by Kim Newman
“Even by the standards of modern day America…” and the great detective lowered his tone, aware that honesty required being rude, “it is utterly preposterous.”
Holmes weaved through the dense crowds on the Strip. The heat and noise seemed to lash at him like whips. People in this modern age moved so quickly and with such noisy bustle, even when they were taking their leisure. He missed London. He missed his flat over Baker Street. And most of all, he missed Watson, although that final emotion was tinged, as ever, with a faint coloring of guilt. The poor old fellow had finally succumbed to a pulmonary canker. Had voluminous doses of secondary pipe-smoke been the cause of that?
It was the worst thing about immortality, seeing those that you’d been close to disappear behind you on the river of implacable time. Lestrade himself. Mrs. Hudson. Even those urchins called the Baker Street Irregulars had grown up, then greyed and met their final hour before his very eyes. Perhaps that was why he had left England. He kept constantly on the move these days, as if he were trying to avoid growing attached too much to anything. Currently, he was travelling the length and breadth of the United States. But after those were done with, where might he wind up?
There was no point, he told himself, either in being maudlin or in wondering too deeply what the future might hold. His longevity was a fact that he had little choice but to accept. Focussing his thoughts on something that could not be changed was an absurd waste of his talents. It was better to stay in the realms of the possible and direct his mind to more constructive ends.
Like solving this terrible case, for instance. That would keep him busy for a while.
Holmes was in disguise, realizing his normal garb would draw too much attention to himself. He needed to blend in, so he had on a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, canvas shoes, a beige baseball cap and a pair of chinos. It was the best compromise that he could manage. He would rather die a hundred deaths than resort to jeans or shorts.
He had come here for two reasons only: First, to see the place with his own eyes, and secondly, to visit Star Trek: the Experience. He had become a devotee of the original show and its movie spin-offs, since he felt a great affinity with the character called Mr. Spock.
He’d intended to spend two or three days here at the very most. Then the murders had begun — he had immediately suspected his assistance might be called upon. In fact, he had already been making some enquiries of his own.
Most of the people around him were tourists, here for the shows, the restaurants and bars, the dolphins and white tigers and only a little flutter on the side. They interested him not a jot. At the heart of this case lay gambling in the serious sense and the caprices of fortune; he was utterly certain of it. That commodity could be found in any place here, any time of day and night. This was a town where the game was constantly afoot.
He headed for the Paris, the setting of Kyle Monoghan’s triumph and the last place that he had been seen. There was one thing Holmes was convinced of, whoever was behind this, there were more than one of them. Harriet Ellison could have been abducted by a single individual, and Daniel Besset had been elderly and slightly built, but Monoghan and Lawrence Mark were both robust and burly. No drugs had been found in the toxicology, so there were at least two murderers involved.
He went through the lobby and into the labyrinthine depths of the casino, his attention gliding watchfully from side to side. Nothing that he saw surprised him after more than a week in this place. Lights flashed everywhere, and there were constant, repetitive clangs and hums and clatters. But that summed up this ultra-modern age, now didn’t it? For all of the advances that mankind had made, most of it wound up as pointless sound and fury.
The majority of the visitors in here were, as out on the sidewalk, merely tourists. They were gambling, but only with a sense of merriment. These were the kind of folk who set a fifty dollar limit, or smaller, for the entire evening. The kind who gambled at all merely because they could not do the same back home.
Scattered among them were other individuals whose presence Holmes found considerably more ominous. Older women wearing gloves, so that they’d not callous their fingers with their constant tugging at the one-armed bandits. Pale, intense men hunched as though in prayer over the blackjack tables. People standing near the roulette wheels with starved-looking gleams in their dull, tired eyes. There was nothing merry about these sorts. Gambling fever had them in its grip as tightly — nay, savagely — as any opiate. They had become slaves to the habit, and poorly treated slaves, at that.
Mostly, they were cheaply dressed. There was evidence that they had pawned watches and rings in some cases — all it needed was a swift glance at their lower finger joints and wrists. But it was their expressions that struck most at the great detective. Hope would flare up as the card was dealt, the wheel set spinning, but it would give way, almost invariably, to horrible disappointment, made all the more profound by the fact that it was a familiar sensation.
He headed for the bar area, glad to leave the poor wretches behind. It was not a busy hour of the day, and there was just one man working behind the counter.
“What’s your poison, buddy?”
Holmes ordered a piña colada, a drink for which he had acquired a taste. They’d not had much in the way of pineapples in Victorian London, and he relished the flavour.
“That unfortunate fellow they found this morning. He was in here yesterday, wasn’t he?”
“You bet,” the barman frowned. “Had an incredible run at the tables.”
“Did he celebrate here afterwards?”
“Where else would he go?”
“And he attracted a big crowd?”
The barman grinned sardonically. “Pal, when you’re on a winning streak in Vegas, hell, you’ve always got a load of friends. The dames especially … that is, till your luck runs out.”
“Does anyone in particular linger in your memory?”
The man thought about it. “There was this chick dressed in black. Chinese or Japanese or something. She didn’t kind of pounce on the guy. She just moved in on him slowly, till finally she had her arm around him.”
Holmes felt his pulse quicken. In all the enquiries he had made so far, there had been mention of an Oriental woman.
“And did Monoghan leave with her?”
“Friend, I was too busy mixing drinks to even know.”
Holmes thanked him and then headed back towards the gaming area. He already had a plan. In fact, he’d come to see that what he needed to attract these villains was a winner. Someone on a lucky streak. That was the kind of person who they targeted.
There was nobody he could make out who answered that description at the moment, so he would have to engineer it.
It would be childishly simple to join one of the high stakes blackjack games and start to win a fortune by the trick of counting cards, but establishments like this one were accustomed to such practices — the security goons would descend on him before the killers could. So Holmes turned to the roulette area instead.
The first three wheels that he looked at were functioning perfectly, but the fourth? There appeared to be some very slight wear to the bearings. Patterns — too small for a lesser intellect to notice — were being repeated in the places that the ball fell. Holmes stood back for fifteen minutes, taking mental notes. Finally, he felt confident a goodly amount of lucre could be made here.
By which time, he had decided that he ought not be the actual beneficiary. When these murderous fiends arrived, it would be better to observe them from a slight remove at first. Once they’d shown their true intentions, he would apprehend them. He had his trusty revolver tucked away beneath his shirt.
So, who should be the lucky man? Holmes’ gaze was immediately drawn to a short, middle-aged gentleman at the far end of the table. They were similarly dressed, except the fellow wore no cap, but that was where the resemblance ended. This hapless soul was overweight, with thinning red hair, and his pores practically oozed frustration. He had been doing
badly at the wheel the whole time the detective had been standing there. He was, in fact, down to his last few chips.
Holmes wandered over to his elbow.
“Things have to look up some time,” he murmured, apropos of nothing.
The fellow turned and glanced at him with a look of surprise.
“You really think so?”
“Yes, I do.”
“That accent? You a Limey?”
A fevered gleam had appeared in his eyes. Holmes understood immediately what was happening.
People who were addicted to gambling all had one peculiar quirk. They took anything different in the environment about them, anything unexpected or new, as an omen that their luck was due to change. This individual seemed to be in that exact state of mind. He perceived the presence of an Englishman beside him as some kind of talisman.
“Fred Bonner,” the man announced, grasping Holmes firmly by the hand.
“George Smith.”
“Pleased to meet you, George. You stand right there and tell me which number I ought to put these chips on.”
Holmes gazed at the wheel.
“You should try number 12.”
And when 12 came up, Fred crowed.
Over the course of the next half hour, he won repeatedly. Not with every single turn, naturally. There were too many variables for even Holmes to foresee every bounce and clatter of the little silver ball, but enough times that the pile of chips in front of the man grew impressively large. Predictably, a crowd began to gather.
Holmes kept his head tucked slightly down and his eyes hooded, pretending to be absorbed in the game when he was actually not. Most of the folk around him appeared to be normal. A couple were streetwalkers, and one chap near the back was almost certainly a pickpocket, but the great detective had no time for such trivia on this occasion. When would the killers turn up?
An Oriental woman’s face appeared in the throng across from him. He had to struggle not to look straight at her.
She was slender, very beautiful. It was hard to be certain with those who heralded from the East, but she was probably in her early thirties. Her hair was tied back in a bun. Her irises were jet black.
The woman was clad in some kind of silken trouser suit. The blouse had a high, stiff collar. Holmes’ suspicions were immediately aroused. Why would anyone wear something so constricting in the kind of heat that reigned outside this gaming palace?
There were several other things he began to notice after a short while. Although her face looked fresh and natural at first glance, it was actually layered with foundation and make-up, so artfully applied as not to be obvious. Great care seemed to have been taken to make her eyes appear more slanted than they really were; her features flatter, and she was rather tall for a female from the Orient, which piqued his suspicions even more.
She had disguised her true appearance, in other words, but there’d be time to find the reason for that later. Urgency pressed at his heart. He had successfully dangled his bait. Now, it was time to let the villain try and take it.
“Whad’ya think?” Fred was asking him. “12 again?”
“I really think you ought to quit.”
“You serious? I’m on a roll!”
“And all rolls come to an end. Cash your winnings, Mr. Bonner.”
Holmes became afraid that he would not succeed in stopping this. The gleam in his new friend’s eyes sharpened, the fellow’s expression growing angry. He was in the grip of his addiction more firmly than he had ever been. Left to his own devices, he would stay at the wheel, frittering away every penny he had won.
Years ago, Holmes had spent a fortnight at a temple deep in the Laotian jungle, and had learnt some techniques from the monks there. He met Fred’s gaze and kept his voice low, employing a mild form of hypnosis.
“That’s me done. Drinks for everyone,” he whispered to the man.
“That’s me done! Drinks for everyone!” Fred bellowed, to the cheers and applause of the crowd.
Holmes allowed a distance of several yards to grow between himself and Fred as they headed for the bar. He was still an observer to this milieu, and would only become an active participant once he was certain that he had his felons. Drinks were mixed and passed around. The great detective found himself engaged in conversation with a claims adjuster from Birmingham, Alabama, but kept most of his attention fixed on what was going on around him.
The barkeeper had been absolutely right. The Oriental-looking woman did not close in immediately on her target. Rather, she hung about the edges of the man’s personal space, casting sideways glances in his direction. There seemed to be some large item of jewelry underneath her black blouse; Holmes could see the bulge it made. Why did she not have it on display, like all the other women present?
And one time, when she dipped her head, her collar shifted and Holmes thought he caught a glimpse of a scar. He had no idea what that signified.
It was too much of a coincidence that she had happened to be in the Paris at the same time Fred began his winning streak. Which told Holmes that his notion about multiple miscreants had been absolutely right. There had to be eyes everywhere, spies in most of the casinos, looking out for situations such as this. In which case, how large a criminal conspiracy was this? But the detective could make out nobody who might be a confederate.
The woman reached across and lightly touched Fred’s arm. Holmes excused himself politely, wandering away to a spot in the bar where he could continue to observe without himself being noticed.
She engaged Fred in conversation. Holmes could see immediately that she had the talents of a clever, subtle courtesan. She made a little joke, at which Fred smiled. And then, when he made one himself, she burst into uproarious laughter, pretending she needed to hold onto his forearm to support herself.
Her hand had moved to his shoulder a minute after that. And a while later, she was no longer addressing Fred’s face, but murmuring in his ear.
Holmes saw him nod.
The curious thing was, the man had been forgotten by the others, by this time. He had been the centre of attention when he had been winning, but the fickle interest of this crowd had already moved on to other subjects. He had become all but invisible. That was how the victims had been spirited away from such busy venues. The mental inexactness of the common herd, its ability to be distracted so easily, never ceased to amaze Holmes, or appall him.
Fred and the woman started ambling towards the exit. The detective followed, taking great care not to close the gap.
This turned out to be one of the worst mistakes that he had ever made. Just as the couple reached the Strip, some coaches out front began disgorging their passengers. They were elderly to the last. The sidewalk became immediately snarled up with arthritic doddering and Zimmer frames. Trying to get past without bowling over some frail octogenarian became an almost impossible challenge. Holmes watched desperately as the two figures dwindled away from him. As soon as he found a passage through, he ran in their direction.
He was just in time to see the couple reach a corner and a van pull up. The rear doors were flung open, and — as though on some invisible cue — a group of people, maybe eight of them, detached themselves from the passers-by and surrounded Bonner, shielding him from view.
He was bundled into the van. The others followed him inside. The doors slammed shut. The Oriental-looking woman climbed in by the driver, shouting something. The vehicle roared away.
Holmes, who had his revolver half-drawn, watched it disappear. The only thing he could do now was call Lieutenant Capaldi and instigate a search.
Except he still had not got used to the maintenance of cell phones, and the battery in his was flat.
“It’s my fault,” he was murmuring at dawn the next morning. “Poor, poor Fred.”
The desert sprawled around them, the temperature of its air already rising. Fred Bonner was lying in his boxers near the foot of a massive saguaro cactus, his skin so robbed of color that it might be alabaster
.
“No use blaming yourself,” said Vince Capaldi. “Wasn’t you killed him.”
“Wasn’t it?” the great detective barked back angrily. “I should never have used an unwitting man as an instrument of such deception. No, I should have played the role myself!”
“In which case, you’d be lying here, and we’d be no closer to solving this. You say, apart from the woman, all the rest were normal-looking?”
That was not exactly what he’d said. Holmes recalled his brief glimpse of the people who’d abducted Bonner. There’d been nothing outstanding about them, certainly, but they all shared a quality that he had previously perceived in the casino.
They’d been cheaply dressed, their faces drawn. Their brows had been furrowed, their eyes squinting, like they were unaccustomed to the natural outdoor light. Some of them had been sporting pale bands of skin at their wrists where watches had once snuggled. They were, in short, the same kind of gambling addicts Holmes had mentally remarked on in the Paris.
Guilt gnawed at him on the ride back into town. Did Bonner have a family? He did not even know, but finally, a fresh sense of resolve gripped the detective. This terrible death would not be in vain. He would solve the case for Fred’s sake!
Capaldi dropped him off at his hotel. Holmes, as soon as he was in his room, pulled on a new disguise: an old shirt, which he rumpled up before slipping on, a pair of grey nylon trousers and some old brown shoes. He took his wristwatch off and put it in a drawer, and mussed his hair up in the mirror before taking a wad of cash from the safe and going out.
At the Luxor, he converted the entire sum into chips. Then he went across to the blackjack tables and sat down; deliberately losing every single hand over the next two hours.
Were there eyes on him? He thought yes. Holmes could feel his neck prickling as the cards were dealt, but did not look around.
When practically all his chips were gone, he stood up with a defeated sigh, wandered over to the bar area and ordered a straight scotch.
He was careful to sit round-shouldered, and feigned a melancholy air. A shabby, grey-haired, rather dumpy figure eased herself onto the barstool next to his.