Case of Lies

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “I’ll talk to my client,” Nina said. “But I can’t advise him to take your offer. I’ll advise him to request the policy limits, which are going to be quite a bit more.”

  “The insurance company won’t go for that. You think I haven’t tried?” Betty Jo said.

  “Maybe losing the motion will convince them.”

  “It won’t. They already factored that in. Even if a jury finds the motel negligent, it’s only contributory negligence. They’ll decide that the motel is about ten percent responsible and the killer’s responsible for the rest. So even if you get a half-million judgment, we’re still only going to have to pay the same old fifty thousand. Last and final, Nina.”

  “I understand,” Nina said. She stood up. “Nice to meet you, Hector. That is some amazingly delicious tea.”

  “Heh. Heh.”

  “He’s delighted you liked it,” Betty Jo said cheerfully.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Bova.”

  Bova said, “I’m sure we can work something out.” The words were basically formulaic, but Nina thought he really did want out, and that there wasn’t any more money. How would Dave Hanna react to the offer? Nina followed Betty Jo’s broad backside outside.

  At the Bronco, Betty Jo said, “I forgot to mention one teeny thing, which is a possibility based on complete speculation and not a scintilla of evidence, that Jimmy might have a line on one of the witnesses. The tourist kids with the fake IDs.”

  Nina stiffened. “What’s that?”

  “He’ll be glad to tell you when we settle.”

  “You can’t do that. You’ll be getting my interrogatories tomorrow, and he’d better answer the questions.”

  “He doesn’t have to provide complete speculation to your client.”

  “He’ll be in court if he-”

  “Let’s part friends,” Betty Jo said gaily. “Okay? Let’s just think on it. We’ll talk again. Meantime, I like your style, Nina. You’re a cool customer.”

  Nina smiled. “Okay. We’ll talk. I appreciate your straightness, too. I’m with you on the negotiating business. I also prefer to lay what I have on the table.”

  “We’ll have lunch sometime. I’d like to hear some juicy legal gossip.”

  “Sure. Nice having you up here, Betty Jo. The winters must be knocking your socks off after Modesto.”

  “My love bunny keeps me warm.”

  “Hector-he’s retired?”

  “Oh, yes. He had a bad accident and crushed his larynx and suffered a little brain damage. But he’s fit as a fiddle in other respects. In all the ways that count.” She smiled. “He was as broke as me when we tried his case, and we both got rich at the end.”

  “He was your client?”

  “Yeah, he got ten million and I got five, and we decided what the hay, let’s put the whole shebang together.” Betty Jo put her hand on Nina’s shoulder and said, “I wouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t a world-class lay. Life’s short, and you better pay attention to that, sister.”

  Nina got into her vehicle, and Betty Jo closed the door after her. “Jimmy and I look forward to hearing from you.”

  Nina started up the engine and waved. Betty Jo had seen it all, engineered every nuance of the evening, this canny, middle-aged lady from Modesto. Driving away with her windows open to the night, loving the way the cool air lifted the hair on her arms like the brush of a hand, Nina thought, Life’s short. She’s got that right.

  4

  ELLIOTT WAKEFIELD WENT TO WORK AT Caesars casino-hotel on Lake Tahoe Boulevard at 10:00 P.M. on Friday night, dressed as usual in baggy khaki shorts and Vans sneakers from his MIT days. The night had a flat, metallic smell to it. The stream of light along both sides of the slow-moving line of cars could almost have passed for palaces and public buildings in some grand European metropolis that had missed being bombed in World War II.

  But Stateline wasn’t a real city, it was slow robbery in a mountain town dressed up with a lot of liquor and eyeliner, and those weren’t palaces, they were casinos. November had arrived, and it was cold after dark. As he climbed out of the subcompact, handing the keys to a valet older than he was, a couple of very young hookers sashayed by in black leather minis. He walked across the portico, jammed his hands into his pockets, and ignored them.

  He didn’t like Tahoe, but he’d been flying here for years. He entered the imposing glass doors of the casino and the stark air-conditioning caught him.

  Inside, people flowed in and out of the main gaming floor. Most were excited; some were drunk, and a few were thieves. Elliott was acutely conscious of being alone. Knock knock, who’s there, Thelonius. Thelonius who? Thelonius boy in town.

  At MIT, living in the tiny dorm room, eating at the Commons every day with the same people, Elliott had still always ended up alone. Now, living with his father in the small brick house on Vashon Island near Seattle, he sometimes felt the loneliness might kill him when the MS got Pop. He did it to himself. Even now he was wishing he were back on the island, sitting at his desk and working with his Mathematica program on the computer.

  He loved Pop, and Pop was his only company. They ate dinner and watched TV together like an old married couple, and Pop didn’t have a clue as to how Elliott paid the mortgage. They were happy, happy like a pair of trilobites embedded in a layer of shale, safe and stable.

  Still, even if he had the misfortune of being a mathematician, he wasn’t a priest. He had thought sometimes about paying for sex, since he seemed to be too picky and shy to pick up a regular girl. But hookers, no. They were phonies. He couldn’t stand the fake smiles and arm squeezes, the self-conscious way they went about their business. Elliott wanted love, not a hustle. And sometimes they could be dangerous, and the danger quotient in his work had already proved high enough.

  He took one more look at the girls entering the casino. Then he rubbed his pocket, where his stake was.

  He couldn’t help glancing upward as he moved into the gaming area. The Eyes in the Sky, video and live cams, were barely visible in the ceiling if you knew where to look. In spite of the marble columns and marble floors of the hotel section and the sumptuous look of the casino, it attracted exactly the same customers as anywhere else in Stateline. The out-of-towners, especially the Asians, dressed up. The locals and California weekenders wore the same clothes as Elliott, straight off the sale table at the Gap. He looked just like every other techie from Silicon Valley, getting ready to say adios to his paycheck after a hard week writing code in a windowless cubicle.

  Elliott circled the blackjack tables, which were almost all full. He liked that, because it kept the pit bosses occupied. They might not notice him. Not that he was looking for a killing tonight without Silke or Raj or Carleen to act as a spotter. He only needed a few thousand, and he still had Saturday night coming up.

  The minute he thought of Silke he wanted to call her, say, “Guess where I am?” just because he knew she would be shocked and angry that he was back at Tahoe. He was still heartsick enough over her to enjoy any kind of emotional reaction, even the negative ones. But she belonged with Raj, working like him on her doctorate, and he had no business bugging her.

  He stopped suddenly at a twenty-five-dollar-minimum table where a First Base spot lay open. On the next seat, a girl with red streaks in her hair, spotty skin, and trendy glasses sat behind several stacks of chips.

  Oh, shit, he thought. Carleen. What’s she doing here? How coincidental was that, him thinking about her just a minute ago and her being here?

  Well, it shouldn’t surprise him. Once, they had traveled this route together.

  He ought to leave; no telling how she would greet him, but driven by perverse curiosity, he slid in beside her. She looked up at him. After the first flash of disbelief, her expression turned firmly noncommittal. Only he would know the tense brow-pinching thing she did when she was truly angry. She looked up once more, just a glance, full of fire. Her eyes said, What the hell are you doing here, anyway?

  He settle
d down in his seat. She didn’t own the joint.

  She slapped her chips into neat stacks. Okay, then I don’t know you, her body language said, and you don’t know me. He remembered her silent language well, and instantly perceived the virtue in not knowing her. Maybe they could play the old game together a few times and make a few bucks.

  The shoe was a six-decker, and the dealer, a middle-aged woman who wore a lot of gold in her cleavage under the required white shirt, had only run through a couple of hands. Giving Elliott a sharp look, she exchanged two thousand for him. The black chips felt as substantial as marbles as he pulled them toward him. He put one dead center on his spot on the green felt and waited for the cards.

  He pulled a thirteen and busted when he hit on it. Fine. He was only playing basic strategy right now, warming up, checking out the cards. He played a few more hands, going down three hundred dollars rapidly on his single-chip bets.

  “You’re too hot,” Carleen told the dealer.

  “Our luck turns just like yours does,” said the dealer, who fielded complaints like this all night long. Carleen was winning most of the time in spite of her complaining. The other people at the table, who told everyone they had just arrived on a bus from Boise, Idaho, each set out a chip at a time, playing decently.

  A couple of minutes later: “No, she’s gonna come through for us,” Elliott said, including everyone at the table in his optimism. They were two full decks into the shoe by now, with enough cards laid down for him to know the deck was ripe. He placed all the chips he had left onto the table, seventeen hundred dollars’ worth, not an outrageous amount at a twenty-five-dollar minimum table.

  Edging her bottom teeth with her finger, Carleen fidgeted unhappily at his bet, but she pushed all of her remaining chips onto the playing area, too, thirty-seven hundred bucks and change. “I fly back to Seoul tomorrow,” she said. “This better be good.”

  The dealer pulled a six after her hole card. Elliott checked his own ace in the hole with a seven showing, soft eighteen, a very good hand against the dealer’s probable sixteen. But he scratched for another card. The card count told him the deck was very short on high-count cards.

  A two. He had pulled a total of twenty. A thrill coursed through him.

  Carleen was showing a ten card. Elliott bent around to catch a glimpse of her hole card when she turned up the corner to have a look, but she turned it over so they could all see.

  Another ten.

  “I’ll split my tens,” she said, pulling a wad of cash out of her wallet and handing it over, and now she was running two hands on the table. They were still barely under ten thousand in bets for the whole table, so the dealer didn’t have to get approval to accept the bet.

  The Boise couple couldn’t believe she was splitting tens, a stupid mistake under basic strategy rules. The dealer laid down a card on each ten, face-down. Carleen picked up the edge of the new card over one of the tens, then scratched for another. The dealer flipped her a card and let her hand stay right there, ready to scoop up the busted hand, but Carleen hadn’t busted yet.

  “It’s such a fun game,” she said, uttering a totally uncharacteristic girlish giggle. “I wish my fiancé hadn’t gone over to the Sports Book.”

  Elliott watched her check the new card over her other ten, and scratch again.

  Standing pat, Carleen waved her hand negligently over the hands.

  The rest of them went through their paces, and when they had all finished the round, the dealer flipped over her hole card. Another six. Now she was showing a total of twelve and she had to hit again.

  The dealer turned over a four this time. Sixteen. The rules required her to hit again, so she flipped herself one more card.

  A third six. She’d busted. “Too bad we’re not playing poker,” said Third Base from Boise. “You’da wiped us out.”

  Starting with Elliott, the dealer went around the table turning over the hole cards. When she turned up his hole card, she looked surprised. “You got someone watching out for you,” Boise said as they all stared at the three cards adding up to twenty. “You hit on a soft eighteen.”

  “I had a good feeling,” Elliott said. The dealer turned over Carleen’s two hole cards and they all had a look. She had taken another card on hard seventeens on both hands. Both those plays were also dead wrong against the dealer’s original twelve, according to basic blackjack-playing strategy.

  But she had won. She had pulled threes on each of her hands, winning both. The dealer pushed over their stacks of chips and the pit boss came over to check out the table and spread some glowers around.

  Between the two of them, Elliott and Carleen had just won almost ten thousand dollars on a single bet. The pit boss, a short thin man in a dark suit, moved in to stand next to Elliott, hanging in close enough so that Elliott could smell the cigars on his breath. Then the boss motioned to the dealer to shuffle up, wheeled, and walked rapidly back to the podium in the pit where the phone was.

  Elliott gathered up his chips, passing a couple over to the dealer as a tip. “I’m out,” he said with a smile that hurt his chapped lips, it stretched them so wide. He felt eyes chasing him as he cashed in and hurried out the door.

  Carleen followed him. Sitting on a bench alongside the driveway, leaning against the wall, his eyes half-closed, he was waiting for his car.

  “So, Wakefield. What’s up? You following me?”

  “You don’t want to be seen talking to me here.”

  “You’re the one who sat down by me.”

  “I mean because of the cameras.”

  “Screw them,” she said, “any damage is done. I should have jumped up and left when you sat down.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Maybe I foolishly imagined you would have more sense than to sit down beside me. Or come to Tahoe at all.” She took off her useless glasses and tucked them into a shirt pocket. “You spot two security men who were following me when I left?”

  “Why didn’t your fiancé from the Sports Book take care of them? I’m sure he’s a muscle-bound freak, just the way you like them.”

  She laughed. “Why, are you jealous at the thought?”

  “Yeah, sure. I hate imaginary rivals. Is he from Korea, too?” They had a running disagreement about Carleen’s disguises. She liked them conspicuous, like the nasty tricolored hair she wore tonight sticking up like a kid’s paper crown, thinking that she was less likely to get made if she went bold. And she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She chatted up the dealers, compounding lies until nobody could keep track of the latest story.

  “Why’d you bet so big? If you hadn’t put up such a massive bet, we could have made the same money in three or four hands without anybody noticing. We could still be playing.”

  “You bet twice what I did.”

  “Well, hey, I had to, didn’t I, after you spoiled any chance for anonymity. She was going to shuffle up for sure after you bet. The pit boss made us so fast after that.”

  “Ah, but it was kind of fun, wasn’t it, Carleen? Like old times. So what was all that about flying to Korea?”

  “I don’t know. I just felt like saying it. God, it’s cold tonight. Wakefield, really, are you nuts? What are you doing here? Are you here with Silke and…”

  “I’m alone.”

  “She stayed on the East Coast after graduation, didn’t she?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know.” Best not to feed her gossip about Silke.

  “Don’t know? Yeah, right. She still with Raj?”

  “Challenge question.” Dr. Braun used to come up with these quizzes on a regular basis. She would recognize the allusion. “Is the square root of two still one point four one two and change?”

  “I thought so. So what else?”

  “I wait for my car.”

  She shook her head impatiently. “Not until we talk.” She looked away, toward a white-haired man in an aloha shirt who was climbing into a limo, but Elliott still felt the force of her nervousness and interest p
ouring over him like sticky goo. He looked at her, at her streaky hair and the triple piercings in her ears and the discontented expression, and thought, She keeps coming back to gamble just like me.

  “I went back to Seattle after graduation,” he said.

  “Still living with your father, I bet.”

  “And?”

  “Is he still driving you into mad ambition?”

  “Not at all. He’s infirm. He needs me.” Elliott was well aware that he was minimizing his father’s influence, but then, what did you say about your father to a girl who must hate you at times and who knows things you wished she didn’t know?

  “I guess he probably does. You can’t just dump your family the way you can dump a lover. You’re locked up into playing along with their psycho needs for life, aren’t you?” She untucked the silk blouse she had been wearing and slouched down on the bench. “Hey, Elliott. Forget I said that. You know I’m not talking about your father.”

  She had her own family problems, a brother with troubles of his own. But Elliott didn’t want to ask about her problems right now.

  “So where are you working, Elliott?”

  “Here, tonight.”

  “You were supposed to become a professor, but you still make your living counting cards at blackjack?”

  “It pays the rent,” Elliott said.

  “How does your father like that?”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “I never took you for the outlaw type,” Carleen said. “I’m still in good old Boston. I’m making big bucks.” She shifted a little and he felt her small breast brush his arm.

  Pathetic, the fact that they were two hungry twenty-somethings in desperate need of human contact, the fact that he didn’t like her but wanted to kiss her. He sat on the bench, unable to decide what to do. She seemed to want to stay with him, though he wasn’t sure, she was so nervous, looking around like casino security might come outside for them.