“Drug rehab. Perfect.”
“Thing is,” Shanna said, “if it ever got out that I roofied him up there, people might think I killed him when he was out cold, so if you want to know why I lied, that’s why.”
“So you didn’t kill him?” I knew she hadn’t, since Jo-X had flown back later that day, according to Melanie, but it’s never a good idea to give out too much information.
“No, I did not. What I did, if you must know, I super-glued his cock to his belly.”
I gaped at her. “You did what?”
“Put a big glob of superglue on his dick and stuck it to his belly, aimed up. The fucker. Glue takes like two seconds to bond flesh to flesh. Then I left him a note explaining why, told him to think twice before he raped girls. It was sort of like he got raped, but not nearly as bad as what he did to Josie. Until he got his dick unstuck, he’d be pissing himself. He’s lucky I didn’t glue his dick shut, ’cause I thought about it. Then I found the keys to his SUV and drove out. Only one road into the place, so that was easy. Anyway, he was fine when I left him, except for the glue. But obviously someone killed him. A guy like that’s got to have a ton of enemies, so it looks like someone finally got to him.”
“And strung him up in your garage.”
“Which is so bizarre I don’t know what to think about it.”
Bizarre, yes. She’d been standing behind me when I tried to open the padlock on the garage and the hasp had fallen out, no key needed. She didn’t see it happen. She didn’t know the lock was jimmied. Anyone could have put Jo-X in their garage. It also meant whoever did it didn’t have access to a key.
“Why would anyone think you could pay a million dollars?” I asked.
“She was Celine,” said Lucy the Trainee, nodding at Shanna. “Whoever put him in the garage probably knew that.”
“Well, hell,” Danya muttered.
“Yeah, what’d that pay?” I asked. I gave Lucy’s waist a little squeeze. Good job.
“Not enough,” Shanna said.
“You told him you would do it for the money. It must have been enough to convince him. How much?”
She shrugged. “I got twenty a concert.”
“Twenty?”
She stared at me like I was the guy texting who walked off a cliff. “Twenty thousand. What’d you think? Twenty bucks?”
Great. Love it when a gorgeous girl puts a sneer in her voice.
“And,” she added, “a thousand a day, just to go around with him, be seen, wear revealing clothes.”
“How many concerts?” I asked.
“I went to four.”
Eighty thousand. “Did you get the money up front?”
“What d’you think?”
“She did,” Lucy said. “For sure.” Shanna shot her a baleful look, then nodded.
“How many days were you with him?” I asked.
“Nineteen or twenty. About that. I didn’t get my thousand a day for those.”
Kids hadn’t written that note. It was someone who thought the girls had money. Might not have known how much, though.
“Anyway,” I said, “there’s a road into Jo-X’s place and you know where it is.”
“It’s not like it’s invisible from the highway. But it’s just a dirt track with ‘No Trespassing’ signs and a wire gate. The gate isn’t locked or anything. It’s one of those wire loop things. Then, if you get up into the hills, still like about three miles from the house, there’s a sign saying the place is a private hospital or something, like a detox place, and Keep Out signs are all over. And there’s one of those tire-shredding things, and a call box and a camera so they can see who’s there if someone shows up and wants in.”
“He’s got a tire shredder?”
“Uh-huh. Like those ugly steel teeth you see in parking lots where they warn you not to back up. I figure there’s got to be a switch or something in the house that someone can throw to lower the teeth. If you tried to drive over it going up to Jo-X’s place, you’d blow all your tires. And they put big rocks beside the shredder and dug trenches. All that is right at the mouth of a canyon. It’d be hard to get up there in a car or truck if someone didn’t want you there.”
After Shanna had driven Jo-X’s SUV out of his hideaway, he’d flown out in his helicopter. Then, according to Melanie, he’d walked hunched over to his SUV. Now I knew he might’ve had something tugging on his pecker. Like his belly. Talk about your basic all-purpose revenge move. But it still wasn’t as bad as Lorena Bobbitt’s solution to life’s little ups and downs. Lorena and her Ginsu knives had spawned a song: “Lorena’s in the car takin’ Willie for a ride.” She was born in Quito, Ecuador. Maybe they did things differently down there. Like cut off the offending member and chuck it out a window on the way to Walmart.
Hurts just to think about it. Superglue was bad, but not that bad. I wondered where Lorena was now, if she had found another boyfriend or if guys were keeping their distance.
Back on the road, top down on the Mustang. Lucy and I had eaten breakfast at the casino on Front Street in Caliente and were on the road by eight twenty, temperature already approaching ninety.
I looked for the turnoff to Jo-X’s hideaway, thought I spotted what might be it, but wasn’t sure. Shanna told us it was on the west side of the highway, eight or ten miles north of Arlene’s Diner and the Midnight Rider Motel.
Speaking of which, as we passed Arlene’s, Lucy was sitting up on the back of the seat with her top off, eyes closed, and we were doing fifty-five miles an hour. And Ignacio was in front of his motel room with what looked like a cup of coffee in his hand, eyes bugging out as we blew on by.
We reached the Vegas city limits at ten fifteen. Lucy put her top on two miles before we reached I-15, but she had a forty-mile topless run in good morning sun, hair blowing around in the blast of wind. I was inordinately proud of the fact that I’d looked up at her only eight or ten times and whistled at her only once when I caught her with her back arched and her eyes closed.
In my white wig and moustache, I valet-parked the Mustang at the Luxor and we went inside. I kept the key that opened the lockbox in the trunk. It might raise eyebrows if some curious kid were to open it and find guns and disguise paraphernalia.
In our suite we found two maids working on the room. There wasn’t much to do since we hadn’t been there in twenty-four hours, hadn’t used the towels or the bed. I gave them each fifty dollars and chased them out.
“Jacuzzi,” Lucy said, shedding clothes as if they were on fire. “The shower in that motel sucked.”
“I thought you had fun.”
“I did. A lot. But the water was only tepid and the pressure was low. Now get naked, Mort.”
“Naked? Moi?”
“People often bathe naked. It’s like a custom.” She came over, pulled my head down, and gave me a kiss. “But I’m not a tease and this is still just getting clean, nothing else, I mean nothing that you’d call exercise or aerobic—so you don’t actually have to participate if it would leave you unfulfilled and unhappy. But you did earlier, participate, I mean, so I’m kind of making an assumption. Sometime later, not sure when yet, it’s likely I will ‘put out’ as the old saying goes—if you want, that is, and I hope you do when the time comes, and if you think Holiday wouldn’t freak out—which from everything you’ve told me she probably wouldn’t—but right now we need to scrub off about three hundred miles of desert dust.”
“Impressive. I believe you said all that in one breath.”
“Good lungs.”
“It’s called logorrhea.”
“You probably think I don’t know what that means.”
I gave her a long up-and-down look. “Are you sure you’re thirty-one, kiddo? You don’t look twenty-one.”
“You should get naked.”
Which I did, and the next thirty or forty minutes were a lot of fun. And I’ve been trained in the art of enjoying the sights without having to take a role more active than helping to get chests really c
lean, a skill at which I believe I have become more skilled than the average Joe since practice makes perfect.
After the Jacuzzi and shower and toweling off, Lucy piled into a bed and suggested that it would be nice if I piled in after her and held her for a while. Being a good sport about such things, I piled in and let the world of wharf rats and dead gangsta rappers and spooky motels drift off into mental vapor.
We stayed like that for about half an hour, during which time I contemplated, drowsily but happily, what it had meant to dump the IRS and become a world-famous gumshoe. Tried to, anyway.
Then Lucy fell asleep and so did I.
“We should lose ten thousand dollars,” Lucy said. She was on the floor, doing splits that would’ve torn every tendon and muscle in my body from crotch to toes, so I didn’t join in.
“Right. Exactly what I was thinking.”
She laughed. “Not. You were looking at my boobs.”
“Okay, Lucifer, why should we drop ten Gs?”
“Lucifer, cool. To keep the suite, of course.”
I thought about that. Did we need the suite? I liked it, but the investigation appeared to be relocating itself to Arlene’s Diner or Caliente or points in between—like Jo-X’s hideaway if we could find it. But the suite was fantastic, free, and only an hour and a half drive from the Midnight Rider. Besides, losing ten thousand dollars? I couldn’t imagine that much fun.
We got eleven chips, thousand bucks each, cashed one, and she bought another baby-doll outfit—white jogging shorts and a white tank top with spaghetti straps. She was into white clothing. The top was short at both ends—that is to say, both high and low. The plunge neckline exposed enough breast to turn heads, and three inches of exceptionally tight belly showed. She wore white sandals. White looked terrific on her. She was an extremely hot little baby-doll bimbo, having fun with Daddy’s life savings. I told her so and got a big smile with a hint of promise in it.
She tucked an arm through mine and we drew stares—well, she did—as we went through the casino to the same roulette table, which caused a hefty-looking pit boss to ease over. The ball was already whirring around its track when Lucy plunked down a thousand-dollar chip on red, said, “Red, red, red,” and the ball came up black, and someone said, “Well, shuckins.”
Not the same pit boss, but he’d evidently been schooled in the ways of Daddy’s Girl. He looked worried. Lucy put down another thousand on black, said, “Black, black, black,” and the ball bounced into a red slot and stayed there.
“Well, shuckins, Daddy,” she said, pouting up at me.
Then she put all the rest of the chips down, four on red, four on black. Wow. I felt my eyes bug out.
“Uh, Honey Bunch . . .” I said.
She reached up and put a finger on my lips, said, “Shhh, I’m gonna win somethin’, Daddy,” and I saw the pit boss smile.
The ball whirred and the wheel spun and Lucy said, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” and the girl running the wheel gave me a look like I was with the world’s all-time dumbest bimbo and therefore I was the world’s all-time dumbest Wallet, then the ball clattered and bounced around, came to rest on green zero.
“Well . . . shuckins,” Honey Bunch said, staring at the table in disbelief as the girl raked in all eight chips.
Honey looked up at me. “Our room still faces east, don’t it, Daddy?”
“Yep. Still does, Sugar Plum.”
She stared at the table again. “Double shuckins.”
We ate lunch before leaving. Well, I did. Lucy had a spinach salad enhanced with beets, cucumbers, and more kinds of inedible vegetation than you’d find on a Mississippi riverbank. By three thirty we were on the road, headed for Arlene’s Diner and the Spooky Motel. We’d put her suitcase and my travel bag in the Mustang’s trunk, in case we needed a change of clothes.
Lucy drove, because I was still drowsy from the Jacuzzi, the nap, and the lunch, and she wasn’t. For an old broad, over thirty, she was pretty tough. Before we left Vegas, I hit a Walmart and had her buy black pants, a dark shirt, dark blue tennis shoes, clothes for night skulking that she didn’t have. And I stocked up on food and water, bought a small ice chest, a bag of ice.
Still in her white shorts and tank top, Lucy got us headed out on I-15. Without either of us saying a word about where we were going, she turned left onto US 93. No need for words. There wasn’t any real choice of destination. All the activity with Jo-X and Shanna was in the neighborhood of Arlene’s Diner and the Midnight Rider Motel. Somewhere around there, up in the hills, was Jo-X’s private retreat, which I wanted to see, if possible, even if we had to walk in once we reached the tire shredder.
“Four thousand on red, four on black,” I said.
“I couldn’t win one lousy penny. All I could do is lose. I’ll bet they’ve never seen anything that dumb in forever.”
“Priceless. You made the pit boss very happy.”
“I’m glad. I bet they’ll let us keep the suite for a month after that show since we’ve still got forty thousand of their money.”
Ten miles north of I-15, in the middle of nowhere, we’d been riding along in silence for five minutes, Lucy in her sun hat, when she let out an abrupt laugh that faded into a round of girlish giggles.
“What?” I asked.
She grinned at me. “Superglue.”
“Ouch,” I said.
“Yeah. But what I wouldn’t have given to be a fly on the wall when he woke up and had to pee.” She looked over at me. “Well, maybe not. That’d be gross. But for the record, I’ve heard his lyrics, so he deserved what he got. And if he raped that girl, then he deserved the bullets, too.”
We’d learned things. I didn’t know if any of it was useful, but anything new added to our store of knowledge, which gave me an idea. I hadn’t spoken with Russell since last night, so I gave him a jingle. Maybe he’d found something useful up there in Reno and hadn’t gotten back to me yet.
“You find her yet?” Russ asked without preamble.
“In fact, I did.” He’d forked over five thousand smackeroos so I figured I owed him that much. Smackeroos was a word I’d picked up in Gerlach last year at Waldo’s Texaco. It filled a niche.
“You did? Where?”
“Caliente.”
“Caliente? What’s she doin’ down there? How’d you find her, anyway?”
“Do you have any idea who you’re talkin’ to?”
Dead air for a few seconds. “Well, yeah.”
“Doesn’t sound like it. You are talking to the most successful locator of missing persons in all of North—”
“Oh, for chrissake, yeah, yeah, yeah—”
“—America, and you oughta stay away for a while. She’s with Shanna. They’re fine, keeping their heads down. Until we get a handle on what’s going on and who might’ve killed Jo-X, I’m of the opinion that they’re in as good a place as any. Pick them up and you’ve got a circus on your hands.”
And you’d also have a bubbling fountain of information on your hands, I didn’t tell him—if he could get it out of the girls. Last thing I wanted him to know was that Shanna had roofied Xenon and super-glued part of his anatomy to another part of his anatomy. Which, if I thought about it, wasn’t a topic I wanted to pursue in any depth now or in the future with Russ or anyone else. Odds were Jo-X’s autopsy had already given Russ that tidbit. No need to bring it up, which I couldn’t anyway without revealing more than I wanted to at the moment.
“Where at in Caliente are they?” Russell asked.
“I’m gonna protect you from yourself and your inclination to do exactly the wrong thing and not tell you—or tell Lucy what you said because she’d correct your English.”
“Jesus Christ, Angel—”
“Seriously, Russ. Don’t go there. Leave ’em alone.” Which was up to him now. If he went to Caliente, it would take him about ten minutes to find them; the place was that small.
“Where’re you staying? Caliente?”
“Nope. Suite at
the Luxor.”
“A suite? Je-sus, Angel. But, look, I paid you to find—”
“Hello,” I said. “Russ? You there? You’re breaking u—”
“I hear you just fine and—”
“Russ, you there? Damn it, call must’ve dropped out—”
“I’m here, Angel. I’m right here. Hey—”
“Guess he’s gone,” I said to Lucy, and into the phone. “Cell coverage out here must not be that g—” and I ended the call.
Ten seconds later, my phone rang. “Monster Mash” played for a while, then the call went to voice mail.
I looked over at Lucy. “You takin’ notes?”
“Yeah. You need a new ringtone.”
“Not that. What I said to Russ.”
“How to screw your client and run a maverick operation? Uh-huh, I think I’m gonna be good at this.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The shimmering motel-diner oasis rose out of the afternoon heat mirage like a ghastly ghostly rotting galleon emerging from the murky depths. I told all that to Lucy.
“Don’t count on a Pulitzer. Are we stopping?” she asked half a mile before we got there.
“Let’s see if we can find that road to Jo-X’s. Shanna said it was west of the highway, eight miles past the diner.”
“Eight to ten.”
“Good. You’re keepin’ notes.”
At the Walmart where Lucy had bought her dark clothing, I’d also bought a small backpack to carry food and water. Shanna had estimated that the tire shredder was three miles from Jo-X’s house. Not far, but in hundred-degree heat and no shade it would make for a hot hike. The longest day of the year was only a week or so ago. The sun would be up for four more blazing-hot hours.
As we went by the motel—no sign of the red Chevy Cruze—I reached over and reset the trip odometer.
At seventy-five miles an hour, the miles piled up quickly. Lucy slowed when we’d gone eight of them. I looked ahead for any sign of a road. After another mile, I saw something.
Gumshoe on the Loose Page 21