Neon Prey

by John Sandford

  He had no idea where she would wind up but didn’t doubt that it would be interesting.

  * * *

  —

  THE TRIP TO LA was fast: he arrived after rush hour, and the 5 and the 405 fed right into Marina del Rey. He checked back into the Marriott, called Bob and Rae, and met them at the entrance to the bar.

  They both looked at him for a long five seconds, then Rae took hold of Lucas’s biceps and said, “You’re okay.”

  “I’m okay,” Lucas said.

  Bob: “You look like shit. You’re kinda gray. You gotta start eating, man.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Lucas said, pulling away from Rae. “It’ll take a while to get it all back, but I’m right there . . . What are we doing?”

  “That English dude comes on at six o’clock at Flower Child’s,” Rae said. “We could have a few beers and go to bed and start tomorrow or we could walk down there right now and jack him up.”

  “I don’t need a beer,” Lucas said. “And I got the jack.”

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  Los Angeles had been working its way through a heatwave, with rolling brownouts killing power across the basin. Washington Boulevard wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t as brightly lit as it had been in May.

  As they walked toward Flower Child’s, Rae said, “All right, we’re gonna jack him up and you said you got a jack. What’s the jack?”

  “I’d rather talk about your love life,” Lucas said. “I can’t believe that it’s taken this long for you to nail Tremanty.”

  “She can’t, either,” Bob said. “I told her why, but she’s not buying it.”

  “Shut up,” Rae said.

  “What’s the reason?” Lucas asked.

  Rae said, “Shut up, both of you.”

  “Quiet. I’m talking to Bob,” Lucas said.

  Bob said, “Well, being a handsome guy with a job, a nice car, expensive threads, and a gun, and being located in downtown New Orleans, with one of the largest known concentrations of redheads, hairdressers, and cocktail waitresses outside of Dallas, I believe Tremanty is well tended to. Rae made the mistake of indicating her interest, which means she’s always there if Tremanty needs a backup, or, you know, feels like going out of town for a long weekend.”

  “Big mistake,” Lucas said. “Can’t believe she made an amateurish error like that.”

  “I’m heavily armed,” Rae said. “Shut up and tell me about your jack.”

  “I could have a word with Tremanty,” Lucas said to Rae. “He’s like a son to me.”

  “One more fuckin’ word . . .”

  Lucas said to Bob, “She’s not only armed, I think she’s actually suffering, at some level, from heartbreak. We’d best leave it alone.”

  “You could be right,” Bob said. “Tell me about the jack.”

  They stopped to let a right-turning car nearly run over their toes. “While I was sitting on my ass in St. Paul,” Lucas said, as the car drove on, “I called up an old friend who happens to be a deputy director at the FBI.”

  Rae said, “Louis Mallard.”

  “That’s correct. Not only a deputy director but a major law enforcement politician. He called up a pal with Scotland Yard—”

  “You gotta be shittin’ me,” Bob said. “There really is a Scotland Yard?”

  “And asked, politely, for any information about Oliver Haar. They had a file. Haar was the youngest member of a smash-and-grab gang in London. He ran his mouth too much and the London cops busted him. They gave him the old ‘Don’t drop the soap in the showers’ talk, being a nice-looking young kid looking at five years or so. He cut a deal to serve no time and ratted out the rest of the gang.”

  “Should have taken his chances with the soap,” Rae said.

  “Maybe. The guys he ratted out are a rough bunch. It gets better. The leader of the gang, whose name was George Wilks, and who had a lot of experience, was responsible for fencing the stuff they stole, and he parceled out the money to the gang in weekly payments. He told them he didn’t want them buying Series 7s or anything else that would catch the eyes of the cops. They had enough to live well, buy decent cars and dope, go to Italy or Portugal in the winter, and so on. Anyway, Wilks and the others all went to prison. Not long after they went away, somebody kicked in the door of Wilks’s house while his wife was out, pulled a dummy wall out from behind a toilet, and took out the two hundred thousand pounds that Wilks had stashed there. Haar knew about the stash. That’s just a rumor, but the London cops think it’s probably true. In the meantime, the Brits let Haar keep his passport—wink wink, nudge nudge—and he hasn’t been seen in England since Wilks’s bathroom got robbed.”

  “What a bad boy Oliver is,” Bob said.

  “That’s what everybody thinks,” Lucas said. “That was twelve years ago. All the gang members got out of prison since then, although two are back in again. The others are still involved in various kinds of crime, according to the London cops. If Oliver were discovered by U.S. Immigration to have come here with an undisclosed criminal record, and to be involved in criminal activity here, he’d be deported. Back to England. Where he probably doesn’t want to go.”

  Rae: “Oh-oh.”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s an excellent jack you got there,” Bob said.

  “I thought so,” Lucas said.

  A young couple walked past. The guy was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, and the woman was wearing a brief strapless top, tiny shorts, and sandals. Rae said, after they passed, “Here we are, walking down the street wearing long pants and jackets. You think anybody in LA hasn’t made us as cops? We need to revise our dress code if we have to work here.”

  “What are you thinking?” Bob asked.

  “What that guy was wearing: shorts, T-shirts, but maybe running shoes. We carry some weight, so maybe cargo shorts. We need to go shopping.”

  “Tomorrow,” Lucas said. “Though I’m feeling a little moist right now. And I can tell you up front, the Davenport doesn’t wear cargo shorts.”

  * * *

  —

  FLOWER CHILD’S was nowhere near crowded. As Lucas remembered the waitress saying during their first visit, it was pretty much a middle-aged meat market, gold chains and all, though no leisure suits were in sight. Or any suits at all, for that matter—too hot.

  Oliver Haar was standing at a podium-style reception desk, talking to a woman who looked like a customer, a friendly chat. Lucas recognized him from mug shots sent by the London cops. Haar was a decade older, but he’d aged well, with wavy blond hair over a high forehead, blue eyes, a long nose over perfect teeth, and a mild tan. He also looked like he’d been hit by a Tommy Bahama truck, wearing an open-necked Hawaiian shirt, pale cotton slacks, and canvas shoes without socks.

  Even as he was talking to the customer, his eyes clicked to Lucas, Bob, and Rae, and Lucas picked up the crook’s involuntary flinch, the impulse to run, though it was quickly smothered.

  Lucas stepped up to the desk and said, “Oliver. Would you have a minute to run upstairs to the office and chat?”

  He nodded. “I suppose so.” To the woman he’d been talking to, he said, “Back in a minute, darling.”

  As they followed him through the back, he turned to Lucas and asked, “Who are you?”

  “U.S. Marshals,” Lucas said.

  “I haven’t done anything at all, except work hard,” Haar said. “I do have a green card.”

  “We’re not interested in your immigration status, though we could be,” Lucas said. “Why don’t we talk upstairs.”

  * * *

  —

  THE OUTER OFFICE occupied by Heather, Tommy Saito’s assistant, was empty, and there were enough chairs to accommodate all four of them. Haar laid back in one of them and asked, “So . . . what’s going on?”

  “We need your coo
peration on something. And if we get it, we walk away. If we don’t get it, we talk to Immigration about some things you may have left off your green card application,” Lucas said. “I’m not trying to be unfriendly, I’m trying to outline the . . . realities.”

  Haar nodded and asked, “What do you want? Specifically?”

  “You use the pay phone downstairs as a kind of switchboard or answering service,” Lucas said. “No cops know that except the three of us, and nobody needs to know that we ever talked to you. We’re looking for a man named Marion Beauchamps, who you might know as Martin Keller or Martin Lawrence, if somebody called for him.”

  Haar stared at Lucas for a moment, showing some teeth in what wasn’t a smile, then bobbed his head. “He’s a hard one. If he knew I’d talked to you, I could get hurt.”

  “We will try to prevent that. If we can find them, they’ll be going to prison forever,” Rae said.

  Haar thought about that for a second, looked carefully at Bob and Rae, and then back to Lucas. “It was Martin Keller and Martin Lawrence until a few months ago. Now it’s Raymond Sherman. I don’t know where he is, but if somebody calls for him I have a number to pass along.”

  “A current one?” Bob asked.

  “Like I said, everything changed a few months ago, including the number. If anyone calls for Keller or Lawrence, I don’t know who they’re talking about. If somebody calls for Sherman, I pass along the new number. I’ve only had one call for Sherman.”

  “Have you called the number yourself?”

  Haar shook his head. “No. I don’t need that kind of trouble.”

  “How many clients do you have?” Bob asked. “For your forwarding services?”

  “A few . . . twelve or fifteen. Most of them completely legitimate. I hook up people who need lawyers or real estate agents . . . I have a dog groomer, even.”

  “Dope dealers?”

  “I don’t do dope,” Haar said. “I’ve been asked, but dealers get caught. Always. Then they cough up everything they know. So I don’t do that.”

  “How did you connect with Sherman? I mean, originally?” Lucas asked. “Whatever his real name is. Or was.”

  “There’s a guy who used to hang out here a lot. He said he was on the run from his wife, he said he owed a couple hundred grand in alimony and child support and he told me he’d give me fifty bucks a call if I’d be his switchboard,” Haar said. He shrugged. “All I had to do is take two steps down the hall to answer the phone, so I said yes. Then another guy came along. My name was passed along by these chaps. I don’t know who any of them were or what they did. I just passed numbers. After a bit, I began to realize that some of them were . . . bad people. Two of them, maybe three, made the Los Angeles Times, and the Times doesn’t write about anyone unless they’ve done something noticeable.”

  “What was your relationship with Sherman?”

  “I passed numbers to him. Most of these people I never met. Sherman—I actually knew him as Keller—came in to see what was what. I knew right away that he was the wrong type. But he liked this place, he liked the women. He’d come in, like anyone else. Rougher but not crazy. A certain kind of woman definitely had a taste for what he was selling.”

  “Give me the phone number you’re calling,” Lucas said.

  Haar dug in his pant pocket, took out a black address book the size of a credit card and an eighth of an inch thick. He read out the number and said, “I hope you’ll use it with care. It’s possible that nobody calls that number except me, so if you call it, they’d know who gave it to you.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Lucas said.

  “I’m surprised you don’t use a smartphone for the numbers, maybe with some encryption,” Rae said.

  Haar smiled for the first time, a brief flash of white teeth, and said, “You know the best encryption? Two pieces of paper wadded up and swallowed.”

  “All right,” Lucas said. He took a card out of his wallet, wrote his phone number on the back, and said, “If Sherman calls, give me a ring. Don’t forget. When we get him—and we will—we’ll look at his phone to see who he’s been calling . . . And who’s been calling him.”

  Haar looked at the card, then at the reverse side, and said, “I need to get some cards like this.”

  Rae asked, “Like what?”

  Haar showed it to her: the card was blank on both sides, except for the handwritten phone number. Rae looked at Lucas and said, “Explain.”

  Lucas said, “Sometimes assholes don’t want to carry a cop’s card around with them.” And to Haar: “Not saying you’re an asshole, or anything.”

  “I’m actually a pretty decent bloke,” Haar said. “With some quirks.”

  After some more talk, and more warnings about the consequences if he spoke to anyone about their visit, they let Haar go back to his reception desk.

  * * *

  —

  RAE CALLED TREMANTY from the sidewalk outside the bar. “I’m with Lucas and Bob. We have a phone number, but we need to be careful.”

  Tremanty called her back as they were walking into the hotel. He’d talked to the FBI’s overnight phone guy, who was named Earl.

  “Earl didn’t do anything that might trip any wires. He looked at records and nothing else,” Tremanty said. “The phone’s a burner, and there have been four calls to and from. It’s in Vegas. I told them to email you a map of where the phone was when the calls were made. That could take a few hours.”

  “You know what we’re talking about here,” Lucas said. “We want to get on them before they take off again.”

  “I’m pushing Earl.”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS, BOB, AND RAE were all on the same floor at the hotel. They went up in the elevator and walked down the hall to Lucas’s room to figure out what to do next.

  “I’d rather stay here. This is hot, Vegas is gonna be a goddamn furnace,” Bob said. He was looking at the weather app on his phone. “It’s 108, 110, 111, respectively, for the next three days. If we have to work outside . . .”

  “Rae’s right,” Lucas said. “We’ll need new wardrobes. Maybe pick up some stuff tomorrow. I’ll call Forte tomorrow morning and get plane tickets . . . Or we could drive.”

  Bob went to his mapping app. “We gotta get to the airport three hours ahead of the flight because of our gear, the guns, and it’s a half hour to the airport. Plus, LAX is a world-class shithole. Flight time is an hour, then we’d have to collect the gear and rent cars at the other end. Total, probably five and a half hours. Or, we could drive, get there in five hours or less, and we wouldn’t have to mess with checking in the guns and renting cars. And we could leave here anytime we want.”

  “Drive,” Rae said.

  “Shop, then drive,” Lucas agreed. “We ought to have the phone maps later tonight or tomorrow morning for sure.”

  “Meet at breakfast,” Bob said.

  “Nine o’clock,” Lucas said.

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS WAS UP at eight, cleaned up, and checked for the overnight email from the FBI. The phone number they’d gotten from Haar showed four calls, three going out, one coming in. All three outgoing calls had been made from the Forum Shops at Caesars, a mall attached to the hotel and casino.

  “Probably because it’s all crowded and confused with a lot of traffic and you could never find a guy in there,” Rae said.

  More interesting was the single incoming call, which had been taken at a trailer park west of Caesars.

  “We’ll have to take a close look at that place,” Lucas said. “That’s about a ten-minute drive from Caesars, so they might have been making calls from Caesars because it’s also convenient. Maybe they hang out there.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Bob said.

  Lucas spent five minutes looking at a map of the Vegas Strip, then called Forte�
�s secretary and told her to book them into the Bellagio Hotel. She called back five minutes later and reported that there was a Best Western within walking distance of the Bellagio and it was more economical. “I don’t care how short the walk is, or how economical it would be, it’s going to be 108 in Las Vegas today and we know the guys we’re tracking hang out at Caesars, which is next door to the Bellagio. Book us into the Bellagio and fuck economical,” Lucas said.

  She called back in another five minutes to say they had three rooms in Lucas’s name.

  “We’re all going to jail,” Rae told Bob, when Lucas had rung off. “Sooner or later, somebody’s going to add up the business-class travel and the four-star hotels and they’ll put us in jail.”

  “Not us,” Bob said. “It’s Forte who’s doing the bookings. Besides, after what happened last year in D.C., I don’t think anybody anywhere would want to take us to a trial.”

  “So they’ll have the CIA kill us,” Rae said. “That’d be more economical, too.”

  * * *

  —

  THEY HAD BREAKFAST, drove over to Santa Monica—Lucas was driving a rental Volvo S90 and Bob and Rae had a three-year-old government motor pool Tahoe arranged by Forte—and walked into a Nordstrom’s at the end of the Third Street Promenade as soon as the doors opened. At eleven o’clock, carrying shorts, short-sleeved shirts, and golf socks in their shopping bags, they were back in their cars and headed for Las Vegas.

  Bob’s mapping app reported a traffic disaster on the 405 North across the Valley, that suggested they wouldn’t get to Las Vegas until September, so they went east across town, eventually catching the 210 into San Bernardino and then the 15 through Victorville, home of an ongoing federal prison humanitarian disaster, and then Barstow, across the hard desert and into Vegas.