by Ed Gorman
The Empire Casino was standard stuff. Just inside the four glass doors there was a long list of all the gaming machines (twelve hundred in total) and table and poker games (thirty total). There were, in addition, five hundred seats for bingo.
There was an area for eating, a food court, a café, a buffet and a steak and seafood joint.
The hotel boasted three hundred and seventy-four rooms and fifteen suites.
I followed a theater-like lobby into rows of slots clamorous with the various sounds of humans dealing with machines that wouldn’t obey.
The female employees, if not quite as leggy or pretty or poised as their Las Vegas sisters, were nonetheless attractive and appealing and, as always, I wondered how the hell they could keep smiling as long as they did and put up with all the inevitable drunken male bullshit that went with any gig like this. My daughter had been a waitress between her sophomore and junior years in college. A decent place. But man, the tales she told. I wanted to go down there with a bullwhip.
I wound my way along the blackjack tables, the roulette tables and the mini-baccarat setup, which was surprisingly busy.
If nothing else, casinos are democratic. Every race, creed and sex demonstrate their eagerness to lose their asses to the house.
There were four poker tables set in a small wing of the place. Five players at each. Showalter was at the nearest table. He could easily have seen me if he’d looked up from the card the dealer had just dealt. But he was too busy scowling. Apparently he was not having a good time.
He threw his cards down on the table and shook his head with real disgust. And then, as if we’d connected telepathically, his eyes raised and met mine.
He was a champion scowler, our police chief was; this one was his deepest yet.
He wasted no time. He shoved his chair back and stood up. I couldn’t hear what he said but obviously the other players didn’t want to see him go. Maybe because he was the chief and it was sort of cool playing with him, or maybe because he was such a shitty player he was giving them part of his kids’ college fund.
He came straight at me. He wore a tweed sport jacket, white shirt, no tie and gray trousers. He also wore a look of real menace, enough to make me wonder if coming here had been such a good idea. Mike Edelstein could bail me out in a few hours if Showalter decided to arrest me. But he couldn’t do much until it was too late to help me if Showalter decided to take me down to the station and see that I was beaten.
‘I don’t want you here, Conrad.’
‘You own the place?’
‘No. But I know the manager here and he doesn’t want any undesirables.’
‘Yeah, undesirables in a casino would really be a bad thing.’
The grip on my elbow made me grit my teeth. I didn’t want to show pain.
‘Now’s the time to leave, Conrad.’
‘I want to get a look at Karen Foster’s car. The one you ran off the road tonight.’
His hand fell away from my elbow and the scowl became one of his sneering smiles.
‘That’s what you came out here for?’
‘That and wanting to know what you did with Grimes.’
‘You know if I was a private citizen I’d be filing lawsuits against you every day of the week. Libel and slander.’
‘And for setting up that fake shooting with Congresswoman Bradshaw.’
He leaned back. I had the feeling that he’d never really assessed me before. The way a cop does, I mean. He was doing it now.
Sounds of the casino crowded in as he stood there in silence examining me.
‘You’re really trying to nail my ass, aren’t you?’
‘Karen Foster may not make it.’
‘You want me to act all worried and sad? She got the job under false pretenses. I started getting suspicious when a couple of my men saw her with you.’ So he had discovered her real identity and purpose in coming to Danton.
‘She’s been trying to nail my ass, too. Just like you. I’m not surprised you two got together. Hell, she may have brought you here, for all I know.’
He was coming undone. I hadn’t heard that in him until just now. Big bad Showalter was starting to feel the pressure. He was beginning to realize that badge and gun could protect you only so far.
‘She didn’t bring me here. She brought herself here. Because she knows who you really are and what you’ve done.’
A security guard strode into sight with the aplomb of a big, battered man who learned long ago that sight of him would put most men and women on alert. But then there was, as now, that almost demented smile. Maybe he was comic relief on this ship to nowhere.
Every casino has got at least three of them. Somebody gets unruly, somebody tries to cheat the house, somebody just really pisses off the managers … and out comes one of these guys. Showalter was royalty here.
Maybe somebody watching on the cameras on the second floor saw how upset I made Showalter and he contacts King Kong and tells him to run this guy’s ass out of here.
He stood next to Showalter and said, ‘I was watching you from across the way there. And if I didn’t know better, I’d say that you’re giving one of our preferred customers here a whole raft of shit.’
He jabbed a finger half the size of Henry’s ball bat into my chest.
‘In which case, I have to say that you don’t belong here. If you had any idea of how much this man has done for this town and for me personally, you’d be shaking his hand right now just because he’s—’
‘That’s enough, Billy. But thank you. Conrad here was not only accusing me of various things I had nothing to do with, he was also refusing to leave, even though I had told him politely that I’d appreciate it if he did.’
Quite an act they had here. Showalter had his old self-confidence back. He was the cool guy once again.
‘Is that true? The chief here asked you to leave and you wouldn’t?’
‘I want to see Karen Foster’s car, Showalter. Have a claims adjuster look it over.’ But I knew that was it.
Billy started moving in on me. ‘Oh, he’ll leave, all right. Or he’ll be sorry.’
This time when Billy jabbed me, he did so with enough power to push me back a couple of inches.
‘I’m givin’ you one more chance,’ Billy said. ‘You understand?’
And understand I did.
THIRTY-SEVEN
At this time of night, the parking lot of the Skylight tavern had only three cars gracing its busted asphalt surface. I swung the rental into a slot and went inside.
There were three men along the bar, two at one of the wobbly tables. The bartender recognized me with no particular expression. He wore a blue short-sleeved shirt and a white smeared apron.
The Eugene O’Neill ambience was there even without a full contingent of lost souls. Generations of loss and failure and fear soaked the place physically and spiritually.
The men at the bar weren’t even talking. Just sitting there drinking and staring. The bartender continued watching me silently as I walked over to him.
‘Grimes been around?’
‘Haven’t seen him.’
He didn’t react but a pair of the older men sitting at the bar did. They seemed to be surprised that he’d said what he had.
‘Hell, tell him what happened,’ a hawk-faced, gray-haired man said. The hawk visage was enhanced by the eyes. In the worn, elderly face they shone with intelligence and cunning. He laughed through a spell of cigarette hacking. ‘Haven’t seen Grimes move that fast in a long time.’
‘Shut the hell up, Patton,’ the man next to him said. ‘There’s nothin’ wrong with Grimes. He’s in some kind of trouble and we shouldn’t be laughin’ about it.’
‘He say what kind of trouble he was in?’ I asked the small man with the charitable, sad eyes of a man who drank to buffer himself against the worst of the world.
Now the bartender spoke up. ‘He was looking for a gun. Said he needed one for protection.’
The man called Pa
tton said, ‘I saw you walk back to the office with him. You were in there long enough to give him one.’
‘Shut the hell up,’ the bartender said.
‘Grimes was half nuts. I sure wouldn’t have given him a gun.’
‘That’s my business, not yours, Patton.’
To the bartender I said, ‘Grimes’s granddaughter is terrified because we can’t find him. Think we could step back in that office and talk a little?’
‘Cindy’s a sweetheart, Hal. You should talk to this guy.’
Patton started to say something but I clamped my hand on the back of his neck and squeezed hard. ‘Shut the fuck up. You understand?’
One of the men at the table said, ‘Kick his ass, man. He’s had it comin’ a long time.’
‘C’mon,’ Hal said.
The office was a collection of ancient girly calendars, two wooden filing cabinets, a desk with one leg propped up by a phone book and an adding machine you probably hadn’t been able to buy parts for in several decades. There were two chairs. Neither of us sat.
‘He was in Nam. With me.’
‘Grimes?’
‘Yeah. We were good buddies and still are. You go through a war with somebody, you don’t forget about them.’
‘So you gave Grimes a gun?’
‘Old Colt I got from my old man.’
‘Loaded?’
‘Yeah. He was so scared I figure he needed it.’
‘What did Patton mean about Grimes moving so fast?’
‘He was so scared he jumped at everything. He heard a siren and he just ran out of here. Knocked over his glass on the bar and broke it while he was at it. I felt sorry for him. A lot of people don’t like him. But like I say, we went through Nam together.’
‘Any idea where he went?’
‘No.’ He nodded to the door. ‘I don’t trust Patton. I better get out there.’
‘I appreciate the information.’
‘I just hope he’s all right.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Me, too.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
The hotel bar stayed open until midnight.
Tonight I didn’t find any middle-aged female counterpart to comfort my roiled state of mind. The first thing I did was call the hospital to get an update on Karen. She was in a stable condition.
There were two calls on my cell pertaining to two other races.
One was good news, one bad.
The other man at the bar wanted to talk politics with the bartender, but she laughed and said that from what he’d been telling her last night he’d better be careful because sitting two stools away was none other than the dreaded congresswoman’s campaign manager.
The guy was two drinks shy of belligerence, so I shoved off and went up to my room, where I fell asleep much faster than I would have thought possible.
I dreamed about the shooting again, except this time it was for real. This time Jess’s head wrenched around and gaped at me. Then the bullets struck the back of her skull. But as blood and pieces of her brain bloomed in the air above her head, she started laughing. The laugh, unlike a sound I’d ever heard before, was more disturbing than the violence had been.
Why was she laughing? I was never to find out.
The call was from a man whose voice was the human equivalent of a dangerous bridge. Very old. Unsteady. ‘Is this Mr Conrad?’
The nightstand digital clock read six minutes after one a.m.
‘Yes.’
‘My name’s Skully. I run River Cabins.’
‘River Cabins?’
‘Yeah. Along the river out to the west side.’
‘I see.’
The nightmare had made more sense than this call. Skully? River Cabins? One in the morning? What the hell was this about?
‘I’ve got an envelope for you.’
‘What kind of envelope?’
‘Just a plain white business one with your name on it.’
‘Why do you have an envelope with my name on it?’
‘Because he gave it to me.’
The ‘he’ gave me focus. I knew not to lose patience now. I swung around in bed and put my feet on the floor. The old habit of fumbling around for my pack of cigarettes came back to me. All these years and I still wanted one.
‘You know a man named Grimes?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well, that’s why I’m calling.’
I cleared my throat. This was now an official call. This was a man who could lead me to Grimes. At least, that was the feeling I had.
‘Is he with you right now?’
He might not have heard me. He didn’t answer my question. ‘Well, I don’t want to get mixed up in nothin’ so I thought I’d call you.’
‘Mixed up in what? Mr Skully, I really need you to be more specific about things.’
‘He left me this envelope with your name on it and the address of the hotel there. He said that if anything happened to him I was to get this to you.’
Whatever was going on, Cindy sure wasn’t going to be happy about it.
‘Is he there now in one of your cabins?’
‘I think so.’
‘You’re not sure?’
‘He was so jittery he might’ve taken off. He had a handgun. Soon as I seen it I knew I didn’t want no part of it. But I took the envelope ’cause I was scared not to.’
The bartender’s gun.
Worse and worse and worse. I’d been thinking that Grimes had just gotten scared and was hiding out. But the envelope made me wonder if he was up to something else only he could concoct.
‘Where exactly are you located, Mr Skully?’
He told me. I’d need to program the GPS. ‘Do you have phones in the cabins?’
‘No.’
‘I appreciate the call, Mr Skully.’
‘I don’t want any trouble. You have trouble and your name gets on TV and people don’t want to come out here no more.’
‘I understand. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘You don’t bring any guns, either, you hear me?’
‘I hear you, Mr Skully. I hear you.’
I realized that I’d be waking Cindy up, but she needed to be told.
She was more asleep than awake when she answered. ‘’Lo.’
‘It’s Dev. I may have located your grandfather.’
‘Oh, God. Is he all right?’
I explained to her about the bartender giving him the gun and the old man calling me about her grandfather renting a cabin.
‘Oh, God. They’re pits. They’ve been closed down several times over the years. They’re not even cabins. More like little garages. They were built during the Depression. Probably all he could afford.’ Then, ‘But why would he do this?’
‘My guess is he didn’t think it through. He got so excited about naming his price to Showalter that he didn’t realize that there was no way Showalter could leave him alive. Now he’s hiding from him.’
‘Oh, God, poor Granddad. I know he sounds terrible doing this, but I love him so much and I’m so afraid for him. I can’t help it, Dev.’
‘I know that. I’m going to do my best to find him and protect him.’
‘Just please call me and let me know what’s going on.’
‘I will, Cindy. As soon as I’ve got some news.’
I stuffed the Glock and the flashlight into the large interior pockets of my rain jacket. I also grabbed my thermos.
On my way out to Skully’s I stopped long enough at a Hardee’s to get my thermos filled.
Whatever the hell Grimes was up to, I was pretty sure he was going to make this a long and terrible night.
THIRTY-NINE
A wooden sign standing next to the narrow two-lane highway announced River Cabins, and in the heavy growth of pines far down the slope to the river you could see the outlines of cabins no bigger than a small garage.
Depression times came to mind. Poor people dragging themselves across the land in search of work probably stayed in plac
es like these. And back then they would probably have been glad to have gotten them. They were preferable to sleeping outside in the rain and snow. And if you did it right you could probably pack a family of five or six inside them. There were migrant workers today in this home of the free and the brave who still lived this way.
Grimes’s car was parked near the entrance behind a rusted dumpster.
A faded clapboard house sat just to the right of the sign. A lone light burned behind the dirty front window.
When I pulled in, a man in a red-and-white hunting jacket and a Cubs cap stepped out onto the porch. He had a handgun pointed straight at me. The welcoming committee.
‘No need for that,’ I said as I got out of my car.
‘I’ll be the judge of that.’
‘I’m Conrad.’
‘Makes no difference to me. I want you up here on the porch where I can see you. Grimes is so scared he’s got me scared.’
‘You hear from him?’
‘Nope. Figured I’d wait for you to check his cabin. I don’t like him havin’ a gun.’
‘Well, I’m not crazy about you having a gun, either.’
‘Well, tough shit. I’m old and you’re young. Figure the gun gives us some equality.’
When I walked up onto the porch the entire house shook. The recent rain had left the wood smelling of rot.
Skully’s face in the window light was as weathered and woebegone as his home. He had a pair of quarter-sized growths on his left cheek that were light-colored and hairy. I wondered if he’d had a doctor look at them.
‘You got some ID?’
‘Sure.’
I dug in my back pocket for my wallet. The handgun – which turned out to be an old-fashioned .38 snubby – was still unerringly pointed at my chest. I handed it over and he managed to snatch it without losing his grip on the pistol.
He leaned back in the light to get a better look at my driver’s license and that was when I saw that he had a third growth, just like the other two, on the right side of his neck. ‘Yeah, I guess it’s you all right.’
Who the hell else would it be?
