Devil's Arcade

by Robert Bucchianeri

  “Leslie,” I said, “let’s leave my friend to his work. You and me need to talk. Back to your office.”

  “What the hell is this now?” Leslie answered, before looking into my eyes. He took in what was there, sighed, struggled to his feet, and followed me out.

  Twenty-Four

  I closed the door to the supply room and motioned for Leslie to sit back in his office chair. I stood with my back to the door and waited until he was settled. He was a none-too-happy man, and it wasn’t just about his nose.

  “Your partner, Matthew, his last name was Mahoney, right?”

  Leslie looked at me but didn’t answer.

  “Jewel Allen’s real name is Dorothy Mahoney. Matthew had a daughter by that name, and they are one and the same person.”

  Portia, Poe’s crack computer hacker, had managed to make the connection.

  “So what?” Leslie sneered.

  “It’s over. Either talk to me or I call the cops right now and tell them that you not only were involved in the casino cheat but that you had something to do with the murders. Your friends back there are going to tell us everything they know. You know they are. Marsh isn’t going to even have to break a sweat.”

  Leslie tried to hold my accusatory stare, tried to stay tough, but his eyes filled with tears, and he closed them with a shudder that racked his body. He grabbed his arms with his hands and leaned forward. Blood began trickling out of his broken nose again and dropping onto the floor. He gasped, put his fingers up, and wiped it away. He put his hands on his knees, steadied himself, and said, “It was all Jewel’s, Dot’s, idea. She was always working some angle, always looking for the big score. She drove her father crazy, but he wouldn’t give up on her. He blamed himself for the way she was. But if you ask me, she was born that way. Nothing he could ever do about it.”

  He stopped, pinched his nose lightly, regaining his composure. He sat up straight and rolled his shoulders back as if better posture would fix everything.

  I just waited, letting him recover.

  “Why did he blame himself?”

  “He left the girl’s mother, and she killed herself a year later. That was when Dot was eleven. He raised her by himself from there, did everything he could to give her a normal life, but he always took responsibility for his ex-wife’s death and the bad effect it had on Dot.”

  I nodded, and he added, “I should never have told her how pissed I was at Poe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He owns this building. It’s not in his name, of course. I think he owns most of half the real estate on this block. Through different dummy corporations or various trusts that he controls. Not Fred’s across the street, but he keeps offering to buy them out. Fred never will. He hates Poe. Randy, his son, is a different story. He’d sell his balls for the right price.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I asked, although the bigger picture was starting to clarify just a little. I thought about Poe and his tentacles spread far beyond his casino enclave on Treasure Island, influencing and infecting unknown parts of the Bay Area and beyond.

  “Just before Matthew died, about a year ago, the lease came up for renewal and Poe tripled the rent. It near drove Matthew crazy. He loved this place. It was his life’s work. The two of us have run it together for the past twenty two years. Matthew had stomach cancer, and I think dealing with Poe shortened his life. He was distraught about it, afraid he’d lose the place. Poe wouldn’t give an inch. Said he had tenants begging him for the place. I didn’t believe him, but what could we do? We’ve been struggling, running big losses every month. I got an inheritance from my mom when she died a few years ago, but it’s almost gone. I was out of ideas.”

  He paused, got up, walked to a water cooler next to the bathroom, filled a paper cup, and sipped it down. He returned to his chair, sagged wearily back down into it.

  “Dot came back into town about six months ago. She’d been in prison and God knows where else after she got out. Said she’d spent time in New York.” He sighed, shook his head. “You couldn’t trust anything she said. Anyway, one night I was so frustrated after paying Poe his monthly ransom that I mentioned it to Dot and how I’d promised her father on his deathbed that I’d protect the place. That I’d never let Poe close us down.

  “The next day she comes to me with this cockamamie scheme of hers. Tells me she knows a lot about gaming and casinos and that she knows guys who can help her and me get money from Poe’s casino. She tells me how important her father’s legacy is to her too. I doubted her, but I was out of options. She can be very convincing, and I was so angry with Poe and well…I owed it to Matthew. I loved him. He was the love of my life.” He closed his eyes again, and his shoulders began spasming as tears rolled down his cheeks.

  Staring at the floor, he said, “Matthew left his wife for me. And Dot knew it. Both of us always carried a load of guilt about that.”

  I took a deep breath and blew it out through my mouth, trying to absorb and make sense of what this new information meant for the whole rotten affair, the scams and the murders, and if the same perps were behind both.

  As usual in human relations and evil doing, everything was much more complicated than it seemed. “So Al and Earl and friend back there were all involved in the scams?”

  “Only Earl. The other two don’t know much. I don’t even know all of it. Carlos, I think you met him when you were here, was involved. His specialty is blackjack. There were five others, and they’ve all been hanging out here on and off for the past few months. Carlos was kind of a co-conspirator with Jewel. He had her ear like no one else.”

  I wouldn’t have guessed that from our conversation about Bobby, but it had been brief, and I’d had no reason to doubt him at the time.

  “What did they need you for?”

  “Money. I gave them the rest of my mother’s inheritance to front them the cash they needed to gamble as well as pay for some electronic equipment used to manipulate the roulette ball.”

  “And you were supposed to split the proceeds with Dot and these men?”

  “Half to me and the other half was up to Dot to divide up. They pinched Poe for more than a million bucks is my understanding. But I haven’t seen a dime of it. Dot kept telling me it was coming. That’s what she told me this morning when she was here. Only a couple more days. I’m already late on this month’s rent. I don’t know why I trusted her. I knew better, but I was just so overwhelmed. I couldn’t disappoint Matthew. If I lost this gym…I don’t know, after he died, I’d have no reason to keep living.”

  If I had to bet on it, I’d wager that Leslie was telling me mostly the truth. His words were raw, and his emotions seemed real.

  I was listening with one ear cocked toward the supply room. I hadn’t heard any screaming so, as I expected, Marsh hadn’t had to resort to pain to have his way.

  “So you and Dot decided at some point that Bobby and his daughter were too big a risk. Did you think that out or did something go wrong and somebody panic?”

  “No,” he said, with a bite. “I don’t know anything about that. Dot told me this morning that somebody had murdered them. It was the first I’d heard of it.” He reached up and touched his raw nose, wiped sweat off his brow. “Jeez. I was stunned. I don’t know if she was involved. She denied it. She said she’d only found out through a source that she couldn’t tell me about because it was too dangerous. I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Were you there the night that Bobby was up in his loft and overheard Jewel and her gang? When they threatened him?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I assumed from what Leslie said that Earl was one of the men involved that night along with Carlos. I’d check Leslie’s story against his.

  Leslie seemed to be leveling with me completely now, but I knew I couldn’t trust him. It was one thing to admit to being involved in a casino scam and quite another to admit that you were a murderer.

  I as
ked a few more questions and got the names of the other two men involved with Jewel and then rose to join Marsh in the stock room.

  “What are you going to do?” Leslie asked as I was leaving.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to the police?”

  “Not right now.”

  We exchanged a long, sad look before his eyes turned away.

  I left him there, broken nose and all.

  Twenty-Five

  “Do you believe him?” Marsh asked.

  We were sitting in his Tesla, a block south of Matthew’s gym.

  “Mostly.”

  “You don’t think he had anything to do with the murders?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe it was just Jewel who set it up. According to most everyone who knew her, she was without scruple. Although she’s never been accused of anything violent. It’s always been grifts.”

  “We don’t know that. She’d probably have a man do her dirty work for her.”

  “True. And she has to be our most likely candidate.” I was watching the street. A man teetering on his heels and holding a paper bag in his hand smoked a cigarette while leaning back against a utility pole. A black cat licked its paws beside a patch of dead grass in front of a hardware supply business. Other than that, it was pretty deserted. I wondered how Matthew and Leslie and Fred had kept their ventures going for the past twenty years with such an off-the-beaten-path location, more suited for industrial uses than retail.

  I guessed it was akin to the out-of-the-way great breakfast place that draws a crowd. Leslie and Fred offered a unique experience, out of step with the au courant style, but popular enough for a cult following.

  “Is Alexandra in place?” Marsh asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You going to join her?”

  “Tonight.”

  “You okay with that?”

  “I know she can take care of herself, but it worries me, of course.”

  He nodded and said, “What now, then?”

  “We’ve got to find Jewel. Our friends back there have any idea where she might be?”

  “Earl said he thought she’d been living at a different motel every night lately, from what she’d hinted. But he wasn’t even sure of that. He said she’d gotten paranoid lately and didn’t trust anybody. She wouldn’t say what was going on, but indicated that she was working on something big. Which Earl said wasn’t unusual for her, but this time, she was more on edge. When she showed up at the gym this morning, it was a surprise to everybody. She met with Leslie in his office for a few minutes and then left without talking to anyone else.”

  “I guess I should start with Carlos. Leslie got me his home and work addresses. He said that he usually comes in the gym late afternoon, but we can’t wait that long. Could you check out the others—Pency, Jorge, and Julian—who Leslie claims were actually involved in the scams at Pirate’s Cove?”

  Marsh took the information, and without further ado, we agreed to check back in with each other as soon as there was anything worth sharing.

  I wouldn’t have pegged Carlos for a florist.

  Weightlifting and petunias aren’t usually associated. Florists and blackjack sharks don’t seem to go together.

  I wondered how many florists were also killers.

  He owned a nursery, Calla Lilies & More, in South San Francisco, near Cypress Lawn Cemetery where my father was buried. As I passed the sprawling, rolling lawns, I realized it had been years since I’d bothered to visit his crypt.

  Dad and I had had more than our share of difficulties, but he’d done the best he could. I don’t live in the past and hardly ever dwell on it, but I owed him a visit.

  Mom wasn’t too far away, in a nursing home in Colma. She’s suffered a few strokes and has dementia. Sometimes she recognizes me, sometimes not. I normally visit her every couple of weeks. It had been close to a month now, and I promised myself that as soon as this case was wrapped up, I’d go see her and hope it was one of her better days.

  She’d been a good mom, mostly, although she didn’t really understand me. Course, I can’t think of a single woman who ever has.

  That’s not really true though, if I think about it. The exception is staring me right in the face if I just acknowledge it.

  Anyway, Mom was an angel who sacrificed herself for her husband and me and my sister without getting much in return.

  It was kind of a cemetery row down on the peninsula with a dozen or more of them lined up off State Route 82, the El Camino Real—the King’s Highway linking the twenty-one California Spanish missions—running from Daly City to San Mateo.

  So Calla Lilies & More was well located to take advantage, and Carlos seemed to be doing exactly that.

  The place was mobbed with patrons. It was a small store made largely of glass, stuffed to the gill with flowers and plants. Three golden bells dangling from red and green ribbons announced my arrival, and I was greeted with the strong scent of a hundred different blossoms. Or so it seemed. The leaves of blooming plants hanging above brushed my hair as I moved through the rainbow-colored space.

  Two young females were behind a desk preparing flowers and plants, nipping buds, wrapping roses in cellophane, chattering with customers about how lovely it all was.

  I spotted Carlos beside a refrigerated display case, holding a bouquet of roses up for inspection by an elderly woman with shellacked silver hair.

  He was wearing khaki shorts and a short-sleeve shirt, and his biceps bulged as he waved a rose to and fro. The woman’s eyes tried valiantly to stay on the lovely red flower but kept straying to Carlos’s even more fascinating musculature.

  I walked over and hovered behind the woman who was wearing a flowing pink caftan and had a pink and yellow daisy sticking incongruously out of a tie in her hair. I couldn’t decide if she’d put it there, or it had fallen from above and stuck to the thick layer of sticky stuff holding her hair pressed down to her skull.

  Despite the fact that I towered over the petite lady, Carlos didn’t seem to notice me as he continued gesticulating and flexing, telling the woman all about the history and appropriateness of this particular set of roses for her purposes.

  Finally, I interrupted. “Carlos.”

  He looked startled, shook his head, found me. “What?” he said.

  “Remember me? From the gym. We talked about Bobby.”

  The smile he’d been flashing vanished.

  The little lady turned her face to me for a moment, frowning, bothered about the rude interruption.

  “I’m busy right now,” Carlos said.

  “We need to talk.”

  “I’m sorry. Not during store hours.”

  “It’s urgent,” I said.

  “We close at three today. Perhaps then.”

  “That won’t do,” I said.

  “Excuse me for a moment, Mrs. Richards. I’ll be right back.”

  He took my elbow and steered me to a little alcove festooned with balloons and ribbons beside the refrigerated case. “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I want to know about Jewel Allen.”

  His eyelids fluttered, lowering for a moment, as if he was trying to shut something down. “I don’t know anything about her. And, as I said, now’s not the time. I’m a busy man. Look at all this.” He waved, pointing out the obvious popularity of his busy little fiefdom. “Now I must go,” he said, and returned to Mrs. Richards who was studying us, or more specifically, him, with an eager eye.

  After apologizing for me, he launched back into his spiel, and she listened, enraptured. I watched them for a few seconds, feeling what I felt.

  I moved away and found a spot in a corner of the store where the floor was covered with a jungle of potted flowers. I planted myself amongst them and peered down into the mass of semi-natural life.

  I drew a deep breath, let it go, and shouted, “Oh my god, a snake! Jeez, how’d a rattler get in here! Everybody run!”

  And I galloped out of the sto
re.

  Twenty-Six

  A general uproar and pandemonium followed my departure.

  Even Carlos’s two employees deserted, shrieking all the way.

  I threaded back through the crowd now gathered outside discussing the dreaded rattler as if it were Voldemort’s evil snake come to life. I reassured one and all, telling them that animal control was on the way and that I was going to check on poor Carlos inside, warning them to come no closer.

  I found the florist sitting on a stool inside his now empty store.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he said, shaking his head like he was in the presence of true insanity.

  I’d been accused of that more today than usual, and it made me wonder for just a moment before I realized that it was my job, not me, that was crazy.

  “I warned you it was urgent.”

  “Do you know what this can do to my business? I’m going to—”

  “Shut up!” I shouted. “You’re in deep shit, friend. Leslie told me you were involved in cheating the Pirate’s Cove Casino among other prosecutable offenses.”

  His eyes danced around the room, then veered to the window looking out at the throng of would-be customers. “What do you want?”

  “Like I said, I’m looking for Jewel Allen.”

  “I can’t help you.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t. I don’t know where she is.”

  “Tell me what you know about her. You were her blackjack guy, right?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m a florist.”

  I studied him, trying to decide on my best tack. “You were friends with Bobby. Or that’s what you told me.”

  He gripped his knees with his hands. “We weren’t close friends, but yes, we worked out together, shared a few breakfasts. He cried on my shoulder. I tried to help him out.”

  “Were you there at Bobby and Jewel’s place the night he overheard her and found out how she was using him, betraying him just for access to information about his brother’s casino?”