“Yep.”
“How’s that work? How do you do that?”
“It’s a knack.”
Well, he’d heard that before. “Jesus Christ, Angel. It’s a girl, isn’t it? Who is she? What’s the story?”
“Her name is Lucy. I’m checking her out as we speak, but it’s up to you, how much I tell her. Thing is, it’d be damn hard to work with an assistant who doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“How old is she?”
“What’s it to you?”
“How old?”
I gave him a weary sigh. “She says she’s thirty-one.” No need to tell him how old she looked.
“She says? I don’t like the sound of that.”
“It’s been more or less verified.”
“How do you ‘more or less’ do that?”
“I got a second opinion.”
Silence. Then: “You’re a hell of a hard guy to talk to.”
“So I’ve been told.”
He wanted to know more about my assistant so I gave him the bare-bones gist of how we met and how we decided to travel together, leaving out all mention of the various outfits Lucy had or hadn’t worn, or that she said she’d marry me, which might’ve been a joke and didn’t seem relevant in any case.
“Twelve thousand? She won twelve thousand bucks?”
“Rounded off a little, yeah.” Rounded down from thirty-six thousand, but he didn’t need to know that.
“How the hell’d she do that?”
“Roulette. She’s a pistol.”
“Sonofabitch, twelve grand is almost three months—”
“Is that a yes on the assistant, Russ? Tell her about Danya possibly being Celine?”
“Christ. You figure you can trust this girl, huh? Lucy?”
“We’re in test mode right now. If she passes, then, yeah. I have the feeling she’ll pass, and I have the feeling I could use the help. She seems like a nice-enough kid.”
“Kid?”
“It’s an expression we old farts use. And she’s sort of like having a set of keys, so there’s that.”
“Keys?”
“She’s the type that might open a few doors.”
“Sonofabitch. She that good-lookin’?”
“Pretty much.”
“Je-sus, I’m in the wrong—”
“Yeah, yeah. But I still haven’t heard that okay, Russell.”
“Yeah, fine. Do what you gotta. Just don’t let the media get hold of that Celine thing.”
“One other thing.”
“What?”
“Get me Jo-X’s address down here. I don’t know where it is.”
“And here I thought you were a PI, Angel.”
“I am. Good one, too. I’ve got a police detective in my pocket. That’s one way I get the information I need. Quick, too.”
“Shit. How old you say that girl was again?”
“They found Rohypnol? That’s really something. Call me back with that address. Shouldn’t take you five minutes.”
I could’ve had Russell try to check out Lucy, but I didn’t want to do that—not after that call to Lucy’s mother. Lucy hadn’t told the woman her name or age, and both had checked out. There was no way Lucy could have been waiting for me to show up in Tonopah, no way to set up that kind of a coincidence. That was just paranoia talking. Now it was up to the money I’d given her. In effect, I was betting twenty Gs that she would still be there, that everything she’d said was true. And if I was wrong . . . it was only money. I had a lot more than I needed and, hell, it really was hers. I would have bet it all on black, lost my ass.
Back at the Luxor, she wasn’t at the pool.
I’d driven around, then walked around the UNLV campus for an hour, chewed up some time, tried to think about Danya, Shanna, Celine, Jo-X, didn’t get anywhere with that. At some point, Fairchild phoned with Jo-X’s Vegas address. Finally, I went back to the hotel.
The pool at 1:05 was bustling with tiny bikinis and speedos on hairy guys with beer bellies; lotion, kids, two hundred baking bodies, a dozen kinds of music. No Lucy.
So there you have it, Mort. Easy come, easy go. Once again, I was a gumshoe on the loose. Already I missed her, but I had a job to do, an address to check out.
I went up to the room, opened the door, and she hit me in the chest with a fistful of thousand-dollar chips.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she said with a feline snarl.
“Do what?”
“Test me like that. And don’t tell me it wasn’t a test or I’ll rip your heart out.”
Ouch.
“Sugar Plum, I—”
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
I saw tears. She turned away, went to a window, and looked out. Her body was rigid, shaking.
I stood there like a great ape, wondering what to do next to screw things up. What I came up with was, “I didn’t have a choice, Lucy.”
She whirled. “I thought we were partners.”
She was hurt, but, in fact, it was time for a reality check, even though that could cost me a gorgeous assistant. I took her by the shoulders. “Look at me.”
She tried to turn away, but I held her, kept her facing me. “You want to be my partner? Well, this is part of it. I was paid to do this. I have a client. What I tell you is up to him, not to me. So if you’re hurt, tough.”
At the word “tough,” she looked shocked.
“It’s been like a game so far,” I went on. “We’ve had fun. But I told you I didn’t have a choice, and that’s the real world. Yes, it was a test. If we’re going to work together, you’ll have to know a few things that are highly confidential, so I had to know you could be trusted. And after knowing you less than twenty-four hours, how was I supposed to do that? So—do you want to ‘stick around’ with me in the real world too, even if it isn’t always ‘fun’?”
A single tear rolled down her cheek. “Yes.”
I kissed her. I had to. Last thing I wanted was to knock her out of herself, make her stop being who she was. But the kiss missed her lips, landed on her forehead instead. My bad.
For a moment she was like a block of wood, then suddenly she was in my arms, crying. I let that run its course, didn’t try to fix it, say anything. I’d learned that much in life anyway. When women cry, just hold them. Anything you say will be wrong.
Finally, she backed away a few inches. “Just, please, don’t do anything like that again, okay?”
No fancy words, no “Sugar Plum,” no typical dumbass Mort comment. “Okay.”
And I still didn’t know what the hell I was doing with this girl. Which was par for the course. I had eleven years on her, not what I’d thought when we left Tonopah in spite of that glimpse at her driver’s license. Eleven years. Not even close to what I’d thought at first sight at McGinty’s Café. She was smart. Maybe she could be my assistant. As if a lone-wolf PI-in-training could even have an assistant.
One thing I noticed, finally, was that Lucy was wearing a real shirt, sleeveless. It wasn’t mesh, wasn’t see-through. She had on tight white pants, barefoot, no ankle chain, no hoop earrings, no belly showing. The shirt had a collar. It was robin’s-egg blue, seersucker with a kind of checkered design, something a real estate agent might wear in hundred-degree heat, showing houses.
She looked more grown-up, looked more like . . . twenty-two.
I crouched down and started to pick up chips. As I went along, I began to notice that there seemed to be too many of them. In fact, there were thirty-six.
“I kept four of them, put all the rest on red,” she said, standing over me.
I stared up at her. “Red, red, red? Sixteen chips?”
“Yep. Pit boss guy looked like he was gonna faint. One spin of the wheel. I was mad. But even mad, I’m still lucky.”
Jesus.
“They looked pretty upset when I won, but now that we’re up another sixteen thousand, they might put more upgrades on the suite,” Lucy said with a hesitant smile, already starting t
o turn back into herself.
I stood up. “Not sure what else they could give us, kiddo.” But we were up fifty-two thousand now, so maybe they would give us the penthouse if we asked. And a limo and a driver.
Her smile widened. She gave me a peck on the cheek. “They could send up a few guys in jock straps to dance around.”
“Yeah. That’d really brighten my day.”
As we went past the main cashier’s cage on our way out, I had Lucy put twenty-six chips in an account in her name alone. Now we each had twenty-six thousand at the casino, which seemed fair to me. It gave her the option of leaving any time she wanted. I still had four thousand in a money belt, a few hundred in my wallet. Money was not going to be an issue.
Back in the Mustang, one forty p.m., Jo-X’s address plugged into the car’s navigation system. The temperature was a hundred six and still inching upward. I had on dark gray khaki shorts and a lightweight green shirt with several buttons undone, a black wig, dark moustache, dark glasses, and the Stetson. Before we left the room, I showed her the two videos of Shanna, brought her up to speed on that front, which might have still been a risk, but she’d had thirty-six thousand dollars and hadn’t taken off. I told her to put on her running shorts and partly see-through crochet halter top. The clothing was cooler and more likely to turn heads if we needed heads to turn. No telling what we would run into.
“That moustache looks pretty funky,” she said.
I touched it. Last year I’d worn one the size of a shoe brush, running around with Jeri while we dodged media jackals. This one was more sedate, two-thirds Pancho Villa.
“You no like, senorita?” The top was down on the Mustang, sun beating down. Hot. Lucy wore a floppy, wide-brim hat.
“Makes you look, I don’t know, with those shades and from a distance—Mexican, maybe Cuban.”
“So you got yourself a hot Latino. Be happy.”
She laughed. “Or not. But you look kinda Texan with the hat.”
I kicked the Stetson back on my head. “You no like the hat, too, Barbie? You’re a hell of a hard dame to please.”
“No, I like the hat. It’s just that funky ’stache. The thought of kissing you gives me the willies.”
“USA Today has me listed as more recognizable than the vice president, not that that’s a ringing endorsement—I’m not sure I could pick the VP out of a lineup—but still not good since we’re going to be in or around Jo-X’s place. So the ’stache, as you call it, shall remain in place.”
We were half a mile past the Mandalay Bay Casino, headed south. Lucy held her hat on with one hand. We were doing fifty in a forty-five zone. “Glad we got that cleared up, and since you brought it up, what’re we gonna do at Jo-X’s place anyhow?”
I shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Perfect. I’m learning stuff already.”
“If you must know, we’re gonna scout the place, see what we see.”
“Scout it, right. You should have a Dan’l Boone hat.”
In addition to the other disguise elements, I had four hats in the lockbox in the Mustang’s trunk. The box also held binoculars, a hefty .357 Magnum revolver and a little .32, a tool kit, other odds and ends. You never know what you’re going to run into. Lucy was proof of that.
But no Dan’l Boone hat.
Might have to pick one up to round out the collection.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JO-X’S ESTATE WAS something shy of a full-on mansion, not like the kind of places you’d find in Florida—Naples, Little Bokeelia Island, Longboat Key. It only had two stories. How could you call it a mansion if it didn’t have at least three stories? But it was a nice stucco Mediterranean in shades of desert sand and basalt with a few desert palms in front, and, as advertised, it overlooked the fourteenth green of the Las Lomas Golf Club—a daily parade of color-blind guys in funny hats swatting balls and cussing. What more could anyone ask?
“Now what?” Lucy asked.
Now I still didn’t know what. A single patrol car was in front of the mini-mansion, a forensics van, and two unmarked cars that might have disgorged detectives, chiefs, and others of that ilk. No way in, nothing to do but gawk with the others, and there were a great many others—about twelve carloads, mostly young, mostly girls, which gave us plenty of cover as we cruised slowly by, also gawking. I slouched behind the wheel while Lucy sat up and gave the place a good long look.
The mansion was eighty-two hundred square feet plus the pool and grounds, so the forensics guys and gals had a lot of territory to cover. Jo-X had been found in Reno, but he could have been killed anywhere—and by anyone, including twenty million civic-minded adults. The size of the suspect list might’ve given Russell a modicum of comfort—if I hadn’t found Jo-X in his daughter’s garage.
But Lucy and I weren’t getting anywhere, which was par for me. I wasn’t sure about her. What had I expected, coming out here? A drive-by look at the house? What would that tell me? The thought that cops would be going through the place had occurred to me, but I’d wanted to check it out to be sure. Skulking Jo-X’s mansion in the wee hours might be out of the question, but not necessarily. However, I did something like that last summer and almost got myself killed.
“Now what?” Lucy the Trainee asked.
“Now—oh, shit, duck.”
“Duck?”
“Well, me. You don’t have to.” I slumped way down. “What I should’ve said was, don’t stare at that blue car at the curb.” Which was like saying, “Don’t think about elephants.”
“Which one?” Lucy asked, sitting up straighter, staring, head swiveling. “There’s two of ’em.”
“The one with the redhead in it.”
“How will I know which one not to stare at if I don’t look at both of them?”
Aw jeez. “Okay, then don’t look at either one of ’em.”
“If there’s a problem, how’s that supposed to help us?”
“Eyes front, girl.”
We kept going. I drifted to the curb when we were a hundred yards beyond the car with the redhead behind the wheel.
“What’s goin’ on?” Lucy asked.
“Remember Shanna?”
She thought for a moment. “Tall, busty, naked blond girl in the shower you described twice in profuse exuberant detail but who’s keeping track? Sure. So what?”
While briefing Lucy earlier, I might have given her an excess of information, but during investigations you never know what will be important. Cases often turn on trivia.
“That was her.”
“In one of those blue cars?”
“Yep. The Ford Focus, not the SUV.”
“You sure?”
“Nope.”
“Perfect.”
I handed her a digital camera. “Get a close-up of her. Make it look like you’re taking pictures of Jo-X’s place.”
She said, “I feel like Nancy Drew,” then popped out of the car and trotted back to where Shanna—maybe Shanna—was observing the activity at Jo-X’s house. I watched in the rearview mirror. Lucy looked seventeen or eighteen, not much older than the quintessential groupie. Perfect cover. I pulled a quick U-turn and got the Mustang aimed in the same direction as the Focus, crept another twenty yards closer, then watched as Lucy walked up to the car in question and snapped a few pictures. Two minutes later, she was back.
I flipped through five pictures on the little screen. Good shots. Lucy had come through.
“That her?” she asked.
“Yep. Wearing a wig and sunglasses, but it’s her.”
“It’s she, you mean.”
“So you’re colloquially challenged, Miss Prissy. I’ll have to keep that in mind.”
She smiled. “Okay, now what?”
“Now we try to follow her.” Which meant I couldn’t ditch the moustache, wig, or Stetson for a while.
“How about I drive? You could slump down, keep out of sight better that way.”
“Got your license with you? Think you can keep up, not lose her
?”
“Does a bear poop?”
I stared at her. “Something’s missing from that time-honored aphorism, doll.”
“Listen very, very carefully, Mort. Does a bear poop?”
“Well, yeah. They don’t hold it until they die. If they did, they wouldn’t last long.”
“Okay then. The bear thing is like a total yes, I can keep up with her. What’s the problem? Change places with me.”
I did, head whirling slightly. I still couldn’t keep up with her. Quixotic damn broad.
We sat there for another ten minutes. The Focus stayed at the curb. Finally it pulled away, slowly, as if Shanna were reluctant to leave but had no choice.
Lucy waited a moment then eased out behind her. She kept Shanna’s car within view but hung back nicely.
“You’ve done this before,” I said.
“Nope. But believe it or not I’ve watched all the seasons of Justified and I think I picked up a few pointers. And, by the way, Timothy Olyphant is a hunk and a half.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Trust me. Don’t feel bad about it, though. He’s not real. You are. And you’re totally Borroloola’ed, whatever that is.”
Olyphant wasn’t real. Good to know.
North on Decatur to I-215, a jog over to I-15, then through the heart of Las Vegas, parallel to the Strip. Lucy waved bye-bye to the Luxor as we went by.
Through Vegas, North Vegas, past Nellis AFB, signs telling us we were headed for St. George, Utah, Salt Lake City. Shanna held it at seventy and on we went, staying nearly a mile behind.
Road trip, motion, heat, freedom, cute girl in a crochet top, and Shanna in a Focus. Shanna, last seen leaving a bank parking lot in Reno wearing a Goodwill dress and bad shoes. Finally I was getting somewhere.
“Hope it doesn’t get cold wherever we’re going,” Lucy said. “What I’m wearing is all I’ve got. Everything else is back at the Luxor.”
I pointed to the temperature readout on the dash. “Right now it’s a hundred seven degrees. Unless you slam us into the back of a refrigerated tractor-trailer, cold isn’t an option.”
Gumshoe on the Loose Page 15