Dying For LA

by Ian Jones

  ‘Fuck it, Golden Arches again,’ Sal said, looking up at the McDonald’s sign high above. There wasn’t a lot else, a small Starbucks, a bar and a pizza place.

  Rico shrugged, he was hungry.

  They sat inside to eat, Sal fidgeted around and then leaned forward seriously.

  ‘Look Rico, I never got a chance to say nothing before, and I may be really fucking up. I sure as shit hope not. But I trust you. Maybe I shouldn’t, but right now you’re the nearest thing I got to a buddy.’

  ‘What is it?’ Rico asked, surprised.

  ‘Listen, I am going way outside here.’

  ‘Sal, fucking hell we are buddies. You sure as hell are the only person I trust. Whatever you say, I ain’t never gonna repeat it.’

  Sal nodded.

  ‘OK. You know I checked the car after we had to dump it, you know, that asshole Weiss situation?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So … I found the silencer like I told Yann. But I also found this.’

  Sal looked around and then carefully put something heavy in Rico’s lap under the table. Rico moved back and looked down. It was an old Glock 17. He checked it over; fully loaded. It had seen some action. He passed it back nervously.

  ‘Fuck! It was in the car?’

  ‘Yeah, under the passenger seat. And it weren’t there before. We the only fucking guys who ever drive, and Yann doles out the guns right? It sure ain’t mine, and I never seen you with nothing, not ever.’

  Rico shook his head.

  ‘I never seen it before.’

  ‘Look, things have been going to shit, right? So I figure, let’s keep this quiet, and keep it close. It’s under my mattress, fucking Yann ain’t never going up those stairs, and we put the new guys below us, move it if we have to but we both know where it is. That sound good to you?’

  Rico looked at him, suddenly very grateful. He had been feeling alone and isolated for some time. He liked Sal ok, but he didn’t really know him. This was good for both of them, a shared precaution. He held up his fist and Sal bumped it.

  ‘It’s very OK man. I don’t know what the fuck is going to happen next, but I have sure been wishing I was someplace else. This is what we need brother. Under your mattress, sounds good to me.’

  ***

  Warner didn’t like to hang around, so it was just under two hours later when they passed the iconic ‘Welcome to Las Vegas’ sign as they approached from the south.

  They had discussed how to proceed on the journey, and had decided to find officer Kirsty Casiano first, to get the lowdown on Madeline and hopefully some more intel on Deanna, Warner was confident he or Judy could get access to their apartment so they could take a look around. Maybe officer Casiano would be able to do some digging for them, find out if there had been any problems with Hayter in one of the casinos.

  Then they would go on to the Mile High Club, and find out as much as they could about Deanna, see if she met with anyone else regularly. After that, up north to the motel Hayter used to stay at, and then The Stratosphere to see if they could add anything.

  Then the drive back, it was going to be a long, long day.

  They entered the bottom end of the strip, John saw the Mandalay Bay hotel and the Acropolis opposite, which brought back memories. Warner turned right at the next junction, as ever he seemed to know exactly where he was going. They travelled along for a distance, then he turned left and pulled up in front of a plain brown building with Las Vegas Police Department across the doors.

  John checked his watch, just gone eleven. He gently woke Judy.

  The walked into the police station and up to the counter, then asked to speak to officer Casiano.

  The desk clerk looked closely at Judy’s ID then tapped on her computer keyboard.

  ‘Officer Kirsty Casiano isn’t due on shift until 2pm today. Do you want me to call her in?’

  Warner went to speak but Judy cut across him.

  ‘No, that’s fine. We’ll be back at two, thank you.’

  They walked out, Warner looking quizzically at Judy.

  ‘Why didn’t you just get her in? We need to be moving on this,’ he asked grumpily.

  Judy turned to look at him.

  ‘I don’t know how this works with the CIA, but we get all sorts of crap from local PD when we demand to get their guys in off shift. Seriously. They get shit off the unions, and the whole thing gets real messy. Look, we don’t even know if she can tell us anything right? I’m already way, way out on a limb here. I don’t need any more heat than I already got.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ John said as they reached the car. ‘We don’t need to keep a tight schedule, we know what we’ve got to do. Let’s find the Mile High Club.’

  And then there was the next bit of bad news. They found the club easily enough, it was the ground floor of a small office block, down the road from Hooters and next to a gym. It had big plate glass windows on both sides of the doors which were thickly painted over, one which said, ‘Mile High Club – Your Eyes Only’ and the other had silhouettes of naked dancing women and ‘Nude Live Girls’ written across the bottom.

  It looked closed to John, but he tried the doors anyway. Locked.

  Reed was tapping the glass close to the doors.

  ‘Place opens at five Monday to Thursdays, twelve on the other days.’

  ‘Shit,’ Warner said.

  An old man holding a broom was walking round the building and he walked over to them.

  ‘Help ya?’ he asked.

  ‘Er yeah, we need to talk to the manager?’ Judy told him.

  ‘Nope, nobody there. Deliveries Mondays and Fridays, you’d have maybe got lucky then. Else, probably gets here about four-thirty I guess.’

  He stood looking at them, leaning on his broom.

  ‘Thanks,’ Reed told him, and they went back to the minivan.

  ‘You see, I said we should have got Officer Casiano,’ Warner complained.

  John held up his hand.

  ‘It’s no big deal. We’ve got other things to do, we’ll just change the order. Let’s go and talk to the wedding people and find this motel.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sammy had a spring in her step and was ready to make history. She had been in a meeting that morning with a lady she had never met before called Davina, who worked at LA Plus as a research advisor, and specialised in dealing with information from law enforcement. She was no Jimmy Frost, she did not have the useful connections he did but she was helpful and knew what they could and couldn’t do.

  As she had already suspected, Sammy had been told by Davina that they wouldn’t be able to run a story naming any names or any real details regarding the events on the platform, the police had a strict clampdown on information and were still refusing press access to the witnesses. But there was a lot they could do, and Davina was happy to go direct to the LAPD with the information they now had, and gauge the reaction. She believed that often this could force their hands, and also suggested that Sammy could at least appear to reach out to the police on her programme.

  So, Sammy had presented the news, and then her follow up morning show, still focussed on the events that had occurred and clearly questioning the efforts to find the perpetrators.

  ‘Where was the information from the LAPD?’ she asked on several occasions.

  She ran the all the video they had, John Smith visible at the end, frozen on the screens.

  ‘There are so many questions, but no answers. Who is this man?’ she asked. ‘Can anyone help us to find him?’

  On the floor, she saw Davina give her a thumbs up.

  ‘LA Plus are eager to help the Los Angeles Police Department in any way we can, so please, if any of our viewers recognises or has seen this man, or has any information at all please call us straight away,’ Sammy told her viewers earnestly, fighting the urge to smile.

  ***

  The Happy Chapel was just north of The Stratosphere, a narrow building with the gilded white archway across the front
that they had seen in the Hayter’s wedding photograph. They parked up and walked in, to be met by a ludicrously bright orange couple with perfect white teeth and meticulously made up hair. Both well into their sixties. But behind the fake tan and the shiny clothes there was nothing going on in their minds but dollars and cents.

  It was pretty much a one-way conversation. The couple fixed on their most helpful smiles and nodded a lot but they only vaguely remembered the Hayter’s when they were shown the picture, they had done seven weddings that day. They produced their book, which was a large elaborate white faux leatherbound edition with gold edges and ‘Special Memories’ embossed on the front. They said it was their records but really it was just a sales pitch. Inside were glossy photographs and the names of the parties, one wedding per page. The Hayter’s were there, the same wedding snap they had already seen. No witnesses listed, but they were told this was a common occurrence.

  So, no help, at all. Thanks for nothing, and off to the next piece of the puzzle. Time was not on their side.

  They found the motel, which was off East St Louis Avenue, roughly twenty minutes’ walk to The Stratosphere. It was a beige and grey cube, on the edge of a small strip mall, its neighbours were a nail bar, convenience store, hair salon, two bail bond offices and a Chinese restaurant. None of them were busy. A sign outside said ‘Supreme Cour Hotel. Stay in Wonderful Las Vegas – Twenty Dollars!!!!’ Someone had unsuccessfully tried to replace the missing ‘t’ using a marker pen. There was an office which jutted out to the left of the building, and they made their way across. Once inside they filled the tiny space, Reed had to wait outside with the door open.

  Behind the counter was a furtive, dishevelled man with greasy hair and thick glasses who was looking at something on a computer. He peered out at them and without speaking pointed to the wall behind which had a sign that said ‘Vacancy – $30’.

  Nobody bothered mentioning the misleading sign outside.

  Judy produced her ID and the file photo of Major Hayter, wearing his uniform.

  ‘We need to talk to you about this man,’ she said firmly.

  The man looked at it, back at her ID, then the photo again, peering closer every time.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Maybe. Kinda familiar I guess. But I don’t know him.’

  ‘I’d think you do, he’s been staying here pretty much every week for God knows how long,’ Judy told him.

  The man looked at her, then at Warner, then finally at Reed, who was completely filling the doorway. He dismissed John completely and looked at the photo again.

  ‘Yeah, so what? We ain’t friends. I never knew he was a soldier.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it. When was the last time he was here?’

  The man didn’t produce a register, a legal requirement in the USA for any hotel. Instead, he looked around again, then back at the computer.

  ‘I dunno. Couple of weeks maybe?’

  ‘OK, so was he on his own?’

  ‘Always. And always in the same crappy car.’

  ‘You never saw him with anyone else?’

  ‘Nope. Never.’

  ‘Not even this woman?’ Judy showed him the picture of Deanna.

  The man looked and shrugged again.

  ‘No, I don’t know her.’

  ‘So, what did he do when he came here, all those times?’ Warner asked.

  ‘He played the tables. The Stratosphere. Always. Every night he was here.’

  ‘OK, did you talk to him much?’

  The man sighed and reluctantly gave them his full attention.

  ‘OK, so what the fuck has he done I got the feds breathing down my neck? Like I ain’t got enough shit to do.’

  ‘Done? He got murdered,’ Warner told him, staring hard.

  At this, the man’s head flicked up and he looked back, alarmed.

  ‘Murdered? Murdered when? Look, he weren’t murdered here, I ain’t seem him, I swear. It’s the truth.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t murdered here. I imagine you’d have noticed that, or I hope to hell you would. But we’re trying to work out who did kill him, and all we got is he spent a whole load of time up here and he just got married. His wife is dead too, and she lived here in the city. So now you can see why we’re talking to you right?’ Judy explained patiently.

  ‘Fuck. Yeah, OK. Fuck. I don’t know nothing about any of this shit. Jesus. OK, so I did talk to him sometimes. Look, he stayed here a lot, always paid cash. I asked him once why the hell he didn’t stay at The Stratosphere, it would’ve been easier on him. It was the money, but I knew that. Sometimes he had a bundle, others he just about made it. Hell, I let him off ten bucks here and there. But he never said nothing about getting married, and he was never with anyone. But listen, there’s a pit boss at The Stratosphere, guy called Aidan Connelly. He’s always around, he uses this place sometimes. If he got … business. Anyways, I saw them together a couple of times. He might know more.’

  John new exactly the business this Aidan Connelly would be doing at the motel.

  Judy took the photos back, and looked around at the others.

  ‘OK, so what’s your name?’

  ‘Gary.’

  ‘OK Gary, that was kinda helpful. Will Mr Connelly be there now?

  Gary shook his head.

  ‘No way. The real pit bosses don’t start till maybe nine, ten? Just be some jerkoff part-timer now most likely.’

  ‘What time did Major Hayter usually get back here from the casino?’ John asked.

  Gary looked at him, surprised by the accent.

  ‘I don’t do a lot of nights if I can help it, but when I was here, I’d say about one, one-thirty. Sometimes earlier, I guess it depends how he was doing, right?’

  ‘Did he walk?’

  ‘Yeah, always.’

  They grouped around the minivan outside, Judy fretting and fiddling with her mobile phone.

  ‘So, it’s gonna be a night in Vegas.’ Warner surmised.

  ‘Looks like it,’ John agreed.

  ‘Hell, I got to buy me some underwear,’ Warner grumbled.

  John said nothing, he had bought a few clothes and toiletries in a small rucksack, and noticed Reed had too.

  ‘Shit, I better had too. So, what now?’ Judy asked.

  They had a couple of hours before they could meet with Officer Casiano, then another couple before they could go to the Mile High Club, and even longer again before they could do anything at The Stratosphere, But the gaps in between all depended on anything that could be discovered from the meetings they had, they hoped that these could lead onto more.

  John looked at Judy.

  ‘There’s an FBI office here. Why don’t you just go there and work? You could get a lot more done, right? All we will be doing is hanging around. Sort yourself a hotel, I’m sure they’ll have a pet one for you.’

  She looked at him gratefully.

  ‘For real? Yeah, that is an idea. But where will you stay?’

  ‘Don’t worry about us. I’m sure Kyle will be the same as you, CIA will look after him alright. Me and Tom will be able to find somewhere. This place is nothing but hotels.’

  Reed watched John carefully, conscious of their earlier conversation and realising what he was doing.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ he said.

  ‘OK, well I’ll get a cab. The office is up north from here,’ Judy said. She looked around, not a cab anywhere.

  ‘Shit! Jeez, I thought I’d step straight into one in this town.’

  Warner grinned.

  ‘No biggie, I’ll drop you at The Stratosphere, there’ll be a line there.’

  They climbed in.

  ‘One more thing, keep it very quiet about where you’re staying OK?’ John said as they moved off.

  Judy looked at him, questioningly.

  ‘I just think right now we probably need to be discreet, we’re going to be asking a lot of questions,’ John told her, trying to sound reassuring.

  They pull
ed into The Stratosphere and Judy got out the car, leaning in through the open door.

  ‘Thanks for this,’ she said to John warmly.

  ‘That’s fine, we’ll see you at the police station about half two, that will give Office Casiano time to get settled.’

  Judy nodded and disappeared.

  Warner had been talking on his mobile, he hung up then turned around in his seat and looked directly at John.

  ‘You sure about this?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, definitely.’

  ‘Well OK, I need to go to The Mirage.’

  ‘Fine, drop us there, we’ll go find a hotel.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Ryan Gallagher was a day short of his twenty-eighth birthday. He had just woken up, having been asleep on the floor of junkie prostitute and his occasional girlfriend Angie’s room in the apartment she shared with three other similar ladies. Angie was still sleeping, lying naked on her back on the grubby bed, ribs sticking out of her emaciated, pale body, angry track marks visible on her arms and feet. To an observer, she could actually be dead, something which he had thought many times before.

  But not anymore, he had got used to that.

  He glanced at the clock next to the bed, nearly twelve, and sat up.

  He looked around the room, he had ended up here, with no other place to stay. The police had warned him against vagrancy but he had bigger problems with being out on the street, he owed a lot of money around, doing deals that didn’t really exist. He couldn’t even risk begging anymore, so had resorted to thieving out of cars again, but this wasn’t so lucrative as it once was. He had managed to steal an iPad from a tourist’s convertible in the car park behind the Wynn hotel a couple of days ago, but had made barely a hundred bucks. He checked his pockets, he had less than five left. He was fully dressed, half in and half out of a tatty, smelly sleeping bag. The room was a tip. It was tiny, just a single bed and a chest of drawers but there were dirty clothes and crap everywhere, needles and burnt foil scattered across the top of the drawers.