“Huh.” Jeff looked contemplative.
“What?”
“Never mind. I’d just hate to see anything happen to you. Is it worth all this? I mean, I’m sure Rachel will understand if you want to back off. Just call the cops, let them take over.”
It sounded so easy. Just call the cops—as if that hadn’t occurred to me every step of the way. “I’ve been thinking about that for the last hour,” I said, “but by now I think I’m in too deep to just walk away. These people know where I live, obviously. The cops would come barging in and blow everything. And then Rachel’s in the same place she started. Or worse.”
“So who are these people?” he asked. “Working for Cody, you think?”
“Could be. I actually ended up following Cody across town and watching him for awhile tonight. He has some interesting hobbies,” I added cryptically.
Jeff took the bait. “Stamp collecting? Scrapbooking?”
“Well,” I paused. “He likes to host pool parties for lots of other young men.” The waitress behind the bar looked over at us discreetly.
Jeff took a second longer to catch my meaning. “No way,” he whispered. “He was always surrounding himself with gorgeous women.”
“I think that was just a ruse. A cover. He was in that beefcake strip show, remember? It wouldn’t be good for business if people learned that the star of the show was more interested in other men than women.”
“Wow,” was all Jeff said. Our food soon arrived, and I recounted the evening’s events as I picked at my salad, and he chewed like a mule. I kept it brief and hit only the high points. Jeff ate like a pig, but his lawyer’s mind was working like an elegant computer. He zeroed in on what I thought was the key issue. “Big picture, it sounds to me like Cody was probably not doing his wife on the night of the murder. That was his alibi, right?”
“You got it,” I said.
“Well there you go. With that juicy little tidbit about his personal life we could probably nail him in a civil case.” He seemed pleased. I wasn’t so cavalier about exploiting a man’s personal sex life, but it was hard to disagree with Jeff’s pragmatic analysis. It was also a relief that my efforts hadn’t been a total waste.
“It’s just… It doesn’t fit perfectly together for me.”
His eyelids danced in surprise. He was working on a huge bite of burger, so I kept talking.
“I agree. The evidence looks bad for the murder. Like you so eloquently put it, with the pictures I’ve got it will be a lot harder to convince a jury he was making love to his wife the night Hannity was killed.”
Jeff came up for air. “Pictures?”
No one else was near us, so I opened up my laptop and ran through a few of the photos for him. He wasn’t shy about studying them.
“These guys do not eat a lot of cheeseburgers,” he said matter-of-factly. “So did anyone know you were going to be out tonight?”
“No. Just Carlos, the bouncer at Cougar’s, and that was last minute.”
“You think they’re watching you?” Jeff asked.
“I don’t know. Probably. It’s not like I’m hard to follow around.”
Jeff chuckled. “So do you think Cody was behind this?”
“I really don’t know. I have to assume so, since he’s the one with the most to lose, and he’s running the Outpost. At least, in theory.”
“Who else would be behind something like this?” Jeff drained his Heineken and signaled the waitress for two more.
“Well, the general manager, Phil d’Angelo. He seemed pretty pissed off that I would even consider looking into the case. I don’t know if he’s working for Cody or on his own. But he was the one who got me kicked out of the casino. There was one other thing.” I filled him in about what Mel Block had told me at the Del Mar racetrack.
“Hmm.” Jeff pondered the question. “So if Cody or this d’Angelo guy are skimming off the top, they’d be really interested in putting a stop to what you’re doing.”
“Right.”
“Does Amy know she’s being ripped off?”
“Nope. But right now it’s just one old man’s theory. I have no proof, and I don’t think I’m going to get any.”
“That stinks. It complicates things. If there wasn’t any financial hanky-panky going on, you could just follow the trail back up through this guy who tried to kill you.”
I wasn’t following. I think it showed on my face.
Jeff tried again. “I mean, now you know there could be other people who want to stop your investigation, and their reasons for wanting to stop you might have absolutely nothing to do with the murder of George Hannity. It’s like you were trying to avoid waking a sleeping bear, but you stepped on a hornet’s nest in the process. “
I frowned. “So I nearly got killed, but I didn’t even manage to get any useful information out of it.”
“Right. There are too many variables. The guy who tried to kill you might have nothing to do with our murder case.”
“You have a way of making things so clear,” I said, smiling. I burped out loud.
Jeff induced a burp himself and beamed like a proud father. The waitress shot us another look, this one not as discreet as her last effort.
“Seriously, though, you need to stay out of sight. Even if someone followed you here, you’re checked in under my name. Hopefully there’s only one person who wants to stop you, but you can’t safely make that assumption.”
Jeff signaled for the check.
“Thanks for meeting me here,” I said. “Your daughter and her friend have probably broken into your liquor cabinet by now.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Duty calls.”
“One more thing,” I said, smiling coquettishly. “Could you spot me some cash?”
Jeff cringed slightly, but he reached into his wallet to find me some much-needed spending money. “It’s always about the cash with you, isn’t it?”
I shrugged, relieving him of over a hundred bucks. “I’m worth it, though, right?”
He smiled. “I can’t deny that.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was only 6:30 in the morning, which meant I had gotten all of five hours of sleep, but my mind was racing. After lying in bed another hour, I took a long soak in the hot tub. I was doing my best to ignore my problems, but they kept pressing themselves into my consciousness. I gave in. After thinking it through, I decided that my most immediate need was to rule out Cody as the one who was behind the assault in my apartment. If that meant he wasn’t George Hannity’s killer, so be it. It meant Rachel would not be happy. But for the time being I was more interested in who was disrupting my life—if it wasn’t Cody, I needed to know who it was. Everything else would have to wait.
After I got out of the tub, I put in a call to my building and asked security if they could look into how someone had gotten into the building without living there. The morning security guy didn’t sound very enthusiastic. A lot of my neighbors had bought apartments before I did, when prices were thirty or forty percent higher. After the market collapsed a lot of people couldn’t afford to live there, so they made do by renting them out. Since so much of my building was either subleased or rented out on a weekly basis, new people were coming and going all the time. That was unsettling. Why have building security at all?
I needed food, and I didn’t feel like going back to the tropical café. And ever since a high school band trip to Peoria, I’d had an aversion to room service breakfasts. After wandering aimlessly for a few minutes, I found myself in the line for the Flamingo buffet, which proved to be a mistake. It quickly became obvious that I would be waiting in line all morning, and the prospect of standing there behind two hundred other lowlifes like me was not a pleasant one. Hunger is one of my great motivators, so I decided to stroll casually over to the VIP line as though I had simply forgotten for a brief spell that I was a VIP. The elderly Asian woman guarding the entrance frowned at me, and from what I could gather from her mumbling it seemed I didn’t have
the specific VIP credentials she was looking for. But I did have a room key and the little cardboard folder it came in, which was enough to show that in fact I was very important. Suite 3266 was not for nobodies. The woman grunted something in disgust and waved me through. A lot of people in this town worked for tips. She wasn’t one of them.
The first time my younger brother came to visit me in Las Vegas, he professed the sensible view that a Las Vegas buffet should be treated as a kind of informal eating contest. I was hard-pressed to disagree. After all, you paid a flat fee. It was a challenge issued by the chefs: I dare you to eat all this stuff.
My first round consisted of hash browns and greasy sausage, with a cup of putrid coffee on the side. That was the round of satisfaction. In case of nuclear war, power outage, or terror attack, I would have ample energy. At least until lunch. The second round was the novelty round, designed to stock up on things like dates, pickled eggs, and Alaskan king crab—the stuff you would never eat for breakfast unless you were at a Vegas buffet. Round three was freestyle. I came back to my table with a waffle covered in whipped cream and chocolate sauce. In a race against the impending sensation of being stuffed, I mauled it with abandon. I’m sure that I had chocolate and white stuff on my face, so I kept my head down until I finished eating.
I came up for air and wiped my face with a handful of napkins. It was then that I realized my stomach had not prepared itself for such an onslaught. It was beginning to make unusual noises, the kind my grandma used to make after polishing off a bowl of figs. I cursed my little brother and his inane theories about buffets. I left the table feeling slightly ill and more than slightly idiotic.
I spent most of the rest of the day in a horizontal position digesting my breakfast and cursing myself for thinking crab legs, brine soaked eggs, and chocolate waffles would be a combination my stomach was equipped to deal with. This is how Elvis must have felt all the time, I thought. Holed up in my high roller suite, I flicked on the TV and watched the stock market plummet for awhile. My booking agent doubled as a financial advisor, but he didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of it lately. Watching the market reminded me I needed to call him and fire his ass. I could get orthodontist convention gigs on my own.
I considered just blowing the afternoon and sitting in the hot tub with a bottle (Okay, two bottles.) of room service champagne, but the thought of champagne in the hot tub reminded me I still had to deal with Cody Masterson. Or whoever else wanted me out of the picture. By 4:15 the maids were getting antsy to clean my suite, so I forced myself to leave for an hour. I decided to walk the half-mile to my condo to talk to the security guard.
It was a sweltering fifteen-minute walk. I gratefully escaped the afternoon heat and approached the security stand in the center of my apartment building’s marble and glass lobby. The man working behind the desk was young, clean cut and recently shaved, with shiny medium-length black hair. From the look of him, I figured his shift had just started. I introduced myself as a resident, and he responded in what sounded like a Russian accent.
“And you were working here yesterday at this time?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Monday through Friday, same time. You are the one who called this morning about a break-in?”
“Yes,” I said. I noticed his nametag read “Ivan,” and apparently Ivan and the security staff were more on the ball than I’d given them credit for. “Anyway,” I continued, “I’m wondering how someone could just walk in here and get into my apartment.”
“I am very sorry about that, miss. We have been trying to upgrade our security systems, but there are just too many new residents all the time. It’s very possible that the intruder actually sublets a place from someone else. There are a few dozen condos for rent on the Internet at any given time. All it takes is money. One month’s rent as a down payment.”
“So no background checks, no credit checks, nothing.”
“I’m afraid not, miss. Actually this was the request of several of our residents, who wanted to have the ability to rent out their places quickly and easily.”
“Okay, but how could someone get into my apartment?”
“We’ve looked into that. Your key is magnetically coded, so he would have needed to get a copy of your key from someone or have it made here in the building.”
“Doesn’t sound likely,” I said.
Ivan nodded. “Probably not. There is another way. Was the intruder an athletic person?”
“Definitely. I was lucky to get away from him.”
“Well, it’s possible to string a rope from another balcony and climb up or down to get to yours. There’s really no way to prevent that.”
“I see. Thanks for your help.” It looked like I would be spending some more time at the Flamingo.
Ivan asked whether they should file a police report, but I told him to hold off for now. I was trying to avoid creating too many waves, and a bunch of cops sniffing around would probably put an end to my investigation. I thanked Ivan again and took off.
I decided to be paranoid and not head directly to work. If someone was still watching me, I didn’t want to make it too easy for him to find me. It was early rush hour, which meant it’d be hard to find a taxi on the street or in front of my building. I decided to head over to Caesars Palace and stand in their taxi line, and on the way I kept an eye out for anyone following me. Getting to Caesars on foot meant darting across several lanes of traffic going in both directions, and that made it almost impossible for anyone in a car to follow me. The taxi line was surprisingly short. I caught one within minutes and had the driver drop me off at the Thai restaurant near Cougar’s.
I sat at the bar and had a small curry pork dinner by myself. I was pretty thick-skinned, but on a Friday night I felt a little self-conscious eating alone. I rushed through my meal and got out of there. I wondered whether I was crazy to dance that night, but I wanted to stick to my normal routine as much as possible. And I hadn’t missed a Friday night in years. There was no way I was going to let a little thing like attempted murder allow the younger girls to poach my regulars.
The nice thing about my night job was that I could show up wearing just about anything, including a t-shirt and shorts from the discount rack at the Flamingo gift shop. I kept a few leather outfits and some g-strings in my locker at work, and that would be enough to get me through at least one night.
I was glad I went to work. Three of my regulars were in the house, and one of them wanted to share me with his out-of-town clients. I spent half the night being passed between about eight different Korean men, and each one shoved a C-note at me when I finished dancing for them. Very nice people, the Koreans.
I was exhausted by one, but I didn’t get out of there until three. The Flamingo bed proved very comforting, and I slept late into the next morning.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep to focus my energies and resolve. I had bummed around too much the day before, and when I finally woke around 10:30 I knew immediately that it was time to talk to Cody Masterson. As nice as the Flamingo suite was, I didn’t feel like moving in. I was determined to reclaim what had passed for my own life.
I thought everything over during an extra long shower. As Jeff had pointed out, it was possible that more than one person wanted me off the case, or off the planet. If I had stumbled onto some kind of a skim operation, that hornet’s nest might have nothing to do with George Hannity’s murder. Maybe Mel Block had had second thoughts and warned someone about what he told me. Or maybe Amy had tipped off people at the casino that Mike was asking questions. It didn’t seem too likely, though. Mel was dying and seemed to be on my side. And as the sole owner of the Outpost, Amy would be the one getting robbed by any kind of inside skim. Either way, it was disturbing that I had almost gotten killed without necessarily making any progress in solving the case.
But it occurred to me that if Cody was behind everything, he was definitely going about things indirectly. He was relying on
Phil d’Angelo to shut me down, and d’Angelo was using his security goons at the casino to get rid of me. Somehow, it seemed safer to go straight to the source—Cody himself—rather than try to untangle the web of people involved at the casino level. Cody seemed downright harmless in comparison to d’Angelo, Eddie Holman, and the Brawny man who’d tried to kill me.
Talking to Cody was the kind of thing that had to be done in person. I debated whether to try to find him at his chateau in Summerlin or at his east side party house. His wife was still out of town with Holman, so I figured he’d probably have spent last night at the party house too. I got my car from the Flamingo valet and headed over to Cody’s half-built subdivision. On the way, I stopped at a pharmacy and had some of my digital photos from the pool party Thursday night made into 8x10s. I studied them for a minute in the parking lot and sighed. Why were all the best looking men gay?
Things in Las Vegas tended to look dramatically different under the desert sun than they looked at night, and I had more trouble than I expected retracing my route from two nights earlier. I eventually found my way, though, and as I approached the house I wondered whether Cody—if he was even there—would be alone. This time there were no cars in the driveway or out front.
I parked directly in front of Cody’s house. I had decided the best approach was the one Mike had taken with Amy: pretend I was investigating some kind of embezzlement at the casino rather than the murder itself. There was no sense confronting him about that, at least for now.
I walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Within seconds the door opened and Cody appeared in a white robe and sandals. He was giggling in a high-pitched voice, looking down and fumbling for something next to the door. “I was wondering when you’d notice,” he said. When he looked up at me he stopped cold.
“Hello,” I said. Obviously he had been expecting someone else. His face looked profoundly confused, as though he had just woken up from a strange dream. He continued to gape at me with uncomprehending wonder, like a baby seeing itself in the mirror for the first time. He said nothing.
Stephanie Caffrey - Raven McShane 01 - Diva Las Vegas Page 12