Nobody Dies in a Casino (20 page)

“Yeah, man, but not from his lawyer. Makes the witness a sitting pigeon. Lawyer tells his client—moral obligation. Client tells his friends—witness meets unexpected death. Works for everybody but the victim and the witness. Hey, man, don't start in on witness-protection stuff. All depends on who is greasing whose what. You know?”

After commercials for Coca-Cola, Chrysler, IBM, Sustacal, and Depends, Terry came back on a sad note. “Services were held this morning for Officer Timothy Graden of the Metro Police, the young father of two small sons.”

Emily Graden and one small son walked between rows of somber police officers standing at attention. Her husband's casket carried before her, Grandma carrying the other small son behind her. Emily wore the expression of the widow—anger and helplessness seeping through shock. “Authorities are still tight-lipped about their investigations into the hit-and-run that led to the officer's death and the motive behind it.”

Charlie looked away.

After commercials by Coca-Cola, Chrysler, IBM, Sustacal, and Depends that played through twice this time, Barry came on with the news of another upheaval on yesterday's stock market, which had sent food stocks broadly higher and technology stocks plummeting.

“Mitch, do you know what a DRIP is?”

“Guy who doesn't eat raw oysters.”

*   *   *

“Jeeze, babe, you look great.” Charlie's boss stuck his nose in her face. “Nice to know somebody's getting a rest out of this vacation.” He nodded spastically and lowered an eyelid half-way, somehow making it stay that way.

“Richard, why did the police call you in for questioning? You don't know anything.”

“I mean, your skin glows, dewylike. And your cheeks are rosy. Your eyes aren't even red.”

“That's because I'm not wearing any contacts and I can't see across the room. Now—”

“And your voice is softer and those anger lines between your eyebrows are gone. Your color's terrific. I should make you take a vacation more often, kid. You win a pile of money, get laid, or what?”

Bradone was cracking up. She was the lump rolling on the couch next to Mel Goodall, whom Charlie identified by his length.

They were in Evan's great room. In the kitchen part of this room, he busied himself cooking pasta-something. It did smell good, but Charlie was so ravenous, she could eat the pan.

“So,” her boss said, “when is Hilsten getting into town?”

Evan howled. Mel hooted. Bradone's laughter broke into choking sounds.

“What the hell's the matter with you guys?” Richard Morse finally tuned in. “Charlie, what's going on?”

“Mitch'll be here in time for dinner, Morse,” their host intervened. “Pour everybody some more wine, will you? Especially Charlie.”

“Richard, what did they question you about?”

“About you, Charlie.”

CHAPTER
24

I
NTERESTING THAT THEY
all ate Evan's marvelous pasta-something by candlelight in a room where three men had died and it didn't smell of death. It smelled of garlic and onion and basil.

And Charlie.

She'd showered before leaving Loopy's but wore the same clothes she had the day before. It was embarrassing. Everyone else in the room pretended not to notice.

Everything so softened by candlelight and myopia and wine. Everyone blissful, tired, content. Three men lay dead the day before yesterday on the other side of that furniture there.

The only sounds—the chomping of mixed lettuces, the slurping of fine Chianti, the crunch of crusty bread, an occasional soft sigh.

Mitch sat across from Charlie and next to Bradone, who was struck dumb again by his august presence. She should have seen him eating raw oysters and camel fries for brunch.

The superstar had dropped Charlie off here and then sneaked into her room at the Hilton to get her some fresh contacts. Hard to imagine Mitch sneaking anywhere, but he'd worn sunglasses to hide the powder blues and promised he wouldn't smile and expose the famous flashing teeth.

He waited until they'd settled over dark roasted coffee, French-pressed, and sliced pears with cheese and chocolate truffles to explain what had taken him so long.

“Charlie's room at the Hilton's been tossed. Hard,” he announced virilely. “Found her box of contact lenses under the bed. What the fuck's been going on around here, Black?”

“I've been trying to tell you, but you won't listen,” Charlie snapped. Evan had put off her questions too. When she'd told him about Loopy Louie's strange offer, he'd said that Toby'd already mentioned it.

Now, Evan belched with pleasure. “Bring your coffee. Somebody grab the wine and the dessert trays. Come on up to the screening room. And we'll show you, Hilsten.” He laughed and swung his ponytail back over his shoulder. Right now, he reminded Charlie of a pirate, but then, she wasn't seeing clearly. “Charlie, you put your eyes in. I want you to see this too. Maybe it'll answer some of your questions.”

“Tell me they didn't take my laptop,” Charlie whispered to Mitch when they stretched out on floor cushions in the screening room.

“I didn't see one, but the place is a mess. I reported it to hotel security and promised to bring you back there tonight to see if anything had been taken. Where'd you keep your computer?”

“In the safe in the closet. Though I don't think that safe's very safe. I saw a security man operate the combination from memory.” Charlie took a sip of coffee and a slug of wine.

Why me, Lord? It's like I'm marked.

“Does what happened to your room have anything to do with those concerns over the conspiracy project you keep going on about?”

“The financing is not legal.”

“Wouldn't be the first time. They searching your room for money?”

“I suspect for what turned the lights out at the Hilton.”

“Anyway, it's going to be okay, Charlie.” He gave her shoulders a proprietary squeeze. “I'll help you clean up the mess at the Hilton.”

“Yeah, right. And we'll spend tonight in my room, I suppose.”

“Well, I'm not leaving you there alone. Besides, my astrologer's calculations say you're not done yet.” The bastard chortled. “And that this should be your best month of the year. Venus is transiting your sign.”

“You want to know why I'll never really get in a relationship? I hate the smell of tuna.”

“You do not smell like canned tuna. I told you.”

“What do you know? Men have no sense of smell.” And Charlie crawled over to Bradone's cushion.

“Quiet on the set,” their host joked. “Roll it, Mel. And somebody pour Charlie some more wine.”

This time, the footage started with security guards wrestling a camcorder away from Evan Black while their cohort bopped Evan with a nightstick.

“That's right, Black. I forgot you always do a cameo in your films.” Mitch sounded appreciative.

“Is that guy really hitting you, Evan?” Bradone sat up.

“Put it on pause, Mel.” Evan rose to stand in front of the stilled frame of himself being beaten and pulled his shirt down at the neck like a teasing stripper to reveal a black-and-blue shoulder, turned around to lift the shirt from the waist to reveal a bruised back.

“Don't look, Charlie,” Mitch advised.

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

“How'd you know when to be there?” Richard raised up on one elbow to stare at the stilled screen with his bug eyes. “You didn't set this up, I hope.”

“Nah, Mel and I were out in the van, had the radio on. We got there just in time to get attacked by the law. It was beautiful. Never say I don't do my own research.” A self-satisfied Evan walked away from the screen. “Okay, Mel.”

The cameraman shooting Evan's beating, probably Mel, turned away from the scene, camera still running. He was running himself, as were all kinds of people with him. Their race down the Strip was a study in control, the man behind the camera holding it in front of him, the world leaping and jostling around him in a frantic but oddly rhythmic step. Like the rescued film of a dead reporter caught in war-torn wherever.

“Holy moly, Superman,” Richard Morse said.

“That's Batman, I think.” Gullible Mitch fell for it.

But even then Bradone sighed and turned her head to Charlie. “If you don't get back over there, I will.”

“Be my guest.” Charlie took a slug of Chianti.

“You want to cuddle up to Richard?”

Charlie took another slug and thought it over. She crawled back to the cushion next to Mitch but asked Richard, “What did Metro want to know about me? You never said.”

“Just a background check. I'm your employer, remember? Wanted to know how long you'd been with the agency, what you do there.”

The next scene showed the same security guards jumping over wounded and dead victims of the shoot-outs, probably borrowed from someone else's camera. A shot obviously out of sequence in real time, but Evan often used that technique to startle audiences. Critics called it a “conceit,” disciples, a “trademark.” Charlie had always liked Evan's films in spite of herself and had to admit that with careful editing, it worked.

“They especially wanted to know what you do for Evan, here. If you're sexually involved—”

“Richard—”

“They're cops, Charlie, they're supposed to ask things like that.”

And then came the footage of Charlie laid out in the desert night with shadow flames for lighting and that gross bush at her head like a tombstone.

Mitch tensed beside her, put an arm around her, drew her into his warmth.

That made Charlie tense. She loathed heroes.

“Besides, I told them you were not sexually involved with Evan and that it's a damn shame. You could use a little.”

Mitch put a hand over Charlie's mouth and held her down until she calmed. But Bradone and Evan howled in unison. Which made for a seriously strange sound.

The next sequence brought them all back to the matter at hand. Charlie and Mitch sat up. Richard raised himself on an elbow again to see better. Evan gave a satisfied sigh.

It was the “ground stuff” he'd kept baiting Charlie with.

This was all shot without sound, which made it spooky. Knowing Evan, who loved to play in the Foley studio, there would be lots of silence in the finished product and real or natural sounds mixed with the score, or sounds from another film even. Charlie could imagine him mixing war sounds with the shoot-out in front of Loopy's. Instead of police sirens, there might be air-raid sirens from the bombing of London during World War II. Just enough to throw you off.

Sometimes he'd begin a scene with sounds from the last sequence. He liked to call this technique “transition.” Again, it would be labeled conceit—distracting and unnecessary—by some, brilliance by admirers. You either liked or hated an Evan Black film. They were as controversial as their maker. And more than once he'd been termed
mad
—as in nuts. Charlie had always wondered how, in Hollywood, you could tell.

But when his projects worked—and probably three-fourths did—they grossed bucks, big bucks on the cheap. Because he did so much of it himself. No second unit on his films, despite Toby's title. No power struggles between egos on the set that drove costs up on most projects. Talent or production crew, they were free to walk, because he wasn't paying squat anyway and there were people lined up to take their places. People worked on a Black film as a way to become better known in their specialty, not for guild or union scales. Studio brass got intimidating, interfering, Evan would walk the project to another studio, never shooting anything in L.A. While endless lawsuits were being filed, threatened, some scheduled in court, he was garnering awards. If this guy was nuts, he was like the Einstein of nuts.

The question was, Was he capable of murder? And treason?

*   *   *

The raw oysters and camel fries seemed to have worked, but Mitch ordered up a deluxe hamburger and french fries sometime in the wee hours. And a bottle of red.

Charlie'd had enough of everything but sex. Well, she did eat one fry. Okay, five, but that was it.

Between bouts of lust that had little to do with the lustee—he could have been anybody that night—in her savaged room at the Hilton, which she and the lustee had no time to put right or to inform security of what might be missing from the obvious search, Charlie dreamed. And when awake, she relived that ground stuff.

It was awesome. In her head, she mixed the sound herself.

Groom Lake even in wide angle from a nearby mountaintop stood well disclosed, impossible to hide on open desert. The massive runways looked able to launch a fleet of ocean liners, or aircraft carriers three at a time—side by side. What could possibly require such spaciousness? No stealth bomber needed anywhere near that width or length. And those runways were in excellent condition, not patched up like at most airports.

The vast hangarlike buildings and sheds sprawled low, flat, and again were impossible to hide. Perhaps the only option
was
to deny their existence. Stranger things have happened. The fleet of white 737s, unmarked but for a wide red stripe along the side pocked by the windows, showing white here, lined up as she remembered them from her brief flight over that ridge with Caryl Thompson, Evan, and Mel. Just before the orange light knocked her out.

That orange light, really more of a thing, had more substance than normal light does. Yet Charlie couldn't be sure it was an object. Round, huge, and spinning, it reminded her fleetingly of a sun before it vanished. It didn't go away or dissolve or spin past the little Mooney. It couldn't. It filled the sky. And then it just simply wasn't. Like it had never existed. This was not on the footage in Evan's film—it was in Charlie's head, at the back of her eyeballs, leaving the orange smear that still returned now and then.