Whisper Death

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  “Tell her I called,” McGuire said, giving his name. “And tell her I spoke to someone who may have broken the figurine last night.”

  “I tell Miss Vargas,” the maid echoed. “Than’ you, sir.”

  He checked the clock; it was almost noon. Among other ways the very rich are different from us, he reflected, is that they get to sleep later.

  It means “The Meadows,” McGuire remembered as he approached Las Vegas from the west. He remembered it had been founded by Mormons. Meadows and Mormons. Peace and religion. And now look at it, he mused, the city ablaze in neon ahead of him.

  Some cities swagger and others doze. To McGuire, Las Vegas sneered. The desert sneered, the mountains ringing the valley sneered, and there was a sneer to the city itself, an arrogance that worshipped winners and spurned losers. He despised the city, despised the overweight tourists in stretch-pants who made pilgrimages to it, despised the oversized casino signs that served as beacons for gamblers and the over-produced stage shows with their topless dancers, despised the waste and the excess.

  He found the Flamingo, parked behind the sprawling hotel complex and walked back. The sun hung just above the mountains, its rays dancing through low clouds and rimming them in diamonds, while the sky faded from claret through gold to azure blue.

  McGuire stood admiring the spectacular colours, jostled by tourists who assumed he was drunk. Only a drunk would stand and stare at a sunset in Las Vegas. Hell, it was just another light-show on the Strip. And not a very original one at that.

  He entered the casino, allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness, then chose a five-dollar blackjack table at random. The dealer was a short, stocky man with thick dark hair and neatly trimmed goatee. His kept his eyes either on the table or somewhere above and a mile beyond the players.

  Half an hour later McGuire had lost thirty dollars and made mental notes on all the gamblers who had played at the table since he had arrived. A young couple had giggled over their wins and losses and left shortly after McGuire sat down. An elderly woman in a mauve pantsuit had perched herself on one of the stools they had vacated. She was still there, two stools away from McGuire, chain-smoking and calling the dealer “Sonny.” The woman played well; McGuire estimated she had won a hundred dollars in the last fifteen minutes.

  A couple in their forties, both grossly fat and wearing peaked caps embroidered with the name of a Kansas farm equipment dealer, arrived to sit between McGuire and the older woman. They played without pleasure or comment, whether winning or losing. At the opposite end of the table from McGuire, the last stool had been occupied by an attractive young woman in tight white slacks and T-shirt who had smiled at McGuire several times before being escorted away by a well-muscled man in a sports jacket. A small man with glasses, white hair and short white beard had taken her place, played three hands, lost them all, and limped away in disgust. Within minutes the same seat was occupied by a moon-faced bald man in a sweat-stained T-shirt who spoke only in monosyllables. He scanned everyone’s face while the dealer distributed the cards. Once, in response to a comment from the dealer, he had replied in a thick German or Dutch accent.

  McGuire watched the man intently through the next few hands, fixing his scowling face and clear blue eyes in his mind.

  “Excuse me?” A hand touched McGuire’s shoulder, and he turned to look into the weary eyes of a middle-aged cocktail waitress, her face staring back at him from under several layers of make-up, her hair the colour of faded straw. “I was asked to give you this,” the waitress said. She set a glass of Scotch and ice on the rim of the blackjack table. “And this.” She placed a small envelope next to the glass.

  “Who?” McGuire demanded. He was swivelling his head, looking around and behind her. “Who gave you this? What’d he look like?” He picked up the envelope, saw “Mozart” written in neat, precise lettering on the front.

  The thin lines masquerading as eyebrows slid up the waitress’s forehead. “A man. He stopped me and asked to do this for you.” She paused. “He said you would tip me but, like, you don’t have to.”

  McGuire swept his remaining chips off the table and thrust them at her. “What did he look like?” he repeated.

  She was sinew-thin, with three children and a string of men in her life that reached back beyond memory, and she wasn’t going to be intimidated by any blackjack-playing tourist whose buddy sent him a note. “About your age,” she said, sliding the casino chips to a corner of her tray. “Look, after I seen him I had to get drinks and then I made four stops on the way back here. . . .”

  “How did you know it was me?”

  The dealer was speaking to him, cold and businesslike. “Will you be taking another card, sir?”

  The waitress’s eyes skipped from McGuire to the dealer and back again. “He described you. Light-blue suit, sitting at the end of this table, table seventeen . . . scar on your lip . . .”

  “Sir?” The dealer’s voice was more insistent.

  “Hey, you playing buddy?” demanded the man in the peaked cap.

  The waitress moved to the next table. McGuire flung his cards at the dealer, walked to the far corner of the casino and tore open the envelope.

  The message was written on a sheet of Flamingo stationery. “There’s a phone booth behind the parking lot,” McGuire read. “A telephone number is written in red ink on the wall above the phone. Tell them it’s about Lafaro.”

  There was something else in the envelope. McGuire shook it into his palm. A twenty-five cent piece slid out.

  The sun had left a pale-blue line separating the black silhouettes of the mountains from the even blacker sky. McGuire walked quickly across the parking lot to a telephone booth that stood shining like a beacon.

  Inside, McGuire saw the number scrawled in fresh red ink immediately above the pay phone. He inserted the coin, dialled the number and counted three rings.

  A woman’s voice, soft and husky, answered by repeating the last four digits of the telephone number.

  McGuire frowned. He knew that voice.

  “I’m calling about Lafaro,” he said.

  “Could you be more specific, sir?” the woman responded.

  “A guy called Lafaro,” McGuire growled. The voice. Where had he heard the voice before? “I want to talk to somebody who knows about him.”

  “One moment, sir.”

  McGuire listened to the silence but he was hearing the woman’s voice, trying to place it in a different setting, a different context.

  The voice returned several minutes later. “Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. Could I have your name and a number where you can be reached? One of our staff will be pleased to contact you . . .”

  “My name’s McGuire, and I’m calling from a telephone booth. Now why don’t you cut the stalling and tell me who you are and who you work for?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t provide that information, sir.” Keep talking, McGuire urged silently. Keep talking and I’ll place your voice. “But I may be able to assist you in another way. One moment.”

  He was drawing a blank. And she was stalling while they traced the call. He leaned against the side of the booth, staring down an empty side-street at a shuttered and dusty takeout chicken restaurant, an adult book store, the cold grey wall of a concrete parking ramp. Another minute passed, then two. She returned on the line, told him she was still trying to connect him and that she appreciated his patience.

  “Who are you?” he began, but she was gone again.

  A helicopter swooped low overhead. A light breeze danced in the gutter with discarded newspapers and entertainment guides.

  The woman’s voice returned in his ear. “We may be able to offer you some assistance, Mr. McGuire, but we will need . . .”

  “Assistance? I don’t want . . .”

  “. . . to ask a few questions. May we know the source of this inquiry?”

 
“A friend.” What the hell?

  “And is this friend well known to you, or simply a passing acquaintance?”

  He’d had enough. “Look, lady, I know you. I know your voice. Now quit jerking me around and connect me with somebody else or I’m walking.”

  “I see. One moment, sir.” Not a hint of fluster. Another two-minute wait.

  A motorcycle rumbled out of the parking lot and down the street. Someone turned a light on in a room above the deserted fried-chicken restaurant. At the other end of the street, a service van entered from Flamingo Boulevard.

  She was back. “Mr. McGuire, it seems there may be a short delay . . .”

  He slammed the receiver down and shouldered his way out of the booth. The van passed and pulled to the curb. A driver emerged wearing coveralls with the name of an air conditioning company stencilled across the back. He walked to the rear of the van as McGuire passed, sliding open the side door.

  McGuire heard the footsteps, light and deliberate, behind him and he ducked his head, running for the safety of the lights on Flamingo Boulevard, knowing what was about to happen and unable to prevent it, struggling only to survive as the arm wrapped around his throat and a hand expertly, precisely located his carotid artery and began squeezing, squeezing to blackness and beyond.

  Chapter Nine

  Plastic cuff straps cut his wrists and he smelled the stale, dusty aroma of canvas. McGuire opened his eyes, leaving one blackness and entering another. They had cuffed his wrists behind him and placed a black canvas sack over his head, fastening it securely at the neck.

  The van was travelling on a highway. He sensed the speed and heard traffic in other lanes.

  There were three of them, McGuire calculated. A driver and two others.

  “He’s awake,” someone said.

  The van reduced its speed and made a shallow right turn, slowed to a stop, turned sharply left, and resumed speed again, leaving the freeway behind.

  McGuire counted the seconds, trying to estimate distance. Within a minute the van left the pavement; gravel crunched under its tires for a few feet, and then it stopped.

  The side door slid open. Hands seized each of McGuire’s shoulders, lifting and propelling him out of the vehicle onto a hard, flat surface, steering him without words across a concrete floor and through a door that opened with a pneumatic hiss and closed solidly behind. They passed through two more doors before McGuire was guided into a soft armchair. One hand pushed him forward until his head was between his knees, while another released the plastic wrist-bindings.

  The canvas bag was lifted from his head and McGuire blinked at the light that flooded his eyes.

  It was not what he’d expected. There were no cold concrete walls, no utilitarian metal furniture, no harsh overhead lights, no one-way viewing windows.

  Instead, he appeared to be in a suburban den, seated on a comfortable wing chair upholstered in a plaid woollen fabric. He was facing a Colonial pine wall-unit which displayed a stereo system and television among shelves of books. A small reading lamp glowed on a desk in the far corner. Muted light reflected back from the ceiling; the fixtures were hidden behind the coving of the wall-unit. Beneath his feet, thick broadloom stretched from wall to wall. Other chairs, matching his own, sat in a grouping around a small antique table.

  “Would you like something to drink?” a voice said from behind him.

  McGuire turned as a tall, slim man in his late thirties strode past him. The man wore a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie. Thick glasses in heavy black frames sat atop a straight, patrician nose. The man opened a wooden panel in the wall-unit, and the light from a small refrigerator shone into McGuire’s eyes.

  “I’m a police officer,” McGuire said.

  “We know that,” a second voice said from behind McGuire. A hand appeared over his shoulder, dropping McGuire’s detective badge into his lap.

  “Orange, grapefruit, lemon-lime or punch?” The man in the glasses was looking at McGuire, one hand indicating the contents of the refrigerator. “We also have mineral water or milk, if that suits your taste.”

  McGuire tried to turn his neck but a strained muscle shot him a sharp warning. He winced and reached to rub it. “Who are you guys?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “You don’t want something to drink?” asked the man at the refrigerator.

  “I’ll take a mineral water,” the second man said, moving into McGuire’s view for the first time. He was heavier than the other man and perhaps a few years older, with eyes like knife-edges and rapidly thinning blond hair. Dressed in a dark suit of the same conservative cut as his partner’s, the fair-haired man accepted a bottle of mineral water from his partner and poured it into a clear crystal glass.

  Goggles and Baldy, McGuire named them. He didn’t expect to see identification, so Goggles and Baldy it would be. It’s their show, McGuire told himself. Let them run it. For now.

  Goggles set a glass of orange juice on a table next to McGuire’s chair. “In case you get thirsty,” he said. A smile appeared briefly and was gone. Baldy chose an armchair among the grouping to McGuire’s right, where he sampled his mineral water in small sips and studied McGuire as though viewing a painting in an art gallery.

  “How did you obtain that telephone number?” Baldy asked in a curious voice.

  “Somebody gave it to me.”

  Goggles moved out of sight behind McGuire, where the room was noticeably darker. McGuire turned to locate him, but the wings of the heavy armchair shielded his view, and the pain in his neck warned against twisting his head further. He looked back at the fair-haired man in front of him. “I never met him. He was at the Palm Springs Desert Museum last night. He called me twice at my motel room, then again today. Told me to wait at a blackjack table in the Flamingo. He left your number in a phone booth. I called, and you know the rest.”

  “Anything noticeable about his voice?” Baldy asked.

  “I think he’s borderline insane. But I’m getting used to that around here. Now tell me who you are.”

  “You know who we are,” came the reply. “Our credentials are at least as valid as yours. In fact, much more so.” A modulated voice, carefully trained, words clearly enunciated. A Mormon, McGuire decided. They’re probably both Mormons. Good foot soldiers. No alcohol or tobacco. White shirts and no vices. Point them and they march.

  “You interviewed Bunker Crawford,” McGuire said.

  “We did indeed.” It was Goggles, gliding silently back and forth across the room in the darkness behind McGuire.

  “I had a warrant for his arrest,” McGuire responded. “And you people interfered with a legitimate exercise of interstate criminal prosecution.” Shit, McGuire realized, I’m talking like Fat Eddie Vance.

  “Academic now, isn’t it?” Baldy watched McGuire with amusement over the rim of his glass.

  “There’ll be hell to pay over this.” McGuire leaned back in his chair.

  “Not by us.” The man lowered his glass. “Let’s begin to make some progress now, shall we? You came down here with your unfortunate partner to take custody of Bunker Crawford and return him to Boston for trial. We had no quarrel with that. In spite of our manner of bringing you here, McGuire, we are as much interested in the execution of the law as you are. But in a slightly different sphere. In any case, in a move of astounding stupidity, you permitted Mr. Crawford to be murdered in an open public area, thus preventing the very exercise of justice you were here to participate in.”

  “Did you kill him?” McGuire asked calmly.

  “Of course not. First, we wanted him alive. And second, if we had chosen to eliminate him, we would hardly have used such a clumsy method.”

  “What did you say to scare him so much?”

  The man with the mineral water shook his head. “Classified, McGuire.”

  Goggles appeared suddenly at McGuire’s side. �
��Tell us what you know about Crawford,” he said in a bored voice.

  “It’s classified.” McGuire smiled.

  “McGuire, how many people would give a damn if your body was found tossed into a ravine somewhere between here and Death Valley?” Goggles asked pleasantly.

  “Probably not a hell of a lot.”

  “Good guess. We know about your career in Boston, about your two failed marriages, one ex-wife dead, the other shacked up in Florida with a drug dealer. We know about your hiatus in the Bahamas. No close relatives, no deep personal relationships with anyone except a burnt-out retired quadriplegic detective. And absolutely nobody to make a connection with us. Trust us on that one, McGuire. Now tell us what you know about Crawford.”

  “He wasn’t crazy,” McGuire offered.

  “An unqualified opinion,” Baldy said. He drained his glass of mineral water and positioned it carefully on a coaster in the middle of the table.

  “Look, you don’t care what I know about Crawford,” McGuire said. “You’ve got it already. You’ve seen the file material we transferred to Palm Springs and you know all about his shooting of Ross . . .” He paused, smiled, snapped his fingers. Suddenly he knew. “That woman who answered Ross Amos’s home phone number as his wife. It was the same one who answered your number tonight. She just dropped the phony southern accent.”

  The two men were unimpressed.

  “She was supposed to be in Virginia, or Maryland or somewhere when I called,” McGuire continued. “A kitchen in a nice suburban tract house. The hell she is. She’s probably sitting at a switchboard with direct lines from area codes all over the country. . . .” He paused, looked around. “Maybe in this building, right?” They were letting him talk, he knew. Letting him function as both inquisitor and source.

  “Tell us again about this mysterious man who called and suggested you come to Las Vegas.” It was Goggles. His approach was more clipped than his partner’s, his mind more focused on the problem at hand. He would be the more dangerous of the two, McGuire estimated. More ruthless. More blank-faced as he pulled the trigger or drew the garrote tighter.