Jackpot (Nameless Dectective)

by Bill Pronzini

  “Hello? Anybody home?”

  No answer.

  I stood looking into the cottage for a few seconds, at furniture shapes and shadows that didn’t move. Maybe Polhemus was out on the lake somewhere. Except that as scared as he had been on Sunday, it wasn’t likely he would go off and leave his front door open like this....

  I called out again, listened to the faint echo of my voice. Then I backed off, moved from the deck onto the dock and on out to the end.

  A patched-up rowboat, sans oars, was tied there. So was a string for keeping caught fish; I hauled up the string but there were no fish on it now. I straightened again, stood scanning the water. Two boats, one moving and one stationary, both down at the south end near the marina and campground. There was nothing else to hold my attention.

  I retraced my steps to the open cottage door. A feeling of wrongness had begun to stir through me. Polhemus’s car up on the parking platform, the unused rowboat, front door wide open and nobody around. Add all of that together and what did you get?

  Trouble, that was what you got.

  I kept staring in among the shadows. Walk in there, I thought, and it’s trespassing. But I didn’t seem to feel as reticent about even a minor piece of lawbreaking as I once had. And the feeling of wrongness kept itching at me, growing stronger. All right—the hell with it. I walked in far enough to feel along the inside wall with the back of my left hand. Located the light switch and knuckled it upward.

  Dull orange light from a chandelier fashioned out of an antique horse collar prodded most of the shadows into comers of the beamed ceiling. Biggish living room: rattan window blinds, wicker furniture, woven Indian-type throw rugs, a stag’s head mounted over a fieldstone fireplace. All very commonplace rustic. And all very empty.

  I moved farther inside. Open can of beer on the table next to the wicker settee, sections of newspaper tossed over the cushions, the remains of a sandwich on a plate with a crumpled napkin. The air was close, thickened by trapped sun-warmth, and I could smell the faint, clinging odor of marijuana. There was an ashtray near the plate, and when I moved another few steps closer I saw that it contained half a dozen roach ends.

  Well? I thought.

  The living room opened into a darkened kitchen. I had come this far; I went the rest of the way. On the counter next to the sink were a loaf of bread and an open jar of mustard and packages of sliced bologna and American cheese that had been left out quite a while; the bologna had curled up at the edges and the cheese had darkened and turned hard. Nothing else caught my eye in there.

  Behind the kitchen was a short hallway with three doors opening off it. Small bedroom, with a pair of twin beds pushed together and neatly covered with a quilt. Empty. The middle door was ajar. I gave it a nudge with my shoulder.

  Bathroom. And blood on the sink, on the floor in front of it —dried blood in drops and splotches and streaks. Not a lot of it but enough to take somebody’s wound out of the simple household-cut category. Polhemus?

  The door to a stall shower was closed; I eased it open. As empty as the rest of the bathroom. I moved on to the third door. Another bedroom, larger than the first. Queen-size bed, slept in and unmade, with Polhemus’s two suitcases and duffel bag on the floor nearby. Both suitcases were spread open, letting me see a jumble of hastily packed clothing.

  All right. The place was deserted. There was that blood in the bathroom, but it did not have to have a sinister explanation. Polhemus had been here since Sunday, the way it looked, and it could be that he was out somewhere now on an errand; if I waited around long enough or came back later, there he’d be.

  Sure. Except that there were bad vibes in this cabin, as subtle and clinging as the odor of smoked grass. Something had happened here, something grim and violent.

  I went back into the living room. Stood looking around again. And this time little things, little pieces of wrongness, revealed themselves in there too.

  The place had not been swept out in a good long while; dust covered the floor in a thin layer. On the left side of the room, nearest the door, the dust was mostly undisturbed. On the right side, there were marks all through it, including scuff marks and a long swath as if something had been dragged across the floor. The cushions on a rattan chair near the hearth were askew, and the chair itself looked out of place—kicked or shoved over there. Some kind of struggle, I thought.

  I moved over that way. And in the disturbed areas by the window and near the fireplace I found more splotches and drops, so dark against the dark-wood flooring that you couldn’t see them at a casual glance from a distance. I scratched up a few flakes from one of the stains, went to the nearest window and pulled an edge of the blinds away from the glass so sunlight shone on my fingernail. Yeah. More dried blood.

  Well? I thought again.

  When I turned from the window, something else caught my eye. Propped on the fireplace mantel were half a dozen small color snapshots, the Polaroid variety. I went to take a closer look.

  Five of the photos had been taken here, out on the deck and down on the dock. The sixth looked to have been snapped in front of a gambling casino—the Nevornia Club, judging from the purple-and-gold facade visible in the background. Jerry Polhemus was in four of the shots, with his shirt off in one, and in each he was in the company of a raven-haired girl with high cheekbones and striking features. Indian, possibly. But it was the other photos that interested me most. A young blond man was prominent in those—David Burnett and no mistake—and so was a willowy redhead with overlarge breasts for her size and shape. In one of the candid shots taken down on the dock, the redhead had her arms around Burnett’s neck and her tongue licking his upper lip, and he had both hands planted squarely on her behind.

  Old photos, I told myself. But they weren’t. The color definition was still sharp and there was only a thin speckling of dust on each print. They had not been on that mantel very long. Who keeps old photographs on display these days?

  I had another vivid mental image of Karen Salter, down on her knees in the Russian Hill apartment, her grief and pain naked on her face. While she’d been making her wedding preparations and keeping her bed warm for Davey, the man whose death had so ravaged her was up here having himself a fling with a hot-looking redhead. Sowing a last few wild oats? Or was the redhead one of many?

  I looked again at the photo taken in front of the Nevornia Club. All four of them were in that one, arms linked, smiles bright on their faces, Polhemus mugging some for the camera. He and Burnett and the dark-haired girl were in casual clothes; the redhead was wearing a purple blouse with gold piping and a gold skirt with purple piping—the uniform worn by female floor employees of the casino.

  I took that photo down and turned it over to see if there was anything written on the back. There wasn’t. I started to return it to the mantel, changed my mind, and slipped it into my shirt pocket instead.

  Without touching anything, I made another circuit of the kitchen, bathroom, and small bedroom. In the second bedroom I poked briefly through the contents of Polhemus’s suitcases and duffel bag. The only thing I found of any interest was a handful of extra cartridges for his Saturday night special. There was no sign of the gun itself, not in the luggage or the bed or the drawer in the nightstand or anywhere else in the room.

  I was sweating when I finished in there. I had been in the cottage too long—more than twenty minutes now. I knew more than when I’d entered, but I also knew less, and I did not like any of it.

  Out on the deck, I thought about leaving the door open as I’d found it. But there was the possibility it might entice somebody else to go poking around inside. I shut it finally, using my handkerchief on the knob, and made sure it was latched before I climbed the stairs to the parking platform.

  My instincts, as I jockeyed the car around and headed back toward Highway 89, were to go to the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department and file a report. But what would I tell them? That I had trespassed on private property, for no valid reason? That I
had felt bad vibes and found some dried blood that could have come from a severely gashed finger or a high-altitude nosebleed? That I had unlawfully searched the premises and removed a photograph belonging to the owner? There was no evidence that a crime had been committed on those premises, and without any, I did not have a legal leg to stand on.

  So?

  So I was not going to the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department. I was going to the Nevornia Club over in Stateline.

  Chapter 11

  THE NEVORNIA was one of the newer, posh casino-hotels. Its fifteen stories vied for attention with the cluster of older high-rise resorts—Harrah’s, Harvey’s, High Sierra, Caesar’s Tahoe—on the quarter-square-mile “glitter strip” just across the Nevada line. Nonstop gambling action and star-studded live entertainment. Gaudy neon and a steady ebb and flow of eager suckers. But for the most part it was the men like Arthur Welker who struck it rich. Evidence of that was the Nevornia’s opulent gold-and-purple facade and decor, its extravagant musical shows, its profusion of boutiques and specialty shops where you could buy everything from diamond jewelry to Oriental antiques. At inflated prices, of course; the house percentage was high on those businesses too.

  I left my car in the free Harrah’s lot, on the California side, and walked over to the Nevornia. Even though it was a weekday afternoon, the banks of splashily neoned slots and the rows of purple-and-gold blackjack tables were getting moderately heavy play from tourists and small-timers. The craps and roulette and baccarat layouts were quiet. The high rollers were like vampires: they couldn’t stand the daylight, so they only came out after dark.

  I showed the photograph to a woman in a change booth, a sleepy-eyed croupier, and a blackjack dealer; none of them recognized the willowy redhead, or owned up to it if they did. But the fourth person I tried—a middle-aged woman with henna-rinsed hair and a squint in one eye, who presided over an empty pai gow poker table—netted me a small payoff.

  She looked at the photo for five seconds and at me for ten, probably trying to decide if I was a pervert. Then she said, hedging, or maybe fishing a little, “You can’t sit here unless you make a bet.” So I made a two-dollar bet, without knowing what the hell I was doing; pai gow poker is a recent addition to the roster of Nevada casino games, put in to accommodate the ever-increasing number of Asian gamblers, and I had never played it before. I won anyway, and slid my winnings over to the henna-rinse’s side of the table. That put her on my side, more or less.

  “So why do you want to know about her?” she asked, nodding at the photo.

  “The boy with her is my son. He’s been seeing her on the sly and he won’t tell me anything about her. I came up to find out for myself.”

  The henna-rinse laughed knowingly. “I’ll just bet he didn’t tell you about her.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’ll find out when you meet her.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Make your bet,” she said slyly.

  I put my original two bucks back on the table. This time I lost it.

  She shrugged—easy come, easy go—and said, “Better luck next time.” Then she said, “Her name’s Wendy Oliver. Sweet Wendy.”

  “What shift does she work?”

  “She doesn’t. Not here, not anymore.”

  “Oh? She quit?”

  “Fired,” the henna-rinse said with relish. “Thrown out on her sweet little can.”

  “When?”

  “Make your bet.”

  Another two bucks down. The henna-rinse and I lost this time too.

  “Couple of weeks ago,” she said.

  “You know why?”

  “With sweet Wendy, it could be just about any offense you can think of.”

  “But you don’t know which one.”

  “Nope.”

  “Would she be working at one of the other clubs?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she’s just working these days, if you know what I mean.”

  “Hooking?” I put my last two singles on the table. “Is she that kind?”

  “She’s that kind.”

  “I don’t suppose you know where she lives?”

  “Try the phone book. She’s probably listed. Easier for her customers to find her that way. If you know what I mean,” she said, and took those last two singles of mine for the house.

  There was a concourse nearby, along which I found a bank of telephone booths. I tried the South Lake Tahoe directory first. One Oliver listed: W. Oliver, 274A Tata Lane. The Nevada directory had no listing for anybody named Oliver in this area. So it was W. Oliver on Tata Lane or I was going to have to start over again.

  When I got back to my car I looked up Tata Lane on the South Lake Tahoe map. It was off Lake Tahoe Boulevard, down past the wye junction—all of three miles away. But it took me nearly twenty minutes to get there because of the traffic.

  The area was a mix of small industrial companies, city offices, the Lake Tahoe Ranger Station, and private residences. Most of the residences were trailers in different parks spread out over several blocks: 274A Tata Lane was on the eastern end of a park called Sugar Pine Estates that didn’t seem to have any sugar pines growing in it. The trailer bearing the number was not much to look at: gray with yellow trim, both colors faded and splotched here and there with rust spots; small front and side yards composed of browned strips of lawn, weedy flower beds, and one diseased-looking tree. Parked under a sagging metal carport was a Toyota Tercel that had had a badly dented right rear fender panel.

  I parked across the street. The sun glinted brightly off the trailer’s metal surfaces; unless W. Oliver had air-conditioning, I thought, it would be like an oven inside on hot days. On the carport side was a narrow porch carpeted with dusty green Astroturf. I went up onto the porch—and the screen door opened before I got to it and a young woman leaned out in my direction. She must have seen or heard me coming.

  She was the one in the photograph. Tall, slender, with dark red hair worn long and cut in wavy layers; pale skin dusted with freckles and lightly sheened with perspiration; a wide mouth and light-colored eyes, both of which were too wise and too cynical for a woman in her mid-twenties. The green halter top she wore revealed about half of each of her overdeveloped breasts. A pair of skimpy white shorts, cut tight through the crotch, also left little to the imagination. There were freckles on her chest and legs, too—lots of them.

  She saw me looking and said in a voice that was part sneer, part tease, “See anything you like?”

  “Well, you seem to be advertising.”

  “You still read the ads, huh?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But I haven’t answered one in years.”

  She laughed in a mildly snotty way. I was an amusing old fart, whoever I was. “You selling something?”

  “Nope.”

  “Neither am I. So?”

  “Are you Wendy Oliver?”

  “What if I am?”

  I took out the snapshot and held it up between us at eye level. “I’ve got some questions about David Burnett.”

  Her whole demeanor changed. It was like watching a piece of trick photography: one second she was soft and sexy, cynical and wise and twenty-five; the next second she was tight-drawn, wary, frightened, with lines around her mouth and eyes that made her look ten to fifteen years older.

  “Who are you?” she said. Her voice had changed, too; now it was full of tremolos.

  “Private investigator.” I put the snapshot away and let her look at the photostat of my license. It seemed to ease her anxiety some—not too much.

  “How did you find me? Where’d you get that picture?”

  “I just told you, I’m a detective. I get paid to find things and people.”

  She gnawed flecks of tangerine-colored lipstick off her lower lip. “Who hired you?”

  “Burnett’s sister. You know he committed suicide?”

  “Yeah. I heard.”

  “Pretty terrible thing, wasn’t it.”

  �
��Awful,” she said.

  “You don’t sound very upset.”

  “It didn’t just happen yesterday. Besides, Dave and me, we weren’t that close.”

  “That’s not how it looks in the photo.”

  “I don’t care how it looks in the damn photo.”

  “Why did he kill himself, Wendy?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Money? Winning a lot, losing more?”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” she said. But she was lying. I could see it in her eyes.

  “Who told you about the suicide? Jerry Polhemus?”

  “So?”

  “When?”

  “Day after it happened.”

  “In person or on the phone?”

  “He called up.”

  “Where did he call from? San Francisco?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then he must have just gone home. He was at Fallen Leaf Lake the night Dave died.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. He found out when he got back.”

  “Did you see him while he was up here?”

  “No.”

  “Talk to him?”

  “No. He called but ... no.”

  “When was the last time you saw or talked to him?”

  “I don’t remember. Weeks ago.”

  “Not in the past couple of days?”

  “No. I told you. Listen, what’s the idea—”

  “How about the weekend Dave won his big jackpot. You see both of them then?”

  For some reason, that seemed to scare her all over again. “I don’t remember. What difference does it make?”

  “Must have been pretty exciting, Dave hitting a Megabucks slot for two hundred grand.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Weren’t you with him at the time?”

  “No. Hell, no.”

  “I had the idea you were.”

  “Well, you had the wrong idea.”

  “But he came and told you about it afterward?”

  “... Is that what Jerry said?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “All right, yeah, he told me about it afterward. So what?”

  I let a few seconds pass in silence. Then I said flatly, “What are you afraid of, Wendy?”