by Lou Berney
“What?”
“You never told me if you liked my tattoo or not.”
“Probably not as much as I’m gonna like your other one.”
She blushed. Shake winked and pushed out through the door.
THE APARTMENT COMPLEX WAS A SERIES of featureless faux-adobe concrete boxes painted the shade of Pepto-Bismol. The sign said MOUNTAIN PALMS, but there were no palms in sight and the closest mountains weren’t close.
Shake climbed the metal stairs to the second floor of Building B and knocked on the door to 201.
The peephole blinked light to dark. Then, after a long moment, back to light. A Latina babe in a bathrobe opened the door, chain length, and peered out at Shake.
“Hi,” she said. She flashed ferocious dark eyes at him and rattled an aerosol can at him. “Do you want me to pepper-spray you now or wait till after you tell me what the fuck you want knocking on my door at eleven o’clock at night?”
“After,” Shake said. “Definitely.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I’m looking for a friend of mine. Gina Clement.”
The fierceness in the Latina babe’s dark eyes wavered.
“She gave you this address?”
“Sort of.”
The Latina babe shut the door. Shake heard the chain slide back. The door opened again, all the way this time. The Latina babe looked like she might be about to cry.
“I can’t believe she gave you this address.”
“My name’s Shake.”
“Lucy.”
“It was on her work card. She doesn’t live here?”
The fierceness in her dark eyes flared again. “No, she doesn’t live here. No, I haven’t seen her. Yes, I’m gonna kill her if I see her, so if that’s why you’re here, get in line.”
“You want to take it easy with that pepper spray, Lucy?”
“Oh.” She slipped the can, which she’d been waving around without much regard to safety, into the pocket of her bathrobe.
“Any idea where she might be?”
“On the moon? I don’t know. She blew town, like, a week ago.”
“She’s back,” Shake said.
“I doubt that.” Lucy looked Shake over. “So are you her latest?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘latest.’ ”
Lucy snorted. She seemed to understand what he meant.
“There is this one place she used to go,” Lucy said. “A guy she knows has a houseboat there.”
“Lake Mead?”
“I don’t know the guy’s name. Dobney something. Or maybe that’s his last name. Did she ever happen to mention me?”
“Mention you?”
“Just in passing or, you know—”
“I think so,” Shake said, to be kind. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Lake Mead, yeah, but don’t waste your time.” Suddenly Lucy looked again as if she might cry. “I’ve already been up there to look for her, like, a hundred times.”
SHAKE CROSSED THE PARKING LOT of the Mountain Palms. To his left were the lights of the Strip, a few miles away, smoldering on the horizon. To his right the sky was darker, deeper, richer, and you could even make out a few stars.
Lake Mead.
He shook his head, slid behind the wheel of Vader’s Road Runner, and fired it up.
Chapter 18
Lucy watched the guy walk away. She shut her door, bolted it, reattached the chain.
“He’s kind of a hottie, isn’t he?” Gina asked. She was sprawled on the couch, eating an apple, her bare feet resting on the coffee table. On the third toe of her right foot, she still wore a silver ring Lucy had given her. The weekend trip to the beach, a few weeks after they met. Lucy had found it on the boardwalk in Venice and knew right away it was the perfect gift.
Take it off, please, she wanted to tell Gina but didn’t.
“Who is he?” Lucy said.
“Oh, just a guy who gave me a ride back from L.A.,” Gina said.
“I’ll bet.”
“Hey, now, Loosey Screw. Don’t be jealous.”
“I’m not jealous,” Lucy said. It was true. She was just stupid and pathetic. “I’m just stupid and pathetic.”
Gina stood up and bounded over and wrapped Lucy up in a big hug.
“Don’t say that! You’re not. You’re loyal and loving, which are excellent qualities in a person.”
“In a golden retriever.”
But Lucy didn’t pull away from the hug, and Gina kept squeezing. Like she could make Lucy believe anything, do anything, be anything, just through the sheer force of herself.
Which of course, Lucy knew, she could.
Gina had been only the second girl Lucy had ever slept with. Until Gina, Lucy had rarely even thought of other girls in that way.
Lucy closed her eyes and breathed Gina in—peach and smoke and shimmering vitality. When Lucy opened her eyes, Gina was looking over her shoulder.
Of course.
“We should make sure he’s gone,” Gina said.
Lucy sighed and went to the window. She peeked through the blinds. Down in the parking lot, the guy, Shake, was unlocking his car door. He was, Lucy had to admit, kind of a hottie. She watched him kick gravel at whatever predicament, thanks to Gina, he’d found himself in. Lucy knew the feeling and shook her head without realizing it. He climbed into his car and drove off.
“He’s gone.” Lucy turned away from the window. Gina already had the wig on. A jet-black number with long braids that Lucy sometimes wore when she danced, part of her Harajuku getup.
“Ah-so,” Gina said.
“You’re crazy, you know,” Lucy said. “You’re gonna get us murdered, Gina.”
Gina just smiled and examined herself in the living-room mirror. She plucked the cigarette from behind her ear and looked around for her lighter, even though Lucy had asked her a million times to “please smoke on the balcony if you’re gonna smoke.”
This was not a healthy relationship. Lucy tried to imagine how liberated she might feel if, right now—right this very instant, without a second of hesitation—she snuck her cell phone into the bathroom and sent a secret text message to Jasper. Told him the person he was looking for was sitting on the couch right here in Lucy’s apartment.
One little text message and Lucy would be finished with Gina forever.
“I’ve got to pee,” Lucy said. She felt a thrill of guilt and fear and joy and horror, even though she knew she’d never go through with it.
“Okay.”
“I’m gonna take my phone in there. Maybe I’ll send a text or two.”
“Go ahead, Loosey Cannon.”
Instead Lucy sighed and flopped down on the couch.
“I thought you had to pee,” Gina said.
“I wish you’d smoke on the balcony, if you’re gonna smoke.”
“This Shake guy is pretty good,” Gina mused. She seemed pleased. “He might actually find me someday.”
Chapter 19
Jasper put one foot against the wall to the left of the pipe and one foot against the wall to the right of it. He wrapped his hands around the pipe and pulled. The pipe didn’t want to come loose, but after a spell it had no choice. Water sprayed everywhere, which gave Jasper an excuse to go home and change clothes before he went to see Mr. Moby.
The handcuffs were still locked tight to his wrist, too, which gave him another excuse, to stop by the trailer of a friend who wasn’t a locksmith but had all the tools.
Jasper got to the club around eight. The young bouncer with long, greasy hair in his eyes, the one all the girls thought looked like some rock star or another, was on tonight. He was always friendly and deferential, but Jasper disliked him anyway. Maybe because he was too friendly, too deferential. Jasper wasn’t sure. Maybe it was because Rock Star thought he was pretty when by any sane standard of measurement he wasn’t. Maybe it was because one time Rock Star had said to Jasper that he bet Lucy would know how to throw a party, wouldn’t she, did Jasper know what he
meant, hee-hee? Jasper had just nodded. There was no sense letting someone like Rock Star know your true mind.
“Hey, Jasper!” he said, flipping his long, greasy hair around so it ended up even more in his eyes than it had started. “What’s going on, my man? How you been?”
Maybe, above all else, Jasper disliked the boy because he made Jasper picture in his imagination what Mr. Moby might have been like when he was twenty-two, when he was still whip thin and eager to get started on all the evil he’d do in his life.
Not that this pretty-boy Rock Star was ever going to be near as smart as Mr. Moby. Not many people were. Jasper supposed every living one of God’s creatures should thank Him for that.
They should probably thank Him that there weren’t more people like Jasper, too. Jasper didn’t dispute it.
“What happened to your nose, dude?”
“It ain’t broke,” Jasper said. His friend who wasn’t a locksmith also wasn’t a doctor but had all the tools for that as well. He’d looked over Jasper’s nose and pronounced it fit. “Where’s Mr. M?”
“He called and said he’d be in around midnight. He wants you to wait for him. Sounds like he’s in a bitch of a mood.”
Jasper touched his nose and swallowed two more of the white capsules. He considered how his day had started bad and then—improbably—turned even worse. And now, instead of finally reaching the apex of worseness, the day was going to drag him on behind it like roadkill caught under a car for another four long hours.
“You want a drink while you wait?” Rock Star asked him.
MR. MOBY CURSED HIM BACKWARD and forward, upside and down, spittle flying off him and his teeth glistening with it.
Jasper weathered it impassively, his eyes fixed on a spot just to the left of Mr. Moby’s ear. He didn’t know if this sort of reaction mitigated or further enflamed Mr. Moby’s fury. Jasper was impassive by nature, though, and didn’t know how else to act. Plus, he couldn’t deny he deserved to be cursed, not after what he’d let happen.
“You know what I should do to you, you dumb fucking shine?”
Jasper didn’t want to think about what Mr. Moby would do to him. Or what Mr. Moby would hire men from Los Angeles or Chicago to do to him. These men came in on a plane and left the same day, usually.
Jasper had been one of those men originally. That’s how he’d ended up with this job.
“How the Jesus fuck do you let some half-wit ex-con errand boy just walk off with the fucking girl I’ve been looking for day and night for a fucking week? And the fucking briefcase, too? Why didn’t you give the cocksucker the keys to your car and your fucking kidney, too, while you were at it, you dumb motherfucking retard? Do you know how fucking humiliating this is for someone in my position, in the eyes of my business associates?”
Mr. Moby had talked to the Armenians in L.A. before Jasper’d had the chance to fill him in, which had not helped Jasper’s position at all.
Mr. Moby took a deep breath because he was out of it, then burped. He was a fat, fat man, but not the jolly kind. And not the weak kind, the ones looked like they might have a heart attack any second. You thought a man like Mr. Moby would ever let a heart attack sneak up and kill him, you were a fool.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Jasper,” he said, not quite so loudly and without so much spittle, “I fucking count on you!”
That hurt Jasper more than all the rest.
“I’ll find them.”
“You better fucking believe you’ll find them!”
Then suddenly, just like that, Mr. Moby plopped back in his desk chair and chuckled.
“This does remind me of the old days, I gotta admit.”
Jasper knew better than to ask.
Mr. Moby sat there for a minute, rocking in his desk chair, savoring what seemed to be a pleasant memory.
“I ever tell you about Laos? Back in the sixties?”
Jasper knew better than to answer.
“Maybe I needed something like this to get my juices flowing again,” Mr. Moby said. “I was getting too soft.” He savored for another minute his pleasant memory of a less soft time in his life, then noticed Jasper and started cursing him all over again.
Chapter 20
Gina parked the Town Car on the far side of the lot, made sure she had a clear angle on the front entrance of the Jungle, killed the lights. Lucy, in the passenger seat, was trying again to talk her out of the plan, but Gina was only half listening. Or maybe just a quarter. She was busy instead:
Scoping the front entrance.
Calculating the odds that the Harajuku disguise would work.
Trying to ignore the Van Halen song “Panama” that had been going through her head ever since Marvin Oates had told her where he thought the buyer for the foreskins was.
Picturing Shake baking his brains out in the sun tomorrow at Lake Mead, looking for her and finding zipkus.
Thinking about the many and varied uses she could make of $5 million.
She knew she wanted to start her own business. She knew she didn’t want to blow the money like some idiot, on clothes and jewelry and expensive cars that cost a fortune just to insure. Well, she’d blow some of the money, of course, but then she’d get busy. She had tons of ideas, and not the sort of kooky, half-baked shit your typical stripper came up with in the slow early-evening hours before the club filled up and the world seemed full of hope and possibility. Lucy, for example, bless her heart, had wanted to use her end from the Moby score to build a Disneyland for dogs. Gina tried to talk her out of it, but Lucy held firm. She had been convinced, by Oprah or somebody else on TV, that if you just followed your passion, you’d make millions.
Gina knew that wasn’t true. It was one of those things that made you feel warm and gooey inside but had no basis in reality.
Most rich people, Gina knew, got rich in boring but smart ways. By doing boring but smart things. By having a passion for making millions, whatever that took.
One of Gina’s ideas: a chain of high-end dry cleaners. These would be places with wood floors and lots of light, comfy chairs and no dry-cleaning smell. Where you could drop off your clothes on the way to the office and pick up a premium nonfat vanilla latte at the same time.
Get it? You take a chore most women dread and you make it not so dreadful. And you give the busy businesswoman a chance to knock off two errands (dry cleaning, latte) with one stop. Like killing two birds with one stone.
Gina wondered if that would make a good name for her company: Two Birds, One Stone. Now, that was a philosophy she could get behind.
One thing for sure: As much fun as schemes could be, she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life running them; a little voice told her that the older you got, the less fun the schemes became.
“You know?” Lucy said.
“I know,” Gina said. She hadn’t been paying any attention and had no idea what Lucy was asking. “I do.”
She squeezed Lucy’s hand, which she was holding in her lap. Lucy squeezed back, and Gina wondered if they had time to fool around a little, before the shit jumped off.
If only Shake had been here in the car with them, too, Gina considered, wow, that would have been fun for the whole family.
She traced a fingertip along one of Lucy’s legs—Lucy had the world’s most luscious gams—but then, nope, too late, the doors to the Jungle swung wide. Light spilled into the parking lot, and out stomped the Whale. To say he looked angry would have been a colossal understatement. To say Jasper, following behind, looked unhappy would have been an even bigger one.
“Looks like somebody just got some bad news,” Gina said.
Moby and Jasper crossed to the Whale’s car, got in, drove off.
“Gina—” Lucy started to try one more time.
Gina pressed her finger to Lucy’s lips. “Shhh,” she said.
FOO FIGHTER AT THE DOOR didn’t recognize Gina in the wig and the makeup.
Lucy, bless her heart, played it perfectly cool.
“Fres
h meat for the graveyard shift,” she told him, and pushed Gina along with her into the club.
THE KEY TO THE WHALE’S office was right where Gina had ditched it last week when she’d spotted the Whale rumbling down the hallway toward her—on the carpet, against the wall, next to the base of a potted fake fern. Good karma for sure, though not a good reflection on the Jungle’s crack team of crackhead Dominican janitors.
Gina knelt and pretended to fix the strap on Lucy’s glitter-crusted stacked-heel peep-toe. When the hallway was empty, she slipped the key into the lock.
“Grrr,” she said. “Aargh.”
“What?” Lucy asked.
“The dipstick changed his locks.”
“I thought he did. I told you. And he bought a safe finally.”
“I don’t need to get into the safe this time.”
“Let’s please, Gina, just forget this and—”
“Don’t worry. I know how to pick a lock.”
Not really. But Gina had seen it done on occasion, heard it explained by a former customer, figured how hard could it be, right?
“What if he comes back? Sometimes he comes back.”
Gina had come prepared with a lock-pick set she’d borrowed from that former customer a few weeks ago. In anticipation of a moment just like this one.
She slid one pick into the lock and felt around with it. Felt a thingy she could press down. Then she slid the other pick in and sort of turned them both like she’d been instructed.
She was more startled than Lucy by the sharp click.
“Hey!” she said. “How’d I do that?”
She hustled Lucy into the Whale’s office and shut the door behind them.
“Go unplug the phone and computer cords,” she told Lucy, just to keep the girl busy and not flipping out.
Gina shuffled through Moby’s Rolodex. It was massive, unfortunately, probably three or four hundred index cards. But she couldn’t rush; this was her one shot, and she knew it.
Lucy finished disconnecting the phone and computer cords. She stood by the door with her eyes closed and appeared to have entered the catatonic phase of flipping out, which under the circumstances suited Gina fine. Just as long as she stayed quiet.