I Don't Like Where This Is Going

by John Dufresne

  When he remarked that he and I seemed to be the only people interested in getting to the bottom of Layla Davis’s death, I told him what Julie Wade had learned about Layla’s sister Blythe. He guessed that Blythe would have been, or might still be, involved in prostitution.

  He said, “There are thirty thousand very busy prostitutes in Vegas, where prostitution is illegal but only a misdemeanor.” He wiped his lips with the napkin. “I figure hundred and eighty thousand blow jobs a day in Clark County. Makes you burst with civic pride.” He thought we were unlikely to find out much more about Layla. Unless.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless Blythe is still alive.”

  “And we can find her.”

  “Do you have a photo?”

  I didn’t, but I would have Bay check with Julie Wade. I told Elwood that the hotel cameras that I was told did not exist must have captured the activity on the thirtieth floor when Layla was disposed of. Elwood said he’d already checked on that, and the cameras, he was told, were not working that day. They couldn’t even get their lies straight. A green and yellow Google Maps Street View car drove by snapping photos with its roof-mounted camera. Elwood said, “Now we’ll always be those two unhealthy guys guzzling fast food and waiting for the Boulder Highway Express.”

  And then he said, “It’s my job to investigate Layla’s death. Why are you doing it?”

  “You can’t just sit by.”

  “Of course you can. We do it all the time.”

  “Because I was a witness. I saw those eyes and that broken face, and I can’t forget. And because an acquaintance, a Memphis PI, the Julie I just mentioned, was hired to find her, and my friend Bay and I are doing what we can to help. Because I think she was killed, and someone’s getting away with murder.”

  “Justice is a game of chance.”

  He told me he grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side, and had gone to prep schools and to Princeton. When he told his parents he wanted to be a reporter, not an academic, they laughed. But they weren’t laughing now. His dad, Dr. Ned Wingo, was a Freudian analyst who rode motorcycles and fancied himself a swinger. Ned called Elwood on occasion to ask for his advice with younger women, whom he just couldn’t figure out. Elwood’s mom, Lainey Roth Wingo, was an atypical Jewish mother who wrote YA novels and did not like to be disturbed by rambling phone calls from her only child, whom she had fictively killed off in her breakout novel, Rap City in Blue (peanuts/anaphylaxis). The parents were not divorced but lived apart except for the month of August, when Ned migrated to Provincetown with all the other analysts, and Lainey joined him. They brought along their current girlfriends.

  Elwood answered his phone, told whoever it was that he’d be there in five minutes, and invited me along to a breaking story. “A body’s been found in the lot behind Lamps Plus on South Maryland.” Elwood drove a Fiat 500 in which he’d installed a workstation in the passenger-side front seat—swivel desktop, computer, police scanner, and wireless printer. I climbed in back and shoved the camera bag and food wrappers to the side.

  He said the on-air reports were essentially eye candy for the easily distracted. His real journalism happened on his station-sponsored blog, where he could go into depth on a story. We arrived at Lamps Plus. It helped that Elwood knew the detective leading the crime scene investigation. He and Detective Lou Scaturro belonged to the Bocce Club of Las Vegas.

  I said, “You play bocce, Elwood?”

  “For the Knights of Cabria. Lou plays for the Sons of It’ly,” Elwood shook hands with Detective Scaturro and introduced us. “What do we have here, Lou?”

  What we had was the body of a young woman, which had been discovered that morning by a homeless guy out Dumpster-diving. The body had been wrapped in the distressing green, gold, and black pleated polyester bedspread that was now folded next to the corpse. The girl, Detective Scaturro told us, had been garroted with an electrical cord, which was still coiled around her neck. He unzipped the body bag and held it open. A cluster of red dots rimmed the girl’s eyes. Her lips were swollen. Elwood squatted to get a closer look. Her shaggy hair was black; she wore a nose ring on her left nostril and smelled like melting plastic. Her left arm was crosshatched with razor cuts. Detective Scaturro resealed the bag and nodded to the EMTs, who lifted the body onto a gurney. He said, “She hasn’t been dead long.”

  Detective Scaturro had a high forehead and a thick brush of russet hair. His eyes were forest-green, his chin modest and dimpled. The wrinkles around the eyes suggested easy and eager smiles. I knew from his guileless face that Scaturro was married and had a flock of boisterous kids. I knew he speculated in real estate. I knew he drank modestly, favored grappa, and had never even considered smoking cigarettes. I knew he kept no untoward secrets and told no unnecessary lies. And when I say knew, I mean, of course, imagined.

  Most body dumps are tough to unravel, but this one would not be. Detective Scaturro said, “Miss Doe was murdered elsewhere.”

  “And I know where,” Elwood said. “I recognize the bedspread. Check the Starlite Motel on South Las Vegas Boulevard.”

  Detective Scaturro raised an eyebrow and cocked his head. “So are you going to tell us the story?”

  “Not much to tell,” Elwood said. “A while back I hit a rough patch. I spent several wasted nights at the Starlite, drinking bourbon, inhaling chocolate, and reading Philip K. Dick novels. But not before I stashed the abominable bedspread in the closet.”

  Detective Scaturro dispatched a unit to the Starlite. Officers were soon able to view the motel’s surveillance videos. At four-thirty P.M. yesterday, a man walked into Room 112 with our Miss Doe on his arm. At six thirty-seven this morning, the man, who had registered under his own name, Ted Seeley, left the room carrying a cumbersome object swaddled in the bedspread and dropped the load into the trunk of his rental car. Seeley was a convicted sex offender only recently released from prison. He was picked up that evening at his mother’s house in North Las Vegas. His mother wept at the kitchen table as the officers read Ted his rights and cuffed him. She made the sign of the cross and said, “He’s sick in the head. My poor baby’s sick.” She scraped the uneaten lasagna from Ted’s plate into the toilet in the hall and flushed. We would soon learn that the victim, Ariel Gonzalez, was a fifteen-year-old crack addict, who liked to write poetry, and who had been working as a prostitute for three years. When police finally located her family, her older sister said, “Thank god you’ve found her.”

  Elwood asked Detective Scaturro what he’d heard about the woman who fell to her death at the Luxor. Not a thing.

  “I did a report on the news.”

  “I’ll watch it.”

  “They took it down.”

  I asked Detective Scaturro, “What do you think about the casino denying it ever happened?”

  “Want to avoid bad publicity.”

  “What about a police department denying it?”

  “That would be wrong.”

  “But not inconceivable?”

  He looked at Elwood and then back at me. “When you say police department, I take it to mean the high command.” And then he turned his back and the conversation was over.

  Elwood and I agreed we needed a drink. He had a well-stocked bar at home only a few minutes from here. From the backseat of his car, I said, “So what does Scaturro have, like, five kids?”

  “Yeah, how did you know? All boys. One on the way. He’s hoping it’s a girl. He’ll never stop having kids, that guy. Every new child makes him feel more alive.”

  Elwood mixed us a drink he called a Chekhov, made with vodka, elderflower, and gooseberry liqueur, which Rachel Maddow had taught him to make at an after party at some press gathering back East. He garnished the drink with a thin slice of green apple and a sprig of mint. Delicious. And one drink led to another. We sat out on his back porch. He pointed to a mockingbird perched in the palo verde and took out his iPhone. He played the two-note text-tone tweet, and the mockingbird answered in kind. He
said to me, “Why don’t you call me, so I’ll have your number.”

  I pulled out what I thought was my iPhone but was, in fact, a Trader Joe’s sardine can. So I told Elwood my number. I said, “The cat makes me crazy.”

  MY CONVIVIAL CABDRIVER suggested I browse through the advertising postcards and pamphlets in the seatback pocket in front of me. I told him I was familiar with the material, and I wasn’t looking for any action this afternoon, hoping he could detect the ironic quotation marks in my pronunciation of action.

  He said, “You don’t like it live in the lap?”

  “Not when I have to pay for it.” I asked him how pathetic he thought a man’s life would have to be if he had to purchase sex.

  He said, “You are what is called a brood, no?”

  “Prude, yes,” I said.

  He said that not all men were as fortunate and handsome as I was, and I did note the gentle ironic quotation marks around his adjectives. He said, “Loneliness corrodes the heart.” He told me his tautonymous name was Ilarion Ilarion, that he was a Macedonian from Bulgaria, spoke five languages, and had been in the USA seven years. He pointed to a photo on his visor of his wife and two young sons. “Names Joe and Tom. Americans.”

  I told him I was Wylie from South Florida.

  He told me that a ride to one of the advertised destinations would be free.

  I said, “How does that work?”

  “I get the juice from the grateful establishments.”

  “Kickbacks?”

  “You seem incredulous, my friend. Are you sure you’re not Canadian? Juice is how I feed my family. Can’t make a living driving people six blocks. Twenty-five hundred cabs in this town.”

  “You own your cab?”

  “No driver owns his cab here. The unions pimp us; the owners fuck us up the ass. Pardon my Serbian.”

  “Tips aren’t good?”

  “All the money goes to the casinos and the whores.” He held up two fingers. “Two sounds a driver doesn’t want to hear: change in a pocket or bullet in a chamber.”

  We were stopped at a red light in front of Caesars Palace when we both noticed a squabby fellow in a Lakers basketball jersey—15 WORLD PEACE—and bulky denim shorts, harassing a young girl. She walked in a circle, trying ineffectively to get away from this lout, who was screaming in her face and poking her shoulder with his stubby forefinger. Ilarion hit the horn, threw the cab in park, opened his door, stepped outside, and told the punk to stop right now or face the wrath of Ilarion. The Laker gave him the finger, but walked away just the same. That’s when I recognized the victim as the girl I’d seen at the Crisis Center two days ago. And she was still crying. I wondered if she had ever stopped. I handed Ilarion a twenty, thanked him, and hopped out. He said, “Watch yourself, my friend.”

  Now that World Peace had fled the field of combat, the frazzled girl put her face in her hands and took a deep breath. She had slipped her arms up to the elbows into the sleeves of a thin green hooded sweatshirt, and left the rest of the sweatshirt doffed. She saw me watching her and told me to fuck off.

  I said, “I know you.”

  “You wish you did.”

  “I mean I know who you are.”

  She had the monogram PG tattooed on her upper arm. Parental Guidance? The swelling on her face had diminished and she’d hidden the bruise with makeup.

  I said, “PG?”

  “Pretty Girl.”

  “You were at the Crisis Center. I volunteer there.”

  “You’ll go to heaven.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “You want a date?”

  “They took you to Refuge House.”

  “And I left.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “In the tunnels. With the mole people.”

  “Why not Refuge House?”

  “Girls don’t stay at Refuge House. They’re shipped out.”

  “Probably want to get you away from your triggers.”

  She shook her head. “You’re clueless.”

  She told me she could take care of herself, had been since she was twelve. No, she had no phone, no change of clothes, no friends in Vegas, and nowhere to go except underground. I told her I wanted to get her a room for the night. She asked if I came with the room. I did not. Had she eaten? She had not. Supper and a room, I said. With a room she could soak in a hot tub, wash her clothes, watch a movie, get a good night’s sleep, and go back to the Crisis Center tomorrow. I said, “I’ll be there at ten.”

  She smiled. “I’ll be sleeping.”

  A short, heavyset woman wearing a Reno Aces ball cap and a GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! DIRECT TO YOU IN 20 MINUTES OR LESS T-shirt handed me several advertising photos of naked women. I handed them back, pointed at her T-shirt, and said, “Fewer.”

  “Qué?”

  “Your T-shirt is grammatically abusive.”

  “No entiendo.”

  “I thought prostitution was illegal in Las Vegas.”

  “Prostitute? No! Girlfriend? Sí!”

  A blonde woman in a blue cape sat on the sidewalk playing a small accordion and singing opera with a piercing falsetto. Her cigar box was empty. The T-shirt lady smiled, pointed her chin at my companion, and said, “Ya tiene las manos llenas.”

  The girl told me her name was Ruby Tuesday; she was eighteen; she grew up in Smallville. Three lies. I was the handsomest guy she’d seen all day. Four. I suggested we duck into Serendipity 3, where we ordered her a buffalo wing pizza and a chocolate milkshake to go. I showed her a photo of Layla. She looked at the photo and then away. Said she didn’t recognize her. Five? Something had leaped out of that image and stung Ruby. I asked her to look again. She said she could look all day and nothing would change. I asked her if the name Blythe Davis rang a bell. It did not.

  We took the walkway over Las Vegas Boulevard to Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall & Saloon. Ruby sucked on her milkshake, and I carried the pizza. When a woman wearing a fanny pack and flipped-up sunglasses looked at me and then at Ruby and then back at me, I realized what we must look like to passersby and to any law enforcement officers lurking about—an odious pedophile and his supple young bedmate. And Ruby, apparently, thought the same. She said, “Don’t worry. They can see your halo.”

  The registration clerk told us we’d be able to see the Eiffel Tower from our room.

  I said, “She will. I’m not staying.”

  Ruby said, “The what?”

  I handed her the key card and the pizza and told her to enjoy herself.

  “When I lay down and close my eyes, and it’s quiet—that’s the best time there is.” She put her drink on the desk, shook my hand, and thanked me. Her sweatshirt still hung from her arms.

  Lie, I thought, not lay.

  BAY SAID THAT my brother-in-law Oliver had been trying to reach me all day. I explained my can of sardines. Bay said Oliver told him that his wife, my sister Venise, had suffered a heart attack, was in the hospital, and wanted to see me. Patience had booked me a flight on the red-eye tonight. She’d meet me at the airport in the morning. Bay said, “I’ve got your suitcase packed and in the car. We’ll drop you at McCarran at nine.”

  I said, “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “Your sister is very sick.”

  “She can be an alarmist. What if I’m seen by the wrong people?”

  “Open Mike reports that no one’s really all that interested in teaching us a lesson anymore. They’re all too busy scheming with their lawyers, keeping their hands clean, and putting on happy and honorable faces.”

  “So we can go home soon?”

  “Soon enough.”

  We ordered Cajun martinis. Mercedes was on her way. Bay handed me his iPhone. Julie Wade had sent him a screenshot of Blythe Davis, aka Fawn Monroe, captured from an escort service ad: “This dark-eyed beauty is playful and intuitive to your needs. She loves attention and doesn’t mind being in the spotlight. A bargain at any price.” The ad promised discretion, safety, and veracity. Blythe’s back w
as arched, her neck was exposed, her allegedly dark eyes shut, and her mouth open in a pose she hoped approximated ecstasy, but more accurately suggested stupor. I asked Bay to forward me the photo. He said, “Aren’t your sardines packed too tightly for that?” And then he handed me my phone.

  Mercedes kissed Bay on the cheek and sat. He pulled a white rose out of the air and handed it to her. She thanked him and slipped it into her water glass. She ordered a Sidecar. I asked her how her creative writing class went.

  “We wrote about what keeps us up at night.”

  “So what did you write about?”

  “Being alone. Feeling abandoned. Forgotten. The party’s over and everyone has gone home, and I’m alone, and I don’t even live here.” She thanked the waiter and sipped her drink. “What keeps you up at night, Wylie?”

  “What I haven’t done. What I’ve done. What I have to do. What I’ve done wrong or sloppily or mindlessly. What might have been. What I can’t forget. What I can’t remember. Death. What I’ve lost. What I gave away. What I’ll find. Layla Davis.”

  “Have you tried Ambien?”

  I said, “What keeps you up, Bay?”

  He smiled. “She does.” He took Mercedes’s hand.

  5

  I WAS DREAMING without sleeping. Bay hadn’t packed my sleep mask, so I bought one at the airport terminal along with silicone earplugs, Dream Water, and a foam neck pillow. I swallowed the Lunesta that Bay had given me. I planned to sleep my way to Florida, but that didn’t happen for more than five minutes at a time. I tossed; I turned; I may even have whimpered and moaned. I dreamed I was crammed into Seat 23D on a Virgin America flight to Everglades International Airport. My dead father told me his brain was on fire, and I could see that his head was smoking. The young man in 23E tapped my arm, said he had to visit the lav. While he was gone, I drifted back to dreamland and told Venise I was en route. Venise weighed 357 pounds in my dream and in her actual life, and she hadn’t spoken to me since our father died a couple of months ago.