Missing Persons by Stephen White

Author:Stephen White [White, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-08-30T18:39:50+00:00

My impatience to hear an update finally compelled me to dial Raoul’s cell number before I climbed into bed. He answered after three rings.

“Yeah?” he said to the accompaniment of Las Vegas background sounds. Music, traffic. Something else — hissing, muted explosions. I wasn’t sure what it was.

The single word he’d spoken as he answered had carried a boatload of hope; every time his phone rang he was praying that the caller was Diane. To me, ironically, his hope meant that he hadn’t found her. My own hope, which was hovering like a flat stone skipping on a smooth lake, sank instantly to the muddy bottom.

“It’s me, Raoul. You didn’t find her.”

He said something in Catalonian. It sounded like “bandarras.” From the spitting tone he employed, I guessed it had been a profanity and that it didn’t really require translation, although I was always more than a little eager to add to my knowledge of the profane spectrum of his native tongue.

“Were you able to talk with that woman from hotel security?” I found myself shouting to be heard above the din.

“Marlina has a story,” he said. “Unfortunately, it takes her a while to tell it.”

“Yeah?” I didn’t get whatever he was saying.

“She’s from Mexico. What’s on her mind is about her brother and something that happened to him on the way from Chihuahua to Tucson. She needs to talk. With some women, it has to first be about them. She is one of those women. Fer un solo de flauta. Trust me, it’s the only way.”

Raoul spoke about women the way he spoke about IPOs and RAM. With authority. Again, I considered asking him for a translation of the Catalonian, but I didn’t.

“You haven’t learned anything?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

He sounded fried — Raoul’s anxiety seemed to be swelling with every conversation we had. The appearance of my voice, and not his wife’s, on the line had robbed him of whatever buoyancy had been keeping him afloat. I could feel the deflation in his spirits as hope leaked away; whatever vessel he was in was taking on water and he was getting tired of bailing.

“Did you find anyone playing at the craps tables who remembered Diane?”

“I set up a half-million-dollar credit line. I assumed that would give me a little bit of latitude in the casino.”

I couldn’t imagine. “Yeah? How much were you betting?”

“Five or ten. Sometimes twenty.”

Thousand. “You win anything?” I asked.

“I did all right,” he said. Raoul, I knew, would take no joy in a big pile of craps winnings. In his various tech businesses, he played for stakes that would make a huge pile of casino chips seem paltry by comparison. But given the events of the last twenty-four hours, Raoul would take some pleasure in the fact that he had taken the money — if it were a large enough pile — from the coffers of the Venetian.

“How good?

“I’m up eighty or so. The only luck I’m having in this town is at a craps table.”

I whistled.

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