The Downtown Deal (7 page)

He
lived on the second floor of a rundown courtyard apartment complex over on
First Street, not because he liked the neighborhood, but because it was two
blocks from the cab yard and he didn't own a car. However, one look at this
area and you realize this is where despair goes to die. Low-rent duplexes and
apartments, as well as trash-strewn vacant lots, are the signature sights.
Whoever wrote the song
Lonely Street
must've been raised in this part of
town.

I'd've
called Ronnie first, but he didn't have a phone, either, or a TV, for that
matter. When I got up to his apartment, which was down at the end of the
windswept second-floor landing, I knew I'd have to knock loudly, because he
probably had his headphones on watching a movie. He's a big, big movie buff
with thousands of DVDs crammed into every corner of his apartment. To my
surprise, however, he answered the door on the first knock. And with no
headphones.

"Hey,
Jack," he said. "Come on in." He made a quick hand gesture, then
rushed back inside. As I entered, he was back in his seat, the only chair in
the tiny apartment, fiddling with his portable DVD player. His headphones
rested on the chair's arm. I made my way inside, carefully stepping over the stacks
of DVDs neatly arranged all over the floor.

Gray
hair ran down the sides of his head past his ears, stopping just short of his
shoulders. A close-cropped full beard was also gray, but betrayed its light
brown origins in select spots. He needed to lose thirty pounds, but I knew he
never would. In his early sixties, he was beyond the point of attending to such
details.

Without
looking up at me, he said, "This damn thing just went out on me. I don't
know what the hell happened." He kept twisting the cord, while shaking the
unit, hoping to resuscitate it.

"How
much did it cost you?"

"Four
hundred bucks, man! That's a lot of money for me!"

"How
long have you had it?"

"Not
even three years!" he said. "Can you believe it? And it's already on
the way out. Man, this pisses me off! These companies try to stick it to you
for something that won't even last three years."

I
didn't want to insert the point that, during those three years, he'd probably
been using it eight to ten hours a day, seven days a week.

He
went on: "I was right in the middle of watching this great movie.
Double
Indemnity
. You know the one? With Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck? I
was right at the part where he's hitting on her pretty heavy, and she wants to
cool him off, so she says, 'There's a speed limit in this state,' and he goes,
'How fast was I going, officer?' and all this great, crackling dialogue."
He finally sighed, and set the small machine down on the floor. Then he got up
and said, "Want a beer?"

"Sure."

He
hustled over to the tiny kitchenette and pulled a couple of cold ones out of
the fridge. He popped the tops, then handed me one. We clicked our cans
together and each took a good, long swallow.

"So
what's up, Jack? What brings you over here to Shangri-La?" He sat back
down, using his sleeve to wipe beer foam out of his mustache and beard.

I
pulled the footstool over around to my side of his chair, then sat on it.
"Ronnie, there's a big piece of nearly-empty land just west of downtown by
I-15. You know the one I'm talking about?"

"West
of downtown?"

"Right.
Behind the Plaza Hotel, back there where I-15 and US 95 meet up. It's about
sixty or seventy acres." He tilted his head a little, trying to get his
bearings. I added, "Just a ways across the railroad tracks."

I saw
the light bulb click on. "Oh-h-h, yeah." He took another big swig of
beer. "Yeah, I know that area. Back by the freeways. Not much there right
now, right?"

"That's
right."

"Yeah,
that's where they're talking about building a new stadium."

"New
stadium?" I jolted myself upright.

"Yeah.
You know, for Major League Baseball."

"No,"
I said. "I didn't know."

"Well,
it's not really in the papers or anything, but I've been hearing little tidbits
about it for a few months now. They're trying to get a big league baseball team
to relocate here, but they've gotta have plans for a new stadium in place
before the team'll even talk to 'em about it."

"Major
League Baseball? In Las Vegas?"

"Oh,
man, they want to come here in the worst way. This place'd be a gold mine for
'em, don't you know. We're sure big enough, and I say it's about time!"

"So,
in other words, if they can get it together to put a stadium over there by
downtown, then they'll get a team?"

"That's
the way I hear it. All these teams nowadays, you know, they're always wanting
new stadiums, with all the skyboxes and fancy shit. And they've been getting
'em too, for the most part. Now, you take the team that's talking about coming
here, they've been having a hard time getting a new stadium back home, so
they're looking at Las Vegas."

"Which
team is it?"

"The
Florida Marlins."

≈≈≈

I left Ronnie's in a
hurry. Before I was at my car, I punched up Frank Madden's number. He picked it
up just as I got into the driver's seat, out of the intensifying wind.

"Frank,
Jack Barnett. I think I may have something for you in the Sandra Blake
case."

"I'm
all ears, Jack?"

"Can
you get away for lunch?"

"I
think I can."

I
said, "Good. Then meet me at Magnolia's. You know it. The coffee shop in
the Four Queens."

"I'll
see you there in twenty minutes."

As I
drove the short distance to the Four Queens, I thought about what I would tell
him. I considered holding back certain things, like the Olivera connection, but
decided to let it all out. After all, Blake was only paying me to find the
killer, and I had explained to him up front that I would have to eventually
turn over what I knew to the cops, since they were the ones that were paid to
make the arrest.

I got
to Magnolia's before Frank did, so I ordered a bottle of beer. By the time the
waitress brought it, he was taking a seat opposite me in the booth.

I
never asked him his age in the year or so I'd known him, but I guessed he was
somewhere in his forties. I knew he'd been on the force for at least twenty
years, because he'd told me about cases he worked back in the early eighties.
He was a big man, with fine, brown hair that lay flat across the top of his
head, while quick eyes dominated his reddened, expressive face. He glanced at
the menu, not long enough to absorb any content, then ordered a fish sandwich and
a Coke. I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich.

Frank
looked directly at me and said, "Okay, what's up?"

"Early
yesterday morning, I went out to Sandra Blake's house. Two guys had already
beat me to it. The Farrow brothers. You know them?"

"No."
He was displeased. "Who were they, and what the hell were they doing
there?" He pulled a small notebook out of his breast pocket and began to
jot things down in it.

"Ryan
and Colby Farrow. They're mortgage bankers. I think that means they're, like,
middlemen between borrowers and lenders of money for high-end commercial real
estate projects, although in fact, they represent lenders, trying to find
places to put their money." I took a quick pull at my beer. "So, it
turns out Ryan Farrow was ver-ry lovey-dovey with Sandra Blake. Had been for
about a year. They were there to remove his clothes from her closet."

"So
that's who those clothes belonged to. We saw them there, but we couldn't put a
name on them."

"Now,
it so happens there's some bad blood flowing between the Farrows and John
Brendan Blake. I don't know, business shenanigans, or whatever. But, according
to Blake, there's no love lost. I don't know if that makes Ryan Farrow a
suspect, but that's for you to figure out."

He
didn't look up from his writing. "What else?"

"You
know, of course, that Sandra Blake worked for Silverstone Towers
condominiums."

"Right."

I
drank again from the cold beer. It tasted good. "She sold one of those
condos to a guy named Hector Olivera out of Miami. It so happens Olivera's a
big land developer back there, just like Blake is here."

"So
what?"

"So
this. Blake has been quietly putting together pieces of vacant, or blighted,
land in an underdeveloped part of downtown, with the purpose in mind of making
it available for a new Major League Baseball stadium."

Stunned,
Madden finally stopped writing. With widening eyes, he whistled softly in
disbelief. "Baseball stadium? Is this for real?"

"It's
for real, Frank. And Blake's got the whole thing almost together. There's only
one missing piece. A little shitpot ribbon of empty land running straight into
the center of it, which he needs in order to put the final package together.
And guess who owns it."

"Who?"

"Hector
Olivera."

He
wrote frantically, getting it all down, then he said, "You say this
Olivera bought a condo from Sandra Blake? Is there any other connection to her?
Maybe personal? Like was he screwing her during his trips here?"

"I
can't say right now. I don't know. But I talked to him on the phone last
night."

"He's
in Miami now?"

I
said, "He was last night. Here's his number." After reciting
Olivera's business number from my cell phone directory, I finished off my beer,
signaling for another. "He seemed genuinely surprised that Sandra had been
murdered, and he let it slip that she was helping him on a real estate deal he
was working on here in town. Right as soon as he said that, he clammed up. I
don't think he was referring to his condo purchase. I think it may have had
something to do with that downtown land."

Just
then, our food arrived, along with my second beer. As we dug in, I said,
"Tonight, I'm going to see Ryan Farrow. I think he might be able to fill
in some of the blanks. I'll let you know what I find out."

"You
do that. I'd go see him right now, but we're caught up in that drive-by that
happened yesterday morning." I thought he was through talking, but his
teeth slowly clenched and he added, "Two street punks dead and a
seven-year-old girl shot while playing hopscotch on the sidewalk." He
twisted his napkin hard between big fists. He looked like he wanted to upend
the table.

I
washed down a bite of my sandwich with some more beer to let Madden simmer down.
Then: "So, how'd you make out with Manny the Mexican last night? Was that
tell worthwhile?"

His
whole body loosened up and a wide grin washed over his Irish face, while his pale
blue eyes twinkled. "I busted him on the first hand I played. Five hundred
smackolas on that one hand. Made nine for the night."

T
he wind hadn't died down any by the time I left the Four
Queens. My jacket wasn't much of a shield against it, while the darkening
afternoon skies promised a cold night ahead. I drove home and watched a little
TV, then finally got around to changing the bare light bulb in my bedroom.

A few
minutes before six, I went out again, heading for Ryan Farrow's home in
Summerlin, a kind of semi-upscale suburban area northwest of the center of Las
Vegas. Since I wasn't anticipating any trouble from Farrow, I left my .357 SIG
behind in my dresser drawer. I didn't have a license to carry in Nevada, so I
didn't want to open myself up to any unnecessary hassles.

The
autumn wind was strong, dancing furiously across the streets of the twilit
city. Unusually light traffic made the crosstown trip a lot easier. As I swung
onto the 95 freeway, I unwound and turned on my car radio.

I
found a jazz station, or at least, that's what it sounded like. I'm not really
big on jazz, but this sweaty alto sax came oozing out of the speakers, talking directly
to me. It stole my complete attention, though I didn't even know the song.
Before I knew it, I was exiting the freeway onto the empty streets of
Summerlin.

I had
snapped myself out of the musical trance by the time I arrived at Farrow's
home. The sun had gone down, and it took the temperature with it. When I got
out of the car, I had to zip up my jacket. Heavy cloud cover made it a
starless, moonless night.

The
house was big and dark, set back from the street behind a circular driveway. A
BMW sedan loomed in front of the garage. I recognized it as the one I put
Farrow and his brother into at Sandra Blake's house. I parked on the street,
then approached the house on foot. As I moved silently across the lush,
landscaped yard, the enchanting scent of night-blooming jasmine found its way
into my nostrils and my head. I recognized it from my years in Los Angeles and
was surprised to find it here in Nevada. The seductive fragrance held me still
for a sweet moment.

The
long, vertical window by the front door was curtained, as were all the windows
in the front of the house. An uneasy feeling crept over me, slowing me down and
causing a sharp tingling on the back of my neck. I tried the door, slowly
twisting the knob. It opened.

Car in
the driveway, no lights in the house, door unlocked … I didn't like anything
about this. I considered leaving, but decided against it. Quietly stepping
inside, I wished I had brought my weapon after all.

After
a few moments, my eyes adjusted to the black interior of the house. Soon, I
found a light switch. I flipped it on, illuminating the foyer and sending trails
of light into a couple of the adjacent rooms. I heard a slight thump, sounding
like it came from the second floor. The stairs were off to the right. I headed
up.