29

L.A. to Palm Springs is 120 miles of a single monster interstate, the 10.

The first half of the trip takes you through downtown, Boyle Heights, and the eastern exurbs- Azusa, Claremont, Upland, Rancho Cucamonga- and into San Bernardino County, where the air varies from sweet to toxic depending on wind and God's whim, and the view from the freeway is a lulling homogeny of marts and malls and car lots and the kind of housing you'd expect to find hugging the freeway. Then comes agriculture and rail yards near Fontana and just after Yucaipa most of the traffic drops off and the air gets dry and healthy. By the time you pass the cherry groves of Beaumont, you're rolling through a platter of gray dirt and white rock, Joshua trees and mesquite, the San Bernardino Mountains off to the right, capped with snow.

The empty road's an invitation to speed and most people RSVP yes. During spring break, golden kids tank up on beer and weed and delusions of immortality, whooping and high-fiving on truck beds, hanging over the sides of little convertibles, flashing sexual greetings. Most make it to downtown Palm Springs, some end up roadkill. The highway patrol stays furtive and watchful and does its best to keep the death toll within acceptable limits.

Milo got stopped only once, just before the San Gorgonio Pass, well after darkness had set in. He'd pushed ninety since Riverside, the Porsche barely working. It's a white 928, five years old, in perfect condition, and the young CHP officer looked at it with admiration, then inspected Milo's credentials, blinking only once when Milo said he was working a homicide case and he needed to catch a material witness by surprise.

Handing back the papers, the Chippie recited a warning about nuts on the road and the need to keep an eye out, Detective, then he watched as we rolled out.

We cruised into Palm Springs at 10:00 P.M., passing block after block of low-rent condos and entering the outer edges of the business district. Unlike Bakersfield, here little had changed. The same seedy mix of secondhand shops posing as antique dealers, motels, white-belt clothing boutiques, dreadful art. All the big money was in Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage, along with the streets named after Dinah Shore and Bob Hope.

“Look for Palm Grove Way,” said Milo. “The Sun Palace Casino.”

“This doesn't look like an Indian reservation.”

“What'd you expect, tepees and totem poles? These are the lucky Indians: booted into the desert but their patch just happened to leak shiny black stuff so they got rich, learned about loopholes, figured they were a nation to themselves and sued for the right to run games. The state finally gave 'em bingo but remained penny-ante about the immorality of gambling.”

“Then the state started running the lottery,” I said, “so that argument became a little inconsistent.”

“Exactly. Indians all around the state are catching on. There's a new casino up in Santa Ynez. State continues to screw around, taking its sweet time to grant permits, not allowing the Indians to manufacture slot machines or bring them in from out-of-state. Which is a big deal because slots are the number one moneymakers. So they smuggle the suckers in on produce trucks and once they're on the reservation, nothing anyone can do about it.”

“Detective,” I said, “sounds like you're condoning law-breaking.”

“There's laws and there's laws.”

“Palm Grove,” I said, pointing to the next block.

He turned left onto another commercial street. More motels, a laundromat, a run-down spa, fast-food joints crowded with people soaking up grease and the hot night air. Then up ahead, bright, blinking turquoise and yellow lights in the shape of a cowboy hat, crowning a fifty-foot tower.

“Tasteful, huh?”

“So all of downtown's a reservation?” I said.

“Nope, it varies from lot to lot. The key is to search land records, find some square footage once owned by an Indian, go into partnership. Here we are.”

He zipped into the massive dirt parking lot surrounding the casino. Behind the hat tower was a surprisingly small one-story building trimmed with more blue and yellow lights and huge, upslanting letters that shouted SUN PALACE in orange neon surrounded by radiating fingers of scarlet.

Between the tower and the building was a brightly lit car drop-off. A brand-new purple Camaro was parked up against the building, a pink ribbon wrapped around its hood. The sign on the windshield said FOUR BLACKJACKS IN A ROW WINS THIS CAR!

Another sign leaning against the hat tower promised VALET PARKING! but no one was around and Milo found a space in the lot. Just as we got out, a husky, brown-skinned boy in a white polo shirt and black slacks trotted toward us.

“Hey, I woulda taken that for you.” Hand out.

Milo showed him a badge. “I woulda joined the Beatles if my name was McCartney.”

The valet's mouth closed. He stared for a second, then ran to open the doors of a urine-yellow, boat-sized Cadillac full of laughing, sun-broiled, silver-haired optimists.

We walked through the casino's glass double doors and into a wall of noise just as a very tall man in Johnny Cash black stumbled out. Behind him was a four-hundred-pound woman in a flowered sundress and beach sandals. She looked ready to deliver a speech and he kept well ahead of her.

The doors closed behind us, locking in the noise and eye-searing fluorescence. We were on a small, elevated, brass-railed platform covered with blue-green industrial carpeting and sectioned by arbitrary columns of polished mahogany. Steps on both sides led down to the playing room: one single space a hundred by fifty. More aqua carpeting and columns under acoustical-tile ceiling. White walls, no windows, no clocks.

To the right was a single stud-poker game: hunched men in plaid shirts and windbreakers, black-lensed sunshades, paralyzed faces. Then row after row of slots, maybe ten dozen machines, rolling, beeping, blinking, looking more organic than the people who cranked their handles. The blackjack tables took up the left side of the room, crammed together so you had to either sit or keep circulating. Dealers in deep red polo shirts and white name tags stood back-to-back, laying down patter, scooping up ante chips, sliding cards out of the shoe.

Bings and buzzers, nicotine air, cash-in window at the rear of the room. But this early no one wanted out. The players were a mixture of desert retirees, Japanese tourists, blue-collar workers, bikers, Indians, and a few dissolute lounge bugs trying to look sharp in fused suits and long-collar shirts. Everyone pretending winning was a habit, pretending this was Vegas. Perfect-body-less-than-perfect-face girls in white microdresses walked around, balancing drink trays. Big men dressed in white and black like the valet patrolled the room, scanning like cameras, their holstered guns eloquent.

Someone moved toward us from a corner of the platform, then stopped. A gray-haired, gray-mustachioed man in a gray sharkskin suit and red crepe tie, fifty-five or so with a long, loose face and purse-string lips. Walkie-talkie in one hand, hair-tonic tracks in his pompadour. He pretended to ignore us, didn't move. But some sort of signal must have been sent because two of the armed guards strolled over and stood beneath the platform. One was an Indian, one a freckled redhead. Both had thick arms, swaybacks, hard potbellies. The Indian's belt was tooled with red letters: GARRETT.

People came in and out of the building in a steady flow. Milo moved closer to the brass rail and the gray-mustachioed man came over as Garrett turned and watched.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” Deep, flat voice. The name tag, computer-printed. LARRY GIOVANNE, MANAGER.

Milo showed his ID in a cupped hand. “Ted Barnaby.”

Giovanne didn't react. The ID went back in Milo's pocket.