Diva Las Vegas (Book 1 in Raven McShane Series) (5 page)

He shrieked in pain for a second and then began wailing a silent scream that only dogs could hear.  As he
lumped
over the table in agony I pushed past them and got the hell out of there.  I retraced my steps down the hallway and emerged next to the bar and did a quick glance down at my shirt.  I was wearing a thin gray t-shirt that was now half-soaked with sweat.  I held my arms against my sides to hide the sweat, moving towards the valet stand in a fast waddle like a penguin trying to escape a polar bear.  I figured I was safe as long as I was out in the open.  Cameras were watching everything, and there were at least fifty people lingering around.

My heart was still pounding.  I couldn’t believe I had just been back-roomed.  That was something they did in the days of the Rat Pack and Bugsy Siegel, not in the twenty-first century Disney version of Las Vegas that I lived in.  Thankfully, my car arrived quickly.  The inbred valet flashed a lascivious and mirthless smile at me while I got into the car.  Did this lowlife think he was getting a tip?  I thought he could use a knee to the groin, too, but I just flipped him off and gunned the engine. 

Somehow I made it back to my apartment without incident.  The familiarity of my condo was reassuring, and I checked myself in the mirror.  My neck was red where Holman had dug his claws into me, and my knee had a nasty bruise forming.  I must have bashed it against a chair when I bolted out of that back room.

It was only two o’clock, but I didn’t feel like working or doing much of anything else.  I found I was muttering profanities to myself as I relived the scene over and over in my mind.  If I let it ruin my day, I thought, then Holman would win.  So I decided to give myself the afternoon off.  I poured some scotch and ice into a pint glass, the theory being that with a bigger glass I wouldn’t have to get up as often for refills.  I slumped onto my leather couch and flipped through the channels on TV.  I settled on a corny Steve Martin comedy from the eighties.  I’d seen bits and pieces of the movie several times before, but never the whole thing.  Halfway through the movie, and all the way through my pint glass, I lost track of the plot and clunked out.

Friday morning I woke up on the couch with a throbbing headache.  I’d slept right through the afternoon and night.  The TV was now showing a children’s cartoon featuring a pair of disturbingly well-endowed female superheroes whose chirpy voices stabbed like daggers in my head.  It was definitely a three-Advil morning.

After getting myself together, I realized I needed to talk to Rachel again.  Things had changed: getting banned from the Outpost was more than a minor setback.  It was obvious that Phil d’Angelo wasn’t going to play nice, and it seemed likely that he’d already turned the entire casino staff against me.  I would need a whole different approach to the case or Rachel would have to find someone else.  

I left a message on Rachel’s cell phone asking if she had any other ideas on Outpost people I could talk to.  I plopped back on the couch, hoping my headache would go away.  After a half-hour of mindless television and about three quarts of water, it went from a throbbing pain to a dull ache.  I considered that a minor victory.

After lunch I decided to give Mike a call—he’d find the story amusing, at the very least.  I reached him on his cell, and he lived up to expectations.  He had a pleasant laugh, but I was determined to take offense anyway.

“I didn’t find it that funny.  A little dramatic of them, don’t you think?”

“What, the treatment?”

“If that’s what you call it.”

“You haven’t been doing this very long.  Even the big corporate hotels have back rooms.  They can legally detain you if they think a crime’s been committed,” he explained.

“And if they don’t think any crime has been committed?” I pressed.

“They just say ‘oops’”.

“Somehow I don’t think goons at the Bellagio or Wynn are taking people to back rooms and digging into people’s flesh,” I said.

“You never know.  I’ve heard some scary things about people who take out six figure markers and try to skip out when they lose.”

I wasn’t really buying it.  I told Mike I was going to hole up indoors for the rest of the day, and I spent the afternoon surfing the web for information about Cody Masterson and feeling like the world’s worst private investigator.

Around five o’clock my agent called to remind me I had a three-hour engagement the next morning at a tire convention.  Conventions were annoying, but they were easy gigs: wander around, hand out a few hundred pamphlets for shock absorbers or dental tape, laugh at a few dozen bad jokes, and pocket a check for $1,500.  Conventions were hugely preferable to stuffy VIP cocktail parties, where I was expected to mingle and feign interest in the latest developments in laser orthodontics (this week) or wheelchair equipment (next month).
 
And convention work gave me a cover job whenever my family started nosing around about how I made my money.

After dinner I managed to get to Cougar’s to dance for a few hours.  I borrowed some cream from one of the girls to cover up the fingernail marks on my shoulder, but my heart wasn’t in the performance.  With my convention starting at ten the next morning, I decided to attend to my three regulars who were partying Friday night and called it an evening by midnight.

The convention at the Bellagio was uneventful except for the ice cream cone that got spilled on my shoulder.  The ice cream was chocolate, and my Yves St. Laurent suit was vanilla.  Luckily the vendor who spilled it was horrified and cut me a check on the spot for my dry cleaning bill.  I felt ridiculous for about an hour, but it proved to be a great, if unimaginative, conversation starter for the men at the convention.

Rachel called me back around 2:00 on Saturday.  I got straight to the point.

“It was bound to happen eventually,” she said nonchalantly.  “Even a ratty little place like the Outpost keeps a close watch on who comes and goes.  Even if Phil was going to talk, they wouldn’t like you nosing around there too much.”

“I suppose,” I said.  “But that kind of cramps my style.  If I can’t get back in there to talk to anybody, it’ll be hard to dig much deeper.”

She paused.  “That’s true.  Even if no one who works there now will talk to you, that doesn’t mean we’re screwed.  Let me think about it and get back to you, okay?”

Rachel left me a message while I was in the shower, asking me to get in touch with a man named Mel Block, who she said was the Outpost’s general manager before Phil d’Angelo took over.  The Mastersons had wanted new blood after George died, and Mel had seemed more than happy to retire to San Diego.  Rachel said Mel was one of the few people at the casino who’d been nice to her, but they had lost track of each other in the last few years.

I tried the number Rachel had given me for Mel Block, but there was neither an answer nor an answering machine.  I tried calling again twice more that afternoon with the same result.  I made an early stir fry dinner and headed over to Cougar’s.  Saturday nights were the most profitable of the week (Friday was second), and I expected four or five regulars to pay me a visit.  I found six, plus a cute younger guy named Dave who I’d danced for the night before.  A regular in the making, I hoped. 

I woke Sunday just before noon.  My first thought was that I really had no leads to go on, even after almost a week working on the case.  It was not just frustrating, it was embarrassing.  I called Mel Block’s number in San Diego again with no luck.  After
putzing
around my apartment for an hour I found myself on my balcony with a stack of Shape and Cosmopolitan magazines that had been building up since May.  A can of cheddar Pringles somehow found its way into my lap.

My phone rang around two o’clock.

“Raven, this is Sean Whelan with LVPD.  Returning your call from the other day.”

I was silent for what felt like a full minute.  “Hi Lieutenant, thanks for getting back to me.”  I had completely forgotten that I’d phoned him on Tuesday.

“Sorry it’s taken so long.  Rough week.  Actually I thought I’d get your machine,” he said.  “Working on a Sunday, huh?”  He was trying to be friendly, but it came off as hollow.  

“Nope, I’m not really working.  It’s my cell number.  I was just wondering if I could talk with you for a few minutes about the Masterson murder case.  You were in charge of the investigation, right?”

“Wow, that’s an oldie but goodie.  Yeah, I was the lead detective on that one.  Your message was kind of cryptic.  What exactly can I help you with?” 

Whelan’s call had caught me off-guard, and I wasn’t prepared with anything useful to ask him.  “I wonder if I could come to your office or something,” I suggested.  “Are you in tomorrow?”

“We can’t do this on the phone?  I’m a little busy.” He suddenly sounded snippy.

“Sure, just give me . . .”

“Sorry,” he interrupted.  “Like I said, rough week.  My wife left me, actually.  Took the kids to her mom’s place up in Oregon.  Kind of sudden.  I’ve been out the last two days and I’m just trying to catch up.”

“God, that’s awful,” I said, not knowing how else to respond.  We were both silent for a minute.  My mind went into overdrive.  “Lieutenant, I’m going out on a limb here, but your name is Irish, right?”

“Yeah.  I’m a thoroughbred, actually.  Why?”

“Well, I’m half Irish myself.  It sounds like you could use a pint of Guinness.  Or two.  We can talk about Cody Masterson and I’ll buy you a couple.”

He was quiet for a few seconds.  “What the hell, okay,” he laughed.  “I know, what are the odds, right?  I’m Irish
and
I drink.”  His voice sounded a little lighter.

“We can toast the old country.”  Like Whelan said, what the hell.

“I don’t give a shit what we toast, but I’m gonna take you up on your offer.  I really don’t think you have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into,” he said, laughing.  We agreed to meet at seven at an Irish pub about ten minutes from the Strip.  I’d never been there before, but Sean recommended it enthusiastically.

Before I left I finished off some leftover Chinese food and tried calling Mel Block in San Diego, again without luck.  I figured Block could be on vacation.  It was July, after all, and he might have a summer place or something.  But at least there should be an answering machine, I thought.  Or maybe I just had the wrong number.

O’Callaghan’s Irish Pub & Grille looked kitschy and formulaic from the outside, as if someone had assembled the place from a build-your-own Irish Pub kit.  On the inside, though, it was surprisingly homey and comfortable.  If anything, the Irish pub theme was understated.  Lieutenant Whelan was sitting by himself at the corner of a large square bar, perched with a good view of the Yankees-Indians game on ESPN.  He was bulkier than I’d thought, but I recognized him from the description he’d given me: red faced with a curly mess of yellowish white hair.  By the time I sat down, he’d already done some damage to a tall glass of stout.  I wondered if it was his first.

He looked like he hadn’t slept well, with bags hanging from his eyes and a pronounced slump to his frame.  Or maybe he’d just gone on a three-day bender.  We made our introductions and I ordered a Guinness of my own.  Whelan wasn’t shy about looking me over.  I was dressed pretty conservatively, with a short-sleeved white oxford shirt buttoned up most of the way and a pair of thin beige linen shorts.  Pink sandals were the only interesting thing I was wearing.

“I have to say,” he said, “you’re not what I was expecting.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“I think so.  Is it still legal in this country to pay a woman a compliment?  Or is that some kind of harassment or something?”

I smiled.  “I’ve got a pretty thick skin.  You can compliment me all you want.”

“That’s good.”  He looked around.  “You’re really a detective?”

I nodded.

“Sorry,” he said.  “With my wife splitting this week, I’m just paranoid some sleazebag lawyer is trying to get pictures of me with a younger woman.”

I didn’t feel comfortable getting so personal with a guy I’d just met, so I dove in to the purpose of our visit.  “I’ve been hired to take another look at the Masterson case,” I explained.  “Basically, my client wants enough evidence to take the case before a civil jury.”

“Wow.”  He whistled for effect and thought about it for a minute.  “You work for Mrs. Hannity?”

“Yes.  She’s a friend of mine.  I’m wondering what your thoughts about the verdict were, and whether there was much in the way of evidence you had that didn’t make it into the trial.” 

“She looks a lot like you, actually.  Except that she’s blonde, of course.”

I nodded.  He was still on the looks thing.  I didn’t feel it appropriate to mention that my boobs were bigger than Rachel’s.

“Fair enough,” he said, picking up on my silent impatience.  He drained his beer and signaled to the bartender.  “Couple of Irish car bombs for my friend and me.”  He turned to me and grinned.  “Guinness
ain’t
working fast enough,” he whispered conspiratorially.

The waiter brought over two foaming pints of Guinness and a pair of shot glasses.  He poured a half-inch of Bailey’s Irish Cream in each shot glass and topped them off with Jameson whiskey.  He waited a few seconds while the head on the Guinness settled, and then he dropped the shot glasses into the beers.  

“Chug,” Whelan said, pushing one of the glasses over to me.  We both chugged for what felt like a full two minutes, and both of us wound up wearing brown foamy mustaches.  

“Wow,” I said, impressed.  “Where has that drink been all my life?”

Whelan seemed pleased.  “They’re big with the guys in the fire department.  I kind of stole that one from them awhile ago.”  He signaled the bartender again and turned to me.  “If you don’t mind, I’m going to let you buy me some plain old whiskey.  My bladder isn’t what it used to be,” he confided under his breath.  I told him I’d gladly join him in a couple double Jameson’s on the rocks.  It was my dad’s old drink.

Whelan was a little overweight, but not exactly fat.  He looked about fifty-five—old for a cop—but had a full mop of hair.  I wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting at the bar before I got there, but the man seemed like he could hold his liquor and knew what he was doing.  I hoped he did, because my stomach was getting nervous about the prospect of drinking whiskey on top of a pint of beer.  On top of two-day-old Chinese food.

“So you want to know about Cody Masterson,” he said, and took a long swig of Jameson’s.  “I still think about that case, do you believe that?  Everyone’s got a white whale, I guess, but that one still nags at me.”

“How come?”

“Well, let me put it this way.  If you’re looking for more evidence, you’re not gonna find any.  We gave it everything we had, and the jerk still got off.”

“I was kind of afraid of that,” I said.  “So you’re convinced he did it?”

He paused, studying the ice cubes melting in his drink.  “I’m convinced he should have been convicted,” he said.  “Whether he actually did it or not, that’s another question.”  He looked at me and smiled.  “How’s that for my impersonation of a lawyer?”

“Not bad, except for the fact that you don’t have horns.  So what was Cody like in the interrogation room?”

“Cool.  Never cracked.  Personally I think he’d been very well coached, but one of my guys actually believed him.  Remember, he had Charlie Frank representing him.  The man is a snake, but if the shit ever hit the fan for me, he’d be the first guy I’d call.”