by Rex Burns
Not looking, but knowing that the man was working his way along the other sidewalk beyond the blur of cars, Wager stretched his legs to reach the flickering sign. Whitey would still be looking behind him while Wager was now in front, and that little twist gave the kind of smile to his lips that brought startled looks from some of the people he pushed by. He turned into The Palm Room and paused under the shaggy plastic fronds that hung from the entry-way ceiling. Blinking against the cigarette smoke and painfully amplified noise, Wager groped his way toward the bar and the half-dozen motionless figures watching the woman on stage.
“Can I get you a table?” A girl stood at his elbow and smiled. “My name’s Tess.”
Wager glanced past her and understood why the men at the bar stared fixedly. A nude girl sat on her heels, knees apart, and leaned back, lifting her breasts toward the ceiling, while her partner, a giant, glistening python, inched its thick body between her legs and up her round stomach in small, rippling moves. Its markings, an intricate pattern of greens and yellows and browns, shone in the spotlight with a clean and primitive sharpness that, to Wager, dominated all that was happening around it, drawing his eyes with the fascination of the substantial.
“Who’s that onstage?”
“The dancer’s Simba. The snake’s Leo. You like snakes?”
“I like the snake better than the broad. No, I don’t want a table—not yet. Just some phone change.” He looked around. “You got a phone here?”
Without wasting another word, she tossed a hand toward the small white sign glowing in a far corner and turned back to her station.
Wager, an eye on the doorway, waited for the bartender to finish mixing an order and come toward him, dragging his towel along the bar top. “Help you?”
He held out a bill. “Phone change, please.”
“Sure.”
Taking the handful of coins, Wager stood at the telephone, his gaze toward the door. Placing a call, he listened to the recorded voice tell him the time and temperature over and over until Whitey, unhurried, finally came in. One of the waitresses came forward with a smile and he followed her to a table. Wager hung up and moved in behind them.
From his small table, Wager saw the waitress ask something; the man nodded, both hands empty and forearms resting in front of him.
“Getcha something now?”
Tess was back and Wager said, “Dark beer.”
“Heineken’s okay?”
“Fine.”
Whitey watched the stage, where the python’s head was nearing the girl’s neck; she had begun to flex her hips to the same rhythm as the snake’s measured ripple and the beat of the throbbing drum. Still watching as the waitress took his order, he reached into his coat’s left vest pocket and brought out something that his hand half-covered and laid it on the table in front of him. Then he reached for his wallet and pulled out a bill. The waitress came back with the tray and served him; Whitey handed her the bill and Wager saw through the dimness that the table in front of the man was empty of everything except his glass and the napkin it rested on. But Whitey’s eyes were still on the stage and, casually, he tucked something away into his right vest pocket. He brings something in his left pocket; he takes something in his right pocket—but Wager hadn’t seen what it was. Like watching bumps moving under a blanket, you know something’s going on, and you have a pretty good idea of what it is. But exactly how it’s happening is still hidden.
The recorded drums ended in a deafening roll and the girl stood, the snake draped heavily back and forth across her shoulders, its long tail dangling between her breasts. The music went into a quick and slightly quieter tune and she paced around the lip of the stage, twisting sharply on the ball of each foot and pausing with each step to show off her body and the snake’s and to allow the men to stuff bills into the thongs of her sandals. Whitey sipped once at his drink and stood, shadowed eyes going over the half-empty room. They hesitated when they came to Wager, sitting at the table just behind him, and he felt that little electric tingle that comes when you know you’ve been spotted. Then the dim face finished its survey and Whitey strode slowly toward the exit as if waiting for someone to follow him.
Wager let him go. He did not know if Whitey recognized him as a cop in disguise or if the bartender at the Turkish Delights had described him as the short Mexican who was asking all the questions and who should have been smart enough to quit while he was in one piece. He hoped it was the latter, but it didn’t make too much difference now—Wager had seen all he would be able to see, and there was no need to spook the man further. Finishing his beer, he raised his finger for another. Give Whitey plenty of line—let him stand around outside until he felt safe and went to his next contact. Now was not the time to rush.
The loudspeaker announced Big Bertha and Her Incredible Fifty-Twos, and Wager sat back to enjoy the show. A woman with frizzy blond hair laughed and joked with the men at her feet as they called to her to take it off. She did, one gauzy wrap at a time. She held out the shimmering color as she spun and tossed it into the darkness at the end of the runway, where a pale hand reached to pull the floating cloth to safety. By the second number and Wager’s third beer, she was down to three or four transparent veils with her bra and panties saved for the final dance. Tess brought him another round without being asked. Wager sipped until the grand finale, then he placed a bill on the runway as he left.
A small tripod facing exiting customers held a carnival-like sign that proclaimed, Ladies! Every Tuesday Nite: Don’t Miss Won Hung Lo. He Will Amaze and Delight You with His Dancing Anatomy!
He was in no hurry; he had more than an hour and spent it shaving off his darkened bristles and changing back into the unofficial summer uniform for detectives: slacks, open white shirt, sport coat whose only purpose was to cover the Star PD holstered on his hip.
At one-thirty, he headed for the Cinnamon Club; ten minutes later, he sat in his dark Trans Am, sheltered by the shadows of a tree that overhung the alley leading to the club’s parking lot. A little after two, he saw Sybil and Rebecca pull out of the lot in their shiny ZX. Their address was in his little green notebook from the first interviews, which now seemed so long ago, and he might have waited for them there. But he wanted to be sure of them; he felt the almost quivering tightness in his chest that told him he was getting close, and he did not want to lose them now.
He followed them through the residential streets whose only traffic was the occasional late automobile speeding recklessly through intersections or the bright cab busy taking working girls home after club closings. Ahead, in the middle of the block, the Datsun swung its long hood under the shine of a streetlight and disappeared between concrete piers that lifted an apartment tower over a parking garage for residents. Wager pulled into the only open space along the curb, a fire zone, and crossed the street as he heard the muffled sound of two car doors somewhere in the dimly lit parking garage. He ducked under the traffic bar and found the women waiting for the sharp glow of the elevator lights to bounce down through the numbers to the basement garage.
They heard his shoes and jerked around, fear widening their eyes.
“Police, Sybil.” He had his badge out. “Detective Wager. I’d like to ask you some questions.”
The hand that clutched her own throat fell away with a sigh, and Rebecca, the one who had the butterflies tattooed on each cheek, breathed, “Shit—you ought to wear a bell around your neck or something.”
“Can I come up?”
They glanced at each other. “You’re sure this is police business?” asked Rebecca.
“It is.”
The elevator arrived with a ding and the doors pumped open, spilling light across them. Neither woman entered. “What kind of police business—what kind of questions?”
“It’s about the white-haired man. The one you waited on tonight.”
Sybil’s eyes blinked rapidly two or three times and she was very still. Rebecca, without moving, seemed to draw farther away. “I don�
��t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. I want to know what his racket is. I want to know what it is he gave you, and what you gave him.”
“Nothing—I don’t even know the man!”
“Come on, Sybil. Think about it. You asked him if he wanted the usual to drink, and that doesn’t sound like strangers in the night. He handed you something. When you brought the change, you gave him something. It was a delivery and a pickup. Now what was it?”
“You don’t have to tell him nothing, Syb. You go to hell, cop—she doesn’t have to tell you a thing!”
The elevator doors shut with a slight hiss and the light from the car died with it.
“You can tell me here without being arrested, or you can tell me at the station, Sybil. If I hear it from you here, Whitey won’t know where I found out—he’s got a half-dozen drops along the strip and it could have been any one of them. But if you’re brought in, I’ll make damned certain the arrest report gets in the newspaper.”
“Arrest for what? What the hell can you arrest her for, cop?”
“Three counts of accessory to murder.”
“Oh, Jesus—”
“But she …”
“Whitey killed three people, Sybil. And he had a woman phone me and set me up to be wasted.”
“It wasn’t me! I don’t even know your number!”
“Nguyen knew my number. It was probably somebody at the Cinnamon Club—somebody Whitey could ask for a little favor.”
“Not me—really!”
“But like I said, he’s got drops all over the strip. It could have been any of them. I think that; he’ll think that.”
The pale blur of her face hung unmoving.
Wager leaned past the taut figure to press the elevator button. “So no hard feelings. Let’s just go upstairs and talk about it.”
CHAPTER 15
SYBIL DID NOT know all of it. She knew the money was good and the work was easy, and she knew better than to ask questions. She’d had an idea—one she didn’t let settle into clear belief—that Shelly had worked for the man and somehow crossed him, and was killed for it. She, Sybil, wasn’t going to be that dumb.
“It’s not being dumb, Sybil; it’s being smart—smart enough to know when the game’s over so you can still get out while you’re not wearing stitches.”
She thought about that while her roommate rattled loudly in the kitchen and stuck her head across the divider to ask sourly if Wager wanted coffee, too. Later, he figured that domestic touch was what swayed Sybil his way, because when they were all sitting around the low table with their cups steaming under their noses, she finally began to talk.
“He comes in, I don’t know, once a week—sometimes every other week. He brings money and hands it to me. It’s wrapped with one of those paper bands that says how much. It’s usually a couple thousand dollars, sometimes even more. I take it back to Berg and he writes out a receipt and gives me a hundred. Then I take the receipt back to him when I bring him his drink. I leave it on the table with the napkin, and that’s it—that’s all I know about it.”
“A money-laundering scheme? Is that what it is?”
“I don’t know. I get a hundred every time I do it. That’s all I know. It’s all I want to know.”
“Annette Sheldon was doing it before you were?”
“I—I guess so. That’s something I didn’t ask.”
But she had been making a lot more money than Sybil. “Did Berg ever say anything about her?”
“Once he, ah, told me to keep my mouth shut because this man is very hard on people he doesn’t like. He never mentioned Shelly’s name, but we both knew who he meant.”
“Did he tell you she got greedy? Maybe skimmed a little?”
“No. But that would be dumb. The money has that wrapper with the amount on it, and he gets a receipt from Berg.”
“What about Angela Williams?”
“I’ve never heard the name.”
Two thousand dollars at each drop—five regular drops every week or so … ten thousand a week … Walking the streets with ten thousand or more in his pockets … no wonder he practiced all those maneuvers. “Where’d the money come from?”
“I don’t know. And I never asked.”
“What’s the man’s name?”
“I don’t know that either.”
He believed her. And he believed that was all she would be able to tell him. Draining his cup, he reminded her not to tell anyone she had talked to him. “This time, I’d know how he found out, Syb. And neither one of us would take it kindly.” He thanked Madame Butterfly for the coffee, and then sat for a few minutes in the dark of his silent car while he turned over Sybil’s information.
Now he had the motive. Figure—what?—half a million a year gross, maybe three hundred thousand after expenses. And somehow laundered so that the tax showed up as paid and then the money could be used like anybody’s savings account—buy a little real estate, a few stocks and bonds, salt it away at a good honest interest rate. Or lend it out again through Clinton. A good setup. Conveniently local, small enough so that it doesn’t attract Mafia interest, but still almost as profitable as working for the federal government….It would be worth killing for, if you thought you could get away with it. Whitey thought he could. And so far he was right.
Maybe Annette went with him willingly—”Come on, I want you to meet somebody.”
Doc went out of the Cinnamon Club with a pistol at his back, and he tried to leave a message with those two bums. Maybe he even tried to ask them for help, but their eyes were glued to that bill he held out and they never even looked at his whispering mouth or sweating, scared face.
Angela Williams? There was still no connection between her and Whitey, but that would come. Wager felt as certain about that as he felt the grainy weariness that burned under his lids when he rubbed his tired eyes. That one would fall into place, too.
He started the Trans Am and headed slowly back to his apartment through the empty streets. As he passed avenues sloping down toward the South Platte river valley, he noted that the night wind had blown Denver’s smog clear and left patterns of lights sprawling all the way to the dark where the mountains lay; there, lights spread in bands and patches up their flanks to blend with the dim stars. Nearer, the streetlights were the sharp blue or pink of vapor bulbs, and, here and there, the softer yellows of curtained windows dotted the blackness. But even as he watched those narrow wedges swing past the car’s windows, he wondered what to do next. He knew the man’s stops and routes; if the man did not run, Wager could pick him up. But what would that get him besides a laugh when the man was let go for lack of evidence? Wager wanted the man for homicide, not for laundering money; and there was a good chance he could not get him for either. Berg? Lean on Berg until he broke? No tie between the owner of the Cinnamon Club and the murders … Still, Sybil said Berg knew something. If he was squeezed hard enough, he might let something out—there had to be ways to get to him without Whitey knowing.
He was still sketching out various means to pressure Berg as he unlocked his apartment door; in the semi dark of his living room, the telephone answering machine’s Alert light was a little crimson diamond. Wager, turning on the lamp, pressed the Rewind and Play buttons. The first few seconds of the tape were blank, the sign of a caller who had hung up when he heard the recording. Then came a half-familiar voice: “Wager—this is Moffett. We got that Lazlo dude and a half-dozen street people, too. Thanks for the help.” Now Little Ray wouldn’t have to worry about the profit margin on his merchandise, not for a few years, at least. He let the tape run farther and then a tense voice, pinched by the tape’s distortion, cut in at mid-sentence—the speaker had not waited for the sound of the beep—”…neth Sheldon. I got to see you. As soon as possible. Call me at the shop anytime. I’ll be there. It’s important.”
He pressed Stop and then ran the tape back and listened again to the anxious voice. Sheldon. Why would the man who almost chased
him out of his shop suddenly be so eager to see him?
Wager checked his watch: two fifty-five. The man said anytime, and it was worth a phone call to see what he wanted. Locating the number for the Nickelodeon Vending Repairs, Wager dialed it, waiting through rings that seemed abnormally long. Halfway through the fifth, it broke off, and, after a breath or two, a soft voice said, “Hello?”
“Sheldon?”
“Yeah—who’s this?”
“Detective Wager. I just got your message. What’s it about?”
“Not over the phone. I can’t talk over the phone. You got to come here.”
“There? Right now?”
“Yes. How long’s it going to take you to get here?”
“Half an hour, forty-five minutes. What the hell is it that can’t wait until morning?”
“I can’t tell you over the phone! And … and if I leave the shop, he’ll follow me. …”
“Who?”
“The guy you’re after. The white-haired guy you’re after!”
Wager didn’t know if the tiny buzz filling the silence was in the wires or in his mind. He said slowly, “All right. I’ll be there.”
“Come to the back door—you know, the alley. And come alone!”
“Sure, Sheldon. I’m on my way now.”
But when he set the receiver on its cradle, he did not move. Instead, he asked himself a few questions: Where did Sheldon get Wager’s unlisted number? How did he know Wager was after Whitey? And exactly why might he want Wager to come alone to a dark alley? I can lead you to Whitey—just meet me in the dark alone. It almost worked last time, why not try again? Sheldon … there was some connection … Annette, and now her husband … But maybe this time Whitey would be on the receiving end; maybe this time Wager, dragging his thumb along the small scar on his cheek, did not intend to let somebody drive him into ungoverned terror.