Read Online I Don't Like Where This Is Going by John Dufresne - Free Book Online Page B

I’d clean up. Bay said we should all meet for dinner. Seven-thirty at Emeril’s at the Grand. They bade me farewell and headed off to bed. I hoped Django wasn’t in Bay’s room bothering them. I called for him. He wasn’t answering. I took out a can of sardines. Nothing like the sound of the can leaving the drawer to get Django’s attention. Before I even snapped the tab on the sardines, there he was purring like mad and rolling on his back at my feet. I gave him a treat instead.
    ELWOOD RECOMMENDED THE EGG burger and the duck-fat garlic fries. And the lobster mac and cheese. To die for . And the zucchini fritters. Ambrosial . And the bacon-fried rice. I ordered the burger, the shitake flan, and a bottled water; Elwood, the burger, fries, and a Diet Dr Pepper. He excused himself, answered a call on his cell, walked to the row of six empty newspaper vending machines, and leaned back against the Las Vegas Weekly . He put a finger in his unoccupied ear. Elwood was a large young man with small hands, long ears, orthopedic shoes, and snaggled bottom teeth. The sign on the grim-looking hotel/casino at the corner read $ 2 B LACKJACK $ 1 C RAPS . This unsightly stretch of the Fremont East District was sun-bleached and deserted except for the occasional solitarypedestrian slouching his way toward Binion’s Horseshoe. Elwood apologized for the interruption—his handyman had run into a problem with the porch repair.
    We carried our food to the shaded Eighth Street bus stop shelter, sat on the uncomfortable metal seats, and ate our lunches off our laps. The burger was so damn good I wanted to put a runny fried egg on top of everything. Elwood flashed his eyebrows and smiled. “Told you.”
    When he remarked that he and I seemed to be the only people interested in getting to the bottom of Layla Davis’s death, I told him what Julie Wade had learned about Layla’s sister Blythe. He guessed that Blythe would have been, or might still be, involved in prostitution.
    He said, “There are thirty thousand very busy prostitutes in Vegas, where prostitution is illegal but only a misdemeanor.” He wiped his lips with the napkin. “I figure hundred and eighty thousand blow jobs a day in Clark County. Makes you burst with civic pride.” He thought we were unlikely to find out much more about Layla. Unless.
    â€œUnless what?”
    â€œUnless Blythe is still alive.”
    â€œAnd we can find her.”
    â€œDo you have a photo?”
    I didn’t, but I would have Bay check with Julie Wade. I told Elwood that the hotel cameras that I was told did not exist must have captured the activity on the thirtieth floor when Layla was disposed of. Elwood said he’d already checked on that, and the cameras, he was told, were not working that day. They couldn’t even get their lies straight. A green and yellow Google Maps Street View car drove by snapping photos with its roof-mounted camera. Elwood said, “Now we’ll always be those two unhealthyguys guzzling fast food and waiting for the Boulder Highway Express.”
    And then he said, “It’s my job to investigate Layla’s death. Why are you doing it?”
    â€œYou can’t just sit by.”
    â€œOf course you can. We do it all the time.”
    â€œBecause I was a witness. I saw those eyes and that broken face, and I can’t forget. And because an acquaintance, a Memphis PI, the Julie I just mentioned, was hired to find her, and my friend Bay and I are doing what we can to help. Because I think she was killed, and someone’s getting away with murder.”
    â€œJustice is a game of chance.”
    He told me he grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side, and had gone to prep schools and to Princeton. When he told his parents he wanted to be a reporter, not an academic, they laughed. But they weren’t laughing now. His dad, Dr. Ned Wingo, was a Freudian analyst who rode motorcycles and