The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset)

by Doug Richardson

  “Whoa…wait…” hacked Kuz, still seeking inflation to his lungs. Despite the lack of air behind them, his words were clear yet thickly coated with a Russian accent. “I’m getting sued? You’re a fucking process server?”

  “Got sweat in your ears?”

  “Thought you were a cop!”

  “I am a Goddamn cop!” barked Lucky. “Just not today.”

  “So you’re a cop?” interjected the heftier of the two Lockheed-Martin security officers who’d taken up trained positions at ten and two o’clock. Their uniform shirts were the same shade of green as their SUV with brass badges so shiny the sun was glinting off them. Both men were armed, hands placed on the butts of their un-skinned weapons.

  “LA County,” said Lucky, finally catching his own breath. “Dude hopped your fence. I’m just the pursuer.”

  “He’s a fucking process server!” said Kuz, finding his feet and dusting off his khakis with the process papers.

  “So which is it?” asked the security officer. “Cop or process server?”

  “Both,” said Lucky, fending off their looks with a shrug. “So what? Never heard of moonlighting?”

  “That means you’re both trespassing on private property,” said the security officer. “Gonna have to ask you to please get in the vehicle.”

  “How’s this?” offered Lucky, snagging his prize by the back of the collar and jerking him as if setting a hook. “I turn around and drag runt-turd’s ass back over the fence and we forget this ever happened?”

  “If you’re really with the Sheriff’s,” said the security officer, “then you should understand protocols.”

  “We really gonna do it this way?” asked Lucky.

  “Lockheed’s a government contractor,” said the security officer. “Homeland Security writes our rulebook. Now, please? Get in the truck.”

  Though Lucky shook his head in disbelief, he quickly relented for no reason other than he’d ridden down such a road way too many times before. Whether it was the Feebs or just some bullshit jurisdictional beef between county deputies and the jack-booted LAPD, it was sometimes more efficient—let alone easier on the personnel dossier—to acquiesce and let the bureaucrats have their petty procedures.

  As Lucky started toward the back of the SUV, the runty runner’s tony deck shoes seemed to be stuck in the asphalt. So Lucky popped him in the back of the head with an open hand.

  “The both of us means me and you,” reminded Lucky.

  “I have a business to get back to,” demanded Kuz in a practiced protest that Lucky wrote off as that of a habitual shirker of responsibility. “Asshole. You should’ve left me to my breakfast.”

  “Next time don’t run, Mr. Kuz.”

  “Not Kuz. Coooooz. You hear the ‘ooooo’ sound? Kuz. That’s how you say my name.”

  “Get in the truck Kuuuuuuz before I hang you up and use you for a piñata.”

  3

  Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump…

  Cherry’s eyes were closed as she swiveled her hips to the incessant beat. Not that anybody could see that her eyes were actually shut. For that last set of the night, she’d kept her retinas hidden behind a pair of cheap, costume sunglasses. White rims. Coffee grind lenses. The shades were identical to the hundred other pairs that had been handed out to the party guests. Boys and girls. Dressed to their thirteen-year-old nines. About half the young women were wobbling on heels too steep for their young legs to handle.

  Cherry danced in her usual spot, at nine o’clock to Marco, the DJ, atop a gray Plexiglas cube with a synchronized strobe underneath. The pulsing light caught the thousands of tiny jewels fixed to her Lycra short-shorts. Each booty shake colored the room in a constellation of ever-shifting rainbows. It was a cheesy effect. But, for the most part, the kids loved it.

  Fifteen more minutes, get paid, then a fast elevator to the valet, my shitty car, and a late shift at The Rabbit Pole.

  The bar mitzvah had all the bells and whistles of a top-shelf event. The parents of the lucky boy had rented out the event room that sat atop the Sheraton Hotel at Universal Studios in North Hollywood. The space sported two-story, floor-to-ceiling windows with a two-hundred-seventy-degree view of the San Fernando Valley. Below, a sparkling carpet of lights spread north and west for miles upon suburban miles. And to the south, a carving streak of car lights cut through the low lying hills—thousands upon thousands of beams in a constant river that flowed in and out of the Basin and beyond.

  “All my friends think you’re the hottest dancer,” shouted the boy over the ear-bleeding din.

  Cherry lifted her eyelids but didn’t stop grinding out the song from atop her post. Below her was a thirteen-year-old boy with a mop of black curly hair wearing a nifty, gray tailored suit. Still growing, she sized up. And most likely from serious money. The boy, though nearly six feet in height, was still in full sprout. And only a mom and dad with a bank full of fuck-you cash would hook up their growing child with an Italian custom tailor.

  “What’s that?” shouted Cherry, wanting the boy to repeat himself. She remembered him, picking him out as maybe the tallest young man at the party and the obvious best friend to the evening’s boy of honor. She had even wondered which of the coterie of fawning teen girls attending might be the likeliest to service the young stud—if that hadn’t already happened in some darker hotel corner. After all, she had party-danced at so many of these “manhood” celebrations that she’d picked up on the stories. Willing thirteen-year-old Jewish girls—still giggly and seemingly innocent enough—queued up to orally pleasure the bar mitzvah boy and his equally decked out entourage.

  Cherry, who was originally from Sacramento, had written off the sordid accounts as myth until one Saturday event only a month before, she’d stumbled into just such a situation. Three girls on their knees fellating three equally young boys in the ladies’ room’s handicap stall.

  “You’re definitely the hottest dancer,” shouted the boy even louder.

  “Why thank you,” mouthed Cherry, not caring to compete with the decibels.

  “I mean, you can really move,” continued the tall boy, venturing close enough where he wouldn’t have to scream. “Sure. Like she may be way prettier than you. But she can’t dance near as hot.”

  Cherry was certain there was a compliment in there somewhere. But the she to whom the boy was referring was Cherry’s dancing doppelganger on the opposite side of the stage. Her name was Valerie or Valentina or some damned V name. Whatever the stage name she’d chosen to sell, it for sure wasn’t her birth certificate name. That much Cherry could guess. This from a woman who everyone assumed had her own fake moniker. As if she’d pulled the name out of the air the moment after finishing up her very first strip club try-out. The owner of the club had asked her name. And because she’d already been saying it her entire life, it was easy to remember.

  I’m Cherry. Like Cherry Pie, you know?

  Just like the title of the classic hair metal hit she’d just auditioned to. Cherry Pie by Warrant.

  So that’s your name? Cherry Pie?

  Yessir. That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.

  As for Valerie or Valentina or whatever the new girl’s name was. Sure, she may have been prettier, and much, much younger than Cherry. Not yet eighteen, by Cherry’s street-wise estimate. But the girl couldn’t move nearly as well as her more seasoned counterpart. She was still stuck in ballet class, thought Cherry. Waiting for some mean prima dance instructor to stalk her from behind, grab hold of her bun-head and yank upward to get the girlie to put some steel in her spine.

  The party ended with a final blitzkrieg of disco-pop. Marco, on the turntable, pushed the volume up to an ear-rupturing torment, making Cherry glad she remembered to install her earplugs. For the last set, her job was to venture forth and drag whoever hadn’t yet sweat through their Saturday finery out of their seats and onto the dance floor. The new girl hadn’t yet mastered the art of luring the unwilling to shake their booties. Out of the corner of her eye
, Cherry could see her gesturing and cajoling various middle-aged bar mitzvah invitees to join the dancing throng. That wasn’t at all what Cherry had instructed her. The trick was to simply smile flirtatiously, reach out and grab the unsuspecting man or woman, and begin pulling them toward the parquet.

  Ask somebody and they’ll usually say no. Grab hold and pull and they’ll feel obligated to trot back to the dance floor with ya.

  Then came the stroke of 11 P.M. when, by hotel contract, the boy’s bar mitzvah was required to unplug. DJ Marco, who could spot a hotel security phalanx from two hundred paces, turned off the mix and began to strike his audio equipment.

  For her part, Cherry wisely stayed amongst the milling adults for a few extra moments, congratulating them, shaking hands, accepting both compliments on her energetic dancing and making herself available for whatever cash tips might come her way. She’d begin with her own twenty-dollar bill folded into her fist as a way of chumming the water. There’d surely be a few more Andrew Jacksons to follow from men who didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of their wives or impressionable children. That and there’d always be one or two who would inquire as to her background or even quasi-tease her with their hotel room numbers. And if a man appeared at all cool, she might tell him where he could see her later.

  I dance at The Rabbit Pole. Midnight to two. Come see me and I’ll dance some more for you.

  “Did you really just tell that man you work as a stripper?” asked the new girl.

  “I did and I do,” said Cherry, toweling the sweat off her face with the nearest, unused cloth napkin. In the quiet air following the hours of nonstop dance music, Cherry’s voice gave off a throaty tone. Smoky and warm.

  “Is that cool?”

  “Is what cool?” asked Cherry. “That I dance at a strip club or tell some middle-aged dude where I dance?”

  “I guess…both.”

  “What’s your name again?” asked Cherry, toweled off and beginning her beeline to the elevators.

  “Valeriana,” repeated the new girl, following but not nearly as sweat-drenched as her more experienced doppelganger.

  “Valeriana,” said Cherry. “You dance for three hours around a lotta these middle-aged Jewish dads and you’re gonna find out who’s horny and who ain’t. Better you have a safe place for them to come watch you finish them. Instead of, you know…”

  “You know…” pressed the new girl.

  “Instead of them trying to get you into some hotel room.”

  The new girl—Valeriana—nodded as if she understood. In Cherry’s view, the new girl clearly hadn’t the maturity or grasp of the potential side effects or benefits that came with the job of a party dancer.

  “You been doin’ this awhile, huh?” asked Valeriana.

  “Party dancing?” said Cherry. “Off an’ on for five or so years. Mostly on. It’s once a week and an easy two hundred bucks.”

  “But you also…You know.”

  “Strip. Yeah, so?”

  “So nothing…”

  “Stripping pays for my car and my rent and all my classes. Party dancing pays gas if I’m lucky.”

  “Is it hard?”

  “Making a living? In this town?” was Cherry’s answer, acting as if she didn’t understand the question.

  “Exotic…stripper dancing?” clarified Valeriana.

  “How old are you?” Cherry pressed the down elevator button, engaged with the new girl but still moving.

  “Eighteen.”

  “My ass,” said Cherry. “More like sixteen or fifteen or you tell me?”

  Valeriana bit her lip like a bad liar. It brought out the pink in her face, flushing behind all the strawberry freckles under a fever of matching blonde hair.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna tell Marco,” promised Cherry. “As long as you don’t tell him I told some old guy with bad cologne to meet me at The Rabbit Pole.”

  “Sixteen this coming Friday,” admitted Valeriana.

  “And Valeriana’s not your real name, is it?”

  “…Not really.”

  “That’s okay. Think my real name’s Cherry Pie?”

  “It’s not?”

  “It kind of is. But that’s for another party.”

  Valeriana laughed. And when she did, her face sparkled like a new day. Cherry would later remember that. She herself was Los Angeles jaded. Had thought she’d seen just about all the city had to give. But Valeriana or whatever the hell her real name was? At that moment, Cherry saw the new girl had something special. Unique. A quality that one could easily see, but not exactly describe. More than just a mix of hair and eyes and preternatural shapeliness.

  “Hey,” said Cherry. “You wanna come along?”

  “To where?” asked the new girl.

  “My other job. See how things work.”

  “But I just told you I wasn’t even sixteen.”

  “Far as I’m concerned you’re Valeriana and you’re eighteen and from Shitsburg.”

  Then it happened again. The lip biting as a tell to the new girl’s thinking process. Engaging. Sexy. Telegenic as hell.

  “I better not,” answered Valeriana. “I’m not ready for…that.”

  “No girl is ever ready for it. Just maybe a little less wanting.”

  “Wanting for what?”

  Man, thought Cherry. What she could do with the new girl. General Ho, the owner-manager of The Rabbit Pole, would probably pay Cherry for an introduction to a girl with such radioactive cuteness.

  “There’s the elevator,” announced Cherry. “Last chance.”

  “Another time?” asked the new girl.

  “Yeah. Another time. You gonna work next weekend?”

  “If I’m available. I’m kinda up for another job.”

  “Ooooh?” guessed Cherry. “Sounds like an acting gig.”

  “Sorta maybe.”

  “Well, good luck with it.”

  “Good luck to you, too.”

  “No luck in shucking your clothes for tips,” said Cherry. “As long as the club’s ATM machine is working.”

  Then came the new girl’s laugh again. Magical. On the verge of miraculous. With that, Cherry stepped into the elevator and gave an unconsciously girlish wave. Then, just as the doors were sliding shut...

  “Wait!” called out the new girl.

  Cherry stuck out her hand and the doors slid back open.

  “Got nowhere else to go,” admitted Valeriana. “Guess it wouldn’t hurt if I came along.”

  4

  Lucky’s latest and not-too-greatest apartment was a stuffy San Fernando Valley roach motel. There was practically zero airflow even with all the windows slid wide open. Lucky blamed the brand new mega-unit building across the alley. It was like a massive, five-hundred unit stucco and tile buffer that, no matter the direction of the wind, would reroute the molecules of air so that few ever found their way to breeze through Lucky’s second-floor windows. That was all the rationale Lucky needed to run the fan on his wall-mounted air-conditioning unit on even the coldest nights.

  Suffice it to say, Lucky liked to feel as if the air around him was on the move. Another reason why he pretty much always drove with his car windows partially cracked. And possibly one of the very few reasons Lucky missed the high-desert life he had made up in Ridgecrest; no matter the time or the day or the temperature, there had always been some kind of breeze to tickle the skin.

  Tired of both the TV and trying to read himself to sleep from his dusty stack of overdue library books, the former Kern County deputy sheriff shut off the light and lay there in the dark in hopes his body would succumb to slumber.

  Dammit, he thought to himself. Sleep used to be one of my best tricks.

  It was after 2 A.M. when his phone rang. Lucky instinctively reached for his mobile device, only to discover that it was his actual hard line that was ringing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d received a call over a wire or even why he had it installed upon moving into the cramped but furnished one-be
droom rental.

  “Yeah, you got me,” griped Lucky into the phone after he’d found the cordless receiver plugged into the wall behind an unopened carton of his dead brother’s clothes.

  “Lucky Dey?” breathed the voice on the other end. Though the voice didn’t ring as that familiar, the nearby sound of ice cubes tinkling in a crystal tumbler sparked a name.

  “Conrad Ellis?” guessed Lucky.

  “Hope I’m not waking you,” said Conrad. “It’s late for most people.”

  It must have been a year since Lucky had spoken to the entertainment mogul. He recalled hearing of the man’s penchant for pacing about his Bel-Air mansion, running his business after midnight.

  “I’m a cop,” Lucky tried to joke. “We only sleep on the job.”

  “Do you really have a job?” asked Conrad.

  “Cop job?” returned Lucky. “No. I’m kinda between gigs.”

  And what a fuckin’ understatement, Luck.

  Not long after Tony Dey’s untimely murder, Lucky had resigned his Kern County job and moved back to Los Angeles. But his reinstatement to the LA Sheriff’s Department was stuck in bureaucratic neutral. It also didn’t help that during those fateful three days when Lucky had tracked down his brother’s evil killer, he’d left the LAPD and LA County Sheriff’s in a pissing match over who would accept liability for all the damage Lucky was alleged to have left in the wake of the eventful chase.

  “Still in touch with the lawyer I got you?” asked Conrad.

  “He calls, I answer,” quipped Lucky. “And when he deposes, I try to show up.”

  “Good man.”

  “How are you doing?” asked Lucky.

  “Dying slower than my old man,” said Conrad. “But that’s only cuz I drink better scotch than he did.”

  I wonder what he’s up to? Half a fifth a day? The whole damn bottle?

  Yet who could blame Conrad if he drank until his liver surrendered? While Lucky had lost his only brother to that bastard ex-Marine, Conrad had lost his daughter in the same fiery conflagration. His one and only child. Lucky couldn’t imagine that kind of pain. Yet then again, at thirty-six he felt so used up and empty he couldn’t comprehend anything filling the void. At least anything that wasn’t temporary or chemical.