the Pallbearers (2010) (29 page)

THE RAGE IN THE CAGE AT THE TALKING STICK EVENT CENTER

8:00 P
. M
. SATURDAY

We pulled to a stop and got out. While we were standing under the huge porte cochere waiting for Alexa to pay Arthur, an overly polite, heavyset man in a dark suit with Indian features approached.

"Welcome to the Talking Stick Hotel and Casino," he said. 'Tin Graham, your casino host. May I direct you inside or help you to find anything?"

"I think we'll just check in and get to bed," I said.

Alexa moved up to join us, and Graham led us to the registration desk.

The lobby was almost deserted at this hour, with only a few tables working in the adjoining casino.

There were four of us, so it was cheaper to rent a two-bedroom suite instead of three separate rooms. In order to avoid detection, we had already decided to take the suite under Seriana's name. She showed her ID, we were registered, and Alexa paid for one night in cash.

Because we had no luggage other than briefcases and purses, we followed a bellman, carrying our own gear down a first-floor hallway carpeted with a new, Indian-style patterned rug. We stopped in front of 1477, which had a brass plaque that read:

The bellman opened the room and showed us inside. I tipped him, then closed the door as he left.

The two-bedroom, ground-floor suite was done in desert-sand colors and furnished with expensive, plushly upholstered, Italian reproduction furniture.

"Not bad," Vicki said.

The others trooped out onto the patio, which adjoined the beautiful, semilit golf course, while I called the front desk and asked for Rick O'Shea's room. He wasn't registered. Neither was Diamond Peterson.

They refused to give me any information about Team Ultima, saying I should talk to the event center in the morning.

After I hung up,
I
went out on the patio to join the others.

I said, "It's almost four. We're not going to learn anything tonight. Let's get a few hours' sleep and start working on it at eight tomorrow."

"What about Diamond?" Vicki said.

Alexa said, "We won't find out anything tonight. Nobody's even up to talk to."

We selected our rooms, and I went to the writing desk, picked up the cordless phone, and set the wake-up call for 8:00 A
. M
.

After I finished, I replaced the phone next to the heavy leather folder that held the room-service menu and hotel literature.

On the folder's front cover, embossed in gold, I saw the same little logo of a mesa with a circle around it that I'd seen on the roof of the building on Wilshire Boulevard.

I picked up a brochure.

The Talking Stick Hotel and Casino was a Eugene C. Mesa resort.

Chapter
52

It suddenly made a lot more sense. I now knew why Mesa brought this challenge match all the way out here. He was also getting a casino cut of the action.

After I showed the others, Seriana said we were bivouaced in enemy territory. There was nothing we could do to change it, so we went to bed.

I couldn't sleep. I was churned up with worry about Diamond, and the fact that E. C. Mesa was popping up everywhere.

I decided to wait until everybody else was asleep and go on a scouting mission. I wanted to get a better feel for this place.

Alexa and I had the main bedroom. Seriana shared the suite's second room with Vicki. When I finally heard Alexa's even, steady breathing, I got carefully out of bed, grabbed my clothes, and quietly dressed in the darkened living room.

I started by going back to the main desk. According to the room clerk, nobody named Sabas Vargas was registered. After the call from Jack telling me he was living in a reservation trailer, I didn't expect him to be registered either. He wasn't.

As long as I was up, I decided to take a look at the Talking Stick Event Center. To get there, I had to walk through the almost-empty casino. I made a slow tour of that glitzy gambling oasis, looking at the few people who were still playing, but saw no familiar faces.

The event center was on the west side of the casino, located in a large new annex. A big sign by the main entrance announced "The Rage in the Cage" later that night.

Six fighters from Team Spartacus were billed with their pictures along with six from Team Ultima. Rick O'Shea was not among them. Brian Bravo was listed in his place.

Since Alexa told me Brian was being cut from the fight club, it seemed strange he would be here, unless he was just acting as a placeholder for O'Shea.

The massive room was at least twice the size of two basketball courts, and at this time of night was completely empty. It was outfitted with fixed overhead lighting, a Jumbotron, and had state-of-the
-
art metal detectors at each entrance.

The event center had been cleverly designed with two second
-
story decks that ran all the way around the entire room. The floor seating could be moved to accommodate proscenium-arch productions for concerts and plays or to feature an arena-style configuration for sporting events.

I checked the seven exits and walked down a supply corridor that led to a concrete loading dock and staging area in the back of the annex. Band equipment and scenery could be loaded into the event room through this corridor.

After I had a pretty good idea of the layout, I still wasn't ready for bed. I found a place in the quiet lobby where I could think.

I still had Rick O'Shea's arrest warrant in my pocket. I had been intending to go to the tribal police and get them to help me serve it. However, now that I knew this whole resort was owned by E. C. Mesa, I wasn't sure that was such a hot idea anymore. Unless, that is, I could get an updated players' report.

I dug into my pocket with my left hand, got my cell phone, then dialed Sally Quinn.

"This better be fucking great, Shane," she said, obviously reading my name on her LCD screen.

"I need someone to give me the name of a cop I can trust with my life at the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation. It's just outside of Tucson."

"You need what?" her voice getting sharper as she came awake.

"I have a judge's warrant for a prime murder suspect, but my doer is friends with the guy who owns this resort. I don't want to ask the reservation cops for help serving the warrant only to have them give me up to the perp."

"How do you spell it? That Indian name."

I gave her the spelling.

"Call you right back."

I hung up and looked around at the lush decor of the casino and hotel lobby. This whole opulent resort was like a bad version of Escape from New York, walled off from the poverty and outlaws that surrounded it.

Then I remembered Alexa telling me that the Mesa Indians had spent millions of dollars on border issues last year. Since there are no coincidences in law enforcement, I wondered, how does a man named E. C. Mesa, who has a fascination for Indian motorcycles, own a lush resort on a Mesa Indian reservation right on the Southwest's main drug corridor?

My phone rang, interrupting this thought.

"Yeah?"

"Okay, the guy you want to talk to is Captain Thomas Ironwood," Sally said. "Calloway called a friend of his on the Phoenix PD who says Ironwood used to work there and he's a kick-ass cop. He checked with the reservation PD and found out Captain Ironwood works nights on that department because that's when all the action takes place. I got an old Phoenix PD Web site article here that says he's a full-blooded Tohono Indian who got recruited to the reservation PD from the Phoenix drug-enforcement squad. He's ex-military, a Green Beret. Captain Calloway's friend on the Phoenix PD says you can trust Ironwood all the way."

"Thanks. Go back to sleep. Sorry I woke you."

I got up and went back to the concierge desk and asked where the Tohono Nation Police Station was. I was told it was about a quarter mile down the road in New Town. The concierge offered to have the casino host drive me.

Graham met me outside, his permanent smile in place.

We climbed into his golf cart and headed down the road. The electric cart buzzed as the headlights sawed through the early-morning darkness.

New Town was a grouping of recently constructed homes, stores, and warehouses. It was located inside the nine-foot wall that protected the casino from the Mexican criminals and endless gunfights outside.

From the architecture, I estimated it had been constructed about the same time as the resort. There were several blocks of efficient but uninteresting boxy-looking one-story dwellings, which I guessed served as housing for the hotel and casino employees and their families.

The police station was a concrete-block building with microwave transmitters on the roof and four blue and white Tohono police cruisers parked out front. It was good equipment, well maintained.

I went inside, showed my creds to a desk sergeant, and asked to speak with Captain Thomas Ironwood, who, as Sally had said, was on duty, working nights. An overweight deputy led me to a small, neat office and told me to wait. After he left, I studied the room filled with pictures of a tall, lean sergeant in a marine uniform posed with a squad of soldiers in Iraq. There were at least half a dozen law
-
enforcement awards and plaques presented to Thomas Mitchell Ironwood from the Phoenix Rotary, PD, and city council.

A few minutes later a tall, well-built man about thirty-five years old with black, close-cropped hair and a neatly pressed uniform walked in.

Tm Tom Ironwood," he said. "How can I help you?" He had a military bearing and command presence.

I showed him my police credentials.

"LAPD?" He looked up and cocked an eyebrow. He was dark skinned with black eyes. Not quite handsome, but close.

I told him I had an arrest warrant for Rick O'Shea and about Diamond Peterson and how I thought she might be in some danger.

"You have the O'Shea warrant on you?" he asked.

I handed it to him. "I think he's scheduled to be one of the MMA fighters at that 'Rage in the Cage' thing at the event center tomorrow night. He's not on the poster, but I think that's because he knows he's hot. I'm betting because of the size of the purse he'll show up anyway. If he does, I'd like your help serving this."

"I can already tell you that nobody named Rick O'Shea is on the reservation," Tom Ironwood said. "You're the second guy's come in here tonight asking about him. The other one didn't have a warrant, so there wasn't much we could do but take a look on the computer. Check the gate sign-ins."

"Another guy?"

"Mexican named Vargas." He looked at me carefully. "A lawyer. According to his gate log-in he's staying over at the old Blue Mountain Lodge on the northeast edge of the res. It's about four miles down the road outside the wall, off Highway Seven, across from the new waste dump in Old Town."

"Can you check and see if you have a record of Diamond Peterson arriving yesterday?" I asked.

He scanned his computer. "No," he said. "That means she's not here. With that wall and all our perimeter security there's no way in or out except through the main gate. If she was on the property, it would be listed here."

I didn't want to get into it with him, but according to jack he was wrong about both Diamond and O'Shea. They were both in the casino earlier this evening.

I thanked him for his help. I wanted to ask him about E. C. Mesa. But some survival instinct told me not to. I went to the reception area and called Desert Taxi, then went outside to wait.

The sun was just breaking the horizon in the east. I watched as it rose slowly, its red and gold beams casting long fingers of light across the desert sand, just as it always had at dawn on Seal Beach thirty years ago.

The cab arrived, and I told the driver where I wanted to go.

Then I was traveling toward that red-gold ball of light with the ghost of Walter Dix right behind me. I could almost feel him on that big old cigar box, paddling hard, breathing through his mouth, hurrying to catch the curl.

Paddle fasta. Dis is our poundah, bra.

Chapter
53

The Blue Mountain Lodge was a concrete-block, one-story motel situated near a garbage-disposal pit.

The motel sat outside the resort security wall and, as a result, had paid a high price in broken windows, litter, and spray-can graffiti. It was about a half a mile down the road from Old Town, which, as I drove past, gave off the tired look of despair. The structures in Old Town were ramshackle with broken equipment advertising broken lives.

When we pulled into the parking lot, it was only a little past five, but as I got out of the cab, I was immediately hit by the toxic smell of garbage coming from the clump across the street.

I went to the front desk and showed my credentials to a tired
-
looking, overweight Indian woman with a lined face and rat-nest hair who was perched on a high-backed stool behind the desk. I gave her a twenty and asked her if Sabas Vargas was registered here. Sh
e n
ever got up, but told me that Vargas was in room six. I reached over her shoulder and plucked the room key off a peg.