by Thomas Perry
Big deal, thought Elizabeth. Flew in and checked into a hotel room, in a thousand words or less. But they were edgy, she could tell. They always did that until something happened and then they snapped to. Every word would count then, but now it was just chattering to make the time pass, to keep the sense that there was somebody back here listening.
She looked up and saw Padgett rush by with a worried look on his face, carrying a voice transcript in his hand. So important—Man with a Big Job to Do—he was really in his glory now, she thought. Probably one of them ordered a martini from room service and the agent in place called for help. Padgett rapped urgently on Brayer’s door, then passed in.
Elizabeth returned to her reports: “Toscanzio is at the MGM Grand Hotel, where it appears he has been for at least twenty-four hours.” So that’s part of it, she thought. Somebody lost track of one of them, and now the whole organization is supposed to compensate for the lost day by watching them all twice as hard, as though they could bring back that day.
“Elizabeth,” said Brayer from his doorway. “Come on in. I think we’ve got something.”
Sure thing, Mr. Brayer, thought Elizabeth as she set aside the sheaf of reports and stepped to the inner office. It had to be an isolated farmhouse, she thought. The agents were getting edgy and it was about time for a farmhouse. Field agents seemed to live with the vision of an isolated house in the backs of their minds because they were weaned on the Apalachin conference and Boiardo’s private graveyard. It was like the Holy Grail to them, and you knew they were getting eager when it started turning up.
“What is it?” she asked.
“All hell seems to be breaking loose,” said Padgett. So it wasn’t the farmhouse. Maybe they were already up to the Man With A Rifle, always amended in final reports to man with a long, thin parcel (or golf club or broom or cane or pool cue).
“What, exactly?”
“Three murders in Las Vegas in the last two hours—at least two of them odd-job types. The other one seems to be some kind of businessman who just got in the way while they were taking out the first of the others. We’re checking, of course.”
“What makes you think it’s significant?”
“Because Balacontano made his first appearance in public while it was going on. Went down to the hundred-dollar tables and started betting the farm at the crap tables, not even looking to see if he’d won or lost, flashing a lot of money and attracting attention.”
Elizabeth noted that the farm had made its appearance in a new avatar, but didn’t let it distract her. “What about other people? Toscanzio? Castiglione?”
“All in an uproar for the first few minutes, then quiet. Shut up in their houses and hotels. But no soldiers in evidence anywhere, almost as though somebody got word to them and convinced them there was nothing to worry about. Like they were ignoring it for now. Or maybe they knew in advance. It’s hard to tell at this distance, and the reports are all of the ‘we’re standing by’ variety.”
Brayer was still silent, staring at the transcript on his desk. Elizabeth waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. She asked Padgett, “Any idea yet on how it was done?”
“No,” said Padgett. “Give me ten minutes. There’s a call out for the report of the LVPD as soon as the homicide team gets back in.”
She glanced at her watch: twelve o’clock. That meant nine o’clock there. Friday. Too early for much of the reaction. Some of them probably weren’t awake yet. The hourlies later in the day would be more reliable.
“What do you think, Elizabeth?” Brayer finally spoke up.
“I think we should check on the other two and see where they go. If there’s a conference in Las Vegas and this is really Balacontano, I would guess they’d head for home. If they show up in Las Vegas this was nothing. If they don’t, it doesn’t prove they’d ever planned to, but it’s still worth checking.”
“Agreed,” said Brayer. “And Padgett, be as thorough as you can when you’re checking on those victims. Don’t give up easy. If you can establish a connection with somebody in particular it’ll tell us what’s going on. We might as well know who’s mad at whom.” Then he added, “Even though it probably won’t do us any good or them any harm.”
Padgett wheeled about and headed for the door and Elizabeth followed. Brayer sat immobile, staring at the transcript. Elizabeth almost asked for it, but thought better of it. There would be another copy at the monitor’s desk. Brayer was either planning his next three moves or contemplating the vanity of his last three. If it helped to stare at a paragraph he’d long since memorized, so much the better.
16
“Amigo,” he said. “I got some shirts for you.”
“I’ll go pick them up.”
“Not a good idea, amigo. I’m on the road already. Ten minutes, no more.”
“Right.” The line went dead.
Shit, he thought. Any news had to be trouble, and it was—what? ten hours? before the shirts were supposed to be back. He looked at his watch. Nine o’clock. The Cruiser never did business at nine. Most of his customers wouldn’t be up for hours. Even the cleaning business didn’t open until ten thirty.
He scarcely had time to dress before he heard the knock. When he swung the door open the Cruiser slipped inward with it as though attached to it, then tossed the box of folded shirts on the bed.
“Amigo,” said the Cruiser. “You really fucked me up.” The Cruiser was smiling, the first time he could remember having seen that exact expression: he was showing his bad teeth and his breath seemed to come in short gasps.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You said it was no big thing but it was. All you had to do was tell me it was. You know better, amigo. You should never have done it to me.”
“It’s no big thing. Orloff owes me money.”
“Not now. He’s dead.”
“How?”
“I sent a man to his office to watch. He was in a parked van all night and then I was going to send somebody else this morning. He was my cousin. Not smart, but I thought I’d let him have this easy one to make some money. But he wasn’t smart, so I sent my boy Jesus at seven to see if he was awake.
He was. God. Something to do was such a big deal he hadn’t even lain down all night. Sat there in a chair staring at an empty office through a peephole he drilled. He sent Jesus to get him something to eat. Jesus got back to the block in time to see it. Orloff drove up to the office and started to get out of his car. Then three of them just appeared from no place. Jesus said he thought the one with the shotgun came out of the building, one came from someplace on the other side of the street where the van was parked. The other might have been in the bushes, but he couldn’t tell. They just were there. Orloff just stood there next to his car shaking, and the one with the shotgun blew his head off. Jesus said my cousin panicked and jumped into the driver’s seat and tried to start the van. He must not have seen the one near him. Jesus said the guy didn’t look surprised or anything, just stepped to the side of the van and put a pistol to the window. He fired five or six times. After that Jesus didn’t see anything else. He was already running.”
“I’m sorry it happened. Where is Jesus now?”
“Outside in the car waiting for me. I’ve got to get us all out of town.”
“Will a thousand do it?”
“I think so. You know I’ll have to tell if they corner me, though. With Jesus and Ascenciòn—”
“Sure. But try to give me time. Leave now and keep going. I wish I could tell you something that would help you spot them, but I don’t know anything. He just owed me money and looked nervous. Did the kid tell you what they looked like?”
“No. Just three Anglos. One dressed like a cowboy and the other two in suits. They didn’t even look like they came together.”
“Thanks for the shirts,” he said.
“Yeah,” said the Cruiser. “See you sometime.” He slipped out the door and was gone.
He locked the door and sat
down on the bed. It wasn’t good. There was no way to tell if it even had anything to do with him. Anybody who had any dealings with Orloff would probably consider doing it sometime. Orloff was cunning and greedy, and he sometimes got nervous. But the three who did it had to be the ones he’d seen in the Frontier, and that meant it had something to do with Carl Bala—but what? They’d either been watching for Bala or just watching him. And there was the money too—a lot of trouble for nothing. His leg started to ache a little at the thought of it.
And now he couldn’t leave. If he did, they’d think he’d done it—broken the rule and violated the truce the families had agreed to among themselves and imposed on everyone else for almost thirty years. Especially the way his face looked, and the fact that Orloff had been seen with him—the fat, stupid pig. Now he’d have to stay put and hope that would convince the dozen old men locked in their houses and hotels that he represented no threat or inconvenience to them. At least with Orloff he could be sure whoever had wanted Claremont dead didn’t know about him. Orloff had never been stupid enough to make his services as middleman unnecessary. He’d known his life depended on it. So he could forget about the three men unless somebody saw the connection between the pile of dead meat in the van and the Cruiser and had the resources and the persistence to find him. And Cruiser would probably be in Mexico by late afternoon.
The ringing of the telephone startled him. He snatched the receiver off the hook and snapped, “Yes?”
“Hi, kid. It’s Norman.” The deep, velvety voice was quiet and imperturbable.
He collected himself. “Hello, Norman.” So it was starting already, the test. “What can I do for you?” He added, “It’s pretty early yet for either of us, isn’t it? What time is it?”
“Almost ten, kid,” said Little Norman. “I figured you’d be up for hours by now. Maybe playing tennis. You like to keep in shape, don’t you?”
“Sure, Norman.”
“Well come downstairs and I’ll buy you breakfast. I’m in the coffee shop.”
“I’ll be there.”
He quickly got undressed again, showered, shaved, and put on a coat and tie. At the closet he lingered for an instant, thinking about the gun taped to the wall, then felt ashamed. Whatever happened he wouldn’t need a gun between the room and the coffee shop. This wasn’t the time to indulge his nerves.
In the coffee shop Little Norman seemed to take up one side of the booth, his arms spread out along the top of the seat in a gorilla’s embrace so that the camelhair sport coat looked like upholstery. When he sat down, Norman didn’t smile. “You’re having ham and eggs, kid,” said Little Norman. “I ordered them while I was waiting.”
“Thanks, Norman. That’ll be just fine.” He added, “Sorry to keep you waiting, but you pulled me out of the sack.”
“I came to tell you something,” said Little Norman.
“What’s that?”
“I just heard Harry Orloff died.” His dark eyes didn’t flicker; they seemed to sharpen and hold him for impaling.
“So?” he said. “Sorry to hear it. He should have lost some weight.”
“Don’t play that on me, kid,” hissed Little Norman, leaning forward on his elbows so his big face loomed only a foot away over the table. “I was the best before you were born. You were with him two days ago.”
“Sorry, Norman,” he said. “What now?”
Little Norman leaned back again to give the waitress room to set the plates on the table between them. Finally he smiled. “That’s better.”
“I didn’t do it, you know,” he said. “I don’t work in Vegas.”
“I know you didn’t,” said Little Norman. “I heard he owed you money.”
He picked up his knife and fork and started to saw at the slice of ham. “Easy come, easy go,” he said.
“Not this time, kid,” said Little Norman. He leaned forward again and his voice dropped. “You’re gonna get paid, and then you’re gonna leave. Tonight at nine you play blackjack at the Silver Slipper.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He was already standing by that time, and then he was moving off toward the door, the broad tan back of his perfectly tailored coat swaying slightly as he leaned to the left to avoid a scurrying keno girl whose stacked wig barely reached his shoulder.
“WHAT THE HELL DOES that mean?” said Padgett. The computer clicked and the lines of green print swept into view across the screen. “A car stopped at a red light, was blocked in by two others, and three men walked up and shot a whole family inside it.”
“That supposed to mean something?” asked Brayer.
“That’s the fourth, fifth, and sixth,” said Padgett. “It has to mean something. How can it not?”
Elizabeth pressed the hard-copy button and waited for the machine to roll out the warm, damp sheet. She scanned the report of the Las Vegas police, and it suggested nothing at all. A husband, a wife, and a boy of ten. Stopped at a corner waiting for the light to change. “If we had a little more it might tell us something,” she said.
“What do you want?” asked Brayer.
“Anything. What he did for a living, where they lived. What they had with them, I guess. And maybe which direction they were going.” She looked out the window into the second heavy snowstorm of the month, and tried to picture it: a bright, sunny morning in Las Vegas and the car stopped in traffic. Maybe the man and woman in the front seat, and the little boy in the back. And then screeching tires, cars lurching to a stop at odd angles, and the sound of guns blasting in the windows, the impact of the slugs at first punching circular spiderweb shapes into the glass, then spattering the glass into tiny crystals like diamonds spread all over the bodies. “I guess that would be first,” she said. “Which way was the car going?”
HE WAS AFRAID. It was as if fear were a thick, oily liquid that had somehow seeped into his entrails and stuck there, holding him in a kind of paralysis. Somehow his body had stopped digesting; his food had turned into a greasy, immovable mass. He could feel it—his body wanted to do something, fight, run, turn light and fly—but the thing was in there, holding him down.
No. He’d seen it too many times. They’d sit there staring at him, maybe their fingers fluttering involuntarily like birds while their eyes went stupid. After it was too late they’d do something—the hands would reach for whatever was nearest, or the leg muscles would tense for a spring, but by then they’d be dead. It wasn’t going to be that way with him. He sat on the bed and thought about it. Little Norman had said they were going to pay him. That was something to think about.
He felt a little better. They were going to pay him. That meant that they acknowledged the debt and that Orloff had done something else. No, that didn’t work unless they thought Orloff had told him where the money was going to come from. And that he had some way to make it worth paying him. He looked at his watch—almost noon. Nine hours left, so he might as well reassure them now.
He reached for the telephone and asked for the United Airlines number. Even as he made his reservation he wondered who would take an eight-o’clock flight from Las Vegas on a Saturday morning. Probably the other passengers would all be people passing through—or maybe it was just that so many people arrived here on Saturday mornings that the only other choice was to fly the planes out empty. He’d probably never know, he thought.
It was going to be tough to give himself an edge in nine hours, most of it daylight. They’d be watching him too closely. He knew he’d have to get started if he was going to make it.
He looked about the room to see what there was to work with—the bed, the shower, the telephone, the air conditioner—all standard. It would have to be the Magic Fingers machine on the bed. He studied it carefully. The metal box had an electric alarm clock besides the mechanical massager. The coin box was impregnable, but the wiring was easy enough to get to. Once he had the back open it was fairly simple. The wires that went to the alarm buzzer fit through the crack in the back once they were stripped of insulation. He set the alarm for no
on and tested the wires. The spark wasn’t much, but it would do. He put the Magic Fingers machine back together and trailed the wires beside his pillow. Then he went to the dresser and brought back his bottle of after-shave lotion and read the label: 98 percent alcohol. He set the alarm, poured the lotion into a paper cup, set it on the bed, and arranged the wires. It wasn’t much, but it might help. If he wasn’t back by two A.M. there would be a fire in Room 413.
That was one of the things Eddie had been able to give him. “Know everything. If there’s nothing you can know that the mark doesn’t know you better make something happen.” The main thing would be getting out. He had the car, and there was the off chance that he might use his plane reservation. Then there were trains and buses. He’d have to get those set up during the afternoon. But that late at night there wouldn’t be many of them, and he might not be able to get where he had to be to get on one.
It was probably just nerves, he thought. They weren’t going to kill him in the Silver Slipper, and they weren’t likely to pay him two hundred thousand and then kill him. But nothing else about this seemed right either. There was no question that something big had gone very wrong, and now they were trying to clean it up. Whatever it was made it worth what they’d done to Orloff, and they’d never have done that in Las Vegas unless it was necessary.
Whatever it was, he’d have to stay out of sight until it was time for the payoff. If they were going to kill him it would probably be before rather than after. He checked the lock on the door, chained it, then moved the dresser in front of it. Then he went to the closet and pulled the pistol off the wall and checked the clip. Then he turned on the television.
17
The air was cold now that the sun had been down for a couple of hours. The hot, steady current of the desert breeze had changed into something harsher and more petulant that whirled down the Strip in icy eddies, then pawed at him and buffeted him from above as he waited to cross the street. He hunched his shoulders and moved closer to the center of the crowd of people. It was as though the frigid emptiness of the mountains was rushing in to correct some imbalance that had been precariously asserted by all this light and noise and motion and color—as though some fragile barrier had been swept away. He pulled his coat tighter around him and felt the pull of the tape on his belly. The hard, sharp edge of the safety catch on the pistol irritated his skin a little, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it now. There would be watchers around him already. It was the only place for it anyway. It had to be near his center of gravity, where he could forget about it. There was no way to carry an extra pound of steel attached to your side or your leg without involuntarily carrying yourself differently. One of the first things he’d learned was to watch for the man who held one arm an inch farther out than the other, or the man who stepped a little stiff-legged.