Loaded Dice (23 page)

“Free Bird,” Ponytail called out.

Mr. Beauregard started playing really fast, the music instantly familiar. Ponytail and his girlfriend stomped their feet, as did others in the crowd. “He’s good,” someone said.

“Another song,” Hicks said.

“The theme from
Friends
,” someone called out.

Hicks said, “Mr. Beauregard, do you know the theme from
Friends
?”

The chimp skated to the edge of the stage. Suddenly there was music.

“Yeah,” the person who made the request said.

“It has often been said that animals communicate on a different level than humans, and perhaps can tap into thoughts,” Hicks said. “Impossible? Just watch. May I have a volunteer from the audience?”

Ponytail hoisted his girlfriend’s arm into the air. The spotlight found her, and she reluctantly went up. She was a big woman, and looked like she slept in the road. Hicks coaxed her into revealing her name.

“Bitch,” she said.

A chalkboard was wheeled out. Hicks positioned the chalkboard so it was out of Mr. Beauregard’s line of vision, then handed Bitch a piece of chalk.

“Please write the name of a song on the chalkboard,” he said.

Bitch wrote
KNOCKING ON HEAVEN’S DOOR.

Mr. Beauregard was playing the song before the last letters were on the board. It had a slow, easy pace, and someone in the audience clapped along.

“Another, please,” Hicks said.

Bitch wrote
COCAINE.
Mr. Beauregard nailed it again. This time, there was real applause. Ponytail stood up in his seat and said, “Give that woman a sugar cube!”

Bitch jumped off the stage like she was diving into a mosh pit. She ran after her boyfriend with tears streaming down her face and the audience howling. It was an ugly scene, and Valentine heard a voice over the PA announce that the show was over.

“I thought I saw your face in the audience,” Hicks said, ushering Valentine into his dressing room a few minutes later. “Like my dear mother was fond of saying, it ain’t much, but we call it home.”

The dressing room was a pit, the plaster walls so badly pocked it looked like they’d been riddled with a machine gun. Mr. Beauregard sat in a leather director’s chair. He had his skates off and was puffing on a cigarette.

“I’m looking for my son,” Valentine said. “You haven’t seen him, have you?”

“Gerry?” Hicks tossed his porkpie hat on a chair, revealing a few loosely combed strands of white hair across his freckled scalp. “He came by the other day with his two friends. They didn’t stay very long.”

“Something happen?”

“Mr. Beauregard did not like your son’s friends. I believe the feeling was mutual.”

Valentine looked at the chimp. Hicks claimed he had special powers. Valentine didn’t believe that, but he knew that the night Hicks had saved his life, Mr. Beauregard was involved. He’d
smelled
him standing nearby, only Hicks had later told the police otherwise, and Valentine had gone along with him. He removed the surveillance photo from the Excalibur, and showed it to Hicks. “This one of my son’s friends?”

Hicks squinted. “My vision is not what it used to be.” Taking the photo from Valentine’s hand, he showed it to the chimp. “Mister Beauregard, was this one of them?”

The chimp looked at the photo and hissed.

“Yes,” Hicks said.

Valentine put the photo away and looked at his watch. It was just before ten. Maybe Gerry had gotten stuck in traffic and was out in the lobby. “I need to run. How long you in town for?”

“Until we decide to leave, “ Hicks said. “We’re four-walling.”

“What’s that?”

“We rent the theater, then set our ticket price based upon a certain number of people coming to each show. Unfortunately, I did not factor in the drawing power of Celine Dion. Did I, Mr. Beauregard?”

The chimp removed a rubber knife from his jacket and plunged it into his heart. Falling back on his chair, he let his tongue hang out the side of his mouth. Hicks said, “I have my carnival to return to if we decide show business isn’t to our liking.”

Valentine said good-bye and shook his hand. Mr. Beauregard was still playing dead. Hicks said, “Mr. Valentine is leaving. Let’s not be rude.”

Mr. Beauregard sat up in his chair. Reaching into his jacket, he removed a cigar wrapped in plastic and offered it to Valentine. Valentine had always enjoyed a good smoke, and slipped it into his pocket. He watched the chimp dig out a pack of matches and hand them over as well.

“I guess he wants me to smoke it right away,” Valentine said.

“I believe he does,” Hicks said.

36

V
alentine checked the lobby. Then he walked through the casino and got readdicted to smoking without having to light up. He even looked inside the bingo parlor again. His son had pulled a no-show.

He walked outside to the parking lot. It was nothing new. Gerry had been breaking his promises to him for as long as he could remember.

He got into his rental and saw his cell phone lying on the passenger seat. He’d left it on, and the phone was blinking and beeping. He grabbed it off the seat and went into voice mail.

“Hey, Dad, Wonder Boy here,” his son’s voice rang out. “Look, something’s come up. I can’t make it over tonight. I’ll call you later, Dad. Bye.”

Valentine took the cell phone away from his ear and stared at it, his anger clouding his vision.
Something’s come up?
What the hell was Gerry thinking? His son knew the FBI was looking for him, and that he’d put his ass on the line to help him out. If he’d been sitting beside him, Valentine would have strangled him.

A car’s horn made him jump. The parking lot was packed, and in his mirror he saw a burly guy in a pickup truck, hoping to grab his spot.

“Hey Pop, you leaving?” the guy asked.

Valentine shook his head and watched the pickup drive away. The guy had called him Pop. Gerry called him Pop, just like he’d called his own father Pop. Gerry
never
called him Dad.

Valentine replayed the message.

“Hey, Dad, Wonder Boy here . . .”

His son was trying to tell him something. He thought back to the code they’d used in the Second Sight act when Gerry was a kid. Then he remembered:
Dad
had been part of the code.
Dad
meant Gerry hadn’t understood him, and needed help.

Dad
meant trouble.

He burned down the Boulder Highway to Henderson where his son was staying. Digging out his wallet, he extracted the slip of paper with the Red Roost Inn’s phone number and punched it into his cell phone. The night clerk answered. Valentine asked to be transferred to his son’s room.

“He checked out,” the night clerk said. “Actually, his buddy checked out for him.”

“Describe the guy who checked my son out,” Valentine said, standing in the motel’s dingy office ten minutes later, having broken every speed limit and run every red light on the drive over.

The night clerk was walking testimony to the evils of alcohol, his face a mosaic of busted gin blossoms, his eyes runny and dispirited. He scratched his unshaven chin, thinking. Valentine tossed down twenty bucks to prod his memory along.

“Middle Eastern, five-ten, about a hundred and seventy pounds,” the clerk said. “Not a bad-looking guy, except he was always scowling. He and his brother shared a room.”

“How long they been here?”

“Couple of weeks.”

Valentine removed the surveillance photo from the Excalibur and laid it on the desk.

“That him?”

The clerk gave it a hard look. “Yup.”

A ledger sat on the desk. Valentine flipped it open and heard the clerk squawk.

“That could get me fired,” the clerk said.

Valentine tossed him another twenty. Then he scanned the names in the ledger. Two stood out. Amin and Pash Amanni. Pointing, he said, “This them?”

“Sure is.”

“Let me see their credit card imprint.”

“Didn’t use one.” The clerk removed a flask from a drawer. The money had put him in a celebratory mood, and he took a pair of shot glasses from the same drawer and slapped them on the desk. He unscrewed the flask with his teeth.

“You a drinking man?” he asked.

Valentine felt something inside him snap. The shot glasses shattered as they hit the floor. The clerk jumped back like he’d been struck.

“Hey mister, I was just trying to be—”

“I don’t care what you were trying to be. I need to find these guys. Anything you can remember before you get drunk would help.”

Valentine put his hand on the flask. The clerk swallowed hard, realizing he wasn’t getting any hooch unless he cooperated. He scrunched his face up, giving it some effort.

“Come to think of it, there were a couple of things,” he said.

Amin and Pash Amanni had liked to eat pizza. They also went to the movies a lot. Those were the two things the clerk remembered.

It wasn’t much, but better than nothing, and Valentine killed the evening visiting every pizza shop and movie theater in Henderson. At each he showed Amin’s surveillance photo to the help, asked if anyone recognized him.

None of the ringed and pierced employees did.

By midnight he felt ready to drop from exhaustion. Sitting in a strip mall parking lot, he ate a slice of pizza that tasted like cardboard with catsup. He washed it down with a soda, told himself he had to keep looking. If Amin knew he’d been photographed in the MGM the night before, he was probably staying away from Las Vegas. That left Henderson as his only real hiding place, unless he was camped out in the desert.

Valentine realized he was dying for a smoke. He’d gone cold turkey a year ago, and didn’t get the cravings for nicotine unless he was under stress. He pulled Mr. Beauregard’s cigar from his pocket, peeled away the plastic, and passed it beneath his nose. The tobacco was dry, but still smelled wonderful.

He fired up the cigar with the rental’s lighter and filled his mouth with the great-tasting smoke. It lifted his spirits and calmed his nerves at the same time.

He saw the lights go out in the pizza parlor. Other stores around Henderson were probably closing as well. Which left fewer places for Amin to hide.

He started up the car and was backing out of his spot when he heard the explosion. It was right in his face, and very loud. It snapped his head back, and he saw nothing but eternal blackness.
Your life just ended,
he thought.

The banging on his window brought him back to the real world, and Valentine stared at the kid who’d served him the pizza standing beside his car. He rolled his window down.

“Hey mister, you all right?” the kid anxiously asked.

Valentine touched his arms, and then his face. Everything felt fine.

“Yeah, I think so,” he mumbled.

“What happened?”

“I honestly don’t know,” he replied.

The kid sauntered off. Valentine inspected the car. The windshield wasn’t broken, nor were any of the windows. He turned on the interior light and stared at his reflection in the mirror. His lips and chin were covered in black soot. It slowly dawned on him what had happened. Mr. Beauregard had given him an exploding cigar.

Valentine thought back to the chimp handing him the pack of matches. He hated to be played for a fool, and thought about calling Ray Hicks, and giving him a piece of his mind. Then his cell phone rang.

He stared at the luminous clock on the dashboard. It was twelve-oh-five.

“I need more time,” he told Fuller.

“You just ran out of that,” the director of the FBI replied.

37

H
og-tied and gagged, Gerry lay across the backseat of Amin’s rental car and watched the sun break over the horizon.

Dawn was different in Las Vegas. Before the sun ever came up, the sky put on a show, turning from black to magenta to a magnificent dark blue. The changes were gradual, yet also severe, as if the colors were being sucked from the desert.

Soon sunlight flooded the rental, and he heard Pash and Amin stir in the front seats. They had driven into the desert around eleven o’clock, parked behind a deserted building, and promptly gone to sleep. Gerry hadn’t slept at all, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might explode.

Amin rubbed the cobwebs from his eyes, then climbed out of the rental and walked away. Lifting his head, Gerry looked through the side window and saw Amin standing twenty yards away, pissing on a cactus. He kicked the back of Pash’s seat.

“Wake up,” he said through his gag.

Pash turned around and stared at him. His happy-go-lucky expression had been replaced by one of mounting dread. “Be quiet,” he whispered.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

Pash reached over and tugged his gag down. “Be quiet, or my brother will put a bullet in your head.”

“The truth,” Gerry said. “I think I deserve that.”

“My brother will kill you, do you understand?”

“Big fucking deal.”

That hit Pash hard. “You are not afraid of dying?” he asked.

Not as much as you,
Gerry nearly said. Before he could reply, Pash turned back around. “My brother is returning. Please shut up.”

Gerry lifted his head. Amin was still draining the monster. During the night, he’d realized he might die not knowing what the brothers were up to, and he said, “Come on. I have a right to know.”

“How so?” Pash said, staring straight ahead.

“I saved your lives yesterday, didn’t I? Just tell me the truth.”

“Stop it. Please.”

“You’re not drug dealers. I figured that out.”

Pash stiffened like a thousand watts of electricity had been jolted through his body. His chin dropped down and touched his chest, and Gerry realized he was fighting back the overwhelming urge to cry. “How did you know that?” he asked.

“You didn’t sample the merchandise.”

Pash lifted his chin and looked over his shoulder into the backseat.

“Please explain.”

“The meeting with the Mexicans,” Gerry said. “You gave them cash, and they gave you drugs. Only you didn’t try the drugs, or test them with chemicals. For all you knew, they could have sold you cornstarch.”