been. I wouldn’t put it past him to go into a rage and kill someone. He’s come close a few times.”

  “Except this wasn’t a rage killing,” Amanda pointed out. She came forward and leaned over the desk. “This was planned.”

  “And unless he’s dropped several decades and a hundred pounds or so, the killer wasn’t Moose himself,” Stride said.

  “So he could have hired someone,” Sawhill said. “The two of you will talk to Tierney?”

  Stride nodded.

  “What about the video archives at the casino? Did we get another look at the killer?”

  “If he was there, he didn’t look like he did on Saturday night,” Stride said.

  “All right, keep me posted.” He waved his hand, dismissing them, and picked up the phone again. He grabbed the pink stress ball on his desk with his other hand and squeezed it. Stride hoped he used a lighter touch with his wife’s breasts. “I want your teams on both of these cases day and night. Get them off the front page. Or get me the perps. And Stride, I don’t want you talking to Walker Lane again without consulting me.”

  “Understood,” Stride said.

  The four of them made a beeline for the door. Stride pulled it closed behind him as they left, Cordy shot an evil glance at Amanda, who winked at him and gave him a tiny wave with a crook of her index finger. He stormed away.

  “What did you do to him, anyway?” Stride asked.

  Amanda giggled. “I pinched his butt”

  THIRTEEN

  Amanda drove over to the south side of McCarran and parked in a lot where she could watch the jets landing on runway 25 Left. She was driving her aging Toyota rather than the Spyder, which she reserved for weekends and road trips. She turned her radio to the frequency of the tower and listened to the chatter between the pilots and the traffic controllers. Tierney Dargon’s United flight from San Francisco was scheduled to land in half an hour.

  There were a few other plane nuts parked around her. Some people made checklists of the incoming and outgoing flights and ticked them off as they watched the planes come and go. Amanda wasn’t that extreme. She just liked to sit here with a latte and a cigarette. She didn’t smoke often, not anymore, but she allowed herself one cigarette when she came here and kept a pack in the glove compartment for those occasions. Something about the smoke and the sweet coffee, and the roar of engines and the smell of jet fuel, made time stop for her, like a kind of hypnosis, when her mind could wander. She didn’t even take Bobby here. This was her place.

  She had found it when she came to the city from Portland five years ago. Back when she was Jason Gillen, a smart Oregon cop who became a smart Vegas cop. Back when she was thinking about killing herself. She remembered sitting here with her gun on the seat beside her, wondering if she had the guts to do it, and finally realizing that it took no guts at all to run away. The courage was in sticking around and facing down the people who were afraid of her because she was wired differently from others.

  So Jason died, and Amanda was born.

  She took the cigarette out of her mouth, exhaled a trail of smoke out the window, and smiled as she saw the lipstick ring on the white wrapper.

  People always thought that it was about sex. That to be her, the way she was, she had to walk on the wild side. That she could only do that to her body, and gulp down hormones every day, if she were obsessed with sex. They never believed her when she told them that she and Bobby were pretty conservative at heart, in or out of the bedroom. They were the ones who were obsessed with sex. They were titillated by her. Aroused by her. Men and women alike. They wanted to know how she did it, in what positions, and how often. They wanted to see her. Taste her.

  The worst were the he-men on the force. People like Cordy. She got under their manly skin. They were so scared of the fact that she turned them on that they ran like hell from her. It used to bother her. Now she had fun with it. It was her way of showing them that she did have guts, that she wasn’t going away. Maybe it was a little payback, too.

  She knew the jokes hadn’t stopped, just gone underground, because the brass had told the other cops to stay cool. Seven-figure settlements had a way of making people behave, at least to her face. No one wanted her around, though. She knew that. They ignored her, talked behind her back, and waited for her to take the money and run. It killed them when she stayed.

  She had been worried about Stride. She could deal with the others for the most part, but a bad partner could make your life miserable. Worst of all, he was a heartlander, from the Midwest. She thought of people from the ag belt as narrow-minded, quick to judge. She figured he would look at her as if she were an alien. But Stride surprised her. She understood what Serena saw in him. He was attractive, no doubt about that, but he also seemed to have a soul a mile deep. Once he got over the shock, he simply treated her like a person. He was curious-everyone was curious-but she felt respect from him for what was in her brain, not what was between her legs.

  That was rare.

  Beyond the fence, a Southwest 737 angled gracefully upward and soared toward the sky. She knew that most of the people on the plane were going home, with lighter wallets, leaving the fantasy world behind and winging back to reality. To her, it looked like freedom. One day, she might really take the money, climb into the Spyder with Bobby, and run. Not because she couldn’t take it, but because she wanted to be somewhere where no one knew her, where people didn’t stare.

  Bobby deserved that, too. He probably didn’t tell her half the shit he got for living with her, or the abuse he took, but he had stood by her and slept beside her for more than three years. She had avoided sex with him for months when they were dating, because she had assumed she would lose him as soon as he found out the truth. When she finally told him, she had lost him, at least for those two weeks while he came to grips with what he felt. Then he had come back, and he had stuck around, never once asking her to be anything but what she was.

  She had never wanted to have the SRS surgery, to take the final step. She was afraid that things would go wrong, that the parts wouldn’t work, that she would be left with no sexual sensation whatever. She didn’t need it to define her as a woman. She had been willing to have it for Bobby, though, to make herself a little more normal for him-except he said no, that he didn’t want it, not unless she wanted it for herself. She loved him for that.

  It sounded so appealing, to run away with him someday, to escape all the cruelty. San Francisco maybe, where Tierney was coming from. No one would give them a second look there. Not in the City by the Gay.

  Amanda tossed the cigarette butt out of the car. She laughed at herself and shook her head. She was as guilty of fantasy as the people on the plane. The truth was, she would never leave.

  The radio crackled to life. United 1580 was cleared to land.

  Amanda fired up the engine. Tierney Dargon was coming home.

  She spotted Tierney in the baggage claim area, standing apart from the crowd, a cell phone wedged between her shoulder and her ear. She was stick-thin and pretty, with a loose pink top that let her breasts sway and rose-colored tight pants, but other than her Vegas body, she wasn’t making any effort to look glamorous. Her brown hair hung limply to her shoulders in a mess of curls. She hadn’t put on makeup or jewelry, except for a gold bracelet that she twisted nervously around her wrist with her other hand. The whites of her eyes were lined with red.

  Amanda began to approach her but found her way blocked by a giant Samoan in a Hawaiian shirt, obviously a bodyguard. She discreetly flashed her badge. The man asked if she could wait, the
n lumbered over to Tierney and whispered in her ear. The girl studied Amanda, murmured something to the Samoan, and went back to her phone call.

  “Mrs. Dargon wonders if she could talk to you in her limo,” the bodyguard told Amanda. “It’s waiting outside. There’s a picture of Mr. Dargon on the door.”

  Amanda shrugged. “Okay.”

  She found the limo without any problem. Samoa had obviously radioed to the driver, who was waiting for her with the door open. He was in his sixties, and he tipped his black hat to Amanda as she got in.

  ’There’s champagne if you’d like,” he told her. “We have muffins, too, but don’t take the blueberry oatmeal muffin. That’s Mrs. Dargon’s favorite.”

  Amanda smiled. “She eats carbs?”

  The driver laughed but didn’t reply. He closed the door with Amanda inside.

  She had never been in a stretch before. Her ass slid all over the leather seat as she tried to get comfortable. A television was built into a corner unit toward the front of the car, with a stereo and DVD player on shelves underneath. A rap video was playing, with the sound muted. The opposite corner included a refrigerator and a circular glass serving tray with sweets, fruits, an open bottle of champagne, and a carafe of juice.

  There was a portrait of Moose Dargon on black velvet stitched into the middle seat on Amanda’s left. He looked twenty years younger, with wild wavy black hair, caterpillar eyebrows, and a bulbous red-veined nose. Amanda clucked her tongue in disbelief. Elvis had not left the limo.

  She chose to sit on Moose’s face, because she could get some traction on the velvet. There was a series of wooden drawers built into the lower half of the seats. She glanced through the limo window, then slid open the drawer between her legs.

  No surprise: drugs and a six-pack of Trojans. Amanda removed the envelope of cocaine.

  She felt the car rock as the driver got out. A few seconds later, the rear door swung open, and Tierney slipped inside. She took a seat opposite Amanda and brushed her dirty curls out of her face. She wasn’t smiling.

  “This is about MJ, huh?” Her voice was girlish and made her sound even younger than she was.

  Amanda nodded.

  “Sorry, I must look like a mess,” Tierney apologized. “I’ve been really upset about what happened.”

  “You look fine.”

  Tierney gave her an embarrassed smile. “That’s nice of you to say.”

  It was amazing, Amanda thought. In Las Vegas, even murder was no excuse for not looking your best.

  “I guess you found the video,” Tierney added.

  “Yes, we did.”

  “God. I can’t believe I was so stupid. But MJ thought it was hot doing it on film. If this gets out, Moose is going to kill me.”

  Amanda raised an eyebrow. “I hear he has a temper”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean literally. Moose would never touch me. But he’d be upset, humiliated. I never wanted that.”

  Her defenses were up. Amanda decided to go another way. “When did you go to San Francisco?”

  “Sunday morning. As soon as I heard about MJ. My family’s there, and I told Moose I wanted to spend some time with my parents, but mostly I stayed in a downtown hotel and cried. I didn’t want Moose to see me that way. He’d wonder why.”

  She was on the verge of tearing up. Amanda realized that Tierney wasn’t cold, like Karyn Westermark. This girl actually felt something for MJ.

  “Were you in love with him?”

  “Who, Moose?” Tierney asked, misunderstanding. “Of course. I know what everybody thinks, that he wanted a bimbo on his arm and I wanted his money. It’s not like that. We care about each other.”

  “He does have a lot of money,” Amanda pointed out. Moose lived in Lake Las Vegas, a gated resort community on the other side of the mountains.

  “Sure, but I won’t see any of that. I’m with him because he’s funny and sweet and he treats me nice. I was nothing before him.”

  “What about MJ?”

  Tierney stared blankly at the television screen in the limo for a long time before saying anything. “I’m twenty-four, okay?” She said it as if that were enough to explain everything.

  “You have a reputation as a party girl. Lots of hookups.”

  “Well, that’s crap,” Tierney retorted. Her brow wrinkled in annoyance. “I’ve only slept with a couple guys. Lately it was just MJ.”

  Amanda wondered about the pack of condoms in the drawer under her feet. “Did Moose know about MJ? Or the others?”

  “It was more like ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ He knows there are things he can’t give me.”

  “But what if he did find out? Moose has put a few people in the hospital in his time.”

  “That was years ago! He’s eighty years old, for God’s sake.”

  “But would he hire someone to send a message? He might not hurt you, but what about MJ?”

  “You think Moose had MJ killed?” Tierney shook her head vehemently. “No way. First, he wouldn’t do that. I told you, we have an arrangement. And second, he didn’t know about MJ.”

  “Come on, Tierney,” Amanda scolded her. “Don’t be naive. People knew. We didn’t recognize you from the video. We asked someone who MJ might be sleeping with, and yours was the first name that came up.”

  Tierney’s mouth fell open. “Oh, shit. I can’t believe this.”

  “Did you love MJ?”

  “Love him? Yeah, a little, I guess. I don’t sleep with people I don’t care about, whatever you think.”

  “Well, if Moose thought you had feelings for MJ, that might make him feel pretty vulnerable. Like you might leave him.”

  “You’re wrong,” Tierney insisted. “Moose knows I would never do that. He’s sick. Cancer. He doesn’t have a lot of time left, and he knows I’ll be there for him. MJ, he was-well, I kind of wondered about the future. After.”

  Amanda was having a hard time deciding whether Tierney was a sweet, lonely girl or a shrewd gold digger with her eyes on the next prize. If she was putting on an act, it was a good one.

  “Did you know about MJ and Karyn Westermark?” Amanda asked.

  Tierney pressed her full lips together until they formed a thin line. “Yes.”

  “Did that bother you?”

  “We did a threesome once. That freaked me out. I didn’t want to do it again. MJ wanted to, though.”

  “Were you with MJ on Saturday morning?”

  She nodded. “And Friday night, too.”

  “Why’d you leave on Saturday?”

  “I had a thing with Moose on Saturday night. A party.”

  “Where?” Amanda asked. She jotted down the details as Tierney told her. “Were you with Moose the whole time? Did he make or receive any calls on his cell phone?”

  Tierney shook her head. “He was schmoozing. It was a political thing for the governor. You know, it’s reelection time. I was with Moose the entire evening.”

  “Did you know MJ was with Karyn that night?”

  “I figured,” she said unhappily.

  “You sound jealous.”

  Tierney tucked one of her curls around her finger and played with it. “Karyn is the big leagues. I know that. I’m just a cocktail waitress who was in the right place at the right time. I try to fit in with MJ and his crowd, but I don’t, not really. I know they laugh at me.”

  “So why hang out with them?”

  “What else do I have? My old friends, they can’t deal with who I am now. Because of Moose. You know, living by the lake, the bodyguards, the limo. It doesn’t matter that I’m still who I was. If you’re young and you’ve got money, you just wind up at the Oasis. And there are all the same little cliques in that crowd. It’s like high school.”

  “What clique was MJ in?”

  “Karyn’s. That’s how I met him. He was at the casino with Karyn about six months ago. She was really friendly to me, and I only realized later it was because she wanted to get me in bed with them. But I liked MJ, so I did it. W
e started going out after that, just the two of us.”

  “How did Karyn feel about that?”

  Tierney shrugged. “I don’t suppose she cared. She still slept with MJ whenever she wanted.” There was a hint of bitterness in her voice.

  “Karyn says MJ was planning to dump you,” Amanda said.

  Tierney was shocked. “She said that? No way. I don’t believe that. MJ wouldn’t do that.”

  “Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill MJ?”

  “No, I don’t,” Tierney said. “I can’t imagine. But not Moose. Definitely not.”

  Amanda asked, “Do you know if MJ had anything to do with Boni Fisso? Did they know each other?”

  “Boni? Not that I know of. He never mentioned him.”

  “How about Moose? Does he know Boni?”

  Tierney nodded. “Well, sure. Moose played the Sheherezade all the time in the old days.”

  Amanda wasn’t sure it meant anything, but Moose was a volatile man, despite his age and health. If someone like Moose did want to hire a hit man, it was easy to imagine him talking to Boni.

  She thanked Tierney and reached for the door to the limousine. Tierney took her arm in a soft grip. Her hand felt small.

  “Does this have to become public? Me and MJ?”

  “I can’t make any promises,” Amanda said. “And like I said, it’s already an open secret.”

  Tierney nodded. Her eyes drifted to the drawer on the other side of the limo, which wasn’t fully closed. She glanced back at Amanda, then looked away. “You took my stuff, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Amanda told her. “But I’m not vice. It gets flushed. You know, it’s none of my business, but you don’t seem cut out for the fast lane, Tierney. Maybe you should think about making some changes.”

  “Thanks.” Tierney took a jaded look around at the limo and gave her a half-smile. “Believe it or not, there’s a part of me that wishes I was still slinging drinks at the Venetian. Sometimes it’s easier being on the outside, looking in.”

  Stride leaned back in the uncomfortable wooden chair and stretched his arms. The knotted muscles in his back tugged and strained. He felt a pain behind his eyes, and he closed them, hoping to tame his headache. He had been staring at the fiche reader for three hours, squinting at fuzzy forty-year-old images, feeling himself transported to 1967. The year Amira Luz was killed. It was odd, looking at headlines from newspapers back in those days, knowing how history turned out. The young girls in the ads were old women now. There was a photograph of Robert Kennedy. Most people had cigarettes hanging off their lips.