Stripped

by Brian Freeman

  Things weren’t so different then. Las Vegas still floated above the times, corrupt and somehow incorruptible. He saw articles about desperate times for blacks in North Las Vegas and, a few pages later, ads for the black entertainers headlining on the Strip. He saw names from the past, in their prime: Red Buttons, Milton Berle, Ann-Margret. Miniskirts were in. The latest Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, was in the theaters that summer. Connery was cool.

  He tried to imagine what it was like to live back then, to be a part of those days. From a distance, it looked old-fashioned, like the pencil drawings of models and the washed-out color in the photographs. Sophisticated but naive. He felt the pull of nostalgia, the yearning for the good old days. But nostalgia was nothing but sadness over times past. The good old days weren’t so good. He saw headlines about labor strikes and bribery scandals. The death of a Cosa Nostra leader thousands of miles away in New York made the front page in Las Vegas. The rumor of dark things was in the papers along with Frank’s old black magic, like shadows of clouds passing overhead.

  He picked up a copy of the first article he had printed. It was dated June 18:

  AMIRA MAKES TRIUMPHANT RETURN

  Fresh from a six-month stint in the Montmartre district of Paris, Spanish dancer Amira Luz got a roaring welcome home on Saturday night from a packed crowd at the Sheherezade, where she introduced a risqué new show entitled Flame.

  Like other shows now in vogue in casino showrooms, Flame features a cadre of lavishly dressed topless showgirls, as well as a riotous comedy performance by Strip veteran Moose Dargon. But Luz is the star. Her showstopper is a flamenco striptease, where the stage is lit by dozens of candles and a single guitarist provides accompaniment as she sheds her fiery red Spanish costume…

  Stride retrieved another article from the third week in July. Amira was on the front page:

  SHOWGIRL MURDER SHOCKS STRIP

  Las Vegas police confirmed today that Amira Luz, star of the hit show Flame at the Sheherezade, was murdered on Friday night in a luxury suite in the popular casino. While police offered few details, sources inside the casino say the dancer was found early Saturday morning in a rooftop swimming pool, her skull crushed. Luz was last seen onstage on Friday during the late performance of Flame.

  Detective Nicholas Humphrey declined to speculate on a motive for the crime or on any possible suspects. In a prepared statement, casino owner Boni Fisso declared “profound sadness” over the death of Luz and vowed “complete cooperation with the police in tracking down the deranged individual who defiled our property in order to perpetrate this heinous crime.”

  One day after Luz was killed, and already Boni was laying the groundwork to pin the blame on an outsider. Stride wanted to talk to Nick Humphrey.

  As he reread the article, Stride felt experienced hands massaging his shoulders. He glanced up as Serena leaned down and put her face next to his.

  “This is your idea of a lunch date?” she asked him. “The library?”

  “Just don’t stop,” Stride told her. “That feels great.”

  Her fingers continued to knead and separate the tissues in his back. She looked at the newspaper articles over his shoulder and at the stack of microfiche boxes.

  “Maybe I heard wrong,” she teased him. “Didn’t Sawhill say the case was closed?”

  Stride smiled. “Did he? I must have misheard him.”

  Serena dragged another chair across the worn gray carpeting and set it down next to him. Stride noticed several of the men in the library watching her. The midday crowd in the library was almost all men, unemployed, in jeans and baseball caps. Some made a show of reading the newspaper. Others simply stared into space.

  “Find anything?” Serena asked.

  Stride shrugged. “You have to read between the lines. It’s mostly rumor and innuendo. There was a gossip column back then that dropped some broad hints. I think that’s where Rex Terrell picked up a lot of the details for his story in the magazine.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Jonny,” Serena told him. “I trust your instincts, but I’m not sure I see the connection. I don’t know how you take a 1967 murder that was supposedly solved and draw a line to MJ’s death today.”

  “Maybe you don’t,” Stride admitted. “There may be nothing in this. But I’m like you. I don’t like coincidences.”

  “Such as?”

  Stride leaned back in the chair. “Here’s what I have. MJ starts nosing into the murder of Amira Luz, because he reads allegations in LV magazine that his father was the one who killed her. Shortly thereafter, MJ winds up murdered himself. The murder of Amira took place at a casino owned by Boni Fisso, who may or may not have ties to organized crime and who is set to break ground this year on a new two-billion-dollar development project. How’m I doing?”

  “You have my attention,” Serena said. “First question: Who was Amira Luz, and why was she killed?”

  Stride nodded. “Amira was a nude dancer, and very good at it, according to the papers. They called her Spanish, but I found a bio that said she was actually half Spanish. Her father was a Spanish diplomat, and her mother was the blond bombshell daughter of a Texas congressman. When Boni Fisso opened the Sheherezade in late 1965, Amira was eye candy, twenty-one years old, in a show built around a comedian. Guess who?”

  “Moose Dargon,” Serena guessed.

  “Exactly. Another interesting coincidence. Anyway, Amira is a big hit. By May of 1966, she has her own show, Lido-style, backed up by a chorus line of wannabes. Toward the end of the year, Amira went off to dance in Paris for six months. Or maybe she was over there planning her next act. Regardless, by June of‘67, Amira is back in Las Vegas at the Sheherezade in a whole new show called Flame, and she’s bigger than ever.”

  “Until someone kills her,” Serena said.

  “Right. A few weeks after the show opens, Amira winds up murdered in a penthouse suite at the Sheherezade. By the way, Moose wound up as a supporting act in Amira’s new show and lost his solo gig. I don’t imagine he was too happy about it.”

  “Go on,” Serena said.

  “Now let’s look at Walker Lane. He filmed one of his movies in Vegas during the spring and got hooked on the city. Soon he was a regular, flying here every weekend from L.A. His favorite watering hole was the Sheherezade. Walker was tight with Boni Fisso. And Rex had it right, too: The gossip columns in June suggested that Walker had his eye on ‘a Latin beauty regularly seen on the Vegas stage.’ Amira.”

  “So what’s the theory?” Serena asked. “What happened to Amira?”

  “Try this. Walker gets carried away in his suite when Amira rejects him. Or maybe rough sex gets out of hand. She winds up dead. Then Boni helps Walker get away clean and finds a patsy in L.A. to take the fall.”

  “Why’d Walker stay away after the police closed the case?” Serena asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe Boni had a secret deal with the cops back then that Walker wouldn’t set foot in Vegas again. Anyway, it’s ancient history until Rex Terrell drags the story into LV and brings up all the old rumors about Amira, Walker, and Boni. Then MJ gets hold of it and starts asking questions.”

  “And gets killed.”

  Stride nodded. “I keep coming back to Boni’s plan to implode the Sheherezade and launch the Orient project. The last thing you want to deal with when you’ve got that kind of money on the line is a skeleton in the closet from forty years ago. Like Amira’s murder.”

  “I hate to point this out, but Sawhill doesn’t want you asking questions about this. What are you going to do?”

  “Ask questions about this,” Stride said.

  Serena laughed. “You could wind up the fastest-hired, fastest-fired detective in Metro history. Come on, let’s get out of here, and you can buy me lunch.”

  “Deal.”

  Stride gathered up his copies and shoved them inside his blazer pocket. He stacked the boxes of microfiche together and balanced them unsteadily. “Can you grab that copy of LV? That’s the one
with Rex Terrell’s article.”

  Serena picked up the magazine. One of the pages had a Post-it note, and Serena opened it to look inside.

  “That’s Amira,” Stride told her.

  There was a large black-and-white photograph in the magazine from the 1960s, with Amira in a sexy Spanish black dress, her black hair spilling across her sweaty face, her hand pulling up her skirt to reveal her bare, muscular leg. Behind her, in white, another showgirl struck a similar pose.

  Stride dropped off the boxes with the librarian. He looked back and realized Serena hadn’t moved. She was holding the magazine in her hands, staring at it.

  “What is it?”

  Serena didn’t seem to hear him. Then she folded the magazine back and pointed at the photo.

  “This girl in white behind Amira. That’s Peter Hale’s grandmother. The boy who was killed in the hit-and-run.”

  PART TWO. CLAIRE

  ***

  FOURTEEN

  Breaking into the car was child’s play.

  He waited in the backseat of the Lexus, parked in the shadows of the underground ramp at the Fashion Show Mall. His gun, a SIG-Sauer.357, was on the seat beside him.

  The Lexus was near the entrance to Nieman’s. Of course. She was a fashionable lady. Seventy-five years old, widowed. Thin as a bird. She parked in a handicapped spot, because she had arthritis in her legs. The windows of the car were smoked, and no one could see inside. But he could see out and see her when she came.

  He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. He found himself staring back at his own dark features: thick black hair, heavy beard line, and his eyes, so deep brown they appeared to have no color at all. He scared people with his eyes. He always had. It was as if, when they looked into his eyes, they were inside a closet, black, without light, with the walls closing in.

  He was like his eyes. Without emotion. Focused only on his goal.

  Except he knew that wasn’t true when it came to the boy. Peter Hale. He had felt something then, despite all his training, despite the soldiers who had showed him how to view pain and death through the lens of a microscope. Study it. Learn from it. But feel nothing.

  He did feel something about the boy, so much that he changed his plan in the middle, which he never did. He changed targets.

  His plan had been the mother. He took the boy instead.

  No one would know about his lapse except himself, but it bothered him. He didn’t like to think that he was a creature of anger anymore, not like in the old days. Those creatures made mistakes. He was a strategist, a mercenary in the field, with a goal and a plan.

  He saw the doors that led to the ramp elevators open, and the old woman came out, shopping bags in both hands. She walked gingerly. Each time her right foot came down, she winced, feeling pain in her joints. He could see her clearly, but she couldn’t see him, not when she approached the car and put the bags in the trunk, not when she fumbled with her keys by the driver’s door. The ramp was dark, and the car was dark. Even when she pulled open the door and maneuvered her frail body inside, she didn’t see him. She pulled the door shut. He was right behind her, watching her. He heard her exhale, sighing, the pressure finally off her feet.

  She hunched over, struggling to fit the key in the ignition. When she finally did, the engine turned over, and light classical music filled the car. She settled back, resting her head against the cushion, relaxing.

  Then she glanced in the mirror and saw him.

  His hand was already around her face, clamping off her scream. He didn’t bother with his gun. There was no need. Instead, he leaned forward, his quiet voice at her ear, soothing her.

  “We’re just going for a little drive,” he said.

  He didn’t want her dropping dead of a heart attack, and he needed her calm for what she had to do. The old woman had to get him through the security gate at Lake Las Vegas. She lived there, alone, in an estate where he could wait safely for night to fall.

  He knew this was the hard way. If it was only about killing the girl, there were easier ways to get it done. She partied at the casinos. She stripped off at the spa. He could take her in any of those places. But he was sending a message.

  Security doesn’t mean a thing.

  I can strike anywhere.

  I’m coming for you.

  FIFTEEN

  Linda Hale told them to take Bonanza Road east until they wanted to become Mormons. That was where her mother lived.

  Her mother-Peter’s grandmother-who had been a dancer onstage with Amira Luz.

  Stride didn’t understand the reference to the Mormons until he and Serena took the drive. Where Bonanza ran out, on the border of the eastern mountains, they were less than a block from the city’s giant Mormon temple, with its white spires visible throughout the valley. In the neighborhood surrounding the temple were lavish homes with Jaguars parked in the driveways, rock gardens landscaped with tall saguaros, and kidney-shaped clear blue swimming pools.

  Linda’s mother, Helen Truax, had a house of luminous white stucco almost directly opposite the temple, with a view down the valley that Stride figured was worth at least two million bucks. According to Linda, her mother was no Mormon, and she enjoyed having her wealthy religious neighbors know about her past as a barely clad dancer.

  When Helen Truax opened the door, she looked nothing like any grandmother Stride had ever seen. She was dripping wet, with a diaphanous white robe slipped over her shoulders, open, revealing a one-piece teal swimsuit underneath. She was barefoot and at least as tall as Stride himself. He knew she was sixty years old, but she could have passed for forty.

  “Please, come in.” She smiled at Stride, and her teeth were snowy white. She held a bell-shaped glass of white wine and had the dirtiest blue eyes he had ever seen.

  “Your daughter said you had showgirl looks,” Serena told her. “She was right.”

  Helen laughed. “I’d love to tell you this is all original equipment, but it’s not. If it starts to sag, I lift it. If it starts to wrinkle, I tighten it.” She cupped her full breasts in her hands. “Without help, these babies would be pointing at my toes by now.”

  She turned on her heels. The robe didn’t stretch to the bottom of her swimsuit, and Stride watched the rhythm of her ass as he followed her. Serena landed a sharp elbow against his ribs.

  Helen’s house was sparingly decorated. There were large empty walls, painted in glossy white and soft pastels. The same honey-gold carpet spread from room to room. Where there was art, it was Italian, mostly handblown glass and landscape oils heavy on sienna and umber. In a wide corridor leading to the rear of the house, however, Stride saw a series of photographs hung in slim frames. Helen, elaborately costumed, with Sinatra. Helen with Wayne Newton.

  Helen with Boni Fisso.

  She noticed Stride admiring the pictures. “Helena Troy,” she said. “That was my stage name. Don’t you love it?”

  “It looks like you knew all the big stars,” Stride said.

  “Why, of course. It was a small town back then. Everyone knew everyone among the entertainers. Las Vegas was like our personal playground. The world was our stage. The tourists who came, they were like children with their noses pressed against the glass, watching us, and wanting to catch a little bit of the glamour.”

  “It’s not that way anymore?” Stride asked.

  “Oh, no. People don’t appreciate the magic of those times. The sixties were our golden age. There was such a sense of class. Today everything is corporate. It’s Disneyland with a topless Minnie Mouse. There’s none of the star quality the town had in the past. Ma and Pa Kettle come here from Kansas, and they dress like they’re taking the kids to Six Flags. Even the celebrities who stay here now are so crass. I miss the old days, I really do.”

  Helen sighed. She led them into a sunken family room overlooking the valley. The east wall was made of rough-cut stone and featured a large fireplace. There was a wet bar on Stride’s right and a mirrored display of crystal behi
nd it. Helen took them through French doors that led to the outside patio. She pulled out three chairs from around a glass table and angled the umbrella to block the sun.

  Stride noticed two deck chairs placed side by side next to a forty-foot swimming pool. Two sets of wet footprints were drying quickly in the afternoon sun. Obviously, Helen had a guest who wasn’t invited to the interview.

  “Linda was very upset when she called me,” she said. “She made it sound like you thought I was in some way responsible for Peter’s death.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” Serena assured her. “We’re exploring whether there’s a connection between Peter’s death and the murder of MJ Lane over the weekend.”

  “Who?” Helen asked. There wasn’t any guile in her voice. She noted their surprise and added, “You’ll probably think I’m old-fashioned, but I don’t use my television set other than to watch old movies. And I don’t read the newspapers. Too much bad news.”

  “MJ Lane was murdered near the Oasis casino,” Stride said. “He was the son of Walker Lane.”

  Helen blinked and looked uncomfortable. “All right, I knew Walker Lane, but that was forty years ago. I don’t see what possible connection there could be to Peter’s death.”

  “We’ve had two murders in the space of a week under unusual circumstances,” Serena said. “Both victims had family relationships to people who had connections to the Sheherezade casino in 1967, and specifically-”