Room No. 4
The electric fan made the overhead 300 watt bare light bulb sway, casting shadows in a slow dance across the army-surplus metal table and steel chairs not designed for comfort. Cigarette smoke twisted in the draft, spread a light blue haze across the ceiling of Room No. 4 of the Viceroy Motel. The Viceroy was a run down motor court just outside the Las Vegas city limits on the long highway south to Berdoo and Los Angeles. The Viceroy was mostly home to Vegas twilight life: craps dealers in the breaking houses, down on the luck gamblers hiding from their bookies, prostitutes on the verge of aging out of their profession. Tapped out pensioners. Busted flushes and broken straits. The scene might have been shot in Kodak black and white.
Room No. 4 was different, although it had the same sparse furnishing the rest of the Viceroy cheap formica and furnishings bought second hand from Strip hotels. It was on permanent loan to an officially unknown and unnamed unit of the Las Vegas Police Department headed by Lt. Max Scheer, known to the brass as the Man Who Played By His Own Rules, and tolerated so long as he Got Results. Scheer was said to be on easy terms with the Chicago Outfit that ran the casinos, the Mormons who managed them, city and county politicians, daily newspapermen, confidence grifters, the local G-men, Frank Sinatra and even Mr Howard Hughes.
Scheer keyed open the door to Room No. 4, took in the scene: Deputy McVicar and Sgt. Bruno, goons hired for muscle rather than police smarts looked up from their chairs. Their ties were undone, shirtsleeves rolled up. Bruno nursed a bloodied fist, McVicar wore a blank stare waiting his turn at the third man who was handcuffed to the metal table.
Bruno shook his head, a silent “no” to Scheer.
Sheer was a rake, man with hawk features, sharply dressed in a tailored suntan police uniform with gold braid, pants bloused into spit shined riding boots, his uniform coat sporting a double row of polished buttons, shirt creases knife crisp even in the desert heat of a late October day. He was unarmed, but he wasn’t the kind of man who needed to be armed: he had the flat, dead eyes of a hard case up from the mean streets of West Vegas.
He stared down the handcuffed man for a minute, finally said, shook his head.
“Wait, that’s not a Halloween costume.”
The handcuffed man was dressed in the remains of a Santa suit, straight from Central Casting. Its fur collar was violently torn, his hat was missing its puff ball. One of the man’s eyes was swollen shut, the other shiny-defiant. They’d stripped him of his red coat, the man’s wife-beater t-shirt was stained and barely covered his stomach. Suspenders hung limp at his waist.
“Ho, Ho … .”
“Shut yur filthy mouth ye animal.” McVicar backhanded the handcuffed man a vicious blow across his face. The chair went over backwards. Spittal, blood and teeth flew.
“… Ho.”
“So this … Thing … is the Slay Ride Killer,” Scheer finally said.
Deputy McVicar answered.
“So Sgt. Bruno an’ I picked him up at the Mayor’s Annual Halloween Haunted Mansion whilst eyeing a couple of showgirls in Scary Klown costumes, so we did. Meanin’ he was oglin’ said girls wif malevolent intent, not us. Brought him here di-recktly for questionin’ per your orders. Sgt. Bruno worked him over real good but he won’t talk.”
The Slay Ride Killer had been a yearly fixture in town, some said for decades, others said he would menace parties and events, peep in bedroom windows, soak down front porches. Halloween candy was stolen by the bucket from houses. Crude pictures were drawn on bathroom walls and mail boxes Louisville Slugged into matchwood. Prominent citizens were doorbell ditched and dozens of the transient residents of Las Vegas went missing, presumed kidnapped or worse.
There were sightings, to be sure. Every shopping mall Santa in the county had been rounded up and put through the Third Degree yet the case was no closer to being solved. Curiously, this scourge of public safety would appear only in October and vanish by the New Year. Every year crusading newspapers Demanded Action. Every year the fiend and his presumed Elf accomplices went uncaught.
Until now.
“So you von’t talk. Vell, we haf vays of making you talk.” Scheer picked up a leather sap filled with shotgun pellets, slapped it against an open palm, looked down at the handcuffed man, still squirming in his overturned chair.
Case closed. In the end, the handcuffed man did talk, and before McVicar and Bruno buried him far out in the desert he dropped the dime on one of his crew, Dancer Vixen, a hard as nails showgirl in the late show at the Sands, moonlighting as the Deceased’s wheelman / gun moll.
Lt. Scheer was a very observant man, and in his own way, a very thoughtful man. The handcuffed man’s French cuffs on his Santa trousers had a certain je ne sais quoi, the very notion of an near endless supply of free Candy Corn teased his baser instincts as did the possibility of coming to some kind of arrangement with Miss Dancer Vixen, now held without bond awaiting arraignment. And his boss Captain Smith’s house needed tee-peeing like no other crib in town.
Perhaps the case was not closed.
The End?