The Given

CHAPTER FIVE

So where was the perfect place to be when you weren’t sure where to go but knew only that you didn’t want to be found?

Vegas, baby.

Part of it was the tourists, yes; the thousands of nameless faces moving and shifting throughout the city made it easy to hide. Sensory overload took care of the rest—flashing lights and LED signs, music and horns and PA systems blasting outdoors—noises normally reserved for airports and hospitals and train stations, all desperate to stimulate ADD in the calmest of souls, at least long enough to separate them from their money.

Ignoring it all, Kit and Grif strolled across the cavernous floor of the Desert Dream, the city’s largest casino. It was past midnight, but the foot traffic was as thick as at the Rockefeller Center at Christmas. Kit nervously eyed the smoky-black domes of the ceiling security cams anyway, then ducked her head as they passed the raised stand bearing not one but two security guards. Yet even Kit’s and Grif’s retro clothing wasn’t enough to raise an eyebrow in this environment, and the in-house security was actually a blessing. It meant there was less chance of running into any city police.

In fact, Grif and she could likely spend a whole weekend in the cavernous building and never run into the same employee twice. Slot machines, pit games, bars, lounge entertainment—visits with wild tigers and dolphins—and strange combinations thereof, there was no end to the manufactured entertainment vying for their attention just in the Desert Dream alone. As long as they didn’t make a run on the blackjack tables, it was the perfect place for Kit and Grif to hide.

“Where exactly are we going?” Grif asked, eyes darting from face to face from beneath his lowered stingy-brim.

Kit looked at her watch. “It’s just as early as it is late. That makes it the perfect time for Temptation.”

Grif tripped over his own feet. “What?”

Kit pointed to the glittering, cavernous red mouth of the hotel nightclub. Warm satisfaction momentarily dislodged the remainder of her fading shock when Grif winced. The club’s bassline throbbed all the way out onto the casino floor. Before he could come up with an alternative, Kit paid the cover. Grif was out of money for some reason, though he said he’d pay her back later, and she thought, Damned right, and sprung for bottle service as well. She knew that no matter how much he spent, the amount he’d died with in 1960 would return to his pocket at 4:10 sharp every morning. That was only a handful of hours away.

A pretty but dead-eyed hostess led them directly across the dance floor and to an elevated “room” curtained off by black sheers and velvet ropes. By the time they were settled, Grif was grinding his teeth together so hard that Kit could almost hear it over the monotonous rap, though she pretended not to notice. Temptation was dark enough to be private, yet loud enough to prevent intimacy, and Kit needed each of those things for her first meeting with Grif in six months. A stiff drink wouldn’t hurt, either.

“They’re up-charging by five thousand percent,” he grumbled as their personal server sauntered away. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was more upset by that than by the headless body he’d found earlier that evening.

“Tip not included,” Kit said, just to see if she could ruffle his feathers. Ha, ha.

Grif slumped in his pleather seat and almost slid to the floor. “She plunked down an ice bucket and walked away. She’s not getting a tip.”

“She plunked down an ice bucket, showed you her cleavage, and walked away,” Kit corrected, lifting her drink as he righted himself.

“Why would you even bring that to my attention?” He shot her a look so jaded—so old and so new—that she blinked in the flashing strobes and wondered for a moment if she was seeing things. How many nights had she dreamed of just that look? She firmed herself against it by downing her entire first glass of overpriced vodka.

“Because no woman actually wants to do that for free, and because it’s not her fault that they overcharge here. She’s not going to see any of it. She works for tips.”

Grif grumbled and leaned forward, and Kit reclined farther into the curtained-off alcove and studied him from the shadows. Out of their element, still trying to find their footing in the aftermath of murder, and they were already bantering with ease. Forget the frenetic beat pushing at them from the multitudinous speakers, this was a true call-and-response pattern, one as easy and deliberate as a sexy blues phrase. It calmed her.

And that made her down her second overpriced drink in one nervous gulp.

“Tell me what happened tonight,” Grif said, light flashing across the angular planes of his face so that he appeared deconstructed. It made him easier to look at, and answer.

“You mean the murder?” The scene flashed again, jumping out at her like it was a part of the choreographed light show. She’d seen a dead body. She’d shot at a killer. Blinking hard, Kit poured herself another drink.

“I mean all of it.” How she’d hooked up with Barbara McCoy. How she’d ended up in the suite on the night the woman was murdered. How she could even think of sitting and talking to a woman who hated him and his not-dead wife.

Sipping now, Kit decided she’d tell him enough to assure his help, but she wouldn’t reveal all of her actions, her life, herself. Never that again.

“I located Barbara McCoy about four months ago, though didn’t approach her immediately.”

She let that sit between them, a loaded moment. Barbara had first popped up on Kit’s and Grif’s radar while they were investigating Grif’s murder in 1960. She’d become Barbara DiMartino not long after that by marrying Vegas’s most infamous mobster. Sal DiMartino was up there with the greats—Spilotro, Siegel, Lansky, and Berman. Names that were like royalty in Vegas. “I told her straight out that I was press, though she remained suspicious.”

“Just suspicious?” Grif asked.

She huffed at his knowing look. “Downright rude. Regarded me like I was a fly to be swatted, and looked more than willing to do it herself.”

Kit could usually charm her way into a story with honest gregariousness or genuine interest or effusive charm. She didn’t often elicit a death glare from anyone . . . never mind from a woman close to her eighth decade.

“She finally agreed to meet me in person seven weeks ago. Said she’d had time to suss me out.”

“How?”

“Given her background? I was afraid to ask.”

So they’d met at the Bootlegger Bistro, the successful offshoot of a downtown restaurant that’d been serving Italian-style family fare since 1947. Those recipes and the bistro had moved to the south end of the Strip since then, but the interior paid homage to Vegas’s golden era. “Barbara was seated in the back of the room in a booth all by herself. I knew she was waiting for me, but she watched everyone. The singer crooning Sinatra. The waitstaff, who were wary of her. The bartender. The women.”

Especially the women.

In fact, she’d taken one look at Kit, narrowed her eyes and licked her over-dyed lips, drew in a deep breath of smoke from the mother-of-pearl cigarette holder cocked in her right hand. “You’re not like the other girls, are you?”

“What do you mean?” Kit asked politely, removing her gloves. She’d been especially careful in dressing for the occasion. After all, this woman had actually lived—had thrived—in the era Kit most revered.

“Because you can’t wrap these girls in fur.” She waved her hand in the air and sent ash scattering. “Bacon, maybe, but not fur.”

Kit clenched her jaw but couldn’t risk calling the woman on it and running her off.

“She was bitter,” Kit told Grif, because she knew he’d been wondering about Barbara for so long. He knew that she thought he’d deserved to die fifty years earlier, and she hadn’t changed her mind in the ensuing years. Not that Kit could tell. “She smoked. Said she was dying of emphysema. Said that her neck was draped in pearls, but what she really needed was a pair of good lungs.”

“Why, so she could continue spewing more of her filth?”

That’s exactly what Kit had thought, though she didn’t say it then or now. “You know, it’s not rare to see someone surrounded by so many things still so indelibly unhappy, but it felt like it was more than that. Like she had greater regrets. Things that were so far in her past that she knew she’d never be able to touch them again.”

Grif nodded briefly, not looking at her. Of course, he’d know about that. He swallowed hard. “Did you ask her anything about, you know . . . me?”

Kit wanted to say that it—he—wasn’t why they’d met, though again, she wasn’t ready to share that with Grif. He was just an interloper here, right? A footnote in her past.

“No,” she said, and watched Grif’s jaw turned to granite. “Not the first time.”

His eyes brightened at that, and though braced for it, Kit felt an old emotion break through her shock. One that hardened in an instant, giving her purchase and making her feel like flint. He was still obsessed with the past, she thought, shaking her head. Still so consumed with it that he couldn’t see her sitting right in front of him.

Maybe it’s the lack of light, Kit thought wryly, sipping at her drink.

“So you met more than once.” It wasn’t a question. How else would she have ended up at Barbara’s home?

“Not willingly. She was just so obstinate. One of those people who answered every question with one of her own. I wasn’t going to say anything about you but . . .”

“But?” He had the nerve to look hopeful.

“But she was just so damned nasty,” she said, and it was true. Kit hadn’t done it for him. She didn’t owe Griffin Shaw a thing, and something of her anger must have rolled across her face, because he leaned back like he was giving her space. Not wanting to let on that she needed it, Kit just shrugged. “So I decided to give her a jolt. I spit it out, just to see the look on her face.”

“Griffin Shaw is still alive,” Kit had said then, and watched as Barbara McCoy choked on her martini olive. Kit hid her smile behind her old-fashioned. She was actually matching Barbara drink for drink, a woman’s duel, unspoken as all duels between women are. And now she was winning.

When the choking had subsided and Barbara had wiped her chin and fortified herself with another sip, Kit added, “So is his wife, Evie.”

“Well, I knew that,” Barbara snapped, splashing gin. “But no way is Shaw still alive. No way in hell.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I spit on his corpse myself.”

And she threw back her head and laughed like it was the funniest thing she’d ever said or heard. Laughed like it fed her soul. The sound sawed through the air, and Kit realized she was wrong. This woman wasn’t just bitter. She was vile.

“But now you’re digging up really old corpses,” Barbara said, flaring her eyes. “And you don’t want to do that. Trust me, the boys may not run this town anymore, but they still guard their secrets carefully.”

Kit couldn’t help herself. She was shaking so badly, and she wanted to shake Barbara, too. “But this was no secret. We already know you hated him.”

“We?”

“Grif and me,” Kit said, because they were still united in this at least. A broken heart was one thing; darkness and cruelty and obsession that fed on itself for decades was quite another.

Barbara leaned incrementally closer, her gaze running over Kit’s face like darting fish. Finally her nostrils flared and she pulled back, giving Kit a brand-new head-to-toe appraisal. She took her time studying Kit’s vintage swing coat and scarf. She traced the outline of her cat’s-eye glasses with cold regard, upper lip curling as she took in the matching black eyeliner. She tried on another laugh, but this one didn’t flow as freely. “Why, you got that sheen in your eyes, my girl.”

“What sheen?”

“That hazy-dazy look of love. Don’t tell me . . . you and Shaw?”

Kit’s mouth firmed into a thin line, saying nothing. Barbara was picturing Grif near the same age as her, an octogenarian battling gout and the ability to stand to his full height. Yet Grif was eternally thirty-three, stronger than this woman could ever imagine, and with wings that rose well above any doorframe to boot.

He also wouldn’t stop until his murderer and his wife were found, though she didn’t tell Barbara that. “He just wants to find Evie Shaw. Truthfully? He wants nothing to do with you.”

And neither did Kit. Not anymore. This woman’s mind was as toxic as stagnant water. No matter what information might be stewing inside of it, the attached lethal tongue could only spread disease.

“Why?” Barbara finally asked.

“Why what?” Kit replied coolly.

“Why does he want to find Evelyn?”

Because he needed closure, but Kit wasn’t going to give Barbara any ammo for that shotgun mouth. So she just shrugged.

“And why do you?” Barbara said, flashing her a knowing look.

Kit flinched before she could stop herself, but it was plain to them both. She wanted to see how she fared against the infamous Evelyn Shaw.

“We just want to know who killed him . . .” She blushed, correcting herself when Barbara’s eyes narrowed. “Who tried to kill him—them both—fifty years ago.”

Barbara huffed and shook her head, so that her hair spread in a cloud. “What does it matter? It was a long time ago.”

“It always matters!” Kit slammed her palm on the table, causing her drink to topple, and they both jumped. She rarely lost her temper, not in public, not with informants, but this woman’s sewer brain and toxic-waste mouth made her feel dirty. “Those two people were driven apart because of what happened that night and there’s been a lot of pain as a result. Grif lost . . . years of his memory and life, most of which he’ll never get back.”

“Most?” Barbara said, voice oily with interest.

“He remembers her,” Kit said, because as much as it pained her to say it, Grif and Evie’s relationship seemed to affect Barbara even more adversely. Kit couldn’t help but rub a little salt into that old wound. “So despite your wishes, your words, and someone’s terrible actions long ago, they are both alive today, and he means to find her. And I’m going to help.”But Barbara was staring off into the distance. “What words?”

“Huh?” Kit paused as she reached for her bag.

“What words?” Impatient, she waved her cigarette holder at Kit. Kit dodged, but Barbara didn’t notice that, either. “What wishes are you talking about? What words?”

Kit tilted her head. “You reportedly told one of my sources that you hated Griffin and Evelyn Shaw. You said, and I quote, ‘The past doesn’t matter, and they mattered even less. Both Shaws got what was coming to them.’ ”

Barbara stared at Kit for a long moment. “And you’re sure it’s really him? That he’s still alive?”

“Yes.”

Barbara huffed. “Then I guess I was wrong about that.”

Shocked silence wrapped around Kit, a blanket of burrs and thorns. She shouldn’t say anything, it would only put the power back into Barbara’s hands, but she couldn’t help it. How could anyone hate Griffin Shaw that much? “Why do you hate them so much?”

Barbara put on an innocent mien that almost worked, due to her age and sex combined. The sharpened gaze, though, kept the innocence from truly reaching her eyes. “I don’t know. I’m old, honey. I can’t remember shit.”

Disgusted, Kit threw down her business card and enough money for the drinks. “Call me if you ever really want to talk.”

But she wouldn’t hold her breath.

“Hey. Hey!” Kit didn’t stop at first. She didn’t want to watch this woman’s painted mouth curving up to tell more lies. “You sure it’s him? Shaw?”

Hand on hip, Kit turned. “Dead sure.”

Barbara tilted her head. “And he’s still sweet on Evie?”

Kit forced a shrug. “He’s been searching for her for fifty years.”

Barbara’s whole face seemed to turn inward at that, and she shuddered down to the base of her spine. But then she remembered Kit standing there, and instead of giving an admiring nod, she shook her head. “Some P.I.”

Kit couldn’t stand it anymore. She whirled and left Barbara there, a small woman in a red velvet booth contemplating a love that was epic and enduring and true . . . and one she’d clearly never known in the entire length and breadth of her mean and bitter life.

You did something to her,” Kit told Grif as they sailed from the casino’s parking garage back onto Vegas’s main drag. Kit had actually allowed Grif to take the wheel of her beloved Duetto, a testament to how much she trusted him . . . and to how much vodka she’d downed due to nervousness and shock. Besides, she was still working through her thoughts on Grif’s abrupt return to her life. It seemed like a magic trick to her. There, gone, then back again. Poof.

“Hand to God,” Grif said, lifting his palms to the sky, and Kit pointed, directing them back to the steering wheel. “I never met any Barbara McCoy.”

“Her name used to be Barbara DiMartino.”

Grif jerked his head. “Sal was married to a woman named Theresa when I was alive. Barbara came . . . after.”

No she hadn’t, Kit thought, turning away, watching as the neon glare of the Strip was snuffed out in her rearview mirror. Barbara had married the old mobster only months after Theresa’s death, and Kit would bet the car she was sitting in that Barbara had been lurking around before then. “What if she was part of the reason you were killed? After all, someone spread the rumor that you hurt”—raped—“the twelve-year-old niece of a mobster.”

They’d discovered that nugget of information last summer. It was a ludicrous lie . . . but one that’d gotten him killed.

Grif hummed, considering it. “I only worked that one case for the DiMartinos. Beyond returning little Mary Margaret unharmed, and getting dry-gulched for the effort, I had no dealings with that family whatsoever.”

Kit said nothing, because she hadn’t been there . . . but she did know women. She could read them inside and out, and Barbara had all the markings of one who’d been scorned. A woman didn’t hate a man in the way she hated Grif unless he’d all but crushed her.

There was more to consider, more to ask, but it was late, and Kit was exhausted. Grif was, too. She saw it in the slump of his wide shoulders, and the circles stamped beneath his eyes, though she could tell from his frown that he was still stewing over Barbara. That’s why she was surprised when he asked, “We going home?”

Silence swelled in the car.

He’d said it without thinking, his tired brain lagging behind his mouth. Kit ignored the slip, knowing that if they were going to work together there were bound to be others—home and honey and Kitty-Cat—all the things that had once marked him as hers, and vice versa. Swallowing hard, she told herself she’d take them as they came. She’d also protect herself this time, and surround herself with people and places that did the same . . . but for Kit that meant home. She nodded, and silence reigned from there on out.

Kit lived in Paradise Palms, a mid-century neighborhood in the middle of Las Vegas, and situated behind the city’s oldest existing mall, the Boulevard. Though Paradise Palms had few rivals for its retro-style homes and spacious streets, it was no longer the crown jewel of the Las Vegas Valley. The brick facades were crumbling at the edges, and the once sweeping lawns were dustier as the desert attempted to reclaim its territory. Its central location also made it a favorite of both gang and police patrols.

Yet the function and form of the neighborhood was solid, hearkening back to a simpler time. Butterfly rooftops, sleek lines, and large glass panes—Kit could practically see the mid-century scrawl of the signage that had once flanked the neighborhood’s entry. THE FUTURE IS NOW, TOMORROW HAS ARRIVED.

The phone rang just as they pulled into the restored carport.

“Oh, yeah.” Grif dug it from his pocket. “I grabbed your phone before leaving Barbara’s.”

Kit just looked at it. Then she lifted her identical one from the center console. “Mine.”

“Then whose—?”

Gasping, Kit lunged for the device but fumbled it, so it fell in the footwell. By the time Grif located it again, the ring had gone silent. “Shit!”

She snatched Barbara’s phone from his hands and lifted it so she could see the lighted screen. She pushed a series of buttons, then sighed. “It’s password-protected. We’ll have to wait until someone—”

And the phone rang again. Kit answered before she could even think what she was doing. There was a moment of silence after she put the phone to her ear, when Grif and she both held their breaths, and Kit was trying to work out how the irascible Barbara McCoy would answer the call. She finally answered with a terse, “What?”

Silence, and Kit’s eyes flashed on Grif’s. She’d blown it.

“Hello?” came the tentative response. Male, Kit mouthed to Grif.

“Yeah?” Kit said immediately, pitching her voice lower than her normal tone. Grif shot her a dead-eyed stare, as if to say, That’s what she sounded like? Kit just shrugged.

“Is it done?”

Kit just bit her lip. Barbara was dead, though, so something had definitely been “done.”

“Barbara, I asked if it was done. It’s been crickets over here. I’m going crazy.”

“Uh-huh,” Kit said, wordlessly trying to draw more out of the caller.

But apparently Barbara hadn’t been a reticent woman. A long silence passed, then the man’s voice dropped low as well. “Who is this?”

Slapping a hand to her forehead, Kit tried to think fast, but the line went dead before she opened her mouth, and her answer swerved into a growl. Squinting at the phone, she began pushing more buttons.

“What are you doing?” Grif asked.

“Working the home button before the screen times out. She’s got it set so you can’t get into this thing after you hang up, but once a call is answered you can work the functions.” The first thing Kit did was remove the password protection. Then she clicked over to the contacts. It was growing chilly in the car, but both the cold and her fatigue were well-forgotten. “Still carry your Moleskine with you?”

Grif pulled the notebook from his inner suit pocket.

“Okay, we’re going to write down every number in her contacts just in case we can’t get into this thing again, starting with our mysterious caller.” There was no name displayed on the incoming screen, just an uppercase X, but Kit rattled it off anyway, then did the same with the rest. Grif scribbled fast, but was barely keeping up until she paused. “How the hell did Loony Uncle Al get in Barbara McCoy’s address book?”

Grif’s pencil fell still. “That’s what she named her contact?”

“Nope. But that was his pet name around the paper back when he was chasing bylines.” She flashed Grif the screen long enough to show the name, and this time Grif jolted in his seat.

“Al Zicaro,” he said, suddenly wide-eyed as well. He circled the name and number after writing them down on his pad. “How does Barbara know that old newshound?”

Zicaro had worked at Kit’s paper in the sixties and seventies, even though any mid-century bookie worth his salt would’ve laid odds on Zicaro getting rubbed out before Grif. The man had covered the crime beat, and was a thorn in the side of the boys, including and especially the DiMartinos. Kit had combed through the archives and knew he’d even tried to intimate that Grif was made after he’d brought back Sal DiMartino’s niece, but it wasn’t anything that would stick. Especially once Grif disappeared shortly after.

“God knows he was around,” Kit said now. “And he certainly had his hands in the DiMartinos’ affairs.”

But why keep up with Barbara after all this time? The boys’ time in this valley had long passed.

Kit rubbed her eyes. “Your past is beginning to resemble a thousand-piece puzzle.”

Grif snorted. “And we’re missing all the corners.”

Kit nodded. They’d had few leads on his cold case: first, Mary Margaret, the child he’d once saved, now a recovering addict in her sixties. She’d given them the Barbara lead, now a literal dead end.

But then there’d been Zicaro.

“He’s gotta be, what? Seventy-six years old?”

“Around there. He’s been at the Sunset Retirement Community for years,” she recalled. It was knowledge she’d let slip away after Grif had disappeared from her life. Unfortunately, as they both knew, ignoring wasn’t forgetting. “Last I heard he was still scribbling far-fetched pieces about alien abductions and conspiracy theories and pasting them around the old folks’ home.”

Kit flipped screens on Barbara’s phone, leaving the address book to dip into the voice mails. Grif’s gaze was steady on her as she scrolled, but he remained silent until she sat up straight. “What?”

“Bingo.” Flashing him the screen, Kit then flipped it back around and pushed the speaker button. Seconds later, a shaky, reedy voice sounded in the cold shell of Kit’s car.

“Barbara, it’s Zicaro. I don’t know what the big idea is showing up here like that, but you’re going to get me killed. You don’t fool no one with that fake name either, so don’t give me that bullcrap. Once a DiMartino, always a DiMartino.”

Kit locked eyes with Grif.

“I don’t know why you’re back, but listen good. Stay away from Sunset and stay away from me. I ain’t lasted all these years just to get rubbed on your account. Besides, whatever you’re into, whatever you want, I ain’t got it. You lived the life, remember? I just reported it.”

The message cut off, and Kit immediately brought up the address for the Sunset Retirement Community.

“When was that call made?” Grif asked, voice no more than a whisper.

“Friday.”

“So Barbara visited Zicaro the day before she died.”

“Which is what we’ll be doing first thing in the morning,” Kit said, and flashed him Zicaro’s address. He began writing again without another word, and they emptied out the rest of the phone book as well. When they’d finished, it was with a start that Kit looked up and realized they were still seated in her car. Just like the old days, she thought. Working together, finishing each other’s sentences, losing track of place and time. Kit reached for the handle.

Grif didn’t move.

She glanced back. “You coming?”

“I’m waiting to be invited.”

Invited where? Kit swallowed hard, but Grif was gazing at the front of the home they’d shared . . . briefly but passionately.

“And if not,” he said, refocusing on her with the same intensity, “I’ll sleep outside.”

“You think I’m in danger.” She’d already seen it in the way he studied the bushes and pockets of darkness the streetlights didn’t reach. He just shrugged, confirming it.

Fine, she thought, narrowing her eyes. You keep your secrets. I’ll keep mine.

“Come on,” she said, breaking the silence and the stare. She’d allow him in her house because the best chance to get through this individually was by working together. But that was all.

Because even if working together felt right, they’d be doing so for a future they would never share. Kit had walked this world in love with Griffin Shaw for six whole months—and they’d solved two major crimes along the way—but then she’d spent another six trying to forget that he’d ever lived. After all of that, Kit thought, she’d learned to hold a little of herself back. She now knew how to hold herself together.

And she knew exactly what she could and could not survive.