“Right,” she said. “How are you planning to find this guy Charlie Stone?”
“Let’s ask at the check-in desk.”
Which was on the abbreviated second floor, a balcony overlooking the casino’s sea of green felt and the people swimming there. Since this package we’d lucked into was your basic twenty-four-hour crash-course in Vegas, hotel rooms weren’t included — we’d crashed an all-night party, it seemed. But since we weren’t here to party, I’d had Jane back at Port City Travel make us a hotel reservation. What I had to do in Vegas could be accomplished in a few hours tonight, and possibly a few more tomorrow. With luck. And if you couldn’t get lucky in Las Vegas, where could you?
“Port City, Iowa,” the middle-aged male clerk behind the counter said, with a knowing smile; he had a mustache and slick hair. “We’ll make sure you get the special rate.”
Jill and I exchanged bewildered looks.
“Why?” I asked, ever skeptical about gift horses.
The clerk beamed. “You’re friends of Mr. Stone, aren’t you?”
Aw right!
“And you didn’t even kiss my dice,” I said to Jill.
“Pardon?” the clerk said.
“Nothing,” I said. “Is Charlie in?”
“Sure,” the clerk said. “You know Charlie — he loves working nights.”
“Actually,” Jill said, “we don’t know Charlie. We’re just friends of a friend. We promised we’d say hello.”
“Well,” the clerk said with practiced cheer, “I’m sure that’s no problem. Anybody from Port City is a friend of Charlie’s.”
And he called down to the casino floor and had Charlie Stone paged.
Soon a big, heavyset, white-haired, ruddy man in a shark-skin suit and a black silk tie was approaching us with a huge hand extended toward me and a smile as big as the neon cowboy’s who loomed over Glitter Gulch.
“So you’re from Port City!” he said. His eyes were casino-felt green, but a little red-lined; booze? “What’s your name?”
I told him, and he snapped two thick fingers; the sound was like a gunshot.
“You’re that mystery writer! I read about you in the paper.”
Jill and I exchanged looks again. “What paper?” I asked. Had I made the Las Vegas Sun?
“Port City Journal, of course,” he said. “I subscribe. Best way in the world to keep up — next to having friends drop by. And what’s your name, miss?”
He had offered Jill his big hand — on one finger of which was a single large gold ring glittering with diamonds, his only ostentatious touch — and she was taking it, telling him her name.
“Was your father Fred J. Forest?”
“Yes!”
“Didn’t he marry Viola Phillips?”
“That’s my mother!” Then, as if apologizing: “But I’m afraid they’ve both passed away.”
He patted her shoulder; like her long lost Uncle Charlie. “I’m sorry to hear that. I knew Fred pretty well. He was younger than me — wild kid, though!”
Jill smiled, a tinge of sadness in it. “He was a pretty sedate father. But I heard rumors he got around, way back when.”
“That he did,” Stone said, grinning broadly. “Can I get you folks a drink? Are my people treating you right?”
“I wouldn’t mind a drink, actually,” Jill said.
“Nor would I,” I said. “And your people are treating us fine. We’re getting some sort of special rate on our room.”
He waved a thick hand in the air, magicianlike, diamond ring reflecting light. “More special than that. We’ll comp you.”
“Well, thank you,” I said. “That’s hardly necessary...”
“Not a word!” he said. “Let’s go down to my office and chat.” He asked us what we’d like to drink, and Jill wanted a Manhattan, and after that dry air outside I wanted a Pabst more than life in the hereafter, and he had the check-in clerk make a call.
We went down the wide, rose-carpeted steps and back into the casino, past a battalion of chrome and glass slots, where patrons, women mostly, stood worshipping, making offerings, often from paper cups of coins, staring at the brightly glowing colored glass in the polished metal machines, transfixed by spinning fruit. Beyond the slots were the gaming tables — blackjack, craps, baccarat. Then roulette, chuck-a-luck, wheel-of-fortune; in a separate open room, with comfortable chairs, armrests and all, people were playing a bingolike game called keno. The air in here was cold, and though many people were smoking, not at all smoky; the room was brightly lit, but despite the high ceiling, it was something like being in a great big submarine.
Stone led us through the casino — where slightly muffled Dixieland music from a lounge mingled with the ka-chunk of slot machines eating money, their alarm bells signaling sporadic payoffs that came in rattling downpours of coin — and into a small, spartan office. Just a desk, some framed documents; a single black-and-white, wall-mounted TV monitor of an overview of the casino. It was a lot like Brennan’s office, without the ducks.
A riverboat-gal waitress came in and delivered our drinks. We thanked her.
“So you’re originally from Port City,” I said. You didn’t have to be a mystery writer to figure that one out.
“Born and bred,” he nodded. He’d ordered a drink, too: milk. “Been in Nevada thirty years now. But I left Port City, oh, ten, fifteen years prior.”
Jill smiled prettily and said, “How did a Port City boy wind up managing a casino?”
He laughed — a single booming “ha.” “Day at a time, dear. Began running a crap game over a saloon in Port City, many, many years ago. Those were wild days.”
I sipped my Pabst, smiled meaninglessly. “I hear Port City was pretty rough, back then.”
“Yes sir, it was. Cooled down in the fifties. I moved on to Idaho when they legalized gambling, and finally wound up here — as a dealer, floor man, pit boss, shift boss. Worked my way up the ladder, like any business.”
“Do you ever get back to Port City?”
“Not in years,” he said, regretfully. “My family’s died out, mostly — what little’s left of ’em aren’t in Port City anymore. But friends drop by. I keep in touch with, oh, dozens of people from home. I try to show ’em a good time, too.”
“You knew Ginnie Mullens, then?”
His pleasant expression fell; the ruddy face looked longer than my day had been. With infinite sadness, he said, “She was a sweet kid. Mixed up, maybe. But I loved her.”
“How did you happen to know her? She wasn’t even born when you left town...”
He held the glass of milk in one hand, looked into it, as if searching for memories. “I knew her dad. Jack Mullens.” He glanced up, brightening. “Great guy! That guy coulda sold Satan a truckload of Bibles. He always had some damn scheme or other up his sleeve, some new idea that was gonna make his fortune. Never did, though. Poor guy. Died young, y’know.”
“Not as young as Ginnie,” I said.
“They were a lot alike,” Stone said. He drank half the glass of milk, more or less; set it down, pushed it away, through with it, a duty he’d dispatched. Ulcers? He folded his hands before him, fingers thick as sausages. “I loved her old man. We played poker, shot craps, from dusk till dawn, many a time. He was younger than me, a little. But we had some wild ol’ times. May he rest in peace.”
“When and how did you get to know Ginnie?”
He thought back. “Well — it must’ve been twelve, thirteen years ago. She came out here, just turned twenty-one. Introduced herself. Cute as a button, smart as a whip. Spittin’ image of her daddy. Pretty version of ’im. Wanted to work as a blackjack dealer. That wasn’t unheard of; lots of college kids were getting jobs with us and other casinos, if they were of age and good enough. And she was. She handled the cards well. She knew the score. She knew the odds, too. Good little gambler, most of the time. Though she had a bad habit of...” He stopped.