3

The offices of Vincent Rubio Investigations, formerly the offices of Watson and Rubio Investigations, have undergone a dramatic change of late. Minsky, the squeaky little landlord who rents me the space in this Westwood office building, got hit by some Council inquiries into his cross-species dalliances, and as I was good enough to defend the little weasel in front of the Southern California chapter, Minsky cut me some slack on the monthly bill. As a result, I’ve had the extra wherewithal to update the furnishings. Of course, when you start out with nothing more than a table and chair, even the smallest improvement is worthy of a featured spot on This Old House.

So now I’ve got a sofa and an oak desk and some art and a coffee table and all those things I had back when it was just me and Ernie—all those things that I lost back when it was just me and the basil. A lamp, for example. With shade.

My friends down at Herbaholics Anonymous convinced me to attend a few Debtors Anonymous meetings as well, even though I was adamant that I knew how to live within my means. They brought up my bankruptcy, my repossessions, my continually vacuous bank account. I explained that I’d had some business problems recently, but that the situation had been resolved. They brought up my massive credit card bills, floating along at 21 percent interest. I blamed the lax California usury laws. They brought up my complete lack of a spending plan or anything resembling good sense regarding purchasing habits, along with my propensity to throw myself headlong into the nearest upscale department store for a quick pillage-and-loot. I had little response, other than to curl into a fetal position on the sofa and mew softly. That’s what the bastards do—break you down until your natural defenses call a time-out and limp off the field. That’s the first step.

Actually, the first step was to admit that I was powerless against the herb, that my life had become unmanageable. That’s a slam dunk right there. My daily existence had reached the stage where any efficiency manager worth his salt would take one look around and instantly shut down the operation. So it was easy to move on to numbers two and three, which were to admit that there’s a power greater than myself, and then turn my life over to His will. This was a bit of a tickler for a month or so; for any dino, even the most gung ho HA member, admitting a higher power is a toughie. You don’t find many holy rollers in reptilian company. But my sponsor—a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers who’s good enough to score me free tickets every other week—helped me get past this by suggesting I take a look at the actual wording of the document. In its entirety, Step Three reads: “We choose to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.” This meant that as long as I understood God to mean the smile of a child and the kind word of a stranger and all that other rubbish, I was good to go, so hurrah hurrah for fine print.

Step Number Four: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.

I’ve been stalled there for a bit. Fearless is no problem. I’m ready to face up to whatever demons are lurking in the pits of my subconscious, and beat them back via those methods deemed necessary. It’s the searching part I’m having trouble with. I just don’t know if I have that kind of energy. A searching inventory sounds like an awful amount of work, and I don’t want to go into it half-assed.

Taking a break at Step Four also keeps me from moving on to Five and the rest, even though my sponsor tells me I don’t have to do them in strict order. Still, I’m a stickler for the rules when it fits me, and now I’m choosing to bring out the Felix Unger part of my personality. I will finish Step Four, and not move on until then. I’ll get to it sometime after this Tallarico mess is finished; I’m sure it can wait.

Despite my reservations about taking on a case for an L.A. mob boss, the twenty grand he fronted me sure comes in handy. As part of my agreement with Debtors Anonymous, I’ve constructed a spending plan for myself, putting my needs first, my solvency second, and am attempting to conduct my life within those numbers. This has proven a massive failure. Unexpected purchases have arisen, and there was little I could do about it. Nordstrom’s had a surprise sale in the men’s department, for example, with their Armani suits going at 25 percent off, and I’m sure that everyone down at DA would agree that such an event qualifies as a valid exemption.

I have, on the other hand, tried to stay current with all my creditors and pay off as much of my considerable debt as I can whenever the cash flows my way. So it’s with great relief that I call the credit card companies, the furniture dealers, the department stores, and promptly deliver a hunk of that $20,000 to its new rightful owners, leaving me with a good four grand in operating and living expenses.

Tallarico was right—I’m easily able to pawn off the other cases in my workload to the hacks down at TruTel, the PI clearinghouse owned by Mr. Teitelbaum that sends me a lot of my business. The other dicks down there are more than happy to take the jobs and front me a 10 percent finder’s fee. Sutherland, in particular, is overjoyed with the prospect of taking on the stakeout in Inglewood; since he’s been married to Teitelbaum’s sister, he’s shown a sudden desire to get out of the house for extended periods of time.

So it’s down to LAX, an easy twenty-minute drive from my offices during light traffic, a good fifty minutes or so the other twenty-three hours a day. Nelly Hagstrom, according to the information given to me by Tallarico, is coming in on Delta’s flight 782 out of Fort Lauderdale. I’ve got a blurry photograph that makes the guy look like a Yeti, a very basic description, and instructions to tail the Hadrosaur back to his hotel and beyond.

I arrive at the gate a few minutes before the plane touches down and promptly busy myself, sitting on one of the uncomfortable semicushioned chairs, pretending to read this morning’s Times. I’ve got on a baseball cap and dark clothes, nothing to distinguish me from the thousands of other travelers in the airport today. Baseball caps and dark clothing are to Los Angeles what togas were to the ancient Greeks. You don’t have to wear them, but you stick out like a narc at a Grateful Dead concert if you don’t. Hopefully Nelly Hagstrom won’t make me—that is, if I can even make him.

But the second I see that tall, muscular body filling the space in the jetway, that self-assured scowl as he brushes past the slower passengers, the fine clothing draped across his broad frame, I know I won’t need to double-check the photograph. I follow him down to the luggage carousel, where a limo driver pops up to assist him with his bags. Prada, the new collection. The driver hauls the heavy valises onto a cart and quickly wheels them from the terminal. Hagstrom follows right behind, moving easily, fluidly; he’s been here before and knows exactly where he’s going.

Fortunately, so do I. Hagstrom is staying at the Regent Beverly Wilshire, better known to pretty much everyone outside of town as the hotel where Julia Roberts and Richard Gere got it on in Pretty Woman. My agent friend Brian told me Julia’s a Stegosaur, but with that lithe body, it’s hard to believe. According to him, everyone in Hollywood is a dinosaur, only their publicists keep it well hidden with well-placed stories about their mammalian beards. Still, Julia’s jaw’s a dead giveaway, so I’ll give Brian the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Hagstrom disappears into the hotel, and I wait outside, keeping my car idling on the small side street flanking the valet lot. I picked up another Lincoln after settling my debts with the folks down at the dealership, and though it’s a used model, a few years older than I’m used to driving, it still rides like a dream. I’ve had the windows tinted out, 2 percent past the legal limit—that’s right, I live on the edge—and it’s enough to keep me safely hidden when I need to be.

Ten minutes after he enters the hotel, Nelly Hagstrom strolls back out of the Regent Beverly Wilshire’s revolving doors and into the limousine. I gun the engine of the Lincoln and pull into traffic behind them, making sure to keep a few cars back. It’s not hard; every ten feet, some idiot or another cuts me off. Since when did they remove the turn-signal feature from the modern automobile? Must have been the same time they decided to license the blind.

Speaking of licensing, limousines in Los Angeles are all awarded their permits via a highly technical and complicated process known as Paying A Lot Of Money. And as a result, each limo is given a TCP number, which basically designates them as an entity that may legally chauffeur others around the city and serve them as much alcohol as they choose. But as I drive behind Hagstrom’s car, I notice that there’s no TCP designation on it. This means one of three things—

One: the number fell off. This is nearly impossible, as the glue used is of the bumper-sticker variety, the kind of adhesive that will be around long after the twenty-megaton nuclear blasts vaporize the rest of the world. When that dark day comes and the radiation is finally falling, the freeways of L.A. will be littered with nothing but cockroaches and small rectangles proudly proclaiming MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT.

Two: the limo company is unlicensed. This is a possibility, but unlikely. The fines are stiff, the penalties greater than the benefits. Most just swallow their medicine and pay the fees and pass the costs on to their customers.

And, three, the choice I’m banking on: this is a private limo. That would mean that Hagstrom’s already in touch with his other connections here in Los Angeles, as Tallarico didn’t mention anything about sending a car for the guy.

I’m on the cell phone a few minutes later, dialing up the TruTel number and, after some frustration with the automated voicemail system, speaking to Cathy, Teitelbaum’s secretary.

“Hey, it’s Vincent.”

Cathy’s a mousy little mammal, plain and cool toward pretty much everyone who walks through the door. But when she hears my voice on the other end of the line, she manages to freeze up another degree or two.

“He’s not in.”

“I’m not calling for Mr. Teitelbaum,” I tell her. “Sutherland around?”

“I’m not the receptionist—”

“I know, but she’s away from her desk, and—”

“Hold.”

I flip around for a radio station while waiting to be connected. Most of the stations I hit are in Spanish, and though I dig my share of salsa music, there’s only so long I can listen to Latin talk radio. It’s not just that I don’t understand the words; I worry that they’re talking about me.

“Go.” The voice on the other line. It’s Sutherland, the ninny.

“Go? Who says ‘go’?”

“Oh, hey, Vincent. I dunno, I’m trying it out. You don’t like it?”

“Look.” I sigh. “I need you to run a license plate for me.” I rattle off the numbers and letters, laying out exactly what I need him to do for me, down to the last detail, because Sutherland can’t be trusted to think on his own. Last time that happened, I wound up with pumpernickel instead of rye and my entire sandwich was ruined. I can’t believe he’s a vice-president of TruTel, and all because he married the boss’s sister. Seems I’ve been screwing the wrong people all these years.

“No problem. Thanks again for that Inglewood job, by the way—”

“Sutherland,” I interrupt. “The license plate. Now.”

I can hear him sulking away, the shuffle of his shoddy shoes on the TruTel linoleum floor. The clack of a keyboard; I’m glad he knows how to operate the computer, at least at a superficial level. A few moments go by, and he’s back on the line.

“I couldn’t find it.”

“You typed it in right?”

“No, I mean I couldn’t find the program. You know, we got this new computer system in here.”

They got it three years ago. Sutherland’s big accomplishment during that time was that he learned how to “boot up,” as he put it. So I hold his cyber-hand, instructing him step-by-step on how to run a plate through the DMV registry, and soon he’s got the information I’m looking for.

“It’s registered to a business,” he says, reading the data off the screen. “Lucky Palace Resorts, Inc. I could try to get an address for you—”

“No need,” I say. “I know where it is.” And before he can get in another inane word edgewise, I click off the cell and shut down the power.

Lucky Palace is a serious misnomer for the card-club gambling house down in the Norwalk region of Los Angeles. No slot machines, no roulette wheels—no “games of chance,” as the legislature likes to call them—but poker and 21 and other representative “games of skill” are fully allowed. The few dinos I know who’ve gone there haven’t gotten very lucky, and none would dare to describe it as a palace.

Which is not to say the owners don’t try. The Lucky Palace has a showroom, just like the big Vegas casinos, where they spotlight aging lounge acts, just like the big Vegas casinos. And they offer a buffet for an ungodly pittance of money, just like the big Vegas casinos, where, depending on your overall digestive health, you may or may not contract food poisoning. And they’ve got cocktail waitresses whose combined clothing barely equals a single yard of fabric, and carpets that practically scream at you to stare away or go blind, and obscured exit signs, and ubiquitous ATM machines, and . . .

But it’s missing that aura of glamour, of ostentation. When you’re in Vegas, all your worldly cares drop away, replaced by a delicious haze of excess and consumption. When you’re at the Lucky Palace, you’re mostly worried about your car getting stolen.

Inside, the Lucky Palace is everything I expected, and less. The gaming tables are nowhere near as plentiful as they should be, the carpet nowhere near as thick. The paint on the walls is cracked in places, the ceiling tiles pocked with holes.

“You gonna play or you gonna loiter?” asks a casino guard, muscling his way up to me in a dull gray uniform.

“Does it matter?”

The guy nods. Human, no doubt. His cologne is both powerful and cheap; I wonder if he thought he’d be picking up any dates this afternoon. Chicks really dig a man with a walkie-talkie and name badge. “You can’t loiter. State gaming rules. Play or move along.”

“State gaming rules or Lucky Palace rules?” I ask.

He gives me a glance and reaches for his walkie-talkie, as if I’m the kind of guy on whose account you gotta call for backup. “I’m walking, I’m walking,” I say, and continue my stroll down the gaudy carpet. I can’t create a scene yet; Tallarico would probably look unfavorably upon having to bail my tail out of casino prison.

It takes me a while to locate Hagstrom again, but eventually I catch a whiff of his scent and follow my snout. There are a number of dinosaurs in the joint this afternoon, their smells intertwining with one another, but like a weaver at his loom, I’m able to pick up a single thread from the skein and follow it to the source.

Behind the poker room, past the bar with the free maraschino cherries and stale peanuts, is a small, sunken pit, surrounded by faux marble columns. The red velvet walls and thick umber carpet contrast with the otherwise bargain-basement decor of the Lucky Palace, and it only takes me a moment to realize I’ve stumbled upon the one game about which I know absolutely nothing: baccarat.

Hagstrom’s inside the pit, sitting across from the house dealer at a small table. Next to him is the only other player in the room, an older gentleman with a mane of fine gray hair cascading across his shoulders. I can tease out the pine riding the air that’s coming from his direction; the old guy is a reptile, no bones about it.

And now that I’m getting a good look at Hagstrom, I’ve got time to focus in on his face. The mask is familiar, in a way—perhaps, as Tallarico suggested, I’ve seen it in the gossip columns. But there’s an odd scar in the center of his forehead that throws the thing out of alignment, a small patch of twisted skin that’s decidedly out of place. Most of the time, cosmetic additions like these are strictly aftermarket, added in at extra expense; whatever happened to this guy’s head must have been drastic enough to warrant extra guise manipulation. Then again, some dinos just get tired of walking around all day in the same old costume and dig a little body modification. I remember a few years back, all the young kids were going around getting extra moles and birthmarks sewn into their guises until the Councils cracked down on the accessories shops. Now the teens just pierce themselves silly, and no one complains.

Hagstrom looks at his partner as I enter the room and gives a little shake of his head. He doesn’t seem especially thrilled that I’ve chosen to enter his territory.

“Afternoon, fellas,” I say cordially, taking a seat next to Hagstrom.

Curt nods all around; I can’t be sure that Hagstrom does anything other than grunt. But the older fellow gives me a quick once-over. “Afternoon. I haven’t seen you here before.”

“Usually I play up a ways.”

“Up a ways? And where would that be?”

Think, Vincent, think. You’ve seen billboards off the 101 Freeway. “The Chumash Casino. On the Indian reservation.”

“Didn’t know they had baccarat,” the older man says.

“Oh, they’ve got quite the operation.”

He nods, and I can’t figure out whether he’s decided I’m for real or a world-class jerk. “You enjoy baccarat?” he asks.

“Of course,” I say. “Sport of kings.”

“Polo,” Hagstrom growls. I can smell his scent now, a sharp stick of cinnamon and burnt soy.

“Excuse me?”

“Polo is the sport of kings.”

“Oh,” I say. “I thought it was the sport of rich assholes.”

This one gets another snort of derision from Hagstrom, but a good laugh from the old guy. “Lighten up, Nelly,” he says. “The fellow is here to play.”

“And play I shall.” I fish around for my wallet in my back pocket and pull out a couple of twenty-dollar bills. “Could I get some chips?”

Hagstrom and the dealer share a look of undisguised contempt. Clearly I’ve made a boo-boo. “We use cash in the baccarat pit,” the dealer informs me. “Perhaps you wish to play elsewhere.”

“No, no,” I insist. “Cash will do.” I toss a twenty on the table. “You got change?”

Another condescending blast from the dealer’s eyes. “We have a fifty-dollar minimum bet per hand.”

Fifty dollars per hand? I’d better get a damned receipt for this. “Of course. Let’s fire it up.”

The dealer sighs and pushes a shoe of cards toward Hagstrom.

“Bets?” he says.

Hagstrom snaps his fingers, and a younger fellow materializes from the darkness of the pits with a thick billfold in his hands. From his quick response and respectful mannerisms, I’d guess he’s a soldier in training. Does the mafia have internships?

He hands the wad of cash to Hagstrom, who pulls four bills off the top and slides them to the dealer. “Four hundred on house.”

Now all eyes are on me. It seems I’ve got at least two options—player or house—and it’s probably best that I don’t color outside the lines right now. “Player,” I instruct the dealer. “Fifty. Start out light.”

No response from the dealer; he turns to Hagstrom and nods. Nelly scratches the table in front of the shoe, his long fingernail dragging across the felt. Back and forth, left to right, he draws a lazy circle, keeping his eyes glued on the deck of cards.

“You really think that helps?” the old man says.

“Quiet, Douglas.”

“I tell you, Nelly, I see folks come into this pit with all sorts of superstitions, and the odds play out the same every time.”

Hagstrom doesn’t stop scratching. “Don’t get me going, old man.”

We’re all prisoner to Hagstrom’s pre-deal ritual, waiting for our sentence to be commuted. Eventually, he lifts his hand from the table, raises it two inches above the felt, and slowly peels the top card from the shoe, caressing the plastic as if he were undressing a lover. I’m a little surprised that they’re letting the players handle the cards; most casinos like to have a firm hold on that sort of thing. Maybe this is how they settle delinquent debts—working it off in the casino; the really bad gamblers have to park cars.

Hagstrom flips the card over. Eight of hearts. “Eight,” the dealer announces, as if we’d all suddenly gone blind. He then draws his own card from the deck without all the pomp and circumstance, and sets it across from Hagstrom’s card. Four of clubs.

“So player wins?” I ask.

Hagstrom sighs, but the older guy—Douglas, it seems—smiles as he instructs me that we’re not yet done with the hand. “Closest to nine wins,” he says, “after two or three cards.”

“Of course.” I pause, hoping he’ll fill me in more, but no luck. I try for a little clarification. “Two or three?”

He proceeds to run through a list of arcane rules involving adding numbers to other numbers, checking them against some chart, and figuring out whether or not your moon is in Virgo, but when the cards are dealt and the game is over, I hear the sweetest words ever uttered on a gaming floor:

“Player wins.”

A hundred dollars slides back into my lap. I could learn to like this game, especially if there’s no need to waste my time actually understanding it.

Thirty minutes later, I’m more confused than ever, but up by nearly two thousand bucks. Nelly Hagstrom’s grinding his teeth in what I can only assume is rage, because he’s lost something on the order of a shitload, and doesn’t seem amused that I, a complete novice, have bested the house 90 percent of the time.

“I’m done,” Hagstrom growls, ripping the discarded cards in half and tossing them to the felt. “Fucking casino cheats . . .”

Douglas tries to soothe him. “Nelly, don’t be that way. Last time you took us for forty thousand.”

“And this time I lost it back.”

Douglas shrugs. “And thus is the nature of the beast.”

But the old man’s platitudes do little to calm Hagstrom, as the Hadrosaur paces back and forth across the carpet of the baccarat pit, hands smoothing out his fine black wig over and over again. The young soldier stands, flanking Nelly, doing his best to stay near his boss without falling into a Rockettes-style kick line with the guy.

“I understand,” Douglas says, keeping his tone soft, even. “Come, let’s go on back, check out the new shipment of talent. Maybe after, you can come back, play again. On the house.”

Hagstrom doesn’t say a word as he and his foot soldier storm out of the baccarat pit and onto the main casino floor. Douglas turns to shake my hand. “You take care,” he says to me. “And good luck.”

“You too,” I call back.

He gives a little laugh, shakes his head, and walks after Hagstrom and his partner. I watch as the three of them disappear into a small, unmarked door near the poker room, then turn back to the dealer.

“He wasn’t making any bets,” I say.

“Who?”

“The older one.”

The dealer nods as he breaks open a brand-new deck of cards and runs them through an automatic shuffler. “Doesn’t have to. He owns the joint.”

“That Douglas guy?”

“Doug Triconi,” the dealer tells me. “Bought it from the original owners a few years ago. Pretty swell boss, as bosses go.”

I should process this information. I should get out of here fast and prepare to tail Hagstrom again and, in my free time, check out all I can about Douglas Triconi so I’m better informed when I give my update to Tallarico. But as I rise from the table, my hand grasping the green, green bills on the felt, the dealer’s shadow falls over me.

“Play again, sir?”

I look down at the cards, at the new deck shining inside that shoe. At the reflective plastic, never before touched by skin or guise. And I think about the feeling of flipping them over, the terrible and wonderful anticipation of those bright-red and deep-black numbers.

“Just one more,” I agree, falling back into that comfortable chair and pushing my money into the center of the table. “For the road.”