But . . . Holiday. And Lucy. In the same room. They had spoken on the phone two weeks ago when we were on our way to Vegas, and while I was in the hospital I’d told Holiday that Lucy and I had gotten “close” and things might be serious—however I still thought a Kevlar vest and helmet would be useful clothing accessories when those two met.
But I’m never right about that. They hugged. They always do—women who have slept with me, or at least seen me naked. Maybe there’s something cosmic about that, something about having shared or survived a life-altering event.
I got Holiday’s next hug. I always get sloppy seconds when the girls I know get to hugging.
“Go easy on the grip, kiddo,” I told her as she reached for me. “Shoulder’s still getting fed OxyContin.”
“I’ll be gentle.”
She was. The impressive bumpers against my chest helped to mitigate the landing. I thought the hug ran a little long and might cause my new assistant to say something about breaking things up, but she didn’t. When Holiday and I parted, Lucy’s eyes were bright, happy, unconcerned. So, no Kevlar needed.
Holiday backed off and looked at Lucy and me. Her look got sharper. “You two really are sort of an item, aren’t you?”
Nothing gets by them.
“If he asks me to marry him, I will,” Lucy said matter-of-factly. “Like today if he slips up. Not sure yet if he believes it, but, yeah, we’re pretty much an item.”
“Well, good,” Holiday said. “’Cause . . .” She looked at me. “I might’ve found someone. I mean, maybe I have. When I was in San Francisco. He . . . he’s what I guess I’ve been looking for all this time—since, I don’t know, maybe even when I was in high school. But, Mort, I don’t want you to think that I—”
I put a finger to her lips. “Shh. It’s okay, kiddo. If you found what you need, then stick with it.”
She hesitated, then smiled. “Well . . . good.”
“If he treats you bad, though, let me know and I’ll kill ’im.”
“He treats me . . . you know, very good.”
“Okay, then. But I’ll be watching.”
So I lost a girl, gained a girl, and the PI world kept its books in balance.
“You’re not really gonna marry that kid, are you?” Russ asked. It was a week after Holiday met Lucy in the Green Room. He and I were in lawn chairs in my backyard, ten thirty at night, a half-moon flying almost directly overhead, temperature still in the upper seventies. “She looks younger than your daughter.” His speech was slightly slurred so I knew the beer was in on the conversation. My daughter, Nicole, was twenty-one years old, in Ithaca, New York, finishing up a degree in dance, which was one step up from a degree in art history—so said Lucy. She should know. Lucy was a PI-in-training at Clary Investigations making fourteen bucks an hour. She had a studio apartment where she actually stayed at times, and drove a recently purchased six-year-old Mustang convertible, paid for in cash. She told me I should drive it out on lonely desert roads while she got a little sun and wind, like before, sans shirt.
Russ had brought over two six-packs of what for him was a very fine brew—Bud Heavy. Love those extra calories. At least it wasn’t O’Doul’s swamp water, otherwise known as “Why Bother Ale,” which I would’ve quietly set aside and used to kill a tough patch of weeds by the back fence the next day.
“Does look kinda young, doesn’t she?” I said comfortably.
“Kinda doesn’t cover it, Angel.”
“You should call me Mort, now that I’ve compromised you, got a cop in my back pocket. But, yeah, she does look a little bit young. Thing is, she’s getting to be an old maid. I found a gray hair on her head yesterday. Made her look twenty-four.”
“Jesus.”
“She pulled it out, so she’s back to nineteen, but those gray hairs are gonna keep coming.”
“Around you, yeah.” He tried again: “So, you two gonna get hitched?” He burped, followed that up with, “’Scuse.”
“To be determined, Russ. To be determined. Twenty years ago I would’ve jumped at it. Now . . . I’m practically a grown-up. The world isn’t as simple as it once was.”
“Yeah. Sucks to get ancient, don’t it?”
“Did you ever find out what was in the safe?” I asked.
“Comic books.”
“Comic books? That all?”
“That’s all, except for a few of his nasty-shit CDs and DVD videos of his concerts. Guy had a solid silver sculpture worth fifty thousand and what’s he got in his safe? Fuckin’ comics.”
“I would’ve liked to have been there if those two had finally got that safe open.”
Another round of silence in the dark. A lot of things had been left unsaid since Vegas. I hadn’t told him about Josie, or that Ma had found that Josie signed Xenon’s guestbook as Jo-X, Reno 37-25-36 Remember me? Measurements, no last name, address, or phone number. Maybe she had the feeling she shouldn’t give out too much specific information. She was a cop’s daughter so maybe something rubbed off. A million teenagers pronounced Jo-X as “Jo-Z,” same as Josie, so, all in all, I thought it had been a close call. I’d spoken with Danya, told her what Josie had done, told her to tell Josie to act dumb and cool if cops came around, and if they brought a tape measure, tell ’em to get a court order.
I was on my fourth Bud and Russ was on his sixth, which was probably why he answered when I said, “Arlene and Buddie Hicks didn’t kill Xenon. They were murderers, but they didn’t kill him like everyone thinks.” Everyone being pretty much the entire country, satisfied that Jo-X’s killers died behind Arlene’s Diner—satisfaction that did not include the FBI. They’d taken over the investigation based on the theory that Jo-X had gone missing and might’ve been kidnapped before being murdered, making it a clear-cut case for the FBI. No doubt they had visions of basking in the glory when the bullets in Jo-X’s head and chest were matched to those from Arlene’s revolver, both of which were .38 caliber. Someone in the upper ranks probably lost his or her job when no such match was found, but they were still sticking to the story that Buddie killed Xenon because it was the only story they had. And, of course, Buddie and Arlene were serial murderers.
Which suited all of us who knew the real story just fine.
“Yeah, I know,” Russ said once the silence had gotten a little thick. “I wondered if you knew.”
“She did it. You and I might not know the reason why, but she killed him.”
I emphasized “she” but didn’t say who she was. And I knew why she’d done it, or I had a pretty good idea. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, just let it go, but I wondered what he would do with the comment. I also wanted to know how far this cop-PI link-up had gotten us.
He remained silent for over a minute. I could almost hear him over there, neurons grinding away. When he spoke, he didn’t sound nearly as drunk. “I know,” he said at last. “But how’d you get there? I gotta know if, you know, I’m gonna protect her.”
He still hadn’t said who “she” was, but I thought it was just as well to leave it like that.
“Timing. Ma found gas receipts in Fallon, Ely, Caliente, Ely again, then Austin. Left a trail from Reno to Caliente and back. Ma’s a bloodhound. Gas was purchased using Shanna’s father’s credit card—don’t ask me how Ma found that since I don’t know—but at that time, Buddie was following Shanna back to Reno, up 95 through Tonopah, different route, so Shanna wasn’t the one using her dad’s card. Buddie found out where she lives, then he came back and found Xenon already dead. Xenon had seen a private doctor in Vegas to get himself unglued, then he’d driven back to the diner, flown the helicopter up to his place in the hills. Shanna was nowhere around by then. But . . . gas receipts from Reno to Caliente and back right at that time. Perfect match. Who else could have used that credit card? Caliente isn’t very far from Xenon’s hideaway. Two and two, Russ. But it’s not proof.”
He thought about that for a while. “I think that’s not gonna be a problem. It’s too far out on the e
dge of it. I mean, Shanna’s father’s credit card? I guess he was letting her use it, her being in college and all. Danya’s got one of mine. I’m glad she was smart enough not to use it anywhere.”
“How’d you figure things out?” I asked him.
“Jesus, Mort. C’mon.”
“Hey, as long as we’re talkin’, Russ.”
He sighed, then dug out his wallet, handed me ten dollars. “What’s this for?” I said.
“I’m hiring you for another ten minutes. You get sixty an hour, right? Now what I say is privileged. And anyway, it’s not proof either.”
“Okay, no proof is good.”
“I’ve got a gun safe at home. She knows the combination. I was in there a few days ago getting a box of ammo, and I found a Ruger LCR .357 Magnum. Thing is, it used to be a Ruger LCR .38 special plus-P.”
“Specials don’t often morph into Magnums. Not even plus-P specials.”
“No they don’t. She didn’t know the difference. Guess she knew it was a Ruger LCR, barrel about two inches long, but that’s all. It took some doing, but two days ago I found that she bought it at Cabela’s. Got the gun registration documents and the background check. She’s got a clean record, so buying that gun took roughly an hour. I haven’t told her. Not sure what the point would be, so I won’t unless it becomes an issue.” He looked a question over at me.
“Not me, Russ. I don’t have a dog in that fight. It feels like a father-daughter thing. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Thanks. If the FBI finds that she bought a gun, it’ll be after this Xenon business, not before. So she bought it for protection and with my blessing. In fact, now that I think about it, maybe I oughta take her out to a gun range, get her qualified for a carry permit. That’d be good if the FBI comes sniffing around. My dad got that LCR special at a gun show about thirty years ago, when I was still in high school.”
“So, no record of you ever owning it.”
“Nope. Even if they find the gun somewhere it won’t come back to me. But I sure hope she got rid of it someplace where it will never be found.”
“She’s a cop’s daughter.”
“Uh-huh. Hope some of that rubbed off.” He fell silent, then said, “I still don’t know why she’d do something like that. Take out Xenon. Doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’ll have to ask her. I couldn’t tell you.” Which was true in a sense, but not the way he would take it.
After another minute of silence I said, “Sometimes it doesn’t go our way, Russ. Sometimes life is a bitch. We want it tied up in a neat bundle, good guys innocent, bad guys dead or in prison, and sometimes it isn’t like that. Xenon in her garage, it makes no sense that she would put him there, and she didn’t, so obviously she couldn’t have killed him, and then . . . turns out she did. So you end up with an elephant in the refrigerator, not sure what to do about it. Sometimes Occam’s Razor doesn’t work, which in this case is a good thing.”
“Occam’s Razor. That’s where the simplest explanation is the way it actually happened.”
“Yup. Simplest explanation is that Buddie killed Jo-X when he stole stuff from the guy’s place, took him up to Reno and hung him in that garage to throw the police off. That particular garage because he liked the way Shanna looked when he saw her at the diner. Something like that, something the FBI will never be able to prove or disprove.”
“Jesus, that last part is still goddamn thin.”
“But it’s where the FBI is at now. I imagine Occam’s Razor has ’em scratching their heads. I doubt that it feels right to them but it’s all they’ve got.”
He sighed. “Hope that’s as far as they ever get.”
“Arlene and Buddie aren’t gonna put their two cents in. And the Feds will want to close this thing out, go home. They’ll take what they can get even if the bullets don’t match the gun.”
A wet washrag tied in a knot missed me by a foot, landed on the grass beside me with a damp plop. I leaned over and picked it up. Behind me, Lucy called down from the upstairs bedroom window, “That’s enough talk, guys. It’s late. You should come on up, Mort. I think there’s a problem with the shower—the water thingie.”
“The water thingie?”
“Like the nozzle or the drain or something. You should come up and help me check it out. Like totally,” she said in her Valley Girl voice.
“Jesus,” Russ sighed.
“Be right there, kiddo.” My shoulder still wasn’t a hundred percent. I levered myself awkwardly out of the lawn chair with one arm. “Duty calls, Russ.”
“I ever tell you I’m in the wrong goddamn line of work?”
“Couple of times. But you probably ought to stick it out on the force, get the brass-and-walnut ‘attaboy’ plaque for your wall, and the damp handshake. Getting shot isn’t for wimps.”
“Wimps. Screw you, Mort.” He got to his feet. “’Night. Oh, the ten minutes are about up so you’re fired again.” He headed for the gate in the fence that would let him out to the street.
“After all this, I think you still owe me, Russ,” I called after him. “So if I ever give you a call, needing some little thing . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
The gate clicked shut behind him. I waited a few seconds, then smiled, listened to the quiet, thought about how good it was to still be alive and finally off the OxyContin, gave the stars one last look, then went inside and hiked upstairs to the second floor to see what I could do about the water thingie.
Gumshoe on the Loose Page 33