The Downtown Deal (18 page)

≈≈≈

I slept fitfully, then
finally awoke at around nine in the morning, still shot full of pain. I changed
the dressing on my wound again, noticing that healing had begun. Also, the
swelling on my face was reduced. I very gingerly took a shower, then left the
house after a fast cup of coffee. I headed straight for the Bank Of America
building and the offices of Blake Enterprises.

The
receptionist, of course, wanted to have me thrown out, with my beat-up appearance
mucking up their immaculate premises, but I urged her to tell Blake I wanted to
see him. She didn't want to, but I continued to insist. It looked like she was
hoping that No-Sleeve Steve would come wandering through at that moment to
bodily eject me, but she was out of luck. For a minute there, she was torn
between giving in and calling the cops; however, she finally notified Blake's
secretary that I needed in.

I
eventually made my way into his office, and he was properly startled when he
saw my face. He beckoned me to sit down. Before he could say anything, I took
the wheel.

"Listen,
Mr Blake, I can't go around taking these beatings for you. We're going to have
to come to some other arrangement here, or else I'm off the case."

"No,
Jack, no. You can't quit now. Please tell me what happened."

"Two
guys jumped me outside my apartment last night, warning me to stay away from
your stadium land deal."

"What?
Who were they? Olivera's thugs?"

"I
don't know who they were. This, by the way, is right on the heels of a little
meeting I had yesterday with a 'Mr Black'. Do you know him?"

"Mr
Black? No, never heard of him."

"Well,
Mr Black is very big, very black, and it seems he is employed by 'local gaming
interests', as he put it, who are apparently hellbent on making sure no
baseball team ever comes to Las Vegas. He made veiled threats to me, even
though I told him I have nothing to do with any of it, outside of investigating
Sandra's murder. It may have been his boys who did the number on me last night.
I don't know. They didn't come with a return address."

Blake
was in his shirtsleeves. His suit jacket was draped perfectly over the
shoulders of a clothes horse off to the left of his large, mahogany desk. Being
a tenth-floor corner office, it presented a stunning panorama of downtown and
the mountains in the distance. His bluish-green eyes gave off a look of great concern.
He came around to my side of the desk to sit in the chair next to me.

"I
don't know who did this, and I can't imagine why they would do it to you. You
have no part in this land deal. I'm truly sorry, Jack."

"Not
half as sorry as I am." I patted my healing head with my handkerchief. The
pain was still there.

He
leaned forward, putting a comforting hand on my knee. "If it'll make you
feel any better, you're not the only victim here. My house was broken into over
the weekend while I was out of town. The security company says the alarm was
disabled on Saturday night, and they just about destroyed everything. It was
Olivera's people, I know, looking for the wine. I know that's what they were
looking for."

"Your
house …?"

"That's
right. I heard that Olivera was close to getting his stadium financing arranged
— dependent on his getting my land, of course — and I also heard
the mayor worked out a deal in principle with him. Now that he's got everything
in order, and he's certain I'll sell him the land, he thinks he can just use
his muscle to steal the wine. He thinks he doesn't have to worry about buying
it."

"That's
your problem," I said, still patting at my head.

"Yes,
it is. But I'm asking you, please don't quit the case now. You've made real
headway toward finding Sandra's killer, and I don't want to lose our momentum
now. I don't want it all to be for nothing."

I
looked right at him looking right at me. He was being sincere, I could tell.
Plus, he had a point about losing momentum. When you quit a case like I was
about to do, everything is down the drain. The progress you made, the money,
everything. I was about to tell him I would reconsider when he said, "I'll
give you an extra five thousand right now to stay on. What do you say,
Jack?"

Jesus!
Another five grand.

"I
say, 'You talked me into it'." He wrote out the check.

I
decided to go back out to Sandra Blake's house for another
look around. The last time I was there, I didn't really give the place too good
a going-over, but now, thanks to Blake's extra five dimes, I felt
newly-inspired as my old car sputtered through the yawning gates of Beachview.

The
house looked the same from the outside as it did on my last visit. Even the
grass and other vegetation was recently trimmed, proving that even capital
murder does not deter the precision landscaping of a high-end gated community.
The big drapes over the tall front windows were still drawn, and there were once
again no people to be seen, on the streets, in cars, anywhere.

I had
Ryan Farrow's key with me, hoping no one had ordered the locks changed. I
slipped it into the slot in the front door. I smiled as I felt the knob turn.

Inside,
though, I wasn't so lucky. Everything was in complete disarray. The foyer was
strewn with items thrown from adjacent rooms. Seat cushions, figurines,
anything that would fly through the doorway was lying in the hall. The living
room, that room of such impeccable taste, was a mess. Furniture overturned,
couches slashed, nothing was left alone. The kitchen got the same treatment,
with every cabinet opened, its contents — plates, glassware, everything
— tossed to the floor. Somebody was certainly hot to find something. I
was pretty sure who, and I was pretty sure what.

Upstairs
was not spared, either. Sandra's bedroom was torn apart. The mattress was cut
to shreds, its wooly contents spread all over the room. Drawers were flung to
the floor, clothes everywhere. Not even the bathrooms escaped the fury of the
intruders. Everywhere in the house that could hide a case of wine was ripped
open.

I went
back downstairs. The office was wrecked. The file cabinet drawers lay empty on
the floor, papers covering virtually every square inch of floor space. I looked
at her bookcase. It was empty. Every one of the books lay on the floor. I glanced
at them for a moment. There were mostly real estate and travel books, along
with a handful of bestselling novels in hardcover, but one book at my feet
caught my attention. It was called
Wine And War: The French, The Nazis, and
The Battle For France's Greatest Treasures
. I picked it up and opened it.
It was just as the title had promised: a lot of wine info with plenty of World
War II-era photos to go with it. I was about to return it to the floor when I
thought I saw handwriting on one of the first pages. I opened it to that page
to see an inscription:

To
Sandra — Ours is not the only great struggle for your wine. One day soon
we will share a bottle.

All
my love,

Hector.

Funny,
but my first thought was that Olivera was actually going to open and drink one
of those six bottles, which, if he could pry them away from Blake, would cost
him over a hundred and fifty grand apiece. That better be some fucking killer
wine.

I took
the book with me, leaving the house as I found it. I got in the car, and left Beachview.
On the drive back toward the city, I called Frank Madden. Fortunately, he picked
up.

"Frank,
it's Jack. I just left Sandra Blake's house again. It's been completely
trashed. Someone's looking for something, and they've just about destroyed her
house trying to find it."

"Oh,
shit. What were they looking for, the wine?"

Traffic
on Sahara was way too thick, so I pulled off onto a cross street, swinging over
toward Desert Inn Road, hoping for less start-and-stop. "You know about
the wine?" I asked.

"Colby
Farrow told us about it while we were questioning him in his brother's killing.
Said it's some kind of ultra-expensive stuff that Hector Olivera wants. Said he
thinks Blake took it and is keeping it hidden away somewhere."

"And
why shouldn't he hide it away? It's his wine."

"It's
not the wine. It's the fact that the wine ties Olivera into this whole mess,
and gives him a motive for killing both of our victims."

I was
pleased that Frank had come back to the one-killer theory. "Not only
that," I said, "but they hit John Brendan Blake's house over the
weekend. Same MO, same destruction, same result: no wine."

"Jesus!"

I
turned onto Desert Inn, where things were much smoother. It relaxed me
considerably. "Here's one more thing you may like. Olivera was having an
affair with Sandra Blake."

"Hot-damn!
I knew it! How'd you find out? Did he tell you?"

"Not
directly. I found a book among the stuff in Sandra's house just now. It's
inscribed to her from Olivera. He signed it, 'All my love'."

"We're
taking a much closer look at Olivera right now, anyway. Thanks for this info,
Jack."

"Don't
mention it. Hey, have you been back to Binion's since we played together last
week?"

His
voice lightened up considerably. "Yeah, I was there Saturday night. It was
a pretty good game. I made about five hundred."

"You
do any good against Manny the Mexican?"

I
could hear him smile. "What do you think?"

≈≈≈

As I arrived home, my
cell phone rang. My caller ID revealed the Miami number which Sandra Blake had
called several times from her home phone in the nights leading up to her
murder.

"Jack,
this is Hector Olivera."

"Hello,
Mr Olivera. Are you still in New York?" I threw my keys on the table and
went straight for the Dalmore bottle in my kitchen.

"No.
We flew to Miami this morning. We are ready for the Marlins to win the World
Series in five games. Six at the most."

I had
to laugh. This guy was nothing if not optimistic. I wanted to remind him they
weren't facing Cleveland this time around, but thought better of it.

I
asked him, "What's on your mind today?"

"Jack,
I must ask you … where is the wine?"

"You
mean, you must ask me after you turned two houses upside down and didn't find
it?"

"Where
is it, Jack?"

I
poured a healthy shot of the Scotch. "I don't have it, if that's what
you're driving at. Send a couple of your boys over to my apartment. I'm
probably next up on your list, anyway. I'll be happy to show them around. Only
they won't have to destroy the place. There's not much here to begin
with." I headed for the living room and my welcoming couch.

"You
say you don't have it. But you do know where it is, right?"

"Why
do you think I know where it is? All I want is to find out who murdered Sandra
Blake. I don't give a shit about the wine or your land or your stadium or
anything else. What is it about that that you don't get?"

"You
must understand, I cannot let you stand in the way of this very complicated deal
with Blake. This is progress. It will represent a very big … shot in the arm,
as you say, for the city of Las Vegas. All roadblocks to that progress must be
removed for the good of everyone involved."

I
paused for a moment. "You know, it was just a couple of nights ago when I
was beaten up pretty badly by some guys who warned me not to help you or anyone
else build a stadium here. You should meet these guys. They kind of like the
idea of roadblocks."

"You
were beaten up?"

"Two
very rough guys. They cut my head open and loosened a couple of teeth. They
were quite insistent."

"Who
were they?"

"Casino
thugs, I think. They don't want the Marlins here."

"Casinos!"
He spit the word out. "They can't see beyond their own slot machines. They
think progress means building a bigger swimming pool behind their hotel. They
have no idea what is good for this city. Don't pay any attention to them."

I
said, "That's easy for you to say. It wasn't your face that was
battered."

"This
is also easy for me to say. I want that wine, and I think you know where it
is."

"What
if I don't know?"

"Then,"
he said, "you know where to get it."

"What
makes you say that? It's Blake's wine."

"Yes,
I know. And perhaps he has hidden it somewhere. But I am certain you know
where."

Time
to shove this right back at him. "Mr Olivera, did you have Sandra Blake
killed because she wouldn't give you the wine?"

"Wha
—? These wild accusations do not change the fact that I want that wine,
and you can get it for me."

I took
a long, slow drink of the Dalmore. "I know you were having an affair with
her. Without Ryan Farrow knowing about it. And I can prove it."

Now it
was his turn to pause. "If that is true, if we were having an affair, and
I only say
if
, then why would I want to kill her? She was the most beautiful,
most wonderful woman who —"

"She
was one of your 'roadblocks', as you put it. She was working with you to try to
make a deal with Blake for his land
and
the wine. You probably thought
about stealing it right out of her house when you found out she had it. But
then you realized Blake would never sell you his land if he knew you did that,
especially since you didn't have all your ducks in a row yet. So when she
couldn't deliver the deal with Blake, maybe you became angry with her, or who
knows? But she turned up with a bullet in her head just the same."