by Wesley Lewis
“Six? How many does it have?”
“Ten. Why? Is that a lot?”
Jennifer tried to decide whether he was joking.
He grinned. “It was an old bed-and-breakfast that had fallen into disrepair. Some developers bought it before the bubble burst, hoping to use the land for a housing development.”
“How much land?”
“It sits on sixty-four acres that butt up to San Juan National Forest.”
Jennifer chuckled.
“Did I say something funny?” he asked.
“Before we got here, you made a comment about how you work extra jobs to help make the house payments. Then I saw this place and . . .”
Crocker laughed. “And you thought I must have seriously overpaid.”
“Something like that.”
“The security jobs fund the renovations and pay the property taxes. And I save enough that I won’t have to spend my golden years waking up to a photograph of my perfect view.”
Jennifer smiled at the realization that Crocker’s good fortune would annoy Bryan to no end.
“What did I say now?” he asked.
“Nothing. I was just thinking that your home-buying story would really piss off my boss. He hates it when people luck into great real estate deals.”
“Why?”
“He says stories like yours make people think our job is easy.”
“Seems like a lame reason to begrudge someone a little good luck.”
Jennifer nodded. “He even has a label for people like you: ‘conveniently ignorant.’”
Crocker swallowed a long sip of coffee and wiped his mouth. “Is it possible your boss was created in a lab by grafting together discarded foreskins?”
Jennifer choked on her coffee. “What?”
“He sounds like a huge dick.”
Jennifer giggled. The giggle grew into laughter.
Crocker watched her with a bemused grin.
Still laughing, she set her coffee cup on the stove so as not to spill it.
“I can’t tell if you’re humoring me or mocking me,” he said, “but I know it wasn’t that funny.”
Jennifer shook her head and forced herself to stop laughing. “I’m not humoring or mocking you.” She picked up her cup. “I just really needed to hear someone call Bryan a dick.”
Crocker seemed amused. “Are there any other names you’d like me to call him? After the night we’ve had, I’m game for anything that eases the tension.”
Staring across her coffee cup, Jennifer arched her eyebrows and asked, “Anything?”
Crocker cocked his head like a curious puppy.
Did I really just say that? She waited for Crocker to blush or look away, which would be her cue to apologize.
Instead, he smiled and said, “Not exactly what I had in mind, but I suppose it wouldn’t be fair to try to qualify the offer after I’ve made it.”
She couldn’t tell if he was serious or just playing along. Worse yet, she didn’t know which she preferred. She was pretty sure she’d meant the innuendo as a joke, but the prospect of redeeming the worst evening of her life was not altogether unappealing.
God knows I’m dressed for it.
“What time did you say you have to be at work?” she asked, still testing the water.
Crocker set his coffee cup on the counter and said, “You’re my ride. I’m at your mercy.”
And just like that, it was real.
Jennifer stared at her well-toned gunslinger, wondering if she should wait for him to make the first move or if she, as the initiator, was obligated to act first.
A sudden rapping on the trailer door so startled her that her free hand shot out defensively and knocked Crocker’s cup into the sink.
In less time than it took for the coffee to spill from the tipped cup, Crocker grabbed Jennifer and spun her around him so that he stood between her and the door. Though he had no weapon at hand, something about his posture told Jennifer he was a real threat to whoever stood on the other side of that door.
“Who’s there?” demanded Crocker.
A gravelly male voice replied, “Crocker, it’s Jim Birdwell.”
Crocker’s posture relaxed a little. “Jim, what the hell are you doing out there at this hour?”
“I have a message from Bill.”
Crocker cast a concerned glance at Jennifer, then stepped forward to unlock the dead bolt.
The door swung open, and in stepped a stout man of perhaps fifty-five, wearing a dark gray suit. He had a semicircle of white hair around his mostly bald head and a thick horseshoe mustache that made Jennifer think of Hollywood westerns.
“Have a seat,” said Crocker as he shut the door. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
Jennifer noted that Crocker was a surprisingly courteous host under the circumstances.
“No, thanks,” replied the man as he sat.
“Jim, this is Jennifer Williams. Jennifer, this is Jim Birdwell. Jim is head of security here at the Rangoon Harbor Casino. He’s also Sheriff Cargill’s partner.”
“Oh,” replied Jennifer. “I didn’t realize sheriffs had partners.”
Jim’s expression didn’t change. “Not that kind of partner.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “I’m sorry, I—”
Jim waved off the apology. “You’re not the first to make that mistake.” He watched her for a moment. “I assume you’re the young lady who was at the truck stop? The one who gave Crocker a ride home?”
“That’s right.”
Jim nodded as if this told him everything he needed to know.
“What’s going on?” asked Crocker.
Jim took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “About fifteen minutes ago, I got a call from Bill. He told me about your altercation at the Placer Gold and asked if I could run out here and give you an urgent message. At first I told him it would have to wait until I was done supervising the loading of the night’s take onto the Brinks truck. But once he told me the message . . . Well, this can’t wait.”
“Okay,” said Crocker, “hit me with it.” His voice was calm, but something about his tone made Jennifer uneasy.
“Apparently,” said Jim, “the CSI guys going through the perps’ car found just under eight hundred thousand dollars in cash, bundled into seventy-some-odd envelopes.”
Jennifer turned to Crocker. “What does that mean?”
His eyes remained fixed on Jim. “So the guys I shot were—”
“Bill obviously can’t be certain,” said Jim, “but each envelope contained exactly ten thousand dollars, so it sure looks that way.”
Crocker spun to face Jennifer. “Move.”
“What?” She made no effort to hide the fear she now felt.
“Move,” he repeated.
Before she could reply, he reached out with his left hand and nudged her gently but firmly to the side. When she was out of the way, he knelt by the kitchen counter and opened the bottom drawer. Inside was a metal box with an electronic keypad on top.
He entered a five-digit combination, and the lid popped open with a loud click, revealing a handgun in a leather holster. He pulled the holstered weapon from the box and slipped it into the waistband of his shorts, on his right hip. He then removed a small holster full of ammunition and slipped it into his waistband, on the opposite hip.
He shut the drawer and stood, facing Jim. “Did Bill say anything about her?” He nodded toward Jennifer. “Does he think she’s in any danger?”
“I can’t imagine why anyone would come after her. She didn’t shoot anybody.”
Jennifer did not find that particularly reassuring.
Jim continued, “Bill thinks that the odds of them coming after you are slim a
t best. If those indeed were Dudka’s men, they were off the reservation. Dudka didn’t authorize them to hold up a truck stop, so blaming you for what happened would be a stretch.”
“But if he wants someone to blame,” said Crocker, “I’m the only one left.”
“That’s how Bill sees it.”
At that, Crocker turned to Jennifer and said, “I’ll get a ride from Jim. You need to get back to Vegas right now. Drive straight to your hotel, no stops.”
She raised her hands to stop him. “I’m not going anywhere until somebody tells me what the hell is going on.”
Crocker glanced at Jim, who didn’t appear to have any advice, then back at Jennifer. “The short version is that the three men I shot are tied to some very dangerous people. And they were carrying a lot of money for those people—money that is now in the hands of the police, thanks to me.”
“Okay,” said Jennifer, far from satisfied. “What’s the long version?”
Crocker looked again to Jim Birdwell, who still had nothing to offer. He turned back to Jennifer and said, “The men work for Vladimir Dudka, a Russian expat with rumored ties to organized crime. He owns a casino called the Winter Palace, on the west side of Pahrump.”
Jennifer stared at him, waiting for him to continue.
Crocker took a deep breath. “Shortly after the Winter Palace opened, the locals noticed a pattern. Most of the time, the Palace seemed to struggle with the usual problems—a bad economy and stiff competition from California tribal casinos—but on the last weekend of each month, it thrived. Armored truck couriers reported seeing deposits that were double that of any other weekend. Local brothels reported a surge of customers coming from the Palace. Everybody knew that something was up, but nobody knew what.”
“So why—”
“Two summers ago, a California highway patrolman pulled over an old station wagon heading east through Shoshone, just west of the Nevada border. The officer thought the driver and his two passengers were acting suspicious, so he called for a K-9 unit. And when the dogs got there, they hit on something.”
“Drugs?”
“Yeah, but it was just a small amount of marijuana one of the passengers was carrying, nothing significant. What was significant was the ninety-three envelopes the officers found in the trunk, each of which contained exactly ten thousand dollars in cash.”
“What was the money for?”
“They never found out—not officially, at least. The driver and the two passengers got out on bail and were never heard from again.”
“They disappeared?”
“Not exactly. Six months later, a couple of hikers in Death Valley stumbled on three bodies that matched the physical descriptions of the suspects. The bodies were never officially identified.”
“Why couldn’t they be identified?”
“Because,” said Jim, “they didn’t have any heads. Or hands. Or feet.”
Suddenly light-headed, Jennifer grabbed the edge of the sofa and lowered herself onto the seat beside him.
Jim continued, “At that time, California wasn’t taking DNA from suspects arrested for nonviolent crimes, so the authorities had no way to positively determine whether the three bodies were in fact the same men arrested with nearly a million dollars in cash.”
“But wait,” said Jennifer. “If the men disappeared or turned up dead or whatever, how do you know there’s a connection to the Winter Palace and this Dudka guy?”
“People talk,” said Crocker. “Once word got around that the Winter Palace hadn’t seen its usual end-of-the-month boom, the pieces kind of fell into place.”
Jim added, “It’s no coincidence that each envelope contained exactly ten thousand dollars. For tax purposes, the law requires casinos to report any gambler whose cash transactions exceed ten thousand in one day. The consensus is that those three men were supposed to distribute those ninety-three envelopes to a number of coconspirators who were supposed to lose the money at the Winter Palace.”
Jennifer thought about it for a moment. “Money laundering?”
Crocker nodded. “If the rumors about Dudka’s ties to organized crime are true, it’s conceivable that he’s using low-level hoods to gamble away his ill-gotten gains at his own casino so that he can declare the money as legitimate income.”
“Okay,” said Jennifer, “then why doesn’t the sheriff go down to the Winter Palace and arrest this Dudka guy and all his bogus high rollers?”
“Because,” said Jim, “it’s all hearsay and circumstantial evidence. There’s nothing that will stand up in court. Both the FBI and the IRS sniffed around for a while after the three couriers disappeared, but after a year or so of running down false leads, they packed up and went home.”
“So what am I supposed to do if these gangsters come after me?”
“I think that’s highly unlikely,” replied Jim.
“You think or you know?”
“To Dudka, this is just business. Going after a bystander like you doesn’t make good business sense—he’d have nothing to gain and everything to lose.”
The slight tremble in Jennifer’s voice masked the anger lurking there. “And what if you’re wrong?”
Crocker sighed. “We’re not helping ourselves by sitting around talking about it. By now someone could have tipped off Dudka that his money was seized. His people could be on their way here as we speak.” He glanced out the window. “Jennifer, if it’ll make you feel better, you can stick with me until we get more information from the sheriff, but I’m not hanging around here to find out if Dudka wants me dead.”
At that moment, Jennifer didn’t feel particularly safe, but when she considered her options, she felt safest with Crocker. She nodded in agreement.
“Fine then. We go now.” He opened the door, stepped outside, and held it open for Jennifer and Jim.
Jennifer grabbed her purse and stepped out into the breaking dawn. Jim followed.
As Crocker locked the trailer door, Jim asked, “If Bill calls back, should I tell him he can reach you at First Shot?”
“No.”
“You’re not headed out to the academy? It’s practically an armed encampment; Dudka would be nuts to try to come after you out there.”
“We might be safe at the academy itself, but the roads to and from it are far too remote and far too obvious a place to look for me. I need to be someplace where I can come and go, someplace where I can get lost if I need to.”
“What options does that leave us?” asked Jennifer.
“Don’t worry,” said Crocker. “I have a place in mind.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jennifer was pretty sure she’d located the missing shag carpeting from Crocker’s trailer. It was pink and thick and arguably the least tacky thing in the lobby of the Prickly Pear Ranch.
The décor was a nonsensical hodgepodge of Far East, Southwest, and disco. The decorator seemed to have operated on the lone criterion that every piece of furniture and art be indicative of some culture somewhere.
Jennifer had let Crocker drive Bryan’s nonconsensually borrowed rental car. During the ten-minute drive from the trailer park, he’d said only five words: As they were pulling into the parking lot, he’d mumbled, “Don’t get the wrong idea.”
When, on the way into the lobby, he’d stopped to exchange pleasantries with the bouncer, Jennifer had tried to convince herself that perhaps the Prickly Pear Ranch wasn’t what it appeared. But now, staring up at a velvet painting of two disrobed women being especially friendly toward one another, she was certain that the Prickly Pear was exactly what it appeared. Even though she hadn’t yet touched anything, she longed for hand sanitizer.
The lobby was empty except for an elderly woman running a vacuum on the far end of the room.
You’d probably make more h
eadway with a lawn mower, thought Jennifer as she watched the woman struggle to maneuver the vacuum over the thick carpet.
Behind the front desk a beaded curtain parted, and out stepped a plump woman with big hair and bigger breasts. She was several years past middle age and wore a conservative blue dress, but something about the sway of her hips made Jennifer suspect she had a long history at the Prickly Pear Ranch.
The moment the woman saw Crocker, her face lit up. “Matt!”
“She calls you Matt?” whispered Jennifer.
Crocker ignored the question. “How are you, Dottie?”
“Ready to go to bed. But seeing you always lifts my spirits. What can I do for you?” She glanced at Jennifer, then back at Crocker. “Are you interested in a couple’s package?”
“No,” he said, “not today.”
His voice was steady, but Jennifer thought she detected a sudden flush to his face.
“You’re not bringing me new talent, are you?” She turned to Jennifer. “Because we’re always hiring, and I’m sure you’d do quite well.”
It was Jennifer’s turn to blush.
“Actually,” said Crocker, “I’m in a bit of a bind and was hoping you might let us have a room for the day.”
The woman hesitated. “We normally only rent rooms as part of a package deal—we’re not a hotel.” She smiled. “But you know I can’t say no to you. I’ll put the two of you in the Champagne Suite. I assume you remember where it is?”
“I do.”
The woman retrieved a key from under the counter and set it on top. “Nobody used it last night, so the sheets are clean. But you’ll need to be out of there by six—we’re expecting a huge weekend crowd, and we’ll need time to clean the bathroom and change the bedding.”
Crocker scooped up the key. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Is there anything else you need before I turn in?”