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  "How are the cops?"

  "I change rooms a lot, go from place to place to keep em guessing. And I get a call if anything big is happening." Parisi stepped out onto the balcony, blew smoke at Las Vegas. "Can he be had twice?" he said.

  "You're talking about a rehash."

  "That's right-going right back to the motherfucker and doing him again."

  "He might blow."

  "The man thinks he's in a cross-otherwise he wouldn't have sprung like he did," Parisi said.

  "I guess I could try it," Sands said.

  Parisi turned to face him. "I know you can do it. Say we go fifty-fifty on the take?"

  "Sounds fair enough," Sands said, though it didn't.

  Eddie Sands wandered toward the door.

  "Tell me something," Parisi said in a voice loud enough so he could be heard from across the room. Sands turned.

  "With only six months to go on work release, why didn't you just save the fifty K and serve out your time?"

  Without acknowledging the question, Sands left the room.

  TEN

  Standing on the balcony of a room at the Stardust, John Novak, dressed in slacks and a loose-flowing sport shirt that covered his gun, lit another cigarette. As he crushed the empty package he told himself he'd been smoking too much. But he always smoked too much on surveillances.

  "What are they talking about?" he said.

  Red Haynes, wearing earphones that looked small because of the size of his ears, adjusted the volume control on a briefcase-size receiver which was sitting on the dressing table in front of him. "The guy Parisi's talking to sounds like a confidence man...and he might have just been released from Terminal Island...was on work release when he got out. Small talk."

  "We've been sitting here for five days and Parisi hasn't said a word to anyone about the bombing," Novak said, thinking out loud.

  Suddenly, Haynes's hands cupped the earphones. "The visitor is leaving," he said.

  Novak hurried to the door and put an eye to the peephole. A pale, clean-featured man with neat, close-cropped hair came out of the door across the hall and headed toward an elevator bank. Quietly, Novak turned the door handle. He stepped out of the room and moved down the hall. With the sound of a chime, the elevator arrived. Novak followed the man into the elevator. As the man pressed a button marked "Lobby/Casino," Novak feigned reaching for the same button and noticing that it was already lit. The doors closed. Casually, the man glanced at his wristwatch, then at Novak. The elevator descended as Novak, avoiding direct eye contact as the man stared at him, lifted his eyes to the row of blinking numbers above the door.

  Finally, the doors opened onto the bustling, smoky casino. Novak allowed the man to step out first. The man moved directly into a slot-machine area which was crowded with busy players and sallow-faced change girls in fishnet stockings. Novak followed at a discreet distance.

  Suddenly, a group of Japanese tourists, clustered around an oversized slot machine, engulfed him, and Novak realized that he had lost sight of the man. He looked about in the casino, then hurried outside onto the crowded taxi-lined sidewalk of Las Vegas Boulevard. The man was gone.

  "Shit," Novak said out loud. Then he turned and walked quickly to the driveway exit. Blending in with a crowd of people waiting for taxis, he surveyed the driver of every vehicle leaving the parking lot. About ten minutes later, the man who had been in Parisi's room drove out in a Chevrolet sedan. Novak yanked a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled the license number of the Chevy on the palm of his hand. It was a California plate.

  When Novak returned to the room, Red Haynes was still sitting in front of the tape recorder. He looked up.

  "He left in a Chevy."

  "Get the license plate?"

  Novak held up his ink-marked palm. He copied the license number onto a page in his investigative notebook, then stepped into the bathroom and washed his hands.

  Haynes's fingertips touched his earphones. "Parisi's telling the hotel operator not to put any calls through to the room.... Now he's brushing his teeth." He removed the earphones and dropped them on the dressing table. "It's time for the asshole to take his daily nap."

  Novak asked to hear the last conversation. Haynes nodded. He pressed the rewind button on the machine, stood up, and stretched. The tape rewound, he hit the play button. As the tape began to play, Haynes moved about in the room shadow boxing, like some skinny-assed boxer before a fight.

  Novak sat down in front of the tape recorder and made notes on a pad of hotel stationery. Finally, he turned the machine off.

  Standing in front of the balcony, Red Haynes cracked his knuckles one by one. "Whaddaya make of it?" he said.

  Novak rubbed his chin as he looked at his notes. He had written "fifty grand" and "six months to go."

  "Five days' work, and we end up with a reel of tape full of small talk: Parisi and some local hoods, Parisi and his girlfriend, Parisi and his foul-mouthed sister in San Francisco, Parisi and some con just out of the joint...and not one word about Bruno getting blown up," Haynes said. "Practically a whole week shot."

  As Novak struck a match to light a cigarette, it came to him.

  "So where do we go from here?" Red Haynes said.

  But Novak was reliving his last conversation with Bruno Santoro, and he only half-heard the question. Absentmindedly, he blew out the flame.

  Later, at the Las Vegas Racquetball Club, Novak changed into athletic trunks, T-shirt, and court shoes. He left the locker room, headed down a wide, carpeted hallway which was filled with the muffled sound of racquetballs bouncing off court walls. He stopped at the door near the end of the hall, peered through a glass peephole. Lorraine Traynor, attired in trunks and a loose-fitting T-shirt, was standing in the middle of the court facing the front wall. Gripping her racquet firmly, she gave the ball a bounce, then, with a practiced swing, fired it low against the front wall. A kill shot. Novak opened the door and stepped inside.

  "Sorry I'm late," he said.

  "How did the bugging go?"

  "Parisi didn't say anything definite. Not a word that could tie him to the bombing."

  She whacked another shot at the wall. As it bounced toward the back wall Novak made a powerful return.

  "So of course you want the authorized time on the bug order extended," Lorraine said as she tapped the ball lightly. It hit the front wall low and dribbled back.

  "If you don't mind."

  "How do you justify it?" she said.

  "Just because he didn't come right out and say he had Bruno killed during the time we were listening doesn't mean he's innocent."

  "The defense would say that if you listened to Parisi's conversations for five days and he didn't say a word about the bombing, what makes you think that listening to him for another five days, or five years for that matter, would yield any different results?"

  "What do I care what a defense attorney might say?" Novak said as he moved across the court. He reached down, picked up the ball.

  "I can't extend the eavesdropping order without some proof that you're not just on a fishing expedition for evidence."

  Novak shook his head. "Anyone listening to the tape would know that the man is a crook."

  "Under the Constitution, even crooks have the right to privacy. Go ahead and serve."

  Novak moved forward to the service line. He bounced the ball a couple of times. "Where does it say that?" he said. Then, with a powerful swing, he slammed the ball.

  It hit the front wall like a shot.

  Just south of the Desert Inn, Eddie Sands turned off Las Vegas Boulevard onto a side street. Halfway down the block, situated between a pair of cheapie hotels, was the Plush Pony Cocktail Lounge, which the vice cops had always called the Dog because of the misshapen neon pony above the door and the looks of the women who hung out in the place. Sands parked in front and went in.

  Inside the dimly lit bar, things were as he remembered them-black leather booths and a large, comfortable bar. The ten or so
male customers at the bar looked like bookmakers and collectors rather than tourists.

  Ray Beadle, a husky man with a crew cut who was a few years older than Sands, sat at the bar facing the door. He spotted Sands, hurried to him, grabbed his hand in a friendship lock, slapped him on the back. "Good to see you back, partner." Sands noticed that Beadle was wearing the same brown sport coat he had worn before Sands had gone to prison.

  "Gonna buy me a drink?" Sands said.

  "Absolutely."

  Sands motioned to a booth away from the others. Beadle stared at him for a moment, then followed. They sat down.

  "I owe you, partner," Beadle said. "You could have done yourself a lot of good by handing me up to internal affairs."

  "I told you that if I ever had to walk, I'd walk alone."

  "You're a man of your word."

  "On the other hand, now I wish I'd ratted on you," Sands said with a hint of a smile. "I could have used the company.

  They looked at each other for a moment. Sands laughed. Beadle, looking uncomfortable, laughed along.

  "How'd you get out?"

  "I paid the price."

  "Who handled it?"

  "Tony Parisi."

  "That's the least he coulda done for you," Beadle said.

  "I hear Tony is now the man to see in this town."

  "It all happened right after you went in. Tony got real big."

  "How did he do it?" Sands said.

  "He cracked a few coconuts, iced a couple count-room guys, and the casino owners shitted out and let him have his way. He does business in one casino for a while and then moves on. They all give him a taste. A joke, isn't it?"

  Eddie Sands shrugged. "In the old days a guy like Parisi would try to muscle in at one of the big places and he'd find himself out in the desert with a coyote eating his ass for dinner."

  "The big guys from Cleveland and Chicago sold to the big corporations," Beadle said. "They got yuppies running the places now."

  Sands slapped his old friend on the shoulder. "How are ya makin' it these days?"

  "My sorry ass makes enough to get by. I collect a few debts for the bookies...that plus my police pension."

  A knock-kneed waitress wearing a short white fringed buckskin skirt and purple lipstick came to the table.

  "Can I get you fellas something?" she said in a Southern drawl. Beadle introduced her as Tex. They ordered drinks. As Tex walked away, Sands admired the way she moved her hips.

  "Nice broad, but don't even think about it," Beadle said. "I've been to her apartment. Dirty clothes, empty Kotex boxes, full trash baskets, cats crawling on the kitchen table. To me a dirty apartment means a dirty box. I'd expect gnats and blowflies to come flying out of her pussy. She'd invited me over, but I left without balling her sorry ass."

  "I'm not interested anyway."

  "You gonna marry Monica?"

  Sands nodded. "And you're gonna be the best man.

  But first I have some business to take care of. That's why I stopped by to see you."

  Ray Beadle swallowed twice. "What kind of business?"

  "The touch-play business...like the old days when you and I worked the vice squad. I need a backup man."

  Ray Beadle examined the palms of his hands. "Extortion is a heavy beef."

  "It's also where the heavy gold is."

  "How much are we talking about?"

  "I just took somebody down for fifty. With a backup man I can make a return trip."

  Tex, with buckskin flapping, brought drinks to the table. As she set the drinks down, Sands noticed that she had dirty fingernails. She winked, moved back to the bar.

  Ray Beadle, with furrowed brow, fingered the moisture on the outside of his cocktail glass. Then he picked up the glass, took a big drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, "I can't do time," he said. "My sorry ass just ain't made to do time."

  "There's a lot of bucks to be made," Sands said.

  "Easier said than done."

  "I guess you could say that about anything."

  "You haven't changed a bit, Eddie."

  "Yes I have. I've changed into a guy that's headed for the five-dollar tables rather than the slot machines. I'm through being a stooge for the police department or Parisi or anyone else." Eddie Sands drained the vodka from his glass. His lips burned.

  "Ain't this a bitch. You and me sitting here on our sorry asses talking shit...just like old times."

  "Are we still a team?" Sands said.

  "Come to think of it, that sorry-assed pension check of mine doesn't go very far in this goddam town...partner."

  ELEVEN

  It was seven in the morning and every seat on the flight to L.A. was filled. The passengers, Eddie Sands thought, looked tired and hungover, and had that forlorn expression peculiar to gamblers and losers.

  During the short flight, Sands and Ray Beadle, both dressed in suits and ties, talked mostly of their years on the police department: the time they bugged the room of a New Jersey hood and overheard him in a spirited session of anal sex with a young male prostitute; the time they got so drunk at a police retirement party that when they left they couldn't find their police sedan in a crowded casino parking lot. Cop talk.

  Once in L.A., having rented a car with a cash deposit, Sands steered out of the airport road and onto a freeway heading north. He noticed that Beadle kept rubbing his hands nervously on his pant legs.

  "What happens if this sorry-assed motherfucker just flat freaks out and calls the cops?" Beadle said.

  Sands smiled. "Why would he want to do that?" he said calmly.

  "Don't fuck with me like that, partner. Anything can happen. You know that."

  Sands kept on driving.

  "Did you hear what I said?"

  "Relax."

  At Sunset Boulevard, Sands steered off the freeway and headed east a few miles along the northern edge of the sprawling UCLA campus, then down into a Beverly Hills residential area. Even though he'd been there only once, Sands was able to find Bruce O'Hara's home without a single wrong turn.

  He glanced at Ray Beadle, who looked slightly pale, and knocked loudly on the door. His heart was pounding. There was the sound of footsteps. The door opened. Bruce O'Hara was dressed in a red jogging suit.

  "I'm sorry to bother you so early, Mr. O'Hara," Sands said.

  O'Hara's gaze moved slowly from Sands to Beadle.

  "This is Captain Powers," Sands said politely. "He's in charge of the department's Detective Bureau. He asked to speak with you." Beadle nodded.

  The movie star glared at Sands. "You told me this was resolved."

  "It is, sir, but there's been a development that we need to bring to your attention."

  Bruce O'Hara just stood there glaring for a moment. Finally, he opened the door fully, allowed them to enter. Having closed the door behind them, he led them into the living room.

  "Is there anyone else here, sir?" Sands said.

  O'Hara shook his head. "What is it?" he said impatiently.

  "We've had some trouble with the...uh...woman whom we discussed."

  "Exactly what does that mean?" O'Hara said as he reached for the cigarette box on his coffee table.

  "It's her lawyer, Barbara Harris," Beadle said. "She's hard-balling."

  O'Hara lit a cigarette. "I was told that you would be responsible for anything further," he said. "That you people would handle this sort of thing."

  "At that point we thought we had everything under control," Beadle said. "Barbara Harris is the one who's thrown a monkey wrench in the works. She wants more money for her client."

  Bruce O'Hara ran a hand through his hair. Deliberately, he sat down on the sofa. "You people are cops. Can't you just ... do something to scare her?"

  "This lady shyster has been around Las Vegas for a long time. The bitch knows how to count. If she's not taken care of, she won't hand us up...just you."

  O'Hara snuffed out the cigarette in the ashtray. "Shit. Goddammit."

  "She's pushing for
a hundred thousand," Ray Beadle said.

  "Out of the question," O'Hara said. "Totally out of the question. I won't pay it."

  "As I was saying, that's what she is pushing for. But I think we can get her to settle for less...a lot less."

  O'Hara stood up, paced across the room.

  "The captain and I figure that if we take her fifty and tell her that's all she's gonna get, she'll take it and that will be that," Sands said. "But if we don't do something you can be damn sure she'll make a move."

  "My bet is that the sorry-assed bitch will peddle the story to the National Enquirer," Beadle said. "That's why we feel it's better to have her inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in. So to speak."

  "What's to stop her from making demands on me again?" O'Hara said after a while.

  "That's not her style," Beadle said. "I've known the sorry-assed shyster for many a moon. She's reasonable. She'll settle for a piece of the pie. I personally guarantee it."

  "What I'm finding out here is that personal guarantees don't mean shit."

  "We're trying to do the best for all concerned, Mr. O'Hara," Sands said. "It's just that human behavior is unpredictable."

  Bruce O'Hara reached for the cigarette box, snatched another smoke. He lit up again, walked to the window, and looked out at his well-manicured lawn. "What happens if I just tell this lawyer to go straight to hell?"

  "We take a chance of losing control of the situation. But it might work...all or nothing."

  "I really have no choice, do I?" O'Hara said. Sands noticed the crack in his voice.

  "It's entirely your decision, sir," Sands said in his best in-command tone. "And I want you to know that if you decide to refuse to pay her and let the story come out, the captain and I intend to return the money you provided us. We'll return every dime."