Lincoln McCall, Gumshoe

In my business, it pays to know and maintain good relationships with hotel managers, housekeeping, concierges, desk clerks, bellboys, and even hotel plumbers, if you can believe it. They all helped me do my job of keeping an eye on associates.

So that’s where I started with Barchek. Vegas had an intricate network of people who made their living, not from gambling, but from gamblers. It may not be exciting and glamorous, but it was steady income, no lucky streak required. And selling information was a sure thing, way more secure than gambling on the roll of the dice or the turn of a card.

“Barchek owes money all over town,” the bellboy on the top floor of The D was happy to enlighten me. “He gets these comped rooms and still doesn’t tip anyone anything, a total asshole move.”

“Yeah, I thought he’d been winning lately?” Barchek was the reigning World Champion of Gambling tourney winner. That was a million-dollar pot.

“The Brothers bankrolled his entry to that tournament and he turned around and lost it in some high stakes games in Dubai or wherever in the mid-east. Yeah, Dubai.”

“Not too smart. Why do you think they kept him around?”

“I don’t know. I do know Franco is the one who paid Barchek’s bill the other day when you had that Marilyn girl here.”

“Sounds like he’s got something on Franco?” I floated the theory to see if it was an original one or if that’s what the rumor mill thought as well.

“Yeah, Franco’s a sick fucker. Probably Barchek knows it. Otherwise, they’d cut him loose cause he’s a weasel.”

“Thanks, Scotty.” I handed him five hundred bucks. “Pleasure doing business with you,” I marveled at how cash-greased the wheels here in Vegas, and keeping secrets was a good line of work if you knew just who to sell them to. It was looking like Barchek did.

The next step was finding out more about Franco Maldonado.

The information was tough to come by. People were afraid of the Maldonado family. Their rise to prominence in Vegas was fast and violent. But that also meant they made enemies. I needed to find a few of those enemies.

The Whispering Pines Retirement home was my third stop after hitting up the network of casino staffers.

Syd Greenblatt had been a resident there for about three years. Syd had been the owner of The Diamond, and once one of the most powerful men in Vegas. His fall was from a great height.

He’d had a few strokes, and his declining health made his hotel easy pickings. The Maldonado family had swept in and taken controlling interest of The Diamond, pouring money into making it as flashy as anything on the strip.

Syd was now stuck in a Vegas nursing home. Nursing homes were depressing as fuck; a Vegas nursing home somehow even worse.

Syd was tough to understand after the stroke, but if anyone hated the Maldonado family it was him. He sat on a chair in the community room watching Family Feud. I’d worked for Syd, freelance, as a bodyguard, before I’d had the regular job with Petra. It had been years, though.

He’d shrunk, and the perma-tan he’d had in his heyday was long gone, replaced with liver spots, but he remembered me. He may have had a tough time moving and communicating, but he was in there, sharp as ever. Just not sharp enough to run a Vegas casino or even strong enough to work the volume on the community room remote control.

“Can I turn it down a bit so we can talk?” I asked.

“Wait until the commershal.” He struggled to properly annunciate the words, but I got it. We had to watch the first round on The Feud, then he’d talk to me.

Which we did. I followed Syd’s eyes as he played along. “Name the top ten reasons men buy jewelry.”

“Suckers, that’s why.” Syd batted a hand to dismiss the poor loser of Family Feud, who said, love. The show went to commercial break and Syd shifted focus to me. I picked up the remote and lowered the volume on the game show.

“So I want to know about the Maldonados.”

“Dangerous, Lincoln. Muscles don’t stop bullets.” He put a knuckle on my bicep.

“Yeah. True. What about Franco? Do you know anything about him?”

“You still work for Petra?”

“Sort of. Well, until very recently, yes. Right now I’m semi-retired. Just like you.”

“Yeah, just like me.” Syd snorted.

“You want to know about Franco you need to look at other services, lower-tier girls, not classy operations like Petra’s, and not in Vegas, overseas. That’s where you’ll find out about Franco, nasty business with him. He treats ‘em bad.”

“I’m surprised Petra took him on.” Usually, her taste in clients was as perfect as her taste in associates.

“Daddy spends a lot of money cleaning up Franco’s messes. Maybe Petra doesn’t know. I only know because I used to think I needed leverage. I spent a lot of money getting the dirt. Of course too late for me to use it now.”

“Well, I need it.”

“Hmm, well you got it. Here’s a key to a deposit box. What I got on Maldonado is in there. Consider it my parting gift.”

“Thanks, Syd. Can I get you anything?”

“No. Just let me know if you ever get rid of Franco. That would be good. I’m never going to be able to run a hotel again. But I would enjoy seeing the Maldonado brothers run into the ground. Now turn the volume back up. This guy’s no Richard Dawson, but he’s funny.” I did as he instructed and left him to his shows.

Next stop was the bank to check out Syd’s safe deposit box. It was time to see what kind of trail Franco had left behind in Dubai.

Syd had compiled security photos from Dubai’s Jewel Hotel. It was the Maldonado’s premier property.

Then there was a stack of missing person reports. All in English, all women, and all with a notation, known prostitute. Each security photo was dated. So were the reports. It was easy to start to see the pattern. Franco was seeing these women and then no one was seeing them again.

Franco Maldonado was connected to a string of missing women. But he wasn’t a suspect. A newspaper article outlined the fear among the “working girls” in Dubai but nothing publicly ever connected Franco to the disappearances. Syd Greenblatt also provided me with a flash drive. I palmed it and headed to the laptop in my truck.

I popped in. Grainy but decipherable security footage showed exactly what I’d suspected. These were from the hotel I’d never seen, the time stamps were in Arabic, so I could only assume it was security camera video from The Jewel in Dubai.

My blood ran cold that he’d even been in the same room with Marilyn. And my suspicion was right about how Franco really got off. Pain.

I didn’t have evidence of murder on the drives but I did have a glimpse into what Franco liked. Unfortunately, the footage was green, grainy and I knew it was Franco but I’d seen him in action. The security camera footage wouldn’t get him arrested, plus it was Dubai? I had no clue what the laws were there.

I did know the guy was twisted as hell.

What I didn’t know was how Donny Barchek played into it. Why were they, friends? Had Franco killed Donny? Why frame me for it? Probably because I made that super fucking easy by getting caught on tape beating the piss out of him.

I wasn’t going to find any more answers on the library computer.

The bottom line for me was that Franco and Dom were still interested in Marilyn, and I wasn’t going to be there to protect her, seeing as I was fired. Protecting her was a more serious business all of a sudden if Franco’s pleasure was sadistic in nature.

Great. A sadistic casino owner with a bad temper, and an eye for my girl. My girl. I could think it whether it was true or not.

I called Marilyn, maybe to warn her, maybe just to hear her voice. Suddenly, I was afraid to leave her alone at all.

There was no answer on her phone, so I went to her place. She wasn’t there.

Marilyn was out of my reach and my increasing sense of dread was about to turn into panic. I phoned Petra. Nothing. They were freezing me out.

I had to be there if the Maldonados had another appointment with her. She was taking on more than sex with these assholes, more than she should handle.

Panic was starting to set in. Where was she? Was she with Franco already? Did Petra book her for something else? If Petra would fucking answer, I could warn her. She would stop this. I had to believe that.

 For those answers, I called my old friend Garrity.