Penny was sitting on a chair. Her shoulder-length blond hair was parted in the middle. She was wearing a skirt and two sweaters. A single strand of pearls hung around her neck. There was a suitcase beside the chair.
It was a fairly large room with a wall of narrow, ceiling-high windows providing a view of the desert and mountains. Matt saw the windows were not wide enough for anyone to climb out.
'Your friend is here, dear,' Dr. Newberry said.
Penny got to her feet.
'Hello, Matt,' she said, and walked to him.
Christ, she expects me to kiss her.
He put his hands on her arms and kissed her cheek. He could smell her perfume. Or maybe it was soap. A female smell, anyway.
'How goes it, Penny?'
'I'm sorry you had to come out here,' she said.
'Ah, hell, don't be silly.'
'Shall I have someone come for your bag?'
'I can handle the bag,' Matt said.
'Well, then, Penelope, you're all ready to go. I'll say good-bye to you now, dear.'
'Thank you, Dr. Newberry, for everything.'
'It's been my pleasure,' Dr. Newberry said, smiled at Matt, and walked out of the room.
Penny looked at Matt.
'God, I hate that woman!' she said.
He could think of no reply to make.
'Have you got any money?' she asked.
'Why?'
'Some people have been nice to me. I'd like to give them something.'
What did they do, smuggle you junk?
'I don't think you're supposed to tip nurses and people like that.'
'For god's sake, Matt, let me have some money. You know you'll get it back.'
'When you get home, you can write them a check,' Matt said.
'What are you thinking, that I'm going to take the money and run?'
As a matter of fact, perhaps subconsciously, that is just what I was thinking.
'I don't know what to think, Penny. But I'm not going to give you any money.'
'Fuck you, Matt!'
He wondered if she had used language like that before she had met Tony the Zee DeZego, or whether she had learned it from him.
She picked up her bag and marched out of her room. He followed her. The rent-a-cop in the blue blazer, who, Matt thought, probably had a title like director of Internal Security Services, was at the front door. He unlocked it.
'Good-bye, Miss Detweiler,' he said. 'Good luck.'
Penny didn't reply.
Matt got in the back seat of the limousine with her.
'Well, so how was the food?'
'Fuck you, Matt,' Penny said again.
FOUR
It is accepted almost as an article of faith by police officers assigned to McCarran International Air Field, Las Vegas-which does not mean that it is true-that the decision to have a large number of plainclothes officers, as opposed to uniformed officers, patrolling the passenger terminal was based on the experience of a very senior Las Vegas police officer in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.
The legend has it that the senior officer (three names are bandied about) was relaxing at a Bourbon Street bar after a hard day's work at the National Convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police when an unshaven sleaze-ball in greasy jeans and leather vest approached him and very politely said, 'Excuse me, sir, I believe this is yours.'
He thereupon handed the senior police officer his wallet. (In some versions of the story, the sleaze-ball handed him his wallet, his ID folder, his wristwatch, and his diamond-studded Masonic ring.) It came out that the sleaze-ball was a plainclothes cop who had been watching the dip (pickpocket) ply his trade. (In some versions of the story, the dip was a stunning blond transvestite with whom the senior police officer had just been dancing.)
In any event, the senior police officer returned to Las Vegas with the notion, which he had the authority to turn into policy, that the way to protect the tourists moving through McCarran was the way the cops in New Orleans protected the tourists moving down Bourbon Street, with plainclothes people.
They could, the senior police said, protect the public without giving the public the idea that Las Vegas was so crime-ridden a place that you needed police officers stationed every fifty yards along the way from the airway to the limo and taxi stands to keep the local critters from separating them from their worldly goods before the casino operators got a shot at them.
And so it came to pass that Officer Frank J. Oakes, an exparatrooper who had been on the job for almost six years, was standing on the sidewalk outside the American Airlines terminal in plainclothes when the white Cadillac limo pulled up. Oakes was wearing sports clothes and carrying a plastic bag bearing the logotype of the Marina Motel amp; Casino. The bag held his walkie-talkie.
The white Cadillac limo attracted his attention. Even before he took a look at the license plate to make sure, he was sure that it was areal limo, as he thought of it, as opposed to one of the livery limos, or one operated by one of the casinos to make the high rollers feel good. For one thing, it wasn't beat up. For another, it did not have a TV antenna on the trunk. Most important, it wasn't a stretch limo, large enough to transport all of a rock-and-roll band and their lady friends. It looked to him like a real, rich people's private limo, an analysis that seemed to be confirmed when the chauffeur got out wearing a neat suit and white shirt and chauffeur's cap and quickly walked around the front to open the curbside door.
The first person to get out was a female Caucasian, early twenties, five feet three, 115 pounds. She wore her shoulder-length blond hair parted in the middle, a light blue linen skirt, a pullover sweater, and a jacket-type sweater unbuttoned. There was a single strand of pearls around her neck. She did not have a spectacular breastworks, but Officer Oakes found her hips and tail attractive.
A male Caucasian, early twenties, maybe 165, right at six feet, followed her out of the limo. He was wearing a tweed coat, a tieless white shirt, gray flannel slacks, and loafers. Oakes thought that the two of them sort of fit the limo, that something about them smelled of money and position.
The chauffeur took a couple of bags from the limo trunk and handed them to the American Airlines guy. Then he went to the young guy, who handed him the tickets. Then the young guy looked at Officer Oakes, first casually, then gave him a closer look. Then he smiled and winked.
It was ten to one that he wasn't a fag, so the only thing that was left was that he had made Oakes as a cop. Oakes didn't like to be made, and he wondered how this guy had made him.
The chauffeur got the tickets back from the American Airlines guy, handed them to the young guy, and then tipped his hat. The blonde went to the chauffeur and smiled at him and shook his hand. No tip, which confirmed Oakes's belief that it was a private limo.
The chauffeur got behind the wheel and drove off. The blonde and the well-dressed young guy walked into the terminal. The more he thought about it, Oakes was sure that he was right. The guy had made him as a cop on the job.
Another limo, this one a sort of pink-colored livery limo that looked like it was maybe five thousand miles away from the salvage yard, pulled into the space left by the real limo.
A real gonzo got out of it, a white male Caucasian in his late twenties or early thirties, maybe five-ten and
