Sin City Homicide

33

It was nearly midnight when Alma Parr’s cell phone woke him up. He had his ringtone set to the most soothing piece of music he could think of: Bach’s Ave Maria for the harp. Regardless of how calm and relaxing the music was, it still jolted him awake. He grabbed the phone and looked at the screen. It was Javier.

“This better be good. I was in a hot tub with Jessica Alba.”

“Home invasion on Cal Robertson good enough for you?”

“You’re shitting me? Anyone hurt?”

“Just the intruder. Got a hole in his chest about four inches across.”

“Text me the address. I’m coming right now.”

Parr jumped up and went to the closet. He put on jeans and a tight black T-shirt before grabbing his badge and placing the chain around his neck. He put on his holster and firearm and took a leather jacket out of his closet before running out the door.

As he sped down the winding road and got onto the interstate, he remembered his first encounter with Cal Robertson: a routine traffic stop when Parr was a rookie. Cal was driving a Ferrari over two hundred miles an hour down the freeway while getting a blowjob from a dancer who worked at the MGM. Parr wrote him a ticket for reckless driving and was going to let him go, but Cal took out a wad of cash and a vial of cocaine and tried to hand it to him. Parr hauled him in while Cal screamed that he would be out in a few hours.

Parr booked him, and the city attorney placed a call to the sheriff, who released Cal right away and wrote Parr a reprimand. It was Parr’s first taste of bureaucracy and the power of pull. He’d learned his lesson well. The powerful could game the system, so Parr went outside the system. If he had it to do again, Parr would have taken photos of the dancer and Cal together and threatened to send them to his wife unless he sold out his coke dealer. It would’ve meant a bust instead of a reprimand for Parr. That was the last time in his career that Parr had been reprimanded.

He drove through the open gate into the enclosed community. The homes were worth millions of dollars, but they didn’t seem comfortable, just luxurious. The entire community represented the type of home meant to impress others, despite being unwelcoming to the owners themselves. Parr found the house and parked in the driveway. He slipped under the police tape across the front door and saw two uniforms trading notes in the living room.

“What genius put tape on the front door? Get that shit down, and one of you stand out there. Reporters can slip under the tape.”

“Al, up here.”

Parr looked up the stairs, where Javier stood at the top. He practically skipped up the steps two at a time. Off to the right, near a bedroom, assistants from the Clark County Coroner’s Office were bagging up a body. The corpse was tall, around six foot four or six five, with a large black wound marking his chest like a decoration. Parr let the assistant zip up the bag and place it on a stretcher. A forensics tech went to work on the blood spatter across the wall, and Parr stepped over him into the bedroom. On a couch in a corner of the massive space, much larger than his living room and kitchen combined, Cal Robertson sat with his wife.

“Didn’t know you were into making Swiss cheese, Cally boy.”

Cal looked up, saw Parr, and cursed under his breath. “What are you doing here? I thought you got promoted.”

“Oh, I’m never too busy for my favorite power broker. How’s the casino business? Not making too many enemies, I hope?”

Cal turned to his wife and gently placed his hand over hers. “Dear, do you mind if we talk in private for a minute?”

“Sure,” his wife said. Parr could see the shock that had taken hold of her as she stood up and walked out of the room. She stepped over the forensics tech without looking down at the large black stain taking up most of her hallway carpet.

“Didn’t know you had it in you, you old bastard,” Parr said.

“Fuck you, Alma. What is it with you, anyway? You got a hard-on for me? You break into my charity event and arrest me like a fucking street thug.”

“You are a street thug. You’re just a rich, old street thug. I heard you pled out on the public assistance fraud charge? Lemme ask you somethin’. How is it that a rich prick like you with a hot, big-titted wife thinks it’s a good idea to get a few hundred extra dollars a month by lying on a worker’s compensation claim? Was it the thrill?”

He became visibly upset. “I worked my ass off to get where I am, and the fucking government is gonna take half my money and give it to welfare whores in the ghetto? You better believe I’m gonna get as much of that back as I can.”

Parr shook his head. “So,” he said, looking back at the bloodstain, “what happened?”

“What does it look like happened? That cocksucker tried to kill me.”

“Do you know him?”

“No. I was just pulling into my garage, and he started shooting at me.”

“Make any enemies lately? Other than the hundreds you already have?”

“I’ll tell you exactly who did this. Bill fucking James. That sonofabitch thinks he can take me out? Me? Well, I’m not dead yet. I got something in store for him.”

“Why would you think Bill James did this?”

“Oh, you want a story? I’ll give you a story. It’s the fucking Cubans. They’re opening back up. Back to business. Or that’s the bullshit Bill gave us. He wants to spend almost a billion dollars building two casinos and hotels on the beaches in Havana. He says he needs half the money up front as a sign of good faith. Half! The crazy sonofabitch wants to give five hundred million dollars of our money to the Cuban government without so much as a handjob in return. And who the hell knows where the rest of the money’s coming from. Well, the board didn’t go for it, and I told him what he could do with his money.”

“How do you know Cuba’s opening up again?”

“Bill says he has some insider in the government, some bullshit he fed us. We didn’t buy it, and he’s mad as hell.”

“If the board shot him down, what would he gain by taking you out?”

“There’s two personalities on that board: Bill James and me. If they don’t follow me, they’ll follow Bill James.”

Parr glanced around the bedroom. “Give Javier all the details. I’ll pay Bill a visit.”

“I want another detective on this case.”

“Other than Javier? Why?”

“He’s a spic. He’ll only work hard enough not to get in trouble.”

“You’re the convicted felon, asshole. You don’t want us to find who did this, then don’t work with Javier. I’m sure Bill James will forget all about this little incident and not try anything else.”

He turned away as Cal said something. Javier was playing with a toothpick near the bedroom door. Parr put his arm around his shoulders, and they walked out to the hallway and into the next bedroom, where it was quiet.

“You believe him?” Javier asked.

“I’ve had a lotta run-ins with him, and he’s never once told me the truth about anything. He’s as dirty as they come.”

“Bill James, though … we had him for the Steed case.”

“We didn’t have anything but a motive. Cal’s got at least a hundred people who would love to put a bullet in his head. You know how he got rich? He used to push junk penny stocks to retirees. He’d clean up on commission fees and leave them holding the bag when the stock plunged. He’s a rat.”

“We could just, you know, not worry about who did this.”

“No, we’re the law, no one else. We can’t allow fuckers to go around executing people. Even pond scum like Cal.”

“So where you wanna start?”

“Run the routine. Follow up on the body, the weapon, the ammo. He had to get here somehow, so get some uniforms out looking for abandoned cars and call the cab companies, too. See if anyone dropped him off.”

“Guy’s got a professional-grade suppresser on the tip of that gun. Not the homemade junk. Top of the line. He’s probably not off the streets.”

“Or someone’s financing him. If he was a pro, he wouldn’t have let some old man with irritable bowel syndrome blow his guts out. I’m thinking amateur. And if he’s amateur, he left a trail for us to find who hired him. Once you find out who he is, make sure we go through bank accounts and safe deposit boxes.”

Javier sighed. “Your wish is my command.”

Parr left the house and got into his car. He looked at the mansion in front of him. It was a den of corruption and decadence. The greed, the absolute greed. Cal had all this, and he still risked prison to steal a few extra bucks from the government. Parr would never understand that about people.