Murder in the Charlestown Bricks: A Dermot Sparhawk Crime Novel

by Tom MacDonald

  “I’m not sure how much Kenny told you,” I said. “I’m chasing a man who’s into illegal gambling, backroom poker, things like that.”

  “Curls,” was his response. Clancy ripped through a set of EZ-bar curls, pumping out ten perfect reps. Muscles pulsated in his biceps, like Popeye’s after a can of spinach. Eighty? He dropped the bar on the mat and said, “Most gamblers go to Vegas these days. It’s on the up and up, and the chances are quite high you’ll come out of there alive. Around here, in the back alleys of Albuquerque, it’s too dangerous, literally a crap shoot. The games attract desperate men, draymen and dicers gambling away the last of their money.”

  “My guy might like that atmosphere. I don’t think he’d go for the glitz of Las Vegas.”

  “A man of the people, I didn’t know there were any left.” He thought for a moment and shook his head. “I still say it’s too dangerous.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked.

  “I’ve lived in Albuquerque my whole life. High school, college, law school, work, this is my hometown. Go to Las Vegas. If your man is a gambler, that’s where he’ll be.”

  I thought about the pamphlets I saw in Skeeter’s apartment and in Gage’s room. Route 66 doesn’t go through Nevada.

  “The guy I’m after is a Route 66 fanatic. I doubt he’d vary off the path for Vegas.”

  Clancy disagreed. “Las Vegas is effectively a stop on Route 66, so is Santa Fe. Both are considered part of it, even though you leave the Mother Road to get to them. Believe me when I tell you, for gambling, Las Vegas is your best bet.”

  “It makes sense, going to Vegas to gamble.” I thanked him for his help, but before I left, I asked, “How do you know Kenny Bowen?”

  “I used to be an official at the NCAA track and field championships. That’s where I first met Kenny. He threw the shot put for Dartmouth and won the meet. I also officiated at the Olympic trials when Kenny qualified for Athens.”

  “Were you an Olympian yourself?”

  “Indeed, I was. I represented the United States in weightlifting, Rome 1960, with Tommy Kono and Norbert Schemansky. We had a hell of a team.”

  “Hence, Bass’s Olympiad Gym,” I said.

  He extended his big paw for a goodbye handshake and said, “Keep pumping!”

  34

  Skeeter and Gage stood in line at a Las Vegas gambling house called The Can’t Miss on North Rancho Drive, waiting to place bets with the sports book. Skeeter looked at the board.

  “The Red Sox are minus 150 tonight. Price is pitching. What do you think?”

  “They’re paying the guy thirty-one million a year,” Gage answered. “I’d bet it.”

  “The Blackhawks are underdogs, plus 115. I’m taking them, too.”

  “The Blackhawks are shaky, Skeeter. The goalie might be hurt. Like you said in Chicago, this is playoff hockey. I’d think twice before betting the Blackhawks.”

  “And the Celtics,” Skeeter continued. “I’m taking the Celtics over the Hornets.”

  “I like the Celtics,” Gage said. “They need a win to even the series.”

  A window opened up and Skeeter stepped forward.

  “Hand me the bag, Gage.” Skeeter unzipped it and said to the attendant. “I want the Red Sox, Blackhawks, and Celtics. One hundred thousand each.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Gage said.

  “I’m telling you Gage, I can’t lose.”

  Skeeter counted out the money, which took quite a while. The attendant motioned to the pit boss, who came over and watched the transaction. When the deal was done, the pit boss handed Skeeter the tickets and started to walk away.

  “Hold on,” Skeeter said. “One more bet. Fifty K on River of Dreams to win, third race Aqueduct. He’s gonna breeze!”

  “River of Dreams,” the attendant said. “Third race, Aqueduct.”

  “River of Dreams? Aqueduct?” Gage said to Skeeter, “You don’t know anything about horse racing.”

  “I’m just as sure about this bet as I am about the others.”

  “That puts my mind at ease.”

  They left the sports book and went to the tables, losing thousands playing Caribbean Poker. They then tried their luck at the progressive tables and things got progressively worse. At three in the morning Skeeter said, “We’re getting low on cash. Let’s check the ball games.”

  They went to the electronic scoreboard to read the results, and it was a clean sweep — for the casino. The Red Sox lost to the Orioles, Price getting walloped. The Blackhawks lost in a blowout, the goalie getting pulled. The Celtics lost to the Hawks, the series slipping away.

  “Fuck, we got swept,” Skeeter said. “How the hell did that happen? I was on a roll.”

  “Hey, it could have been worse,” Gage said.

  “How could it be worse?”

  “The Sox could have played a doubleheader.”

  The next day they went back to the casino. River of Dreams finished second at Aqueduct, getting nosed out by an upstart named Bushmill’s Legend.

  “Why didn’t I bet River of Dreams to place instead of win?” Skeeter groaned.

  “If you did, he’d have finished third,” Gage said.

  “It’s bad enough without your wisecracks.” Skeeter rubbed his stubbly chin. “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s go to a brothel and blow off some steam. It’s legal out here.” He took a glossy pamphlet from his pocket. “Look at this, a place called the Raunch House.”

  “I think it says Ranch House.”

  “Whatever, let’s check it out.”

  “Your heart, remember what happened with Miss Jeffers?”

  “She caught me off guard,” Skeeter reasoned. “I’ll be ready this time.”

  35

  I was still in New Mexico, twenty miles outside of Albuquerque and driving west, surrounded by pink sand and rim rock. I saw a sign that said Continental Divide, Elevation 7,882. Another sign said that Arizona was Spanish for arid zone. “You learn something every day,” I said aloud. It was weird hearing my own voice. Going seventy-five with no cars in sight, I hit the eastern edge of Arizona, cruising through Sanders and Joseph City. When I passed Winslow I thought of Skeeter singing Take it Easy the first time I met him in the bricks. Skeeter was nowhere near the bricks now. In Flagstaff I got a room in a touristy hotel and called Kenny Bowen, who told me there was nothing new on Skeeter. He must have heard something in my voice, because he asked if everything was okay.

  “The information I’m getting, I’m getting too late,” I said. “I know where Skeeter gasses up, after he’s gassed up. I know where he’s staying, after he’s checked out. By the time I get to these places, he’s gone.”

  “You sound frustrated.”

  “I’m not frustrated, but the routine is getting old, and it’s not working,” I said. “What’s more, I have a fear, and I have an idea.”

  “What’s the fear?”

  “Route 66 ends in Santa Monica. My fear is that if I don’t catch them in Santa Monica, I’ll lose them.”

  “What’s your idea?”

  “Instead of chasing Skeeter and Gage, I’ll get ahead of them. I’ll drive straight through to Santa Monica, no stops along the way, and let them come to me. Gruskowski and Lauria will probably keep gambling, giving me time to get the lead.”

  “Good idea,” Kenny said. When a Rhodes Scholar says ‘good idea,’ the idea sounds that much better. “Go to California and wait for them. I’ll focus on the Los Angeles area.”

  I pulled over to the side off the road and called Cheyenne, and we got into yet another endless conversation. We talked from sundown to dusk to darkness, and the talk was lively and loose, discussing everything that came to us. Nothing was off limits, nothing was out of bounds. When I hung up the phone, one word came into my mind: soulmate.

  The next day I crossed the state line, g
oing from Kingman, Arizona to Needles, California. In Amboy I stopped for gas and coffee. In Barstow I pulled over to eat. I passed the Mother Road Museum, which I would have liked to have visited, but I didn’t have time to waste. I’d been driving all day, and when I came into San Bernardino, I decided to stop for the night.

  I needed a meeting, and I found one called the Token Group. I activated the GPS and ten minutes later I parked and went in. A young woman was chairing, and it was clear from her attire that we weren’t in Kansas anymore. She wore rings on her fingers, rings on her thumbs, loop earrings, loop bracelets, nose rings, lip rings, eyebrow rings. She had more rings than a frat-house coffee table. She also had more years in recovery than I had, humbling my smugness.

  She talked about getting into a relationship too early in sobriety. Both she and her partner had been off the sauce for only a month when the whirlwind romance began, and not surprisingly, they both picked up a drink when the relationship intensified. It started with a single glass of wine. A glass of wine couldn’t hurt her, she said, couldn’t hurt anybody. Six months later she was hospitalized with a crack addiction. She finished her talk by saying, “We shouldn’t have gotten into a relationship that early. Two dead batteries can’t start a car.”

  After the meeting I went to a lookout in the San Bernardino foothills. I had read about the foothills in a novel and I’d always wanted to see them. They were burnt and rocky and grand, and they rose suddenly from flat brown ground. I smelled smoke in the air and the temperature was stifling hot. The Santa Ana winds blazed down the trodden slopes and vaporized the oxygen in its path, turning the lookout into a convection oven, and I was the bun baking inside.

  A low rumble came from the east. The rumbling grew louder, nearly violent, and the lookout shook. Was it an earthquake? Then I saw it, a stampede of motorcycles rounding the bend, hundreds of them roaring like hungry lions. The riders were bearded, the men at least, and they wore no helmets. Clad in leather or denim and shod in engineer boots, they revved their motors and popped wheelies and passed each other and fell back, like a team of Olympic cyclists.

  I hoped like hell Maish wasn’t in the pack.

  They thundered past the lookout and squealed on the soft shoulder and went up the road with expert aplomb — the back of their vests reading Hells Angels Berdoo — and then they disappeared into the darkening horizon, leaving behind a deadly wake of silence. I got out of there in case they circled back.

  In the morning I left San Bernardino for Santa Monica.

  36

  I drove through Pasadena and Glendale and Hollywood on a sun-splashed day, cruising at a steady clip, and then the steady clip ended when I hit the freeway approaching Santa Monica. The traffic was far worse than Boston’s, but the California drivers weren’t as antagonistic, perhaps due to the pleasant weather. They didn’t have to deal with snowplows shearing off sideview mirrors. I crawled along the freeway, a lane stripe at a time, daydreaming, and then the phone rang. It was Kenny Bowen.

  “Gruskowski is back online,” he said. “He’s using his prepaid credit cards again.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m almost in Santa Monica.”

  “You’re well ahead of him. He checked out of a hotel in Las Vegas this morning, and he bought gas in Bullhead City this afternoon.”

  “Where’s Bullhead City?”

  “The Arizona line, abutting Nevada.”

  “He’s still driving southwest.”

  “I’ll keep tracking him. The credit card makes it easier, but there’s a downside to it. The hotels don’t process the card until he checks out.”

  “Which is too late,” I said.

  “I’m working another angle. I’ll keep you posted.”

  I went to the Henshaw Hotel, a four-star resort with water views, a health club, and a massage parlor. I checked in at the front desk and went to my room on the top floor. Tired from driving, I decided to stay in for the night. I order a cheeseburger platter with two cans of Coke from room service and ate by the window. The vistas were breathtaking at sundown, when the sky turned purple over Santa Monica Bay, but you really couldn’t see the shoreline. Maybe you had to wait until high tide.

  The morning brightness woke me with a start. I checked my phone. No call from Kenny. Two days passed and still no calls. I filled the time by going to meetings and talking to Cheyenne and hanging out on Santa Monica Pier. My skeeball scores were improving at the same rate my patience was declining. Kenny finally called one night, moments after I clicked off the television.

  “I got him,” Kenny said. “Skeeter is booked at the Henshaw Hotel in Santa Monica.”

  “That’s where I’m staying.”

  “Perfect.” Kenny shuffled papers. “He checked in yesterday.”

  I went to the front desk and asked for Craig Gruskowski’s room number. The clerk, a more principled man than the clerk in Chicago, refused to give it to me, citing privacy issues and other legal restrictions. The hundred I offered didn’t help. Rather, it cemented his high moral ground, prompting him to raise his peach-fuzz chin with pride. Integrity is a terrible thing when it comes to bribery. I stepped outside and stood under a streetlamp, thinking what to do next, when a parking attendant came up to me.

  “Are you waiting for your car?” He paused. “The desk didn’t call me.”

  “I’m getting some air,” I said. He started to walk away, and I said, “Hey, did you park a Corvette yesterday?”

  “Which one? We have three.” He smiled at me. “I know the one you’re talking about, the red convertible.”

  “How did you know?”

  “The gentlemen talked funny like you. You’re talking about Skeeter and Gage.”

  “Right, Skeeter and Gage.” Now this was a guy I could work with. “I came in from Boston to meet them here.” I peeled off two hundred dollars and held it out. “It’s yours.”

  “For what?” He didn’t take. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “For their room number.”

  “I thought you knew them.”

  “I do.” I peeled off another hundred. “I want to surprise them.”

  “I don’t know about this,” he said. “I could get in trouble.”

  “No trouble.” I handed him the bills. “Take it. If you decide to tell me, I’ll be in my room.” I told him my room number. “The three hundred is a down payment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You get another three for Skeeter’s room number.”

  I went back upstairs and had barely stepped into my room when the phone rang. The parking attendant told me that Skeeter was staying in room 311. I went down to the third floor and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I stood silently in the hallway and listened, but heard nothing inside. I knocked again louder. No answer. I thought about pulling a fire alarm, but decided against it. I could always do that tomorrow. With my cell phone I called the hotel and asked for room 311. The desk patched me through. I heard the phone ringing in the room, but nobody answered it. I went down to the lobby and out to the valet station and paid the parking attendant the three hundred I owed him. He timidly took it and said thanks, apparently worried about bending the rules. I said to him, “How would you like to make a little more?”

  “How much?”

  “A thousand.”

  “Are you kidding me?” he said. “What do I have to do?”

  “Call me when Skeeter comes for his car.” I could see he was nervous. “No one will know about our arrangement. You have my word.”

  “Yeah, the word of a briber,” he huffed. “This better not cost me my job.”

  “I just want to talk to them.”

  “They don’t pay shit at this place, so I guess I don’t feel too guilty about helping you,” he rationalized. “If it wasn’t for tips, I wouldn’t eat.”

  “Consider the money a tip, which is all it is anyway.”


  “If you say so, but there’s a problem,” he said. “My shift ends at eight and I won’t be back ’til four in the morning. What if Skeeter comes for the car when I’m not here? Then we’re both out of luck.”

  “Who’s relieving you? Is he someone we can do business with, someone who will go along with us?”

  “I think so,” he said. “I got him the job, so he should be okay.”

  “I’ll give him the same deal, a thousand, and you still get a full share.”

  “I get a grand even if he’s the one who calls you?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “I’ll make it happen,” he said. “It’s not that big a deal. I mean, it’s not like we’re robbing a bank, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “Use my cellphone number.”

  I gave it to him.

  37

  A day later Skeeter’s car was still sitting in the hotel garage. I called Kenny twice and he told me Skeeter was still checked in. I went to the room hourly and knocked. I called on the phone. Skeeter and Gage weren’t in. I even followed the maid in once. I saw a suitcase and a duffel bag on the floor, but the beds were made and the chocolates were on the pillows. The maid looked at me and shrugged.

  Where had Skeeter and Gage gone? Did they figure out that I was following them?

  I walked to the end of Santa Monica Pier and stared at the Pacific Ocean and let the yellow rays warm my face. In Southern California the sun shined a little brighter, the breeze blew a little cooler, and the sea glass came from champagne bottles tossed off yachts. Even the gulls cawed in harmony. My cellphone pinged. The parking attendant had sent a text. He was retrieving Skeeter’s Corvette. I jogged off the pier and up Ocean Avenue to the hotel. It only took me a minute to get there.

  I didn’t see the parking attendant, and I didn’t see Skeeter. I looked in the lobby and down the street and inside idling taxis, but I didn’t see him. Was he hiding? Two Latino men in polo shirts and chinos walked through the revolving door and stood next to me at the valet desk. One of them glanced at his watch and said something in Spanish to his friend. His friend said nothing in response. Tires squealed from the garage below and the red Corvette rolled up to the surface and stopped in front of us.