The Ragged End of Nowhere

by Roy Chaney

  The Sniff cut the cards and dealt. Two cards slid across the green baize, came to rest in front of Hagen. Then the Sniff dealt himself two cards, one up and one down. The backs of the cards were printed with the name CAESARS PALACE inside a round white oval surrounded by a pattern of red diamonds.

  Hagen looked at his cards.

  Ten of hearts and deuce of clubs.

  The Sniff had a king of diamonds showing.

  Hagen said, “Hit.”

  The Sniff tossed another card across the table. The seven of clubs for a total of nineteen. Hagen turned his cards face up. The Sniff overturned his second card. The king of spades.

  “House wins,” the Sniff said. He collected the cards. “Bodo, I saw Ronnie last week. Monday night—he’d just gotten into town the day before. He wanted to borrow money. A thousand minimum, more if I could spare it. And he wanted me to set him up with a fence.”

  “A fence? Why?”

  “Why does anybody need a fence? He had something to sell that wasn’t his. He didn’t say it like that but that’s what it sounded like.” The Sniff picked up his glass, raised it halfway to his mouth, paused. “Surprised?”

  Ronnie had always had a way of finding trouble, Hagen knew. He’d had scrapes with the law when he was growing up. But a fence? Hagen had never known Ronnie to be involved with stolen goods. The whole thing sounded even more odd when Hagen considered the fact that Ronnie had only been in town one day. What kind of trouble had he gotten himself into in one day? Or had he brought some trouble home with him from France?

  The Sniff took a long drink, set his glass down. “Ronnie wasn’t like you, Bodo. He was different. He was all edge. When he was here last week he came on way too strong. At first I was glad to see him—he brought back a lot of memories. But after five minutes I just wanted him gone. I should’ve pushed him, found out what was going on. Maybe I could’ve helped him get out of trouble. But I didn’t and there it is. Nothing I can do. Maybe that sounds hard but I’m too old to mince words.”

  The words did sound hard. But Hagen couldn’t argue with what the Sniff said. Hagen knew how his brother could be—crass, thoughtless, short-tempered. Like their father had been. But unlike their father, Ronnie never had any charm to help gloss over the rough spots.

  Hagen said, “This thing he wanted to sell—what was it?”

  “He said it was a little something he picked up in his travels. Some kind of a relic. Said there might be some baggage behind it, but nothing serious. I didn’t ask him what kind of baggage, I figured I knew. He gave me a photograph of the thing to pass on. It was a wooden hand, looked like a carving or something. Didn’t mean anything to me. Ronnie called it a dead man’s hand. I thought he was trying to be funny. He left me a phone number too, said that if I knew anybody who could keep their mouth shut, to give them the picture and his number and he’d give them the particulars. I said I’d do what I could. Then I dealt him a thousand on account and pushed him out the door. After he left I felt bad about giving him the bum’s rush, but not real bad. Next thing I hear, somebody’s taken him out. That’s when I started feeling real bad.”

  A dead man’s hand—Hagen hadn’t heard that expression in years. At a card table it usually meant two pair, aces and eights—the hand of cards that the gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot dead in a South Dakota saloon.

  But Ronnie had been talking about a wooden hand.

  “Can I see the photograph?”

  The Sniff coughed, a loose chest-rattling cough. Then, “I passed it on, like I said I would. I sent it over to a fellow I know, name of Martinez. Dallas Martinez. He deals in things that are hard to find. This and that. I gave him the number Ronnie left, told him that if he was interested in the dingus in the picture then he should give the number a call. I talked to him again a few days later, just before I heard what happened to Ronnie. Martinez said the dingus wasn’t anything he was interested in. Last I heard about it.”

  “Martinez is a fence?”

  “He takes it as it comes.”

  “I’d like to talk to him.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. He’s funny about who he talks to.”

  “The money—any special reason why Ronnie needed it?”

  The Sniff tapped the edge of the deck on the table. Began shuffling. “He said he found himself a game as soon as he got into town, got himself cleaned out in a hurry.”

  “Who cleaned him out?”

  “I didn’t ask. A man loses his wad at the tables—it’s not big news.”

  The Sniff shuffled the cards once more, then cut the deck. He dealt Hagen two cards, face down.

  Hagen examined the spread. He had a ten of hearts and a deuce of clubs—the same cards as the last hand. The Sniff had a queen of clubs showing.

  Hagen said, “Hit.”

  A third card landed in front of him. Hagen glanced at it. Also the same as last time—a seven of clubs, for nineteen. Hagen tossed the cards into the center of the table. “I don’t suppose that’s going to be good enough.”

  The Sniff glanced at Hagen’s hand, then turned over his second card. Queen of diamonds for twenty.

  “House wins.” The Sniff gathered up the cards.

  Hagen said, “McGrath said he wants to talk to you about Ronnie.”

  “How does he know I saw Ronnie?”

  “He doesn’t. But he’s wondering.”

  “If you want me to tell McGrath what I just told you, Bodo, that’s okay with me. I’ve been thinking about giving Metro a ring. But I wanted to talk to you first. In case you have your own angle on this.”

  The Sniff set the deck of cards down and eased himself up from his chair. He walked across the room to a bookcase. When he returned he brought with him a black address book, a ballpoint pen, a small pad of paper. He slid his glasses on, thumbed through the pages of the address book.

  “Sniff, how did you get my number in Berlin?”

  “Ronnie gave it to me. Gave me your address too. I thought I’d send you a postcard, just in case you’d forgotten the old Sniff. And there’s something else Ronnie told me. Maybe it means something and maybe it doesn’t.”

  The Sniff found the page he was looking for. He wrote a name on the pad of paper, and underneath it an address and phone number. The Sniff tore the sheet of paper off, pushed it across the table.

  The name written on the paper was Jack Gubbs.

  “That phone number—it’s the one Ronnie gave me,” the Sniff said. “He said he was staying with that fellow until he could find his own place. Do you know that name?”

  Hagen didn’t.

  The Sniff went on. “It rang a bell, when Ronnie told me the name, but I couldn’t quite place it. I had someone look into it. Turns out Gubbs works for Marty Ray.”

  Marty Ray was a name that Hagen knew.

  Marty Ray and his brother Jimmy—they ran a small casino off Fremont Street called Diamond Jim’s. Hagen had once worked for the Ray brothers, and a few years after Bodo left town the Ray brothers had hired Ronnie to do the same kind of work. Ronnie couldn’t have worked for them long though, he’d left town to join the Legion a short time later. So what if Ronnie knew someone at Diamond Jim’s well enough to stay with him when he returned to Las Vegas?

  Hagen said, “What are you getting at, Sniff?”

  “Did you know that Jimmy Ray was murdered?”

  “When did that happen?”

  “Few years ago. He was at home one night and someone broke in, took some cash off of him and shot him. Quite a bit of cash—two or three hundred G’s. Skim money. Everybody knew the Rays were skimming. No one ever fingered who did the job. For a while the talk was that it was a mob hit, because of the way he got it—one shot in the back of the head, execution-style. But I’ve got it on good authority that it wasn’t a mob hit. The mob never gave a shit about the Ray brothers.”

  The Sniff went on, his voice calm, unconcerned. He might have been talking about the weather or a new pair of Italian shoes he�
�d just purchased. But the hard fast movements of his hands as he shuffled the cards belied the casual tone of his voice. The Sniff was using the deck like worry beads. “Ronnie was still here and still working for the Rays. He left town a couple of months later. Joined the Legion and disappeared. After Ronnie was gone I heard some loose talk that maybe he knew something about what happened to Jimmy Ray and that’s why he left town. Just loose talk, from nobody that matters. I didn’t place any stock in it. I’d forgotten about it, but when I heard what happened to Ronnie—I just thought you should know.”

  Jimmy Ray—murdered. And Ronnie was working for the Ray brothers when it happened. The death of Jimmy Ray was certainly a piece of news. And yet Ronnie had never mentioned it in any of his letters. Hagen didn’t like the way the Sniff was splitting hairs. Loose talk or no, if Jimmy Ray’s murderer had never been caught, and if Marty Ray had ever had the remotest suspicion that Ronnie might know something about it, Marty Ray would have crucified him.

  Hagen tried to get more information out of the Sniff, but the Sniff only shook his head and shuffled his cards, stone-faced. He’d told Hagen all he knew. And all he knew was what he’d heard—loose talk among people who had no stake in what had happened to Jimmy Ray. It probably meant nothing at this point, five years down the road. Still . . .

  “I’ll have a talk with Marty Ray,” Hagen said.

  There was a long silence. The Sniff studied Hagen’s face, like maybe the Sniff didn’t quite remember who was sitting across from him at the table. Hagen thought that the Sniff looked much older now than he had only a few minutes ago. Much older and much more frail.

  The Sniff shuffled the deck. Dealt four cards face down into the center of the table. Slapped his open palm down on each one, then sat back and waited.

  Hagen reached out, turned each card over, left to right.

  Four aces.

  “The house always wins, Bodo,” the Sniff said. “Remember that. You’ve been away. Maybe you’ve forgotten the mechanics of this town. You’re just a mark now, no different than any other. And when you’re a mark, the house always wins. You catching the drift?”

  Hagen caught it.

  Before Hagen left, the Sniff made a phone call, then handed Hagen another piece of paper with two more names, two addresses, two phone numbers. One of the names belonged to a man who ran a small gun shop on the northern edge of town. The man nervously ran his tongue back and forth over buckteeth as he led Hagen into a dusty back room full of metal shelves and cardboard boxes. The man had a set of doctored sales records ready to cover the transaction.

  “What kind of piece?”

  Hagen asked for a Heckler & Koch P9. It was a good solid automatic and one that Hagen was familiar with. The man didn’t have that model in stock, but he did have one P7 model. Used, but in good shape. Hagen was familiar with the smaller P7 as well—it was one of the standard handguns carried by the German federal police. The man assured him that it had no history that Hagen needed to worry about.

  “You want to take it with you or eat it here?” The man laughed at his wit as he wrapped the automatic in plastic bubble wrap and set it inside a brown paper sack, along with a soft black leather shoulder holster, two spare ammunition clips, three boxes of 9-millimeter cartridges, a small plastic bottle filled with gun lubricant, a cleaning kit.

  Hagen hoped he didn’t need the pistol.

  But he knew Marty Ray—and Marty Ray ran with a tough crowd.

  Years ago, on the strength of his father’s reputation, the Ray brothers had hired Hagen on as a member of their security staff at Diamond Jim’s. It was a mundane sort of security work—mostly keeping the peace at the tables and bouncing bad drunks and pickpockets out the front door. But when the Ray brothers saw that Hagen was good at his job they began to give him other duties. He became a sort of personal aide and general factotum to the two hard-drinking, hard-living brothers. The job turned sour after a while and Hagen was happy to leave it when he was offered employment in Berlin.

  The Sniff said that the money taken from Jimmy Ray’s place the night he was murdered was skim money, and he was probably right. Hagen recalled one evening in the upstairs office at Diamond Jim’s, watching the Ray brothers and a few of their close associates divvying up bundles of money. Hagen’s job that night was to sit by the door with a loaded revolver under his coat, his eyes fixed on a bank of video monitors patched into security cameras that covered the casino floor, the elevators, the hallway just outside the door. When the counting was done the bundles of money disappeared into briefcases and the close associates disappeared down the back stairs. Hagen knew that it was money skimmed off the profits of the casino. It was a simple tax dodge. Nothing more or less.

  Years later Hagen was surprised when Ronnie mentioned in one of his letters from France that he’d also gone to work for the Ray brothers for a time, doing much the same job as Bodo had.

  But he hadn’t mentioned that Jimmy Ray was murdered.

  Hagen wondered why.

  Driving back to the highway after picking up the automatic, Hagen noticed a late-model black Chrysler a block behind him—the same type of car he’d noticed behind him when he’d followed McGrath to the police station.

  He wasn’t so paranoid after all.

  Hagen sped up. The Chrysler followed suit. When Hagen pulled onto Highway 95 heading east the Chrysler had closed the gap between them to seven or eight car lengths. Whoever this tail was, they weren’t very good. Either that, or they didn’t care whether Hagen saw them or not.

  Hagen cruised in the far left lane on the highway. The Chrysler stayed behind him. A highway exit appeared on the right. At the last second Hagen gunned the engine and cut across three lanes of traffic. He cut in front of an exiting pickup truck with only a few feet to spare.

  Hagen sped into the curve of the exit ramp. He was going too fast. The car began to drift and Hagen pumped the brakes lightly. The brake pedal was spongy and for a second Hagen felt the car pulling even more to the left, toward the guardrail. Hagen got the Buick back under control and glanced into the rearview mirror. The Chrysler had swerved across the highway and was now riding the rear bumper of the pickup truck Hagen had cut off.

  The exit ramp came out at an intersection. The traffic light was red. Hagen pumped the brakes hard as he glanced down the cross street to his left. He saw no traffic. He gave up on the brakes and stepped on the gas pedal. He spun the steering wheel into a hard right turn as he slid into the intersection.

  For a second Hagen thought he’d pushed the car too hard. He felt the Buick’s rear end sliding, heard the screech of tires skidding on pavement. The front end of the Buick shimmied. Shook. Shuddered. Hagen cursed gutless Detroit machinery.

  But he managed to keep the car on the road.

  Hagen sped down the street. Halfway down the block he hit the brakes and turned into the entrance of a grocery store parking lot. He spun the wheel around and pulled into an empty parking space among a line of parked cars.

  He faced the street.

  He could see the light at the intersection as it changed from red to green.

  The slow-moving pickup truck appeared in the intersection, with the Chrysler right behind it. The Chrysler swerved around the truck and shot forward down the street. Hagen watched as the Chrysler sped past. There were two men inside the car but Hagen couldn’t see them clearly.

  But Hagen knew one thing now.

  He needed to be careful.

  And if Marty Ray was involved in this, he needed to be very careful.

  4.

  HAGEN SAT AT THE TABLE in his hotel room. The Heckler & Koch automatic lay in pieces before him. With the small cleaning cloth he went about the work of oiling each piece with the gun lubricant. Out the window the hotel casinos along the southern end of the Strip shone in the sunlight. Twenty-four floors below, the traffic was snarled up along Las Vegas Boulevard.

  The Strip was ugly during the day—too garish and pretentious. It looked much better at nigh
t, when the sparkling casino lights up and down the boulevard created a luminous playground with enough shadows to hide the rough edges and the artifice. The Strip was one of the few places in the world where the rise of the sun every morning was viewed as a great injustice.

  During his stopover in New York Hagen had called ahead and booked a room at the Venetian. Hagen hadn’t realized until he arrived that the Venetian stood on the site of the old Sands Hotel. The Venetian was a grand hotel—the exterior built in a lavish Italianate style, the interior elegantly appointed—but the Sands had been a piece of Hagen’s personal history. The place where his father had worked. The place where Hagen had come as a child to run along the carpeted hallways. Eat free meals in the coffee shop. While away long summer days at the swimming pool. He was Karl Hagen’s son and that had given him privileges at the Sands. The Sands had been a second home. Perhaps even more of a home for him than his real one.

  But maybe it was better that the Sands was gone. Maybe it was better to bury as much of the past as possible, here in this city of the eternal now. History was a liability in Las Vegas, and the future was no further than the next roll of the dice, the next shuffle of the cards. That’s what all the best gamblers said. Sometimes they were right. But sometimes the next roll of the dice or the next shuffle of the cards was a dead end.

  Or a dead man’s hand.

  When Hagen got up to his hotel room he’d searched the black Delsey suitcases that he’d picked up at the police station’s property room. Two suitcases—not much to show for five years overseas. Hagen found nothing inside the suitcases that told him anything or helped him in any way.

  No wooden hand. Not even a photograph of one.

  Ronnie told the Sniff on Monday night that he’d been cleaned out. He needed some cash and he had something he wanted to sell—a wooden hand that he called a dead man’s hand. Early Friday morning Ronnie was murdered. Ronnie calling the hand a dead man’s hand might just be an odd coincidence, a colorful choice of words that in retrospect took on a significance that it didn’t deserve.