“Fits with what I remember, Raoul.” I paused before I added, “The guy from the craps table was going to hit on her, wasn’t he? That’s why he was following her?”
“Yes,” said Raoul without any animosity. He understood these things.
“So that was it? He never reported this to anyone?”
“He said that Diane didn’t seem to be in any distress. The phone thing was odd, but she went with them voluntarily.”
“But he doesn’t know where they went?”
“They were walking in the direction of the lobby, but he didn’t follow them out of the casino. He went up to his room.”
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I’m thinking what he said to her had something to do with Rachel Miller. That’s why she went with them-she thought she was going to get a chance to talk with Rachel.”
“That’s what I’m thinking, too.” I paused for a moment. “Somebody must have picked the phone up off the floor and put it in the tray of the slot machine where that drunk woman found it.”
“It also explains why Venetian security isn’t too eager to let me see the surveillance tape. Probably looks a lot like a rendezvous to them. You know, something between… adults.”
“But they must have a picture of these two guys, right?”
“Right. You can’t walk out of a casino without a camera seeing you. No way.”
“You said you have a couple of pieces of news. What’s the other one?”
“Norm Clarke came through. I should’ve called him the first day I got here. I can be such a putz.”
I was surprised-no, shocked-at the Yiddish. I didn’t know it was part of Raoul’s language repertoire. I grabbed a beer from the kitchen so I could sit down and listen to his story about Norm Clarke.
Any good big-city daily newspaper that doesn’t take itself too seriously has one, though few are fortunate enough to have that special one that becomes a silk thread in the urban fabric. San Francisco had Herb Caen. Denver has had Bill Husted for as long as I can remember.
What’s their role? Gossip columnist? Man about town? If they’re good, the phrases don’t do them justice. These guys, and a few gals, take the pulse on their city. They tell the rest of us what happens behind closed doors, what happens after the bars close, what’s new, what’s old, what’s coming next. They invite us to the city’s water cooler for the latest gossip on the movers and shakers, and they whisper the latest dish over the city’s backyard fence. They’re the ones who know what local boy has done good, and what local girl has gone bad. What famous visitor has been spotted where, doing what, with whom.
Las Vegas’s version was Norm Clarke.
Norm had briefly gone head-to-head with Husted back in Colorado, scrounging the usually dull Front Range of the Rockies for paltry scoops, but years before he’d moved on to ply his trade at the Review-Journal in the much more fertile gossip terrain of Las Vegas. By all the reports that made their way back across the Great Basin and the Rocky Mountains to Denver, Norm soon owned his adopted town.
He knew everybody in Vegas, had spies everywhere, had eaten at every now table, could get backstage at any show, and was escorted to the front of the line and past the velvet rope at any trendy club. After a few years in the desert Norm had, literally, written the book on Las Vegas, and was always busy taking notes for the next edition. His mug, and his column, graced the front page of the paper every weekend.
Celebrities weren’t really in Vegas until Norm said they were in Vegas. Some begged him for ink. A few had managers and publicists call and beg him to please, please, please forget what he had seen or heard.
Back in his days at the Rocky Mountain News, Norm had done a feature on Raoul, and on Raoul’s golden touch incubating Boulder tech companies during the heady days of the early 1990s. Raoul, who generally despised publicity, thought the piece was on the money, and he and Norm had become casual friends. They’d stayed in touch over the years even as each of their lives grew more complicated.
When Raoul called Norm asking for help in finding Diane, he was asking Norm to do something that Norm wasn’t often asked to do: He was asking him to keep a secret.
Raoul’s first sit-down with Norm had taken place almost twenty-four hours before in one of the many bars that dot the expansive, expensive acreage on the main floor of the Venetian. After some pleasantries Raoul had told Norm that he had a personal favor to ask, and asked Norm if he could speak off the record. Raoul proceeded to provide only the Vegas pieces of the puzzle: that Diane was in town to talk to a patient’s mother, which was as good an excuse as she needed to spend some time playing a little middling-stakes craps. On Monday evening Diane had been talking to a friend on her cell while walking through the Venetian casino, and hadn’t been heard from since. She’d disappeared. Hadn’t returned to her hotel room. Hadn’t called anyone. Nothing.
Earlier in the day she disappeared, Diane had tried to track down the patient’s mother and had ended up at the Love In Las Vegas Wedding Chapel out on Las Vegas Boulevard, where she’d apparently located someone named Rachel Miller-yeah, Raoul told Norm, that Rachel Miller-but Raoul hadn’t been successful finding her. Raoul also told Norm about his conversation with Reverend Howie at the Love In Las Vegas and about Howie’s suggestion that Rachel could possibly be tracked down through an intermediary-a man, someone who apparently made Howie shake in his Savile Row boots. Somebody scary.
Norm admitted to Raoul that he didn’t have a clue about the intermediary’s identity, but that he suspected the man didn’t inhabit the part of Las Vegas that typically interested his column’s readers.
“But…” Raoul had said, sensing something.
“But,” Norm had added quickly, “I think I know somebody who might be able to help.”
The way Raoul told it to me later, he and Norm met again at almost exactly the same time that I was finishing my meal with Sam, Darrell, and my new buddy Jaris at the Sunflower in downtown Boulder.
Norm was on the clock getting ready to chronicle for his column which of-the-moment celebrities were really going to show up at some cocktail-hour charity-do at one of the trendiest of the city’s many trendoid restaurants, this one high in the newest tower of the Mandalay Bay. A setup crew was bustling around the still-vacant space, frantically arranging the tiers of a gorgeous raw bar, and test-fitting the blown-glass platters that would soon be heaped with gleaming shellfish, sushi, sashimi, and maki.
Raoul joined Norm at a corner table that had a stunning view of the Strip’s neon at dusk. The table in front of Norm was naked except for his ubiquitous mobile phone, a longneck Coors Light that was almost full, and a couple of paper cocktail napkins on which Norm was scribbling notes with a felt-tip pen.
Norm looked up and said, “Raoul, hi. Any luck?”
Raoul shook his head as he sat down.
Norm asked, “You want a drink?”
“No, thank you.”
Norm slid the beer aside and leaned forward. “I didn’t think you’d have good news. Especially given what I found out about the guy you’re looking for. You ready? His name is Ulysses Paul North. That’s U-P-North. Or… Up, North. On the street they call him Canada.”