Devil's Arcade

by Robert Bucchianeri

  Two women hurried away before I could even complete a sentence, and a man in a business suit just shook his head and went back to his texting. Normally, I would have just snatched the phone out of his hand, but I didn’t have the energy.

  Finally, I prevailed upon a young boy, probably only eight or nine, who was hanging out near the Colma Bart station a few blocks from Carlos’s house. The kid was playing Fortnite on his phone, and I convinced him with the benefit of a ten-dollar bill I found in my jacket pocket. I had no idea how it had gotten there, but was thankful to the Gods for small favors.

  I made the call, handed over the ransom, and the kid went back to his game.

  I sat down on a bench outside the station and waited, trying to stay alert, my eyes combing the surroundings for any sign of Carlos or Jewel or other shady characters. I didn’t figure they’d follow me. I assumed they wouldn’t attempt to kill me out on the streets in broad daylight.

  They were probably gone. On the run.

  But where would they go?

  Maybe Jewel was in love with Carlos and the two of them were going to escape to Borneo or Bali with all that loot and live happily ever after.

  I waited no more than fifteen minutes until a long black limousine with shaded windows pulled up in front of my bench.

  The driver, a Samoan man in a tight black t-shirt and knee-length, cut-off jeans, got out of the car, helped me into the back seat, and then got back behind the wheel without saying a word.

  Bless him.

  I curled up into the fetal position I’d been craving, resisting the urge to suck my thumb, and fell fast asleep.

  When I woke up, I was in Marsh’s arms.

  Not a place I’ve ever particularly wanted to be, but at that moment, it felt like the safest place in the world. I may have nuzzled his chest with my nose.

  “Big baby,” he said.

  I couldn’t disagree with his assessment.

  He placed me down on a white couch in a white living room surrounded by glass and steel and chrome. A typically sparse, modern room in another of Marsh’s spare, modern condominiums.

  This one I was familiar with. It was in Ghirardelli Square and looked out over the famous chocolate company and the coffee shop, FIX, that he owned, and farther onto Fisherman’s Wharf and the Bay itself.

  As I settled back on the couch, I realized that Marsh had carried me a ways before I woke up, which meant he had lifted almost two hundred pounds of manly flesh like it was an oversized sack of potatoes.

  He was stronger than he looked, which I knew, but still was once again impressed by.

  He disappeared in the galley kitchen at the front of the room, and I closed my eyes and tried to center myself. I realized that the pain in my head had lessened a bit, but that was little comfort as it still hurt like nobody’s business.

  Marsh reappeared with a mug. I smelled ginger and turmeric. “Drink this,” he said.

  He was famous for his healing concoctions, and sometimes they even seemed to work.

  I took the mug and said, “I need drugs.”

  He looked at me. “Drink.”

  I took a sip and winced. “Drugs,” I repeated.

  He sighed.

  “My head is exploding.”

  He knelt on his haunches and took my face in his hands, tilting my head this way and that, examining my eyes. He got up and left me alone again.

  I took more sips of the ginger brew. It started making my tummy feel a little better but did nothing for my head.

  Marsh returned and opened his palm to me. In it were two oblong off-white pills.

  I didn’t know what they were, and I didn’t care. I downed them with two gulps of the tea.

  I handed the mug to Marsh, laid my head back against the couch, and closed my eyes.

  Miraculously, ten minutes later, the pain, the relentless harsh pounding against my skull, lessened, then eased further, then almost dropped away. A surge of euphoria replaced it, and I was suddenly in love with the world and everyone in it, particularly my savior, Marsh Chapin.

  I opened my eyes and said, “I love you, man. I really, really do.”

  “It won’t last.”

  “No. You’re wrong there. My love is forever. What is that shit you gave me?”

  “Got it from a friend of mine, a researcher at the CDC. It’s been tested, but it’s not yet FDA approved. A new and supposedly non-addictive pain killer. It’s not a narcotic or opioid really, or an NSAID. It’s kind of an offshoot of an anti-depressant, but it works more on the body than the mind. It’s a real breakthrough, according to my friend. And, judging by your reaction, you agree.”

  “I more than agree. Can you get me more?”

  “I’ll have to tell Stan that he may be wrong about it being non-addictive.”

  “Please,” I murmured.

  “You’re still a little out of your mind. You have to see a concussion doc. Two blows to the head like you’ve absorbed in as many days is more than a little dangerous. You may even have some bleeding around your brain.”

  I knew he was right, but I was feeling too good to worry. “I’ll have it checked out soon. But right now, we need to figure out where Jewel and Carlos might be. After what just happened, they have to be desperate to get away now. They probably figure I’m going to the police, and they must be scared out of their wits that Poe will catch up with them sooner rather than later. Can we put out alerts somehow at the airport and train station and—”

  “Hold on,” Marsh said. “There’s a new wrinkle. Do you feel well enough to listen and make sense of it?”

  “Never felt better.”

  He shook his head. “Right,” he said, and then told me about the article that had just been published on the online version of the Examiner.

  And what he explained completely changed my view of the case and made me realize that I was back at the beginning, right where the whole damn mess had started.

  Thirty-One

  The story outlined how Pirate’s Cove Casino had been cheated out of nearly five million dollars in a recent series of scams.

  A spokesman for the casino, a man by the name of Phil Likely, a senior executive who I’d never heard of, said that investigations into the incidents were ongoing but that internal controls as well as video surveillance had been strengthened as the result of the scams and that it would be much more difficult, if not impossible, for perpetrators to hit the casino going forward.

  The only thing surprising about the story, casinos always adjust immediately to any kinds of thefts, was the amount of money reported stolen.

  It was at least three times the size that Poe had initially claimed when he asked me to investigate and much larger than what Bobby and Leslie claimed had been stolen. So either Jewel was lying to them or Poe had been mistaken or there was a new scam being perpetrated on top of the old one.

  I thought about insurance as soon as I registered the massive dollar difference, and Marsh confirmed my suspicion moments later when he said that he’d contacted the reporter who’d written the story.

  “He’s been looking into Poe’s life and times for a couple of years. Trying to sift through all the subterfuge, the dummy corporations, and smoke screens hiding the toxic effects. He says it’s a long, slow slog and he’s nowhere near where he needs to be. But it’s kind of his mission. He’s a young guy, maybe thinks it’ll make his reputation.”

  “A brave guy too.”

  “That or just dense, although he seems pretty sharp.”

  If this were a South American banana republic, the reporter would probably already be dead. Although it seemed to me that America was veering closer to that sorry state with each passing day, so I feared that Poe might eventually give in to temptation.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Nick. Nick Natalino.”

  “Nice.”

  “I thought so too. Anyway, the most interesting thing he told me that he didn’t put in the story because he can’t prove it is that Pirate’s Cove ha
s a loss insurance policy with a small company out of Delaware. One source, he said that it was a competitor, so only semi-reliable, claims that the loss amounts are greatly exaggerated. So Nick thinks that, right in character, Poe is trying to make lemonade out of lemons. He’s trying to milk the insurance company for a big profit.”

  “Not too surprising.” Although I’d never given it a thought before.

  “No. But Nick also has a notion that this insurance company, DelMark, might possibly be at least partially owned by Poe. That way the claim is going to be pushed through without a lot of fuss or muss or close examination.”

  “Does he have any proof?”

  “He says he’s working on a couple things, but I sense it’s more of an intuition on his part after the past couple years looking into Poe’s affairs.”

  “It certainly wouldn’t be a shock.”

  Marsh nodded.

  “So,” I said, “where does that leave us?”

  My head was feeling much better, my mood was bordering on exuberance, but I can’t say that my thoughts were all in neat and tidy order. I needed to rely on Marsh’s brilliant deductive powers, which had proved more than reliable in the past.

  “Well, looked at one way, nothing much has changed. We still should consider Jewel and her gang as the prime suspects, certainly in the casino scam, but also in the murders. Poe is just trying to profit from it, as he always does.”

  “I guess so,” I said, although I felt, but couldn’t explain, why I was much less sure of that notion than earlier in the day.

  “Or, we could look at this new information and let it shade all that we know in a new light. Perhaps Poe was behind the whole affair. Maybe he hired Jewel to steal from his own casino, planning on a big score with the insurance company. Maybe he’d had it with his brother and decided to have him killed and, unfortunately, his daughter got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  I took that in, but it didn’t seem right to me. I struggled mightily to tell him why.

  “That doesn’t make sense.” I paused, covered my eyes with my fingers, rubbing my face raw, trying to clear my mind. “The casino is Poe’s baby. His somewhat-legit business that supports all the other illegal activities that allowed him to purchase it in the first place. I don’t think he’d jeopardize the whole thing by concocting this scam and hiring people like Jewel and her ilk who might easily spill the beans when they were questioned by the feds or the cops. It’s too risky, and Poe is too careful a man.”

  Not half bad. I realized the drug was really doing right by me.

  “Yeah, I know. I was just playing devil’s advocate. Still, if I had to bet on who our murderer is, I wouldn’t.”

  I nodded. Neither would I.

  And right then I realized that it was time to join Alexandra.

  Thirty-Two

  “I’m not comfortable giving you a lot more of that pain killer. Who knows what side effects might be lurking?”

  I was having my second ginger/turmeric tea, sitting on a stool at Plank’s austere chrome and glass bar, feeling not half-bad, the high from the drug dimming a bit, but the pain still vanquished.

  “You said that it lasts for four to six hours?”

  “Supposedly, but the dosing hasn’t been fully tested yet.”

  “Then give me four more. That’ll take me through the night.”

  He left me alone there for a couple of minutes and returned with a tiny pill box and put it on the bar in front of me, along with another untraceable cell phone. I snatched both before he could change his mind.

  “So you’re going to stay after Jewel and Carlos?”

  “And keeping an eye on both Matthew’s gym and Fred’s casino. We’ll put out a watch at the airport, train and bus stations, and rental car places. We can’t be sure that we have all their credit cards or any false identities. If they have a car, they could already be a hundred miles away.”

  “I’m not too worried about that. If they get away, it won’t be for long. Jewel is smart, of that I’m sure, but if the FBI doesn’t catch up with her, Poe will. Assuming he didn’t hire her in the first place, which I just can’t wrap my head around.”

  “You still have a disguise?”

  “Back at Alexandra’s place. I guess I could go there, but…”

  “Hold on.” He left the room again and returned five minutes later, holding a duplicate of the stuff I kept in my safe: mustache, driver’s license, shades, plus a bottle of black hair dye.

  “Poe thinks I’m dead, right?”

  “That’s what we hope. And this stuff,” he motioned with his chin toward what he’d just placed in my hands, “should give you some cover, at least for one night.”

  I figured one night was all I had anyway.

  From what Marsh told me, his friend in the mayor’s office wasn’t going to allow the false story to stand much longer. The police were going to announce their mistake by the morning, and I’d join the ranks of the undead.

  Whatever advantage or surprise it afforded me had to be exploited tonight.

  By tomorrow, the cops would be turning their attention toward me as the prime suspect in Bobby and Paula’s murders.

  Thirty-Three

  As I crossed over from Yerba Buena Island to Treasure Island, it was a cool early evening, and I was feeling unsettled in more ways than one.

  Maybe it was the itchy mustache covering my lip, or my new slicked-back black hair.

  Maybe it was the suit. Marsh had had me fitted for one a couple of years back, but I’d never worn it. It was an expensive Italian-cut deal, something I would have never bought for myself, let alone deigned to wear.

  I couldn’t remember when I’d last worn a suit other than my high school senior prom. And that was only to please Maria Temple. At the time, I would have done just about anything for that golden-haired girl.

  Marsh helped me dye my hair and then gotten me into the suit. We agreed that it was a whole new me. I looked younger—my hair was rich, lustrous, lounger-singer black. The whole getup gave me a more finished, sophisticated appearance than my normal tousled devil-may-care look.

  Actually, it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. I even wondered if Alexandra would recognize me.

  As I drove up Perimeter Drive, tiny Alcatraz and its behemoth sister, Angel Island, loomed, sparkling in the twilit purple waters.

  And then the unmistakable contours of my destination rose up to the right of me like the giant mollusk that it had been modeled after. The resort complex, Pirate’s Cove, perfectly mimicked an octopus with its sprawling tentacles possessively gripping the surrounding landscape.

  Perched at water’s edge was the main casino, a gigantic smoky glass round hub with eight curling steel and glass spindles extending a hundred yards to the north, south, east, and west. Two of these arms held hotel rooms coursing out over the Bay and anchored to the ocean floor by concrete hands that were topped by overhanging walkways lush with palms, fountains, Daliesque statuary, and even a couple of water slides not too far from game parlors where you could continue to lose money while getting your fresh air break from the casino.

  A local comedian by the name of Kip Kato, who committed suicide a few months back, used to say that the architect, Raise Fuhlmnan, out of Hong Kong, had conceived its design after a scuba diving expedition on the heels of a bad acid trip.

  It was Las Vegas kitsch transplanted to cosmopolitan San Francisco where the local media thought it was going to turn out to be a boondoggle, a massively expensive flop.

  But they were wrong. Poe had his finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, and he’d been busy printing money since the massive gambling den opened four years ago.

  That’s why it was hard to believe he would have concocted a risky scheme like the scam and insurance fraud that Nick Natalino was trying to prove.

  But I knew that with some people, greed knew no bounds and enough was never near enough. With Poe, if he really was guilty, I didn’t think it was primarily about the money.
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  Although many in the media had speculated, no one could really nail down Poe’s true nature and motivations. My own view, after having spent quite a bit of time in his company, was that although he was a careful and methodical man, something deep in the dark heart of him craved danger and risk.

  He courted the devil and danced with the possibility of disaster and even ruin. Like most sociopaths, he hated convention and rules and the civility required for a just society.

  He projected a cultured air, a taste for the finer things, a high-brow demeanor, but deep down, I knew he craved destruction and exalted in weakness and corruption of both the powerful and, especially, the weak and innocent.

  Like the old Mafia dons, he’d gone to extraordinary lengths to stay out of the public eye until Pirate’s Cove. The high-profile resort and casino was a departure and a big risk, or at least appeared to be.

  I think it was a sign of his overweening confidence and hubris. And the fact that his reach, his influence, ran not only throughout San Francisco’s criminal underworld, but extended into the highest reaches of the city’s political and cultural life gave him the confidence that he could pull off the grand gesture without a hitch.

  And so far, he was right.

  I didn’t think, like Don Corleone in The Godfather, that he craved legitimacy to gain respect.

  Poe demanded respect. And most of the time, he had the wealth and power to get it. As long as you feared him and didn’t get in his way, I don’t think he gave a damn what was whispered behind his back.

  I pulled into one of the octopus’s tentacles—a tunnel leading directly into the underground garages beneath the casino, the place I always park when I visit the Devil’s Arcade.

  As I rode the glass polyhedron-shaped elevator, a near prism, up to the main casino floor, I had the feeling of being naked. Which was odd. The disguise served to make me feel conspicuous, like a donut in a flower shop.