Vegas Vengeance

by Randy Wayne White

  She could have taken his tone as the lightest sarcasm, but she didn’t. The blond girl thought hard for a moment. “I sense a lot of goodness in you. I felt immediate trust for you—if I hadn’t, I’d have gotten the hell out the moment you came in. I always follow my instincts, James.”

  “Well, I’m flattered, Wendy—”

  She held up her hands, cutting him off. “Don’t talk. You asked me what kind of vibes I picked up, and I want to tell you as clearly as I can.” She rolled her head back, loosening her neck muscles. “That’s the first thing I felt: that goodness in you. But then I began to get a lot of dark stuff. Evil. It kind of scared me at first. That’s when I asked if you were a friend of Jason’s. If you had said yes, I would have left. I’d have known you were lying. But then I began to realize that none of that dark stuff, that evil, was directed at me.” She looked at Hawker innocently. “It’s kind of confusing, huh?”

  “Yeah,” James Hawker said. “It is.”

  “You’ve killed people, haven’t you? A lot of people.”

  Confronted with her total openness, Hawker couldn’t lie. “Yes, Wendy, I have.”

  “Like in a war or something?”

  “Yes. A war. In a way.”

  “And they were bad people? Evil people?”

  “I hope so, Wendy. Sometimes I worry I’ve made mistakes, but I don’t think I have.”

  She nodded as if accepting that. “And now you’ve come to find the men who murdered Jason. And when you find them, you plan to kill them?”

  “Not if I can help it. I don’t really know.”

  She stood abruptly and bent over Hawker. She kissed him very tenderly on the lips. Then she opened the door to leave. “I hope you don’t find them, James Hawker. I hope you don’t find them, because I picked up something else in the vibes. Something bad. Something very bad.”

  Hawker was still thinking about the extraordinary softness of her lips. “And what’s that, Wendy?”

  “It’s death, James. Your death. I sense that you are to die soon. Maybe not this week; maybe not even this year. But soon. Too soon.”

  As she stepped onto the porch and trotted into the yard, she called over her shoulder, “I live just over that ridge, James. I hope you’ll come and see me. Any time, day or night, it doesn’t matter. You’ll be welcome.…”

  Hawker sat unmoving for several minutes. He had met the hippie types before: the whole cast of pot smokers, meditators, bead weavers, free livers, pseudo-intellectuals and the general run of drug-damaged do-nothings all of those things implied.

  But still, Wendy Nierson didn’t seem to fit neatly into those categories. Her openness, her honesty, in fact, seemed to put her above the narrow cubbyholing of human types.

  Hawker thought about her for a while longer, then stood. He had work to do. He had come to search Jason Stratton’s cabin, not waste time wondering about one woman’s surprising display of extrasensory perception.

  So he did just that: searched the cabin.

  There was surprisingly little dust about for a place supposedly vacant for several weeks. But that could have been because Wendy had been using it, keeping it clean.

  Stratton seemed to have few material belongings. The books on the shelves over the bed were mostly nonfiction. Academic works on biology, geology, the arts.

  He had made a table out of planking and cement blocks. On the table were a microscope, a few jars of chemicals, then a long row of jars. In the jars, soaking in formaldehyde, were various species of spiders, insects and snakes.

  Hawker looked closely at the jars of chemicals. Because they were not labeled, he found some envelopes and took samples of each.

  Also on the table was a display case of rocks. Many were quite beautiful: raw crystals of red, blue, green and clear white. Another looked like salt crystals immersed in shiny black tar. Some were labeled with their scientific names. Others weren’t. Outside the display case were mounds of other rocks, beside which were a geologist’s hammer and a stone polishing machine.

  He put samples of the rocks in separate envelopes.

  Hawker knew that almost everyone had a secret hiding place: a place to stash money, private papers, diaries.

  He spent half an hour looking for Stratton’s before he found it: inside the wall behind a broken board.

  There was $732 in cash, a life insurance policy and a notebook.

  Hawker put it all in a manila envelope, then climbed back into the Jaguar and took his time driving back to Las Vegas, enjoying the scenery he had missed on the trip out.

  six

  Half an hour late, Barbara Blaine parted the crowd in the elegant Mirage dining room as with a wave of her hand.

  She singled out Hawker sitting in a far corner and allowed the maitre d’ to escort her to the table.

  Hawker had expected a gaudier woman. A woman who, because of her unusual social position, cultivated a go-to-hell look through loud clothes, heavy makeup, bright colors and an avante garde hairstyle.

  He was pleasantly surprised.

  Everything about Barbara Blaine was subtle, understated. She was one of the long, lithe ones. A hint of Mediterranean in the glossy black hair, the hollow cheeks and the penetrating brown eyes. A suggestion of the athlete in the fluidness of her walk. The implication of the successful business-person in the assertive movements, the no-nonsense gaze above the winning smile.

  Her evening gown was held by a single shoulder strap, the gown a silver satin creation that flowed down over the svelte swell of breasts, the flexing convexity of buttocks, the sleek brown legs. She carried the small pearl handbag as naturally as, Hawker was sure, she would carry an expensive briefcase.

  He found himself standing at her approach. Her handshake was dry, firm and brief. A chairman-of-the-board handshake.

  “I’m late,” she said. It was not an apology. It was a statement.

  “I thought no one looked at clocks in Las Vegas,” Hawker said as they took their seats.

  “Oh, there are still a few of us who haven’t fallen under the spell of complete and unremitting debauchery.” She gave him a careful look as she opened the velvet menu proffered by the maitre d’.

  “I’m nursing a beer, Barbara. Drink?”

  “I shouldn’t, but I will. It’s been one of those damn crazy days.” She gave her order to the waiter rather than Hawker. “Billy, I want the biggest, driest, coldest martini that rummy bartender of yours can build. Let me work on it for about twenty minutes, then bring me an artichoke salad—double portion—and a pot of coffee. Sweet ’n Low but no cream.”

  “Right away, Miss Blaine.”

  Her order was given so succinctly that the waiter got halfway to the kitchen before remembering he had failed to get Hawker’s dinner order.

  Hawker ordered the onion soup, prime rib au jus, baron cut, a dish of cold asparagus with mayonnaise and a double order of garlic toast.

  When he had finished, he folded the menu and turned his attention to the woman across the table from him.

  “It was nice of you to agree to this meeting,” he said.

  “Nothing nice about it,” she countered. “Kevin Smith says you might be able to help us. I have no intention of selling the Doll House, and I don’t care to spend the next year living in fear for the lives of my friends. If you can help us, I will cooperate in any way I can.”

  “You play the part of the steely businesswoman very nicely.”

  “Maybe I’m not playing a part. Maybe I’m just that: steely.” The waiter brought her martini. She tasted it experimentally and nodded that it was satisfactory. She spun the swizzle stick in her fingers as she continued. “And I am a businesswoman, Mr. Hawker. Even in my business, people who see me rarely mistake me for anything else. But I must admit that you look nothing like I pictured you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Not at all. I guess I expected the Sam Spade type. Cheap suit frayed at the elbows. Rough complexion. Cigarette sticking out of the corner of your mouth. A bulge under your
lapel where your gun is holstered. Glassy scars on your jaws and knuckles.” She peered at him closely over the candle in the center of the table. “But I guess you do have a few scars, don’t you?”

  “A few. I hope they make up for the other shortcomings.”

  She laughed. “Oh, I’m not disappointed in you. Not yet. Kevin Smith speaks highly of your abilities.” Her gaze narrowed. “In fact, he said you were something of a legend among the major police departments in this country. He said he had never even met you before yesterday, yet he was sure you were the ideal man for the job when he realized that neither he nor the official police could handle it. I wonder why, Mr. Hawker. Why would one man be able to succeed where a whole force of trained policemen might fail?”

  Hawker shrugged. “To begin with, I’m not Mr. Hawker. That was my father. I’m ‘James’ or ‘Hawk’ or just about anything else you care to call me. And maybe it’s because I don’t take coffee breaks. And I don’t have a union that charges time and a half. And, of course, there are no guarantees I won’t fail. Working undercover offers certain advantages, but it also makes me more vulnerable.”

  “Is that right? For some reason, you don’t strike me as the vulnerable type.”

  “I become especially vulnerable when the people I’m after have a spy in my own camp.”

  She put down her drink quickly, her face incredulous. “What? You can’t mean that.”

  Hawker shrugged. “Today on the telephone, I told you I planned to check out Jason Stratton’s cabin this afternoon. I left a note for Captain Smith telling him the same thing. Through one of those two sources, the organization trying to force you out of your businesses was informed.”

  “I didn’t tell a damn soul!”

  “I’m not saying you did. It was stupid of me to leave the information in a note. Anyone could have opened it, read it, then put it in a fresh envelope. It’s a mistake I will never make again.”

  “Or the telephone lines could have been tapped,” Barbara Blaine said thoughtfully.

  Hawker nodded. “Or they could have bugged my room. I didn’t have time to give it a thorough going over when I returned late this afternoon, but I will tonight.”

  “But they knew where you were going? And they followed you?”

  Hawker poured the rest of his Tuborg into the pilsner glass. He didn’t want to go into too much detail. For one thing, he had no real proof that he could trust this woman. On the way out to Vegas, he had formed several possible scenarios to explain the extortion attempt on the Five-Cs complex. One of the scenarios was that Jason Stratton hadn’t been murdered—he had disappeared voluntarily to work undercover against the Five-Cs with his accomplice, Barbara Blaine.

  The scenario didn’t seem to fit now. Barbara Blaine seemed too earnest; the things he had found in Stratton’s cabin suggested that he had, indeed, been kidnapped or murdered.

  Even so, Hawker omitted some key information from his story. He had learned very quickly that in Las Vegas, the opposition only needs one small opening to kill you.

  She listened transfixed to the story of the car chase. “But what happened after they wrecked their car?” she demanded. “Did they talk? Did they say anything?”

  Hawker looked at her levelly. “They were both killed.”

  Her hand trembled slightly as she touched the martini glass to her lips. “They were killed? In the car wreck, you mean?”

  “In the paper tomorrow you will read that the two men somehow got into a fight with each other while driving through Kyle Canyon. The police will be confused, so they will say that it is still under investigation. But they will decide the two men killed each other. The car, of course, then went out of control and wrecked.”

  “You killed them,” she whispered.

  Hawker looked away noncommittally.

  “But did they tell you anything first? Did you find out who hired them—”

  “No. They didn’t grant me an interview. They were too busy trying to convert me into a corpse so they could dump me and my car into the canyon.”

  “My God,” she said. “Then I … I was right. Jason is … they really did kill him?”

  “I think so. I found evidence in his cabin that he did not leave voluntarily.”

  “Oh, no,” she whispered. “That’s awful. It didn’t seem so hard to accept when I was the only one insisting he had been murdered. I guess it was because deep in my heart, I secretly believed I was wrong. But to hear you say it …”

  The woman whimpered, and her chest heaved as she fought for control. Hawker reached over and patted her hand. “Maybe we should eat later. Let’s go up to my suite. I have a few things I need to show you, and it’ll give you time to calm down.”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “That might be best.”

  Hawker found their waiter and gave him a twenty to delay their dinner orders, then took Barbara Blaine’s hand and led her through the casino to the elevator.

  This was a different woman from the one who had entered the dining room with such quiet flair. Now she was soft and vulnerable and very, very damn close to breaking.

  The change was so drastic and so touching that Hawker found himself feeling sorry for her.

  Like the hard-nosed whorehouse matrons of fiction, this one really did seem to have a tender heart made for breaking.

  seven

  Back in his suite, Hawker poured gin into a beaker and added the obligatory scent of vermouth. He filled the beaker with ice, shook it and served the martini in a chilled glass with a triple portion of olives.

  Barbara Blaine took the drink gratefully.

  “Better?”

  She nodded. “I don’t understand why it hit me so hard all of a sudden.” She looked out the broad veranda window and spoke out loud, as if listening to her own words. “Jason is dead. Jason Stratton is dead.” She shivered and took down half the drink in a gulp. “And it’s such a damnable waste.”

  Hawker took the manila envelope from the desk. He opened it and handed it to her. “I found this stuff hidden in his cabin. If he had left voluntarily, he would have taken it.”

  She looked at the wad of bills for a moment and smiled wryly at some private memory. She put the money on the bed with the insurance policy. Then she turned her attention to the journal: a small book bound in black leather.

  She leafed through the pages, then looked at Hawker. “I’ve seen him carry this. He used to joke about it. Of course, with Jason, it was hard to tell when he was joking and when he wasn’t. He used to say this would be his doctoral dissertation, but that no one would understand it. Now I see why.”

  Hawker didn’t have to ask what she was talking about. He had already looked at the journal. There were about three hundred pages covered in a minute, carefully written code. There were drawings of plants and insects, and a few entries in recognizable English, but most of it was in what seemed to be a random combination of numbers and letters.

  “I was hoping he had explained the code to you. You seem to think these people killed Jason as a way to pressure you. I’m not so sure.”

  “But why in the hell else would they do it?” she snapped. “He was such a kind … good … person. Jason wouldn’t hurt anybody. It wasn’t in him.”

  Hawker shrugged. “Maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have. Maybe he knew something they didn’t want him to know. I was hoping you or this journal could tell me a little more about him.”

  “All I know about the code he used is something he told me about his boyhood. He came from a big family with a drunken, nosy mother. He said he developed the code when he was in his teens, so she couldn’t read what he had written. He said he’d been using it so long that it was second nature to write that way.”

  “He never hinted at the key to the code?”

  Barbara Blaine thought for a moment, then gave a negative shake of her head. She began to riffle through her handbag. “Do you have any cigarettes?”

  “No.”

  She put down the bag and returne
d to her drink. “I don’t either. I quit two years ago—when I met Jason. But sometimes I still carry them for friends—and to prove I don’t need them. He had this way about him, a way of making you not only believe in him but in yourself, too. I mentioned once that I wanted to quit smoking, and then very calmly and very kindly he told me all this scientific stuff about cigarettes. He explained that no one really enjoyed sucking poison into their lungs; that claiming to enjoy it was really just a rationalization for the physical feelings of addiction. He asked me to picture how ridiculous I looked sucking a white stick of burning leaves. He said it was the tobacco industry—a multibillion-dollar industry—that had replaced the honestly absurd image of smoking with a carefully planned image of sophistication and sexuality. He said I was allowing them to use me as a dupe. A slave, really, who earned them several hundred dollars a year in profit—not to mention the grave harm I was doing to my own body. Jason didn’t lecture people. He reasoned with them. He got me so mad at my own silliness and at the tobacco industry that I quit that afternoon.”

  Hawker waited patiently, knowing the woman had to work into it in her own way.

  She swirled the gin in the glass, staring deeply into the clarity of it. “I met him just over two years ago. I had just built the Doll House, had just built on property I’d bought from the Five-Cs syndicate. Outwardly I was feeling very proud of myself. Very tough and in control. The house was tastefully done, and I had built it all myself. No partners. And I knew that I would soon be rich, have all the money I had ever dreamed of.

  “But inwardly I felt … I felt just as cheap and dirty as a person can feel.” She looked up at Hawker suddenly. “Do you want to know how I became the matron of a whorehouse? Take the most obvious guess, and you’ll be right. I worked on my own, free-lance, for three years. A thousand dollars a night—and I did my best to make damn sure I was worth it. I read all the literature, learned all the tricks and then improved on them. If a man paid me once, I did anything I had to do to make sure he would be back. I got the occasional sicko. I was beaten badly twice. But I went right back to work when I got out of the hospital. For an attractive woman from a poor background, there are only two ways to get rich, Hawk. One way is to marry a rich man.” She laughed sardonically. “That’s the most common form of prostitution, isn’t it? But I didn’t want a bad husband and a bad marriage. I had watched a bad marriage turn my mother into an old and broken woman. But I did want to be rich. Money was power, and I wanted power. So I chose the other form of prostitution.