“ElectroniCon?” Dane matched my pace.
“The high-tech industry’s annual gathering. Picture a hundred thousand geeks gone wild.”
“Whoa.”
“That’s just the beginning. In addition to the awards banquet, there is a trade show. Every manufacturer, distributor, and purveyor of dildos, sex toys, vibrators and herbal sexual enhancements will be here. The film stars hawk the products. The geeks come to gawk.” We hit the door to the mezzanine. “If that wasn’t enough, this is the week the Trendmakers hold their annual confab of spouse swapping. All the regular shows in town go dark; X-rated shows replace them.”
Dane and I paused at the railing. Below us teemed the controlled chaos in the lobby.
I bent over to catch my breath, then straightened. “This”—I swept my arm toward the crowd below—“is only the beginning.”
“Damn.”
I was glad to see Dane struggling to catch his breath as well. “Don’t expect to get much sleep, but now I gotta go. I’m already a couple of minutes late for an appointment and I’ve left Miss Patterson holding the bag too long already. If she quits on me, I’m screwed.”
“Thanks for lunch—both of them. It’s been a most enlightening day.”
“Sure. Keep looking for Willie, would you?”
“Your wish is my command.” Dane started to go, then paused. “Say, you wouldn’t want me to see if I can score a couple of tickets for us to the porno awards, would you? As I recall, I owe you a dinner.”
“A dinner of my choice, I believe. And, you’re too late. I’m sitting at the head table with Subway Jones, the porn industry’s biggest star.” I held up my hand, silencing him as he opened his mouth to speak. “I didn’t make that up, and no, I can’t attest to the truth of the statement—at least not from personal experience.”
“I know you’re shittin’ me now.”
“Trust me,” I said. “The dinner is the highlight of the whole week. I wouldn’t miss it.”
“How’d you get so lucky?”
“I wish I could say it was my innate beauty and captivating charm, but the hotel buys a lot of adult films for the in-house movie channels. It’s my job to vet them all—wouldn’t want to offend anyone’s sensibilities now, would we?”
“So you do watch those movies.” Dane’s eyes lit with mischief.
“Actually, I take Smokin’ Joe’s advice. There are just so many hours in the day.” I started down the hall toward my office.
“Wait.” Dane stopped me. “I know I’m going regret asking this, but Subway?”
“Subway.” I held my hands up in front of me, palms facing, twelve inches apart. “Because it’s a foot long.”
I left Dane standing there with his mouth open.
Chapter
SIX
Am I interrupting?”
The Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock sprang to his feet from his perch on the corner of Miss Patter-son’s desk, guilt written across his reddening features.
Miss Patterson busied herself rearranging the papers on her desk. She didn’t meet my eyes immediately, but when she did, I caught a reddening in her face as well. Without a word she handed me my Nextel.
“Ah, my ball and chain. Thanks.” Stifling a smile, I glanced at the offending device—twenty-seven messages. I tried to scowl at Miss Patterson as I handed the damn thing back to her.
Miss Patterson gave me a goofy grin, which ruined any chance I had at mustering that scowl. Had a guy ever put that look on my face? Maybe, but white knights and good guys were the stuff of grade-school crushes, and that had been a long time ago.
I pointed to Jeremy, then cocked my head toward my office. “You, in there.”
He bolted in ahead of me and immediately retreated to a chair opposite my desk.
I shut the door behind me, then settled into my chair. The desk between us, I leveled my gaze on the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock. This time I mustered that scowl.
Shaggy brown hair, baleful golden brown eyes, chiseled features and a lopsided grin, his name fit—under any definition of the term, Jeremy was definitely beautiful. Not many women were cold to his outward charms, but, if they were, when he opened his mouth they were toast. Handsome men with Australian accents had a magnetism that American women—present company excluded, of course—seemed unable to resist.
He flashed that grin at me, then said in his delicious accent, “You summoned me?”
“I’m not sure I’d put it quite that way.” Although I had to admit, the thought of having the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock at my beck and call did have some appeal. “Before we get down to business, a word to the wise. Miss Patterson may work for me, but she is also my friend. Break her heart with all that Aussie surfer-boy charm, and I’m all over you. Got it?”
Jeremy opened his arms wide, his face falling into a mask of innocence. “Hey, I like her. She’s got moxie, and some smarts, too. That’s more than I can say about all the bubble-brains who parade around here hoping to catch big money with their plastic tits.”
I crossed my arms, leaned back in my chair and took in all of the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock. Miss Patterson might have a great bullshit meter, but I’d learned, when it comes to personal stuff, those meters can give you false readings. She was my friend; I had her back.
He squirmed under my perusal. “She’s fair dinkum, and certainly no dog.”
Even though I had only the vaguest idea of what he just said, he wasn’t registering on my meter. He could live another day.
“A real nice lady, you know?” he said, each word pregnant with sincerity.
“I know. I’m just making sure you know.”
“Of course I know. I know everything. How do you think I got rated the best private investigator in all of Las Vegas by the Review-Journal last year?”
“It certainly wasn’t your emphasis on keeping a low profile.”
“You can’t get business if nobody knows who you are.” Apparently satisfied I wasn’t going to skin him alive, Jeremy settled back into the chair. Crossing one foot over the other knee, he held his leg in place with both hands while his foot bounced with nervous energy.
“A valid point. And, speaking of business—” I sifted through the pile of papers in front of me and found the pictures I had requested. I extended one set to him. “Here are photos of three of our employees—Felicia Reilly, Willie the Weasel, and Paxton Dane. I want you to input them into your magic machine, then tell me if any of these folks show up, where they appear, and where they go.”
“So, you actually believe my—let me see, what did you call it?” He flashed that damn grin again. “I remember. I believe you called it my ‘hocus-pocus machine.’ So now you think it works?”
“I’m willing to suspend disbelief. And it’s not so much that it doesn’t work, it’s that it seems so . . . personally violating.”
He laughed. Unfortunately, he had a deep, throaty, wonderfully male laugh. A laugh that seemed to imply we were both in on a secret.
I shifted in my chair. Okay, I lied. I’m not immune to the whole Aussie thing. I chanted, All men are pigs, over and over in my head. It didn’t work this time either.
“You don’t have to believe me,” Jeremy continued. “The NSA is using the same software. They actually take pictures of all of us through cameras strategically located in most of the major cities, then compare us to an international database of known bad guys.”
“Jesus, George Orwell was right. And, come to think of it, so was I.”
“Huh?”
“Big Brother really is watching.” I found that little bit of reality totally depressing. “Talk about personal violation!”
“You have no idea.” Jeremy nodded, his eyes big—their gold flecks catching the light, momentarily distracting me. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. Don’t get me started on cell phones used as listening and tracking devices. And then there are satellites. Did you know they can read your license plate using those things?”
I held up my hands.
“You mean they can see our faces, our . . . everything?”
The Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock nodded, a serious look on his face, but a twinkle in those gold-flecked eyes. “Takes voyeurism to a whole new level, doesn’t it?”
Why I ever leave the house in the morning, I don’t know. “Are they allowed to do that?”
“Are we?”
I shrugged. “You have a point.”
Jeremy nodded. “Anyway, we all have a unique set of facial measure ments. The machine compares them, that’s all.”
“Like fingerprints.”
“Exactly, but now Big Brother doesn’t have to stop everyone on the street and ask them to roll ink on their fingers. In fact, we don’t have to ask them for permission at all.”
“People on the streets or everyone in a casino.”
“Precisely.” Jeremy nodded. “Scary.”
“But helpful.”
“I’ll go along, but only if they take pictures of everybody else.” Call me morally corrupt, but I wasn’t above letting the end justify the means—as long as I was the one pulling the strings.
“I do this for all of the casinos. The images come right from their security videos. It actually works quite well. We’ve caught a fair number of cheats and card counters. No terrorists, yet.” He actually sounded disappointed about the terrorist part. “But, if it makes you feel better, I’ll make a note—no pictures of Lucky O’Toole.”
“Please do.”
“You got it.” Jeremy flashed that grin again as he took the pictures and stood.
Damn, he even had dimples. What was it with me lately? A handsome guy flashes me a grin, and I melt into a puddle. And a handsome guy who was off limits at that—I would never pull the rug out from under Miss Patterson. I must be hormonal.
“The normal fee?”
“There’s a bonus in it if you start right away.”
“That important?” He looked like he was going to perch on the corner of my desk, then thought better of it. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain helicopter, would it?”
“This has everything to do with that frigging helicopter.”
“Right. I’ll fossick through all the feeds myself. I’ll let you know when I have something.” Jeremy hurried out. He didn’t linger in the outer office.
The man sure had a way with words.
For a fleeting moment I felt bad siccing Jeremy on Paxton Dane. Although Dane was charming, and I wanted him to be one of us good guys, he’d lied once—that I knew of. Lies were sorta like cockroaches: where you saw one, there were probably a thousand lurking out of sight. What was that old adage my mother pounded me with? Fall for it once, shame on you. Fall for it twice, shame on me. I took another set of the three pictures, folded them and stuffed them in my pocket.
I was just rising to leave when Miss Patterson peeked around the doorway. “Could I have a minute? I won’t take long. I know you have the Hollywood crowd in about a half hour.”
I sank back into my chair and motioned for her to take a seat.
Like a bird at a feeder, Miss Patterson perched on the edge of the chair, which probably still held the warmth from the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock’s butt. I squeezed my eyes shut in an effort to block the images that thought conjured up.
“Do you have a headache? There’s some aspirin in the cabinet. I could get you some.”
I sneaked one eye open. No mental images of Jeremy’s butt. I eased open the other eye. Miss Patterson, her feet and knees demurely touching, her hands resting in her lap, was the very picture of propriety. Concern clouded her eyes.
“Aspirin wouldn’t put a dent in the kind of headaches I’m dealing with.”
“Oh, am I going to have to lock up all the weapons again?”
I couldn’t even muster a smile.
She started to rise. “I’ve caught you at a bad time.”
“Sit. Sit.” I rubbed my temples and took a deep breath. “You know how I get after a trip to Mother’s.”
“She does seem to dampen your normal effervescence.”
Effervescence. I don’t think I had ever before heard anyone use that word and my name in the same sentence. My smile fought with my foul humor. My smile won.
“Hah! I knew you were in there somewhere hiding behind that scowl.” Miss Patterson looked triumphant.
“You’ve done your good deed for the day. They’ll be proud of you at the next Girl Scout meeting. Are you working toward a good deed badge or something?”
“If they had such a thing, my chest would be covered with them by now.”
“And you’d be well on your way to sainthood. So you don’t really think I’m effervescent?”
“Not today.”
“A diplomat to the end. So what can this lowly grump do for you?”
“I need some advice.”
“It’ll be worth what you pay for it.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“It’s your funeral.”
“Would you stop?” Miss Patterson finally threw up her hands in submission. “I don’t want your bad mood, but that’s what I’m going to get if you keep up this verbal parrying.”
“It takes two to play,” I mumbled.
She smoothed her skirt and harrumphed a bit more. “You can be so difficult.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Anyway, I came to ask your opinion.”
Opinion. I hated that word. My mother once gave me a tee shirt that said, “Everyone is entitled to my opinion.” She said it was so me—opinions were my best thing. All these years later, I’m still trying to figure out what she meant by that. Was it a good thing or a bad thing? Why did I care? “It’s Jeremy, isn’t it?”
“Is it that obvious?” She looked embarrassed.
“Only to me,” I lied.
“Good.” She picked at an invisible piece of lint on her skirt. “Do you think I’m . . . overreaching?”
Miss Patterson, a cougar? Wow. An image of a wolf in sheep’s clothing popped into my head, but the wolf was a she. The tables were turned. I liked it.
I tried to keep my face arranged in a benign expression. “Absolutely not!”
She went to work on that invisible piece of lint again. After a moment, she raised her eyes to meet mine.
I’d never noticed her pale blue eyes; the glasses didn’t do much to bring them out. Her hair was a pretty color of brown. We could get rid of the few traces of early gray. . . . Those changes coupled with her peaches-and-cream skin, impish smile and maybe a new wardrobe and she’d be in business. A makeover—that would be fun! Yes, we should start with the hair.
“I was going to ask you to make me an appointment with Linda,” I said as if I’d been thinking about it all along. “She’s a magician when it comes to hair. Would you like her to look at yours as well?”
“She’s the most expensive in town.”
“Because she’s the best. What do you say? My treat?”
Miss Patterson nodded, a smile tickling her lips.
“You book it. And make it soon, I think birds have come home to roost in my hair.” I rose. Miss Patterson followed my lead. “Clear my schedule, and we will drink champagne while Linda makes us beautiful.”
Lost in thought, Miss Patterson seemed to float out of my office.
I heard her on the phone making our appointments. Next I hoped she would tackle the accumulated messages on my Nextel. I thought about leaving, but the pile of papers on my desk called to me. The damned things seemed to propagate every time I turned my back. If I didn’t at least try tackling them now, there’d be twice as many to deal with tomorrow. I had twenty minutes before I was due out front. That should be enough time to at least make a dent.
I hadn’t even gotten started, when Miss Patterson buzzed me. “Yeah.”
“Detective Romeo to see you. I told him you are very busy.”
First the morning with my mother, now the afternoon with the police. God was punishing me. “Five minutes, that’s all I’ve got.
”
I didn’t even look up as he walked in the door.
“You must’ve gone home. You’ve changed clothes.” As greetings go, his was certainly unique.
I looked up and motioned for him to take a seat. “No need to go home. I just step into the nearest phone booth and, voilà, a new set of civilian clothes.”
Romeo crossed one leg over the other, his foot resting on his knee. “Handy.”
I leaned back in my chair and tented my fingers as I gave him the once-over. Young, wet behind the ears, cute in a puppy-dog kind of way, and, while I had changed my clothes, he looked as though he’d slept in his. “You look like you could use one of my phone booths. Have you even been to sleep?”
“Not yet.”
Next to his night, my measly three hours of sleep looked positively self-indulgent. “So what can I do for you?”
He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. Earnest was the only way to describe him. “I came to apologize for Detective Richards. He was a bit abrasive last night.”
“I thought this whole good cop/bad cop thing was supposed to be done as a tag team.” I felt the edges of that bad mood start to wrap around me again.
He looked wounded. “Is it just me, or do you throw darts at everyone?”
“Everyone with a badge in his pocket.”
“We’re the good guys, remember?” He really was as young as he seemed.
“I keep trying to remember that,” I explained. The kid was overdue for a dose of the real world. “But look at it from where I’m sitting. I found the helicopter. You can’t seem to deliver the pilot. You take up not only my time but other employees’ time as well, not to mention the chilling effect your skulking around has on our guests. If you have some info, you won’t share it with me.”
The hangdog look on his face told me I was getting through.
Wanna Get Lucky? Page 9