There was an area for eating, a food court, a café, a buffet and a steak and seafood joint.
The hotel boasted three hundred and seventy-four rooms and fifteen suites.
I followed a theater-like lobby into rows of slots clamorous with the various sounds of humans dealing with machines that wouldn’t obey.
The female employees, if not quite as leggy or pretty or poised as their Las Vegas sisters, were nonetheless attractive and appealing and, as always, I wondered how the hell they could keep smiling as long as they did and put up with all the inevitable drunken male bullshit that went with any gig like this. My daughter had been a waitress between her sophomore and junior years in college. A decent place. But man, the tales she told. I wanted to go down there with a bullwhip.
I wound my way along the blackjack tables, the roulette tables and the mini-baccarat setup, which was surprisingly busy.
If nothing else, casinos are democratic. Every race, creed and sex demonstrate their eagerness to lose their asses to the house.
There were four poker tables set in a small wing of the place. Five players at each. Showalter was at the nearest table. He could easily have seen me if he’d looked up from the card the dealer had just dealt. But he was too busy scowling. Apparently he was not having a good time.
He threw his cards down on the table and shook his head with real disgust. And then, as if we’d connected telepathically, his eyes raised and met mine.
He was a champion scowler, our police chief was; this one was his deepest yet.
He wasted no time. He shoved his chair back and stood up. I couldn’t hear what he said but obviously the other players didn’t want to see him go. Maybe because he was the chief and it was sort of cool playing with him, or maybe because he was such a shitty player he was giving them part of his kids’ college fund.
He came straight at me. He wore a tweed sport jacket, white shirt, no tie and gray trousers. He also wore a look of real menace, enough to make me wonder if coming here had been such a good idea. Mike Edelstein could bail me out in a few hours if Showalter decided to arrest me. But he couldn’t do much until it was too late to help me if Showalter decided to take me down to the station and see that I was beaten.
‘I don’t want you here, Conrad.’
‘You own the place?’
‘No. But I know the manager here and he doesn’t want any undesirables.’
‘Yeah, undesirables in a casino would really be a bad thing.’
The grip on my elbow made me grit my teeth. I didn’t want to show pain.
‘Now’s the time to leave, Conrad.’
‘I want to get a look at Karen Foster’s car. The one you ran off the road tonight.’
His hand fell away from my elbow and the scowl became one of his sneering smiles.
‘That’s what you came out here for?’
‘That and wanting to know what you did with Grimes.’
‘You know if I was a private citizen I’d be filing lawsuits against you every day of the week. Libel and slander.’
‘And for setting up that fake shooting with Congresswoman Bradshaw.’
He leaned back. I had the feeling that he’d never really assessed me before. The way a cop does, I mean. He was doing it now.
Sounds of the casino crowded in as he stood there in silence examining me.
‘You’re really trying to nail my ass, aren’t you?’
‘Karen Foster may not make it.’
‘You want me to act all worried and sad? She got the job under false pretenses. I started getting suspicious when a couple of my men saw her with you.’ So he had discovered her real identity and purpose in coming to Danton.
‘She’s been trying to nail my ass, too. Just like you. I’m not surprised you two got together. Hell, she may have brought you here, for all I know.’
He was coming undone. I hadn’t heard that in him until just now. Big bad Showalter was starting to feel the pressure. He was beginning to realize that badge and gun could protect you only so far.
‘She didn’t bring me here. She brought herself here. Because she knows who you really are and what you’ve done.’
A security guard strode into sight with the aplomb of a big, battered man who learned long ago that sight of him would put most men and women on alert. But then there was, as now, that almost demented smile. Maybe he was comic relief on this ship to nowhere.
Every casino has got at least three of them. Somebody gets unruly, somebody tries to cheat the house, somebody just really pisses off the managers... and out comes one of these guys. Showalter was royalty here.
Maybe somebody watching on the cameras on the second floor saw how upset I made Showalter and he contacts King Kong and tells him to run this guy’s ass out of here.
He stood next to Showalter and said, ‘I was watching you from across the way there. And if I didn’t know better, I’d say that you’re giving one of our preferred customers here a whole raft of shit.’
He jabbed a finger half the size of Henry’s ball bat into my chest.
‘In which case, I have to say that you don’t belong here. If you had any idea of how much this man has done for this town and for me personally, you’d be shaking his hand right now just because he’s—’
‘That’s enough, Billy. But thank you. Conrad here was not only accusing me of various things I had nothing to do with, he was also refusing to leave, even though I had told him politely that I’d appreciate it if he did.’
Quite an act they had here. Showalter had his old self-confidence back. He was the cool guy once again.
‘Is that true? The chief here asked you to leave and you wouldn’t?’
‘I want to see Karen Foster’s car, Showalter. Have a claims adjuster look it over.’ But I knew that was it.
Billy started moving in on me. ‘Oh, he’ll leave, all right. Or he’ll be sorry.’
This time when Billy jabbed me, he did so with enough power to push me back a couple of inches.
‘I’m givin’ you one more chance,’ Billy said. ‘You understand?’
And understand I did.
Thirty-Seven
At this time of night, the parking lot of the Skylight tavern had only three cars gracing its busted asphalt surface. I swung the rental into a slot and went inside.
There were three men along the bar, two at one of the wobbly tables. The bartender recognized me with no particular expression. He wore a blue short-sleeved shirt and a white smeared apron.
The Eugene O’Neill ambience was there even without a full contingent of lost souls. Generations of loss and failure and fear soaked the place physically and spiritually.
The men at the bar weren’t even talking. Just sitting there drinking and staring. The bartender continued watching me silently as I walked over to him.
‘Grimes been around?’
‘Haven’t seen him.’
He didn’t react but a pair of the older men sitting at the bar did. They seemed to be surprised that he’d said what he had.
‘Hell, tell him what happened,’ a hawk-faced, gray-haired man said. The hawk visage was enhanced by the eyes. In the worn, elderly face they shone with intelligence and cunning. He laughed through a spell of cigarette hacking. ‘Haven’t seen Grimes move that fast in a long time.’
‘Shut the hell up, Patton,’ the man next to him said. ‘There’s nothin’ wrong with Grimes. He’s in some kind of trouble and we shouldn’t be laughin’ about it.’
‘He say what kind of trouble he was in?’ I asked the small man with the charitable, sad eyes of a man who drank to buffer himself against the worst of the world.