Hotline to Murder (16 page)

Tony stood up and shook hands with him
across the table. “Sit down,” he said. “Would you like something to
eat?”

“Maybe a coke,” Paul said, his first words
other than hello.

Tony signaled the waitress while Shahla
said, “So what’s this limerick on your shirt?” She read it
aloud:

“
Now God was designing a mammal,

With beauty and grace, without trammel,

By computer, of course,

The genetics said ‘horse,’

But the disk crashed and out came a
camel.”

“The Association for the Prevention of Cruel
Statements About Camels is not going to like that,” Tony said.

Paul looked uncertain, as if he didn’t know
whether Tony was serious. But then he smiled. He said, “I won a
contest on the Internet for writing it.”

“I like your sense of humor,” Shahla said.
“I could see it in the poems on your website. “Does that book have
your poems in it?”

Paul nodded shyly.

“May I see it?”

He slid the notebook across the table to
her. It was a three-ring binder, crammed full of pages. Tony
wondered whether he spent all his time writing poetry. Didn’t he
have to work for a living? And did all poets have a similar
notebook? Shahla had said she kept her poems in one.

Shahla started leafing through the book,
reading and commenting on some of the poems, always positively. She
and Tony had agreed that if he brought poems with him—and she had
asked him to in her e-mails—that they would try to look at all of
them. Of course, if they could find a copy of the spaghetti strap
poem, that would be a coup. If not, they would look for other poems
with similar style or subject matter.

Tony was relying on Shahla to do most of the
work. In retrospect, it was a good thing she was here. He would
never have been able to fake enough of an interest in or knowledge
about poetry to fool Paul. When Shahla excused herself to go to the
lady’s room, he was stuck for something to say. He decided on a
subject he knew something about.

“Do you ever do any gambling?” he asked.

“People who live here will tell you they
don’t gamble,” Paul said, “but that’s not necessarily true. I like
to play video poker once in a while.”

“Where’s a good place to play?”

“I like the New York-New York because it has
some machines that pay eighty to one for four of a kind. They’re
hidden in a corner as you curve around from the theaters.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Tony said.

Shahla came back, and the discussion
returned to poetry.

“I notice that a lot of your poems are about
pain,” Shahla said. “You use metaphors for pain.”

Paul didn’t immediately reply. Tony knew
from his Hotline training that he and Shahla should remain silent
and wait for Paul to say something. The silence dragged on for
several minutes. Shahla continued to leaf through the book, looking
completely at ease. Tony admired her composure.

In his calls to the Hotline, Paul had
sometimes talked about an abusive aunt. Or abusive parents.
Somebody had abused him. Maybe that’s where the pain came from. If
so, did that trauma color his feelings toward all women? Tony
leaned toward Shahla and read pieces of some of the poems. The
figures of speech in the poems, such as “a fire inside that makes
me scream” must be the metaphors Shahla was talking about. They
were not specific as to where the pain originated.

“I’m feeling better,” Paul said finally.
“The pain is going away. Maybe I won’t be able to write poetry
anymore.” He smiled.

“Has something good happened to you?” Shahla
asked.

“I have a new girlfriend.”

“You should have brought her with you.”

“She’s working today.”

“When was the last time you were in Los
Angeles?” Tony asked, hoping to speed things up. They didn’t seem
to be accomplishing anything and he was getting bored.

Paul hesitated and then said, “I’ve never
been to Los Angeles.”

“Never?” Tony said, not believing him.
Everybody who lived in the West had been to Los Angeles.

“My parents don’t like big cities, and I
just never got there on my own.”

Shahla had finished going through the book.
She glanced at Tony and imperceptibly shrugged her shoulders. What
now? It was time for direct action. Tony reached into his pants
pocket and pulled out a copy of the spaghetti strap poem. It was
folded and wrinkled.

He smoothed it out and said, “I’m not much
of a poet, but I found one poem that I kind of like. He pushed it
across the table and watched Paul’s eyes as he read it, hoping to
see a spark of something. He didn’t detect anything.

When he finished reading it, Paul said, “It
sounds like it was written by a teenage boy with raging hormones,
but very few teenage boys can write poems like this.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it takes a lot of practice and a
certain amount of ability to achieve that use of meter, rhyme and
organization.”

“So who do you think wrote it, then?” Shahla
asked.

Paul pushed his glasses up on his nose. He
did that frequently. He said, “It was probably written by an older
man who wishes he were still a teenager.”

After some further discussion about the
poem, Paul excused himself to use the restroom.

Tony said, “Well, do you think he wrote
it?”

“Definitely not,” Shahla said.

“Then we have no more use for him. Let’s get
rid of him.”

“Tony. You know as well as I do that our
callers have fragile psyches. We can’t just dismiss him.”

“Well, what do you suggest then?”

“I read about an art exhibition at one of
the hotels. We could invite him to accompany us to see that.”

Was she falling for this geek, just because
he was tall and wrote pretty words? Tony caught himself before he
said anything he would regret. “Great idea.”

When Paul came back, Shahla brought up the
subject of the exhibition.

Paul said, “I’d…really like to, but I’m
meeting my girlfriend after she gets off work. If fact, I should be
leaving now. It was really nice to meet both of you.”

He picked up his notebook. Tony shook his
hand. Shahla gave him a hug, which apparently surprised him. He
turned and almost ran to the door of the coffee shop. As he went
through the doorway, he turned and looked back at them, giving a
tentative wave. Then he was gone.

CHAPTER 19

“There’s the Sahara. The Riviera. Oh look,
Circus Circus.” Shahla excitedly craned her neck and read the names
of the hotels as they crawled past them, stuck in the Saturday
afternoon traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard. “Can we go inside just
one?”

“You know you have to be twenty-one to
gamble,” Tony said. He had put the top of the Porsche down to enjoy
the sun. It was easier to cruise slowly along in the car than to
face the hassle of parking and walking in the heat.

“What are they going to do, card me? It
didn’t look as if they were watching too closely at the Tortoise
Club.”

“But we didn’t do any gambling there.”

“I can look older. I brought a dress with
me. It’s in the trunk, er, the front.”

“We’re stuck in traffic, and there’s no
place to change.”

“I can handle it. Open it up so I can get my
bag.”

Shahla started getting out of the car.

“Shahla. What are you doing?” When he saw
she wasn’t going to stop, he said, “Stick your fingers under the
hood to release it. And when you shut it use two hands.” And do it
gently.

Shahla went around to the front of the
Porsche, oblivious to the stares of the other motorists stuck in
traffic. Tony had no choice but to unlatch the hood. Shahla grabbed
her small traveling bag and brought the cover down hard enough to
make Tony wince. She was back in the car in thirty seconds.

“What are you going to do now?” Tony asked
as he inched forward.

In answer, Shahla unzipped the bag and
pulled out a dress. “It’s my mom’s. We wear the same size. Don’t
you think it will make me look older?”

“Yes, but as you can see there’s no place to
change.”

“Don’t look.”

To his amazement, she pulled her top up over
her head in one fluid motion. Sure, she was wearing a bra, but all
the tourists in their SUVs, towering over them, had a good view of
her as they looked down at the little Porsche. And telling him not
to look? She might as well tell a bear not to hibernate.

“I saw the ads for the nudie shows,” Shahla
said as she unzipped her jeans. “Las Vegas is a pretty casual
place.”

It was no easy job for her to wriggle out of
her tight jeans in the enclosed space. She had to lift her legs and
place her bare feet against the windshield of the car in order to
accomplish it. Some senior citizens in a tour bus watched her,
fascinated. Maybe they thought she was part of the entertainment on
the Strip. Several guys in a van opened their windows and cheered.
It was a good thing Tony was stuck in traffic, or he would have
been in danger of wrecking the car.

She had an easier time getting on the dress.
She pulled it over her head and worked it down, slowly, until
eventually it reached her knees, and she became the picture of
modesty.

“There,” she said. “How do I look?”

“Like a million dollars. You should be on
display in a casino to show what a million looks like.”

“I’m not through.”

Next, Shahla took her long hair and wrapped
it into a bun. Then she applied a little more lipstick and some eye
shadow to what had been an almost makeup-free face. She turned to
face Tony.

“What do you think now?”

“Okay, I give up. We’ll go to New York-New
York. I heard they have some video poker machines that have a good
payoff.”

It took a while, but Tony was eventually
able to park within walking distance of the hotel. Shahla took his
arm as they knifed their way through the crowds of pedestrians
outdoors, despite the September heat, and finally made it into the
air-conditioned interior of the hotel.

“It’s so big,” Shahla said, craning her neck
in all directions, as they strolled through the gaming area, which
was like an irresistible force that oozed its way into all corners
of the building not taken up by restaurants, theaters, or
shops.

They stopped beside one of the blackjack
tables, where a bored dealer was dealing out of a shoe to a couple
of bored players.

“Can we play this?” Shahla asked as one of
the players displayed an ace-king combination and collected his
reward from the dealer.

“Not here,” Tony said. In spite of her
transformation, it wouldn’t be wise to let Shahla be scrutinized by
a dealer and the unseen employees who watched all the games on
video monitors. In addition, the minimum bets were far too high to
allow her to play just for fun.

They wandered around, looking at the other
games. They watched the roulette wheel spin, and Tony explained
some of the bets at the craps table. They read the information
about the shows that were playing. Shahla was interested in
everything.

Finally, Tony realized that the afternoon
was moving along, and they would be very late getting home. He told
Shahla they had to go.

“We haven’t tried gambling yet, ourselves,”
she said. “You promised.”

“We’ll play a little video poker.”

Tony led her to the area that as nearly as
he could tell was where Paul had talked about. After some wandering
around, he spotted a cluster of video poker machines in a
relatively isolated place. He checked the payoffs on one of them.
Sure enough, it paid eighty to one for four of a kind. It also had
a slot that accepted bills. He inserted a five dollar bill and
twenty credits appeared on the monitor.

“Do you know how to play poker?” Tony asked
as he figured out which buttons to press.

“No.”

“Your mom is never going to forgive me for
corrupting you, but here goes. This kind of poker is called
five-card draw because you get dealt five cards, and then you can
draw to replace any or all of them. Aces are high, deuces, that is
twos, are low. You have to get at least a pair of jacks to win.
Other winning hands, in order of increasing value, are two pairs,
three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind,
straight flush.”

“Now tell me that in English.”

“In English, what we’re always trying for on
this machine is four of a kind, because it pays eighty to one,
which is better than most machines. We use our other wins to
maintain our capital so we can go for the big one.”

Shahla caught on much too quickly. Soon she
was pressing the buttons herself, and playing with minimal guidance
from Tony concerning how many cards to draw. After ten minutes, she
hit four eights and screamed as the credit counter tallied up the
score.

“Congratulations.” Tony pushed the button to
get the cash out of the machine. Quarters came gushing into the
tray. He picked up one of the paper containers available for that
purpose and scooped all the coins into it. He said, “Now we can go
home.”

“Already? We’ve only just begun.”

“Any time you hit a sizeable jackpot, you
cash out and start over. That way you keep your perspective. Even
when you’re only playing for quarters. But this is a good time for
us to leave. We’ve got a long ride.”

When they exchanged the quarters for bills,
Tony figured they were about seventeen dollars ahead. Not much, but
winning was better than losing.

Shahla said, “Of course, that money belongs
to you because we were playing with your money to start with. Now I
want to play a little with my own money so I can keep the
winnings.”

She pulled a five dollar bill out of a small
purse she carried.

“What if you lose?” Tony asked, but Shahla
was already returning to the machine, where she inserted the bill
in the slot.