"Throw me that towel hangin' on the door," the old man growled, flipping a finger. Malovic complied, averting his eyes.
"Hell, nothin' here you haven't seen before," Donaldson cackled.
He vigorously scrubbed a mane of matted, wet hair, made a show of throughly drying his privates, then wrapped the towel around his waist.
"Open that door, before you turn lobster red, kid."
Malovic followed Donaldson into the bedroom, and again turned away as the old man let the towel fall. Modesty wasn't a Donaldson trait. Struggling into a pair of boxers, the man glanced sideways at Malovic.
"How long you been with Metro, son?"
"Two years, sir."
"Little over one year, you mean. You're still 'sirring' everything that isn't painted. That year in the academy don't count, ya know. Not for real cops, anyhow."
Malovic shrugged. Most civilians didn't know about the year-long academy training phase.
"So… What d'ya think of the police biz?" Donaldson asked casually. He pulled up a pair of dark blue slacks, then sat on a chair to roll on a pair of socks.
"It's… it's good, sir."
"But definitely not what you expected, huh?"
The young officer shrugged again.
"Lot of dumbarse duties like rounding up an old fart for a no-notice mental eval? Not much bustin' bad guys' heads and solvin' murders, right?"
Malovic nodded. The old dude sure got a lot of mileage out of that ancient upper-Midwest term, "arse."
Donaldson said nothing more, as he shouldered into a tailored, button-down, yellow shirt.
Does have taste, Malovic admitted.
Watching himself in a full-length mirror, the retired law enforcement officer continued in a low voice, "Let me guess. You've witnessed your fellow cops and superiors pulling shady stunts. You've seen 'em lie to the sheriff, the district attorney and probably even a jury.
"I'll bet you've talked to a senior officer, somebody you trusted, and he—or she these days—explained the facts of real-world police work. 'Go ahead and accept the free coffee and meals at the hotels and casinos. Everybody does, so what the hey? We put our lives on the line for these damned civilians. We deserve a few goodies!'
"Next it's doctoring a report. Not much. Only enough to, say, protect your partner or a fellow boy in blue." He glanced at Malovic. "Or, in your case, boy in brown."
"Sir, we really need to… "
"Shut up, kid! You're gonna hear me out!" Donaldson snapped, glaring at Malovic. "Now… You've probably been told to keep your trap shut. 'Go along and get along. Don't rock the ol' canoe and you'll do juuuust fine.' Right?"
Malovic was silent, glaring at the geezer.
Donaldson smiled tiredly, almost apologetically. "Yeah, I'm right. Been there myself. But, before you haul my old arse downtown, I'm gonna give you a piece of advice. One old cop to a rookie cop. Okay? And ya better pay attention, kid: Never, ever give 'em your soul! As much as humanly possible, hang onto those naive principles that brought you to this 'protect-and-serve' profession. Don't take the easy road of lying, cheating and covering up. And never, ever discharge your weapon, unless you're absolutely frickin' positive you're gonna be killed.
"In twenty-two years behind the badge, I drew my weapon a few times, but I never fired it in anger," Donaldson said quietly. "Not once. I never killed a man, even though I could have. Many times. And, today, I sleep like a baby every damned night. No regrets. D'ya understand what I'm sayin', son?"
Malovic, taken aback, nodded. The retired officer's words had sliced straight into the young cop's soul. Over the past few months, Malovic had become deeply troubled by the go-along-to-get-along bull that he'd encountered repeatedly, and was haunted by serious doubts concerning his chosen profession. With less than a year in the field, every shining ideal and perception of honorable police service had been shattered.
"Kid, I gotta tell you somethin' else," Donaldson said, staring hard at the young officer. "Your eyes tell me you already know this, but I wanna make damned sure you know that I know. You're working for one of the most corrupt, crooked, dirty, ugly, dishonorable police forces in the nation. Your sheriff is a smooth politician, who finagles meaningless bullshit awards for Metro, but he and The Tower have the moral turpitude of sour-mouthed rattlesnakes.
"If I were you, I'd resign right now. Today! Throw that tarnished star on Uriah's desk and walk out the door with your head held high and your honor intact. If you don't, Metro's bad son of a bitches'll destroy you. Count on it."
Donaldson brushed past a red-faced Malovic, not waiting for a retort. In the living room, the old man spread his arms and said, "Ready to go! Take this poor old wreck of an ex-cop downtown for a trumped-up mental evaluation!"
The front door burst open and a third officer stuck his head inside. "Dude, we gotta go! Dispatch says there's a guy acting weird at the Summerlin Ho's store. Carrying a concealed weapon and claiming he's a Green Beret."
Malovic's heart jumped, as he ran for the door. Excited? Yes. Scared? Maybe.
Either way, given Donaldson's pointed admonitions, a dark cloud of foreboding followed the rookie, a palpable sense of dread that defied logical definition. Flipping on the cruiser's lights and siren, he was vaguely conscious of a nagging premonition that he was racing into a shadowed valley of death.
CHAPTER 3
MURDER
"Little man with a big gun."
Colonel Ted Sturmthal
Test Pilot
LAS VEGAS
"Do you have to take that today?" Katrina asked.
Dressing in the cramped confines of a walk-in closet, I hadn't heard her slip in behind me. I'd tucked a holstered .45-caliber Kimber Ultra Carry pistol inside my jeans' waistband, and was pulling a dark-colored T-shirt over my noggin.
I yanked the shirt firmly, making sure the weapon was covered, and faked a grimace. "Look, if I get a call to work a case, or have to deliver a pacemaker… ."
"Yeah, yeah," Kat interrupted, handing me a food bar and a second protein shake, a blended mixture of Living Fuel powder, frozen berries and a raw egg. "You go into rough areas of town at any hour, day or night. All 'pacer reps conceal-carry for self-protection. Yada, yada.
"But it's Saturday, hon! You're not on call this weekend!"
"Now, sweet thang," I answered, exaggerating a disarming tone of Southern ultra-patience, "y'all know our team's sho't three reps. Ah maght just have to fill in, if'n we run outta bodies."
Two senior pacemaker sales professionals had left the company recently to set up their own business, leaving our local Cardiac Response Corporation team of sales reps and "clinicals" shorthanded. For several weeks, everybody had been on call 24-7, logging twelve-to-twenty-hour workdays. That would continue, until new employees were hired and trained. In fact, I'd missed my grandfather's funeral a week earlier, because our Las Vegas CRC team was so understaffed.
"Whatever. Just move your butt, soldier. Ho's will be slammed on a Saturday. The sooner we get there, the better."
"Arggh!" I groaned. "Hey, do you have a Ho's membership?"
Founded by Ho Zhang, a Chinese immigrant, the chain of big-box discount stores had become a Wall Street darling. It's stock price had soared, as new Ho's retail outlets proliferated across the nation. Consumers battered by the harsh recession and desperate to save a few bucks on day-to-day essentials had flocked to the new stores, leaving Grocery Warehouse, Costco and Sam's Club executives scrambling to compete. I'd researched the stock and knew Ho's was expanding rapidly in Europe and the Far East.
Frankly, shopping was a time-wasting annoyance, in my professional opinion, and I'd organized my life to avoid doing so. I paid my Brazilian-immigrant "rent-a-wife" and housekeeper, Clarice, to keep the pantry stocked with essentials and run time-consuming errands.
She was a godsend. From picking up dry cleaning and freshly laundered scrubs, the green or blue outfits doctors, nurses and our CRC team members wore, to loading the fridge with healthy, ready-to-eat
meals prepared by the local "Whole Paycheck" natural-foods establishment, Clarice took care of all tedious nit-noy.
Consequently, I rarely prowled the aisles of any retail store. I found the ambience of big-box warehouse outlets, which greet their customers with an overpowering odor of cheap hot dogs and stale popcorn, particularly distasteful. And in ol' Erik Steele's case, that aversion was exacerbated by negative association. My second wife had insisted on buying food and household stuff in quantity, and loved shopping at Ho's. That, in itself, was reason enough to avoid the damned place.
Kat wrapped her arms around my neck, her dark eyes boring into mine. "We are going to Ho's, and we are going to sign up for a membership, okay? It's the cheapest place to get what we need to stock your very empty kitchen. Suck it up, big boy. We're going to Ho's."
You have to love a gorgeous woman, who totally destroys half-baked positions, by employing cold, irrefutable logic. I appreciated Kat tremendously, but a smart, organized woman had a few downsides. She was hard to BS, even for a charismatic, experienced sales professional used to getting his way.
She pressed her slim body against mine and planted another warm, deal-closing kiss on my smacker-dos, apparently immune to Steele morning breath. My mouth tasted like the First Cavalry had marched through it overnight, but she didn't seem to mind.
What a woman.
Head tilted, Kat smirked. She'd won again, and knew it. I tightened a one-arm grip on her waist, pulling her against me.
"Hmmm," she smiled impishly. "Is that your ridiculously overweight wallet, or are you just glad to see me?"
I laughed. "Merely a mongo wallet, me love. Zero cash. Lotsa cards. All essential."
"Why do you carry it in your front pocket?" Kat pecked me on the nose and melted into my form.
I leaned back and smiled broadly, trying to focus on those dark, soft pools radiating absolute love.
"Well… You really… ?"
"I do. Really!"
"An old girlfriend liked the shape of my butt. She said an overstuffed billfold… You know. Spoiled the view," I stammered.
She stared. "You serious? Because you didn't want a lumpy butt?"
I shrugged. "She didn't. I got used to carrying the damned thing in a front pocket, so… "
Crap. How the hell did I walk into this?
Kat pushed away, laughing. Her long, dark tresses swung back and forth. "Steele, you're toooo vain! You honestly think young chicks still dig your curvy little butt!"
She departed, still hooting.
Alright, that stung. My face flushed. I could feel the heat of embarrassment, not from exposed vanity, but from being reminded—unintentionally, I knew—of our age difference. I'd logged thirty-eight years on Earth; Kat only twenty-four. Fourteen years was a huge chasm, at least from my perspective.
Kat had made it ice-blue clear that our age difference meant nothing to her. And yet, I was conscious of an acute, unavoidable fact: The ravages of time would take their toll on both of our bodies, but register far sooner on mine. Would her love falter at some point in the future, when my skin wrinkled, copper-red hair turned to gray, and butt cheeks sagged? I couldn't help but wonder.
I drained protein shake number two, brushed my pearly whites, and joined Kat at the front door.
"I suppose you want me to carry these, 'cause you don't have room in your pockets. And we sure don't want to deform our cute little butt, do we?"
She smiled sweetly, dangling a wad of keys, maybe a dozen of the darned items threaded onto interlocking key rings. Keys seemed to breed around me. I nodded and retrieved an extra magazine of hollow-point, .45-caliber ammunition from my left pocket, proving it, too, was occupied.
Kat shook her head in mock disgust and stuffed the keys into a purse. "You need a keeper, Erik Steele."
She pivoted, hooked one arm around my neck and kissed me, hard. "But I love you so much that I'll gladly carry your five-pound key ring, and take very good care of your oh-so-cute little fanny for the rest of your life. Deal?"
Taken aback by the unexpected declaration, I flushed like a kid caught taking a whiz behind the schoolhouse.
"Deal, my queen," I answered, opening the door and bowing.
Kat's spike heels click-clicked down the sidewalk to a borrowed Chevy SUV. She climbed into the driver's seat and unlocked the other doors.
Swinging into the passenger side, I flicked a glance at a cheapo Ford Edge parked nearby. Its front-left fender was crunched, barely clearing a donut-sized spare tire. That would be my company car, which I'd be limping to a body shop on Monday. Some head-up-and-locked kid had cut a corner yesterday and clipped my car's front end, as I pulled out of a gas station. Another hassle and unnecessary task for which I did not have time.
As it turned out, I needn't have worried about such trivial matters.
* *
Temps had topped 110 degrees, by the time Kat and I arrived at Ho's sparkly new Summerlin store. The parking lot was already crowded, and its fresh, deep-black asphalt pavement was sizzling.
Inside, we presented ourselves to a fiftyish lady at the customer service counter, and I filled out an Executive Membership application. I elected the business "Executive Plan," forked over $100, had a mug shot taken and waited for the plastic card to emerge from a coding machine. The friendly service rep commented on "what a beautiful couple" Kat and I made, then handed me the still-warm card.
I was now an official executive member of Ho's Warehouse Club.
Yahoo, I thought, acutely aware of an annoying factoid: I was facing an hour-plus of shopping in the crowded cavern of Summerlin Ho's. The gut-roiling odor of steamed hot dogs was already attacking in force.
Forty minutes later, we were in the camping equipment aisle, where I spotted a package of three stainless-steel water bottles. I'd recently expressed concern that Kat wasn't drinking enough water to maintain optimum health, especially now that Vegas temperatures were exceeding 100 degrees every day.
"Hey, I'm gonna grab some of these bottles," I suggested, pointing. "And a couple of those zip-up coolers. You put 'em in the freezer and they'll… "
"Cool! But get me a red one," Kat interrupted. "I'll be right back."
She pushed our overflowing shopping cart around the corner, heels tapping a rapid staccato.
I pawed through a pallet stacked with plastic packages of zip-up coolers.
A red one! Why the hell does it have to be red?
None in the front few rows, so I moved packages of green, black, orange and gray coolers aside. Shoving several over to an adjacent pallet to access those in the back, I finally found a red pack.
Yes! The great white hunter bags the elusive RED cooler!
Next, I squatted on the floor and opened a plastic-and-cardboard three-pack of two-inch-diameter, stainless-steel bottles to make sure three would fit in Kat's red zippered cooler. I was unaware of a young, bowling pin-shaped Ho's undercover security guard eyeballing me from one aisle over, peering between the shelves.
Hajji Taseer felt a surge of excitement, watching the bulked-up redhead in the camping aisle. The guy rearranged plastic-wrapped, zippered cooler-packs, then ripped a package open and started stuffing metal bottles into a red, soft-sided cooler. As Ho's plainclothes Loss Prevention Guard, Taseer assumed the muscular dude was trying to hide metal water bottles in the cooler case.
Shoplifter!
Taseer pretended to be another customer searching for an item, allowing him to keep an eye on the redhead. The guy was now squatting on the floor, shielded from view by pallets stacked high with products. The guard straightened, walked around the wall of shelves, glanced down Aisle 126, and confirmed the "perp" had opened a package of metal water bottles.
Got ya, dude!
Taseer loved busting would-be shoplifters. No perp ever escaped his sharp-eyed attention! He had a sixth sense for spotting thieves.
Taseer pulled a combination cell phone-radio from baggy jeans and keyed the microphone.
"Hey, Joe. Hajji. Pos
sible shoplifter in aisle one-twenty-six. Can you come over here?" Taseer said, voice muted to avoid being overheard.
"Be right there," Joe responded.
Standard Ho's protocol called for a supervisor to make contact with a suspected shoplifter, ensuring the security guard maintained his cover as another customer. Further, only a supervisor was allowed to make a determination that a suspect really was trying to steal something, and take appropriate action, if necessary.
The plump, knock-kneed Ho's security guard circled a low table piled high with folded, single-color T-shirts and pretended to sort through them. It enabled watching the redhead, who was still squatting on the floor, messing with several metal bottles. He'd already opened one three-pack. Taseer could see the box and cardboard packing on the floor.
Joe, one of Ho's day-shift managers, appeared.
"Where's your suspect, Hajji?"
Taseer pointed, indicting a guy in a gray T-shirt and jeans, the man they'd soon learn was Erik Steele.
"Dude's acting kinda weird," Taseer reported. "You know, ripping open packages, throwing stuff around. I heard him kinda… you know… Talking to himself. Like, 'Where's the red one? She has to have a red one.' Weird shit, ya know? Maybe he's on something."
Joe Davis was in his late forties, and a no-nonsense, pragmatic manager. Recently promoted, he took his responsibilities seriously. "Okay. You stay here. I'll see what he's up to."
* *
"Can I help you, sir?" I looked up to see a smiling, red-vested Ho's employee. A name tag said Joe.
"I'm good, Joe. Thanks."
He squatted beside me, moving an empty water-bottle box aside. Alright. He wasn't going away, so I explained, "I'm checking to see if three of these will fit in a cooler."
Joe didn't say anything. I glanced at him, as I zipped the soft-sided cooler case open to expose three metal bottles. Joe was staring at something behind me.
"Sir, you can't have that in here," he said, pointing. I turned and noticed that my T-shirt no longer covered the Kimber .45 tucked inside my jeans' waistband. The semiautomatic's handgrip was exposed.
The Permit Page 3