Murder in Vegas

by Connelly, Michael

“Say, I was wondering. What did Herb do to you guys? Did he steal some money?”

  Flannel Shirt turned. “What the fuck you think?”

  “Right. But how?”

  “His numbers,” the other said. “Juggling the books.”

  “He’s your accountant?”

  They looked at me like the stupid white scum I was that day. Stupid and white came easily, the scum was courtesy of them. As they walked away, the big one kicked the side of the Dodge with a very large motorcycle boot, leaving a dent that would cost me plenty.

  Back in the room I took another shower and called the cops. I reported Herbert Monroe missing and my rental car burglarized and vandalized. The paperwork took the rest of the day, even though the cops came out to the hotel to see the damage. The car got a lot more attention than Herb. Apparently people disappeared from Las Vegas with a fair regularity.

  Sometime in late afternoon I called Cynthia to break the news. No answer, just: “the number you have called has been disconnected or is no longer in service.” I stared at the receiver, sitting on the edge of my bed, and listened to the recording six times. Then I hung up and sang my sister’s favorite song. End of whose world, sis?

  On the plane flying home I asked the stewardess if they had any old issues of Forbes Magazine up in first class. Somewhere over Colorado she brought me a stack of ten magazines including three Forbes. I’d seen the issue all over Minnesota because the cover featured a native (literally) son. There he was: a handsome Indian man, Matthew Birdsong, wunderkind business whiz who grew up on a reservation in Minnesota, went to college, and came home to help his tribe build one of the first, biggest, and most successful Indian casinos in the U.S.

  I skimmed through the rags-to-riches story, or in this case, loincloth-to-loot. Finally, in a discussion of his business practices, I found the link.

  “Rumors flew for weeks among employees at the Crow Wing Casino that layoffs were coming. Was business bad? Reports were that machines and tables were busy all day and most of the night. Busloads of gamblers arrived from Chicago and other Midwestern cities. However, due to financial irregularities the management announced a quarter of employees would be let go and tribal distribution would be substantially reduced this year. Birdsong, now CEO of one of Las Vegas’s biggest casino hotels, said the auditors in St. Cloud had found profits to be exaggerated in the last quarter. Calls to Herbert Monroe, chief auditor at White Birch Accounting, were not returned.”

  Were the Vegas Indians casino employees Herb had helped get fired? Or were they employees of Matthew Birdsong? Had Herb double-crossed the man he was cooking the books for? In the manner of life in general I was never to know exactly.

  In November the Securities and Exchange Commission indicted Matthew Birdsong for fraudulent accounting practices, accusing him of skimming money from Crow Wing Casino to pad the accounts in Vegas to drive up the stock of the casino’s holding company. To celebrate I went up to Crow Wing one frigid night just after Thanksgiving to lose a few dollars in slot machines, to bet a few at the tables, to drink coffee all night with my kin. About three in the morning I spotted Louise, Cynthia’s old St. Paul pal, playing keno. We were both sober, an unfortunate byproduct of Indian gaming.

  Louise looked tired, dark circles under her eyes. “What do you hear from Cyn?”

  “You kidding? Vanished into thin air.”

  She shook her head sadly and looked toward the gaming tables, as if there was something else.

  “You heard from her, didn’t you?”

  Louise frowned then smiled then burst out laughing. “You won’t believe it, Aaron. I can’t tell you where she is, she wouldn’t tell me. But guess what she’s doing?”

  A vision of black leather hot pants popped into my head. She was my little sister. I just knew. “Singing in a band.”

  The day before Christmas a letter arrived with Canadian stamps. No return address, a Winnipeg cancel mark. Inside were two 500-dollar bills, Canadian. A small note was fixed to the paper clip.

  “Rock your world courtesy Matthew Birdsong. Go, bro. The music is calling.”

  NICKELS AND DIMES

  RONNIE KLASKIN

  Once upon a time, in the summer of 1973, there were two sisters who went on a car trip with their Mommy and their Daddy, who were both school teachers and thus had the whole summer off. They left from Long Island New York and were driving all the way to Los Angeles, where their Uncle Phil, Aunt Miriam, and their cousins Jon and Karen lived in the Valley. But Uncle Phil, Aunt Miriam, Jon, and Karen are not important to this story, so it’s perfectly all right for you to forget their names. Neither is Los Angeles or any of the other places, mostly Holiday Inns right off the Interstate, with game rooms and pools, where they stayed for one night at a time, or the dozens of Stuckey’s, where they stopped for bathroom breaks and root beer and an occasional pecan log.

  What’s important is Las Vegas, with its neon lit Strip, big hotels and glittery casinos. They got a room at one of the moderatesized and moderate-priced hotels called Dollars Dreaming, which had a big flashing neon one-hundred-dollar bill as a marquee. The room had two queen-sized beds, one shared by the parents, Brenda and Jeff, and the other by the two girls, Laura and Julie. The hotel served a large and cheap buffet breakfast and lunch, and boasted a big outdoor pool. It had a casino, of course, filled with slot machines and all sorts of gaming tables, but the sisters were not allowed in there. They were too young.

  Laura, the older sister, was ten, almost eleven. She was a quiet, studious girl who was always reading. She was a good reader and had graduated from reading Nancy Drew books to those by Judy Blume, which weren’t mysteries but told of things like menstruation and pimples, things that were of the utmost interest at that time of her life. Then she discovered mysteries by Agatha Christie, of which her mother had an entire collection.

  Laura was not sure about what she wanted to be when she grew up. Maybe a teacher, like Mommy and Daddy, so she could have the summers off, as well as Christmas and Easter and a bunch of other holidays. Laura was an extremely practical young person. Or possibly she could be a detective, but she wasn’t very sure how you went about that. Or a writer, or movie star. A year before she had considered becoming a ballet dancer, except that she wasn’t really very graceful, and more important, Laura had heard her dancing teacher say that ballet dancers had to be skinny, and she liked ice cream and cookies far too much. She was tall and slim then, with straight, dirty blonde hair and a totally flat bosom which she feared would never develop.

  Julie, who was just seven, was not at all like Laura. She was small and wiry with short red curls and a spray of freckles across her upturned nose, and was always moving. Kinetic energy, Jeff called it. She wasn’t anywhere near as well behaved as Laura. She wasn’t a bad kid, but her teachers said she talked too much in class, and she didn’t always pay attention or finish her homework, and she didn’t get very good marks on her report cards. She had also been known to lie on occasion. But she was popular, with a lot more friends than Laura ever had. She knew all of the dogs and cats in her neighborhood and constantly begged Brenda for a pet, which Brenda said was nagging, and explained that they couldn’t get one because Laura had too many allergies.

  One of the things that made Laura have itchy eyes and sneeze a lot was cat hair. Julie didn’t ever see Laura sneeze when she pet a dog, but Brenda said a definite no to any sort of furry pet. Even hamsters and gerbils, which Julie said could live in a cage in her room, and Brenda could tell Laura never to go in there and steal any of Julie’s things anymore.

  Another thing that gave Laura allergies was lavender. She had found that out when Grandma Helen had given them each a small bottle of lavender perfume. Grandma Helen always gave them exactly the same thing, hoping that they wouldn’t fight over whose present was better.

  Laura smelled the perfume and went into a sneezing fit. So she traded her bottle with Julie for a gold locket that Julie had found lying in the street. At first she told Julie that the
locket was just a piece of junk, but after the trade, she said she thought it was real gold. Julie was really angry, and, after that, every time Julie was mad at Laura about something or other, she would put some of the perfume on a piece of tissue and stick it between the pages of the book that Laura was reading. When Laura opened the book she would sneeze for hours. But she never told on Julie because then Brenda would find out about what happened with the locket, and she’d probably be punished and not be allowed to watch her favorite TV.programs for a night or two.

  They checked into the hotel a little after three on Thursday, changed right into their bathing suits and took a dip in the pool. Brenda made sure that the girls were well covered with suntan oil because it was very hot and sunny, 109 degrees, even that late in the afternoon, and she didn’t want them to get bad sunburns. Both girls had very fair complexions. Julie was the better swimmer, but she also enjoyed splashing Laura, who complained to Brenda, and then Brenda said that twenty minutes in that hot sun was enough for the first day in that awful heat, and it was time to go back to the room and take showers. Julie whined a bit, and Jeff gave her a light tap on the bottom of her two-piece bathing suit.

  Laura was disappointed too. The lifeguard at the pool was really cute. Laura was just beginning to notice these things. He wore his blond streaked hair long, almost to the bottom of his ears. Gold hair glistened on his suntanned arms.

  “So what?” Julie said when Laura told her she had a crush on the lifeguard. “He’s too old for you,” Julie said. “He must be more than twenty, and besides, he has a pimple on his chin.”

  Laura touched her chin and then her forehead. She was just beginning to break out in pimples and had loads of blackheads on her nose. She hoped that Julie wasn’t going to tease her and say she was ugly because of it.

  “His name is Ken,” Julie said.

  “How do you know that?” Laura asked.

  “It’s written on his shirt,” Julie said. “And he has a big bulge in his bathing suit, you know where.” Julie began to giggle.

  “You’re not supposed to notice that,” Laura said.

  “I thought you wanted to be a detective,” Julie said. “If you’re a detective you’ve got to notice everything, just like Nancy Drew does.”

  Julie had inherited Laura’s Nancy Drew books, though she never had much patience for reading, but on rainy days when she couldn’t play outside, she had read just enough of them to know that girl detectives looked for clues.

  “Not that sort of thing,” Laura blushed. She had noticed Ken’s bulge also, but she wasn’t going to let Julie know that.

  When they got back to the room, Brenda said, after they all showered, they would go to Circus Circus, and then out for dinner, but that this would have to be an early night. They had traveled over four hundred miles that day and were hot and tired. Besides, they had three more days there, so they’d have plenty of time to spend at the pool.

  Circus Circus was fun. There were lots of games that the children could play, games like throwing balls into cup-like containers or knocking down pins. If you won, you could get prizes, like stuffed animals, but not any money. Jeff gave them each three dollars to play the games, which cost a quarter apiece.

  Julie was the better player and had a good pitching arm. She won two small teddy bears, a light-brown one with a blue ribbon around its neck, and a dark-brown one with a red ribbon and a large stuffed panda.

  Laura was disappointed. She didn’t win anything. She loved teddy bears and had really wanted to get the light-brown one, but she wasn’t nearly as good at games as Julie.

  Brenda said she didn’t know where they would put them, but since they were traveling in Brenda’s big, brown Ford Country Squire station wagon, not Jeff’s old Rambler, even though Jeff did most of the driving on this trip, Julie wasn’t worried. Julie and Laura could nap in the back, still in their pajamas, every morning, when they left the Holiday Inns at five o’clock so they could get a few hundred miles in and still stop in time for a swim. The back of the wagon was loaded with pillows and blankets, so Julie knew there would be plenty of room for the stuffed animals too. She was so excited about having won the panda that she actually gave Laura the light-brown teddy bear, since Laura was clumsy and never won anything.

  Then they watched the acrobats and tightrope walkers. They laughed at the antics of the clowns. Finally they went to dinner at one of the other hotels, where Jeff had made a reservation.

  They saw people playing the slot machines while they waited to be seated. Bells rang, lights flashed, and coins poured out of the machines. Nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars, and large, shiny silver dollars. And this wasn’t even in the casinos that didn’t allow children. It was on both sides of the line outside the restaurant. There were lots of kids standing on that line, watching the slot machines, but they weren’t allowed to play.

  Jeff grumbled about having to wait when they already had a reservation. He removed his change from his pocket. He put five quarters in one of the machines and won ten more. Then he put them back in the machine and lost nine of them. The last quarter netted him two more, which he put in his pocket. “For later,” he said.

  “I thought we agreed to play only nickels and dimes, nothing larger. We need to budget,” Brenda said.

  “This doesn’t count. It’s only the loose change that was in my pocket,” Jeff said.

  “We had an agreement,” Brenda said.

  “Okay, okay, nickels and dimes. Only nickels and dimes. Or maybe you’d rather go downtown, where they have penny slot machines,” Jeff said.

  “Let’s not be sarcastic,” Brenda said.

  “Can I play the slot machines?” Julie asked.

  “May I, not can I,” Brenda said.

  “No,” Jeff said. “Children are not permitted to play.”

  “Why not?” Laura asked.

  “Because it’s gambling and children are not allowed to gamble.”

  “But Julie gambled when she won the teddy bears and the panda,” Laura said.

  “That’s different,” Jeff said. “Teddy bears and pandas are not the same as money.”

  “I don’t understand why it’s different,” Laura said.

  “Because it is,” Jeff said.

  Finally they were seated at a round table with a red and white checked tablecloth. They had steak and baked potatoes with sour cream instead of butter, and vanilla ice cream on apple pie for dessert.

  “Time to go back to the hotel and to bed,” Brenda said.

  “I’m not sleepy,” Julie said.

  “We’ve had a long day,” Brenda said, “and we have a lot to do tomorrow.”

  Julie lay in bed next to her sister. She hated sleeping in the same bed as Laura, who was restless when she slept and sometimes kicked her. She thought that she’d be kept awake all night long, but they both fell quickly into a deep sleep.

  The next morning they ate a buffet breakfast in the hotel. Again they had to wait on line. There were lots of slot machines on both sides of the line. It was before breakfast and the grownups were already playing. Some of them were winning money.

  Julie wished she was a grownup. She thought she would come back to Las Vegas as soon as she was old enough and then she could gamble all she wanted.

  They had orange juice, cut up melons, bacon and sausages, eggs, hash brown potatoes, pancakes, and French toast. Then they went to see some more of the hotels.

  There were stands in the street that looked like they might hold newspapers, but instead they had little guides full of advertisements and discount coupons for lots of stuff to see or to buy in the gift shops.

  Brenda wanted to do some shopping in the hotel gift shops that used the coupons.

  “That’s not for me,” Jeff said. “I hate shopping. Why don’t I go back to the hotel while you girls shop?”

  Brenda glowered at him. “Do what you want,” she said.

  “I’ll see you in the room before lunch. Take a cab back. It’s too hot to walk,” J
eff said.

  Laura was kind of glad. Mommy and Daddy had been fighting a lot on this trip. She figured they were getting on each other’s nerves. She and Julie were getting on each other’s nerves also, but then they usually did, even when they were at home.

  She and Julie had saved their allowances for weeks to buy all sorts of stuff on the trip.

  The girls bought liquid silver necklaces (they had collected a lot of those discount coupon books) for themselves and for their best friends. Brenda bought presents for just about everyone, for both grandmas and grandpas, all the aunts and uncles and cousins, a dozen of her friends, some of the other teachers in her school, and Peg, their next door neighbor who was watering their plants while they were gone.

  When he got back to his hotel, Jeff went into the casino. He changed a twenty-dollar bill into twenty silver dollars and went to a dollar slot machine. He had no intention of telling Brenda he played the dollar slot machines. She was probably spending quite a lot more on silly bargain gifts for the entire world than he was in gambling. But she still tried to boss him around about how he spent their money.

  He lost the first ten dollars. If I lose the rest, he thought, I’ll switch back to dimes. But when he lost the rest, he went back to the cashier and got twenty more silver dollars. He lost the first nineteen.

  The twentieth one won a thousand dollars.

  Jeff was ecstatic.

  Then he thought, I can’t even tell Brenda that I gambled silver dollars. She’d have a fit. From now on it would have to be nickels and dimes.

  He cashed in the money, which weighed a ton. Then he went to their room and hid the ten hundred-dollar bills in his eight-millimeter camera case.

  They stood on line waiting to get into the cheap lunch buffet at their hotel. Jeff unwrapped a roll of nickels. He dropped one into one of the slot machines that flanked the line. He pulled the arm. Cherries and watermelons and peaches twirled around and around and then stopped. Jeff put in another nickel. This time five nickels clanked out.