Glitz. Part 9

She said, "Yeah, why get cancer when you can get shot." She said, "Donovan, the big s.h.i.+t, he tells me I can have my own band. I get here, I've got one number I do, 'Automatic,' the Pointer Sisters? These guys, they get on their roll I don't even know what they're playing. They're spazzed out on ganja anyway, they don't give a s.h.i.+t, they're gone. 'No Parking on the Dance Floor,' the Midnight Star number. I'm on the synthesizer? I'm trying to keep it precise, these guys ride right over you."

"You're not happy," Vincent said.

"I don't know what I'm doing here."

"When're you through?"

"What's today? Started at eight, we're off at twelve. Weekends we're on ten to two."

"We could get something to eat after."

"I don't know-I could meet you for a drink. But not if you're gonna ask questions."

"I think Iris went up to that apartment the night before she died," Vincent said.

Linda put her drink down, started to rise.

"That wasn't a question. I didn't ask if she went up there the night before. But I think she did."

"I have to go back to work."

The bartender came down from the lounge interior to the far end of the horseshoe bar nearer the casino floor, the dark edge before the circus of lights and mechanical sounds. The bartender was smiling. He said, "Mrs. Donovan, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there."

Nancy Donovan was watching Vincent and beyond Vincent the girl in the orange tango dress walking through the tables to the bandstand. She said to the bartender, "What's her name? The singer?"

"Oh, that's Linda. Linda ...I don't recall her last name. What can I get you, Mrs. Donovan?"

She watched Vincent get up from the table. Bearded man in a raincoat, out of his natural element. Talking to the waitress now, paying his check. Then coming this way, along the dark lounge side of the bar.

Nancy could take three steps and be standing in front of him. She thought about it. She thought of an opening line but didn't like it. She turned to the bar and said, "A gla.s.s of water, Eddie. Please."

"Nothing in it, Mrs. Donovan?"

"Ice."

The bartender said yes ma'am and moved off as Vincent pa.s.sed behind her. She wasn't ready for him quite yet. But she would keep him in sight and turned to watch him as she had watched him in the lounge talking to Linda, Vincent close to Linda's bare shoulders, dark hair showing beneath the headdress, Linda not bad looking, the same Linda who was in San Juan. They seemed to be friends. She watched Vincent walk through the empty outer lounge to a railing and stand looking over the casino, at the activity, the flas.h.i.+ng lights, the serious faces in that funhouse the size of a dozen ballrooms. She watched him turn and walk toward the stairway, the five red-carpeted steps to the casino floor.

Nancy rode a gold elevator to the fourth level. She followed the executive hallway, pale gray and silent, past suites of offices with nameplates on double doors. Casino Hosts. Administration. Payroll. Division of Gaming Enforcement. Casino Control Commission . . . turned the corner, walked past executive offices and her husband's suite of rooms to the end of the hall where she knocked on a door marked Surveillance Surveillance.

"Mrs. Donovan-"

The woman stepped back, surprised, opening the door wide for Nancy.

"What can we do for you?" She wore a plastic-covered I.D. card pinned to her blouse that said she was Frances Mullen, Supervisor, Casino Surveillance Frances Mullen, Supervisor, Casino Surveillance.

"I think I saw somebody I know," Nancy said, "but I lost him." She led the way through a narrow hall.

Behind her, Frances Mullen said, "What's he look like?"

"Beard and a raincoat, dark hair, about forty."

"That shouldn't be too hard."

They entered a small, windowless office where a young man and woman sat before a bank of twenty monitors, rows of video screens that framed areas of the casino floor, bits of action in black and white, angles on gaming tables, aisles of people playing slot machines. Frances leaned in close to the console, between the young guy and the girl. She pressed b.u.t.tons and pictures on several of the video screens changed while looking much the same as before. "Man with a beard, wearing a raincoat. What color, tan?"

"Yeah, natural," Nancy said.

The young guy looked over his shoulder and smiled at her. "Mrs. Donovan, how's it going?"

"Just fine, Roger. Thank you. Terry, you holding up?"

Now the girl glanced around, a healthy, happy face in this high-tech room. "No problem, Mrs. Donovan."

Nancy stepped in behind Roger to watch a man in a leather jacket standing at the corner of a crowded c.r.a.ps table, next to the player with the dice. She noticed, now, the same man on three of the monitors, presented at different angles.

"Anyone we know?"

"Guy's acting a little s.h.i.+fty," Roger said. "Could be a railbird, waiting to grab a few chips."

Frances looked over. "He still there? Let's check him out, see if he's in the file."

Roger turned a k.n.o.b, bringing the image of the man in the leather jacket into a close shot. From the floor next to him he picked up a Polaroid camera with a scoop attachment on the front of it that was like a long square megaphone. He placed it against the screen, covering the screen, and snapped a picture.

Nancy's gaze moved to another screen. "Is that Jackie?"

Standing at a blackjack table where a single player sat facing the dealer, the player's back to the camera.

"The one and only," Frances said. "And here comes Miss Congeniality."

On the monitor a young woman with swirls of blond hair approached Jackie Garbo from behind. When she spoke to him Jackie turned his head, said something over his shoulder without looking at her.

"Poor LaDonna," Nancy said.

"Poor LaDonna my a.s.s," Frances said. "She begs for it. Jackie, you have to talk back to him or he'll walk all over you. She wears that pushup bra with the peasant blouse? Jackie calls her b.o.o.bs her Kathryn Graysons."

"He's a lovely man," Nancy said. "Turns now . . . gives her a pat on the behind . . ."

"Means he still loves her."

Nancy could see Jackie talking now, the diamond flash on his little finger as he raised his hand to his nose, turning again to the blackjack table.

"What's he doing?"

"He's scratching," Frances said.

"It looks like a signal."

"I don't know about it if it is," Frances said, "and I worked for him in Vegas twelve years, dealer to pit boss. Jackie's always scratching, he's a nervous type a person, lives on Gelusils . . . There's Tommy. I didn't think he was around this evening."

"We had dinner in the Versailles Room," Nancy said. "I think the food's getting better."

"They saw you coming. But I hear it is better," Frances said. "That cute little Mr. Hayakawa, he's finally straightening things out. All the restaurants served from the one kitchen, that's gonna save you some money."

Nancy was watching her husband talking to Jackie Garbo: Tommy's silver crown towering over Jackie's ball of curls, Jackie talking now. Jackie almost always talking, Jackie nodding toward the blackjack player, Tommy waiting, getting a smile ready as Jackie reached over to touch the player's arm. She watched her husband in action now as he took the player's hand in both of his and poured on the macho charm, big shooter to big shooter, the player's head nodding mechanically up and down, expression deadpan.

"Do they know each other?"

"They ought to," Frances said.

"Who is he?"

"Well, he's from Colombia . . ."

"Not the one in South Carolina."

"The other one," Frances said. "Jackie has the company plane pick him up in Miami."

"Is he on file?"

"My file? You kidding? This guy's comped to the eyeb.a.l.l.s, the whole shot." file? You kidding? This guy's comped to the eyeb.a.l.l.s, the whole shot."

The player was middle-aged, a small man, gaunt, with dark Indian-Latin features. His hair glistened. His starched s.h.i.+rt with the dark suit showed bright white on the monitor, with a sheen.

"I think I'd like a picture of him," Nancy said.

Frances pushed a b.u.t.ton and a close-up of the player appeared on the monitor in front of Roger. She said to Nancy, "You could work here."

"I was at Bally's a few years."

"I know you were. You got the eye, there's no doubt in my mind." Frances motioned to bring Nancy away from the monitors, hand on her arm. "I not only see things up here, Mrs. Donovan, people tell me things 'cause they trust me and they don't know how to handle certain situations."

"What people?"

"Well, like the cas.h.i.+ers. Guys I've worked with for years, we're like family. They see certain irregularities taking place and they tell me about it 'cause they want it on record. You understand? I'm talking about top management allowing certain things, not the help. The help I'm watching twenty hours a day."

"What's Jackie up to?" Nancy said.

"See? You know what I'm talking about."

"I have an idea."

"I work for you and Tommy, Mrs. Donovan. But I did work for Jackie at one time. I learned everything I know from him, I mean the finer points, and that's the only reason I'm saying this. I don't want to see him get hurt, lose his license. It could happen- some of the people he's hanging around with, the hotshots. I don't mean the celebs and the legit high rollers, he's got to take care of them and he loves it."

"So does Tommy," Nancy said. "The two of them, they're an act ...Wouldn't you say?"

"Well, Tommy's in a different position, he's having a good time. Why not?" Frances smiled faintly.

"We kid around. You know, about the old neighborhood, growing up on the West Side there."

"Who would've ever thought," Nancy said, "a Mick from Columbus Avenue-"

"Yeah, like that. He says to me, 'Don't go back, Fran, it's all artsy-craftsy over there now. Hurley Brothers Funeral Home, they changed the name to Death 'n' Things. The bars, you can't walk in you hit your head on the ferns in the hanging baskets. Where would our dads go for a drink?' They were subway motormen, you know. Both of 'em."

"I know," Nancy said.

"He calls me Wrong-Way Mullen 'cause I went out to Vegas, worked there fifteen years to end up in Atlantic City. Tommy says, 'You could a taken a Fugazy tour bus, been here in three hours.' "

"He's quite a guy," Nancy said.

"He's having a good time-what the heck. This place with Tommy it's like a toy, you don't mind my saying."

"Please," Nancy said.

"I'm not taking anything away from him, he's a brilliant guy, very charming. I don't have to tell you that."

"But what?" Nancy said.

"Well, Jackie-you know what he's like, all the celebrity photos in his office, the poor kid from the Bronx showing off. That's what he is, he's a show-off."

"Among other things," Nancy said.

"But he's getting mixed up with some people he shouldn't go anywhere near, and Tommy doesn't realize it. Jackie thinks, you know, he's discreet; but some of the people, you can't miss 'em."

"Like the guy from Colombia," Nancy said. "What's his name?"

"Excuse me." Terry looked over from the bank of monitors. "Here's a guy with a beard. On this one." She pointed to a screen.

Frances said, "Is that him?"

Nancy nodded, walking over, seeing Vincent Mora in profile playing a quarter slot machine, carefully inserting the coin, ritualizing it, pulling the handle and watching the drum spin ...to come up with nothing. She heard Roger say, "I don't recognize him, do you?" And Terry say, "No, but he's kind of cute."

When Vincent walked away from the machine Nancy said, "Follow him." She moved to a telephone on the wall, touched b.u.t.tons, then turned to watch Vincent appear on several monitors.

"Hi, is this Milly? ...Mrs. Donovan. See if we have a Vincent Mora staying with us."

As she waited she saw Vincent stop to watch coins clattering into the tray of a slot machine. He said something to the woman scooping quarters into a paper cup. The woman, very serious, turned and smiled, nodding.

Nancy smiled a little, watching him. She said, "Thanks, Milly," and hung up the phone. Roger was saying, "We know this guy?"

"He looks lost," Terry said. "Came in out of the rain-wow, never saw anything like this before."

It was a long raincoat, below his knees. He stopped at a blackjack table and watched several hands among three players before taking a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet. He bought four red chips from the dealer.

Nancy watched Vincent draw a pair of aces on the deal and split them to bet two red chips on each. Then was. .h.i.t with a king and queen and paid three-to-two for the naturals, sixty dollars. Roger said, "Look at the guy."

"I'd like a picture of him," Nancy said.