Diamond tried calling the Professor from his room at the Last Chance Motel. He got no answer. The P.I. did fifteen minutes of push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, and shadow boxing, then took a steamy shower.
Evans was unavailable when Red called again, but Norris arranged for Diamond to get another leased car. The car was left on a street near, but not at, the Last Chance Motel. He watched as a casino employee got out and into a car driven by another employee.
Diamond waited until he was sure they were gone before climbing into the car, turning the keys that had been left in the ignition, and heading to meet Velma.
“What did you do at Speedy?” Velma asked as a greeting.
“Crane pushed me. He’s used to pushing people who don’t push back. He made a mistake.”
“A couple of the women from the office called. They said you hit him.”
“Just once.”
He walked over to a divan and sat. She poured glasses of white wine, gave him one, and sat next to him. Any closer and she would’ve been on his lap.
She was wearing dime store perfume. Her face had a lot more lines than he’d first noticed. She flicked her tongue into the wine like a cat lapping milk.
They sipped in silence.
Velma lived in a seedy garden apartment, with a sun-bleached carpet and stains on the frayed curtains. The room was cluttered with furniture that was more Salvation Army than W. J. Sloan. The only bright colors came from travel posters of Europe that were stapled to the cracked plaster walls.
“I’ve never been out of the country,” she said when she saw Diamond looking at them. He felt her predatory gaze boring into him.
She was wearing a top that was not quite see-through but implied it was. Her ample breasts rolled with every breath. Skintight jeans tapered down to painted toenails and sling backs. Her hair was freshly washed, her face carefully made-up. He was getting the deluxe treatment.
She kept her eyes seductively half-opened. Coupled with her natural hardness, it came across as dangerously cunning.
Diamond got out a cigarette. Velma reached into his pocket, took one for herself, and lit both.
“That Crane is a real creep. I’m sure he deserved what you gave him. He’s got two other girlfriends. That I know of. And a wife and three kids. But he gets bent out of shape if I talk to another guy.”
“Why don’t you dump him?”
“The pay’s pretty good,” she said. “How old do you think I am?”
He debated whether to knock a couple of years off his estimate, but decided against it. “Around fifty.”
“I guess it’s starting to show,” she said sadly. “I’m forty-nine.”
Diamond decided to let her speak her piece. He puffed his cigarette.
“I been getting a raw deal my whole life. I used to be on the floor show at the Riviera. Then at the Lion’s Den. You didn’t know that, did you?”
He shook his head.
“That’s right. Then I got involved with a half-smart guy. My ex. That’s what I draw. Guys too smart to see how they’re screwing up. He’s in the slammer now. I hope the bum never gets out.”
She rose and retrieved an ashtray.
“My father ran out on my mother the day I was born,” she said. “And men been letting me down ever since.”
“Not someone as sweet as you.”
“Go ahead and make cracks.” She stood up abruptly. “I want what’s coming to me. I ain’t ashamed I’m looking out for number one. It’s a sure thing nobody else in the world will.”
“How’d you get the Professor to talk?” Diamond asked.
“Easy. He’s about as hard to read as the comic pages. Asked me out a couple of times. I heard he was real excited when he called in. I thought they’d gotten a new book at the library. I teased him a bit and he began showing off.”
She smirked, an evil expression that fit her face too well. “The Professor showed me where the gravy train is and I’m climbing aboard,” she said.
“What do you want and what are you selling?”
“Ten grand. A big time private dick can spare that. Then I keep my mouth shut. I want out of Vegas for good. Otherwise everyone finds out that Red Diamond is in town, and what he’s up to.”
“What am I up to?” he challenged.
“Something about the lands.”
“You know you could get me killed?”
“It’s your decision.”
Diamond didn’t tell her he was ready to shuck the Jaffe identity. Until he could get the Professor to safety, Velma could still hurt him.
“YES or no?” she demanded.
“I’ve got to think about it.”
“So think.”
‘I need time. Even if I decide yes, I’ll need a bit to raise the money.”
“You got twenty-four hours. Call me with your answer. I get paid, that’s the last you hear of me.”
“That’s what blackmailers always say.”
“Blackmail’s such an ugly word,” she said coyly as she sat down next to him again. “I rather think I’m selling information.”
“Call it what you want,” he said, getting up and moving toward the door.
She followed. “It doesn’t have to be like that.” She leaned against him, her voice the velvet rasp that drove cabbies wild. “I could use a real man. I’ll take your mind off your problems.”
“Baby, you are my problem,” he said, pushing her away and walking out.
She yelled an obscenity at his back.
The murder of Teri Lennox weighed heavily on Red’s mind as he tried calling the Professor again. No answer.
He drove over and tried the door to the Professor’s apartment. Locked and solidly set in its frame. The Professor didn’t seem to be the kind to be out enjoying Vegas nightlife. He was more the type who’d curl up with a good book than a showgirl.
He walked around back, carefully stepping over a vegetable garden. The windows were locked, as was the sliding glass door.
Diamond picked up a garden trowel, edged it between the sliding doors, and pried them apart. He slid them open and entered.
The apartment was a mess. Diamond assumed the place had been ransacked. But the chaos was too casual. Underwear on the living room floor, dishes on every table, newspapers scattered. There were none of the signs of a determined search: torn couch cushions, opened drawers, bookcases dumped out. It was just a bachelor in his natural habitat.
The only neat room was the den: an overstuffed chair, reading lamp, and four walls of bookcases. The shelves held two full encyclopedia sets, Greek and Roman classics, and textbooks. Science, history, psychology, medicine, law, art. Ontogeny Recapitulates Phytogeny. The Existential Dilemma in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Thermonuclear Ramifications of Mitochondrial Development. Even the titles were hard to read.
Diamond felt the light bulbs and the back of the television set. No sign of warmth. No signs of blood anywhere. And if Diamond was reading the debris properly, no evidence of a struggle.
He took a pen from the cluttered desk and wrote: Dear Prof, Get out right away. Go to a motel. And don’t tell anyone. Especially Velma. Red. He taped the note to the refrigerator.
As he left he wedged a small piece of paper between the front door and its frame. He went to his car, which he’d parked up the block.
He sat in the seat next to the driver’s. The car was facing away from the Professor’s apartment. He adjusted the rearview mirror so he could watch where he’d just been.
He remembered the time he’d taught the trick to Jim Rockford, when Jimbo had been starting out in L.A. Competition was fierce, but Diamond didn’t mind sharing his knowledge.
There were more good Angeleno dicks than stars on Hollywood Boulevard. Brock Callahan, Toby Peters, Fergus O’Breen, Archer, Stu Bailey, Fred Bennett, Lam and Cool, Marlowe, Shell Scott, J. J. Gittes, Jack LeVine, Ace Carpenter, Tom Kyd, Pete Schofield, Joe Puma.
Scratch Puma. He wound up with a .32 slug in the face. Word on the street was that he’d sold out. The temptations were great, but there could be no remorse for a good guy gone bad.
It’s the P.I.’s heart that separates the good dicks from the ham-fisted yo-yos who spend their time gathering evidence to break up marriages, Red thought. Sure the gimmicks were nice, like Mike Hammer’s move with the rubber wedge to trap a tail in a revolving door or Gittes’s cheap watch under the tires to record the time a car moved. But it was heart, the willingness to bang your head against a door until it opened, that made a dick great.
So he sat in the passenger’s seat, looking like someone waiting for a driver to come out. He fought to keep his eyes opened and focused, his lack of sleep tempting him with a persuasive lullaby. He kept awake by sorting through what he knew.
Not much. The only thing that intrigued him was Silky and Greenberg’s role in the Teri Lennox murder. What was the connection between the Lennox incident, the South African, and Greenberg?
Despite his best efforts, after a half hour of sitting motionless, Diamond was getting drowsy. He remembered the invitation Flamingo had given him.
The Professor would see the note and hopefully clear right out. There was little he could do baby-sitting the apartment. And Velma hadn’t begun to spread the news. Yet.
He fished Flamingo’s card out of his pocket, read it, and headed out to the address in Henderson.
It was a run-down warehouse in an industrial part of town where asphalted, barbed-wire-fringed com pounds held fleets of trucks and mammoth crates. The streets were deserted but around the warehouse a couple of dozen cars were parked.
Diamond leaned on the buzzer at the entrance, a panel in the metal door slid aside, and he held up the card for a suspicious eye.
“This place reminds me of a speakeasy,” Diamond said to the unsmiling fireplug who opened the door. The man grunted and indicated Diamond should follow.
They walked down a long hall, past vile green walls lit by bare incandescent bulbs hanging by wire from the ceiling.
“Really spent a lot fixing this place up,” Diamond said.
His host didn’t answer.
The murmur of voices grew louder and then they were in a cavernous main room. Exposed beams crisscrossed the ceiling, which was thirty feet above the concrete floor.
Roulette wheels spun, dice rolled, and cards were slapped down. But it was no glitzy casino. The wooden tables were chipped and scarred. The green felt tops were mangy. And the characters operating the games looked like a bunch of outcasts from a circus sideshow.
A fat lady in an apron as big as a tablecloth spun a roulette wheel. Card dealers included a thin man, a woman with more stubble than Diamond, and a couple of dwarves. A pudgy man whose dark mustache glistened with beads of sweat stood on an overturned carton. “Welcome! Welcome!” he boomed at Diamond. “School is about to begin. The road to riches stretches before you and we’re here to give you a lift.”
The man turned his attention to the thirty-five other people in the room. They were a mixed bag of men and women, ranging in age from their early twenties to late fifties, white, black, Hispanic, Asian. The only thing they had in common was a shabby, hungry look.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the huckster said in a voice that echoed off the hard warehouse walls, “step right up. Don’t be shy. My name is Bob and I welcome you to the Advanced School of Dealing.”
He shined a beatific smile on the group.
“I see a few new faces here tonight,” Bob continued. “I trust our oldtimers won’t mind a quick review. Las Vegas is a town built on luck. Great gushing fountains of luck. And tonight I’m going to tell you how to dip into those fountains. Through no fault of your own, you have been cheated out of your just deserts. But you listen carefully to what your friend Bob and our guest speakers have to say and soon you’ll have so much money you won’t know what to do with it.”
He went on mouthing generalities and working the crowd up like a preacher at a Holy Roller tabernacle.
“I will teach you to beat the odds,” Bob said. “The casinos don’t like that. They have some nasty names for it. I say God helps them that helps themselves. I like to think of myself as Robin Hood. And I invite you to be my merry men. And women.”
The crowd cheered like a bunch of bobby-soxers at a Sinatra concert.
“Enough from me,” Bob said with false humility. “In past nights we’ve discussed card counting, magnets and working the slots, and techniques for making the pasteboards your friends. Who remembers some of those techniques?”
“Crimping,” an elderly black man shouted.
“Riffle stacks,” a white woman said.
“Palming,” an Oriental man said.
“Very, very good,” Bob said like a pleased teacher. “Now how about different ways of marking cards?”
A bespectacled Mexican raised his hand and Bob pointed to him.
“Edge work, line work, cut out, block out, shading, trims, and sorts,” the man recited.
“Go to the head of the class,” Bob said. “A quick reminder to practice your mechanic’s grip. There will be a test next week. And now, let me turn the floor over to a gent we’ll call Joe. Joe is a virtuoso with the devil’s dominoes, a man who can make dice do everything but sit up and talk. Please give him a warm welcome.”
A bald man with a head as white as a set of virgin dice and eyes as cold as snake eyes nervously got up on the carton as the crowd applauded and Bob stepped down.
Joe stuttered and stumbled over his words but relaxed as he warmed to his subject.
“There are four basic kinds of die that can help you get an edge,” he said. “Flats, tops, loads, or edge work dice. Flats, as you might guess, are flattened on one side. Tops have ones, threes, and fives, or twos, fours, and sixes on their face. Loads are weighted. Thus the phrase ‘loaded dice.’ Edge work die are beveled so they tend to roll a certain way.”
Joe got down and strode to a table. The crowd surged around him. He began demonstrating with different dice, keeping up a running explanation of craps. He told how the house can use the dice to cheat a gambler and how they could be turned around to work in the player’s favor.
When Joe began lecturing on sleight of hand tricks for palming and switching the dice, Diamond walked away.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the Professor. If he had told Velma, who else had he spoken to? Diamond didn’t want the genius to wind up like Teri Lennox.
Bob stopped him as he was halfway down the corridor.
“My friend, where are you going?” Bob demanded.
“I remembered I left the gas on.”
‘The people that run this show don’t appreciate anyone leaving early,” Bob said, the huckster warmth replaced by a menacing tone.
“That’s too bad. Who runs this show anyway?”
“None of your business.”
“What’s the tuition here?”
“First two classes are free. Then you sign a contract. After a month in the business you can pay the thousand dollar tuition with no sweat,” Bob said, taking Diamond’s arm. “Now c’mon back in.”
The P.I. pulled away. “Mrs. Diamond didn’t raise her baby boy to be a card sharp. Good-bye.”
“Buddy, something’s not right with you.”
“You a doctor?”
“No.”
“Then don’t go practicing medicine without a license,” Diamond snapped. “The docs are sensitive about that sort of thing.”
“Are you a comedian?”
“I’ve heard that line before. I don’t have all night to exchange witty repartee,” Diamond said, turning and taking three steps toward the door.
“Hey, Rube,” Bob yelled.
Two gorillas appeared faster than a bill collector on payday. They had forearms the size of sewer mains. They grabbed him.
“Dis guy giving you trouble?” Gorilla One asked. Gorilla Two licked his lips.
“Tell King Kong and his sidekick to back off. I’m not making half the ruckus I will if they get strong with me.
“We’ll go outside and you can tell my friends a few of your jokes,” Bob said. “If they don’t laugh, they can do something funny to your face.”
Diamond’s arms were pinned to his side. There was no way he could reach his .38 as he was quickstepped down the hall.
“You guys get those muscles playing with yourself?” Diamond asked.
Bob answered for the men, who only squeezed Diamond harder. “They used to pound bigtop stakes for a living. They still like pounding things, smart guy.”
“I heard guys with big muscles are making up for having little dicks,” Red said. “Not that it matters much, since most of them are swishy.”
Gorilla One gave an enraged snort, let go of Diamond’s arm, and swung. Diamond spun, reaching for his gun. The blow caught his shoulder. It wasn’t as painful as getting hit by a cement mixer. It took all of Diamond’s willpower to keep from dropping his weapon. He shoved it into Bob’s stomach.
“How’d you like another belly button?” Diamond asked. “Tell the goon squad to go play mumblety-peg or I waste some lead.”
Bob nodded and Gorilla Two let go. They eyed Diamond like hungry sharks.
He cocked the .38. “They better back off or you won’t be here to hear about it,” Diamond said to Bob.
“Go. It’s okay,” Bob said, and the two gorillas reluctantly lumbered off.
Diamond stepped behind Bob, nudged the huckster’s back, and walked him outside.
“Now what’s the story?” Diamond asked.
“You a cop?”
“I ask the questions. Answer me. Who’s behind this?”
“I don’t know.”
Diamond put the gun to Bob’s head.
“I don’t know. Honest.”
“This set-up hasn’t impressed me with your honesty.”
“But it’s true. We were a carnie group working the boonies. Business ain’t what it used to be. This guy offered us a few grand to take over this place.” “What’s the guy look like?”
“Flashy dresser. Slick hair. Slick all over. Too sharp an operator for Winnemucca,” Bob said. “That’s where we met him.”
“Was he alone?”
“No. With a real big guy. Three hundred pounder. Had one bushy eyebrow running across his whole face. He didn’t say nothing. I don’t know if he spoke English.”
Keeping the gun on Bob, Diamond dug out the pictures of Flip and Babe. “These two?”
“Yeah. Those are the guys. Who are they?” “I ask the questions. How do you get paid?” “A money order is sent to me. From banks around Las Vegas. I never see anyone. First couple of weeks I got paid in Krugerrands, then they switched to the money orders. The guy delivering them is just a messenger.
“How long you been doing this?”
“Three months.”
“Tonight’s your last night. Pack your tent and split.”
“But—”
“No buts. Anyone contacts you, tell them Red Diamond is on the case.” The P.I. stepped back, keeping the .38 pointed at Bob’s middle.
“We could make a deal. I’ll cut you in for—”
“No deals. Get going. I’ll be back in a couple hours. If you’re lucky only the cops will be with me. If I’m in a bad mood I’ll bring a bunch of ass-kickers from the casinos. Catch my drift?” Bob nodded glumly.
“I don’t think the broken nose boys would be very happy with your show,” Diamond said.
Bob yelled the same obscenity at Diamond’s back as Velma had.
It’s a good thing I don’t have an inferiority complex, Red mused as he hopped into his car, and sped back to the Professor’s.