by Mark Dawson
“So?”
“North of the Strip.”
“Fremont?”
“Near there.”
Milton came off the expressway at the exit for downtown and followed Las Vegas Boulevard to East Ogden and then East Fremont. The El Cortez was ahead of them. He parked the car at the rear of the hotel lot and stepped out. He stood for a moment and looked around at his surroundings. East Fremont was just five miles from the Strip, but it might as well have been five hundred. The buildings around and about had none of the glitz and glamour that could be found in the chic resorts. The streets were narrower and traffic was lighter, especially at this time of night.
The hotel was large, but modest in comparison to the behemoths with which it was forced to compete. A sign on the awning above the entrance advertised $5 Patron Margaritas and 24/7 drinking. Milton felt the familiar stirrings of temptation and started to wonder whether he was going to have to find a meeting if he was forced to stay in the city for longer than he had planned. He knew that he would benefit from an hour’s peace, and it wouldn’t hurt to have his defences buttressed. There was temptation here, and plenty of it.
Jessica got out of the car. She looked exhausted.
“Coming?” he said.
She nodded and followed him toward the hotel’s entrance.
Milton led the way into the reception. If the place looked dowdy from the outside, it was obvious that effort had been expended on making the interior a little more pleasing to the eye. There was a 1948 Cadillac in the lobby, the paintwork polished up to a high sheen, and the walls were adorned with cartoons of mobsters and their Rat Pack acolytes. The PA played classic Sinatra and, as Milton gazed around, it wasn’t hard to imagine that this might have been the sort of place that Ol’ Blue Eyes would have frequented. The casino was off to the left, the usual collection of green baize tables, roulette wheels and slots. The clientele had none of the well-heeled swank that one would expect at a higher-end resort. The atmosphere was more relaxed, but the clamour—the buzz and rattle of the slots, the constant music and the hum of conversation—was just the same.
Beau Baxter was waiting for them next to the check-in counters. He was sitting down at a low table, a margarita in his hand.
“English,” Beau said, getting up.
“Beau,” Milton said.
They shook hands.
“You okay?” Beau asked him.
“I’m good,” he said. “Thanks for this. I appreciate it.”
Beau waved that off. “It’s nothing,” he said, and grinned. “Just a couple of hotel rooms. I just made the reservations—you’re paying.”
“It’s kind of a thank-you in advance,” Milton corrected him. “For the favours I’m going to ask you.”
“And which I will gladly provide. What do you need?”
Milton angled his head behind him to where Jessica was waiting. “Can we talk later?”
Beau nodded his understanding. “Sure.”
Milton took the older man over to Jessica so that he could introduce them both.
“This is Jessica Russo,” he said.
“Good evening,” Beau said to her, shaking her by the hand. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better.”
“And this is Beau Baxter,” Milton added. “He’s a friend.”
“Good to meet you,” Beau said to her. “Whatever’s ailing you, you’ve ended up in a safe pair of hands.”
“I’m grateful, really, but I don’t really know who he is”—she inclined her head at Milton—“and I don’t know who you are, either.”
If Beau was offended by her brusqueness, he didn’t show it. “I’ve booked you in up on the second floor. Two rooms, one opposite the other. You look cooked.”
“I am,” she said.
“So go get yourself some sleep. They serve breakfast in the restaurant between seven and ten. I’ve eaten a few Vegas breakfasts in my time, but none of them are as good as the grits they got here. You come down then, and if there’s anything I can do to help, you just got to ask.”
“Why would you do that?” she said, still abrupt. “You don’t even know me. Why would you help someone you’ve never met?”
Beau nodded over at Milton. “He helped me out of a sticky situation not that long ago. A friend of his is a friend of mine. It’ll be a pleasure to help get whatever’s bothering you squared away.”
She looked as if she was about to speak, but bit her lip and looked away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I sound like an ungrateful bitch. It’s just… it’s just that it’s been a long day and I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“No need to apologise,” Beau said, smiling. “Whatever it is, it’ll look better in the morning.”
She smiled wanly and started toward the elevators.
“What time are you up tomorrow?” Milton asked.
“I’ll catch a couple of hours,” Beau said. “Seems I need less and less sleep the older I get.”
“See you down here for breakfast?”
“I’ll see you then. I mean it about those grits.”
24
Milton went up to the second floor and followed the signs for the rooms between 200 and 250. Beau had made reservations for room 205 and, on the opposite side of the corridor, room 206. Milton went into his room first. The hotel literature described it as ‘Vintage Queen’ and, although it was of a decent size, the fixtures and fittings looked old and tired. The bed came with a heavy wooden headboard, the carpets had a mildly hallucinogenic swirl to them, and the bathroom, when he investigated, was very basic. But Milton was satisfied: discretion was more important than amenities. He went to his window and looked outside. They were two blocks from the insanity of Fremont Street, with enough distance between them to offer a little peace and quiet. That, of course, was comparative; this was serene by Vegas standards.
He went back out to the corridor, knocked on the door for 206 and waited for Jessica to open it.
“You alright?” Milton asked.
She stared at him, her eyes tired and red. “No. Not really.”
“Sorry,” Milton said. “Not my best ever question.”
He stepped inside and went over to the minibar. He opened it, ignored the temptation offered by the array of miniatures, and took out two bottles of water. He tossed one over to Jessica and took the other to the window.
“We need to talk,” he said. He watched Jessica’s reflection in the glass.
She looked up, with—perhaps—a flicker of concern. “What?”
He turned back to face her directly. “We can speak more freely now.”
“About what?”
“What did you take?”
“Take? What does that mean?”
“From the house.”
“I didn’t take anything.”
“You’re not a very good liar.”
“Why would you think I took something?” she asked, not looking at him.
“I saw you, Jessica. In the bedroom. You reached around the back of the bed. It wasn’t to do with a gun. What did you take?”
“I didn’t.”
“Okay,” Milton said. He started for the door.
Jessica looked at him. “What are you doing?”
Milton opened the door. “I’m going.”
Jessica leapt to her feet. “Wait!”
“I can’t help if you lie to me.”
“Wait.”
Milton held the door open, but turned back to her. “This is your last chance. If you want my help, be honest. If I ask you a question, answer it. If you don’t, I’m gone. You can deal with those people on your own.”
Jessica bit down on her lip. Milton could see that she was wrestling with something.
“Do you understand me?” Milton pressed. “I mean it. You’ll never see me again.”
She swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
Milton let go of the door. It closed as he came back into the room. He took the chair from the desk and turned it around so that
he could sit and watch Jessica. The young woman, for her part, put her bottle of water back in the fridge and grabbed a beer instead. She popped the top with the opener she found on the desk and took a long draught.
“Well?” Milton said.
25
Jessica slumped back down onto the bed.
“Dad called me.” She scrubbed the heel of her hand against her eyes. “It was a week ago. That was weird enough—he never calls. I remember, I was just coming back from the gym. He said he needed to talk to me and that it was important. I remember what he said: ‘This is going to sound crazy, and I don’t want you to worry, but if anything happens to me, I need you to know what to do next.’ The first thing I thought was that he must’ve been sick. You know—the cancer. I asked him and he said he wasn’t, that it was nothing to do with that, that he was doing okay.”
“So? What was it?”
“I didn’t press him. I decided to wait until I saw him.”
“But he told you what you’d have to do?”
She nodded. “He said that he’d rented a storage unit out in North Vegas. He said that if anything happened to him, I had to go up there. He told me that he had taped a key behind the bed. I looked tonight. And this was there.”
Jessica reached into her pocket and took out a small silver key and a swipe card. She handed it over. The key was marked with a brand name—American Lock—and looked like it might be the sort that would open a padlock. The swipe card was a plain oblong of plastic with a black magstripe down one side and a number to call in the event that the card was found.
“Where’s the unit?”
Jessica reached into her pocket and took out her phone. She tapped the screen to wake it and then navigated to a note that she had taken.
“I wrote it down. Cheyenne Storage Depot,” she read, “8650 West Cheyenne.”
“And did he say what was inside the unit?”
“No,” Jessica said. “He didn’t say anything.”
“You have no idea? None at all?”
Jessica shrugged helplessly. “None.”
Milton stared at her. “This is one of those moments where I need you to be completely honest with me.”
“I don’t know, John, I swear. I was going to speak to him about it tonight.”
Milton swigged down a mouthful of water. The situation had just become a little more complicated. He considered all the information that he had: a man had been abducted from his home by armed men. Those same men had given chase in an attempt, he assumed, to secure the daughter, too. The father was seemingly in fear for his life, and he had a storage locker with contents important enough that the daughter was told to go and get them in the event that he was no longer able to do so.
What was in the unit? It must have been what Oscar was looking for.
“What do we do now?” Jessica asked him.
“I’m not sure.”
“I should go and look in the locker—right?”
Milton exhaled. “No,” he said. “Not you. We have no idea what we might find there. You need to stay.”
“Who, then?”
“Me,” he said. “I’ll go.”
26
Oscar stepped into the office. Sacca and Abellán were lounging against the wall, both smoking cigarettes. Richard Russo was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, his wrists and ankles secured to its arms and legs with cable ties. His face was bruised from where Pérez had struck him, and his scalp was matted with dried blood from when they had subdued him at the house.
Oscar took off his jacket and draped it over his desk. He made a show of unbuttoning his shirt and then folded it neatly, placing it atop the jacket. He took off the Rolex Submariner that he had bought from the store at the Wynn with the commission that he had earned after his first month in the city. He had found the watch heavy in the first few days of wearing it, but he had grown accustomed to it now. He had also grown accustomed to what it represented—his hard-won success, the distance between his beginning in the slums of Mazatlán and where he found himself now—and he wanted more. He was not about to let this cabrón ruin everything.
He turned and walked over until he was right in front of the old man. He crouched down so that he could look into his eyes. “Do you think I am a fool?”
“No, Oscar. Of course not.”
“But you must think that I am. Why else would you think that I would miss your thieving?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Please,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Oscar stood up and took a quarter-turn so that he could look over at Sacca and Abellán. “He says he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t—”
Oscar wheeled around, bringing the back of his hand across Russo’s face. It was a hard, stiff slap, the knuckles catching against the old man’s cheek. Russo’s head snapped around, and blood splashed from his nose onto his top lip.
Oscar grabbed him by the chin and turned his head, tilting it up so that he could look down into his face. “¡Que te jodan! Where is my money?”
There was a pause; Oscar’s angry denunciation rang around the room, faded, and was replaced by Russo’s ragged breathing.
“I’m not afraid of you,” he said at last.
“No?” Oscar laughed. “You should be.”
“I have cancer, Oscar. You know I do. I have months to live. A year if I’m lucky. I’m not scared of death. I’ve made my peace with it.”
“It is not death you should be afraid of,” Oscar suggested. “I will make you beg for it. What you should be afraid of is what I will do to your children. Your son is Mason, no? A soldier, dishonourably discharged from the army, lives here in Las Vegas. Sí? And your daughter, Jessica, lives in Los Angeles. We know her address. We know where she works. I can have them both brought here like this.” He snapped his fingers.
Russo’s head drooped; Oscar held it more firmly, squeezing his chin.
“What do you say? Perhaps we take a chainsaw to your son? Perhaps we cut his limbs off one by one. And Jessica? Perhaps we ship her back to Juárez in a crate. A pretty girl like her? She would be taken to one of the kitchens in the jungle. I have been to the places where they are kept. She would be tied to a stake, and men would come whenever they wanted, do whatever they pleased.”
Russo closed his eyes; the life drained out of them, all of the fight gone. He didn’t speak.
“What do you say? You tell me where I can find my money and perhaps your children can continue with their lives. If not…” He shrugged. “If not? Well, what happens to them if not is your fault.”
Oscar put his shirt back on and slipped the Rolex onto his wrist again, snapping the clasp shut. Russo wasn’t watching; he had slumped forward in the chair, held upright by the cuffs that secured his wrists to the arms. Oscar was a little annoyed that Russo had folded so quickly. He was full of frustration and he had anticipated taking it out on the man responsible for it. He would wait, though. It was a case of delayed gratification. He knew that Russo was telling the truth, but he wanted him alive until the moment the money was returned.
But then?
He would get what was coming to him.
Him and his children and the pendejo who was helping.
Oscar went outside to where Ellacuria and Higuaín were waiting.
“There is a storage facility,” he said. “He says he has been keeping the money there.”
Ellacuria dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out. “Where?”
Oscar took the piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to him. He had written down the address and the number of the storage unit.
Ellacuria looked down at it. “West Cheyenne Avenue.”
“Go now.”
“The key?”
“At his house. You missed it.”
“A key, boss. How could we be expected to find—”
“Enough excuses! I am sick of them.”
He went to the rack of tools that they used on the shipments and selected a pair of long-handled bolt cutters. He tossed them over; Ellacuria fumbled them and they clattered against the concrete floor. “Use those. And do not come back unless you have my fucking money!”
27
Milton made sure that Jessica understood how important it was that she stay in the hotel room while he was away. She asked how long he would be gone, and Milton replied that he would be back as soon as he was able. There were a few things that he needed to do, and it was difficult to know how much time he would need.
He went back to his room and took out the pistol that he had taken from the man in Russo’s garage earlier. He popped the magazine to confirm that his count of how many rounds were remaining was correct—it was—and then slipped the weapon into the waistband of his trousers, arranging his shirt to hide it.
Milton decided that he would leave the Macan in the lot. It was a distinctive car even without the damage that it had suffered, and the last thing he wanted to do was to draw attention to himself. He called Beau again and asked if he had something that he could borrow. Beau had hired a rental from the airport and said that Milton was free to use it; he told him where to find it and that he would leave the keys on reception for him to collect.
The hotel had a small gift store in the lobby that was open twenty-four hours a day. Milton picked out a ball cap with WELCOME TO LAS VEGAS emblazoned across the front and added a T-shirt that featured a drawing of dogs playing poker. He bought both items, changed into the T-shirt in the restroom and then went outside to the lot. Beau had hired a Denali Yukon, a big and powerful SUV with a four-wheel-drive configuration.
Milton started the engine and tapped the details of the storage facility into the satnav. The unit reported a twenty-five-minute drive, following the Las Vegas Freeway and then Route 95.
He pulled out and started on his way.
The storage depot was advertised by way of a tall sign at the side of West Cheyenne Avenue. It was set within a typically sprawling retail property that also included a McDonald’s and a Burger King. Milton flicked the turn signal and turned into the quiet parking lot. There was a roller gate to one side of the building that offered access to a series of outside storage units. The main facility was constructed out of plain blocks of concrete, with miserly windows at ground level and nothing above.