“Hell, kid, it’s your night.”
A waiter brought a silver bucket holding two bottles of Cordon Rouge. Dunc was caught by the music; “Moonlight in Vermont” had been followed by an evocative, somehow familiar one he couldn’t name that then segued into “Old Cape Cod.”
They drank and toasted until their table was called. The steaks were huge and bloody and the baked potatoes smothered in butter and crumbled bacon and sour cream. Garlic toast on the side. The windows were steamed over, snow was piled on the sills outside like in Minnesota, like a Christmas card, the voices and laughter in the room were hearty and exuberant like coming home from duck hunting with your limit of mallards.
For a moment he wished his folks, his uncles and cousins, everybody he had hunted and fished with over the years, were all here to celebrate with them.
They went back into the piano bar for a nightcap, the crowd had thinned, they got their same table back. A waiter appeared.
“Order anything you want, champ,” urged Drinker.
The piano was still playing. On an impulse Dunc said, “Ask the piano player for ‘Desert Moon.’ ”
Penny looked at him with slight misgivings, as though she might have forgotten their favorite song, then looked puzzled when she didn’t recognize the song at all. A few minutes later Pepe pulled up a chair from an adjacent table with effervescent energy and sat down.
“Pepe!” said Penny. “How did you even know we were here?”
“ ‘Desert Moon,’ ” he said with a grin. “Nobody but Dunc asks for my own stuff. What brings you two to Reno?”
“They got married this afternoon!” said Sherry.
After hugs and congratulations and introductions, Pepe looked at Dunc with a grin. “Apart from snagging the prettiest girl in Reno, what are you up to these days?” He read Dunc’s business card and chuckled. “A genuine private eye? How did you get into that?”
“Remember that Labor Day picnic we were going to at Griffith Park in L.A.? I met Drinker there, he’s my boss now — and my best man.”
Pepe told Drinker, “You got a pretty damn good man right here.” Then, looking embarrassed, said to Dunc, “Sorry about that picnic. An hour after you left that joint on the Strip I got a good gig in Monterey, be there immediately. After that, a couple of cruise ships. Chile, Argentina, and back.”
“Did you make your record?” asked Penny.
“Not yet, but thanks for remembering.”
She shook a finger at him in mock severity. “If you stayed in one place — maybe L.A. — you’d get a contract for sure.”
He laughed. “You got me, Penny — I can’t stay in one place.” He turned to Dunc and Drinker with twinkling eyes. “Private eyes! Maybe you guys can find me a record contract.”
They chatted, drank more bubbly. Finally Pepe looked at his watch and sighed and stood up from the table.
“I’d better get back. After the grand opening in May, the piano lounge becomes a show lounge; they’re bringing in Vegas headliners, and then where will I be?” He bent and kissed Penny on the cheek. “Long life and every happiness, beautiful bride.”
They were staying at a downtown hotel with a garage next door because Drinker had insisted on indoor parking. The two couples rode up to their respective rooms together.
“Where’d you meet the piano player?” asked Drinker.
“Las Vegas,” said Dunc.
“Then again on the Sunset Strip,” said Penny.
“Now here.” Drinker was thoughtful. “Lad gets around.”
Sherry’s head was on Drinker’s shoulder, she was almost asleep, but Penny looked more alive and sparkling than she had all day. Dunc realized all over again how much he loved her, how her vitality energized him. They parted outside the elevator.
Lad gets around, Dunc thought. The guy was a musician, musicians had to go where they got the best offer. Or maybe, the way his mind worked, Drinker thought Pepe was connected with the big boys. But anyone who lived around gambling at least brushed up against mob guys, that didn’t mean they were connected.
Despite the champagne, both he and Penny were ready. He entered her tentatively at first, awed at the expanded context of then lovemaking since they’d last been together.
“It’s okay, darling,” she said. “We can’t hurt anything.”
He was a piston driving their love, then Penny was bucking under him, her incoherent cries of climax bringing on his own. He gasped, “Move... over little... man. Make room for... Daddy.”
Daddy. He was going to be a father. Of a boy, of course.
Pepe closed down his piano at 2:00 A.M., went to the bar to sip cold white wine and stare sightlessly at the backbar mirror.
Dammit, the man had to know. Or suspect. He was a natural-born observer, made even sharper by months as a private investigator. Running into Dunc twice could be accidental, but at some point the kid would figure it out. Unless...
Could Dunc be that sly? Hiding what he knew behind that open midwestern face, biding his time for the moment to act?
Maybe, maybe not, but Pepe couldn’t take the chance anymore. For his own peace of mind he had to act first.
Sometime into Dunc’s head would pop the sequence of events during that last night in Vegas. Some night he would sit bolt upright in bed, beside that new bride of his — she had known there was significance in Pepe’s sudden disappearance from the Strip, he had seen it in her eyes tonight — and Dunc would remember. And, remembering, he would go back to read the Las Vegas newspapers for last July 5, and then he would know...
The hell of it was, Pepe really liked the kid. He wasn’t small-minded or mean-hearted, and he was a genuine fan of Pepe’s music. Pepe could count his fans on the fingers of one hand.
But survival came first. He didn’t want to have to move on as he had in L.A. Keep ducking out before the job was done, and word would go out he’d lost his nerve. Guys like Mr. David had people like Pepe, who had not only fronted for the mob but carried out hits on face-to-face orders from the bosses, retired with flowers the minute it looked like they were losing their nerve. That was the only way someone in his line of work was ever retired. With flowers.
Look what had happened to Jack Falkoner just because a couple of kids maybe had seen a body being carried away.
Uh-uh. Not for Pepe that little stutter-step to the coffin. Time to make another phone call about Dunc; not, as it had been in L.A., just to have someone check him out. A careful voice answered the phone in San Francisco.
“Give me Mr. David,” Pepe told it. “Right now.”
Chapter Forty-eight
On Sunday they didn’t even pry their eyes open until noon; it never occurred to Dunc to go to Mass. What with one thing and another, they were lucky to join Drinker and Sherry in the hotel casino at three in the afternoon.
Drinker looked them over critically. “Married life agrees with you,” he said to Penny, then to Dunc, “You look like hell.”
Penny did look ravishing, her hair full and soft around her face, her eyes sparkling as she laughed at Drinker.
“I love my husband.”
Sherry took Penny’s hand. “And he loves you, sweetie, make no mistake about that. Come on, let’s win a lot of money.”
“I’m a killer at blackjack,” said Penny.
She had a system, right pocket/left pocket. You bought chips with the stake in your right-hand jacket pocket, played at a dollar table. Winnings went back into that pocket until the original stake was replaced. After that, winnings went into the left-hand pocket. If you lost your original stake, you quit for the night. Penny didn’t have to quit, except, finally, to eat.