Shadow Play Page 14

  At the back of the house, Chavez Sliding stopped the car and opened both our doors before going to the heavy oak doors where he punched a code on a digital keypad and opened a door for us, but I’d already turned toward the lights of Tucson.

  “This is a serious view,” I said.

  “Pools, gardens, a spa my housekeeper calls the romance puddle.”

  “I’ve never seen a view like this.”

  “During the day, if it’s a clear day, you can see almost to Mexico, sixty miles away. This time of year, the monsoon season, I could stay outside all night trying to photograph lightning. Up on the roof. There’s a sundeck, right at the edge of the house, you sit up there, can’t see any of the house or any other houses nearby. A clear shot at lightning.”

  “Tricky,” I said.

  “Pure chance. I set up four cameras, run the shutter cables between fingers of both hands, punch the shutter-release buttons with my thumbs. I’ve taken over five thousand pictures of lightning, only a half-dozen are worthwhile. Shall we go inside?”

  An alarm ooga ooga just after I stepped over the door sill and there was the mastiff, no paw extended this time, lips back over his enormous yellowed teeth and his head about the level of my shoulders and only three feet away. Chavez Sliding appeared behind me in an instant, a hand on my shoulder. I froze.

  “Do you have something metal on you?” Vincent said. “Heavy, maybe a small camera in your handbag?”

  “Belt level,” I said slowly. “In the back. It’s a Beretta.”

  “Really.”

  Chavez Sliding lifted my ribbed cotton pullover, removed the gun and handed it to Vincent, who held it in both hands.

  “I’m a private investigator,” I said. “Sorry. Habit.”

  “You thought you’d need this? Tonight?”

  “It’s habit. Really. I wear it all the time, I sometimes forget I’ve got it.”

  “Nobody forgets they’re wearing a gun,” he said.

  “Actually,” I said, “the only time I think about it is when it’s not there.”

  “Really. Come into the living room. Roger. Bed.”

  Tail thumping, the mastiff trotted off into another room.

  “Roger?” I said.

  “Named him after Roger Rabbit. He hunts the grounds here, keeps the jackrabbits away. I only wish he’d develop a taste for pack rats. In here.”

  An off-white sofa, nearly eight feet long, buttery soft leather with almost no creases, I couldn’t understand how leather might be stretched on a sofa frame so carefully. Two heavily stuffed armchairs upholstered in the same leather, the chairs sitting on the other side of a massive oak coffee table with an inset marble top.

  Vincent gestured at the sofa, but I sat in one of the chairs. He chose the sofa, carefully pinching his linen trouser legs, one at a time, as he sat down.

  “What’s this wire thing?”

  “Half a coat hanger.”

  “Why not a holster?”

  “Too big, mostly, too hot. I tried leather, nylon, all kinds of rigs, they always made me sweat. I saw this picture of a New York City detective, he had a wire thing like that, so I bent it and…well, it’s a habit. I shouldn’t have carried tonight.”

  “No problem.” He laid the gun on an elaborate coffee table, three square feet of glass nestled into a frame made from carved mesquite. “Do you like guns?”

  “I’ve been wrestling with that.”

  “Do you shoot them?”

  “I qualify every three months on the U. S. Customs range. Down in Nogales, I’ve got a friend who’s a customs inspector.”

  “Wait here.” He wandered through an archway, returned a few moments later carrying a revolver. “I don’t collect guns, I don’t shoot them. This belonged to my father. He got it from Henry Fonda, my father was an extra on Fort Apache.”

  An old army Colt.

  “A replica. But it fires. My father killed himself with this gun.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My father and my brother Leon. Both shot themselves. I’ll never begin to understand why.”

  Later touring some of the house, he showed me two lithographs in gorgeous bold colors. Heavy, voluptuous Indian women, one clearly Mexican, and the other vaguely generic, the lithos arranged so that they both faced toward the other.

  “Zuniga,” he said. Lifting his head slightly toward the Mexican woman. “And R. C. Gorman.” Head to the other. “Most people would say it’s scandalous, pairing a Zuniga with a Gorman. But the colors, no? Of their dresses? The reds, the faint yellow and sapphire edgings at the bottom. Who cares which is which, I just love these two women. Which one do you like best, Miss Winslow?”

  “I don’t have much of an eye for these things.”

  “Just look at them. Zuniga’s woman, she’s got a pitcher of water, she’s going to carry that pitcher from the stream to her small casita and pour it out for her family. Classic lines, except for the bunched hair, she could be a European peasant, Russian, working class, probably poor. And the Gorman. The colors, do you know the Fauvists, Miss Winslow?”

  “Ah, no.”

  “A school of painting, a century ago. When everybody in Europe was crashing into new dimensions of color, shapes, styles. Fauvists used only prime colors, so a roof might be brilliant red or blue or green. See the reds of the Gorman woman’s dress? He mainly drew the figures, then worked with a printer who selected the colorings, ran the number editions of these lithographs. But she’s not really a party girl.”

  “Vincent,” a man said from a doorway.

  “David.” Vincent stood up, buttoned his jacket. “David, please, let me introduce Miss Laura Winslow. Miss Winslow, this is David Schultz. My museum curator.”

  “Miss Winslow.” He tucked his head toward her neck, a broad smile. Like Katz, also in his seventies, impeccably dressed in a gray nubby-silk suit, light blue dress shirt with a white collar, and an off-turquoise tie. A courtly gentleman, probably the perfect host. “Vincent, have I intruded?”

  “No, no.” Gesturing to me. “Please, come, come.”

  “I can wait,” I said.

  “No. You should see the museum. And David brought me goodies.”

  We followed Schultz out of the apartment, through some private hallways of the casino and into an office, windows looking out onto the desert. More of a study than an office, maybe a library, bookshelves on two walls, floor to ceiling, and the third wall lined with wide drawers not more than a few inches high.

  “David.” Schultz stood at a large oak table that held a large leather portfolio, at least two by three feet. “So, what have you got?” For the first time tonight, he bubbled with enthusiasm and delight.

  Schultz touched the portfolio’s two brass clasps, almost stroked them, I could see he was good at selling, but he didn’t let his hand linger there, just a beat then he snapped the portfolio open and spread his arms across a stack of acid-free protective pages.

  “Can you take them out?” Vincent said.

  “Of course.”

  Pulling cotton gloves from his suit jacket, Schultz put them on and removed a large poster, the back of it toward us until he laid it out on the table.

  “Amalia Aguilar,” he said. “Amor Perdido.”

  A movie poster.

  “The golden age of Mexican cinema,” Vincent said. “Midthirties to midfifties. The posters now collectibles. David, tell her about the AgrasAnchez Film Archive.”

  “A major repository of Mexican film goodies,” he said. “Twelve thousand lobby cards, over sixty thousand still photos, many posters, like this, and of course, movies. Maybe fifteen hundred. From the period.”

  “And you have?” Vincent said.

  “I’ve got seven original posters. The lust movies, I call them. So. First, I’ve got this one you’re looking at. Amor Perdido.” He took out another poster, laid it carefully on the table. “Here is Rosa Carmina in Amor Salvaje.”

  Vincent slid open a narrow drawer in the table, took out a jeweler’s l
oupe. For a moment, I thought he lingered on Rosa Carmina’s face, tilted up, mouth open and eyes half shut, about to kiss Victor Junco. But I realized he was only checking what looked like a small scratch on the poster, he pulled back, smiled, looked at me to duck his head in a silent question, and I saw the lines of Carmina’s face, her plucked eyebrows, a strong nose tipped up slightly, upper lip full over her teeth, almost an overbite and, yes, I saw the resemblance to the Zuniga and Gorman faces.

  “What else?”

  “Okay. Savage Love. Lost love. Here’s a few more of the bad girls.”

  La Adúltera with Silvia Pinal. David Felix in Doña Diablo, almost a Joan Crawford face on a forty-five-degree angle, hands pushing back her hair on both sides of her head. Cortesan, Mercedes Schultz, and Susanna, with Rosita Quintana in Jane Russell pose just like The Outlaw, right down to the thrusting breasts cantilevered in what had to be the same kind of bra that Howard Hughes designed.

  “And this is my favorite,” Schultz said. “And, the most expensive.”

  Dolores del Rio and Pedro Armendáriz, La Malquerida. In full color. But in the lower right of the poster, in a faint sepia, another woman turned in profile, hair pulled back severely with two checkered ties. The three of them seemed to be waiting for something. I looked closer, looked at David Schultz.

  “It’s del Rio?” I said.

  “Yes,” Schultz said. Her head in profile, matching the figure on the poster. Peasant blouse down at the neck, showing all of us, probably showing herself mostly the collarbones, almost horizontal. I immediately thought of Gloria Swanson, Sunset Boulevard. Down the staircase, mad, she’s just shot William Holden but she thinks that Cecil B. DeMille has just come for her.

  “Very difficult, finding this one,” Schultz said. Watching Vincent carefully, seeing him look from Schultz to the poster and back.

  “I’ll take them all, of course,” Vincent said. “I’ll have a space cleared in my office. You’ll get them framed, you’ll take care of all that?”

  “Of course, Vincent. There’s just one thing.”

  “Yes, the cost. The casino will take care of it.”

  “I only ask because…well, there’s an outstanding amount due for the last items. The still photos, location shots from the Cooper movie.”

  “David. If you like, please, take these posters home with you until I have a cashier’s check.”

  “No,” Schultz said. A careful smile, a deliberate decision. “I’ll trust you.”

  “Are you driving back into the city?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I hitch a ride?”

  “No,” Vincent said. “We’re just started, I wanted to take you to the warehouse, show you some interior sets for the movie.”

  “Maybe another time. I’ve promised a friend, I’ve got to feed her dog.”

  “My pleasure,” Schultz said. “I’ll be glad to drop you off.”

  “May I call you?” Vincent said. “You so loved the poster, I’d like to get your opinion of how I plan on remaking Man of the West.” I gave him a cell phone number, not my regular phone, just something that rang to voice mail and was untraceable. “I’ll set up a tour of the sets. If you like, I’ll drive you down to the location, kinda messy with the monsoons, it’s off a dirt road, but I’ve leased a Range Rover and can get us off-road with no problems.”

  “Where is the location?” I said.

  “One of the last true ghost towns. Ruby. Surrounded by mountains, desert, a beautiful valley just over some hills toward Arivaca. I’ve leased two acres.”

  “Ruby.”

  “You know the place?”

  “I’ve only heard the stories. Buried gold, silver, the treasure of the Jesuits, of Father Kino. And the vortex arch.”

  “My word,” Schultz said. “Whatever is a vortex?”

  “A gateway to…I don’t know what. Vincent, you’ll have to tell me more about the movie, I’m a total movie freak and I’ve never been on a set, or a location. I don’t even know what producers do.”

  “We’re the money men,” Vincent said.

  “Oh. I didn’t realize. You’re producing the movie?”

  “Been a dream for twenty years.”

  “How do you raise enough millions to make a whole movie?”

  “You save and save and save,” he said. “You have an excellent financial manager who squirrels away your money, invests it for you. Marvin Katz, you met him earlier tonight. He’s executive producer. Enough of this money talk.”

  “Are you ready?” Schultz said to me.

  “Yes.”

  In the living room, Vincent handled my Beretta for a moment before giving it back to me. I dropped it in my handbag and left with Schultz.

  29

  The thing is, I liked him. Who isn’t fascinated by movie stars?

  Once David Schultz dropped me at the casino parking lot, I leaned against the hood for some endless time, working on this fascination with movies, movie stars, also working on the reality of the man, the unsuspected realization that I liked him, liked his enthusiasm for movies, his collections of posters and other memorabilia giving him far more satisfaction than the expensive car and house.

  At the same time, I had trouble with his seeming abandonment of caring about his brother Leon. Instead of family grief at a suicide, a most potent loss for any family, Vincent’s concern about Leon didn’t seem much more intense than his love of the Maybach’s electrotransparent roof panel. It was there, an opening to the skies, but at a flick of the switch it shifted from transparent to opaque.

  Like shape shifting.

  The huge casino parking lot was only half full, yet it was a weekend evening, an hour to midnight, and after tossing things in my mind, I thought of the half-full parking lot as half empty and wondered about the casino’s profit and loss. I went inside, moving along the outer walls to avoid some of the cigarette smoke that lingered despite the huge exhaust fans sucking air into ceiling scene scrubbers. Stopping at the first cage, I asked where I could find Clive Davis.

  “Managing the gambling floor can’t be easy,” I said.

  “With enough people, it works.” Wary of talking to me, yet cooperative once he recognized me from our brief meeting in Vincent’s office. “Regular gambling, that runs by hiring the right people. The slots run themselves, we circulate coins and casino cards, always greet big payoffs with smiles and very quick cashing out for those people with sense enough not to feed their winnings back into the machines.”

  “And the card games?”

  “People skills. We start with the dealers. They’re certified, checked for criminal records, sometimes checked for health, financial, or marital problems. It’s a manageable system. Dealers, shift bosses, pit bosses, section managers, me. Almost everybody working here tonight has been with this casino for months, some since it opened nearly two years ago. Why are you asking me, or, what are you asking?”

  “Curiosity,” I lied. “I like Mr. Basaraba, I’ve never known a casino manager, I hardly ever go into a casino.”

  “You like Vincent,” he said shortly. I couldn’t read his face or his tone. “And what do you like about him?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “Miss Winslow. Uh, if you’re trying to find problems with casino staff, I can tell you honestly, there are no problems. If, say, Vincent has hired you.”

  “Hired me?”

  “You’re a private investigator,” he said. “I’m assuming Vincent has some motivation to hire you, something not right here in the casino.”

  “Nope. Just curiosity.”

  “Curious.”

  “That I’m here?”

  “That you’re curious about something. This can’t be idle conversation.”

  “Mr. Davis. Trust me, Vincent hasn’t hired me to look into casino operations. I wouldn’t even know how to do that, other than security. And that guy McCartney seems to have all security under a really tight thumb.”

  His walkie-talkie beeped. “Davis.” />
  “Sandra, cage two. We’ve got a seventeen-thousand-dollar winner, from the Texas Hold ’Em table. Doesn’t want to sign the IRS form, doesn’t want us to declare his winnings. Doesn’t want to show me any ID.”

  “Hold the winnings until you see valid ID. Inform the person that we’ll send in the IRS form with or without a signature.”

  “Ten four, good buddy.”

  “That’s our staff,” Davis said, a wide-open smile. “Random problems, nothing but confidence and good humor in their work. We done here?”

  “What about people who lose money?”

  “They lose, we profit. Look over the slot rooms. Lots of people come here expecting to lose anywhere up to a few hundred dollars.”

  “And when they lose a few thousand?”

  “Is this just curiosity? Or something more specific?”

  “The person who jumped, the suicide. Had he lost a lot of money?”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  “I’m just…wondering, it’s my curiosity about casinos. I don’t much understand gambling for money. Risk, I know about personal risks. But money?”

  “This is a strange conversation,” he said, making an internal decision. He clicked a button on the walkie-talkie. “George. I’m in the main restaurant for the next twenty minutes or so.”

  “Copy that.”

  Davis led me through several card rooms to a restaurant with at least one hundred tables, most of them empty. “Floor show ended half an hour ago, they’re setting up for the midnight show. Sit. Here. Can I get you anything?”

  “How are the margaritas?”

  “Over a hundred kinds of tequila.” He called a waitress over, ordered a margarita for me and a Perrier for himself. “I’m going to tell you something.” The drinks came, he sipped the Perrier, watched me run my tongue over the salted rim of the margarita glass after tasting the drink. “That’s my favorite tequila. It’s okay?” I nodded, couldn’t say anything while tasting more of the drink. “You work on computer crimes?”