by Andrews
A man wearing a hotel uniform appeared and addressed Callie. "Congratulations, you're a winner." He returned her ID, paid her out in cash, and handed her a small slip of paper. She glanced at the paper, folded it up, and put it in her pocket. "Quit while you're ahead and go home," he said pointedly. Then he added, "The real winners leave," and he turned and did exactly that.
"That guy looked like a drag queen in a suit, like one of the performers pictured in the Boy Review posters."
"It's a drawing..." Callie pulled the paper he'd given her out of her pocket. "It's a sketch showing a pathway leading to a cemetery with an X on the building next to it." I scanned the room in search of the man, but he was gone. "I think he's telling us that whatever is going on here at the hotel is somehow connected to a cemetery," Callie said.
I spotted the drunk guy I'd elbowed on the first night I'd joined Callie in the bar. He was wearing the same silk pants and had drawn a bead on us, missile locked on Callie, obviously drawn by the flashing lights. He looked drunker than the first time I saw him. He staggered up to her, his words slurring as he reached into his pocket.
This is just all we need tonight, I thought. "Okay, fella, we're done with the Paco number, let's—"
He slid his hand out of his pocket and lunged at Callie. For a moment, I thought he was attacking her with his silly puppet, but then I realized in his pocket was a small knife, and we had been lulled into complacency because we expected it to be a puppet. Callie jumped back, but she was trapped up against the slot machine. His knife slashed her jacket. My mind got stuck on that image: a knife slicing through Callie's jacket, next to her perfectly formed body, a knife—so close—a knife—her jacket—a knife. My terror at losing her causing my neurons to lock up—short-circuit—the chemical communication to go suddenly speechless—frozen—frightened—my mind replayed knife—jacket— knife—as my reflexes, unhampered by my brain's issues, kicked in, and I grabbed his wrist, twisted, and swung his arm out at a ninety-degree angle from his elbow and cracked it back against my knee. I pried the knife out of his fist and was preparing to drive it into his stomach when Callie screamed for me to stop.
By now, we were surrounded with name tags of every description: security, gaming management, hotel bar, clerks, front desk, everyone pressing the crowds back and separating us from the attacker.
It took about an hour to fill out the paperwork for security, who told me their procedure was to do an internal investigation and the police had already been notified. I smirked as the young kid filling out the paperwork for the hotel moved his arm just long enough to reveal Palace Guard Greg on his uniform. Great guarding, Greg, I thought. The LVPD officer arrived looking serious and formal this time—the near knifing of a tourist definitely higher priority than a sex video. The officer conducted the appropriate questioning and then took Paco-man down to the precinct. I was certain the hotel would have him out on bail in a matter of hours since they all seemed to know him.
When the crowd cleared, Ms. Loomis took us aside to say how grateful she was that we were all right, but that, as we had undoubtedly noticed, trouble seemed to be following us at this hotel, and the management felt that for our safety, and the safety of the other guests, we should check out. I became incendiary. This was a neat trick: someone who wanted us out of the hotel had threatened us with dognapping, illicit videotaping, and attempted knifing, and now was trying to make us the threat!
"Ms. Loomis," I said, my voice like steel, "this hotel has a secret. Perhaps more than one. I am beginning to think you are aiding and abetting that secret. Your telling me to leave further supports my belief that you're an accomplice and you're covering up something. I know your owner, Karla Black, and perhaps Karla will be happy to tell the FBI what's going on here."
Ms. Loomis backpedaled, explaining that she was merely fearful for us, and the insurance problem that all of this might cause the hotel, but certainly she never meant to imply that we should leave if we didn't want to go.
I stepped over to the only section of the lobby where I could get reception on my cell phone and called my old police buddy in Tulsa, Wade Garner, who'd helped Callie and me on the Marathon Studio murders a few months earlier. Wade was the big square-jawed cop I'd worked alongside at the TPD, and our time together had an odd bonding effect. We were known on the force as the Odd Couple because there wasn't one thing we agreed on except that we'd lay down our lives for each other.
"I think you've encountered more crooks as a writer than you ever did as a cop," he said. I gave him the rundown on what was happening and the names of a few of the players, just to see what he could dig up on them: the drag queens in the review, Karla, Mo. "It would also help if you could match any current hotel employees with employment at the local newspaper here, say fifteen, twenty years ago."
"Oh sure," Wade snorted. "You think TPD stands for league's Police Department? You know what kind of work all this shit involves? I'm not the desk flunky on your crazy-ass cases," he said. I told him to forget my request and implied that he was probably incapable of finding anything out about them anyway. The response was instantaneous harassment and snorts on his end of the line.
"By the way," he added, "I ran into your mom and dad, and they mentioned that you hadn't called in a week. Do I have to wipe your butt too?" he asked and hung up.
I rejoined Callie, who was in a snit. "I'm trying to find someone in the hotel who can sew up my jacket. That man sliced a hole in it, and it's my good jacket!"
I shook my head in wonderment. "You're nearly knifed, and you're worried about your jacket."
"You kept me from being stabbed," she said and sagged into my chest, holding me close, and I realized that sometimes she focused on small tasks to keep from feeling the enormity of larger issues.
"You want to go up to our room?" I whispered into her ear, not being able to bear seeing her upset.
"Just long enough to see Elmo, then I want to go out. I'm too upset to stay in a small space. I don't think that was just the act of a drunken man. I think he's been stalking us from the day we arrived, and now, we're starting to get close to somebody or something the hotel doesn't want us to see," Callie said.
"Or maybe he's merely a drunken lounge performer who, in his own mind, is paying me back for decking him in the bar the night he called us dykes. But none of that matters right now. What matters is, are you okay?"
Callie nodded that she was. I asked if I could have another look at the drawing the stranger had handed her before he walked out the door.
Callie pulled it out of her pocket. It clearly showed a pathway from the casino to a cemetery, but from where in the casino and to which cemetery?
We moved over to a bank of phones and checked the phone directory, but there were no cemeteries that were a "pathway" away from the hotel.
"I wish if people are going to give us clues, they'd think it through a little more, you know?" I said in exasperation.
"Maybe the people trying to help us aren't used to being in this situation and don't know how to provide clues. Maybe they're doing the best they can," Callie said.
"Well, they're going to have to do better if we're going to stay alive," I said darkly.
Chapter Twelve
Having showered and changed clothes, I sat down on the bed and speed-dialed Mom and Dad. Mom swooned when she heard my voice, saying she'd been so worried when she couldn't reach me in L.A.
"Mom, if you were worried, why didn't you just pick up the phone and call me on my cell?"
"If you don't have time to call your mother, why would you have time to take a call from your mother?" she said.
Years of experience had taught me to let those remarks go unanswered. Instead I put Elmo on the line so she could baby talk to him. He pressed his ear into the phone and moaned with joy upon hearing her voice.
"What did you say to him?" I asked her, taking the receiver back.
"That's between him and me," Mom replied. "He said you're with Callie, is that true?"
"Just wanted to tell you that we're safe. Gotta go, Mom." I sent her my love and hung up.
"Your dear friend, my mother, says she fully expects that we'll live together." I looked at Callie with renewed interest.
"That's because she thinks you sleep around too much," Callie said.
"What?" My voice elevated.
"She says women are at your house a lot when she calls. She worries about disease."
"What?" My voice was going even higher now. "Let's talk disease. I am not the one who married a guy. I believe that was you. Do you know the disease you can get from guys? They will put it anywhere! A blowup doll, a knothole, a sheep—have dick, will stick! I am a woman."
"And a very sexy one. Take me to dinner." Callie laughed and patted me in an indulgent way, and I was glad to see that she was coming out of the darkness brought on by her attacker.
The hotel's top floor contained a big Italian restaurant with arched ceilings and painted frescoes taller than the restaurant was wide. It was a quiet, relaxed atmosphere away from the noise of the gamblers, and I was happy to have a few hours alone with Callie. I made a mental note that Elmo would love an order of meatballs.
Callie was dressed in a pair of navy slacks with a navy blazer, a designer crest on the pocket, and a white starched shirt. The overhead lights bounced off her polished gold jewelry and her gorgeous swept-back blond hair with an intensity that could have lit up an airfield at midnight. When she walked through the door, every head turned to see where she'd land.
"You look great in that jacket," she said, referring to the green suit jacket I wore to highlight my green eyes.
"I think everyone's looking at you, not me." I smiled.
"I think they're looking at both of us, thinking we make a nice couple."
The waiter tried to seat us in the middle of the room at a small table because we were two women without men. I stopped him, letting him know we'd take the corner booth. He hesitated, wondering no doubt if he should say that the larger booth was reserved, or that it was being held for a larger party, or that he had no wait staff for that area, but one look into my eyes and he undoubtedly knew, in order to preserve peace, he should fold on this one. He nodded his acquiescence, and we were seated in a large corner booth where I could slide close to her and we had a view of the entire room.
"So, Ms. Rivers, when this assignment is over, are you going back to L.A. with me and spend some time so we can get to know each other in a normal setting?"
"We agreed we weren't going to do anything permanent."
"I didn't say it was permanent. We can re-up the deal every ninety days—for the rest of our lives."
"I don't think I..."
"Do you want me dating other people?" I asked in my blunt way. She looked at me for a moment and blinked.
"I never thought you wanted that," she replied, seemingly hurt.
"I don't want that, but..."
"Then why would you do it, or even suggest it?"
"Because...because you're making me crazy." We both laughed. "I think, I'm not sure, but I think I'm a nester. Now, before I met you, I never was, and frankly, I abhorred the idea, but all I want right now is to be together with you in the same cave, apartment, house.. .hell, even town would be nice! To find out if maybe you like that too."
"You're proposing..." Callie teased out the words.
"Yes, in an impermanent fashion!"
"...that we live together." She completed the sentence.
"To please my elderly mother," I said.
The waiter arrived with a napkin over one arm and a pad and pencil in hand. "Are we ready, ladies?"
"That is the very question we were just discussing." I gave Callie a meaningful smile, and we ordered our meal.
Callie sat close to me, reached over, laced her fingers through mine, and pressed her shoulder into me. A musician moved from table to table playing love songs. He was wearing black tights, a blousy white shirt, and had a big colorful sash wrapped around his substantial middle. I wondered when he was growing up, if he ever conceived of the day when he would have to dress like Geppetto to find work. After the last strains of "Arrivederci, Roma," the violinist removed his violin from his shoulder as if taking a break in a musical interlude and then reached into his pocket and suddenly produced an explosion of red. I lunged across the table and intercepted it before it could reach Callie. It fell to the table.. .a small red paper rose. I felt foolish and sank back into the red tufted leather booth as the musicians moved on to the next table.
Callie rested her head on my shoulder. "Relax," she said. "It's okay."
"It's a rose! Do you think that means anything?" I asked.
"Just that Italians are romantics," she said and kissed me. "Maybe I'm Italian."
Her kiss felt so natural that I wasn't even shy about being out in public with this gorgeous blonde hanging on me. In fact, I was grinning, betting that the men at the other tables were wondering what in hell I'd done to deserve this or what I had to offer that they didn't. I was happily wondering myself when a dark, swarthy Italian man in his sixties, with the masculine softness of an opera singer, came to our table and introduced himself as Giovanni, a friend of Karla Black's. She had told him that we were very interesting writers, and he wanted to invite us to his home later that evening for a party.
"Many beautiful people from Las Vegas will surely be there." He smiled and squeezed my hand warmly.
Callie asked for directions, and he said once we were at Karla Black's home, we merely had to proceed up the hill another two miles and the road would dead-end at his estate. I could tell Callie was interested in going.
"I heard that you are the ghost of the famous ghoul pool," Callie said, smiling.
"The ghosts are everywhere in Las Vegas, even this hotel," Giovanni said, and then at her probing he tried to explain. "It's an old tale, really, that a ghost watches over the hotel and guards it. In exchange, the ghost demands a cut of the earnings. So every night, after the money is counted, a dollar bill is taken to the ghost to make him happy. A dollar's not much, but over time, I would say the ghost is doing better than the 401Ks, no?"
"So who really gets the money?" I asked.
"Like throwing pennies in a fountain Las Vegas style. It brings good luck and everyone in Las Vegas is superstitious about luck. Perhaps when the hotel is destroyed a hundred years from now, the money will be discovered." Giovanni reiterated that he hoped to see us at his party later in the evening, and he took our hands again before leaving us in a flurry of spirits.
"He said after the money's counted," I whispered, watching Giovanni's retreating backside. "So the money is probably counted in the cashiers' main cage on the north side of the hotel, maybe that's where the pathway begins."
"I think it's more than a pathway. I think it's an underground tunnel," Callie said.
"Why do you think so?"
"I don't know. Just a feeling," Callie defended herself.
Callie and I finished our leisurely dinner just as a tray of cream-filled Italian pastries arrived compliments of Giovanni. It was a nice gesture, and we took a few, along with the meatballs, back to the room for Elmo.
Elmo was lying patiently inside his wire show cage and jumped to his feet as the meatballs and pastries were unwrapped. I placed them in his doggie bowls and set the bowls on the morning newspaper, anticipating a lot of action. Elmo dove on the meatballs and in his enthusiasm scattered them all over the floor.
Callie grinned. "Give me a washcloth. He's got it all over the ends of his ears and on his paws."
"Hey, at our house, Elmo and I have a rule: If it's good enough to eat, it's good enough to wear."
I glanced down at my hand and nearly jumped out of my body. Clear
ly printed on the inside heel of my right hand was a jumble of letters: 320flWAOI.33U.fla. I screamed for Callie to take a look, and then we both stared in disbelief.
"Where did you put your hand?" she asked.
"Nowhere!" I exclaimed, my mind racing.
"It was written somewhere and you pressed your palm down on it. What does it say?"
"Nothing, just letters!" I nearly shouted.
"Hold your hand up to the mirror," Callie demanded.
I held my hand up and both of us stared into the mirror... clearly written was BRUCEJOANROSE.
"Bruce Singleton is dead," I breathed, not wanting to think that maybe the other two were scheduled to die. I held my palm away from me as if it belonged to Sigourney Weaver. "I am totally freaked out. How did this get on my hand?" I rushed into the bathroom and scrubbed the ink off, watching it dissolve almost immediately.
"You took a shower before we left, so it had to have gotten there between the hotel and the restaurant. Think about everywhere you've put your hands," Callie said.
"All over your body, for one thing!" I replied. "I think whoever did it wanted to frighten us."
"Everyone here is frightened of someone, and it's not all the same someone," Callie said.
We harnessed Elmo up and took him down to the lobby, where his arrival always caused a stir. I walked him out the front doors and over to a grassy landscaped area, carrying a plastic bag with me. Having walked Elmo in other people's yards in L.A., I'd mastered the inside-out baggie for poop pickup. I quickly sealed and tossed the airtight baggie and its odiferous contents into a Dumpster outside the hotel. Elmo scratched the ground with his hind legs, pleased with his efforts, as we looked up to see Rose Ross heading our way. Callie called out her name, and she looked relieved and quickly joined us.