Brooks sat down next to the wheel, bet on half a dozen spins, broke even, and then ordered a bourbon. Then he didn't hit a single winner for eight spins in a row, despite covering the layout with complex chip combinations, but he never changed his expression.
"Maybe you should quit," Clendon said.
"I never quit. Quitting is for losers."
Every fifteen minutes Brooks reached into his wallet and took out more $100 bills, converted them to $25 chips, and dissipated them into Caesar's coffers. Time drained away. Then he had a short run and made up $700 in minutes. The effect was the same as giving an alcoholic a drink at the end of a dry out.
He gave the croupier a big tip.
"Brooks, let's go get some air."
"Air?" Brooks sucked in a deep breath. "The air in here is great! Haven't you heard that they pump pure oxygen into the casino to make all the players high?"
The croupier spun the ball. It clacked into a slot and Brooks won again. He raked in his winnings. Clendon placed his hand on Brooks's shoulder.
"Brooks-- "
"Back off."
A dark look passed through Brooks's eyes. A toga'd cocktail waitress brought him another drink while he spread his chips around the table.
"Let's go to the craps table," Clendon said. "I've heard the percentages are better."
Brooks filtered him out, so Clendon decided to drift around the casino, past the high rolling Texans in Nocona boots, past the slots where old women in blue lacquered hair sat with their paper cups of quarters, and past the porters dressed like centurians sweeping up cigarette butts.
Clendon looked down at his new oxfords, the ones he'd bought on the way to the airport the evening before. City shoes indeed. Hours passed-- or was it only minutes? Was it three a. m., or merely midnight? He dropped a roll of quarters on video poker and quit.
He looked across the casino. A platinum blond woman was standing next to Brooks. He was making faces as she spoke to him. She paused to smoke a cigarette from a holder. Clendon recognized her black eyes from the Hilton bar, then realized she was also the woman driving the Grand Prix the night before.
He headed for the roulette tables. He could only slowly ease through the crowd, and lost sight of Brooks. When he reached the tables, the woman was gone.
Brooks grabbed Clendon's arm.
"I'm down to my last $100. It's time for red-black-red, double zero."
The man dressed in white had cashed his last chip and had gone. Only an old woman in fur who played one dollar chips in her own secret patterns stuck at the wheel with Brooks, who put his four $25 chips in one neat stack and pushed them onto red. The new croupier, a woman who had a face like molded plastic, stared at Brooks, then flipped the ball into the spinning wheel. He whooped as the ball fell into a slot.
"14 - Red," the croupier said.
Brooks shifted his original bet and his $100 winnings onto black.
"24 - Black."
Brooks now had $400 on the table. He shoved it all on red, and drank all of his bourbon.
"27 - Red."
"Double zero!" Brooks yelled.
"Brooks, you can't-- "
"I have to."
He took his sudden $800 bulge and put it on the double zero, a 38 to 1 shot at true odds. Clendon started to grab for Brooks's chips. The croupier brought her stick down to stop him.
"I'm sorry," the croupier said. "The house limit is $100 on the inside."
"I want to see the pit boss and ask him to raise the limit," Brooks said.
"Brooks, keep your $700, put $100 on double zero if you have to, then let's get out of here."
Clendon gripped Brooks's shoulder. Brooks shucked Clendon's hand off.
"Pit boss, please," Brooks said, then whispered in Clendon's ear. "Double-zero pays 35 to 1. That's 800 times 35, which is $28,000. On one spin!"
A man with a red bow tie appeared.
"I want the house to raise the limit on the inside to $800."
"My friend doesn't really. He's just joking."
"One spin only," Brooks said. "Raise the house limit."
The face of the man with the red bow tie never changed from indifference.
"One spin," he said.
Brooks put his $800 on the double zero. The woman in fur didn't notice. Clendon thought he glimpsed the platinum blonde as she floated past with a man dressed like a sheik. Her lips twitched when she saw Clendon looking at her, then she slid into the crowd.
The croupier flicked the ball into the spinning wheel. The ball bounced crazily into the wheel and settled into a slot.
"Zero," the croupier said.
"Zero!" Brooks shouted. "Zero!"
The croupier raked away all of Brooks's chips.
Brooks muttered "zero, zero," then stopped and focused on the man with the red bow tie. "I have a $10,000 line of credit at this casino and I want to open it up."
"Perhaps tomorrow."
Sweat pearls formed on Brooks's forehead. One dangled on his nose tip.
"Check your records now," Brooks said.
"Take your friend up to his room now," the man with the red bow tie said to Clendon. "Please."
"Brooks, let's go," Clendon said.
He locked both his arms around Brooks's left arm, and took a step.
"Goddamn it!"
Brooks jerked free, stumbled, regained, and turned toward Clendon, who easily ducked Brooks's first drunken swing, but Brooks spun and shot another wild fist that caught Clendon's shoulder. Clendon popped him back, an uppercut that jarred Brooks's stomach and made his cheeks puff.
Brooks clutched his belly and lurched toward Clendon, then said, "I'm going to barf." He staggered into the roulette table and vomited all over the layout in long bursts. The woman in fur stumbled to the floor as her chips flew across the carpet. An aroma rose from the roulette table as undigested Wild Turkey soaked into the green felt and little chunks of Maine lobster clung to Caesar's chips. A small flick of vomit dropped on one of Clendon's new oxfords.
When Brooks was finished vomiting, he said, "Sorry," then wiped his mouth. "I want to speak to the owner of this turkey shoot about my line of credit." Then he gripped his head in a spasm of pain and groaned.
Somebody threw a tarp over the roulette table. Four large men dressed in blue blazers rushed over to Brooks, picked him up, and carried him double time out of the casino and down a long dim hallway to a freight elevator.
Clendon followed beside the man with the red bow tie. They crowded into the elevator. Brooks moaned but didn't struggle. Out of the elevator, they carried him toward the hotel room. Clendon opened the door. The stench of spilled bourbon still hung in the air. They dumped Brooks on the bed and hustled out.
The man with the red bow tie stayed.
"We'll be glad to offer our assistance to help you check out in the morning, Mr.-- "
"Lindsey."
"Yes. Where are you gentlemen from, Arkansas?"
"No. We're from Oklahoma."
"Ahhh. . . I see there's been an accident with the television. Well, good night."
The man went out and eased the door shut.
Brooks lay on his back and sobbed on the bed. "I don't want to die, Clendon, I don't want to die."
"Who does?" Clendon said.
"I don't want to die, I don't want to die."
"You're not going to die," Clendon shouted. "You're drunk."
"Make sure I don't have a Baptist funeral."
"I promise. No Baptist funeral."
"Please--
I don't want to die."
"Jesus, Brooks, why do you think you're going to die?"
"Do you know why Baptists won't fuck standing up?" Brooks whispered. He paused. "It's too much like dancing." Brooks mumbled something else. Clendon thought he heard Brooks say "Eskimo shoes," but he wasn't sure. He bent closer. Brooks's eyelids stuck half-open and his tongue stuck from his mouth like a dead dog.
"Brooks?"
No response.
"Brooks?"
Clendon kicked Brooks's foot. Brooks didn't even quiver. Clendon bent next to Brooks's face, and listened for breathing. He thought it had ceased. He put his ear next to Brooks's nose, and it was there, very shallow. He pulled some covers up and over Brooks and turned the air conditioning up a notch. Then he rolled Brooks over on his belly and pulled his head to the edge of the bed in case he vomited in his sleep.
Clendon took his shoes off and decided to clean them in the morning. He took the pillow and top sheet and a blanket from his bed, crawled into the bathroom, flipped on the ventilation fan, and locked the door. He knew that somewhere Caesar was counting his chips.
* * *
They checked out by noon. Brooks was told to sign a letter stating that all the damage would be billed onto Boyd-Tek's corporate American Express card. On the plane Brooks drank a Bloody Mary and threw up once. He muttered to Clendon something about avoiding arrest by the Las Vegas police for puking on an active roulette game. When they landed in L. A., the sky was swept clear and blue with no shroud of smog. When they reached Brooks's Mercedes, normal color had returned to his face, but his eyes were sunken.
"I'll drive you home," Clendon said and put on his sunglasses.
"No, I'll drive. Just need a pit stop for a couple of quarts of Gatorade and rest up for on Monday."
"Where do you live?"
"I'm having the house remodeled," Brooks said. "A major job. Business has been so good the last few months, we-- Shelley and I-- couldn't resist, but it's a huge mess right now, sawdust and plaster on the kitchen table, paint on the bedspreads. It looks like we've been in an earthquake. I'll take you back to the hotel."
"What are Eskimo shoes?"
"It's a new fad," Brooks said. "It's like baggy shorts." Brooks slapped Clendon's knee. "Hell, I don't know what they are."
"$700 disappeared from my wallet in Vegas and it wasn't a pickpocket."
Brooks said nothing for long seconds. The car key scissored between his fingers.
"I'll make it up to you. I'll have another job for you in a few days, and I'll give you a large commission. This is the one big killing I've been working on. And it might involve a Texan." A wisp of a smile graced his mouth. "Revenge, you know."
"Is that the only way I'll get my $700 back?"
"I don't have the cash. If you want to fly back to Oklahoma, Clendon, I'll put you on a plane this afternoon and I'll pick up the fare."
"I'll take the deal, Brooks, because I need my $700."
* * *
That night Clendon's dreaming returned. Brooks handed him the oil buckets on the ground and then waited at the top of the skyscraper to push him off, but Clendon landed on Shelley, his cock throbbing so hard it hurt. When he awoke, his heart was flipping and breathing was suffocating. . .
He spent Tuesday and Wednesday at the north end of Santa Monica beach where he watched the women in thong bikinis. He spent Tuesday and Wednesday evening draining pitchers of beer at a pub he found up from the beach called the King's Head. Shaving in the morning became a struggle to avoid slicing his face. His last one hundred dollars had shrunk to a fiver and two ones.
Brooks called him Thursday morning. He instructed Clendon to meet again in Palisades Park at one p.m. sharp. Clendon wondered if Brooks thought his office was bugged, his phoned wiretapped, his car a listening device.
Clendon drove along Ocean Avenue at the north end of the park, eyes open for a parking spot. Again he saw Brooks leaning against the railing, facing the ocean, and standing beside the tall man with big ears. Clendon turned his head to get a good look and nearly ran over an old man wearing only a bathing suit and riding a bicycle. The old man cursed him in a foreign language. Clendon yelled and cursed back and honked.
He did three laps around the block trying to park. On the third lap, Brooks and the man with the big ears were gone. Clendon swung through the neighborhood to see if one or the other was walking to his car. The blocks were long and the houses were large. Tall palm trees swayed in the ocean breeze, and the sun shone. The lenses of Clendon's sunglasses made the clear sky look deep blue. Kids played in a front yard, Latinos fixed a roof. Nobody walked on the sidewalks.
After cruising for about ten minutes, Clendon spied the baby shit green Mercedes with the IURNDIT plates. He parked a hundred feet behind it. Brooks sat at the wheel. The BMW's digital clock read 1:08, so Clendon decided to wait until Brooks got out of his Benz. Then he would sneak up and honk.
The clock showed 1:09, then 1:10. Brooks hadn't moved.
Maybe he was deep in thought about that blonde in Vegas. Clendon turned on the radio and rolled through the FM band. Nothing. What was Brooks doing? Hadn't he looked in his rear view mirror?
Clendon had to take a leak. He remembered when he was stuck in football traffic after an OU game, heading back up I-35 to the City with forty thousand other fans. A tractor-trailer rig had jackknifed, squashed a Volkswagen, and spilled frozen chickens on the highway. Several other cars had plowed into the mess. Both northbound lanes were blocked while the highway patrol tried to figure it out. Fire trucks arrived to pry open the mashed VW. Ambulances hauled away the dead and maimed. It was November, dusk fell hard, and it began to sleet.
Clendon had sat there in his old Chevy, stuck on a short bridge over a creek. Cars stretched ahead and behind. There was no place to move or to go. As the minutes became an hour and longer, the six pack that Clendon had drunk at the game began to dam up in his bladder. Every few minutes another highway patrol car or ambulance or tow truck rumbled past on the shoulder.
Clendon was tempted to do the same, except that two patrolmen holding flashlights stood in their raincoats and Smokey hats at the head of the bridge. Stepping out of the car and pissing over the side of the bridge was not possible. He didn't have the cash on him to make bail and he knew he would flunk the breathalyzer.
Then he remembered that he had a pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment in a leatherette case. He didn't have any empty beer cans in the car because an open container was a $50 fine, and he was careful about that on game days. It hurt like a stabbing to lean over and open the glove compartment and take out the glasses case. He dropped the sunglasses onto the floor, unzipped, fit the glasses case under his dick, and felt relief.
The case held maybe two ounces, so he had to rein it back. It hurt badly but that subsided while he opened the door and bailed out the first steaming case full. He left the door open a crack, repeated the procedure, always keeping his eyes on the patrolmen.
They never noticed. It took him about ten minutes to finish, a six pack equaling 72 ounces. He flipped the soggy case into the weeds.
Still Brooks sat there. Clendon gave it till 1:22, then adjusted his shades and approached the Benz. All the windows were rolled up. Brooks's head was tipped back. Clendon shielded his eyes from the glare and started to tap on the tinted window.
Brooks's mouth hung half open. A bit of tongue sat on his teeth. Stuck to his forehead was a $100 bill, where fresh blood was soaking through the portrait of Franklin. His eyes were wide, his pupils a pair of black zeros inside the blue zeros of his irises.
PART TWO
TOO FAR
A bullet hole had pierced the windshield. The hole looked pasted on. Brooks was partially hidden by the Benz’s tinted windows. Clendon pulled on the door latch. It was locked. Great. Leave your prints. He took a step around to try to lean closer and get a final quick look. He kicked something lying on the pavement in front of the tire. It was a pistol.
Clendon started walking fast toward the ocean into the breeze. At Ocean Avenue he stopped and waited as traffic raced past. A poking hot pain centered in his forehead.
Across the street a woman bent over the railing and gazed at the ocean. She was dressed in red jogging shorts and a tank top, and had natural blond hair. She moved, and it stung Clend
on. It was Shelley. He shouted, waved, and dashed across the street into the park and ran up to her.
Shelley’s face was bleached white. She was shaking, and her silver-blue eyes were stuck open wide and glassy. She sank back against the railing and reached for him.
"Clendon, Brooks—" She pointed toward the Mercedes.
"I just saw him," Clendon said. "What did you see? Fifteen minutes ago—" She straightened and pulled hard on Clendon’s arm and shoulder.
"Do you have a car?"
"Yes."
"Get it and pick me up and get us out of here. I can’t walk by his car again."
"How’d you get here?"
"Just get the car and pick me up."
Clendon crossed Ocean Avenue and walked up the street to the BMW. When he passed the Mercedes he took a glance and saw the pistol was under the car. He didn’t slow down. At the BMW he had trouble putting the key into the door lock. Finally, the door opened and he started the engine. As he hung a left onto Ocean Avenue, Shelley ran to the curb. He pulled up, flicked the automatic door lock, and she got in.
"I can’t talk right now."
Shelley massaged her temples with both hands.
"Tell me what I can do."
"Drive."
"Where do you want me to go?"
"I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s hard to think."
Clendon touched her shoulder. She was glazed with sweat. He cranked the AC to high.
"I want to go home."
"Where do you live?"
"The Palisades."
Shelley told him to drive out the Pacific Coast Highway. At Chautauqua, Clendon turned up the hill into the Palisades.
"Do you think we should call the police?"
"No," she said.
"Why can’t we?"
"Don’t snarl."
When they hit the stoplight at Sunset, Shelley gave him directions to her house. Clendon turned and the BMW curled along the hilly, landscaped streets past block after block of large houses with green lawns and flowering bougainvillea.
"Is this the house Brooks told me was being remodeled?"
"Not this house."
"Do you have another house?"
"No."
Shelley lived in a split level pink stucco house with a brick red Spanish roof. Ivy climbed the walls and bushes and trees grew around it. Other houses on the block were larger and prouder with fences and hedges. No cars were parked on the street. A mockingbird sang, loudly. Behind Shelley’s house rose high hills that cradled even larger houses.