At six P.M., the place seems tired and dingy, only a couple of its tables going, stage curtains drawn, the place mostly empty. A few hardy types slam away at the slots, but at this hour most of the patrons are there for the $3.99 Early Parrot Dinner.
A fatigued woman in a cheetah-print micro-dress sighs and shows me into the boss’s office. This is a ten-foot box, paneled in fake wood, with a scrofulous magenta carpet and a particleboard desk from which the veneer is beginning to separate and curl. Clay Riggins, fifty, bald, with the permanent squint of a smoker, has seen better days himself – although a big diamond stud in one ear speaks of a certain bravado. He’s on the phone, a Diet Dr Pepper in his hand. He raises it by way of hello and continues his conversation. Which concerns pool maintenance.
I stand there for more than five minutes, counting the number of empty Dr Pepper cans in the room (fourteen) and wondering what I can possibly learn from Riggins. What do I even hope to learn? Something, Shoffler says in the back of my head. Or maybe not. The detective would tell me that the process can be circuitous. This guy, maybe he says something and later you put it together with something else.
Riggins finally hangs up. “Sorry ’bout that,” he says, with a little grimace. “These days, you gotta ride herd on every single thing, know what I mean?” He shakes his head. “So you’re here about the Gabler sisters.”
“Right.”
“Well, I don’t mind talkin’ to you, but I hardly knew these girls, know what I’m saying?”
“They worked for you for eight months,” I point out.
“Yeah yeah yeah, but plenty of people work for me. I didn’t really know the two of them – didn’t even know where they lived.”
I’m not sure what to ask him. “Were they… good at their job? What did they do, anyway?”
“We gotta stage show – bird theme. They more or less came out in their costumes, took their tops off, and shook their tits along with a dozen other girls, while one of the dancers or singers did her thing in the middle. And no – they weren’t very good at it. They had the twin thing going for them, and that was about it.”
“Hunh.”
“Truth is, they weren’t that pretty,” Clay Riggins tells me. “I kept telling them, they needed a little work, a little less nose, a little more boob.” He barks a laugh. “Then” – he seesaws his hands in the air – “maybe I showcase them a little more. As it was…” He expels a dismissive puff of air and taps his hands on the desk.
“So what did you think when they didn’t show up for work?”
“Now, that,” he says, as if this never occurred to him before, “was not like them. Dependable – yeah, I give ’ em that. Never missed a single day of work.”
“So – weren’t you surprised when they didn’t show up? Didn’t you think something might be wrong?”
He frowns, pushes the air with his hands, as if shunting this notion right back to me. “Nah – this is Vegas, son.”
“So what did you think?”
“Truth?” He fingers his earring. “I thought they went home. Took jobs in Wal-Mart or the Dairy Queen or whatever. I thought they were like a lot of girls come here – hoping to meet Prince Charming or catch the eye of some Hollywood director or whatever damn thing these girls think. I thought maybe they figured out it wasn’t going to happen and decided to bag it. They were on the shy side – maybe didn’t want to come and tell me in person. That’s what I thought.” He shrugs and drains his Dr Pepper. “But maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tammy? Their roommate – she’s the one brought them to me. A good kid, Tammy. Works at the Sands now. Anyway, the twins told her they had an audition, thought they had a line on a new job.”
I sit up straight. This is new. “What audition? Where?”
Riggins shrugs. “I don’t think Tammy said.”
Tammy Yagoda lives with her fiancé, Jaime, in a new condo five miles out of town toward the Hoover Dam. The living room contains a huge television and an overstuffed couch. “We just moved in,” Tammy apologizes. “It’s going to be soooo great! Good thing we’re minimalists – right, honey?” She gives Jaime a megawatt smile and asks him to get me a chair.
Jaime brings in a beat-up straight-backed chair from the dining alcove. The two of them twine together on the couch as we talk, trying to keep their hands off each other. But failing.
“Tammy’s been through all this a million times,” Jaime warns me. “She can’t think of anything she has to add.”
Tammy looks up at him adoringly – her champion. “I still can’t believe it,” she tells me, her features clouding. “They were such sweetie pies, really nice girls.” She twists her pretty face into a grimace. “It was so horrible.”
Jaime gives her a buck-up hug and a peck on the cheek.
“How were they nice?”
“In just about every way,” Tammy says. “Do anything for you. Plus” – she looks at Jaime – “they were, you know, a little naive.”
“What she means,” Jaime puts in, “is they were sexually inexperienced.”
“Jaime!” She gives his thigh a little girly slap.
“Hey, he asked,” Jaime says. “Why not say what you mean? Now, I didn’t know these girls, but from what Tammy told me, they were like… off the truck.”
“He’s right,” Tammy says, with a sigh and a sad little shake of her head. “They were soooo naive. Like they believed guys when guys said they weren’t married.”
“You told me they didn’t even know what a blow job was. Thought it involved blowing air on someone’s dick. You had to explain it to them.”
“Jaime!” Another slap.
“I mean, what planet were they living on, you know?”
“So they didn’t date much.”
“Oh, no,” Tammy says. “I lived with them for almost a year and maybe they each had a couple of dates. Don’t get me wrong: they weren’t virgins, but they were like – they had to be in love to have sex with someone, you know? That kind of cuts down on your social life here. They hated doing the topless thing. They couldn’t wait to get out of that.”
“No old boyfriends, no stalkers they were worried about, no admirers, no one… uh… romancing either one of them?”
“I met Jaime a couple of weeks before they went missing and it was” – she looks at her fiancé – “it was love at first sight. So maybe they met someone in that two weeks, ’cause I was busy.” A chuckle from Jaime. “But far as I know, there was no one.”
Jaime rubs her thigh and kisses her neck. I feel like a voyeur.
“Guys came on to them, of course, all the time,” Tammy says, “but they never brought anyone home. They weren’t like that. And I taught them to be careful. Coming home from the Parrot, there’s a guy escorts you to your car; they’re real good about that. But even so, I told them – don’t ever get into your car without looking in the backseat. Always check behind you.”
“How about a guy with a dog – a whippet? You ever see anyone like that?”
“No. Clara was afraid of dogs. They were cat people.”
I ask if the twins were into medieval festivals or Renaissance fairs.
“What’s that?” Tammy asks.
“You know, Tammy,” Jaime answers, “one of those things with knights and shit. Like Excalibur. My cousin Wilson dragged me to one of them a couple years ago. I thought it was dorky, but Wilson – he loved that shit.” He rubs Tammy’s thigh. “It might be the kind of thing those girls’d be into.”