The Clinic (34 page)

The empty road’s an invitation to speed and most people RSVP yes. During spring break, golden kids tank up on beer and weed and delusions of immortality, whooping and high-fiving on truck beds, hanging over the sides of little convertibles, flashing sexual greetings. Most make it to downtown Palm Springs, some end up roadkill. The highway patrol stays furtive and watchful and does its best to keep the death toll within acceptable limits.

Milo got stopped only once, just before the San Gorgonio Pass, well after darkness had set in.

He’d pushed ninety since Riverside, the Porsche barely working. It’s a white 928, five years old, in perfect condition, and the young CHP officer looked at it with admiration, then inspected Milo’s credentials, blinking only once when Milo said he was working a homicide case and he needed to catch a material witness by surprise.

Handing back the papers, the Chippie recited a warning about nuts on the road and the need to keep an eye out, Detective, then he watched as we rolled out.

Page 228

We cruised into Palm Springs at 10:00P.M., passing block after block of low-rent condos and entering the outer edges of the business district. Unlike Bakersfield, here little had changed. The same seedy mix of secondhand shops posing as antique dealers, motels, white-belt clothing boutiques, dreadful art. All the big money was in Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage, along with the streets named after Dinah Shore and Bob Hope.

“Look for Palm Grove Way,” said Milo. “The Sun Palace Casino.”

“This doesn’t look like an Indian reservation.”

“What’d you expect, tepees and totem poles? These are the lucky Indians: booted into the desert but their patch just happened to leak shiny black stuff so they got rich, learned about loopholes, figured they were a nation to themselves and sued for the right to run games. The state finally gave ’em bingo but remained penny-ante about the immorality of gambling.”

“Then the state started running the lottery,” I said, “so that argument became a little inconsistent.”

“Exactly. Indians all around the state are catching on. There’s a new casino up in Santa Ynez.

State continues to screw around, taking its sweet time to grant permits, not allowing the Indians to manufacture slot machines or bring them in from out-of-state. Which is a big deal because slots are the number one moneymakers. So they smuggle the suckers in on produce trucks and once they’re on the reservation, nothing anyone can do about it.”

“Detective,” I said, “sounds like you’re condoning law-breaking.”

“There’s laws and there’s laws.”

“Palm Grove,” I said, pointing to the next block.

He turned left onto another commercial street. More motels, a laundromat, a run-down spa, fast-food joints crowded with people soaking up grease and the hot night air. Then up ahead, bright, blinking turquoise and yellow lights in the shape of a cowboy hat, crowning a fifty-foot tower.

“Tasteful, huh?”

“So all of downtown’s a reservation?” I said.

“Nope, it varies from lot to lot. The key is to search land records, find some square footage once owned by an Indian, go into partnership. Here we are.”

He zipped into the massive dirt parking lot surrounding the casino. Behind the hat tower was a surprisingly small one-story building trimmed with more blue and yellow lights and huge, upslanting letters that shoutedSUN PALACE in orange neon surrounded by radiating fingers of scarlet.

Between the tower and the building was a brightly lit car drop-off. A brand-new purple Camaro was parked up against the building, a pink ribbon wrapped around its hood. The sign on the windshield saidFOUR BLACKJACKS IN A ROW WINS THIS CAR !

Page 229

Another sign leaning against the hat tower promisedVALET PARKING ! but no one was around and Milo found a space in the lot. Just as we got out, a husky, brown-skinned boy in a white polo shirt and black slacks trotted toward us.

“Hey, I woulda taken that for you.” Hand out.

Milo showed him a badge. “I woulda joined the Beatles if my name was McCartney.”

The valet’s mouth closed. He stared for a second, then ran to open the doors of a urine-yellow, boat-sized Cadillac full of laughing, sun-broiled, silver-haired optimists.

We walked through the casino’s glass double doors and into a wall of noise just as a very tall man in Johnny Cash black stumbled out. Behind him was a four-hundred-pound woman in a flowered sundress and beach sandals. She looked ready to deliver a speech and he kept well ahead of her.

The doors closed behind us, locking in the noise and eye-searing fluorescence. We were on a small, elevated, brass-railed platform covered with blue-green industrial carpeting and sectioned by arbitrary columns of polished mahogany. Steps on both sides led down to the playing room: one single space a hundred by fifty. More aqua carpeting and columns under acoustical-tile ceiling. White walls, no windows, no clocks.

To the right was a single stud-poker game: hunched men in plaid shirts and windbreakers, black-lensed sunshades, paralyzed faces. Then row after row of slots, maybe ten dozen machines, rolling, beeping, blinking, looking more organic than the people who cranked their handles. The blackjack tables took up the left side of the room, crammed together so you had to either sit or keep circulating. Dealers in deep red polo shirts and white name tags stood back-to-back, laying down patter, scooping up ante chips, sliding cards out of the shoe.

Bings and buzzers, nicotine air, cash-in window at the rear of the room. But this early no one wanted out. The players were a mixture of desert retirees, Japanese tourists, blue-collar workers, bikers, Indians, and a few dissolute lounge bugs trying to look sharp in fused suits and long-collar shirts. Everyone pretending winning was a habit, pretending this was Vegas.

Perfect-body-less-than-perfect-face girls in white microdresses walked around, balancing drink trays. Big men dressed in white and black like the valet patrolled the room, scanning like cameras, their holstered guns eloquent.

Someone moved toward us from a corner of the platform, then stopped. A gray-haired, gray-mustachioed man in a gray sharkskin suit and red crepe tie, fifty-five or so with a long, loose face and purse-string lips. Walkie-talkie in one hand, hair-tonic tracks in his pompadour.

He pretended to ignore us, didn’t move. But some sort of signal must have been sent because two of the armed guards strolled over and stood beneath the platform. One was an Indian, one a freckled redhead. Both had thick arms, swaybacks, hard potbellies. The Indian’s belt was tooled with red letters:GARRETT.

People came in and out of the building in a steady flow. Milo moved closer to the brass rail and the gray-mustachioed man came over as Garrett turned and watched.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” Deep, flat voice. The name tag, computer-printed.LARRY

GIOVANNE, MANAGER.

Page 230

Milo showed his ID in a cupped hand. “Ted Barnaby.”

Giovanne didn’t react. The ID went back in Milo’s pocket.

“Barnaby’s working tonight, right?”

“Is he in trouble?”

“No, just some questions.”

“He’s new.”

“Started two weeks ago Wednesday,” said Milo.

Giovanne looked up, taking in Milo’s face, then down to the green poly shirt hanging over tan chinos. Looking for the gun-bulge.

“No problems?” he said.

“None. Where’s Barnaby?”

“Did you check in with the tribal police?”

“No.”

“Then technically you have no jurisdiction.”

Milo smiled. “Technically, I can walk around the room til I find Barnaby, sit down at his table, playreal slow, keep spilling my drink, ask stupid questions. Keep following him when he moves tables.”

Giovanne gave a tiny headshake. “What do you want with him?”

“His girlfriend was murdered half a year ago. He’s not a suspect but I want to ask him a few questions.”

“We’re new, too,” said Giovanne. “Three months since we opened and we don’t want to break up the flow if you know what I mean.”

“Okay,” said Milo. “How about this—send him out when he goes on break and I’ll stay out of the way.”

Giovanne shot French cuffs and looked at a gold watch. “The dealers do thirty-minute shifts at each table. Barnaby’s set to change in five, break in an hour. If you don’t cause problems, I’ll give him his break early. Fair enough?”

“More than fair. Thanks.”

“Five minutes, then. Want to play in the meantime?”

Page 231

Milo smiled. “Not tonight.”

“Okay, then go outside, over by the Camaro, and I’ll send him out to you. How ’bout some drinks, peanuts?”

“No, thanks. Give any cars away lately?”

“Three so far—after you’re finished with him, come back and try your luck.”

“If I had some, I’d try it.”

“What’s your game?”

“Cops and robbers,” said Milo.

A microdress girl brought out two beers anyway and we drank them standing against the cool block wall of the casino, waiting behind the purple car, watching the in-and-out, able to feel and hear the gambling inside. The outdoor lot seemed to stretch for miles, bleeding into black space and star-painted sky. Motor drone and headlights defined a distant road but for the most part all the movement was here.

Just as we emptied our glasses, a tall, thin, red-shirted man came out and looked from side to side, long fingers curling and straightening.

Barely thirty, with thick blond hair, he wore flint-colored bullhide boots under his pressed black slacks. Thin but knotted arms. A turquoise-and-silver bracelet circled a hairless wrist, and a gold chain seemed to constrict a long neck with a kinetic Adam’s apple. Handsome features, but his skin was a ruin, so acne-scarred it made Milo’s look polished. A couple of active blemishes stood out in the light, most conspicuously an angry swelling on his right temple. Small, round Band-Aid under his left ear. Deep pits ran down his neck.

Milo put his glass down and came out from behind the car. “Mr. Barnaby.”

Barnaby stiffened and his hands closed into fists. Milo’s ID in his face made him step back.

Milo extended a hand and Barnaby took it with the reluctance of a man with wet palms. Milo started to draw him out of the light but Barnaby resisted. Then he saw the valet approaching and came along.

Back at the purple car, he looked at me and the glass in my hand. “What the hell is this all about? You just got me fired.”

“Mandy Wright.”

Hazel eyes stopped moving. “What do the L.A. cops have to do with that?”

Milo put a foot on the Camaro’s bumper.

“Careful,” said Barnaby. “That’s new.”

Page 232

“So you’re not too torn-up over Mandy.”

“Sure I’m torn-up. But what am I supposed to do about it after all this time? And why should I get fired over it?”

“I’ll talk to Giovanne.”

“Gee, thanks. Shit. Why’d you have to come here? Why couldn’t you just call me at home?”

“Why’d Giovanne boot you?”

“He didn’t but he gave me the look. I know the look. They’re bending over backward not to have problems and you just made me a problem.”

He touched the Band-Aid, pressed down, winced. “Damn.Just signed a lease on a place in Cathedral City.”

Milo cocked his head toward the casino entrance. “This ain’t exactly Caesar’s, Ted. Why’d you leave Vegas after Mandy was killed?”

“I got . . . I was bummed, didn’t want to deal with people.”

“So you took off?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“To Reno.”

“After that?”

“Utah.”

“Why Utah?”

“It’s where I’m from.”

“Mormon?”

“Once upon a time—listen, I already told those Vegas cops everything I knew. Which is nothing. Some customer probably killed her. I never liked what she did, but I was heavily into her, so I stuck around. Now what am I supposed to tell you? And why are the L.A. cops interested?”

“Why didn’t you return to Vegas, Ted?”

“Bad memories.”

“That the only reason?”

Page 233

“That’s enough. I was the one identified her body, man.” He shook his head and licked his lips.

“You weren’t avoiding anyone?”

“Who should I avoid?”

“Mandy’s killer.”

“A customer? Why would I avoid him?”

“How do you know he was a customer?”

“I don’t, I’m guessing. But what else? Working girls get messed up all the time—who’m I telling? You know. Occupational risk. I warned her.”

“She’d been roughed up before?”

“A mark here and there. Nothing serious. Until.” He touched the Band-Aid again, rubbed his pitted neck.

“Any idea who roughed her up before?”

“Nah. She never gave me names—that was our arrangement.”

“What was?”

“I stayed out of her face and she gave me her spare time.” Twisted smile. “I was into her a lot more than she was into me. Ever seen a picture of her? From before, I mean.”

“Uh-huh,” said Milo.

“Gorgeous, right?”

“The two of you ever live together?”

“Never. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. She wanted her own place, her own space.”

“Her own place for work.”

“Yeah,” said Barnaby, louder. Cracking his knuckles, he looked at his fingers sadly. “She was unbelievable. Part Hawaiian, part Polynesian. They’re the finest-looking people in the world. At first, I was totally nuts over her, wanted her out of the life, the whole bit. I told her, babe, learn how to deal, the way you look you’ll clean up on tips. She laughed, said she had to be her own boss. She loved money, was really into stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Clothes, jewelry, cars. She used to buy a new car every few months, sell it, get another one.

Corvettes, Firebirds, BMWs. The last one was a used Ferrari convertible, she got it at one of those car lots outside of town where the losers dump wheels for cash. She used to tool around
Page 234

the Strip in it. I told her you’re the first girl I know so into cars. She laughed, said I’m into big engines, Teddy. That’s why I likeyou. ”

The hands started moving again. “So look where it got her.”

A vanload of buzz-cut GIs was disgorged into the casino, laughing like schoolkids. Barnaby stood straighter and stared at the swinging glass door.