Макс Коллинз - A Shroud for Aquarius

“Maybe not,” I said, the desert heat starting to get to me. “Shall we go in?”

“Let’s,” she said, and I slipped my arm in hers, and we went in.

Like other downtown casinos, the Four Kings was smaller than the “super” casinos on the Strip, but it was massive just the same. The decor was somewhere between riverboat and New Orleans whorehouse (not unlike the redecorated Port City Elks Club Ginnie had scoffed at), and the dealers and croupiers, predominantly male, were in white frilled shirts with string ties, to match the riverboat/Maverick decor; the waitresses were dressed much the same, though with mini-skirts and mesh stockings; the gaming-table patrons, of which there was no shortage, were casually dressed. We paused at a craps table, a large affair longer than it was wide, that took four men to run; some spectators had gathered there, joining the players, and we had to strain to see. Standing at one end, a fat, fiftyish, balding, cigar-puffing guy in a red and blue Hawaiian shirt and polyester pants a shade of brown never dreamed of by God was kissing the red plastic cubes and their white dots; he then held the dice out gingerly between thumb and forefinger like a sacrament before the proffered pucker of a stunning blonde of about twenty in a pink low-cut sweater and impossibly tight white jeans. She kissed the dice, neatly. He kissed her, sloppily. Then he flung the dice.

They bounced off the backboard, tumbled across the money-green felt awhile, came up 6 and 5.

“Aw right !” the obnoxious fat guy said, chewing on his stogie; the blonde cheerleader bounced up and down, only it was a stationary bounce: she went up and down like a piston, due perhaps to the tightness of her pants.

“Put your eyes back in your head, Mallory,” Jill said, with a mock-nasty smirk.

“I’ve just never seen polyester that color before,” I said.

“Right,” she said. “How are you planning to find this guy Charlie Stone?”

“Let’s ask at the check-in desk.”

Which was on the abbreviated second floor, a balcony overlooking the casino’s sea of green felt and the people swimming there. Since this package we’d lucked into was your basic twenty-four-hour crash-course in Vegas, hotel rooms weren’t included — we’d crashed an all-night party, it seemed. But since we weren’t here to party, I’d had Jane back at Port City Travel make us a hotel reservation. What I had to do in Vegas could be accomplished in a few hours tonight, and possibly a few more tomorrow. With luck. And if you couldn’t get lucky in Las Vegas, where could you?

“Port City, Iowa,” the middle-aged male clerk behind the counter said, with a knowing smile; he had a mustache and slick hair. “We’ll make sure you get the special rate.”

Jill and I exchanged bewildered looks.

“Why?” I asked, ever skeptical about gift horses.

The clerk beamed. “You’re friends of Mr. Stone, aren’t you?”

Aw right !

“And you didn’t even kiss my dice,” I said to Jill.

“Pardon?” the clerk said.

“Nothing,” I said. “Is Charlie in?”

“Sure,” the clerk said. “You know Charlie — he loves working nights.”

“Actually,” Jill said, “we don’t know Charlie. We’re just friends of a friend. We promised we’d say hello.”

“Well,” the clerk said with practiced cheer, “I’m sure that’s no problem. Anybody from Port City is a friend of Charlie’s.”

And he called down to the casino floor and had Charlie Stone paged.

Soon a big, heavyset, white-haired, ruddy man in a shark-skin suit and a black silk tie was approaching us with a huge hand extended toward me and a smile as big as the neon cowboy’s who loomed over Glitter Gulch.

“So you’re from Port City!” he said. His eyes were casino-felt green, but a little red-lined; booze? “What’s your name?”

I told him, and he snapped two thick fingers; the sound was like a gunshot.

“You’re that mystery writer! I read about you in the paper.”

Jill and I exchanged looks again. “What paper?” I asked. Had I made the Las Vegas Sun ?

“Port City Journal, of course,” he said. “I subscribe. Best way in the world to keep up — next to having friends drop by. And what’s your name, miss?”

He had offered Jill his big hand — on one finger of which was a single large gold ring glittering with diamonds, his only ostentatious touch — and she was taking it, telling him her name.

“Was your father Fred J. Forest?”

“Yes!”

“Didn’t he marry Viola Phillips?”

“That’s my mother!” Then, as if apologizing: “But I’m afraid they’ve both passed away.”

He patted her shoulder; like her long lost Uncle Charlie. “I’m sorry to hear that. I knew Fred pretty well. He was younger than me — wild kid, though!”

Jill smiled, a tinge of sadness in it. “He was a pretty sedate father. But I heard rumors he got around, way back when.”

“That he did,” Stone said, grinning broadly. “Can I get you folks a drink? Are my people treating you right?”

“I wouldn’t mind a drink, actually,” Jill said.

“Nor would I,” I said. “And your people are treating us fine. We’re getting some sort of special rate on our room.”

He waved a thick hand in the air, magicianlike, diamond ring reflecting light. “More special than that. We’ll comp you.”

“Well, thank you,” I said. “That’s hardly necessary...”

“Not a word!” he said. “Let’s go down to my office and chat.” He asked us what we’d like to drink, and Jill wanted a Manhattan, and after that dry air outside I wanted a Pabst more than life in the hereafter, and he had the check-in clerk make a call.

We went down the wide, rose-carpeted steps and back into the casino, past a battalion of chrome and glass slots, where patrons, women mostly, stood worshipping, making offerings, often from paper cups of coins, staring at the brightly glowing colored glass in the polished metal machines, transfixed by spinning fruit. Beyond the slots were the gaming tables — blackjack, craps, baccarat. Then roulette, chuck-a-luck, wheel-of-fortune; in a separate open room, with comfortable chairs, armrests and all, people were playing a bingolike game called keno. The air in here was cold, and though many people were smoking, not at all smoky; the room was brightly lit, but despite the high ceiling, it was something like being in a great big submarine.

Stone led us through the casino — where slightly muffled Dixieland music from a lounge mingled with the ka-chunk of slot machines eating money, their alarm bells signaling sporadic payoffs that came in rattling downpours of coin — and into a small, spartan office. Just a desk, some framed documents; a single black-and-white, wall-mounted TV monitor of an overview of the casino. It was a lot like Brennan’s office, without the ducks.

A riverboat-gal waitress came in and delivered our drinks. We thanked her.

“So you’re originally from Port City,” I said. You didn’t have to be a mystery writer to figure that one out.

“Born and bred,” he nodded. He’d ordered a drink, too: milk. “Been in Nevada thirty years now. But I left Port City, oh, ten, fifteen years prior.”

Jill smiled prettily and said, “How did a Port City boy wind up managing a casino?”

He laughed — a single booming “ha.” “Day at a time, dear. Began running a crap game over a saloon in Port City, many, many years ago. Those were wild days.”

I sipped my Pabst, smiled meaninglessly. “I hear Port City was pretty rough, back then.”

“Yes sir, it was. Cooled down in the fifties. I moved on to Idaho when they legalized gambling, and finally wound up here — as a dealer, floor man, pit boss, shift boss. Worked my way up the ladder, like any business.”