Lost (25 page)

The first thing I notice, aside from the way brash daylight transitions into soft, lingering twilight inside the casino
complex, is the gentle ringing of bells. A kind of musical background noise that reminds me of money. Not cash registers ringing, but the silvery chime of heavy coins colliding. A peaceful, hopeful, never-ending song that says you’re a winner, be happy.

It is, of course, the gaming machines. They all chime. Hundreds of one-armed bandits with lights flashing like diamonds, and soft leather seats for your tired tush.
Sit down, my friend,
the whole look and feel of the place says.
Take a load off and fill your pockets with gold.
Very few coins are actually falling, mostly it’s plastic cards you put in the slot, with your loses deducted by magnetic strip, like a debit card. All of which has been described and explained to me by Fern, who claims never to have lost at a casino, but seeing it with my own eyes is something of a revelation.

I’m on a mission here, looking for Edwin Manning and his cronies, and yet the whole machinery of the place calls to me. Demonstrating how powerful the urge to play, to take a chance, to be one of the lucky ones who shriek and point, leaping around like the blissfully demented contestants on
Deal or No Deal.

Part of my disguise, in addition to the oversize hat and the big wraparound sunglasses, is my cell phone. Clamp that to the side of your face and you become a slightly different person, more inward, less engaged, and at this point in our cellular society, less noticeable.

“I’m in,” I say into the phone, keeping my voice low, not that anyone is likely to overhear me in the cacophony of machines. “No sign of Manning yet. But this place is huge, they could be anywhere. You enter through what looks like a giant tiki hut. Very dramatic lighting. There are three
separate casinos and a bingo hall, all with cute names like Wampum and Sachem’s Cave and Wonderluck.”

“I doubt he’s there to gamble.”

Shane, stuck out in the parking lot, sounds frustrated.

“Wampum is about a million slot machines, rows and rows of them. Lots of older folks, some of them in wheelchairs. They must bring them in by the busload. Can’t see Manning anywhere. Okay, wait, I’m headed toward Wonderluck. Slot machines here, too, but mostly it looks like table games. The one they have on TV, Texas Hold Up.”

“Hold ‘Em,” says Shane, sounding exasperated. “Keep moving.”

“Texas whatever, I am moving. You should see this place. There’s a whole section for some sort of Chinese table game they play with green tiles, like mahjong, but it isn’t mahjong. The dealers are Asian, too. I thought this was a Native American thing?”

“Asians love to gamble. Every casino has a room like that. Keep looking, what do you see?”

I have trouble tearing my eyes away from the enthralled, tile-smacking Asians, who look as crazed as traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, shouting and gesturing and slamming tiles on the blue felt, eyes gleaming like, well, the madly blinking lights of the slot machines.

This corner of the casino feels more like Hong Kong or Macau—not that I’ve ever been further west than Pittsburgh. Looking around, I see antlike trails of feeble old folks trudging eagerly into the vast bingo hall, some of them tottering on walkers.

Old folks you might just as easily find in Long Island as in an Indian casino on the edge of the Everglades. Asians, blacks, whites, Latinos, most ethnic groups seem well represented,
some gaming in groups, others traveling solo to their favorite machines. Everybody but the folks who own the place—I’ve yet to see anyone recognizably Native American, either among the uniformed staff, who wear cute little money-green vests, or among the players.

Pretty smart, I’m thinking. Take the money and keep it.

“Oh!” I exclaim, struggling to keep my voice low. “The bald guy with the eyes like eggs!”

“Salvatore Popkin. You see him?”

“In the area between gaming rooms there’s like a high-priced food court, except with sit-down restaurants? Oh look, they’ve got a Wolfgang Puck pizza joint! What am I saying, they have those in airports,” I add, rambling on, just an excitable girl and her cell.

“Popkin’s in a restaurant? Where are the others?”

“No, no. Sorry. He seems to be guarding an unmarked door in a hall between the restaurants. Or maybe it is marked, I can’t tell from here. Looks like the whole wall area behind him is smoked plate glass. Lots of dark, smoky accents in here.”

“Has he spotted you?”

“There are hundreds of people wandering around.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“No, he hasn’t spotted me. Relax, I’m fine.”

“Don’t get any closer,” Shane warns, husky in the receiver. “Just keep an eye on him. Just a glance, don’t look directly at him. Even from across a crowded room, a direct look will get your attention.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Exasperated, the voice in my ear goes, “Don’t move, damn it!”

I have absolutely no intention of obeying—where the egg man goes, I’ll follow—but for now Mr. Salvatore Popkin is
glued to the door. Dressed in the same sort of shapeless nylon, soft-shell sports gear he was wearing when we confronted him at the airport. Sport stripes running down the baggy legs. The Nike version of Tony Soprano. What I hadn’t mentioned to Shane, the egg man is actively eyeballing the crowd, giving off a Jersey bouncer vibe, like better steer clear, little people, the VIPs are doing important VIP things. Like bullets would bounce off his cast-iron skull. Didn’t look quite so imposing when Shane bounced him off the concrete. No obvious sign of the injury to his collarbone, but he does appear a bit stiff on one side. Trendy little headset and earpiece may explain why he appears to be talking to himself.

I’m thinking about sidling closer, determining if the smoked-glass doorway he’s guarding is in fact unmarked, when something tugs at the hem of my blouse. Whirling around with hand raised, ready to take a slap at whatever lowlife is trying to cop a feel, I find Shane sitting in a casino wheelchair, wearing a floppy sunhat.

“Are you sure about this?” I ask, trying to shield him from view, not any easy task, considering the difference in size.

“Best I could think of on short notice,” he says, leaning to get a line of sight on the egg man. “You said it yourself, they remember my height.”

“At least let me tear the price tag off the hat. You look like that old lady on
The Grand Old Opera.
”

He chuckles. “
Grand Ole Opry,
and she was before your time.”

“Whatever. You know who I mean.”

“You’re right about this place being crowded,” he observes. “That helps.”

Shane’s scheme is, my opinion, totally whacked. I’m supposed to push the wheelchair, keeping the crowd between
us and the egg man, and we’ll get a closer look. Shane has a theory that Manning is in the business office getting cash for a payoff. Either that or dealing directly with some casino employee or associate implicated in his son’s disappearance.

“The guy is a billionaire,” I say, grabbing hold of the wheelchair. “Why would he need cash from the casino?”

“He’s a fund investor. He doesn’t deal in cash, and criminals prefer folding money. It’s just a theory. Roll me up to the next casino entrance, we’ll work our way back.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m pushing but you’re not moving.”

“Oh,” he says. “Sorry.”

With him pushing the wheels, all I have to do is steer, or pretend to steer, and we’re moving along, keeping pace with the shuffling gamblers. What I find amazing is that no one is making or seeking eye contact. Even in the most crowded mall people tend to check each other out, maybe smile if the impulse strikes. Not here. The vibe is that everyone has his or her own bubble and none of the other bubbles really exist, they’re just background, like the continuous chiming of the slots, the whisper of the air-conditioning, the dreamy lighting that makes the blinking machines look more alive than most of the players.

We’re up to the entrance of Sachem’s Cave—more slot machines but bigger payoffs—and have made the turn, sneaking up on the egg man, when Shane urgently announces, “Look at Popkin. Something is going down.”

The egg man, Mr. Popkin, is apparently reacting to something he’s heard in his earpiece. Shaking his head and looking furtively around as he talks, as if he’s not sure what to expect. All nervous and jumpy.

Does he know about us? Have we been spotted, and the message relayed?

The weird thing is, the egg man looks scared.

“I’ll be damned,” says Shane, rising from the wheelchair.

Coming through the entrance, moving quickly with almost military precision, is a band of black-haired men, unmistakably Native American, and from the similarly dark, high-cheek-boned look of them, all sharing the same blood. Brothers and cousins, uncles and nephews, moving as one. They carry M4 carbines slung over lithe shoulders, not bows and arrows, and their uniform blouses are matching white guayaberra shirts with tribal police emblems, but there is no doubt about who they are.

A war party, ready for battle.

16. The Absolute Zero Of No

It’s an amazing sight, really, totally out of sync with the sedate atmosphere at the casino. The tribal security squad marches in, shoves aside the egg man—no resistance there—enters through the smoked-glass door, and emerges less than a minute later carrying Edwin Manning in an office chair.

A chair to which he is obviously clinging, having refused to move. Looking like a deposed king being borne away on his throne, he appears to be both livid with anger and frightened out of his mind.

“This all goes away!” he shouts, making a gesture that takes in the whole casino complex. “Think about it! Money, success, all gone! Just talk to the man, that’s all I’m asking! I’m begging you, please talk to him! Make him give me back my son!”

The men carrying him have eyes like chips of black ice. They betray no expression, pay no heed to their lively burden, hustling him out the casino as he clings awkwardly to the prison of his chair.

What really gets me, what puts the cold fear in my guts, is what happens next. Up in the chair, carried by those he cannot buy or influence, Manning seems to surrender himself to madness, a lunatic in suit and tie. He begins to scream wordlessly, saliva spraying from his mouth, tears leaking from his eyes. As if anguish and fear and frustration have made it impossible to communicate in words, and from now on only screams will do.

I find myself clinging to Randall Shane like Mr. Manning clings to the chair, because it’s either hold on or fall down.

The big guy senses my distress, squeezes my hand.

“Kind of like watching a patient undergo surgery without anesthesia,” he says softly.

“He’s falling apart. Something terrible has happened since we saw him. Something truly awful.”

“We don’t know that,” says Shane consolingly.

“I do.”

Bless the man, he does not argue, but instead decides to take action.

“Be right back,” he assures me, and then strides into the crowd on his long legs.

Be right back? No way am I missing this. So I’m right behind the big guy when he corners the goggle-eyed egg man and goes, “Sal—do they call you Sal?—we have to talk.”

To give him credit, the egg man looks more lost than frightened, although he does catch his breath and shrink back as Shane approaches.

“What are you doing here?” he demands, protuberant eyes
rolling around like big white marbles in a jar of oil. “Are you nuts? You want to wreck everything, is that it?”

Shane raises his open hands to show he means no harm. “Furthest thing from my mind. All I want is talk. Your boss is in trouble, maybe you can help.”

Egg man closes his eyes and curses, uttering a few suggestions I’ve never before heard applied to human beings. Then he opens the eyes—amazingly puffy eyelids, blinking must be like lifting weights—and goes, pleading to heaven, “How do I get into this shit?”

“Look,” says Shane, sounding conciliatory. “It’s obvious that your boss has lost control of the situation. He’s afraid to call in the cops, make it official? Fine. I’m not the cops. I’m private. And we have exactly the same goal, the safe return of Seth and Kelly. We can cooperate, help each other out.”

“I dunno,” says the egg man, not looking at either one of us. “These people are just plain nuts. You see what they just did to Mr. Manning? He owns the joint and they treat him like shit.”

The guy rubs his shaved, chunk-o’-cheese head and squints, as if looking for a way to escape the range of Shane’s long arms. But Shane mirrors his moves and keeps him cornered without ever having to actually touch him.

“Who did this?” Shane asks, persisting. “Who took Seth and Kelly?”

The egg man sighs, giving the impression that not only does he want to avoid any sort of physical confrontation, he also knows he’s way out of his depth and really could use some help.

“I work the casinos, you know? Like a bouncer, only I get paid better. My so-called career in the ring, all it ever gave me was a face that scares some people. Not you obviously, and not so much you, either, Miss Whoever-you-are.”

“Jane Garner,” I remind him. “What happened to Seth Manning? Is he still alive? Is my daughter still alive?”

He shrugs, the kind of whole-body shrug that can only be deployed by those born and raised in the part of New Jersey that lies a bridge or tunnel away from New York City. “If I knew I’d tell you, honest. Come on, think I’d hold out on a worried mom? I ain’t that kind of guy.”

“What
do
you know, Mr. Popkin?”

“Call me Sally, please,” the man says. He seems relieved that I’m asking the questions at the moment, rather than Shane, who looms over both of us, exuding energetic patience. “I been Sally Pop all my life, that’s what I’m used to. What do I know? Less every day. But I do know Mr. Manning is in trouble, big trouble, and he don’t know what to do. All his money, that don’t seem to be helping.”

“Who did it, Sally? Who took Seth?”

Sally the egg man studies me, makes up his mind. “What I heard between the lines, it’s some crazy big-shot Indian everybody’s scared of. But I’m guessing, you know? ‘Cause Mr. Manning, he don’t share with me. Not specific to names he don’t.”