Stripped

by Brian Freeman

  An elderly black man limped over from the neighboring house. “I’m sorry about that.”

  The dog leaped up and began jumping for attention at the man’s legs, wanting to be picked up. He bent over with a groan and scooped her up. “Some watchdog you are,” he grumbled at her. The dog kissed his face.

  “What a sweetie,” Serena told him.

  “Yeah, she loves people,” the man replied. He added, “I’m Harvey Washington. You coming to see Nicky?”

  They nodded.

  “He’s inside. Probably watching ESPN. Me, I prefer the History Channel. I love it when they do those dinosaur shows.” He put the dog down, and the dog sat and stared up at him. “You wouldn’t have liked those days, huh, missy? You would have wound up an appetizer for one of them T-Rexes.”

  The dog looked unconvinced. It pawed at Serena’s leg and then flopped over on its back again.

  “Oh, you’re a lady, for heaven’s sake,” Harvey said. “Don’t go offering up your tummy like that. You want people to think you’re easy?”

  Harvey had gray curly hair and a broad nose. His chocolate skin was wrinkled and hung like ill-fitting clothes on his arms and legs. He wore navy blue shorts and a white polo shirt.

  “Have you known Nick long?” Stride asked.

  “Oh, for years. Long before both of us moved here.”

  “Were you on the force, too?” Serena asked.

  “No, nothing like that. I can see you two are on the job, though. You both have that look. I’d know it anywhere.”

  Stride saw a twinkle in Harvey ’s eyes and wondered if the man knew the police from personal experience. He wouldn’t have wanted to be a black man in Las Vegas in the old days.

  “I won’t keep you,” Harvey said. “I’m sure you’ve got ground to cover with Nick. When you see him, ask him if he’s taking his lisinopril. The man’s blood pressure could pop a champagne cork.”

  He waved good-bye with his dog’s paw and shuffled back to his yard.

  A small plane floated overhead, its engine whining. They weren’t far from the North Las Vegas Airport. Nick Humphrey lived on a street of tract houses just off Cheyenne. There was still a lot of open land out here. Stride could hear the rumble of bulldozers digging up the rocky soil somewhere, giving birth to another look-alike development like this one. Each unit was cheap and without any soul, painted the same mute beige, dropped next to one another like part of a build-by-numbers master plan. Stride was sorry to think that this was the best Humphrey could afford, after several decades on the job.

  Stride and Serena continued to the front door and rang the bell. Humphrey answered immediately, as if he had been waiting for them. His eyes were hooded with suspicion. Stride explained who they were and that they wanted to talk to him about an old case, but his granite expression didn’t change.

  “Amira Luz,” Stride added.

  “Yeah, I thought as much,” Humphrey said. With a shrug, he let them in.

  Humphrey had a shock-white crewcut and a goatee. He was bulky for his age, and when he shook their hands, his grip was crushing. He wore jeans and slippers, but no shirt, and a green terry robe tied loosely at his waist. He led them into a small living room, trailing an aroma of Bengay.

  “You guys want a beer? If anyone asks, I can just say it was bottled water.” They declined, and he didn’t seem surprised. He added, “That’s okay. No one would believe I kept bottled water in the house anyway.”

  His living room had the look of a bachelor’s house, messy and unorganized. Prescription pill bottles and beer cans were strewn across a coffee table, its wooden veneer scratched and dotted with water rings. Books and newspapers sat in stacks on the floor. Stride took a seat on a sofa and heard its sagging frame squeak through the cushions. Stuffing spilled out through the ripped floral fabric on the arms.

  Stride saw an old baseball rolling around on the coffee table. He picked it up and noticed the ball was autographed in a faded blue scrawl. Willie Mays.

  “This must be worth a lot,” Stride said.

  “Yeah, so what, I’m not allowed to have some nice things?”

  “I never said that.”

  Humphrey snorted. “I’m a collector.” He took a seat in an old leather recliner across from them. “So I hear Sawhill is in charge of homicide now.”

  “That’s right,” Serena said.

  “Bunch of Mormons running Sin City,” Humphrey said, curling his lip. “Ain’t that a fucking joke? But I suppose you got the Indians raking in the gambling bucks everywhere else. Take your pick.”

  “Did you work with Sawhill?” Serena asked.

  “Sure. Ambitious but smart. Politics first, God second. I hear he’s got his eyes on the sheriff’s campaign next year.”

  Serena nodded. “But the word is that the sheriff will endorse someone else.”

  “Don’t be so sure. He’s going to feel a lot of heat. Sawhill’s got a brother who’s a top aide to the governor, and he’s got a sister who does political ads and worked on the mayor’s last campaign. And the old man, Michael Sawhill, is a big-shot casino banker. The whole family’s connected.”

  “You didn’t sound surprised that we were here about Amira Luz,” Stride said.

  “I saw the article in LV ,” Humphrey retorted bitterly. “That little snot Terrell all but accused me of being on the take. I called a lawyer who told me there wasn’t much I could do. Too bad. A libel suit would pay for a few upgrades around here.”

  “A lot of people back then seemed to think Walker Lane was involved in the murder,’ Serena said.

  Humphrey shrugged. ‘There was no evidence he was involved, and there was plenty of evidence that this guy in L.A. did it.”

  “ Walker was in Las Vegas that night,” Stride said.

  “Hell, I know that. It was that goddamn article that said we were clueless about it. But I had six people who told me that Walker Lane left town before the second performance of the show. He drove back to L. A.”

  “Could they have been lying to you?” Serena asked. “Sure they could, but if they were, they got their stories straight.”

  “Did you talk directly to Boni Fisso about what happened that night?” Stride asked.

  Humphrey shifted uncomfortably and tugged at his groin. “Boni talk to the cops? Fat chance. I dealt with Leo Rucci. He was the fixer, Boni’s boss on the casino floor. Everything went through Leo. Meanest asshole I’ve ever met.”

  “We heard Leo Rucci was involved in breaking up a fight in the middle of the night on the night of the murder. Did you investigate that?”

  “Fight? I never heard a word about it. Rucci never mentioned it. His alibi was he was balling one of the dancers, and she confirmed it. Besides, Rucci didn’t usually break up fights-he caused them.”

  “How about a lifeguard named Mickey? He was the one who called Rucci. Did you talk to him?”

  “Nah. Pretty boys by the pool were a dime a dozen.” Humphrey pushed himself out of his chair. “I got to take a leak,” he said. “Prostate. What a bitch. Bet mine’s the size of a fucking orange by now.”

  He left the room, and Stride got up from the sofa, shaking his head. “It’s hell getting old,” he said.

  “So you tell me,” Serena said with an impish grin.

  He did think about it sometimes, the age difference of almost a decade between them. He worried about a day when she might wake up and ask herself what she was doing with an old man. He didn’t feel any older or younger than his years, but he wasn’t a superman. He was in his midforties, and some of the original equipment was a little worn. He felt better physically away from the Minnesota cold, suffering from fewer of the bone-deep pains that the frigid lake winds brought.

  Serena, by contrast, was physically in her prime, at least in his eyes. It was her soul that felt older, and that was what held them together. It was as if she had started bruising and weathering it at a young age. He only wished she would tell him more about it. She had begun to offer him little glimpses, like op
ening the windows in an Advent calendar, but there was still a lot he didn’t know about her.

  He studied Humphrey’s living room, looking for clues to the man. There were sports sections littering the floor near his recliner, not just from the Las Vegas paper but also from Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. Sports book, Stride thought. Humphrey probably spent a lot of time trying to beat the spread.

  The recliner itself reeked of menthol. The whole house was dank, as if the windows had been closed for too long. He also picked up a remnant of Cajun smells in the air, as if someone had been spicing up a pot of jambalaya.

  “Look at this,” Serena called to him.

  She was looking at several framed photographs on the wall. They were publicity shots of old Vegas stars, similar to the ones that Stride had seen at Battista’s. He recognized Dean Martin, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe.

  “All of these are autographed,” Serena said.

  Stride shrugged. “So he collects memorabilia. He told us as much.”

  “No, they’re autographed to him,” Serena said.

  Stride joined her at the wall and realized she was right. Each photograph bore Nick’s name and a personal message in addition to the star’s signature. “Helen said he did private security gigs,” Stride said.

  “Yeah, but look at Marilyn’s message,” Serena told him.

  Stride leaned closer to the smiling photograph of the platinum blonde. Across one bare shoulder, in black marker, a feminine hand had written: Nicky-What a night. I needed you, and you were there. Love and kisses, MM.

  “She was a hell of a girl,” Humphrey said as he reentered the living room behind them. He held a lowball glass with a large shot of what looked like whiskey.

  “Come on, Nick,” Stride told him. “Maybe you could get by with Willie Mays and Dean Martin, but not Marilyn. I’m not buying it.”

  Humphrey was smug. He put down his whiskey and rummaged through a pile of paperbacks on an end table. He pulled one out and tossed it across the room to Stride. It was a biography of Marilyn Monroe.

  “There are some photographs after page seventy-two,” he said. “One of them shows a letter she wrote to DiMaggio. Now you tell me if that’s not the same handwriting.”

  Stride and Serena found the page and held up the image of Marilyn’s old letter to the photograph on the wall. Humphrey laughed as their faces fell. Stride had to admit that the handwriting looked like a dead-on match.

  Humphrey sat back down in his recliner, picked up the whiskey, and grinned at them, enormously pleased with himself.

  “So you guys want to tell me why you’re really here?” he asked. “I don’t imagine Metro has the resources to be digging up forty-year-old murders.”

  Stride and Serena sat back down. He found himself stealing glances at Marilyn’s photograph and still thought Humphrey was pulling one over on them.

  ’Two close relatives of people who were mentioned in Rex Terrell’s article have been murdered in the last two weeks,” Serena said. “Same perp. We want to know if these murders somehow are tied back to the death of Amira Luz.”

  “Forty years is a long time to wait to start a vendetta,” Humphrey replied.

  “Even so, you might want to take precautions,” Stride suggested. ‘Tell your family to do the same.”

  Humphrey shrugged. “Never married, no kids. I’m the end of the blood line.”

  “Do you have any idea who might be doing this or why?” Serena asked.

  “None at all,” Humphrey said. “I hope you don’t think it’s me. A geriatric serial killer, now that would be a new twist They could show that one on Law & Order: Nursing Home Unit”

  “Then what do you think is going on?” Stride asked.

  “Look, you already mentioned his name,” Humphrey said. “Boni Fisso. He’s got a big new project going up, right? Couple billion dollars in play?”

  Stride nodded. “That was our first thought, too. Boni might be afraid that the truth about Amira’s death would come out. We thought he might be sending a signal to people who were involved back then. Keep your mouths shut.”

  “Boni wouldn’t bother with relatives and signals,” Humphrey said. “He’d simply take them out.”

  The old detective shook his head, as if he had already figured it out Stride realized, watching the man’s mind work, that Humphrey had been a smart cop-which made the gaps in the investigation of Amira’s death smell even worse.

  ’Turn it the other way around,” Humphrey said. “Maybe someone wants to derail Boni’s big new casino as a kind of weird justice for Amira. So he starts killing people. Leaving bread crumbs for you guys to follow. All of it leading into the past.”

  Bread crumbs, Stride thought Like fingerprints. “Did Amira have relatives?”

  “None that I ever found. She was an only child, parents both dead. But it wouldn’t have to be someone who was related to Amira. Boni made plenty of enemies in his day.”

  “The question is, where do the bread crumbs lead?” Stride asked. “If you’re right about this guy, he seems to think there’s more to Amira’s death than ever came out.”

  “He’s wrong,” Humphrey insisted. “We closed the case.”

  “Listen, Nick,” Serena said cautiously. “Don’t take this the wrong way. Word is you were a regular at the Sheherezade. You did a lot of private security gigs there.” She gestured at the photographs on the wall. “Looks like you’ve got the pictures to prove it, too.”

  Humphrey’s eyes got as cold as the ice in his drink. “So?”

  “So it was another time. Different rules. This was an outlaw town. What we’re wondering is-”

  “You’re wondering whether I was paid off,” Humphrey said, his voice rising sharply. “Right? Fuck, you’re as bad as Rex Terrell.”

  “No one said that,” Serena replied. “But there are a lot of questions, and you seem too smart to have missed them. We want to know whether you got pressure from somewhere to go easy on the investigation.”

  Humphrey stared at them, and Stride thought he saw the pain of a compromised man. The retired cop looked down into his drink and drained the last of the whiskey in a single swallow. “There was no pressure,” he croaked, his throat constricted.

  Stride saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Harvey Washington from next door stood in the doorway of the living room, his dog in his arms, his eyes sad. The dog squirmed to be put down.

  “Nick, why don’t you tell them the truth? We’re old men. No one gives a rat’s ass about us anymore.”

  Humphrey didn’t show any surprise. “Shit, Harvey, I could still get in trouble. We both could.”

  Harvey shook his head and put down the dog. It immediately scampered across the room, jumped into Humphrey’s lap, and curled up for a nap.

  Serena blinked. “She’s your dog?”

  “Do you guys want to tell us what the hell is going on?” Stride asked.

  Harvey folded his arms and waited. Humphrey scratched the dog’s head and refused to look up. He gave a petulant shrug. “You do what you got to do,” he told Harvey.

  “Oh, don’t be a child,” Harvey said. He pulled a rickety wooden chair out from the wall and sat down. ‘There was pressure,” he told Stride and Serena, “but it’s not what you think. Nicky never took a dime. He went soft on those guys because of me.”

  Stride didn’t understand. “You?”

  “We’ve been partners for almost fifty years.”

  In the recliner, Humphrey took a deep breath. If there had been a closet in the room, he would have crawled back into it. “Leo Rucci knew. I don’t know how. Those guys back then, they knew everything about everybody. He made it clear that if I pushed in the wrong direction, the department would find out I was gay. That would have cost me my job.”

  “And the wrong direction was Walker Lane?” Stride asked.

  Humphrey spread his arms wide. “What do you think? I knew it smelled, but I was fucked.”

  “It was more than that,” Harvey added. �
�Nick was protecting me. He would have lost his job, and I would have wound up in jail. Me and the law, we haven’t always seen eye to eye about things.”

  Stride saw Marilyn Monroe smiling at him from the wall. “You’re a forger,” he guessed.

  “He’s an artist is what he is,” Humphrey insisted.

  Harvey ducked his head modestly. “I imitate things. When I was younger, sometimes I wasn’t all that fussy about people knowing what was real and what wasn’t”

  “But not anymore?” Stride asked, picking up the Willie Mays baseball.

  Harvey grinned. “I give Nicky presents from time to time. It’s a game for us. These days, I can sell my imitations on eBay and still make pretty good dough. Mind you, I advertise them as imitations, not the real thing.”

  “And I’m sure your buyers are always equally honest when they resell them,” Serena said.

  “That ain’t my problem,” Harvey replied pleasantly.

  Stride couldn’t believe it. A gay cop and a lover who happened to be a con artist. The result was that someone- Walker Lane?-got away with murder, and some poor chump in L.A. got killed to close the case. And forty years later, another round of murders had begun.

  “Is Leo Rucci still alive?” Stride asked. “We need to talk to him.”

  “He’s alive,” Humphrey said, “but Rucci was just the arms and legs. Boni was always the brains. He’s the only one who really knows what went on that night.”

  “Except Boni’s not likely to talk to us without a warrant and seven lawyers vetting every question,” Stride said.

  “See if Sawhill can get his dad to make a call,” Humphrey said. “The old man has done money deals for Boni and a lot of the other casino owners for years.”

  “Sawhill has connections to Boni?” Stride asked.

  “It’s a small town,” Humphrey replied.

  “You could talk to Boni’s daughter, too,” Harvey suggested.