'That ain't my style, man,' Red said stiffly, glancing at his mother.
I dug out my PI license and showed it to them. 'A long-time stakeout, then maybe a long time tailing. Let me know when this runs out.'
Red handed the money back to his mother. 'She your wife? Or she steal your money?'
'More like my pride,' I said. 'She set me up to be killed.' I had no reason to be candid with this strange couple, but perhaps it was easy to be honest with them because they seemed so odd, as far outside the norm as I was.
'Killed, man? That's cold. You gonna pop her?' Red asked.
Mrs. McCravey gave her son a hard look and a sardonic moue, then folded the bills and stuffed them into her purse. 'Thank you, sir. And please forgive my son for his curious candor. He's both cynical and excitable.'
'Whooee, that's me, man. The excitable cynic,' Red said. 'You mind if I drop my Mom off before we go to work?'
'Not a bit. It's a pleasure to ride in a classic station wagon big enough to be a hearse.'
'Hell, man, it's big enough to live in,' Red said.
As we drove down the Strip toward downtown, Mrs. McCravey continued, 'We're at your service, sir. The cards have been remarkably unkind for several weeks now.'
'She's a professional poker player,' Red said proudly, 'with a Ph.D. in economics from Wharton. So she knows her numbers, man. Me, I'm more a people person. I ain't into numbers. Not like she is.'
'Actually, it was just a master's,' she explained. 'And a long time ago. When I tried to go to work on the Street, my race and my gender seemed an insurmountable problem. Or if surmountable, certainly not worth the effort on my part. So I went back to Detroit and another sort of life altogether. Then moved down here on the arm of a second-rate Sammy Davis wannabe.' She paused, smiling like a woman who had enjoyed this other sort of life as well as she could. 'Mr. Milodragovitch – is that right? – have you been in the investigation business for a long time?' she asked.
'Except for forays into the bar business, I've been a PI since I got out of law enforcement thirty years ago,' I told her.
'But you have no Texas in your accent.'
'Texas is a fairly new vice,' I admitted. 'I grew up in Montana. Meriwether.'
'You must have known Big John Reynolds?' she said.
'Sure. John owned the game at the Slumgullion, where I made my first foray behind the stick. He and my father were cronies. I can't remember when I didn't know John.'
'I played against him a few times down here,' she said. 'He was charming, but lord was he tough. There aren't too many players like him anymore.'
'He was a great friend,' I said.
'So what can we do for you?'
'There's this mailbox place over on Trocadero,' I said, handing her a picture of Molly Molineaux. 'Maybe we can park somewhere around there until she shows up. Then follow her home.'
'Then what?' Mrs. McCravey wanted to know.
'Then I try to talk her into going back to Texas with me,' I said.
'I've seen this woman somewhere,' Mrs. McCravey said as she handed the picture back. 'And it is not my impression that she was exactly a hooker. If she is, she's one of the few true freelances in town. Which means she's either very connected or very tough.'
'If she's expensive, maybe she'll respond to money,' I said as we parked in front of Benion's. 'That would make it easier,' I said, 'if she'll talk to me for money.'
'Be cautious, sir, and remember that everything in this town turns on money,' she said, 'but not always the way you want it to turn out.' Then she climbed out, and walked into the front door as I climbed into the front seat.
Driving to the Strip, Red prattled at me. 'Hey, man, I thought about bein' a PI. Hell, driving a cab, that's a perfect cover. 'Course my ride is more like a bus than a cab – the longest production station wagon in Detroit history – but I got two other classic cherry rides. A Checker and one of them English hacks. 'Course in Vegas, between the cops and casino security, a PI license ain't all that easy to get.
''Course I got a little record back in Detroit to deal with, too,' he continued. 'Did a little collecting for a shy named King Kong Elmo. You ever hear of him? No. Well, he is big, man, so big now he's almost legit. But that should count for me, you dig, collecting. Some of them people are tougher to find than a whole peanut in a pile of elephant shit. But you just gotta know how to ask the right question, you dig?'
I had to agree. 'Didn't we just drive past the place?'
'Oh, shit,' Red muttered, then popped a U-turn that parked us right down the street from the mailbox drop. When I saw the light bar on the police unit behind us fire up, I thought Red was about to get a ticket. Until the unmarked unit pulled in behind the marked one.
'Maybe if you just drive away,' I said as I stuffed another ten C-notes into his hand and opened the door, 'they'll be satisfied with me.' Then I added, 'See what you can dig up, man. I'll call when I get out of jail. Now go.'
Willow didn't even bother getting out of his unit until the two young officers had patted me down thoroughly and cuffed my wrists tightly behind me.
'No weapons, huh? I would have thought an asshole as dumb as you are would surely be carrying a piece,' Willow said.
'Didn't seem necessary,' I said. 'This looks like the kind of place where I could shake a piece off the first skateboarder I saw, or buy one off the nearest cop. Who turned me?'
'What makes you think that little albino asshole McCravey didn't burn you?'
'He doesn't hardly seem the type.'
'If you weren't going to use the doorman's cousin, man, you should have given him a C-note, you cheap asshole, because it's going to turn out to be an expensive economy,' Willow said.
'I guess I haven't kept up with the price of graft in this shithole,' I said.
'This is a family town,' he said. But he didn't say which family.
Even in the middle of the afternoon among the scrubbed walls of the jail, even empty, the holding tank didn't look like any place I wanted to be. And I knew it wasn't going to get any better as the sun fell. At least the other prisoners wouldn't be fighting over my clothes: everybody's jailhouse sweats and slippers would be the same. I didn't know how long the Vegas police thought they could hold me before letting me make a call, but I assumed it would be a considerably uncomfortable length of time, so I found a corner where I could pretty much cover my back, slid to my haunches, and pretended to sleep, while I tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
The confusion must have started fifteen or twenty years before, either with the death of Dwayne Duval or the failure of Enos Walker's last cocaine scam. Already three people were dead, one was still in the hospital, another was on the run, and I didn't have the faintest idea what I'd done to stir up this ancient hornet's nest of death and disaster. And I couldn't even begin to guess why the hell somebody had sent the Molineaux woman to charm me and a cop to kill me. And how the hell did Betty end up in bed with the McBride woman before I did? Just to steal her piece to shoot me with? And what the hell did Sylvie Lomax want with the Molineaux woman? Shit, I thought as I went back to pretending to be asleep. At least I could do that.
It was a long pretend, broken only when they allowed me my telephone call.
The first customer to try me was a drunken college kid about midnight who poked me on the thigh with his foot and asked, 'Whattcha you in for, old man?' I ignored the first kick, then the second, but when the third came, I dropped the kid with a leg-lock, rolled up his body, kneed him hard in the crotch and jammed a thumb against the kid's eye.
'First jailhouse lesson, punk,' I said softly, 'people don't like being in here, so you'll want to leave them alone. First lesson's free. Second one costs you an eye.'
'You best pay attention, gringo,' growled a huge, tattooed Chicano from the far corner.
I moved back to my corner, leaving the crying kid curled in the middle of the cell. Things actually stayed so quiet that I drifted off about three A.M., and only woke when I heard my name being called just before six. A sleepy young man in a rumpled sport coat stood beside one of the jail-house bulls.
