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The Strip was notorious for its spectacular teenage murders and for the fact that Vincent Mado
Thirty years ago it had been a cow town, 25,000 people. Now the population was swollen tenfold by the retired, the drifting, the failed, the health-seeking, the opportunistic, the escapist. Every year the number of retail bankruptcies was staggering. It had the fragile aura of impermanence—no yesterdays and no tomorrows; eat, drink and gather ye rosebuds. It was a slick, chromium imitation of Los Angeles in the desert.
Ahead of me, Joa
The Executive Lodge sprawled near the south freeway cloverleaf. It was a big new motel with all the efficiency of an electronic computer, and all the warmth. I had picked it because I was fairly certain it didn’t belong to one of Vincent Mado
An intense layer of heat lay along the parking lot. I pulled in beside Joa
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
She gave me a startled-fawn look and glanced toward the street. She was thinking about the fact that she was in full view of the road. I pointed to the narrow covered paveway that shaded the ice and coke machines and said, “Try the shade,” and got out of the Jeep. I watched her walk into the passage, swing of hips and clip of calves; she didn’t ask any questions. The sun was miserably hot.
I folded the Jeep cushion down to keep the sun off the seat, and went up the sidewalk under the concrete eaves. The heat sizzled through the soles of my desert boots.
The lobby was sterile and cool, almost deserted. There was a coffee shop with a counter and a round rack of paperbacks at the cashier’s desk. The echoing imitation marble door and soft-lullabying Muzak gave the place a mausoleum air. The walls were fake rough-stucco ornamented with phony Mexican artifacts. There were the obligatory plastic flowers and potted plants.
The desk clerk had a crew cut, vest and tie, and an earnest chamber-of-commerce face. Groomed and ta
Dangling the room key, I headed for the front exit, then made a detour toward one of the open acoustic phone cubicles along the front wall. I had picked up the receiver before I noticed that the phone had no dial; obviously it went through the motel switchboard. I was about to replace it on the hook when a girl’s voice chirped on the line and I thought, To hell with it, the risk was negligible; I gave her the number of police headquarters.
“Are you registered here, sir?”
I thought. “No. I’ll leave a dime at the desk when I finish the call.”
“Twenty cents, sir.”
“Yeah.” They must make a bloody fortune on phone calls.
I heard the girl chortle. “Ordinarily we don’t let outside people use the house phones, sir, but since this is the police number it must be all right.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I drawled. I could hang up, but it hardly seemed worth the trouble …
“Police headquarters, Patrolman Garcia. Hello?”
I said, “Lieutenant Behn, please.”
“Sure. You happen to know what division that’d be?”
“Homicide,” I said.
“Okay. I’ll get you Homicide, they’ll put you through to him.”
It took two more relays but finally I heard his voice: “Behn here.”
“Larry, this is Simon Crane.”
“Well, well.”
“Can I talk to you?”
“It’s your dime.”
Twenty cents, I thought. I said, “What have you got on the Aiello case?”
“Why do you want to know?”
Larry Behn was one of the handful who had decided to stick it out and fight from the inside. A long time ago I had decided to trust him. I said, “I used to be pretty close to Aiello’s secretary and it looks like they think she was involved in it.”
“And if she was involved, you were too, hey? All right—where is she?”
“She doesn’t know anything,” I said. “I can’t help you, anyway—I’m not with her now. I assume you’ve got it down as murder. I only heard the radio flash.”
“Murder, yeah. Two slugs in the head, no powder burns, and he sure didn’t bury himself.”
“Have you got anything? Not for broadcast.”
I heard him breathe. He was thinking. Finally he said, “Right now we haven’t got much worth talking about. They’re ru
“How do you know?”
“No comment,” he said, which told me the answer: Behn must have had surveillance on Mado
“Any ideas, Larry?”
“Nothing worth the waste of breath. Maybe it was some sorehead that got muscled by the mob.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, thinking of Joa
“Time of death?”
“The medical examiner says between two and five this morning. Look, Simon, you haven’t talked to me and I haven’t told you a thing, all right?”
“Sure,” I said, frowning and thinking.