Cold Desert Sky

by Rod Reynolds

  Lizzie lowered her window. ‘Nobody home?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘The neighbour over there looked out when you knocked.’

  I looked to where she pointed, the next house along separated by twenty feet of scrub yard, a tattered Stars and Stripes flying above the doorway. I nodded a thanks to her and cut across the patchy crabgrass, knocked on the door and waited again.

  After a moment, an older man with thinning grey hair opened up. I introduced myself and asked after Booker’s whereabouts.

  ‘Couldn’t tell you. I haven’t seen him in a while.’

  ‘Are you friendly with Mr Booker?’

  ‘Only so far as to say good morning.’

  I rubbed my mouth. ‘Do you know what he does for work?’

  He squinted. ‘Seen him loading tools into his truck the mornings. I’m of a mind he works construction.’

  The word made me glance back at Lizzie, wanting someone else to confirm the significance I took from it. I faced front again, chest tightening. ‘But you wouldn’t know where?’

  He was already shaking his head. ‘Sorry. But with that said, the biggest construction site in the state is right down the road …’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I couldn’t put a name to the emotions buffeting me as we turned off the highway into the Flamingo. Fear was at the forefront, but it was tempered by the thought of finally confronting him again; no more time spent wondering.

  The buzz of the construction site was a counterpoint to the foreboding that had filled me. A place of business, crawling with regular men – witnesses – didn’t have the same hold over me as the back room at Ciglio’s. I peeled off to one side of the site, stopping the car next to a swimming pool that stood empty.

  The main building looked almost complete, but through the glass frontage, I could see it was a facade. Crews were swarming around the inside, and the sound of hammering and sawing rang out through the uncovered entranceways. Around the outside, palm trees had been planted in a grid pattern, but most of the grounds were still bare dirt, waiting to be landscaped.

  Lizzie was surveying it the same as I was. ‘It doesn’t look even nearly finished.’

  I stepped out and stuffed my hands in my pockets, looking around. No sign of him.

  Lizzie slipped out and stood beside me. ‘Don’t think to say it. I’m coming with you.’

  ‘I’d prefer it. I’d rather you not be out of my sight here.’

  She squeezed my elbow and let it go. ‘Likewise.’

  A flatbed carrying lumber pulled off the highway and crawled to a stop. A foreman in an aluminium hardhat who’d been making his way towards us doubled back to meet it. We crossed close to where he stood giving directions to the trucker. Finished, he waved the driver on and stepped back as it pulled away, kicking up a swirl of dust. He turned around and waited for the engine noise to fade before he called out.

  ‘You folks lost?’

  ‘Name’s Yates, I’m looking for Henry Booker. He one of your men?’

  The foreman started to nod then stopped, looking at each of us in turn. ‘Mind telling me your business here?’

  ‘I owe him money,’ I said.

  The foreman half-smiled. ‘That’s a first.’

  ‘I’m a reporter, he helped me out with a story.’

  The foreman came over serious. ‘About Mr Siegel?’

  ‘Nothing like that.’

  The man’s face relaxed again. ‘Good. Mr Siegel’s got no time for you men, the things you write. The other owners must be all over you.’

  He said it without looking around and I got an inkling Siegel wasn’t there. ‘Mr Siegel on the site today?’ I asked.

  ‘I thought you wanted Booker?’

  ‘I’m star-spotting,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’d love to have a photograph with Benjamin Siegel.’

  The man rolled his eyes. ‘You’re out of luck on both counts.’

  The straps around my chest seemed to loosen a notch even as disappointment filtered through me. ‘When’s he expected back? Booker, I mean?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘He quit showing up?’

  ‘He’s not here now, I know that much.’

  ‘When’s the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Two days ago?’

  I looked over at the tower bearing the hotel’s name, the word Flamingo and an image of the bird displayed in unlit pink neon. ‘Anyone talked to him?’

  ‘Look, mister, I got to get on. You catch up with Henry, you tell him there’s plenty other men can swing a hammer for a paycheck, he don’t want it.’

  ‘What about Siegel? When’s he due here?’ My voice withered at the end.

  The foreman shrugged. ‘You honestly think he runs his diary by me?’ He turned and set off towards the main building.

  Lizzie watched him go and then turned to me. ‘I think we should get away from here.’

  I nodded, distracted, and slowly started moving.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she said.

  I walked a few paces before I could voice an answer. ‘It took us a matter of hours to turn up the name Henry Booker. If someone local was looking for him, it would’ve taken them no time at all.’

  We carried on walking, Lizzie’s brisker pace telling me she understood my meaning. ‘If he knew more than he let on to Mr Newland …’

  ‘I think it would be best if we find him first.’

  If he was still for finding.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Night seemed to come early in the desert. We took a room at the El Cortez, a low-rise mission-style hotel a little further out from the main drag and one that seemed big enough for us to pass in anonymity. Even out of the way as it was, it boasted the same oversized neon sign and a banner outside advertising cocktails, all the hotels seeming to craft their offering to the same appetites.

  The casino dwarfed anything I’d seen in Hot Springs. It was full to bursting, with the loudest noises coming from an overheated craps table near the middle of the room. I went to find a payphone in the lobby and called Newland at his desk.

  ‘You manage to speak to your source?’ I said, almost making the mistake of referring to Booker by name.

  ‘No. I’m getting the feeling he’s gone to ground.’

  I closed my eyes, wondering if he had the same bad feeling about the situation I did. ‘I’m desperate, Newland—’

  ‘You already made yourself clear about that.’

  ‘There must be someone else you can speak to. What about his workmates?’

  He hesitated before answering and I wondered again if I’d given myself away. ‘I’m doing what I can,’ he said. ‘Leave it with me.’

  I screwed my eyes closed. ‘All right. I’m at the El Cortez if you have news.’

  I hung up and went back to our room.

  Lizzie was sitting on the bed, leafing through my folder of notes on the missing girls. She stopped and looked up when I came in. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’

  A sense of intrusion came over me, but faded just as fast. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘There’s something I’m curious about.’ She gestured with one of the sheets of paper. ‘The first you heard of Colt Tanner was when you visited the girls’ boarding house.’

  I thought back, meeting with Angela Crawford, the other boarder at Mrs Snyder’s, her telling me a cop had been asking about me. ‘What of it?’

  ‘I don’t understand why he would’ve went there to ask after you. What was the relevance to his investigation?’

  I looked at her and at the paper, my writing scrawled all over it, drawing a blank. ‘I don’t know. I suppose he wanted to know what I was doing.’

  ‘How would he know to go there – independently of you, I mean?’

  ‘He was following me.’

  ‘As far back as your first visit there?’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head and set the paper down, frustr
ation showing. ‘I don’t know. It just …’ She closed her eyes and reclined onto the bed, rubbing her face. ‘It just seems a strange way to go about matters.’

  I cast my mind back, thinking about Tanner and when he’d first approached me, what he’d told me and how much I believed of his story. Then the discrepancy I’d filed came back to me – him not knowing about my first beating in the back room at Ciglio’s, almost a week after I’d first visited Mrs Snyder’s. Had he stopped tailing me by that point? And then resumed later?

  Lizzie’s breathing had deepened and slowed, and I realised she was drifting off, tiredness finally overcoming her. I waited a few minutes until she was fully asleep, then lifted her legs onto the bed and covered her with the comforter. I switched off the light and waited, thinking. I could hear the sounds of the casino – the crunch of the arms on the slots and applause coming from the tables. Weary as I felt, my mind was still racing – no chance at sleep.

  I cracked the door open, waited a moment to ensure Lizzie didn’t stir, then slipped out.

  *

  I started with the cigarette girls and cocktail waitresses, working my way around the casino floor and asking variations of the same questions over and over: Did you hear about the dead girl they found in the desert? Do you know anything about her? Anyone that knew her? Is the name Henry Booker familiar to you?

  I struck out on the last, and got nothing new on the rest. Most had heard about the victim and it seemed common knowledge – or at least assumption – that she was selling her body, but not one person could tell me more than that.

  I moved on to the dealers and bellhops, another go round on the same questions, with a new one added in: Do you know anything about a girls-by-appointment service?

  It was no surprise to be offered a line on all manner of ways to spend money for female company, but again the trail stopped dead at girls-to-order. One nugget turned up on Henry Booker: he was a regular casinogoer with a reputation for showing up on payday to blow his earnings on drink and blackjack. But according to the same dealer, he hadn’t pulled that routine at the El Cortez in a while.

  I sat across the otherwise empty card table, running out of questions and out of steam. I’d changed five bucks to chips to buy time to grill the man further and still had two left; I set one down in front of me and watched him deal the cards. Thinking to get my money’s worth, I threw out one more question. ‘You know where I can find Ben Siegel?’

  The man didn’t look up. ‘What you want him for?’

  I took a sip of my drink, bourbon making my head woolly. ‘Settle a debt.’

  He held the deck in his hands, waiting for my instruction. I tapped the felt for another card. ‘You’ll have to get in line,’ he said.

  ‘Behind who?’

  ‘Just about everyone.’

  I asked for another card and he turned up the two of diamonds, my hand now eighteen. ‘On account of the Flamingo?’

  ‘What else?’ He flicked his eyes up, glancing around the casino floor, then looked down again. ‘They tell us we’re supposed to warn folks not to go there because it’s run by mobsters, but I can’t see what they’re worried about – it’ll never be finished. Everyone knows he’s being robbed except him.’

  I tapped the felt again, not concentrating, a seven turning up.

  ‘Bust.’ He showed his hand and then used it to sweep up my cards.

  I set down my last chip. ‘In what way?’

  ‘He’s being charged two, three times the going rate. No one has a problem with it because he seems to be at the top of the building needs list for anything he wants. The VFW and the Elks can’t lay their hands on materials that Siegel’s got coming in by the truckload. It was in the papers, they’re holding protest meetings against the place and it’s not even finished.’

  ‘If everyone’s set against him, how’s he manipulating the needs lists?’

  The dealer turned his mouth down slightly. ‘Beats me – but someone must be making out from it. More money out of his pocket.’

  My hand showed twenty and I waved to stay. The dealer turned his blind card over – eleven. He hit to sixteen, had to hit again and turned up a king, making him bust. He matched my chip with another.

  ‘Keep it,’ I said, standing up from the table.

  I went back to the room and slipped inside so as not to wake Lizzie. She’d shifted position but was sound asleep. I sat down on the end of the bed and tried to bring order to my thoughts, but two drinks had dulled me enough to let tiredness take over.

  I lay back on the bed and tried not to think where Nancy Hill might be right at that moment.

  *

  The ringing telephone woke me with a start, Lizzie too. I was disoriented, both by the unfamiliar room and the daylight, and through the haze my first thought was that it was Tanner calling to tell me Lyle Kosoff had been killed.

  I shot up and snatched the phone from its cradle. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yates, it’s Trip Newland.’

  Lizzie looked at me, worried, mouthed, ‘Who is it?’

  If my mind had been up to speed I could have guessed it would be him – the only person knew we were there. ‘What’s the news?’

  ‘All bad. Cops just found Henry Booker’s corpse, and I want out of this town today …’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Clark County Sheriff’s Department were at the scene when we arrived – a service road between the backs of a saloon and a sawdust gambling hall called Club 21. I saw Robert Lang talking with a deputy at the head of the alley, a sheriff’s car parked across it to hinder access. A third officer was just in view further down, bent over and examining something on the ground.

  Lizzie was staring out the passenger window at the officers.

  ‘Will you stay in the car? This isn’t something you’ll want to see.’ I blanched as the words left my lips – forgetting she’d been there at Alice’s murder scene; the image of her holding her dead sister in a final embrace one that would pain me for ever.

  She looked at me sideways. ‘It’s fine, you’re right, I don’t want to see.’

  I nodded and climbed out, holding the car door across me, cautious, watching Lang. He was fifteen yards from where I stood, hadn’t spotted me. I was still weighing my options when Trip Newland appeared from nowhere, looking like he’d been up all night. He was breathless when he spoke. ‘This is out of hand.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Someone put a bullet in him.’

  Lang turned now, breaking off his conversation to look at Newland and me. His gaze lingered a moment and then he resumed what he’d been saying.

  ‘Had you spoken with him?’

  He shook his head. ‘Friendly dispatcher at the sheriff’s tips us off to any serious call-outs. I made it here just before I telephoned you.’

  I took a look around, a sudden fear that the perpetrator could still be close by. ‘You get anything out of them yet?’ I nodded in Lang’s direction.

  ‘Only about him being shot. And that it’s recent. Early hours, looks like.’ He checked the cops were still talking and then crowded into me, turning his face away from them. ‘You rustled up his name and now he’s dead. How short of a line should I draw between those two things?’ His voice was an angry hiss.

  ‘Are you accusing me of something? You’re way out of—’

  ‘Not of killing him. But of getting him killed? Sure looks that way to me.’

  A cold flush ran through me. From the corner of my eye I saw Lang look over at us again.

  ‘You had no goddamn right to do that,’ he said. ‘My source, my story.’

  ‘You’re getting ahead of yourself.’

  He was shaking his head. ‘Don’t make me out for an idiot. Whoever killed your girl killed him.’ He jammed his thumb into his chest. ‘And who the hell do you think they’ll be looking for next?’

  ‘Will you get a goddamn hold of yourself?’

  Lang broke away from his colleague and started towards us. Newland saw
him and clammed up, turning away to brace himself on the car roof. For my part, my thoughts jumped to Booker’s house, wondering if it might hold a clue as to how he was able to identify Desjardins – and maybe a lead to Nancy Hill. How soon would the cops show up at his address?

  Lang walked with ease, but ramrod straight. He touched the brim of his Stetson as he neared. ‘Mr Yates, Mr Newland. I didn’t know you two were acquainted.’ He glanced towards the alley then focused on me. ‘Eventful start to the morning. Mind telling me your interest in this here?’

  I waited for Newland to say something, cycling through a list of lies I could tell, wondering if the truth would serve me better.

  Newland kept his silence and Lang kept his eyes on me even as I looked away.

  ‘Nothing to say. Let’s see, Mr Yates shows up in town on account of a young woman was murdered, and wants to know who put a name to the girl. Mr Newland, I believe that was you. So that’s A to B, and the poor gentleman in that alleyway is point C; what’s the connection? Was he involved with the late Miss Desjardins?’

  I looked at Newland, wondering if he did know more than he’d told me.

  He ignored both our stares, keeping his eyes locked on the car.

  ‘Do I need to go around you, Mr Newland? My department has always been a friend to your newspaper …’

  ‘He was a source.’

  ‘I’d arrived at that already.’

  ‘He gave me her name.’

  Lang nodded, what he’d expected to hear. ‘Which takes me back to my first question – was he involved with her in some way? A customer maybe?’

  I kept watching him, waiting to see if he’d lied to me.

  ‘I don’t know. We spoke on the telephone, he gave me the name.’

  ‘C’mon, Trip. I respect your right to protect your source, but in the circumstance …’

  He turned around now, slouching back against the car in defeat. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Did the deceased have anything on his person?’ I said, thinking about an address book.

  ‘We’re still cataloguing his effects. Why do you ask?’