Kicks for a Sinner S3 (25 page)

“See, you do have issues. We need to find your mother. We don’t know her reasons for giving you up.”

“Doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure out I messed up her life. She never returned, didn’t call, or take any interest in me.”

“Maybe your grandmother burned her letters or wouldn’t take her calls. Sounds to me like Ruth McCoy was very stern.”

“Not with me so much. She admitted she drove my mother away by being too strict. My mother wanted to sing and dance. They allowed her to take ballet because that is classy and sing in the choir, but none of that ‘shake your booty’ dancing or ‘nasty songs.’ She wanted to wait tables at the local café after school for spending money, she said. They let her. Hard work is character building. They went twenty year childless and wanted to raise a perfect daughter once they had one. Well, my mother used her pay and tips on voice and booty shaking lessons taken on nights when she wasn’t really working at the café. Grandpa got her an old truck to drive back and forth, also character building, old trucks. When she graduated from high school, she drove that truck directly from the party to Las Vegas, called once to let them know where she ended up and only returned to the Bar Mack once to drop me off seven years later.”

Cassie let the reins rest on Mad Son’s neck and touched his arm. “Maybe she did what was best for you.”

“Maybe.” Howdy stared out over the land once part of the Bar Mack Ranch and did not look at her. “Let it be. How about a picnic in the orchard?” He turned his old mare and headed back the way they came.

They shared a simple lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches on rye, store-bought apples Howdy claimed weren’t nearly as sweet and crunchy as the ones that would fall from the trees here in autumn, and cookies from a box that didn’t hold a candle to his grandma’s home-baked goodies, all that spread out on an old red and white checked tablecloth. After eating, the tablecloth served as a fairly good bedspread.

As Cassie toyed with his chest hair, stroking him into contentment like a well-fed cat, she said, “I bake a pretty mean cookie myself. My little brothers and sisters always needed some for school.”

“You’re showing me your sweet side again, though I have to say both sides of you are pretty tasty.”

“Howdy, I have no sweet side. I’ve been called feisty, tough, and sassy. Sassy, that’s my nickname in the family. My attitude got me through years of cancer treatments when other children much nicer than me died. I survived life with Bijou which was almost worse than leukemia after awhile. I believe you have to face life head on without ducking.”

“The Sinners should recruit you,” he replied with a lazy smile and a hand on her breast.

“I think you’re ducking by not finding and confronting your parents. A real football player would do that—but you’re only a kicker.”

“Hey, I thought we were past the insults.” He dropped his hand and his smile.

“Whatever it takes to get you to go to Las Vegas tomorrow.”

“Jesus, okay. There, now I have to put a quarter in the cuss jar for blasphemy. Las Vegas tomorrow. Shit. Another quarter. Might as well be going to Sodom and Gomorrah when we have Paradise right here as my grandma would say.”

TWENTY-SIX

They didn’t get to Vegas in one day but arrived early enough on the second to see the losers and the drunks still sleeping on the curbs and benches. A group of waitresses in green uniforms and a man in a shiny tuxedo sucked on their smokes outside a breakfast buffet. “Do your job, Arnie,” one of the women prompted as they passed. “They look like fresh meat.”

Arnie tossed his cigarette aside and swung into action, running around to get in front of them. “Best breakfast buffet in Vegas. We got shrimp morning, noon, and night. Loose and easy slots in the rear. How’s about a discount coupon—two for one this morning only.” He waved a slip of paper in their faces.

Howdy shrugged. “Why not? I really could use some coffee.”

He pinched the coupon and steered Cassie inside. The place looked clean enough and the buffet fairly standard with a steam table offering overcooked scrambled eggs, undercooked bacon, and little, gray sausages. The promised pile of shrimp of the tiny, pink variety looked like they might have come from a can, but who ate shrimp this early in the morning? Waffles, pancakes and French toast sticks fanned out on warming trays like winning hands in poker right next to cups of yogurt and cubed fruit in bowls sunk into crushed ice. All this for a mere twenty dollars a head, orange juice and coffee extra, but they had the half-off coupon. He’d never been a picky eater, but he asked Cassie, “This all right?”

“Sure. Let’s ask the waitress for a phone book. We can start our search.”

“Your search,” he corrected.

Their waitress brought a pitcher of orange juice over to their table and held it enticingly over two upturned glasses. Howdy nodded for her to pour. Cassie asked for a telephone directory, and their server padded away on sensible shoes, delivering the request shortly like she’d gone to a lot of extra work. The woman brightened a little when Howdy wanted coffee, too, adding to the tab and the tip.

“No Mary McCoy or Benito Rizzo listed.”

Howdy raised his eyebrows at her. “You thought it would be that easy?”

“We’ll do a Google search as soon as I can find a wi-fi hot spot.”

“We could find a room after driving all night. I’ll get us a suite like the one in New Orleans, champagne again, maybe a marriage license once I get you liquored up enough.”

“Quit joking. We have a mission to complete. A couple of Rizzos listed, but no Benitos.”

The waitress, creeping up behind them in her crepe-soled shoes, served their coffee. From behind, she had a slim body and showgirl legs shored up by support hose, but the facial lines of a heavy smoker dragged her tired face down. The stench of her cigarette breaks clung to her long red hair, most definitely colored a brighter shade than Cassie’s since the woman had to be in her forties or older. She wore it drawn back at the nape of her neck with a cheap hairclip. A nametag branding her “Mariah” perched on one of her unnaturally large breasts straining the buttons of the green uniform and offering a view of a vast cleavage. Her hard, emerald eyes regarded them and showed she’d reached some momentous decision as she retrieved the phonebook.

“Everyone in Vegas knows Benny Rizzo. He won’t be listed in the phone book, but you can find out plenty about him on Google. He owns Nero’s Lounge and Casino. You look like his type, sister, if you want to get into show business, but you’ll need to get a private appointment with him. Have your agent here make one and get lost. You audition for Benny alone.” The waitress said agent as if the word were synonymous with pimp.

“Not me. It’s my friend who wants to see him.”

“Last time I heard, Benny didn’t do guys, but in Vegas you never know. You look like nice kids right off the farm. Why don’t you go home and forget about meeting Rizzo?”

“We think he might be Howdy’s father,” Cassie blurted out.

Howdy ducked his head and turned red in the face. “Not my idea to meet him, ma’am. Hers.”

“I had one of those private appointments with Benny Rizzo years ago. I can tell you that you sure don’t look anything like him. If you have to see for yourself, I’d make an appointment for the girl. He likes ’em fresh. Then pull a switcheroo to get yourself into his office.”

“Thank you, Mariah. You’ve been a big help. Howdy, give her a nice tip.”

Obeying, he handed the waitress two twenties.

“My, my, anything else I can do for you, sweetie?” Mariah shot out one hip and posed a hand on it. Clearly, she did not mean the “sweetie” for Cassie.

“No, ma’am,” he mumbled, staring at the cutlery. “We’ll just have the buffet. Thank you.”

“I do like a boy with manners,” she said with a sly, full bronze-lipped smile. “After you meet with Rizzo, you hurry back to the ranch or farm or wherever you came from before this town tosses you to the white tigers.” She moved away to pour coffee at another table and flipped one of the twenties to another waitress as she passed. The other bill disappeared into her substantial cleavage.

“Howdy, she could be your mother. Mariah was her middle name.”

“Heaven forbid, Cass. I’d know my own mother. I have pictures of her from high school, even in her ballet tutu. Dancers don’t have huge breasts like that. Her hair is four times as red as mine, and my mom had blue eyes, not green. That much I remember.”

“Look at me, Howdy. Do you see a single freckle on my face today? Do you think I was born with blonde streaks in my red hair? And I think in Vegas all dancers have huge, fake tits because they don’t dance, they only strut around poking them out at guys like you. Twenty would have been plenty for a nice tip by the way.”

“That’s another thing. I don’t think my own mother would hit on me.”

“She hasn’t seen you all grown up, and you are kind of cute. There, I finally admitted it.”

“Thank you, thank you very much,” he said, doing a creditable Elvis imitation. “You having eggs or a pile of carbs? Personally, I think I could use both after that gas station burrito we shared at two a.m.”

He stalked off to the buffet and filled two plates with some of everything, dumping a pile of the tiny, pink shrimp on top of his eggs.

“Thank you,” Cassie said as he plunked down the two plates.

“Get your own,” he growled.

She got up to do exactly that. “At least now I know you’re grouchy after pulling an all-nighter and not always so polite and goody-goody.”

“Eat, and let’s get this meeting with Rizzo over so we can go home.”

Nibbling on French toast sticks dipped in syrup, Cassie took her good time eating while Howdy wolfed down his two plates of chow. Earning that forty-dollar tip, their waitress returned again and again to refill their coffee cups and slip them more orange juice free. She gave them directions to Nero’s Lounge, not too far distant, no need to hunt for another parking place. Howdy ate up the sidewalk with long strides in his haste to get there and get out. Regretting her early morning decision to switch from sneakers to heels in order to look more sophisticated and suffering from the tightness of her jeans, Cassie wobbled along beside him. They turned in between two faux Corinthian columns. A chubby man wearing a toga wrapped around his tubby body and a laurel wreath on his bald head materialized from the perpetual twilight of the club.

“Welcome to Nero’s Lounge and Casino. We hope you will stay and fiddle with us all day long. Free cabaret show at nine and midnight. Summon one of our charming Vestal Virgins for drinks at your table or step into the Golden Room and indulge in our decadent round the clock buffet.”

Howdy got right to the point. “Ah, thanks, but we haven’t come to gamble. We want to make an appointment to see Mr. Rizzo.”

“Difficult, very difficult to see the emperor at this time of day. However, if you take one of the elevators to the top floor, you may request an audience from his personal assistant.”

The greeter bowed away and disappeared between a row slots. They found the elevators and climbed aboard the first to arrive. A large poster set into a frame on one wall touted a performance by an aging jazz musician who cradled his horn like a babe in arms. Exiting, they stepped directly up to a large, circular glass-topped desk staffed by a leggy, bleached blonde with thinly plucked eyebrows. She raised those eyebrows at them now. “Yes?”

“We want to see Mr. Rizzo on a matter of business,” Howdy said.

“Mr. Rizzo is solidly booked for the day. Why not check into our adjoining hotel and enjoy the casino. I’ll see if I can work you into his schedule tomorrow. Is this an audition for the young lady?”

“No.”

“Yes,” Cassie corrected, giving Howdy an elbow sharp enough to drive home Mariah’s advice on how to get Benny Rizzo’s attention.

The second of the elevators opened and disgorged a short, thick man clad in a gold, yes, gold tuxedo with the bow tie unraveled around his neck. He scraped a hand over his black stubble and said, “Christ, I need some sleep.”

With eyes darker than Joe Dean Billodeaux’s, he caressed Cassie from her peep toes to her tits encased in that snug turquoise top, lingering in that last area until he finally raised his gaze to her face. “But, baby, you are an eye-opener. You here for an audition?”

Putting a cautioning hand on Howdy who seethed beside her, she replied, “I am, but I understand you have no openings until tomorrow. Is there any way I could see you sooner?” She fluttered her eyelashes.

“Make her my three o’clock today, Darci. Comp them a room.” Benito Rizzo slicked back both sides of his ebony hair and licked his thick lips before entering his office and shutting the door with a definitive click.

Darci flicked her red fingernails over her computer keyboard and asked their names. “Be on time and wear something easy to slip out of. Mr. Rizzo likes to examine the whole package.”

“You tell Mr. Rizzo to—”

Cassie stopped Howdy again. “That we’ll be here at three. Come on, McCoy, let’s take advantage of that free room.”

She dragged on his arm before he could say anymore and led him into the elevator used by Rizzo moments ago. It still reeked of the man’s heavy cologne.

“Stinks in here,” Howdy remarked.

“But it stinks expensively. Would you look at that? It’s our waitress.” Cassie pointed to another framed poster advertising singer, Mariah Coy, looking far more youthful and glamorous than she had in her green uniform at the breakfast buffet.

“Mary McCoy, Mariah Coy—it’s her stage name, Howdy. I tell you, that’s your mother. She saw you walking right toward her this morning and got that barker to lure you inside so she could feast her eyes on you after all these years.”

“Hogwash! That is not my mother.” He caught Cassie’s smirk. “Go ahead and laugh at how I express myself. This is her.”

He fished out the same curved wallet stuffed with hundred dollar bills he’d had in Mexico and flipped it open to a set of small opposing photos, one black and white, obviously taken from a dance recital program, and the other a high school graduation portrait. En pointe on willowy legs, long graceful arms extended in a classic ballet position, the young woman in the picture wore a serious expression and her hair pulled back in the traditional bun. Her costume completely flattened her meager breasts.