While Drowning in the Desert

by Don Winslow

  “This is a non-smoking room,” I observed.

  “The room isn’t smoking,” Nate snapped. “I’m smoking. If the room was smoking, I’d leave the room. I may be old, I’m not an idiot.”

  “Okay.”

  Nate inhaled, then coughed for about ten seconds. Inhaled, coughed. Inhaled, coughed. Then he said, “Let’s go get a drink. I’m thirsty.”

  “Our flight doesn’t leave for three hours,” I said.

  “Good,” Nate said. “I’m horny, too.”

  I watched television while Nate dressed. Or I tried to, anyway, because Nate kept up a nonstop monologue from the bathroom.

  “Eighty-six-year-old Mr. Birnbaum goes to confession,” Nate said. “Says, ‘Father, last night I had sex with a twenty-year-old girl.’ Priest says, ‘Mr. Birnbaum, you’re Jewish, why are you telling me?’ Birnbaum says, ‘Father, I’m telling everybody.’

  “Birnbaum checks into a hotel with the girl. Desk clerk says, ‘Birnbaum, aren’t you afraid of a heart attack?’ Birnbaum says, ‘If she dies, she dies!’

  “Mrs. Birnbaum comes home one day and finds him in bed with a girl. She throws him out the window. Cop comes and asks, ‘Why did you throw your husband out the window?’ She says, ‘I thought if he could schtupp, he could fly.’

  “Crowd gathers on the street where Birnbaum fell. Another cop pushes through the crowd and asks Birnbaum what happened. Birnbaum says, ‘I don’t know, I just got here myself.’”

  I knew just how Birnbaum felt. I was beginning to look for a window. Of course the windows in Vegas hotels don’t actually open, which is a pretty good idea when you think about it. You’d need a three-digit over/under on the daily number of competitors in the 100 Meter Concrete Diving Competition. And you’d still get some guy taking the million-to-one odds that this time, this one time, some poor suicidal loser is going to step out the window and fall up.

  You give big enough odds, you’ll find a dreamer in this town to take them. A thousand-to-one that tomorrow’s Washington Post will feature a picture of Elvis and Ronald Reagan secretly worshipping a bust of Leon Trotsky in the laundry room of The White House? Done. Two-million-to-one that Mother Teresa will spend the night in the slammer after a barroom brawl in Passaic, New Jersey? Done. Five-trillion-to-one that a Rhode Island transportation official will issue a highway construction contract without taking a kickback …

  Well, okay, there are some things no one would bet on.

  When Nate emerged from the bathroom he was wearing white shoes, plaid trousers, a canary yellow shirt and a white golf hat.

  “Funeral?” I asked.

  “Why do you think they call me Natty?” Nate asked. He picked up his cane and asked, “So are we going or what?”

  “We’re going,” I said.

  It took a while to get to the bar. Not because the elevator was slow or the floor was particularly crowded but because Nate took the time to ogle each cocktail waitress that crossed within a fifty-foot radius of his immediate gaze.

  Actually, it wasn’t so much an ogle as much it was a long, leisurely evaluation that started at the targeted woman’s feet and slowly progressed to the top of her head. Nate’s gaze started with a concentrated frown and ended with an appreciative smile. Nor was Nate the least bit surreptitious about it—he stared at these women with the unself-conscious glare of a judge in the bathing-suit competition at a beauty contest. It was the kind of look that would get the average man a subpoena.

  But the objects of Nate’s attention just looked at his cute little avian face and smiled. One of those “Isn’t he cute?” smiles. They didn’t realize that while the old man was undressing them with his eyes he was undressing himself at the same time.

  I figured that Nate had gotten laid in his own mind at least fifty times by the time we finally made it to the lounge.

  Nate insisted on sitting at the bar, so I helped him get up on a stool and sat in constant readiness to catch him.

  “Mr. Silver,” the bartender said. “The usual?”

  The usual?

  “And whatever my friend here is having,” Nate said.

  “A gin and tonic, please.”

  I reached for my wallet but Nate hastily said, “Put it on my tab.”

  The bartender set the drinks down and looked expectantly at Nate. Nate took a sip of his vodka collins, leaned over the bar, and asked, “Have you seen Jayne Mansfield’s new shoes?”

  The bartender grinned like someone left a twenty-dollar tip and said that he hadn’t.

  “Neither has she,” Nate said.

  The bartender guffawed, shook his head, and I thought, Jayne Mansfield? I was trying to remember how many decades it had been since Jayne Mansfield died when Nate looked at me and said sadly, “I was with the same woman for fifty years.”

  “Wow,” I said. This was about to get pathetic.

  “Then my wife found out.”

  Nate turned on the stool to get a better view of the women playing the slot machines and damn near fell off trying to get a closer view of the wide albeit heart-shaped rear end of a peroxide blonde who was bending over to collect her quarters. She looked over her shoulder, saw him staring, and gave him a real hard look.

  This was trouble.

  The woman straightened up and stepped over to the bar. She was about five-ten and wore a tight, white, sequined evening dress with a push-up bra that could only have been designed with Atlas in mind. Her high heels showed off long legs leading to generous hips. I figured her to be somewhere between forty-eight and sixty-eight under the makeup. She had a sweet, pretty face and deep cornflower blue eyes.

  Which were staring right at Natty.

  I was formulating apologies when the woman squealed, “Natty?!”

  “Hope?” Natty asked. “I thought that was you, darling. Who else has a tush like that?”

  I was waiting to see Nate’s head go flying off his skinny neck when Hope smiled and said, “You always knew how to sweet-talk a lady, Natty Silver.”

  She threw her arms around him and Natty disappeared into a cloud of breasts and big hair. I was afraid Natty would suffocate but Natty emerged a few seconds later a bit red-faced but with a rake’s smile spread all over his little face.

  “Hope,” he said, “meet my friend …”

  He didn’t have a clue.

  “Neal Carey,” I said.

  “Nice to meet you, Neal.”

  “A cocktail, Hope?” Nate asked.

  “Let me go freshen my face first,” Hope said.

  Nate watched her sashay across the floor, then fumbled in his pocket for his wallet. He took it out, found a twenty-dollar bill, handed it to me and said, “Go take in a movie, kid.”

  “Huh?”

  “Or play the slots or something.”

  Nathan winked.

  “Huh?” I asked again.

  “What, I gotta draw you a picture?”

  It took a moment for it to sink in and then I said, “You’re kidding, right?”

  And I definitely didn’t want to see a picture.

  Nate looked genuinely offended.

  “What?” he asked. “You think that because there’s snow on the roof, there’s no fire in the oven?”

  “Mr. Silverstein, we have a—”

  “I’ll spell it out for you: Get lost.”

  “—plane to catch, and—”

  “Beat it.”

  “—I have to get you back to Palm Desert.”

  “I still have the room!” Nate whispered urgently, because Hope was hip-switching back to the bar.

  “And don’t you look lovely,” Nate said as Hope slid onto the stool next to him.

  “I have to make a quick phone call,” I said.

  “Take your time,” said Nate.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Hope. “A Bloody Mary, please.”

  I found a phone from where I could still keep an eye on Nate and Hope and dialed home.

  Karen’s probably over this baby thing by now, I thought. Probably just
a bad case of hormones.

  Karen answered on the third ring.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi.”

  Her voice was as warm as a January morning in Chicago.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Not pregnant.”

  And hung up.

  I stood pretending to be listening, then hung up and walked back to the bar to rescue Hope.

  “Who did you call?” Natty muttered. “Time and temperature?”

  Then he turned back to Hope.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s probably about time to check out and head for the airport.”

  They weren’t listening.

  “Nice lounge,” Nate said.

  “Very pleasant,” answered Hope.

  “A little noisy, though,” Nate said.

  Oh, God.

  “Hard to conduct a conversation,” Hope agreed.

  Nate said, “I wish there were a quiet place we could have a nice chat.”

  “That would be lovely.”

  I watched as Nate feigned deep thought, then said, “I have an idea!”

  I’ll bet you do.

  “We could go up to my room,” Nate suggested.

  Surprise, surprise.

  “By the time we check out,” I said, “park …”

  “Room service,” Nate said.

  “… get our boarding passes …”

  “A little drink, a little chat …” Nate said. “Talk over old times. Nothing you’d be interested in, Neal.”

  Hope looked over Natty’s shoulder and gave me a look. One of those significant looks. A “Help me” look.

  “You just can’t get to the airport too early these days,” I said.

  “Or you can always catch a later flight,” said Nate.

  Hope slid off the stool and said, “Could I have a word with you, Neal? Alone?”

  She took me by the elbow and guided me a few steps away.

  I smiled and whispered, “Look, I know. Why don’t you make your excuse, I’ll get him on his plane and—”

  She dug into her purse, doubtless searching for her car keys. “Neal, sweetie,” she said, pressing a twenty into my palm, “can I treat you to a movie or something?”

  I slipped the bill back to her.

  “Save your money.”

  She looked at me with those big blue eyes.

  She must have been something, I thought. In fact, she was not at all unattractive now. And there were still a couple of hours before the flight, the airport was close and I could still get Nathan back to Palm Desert tonight.

  “You know how it is,” she said.

  Yeah, I thought. I was young once myself.

  Chapter 3

  Las Vegas is the weirdest place in the world.

  I’ve been to some pretty weird places. Hell, I grew up—or failed to, depending on your perspective—in New York City. Weird. I’ve worked cases in San Francisco (weird), London (weird) and Hollywood (very weird). I even spent three months as a prisoner of sorts in a Buddhist monastery in the remote mountains of western Sichuan in China (very, very weird).

  But on the general scale of weird, Las Vegas has all these places beat hands-down, so to speak.

  I think it’s what happens when you have a combination of unlimited space and unlimited money unconstrained by common sense or good taste. Things can get pretty weird.

  I mean here in a state run by Mormons you have a town founded by a Jewish gangster whose nickname was Bugsy. He gets the weird ball rolling when he builds the first casino and calls it what? The Flamingo.

  In a desert.

  A big pink bird that lives in the water.

  In Africa.

  I don’t know about you, but if I’m standing in the middle of a Nevada desert, one of the first things I think of is not an African bird that stands around with one leg in the water.

  But, then again, the guy’s nickname was Bugsy, right?

  So Bugsy built the Flamingo, came in way over budget and got a Mafia pink slip. After the funeral, a couple of other boys built casinos with names like the Sands (not weird), the Oasis (not weird), and the Sahara (confused, but not weird) but that’s where the non-weirdness stopped.

  Because people started coming to Las Vegas.

  To do what?

  Lose money.

  It became one of the great American pastimes. Save your money all year to go on vacation and lose the money. People started treating it as if it were some sort of wonderfully guilty pleasure. Yeah, I went to Vegas last week and really lost my shirt. Heh-heh-heh.

  The gangsters couldn’t believe it. Here they’d spent all those years of effort and planning on crime and it all suddenly seemed like such a waste. Now all they had to do was build a bunch of hotel rooms, tell people they could stay in them for twenty bucks if they promised to lose five hundred at the tables, and people actually went for it. Yeah, I went to Vegas last week and dropped two grand. But guess what? My room? Twenty bucks. And the buffets …

  Mob-organized bank robberies stopped virtually overnight. Why go to all the trouble and danger of robbing a bank when all you had to do was invite the bank to come to Las Vegas? And the beauty of it: it was all perfectly legal.

  Anyway, the money kept coming in and the casinos kept going up and the weirdness quotient kept rising.

  To the point where you could now walk, as I was doing that Sunday afternoon, from a casino where they have a mock volcanic eruption every two hours, to a pirate ship, to ancient Rome, to a paddle-wheeled steamboat, to a Chinese temple, to a circus where they have acrobats flying around over your head while you’re trying to drop twenty bucks’ worth of quarters into a slot machine while some waitress dressed like a lion tamer offers you free drinks.

  Weird.

  Not that I was gambling. I wasn’t. In the first place I don’t like gambling and in the second place I was too busy looking for Natty Silver and dreading the phone call I had to make.

  I finally pulled my sorry ass into a phone booth and made the call.

  “So how’s Palm Springs?” Graham asked.

  “Uhhh,” I answered, “it’s a nice town.”

  There was a long pause.

  “You’re not there, are you?” Graham asked.

  “Uhhh, yes,” I said.

  “Yes, you’re there?”

  “Yes, I’m not there.”

  I don’t have any bananas, either.

  Another silence.

  “How’s Silverstein?” Graham asked.

  “Funny,” I said. “He’s a funny old guy.”

  A sigh of resignation then, “He’s not there, is he?”

  “No.”

  “Where is he?”

  “That’s sort of the question of the hour, Dad.”

  I hated saying it. Hated explaining it to Graham. Hated the sound of the words as they came out of my mouth. But it was the truth.

  I’d given Nathan and Hope an hour and when I went back to the room no one answered. I ran down to the lounge, checked it and several other lounges, ran through the gaming tables, the slot machines, the sports room, the pool complex and then thought of the white tigers exhibit.

  They weren’t there, either. Oh, the white tigers were there, just no sign of Nathan or Hope.

  “How do you lose an eighty-six-year-old man?!” Graham yelled. “What did he do, Neal, outrun you? Cold-cock you with his cane? Gum you into unconsciousness?”

  “He got out of my sight, I guess.”

  Graham screeched, “Why did you let him get out of your sight?!”

  So he could get laid or whatever, I thought. But I was too embarrassed to say it so I settled for, “We bumped into an old friend of his and they took off together for a few minutes.”

  “Who was the old friend? Mother Teresa?” Graham asked. “She outrun you too?”

  “Some of those nuns are pretty fast, Graham.”

  Some of them are, too. Especially with a ruler in their hands.

  Graham asked, “Who was the friend?”<
br />
  “A woman.”

  Sigh. “Name?”

  “Hope.”

  “Last name?”

  “Dunno.”

  “So, can you find him?” Graham asked.

  “Dad, the way he’s dressed, Stevie Wonder could find him.”

  “Stevie Wonder’s blind—”

  “Yeah …”

  “—he’s not a moron!”

  Click.

  I went back to the bar. In the first bit of good luck I’d had since I got out of the hot tub the same bartender was on duty.

  “The woman who was sitting here with me and Natty Silver?” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “Yes I do.”

  My headache started to come back.

  “What is her name?” I asked.

  “Hope.”

  “Does Hope have a last name?”

  “Yes, she does.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  What have I done? I thought. What have I done to deserve all these little torments?

  I decided that it was some sort of cosmic female conspiracy—that was it. Let a basically decent guy hesitate for the slightest second to instantly impregnate his fiancée, on her slightest whim, and the whole universe starts messing with him.

  “What is her last name?” I asked.

  “Her last name is White.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “Lots.”

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m just trying to help Mr. Silverstein.”

  The bartender chuckled.

  “Looked like he was doing all right by himself,” the bartender said. “Besides, you’re not his buddy. You were laughing at him.”

  “You were laughing at him, too.”

  “I was laughing at him,” the bartender said. “You were laughing at him.”

  I thought about it for a second then said, “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  I got up from the stool. “Thanks for the name.”

  “Hope White,” the bartender said, “used to be a chorus girl. Worked all the big shows. When gravity took its toll she switched to cocktail-bar piano. She’s good enough to work the morning shift in the older casinos. You know, Cole Porter tunes to guys with hangovers waiting for a table in the breakfast buffets. I think maybe now she’s at the Nugget. She gets off, she plays the slots. Nice lady. That’s Hope White.”