Page 18 of Spade

She turned and returned the bottle to the counter behind her, watching me through the glass as I checked out her ass in a pair of jeans that hugged her the way a baby hugs a tit.

“Will that be all, Detective Shaw?” She glanced around the casino and then said, “Things are starting to pick up a bit.”

I wrote it all down, even though I already knew what I needed from the traffic cams. “I’ll want to see that footage. When’s the last time you saw her?”

Selene paused. “Depends on what you mean by ‘see.’”

“Physically, in person.” I know she was expecting me to look around the casino, but I didn’t. I’d played this game too often.

She sipped her whiskey. “About an hour ago.”

“She still here?”

Selene gave me a look that was so blank it came all the way back around to being aggressive. “You want to go search the premises, Detective? I could escort you.”

I raised a hand, warding off the challenge. “Not yet. Just doing my job.”

She lifted her glass in a mock salute. “So am I. The women in my club are good people, detective. They don’t walk around Vegas killing people.”

“I never mentioned any murders,” I said, thinking I’d caught her in a lie.

She pointed at the small notepad I’d been writing in. “Third page, where you were writing, at the top, MURDERS.”

I let the silence spool out, waited to see if she’d fill it. In my experience, people always do. The trick is making them want to.

“Spade’s a good person,” Selene finally said. “You won’t find anyone here who’ll say different.”

I glanced at the mirrored wall behind the bar. “I’d love to hear her tell it.”

She shrugged, a small movement. “If she wants to talk to you, she’ll find you. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time.”

The interview was going nowhere, but that was the point. This place ran on the kind of loyalty you can’t buy—only earn, or blackmail. And I could tell that nobody in the room was going to break rank, not for me and not for anyone else with a badge.

I stood. “Thanks for the drink,” I said, even though I hadn’t touched it.

Selene smiled, this time with teeth. “Anytime, Detective.”

I took my time leaving. It’s always good to look like you’re in less of a hurry than you actually are. On the way out, I let my eyes sweep the whole room again. The poker tables. The boot prints on the side door mat—muddy, fresh, and matched the size of the ones found at the scene. A leather jacket, draped over a barstool near the back, SGT AT ARMS in block letters across the patch. A thin line of blood on the knuckle of the right glove, almost invisible unless you’re looking for it. I was.

And in the shadow of a support beam, just outside the bar’s immediate circle, a lean woman in black. She had her arms folded, hands in gloves, face a mask of studied indifference. She watched me with the flat, bored stare of a cat in a sunbeam. If you’d asked me to pick Spade out of a lineup, that would’ve been the moment.

I didn’t acknowledge her because she wanted me to. Instead, I nodded to Selene, made a show of checking my phone, and let myself out. The heat outside was knife-sharp, and I relished it. A minute later, the neon Harlots sign buzzed behind me, and I was back on the sidewalk, civilian again.

Inside, I knew, the game had shifted. I’d learned nothing and everything, both at once. Just how I liked it.

I lit a cigarette and smoked it near the front door, giving Selene and the club enough time to gather themselves inside. The goal was to make them uncomfortable. That’s when mistakes were made.

I finished the cigarette and followed the next customer inside, ignoring the stares following me.

There are rules about how long you can let a silence go before it curdles into something else. One beat, and it’s just a pause. Two, and you’re thinking. Three, and the power starts to shift. Selene let it run five. I let her, because she was the kind of person who needed to feel the weight of your patience, needed to test what you’d do if she left you unmoored for a while.

“Forget something?” she asked, watching me through the mirror. Another club member had joined her behind the bar. Joker is what the file on my desk said she was called. They were sexy and deadly. All of them.

I smiled at the back of her head. “Just a couple of things I’m trying to figure out.”

She half-turned on the stool, one boot hooked over the rail, and gestured with the glass. “Then let’s get to the real part, Detective.”

I fished out my notepad and made a show of clicking the pen. It was cheap, the kind of stationary that left blue rivers on your fingers, but people always noticed the ritual of it. “Walk me through the last three weekends. Friday through Sunday. Where was your Sergeant at Arms? You know, since you have that great memory and all.” I nodded at the whiskey bottle on the bar. “Two fingers.”