They drove past wedding chapels, doughnut shops, bail bondsmen, and psychics who read palms and tarot cards. Traffic was heavy. Hot, dry air blew in through the window as Blake followed the convertible. He figured they were heading for one of the casinos on Fremont Street.
Blake had a wireless Bluetooth device hooked to his ear. He punched in a number on his cell phone, and a few seconds later, he heard a gruff voice answering through the earpiece.
“Yeah?”
“Good evening, Leo,” Blake said.
“Who the fuck is this?”
“This is Blake Wilde. Do you know who I am?”
There was a long stretch of silence.
“Okay, yeah, Boni told me about you,” Leo Rucci said. “So did the cops. You’re the guy who thinks he can bring his mama back to life by running down little boys. So what? I should be scared of you?”
“Yes, you should, Leo.”
“Well, you don’t scare me, you little prick. Why don’t you come over to my house right now and talk to me face to face? You won’t, because you know you won’t walk out of here alive.”
“I just want to know if it was you,” Blake said. He accelerated, closing the distance to the convertible. He passed a limousine and slid back into the right lane. The convertible with the fat man and the blonde was on his left.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“You were Boni’s right-hand man in the Sheherezade. I want to know if you were the one who actually killed Amira.”
Rucci laughed. “Some dipstick fan bashed her skull in. Let it go”
“We both know that isn’t what happened,” Blake said.
“Yeah? How do you know that? You were shitting your diapers when it went down,”
“Just tell me if it was you, Leo. If it was you, then this is between us. You and me. No one else.”
“I don’t owe you nothing, fuckhead.”
“Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it” Blake took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m driving beside a white convertible,” he added, eyeing the car next to him. “License plate YA8 371. That’s what your son Gino drives, isn’t it?”
There was silence again, longer and more deadly.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Leo whispered.
The convertible with the fat man and the blonde stopped at a red light just ahead. Blake pulled next to it in the right lane and rolled down his driver’s side window. “Pay attention, Leo,” Blake said into the phone.
Leo’s voice screamed in his ear. “You fucker! Don’t you do this, you fucker!”
The blonde was cuddling up against Gino Rucci’s side. Blake figured her hand was in his lap. In his sideview mirror, he saw the bodyguard in the car behind, lazy and unconcerned.
“Hey, baby,” Blake called out to the blonde. “How much?”
She wheeled around. “Shut up, you creep!”
“Come on, baby, I said, How much?” Blake repeated. “How much is fatso paying you for a hand job? Can’t be worth more than five bucks.”
Sideview mirror. The bodyguard was paying attention now. He was opening the driver’s side door. Blake saw Gino’s beefy arm push the blonde back into the seat. Gino leaned forward, his face black with rage.
“That’s a pretty sorry excuse for a hooker,” Blake told him. “Is she the best you can do, you loser?”
Gino’s cheeks pulsed red. Blood vessels popped like fireworks. “I hope you enjoyed your last walk, creep,” he hissed. “’Cause you ain’t ever going to walk again.”
“You listening, Leo?” Blake murmured into the phone.
Leo screamed, “Amira was a whore! She was a fucking cunt!”
The bodyguard shouldered his way out of his car. Gino was getting up, too, his huge torso lifting off the seat like a hot air balloon. The blonde cowered with her head buried in the leather cushion.
“Want to say good-bye, Leo?” Blake said.
“I will fucking destroy you!”
A cell phone began ringing in Gino’s convertible. Blake knew it was Leo on another line, trying to reach his son. He casually picked up the SIG-Sauer from between his legs and pointed it out the window. “Listen up, Leo,” he said.
The bodyguard’s hand began diving into his jacket. Gino got the same stupid look on his face that MJ had when he opened his eyes. Blake pulled the trigger twice, firing two neat rounds into Gino’s skull. Flicking his arm back, he fired again, catching the bodyguard in the throat. Both men collapsed. Through the earpiece, Leo let fly with a guttural scream. The blonde joined in.
“Say hi to Boni for me,” Blake said, as he accelerated calmly through the green light. “Tell him he’s next.”
THIRTY-TWO
Sara Evans again. Restless.
When Stride fished his cell phone out of his pocket, he saw a 218 area code on the caller ID. He had spent his whole life in that area code, which included most of northern Minnesota. He answered the phone and heard a familiar voice say, “How’s it going, boss?”
“Mags!” Stride exclaimed. “God, it’s good to hear your voice. I miss you.”
“Same here.”
Maggie Bei had been his partner for more than a decade. She was a Chinese girl the size of a Kewpie doll, but with the best brain he had ever encountered on the force. Shortly before Stride left for Las Vegas, Maggie had announced that she was pregnant and was giving up her shield. It helped make it easier for Stride to leave.
“What’s the weather like up there?” Stride asked. Only a Minnesotan could appreciate that every conversation had to begin with a review of the weather.
“Sucks. Rain. Cold. How about there?”
“Heat wave,” Stride said. “We had a couple weeks in the seventies, and now it’s in the upper nineties again. I thought we were done with that after August.”
“You gone Vegas on me yet, boss?” Maggie asked. “Silk shirts? Shades? Bubbly drinks with little umbrellas?”
“Yeah. I’m coloring my hair, too. Got it slicked back.”
“Right, and I’m blond now. Got implants.”
Stride had to pull his Bronco over to the curb and park. He was laughing too hard. “I really do miss you, Mags.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Maggie paused, then added, “Listen, I’ve got some news. Not good, I’m afraid.”
Stride sobered up immediately. “What is it?”
“I lost the baby.”
He heard the crack in her voice. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. It was actually like three weeks ago, but I didn’t have the guts to call and tell you.”
“Shit, Mags, you should have told me right away.”
Maggie sighed. “Nothing you could have done.”
“Are you okay?” He shook his head in disgust. That was the kind of stupid question reporters asked victims on the evening news.
“So-so. Doc says it’s real common, we can try again, blah blah blah. That doesn’t make it any easier. Eric’s taking it hard. He says he’s not so sure he wants kids now. Like God’s trying to tell us something.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I know.” She hesitated. “I’m wondering about going back on the force. I didn’t really want to leave, you know. It was Eric’s idea.”
“Is that what you want?” Stride asked.
“I don’t know. It’s not the same without you.”
Stride didn’t know what to say to that, so he kept quiet. He didn’t know where Maggie was going. Once upon a time, there had been history between them. Maggie had been in love with him for several years, and she had made a play for him shortly after Cindy died. It didn’t work out. She didn’t hold a grudge, not even when Serena entered the picture, but Stride always wondered if the emotions were entirely dead. Even after Maggie married Eric, there were hints sometimes that she would have gone over the edge if Stride had ever given her a reason.
“But I suppose you’re happy in Sin City,” Maggie continued.
“Oh, yeah. I fit right in here. You’d expect th
at.”
She ignored the sarcasm. “What’s it like being a working stiff again and not the big boss?”
“I just do what you always did. Complain about the lieutenant.”
“Nice. Good one. How’s Serena?”
“Okay.” He knew his voice sounded like lead.
Maggie took a long time to reply. He could never fool her. “You guys having problems?”
“I don’t know what we’re having,” he admitted.
“Serena’s got ghosts, boss. You knew that going in.”
“This isn’t a ghost.” He took a deep breath and told her about Serena and Claire-and about his secret fear, which he had barely expressed to himself, that this would all end in him losing her.
“She says she still loves you?” Maggie asked.
“She says that.”
“What about you? How do you feel?”
Stride thought about the old joke. Ask a Minnesotan how he feels on the day his dog dies, his wife leaves him, and he loses his job. “Fine,” he said.
“Real funny.”
“I love her, Mags. You know that.”
“So what’s the problem? Hell, boss, this could be your ticket to a threesome.”
Stride laughed. “Sure.” He added, “Okay, the thought of it did cross my dirty mind. But come on. Me?”
“It’s a lot stranger world than you know,” she replied, in a voice that didn’t sound like Maggie at all.
“Don’t tell me that you would get into anything like that.”
“Let’s not go there, boss,” she retorted.
He felt as if he were walking in quicksand and decided to change the subject. “So what about you? Are you going back?”
“I haven’t decided. It’s too soon after the baby, you know?”
“I know.” He was so accustomed to thinking of Maggie as a rock that it was difficult to hear pain radiating from her. “I really am sorry, Mags.”
“Thanks. You know, there was another reason I called.”
“Oh?”
“K-2 asked me to do it. He was too chicken to call himself.”
Deputy Chief Kyle Kinnick was Stride’s old boss in Duluth. “What does he want?” Stride asked, feeling a tingling in his chest.
“The search for a new lieutenant in the Detective Bureau washed out,” Maggie said. “He wanted me to feel you out. See if you might be interested in coming back.”
Libraries,” Amanda said. “I think that’s our best bet.”
She stood by the open window in Sawhill’s office. There was barely a whisper of a breeze. A portable fan whined on his desk, directing its air at the lieutenant’s face. Part of the downtown area had lost power earlier in the afternoon, and though the station had a backup generator, it didn’t extend to air-conditioning. The office was stifling.
“This guy had to find out about Amira somewhere,” she went on. “We’re talking about Vegas forty years ago. Sure, he could surf the Web, but wouldn’t he go to the library, too? That’s where he’d find old newspapers, old magazines, anything like that. It may be one way he built his list of targets.”
“Check it out,” Sawhill said. He had a glow of sweat on his face, but his tie was tightly knotted at his neck. His one concession to the heat was removing his black suit coat. “We’ve got this guy’s description all over the papers and television, but we can’t find him. And he still manages to gun down Gino Rucci and his bodyguard right on the Strip. Explain that to me.”
“We know he can disguise himself,” Stride said. “If he doesn’t want to be recognized, he won’t be, but we’ve got uniforms and casino security people on the lookout for him. Witnesses last night pegged him in a brown sedan, but no one got a plate. We’ve added that to the profile.”
“Are we getting calls to the hotline?”
“Lots, but nothing you could call a break,” Stride said.
“What else do we know about this guy?” Sawhill asked.
“He’s pretty much an unperson,” Serena replied. “He was called Michael Burton in Reno until he was sixteen. Jay Walling dug up some school records, but nothing that will help us here. After he torched his parents, he fell off the grid. There’s no record of who he became or where he went.”
“I checked with the military,” Stride added. “I was able to contact two other men from David Kamen’s unit in Afghanistan. One of them remembered Wilde and confirmed Kamen’s story that the guy was essentially a mercenary, but he didn’t know anything that would help us find him.”
“We haven’t gone public with the connection to Amira,” Serena said. “Maybe we should.”
Amanda watched the political wheels turning in Sawhill’s mind. “How would that help us?” he asked.
“Wilde might have talked to someone about Amira or the Sheherezade. They might remember him or know something about him.”
Sawhill shook his head. “Not strong enough. The casino connection would generate a lot of headlines, but I don’t think it will help us catch this guy. It’ll just be a distraction.”
In other words, people might start asking Boni Fisso some embarrassing questions, Amanda thought. “Someone’s going to make the connection soon,” she said. “Either it will leak, or some writer like Rex Terrell will put it together.”
“Let them worry about that, and we’ll worry about catching this guy before he kills someone else.” Sawhill pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiped his brow. “What are we doing to prevent another hit?”
Serena glanced over her shoulder at Cordy. “Did you get the list?”
Cordy nodded. “Uh-huh. We got another ten people who worked at the Sheherezade back then and had jobs that had something to do with Amira and her show. Dancers, choreographers, the kind of folks this Wilde thing might decide to have a grudge against, you know? We’ve told them to make sure their relatives keep an eye out.”
“But Wilde seems to be moving up the food chain,” Stride said.
“Meaning?” Sawhill asked.
“Meaning Boni,” Stride said. “Wilde wouldn’t let us know what he looks like if he wasn’t in the last stages of his game. He wants Boni to know he’s coming after him.”
“Why announce his intentions?”
Stride shrugged. “Pride. Ego. Confidence. He wants Boni to squirm.”
Sawhill rocked back in his seat and frowned. “Except he’s not likely to tackle Boni directly, is he? In every other case, he’s gone after a relative. His daughter-Claire-she’s got to be at the top of our list, doesn’t she?”
“No question about it,” Stride said.
Sawhill leaned forward, jabbing a finger at Serena. “You know her, don’t you? I want you to take charge of her protection. I want you all over her, Detective.”
“I’m not a babysitter, sir,” Serena said.
“No, you’re a detective trying to save a life,” Sawhill retorted. “Do you have a problem here?” He didn’t wait for an answer but added immediately, “I want you to oversee security for Claire Belfort. Under no circumstances are we going to let Wilde get near her. You got that? I want you with her now, and I want you glued to her side until we catch this guy. Have her stay at your place.”
“Understood,” Serena said. She looked like she was wilting in the heat. Amanda was surprised. She had always thought of Serena as cool and unflappable.
Amanda’s cell phone vibrated. She quickly excused herself, left the office, and ducked into an empty cubicle. “Gillen.”
“It’s Leo Rucci.”
Amanda sat down. Even the seat felt warm, as if the heat wave had worked its way inside the cushions. “I’m sorry about your son,” she said.
“Save it. I’m not looking for sympathy.” Gino’s death hadn’t softened Rucci at all.
“I’d like to talk to you about the murder,” Amanda said. “Maybe you can help us find this guy before he kills anyone else.”
“I got nothing to say to you. I’m not talking about the past, okay? And what happened to Gino is between me and
this Wilde fuckhead. I don’t need any help. I just wanted to tell you that if you want to catch this guy, you better do it quick.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” Rucci growled. “Because I’m coming after him, too.”
THIRTY-THREE
Blake blew out a lungful of acrid cigarette smoke that billowed in a cloud around his face. Picking up his drink, he took a hit of salt from the rim and a sweet-sour sip of margarita. In reality, he despised the lime drinks that all the tourists sipped in Cancún-he preferred beer or scotch-but a red-headed lawyer from the bankruptcy attorneys’ convention in town, with shades, a name tag, and a margarita, didn’t attract special attention. He was just another shyster soaking up the blues and hoping to get lucky by flirting with the twenty-something waitress.
He sat at a circular table in the last row of the Limelight showroom. Other people squeezed around him, clinking ice, talking too loudly, coughing, and passing gas. It was hard to see faces with the lights low and bodies shifting in their seats, blocking his view, but he had already pegged the security before the show began. Two bulky detectives squirmed at a table in front of the stage, painfully obvious in suits and ties. A Hispanic cop, a smooth piece of work with slicked black hair and a permanent leer, hovered in the back, constantly scanning the crowd. He was almost close enough to touch. On the east and west walls, standing, were two of the boys from Premium Security. Blake knew them. Enormous, probably part gorilla. Walnut-sized brains. He had actually waved at one, and the man just stared dully back, not penetrating the disguise. Blake couldn’t help but laugh.
Claire was onstage. It was her second show, and midnight had already come and gone. He didn’t usually care about music, but he enjoyed her voice. She had a throaty country drawl, and there was something sad about the way she sang that made him remember the suffering he had experienced as a boy. He rarely visited that room in his soul, but Claire’s voice made it seem like a good thing to do, as if she could march you inside and make you believe that loss was what made you alive, that yearning for something could be more beautiful than having it
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