Free The Other Side of Silence by Bill Pronzini Page A

a while, you probably know him. This friend of mine.”
    “Maybe. What’s his name?”
    “Well, he called himself Banning when I knew him.”
    “Called himself? What does that mean?”
    “Claimed he had a good reason for not using his real name.” Fallon shrugged. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
    “I don’t know anybody named Banning,” she said.
    “So maybe now he’s using his real name again. He’s in his midthirties, heavyset, kinky black hair. Dragon tattoo on his right wrist, wears a gold cat’s-eye ring on his left hand.”
    She made a face. “Doesn’t sound like a guy I’d want to know. What do you want with him?”
    “He owes me some money.”
    “Yeah, I’ll bet. What are you, anyway, some kind of cop?”
    “Do cops give out five-dollar tips?”
    “I don’t know any cops,” she said. “Or any Bannings. Or any guys with dragon tattoos. Thanks for the tip.” And she walked away.
    Wrong approach. But what was the right one, given the sketchy information he had?
    Fallon took one more stroll around the casino floor. This time there was activity on a raised stage set back into a long alcove at the rear. Tinny piano music blared and spotlights shone hard and bright on eight young women in skimpy costumes dancing a Western movie version of the can-can. Each wore one of the gold-and-black garters, not on their arms but on their bare thighs.
    Ah, Christ, he thought. Dancers, cocktail waitresses, blackjack dealers— all the women employees wore them. And there didn’t seem to be any difference between a Golden Horseshoe sleeve garter and leg garter. The one Casey had seen at the motel didn’t have to’ve been Banning’s. It could just as easily belong to a girlfriend who worked here.
    Some detective, Fallon. Jumping to conclusions, missing the obvious.
    Maybe he was out of his league in this kind of hunt; maybe he wasn’t the right man for the job after all. It might be smarter to turn the legwork over to a professional. Sam Ulbrich, or someone like him. Foot the bill, and then stand off with Casey and wait for results.
    No, the hell with that. Geena’s knock on him: not aggressive enough, not a fighter anymore—a quitter. Besides, detectives were expensive and he didn’t have unlimited funds, and there were no guarantees a pro would be able to find out any more than he could. Ulbrich hadn’t found Spicer and the boy, had he?
    All right. Man up and use his head from now on.
    He rode the escalator to the second floor, where there were a steak restaurant—Old Billy’s Texas Grill—and a coffee shop. He sat in one of the coffee-shop booths, tried a new approach on the woman who waited on him.
    “I’m looking for a friend of mine. He might work here, might be a friend of one of the woman employees—I’m not sure which.” And then Banning’s description. Casual, offhand. No mention of the name Banning.
    Craps—a loser.
    After eight by the time he finished picking at a bad tuna salad. He tried the same line on the cashier while he paid his check, and when he went back down to the casino, on a different cocktail waitress.
    Craps again.

THREE
    T HE INTIME ROOM RESEMBLED an oversized 1930s nightclub laid out in a circular fashion, with the three bars and the stage forming an outer ring around an inner one of close-packed tables lit by blue lamps and a parqueted dance floor. Waiters in tuxedos circulated among the tables; even the bartenders were in soup-and-fish. New Orleans-style jazz music blasted from loudspeakers. Benny Amato and his Jazzbos were onstage, warming up for their opening set with riffs and trills and runs that you could hear when one of the recorded pieces ended. The place was packed, standing room only at the bars. Fallon’s choice of the rear bar had been the right one. It was the least jammed of the three because it was the farthest from the performers.
    He jostled his way to a position at one end. The stage was a long way off, but he had a clear enough look at the