Drawing Dead (24 page)

… but here’s my cell phone number.

She handed me a card. It was rose-colored, with her name.
Madeleine
. Only that. And the phone number.

I wondered if she’d had it made for me.

I
WANTED TO CATCH A BIT MORE SLEEP
. Give the bones some healing time. Four hours’ sleep isn’t even enough for a normal human. Let alone one in the throes of terminal alcohol syndrome, or whatever they called it, and deep-in-the-bone bruise, recovering from an infarction. But it was time to meet Louise. And when the client calls, as we all know, we listen. We hop on up. Put on the uniform. Salute the flag. Piss in the right pissoir. You piss in the left pissoir, everybody knows: you’re deeply suspect.

I grabbed a cab. It smelled of cardamom and cloves. Very pleasant. Told him to get me to the Wynn.

The thing about the big, opulent joints like the Wynn and the Bellagio is that under the elaborate skin they’re still Vegas casinos. The fat people are better dressed. And the slot machines have designer chairs. But a morbidly obese slot-head in a designer outfit sitting on a fancy chair is still a morbidly obese slot-head. My opinion, anyway.

When I got to the restaurant, she wasn’t there. I used her name with the maître d’. He gave me a knowing look. What he knew, I didn’t know. What I did know was that I didn’t like the guy. He had that tall, erect, brushed-back-on-the-sides-gray-hair-black-on-top-in-a-dark-suit thing going. With the tan. In other words, a man in an inferior job, with a vast air of superiority.

There is a message for you, Mr. Redman, he said.

And what might that message be? I asked in my most supercilious manner.

I wouldn’t know, sir, he said. It’s sealed.

I see. Might I then have the pleasure of receiving this sealed message?

At that point Mr. Slick figured out that I was mocking him. His lips pursed, he said not another word. Turned on his heel.

While I was waiting, I sat at the bar, ordered a scotch. A couple of stools down was an old guy in a ratty sweater and a tattered baseball cap. The bartender put three wineglasses in front of him, poured a tasting amount from three bottles. The old guy looked warily at the glasses, picked one up. Took a sip. Stared at the bartender for a while.

All of a sudden it tastes like a horse, he said in a heavy Eastern European accent.

The bartender chuckled nervously. Yes, sir, he said, it does have a touch of earthiness to it.

If by earthy you mean horseshit, said the old man.

Mr. Slick returned to the maître d’ais. I took my scotch on over. He handed me an envelope.

I turned away, tore it open.

She didn’t seem like the horse-betting type. Tell you the truth, I didn’t recall ever seeing a woman in a sports betting joint. At least, not a well-dressed one. But it was next to the poker room, so I couldn’t complain. I’d have something to do with the two hours.

Which turned out to be a good thing. I drew a table full of fish. Picked up a couple grand. Got in a good mood.

When I got to the bar next to the poker room, the esteemed Ms. Chandler hadn’t arrived. I was starting to get used to it.

But Bob was there. Bob was the bartender. I’d spent many hours in his company, taking a break from the poker tables. He was a back-slapping, stocky guy who knew how to make a guy feel comfortable. He brought me my scotch without my asking.

I used the downtime to think about the nature of fish.

A fish, I mused, is a very well-studied beast. He’s been scrupulously observed, both in captivity and in the wild. His habits and peccadilloes assiduously recorded, analyzed and digested by the sharkish poker tax-onomist. He’s been broken down into subspecies. There’s the Pure Fish: he calls too many hands, and once in the pot is governed primarily by fear. He’s afraid to raise, lest someone have a better hand. Afraid to fold, lest he miss some random opportunity down the road. And afraid to call a big bet, because he can’t believe you would do that without a monster. This is pure, exquisite Fishdom. You can bluff him whenever you want. You can string him out with smaller bets when you know you have the better hand. And he’ll always be in enough hands to spread his wealth around.

Then there’s the Calling Station Fish. He doesn’t play as many hands as the Pure Fish, but once there, he’s not going away. He, too, has never heard of a raise, still less a re-raise. It’s call, call, call, fold. Or call, call, call, lose. Oh, my kingdom for a tankful of Calling Station Fish.

The varieties are endless. There’s the Bottom Feeder, a guy who’s good, but not good enough to win in the bigger games; you can find him every day in the cheesier casinos, feeding off the tourists at the low-limit tables. Usually wearing a tracksuit and well-worn sneakers. The Catfish: a Bottom Feeder with fat lips and a mustache. The Grouper. You never see him without his posse. Can’t play unless there’s somebody there he can impress with his knowing banter.

And then there’s the Maniac. Ah, the Maniac. The Maniac is a different sort of fish. A dangerous fish. A fish with a bite. A piranha of a fish: much harder to deal with in groups. The Maniac has never seen a hand he doesn’t like. He’ll put in a huge preflop raise with Seven, Five off suit. Or King, Three. Or, of course—and here’s the bite—with a pair of Aces or Kings. He counts on scaring everybody out of pots a lot of the time. The few times he’s got a hand, or flops a monster hand—his Seven, Five draws Four, Six, Eight, three suits, he’s got the nut straight,
no flushes to compete—are hard to forget. They prey on you. The next time he puts five hundred dollars in the pot on a nondescript flop, you have to ask yourself: did he hit or miss?

So the Maniac, actually, can make a lot of money, on a given night. With the right opposition. Or the right amount of luck. But the Shark, well, the Shark can see the Maniac coming a mile away. The Shark knows what to do with the Maniac.

What, exactly, you ask, does the Shark do with the Maniac?

Well, something needs to be left for the Advanced Course. The one you pay for. Call me when your luck changes.

My reverie was interrupted when a mismatched couple of guys came over from the betting tables, sat at the bar.

The older guy, with wispy dyed-blond hair and pink and green golf slacks, was lecturing his new best friend, a good-looking young black guy with a confident air.

Don’t gamble, the old guy said. You gamble, you don’t go out with girls. Sex is five minutes, when I was your age. I came before I got in the girl, when I was your age.

Not me, the kid said.

Stop it now, the old guy said. I’m telling you ’cause I like you. You’re a good-looking guy. I’m telling you: don’t gamble!

Okay, the kid said, giving me the wink and a nod.

The old guy went back to the pony tables.

The kid turned to me, said, Can you believe that? That guy telling me what to do?

Before I could respond, Ms. Chandler appeared.

If she was a fish, she was an Angelfish.

She was dressed in a red sort of mesh thing, a dress I guess it was, with a gray thing on her shoulders that on closer inspection turned out to be the smallest jacket in the world. It had arms all right, but they stopped right after the shoulders. And the rest of it went down to maybe a couple inches below the collarbone. And it had three big buttons. There’s no reason I would have known it, but to me it said: high fashion. Had to be. It was too ridiculous to be anything else.

Somehow it made her look good. But then, everything she wore made her look good.

Why this place? I asked.

I like the atmosphere, she said.

I looked across the rail to the sports betting area, surveyed the local fauna. A heady mixture of graying paunchy old men with bifocals and racing forms, and slightly younger paunchy middle-aged guys with bifocals and racing forms. Didn’t see the black kid anywhere. Maybe he’d decided to heed the old man’s advice.

And also, she said, it is very unlikely that anyone here will overhear us.

I looked the length and breadth of the bar. Her theory seemed to hold water. We were alone. Except for Bob.

Except for Bob, I said. Just kidding, I said. Bob is very discreet. She looked at him, polishing glasses at the far end of the bar. She frowned.

But it was all right. Bob loved to banter when I was there alone, but respectfully kept his distance in the presence of my slinky client. Though I could hear, word for word, the salacious comments I’d get from him once she left. That was the comfort of a good bar, a good bartender. No surprises.

Okay, she said. So. You have some news for me?

I seem to have traced your sister to a trailer park somewhere north of Red Rock. Not positive. But that’s the word I got.

The word I got, she said. You know, Mr. Redman, it’s curious. How one minute you’re talking like a New York lawyer and the next like some low-rent gangster.

Low-rent gangster, I said. You’ve got a way with a phrase yourself.

Thank you.

Truth is, I’ve been both. Well, the lawyer bit definitely. I was never a gangster. But before the law thing, before law school, before college even, I spent some years.

You spent some years.

Hanging with the less privileged, if you will.

Hanging with the less privileged.

I did that on purpose. See, you can mix the two up in the same sentence.

She smiled. It was a real, warm, genuine smile, it seemed to me.

Progress, I thought. I’m making progress.

Tell me about this trailer park, she said, the smile gone.

I don’t know anything about it, yet, I said. I’m heading out there tomorrow. I just hear that’s where she is. Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t. If she is, maybe she’ll be there. Maybe she won’t.

Thank you, Mr. Redman. As ever, you inspire confidence.

No misinformation. Only the facts, Ma’am.

Only the facts, she echoed, placing her hand playfully on my knee, and quickly removing it.

It was enough. I was all a-tingle.

But I couldn’t let my imagination get away with me. God knew what she’d meant by that. If anything. And anyway, I had work to do. Poker work. Investigation work. Dad work. Couldn’t afford to get distracted.

T
HERE WAS A DROUGHT IN
V
EGAS
, a drought even by desert standards. Rows of wilting blackened cacti, stranded like syphilitic dicks in the sand. I saw a sign for food and fuel, scrambled the rented Mini Cooper on to a dirt road off the highway to Kick-Ass Gas, two unsmiling guys with beards to their belt buckles pumping the gas and sliming my perfectly clean windshield with a rag. They were wearing old-style Western holsters, with big-ass guns in them. This was a first for me. The gunslinging gas station attendant.

I was five miles down the road before I noticed the gas gauge was at half full. I’d paid for a full tank. But turning back to protest seemed not only time-wasting, but possibly suicidal. I stepped on the pedal. Get the fuck there and get the job done.

Then again, I got thirsty. Or cold feet. Which often are the same thing. I spotted a bar with a shed-like air and a couple of motorcycles parked outside. The sign said
Sam’s Pizza
.

Inside, the walls were paneled with 1950s rec-room wood. On the wall was a sign:

There was an old wooden double telephone booth with another sign on it:

The tables were tiny and round, faded red gingham tablecloths covered in thick yellowed plastic. Hanging from the ceiling on each side of the bar were two ridiculous Tyrolean puppets, holding lanterns.

It seemed like just the place.

The bartender looked like Elliott Gould as a young man: pursed-lip smile, equal parts contempt, amusement and anal discomfort. I introduced myself and my needs:

Redman, I said. I’ll have a whiskey, double.

Normally I’d ask for scotch. But here the word
whiskey
seemed right.

James, he introduced himself. Gotcha.

He turned and grabbed a bottle. It didn’t seem to matter which one.

Pleased to meet you, James, I said.

The only other customers were two girls sporting cutoff denims halfway up their butt cheeks, and a willowy guy with spiky orange hair. One of the girls had the Big Hair and the other was doing the shaved head thing. The shaved-head girl was absurdly elongated. Six foot two if she was an inch, with a long horse’s face, and legs so skinny her knees looked like boles on a banyan tree. Big Hair was short and plump and wearing a white mesh shirt tied up under pendulous breasts. The orange hair guy leaned on the bar with an air of calculated detachment.

They were talking about crossword puzzles.

I like the
Times
, said the orange hair guy.

Six-letter word for when Earth Days occur? said Big Hair.

Leap year? said the bald one.

Jesus, Suzy, said Big Hair.

Monday?

At least that one has six letters.

So that’s it, right?

These ones are too easy, said the guy.

So what’s the answer, smart-ass? said Big Hair, taking an enormous slug off a very large stein of dark beer.

That’s not the point, he said, lighting a cigarillo. The point is, life is short. A good crossword puzzle exercises the mind. A lousy one is like watching T V. It’s just you waiting for death.

Speak for yourself, said Big Hair.

I know, I know, said the bald one. Decade. It’s once every ten years, right?

James, turning back with my drink, leaned over and drawled at me, with a knowing nod at the threesome:

I can’t even count to three.

Yes, it was my kind of place.

I hung for a while. Fortified myself for whatever was to come. Why I was worried, I had no idea. Just one of those random foreboding things. I was on my third whiskey when the crossword trio left the joint. I heard the gravel-strewn roar of a badly maintained exhaust system. So it was just me and James. I asked him if he knew of a trailer park near here.