there on the bathroom floor where he’d slipped on it and-tragically-fell backward and hit his head. More accidental deaths in the bathroom than anywhere else, I hear.
I regarded the scene with some satisfaction. Staging accidental deaths was hardly my specialty, but I’d pulled this one off under fairly difficult circumstances. I hadn’t touched much at all, but used a handkerchief I’d brought along to wipe anything it seemed remotely possible my fingers had met.
Such as the key to room 319 that I’d taken off him, which I put back in his pocket. And the inside knob, which I then turned with the hanky-in-hand to crack the door.
Lady Luck-alive and well in Boot Heel, it seemed-dealt me an empty hallway.
I had to take the time to wipe down the outer knob as well, of course. Varnos had already hung a DO NOT DISTURB card there, and that would aid in his body not being found right away. Although when it was found didn’t concern me much. No need to wipe the little plastic hanger of my prints because I had never touched the thing.
Anyway, I slipped down to my own room, just catty-corner across the way, and ducked inside, where the first thing I did was open the little envelope I’d liberated from the late Nick Varnos.
Its contents looked like Percodan. Very possibly the twenty or so little tablets were Percodan, but if so, they were either poisoned or bore a much higher dosage than Stockwell could have handled.
Swap these out for whatever pills remained in the director’s prescription bottle, and my ex’s current hubby would ease his back pain once and for all. Just another Hollywood type, dead of a drug overdose.
Which struck me as pretty slick work on the part of the late Nick Varnos, if some pretty cold-blooded shit.
The world wouldn’t miss this prick.
EIGHT
I went back to Stockwell’s room to make sure no tidying up was needed. None was. As noted before, my knock-out blow had not bloodied the back of Nick Varnos’ head, though I did give the carpet a good close look-more out of habit than necessity.
In the bathroom, where I’d sat watch, I’d left behind my paperback, and retrieved it. Flushed the doctored Percodans. Didn’t bother wiping anything down for fingerprints. Who’d be checking room 313 for those?
Back in my room, I took the time to shower again-it had been a long morning and I’d worked up some sweat with all that scuffling-and I was a little tense, a little tight in the shoulders. The hot water helped, but not enough, and I decided to go down for an early afternoon swim. It was the weekend now, meaning families with kids were around, lots of running and screaming and splashing, and cuffing children is frowned upon these days. Not that relaxing, so I cut it short.
Up in my room again, I got into a fresh polo shirt and some black jeans and running shoes and threw the sport coat on, too, though it was another warm dry sunny day out there. But the nine millimeter was in my waistband for now. I skipped lunch. It’s not that killing some fuck freaked me out or anything, but neither did I work up an appetite.
I did take time to look at local newspapers in the lobby, although sitting in that mini-casino with the nine mil digging in my belly was not exactly the most comfy or peaceful reading experience. Most of the slots and poker machines had worshipers making offerings. The Spur on a Saturday, probably any place in Boot Heel on a Saturday, was way too populated for my tastes.
Anyway, the papers-both the local one and the Las Vegas Review-Journal — had nothing about a body with a smashed head being found on a country road. Though I’d just removed the Active half of the hit team, I was more concerned at the moment with the Passive half. It always took the media a day or so to catch up.
I had checked the papers yesterday, too, and listened to a couple of local newscasts on the car radio and the TV in my room, and Jerry just wasn’t making the news. Which I found gratifying. Driving his ass out of the county had been worth it.
That dirt road fatality would be tough to I.D. and the same would be true of the accident victim on the bathroom floor of room 319. The former had his wallet stripped off him, and the latter would have checked into the Spur under a false name supported by a credit card or two. The Buick Century in the parking lot was a vehicle Nick had purchased for cash. Very likely its registration would be in whatever fake name he’d checked in under.
Of course, the vehicle might have yet another name on it-I always make sure the collars and the cuffs match, when I’m using one of my eight sets of I.D. (credit cards, driver’s license, social security). This precaution dated back to Broker days. But Varnos had been his own man, so he might be sloppier than me…or less so-who could say?
Since I was the one still alive, I would vote for sloppier.
Anyway, all of this would send the authorities down a blind alley or two for at least forty-eight hours, and nothing they might find would likely lead to me or for that matter my client, Arthur Stockwell, and his movie shoot.
Nonetheless, when you have dumped two dead bodies in the same general area within a couple of days-and those dead bodies are fucking hit men-hanging around indefinitely is not the greatest plan. I had removed my client’s immediate threat-Jerry and Nick-but now, to earn my bonus before getting out of Dodge, I needed to quickly remove whoever had commissioned those two.
This was unquestionably the trickier of the services I offered to select clients like the director of Hard Wheels 2.
Which had been shooting since this morning at the Four Jacks casino. I parked the Nova in the back lot (nine mil in the glove compartment, sport coat left behind as well) and went in the rear doors. If I’d thought the place was bustling before, Saturday afternoon more than topped it, the vast casino floor crowded and clamorous and if the cigarette smoke had been any thicker, the sprinklers would have come on.
The blue-hair bunch had been infiltrated by younger couples and I didn’t see any who looked like they could afford to heedlessly slam coins into one-armed bandits much less chase dice or a little white spinning ball or try to hit 21 at a blackjack table. These were the good solid salt-of-the-earth Americans I had gone off to war to protect, who had presumably benefitted from all those little yellow people I killed, making the world safe for idiocy. I hoped they fucking appreciated it.
Today I spotted two Carter For President buttons. If I’d got a buck for every Reagan, I could have retired myself.
Aggravating this chaos was the presence of a movie company. Even amid all the colorful flashing lights of machines, they were easy to spot-the little invading army of technicians and actors had taken over a roulette table in the far left corner, up toward the front of the building. Around it were slots and poker machines in clanging, dinging action; some of the people playing them I recognized from the film set.
Actually, this whole corner was cordoned off by the half-dozen Hell’s Angels types on the production’s security force, plus another half-dozen real security guys in cop-like light blue who worked for the casino. In the great scheme of this vast room, perhaps only 5 % of the available gaming floor was blocked off. Another roulette table, nearest the one where a scene was being shot, was out of use; but otherwise the remaining 95 % of the casino was business as usual.
As crowded as the place was, freckle-faced Ginger-working her clipboard on my side of the blockade, wearing a tiny-titty-perked red Hard Wheels 2 t-shirt and frayed blue jeans-found me, and took me by the arm and walked me past security. She wasn’t speaking because they were rolling. The down-turned sailor hat was absent and revealed short red shag-cut hair. Maybe she would like to be the next Mrs. Quarry.
Despite a casino being one of the most brightly lit chambers on earth, a towering array of lights on stands, some of them with colored gels, half-ringed the roulette table where the scene was playing out. I couldn’t hear what was being said.
Eric Conrad, shirtless in his denim vest and jeans, was winning at roulette (a tech, out of frame on the floor, was running a gizmo that apparently controlled the white ball). At the star’s side, cheering him on, was Tiffany Goodwin in a white dress reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. You know, where the subway blew her skirt up.
