Dreams of Jeannie and Other Stories Part 6

I wish I could say I was surprised when he wasn't there.

He'd had more than enough time to settle the bill, stop in the men's room, and get to the lounge. I cleared a path through the crowd with my elbows and my boots, apologizing all the way, knowing I was too late to catch him in the parking lot if he wanted to escape that way.

Once out of the building, I picked up speed. I trotted to the exit lane, then took it across the middle of the lot, checking the rows both ways for a little man in a blue Acura trying to head for the hills.

I couldn't spot Billy, and I wasn't ready to check the lot car by car, especially when I didn't have a license plate number.

On the off chance that he'd asked me to meet him at the hotel where he was staying, I went back inside and picked up the house phone near the door.

"Billy Davis's room. William Davis," I corrected.

"Just a minute," the operator answered.

The phone started ringing.

I let it ring until she came back on the line.

"He doesn't seem to be there. Would you like to leave a message?"

"Not just now."

If he had a room, he'd have to go back to it, sooner or later. I just had to find it. I thought again about telling security. I still wanted to talk to Billy first.

I had to check the lounge one more time.

On stage, a man with shoe-polish black hair and a face dripping with flop sweat was belting, "What's New, p.u.s.s.ycat," while the band behind him did its collective best to keep playing, and to keep him from keeling over in embarra.s.sment.

Billy still wasn't at a table.

I looked around for a sign that would direct me to a restroom. A stall seemed to be as good a place as any to see what was in the envelope. All I saw were bright, Disneyesque parrots pointing me toward the buffet. I figured restrooms would be close to the buffet line, and I was at least right on that.

The restroom wasn't crowded. The first lucky thing that had happened since I arrived at the casino.

The envelope contained just what Billy told me-his personal check for ten thousand dollars, made out to Theodore Georgopoulos.

For the first time, I wondered if something had happened to Billy after I left the restaurant, something that kept him from the lounge. I had to check out his room.

Finding his room would have been a lot easier in pre-electronic days, when rooms had keys instead of programmable cards, and messages were stuck in racks of key boxes behind the registration desk. I could have left him a message and watched where it was placed. But not here.

My only quick idea was the maitre d' at the restaurant. If he wasn't bribable, or if Billy hadn't charged dinner to his room, I'd be reduced to calling security.

I retraced my steps to the escalator, rode to the second floor, then walked around the balcony to the dark restaurant door.

The maitre d' smiled when he saw me.

"Did you forget something?" he asked.

"Not exactly. I wanted to split the dinner bill with my cousin, Billy Davis, and he's being stubborn. Could you possibly retrieve our check from the waiter and let me see it?" I had a twenty folded in my hand.

"Certainly," the maitre d' said, still smiling, once the twenty was his.

He slipped into the dim recesses of the restaurant and came back with Billy's signed receipt. And I had the room number. Room 1115, right down the hall from the corpse.

I thanked the maitre d' and left the restaurant for the second time, heading again for the elevator bank and the eleventh floor.

I barely glanced at 1103 as I pa.s.sed. The door was still ajar. I hadn't pulled it shut, both because I wanted to leave it as I found it and because I didn't want to put my hands on anything in the vicinity of the dead man.

When I reached the door to Billy's room, I knocked, out of habit, not really expecting an answer.

But I could have sworn I heard a groan.

I knocked again.

"Billy? Are you there?"

Silence.

"Billy, if you're there, open up. Because if I leave, I'm coming back with hotel security. Two of them. One for the room down the hall, and one for you."

I was about to walk away when I heard someone turn the lock.

The woman who opened the door was easily six-foot-two in her stiletto heels. Long black hair hung straight down over her bare shoulders, all the way to her lace-trimmed red corset, the kind with matching underpants, and garters to hold up black fishnet stockings. Her arms were fleshy, and a roll of fat billowed softly over the satin-covered wires.

But the set of her wine-red mouth was hard. I glanced down at her hand, expecting a whip.

She was holding a gun.

"Come in," she said, blinking a heavy fringe of fake eyelashes. "You must be Billy's cousin. He's told me so much about you."

"Oh, G.o.d. Next you'll tell me he couldn't come to the door himself because he's tied up."

In bare feet we would have been eye to eye. I didn't like having to look up to meet her gaze.

She smiled one of those wide-lipped smiles that vampires use to expose their fangs.

"I'm going to step back from the door," she said. "You're going to come in and shut it behind you. If you leave instead, I'm going to end your cousin's life and disappear before you can return with help. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She kept the gun on me as she moved away from the door. I followed her into a room that was the twin of 1103, except that the man on the bed was Billy, and he was still alive.

He was naked and gagged, and his hands were cuffed behind his back, but he was still alive.

I could tell because he squirmed, and his face turned red. He looked even smaller and more pathetic naked than he had in the suit and boots.

"Sit down." The woman used her gun to point toward a chair on the far side of the room.

I did as told.

She leaned against the wall, regarding me thoughtfully.

"What happens next?" I asked, not wanting to give her too much time to think. "I can't believe you're going to walk out of here and leave us to call the cops."

"No. I hadn't expected you, and I'm afraid I'll have to improvise. In fact, I had specifically told Billy to leave the situation to me. Fortunately, I suspected that he was weak enough to panic. I've had friends keeping tabs on him. And when I saw him meet you, I knew what he was doing. I was about to punish him when you knocked."

"We haven't been introduced. I'm Freddie O'Neal, and you are-?" I broke off the question to wait for her answer.

"You don't need to know my name. You can call me Sada if you like."

"Sada. Are you by some other name known as a financial whiz?"

"I don't think you need to know that, either."

"Maybe not, but if you are, it would make sense out of why three Southern California stockbrokers chose to risk their licenses in a scam. Had to be something more than greed."

"A scam? Naughty Billy. I've told him not to use that word."

Billy squirmed some more, drawing his knees up to protect his genitals. He tried to make sounds through the gag.

"He called it a misunderstanding," I said.

Billy nodded rapidly.

"Good Billy," Sada purred.

Billy didn't relax his knees.

Sada looked at me again.

"I had hoped I could control Billy, at least until the money from investors was safely deposited in an off-sh.o.r.e bank. Unfortunately, I don't think you're quite as amenable to persuasion as your cousin. So this is what we're going to do. You and I will exchange clothes. And poor Billy will shoot you and then himself, after having shot the good doctor down the hall, in a love triangle gone awry." She thought it over and sighed. "This is far too messy for my taste, but I don't see a way out of it. Undress now. Start with your boots."

I bent over toward my right foot. And I pulled the gun out of my boot and shot.

With a small .22 caliber, you have to pray when you shoot. It's the equivalent of throwing a Hail Mary pa.s.s in football.

My first shot landed in her right shoulder. Her gun hand wavered.

My second shot grazed her ear.

"Stop." She dropped her gun. Blood ran in one stream down her arm, in another down her neck and across her collarbone. "Stop."

I kept the gun aimed more or less at her chest. My stomach was churning, and I was tempted to walk out and leave both of them. But I didn't.

"Uncuff Billy and let him call security."

"I'll have to get the key."

"Wrong. Just ungag him, then. You can hit 0 for Operator, but I want him on the receiver. I don't want you faking the call and somehow alerting a friend instead."

Awkwardly, with her left hand, she loosened Billy's gag, picked up the receiver, hit 0, and then held the receiver next to Billy's head.

Hotel security arrived first, then the hotel doctor, followed sometime later by Detective Matthews and the crime team from the Reno Police Department.

I told the story and Billy confirmed it.

Sada was taken into custody.

The first security guard to arrive tossed a clean towel over Billy, but he spent a lot of time naked and cuffed while people walked in and out of the room. If it wasn't Sada's idea of punishment, it was certainly mine. I'd have to think later whether it was enough.

Billy not only gave his own name and address to the police, but Sada's as well. The silent partner no more.

"How long are you planning to stay in Reno?" Matthews asked him. "We'll need your testimony to make the charge stick."

"I'll stay as long as you need me," Billy said. "After all, I have family here."

I winced.

"Yeah, sure," Matthews nodded. He had raised his eyebrows when I introduced Billy as my cousin, but he was now beyond shock. "I won't blame you if you decide not to stay at the hotel after this. But make certain I have a good local address and phone number, okay?"

That was to me as much as to Billy.

I waited until Matthews had left and Billy was dressed before I brought up the question again.

"Where are you going to stay?" I asked.

"I'll have to think about it." He was still badly shaken. "The detective is right. I don't think I want to stay here."

"Do me a favor and sleep on my couch tonight. I don't want to worry that Sada might make a phone call and get somebody to come after you." I was still p.i.s.sed at Billy for getting me into this, and I wasn't happy with the idea of spending more time with him, but I didn't want to lie awake wondering whether he was going to disappear, whether he wanted to or not.

"Oh, G.o.d," he groaned, "she's capable of it."

"Okay. Tonight you sleep on my couch and we'll figure out the rest of it tomorrow. Maybe you could stay with Ramona for a while. Work on your tan."

"Do you have to tell Aunt Ramona what happened?"

"Billy, there was a murder in a hotel-casino. What happened will be in a police report. TV news vans root out crime scenes the way pigs root truffles. I won't be surprised if Ramona knows before I can call her. She watches the eleven o'clock news."

He thought for a moment.

"She'll know about the murder. She might even find out that the railroad tank car situation wasn't quite on the up-and-up. But I was led astray, and I can explain. It's just-she doesn't have to know about Sada, and about me being naked and cuffed, and all that, does she?"

Billy was looking at me with hope in his soft, hazel eyes.

"Maybe, maybe not. I'll have to think about it."

"I'll owe you," he said, starting to twitch. "Remember when I dragged you around the pool? I'll let you drag me around the pool. Any pool in town. What do you say?"

I almost liked the idea. But the thing was, he liked it better. The hope in his soft, hazel eyes was that I would drag him around the pool.