Michael Connelly - Murder in Vegas

Brandi noticed Ed giving the three Eskimos the eye as he reached the stoop of the chalet. Then the guy knocked and disappeared inside.

Brandi couldn’t believe how cold it could be in mid-May nor how her breathing still wasn’t back to normal from banging Ed and then just walking downstairs in the lodge and over to the Mustang. In fact, about the only other thing Brandi did notice was how, about five minutes after Ed entered the chalet, the oldest Eskimo in the next yard came strolling toward her side ofthe car, smiling and taking a piece of paper-no, an envelope?-out of a bulging pocket in his jacket.

And right then, Brandi Willette, even without knowing what was going to happen next, could feel her luck changing, and visions of what that would mean in Vegas-and beyond-began slam-dancing in her head.

Natalya, a fat-to-bursting fortysomething who looked like no drug pusher Ed Krause had ever encountered, settled the two of them into over-stuffed chairs that suited her like Felix’s red flowers back in San Fran’ suited him, only different.

She said, “Tell me, do you prefer ‘Edward,’ ‘Ed’…?”

“Just ‘Ed,’ thanks.”

Natalya smiled. Not a bad face, you suck a hundred pounds off the rest of her, let the cheekbones show. She seemed to arrange their seating so he could enjoy the dynamite view of the lake through a wall of windows. Ed was pretty sure the chalet had been designed to be appreciated from the water, not the road.

But the view turned out to be less “enjoyable” and more distracting, as some fucking moron in a scuba wetsuit went waterskiing past, and Ed automatically glanced at all the interior doorways he could see.

The fat lady turned her head toward the skier, then turned back, smiling some more. “There’s a rather famous school that teaches that between here and your lodge, though I’ve always felt it a bit too frosty and… strenuous to be diverting.”

As soon as he’d entered the room, Ed had seen the sample case on the tiled floor next to the chair Natalya had picked for herself. He’d rather it be at least the same size as his briefcase, but then the two-fifty in hundreds had barely fit in its twin on the way to Healdsburg, and this would be twice as much, maybe some of it in smaller denominations to boot.

Natalya said, “May I offer you refreshment?”

“No, thanks. I gotta be going soon.”

“As you wish,” the fat lady sighing, as though if he’d said “yes,” maybe she could break some kind of weight-watching rule of her own by joining him. “I will be needing to test your product.”

A switch from Tommy in wine country. “And I’ll be needing to count yours.”

“Let us begin, then.”

“Before we do,” said Ed, leaning forward conversationally but also to free up his right hand to move more fluidly for the revolver under his sports jacket and over his right hip, “any security I should know about, so nobody accidentally gets hurt?”

“Security?” A laugh, the woman’s chins and throat wobbling. “No, Tahoe City is a very safe place, Ed.”

“Not even those guys next door?”

“‘Those guys?’”

“Mexicans maybe, doing yard work.”

“Oh,” a bigger laugh, shoulders and breasts into it now. “Hardly. And they’re Mayans, Ed. They drift up here from the Yucatan to do simple labor-like opening up the houses after the winter’s beaten down the foliage? My neighbor’s a retired professor of archaeology, and the one who first got them to do landscaping for a lot of us along the lake. In fact, that figurine on the table and the stone statue near the fireplace are both gifts from him.” Natalya paused. “I’d have said it was too frigid up here for them, frankly,” the fat broad stating something Ed had been thinking from the moment he saw them, “but my neighbor tells me our gorgeous topography reminds them in some ways of their native land.”

Ed thought that still didn’t ring right: Most people he knew who ever traveled far from home went from colder weather to warmer, not the other way around.

On the other hand, what do you know about Mexicans, period, much less “Mayans” in particular?

Then Natalya opened her hands like a priest doing a blessing. “Shall we?”

Ed brought his briefcase over to her, and he took her sample case back to his chair, accidentally scraping the bottom of the case against the tiles, the thing was that heavy.

“This is supposed to be the best restaurant in town.”

Brandi Willette heard Ed’s comment, but she waited till the waitress at Wolfdale’s-who looked like one of the retro-hippiesback in the city-took their drink orders and left them before glancing around the old room with exposed ceiling beams and a drop-dead-gorgeous view of the lake, kind of facing down its long side from the middle of its short one. “It better be the best, all the time you spent back there.”

Ed just shrugged and read the menu.

Brandi didn’t want to push how long it took him inside the chalet, but she did notice he was carrying a different bag coming back to the convertible. The guy wants to keep things “confidential,” that’s fine. But it didn’t take a genius to figure that if what Ed brought in there was drugs, what he brought out was money. Lots of it. And, given the size of the case, lots more than he used in Healdsburg to buy the shit with.

Then Brandi thought about the oldest Eskimo, and what he’d given her while she was waiting for Ed, what was now nestled in her lucky totebag. Plus what that gave her to think about from her side. For her luck, even her fortune, which was a nice fucking change of pace.

The dinner at Wolfdale’s turned out to be maybe the best food Brandi had ever eaten in her life-medallions of veal, asparagus, some kind of tricked-out potatoes. And a merlot that made even a lot of the great wines she’d tasted the day before seem weak. A perfect experience.

Just like the catered dinner parties you’ll be going to soon.

But, just as they were finishing dessert, Ed said, “How about we take a drive, see the lake by night?”

Remembering the mountains closer to the wine country they’d already gone up and down with her hangover that morning, Brandi said, “I’d rather see our bed by night.”

“We can do that, too. Afterwards.”

Well, what could a girl say to that? A guy who’d rather drive than get laid, there was just no precedent for dealing with such a situation.

“Ohmigod, ohmigod,” said Brandi Willette in a tone that made Ed Krause think of the word shriek.

“What’s the matter?” him taking the Mustang through itspaces on the ribbon of road-lit only by the moon-switchbacking up one of the mountains on the southwest end of the lake.

“What’s the matter?” came out as more what Ed would call a “squeal.” The chick pointed over the passenger’s side of the car without looking down. “There’s no fucking guardrail here!”

“Highway Department probably thinks it wouldn’t help. Either you’d go through it and down, or bounce off it and into a head-on with somebody coming the other way.”

“Don’t even say that.”

Another couple of miles-Brandi now groaning, even shaking-and Ed saw his lights pick up the “SCENIC VISTA” sign that fat Natalya had told him about back at her chalet, after she recommended Wolfdale’s for dinner. “Let’s give you a break.”

He pulled into the otherwise deserted parking area, which seemed, even at night, like just a man-made platform jutting out from the side-nearly the top-of the mountain. They’d passed a few other viewing points-not to mention the entire Nevada town of South Lake Tahoe, but when Brandi had said, “Why don’t we stop here for a while, try our luck?” Ed had glanced around at the penny-ante casinos with Harrah’s, Trump’s and a bunch of other evocative names on them, chintzy motels sprinkled among them, and replied, “Nah, I want to wait for the real thing. In Vegas.”