by Lou Berney
Barone woke at eight in the morning. Monday. He opened the curtains, and the blast of white desert light was like getting slugged in the face. His bad hand hurt like hell again. Go see a doctor. All right, but first he needed to follow a hunch. He told the switchboard to put him through to Dandy Stan Contini.
“I still haven’t heard anything,” Contini said.
“Where do families stay?” Barone said.
“What do you mean?”
“You come to Vegas with your family. Is there a joint like that?”
“Who comes to Vegas with their family? But the Hacienda. That’s where.”
The Hacienda was about a mile south of the Tropicana, stuck off by itself in the no-man’s-land across from the airport. Barone sat in the parking lot and watched the people come and go. Some of the usual crowd, the wolves and the sheep that you’d see anywhere on the Strip, but lots of families, too. A father and his two teenage boys in matching madras golf slacks. A little girl in a red velvet dress hop-hop-hopping on one foot. The doorman wore a Santa hat and handed out candy canes to all the kiddies who passed by.
Guidry was here. Barone didn’t know how he knew it, but he did.
He went inside and paid for a room. Two dollars extra for a view of the pool. Sure, why not.
The coffee shop had a clean line on the lobby doors. Barone took a seat at the counter. He ordered chops and black coffee. He set the room key next to his plate so the waitress could see it. He had a long wait, most likely, and didn’t want any hassle.
He wasn’t worried that Guidry might make him. Guidry knew the name, but he didn’t know Barone. And they’d only been in the same room a couple of times, years ago. Guidry grinning and greasing the big wheels at the party, Barone just another forgettable face in the crowd. Watching Guidry, watching everybody.
“Top off that java for you, hon?” the waitress said.
“Yeah,” Barone said. “And some ice water.”
“Any luck at the tables today?”
“Not yet.”
A couple of hours later, just before noon, Barone saw Guidry emerge from the elevator. He was with the woman, the one he was using, and the two little girls. Guidry said something to the woman, and she smiled. The doorman in the Santa hat held the doors open for them.
Barone took his time and gave Guidry plenty of room. He paid his ticket and took a toothpick from the tray and strolled out of the coffee shop. Through the big glass lobby doors, he watched Guidry and the woman and the two little girls get into a green Rolls. No suitcases. He watched the Rolls drive off. They’d be back.
He stepped outside and looked around.
“Help you, sir?” the doorman said.
“Oh, hell,” Barone said. “I must have missed them.”
“Who’s that, sir?”
“My pal and his wife. You didn’t see anybody get in a Rolls-Royce just now, did you?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright. Sure.”
So Guidry hadn’t switched up the names. He was cutting corners, starting to breathe easy. Good. Or he had to keep the name to keep the woman in the dark.
“Don’t mention it to them that you saw me, will you?” Barone told the doorman. “It’s a surprise. I’m here for the anniversary party. That’s a surprise, too.”
The bar. Barone ordered rye on the rocks and took two more of the pain pills. Now what? This was the part of the job he enjoyed the most. All the pieces spread out on the table in front of him, the cogs and the springs and the screws. Try this, try that. Fit everything together just right, wind it up, watch the clock start ticking.
The woman and the two girls made it interesting. Barone preferred to take care of them separately. Maybe he could find a way to lure Guidry downstairs, alone. Get him in the car, drive somewhere nice and quiet, and then go back afterward for the others.
Hello, Frank. Let’s go for a ride.
But Guidry might cause a fuss. He’d already bolted once, in Houston. Most guys saw the light and accepted the inevitable. A few guys kept kicking until the bitter end. Good for them, as long as it wasn’t Barone who got kicked. He remembered his old buddy Fisk in Houston. Barone’s aching hand remembered the son of a bitch’s switchblade.
He asked for more ice in his drink. The bartender chopped up a chunk. Barone watched the steel pick flash, the glitter fly.
Let’s go for a ride, Frank. Be polite and I won’t touch the woman and her kids.
No. Guidry wouldn’t buy. He wasn’t stupid. And he wouldn’t give a shit anyway, what happened to the woman and her kids.
Don’t give Guidry an opening. Find his room, jimmy the lock, knock him cold when he walked in the door. Barone had his jawbreaker with him, always, a leather sap filled with lead shot.
Were the woman and her daughters staying in the same room as Guidry? Barone would make them wait in the bathroom while he finished Guidry with the belt. Stan Contini could send a crew to tidy up. Just the one stiff left for him at the hotel. That wasn’t too much of a mess. Barone would take care of the woman and her kids somewhere private.
Let’s go for a ride, lady. You and your daughters. Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.
She’d buy. I’m not going to hurt you. She’d buy because she’d want to buy, with all her heart.
Barone held the glass of ice to his forehead and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, a guy was sitting on the stool to his right. Another guy slid in on his left. Barone looked at them in the mirror. Heavyweights, both of them, all smiles.
The meat on the right held a .45 in his lap, down low so that the bartender couldn’t see it. “Mr. Barone,” he said. “Welcome to Las Vegas.”
“I’m on a job,” Barone said.
“No fooling. That’s why the man wants a word.”
Barone was too hot, too tired, to smile at the twist. “Let’s go for a ride?”
The meat on the right glanced at his partner. They’d been warned, but up close Barone didn’t seem like such a bad brass boy, did he?
“That’s right, Mr. Barone. No trouble, okay? We’re all friends here.”
“Sure we are,” Barone said.
They took Barone’s Police Positive and drove him up to the Desert Inn. Barone in the backseat, his thoughts drifting. Not memories as such. His mouth filled with the flavor of strawberries. A song playing faintly, in the corner of his mind.
Past the cages, down a corridor, elevator up. The door to the office, carved wood and a truss of black iron, looked like it had been pried off a cathedral in Germany.
“After you, Mr. Barone,” the meat who did the talking said.
The man sitting behind the desk had a world-class schnoz and friendly eyebrows. Thick glasses with black plastic frames.
“You know who I am?” he said.
“Moe Dalitz,” Barone said.
“So you know I run this town.”
“For the boys back east.”
The meat behind Barone tensed and shifted. Barone could feel it. But Moe Dalitz just grinned. He tapped a finger against his schnoz.
“Exactly,” he said. “Like you, Mr. Barone, I serve the greater good. The community, as it were.”
“Who tipped you?” Barone couldn’t figure it. Only Stan Contini knew he was at the Hacienda. Stan Contini had no reason to bring Moe Dalitz into the mix. He had every reason not to do it.
“Who tipped me?” Dalitz said. “Nobody tipped me. You’ve made enough noise to wake the dead. Asking around, yanking on pant legs.”
He was lying. If Dalitz put a tail on him Saturday or Sunday, Barone would have picked it up. Though Barone hadn’t spotted his boys just now, had he? Not until they walked into the bar and sat down right next to him.
Barone knew he was slipping. The fever. But Dalitz had been tipped.
“I have enormous regard for you, Mr. Barone,” Dalitz said. “I have enormous regard for your employer. But we have a certain way of doing business in Las Vegas.”
“It’s an open city,” Barone said.
What fucking rules? While Barone stood here with Moe Dalitz’s dick in his hand, wasting time, Frank Guidry was on his way back to the Hacienda. He was packing his suitcase, heading to the airport, disappearing forever. All this, this whole last week, the kid dead in a ditch, all of it for nothing.
“Something like this,” Dalitz said, “the committee has to look it over. All the particulars, you understand. And then we give the green light or we don’t.”
“Call Carlos,” Barone said.
“I will. I’ll discuss everything with the committee. In the meantime take a load off. Relax.”
“Call him now.”
“I know you’re in a rush. I appreciate that.” Moe Dalitz shrugged but stopped halfway, with his shoulders up around his ears. What can I do?
Who tipped him? Why? Someone who wanted to gum up the works and keep Guidry alive for another five minutes. Or was Barone slipping and Moe Dalitz telling the truth? Had Barone missed the tail?
“The boys here will look after you,” Dalitz said. “Anything you want, just bark. I’ve got a little place down in Searchlight. The El Condor. You’ll like it. Craps, girls, whatever you want, everything on the house until you get your green light. You’ll get your green light, be patient. All right?”
The eyebrows friendly and innocent, but not his eyes. Dalitz didn’t care if Barone thought it was all right or not. Don’t force my hand. That’s what Dalitz was telling Barone. You’re pain enough in my ass alive, I don’t need you dead. I don’t want to have to kill you.
“My mark,” Barone said. “What about him?”
“We’ll make sure he doesn’t go anywhere,” Dalitz said. “Don’t you worry. Who is he anyway? This Wainwright cat you’re so hot for?”
“Call Carlos.”
“If he wants me to know, yeah, he’ll tell me. Good man. I could use a guy like you around here.”
Barone could keep pushing. A waste of time. But he had one more question.
“Who do you know in town owns a green Rolls?” he said.
“A green Rolls?” Dalitz said. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
Dalitz’s face was blank on top of blank, a study in smooth nothing. Barone didn’t know if he was lying about being tipped, if he was lying about the Rolls. Stick to what you do best, mon cher, Seraphine told Barone once when she caught him trying to read her.
Barone gave Moe Dalitz a nod, respectful. Fuck you. Seraphine’s advice was good. Barone would stick to what he did best.
He turned to the meat. “Let’s go. Lead the way.”
27
Monday morning Charlotte woke before the girls, as usual. She got dressed and took the dog downstairs to the cactus garden. They watched the sunrise from there, watched the mountains drink in the color and light, every last drop of it. And oh, the shadows.
The limousine arrived for them at noon. The chauffeur gave Charlotte a bow. He bowed to each of the girls, too.
“My name is Leo,” he said, “Mr. Zingel’s assistant. I’m delighted to meet you. Mr. Zingel awaits us at the marina.”
With his English accent and amused smile, the checkered waistcoat and brilliantined mustache, he was as much of a character as Ed—though Charlotte suspected that Leo had stepped from the pages of a different book, a novel by Dickens or one of the Brontë sisters.
Lake Mead was something of a shock, a rude and beautiful slash of iridescent blue in the middle of the dry desert, ringed by chocolate and cinnamon canyons. Charlotte rolled down her window and took a photo as the limousine wound around the shoreline. She would have to be thrifty with her film. She had only one roll for the day and guessed that much was still to come.
When they reached the marina, she discovered that Ed’s “little boat,” the Miss Adventure, was an enormous yacht, spacious enough to accommodate half the population of Woodrow, Oklahoma. She wasn’t surprised. Ed waved to them from the bridge, his captain’s hat cocked at a jaunty angle. In which novel did he belong? That was the question. Perhaps Gatsby, Charlotte decided. Or perhaps his width and breadth required more room to maneuver, so an epic poem like the Odyssey.
They boarded. As the Miss Adventure slid away from the dock, Leo showed Charlotte and Frank and the girls to the vast teak sundeck. He introduced them to the other passengers, two teenage boys and a teenage girl. Ed’s nephews, Dennis and Tim, and his niece, Cindy.
“Very nice to meet you, ma’am,” Dennis told Charlotte.
“Have you had a nice time in Las Vegas, ma’am?” Tim said.
Cindy, a pretty girl with her blond hair plaited into Heidi-of-the-Alps braids, lifted a heel and bent one knee, a little curtsy.
Charlotte couldn’t decide if Ed’s nephews and niece were the most extravagantly well-mannered high-schoolers she’d ever encountered or if they were just putting her on.
“Did you come straight from class?” she asked.
All three of them wore Catholic-school uniforms: the boys in dress shirts, ties, and pressed navy slacks, Cindy in a white blouse with Peter Pan collar, a plaid skirt, knee socks. Charlotte could imagine Ed blowing like a gale wind through their high school, charming and terrifying the nuns, liberating his nephews and niece from Algebra II so they could spend the afternoon with him.
“What?” Tim said. He and Dennis and Cindy regarded Charlotte blankly.
“I just assumed,” Charlotte said. “Your uniforms …”
“Yes,” Cindy said. “We came from class.”
“Yes,” Dennis and Tim agreed.
Before Charlotte could wonder about their odd reaction, Frank put a hand on her shoulder and pointed across the deck. An unshaven man in dark glasses lazed in a canvas deck chair, swaddled in blankets. He looked vaguely familiar, but Charlotte couldn’t quite place him.
“Is that who I think it is?” Frank said. “I think it might be.”
The man noticed them staring. He lifted his bottle of beer in greeting and, without any sort of preliminary, began to sing “If I Only Had a Brain” from The Wizard of Oz.
Charlotte saw Joan squeeze Rosemary’s hand. That’s him.
“I know,” Rosemary whispered. But she seemed uncertain. Where was the floppy hat? Where were the tufts of straw? Why did his voice sound as if it had been dragged through gravel?
Still, though, what a voice. So distinctive that it could never be confused for any other.
“It looks as if Ray had a late night,” Frank murmured to Charlotte. “I think his head really is full of stuffing.”
Halfway through the last verse of the song, Ray Bolger lost steam. But he took a swig of beer and managed to finish. He threw off the blanket, as everyone applauded, and made his way unsteadily toward them. Frank stepped forward to take his elbow, to keep him from toppling over the railing.
“Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Most kind, most kind. For my next number …”
A look passed over his face. Charlotte knew that look, from long experience with Dooley. So did the girls.
“Are you feeling under the weather?” Rosemary asked.
“Not at all,” Ray Bolger said. He eyed the railing, but then the nausea seemed to pass. “I’m fit as a fiddle. In tip-top shape. Never better.”
“It’s such an honor to meet you, Mr. Bolger,” Charlotte said.
“It’s an honor to be here,” he said. “On a lake, apparently.”
Charlotte could see the girls conferring telepathically. You ask him. No, you. Finally Joan took the plunge.
“Are you really the Scarecrow?” she said.
“Every single day for the past twenty-five years,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I shall retire below for a short intermission. You’ve been a most delightful audience.”
The surface of the lake was as flat as glass, the wind barely a whisper, but the journey across the deck almost defeated him. He rolled, he pitched. But then, just befo
re he reached the hatch, he kicked a leg and shrugged a shoulder and flapped the opposite arm. Wrist, elbow, hip, and knee—he came gracefully unhinged, the dance that Charlotte had seen him perform on the movie screen so many times.
“It really is him, Joan,” Rosemary said.
“I know,” Joan said.
Charlotte turned to smile at Frank, but he was watching Ed’s niece, Cindy, who had reached out to stroke Joan’s head.
“So smooth,” Cindy said.
“Let’s go up front,” Frank said. He took Joan’s hand in his. “Ed! Do you have anything to eat on this rust bucket?”
Of course Ed had everything to eat. He exchanged his captain’s hat for a chef’s toque and cooked hamburgers and red-hots on a portable charcoal grill. Leo set up a buffet of deviled eggs, German potato salad, corn on the cob, succotash. For dessert there were chocolate-chip cookies, fudge brownies, fruit cocktail in strawberry Jell-O with whipped cream on top.
They ate and ate and yet barely made a dent. Charlotte climbed onto a locker so that she could take a photo of the spread from above. Which fairy tale was it, where the hero encountered a table that magically replenished itself? Had the enchanted table been a reward or a dangerous temptation? She couldn’t recall.
They anchored in what appeared to be the very center of the lake, far from shore. Charlotte considered how deep the water must be. Compared to Lake Mead, Oklahoma reservoirs and ranch ponds were just boot prints filled with muddy rainwater. She kept a close eye on the girls. The pair of cork life preservers tied to the railing looked more decorative than practical.
Ed beckoned to her. Charlotte left Frank and Leo to fend for themselves—Rosemary and Joan were teaching them how to play Down Down Baby—and pulled over a chair.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” Ed said.
“Very much,” Charlotte said. “We’re having a wonderful time.”
“Good. Now, let’s get to know each other. Tell me a juicy secret about yourself. I promise not to breathe a word.”
She laughed. “I’m afraid I don’t have any secrets, juicy or otherwise.”