Chance s-23

by Robert B. Parker

  "Don't kid around, you know. This is a fucking life-or-death deal."

  "Ain't it always," I said.

  I patted Bibi's knee again and headed for the door.

  "We'll be in touch," I said.

  CHAPTER 25

  When Hawk and I came into my room, I thought the air-conditioned stillness hinted at the memory of Susan's perfume, but maybe it was nostalgia. The message light was flashing on my phone.

  "A Mr. Ventura called, please call him in his room."

  Hawk smiled and shot me with his forefinger.

  Julius had several rooms in another wing, without a view of the volcano. I wondered if he knew he was not A list. Hard to be sure.

  There might be people closer to the volcano than I, who thought I wasn't A list. His suite was bigger than mine, though it was smaller than Delaware. A fat guy named Steve, whom I knew slightly, let us into the living room. He was in his shirtsleeves and had a Glock 9mm on his right hip. There were four other men in the living room, all in shirtsleeves, all with guns. One of them was Jackie, Shirley's driver. I nodded at him. He nodded back. A pump shotgun lay across a hassock near the couch. The remnants of lunch littered the coffee table and the bar top, and spilled off the rollaway room service table. A bottle of red wine stood on an end table.

  "Julius was looking for us," I said.

  Hawk stepped to the side of the doorway and leaned on the wall again. There was nothing specific about the way he leaned but somehow it projected menace.

  "He's in with the missus," Steve said.

  "She's pretty shook up about Shirley."

  "Probably is," I said.

  "Can you let him know we're here?"

  Steve went into one of the bedrooms, and stayed a moment. The four men in the room looked at Hawk and at me. No one said anything. Steve came out of the bedroom.

  "Julius says come in."

  Hawk and I went past him into the room. There was an old woman dressed in black lying on the bed with her shoes on. The shoes were black. Julius sat on the bed beside her. There was a plastic ice bucket full of water on the bedside table. Julius wet a face cloth in the ice bucket and wrung it out and wiped his wife's face with it. Her face, even refreshed with the cold water, was pale, and her eyes were puffy. She had thick eyebrows and a thick prominent nose. Her hands rested on her stomach below her bosom and her thick fingers were moving rosary beads through them, though she gave no outward sign of prayer.

  "She don't want me to leave her," Julius said.

  "Here is fine," I said.

  The woman opened her eyes and looked at Hawk and me, without much focus.

  "I don't know you," she said.

  Ventura said softly, "They work for me, Iris."

  "The colored man, too?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you know Shirley?" she said.

  "Yes," I said.

  "She's dead, you know."

  "I know," I said.

  "I'm sorry."

  "Did you know her?" she said to Hawk.

  "Yes, Ma'am," Hawk said.

  "I'm sorry for your loss."

  "Yes," she said.

  "It is a loss."

  We were quiet. The old woman closed her eyes again and in a moment tears began to seep from under the lids. Sitting beside her, Julius wiped her face again with the wet face cloth Then he put the cloth back into the ice water and picked up her hand and held it and patted it with his other hand.

  "We come to bring her home," Julius said to me.

  "You know who did it?"

  His voice was a deep slow rumble, like a subway train passing far below the surface.

  "No," I said.

  "Hawk?"

  "No," Hawk said.

  "You know where Anthony Meeker is?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Tell Stevie," Julius said.

  "Then go home."

  "Can we talk?" I said.

  "Nothing to talk about," Julius said.

  "Yeah, there is."

  "No," Julius said.

  "I don't know if it was him actually put his hands on her. But he ran off on her. She wouldn't have been out here, he hadn't run off on her. She wouldn't be gone."

  He slowly patted his wife's hand as he spoke.

  "Did you know he has some kind of game going with Marty Anaheim?"

  "He did, he didn't, don't matter. That's business, this is blood.

  You understand anything?"

  "You don't know the game between him and Marty?" I said.

  The old woman on the bed opened her eyes. Her voice scraped harshly out between her thin bluish lips.

  "Don't talk business, my daughter's in the morgue."

  "No, Iris," Julius said.

  "No business."

  "Only business is killing him," she said.

  "Yes," Julius said, still holding her hand, still patting it.

  I looked at Hawk. He shook his head. I nodded.

  "We'll find him anyway," Julius said.

  "Save us a little time, you tell Stevie."

  "Sure," I said.

  "I'll pay you through today," Julius said.

  "Tell Stevie, he'll give you cash."

  "Sure."

  "No more business, Julius," Iris said.

  "Kill him."

  He reached across and closed her eyes gently with his fingertips.

  "Try to sleep," he said.

  Hawk and I left the room. In the living room I spoke to Steve.

  He took $100 bills from a suitcase in the closet and gave some to me. I folded it once and put the money in my pants pocket without counting it, and we left.

  CHAPTER 26

  On the phone Susan's voice had the same quality of promise that it had in person.

  "I talked to a policeman from Las Vegas on the phone. He wanted to know if you were with me the night before I left."

  "Yeah. They found Shirley Ventura dead with one of my business cards near her."

  "My God! I told them the truth on the assumption that had you wished otherwise, you'd have gotten to me first."

  "Honesty is the best policy," I said.

  "Usually," Susan said.

  "When are you coming home?"

  "Why is it," I said, "that the simplest question, about the most ordinary subject, when you ask it comes freighted with the hint of God knows what excitement?"

  "Perhaps it has to do with the auditor, more than the utterer."

  "Utterer?"

  "I have a Ph.D.," Susan said.

  "Of course you do," I said.

  "You think I'm projecting?"

  "Yes. All I said was, "When are you coming home?" "And the possibilities I hear implied are me not you."

  "Certainly. When are you coming home?"

  "Well, as of yesterday I'm on my own. Julius paid me off."

  "So now you have no client."

  "True."

  "But…?"

  "Well, Julius blames Anthony for Shirley's death and plans to kill him. And Marty Anaheim's in town, and may want to kill Anthony. Might want to kill Bibi too."

  "Bibi?"

  "Anaheim's wife; she's here with Anthony."

  "Oh my."

  "Yeah. And there's something else going on, in the background, that I don't quite get."

  "Do you think Anthony killed his wife?"

  "Killing was pretty brutal. Raped and strangled by hand, left naked with no ID in a vacant lot."

  "And you don't think Anthony's capable of that?"

  "Doesn't seem his style."

  "Still it sounds like a crime of anger. Rape and manual strangulation."

  "Or a crime made to look like that."

  "By whom?"

  "Anytime there's a brutal crime and Marty Anaheim is around, it's worth thinking he might have done it."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know."

  "But you don't want to come home not knowing?"

  "No."

  "And you wouldn't want to abandon the charmingly named Bibi to her fate."
<
br />   "No."

  "Of course not," Susan said.

  "Is Hawk willing to stay on?"

  "I don't know," I said.

  "I hope he will. I feel better when he's with you."

  "Hell," I said, "so do I."

  "But you'll stay whether he stays or not."

  "Yes."

  "So, when are you coming home?"

  "I miss you," I said.

  "I'll come home as soon as I can."

  "Good," Susan said, and there was that sound in her voice again.

  "Because I intend to boff your brains out when you arrive."

  "Sure, I'm projecting," I said.

  CHAPTER 27

  I left Hawk in Anthony's room to ward off Julius, and strolled down the Strip toward the MGM Grand on a bright desert morning.

  It was about 105 and the perspiration on my forehead evaporated as soon as it formed. Traffic was heavy along the Strip, an equal mix of limousines and pickups. A lot of young women with big hair and thick thighs were on the Strip, and men with big bellies hanging over low jeans were on the Strip. Neon lights were blinking, in the bright sunshine, and ahead of us the MGM Grand rose greenly from the gravelly desert. The emerald palace. I was going to look for Marty Anaheim. When I found him I was going to talk with him. About the current situation. Or whatever. Because I didn't have any idea what was going on and I didn't know what else to do.

  I went into the vast lobby chattering with slot machines. It was about forty degrees cooler inside. I walked past the Wizard of Oz exhibit in the front of the lobby, past the crap tables, and took up residence in sight of the guest elevators. It was of course possible that Marty wasn't staying here, that he'd been visiting someone else. According to the list the Vegas cops came up with he wasn't registered under his own name so I had no way to find out. Except to stand here and watch until I saw him. Or I didn't. Or hell froze over.

  The MGM casino seemed bigger and more crowded than the Mirage, and noisier and more garish. People in short-sleeved shirts and Bermuda shorts and tank tops milled about the slots and crowded around the crap tables and marched reverently past the life-sized statues in the Wizard ofOz display, and ate in the restaurants and had drinks and came and went on the elevators. None of them was Marty Anaheim. After a couple of hours I looked at my watch. I'd been there twenty minutes. At the crap table to my far right a small cheer pushed through the routine hubbub. Big winner. I tried standing first on one foot then the other. Make use of the time. Improve my balance. That way, when I did find Marty and he gave me a shot in the mouth I'd be less likely to fall over.

  The morning went that way. I varied my balancing exercises by doing toe raises. I stretched my lower back by flattening the hollow against the wall. I did isometric exercises, pressing my palms together or against the wall. I stretched my neck. I stretched my shoulders. I laced my fingers, turned my palms out, and stretched the muscles in my forearms. I thought about doing push-ups but concluded that people might notice. I looked at my watch. I began to count the number of women getting off the elevator that I would want to sleep with. They had to be getting on or off the elevator.

  Women strolling past didn't count. After forty minutes the count was lower than it once would have been. When I was seventeen, the count would have been every.

  Just before noon, while I was doing toe taps to guard against shin splints, the little guy in the Panama hat got off the last elevator to the left and walked on past me.

  I said, "Hey."

  He stopped and turned slowly, looking at me under the snap brim of his hat. His small black eyes were close on either side of his big nose.

  "You talking to me?"

  "Yeah. Where's Marty."

  "Marty who?"

  "Marty Anaheim that's been paying you to follow Anthony Meeker around."

  "Buzz off," the little guy said.

  He turned away. I reached out and got hold of his right arm. He stopped in half stride and turned his head back slowly toward me.

  "Keep your hands off me," he said.

  "I want to see Marty," I said.

  He made no effort to get his arm free. He stood perfectly still, his eyes steady on me.

  "He might even want to see me," I said.

  "Why don't we go to a house phone and you call him. Tell him I've seen his wife."

  The little guy kept looking at me. I kept hold of his arm.

  "Okay," he said.

  "I'll call him."

  I let go of his right arm. He flashed his right hand in under his coat and came out with a short stainless-steel automatic. He pressed it against my stomach, standing close so that no one would see.

  "What kind of gun is that?" I said.

  "Next time you put your hands on me," he said softly, "you'll be breathing through your navel."

  "Fast little guy aren't you."

  "Remember it," he said and put the gun away with a small deft movement.

  "So what kind is it?" I said.

  "What?"

  "The gun, looks like a short Colt."

  "It is, nineteen ninety-one A-one Compact."

  "Forty-five?" I said.

  "Yeah, six rounds."

  "Nice gun," I said.

  He looked at me with no expression in his slatey little eyes.

  "Gun's as good as the guy who holds it," he said.

  "Sure," I said.

  "Call Marty."

  Which he did.

  There was a pedestrian overpass across the Strip so people on the other side would have no trouble dashing over to the MGM Grand and dropping a bundle. Marty met me in the middle of it.

  He was wearing a blue silk suit and a blue silk shirt buttoned to the neck.

  "Okay, Bernie," he said to the little guy, "take a walk."

  "I'll be over here, Marty," the little guy said.

  He walked a ways toward the west end of the overpass and leaned on the railing, watching us.

  "Tough little guy," I said.

  "He can shoot," Marty said.

  "You seen my wife?"

  "Yeah."

  "Where is she?"

  "Where do you think she is?"

  "What is this, some kinda fucking game?"

  "Sure," I said.

  "I'm trying to find out what you know, without letting you know what I know. You know?"

  "This is what I know, asshole. I come down here to talk with you. I could throw you off this fucking overpass instead."

  "Or not," I said.

  "You don't think so?"

  "Marty," I said.

  "You don't scare me, any more than I scare you.

  One of us is wrong, but do we have to find it out right now?"

  "You called me, pal."

  I nodded. I was thinking about what to say. Since I didn't know what was going on there wasn't much to think about. I turned to one of Spenser's rules. When in doubt tell the truth. It was a brand-new rule, and it might be worth testing.

  "Your wife's with Anthony Meeker," I said.

  "Tell me something I don't know."

  "You know where?"

  "At the Mirage," Marty said.

  "You know Julius is there too?"

  Marty didn't say anything.

  "Julius is going to kill Anthony," I said.

  "He better hurry."

  "Julius's daughter, Shirley, was killed Sunday," I said.

  "Cops found her in a vacant lot up the Strip a little."

  "Yeah?"

  "Julius is upset," I said.

  "He blames Anthony."

  Marty said nothing. Below us on the Strip, cars moved steadily in both directions. Across a short spread of scrub desert, Route 15 was busy with trucks and cars and RVs heading west to California and east to Utah and the northwest corner of Arizona.

  "I'm under the impression," I said, "that you and Anthony were in on some scam together."

  "Lying little fucker tell you that?"

  "I got that impression."

  "It's bullshit."

  "S
o why are you here?"

  "I'm going to kill him and take my wife back."

  "He didn't do anything to you," I said.

  "She did."

  "Don't matter who did what. He dies. She comes back."

  "And if she doesn't want to come back?"

  "She'll come back."

  "Or?"

  "No or. She'll come back."

  "And you'll forgive her," I said.

  "Fuck forgiveness. Forgiveness got nothing to do with it," Marty said.

  "She's with me, you unnerstand? That's how it is."

  "Maybe not," I said.

  "You going to get in my way?" Marty said.

  "You kill Shirley Ventura?"

  "Why the hell would I kill Shirley Ventura?"

  "What was the deal with Anthony?"

  "I got no deal with Anthony, asshole. He collected money for Julius, passed some of it along to Gino."

  "Through you?"

  "Everything goes to Gino through me," Marty said.

  "Makes it easy to skim," I said.

  "Any skimming was done by Anthony."

  "Bibi says you and Anthony were playing a two-man game," I said.

  "You're a fucking liar," Marty said.

  "Bibi don't know nothing about my business."

  "Says you introduced her to Anthony," I said.

  "Says she ran off with him to get away from you. Says you're a. pig."

  It was a gamble to get him mad enough to say something wrong.

  It didn't work. He didn't say anything. He swung at me. He telegraphed it some, and I was able to turn my hips against the railing as it came. The punch landed on my right cheekbone, and rocked me backwards, and sent me staggering along the railing. Marty could hit. If I hadn't half slipped it I would have gone down. I could feel the shock of it through my head. Everything darkened and for a minute I didn't see well. The railing helped keep me up.

  "I'm sick of you, Spenser. You got that? I see you again and I'm going to fucking beat you to fucking death."

  My head was clearing. I steadied against the railing as my legs re solidified and my knees unbuckled. Fighting with Marty Anaheim wasn't going to help me figure out what was going on.

  I said, "Not here, Marty. Not now."

  He extended his arm straight out from the shoulder and pointed his finger at me.

  "You been warned," he said and turned and stomped back toward the emerald palace.

  I glanced down the overpass in the other direction. The little guy with the Panama hat was leaning on the railing looking at me and shaking his head. I felt my cheekbone. It was hot and already puffy. I had learned nothing and gotten popped on the kisser in the process. I was willing to take one on the chops now and then if it furthered my cause. I wasn't sure my cause had been furthered.