Devil's Arcade

by Robert Bucchianeri

  Devil’s Arcade-Max Plank 3

  A Max Plank Novel

  robert bucchianeri

  Copyright © 2019 by robert bucchianeri

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Editing: Clicking Keys

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  More Max Plank

  Author Note

  Also by robert bucchianeri

  About the Author

  One

  “Disappeared?” I said, then took a sip of the strong, black coffee, undoubtedly a French or Italian roast, from the gold-rimmed Wedgwood cup.

  There’s no way not to feel prissy when the tips of your fingers are struggling to hold onto a tiny curlicued handle. I prefer a plain solid mug, but I didn’t complain. Coffee is coffee, and that morning, like most, I craved the buzz.

  Poe nodded. His eyes, normally quick and alert like a fox’s, reflecting a surprising note of sorrow or perhaps resignation.

  With his short, trim build and his well-tended hair and goatee, along with his typical uniform of Italian-made Battistoni long-sleeved white shirt and black vest, he looked as smooth and suave as ever. But there was a distracted, preoccupied air to his manner, in place of the usual formidable intensity.

  I looked away, angling my head toward the glass wall to the west, past Alcatraz, the abandoned prison rock, and out to the Golden Gate Bridge and its gleaming burnt-red spires, and the Gulf of the Farallones beyond which led eventually to Hawaii itself, which I was picturing in my mind.

  In particular, my focus was on the hike down Waimea Canyon where I’d promised to lead Alexandra. I’d told her of the glories at the bottom of the canyon, the river and the waterfalls and the flowering plants and fruit trees. I could almost taste the strawberry guavas I’d sampled the last time I’d hiked down ten years before.

  Alexandra had never been to Hawaii and I, relatively flush for the time being due to a recent case where I discovered the location of a lost lockbox for a client with more money than sense, had two round-trip tickets to Honolulu airport booked for the coming weekend.

  I wanted to take Alexandra away. I had been a little neglectful in recent weeks, of her and our semi-adopted daughter, Frankie, and I felt guilty about it. She hadn’t brought it up, but it bothered her.

  She’d agreed to go with me, but it had been a big hassle for her to arrange the time away from her investigative work as a photojournalist. She’d also wanted to take Frankie along, but, as much as I care for the little girl, I thought a week alone was just what we needed.

  Or maybe I’m just a selfish prick at heart.

  Alexandra adored me, I’d assumed. And the relative coldness toward me recently didn’t feel good. Which surprised me. My time with Alexandra is the longest relationship with a woman I’ve ever had, save for Mom. Normally by now, over three years in the big muddy, either me or the woman has long since bailed.

  I care for her. I love her, whatever that means. I’d even told her, for what it’s worth. She’d been telling me she loved me for more than a year before I finally offered the word up to her a couple of months ago. I hadn’t repeated it since then, but she knew. She also knew I’d never used that word with any other woman, even my mother, if you don’t count Mary Mathieson in the second grade at Our Lady of Mercy.

  Mary giggled when I told her how I felt and scurried off to confer with her equally giggly friends.

  I almost never got over it.

  Alexandra seemed bothered that she was the first woman I’d told that I loved since I’d achieved puberty, roughly thirty years. I don’t know why it irked her. I don’t pretend to comprehend what lurks in the hearts and minds of women. That alone sounds sexist. Women are humans. Ordinary people. Just like men.

  Right.

  Anyway, Meiying and Dao had agreed to take care of Frankie for a week, and I would let nothing impede the trip, even and especially Poe’s cry for help. I’d told him I’d listen to his story, but that was all.

  “What does ‘disappeared’ mean?” I asked, biding my time.

  He scratched his goatee, considering what to tell me. Behind him on an antique walnut desk was a large bust of Edgar Allan Poe, his hero, next to volumes of the master’s works. The wall behind the desk was covered with framed posters of B-movies directed by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price—The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Raven—all adaptations of Poe’s stories.

  The room appeared that of an academic, a man a little obsessed by his subject. Poe had a master’s degree in English literature. His thesis had been on some arcane aspect of Edgar’s influence on modern-day horror writers.

  All a tad surprising considering we were on the mysterious thirteenth floor of Pirate’s Cove, a sprawling, octopus-shaped steel and glass casino and resort hotel on Treasure Island, an artificial heptagon-shaped spit of land, connected to a real island, Yerba Buena, which sits below the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate’s younger, but less attractive, sister connecting Oakland to San Francisco.

  Even more surprising is the fact that Poe himself owns and operates the casino complex, the public face of an empire with deep criminal roots in the San Francisco underworld.

  The former academic has come a long way from his small-town east coast roots, and the story of that journey is cloaked in mystery. Nobody seems to know what really happened on his trek westward, and the couple of local reporters who’ve attempted to retrace Poe’s steps have mostly ended up with more questions than answers. Most of the people who knew Poe well then have little or nothing to say about him now.

  Poe talked slowly, carefully parsing his words. “Bobby’s been working for me here for the past couple of years. I had him doing security work at first, some public relations too.” He paused, stroking that perfectly manicured goatee again, shaking his head. “He’d had some problems. Never really found his place in the world.”

  Poe’s younger sibling was nothing like his big brother. Actually, he was a larger man. Poe himself is trim but muscular. Bobby is taller but round-shaped with a big belly. He’s kind of a mess. A boyish man who’s never outgrown his adolescent awkwardness. He was eager to please his older brother who was clearly embarrassed by him. I couldn’t believe that he was a blood relation to Poe, a dangerous man with a highly civilized veneer. Bobby was soft, kind-hearted, but kind of hapless. He loved dogs and Star Trek and was near helpless around women he was attracted to.

  Poe was uncomfortable talking about Bob
by. He wasn’t exactly a touchy-feely kind of guy, but Bobby was his brother.

  “He used to have a coke habit. It got pretty bad. He lost his wife because of it. Not that she was any prize.” Poe shook his head, frowned. “She took him for all he had and some of what I have. Anyway, I got him in rehab and offered him the job here as long as he stayed away from the junk. I knew he smoked pot, but he said it helped him stay off blow.”

  It surprised me to hear that Bobby had a wife. It seemed altogether too adult and mature for the man. And then I remembered the countless masses—young, passionate, dumb, broke, unformed, yet pierced by Cupid's arrow, or Darwin’s imperative, marching ceaselessly down the aisle, playing their part in the great game, and I wondered at my surprise. I hoped there were no kids involved but didn’t interrupt Poe to ask. I wanted to hear him out, then turn his request down, and get back on track for Alexandra and Hawaii.

  “…he was trying. He had a little knack for writing press releases, thank god, because otherwise, he wasn’t earning his keep. But he’s family. And I doubted he could find decent work elsewhere…”

  Poe revealing a morsel of a heart I didn’t know he had.

  “… and then we got cheated. More than a million dollars now. Perhaps more. I noticed something different about it right away—”

  “I haven’t read about any of this.”

  He smiled, shook his head.

  “You didn’t report it.”

  “I take care of my own business.”

  “And you want no one shoving their curious noses into smelly corners of this place. I still don’t know how you finesse the Bureau.” The state Bureau of Gambling, the regulatory body that polices casino operations in our Golden State.

  I also thought he wanted no one to know that he was a sucker of any sort and intended to deal with the culprits in a slightly more direct and decisive way than what the judicial system offered. But it looked like that hadn’t worked out. Ergo, my presence here.

  “We dot our i’s and cross our t’s. This is a completely law-abiding business that pays the city and state substantial tax revenues.”

  Pirate’s Cove was an unusual hybrid. Only federally recognized Indian tribes may have casinos under California law, but Poe had engineered a strange, subtle partnership with the Arapahoe Indians to help secure a license. Indian tribes rarely pay taxes on gambling revenue, but in exchange for granting him the ability to print money, Poe had agreed to pay both local and state taxes.

  I couldn’t imagine the hundred-ton tub of green-tinged lard he must have used to grease the palms of both Indian and government bureaucrats to get the deal done.

  I imagine everybody involved considered it a win-win.

  “You’re still a cynical bastard, Plank.”

  “Yeah. So did you find out who was stealing from you?”

  “Not yet. It’s only a matter of time though.” Poe rose, walked over to the glass wall overlooking the bay. Outside, there was a bright, midday sun and a semi-blue sky, unfurling into a hazy forever sky.

  He stood there with his hands on his hips for a long while then reached down and effortlessly touched his toes, dipped further into the forward bend, his palms flat on the floor, his knees locked straight.

  He was flexible. So was I. We were both to be commended.

  Poe re-assumed his full verticality and tapped his knuckles against the glass wall. “I think my brother was somehow involved in the conspiracy. His disappearance is related. I don’t think he knew what was going on. They used him.” He stopped, smacked the glass with his hands. “They must know who they’re dealing with and yet they dared violate me. I’m perplexed.”

  He turned to face me, his facial muscles tightening over his bones, his eyes searching for an answer in my own.

  I shook off his gaze and said, “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to find my brother.”

  “Have you looked for him?”

  He nodded. “Yes. We’ve checked everywhere he might be, all of his favorite haunts. Art and Rex have scoured the Bay Area. We’ve examined his computer, contacted everyone he knows. Gotten nowhere.”

  “And, if you want me to find him, why are you telling me about the thefts?”

  “Because when you find him, I believe you’ll find the thieves.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  He walked back to the formidable desk and picked up his phone and waited, his eyes skipping around the room, until I heard a female voice say hello.

  “Angelique, would you mind visiting my office now?”

  There was a subtle change in the atmosphere when she entered, an electric charge in the air, along with a lingering scent of licorice and vanilla that was more than a little appealing.

  I’d met Angelique twice before when I was helping Frankie find her missing, dead sister.

  This was an awesome woman, Poe’s right hand it appeared, as fierce as he was. A no-nonsense lady with a keen sense of loyalty to her boss.

  She was black, tall, stunning. She wore a black jacket over a simple white blouse above a long black silk skirt that flowed like slick oil down to her open-toed stiletto-heeled pumps. A silver necklace with a single black onyx stone lay at her collarbone, and she had a small tattoo there, a bird of prey, perhaps a hawk. She was a martial artist like Marsh and me, rumored to have exemplary skills. I’d gotten a glimpse of them when she’d caught me off balance on the roof of the Fairmount Hotel two years before.

  She looked cold, aloof, an ice queen. But I felt she concealed a hidden warmth toward me, an unacknowledged attraction. There was a certain frisson I sensed on each of the two occasions we had shared the same space.

  But she was a woman who played her cards close to the vest.

  That was my explanation, anyway.

  Poe gestured with his hand, offering her the seat opposite mine in front of his desk. She eased into the chair, lifted her skirt away, revealing lush, toned dark flesh beneath metallic gray stockings. She raised her long sinewy right leg and laid it over her just as muscly left.

  I imagined she, too, could touch her palms to the floor, so there we were together, a flexible triumvirate.

  “Angelique, could you fill Mr. Plank in on the situation? Please, leave nothing out.”

  She looked at him for a moment, their eyes danced, and at that moment, I wondered if they’d ever shared sheets. Poe’s sexuality, like much else about him, was a mystery. He lived alone but was rumored to have lovers of both sexes.

  Angelique turned her attention to me. Her almond-shaped eyes, there had to be an Asian influence along with the African American tint, took my measure. Her tongue slipped just over her lower lip, a tic, a gathering of her thoughts, and then she began.

  Her voice was deep, with a faraway southern lilt to it, but refined, smoothed out, containing a dollop of honey and a bite of spice. South Texas all chummy with Jamaica. “Mr. Plank, it started—”

  “Please, Angelique, Max.”

  “Mr. Plank,” she said, not smiling. “I’d appreciate it if you listened silently until I finish.”

  I felt like I’d had the back of my hand spanked with a ruler. If I was going to get spanked, I didn’t mind so much it being her. I glanced at Poe, who shot me a smile and shrugged his shoulders.

  I pressed my forefinger and thumb together and drew a line in front of my lips, zipping.

  She rolled her eyes at me.

  “As I was saying, it started when Bobby came to see me about a month ago…”

  She took almost ten minutes to lay it all out. I asked a couple of questions to be polite, then turned to Poe and told him there was nothing I could do for him.

  “I’ll double,” he paused, scratched his cheek, “triple your usual fee. And if you find him within a week, there’ll be a bonus,” he said, playing with a folder on his desk, avoiding my eyes, like it was embarrassing to overpay for my services.

  I didn’t think there was anything to be ashamed about. In other circumstances, I would have ca
ved into his request, despite my reservations about doing any more business with the man.

  But there was Alexandra and Waimea Canyon.

  “Generous of you, but I’m going away for a week. Anyway, why do you think I can find him when you and all your resources have had no luck?”

  He teepeed his index fingers and brought them up to his lips, studying me for a few moments. “Don’t be modest. I know how good you and your friend, Marsh, are at this kind of thing.”

  “Sorry. I’ll be out of pocket.”

  He sighed. Poe is a man used to people doing his bidding.

  He shook his head. “This is important. Very important. Tell me what I have to do to convince you.”

  “Nothing you can do.”

  “That’s disappointing. Surprising also. I felt sure you would help me.”

  Angelique stayed motionless, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere behind Poe. Despite her lack of movement, there was a coiled spring tension vibe emanating from her body that made the hairs on my arms tingle.

  “I’ve had this planned for a while. If you’ve had no luck in two weeks, call me again and maybe…”

  “It can’t wait. Thank you for your time. Angelique will see you out.” He turned away and gave me the cold shoulder.

  His voice was as icy as the inside of a meat locker. I’d seen it before. He could be the most polite, civilized human being on earth one moment, and then the next, turn into a stone-cold killer.