Thread of Fear (10 page)

TWENTY ONE

I asked at the front desk about the impound lot and the guy in the uniform directed me down a hallway to a back door and into an exterior lot. Another uniform was sitting in a small booth, listening to the radio and paging through a news magazine. I handed him my driver's license and he took it wordlessly. He scanned it, typed something into the laptop computer on the shelf he was using as a desk, then opened a drawer in the cabinet behind him. He handed me my keys and showed me where to sign on the clipboard he handed me. I scrawled my name on the line and walked away without saying thank you.

My car was parked next to a tricked out Cadillac. I got in and drove out of the lot. I checked my rearview mirror to make sure I wasn't being followed. I didn't put it past Toball to stick a tail on me, but my mirror looked clean. About a mile from the station, I pulled over to the curb and pulled out my phone. I pulled up the contacts and, gritting my teeth, punched in a number.

“Mr. Tyler,” John Anchor said. “Good evening.”

“Actually, it's not,” I said. “I need to meet with you. In person. Soon.”

“I see,” he said. “Can you explain as to what this is in regard to?”

“It's in regard to Patrick Dennison and me trying to figure out exactly what  the hell is going on,” I said. “When can you be here?”

“I'm finishing a meeting now,” he said. “I can be there in an hour.”

Even Anchor didn't have access to the kind of plane that could get him from Minneapolis to Las Vegas in sixty minutes. “Aren't you in Minneapolis?”

“No,” he answered. “I'll see you in an hour.”

TWENTY TWO

I got a text from Anchor fifty-eight minutes later, asking me to meet him in a bar at the MGM. I valet parked the car at the casino, a muscled-up kid in his twenties looking less than enthusiastic about taking care of my decade-old car. I gave him a twenty with the keys and he perked up a little as he handed me the claim ticket.

The MGM was one of those hotel and casinos that had never really decided what it wanted to be. They'd made a huge mistake when they'd originally opened, going for a movie theme tied to the old MGM Studios and making the main entrance a lion's mouth. They realized too late that in Asian culture  walking into a lion's mouth –  even just symbolically – was bad luck. Because of this, the big money gamblers from the Far East avoided the casino when they visited Vegas, putting a large dent in the casino's revenue. The hotel execs very quickly remodeled the entrance, but once they did, the hotel sort of lost its identity. It was still a popular venue with a great location on The Strip, but when you walked in, you weren't taken away to another place like you were at Bellagio or Mandalay Bay.

I found the bar just off the casino floor, a small duck-in room with oak paneled walls and high backed booths. Anchor was in one of the booths, tapping away at his phone. He set the phone down when he saw me and nodded in my direction. I slid into the opposite side of the booth.

“Not the greatest of meeting spots, but I was able to negotiate some privacy,” Anchor said.

I looked around. Besides the guy behind the bar, the only other person in the room was a guy perched on the very first barstool near the entrance. He was dressed in a business suit and I'd barely noticed him when I'd walked in. He stood and took a couple of steps toward the entrance when an older couple came into the doorway. He said something to them. They looked at each other, then shrugged and walked away. The guy went back to his stool, his eyes trained on the entrance. The bartender worked on polishing drink glasses, avoiding eye contact with us.

“We have friends here,” Anchor said. “It's ours for just a bit. Drink?”

“Actually, yeah,” I said.

Anchor held his hand up and the bartender hustled over to us.

“Ice water,” Anchor said. “Two limes.”

“Crown and Coke,” I said.

He nodded and hustled back to the bar.

“I was a little surprised by your call,”  Anchor said. “I take it you have some information.”

“I need to know exactly what the fuck I'm in the middle of here,” I said.

Anchor raised an eyebrow. “In the middle of?”

“Who exactly is Carina Armstrong?”

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don't know. As I told you, hers was a name that one of my men came up with. That's all I know.”

“She works for you, so I'm not buying that,” I said. “Worked, actually. Because she's dead.”

The bartender came and set our drinks on the table. I picked mine up and immediately downed half of it. Anchor waved the guy away, but didn't touch his water. He stared at the glass, seemingly transfixed by the two slices of lime floating on the surface.

“She was dead when you located her?” Anchor finally said.

I set my glass down and shook my head. “No. She was dead a couple hours after I spoke to her.”

“You know this how?”

“Because Las Vegas PD arrested me at her place.”

Anchor picked up his glass and sipped at the water. I killed the rest of my drink, caught the bartender's eye and pointed at the empty glass. He nodded and had another one on the table in under a minute.

I took another long drink, letting the alcohol burn down my throat. “So to summarize my day, here it is in a nutshell. Talked to a girl whose name I got from you, two guys followed me and weren't interested in Dennison, someone killed the girl and I got to spend the evening with Las Vegas homicide.” I lifted the glass in his direction. “Not exactly what I had planned.”

“I'm sure it wasn't,” Anchor said.

“So I want to know exactly what the fuck I'm in the middle of,” I repeated. “Because this now feels like a bit more than Dennison running off with some of your cash.”

“Yes, it does,” Anchor said, slowly stirring the red straw in his drink. “It certainly does.”

We sat there in silence for a minute, the muted sounds from the casino sounding about a mile away.

“Does the police department consider you a suspect?” Anchor asked.

“They said no, but I'm sure they're still looking at me,” I said. “They pulled my background, they figured out I was working for Dennison's wife and the detective wasn't an idiot, so I think he knows I didn't do it. But he doesn't know me and he'd be stupid to ignore me. They know I had contact with her and they found me in her home.”

“Inside?”

I explained what happened.

“You find anything of interest there?” Anchor asked.

“Not really,” I said. “But you still haven't answered my question. What exactly is this?”

Anchor's face remained impassive but a muscle twitched in his jaw. “I can make several assumptions, but I'm not sure they're correct. But let me be clear. When we spoke about this job, the only thing I was aware of was that Mr. Dennison had gone missing. I was not aware that anything else was at play here. After the photos you sent me this afternoon, along with what you've just shared at me, I won't disagree that there are other things going on. But let me be clear.” He stared at me for a moment. “I was not aware of them prior to speaking with you.”

It sounded like he was telling the truth. I didn't think he had any reason to lie to me or to pretend he didn't know anything. At the same time, though, it was hard for me to accept that anything was happening in Anchor's world that he was unaware of. Everything I'd seen in the past with him indicated that nothing happened without his knowledge.

“Who are the guys?” I asked.

Anchor took another drink and set the glass back down on the table. “It appears they are employed by a competitor.”

“Competitor?”

He adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses. “Mr. Codaselli's company and organization is a large one. Our interests and investments are varied and wide. In Las Vegas, we've focused primarily on men's entertainment venues, as well as acquiring commercial real estate that has not yet been developed. As I'm sure you can imagine, there is competition in those areas of business.”

“Similar types of organizations?”

Anchor nodded. “Yes. Based out of Los Angeles. We've attempted several times to facilitate a certain level of peaceful co-existence, but we haven't had much success. As a result, this other group is not pleased that we've established a foothold in Las Vegas. It's been contentious at times.”

“So why would they have an interest in Dennison?”

“Good question,” Anchor said. “My guess would be that maybe they made an overture to him at some point.”

“An overture?”

“Yes. To see if maybe he had an interest in a position with their organization.”

“Have they done that before? With other folks that work for you?”

“They have.”

“And what happened?”

Anchor smiled. “We discouraged it.”

“With both parties?”

“Yes.”

I didn't know what discouraging both parties entailed, but I was sure it wasn't polite conversation.

“Is Dennison the kind of employee who could prove...valuable to someone else?” I asked.

Anchor thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I believe so. He had access to information that we wouldn't want to see shared.”

“Like?”

“Mostly financial,” he said, shrugging. “But, frankly, if someone reaches a certain level in our organization, if they choose to leave, our preference is for them to leave for something that doesn't directly compete with what we do.”

“I'll assume that preference is usually honored.”

Anchor nodded again. “Usually, yes.”

I stirred the bourbon and soda in front of me. “Would Dennison have considered jumping ship?”

“I have no way of knowing. If you're asking me if I know anything concrete in that regard, my answer is no. If I did, we would've dealt with it immediately.”

I was certain that was true. “So, it's a possibility then,” I said. “That they made a run at him. Maybe he told them he'd cross over or whatever you wanna call it. Then maybe he gets cold feet. Takes off.”

“Certainly plausible,” he said. “Especially given that they were apparently watching you. I'd assume that meant they were watching for him.”

I nodded. “Yeah. So. How worried do I need to be about these guys?”

“Looks like they should be more worried about you from what I saw in the pictures you sent me,” he said, smiling.

“Two guys who probably weren't hired to do much more than watch me,” I said, shaking my head. “Dumb, unskilled labor and low end of the food chain. You know what I'm talking about.”

Anchor gave me a begrudging nod. “Right. Well, I would say that there appears to be enough of an interest in Mr. Dennison that they identified you as a potential information source. I would certainly say that you need to be cognizant of that.”

I finished what was left of my drink and pushed the empty glass to the end of the table. The bourbon had calmed my nerves but had done nothing to dull my anger over the way the situation had changed. “I didn't sign up to get in the middle of some sort of turf war. That isn't what you asked of me. You asked me to find Dennison.” I paused, letting the rest of my assignment go unspoken. “You didn't ask me to negotiate with a rival organization or step into a murder investigation. I find people and that's what you hired me to do and I agreed to do it. I did not agree to the ancillary bullshit.” I leaned forward across the table. “I'll keep going for now, but if this gets uglier or if I feel this is somehow going to prevent me from going home to my daughter, then I'm out.”

Anchor stirred the straw in his drink slowly. “I'm not sure that's your choice to make at this point, Mr. Tyler.”

“Actually, it is,” I answered. “You can leverage me and threaten me all you want, but if this gets so deep that I'm not sure I can get back to my family? Then I'm out.” I leaned back in the booth. “And you and I can deal with the fallout.”

Anchor stared at me across the table, still stirring the straw.

I stared back.

“Let's hope it doesn't come to that,” Anchor finally said.

“Yeah. Let's.” I rolled my shoulders, trying to release some of the tension. “Back to the girl. You told me you don't know her, but she works for you.”

“I don't know every single name on the payroll, Mr. Tyler.”

That was probably true. “Okay. This rival group. It's possible that they could've taken her out?”

Anchor nodded. “Certainly. I'm not sure why, but yes. It's definitely possible.”

“Would they need a reason or would they just do it to do it?”

Anchor thought longer on that. “It's been my experience that it wouldn't be done carelessly. Now, you and I might differ on what might equate reason, but I don't believe that it would've occurred without a reason.”

I tended to agree, even without knowing who they were. Street gangs would kill just because. They didn't necessarily need a reason. But an organization like Anchor's tended to operate more professionally, which was to say that they killed for a reason or when they felt it was necessary. They weren't looking to draw the attention of the legal establishment. It was a gray area, but it was still a different area.

“Can you reach out?” I asked. “See what's there?” I wasn't asking as a favor to me and he knew it. We both needed the information, him probably more so than me.

Anchor finished the water and pushed his glass next to mine. “I'm not sure I want to do that at this juncture.”

“Why not?”

“Because if they have an interest in Mr. Dennison, I have no interest in striking a deal,” he said. “What I've asked you to do with Mr. Dennison is the only acceptable result I'm looking for. Involving anyone else might create the notion that I'm willing to settle for something less.” He paused. “I have no interest in turning him over to them for whatever their needs might be or anything along those lines. I also don't wish to help them if they are indeed looking for him. So reaching out is a bit problematic.”

I understood his reasoning. He didn't want to connect with anyone; he just wanted the problem taken care of.

“We can look into it quietly,” Anchor added. “But at this point, I'm afraid that's all I'm willing to do. I'll be around for the next few days if you need any assistance.”

I pushed out of the booth. “Let's hope that won't be necessary.”

“And Mr. Tyler?”

I looked at him.

Anchor smiled at me. It was cold and hard and sent a shiver down my spine.  “I really hope you and I don't have to deal the fallout,” he said. “That would be very unpleasant.”

I had no doubt.