Raoul took a second to pull it all together, then he couldn’t help himself: He smiled. “Up North? Canada? Really?”
Norm smiled, too. He held up his hand like a Boy Scout taking an oath. “I’m good, but I couldn’t make that up.” Norm’s grin caused his cheekbones to levitate-just a tiny bit-and that motion caused the distinctive black, flat crescent patch that always covered his right eye to rise.
Raoul said, “There’s more, yes?”
“There’s more. Canada’s a facilitator, apparently. A street facilitator of some kind.” Norm sipped from his beer. “If this place were Hollywood”-he gazed down at the flashing neon skyline of ersatz New York, and the ejaculating fountains at the Bellagio, and the distant faux icons of Egypt and Paris and Venice-“and if Canada’s people were movie stars, he’d probably be called a manager. But this is definitely not Hollywood, and Canada’s clients are, well, definitely not movie stars, so there’s not exactly a name I know of for exactly what he does.”
“He’s not a pimp?”
“No. He probably counts some pimps and prostitutes among his… clients.”
“He’s not muscle, protection?”
“Not in any conventional sense. But should the need arise, he has all the muscle he might want. That’s what I’m told.”
“I assume he gets a percentage of-”
“He does. I was told he advises his… clients-I’m sorry, I keep stumbling over that word-on business matters, helps them formulate strategic plans. I swear; that’s the party line. He intervenes only when necessary. Tries to keep turf fights in his territory to a minimum. Settles occasional disputes. For those services, he is paid a percentage of his clients’… proceeds.”
“The clients are crooks?”
Norm took a moment before he decided how to reply. “Let’s say they don’t report their income to the IRS.”
“And Canada’s a scary enough man to do this… job?”
“He is known to be ruthless when necessary. And sometimes more, when he needs to make a point.”
“Your source knows him?”
“Of him.”
Raoul sat back. “You have contacts everywhere.” He intended it as a compliment, and as a question. Norm read it both ways.
“Everywhere I can. To do my job for the paper, I need all the eyes I can find.” He gestured over his shoulder. “When nobody knew where Jacko was after his indictment, I found him. When Britney got married for ten minutes, I knew about it before her mother did. Roy Horn after the tiger mauled him? I knew things his nurses didn’t know about how he was doing.
“Tonight? One of the busboys here is going to tell me exactly who shows up for this shindig. Sometimes it’s a host who helps me, occasionally a chef. Some of my best sources are people on the fringes of the A-list. They get invited to the hot parties, then tell me who else is there. Rule number one in this business: Everybody knows somebody.”
“And one of them knows how I can find this Canada?”
“You won’t find Canada. He doesn’t like to be found by people outside his orbit. But if you would like, the man who’s talking to me will pass the word along on the street that you would like to speak with him. That’s how it works, apparently.” Norm shrugged, a gesture that at once apologized for the melodrama and acknowledged that the show was totally out of his control.
Raoul sat back. “Canada is what? Nevada’s answer to Osama? I get a canvas bag on my head and get driven out to a cave somewhere in the desert?”
Norm’s face remained impassive. “I’m a reporter; I don’t make this stuff up. I’d never heard of this guy before today. Odds are I’ll never hear about him again after today. This is North Vegas stuff. It’s way off my beat.”
“But you trust your guy? Your source?”
Norm took a long pull from his Coors Light. “I work hard to write my column. It’s not a party. To do this right, I have to have great instincts, I have to hustle, and I have to have a good bullshit detector, or I end up becoming a joke. I don’t get them all right, Raoul, but I get almost all of them right. My gut says I have this one right.
“I grew up in a middle-of-nowhere town in Montana. Small-world time: Turns out a guy I went to high school with is part of the North Vegas street life. I tracked him down after his photo showed up in the paper one day with a story on the homeless. He’s my source on this. He has no reason to lie to me, and it was pretty clear to me that he’s honestly afraid of this guy Canada. He would much rather have been telling me that he knew where I could get serviced by the pope’s favorite hooker.”
Raoul pondered for a few seconds. “This man you know? Did he tell you anything about Rachel?”
Norm shook his head.
“Diane?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
Norm’s cell phone rang. He excused himself to Raoul. “Sorry, I have to get this. I’m waiting for a confirmation about an item for tomorrow’s column. That thing at The Palms.” He opened the phone. “Hello.”
Raoul didn’t know about the thing at The Palms, and preferred it that way. He’d read it fresh in Norm’s column the next morning.
Norm listened for a moment, stood up from the table, faced the window, and said, “Of course, yes.” He listened for a longer period, almost a full minute, before he said, “He’s with me right now.” Beat. “Okay, you know that… You want me to ask him?”
Norm set the phone on the table between himself and Raoul. He nodded at it and with an extended thumb and pinky held up to his face, he mimed that the telephone conversation was continuing.
“It’s one of Canada’s… people. If you agree to leave the police out of this, totally out of this, Canada will talk with you.”
In a heartbeat Raoul said, “Agreed. Is my wife safe? Can he tell me that? Please?”
Norm shrugged. He didn’t know the answer. He picked up the phone and placed it against his ear. “You heard?” he said. Norm listened some more, nodding, and finally added, “It shouldn’t be a problem. He’ll be there.” Norm folded his phone shut.
“I’ll be where?” Raoul asked.
“The tram platform at the Luxor at seven o’clock. That’s only twenty minutes from now.”
“Is it far?”
“If we could get a real good running start, and if we could jump out those windows over there, we could probably land on it. But from way up here, without flying? It’ll take us most of that twenty minutes to get over there.”
“You know the way?”
Norm stood up. “Of course.”
Raoul threw twenty dollars on the table and they ran.
“We had to hustle,” Raoul said to me. “Down the elevator, all the way across the casino, which is like the size of Luxembourg, over to the monorail station. Wait for the train, get onto the train, ride it over to the Luxor. It’s a turtle. The thing moves so slowly, you wonder why they bothered to build it. My mother has a cane; she walks faster than the damn tram moves. We finally made it to the platform with only a couple of minutes to spare.”
He stopped.
“And?” I asked.
“And nothing. We stood there for half an hour. Nothing. Nobody. Trains came, trains left. Nothing.”
“Nobody met you?”
“No.”
“Now what?”
“I don’t know,” Raoul said. “I suppose I’ll continue to try to reach out to Canada some other way.”
I’d grown increasingly discomfited listening to Raoul’s recanting of his meeting with Norm Clarke, especially the parts about the man called Canada. I stood up and began to pace in front of the big windows that faced the mountains. My movement caused Emily to stir. She was so exhausted that it appeared as though the simple act of lifting her big head to see what I was up to required a monumental effort.
“When I got back here a little bit ago?” Raoul said.