“I understand,” Stride said. He thought about his second wife, Andrea. Their relationship was similar. Two people who needed each other but didn’t love each other.
“MJ was born two years later. I didn’t realize she was falling into a deep depression. People didn’t really talk about those things. I just thought she didn’t love me anymore and didn’t love the boy. I was a fool.”
Stride had read newspaper articles about Walker. His wife had killed herself a few years after MJ was born. “I think I know the rest,” he said.
“Yes, her suicide made the news. But you don’t know why, Detective. MJ understood it eventually, or he thought he did. He realized that my wife couldn’t stand the competition. She was fragile and neurotic, and I only made it worse. Because I couldn’t let go of the past, you see. MJ realized it, too. That’s why this business about the Sheherezade was so upsetting to him.”
Stride felt his senses shift as he heard the name Sheherezade. He tuned out his emotions and hardened his heart. It was a shame, because he found himself liking Walker Lane.
“You said your wife couldn’t stand the competition,” Stride said. “What do you mean? What couldn’t you let go?”
Walker sighed. “Yes, that’s what you’ve come for, isn’t it? To hear the real story.” He turned the wheelchair around and pointed up at the tower rising above the house. “Do you see it, Detective?”
Stride looked up, confused. He saw only peaked roofs and stone, and dozens of windows opening on the water. He saw the tower overhead, with a circular balcony at the top like a widow’s walk. “I don’t-” he began, but then his eyes finally lighted on the five stones different from the others in the tower. They were gray slate like the rest, but someone had carved a letter into each of them. There were other stones between them, so they were spread out, forming a word horizontally that stretched from one side of the turret to the other. Years of Pacific rain had washed down their edges, but he could still read it.
AMIRA
He stared down at Walker, not understanding. Walker was lost in thought, studying the letters with his one eye as if he could caress them.
“You named your estate after her,” Stride murmured. “Why?”
“Why? Detective, you’re not a romantic.”
“You killed her,” Stride said. The words slipped out.
Walker shook his head. He didn’t seem angry, just intense and heartbroken. “No, no. Never. Don’t you understand? I’d sooner kill myself. There are many days I’ve thought about doing that, just to be with her. I loved Amira. She loved me. We were going to be married that very night. The night that Boni Fisso murdered her.”
When they returned to the porch, Stride saw that the cloudless sky had dissipated into patches of darkness. It happened so quickly here, the changes from rain to sun, sun to rain. Drizzle began to dampen the garden outside and streak the windows. It grew colder. Walker called one of his staff, who stacked logs in the fireplace and started a blaze that quickly warmed the room. He opened wine, and Stride gave up his inhibitions and accepted a glass. Walker sipped the pinot noir and stared into the fire.
“I wish I could explain about Vegas in those days,” Walker said. “I think it had the same kind of allure that Hollywood did in the thirties. It was young, electric, glamorous. Millionaires rubbing shoulders with showgirls. Entertainers playing craps on the casino floor at two in the morning. Everyone dressed up in jewels and tuxes like they were going to the Met. I remember it seemed to me that everyone there was beautiful. Everyone was rich. It was illusion, of course. Sleight of hand. That’s what the town is so good at. You couldn’t walk into one of the casinos then and not get caught up in it. Maybe that’s because the real world seemed so far away. Walk a hundred yards in any direction and there was nothing but desert, an utter wasteland. I remember driving there on this two-lane nothing road from California, spending hours in the darkness without a glint of light anywhere. Then you’d see a glow like fire on the horizon, and you’d come over the crest of a hill and find this neon island blazing out of the night.”
“Helen Truax said the town had star quality then,” Stride said.
“Yes, she was right. That’s exactly what it was.”
Stride added, “Helen was one of the dancers with Amira.”
Walker shook his head. “Was she? I don’t remember her.”
“Her stage name was Helena Troy. She says she slept with you.”
Walker looked embarrassed. “I don’t doubt it. I played the game. I was young and rich, and I liked to sleep with lots of girls in those days. Vegas seduced me like so many others.”
“What about Amira?”
“Yes, her, too. She seduced me. Have you read about Flame?
Stride nodded.
“Words can’t do it justice,” Walker said. “I think I fell in love with Amira the very first time I saw it. I had had plenty of flings, but Amira was different. I fell for her, head over heels. Maybe I’m flattering myself, but I think it was the same for her. Perhaps she just wanted my money, or wanted an escape, but I think she loved me, too, just as passionately.”
“But Amira was Boni’s mistress, wasn’t she?” Stride asked.
Walker ’s face, the part of it that moved, showed his pain. “Foolish, wasn’t I? Naive. I was playing with gangsters, and I thought it was just another one of my movies. The tough guys in suits and fedoras looked like actors. But this was real.”
“What happened?”
“We thought we could keep it secret,” Walker said. “No one would know how we felt, until we were long gone and married.”
Long gone, Stride thought again.
“I wasn’t good at hiding my feelings. I was young, and love was written all over my face. Everyone knew it. They knew when I showed up every weekend at her shows. Boni knew, too, of course. Leo Rucci told me how it was. He told me Amira was Boni’s property, like a chair or a dog. That made me furious, but I pretended it was just a crush, nothing serious. Amira was the better actor. She never so much as looked at me in public. She told Boni if I ever laid a hand on her, she would knock me flat. Boni laughed about that, she said. So you see, we thought we were getting away with it. After her performance, in the middle of the night, she’d slip up to my suite on the roof, and we’d be together. It was our secret.”
“There aren’t many secrets in Vegas,” Stride said.
“No. Later, I realized he probably bugged my suite. We thought we were so smart, and he knew all along what was going on between us.”
“Tell me about that night.”
“That night,” Walker murmured. “That horrible, horrible night” He brought his right hand up and touched the frozen side of his face, rubbing it, as if he might feel something there. “After her last show, we were going to Europe. We planned to get married and spend six months traveling the world.”
“But Boni knew?”
Walker nodded. “He and I spent the evening together in his office. We did that a lot. I always thought Boni was charming. We had fun together. But the hours wore on, and there was something wrong. There was something different about him. As it got later, I knew Amira would be waiting in my suite, and I wanted to go to her. Boni kept finding excuses to keep me there, and I just watched the clock. Then Leo Rucci arrived. Boni’s enforcer. He always scared me, because you knew he was nothing but a vicious thug underneath his suit. Boni asked Leo to escort me back to my suite, and I protested, but Boni insisted. And as I left, Boni kissed me on both cheeks. I remember what he said. ’God be with you, Walker.’ Right then, I knew. I knew it was going to be bad.”
Stride didn’t say anything. He remembered standing on the balcony of MJ’s apartment, looking down at the rooftop suite of the Sheherezade.
“Leo followed me into the suite. I tried to stop him, but he just laughed. I expected to find Amira there, but it was quiet, and I thought she had come and gone. And then-I could see the door to the patio was open. I had this terrible feeling. I went outside.” Walker
choked up. “She was in the pool. The water was red and cloudy. I just stared down at her. All I could think was that I was the one who killed her. By falling in love with her.”
“What did they do to you?” Stride asked, guessing what had happened next.
Walker looked down at his useless limbs in the chair. “Leo took me into the basement and put me in a limousine. He said they were taking me to the airport, and I was to leave the city and never come back. That wasn’t enough for them, of course. The two men in the car-they took a detour into the desert. Do you know what it’s like to have your knees broken with a baseball bat, Detective? Or to have your skull fractured by brass knuckles? I would have given them any amount of money to kill me, but they were very careful about that. Boni didn’t want me dead. He wanted me to know what he had done to me.”
Sitting in his wheelchair, Walker Lane, billionaire, began to cry.
Stride felt himself getting angry.
He was angry at Boni Fisso, a man he had never met. He was angry at Las Vegas for the lives it left in ruins. He felt a strange kinship with the killer in that sketch, trying to find justice for Amira in his own immoral way. He began to realize that the killer had been ahead of them all along.
This was never about Walker.
It was about Boni.
TWENTY-SEVEN
His name is Blake Wilde,” Serena told Stride. “Or at least, that’s the name he’s been using. He was one of the bodyguards at Premium Security. The guy who runs the agency, David Kamen, recognized Blake from the sketch. He’s our perp, and he’s disappeared.”
It was night, and Stride was in Walker ’s private hangar at the Vancouver airport, waiting for the return of the Gulf-stream. The jet was grounded in Denver by bad weather. It was raining on the coast now, too.
“How long has he worked there?” Stride asked.
“Just about three months. Kamen claims they did a background check on Blake, and it came up clean, but his personnel file is gone. They say Blake must have lifted it. I wonder if Kamen sent it to the shredder.”
“You think they knew each other?”
“Kamen has a military background. A sharpshooter for the marines in the Gulf. But I made some calls, and the rumor is he had ties to a lot of other groups in the Middle East, including smugglers and mercenaries. If you were Blake Wilde and you wanted to make a landing in Las Vegas, wouldn’t you look up an old friend?”
“The question is why Blake came to Las Vegas,” Stride said.
“To kill people.”
“I know, but why? Why him? Why now? I suppose his address was a fake?”
“A house in Boulder City,” Serena said. “Mormon family, five kids, a beagle. They never heard of Blake Wilde.”
“How about his SSN?”
“It traces to a boy in Chicago who died at age five.”
“He had to get paid,” Stride said.
“He cashed his checks at local pawnshops. A different one each time. It cost him ten percent, but no cameras and no questions asked.”
Stride stared through the door of the hangar at the rain falling outside. “So this guy was with Karyn Westermark on Saturday afternoon?” he asked. “He was running her security?”
“Nice, huh?” Serena replied. “It explains the disguise that night. He didn’t care about hiding from us, but he didn’t want Karyn recognizing him.”
“How about Tierney Dargon?”
“Yes, Kamen says he worked with her, too. No problem getting her to open the door in Lake Las Vegas.”
Stride couldn’t believe they were this close, and it still felt like they had nothing.
“There’s got to be something more,” he said. “What about expense vouchers, something with a credit card number or a bank account?”
“Zip,” Serena said. “Everything he gave them was faked. Nice jobs, too. I called Nick Humphrey’s next-door neighbor, Harvey Washington. Call a forger to find a forger, right? He had some names for me. Other local con men. Cordy’s checking with some of his snitches on the street, too. But this guy’s smart. I’m betting he didn’t have it done locally.”
“He probably has a backup identity ready as well,” Stride said.
“We’re getting in touch with all of the people that he did security for. We’re warning them to take care in case he shows up, and we’re interviewing them to see if Blake tipped anything about his personal life while he was with them. Where he shopped, where he ate, anything that might narrow down the area for us.”
“The sketch is on TV?”
“Yeah. We’re getting calls, but nothing solid so far. What did you get from Walker Lane?”
Stride quickly reviewed his day with Walker and what Walker had told him about the connections between Amira’s death and Boni Fisso.
“Do you believe him?” Serena asked.
“It plays either way,” Stride said. “Either Walker really did kill Amira, and Boni had him worked over as punishment, or Boni took it out on both of them because Amira and Walker were trying to run away. That’s what Walker says, and I think he’s telling the truth. The man has more money than God, and he still looks afraid of Boni.”
“There’s more,” Serena said. “Boni owns Premium Security.”
Stride shook his head. Boni Fisso had his tentacles wrapped around the neck of every person in the investigation. “So that means David Kamen has already told Boni everything that’s going on.”
“Count on it,” Serena said. “I wonder if our perp, Blake Wilde, knew that the company had Boni’s fingerprints on it. Maybe that was part of the game, worming his way into one of Boni’s shadow companies.”
“I think Blake Wilde knows Boni a hell of a lot better than we do,” Stride said. He added, “We’ve got to talk to Boni. He must know what the hell is going on. This all gets back to him. Maybe to his Orient project, too.”
“Sawhill says he tried to get us in to see him,” Serena said. “He even asked his dad to call Boni. No luck. The most we can get is an interview with Boni’s lawyer.”
“Goddamn it,” Stride swore. “I’m not going to arrest the son of a bitch. I’d love to, but I can’t. He’s not a suspect in any of these murders, so why the hell won’t he talk to us? The one murder we think he did commit was forty years ago, and we won’t be able to touch him for that.”
“Boni keeps his hands far away from the dirt,” Serena said.
“There’s only one way in. You’ve got to talk to Claire again.”
Serena was silent for a surprisingly long time. Finally, she said, “I don’t think that will work. She won’t talk to him.”
“You said she didn’t close the door entirely. We need her help.”
“It’s a waste of time,” Serena insisted.
Stride didn’t understand. “You can talk anybody into anything. What’s the problem?”
“Claire made a pass at me,” she said.
He almost laughed. “Well, so what’s the big deal? Guys make passes at you all the time. If she gets fresh, you have my permission to deck her.” He tried to understand what he was missing, why this had knocked Serena off her feet. Finally light dawned. “Unless it was a completed pass,” he said.
“No,” she told him. Then, embarrassed: “Not really.”
“Not really? That sounds like being a little pregnant.”
“Nothing happened,” Serena insisted. Then she went on. “But I wanted it to happen. I mean, it came out of nowhere for me. I was ready to jump into bed with her. That’s what scared me. Shit, I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
Stride was at a loss for words. He tried to let his brain catch up with his emotions, but he had no idea what he felt. Betrayed. Jealous. Aroused. All of those things.
“Just what are you telling me, Serena?”
He had stumbled into a conversation for which he wasn’t prepared, and the last thing he wanted to do was have it by cell phone, a thousand miles apart.
“I don’t know what I’m telling you.” Her voice was becom
ing part of the static. He strained to hear her. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. There’s a lot I don’t know about myself.”
“You’re making too much of this. You got caught off guard. You’re not made of ice.”
“It was easier when I was,” she said.
“So tell me this, do you love me?” he asked. He held his breath, because he was suddenly not sure what she would say.
“Yes.”
“Has Claire changed that?”
“No, no, that’s not it. But now I have to see her again.”
Stride thought about it. “You know you can use her attraction to you as a way to get her to call Boni.”
“Of course. That’s what I have to do. But I’m worried about getting in over my head,”
“The attraction is that strong?”
“Yeah, it is.”
Stride stared into the mist that hung like halos around the lights of the airport. His sense of homelessness had never been keener. He wanted to leave, start walking into the downpour, and disappear somewhere.
“Look, I can’t tell you what to do,” he said.
He was talking to air. The signal was gone, lost in the rain. For the time being, they were in different universes. He knew it was going to be a long wait and a long flight home through the dark sky.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Hello, Serena,” Claire said. “I’m glad you called.” Serena slipped past her into the one-bedroom apartment, passing through the honeysuckle fragrance of Claire’s perfume. Their eyes met.
“I’m sorry to come so late,” Serena said. “They told me at the Limelight this was your night off.”
“You’re not interrupting anything,” Claire said. “Just me and some chick lit.”
The lights in the apartment were dimmed, and several candles were lit, giving off a vanilla aroma. There was an indentation on the sofa and a blanket where Claire had been sitting with her book. A Tiffany lamp on the end table gave her light to read. There was a glass of white wine, half filled, on the coffee table. Soft jazz played from speakers discreetly hidden around the room.
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