When they returned to the porch, Stride saw that the cloudless sky had dissipated into patches of darkness. It happened so quickly here, the changes from rain to sun, sun to rain. Drizzle began to dampen the garden outside and streak the windows. It grew colder. Walker called one of his staff, who stacked logs in the fireplace and started a blaze that quickly warmed the room. He opened wine, and Stride gave up his inhibitions and accepted a glass. Walker sipped the pinot noir and stared into the fire.
“I wish I could explain about Vegas in those days,” Walker said. “I think it had the same kind of allure that Hollywood did in the thirties. It was young, electric, glamorous. Millionaires rubbing shoulders with showgirls. Entertainers playing craps on the casino floor at two in the morning. Everyone dressed up in jewels and tuxes like they were going to the Met. I remember it seemed to me that everyone there was beautiful. Everyone was rich. It was illusion, of course. Sleight of hand. That’s what the town is so good at. You couldn’t walk into one of the casinos then and not get caught up in it. Maybe that’s because the real world seemed so far away. Walk a hundred yards in any direction and there was nothing but desert, an utter wasteland. I remember driving there on this two-lane nothing road from California, spending hours in the darkness without a glint of light anywhere. Then you’d see a glow like fire on the horizon, and you’d come over the crest of a hill and find this neon island blazing out of the night.”
“Helen Truax said the town had star quality then,” Stride said.
“Yes, she was right. That’s exactly what it was.”
Stride added, “Helen was one of the dancers with Amira.”
Walker shook his head. “Was she? I don’t remember her.”
“Her stage name was Helena Troy. She says she slept with you.”
Walker looked embarrassed. “I don’t doubt it. I played the game. I was young and rich, and I liked to sleep with lots of girls in those days. Vegas seduced me like so many others.”
“What about Amira?”
“Yes, her, too. She seduced me. Have you read about Flame?
Stride nodded.
“Words can’t do it justice,” Walker said. “I think I fell in love with Amira the very first time I saw it. I had had plenty of flings, but Amira was different. I fell for her, head over heels. Maybe I’m flattering myself, but I think it was the same for her. Perhaps she just wanted my money, or wanted an escape, but I think she loved me, too, just as passionately.”
“But Amira was Boni’s mistress, wasn’t she?” Stride asked.
Walker ’s face, the part of it that moved, showed his pain. “Foolish, wasn’t I? Naive. I was playing with gangsters, and I thought it was just another one of my movies. The tough guys in suits and fedoras looked like actors. But this was real.”
“What happened?”
“We thought we could keep it secret,” Walker said. “No one would know how we felt, until we were long gone and married.”
Long gone, Stride thought again.
“I wasn’t good at hiding my feelings. I was young, and love was written all over my face. Everyone knew it. They knew when I showed up every weekend at her shows. Boni knew, too, of course. Leo Rucci told me how it was. He told me Amira was Boni’s property, like a chair or a dog. That made me furious, but I pretended it was just a crush, nothing serious. Amira was the better actor. She never so much as looked at me in public. She told Boni if I ever laid a hand on her, she would knock me flat. Boni laughed about that, she said. So you see, we thought we were getting away with it. After her performance, in the middle of the night, she’d slip up to my suite on the roof, and we’d be together. It was our secret.”
“There aren’t many secrets in Vegas,” Stride said.
“No. Later, I realized he probably bugged my suite. We thought we were so smart, and he knew all along what was going on between us.”
“Tell me about that night.”
“That night,” Walker murmured. “That horrible, horrible night” He brought his right hand up and touched the frozen side of his face, rubbing it, as if he might feel something there. “After her last show, we were going to Europe. We planned to get married and spend six months traveling the world.”
“But Boni knew?”
Walker nodded. “He and I spent the evening together in his office. We did that a lot. I always thought Boni was charming. We had fun together. But the hours wore on, and there was something wrong. There was something different about him. As it got later, I knew Amira would be waiting in my suite, and I wanted to go to her. Boni kept finding excuses to keep me there, and I just watched the clock. Then Leo Rucci arrived. Boni’s enforcer. He always scared me, because you knew he was nothing but a vicious thug underneath his suit. Boni asked Leo to escort me back to my suite, and I protested, but Boni insisted. And as I left, Boni kissed me on both cheeks. I remember what he said. ’God be with you, Walker.’ Right then, I knew. I knew it was going to be bad.”
Stride didn’t say anything. He remembered standing on the balcony of MJ’s apartment, looking down at the rooftop suite of the Sheherezade.
“Leo followed me into the suite. I tried to stop him, but he just laughed. I expected to find Amira there, but it was quiet, and I thought she had come and gone. And then-I could see the door to the patio was open. I had this terrible feeling. I went outside.” Walker choked up. “She was in the pool. The water was red and cloudy. I just stared down at her. All I could think was that I was the one who killed her. By falling in love with her.”
“What did they do to you?” Stride asked, guessing what had happened next.
Walker looked down at his useless limbs in the chair. “Leo took me into the basement and put me in a limousine. He said they were taking me to the airport, and I was to leave the city and never come back. That wasn’t enough for them, of course. The two men in the car-they took a detour into the desert. Do you know what it’s like to have your knees broken with a baseball bat, Detective? Or to have your skull fractured by brass knuckles? I would have given them any amount of money to kill me, but they were very careful about that. Boni didn’t want me dead. He wanted me to know what he had done to me.”
Sitting in his wheelchair, Walker Lane, billionaire, began to cry.
Stride felt himself getting angry.
He was angry at Boni Fisso, a man he had never met. He was angry at Las Vegas for the lives it left in ruins. He felt a strange kinship with the killer in that sketch, trying to find justice for Amira in his own immoral way. He began to realize that the killer had been ahead of them all along.
This was never about Walker.
It was about Boni.
TWENTY-SEVEN
His name is Blake Wilde,” Serena told Stride. “Or at least, that’s the name he’s been using. He was one of the bodyguards at Premium Security. The guy who runs the agency, David Kamen, recognized Blake from the sketch. He’s our perp, and he’s disappeared.”
It was night, and Stride was in Walker ’s private hangar at the Vancouver airport, waiting for the return of the Gulf-stream. The jet was grounded in Denver by bad weather. It was raining on the coast now, too.
“How long has he worked there?” Stride asked.
“Just about three months. Kamen claims they did a background check on Blake, and it came up clean, but his personnel file is gone. They say Blake must have lifted it. I wonder if Kamen sent it to the shredder.”
“You think they knew each other?”
“Kamen has a military background. A sharpshooter for the marines in the Gulf. But I made some calls, and the rumor is he had ties to a lot of other groups in the Middle East, including smugglers and mercenaries. If you were Blake Wilde and you wanted to make a landing in Las Vegas, wouldn’t you look up an old friend?”