Authors: Mike Dennis
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #mystery, #Thriller & Suspense, #crime, #Noir, #Maraya21
The Downtown Deal
THE DOWNTOWN DEAL
by
MIKE DENNIS
THE JACK BARNETT / LAS VEGAS SERIES
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Links to
other books by Mike Dennis
Bought by Maraya21
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For my
beautiful wife, Yleana, who gave me the greatest night of my life by marrying
me on a rooftop in the heart of old Havana. I hope you will never stop
believing in me.
1
H
er
eyes
were probably once tinged with blue, but now they were the color of stone, as
they stared lifeless up at the fluorescent ceiling. She was dead, all right,
just like Blake had said, but what he didn’t tell me was how beautiful she was.
Even with the bullet hole in her forehead, I could see she was stunning in
life.
If I’d
stopped to think about it, I’d’ve probably pegged her as a real looker from the
get-go. I mean, she was Blake’s ex-wife, and that meant a long ride on the top
rung: the big house, the Benz, the jewelry, it all went with the territory.
Nothing was out of reach for John Brendan Blake, real estate big shot, and that
included the most desirable women.
I
nodded at the morgue attendant. He covered her lovely face with the sheet, then
motioned me toward the door. As we exited the chilly portable storage cabinet
that held her and about twenty other bodies, he doused the light, leaving them
in their cold, quiet blackness. I thanked him, slipped him a hundred, and got
the hell out of there.
Outside,
I took a deep breath, calling the crisp night air into my lungs, but I couldn’t
exhale the death vibe that had fouled my insides. Morgues do that to me. It
would take a couple of Scotches to cleanse that away. That’s one good thing
about living in Las Vegas. You can get a drink any time you want it. Or need
it.
And
right now, I needed it.
≈≈≈
I aimed my car toward
the Four Queens Hotel and Casino. They have a place in there called Hugo’s.
It’s a fancy restaurant, actually, located below street level, away from the
racket of the casino floor. People in suits and dresses buzz around the place,
but the bar is one of my favorites. It’s cozy, friendly, and most important of
all, they serve Dalmore, my brand of single-malt Scotch. I ordered one, as I
took the last empty stool, while Dean greeted me with a wide smile from behind
the bar.
He
brought my drink, asked how my poker was coming along, and some other small
talk under the dim lighting. Then it was my turn.
"Dean,
you ever see the corpse of a gorgeous woman?" I watched his reaction, as I
put the single-malt Scotch to my lips. It serviced all the right spots, sliding
down down smooth and easy. I started to relax.
"No,
but I’ve seen a lot of live ones." His round, dark eyes sprang to life. I
could tell he was thinking of one in particular.
"I’m
serious. I just saw one."
The
grin flew off his face. "What? Where?"
Right
away, I regretted bringing it up. I wasn’t sure how far I wanted to get into
this with him. We were friendly, but apart from sitting at the same poker table
on a few occasions, I never really saw him outside Hugo’s.
He was a pretty good guy, though, plus I
felt like I needed to get the whole dead-body thing out of my system, so I
dropped my reluctance.
I
said, "Down at the morgue. She was murdered last night."
"What?"
He leaned over the bar, a little closer to me. "Did you know her?"
I
shook my head. "She was the ex-wife of a guy I know."
Suddenly,
the sixtyish man on the stool to my left spoke up. "It’s always the
ex-husband who did it." I made his accent to be from the Great Lakes, maybe
Chicago or Milwaukee. He sounded pretty sure of himself.
Turning
his bulk around in the stool to face me, he looked me over with watery eyes of
an indeterminate color, somewhere between green and gray, with a splash of
yellow. Jowls hung well below jaw level, and they shook when his large mouth
opened to speak. Right now, it opened wide, revealing uneven teeth.
He
said, "Jealousy, betrayal, lust … ahh, motives like that’ll drive a guy to
just about anything. Including murder."
He
returned to his drink, which had a carbonated mixer in it along with lots of
ice.
I
didn't appreciate his intrusion. I wanted to tell him to mind his own business,
but instead, I said, "Well, I don’t think it’s the ex-husband this time."
"And
why is that?" He scanned me up and down again, searching for the source of
this opposite opinion.
"He’s
the one who hired me to find whoever did it." Right away I realized I
shouldn't've said that, but hey, I'm not licensed anymore. I can say whatever
the fuck I want.
Mr
Great Lakes said, "He did? Would you be a private detective, sir?"
I was
not wild about the drift of this conversation, but since I started it, I
couldn't really back out just yet. After another slow taste of the Dalmore, I
said, "Not exactly. I used to be."
That
was all he was getting out of me. I damn sure wasn’t going to get into how I
lost my license over in LA, or how I split town in the middle of the night to
come here, just so I could squeeze out a living playing low-limit poker over at
Binion’s, all the while trying to stay a couple of steps ahead of the
California law.
"Well,
let me shake your hand. I've never met a real private eye before. The name's Travis.
Travis Haynes."
"Jack
Barnett."
He
gave me, oddly, a European single-stroke handshake. His large, pale hand was a
good deal whiter than his flaccid face, which was red, but not from blushing.
"Tell
me, Jack, what does this guy, the ex-husband, do for a living?"
"I
can’t talk about it."
"Does
he have a lot of money? You know, is he filthy rich?"
"I
can’t talk about it."
"Because
if he is, he’s almost certainly your man." He paused to swallow the
remainder of his drink. There were mostly ice cubes left in his glass, with
only a trace of whiskey, and he got one of the cubes in his mouth. He spoke around
it as he crunched on it. The sound of his teeth against the ice was driving me
crazy and I had to strain to understand him when he said, "If she was
beautiful, like you said, there’s another man in there somewhere and she was
screwing him for sure. You can bet on it. Then, if her husband is rich, oh
brother, watch out! You put jealousy and sex into bed with big money, and man,
you’d better get out of the way. Ha! It’s like a bunch of hemophiliacs running
loose in a razor factory. Someone is damn sure gonna bleed."
I
didn't want to go any further with this, but the thing was, old Travis made
sense. That’s exactly how this kind of thing usually went.
Only,
it couldn’t have been Blake who did it. Not that he wasn’t capable of it, mind
you. He’s got goons that’ll do whatever he tells them. I ought to know; they
beat the shit out of me one day back in February during my initial encounter
with him on another matter.
No, if
he did do it, he had no reason to hire me, especially if he knew the trail
would lead right back to him. Besides, he was paying me ten thousand dollars right
now, and ten more when I finished the job. For that kind of money, I was going
to find the shooter, no matter how long it took, if the cops didn’t find him
first. And Blake knew it.
Dean
filled a drink order for a waiter, then turned back to me. "Where’d it
happen, Jack?"
"In
her home. She lived in that fancy gated community called Beachview, out on Lake
Sahara."
"Gated?
Wait a minute, I saw something about that on TV this afternoon. Yeah-h-hh."
I could see his memory coming back. "Is that the one you're working on?
How’d he get through the gate?"
I
finished off my drink. Within ten seconds, Dean had the Dalmore bottle in hand,
replenishing it. "If she knew him," I said, "she probably let
him in. If not, well, I have no idea. And my client, if you can call him that,
has an airtight alibi."
I
didn't mind throwing that last part in, since I knew it would be in the papers.
Cops always look to the ex first in cases like this, and since the ex was a
local heavy hitter, they'd want to make public the fact that he was cleared.
Travis
shrugged and made a grand hand gesture. I wished he would shut the fuck up and
go back to chewing his ice, but of course, he didn't. He said, "Well,
maybe he paid someone to do it. You've gotta consider that. Or better yet,
maybe it was the third member of the triangle. You know, like the other man."
Irritated,
I threw a sidelong glance over at him. "Might be," although I wasn't aware
of any other man just yet.
Blake
only approached me about this earlier today. We met briefly in his fancy corner
office in the Bank of America building downtown. All he knew was that his
ex-wife — Sandra was her name — was found in the living room by her
maid early this morning, dead of a gunshot wound to the head, as the maid
arrived to clean the house. The coroner tentatively estimated the time of death
at sometime between six o'clock and midnight last night.
Blake
told me they were married for eleven years, no children, and that the split
came about a year ago, around October of '02. He didn't want to go into the
reason for it, so I didn't press the issue, but to hear him tell it, he took it
hard. Said she was the only woman he'd ever really love, and all the rest of
it. I wasn't sure I believed him, but I leaned in that direction. I had one of
those women in my past myself and I'd crossed that bridge. Besides, Blake could
be pretty convincing when he put his mind to it.
I
drained the second Dalmore, and with it went the creepy-crawlies from the
morgue. All I wanted now was to get back to my apartment and fall into bed.
Which
is exactly what I did.
2
I
set my alarm for seven the next morning. I don't usually do
well at that hour, but I wanted to be at Sandra Blake's house on Lake Sahara by
no later than eight, in case the cops were still nosing around. If they were, I
might be able to wangle a little information out of them before their coffee
brought them to their defensive senses.
If
they were gone, then I could have a look around myself to see what I might pick
up in the way of information, with the rest of the day still in front of me.
Lake
Sahara sits on the west side of town, just a few miles from the Las Vegas
Strip, nestled among a cluster of gated communities. Its shore is ringed with
mostly big, extravagant homes. Apparently, the one where Sandra Blake died was
the one she and Blake had occupied when they were married, so it became part of
her divorce package.
On the
drive out there, I phoned Blake to get the gate code. He gave it to me, then I
said, "When I'm done at the house, I'd like to see you. There's a few more
things I need to speak to you about."
He
sounded agitated. "Is it absolutely necessary? I'm looking at a full day
here, and I've already told you everything I know about it."
"Well,
of course, it's up to you, Mr Blake. But you're paying me a lot of money. Why
not let me earn it? I'm not out to waste your time."
"All
right, all right. Lunch, then. Say around one o'clock?"
"One
it is. Meet me at the Stardust coffee shop."
"The
Stardust? Are you kidding?"
My
voice shifted to a lower, more patient, gear. "Okay, it's not exactly the
Las Vegas Country Club, but think about it. It's an ideal place. Friendly,
well-lit. You damn sure won't run into anyone you know there." Before he
could respond, I added, "One more thing. I'm sure you have a photograph of
your ex-wife, one that's a good close-up?"