Brian Freeman - Stripped

Stride remembered. There was an issue of LV magazine on MJ’s nightstand, underneath the newspaper story about the implosion.

“What was the story about?” Stride asked.

“It was called ‘The Dirty Secret of the Sheherezade.’ Does that give you a clue?”

“MJ called his father a murderer” Stride said. “Is that what you said in your story?”

“He is. Scandalous, isn’t it?”

“We talked to Walker Lane. He says you were putting ideas in MJ’s head.”

“You talked to Walker? And he mentioned me! Oh, now that is too much. I wondered if he would hear about it. Walker Lane telling people about Rex Terrell. God, David is going to flip over this.”

Stride and Amanda shared an exasperated glance.

“Tell us about the story,” Stride said. ‘The short version, please.”

Terrell nodded. His drink was empty, and he waved the glass in his hand at a waitress.

“The Sheherezade was Boni Fisso’s first big place,” he said. “Now, that was Vegas. The real stuff. Like Battista’s here. Authentic. I mean, look around most bars in town now, it’s all fake. You got your celebrity photos there, sure, but its all Tara Reid and Lindsay Lohan, and ten years from now, people will look at them and go, ‘Who’s that?’ Sinatra, he was authentic. Alan King. Rose Marie.”

“Rex,” Stride said, through gritted teeth.

“I mean, I’m a Vegas baby,” Terrell continued. “How rare is that? Born and raised. I’m authentic. These days, everyone is from California.”

Amanda picked up a butter knife and began slapping it against her hand. Terrell blanched.

“All right, all right. For you, I’ll leave out the good parts. Back in 1967, the Sheherezade was the hot place in the city. Right up there with the Sands. Part of the buzz on the joint was its showroom, see? They had an amazing dancer. Amira Luz. Spanish beauty, dark hair, spitfire. Absolutely a sex machine, and I am not lying. She did a nude dance that filled the seats, SRO every night. I mean, in those days, there were plenty of boobies jiggling onstage, but it was all chorus line stuff, deathly dull. Amira did a flamenco number and stripped down like a thousand-dollar call girl. H-o-t.”

“So?” Stride asked.

Terrell leaned forward and whispered, “So one hot July night, they found Amira at the bottom of the pool in the high roller’s suite on the roof of the Sheherezade. Someone had bashed her skull in.”

“And you think it was Walker Lane?”

“Absolutely. Everyone knew back then, but no one was going to say a word, not in those days.” Terrell twisted his index and middle fingers together. “Boni Fisso and Walker Lane were like this. Walker was Boni’s whale. He was there at the casino every weekend. Staying in that very same high roller’s suite where Amira was killed. He was a party boy, couldn’t get enough of Vegas, liked rubbing shoulders with the mob.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Amanda said.

Terrell put on a look of faux astonishment. “Oh now, don’t play innocent with me. I talked to people Who saw Walker in the casino that weekend, but the official word is, he wasn’t in town. He wasn’t in the suite. I mean, come on. Walker was a horny little dog. He wanted to hump Amira’s leg and move up to her fur. People told me he was obsessed with her, and Amira wasn’t interested. Turned him down flat. But Walker wasn’t about to hear the word ‘no’ from some Spanish stripper. Crack, pow.”

“Apparently, the police didn’t think so,” Stride said. “Walker was never arrested.”

Terrell sighed dramatically. “The police? This was 1967, Detective. You don’t think Boni could make the police go away? Puh-leez. The detective in charge of the case was Nick Humphrey, and Nicky was in Boni’s pocket. Everyone knew it. So Boni spirited Walker out of town. I mean, the man did a Roman Polanski and left the whole fucking country. And Nicky looked the other way. A murder in a high roller’s suite, for heaven’s sake? How easy should that be? But all the police could come up with is that some fan climbed down into the garden from the maintenance area of the roof and killed her.”

“What was Amira doing in the suite?” Amanda asked.

“The story was, she had seduced a key out of one of the desk clerks, and she liked to go up there for a nude swim after her shows, when the suite wasn’t occupied. Again, that was the official word. I mean, as if.”

Stride shook his head. “You put all this in your story? Get ready for a lawsuit, Rex.”

“Oh, we had a lawyer read every word,” Terrell replied, rolling his eyes. “We added lots of maybes and allegedlys and other weasel words like that. Anyway, you think Walker wants to make the story even bigger by suing? I think not. Walker wants this to go away. So does Boni, so he can put up his new slant-eyes baccarat palace.”

“So what about MJ?” Amanda asked. “How does he fit into this?”

“Hang on, honey. My butt’s vibrating. Damn cell phone. I swear, it goes off so often I could have an orgasm if I kept it in my shorts.” He slid a wafer-thin phone out of his back pocket and checked the caller ID. “Oh, her again. Never mind. Some little blond flack, never has any real stories to sell. Probably bangs her clients.”

“Rex, we’re running out of time,” Stride said.

“Chill, detectives. Like I said, MJ called me when he saw the article. He asked about my sources, which I could not tell him-duh-other than to suggest he ought to check out the archives at the library. Most of it was tucked away in the gossip columns back then if you could read between the lines. Dishy stuff. He asked me honestly if I thought his dad had killed the girl, and I told him honestly, yes I did. End of conversation.”

“But you called and left a message on the day he died,” Stride said.

“Surely. In my business, I give you a little, you give me a little. Which reminds me that I’m giving you guys a lot, so hello, don’t forget your friends. I figured MJ could feed me some dirt about Karyn Westermark, but oh well, somebody popped him first.”

“Do you have any idea who would have wanted him dead?” Amanda asked.

“Other than Walker and Boni?” Terrell grinned. “No, MJ seemed like a decent enough celeb. Pretty vanilla if you ask me. He poked it around a lot, though, so maybe you ought to find a jealous husband.”

“Like who?” Stride asked.

“Well, all I have is gossip. Rumors.”

“Tell us,” Amanda said.

Terrell glanced around at the other tables. “I do know that Moose Dargon’s wife, the little twenty-something waitress, hangs with a lot of celebs at the Oasis and likes to hook up. I heard she was very impressed with MJ’s performance in that sex tape with Karyn. Word is that Moose can’t plump the wiener anymore, even with Viagra. And you know what kind of temper Moose has. In the old days, he was in and out of the jails around here for busting people up.”

“His wife is Tierney, right?” Stride asked. He remembered that Karyn Westermark had already mentioned her as one of MJ’s flings.

“Tierney,” Terrell groaned. “Puh-leez. I mean, whatever happened to ordinary names? Did you hear one Hollywood actor thought it was such a riot and named his daughter Tinkle?”

“What does this Tierney look like?”

“Brunette. Kind of a bottlebrush look. She did Playboy last year. Breasts look like the pyramids in Egypt. Know the type?”

Stride did. He realized they had seen Tierney and her cone-shaped breasts on the video in MJ’s condo. He wondered what someone like Moose Dargon would do if he saw his wife fornicating on camera and whether it would be enough to make him hire a professional killer.