Джо Горес - Cases

Oh God, would he be good to her? Would he love her always? Panic washed over her. So often in shotgun weddings there were other women, anger, raised fists... She and her baby, alone...

No, Dunc would be waiting at the gate with open arms. She’d work at temp jobs as she’d done in L.A. until the baby came, and then maybe she could work at that Fleur de Lis place, or at an inn, anyplace she could learn while she worked. A few years down the road, she and Dunc would have the dude ranch she dreamed of. The three of them together. She would run the ranch, Dunc would write and become famous. Like Hemingway. And their baby would ride bareback like a wild Indian.

Twenty minutes later she came out of the accordion ramp from the plane and there he was, right in front of the gate, solid as a rock, not even aware of the deplaning passengers parting around him.

His arms were around her, tight, they were kissing, she kept her eyes shut, dizzy, feeling him start to harden against her just from this brief embrace, and she knew it was going to be all right.

Everything was going to be all right forever.

Dunc could remember going to only three weddings; the best had been when he’d served a Summons and Complaint on the groom in San Mateo. Reno’s Little Chapel of Eternal Love (“No Waiting, No Delay") reminded him of that occasion, in fact: a single room with fake stained-glass windows and cupid figures and big red plush hearts. “Here Comes the Bride” from a record player while he and Penny were motionless in front of the justice of the peace.

Penny was wearing a rose suit with a fitted jacket that emphasized her waist, and a longish black skirt that followed the lines of her body. Just dressy enough for the occasion, but suitable for an office job if being assistant chef in training for a dude ranch didn’t pay enough.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together...”

The J.P. was a tall thin man wearing an embroidered western suit and a cord tie with a silver bull’s-head clasp. High-heeled boots chased with silver. Spurs. Even a fake six-gun. Penny avoided Dunc’s glance not because she sensed his hidden reservations, but because she was fighting back laughter as hard as he was. Suddenly he loved her very much.

“... authority vested in me by the State of Nevada...”

Penny squeezed his fingers gently after he had slipped the plain gold band onto her finger. She lifted smiling eyes to his. The dimples at the edges of her mouth — the girl of his dream.

“You may kiss the bride...”

He did. With all his heart.

“Champagne!” yelled Drinker, bigger than life and redder of face than usual, wearing a western suit of his own. The J.P. set out four plastic champagne glasses, went out to the next couple in the anteroom. He stuck his head back in a moment later.

“Y’all mind staying a few minutes extra to witness these here lovely folks’ wedding?”

Sherry and Drinker went out to warm up the car. While they waited, Dunc and Penny witnessed the other wedding, then bundled up in their coats and went out into the cold to get into the backseat.

“Now the four of us are gonna go out to a new steakhouse and casino I heard about a couple miles outta town.” Drinker drove them through the icy Nevada evening; there was banked dirty snow along the sides of the road. “You know, if you put a marble into a glass jar every time you do the deed during your first two years of marriage, then take one out for each time after that, it’s a scientific fact that you’ll never get ’em all out again.”

“My Uncle Carl and Aunt Goodie actually did that,” said Penny, “just to see if it was really true.”

Sherry turned to look at them. “Well? Was it?”

“They have to keep buying more marbles,” said Dunc.

Penny gave him a little shove on the arm, but her look was warm and grateful. The anxiety he’d noticed before was gone from her face. The heater was finally warming up the car.

The Roundup was a long low flat deliberately rustic building built to resemble a big old Southwest cattle ranch, but the blaze of lights prevented any confusion with the real thing.

“Here’s the place I should work,” said Penny as they entered.

“They just opened it a month ago because their gaming license came through,” said Drinker. “The grand opening won’t be until the better weather comes.”

“Think I could buy it?”

“I imagine the big boys’ll move in on them if they make a go of it.”

The big boys. Reno brought back memories of Las Vegas. Artis’s story about Bugsy Siegel moving in on the owner of the Flamingo; the fat man who buried Lana Turner in the desert and took over the Gladiator after Carny died.

The greeter wore a ten-gallon hat and blond cowhide chaps that swished when he moved; there were longhorns over the dining room entrance. A maroon velvet rope across the doorway kept you from stampeding in and grabbing your own table.

Sherry said, “I put our names in, Drinker, but there’s almost an hour wait to get a table.”

A folded bill changed hands. Drinker came back to them.

“We’ll wait in the piano lounge.”

There were no empty stools at the long bar under the windows, and the perimeter stools of the block-long Steinway grand against the far wall were all taken, too. But a table between the fireplace and the window had four conspicuously vacant chairs waiting around it.

“Well, what do you know about that?” marveled Drinker.

“Thanks, big guy,” said Dunc.

“Hell, kid, it’s your night.”

A waiter brought a silver bucket holding two bottles of Cordon Rouge. Dunc was caught by the music; “Moonlight in Vermont” had been followed by an evocative, somehow familiar one he couldn’t name that then segued into “Old Cape Cod.”

They drank and toasted until their table was called. The steaks were huge and bloody and the baked potatoes smothered in butter and crumbled bacon and sour cream. Garlic toast on the side. The windows were steamed over, snow was piled on the sills outside like in Minnesota, like a Christmas card, the voices and laughter in the room were hearty and exuberant like coming home from duck hunting with your limit of mallards.

For a moment he wished his folks, his uncles and cousins, everybody he had hunted and fished with over the years, were all here to celebrate with them.

They went back into the piano bar for a nightcap, the crowd had thinned, they got their same table back. A waiter appeared.

“Order anything you want, champ,” urged Drinker.

The piano was still playing. On an impulse Dunc said, “Ask the piano player for ‘Desert Moon.’ ”

Penny looked at him with slight misgivings, as though she might have forgotten their favorite song, then looked puzzled when she didn’t recognize the song at all. A few minutes later Pepe pulled up a chair from an adjacent table with effervescent energy and sat down.

“Pepe!” said Penny. “How did you even know we were here?”

“ ‘Desert Moon,’ ” he said with a grin. “Nobody but Dunc asks for my own stuff. What brings you two to Reno?”

“They got married this afternoon!” said Sherry.

After hugs and congratulations and introductions, Pepe looked at Dunc with a grin. “Apart from snagging the prettiest girl in Reno, what are you up to these days?” He read Dunc’s business card and chuckled. “A genuine private eye? How did you get into that?”

“Remember that Labor Day picnic we were going to at Griffith Park in L.A.? I met Drinker there, he’s my boss now — and my best man.”

Pepe told Drinker, “You got a pretty damn good man right here.” Then, looking embarrassed, said to Dunc, “Sorry about that picnic. An hour after you left that joint on the Strip I got a good gig in Monterey, be there immediately. After that, a couple of cruise ships. Chile, Argentina, and back.”