letting him train in electronics as he’d requested. A matter of aptitude, he was told.
He hadn’t much liked the MP duty at first. Mainly it involved routine patrols and handling drunken noncoms and issuing citations. Good at it, though, because he’d applied himself, and somebody at the command level had decided that was where he belonged. He’d spent his entire four-year tour at two stateside bases, Fort Benning and Fort Huachuca. Never left U.S. soil the entire time. Fort Huachuca was the better of the two duties by far because it was in Cochise County, in the southeastern part of Arizona- desert country, the place where he’d first learned that deserts were so much more than arid wastelands.
Everybody always said he was lucky. Not only because of the easy stateside duty, but because his tour had fallen between the times of intense foreign combat-enlisted in ’93 at age eighteen, after Desert Storm, and discharged in ’97 before Nine-Eleven, Afghanistan, Iraq. Maybe he
Geena. Timmy. A whole different life back then.
The Ruger was unloaded; he kept it that way whenever he was in Death Valley, except when he was packing well off the beaten track, because loaded firearms are illegal in national parks. Rattlesnakes aren’t, though, and self-defense was more important than strictly following rules. He swung the gate open, looked at the empty chambers for several seconds, and then closed the gate again and sat holding the weapon in his hand. He’d never fired it anywhere except at the police range, once every other month in competitions with Will Rodriguez that he usually won. Never had occasion to draw it even once in the nine years he’d been with Unidyne. Never drawn it in the wilderness, either. He’d seen his share of sidewinders, but never been surprised by one up close.
He could and would shoot a man if he had to. Army training: if your weapon was loaded and you had reason to draw it, you had to be prepared to fire. But only in self-defense. He’d thrown down on fellow soldiers twice during his MP days, one of them a kid from Tennessee on a violent meth high who was threatening bar patrons with a bayonet. He would’ve fired a kill shot when the kid started to attack him, if his partner hadn’t swung a blindside billy first. The incident had made Fallon think what it would be like to shoot an assailant, shoulder the responsibility for a man’s death. He didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t shy away from it either. Putting yourself into a potentially deadly situation meant being willing to do what you had to do to protect yourself. True as an MP and corporate security officer, true as a civilian.
But he was on thin ice here. His California carry permit was no good in Nevada or any other state, and the gun laws here in Vegas were strict. O. J. Simpson and his buddies had found that out the hard way. He could keep the weapon in his pack, but to be strictly legal it would have to be unloaded. An empty sidearm was worthless except as a bluff threat, and if the bluff were called with a loaded piece, you could end up dead.
So the smart thing to do was not to rely on ordnance at all. Keep the Ruger unloaded and tucked away. He was a big man, strong, he was skilled in hand-to-hand combat methods, he could handle himself against men like Banning and Court Spicer. Sure he could-as long as they weren’t armed with chambered weapons and likewise prepared to use them.
He asked himself, not for the first time and not for long, if he’d bitten off more than he could chew. Could be. But he was already committed. And the doubts dissolved when he thought about what Banning and Spicer had done to Casey, the probably frightened eight-and-a-half-year-old with asthma, the promises he’d made. He’d see it through, one way or another.
The digital clock on the nightstand read 4:33. Lull time in the clubs and casinos, especially on a Saturday. If Eddie Sparrow was still playing at the Hot Licks Club, it wasn’t likely he’d be there until evening. Making the rounds to find out which if any of the casinos used gold and black-ruffled sleeve garters could wait a while, too.
He put the unloaded Ruger away, lowered the pack to the floor, then lay back on the bed. The air conditioner made a clunky humming noise. Outside, kid cries from the pool and traffic noise on North Rancho Drive filtered in faintly.
The kid cries started him thinking about Timmy again. He took out the good, cherished memories as he often did, let them stream like slides across his mind. The boy’s love of baseball and their backyard pitch-and-catch games and the trips to Dodger Stadium. The time they’d gone camping together in the Mojave, just the two of them, and how excited Timmy had been. Their first visit to Death Valley, Geena with them that time, and the wonder in the boy’s eyes as he gazed out at the changing colors of the hills from atop Zabriskie Point. The other places they’d gone and the other things they’d done, and the sound of Timmy’s laughter at cartoon antics and silly kid jokes.
The slide show ended abruptly, as it always did, with the image of a still, pale, bandaged face in a white room, the last image before the middle-ofthe-night call from the hospital and the doctor’s solemn voice saying, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Mr. Fallon.”
Timmy.
Ah, God-Timmy.
For an hour Fallon lay motionless, waiting, trying not to think about anything once the memories were locked away again. The army, with its hurry-up-and-wait philosophy, had taught him the rudiments of patience; the routine at Unidyne and the desert treks had honed and refined it for him.
The phone didn’t ring. No one knocked on the door.
That didn’t mean anything one way or another. He was pretty sure the desk clerk knew the man who called himself Banning, had some idea of what had gone on in this room on Wednesday, and had been paid for his collusion and his silence. If that was the way things shaped up, the clerk would report to Banning. What Banning did about it, if anything, was a matter of wait-and-see.
At 5:30 Fallon tried Vernon Young’s home number a second time, got the answering machine again. He called Casey’s cell, to find out how she was doing. There seemed to be some life in her voice when she said she was all right, feeling better. He told her he was in Vegas, but not where he was staying the night, and a little of what he was planning for tonight. There wasn’t much else to say except that he’d call again in the morning.
Six o’clock.
No calls, no visitors.
Fallon went into the bathroom for a small strip of toilet paper. Outside, with the pack slung over his shoulder, he closed the toilet paper into the joining of the door and the jamb, a couple of inches below the lock, with just enough of it showing so that he could feel it with a fingertip. Then he locked the door, put himself and the pack inside the Jeep, and joined the rush of platelets heading for the heart of the Vegas creature.
TWO
THE HOT LICKS CLUB wasn’t just a jazz spot. Like just about every other entertainment spot in Vegas, it was dominated by a ground-floor casino and it had a theme-a broad mix of 1920s speakeasy and 1930s supper club. Wall murals and furnishings reflecting that bygone era, jazz music blaring over loudspeakers, employees decked out in period costumes that ranged from tuxedos and gowns to gangster-style and flapper outfits. Combined with the neon glitz-and-glitter of the casino, the effect was ludicrous. But the customers didn’t seem to think so. The casino was packed, the slots and tables getting heavy play, streams and knots of gawkers clogging the narrow aisleways.
Fallon found his way to an escalator at the far end. Propped up there was a large billboard sign that read: BENNY AMATO AND HIS JAZZBOS. VOCALS BY HELEN DUPREE. APPEARING NIGHTLY EXCEPT SUNDAY IN THE INTIME ROOM. DIXIELAND, SWING, FUSION. DINNER AND DANCING TILL THE WEE HOURS. There was a photo of a group of eight men and one woman, all wearing the requisite period clothing. The man in the foreground holding a trumpet was black and middle-aged, but neither he nor any of the other Jazzbos was identified by name.
On the second floor, a velvet-roped aisleway led to a wide set of closed doors. A neon sign above them bore
