“Anyway,” she said, “you’re nice and a little bit goofy but so am I, so I think this relationship is going to work out fine.”
“What relationship?”
“You. Me. Us.”
“What relationship?”
“It’s a work in progress. Guess we’ll find out. So, you’re investigating this thing with Jo-X? His murder?”
“Maybe.”
She frowned. “That doesn’t sound very definite.”
“It’s not.”
“Then what’re you doing, driving all the way to Vegas if it’s just maybe?”
“I’m going to nose around, see if anything pops up. A guy in Reno asked me to look into it. It’s sort of a favor.”
“A favor, huh? This guy pay you to do this favor?”
I looked over at her.
“Hey, don’t look at me like that. It’s not like I’m looking for a handout or anything. I’ve got money. I just want to, you know, hang out with you a while. Especially if you’re looking into Jo-X’s death, and especially-especially since it’s okay with Sarah.”
“Hang out?”
“Uh-huh. Until you marry me, then it’s not called hanging out. In the meantime, I’ll learn private eye stuff, help out if I can. I’ll tell you why neo-impressionist paintings generally suck, and you can tell me more about those decapitated heads you found, stuff that didn’t make it into the news.”
“Jesus.”
“So even if all you’re gonna do is nose around, what’s the first step? Do you have a plan? Seems like you ought to. Vegas is a big place. First thing, though, we’ll need to get a room.”
“Two rooms.”
“Nope. One. A suite. I’ve got an idea about that. Nice big fancy suite and it won’t cost us a penny.”
“A free suite?”
“Yep. You watch. Like I told you, I’m lucky. Lucky Lucy. Take the ‘k’ out of Lucky and what’s left? Lucy. I was born when four planets were lined up and Mars wasn’t one of them.”
“That works?”
“Does it ever. You watch.”
We stopped in Beatty, Nevada. Whatever else Lucy wanted to do or see or experience, it was not going to include a big right turn that would take us into Death Valley and temperatures that might exceed a hundred twenty degrees. While I was at the wheel, there was going to be no Furnace Creek, no Dante’s View, no Devil’s Golf Course, no breakdown in the middle of nowhere, no desiccation of the Mort.
But what she wanted was almost as weird, at least to me. She found a shop that sold nail polish, bought a tiny bottle filled with what looked like fresh blood. I gassed up, and we were back on the road in ten minutes, headed south. She propped a heel on the seat and hunched over a foot, painting her nails. She did the other foot, then her fingernails. When she was finished, she held up her hands and admired her handiwork. Bright blood red.
“Cheap,” she said. “Very trailer park.”
Women. Go figure.
CHAPTER TEN
WE HIT THE Vegas city limits at 5:20 p.m. First thing visible on the skyline was the Stratosphere. Fifteen minutes later, we were on the Strip, headed south past the Bellagio.
Lucy pointed straight ahead. “The pyramid. Go there.”
The Luxor.
Traffic was stop and go past Paris Las Vegas, New York New York, Excalibur. The temperature was a hundred four at almost six in the afternoon. I stopped on a street parallel to the Strip and dug through the lockbox in the trunk. It held weapons and various wigs—long dishwater blond, a snow-white one with shaggy five-inch hair, short black, long brown with a single braid down the back, unkempt light-brown in a bad cut.
Lucy grabbed the white wig. “This one.”
“Just what I was thinking.”
“I’m sure.” She picked up a dark-gray Stetson, held it out. I put on the wig and the hat. Lucy dug through the box and found a salt-and-pepper moustache. “This, too.” I put it on, then she gave me a critical look, gave it a little adjustment. Lastly, she found a pair of glasses with just enough purple tint to half-conceal my eyes. She smiled at me, lips twitching slightly. “Perfect.”
I was getting used to wearing disguises, even when they itch like a son of a gun. All part and parcel of being world-famous.
I pulled in at the Luxor, valet parking. Lucy and I got out. Lucy got a long admiring up-down-up look from the kid who took the Mustang’s keys. I got my bag from the trunk and Lucy’s suitcase from the backseat, money in an envelope out of the lockbox, waved off a uniformed bellhop who had hustled out to grab the luggage from me, and we went inside.
“How much money you got with you?” Lucy asked.
“What’s it to you?”
“Jesus, Mort. How much?”
“Eight grand, give or take.”
She stared at me for a moment, then said, “Coolarama. Okay, first thing, let’s get the hotel desk to hold our stuff so we don’t have to lug it around. Then you’ve got to buy me a dress.”
“A dress?”
“Yep. Fairly good one, but not too good. Mostly it’s gotta be sexy.”
“Sexy.”
“Baby-doll sexy.”
I didn’t ask.
A blond, beautiful desk clerk took our rudimentary luggage without batting an eye, and gave me a claim check. Lucy took me by the arm and hauled me through the pyramid toward a line of interior shops where, without having to interact with the outside world, folks could buy clothing, jewelry, oil paintings, original bronze or pewter sculptures, get a manicure, pedicure, purchase gold coins and unset diamonds, load up on magazines, Snickers bars, key chains, tiny slot machines, Luxor T-shirts, fuzzy dice.
Lucy stopped in front of a shop that sold women’s stuff, which was the only way to describe it. “Wait here.” She went in, came out ten minutes later carrying a plastic bag with the shop’s logo on it. “Got some stuff for later.”
Stuff, so I was right.
She handed me the bag. “Don’t peek.”
“Nice earrings,” I said. She’d come out with gold hoops two inches in diameter dangling from her ears.
“You like? Pretty gaudy. Makes me look cheap.”
Women. You gotta love their crypto-talk.
We went down two stores to a place that sold dresses, gowns, expensive women’s clothing. “Okay, now I’ll probably need five hundred dollars,” Lucy said. “Or more.”
“Nice goddamn dress for five hundred, Sweetheart.”
“You kidding? Five hundred’ll be low midrange, but I like the sweetheart. Keep it up. It’ll play well in this place.” She made a “gimme” gesture with her fingers.
I gave her seven hundred. She told me to wait outside, then went in. Mannequins in a window display were draped in silk and leather, sequined dresses, scarves that probably cost two hundred each, purses for a thousand. From the hallway in front of the shop, I watched her amble in wearing a tank top and jogging shorts. I had an image of Pretty Woman—hooker going into a ritzy shop on Rodeo Drive. But Lucy didn’t look like a hooker, just like a kid who couldn’t afford pantyhose in that place, maybe looking for a ladies’ room.
She could disappear. Find a back entrance and end up in some sort of a service catacomb that ran behind all the stores, take off with seven hundred bucks. She’d told me to wait outside. But I had five thousand from Russ, so I could afford it if Lucy bolted. She’d been at least seven hundred dollars’ worth of company during the drive from Tonopah, so what the hell.
She came out fifteen minutes later in a wow dress. My eyes bulged. Red shimmery fabric, tight around her small waist with a loose cheerleader skirt with a hem twelve inches above the knee that looked as if it’d fly up around her waist in a little updraft; the sweetly rounded tops of her breasts showing, a little red piece of dental floss around her neck to keep the top up, shoulders bare, shapely arms. She was barefoot, a bag in one hand that held the clothes she’d worn into the place, and she had a tiny gold chain around one ankle that hadn’t been there before. Now the blood-red nail polish
worked, or at least matched the outfit.
“Ho-ly smoke, woman.”
She smiled. A pirouette flared the skirt and showed even more thigh. “Like it?”
“Yep. But not if my daughter was wearing it.”
“Good. Five hundred sixty-two dollars. Now I need shoes.” She handed me that bag, too, turned me into a pack horse, hauled me over to a shoe store, got several more hundred dollar bills, went in and again I waited.
Shoes take longer, but she was a female, so I knew that. I was prepared. I should’ve wandered off and found a cheeseburger. Forty minutes later, out she came in sparkly silver heels three inches high, which put her at five eight. “How much?” I asked.
“Two-eighty.” She handed back a small wad of bills.
“How long have I known you?”
“I don’t know. Five hours, maybe six?”
“Call it six. That’s a hundred forty bucks an hour.”
She stared at me.
I shrugged. “Figures just pop out.”
She looked at the front of her dress. “They do, don’t they? Nice of you to notice.”
“Not that. Well, that, too.”
She grabbed me by the arm. “Okay, Daddy, let’s go get that suite.”
Daddy?
Roulette. Lucy headed for a table with the highest limits—a thousand on a number, twenty thousand on red or black.
“What about my clothes?” I whispered in her ear. I was still holding the bags she’d given me.
“Your clothes don’t matter. You’ll see. It’s all about the idiot baby doll on Daddy’s arm.”
Baby doll? Daddy? I was beginning to really like this girl, and it wasn’t just the way she was filling out that dress.
She sat in a chair at the table, sort of bouncing, and looked up at me. “Sugar needs a thousand, Daddy,” she tittered, voice pitched high. She crossed her legs and her dress rode up another three inches. One more inch and we’d be in trouble.
The eyes of the gal running the wheel flickered. Daddy gave “Sugar” ten bills and she hardly looked at the roulette girl as she handed over the cash and received ten chips worth a hundred each. The girl sent the ball spinning around its outer track.
“Uh-uh,” Lucy said to her, sounding put out. “One chip, not these little bitty things.”
Great.
The ten chips became one chip. Lucy slapped it down on red a few seconds before the girl said, “No more bets.” The ball went around the outside a few more times, then clattered around in the wheel and came up black.
Lucy giggled. “Oops.” She turned back to me and said, “Sugar needs another hit, Daddy.”
I looked at her, and she shot me a look that lasted no more than a millisecond.
I handed twenty crisp Franklins to the girl running the wheel and said, “Two big ones, Honey,” in a dumbass voice that matched Sugar’s, but was two octaves lower. It matched the wig, the moustache, and the Stetson. Rich old dude keeping his young sexy thing happy. However this played out, I was going to keep enough gas money to limp back to Reno. Without Lucy.
Sugar grabbed the two chips as the ball whirled around the track, wheel spinning in the opposite direction. She closed her eyes and said, “Red, red, red,” then plopped a single chip down on red.
Whirr, clatter, bounce.
“Twenty-three red,” the girl said. She set a thousand-dollar chip on top of Lucy’s.
Lucy let out a little-girl squeal of delight and bounced in her chair. “Lookit, Daddy. I made us some money.”
“Real fine, Honey Bunch.” I decided not to point out that in fact she hadn’t made us a single penny yet.
She closed her eyes and lifted her face toward the ceiling. “I’m gonna let it ride. And this one, too.” She giggled, putting down the other chip I’d bought her.
“You do that, Sugar Plum.” Three thousand on red. Shee-it.
Christ, what a circus. Half a dozen people were watching. So far we hadn’t lost a nickel. Hadn’t made one either, but Lucy was betting red and I was thinking black.
The ball whirred around the rim and the wheel spun and Sugar said, “Red, red, red,” and the ball clattered and bounced, stopped.
“Nine, red,” the girl called out.
Lucy squealed, bounced out of her chair, and planted a big wet kiss on my lips as the girl put three chips on top of Lucy’s. A quick breathy whisper in my ear: “Lucky Luce. Look out.”
She sat down and picked up her six chips. I was still savoring the kiss. A pit boss eased over, as if drifting on an unseen current. He was bald, wearing a shiny black vest, name tag said Fred. He didn’t look directly at Lucy as she toyed with six thousand dollars’ worth of chips, three of which had recently belonged to the house.
The wheel spun, Lucy slid all six grand onto red again. “Red, red, red,” she chanted, as the pit boss tried not to look as if he were taking a greater interest in the game.
Clatter, bounce. “Thirty-three, black.”
“Well, shuckins,” said my darling Honey Bunch, pushing her lips out in a pout. She turned to me and said in a giddy voice, “Sugar needs another hit, Daddy.” And a sharp flash in her eyes said that, yes indeed, Sugar needed another hit.
So, Daddy shelled out another grand. Down three thousand and counting, not to mention the red dress and shoes.
The ball spun, and Sugar said, “Red, red, red,” and the ball landed and the girl called out, “Sixteen, red.”
Sugar squealed, which was evidently what she did, and it was a hell of an improvement over, “Well, shuckins.”
The pit boss didn’t leave. The girl got the ball going again and Lucy moved both chips to black and said, “Black, black, black,” and damn if the girl didn’t call out, “Two, black.”
Sugar squealed, looked up at the ceiling with her eyes closed, moved the four chips to red. The ball spun, the pit boss watched, and Sugar said, loud enough for everyone around to hear, “I gots me that lucky-unlucky feelin’, Daddy,” and she took a single chip off red and stuck it on double zero.
The ball whirred, clattered around in the wheel, stopped, and the girl said, in a slightly higher register than before, “Double zero.”
Lucy squealed and clapped her hands, threw her arms around my neck, and gave me the best-tasting French kiss I’d had in I didn’t know how long.
The pit boss’s eyes jittered as the girl counted out thirty-five chips and set them on Lucy’s double-zero chip, so I guess he had a little strabismus thing going. Suddenly we were up a total of thirty-two thousand dollars.
Lucy pulled her chips in front of her and looked up at me and said, “We oughta get us a suite here, Daddy. I like this place.”
The pit boss had a two-way radio with a mike on his lapel. He turned away, head lowered, and twenty seconds later a guy was at my side in a two-thousand-dollar suit and a power tie. “Little lady’s lucky,” he said conversationally.
“Yep. She’s a pistol.”
He smiled. “We like to treat folks right around here. If y’all don’t have a place in town yet, I’ve got a nice suite that might suit you. Place with a Jacuzzi, full kitchen, sitting room.”
I liked the “y’all.” He was speaking to the Stetson.
“Don’t know,” I said. I leaned closer to my baby doll. “Want to settle down here tonight, Sugar Plum? Get us a suite?”
She didn’t even look at me. “It’s gotta face east, Daddy. You know that.” She pushed six chips onto red, kept thirty thousand in front of her. “Red, red, red . . .”
“Forgot,” I told the guy in the suit. “Room’s gotta face east. Got anything like that?”
“Not a problem. East it is.”
“And—any upgrades come with that suite? Little lady purely hates all that nickel and dime stuff, drives her nuts.”
“We got something that looks like a credit card, but isn’t. Good for show tickets, in-room massage, room service or any bar or restaurant in the place, some other stuff, too, no charge.”
I pondered that for
a moment. The ball clattered, “Eleven, black,” the girl called out. “Well, shuckins,” Sugar tittered. I looked at the guy at my side. “Sounds good. We’ll take ’er.”
He slapped me on the shoulder. “Stay right there. I’ll send a girl around with keys and a card, get you settled in.”
That took six minutes, during which time Lucy won back the six grand she’d lost. I got us checked in under the name Stephen T. Brewer. T for Thomas. Last October, hunting Julia Fairchild, Maude Clary—Ma—had fake passports, driver’s licenses, credit cards, and a bunch of other paper made up for us by a slippery old boy in New Mexico, Ernie “Doc” Saladin. Something of a rush job that ended up costing $12,000 a person. I wasn’t inclined to give up the fake ID since the credit cards and all the rest of it was “legit.” Now it came in handy. I didn’t want Lucy officially tangled up in this and, now that I was once again a household name all across the land of the free, I couldn’t run around calling myself Mortimer Angel, the PI who finds bodies and body parts of famous missing people. But the pretty thirty-something gal in a dark green pantsuit who took my information didn’t bat an eye at Stephen Brewer, although she raised a discreet eyebrow at the sultry girl at the roulette table who said “shuckins” when her red, red, red came up black, and a small stack of chips was swept away.
“Give it a rest for a while, Sugar Plum?” I asked her when the girl left. “Go have a look at the room?”
“Just one more, Daddy,” she said. The ball was spinning. She plopped a chip down on a corner, covering numbers eight, nine, eleven, and twelve. Several more on black.
The ball stopped. “Nine, red,” the girl called out, sounding weary. “Corner wins.” She put eight more chips on Lucy’s one.
“I like this place, Daddy,” Sugar Plum chirped.
I did, too. Once the dust finally settled, we were up thirty-six thousand dollars, and I still had my original eight. Seven, after buying Sugar a wardrobe. I stashed our winnings in an account with the casino and got a receipt.
In the suite on the fifteenth floor, alone with Lucy, I looked at her through one eye. “Sugar needs another hit, Daddy?”
Gumshoe on the Loose Page 12