There was a long beat over the line. Patricia asked, “Am I supposed to play dumb? I don’t feel comfortable with that, Sergeant.”
“No, you can tell him I called … tell him what I said verbatim. Knowing Steve, he’ll do a true confessions as soon as he sees you … get all the garbage out of the way.” Poe raked his hair with his fingers. “Probably’ll say some choice words about me. So be it. Let him rant. Just keep an eye out.”
“All right.”
But she sounded wary. Poe knew he was putting her in the middle. Not a choice assignment, but since he had kept Steve on, someone had to watch him. He said, “Jensen should be there any moment.”
“He’s pulling up now.”
“I’ll be at Havana. Beep if you need me. After that—unless I get some hot lead—I should be back at the Bureau to finish up paperwork. Let’s all plan on meeting in a couple of hours.”
“Fine.”
“Bye.” Poe cut the line, started the car, let it idle in neutral. Before he jerked the stick into reverse, he took off the plastic protective slicker he’d been wearing and slipped on a lightweight ebony blazer he kept in the trunk for emergencies. It wouldn’t keep him warm, but it gave him a look.
Black jacket, black turtleneck, black jeans, black socks and shoes. All-purpose clothes. He’d fit in anywhere. Again, he combed his droopy locks with his fingernails. Checked himself in the mirror. He needed a shave, which gave him the appearance of pulling an all-nighter. Casinos like that image.
West on Charleston, he headed back into town, making it to Main in under five minutes. A few more blocks, then Poe merged onto Las Vegas Boulevard. Some cars and cabs were still on the road, but the Strip was essentially deserted. Things slowed down as night inched toward dawn. People calling it quits, roosting in their hotel rooms, licking their wounds or sleeping off a bender. Besides, the weather wasn’t conducive to strolling.
A pleasure to drive the boulevard empty. Devoid of life but not light. He had spent most of his life in this fabulous city—a bizarre combination of horse town friendliness and metropolitan frenzy. For Poe, the tacky street spectacle held comfortable familiarity. Like his own dysfunctional family—hard to be around, but it was home.
Gaudy Day-Glo colors still sparkling at three in the morning. Silly but actually much tamer than the Vegas of his youth. Yes, hotels continued to erect idols in the neon wilderness. There was the Hard Rock Cafe’s electrified Gold Top Les Paul pointing up toward the all-powerful Guitar God in the sky and an emulsified hologram of King Tut floating in the night air at the Luxor. But since the eighties, the city had tried to class up its act. Instead of eighty-foot pink clicking champagne flutes, the hotels opted for the more corporate marquee look. Besides being perceived as better behaved, the signs provided free advertising for Vegas acts—a Madison Avenue integration of form and function.
Passing the thousand-foot-tall Needle in the Sky—more of a space station than a hotel—then the dowager Sahara, which had once been the hottest showgirl of the Strip, and the Big Top, a tangible homage to P. T. Barnum’s adage “There’s a sucker born every minute.” A family-oriented place replete with theme park, circus acts, RV hookups, and cheap rooms and food. Keeping the kids stuffed and occupied with roller coasters and high-wire acts, allowing Mom and Dad free time to squander away the college tuition. Four separate casinos providing everything and anything—from penny-ante slots on up. Lest the homey facade fool the innocent, old Steve had found Brendon, AKA Bebe—Mr. Connected Bellman. Jensen had been using the hotel for his second bedroom for over three years. Bebe gave him hourly rates in the city’s off-season.
Like now.
Tourism had been especially light the past couple of weeks. April blues. With Mr. IRS Man waiting in the wings, disposable cash was suddenly scarce. Poe had yet to file himself. This year, as in the years past, over half his income had come from gaming wins. Blackjack. He’d been kicked out of most of the big casinos. But there were always ways to work around it.
Poe loved the pits, loved to play. It provided him with a place to sit, cards to hold, and a set of rules to follow. It prescribed his life for a couple of hours, warding off urges to bounce off walls. Just like the job, cards kept him occupied.
Driving past the Stardust, the Mirage, and Treasure Island—the brainchild of the Golden Nugget’s onetime wunderkind Steven Wynn. On warm summer nights, the sidewalks were jammed with gawkers watching buccaneers battle on grounded galleons. Others piled up to stare at a fifty-four-foot fiery volcano complete with spewing lava. Once, Poe happened to be in one of the hotel rooms overlooking the smoking mountain. Peering into the bowels of the man-made Vesuvius … seeing all those gas jets and pipes …
Past the Hilton, past Bellagio, Monte Carlo, Caesars, MGM, Excalibur, the Luxor … to the last few dirt lots before McCarren International.
Havana had recently been constructed as a joint venture by two major hotel moguls. Its grounds were densely planted with coco palms and hundreds of tropical fruit trees and banana bushes. During the summer, the landscape was kept lush and green by a zillion different sprinkler and spray systems. The place was low-rise for the city, and catered to high rollers who wanted old-time decadence and privacy.
The main lobby and hotel emulated a Cuban plantation—a four-story building of vanilla stucco, with green-and-white-striped awnings and red roof tile. Lots of balconies and verandas—unusual because most Vegas hotel fronts were pressed as flat as asphalt. Behind the main structure lay the more expensive—and very personal—bungalows. The rock pool was actually a series of manmade lakes, streams, and waterfalls rimmed with rain forest housing an imported parrot population. But the lodging’s biggest draw was the smoke shop. Though Cuban cigars were illegal to buy and sell on Uncle Sam’s turf, Havana boasted its own line of smokes made from Cuban-stock tobacco. Apparently the leaves were grown on the hotel’s own private land down South. No one had ever verified if the fields really did exist, but word of mouth had been sufficient. The inn’s humidifier was as big as Phileas Fogg’s ballroom.
Pulling into the multilane circular driveway, Poe drove up to the entrance. A valet peered inside the window of the Honda and opened the car door, pausing a nanosecond before giving him a laser-light smile. Poe knew the footboy was sizing up his tip. Poe’s straight black hair, large, almond-shaped dark eyes, and café-au-lait complexion coupled with the cheap car suggested a Southern Paiute Native American—a lowly cigarette-hawking Digger who’d probably stiff him. On the other hand, the straight black hair, dark eyes, and dark complexion could mean Italian and therefore “connected.” Actually, Poe’s lineage held both bloodlines plus pinches from other nationalities. He was a true mongrel. Flashing his badge, he smiled, then tipped generously, told him to keep the Honda out front.
Havana’s lobby was three stories tall and held a half-dozen atria of exotic birds and squawking wildlife, including macaques, which were Asian, not Central American, monkeys. But so far, few if any demanded absolute authenticity. Animal rights activists had tried to stop the construction, but the hotel had preempted them by bringing in the Las Vegas Zoo and designing the cages to simulate natural animal habitats. Poe admired the hotel’s ingenuity.
He had to walk through the Cuban-themed casino—through the flashing lights and an aural assault of bells, whistles, and bongs—to get to the check-in desk. The dealers wore white double-breasted suits and linen shirts, white loafers on their feet and broad-brimmed Panamas on their heads. Cocktail waitresses were garbed in ruffly midriff blouses and multicolored sarongs, flowers tucked in their coifs. When business was hot, they often wore fruit hats à la Carmen Miranda. Poe followed the floral carpet walkway past seas of slots dinging out monotone mantras as coins were absently dropped into ever-hungry mouths. They held no interest for him, no magic allure. Just money down the toilet.
The pits were a different story—the crap games, the wheel games, regular poker, pai gow poker, and blackjack. If a half-shredded face hadn’t been torturing his soul, Poe might have stopped. Instead, he moved