by Rex Miller
Flat black eyes looked up at him from under an unruly shock of white hair. Ellie Spoda appeared to be a woman of about sixty-five years old.
“Ellie,” Jack whispered, “could we go talk about your stepbrother, Arthur?"
She tuned out on him immediately, her eyes looking down at the Bingo card in front of her.
“I-seventeen,” the attendant called, and there was a murmur of excitement.
Outside, Eichord asked Claire Imus how old Ellie was.
“She was born in 1950, Mr. Eichord."
Las Vegas
Eichord deplaned at McCarron International and managed to find both his luggage and a cab, and within minutes he was bound for Las Vegas Boulevard. He chose the option of coming in “unofficially,” at least for the moment. He planned to sniff around some on his own first.
Vegas was a nighttime town. No clocks. City of the perennial weekend. And the Strip had been designed for darkness—all light show and bright dazzle. But, God, it was a depressing vista in the daytime.
The gray smog layer clung to the skyline like dirty smoke and it was all you could see from the Tropicana clear over to the Hilton ... dirty gray sky and garish hotel architecture. Check-in was a nightmare of tourists logjammed through a maze of brass-tipped, velvet rope. Eichord found himself caught in a giggling, whispering hubbub of Japanese with cameras. The slow-moving line inched forward as he listened to the Japanese talk about going to Anaheim and Disneyland, and which shows to see first. Where did all these people COME from?
Finally Jack reached the front desk, checked in, and was whisked through the casino to an elevator, and before long was unpacking his rumpled clothing. His room had a sliding glass door and he walked out on a small balcony about the size of a coffee table. Everywhere he looked fabulous, fabled neon icons lit up the Nevada smog with promises of easy money and good times and no tomorrow.
But down on the rooftop adjoining the hotel's parking garage he spotted the yellow pages and a pair of white, high-heeled pumps. What scenario of anger, frustration, rage, and sad despair might account for such an irrational act? Did a drunken woman throw them herself? More likely it was a man's work. The Vegas phone directory is not an easy toss. An event for the Las Vegas Decathalon, the hundred-meter telephone book and high-heel throw.
He changed clothes and made his way back downstairs, taking a cab downtown to the California Club, as good a starting place as any. He was armed with a police sketch he didn't have much faith in, and less sense of purpose than he could remember.
The first thing he spotted in the casino was obvious giggle of three hookers. If it is a coven of witches, a pride of lions, a gaggle of geese, an army of caterpillars, a school of fish, a pod of seals, and a flock of sheep, what do you call a trio of hookers? Oh, about $250, he imagined.
His cop eyes saw them the way he always saw people, registering overly tight maroon corduroy slacks and a bulge of green sweater with an invitation to all monied males, the middle one with a too-dressy black cocktail dress, the third with lots of poundage packed into another pair of tight slacks. All of them with high wedgies, frizzes, tons of makeup. The only obvious flaw other than a possible lack of scruples the set of the shoulders. They strode through the casino like jocks. In fact, when Eichord looked at the big one, he thought of Alex Karras reincarnated as a woman. Just your average middle linebacker working girls—what could be more inviting? Jeezus.
But in the same breath he saw something fantastic. A woman in the shortest, blackest, tightest clinging top of a material that revealed every outline and curve. Perfect, movie-starlet mammaries, nipples thrusting like hard fingertips, gorgeous blond hair, and a face without a hint of makeup—stunning, spectacular, smashing. But, of course, he told himself, I have something better at home.
But this WAS Vegas, after all, and Eichord spent the first ten minutes just checking out the chicks. With that important detective work done, he called a pit boss aside and asked to see the shift manager, waiting by the side of a 21 layout. An old man wandered over and tried to make some pitiful, erratic bet of some kind. It took the dealer three or four minutes to explain to him why he couldn't place the wager.
A hard-eyed, suspicious-looking man in a silk suit introduced himself and Eichord showed his tin and explained what it was he wanted and was told how totally impossible that would be. Nobody employed here at the club would have any way of identifying somebody from that long ago—not even from five WEEKS ago—in a wheelchair?—no big deal. We have handicapped in here all the time, the man informed him, looking around and seeing in fact a wheelchair rolled up to the craps table where a group of fifteen men were screaming at the moment.
Eichord showed the drawing to some people anyway and watched various pairs of bored Las Vegas eyes glaze over. After all this WAS Vegas, pal. These people have seen it all. They've seen all the cops. All the wise guys. All the hookers. All the stars. What's one more serial killer in a wheelchair—right?
The old man was still farting away his Social Security leftovers when Eichord decided he was spinning his wheels. The man's sweet wife had joined her hubby and stood beside him, this strange old dude in a ragged undershirt, as he had his moment of fun, escaping momentarily out of whatever drabness, escaping into the bright flash for a second—one turn of a card or spin of a wheel and a thirty-second promise of easy dough that had led so many of us down the wrong pathway. A cocktail waitress in a push-up bra and stiletto heels whispered at him and by reflex he showed her the picture.
They talked briefly. Her name was Stephanie or Kim or Lisa, she was twenty-one, or twenty-two, or twenty-three, she was married to a struggling lounge performer, or she was a would-be student or a part-time nurse working cocktails to support a child, and he'd known a thousand girls just like her. On his way back out of the club he tried to remember all the name tags that went with the glazed eyes: Lethea, Nadja—from Iran, Gerry, Nassia. A dealer named Takio, Sam. A lady pit boss with an American first name he couldn't remember—last name Wong. Eduarda, whom they called Fast Eddy. Stephanie. Kim. Lisa.
A maid said, “How ya doin'” to him as he smiled at her in the hallway, back in the hotel.
“No good,” he said, meaning it.
“I know what you mean. I live here."
Metro
Jack spent all of the next morning getting the official glad hand from the guys at Metro headquarters. MLVPD was one of the top cop shops in the country for a Homicide detective. The action of a high-crime-incidence beat without the hazards of some shithole like East L.A. or Bed-Sty. It tended to draw slick sleuths with a taste for gold and rich, Corinthian leather.
Eichord was accorded full VIP status whether he wanted it or not, which automatically made any good copper just a tad suspicious of this big-media mocker, this ink-happy fed from some mystical task force dropping by to snoop around.
He eventually got shoved off onto a liaison type named A.W. “Augie” Stiverson.
“Sorry you got saddled with me, Augie,” Eichord said with a smile.
“It's a dirty job"—Stiverson smiled back—"but...” He left it go unsaid.
Eichord had to spend twice as much time getting duked back in while he went around listening, being a good dude, being Eichord, acting like he was just one more flat-footed copper who didn't think his shit smelled like Chanel.
“Let me know what we can do for you and we'll give it our best shot."
“This one's a bitch kitty, so far,” Eichord said, handing a stack of the police drawings to Stiverson. “Got this dude who looks real good for about five serial homicides back in the 1960s. Spoda, Arthur. It's all on the other sheet. We're talking about a male Cauc maybe forty-one, forty-two years old now. Likely he could have been a resident here for years, possibly. I believe he may have killed again recently, the first kill after twenty years, back on my home turf. Just a hunch from the M.O. Nothing solid. But the more I looked at these old files, he was doing the victims in and around Amarillo, Texas, I think they had him."
“I never got a real handle on that. I think it may have just been a combination of things. Their so-called eyeball witness fell apart on them. Violated some Texas statute when they put him into a lineup, best I can judge. He was nineteen, this Spoda, and all of that and some sloppy paperwork and he just ended up walking. Like a dude there said to me, You know how it is, it happens."
“Yeah.” Siverson nodded. “I know. Sometimes the scumbags walk. I know how it happens. Can you put something together on this individual if you can find him again?"
“I dunno.” Eichord scratched his head. “Beats me,” he said quietly. “I know the Iceman killings stopped as soon as the suspect became hurt. He apparently was crippled to the point where he was in a wheelchair.” Eichord told him about the mother and the man in Vega, Texas, who had supposedly seen Spoda in Vegas.
“Shit. I think you could send these around to all the big hospitals, clinics, therapy centers, and what not. Real needle in a haystack without a mug shot or prints.” He read the short information sheet Eichord had handed him with the stack of drawings.
“Well, for starters, I'd like all the guys to get one of these. I'll also get them run through all the casinos just on the odd chance it might shake something loose."
“Sure. What else?"
Eichord gave him a couple more requests, including the standard desk-directories-telephone requirements, and Stiverson eventually left him to his own devices while he sat there in busy MLVPD Homicide dialing and smiling, finding out in the course of one afternoon that Las Vegas, Nevada, had about all the health care anybody could handle.
By late afternoon he was getting punchy. The day had not been a total loss, however. He had learned about how the coloration of a victim's fingernails and the consistency of the vomit will help determine if they have ingested a slow-acting, nonvolatile poison. That a shotgun leaves pellets, wadding, markings, ejected shell casings, and that people who do police work send these things to laboratories for analysis. He learned they found a homosexual with over a hundred stabbing wounds in the body, of which a detective observed “Boy! Somebody was sure pissed."
He learned more about the Vegas sports books than he had ever wanted to know, including the line on three important games. He learned that in Vegas they use the transitive verb “shake” the way they use the word “smoke” in Buckhead. That most homicides are solved by witnesses or informants. That most Vegas crimes are solved in the first twenty-four hours or they tend to go unsolved. That a three-day-old killing was “getting there ‘cause this guy in the joint told me this hump he knows said he was gonna shake him.” He learned that a stringer for Channel 11 was a turd. And the guy on the early-morning assignments desk was cool. And that a guy in the News Cruiser eats shit. And that somebady “got their ten-thirty-one stepped on” and all of this was profoundly more interesting than the sheet of doodles in front of Eichord. A list that said: 5 x 39 .6 = 198
Gloria (39) Strangulation
Darleen (37) Strangulation
Ann (38) Bludgeoning/Stabbing
Elnora (41) Stabbing
May (43) Stabbing.
The doodles were average. Nothing great. He was proud of the numbers, though. They were nicely rendered. Why would a nineteen-year-old boy want to “shake” 39.6 year old women? Because he could? Because they were vulnerable? Because they were surrogate mommy targets? Forcing Mom to give him head and then going to work with his hands or his sharpened icepick? I am twisted. So here's some steel, Lucile. NOW you can't see my perversions and abnormalities. My half-inch Vienna sausage of a cock. My twisted soul. Here's not looking at you, kid. Kiss THIS, Sis!
It bored him so badly, this doodle, that he concentrated on the more accessible Homicide work at hand. And by the time he packed it in for his last overnight in Vegas, he knew exactly how the three-county-level special unit worked Homicide calls, suspicious deaths, and officer-related shootings. He knew that the officer, or pair, depending on the beat, calls in the “criminalistic” officers, the HDs and the ID techs. He learned how to write up an incident report, how to get hold of a path, the pathologist, the way photographs are made, the manner in which diagrams are drawn. The place the autopsy is performed. All sorts of useful stuff in case he ever decided to do any Homicide work.
You had to walk right through the casino to get to the elevators. What made him think it was planned that way? He put a ten-dollar bet on ODD and lost. Put a two-dollar bet on 39 and lost. Put two five-dollar chips on ODD and won. Put ten dollars on EVEN and won. He was eight dollars ahead, and he quit. There was a slot machine near the bank of elevators and he fed five dollars in while waiting for his elevator. Still, he was quitting three bucks ahead. Another Vegas winner.
The noise and the smoke and the lights and the sleaze factor were almost overpowering. He couldn't wait to have Las Vegas become a memory. One more piece of business in the morning and he was gone.
Television Park
“Pull your coat down a little,” a metallic voice commanded over the intercom, and the good-looking man seated beside the car mouthed a silent okay and leaned forward as far as he could, pulling his coat down under him as well as he was able, smoothing his lapels.
“Okay now?” he asked aloud.
The intercom did not choose to reply and a boy with a rattail haircut clicked a marking slate clapper and said, “Fourteen,” looking at the man in the chair saying, “Stand by."
The seated man held his smile into the bright lights, and when the rattail boy pointed at him, he smiled widely and said, “Luxury in a beautiful car you CAN afford. Because nobody beats our deal.” He let the smile relax a little and took a breath.
The intercom squawked, “Let's do it again."
“Sure."
“Take Fifteen."
“Luxury in a beautiful car you CAN afford. Because nobody beats our deal.” He was very tired. “Was that better?"
“Let's wild-track it again, please,” she answered in her grating, metallic squawk.
“Sixteen,” the boy said, and marked it.
“Luxury in a beautiful car you CAN afford. Because nobody—"
“Hold it."
He breathed again. Fucking imbeciles.
“Wha hoppen?” He beamed in the direction of the control booth.
“You're saying Lug-sury. It's LUCKS-U-REE. Make it a real hard X sound, okay?"
“LUXury in a beautiful car. Like so?"
“Better. Do it again. Here we go."
“Seventeen."
“Nobody ... Shit, I'm sorry. I forgot the line.” He kept his smile as the rattail boy giggled and said, “That's a take.” Wise little fuck. “Okay. I'll get it right this time, folks. I promise."
“Okay,” over the intercom. He could feel himself reddening a little. Fuck it.
“Eighteen,” the kid said in a tone of unmasked contempt.
“LUXury in a beautiful car you CAN afford. Because nobody beats our deal.” The eyes boring in under the red light. His hundredth spot maybe. An old pro.
“I think that one got it, but give me a safety,” she said, and he tilted his head back and said, “Sure,” ever the gentleman.
“Nineteen, safety,” the wise-ass kid said, and the man in the chair smiled brightly, gestured to the new car parked in the production studio, and gave her another perfect one. Smiling into the camera with his handsome public face.
Las Vegas
He was up, dressed, and checking out half an hour before dawn and the casino looked like nine p.m. on a Friday night. An incessant blur of movement and a ceaseless roar of voices and noise. He walked past a blackjack layout and a woman dealer whose tag said adele—nevada. A Yugoslavian crackpot was babbling something to her about how GM was going to pay him a billion dollars in “reparations” for patent infringement.
“Don't bet until I've cleared the table, sir,” he could hear another dealer scolding someone as he walked by the early-morning crew. You can have it all, Adele Nevada. Every las
t dirty dollar. Just lemme outta here.
Heading north out of Las Vegas on I-15 past the Moapa Reservation, he drove into the Valley of Fire, and the sun came up over the mountains like a blazing red H-bomb, lasering the eyeballs as it mushroomed out into billowy fallout over the rocky canyons and the bust-out, degenerate gamblers, and the poor, ordinary folks, and the pathetic detectives, and whoever else.
Even with his shades on and the visor of the rental flipped down the blindingly bright sun gave him a massive headache, smashing into his eyes and into the brain like the needle-sharp Icepick of the Gods. He remembered the mirrored reflections from the eye-in-the-sky back in the casino. He knew the day was going to suck and it hadn't even started yet.
Far out in the sky over the Valley of Fire some movement caught his eye. He had to shield his eyes to squint, looking through dark lenses and tinted glass at buzzards circling something dead or dying out there. Eichord hoped it wasn't a sign.
Buckhead Station
The one flimsy semilead he'd turned up out west had flattened out on him. A former Vice guy, three years retired, had vague memories of this “spectacular pony” who lived with this wheelchair-bound gambler in one of the old plush joints—the Flamingo, he thought. The guy turned out to be hazy on the whole thing—some fuzzy recollection of the guy and his show-bizzy broad. He couldn't be sure of the drawing, he said. Bottom line: el zero.
Eichord heard a radio or television blaring as he descended into the sublevel of Buckhead Homicide. One of the guys had brought a TV set to work. Not a portable, but a twenty-one-inch set purloined from God-knows-where and squeezed into the back seat of an unmarked ride.
“Couldn't you get a big screen?"
“It's Dana's tummy tee vee,” Peletier said, and brought forth some snickers.
The detectives were watching a dog show for some reason.
“Peletier,” fat Dana Tuny growled, “you'd hafta pick up forty more IQ points to qualify as a fuckin moron, ya know that."
