Forty-eight
Jennifer and John, Craig and Evelyn, and Emily and
Sally rented three adjacent, second floor motel suites a half mile from
the Bartow Community Ballroom on the outskirts of Houston. The complex
sprawled over a full city block. The evening the three couples
investigated the complex, bingo was in progress for the elderly in the
Golden Lounge, ballroom dancing in Starlite, and a nightclub for the under
twenty-one crowd in a basement area called the Inferno. The adult
nightclub, Diamond Bill’s, was a basement affair as well, but beneath the
opposite end of the building. The three couples wandered a confusing maze
of Diamond Bill’s glass walls and a dazzling light show considered a
unique attraction by locals.
“It might be a cover for the private club,” John
suggested when they returned to John and Jennifer’s room to discuss their
findings.
Craig flopped down onto a couch, closed his eyes and
leaned his head back. “The casino’s in there somewhere. Some of the
photographs show side entrances to the building that I couldn’t find from
the inside. How do we
get in? John, you don’t do well in a crowd, so you and Jennifer keep your
distance. If Jennifer gets carded, someone’s liable to question her
out-of-state ID. Evelyn? What do you say?”
“Bartow would have a private entrance if this place
belongs to him,” Evelyn said. “Find it and I’ll get in.”
“How?” Craig said.
“I’ll be invited.”
Craig studied the woman in the room’s flattering
indirect lighting. “I guess you would at that. Plant a flower along a
beaten path and someone’s bound to reach out and pick it on their way by.”
John took the upholstered recliner, kicked off his
shoes, and tried to relax. It had been a long, exhausting day, both the
drive in the escalating heat, and the confusion of the lights and crowds
of the community center.
“What do you think?” Craig said, cautiously directing
his question to John.
John was thinking that a man’s vices were invariably
his greatest weakness, gambling, women and sex, alcohol or drugs. Virtues
carried to obsessive extremes carried the same price tag. Religion and
politics fell into that category in his studied opinion. “Evelyn’s our
best bet,” he said to break the mounting tension. Beyond that, he had
nothing more to say. The others talked, forming a wall of gentle
background noise as John all but slipped off to sleep.
Jennifer slid into his lap after a time. “You like
hard rock?”
“Most rocks are hard.” John put his arms about her
shoulders and deduced that she was referring to music. He tried not to
smirk.
“Bingo with the old folks?” Jennifer said teasingly.
It dawned on him that the others had been discussing
a means of casing the center and watching for Bertram’s arrival at the
casino. “I’ve got an eye for sneaks,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on
exterior entrances.”
“I’ll keep John company,” Jennifer announced. “You
two snoop inside.”
“Are we talking about plans for tomorrow night?” John
said hopefully.
“John,” Jennifer said with mock impatience. “How
late do you think the old folks play bingo? It’s two in the morning. Of
course we’re talking about tomorrow night.”
He closed his eyes again, desperate for eight solid
hours of restful oblivion. “Wake me about ten in the morning, sooner at
your own risk.”
Jennifer drove him around the community center early
the following afternoon. They walked around it once on foot. The heat
was stifling, but dry, forcing them both to don sunglasses in defense
against the blazing, late summer sun.
John observed the loading docks and side doors to the
bars and auditorium. The outside entrance to the casino had to be the
chromed double doors of the main offices. Rough measurements of the
accessible areas of the building left roughly three thousand square feet
unaccounted for. That would be Bertrand’s private domain.
At dusk, Evelyn dressed in one of her sleek gowns.
Craig shaved, sleeked down his hair, and put on a light gray suit and
patent leather shoes.
“You’re not packing,” John noted.
“I don’t see the need.”
“There’s a need. We’re outsiders. We’ll be
conspicuous, easy to spot.”
“I don’t think we’ll be spotted that easily,” Craig
said. “Besides, we can’t shoot our way out of crowds as dense as these.”
“Act a little drunk, then. Don’t look the part of a
point man.”
“What do point men look like?”
“Too damned alert and watchful. Like you.”
Craig grimaced at the bulge in John’s light jacket.
“I guess there’s a first time for everything.”
“Carrying or not carrying isn’t a matter of
philosophy. Sometimes I can afford to play games. Tonight doesn’t happen
to be one of those.”
They drove in separate rentals to the community
center that evening. John had Jennifer park two blocks away and maintain
a vigil without leaving the car.
“I don’t see why anyone would pay us any mind around
so many people,” Jennifer said. “Why can’t we snoop like we did last
night?”
“Bartow inherited his money,” John said. “It bothers
me that he can handle the responsibility and screw around as much as he
does on the side. It’s an indication of how smart and dangerous he is.
He’s survived this long untouched because of the quality of the men he’s
hired to field for him. He’s one of the richest men in this part of the
country and he manages to keep a low profile. We’re safer staying put.”
“By quality, I suppose you mean really bad men.”
“Pit vipers.”
She shrugged. “The worst they can do is to tell us
go away.”
“They can take us in and ask questions and then
shoot us in the head.”
“So what do we do, shoot anybody that tries to shoot
us first?”
“Whatever it takes.”
“Really?” Jennifer asked it as a serious question.
John glanced at her solemnly. “Really.”
“Okay.” Jennifer double-checked her own twenty-two
revolver and put it back in her purse.
Once or twice during the early hours of the evening,
cars drove up to the office entrance and let people out. The parking lots
out front and out back quickly filled. Music filtered out into the night
from inside, hard rock and country and western, and occasionally strains
of quieter music from the auditorium.
At about nine that evening, a limo pulled up to the
office entrance. Four men and two women got out and went inside. A half
hour later, two more pulled to the curb and discharged its passengers.
“I saw Bertrand that time,” John announced.
A car eased around the corner ahead. Headlights
glimmered in the rear view mirrors from a second car. Jennifer was driving. She started
the engine as they grew closer, closing from front and rear.
“We’ve seen everything we need to see,” John said.
“Get us out of here.”
Jennifer switched on the headlights and put the gear
select in drive. John marveled at her calm. Only the dilation of her
pupils gave away her heightened state of consciousness.
The car coming up behind them pulled to the curb,
edging up so close that Jennifer had no way of backing away from the glare
of high beams rushing in to block them off.
“Dent fenders,” John said mildly, and he reached out
to brace himself. “Get us out of here.”
Jennifer floored the accelerator, burning rubber as
she accelerated into the glare. She clipped the oncoming car and spun it
around in a rain of shattered glass and chrome trim. She bounced up over
the curb and left tire marks down the sidewalk in her effort to escape.
But as she rounded the corner at the back of the
building, a mass of parked cars and pedestrians blocked their path.
“Shit!”
Without missing a beat, Jennifer laid on her horn and
scattered a mass of young people. Obscenities drifted in the air behind
them, leaving an angered mob for the car following to contend with.
“Damn,” Jennifer muttered in a hurt tone of voice.
“I think he hit a few of those kids.”
The sportier model two-door came rushing up onto
their tail.
“Stop,” John said. “We can’t risk the cops getting
in on this. We settle it here.”
Jennifer all but stood on the brake. The nose of the
their sedan dived, and when the car behind them struck, it slid its sloped
hood beneath their rear bumper and locked itself in place.
Jennifer threw her door open. John reached for her
arm, his eye on the rear view mirror. Two dazed men climbed from the car
that had rammed them, but by that time, the crowds of angered youths had
encircled them.
“Act like you’re hurt,” John said. “Put your hands
to your face.”
John rushed from the car and circled around to the
passenger door, ostensibly to attend his injured date. Belligerent
teenagers closed on John, but saw Jennifer and turned away to hassle the
driver of the vehicle behind them. Scuffles ensued. Several girls
Jennifer’s own age helped her from the car, and with John’s arm about her
shoulder, the crowd made no attempt to detain them. Already, red lights
were flashing in the near distance, easing their way through the gathering
mob.
Jennifer pleaded with the crowd of girls. “I got to
get my dad out of here! I shouldn’t have been driving the car! Don’t let
them see us, please!”
The girls formed a human shield about them, escorting
them for a half block, then parting to reveal a parked cab.
The cabbie grimaced as they climbed in back. “Hey,
kid, I’ve got fare at the door!”
Jennifer shoved two twenties in his face. Two
fingers snatched the bills and made them disappear. “Where to?”
Jennifer nodded west. “That big motel over there.
My dad’s not feeling too well.”
“What the hell’s with the riot?”
“Some idiot rear-ended somebody,” Jennifer murmured,
and she leaned back in her seat at John’s side. Already there were cops
at the scene, easing the traffic on past.
Fifteen minutes later, John furiously paced their
motel room to work off the gathering tension. “They can’t trace the car
to us using Francis’ phony IDs,” Jennifer said. “We can get another one.”
The car wasn’t the issue. “We’ve done all the
reconnoitering we’ll get away with.”
“Maybe Craig and Evelyn will come up with something.”
John didn’t think it likely. Craig was too
accustomed to playing by rules, and even if Evelyn got inside the casino,
they had no plan for making use of her presence.
“What awful things are you thinking?” she said.
“John, I don’t like that expression on your face.”
“I don’t see how we can handle this,” he said.
“So, what is that supposed to mean?”
“We need to interrogate the bastard and get him to
lift the pressure on us. I don’t think we can manage that.”
“So, what do you want to do, just kill him?”
“Do we have a choice? If someone nails me, and you
die, who protects the others? Bartow needs to be dead while we have the
opportunity to make it happen.”
“If you get close enough to kill him, you’ll never
get away,” Jennifer said. “They’ll shoot you, or arrest you.”
“They won’t arrest me, but it may be our only
alternative.”
“Talk to Craig about it. Wait for the others to get
back. Don’t make decisions like that on your own.”
“It’s not something I’d need help with,” John said.
Jennifer hugged herself in growing agitation. John
tried to embrace her. She stepped out of reach.
“Jennifer, we can’t leave without taking out Bartow.”
“And you’re anxious to get it over with,” Jennifer
said. “You want to hurry up and be dead and gone so that you don’t have
to put up with me any more.”
John reached for her again if only to shut her up.
Jennifer evaded him a second time. “Who do you think
I am that you’re not good enough for me?”
At the back of John’s thoughts, he understood that
the issue at stake was his own inability to let go of his old life, or
adapt to a new one. How could Jennifer hope to understand the suffering
he contained inside himself? It was too dangerous to let it escape.
Better to let it end while he still had it under control, while it could
still accomplish something useful.
“I’m not anything so special that you have to die for
me!” she screamed at him.
Craig and Evelyn showed up at three in the morning.
“What happened to you two?” Craig asked evenly. John and Jennifer looked
thoroughly distraught.
“We lost the car,” Jennifer said. “Some cars tried
to box us in and we wrecked it in a crowd and got away.”
“Damn. We saw the commotion from the distance. We
had no way of knowing it was you.”
“So what do we do now?” Jennifer asked worriedly,
watching John while waiting for an answer from Craig.
“I got in,” Evelyn said, taking them all by surprise
as she entered the room. “I went looking for you two when the bar was
closing. Craig was talking to the bartender. Your car wasn’t where you
said you would wait, Jennifer, so I went around the quiet side of the
building. There were limos waiting. Some men asked what I wanted. I
told them I was looking for a lady’s room. A man in a tux grilled me and
I came on to him. And he let me in.”
John looked around. “You got into the casino.”
“Yeah. There must have been fifty people inside. I
made a date for tomorrow with my new friend.”
Craig, John noticed, looked thoroughly unhappy with
the arrangement. Evelyn noticed Craig’s reaction. “So what?” she said.
“I saw Bartow, and Bartow saw me, and the little pig won’t be able to
resist.”
“So how are you going to handle it?” Craig said
evenly.
“I’ll invite him to my motel room for a drink.”
“He won’t risk it,” Craig said.
“I’m diabetic and I’ll need an insulin shot,"
Evelyn said. "Or I’ll
have to check on my baby daughter. I’ll feel him out and I’ll give him
the appropriate line, and I’ll bring him here. His security will wait
downstairs while he does his thing. There's no way he can resist.
I don't have to be pretty. I just have to know what he wants to do
to me. If he thinks I've offered that of my own accord, it's
something he doesn't normally get so free and easy. Most men have a
secret fetish. He'll come.”
“Great,” Craig said in agitation. “We’ll have
ourselves boxed in by enough firepower to do Desert Storm all over again.
Then what?”
John rose to his feet. “We can’t afford to bypass
the opportunity.”
“John wants to kill him,” Jennifer said sullenly.
“Then perhaps we’ll let John kill him,” Evelyn said
with a careless smile. “And we’ll just fly away before they all come
rushing upstairs and kill us, too.”
“If it comes down to killing Bartow,” John said,
“only one of us needs to stay behind and take the heat. If we miss the
opportunity, you’re all just as dead as you were when you got here.”
Jennifer fled to the far side of the room, too
rattled to argue further. Evelyn shrugged nonchalantly and left, waiting
just outside the room for Craig to join her.
“We’ll wait and see what happens,” Craig said
awkwardly to his newfound friend. “If it has to be the way you think,
yeah, we take Bertrand the Bastard out. But we wait and see what happens,
and if we have to jump right instead of left, we’ll be ready to go either
way. Sound fair enough?”
John remembered how much he hated roller coasters,
how much he needed to be in control of his life on a moment by moment
basis. This was a roller coaster ride. He wasn’t in control and perhaps
he never would be again.
