Dark End Of The Street

Chapter 19

Even in the middle of the day, the scene was the same as the night before. The perfectly dimmed blue and green neon light. The pinging electronic music. The hundreds of slots, card tables, and roulette wheels buzzing with the energy of a never-ending party. The scent was the same, too. A musky odor of nervousness and beer breath mixed with cheap cigars and endless cigarettes.

I walked toward the security offices flanked by U and Beckum, scanning the crowd for the men we met last night. Didn’t matter if I had two or two hundred with me, I still felt a raw nervousness in the back of my throat. I swallowed, ground my molars together, and kept walking.

Somewhere in the crowd, a craggy blond in a red cocktail dress whooped it up with a black man in a red suit after the dice she’d kissed rolled a winner. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the woman – bloodshot eyes, lazy grin – reach into the man’s pocket, give a tug, and then stumble backward.

On the opposite side, I saw two boys with black hair slap the heads of rubber frogs with cushioned mallets. One chewed gum. The other pretended he was smoking with a pretzel stick.

My stomach burned. The sound of my grinding teeth buzzed in my ears.

Ahead, two men in green blazers met Beckum by the cash exchange windows. U and I hung back. Beckum clasped the shoulder of one of the guards, a white man with teeth like a rake and a buzz cut, smiled, and pointed to a back door in agreement.

He motioned for us to follow.

“Big boss is over at the command post,” Beckum said.

“It’s the other way,” I said.

Beckum shrugged and kept walking. He had on tan ostrich-skin boots that probably cost a thousand bucks but had been worn like they cost fifty. Scarred and muddy.

“How could they not report this?” I asked in a low voice.

“Maybe you didn’t kill him,” U said, still staring straight ahead. “Maybe they don’t want folks knowing they keep little girls chained in back rooms.”

A minute later, we followed Beckum up a staircase to the casino’s second floor and into a wood-paneled office dotted with Tiffany lamps and sepia-toned photographs of Wild West scenes. Waxy looking figures in coffins. Hardened women holding six-shooters.

A fireplug of an old man stood as we walked in the door. Wide-jowled face with an Irish-veined nose and pale blue eyes. He had a round body, short legs, and thick stubby fingers that couldn’t quite clasp around my hand.

He smiled along with Beckum when the murder was mentioned. He scratched the back of his unshaven neck and stared over at another guard who sat in a far corner.

“Did we forget about a guard getting killed last night?” Fat Man asked.

The man in the corner laughed, too.

“He wasn’t a guard,” I said. “His name was Humes. Head of security for this whole damned place.”

Fat Man shook with laughter. “Not only did I find out a man got killed last night,” he said, “but now you’re telling me I have a boss.”

I felt the blood rush into my face and my right fist tighten. U didn’t say a word. I could only hear his steady breath behind me in the paneled room. Overhead, Kenny G played some irritating saxophone. My nails dug into the palm of my hand.

“So you don’t know Humes?” I asked.

Fat Man shrugged. Beckum snickered again.

I crossed my arms across my chest and stared at Fat Man’s face. Impassive. Slow breath. A sociopath of a liar.

“Sheriff, this man is fucking with you. I want to walk you through what happened last night. You won’t mind, will you?”

Fat Man shrugged again and exhaled his boredom. His breath smelled of onions and cigarettes. The red veins in his face a road map of a disappointing life.

T he door wasn’t there. There was a rack of tourist brochures instead where the maid had let me in the night before. I touched the Sheetrock and found dry paint. I scanned for the outline of a door and even pressed against the wall as Beckum and Fat Man stood by watching.

“You guys are good,” I said. “What about your back halls? I want to see them.”

“Listen, y’all,” Beckum said. “I’m tired as hell. I got off a hunt about six this morning and haven’t slept a lick. How ’bout we call this whole thing off? I don’t know what y’all want or why and, to be honest, I really don’t give a shit. But I don’t have time to look for secret doors and dead men who don’t exist and little missing girls and that kind of nonsense.”

“I want to see the hallways,” I said.

“You’re in them,” Fat Man said.

“No, the ones the staff use. You couldn’t have sealed off all of that, too.”

“We have some back rooms for storage and employee lounges and that type thing. But, Sheriff, this is getting a little ridiculous.”

“You mind?”

Fat Man led the way to a steel door in the main casino lobby. He punched a code on the door and sauntered inside. A cold musty odor exhaled from the open door as we walked through the concrete caves intermittently lit with caged bulbs. I moved on ahead trying to reconnect with the same route as last night.

“Where do you keep the surveillance monitors?”

“Upstairs.”

“Bullshit,” I said. I kept walking. The walls seemed to constrict as the blood flowed hot through my face and ears. I could hear my own breathing as the clacking of my boots beat a steady rhythm.

The hallway ended with a path to the right and left. This was the path back to the sealed door. I walked about fifteen yards ahead to see the hall blocked with seven-foot stacks of paint cans.

“Clever,” I said, brushing past Fat Man and continuing down the hall.

“Mister…?” Beckum called out.

U caught up with me. “They good,” he said.

I nodded.

I turned to the first door. This was it. Or at least I thought this was it. Shit, I was so damned turned around, this was maybe the women’s bathroom. Felt like this was the turn from last night. I didn’t remember any doors along the corridor before the surveillance room. I reached for the door. It was locked.

“Open it,” I said.

“Listen, I’ll indulge you,” Beckum said. “But don’t be smarting off to these folks.”

Fat Man pulled a set of keys from his pocket, extracted a single one from dozens, and pushed open the door.

The room was filled with dusty blackjack tables and roulette wheels and a few mannequin Southern belles propped armless by the door. Along the back wall was a row of something long and rectangular under a tarp. I walked over and pulled it away.

Slot machines.

“Y’all done?” Fat Man asked, giving a phony yawn.

“Room one-oh-two,” I said. “But let me guess… it’s now a swimming pool.”

It wasn’t.

It didn’t exist at all.

The room sequence stopped at 101. A long concrete hallway continued on without a single entrance. Caged lamps burned in the semidarkened corridor.

“Can’t you see what they’ve done?” I asked, my voice sounding hollow. “They’ve erased everything. Go interview employees. They’ll tell you about the work they put in last night. They sealed up two doors and moved a lot of shit around. Check on this man Humes. He was here last night. People saw him. Someone had to have heard the shots

… there were witnesses. You can’t just pretend that the man never existed. That’s bullshit.”

Beckum looked over to U. “Best get this boy some sleep. And keep him the hell away from this place.”

“That’s all you going to do?” U asked.

Beckum ran his hand over his head and looked down the concrete corridor. “What do you want me to do? Arrest the man for murder? Do you really want that for your buddy?”

Fifteen minutes later, I slammed my fist into the dashboard of the Bronco. U reclined the seat back and stared into the cotton fields I had shown him. A quiet splatter of rain dolloped on the hood. The sky was deep black and seemed to stretch all the way to the Gulf.

“I’m not crazy, U,” I said.

“Listen, brother, I’m with you,” he said. “If you say you seen a chicken smoking, I’ll walk over to his feathered ass and bring back a pack of Camels.”