Private Vegas (Private 9)

Chapter 95

THE ARMSTRONG HOTEL was a cheap joint on a run-down block at the fringes of the Cypress Park neighborhood. It didn’t look out of place here with its peeling paint, blown-neon signage, cracked and empty swimming pool out front. It was hardly a hotel. More like a crash pad for locals who had no place to go.

I locked my car outside the front door, saw Captain Warren through the plate glass; he was leaning against a planter that divided the front desk from the furniture in the lobby. He straightened up when he saw me, came out, and told the uniformed cop at the door that I was working with the LAPD.

“Glad you could make it,” he said, shaking my hand.

I said, “No problem. Glad you caught me.”

The lobby had already been processed by CSU investigators who had left evidence of their own: yellow tape at the doorways, markers beside blood evidence, fingerprint powder on every surface. I asked Warren what had happened.

“First, I want to say, this isn’t my case. I got my hands on it anyway, because if I can help, the Northeast Division will take it.”

“So where are you with this, Luke?”

He ran a hand through his hair, looked past me to the front desk, as if he were trying to back up the film and see it from the beginning.

“Not far enough. It seems like two guys checked in to room four-oh-three at around ten on Saturday night,” he said. “They checked out before three Sunday morning, and their room was professionally cleaned. Practically sterilized.

“We’ve got a dead woman behind the front desk, and the computer has been trashed, hard drive removed. Surveillance camera’s gone.

“As for why, we don’t know. We don’t know who did it either, but we’ve got a lead. Hang on, Jack. I’ll get our witness.”

I said, “Mind if I look around?”

“Keep your hands in your pockets,

okay?”

The furniture was aquamarine vinyl, looked pretty much the way it had when it was manufactured in the seventies, and that went for the planter of plastic plants as well. The front desk had taken most of the punishment. The computer that must have been there was gone, and there was a dried lake of blood on the floor, spatter on the Formica. It didn’t look like the victim had put up a fight.

I was checking out the hole where the security camera had been ripped from its mount when Warren came over with a skinny, fortyish man wearing polyester pants and a wifebeater under a loud print shirt.

He said, “Jack, this is Kevin Fogarty. He’s the night doorman. He’s the one who found the victim—the desk manager, Lois Bird. Kevin, this is Jack Morgan. He’s an investigator. Why don’t you tell him what you saw?”

Chapter 96

WE STOOD NEXT to the vending machines, the night doorman saying to Captain Warren, “I told you, I hardly know anything.”

It was one in the afternoon, but Kevin Fogarty smelled of alcohol. When Warren had a chance to run his name, I was pretty sure he’d be looking at a long sheet littered with misdemeanors and outstanding warrants.

Fogarty pulled a bent half of a cigarette from the hip pocket of his shiny slacks, lit up, and when he’d framed his thoughts, he said, “I’m not going into any court to testify against anyone. Just be sure you hear me. I don’t do that. That’s not me. I like to keep a low profile.”

“Go ahead with what you saw,” I said.

Fogarty took a long draw on the cigarette, coughed violently for too long, then: “Like I said, I saw these two guys coming in around ten on Saturday night. They was carrying brown paper bags, so they’d brought their own bar service, I guess. They were with these two women, heavyset. Bleached blondes.

“The four of them seemed like they’d been drinking for a while. They were at the elevator as I was going out on my break. All giggly, like the party was on, something I’ve seen maybe a hundred million times.”

Warren said, “But something was different, right, Mr. Fogarty? You saw something that made you remember them?”

“Like I told you and the other five cops I spoke to, one of the guys was wearing a muscle shirt, no sleeves. He had some tattoos on his arms. They were like stripes going around the biceps and all the way down, and maybe words written above the stripes. He pinched one of the ladies, hard. She yelped, but that’s all I saw. I remember that noise she made.”

There was more smoking, coughing, and encouragement to finish the story before Fogarty continued.

“When you showed me their pictures,” Fogarty said to Warren, “I thought maybe I recognized the guy with the striped tattoos. He has a lot of hair. And a big nose.”

“Did you see them again?”