Diva Las Vegas (Book 1 in Raven McShane Series) (19 page)

We pulled into the hospital lot and Carlos dropped me at the emergency entrance.

“Oops,” I said to no one in particular.  I realized I had told Cody to use a pseudonym, but I had no idea what name he’d use.  The lobby was surprisingly bustling for a Tuesday night, but then again I had no idea how busy a hospital was supposed to be.  I hadn’t been inside one since I was a kid.

I hit the callback button on my cell phone to dial the number Cody had just called me from.  Cody didn’t answer.  He’d probably only arrived a few minutes before us, so he couldn’t have gotten very far.  And with a broken arm, it wasn’t like they were going to take him to the geriatrics department or the psych ward.  I decided to poke around the ER.

It didn’t take long to find him.  A clump of six or seven female nurses and other staff were crowded outside one of the exam room doors next to the ER.  They were trading peeks through the door’s small glass window.  It wasn’t hard to imagine who they were gawking at.  I waited a minute for Carlos to come in after he parked.  When he joined me, I nodded my head in the direction of the nurses pressing their noses up to the window.

“Gee, I wonder where Cody could be.  Wait ‘til those nurses find out he doesn’t like girls.”

“So much for patient privacy.  Let’s get him out of there before they eat him alive,” I said.

We picked our way through the small crowd and I got a peek for myself.  Sure enough, Cody was seated on the exam table, shirtless, his left arm already in a rudimentary sling.  The examining doctor was a short, thin man with thick outdated glasses.  He had Cody stretching his right arm back and forth, presumably to test for injury.  I flashed my private detective’s I.D. at the woman next to me, who seemed to be some kind of tech rather than a nurse.  I nudged her out of the way and pushed the door open.

She stared at me but didn’t say a word, and Carlos and I walked into the exam room.  Cody looked up and appeared relieved when he saw me.  He had a long gash below the jaw on his right side, but it didn’t look too deep.  Other than that and his broken arm, he seemed to have survived the crash unscathed.

“Excuse me, this is not a public area,” the doctor said.  His voice sounded detached, as though he knew his objection would be pointless.  Cody spoke up.

“It’s okay, they’re with me,” Cody said, as if he were in charge of the hospital’s security.

I showed my I.D. to the doctor.  “Is there another room we could take him?  His security is at stake.” I used my gravest voice.  It was hard to appear grave when I had that much cleavage showing.

The doctor seemed bored by the whole thing and shrugged.  “I’ll get someone,” he muttered, and left.  I figured there wasn’t too much that a Vegas ER doctor hadn’t seen before.

Cody looked at Carlos inquisitively.

“He’s got a gun,” I said quietly.  Cody nodded and directed his attention back to me.  “So what are we going to do?” he asked.

“What we are going to do is get you out of here, and then we’re going to talk,” I said.  “You need a cast?”

“Yeah.  But they said it shouldn’t take long.”

I thought for a minute.  “Carlos, how’d you like to play security guard?”

He shrugged.

“How about if you sit in the lobby and see if any bad guys come in.  I’ll wait with Cody.  Call my cell if anything looks off.”

He nodded and headed back to the lobby.  When he opened the door, I noticed a few nurses and other women were still lingering outside the exam room.

“You have a fan club,” I said to Cody.  “It must be rough.  Here you are, all scratched up with your arm in a sling, and you still can’t keep them away.”

Cody laughed for the first time.  “It’s good for the ego, I guess.  A lot of times people think I’m in the movies or on TV, and they hang around trying to figure out who the hell I am.  Sometimes I sign fake autographs.”

“Do you sign them ‘Lars Bergstrom’?” I asked.

He shot me a surprised look.  Apparently his real name was a pretty well-kept secret.

I shrugged.  “Why don’t you start talking while we wait for someone to move you to another room,” I suggested.

“Okay,” he said.  His eyes seemed a little wild, but he didn’t seem stoned or anything.  His voice was calm.  “Basically, you were right about the money.  I’ve been paying Paul Gonsalves since the trial.  I didn’t know him beforehand, but by chance we met up at a nightclub and I figured it was worth a shot.  Now we’re friends.”

Cody’s shorthand version was basically consistent with what Paul had told me, except I doubted that he met Paul “by chance.”  “So you bribed a juror . . .”  I began.

“Even though I was innocent.  Yes.  You have to remember that it didn’t look good at the time.  Everyone thought for sure I was going to prison.  Even my lawyers.  And I would have been eligible for the death penalty, too.  Facing that, I think a lot of people would have done exactly what I did.”

I tried to process what Cody was saying.  It confirmed some of the assumptions I’d been working out in my head, and he seemed to be telling the truth.  Finally.

The bored-looking doctor returned with a security guard and a bulky male attendant pushing a wheelchair.  Cody obviously didn’t need to be wheeled around, but they didn’t seem to concern themselves with that detail.  Cody proved to be a good sport.  He put on the hospital gown they gave him and set himself down gingerly in the wheelchair.

“Room 604,” the doctor said simply.  He looked me over with a faint air of disapproval.  “They can put the cast on him there,” he said.

I grabbed Cody’s shirt off of the exam table and followed them to the elevator and down a long, bleak corridor that seemed to have a few too many fluorescent lights overhead.  The gaggle of gawking nurses had finally dispersed.

I was surprised to find a nurse already waiting for us in Room 604, and I left Cody and his shirt inside and stood guard outside the door.  The security guard had
sentried
himself on a brown faux-leather chair in a mini-lobby near the elevator.  He seemed fixated on a summer rerun of The Tonight Show.  A young doctor soon arrived and joined the nurse in Cody’s room.  The whole procedure took less than a half-hour.  It was either great service or they just wanted to get rid of us.  I thought about asking the doctor to check my own shoulder, but it had stopped bleeding and I wanted to get moving.  Maybe I could bum some pain meds from Cody later, I thought.

Cody emerged a few minutes after the doctor left.  He was a sight, and I tried to muffle a giggle.  The sleeve of his yellow polo shirt had been cut open to allow room for the cast.  The cast, which was bright blue, forced his arm to jut out upwards at a kind of half-salute.  He had a line of stitches running from his neck to his jaw line.  He looked like the gay Frankenstein.  On our way out, we both gave a half-salute to the security guard and went down the elevator to the lobby.  Carlos was lost in a dog-eared copy of
Golf
Digest
. 

“You’re not even paying attention!” I scolded him.  “Armed thugs could be after us and you’d never even have noticed.”

“My divots aren’t big enough,” he said excitedly, like Archimedes shouting
Eureka
! in his bath tub.  I didn’t press for an explanation, but that didn’t stop him from elaborating.  “If you hit an iron shot right,” here, he stood up and demonstrated his swing for us, “you should leave a long divot in front of the ball.”

“You’ve got to hit
down
on the ball,” Cody chimed in.

I rolled my eyes and grabbed both of them by the arms.  Two of us had been victims of murder attempts within the last hour, and here they were talking about the dumbest game ever invented.  I shook my head disapprovingly at Carlos.  “Let’s get out of here.”

I watched out for any sign of trouble—someone had to—but the parking lot seemed clear.  Apparently whoever was trying to bump off Cody either hadn’t realized he was still alive or hadn’t yet thought to check for Cody at the hospital.  I didn’t want to hang around too long in case the idea dawned on him.

Cody’s injury meant he got to ride shotgun.  I was relegated to the Mustang’s embarrassing excuse for a back seat.  I assumed Carlos didn’t have the Jaws of Life in his trunk, so I decided not to try squeezing my legs into the three inches of clearance behind the front seat.

“Let’s make this as quick as possible,” I suggested.

Carlos nodded and hit the gas a little harder.  “Where are we going, by the way?” he asked.

“Cody still has some things he needs to say,” I prodded.  “Let’s get us back to the Flamingo.  We can disappear in that place and no one will give us a second look.”

Carlos checked his watch, which prompted me to do the same.  It was just after 11:45.  “You got a hot date, Carlos?”  I asked.  “It’s not like you have to be at the office early tomorrow.”  I realized it would be better to have company tonight—armed company—than be alone with a guy who was either the target of a recent murder attempt or a murderer himself.

“No, I’ll join you,” he said gamely.  He didn’t sound too enthusiastic.  We let the valet park the car, but before extracting myself from the back seat I grabbed a crumpled baseball cap I’d seen peeking out from under the seat.  I thrust the cap at Cody.  I couldn’t cover up the royal blue cast jutting out from his yellow shirt, but I thought the baseball cap might at least disguise Cody’s face and hide his golden hair.  Cody frowned, but he got the drift and put the hat on so the brim covered half of his face.  Carlos discreetly found his gun in the trunk and shoved it underneath a jacket to hide it.

 We headed to the elevators and up to my suite without incident.  Carlos whistled dramatically when we entered my suite.  “So
this
is how you roll,” he said, impressed.  “Just like I imagined it.”  He went over to the bedroom and made a show of feeling the bed.  Carlos looked at me suggestively.  I flipped him off.

Cody made himself as comfortable as was possible in one of the leather chairs facing the bed.  He wriggled a little bit, as though steeling himself for the Spanish Inquisition.

Carlos stared out the window at the Strip below, and I plunked myself down on the bed to face Cody.  “Why don’t you finish the story you were telling me at the hospital.”

Cody paused for a few seconds.  “I need to take a pill,” he said simply.  He fished around in his pocket and produced a small foil pack with three pills in it.  He went to the bathroom and got himself a glass of water, and when he returned to the same seat he exhaled and looked directly at me.  I went into the bathroom and examined the foil pill pack.  Tylenol with codeine.

“Anything I tell you,” he said, “you can’t tell the cops.  Okay?”

I nodded.  I wasn’t exactly in a position to promise him anything, but I decided to fake it.  “I’m interested only in figuring out who killed George Hannity and who’s been after the two of us.  I don’t do very well in this business if I go running off to the cops all the time.”  I hoped that would satisfy him.

He leaned forward and seemed relieved to have the green light to talk.  “Basically, you’ve really stepped in it big time,” he said.  Carlos grabbed a six-dollar can of soda out of the mini-bar and sat down to pay attention.

Cody continued.  “It started, as far as I know, about five or six years ago.  I wasn’t there yet, so this is just what I heard.  Phil d’Angelo, the manager, was in the process of taking over the financial end of the casino from a guy named Melvin Block, who was this old Jewish guy with a terrible comb-over.  Really old school, and probably mobbed up.  But I only worked with him for a few months before he retired.  I think he’s living out of state now.”

I nodded encouragingly, but saw no reason to let him know I’d talked to Block only last week.

“So they were in the process of upgrading all the slot machines, which they’re doing all the time.  People want more glitz, different themes, all that kind of stuff.  One year Elvis machines are hot, and the next year they want Wheel of Fortune slots with Vanna White on them.  The latest craze is vampires.  Anyway, the management is always reconfiguring the layout of the floor, forming the machines into rows, circles, straight lines, that sort of thing.  It’s like some weird voodoo science, always trying to guess what arrangement will make people gamble more.”

“A million ways to separate chumps from their money,” Carlos chimed in.

Cody ignored him.  “Anyway, one day a new shipment arrives for slots that are supposed to be squeezed into a corner where there hadn’t been any slots before.  Twelve of them.  And Phil gets the bright idea: why do we have to tell the owners about these slots?  George Hannity had been out of town for a month on some cruise with his wife, so he wasn’t paying close attention.  Neither was Amy.  Mel Block might have figured it out, but he was close to getting pushed out, so Phil figured he had free reign.  There are seven-hundred-some machines on the floor, and they’re always changing things around, so no one will notice if a few of them aren’t on the grid, right?  That was the plan.  Instead of skimming off the total take, Phil basically started his own little twelve-machine casino inside the Outpost.”

Carlos was nodding appreciatively.  “Nice,” he said.

“They aren’t in a prime location,” Cody said, “but the machines bring in a daily profit around three hundred bucks.  Each.”

I tried to do the math in my head, but Carlos beat me to it.  “That’s thirty-six-hundred a day times three-sixty-five.  That’s close to a million-five a year,” he said.

Cody nodded.  “Tax free.”

“How did Phil get the money out?”  I asked.

“That was the main problem.  The machines can hold thousands—much more than in the old days, because most people use paper money rather than coins.  And there are different security shifts responsible for emptying different banks of machines, so no one ever thought it was unusual that our special bank of slots wasn’t being emptied.”

“But someone had to empty them eventually,” I said.

“Right.  Phil needed a partner, so he brought in a guy named Eddie Holman, who’s now the head of security.”

“We’ve met,” I said cryptically.

Cody continued his explanation.  “Holman had worked his way up from the cage and knew exactly how and when to empty the machines quickly, and each time he brought with him a new employee to help, usually some trainee who wouldn’t have a clue what was going on.  And I bet if you checked, a lot of the security tapes from those nights have mysteriously gone missing.”

It was beginning to make some sense, I thought.  “And now you’re getting to the good part, right?”  I asked.

“What do you mean?” Cody asked.

“I mean, the part about how you’ve been tapping into this bottomless gold mine yourself.  You said they were stealing from the owners, but you’re one of the owners now.  Or at least your wife is.”

He was silent for a few seconds.  “I guess that’s true.  I found out about it almost by accident pretty soon after I started working there.  I’m not as dumb as people think, and when I went over the floor map one day I noticed things didn’t add up.”

I chuckled.  “Oops,” I said.

“Yeah.  So we’ve been splitting the pie a few ways.  Phil gets the largest slice, and Holman and I take twenty grand a month.”

“Okay,” I said, “so that’s how you fund your monthly contributions to Paul Gonsalves, and it explains how you pay for a second house.  All without your wife knowing.  What does it have to do with George Hannity’s murder?”

Cody nodded, seeming to anticipate the question.  “I don’t have a clue,” he said.  “I don’t know if George found out about it or what, but nobody told me anything about any murders.  All I know is one day I woke up and there was a crime unit digging in my backyard.  Five months later I was in court looking at a death sentence.”

I had been thinking about it while Cody was talking.  “Well, it stands to reason that whoever tried to kill you tonight is on the same page with the guy who’s been trying to kill me.  It seems like nobody wants the boat rocked.  By the way, what’s this guy’s name, anyway?”

“Who?”

“Works for Eddie Holman.  He’s got brown hair, huge mustache.  Looks like Jeff Foxworthy on steroids.”

Cody laughed.  “That’s Dave Kootz.  He basically does everything Holman says.  And I mean
everything
.”

I decided to leave that one alone.  “So your theory is that Holman or d’Angelo are after you because they think you’re going to give up what you know about your little money skimming operation?”

“Yeah, I do.  But it’s not just that.  If Holman or d’Angelo were behind Hannity’s murder, they’d be scared to death that I was talking to you.  Like I said earlier, it’s really convenient for the true killer that everyone assumes I’m guilty of the crime.  If they think I’m going to start claiming to be innocent again, it upsets the applecart.”

I nodded. “So they’d want to kill both of us.  Quickly.  The problem is isolating who it is.”

Cody was silently pondering things.

I continued thinking out loud. “Obviously this Kootz guy is doing the dirty work.  He’s not a problem anymore.  I think
DeShawn
put him out of commission when he tried to run away.  But I’m guessing he’s not doing this on his own.  The question is whether he’s working just for Holman or if this goes all the way to d’Angelo.”

Cody nodded.  “We can’t exactly go back to our normal lives without figuring that out,” he said.  “I mean, they’re obviously following us.  If we don’t get to the bottom of it now, they’re going to get us first.”

He was right.  I wanted to end this as soon as possible.  “I could call the cops and file a complaint against this Kootz guy, but that would only be a short-term fix.  We need to see how far this goes and bring everybody in at once.”

Carlos nodded gravely.

A half-baked idea was forming in my mind.  “Let me ask you, Cody: how’d you feel about acting as a double-agent?

He fixed me with a skeptical look.

“We’re running out of options.  You’ve told me everything, but we can’t just sit around holed up in here forever.”

He shifted uneasily in his chair.

I decided to flesh it out aloud.  “Tonight was just a car accident, right?”  I asked rhetorically.  “
You
know it was intentional, but they don’t know you know.  You could brush it off and play it cool.  Pretend you have no idea anyone was deliberately trying to hurt you.”

“Okay . . .” he said, tilting his head slightly.  He was still a little wary.

I pressed on.  “What if you call one of them up and tell him you’re meeting with me tonight.  Tell them I’ve solved the case, and I’m going to disclose the identity of George Hannity’s killer to you.”

Cody frowned.  “Then they’d just come after both of us,” he said.

Carlos moved closer.  “Exactly.”  He was smiling.  “I think I get it,” he said.  “You can’t go after them, because you don’t whether it’s d’Angelo or Holman.  But you can get them to come to you.  With this Kootz guy out of the way, one of them will have to show himself.  He’ll know you guys have been talking to each other, but he doesn’t know you know that.”

Cody pursed his lips and lifted an eyebrow in a show of puzzlement, but it seemed he was catching on, too.  “Then what?” he asked.  “That sounds pretty dangerous.”

“We can take some precautions,” I said, even as I was thinking through the options.  “The thing is, you’re not the only target anymore.  I’m a target too.  If the killer found out we were both going to be in the same place, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to bump off both of us at the same time.”

Cody wasn’t following.

“Ever since Kootz tried to kill me on my balcony, I’ve been holed up here at the hotel.  They haven’t been able to find me here, at least not yet.  They managed to find where I worked, but tonight was probably their last chance.  They know I’m not going back there now.”

Carlos stood up.  “So they’re desperate.  Whoever it is would jump all over this if he found out where you guys were going to be and when you were going to be there.”  He seemed impressed with the plan.

“He could kill two birds with one stone,” Cody said.

“And we’re the birds,” I said grimly.  “One more question.  If you had to guess between Holman and d’Angelo, who would you take?”

“For what?  Hannity’s murder?”

I nodded.

“Who knows?  Both could have done it.  Phil had more to lose if the skim was discovered—money, job, that sort of thing—but Holman is pretty much a thug.  And obviously they
both
could have been in on it,” he concluded.

“Call Holman,” I said.  It came out more decisive than I actually felt.  “If he shows up alone, he’s probably in this by himself.  And if he doesn’t show up at all, it means d’Angelo’s probably our guy.”

My mind was running through a list of possible places to stage a late-night rendezvous, but it was coming up blank.  It couldn’t be a public place, because I wanted some privacy and space to confront whoever showed up.  What I needed was an office, but I didn’t have one.  Cody could tell Holman he was meeting me at my office, and then we could lie in wait for the killer there.

My mind wandered for a minute before I realized I knew someone with an office: Jeff.  I hesitated to extract another late-night favor from him, but I didn’t have much choice.  Luckily, he was still awake when I called.

“You want to use our office for
what
?”  He sounded reluctant.

I glossed over a few of the details.  Especially the part about Carlos and his Glock.

“Okay,” Jeff finally agreed.  “But not the one downtown.  We rent a suite of offices in a building about five miles east of the Strip.  It’ll be deserted at this hour.  There’s a big parking lot coming off a long driveway from the street.  Nice and private.  Let me just look up the security code.”

 “Is there a sign outside?” I asked.

“A sign?”

“Something listing who occupies the building,” I explained.

He thought for a second.  “I don’t think so.  It’s just a nondescript brown office building.”

It sounded as good a place as any.  If there was no sign out front, they wouldn’t realize I didn’t actually have an office in the building until it was too late.  Jeff gave me the address and the security code.  I thanked him and wrote it down.  I made a few more phone calls before we left.  I woke up Lieutenant Sean Whelan, but he would forgive me if this all worked out.  I turned to Cody.

“Ok, call Holman and tell him you’re meeting me at my office at 3221 North
Nellis
Boulevard at 1:30 a.m.  That gives us an hour.  If he asks why we’re meeting in the middle of the night, it’s because I’m going to the cops first thing in the morning to have them arrest George Hannity’s killer.  And remember, you were in a car accident and you don’t suspect foul play.  As far as they know, you’re on their side.”

Cody looked like he still wasn’t getting the whole plan.  Maybe it was the codeine, or maybe my plan was just that crazy.  I tried my best to explain it again.

“I figure that Holman is in this up to his eyeballs anyway, so even if he didn’t murder George Hannity himself he’s got to know that d’Angelo did it.  He seems like a loyal lackey, so he’ll tell d’Angelo about our little meeting tonight, at which point they’ll probably both come over and try to kill us.  But if Holman did do the murder by himself, he’ll probably come alone.  Either way, we have a good shot of finding out who killed George Hannity and ending this madness tonight.”