Houston Attack (17 page)

“San Antonio?” Evans wagged his eyebrows. “I haven't been to Flora and Ella's in a long time.” He got up and stretched, smiling. “In fact, I might even take me a little nap just so I'll be ready.…”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Hawker series

one

James Hawker found her in the Yellow Pages.

Under prostitution.

A four-by-four ad in the hotel directory sandwiched with a dozen others between Process Servers and Psychologists.

It seemed appropriate that the three headings should fall into such a convenient order.

The ad affected an Elizabethan motif: drawing of a plump lady on a plush couch beneath an ornate chandelier:

The Doll House. A reputable house for the discriminating gentleman
.

There were two telephone numbers in bold print, along with an address. Beneath, in light script, was the reminder:

It's Legal in Las Vegas
.

Hawker almost smiled. When had anything ever been illegal in Las Vegas? It was a wide-open town. Always had been. Always would be.

Even long before the white man came to Vegas, the local Paiute Indians were said to have been addicted to gambling. They rolled human bones in the sand and bet their wives and favorite horses. Then came the days of the gold and silver rush, and Las Vegas became a mining town. Poker debts and whores were paid for with raw gold nuggets.

After the gold and silver ran out, Nevada seemed to be left with only one natural resource: the freewheeling attitude of its citizenry. In 1931, the state legislature legalized gambling. But the clientele was mostly local, mostly ranch hands and construction workers.

Then, in 1955, a Mormon banker named E. Parry Thomas came to town and realized that while gambling fever was not unique, a municipality that would tolerate it in the open was. Las Vegas, he decided, had something very special to offer the world. Thomas risked huge loans to back the construction of gambling palaces.

Modern-day Las Vegas was born.

So Las Vegas had always been a wide-open town. It was, in fact, only within the last twenty years that a gambler could go there and be sure that if he played the legitimate houses, he would be given a straight deal.

Everything was legal in Las Vegas. And the prim establishment loved it. An ultraconservative businessman from, say, Des Moines could leave his wife, kids and life of respectability behind and spend a weekend in Vegas whoring, drinking, gambling, indulging his every whim or perversion at great expense—but in relative safety.

Las Vegas was the blossom of America's dark fantasy. A small desert town, population less than. 200,000; that was open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A small desert town built on sand dunes and rimmed by blue mountains; a town that, at night, sent a gaudy, blazing neon flame brighter than Broadway's into the Nevada darkness.

A wide-open town. Gambling. Prostitution. Fast marriages, faster divorces. Booze and drugs.

But lately, it was even more wide open than usual.

Murder had been added to the city's list of vices.

Murder and extortion.

James Hawker closed the directory and picked up the phone. While he waited for an outside line, he surveyed his hotel room closely for the first time.

Kevin Smith had given him one of the best his gambling complex, the Mirage, had to offer.

A two-bedroom suite done in pale blues and desert grays.

There were copies of good watercolors and oils on the walls by Western artists: haunting landscapes of buttes and plains; raw-faced cowboys riding herd.

There was a sunken living room with ankle-deep pile carpet and a spa-size bathroom complete with whirlpool bath and mirrored walls. The balcony overlooked the Olympic-size swimming pool in the middle of the complex, and Hawker carried the phone out onto the balcony.

It was 11
A.M.
, and the showgirls were spending their off hours in the sun.

They lay beneath him on lounge chairs, an oiled row of lithe legs and heavy breasts in candy-colored bikinis. Blondes, brunettes and redheads sipping at drinks and rubbing on lotion.

Hawker dialed the number.

“The Doll House. Can we please you in some way?”

The girl who answered had a husky, sensual voice edged with just a hint of teenybopper.

“My name is Hawker. I'd like to speak with Barbara Blaine.”

The girl hesitated. “If you're interested in setting up a private party, I can do that for you.”

“I'm not interested in a private party.”

“Then you know that Ms. Blaine isn't … she employs the other girls who work here. She owns the business.”

Hawker smiled. “I know Ms. Blaine isn't for hire, if that's what you mean. And I would still like to speak with her.”

“Hang on then, Mr. Hawker. I'll see if she's in.”

“Tell her I'm a friend of Kevin Smith's.”

The girl brightened. “Captain Smith? Yes, Mr. Hawker, of course I will.”

There was nothing overtly sensual in the voice of Barbara Blaine. It was a cool alto with the controlled friendliness businesspeople reserve for the acquaintances of friends.

“Yes, Mr. Hawker. How can I help you?”

Below the balcony, one of the showgirls stood. A leggy woman in her early twenties with a rich mane of auburn hair, she wore a bright lime bikini, and she had forgotten that she had untied the top. It slipped down off her breasts, showing the wide pink areolas and upturned nipples. Unflustered, she calmly tied the bikini top back on, laughed at something the other girls called out to her, then dove headlong into the Jell-O-blue water of the pool.

Just before she went in, she glanced up and saw Hawker watching her.

When she saw that Hawker was not embarrassed, she grinned.

There was something in her open, handsome face that reminded Hawker of someone.

A girl from not so long ago.

A girl he had loved. A girl whom he had lost to a bullet. A girl named Megan.

Hawker looked away from the pool, clearing his throat. “I'm a friend of Kevin Smith's, Ms. Blaine,” he said. “Kevin told me about the trouble he and the other casino owners in the Five-Cs complex are having. He also suggested that your business was having the same kind of trouble.”

“Yes?” Her voice had turned cool.

“Kevin asked me to check into it. I'd like to help him if I can—and you, too. Could we get together and talk?”

“Are you a cop, Mr. Hawker?”

“No.”

“A private investigator?”

“In a way. Yes.”

“It's just that I find it odd that Captain Smith and his associates would find it necessary to bring in outside … help. After all, Captain Smith and Captain Wells and Mr. Kullenburg and the others are all ex-Vegas policemen. Thus the name of the complex: the Five-Cs. The five cops.”

“You're welcome to call Captain Smith if you have any doubts, Ms. Blaine. He said you would probably insist on it. He said you're a hard-nosed businesswoman who doesn't take any chances.”

Hawker could sense the woman smiling at the other end of the line. “Did he now? And what else did he say?”

“He told me that your lover of two years, Jason Stratton, disappeared three weeks ago and you think he's been murdered.”

“I don't
think
he's been murdered, Mr. Hawker. I know he's been murdered.”

“Then you have proof?”

“None that the official police will listen to. But we can talk about that privately, Mr. Hawker. Say in an hour? At my office?”

“I was thinking dinner might be better, Ms. Blaine. Seven in the Von Hoff Room?”

“Going to spend the day looking for clues, Mr. Hawker?”

“Kevin also said you had a gift for sarcasm. And I am going to look for leads, as a matter of fact. I'm going to drive to Mr. Stratton's cabin and have a look around.”

“You won't find anything. The police didn't—and it's thirty miles from downtown Vegas.”

“Kevin told me how to get there.”

“The stubborn type, huh? Okay, then dinner it is, Mr. Hawker—if Captain Smith
does
confirm that you're working for him.”

“I'll see you then—”

“Mr. Hawker,” the woman cut in, “I'm sure Captain Smith has already warned you, but let me warn you again. The people who want to take over the Five-Cs complex and my business will stop at nothing. They would have murdered us long ago if the resulting publicity wouldn't make it impossible for them to consummate the takeover without a federal investigation. But Jason Stratton was an outsider. That's why they killed him. It was a way of pressuring me. And you're an outsider, Mr. Hawker. They'll kill you the moment they find out you're nosing around. Remember that.”

“And why do you think they want your business so badly, Ms. Blaine?”

James Hawker repeated the question once more before he realized the woman had already hung up.

two

Hawker checked the suite's refrigerator before stripping off his clothes.

Kevin Smith had had his people load it with bottled beer and gourmet sandwich fixings.

On the chauffeured ride from the airport, Smith had warned him about the bad room service—an odd thing for the president of a hotel syndicate to do. But when he explained why, it made sense.

“You've got to first understand that Vegas is legit, James. Mostly legit,” Smith had said. He was a barrel-chested man who still looked more like a cop than a casino manager.

“Why risk the license of a multimillion-dollar gambling plant just to cheat a customer out of a few thousand? See? Cheating doesn't make sense. If we can get our customers to gamble, then we win, because the odds are in our favor. It's a matter of mathematics. The house has just under a two percent edge in craps and blackjack, about a six percent edge in roulette, a ten percent edge with slot machines and a twenty percent edge in keno. For every one person who leaves Vegas a big winner, there are eighty others flying out losers. The other nineteen percent maybe win a little or break even. You see, cheating is stupid because we're going to win anyway—as long as we get our guests to the gambling tables.”

Hawker had listened carefully—not because he was interested in gambling. He wasn't. But he knew he had to familiarize himself with the philosophy of the Vegas business establishment in order to crack the mob that was now using murder and extortion to chase Kevin Smith and his associates out of the Five-Cs complex.

“Getting people to gamble is the key,” Smith had continued. “And to do that, we use tricks. We offer deluxe rooms and gourmet food at less than break-even prices. That gets them to Vegas, but it doesn't get them into our casinos. So we make the food in the restaurant just as good as we can get it—and make room service bad enough so our customers will
have
to go to the restaurant. The plant is designed so they have to walk through the casino to get to the restaurant. See? Same with the floor shows. We run a heavy entertainment nut, but the tables give it all back to us. We book big-name stars. Nothing but the best: Sinatra, Ann-Margret, Johnny Carson. We make the tickets cheap, and we hand out plenty of comps to people we know to be heavy gamblers. But they have to walk through the casino to get to the show. Smart, huh?

“Once they're in the casino, of course, our people take very damn good care of them. Free drinks, free food and perfect service. And that's a trick, too. We figure it costs us more for a gambler to be away from the table buying a drink than it does for us to give the gambler that drink free. See what I mean? It's all legit, but it's a trick. That's why you shouldn't expect much from room service, Hawk. Even if I gave my room service people direct orders to take care of you, they'd still be sloppy because that's the kind of people I have to have working in room service.”

So Hawker was glad for the refrigerator—and amused by Vegas economics.

Hawker opened a frosted bottle of Tuborg, turned the whirlpool bath on high and settled himself into the 120-degree water.

He'd flown in from Chicago that morning, with four sour flight attendants and a capacity load of revelers all energized by booze and the hope of beating the tables of Vegas.

They wouldn't, of course. Like Kevin Smith said, it was a question of mathematics.

He had spent about an hour with Smith on a short tour of the hotel. But mostly Smith had talked about the goons who were trying to force him out of business.

He didn't have to tell him much.

Hawker's own friend and associate Jacob Montgomery Hayes had told him enough for him to know it was another job that couldn't be handled effectively by the official police.

It was a job that called for a vigilante. Someone who could move on the shadowy outskirts of the law. Someone who could move quickly and decisively. Someone who wasn't afraid to kill—or be killed.

Hawker finished his whirlpool, wrapped the towel around his waist and went to the balcony.