She laughed. “Maybe later. Like in a day or two or three.”
She got in, sank down into a froth of iridescent bubbles with a sigh, leaned back, closed her eyes. “Omigod, Mort.”
Yep.
Neither of us said a word for the next five minutes. We faced each other in water up to our chins, legs touching, not moving. Lucy slid a foot along my calf. That was all, no words.
Then I said, “We could turn on the jets on this thing.”
“Uh-huh. If we want bubbles all the way out in the hallway, get management thinkin’ they made a big mistake with us.”
Another five, wet, warm, silent minutes went by.
“Mort?”
“Yeah?”
“If I ever get so grown-up and serious that I don’t want to do anything like this anymore, will you please shoot me?”
“Sure thing, Sugar Plum.”
A smile in her voice. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“You’re welcome. By the way, very little of what’s happened in the past twelve hours feels real to me.”
“Uh-huh.” Her voice was soft, dreamy.
“Sure you’re thirty-one years old?”
“Shut up, Mort.”
We floated weightless in bubbles and music with our legs entwined, hers silky, mine not so much. Hammer never had it this good. Or Spade, Moto, any of those guys. Didn’t know about Hercule Poirot. With a name like that, bubble bath might’ve been the norm, but I was fairly certain Spade and Hammer had never bubble-bathed with the dames. This, then, was a whole new chapter in the pantheon of the world’s greatest PIs.
PIs—that would be private investigators.
Wake up, Mort. What about Jo-X?
Lucy’s comment about us not getting any closer to looking into his murder began to drift around in my head like a shark circling meat. My newly discovered PI gene was acting up. We had work to do, and this wasn’t it. She wanted to help, wanted to “stay with me.” A few hours with America’s preeminent locator of missing persons, and she wanted to learn the innermost secrets of the gumshoe’s tradecraft.
Well, so did I.
Too bad Ma was in Tennessee, a lady who actually knew a few innermost gumshoeing secrets.
Warm. Drifting. Jo-X fading back into oblivion . . .
“Mort?”
“Yep?”
“Water’s cooling off.”
“Um-hmm.”
“We probably ought to shower off these bubbles.”
“Right.”
“Hey, wake up.”
“Yup. Wide awake.”
“Are not. We could shower together or separately.”
“Yup.”
Her foot nudged my knee. “So? Which one? Together, I could scrub your back and you could scrub mine. But I can see where that might lead to a series of escalating complications.”
Seventeen-year-old girls do not use phrases like “escalating complications.” Good deal.
“You go ahead, kiddo. I’m good.”
I kept my eyes closed, my erection under water where I thought it belonged. I heard her get out, pad over to the shower, heard the shower come on, heard her humming to herself over the music.
Hammer never had it so fuckin’ good.
News at Eleven, and there was Mortimer Angel again, a five-second shot of me getting stuffed into a police car, looking guilty. And photos of Danya and Shanna who were renting the house. Nice long mention of “Celine,” dark and luscious in a two-week-old clip of her and Jonnie-X as they got into a limo somewhere. No mention of Vince Ignacio. No floods, riots, no nukes in the Middle East, so the story was still the top item of the evening. It seemed as if it had happened a week ago, but I totaled it up and it had only been sixty hours since I’d found Jonnie-Boy. A lot had happened since then, warping time.
I turned off the television. Probably twenty million adults were cheering Jo-X’s passing while a million little souls were crying their little hearts out because, one by lonely one, there was no longer any hope that they might ever feel his manly arms pressing their trembling little bodies to his bony sunken chest. Tragedy, American style.
Waists wrapped in towels, Lucy and I spent a few minutes at a window, looking down at the lights of the Strip, a thousand people below, neon up the wazoo in the psychedelic night, traffic as thick and slow as molasses as midnight approached.
Finally she went up on tiptoe, kissed me, dropped her towel on a chair, and slid between satin sheets in the bed nearest the window. “’Night, Mort.”
“’Night, kiddo.”
“Lucy.”
“Lucy.”
I gave it another two minutes, then crawled into the other bed, closest to the door. I lay on my back looking up at the ceiling, dimly illuminated by a muddy wash from all the multicolored lights below.
Felt Lucy over there, eight feet away.
She still looked eighteen, except in that red dress, which put her at about twenty-four. Tangling with her was like being caught in a tornado, tossed around like a rag doll, but the truth is I’d made a choice back in Tonopah. I could have left her there. She would’ve been fine. I’d been under no obligation to haul her down here to Vegas, and had no obligation to keep her with me now. She could have all the money she’d won, and I could get on with this Jo-X investigation, such as it was. But all of that would have been like throwing the gift back in the face of fate. I was a gumshoe. I had cast off the IRS lamprey mantle. Girls flocking to me like pigeons to a statue was my reward for discovering I had a soul.
I heard her turn over. She sighed softly.
But forget the girl for a moment, big guy. Now what? Jo-X was dead, murdered, and I’d stumbled across his body, which is what I do, no skill involved, no idea how to follow up. Danya and Shanna were still missing. I was in Las Vegas with not much more to go on than the thinnest of evaporating vapor trails.
Lucy turned over again, thumped her pillow with a fist.
I had an inkling of the truth about the mysterious and elusive Celine, something the world at large hadn’t picked up on yet—except possibly for the Wharf Rat, Ignacio. And I had a connection between Shanna and what appeared to be an unknown little diner somewhere in a hundred thousand square miles of desert. And maybe there was a clue or something in Caliente, but I didn’t know what, other than it was a good place to go if you wanted a mud bath or needed to stock up on matches.
“Mort?”
A-a-a-and, here we go. “Yeah?”
“This doesn’t feel right. Would it be okay if I—?”
“Sure, kiddo.”
“Not to like do anything. But it would help me get to sleep if I could just sort of snuggle up for a while—if, you know, that’s all that I did . . . that we did, ’cause this isn’t working.”
“C’mon.”
She slid into bed with me and wriggled closer. “Thanks.”
“De nada.”
“Sure you’re okay with this?”
“I’m sure it’ll be a hardship, but I’ve endured worse.”
“Worse than this, huh?” She kissed my shoulder.
“Like you wouldn’t believe. Don’t give it a second thought.”
“Well, okay then. ’Night.”
“’Night.”
And that was that. In a dark corner of the room, Hammer and Spade were cat-calling and firing off rude names at me. Finally they left, disgusted.
I lay there with a dynamite girl tucked against my side, the rest of me humming happily, no bumping or thumping necessary. A real gumshoe might’ve had her flipped onto her back by now. A real gumshoe might’ve paid for her lunch and left her in Tonopah with a twenty-dollar bill. If I weren’t a trainee, I might have checked out leads the minute I’d hit town—alone. I might be out rustling clues right this minute, if I knew how to do that. A real gumshoe would at least have some idea of where to start, conjectures to explore, but the only real investigator I knew was in Memphis, Tennessee. I thought all that was true, but I had the feeling that Lucy would’ve been a game changer
even for Mike Hammer.
Were we partners, or just two people sharing body heat, about to part company in the next day or two? Should I tell her about the “Celine” video? Could I trust her?
Trust her? Seriously? My eyes flew open at the thought. Trust her after we’d been together barely twelve hours? That sounded like the definition of an idiot on wheels.
And Holiday? Other than telling Lucy not to hurt me, she was so far out on the ragged edge of this Jo-X thing that she was invisible. Holiday wasn’t a PI, didn’t pretend to be. But she thought I could be hurt? Tough, invincible me? What did she know that I didn’t? Hurt Mort and I’ll break your legs. Which meant what? Make him happy?
I was happy. Very. And Lucy was already asleep, pressed up tight against me. The palm of my left hand was at the small of her back, fingertips riding the sturdy swell of her rear.
Every single thing that had happened in the last two days felt so unreal right then that I thought I might levitate off the bed and find myself stuck to the ceiling come the dawn.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHEN I SAT up in bed the next morning, Lucy was in pale green bikini panties, standing in the middle of the room, bent forward at the waist with her forehead touching one knee, the other leg up over her body, toes pointed at the ceiling. Both legs were as straight as rulers.
She turned her head and looked at me. “Morning.” She held her position.
“Christ, you can do that before coffee?” I asked.
“You’ve been totally conked. How do you know I haven’t had coffee already?”
“Well, okay. How about bringing me a cup?”
“Haven’t made any. I don’t drink coffee.”
I stared at her. It was too early to process all that.
She said, “If you need caffeine on board before you do this, there’s a Mr. Coffee or something in the kitchen.”
“I would, but I prefer not to show off. What is that exactly? What you’re doing? It sure looks like fun.”
“Stretchies. I’ve got this routine I do every morning. Most evenings, too. Have to, if I don’t want to lose it. I want to be able to do this when I’m fifty.” She switched legs and went into her stance again.
“If I end up in hell, that looks like one of the exercises they’ll make me do.”
She laughed. Held the stance for thirty seconds, then stood up, squared her shoulders, and bent over backward, arms straight, farther and farther, until her hands touched the floor behind her feet, breasts stretched tight as drums, pointed first at the ceiling then behind her, which looked impossible. Her spine was doubled into a U shape. Then one leg came up, then the other, and she was in a handstand. Held that for a few seconds, then one leg continued on over and touched the floor, then the other, and she stood up, all of it done slowly and in perfect control. She did that nine more times, traveling backward half a foot at a time.
I said, “Deer can reach back and lick the middle of their own backs.”
“It helps that they have three-foot necks.” She sank to the floor, down into fore-and-aft splits. Lifted her back calf, arched her back, and put the sole of her foot on top of her head.
“You don’t have a backbone, do you? You’re a jellyfish, or an eel.”
“Eels have backbones. I might be a shark, though.”
“Whatever. The point is, God didn’t give you a bunch of rock-hard inflexible concrete cast-iron splintery vertebrae like the rest of us, did He?”
“Rhetorical question. And He’s a She.”
“Do you own a bra?”
“Another rhetorical question.”
“Not that one.”
“Jog bra, yeah. Don’t wear one if I’m not jogging, so, no, I sorta don’t own what you’d call a real bra. Never really needed one, either.” She twisted on the floor and the fore-and-aft splits became side splits. I winced.
“How ’bout I buy you one?”
“Naked breasts disturb you all of a sudden?”
“Not at all. It’s just that . . . aw, the hell with it.”
“Not getting a little worked up, are you?”
“Who? Me?”
“Sounds like a yes. Do you think my wearing a bra would help with that?”
“I don’t know. It might.”
“I could go do this in the other room.”
“Not sure I want that, either.”
She stood up and faced me, hands on her hips. “Well, what do you want?”
I put my feet on the floor. “Right now, breakfast.” Buck naked, I headed for the bathroom.
Behind me, Lucy whistled, then said, “Hey, wait a minute, you. That was definitely a yes.”
“Fair’s fair, Sugar Plum. Cool your jets.”
We ate at the Pyramid Café, then went “outside,” into the rest of the building. If it were raining in Vegas, we would never know it. Measured by the amount of empty space it contains, the Luxor is in a class of its own. Its scale is lost from outside, but inside you see how vast the place really is. Its interior was a huge hollow pyramid, big enough to launch a dozen hot-air balloons.
The bigger Vegas casinos are like little cities. Management doesn’t want you to leave, at least not with your wallet—unless your wallet has been gutted like a fish—so they do their best to provide everything under one roof: shopping, gambling, dinner, breakfast, bar, hotel, ATMs, banking, floor shows, video arcade, childcare, the works. The only two things you can’t get are river rafting and open-heart surgery.
Okay, I’m not sure about the surgery.
Lucy and I had been inside for sixteen continuous hours. I was starting to miss the only things missing: real sky, clouds, wind. But there was something I had to do first, no choice.
At the main cashier cage I got twenty chips out of my Luxor account and handed them to Lucy.
She drilled me with her eyes. “What’s this for?”
“Fun. Gambling. Whatever. I’ve got to go out, Lucy. Alone.”
“Where to?”
“Just . . . out. There’s a certain kind of confidentiality private investigators are supposed to honor. I’ve got something I need to do.” I brushed her cheek with a finger. “I’ll be back in, say, three hours. If you want, you could get some more sun. Morning sun’s good. Meet me at the pool in back?”
She looked unhappy. “I don’t have a bathing suit.”
“Cash in a chip, buy yourself one.” I left her there, walked away a few steps, turned back. “Three hours,” I said, then I left.
Twenty thousand dollars. I didn’t care about the money. As far as I was concerned it was hers, but I had to know what she’d do. I felt crummy about that, but didn’t feel I had a choice. I couldn’t tell her about Celine possibly being Shanna, not without getting the okay from Fairchild. For all I knew, Danya was Celine, though that was looking less likely now. My certainty level, having watched the video on the flash drive and finding Jo-X in that garage, was edging toward eighty percent that it was at least one of them, but that left twenty percent unaccounted for.
Outside, I had the valet bring around the Mustang. I gave the kid twenty bucks—big spender—got in, hit the Strip, headed east at the next intersection. I went far enough that Lucy couldn’t see me from a window in our suite if she went back up. I pulled to a curb and phoned Russ.
“Yeah, what’s up?” he answered, guarded.
“Can you talk?”
“Give me a minute.”
I waited, top down on the car. Ten fifteen a.m. The day had already hit a hundred degrees. I wondered what Lucy was doing. If she wanted to split, now was the time to do it.
“Angel?” my favorite RPD detective said.
“Yep.”
“What’s up? You find Danya?”
“Not yet. Obviously you haven’t either. But I’m just getting started down here.”
“Down where?”
“Vegas.”
“Vegas! What the hell’s down there? I mean, other than Jo-X’s got a big place down there, but they’ve already been through
it, the police. Didn’t find much of anything, except . . .”
“Except what?”
“Rohypnol. Guy had some in a drawer in his bar. Son of a bitch has his own in-house bar, thirty million bucks, and he needs a date rape drug? I’m glad that lowlife fucker is dead. Especially if Danya is Celine. You still think it’s possible?”
“Anything’s possible. Right now I’m at about fifty percent.” I wasn’t, but I was at least at fifty percent for Shanna.
“Last time it was twenty-five.”
“This is Vegas. Odds change every few minutes down here.”
“Well, shit. Got anything else goin’ on?”
“I don’t know. Might be something. But the police have things pretty well covered up there. I’d just get in the way.”
“So what’s down there? What’ve you got?”
“Not sure. I’ll let you know if or when I find anything.”
“If you find that goddamn secret hideaway of Jo-X’s, let me know. That is, if there is such a place.”
Which is what everyone else on the planet wanted to know. The fabled Jo-X “retreat,” his private getaway place when he’d finally had his fill of screaming fans and wanted to be alone. The place was a castle in the sky, a fantasy, media conjecture. It might not exist. Opinions varied. But Jo-X disappeared from time to time. When he did, there was no sign of him. Nothing at all. Then he would reappear, and when asked where he’d been, his response was invariably to stick his tongue out that also-fabled three and a half inches, except that wasn’t a fable but a tape-measured fact. Gross one, too.
“Haven’t come across it yet,” I told Russ. “What I’m doing, I’m following up on something of a lead down here.”
“What kind of a lead?”
“A vapor trail. Maybe a little less than that.”
“A vapor trail . . .”
But that Rohypnol thing might’ve thickened the mist. I would have to think about that. “What I need, Russ, is your okay to get someone else involved in this.”
“Someone else? Like who?”
“An assistant that I . . . that I came across.”
He was all over that half-second hesitation. “An assistant? You ‘came across’ an assistant?”
Gumshoe on the Loose Page 14