Preston Allen - Las Vegas Noir

Madison began to carve the slightly warm meat. The sharp knife slid cleanly through tissue, then gristle, then bone. She was a vegetarian, but that didn’t matter. Madison wasn’t about to partake of this feast. This was the feast of atonement. This was the blood sacrifice for sin. Just as her Hebrew ancestors centuries ago had offered up the blood and flesh of goats, so too was Madison going to petition God for His mercy. This was Madison’s Yom Kippur.

The knife grated on something hard. Madison sighed in exasperation, then plucked a silver bead from the gory mass in front of her. Everything was in order. It was time for her to go. Carefully, she began to roll bits and pieces of Garvey into remnants of the filthy carpet she’d also sectioned up. There were six construction sites in her neighborhood alone.

Madison had to make four trips to her BMW. Two legs, two arms, one torso, the surprisingly heavy head. The midnight sky reflected the beam of the giant Luxor pyramid thrusting its shaft of light heedlessly through the dark womb of stars and galaxies above. Madison drove out of the parking lot without thought, without feeling.

Early morning found Madison not far from her condo. She didn’t remember where she’d been, but she knew she had one last stop to make. Madison stood among broken soil, a heavy blood-sodden lump of carpet cradled in her arms. The eastern sky was beginning to brighten into a jaded pink. The lights of the Las Vegas Strip seemed to wink at her.

Madison was poised before a slab of semi-hardened concrete. Silent pieces of heavy equipment surrounded her: hulking dark masses that loomed against the backdrop of the dawn sky. Reverently, she knelt on the cold foundation and laid her burden down. Madison wondered briefly if the cement contractor would appreciate the sacrifice his son had made.

From the valley below, the slow hum of machinery warming up began to fill the air. Bit by bit, the thriving city came to life. Madison rose to her feet and picked her way carefully back to her car.

Safe and secure in her condo, she began to methodically gather every strand of jewelry she’d ever made. Piece by piece, Madison fed the necklaces, earrings, and bracelets into her garbage disposal. Perhaps now the tics would stop. Perhaps now Madison Feldon could move beyond the shadow of her bullying father.

Madison was training one of the tennis women she so admired from afar when a detective came to see her the following week. Detective Nick Latkus’s face looked like an orange that had been left too long in a fruit bowl. His freckled skin hung in folds of crepe around his deeply lined mouth. His hair, mustache, and eyebrows were a faded red. Tall, thin, and stoop-shouldered, the only remarkable thing about the man was his eyes. Beneath droopy lids, they were as green and knowing as a feral cat.

He waited patiently for Madison to finish with her client, then asked where he could speak to her in private. Detective Latkus followed Madison upstairs to the club café. After exchanging a few pleasantries, the detective abruptly asked her if she was aware she was missing a client. The local media had been in a frenzy for the past week over the discovery of body parts at construction sites throughout Green Valley. The victim had been ID’d as Garvey Kendall; Madison’s client.

Even a seasoned veteran like Latkus would never forget, when he arrived at the first crime scene, the agonized mask that was Mr. Kendall’s face. The cement contractor was actually cradling the severed head in his arms. He’d refused to relinquish what was left of his son, his only child, until the screams of the newly arrived Mrs. Kendall pierced the air.

“Ms. Feldon, we traced several calls from Garvey to your cell phone last Sunday. He was first reported missing the following morning when he didn’t come home. Did you see him that day? Mind telling me what you talked about?”

Madison looked steadily into the detective’s eyes. Nothing twitched. Not her eye, not her lip. Even her heart felt as though it was on standby. She was as placid as the waters of Lake Mead in the early-morning stillness of high summer. Madison sighed.

“Garvey was a true loner, detective. He had a serious self-image disorder. And that’s why he came to me.” Madison shook her head in much the same manner as her mother would after one of Louis’s tirades. “Garvey was obsessed with his diet. He wasn’t comfortable in his own body. He wanted me to help him reinvent himself. He was also consumed with a need to impress his father.” Madison smiled sadly. “I did see him Sunday, detective. He came over to tell me that he’d had an epiphany.”

“An epiphany?” Nick Latkus’s splintered alley-cat eyes bored into the dull brown of Madison’s.

“Yes.” She dropped her eyes to the stubby fingers that were folded primly in her lap. Madison noted her ankles were neatly crossed; her mother and father would have approved. For the first time ever, she felt composed, assured, and completely in control of her environment. “He told me he knew he could never measure up to family expectations.” Madison leaned forward and looked earnestly into the detective’s face. “Garvey realized he had to stop his father’s madness. He simply needed someone to show him the way. There had to be atonement, you see. Garvey was special. He was worthy of sacrifice. I set him free.”

Latkus snorted. “So you decided to cut this young man up into bits and pieces as a favor to him?”

Madison nodded. Her eyes seemed to glaze over. She had no doubt she would soon be behind bars. Only she was aware she would be in a reverse form of prison. Madison was already dreaming of the indulgences behind thick concrete walls, away from prying eyes and nagging voices. Three hot meals to be eaten every day. No digital scales to haunt her. No construction noises to interrupt her sleep. Madison arose, and like a small child, obediently allowed the detective to escort her to his unmarked white car.

After all , she thought, gazing out the window as the tree-lined streets of Green Valley flashed by, once I get some time by myself to pull myself together, there’s always the possibility ofparole. A cloud of dust from a back loader drifted across the road. Madison Feldon smiled.

Nellis

They called him Crip, and you could find him at night seated on his throne outside the Gold Man’s Gentlemen’s Club.

He wore a mustard-colored suit and a ruffled party shirt. His round-eyed shades were mustard-tinted, and his narrow-brimmed hat was mustard too. He carried a gold-tipped cane. But he was a nobody, just a big, ugly coal-black man with a twisted face and a brain that divided the world into absolutes. Black and white. Right and wrong. Loyal and disloyal. What he like and what he don’t like.

He was not exactly a bouncer, but he was. He was not exactly a valet/bodyguard, but he was. He was not exactly associated with the Gold Man’s Gentlemen’s Club, but he was. What he was, was a man with a face so ugly that the Gold Man himself found him useful and kept him around for special assignments.

Usually he just sat outside the entrance with his hat and his cane in his lap, keeping watch over things. Making sure the college boys didn’t start any trouble when you turned them away for being underage. Making sure the flyboys from Nellis Air Force Base weren’t too drunk already before they went in. Making sure nobody tried too hard to put the moves on Candy Apple, the pretty little thing who checked IDs and collected cover at the door. Yeah, there was a security guard out there, little Josh Ho the Hawaiian, all decked out in his black-on-black uniform — but everybody knew the real power was the Mustard Man. Crip never said much. He never had to. He just had to stand up and walk over to you. He loomed well over six-foot-five — and he had to be pushing three hundred pounds. The twisted, scarred face. The unsettling mustard tints. If he told you, “Get to steppin’,” then you did, no matter how drunk you were pretending to be.