by L. J. Martin
"You don’t have much to compare with, as this is only the second time we’ve met."
"But not the last time, I hope," I say, digging deep for the best of my b.s. I learned a long time ago it pays to have friends in low places.
She laughs.
"Should I come back later?" I ask.
"When I get off?" she asks, an obvious invitation, and flashes the gold eyelids with a coy blink.
"Actually, I have to chat with your boss."
The smile goes cold. She says something under her breath that I can’t hear. I don’t ask, and by her look, probably don’t want to know.
"She’ll be here sometime this afternoon," she repeats, and goes back to work. It appears I’m dismissed.
"See ya," I say as I pull the door open, but she doesn’t look up.
Then I’m racked all the way from neck to heels, as if I’ve been poleaxed with a two by four.
I’m face to face with Carol Janson.
"Excuse me," she says, trying to get around me.
"Carol," I stammer, stupidly. Could the headless body I saw be someone else?
"Carol’s twin sister, Crystal," she says, and begins to tear up.
"Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I had no idea you were twins." I’m having trouble catching my breath as seeing her identical replica is a mind bender, a breath-taker.
I have no hanky to hand her, but it’s a natural reflex to wrap my arms around a crying woman and comfort her. She sobs on my shoulder for a moment then backs away and focuses. "Who are you?"
"Mike Reardon," I say, actually using my real name. "Your sister hired me to find her daughter...your niece."
She stares at me a moment and I don’t know if she’s going to scream for help, run, or slap me. Finally, she sighs deeply and moves around me and opens the door. "Last time we talked on the phone she told me she was hiring someone. Come on in and up to my office. We need to talk."
If I were not still in a state of shock, I’d have been even more in awe at following that perfect backside up the stairway where the SPA sign points. She’s dressed to the nines, shoes with two and a half inch soles and five inch heels that must have cost the price of a new set of tires for my Vette, a Saint John’s knit—I once had a girlfriend who worked in that department at Nordstrom’s—that is four times that price, and a tiny handbag the price of which would exceed the value of all the gold coins it might hold. She has perfectly tanned, nicely defined calves above the expensive high-heeled platform shoes.
She turns the opposite way from a spa with a half dozen massage tables and other accouterments, half of which are draped with women in turn draped scantily with toweling. Her office door is rosewood, and the brass plate is concise, OFFICE, not CRYSTAL JANSON. It’s an indication that her vanity is kept in check. I follow her in and she waves me to an upholstered chair in front of a rosewood table that serves as her desk. She moves to an antique armoire and opens it, to reveal that it’s been converted to a bar with glass shelves and mirrored sides and rear. It holds a dozen decanters and bottles and twice that many glasses. Above on a shelf is a picture of her sister and niece.
Over a shoulder she gives me a tight smile. "I don’t normally drink during working hours, but I’ve already had two on the plane, another one won’t hurt."
"Did you get your sister buried?" I ask, and then answer my own question. "Of course not. Silly question. I’m sure the cops have the body...your sister...for a while."
She begins to tear up again, and then collects herself, stepping over and using a tissue from a box on the credenza behind her desk to dry her eyes and blow her nose in the most dainty fashion. She finally nods. "I made arrangements. When they release her...and, pray to God, find...find...the rest of her."
"Pray to God," I repeat.
"What’s your pleasure? I’m having a single malt, neat."
"Perfect," I reply, and would have said the same to anything she offered.
She pours from a cut-glass decanter and hands me three fingers of amber liquid in an equally beautiful glass. Then she parks her way more beautiful backside behind the table in an expensive net-webbing form-fitting office chair.
I hoist my glass. "To your sister."
She again gives me a tight smile, and for the first time, fire flashes in her eyes, and she toasts with great conviction. "To a slow agonizing death of the rotten cocksuckers who did that terrible thing to her."
"I’ll drink to that," I say, and down a dollop of a very fine peat-laced single malt.
She looks at me with eyes that seem to burrow into my soul. "Who killed my sister, and did you have anything to do with it?"
That makes me clamp my jaw. "Hell no, but I’m going to find out and it’s going to be..." I start to say a head for a head, but that’s unkind at the moment, so I say "tit for tat."
"Any idea who?" she presses. "Not her husband, I hope? He must have Sherry."
"I very much doubt if it was him. It had the cartel’s signature all over it. I have reason to believe Raoul’s in some kind of protective custody."
"And Sherry’s with him, I hope. I hope she’s safe there."
We talk for over another hour, then I glance at my watch. It’s nearing four thirty and I want to be outside Miss Wally’s office when she gets off work. We’ve traded cell phone numbers and since I had no address to give her, Crystal refuses to give me her home address saying I can find her at the office.
I was in the Vette the last time I stalked Miss Wally, so I go back to the mini-storage and trade for the van.
As seems to be her habit, it’s six when she walks out and heads for her covered parking spot.
I’m not the only van in the parking lot, and before she can get across the lot a red Dodge van idles in front of her, stops where I cannot see her or the sliding door on its far side, then guns it. And she’s gone.
13
"Christ," I say, and start my engine and slam it into gear. I’m right on their ass when they pull out into the line of traffic, and stay so close I almost ram the car they’ve cut in front of. The driver of the Cadillac leans on his horn, but he’s the least of my worries.
They’re caught at a red light and I slip up alongside. There are two big ugly boys in the front of the van, and probably two more in the rear who’ve performed the snatch. I’m on the passenger side and the guy on my side of the van is tall, cadaver thin, and sunken cheeked. He looks over and reveals that his left eye is glassy white, and his good eye is yellow and I get half-a-shiver down my back as if I’m looking into the eye of a cobra. I expect him to flash a forked tongue at me, but he merely turns back to his buddy who’s so obese his neck looks like it has a small flesh colored inner tube fitted under his ears.
I don’t think I’m made. Then the thin guy turns back and gives me the finger as the van turns left, leaving me in the right hand lane.
Fuck it. I turn right behind him, cutting off the Cadillac again, and again he leans on the horn after he has to slide to a stop. He’s shaking a fist at me as I shove the pedal to the metal.
As I gun it to keep up I glance in my rear view mirror and see a Las Vegas cop car flip a U-turn and hit his red light; smoke flies from his back tires as he hits the throttle hard.
For once I’m happy to see a cop on my ass, but I’m not about to stop. Instead I pull into the oncoming lane, forcing cars to veer to the right shoulder, get a little in front of the red van, and praying this is what I think it is, slam to the right crunching his driver’s side fender with the wrenching scream of metal on metal, forcing him to the right side shoulder. He slams on the brakes, sliding to a stop, and I shoot three lengths in front of him before I can get stopped. The cop is right behind me, in front of the red van, and skids to a stop in a cloud of dust. He’s on the radio, then out of the car in a flash, crouching behind the driver’s side door, he has a weapon in hand, laid down ready to center punch me, yelling for me to exit the van with hands in sight.
I slide out, hands on my head, then notice that the fat boy is out of the red van be
hind the cop, pulling the fender away from the tire.
"Officer," I yell, "I was trying to stop them...those guys just kidnapped a woman."
"What?" he says, glancing over his shoulder as the fat one clamors back into the driver’s seat.
"Don’t move," he yells at me, then spins and starts to walk back to the red van, but doesn’t make it past the rear of his patrol car. The skinny creep on the passenger side, who’s out of the van and behind his door, cuts loose with a fully automatic Bushmaster. The cop slams to his back with a half dozen .223’s splattering his chest; I can only pray that he, like me, has on some Kevlar. The shooter piles back in the red van, and it’s spinning it’s wheels in reverse. Fat boy slams it in drive and roars around the cop car, crunching the cop's legs, heading directly at me. To his great surprise, I’ve palmed my Glock and I put two through the driver’s side windshield. The Glock bucks in my hand and the windshield spider webs in front of the driver. I have to dive back into the van to keep from getting crushed. The red van peels my door away as it scrapes past.
For a second, I think I’ve missed the asshole who’s tried to turn me to mush against the side of my own van. Then their van veers to the left, crosses the center line, and does a head on with a large telephone company truck. The sound is deafening as metal and glass fly.
Before the dust settles, the sliding door opens and two guys pile out from the back. They beat it across into a crowded parking lot on the other side heading for a Denny’s restaurant.
The red van is going nowhere, so I haul ass back to the cop, kneel, and say a quick silent prayer for the young patrolman as I head to his car and grab up his radio. "Officer down," I yell into the radio, give the location, and drop the radio before the dispatcher has a chance to question me...but then I hear a siren in the distance. That’s my cue to check on Wally, and it’s a good thing I do as the van is beginning to smoke. Just as I sprint the hundred feet, the engine compartment bursts into flames.
The telephone guy, obviously uninjured, is out of his truck and dragging Skinny, his face bloodied and him unconscious, out of the passenger side of the red van. The phone guy tries to get in the passenger side door to help the fat boy, but the flames drive him back.
I run for the van, open the rear doors and see Wally on the floor, her eyes rolling like cherries in a cheap slot machine, her hands cuffed behind her. Then her eyes settle and widen with fear. She tries to kick me as I reach for her, then screams and scrambles my way to escape the heat from the flames.
I grab an arm and hustle her away, only to come face to face with two officers, guns drawn.
"Hands on your head!" one of them yells.
"I’m the good guy," I say, and then remember there’s a shot up cop on the pavement and I have a Glock shoved in my belt. I comply and one of them moves forward and jerks the Glock and spins me around while the other begins to move away from the burning van with Miss Wally in tow.
"Hands behind you," he commands and I comply. He hooks me up, jabs a leg between mine hooking an ankle, and shoving me hard on my face to the pavement. I knew what was coming, didn't fight, and tried not to hit face first, not doing too good a job, oofing like I was kicked in the gut and scraping a cheekbone.
In the distance, I see the phone guy dragging skinny cobra far from the accident, and the van fully involved in flame, which is spreading to the phone company truck. I wonder, bizarrely, if the flames are being fed by suet.
"Let’s get the hell away from here," I look back over my shoulder and suggest to the cop.
"Get up," he commands, taking his foot off the back of my knee joint, and I do so quickly. He begins to shove me away, and I don’t take much shoving as I’m moving rapidly before the van’s flames reach its gas tank and blows us all fifty yards further away in half a heartbeat, peeling us in the process.
By the time we are back to my van and the patrol car an ambulance is threading though the traffic, then stops and two EMT’s jump out and begin working on the young patrolman. To my great surprise, he has his eyes open. He too, thank God, has invested in Kevlar.
My cop moves me to the blue and white cop car they arrived in, opens the rear door, does the standard hand on head, and shoves me in with a little too much vigor. Then he leans in and snarls, "If you shot my buddy, you’re toast."
"I'm the one who called it in…."
"Oh, yeah, good cover up, asshole."
There's no sense in trying to make sense with this guy, so I keep my mouth shut. I'll get my one phone call. I hope the cop lives, for his sake, his family's sake, and for mine. And I hope he talks quickly as I don't need them tearing apart my van and finding the signage, weapons, and half-dozen license plates. That might be a little hard to explain.
I'm six hours being interrogated by two LVPD dicks who are good at their job, one playing good cop, and one bad. The bad one, coincidentally, is the same cop, Andre somebody, who was at the fire marshal's office when the Zamudio brothers were giving their statement. I saw him in the conference room and he only got a glance at me when he stepped out of the room. This time I learn his name, Andre Bollinger…he's easy to remember with a hawk bill for a nose, yellow owl eyes with bags under them deep enough to pack for a weekend, and thin hands like eagle talons. Luckily, he doesn't recognize me.
They're a little frustrated by my Wyoming permit to carry. They've identified the van's driver and found him to be wanted…and I'm not in their system. They know the fat guy was a bad guy, and don't have a clue about me. Somehow the thin guy, the cobra, has crawled away and is not to be found.
The good news: a uniform sticks his head in the room and calls the dicks outside. They return in fifteen minutes—were I Pax I could have taken a nap—and inform me that I'm released on my own recognizance. It seems a bank nearby caught the whole thing on their security cameras, and I'm suddenly a hero, except for the part where the red van ran over the cop's legs. Hawk-nose thinks I should have held my ground in front of the oncoming van. I shrug, and he's not pleased. Fuck him.
One of life’s great pleasures is getting out of a holding cell, particularly one that’s frequented by drunks. The last thirty of so of them have blown chunks in the corners and even though the place has been hosed out a hundred times, it still reeks of stomach-acid-processed Old Crow. The odor sticks in your nose like glue, so pungent you can taste it. When you hit the street you know you'll fall in love with fresh air, and freedom.
I recover my belongings, get a location where my van's being held at the police impound, and make a beeline for outside, when the sergeant at the desk tells me someone is in the jail waiting room. I'm surprised to see it's not Pax, but rather Miss Wallace 'Wally' Rosenlieb. Only a long legged strikingly beautiful brunette could slow my escape.
"You okay?" she asks, with seeming concern.
"Oh, yeah. These Vegas cops are a cake walk compared to some I've known."
To my surprise, she clasps my cheeks in both hands and lays a big wet one on my lips. She pushes back to arm’s length, and says, "I really owe you. I don't know...at least not exactly...what was going on there, but I'm so happy you saw it happen, then came to my rescue."
It's obvious she doesn't know I was waiting in the parking lot to tail her, so I go along. "You know, damsel in distress and all that."
"I'm in your debt. I called a friend of mine, Judge Howard, and he leaned on the PD to let you go."
That gets a smile on my mug. "I thought I was out of there pretty quick. Pays to know people who know people."
"Come on, I'm buying you a late supper."
It's almost two A.M., I guess it qualifies as late. As I follow her to her car, I ask, "Did you know those guys?"
"No, but I have an idea it was all about somebody I do know."
"Okay, over supper, okay?"
"I'll fill you in over a steak and a cocktail."
"First I've got to see to my van."
She's in the new Mercedes and pauses at the driver's door. "Can't it wait?"
"Nop
e, can't wait."
"Fine, you drive." She throws me the keys and moves around to the passenger side.
As I'm getting behind the wheel, my cell phone chimes Ring of Fire, Pax calling. "Yeah," I answer.
"Where the fuck have you been?" he demands, sounding unhappy.
"In the pokey. I just got my phone back."
"Well, you burned it with the beautiful Jennifer. She said something about you and the mule you rode in on."
"Sorry to hear that. I really like the girl. …Catch you for lunch tomorrow and fill you in."
"Okay. You had me worried. You being in the can is a relief to the whole world."
"The worrying ain't over, rover, but I'll fill you in at lunch."
"You got it," he says, and disconnects.
It's a good thing the police impound lot is an all night concern, as are tow services. I recover the van with the help of Willy's Towing and have him deposit it inside the ministorage, where it's semi-safe, and finally I'm ready for that steak, only now it looks like it has to be breakfast. I do a cursory check and see the side panels have not been tampered with, so I presume signs, weapons, and license plates remain safely hidden. I do take time to recover another weapon, a Ruger nine that I like almost as much as the Glock, and an ankle holstered Smith & Wesson lightweight .38 police special. The nine goes to the small of my back, the ankle holster where it belongs.
I climb into the passenger side of the waiting Mercedes. "Now, I'm hungry," I say.
"How about breakfast at my place?" she asks. And the sultry look promises more.
"If we must, we must," I reply, and can't help but lick my lips, and it's not over anticipating scrambled eggs. "But you've got to take me to my car first. I'll follow you home…gladly."
14
By the time we reach Wally's condo, overlooking Badlands Golf Course, I'm well versed on her and she knows what I want her to know about her white knight—that I'm a sub-rosa self-employed guy who does lots of repo work with the occasional more challenging opportunity. That's enough for her to know, and she seems fascinated. She hasn't spit up any intelligence on her abductors, but maybe that will come, with luck, in the sleepy talk of post-coital conversation.