The Downtown Deal

by Mike Dennis

  I said, "Like I told you, I was at the house this morning. Are you familiar with the Farrow brothers?"

  "Shit! Were they there?"

  "They were. Who are they?"

  "What were they doing at the house?"

  I held up before answering. I didn't want to derail our conversation before it got started. But then, I figured, he's paying me. He's got a right to know.

  "They were just removing some of their items from the house."

  "Items? What items?" His right hand tensed, folding over into a fist.

  "Well, one of them had some … some clothes over there. Then there was this wine. It was —"

  "Don't tell me. The wine in the wooden box?" I nodded. He said, "Shit, those god-damned thieves."

  The line around his jaw tightened through clenched teeth. His right hand contracted again into a hard, tight fist, which he pounded once into his open left hand.

  I said, "I got the distinct impression it didn't belong to them."

  "Hell, no! I got it a little over a year ago. When Sandra and I divorced, I kind of forgot about it and just left it in the house when I moved my things out. Those slimy moth —"

  I threw him a reassuring palms-down gesture. "Okay, okay, keep your shirt on, Mr Blake. The wine is still there. I didn't let them take it."

  "You … you didn't?" His body loosened.

  "No. I didn't. It's safe." I noticed he let out a big breath, releasing lots of the tension that had gripped him. "Safe for now. But I suggest you get on over there and recover it, if it's that important to you."

  "Can you do it?" he asked.

  "Can I? You mean, can I go back out there and get that wine?"

  "Yes."

  "Well …"

  "Come on, Jack. I've got meetings all the rest of the day, and I'd feel a lot better if I knew it was secure. I'm no wine expert, but it's probably worth a few thousand dollars."

  "You paid that much for it? For a case of wine?"

  "No, not really." He moved around a little in the booth, trying for a little more comfort. He found the sweet spot, then he opened his hands to begin his explanation.

  He said, "It was given to me. Baron Rothschild — the winery belongs to his family — was over here from France early last year, and I steered him into a deal on some condos. He flipped them a few months later, and wound up making millions. He was extremely grateful to me. So grateful, in fact, that when he got back to France, he sent me the case of wine as a thank-you. He said it was among the best wine his family has ever produced."

  "I noticed the case was still sealed. How come you never drank any of it?"

  "Neither Sandra nor I are big on wine. I mean, we're not connoisseurs. She likes — liked a glass of Chardonnay with dinner, that kind of thing. But this stuff is red, or so the Baron told me, and she preferred white. We had that little wine pantry to keep a few bottles in there for her, and for company. You know, for dinner parties and whatnot. I just put it in there down on the floor and forgot about it. Then, before we could use any of it, we divorced."

  "Speaking of your divorce, was it amicable?"

  He shrugged. "It was as amicable as these things can get, I suppose. I mean, we weren't spitting on each other or anything, but it did take a lot out of me, both monetarily and emotionally. I really don't want to go any further into it."

  I exhaled. "All right, I'll go get the wine. I've got a key, compliments of Ryan Farrow."

  "Great," he said. "Just be very careful with it, okay? It's expensive stuff."

  "Yeah, I know. So I'm told."

  "I'll let you know when I want to pick it up."

  "You mean, you're not coming to get it anytime soon?"

  He said, "If I kept in my house, someone could break in and steal it."

  "Steal it? Out of your house? Why would anyone do that?"

  "If someone wants it badly enough, they'll do it."

  I leaned forward in the booth. "By someone, you mean the Farrow brothers?"

  "Them, or … whoever."

  I scratched my head. "Isn't your home safe? I mean, you must have a pretty good security system."

  "Oh, I definitely do. But if someone wants that wine, they'll break in and take it, security or no security. So will you keep it for me? For just a little while? I'll throw in an extra twenty-five hundred for your trouble."

  That got my attention. "Okay. Consider it stored."

  "And don't open any of the bottles. Not even the case."

  This wasn't adding up. Why would the Farrows be so hot to get this wine if, as Blake says, it didn't belong to them. They didn't strike me as common thieves, so they must have a deeper reason. And then, why would Blake go all this way to protect it. He said he never even drank wine. To hear him talk, you'd think he didn't know or care anything about it, the way he let it sit around untouched in that little cooler all that time.

  "What's the deal with this wine?" I asked. "Why's it so important to you?"

  His voice ticked downward, barely audible in the racket of the coffee shop. "It's not important to you, Jack. That's what you have to remember."

  I didn't like that shit at all, but he was paying the freight, so he got to decide what's important. Reluctantly, I nodded, and I agreed to his don't-open-don't-touch rule. Then I said, "Now, who are these Farrow brothers, anyway?"

  "They're mortgage bankers. One of them's been seeing Sandra for about six months."

  I let that go. Colby told me his brother had been seeing Sandra for a year. Either Blake wasn't tracking her activities as closely as he might have liked, or she was lying to him for the first six months of her relationship with Ryan Farrow. Or maybe both.

  "Are they involved in any kind of competition with you at present? Would they try to undermine any of your deals?"

  "We're not really competitors. They represent the big money lenders, finding borrowers for them on large real estate projects. But let's just say they certainly wouldn't go out of their way to avoid making things difficult for me. Over the years, I've had my problems with them."

  Just then, the waitress brought our drinks. Blake got his iced tea in a really tall glass, taller than anything he was used to, I could tell, and very big around. He looked at it as though a UFO had landed on the table.

  My beer came in a bottle, accompanied by a frosty pilsener glass. I poured it and took that first refreshing sip. Call me crazy, but I think beer always, always tastes better out of one of those slender, V-shaped glasses.

  Once the cold beer slid down my throat, I said, "You know, Mr Blake, I'm not real clear on why you want me, of all people, to work on this. For the money you're paying me, you could hire a real PI, one with a Nevada license, to work this case. Or, for that matter, you've got No-Sleeve Steve and … and … what's-his-name working for you already." I remembered all too well his two goons who pounded a lot of sense into me one day not so long ago.

  He chuckled. "You mean Julius? Ha! Steve and Julius find the killer? Ha! They couldn't find the sink in a kitchen."

  He pushed his iced tea aside. I could tell he wanted no part of it.

  Then he said, "And as for some other PI, I don't want any other one. I want you." He spoke in a honeyed voice, smooth and persuasive. "After all, it was you who returned over eighty-five thousand dollars of my money back in February, when you could've kept it, without my ever knowing about it. You've got integrity, Jack. That's a rare commodity in today's world. Something you can't license, and it can't be had for a price."

  Sure, I could've kept his money, and I almost did. I damn sure could've used it, too. Back in February, before I switched to no-limit hold'em, it was getting harder and harder to make a living at those low-limit stud games at Binion's.

  But he was wrong when he said no one would've known.

  I would've.

  "Mr Blake, let me see your cell phone."

  I saw his head go back just a little. "My cell phone? What for?"

  "Just let me see it, please." I put my hand out, palm up.

>   "What do you want it for?"

  "I'm going to copy down certain names and numbers."

  His nostrils flared at this notion. "My cell phone is private. And it's got nothing to do with this."

  "What do you think, I'm going to publish the number in Las Vegas Weekly? Now, either you trust me on this, or we can't have a deal. I'm working on your behalf here."

  "How about if I read the names and numbers to you?"

  "So you can skip over the ones I want?" I shook my head. "Let me see the phone. Like I said, it's in your best interest."

  He slowly reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, and out came the cell phone. He slid it across the table, and I went straight to his directory. Scanning the names, I saw what you might expect. Local officials, real estate people, and so on. Most had local numbers.

  "Do you have a pen?" I asked. I knew this aggravated the shit out of him, but I didn't care.

  He produced a pen, a nice one, from his other inside jacket pocket. First, I wrote down his cell number, then I began jotting down names and numbers from the directory on a napkin.

  "Hey, those are private." he said. "Confidential numbers. No one's supposed to have them."

  I stopped writing to look up at him. "You have them."

  "I mean no one else but me," he said, knowing his protests were falling away, dying unattended by the side of the road.

  "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone where I got them."

  He tossed his hands up in the air in exasperation, then let them land softly on the tabletop. He looked around the room, trying to occupy himself.

  Needing something to do while I invaded his confidential phone directory, he reached for a packet of Splenda, opened it, and was about to pour it into his enormous iced tea glass. He thought better of it, then, not knowing what to do with the open packet, dumped its contents into his empty coffee cup.

  Our food arrived, but I kept writing. I was on my second napkin.

  "Go ahead and eat while I do this," I chirped. "Go on. I'll catch up."

  Soon, I came to a single name, "Netty". I wrote down the number.

  "Who's Netty?" I asked.

  He fiddled a little with his salad. "A friend."

  "Female?"

  He nodded.

  "How close a friend?"

  He looked at me, right into my eyes. Almost right through me. "Close enough."

  "What's her last name?"

  He put down his fork in frustration.

  "That's none of your business."

  Now it was my turn to put something down. I slammed his phone on the table in front of me. The sharp report got his attention.

  "None of my business? I've got ten thousand reasons why it is my business. You know, Frank Madden is working this case for Las Vegas Metro. If you don't happen to know him, let me tell you that if you start high-hatting him like you're doing to me, he'll have your ass downtown in about two seconds flat." He opened his mouth to deliver a sharp response, but I wouldn't let him interrupt. "Now, I know you're not used to having anyone talk to you like this, Mr Blake, but I'm speaking the truth. We're supposed to have the same goal in mind here, but if you're that upset by it, just fire me, I'll return your money, then I'll go play poker this afternoon."

  To underline the point, I reached into my pants pocket, pulling out nearly the entire ten grand he'd given me, all in cash, folded over with a rubber band. I held it at eye level between my thumb and first two fingers, slowly turning it from side to side.

  He said, "She and I are no longer seeing each other."

  Someone in the party of eight at the next table told a rip-snorter of a joke, sending the entire table into laughing fits, and drowning out any normal tone of voice.

  As I returned the cash to my pocket, I had to shout out the question, "When did you break up with her?"

  "Six or eight weeks ago. She's not involved with this at all."

  Without comment, I looked at his text messages. Most were to and from Netty, suggestive cooings to one another, or else setting up times to meet, that kind of thing. I read a few, but they were all pretty much alike, all carrying the whiff of hot sex. The two of them were obviously a heavy item. The messages stretched back to last March, then dried up during the summer.

  "There," I said, smiling, as I finally returned his cell phone. "Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

  I put his pen down, but didn't give it back to him.

  I started eating, and we both fell silent for a few minutes. Pretty soon, I said, "I need to ask you something else. What deals do you have cooking with your company."

  He was a cool one, not fidgeting in the least, his voice hanging on to its satiny, alluring timbre, while he pushed his salad around on his plate.

  "We're building a new shopping mall out in Henderson, and we're about to start construction on a new bank building up in the northwest part of town."

  "Anything peculiar about those? Any unusual obstacles standing in your way?"

  "Not really, no. They're moving along as expected."

  "That's it, then? Just those two?"

  "That's it. Well, except for …"

  I let him wrestle with his hesitation while I refilled my beer glass, sipping a little of the head as it brimmed over down the sides.

  Then I said, "Except for what?"

  "There's this lot we want to buy on the edge of downtown. We're negotiating for it now."

  "What kind of lot?"

  "About five acres. Zoned industrial. It's nearly vacant. Got a couple of old warehouse structures on it in one corner."

  "What do you want with that?" I asked.

  "We own a few parcels surrounding it. That's all I'm going to tell you."

  "Are the Farrows involved in any way?"

  "No." He stirred his salad around with his fork.

  "Who owns this lot now?"

  He ate some salad, then washed it down with a sip of iced tea. I noticed his discomfort at lifting the large glass. "None of this has anything to do with Sandra's death."

  "You don't know that. Now who owns the lot?"

  "Forget it, Jack. Our discussion is over."

  Blake was one cool customer, all right. He'd given up quite a lot here under my duress and I figured I'd pushed him as far as you can push a guy like this. Farther, really. I knew anything more would be counterproductive, so I quit while I was way ahead, and went back to my club sandwich.

  5

  I had other stops I needed to make, but I wanted to get back out to Beachview first and retrieve the wine. Blake was obviously nervous about it, and while I had put the fear of God into the Farrow brothers, they seemed to want it pretty badly, too. I had a hunch they might eventually push their luck and come back for it anyway, despite my threats.

  Getting into the house was no problem, since I had the key, but I noticed that the door had only a hardware-store deadbolt, which wouldn't stop anyone who really wanted in. I made a mental note to tell Blake to get decent locks for the house he currently lived in.

  Once inside, I went straight back to the kitchen. The old wooden box was still there, still nailed shut, so I pulled it out of its cool nook. Before carrying it out to my car, I decided to have another look around.

  The living room looked the same, nothing disturbed. I glimpsed the bloody carpet again. The reddish stain was concentrated in one small area where Sandra Blake obviously bled heavily. That told me she fell in that spot right after being shot, without much moving around, while her blood poured out of her, soaking into the thick yellow carpeting.

  On the wall, a couple of feet behind where she would have been standing, was the evidence of the exit wound: the bullet hole, along with somewhat symmetrical blood spatter. From about three feet away, I raised my arm straight out, as though I had a gun in my hand pointing at the spot where she must have stood. I wondered about her final thought as she saw the barrel of the gun rise up to eye level, inches away. Was she consumed by fear? Surprise? Hatred?

  I moved back through the
rest of the downstairs. She had a large, well-appointed office, sunlit through bay windows allowing a panoramic view of the lake. A metal file cabinet stood in one corner, all four drawers unlocked. Each drawer was filled with mostly real estate paperwork. I riffled through it for a couple of minutes, but nothing caught my attention.

  Sitting down at her desk, I checked out the drawers for an address book, but of course, there was none. Madden's boys would have taken it and gone over it, trying to pick up a lead. I was pretty sure they snatched her computer, too, which had undoubtedly occupied the empty spot on the desk, where the modem cord now lay by itself, unconnected.

  I pushed a couple of buttons on her telephone, revealing the number of the last person to call her. The caller ID read, "Silverstone Towers". I pressed the back arrow for the call before that, and the one before that, making note of her last fifty calls, while writing down names and numbers with one of her pens and a sheet of lined paper off a yellow pad on her desk. I always want to have a pen on me, you know, for things like this, but for some reason, I never have one.

  Afterward, I went upstairs, straight into her bedroom. It was the same as when I'd seen it this morning, with all the feminine touches. Lots of pale blue and peach stuff everywhere. In her closet, which was extremely large, I noticed a two foot-long blank space on one of the hanging rails, from which Ryan Farrow had retrieved his clothes. The rest of the closet was filled with her things. The ones I looked at all bore upscale designer labels.

  Over on the nightstand was a cream-colored phone, the kind people had in their ritzy penthouses in the old black-and-white movies. The receiver was a thin cylindrical handle, with an earpiece and mouthpiece attached to the ends. In the movies, the black and white film invariably made these telephones look white.

  Also on the table was a lamp and a book. It was a hardcover copy of The Da Vinci Code. I had tried reading that one a couple of months back, borrowing a copy from the library, but I threw it on the floor after about fifty pages.

  A bookmark barely showed itself, just peeking through the top rim of the pages. I thumbed to that spot, about two-thirds of the way through. The bookmark was in fact a business card, belonging to one Hector Olivera, president of the Olivera Group, Miami. Their logo tastefully covered the left side of the card. It was made of very heavy stock, glossy and expensive. Madden's boys had apparently missed this one. It surprised me, because he's a good cop, not known for missing details at a crime scene. I flicked the card between my fingers a couple of times, feeling its high-end thickness, then slipped it in my shirt pocket, next to the photo of Sandra that Blake had given me. As I made my way down to the first floor, I wondered what a Miami business card was doing in a book in Sandra Blake's bedroom.