The Downtown Deal (8 page)

When I
reached the top, I could go down a hallway either right or left. Looking both
ways, I glimpsed one door to the left and two to the right. All were closed. I
went left.

Creeping
across the carpeted floor, I arrived at the door, momentarily motionless, listening.
The light from downstairs had faded behind me. With all quiet, I took the
handle and carefully turned it, easing the door open.

The
first thing I saw was the big window offering a wide vista of the Las Vegas
Valley, with the city sparkling in the distance. As I entered the room, I saw
the beginnings of a bed, with an arm draped over the side. Then, I felt the
hard, hammering force on my head, my consciousness ebbing away, and as I
crumpled to the floor, I saw no more.

≈≈≈

I don't know when I
opened my eyes, but when I did, I couldn't see anything at all. Not only was
everything dark, but I didn't know where I was. I thought I felt carpet against
the right side of my face, but I couldn't prove it. I couldn't move at all. My
head pounded so hard, I could almost hear it. Otherwise, all was silent.

After
a little while of lying immobile, I pieced it together.
Farrow, dark house, upstairs, boom.
Again I tried to move. No luck.

From
my paralyzed position, I moved my eyes as best I could, trying for a look around
the room, but I didn't get far. I could see the foot of the bed, with an arm
hanging off it. It looked familiar. Then it snapped back to me that it was the
last thing I saw before my skull caved in.

As my
brain ramped back up into functioning mode, I finally gained movement, tiny
bits at a time. The whomping in my head subsided a little, enabling me to make
the mighty effort to get up. I don't know how long it took me — time had
no meaning at all — but I eventually struggled to my feet.

I
didn't want to think right then about who hit me or why, but I cursed myself
for walking into this blackened house to begin with, for climbing the
staircase, and for all the snooping around. I felt I shouldn't push my luck, so
I stood still for a minute, leaning against the wall while taking in the
sights, or what I could make of them in the blackened room.

The
panoramic view of the city was still there in the window, while over on the
bed, the arm that hung off it was attached to a stationary figure. From where I
stood, I didn't have to get any closer. I knew it was Ryan Farrow, and I knew
he was dead.

All of
a sudden, I was very grateful to be breathing. Shit, if the killer had wanted
me dead, that's what I'd be. I'd been out for a while, so I was pretty sure he
was long gone.

Pretty
soon, I felt I could put one foot in front of the other without tumbling back
to the floor. I slowly made my way across the room to the bedside table, where
I flicked on the light. Farrow lay on his back, having been shot once in the
forehead, just like Sandra Blake. His blood had spilled out of him into a stain
on his green and gray satin bedspread.

I
looked at my watch. Nine-fifteen. I reached for my cell phone to call Frank
Madden. Then I realized he would've left work by now, meaning I'd be connected
to the swing shift at Homicide, talking to God knows who. Of course, I'd have
to answer for my presence at the murder scene: why was I there, how did I get
in, what's my connection to Farrow, and on and on all night long. Fuck it. My
head was killing me, so I figured I would just go home and call Madden in the
morning.

With
great resolve, I painfully hobbled downstairs. The foyer light had been
switched off. I flipped it back on to take a quick look around the house.
Nothing of any significance popped up until I got to a room Farrow obviously
used as a den.

There
was a switch on the wall just inside the door. When I hit it, a big overhead
light came on. A long couch lined one wall, with the opposite wall covered with
books. A comfy-looking chair and side table sat in a bay window, which offered
the same sensational view as the bedroom. A ladder on a track slid back and
forth along the stacked shelves. On the near wall, just to the right of the
doorway stood a wet bar, and beyond that, a wine storage unit. It held about
thirty bottles, but none of them were in their horizontal slots. They lay
scattered around the floor. A couple were broken. I looked behind the bar. It
had all been disturbed, rummaged through. I'd seen enough.

I
wiped my prints from everything I remembered touching, then left the house. On
the way to my car, the cold wind finished the job of reviving me, but my mind
raced into fifth gear.

This had to be a contract job. That's the
only reason I'm still alive. The killer came for Ryan Farrow and I just
happened to show up at the wrong time. An amateur would've freaked out and
blasted me on the spot. But this guy kept his head and didn't want to leave
anything that would look like a mass murder scene, so he put me out while he
made his getaway.

That
led me to try to piece it all together. Why was Farrow smoked? Was there a
connection to Hector Olivera? Maybe to Blake?

And
whoever did this wanted that case of wine.

What the fuck is going on here?

All
this made my head hurt even more. I drove straight home, where I poured myself
a good, stiff shot of Dalmore. It didn't do much for the pain, but it helped me
drift off to sleep.

T
he raw pain in my head had wound down to a dull burn by the
time I awoke the next morning. I'd forgotten to close the curtains before I
crashed, so the gray morning light came blasting into the room, not doing me
any good at all. Squinting, I stumbled out of bed and into the shower, hoping
the pain would go away. It didn't. Once I got dressed and made my way into the
kitchen to put the coffee on, I realized the hurt would be with me for quite a while.

After
the toast popped up, I took it to the table and sat down with the paper. The
first agreeable sip of coffee helped out, feeling warm and familiar going down.
There was no news of Ryan Farrow's murder anywhere. If they knew about it, they
almost certainly would've put it on the front page, or at the very least, page
two or three, provided there was no worldwide crisis to hijack the space, which
there wasn't. I reached for my phone.

Punching
up Frank Madden's number for Homicide, I hoped he would be there, although I
wasn't sure he worked Saturdays. As I made the call, I opened the curtains in
my living room. Through the window, I heard the wind rustling through high
treetops, while paper, leaves, and other pieces of debris blew hard across the
parking lot. Gray skies lingered overhead, promising a miserable day. I
couldn't find the sun anywhere. Instinctively, I started to shiver, so I went
over to the thermostat and shoved it up to about eighty. Finally, I got Madden
on the line.

"Frank,
Jack Barnett. I'm glad I caught you this morning."

"Yes,
Jack. What can I do for you?"

"Go
out to Ryan Farrow's house." I gave him the Summerlin address, as I walked
back to my toast and coffee on the table. "You'll find him sprawled out on
his bed with a bullet in his brain, just like Sandra Blake."

"
Jesus
!
How do you know this?"

"Remember
I told you yesterday that I was going to pay him a little visit last night?
Well, I got there a shade too late. That's the state I found him in before
someone sapped me and put me out for a few hours. When I came to, Farrow was
still there, still just as dead."

"Last
night? Holy shit! Why didn't you call me? You've got my cell number."

"I
know, I know," I said. "But it was late, and I didn't want to hang
around. The inside of my head was exploding, and I didn't want to have to
explain my being there to whoever showed up from Homicide. When I got popped, it
was obviously close to the time of death, since the killer was still in the
room. I'd label him a professional, sent to kill Farrow only, while limiting
collateral damage such as myself."

"What
time were you there?"

"I
got there around twenty till seven. It hadn't been dark for too long." I
propped the phone up between my cheek and shoulder while I buttered my toast.
Just that little motion with the phone sent hot jabs of fire through my skull.
I set the knife down and took the phone in my hand again.

"Just
for the record, Jack, what
were
you doing there?"

"Like
I told you yesterday, I wanted to find out what, if anything, Farrow knew about
Hector Olivera and his relationship with Sandra Blake." He didn't speak,
then I added, "Don't worry, Frank. I didn't do it."

"It's
not a question of whether you did it, it's why did you wait till this morning
to call it in. I've got to go out there now, goddammit, and I've got to put it
in my report that you told me about it."

"Just
say you got a call from a Concerned Citizen."

"And
just what was a CC doing at the scene of a murder moments after it took
place?"

"I'm
sure you can be creative about that. The main thing is, Farrow's dead, and he's
waiting for you right now."

≈≈≈

I nursed my head the
rest of the day. Taking a shot that heavy would normally turn me off on a case.
I mean, I really don't need that shit, you know? I like my head the way it is,
and I don't want it cracked open because I was in the wrong place at the wrong
time. But Blake had given me twenty-two thousand, five hundred reasons to stick
my nose where it shouldn't be. So that's where I was going to stick it.

As the
afternoon wound into evening, I poured a shot of Dalmore and turned on the TV.
The baseball post-season playoffs were under way, with the winners advancing to
the World Series. I tuned into the National League playoff, game four,
featuring the Chicago Cubs and the Florida Marlins. The Cubs were walking away
with it, 7-0, in the fourth inning.

Normally,
I'm a big baseball fan, but this year, the poker at Binion's has been too good
to ignore ever since I made the change to no-limit hold'em. So because of that
and because of this case suddenly falling into my lap, all of this year's
season-ending baseball drama has been sliding right by me.

They
were playing in Miami. The announcers were going crazy over the Cubs and their
chances of going to the World Series for the first time in the memory of man.
If they won this game, which it looked like they would easily do, the Marlins would
be down three games to one in the best-of-seven series, meaning they would need
to win three in a row to advance, including the final two games in Chicago.
This gave the Marlins only the slimmest of shots to go to the World Series.

In
between their breathless praise for the Cubs, the announcers casually mentioned
the Marlins were hamstrung in their endless quest for a new stadium in Miami.
With the game still on, I went over to the computer and looked up "Hector
Olivera".

There
were thousands of mentions. As best I could tell from scanning a bunch of them,
most were trade stories about his companies and their real estate dealings.
There was a human interest piece from the Miami
Herald
a couple of years
back. I looked it over, and found nothing more than a strong emphasis on his
impoverished youth and his daring journey across the Florida Straits, escaping
the viselike grip of Fidel Castro. According to the story, Olivera was a real
self-starter, not easily intimidated by odds being stacked against him.

This
all fit in with what I'd learned about him so far, but I still needed to link
him to the Farrows and Sandra Blake.

I then
googled the combination of "Hector Olivera" and "Florida
Marlins", and got a handful of hits. It turned out that Olivera's name was
one of several that were being tossed around in the team's search for a new
stadium. In one of the articles, which was about ten months old, he claimed he
had a parcel of Miami-area land "in his pocket" that was big enough to
accommodate the ballpark. He further went on to say he could arrange a
"serious percentage" of the needed construction financing if his land
was chosen as the site. Only problem was, the land was in Hialeah, a Miami
suburb, and Marlins management was reluctant to move the team out of Miami
proper.

I
looked back at the TV. My knowledge of the Marlins was sketchy at best, but I
knew they won the World Series back in, I think, '97 or so, beating Cleveland.
The following year, however, their ownership pissed off a lot of their fans
when they dismantled the team, unloading most of their top players. It think it
was because they … they … ri-i-ight, then it came back to me …
because they couldn't get a new stadium deal
from the city of Miami.

I
watched another inning. The Marlins scored, but were no threat to win the game.
A few televised shots of foul balls landing in the stands showed me lots of
ugly orange seats. They looked like they were made out of wood and were
obviously very uncomfortable. The place was jammed, over sixty-five thousand,
the announcers said, but they went on to say that normal home-game attendance
for the Marlins during the season was far, far less, just barely cracking five
figures.

A new
stadium, according to the announcers, with lots of eye-popping luxuries like a
dome and other shiny features, "would have no trouble at all attracting
tens of thousands of fans to each and every game." Translation: higher
ticket prices, higher concession revenue, higher parking rates, and more money
all the way around.

A lot
more money.