Jackpot

Chapter 61

Marie Marchese was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery on north Las Vegas Boulevard. She had died at age thirty-nine of an infection contracted in a prison hospital, a victim of neglect. Instead of a phone call, Bronco had gotten a letter in the mail.

He had picked Woodlawn to bury Marie because it was close to where he’d been living at the time. But the cemetery’s name had always rankled him. A wood lawn, made up of endless caskets, laid side by side.

At six-thirty the next morning, he drove his Lexus to the entrance of Woodlawn, parked in the visitor area, then got out and had a look around. A maintenance man in a gray work suit was tending to the grounds, but otherwise the place was deserted.

“Hey, Pops, you got a cigarette to spare?”

The maintenance man shuffled over, dragging a bad leg. He looked about seventy-five, with sagging skin around his mouth and eyes that had seen too much. Probably wasted his retirement money gambling, and been forced to take this crummy job. Las Vegas was filled with a hundred thousand people just like him.

The maintenance man dug out a pack, and threw it at him. Bronco grabbed the pack out of the air, pissed off at first, but then breaking into a smile. The old guy had spunk. “Marlboros, huh,” Bronco said, banging out a smoke.

“That’s all I’ve ever smoked,” the maintenance man said.

“Got a light?”

The maintenance threw a pack of matches and Bronco lit up.

“Look, the place doesn’t officially open until eight, but I won’t say anything if you want to visit,” the maintenance man said. “That’s my policy. Mind your own business.”

“Thanks.”

Bronco handed him the pack and the matches, and the maintenance man pocketed them. He’d left a rake on the ground, and used his foot to right it, then limped away. Bronco puffed on his cigarette and had another look around. Woodlawn was as dead as its inhabitants. He could say his goodbyes, and then be gone.

He finished the cigarette, and ground it out. Marie had hated tobacco, and he hadn’t smoked when they were married. Around Marie, he hadn’t needed to.

He entered the cemetery and walked down a maze of paths until he reached her marker. It wasn’t much, just a simple gray stone with her name, and the dates she’d been born and died. She’d wanted to be cremated, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, wanting a place to visit where he could be sad and then walk away, and not be sad any more.

The ground around her grave site was ragged, the grass unkempt, the flowers he’d brought the time before withered and gone. The rest of the graves didn’t look so crummy, just hers, and it made his blood boil and the anger pulse hot through his veins. His eyes found the gimp maintenance man and he yelled at him coarsely.

“Get your sorry ass over here.”

The maintenance man shuffled over with his rake, a butt dangling from his lip. “Put out that cigarette,” Bronco said. “Show some respect.”

The maintenance man lifted his foot and ground the cigarette into the heel, then pocketed the stub. Then he looked at Bronco with hesitant eyes.

“What do you want, mister? I’ve got work to do.”

Bronco pointed down. “My wife’s grave looks like shit. Fix it.”

The maintenance man stepped forward, and began to rake the dead grass from Marie’s grave, drawing the rake delicately across the parched earth. He was being gentle with her, showing some respect, and Bronco felt himself relax. He pointed at a marker several yards away.

“When you’re done here, I want you to fix that one, too.”

The maintenance man lifted his head. “Which one is that, mister?”

“Michael Marchese. My son.”

“I’m sorry, mister.”

“He died in a foster home,” Bronco said. “My wife was in prison, and the state put him in a foster home, and he died. We never got the complete story. Some bullgarbage about falling down a staircase, and banging his head.”

The maintenance man followed the direction of Bronco’s finger. “I’m sorry, but which one is it?”

Bronco felt the rage build up inside of him. He grabbed the maintenance man by the shoulder, and pulled him close. “You don’t listen too good. It’s right over there, third marker from the end of the path. It’s taller than the others.”

“Oh, that one.”

“Yeah. Make sure you take care of it.”

“I’ll do that.”

The maintenance man dropped his arms, and thrust the rake’s handle squarely into Bronco’s groin. Bronco let out a painful yelp and doubled over in agony, then felt a fist crash down on the back of his neck, sending him face-first to the ground. Before he could react, the maintenance man pulled his arms behind his back, and cuffed him.

“You’re not the only one good at disguises,” the maintenance man said.

Bronco sat handcuffed in the passenger seat of Tony Valentine’s rental car and slowly got his bearings. His face had hit the ground hard, and two of his front teeth were chipped. Valentine was in the driver’s seat, peeling off his disguise, while his son was over at the Lexus, going through the trunk.

“There’s one part of this whole thing I don’t understand,” Valentine said.

Bronco started laughing. The great thinker was stumped. “Just one thing?”

“Okay, maybe there’s a bunch of things. But there’s one thing about this case.”

“Gimme a cigarette first,” Bronco said.

Valentine banged out a cigarette, put it between his busted lips, and lit it. Bronco took a drag, and blew a purple plume of smoke into Valentine’s face.

“What do you want to know?”

“Why did you kill Bo Farmer in Reno? You knew it would screw things up. Why didn’t you just beat him up?”

Bronco stared through the windshield at the cemetery. He’d asked himself the same question many times. The answer came out slowly. “He was a good-looking kid, had a pretty young wife. I’d lost my wife, and my son. I looked at Bo, and just hated him.”

“So, you killed him.”

“Yeah.”

“Any regrets.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“But you had all that money from that jackpot you stole. You could have gone to Mexico or South America, and started over. Why didn’t you?”

Bronco gave Valentine a murderous stare. It was easy to dream about building a new life, easy to dream about a lot of things. But it wasn’t real. He could tell that Valentine didn’t get it, so he explained it to him.

“There’s no such thing as starting over,” he said.

Gerry climbed into the passenger seat of the rental. “I checked his car. It’s not there. He must have hidden it someplace else.”

Bronco twisted uncomfortably. The handcuffs were tight, and starting to cut off the circulation to his hands. Looking into the mirror, he saw Valentine staring at him.

“Want to do a deal?” Valentine asked.

“I ain’t got nothing you want.”

“Yes, you do. I want the tape you secretly made of Fred Friendly talking about all the jackpots he and his gang stole.”

“Who said I had a tape?”

“I did. You told the D.A. in Reno you had evidence that a gaming agent was stealing jackpots. What else could it have been?”

“You’re pretty smart, for a dumb ass cop.”

“Yes or no?”

Bronco’s hands had gone numb. He wanted to ask Valentine to loosen the cuffs, only he knew Valentine wouldn’t do it. Cops liked to treat criminals badly. He knew it would only get worse when he went to prison.

“Yeah, I’ll do a deal.”

Valentine turned in his seat and faced him. “What do you want in return?”

“Put a bullet in my head, and bury me in the desert.”

“You serious?”

“Dead serious.” He laughed at his own joke.

“You’ve got a deal. Where’s the tape?”

“Crawl under my car. It’s stuck to the bottom with a magnet.”

Gerry hopped out and went to fetch the tape. A minute later he returned covered in grime, holding the tape triumphantly in his hand.

“Just don’t make me suffer,” Bronco said.

Leaving the cemetery parking lot, Valentine hung a left on Las Vegas Boulevard, and drove a mile before turning right on Stewart Avenue. The streets were deserted except for a city bus spitting black exhaust a few blocks away. Bronco felt his heart catch in his chest as Valentine pulled into the Las Vegas Metropolitan Sheriff’s Department headquarters, and parked near the gleaming front doors.

“You’re turning me in?”

“That’s right,” Valentine said.

“But we had a deal. I want to die.”

“You are going to die. But first, you’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison, thinking about all the rotten things you’ve done.”

Bronco stared at the ugly stucco that defined the building. Like a monster hidden beneath the surface, the fear welled up inside of him, knowing what his life was about to become.

“You bastard,” he swore.