“Are you sure about this?” I asked Natalie.
“You’re the one who doesn’t want to wear the wig.” She pulled open a desk drawer and withdrew a crisp hundred-dollar bill.
“What’s this for?”
“Seattle’s tip. Be discreet.”
“What does she charge for a haircut if her tip is a hundred dollars?”
“It’s he. And he charges four hundred for a cut and color. And be discreet.”
Four hundred dollars for a hair cut? My last hair cut had been fifteen dollars with a two-dollar tip. “If he’s that special, how’d you get me an appointment?”
“I got people.” She gave me an exaggerated wink. “And one more thing, Davis, before you get in there and get the shock of your life.”
No, I’d already had that, when I’d been called on the carpet in Mr. Sander’s office.
“He’s Bianca Sanders’ stylist. That subject might come up. Be discreet.”
That was three times she’d told me to be discreet. Discretion, discreet, what was next? Dismember? This was a dangerous job.
“Theese color?” Seattle, who had the longest and most glorious hair I’d ever seen on a man, even putting Mr. Sanders’ golden locks to shame, looked positively Hawaiian, spoke with an exaggerated French accent, and held the wig I’d worn for the photographs before I was hired as far away from his body as his arm would allow.
“Theese style? The cream blonde, yes?” He let the wig drop on a rolling table full of plug-in things and straight-edge razors, then circled me, tapping his chin. He twirled the chair so that I was facing the mirror, and pressed his cheek against mine, our eyes meeting in the reflection. “You already look just as her, no? The hair will be the finish, yes?”
This man had no whiskers. Smooth as a baby’s butt.
“If you had the green eyes,” Seattle’s laugh was a nasally series of quick snorts, “I would find myself most frightened.”
* * *
Morgan George, Jr. died on March 5, almost seven years ago. He was twenty-eight years old. His last known residence was Henderson, Nevada. I’ve never been to Vegas, but I’m pretty sure Henderson is right there.
The Las Vegas Sun offered so little that it screamed cover up: Henderson man found dead at his residence; police do not suspect foul play. What did they suspect? Parkinson’s? Alzheimer’s?
The obituary gave me more: Morgan George, Jr. was a magna cum laude graduate of UNLV’s School of Math and Technology. He was there the same time the boss, Richard Sanders, was. He was employed by a software writer: Technology Systems Incorporated, in Henderson.
TSI’s website listed, among its clients, Total Gaming Corporation, who manufactured slot machines, specifically video poker, their most popular game a familiar one even to me: Double Whammy Deuces Wild Progressives. A coincidence?
Total Gaming didn’t brag about their clientele, because they claimed to have more than two-hundred thousand machines on casino floors worldwide; I guess that list would be too long. They did, however, show off their Board of Directors. The face that stood out in the crowd was the sandy-blond haired green-eyed one, Salito Casimiro.
Let’s say it together: Conflict of interest.
Morgan George, Sr.’s obituary was a two-liner: Las Vegas Detective declared dead on Tuesday, June 16. Private memorial service; don’t send anything. The only news I could match up with my driver’s fake death was a single paragraph in the Metro section, the week after Jr. died, about an abandoned dingy floating in the middle of Lake Las Vegas. The police were searching for a body.
I could tell them where the body was. It was in a cab parked at the VIP entrance of the Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi.
I called my father. “Daddy, I need you to ship me my computer. All of it.”
“Right away, Angel,” he said. “I don’t suppose you can do much damage with a computer.”
I called Natalie. “Natalie, I need a slot machine here at my condo.”
“You bought a condo?”
My head popped up and I tried to locate a clock. I’d woken her. “No, the one I’m leasing.”
“Why do you need a slot machine?” she asked.
Because I smell a rat, I didn’t answer.
“Never mind,” she added quickly. “What kind?”
“The Double Whammy game. It’s manufactured by Total Gaming with software written by Technology Systems, Inc.”
“I’ve got three of those right here,” she said.
“Really?”
She laughed. “Anything else?”
“That ought to do it.”
I sat there a minute trying to decide if my next order of business could wait until tomorrow. No, it couldn’t. I pulled on yoga pants to wear with Bradley Cole’s Life Is Good sweatshirt, grabbed my keys, and locked the door behind me. I’d forgotten to wear shoes, and it was about thirty below and foggy. I danced across the frozen asphalt. I was ten minutes from the Bellissimo, but it was late, and there wasn’t much traffic. I made it in six. The VIP entrance was deserted, yet there he was. I pulled alongside him facing the opposite direction, driver window to driver window.
“George, wake up.” I beeped my horn.
He cut his black eyes my way. Finally, he lowered his window.
“I’ve got a question for you,” and as I said it, I wished I were farther away. It occurred to me he might not like the question.
“What.”
“Do you still have his textbooks? TSI operating manuals? Anything?”
George did the physical equivalent of collapsing, even though he was already sitting. He stared at his lap. He nodded yes without displacing one atom.
“Can you get them for me?”
He nodded again.
“What happened, George?”
He turned, dead on. “They slit his throat. My baby boy.”
Evil almost knocked me down.
“Go away,” George said.
* * *
“I love you being here with me, Davis,” my father said, “it’s a dream come true.”
“Me too, Daddy.”
“With one exception.”
“What’s that?” I couldn’t move in my new uniform. I was wearing a tie. And a concrete vest. I had twenty extra pounds strapped around my middle—a piece, two extra mags, riot baton (as if), mace, cuffs, flashlight, knife, radio—and the pants were made of fabric so thick and coarse it felt like canvas. Very unflattering.
“Listen to me.” Daddy held both my hands in his big strong ones. He spoke quietly. He looked me straight in the eye. “You’re going to see evil. You’re going to see hatred, violence, and injustice. You’re going to see blood, Davis, more than you ever imagined a human body could hold. I can’t even prepare you for things you’re going to see, because as well as we try to do our jobs, we can’t predict it. You’re joining a clean-up crew, Angel. Part of your job is to help me clean up after evil’s had his way. And from the moment you were born, all I’ve tried to do, all any parent tries to do, is keep you as far away from evil as possible.”
“Here?” I asked. “In Pine Apple? Daddy! Nothing’s going to happen.”
“It will, Princess. It will.”
It did.
Obviously, I got the fluff jobs. One was standing in the middle of our only true intersection between 7:45 and 8:15 in the morning, then again between 2:45 and 3:15 in the afternoon every single school day of the calendar year, ushering all sizes and shapes of children to and fro. In all those years, there were maybe ten days of nice weather.
There was a little boy, Tanner Pruett, who tugged on my heartstrings from day one, and it never occurred to me that my father would be anything but supportive. He never was.
“Sweet Pea?” I was off to the school crossing in pouring-down rain. “Where are you going with those groceries?”
“Oh.” I was lost somewhere inside a rain poncho. Finally, I found the opening. “I like to slip a little something to the Pruetts for the weekend. You know,�
�� I found my arms, “so they can actually eat between now and Monday, when the school cafeteria opens again.”
My father’s chair scraped across the floor so fast it startled me. He grabbed the bag of peanut butter, lunch meat, bread, bananas, and Yoo-Hoos off my desk. “No,” he said.
“Daddy!” I was shocked.
Tanner was the oldest child of Christine Pruett, an ongoing Pine Apple headache/heartache. She was a few years older than me, and I’d known her all my life. She’d been a cheerleader at Pine Apple High, rah-rah. Christine had exactly what the rest of us had—loving parents, a nice, warm home, a state-funded education, and all her faculties. Somehow, though, Christine had gone way off track. She’d gotten pregnant with Tanner sometime during eleventh grade. (Big whoop. Unplanned teen pregnancies were a rite of passage in Pine Apple.) Christine, though, seemed helpless to stop it, and she slipped up five more times with, those with eyeballs had to assume, five different men from five different ethnic origins. Between her third and fourth child, she met her true love, methamphetamine, at which point, she began cranking herself into oblivion.
Eventually, Christine didn’t have a tooth in her head, and stopped leaving her trailer. We’d all done every single thing we could possibly do for Christine through the years. We locked her up. We cleaned her trailer. We had interventions. We scattered her children to foster homes. We held vigils. We did everything except cook her smack and shoot her up. She was, truly, a hopeless case.
But her firstborn Tanner wasn’t. He was an old soul, and why wouldn’t he be? He’d seen it all. He was a smart boy, a straight-A student. And he worked hard; he tried his best to take care of his mother. He mowed yards, he did odd jobs, he learned how to heat up ravioli and ration it out.
Daddy had a tight grip on the grocery bag. An uncommon and unnerving silence fell between us.
“Daddy,” I whispered.
“Sit down, Davis.”
I sounded like a plastic tarp going into the chair.
“You can’t get involved. It’s not your job. Don’t get anywhere near those children without backup.”
I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my father’s mouth. More than that, I couldn’t believe the seriousness with which they were delivered. He wasn’t giving me advice, there weren’t options; he was giving me a direct order. “You have no business with the Pruetts, and if I get wind of you around them, I’ll fire you on the spot.”
It was the first and last time I deliberately disobeyed my father. I continued to sneak things to Tanner: groceries, school supplies, and winter coats. When Christmas rolled around, I slipped him five twenty-dollar bills.
“Spend it wisely, Tanner,” I said.
On Christmas Eve, both mine and Daddy’s radios squawked the very second we started passing the potatoes. My mother said, “Whatever it is, Samuel, let Davis take care of it. I don’t want you to miss Christmas Dinner.”
“It’s the Pruetts,” my father said. “I’m sure it’ll take both of us.”
He killed his mother first, with a close shot between the eyes. He lined up his siblings, execution style, killing four of them instantly. The fifth bullet had unmercifully missed, but by the time we got there, he was in the middle of smothering that sister.
She died.
“Where did you get the gun, Tanner?” my father asked.
“I bought it.”
“Where did you get the money to buy a gun?”
He pointed.
Evil was out there. I’d seen it up close and personal. You can’t guess what form it might come in. There were times when it was impossible to know.
I leaned hard on José Cuervo for support. Unfortunately, he brought his friend Eddie along.
* * *
Tonight, I was leaning on Jack Daniels and Bradley Cole. Here’s hoping these two were a better combination.
I’d taken to chatting with an eight-by-ten framed photograph of Bradley taken on a ski trip with his buddies. I kept it beside the bed, so that Bradley’s face was the last thing I saw before dreaming, and the first thing I saw upon waking. In the privacy of my/his condo, I used it as a magic eight ball of sorts. (Maybe I should get a cat or a guinea pig. Or a magic eight ball.)
I asked him, before I turned out the light, if he thought there was enough good left in the world for us to bother. His answer: without a doubt. Did he like my new look? Definitely. I asked him if he minded me redecorating his dining room with a slot machine. He didn’t. Even if I make a really big mess with it? No. I asked him if he thought my theory was right: there was some dirty, dirty business going on all around me that had somehow, someway, began with the murder of Morgan George, Jr. He said ask again later. And one last question: Did he think I could figure it out and avoid my ex-ex-husband at the same time? His sources said no.
THIRTEEN
One-tenth of the casino floor was devoted to the irresponsible gambler. It was called High Limits, where the table game minimums were weekly grocery-store budgets and the slot machines could eat an entire mortgage payment in fifteen minutes. It was elevated, smack-dab in the middle, cordoned off by brass rails, and all aisles led to it so that everyone eventually got a wistful glance and wished they had the mojo to play up there with the rich people. But off the main casino floor, in the northeast corner away from all other venues behind a backlit waterfall, there was a Ridiculously High Limit room. It was by invitation only. It was the most brutal gaming this side of Las Vegas. The draw was the anonymous geography; it was the reason so many private hangars were built for so many private jets fifteen miles away. In this room, school-teacher salaries were tips and the sticker price of luxury yachts was won and lost in seconds.
A different breed of gambler played in Private Gaming, the one they call a whale. Whales were one of these: famous, a professional athlete, a politician, or so inherently wealthy their portfolio had its own summer house in France. You might think you’d find self-made millionaires in every other seat, but Natalie told me not to bother looking for those, because people who earned their fortunes didn’t give it to casinos.
“They gamble,” she explained. “But you’ll find them playing one hand at the five-dollar tables, not two hands at the five-thousand. The only other reason someone would play in Private Gaming would be if they had something else entirely going on.” She sat back and crossed her arms. “That’d be you, Davis.”
“And you’re telling me that Eddie Crawford plays in the private room? Seriously? How could that be?” I asked.
He wasn’t famous, he wasn’t athletic, probably couldn’t tell you who the governor of Alabama was if you held a gun to his head, and his mailing address was Shady Acres Mobile Home Park, Slip 18, County Road 4, Pine Apple.
“I am,” Natalie said, “and he does. He won big money a little more than four months ago.”
“How big?”
“One point two,” Natalie popped the words.
“One point two what?”
“Million.” She said it in two syllables.
My hand slapped my own chest so hard I’m sure it left a mark. “What?” I shot up from the chair.
“Settle down, Davis.”
Eventually, I stopped screaming and found the chair. That son of a bitch. And it wasn’t just me; his mother drove a clunker minivan from the late eighties. What the hell was Eddie doing with that kind of money?
“Can we continue, Davis?”
I sat there quietly seething while she picked up where she left off: markers, tuxedos, women who were paid to hang out and look good. The Bellissimo Word of the Day—discretion—found its way in there several times.
“He’s playing there,” I said, “and you want me to play in there, too, right? Natalie, he’ll see me and run.”
“No, Davis. He won’t.”
“We met at the hospital when we were born, then I married him twice, Natalie. How is it you think he won’t see me?”
Her voice lowered to a whisper. “He won’t see Davis. He’ll see Bianca.”
>
“Mrs. Sanders? How does Eddie know what she even looks like?”
“Your ex-husband is Bianca Sanders’ latest whim,” Natalie said. “And he’s her third.”
“Her third what?” I was still having trouble breathing. “Whim? Her third whim?”
“Yes,” she said. “The two before him are dead.”
“How dead?”
“How many kinds of dead are there, Davis?”
“No. I meant how did they die?”
She inhaled sharply, her jaw clenched, and she didn’t answer.
“Natalie,” I started.
She waited.
“Natalie,” I started again.
She waited.
“Natalie, is there something going on between Eddie and Bianca Sanders?”
“You could say that.” She sniffed.
“What?”
“You could say there’s something going on between them.”
“What?”
She looked at me as if my last marble had just rolled out of my head, across the floor, and out of the building.
“What is going on between them?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me, Davis.”
“How do you suggest I go about doing that?”
Natalie closed the space between us. “You look just like her, Davis. Be her. Make him think you’re her and find out how they’re winning the money.”
Well, there you go. And what a relief. They only wanted me to weasel the game secrets out of Eddie the Ass by pretending to be Bianca. I had been entertaining much more sinister scenarios, scenarios in which I was in way over my head, and this new perspective was very welcome, with the exception of the Eddie the Rotten Rat angle.
She let me connect the dots before she asked, “Anything else?”
I left her office with a lot on my mind, not the least of which was Eddie winning all that money four months ago, right about when I was dribbling hot chocolate on the classified ads back in Pine Apple, but the most of which was that I had to find a way to get the job done and leave him out of it at the same time.
Double Whammy (A Davis Way Crime Caper) Page 12