It Was a Very Bad Year

SIXTY-NINE

There was a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. I grabbed the short chain and yanked it, and the light came on.

File cabinets along one wall, the back, and down the other.

‘Sonofabitch,’ I said. ‘I’ll bet I know what’s in these.’

He started at one end, me at the other, and all we found were nude photos of young girls.

‘Goddamn,’ I said, ‘I wish I had a can of gasoline.’

‘I know what ya mean.’

‘Wait,’ I said, closing the drawer of the cabinet I’d been looking through. I turned, went through another two cabinets until I found a drawer with ‘D’ names in them. Sure enough, I found what I was looking for.

‘Sonofabitch!’ I swore again. ‘If Irwin was here right now I’d strangle him.’ I was holding a whole sheaf of Abby Dalton photos.

‘I guess I didn’t scare him enough,’ Jerry said, and he seemed genuinely disappointed with himself. ‘I knew I shoulda broke somethin’.’

‘Well, next time I’ll hold him and you break his damn neck,’ I said.

‘So what do we do now?’ Jerry asked. ‘Wait for him to come back? Because he ain’t gonna leave town without these photos. I’ll bet he’s got some other ones in there he wants as bad as those of Miss Dalton.’

‘If we stake this place out it could take days, or weeks for him to show up,’ I said. ‘We don’t have that much time.’

‘What, then?’

I looked around.

‘I suggest we go through the rest of these cabinets and see what we find,’ I said. ‘Maybe there’s somethin’ here that’ll help us.’

‘OK, Mr G.,’ Jerry said. ‘But. .’

‘What?’ I said, detecting something in his tone.

‘I just hope we don’t find nothin’ else that might make you wanna burn the whole buildin’ down.’

I looked at the photos of Abby I was holding in my hands, and wondered what that would be.

As it turned out, the cabinets along the back wall — only three of them — held something quite different from the photos in all the others.

One cabinet had a drawer that was filled with financial reports, bills, tax records. The other two drawers were empty.

The second cabinet had one empty drawer, and two that seemed to be holding all sorts of personal records and papers that I really didn’t want to go through. I already felt like I had to steam my hands clean when we got out of there.

The third cabinet was the emptiest. The top drawer was completely bare, the second held only one folder.

‘What’s that?’ Jerry asked.

I took it out, opened it, knew exactly what it was right away.

‘It’s a floor plan,’ I said.

‘Of what?’ Jerry asked.

‘Harrah’s, in Lake Tahoe.’ That sonofabitch, I thought.

There was one more drawer to search, at the bottom. Jerry opened it while I was still staring at the floor plan, realizing the implications. It even included a drawing of the parking lots.

‘Mr G.?’

‘Yeah?’

‘You better have a look.’

‘What?’

I bent down and saw what he meant. There were some reels of film in the drawer. I took one out, and unfurled a length of it, holding it up to the light.

‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘this opens up a whole new can of worms, Jerry.’

‘Stag films?’

I nodded. We took another roll and had a look. Same thing. Men and women doing things to each other you should do at home, or in a hotel, or in a closet, but not on film.

‘These look like good quality, Mr G.,’ Jerry said. ‘Maybe pro.’

‘There’s a lot more to Irwin than meets the eye, Jerry,’ I said. I held a roll of film in one hand, and the Harrah’s floor plan in the other. ‘We been had, Jerry.’ I waved the floor plan folder at him. ‘Looks like Irwin was not only involved with the kidnapping. He may have planned the whole thing.’