Jerry opened the office door and motioned to his men who waited in the hall. One of them stepped inside.
My father jumped into the silence while we waited for Mrs. Ponder to gather her things and her dignity. “Do you think the victim could be in the hotel?”
I took my father’s elbow and led him out of the middle of the action to the chair behind the desk. “I have Security and Housekeeping scouring the property, surreptitiously, of course.”
“And?” My father settled in the chair, his face ashen underneath the flush of anger.
“Nary a drop of blood.”
Miss P moved in beside him, holding the chair with one hand and handing him a Wild Turkey with the other. “Here you go, sir. Just what the doctor ordered.”
He accepted her peace offering with a glare. He’d been out maneuvered—he didn’t have to like it; he just had to live with it.
Miss P sidestepped my displeasure. Bourbon was not what the doctor had ordered—my father’s recovery from a bullet to the chest had been slower than anyone was comfortable with, and spirits, no matter how emotionally medicinal, were not on his permitted list. But I was in no mood to quibble. I’d lose anyway. This was one relationship in my life that eluded me.
Okay, not true. In fact, they all did. At sea in an emotional dinghy, every seam leaking, I hadn’t a clue what ocean I navigated nor where I’d eventually drown.
I turned back to Ponder. He’d been rooting in his pocket. Extending his hand, he opened his fist to show a casino chip. It looked like ours.
“I have this. Not sure where it came from.”
“Nolan!” Sky stopped on her way through the door. Her foot stomp carried a veiled warning.
“Get out of here, Sky.”
She didn’t budge.
I pulled my father’s pocket square from his pocket, then flapped it open, and Mr. Ponder placed the chip in the center. Our chip, for sure.
Mr. Ponder moved to wipe his eyes but stopped at the sight of the blood. “One of the players, he said something about a more interesting game. I went with him. I must’ve found it.”
“Player?”
“Yeah, the kid, Boudreaux.”
“Nolan!” Sky screeched.
I gave a nod to the security guy, and he pulled her toward the door.
Once the door closed behind them, I turned to Jerry. “Any private games tonight?” Security monitored all non-casino games in the hotel. For obvious liability reasons, we didn’t have many.
If he heard me, it didn’t register. Sweat poured off of him and he’d started to shiver. His gaze wandered—a bee tasting the flowers but not finding any to his liking.
“Jerry? Are you okay?”
His hand shook as he swiped at the sweat on his brow as he finally looked at me. “Tired, I guess.”
“Any reports of someone running a game in the hotel tonight?” I asked again, and I shucked and jived a bit, trying to catch Jerry’s attention and keep it.
“No, but the loonies are running the asylum.” He gave a silly, choked laugh. “Fox can handle it. He’s Senator Lake’s man.”
For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. Very out of character for Jerry, who wore decorum like a Boy Scout merit badge.
“Is he okay?” Miss P got the same vibes I was getting.
“Fox works for Lake? Some politician’s lackey is on our desk tonight?”
“I coulda told you that,” Ponder chimed in, still not quite himself but looking better by the minute.
“I was kept out of the loop, why?”
Jerry shrugged, then gave my father a pointed look. “Like I said, the loonies.”
My breath caught. Was my father messed up in this? I wouldn’t brace him in front of these people, he deserved that much, but when I had him alone…
“Boudreaux? Doesn’t he play for your team, Nolan?”
“After that fiasco in the elevator, I told him this season just over would be his last.”
“Fiasco in the elevator?” My father gave me a quizzical look. Normally on top of stories like this, he’d fallen behind, not only in the news but in his recovery as well.
“He dropped a girlfriend with an elbow to the jaw. Caught on tape, he copped to an alcohol abuse problem. Local boy, he’s from Ely. His daddy’s some sort of bigwig up there. Beau played at Reno before making the leap to the NFL.” Probably more than anyone wanted to know. “We need to find him.” Conversation stopped as I got on my phone—this time a call to the front desk.
Sergio Fabiano, our front desk manager, answered with his trademark effusive tone. He was our resident babe magnet, or whatever they called too-beautiful men these days, and he loved to infuse his voice with a sort of breathless quality—something I found totally off-putting…along with his too-long black hair that he was constantly flipping out of his eyes. “It’s a great night at the Babylon, where the world comes for fun. Sergio Fabiano here to help.”
That wasn’t our official tagline, but it also wasn’t a battle I wanted to fight. “Sergio, I need to know which room Beau Boudreaux is registered in.”
“Yes, Ms. O’Toole.” His voice dropped the effusive. “One momentito.”
I felt all eyes in the room on me while I waited for him to return. I didn’t have to wait long.
“We don’t have anyone by that name on the register.”
Of course, this couldn’t be easy. “He’s famous in some circles. He might have registered under a different name. He’s one of the NFL players here for the big announcement. Call his team, any players you can find, and see if you can find him, okay? Last I saw him, he was in the lobby.”
“Yes, Miss, Sergio will find him for you.”
I disconnected and pocketed my phone as I looked around my office. “He’s working on it.”
Mr. Ponder seemed to be better able to focus, so I kept with the questions, dancing around my previous advice to everyone else. “What kind of game?”
Shivers wracked his body. “Man, what did they do to me?”
I leaned to the side, trying to see his eyes. “Mr. Ponder? You okay? You need help?”
Frankly, to me, he looked the best he had all night. “What kind of game did they lure you in with?”
By some incredible force of will, he pulled himself more upright. “I assume Baccarat, high stakes. That’s what I play.”
“Is that what they said?”
“They said a different kind of game. I was playing Baccarat, so I assumed they meant a different version of that game. That was their implication.”
“Where?”
“I don’t remember.” He turned tired eyes on me, but they looked clear.
“Did you go by car?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jerry, do your folks have any new information?”
No response.
Jerry tried to answer, then his head lolled onto his chest and his knees buckled.
Bethany, who’d been holding up the wall in the corner, lunged for him.
“Don’t!” I barked.
That single syllable hit like a jolt from a Taser, and she stopped as if frozen.
In slow motion, Jerry slid down the wall, landed on his knees, then fell forward.
I cringed when his face hit the carpet.
“He’s going to kill you,” Bethany said.
“Not if he dies first.” I dropped to my knees by his side. His breath was rapid and shallow, but he was breathing. Blood oozed from his nose that angled a bit off center—hard to tell with it still mashed into my carpet.
Bethany eased down opposite me, Jerry between us. “Dies?” the smirk in her voice had vanished.
“Don’t touch him,” I said in the same tone, but now with a sense of urgency. I rested my hands on my knees to keep from grabbing Jerry and doing anything I could to help him. But I couldn’t. Not yet. “Miss P, get the other Narcan kit. And hurry.” Then I turned back to Bethany. “I’m going to roll him over. Don’t you touch him.” I’d seen the white powder on his right s
ide after he’d grabbed Mr. Ponder. Jerry had brushed it off with both hands.
Reaching inside Jerry’s shirt, I grabbed the fabric from the inside. Then, with my forearm for leverage and bracing him against my knee, I eased him over. “Jerry?”
No response.
With two fingers, I gently opened his eyes. All white.
Miss P disappeared into the back office then reappeared with the requested drug in a nasal squeeze bottle. “I thought I’d seen it all,” I said as I administered the antidote. But I’d never seen my Security Head OD-ing on opioids. “Call the paramedics. Find out where the fucking hell they are.”
“Bad girl. Very bad girl,” Newton sang out.
“And somebody shoot the fucking bird.”
“Asshole.” Newton gave it his derisive inflection normally reserved for me, his version of eating crow. Not that parrots were omnivorous.
“Jerry’s heart is racing off the charts along with itching, sweating, weakness, losing consciousness. He wasn’t like this in the lobby.” I sat back on my heels and prayed for my friend, my business better half, to stabilize.
“What’s going on? You’re freaking me out,” Bethany said, her eyes wide.
“See the white powder on Ponder’s jacket, left side and sleeve?”
“Yeah.”
“Jerry got that all over him, then brushed it off with his bare hands.”
“You think touching it did this? What the hell is it?”
If he’d encountered the stuff in my hotel, that put not only all of us but all of my guests at risk. “Fentanyl, a new form of super potent opioid. Romeo told me he almost lost one of his men to it last week—the stuff can kill you even if your only exposure is dermal. You don’t even have to ingest it. The State has petitioned to use it in the cocktail to execute the Death Row guys.” I loved irony, but this tidbit stuck in my throat.
“They’ve been cutting heroin with the stuff. Amazingly lethal,” Miss P added.
“Man, what happened to the days when having a few drinks and dancing the night away was considered a good high?” This first sign of getting old was pining for days gone by as somehow better. With that as a metric, my age was showing.
“Your age is showing.” My father gave me gave me a hint of a smile, as if reading my mind.
“And my wisdom.” I sat back on my heels. “This explains the opioid haze he was in. Not sure why it didn’t kill him, though.”
“You didn’t touch it?” Bethany’s voice turned breathless and she grabbed my arm. “It could’ve been you.”
“No. Luck of the draw.”
“If you had, I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
“Jerry would have. And Miss P. And now you know, too. Metro issued every member a Narcan kit. Hell, they even carry one for the dogs. They sniff it out, and it kills them. Lost two dogs before Romeo got the department’s okay for the kits. We have them all around the hotel. Security carries them. Hell of a world.”
“Where do you think Ponder ran into this stuff, and, if it’s so potent, why didn’t it kill him?” my father asked.
If this stuff was in my hotel…
“Miss P?” I communicated my horror with a look.
“I’m on it.”
For some reason, that flipped my pissed-off switch. “Hell, everybody’s on it. We need to find it. Find Boudreaux. Find Lake. Find something!” My voice rose with each word, riding on my anger and my fear.
I looked down at Jerry—the man who had been my rock for decades and had saved my ass more times than I could count. “Don’t you dare die on me.”
My phone rang. “What?” I didn’t even look at the caller ID.
“We’ve found something,” Romeo said, his voice a monotone. “I could use your help.”
CHAPTER FOUR
WAR VEGAS.
The name alone gave me chills as I piloted the Ferrari through the masses teeming along the Strip. Night had deepened, providing the perfect backdrop to the miles of flashing neon.
Loose Slots! Girls! $9.99 Seafood Buffet! Nude for you!
Each a bright lure tossed into the sea of humans in an attempt to get a bite.
That last one I liked the best—nude what, exactly?
As I hit the Fifteen and goosed the five hundred horses, my mood darkened, not that it was even close to bright, to begin with. The car leaped forward, pressing me back.
“Cool,” Bethany whispered, overcome with awe—fast cars and murder, a typical Saturday for me, but a bit outside the girl’s previous normal. But she was part of my family now; she’d get used to it. Some folks were born to money; we were born to murder…or solving it, at least.
I’d let the girl talk her way into coming along—she was my resident expert in all things War Vegas. Shooting people for fun and profit—that whole thought seemed so spectacularly horrid, so I didn’t brood on it. Life in Vegas operated at the very periphery of imagination. People came here looking for that unique, pushing-the-boundaries experience.
We either got them out of it, called a lawyer, or notified their next of kin.
Tonight was shaping up as a next-of-kin kind of night.
I wondered who would grieve for Senator Lake. Not many, if scuttlebutt could be believed, but surely even the worst among us had someone to cry over their grave. Maybe I was wrong; maybe life wasn’t benevolent like that, but I didn’t want to believe it, so I didn’t.
The lights of the Strip faded to a glow behind us, leaving space for the darkness to fill around us. The flash of passing streetlamps strobed, pushing aside the darkness for a moment, then plunging us back in—a dizzying, disco-ball light show. I concentrated on the expanse of concrete stretching in front of me as it gently curved around the north, then the west side of town. Periodically, I cast side-glances at the kid, wondering what she was thinking. Those of us responsible for creating the Vegas fantasy, for sweeping the darkest bits of reality under the fantasy carpet so others could ignore them, paid a heavy emotional price.
Hence the disassociation, the compartmentalizing, and the Wild Turkey and Champagne. It wasn’t a future I wanted for the kid. She’d seen the worst, and now she deserved better.
For the rest of us who had to live in this spook show, I wanted the fantasy we created to be our reality.
“If you live it, you will be it.” I heard my mother plain as day as if she were there to whisper her mantra in my ear.
Unfortunately, Mona wasn’t always right. In fact, she was rarely right.
“You see enough bad, you learn to mistrust the good,” I admitted to Bethany—maybe the cover of darkness made the admission less of a confession. “Go to Cornell. Get away from here. Make a happy life as a vet in some fabulously bucolic place. And make sure you have a guest room for me, preferably padded.”
Bethany, her face serious, her eyes straight ahead, said nothing as she gripped the edge of her seat, but a grin lifted the corner of her mouth. “You said you see everything here. Now I know what you meant.”
This wouldn’t be her first dead guy.
But walking where death had so recently visited always instilled a sense of ominous reverence. Not dread exactly, but the uncomfortable reality of confronting something that will come for us all whether we are ready or not.
I didn’t want to tell her it would get worse before it got better. Seeing a killer’s handiwork was horrible.
Confronting the killer was so much worse.
Growing up involved the acceptance that human depravity was real and so much more horrendous than a mind could imagine. That realization had changed me in ways I could never fix; it had killed the child who’d played inside, or at least made her so much more wary.
The Christians got it wrong: Original Sin wasn’t the burden we bore.
We bore the ongoing sins of our brothers and sisters. Maybe it was the same, and I just missed the whole allegory. Maybe tonight the horror of what we all had become had finally broken me.
We looped around to the west side of town, peeling o
ff at Charleston and heading west into the dark, unyielding landscape of the Mojave, an animal barely domesticated, jerking at its leash of water and cultivation, desperate to be freed to reclaim its own. Just beyond the light, I sensed its looming, hungry presence. As a child, I’d gotten to know the desert well and learned to respect its dangers.
A sign flickered in the distance. Neon, half of it dark, it said simply “WAR.”
The end of the road.
“And here we are.” I took the turn too fast, sliding the Ferrari in the dirt. Fishtailing, I slammed the wheel over and slid to a stop in front of the trailer that served as an office—or at least the sign hanging by one corner over the door indicated as much—as a cloud of dust enveloped us.
“Classy.” I let it go at that. As first jobs went, this one was a far sight better than my first paycheck. I’d earned a whole two bucks an hour as a greeter in a whorehouse…my mother’s whorehouse. So I really couldn’t call dibs on hurling the first rock.
Floodlights illuminated a couple-acre patch of land behind the trailer. The fence seemed superfluous as there was nothing of any value to protect—just slabs of concrete and cinder blocks erected to mimic shells of buildings, a few burned truck skeletons, and piles of stones and bricks as if a mortar had imploded a building.
Another seven-foot chain link fence topped by three rows of barbed wire circled a windowless brick building to our left.
“What’s in there?” I asked Bethany when we met in front of the car. “It looks like it was built to house enough ammo to start a small revolution.”
“We don’t have ammo. The guns are air powered; the pellets, if you will, are hard plastic. But the guns look real, as you know—we have some that are used in military training and really mimic the real things. And we have a shitload invested in camera equipment.”
“Cameras?” I perked up. Video could be helpful.
“Each gun has a camera so you can see in real time the path of the bullets.”
“And when someone is hit?”
“Honor system. They’re supposed to raise their hands to indicate they are dead.”
A game of life and death. Was I the only one who saw the inevitability? I raised my hands.
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