“It probably just slipped her mind. You know how kids are—they get busy, forget to mention things.”
He snorted an unhappy laugh.
“Anyway, that was a lot of background information, Russ.”
He stopped and faced me. “Don’t laugh or I’ll shoot you right here and dump you in the river, but . . . hell . . . I’m thinking I want to hire you.”
I stared at him. Finally, I said, “You’ve got an entire police force at your disposal, Russ.”
“Yeah, but there’s all those fuckin’ rules that get in the way, which is sort of what you mentioned a few minutes ago. I oughta know. This is a goddamn awful situation. I’ll be able to keep tabs on the investigation, but Don Kreuger’s taking lead. Guy’s a square shooter, but a stickler. All I’ll be able to do is sit back and watch it roll over her—Danya. And Shanna. So I’m wondering if a maverick isn’t what we need, all three of us. And luck. You stumble along, but you’re the luckiest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.” He headed east again.
I caught up to him, thinking about luck. Luck came in all sizes and shapes. My kind of luck was different. I hadn’t put Ma on a train that morning thinking I’d run into a wet, stacked, naked girl before noon, but there you go—Lady Luck, following me around like a hungry dog. And, of course, there was Jo-X, stinking up a garage, waiting for Nevada’s luckiest gumshoe to find him and cause another uproar.
We walked awhile in silence, me thinking about how weird this deal with Fairchild was, or could be, not sure I wanted him involved like this, not sure I didn’t, either. In the interrogation room I realized I wasn’t going to abandon the investigation, such as it was, since Danya and I had kind of a handshake deal going, but . . .
“Maverick, huh?” I said to get Russ talking again.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “But two things I’m sure of—you’re completely unprofessional, and you’ve got a way of digging in and finding stuff out. Weird stuff.”
I smiled. “It’s probably because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Guess that pisses you off, too. I still remember you giving me the finger in the hospital last summer.”
He stopped and jabbed a different finger into my chest. “What I’m thinking is—you can do things I can’t. We can’t.”
“You mean the police?”
“Right. I’m thinking you could be something of a parallel, off-the-record investigation—coloring outside the lines so to speak, ’cause that’s who you are, the way you do things.”
I looked out at the slow-moving river, thinking about it. This might be a mistake, but it might not. It had possibilities.
“I sure as hell wouldn’t want anyone to know about this,” he went on. “I mean, anyone. It could mean my career.”
I thought a moment longer, then said, “If I do this, what are you hiring me to do, exactly? Locate Danya since she took off, or find out who killed Xenon?”
“Well . . . both. Either. I mean, whatever, you know, makes her safe, explains how Xenon got in that garage. I want this to go away.”
“What if she’s guilty, Russ? Or your daughter-in-law.” No way I could resist that in-law dig. After all, this was Russ.
He stared at me, finally shook his head. “I know Danya. She didn’t do this. She wouldn’t know the first thing about that Xenon asshole, lyrics like that. She plays Johnny Mathis CDs at Christmas, sings along with him. I don’t know that much about Shanna, but . . . no way. I think this is just a random piece-of-shit deal, unless someone knows Danya’s my kid and is using her to screw with me.”
“Whatever I find, assuming I find anything at all, you want me to run it past you first.”
“That’s right.”
“Sounds maverick all right, but not illegal since you’re a cop. I would just be giving information to the police, which is the right thing to do.”
“You might concentrate on who killed Xenon and stuck him in that garage. Finding Danya isn’t likely to be an issue. She’s a bit high-strung. She might not think about something like this very clearly, but I think she’ll get hold of me pretty soon. If she doesn’t, police will probably have her and Shanna rounded up by this evening at the latest.”
“Yeah? I didn’t think RPD was that good.” Another sweet dig, and one I thought might be accurate. Danya and Shanna might not be as easy to find as Russ thought. Not sure why I thought that, but it might’ve been my gumshoe gene flaring up.
He shrugged, didn’t rise to the bait. “Where’s she gonna go? Right now we’ve got fifty cops looking for her and Shanna. So, how ’bout it? I haven’t heard you say yes yet.”
I gave him a hard look. “On three conditions, Russ.”
“Aw, shit. Let’s hear ’em.”
“Number one, I want access. Right now I don’t have that, not like I’ll need it. Maude’s out of town and I’m not licensed. I can’t get a name or address from a phone number or a license plate. I can’t track credit card usage or ping a cell phone’s GPS. I might have to call you with something like that, and if I do, I’ll want it, no hassle, no questions.” In fact, I had all that except the pinging. I had Ma’s passwords and was getting used to her online investigative tools, but putting Russ in my pocket was the kind of underhanded move Ma had built a career on. If I didn’t do this, Ma would show my naked poster all over town. But even without Ma, I wasn’t about to let an opportunity this good slip away.
“Two,” I went on. “Ma’s not going to be involved in this. I’m not going to put her PI license at risk. This is just between you and me. No contract, no legal shit. Just you and me.”
“Well, hell, Angel—I was gonna get the guys in the squad room together and make a formal announcement.”
Good one, Russ. “What about Day? Clifford. That thing you did, turning off the camera. How’s he good with that?”
“Cliff’s my brother-in-law. Well, ex. He’s a good guy. And if he said word one about any of this, my sister would cut off his nuts since they’re still friends.”
“That does sound friendly. It also sounds like she knows how to use a chainsaw.”
He smiled. “So we’re good. I give you access and this deal’s just between you and me—don’t worry about Cliff. You said three conditions. What’s the last one?”
“I want five thousand dollars. Today. In cash.”
“Well . . . horse pucky,” he said, smiling. “Now I gotta go hit the bank.” Walking back, he had a little skip in his step. Until, that is, he got to thinking about things—like me, his job, Jo-X in his daughter’s garage even if the place was a rental—a rat’s nest of complications that looked as if it was going to turn into shit stew. Then the skip curdled into his usual flat-footed shuffle, shoulders hunched, face as long as a cold night in January.
“Try phoning her again,” I said.
He got out his cell phone and called Danya, got voice mail, left a message for her to call him.
We walked back to the police station, hashing out details. I got his phone numbers, personal and police, same for e-mail addresses. And I got Day’s numbers, which I would treasure. I gave Russ both my numbers and e-mail, and told him not to call unless he absolutely had to. Or if he heard from Danya. And I told him if I ever caught him tracking my phone’s GPS, he’d never hear from me again. I didn’t bother to tell him I was going to go out and get an untraceable Walmart burner, just in case. In case of what, I didn’t know, but . . . you never know. If you’re going to skate around that razor edge of right and wrong, you take precautions. After last October, I was an expert. And, of course, a murderer.
He stopped outside the gate to the parking lot. “Not actually sure I like you, Angel. Probably won’t be having you over for beer and barbeque, but . . . I’m glad you said yes.”
He went through, but I stayed behind. He turned and gave me a questioning look.
“I’m not going to tell you how I came up with this, Russ, so I don’t want to hear any whining or hassling, none of that, but since you’re a client now, you s
hould know that I’m about twenty percent sure that your kid, Danya, is Celine. Maybe even thirty percent.” Actually I was only at about ten percent, since Danya was five-eight or -nine and Celine was six-three, almost as tall as Jo-X. I didn’t know if they made shoes with six- or seven-inch heels, but there was some sort of a connection there. Danya and Celine were both black, beautiful, and busty, and Jonnie Xenon was hanging around Danya’s garage, so I thought . . . maybe.
“Celine?” Russ asked.
“The missing black girl. Girl who’s been seen around Jo-X the past couple of weeks.”
His jaw dropped. “That Celine? You gotta be shitting me.”
“Split the difference. Call it twenty-five percent.”
“Sonofabitch. How’d you get that? Which can’t be true, by the way. I looked into her on the Internet this afternoon—Celine—while you were cooling your heels in your favorite room. No one knows who she is. And she’s black as midnight, which Danya isn’t. Celine is a looker, but she’s taller, like about six foot two. And she doesn’t look anything like Danya. Well, not a lot.”
“There’s that whining thing I mentioned.”
“Fuck you, Angel. Celine?”
“Okay, if it makes you happy, I’ll go fifteen percent. It isn’t a sure thing. But it makes you wonder, doesn’t it—Jonnie Xenon in their garage like that? Why him? Why there?”
He stared. “Sonofabitch.” Without another word, he headed for the station in a fast, choppy stride.
“Russ.”
He turned sharply, angry. “Yeah?”
“If the police turn up anything about Celine, anything at all, I want to hear about it thirty seconds later.”
He chewed on his lower lip. “Yeah, okay.”
“And—you know how to find your way to Rapscallion?”
“The restaurant? Sure, why?”
“I’m gonna be there getting a late lunch, since you didn’t feed me at the station. Drop by in the next hour or so with five thousand dollars. And bring enough to pick up my tab while you’re at it.”
He said “fuck” as he went through a back door into the station, just loud enough for me to hear.
CHAPTER SIX
I WAS AT a Walmart still digesting grilled salmon with rice and a pretty good pinot noir when Ma phoned at seven. She’d reached western Utah. She was in the dining car waiting for a New York steak, rare, and a beer. I could tell she hadn’t been getting the news since I was all over the place at six o’clock in Reno, four local channels, CNN, no telling how many others. Mortimer Angel does it again. I thought I’d surprise her and let her find out on her own, so I told her everything was copacetic on the home front. I hoped I’d still have a job once she found out just how copacetic things had become.
I wished her a terrific dinner and a safe trip—it was, after all, Amtrak, subject to sudden derailments—hung up, and went back to the Walmart clerk who was ringing up that burner phone—$12.99 and a fifty-dollar phone card with two hundred minutes on it. I got the Drug Dealer Special—though professional dealers probably went with the cheapo thirty-dollar card since the phone would be tossed within a week.
Out the door, the sun was behind the Sierras, nice pink glow on high wispy clouds, day cooling off. I drove to Jeri’s place—okay, mine. I was still getting used to it, still saw Jeri in the exercise room tossing me around like a sack of grain. I missed her. We’d been planning an entire lifetime together. What we got was two months, then Julia Reinhart happened.
I got a bottle of Pete’s Wicked Ale and sat in the backyard on a lawn chair, watching stars come out one by one, waiting for full dark. Waiting, in fact, for two a.m. to roll around.
Danya-Celine. Celine-Danya.
Weird. Didn’t make sense. Danya Fuller was a psych major at UNR. She shouldn’t have any connection with a nasty low-life rapper. When Russ had handed over five thousand dollars and paid thirty-six bucks for my lunch, plus tip, he’d given me a photo of Danya taken at his place last Christmas, and a picture of Danya and Shanna at the Grand Canyon last summer.
Celine was . . . unknown. An instant sensation, a media circus all her own, a one-namer like Cher or Beyoncé. Lots of speculation about Jo-X’s latest, a girl as black as Jonnie was white. She’d come out of nowhere, replacing some hot, slender bimbo with a nice ass and photogenic boobs revealed by dresses split all the way down to her navel—Krissy Something. Krissy was already old news, off the public’s radar, which no doubt pissed her off. It had taken Celine only three days to get on the cover of every tabloid in the country. Krissy might’ve put bullet holes in Jo-X’s forehead and strung him up in Danya’s garage knowing, somehow, that Danya was Celine.
But—was Danya Fuller actually Celine? With Jo-X hanging around in her garage, I mentally upped the odds to forty percent. Which left sixty percent that she wasn’t, so there was still a lot of room for debate and conjecture there.
And Vince Ignacio, Wharf Rat, was in the picture, snooping around. For some reason, he knew who Danya was and where she lived . . . but, wait. He’d identified Shanna by name, not Danya. But those two were an item, so, if he knew Shanna, he would know Danya. If he thought Danya was Celine and if he thought he had sufficient proof, Celebrity News might be gearing up to put out a special edition—Ignacio’s hot scoop. Which would put Fairchild in the eye of an epic shit storm.
Fairchild. My brand-new shining contact with RPD. Time to see if that was real or another broken promise.
I got out my phone, rang him up. “Hey, Russ?”
“Yeah? You find somethin’ already?”
“No. Xenon’s been removed from the garage, hasn’t he?”
“Forensics got done about two thirty this afternoon. Guy’s at the coroner’s office. Why?”
“All I want are answers, Russ, not questions to which you don’t want answers. Still got crime scene tape up at the house?”
“Yeah.”
“Any police up there, watching the place?”
“A car’s out front, in case Danya shows up. Or Shanna. Or your guy, Ignacio. Unmarked car.”
“Ignacio’s not my guy.”
“Right. I’m makin’ a note of that as we speak.”
Smart-ass. “Pull the car at midnight, Russ.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Just do it. Figure out a way. Send ’em home. Tell ’em their overtime is only good until midnight, that’ll get ’em out of there. If you can’t do it, call me back.” I hung up, then phoned the Wharf Rat. I had his card, but I’d also memorized his number. Seemed like a good idea.
“Yeah?” he said, in a paranoid whisper. “Who’s this?”
“You are not authorized to use that picture of me, Ignacio. Do that and I’ll sue you and your scummy rag for a million bucks.”
He laughed. “Good luck gettin’ a million from me. I got forty bucks in my checking account.”
“Forty bucks and no job if you run that picture.”
“Jesus, you don’t know nothin’ about tabloid journalism, do you?” He hung up.
Well, shit.
Five seconds later, my phone rang. Probably the Rat, so I said, “Tabloid journalism is a pimple on society’s ass.”
“Really? Just a pimple, not a boil or a hemorrhoid?”
I knew that voice. “Hey, Dallas. What’s up?” Dallas, my ex, pushing forty-three and still beautiful. She’d been semi-engaged to Reno’s missing mayor, Jonnie Sjorgen, until I found his head in the trunk of her Mercedes last July. That pretty much put the kibosh on the engagement, but she got to keep the ring.
“You found another missing Jonnie, Mort. Good work.”
“It’s a knack.”
“I just wanted to call with my congratulations before you got so famous I couldn’t get through.”
“Thanks. It’s always great to hear from you, Dal.”
“How’s Maude taking it? You and this Jo-X thing?”
“She’s somewhere in Utah, on her way to Memphis to visit her kid. She’ll be gone two weeks. Amtrak. Her phone cut
s in and out, so I think she hasn’t seen the news yet.”
“No doubt she’ll be thrilled.”
“I’m counting on it. It’s about time I got a raise.”
She laughed, hung up, then a minute later my phone chirped and it was Holiday. A phone chirp didn’t seem all that manly. I was going to have to come up with a new ringtone.
“Mort, I’ve been reading. I just turned on the television.”
“Yeah? Anything good on?”
“You’re totally something else.”
“Got that right. Totally.”
“Ma’s gonna kill you when she gets back. She told you not to find Jo-X, and what do you do?”
“Uh-huh. Can’t help it.”
“I know. At least this time you found an entire body, not just heads or a severed hand.”
“I’m upgrading my act. Doesn’t piss off the police as much, waiting around for the rest of it to show up.”
“They’re saying you found him at a girl’s house. Was that the girl in the Green Room last night?”
“This’s not for public consumption until it gets out—but that girl was Fairchild’s daughter.”
Six seconds of silence. Then, “Fairchild? The detective? You gotta be kidding me.”
“Nope.”
“That girl was black, Mort. And pretty. Russell Fairchild is as ugly and white as Buddy Hackett’s ghost.”
“Good eye, kiddo. The metaphor was a winner, too.”
“That was a simile. And . . . Russell’s kid? I never know when you’re serious.”
“I am now.”
“Interesting. So, how’s he taking it?”
“Talk about delighted. The guy is bouncing off the walls.”
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