In our suite, I put Chinatown on our room tab, and then Young Frankenstein. I’d seen them both before, but they were good. During “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” I fell asleep on the sofa, even though I’d had enough Coca-Cola caffeine to fly back to McCarran.
What woke me was Boyd coming back in. The night latch was on, so I got up and let him in. I stopped off at the john to get rid of some of that Coke, the pause that really refreshes, and joined him in the living room.
“Pack your shit,” I told him, “and take mine, too.” My travel bag was ready to go. “Be in your car with the motor running at six-fifteen. I parked up top. It’s a beater, so if we have to haul ass, we can leave it behind.”
“You wipe the car down for prints?”
“No, I made sure to leave every clue I could. Your picture’s in the glove compartment with the bill of sale for my nine mil.”
He laughed at that, said, “Sorry.”
I took off my suitcoat and got into the shoulder holster with the silenced nine millimeter Browning in it. Rarely did I wear a rig like that, but sticking the bulky gun in my waistband just wouldn’t cut it. Even at this time of night, or morning or whatever, too many people would be around.
“Gun doesn’t show at all,” Boyd said admiringly, eyes on my right shoulder.
“The Broker recommended a tailor,” I said. “Paid for it himself.”
Boyd smirked. “Isn’t this the goddamnedest job?”
“It is. And I wish it were over.”
“Will be, soon enough.”
“Guy ever had a girl in there, this time of day?”
“No.”
“Sure about that?”
“Now who’s asking stupid questions, Quarry? Strictly an afternoon delight type. Too wiped after work for funtime. Quick bite of breakfast at the in-house café, and off to beddy-bye.”
“And only the one bodyguard?”
“Well, like I said earlier, there’s three... but they work one at a time. Guy there now does the five A.M. to one P.M. shift. So he just went on — he’ll be alert.”
“Not for long.”
I went to the window for a look. Despite the hour, the pool was still doing a good business, more bikini girls parading in the reflective glow. The round umbrellas were like big colorful poker chips and the squat palms lent an exotic vibe.
In the sprawling Mission-style building on the other side of the pool, mobster Bugsy Siegel and his moll, Virginia Hill, had lived and fought and fucked in the penthouse suite on the top floor of the central four stories. According to Boyd, Siegel haunted the penthouse, now known as the Presidential Suite, where the man who “invented” Las Vegas dwelt while he built the Flamingo.
“Guests stayin’ in that suite,” Boyd had reported to me over dinner, between bites of rare filet mignon, “tell of strange run-ins with Bugsy’s ghost — and cold spots that give you the shivers... plus, things that were left here and wind up there.”
“Yeah,” I’d said. “There’s a name for poltergeists like that — housekeeping.”
He ignored that, caught up in the around-the-campfire moment. “They’ve seen his ghost all around the place — in a bedroom, and in the living room, standing by the pool table.”
“So how is ol’ Bugsy these days?”
“Except for being dead, Quarry, apparently not bad! Doesn’t seem unhappy or out of sorts. Must be pleased to still be around the place.”
“Maybe he’s getting a charge out of seeing how his dream played out.”
“Maybe! Kinda all came true, didn’t it?”
“Yeah. Course, he probably didn’t dream of getting shot full of holes in his girlfriend’s living room.”
In a corner of the underground parking garage, itself a relic of the early days of the casino/hotel, a door waited that wore its age without dignity, a somewhat warped affair, its face a paint-peeling mess worthy of Dorian Gray. The Flamingo, despite occasional signs of its long run here on the Strip, was relatively spiffed up. This was like a big rectangular scab in the corner.
But the key the Broker provided worked fine. I did not lock the door behind me, since the need for a quick Bugsy-style getaway remained a possibility — like if one bodyguard turned into three. The promised light switch inside the door at right clicked the long cement corridor into a weak state of jaundice, thanks to bare yellow bulbs in the ceiling spotted along every ten feet or so. This was the kind of passageway that led to an electric chair back in the old days. And in some states still did.
About eight light bulbs down I came to another door, the slightly better-preserved twin of the previous one, and no key was required. Steep stairs awaited, cement again — no creaking to announce me. They led to three landings, the third of which had a ladder — bare wood but of a vintage going back decades — leaned against the wall opposite.
I was still in the gray suit with the black turtleneck. But the silenced Browning was in my surgical-gloved right hand now, as I scaled the ladder to a panel in the ceiling.
Well, sort of in the ceiling. Actually in the floor of the room above. And that room was the penthouse, the front closet of which I pulled myself up and into. Only a few coats hung — the climate required a raincoat or two, one topcoat reserved for weird weather, but mostly just empty hangers for me not to bump into.
With the lid leaned against a side wall, I sat there in the opening, legs dangling like a kid in a high chair, and braced myself in case my minimal noise had roused anybody.
Apparently it hadn’t.
Straddling the square hole in the floor, I used my left hand to work the doohickey on this side of the closet-opening knob. Turning that worked just fine, and I got the door open quickly, ready to deal with the bodyguard in the front room.
The fairly narrow but very long living room had, as promised, a pool table taking up a good third of it. I was facing the table now. At my left, at the far end, was a wet bar. A wall of windows, straight ahead, looked out onto the pool, curtains back, night not having given in to morning yet, dawn not even a threat.
But the expected bodyguard was nowhere to be seen in this considerable space.
Then, from behind a door next to me, came a flush. I positioned myself with my back to the wall next to that door. Next came the sound of running water. He was a good employee, washing his hands like that. Probably made drinks and handled food for his boss. He deserved a gold star.
He got it. When he came lumbering out — another cauliflower-eared ex-bouncer with eyes peering out of slits and an open mouth waiting for a thought to form — I clubbed him along the right side of his head with the noise-suppressed nine mil. He immediately transformed into a useless pile of protoplasm, and I caught him with my free arm, to lower him gently to the pink pile carpet.
His heavy breathing meant the blow hadn’t killed him, at least not just yet, and I used the duct tape in my suitcoat pocket to secure his wrists behind him and his ankles together, and just for good measure slapped some across his mouth, getting a little drool on my hand that I wiped off on his leisure suit jacket — a plaid number from the Who Shot the Couch collection. No gun. Some bodyguard.
I checked the place, knowing the layout well from the provided materials. The two bathrooms off the living room were unpopulated. The guest bedroom, too. The living room had painted plaster walls, but the first bedroom I checked sported pink-and-black vertical-striped wallpaper, the pink parts shiny, the stripes wide. The bed was a king with a pink spread and matching fluffy pillows.
The master bedroom was larger but similar, the main differences being black-and-shiny-gold-striped wallpaper and a big round bed.