A Song to Die For (28 page)

“I've always paid my markers. You know that.”

“Yeah, when you had something to pay with. You're broke. No more credit. You don't play till you pay.”

“Come on, Gordy. I finally broke my streak of bad luck at the tables last week. I'm on a roll. Let me win the money back.”

Gordy shook his head. “You're too big of a risk now.”

“What about me?” Creed said. He rattled the Crown Royal bag. “You owe me from last week. I'm not in the hole with you.”

Gordy took the chips. “You work for him, right?” He nodded toward Luster. “I'll apply this to what he owes.”

“The hell you will! You owe
me
that money!”

The burly guard squared off in Creed's face. Creed was a split second away from taking him down with a head butt to the bridge of his nose, or knee to his groin.

“Easy, Creed,” Luster warned.

Creed stood his ground, but resisted further aggression.

Gordy looked at Tump. “Who's this? Did you bring your goon with you?”

“Close,” Luster said. “He's our bass player. Now, let's all just settle down and talk this over. Gordy, you can't put the kid's chips on my account. He won fair and square last week, before the shootin' started.”

“Shootin'?” Tump groaned.

“All right, I'll pay him off,” Gordy said. “But he can't play. Nobody wants his trigger-happy ass in the game.”

“If it hadn't been for my happy trigger, we all would have been robbed, or worse.”

“Yeah, you're a regular Buffalo Bill Earp,” Gordy said. “You almost got us all arrested.”

“Don't you mean Wyatt?” Tump asked.

“Buffalo Bill Wyatt. Whatever. How much did you win last week, Billy Holliday?”

“Are you going for Doc Holliday or Billy the Kid?” Tump asked.

“Eleven hundred,” Creed said. “You can count the chips.”

“I trust you. Easy, now, I'm reaching for my wad.” Slowly, Gordy pulled a fold of bills from the breast pocket of his jacket and peeled off eleven one-hundred-dollar notes. “You boys need to find another game in another town. And Luster, you need to pay up, or I'll have to send a collector to visit you. Neither one of us wants that.”

“I always pay my markers.”

“I made a few calls. You've got markers to pay from Lake Charles to Reno. Just make sure you pay mine first. I know where you live.”

“No need to threaten me,” Luster said. “Everybody's going to get paid.”

“Don't make me wait too long.”

“Well, nice meeting you both,” Tump drawled, “but we've got to be running along now.”

Creed let Tump drag him away by the sleeve. He had his money. That would get the band down the road to the next gig, wherever that might be. He took a few deep breaths on the way to the van to let his temper simmer down. Steering the van up the gravel drive, Creed noticed that Tump was keeping an eye trained out the rear window. When they hit the pavement, he finally turned forward.

“So let me get this straight,” he said. “Last week, you two went to a gunfight, and a poker game broke out?”

“Something like that,” Luster replied.

 

28

CHAPTER

Hooley spotted Special Agent Mel Doolittle waiting on the sidewalk in front of the terminal, holding his suitcase, his briefcase, and his spy phone. Hooley stopped his truck, pulling the bass boat on the trailer behind, just long enough to let Mel jump in. They shook hands.

“I brought my lucky fishing hat,” Mel said, smiling.

Hooley had more pressing issues on his mind. “I need you to brief me on the missing persons you mentioned last night.”

The smile slipped from Mel's face. “But enough small talk. Okay. About the time Rosa fled Vegas, a casino manager by the name of Bert Mathers disappeared. He hasn't been seen since.”

“From one of Paulo Martini's casinos?”

“Exactly. He was the manager of The Castilian.”

Hooley ground his teeth. “You reckon maybe Rosa could have told us what happened to him?”

Mel shrugged. “That's one possible scenario. Maybe she saw something she wasn't supposed to see.”

“Who else is missing in action?”

“A while back, Rosa was dating a lieutenant in the Las Vegas Police Department. We've been keeping tabs on him since Rosa's death. Yesterday, he took an emergency leave of absence and dropped off the radar.”

“I thought you were keeping tabs on him.”

Chagrinned, Mel said, “He gave us the slip.”

“His name wouldn't be Lieutenant Jake Harbaugh, would it?”

Mel looked truly shocked. “Yeah. How'd you…?”

“He was found dead about half an hour ago in a lake house overlooking our favorite fishing hole. There's a suicide note. I told them not to touch a thing and we'd be right there.”

Mel began clawing at the latches to the leather case holding his spy phone. “I've got to call my partner—get a warrant to search Harbaugh's place in Vegas.” He yanked the receiver from the portable phone and listened to the headset. “Hey, I actually have a dial tone!” He began hurriedly punching in numbers. “Hooley, pull over, will you? I don't want to loose this connection.”

Without signaling, Hooley changed two lanes in front of honking traffic and whipped into the parking lot of a Circle K store and gas station. He watched as Mel listened to his phone, then shook the box and cursed.

“Go back a couple of blocks,” Mel suggested. “There was a signal back there.”

Hooley just stared at him.

“Just two blocks,” Mel pleaded.

“Hey, Slick. You recognize that antique right outside your door?”

Mel turned and looked at the phone booth Hooley had deliberately pulled up next to.

The young agent shoved his spy phone aside and opened the truck door, too embarrassed to make eye contact with Hooley. He jumped out and slammed the door unnecessarily hard. He reached into his pocket as he stepped into the phone booth. His hand still in his pocket, he hung his head. Slowly, he trudged back to the truck and opened the door.

“Sorry I slammed the door so hard. I forgot it's your private vehicle.”

“Yeah.” Hooley was shifting in the seat, reaching into his pocket. “Anything else you want to say?”

Mel nodded and rolled his eyes. “May I borrow a quarter?”

Hooley chuckled and handed him the coin. Mel clicked the door closed and turned toward the phone booth.

*   *   *

An hour later, having driven ninety miles per hour out to Sunset Shores, Hooley pulled his bass boat past half a dozen squad cars from various agencies and parked in front of the crime scene. He nodded at the deputy sheriff guarding the rental house and entered through the open garage, Mel on his heels with his briefcase.

“That's Harbaugh's Land Cruiser, all right,” Mel said.

Stepping through the open door to the kitchen, Hooley stopped at first sight of the corpse lying on the floor, hair caked with dried blood that had pooled on the linoleum, then blackened around the head like a satanic halo. He looked back at the deputy. “Has anybody been in here?”

“Nobody's taken one step past where you're standing.”

Hooley stepped aside to let Mel in. “Well, Special Agent Doolittle. This looks like a job for the F.B.I.”

Mel entered the room carefully, eyeing the dead body like a man walking around a rattlesnake, keeping his distance. “That's Harbaugh.” He put his briefcase on the kitchen counter, opened it, and removed an instamatic camera with a flash.

“The D.P.S. photographer's on the way.”

Mel nodded. “I just want a few shots of my own.”

“Ah, memories,” Hooley jested.

Mel slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and half-circumnavigated the body, taking flash shots and winding the camera with his thumb. He knelt as close to the body as he could without treading on dried droplets of blood. “Interesting.”

“What do you see?”

“There's blood spatter all over the weapon in his hand, but only a drop or two on his hand.”

“Imagine that.”

Mel backtracked for a closer look at the suicide note. Carefully, he lifted the piece of paper by one corner. He put the camera back in his briefcase, and removed a magnifying glass.

“Whatcha got there, Sherlock?”

Mel was looking alternately at the back of the note, then the tabletop, then the note again. “There's a single droplet of blood on the
back
of this note. The paper picked it up from the tabletop.”

“So he put a bullet in his own brain,
then
laid the note down. Tough guy. Look what he supposedly shot himself with.”

Mel nodded. “A twenty-two Baretta auto with a silencer.”

“Didn't want to disturb the neighbors. This is bullshit. He's wearing his sidearm. What is that? A forty-five?”

“Nine millimeter,” Mel said.

“If you were gonna end it all, would you trust a plinky little twenty-two, or do the job right with your nine mil?”

“Harbaugh wasn't the type to do himself in, anyway.”

“Frank's been here,” Hooley announced.

“Franco?”

“That's what I said. I'll have the boys dust the place for prints and take enough pictures for a class yearbook. Doc Brewster will have an autopsy done by the end of the day. What else do you need to do?”

“I want to talk to the cleaning lady, and the company that rented the lake house.”

“You do that. I'll launch the bass boat.”

*   *   *

Hooley launched his boat, noticing that the lake level had already dropped nearly a foot from his last visit here. When Mel had wrapped up his interviews, he trotted to the dock from the nearby crime scene and jumped in the boat. Hooley motored out past the snag that had caused Rosa's boat wreck, a little over a week ago, now standing a foot above the dropping water level.

“I've been thinking about The Crew's Inn,” Mel said, shouting over the whine of the outboard. “If I wanted to boat to the bar, instead of drive—especially at night—I wouldn't want to have to go very far.”

Hooley nodded. “Makes sense to me.”

“You remember where that old fart accused us of being shithead Republicans?”

“Yep.”

“That's a likely neighborhood from which to go on a boat ride to the bar.”

“The most likely, I'd say. That's where we're headed.”

“Are we going to be able to get back to the boat ramp, with the lake dropping like this?”

“I know the channels. Leave the driving to ol' Hooley.”

They motored as fast as they dared, considering the lowering of the lake giving rise to newly emerging obstacles. Pulling into Shithead Republican Cove, Hooley killed the outboard and dropped his electric trolling motor off the bow of the boat where he could sit in the swivel chair up front and cast his lures.

“So, you're really gonna fish?” Mel said.

“If you'd been fishin' as long as I have, kid, you could feel around underwater with your lure like it was your own hand.” He made a cast as he rounded a bend in the channel flanked on both sides by lake houses. “Hey, look ahead. It's our ol' pal.”

The old man was puttering around his dock, looking over newly exposed timbers and concrete. When he saw Hooley and Mel coming, he retreated to his house. The lawmen continued to troll, coming to the high-dollar neighborhood where the fancy boathouses faced the channel with doors like garage doors. Most of the doors were closed, but with the lowering of the lake, the fishermen could begin to see under them, into the private boat slips. Some were empty. Some housed vessels, hanging from boat lifts. None yet revealed the old wooden craft they sought.

Hooley entertained himself by expertly flipping his lure underhanded through the narrow horizontal gaps created between the garage doors and the dropping waterline. Mel tried to emulate the technique, but kept slamming his lure into the closed doors, missing the open gap below them.

“Nice try, Slick.”

“I'll get it. I just need a few more practice throws.”

“Do you always fire a warning shot, too?”

“I've never had to fire my weapon at anybody. You?”

Hooley made a perfect cast and shrugged. “A few times, over the years. The thing is, you've got to be ready to do it when the time comes. Ain't no second place in a gunfight.”

Mel finally made a textbook cast, just under the bottom of a boathouse door, far into the empty stall behind it. “Hey, look at that cast!” he said.

“Beginner's luck.”

“Uh-oh. I'm snagged on something.”

Hooley killed the trolling motor with the foot switch. “I'll back up. Maybe you can pull it loose.” He maneuvered back down the channel a few feet, the way he had come, but Mel's lure was still snagged on something underwater.

“It feels like I'm hooked on something that I can lift a foot or so, then it hangs up,” Mel said.

“Let me get you closer. Reach your rod up into the boat slip and lift it straight up.”

Mel followed the suggestion. “It feels like it came loose,” he said, reeling, the rod still bent.

“Reel it in. See what you got.”

Mel lifted a small, flared, bell-shaped object into view, covered with silt. It was precariously lodged on the point of his fishing lure's hook.

“What the hell is that?” Mel asked.

“A piece of an air horn,” Hooley said, motioning for Mel to swing the object over to him at the end of the fishing pole. “You screw a can of compressed air onto the bottom of this thing.”

Mel nodded. “A noisemaker. Like some people would use at a ball game.”

He dislodged the hook from the horn. “Or in a boat at night, to warn off other boaters in the dark.”

“What do you think it was doing down there?”

Hooley shrugged. “Either somebody accidentally dropped it overboard, or…”