The Butcher's Boy Page 9

  “No,” she said tonelessly.

  “Then I’d say we have only a few things we can check on,” he said. “One is that somebody close enough to him to get into his luggage put poison on one of the Polident tablets and only one. Maybe his assistant or whoever packed his bags. Another is that somebody tampered with them between Washington and here.” He hesitated for a moment, but Elizabeth wasn’t going to help him, since he hadn’t had the decency to be surprised. Then he said, “But I’d say the least unlikely thing is that somebody came in through the window.”

  “The forensics people are on their way up now to check the window out,” said Mistretta. “Elizabeth figured it out a little while ago.”

  “Good thinking, Elizabeth,” he said, with apparent sincerity.

  Elizabeth wasn’t ready to accept the compliment. Patronizing bastards, all of them. She was past that part of it anyway, thinking about the killer. He had to be athletic, or at least fit, to be able to go from any other room to this one. No matter how it was done he still had to get from one balcony to another in the cold and dark. That probably meant he wasn’t over forty. He was between five foot nine and six feet tall. And he was sneaky. God, he was sneaky.

  9There was something clean about the sun in Las Vegas. Even in February there was a searing, blinding white light that made you feel as if you were being sterilized, even cauterized, so there wasn’t a germ that could stick to you. Everything extraneous would be burned off your skin, desiccated and sucked dry, its empty husk blown clattering away in the hot wind out of the desert. Even the air itself felt like that—a breeze that carried with it tiny abrasive particles of ground-up quartz and topaz too small to see. You could feel them buffing and polishing away at you.

  He rolled over on his stomach. Better be careful the first time out. Getting a sunburn on top of all those scrapes and bruises would be about the limit of what he could endure. He could already feel the sun gradually heating up his back and shoulders, breathing its energy into them so that moment by moment the temperature of his skin rose in infinitesimal gradients. In a few more minutes, he decided, he’d go back to his room and get cleaned up, then take a nice long nap before dinner. Your body heals faster while you sleep, he thought. There was no reason to think about anything at all until Friday night. Friday was payday.

  The soft electronic female voices were alternating on the public address system: “Telephone for Mr. Harrison Rand. Harrison Rand, telephone. Telephone for Princess Karina. Princess Karina, telephone,” a steady murmur going out across the swimming pool from nowhere in particular, the volume just high enough to flicker across the corner of your consciousness. There was no more urgency to it than the constant whir and click of the slot machines in the casino. This, he thought, was the only place he knew of where clock time didn’t matter. You measured time against the size of your bankroll—unless you were lying on a chaise longue next to the swimming pool, he remembered. Then the sun would damned well remind you what time it was if you weren’t careful. Enough for today.

  He sat up and put on the dark brown terrycloth robe and zoris he’d picked up in one of the hotel stores this afternoon. Then he changed his mind again. The vast empty surface of the swimming pool sparkled at him. There was time enough for one more dip in the water, he thought. There was no reason not to do exactly as he pleased, and swimming was good for you—the best thing in the world for damaged muscles, and it would be time to stop when you didn’t feel like it anymore.

  The water was warm, almost hot, like a gigantic Roman bath. He swam lazily from one end to the other, testing the flex and fluidity of his muscles against the solidity and support of the water. It had always struck him as funny that they should have a heated pool that was twice the size of the ones they used in the Olympics, and that he should be alone in it every time. People who were serious about swimming didn’t drive through the desert to do it. He stopped at the shallow end and let himself go limp in the warm water, feeling the deliciousness of it, held there as though by a broad, gentle hand. He floated on his back, surveying the people sprawled on lawn chairs, absorbing the sunlight. Most of them had probably been up all night, he thought. Gambling, drinking, fucking, and now they were recharging their batteries by the energy of the sun. No, they weren’t swimmers, but it seemed to comfort them to be near all that water. Something to look at through your polarized sunglasses while you waited for night.

  He swam back to the deep end, acutely aware of the workings of his muscles as he stroked. He was going to be all right. Everything felt exactly as he wanted it to. At least his body did. His head was going to take longer. It felt big and soft and sensitive today, a peeled pumpkin held in anxious balance on a neck too thin for it. Just so there weren’t any scars on his face. The pain he could live with.

  He pulled himself up out of the pool and flopped down on his chaise longue. In a few seconds he could feel the water on his body disappearing into the parched desert air, leaving his skin feeling tight. He let the sun settle its gentle pressure on his face for a few moments before he put on his sunglasses. Then he closed his eyes and let himself slip into a state that felt as good as sleep but wasn’t quite a relinquishment of consciousness. “Telephone for Mr. Arthur Walters. Arthur Walters, telephone. Telephone for Mrs. Natalie Beamish, Natalie Beamish, telephone,” crooned the soft unanxious voices in monotonous alternation.

  “You do all that to yourself or did you have help?” said a voice above him. His eyes flicked open for an instant like camera shutters behind the sunglasses, and brought back with them into the darkness an imprint of the familiar, hulking shape. Little Norman.

  “You know how it is, Little Norman,” he answered. “You want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” He heard the scrape as Little Norman dragged a lawn chair across the pavement to his side. Little Norman. The first thing anybody said when he heard the name was that he never wanted to see Big Norman. Little Norman was six foot four without his hand-tooled Mexican cowboy boots, and must have weighed in at two-fifty without the two rolls of quarters he always had in his pockets. As if those fists needed the extra weight. And Little Norman was no longer young. He had to be at least fifty-five and semiretired, so that wasn’t it either.

  “What brings you to Caesar’s Palace, Little Norman?” he said. “I thought you hung around at the Sands.”

  “Nice sunny day out,” said Little Norman. “Good day to get a tan.” Little Norman was wearing his usual tailor-made suit and stiff-collared white shirt with pearl studs. Little Norman was also blacker than the bottom of a coal mine.

  “You’re right there. Been getting some myself, and doing a little swimming.”

  “That’s good, kid. That’s what you need for those thumps you got on you. A little sunshine, a little exercise, a lot of rest.” He said it again, “A lot of rest.”

  He just nodded and let Little Norman go on.

  “For excitement there’s always the tables. You don’t have to do anything spectacular to keep your blood circulating, you know what I mean, kid?”

  “Sure I do, Norman.” He smiled. Then he said, “I’m not working. Nobody works in Las Vegas, you know that.”

  Little Norman’s long face broke into a broad grin. “That’s real sensible, kid. Coming in here with a face like that, people wonder. I’m not asking where you got it, you understand. But people do wonder where you got it and whether you’re maybe a little mad about it.”

  “If you see anybody like that, will you do me a favor?”

  “Sure, kid, if I see anybody like that.”

  “Tell them I’m not working.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Thanks, Little Norman. I wouldn’t want anybody worrying about my health.”

  Little Norman stood up, straightened his tie, and said, “If you’ve got some time on your hands you might stop by for a drink. You know where to find me, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I’ll see you, then.”

  He w
atched Little Norman’s huge back moving along the edge of the pool toward the entrance near the casino. It hadn’t taken long, he thought. He reached in the pocket of his robe and pulled out his watch. Four hours. He’d been in Las Vegas less than four hours before someone had noticed him and told Little Norman. But at least Little Norman seemed to be satisfied. For the next hour he’d be scurrying all over town telling rich, powerful old men that there was nothing to worry about this time. Their deaths hadn’t been purchased yet. It really was a vacation. And the uneasy truce would hold until the next thing came up. He should have looked up Little Norman right away, he thought, and made sure the word got out before any of them got nervous. It was the polite thing to do.

  10In his room he closed the door, bolted and chained it, then took off his robe and walked into the shower. Little Norman worried him because it hadn’t occurred to him that the way he looked would cause them alarm. It was never a good thing to come to the attention of any of the dozen nervous old men who lived in the fragile sanctuary of the open city. Each of them had survived to his present vicious senility through predatory cunning and the instinctive preference for striking first. And they wouldn’t forget that. No matter if you were eighty-three years old and propped like a sack of rags in a wheelchair like Castiglione, you would remember that much.

  As long as Little Norman did what the old men paid him for, it would be fine. And there was no reason to think he wouldn’t. But now a slight trickle of fear had begun to mix itself into his bloodstream. It wasn’t enough to spoil the pleasure of being safe and comfortable in Caesar’s, but it was there. He decided that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to go have that drink with Little Norman. He had told him he was on vacation, and now he’d damn well better act like it. Besides, he was on vacation. At least until Friday night.

  WHEN HE WOKE UP the room was dark and he could hear the voice of a man outside the door of his room saying, “System, my ass. You see this place, Alice? It’s made out of systems thought up by dumb women from Fullerton.” Then a door closed and he heard footsteps receding down the hallway. He couldn’t hear what Alice said in reply, but the man’s voice said, “So you won once. That doesn’t …” and then they were out of earshot.

  He rolled over and looked at the luminous dial of his watch. Nine thirty. Perfect, he thought. Just the right time to start the evening. He lurched to his feet, turned on the lights, and went to the closet to lay out his clothes. The nap had done him more good than he’d dared to hope. He felt cheerful and clearheaded. If he hadn’t caught sight of himself in the mirror he’d have said he was 100 percent.

  It was Eddie who’d taught him about rest. Eddie had been the undefeated world champion of resting. He could still hear the quiet, patient voice: “Never work when you’re tired, kid. You have to be able to think straight, and you have to have the physical edge too. Each time it’s a contest and if you don’t come in first place every time you’re dead.” Eddie Mastrewski had kept the physical edge all right. That frigid winter night in Philadelphia when the building contractor had spotted them on the street and tried to run away he’d seen it. All his mind had told him was that they couldn’t shoot, and so he was paralyzed for a minute. But Eddie had just muttered “Oh, shit,” reached over the seat to the back of the car, and taken off on foot after the contractor with the tire chain. He ran him down and garrotted him.

  But Eddie’d had the build for it, he thought. A Pennsylvania Polack from the coal mining country—probably the toughest physical specimens on earth except for maybe central Asian goatherds who were supposed to live to be a hundred and forty. He could hear Eddie correcting him, “I’m not a Pole, I’m a Lithuanian. There’s a difference, kid. I just don’t know what it is.” But Eddie had sure known how to sleep. He seemed to sleep whenever there wasn’t some definite reason why he shouldn’t. Even then Eddie seemed a little resentful and suspicious that the reason might not be good enough. He’d seen Eddie sleep on trains, buses, and airplanes; in stations and sitting up behind the wheel of a parked car. Over the years he’d learned that there was something to Eddie’s theory. Sleep really did make a difference. Maybe Eddie hadn’t had enough sleep the day he got it. Or maybe when you got to a certain age there just wasn’t enough sleep to make up for all the years.

  He put on the sport coat he’d bought in the hotel store this afternoon, took another look at the knot in his tie, closed his door, and began to walk down the hall toward the elevator. Then he hesitated. No, he thought, it’s stupid not to. He returned to the room, bent over, and pulled a few tufts of lint from the bright azure carpet. He stuffed them between the door and the jamb about two inches above the surface of the red carpet of the hallway. It’s always better to know than to wonder, he thought as he stepped into the elevator.

  He made his way through the crowds and noise of the casino and out to the front entrance. The doors gave a wheezy sigh and opened automatically to pull him forward into the warm night air. The absurd magnificence of the oversized fountain along the drive seemed to be the focus of the unanimous eyeless contemplation of the genuine Carrara marble copies of classical statues that stood sentinel. Sammy Cohen had once called them The Stupefied Losers, but that wasn’t what they looked like. It was as though they were staring in dumb amazement at waking up and finding themselves so far from the gentle, reasonable proportions of home.

  He glanced at the line of taxis waiting in the loop, but dismissed them in favor of the stroll. There were hundreds of people walking up and down the sidewalks of the Strip in light summer clothing that changed colors as they passed under the garish incandescent auras of the gigantic marquees and glittering facades of the casinos. He stepped in among them, into a herd that was flowing along in the direction of the Sands. As they passed each doorway, came into the glowing circle of each new complex of lights and neon signs, a portion of the herd would be drawn off by the magnetism of it. Others would issue forth from the doors to replace them.

  They were moving toward the center of the city, and as they did the white river of automobile traffic in the street seemed to slow down and constrict, the signs and lights to cluster together more tightly into a general undifferentiated blur and dazzle, until the doorways were just holes in the light.

  Then there was a pause in the glitter, as though it were gathering itself up for some major effort, and then the monolithic marquee of the Sands burst forth to dominate the night. He peeled himself out of the moving crowd, walked up the steps, and crossed the boundary into the air-conditioned cool of the casino. Inside the light, the air, the colors, the sounds were all different and belonged to the special exigencies of this place, where the world consisted of a low-frequency hum of unflagging agitation, like an itch or a hope.

  He made one slow circuit of the casino, past the banks of winking, buzzing, clattering slot machines that spun gyroscopically on the periphery, then past the zone of roulette wheels and crap tables and along the rank of fan-shaped blackjack games ascending in order of wealth toward the roped-off sanctum of high-stakes baccarat, where the croupiers wore black tuxedos and the reverential faces of French financial consultants.

  Little Norman wasn’t in evidence in the casino, but he knew that someone would tell him. One of the unseen beings Norman kept on his personal payroll would probably be talking into a telephone right now. He made a leisurely path to the doorway of the Regency Room and slipped through the doors into the candlelit red-and-gold silence. He always had the sense that this place was insulated from the cacophony of the city by something more than walls, as though everything outside could explode into screaming atoms and you’d never know it by so much as the wavering of a candle flame. The maitre d’ conducted him to a booth in the far corner of the room, where a waiter nodded his respect for the wisdom of beef Wellington and a middle-range Bordeaux with two glasses.

  He had almost finished the beef Wellington when Little Norman came in and sat down at his table. “Hello, kid,” said Little Norman. “You come over here looking f
or me?”

  “That’s right, Norman. I thought I’d take you up on that drink. I suppose you’ve already had dinner?”

  “Yeah, but since you got an extra glass I’ll help you with the wine.” Norman poured it himself, sniffed the bouquet, and said, “Not bad at all. Your idea or the waiter’s?”

  “Mine,” he said and kept eating.

  “Then you’ve picked up a lot since you worked with old Eddie. I always heard that travel broadens you.” He chuckled.

  “I’ve always heard that too.”

  “Something on your mind, kid? You’re not looking too cheerful. I mean besides the thumps on your face.”

  “I’m fine. Nothing wrong that a few days of rest won’t handle. How about you, Norman? You have a hard day? Run into anybody that was nervous about anything?”

  “No,” said Little Norman, and smiled. “I ran into one or two who used to be nervous, but I seem to have a natural talent for reassuring people. Should have been a psychiatrist, I guess. I’d probably have a lot more money.”

  He eyed the heavy gold ring on the finger Norman had wrapped around the stem of the glass. The diamond, he calculated, was around five carats. It looked big even on Little Norman. “I doubt it,” he said.

  “I guess you’re right,” said Little Norman. “White folks don’t want a big black psychiatrist, and black folks don’t have the money for one. They just have to stay crazy, like I did, and learn to enjoy it.”

  He pushed his plate away and noticed that Little Norman had emptied the bottle. “Well, how about that drink, Norman? You want it here, or you want to go someplace else?”

  Little Norman leaned back in his chair to let the waiter deposit the check where the plate had been. He paused to savor the last inch of wine in his glass, then said, “You know, I think you’ve been working too hard. Seems to me like you’re in a hurry all the time, like you forgot how to relax. I’m gonna have to take pity on you and remind you how it’s done.” He waited while the waiter whisked the money away. Then he stood up and said, “No sense in being crazy if you’re not gonna enjoy it.”