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

by Doug Richardson

  Lucky’s eyes remained closed during the entire recitation. The kind of shut-eye that might normally lead to slumber. If not for the pool of pain holding like meat hooks in his low back, he might have actually nodded off. Gabe’s cell phone, with its quarter charged battery lay safely on his chest. It was sure to alert him the moment the mysterious Jake replied. Soon, he hoped. Yet not too soon. Because while he was fully reclined, the strain on his lumbar region was somewhat eased. The hurt temporarily curbed. A brief cessation in a footrace that was leading him Lord knows where.

  Was it the way Cherry smelled that reminded him of Gonzo? Something in her hair? She had to be more than ten years younger and a near foot shorter than his Amazonian ex. Aside from gender and maybe an affection for leather accessories, there was practically nothing the two women appeared to have in common. Yet there it was again. A mild whiff and Lucky could easily imagine Gonzo lying next to him.

  “You’re still naked, aren’t you?” Lucky found himself asking.

  “Got a problem with that?” teased Cherry.

  “If you don’t…” Lucky let his voice trail. He was still picturing Gonzo. Half of it was memory. The other half was fantasy, imagining his former lover in the very same bedroom and on the very same extra-large mattress.

  The lips though, were not Gonzo’s. Nor was the taste of her breath. The twenty-two-year-old had pressed herself to him without invitation. Nor was she rebuffed; Lucky appreciated the instant distraction from his pain; from the missing teenager; from the teenager’s annoying, me-first father.

  “Just tell me to stop,” warned Cherry, working her way down to Lucky’s belt buckle. She pulled his denims loose, lowered his zipper and reached inside.

  “I’m not resisting, officer,” chuckled Lucky.

  “That’s not the first time you’ve said that,” suggested Cherry.

  “If it could only talk.”

  “It would have its own YouTube channel,” joked Cherry, playfully joking seconds before taking him into her mouth.

  And in that instant, the pain ratcheted back to a negligible number as an autonomic release of dopamine injected into Lucky’s brain. Yet it wasn’t all pleasure. A caution flag was waving. He didn’t really know this girl. She was young and vulnerable and had obviously gotten swept up in the hunt. Such circumstances often led to some kind of sex. Be it in a strange apartment, bathroom stall, or the backseat of a radio car. Cops justified these moments as everything from stress respites to job perks.

  “You don’t really know me,” Lucky said.

  “Ditto,” said Cherry, sliding up to straddle him. “Box of condoms in the nightstand. You mind?”

  Lucky twisted, reaching across himself to the old pine nightstand with top and bottom drawers. In doing so, Gabe’s smartphone spilled from his chest. He felt it vibrate beneath him. As if the phone was there to save him from himself, Lucky grabbed for it and checked the screen.

  Ur good. Same exact routine, read the text from Jake.

  “What routine?” asked Lucky aloud. Cherry laid across him, reading over his left ear. “He musta got instructions before.”

  “Check his email,” suggested Cherry.

  Lucky handed the phone off and began pulling up his pants. Meanwhile, Cherry was madly searching through the phone. Like most her age, her agility with technology seemed second nature. She blew through email, texts, applications.

  “Here. He made a voice note,” she said before pressing play and turning up the volume. There was a brief crackle, then the hush of a man’s voice making a memo for himself.

  “Rent blue Nissan. Park. Take bus.”

  That was it, but for the half-sigh recorded at the end. Cherry replayed the voice memo three more times as if she expected to hear something new or nuanced. Lucky though, had already heard enough. He was already mentally building two roadmaps. The first was the cop move. Work the phones. Call in favors. Find somebody within the authority system to run wants and warrants on blue Nissans involved in crimes or that might have been impounded in the past seventy-two hours. Next, he’d request access to cell phone records from which he could have an account of Gabe’s calls and approximate travel over the time period. A warrant would be required to search the photographer’s Santa Monica apartment—which was in a city apart from Los Angeles—not to mention the bureaucratic nonsense that came with multi-jurisdictional police searches. Add to that more delays which would come while waiting for returned phone calls, and the time concerns were stacking up.

  Sure, thought Lucky. The photos of Karrie were evidence enough to possibly trigger an Amber Alert. But runaway teenagers could sometimes be a tricky loophole. So many were lost in LA that it could gum up the system.

  No. If working Lennox and South LA had taught Lucky one thing it was that despite the legal morass created by shortcutting procedure, lives could be saved by flushing protocol and employing the following principle: the shortest line between two points was always a straight line.

  “Rent blue Nissan,” he pointed out to Cherry. “Not a red one or a green one. A blue Nissan. Specific by color. These guys move their cargo like drugs. Car trunk. Park the correct make and model at the dead drop, walk away, somebody shows up after to move the merch.”

  “Merch?” she asked, before connecting the dots and answering her own question. “Oh. Merchandise.”

  “Check the guy’s GPS,” said Lucky. “Maybe we can match an address with a rental car company.”

  Cherry skipped from the bed, returning seconds later with a laptop, wearing a wrinkled, lemon-yellow t-shirt silkscreened with a faded, Endless Summer logo. She was quick to match the few addresses in his GPS app’s history.

  “Speedy-K Rental Car in Van Nuys,” read Cherry.

  “Next address will be the drop,” believed Lucky. “Isolated. But no more than a few blocks from a bus route.”

  “Valley again.” Cherry’s voice raised an octave from the sheer thrill. She pasted the GPS address into a Google Maps bar. The program quickly animated, dive-bombing into Southern California and locking in on ten square industrial blocks north of Burbank Airport. “8463 Tujunga.”

  “What’s there?”

  “Looks like a cement plant.”

  Lucky guessed that both the car rental joint and the cement plant were owned by Armenians in keeping with crime family traditions.

  Cherry scooted over to the edge of the bed and her closet.

  “What does a girl wear if she’s gonna be left in a car trunk?” she joyfully asked.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” said Lucky. “Let alone in some car trunk.”

  “But you need me to be the girl.”

  “I need you to take him back to the Biltmore and pretend you don’t know squat about what I’m doing,” imparted Lucky.

  “Think there’s still cops back at the hotel?”

  “If they’re on the ball there’ll be somebody. Answer their questions. Tell the truth,” said Lucky, suddenly looking around for…“Where’s your car keys?”

  “To my shitmobile?”

  “Assuming Sleeping Beauty is still out in the back of mine, I suggest we switch.”

  Cherry plucked her car keys from the bottom of her bag. As she traded with Lucky, she gripped him with both hands.

  “I helped right?” she asked, her face smattered with a childlike wish for praise.

  “Yeah,” said Lucky. “You did good.”

  “And if I want to help some more?”

  “Take care of Daddy and I’ll make sure he takes care of you,” promised Lucky, escaping toward the door.

  “Hey!” she called after him. Lucky stalled, nearly halfway out of the apartment. “Unfinished business.”

  Lucky shrugged.

  “I owe you a blow job.”

  Right, thought Lucky. But as for words to reply with, he was a syllable short of nothing. The best he could do was leave her with a sort of partially gob-smacked smile before he shut the door behind himself.

  56

 
Those old enough remember Van Nuys Boulevard as more than a fat strip of blacktop bisecting the San Fernando Valley. It used to be an iconic landmark. A reminder of those bygone days of Beach Boy tunes, surfboards, Jan and Dean, and the lost art of car cruising. For two decades, the boulevard hosted the famous to the infamous and more importantly, their magical muscle cars. On Friday and Saturday nights—or even summer weeknights—the north/south strip was choked with chrome and the throaty echoes of internal combustion. Then came the eighties and the influx of guns into the gang scene. Cruising became less of an expression of car affection and more about turf. Gang muscle over muscle cars. The boulevard eventually became so dangerous to cruise the LAPD deployed a phalanx of radio units to deter all shades of car enthusiasts and their showy, slow-rollin’ fun rides.

  The only remnants of those days are reflected in all the car dealerships, car washes, and auto shops which flank the sidewalks. One of those establishments was Speedy-K Car Rentals which turned out to be little more than two offices in eight-hundred square feet next to a sheepskin upholstery shop. The dated stucco exterior was painted white with red racing stripes, and seemingly getting little attention so close to Christmas.

  Lucky noticed that but for the colored lights and miles of plastic garland employed by a nearby car dealer, nobody waking from a coma would have known Christmas was so damn near. He twisted the rearview mirror of Cherry’s VW Jetta to get a look at himself. By his own account, he looked appropriately scruffy, both unshaven for days and sleep-deprived. A dead ringer for a drug addict.

  Because that’s what you are.

  He swallowed his guilty conscience and unfolded himself from the driver’s seat. Hours without any meds had left him wrecked with an added stiffness that crept all the way down his legs to his Achilles tendons. Perfect. He sickly knew that the best acting performances were the most real. He recalled hearing about an undercover cop who needed to affect a limp on the spot. Afraid that his untrained fakery might put the sting at risk, he simply took off his shoe and embedded a sharp stone in the foam arch. The limp became real the instant his body weight was applied.

  The door to Speedy-K Car Rentals swung outward. Lucky instantly felt a rush of warm dry air meeting the cold wet from which he’d come. He entered, automatically scanning for exits and security cameras. The only other route of egress he could determine was the door behind the desk leading he imagined, to a back office or a storeroom. The counter was a gray, chipped laminate that matched the equally monochromatic walls. To the right was a glass case with model replicas of German cars.

  “May I help you?” asked the woman behind the counter.

  Lucky hadn’t seen her at first. She was squat, dark, and matronly, hidden behind a large countertop display advertising aftermarket vehicle insurance. She wore a hair-matching knit black cardigan over a champagne colored blouse and a floor-length plaid skirt.

  “Yes,” said Lucky, clearing his throat with a cough. “Sorry. Guy I know recommended I rent from you.”

  “Do you have a reservation?” she asked with an accent strong enough to reveal that English wasn’t her first language.

  “No,” said Lucky. “But the guy said I should ask for a blue Nissan.”

  As if cued, the woman’s eyes lifted to greet Lucky, as if she was viewing him for the first time.

  “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Jake,” replied Lucky.

  The woman gave the slightest nod, as if she’d heard the secret pass phrase. Onto the counter she placed a clipboard with the appropriate paperwork.

  “Driver’s license, proof of insurance, and a credit card,” she said dryly. “Oh, and we don’t take American Express.”

  Lucky had an impulse to ask why. If the car was designated for dead drops, it would clearly be returned right back to the rental company. It would have been entirely in character for a sketchy fellow to complain about payment under the circumstances. But then again, Lucky felt he had already passed the sniff test. He was inside. Recommended by Jake. About to rent a blue Nissan. So he pulled his driver’s license and a Visa card from his wallet along with the slip of paper provided by his insurance carrier.

  “Fill this out and I’ll be right back,” she said. Upon rising from her chair only inches were added to her height. She swept up the cards Lucky had left on the counter and disappeared into the back room.

  The hairs on the back of Lucky’s neck turned stiff. As far as he knew, she was back there either calling or texting somebody a quick pic of his driver’s license. Lucky swiveled his view over his shoulder to check the entrance before returning to the clipboard. With his left hand he picked up the pen and began to fill out the rental agreement. All while his right hand moved inside the tail of his jacket to the butt of the .45 caliber pistol he kept snugly holstered at the small of his back.

  Just in case.

  By Lucky’s mental count, she was gone anywhere between thirty seconds to a minute, at last returning with a photocopied piece of paper on which were duplicate images of his driver’s license and proof of insurance.

  “By initialing here, here, and here you are declining insurance and agreeing to return the car with a full tank of gas.”

  But I’m not returning it. It’s a dead drop car. I’m supposed to leave it and take the bus.

  “Understood,” said Lucky, scribbling every place the woman pointed her cheaply manicured nail.

  The woman ran the credit card, charging a flat seventy-five dollars. Lucky signed the receipt, accepted his copy of the rental agreement and stepped to the side as the blunt little woman rounded the counter, jangling a set of car keys. She pushed her way out into the early evening mist and after a hard left turn, vanished out of sight.

  She’ll either return with a blue Nissan or I’ll never see her again, thought Lucky. Then before his imagination could run through the hundreds of other possibilities, most of which involved him ending up dead, tossed into some rushing sewer with a bullet lodged in his cranium, the one-woman-rental-car agency pulled up to the door in a sparkling clean Nissan Altima glazed in a metallic cobalt blue. She left the car door open as well as the shop door as an invitation for Lucky to accept the rental.

  “Thanks,” said Lucky, expecting and receiving no reply whatsoever. He slid into the sedan, quickly adjusting the seat and mirrors. With the engine already running, He needed only to buckle his seatbelt and shift the transmission into drive.

  But it wasn’t until the front rubber left the pavement and touched the asphalt of storied Van Nuys Boulevard that Lucky truly felt that overwhelming pull he had been missing for some time. Not since he had bolted out of Kern County like a rocket out of Hades had he felt such a visceral sense of commitment.

  Lucky was at last, all in.

  57

  All dilemmas came with horns. At least that’s how Herm remembered it.

  You’re stuck on the horns of your dilemma, Herm’s old man once said. He could only recall his dad using the metaphor the one time. Twelve-year-old Herm was playing both Pop Warner Football and soccer when he also joined the local Boy Scout troop. Refusing to drive the boy another quarter mile until he whittled the after-school activities down to a simple pair, his mother demanded that Herm make a choice. Choosing vexed the boy. He didn’t want to pick between his friends. Plus, the extra curricular activities kept him out of the house where his bipolar mom would pound orange juice and vodka and throw screaming fits so terrifying Herm would lock himself in the garage with his AM radio and headphones.

  Herm reluctantly chose to abandon Boy Scouts. And from that day on, he had looked at all dilemmas as sharp and pointed and grown from a raging bull that could easily disembowel a man with the unlucky flick of his head.

  Such was the case of his newest conundrum. To follow that cop fellah? Or Father Unicorn? as he’d somehow labeled Andrew Kaarlsen. From the big box store’s parking lot, he had quietly tailed the primer gray Crown Victoria from the Valley all the way back to Silver Lake. Once near Cherry’s hi
llside apartment, he had plugged his car into a curbside space some eighty yards up the slope. From that spot, he could fully eyeball the four-unit apartment building. Shortly after arriving, he watched Cherry and the cop fellah step from the Crown Victoria where the cop fellah followed the purple-haired spinner up the steps until they disappeared into an apartment. As for Father Unicorn, he hadn’t seen him exit the car or noticed them dropping him off anywhere. And with that strange absence, Herm began second-guessing his plot, half-baked as it was. Once cashed in with the fifty thousand dollars in the FedEx envelope, he should have been satisfied, not to mention mentally spending the payday on further home improvements. Yet another idea had formed as quickly as it had taken him to clear the Costco exit and walk to his Ford Edge.

  Father Unicorn.

  Trading the photographer’s mobile phone for the envelope of cash, Herm felt an odd warmth. He felt a surge of confidence in the strange duo of the daddy and his hired gun. They might successfully land that elusive strawberry blonde, thus rescuing her from the evil clutches of white slavery only to return her to Whereversville, USA.

  By the moment Herm had settled in his driver’s seat, that weird warmth had turned jealous. He’d been paid. The transaction was complete. He should have wheeled the car out of the parking lot and driven back to his unfinished domicile in Panorama City. Instead, he waited and watched. Until at last he had picked out the three amigos exiting Costco and trudging to a primer gray Crown Victoria.

  But she’s my unicorn.

  The ugly emotion gathered again. The same as when he had discovered that young Gabe, the neighbor photographer, had pounced before he had his chance. And why should Daddykins get a chance to bring his little girl home? A little girl who’d already chosen between family and running away. Hell, figured Herm. Until the girl was walking down the ramp to her return flight, she was still game for the kill. Huntable as hell. And worth, possibly, another envelope of green if Herm could bag her.