Night seemed to come early in the desert. We took a room at the El Cortez, a low-rise mission-style hotel a little further out from the main drag and one that seemed big enough for us to pass in anonymity. Even out of the way as it was, it boasted the same oversized neon sign and a banner outside advertising cocktails, all the hotels seeming to craft their offering to the same appetites.
The casino dwarfed anything I’d seen in Hot Springs. It was full to bursting, with the loudest noises coming from an overheated craps table near the middle of the room. I went to find a payphone in the lobby and called Newland at his desk.
‘You manage to speak to your source?’ I said, almost making the mistake of referring to Booker by name.
‘No. I’m getting the feeling he’s gone to ground.’
I closed my eyes, wondering if he had the same bad feeling about the situation I did. ‘I’m desperate, Newland—’
‘You already made yourself clear about that.’
‘There must be someone else you can speak to. What about his workmates?’
He hesitated before answering and I wondered again if I’d given myself away. ‘I’m doing what I can,’ he said. ‘Leave it with me.’
I screwed my eyes closed. ‘All right. I’m at the El Cortez if you have news.’
I hung up and went back to our room.
Lizzie was sitting on the bed, leafing through my folder of notes on the missing girls. She stopped and looked up when I came in. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’
A sense of intrusion came over me, but faded just as fast. ‘Of course not.’
‘There’s something I’m curious about.’ She gestured with one of the sheets of paper. ‘The first you heard of Colt Tanner was when you visited the girls’ boarding house.’
I thought back, meeting with Angela Crawford, the other boarder at Mrs Snyder’s, her telling me a cop had been asking about me. ‘What of it?’
‘I don’t understand why he would’ve went there to ask after you. What was the relevance to his investigation?’
I looked at her and at the paper, my writing scrawled all over it, drawing a blank. ‘I don’t know. I suppose he wanted to know what I was doing.’
‘How would he know to go there – independently of you, I mean?’
‘He was following me.’
‘As far back as your first visit there?’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head and set the paper down, frustration showing. ‘I don’t know. It just …’ She closed her eyes and reclined onto the bed, rubbing her face. ‘It just seems a strange way to go about matters.’
I cast my mind back, thinking about Tanner and when he’d first approached me, what he’d told me and how much I believed of his story. Then the discrepancy I’d filed came back to me – him not knowing about my first beating in the back room at Ciglio’s, almost a week after I’d first visited Mrs Snyder’s. Had he stopped tailing me by that point? And then resumed later?
Lizzie’s breathing had deepened and slowed, and I realised she was drifting off, tiredness finally overcoming her. I waited a few minutes until she was fully asleep, then lifted her legs onto the bed and covered her with the comforter. I switched off the light and waited, thinking. I could hear the sounds of the casino – the crunch of the arms on the slots and applause coming from the tables. Weary as I felt, my mind was still racing – no chance at sleep.
I cracked the door open, waited a moment to ensure Lizzie didn’t stir, then slipped out.
*
I started with the cigarette girls and cocktail waitresses, working my way around the casino floor and asking variations of the same questions over and over: Did you hear about the dead girl they found in the desert? Do you know anything about her? Anyone that knew her? Is the name Henry Booker familiar to you?
I struck out on the last, and got nothing new on the rest. Most had heard about the victim and it seemed common knowledge – or at least assumption – that she was selling her body, but not one person could tell me more than that.
I moved on to the dealers and bellhops, another go round on the same questions, with a new one added in: Do you know anything about a girls-by-appointment service?
It was no surprise to be offered a line on all manner of ways to spend money for female company, but again the trail stopped dead at girls-to-order. One nugget turned up on Henry Booker: he was a regular casinogoer with a reputation for showing up on payday to blow his earnings on drink and blackjack. But according to the same dealer, he hadn’t pulled that routine at the El Cortez in a while.
I sat across the otherwise empty card table, running out of questions and out of steam. I’d changed five bucks to chips to buy time to grill the man further and still had two left; I set one down in front of me and watched him deal the cards. Thinking to get my money’s worth, I threw out one more question. ‘You know where I can find Ben Siegel?’
The man didn’t look up. ‘What you want him for?’
I took a sip of my drink, bourbon making my head woolly. ‘Settle a debt.’
He held the deck in his hands, waiting for my instruction. I tapped the felt for another card. ‘You’ll have to get in line,’ he said.
‘Behind who?’
‘Just about everyone.’
I asked for another card and he turned up the two of diamonds, my hand now eighteen. ‘On account of the Flamingo?’
‘What else?’ He flicked his eyes up, glancing around the casino floor, then looked down again. ‘They tell us we’re supposed to warn folks not to go there because it’s run by mobsters, but I can’t see what they’re worried about – it’ll never be finished. Everyone knows he’s being robbed except him.’
I tapped the felt again, not concentrating, a seven turning up.
‘Bust.’ He showed his hand and then used it to sweep up my cards.
I set down my last chip. ‘In what way?’
‘He’s being charged two, three times the going rate. No one has a problem with it because he seems to be at the top of the building needs list for anything he wants. The VFW and the Elks can’t lay their hands on materials that Siegel’s got coming in by the truckload. It was in the papers, they’re holding protest meetings against the place and it’s not even finished.’
‘If everyone’s set against him, how’s he manipulating the needs lists?’
The dealer turned his mouth down slightly. ‘Beats me – but someone must be making out from it. More money out of his pocket.’
My hand showed twenty and I waved to stay. The dealer turned his blind card over – eleven. He hit to sixteen, had to hit again and turned up a king, making him bust. He matched my chip with another.
‘Keep it,’ I said, standing up from the table.
I went back to the room and slipped inside so as not to wake Lizzie. She’d shifted position but was sound asleep. I sat down on the end of the bed and tried to bring order to my thoughts, but two drinks had dulled me enough to let tiredness take over.
I lay back on the bed and tried not to think where Nancy Hill might be right at that moment.
*
The ringing telephone woke me with a start, Lizzie too. I was disoriented, both by the unfamiliar room and the daylight, and through the haze my first thought was that it was Tanner calling to tell me Lyle Kosoff had been killed.
I shot up and snatched the phone from its cradle. ‘Yes.’
‘Yates, it’s Trip Newland.’
Lizzie looked at me, worried, mouthed, ‘Who is it?’
If my mind had been up to speed I could have guessed it would be him – the only person knew we were there. ‘What’s the news?’
‘All bad. Cops just found Henry Booker’s corpse, and I want out of this town today …’