SEVENTY-TWO

We got a couple of drinks for ourselves while we waited. Seemed to me I’d been drinking a lot more lately. When I moved to Vegas years ago I was both a drinker and a smoker. I’d pretty much cut those two vices down to almost nothing. Over the past few years I’d gone back to drinking a bit – beer, and an occasional bourbon – but still stayed away from the cigarettes.

When she came back out almost fifty-five minutes later – Jerry had suggested at the half-hour mark we check to see if she had run out on us – her make-up was perfect and she had composed herself. Still, she poured herself another brandy and lit a cigarette. The way she inhaled the smoke and expelled it, you could see she was still churning inside.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Elizabeth said she got an envelope in the mail from Phil weeks ago.’

‘The key?’ I asked.

‘She claims she never opened it. Now she says she doesn’t want to. She agreed to send the whole thing on to me by international messenger. Still, it might take two days.’

‘What about Eric?’

‘I couldn’t get him on the phone,’ she said. ‘Not at home, and not at work. He’s either in a casino or he’s—’

‘In hidin’,’ Jerry said.

‘I was going to say “dead”,’ she said, ‘but I hope you’re right, Jerry.’

‘And what about Vince?’

‘Vince agreed to meet with me.’

‘You? Alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you ask him about me?’

‘I did. He said there was no reason to meet with you.’

‘Why did you arrange to meet with him, then?’ I asked.

She shrugged.

‘I thought you’d come along, anyway.’

‘I will,’ I said.

‘Mr G.—’

‘I know, Jerry,’ I said. ‘He won’t be alone.’

‘You won’t be, either.’

‘Yeah, you’ll be there,’ I said, ‘but we’ll have to set it up so the advantage is ours.’

‘How do we do that?’ Jerry asked.

‘By controlling the time and place.’ I looked at Adrienne.

‘I’m supposed to call him back and arrange that,’ she said. ‘He was in a hurry to get off the line. He said to call back in two hours.’

I looked at Jerry, who looked back at me. I found the silence on both our parts very loud.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘We have some stuff to do. We’ll pick out a place and be back in two hours.’

‘Are you sure you can’t . . . stay?’ she asked.

This time I felt Jerry look at me, but I didn’t return it.

‘No, Adrienne,’ I said, ‘but we’ll back before the two hours.’

‘OK.’

‘Keep tryin’ Eric,’ I suggested. ‘He has to be warned.’

Jerry and I left. I knew we were thinking the same thing. If she hadn’t been able to get Eric, and DeStefano hadn’t been able to talk, why had she been in the bedroom on the phone for almost an hour?

We had two hours to figure out a place for the meeting, someplace where Jerry would have a good line of sight on us.

‘And I need to be close,’ Jerry said to me as we left Adrienne’s building. ‘If the shooter out at Red Rock was from DeStefano, he’ll probably use him again. He won’t have to be close. Me, with my forty-five, I’ll have to be closer.’

I was starting to think I was a fool to have come away from the first meeting with Vince DeStefano believing that he was not involved. Unless somebody else came out of the woodwork, he was the likely suspect . . .

‘Why’d she give us that loan shark’s name?’ Jerry asked.

‘And why was she on the phone for almost an hour?’ I asked.

‘You think she’s settin’ us up?’

‘I think the only person I’m ready to trust over the next few hours is you,’ I said. ‘So we’re gonna have to watch our backs.’

‘I got yours, Mr G.,’ he said, ‘and I know you got mine.’

I suddenly remembered something, and opened the glove compartment. There was Frank’s .38.

‘I definitely have got yours, Jerry.’