FALLON HAD ALWAYS THOUGHT of Vegas as a massive, amoeba-like creature slowly inching its way across the flat desert landscape, absorbing more and more of it in little nibbling bites. No head or tail, no intelligence, its only purpose to grow larger, fatter, like the others of its kind that had covered the Los Angeles basin and the Phoenix area and were now swallowing parts of the Mojave Desert. Its veins and arteries pulsed and glowed, new cells made up of housing developments and strip malls and big-box stores expanded in every direction as it grew. Heat radiated from it, but it wasn’t the dry, natural heat of Death Valley. It was sweaty, oily, carbonized. Body heat. Engine heat.
Worst of all was the noise it generated. Growls, snarls, howls, roars, siren shrieks, and all the other sounds that came from its writhing bowels in a throbbing, never-ending din. There were louder assaults on the eardrums- NASA rocket launches, supersonic jets on takeoffs and flyovers-but they didn’t go on and on and on. Only two places were worse than the city beasts. One was a military training base during ongoing preparations for war. The other was war itself, the deadly thunder of bombs and rockets, grenades and small-arms fire-hellsounds that by pure chance he had never had to endure himself.
This creature, the Vegas creature, seemed to be spreading even faster than he recalled. Only five years since he’d been there last, on a concessional weekend with Geena, but it might’ve been decades. Accelerated metabolism, increased hunger: proportionately less desert. One of the fastest-growing cities in America. One of the fastest-dying open spaces in the West.
Geena loved it, of course. Not so much Vegas itself as its pulsing, pounding heart-the Strip. The skyscraping, weirdly shaped casinos like New York, New York, Bellagio, Bally’s, Luxor, the Venetian; the lounge acts and musical extravaganzas; the eye-stabbing neon colors that obscured the night sky-all the gaudy, tawdry, money-driven glitz the City Where Anything Goes could supply. To her it was the epitome of excitement. Worked on her like an aphrodisiac, he remembered. Their sex life had never been as lush and experimental as it had been on their few short stays in Vegas.
He couldn’t help wondering briefly, as he reached the northern outskirts, if she’d been here yet with the new man in her life. His name was Macklin-a gynecologist, of all things. Good practice, plenty of money to give her the material possessions she craved. That was all Fallon knew or cared about Macklin or Geena’s affair with him or their future prospects together. You love someone, you live together and suffer and grieve together, and then you fall out of love and drift apart and move on. Happens all the time. Doesn’t have to be bitter or adversarial. All it really has to be is final.
He didn’t need a map to find the Rest-a-While Motel. The Jeep’s GPS navigator took care of that. North Rancho Drive was off Highway 93 in North Las Vegas, a few miles from the old downtown. It took him longer to get there crosstown from Highway 95 than the GPS estimate because of heavy Saturday afternoon traffic, like bunched-together platelets clogging the creature’s arteries.
Casey had described the motel as nondescript and cut-rate. Right. It took up most of a block between a Denny’s and a strip mall, in a section of small businesses and fast-food joints and discount wedding chapels. Low parallel wings stretched vertically from the street, ten units in each, facing one another across an area of dried-out grass that contained a swimming pool and lanai area. The desert sun had baked a brownish tinge into its offwhite paint job. A sign jutting skyward in front claimed that it had Las Vegas’s most inexpensive rates, free HBO. A small sign said VACANCY.
Either the Denny’s parking lot or the strip mall would have been a good place to watch and wait for an expected arrival; easy, then, to walk or drive over to the motel. Number twenty would be one of the rear units, farthest from the street, probably in the wing that backed up against the fenced side yard of an auto-body shop. If the rooms closest to it had been vacant, the sounds of a woman being beaten and raped, even in broad daylight, wouldn’t have carried far or alerted anybody. And Banning, the son of a bitch, had been careful, methodical in his assault: hand around Casey’s throat, panting threats in her ear to stifle her cries.
Fallon went inside the office. Small, but not too small to hold a bank of slot machines and a TV turned on to a sports channel. A chattery air conditioner vied with the voices from a row of talking heads. Behind the short counter, a man wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt had been perched on a stool staring at the talking heads; he stood up when Fallon came in. Middleaged, slightly built with a noticeable paunch and an advanced case of male-pattern baldness. He pasted on a smile as Fallon stepped up to the counter.
“Help you, sir?”
“I’m looking for a friend of mine.”
“One of our guests?”
“Probably not. But maybe you know him. Calls himself Banning.”
The clerk’s expression was as flat as a concrete wall. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“Big, heavyset, tattoo of a fire-breathing dragon on his right wrist.”
“No. Sorry.”
“You work every day this week?” Fallon asked.
“Since Tuesday.”
“Here on the desk every afternoon about this time?”
“That’s right. Why?”
“Then you remember a young blonde woman, Casey Dunbar, who checked in around three o’clock on Wednesday.”
Flicker of something in the man’s eyes. They slanted away from Fallon’s, to a point above his right ear. “I see a lot of faces every day. Can’t remember them all.”
“You gave her number twenty. She didn’t stay long, not much more than an hour.”
“None of my business how long they stay.”
“Banning showed up right after she did, paid her a visit. He didn’t stay long either.”
“So? What’re you getting at?”
“The maid report anything out of the ordinary when she cleaned up afterward?”
“Such as what?”
“Such as bloodstains on the sheets.”
“Bloodstains?” Now there was a little twitch under the clerk’s eye, like a piece of the concrete wall that had worked itself loose. It took him a couple of seconds to smooth it down again. “Listen, Mister-”
“Did the maid report anything like that?”
“No. What’s the idea of all these questions? You’re not a cop or you’d have proved it by now.”
“Let’s just say I’m a friend of Casey Dunbar’s.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know anything about her or this guy Banning or any bloodstains Wednesday afternoon. You satisfied now?”
“Let me have a room for the night,” Fallon said. “Number twenty.”
The clerk was going to refuse; his mouth started to shape the words. But the way Fallon was looking at him changed his mind. “I don’t want any trouble here,” he said.
“Just a room. Twenty’s free, isn’t it?”
“… Yeah, it’s free.”
“How much?”
“Only one night?”
“That’s what I said. How much?”
“Like the sign says-forty-nine ninety-five.”
He took his time producing a registration card, sliding it across the counter. Fallon filled it out, transposing two of the numbers on the Jeep’s license plate. The name he printed on the card was in block letters, easy enough to read upside down.
The clerk read it aloud: “Court Spicer.” The name didn’t seem to mean anything to him.
Fallon laid three twenties on the counter, waited for his change and the room key. Still no eye contact. And no more words except for a by-rote, “Check-out time’s eleven A.M.”
A gamble, playing it this way. If the clerk knew Banning and reported to him, it might flush him out into the open-potentially a quicker way to make contact than trying to track him down on skimpy information. Poten- tially dangerous, too, but what Fallon had told Casey was true: he wasn’t afraid of men who beat up and raped and extorted money from women. The bigger risk was that if Spicer was still in Vegas, Banning would report to him and he’d spook and take Kevin somewhere else.
A gamble, sure. But this was a gambler’s town, and there was risk no matter what game you played.
Fallon drove to the rear and parked in the space in front of number 20, the last in the row on the far side as he’d guessed. He took his pack in with him. Not much of a room: bed, nightstand, dresser, one scarred naugahyde chair, TV bolted to an iron swivel, tiny bathroom with a stall shower. Stifling in there, the smell of Lysol disinfectant nearly overpowering; the room likely hadn’t been rented since Wednesday. You’d need a UV fluorescein detector to find the blood traces in here now.
He put the air conditioner on low, drew the drapes over the single window, made sure the door was locked. Then he sat on the lumpy bed, opened the phone book he found in a nightstand drawer. The Hot Licks Club and Casino was on Flamingo, probably in a section close to the Strip.
He debated calling Vernon Young in San Diego. Casey didn’t want Fallon to bail her out, but he didn’t see any reason to wait before getting in touch with her boss. The quicker the money issue was resolved, the better it would be for her. And if resolving it meant loaning her the two thousand, all right-another gamble. But he doubted it would come to that.
AT &T Information gave him the number of Vernon Young Realty. He put in the call, but Vernon Young wasn’t there. The woman who answered said he didn’t come in on weekends. Fallon persuaded her to give out his home number by saying, “It’s important that I talk to him. It has to do with some money he’s owed.” But when he called the home number, an answering machine picked up. He didn’t leave a message.
Fallon hauled his pack onto the bed, unzipped the side pocket where he kept his handgun in its supple leather holster. Ruger.357 Magnum revolver, four-inch barrel. Moderately heavy piece at two and a half pounds. More weapon than he needed for his routine security job at Unidyne and for selfdefense against snakes on his desert treks, but he was comfortable with it. The army had taught him to shoot, and he’d been comfortable with the heavier military sidearms. Ranked high in marksmanship in basic training at Fort Benning-good hand-eye coordination, steady aim, easy trigger pull. That was one of the reasons they’d assigned him to MP duty instead of letting him train in electronics as he’d requested. A matter of aptitude, he was told.
He hadn’t much liked the MP duty at first. Mainly it involved routine patrols and handling drunken noncoms and issuing citations. Good at it, though, because he’d applied himself, and somebody at the command level had decided that was where he belonged. He’d spent his entire four-year tour at two stateside bases, Fort Benning and Fort Huachuca. Never left U.S. soil the entire time. Fort Huachuca was the better of the two duties by far because it was in Cochise County, in the southeastern part of Arizona- desert country, the place where he’d first learned that deserts were so much more than arid wastelands.
Everybody always said he was lucky. Not only because of the easy stateside duty, but because his tour had fallen between the times of intense foreign combat-enlisted in ’93 at age eighteen, after Desert Storm, and discharged in ’97 before Nine-Eleven, Afghanistan, Iraq. Maybe he was lucky. Like every other soldier he’d ever known, he’d had no desire to get his ass shot off. And yet he’d come close to reenlisting after the Nine-Eleven terrorist attack in New York City. Would have, if Geena hadn’t talked him out of it for Timmy’s sake.
Geena. Timmy. A whole different life back then.
The Ruger was unloaded; he kept it that way whenever he was in Death Valley, except when he was packing well off the beaten track, because loaded firearms are illegal in national parks. Rattlesnakes aren’t, though, and self-defense was more important than strictly following rules. He swung the gate open, looked at the empty chambers for several seconds, and then closed the gate again and sat holding the weapon in his hand. He’d never fired it anywhere except at the police range, once every other month in competitions with Will Rodriguez that he usually won. Never had occasion to draw it even once in the nine years he’d been with Unidyne. Never drawn it in the wilderness, either. He’d seen his share of sidewinders, but never been surprised by one up close.
He could and would shoot a man if he had to. Army training: if your weapon was loaded and you had reason to draw it, you had to be prepared to fire. But only in self-defense. He’d thrown down on fellow soldiers twice during his MP days, one of them a kid from Tennessee on a violent meth high who was threatening bar patrons with a bayonet. He would’ve fired a kill shot when the kid started to attack him, if his partner hadn’t swung a blindside billy first. The incident had made Fallon think what it would be like to shoot an assailant, shoulder the responsibility for a man’s death. He didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t shy away from it either. Putting yourself into a potentially deadly situation meant being willing to do what you had to do to protect yourself. True as an MP and corporate security officer, true as a civilian.
But he was on thin ice here. His California carry permit was no good in Nevada or any other state, and the gun laws here in Vegas were strict. O. J. Simpson and his buddies had found that out the hard way. He could keep the weapon in his pack, but to be strictly legal it would have to be unloaded. An empty sidearm was worthless except as a bluff threat, and if the bluff were called with a loaded piece, you could end up dead.
So the smart thing to do was not to rely on ordnance at all. Keep the Ruger unloaded and tucked away. He was a big man, strong, he was skilled in hand-to-hand combat methods, he could handle himself against men like Banning and Court Spicer. Sure he could-as long as they weren’t armed with chambered weapons and likewise prepared to use them.
He asked himself, not for the first time and not for long, if he’d bitten off more than he could chew. Could be. But he was already committed. And the doubts dissolved when he thought about what Banning and Spicer had done to Casey, the probably frightened eight-and-a-half-year-old with asthma, the promises he’d made. He’d see it through, one way or another.
The digital clock on the nightstand read 4:33. Lull time in the clubs and casinos, especially on a Saturday. If Eddie Sparrow was still playing at the Hot Licks Club, it wasn’t likely he’d be there until evening. Making the rounds to find out which if any of the casinos used gold and black-ruffled sleeve garters could wait a while, too.
He put the unloaded Ruger away, lowered the pack to the floor, then lay back on the bed. The air conditioner made a clunky humming noise. Outside, kid cries from the pool and traffic noise on North Rancho Drive filtered in faintly.
The kid cries started him thinking about Timmy again. He took out the good, cherished memories as he often did, let them stream like slides across his mind. The boy’s love of baseball and their backyard pitch-and-catch games and the trips to Dodger Stadium. The time they’d gone camping together in the Mojave, just the two of them, and how excited Timmy had been. Their first visit to Death Valley, Geena with them that time, and the wonder in the boy’s eyes as he gazed out at the changing colors of the hills from atop Zabriskie Point. The other places they’d gone and the other things they’d done, and the sound of Timmy’s laughter at cartoon antics and silly kid jokes.
The slide show ended abruptly, as it always did, with the image of a still, pale, bandaged face in a white room, the last image before the middle-ofthe-night call from the hospital and the doctor’s solemn voice saying, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Mr. Fallon.”
Timmy.
Ah, God-Timmy.
For an hour Fallon lay motionless, waiting, trying not to think about anything once the memories were locked away again. The army, with its hurry-up-and-wait philosophy, had taught him the rudiments of patience; the routine at Unidyne and the desert treks had honed and refined it for him.
The phone didn’t ring. No one knocked on the door.
That didn’t mean anything one way or another. He was pretty sure the desk clerk knew the man who called himself Banning, had some idea of what had gone on in this room on Wednesday, and had been paid for his collusion and his silence. If that was the way things shaped up, the clerk would report to Banning. What Banning did about it, if anything, was a matter of wait-and-see.
At 5:30 Fallon tried Vernon Young’s home number a second time, got the answering machine again. He called Casey’s cell, to find out how she was doing. There seemed to be some life in her voice when she said she was all right, feeling better. He told her he was in Vegas, but not where he was staying the night, and a little of what he was planning for tonight. There wasn’t much else to say except that he’d call again in the morning.
Six o’clock.
No calls, no visitors.
Fallon went into the bathroom for a small strip of toilet paper. Outside, with the pack slung over his shoulder, he closed the toilet paper into the joining of the door and the jamb, a couple of inches below the lock, with just enough of it showing so that he could feel it with a fingertip. Then he locked the door, put himself and the pack inside the Jeep, and joined the rush of platelets heading for the heart of the Vegas creature.
THE HOT LICKS CLUB wasn’t just a jazz spot. Like just about every other entertainment spot in Vegas, it was dominated by a ground-floor casino and it had a theme-a broad mix of 1920s speakeasy and 1930s supper club. Wall murals and furnishings reflecting that bygone era, jazz music blaring over loudspeakers, employees decked out in period costumes that ranged from tuxedos and gowns to gangster-style and flapper outfits. Combined with the neon glitz-and-glitter of the casino, the effect was ludicrous. But the customers didn’t seem to think so. The casino was packed, the slots and tables getting heavy play, streams and knots of gawkers clogging the narrow aisleways.
Fallon found his way to an escalator at the far end. Propped up there was a large billboard sign that read: BENNY AMATO AND HIS JAZZBOS. VOCALS BY HELEN DUPREE. APPEARING NIGHTLY EXCEPT SUNDAY IN THE INTIME ROOM. DIXIELAND, SWING, FUSION. DINNER AND DANCING TILL THE WEE HOURS. There was a photo of a group of eight men and one woman, all wearing the requisite period clothing. The man in the foreground holding a trumpet was black and middle-aged, but neither he nor any of the other Jazzbos was identified by name.
On the second floor, a velvet-roped aisleway led to a wide set of closed doors. A neon sign above them bore the standard ’30s tilted cocktail glass and the words INTIME ROOM in blue letters. Another billboard in front of the doors announced that the Intime Room opened for dinner at 7:00 and that the music started at 9:00. Nearby was a gated ticket window staffed by a smiling young woman painted up like a Busby Berkeley hoofer. Fallon put on a smile as he walked up.
Before he could say anything, the woman said in a chirpy voice, “We’re sold out for supper, sir, but bar space is still available. The Intime Room has three bars,” she added, as if she were awed by the fact.
“Can I ask you a question before I decide to buy a ticket?”
“Oh, sure. About the Jazzbos?”
“Yes. I thought I recognized the trumpet player in the billboard photo downstairs. Eddie Sparrow?”
“Yes, sir. That’s right.”
“Well, I knew Eddie in San Diego,” Fallon lied. “Is there any chance I could see him for a couple of minutes, say hello?”
“You mean now? Oh, I don’t think he’s here yet. The musicians don’t usually come in until about an hour before they’re ready to go on.”
“They allowed to mingle on their breaks between sets?”
“With the customers? Oh, sure. The management likes them to do that.”
“You said three bars. They have names?”
“Names? No, they’re just bars. You know, one on each side and one in back where you go in.”
“So I can pick any one I want.”
“Oh, sure. Wherever there’s room. But you have to buy a ticket.”
Fallon said patiently, “I will. I’d also like to leave a message for Eddie.”
“Message? You mean with me? I won’t see him when he comes in-I’ll still be working here in the booth.”
“You could pass it on to someone who will see him, couldn’t you?”
“Pass it on?” she said doubtfully. “Well… I guess I could.”
On a page in his notebook Fallon wrote: I’m a friend of Court Spicer. I’ll make it worth your while if you’ll give me a couple of minutes during your first or second break. Look for me at the bar nearest the entrance, white man, blue shirt, tan suede jacket. He signed it Rick, folded the paper twice, and put it and three bills into the tray under the window gate.
“The extra ten is for you,” he said.
Her smile got even brighter. “Thanks! I’ll pass it on. The message, I mean.”
“One more question,” he said as he pocketed the ticket. “Would you know of a casino where the employees wear gold sleeve garters with black ruffles?”
“Sleeve garters?”
“Like women’s garters, only around their upper arms.”
“Oh.” The smile turned into a thinking frown. “Gold with black ruffles… well, I know I’ve seen them somewhere… Oh! Oh, sure, the Golden Horseshoe.”
“The Golden Horseshoe.”
“It’s in Glitter Gulch,” she said.“You know, the Fremont Street Experience?”
Glitter Gulch. The Fremont Street Experience. That was downtown Vegas, a mile or so north of the Strip-five blocks of casinos, restaurants, lounges in a covered mall dominated by a ninety-foot-high, multimillion-dollar Viva Vision screen, the largest on the planet. One of the city’s big attractions. Fallon had gone there once with Geena-for ten minutes, all he could stand of a constant assault on the visual and aural senses. Larger-than-life animations, integrated live video feeds, synchronized music on a high-tech canopy the length of more than five football fields. State of the art fiber-optic light shows and what was billed as 550,000 watts of concert-quality sound.
Deafening noise, to him. The kind that shattered silence like a sledgehammer powdering glass.
Two minutes inside the mall and his head ached; his eyes felt as raw as if he’d been staring into the noonday desert sun. Milling, jostling crowds as thick as those on the Strip. Shills offering come-on gambling packages, hawkers handing out prostitutes’ calling cards and extolling their services even though prostitution was technically illegal in the City Where Anything Goes. Walking here or on the Strip on a Saturday night was like being trapped on the shrieking, neon midway of a madman’s carnival.
It was almost a relief to walk into the Golden Horseshoe. Almost. Electronic bells and whistles and bongs and burbles, rattling dice and clicking chips and clinking glassware, chattering human voices, laughter, shouts and cries and all the other myriad sounds made by men and women caught up in the gaming fever-a pulsing din that kept rising and being bounced back down from the low glass ceiling. Didn’t matter what casino you entered during peak times, from the megaglitz palaces to the low-roller clubs like this one-the noise level was the same. Loud, loud, loud.
The motif here was Western, the old Hollywood movie variety. Waitresses dressed like saloon girls, croupiers and dealers and stickmen and pit bosses in ruffled shirts and string ties and cowboy boots. And all of them wearing gold armbands with black-ruffled edges.
Fallon took a long, slow walk around the casino. Making it look casual when he paused near one of the blackjack, craps, or roulette layouts for a look at a male employee who more or less fit Casey’s description of Banning. None of them had a dragon tattoo or wore a cat’s-eye ring.
A crowd of people was grouped around one of the crap tables, hooting and hollering whenever the dice were rolled. Fallon stepped over that way for a look at the stickman, all but invisible in the crush, whose droning voice reminded him of the handful of crap games he’d gotten into in the army.
“Ee-o-leven, a winner! Pay the line. Same lucky shooter coming out… Eight, hard way eight, eight a number. Place your come and field bets… Nine, eight the point…”
Once more the dice rattled off the board. This time the crowd groaned.
“Ace-deuce, three craps-a loser. Pay the field… New shooter coming out. Place your bets… Seven! Seven, the winner. Pay the front line…”
Fallon moved on.
After a second circuit, to make sure he hadn’t missed anybody, he went into a raised, neon-lit lounge bar. The Western-etched leather stools were mostly filled, the barman busy, but only half the tables were occupied, mostly by players studying the big keno board on one wall. He picked a table along the outer rail, at a distance from the nearest players. A tired-looking cocktail waitress, thirtyish, wearing a Miss Kitty outfit and one of the distinctive sleeve garters, drifted over. He ordered a beer. When she brought it, he laid a ten-dollar bill on her tray.
“Busy night,” he said.
“I’ve seen it a lot busier.”
“Bet you have. Been working here long?”
She gave him an up-from-under-look.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not going to hit on you. I asked because I’m looking for a guy I know. I’ve been told he works here.”
“Is that right?”
Fallon said, “No, keep it,” as she started to hand over his change. “If you’ve been working here a while, you probably know him. This friend of mine.”
“Maybe. What’s his name?”
“Well, he called himself Banning when I knew him.”
“Called himself? What does that mean?”
“Claimed he had a good reason for not using his real name.” Fallon shrugged. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“I don’t know anybody named Banning,” she said.
“So maybe now he’s using his real name again. He’s in his midthirties, heavyset, kinky black hair. Dragon tattoo on his right wrist, wears a gold cat’s-eye ring on his left hand.”
She made a face. “Doesn’t sound like a guy I’d want to know. What do you want with him?”
“He owes me some money.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. What are you, anyway, some kind of cop?”
“Do cops give out five-dollar tips?”
“I don’t know any cops,” she said. “Or any Bannings. Or any guys with dragon tattoos. Thanks for the tip.” And she walked away.
Wrong approach. But what was the right one, given the sketchy information he had?
Fallon took one more stroll around the casino floor. This time there was activity on a raised stage set back into a long alcove at the rear. Tinny piano music blared and spotlights shone hard and bright on eight young women in skimpy costumes dancing a Western movie version of the can-can. Each wore one of the gold-and-black garters, not on their arms but on their bare thighs.
Ah, Christ, he thought. Dancers, cocktail waitresses, blackjack dealers- all the women employees wore them. And there didn’t seem to be any difference between a Golden Horseshoe sleeve garter and leg garter. The one Casey had seen at the motel didn’t have to’ve been Banning’s. It could just as easily belong to a girlfriend who worked here.
Some detective, Fallon. Jumping to conclusions, missing the obvious.
Maybe he was out of his league in this kind of hunt; maybe he wasn’t the right man for the job after all. It might be smarter to turn the legwork over to a professional. Sam Ulbrich, or someone like him. Foot the bill, and then stand off with Casey and wait for results.
No, the hell with that. Geena’s knock on him: not aggressive enough, not a fighter anymore-a quitter. Besides, detectives were expensive and he didn’t have unlimited funds, and there were no guarantees a pro would be able to find out any more than he could. Ulbrich hadn’t found Spicer and the boy, had he?
All right. Man up and use his head from now on.
He rode the escalator to the second floor, where there were a steak restaurant-Old Billy’s Texas Grill-and a coffee shop. He sat in one of the coffee-shop booths, tried a new approach on the woman who waited on him.
“I’m looking for a friend of mine. He might work here, might be a friend of one of the woman employees-I’m not sure which.” And then Banning’s description. Casual, offhand. No mention of the name Banning.
Craps-a loser.
After eight by the time he finished picking at a bad tuna salad. He tried the same line on the cashier while he paid his check, and when he went back down to the casino, on a different cocktail waitress.
Craps again.
THE INTIME ROOM RESEMBLED an oversized 1930s nightclub laid out in a circular fashion, with the three bars and the stage forming an outer ring around an inner one of close-packed tables lit by blue lamps and a parqueted dance floor. Waiters in tuxedos circulated among the tables; even the bartenders were in soup-and-fish. New Orleans-style jazz music blasted from loudspeakers. Benny Amato and his Jazzbos were onstage, warming up for their opening set with riffs and trills and runs that you could hear when one of the recorded pieces ended. The place was packed, standing room only at the bars. Fallon’s choice of the rear bar had been the right one. It was the least jammed of the three because it was the farthest from the performers.
He jostled his way to a position at one end. The stage was a long way off, but he had a clear enough look at the musicians. Mixed group-Latino, African-American, Caucasian. The piano man appeared to be the leader, Benny Amato. The rest were drums, bass, alto sax, tenor sax, trombone, cornet, and Eddie Sparrow on trumpet. Sparrow sat slumped on a stool, doing less noodling with his instrument than the others. He was even smaller in the flesh than he’d appeared in the group photo, maybe five and a half feet tall and a hundred and twenty pounds. He didn’t look as if he could blow a dozen riffs without losing his wind and keeling over.
Fallon knew a little about jazz. Geena’s brother Stephen was a nut on it, had insisted on dragging them to jazz clubs and festivals in the L.A. area. He liked it well enough, in small doses-the bluesy, sweet-and-lowdown pieces more than the wailing, frantic arrangements. There wouldn’t be much of the former here tonight, he figured, but he was wrong. The Jazzbos mixed it up pretty well, up-tempo and down-tempo, classics and less well-known compositions and a few that were probably of their own devising.
The first set was strictly Dixieland, which meant that they’d do swing, probably thirties-style New York or Kansas City, for the second set, and fusion-jazz elements mixed with pop, rock, folk, R &B-for the third. Their late-hour sets would be a mix of all three, with plenty of improv for the true aficionados who would rather linger here than head downstairs to the gaming tables.
They had the usual repertoire of standards: “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “Saint James Infirmary,” “Basin Street Blues,” “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” “Take the A Train,” “Blues in the Night,” “Perdido,” “Gloomy Sunday.” Mixed in were vocals featuring the dark and slinky Helen Dupree: “Moanin’ Low,” “Jazz Me Blues,” “Skeleton Jangle.” Good group, all right, with Amato’s piano and Sparrow’s trumpet dominating the instrumentals. Despite his slightness, Sparrow seemed to have more energy and stamina than any of the others. Plenty of talent, too. His solos earned him enthusiastic applause.
When the first set ended, Fallon watched the musicians file off. Some of them went backstage, while three others, Eddie Sparrow among them, moved out through the audience. It took Sparrow six or seven minutes of handshakes and brief conversations to make his way to the rear bar. When he got close, Fallon stepped out and went to meet him.
“Eddie. Eddie Sparrow.”
The little man focused on him, ran liquidy brown eyes over him. “You Rick?” he asked in a surprisingly husky voice.
Noise and people swirled around them. Fallon had to stand close and lean down to hear and be heard. “That’s me. You blow a mean trumpet, Mr. Sparrow.”
“Thirty years of lip, man. Jazz your business, too?”
“Not like it’s yours. Buy you a drink?”
“Never use it. Come on, we’ll talk out front. Too crowded in here.”
Fallon followed him out and a short distance away from the entrance. When Sparrow stopped, he said, “Five minutes, that’s all I got for you.”
“Five’s plenty.”
“So why the note? What’s worth my while?”
“Court Spicer. I’m trying to find him.”
“You’re not the only one.”
“I heard the two of you were friends, so I thought maybe-”
“Friends, hell,” Sparrow said. “That dude don’t have any friends. You’re not one any more than I am. What you want with him?”
“Personal business.”
“Money business?”
“Among other things. I’ll pay cash for his current address.”
Sparrow laughed, showing three or four gold teeth. “If I knew it, you could have it for free.”
“So you don’t know if he’s living in Vegas now?”
“Not a clue.”
“Or if he is, where he might be playing?”
Shrug. “Bound to be a joint, solo or with some crappy trio. Spicer’s strictly second-rate.”
“You ever play a gig with him here?”
“Never. Once, in San Diego, when I needed some quick cash. Once was enough.”
“He played Vegas about three years ago. You wouldn’t have been here then, by any chance?”
“Three years ago? Uh-uh. I was with the Jazzbos in L.A.”
“Something went down around that time, something that brought Spicer some heavy cash. Any idea what it was?”
“You mean a gambling score?”
“Any kind of score.”
“Not that I heard about. That cat’s mojo is strictly bad.”
Fallon let it go. “I understand you saw him not too long ago.”
“Yeah, I saw him. Jam over in Henderson last Sunday.”
“Talk to him?”
“No, man. He was leaving when I got there,” Sparrow said. “Did a fast fade when he saw me.”
“Like he was trying to avoid you?”
Shrug. “We never did have much to say to each other. And him and the dude he was with seemed to be in a hurry.”
“What dude? You know him?”
“Never saw him before.”
“What’d he look like?”
“Mean-looking, that’s all I remember.”
“Dragon tattoo on his right wrist?”
“Tattoo… yeah. Dragon breathing fire.”
Banning.
“You said this gig was in Henderson. Where, exactly?”
“Some rich cat’s hacienda in the desert. He’s a buff. Throws regular jazz parties, pays high and handsome for the best improv talent. Must’ve been a hundred people at this one.”
“What’s his name?”
“Rossi. Big wheel in one of the chemical outfits over there.”
“You remember the address?”
“No. Benny made the arrangements.”
“Maybe you could ask him? It’s worth a hundred to me.”
“Forget it, man. He knew I was out here talking to you, he wouldn’t like it. Besides, you don’t need an address. That hacienda’s all by itself on a hill, mesa, whatever they call ’em out here. Biggest place around, you can see it a mile off when it’s lit up at night.”
“What part of the desert?”
“East. Far enough out you can see the lake from up there.”
“Lake Mead?”
Sparrow shrugged, then glanced at the gold watch on his wrist. “Five minutes are up.”
“Pay you something for your time?”
“Oh, five skins’ll do it.”
“… Five hundred dollars?”
“You said worth my while, right?” Sparrow laughed again, gave Fallon a broad wink. “Jerking your chain, man. You planning on giving Spicer a hard time when you find him?”
“Yes. A hard time.”
“Then you don’t owe me a thing.”
Late-night quiet at the Rest-a-While. Neon sign, office lights, scattered nightlights; everything else was shadows. Fallon shut off the Jeep’s lights as he rolled past the office; pale desert moonlight guided him into a space two doors down from number twenty. He lifted the pack off the floor where he’d stowed it, swung it onto his shoulder as he stepped out. He walked soft to the room door, paused to listen, then slid his hand down along the jamb below the lock.
The piece of toilet paper was gone.
He keyed the door open and shoved it inward, standing back to one side. Nothing happened. A thin trail of moonlight penetrated the darkness within, showing him a portion of the carpet and one corner of the rumpled bed. He stayed where he was for a minute, listening to unbroken stillness. Finally he moved forward, reached around the jamb, found the light switch and flicked it on.
Empty. Come and gone, whoever the intruder was. Went away frustrated, likely, because Fallon hadn’t left anything of himself in the room.
He dumped the pack on the bed and went right back out again, locking the door behind him. The office lights were on, but so was the night latch. A different clerk, in his sixties and gray-bearded, sat reading a paperback behind the desk. Fallon rang the night bell. The clerk stood up like a soldier coming to attention. He took his time walking over, peering warily at Fallon through the glass.
“Help you, sir?”
“I’m one of your guests.” Fallon waggled his room key to prove it. “Talk to you for a minute?”
The clerk relaxed, shrugged, went back behind the counter and buzzed him in. “Problem with your room?”
Fallon said, “No. Just wondering what time the day clerk comes on. Charley, isn’t it?”
“No, his name’s Max.”
“Now where did I get Charley from? Max, you said? Max what?”
Brief hesitation before the clerk said, “Arbogast. You have some sort of problem with him?”
“Not that type, is he? Hard to get along with?”
“Everybody’s hard to get along with sometimes,” the night man said. His expression and the pitch of his voice indicated that he didn’t much like Max Arbogast.
“Complaints about him from other guests?”
“You want to make one, Mr.-?”
“Spicer. Court Spicer.” The clerk didn’t react to the name. “No,” Fallon said, “I just need to talk to him about a friend of his, comes to the Rest-a-While sometimes-midthirties, heavyset, tattoo on the back of his right wrist, wears a cat’s-eye ring. You know him?”
Again, no reaction. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”
“Max wouldn’t happen to live here, would he?”
“Would you live here if you didn’t have to?”
“When’ll he be in in the morning?”
“He won’t. Tomorrow’s Sunday. One of his days off.”
“Maybe I can catch him at home then. You know where he lives?”
“Couldn’t tell you if I did. Rules.”
“Sure. Rules.”
There was one Arbogast listed in the phone directory. M. Arbogast, 1189 Ocotillo Street, North Las Vegas. The right one? He’d find out in the morning.
The room had a cramped, airless feel and he slept restlessly. He was awake for a good hour before dawn, up and dressed and on his way just as the pink-and-gold sunrise colors began to seep through the sky.
OCOTILLO STREET: SEVERAL BLOCKS of lower middle-class, lowrise apartment buildings stretched out between two thoroughfares. Number 1189 was two stories of one- and two-bedroom units, built of stucco and wood and arranged in a squared-off horseshoe with the closed end facing the street. A sign above the entrance read: DESERT VIEW APARTMENTS. Sure. Right. If you took a ladder and a pair of binoculars up onto the roof, maybe. From the apartments, all you’d be able to see were urban glimpses that might have been of any city in the country.
It was a few minutes past seven, Sunday morning quiet, when Fallon found a place to park on the crowded block. He locked the Jeep with all his belongings inside, walked to where a cactus-bordered path led to the building’s entrance-a set of glass doors that were closed but not locked. When he passed through, he was in a tunnel-like foyer that opened into a central courtyard. He scanned the row of mailboxes until he came to the one marked 2-D. The name tag on it, Max Arbogast, removed all doubts about the phone book listing.
From the courtyard Fallon could see that the apartment entrances opened onto wide concrete walkways, motel fashion. Except for a central section of palm trees and low-maintenance ground cover around the pool area, the Desert View resembled the Rest-a-While. Man in a rut, Arbogast. Or maybe this type of structured environment was his comfort zone.
Apartment 2-D was in the near wing, second floor, with access by elevator or outside staircase. Fallon climbed the stairs, walking soft. Each unit was set off from its neighbor by short stucco walls that created a narrow little sitting area and gave the illusion of privacy. A curtain was drawn across the window alongside the door marked 2-D. Through the glass he could hear the hum of an air conditioner, even though the early morning was cool. The television was on in there, too, indicating that Arbogast was awake.
He put his thumb on the bell button and left it there until he heard footsteps approaching. There was a short silence-Arbogast looking through the peephole in the door-and then a muttered “Oh, Jesus!”
“Open up, Max.”
Arbogast said more clearly, “What’s the idea, what do you want?”
“Talk. Open the door.”
“No. Go away.”
“Talk to me or talk to the police.”
“… The police? Listen, you can’t-”
“Want me to say it louder, so your neighbors can hear? I can make a lot of noise before I call the cops.”
Nothing for a few seconds, while Arbogast wrestled with a decision. Then a chain rattled, the lock clicked, the door opened a few inches. Fallon pushed it inward, saw Arbogast backing away into the center of a cluttered room, went in and shut the door behind him. The apartment smelled of coffee, stale food, unwashed clothes. Your typical sparsely furnished bachelor’s quarters: dirty dishes, empty beer bottles, newspapers and clothing strewn over the floor, the TV set blaring away in one corner. The television was the only new, clean-looking item in the room-a 42-inch flat-screen job.
Arbogast was in his bathrobe, a coffee cup clutched in both hands against his chest as if he were afraid Fallon might try to take it away from him. Grayish beard stubble flecked his thin cheeks; what hair he had left was puffed out in little tufts around his head like a collection of dust mice.
“What’s the idea coming here this time of day, threatening me with the cops?”
“Turn off the TV.”
“… What?”
“The TV. It’s too damn loud. Turn it off.”
Arbogast stared at him a few seconds longer, finally went to where a remote control unit lay on an end table and used it to stop the noise. Then he sidestepped to a breakfast bar that separated the living area from a kitchenette, set the coffee cup down and leaned back against it.
“That’s better,” Fallon said. He moved forward until only a couple of feet separated them. “Now we can talk.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you. What you want? How’d you find out where I live?”
“Banning.”
“Who? Listen, I told you-”
“I know what you told me. Now you can tell me the truth.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything. I don’t know anything.”
“Like I said. Me or the police.”
“You can’t sic the cops on me, I haven’t committed any crime-”
“No? How about an illegal search, for starters?”
“A… what?”
“Illegal search. You searched my room last night after I left the motel.”
“I never did. That’s a damn lie-”
“Then there’s accessory to rape and aggravated assault.”
“What?” Arbogast’s hand spasmed; coffee slopped from the cup onto the sleeve of his robe.
“That’s what Banning was doing in room twenty last Wednesday. Raping and beating up Casey Dunbar. And you helped him do it.”
“No! I never did!”
“He told you she was coming in. He told you to give her room twenty and make sure the rooms near it were empty. He told you to destroy the registration card afterward.”
Arbogast shook his head. He looked as though he wanted to crawl down inside his robe and hide there, like a turtle retreating into its shell.
“I didn’t know,” he said in a cracked voice. “I didn’t know.”
“What didn’t you know?”
“A favor, that’s all. He gave me a hundred bucks. You think I can’t use a hundred bucks?”
“What’d he tell you was going on?”
“He wanted to talk to her, that’s all. Private, he said. Just talk to her. I swear to God-”
“But he didn’t just talk to her and you know it. Bloodstains on the bed, the bathroom towels. Right? The maid found them, or you did.”
“Maria. I had to give her some of the hundred so she wouldn’t… Ah, Jesus, listen, you got to believe me, I didn’t know…”
“When I checked in yesterday,” Fallon said, “you called Banning and told him I was there and asking questions. Then you called him again after you searched my room.”
“I had to. He said… I didn’t know why you were there, who you were, I still don’t know, I had to call him.”
“What’s his real name?”
“No, I can’t tell you that…”
Fallon stepped closer, caught a handful of the soiled robe in a hard fist. Arbogast made a squawking noise, flinching and cringing.
“What’s his name, Max?”
“I… oh shit, all right, all right. Bobby J.”
“J-a-y?”
“No, the initial. J.”
“Last name?”
“I don’t know his last name.”
“Come on, Max.”
“I swear I don’t know, I swear!”
Fallon let go of the robe. Arbogast moved away from him, running his hands over the fabric-drying them. Cool in there, almost cold from the air conditioner, but he was sweating visibly now.
“Where does Bobby J. live?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“You’ve got his phone number, but you don’t know his last name or where he lives. You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth, I swear to God.”
“How do you know him, then?”
“He… listen, you’re not gonna tell anybody about this, are you? It could, you know, it could do me some hurt.”
“How do you know him?”
Arbogast said, looking at Fallon’s ear the way he had at the Rest-a-While, “He brings women to the motel sometimes. For parties. And he don’t want anybody to bother him when he’s there.”
“What women?”
“You know. Hookers.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Max,” Fallon said. “Prostitution may be illegal in Vegas, but it still runs wide open. He doesn’t need to bring hookers to a place like the Rest-a-While, or you to watch out for him if he did.”
“Women, that’s all. Women he picks up…”
“Underage girls. That’s it, isn’t it? Runaways, jail bait.”
Arbogast made a sound in his throat.
“What is he, some kind of pimp?”
“No. I don’t know. He just likes to party with young girls…”
“Party. Drugs as well as sex, right?”
“I don’t know nothing about drugs.”
That was a flat-out lie. He knew, all right. He swiped his hands across the robe again.
“So this Bobby J. paid you to keep other guests away from the rooms he was using and warn him if anybody complained or the cops showed up.”
“Listen, you have to understand… my salary isn’t much, and my rent… A man has to live, don’t he?”
“How does Bobby J. live, if he’s not a pimp?”
“I don’t know.”
“Drugs? Dealer as well as a user?”
“I tell you, I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”
“What’s his connection with the Golden Horseshoe?”
“Huh? Oh… Candy.”
“Who’s Candy?”
“His woman. He brought her with him a couple of times.”
“She work at the casino?”
“Dancer. They got this French can-can show…”
“What’s her last name?”
“I don’t know. Just Candy.”
“Describe her.”
“Blonde. Tall, legs up to here, nice tits.”
Fallon said, “Court Spicer.”
“Huh?”
“Name mean anything to you?”
“… Your name, isn’t it? That’s how you signed the register.”
“What’d Bobby J. say when you told him Court Spicer was asking about him?”
“Wanted to know what you looked like. What kind of car you drive, from what state.”
“What did he say then?”
“Just… look in your room, see what I could find out from your stuff.”
“And when you called him again and told him there wasn’t any stuff?”
“Keep an eye on you, let him know if you tried to pump me again.”
“All right. What’s his phone number?”
“… You’re not gonna call him up? You do, he’ll know where you got it…”
“Not if I tell him otherwise. You’re not the only person in Vegas with his number.”
Arbogast gave it to him, reluctantly. “Just don’t tell him you been talking to me, okay, Mr. Spicer?”
Fallon said, “My name’s not Spicer,” and left Arbogast standing there sweating in his cold apartment.
SUNDAY MORNING SLOW AT the Golden Horseshoe. Red-and-gold curtains were drawn across the stage where the can-can dancers performed. More than half the roulette, craps, and blackjack tables were covered; at a couple of the others and among the banks of slots, a scattering of players, pale and zombie-eyed, sat trying to recoup their losses. A cleaning crew ran a phalanx of whirring vacuum cleaners over the worn carpets.
Fallon sat down at an open but empty blackjack table and tried working the bored woman dealer for information on Candy. It cost him twenty dollars on four lost hands, the last two when he had paired face cards and the dealer hit twenty-one, plus a five-buck tip to find out that the stage show started at one o’clock on Sundays. If the dealer knew Candy, she wasn’t admitting it.
He tried the bartender in the lounge, one of the cocktail waitresses, another waitress in the coffee shop. The only one who could or would tell him anything about Candy was the cocktail waitress, but for another five dollars it wasn’t much.
“I know her, sure,” she said, “but I don’t think she works Sundays.”
“Where can I get in touch with her?”
“I wouldn’t tell you that even if I knew. Besides, she’s not available.”
“I’m not planning to hit on her. That’s not why I want to talk to her.”
“Yeah, sure. Well, whatever you want with Candy, you don’t want anything to do with her boyfriend.”
“Is that right? Why not?”
“Trust me, you just don’t.”
Fallon asked the boyfriend’s name. The waitress gave him a cynical, humorless smile, shook her head, and walked away.
“Another favor? Getting to be a habit.” But Will Rodriguez didn’t sound annoyed. He had a wife who talked nonstop, three rambunctious kids, and an even temperament; it took a lot more than an early Sunday morning call to raise his blood pressure. “What is it this time?”
“I’ve got a phone number and I need the name and address that goes with it. Think you might be able to get me a match today?”
“I suppose I can try, if it’s important.”
“It is.”
“Uh-huh. Anything else you want?”
“Background on whoever the number belongs to, if you can manage it.” “Hey, why not. I had nothing better to do today than spend time with my family.”
“I wouldn’t ask if there was any other way, Will.”
“I know, I know. Let me get a pen… Okay, what’s the number?”
Fallon read it off to him.
“Seven-oh-two area code. Las Vegas.”
“That’s where I am now.”
“… Vegas can be a rough town, amigo.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“The Dunbar woman there with you?”
“Not yet. Still resting in Death Valley.”
“But you’ll be hooking up with her later.”
“Not the way you mean.”
“You think her ex-husband and son are there, is that it?”
“I don’t know yet,” Fallon said. “That’s why I need the name and address.”
Will made a noise that could have been a laugh or a snort. “I never knew they had windmills in the Nevada desert.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Think about it,” Will said. “I’ll get back to you.”
Windmills. Christ.
Fallon drove back to the Rest-a-While. He’d put another piece of toilet paper under the door lock when he left; it was still there. No need to go inside-all his belongings were stowed in the Jeep. He walked through the gathering heat to the motel office.
Yet another clerk was behind the desk, this one a wheezily fat woman with dyed yellow hair. Any messages for room 20? No messages. He asked her if she knew a man named Bobby J., added the man’s description. No again. It didn’t sound like a lie; her expression remained bored and disinterested.
There wasn’t much point in staying here any longer. Bobby J. had to be curious who he was, why he’d come to the Rest-a-While using Court Spicer’s name, but evidently not curious enough to initiate contact. Either that, or the decision to play a waiting game had been Spicer’s. As far as one or both knew, Fallon didn’t have any idea who Bobby J. was or how to find out. The beating and rape hadn’t been reported; they were in the clear as long as they did nothing to call attention to themselves.
He wheeled the Jeep over to the freeway, took Interstate 15 south to Mc-Carran International. There were a lot of motels in the vicinity; he picked a Best Western with a VACANCY sign on Tropicana Avenue, checked himself in under his own name. As before, he brought his pack into the room, left everything else locked in the Jeep.
Late morning by then. He used his cell phone to call Vernon Young’s home number in San Diego. This time he got a person, a woman, instead of the answering machine. He asked for Vernon Young and she went and got him.
“You don’t know me,” he said when Young came on the line, “and my name isn’t important. I’m a friend of Casey Dunbar.”
Longish silence. Then, “How is she? Is she all right?”
“Yes.”
“Is she with you? Let me talk to her.”
“She’s not here right now.”
“Where’s ‘here’? Where are you calling from?”
“Las Vegas.”
“Did she ask you to get in touch with me?”
“No, it was my idea. About the money she owes you.”
“What money?”
“The two thousand dollars she borrowed.”
“… She told you about that? What else did she tell you?”
“Enough about what happened to her son to put me on her side.”
“The boy? Spicer? Did she-?”
“No, not yet.”
“… You’re helping her?”
“Yes.”
“Another detective?” Young sounded flustered.
“Not exactly.”
“Then just who are you?”
“I told you, a friend.”
“Is there some reason you won’t give me your name?”
There wasn’t. “It’s Fallon.”
“She never mentioned anyone named Fallon. How long have you known her?”
The intense, proddy type, Vernon Young. But then, under the circumstances he had a right to demand answers. “It’s a long story, Mr. Young. She can tell you how we met if she wants to. About the money-”
“I’m not concerned about the money, I’m concerned about Casey.”
“She’d be grateful if you’d give her time to pay you back.”
“Yes, yes, as much time as she needs. I should have given her the money in the first place.”
“Maybe let her keep her job, too?”
“Yes, of course,” Young said. Then, “Spicer and the boy… are they why you’re in Las Vegas?”
“It’s possible they’re here. We just don’t know yet.”
Pause. “No offense, Mr. Fallon, but you’re just a voice on the phone. I’ll feel better about all this if I can talk to Casey. You understand?”
“I understand.”
“I would appreciate it if you’d ask her to call me as soon as possible. Will you do that?”
Fallon said he would.
Casey answered her cell so fast, she must have been sitting with it in her hand. “I thought you’d never call,” she said. Spirit, eagerness in her voice today.
“I’ve been busy.”
“Have you found out anything yet?”
“A few things. Nothing definite. How’re you feeling?”
“I’m all right. But if I have to stay in this cabin much longer, I’ll start climbing the walls.”
“Your car fixed?”
“Yes. And yes, I’m up to the drive down there. Where are you?”
Fallon told her the name and location of the Best Western. “I’ll make a reservation for you when we hang up,” he said. “If I’m not in my room when you get here, wait in yours until I get back.”
“Where will you be?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“For God’s sake, don’t be evasive.”
“I’m not. I don’t know yet where I’ll be. You just have to let me do things my own way. I won’t withhold anything important from you.”
“… All right.”
“One piece of news: I just spoke to Vernon Young.”
“What? You called him? For God’s sake, why?”
“To get the money situation straightened out. It’s okay, he’s on your side. You can take as much time as you need to pay back the two thousand. And you can keep your job.”
“He… said that?”
“Yes. He sounded pretty worried about you.”
“You didn’t tell him what I tried to do to myself?”
“No.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I’m a friend helping you try to get your son back. Not much else. He wants you to call him to confirm it and that you’re okay. I think it’s a good idea. He seems to care about you.”
She didn’t say anything. Faint muffled sounds came over the line. Crying a little? If so, she didn’t want him to know it. He made it easier for her by saying he’d see her soon and then breaking the connection.
Different from any woman he’d ever known, Casey Dunbar. A bundle of conflicted, deep-seated emotions. He had a feeling that her depression and her self-destructive impulses were caused by more than the situation with Spicer and her missing son. Self-doubts, more than a little self-hatred. Other things, too, that he couldn’t fathom-like trying to see through dark, turbulent water.
Better not try too hard to understand her and her private demons. He had enough of his own to deal with.
HENDERSON WAS A DESERT community seven miles southeast of Vegas, off the highway that led to Boulder Dam. The fastest-growing city in Nevada, according to advertising billboards, as if that was an attraction to be recommended. Gateway to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
Fallon took the downtown exit and passed several big chemical plants, following signs that said HISTORIC WATER STREET DISTRICT. Once he got there, the whole character of the town changed. Luxury resorts and the usual casinos, art galleries, boutiques-much of the architecture art deco-themed. Henderson was no longer just an industrial center, where half of the state’s nontourist industry output was produced. It had changed its image, gone upscale. Home base now for the wealthy and the upwardly mobile who liked their surroundings and their recreations less gaudy than those in Vegas proper.
He found a parking garage off Water Street, went back and joined the flow of walkers and gawkers. All of the shops were open; no dark Sundays in places like this. He found a gift shop that sold local maps, bought one, and carried it into the lobby of a nearby casino hotel. There were several roads that snaked out into the desert to the east, he found. To cover them all, blind, would take too long.
Once he left the hotel, it took him less than five minutes to locate a real estate agency. The woman he spoke to was eager to please when he said he was in the industrial chemical business, in the process of moving to the area from California, and in the market for a new home.
“We have several excellent listings, Mr. Spicer. How large a home are you interested in?”
“At least four bedrooms. With some open space around it. Would you have anything in the vicinity of the Rossi home?”
“Rossi?”
“Works in the same industry I do. Big home on a mesa.”
“Oh, of course. David Rossi, from Chemco.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, you know, that’s quite an exclusive section…”
“Not a problem.”
That widened her smile. “Well, then, let’s see what we have on or near Wildhorse Road.”
Wildhorse Road ran due east through miles of new housing developments, finished and under construction, unchecked growth that would eventually swallow up every available mile of desert landscape west of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Beyond its present outer limits, where open desert still dominated, a few larger and more expensive homes appeared at widely spaced intervals. In the distance, then, he could see the low mesa rising up off the desert floor, the hacienda that stretched like a huge sand-colored growth across its flat top.
A little over a mile and he was at the base of the mesa, where a paved lane led up to stone pillars and a pair of black-iron gates. Stone walls extended out on both sides to make sure you didn’t drive onto the property unless you were invited. An electronic communicator was mounted on a pole just below the gates. Fallon stopped alongside, rolled his window down, reached out to punch the button that opened the line.
Pretty soon the box made noises and a Spanish-accented woman’s voice said, “Yes, please?”
“Is Mr. Rossi home? David Rossi?”
“What is your name, sir?”
Fallon didn’t hesitate. His own name wouldn’t get him in; only one name might. “Spicer. Court Spicer. It’s important that I talk to Mr. Rossi.”
“Wait, please.”
He switched off the ignition. With the window lowered and the Jeep’s engine shut down, the desert afternoon should have been quiet, but it wasn’t. Even out here he could hear the engines, literally. A small plane sliced through the air overhead, making a rumbling whine. When it passed, the accelerating roar of a couple of racing dune buggies rose out of the distance. That was the thing about the desert-eaters: they were never silent.
Ten minutes passed. He was thinking that he’d been blown off without a callback when a loud electronic buzzing sounded and the gates began to swing inward. He drove through, climbed the asphalt drive between low stone walls. When it leveled off at the top, he was in a sandy parking area large enough to accommodate fifty or more vehicles. Some view from up here, as long as you faced toward the east-sage-dotted desert and distant shimmering water.
Up close, the house seemed almost fortresslike. It was built of native stone with a tile roof that gleamed redly in the sun glare. Seven or eight thousand square feet, Fallon judged, maybe more. Yucca trees and desert plantings, and a flagstone walkway, separated it from the parking area.
A middle-aged Latina opened the door to his ring. She didn’t say anything, just stepped aside so he could walk in. Dim and twenty degrees cooler inside. The woman led him down a hallway, through a massive sunken living room: tile floors, muraled walls, dark-wood furnishings, Indian rugs and pottery. Casual elegance. Geena would have loved it.
The entire inner wall was floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding glass doors. Through the glass, Fallon could see that the hacienda had been built around a central courtyard as large as a parade ground: more yuccas and plantings, stone benches, a swimming pool surrounded by flagstones and outdoor furniture. Sitting at one of the umbrella-shaded tables was a woman in a floppy brimmed sun hat-the only person in the courtyard.
The woman got to her feet as the maid led Fallon outside, stood waiting as they approached. There was a glacial look about her despite the hot sun: thin white robe that covered a slender body from throat to ankles, the sun hat white with white-gold hair showing beneath the brim, white skin. Her expression was cold, too, but it changed slightly, her eyes narrowing and her mouth opening an inch or so, when she got a clear look at Fallon.
“All right, Lupe. That will be all.” She continued to look at him, unblinkingly, as the maid drifted away. The gray eyes were as cold the rest of her. She might have been a mature thirty-five or a face-lifted forty-five.
When they were alone, she said, “I’m Sharon Rossi,” without offering her hand.
“It’s your husband I wanted to see, Mrs. Rossi.”
“My husband left this morning on a business trip. Perhaps I can help you, Mr.-Spicer, is it? Court Spicer?”
“No. My name is Fallon.”
Her unpainted mouth shaped itself into a faint, humorless smile. “You told Lupe you were Court Spicer. A ploy to get yourself admitted?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What do you want with my husband?”
“To ask him about Spicer.”
“Why?”
“I think he may know the man, know where I can find him.”
“Why do you want to find him?”
“Personal reasons.”
“I see. Do you have identification, Mr. Fallon?”
He opened his wallet, slid out both his driver’s license and his Unidyne ID. She studied them for a full minute each, as if memorizing the data they contained, before she handed them back.
“Sit down,” she said then. “It’s cooler under the umbrella.” She waited until he was seated before sitting again herself. On the table next to a cloth pool bag was a pitcher of pale-green liquid with ice cubes and lime wedges floating in it. “Would you like a margarita?” indicating the pitcher. “They’re very good. Lupe’s special recipe.”
“Nothing, thanks.”
Sharon Rossi poured her glass three-quarters full, took a sip that lowered it to the halfway mark. Her movements were slow, deliberate, and for the first time, watching her, Fallon realized she was a little drunk.
“Now then,” she said, “I’d like to know exactly why you want to find Court Spicer.”
“First tell me this. Is Spicer a friend of your husband’s?”
“I highly doubt it.”
“Business acquaintance?”
“No.”
“Friend of yours?”
“Hardly.
“Then why did you agree to see me?”
“Your motives first, Mr. Fallon. Then we’ll get to mine.”
Lay it out for her? He couldn’t see any reason not to, up to a point. He said, “When I find him, I’ll also find his son.”
“His son.” The way she said the words told him she hadn’t known about the boy. “And why do you want to find his son?”
“Spicer kidnapped him four months ago, in San Diego. No one’s been able to find them since. The boy is eight and a half, asthmatic, and his mother is desperate to get him back.”
“I see. And what is your interest?”
“Let’s just say I’m a friend of the mother.”
“Your Unidyne card says you’re a security officer. Does that mean you have experience in detective work?”
“Not if you mean finding people. Military police for four years, private security work for the past dozen.”
“I see,” she said again. Another sip of her margarita. She seemed to be thawing a bit. Maybe it was the liquor, maybe what he’d told her. Or maybe a little of both. “What made you come here to ask about Court Spicer?”
“A jazz musician who knows Spicer saw him at a jam here last Sunday.”
“Ah, yes. David’s all-consuming passion for jazz.”
“Did you see Spicer then?”
“I saw him, yes.”
“Talk to him?”
“No. We have nothing to say to each other.”
“So he’s been here before. At other parties.”
“But not to listen to the music. On business, I think.”
“What kind of business?”
“My husband prefers not to tell me that.”
Fallon said, “Spicer was with a man called Bobby J. last Sunday.”
“Was he? I wouldn’t know.”
“The initial J. Bobby J.” Fallon described him. “Familiar?”
“Vaguely. I seem to recall the tattoo. But there were quite a lot of people here. There always are at one of my husband’s jams.”
“His jams?”
“Ours,” she amended, but a faint resentment lingered in her voice. David Rossi was the jazz buff, not his wife.
“Was Spicer playing at the Sunday jam?”
“No. He wasn’t a spectator either. He and my husband spent some time together in David’s study.”
“Any idea why?”
“No, but I’d like to know. I’d very much like to know.” Sharon Rossi drank again before she added, “My motives now, Mr. Fallon.”
He waited.
“Do you know anything about my husband?”
“Not much, no.”
“He’s usually very sure of himself. I’ve never known him to be afraid of anything or anyone-except Court Spicer.”
“How do you mean, afraid?”
“Just that. Nervous, on edge-afraid. Every time Spicer has come here, David has looked and acted the same, during and afterward.” She made a low, mirthless chuckling sound. “It’s almost Pavlovian, the effect that man has on him. And I haven’t a clue why. The one time I asked him about Spicer, he told me to mind my own damn business.”
Fallon asked, “How long has he known Spicer?”
“I’m not sure. A while.”
“More than three years?”
“At least that long.”
“How often does Spicer show up here?”
“Not often. And when he does, judging from David’s reaction, it’s without an invitation.”
“I wonder if your husband knows where he’s living now.”
“He might. It would depend on their business, wouldn’t you say?”
“What do you think that business is?”
She poured her glass full again, drank deeply this time. The thaw was complete now; there was high color in her cheeks, a faint glaze on her eyes. She was the type of drinker who knew her limits and seldom exceeded them, but she seemed to feel she had cause today. Dutch courage for what she was about to reveal.
“I think Court Spicer has some sort of hold on my husband,” she said. “I think he comes here for money, large amounts of money.”
“Blackmail?”
“Or extortion. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but David keeps a large sum of cash in his safe. The morning after the last jam, I opened the safe and there was quite a bit less than there should have been.”
“How much less?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
Spicer’s outside source of income-not much doubt of that now. He must have stumbled onto something three years ago, something David Rossi didn’t want revealed, and been using it to bleed him ever since.
Fallon asked, “So you thought I was Spicer coming back for more. What were you planning to do?”
“Confront him.”
“Just like that?”
“No.” She reached into the pool bag, came out with nickel-plate and pearl shining in her hand. “With leverage.”
It wasn’t much of a gun. A.32-caliber automatic slightly larger than her palm. Lethal enough at close range, but unreliable at any distance.
“Suppose he wasn’t intimidated,” Fallon said. “What would you have done then?”
“Would I have shot him? I don’t know, I might have.”
“It takes a lot of courage to shoot a man.”
“Or a lot of provocation. When it comes to protecting my nest, I’m as much of an animal as any wild thing.”
Fallon believed it. He said, “Why tell me all this, Mrs. Rossi? It’s personal and you don’t know me, you didn’t even know I existed until a few minutes ago.”
“Isn’t it obvious? You have a good reason for finding Court Spicer and you seem determined to do so. When you do, you’ll be in a position to find out what hold he has on my husband. And to recover anything in his possession that might be… shall we say embarrassing?”
Fallon said nothing.
“The idea doesn’t appeal to you? You’re big and strong, Spicer is small and soft. You shouldn’t have any difficulty.”
Still didn’t say anything.
“If you agree,” she said, “I’ll pay you the same amount my husband gave Spicer-five thousand dollars. And if you succeed, I’ll double that amount.”
He said carefully, “I’m not in this for money. Money isn’t important to me.”
“Oh, come on now. Money is important to everyone.”
“Not me.”
“So noble. Just doing a favor for a friend. Why not do what I ask and make it two favors, the second one paid for?”
It sounded good on the surface. Return a kidnapped boy to his mother and at the same time put an end to a blackmail or extortion game. Recoup his expenses and make a profit, whether he succeeded or not. But there were pitfalls. As things stood now, all he had to do if and when he located Spicer was to call the police and have him arrested on the kidnapping charge. What Sharon Rossi wanted meant confronting the man, maybe threatening him, maybe leaning on him. Breaking the law. Another thing: suppose the hold Spicer had on David Rossi involved a felony of some kind? Suppose there was incriminating material and he could lay hands on it? If he turned it over to Sharon Rossi or her husband for pay, he’d be guilty of withholding evidence, compounding a felony. He could go to jail.
“Well, Mr. Fallon?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “No.”
“Why not, for God’s sake?”
He told her why not.
“False concerns,” she said. “Whatever Spicer’s hold, it can’t possibly involve a serious crime. I know my husband-he’s not capable of a criminal act. Infidelity, oh yes, and questionable business practices, yes indeed, but those are his limits.”
That was the liquor talking. Nobody knows anybody else as well as they think they do, and that went double for wives and husbands.
“I’m sorry. The answer is still no.”
“There’s nothing I can say to convince you?”
“No.”
It was several seconds before she said, “Suppose I could help you find Court Spicer.”
“How could you do that?”
“I have access to my husband’s personal records. It’s possible he has Spicer’s current address written down somewhere or stored on his computer.”
“If that’s the case, why haven’t you looked before? Or have you?”
“Yes, but mainly I was searching for something that would explain Spicer’s hold on David. I may have overlooked an address or phone number. Or failed to look in the right place. Would you do what I ask in exchange for that information?”
Fallon thought about it. Worth yet another gamble?
He was still thinking when she said, “I could confront Spicer myself, of course. But then I’m not particularly brave or aggressive outside the confines of this house. And it might compromise your efforts to return the child to his mother.”
“Yes, it might.”
“I could hire someone else to do the job. A professional. That might work to both our benefits.”
“It might also trade one blackmailer for another. There aren’t many reputable detectives who’d take on a job like this.”
“I’d run the same risk with you, wouldn’t I?”
“I’m not that kind of man.”
“No, I don’t think you are,” she said. “I wouldn’t have been as candid with you if I did. Which leaves you as my only option. Will you please help me?”
It was the “please” that made up his mind; the way it came out told him it was not a word she used often. “All right, Mrs. Rossi,” he said. “If you can give me a lead to Spicer, I’ll try to find out what you want to know.”
“And any… material you might recover?”
“You’ll get it, as long as it doesn’t put me in a legal bind.”
“I’ll have to be satisfied with that, then, won’t I,” she said.
Fallon traded his cell phone number and the name and location of the Best Western for her private number. “How long will it take you to search?” he asked then.
“Not long, unless I have to go to David’s office at Chemco. If there’s anything to find, I’ll have it tomorrow at the latest.”
She stood up when he did, steady on her feet despite all she’d had to drink. He didn’t think she’d keep on boozing after he left. Woman with a purpose now. The drinking was a product of loneliness and a less-than-happy marriage, but it was plain that she loved her husband and would do whatever was necessary to keep the relationship intact.
In a way, Fallon thought, she was a lot like him. A fighter at heart. All either of them really needed was something worth fighting for.
WILL RODRIGUEZ GOT BACK to him just as he was leaving the Hen-derson city limits. “I had to call in a favor of my own to get what you asked for,” Will said. “You owe me big time, amigo.”
“I know it. I won’t add to the debt.”
“Number you gave me is a cell phone registered to a woman named Harper, Constance Harper.”
Constance Harper. Constance-Candy’s real name? In character for a man like Bobby J. to use a phone registered in his girlfriend’s name.
“What’s the address?”
“Twenty-nine hundred Cactus Flower Court, unit twenty-two-B, Vegas.”
“Anything on her? Known associates, anything like that?”
“Not without a lot more checking than I had time to do. Pretty common name. What does she have to do with the missing kid?”
“Directly, nothing,” Fallon said. “But if I catch a break, she could be a way to find him.”
Twenty-nine hundred Cactus Flower Court turned out to be a collection of forty or so town-house-style apartment buildings, four units to each, that took up an entire block a mile northeast of the Strip. Long entrance drive at one end, rows of covered carports for the tenants, an open visitors’ parking area nearby. Low-maintenance desert landscaping with crisscrossing crushed-rock paths.
Fallon put the Jeep into one of the visitors’ slots and went first to check the carports. Each one was marked with a unit number; 22-B contained a dark blue Lexus a couple of years old-not the kind of car you’d expect a strong-arm pimp or a dancer in a Glitter Gulch casino to be driving.
He followed one of the paths into the complex. Kids and adults made a lot of Sunday-afternoon noise over at a pool and picnic area. The town houses were arranged in geometrical rows, separated by plantings and paths; he found his way to the building numbered 22. Apartment B was ground floor, its front windows and one beside the door covered by blinds.
When the door opened to his ring, it was on a chain and half of a woman’s face appeared in the aperture. A wrinkled, sixty-something face topped by gray-streaked red hair. The one eye studied him warily.
“Yes?”
“Constance Harper?”
“That’s right. I don’t know you. What do you want?”
“Is Candy here? Or Bobby J.?”
“Who?”
“Candy, from the Golden Horseshoe. Her boyfriend, Bobby J.”
“Never heard of them. You got the wrong unit, mister.”
“He has a dragon tattoo on his right wrist-”
That was as far as he got. She shut the door in his face.
Fallon went back to the Jeep with his teeth clenched tight. The woman hadn’t lied to him. The liar was Max Arbogast.
The son of a bitch had deliberately given him a wrong phone number.
Arbogast wasn’t home. Or if he was, he wasn’t answering his door.
Mild hunger prodded Fallon into a shopping-center coffee shop a few blocks from the Desert View Apartments. Lousy food and two glasses of weak iced tea used up half an hour. One more pass at Arbogast’s apartment, he decided, before he went back to the Best Western.
He couldn’t have timed it better. As he came down Ocotillo Street, Max Arbogast was just getting out of a parked Hyundai with a grocery bag under one arm.
Fallon swung the Jeep into a space opposite. Arbogast was on his way up the path to the entrance by then; he didn’t see Fallon cross the street and come up fast behind him, didn’t know he was there until he said, “Hey, Max.”
Arbogast stiffened, turning. “You again.”
“Me again. You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
“What you want now?”
“The truth this time.”
“Truth? What’re you talking about?”
“Let’s go up to your apartment.”
Arbogast gnawed on his lower lip, little nibbling bites like a rat gnawing on a piece of cheese. “No. I had enough of that this morning.”
“Your car, then. Just so we have a little privacy.”
“I got nothing more to say-”
Fallon closed fingers around scrawny biceps, squeezed hard enough to make Arbogast wince. “Your car. Now.”
They went to the Hyundai. Arbogast unlocked the passenger door and Fallon prodded him inside, then slid in behind him. With the door shut, the car smelled of dust and leftover fast food. The grocery bag contained a six-pack of beer; Arbogast ran his hands over it, looking at Fallon’s ear again.
“You gave me the wrong phone number for Bobby J.”
“The hell I did.”
“The hell you didn’t. Let’s have the right one.”
Arbogast hesitated, but only for a few seconds. The number he recited then was close to the one that belonged to Constance Harper, but not that close.
“If that isn’t right,” Fallon said, “I’ll be seeing you again. And you won’t like what happens.”
“It’s right. I swear it.”
“Like you swore it this morning. What else did you lie to me about?”
“Nothing, for Chrissake.”
“So you told me everything you know.”
“Everything, yeah.”
“I don’t think so. I think you know or have some idea where Bobby J. lives or works or hangs out.”
“No.”
“Listen, Max. I’m going to find him one way or another, and when I do I’ll either drop your name or I won’t. Be straight with me and I never heard of you. Keep lying, and I’ll make him believe you sold him out for cash.”
Arbogast did some more lip-gnawing. The thin hands kept on moving restlessly over the bag.
“Okay. Okay. Cheyenne Street.”
“What about Cheyenne Street?”
“He’s got a place there. In back.”
“In back of what?”
“Slot machine repair business.”
“His?”
“I don’t know. His, some friend’s, I don’t know. I had to take him something there once. A package.”
“Drugs?”
“A package.”
Fallon sat looking at him for a time. All he saw was pale profile; Arbogast still wasn’t making eye contact.
“What’s the street number?”
“Nine eighty.”
“That better be right, too.”
“It is, it is. Nine eighty Cheyenne.”
Arbogast opened the driver’s door, quick, as if he were afraid Fallon might try to stop him. He didn’t even wait for Fallon to get out so he could lock the car again, he just started running for the Desert View’s entrance.
The Jeep’s GPS pinpointed the Cheyenne Street address. Northeast Las Vegas, not too many miles from the Desert View Apartments. But Fallon didn’t go that way; he went south to the Best Western instead.
Casey was at the motel, her Toyota slotted in front of the unit he’d reserved for her. He parked next to it, rapped on the door.
“How long have you been here?” he asked when she let him in.
“About two hours.” She caught hold of his arm, gripped it tightly. “What’ve you found out? Anything?”
“A few things. Getting closer.”
“To Court and Kevin? They’re still in Vegas?”
“That I don’t know yet.”
“Well, for God’s sake, what do you know? You promised you wouldn’t hold out on me, Rick.”
“I’m not trying to.”
He filled her in. As much of what he’d discovered as he thought she should know at this point. She paced while she listened. Tense and restless after the long drive and long wait, but she seemed all right otherwise. She’d made an effort with her appearance, either for him or for herself: hair combed, lipstick on her scabbed lips, makeup covering the healing marks on her face. The tight-fitting blouse and skirt she wore made him aware that her figure was well-developed.
“What now?” she said when he finished talking. “Just wait for the Rossi woman to call? Suppose she doesn’t, then what?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m going out again.”
“Where? To do what?”
“To see what I can find out about Bobby J.”
“Let me go with you.”
“No. It’s better if I do this alone.”
“I did enough sitting around at Furnace Creek. I’ll go crazy if I have to keep doing the same thing here.”
“It won’t be for long. Go over to the coffee shop next door, have a drink or two at the bar.”
She started to argue, changed her mind and sat down heavily on the bed.
Fallon said, “I’ll need the keys to your car.”
“My car? What for? What’s the matter with your Jeep?”
“Nothing’s the matter with it. How much gas is in the Toyota?”
“I don’t know, I had it filled before I left. Rick…”
“The keys,” he said. “I’ll try not to be too long.”
A BLACK-PAINTED SIGN ON the cinder-block building at 980 Cheyenne Street said: CASINO SLOT MACHINE REPAIR AND RESTORATION. MECHANICAL AND ELECTRONIC SLOTS. ANTIQUE BALLY’S, MILLS, JENNINGS-SALES AND REPAIR. The building, in a semi-industrial area off I-15, looked to be thirty or forty years old and in need of a paint job. On one side was a parking area that extended around to a narrow loading area at the rear; another cinder-block edged over close on the far side. Two entrances were visible from the street, the main one in front and a side door off the parking area. The only car on the property, a bulky, dusty Ford Explorer, was parked twenty yards or so from the side door.
Fallon took all of this in on a slow drive-by. The place looked closed up, deserted despite the Explorer. The sun, big and hazy orange, had drifted low in the western sky; where its descent was blocked by buildings and trees, shadows gathered in pools and pockets along the cinder-block’s wall.
He circled the block. There was no rear access to Casino Slot Machine Repair from the next street over; you could see the lines of its roof, but that was all. When he turned back onto Cheyenne, he made sure there was nobody in sight and then parked the Toyota a short distance away, underneath a droopy palm tree on the opposite side of the street. Good vantage point: both front and side entrances and all of the parking area.
He picked up the 7 × 50 Zeiss binoculars from the seat beside him, slid down to a level where he could rest the glasses on the sill, and adjusted the focus until everything over there came into sharp relief. Next to the side door was a window with blinds drawn behind it. The powerful glasses showed him bars of light between the slats.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to arouse suspicion. Just the Explorer, the otherwise empty lot, the side door, the lighted window.
Setup.
Trap.
He’d figured it that way from the first; that was why he’d switched cars. Arbogast’s lack of surprise, his shifty-eyed nervousness, the too-quick way he’d given up the Cheyenne address-all red flags. The little bastard must have contacted Bobby J. after Fallon’s first visit, told him about giving out the wrong phone number, been told in return what to say and do if Fallon came back to brace him again. Fallon was asking too many questions for Bobby J. to keep ignoring him. So the trap had been set to find out who he was and why he was snooping around, and then to get rid of him one way or another-threats, a beating, maybe even a permanent disappearance. The desert surrounding Vegas had a reputation as a missing-persons graveyard.
Well, none of that was going to happen. Not here, not tonight.
Fallon waited, the Zeiss glasses on his lap. There wasn’t much activity in a neighborhood like this on a Sunday evening-an occasional car or truck passing by, but no pedestrians. The steady traffic hum on I-15 was audible but muted.
Sunset, dusk settling. And the cinder-block’s side door opened and a man eased out into the lot.
Fallon snapped up the binoculars. The man was built like a pro football lineman, with a mane of yellow hair and a yellow beard-not Bobby J. He walked out past the Explorer, to gaze up and down the street in an agitated way. Looking for a black Jeep, so he didn’t pay any attention to the parked Toyota Camry. After a few seconds he returned to the side door, paused to light a cigarette, then went back inside.
So there were at least two of them. And it didn’t look as though they were as good at waiting as Fallon was.
Full dark came quickly, as it always does in desert country. Lights blossomed in the front windows of the cinder-block-Judas lures, for all the good it would do them. The rest of the property remained dark. The only other lights in the vicinity were on street poles, none close to the Toyota.
Another hour went by. The side door opened again and the yellowbearded man came out and repeated what he’d done before, the fast, hard way he moved and a slapping gesture of one hand against his pant leg suggesting both frustration and anger. He stayed out there less than a minute. Fallon watched him go back inside, heard the faint slam of the door.
How much longer would they wait?
Not too long. Less than forty-five minutes.
The front window lights went out first. A couple of minutes later, the side door opened, blackness replaced the light inside, and two figures emerged. Fallon put the glasses on them; the Zeiss’s capacity for clear night vision was the best on any pair of commercial binoculars he’d used. The one who locked the door matched Bobby J.’s description. His face was tight-set and he seemed to be arguing with the bearded man as they crossed to the parked Explorer. Not Bobby J.’s vehicle, evidently; he got in on the passenger side.
Fallon drifted lower on the seat, his eyes on a level with the sill, as the Explorer’s headlights came on and the machine swung around fast, burning rubber. It was headed his way as it came off the property; the beams splashed over the Toyota. He sat up, reached for the ignition as soon as it shot past.
The Explorer was at the intersection when he completed his dark U-turn. As soon as it turned left, toward the freeway, he put the headlights on and increased his speed. Once he made the turn, he was less than a block behind.
He maintained that distance onto I-15 south, then slipped over into a different lane and dropped farther back. The Explorer, with its high rear end and fat taillights, was easy to keep in sight. The way Yellow Beard was driving, moderate speed, no lane changes, said that they didn’t know he was there. Even if they’d considered the possibility of a tail, it would be his Jeep they’d be alert for.
Vegas proper was where they went. The Charleston Boulevard exit, then half a mile west along there and into a deserted but well-lit shopping center. Fallon rolled on past, watching in the rearview mirror as the Explorer braked alongside a low-slung, light-colored car parked near the entrance. Bobby J.’s wheels. Yellow Beard dropping him off.
Fallon caught a green light at the next intersection, turned right, and pulled to the curb. From there he watched the Explorer U-turn, head out of the lot the way it had come in, and make a cross-traffic left turn back toward the freeway. Bobby J. had closed himself inside the light-colored car; its headlights flashed on. If he drove away in the same direction as Yellow Beard, keeping him in sight and catching up wouldn’t be easy.
But he didn’t. Piece of luck there: the light-colored car came shooting across the lot, at an angle to where Fallon waited, exited and turned right onto the same four-lane cross street. Mustang, one of the original models, white or beige. Fallon gave its taillights a full block lead before he swung out to follow.
And that was when his cell phone rang.
He almost didn’t answer it. Tailing another car at night was tricky enough without any distractions. But the noise grated on him, and Bobby J. was still moving in a straight line and about to be held up by a red light at the next intersection. Fallon yanked the phone out of his pocket, flipped it open.
“Mr. Fallon? This is Sharon Rossi.”
“Yes, Mrs. Rossi.”
“I think I may have found what we’re looking for. I’m not sure, but I don’t see what else it can signify.”
The light was green now and they were rolling again. A rattletrap pickup had cut in between the Toyota and Bobby J.’s Mustang. Fallon swerved into the other lane. Sharon Rossi’s voice droned in his ear, telling him what she’d found was a piece of paper under the blotter on her husband’s desk, in a handwriting different from his.
“Go ahead, what’s on the paper?”
“The name on it is Steven Courtney. That could be the name Spicer’s using, don’t you think? The same initials-”
“What else?”
“ ‘Care of Co-River Management, Laughlin.’ ”
“Laughlin.”
Bobby J. was about to make a left-hand turn. No signal, just the flash of brake lights and a rolling stop as he waited for a break in the oncoming traffic. Fallon couldn’t get over behind him in time; the pickup, forced to slow, too, was blocking the lane.
“That’s all,” Sharon Rossi said. “No address or phone number.”
Fallon passed the Mustang just as Bobby J. completed the turn, then cut into the inside lane. There was a left-turn lane at the intersection ahead, the light green. He hit the gas hard.
“Mr. Fallon?”
A quick glance into the rearview mirror showed him the Mustang just disappearing into a side street up ahead. He snapped, “Emergency, I’ll call you back,” and threw the phone onto the passenger seat so he could grip the wheel with both hands.
The light flashed yellow as he veered into the left-turn lane. He kept on going, out into the intersection in a sliding U-turn. Got the Toyota straightened out, accelerated to the side street and made the turn just in time. Near the end of the next block ahead, taillights threw a sheen of crimson on the darkness and the Mustang made a sharp left and disappeared behind a low wall.
Residential street: older tract houses on small lots. Fallon reduced his speed to twenty-five. The wall, he saw as he neared, was whitewashed stucco-a boundary between two of the houses. The one beyond had a huge tangle of prickly pear cactus growing in the front yard. The Mustang was in the driveway, dark now and drawn well back toward the rear. As Fallon passed, its door opened and a dome light came on and the dark shape of Bobby J. emerged.
Fallon drove on to the next intersection. A street sign there said he was on the 200 block of Sandstone Way. He turned right onto Pyrite Way, circled that block onto the first cross street-Mineral Way-and came back onto Sandstone. Short of the corner, he parked and shut off the lights. And sat there to let his pulse rate slow while he did some thinking.
What he felt like doing was going to the house on Sandstone, taking Bobby J. by surprise, and beating the crap out of him-payback for what he’d done to Casey, and what he and Yellow Beard had planned to do at Casino Slot Machine Repair. Stupid idea, fueled by ragged emotions. It could get him arrested for trespassing and assault, for one thing. Or the tables turned and the crap beaten out of him: he wasn’t armed and he didn’t know who else was in that house.
Besides, Bobby J. wasn’t the important issue here. Finding Court Spicer, reuniting Kevin and his mother, was. He hated the idea of letting a man like that get away without paying; but he wasn’t a crusader, he wasn’t even a law officer-it was not up to him to dispense justice. Sooner or later Bobby J. would take a fall, a hard fall. His kind almost always did.
Fallon started the car and headed back to the Best Western to tell Casey the news about Laughlin.