Murder in Vegas

by Connelly, Michael

  “All right, all right,” Brandi flicking her hand like she couldn’t give a damn.

  Only she did. After seeing all that “snow” in his briefcase back at the lodge, Brandi could care less about the real thing on the mountaintops and melting in the shaded clumps still on the ground under trees that must block the sun. As they drove, many of the houses—like the one next door to the chalet—looked like something out of that ancient Bonanza TV show with Michael Landon that Brandi caught on the cable sometimes, a program she figured he must have done even before that old show Little House on the Prairie, account of how much younger he looked as a son/cowboy instead of a father/farmer.

  But the snow in the briefcase? Heroin or cocaine, had to be. Which meant big-time bucks, and maybe an opportunity for her luck really to change, even just riding with Ed.

  Or figuring out a way to hijack him. After all, the three friends Brandi called from the pub in the city would go to the police only if she didn’t make it back.

  Brandi watched Ed move slowly through the yard and toward the chalet. There’d been a wooden privacy fence between it and the road that wound around the lake. On each side of the fence’s gate were these totem poles, like Brandi remembered from a Discovery Channel thing on Eskimos—or whatever they were called when they lived more in the deep woods and not so much on icebergs.

  And, sure enough, there were three guys doing landscaping in the next yard who could have been Eskimos themselves. Short, blocky guys, with square, copper-colored faces. The oldest of them seemed to be bossing the other two, one gathering up broken limbs and throwing them onto a brushpile, the other sweeping the driveway of huge pine cones from even huger trees looming overhead. Probably getting the neighbor’s place ready for the season.

  Brandi noticed Ed giving the three Eskimos the eye as he reached the stoop of the chalet. Then the guy knocked and disappeared inside.

  Brandi couldn’t believe how cold it could be in mid-May nor how her breathing still wasn’t back to normal from banging Ed and then just walking downstairs in the lodge and over to the Mustang. In fact, about the only other thing Brandi did notice was how, about five minutes after Ed entered the chalet, the oldest Eskimo in the next yard came strolling toward her side of the car, smiling and taking a piece of paper—no, an envelope?—out of a bulging pocket in his jacket.

  And right then, Brandi Willette, even without knowing what was going to happen next, could feel her luck changing, and visions of what that would mean in Vegas—and beyond—began slam-dancing in her head.

  Natalya, a fat-to-bursting fortysomething who looked like no drug pusher Ed Krause had ever encountered, settled the two of them into over-stuffed chairs that suited her like Felix’s red flowers back in San Fran’ suited him, only different.

  She said, “Tell me, do you prefer ‘Edward,’ ‘Ed’ … ?”

  “Just ‘Ed,’ thanks.”

  Natalya smiled. Not a bad face, you suck a hundred pounds off the rest of her, let the cheekbones show. She seemed to arrange their seating so he could enjoy the dynamite view of the lake through a wall of windows. Ed was pretty sure the chalet had been designed to be appreciated from the water, not the road.

  But the view turned out to be less “enjoyable” and more distracting, as some fucking moron in a scuba wetsuit went waterskiing past, and Ed automatically glanced at all the interior doorways he could see.

  The fat lady turned her head toward the skier, then turned back, smiling some more. “There’s a rather famous school that teaches that between here and your lodge, though I’ve always felt it a bit too frosty and … strenuous to be diverting.”

  As soon as he’d entered the room, Ed had seen the sample case on the tiled floor next to the chair Natalya had picked for herself. He’d rather it be at least the same size as his briefcase, but then the two-fifty in hundreds had barely fit in its twin on the way to Healdsburg, and this would be twice as much, maybe some of it in smaller denominations to boot.

  Natalya said, “May I offer you refreshment?”

  “No, thanks. I gotta be going soon.”

  “As you wish,” the fat lady sighing, as though if he’d said “yes,” maybe she could break some kind of weight-watching rule of her own by joining him. “I will be needing to test your product.”

  A switch from Tommy in wine country. “And I’ll be needing to count yours.”

  “Let us begin, then.”

  “Before we do,” said Ed, leaning forward conversationally but also to free up his right hand to move more fluidly for the revolver under his sports jacket and over his right hip, “any security I should know about, so nobody accidentally gets hurt?”

  “Security?” A laugh, the woman’s chins and throat wobbling. “No, Tahoe City is a very safe place, Ed.”

  “Not even those guys next door?”

  “‘Those guys?’”

  “Mexicans maybe, doing yard work.”

  “Oh,” a bigger laugh, shoulders and breasts into it now. “Hardly. And they’re Mayans, Ed. They drift up here from the Yucatan to do simple labor—like opening up the houses after the winter’s beaten down the foliage? My neighbor’s a retired professor of archaeology, and the one who first got them to do landscaping for a lot of us along the lake. In fact, that figurine on the table and the stone statue near the fireplace are both gifts from him.” Natalya paused. “I’d have said it was too frigid up here for them, frankly,” the fat broad stating something Ed had been thinking from the moment he saw them, “but my neighbor tells me our gorgeous topography reminds them in some ways of their native land.”

  Ed thought that still didn’t ring right: Most people he knew who ever traveled far from home went from colder weather to warmer, not the other way around.

  On the other hand, what do you know about Mexicans, period, much less “Mayans” in particular?

  Then Natalya opened her hands like a priest doing a blessing. “Shall we?”

  Ed brought his briefcase over to her, and he took her sample case back to his chair, accidentally scraping the bottom of the case against the tiles, the thing was that heavy.

  “This is supposed to be the best restaurant in town.”

  Brandi Willette heard Ed’s comment, but she waited till the waitress at Wolfdale’s—who looked like one of the retro-hippies back in the city—took their drink orders and left them before glancing around the old room with exposed ceiling beams and a drop-dead-gorgeous view of the lake, kind of facing down its long side from the middle of its short one. “It better be the best, all the time you spent back there.”

  Ed just shrugged and read the menu.

  Brandi didn’t want to push how long it took him inside the chalet, but she did notice he was carrying a different bag coming back to the convertible. The guy wants to keep things “confidential,” that’s fine. But it didn’t take a genius to figure that if what Ed brought in there was drugs, what he brought out was money. Lots of it. And, given the size of the case, lots more than he used in Healdsburg to buy the shit with.

  Then Brandi thought about the oldest Eskimo, and what he’d given her while she was waiting for Ed, what was now nestled in her lucky totebag. Plus what that gave her to think about from her side. For her luck, even her fortune, which was a nice fucking change of pace.

  The dinner at Wolfdale’s turned out to be maybe the best food Brandi had ever eaten in her life—medallions of veal, asparagus, some kind of tricked-out potatoes. And a merlot that made even a lot of the great wines she’d tasted the day before seem weak. A perfect experience.

  Just like the catered dinner parties you’ll be going to soon.

  But, just as they were finishing dessert, Ed said, “How about we take a drive, see the lake by night?”

  Remembering the mountains closer to the wine country they’d already gone up and down with her hangover that morning, Brandi said, “I’d rather see our bed by night.”

  “We can do that, too. Afterwards.”

  Well, what could a girl say to that?
A guy who’d rather drive than get laid, there was just no precedent for dealing with such a situation.

  “Ohmigod, ohmigod,” said Brandi Willette in a tone that made Ed Krause think of the word shriek.

  “What’s the matter?” him taking the Mustang through its paces on the ribbon of road—lit only by the moon—switchbacking up one of the mountains on the southwest end of the lake.

  “What’s the matter?” came out as more what Ed would call a “squeal.” The chick pointed over the passenger’s side of the car without looking down. “There’s no fucking guardrail here!”

  “Highway Department probably thinks it wouldn’t help. Either you’d go through it and down, or bounce off it and into a head-on with somebody coming the other way.”

  “Don’t even say that.”

  Another couple of miles—Brandi now groaning, even shaking—and Ed saw his lights pick up the “SCENIC VISTA” sign that fat Natalya had told him about back at her chalet, after she recommended Wolfdale’s for dinner. “Let’s give you a break.”

  He pulled into the otherwise deserted parking area, which seemed, even at night, like just a man-made platform jutting out from the side—nearly the top—of the mountain. They’d passed a few other viewing points—not to mention the entire Nevada town of South Lake Tahoe, but when Brandi had said, “Why don’t we stop here for a while, try our luck?” Ed had glanced around at the penny-ante casinos with Harrah’s, Trump’s and a bunch of other evocative names on them, chintzy motels sprinkled among them, and replied, “Nah, I want to wait for the real thing. In Vegas.”

  As Ed now came to a stop in one of the vista’s parking spaces, Brandi finally opened her eyes. “It’s dark out. What’re we gonna be able to see?”

  He opened his door, came around to hers. “A fat broad told me a story about a guy, said nobody should miss it.”

  Ed could tell the only reason the chick’d leave the car would be to feel her feet on solid ground again, and that was fine. She got out of the Mustang, leaving her lucky fucking totebag on the floor between her feet, and Ed took her hand, guiding her over to the edge of the vista’s platform.

  “I don’t want to go any closer.”

  “You have to, to appreciate the story I’m gonna tell you.”

  “Honey, please. I’ll do you every which way but loose back in the room—”

  “—the suite—”

  “—whatever, but please don’t … .”

  “Hey, there it is.”

  Ed had his hands on the sides of her shoulders now, marching her in front of him, teach her a lesson about going through his briefcase. She was arching over, pushing her butt into his groin, the grinding sensation of their little “dance” making him hard.

  “Honey, please … .”

  “See? Right there, through the tree branches?” Brandi’s butt was writhing, like a wet cat trying to get free of the drying towel. “The moon’s lighting it up like noontime.”

  “It’s a … all I see is this island—ohmigod, way down there?”

  “This fat broad told me that back in the old days—eighteen-hundreds we’re talking—there was a caretaker for the house that’s on the mainland, back under the trees.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Seems this caretaker stayed all winter,” said Ed, “but he liked the island more, and his booze the best. Fact is, he’d row all the way from here to where we’re staying in Tahoe City—miles and miles through the cold, though the lake doesn’t freeze over like you might expect—to hit a saloon, then he’d row all the way back.”

  “Honey, let’s go, huh?”

  “But this caretaker, he fell in love with that island, so he built his own tomb on it. For when he died, to be buried there.”

  “Why are you—”

  “Only thing is, the poor old coot was rowing back from town one night with too much of a load on, and he went over into the water. They found his boat, but not him. Not ever. And so he’s at the bottom of the lake someplace, and his tomb’s just falling apart, empty, down there on that pretty little island.”

  “Honey, this is too weird for—”

  Ed dropped his hands from her shoulders to her biceps, and then lifted her off the ground—swinging her legs straight out—and sat her down, hard, on the ledge overlooking the drop-off.

  Brandi lifted her face to the sky and screamed like a baby.

  Ed said, “I invited you along on this trip—a complete freebie—and I didn’t move on you ’til you let me know you were ready for it.”

  “Yes, yes,” the tears streaming down her cheeks from eyes clenched shut.

  “And I don’t expect you to help me at all in what I’m doing, just be half the cover story of the nice couple on a vacation.”

  “Anything, Honey, I will.”

  “But if I ever …” Ed thrust his pelvis forward, into her butt, like Brandi was giving him a lap-dance and he was pounding her doggy-style. She screamed till her voice broke, then began just sobbing and gasping for breath. “Ever …” he banged her harder, nearly over the edge but for him holding her upper arms, Brandi now just choking on her own breaths, “ … think you’re double-crossing me, you’re gonna join that fucking caretaker down there, deep at the bottom of the fucking lake. Or worse.”

  “Don’t … Please, don’t …”

  Ed pulled Brandi with an “I” back off the ledge, almost having to carry her toward the car. He would have done her on the rear seat, too, finish the lesson, but he could smell what she’d already done to herself, and so Ed Krause wanted her back in their suite and cleaned up first.

  Standing under the showerhead, the water so hot she almost couldn’t bear it, Brandi Willette thought, Girl, nobody does that to you and gets away with it. Nobody.

  Fuck Ed, the goddamned homicidal maniac, hanging you over the fucking edge of that fucking cliff. Literally fuck him as soon as you dry off, keep Dickhead happy and his fucking mind off killing you, but really fuck him good tomorrow, just like the Eskimo’s note said, just before telling you to tear it up.

  Fuck Ed with the other thing that gardener gave you, too.

  And, for the first time in hours, Brandi actually smiled, even if only to herself. Feeling the luck changing, guiding her toward the fortune she’d always felt she deserved.

  About two hundred miles into the drive that next afternoon, the scenery now pretty much scrub desert on the eastern side of the California mountains, Ed Krause noticed that Brandi wasn’t all that interested in small talk anymore.

  Hey, count your blessings, he thought, glancing again to the rearview mirror, not such good viewing with the convertible’s top up, but necessary against the withering heat outside: At least today the chick’s not complaining every two minutes.

  No, their time at the moonlit vista over Lake Tahoe seemed to have had the right effect on little Brandi. Or so Ed would have thought, from the way she romped him in bed after her shower back at the lodge. Good thing he’d taken the trouble, though, while she was still in the bathroom, to go through her stuff a second—shit!

  Checking the rearview, like always, Ed saw the same vehicle again. Making three times in the same day, even after stopping the Mustang for lunch and once more for gas.

  A dark Chevy Suburban, or some other fucking station-wagon-on-steroids, coming around the last turn behind their Mustang along one of the narrow state roads in Nevada that linked together like a poorly designed necklace from Reno to Las Vegas. Between the sun’s glare and the Suburban’s tinted windshield, though, Ed couldn’t make out the driver, much less how many others were in the thing.

  “What’s the matter?” said Brandi.

  Ed thought about how to play it, both with the Suburban and her. “Don’t turn around, but we’ve got somebody tailing us.”

  Predictably, the stupid bitch started to turn her head, so he reached over and squeezed her thigh like he wanted to break the bones underneath.

  “Owwww! That hurt!”

  “It was supposed to. I told you, don�
��t turn around. Right now, they’ve got no reason to think I’ve spotted them, and I don’t want to give them one.”

  “You didn’t have to hurt me for that.”

  Ed just shook his head, not trusting his voice right then.

  “So,” said Brandi, “what are we going to do?”

  Different tone now, kind of “We’re still a team, right?”

  He glanced again in his rearview, the Suburban dropping back a little. “Try to lose them.”

  Ed nailed the accelerator, Brandi making a moaning noise, kind of like when they’d started again in bed back at the lodge the night before. But the Mustang at least didn’t give him any trouble, the V-8 he’d insisted on at the rent-a-car agency coming into its own.

  Maybe five minutes later, Brandi said, “Aren’t you, like, worried about the police or anything?”

  “Lesser of two evils,” said Ed, noticing nobody behind them now. Problem was, based on his study of the map that morning before heading out from Tahoe City, there were only so many roads you could take to get to Vegas, so the tail could probably find him, and he didn’t have the firepower onboard to stage an effective ambush.

  At least not until he found a perfect spot, and after dark.

  Brandi piped up now with, “Are they gone?”

  Ed tried to remember whether he’d ever said “they” in talking about the tail, decided he had. “For now.”

  “So,” the tone growing a little more impatient, “what are we gonna do?”

  “Stay ahead of them. At least for a while.”

  “How long a while?”

  “Until sunset.”

  “Uh-unh, no way, Honey.”

  “What the fuck do you mean, no way?”

  “I gotta pee.”

  “So, do it in your clothes, like you did last night.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  Jesus Christ. “Okay. Around this next bend, then.”

  “No. I want a real bathroom, not …” Brandi with a fucking “I” waving her hand “ … some spot behind a bush in the desert where a snake could get me.”