Fatal Flaw (18 page)

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Pull your hair back and bind it with a rubber band.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

She looked at me like I’d gone over the edge and then went into her drawer and took out a rubber band. Beth’s hair was black and shiny and fell down about to her shoulders, so she was able to make a short ponytail of it.

“All right,” I said, “now put these on.”

She took the glasses and peered at them for a long moment. “What’s this all about?”

“Humor me,” I said.

When the glasses were on, I compared what I saw with the picture. It wasn’t a perfect match by any means. Beth’s eyes were green, not blue, and she was slightly taller. But there was a resemblance, an undeniable resemblance.

“How are you feeling, Beth? You a little tired?”

“No.”

“Worn down by your frantic pace? At the end of your rope?”

“No.”

“Are you feeling overwhelmed by life?”

“Not at all.”

“Funny, I am, too. You know what we should do? We should
chuck it all for a bit and get out of here. Not just the office but the city, the state. Aren’t you sick of the East Coast?”

“Victor, what are you talking about? We have a trial to prepare for. Did someone spike your morning coffee? Are you sane?”

“Actually no, but that’s not what’s going on. Clear the weekend, partner, because you and I, we’re taking a road trip.”

22

AH, LAS VEGAS.
Neon, flash, the crush of crowds opening for long-legged women in boots and short skirts. Artificial light, artificial air, proud entrances, meek exits, announcements, lines, doors hissing open and shut, chrome, chrome. The bells and whistles of the slot machines, the silver clatter of coins, the snarl of old ladies with cigarettes dangling feeding in quarter after quarter. Giant video screens advertising the latest shows, the fattest buffets, the newest hotels. Wheels spinning, luggage flying, money passing in every handshake, limos lined up like black lemmings at the doors. The infinite sense of promise in those arriving, the weary defeat in those departing. Signs, shops, restaurants, uniforms, joyous laughter cackling over the grand cacophony as a jackpot hits and the lights start flashing. Ah, Las Vegas.

And that was only the airport.

“Could you wait here a minute?” said Beth after we had departed our plane and were headed to the tramway into the main terminal. “I could use a pit stop.”

I stood in the gray concourse and looked around. The usual mall-like stores and fast-food joints intermixed with slot machines. Nothing of too much interest, until something in the window of a kiosk with a great neon Mardi Gras head on top captured my attention
and knocked it cold. While Beth was taking care of business, I went to check it out.

It was a sports jacket, hanging on a rack just beside the snow globes with the Vegas skyline doused in glitter. I found one in my size and felt its material, the lapels a satiny black, the body a rough and sparkly gold lamé. Gold lamé, how apropos. It wasn’t well made—it had no lining, threads were fraying already from the shoulder seams—but it had pockets big enough to hold five jackpots and it glistened so brightly it should have had a switch. I slipped it on and did a spin in front of the narrow mirror and had to shield my eyes. It was money, baby.

“You sell many of these?” I asked the cute salesgirl with the green hair and the ring though her eyebrow.

She curled her lip. “Hardly.”

“It’s a little bright, hey?”

“A-yaah.”

“Could you think of anything tackier?”

“Not really.”

“Perfect. I’ll take it.”

Seventy-eight bucks, and worth every dime.

“By the way,” I said to the salesgirl as I left the store, the jacket packed safely away in my briefcase, “I like your hair,” and I meant it, and she blushed, which was like hitting three sevens on the slots.

While Beth waited for our luggage, I took the shuttle bus to pick up our rental car. A convertible, red, as cheaply made as the jacket, but still topless and red. Before I drove it back to the airport, I dropped the roof. I shucked on my new jacket despite the oppressive heat. I slipped on my sunglasses despite the fact that it was long past dark.

When I pulled in front of Beth at the loading curb, I was smiling like an idiot.

“Welcome to Vegas,” I said.

“You look like you’re about to do a very bad version of ‘Feelings.’”

“This city brings out the best in me.”

“I’d hate to be with you in any city that brings out your worst.”

“Boca Raton, where I break out my Sansabelt slacks and white shoes?”

“Victor, Sansabelt slacks and white shoes would be six steps up from that jacket.”

“Hop in, sweetheart, the night is young and my stake is burning a hole in my pocket.”

She dropped our bags into the back seat and opened the door. “I didn’t know a buck sixty-four could get so hot?”

“Let’s go shoot craps.”

“Do you know how to shoot craps?”

“No,” I said, “but I understand they teach you how to play right on the television in your room. How nice is that?”

“It’s going to be an expensive night, isn’t it?”

I squealed my tires on the blacktop and tore out of the airport, into the desert night.

Vegas was not in my normal route between the office, the diner, and my apartment, but I had been there before. After college, on the obligatory cross-country road trip, I had stopped in Vegas on the way to L.A. and stayed longer than I ever expected. I remembered the $1.99 breakfast buffet at Circus Circus, great troughs of eggs, mountains of bacon. I remembered the shabby old pool at the Dunes where I could sneak in without anyone caring enough to do a thing about it. I saw Wayne Newton at the Hilton, I saw an Elvis impersonator sing “Viva Las Vegas” at the Imperial Inn. I lost thirty bucks on a queen-high straight playing poker at Binion’s. I spent a Sunday afternoon in the Caesar’s sports book, sitting in a helmet, watching nine NFL games at once. I bought the little yellow card that detailed perfect blackjack strategy and still lost more than I could afford and then won half of it back on a royal straight flush at a video poker machine. It was a great tacky carnival and I loved it, and that was why I was in high spirits despite the grim nature of our errand.

Yes, we might be there to break open the safe-deposit box of my murdered lover, but, hell, I was going to have myself a time. It was, after all, still Vegas.

Or was it?

It had changed. It was no longer dominated by the hopelessly
tacky, now it was all flash and pomposity. The Dunes had disappeared, spectacularly razed to make way for the Bellagio, with its great sign in front advertising the Picassos and Manets held in the hotel’s private museum. Just on the other side of Caesar’s was the Mirage, with its high-toned lobby and volcano out front. We could have stayed at Paris with its Eiffel Tower, at the Venetian with its Grand Canal, at the Monte Carlo or Mandalay Bay or the Rio or New York, New York. There was the MGM Grand, there was the sinister Pyramid of Luxor with its message beam of pyramid power soaring out to the heavens, there was the Excaliber. As we drove down the glory of the Strip, the city was different from how I remembered it to be, a place that now aspired to be something grander than the tacky heart of the American wasteland. It didn’t look like it was succeeding, but even the attempt was disappointing. My God, I wondered if it still had whores.

“This is amazing,” said Beth as I drove her down the Strip. She had never before been to Vegas and her head wagged as we passed all the shiny new hotels.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why do they have to ruin everything?”

“I’ve never seen so many lights in my life. It’s like the whole city is a parade. What is that?”

“The Pyramid of Luxor,” I said. “But they have a better one in Egypt.”

“And look, look, the Statue of Liberty.”

“The one in New York Harbor is cooler.”

“And what’s that? Oh, my God, the Eiffel Tower.”

“Yeah, but the one in France is bigger.”

“Look at the sign. ‘Now appearing, Picasso’?”

“That’s where the Dunes was. Now, that was a Vegas hotel. You want to talk seedy, that was seedy. There were rats nibbling the food trays left outside the rooms at night, and they had this thing shaped like a spaceship with rows and rows of nickel slots. That was my Vegas.”

“But look how bright it is.”

“It used to be brighter.”

“Why do I suddenly have the urge, Victor, to rub lemons on my breasts?”

I had booked us rooms at the Flamingo, which was decidedly old school, the first casino ever built on the Strip. But it had one of the biggest neon displays, which I liked, and it was also three hundred and fifty dollars a night cheaper than the Bellagio, which I liked a lot. The hotel was very Miami Beach, old-time Miami Beach, crowded with an aged clientele drawn to the same bargains as was I. We ate dinner in their restaurant, the Flamingo Room, since Beth refused to wait in a long line for a buffet, and took a stroll down the Strip to the Venetian, where we saw the gondoliers, and then it was time. I went back up to my room, put on my new lucky jacket, checked my wallet, cracked my knuckles, picked up Beth at her room, and together we took the elevator down to the casino. It was nine-thirty in the evening, Las Vegas time, and I was ready to play.

By ten-fifteen I had busted through my bankroll and was mournfully hanging, like a disconsolate teenager, around the nickel slots.

The only thing more pitiful than stories of great gambling winnings are stories of great gambling losses, so I’ll spare you the details of the debacle, but let me just ask one question: Why is it that whenever you jump-raise your blackjack bet to a level higher than you should, you end up with a pair begging to be split, and then, after you’ve doubled the already stupidly high bet, why does the dealer always seem to pull that six she needs to turn a dead fifteen into a killer twenty-one? Why is that? Why? Answer me that. Does that seem fair to you? Or does it seem fair that Beth, who as far as I knew had never played before, who was merely following the rules of the little yellow strategy card instead of well-honed instinct, was doing spectacularly well, her stack of chips rising and turning colors while mine dwindled and disappeared? It was almost enough to make me lose faith in my lucky jacket. Almost.

So I was mournfully hanging around the nickel slots, feeling like I was living dangerously if I punched the “bet max” button and put a quarter on the line, when I saw it.

A flash of sparkly color. Gold lamé. My jacket.

Just the sight of it on someone else cheered me. It was like finding a grade school soul mate in the glittery wasteland of the new Vegas. Only someone who appreciated the Vegas I had first known could appreciate that kind of jacket. I wondered if my friend was
having any better luck with his jacket than I was with mine. Maybe I had taken the wrong jacket off the rack, maybe the lucky one was the one he took. Good for him. Maybe I should pat him on the back, just for laughs. Without anything much else to do, I followed the flash of gold through the pink sheen of the Flamingo’s casino. I glimpsed it snaking in and out among the craps tables, and I kept after it. I could only catch sight of it here or there, losing it among the crowds or in the aisles. Who was he? I wondered. A hard-core gambler or a tourist like me? His hair was black, I could tell, there was a cigar, but I never got a clear glimpse of him. And strangely, as I hurried to catch up, the jacket seemed to hurry away from me.

I sped up my pace. Past the craps tables, the blackjack, the Let-It-Ride, the big wheel. I could only now catch glimpses of the jacket rushing out of this crowd, around this row of tables, catch a glance of its reflection in the shiny side of a slot machine.

Who was in the jacket? Did he know me? Who did I know whose taste was as tacky as mine, and why was he avoiding me?

I had a final glimpse of gold slinking out the corner doors to the Strip, but when I stepped out into the thick night air with its crazed electricity, he was gone.

“IS THAT
him?” asked Beth.

“No, I told you, he was a smarmy-looking man.”

“He looks smarmy.”

“That’s not smarmy, that’s just old.”

“He has a mustache.”

“So did Stalin,” I said. “But he wasn’t smarmy.”

“Maybe we have a different definition of the word.”

“But only one of us is right,” I said, “and that guy is not smarmy. He looks like Art Carney.”

“I always thought Art Carney looked a little smarmy. When was Hopkins leaving for lunch?”

“They said he leaves about twelve-thirty. We have time yet.”

“Is that him?”

“What are you, kidding?”

“Maybe you’re right. It’s hard to be smarmy shaped like a fire-plug.”

“So how much did you win?”

“A few hundred, nothing much. Maybe ten.”

“A thousand? You won a thousand? And you’ve really never played before?”

“Well, maybe a little in Atlantic City.”

“Ah, so now we get the truth.”

“A few jaunts now and then with an old boyfriend.”

“Which one?”

“Dieter.”

“Dieter, the German computer scientist. Dieter was smarmy.”

“So that’s what you mean.”

“I didn’t know Dieter liked the cards.”

“He played slots. I suppose your jacket wasn’t lucky after all.”

“Oh, no, the jacket was lucky, but I wasn’t. It did okay for you while you were sitting next to it.”

“Yes, it did.”

“And I won a pot on the nickel slots.”

“They make you sign a W-2 on that one?”

“Wait a second.”

“Is that him?”

“Wait a second.”

“Now, he’s smarmy.”

“There we go. Yes, that’s our boy.”

We were in a strip-mall parking lot off Paradise Road, just west of the Flamingo, watching from the convertible, with its top up, as Gerald Hopkins left the bank. I had stopped at the bank earlier in the morning to scope out what he looked like. Then I made a call from Hailey’s cell phone to say I’d like to meet with Mr. Hopkins after lunch and to ask about his normal lunch hours. The bank people were ever so helpful. Everything was done to ensure that when we walked in with Hailey Prouix’s identification card and safe-deposit key, Gerald Hopkins, who asked me to give his regards to Hailey, would not be in the bank. I was hoping that when he left for lunch he wouldn’t be walking to the Indian restaurant a few doors down for the $5.95 buffet and a quick return. I almost willed him
into the parking lot and, thankfully, he obliged. There was a white Cadillac a few rows down and he opened it with his key and ducked inside. A few seconds later he passed right by us on his way out of the lot and onto Paradise Road.

“How do I look?” said Beth, with her hair now back and the glasses on.

“You look great,” I said, “just great. Now let’s hope that no one’s reported yet to her Vegas bank that Hailey Prouix is dead.”

WE SAT
at a desk and waited as the service specialist went off to get the card for the safe-deposit box. Beth fingered the key, trying to hide her nervousness. The woman, a Mrs. Selegard, heavy and smiling, talking all the while to her friend at the other desk, hadn’t blinked when Beth gave Hailey’s name and the box number stamped on the key.

“Here it is, Miss Prouix,” said Mrs. Selegard as she came back with the card. “I’ll need to see your identification and then have you sign.”

Beth reached into her bag, pulled out a wallet, unfolded flap after flap as if searching for something long hidden away. I thought she was laying it on a bit thick, but finally she pulled out the driver’s license and Mrs. Selegard started taking down the information.