Nobody Dies in a Casino (18 page)

Inside, Caryl's home was largely beige. Beige furniture, carpet, and blinds. Tall dried wheat grass in a floor vase. Three-story, with a drive-in basement garage. Two humongous cats moved over on the sofa to make room for Bradone and Charlie.

At Bradone's insistence, they'd dropped in without calling first this time, giving Caryl less time to fabricate answers to questions she'd expect to be asked. The astrologer reasoned that since Charlie was Evan Black's agent and Caryl worked for him, they'd gain admittance.

Dressed in sweats, sweat, and stringy hair, still gasping after her run, Patrick Thompson's sister sprawled on a recliner. A concrete gargoyle leered from the hearthstone of a gas-log fireplace.

The feline who chose Charlie to torture began kneading her thighs through the denim of her jeans, hard enough to make her squirm.

“Why did you call Timothy Graden's wife?” Charlie wedged an index finger under each of the offending paws to pry the pricking nails loose. “If you didn't think your brother's death was murder?” The fat cat hissed and bit Charlie's thumb before crawling off her and onto as much of Bradone's lap as its obese partner had left vacant. “I mean, you wouldn't go to the police, so you must not have thought it was. Or is it that you are just as involved in whatever Patrick was that you're afraid to?”

“Look, my brother is dead. My parents just left, hallelujah, and I must have run ten miles to get those two disasters out of my system. And now you turn up. I have to shower and get to work.” The bones in Caryl's face looked larger without makeup, her eyes smaller. “How did you know I called Emily Graden?”

“We just came from there.” Charlie sucked her thumb and tasted blood. “Was your brother run over by a limo too? The kind that takes johns out to the Patch? Did you think it might be the same one?”

“Having them both run over the same night—of course I wondered. And, yes, I'm just as involved as he was.” Caryl pulled the stringy hair up off her face and neck and knotted it behind her head. “And now you are too, Charlie Greene,” she said, and shrugged. “Involved, I mean. These people don't take prisoners.”

That's exactly what Charlie was afraid of. A roomful of people had seen her flying over Groom Lake with Evan and company. It was documented on film. “You mean the government?”

“Might as well be. You're Evan's agent, ask him.”

“Where did Pat live?” Bradone asked.

“Here. He had too many girlfriends to move in with one. But a sister—what the hell.”

Bradone reached across seventy-five pounds of cat fur to right a picture frame lying facedown on the end table next to the couch. She held it up for Charlie to see and then for Caryl Thompson.

“That's him. Patrick,” Charlie said.

Patrick's sister just looked away.

“He was beautiful.” Bradone laid the picture frame down as she'd found it. “I'm sorry for your loss. But why would he risk so much for Evan Black? What did he want out of life?”

“His own plane. That's all he ever wanted.”

“Evan was going to buy him a plane?” Charlie thought that sounded too generous for a low-budget producer. “Why?”

“Pat would share in the profits and buy a plane. Eventually, he hoped to own a charter service.”

“To produce something of this size, Evan will have to go to a studio. There won't be any profits. Not after production costs and wages and once Evan Black and Mitch Hilsten take a percentage. There're never profits.”

“Is that really true?” Bradone asked, “or just Hollywood paranoia?”

“Well, if there are, they get absorbed in the grease that's cooking the books.” That's why damn good agents demand every cent they can squeeze out of a project up front for their clients and why the guilds make all the salaries so expensive.

“Pat was to be paid up front,” Caryl said, as if reading Charlie's thoughts. Then she stood, so they also had to. “And now I will be paid instead.”

“Paid for what?”

“For goods delivered.” She walked to the door and opened it.

“Just one more thing,” Charlie pleaded. “That fancy phaser-wand thing one of the robbers waved around in the film—that was special effects? Or some real doohickey from, say, Groom Lake? That and the gizmo that turned off the lights at the Hilton? And what else, Caryl? Was your brother killed for smuggling secret stuff out of Area Fifty-one?” What kind of trouble had Evan gotten Charlie into?

Caryl Thompson ushered them out onto the patio without answering and even opened the gate for them.

“Pat wanted a plane. What do
you
want out of life, Caryl?” Bradone insisted.

“I want to help Evan get even with the people who ordered my brother's death.” And she closed the gate and then the door as she went back into the house.

*   *   *

Charlie whispered an explanation of the wand-phaser to Bradone in the cab that had waited outside for them and the effect it supposedly had on those caught in the dark at the casino robbery. “I'd bet it was Evan waving it, and I just assumed he was showing off, that maybe it had some connection to the Star Trek Experience at the Hilton. If it was real, it was awesome.”

“If only the heavy woman could move, it might mean that the phaser couldn't affect her as much because she had more mass to penetrate.”

“That could be faked. There's little Evan can't do with film—although there wasn't time to work up computer animation. But if Patrick persuaded one of the workers to spirit some secret weapons off the Groom Lake base for Evan's conspiracy project…”

“For the price of an airplane of his own,” Bradone said thoughtfully. “‘Goods delivered.' Wonder what all those goods were?”

“The infrared camera and goggles can be bought on the open market. Could be just copies of important papers or plans that Evan could use in the project.”

“Whatever it was, its theft explains why Caryl's brother had to die.” Bradone tapped a tooth with her sunglasses, nodding sagely. “The keepers of the secrets out there might have wanted to make an example of him among workers and those who fly them to work. And why Emily Graden's husband was going out to the Janet Terminal.”

“The question, Detective McKinley, is Evan Black's role in all this. I'm not sure I'd trust him as far as Caryl Thompson does. And Loopy Louie's offering Evan some kind of way to get, I thought, all his winnings out of the country. Sounds like he's bidding against others for the job. I wonder if it's also to get some secret doohickys out.”

“Wish we could talk to Evan while avoiding the police, the murder or murderers, and—”

“Richard Morse?”

“And Richard Morse. Don't underestimate the man's usefulness to you, Charlie. He has great admiration for your abilities. In his way, I think he's very proud of you.”

And you're getting tired of him. And I'm tired of small favors Richard's pride lets him drop, “in his way.”

*   *   *

They left the cab on a street corner and walked a few blocks to a deli with outdoor seating in an inner courtyard. Bradone made a discrete phone call to her butler before their salads arrived. She made another after they'd been served and spoke to Evan Black himself, giving directions to their location.

“Someone named Mel will pick us up in about forty-five minutes. So we can relax and enjoy our meal.”

“Mel is Evan's cinematographer. What are they up to?”

“Same thing we are, trying to avoid the police. Evan left word with Reed so we could get hold of him. It seems Metro has taken Richard Morse in for questioning.”

“Richard doesn't know anything. He's been so smitten with you, he won't listen to what I've been trying to tell him about all this.” Charlie put down a fork full of radicchio, sprouts, arugula, and godknows. “What? That's not all. I'm not being intuitive. You look funny.”

Bradone speared a cucumber slice and took an eternity to chew it. “Looks like we're going to get our chance to talk to Evan.”

“God, are there more bodies?”

The unreadable expression on the stargazer's face grew even stranger. “Evan doesn't want to spend time with the police because of an important meeting. And he wants you there too. I guess I get to come along by default.”

“What meeting? Will you stop this?”

“Charlie, Mitch Hilsten is in town.”

CHAPTER
22

“D
O YOU KNOW
parents drive kids to schools two blocks from home in neighborhoods so safe no kid has been molested by anybody but relatives and family friends for decades?” Evan Black, the young genius, swung his legs from side to side over the edge of an upper bunk and gazed down on them all. The hanging light fixture over the table, a gas lantern with a lightbulb in it, swung in rhythm with his legs across his little round glasses. “Kids are safer out on the streets than in the house.”

He was making Charlie seasick. She and Bradone sat on the bench on one side of the galley table, Mel Goodall and Mitch Hilsten on the other. Mitch leaned against the bulkhead of the boat Evan had borrowed for the meet, tied up at a marina somewhere on Lake Mead.

“All because the media makes big on false statistics and rare but memorable occurrences in a small portion of the population.”

Mitch had one elbow on the table and one on the sink counter. He was in his denim mode—clothes faded to powder blue, like his eyes, like Charlie and Bradone's pants. He faced Evan, hands clasped in front of his mouth, biting one knuckle, watching the writer/producer with skepticism.

Charlie blinked. Skepticism? Mitch Hilsten, who believed in every kooky thing that came down the Ventura Freeway? Maybe he was acting. Hard to tell with this guy.

“And then the rest of the entertainment industry picks up on the latest fear—books, movies, documentaries of odd events make us feel they're common. Somebody figures out how to train police and psychologists and publishing houses on how to handle the fear, discover it, treat it, prosecute it, recognize it. Hell, a whole new industry or three are invented right there, job descriptions and new college studies—not to mention pulp genres. It's beautiful, man.”

Mel Goodall pretended sleepiness but watched Charlie through slits.

“People are even afraid of the fucking sun. Kids get fat and turn into listless couch potatoes because nobody wants to smear sunscreen on them every time they want to go out and play. Old people suffer from vitamin D deficiencies because the sun will give them cancer. Hell, life will give you cancer. Everything's gotten out of hand. One baby is swiped out of a nursery in one city and every hospital in the country's got to have surveillance cameras and security checks on the obstetric wards,” said the man, responsible for stealing government secrets, joyfully. And he'd already involved Mitch in that theft by announcing his probable participation in the project.

And Charlie, caught in a quandary, watched Evan. Hard to square this boyish, excited, earnest, creative creature with the man who showed no emotion other than impatience with Charlie when she insisted on discussing with Officer Graden his personal pilot's death on the street in front of Loopy Louie's. The man who promised Patrick's sister he would get even with the people who ordered that death and yet told Charlie he wasn't sure that it hadn't been an accident. Who were the people who hired Sleem and the bald bouncer to walk Patrick into the traffic? How did Loopy Louie fit into all this?

Again, she looked to Bradone for guidance, but the astrologer had zoned out the minute Mitch Hilsten came into view. She squirmed every time he inhaled.

The boat, sort of a motorized sailboat, rocked with the lantern light crisscrossing Evan's glasses, nudging the dock gently. Nobody but Charlie seemed to suffer from indigestion.

“So, what's all this got to do with Groom Lake?” Mitch slid a studied glance at Charlie.

“It's the ultimate in conspiracy. Okay, maybe along with Roswell.”

“But what's the purpose? To poke fun at people's beliefs? Eccentricities? What?”

Charlie gave Evan an “I told you so” smirk.

“No, man, to poke fun at their fears. We're talking concept here. Theme. Groom Lake is the epitome, but only symbolic, of the way conspiracy has taken over our lives. We don't trust anybody in a position of authority because the press and entertainment industry, one and the same, blow mistakes and corruption out of all proportion. And you know what, man? They're … we're going to make our fears happen. And that is the theme behind
Conspiracy.
We'll start with the small stuff—like perfectly healthy kids in bad need of exercise being driven to school two blocks away, never allowed outside without sunscreen, women in grocery stores scared to death the food's unsafe in the cleanest country in history—all the way to the billions spent on things that aren't needed, like Star Wars, all because of fear.”

“Is there any script here?” asked Mitch, still skeptical but now showing some interest.

“Script it as we go. You know me, or you've read how I work. But see? The conspiracy is us, Mitch, living our lives out of fear of things that mostly don't happen or don't happen to most. The cause of the fear is not the dangers real or imagined in this world, but the media hyping them out of proportion to their impact in the name of news-entertainment. Fiction that becomes fact because we believe it so strongly. We could be missing the best days of our lives, Mitch, the best days of our country, the best days of our planet.”

There were smears on both of Charlie's contact lenses—she could be missing something too. How do you finance without a script? And why hadn't he pitched this way to the moneymen at the screening? He'd have had them pulling out checkbooks in droves instead of groaning.

Hell, because they were groaning and pulling out cash instead. To pay off the stupid bets that Evan couldn't pull off a casino heist or which casino it would be. Did he really have enough money from that wager to produce the film himself?