“Underwater spirit is called Keysalt. My great-granddad knew an old Puget Sound shaman called Duke Kehalic. Duke Kehalic wanted a certain boy to get Keysalt tamahnous so he kept sending that boy down into the water. For a long time nothing happened. Then after a while the Duke’s boy went down and found a big underwater house. A spirit in the underwater house asked the boy if he came from good family. Well, the boy did come from good family so he answered, ‘Yes.’ The spirit told the boy to open the door and come in.
“The boy went into the underwater house and saw a lot of women and slaves at the other end of the house. The spirit said, ‘Do you see the women and slaves?’ The boy said, ‘I see them.’
“‘Fine,’ the spirit said. ‘That’s yours. I’ll give you all those people.’”
“That’s a neat trick,” Denise said thoughtfully.
I said, “That boy I was telling you about. After his adventure he woke up lying at the foot of the bluff. He went back home and his people asked him, ‘Have you got Keysalt tamahnous?’ The boy told them he had it.
“Pretty soon the word went out. That young boy had Keysalt tamahnous. Big time. They had the boy gambling, they bet priceless copper plates and slaves against him. Canoes, blankets, women. That boy just wins and wins.”
“That sounds very nice. A nice little story.”
“But what I didn’t tell you, Denise. When that young boy was underwater, the spirit said, ‘You’re going to have to pay for this tamahnous. I want your first wife. You’ve got to send your first wife to me.’”
I straightened up in my seat. “That young man — he was a man now — he fell in love and got married. It was wonderful. He had a big house and plenty of money, slaves, canoes. He was with his wife one night when Keysalt came to him and said, ‘Remember what you’ve promised? You’ve got to give your first wife to Keysalt spirit.’
“That young man loved his wife, didn’t want to part with her. So he got one of his slaves, dressed her up in fancy clothes, and he took her to the bluff. When he got there he shoved her in the water, but she wouldn’t sink. He kept pushing her down and she kept floating back up. Keysalt spirit knew she wasn’t the first wife. You can’t fool him. Keysalt knows everything.
“Just about then, the young man’s people came up in canoes to take him home. He got in the canoe and covered himself with a goat-hair blanket. When they got back home the young man’s people said, ‘We’re home now.’ But the young man doesn’t move. The people took the blanket off him, but he wasn’t there. Keysalt spirit had taken him instead of his first wife.”
“And this happened a long time ago, did it?”
“Yes, Denise. It happened a long time ago.”
“Could it happen again, do you think?”
“Good question. If it happens again it would cost Jimmy. Big time.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It took me two days to drive to Reno. My Chevy ran well, but the old beater lacked air conditioning and it was 118 degrees in the shade in Alturas, where I stopped to load up on iced drinks and gas. The late sun was yellow on Nevada’s arid mountain slopes when I left the hot lonely desert behind and crossed the Truckee River in downtown Reno. I checked into a hotel on the Strip and spent the next 15 minutes cooling off under a shower.
≈ ≈ ≈
The casino’s gaming room was a space-age fantasy, large as a football field. A place of flashing lights, jingling bells, inescapable Muzak. Loudspeakers announced winning keno numbers. Hordes of brightly dressed people swept between gambling stations like schools of jellyfish. Glittering shoals of one-armed bandits, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, nibbled at the purses of women in stretch pants and sequined blouses and tinted eyeglasses. Men slumped over blackjack tables, drinks at elbows, their bald heads reflecting the glow of immense chandeliers. Stone-faced dealers in white shirts and black pants showed their teeth when winners tipped them and looked neutral the rest of the time.
After three hours at a $25 poker table I was up nearly a thousand. The other winner was a skinny oilman from Oklahoma. His eyes were shadowed by a tipped-forward 10-gallon hat. The tip of his bony chin and hooked nose seemed to touch as he chomped an unlit cigar. He had on a pale blue shirt, with little chromium tabs weighting down his collar, and a narrow black-ribbon necktie. The oilman picked his hole cards up slowly with a bony, liver-spotted hand, looked at them once, then left them face-down on the green-felt table. When he won he flipped his hole cards one at a time, dragging out the action deliberately in a manner that irritated some of the other players. The losers were a succession of impulse gamblers who sat in when a seat became vacant, dropped a few hundred, then folded.
Unlike the blackjack dealers, the poker dealers were a jovial crew, rotated every 40 minutes. They were Marvin, Terry and Gayle. Marvin and Terry looked like Sonny and Cher. Gayle looked like Dolly Parton on crack, but she was full of fun and earned plenty of tips.
Beauty queens circulated with trays of free drinks. I sipped rye and water. I was looking at a $400 pot. I held a pair of kings and had one more card to come. The player to my right had just bet the limit. I had watched him lose steadily. When he frowned he had at least three of a kind. He was frowning. I folded my hand and got up, leaving my stake on the table to hold the seat. I pushed through the crowds to a washroom and splashed water on my face. A white-jacketed attendant handed me a towel and whisked a brush across my shoulders. I tipped him a Canadian dollar. The attendant stared at the foreign currency morosely and was still staring at it when I went out. Instead of returning to the game I sat at a bar with my back to the poker tables.
Despite the crowds, I felt the room’s desperate loneliness. I knew that if I continued to play I would lose my stake. One of the pit bosses came over and sat on the next stool. He was a darkly handsome man with thick wavy hair, about 30. He smiled amiably and said, “You’re doing all right. Where did you learn to play poker?”
“Victoria, B.C.”
“They got any heavy action up there?”
“There’s a couple of clubs. If you know where to look you can find big weekend games on construction sites, logging camps.”
“Yeah, that’s the way it’s done. A hustler shows up with a canvas carryall, holes in his socks, straw between his teeth. Cleans the suckers out on pay night.”
“That’s right. Arrives on a bus, leaves in a private plane.”
“Here in Reno, it’s the other way round,” said the pit boss, laughing. Then he added, “Enjoying yourself here, people treating you right?”
“I’ve got no complaints.”
“I guess not. You’re up, what, about a grand?”
I nodded. The pit boss didn’t miss much. A waiter came over and the pit boss insisted on buying me a drink. He said, “If you’re interested, there’s a spot on a no-limit table upstairs. Guy plays like you, he could make a bundle.”
“Or drop one.”
The pit boss shook his head. “I’ve been watching. You’re playing a good game, not trying to win every hand.”
“This is my first night in town, I’m just enjoying myself, fooling around. Tomorrow I go to work.”
“What kind of business you in?”
“I’m a cop,” I said and gave him my card. “I’m looking for a woman.”
“Ain’t we all,” said the pit boss, studying the card.
“This one’s been missing over 20 years.”
“If she had the bucks, she could have spent the whole 20 years right here, in this casino. We’ve got shops, restaurants, a hairdresser, tanning salon, spa, swimming pool. Two shows a night. A guy with your luck, you might run into her.”
“I wouldn’t recognize her if I did. She’s probably changed her name as well as her appearance. I don’t have much to go on.”
“Well, if I can do anything for you, give me a shout.” He gave me his own card. The man’s name was Dean Costello and his title was senior floor captain.
“You have a musical director in the hotel, Mr. Costello?
Somebody who arranges music for the acts?”
“We’ve got a house band. A guy who stands in front and waves his arms. I guess he’s the musical director.”
“The woman I’m looking for was a piano player. Small-town professional. She worked with a little group in Seattle, long time ago. Had a nice voice. If she came to Reno and stayed, she probably worked the clubs.”
“You’ve got your work cut out then. She’d be one of the herd, pal. Every warbler in the country heads here. We’ve got the largest transient population in the United States. I’m an old-timer in Reno, been here three years.” He tugged at his chin, thinking. “Our band leader is also new, arrived a few weeks ago from the Big Apple. But you might talk to Barney Bevis. He’s featured in the Kitten Lounge, downtown. B.B. arrived when they had horse troughs on the main drag. If the lady ever played professional piano in Reno, Barney would know.” Costello got off his bar stool. “You doing any more gambling while you’re in town?”
“Probably. I’m staying in this hotel. You guys make it hard to go anywhere without passing the slots and the tables.”
“Psychology at work, Mr. Seaweed. But good luck.”
We shook hands. I played another half-hour and lost $100 in the process. My timing had gone, I felt stale, the cigarette smoke in the room was beginning to bother me, so I cashed out. When I went to collect my room key at the front desk the clerk said, “Your things have been moved out of Room 463, sir, to a view room on the eleventh floor.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Compliments of Dean Costello.”
Costello had comped me to a suite. A basket of fruit stood on a coffee table next to a bottle of Canadian Club and polished crystal glasses. There were flowers everywhere.
The city was spread out below me. Restless gamblers walked the Strip under the whirling lariat of a 10-storey neon cowboy. Electric showgirls with immense peacock-feather hats kicked their heels on a distant rooftop. The 10,000 lamps of the Circus Circus sign banished the night. Ribbons of moving automobile lights spread from the brilliance like spider webs. Beyond the golden bowl of the city, where scuttling money spiders wove their traps, darkness claimed the desert and it rolled on, black and mysterious, toward the distant Sierras. Jet planes glided noiselessly in and out of Reno airport, red and green lamps winking.
Somebody had hung my clothes exactly as I had left them in the other room. Satin sheets were turned back invitingly on my bed. I stripped, showered. After flossing dutifully, I cleaned my teeth, then crashed.
≈ ≈ ≈
To reach the restaurant for breakfast I had to pass through the gambling areas. It was only 7:30, but the place was crowded. In the poker pit the oilman was sitting behind a big pile of chips. Three rappers had replaced Sonny and Cher and Dolly Parton.
After breakfast I strolled Sierra Street to the Truckee River. Like every other visitor to this quickie-marriage, quickie-divorce capital, I stopped on the bridge and stared down into the shallow water where, according to legend, jubilant divorcees hurl old wedding rings. The early sun glinted on tiny wavelets rippling across the pebbled bottom. I saw no golden rings — only beer bottles and plastic bags and a rusting shopping cart. To my surprise, nervous pan-sized trout darted in and out of the shade.
Although it was still early I was sweating by the time I reached the downtown precinct office. A uniformed Reno cop stood in the entrance hall with his arms folded, staring impassively at a sobbing woman. She was crouched in a corner, clutching her drawn-up knees, hiding her face between her arms. Mascara tears dripped onto her legs and traced little black tracks along her white thighs. A man wearing blue jeans and a tartan shirt knelt beside her with one hand touching her shoulder. Nobody spoke.
Inside the building, three plainclothes men were at a water cooler, laughing. Behind an inquiry desk a clerk with a huge beehive hairdo that almost concealed her tiny face was speaking into a telephone. When she hung up, I said “I’m a policeman from Victoria, B.C. Maybe I could talk to somebody, one of the detectives here.”
“You’re a what?” She stared at me as if I were a Martian.
“I’m a cop.”
Her eyes shifted to a point behind me and she shouted. “Hey, Ben. You got a minute?”
A broad-shouldered man detached himself from his friends at the water cooler and strolled across. He gave me an appraising glance and said, “What can I do for you?” He had an easy, assured manner, not quite friendly.
“I’m a cop from Victoria. I’d appreciate it if you could spare me some of your time.”
“The only Victoria I know in these United States is in Texas, but you don’t look like no Plains Indian. You from up north?”
“Right. I’m Silas Seaweed.”
“Detective-Sergeant Conklin.” He extended his paw and I shook it. “I just finished my shift, Mr. Seaweed, but I can give you a minute. Come on.”
He led me into a small, solid-walled cubicle furnished with a bare table and two chairs. A feather boa dangled from a coat hook — the only touch of colour in that white-painted space.
Conklin sighed as he eased himself into the chair behind the desk and brushed a hand across his eyelids. There were dark crescents beneath his eyes and black stubble on his chin.
I said, “Busy night, Sergeant?”
He shrugged. “Call me Ben. The night was about normal.”
“You mean it was tiring, frustrating and largely a waste of time?”
Conklin grinned. “Am I listening to the voice of experience?”
“I pounded a beat for a while.”
“Way I feel this morning, I should quit before I develop my first ulcer. Trouble is, what would I do? There’s too many private dicks in this town, you can’t make a dime.”
“Just so we’re clear. Right now I’m on sick leave because somebody took potshots at me.”
Conklin’s dark eyes narrowed but he smiled and said, “They gonna give you a medal?”
I grinned at him and said, “I’m looking for a woman called Marcia Hunt. She’s a Canadian citizen, been missing a long time.”
“Does she have a record?”
“No. She was married briefly to a convicted felon named Frank Harkness, a.k.a Frank Turko.”
“What exactly do you want?”
“A big favour. I want to know whether you have sheets on these people.”
“Tell me about them.”
I told him.
Conklin examined his fingers. “Suppose I find that these people have local records. So what? How would that help?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, I’m clutching at straws. The trail is cold, dead. I haven’t got a lead.”
“I won’t promise anything. This is irregular, as you know.” Conklin stifled a yawn with the back of a hand. “Mostly, when outside police come here they bring introductions.”
“I have a personal stake in this thing. I’m working on my own time.”
“If I find something, where can I reach you?”
I gave him the name of my hotel and got up. “I’m standing between a man and his bed.”
“I wish you were, Silas, but you’re standing between me and a shopping cart. My wife works shifts too, at a casino in Sparks. It’s my turn to buy groceries and do the housecleaning.”
<
≈ ≈ ≈
I was soon grateful that I had comfortable walking shoes and a thick skin. I checked the talent agencies first, without success, and then the legwork began. I combed Reno’s taverns, bars and clubs, starting at the big casinos on Sierra Street and working outward, asking polite questions of impatient people who had troubles of their own and were not particularly interested in mine. This town was full of dangerous strangers. People hid inside velvet-lined cages and lived lonely, insulated lives. I spoke to musicians and bootblacks and concierges and waitresses. I spoke to men who had been playing piano so long they could hold complex conversations while performing lounge-bar standards and never miss a note. I chased down numerous false trails an
d came to a dead end every time. I bought drinks for lonely people sitting on bar stools at seven in the morning, questioning them before they were too smashed to remember what day it was.
I dosed my residual aches and pains with over-the-counter Tylenol and worked my way through the Nevada Bell directory. It took a long time, but I slowly eliminated most of the Hunts, Harknesses and Turkos in the state. I checked old city directories. I went to Carson City and combed the state archives, trying to find out whether Marcia Hunt had ever bought property in Nevada, registered a child into the school system, applied for social assistance, a driver’s licence, a fishing licence.
A job printer made me 1,000 cards with my phone number on them and the message:
marcia hunt, where are you?
reward offered for information.
And I managed to give most of the cards away.
Back at my hotel after every fruitless day I checked for messages. Ben Conklin did not call, nobody called. My greatest discovery was a joint where the barman had a 10-word vocabulary and the patrons were all serious drinkers. The place had a sawdust floor and no jukebox. It was a place where people could destroy themselves without interference from any earthly authority provided they paid cash and kept quiet about it. Some nights I went in for an hour or two, watching winos fall off their stools, crawl outside, throw up, then return to continue their slow suicide. These were people who had examined the game and didn’t like the rules. The ante had got too high, they’d folded their cards. Sometimes I thought they were onto something.
≈ ≈ ≈
Taff’s Keyboards was an old-fashioned music store located on a street near the railroad tracks. A faded, sun-cracked wooden sign over the shop door announced that pianos were for sale, trade or rent. I pushed the door and a bell chime jingled me inside. Racks of sheet music filled every space not occupied by instruments. There were pianos, organs, and electric keyboards. Somewhere out of sight, a piano was being tuned. A silver-plated bell push was screwed to the countertop. I hit the button with the palm of my hand and the tuning ceased. Thick red curtains swung apart and an elderly man shuffled in. He wore black patent-leather shoes, black pants with a silk stripe down the legs, and a white, collarless shirt. He had black sleeve protectors on, and dirty hands. “You’re too danged early,” he said. “I’m not finished and when I am I’ll let you know.”
