Private Dick Casefile 01 - Lily White Rose Red

Berman. There were stars like Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Lily McIntyre. The Rising Star and the Flamingo opened in 1946 on what would become the Las Vegas Strip, and overnight Sin City was born.
    Now in 1948, drinking and gambling might have been legal, but many other things were not. And that’s where I come in. I do things that the cops can’t. In the city of neon, I shine a light on things that some people would rather remain in the dark.
    My name is Grey Randall, and I’m a private dick.

    Lily White, Rose Red: Grey Randall, Private Dick Casefile #1
    3

    Chapter 1: Miss Lily Comes to Call

    YOU’VE heard of the big fish in the small pond. That was Vegas in 1948 for casino owners, mobsters, and movie stars—but not for me. I’d had a few jobs since I landed in town and even did some very clever work, but it was all small potatoes: the cashier with sticky fingers operating the till at Woolworth’s on Fremont, the dame who slipped the leash her bookie boyfriend had her on and was seeing a blackjack dealer on the sly. And then there was my favorite case, the newsboy who cut in on the other kids’ territory. I never thought I’d be catching a twelve-year-old criminal mastermind, but he had the goods all right.
    Went around on the other boys’ routes, collecting a day early. He was counting on the fact that most people just don’t look that close at the kid who rides by and tosses the paper on their front step. And he was scoring big-time, at least till I got on his trail. Probably had a blooming career ahead of him when he got a little older.
    No, I was the little fish in the big pond. None of the bigs came around calling on me to get their problems solved, at least not until that one day when she walked into my office.
    Femmes fatales had been noticeably absent since I hung out my shingle, but the day she opened the door without knocking, I knew I’d hit the jackpot.
    She was a doll all right, a little out of my age range, maybe in her early forties although she didn’t look it, but everything was positioned right where it should be. She was tall and slim, dressed all in black: the fashionable suit with the big shoulders, expensive furs, the jaunty hat with a little veil and a sweeping feather, but the somber color just set off her shiny red hair and that famous peaches and cream complexion.
    They said it extended way down past what I could see with all her clothes on.

    4

    CATT FORD

    “Mr. Dick,” she announced in a velvety tone that spoke of seduction and made you want to get dirty.
    “Call me Mr. Randall, that’s my name, Miss—?” I stood up politely. My mother was a stickler for proper manners.
    “You may call me Lily.”
    I admired her strategy. By putting us on a first name basis right off the bat, she managed to stay incognito and get us on a cozy footing.
    A lot of people don’t like admitting that they need a dick’s help. But I recognized her, all right. Miss Lily McIntyre had been a dancer, not just a dancer, only the most famous dame to have ever strutted her stuff on a Vegas stage. She wasn’t hoofing for dough any more, but retirement seemed to agree with her.
    There was something about her that suggested that if she were yours, each day would be filled with fascinating and exciting surprises.
    Her laugh made the little lines around her eyes stand out a bit more, despite the expert make-up. She might be getting on in years, but she was still an astoundingly beautiful woman. And she had something that transcended beauty, that elusive quality called charm that would make her the center of attention when she was eighty. She flashed me the kind of smile that had probably gotten her that fur stole around her shoulders and the sparkly bracelet on her wrist. She really piled on the rocks, but she could carry the weight.
    Miss McIntyre came a little closer, and I got a whiff of her perfume. Expensive, just like everything else about her, from the diamonds sparkling in her ears to her exquisite coiffure. She had on a four-string pearl choker with a diamond and emerald catch; probably she thought that was toned down for days, but under it I caught the glint of a fine platinum chain studded at intervals with diamonds that disappeared down into the deep V of her silk blouse. I’m no expert in women’s fashion, but hers was top-drawer. First class all the way for a dame like her. I wondered who was keeping her now that dancing wasn’t paying the bills.
    “All the