“That doesn’t mean anything,” Amanda said.
Terrell put on a look of faux astonishment. “Oh now, don’t play innocent with me. I talked to people Who saw Walker in the casino that weekend, but the official word is, he wasn’t in town. He wasn’t in the suite. I mean, come on. Walker was a horny little dog. He wanted to hump Amira’s leg and move up to her fur. People told me he was obsessed with her, and Amira wasn’t interested. Turned him down flat. But Walker wasn’t about to hear the word ‘no’ from some Spanish stripper. Crack, pow.”
“Apparently, the police didn’t think so,” Stride said. “Walker was never arrested.”
Terrell sighed dramatically. “The police? This was 1967, Detective. You don’t think Boni could make the police go away? Puh-leez. The detective in charge of the case was Nick Humphrey, and Nicky was in Boni’s pocket. Everyone knew it. So Boni spirited Walker out of town. I mean, the man did a Roman Polanski and left the whole fucking country. And Nicky looked the other way. A murder in a high roller’s suite, for heaven’s sake? How easy should that be? But all the police could come up with is that some fan climbed down into the garden from the maintenance area of the roof and killed her.”
“What was Amira doing in the suite?” Amanda asked.
“The story was, she had seduced a key out of one of the desk clerks, and she liked to go up there for a nude swim after her shows, when the suite wasn’t occupied. Again, that was the official word. I mean, as if.”
Stride shook his head. “You put all this in your story? Get ready for a lawsuit, Rex.”
“Oh, we had a lawyer read every word,” Terrell replied, rolling his eyes. “We added lots of maybes and allegedlys and other weasel words like that. Anyway, you think Walker wants to make the story even bigger by suing? I think not. Walker wants this to go away. So does Boni, so he can put up his new slant-eyes baccarat palace.”
“So what about MJ?” Amanda asked. “How does he fit into this?”
“Hang on, honey. My butt’s vibrating. Damn cell phone. I swear, it goes off so often I could have an orgasm if I kept it in my shorts.” He slid a wafer-thin phone out of his back pocket and checked the caller ID. “Oh, her again. Never mind. Some little blond flack, never has any real stories to sell. Probably bangs her clients.”
“Rex, we’re running out of time,” Stride said.
“Chill, detectives. Like I said, MJ called me when he saw the article. He asked about my sources, which I could not tell him-duh-other than to suggest he ought to check out the archives at the library. Most of it was tucked away in the gossip columns back then if you could read between the lines. Dishy stuff. He asked me honestly if I thought his dad had killed the girl, and I told him honestly, yes I did. End of conversation.”
“But you called and left a message on the day he died,” Stride said.
“Surely. In my business, I give you a little, you give me a little. Which reminds me that I’m giving you guys a lot, so hello, don’t forget your friends. I figured MJ could feed me some dirt about Karyn Westermark, but oh well, somebody popped him first.”
“Do you have any idea who would have wanted him dead?” Amanda asked.
“Other than Walker and Boni?” Terrell grinned. “No, MJ seemed like a decent enough celeb. Pretty vanilla if you ask me. He poked it around a lot, though, so maybe you ought to find a jealous husband.”
“Like who?” Stride asked.
“Well, all I have is gossip. Rumors.”
“Tell us,” Amanda said.
Terrell glanced around at the other tables. “I do know that Moose Dargon’s wife, the little twenty-something waitress, hangs with a lot of celebs at the Oasis and likes to hook up. I heard she was very impressed with MJ’s performance in that sex tape with Karyn. Word is that Moose can’t plump the wiener anymore, even with Viagra. And you know what kind of temper Moose has. In the old days, he was in and out of the jails around here for busting people up.”
“His wife is Tierney, right?” Stride asked. He remembered that Karyn Westermark had already mentioned her as one of MJ’s flings.
“Tierney,” Terrell groaned. “Puh-leez. I mean, whatever happened to ordinary names? Did you hear one Hollywood actor thought it was such a riot and named his daughter Tinkle?”
“What does this Tierney look like?”
“Brunette. Kind of a bottlebrush look. She did Playboy last year. Breasts look like the pyramids in Egypt. Know the type?”
Stride did. He realized they had seen Tierney and her cone-shaped breasts on the video in MJ’s condo. He wondered what someone like Moose Dargon would do if he saw his wife fornicating on camera and whether it would be enough to make him hire a professional killer.
“What else can you tell us about Moose?” he asked.
“He’s still a riot and a half, even with one foot in the grave, Terrell said. “He’s mostly retired, but he still does charity stuff, fund-raisers for the gov, that kind of thing. His jokes are dirty, dirty, dirty, and they are hysterical.”
“He still have a temper?”
Terrell’s face lit up, and he leaned in and whispered, “Oooh, like would he blow MJ away for condomizing little Tierney? Isn’t that a delicious idea. Well, it would be very ironic, you know.”
“Why?” Stride asked.
“Because Moose used to be a regular at the Sheherezade back in the 1960s. And who was he banging at the time? None other than Amira Luz.”
TWELVE
Sawhill was on the phone with Governor Durand again. Stride and Serena sat in the two chairs in front of Sawhill’s expansive desk while the lieutenant affixed his lips electronically to the governor’s ass. Cordy was leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets. Amanda stood there, too, and Stride smothered a smile as he watched her play games with Cordy. She kept inching closer, and Cordy, looking pained, kept shifting farther along the wall, trying to keep his distance. Then she took a deep breath that swelled her breasts and lazily stretched her arms upward. Cordy couldn’t help but stare.
Sawhill saw the game, too, and snapped his fingers at them.
“I’m meeting with my team right now,” Sawhill told the governor, his voice casual and familiar. “No, no, I can assure you that line of inquiry is closed. You can pass the word along.”
Stride didn’t like the sound of that. Sawhill was staring directly at him while he said it, and Stride had a sinking feeling that his hands were about to be tied.
It was no secret that Sawhill was aiming for big things in the department, with an eye on the sheriff’s job. Stride had to give Sawhill credit. The lieutenant knew how the game was played and understood the political connections he would need to leapfrog the competition. The current sheriff had already announced his retirement the following year. At least two Metro veterans who were older and more senior than Sawhill had made noises about campaigning for the job, but no one was ruling Sawhill out. A sheriff’s election was more about endorsements than votes, and Sawhill had spent the last decade cultivating friends in high places.
Most of all, he knew that murder headlines made bad politics.
Sawhill put down the phone. He picked up a copy of the Tuesday edition of the Las Vegas Sun.
“I have two murder investigations on page one,” he told them. “The governor doesn’t like that. I don’t like that. That’s why I wanted all of you here to tell me what you’re doing to get these cases off the front page.”
He said it as if somehow the four detectives in the room did like it and were basking in the media glow.
“Serena,” the lieutenant continued, pushing down his half-glasses so he could stare at her above the frames. “You go first. Tell me more about the murder near Reno and whether this ties in to the hit-and-run on the boy in Summerlin.”