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“She is crazy.”
“So, does the casino have a lawyer you’d recommend?”
“Like a criminal lawyer? Why would you think any of us would know a criminal lawyer?”
I knew he was being coy. This was Las Vegas.
“I mean, you don’t need a real estate lawyer,” he continued. “We got those up the wazoo. And now we got estate lawyers hanging around, too: the Morleys’ estate lawyers. But criminal lawyers?” He shook his head.
“I only did what you and Artie asked.”
He sat forward and clasped his hands in front of him. He looked me squarely in the eye and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Calling a U.S. representative? Why would you do such a thing, Crissy?”
“Because—”
“Nope.”
I understood what was happening intellectually, but in moments of crisis, we can’t help but succumb a tad to our inner ostrich. “Eddie,” I pleaded, but he shook his head.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He was sufficiently old school that he wore a necktie and kept it in place with a gold clip. It had a diamond on it. Now he pulled his hands apart and fidgeted with the clip with a thumb and a forefinger that belied his age more than his hair, gnarled as they were by arthritis. “But if the death of this Orlov character becomes a serious murder investigation and you become a serious suspect, you do need a lawyer. You’re right. But I can’t help you. I have no future here.”
“At the BP?”
“And Las Vegas. I’m getting out. Leaving town.”
“You’re…you’re an institution.”
“Institution? I’m a dinosaur. I hired the first magician on the strip.”
“You didn’t. You weren’t even alive when El Rancho brought Gloria Dea into their showroom.”
“A woman, eh? Okay, so maybe the second. My point? The people buying the BP got no use for me. I’m not even going to stay in Clark County. I figure I got ten good years left, and I’m going to find a place that’s warm and Mastaba-free, and keep my head down. And you? You should do the same. Get the hell out of Dodge, Crissy.”
“Because of the Mastaba?”
“And the cops.”
“Aren’t people innocent until proven guilty—especially in this town?”
“People are innocent, Crissy. People. Not princesses. You of all”—and he emphasized the next word ominously—“people should know that as well as anyone.”
* * *
When I left Eddie’s office, I went first to my suite and called my agent. Terrance and I had been speaking about the death of the Morleys, but it was only that morning that I told him a fellow I’d shagged a couple of times was dead, the police had been at my suite twice in the last eighteen or so hours, and I’d called a congresswoman at the request of Artie Morley—and now Eddie Cantone was prepared, it seemed, to toss me away like sour milk. Terrance said the agency would find me a lawyer in Las Vegas. I shuddered at the cost. But I trembled more at how my life was unraveling.
Then I met Nigel at the castle keep of my cabana, and we started to drink. (I’d long ago accepted the fact it was always five p.m. somewhere.) I was sitting upright on my chaise, and he was reclining on his side in the one next to me. He had a Guinness, and I a gin and diet tonic. For a while, we scrolled through sites on our phones looking for a defense attorney who might be less costly than whatever firm my Beverly Hills agent found for me, but this wasn’t Better Call Saul, and I didn’t want ambulance chasers who sold their services via billboards. Still, it gave us something to laugh about, even if it was gallows humor at its darkest. We also talked about an appalling gathering of second-rate entertainers scheduled for that night at Fort Knocks, a nightmare of a casino that made the BP look like the Ritz. Nigel had wondered if our feelings should be hurt that we weren’t invited, and I said absolutely not. No one of our caliber would be caught dead at a party like that. Then he surprised me by asking, out of the blue, if I might consider buying a gun.
“No, thank you,” I said. “I’ve never even held one.”
“Even in Vermont?”
“Even there.”
My hair was loose around my shoulders, and he surprised me by reaching over and pushing a strand behind my ears. “I thought I recognized the earrings,” he said. They were a pair of moonstones he’d given me for my birthday. We had, by then, the sort of relationship where I thought nothing of his reaching for a lock of my hair like that. It would rather have been like my adjusting the collar on his shirt. His voice, as it was always, was a balm.
“They’re beautiful,” I said. Then I sipped my drink and told him, “You’re not going to convince me to start carrying a pistol because of whatever my sister is up to or whatever happened to Yevgeny. That’s a bad idea on a thousand levels.”
“You could borrow mine. We could go to a shooting range tomorrow and you could practice,” he said.
