Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 2 - Stellium in Scorpio (27 page)

"How
do you know that he died in this theater?"

"Randall
Ross told me. He said he died of asphyxiation. Some sort of carbon monoxide
accident. Of course, the rumor was that he turned the gas on himself."

"How
the hell do you get asphyxiated in a room the size of this theater?"

"I
don't know," Callie said, looking around the room. Suddenly a small blue
light appeared on the theater wall at the farthest point from the stage where
we were standing. I glanced up at the projection booth to see if someone was
inside, but it was dark. The light moved down the wall and then swung across
the room, landing on the opposite wall. Callie's eyes followed it and she took
a few steps toward it. Then the light traveled down the wall to the floor and
came to rest at the edge of the circular stage next to the metal disk at our
feet, as if someone were secretly watching and trying to point something out to
us.

"Who
the hell's doing this?" I asked.

Callie
focused on the light. She sat down suddenly on the polished stage floor and
watched the light as one would watch a movie. It flickered and then finally
went out.

"He
died right here," Callie said and then added, "But that just doesn't
feel right."

I
looked up at the booth again but couldn't see who the operator was. "We're
sitting ducks out here. Let's get going," I whispered, but Callie looked
up at me, offered her hand, and pulled me down beside her with exceptional
strength. My eyes connected with hers.
Life is short. Why can't she be
mine—just mine?

"I
think if Mo were here he'd say that he's haunted by what's going on at his
hotel and it has to stop," Callie said.

"Why
didn't he stop it when Karla asked him to?"

"I
don't know. I'm being told to come back here and see the
Boy Review,"
Callie
said.

I
didn't mention to her that we'd already seen the show once. I just let it ride.

Out
of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a man who looked familiar. I focused
on him. He was a short, muscular man in a business suit, a buttoned-up employee
crossing the theater aisle apparently on a mission: perhaps checking up on the
cleaning crew or checking on supplies for the greenroom or maybe just taking a
shortcut somewhere, and then I noticed the lifts. Lifts like the shoes worn by
the man who delivered Joey to Sterling Hackett's hotel room. He turned in
profile and it was Paco man. Images collided in my brain as if a projector
light had illuminated my head: Opening night, Paco in the bar, cut to tight
shot of "my friend Paco" bobbing inside the silk pants and grabbing
my flesh with his thumb and forefinger. Cut to the same man coming at Callie
near the slot machines, Paco in his pocket, his thumb and forefinger nipping at
her leg, but this time in his pocket was a knife. Cut to Joey in the hospital,
his small, frail hand, thumb and forefinger coming together like—Paco! I jumped
up and sprinted toward the man.

"Hey,
you!" I shouted. The man turned and looked at the stage, focusing on us
for the first time and registering a decidedly startled look. "You know
Joey Winters?" I asked and I saw the slightest tensing around his eyes.
"Hold it, just a second!" But the man turned and ran. I pursued him
as if spring-loaded.

"You
beat that kid, didn't you, you sorry-assed sonofabitch!" I tackled him and
we both fell to the floor. I rolled him over, pushed his chin skyward with my
left hand, and slammed my fist into his Adam's apple with my right. "I
should slit your damned throat!"

Callie
was standing over us. "Tell us who you work for!" she shouted at him.

He
struggled to reach his gun, visible now in its shoulder holster hidden beneath
his suit coat. He was strong, and I only had him down due to the element of
surprise. I squeezed his jugular vein and cut off blood flow to his brain.
"Who hired you to beat up the kid?" I squeezed more tightly and he
began to lose consciousness. "Shit!" I jumped up off the guy. "I
shouldn't have done that," I said, straightening my clothes and feeling
suddenly uneasy about how quickly I could turn violent.

"Why
should he wake up feeling fine? Joey doesn't," she said, bitterly cold.
Callie's cosmic attitude was apparently put on ice.

"Plus,
he ripped your suit." I took a deep breath and tried to make light of it.

I
rang Security Guard Roy, the front desk, and the LVPD. Roy arrived first and
quickly explained that the man was a longtime lounge performer, beloved by the
patrons, and that his behavior was due to having lost his wife. To which I replied,
"Bullshit!" The woman from the front desk was none other than the
lady who'd tried to comprehend homo-fucking, so I realized my current dilemma
was several stratospheres above her comprehension. Her presence actually made
me look forward to meeting the Las Vegas police, who arrived within minutes and
began asking questions and taking notes. I went through the preliminaries and
explained that the man before them had taken a young boy up to a room for sex.
That boy was now in the hospital— Joey Winters. One of the officers, a tall,
somber fellow, asked if I had evidence or a motive or something that could tie
him to the case.

"Get
a photo of this guy," I said under my breath to the officer, "and
show it to the kid in the hospital. He'll ID him, I'd bet my life on it."

The
officer said they'd look into it and after more conversation took Paco man with
them. "Call me jaded"—I sagged into a chair— "but they'll
prosecute that guy when pigs fly. For all I know those two weren't even cops,
or they're cops that Karla has in her pocket." I watched Roy departing and
started to laugh. "There's your guy with the headset! Roy! Why didn't I
think of that before. Roy is in on it just like Ted and every other security
person in this hotel, which means everyone who's guarding us is not only
listening but is out to do us in!"

"Good
to have clarity," Callie said and almost made me laugh.

That
night, we returned to the theater again. This time for the show, because
according to Callie, Mo wanted us to see it. There were a lot of remarks I
could have made about that, but I chose to remain silent. I wasn't feeling too
talkative, much less funny.

The
Boy
Review
was one of the few places I could be perfectly comfortable kissing
Callie, and now I was no longer kissing Callie, because I still hurt, my
feelings were on ice.
Why in hell do I care if she’s snuggling up to some
old fart at a bar, if she’s chosen me to make love with? Why can't I just enjoy
the moment and take from it what there is to take? Because I'm hard-wired for
fidelity, because I flunked sharing, because she’s either all mine or she can
go screw whoever she wants and get the hell away from me! I have to shut this
out of my mind before I go nuts.

We
were midway through the show, beyond all the high kicks and Marilyn Monroe
impressions, and into the full acrobatic review that came just before
intermission. It was quite an extravaganza designed to have us heading out to
the lobby in a wild, enthusiastic buzz. Boys in tights dangling from high
wires, cyclists on wires overhead, acrobats leaping into the air. It was a
virtual
Gay du Soleil
and exceptionally well done, cut in time to
rhythmic rock music, the strobe lights fluttered disco style, and with each
strobe effect, all the men onstage turned into women and back again.

By
the time we hit the famous first half finale, the stage was a feast of
feathered flight. Graceful birdlike men slashing across the skies, their wings
outspread, sending a massive breeze across the audience, choreographed to
celestial music that gave everyone chills. It was awe-inspiring. Suddenly,
Callie gasped and stiffened in her chair, staring center stage. "Do you
see Rose?"

"Rose
isn't even on the stage," I said. "She's out of town, remember?"

"We've
got to find Rose!" Callie was out of her seat and heading for the lobby. I
hurried out after her, catching up with her just past the massive theater doors
and into the bright lights on the other side where I worked to get her to find
a spot and plant her feet so we could talk.

"Rose
Ross was caught in the rope hanging from the scaffolding in the back of the
set."

"Rose
Ross was caught in a rope onstage?"

"Yes,
I saw her," Callie panted.

"Like
you saw the other two?"

"Yes,
I finally get it," Callie said.

"Well,
help me out, because I don't. Start with the guy in the bathtub. Was he
real?" I asked.

"He
was real, but he was alive at the time that we saw him in the bathtub. He
wasn't in the bathtub at that point. It was Mo putting that image, that form
there, a man lying in the tub demonstrating that Bruce Singleton was about to
drown in water."

"Mo's
dead, you told me!"

"Mo
was showing me that a man who looks like this is about to die. Of course, I
didn't get it, so hours later the guy is found dead. Then the woman at the
party who cracked her skull on the terrazzo, I looked for help, and no one
seemed to even care. Well, that's because they couldn't see her—Joanie Burr in
full costume! It was Mo putting the form of Joanie there, saying someone who
physically looks like this, wearing this, is going to die. Sure enough next
day, Joanie Burr is dead from having hit her head on the patio, and I didn't
get it."

"Mo
is talking to you from the grave?"

"Tonight,
Mo showed me Rose Ross hanging dead before my eyes. He's saying she's in
trouble, big trouble, Teague, and we've got to find her. Within twenty-four
hours of my seeing the other two, they were dead."

"Did
he give you any clues? She's hanging by a rope, right? From a scaffolding.
Maybe there's a big construction site?"

"I'm
trying to tune in, but I'm not getting anything."

We
went back to our room to determine our battle plan. Elmo was barking at the
phone, having discovered that when we picked it up and talked into it, food
came to the door.

"Sorry,
Elmo, we made a pact not to eat food from room service... too dangerous,"
I said. As if by magic, there was a knock at the door. We froze. I looked
through the peephole. "Room service," I whispered to Callie and
stared at Elmo as if he had mentally ordered it up. I opened the door and a
waiter sailed in with a tray. "We didn't order anything," I said.

"Compliments
of the hotel manager," he said. The tray smelled of hamburgers, and Elmo
was already nudging the silver domed cover off to get to them.

"I
know you. You're the guy from backstage..." I said.

"Yeah,
the one with no name tag. Only now I have it on," he said.

"Rob!
How did you get this duty?" Callie asked.

"They
switch us around when we first come here so we learn different areas," he
said.

"Well,
I'd ask for a transfer out of this gig," I said and tipped him.

He'd
barely closed the door when Elmo put his paws up on the table in an
uncharacteristic show of bad manners.

"Hey,
hold on. One day you might meet a nice lady basset, and you don't want to have
the manners of a warthog," I warned him.

I
pulled the lid off. "Don't they normally put the flowers in a vase beside
the plate?"

Callie
stared down at the burgers with the single flower lying beside it. "A dead
rose," Callie said. "We have to find her right away!"

"Look!"
There was a plastic card under the rose. It was a security clearance card. I
couldn't believe my eyes. "Why would someone give us that?"

"Someone
gave us that to get us through the cashiers' room. So they're either helping us
or setting us up," Callie said. "They could have someone waiting
there for us to say we stole the card to break into the cashiers' cage. Imagine
trying to explain how we got the card."

"Yeah,
it arrived with a hamburger we didn't order and was under a dead rose." I
sighed.

Elmo
dove on the burgers before Callie could get them away from him. I hooked up
Elmo as he gulped the last bite.

"Come
on, buddy, we'd better take a quick walk. This could be a long night."

I
stopped at the front desk because the room service order with the dead rose was
presumably compliments of "the manager."

"Is
Ms. Loomis in?" I asked.

"Ms.
Loomis is gone," the golden woman said and went back to her computer
screen.

My
body froze. "Gone? For the day, for the week, forever?"

The
woman shrugged and gave me a sweet smile.

Joanie
was killed after we asked if she would talk to us. Joey Winters was beaten
nearly to death for talking to us, and now Rose is missing for talking to us.
Have they gotten to Loomis too? And who the hell are these bastards?

I
took my gun on the walk with Callie and Elmo, looping Elmo's long leash around
his neck to substitute for his collar. I knew things were heating up. I might
not have a sixth sense about much, but I have it about dangerous situations. It
was an uneasy feeling, and Elmo seemed to have it too. He glanced up at me,
gauging my tension, then hit the bushes fast, aware that we were in a time
crunch. The three of us went inside and crossed the casino, where I caught
sight of Dealer Brownlee who was there the night the man he called Mr. Emerson
bet ten thousand dollars on number fourteen.