Chance (12 page)

"Spenser," he said, "get up here."

"You're awful bossy, Anthony, for a guy who's not paying me."

"For God's sake," Anthony said, "Julius is here."

"With you?" I said.

"In the hotel. He called me on the house phone, but I wouldn't tell him where my room was."

"What was his posture?" I said.

"What?"

"How was he acting?"

"He said he was going to kill me."

"Oh," I said.

"That posture."

"So get Hawk and get your asses up here," Anthony said.

I indulged a cruel streak.

"Did you know Marty Anaheim was in town too?" I said.

"Marty?"

"Yeah. He's staying down the Strip."

"Oh my God," Anthony said.

His voice was very small. I heard the murmur of another voice in the background and Anthony's voice, muffled, as if his hand were over the mouthpiece, saying Marty's here, and a louder murmur and Anthony's voice saying, "For cris sake Bibi," then his voice on the phone again.

"You and Hawk said you'd protect me," he said.

"You gotta come up right now."

"Stay in your room," I said.

"We'll be along."

When we got there Anthony was drinking scotch out of a short fat glass. His coat was off, his dark blue linen shirt was unbuttoned nearly to the waist. The cuffs too were unbuttoned. Bibi sat on the couch, hugging her knees, her back wedged into the angle of the arm. Her feet were bare. She had on designer jeans and a white sleeveless top.

"So tell me about Julius," I said.

"Fuck Julius," Anthony said.

"Where's Marty Anaheim?"

"MGM Grand," I said.

"How do you know?"

"I saw him," Hawk said.

"You know he's staying there?"

"Seems likely," Hawk said.

"He coming out of the guest elevators when I spotted him."

"Maybe he was just visiting somebody?"

"Maybe," Hawk said.

"What difference does it make?" I said.

"He's staying someplace. He's here in Vegas."

"Yeah, yeah. Of course. Right. What difference does it make.

You haven't seen him here, in this place?"

Hawk shook his head.

"Step at a time," I said.

"Far as we know, Marty doesn't know where you're staying. Julius does. Tell me about Julius."

"You think Marty's here looking for me, though."

"Center of attention," I said.

"Tell me about Julius."

"Oh God," Anthony said.

He finished his scotch, went to the ice bucket on the table, put a handful of ice in his glass, and poured more scotch over it. Bibi continued to watch us, peeking over her clenched knees. Hawk leaned on the wall near the door. I waited, standing in front of Bibi. While I waited I patted her knee. My father used to do that, give me a pat once in a while, without comment. Anthony drank some more scotch.

"Julius blames me for Shirley's death," Anthony said.

I nodded.

"Said if I hadn't run off like I did she'd be alive today."

I nodded.

"Hey, it's too bad somebody killed her, but I ain't going to pretend she was like, you know, Meg Ryan or somebody. I had to get away from her. I had to get a new start."

"You could have killed her," I said.

"I was right here with Bibi, you asked her yourself."

I patted Bibi's knee again.

"She might lie to protect you."

"I was gonna kill her, would I wait till I got out here?"

"You thought you were free and clear," I said.

"You were winning, your system was working, and then she showed up. You could have done it."

"For cris sake I thought you and him was gonna protect me."

"Julius threaten you?" I said.

"Yes. He said I was as good as dead."

"Was he alone?" I said.

"I dunno, I just talked to him on the fucking phone," Anthony said.

He drank more scotch.

"Probably he wasn't alone," I said.

"Probably not," Hawk murmured.

"So," I said.

"How you want to handle this?"

"Me?"

"Yeah. It is, if you'll pardon the expression, your ass. I figure you might want some input in how to save it."

"How much to eliminate them?"

"Them?"

"Both of them, Julius and Marty."

"How about Gino Fish?" I said.

"Don't you have some of his money?"

"I don't know. That was Marty's part."

"Part of what?"

"Of our deal. I'll tell you about it later. Right now we got to get rid of the immediate threat."

"By shooting it," I said.

"Yeah. You guys are good. I've heard about you. Ten thousand each. Cash on the barrel head."

I looked at Hawk.

"On the barrel head," he said.

"It's a nice idea," I said.

"But it might turn into a career, we have to kill everybody you annoy."

"No, no. Just these two guys. You want more than ten each.

Okay. I can do that. You name it, I'll do what it takes."

"We'll hold that option in reserve," I said, "until we talk with the other principals."

"Talk?"

"Yeah. Hawk and I will go talk with Julius, see what he has in mind. Then maybe we'll find Marty, see what he's thinking, then we'll report back to you."

Anthony drank some scotch as if it were an antidote to madness.

"Talk?" he said.

"Fucking talk? You can't talk to them, for God's sake. You try talking to them and they'll kill you, for cris sake and where the fuck does that leave me?"

"Nice to be needed," I said.

Bibi was sitting as she had been, motionless, her eyes seeming to grow larger and more empty as we talked.

"You all right in this?" I said to her.

"No," she said.

"All I can do is sit here and wait for the men to do whatever they'll do. How all-right is that?"

"We can get you out of this," I said.

"Have you on a plane out of here in an hour."

"To where?" she said.

I didn't answer. I knew the question was rhetorical.

"She stays," Anthony said.

"She does what she wants to," I said.

"I'll stay," Bibi said.

Her voice was small and nearly empty. The words were its only content. I nodded.

"Okay," I said.

"Sit tight. No one knows quite where you are.

There's two doors. This one and the one in the bedroom. Leave the door in the bedroom chained and bolted. Use the living room door.

Check everybody through the peephole. No room service. No messages. No housekeeping services. Nobody but me or Hawk. There's trouble call hotel security."

"You don't even know where his room is," Anthony said.

"Maybe he's not even staying here, how you going to find him?"

"He'll find me," I said.

"Technically, he's still my client."

"You going to sell me out to Julius," Anthony said. His voice was shrill.

"You gonna leave me here and sell me out, like a goddamned sitting duck?"

"You could call the cops," I said.

"You guys are scared," Anthony said.

"And you won't admit it.

That's the fucking problem, isn't it? You're yellow."

"Maybe we could shoot him," Hawk said, "and go get ten thousand from Julius."

"Hell," I said, "we could double-dip. Get ten from Julius, get ten from Marty."

"Hey," Anthony said.

"Don't kid around, you know. This is a fucking life-or-death deal."

"Ain't it always," I said.

I patted Bibi's knee again and headed for the door.

"We'll be in touch," I said.

"A Mr. Ventura called, please call him in his room."

Hawk smiled and shot me with his forefinger.

Julius had several rooms in another wing, without a view of the volcano. I wondered if he knew he was not A list. Hard to be sure.

There might be people closer to the volcano than I, who thought I wasn't A list. His suite was bigger than mine, though it was smaller than Delaware. A fat guy named Steve, whom I knew slightly, let us into the living room. He was in his shirtsleeves and had a Glock 9mm on his right hip. There were four other men in the living room, all in shirtsleeves, all with guns. One of them was Jackie, Shirley's driver. I nodded at him. He nodded back. A pump shotgun lay across a hassock near the couch. The remnants of lunch littered the coffee table and the bar top, and spilled off the rollaway room service table. A bottle of red wine stood on an end table.

"Julius was looking for us," I said.

Hawk stepped to the side of the doorway and leaned on the wall again. There was nothing specific about the way he leaned but somehow it projected menace.

"He's in with the missus," Steve said.

"She's pretty shook up about Shirley."

"Probably is," I said.

"Can you let him know we're here?"

Steve went into one of the bedrooms, and stayed a moment. The four men in the room looked at Hawk and at me. No one said anything. Steve came out of the bedroom.

"Julius says come in."

Hawk and I went past him into the room. There was an old woman dressed in black lying on the bed with her shoes on. The shoes were black. Julius sat on the bed beside her. There was a plastic ice bucket full of water on the bedside table. Julius wet a face cloth in the ice bucket and wrung it out and wiped his wife's face with it. Her face, even refreshed with the cold water, was pale, and her eyes were puffy. She had thick eyebrows and a thick prominent nose. Her hands rested on her stomach below her bosom and her thick fingers were moving rosary beads through them, though she gave no outward sign of prayer.

"She don't want me to leave her," Julius said.

"Here is fine," I said.

The woman opened her eyes and looked at Hawk and me, without much focus.

"I don't know you," she said.

Ventura said softly, "They work for me, Iris."

"The colored man, too?"

"Yes."

"Did you know Shirley?" she said.

"Yes," I said.

"She's dead, you know."

"I know," I said.

"I'm sorry."

"Did you know her?" she said to Hawk.

"Yes, Ma'am," Hawk said.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"Yes," she said.

"It is a loss."

We were quiet. The old woman closed her eyes again and in a moment tears began to seep from under the lids. Sitting beside her, Julius wiped her face again with the wet face cloth Then he put the cloth back into the ice water and picked up her hand and held it and patted it with his other hand.

"We come to bring her home," Julius said to me.

"You know who did it?"

His voice was a deep slow rumble, like a subway train passing far below the surface.

"No," I said.

"Hawk?"

"No," Hawk said.

"You know where Anthony Meeker is?"

"Yes," I said.

"Tell Stevie," Julius said.

"Then go home."

"Can we talk?" I said.

"Nothing to talk about," Julius said.

"Yeah, there is."

"No," Julius said.

"I don't know if it was him actually put his hands on her. But he ran off on her. She wouldn't have been out here, he hadn't run off on her. She wouldn't be gone."

He slowly patted his wife's hand as he spoke.

"Did you know he has some kind of game going with Marty Anaheim?"

"He did, he didn't, don't matter. That's business, this is blood.

You understand anything?"

"You don't know the game between him and Marty?" I said.

The old woman on the bed opened her eyes. Her voice scraped harshly out between her thin bluish lips.

"Don't talk business, my daughter's in the morgue."

"No, Iris," Julius said.

"No business."

"Only business is killing him," she said.

"Yes," Julius said, still holding her hand, still patting it.

I looked at Hawk. He shook his head. I nodded.

"We'll find him anyway," Julius said.

"Save us a little time, you tell Stevie."

"Sure," I said.

"I'll pay you through today," Julius said.

"Tell Stevie, he'll give you cash."

"Sure."

"No more business, Julius," Iris said.

"Kill him."

He reached across and closed her eyes gently with his fingertips.

"Try to sleep," he said.

Hawk and I left the room. In the living room I spoke to Steve.

He took $100 bills from a suitcase in the closet and gave some to me. I folded it once and put the money in my pants pocket without counting it, and we left.

"I talked to a policeman from Las Vegas on the phone. He wanted to know if you were with me the night before I left."

"Yeah. They found Shirley Ventura dead with one of my business cards near her."

"My God! I told them the truth on the assumption that had you wished otherwise, you'd have gotten to me first."

"Honesty is the best policy," I said.

"Usually," Susan said.

"When are you coming home?"

"Why is it," I said, "that the simplest question, about the most ordinary subject, when you ask it comes freighted with the hint of God knows what excitement?"

"Perhaps it has to do with the auditor, more than the utterer."

"Utterer?"

"I have a Ph.D.," Susan said.

"Of course you do," I said.

"You think I'm projecting?"

"Yes. All I said was, "When are you coming home?" "And the possibilities I hear implied are me not you."

"Certainly. When are you coming home?"

"Well, as of yesterday I'm on my own. Julius paid me off."

"So now you have no client."

"True."

"But…?"

"Well, Julius blames Anthony for Shirley's death and plans to kill him. And Marty Anaheim's in town, and may want to kill Anthony. Might want to kill Bibi too."

"Bibi?"

"Anaheim's wife; she's here with Anthony."

"Oh my."

"Yeah. And there's something else going on, in the background, that I don't quite get."

"Do you think Anthony killed his wife?"

"Killing was pretty brutal. Raped and strangled by hand, left naked with no ID in a vacant lot."

"And you don't think Anthony's capable of that?"

"Doesn't seem his style."

"Still it sounds like a crime of anger. Rape and manual strangulation."

"Or a crime made to look like that."

"By whom?"

"Anytime there's a brutal crime and Marty Anaheim is around, it's worth thinking he might have done it."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"But you don't want to come home not knowing?"

"No."

"And you wouldn't want to abandon the charmingly named Bibi to her fate."

"No."

"Of course not," Susan said.

"Is Hawk willing to stay on?"

"I don't know," I said.

"I hope he will. I feel better when he's with you."

"Hell," I said, "so do I."

"But you'll stay whether he stays or not."

"Yes."

"So, when are you coming home?"

"I miss you," I said.

"I'll come home as soon as I can."

"Good," Susan said, and there was that sound in her voice again.

"Because I intend to boff your brains out when you arrive."

"Sure, I'm projecting," I said.