The Other Side: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  “Yeah, okay.” They’d insisted on accompanying Ned inside the bus station and waiting with him until his bus arrived twenty minutes later, just in case the Hard Eights got any ideas about ambushing him there. Ned had deliberately chosen a bus that was leaving soon—he told them he didn’t particularly care where he went, as long as it was far away from Vegas. He’d boarded a bus heading to Los Angeles without further incident. It was now almost ten-thirty p.m.

  “Ned wasn’t kidding when he said this place was old-school,” Jason said. “Looks like someplace the Rat Pack would stop by for drinks after a show.”

  “Maybe that’ll work in our favor,” Verity said. “They probably won’t want to start a fight on their own turf, so as long as we don’t let ’em get the jump on us, we should be okay at least for now. But what are we gonna do if we find Mickey? We can’t exactly call the police.”

  “If we spot him in there, I guess we just keep an eye on him. Maybe he’ll leave at some point, and we can follow him.”

  “We aren’t even going to recognize him, unless we see him walking,” Verity reminded him. “All we know is he’s got a limp, right?”

  “Yeah, though Ned said he was an enforcer, and he’s big enough to hustle Gary’s body around without much effort, so at least we can rule out little skinny guys.”

  “You think we should give Roper a call and ask him about him? Maybe he’s got a mug shot or something.”

  “That’s a good idea. We’re here now, though—I want to take a look around first. If we don’t find him in an hour or so, well do that. Maybe ask Nakamura too.”

  “You thinking of grabbing him someplace when he’s alone and questioning him?” Verity tilted her head. “Is that legal? I mean, I know they do it all the time on TV, but I thought real private investigators weren’t allowed to do that kind of thing.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Jason said, looking grim. “I want to find out what happened to Gary, and David too, if we can. If that means we gotta lean on Mickey a little…” He shrugged. “Not like a mob guy’s gonna call the cops either, y’know?”’

  “No, but getting on the wrong side of the Mob—even a splinter version—isn’t a smart idea either. Anyway, I think we’re overthinking this,” she said, watching another guy in a suit get out of a taxi and amble toward the casino’s front door. “Let’s just go in and see what we see.”

  After checking their clothes to make sure they hadn’t picked up any of Ned’s bloodstains, they headed in. Compared to the other people they’d seen entering and exiting they were a little underdressed, but at least they didn’t look like tourists. This definitely didn’t seem like a tourist kind of place.

  That suspicion was confirmed when they got inside. Unlike the standard Strip and downtown casinos, the Palomar was set up more like an old-fashioned private gambling club. Everything about the place, from the old-style, carved-wood gaming tables to the fading floral carpet to the sparkling chandeliers hanging overhead evoked an older time before Vegas had become a glitzy tourist destination. Like a much smaller scale version of the Obsidian, the Palomar kept its slot machines segregated in their own parlors off to the left and right of the main gaming floor, their constant, muted sounds of payoffs quieter than the buzz of the small crowd in the main salon. Beyond the casino, Verity spotted the marquees of an Italian restaurant and a steak house. The place didn’t appear to include a hotel. “Where’s the sports bar?”

  “Probably in the back. C’mon, let’s just walk around a little, maybe play a couple hands of something so we look like we belong here. Keep your eyes open, okay?” His significant glance and slight emphasis on the word eyes told her what kind of attention he wanted her to keep up.

  He didn’t have to—she was already taking quick looks around with magical sight as they moved through the casino. Nothing struck her as out of the ordinary—the auras blazed in all the colors of the rainbow as usual, some exuberant, some subdued, some indicating their owners suffered from significant medical issues or stress. A typical crowd, in other words.

  She also spotted several beefy men in well-fitting suits stationed around the area, their own auras indicating watchful attention to the casino. It didn’t surprise her that all of them were men—it made sense that the old Mob would still cling to outdated ideas about gender roles. Quite a few of the dealers and croupiers were women, all of them attractive and relatively young.

  “I feel like I just walked into an old Sinatra movie,” she muttered to Jason.

  “Just pay attention,” he muttered back.

  They reached the rear of the casino without anyone appearing to notice either of them—at least nobody they could see with either normal or magical sight—and discovered Jason was right: the sports bar’s entrance was tucked away in an alcove to the left of the Italian restaurant. They drifted in and found a table near the door.

  Inside, TV screens lined the walls, each one showing a different sporting event: soccer games, horse races, boxing matches, and more. The only exceptions were the left-side wall, which featured a long bar with a mirrored back, rows of liquor bottles, and a screen showing Keno numbers, and the middle-right wall, which had a constantly-changing board displaying real-time odds on various events.

  “Real sausage fest in here,” Verity said, nodding toward the bar and the other tables. With the exception of one blonde in a tight dress draped over a gorilla-looking guy in a shirt and tie, all the other customers were men.

  “Yeah, no kidding. Lemme get us some drinks, hang on.”

  “Just an iced tea for me.” Already, the novelty of being able to order alcohol with her legit ID had worn off, and the last thing she wanted was to dull her mental capacities in the middle of what might end up being a nest of murderers.

  She amused herself watching the small crowd while waiting for Jason to come back. The place was about half full; except for one table with six raucous guys cheering on a boxing match off to one side, most of the other occupied tables had only one or two customers. The majority were over thirty, with hard eyes and focused expressions as they watched the various TVs and made notes while sipping no-nonsense drinks. She wondered how many of them were professional gamblers, and if one of them was Mickey Toro, Mob enforcer. This was a side of Vegas she hadn’t seen before, and she found it fascinating, as if she’d stepped back in time. She’d thought the classic, old-school Mob was a myth these days, a relic of the past perpetuated by the entertainment industry.

  Jason was heading back to their table with the drinks when a thought popped into her head, and she frowned. “Jason…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Something doesn’t make sense.”

  “You’re just now figuring that out?” He grinned, but sobered again when she didn’t return it. “What?”

  “Well…” She let her gaze travel over the crowd again, working it out in her mind as she spoke. “Ned said the Hard Eights don’t work for the Zocchis, right?”

  “Yeah…”

  “And we think this guy we’re looking for—” She deliberately didn’t use his name, in case anyone was listening too closely, and dropped her voice to a near-whisper for the next part “—killed Gary, or at least knows what happened to him, right?”

  “Yeah…”

  “So why are the Hard Eights after us? If they work for somebody else, and the Zocchis are trying to frame whoever they work for by dropping Gary’s body out back of a place these other guys control, then why come after us?”

  “That’s a good question. I guess they might think we believe they did it, and don’t want us getting too close to their operation.”

  “But they didn’t do it. So even if we did get close, we wouldn’t find any proof they killed Gary, or David. Why draw attention to themselves by coming after us—especially since the police know Gary was dumped from somewhere else
? And they probably even know the cops aren’t bothering to investigate the murder any time soon.”

  “You have a point. But it sounds like the Hard Eights and whoever they work for are some crazy bastards—and we know they have magic. If they know somebody with magic is starting to sniff around their operation, that might make them nervous on general principles, right?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yeah…that makes sense, I guess. I’m just really curious about why the Zocchis bothered dumping Gary where they did, unless they’ve got some kind of turf war going with whoever these guys are.”

  Jason sipped his drink, thinking. “It does almost sound like the Zocchis have some specific beef with the Hard Eights’ bosses about this particular thing, doesn’t it?”

  “Especially when you think about what they did to Gary. I mean, look around at the guys in here. Do they look like the types who’d do—that—to a guy they’re beating up if they didn’t have a reason?”

  “So maybe we’re back to Gary making time with the wrong woman…or the wrong guy, if we’re right about him being gay.”

  “Maybe David had a connection to the Zocchis…” Verity shook her head. Too much speculation could get them into trouble, especially when they didn’t have facts to back it up. “Anyway, it was just a thought. This whole thing just keeps making less and less—Jason!” she whispered suddenly. “I think that’s him!”

  She’d still been scanning the crowd as she talked, and suddenly spotted a guy getting up from the bar and heading toward the restrooms. Tall and broad-shouldered, he wore a dark sport coat and had short-cut, dark hair. As he walked, she noticed he had a sort of rolling limp as he took one lurching step followed by one normal one.

  “That’s gotta be him,” Jason agreed, his tone tense.

  “What do we do? We can’t exactly ambush him in the men’s room.”

  He thought about it for a moment. “No…that won’t work. But…hmm. Can you make more than one person invisible at once?”

  “Yeah, but only for a few seconds, and they’d have to be touching. Why? What are you—”

  “I have a plan. It’s probably crazy, but hey, when did that ever stop me?”

  When Mickey Toro came out of the men’s room a couple moments later, the first thing he saw was Verity leaning across the hallway. “Hey,” she said with a smile.

  He looked her up and down and returned her smile. He had a blunt, wide face that could have been handsome if his nose hadn’t been broken multiple times. “Hey, baby. Haven’t seen you around here before.”

  “I’m new in town.” She glanced up and down the hallway to make sure it was clear and nobody else was headed their way. “I’m here with my brother.”

  “Your brother?”

  “That’d be me,” said a disembodied voice next to him. “Keep your hand away from that gun, Mr. Toro, and get in the ladies’ room, nice and easy.”

  Verity reached out to extend the invisibility spell to cover Toro as well as Jason. She was okay so far—she’d drawn some power from Jason while waiting for Toro to come out of the men’s room—but she couldn’t keep this up long. “Let’s go.”

  She pushed open the door to the deserted ladies’ room—she’d checked to be sure—and held it open a moment as if pondering whether she’d forgotten something. When she felt the air currents indicating Jason and Toro had gone past her, she pulled the CLOSED FOR CLEANING sign in front of the door and slipped inside, dropping the spell.

  “What the fuck is this?” Toro demanded. Jason stood a few feet from him, holding his gun on him. “You guys are fuckin’ idiots.”

  “We just want to talk, Mr. Toro. For now, at least,” Jason said.

  “Talk about what?” Toro looked a little flustered, but not nearly as much as they might have expected him to. “Who the hell are you and what do you want?”

  “We want to talk about Gary Woods. You know, the naked dead guy you dumped behind the Pussycat Club?”

  Toro let his breath out. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Tell us about Gary, Mr. Toro. Why’d you kill him? His wife and his two little girls want to know.”

  The enforcer barked a laugh. “Oh, man. You guys are in shit so far over your heads you can’t even see daylight. You don’t have a fuckin’ idea what’s goin’ on, do you? What are you, some kinda junior cops?”

  “We’re doing the questioning, Mr. Toro,” Jason said. “Why’d you kill Gary Woods?”

  “Put the gun away, kid, before somebody gets hurt.” Toro looked at Verity. “Nice trick you did there, girlie, by the way.”

  “I have a lot more. You want to see ’em? You will, if you don’t start talking.” She shifted to magical sight and checked his aura—it looked dead calm. She supposed a guy like him was probably used to having guns pointed at him, and wondered if he’d figured out that Jason wasn’t going to shoot him.

  Toro shook his head, looking smug. “Nah, that’s okay. What you’re gonna do right now is put that gun down.”

  The door to the ladies’ room burst open and three more men rushed in. “Drop it!” one ordered.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Stone had no idea what the usual winter rainfall situation looked like in Brunderville, but if this wild storm wasn’t an aberration, he wondered how the town had survived as long as it had without being washed away.

  By the time he’d struggled through the howling wind to reach the Brunder house, he was once again soaked through despite his overcoat. He hadn’t even bothered with an umbrella, since he knew the harsh squall would destroy the feeble things Americans used instead of proper gear. His feet made wet squelching sounds every time he took a step through the gathering mud, and he had to squint to keep the blowing water out of his eyes so he could see where he was going.

  He knew something was wrong before he got there—one glance with magical sight confirmed it. The red mist had risen up and surrounded the entire house now, and lights flickered through the downstairs windows.

  He flung open the door and strode inside, heedless of the mud and puddles of water he was tracking in behind him. “Duncan!” he called. “Where are you?” He burst into the downstairs staging room, sweeping his gaze around.

  Some of them were there: Duncan, Petrucci, Nick the cameraman, Huff, Celina, Rita, and one of the young assistants. He took them all in fast: so far, at least, they all appeared uninjured.

  “Stone!” Duncan yelled, red-faced with anger. “Where the hell have you been? I expect this kind of shit from Riley, but you ain’t a star yet, baby. You were supposed to be in makeup—”

  “Come with me,” Stone ordered, grabbing the producer’s arm.

  “Wait,” Petrucci protested. “You can’t—”

  He wheeled on them. “Listen to me, all of you. You’re all in a lot of danger right now. If you listen to me and do what I say, you might get out of this alive.”

  “Are you threatening us, Stone?” Duncan sputtered, trying to wrench his arm out of Stone’s grip.

  “Dude, what’s going on?” Cody Huff looked confused and annoyed. “We’re supposed to start shooting in less than half an hour.”

  “You’re not shooting anything,” Stone said. “If you want to survive, you need to get away from each other. Go back to the winery, go to the trailer, go to one of the houses in town. Go somewhere and stay away from each other until you hear back from me.”

  “What the hell?” Cody frowned. “You make it sound like there’s a contagious disease or something here. That’s crazy.”

  For a moment, Stone thought about confirming that hypothesis. It might be easier to make them all think they’d been exposed to something medical than something supernatural.

  Then Kelly Petrucci spoke up: “That is crazy. And anyway, we’ve been together since we got here. Even if it wasn’t crazy, we’d alread
y be exposed.”

  “That’s the spirit, Kelly baby,” Duncan said. “Damn it, Stone, let me go! And where the hell is Riley? He should have been here already.”

  Stone didn’t let go. “You’re going to talk to me, Duncan. It can be voluntarily or not, but you don’t have a choice. What’s it going to be?”

  Duncan’s gaze shot around the room, taking in his people and then Stone. Something in Stone’s eyes must have convinced him he was serious. “Fine. But it’s gotta be quick. Riley’ll be here any minute. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to cut you from this segment, baby. We’ve only got so much time on the genny—can’t have prima donnas getting in the way of the shoot.”

  If things hadn’t been so dire, that would have been the best news Stone had heard all day. For now, though, he’d barely registered Duncan’s words. He tightened his grip on the man’s arm and led him out of the room, calling back over his shoulder: “I’m not kidding, you lot. Get away from each other. All these short tempers today haven’t just been stress. Resist it. Remember, these are your friends. If you start feeling irrationally angry or annoyed, get yourself away. Ms. Wanderley—if you really are as ‘sensitive’ as you claim to be, take a look around and make them see.”

  They all gaped at him as if he’d just donned clown makeup and encouraged them to join him in a tea party right there on the floor. He didn’t wait to see the rest of their responses.