John Miller - Smoke and Mirrors

“Financially speaking, it’s looking grim at the moment, Mr. Mulvane.”

“I hope at least your accommodations are satisfactory.” “Room’s fit for a king. And I thank you for the bottles of bourbon you sent up.”

“Our pleasure. If you need anything, you’ll let us know?”

“I sure will. My only question is, what are y’all gonna do with my hog farm?”

The farmer guffawed, and Pierce laughed right along with him.

Pierce stayed long enough to watch the farmer toss back a glass filled with brown liquor and lose another two thousand dollars. He didn’t want a pig farm, but if Parr lost enough money, the casino’s attorneys would figure out how to liquidate one pretty quickly.

The bottom line was Pierce’s responsibility. When all was said and done, gambling was just a business like any other. Pierce Mulvane was just another CEO working long hours to generate profits for a corporation.

The main gaming tables ran the length of the casino center like a narrow island bordered by an ocean of slot machines, row after row like the cash crop they were. Though they were the main source of casino income, they were just machines, and got only a cursory glance from Pierce. Twenty-eight poker tables were surrounded by a low wall, so people could watch games in progress without interrupting them.

As Pierce and Tug rode the private elevator back upstairs, he couldn’t shake his curiosity about how the young blackjack player was beating the house. He opened his phone and poked in a number.

“Albert, no-limit blackjack, table four. The man in the yellow V-neck. He’s counting, with quite an audience. Let him run his streak. Check the black book and see if he’s in it. Handle it with your customary discretion.”

Pierce closed the phone. He couldn’t allow cheaters to profit and tell their pals that the Roundtable was an easy mark. He knew that White would handle this matter properly. As security director, Albert White received a substantial salary, but the additional enrichment incentives Pierce made available to him here and there ensured results, not to mention the above-and-beyond effort Mulvane expected. And Pierce’s above-and-beyond requests often called for tasks he couldn’t give to people he didn’t trust one hundred and ten percent.

The house that Alphonse Jefferson had listed as his address when he’d been arrested three months earlier had long since surrendered to the elements. Several of the paint-starved clapboards were missing and shocks of faded-pink fiberglass shot out from several open spaces like clown hair.

The yard was bare dirt except for scattered clumps of stiff rust-colored weeds, a dead washing machine, a child’s bicycle without wheels, a flattened shoe, and an emaciated and shivering pit bull whose head was much wider than his shoulders. The animal, standing in front of a wood-crate shelter with a floral plastic shower liner weighted down by brickbats on top of it, was anchored to a stake by a short section of swing-set chain. The dog growled as though he was saving his barks for more worthy customers than the two strangers he watched approach his master’s front door.

Brad stood and loudly rapped on the jamb. The interior door opened a few inches. The unmistakable sounds of a fist-flying talk show boomed from the living room.

“Yeah, what?” a scrappy voice rumbled from inside.

“Mrs. Jefferson, it’s Sheriff Barnett. I’m looking for Alphonse,” Brad said through an aluminum door whose fabric screening hung like a mainsail from a corner of it. A mangy cat shot out and flew around the corner of the house. The watchdog eyed the fleeing feline without comment.

“What you wants wif my grandbaby?” the old woman asked, her rheumy brown eyes floating in a cocoa lake of skin, her gaze moving between Brad and Winter like a drunk counting fish in an aquarium. “He ain’t been here for two, three days. You the sheriff, you say?” she asked, warily.

Brad opened his jacket to show her the badge on his shirt. “Yes, ma’am. Does Alphonse live here?” Brad asked her. “He used this address the last time he was arrested.”

“When he want to, he stay here. When he don’t, he don’t. What you wants him for?”

The old woman reached up to her outraged hair as if to check whether it was still there.

“Does your grandson have a rifle?” Brad asked.

“He a vetrin, so in the Army he might a’ did,” she said. “He didn’t brang one back from thur. It ain’t unlegal to have guns when you in the Army, is it?”

“No, ma’am, it isn’t. I was just wondering if he has a rifle now. ”

“Not that I ever seen around here, he don’t.” She laughed. “If he had one, he sure would of pawnded it.”

“Can I come in and look at his room?” Brad asked.

“Not without no warrants you ain’t coming in my house. I knows my sivah rights.”

“I can get a warrant, Mrs. Jefferson.”

“Then why you standing there? Go on and get it.” And she slammed the outside door closed, causing the jamb to vibrate.

Winter waited until they were almost back to the cruiser to laugh. Once inside, Brad laughed as well.

“Mrs. Jefferson was downright inhospitable,” Brad said.

“Less than cooperative,” Winter said. “How soon can you get a warrant?”

“I didn’t figure she’d cooperate, so one of my deputies is at the courthouse getting it right now. Watch the front, and I’ll cover the back.”

Ten minutes later, a beefy young deputy climbed from his still-running cruiser and when Brad came around the house, he handed the sheriff a folded search warrant. Brad and Winter moved swiftly to the porch as the deputy went around to the back.

After Mrs. Jefferson opened the door, Brad handed her the warrant and led Winter inside while she stared down at the folded paper in her hand with no expression on her face.

“You people better not make no mess you don’t put straight. And you don’t take nothing neither. I know everything what all’s in here.”

How anyone had managed to pack so much into a small house without it collapsing was an engineering feat worthy of the ancient Romans. The TV set and two mismatched recliners filled a small nest to the right of the front door. A path of sorts existed between shoulder-high walls of newspapers, old books and magazines, which allowed limited access into the rest of the home-based storage facility.

“Reminds me of a prairie dog town,” Brad said in a whisper, referring to several house cats lounging like skeletal panthers on the canyon walls. The first room, which contained a bed, held enough items of clothing and accessories to start a Salvation Army dry-goods distribution center. There were also stacks of electronic appliances, most of which looked like they had been salvaged from the side of the road. A man in his sixties sat up from the bed and blinked at the two men staring into his space.

“Huh?” he asked.

“Sheriff’s department,” Brad said. “We’re executing a search warrant.”

He ran his hands over his hair in an attempt at collecting himself. “We ain’t hiding nothing,” he said in a tone that told Winter the man wasn’t at all sure that was the case.

“We’re looking for Alphonse’s room, Mr. Jefferson,” Brad said.

“Next room, but I don’t think he’s in there.”

“Where is he?”

“Sommer else probably.”

“Mr. Jefferson,” Brad said. “How can you live like this?”

“Axe her,” the man said sadly. “City makes her keep the yard up some. You think you can git ’em to come up in here and ’complish the same thang?”

“I expect I could call the fire chief and tell him this is a fire hazard and maybe he can make her clean some of this out,” Brad said.