Violence was part of the city, Stride realized. Part of the immoral world.
Boni didn’t even look at Durand. “Don’t worry, I’ll get my doctor here in a few minutes. He’ll live.”
He reached into his pocket and took out a piece of paper and scribbled something on it. He handed the paper to Serena. “This is Claire’s number in St. Thomas. You can tell her she’s in charge if she wants it. I won’t go to the ceremony next week, but I figure you won’t mind if I watch from up here as she blows up my hotel.”
FIFTY-FOUR
When they visited Nicholas Humphrey the next morning, the retired detective was in a deck chair on his lawn, still wearing his green terrycloth robe. He had furry slippers lying near him in the grass. His decades-long lover, Harvey Washington, was in a matching chair next to him. The two men were holding hands. It was strangely sweet.
Their little Westie was a blur of white motion, running around the chairs and stopping long enough to roll over to be petted. Humphrey and Washington took turns rubbing the dog’s belly with their feet. The noon sun made the shabby neighborhood around them look bright. A small airplane whined overhead, floatingthrough the blue sky.
Humphrey waved as Stride and Serena climbed the driveway. The sour detective looked happy this morning, as if a long-overdue debt had been paid.
“Heard it on the radio,” he called to them. “I can’t believe you actually pulled it off.”
Stride nodded. “It may not be prison, but for Boni, it may even be worse not to be calling the shots anymore.”
“And our governor? How did he take the news?”
“He wasn’t kidding about a knee injury.” Stride explained what had happened in Boni’s suite, and both older men winced, hearing how Boni had calmly shot Durand.
“Ouch,” Harvey said. “Man, that must be like getting your balls in a vise.”
“Worse,” Humphrey said. “I’ve seen guys who’ve been through it. They say that’s the most excruciating pain you can inflict on someone. Well, too bad, so sad. Payback’s a bitch.”
He was tossing his Willie Mays autographed baseball from hand to hand. Finally, he tossed it to Stride, who caught it and smiled.
“Harvey and I, we thought you should have this,” Humphrey said.
“Just don’t go selling it on eBay,” Harvey added, with a crinkle of his brown lips.
Stride looked at the signature on the ball. If it had been genuine, it would have been worth a lot of money.
Of course, it was a fake, courtesy of Harvey Washington’s magic hands. Like everything else in Humphrey’s celebrity archives. Like his note from Dean Martin. Like his photo of Marilyn Monroe and her sexy message.
Like the letter from Leo Rucci to his son.
Fake.
“I was nervous when Boni pulled the letter out,” Serena told them. “I was sure he was going to realize we were conning him.”
“You have to have faith in me,” Harvey said, as if the very idea that one of his forgeries would be detected was an insult. “’Course, you hunted down that old envelope from Leo’s office. That helps. If the package is authentic, people just assume that what’s inside is genuine, too.” He pronounced it gen-yoo-ine.
“It would have fooled me,” Stride said.
“But Boni knew Leo,” Serena added.
“So did I,” Humphrey retorted. “That was how the son of a bitch talked. No, we had those bastards nailed. They were going down. Thanks for letting me and Harvey be a part of it. Feels good to make up for what I did all those years ago, you know?”
The Westie jumped in his lap. Humphrey scratched its head and let it kiss him all over his face.
“We couldn’t have done it without you,” Stride told them. “Boni had all the cards.”
Harvey laughed. The dog scampered from one chair to the other and nestled in his lap. “Well, hell, this is Vegas, baby. When you don’t have the cards, you bluff.”
It was later the same day. Stride had dropped Serena back at the station.
He hated hospitals. The antiseptic smell reminded him of the days he had spent in the Duluth hospital in January a handful of years earlier, holding Cindy’s hand as she grew weaker and weaker, until finally she slipped away. Dying in front of his eyes in the warm room, as the snow hissed and whipped outside. He tried to force the memories away.
He saw patients stretched out on beds in their rooms as he passed through the maze of corridors. Nurses tending to them. Anxious family members sitting beside them. As he had done.
He got lost and had to ask for directions, and the nurse was pleasant and patient, pointing him to where he had to go. When he found it, the door was closed, and Stride hovered outside nervously, not sure if he should knock or go in or wait in the corridor. He wasn’t used to being indecisive, but places like this sapped his strength.
The door opened suddenly, and a man appeared in the doorway, almost filling it.
“I’m sorry,” Stride said, feeling stupid, holding flowers. “I was looking for Amanda Gillen.”
The man nodded. He was at least six-foot-five, and Stride had to confess he was one of the most strikingly handsome men he had ever seen, as if he had come to life from the pages of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. Early thirties. Perfect features. Clothes that fit as if they had been sewn for him.
“She’s in here,” the man said. “I’m Bobby.”
Stride tried not to gape. “You’re Bobby?”
He wasn’t sure how he had pictured Amanda’s boyfriend, but certainly not like some male god.
“Are you Stride?” Bobby asked. “It’s great to meet you.”
They shook hands. He had a rock-hard grip.
“I want to thank you for being so supportive of her,” Bobby said. “I don’t have to tell you, you’re the first.”
“She’s a great cop,” Stride said. He found himself adding, “A great woman, too.”
Bobby smiled. “That’s nice.”
“Can I see her?”
“Sure, go on in. I was going for coffee.” He added, “She’s better than she looks. It’ll take her a while to get back on her feet, but she’s going to make it.”
“I’m very relieved.”
“She’s a little groggy from the morphine, but she can talk.”
“I won’t stay long,” Stride said.
Bobby headed off down the corridor, and Stride noticed the nurses’ eyes following him.
Stride went inside. He was careful to close the door behind him. When he went around the other side of the curtain, his heart seized. He knew Amanda was going to recover, but the sight of her there, motionless and pale, was an instant reminder of Cindy. A battery of devices measured her vital signs and fed them back on LED monitors. A tube across her face blew oxygen into her nose, and another tube was buried in her chest. She had an IV drip taped to her hand. Her hair was limp against the pillow, and her eyes were closed. The wrinkled white sheet was bunched at her waist.
He sat down on the chair next to the bed. He didn’t say anything, because he didn’t want to wake her. Tearsfilledhis eyes. It was an automatic reaction. He choked up, consumed by the past.
“Hey.”
He saw her watching him. Her voice was weak, as if it were a struggle to draw the air into her lungs and push it out. She had tired, heavy eyes.
Stride reached over and squeezed her hand. “Bobby tells me you’re going to be okay.”
“Hurts like hell,” Amanda said.
“That’s God’s way of telling you to call for backup next time”
She was able to move her hand enough to give him the finger. Stride laughed.
“I hear two of the nurses fainted when they stripped you for the OR,” he added.
Her lips puckered into a smile. “Ha ha.”
“You had me scared.”
“Sorry.”
“Bobby told you we got him?”
She nodded and gave him a thumbs-up with a loose fist.
“There’s more,” he said. Stride glanced at the door to make sure it was closed, then spent the next few minutes explaining everything else that had happened. About Boni. About Mickey. About the confrontation that he and Serena had had with them the previous night. She deserved to know the secrets.
When he was done, Amanda pointed a finger weakly at him and whispered, “You got balls.”
“So do you.” Stride laughed so hard he thought he would fall off the chair, and he felt a surge of happiness and relief. It sank in. She was really going to be fine. Amanda couldn’t laugh, but she smiled along with him, enjoying it.
“Wanna see?” she asked, as she had asked him the first time they met.
“No thanks, Amanda.”
“Chicken.”
Her eyes were fluttering closed. She was getting tired. “I’ll let you rest,” Stride said, getting up to leave.
“Serena?” Amanda asked groggily.
“She’s fine.”
Amanda took a deep breath, and Stride saw her flinch in pain. A few seconds passed, and then she held herself awake long enough to say, “You?”
There were many ways to take that. How was he after nearly losing his life and coming face to face with the sins of the city? How was he after his lover slept with another woman? How was he in dealing with the choice that was eating away at his gut: to stay or go?
Stride didn’t answer. It was easier that way. He let her fall back asleep, her chest rising and falling, her heart rate slowing on the monitor behind her. He crept from the room silently, closing the door behind him. Bobby was seated in a lounge across the corridor, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a magazine in the other. He looked up as Stride came out, and Stride mouthed, “Sleeping.” Bobby nodded.
Stride heard his cell phone ringing. One of the nurses looked at him sharply, and he nodded in apology. “I’m a police officer,” he said.
He found a quiet corner to answer the phone. “Stride.”
“Detective, my name is Flora Capati,” a woman said, her voice bright and foreign-accented. “I run a senior care facility in Boulder City. The Las Vegas police gave me your number.”
Stride was puzzled. “How can I help you, Ms. Capati?”
“It’s one of my residents. Her name is Beatrice. She’s been beside herself the last two days, and I promised I would call you in order to calm her down. She insists you’re making a terrible mistake.”
“A mistake?” Stride asked. “About what?”
“Well, Beatrice claims she knew Amira Luz.”