“Are you saying that he might not be guilty? How can that be? After all this time?”
Strangely, what I can say to her isn’t that different from what I said to Nicholson. “All I’m saying, at this moment, is that I need to ask you some questions. And that when I know, you’ll know.”
She finally nods, giving in, and slips off her coat. “Ask your questions.”
“In the last weeks before Rita disappeared, was there anything that she expressed fear about?”
She shakes her head. “Not to me. But she seemed distracted, maybe worried. She was not the type to burden other people with her problems, not even her mother. So she never came out and said anything, but I felt something might be wrong. I planned to ask her about it, but … I never got the chance.”
“Was she having any problems at work?”
“I don’t think so. She loved her job.”
“She told someone that she ‘didn’t have a job anymore.’ Any idea what she could have meant by that?” Nicholson had reported that Rita said that at the restaurant, after she said she was leaving town. Of course, since Nicholson is currently in prison for the crime, I can’t just accept anything he says at face value.
“Who did she say that to?”
“I’m sorry, please, it will be much better if you just answer my questions. If she said that, that she didn’t have a job anymore, do you have any idea what she might have meant?”
“No. I can’t imagine her saying that.”
“Mrs. Carlisle, I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but was Rita having an affair? Maybe with someone at work?”
She tenses slightly and doesn’t answer for a few moments. There’s no doubt that I’ve hit a nerve; the only question is whether it will provoke a response.
“They asked me that three years ago,” she says, her voice getting lower. “In fact, you asked me that three years ago. I said no then.”
“Was it the truth?”
“I didn’t see what it could have had to do with what happened, and I didn’t want to soil her memory. She was a good girl; she made a mistake.”
“So she did have an affair?”
She nods. “Yes, but not with someone who could have had anything to do with what happened.”
“I’m not saying he did, Mrs. Carlisle. I’m not saying that at all. I just need to know his name.”
“He is a doctor; he worked at the hospital. I don’t know if he still does or not.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I say. “Please tell me his name.”
“Cassel. Dr. Steven Cassel.”
“I told you when you called that he was in surgery.”
Dr. Steven Cassel’s receptionist seems annoyed that I didn’t take her statement in our phone conversation as the last word in the matter. Instead, I’ve decided to come to his office; it’s almost five o’clock, and I figure that at some point surgeries have to end, either positively or negatively.
“I remember that. You were very clear about it,” I say.
“So why are you here?”
“Because I wanted to come by.” I take a seat in the waiting area and pick up a brochure on thoracic surgery, which I take one glance at and immediately put back down. I then grab a three-month-old magazine and ask, “You got anything newer than this?”
She doesn’t bother to answer and just sort of makes a huffing noise, which is fine. I assume if they had more recent magazines, they would have put them out. Either way, this woman is not about to go magazine hunting to find me something more current.
Doctors, and apparently their employees, are not used to having their directives disregarded. I’m told there was once a time when it was the same way with police officers, but that was before I lost my memory, and probably before I was born.
I’m guessing that Dr. Cassel is going to return after he’s through with surgery. It’s an educated guess; his bouncer would have probably told me if he wasn’t coming back just as a way to get rid of me. Also, she’s hanging around after hours, and I have to assume she’s waiting for the boss.
I’m midway through my third outdated Sports Illustrated when a guy in what looks like a surgeon’s outfit comes in the door. I’m figuring he’s not a patient, since there’s no doctor here to see.
He says, “Long day, Helen,” and then notices I am sitting here, and says, “Oh.”
Helen starts to do the introductions. “Doctor, this is Detective…”
“I know who it is, Helen,” Cassel says. “Come in.”
I follow him into his office. It’s small and rather unimpressive, but I guess if you’re going to spend the whole day in surgery, that doesn’t matter. I take the seat he offers me, and he says, “I’ve been expecting you. When I heard that … never mind. What can I do for you, Detective?”
“You had an affair with Rita Carlisle.”
“Is there a question in there?”
“Not so far,” I say. “But jump in whenever you want.”
“I’m a married man, Detective. I have two children. I am very protective of my family; I do not want them hurt in any way as a result of my mistakes.”
“I have no interest in hurting your family. My interest is in accumulating relevant facts, and then trying to figure out what they mean.”
He nods. “Very well. I’m not sure how relevant it is, but yes, I had a fairly brief relationship with Rita Carlisle. I regretted it then, and I regret it now. She deserved better.”
“How brief?”
“Three months.”
“Was it still going on when she died?” I ask.
“Not quite. It ended just two days before. She ended it.”
“Why did she do that?”
“I’m not sure. She just said that she couldn’t do it anymore. I assume she meant invading someone else’s marriage. She was a very moral person, and was not comfortable with the role she was playing. Maybe she meant something else, but if so, she didn’t verbalize it.”
“Why didn’t you come forward about this three years ago?” I ask.
“No one asked me. Had they done so, I would have told the truth as I’m telling it now.”
“Did you have much interaction with her in doing your respective jobs?”
He shakes his head. “Some, but not much. I am one of the doctors on a board that deals with the administration about common interests and policies. So in that sense Rita and I had some contact. That’s how we met.”
“To your knowledge, was she happy in her job?”
He hesitates, and finally says, “I’m not sure I should go there. It would mean getting into hearsay and rumor, and I’m not really comfortable with that.”
Since Cassel’s comfort level is pretty far down on my list of concerns, I continue. “Doctor, these questions are going to be answered, one way or the other. You can answer them in a private setting, like this one in your office, with me, or in a more public forum in a place not of your own choosing, with a bunch of lawyers and a court stenographer. It’s really your call, but you only have one bite of the apple.”
“That’s sounds like a threat,” he says.
“Not to me. To me it sounds like a simple statement of fact.”
“Okay. She was having trouble with the hospital general manager, Daniel Lewinsky. She was considering leaving her job.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know, but I believe she disapproved strongly of something he was doing. I truly do not know what that was.”
I tell Dr. Cassel that I may want to talk to him again, and he gets me to repeat that I have no interest in revealing his affair with Rita Carlisle. I’ve been promising so many people that I’ll keep quiet that I probably should have Dr. Cassel operate to remove my larynx.
When I leave I call Nate to update him on my interviews with Helen Carlisle and Dr. Cassel.
“What kind of doctor is he?” Nate asks.
“A thoracic surgeon.”
“What the hell is that?”
“You don’t
know?”
“Of course I know, I was just seeing if you did. He operates on thoracics.”
“Exactly. I’ll give you his card, in case you break your thoracic.”
The Mirage is the one that started it all.
When it was built in 1989, it was the first huge casino hotel/resort built in Vegas in fifteen years. But it was not the last; in fact, it set off a building spree that has still not stopped.
The Bellagio, the Venetian, the Mandalay Bay, the Wynn, and many, many more; one after another, they sprang up and came to dominate the Strip. They are remarkably large and ornate, with the finest restaurants, casinos larger than football fields, and showrooms that can accommodate Broadway–style productions. Caesars Palace is the only hotel from the “old days” that has managed to compete with these newcomers.
As these enormous hotels were built, the smaller ones were gobbled up to make room. Most of the street-level casinos and gift shops on the Strip took the money and ran. They got outsized prices for spaces that housed businesses that would never have been able to compete with the “big boys” anyway.
One of the casinos that did not sell out was a small one near the Flamingo called “Lucky Linda’s.” Legend had it that Linda was an old-school casino operator who was too stubborn to sell and feisty enough to think she could make a go of it. Linda, the story goes, had started the place as a family business, and would never let go, no matter how big the offer.
Linda was revered as the last of a dying breed.
None of it was true. There were no big offers of a buyout; the place had the very unfortunate luck to be positioned in a location that no one really needed. There never even was a Linda; the original male owner just liked the name. The place had been sold a number of times over the years, sometimes to groups with multiple owners. It actually defied the odds that among all those owners, there had never been a Linda. Pretty much every other name was represented.
Except in conditions of inclement weather, every day movable glass walls were raised and the casino was actually open to the street. People passing by could just walk in, and there were gambling tables within five feet of the sidewalk.
Walking on the Vegas Strip is not easy. It takes a long time even to go from one hotel to another; they seem deceptively close but it takes forever to navigate the distance. Adding to the problem are pedestrian barriers that the town has installed for crowd and traffic control; the Strip is very definitely not conducive to long strolls and window shopping.
So Lucky Linda’s, and a few others like it, have become rest stops for weary pedestrians. They walk in, take much-needed seats at slot machines and blackjack tables, and lose money for the privilege of doing so. The place doesn’t get high rollers—you wouldn’t even call their patrons “rollers” at all—but it pays the rent, one slot machine lever pull at a time.
The fancy casinos are among the most surveilled places in the world; there is not a square inch of them that is not being videotaped by multiple cameras twenty-four hours a day. You don’t have to have seen any of the seemingly thousands of “Ocean” movies starting with 1133 to know that the casinos are prime targets for thieves and gambling cheaters, and the video surveillance is designed to thwart that.
Places like Lucky Linda’s have neither the money nor the inclination to duplicate the intensity of that security. There are cameras, and there are certainly security personnel, but the level is not on the same planet as their more well-heeled competitors. They have less to lose, and less to spend on protection.
Vegas has its share of rainstorms, and they can be sudden and intense. When that happens, the crowds on the sidewalks pour into places like Lucky Linda’s for temporary refuge. The average crowd can more than double.
It would be relatively easy, during those times, for someone to sneak in and leave a device in a shopping bag, and then exit the casino undetected.
And if that device then exploded, the results could be catastrophic.
“Lewinsky said, ‘Tell Mr. Silva not to worry.’”
Jessie turns off the tape of my interview with Galvis, which she, Nate, and I are playing for Captain Bradley.
“This is dynamite,” Bradley says. “Nice work.”
“It’s unsubstantiated in a legal sense,” I say. “But I think every word is true.”
“It’s a road map. If we get any corroboration at all, we can squeeze Lewinsky into implicating Silva.”
I have some doubts about what Bradley is saying. Unless Lewinsky has been inhabiting another planet for most of his adult life, he would know what ratting out Silva would likely do to his life expectancy.
“Getting people to talk against Silva requires a lot of squeezing.”
“I understand that.”
“And I did promise Galvis anonymity,” I say, as Nate winces. Apparently the diminished value of promises is something that I’ve forgotten along with everything else.
“Ask me if I give a shit about what you promised,” Bradley says, confirming Nate’s point of view. “This guy Galvis has admitted that he’s known about stolen drugs going on the street and until now never said a word. He’s one step above a pusher. The son of a bitch is lucky if we don’t put him away for aiding and abetting.”
I don’t completely disagree with Bradley and Nate on this, but it doesn’t matter, because my point of view is not going to carry the day anyway.
“We need to get search warrants to search the hospital records,” Bradley says.
I shoot a glance at Nate; this is why I was opposed to bringing the Galvis information to Bradley.
“It’s too soon, Captain,” I say. “We’ll tip them off.”
“I understand that’s a danger, but there’s no way we’re going to catch them in the act. There may not even be an act anymore; we have no way of knowing if this is ongoing.”
“You heard Galvis say that Lewinsky has cooked the books to hide it all. The warrants won’t turn up anything.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But if he did, the only books he could cook are his own.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“Jessie, this is where you come in. We’ll prepare the warrant to go after both sides of the transactions.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“We go to the suppliers, the drug companies. They know how much they shipped, and how much they got paid. If Galvis is right, then their figures won’t match the hospital’s. Which would give us the proof that the hospital is committing fraud. It will then be easy to make the jump to Lewinsky.”
It’s a good idea, so much so that I’m annoyed I didn’t think of it, but I’m still worried that we’re alerting Lewinsky and Silva that we’re on to them too early in the process, but it’s not like I have another, better idea. And Bradley’s idea of getting the drug companies’ books as a comparison could actually work.
Nate is going to prepare the warrants, with the help of our legal people. It’s going to be tricky, because all we really have to go on is Galvis, and we’re not ready to name him yet. Since I’m the one who conducted the interview, my name will be on the warrant. I’ll be vouching for Galvis’s reliability as an upstanding citizen and someone in a position to know what he’s talking about in this matter.
We’ve all heard the tape, so anyone in the department could be the person vouching for Galvis. Without saying so, Bradley is using me because of my recently earned reputation. I’m not sure why that bugs me, but it does. Not that there’s anything I can do about it.
“We’re going to have to go to the well with Galvis a few more times,” Bradley says. “Jessie’s going to need guidance about what to look for.”
“He’s not going to be happy about that,” I say.
“That’s too bad. If he resists, tell him you’ll feed him to Silva.”
“Two things are bothering me,” I say. “One is Tartaro. What does he have to do with this, and why send Shawn to get us to reopen Carlisle? What does he have to gain if Silva goes down?”
“Excellent questions,” Bradley says. “What’s the other thing bothering you?”
“Nicholson. He’s sitting in prison, and we’ve developed a theory about what went down that precludes his guilt.”
“Not necessarily. He could still have killed Carlisle having nothing to do with this other stuff.”
“That’s bullshit,” I say.
Bradley nods. “I know.”
I leave Bradley’s office and head back down to the prison to talk to Nicholson. I don’t expect to get much in the way of information, but I feel like I need to make him aware that things are happening.
His first comment when he’s brought in is, “I never thought I’d see you again.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“You have any news?”
“Does the name Joey Silva mean anything to you?”
“The mobster?” he asks. “I’ve heard of him, but that’s all.”
“What about Salvatore Tartaro?”
He thinks for a moment. “No. Who is he?”
“He’s the Joey Silva of Las Vegas. Do you have any idea why Rita might have had anything to do with these people, or people like them?”
“Absolutely none. And you could never get me to believe that she did.”
“Okay,” I say, not surprised by his answers.
“That’s it?”
I nod. “That’s it.”
“I was hoping for more.”
“All I can tell you now is that we’re making progress.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can’t say right now. But for what it’s worth, there’s one other thing I can say. I no longer think you killed Rita Carlisle.”
He takes a while to digest this, and finally says, “Good. Now prove it and get me the hell out of here.”
Gail Marshall seems like a very nice lady.
Fade to Black Page 10