Kicks for a Sinner S3

by Lynn Shurr

  “Howdy, I have no sweet side. I’ve been called feisty, tough, and sassy. Sassy, that’s my nickname in the family. My attitude got me through years of cancer treatments when other children much nicer than me died. I survived life with Bijou which was almost worse than leukemia after awhile. I believe you have to face life head on without ducking.”

  “The Sinners should recruit you,” he replied with a lazy smile and a hand on her breast.

  “I think you’re ducking by not finding and confronting your parents. A real football player would do that—but you’re only a kicker.”

  “Hey, I thought we were past the insults.” He dropped his hand and his smile.

  “Whatever it takes to get you to go to Las Vegas tomorrow.”

  “Jesus, okay. There, now I have to put a quarter in the cuss jar for blasphemy. Las Vegas tomorrow. Shit. Another quarter. Might as well be going to Sodom and Gomorrah when we have Paradise right here as my grandma would say.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  They didn’t get to Vegas in one day but arrived early enough on the second to see the losers and the drunks still sleeping on the curbs and benches. A group of waitresses in green uniforms and a man in a shiny tuxedo sucked on their smokes outside a breakfast buffet. “Do your job, Arnie,” one of the women prompted as they passed. “They look like fresh meat.”

  Arnie tossed his cigarette aside and swung into action, running around to get in front of them. “Best breakfast buffet in Vegas. We got shrimp morning, noon, and night. Loose and easy slots in the rear. How’s about a discount coupon—two for one this morning only.” He waved a slip of paper in their faces.

  Howdy shrugged. “Why not? I really could use some coffee.”

  He pinched the coupon and steered Cassie inside. The place looked clean enough and the buffet fairly standard with a steam table offering overcooked scrambled eggs, undercooked bacon, and little, gray sausages. The promised pile of shrimp of the tiny, pink variety looked like they might have come from a can, but who ate shrimp this early in the morning? Waffles, pancakes and French toast sticks fanned out on warming trays like winning hands in poker right next to cups of yogurt and cubed fruit in bowls sunk into crushed ice. All this for a mere twenty dollars a head, orange juice and coffee extra, but they had the half-off coupon. He’d never been a picky eater, but he asked Cassie, “This all right?”

  “Sure. Let’s ask the waitress for a phone book. We can start our search.”

  “Your search,” he corrected.

  Their waitress brought a pitcher of orange juice over to their table and held it enticingly over two upturned glasses. Howdy nodded for her to pour. Cassie asked for a telephone directory, and their server padded away on sensible shoes, delivering the request shortly like she’d gone to a lot of extra work. The woman brightened a little when Howdy wanted coffee, too, adding to the tab and the tip.

  “No Mary McCoy or Benito Rizzo listed.”

  Howdy raised his eyebrows at her. “You thought it would be that easy?”

  “We’ll do a Google search as soon as I can find a wi-fi hot spot.”

  “We could find a room after driving all night. I’ll get us a suite like the one in New Orleans, champagne again, maybe a marriage license once I get you liquored up enough.”

  “Quit joking. We have a mission to complete. A couple of Rizzos listed, but no Benitos.”

  The waitress, creeping up behind them in her crepe-soled shoes, served their coffee. From behind, she had a slim body and showgirl legs shored up by support hose, but the facial lines of a heavy smoker dragged her tired face down. The stench of her cigarette breaks clung to her long red hair, most definitely colored a brighter shade than Cassie’s since the woman had to be in her forties or older. She wore it drawn back at the nape of her neck with a cheap hairclip. A nametag branding her “Mariah” perched on one of her unnaturally large breasts straining the buttons of the green uniform and offering a view of a vast cleavage. Her hard, emerald eyes regarded them and showed she’d reached some momentous decision as she retrieved the phonebook.

  “Everyone in Vegas knows Benny Rizzo. He won’t be listed in the phone book, but you can find out plenty about him on Google. He owns Nero’s Lounge and Casino. You look like his type, sister, if you want to get into show business, but you’ll need to get a private appointment with him. Have your agent here make one and get lost. You audition for Benny alone.” The waitress said agent as if the word were synonymous with pimp.

  “Not me. It’s my friend who wants to see him.”

  “Last time I heard, Benny didn’t do guys, but in Vegas you never know. You look like nice kids right off the farm. Why don’t you go home and forget about meeting Rizzo?”

  “We think he might be Howdy’s father,” Cassie blurted out.

  Howdy ducked his head and turned red in the face. “Not my idea to meet him, ma’am. Hers.”

  “I had one of those private appointments with Benny Rizzo years ago. I can tell you that you sure don’t look anything like him. If you have to see for yourself, I’d make an appointment for the girl. He likes ’em fresh. Then pull a switcheroo to get yourself into his office.”

  “Thank you, Mariah. You’ve been a big help. Howdy, give her a nice tip.”

  Obeying, he handed the waitress two twenties.

  “My, my, anything else I can do for you, sweetie?” Mariah shot out one hip and posed a hand on it. Clearly, she did not mean the “sweetie” for Cassie.

  “No, ma’am,” he mumbled, staring at the cutlery. “We’ll just have the buffet. Thank you.”

  “I do like a boy with manners,” she said with a sly, full bronze-lipped smile. “After you meet with Rizzo, you hurry back to the ranch or farm or wherever you came from before this town tosses you to the white tigers.” She moved away to pour coffee at another table and flipped one of the twenties to another waitress as she passed. The other bill disappeared into her substantial cleavage.

  “Howdy, she could be your mother. Mariah was her middle name.”

  “Heaven forbid, Cass. I’d know my own mother. I have pictures of her from high school, even in her ballet tutu. Dancers don’t have huge breasts like that. Her hair is four times as red as mine, and my mom had blue eyes, not green. That much I remember.”

  “Look at me, Howdy. Do you see a single freckle on my face today? Do you think I was born with blonde streaks in my red hair? And I think in Vegas all dancers have huge, fake tits because they don’t dance, they only strut around poking them out at guys like you. Twenty would have been plenty for a nice tip by the way.”

  “That’s another thing. I don’t think my own mother would hit on me.”

  “She hasn’t seen you all grown up, and you are kind of cute. There, I finally admitted it.”

  “Thank you, thank you very much,” he said, doing a creditable Elvis imitation. “You having eggs or a pile of carbs? Personally, I think I could use both after that gas station burrito we shared at two a.m.”

  He stalked off to the buffet and filled two plates with some of everything, dumping a pile of the tiny, pink shrimp on top of his eggs.

  “Thank you,” Cassie said as he plunked down the two plates.

  “Get your own,” he growled.

  She got up to do exactly that. “At least now I know you’re grouchy after pulling an all-nighter and not always so polite and goody-goody.”

  “Eat, and let’s get this meeting with Rizzo over so we can go home.”

  Nibbling on French toast sticks dipped in syrup, Cassie took her good time eating while Howdy wolfed down his two plates of chow. Earning that forty-dollar tip, their waitress returned again and again to refill their coffee cups and slip them more orange juice free. She gave them directions to Nero’s Lounge, not too far distant, no need to hunt for another parking place. Howdy ate up the sidewalk with long strides in his haste to get there and get out. Regretting her early morning decision to switch from sneakers to heels in order to look more sophisticated and suffering from the tightness of
her jeans, Cassie wobbled along beside him. They turned in between two faux Corinthian columns. A chubby man wearing a toga wrapped around his tubby body and a laurel wreath on his bald head materialized from the perpetual twilight of the club.

  “Welcome to Nero’s Lounge and Casino. We hope you will stay and fiddle with us all day long. Free cabaret show at nine and midnight. Summon one of our charming Vestal Virgins for drinks at your table or step into the Golden Room and indulge in our decadent round the clock buffet.”

  Howdy got right to the point. “Ah, thanks, but we haven’t come to gamble. We want to make an appointment to see Mr. Rizzo.”

  “Difficult, very difficult to see the emperor at this time of day. However, if you take one of the elevators to the top floor, you may request an audience from his personal assistant.”

  The greeter bowed away and disappeared between a row slots. They found the elevators and climbed aboard the first to arrive. A large poster set into a frame on one wall touted a performance by an aging jazz musician who cradled his horn like a babe in arms. Exiting, they stepped directly up to a large, circular glass-topped desk staffed by a leggy, bleached blonde with thinly plucked eyebrows. She raised those eyebrows at them now. “Yes?”

  “We want to see Mr. Rizzo on a matter of business,” Howdy said.

  “Mr. Rizzo is solidly booked for the day. Why not check into our adjoining hotel and enjoy the casino. I’ll see if I can work you into his schedule tomorrow. Is this an audition for the young lady?”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” Cassie corrected, giving Howdy an elbow sharp enough to drive home Mariah’s advice on how to get Benny Rizzo’s attention.

  The second of the elevators opened and disgorged a short, thick man clad in a gold, yes, gold tuxedo with the bow tie unraveled around his neck. He scraped a hand over his black stubble and said, “Christ, I need some sleep.”

  With eyes darker than Joe Dean Billodeaux’s, he caressed Cassie from her peep toes to her tits encased in that snug turquoise top, lingering in that last area until he finally raised his gaze to her face. “But, baby, you are an eye-opener. You here for an audition?”

  Putting a cautioning hand on Howdy who seethed beside her, she replied, “I am, but I understand you have no openings until tomorrow. Is there any way I could see you sooner?” She fluttered her eyelashes.

  “Make her my three o’clock today, Darci. Comp them a room.” Benito Rizzo slicked back both sides of his ebony hair and licked his thick lips before entering his office and shutting the door with a definitive click.

  Darci flicked her red fingernails over her computer keyboard and asked their names. “Be on time and wear something easy to slip out of. Mr. Rizzo likes to examine the whole package.”

  “You tell Mr. Rizzo to—”

  Cassie stopped Howdy again. “That we’ll be here at three. Come on, McCoy, let’s take advantage of that free room.”

  She dragged on his arm before he could say anymore and led him into the elevator used by Rizzo moments ago. It still reeked of the man’s heavy cologne.

  “Stinks in here,” Howdy remarked.

  “But it stinks expensively. Would you look at that? It’s our waitress.” Cassie pointed to another framed poster advertising singer, Mariah Coy, looking far more youthful and glamorous than she had in her green uniform at the breakfast buffet.

  “Mary McCoy, Mariah Coy—it’s her stage name, Howdy. I tell you, that’s your mother. She saw you walking right toward her this morning and got that barker to lure you inside so she could feast her eyes on you after all these years.”

  “Hogwash! That is not my mother.” He caught Cassie’s smirk. “Go ahead and laugh at how I express myself. This is her.”

  He fished out the same curved wallet stuffed with hundred dollar bills he’d had in Mexico and flipped it open to a set of small opposing photos, one black and white, obviously taken from a dance recital program, and the other a high school graduation portrait. En pointe on willowy legs, long graceful arms extended in a classic ballet position, the young woman in the picture wore a serious expression and her hair pulled back in the traditional bun. Her costume completely flattened her meager breasts.

  The other offered a full color shot of long, smoothly curled hair the exact auburn shade as her son and wide blue eyes. Not anything like Howdy’s, her mouth, sitting small and pouty above a stubborn chin, already showed signs of discontent in its unwillingness to smile for the camera. The white graduation gown fell in straight folds down her front and its matching cap crooked at a defiant angle. A pretty girl who couldn’t wait to get out of Oklahoma, Cassie judged.

  She paged to the next set of pictures, Howdy’s grandparents. She recognized the white-haired old man in his grandson. They shared the same generous grin, the same mellow blue eyes, even a smattering of freckles across the bridge of the nose, though Howard Angus McCoy the elder’s had faded with time. His wife, Ruth Weems McCoy, stared straight at the photographer with cool, gray eyes and small, pursed lips, her chin just as stubborn as her late born daughter’s. Gray hair, short and severely styled close to the head, did nothing to soften her image. No padded bras for Grandma McCoy, either. Her navy blue dress with its prim white collar sported no unseemly erotic bulges above the waist. She was what she was, take it or leave it. Hard to believe Howdy’s grandfather had taken it.

  “I guess she wouldn’t have approved of me,” Cassie wondered aloud.

  “Not in those tight jeans, but I like ’em,” Howdy said as he reclaimed his wallet and they left the elevator. “Let’s get a room.”

  “I believe Nero’s Palace Hotel is right next door.”

  “We aren’t going there. I want to take you to the Bellagio. That’s where Joe took Nell the first time they married.”

  “But the Palace is free.”

  “I can afford something better, as good as anything Joe would do.”

  Cassie linked onto his arm as they left the gloom of the casino where colorful machines pinged and dice rolled from the fingertips of those who’d never gone home. They moved into the already hot desert morning. “You don’t have to be jealous of Joe anymore.”

  “Good, then let’s get hitched. I know what wedding chapel Joe and Nell used, too.”

  “Howdy, have you ever been in love before? Don’t you think you’re rushing things?”

  “I thought I was in love with a Mexican whore once. I can see I had a bad case of lust now. Heck, she went off with someone else, that’s how pitiful I seemed to her. I really do love you, Cassie. Maybe if we get married now, you won’t get around to leaving me later.” He said the last with a slight smile.

  She wasn’t fooled by his making a joke of it. “Abandonment issues, Howdy, you have them big time. That’s why you have to deal with your parentage before you can move on to other decisions.”

  “If you say so. Will you give me an answer once we’re through with this? If you want a big engagement ring, we can pick one out right now. I’m sure this place has a jewelry store on every corner like Starbucks in Seattle. Joe got his rings right at the hotel.”

  Red hair flying, she shook her head. “Ever since Bijou, I’ve had an aversion to big, gaudy rings. Look, we both have our problems. Let’s handle one at a time. First, we find out if Benito Rizzo is your father.”

  Howdy took a turn at head shaking. “I don’t see it.”

  “Second, we find out if Mariah Coy is your mother.”

  “More hogwash.”

  They returned to the truck and drove to the Bellagio with its dancing fountains and ceiling of glass flowers. Howdy insisted on a suite. She insisted they make love before sleeping away the rest of the day until that looming three o’clock appointment.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  They arrived promptly for the appointment with Benny Rizzo because Cassie had set the suite’s alarm clock for two, giving her enough time to primp and cover her freckles with makeup. Riding up in the Mariah Coy elevator, she posed seductively in front of the poster. “What
do you think?”

  Dressed as his plain ole cowboy self, Howdy frowned, so unlike him but he found he did it more and more since meeting Cassie. “How come you brought a dress like that to the ranch?”

  Not that he didn’t like what she wore. It had one of those halter tops that went behind the back of her neck and held her breasts up without a bra. The back ran low, and he’d done up the short zipper for her not long ago. The skirt, very short, way above the knees, poufed out in swirling layers of green and blue. High heels of metallic gold made her almost as tall as himself, and she wore no stockings on the legs she’d tanned at the ranch. She’d put her hair up in a messy, just got out of bed suggestive style he didn’t care for at all. Dangly earrings of tiny iridescent beads pretty as a peacock’s tail swung from her ears. As usual, her lips were the color of ripe peaches, but she’d ramped up the eyeliner, mascara, and green shadow. Men stared at her on the street, and addicted gamblers took their eyes off their cards for a moment when she passed through the casino for the ride to the top of the building.

  “I always bring along one good dress. You never can tell when you might need it. Do I look the part?”

  “Of a showgirl wannabe or an expensive call girl?”

  She acted a little hurt at his assessment. “I had to dress the part to get us inside the office. Look, I wore panties because you insisted.”

  “I’d hardly call what you got on under that dress panties, more like a thong, and Mr. Rizzo won’t ever have the pleasure of seeing it if I have my way.”

  “But you will have that pleasure after we clear up the paternity issue.”

  His face still burned at the thought of taking off that thong as they got out of the elevator and approached the desk. The blonde raised those thin, penciled brows again. “My, you did clean up nicely, Miss Thomas. Go right in. Mr. Rizzo awaits. Mr. McCoy, take a seat.”

  “I don’t think so.” He advanced to the door and turned the knob, allowed Cassie to strut in first out of sheer habit.

  The first words his supposed father uttered were, “Out! Only the girl stays. Don’t make me call security.” The man, clad in gray monotone mafia chic, rapped his knuckles against an inlaid mahogany desk to emphasize his order. “You, Cassie, take a seat on the couch.”