Look around—an odd expression for a blind man to use. “I didn’t accuse you,” I said. “I’m accusing whoever represents you on the Council.”
He put his wine glass down. On the very edge of the table. “And you want a name.”
“I do.”
“First, Mrs. Cole, let me congratulate you on putting two and two together.”
There was a sharp edge to his voice. It set off an alarm in me.
“I’ll tell you what.” He sat back and laced his fingers behind his head. “Give me the dog collar and I’ll give you the name.”
Several hundred dollars of wine slid from my hand and spilled to the balcony tile in a Waterford crystal explosion. His Hiri wasn’t His Anything. And he wasn’t blind at all. He could see perfectly fine, but he didn’t have X-ray vision. I had the pink gun out of my clutch and a dart in his neck before he could cross the perfume divide and stop me.
Fantasy was right. A dose of tranquilizer to the neck worked right away.
The only reason I shot him was because I didn’t have the collar to trade for a name.
And I should have known when he adjusted his sunglasses.
EIGHTEEN
“You got me.” Urleen scratched his head over the comatose man Fantasy and I dragged by his legs, one each, big black poodle bringing up the rear, out of Jay Leno’s suite, down the hall, through my front door, the foyer, and down the guest-wing hall to the smallest bedroom, Princess’s old room. Neither bed was made, not that it mattered, because His Fakeness’s comfort wasn’t a concern. We left him on the floor. Urleen gave him a prod with his foot. “I’ve never seen anyone this passed out.”
“You are the sorriest excuse for a doctor ever.”
Urleen winked at Fantasy. “It is my goal in life to win you over, beautiful maiden.”
“How about your goal in life be to keep this guy alive, Urleen.”
He turned to me. “I must insist you shower, Davis, doctor’s orders. You’re destroying the optic nerves of my left eye, distorting my image of the exquisite Bianca, while burning the cornea of my right eye with overwhelmingly fragrant chemicals. If I can’t see this man, I can’t save his life.”
“Yeah, go change, Davis. You’re killing me too,” Fantasy said. “I’ll watch the prisoner.”
“Can you lock down Leno’s place first?” I asked her.
“Sure. Is the expensive wine still there? Did you drink it all?”
“No. Why?”
“I’ll grab it for later.”
“By all means,” Urleen said. “Grab the wine.”
She ignored him, checked her gun, then said, “Be right back.”
Urleen watched her leave. “Don’t you just love a pistol-packing woman who appreciates a good wine?”
“Urleen, have you ever met a woman you didn’t love?”
A wheelchair appeared in the doorway. Vree was driving. Bootsy Howard, in a hospital gown built for two lumberjacks, slid out of the seat into a passed-out puddle at Urleen’s feet. She wasn’t wearing much under the hospital gown, which was pooled around her head.
“Indeed,” Urleen said. “I have.”
* * *
I stepped out of the fastest shower ever, having washed a can of B Blonde and nine hundred dollars of perfume down the drain in record time, to my waiting babies, who asked to go to bed. Four little arms reached for me. “Night, night, night.” I tucked them into my bed, propped pillows around them, wishing there was someone I could ask to put me to bed. I locked the bedroom door with a keypad security code we’d never used.
I hustled down the guest-wing hall and relieved Fantasy. “Anyone up?” I asked.
“No one’s moved a muscle,” Fantasy said. “And I’m late.”
It took me, Urleen, and Vree to cuff His Fakeness to the bedframes. Spread eagle. If he came to, he wasn’t going anywhere unless he took two beds with him. I hooked a portable baby video monitor up on him, then took a picture of his right index finger to run his print. Vree put a pillow under his head.
We put one of Vree’s t-shirts on Bootsy, a Westie wearing a bright red clown nose, then piled her into Meredith’s bed. Biloxi Regional had spiked her final dose of fluids with Ambien. They said when she woke up, she’d be fine, but not to expect a peep out of her for hours. I placed an audio baby monitor on the nightstand; Vree clipped the receiver to her belt.
Princess was in her overturned Pop N’ Play in the living room yammering along with Madeleine Albright, and Harley was following Vree, every step. We were barely situated in the living room—me, Vree, Urleen, and the dogs—when Fantasy joined us again.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at Wag the Dog?”
“Davis, it’s ten o’clock.”
Time was (running out on me) flying.
“Who’d like a little libation?” Urleen’s head bobbed between our blank faces. “No? No takers? A nip? A tuck? Get it?” He slapped his seersuckered leg, laughing at his own joke, then chuckled all the way to the bar where he poured himself a tall glass of whiskey. He sat back down with it, then rubbed his hands over it. “What’s next, ladies?” His bushy eyebrows danced. “What other adventures do you have in store for your faithful servant, Leverette Urleen?”
“Lookit, Urleen,” I said. “You’re here because we have two half-dead people. Your only job is to keep them alive. Sit there and sip your drink while we talk.”
“Has anyone seen Jenna Ray?” Vree asked. “She drove you here, right, Dr. Urleen? I mean, shouldn’t we check on Jenna Ray? Has anyone talked to her? Has anyone seen her? If I were here by myself and I knew someone else was here from Pine Apple, I’d want to hang out with them. Like dinner, maybe, or what’s that game where you pick a number? No. It’s a color. You pick a color. Wait! I’ve got it! You pick a color and a number! One time Gooch—”
I barely tipped my head at Fantasy, who barely acknowledged. She slipped away first, then I made my escape. We stepped out to the terrace with what was left of the Screaming Eagle Cabernet. For the first five minutes, we did nothing but breathe and pass the bottle.
“Where’s the real oil sheik, Davis?”
“That, we don’t know.”
“Who’s the fake oil sheik?”
“We don’t know that either.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket. I swiped past four Bellissimo security alerts without reading them. I had enough alerts of my own. I opened Safari and entered Hiriddhi Al Abbasov. Still no images. We didn’t even know who we were looking for.
“Where do we think he might be?” she asked.
“We have no idea.”
“Do you have the energy to go to your office and watch the surveillance footage of him checking in? Maybe it was the real sheik who checked in. At least we’ll know what he looks like.”
“And if he checked in, he’s somewhere close.”
“Should we go look?”
“No.” I would end up in my office before the night ended, if the night ever ended, but not to look for the sheik. “For all we know, the real sheik is the one pulling the strings.”
The only answer we had was three-thousand-dollar Cabernet. Worth every penny.
We could hear the faint strains of Vree from the living room.
“Are you going home tonight?” I asked.
Fantasy took her time checking the time on her phone. “I’m waiting until I’m sure Reggie’s asleep.” She spoke slowly, reading and talking at the same time. “He’s mad about my car, refusing to believe I misplaced it.”
“So harsh.”
“He spent the morning at the dentist and the afternoon boarding up the bonus room so no one would wander off the beach and set up camp above our garage. He blames me for everything.”
“So unfair,” I said.
She was still looking at her phone. She put it down, then held out her hand for the b
ottle. “You know what we really need to find?”
“What?” I asked.
“The dog collar.”
That too. The real sheik and the dog collar.
“Not to mention the fake housekeepers and the dead caregiver are still in the wind.” She poured three-thousand-dollar wine down her throat, chugging it like water, passed what was left to me, then stood.
“Where are you going?”
“Downstairs. Security says a loud woman accompanying a man with a bandaged foot sledgehammered into the dog hotel part of the conference center. They let the dogs out. The dogs are all over the casino. Then the same people and their sledgehammer went to high limits and took out the five-hundred-dollar Wheel of Fortune. I’m going downstairs to help No Hair and Baylor.” She yanked the bottle out of my hand and polished it off. “Get some sleep, Davis. We’re going to have another long day tomorrow.”
I walked her to the door, then checked on everyone and everything, starting, then looping back and ending, with my daughters. I still didn’t feel safe enough, with whoever it was I had cuffed to twin beds in my guest room. I called security and ordered myself two armed guards for the vestibule. I brewed a pot of coffee, then went to my office to steal a million dollars.
* * *
I’d never stolen anything in my life.
Maybe Bradley’s heart?
That wasn’t theft. He gave me his heart, just like I gave him mine. I dreaded the day, and it could be soon, he gave it back. I’d miss him terribly when I went to prison. I sat down at my computer, wondering if he’d visit me. I wanted to believe what Meredith believed—I was borrowing the money. But when you take something that isn’t yours, even if you have every good intention of replacing it, it’s still stealing. It’s theft, robbery, burglary, larceny. I was on the verge of being a larcenist. A felony larcenist.
The one framed picture on my desk was of the four of us. Bex and Quinn’s first birthday—frosting everywhere. I turned it over so my family wouldn’t see what I was about to do.
I remembered reading about the greatest bank robbery of all time. It was at least a dozen years ago; my police officer’s badge was bright. A gang of Brazilian thieves rented property in downtown Fortaleza, then posing as landscapers, spent three months tunneling two hundred and fifty feet to a bank. A bank they relieved of seventy million dollars. My first thought when the story broke? Brilliant. The thieves were brilliant. It was August, my first summer on the job, and my police-chief father and I watched the drama unfold on the television in the air-conditioned comfort of the police station while waiting on a domestic disturbance, traffic, or cat-in-a-tree call. I remember cutting my eyes at Daddy, wondering if he caught the look of admiration on my face before it occurred to me I should be, or at least pretend to be, appalled.
The Brazilian bank money was never recovered.
Which made the exit plan even more brilliant than the heist.
I needed a brilliant heist with an equally brilliant exit plan.
I gave myself points for not holding a Silver Slipper cashier at gunpoint. In spite of me telling Fantasy we’d need a week to hit the Slipper, the truth was it would have taken me ten minutes to get in and out with a million Slipper dollars. One minute to disable their surveillance and nine to wait on the cashier loading the money. But I didn’t. I didn’t help myself to one of the seventeen million sitting in front of me when Fantasy and I took cage either. And I hadn’t fenced Princess’s collar.
Well.
There was a reason I hadn’t fenced Princess’s collar.
I couldn’t find it.
There I was at midnight. Alone at my desk. About to commit a million counts of larceny with my babies asleep in the bed, a hall away from a con man impersonating a blind oil baron, who was a wall away from a doped witch, who was a door away from Urleen, on self-appointed sentry duty, outside the twin bedroom with two taser guns and a cast-iron skillet, who was down the hall from Vree, a big black poodle, and Madeleine Albright’s number one fan. My home was stuffed, and I’d never felt so alone.
The computer screens in front of me were dark. I knew as soon as I powered up, I’d cross the line, so I put it off. Just to put it off another minute, from my phone, I checked baby monitors—the one on my sleeping children and the one trained on the man between the twin beds who shouldn’t be under the same roof with my sleeping children. Which was when it occurred to me—why should I risk getting caught stealing a million dollars? Why not let him risk getting caught stealing the million?
Digging through my desk drawer, past pens, paperclips, and baby girl bows, I found my Bellissimo passkey. It gave me access to seventeen hundred hotel rooms, including Jay Leno’s. Chances were high His Fakeness had a laptop. Everyone had a laptop, and they were never far from it. Instead of taking the chance I’d leave a trail, why not let him take the chance? The only problem was, I couldn’t and wouldn’t leave my daughters unprotected with him in the house even to walk next door. If the man left his laptop in the foyer and start to finish I was gone less than three minutes, I still wasn’t going to take the chance. I wouldn’t ask the security guards to stand at my bedroom door. I couldn’t call Fantasy; she was in deep enough. I wouldn’t call Baylor and ask for help, because he’d tell No Hair before he did anything else. I wasn’t about to call No Hair.
I could easily put Bex and Quinn in their stroller and take them with me—they’d sleep right through it—or I could wake up Vree and put her on patrol at my bedroom door with a taser gun. Then I could run next door, toss the place, find a laptop, and be right back home.
How was it, in a house so full, there was no one I could trust to watch over my daughters?
I thought of someone.
Carrying a thick play quilt from the living room with me, I stepped over Urleen, who had passed out in the hall with one of the taser guns an inch from his own head, his finger on the trigger, the skillet between his sprawled seersuckered legs. I eased open Vree’s door. Harley’s head popped up from the foot of the bed. “Shhhh,” I said. By the light of the hall, I lifted a corner of the flipped Pop N’ Play and dropped the quilt over Princess the second she escaped. The quilt smelled like Bex and Quinn; she didn’t protest. My package and I dodged Urleen on the way back to my bedroom. When I got to the door, I dropped the quilt, then spread it out. Princess turned circles on it, then glared at me with her yellow eye. I showed her the door. “Guard.” She spread her long skinny legs, the three with patchy fur and the bald purple one, and a growl erupted from her thick middle. She showed me her teeth.
I ran like the devil was chasing me. It took four minutes to find two laptops: one on the coffee table of the sitting room outside of the master bedroom, a MacBook Pro, and one askew on the floor of the solarium adjacent to the indoor pool, a BrailleNote Apex BT 32. I went with the MacBook, and it only took one minute to grab it and run to the front door, but two more minutes to run back to the solarium and take a second look at the BrailleNote. It took three minutes to bust through the barricaded pool door and find Hiriddhi Al Abbasov. It took seven minutes to rescue him, and another minute to dial 911.
Princess was right where I left her.
Good dog.
NINETEEN
With emergency services on the way, I stood in the hall between my open front door and the Leno suite soaked to my bones and freezing to death. I called No Hair. “I have a situation.”
“At this time of night, Davis? You have a situation? Too bad, because I have a situation of my own.”
“The Smuckers?”
“They’re gone. I’m watching them leave now. Separate squad cars. Lights blazing.”
I didn’t say, “Stay right where you are. There’ll be more blazing lights in a minute.” Instead, I asked, teeth chattering, “What’d you get them on?”
“Destruction of property.”
The sledgehammered Wheel of Fortune slot machi
ne. “It won’t stick, No Hair. They’ll be out before sunrise.”
“No, they won’t,” he said. “IGT is charging them with loss of income.”
Wheel of Fortune was a multistate progressive game. Cleavon and Candy Smucker hadn’t just taken out the Bellissimo’s Wheel, they must have shut down the game nationwide. That meant more than two thousand Wheels in Las Vegas alone, no telling how many coast to coast. I hoped the Smuckers had set aside a little of the billion and a half dollars, because they were going to need it when International Gaming Technology rained down on them.
“What is it, Davis? I’m dead on my feet. I need sleep. I don’t want to hear about your witch.”
Baylor. That rat.
“Hiriddhi Al Abbasov?”
“Your neighbor?”
“Yes.”
“What about him?”
“I found him in Leno’s indoor swimming pool.”
I gave No Hair a minute to process the news.
“Doing what?”
“Floating. For three days, he’s been floating. Nothing to eat and nothing to drink but pool water. His pulse is weak and I think he has hypothermia.”
“Where is he now?”
“Under every blanket I own. An ambulance is on the way.”
“I’ll see you in two.”
An hour later, I’d had another hot shower after my impromptu dip in the pool, and His Passed Out Fakeness had been uncuffed from the twin beds and was on his way to central booking. I hoped they’d put him in a holding cell with Cleavon and Candy Smucker. The arresting officer couldn’t read him his rights, because he couldn’t rouse him. We tried a little bit of everything--ice water, whiffs of straight ammonia, and No Hair patting him about the cheeks, none too gently, probably rearranging his teeth and shuffling his brains. His Fakeness wasn’t waking up.
“What’d you do to him, Davis?”
“Why is that always the first place you go, No Hair? What did I do?”
I stole his MacBook. That’s what I did.
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