Stripped

by Brian Freeman

  Boni’s face hardened like concrete. “A police detective concerned about my family values. That’s very nice. You didn’t really come here to help me patch things up with Claire, did you?”

  “No, it’s just that-”

  “Look, Claire and I didn’t see eye to eye about my business ventures. So she went off to sing her sad songs, just to spite me. And to live in that little apartment, when I know perfectly well she’s made millions in the market.” Boni watched Serena, who couldn’t keep the shock off her face. “She probably told you it’s because she likes to sleep with girls. That’s not the Catholic way. Well, I’d have been happier if she married some strapping fellow like Detective Stride here. I made her go on a few dates with some good-looking guys. Any sin in that? But no, I have to deal with Claire in confession every Sunday, God help me. Father D’Antoni always asks about her, to see if she’s come back to God’s way. I think he just likes hearing the details, if you ask me.”

  “Have you heard her sing?” Serena asked.

  “I have. She’s primo. That girl would run Nashville if she moved out there. It’ll never happen, though. She’s all Vegas at heart.” Boni settled back in his chair and took a sip of champagne. “But we have other things to talk about, don’t we? Claire says you two wanted to have an off-the-record conversation with me, no goddamn lawyers around. I have to respect that. I’m a lawyer myself, and I have to tell you that most of them might as well stick a talking parrot on their desk that says, ‘No, no, no.’ And they’d bill the parrot out at a thousand dollars an hour. So there’s no lawyers here, Detectives. Just the three of us. This conversation never happened. Got it?”

  They both nodded.

  “The reason we’re here-” Stride began.

  “The reason you’re here is you’re trying to catch a killer. And you want my help.”

  Stride nodded. “That’s right.”

  “I saw the sketch in the paper. I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”

  “He worked for your company,” Serena retorted. “David Kamen hired him at Premium Security. I’m sure you know that, because I’m sure Kamen called you.”

  “Yes, he did,” Boni said. “But that doesn’t change a thing. I never met this Blake Wilde, and I don’t know how you can find him. I wish I could help.”

  “You realize Claire could be his next target,” Serena said.

  “I’m not a fool, Detective,” Boni said sharply. He fixed Serena with his blue eyes and added, “I always have people watching Claire. Even when she doesn’t know it, I’m always protecting her.”

  Serena fired back, “Was Blake one of the people you had protecting her?”

  Boni didn’t reply, and Stride thought she had hit a nerve.

  “Mr. Fisso, may I speak candidly?” Stride asked.

  “By all means, Detective.”

  “It hasn’t been in the papers, but you probably knew even before we did that these murders have one thing in common. The Sheherezade. Or more specifically, Amira Luz. Blake Wilde, whoever he is, seems to be bent on avenging Amira’s death, because he thinks it didn’t go down the way the papers and the police said it did. He may very well be right about that. But we’re not here to reopen the investigation into the murder of Amira Luz. That case is closed.”

  “Really? I understand you’ve been making a lot of inquiries about it, Detective. I hear you even paid a visit to my old friend, Walker Lane.”

  “You know he’s in a wheelchair,” Stride said. “He has been since that night.”

  “Terrible thing. A car accident, wasn’t it? A good lesson about not driving while intoxicated.”

  “That’s not what Walker says.”

  “Oh?”

  “He says you had him beaten. Crippled. As payback for trying to take away your mistress.”

  “I suppose he also accused me of killing Amira,” Boni replied placidly.

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Naturally. I liked Walker very much, Detective, but his behavior was reckless. When you make mistakes that have awful consequences, you often try to blame someone else.”

  “So you didn’t have Amira killed,” Stride said.

  “Of course not.”

  “No? Wasn’t she your property? Didn’t you own her?”

  Boni tut-tutted him like a child. “No one owned Amira. No one. Least of all Walker. I believe that frustrated him enormously.”

  “So you’re saying Walker killed Amira?” Stride asked.

  “As far as I know, a deranged fan killed her. Walker wasn’t here when Amira was killed. He had already left to drive back to Los Angeles. Coincidentally, I believe that’s when he had his accident.”

  “And I’m sure we’ll find a police report about the accident if we go back far enough,” Stride said.

  “I’m sure you would. Then again, in forty years, things get lost.”

  “What about employment records from the Sheherezade back then? Did they get lost, too?”

  “Why?” Boni asked. “Who are you looking for?”

  “A kid who worked at the hotel during the summer as a lifeguard. His name was Mickey.”

  Boni cocked an eyebrow at Stride. “Why would you care about someone like that?”

  “He called your casino boss, Leo Rucci, the night of Amira’s death about a fight outside. I want to know more about it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, Detective. I’m sure the old employment records are in a warehouse somewhere in the city, half-eaten by cockroaches, but when we had college kids working here over the summer, I usually had Leo pay them in cash. It was more hassle than it was worth to worry about the paperwork and taxes.”

  Stride felt as if he were battling an old elk with a massive set of horns and the willingness to bang heads all day.

  “If there was nothing unusual about Amira’s death, why is Blake Wilde so intent on avenging her?” Serena asked. She looked like she was tired of watching the boys play a game of which one’s bigger.

  “He’s a serial killer. You know the mind of that kind of man better than I do.” He couldn’t keep a small smirk off his face.

  “If we knew why he was doing this, it might help us find him,” Stride said. “And I think you know why.”

  “You already said it, didn’t you, Detective? He has some misguided ideas about what happened to Amira.”

  Stride shook his head. “Look, I know you want him first. I know you want to get him and pay him back your way.” Stride paused and noted that Boni didn’t disagree with him. “But the main thing is that one of us catch him, soon, before he kills anyone else. If you catch him, okay, we’ll never know. But I don’t think there’s a downside for you if we get him first.”

  “Think harder,” Boni said. The mask slipped. A glint of steel.

  Stride knew he was right. It was a race, and Boni needed to win. Not just to squeeze Blake but to make him disappear quietly and quickly from the headlines. In custody, who knew what Blake might say? Or what he knew. His allegations alone would keep the heat on Boni and might drive investors away from his Orient project.

  He wasn’t going to help them.

  “What if you’re too late, Boni?” Serena asked. “What if he gets to Claire first? Is it worth the risk?”

  There was silence as Boni chewed on that thought.

  “Where did Kamen find him?” Serena asked.

  “That won’t help you,” Boni said. “Wilde was a mercenary in Afghanistan. David used him sometimes for ops that weren’t on the books. He was good. Fearless. Ruthless. But that’s all shadow stuff. Fake names. No backgrounds.”

  “Were there others Kamen worked with who might know him?”

  Boni shook his head. “No way I’m giving you that. No way David gives you that.”

  Stride knew there were military channels he could pursue, but if Wilde was a rogue player, the brass wasn’t likely to give them any more information than Boni. “Then tell us why,” he said.

  Stride watched Boni grinding through calculations. It was all mathem
atics to him, debits and credits. The value of information. He thought at first Boni would stiff them again, but the old man leaned forward, his hands on his knees.

  “I tell you this, and we’re done.”

  They both nodded.

  “Amira, she wasn’t celibate, you get the picture? She came to town, and she started sleeping with Moose. Smart girl. Moose had juice. Pretty soon she was lead dancer in one of our T &A shows. Then she went to Paris, okay? Special engagement. That’s where she came up with the idea for Flame.”

  Boni seemed to enjoy the confusion on their faces.

  “The thing is, she didn’t go to Paris,” he went on. “She was pregnant. She wanted to keep it under wraps. So I sent her away for a few months, and she had the kid.”

  A baby, Stride thought. A secret baby. Sometimes the hardest problems were really the simplest. Blake Wilde was Amira’s son.

  “What happened to the baby?” Stride asked.

  “Adoption,” Boni said. “Amira couldn’t get rid of the baby fast enough. It killed her stuck up there all alone. She couldn’t wait to get back. She knew Flame would be a huge hit.”

  “Moose didn’t know?” Serena asked.

  “No one knew.”

  Something niggled in Stride’s brain. A plate shifted, like in an earthquake, and a piece of the puzzle fell into place.

  “You said ‘up there,’” Stride said. “Where did you send her?”

  “An associate of mine had resort cabins in Reno near the lake,” Boni replied. “That was where a lot of the girls from Vegas went when they had problems like that.”

  Stride and Serena looked at each other. “ Reno,” they said.

  PART THREE. BLAKE

  ***

  THIRTY

  I get to see you twice in one week,” Jay Walling said, as Serena got out of her rental car outside the retirement home near downtown Reno. He was wearing his black fedora at a cocky angle. “How blessed I am.”

  “Stuff it, Jay,” Serena said pleasantly.

  She zipped up her leather jacket. It was cold in the city, with a stiff wind off the mountains and snow flurries in the air. A fall heat wave was firing up the temperatures in Las Vegas, but up here it felt like winter. The sky overhead was a somber charcoal, and the mountains looked angry.

  “His name’s William Borden,” Walling said. “Alice Ford’s brother.”

  Once they knew about Blake’s connection to Reno, it hadn’t taken them long to find what they had been missing from the beginning-something to tie the murder of Alice Ford at her Reno ranch to the deaths in Las Vegas. They discovered that Alice ’s brother had spent thirty years as executive director of a nonprofit organization that delivered family services in the northern half of the state. That included arranging confidential adoptions for knocked-up showgirls like Amira.

  “Did you find out any more about the agency?” Serena asked.

  “They’re saintly, as far as the folks in Carson City are concerned. Modest budget, lots of small annual gifts, no significant complaints. They do good work.”

  “Was Borden running the agency when Amira Luz had her baby?”

  Walling nodded. “He took over in 1960. Ran it until he retired. He’s terminal now, with a heart condition. Moved into this place last year.”

  Serena studied the three-story senior facility, a concrete box in dirty white, and felt herself getting depressed. They weren’t far from the huge old homes that looked down on the rushing waters of the Truckee River, but they might as well have been in another universe. It got worse when they went inside. The nurses tried hard, decorating the walls with children’s art and wearing wide smiles, but it was still a place where used-up people went to die. They passed a diabetic man with amputated limbs. A woman trembling in the grip of severe Parkinson’s. People with empty stares, their minds gone. Serena felt a sense of claustrophobia.

  They found William Borden in the lounge on the second floor. There was a television in one corner, and a dozen people were on sofas and in wheelchairs around it, watching a rerun of Friends. A nurse pointed out Borden for them. He was off by himself in an armchair on the far side of the room, a book in his lap.

  They introduced themselves and pulled over chairs to sit in front of him. Serena took off her coat. The room was a furnace.

  “I’m very sorry about your sister,” Serena told him. She noted that the book in his hands was titled Families Making Sense of Death. She wondered how anyone ever did make sense of it. Particularly violent death. Borden’s eyes were far away.

  “I feel terrible guilt,” Borden replied. He had a professorial voice, self-reflective and somewhat pompous. He was a small man, with a gray beard and silver hair badly in need of a cut. He wore light blue pajamas and slippers. “I guess that was this man’s intention all along. To inflict guilt and pain. I haven’t seen Al yet. I wonder if he’ll even visit me now, since I took his wife away from him.”

  “You didn’t do that, Mr. Borden,” Walling pointed out.

  Borden shrugged “Didn’t I?”

  “We’d like to see if you can identify the man we think may have killed your sister” Serena said. She began to hand him a copy of the police artist’s sketch, but Borden waved it away.

  “No need. I know who it is. When Mr. Walling called me, I knew exactly who it had to be.” Despite the warmth in the room and a wool blanket over his legs, Borden shivered.

  “He calls himself Blake Wilde,” Serena said.

  Borden shook his head. “That name doesn’t mean anything to me, but I’m sure he’s changed it many times over the years. When I knew him, he was Michael Burton. That was more than twenty years ago.”

  “I really would like you to look at the sketch,” Serena said.

  Borden sighed. He took it and stared at it with obvious discomfort. Finally, he closed his eyes and nodded. “He was only sixteen when I last saw him, but it’s definitely him. Those eyes. The rest of his face is older, but those eyes are just as they were.” He heard a titter of laughter from the crowd gathered around the television set. He frowned. “This is what it comes down to, you know, this place. Gather the dying like cattle and wait for them to peel off one by one. It’s ironic. I spent my whole career trying to better the lives of children. I never found time to get married and have kids myself. Instead, I wind up here with a decaying heart, no one to visit me except my sister. Now she’s gone. Thanks to the mistake I made. One terrible mistake in thirty years.”

  “Was Blake-or Michael-the son of Amira Luz?” Serena asked.

  “I really don’t know. I never did. I never met the mother.”

  “Tell us what happened,” Walling suggested gently.

  “A man came to me,” Borden explained. “This was spring of 1967. It was after hours. He had a baby with him, very young, no more than a few days old. He told me that the mother was unable to care for him and asked if I could find a home for the boy.”

  “Do you know who the man was?”

  Borden shook his head, “He didn’t give a name. He was big, neck like a redwood tree. Intimidating.”

  Serena thought it sounded like Leo Rucci, although there were plenty of musclemen working for the casinos in those days. “You took a baby, just like that? No questions asked?”

  “Things like that happened all the time back then. Girls in Vegas had relationships with high rollers and got pregnant. They wanted it to go away quietly. No papers. No inheritance problems. Every month it seemed there was another girl, another baby. Everyone has such nostalgia for the Rat Pack times, but that was mostly if you were rich and white. Nobody wanted to look at what was behind the curtain. Virulent racism. Women abused. Children thrown away.”

  “So you took the baby?” Serena asked.

  Borden nodded.

  Walling leaned in and whispered, “Not that I don’t think you’re a fine citizen, Mr. Borden, but did any money change hands?”

  Borden looked up at the ceiling. “Yes, yes, there was money, too. These people always paid handso
mely. But I assure you, not a dime of it went into my pocket. It all went into the agency. It pulled us through some difficult times.”

  “What about the family?” Serena asked. “Didn’t they ask questions?”

  “Everything was anonymous back then. To them, there was nothing unusual. It’s not like today, where many birth mothers stay in touch with their children long after they’ve been adopted.”

  Walling smoothed his fedora as he held it in his hands. “I’m a little confused, Mr. Borden. If you didn’t know where the baby came from, and the family didn’t know either, how did this man figure out that Amira Luz was his mother? And why did he start this nasty little game by murdering your sister?”

  Borden looked pained. He took a few deep breaths, and Serena noticed that they didn’t come easily. “How he found out about Amira, I don’t know. The vendetta-well, that began a long time ago.”

  “Explain,” Walling said crisply.

  “I told you I made a mistake. An awful mistake. I don’t mean accepting the baby or taking the money. If I had it to do over again today, I would do the very same thing. My mission was protecting children.”

  “Then what?” Walling asked.

  Serena looked into Borden’s eyes, and she began to realize what had really happened. She had been there, too. She felt the warmth in the room begin to smother her. The word hung between them, waiting to be spoken.

  Abuse.

  “My mistake was in the family I chose,” Borden said.

  Walling saw it now, too. “What did they do to the boy?”

  “You have to understand,” Borden said. Serena thought he was trying to rationalize the decision to himself. “Placing children with adoptive parents is not an exact science. We make our best judgment based on interviews. Occasionally, there are problems. I confess, I was young and overconfident in those days. I have a doctorate in child psychology. I thought I could size up an adoptive family and tell you in a few minutes whether they were suited or not. I didn’t know then all the things I didn’t know.”

  “The Burton family wasn’t suited,” Serena said.