The Downtown Deal

by Mike Dennis

  The long, vertical window by the front door was curtained, as were all the windows in the front of the house. An uneasy feeling crept over me, slowing me down and causing a sharp tingling on the back of my neck. I tried the door, slowly twisting the knob. It opened.

  Car in the driveway, no lights in the house, door unlocked … I didn't like anything about this. I considered leaving, but decided against it. Quietly stepping inside, I wished I had brought my weapon after all.

  After a few moments, my eyes adjusted to the black interior of the house. Soon, I found a light switch. I flipped it on, illuminating the foyer and sending trails of light into a couple of the adjacent rooms. I heard a slight thump, sounding like it came from the second floor. The stairs were off to the right. I headed up.

  When I reached the top, I could go down a hallway either right or left. Looking both ways, I glimpsed one door to the left and two to the right. All were closed. I went left.

  Creeping across the carpeted floor, I arrived at the door, momentarily motionless, listening. The light from downstairs had faded behind me. With all quiet, I took the handle and carefully turned it, easing the door open.

  The first thing I saw was the big window offering a wide vista of the Las Vegas Valley, with the city sparkling in the distance. As I entered the room, I saw the beginnings of a bed, with an arm draped over the side. Then, I felt the hard, hammering force on my head, my consciousness ebbing away, and as I crumpled to the floor, I saw no more.

  ≈≈≈

  I don't know when I opened my eyes, but when I did, I couldn't see anything at all. Not only was everything dark, but I didn't know where I was. I thought I felt carpet against the right side of my face, but I couldn't prove it. I couldn't move at all. My head pounded so hard, I could almost hear it. Otherwise, all was silent.

  After a little while of lying immobile, I pieced it together. Farrow, dark house, upstairs, boom. Again I tried to move. No luck.

  From my paralyzed position, I moved my eyes as best I could, trying for a look around the room, but I didn't get far. I could see the foot of the bed, with an arm hanging off it. It looked familiar. Then it snapped back to me that it was the last thing I saw before my skull caved in.

  As my brain ramped back up into functioning mode, I finally gained movement, tiny bits at a time. The whomping in my head subsided a little, enabling me to make the mighty effort to get up. I don't know how long it took me — time had no meaning at all — but I eventually struggled to my feet.

  I didn't want to think right then about who hit me or why, but I cursed myself for walking into this blackened house to begin with, for climbing the staircase, and for all the snooping around. I felt I shouldn't push my luck, so I stood still for a minute, leaning against the wall while taking in the sights, or what I could make of them in the blackened room.

  The panoramic view of the city was still there in the window, while over on the bed, the arm that hung off it was attached to a stationary figure. From where I stood, I didn't have to get any closer. I knew it was Ryan Farrow, and I knew he was dead.

  All of a sudden, I was very grateful to be breathing. Shit, if the killer had wanted me dead, that's what I'd be. I'd been out for a while, so I was pretty sure he was long gone.

  Pretty soon, I felt I could put one foot in front of the other without tumbling back to the floor. I slowly made my way across the room to the bedside table, where I flicked on the light. Farrow lay on his back, having been shot once in the forehead, just like Sandra Blake. His blood had spilled out of him into a stain on his green and gray satin bedspread.

  I looked at my watch. Nine-fifteen. I reached for my cell phone to call Frank Madden. Then I realized he would've left work by now, meaning I'd be connected to the swing shift at Homicide, talking to God knows who. Of course, I'd have to answer for my presence at the murder scene: why was I there, how did I get in, what's my connection to Farrow, and on and on all night long. Fuck it. My head was killing me, so I figured I would just go home and call Madden in the morning.

  With great resolve, I painfully hobbled downstairs. The foyer light had been switched off. I flipped it back on to take a quick look around the house. Nothing of any significance popped up until I got to a room Farrow obviously used as a den.

  There was a switch on the wall just inside the door. When I hit it, a big overhead light came on. A long couch lined one wall, with the opposite wall covered with books. A comfy-looking chair and side table sat in a bay window, which offered the same sensational view as the bedroom. A ladder on a track slid back and forth along the stacked shelves. On the near wall, just to the right of the doorway stood a wet bar, and beyond that, a wine storage unit. It held about thirty bottles, but none of them were in their horizontal slots. They lay scattered around the floor. A couple were broken. I looked behind the bar. It had all been disturbed, rummaged through. I'd seen enough.

  I wiped my prints from everything I remembered touching, then left the house. On the way to my car, the cold wind finished the job of reviving me, but my mind raced into fifth gear.

  This had to be a contract job. That's the only reason I'm still alive. The killer came for Ryan Farrow and I just happened to show up at the wrong time. An amateur would've freaked out and blasted me on the spot. But this guy kept his head and didn't want to leave anything that would look like a mass murder scene, so he put me out while he made his getaway.

  That led me to try to piece it all together. Why was Farrow smoked? Was there a connection to Hector Olivera? Maybe to Blake?

  And whoever did this wanted that case of wine.

  What the fuck is going on here?

  All this made my head hurt even more. I drove straight home, where I poured myself a good, stiff shot of Dalmore. It didn't do much for the pain, but it helped me drift off to sleep.

  9

  The raw pain in my head had wound down to a dull burn by the time I awoke the next morning. I'd forgotten to close the curtains before I crashed, so the gray morning light came blasting into the room, not doing me any good at all. Squinting, I stumbled out of bed and into the shower, hoping the pain would go away. It didn't. Once I got dressed and made my way into the kitchen to put the coffee on, I realized the hurt would be with me for quite a while.

  After the toast popped up, I took it to the table and sat down with the paper. The first agreeable sip of coffee helped out, feeling warm and familiar going down. There was no news of Ryan Farrow's murder anywhere. If they knew about it, they almost certainly would've put it on the front page, or at the very least, page two or three, provided there was no worldwide crisis to hijack the space, which there wasn't. I reached for my phone.

  Punching up Frank Madden's number for Homicide, I hoped he would be there, although I wasn't sure he worked Saturdays. As I made the call, I opened the curtains in my living room. Through the window, I heard the wind rustling through high treetops, while paper, leaves, and other pieces of debris blew hard across the parking lot. Gray skies lingered overhead, promising a miserable day. I couldn't find the sun anywhere. Instinctively, I started to shiver, so I went over to the thermostat and shoved it up to about eighty. Finally, I got Madden on the line.

  "Frank, Jack Barnett. I'm glad I caught you this morning."

  "Yes, Jack. What can I do for you?"

  "Go out to Ryan Farrow's house." I gave him the Summerlin address, as I walked back to my toast and coffee on the table. "You'll find him sprawled out on his bed with a bullet in his brain, just like Sandra Blake."

  "Jesus! How do you know this?"

  "Remember I told you yesterday that I was going to pay him a little visit last night? Well, I got there a shade too late. That's the state I found him in before someone sapped me and put me out for a few hours. When I came to, Farrow was still there, still just as dead."

  "Last night? Holy shit! Why didn't you call me? You've got my cell number."

  "I know, I know," I said. "But it was late, and I didn't want to hang around. The inside of my head was
exploding, and I didn't want to have to explain my being there to whoever showed up from Homicide. When I got popped, it was obviously close to the time of death, since the killer was still in the room. I'd label him a professional, sent to kill Farrow only, while limiting collateral damage such as myself."

  "What time were you there?"

  "I got there around twenty till seven. It hadn't been dark for too long." I propped the phone up between my cheek and shoulder while I buttered my toast. Just that little motion with the phone sent hot jabs of fire through my skull. I set the knife down and took the phone in my hand again.

  "Just for the record, Jack, what were you doing there?"

  "Like I told you yesterday, I wanted to find out what, if anything, Farrow knew about Hector Olivera and his relationship with Sandra Blake." He didn't speak, then I added, "Don't worry, Frank. I didn't do it."

  "It's not a question of whether you did it, it's why did you wait till this morning to call it in. I've got to go out there now, goddammit, and I've got to put it in my report that you told me about it."

  "Just say you got a call from a Concerned Citizen."

  "And just what was a CC doing at the scene of a murder moments after it took place?"

  "I'm sure you can be creative about that. The main thing is, Farrow's dead, and he's waiting for you right now."

  ≈≈≈

  I nursed my head the rest of the day. Taking a shot that heavy would normally turn me off on a case. I mean, I really don't need that shit, you know? I like my head the way it is, and I don't want it cracked open because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Blake had given me twenty-two thousand, five hundred reasons to stick my nose where it shouldn't be. So that's where I was going to stick it.

  As the afternoon wound into evening, I poured a shot of Dalmore and turned on the TV. The baseball post-season playoffs were under way, with the winners advancing to the World Series. I tuned into the National League playoff, game four, featuring the Chicago Cubs and the Florida Marlins. The Cubs were walking away with it, 7-0, in the fourth inning.

  Normally, I'm a big baseball fan, but this year, the poker at Binion's has been too good to ignore ever since I made the change to no-limit hold'em. So because of that and because of this case suddenly falling into my lap, all of this year's season-ending baseball drama has been sliding right by me.

  They were playing in Miami. The announcers were going crazy over the Cubs and their chances of going to the World Series for the first time in the memory of man. If they won this game, which it looked like they would easily do, the Marlins would be down three games to one in the best-of-seven series, meaning they would need to win three in a row to advance, including the final two games in Chicago. This gave the Marlins only the slimmest of shots to go to the World Series.

  In between their breathless praise for the Cubs, the announcers casually mentioned the Marlins were hamstrung in their endless quest for a new stadium in Miami. With the game still on, I went over to the computer and looked up "Hector Olivera".

  There were thousands of mentions. As best I could tell from scanning a bunch of them, most were trade stories about his companies and their real estate dealings. There was a human interest piece from the Miami Herald a couple of years back. I looked it over, and found nothing more than a strong emphasis on his impoverished youth and his daring journey across the Florida Straits, escaping the viselike grip of Fidel Castro. According to the story, Olivera was a real self-starter, not easily intimidated by odds being stacked against him.

  This all fit in with what I'd learned about him so far, but I still needed to link him to the Farrows and Sandra Blake.

  I then googled the combination of "Hector Olivera" and "Florida Marlins", and got a handful of hits. It turned out that Olivera's name was one of several that were being tossed around in the team's search for a new stadium. In one of the articles, which was about ten months old, he claimed he had a parcel of Miami-area land "in his pocket" that was big enough to accommodate the ballpark. He further went on to say he could arrange a "serious percentage" of the needed construction financing if his land was chosen as the site. Only problem was, the land was in Hialeah, a Miami suburb, and Marlins management was reluctant to move the team out of Miami proper.

  I looked back at the TV. My knowledge of the Marlins was sketchy at best, but I knew they won the World Series back in, I think, '97 or so, beating Cleveland. The following year, however, their ownership pissed off a lot of their fans when they dismantled the team, unloading most of their top players. It think it was because they … they … ri-i-ight, then it came back to me … because they couldn't get a new stadium deal from the city of Miami.

  I watched another inning. The Marlins scored, but were no threat to win the game. A few televised shots of foul balls landing in the stands showed me lots of ugly orange seats. They looked like they were made out of wood and were obviously very uncomfortable. The place was jammed, over sixty-five thousand, the announcers said, but they went on to say that normal home-game attendance for the Marlins during the season was far, far less, just barely cracking five figures.

  A new stadium, according to the announcers, with lots of eye-popping luxuries like a dome and other shiny features, "would have no trouble at all attracting tens of thousands of fans to each and every game." Translation: higher ticket prices, higher concession revenue, higher parking rates, and more money all the way around.

  A lot more money.

  My mouth was clamping down around the hook of this case, and I felt myself being slowly reeled in.

  I went back to the Olivera-Marlins connection on the computer. One of the articles mentioned that Olivera's first cousin, Marco Antonio Calzado, owned a very small percentage of the Marlins. Calzado had come to the US in a similar fashion as his cousin, and was currently a junior partner in the Olivera Group.

  The article also said that the Marlins ownership changed hands earlier this year, but that Calzado and a few others from Miami kept their interests in the team, which amounted to a total of less than five percent. The new owners, it seemed, were from the West Coast, headed up by a woman, Mrs Elva Wiltenauer, while the five-percent group was entirely made up of Miami investors. So, in the interests of keeping up good local PR, they didn't force out the small south Florida partners.

  Smart move.

  One group they did force out, however, was the previous owner's management team, who had led the struggle to keep the Marlins in Miami.

  I googled "Florida Marlins relocation". Hundreds of hits popped up, all speculating on when, not if, the Marlins would leave town. Several cities were reported to be in the running, the pack leaders being Charlotte and San Antonio. Las Vegas was mentioned only a couple of times, and then purely as an outside contender.

  Mrs Wiltenauer, through her management mouthpieces, made it clear in one article that if a new stadium deal did not materialize in Miami "very soon", the team would have no choice but to look for another home. It was clear she and her colleagues desired the money those empty orange seats weren't currently bringing in.

  I got up and poured a hefty shot of Dalmore. Sipping it as I walked back to the computer, I thought back on all my baseball knowledge regarding this type of thing. I knew that relocating a team was something not often done. It was an unwieldy process, and very disruptive. It showed bad faith to the original city, to say nothing of the high monetary and public relations costs involved. But I also knew that if the magic words, "new stadium", were uttered by the prospective host city, all other negatives tended to fade into the fog.

  It was beginning to look like Sandra Blake and Ryan Farrow died so the Florida Marlins could move to Las Vegas.

  10

  There was no point in watching the game any further. I put my jacket on, walking out into the cold night to make the long drive down to the Bootlegger.

  Martine was well into her set by the time I arrived. I caught most of Come Rain Or Come Shine, an old torch song that always gets my attentio
n. She looked ravishing, her dark brown, shoulder-length hair falling around the straps of a clingy burnt orange dress. The place was fairly full, both the bar and the dining room, in contrast to Thursday's sparse crowd. In fact, I had trouble finding a seat at the big bar, but when I did, I ordered a Glenlivet.

  I took a long look around. People mostly in their late thirties and up, all the way into what looked like maybe their seventies, yet it still didn't feel like an old folks' place. It was alive, humming with exuberance you would usually associate with youth.

  I sipped at my Scotch for a while until she finished her set. As she made her way through the thick crowd, I waved at her a couple of times. She eventually saw me, then came over to where I was seated.

  "Hi, Jack." Her smile was infectious.

  "You sound great, as usual," I said, looking around for another empty stool, but finding none. I got up, moving my drink aside. "Here, take a seat."

  She resisted at first, but I insisted that she sit. I ordered her a drink, house red, as before. When it arrived, her work smile vanished and she asked, "Any news on who killed Sandra?"

  "Not yet. But there are a couple of more things I'd like to ask you about it."

  She talked over me and said, "I heard her body is still in the morgue. It's been, what, four days now. What's up with that?"

  I had to admit I didn't know the answer. "Maybe the coroner has some further testing he wants to do. It's not uncommon in a high-profile murder case. That's usually one of the prime reasons for not releasing a body."

  She relaxed her posture. "Sorry, Jack. I'm just, well, you know, upset over the whole thing. She was my friend."