by Mason Cross
Which meant he hadn’t paid Carol a dime over three and a half, I estimated. I thanked him for his help and told him I would try to drop by in the next couple of days.
“One last thing.”
“Shoot.”
“This is kind of a long shot but—you say she was in around eleven?”
“That’d be about right.”
“You don’t have any used car dealerships open that late around there, do you?” I had already checked. There weren’t, but it never hurts to ask.
“Is this about the Civic?”
“The what?”
“She asked the same question as you, Mr. Thomas. And I told her no, and why did she ask? She said she needed a car quickly. I told her that was too bad, but Martin’s opens at eight, and she ...”
“She asked if she could buy your car? A Honda Civic?” “Oh, she told you about that?”
57
LAS VEGAS FRIDAY, 10:21
The address Walter had given Gage was just within the Vegas city limits, on the boundary with the Strip. He had decided it was safer to hold on to the old man’s battered pickup, on balance. His body wouldn’t be found for a while, and stealing another car would likely draw more attention. He parked it a block away and approached on foot, keeping his eyes open for any surprises. For a second he wondered if he had taken down the street number wrong, because there wasn’t a building there. Or at least, there wasn’t yet.
It was a construction site: rising ten stories up from the street, a stack of concrete floors supported by visible steel beams. The site was closed off by wooden construction hoarding branded with the name of the company. Beck Concepts Ltd. When he saw the sentry at the entrance, he knew he had the right place. Sentry was the right word, not security guard. Instead of the hard hat and hi-vis jacket Gage would have expected, this guy was clad in a cheap gray suit with a noticeable bump under the left lapel. He was bald, a little overweight, and was staring straight at Gage from across the road.
He looked both ways, waited for a gap in the traffic, and crossed over. The sentry’s gaze hardened at his approach.
“You Gage?”
“I’m here to see Walter. I hope he’s on time.”
The sentry glanced up at the structure above them, and then looked back at Gage.
“I’ll take you up. They’re waiting for you.”
He turned and unlocked the door in the hoarding that surrounded the site. He walked in and held the door open for Gage, then led him to the stairwell, ignoring the service elevator. Gage followed as he walked briskly up the stairs, surprisingly nimble on his feet for a large man. There was another big guy in another cheap gray suit waiting for them on the sixth floor. Gage thought back to his first meeting with Walter, David and Grant in the bar a few days back. Grant’s general look and demeanor had given him away as a cop immediately. Just as Grant had been unable to mask his background, neither could this pair. Only these two certainly weren’t cops.
The second guy had more hair and was a lot thinner than his friend. Neither spoke. The one with hair took a step toward Gage, deliberately getting into his personal space. He reached into Gage’s jacket and opened it, frisked the pockets, then got on one knee and patted down his legs. As his jacket stretched tight over his back, Gage could see he was armed too.
The guy got to his feet and straightened his tie. There had been nothing to find, because Gage had expected this welcome. The guard jerked his head to the left.
Gage stared him out for a second and then looked away. He walked in the indicated direction, following the corridor until it opened out onto the main floor. The space was unadorned apart from the support pillars; just a floor of rough concrete stretching out to where the building was wide open to the sky, waiting for plate-glass windows to be installed at some point in the future.
He heard his name being called and turned to see two figures on the opposite side of the floor, at the edge of the drop on the opposite side. Walter and David were waiting there. As he approached he saw that this side overlooked a space in the core of the building. The six-story drop bottomed out in a pit that would be a courtyard when the building was finished. The courtyard was obscured from outside by the bulk of the building. Nothing that went on up here would be seen by anyone passing by. Heavy industrial noises drifted up from below: the scream of angle grinders and the churn of cement mixers. He could see why they had chosen this spot for the meeting.
Walter and David were wearing matching “this better be good” expressions. Gage wondered if they’d practiced those while they were waiting. It was cute.
Gage walked past them and right up to the edge of the drop. Six stories, straight down. “Nice place, this yours, David?”
He saw David’s sneer out of the corner of his eye. At least he was smart enough to know when he was being condescended to.
“Mine,” Walter said. “One of my projects.”
“A man of many projects,” Gage said, turning to face them at last. “Where’s Grant?”
Walter ignored the question and countered with one of his own. “What did you mean, about Freel’s wife?”
Gage stepped back from the edge and looked at them. “Why didn’t you tell me about the Ellison diamonds?”
David turned his eyes to Walter and started to open his mouth. Walter silenced him with a motion of his hand. He stared at Gage for a moment, as though carefully considering what he was going to say next.
“What do you know about that?”
“What do I know about it? I know it’s the reason you really wanted Freel. So I’ll ask again, why didn’t you give me the whole story?”
He exchanged a glance with David. “It wasn’t relevant.”
“Wasn’t relevant? Maybe if you had found it relevant, he would still be alive and I wouldn’t have almost gotten killed.”
There had been zero chance of that, of course, but they didn’t need to know that.
“We told you to back off.”
“But I didn’t. So here we are. Why did you do that, by the way? It didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense, after hiring me to do the job.”
Walter sighed, as though he saw no reason to waste time arguing about it. “So what’s your proposal? You know about the diamonds, which means either Freel told you about them, or his wife did. They tell you where they hid them?”
Gage stared at him for a long moment. “My price went up. I want what we agreed, plus another two hundred grand.”
“Your price went up?” David repeated, speaking for the first time. His voice was straining to contain his incredulity. “You fucked up. We’re not paying you a cent.”
Walter nodded agreement. “He’s right. That’s outrageous. And we already told you we don’t need you.”
Gage shook his head sadly, as though he was disappointed they had chosen to waste more time. “Except that I’m here, talking to you. Which means something changed and you do need me. I’m guessing the thing that changed is Freel’s pulse rate. You thought you had him, now you don’t. You can bore me with the story behind that, or we can talk about our new arrangement.”
Walter considered this for a second. “Okay, you’re correct. We want Freel’s wife. If you can help us find her, we’ll keep our end of the original deal.”
Gage took a step back and looked down at the courtyard again. Six floors, straight down. No guardrail, no scaffolding. Nothing between them and the ground but fresh air.
“Like I said: you didn’t give me the full picture, so that deal is null and void. I think my new terms are more than reasonable.”
They were, in fact, more reasonable than Gage had any intention of being. As soon as he found Carol and the diamonds, the last thing he would be doing would be handing them over to these guys. He stepped away from the edge and looked Walter in the eye.
“You have nothing to lose. Freel’s gone, and one way or another, his wife won’t be far behind him. I’m your last chance to keep anything from the Ellison job. If I don’t find her, we�
��ll call it even. But if I do—and I will—I want to be compensated.”
Gage thought he caught the mildest twitch at the edge of Walter’s mouth. As though he were about to smile, and then stopped himself. He glanced at David, whose eyebrows were bunched together, his lips pursed.
“What would you need?” Walter asked, his voice the model of reasonableness once more.
“I think they were waiting until things had cooled off, then they were going to cash in. There can’t be that many people out here who could move that kind of merchandise. I figured you would know who was on that list of names. I’ll do the rest.”
Walter took a moment to think it over. In the corner of Gage’s eye, he saw a smug look cross David’s face, as though there was an inside joke.
“That makes sense,” Walter agreed.
He took a pen and a small notebook out from his jacket. He scribbled a list of names down and tore the sheet off, extending his hand to offer it to Gage. Gage could see from where he was that it was a short list. And he was pretty sure the name he needed wasn’t on it.
From the moment he had stepped onto the sixth floor, he had made sure to keep one eye on the demeanor of the two flunkies while his conversation with their boss unfolded. As soon as he had begun talking to Walter, they had taken a step back. Don’t mind us, pretend we’re not here. They had stuck close together, which was good. For Gage, not for them.
He reached out and took the list from Walter’s outstretched hand. At that moment, he sensed a change in the atmosphere on the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the thin one with hair move his shoulders a little, as though to adjust the position of his jacket over the gun.
When Walter finally gave his signal, Gage was way ahead of him.
“Thank you for coming in,” Walter said. “This has been a big help.” Then he looked beyond Gage, at the two men, and nodded.
Gage spun around and saw the thin one was already reaching his right hand inside his jacket. The fat boy was a little slower on the uptake. His hand was just beginning to move in the direction of his jacket and the gun beneath.
Gage grabbed the thin one’s wrist as he tried to pull the gun free, pinning his hand beneath his jacket. He couldn’t get his hand free to defend himself without letting go of the gun. As he was running through this dilemma in his head while recovering from his surprise at Gage’s reaction speed, Gage took both options off the table and smashed his forehead into his nose, hard.
The guy yelped and staggered backwards, blood spilling from his nose. Gage let go of his wrist and grabbed the handle of his gun instead, feeling the familiar contours of a .45 in his hand. His thumb moved to the safety as he pulled it free from the holster, and found it was off already. Unless this guy was a real idiot, he had most likely left the chamber empty. Two trigger pulls to get off the first shot. Faster than fiddling with the safety.
While these thoughts were crossing his mind, he was turning to the second guy: the heavier, balder one in the set. Already slower than his comrade on the uptake, he had hesitated a fatal second to watch as Gage downed his colleague. Gage saw the realization that this mistake was about to cost him his life as he scrambled to pull his own gun out. Gage leveled the gun and pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession. A click, followed immediately by an explosion. A red circle appeared in the fat boy’s forehead and he toppled backwards, the gun falling from his dead grip. Gage swung the gun around, expecting an attack from the first guy, but he was still on the floor.
Gage turned and saw that Walter and David were still reacting. Walter froze and then slowly began to raise his hands. David hesitated, and his right hand moved toward his own jacket. Gage brought the gun over to cover him and shook his head.
“I wouldn’t.”
David hesitated again, and then dropped his hands. His face displayed a mixture of shock, anger, and fear.
Gage shot him twice in the chest. David’s mouth opened and he took a step back, then pitched backwards off the edge. A heavy thud followed a second or two later.
Walter flinched at the sound and spoke quietly, his voice barely carrying over the industrial sounds. “Don’t kill me.”
Gage paused and looked around at his handiwork in the last twenty seconds. The thin flunkey on the ground, clutching his broken nose and trying to get to his feet. The fat one, face down dead on the concrete. David in a broken heap six floors below.
Gage put two bullets in the thin man’s head.
“No promises,” he said quietly as he approached Walter.
Walter seemed to come to a realization that it was fight or flight. Denied of the latter, he launched himself at Gage. Gage had plenty of time to fire again, but instead, stepped forward and batted Walter’s arms away with ease. He dropped his gun and gripped Walter’s lapel, moving the older man closer toward the edge of the drop.
“Why did you call me off?”
“Don’t kill me!”
“I didn’t come all the way up here for the aerobic exercise. Tell me why you called me off.”
Gage jerked him backwards toward the drop but held on. Walter started talking quickly.
“We got to the guy they were going to sell to weeks ago. It’s why they ran from the house in Summerlin. They didn’t have a buyer, and we think they were just going to wait it out. But after you got to McKinney, Freel must have realized what happened. He got spooked, he contacted a fence named Kailani, here in Vegas. Only Freel was careless. He didn’t know Kailani does some work for me. Kailani asked me what to do, I told him to set up a meeting. We didn’t need you anymore, after all this, the dumb son-of-a-bitch was going to come straight to us.”
Gage searched Walter’s eyes. He was telling the truth now. He lowered his voice to a menacing whisper.
“Look down.”
Walter hesitated, looked down at the void. Nobody to see them, nobody to overhear his screams. Exactly what he had had planned for Gage. He looked back at Gage, his eyes pleading.
“Now,” Gage said. “Tell me the address.”
58
LAS VEGAS FRIDAY, 10:45
With nothing better to do for the moment, I bought coffee and a couple of donuts: enough caffeine and sugar to keep me awake for a while. I spent some time cruising the streets on the south side of the city, looking for Honda Civics. As morning rush hour built, the task became impossible, so I parked up again and looked at the blank screen of my phone. I hadn’t heard anything from Sarah at all, and I was worried now. I knew she would have been tired, but there was a little over an hour left before the rendezvous time, and there hadn’t been so much as a text. Perhaps she had decided things had gotten a little too crazy, and gone back home to forget any of this ever happened. I wouldn’t have blamed her, but I didn’t believe that theory in a million years.
When my phone finally did ring at ten forty-five, I grabbed it and checked the screen, hoping to see Sarah’s cell number. But it was a landline. A Las Vegas area code.
The caller was male. He asked for me by one of the names I had used when calling hotels earlier.
“This is Matt at the Howard Johnson over on Tropicana?”
My disappointment that the call was not from Sarah turned to cautious optimism.
After I had extracted the color and license plate of the pawnshop clerk’s Honda Civic from him, I had called around some of the hotels on the east side of Vegas, figuring Carol would need somewhere to lay low until the meet. There are about a billion hotel rooms in Las Vegas, of course, but I narrowed the search down to places that were cheap and unobtrusive. The direction of her approach meant it was only logical she would pick one on the east side, rather than going all the way across town. I had included a few hotels deeper into town but adjacent to freeway exits, just because I had the time. It was a long shot, but as much as anything else it had been a way to occupy my mind as I waited and worried about Carol, and now Sarah.
I used the same line every time: saying my wife had checked in somewhere in that area, had lost her phon
e, and she had forgotten to tell me the address of the hotel. She was driving a green Honda Civic, and I knew the license plate.
The polite, well-spoken voice on the other end continued. “It was just to let you know that you were right, this is where your wife checked in.”
I felt a jolt and grinned. Sometimes long shots pay off. If I could get to Carol before she tried to meet with the fence, it would make things easier. I asked Matt for the full address.
“One more thing,” I said as he was about to hang up. “Would you mind not mentioning my call to my wife? I’m going to surprise her.”
There was a pause. “Oh, I’m afraid we already contacted your wife.”
I winced. “You did?”
“That’s right, I called her just before I called you, just to make sure ...”
Just to make sure you were legit, was what I assumed he was too polite to say out loud.
I started making calculations. From my memory of looking up the numbers, that hotel was in the southwest corner of the map, close to an exit off the 15. It would take me at least ten or twenty minutes to get there. Carol would be long gone by then. I started the engine and swung out into the traffic. I kept my voice steady.
“Has she gone yet?”
The desk guy’s voice sounded puzzled. “No, sir, she says she’ll see you when you get here. Room 27.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Sir?”
“That’s great, thank you, Matt.”
I hung up. When I stopped at the next set of lights, I called Sarah. I got voicemail again, just like the last dozen times. Where the hell was she?
59
LAS VEGAS FRIDAY, 11:12
Sarah had waited in her room until checkout, and, with no money for a cab fare, had risked walking to Wilston Street. She was early, but as she approached the building where “FDC” was based, she kept her eyes peeled for Carol.