“Oh, absolutely. I smell a story here. MJ murdered? I want the dirt.”
Stride shook his head. “No story, Rex. This is off, off, off the record, and the conversation goes one way. You tell us what you know about MJ.”
“Start by telling us where you were on Saturday night,” Amanda added.
“You think I killed him? How exciting. But no. David and I got to Gipsy at ten, and we were there, like, all night.” He winked at Amanda. “You can call David and check if you’d like, but not your partner here, because David has a teensy weakness for the strong, silent type.”
“MJ,” Stride repeated.
“Well, what can I tell you?”
“How did you meet?” Stride asked.
“He called me after the story appeared. Very upset. But who can blame him for that, right? I mean, if it was my father?”
“What story?” Amanda asked.
Terrell clapped a hand to his heart. “Best thing I’ve published in LV. I was sure I was going to get death threats, but not a one. I’m disappointed. But I named names, and no one else did. Two big names in particular. Walker Lane and Boni Fisso.”
Stride remembered. There was an issue of LV magazine on MJ’s nightstand, underneath the newspaper story about the implosion.
“What was the story about?” Stride asked.
“It was called ‘The Dirty Secret of the Sheherezade.’ Does that give you a clue?”
“MJ called his father a murderer” Stride said. “Is that what you said in your story?”
“He is. Scandalous, isn’t it?”
“We talked to Walker Lane. He says you were putting ideas in MJ’s head.”
“You talked to Walker? And he mentioned me! Oh, now that is too much. I wondered if he would hear about it. Walker Lane telling people about Rex Terrell. God, David is going to flip over this.”
Stride and Amanda shared an exasperated glance.
“Tell us about the story,” Stride said. ‘The short version, please.”
Terrell nodded. His drink was empty, and he waved the glass in his hand at a waitress.
“The Sheherezade was Boni Fisso’s first big place,” he said. “Now, that was Vegas. The real stuff. Like Battista’s here. Authentic. I mean, look around most bars in town now, it’s all fake. You got your celebrity photos there, sure, but its all Tara Reid and Lindsay Lohan, and ten years from now, people will look at them and go, ‘Who’s that?’ Sinatra, he was authentic. Alan King. Rose Marie.”
“Rex,” Stride said, through gritted teeth.
“I mean, I’m a Vegas baby,” Terrell continued. “How rare is that? Born and raised. I’m authentic. These days, everyone is from California.”
Amanda picked up a butter knife and began slapping it against her hand. Terrell blanched.
“All right, all right. For you, I’ll leave out the good parts. Back in 1967, the Sheherezade was the hot place in the city. Right up there with the Sands. Part of the buzz on the joint was its showroom, see? They had an amazing dancer. Amira Luz. Spanish beauty, dark hair, spitfire. Absolutely a sex machine, and I am not lying. She did a nude dance that filled the seats, SRO every night. I mean, in those days, there were plenty of boobies jiggling onstage, but it was all chorus line stuff, deathly dull. Amira did a flamenco number and stripped down like a thousand-dollar call girl. H-o-t.”
“So?” Stride asked.
Terrell leaned forward and whispered, “So one hot July night, they found Amira at the bottom of the pool in the high roller’s suite on the roof of the Sheherezade. Someone had bashed her skull in.”
“And you think it was Walker Lane?”
“Absolutely. Everyone knew back then, but no one was going to say a word, not in those days.” Terrell twisted his index and middle fingers together. “Boni Fisso and Walker Lane were like this. Walker was Boni’s whale. He was there at the casino every weekend. Staying in that very same high roller’s suite where Amira was killed. He was a party boy, couldn’t get enough of Vegas, liked rubbing shoulders with the mob.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Amanda said.
Terrell put on a look of faux astonishment. “Oh now, don’t play innocent with me. I talked to people Who saw Walker in the casino that weekend, but the official word is, he wasn’t in town. He wasn’t in the suite. I mean, come on. Walker was a horny little dog. He wanted to hump Amira’s leg and move up to her fur. People told me he was obsessed with her, and Amira wasn’t interested. Turned him down flat. But Walker wasn’t about to hear the word ‘no’ from some Spanish stripper. Crack, pow.”
“Apparently, the police didn’t think so,” Stride said. “Walker was never arrested.”
Terrell sighed dramatically. “The police? This was 1967, Detective. You don’t think Boni could make the police go away? Puh-leez. The detective in charge of the case was Nick Humphrey, and Nicky was in Boni’s pocket. Everyone knew it. So Boni spirited Walker out of town. I mean, the man did a Roman Polanski and left the whole fucking country. And Nicky looked the other way. A murder in a high roller’s suite, for heaven’s sake? How easy should that be? But all the police could come up with is that some fan climbed down into the garden from the maintenance area of the roof and killed her.”
“What was Amira doing in the suite?” Amanda asked.
“The story was, she had seduced a key out of one of the desk clerks, and she liked to go up there for a nude swim after her shows, when the suite wasn’t occupied. Again, that was the official word. I mean, as if.”
Stride shook his head. “You put all this in your story? Get ready for a lawsuit, Rex.”
“Oh, we had a lawyer read every word,” Terrell replied, rolling his eyes. “We added lots of maybes and allegedlys and other weasel words like that. Anyway, you think Walker wants to make the story even bigger by suing? I think not. Walker wants this to go away. So does Boni, so he can put up his new slant-eyes baccarat palace.”
“So what about MJ?” Amanda asked. “How does he fit into this?”
“Hang on, honey. My butt’s vibrating. Damn cell phone. I swear, it goes off so often I could have an orgasm if I kept it in my shorts.” He slid a wafer-thin phone out of his back pocket and checked the caller ID. “Oh, her again. Never mind. Some little blond flack, never has any real stories to sell. Probably bangs her clients.”
“Rex, we’re running out of time,” Stride said.
“Chill, detectives. Like I said, MJ called me when he saw the article. He asked about my sources, which I could not tell him-duh-other than to suggest he ought to check out the archives at the library. Most of it was tucked away in the gossip columns back then if you could read between the lines. Dishy stuff. He asked me honestly if I thought his dad had killed the girl, and I told him honestly, yes I did. End of conversation.”
“But you called and left a message on the day he died,” Stride said.
“Surely. In my business, I give you a little, you give me a little. Which reminds me that I’m giving you guys a lot, so hello, don’t forget your friends. I figured MJ could feed me some dirt about Karyn Westermark, but oh well, somebody popped him first.”
“Do you have any idea who would have wanted him dead?” Amanda asked.
“Other than Walker and Boni?” Terrell grinned. “No, MJ seemed like a decent enough celeb. Pretty vanilla if you ask me. He poked it around a lot, though, so maybe you ought to find a jealous husband.”
“Like who?” Stride asked.
“Well, all I have is gossip. Rumors.”
“Tell us,” Amanda said.
Terrell glanced around at the other tables. “I do know that Moose Dargon’s wife, the little twenty-something waitress, hangs with a lot of celebs at the Oasis and likes to hook up. I heard she was very impressed with MJ’s performance in that sex tape with Karyn. Word is that Moose can’t plump the wiener anymore, even with Viagra. And you know what kind of temper Moose has. In the old days, he was in and out of the jails around here for busting people up.”
“His
wife is Tierney, right?” Stride asked. He remembered that Karyn Westermark had already mentioned her as one of MJ’s flings.
“Tierney,” Terrell groaned. “Puh-leez. I mean, whatever happened to ordinary names? Did you hear one Hollywood actor thought it was such a riot and named his daughter Tinkle?”
“What does this Tierney look like?”
“Brunette. Kind of a bottlebrush look. She did Playboy last year. Breasts look like the pyramids in Egypt. Know the type?”
Stride did. He realized they had seen Tierney and her cone-shaped breasts on the video in MJ’s condo. He wondered what someone like Moose Dargon would do if he saw his wife fornicating on camera and whether it would be enough to make him hire a professional killer.
“What else can you tell us about Moose?” he asked.
“He’s still a riot and a half, even with one foot in the grave, Terrell said. “He’s mostly retired, but he still does charity stuff, fund-raisers for the gov, that kind of thing. His jokes are dirty, dirty, dirty, and they are hysterical.”
“He still have a temper?”
Terrell’s face lit up, and he leaned in and whispered, “Oooh, like would he blow MJ away for condomizing little Tierney? Isn’t that a delicious idea. Well, it would be very ironic, you know.”
“Why?” Stride asked.
“Because Moose used to be a regular at the Sheherezade back in the 1960s. And who was he banging at the time? None other than Amira Luz.”
TWELVE
Sawhill was on the phone with Governor Durand again. Stride and Serena sat in the two chairs in front of Sawhill’s expansive desk while the lieutenant affixed his lips electronically to the governor’s ass. Cordy was leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets. Amanda stood there, too, and Stride smothered a smile as he watched her play games with Cordy. She kept inching closer, and Cordy, looking pained, kept shifting farther along the wall, trying to keep his distance. Then she took a deep breath that swelled her breasts and lazily stretched her arms upward. Cordy couldn’t help but stare.
Sawhill saw the game, too, and snapped his fingers at them.
“I’m meeting with my team right now,” Sawhill told the governor, his voice casual and familiar. “No, no, I can assure you that line of inquiry is closed. You can pass the word along.”
Stride didn’t like the sound of that. Sawhill was staring directly at him while he said it, and Stride had a sinking feeling that his hands were about to be tied.
It was no secret that Sawhill was aiming for big things in the department, with an eye on the sheriff’s job. Stride had to give Sawhill credit. The lieutenant knew how the game was played and understood the political connections he would need to leapfrog the competition. The current sheriff had already announced his retirement the following year. At least two Metro veterans who were older and more senior than Sawhill had made noises about campaigning for the job, but no one was ruling Sawhill out. A sheriff’s election was more about endorsements than votes, and Sawhill had spent the last decade cultivating friends in high places.
Most of all, he knew that murder headlines made bad politics.
Sawhill put down the phone. He picked up a copy of the Tuesday edition of the Las Vegas Sun.
“I have two murder investigations on page one,” he told them. “The governor doesn’t like that. I don’t like that. That’s why I wanted all of you here to tell me what you’re doing to get these cases off the front page.”
He said it as if somehow the four detectives in the room did like it and were basking in the media glow.
“Serena,” the lieutenant continued, pushing down his half-glasses so he could stare at her above the frames. “You go first. Tell me more about the murder near Reno and whether this ties in to the hit-and-run on the boy in Summerlin.”
“A schoolteacher named Alice Ford had her throat cut at her ranch home,” Serena explained. “Jay Walling and I spent an hour and a half with the victim’s husband. We couldn’t find any connection between Alice Ford in Reno and Peter Hale’s family in Summerlin. There’s not even a hint of a common motive for both victims.”
“So maybe there’s no connection,” Sawhill concluded. “You’re talking about a major artery between Reno and Carson City. It may seem like a backwater compared to Las Vegas, but you’ve got thousands of cars on that highway every day. Just because our perp in the hit-and-run bought doughnuts up there the same day Alice Ford was killed, it doesn’t mean he did it.”
“I don’t like coincidences.”
“Neither do I, but they happen. Other than the receipt you found, there’s nothing to tie these cases together.”
“That’s true,” Serena admitted.
“What about a hit man?” Amanda suggested from the other side of the room. “It could be two separate jobs, and you stumbled across a way to tie them together.”
“Sure, it’s possible,” Serena said. “Except who hires a pro to kill a twelve-year-old boy and a retired schoolteacher?”
Sawhill made a chopping motion with his hand, cutting off the conversation. “Let Reno worry about Reno,” he told Serena. “The crime that concerns me is right here. What else do you have?”
Cordy cleared his throat, then squealed and practically jumped in the air, as if he had looked down and found a tarantula crawling across his foot.
“What’s wrong with you, Cordy?” Sawhill demanded.
Cordy blushed furiously. “Nothing,” he murmured. “Sorry.”
Stride saw Amanda struggling to keep a straight face.
Cordy tried to regain his cool. “We did another run through the neighborhood in Summerlin, I thought now that we know it was an Aztek, we might jog some memories. The thing’s butt ugly, who can miss it?”
“And?” Sawhill asked.
“We got a hit. A neighbor remembered seeing a blue Aztek parked across the street, a few minutes before the hit-and-run. It means our guy was lying in wait. He wanted a shot at the kid.”
“Did the witness see the driver?” Sawhill asked.
Cordy shook his head. “She was on the second floor. Couldn’t even see if someone was in the car.”
“So what’s next?”
“Jay Walling sent me a pile of receipts from the store that sold those Krispy Kremes,” Serena said. “Credit card purchases in the last two months where the person ordered doughnuts and Sprite. Plus other people who were at the same store within an hour of our man. I could use some help making phone calls.”
Sawhill nodded.
“We’re also running a search on other hit-and-run deaths in the Southwest where a child was involved,” she continued. “Maybe this guy has done this before. And we’re expanding our background checks on the family and friends to see if anyone might have been carrying a grudge about something.”
“Use discretion,” Sawhill reminded her. He extended a slim finger at Cordy. “You, too, Cordy.”
They both nodded. Stride knew he was next.
“Detective Stride, you’re new in this department,” Sawhill told him, “but Governor Durand already knows your name.”
“I’m flattered,” Stride replied pleasantly. Serena kicked him.
“Don’t be. He added a few expletives in front of it. Walker Lane called him, complaining that you seemed more interested in a forty-year-old murder than in finding out who killed his son.”
“I didn’t know anything about the murder of Amira Luz when I talked to Walker. He was the one who steered us to Rex Terrell.”
Sawhill snorted. “Rex Terrell has turned LV magazine into the National Enquirer. He writes gossip and trash. It has no place in this investigation.”
“But there was a murder at the Sheherezade.”
“Yes, I’m familiar with the crime, Detective.”
“I’d like to talk to the detective who ran the investigation back then,” Stride said. “Nick Humphrey. Is he still alive?”
“He is, but that would be a waste of time.” Sawhill leaned forward and stripped his glasses off. “What
Rex Terrell probably did not tell you is that the murder of Amira Luz was solved.”
Stride hesitated. He hadn’t pulled any files on Amira’s death yet. “You’re right, I didn’t know that.”
“The murderer killed himself,” Sawhill replied crisply. “He was a stalker. An unemployed gambling addict from Los Angeles. A month after Amira Luz was killed, he was found hanged in his L.A. apartment. He had pictures of the girl all over his bedroom wall, and he had a receipt from the Sheherezade the night she was killed. I imagine Rex left that out of his little story.”
Stride felt his cheeks growing hot. “Things still don’t add up. Terrell says he talked to people who saw Walker in Las Vegas that day. Then he left the country and has hardly come back since. Why?”
“Maybe he likes Canadian bacon. Maybe he always wanted to be a Mountie. I have no idea, Detective, and I don’t care. Walker Lane didn’t kill anyone.”
“MJ thought he did.”
“MJ was wrong. Rex Terrell was wrong. You are wrong. There is no connection to MJ’s death, because there is no mystery here. Move on. Is that clear?”
Stride nodded. “Perfectly clear.”
Even so, his doubts lingered. He was willing to admit that Rex Terrell might have spun a fairy tale for them, more fiction than truth. If nasty rumors had followed Walker Lane after the girl’s death, he might have chosen to leave town, even if he was innocent. There was another name that had popped up in the middle of the story, though, like a bathtub toy that wouldn’t sink.
Boni Fisso.
Boni, who owned the Sheherezade and had ties to both Amira Luz and Walker Lane.
Boni, who had two billion dollars on the line in the Orient casino project. Worth killing over.
Sawhill wasn’t stupid. He could read Stride’s eyes. “You don’t sound convinced, Detective. So you tell me: What connection could there possibly be between the death of Amira Luz and the murder of MJ Lane?”
Stride shook his head. “I can’t think of a thing,” he admitted.
“Good. Let’s look for a more plausible theory of the crime. And I really hope you have one.”
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