Yet despite the private waterworks, Andrew kept clicking through miles of pages. He had made a pact with himself to exhaust the site before moving onto the next and the next until he had either identified his daughter or eliminated her participation in all local escort ads. The images piled up in his brain. Numbed him to the ever-constant parade of young flesh until, past his own bleary eyeballs, he found himself on pause and staring at a pair of youthful stems in a yellow string bikini.
Like so many of the advertisements, the face was obscured to disguise identity and age. But the features, the skin type, the Nordic pallor with both the recognizable bloom of freckling, struck Andrew cold and frozen for so long that his screen saver unexpectedly kicked in.
Karrie.
Andrew tapped the space bar, instantly regenerating the page with its very teenage bikini body. The ad message was simple and clearly penned to attract a man with a certain and perverse predilection.
♥︎ — SEXY — BUBBLY — U WON’T BELIEVE IM OLD ENUFF ♥︎
The mobile phone fumbled in Andrew’s dominant, yet now splinted hand. It took him a moment to steady it and punch in the number with his thumb. He held it to his ear, listened to the rings at the other end, and waited for a voice to answer.
Karrie’s voice.
“Hello?” said the woman at the other end, a tad squeaky with her voice.
“Oh,” said Andrew, not planning to sound so awfully disappointed. “I…I was expecting someone, something—you know—”
“Someone more girly?” asked the voice, perkier at the smell of money. “I promise you, I’m just the girly you need. What’s your name, daddy?”
“Listen. I saw the pictures and I thought you were—”
“Just the right age?”
“Someone I knew,” admitted Andrew.
“Well. I’m Jodi. And I’d sure as heck like to know you. You have a name, sugar?”
“I’m…I’m Charlie,” fibbed Andrew.
“Hi, Charlie.”
“Hi.”
“You like what you see?”
“Yes, well…” said Andrew. “But the pictures on JumpFinder. They looked like—”
“They’re me, Charlie.”
“Right. But they look like someone else. And I thought—”
“What’s her name?” asked Jodi. “Maybe I know her.”
“You don’t—”
“Small world our thing. Wouldn’t hurt to ask.”
“Her name’s Karrie—er—sorry,” stammered Andrew. “Her name, I think, is Valeriana?”
“Val?”
“I think so.”
“Strawberry blonde? Sweet sixteen?”
“Fifteen.”
“That’s her. Yes. You want me to bring her, too?”
“You can do that?”
“I’m sure your Val is my Val,” cooed Jodi. “We could do a Charlie twofer.”
“Twofer?”
“Twofer one. You. Me. And Val.”
“Karrie—I mean Val—would come with you?”
“If I can rouse her. It is pretty early in the morning. But me, I like men in the morning. More wood from the pile, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes. Right.” Andrew attempted to fake a laugh, but couldn’t because his racing heart was eating too much oxygen.
“Where are you?” asked Jodi.
“At a hotel.”
“And does that hotel have a name?”
“Yes. You’re right. The Biltmore. Downtown. You know it?”
“Nice. I know it. What time would you like us to come by?”
“Soon?”
“How’s an hour sound?”
“Yes. An hour’s good.”
“Room?”
“Eleven thirty-four.”
“We will be there.”
“You and Valeriana?”
“Me and Valeriana. Yes. See you, Charlie. Bye now.”
Andrew hung on the phone until he heard the digital click of the terminating connection. He checked the time on the phone’s screen. It was only 7:29 A.M. At eight thirty, his daughter would be arriving at the hotel.
Might be.
Would be, argued one side of Andrew’s brain, accustomed to countering his negative thinking.
Then came a question. An annoying query which stuck under Andrew’s bonnet like a stone in a shoe. If Val does arrive at the hotel. And Andrew and his baby daughter are, at last, reunited. What should be done about Lucky Dey? Should Andrew pay him the full fifty thousand? A partial amount as a parting gesture that his friend Conrad Ellis would understand? Or should Andrew man up and stiff that finger-breaking sonofabitch?
Andrew let the answer come to him in the shower. Suddenly, that lousy sponge bath he’d given himself wasn’t quite satisfactory if he was less than an hour away from wrapping the biggest hug around Karrie that a father ever gave.
“My Karrie is coming home,” Andrew said aloud. “Thank you Jesus.”
38
Reseda. 8:16 A.M.
The way Lucky remembered it, he had trundled into his apartment sometime after one in the morning. After finding the energy to take a quick, lukewarm shower, he had stood naked, air drying at the bathroom sink. He brushed his teeth, flossed his uppers, then unscrewed the cap from one of the unlabeled prescription bottles where he kept his precious tabs of Percocet. It was his habit to shake out one or two tablets, depending on his self-prescribing pain index. Only this time, the number was three. And for some unconscious reason, Lucky never returned the extra pill to its bottle. He swallowed the capsule with the other pair then dumped the rest of the bottle into the toilet.
Lucky was that fed up.
Once he had slept off the meds, his plan was to tough out the next few days on Gatorade and a mix of ibuprofen and naproxen. If he was a true addict, the pain of withdrawal would be worse than anything his back could dish out. If he wasn’t, well, he would still need to get himself back into some serious physical therapy.
Lucky recalled little more of the late hours until he woke a few ticks past eight in the morning to the feeble clang of his push-button doorbell. Whatever ringer was left in the mechanism sounded like it was coming from somewhere inside a mason jar full of pickle sludge.
Groggy and unbalanced, Lucky instantly regretted the mild overdosing of the med.
Drug addict? Or dickhead?
His body answered before his brain, already craving an opioid flood to blunt his angry nerve receptors. His back had already re-clenched and in the short walk to his front door, was demanding ten minutes of horizontal traction.
Before his hand even reached the knob, a vanilla hued envelope was jacked through his mail slot, skidding to a stop on the dirty shag his landlord had advertised as recently replaced wall-to-wall carpet. Just bending over to retrieve the letter proved so restrictive that Lucky needed to grab a chair back with one hand and knee-bend down to pinch the envelope off the floor. As he rose, he felt gravel pops in both knees. Painless. But a certain red flag that his body would no longer repair itself without a significant effort from the owner.
Note to self. Change lifestyle before it changes you.
Lucky cursed his inane bumper sticker philosophy, hobbled over to the couch and practically flopped himself onto his back, causing a ripple of nerve pain that began at the small of his back and eventually radiated all the way to his fingertips. He waited for the aching to pass, then examined an envelope that bore not a single scrawl to identify the intended recipient. Still, he had every right to rip it open. After all, mistake or otherwise, it had been stuffed into his mail slot. Yet if he had received it in error, opening a personal note that was meant for a neighbor could prove to be messy and embarrassing.
With a tug on the lanyard controlling a set of mail-order blinds, Lucky unleashed a yellow blast of morning sunlight, so potent it made reading through that vanilla envelope easier than reading the lettered marks in a teacher’s upside-down grade book.
Lucky first noticed the number ten, followed by
a comma and three zeroes. A decimal point was next, then two more ovals to reveal a check in the amount of ten thousand dollars. Lucky’s name was machine-printed about three millimeters above the payable line. He easily recognized that the true ink signature in the lower right belonged to Conrad Ellis.
Severance pay, Lucky bitched. For a lousy job poorly done. A high-society way of saying you’re fired and don’t let the door hit you in the ass can. Conrad was probably so embarrassed he had recommended Lucky that he had insisted on covering Andrew’s expenses.
A billionaire’s apology to a millionaire.
“No thank you,” spat Lucky, crushing the envelope into a crumpled sphere before sailing it across the room. It bounced into a corner behind that stack of sealed moving boxes containing clothes that once belonged to his little brother. He’d always intended to give the old togs to Goodwill, but like so many other painful issues, hadn’t gotten around to dealing with them. Returning back to the ranks of the LA Sheriff’s was still the priority.
And how’s that going, Luck?
Lucky’s mobile phone made an electronic chirp, alerting him to a new voicemail. Which was odd, considering that he hadn’t heard so much as a single ring.
“Timing,” said Lucky, suddenly certain that the missed call was from Andrew Kaarlsen, wanting to tie off the last connection to that Goddarn corn-hole, Lucky Dey. Obviously timed with the arrival of the check, certifying the message of termination in unambiguous terms.
It was then that Lucky felt the regret creeping in. Despite Andrew’s continued awkwardness, he probably deserved an apology. No daddy in search of his missing daughter, whacked out or otherwise, deserved what Lucky had done to him.
Hell, Lucky. You give suspects better treatment.
Fully intending to phone Andrew back—and not with any intent of getting his gig back, but to stand tall and take the hit for his own lousy behavior—Lucky twisted on his sofa until his feet were underneath him and stood slowly in hopes the blood in his skull wouldn’t drain too efficiently back into his thorax.
The phone screen bore various options. One read VOICEMAIL; the other, CALL BACK. In his less than lucid state, Lucky dropped a thick thumb on CALL BACK, brought the phone to his ear, fully expecting to hear Andrew’s message playing back. Instead, he heard a single ring followed by a familiar woman’s voice.
“So good,” brightened the woman’s voice. “I wasn’t sure you were gonna get back to me so quick.”
“I’m sorry,” throated Lucky. “Who is this?”
“Cherry,” said the dancer. “We had a bit of an adventure last night? This is Lucky, right?”
“Yeah,” groaned Lucky. “Same guy. Different headache. I just woke up, so—”
“Really sorry. You want me to call you later?”
“No. I’m up.”
“You asked me to call if I thought of anything.”
“Right.”
“Hit me in the middle of the night and I haven’t slept since,” said Cherry. “I can’t believe it didn’t register when I was with you.”
“Okay,” approved Lucky, not yet ready to admit even to her that he had been dismissed. “Whatcha got?”
“So you know how I told you about the Gabe guy?”
“Guy who Karrie was last seen with.”
“Okay. So the whole reason we were there was cuzza my audition for an Audi commercial.”
“She tagged along with you,” recalled Lucky.
Cherry went on to describe how a casting director named Herm had shown only a mild, professional interest in her until he had stumbled onto Karrie outside his casting door. Only later did he invite the duo back for a second audition only to stand them up.
“That’s why we were there that night,” Cherry explained.
Cherry continued with her tale about Herm calling again, the new appointment when she showed up with someone other than Karrie, only to get a blast of Herm’s vitriol and personality.
Then Cherry described the man. Tall, elegant. Salt and pepper hair. Multi-ethnic with half a dose of sincerity in his voice. Clearly the same character Lucky had encountered the night before.
Bad guy.
“That was just yesterday?” Lucky asked.
“The morning. Yeah.”
“And you still have his contact info?”
“I seriously do, yeah,” giggled Cherry. “So whaddayou think?”
“About?”
“About the guy we just talked about?” insisted Cherry. “Think he could have somethin’ to do with tryin’ to find Val…I mean Karrie?”
“Unknown,” said Lucky. “Listen. Can I call you back?”
“Yeah, sure…And hey. If you talk to her old man? Tell him I’m sorry for being such a little bitch. After all. He’s her dad.”
The nascent fog from that extra Percocet was still clinging to a few final membranes. Despite that, a plan was forming. Less than that. It was more like a shot in the dark. Not so much to get his job back, but to finish. Lucky hated to leave duties undone. At least those chores that didn’t involve care for himself.
“You have plans this morning?” Lucky found himself asking.
“You talking to me?” asked Cherry. “Uh, not really. No.”
“Because I think I’m gonna need you.”
39
Downtown. 8:45 A.M.
“C’mon sweet bizness,” nudged Romeo. “Time ta get your think workin’.”
After the bloodbath at the Mayfair Hotel, Jodi wanted badly to blow town. Only with Romeo hanging onto her cut of the cash score, she hadn’t the resources to get further than a one-way Metrolink ticket to the Inland Empire—the endless no-man’s-land-of-a-suburb between LA and Palm Springs. She had spent the rest on packets of crystal meth. But that didn’t stop her phone from ringing with perverse requests from adult men cruising her JumpFinder ad. It was only at Romeo’s command that she answered the next query, a call from a man going by the name “Charlie” at the downtown Biltmore Hotel.
The plan was the same as before. Gain access to the man’s hotel room, get his PINs and while Romeo held a knife to the mark’s throat, Jodi would venture to the nearest ATMs and do what she could to drain the unlucky bastard’s cash accounts.
She made Romeo promise not to drain the john’s blood this time.
But when it came time for Jodi to don that same, identity-concealing floppy hat, second and third terrified thoughts came flooding in.
“What about the police?”
“They aren’t even looking for us.”
“But we were there! You killed a man!”
“We killed a man. And that man was a baby raper. And the police don’t care about no baby raper.”
“I don’t wanna kill nobody no more,” Jodi harshly whispered as they stepped off the city bus.
“Just do your part and I do mine,” griped Romeo, directing her to start walking the two blocks north to the Biltmore entrance. “And put on dat hat.”
“We’re not even there yet,” she argued, still uncomfortable with the headwear. The wide brim flopped about and obstructed her view of nearly everything over her platform-shoe-assisted five-foot-one. That and the slightest gust of wind was sure to send it sailing God knows where. And hell if she was going to chase the piece of crap hat into four lanes of traffic.
“Camera everywhere,” reminded Romeo, already disguised in a woolly cap and dark glasses so overreaching they could have been categorized as goggles. “Put on da hat now!”
On went the floppy hat. During the entire trudge to the hotel—a walk which turned into an extra hike as Romeo circumnavigated the hotel in order to judge the most stealthy entrance—Jodi kept one arm in a hook-shot pose, palm pushing down on her crown to keep those whistling downtown gusts from separating that hat from her head.
A side service door had been propped open to the sidewalk. There was a painting crew off-loading a compressor on wheels and coils of spatter-caked tubing. The stick-up duo slipped by and in a matter of seconds, had easily b
orrowed the cargo elevator.
“Ugh,” moaned Jodi, complaining about the canned sounds piped into the lift. “Christmas music.”
“What wrong wit Christmas music?” asked Romeo. “Who don’ like Christmas? You sad little girl who never got present?”
“Oh, I got a gift,” said Jodi. “My daddy knocked me up one Christmas. I was twelve.”
“I go meet your daddy I’ll show him ma razor,” chuckled Romeo. He ran his right index finger across his own neck while with the left in his pocket, thumbed the blade of his box cutter—open and closed, open and closed.
Click-clack, click-clack.
“All da baby rapers deserve to die,” insisted Romeo.
The doors slid open to the eleventh floor. Romeo stepped off first, quickly scanning the corridors, then reaching for Jodi’s hand.
“C’mon,” he said. “Same as las’ time. You knock, I rock.”
“You promised. No more blood,” begged Jodi.
“Pervert man no fight me? Then ain’ gonna be no blood.”
“Your shit gave me nightmares.”
“Meth give you nightmares.”
“Ssshhh,” cautioned Jodi.
“Jus’ lemme fine da number, okay?”
There were polished brass plates with directional arrows where the corridors converged. Rooms 1100 thru 1122 to the left. 1123-1144 to the right.
Romeo continued to lead. His pace began to quicken to match his ever-increasing heart rate. The way Jodi figured it, adrenalin was to Romeo’s nervous system what crystal meth was to her own. He too needed the rush.
That’s when Jodi made a vow. If Romeo spilled so much as a drop of blood in room 1134, she was done with the whole scam. She was going to cut from him, the hotel, and maybe even go right to the cops. She might even offer up her testimony in exchange for some kind of deal that kept her out of jail. While trailing slightly behind Romeo, she found herself fantasizing about a plea-bargain for some cushy rehab clinic like the ones advertised in local TV commercials. Shangri-La villas high up in the mountains overlooking Malibu. Ocean views. Paradise for the chemically pathetic.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 49