“Bar fights, gang fights, robberies gone bad,” Silver told them. “And none of them took place in the big hotels. The big hotels police their clientele way better than we could do with our budget. They got the money, the motivation, and the manpower to keep the crap out. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen…it has happened…but the hotel corridors are patrolled pretty well. Someone screaming or someone dragging a body out of one of the rooms would likely be noticed.”

“They got more security cameras than the Pentagon,” Rodney Major said. “They got people looking at them night and day. Funny stuff goes on between individuals behind closed doors, they don’t bother with that. But if the powers that be see any hint of a prostitution ring or drugs being dealt out of a room, they’re gonna bust it up with their own people and keep it quiet. The owners aren’t gangsters anymore, haven’t been for forty years. They’re savvy businessmen. Why would they want the illegal crap when they can rake in billions doing legal gaming?”

“I’m not saying that Garth ran a prostitution ring,” Marge said. “But we did hear from his friends that he goes to Vegas all the time, spending way more money on women than on gambling.”

Silver said, “You told me that, and it got me thinking.”

“He’s dangerous when he’s thinking,” Major said.

“Yeah, you can smell the wood burning.” Silver smiled. “Anyway, a lot of the young bucks who spend a lot of time here, like every weekend or every other weekend, they just don’t have the wallet size to stay at the big hotels. If they want cheap action, they go outside the Strip. From my standpoint, that’s easier to handle because the scale is smaller.”

Marge and Oliver nodded. Silver had a story to tell and there was no sense rushing him through it.

“So I start making calls,” Silver said. “I call up downtown…that’s still pretty glitzy and hard to get a fix on. No luck there. I call up Boulder City. They’ve got a small strip there, but I still don’t get anywhere with that. Then I start on the smaller places like the one you’re staying at. These establishments don’t have a posse of soldiers behind them like the big hotels do. They rely on police. I have a good relationship with them. I still don’t get any hits, but I can’t let go. I get that way sometimes…that I’m moving in the right direction, like this invisible hand pushing me. After so many years in homicide, you learn to respect your intuition.”

Marge said, “Absolutely.”