Nightlife: A Novel

4

Joe Pitt looked up at the chandelier. There were a few hundred tear-shaped crystal pieces like diamond earrings hanging above him, the light that came off them bright white with glints of rainbows. It was like heaven up there.

He looked down again at the green felt surface of the table, gathered his cards, and glanced at them. It was not heaven down here. Three of clubs, six of diamonds, four of spades, ten of diamonds, nine of hearts.

Joe Pitt watched his four opponents pick up their cards. Jerry Whang’s tell was that he always blinked once when he picked up a really good hand. It was as though he were closing the shutters of his mind, because when he opened his eyes again, he revealed nothing more. There was the blink.

Stella Korb picked up her cards and looked sick. She’d had a Botox injection today to deaden the muscles under her facial skin, but it didn’t change her eyes. The new guy that Pitt thought of as the Kid, who had the repulsive habit of wearing a baseball cap indoors, retained the same dumb look after seeing his cards.

Delores Harkness squeezed her cards open with her thumb, closed them again to look around, then thumbed them open once more to be sure she had seen what she had seen.

She opened with a single twenty-five-dollar chip, patiently trying to keep all of the others in as long as she could before she started murdering the last optimists. She succeeded, each of them tossing in a chip until it came to Joe Pitt. He set his cards down. “Have a good evening, everyone. I’m out.”

Billy the dealer swept Pitt’s cards away. “See you, Joe.” Pitt stepped off, heading past the crowds of gamblers toward the front door of the card club. He walked outside, sniffed the night air, looked around himself, and listened. Just beyond the far side of the parking lot he could see headlights flashing past on the freeway and he could hear the constant swish of tires on the pavement. For once he had managed to lose all of the money he had allowed himself for the evening and not go to the cashier’s window with a credit card. He supposed that was a kind of half victory, like getting into a crash and having the car still run well enough to get him home. Then why didn’t he feel better?

He stared at the aisle of the big parking lot where he had left his car and sensed that something was not right. His right hand moved reflexively to pat his left side once, a gesture that was so habitual that most observers would have missed it. He was still permitted to carry his pistol in a shoulder rig under his sport coat: for the rest of his life there would be the chance that someone who had gotten to know him during his twenty years as an investigator for the D.A.’s office would finally get around to killing him.

He opened his coat and stepped forward, away from the lighted front of the casino. Joe Pitt had a willingness to pay attention to vague sensations, and when he sensed that something was threatening he went toward it.

He had built his reputation by solving murders, and he had done it by moving toward whatever didn’t feel right. Offices closed on weekends, but every day on the calendar the killer was a killer, and Joe Pitt was working his way toward him. Any suspect who had not understood it that way had found himself at a severe disadvantage. It wasn’t some theoretical entity called the State of California that was after him; it was Joe Pitt.

He selected a row of cars three spaces to the left of his car, and began to walk up the aisle. It took a moment before he saw the heads in the car parked beside his. As he walked his angle changed, and he could see more: there was a male driver in front, and a second man sitting in the back seat. Maybe it was a rich guy with a chauffeur, and maybe it was an easy way of putting two shooters into position to fire at him.

Joe Pitt stopped beside a car, pretended to unlock it, then went low, as though he had gotten into the driver’s seat. He stayed low and scurried along the spaces between parked cars until he was beside the car where the two men waited. He stood up slightly behind the passenger, with his gun in his hand close to the open window.

The passenger looked at him. “Hello, Joe.”

Joe Pitt’s hand tightened on the gun. “Hello, Hugo.”

“You know my friend Otto?”

“Of course. How are you, Otto? Congratulations on your early release.”

“Thanks,” said Otto. “It’s nice to be out. And yourself?”

“I’m fine, thanks. What’s up, Hugo?”

Hugo Poole looked up at him. “I need to talk to you. If you feel safer doing it inside the casino, I’ll send Otto in to arrange for a private space.”

“I’m not afraid of you. I’m just not interested.” He put his gun away.

“It’s worth money to you.”

“I have money, thanks,” said Joe Pitt.

“You have a weakness for women and a gambling problem, and nobody’s got enough money for those. Three different guys have come to me in the past year or so to sell me that information. I only paid the first one, but I remembered it. We don’t have time to bullshit each other. Tonight when I found out I needed you I knew where you would be.”

“The gambling isn’t a problem. It’s the losing. What do you think you need me for?”

“Will you get in so we can talk? You’re safe with us.” Hugo Poole pushed open the door and then slid to the other side. Joe Pitt hesitated, then got in beside him. Otto Collins drove the car up the aisle and out to the street.

Pitt said, “I know that a few times when I needed information, you arranged for somebody to miraculously turn up to give it to me. I got the solution to something that was puzzling me, and you got—whatever it was that you got. That may have made me forget to add your name to a list of menaces to the public welfare. But life isn’t the same now.”

“You’re the same, I’m the same. What’s different?”

“I’m retired from the district attorney’s office. I’m out. I can’t affect the outcome of some investigation. Whatever it is that you want, I’m not in the position to give it to you.”

“You’re a private detective now. You’re getting famous.”

“Everybody’s got to do something. But I don’t do anything for money that can send me to jail.”

“I assumed that. You wouldn’t last long enough to get to the front of the chow line. If it were anything illegal, I wouldn’t waste your time with it,” said Hugo Poole.

“So what do you want?”

“Yesterday my cousin Dennis got shot to death in Portland.”

“What for? Was he working for you?”

“No. He’s never worked for me. I haven’t even seen him in about four or five years.”

“So what was he into?”

Hugo Poole frowned. “Nothing. Dennis wasn’t into anything. He was a computer salesman.”

Pitt’s face was expressionless.

“Dennis was a straight businessman. He had a store up in Portland and a warehouse, and he sold computer stuff wholesale and over the Internet. He was good at it. He made money. I want to know what gets a guy like that killed.”

“That’s what you want? You want me to find out what happened?”

Hugo Poole held up his hands. “I can’t just leave this to a bunch of shitkicker cops in Oregon. I need somebody on this who knows what’s what.”

“Portland isn’t a small town, Hugo. They have homicide detectives who can handle an investigation,” said Pitt. “And I don’t think an outsider has much chance of finding anything they won’t. It’s their city.”

“It’s not just their city I’m worried about. I need someone who will be able to make the connections between what went on there and what goes on here.”

Pitt’s eyes settled on Hugo’s face. “You think your cousin’s killing had something to do with you?”

“Dennis may have had some enemies of his own. He may even have been into something that I don’t know about. But until somebody proves that, the only reason anybody had to shoot Dennis was that he was related to me.”

“What do you think I can do for you?”

“Fly up there. Cops all over the country know who you are, and the cases you solved when you were the D.A.’s investigator. They’ll hear your name and think you can help them find out who killed Dennis. So I want you to do it. I’ll pay you a lot of money.”

Pitt stared at him, unblinking. “Then what if it is about you? I’m not interested in being paid to go up there and steer a police investigation away from you.”

“You wouldn’t. I can keep myself out of trouble without any help from you. If the investigation starts pointing back in the direction of L.A., you’ll be able to tell them where to look. Even if it’s toward me.”

Pitt said, “Then you’ll need time to clean up your act, won’t you? Or have you already started phasing down your operations?”

“Tonight I’m clearing up loose ends so you can go after this guy without tripping over my feet. I’m pulling my feet out of the way.”

“If I get into this, I’m not going to point the finger at some guy so you can kill him.”

“I want you to help the cops find the killer—the real one, not some poor bastard they decide to pin it on. If you do that much for me, then you did your job.”

“How much are you offering?”

“A hundred thousand plus expenses if you agree to make a serious effort. Another hundred when they get the guy.”

“You must really feel guilty.”

“If you won’t take the job because it’s my money, then say it.”

“No, I’m like a doctor,” said Joe Pitt. “If you’ve got a heartbeat, I’ll work on you until it stops or your bank account runs dry.”