The Downtown Deal

by Mike Dennis

  He threw me a mean grin, tightly wrapped around small teeth. "You really have done your homework, haven't you?"

  "Like I said, I'm only interested in finding Sandra Blake's killer. I don't care anything about this stadium, or the land, or anything else. I'm not out to derail your deal. I only want to get to the bottom of her murder. And I repeat, everything is confidential." I tossed him a slight hand gesture as a token of my sincerity. I hoped he bought it.

  He took a long time before he spoke. Finally, he leaned toward me and said, "Mr Blake felt I would present a better face to the city when the time came to work out their participation in the deal. You see, I'm the rarest of the rare breed, Mr Barnett. A native Las Vegan."

  I had to give him that. "They are rare indeed," I said.

  He quickly added, "Rarer still, my family goes all the way back before the very founding of the city in 1905. The Silquists were one of the original families who settled the Las Vegas Valley back before there was a city at all. I mean before there was gaming, before there was a Hoover Dam, when there were virtually no cars, no permanent buildings, and of course, no air conditioning. Do you have any idea what it was like for those settlers back then? Here in this hot, dusty, godforsaken valley?"

  He didn't wait for my response, although none was coming. His voice rose to a fervent, preacher's pitch. "At first, it was nothing more than a boiling, sandblown tent town, built around the railroad. There were little more than a few saloons and whorehouses, plus a general store, and also a hotel, if you could call it that."

  He stood up, pointing to the framed photo on the wall. I finally looked at it. There were two men in big, thick mustaches standing in front of a wooden building by a hitching post. They were both wearing guns. A horse was in the left of the picture. He tapped the frame glass with his index finger.

  "That's my great-grandfather on the right. Benjamin Silquist. One of the original pioneers of this city. He bought two lots at auction right after the city was officially founded, and received the very first deed to Las Vegas land. Our family settled on one of those lots, and we've lived in Las Vegas ever since." He returned to his chair, calmer. "Mr Blake believes that my pedigree would be much more palatable to the city, as well as to the media, when it came time to negotiate their role in the stadium financing."

  I said, "More palatable, say, than that of a Cuban exile from Miami who came to this country a few years ago on a life raft?"

  "Well, I don't want to put it in those terms …"

  "But you will if you have to."

  "I will do whatever it takes to get this stadium built. The city needs it."

  I shifted my weight in the chair. I couldn't get comfortable. "Were you acquainted with Sandra Blake?"

  "I was. Back before she and Mr Blake got divorced. My wife and I saw them socially on several occasions."

  "How about after?"

  He swiveled his chair around a little, facing slightly off to my left. "I saw her maybe a time or two. Most recently, right after Mr Blake enlisted her to help him get Olivera's land. Previously, she and Ryan Farrow were working the other side of the street, trying on Olivera's behalf to acquire all of Mr Blake's holdings in that downtown area."

  "How did you feel about that?" I asked.

  "About what?"

  "About her working with Olivera. I mean, she was, after all, Blake's ex."

  "She was very knowledgeable in the world of real estate and development. Much more so than you might think. She evidently felt Olivera would pay her a healthy commission. That's the way the business works, you know."

  "How'd you feel about her switching sides? Coming back to Blake."

  "They were divorced, but Mr Blake would never let personal feelings stand in the way of a major business deal like this one. Sandra was perfectly positioned to help him, what with her relationships with Farrow and Olivera. Myself, I think it was a good move."

  I glanced out the window behind him. Traffic had picked up some, moving smoothly in both directions on West Sahara. The little noon-hour bump was in full flow. In addition, the top fronds of the tall desert palm outside his window were beginning to stir. The wind had arrived.

  "What kind of relationship did she have with Olivera?"

  "Really, Mr Barnett, let's not let this degenerate into gossip. I'm very busy, and I would prefer to end our discussion right now."

  "I would prefer to keep it going."

  "Well, it will have to be some other time, I'm afraid." He stood and gestured toward the door. I got the idea.

  19

  Olivera had said his money meeting was this morning. My watch said it was nearing noon. Hoping the meeting had concluded, I motored on down to the Venetian, thinking I could catch him before his meeting with the mayor this afternoon. Reluctantly, I decided to valet my car again, since timing was important. Inside the hotel, I picked up a house phone and asked for his room. I was in luck.

  "Mr Olivera, it's Jack Barnett, the private investigator."

  "Yes, Jack. What is it?"

  "I hope your meeting with the money people went well this morning."

  "It went very well. But somehow, I do not think you are calling to congratulate me."

  "I'd like to see you for a moment. It's very important."

  "Do you have further information on who killed Sandra?"

  "I'm working on it, but I need to speak with you. And not over the phone like this."

  "Jack, I'm afraid I have to prepare for my meeting with the mayor this afternoon. There isn't time."

  "And you're leaving town tomorrow to go to New York for the World Series. I must speak with you. I promise I'll be brief."

  "All right. Room twenty-four one-thirty-six. But only for a moment. I have very little time."

  "I'm downstairs right now. I'll be right up."

  There were so many digits in the room number, I was about to forget them, so I went to the front desk and borrowed a pen and a piece of paper to record it. I hoped I'd gotten it right.

  I glided smoothly to the twenty-fourth floor, then down the lush hallway to the room number he gave me. I knocked, and almost immediately, Calzado answered the door. He was surprisingly well-dressed, sporting a French blue dress shirt with an appropriate silk tie, along with dark blue pants. I assumed the pants were part of a suit.

  "I must have the wrong room," I said. "I was supposed to meet Mr Olivera."

  He opened the door wide enough, gesturing to let me know I should come in. "This Hector's room," he said. I went in. I noticed his suit jacket was neatly folded over the back of a chair just inside the door.

  It was a suite of olympic proportions. My entire apartment could have fit into the living-room area, with enough room left over to throw a dance. High-ticket furniture all over the place, plenty of gadgets everywhere, original artwork — or what looked like it, anyway — and a sensational view of the south Strip. I had to admit, I was impressed. I thought about my one-bedroom apartment in a questionable part of town and realized I could learn to live like this.

  There were two doors leading out of the living room. Both were shut. Momentarily, Olivera came through one of them, closing it behind him. He exuded every bit of his vibrant youth, all thirty-some-odd years, itching for his next challenge, with no fear in his playbook. He was dressed in shirtsleeves, just like me, only his shirt was a hard-to-get shade of lavender and made of Sea Island cotton, costing about fifteen times as much as mine. His designer tie probably went for upwards of two hundred dollars. He welcomed me and we shook hands.

  "I have ordered lunch, Jack. Would you like to join us?"

  "You're very kind, but no, thank you. This is certainly a beautiful suite, though."

  "Yes, I like the Venetian. They treat you well here. But when my condo is ready, that is where I will stay whenever I come to Vegas. It will be even nicer than this."

  Of that, I had no doubt.

  "Would you care for a drink?" He motioned to a silver table with two cut glass decanters, an ice bucket, and va
rious pieces of glassware. One of the decanters contained a clear liquid, the other was amber. He pointed at the amber with raised eyebrows, as if forming a question.

  I nodded. He poured the whiskey — straight up, fortunately — then handed it to me. He didn't pour one for himself. I reasoned it was because he didn't want to take the edge off for his big meeting with the mayor after lunch.

  He took a seat on a big tan couch made of buttery leather and motioned me to sit on it as well. Calzado sat in the adjacent matching loveseat, not registering any emotion on his face.

  "So, what is so important?" Olivera asked.

  "What I want to know, Mr Olivera, is … what's the deal with the wine?"

  I tasted the drink. It was very good Scotch, probably single malt.

  "The wine? Do you mean …"

  "I mean the château whatever-it-is. What is it and why do you want it so badly?"

  "Jack, this, uh, this is not really —"

  "Don't tell me it's none of my business. There have been two murders, and I'm investigating one of them. This wine is right in the middle of the whole dirty mess. That makes it my business."

  I could see him gathering his thoughts. "What do you know about it so far?"

  "Very little. I know it's expensive, and that you want it. That's about it."

  "Did Mr Blake tell you anything about it?"

  I sipped the whiskey again. It was really good stuff. "He didn't seem to know much more about it than I did. He told me some nobleman from France gave it to him a little while back."

  "But he did not tell you anything about its value?"

  "He said he thought it was worth some money, but I got the idea that he really didn't know how much. I don't think he's a wine drinker at all, to tell you the truth."

  Olivera said, "Did either of the Farrow brothers seem to know about it?"

  "I'm supposed to be the one asking the questions here. What do the Farrows have to do with this?"

  He appeared to be very relaxed on his end of the couch, but he put his ankle up on his knee to get that last little ounce of comfort. "I am only trying to find out exactly what you have been told about this wine, Jack. I want to make sure you have not been misled."

  "I told you, I know very little about it."

  "Well, what did the Farrows tell you?"

  "That they wanted to steal it out of Sandra Blake's house thirty-six hours after her murder. Colby told me it was French wine, and that I wouldn't know anything about it. He was right on both counts."

  He uncrossed his leg, putting his foot back down on the thick, pale yellow carpeting. Then, in a very compact set of motions, clasped and unclasped his hands several times, fairly rapidly.

  "It's Château Mouton-Rothschild, 1945. Do you know what that means?"

  "Surprise me."

  He leaned a little farther back into the couch, crossing his legs again. I sensed a speech coming up, almost a professorial-type lecture. As he clasped his hands together for good, I knew I wasn't going to be disappointed.

  His dark, liquid eyes widened in excitement, as he began: "During the Second World War, the Nazis took over all the vineyards in France and the other countries they conquered. They did not really want to get into the wine business. Not while they were fighting a war on two fronts, anyway."

  He looked at me for some acknowledgement of what he was saying, some assurance that I was paying attention. I slowly moved my head up and down, then focused my eyes directly into his. That seemed to satisfy him.

  He went on. "But most of those vineyards had great stocks on hand, so the Nazis just looted those stocks and drank from them. When the war ended, the Rothschilds returned and immediately resumed management of their winery in time for the 1945 vintage. Because they had been out of the business for several years, they wanted to do something special for their first release. So they decided to call the Mouton '45 the 'Liberation Vintage' to celebrate victory in the war. Does that mean anything to you?"

  "What do you think?"

  I almost caught him rolling his eyes, but he restrained himself at the last split-second. "Well, I'll tell you what it means. The weather conditions in France that year came together perfectly to produce one of the greatest grapes in history. And the Liberation Vintage Château Mouton is one of the greatest wines in the history of the world."

  I glimpsed Calzado. He was preoccupied during this history lesson with looking out the window and fiddling with his cufflinks. I said, "Okay, so it's a great wine. So what?"

  "So what? I will tell you so what. The Rothschilds released the wine in 1945, on schedule, but in a limited number. Without doubt, this was due to lack of time. Remember, the war had just ended, and it took them a lot of time just to get the winery up and running to their satisfaction. In any event, they produced only about twelve thousand cases altogether, including fewer than three hundred fifty cases of magnums, a very small number."

  I drank a little more whiskey, this time to keep my eyes from glazing over. Olivera continued, "Not only that, for that one year only, they issued some, but not all, of these cases with a special liberation label on the bottles. Blake told me his case contained magnums, and that the Baron told him all six bore these extremely rare labels."

  I said, "Why would he tell you something like that? I mean, how did he know of your great interest in wine?"

  "Sandra told me about the wine at first. She said she had it in her house. When I began speaking with Blake about the land deal, I mentioned it, and that's when he told me. He gave me the complete story of how Baron Rothschild gave him the wine, the whole thing."

  I tried to get a handle on this. "So it's those labels that make this wine so rare?"

  He sat up straight, then began gesturing with his hands, something he'd tried not to do up till now. I knew he was getting more excited. "Not just the labels. As I have said, the wine itself is superior. And they didn't make too much of it. Back in those days, you could have walked into a liquor store and purchased a bottle of Mouton '45, but it would have cost you around twenty dollars, a fortune at that time for a bottle of wine at the retail level."

  He then raised an index finger and said, "One more thing. Every winery keeps a few dozen cases of each vintage in its own stockpile. Which means that from 1945 until the time the Baron gave it to Blake a little over a year ago, it was kept under the most perfect, most pristine conditions. I also know that Blake kept it under proper storage from the moment he received it." Now, as his excitement reached a new level, he modulated his voice upward. He couldn't help it. "Jack, this is a find that wine collectors like myself only dream of. A case of Château Mouton Liberation Vintage, straight from the winery itself! It is nothing less than the Holy Grail of wine."

  He'd gotten pretty worked up over this. I gave him a moment to come back down to earth, then I asked, "What's it worth?"

  He exhaled, then slowly settled back into the couch. He looked up toward the ceiling, as if trying to calculate a figure in his mind. Then, he tossed that strategy aside, saying, "Well, this case is worth much more because they are magnum bottles."

  "What are those?"

  "They are the larger size bottles, kind of like the one-point-five liter bottles you see today." I didn't know what he was talking about, but I nodded again like I did know, then let him go on. "Wine ages differently in the magnums than it does in the standard size bottles, causing it to deliver a more … a more extravagant taste. Because these bottles were kept under such ideal conditions, that would add greatly to its value."

  "So, I ask you again, what's it worth?"

  Again, another look at the ceiling, and again, his eyes returned to looking at me, only much more expressively. "Not long ago, a case of Mouton '45 magnums was auctioned off for more than a couple of hundred thousand dollars. But what you must understand, Jack, is that these wines that sell at auction have been floating around for years, from one collector to another."

  "Okay," I said. "So they float around."

  "Well, you would th
ink that most collectors keep their wine under proper conditions, but there's really no way of knowing, is there? Blake's case came directly from the winery! And this can be proven. That is as good as it gets. You never see this kind of thing anywhere. The wine is guaranteed to be perfect in every way. So its value goes off the chart, as you say."

  "If it was so valuable, why would Sandra Blake just keep it lying around on the floor of her wine storage area?"

  "She didn't really know what she had, and no one knew she had it. No one but myself, and of course Blake and the Farrows, since she was dating Ryan Farrow. In fact, I don't believe anyone knew that Blake had it in the first place. There was no news in the wine world that Baron Rothschild had given away a case of Mouton '45 magnums. It was, you see, just one of those things that no one was aware of. There was no great attempt to keep it secret, but Blake didn't think it was anything special, so he just never told anyone about it."

  "How do you know it's for real? I mean, how do you know Blake's story is true? Have you seen the actual bottles?"

  "When Sandra told me about it, I asked to see it. She showed me the sealed case. It was nailed shut, exactly as they did it in 1945. I did not ask her to open it. When I returned to Miami, I telephoned the winery in France. After many attempts over a period of several weeks, I finally was able to speak personally with Baron Rothschild, who confirmed that he had sent Blake a case of Mouton '45 magnums as a gift. When he told me that, my knees became weak. Do you understand?"

  "Not really. But they're your knees."