Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 2 - Stellium in Scorpio (11 page)

Elmo
and I went downstairs to his favorite spot on the grass where he went about
leaving his calling card as I pondered how to begin the conversation with the
front desk. I rehearsed under my breath. "Hi there. So does in-room movies
mean that people are in the room making movies—or not? Or how about, I got a
letter saying you'd captured my homo-fucking on tape and I wondered if I could
get a copy for my agent?" I sucked in air so loudly that Elmo stopped to
see if I was all right.
There is no way this can go well.

I
took Elmo back upstairs and gave him two cookies and a rawhide bone to chew on
as I prepared to leave to go talk to the front desk. He looked at me as if to
say my recent attempts to entertain him were lame and insulting. "Look, I
know. But at least you're not going downstairs to talk to the front desk about
who you've been humping!"

"You're
not really worried about telling the front desk what happened, are you?"
Callie asked.

"Looking
forward to it. Something I've always wanted to do— share my sex life with total
strangers who come from countries where they still stone people to death for
wearing lipstick or, if I get lucky, share my sex life with a prepubescent
theater person, disguised as a front desk person, whose age is most likely
higher than her I.Q."

"Don't
underestimate people, Teague. They're more in tune than you think."

Moments
later I was at the front desk where a very pretty multiethnic woman in her
early twenties, swathed in gold cloth, smiled at me and asked if she could
help. I hesitated, envisioning her perhaps cultural reaction to the word
"homo-fucking," but decided to go for it. She was either front-desk
material at a big hotel in a sophisticated city or she wasn't.

"I
received this threatening letter in my room." I handed her the letter.

She
bent her head and dutifully read the letter, after which she looked up with a
confused expression. "Where is your homo-fucking that was captured?"
she inquired, her brow slightly furrowed.

"What?"

"I
don't know what the homo-fucking is that was captured," she said sweetly
but loud enough that the businessman next to me stopped checking in and stared
at me.

"Could
you get Ms. Loomis, please?" I asked.

"She
is very busy. I can handle this with you, if you will tell me about
your"—she glanced down at the unfamiliar word—"homo-fucking so that I
can help you find it."

"Get
Ms. Loomis, the hotel manager, now!" I said, my tone beyond urgent as I
took the note back from her.

In
seconds, the very tired and very thin, but nattily dressed Ms. Loomis stepped
out of the door behind the long marble main desk. Her black hair was just this
side of lacquered and lay tightly against her head. She had the look of someone
who worked for powerful and demanding bosses. I told her that, like many people
vacationing in Las Vegas, I had made love in my room, and I then received a
letter under the door telling me that my lovemaking was captured for posterity,
and if I chose to expose them, they would expose me.

"And
who are
they?"
she asked.

"I
have no idea," I said, realizing for the first time how hard it is to
report an act of near-criminal behavior.

"So
you have no idea what they might be afraid you would expose?"

"None,"
I replied.

"To
the precise point, there were pictures taken of you in our hotel, making love,
is that what you're saying, Ms. Richfield?"

"That's
what the note says." I laid it on the counter in front of her, looking for
a reaction to "homo-fucking," but to Ms. Loomis's credit, she never
altered her expression.

"I
want to know who wrote the note, and who took the pictures, and where those
pictures are," I said calmly.

Ms.
Loomis looked me squarely in the eyes. "Ms. Richfield, there is no
conceivable way that the hotel could take photos or videos of you in your room
doing anything." She picked up the phone and rang security. Roy arrived.
The same flat-topped, flabby Roy who had shown up to find nobody in our
bathtub. I sighed when I saw him, imagining what he would think upon hearing
that our lovemaking had been taped, but that there was no tape. Ms. Loomis
assumed her most crisp, executive tone in addressing Roy. "Ms. Richfield believes
that her privacy was violated with in-room cameras, the images from which are
being held by someone in the hotel."

Roy
stared at me. "Pictures were taken of you in your room? Not possible,
ma'am. No cameras in any rooms anywhere."

I
stood quietly for a moment trying to decide if I should demand they summon the
police. However, I was fearful that the LVPD might find the camera topic less
interesting than the same-gender-sex topic. I had no evidence, no perpetrator,
not even a suspect. I decided to drop it, drawing the dialogue to a halt by
summing up my current needs. "I want security to keep an eye on our
room."

They
both assured me they would have someone available at all hours if we rang, and
someone would make it a point to patrol the halls. As Roy spun on his heels to
execute that order, Ms. Loomis looked deep into my eyes. "I will
personally file a report and follow up on this matter, and I will be in touch
with you on what we find. It appears to me that despite this terrible thing
having happened to you, you have the makings of a lovely vacation, and we at
the hotel wish you one." Ms. Loomis gave me a pleasant smile.

The
young golden woman standing at her side replicated her smile and craned her
neck slightly to one side to be able to make eye contact with the person behind
me, thereby dismissing me with practiced body language. I strolled back over to
Callie, who was just getting off the elevator.

"What
did she say?" Callie asked.

"Well,
the 'more-in-tune-than-you-think' young woman at the front desk shouted
'homo-fucking' loudly several times because she couldn't figure out what it
meant. After that, Ms. Loomis implied that I looked like I was in love," I
said, running my hand up her back and resting it on the nape of her neck,
sighing over how good it felt to be there. "Nobody in this hotel knows the
answer to anything! The only good thing about the front desk is that I can
immediately locate the person who knows nothing rather than having to flag down
someone and
discover
they know nothing. Maybe there's no video of
us," I said, tired of the stress it was causing. "Maybe Gloria the
Harem Girl slid the note under our door to pay us back for our checkin
altercation like a waiter who spits in your soup," I remarked. "But
then how would she or anyone know that we had just made love unless they were
watching or listening, which gives me the creeps."
It could just be
someone's attempt to make us nervous
—
and it’s working, I 'm nervous,
I
thought.
Someone wants us to get the hell out of this hotel.

"Let's
not give it any more energy," Callie said, which I'd learned was the
astrological equivalent of forget it, and we headed back to our room.

Callie
stretched out on the bed, thinking no doubt about what had happened. I wrapped
around her, contemplating the evil done to us. It would have been quite a
different matter if I were a man. A man could go downstairs, talk to another
man at the front desk, and let him know that he was going to punch the lights
out of any human being who had disgraced his wife by taping her in the act of
making love with her husband. The hotel would bow down and no doubt apologize
profusely to the injured couple. Investigations would take place. There would
be a great deal of reporting back to the offended duo. Apologetic notes tucked
into fruit baskets would be delivered to the room from the manager. Sex would
not be the topic. Violation of privacy would be the topic.
When I reported
the same situation on behalf of Callie and me, I was missing the two key
ingredients that could trigger that kind of solicitous response: a marriage
license and a chromosomal random act. Papers and penises. Absent those two
things, the world is afar more difficult place, and our blackmailer obviously
knows that,
I thought.

"I
can't sleep with your brain churning." Callie patted me.

"I'm
not moving or making a sound."

"Your
brain is." She propped up on her elbow. "Let me tell you something,
darling. Things are what we make them. If you believe things will be difficult
and embarrassing, they will be. If you believe they will go smoothly, then they
will. We create our own world, Teague. Repeat out loud 'My world will go
smoothly,' and then let it rest for a few hours."

She
kissed me and rolled over and went to sleep. I stared at her small, exquisite
form, thinking what a positive light force she was. I whispered out loud the
phrase she'd given me, wrapped around her, and went to sleep.

We
tried to take our minds off the note we'd received, pretend it was all just a
hoax, and think about each other and our vacation. Callie occasionally brought
up the topic of Rose Ross, but I called a halt to the discussion. As far as I
was concerned, we'd checked—the girl didn't want help. I had no desire to make
us a target for someone who didn't want our assistance.

"Someone's
trying to silence her," Callie said.

"We're
done," I politely warned. "Come on, let's just focus on each
other."

I
knew Callie loved to gamble, so I took her to the casino to take her mind off
everything else. She took off like a happy hound, her nose to the gambling
trail, and I followed her. We moved through the casino lobby, which was dotted
with slot machines, into the deafening roar of the main casino, where gambling took
on the intensity of an illicit sexual encounter. We continued past the walls of
mechanized monsters, their crowbar-like arms stretched out imploringly, eating
silver dollars, dollar bills, and hotel debit cards as fast as the players
could feed them. Men yanked the metal arms down, a whirring sound ensued, the
tiny window in the machine erupted with symbols of hurricanes, volcanoes, and
double diamonds as players screamed out encouragement.

"Sevens,
sevens, seeevens! Sonofabitch!" a young woman yelled.

"Come
on, baby, come on, come oooooon, baby!" A man's voice was orgasmic as he
coaxed his machine, grabbing her metal edges as if he could tilt her into
coming up with the right pictures.

Suddenly
across the room a loud synthesized melody twanged out, a red light akin to the
one atop a police car flashed above one of the machines, a siren wailed, a
woman shrieked, and people stood up and threw their arms over their heads as if
they were caught in a police raid.

"That
woman just won a hundred thousand dollars!" Callie said.

"You're
psychic, go do that!" I ordered playfully.

"I
wish it worked that way." She grinned back at me.

We
meandered into the arena of blackjack and craps tables, where the winning was
decidedly more subdued. The players were more knowledgeable and, therefore,
fretful, understanding the odds were not in their favor.

The
line at the blackjack tables was three deep and the craps table was loaded with
high rollers, so I suggested we do a couple of spins at the roulette wheel.

"Give
me your lucky number," I told Callie as I pulled out a five dollar bill.

"Seventy-two."

"That's
your lucky number? Nobody's lucky number is seventy-two. Personally, mine is
still sixty-nine." I grinned at her. "Give me a number between one
and thirty-six or zero or double zero."

Callie
laid five dollars on the table. "Twenty-eight," she said coolly as
the dealer put a single five dollar chip down in front of her. The overhead
lights reflected off his ring, a flat gold signet ring bearing a ferocious-looking
bird with one leg poised in the air, its claws extended. I drew back. It was
the ring worn by the dead man or, if not
the
ring, one exactly like it.

"Place
your bets," he warned, putting the wheel into motion.

"The
ring!" Callie whispered.

"Last
chance. Place your bets. Game closed." The dealer put his hand up, warding
off any further placement of chips on the numbered felt.

"Thirty-two!"
he announced, deftly sliding chips off the table into a trough and paying the
winners in a stack of tens.

"Where
did you get your ring?" I asked.

"I
used to perform in the
Boy Review, "
he said without looking up.

I
glanced at his name tag, which bore the name Dealer Brownlee. Callie put money
on double zero as the wheel spun around again. Twenty-nine came up, and he
raked her chip away. I pulled another twenty dollar bill out of my wallet as an
older, well-dressed man came up to the table.

"Mr.
Smith, welcome back." Brownlee became downright civil. "What will it
be?"

"Ten
on sixteen," Mr. Smith said, pulling a stack of bills out of his pocket,
not amounting to ten dollars, but to ten thousand dollars. Brownlee quickly
raked in the cash and replaced it with a stack of thousand dollar chips,
sliding them onto number sixteen and rolling the wheel again.