Free Arizona Dreams by Jon Talton Page A

Grandfather’s admonition that casinos were not built by the money of the winners.
    We walked quickly past the machines, which looked high tech and elaborate—not at all my memory of slots. They had names like Xanadu, S’mores, Triple-Double Diamond, and Wild Thing, and comfortable seats were attached. Few were unattended. The crowd was mostly older and badly dressed, although that description embraced much of the population of Greater Phoenix. From the slack look of their faces, they could have been working in a textile mill. Nobody looked to be having a good time. None turned to notice as we walked through, escorted by two linebacker-sized tribal cops in uniform.
    Then we were alone, stepping around a row of chairs that had been set up to block off a far province of the slots empire. More tribal police stood watch. Beyond them, all I could see was a circle of men wearing plainclothes and badges on their belts. One of them broke free: Patrick Blair. He looked at me with the suppressed glee of a tattling child. Then another man came forward. He was small, with worried, hooded eyes and TV preacher hair. He wore an olive dress shirt and tie of the kind picked out by a certain kind of wife. He was a white man with a loud whisper.
    â€œSheriff, we need to deal with this quietly and get this out of the sight of our patrons.”
    â€œEveryone here will have to be interviewed before they can leave,” Peralta said.
    â€œBut that could be two hundred people.”
    â€œEverybody,” Peralta said. He looked around. “I don’t see anybody taking offense. Anyway, it’s a tribal and federal case…”
    I left them talking and walked ten feet farther.
    â€œSo the professor didn’t tell the sheriff about his little adventure…”
    â€œFuck you, Blair.” I was all out of devastating one-liners.
    Our dustup was threatening to disturb a man who was sitting before a big slot machine called Damnation Alley. The machine was still making sounds of gunfire and action-movie music. It informed us that it could take every kind of bill up to twenty dollars. The man looked frail inside a checked short-sleeve shirt and old blue jeans. Some gamblers are so dedicated they will sit for hours before the slots. It’s understandable they might even fall asleep on one. Unfortunately, the small man slumped backward in the seat was merely perfectly balanced by some odd combination of gravity, body mass, and the onset of rigor mortis. When I saw the ice pick handle protruding from his right ear, I’m sure the whole casino could hear the catch in my throat.
    Blair watched me. “His wallet’s gone. But I met him a while back, with Snyder, when we interviewed him about his brother’s body being found in the desert.”
    â€œLouis Bell.”

13
    The small, worried manager conveyed us to an office that overlooked the casino through a darkened, one-way window. I followed Peralta inside and the casino manager went away. The office was large, with a highly polished wood floor, and ornamented with Indian pottery and baskets. A bank of television screens showed different angles of the casino. Out the window, I could see the detectives and crime-scene technicians still gathered around Damnation Alley, as if they expected the corpse of Louis Bell to hit the big payout. If so, it would give the manager yet another reason to worry. Or maybe celebrate. I could imagine the billboards around town: “Casino Arizona, Where You CAN Take It With You.” Peralta had moved to the large leather chair behind a long modern desk with a bare top. The chair barely contained his bulk. He just stared at me.
    â€œWell?” I said.
    He just shrugged, turning down the corners of his face so he briefly had bulldog jowls. The room was silent. The miniature city of lights out the window gave a sense of the symphony of odds and desperate hopes that lay beyond the thick glass. I walked along the wall,