Shakedown (13 page)

TWENTY

It was four in the afternoon on Roanoke Street, an East Las Vegas thoroughfare lined with stuccoed apartment houses that looked as if they had all been constructed from the same set of plans.

Sitting behind the wheel of a G-car parked across the street and more than half a block away from the entrance to the apartment where Monica Brown and Eddie Sands resided, John Novak half-listened to an all-news station. There had been a small fire in the kitchen at the Thunderbird ... the Teamsters Union was threatening a strike at the Dunes ... the chairman of the board of the Sahara had announced plans to expand the golf course. He'd been there since dawn, and he was fed up with news, talk, and music, any and all varieties. He was also weary of thinking about ways to trap Parisi, of reliving Bruno Santoro's murder, and just of killing time. Monica Brown hadn't left her apartment all day.

He turned the radio off, rubbed his eyes, admitted to himself that the day had been wasted.

Suddenly the electric wrought-iron gate to the ground-floor parking area began to open. A silver Porsche cruised out onto the street and headed in his direction. It was Monica. He ducked down in the seat. The vehicle swished past. Quickly, he started the engine, made a U-turn. Monica made a left turn at the corner. He followed her at a discreet distance as she made her way to downtown Las Vegas. Having cruised along Fremont past the motels at the west end of Glitter Gulch, she turned right. As Novak made the right turn she was nowhere to be seen. He stepped on the gas, but had to stop at the next light. "Damn," he said out loud.

Believing he had lost her, he made a U-turn and drove into the parking lot of the shopping mall. He cruised along the rows of cars for a few minutes.

He finally spotted the Porsche parked in front of a small shop with a sign in the window which read:

MAIL SERVICES

Postal Boxes/Western Union

He parked a few cars away, climbed out of the G-car, wandered toward the shop. Through the bay window he could see Monica standing in front of a counter conversing with a cadaverous man wearing a tank-top shirt.

Novak walked into the place and stood in line behind Monica. The man took some envelopes from under the counter, handed them to Monica. Novak glanced over her shoulder as she checked the letters. All the envelopes appeared to have the same address:

Monica Butler, President

United Equity Mining Trust

She shoved the letters in a straw purse she was carrying, turned, and headed toward the door.

"Can I help you?" said the cadaverous man.

"Nice-looking lady," Novak said as Monica left.

"Gets lots of letters. What can I do you for?"

"Uh ... how much is it to open a postal box?"

"Thirty a month."

"Little too steep for me," Novak said as he watched Monica climb into her Porsche. "Thanks anyway."

"You ain't gonna get a postal box no cheaper in this town," the man said as Novak moved away. As he stepped outside, Monica backed the Porsche out of the parking place and headed for the street. Novak ran to his car.

He caught up with Monica at the stoplight at Fremont and followed her directly back to her apartment. He returned to the spot where he had been parked all day. He made a note of the trip in his investigative log.

Soon it was dark and he found himself turning the radio on again.

The flight to Salt Lake City from Las Vegas was uneventful. Red Haynes located the government Chevy in the airport parking space where the Salt Lake City liaison agent had told him it would be. It took him no time at all to drive to Mabel Kincaid's suburban address: a one-story wood-frame house with a front porch that looked recently scrubbed.

He knocked on the door, heard footsteps. The door was opened by a hefty older woman, wearing a flower-print dress. Her white hair was wrapped tightly in a bun. Haynes showed his badge. "Agent Haynes, FBI. Are you Mabel Kincaid?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm here about the fraud report you filed."

"Please come in."

Haynes followed her into a modest but immaculate living room. The furniture was sturdy and well-made, but old-fashioned. What looked like handmade quilts covered the sofa and walls.

"When I made the report I never thought anything would come of it. I'll never get my money back."

"There aren't enough agents to investigate all the cases that come in," Haynes said. "We're bogged down in paperwork and a rotten court system."

Mabel Kincaid made eye contact with Haynes. Her eyes were a penetrating blue. "It's noon. I'll bet you're hungry," she said.

"Not really," Haynes said, though he was starving.

"I grew up with six brothers and I can tell when a man is hungry," she said. She pointed him to a chair at the dining table, which was covered with a crocheted tablecloth. "You sit right down, Mr. Haynes," she said on her way out of the room.

Though Haynes protested, Mabel Kincaid brought food to the table, roast beef, salad, mashed potatoes - hell, he thought, maybe everything she had in the house. They ate and talked.

"I was at a convention in Las Vegas and this nice young woman, Monica Butler, struck up a conversation with me. She said she'd been raised in Salt Lake and that her father was an Elder in the church ... just like my daddy. We had so much in common," Mabel Kincaid said as she kept an eye on his plate.

"A big line of bull ... baloney," Haynes said. He finished off his mashed potatoes.

Mabel Kincaid immediately jumped up, grabbed the bowl of mashed potatoes, and, completely ignoring his protestations, ladled another heaping portion onto his plate. She sat down again.

"She called me when I returned home. At first we just talked. Then she suggested I invest the money from Daddy's estate-there wasn't much, about three thousand dollars-in the Gold Mining Trust. She said she'd actually been down in the mine and seen the vein of gold."

Red Haynes forked the last piece of roast beef on his plate, thought better of it, cut the piece in half, then ate it slowly.

"Looks like you can use a little more roast beef," she said.

Haynes held up his hands. "Can't eat what I have. Uh... what happened when you finally sent her the investment money?"

"That was the last I ever heard of her," Mabel Kincaid said as she forked a thick slice of roast beef, slapped it on his plate. "I tried to call, but she'd changed her number. It never occurred to me until that very moment that she was anything but an upright Christian woman. Right now I feel like the dumbest old turkey that's ever come along the pike." Using her cloth napkin, she wiped away a tear.

"Are there any witnesses to the conversations you had with her? To the times she made representations to you about investing in the trust?"

Mabel Kincaid shook her head sadly. Then a look of kindness came across her face. "I bet you could go for a nice slice of hot apple pie."

"Thank you, but there's no way I can eat anything else, ma'am. I mean that."

Mabel Kincaid carried the empty plates into the kitchen and returned with an enormous slab of apple pie. She stood over him.

Haynes shook his head. "No. Please. I've never eaten so much."

"There's something important I haven't told you, Mr. Haynes."

Haynes looked at her, then at the pie. She set it in front of him, then walked over to a china cabinet and pulled open a drawer. She removed a small cassette tape, handed it to him.

"What's this?"

"Before I sent her the money, I recorded some of her calls. Right here on tape are all the promises she made to me about that darn old Gold Mining Trust."

"Why didn't you give this to the agent you spoke with the first time?"

"Because I felt underhanded at having recorded the calls without Monica's permission, and I thought there might be an outside chance that she would repent, someday, and give me back my daddy's money." She returned to her seat. "But something changed my mind."

Haynes shook his head.

"I was watching you sit here at the table where my daddy used to sit and I remembered something he once told us kids."

"What's that?"

"Destroy the seed of evil or it will grow up to be your ruin.

"I've heard that," Haynes said. And as Mabel Kincaid watched with pleasure, he took a healthy bite of apple pie and chewed slowly.

TWENTY-ONE

There was a metallic roar in the Stardust Casino, the sound of one-armed bandits eating money. For the life of him, Tony Parisi couldn't spot even one solitary slot machine that didn't have someone feeding it change. And the crap tables were hot. Plastic dice tumbled on green felt. Stick men changed numbers. Gaming chips were stacked, shuffled, collected.

Sitting alone at a cocktail table at the edge of the elevated portion of the casino bar, he surveyed the maelstrom of activity in the place. It was standing room only in the keno area, crowds at the busy blackjack tables, even a line waiting to get into the coffee shop. He knew that because of the table odds and the fix on the slot machines, every man and woman in the crowd, no matter how much or how little he or she chose to gamble, would eventually lose. He gazed down the enormous, high-ceilinged, plushly carpeted room full of losers, turkeys, cornball Okies, dumb farmers, cripples, tourists, and working stiffs from L.A. who were getting a charge out of pissing away their bucks. Fuck them and the station wagons and tourist buses they rode in on, he thought.

Mickey Greene, dressed in white trousers and a polo shirt, wandered into the bar area, spotted Tony Parisi. Parisi gave him a little wave. As Greene made his way to the table, Parisi took a sip of club soda, swished it around in his mouth, swallowed. They shook hands.

As Greene sat down, Parisi looked about the surrounding area for signs of the local cops, feds, or DA's investigators who he knew took turns surveilling him.

"Friends tell me things are nice for you here," Greene said.

A cocktail waitress dressed in a sarong came to the table. Mickey Greene ordered scotch and milk. She headed back toward the bar.

"Why'd you want to meet me in the bar?" Parisi said. "I don't like meeting people in public."

"Because when you're on vacation in Las Vegas you might just happen to see somebody in a bar and join them for a drink. If you go to a room, to the cops it means you
know
the person-it's a planned meeting. See, I think in courtroom terms."

"It's good to be careful."

The waitress returned with the scotch and milk, set it on the table. Greene dropped a ten-dollar chip on her tray. She thanked him, moved toward another table. Greene took a look around, lit a cigarette. "Are you in a position to have something done?"

Tony Parisi turned his palms up. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about laying paper on somebody," Greene whispered.

"Who, why, what," Parisi said, as a statement rather than a question.

"I have a friend, and this friend is visited by a shakedown man ... a phony-cop play. My friend shells out. This cocker is greedy, comes back, scores again. My friend wants off the hook. He wants the shakeman to disappear."

"The shakeman ... is he connected?"

"Not that I know of"

"No problem as long as the man is not connected. But I can't get involved in a war."

"This is an independent operator ... a shmeckler, a confidence man."

"Who are we talking about?"

"Can this be done?"

"As long as the guy is not protected by someone else's family, yes, it can be done, sure." Tony Parisi finished off his soda. He belched.

"How much?"

"The price is twenty-five large."

"Twenty-five? I was thinking more like ten."

"So I guess you wasn't thinking hard enough."

"Twenty-five is a lot of money."

"So do it yourself. Then it doesn't cost you shit."

"I never thought you would try to rip me off on something like this," Greene said. "I'm doing this for a friend."

"Is your friend broke? Maybe he lives in the poor section of Beverly Hills?"

"Be realistic."

"Poor people don't get shaken down," Tony Parisi said, staring at the waitress as she bent over a nearby table and showed cleavage.

"Let's call it fifteen," Mickey Greene said.

Parisi gave a little laugh. "Hire a junkie to do it for fifty bucks. Then he can point the finger at you on his way down the river."

Greene stared at him for a moment. He took out a pen and wrote something on a cocktail napkin. He handed the napkin to Parisi.

Parisi turned the napkin around and read: "Edward Sands-ex-cop in Vegas."

"Heard of him?" Greene said.

Tony Parisi shook his head slowly. "No," he said with a straight face. He checked his wristwatch, pushed his chair back, stood up, stretched, slapped his paunch.

"But can you find him?"

"For twenty-five I'll keep looking until I find him."

"What's next?" Greene said.

"I find this guy Sands, then I call you up. You bring me twenty-five. Then it gets done. That's all. What more do you want?"

It was ten at night by the time Novak discontinued his surveillance of Monica Brown's apartment. He was hungry, thirsty, and stiff from sitting in a car all day. He found himself driving toward Lorraine Traynor's home.

He arrived there a few minutes later, pulled into the driveway. The near-new two-story house was in one of Las Vegas's exclusive residential areas. Through the front window, he could see her sitting on the sofa next to a stack of thick books.

"Where have you been all day?" she said as she opened the door.

"Sitting on the place where Eddie Sands is living," he said, stepping inside. The living room was furnished with Victorian furniture, which Novak never found comfortable.

"The man you saw meeting with Parisi?"

He nodded.

"Learn anything?"

"His wife is running some kind of a scam."

"Doesn't sound like a very profitable day. Hungry?"

"Starving."

In the well-equipped kitchen, Novak stared outside at the pool as Lorraine pan-broiled a steak. He sipped a beer.

"I listened to the tapes of Parisi," she said. "I made some notes for you. There's nothing there. The tapes alone aren't enough to have him indicted for anything."

"He talks about people paying off."

"Nothing is definite. Not once does he make a definitive statement that could be used against him in court."

"Hoods don't make definitive statements about crimes they've committed."

She forked the steak out of the pan, set it on a plate, and put it in front of him.

"I can give you another eavesdropping order," she said.

He unscrewed the top of a bottle of steak sauce, poured it on the meat. "Parisi is too cagey on the phone. And he never uses the same room for longer than a day or so, which makes it almost impossible to plant a bug." He cut into the steak and ate.

"How about a search warrant?"

"Won't do any good."

"You sound as negative as Red Haynes," she said, sitting down at the table with him. She refilled his beer glass.

"Somehow or another I've got to get next to him."

"You sound like a crook talking."

"The game isn't all cut-and-dried like the case law you read," he said as he chewed. "Sometimes it gets real nasty."

"Taking cases personally isn't good for one's mental health," she said.

"Easy for a judge to say."

Nothing was said for a while.

"May I ask you a question?" Lorraine said.

"Shoot."

"Am I just a judge to you? Someone to bounce cases off of, someone to sign search warrants for you? Just an acquaintance?"

He stopped eating, looked into her eyes. "I didn't mean it like that, Lorraine. I'm sorry." Novak reached across the table and took her hand.

"You look beat," she said.

"I am."

She squeezed his hand. "You'll make the case. Don't worry.