Devil's Arcade

by Robert Bucchianeri

  Entering here put me on the fourth level of the garage, and I headed down, using the same route as the autos, hugging the exterior of the building. The alarm continued but was muted here. Cars passed me heading up to leave, but there weren’t many, and none paid attention to my presence.

  When I reached the first level, I was in the center of the complex, with the garage spread out in a large rectangle around me. I got my bearings and headed to my destination in the southeast corner.

  It was quiet for the moment, and my footsteps against the concrete floor echoed in my head. My headache had returned, a pulsing, threatening hurt bomb.

  I felt both stoked and enervated at the same time and knew that it was fear pushing and pulling me. My plan was nothing but a shot in the dark, with worse-than-slot-machine odds.

  But I felt out of options. By tomorrow morning, I’d be facing police detectives accusing me of murder. I’d be able to beat the rap eventually, but even the thought of defending myself seemed too much to bear.

  I reached the end of the building and angled south toward a small nondescript space, a step up from the garage floor, a door frame with a key-card entry.

  I knocked on the door and waited.

  A few seconds passed, and the door opened from the inside.

  Marsh stepped out in front of me.

  I followed him into a small crypt made of reinforced concrete. At the other end of the space was another door with a double security entrance: keypad and thumbprint.

  Marsh punched in half a dozen numbers, placed his thumb over the reader, which flashed a green light okay, and then turned the knob and it gave way. He stepped aside to let me in in front of him.

  The door led to yet another small room that contained a single elevator controlled by another key card. Marsh mumbled that this was a different key card than the one he used to access the space from the garage.

  As we rode up the private elevator, I thanked my lucky stars for Marsh and his resources. After a couple of my previous run-ins with Poe, and assuming that eventually there would be more, Marsh had gotten hold of the blueprints for Pirate’s Cove about a year ago and had his security people comb the plans, looking for whatever of interest they could find.

  This elevator was one of the most interesting spots they found, as it was solely for the use of the owner of Pirate’s Cove. A direct route to his private offices, which otherwise were manned by a phalanx of security devices and guards.

  It had taken Portia a while to break into the computer systems here, but she’d eventually managed to find the servers and links that maintained the secret elevator. The door security codes were changed frequently, and Portia always got the new ones as soon as Poe and his people did. The Thumbprint keypad had been a little trickier, but she’d eventually brought it under her control. On the drive over, Marsh called Portia, and it had only taken her minutes from her home computer to add Marsh’s thumbprint to Poe’s, allowing him equal access.

  We knew that the elevator was hardly ever used, by Poe or anyone else. It was designed and built for emergencies, in case Poe’s enemies somehow managed to breach his formidable defenses and trapped him. He normally arrived and departed his lair via a helicopter using a rooftop pad.

  The elevator was fast and smooth, befitting he whom it served.

  In seconds, the doors slid quietly open and deposited us in Poe’s private suite of offices.

  Thirty-Eight

  After making sure we were all alone and locking the office door from the inside, we went right to work.

  I’d made a lot of assumptions, and only the first one had worked out so far.

  Poe wasn’t here.

  I assumed that Jewel had talked to Angelique, who’d talked to Poe and they, after gathering sufficient manpower depending on their turn of mind, had proceeded to room 1001 for our 10 p.m. meeting.

  I also hoped that the fire alarm would delay and confuse them as would the empty room.

  In the best of all possible worlds, Poe would be detained even further by having to deal with hotel employees and the fire department until all danger had passed and all was right in the Pirate’s Den again.

  That was a whole lot of hope and assumption and, even in this best of cases, might give us less than an hour alone here.

  Of course, I couldn’t be sure of Poe’s plans for the night, other than that he was here as Jewel had confirmed in her chat with me.

  “What precisely are we looking for, other than the camera switch and recorder?” Marsh asked, starting to open the drawers on Poe’s desk.

  I was looking up into a corner of the room where I spotted the tiny protruding edges of a lens embedded in the ceiling. I knew that there were a half-dozen arrayed around the room, controlled by a switch that Poe had. It wasn’t connected to the rest of the network, so there was no monitoring of this space by anyone but him.

  What went down in Poe’s offices stayed there, unless Poe chose to record it for his own use. I didn’t know if he’d turned on the cameras before he left, but we had to find the controller to make sure.

  Portia couldn’t access the cameras because they weren’t online.

  “A murder weapon,” I said, perusing the trove of Edgar Allan Poe paraphernalia on various bookshelves and display cases.

  “Right. Of course. But in the odd circumstance that we don’t find it, what else?”

  “Anything. Anything to do with Bobby or the scams at the casino or Jewel or the insurance claim regarding the thefts. Anything that might link Poe to either the scams themselves or his brother’s murder.”

  Poe was an extraordinarily careful man. He had to be to have survived without even a single day of prison time for so long while being on the wrong side of the law as often as he was.

  It was as crazy to expect incriminating evidence of any sort to be lying about here as it was to break in in the first place.

  But.

  No risk. No reward.

  No retreat. No surrender.

  I liked that one too.

  Two of my rules to live by. Although I knew there was an opposite side to those coins. You could come up tails and your risk and lack of retreat might be the end of you.

  But, once in a great while, luck or fate intercedes in the most unexpected ways.

  Magic is real, if rare.

  I was praying for a little of the magic stuff, but I didn’t dare let the secret out to Marsh, who wouldn’t understand. He wasn’t a believer in anything other than logic and preparation. And violence, when necessary.

  He believed in his own capacities and leaving as little to chance as possible.

  He knew what we were doing here was foolhardy, but he trusted me, or rather, indulged me, as he knew it was impossible to stop me once I’d decided on a course of necessary action.

  “Plank,” he said, holding a blue manila folder he’d retrieved from a side drawer of Poe’s desk, his fingers and eyes scanning its contents.

  “Here’s the DelMark policy.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Decidedly not. Lawyers wrote it. Indecipherable to the common man. I’m a lawyer, and it’s making me grind my teeth.” He folded it in half and shoved it into a pocket inside his jacket. “Later,” he said.

  “Any claims in there?”

  “Nothing.”

  I moved to a large hutch, made of gleaming hardwood, beneath a bust of Edgar Allan Poe, and started opening drawers. It was the only other obvious piece of furniture in the office that might hold incriminating paperwork.

  But I was open to the possibility of hidden compartments and secret doors. Of safes embedded in the floor.

  After five minutes digging around in the hutch, I gave up. In one drawer, there were all sorts of financial documents and architectural drawings and newspaper clippings about the casino’s history and construction.

  The other two drawers were empty, save for more documents and books and memorabilia regarding Poe’s Edgar obsession.

  “Bingo,” Marsh said. “
A file on Jewel Allen.”

  He raised it up in his right hand, dropped it on the desk, and opened it up. He sat down in Poe’s chair to read.

  I waited and surveyed the room.

  Where would I put a secret compartment or safe if I were a criminal mastermind?

  I dropped to the floor and ran my fingers over a couple of the seams between the marble tiles. Without examining every last one of them, I couldn’t be sure that there wasn’t one that lifted away to reveal buried treasure.

  This was Pirate’s Cove, after all.

  I stood back up, and my eyes roamed over the two walls that weren’t made of glass. I didn’t detect a seam that might signal a secret door.

  I was wasting time. I moved closer to Marsh, leaned over his shoulder to look at Jewel’s file.

  “Nothing here that can help us really. Her prison records. Someone wrote up a bio, a history of her life of grifts and scams. There are a couple of recent photos taken from a distance, which means that maybe somebody was tracking her.”

  While listening to Marsh, I continued studying the room, noticing things I hadn’t on the previous occasions when I’d had meetings with Poe here.

  “We already know most of this. It proves that Poe was onto Jewel Allen and probably knew that she was involved in the scams. I don’t know what we can do with that. Did he actually set the whole thing up for some unfathomable reason? Did he hire Jewel in the first place? That’s what we need to find out.” He pushed the file away, leaned down, and opened the bottom right drawer in the desk.

  “Voila,” Marsh said.

  I looked down. The drawer was a tidy box full of electronics and wires.

  Marsh reached in and clicked a switch. “Cameras are disabled. Nothing to do with the digital recorder but destroy it.”

  He reached in and lifted out a small rectangular metal box that looked like a Blu-ray player. He placed it on the floor.

  “Let’s see, what can I use…” He glanced behind him and smiled.

  He grabbed a bust of Edgar Allan Poe made of stainless steel and smashed it hard against the recorder. He hit it again. And again. Its guts started spilling out.

  Edgar Allan’s nose broke.

  The door to the office swung open, and Poe stepped into the room. My old friends, Art and Rex, loomed behind, with Jewel and Carlos, looking nervous, huddled between them.

  Poe was holding a stocky gun in his right hand, pointed at the floor. Art and Rex each held a similar weapon.

  Marsh placed the wounded Edgar Allan Poe in the center of the desk and removed two short-barreled, German-manufactured pistols from either side of his jacket, holding them level in each hand.

  Poe looked stricken. His eyes were on the Edgar bust. I didn’t know if Marsh’s sacrilegious use was our biggest offense, but guessed it was something more.

  He hadn’t raised his gun as Art and Rex had as soon as they took notice of Marsh’s twin pistols.

  Poe turned his cold eyes to me. “I know you, Plank. I know what you are capable of. But I thought we had an understanding. I’ve forgiven your behavior more than once, knowing your code. Your relentless prerogative. I admire it. Your single-minded focus. But do you think your moral superiority excuses all?”

  There was a lot he was packing into those statements, and with my brain throbbing painfully in my skull as rapidly as my heart thumping in my chest, I couldn’t conjure an immediate response.

  His eyes bore in on me.

  “You’ve exceeded the limits of my patience.”

  “You’re boring me,” Marsh said, the barrels of his guns steady and aimed true for the heart of Poe. “Get to the point.”

  “Marsh Chapin. I’m honored that Plank brought you here. A sign of respect. An inkling that he understood the nature of his wrong, his transgression against me.”

  Marsh sighed. “Whoever said words will never hurt me? I’m suffering here. Give me sticks and stones.”

  “You’ll get your wish, Marsh. We have business to attend to first. You wouldn’t want to take your last breath on this earth without understanding why, would you?”

  He waved his fingers and smiled, his eyes dancing with Marsh’s.

  “Don’t claim the jackpot before the reels all fall into place.” Marsh smiled right back, calm and cool as ever.

  I sometimes wondered if his heart rate accelerated even a beat during these life-threatening encounters that we occasionally shared.

  “Don’t you worry,” Poe replied. He nodded toward Art and Rex, and they marched Jewel and Carlos in and directed them to sit on a leather couch diagonal to the two solid walls of the room. Art and Rex took their places on opposite sides of the couch, hovering over the two grifters.

  Carlos walked in a stilted manner, his eyes bouncing around the room. Jewel’s confident exterior had vanished, but she looked more confused than frightened.

  Poe moved directly toward us, toward his desk, paying no attention to Marsh’s guns, and sat down in one of the two chairs angled in front. He placed his own gun down on the arm of the chair and settled back into it.

  He closed his eyes and formed his fingers into a pyramid, brushing his lips. After several contemplative moments, he opened his eyes and looked at me.

  “You came here because of your curiosity. Searching for answers. All you had to do was come and see me. I would have dealt with you honestly, no matter what you think. Go ahead, ask away.”

  I studied his placid face for a few seconds and then said, “Why did you try and hire me?”

  “For exactly the reason I stated. To find my brother.”

  “But there was a lot more. Things you didn’t tell me. Plans that would have affected me.”

  “Perhaps,” he muttered, nodding his agreement. “But you turned me down. My original intent was true and honest. Perhaps if you had accepted, I might have told you more. Events were in a state of flux, moving rapidly.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He shook his head. “Go on.”

  “You sent Jewel, acting like she was Paula, Bobby’s daughter, to convince me to take the case.”

  “True.”

  “Why?”

  “To convince you to take the case.”

  “More than that.” I glanced over at Jewel, who was watching the interchange with her lips parted, looking like she wanted to say something. Carlos sat ramrod straight, his hands trembling on his knees.

  “Not really.”

  I didn’t believe him.

  “Was Jewel working with you from the beginning? Was all this scam just a scheme so you could bilk an insurance company?”

  “My goodness, you’ll believe any fairy tale you hear.” He sighed. “The thefts were real. I knew nothing of Jewel, not even that she was involved with Bobby. I didn’t even know she’d been hired, that he’d greased her way in here. Believe me, the people who allowed that to happen have been reprimanded, our hiring practices overhauled.”

  He paused, his lips curled downward. “I blame myself. I’d become a bit complacent. Allowed some in my employ to let down their guard. Allowed myself to let family ties get in the way of business.”

  “But I had no trouble finding Bobby. His address was literally placed in my hand. You directed me right to the place where that would happen. You knew where he was and yet you wanted me to be the one to find him. You wanted me there when he was murdered.”

  “I understand how you might come to those conclusions, but they’re wrong. Karin was the wild card I didn’t expect. We were still hunting for Bobby but had had no luck. I did try to hire you because I know how good the two of you are. I won’t go into great detail, but I needed to get to the bottom of things as soon as possible.” He paused, thinking, deciding how much to tell me. “There’s a…kind of syndicate. On the East Coast. They’re trying to hone in on some of my endeavors here in the Bay Area, to wrest away some of my most profitable ventures. And there were rumors that they’ve targeted me here in the casino. After Jewel’s scams, it was vital for me to find out
if she was working for them. If more was planned.”

  “I had nothing to do with any syndicate, Poe. I told you—” Jewel cried, starting to rise. Art put a hand on her shoulder and shoved her back down.

  “I know, Jewel. I believe you,” Poe said, without looking at her. “It was just her and Carlos and Leslie and the rest of them. They were skilled. Talented, but stupid. The execution was fine, except for afterward. They should have had an escape plan. They needed to disappear. I would have found them all eventually, but it would have taken longer than it did. I located Jewel within three days. Unfortunately, she’d already broken with Bobby and he’d gone into hiding.”

  “So Karin wasn’t working for you or Jewel?”

  “A wild card, as I said. But I can’t say that it didn’t work out better than I expected. It resulted in you finding my brother faster than I could have hoped.”

  “So you had me followed. You had Angelique find us at the motel, and she murdered your brother and his daughter.”

  Poe gave me a blank stare, betraying nothing.

  “And then you framed me for it. Why?”

  He nodded. “I know what you’re like. I knew that you’d keep pursuing the matter. That you wouldn’t let go. I figured if you were a suspect, it would take you away for at least a little while, long enough for me to wrap everything up and seal it away permanently from prying eyes. I knew that you wouldn’t go to jail. If there was a screwup and it looked like they were going to make it stick, I would have stepped in and cleared your name.”

  “Sure, Poe. I believe you.” I paused, trying to parse out all that he’d said, test its degree of truthiness.

  “How could you have your brother murdered like that? And his poor innocent daughter? I thought you cared for him. And I know Paula liked you; she admired you even. She told me. Bobby betrayed you, yes, but he did it because he was in love and Jewel was feeding him coke.”

  “Wait a minute, don’t—”Jewel said.

  “Shut up!” Poe’s voice was full of menace, and Jewel obeyed.