Brass in Pocket

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Can anyone corroborate that story?” Sam asked.

  “I paid with a debit card,” Gorecki said. “So like you said, you can check their records.”

  “But you weren’t alone, right?” Catherine asked. “There was a witness.”

  “Yeah.” He hesitated. Sam jutted his chin at Gorecki and he went on. “But I don’t know how you’d find… well, her, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  He leaned toward them and lowered his voice even more. “Look, she calls herself Sugar Bear—that’s all I know about her. She’s big, tall. I picked her up over on Main, we went to the motel, did what we did, and I dropped her off again. End of story. I don’t have her cell number or anything.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. Every cop in Las Vegas knows Sugar Bear,” Sam said. “We know how to find her.”

  “You do?”

  “Mr. Gorecki, even in Las Vegas there aren’t many two hundred and seventy–pound transvestite hookers working the streets. I’m sure we can get our hands on her if we need to.”

  Gorecki immediately went crimson. Catherine thought his skin even glowed through the thick fur coat, but that might have been an illusion.

  “We’re not judging you here, Mr. Gorecki,” said Catherine, “but we’d appreciate some honesty. You weren’t at the motel today or tonight?”

  “No. Hell no. I was with my wife and some buddies, playing cards.”

  “We’ll need a list of their names and a way to reach them.”

  “No problem.” He ducked back inside, returned with an envelope and a pen, and scrawled four names and phone numbers onto it. “Here you go.”

  “Thank you,” Catherine said. “By the way, do you know someone named Antoinette O’Brady?”

  Gorecki picked at some of the fur thatching his belly. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

  “How about Deke Freeson?” Sam asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Okay, fine,” Catherine said. “Thanks for your cooperation.”

  “And don’t go anywhere,” Sam said. “In case we need to talk to you again.”

  Gorecki pushed the door open again and started through it. “I got nowhere to go and no money to get me there. You don’t got to worry about me.”

  “Stay out of trouble,” Sam said. “And if I were you, I’d keep away from Sugar Bear for a while.”

  “Sugar Bear?” A petite woman had silently walked up behind Gorecki, barefoot, wearing only a short silky nightgown that left almost nothing to the imagination. Her hair was dark brown and loose, her eyes tired. She was too young and not blond enough to be Antoinette O’Brady. “What about Sugar Bear?”

  Here it comes, Catherine thought. “Let’s go, Sam. I think he’s in enough trouble without us here.”

  “It’s nothing, baby. Go back to bed.”

  “You bastard,” she said. Gorecki started to close the door, but her voice came through anyway. “You know I hate it when you see her without me.”

  The door shut, muffling their voices. Catherine and Sam started down the stairs. “Wow,” Sam said.

  “Wow what?”

  “People can really fool you.”

  “We wouldn’t be people if we didn’t,” Catherine said. “I think that’s what we’re best at.”

  17

  MOST NIGHTS, GIL GRISSOM seemed to juggle three or four cases at once without breaking a sweat. So why, Catherine wondered, did handling the logistics of everything seem so complicated? Go here, go there, send this CSI to that scene and another one to this scene. Keep the lab techs busy, coordinate with the detectives, prepare reports for the undersheriff. Piece of cake, Catherine would have thought, except that it wasn’t. She had felt one step behind all night long. Everyone seemed to have their hands more than full, too much going on, herself included.

  She was worried about Jim Brass, worried about Antoinette O’Brady, and now worried about Melinda Spence. She made time for a quick call to Lindsey, just to reassure herself that some things were well in her world, but got her daughter’s voicemail. Finally sleeping, she told herself, the crisis over Sondra and Jayden already settled. She would answer if she wasn’t asleep, as she should be at this time of night. Still, the call that was meant to put Catherine at ease only made her more uptight because she hadn’t been able to hear Lindsey’s voice. She knew she had less to worry about than a lot of other parents—Lindsey was smart and careful, and had so far resisted a lot of the temptations to which young people often succumbed.

  That didn’t mean Catherine didn’t worry.

  Archie Johnson knocked twice, and Catherine waved him into the office. Every visitor felt like another interruption, one more thing preventing her from getting something else done, even though she understood that every person in the lab was working just as hard as she was, and had a contribution to make. Instead of sitting down, he stood behind the guest chair with his hands on the back. He seemed to tower over the desk, and his upswept black hair added at least an extra inch to his height.

  “Mandy got an AFIS hit off some fingerprints from the motel,” Archie said. “Surprisingly, Antoinette O’Brady really is Antoinette O’Brady.”

  “Mystery solved. Now we can all go home.”

  “Mystery just beginning,” Archie countered. “She was in the system because of some minor run-ins with the law in the 1970s and ‘80s, back east. Petty theft, drunk and disorderly, that kind of thing. Running with the wrong crowd, it sounds like. But that old record didn’t give us much information that might help anybody find her now. Mandy’s still running more prints, so I did a little poking around.”

  “Which is what you do so well.”

  “One of my many talents, yes. And I did find out some interesting tidbits.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as while her name used to be Antoinette O’Brady, for the last twenty-four years she has officially been Antoinette Blago. That driver’s license she was carrying is a phony, but the state of Nevada has issued one under the Blago name.”

  “Blago—that sounds familiar,” Catherine said. On another night she would have latched right on to it, but tonight the name was just one of too many things swimming around her.

  “Think wise guys,” Archie said. “She’s married to Emil Blago.”

  The name clicked everything into place. “Ohh. He’s a serious wise guy.”

  “The kind who built Vegas. At least, according to Greg.”

  “Greg is fascinated by our city’s criminal history, isn’t he?”

  “It’s a compelling topic. And even though he’s only been in town a few years, Blago seems determined to live up to the archetype.”

  “This certainly puts a different spin on Antoinette’s disappearance. And Deke Freeson’s murder.”

  “One more thing.” Archie pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of his lab coat. “I actually printed this for you, because… well, because high school pictures are funny.”

  “High school?” Catherine reached for the paper. On it were printed two strips of black-and-white photos from a decades-old high school yearbook.

  “Grover Cleveland High School, Newark, New Jersey, 1970. Antoinette O’Brady’s in the top row, second from the left.”

  The girl in the picture had long, straight blond hair held down by a leather headband wrapped across her forehead. She wore heavy eye shadow and smirked at the camera with her eyes half-shut. She seemed to be saying she knew her whole life was a joke—the photographer, the school, and all the rest of it—and she had more important places to be. Looking at her, Catherine could see a resemblance, across the years, to the driver’s license picture of Antoinette O’Brady. “She looks like a troublemaker. The same person?”

  “It’s definitely the same person,” Archie said. “I ran FR on it and the two pictures are a positive match.”

  Catherine did a quick facial recognition analysis of her own, holding the two pictures side by side. The lab’s facial recognition software would study and compare eighty different
nodal points—the depth of the eye sockets, the distance between the eyes, the shape of the cheekbones, and so on—to determine if two faces were the same. She came up with the exact result Archie’s software had: Antoinette O’Brady was indeed Antoinette O’Brady. “That’s good to know,” she said.

  “Now look at the bottom row, center,” Archie said. “Same school, same class.”

  Catherine scanned the other row. Boston, Boynton, Brass…

  “Brass?” she asked. She already knew the answer. Brass, James, the caption said. And sure enough, from inside a beefy young man, Jim’s direct eyes glared at her. His mouth hadn’t changed much either, the lips thin, the corners curled in a grin amused at all the world’s foibles. His dark hair was longer than she would have expected, appearing to shoot off in every direction at once, like a box of fireworks with a flare thrown into the middle, barely contained by the frame of the photograph. He wore a light turtleneck, and the chains of a medallion were visible draped across his collarbones. “Wow,” Catherine said. “I’d never have believed it. I guess this is before he volunteered for Vietnam.”

  “If you had hair like that, you’d want to get out of the country, too. That’s why I had to print it out. We can blackmail the captain for whatever we need.”

  The meaning of the two rows of pictures sank in, delayed by the unexpected appearance of the young Jim Brass. “Wait, you’re saying that Jim Brass went to high school with Antoinette O’Brady? And she’s married to Emil Blago?”

  Archie gave her a smile. “That’s what I’m saying. I told you it was interesting.”

  Catherine sent Archie away, and prepared for another late-night visit, this time to see Emil Blago. She wanted to know what he knew about his wife’s disappearance. Antoinette could have come home and they’d been looking for her for no reason. She was barely out of her office when Nick Stokes caught up to her, walking quickly. “You going somewhere, Catherine?” he asked.

  She looked up and down the hall to make sure they were alone. “I’m going to see a mobster named Emil Blago.” She briefly described Archie’s findings.

  “I’ve got to see that picture of Brass,” Nick said.

  “Oh, don’t worry, everyone’s going to see it.”

  “That’s good. Don’t rush off yet, though.”

  “What is it?”

  “Couple things. Number one, I believe Will Penfold is clean. I’ve confirmed that he was making rounds in his beer truck when Freeson was killed, just like he says.”

  “Okay, strike one. What’s number two?”

  “Hodges came through.”

  “In what way?”

  “He identified the type of brake fluid you found on the carpet at the Rancho Center Motel. It’s a unique high-performance blend, only used in auto racing. Even if you could buy it at a store, you wouldn’t, because the stuff costs about twenty times what ordinary brake fluid costs.”

  “Okay. And that tells us what, exactly?”

  Nick suppressed a grin, but she could see it creasing the skin around his eyes. “According to the manufacturer, there’s only one racing team in Las Vegas that uses it. They’re called Supra Racing, and they’re headquartered near the Clark County Raceway. I did a quick public records search and found out that they’re owned by a company called Supra, Inc.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Supra, Inc. owns a bunch of businesses in the city. Apartment buildings, a couple of restaurants, some commercial and industrial real estate, among other things. And it’s a known front for one Emil Blago.”

  The news hit Catherine with the force of a slap. Sometimes things just fell into place. “You don’t say.”

  “I do say.”

  “Okay, this changes things. Thanks, Nicky. I need to… to take a minute to process this.”

  “Glad I could make your night even more complicated,” he said.

  “At least I can do the same for you. Riley’s just back from the airport—take her and get out to Supra Racing, see what you can find out there.”

  Catherine returned to her office. The whole night felt like a cleverly constructed trap, one roadblock after another thrown in front of her every time she tried to escape.

  What she wanted to do more than anything was to track down Jim Brass and ask him what the hell he was mixed up in. But she couldn’t risk that. Now she hoped he didn’t return her earlier calls, because she didn’t know what she would be able to say.

  Things had gotten too problematic too fast. The deeper Brass sank into this whole mess, the more she couldn’t risk tipping him off that she was onto it until she knew enough to mean something. If Brass had committed a crime, if he had to be charged, she didn’t want to force her hand too soon.

  And if he hadn’t done anything wrong, why hadn’t he been in touch? Why not make sure his coworkers knew what was going on so they could help?

  She would have sworn that Brass was no criminal. But he was no idiot, either. The more little bits and pieces of Deke Freeson’s last night she learned about, the more it seemed that he was behaving like one or the other.

  Maybe even both at once.

  And that wasn’t like the Jim Brass that she knew, not in the slightest.…

  18

  SUPRA RACING WAS housed in a big stand-alone pink stucco building. One side jutted toward the street and appeared to house offices, while the other, recessed with a big paved area in front, had four garage-style doors side by side with porthole-type windows about five feet from the ground. Nick guessed that was the shop. A couple of vehicles sat on the pavement, including a van decorated with Supra Racing decals.

  Nick and Riley parked next to the van. Lights blazed inside the front office, so they went to the front door. It was stainless steel and glass and looked in on an empty reception area. It was also locked. Nick banged on it a couple of times, then Riley softly tapped a key against the glass, making a much sharper sound.

  A minute passed before a big, dark bruiser swarmed into view through an interior doorway. His hair was short and spiked, and tattoos scrolled up both suntanned arms, a snake on one side and a dragon on the other. Nick supposed they might well meet in the middle somewhere, under his stained red T-shirt. “We’re closed!” the man shouted.

  Nick and Riley held their badges to the glass. “Nothing lasts forever,” Riley said. “You’re open again.”

  The guy shrugged, said something to a person in the other room, and unlocked the door. “What?”

  “What do you mean, what?” Nick walked in past the guy, Riley following. Behind a waist-high counter were a couple of desks. A glass-fronted display case held trophies, and the walls were covered with racing posters and framed photos of the racing team in action and enjoying victory celebrations. A faint scent of marijuana hung in the air. “Maybe we’re racing fans.”

  “Then you can watch on TV,” the big guy said. He scratched his ribs, or where his ribs should be, although layers of fat and muscle buried them.

  Another man came into the reception area, this one Hispanic, short but muscular, with broad shoulders and tattoos of his own. His arms and chest strained his polo shirt to its breaking point. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “They’re cops,” the big man said.

  “Actually, we’re crime scene investigators,” Riley corrected. Nick wouldn’t have minded letting these two thugs think they were regular cops for a few minutes longer. On the other hand, they might not understand the difference. A lot of people—especially people living on the wrong side of the law—never saw beyond the badge and gun.

  “You got a warrant?” the shorter one asked.

  “Easy,” Nick said, holding out his hands. “Slow down. We haven’t even said anything to you yet. We’re not here to search the joint. We just have a couple of questions. Is Mr. Blago here?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Come on, anybody who reads the sports page knows Emil Blago owns Supra Racing.”

  “Maybe I only read the funnies.” The short one
seemed like the spokesman—the big guy stood back now, watching. His expression never changed. Nick couldn’t tell if he was smiling or tasting some bad fish he’d had for dinner.

  “There’s no reason to get all defensive,” Riley said. “We just wanted to talk to him if he’s here. If not, no biggie. Do you know if his wife has been around lately? What’s her name, Antoinette?”

  The two men shared a glance. “You keep tabs on your boss’s wife?” the short one asked.

  “He’s not married,” Nick said. He might have been by now, if Sara Sidle hadn’t left town.

  “Lemme tell you, if he was, you wouldn’t. You’d keep your eyes on the ground and your nose outta their business.”

  “You’re probably right. We didn’t mean anything by it—we just wanted to talk to her and figured if she was here that would make it easy.”

  “She’s not. Why would she be, this time of night?”

  “I see what you’re saying,” Riley said. “Nobody here but you two, right? And you don’t know anything about anything?”

  The big man finally spoke again. “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Maybe we’ll just come back during regular business hours,” Riley said. “Maybe with some detectives along too, just for fun. And maybe a few drug-sniffing dogs. Does that work for you?”

  “Whatever you gotta do, lady.”

  “Hold on,” Nick said. His cell phone was letting him know he had a message. He flipped it open and found a text and photo, sent over by Wendy Simms. She had gotten a DNA hit off some of the hairs found in the motel room. They belonged to a man named Victor Whendt, who, according to the brief message, had a number of violent crimes on his sheet. The picture showed a white man with short brown hair, a broad face, and thick features, his small, deep-set eyes staring into the camera with undisguised contempt. Works 4 Blago, she had written.

  “You want to text your girlfriend, do it somewhere else,” the short man said. “We got stuff to do.”

  “I bet you do,” Nick said. He closed the phone and walked over to the wall with the most framed photographs hanging on it. Ignoring the glares of the two men, he studied them. He didn’t see Victor Whendt until the fourth picture, in which Victor was spraying champagne on a winning driver and a couple of women who looked like strippers. “Hey, that’s Vic Whendt, isn’t it?” he asked. “He works with you guys, right?”