fake a guy slipping in the bathroom and cracking open his head on the edge of the toilet bowl with his wife in the room? Or tumbling off his balcony, or getting electrocuted in the tub, or going out a suicide?
But what if Joni herself was behind the contract? What if she was an active participant here? Had hired Varnos directly and was abetting him? I’d already established that Nick and Jerry varied from the standard procedures the Broker had laid down.
With Joni onboard as a collaborator, setting up an accidental death in a hotel room would be a snap.
So I had a lot to think about.
Before driving out to the set this morning, I’d gone down to the Spur’s restaurant for breakfast. I’d been up quite early, despite my long day previous, and had started off with a swim.
Swimming relaxes me. It was my sport as a kid and it’s been my salvation as a grown-up. Helps me think, if that’s what I need. Helps me not think, if that is.
My early morning swim had been as solitary as Joni’s the night before. And swimming in that desert clime is special. It has an entirely different flavor-no humidity gives it at once a crisp reality and a dream-like quality.
During the swim, I had decided there was no reason to go out to the set immediately. That my time initially would be better spent sitting in the restaurant, hoping that Nick Varnos would come down for breakfast and that I could then tail him, and get this thing over with.
Even that was dodgy, though-what if I tailed him, and got him off somewhere and disposed of him… when he’d already put the accident in motion? If he’d rigged something to take Stockwell out, killing Varnos without a conversation first would be a bad idea.
This was fairly distasteful, because I am no fucking sadist. Cutting off somebody’s fingers or shooting them in the kneecap, trying to make them talk, it’s messy and it’s inefficient. And you have to keep them alive, in case the first thing they tell you isn’t true, requiring you to go back and cut off another finger or shoot another kneecap or something.
Torture is a whole different arena. Requires training that I never got. You never know when somebody is going to pass out or even die on you. And then where are you?
On the other hand, part of what I liked about using the Broker’s list to find, and protect, clients was the improvisational, on-the-fly, think-on-your feet nature of it. You can get numb in my line of work, and living alone like I do can sort of lull you into a waking sleep. This work was lively. It had a nice edge. Made me feel alive.
Anyway, I had breakfast and several glasses of iced tea and read various newspapers, sitting in a booth situated to see the rest of the modern-looking restaurant, another example of the Spur not bothering with much if any western-style trappings. A couple of framed desert landscapes was all that separated this from a Ramada Inn in Who Farted, West Virginia.
By nine-thirty, Varnos hadn’t shown, and I went out to the film set for a couple of hours. I’ve told you about that. What I haven’t told you is that when I got back to the Spur, the first thing I did was return to that same restaurant for lunch.
Not that the breakfast had been so fabulous that I felt compelled to come back for more; but on the off chance that somebody like Nick, staying in the motel, might just be lazy enough to take lunch there.
Of course, even so, it was a quarter to one and he may well have already eaten. I’d have to get lucky again.
And I was.
He was just sitting down to a table when I was ushered to a booth.
Nick Varnos was a small man, almost as small as Eric Conrad. He was pale and he had dark, dark eyes, dark eyebrows, medium-length well-barbered dark hair with long sideburns and a Tom Selleck mustache. He wore a gray button-down short-sleeve shirt, no sport coat, and a tie with Necco Wafer-colored stripes. His slacks were a darker, dirty gray, very stylish, his belt western-looking. It was an odd combo of casual and dressy.
He ate light-soup and salad.
I ate even lighter, just soup (a hearty chili, though), because I’d put away a good breakfast on my earlier restaurant stakeout.
The guy seemed quite composed. Cool. He was pleasant with the waitress, who was cute enough for flirting, but he didn’t flirt. He was in a good mood, apparently, but selfcontained.
After lunch, I followed him to his room and discovered he was not only on the same floor as Stockwell and me, but the same wing-in 319. Same side of the hall as Stockwell, too, but not next door (the director was in 313, you’ll remember, and I was in 316).
In my room, I pulled up a chair, cracked the door and sat and monitored Stockwell’s room across the way. It seemed endless, but was only maybe an hour, because around three o’clock, Varnos left his room and went down to the lobby. Then he went to the parking lot and got into the blue Buick Century he’d bought specifically for this job.
I followed him in my Nova into downtown Boot Heel. He parked in the Four Jacks lot. So did I. He went into the Four Jacks casino. So did I. He gambled for an hour or so. So did I.
Varnos was a real gambler, though-he played blackjack and roulette, and routinely bet fifty or more dollars. I was strictly a poker-machine amateur, never more than a buck a throw, but I was always able to find a machine in nice view of what Varnos was up to.
Around five, Varnos left the casino, going out one of the half-dozen doors onto Main Street. He walked two blocks to a movie theater that had four films playing: The Gong Show Movie; The Empire Strikes Back; The Shining; and The Long Riders. He bought a ticket for The Long Riders, a western. So did I. He bought no food. I did-Christ, what’s the point, without popcorn and a Coke? This, and that healthy lunch, he was starting to irritate my ass.
Having him in that movie theater, which was underattended (people didn’t go to a casino town like Boot Heel to go to the movies, and anyway this was a five-fifteen show), did provide a potential opportunity to remove him. I had my nine millimeter in my waistband, noise suppressor in my sportcoat pocket. I also had a retractable knife, a stiletto, which I didn’t love using, but there were appropriate times and places for the thing…
But again-what if something was rigged already to take Stockwell out in his room?
I considered putting the gun in Nick’s back on the way out of the theater, after the movie was over, and walking him somewhere for a talk and a bullet; but the lobby was full-it was a Friday night, which kicked the shit out of my nobody-goes-to-the-movies-in-a-casino-town theory.
So I wound up just following him again.
Back to the Four Jacks. It would be just my luck if I ran into Eric Conrad, with him thinking I’d had a change of heart. Or hard. But I didn’t.
Anyway, Varnos gambled another hour. He had lost this afternoon, but this time he cashed in way more chips than he’d bought. He played nothing but blackjack, and seemed to have a nice rapport with a pretty brunette dealer.
Around nine he went out into the parking lot and smoked a cigarette, standing by his Buick. So he wasn’t a complete health nut, then. Fifteen minutes or so passed, and the little brunette dealer came running out and took his hand. Apparently he’d hit it off with her and she was off work, and they got in the Buick and drove back to the Spur.
Here’s when I started to get really pissed at this guy: he takes her to the Spur for a romantic late supper. All the decent places to eat in a casino town like this, and he makes it so that I have to eat in that same boring hotel restaurant again.
They talk quietly. She does most of the talking. First date, but this woman is in her mid-thirties (Varnos is maybe forty) and, like a lot of Boot Heel gals, this is not her first time at the rodeo. He buys her lobster and has a chef’s salad himself, fucking rabbit. I eat a rare filet that is not terrible with a baked potato that also isn’t bad.
By ten he has taken her up to his room.
Back in my room, I try to dope it out. Is this what it seems to be on the face of it? Has Varnos just had a day off, gambling, movies, dining, picking up a babe for the night? Maybe relaxing before the big day tomorrow when he does his thing, and then hits the road?
Or is he setting up an alibi with some local girl, just in case he needs it?
Or has he already rigged that room for a kill?
I went across the hall to Stockwell’s room and knocked. It was ten-thirty and maybe my client was back from the set. Or maybe Joni was. At this point, I’d settle for her. Shit! What an idiot I’d been, not asking the director for
