“What would that be?” I asked.
“You.” Bradley and No Hair said it at the same time.
I bent over double again.
“She didn’t count on anyone coming to your rescue, Davis.” No Hair’s voice was softer.
“Happy to help.” Bradley reached over and gently pushed my hair out of my face. He smiled at me.
* * *
We ordered food while discussing where to go from here, because No Hair was ranting about famine and hypoglycemia. I couldn’t have swallowed a bite of food if Natalie walked in, put a gun to my head, and demanded I eat. Bradley asked, “Not even a Pop Tart, Davis?”
When I’d been staring out the window at the Las Vegas Boulevard traffic long enough for Bradley and No Hair to think I might be contemplating jumping, No Hair spoke up.
“You’re not going to jail, Davis. We’ll find her.”
Her who? I needed both of them. I had to have Bianca to be cleared on the first charge, and I had to have Natalie or I’d go to jail for Teeth’s murder.
Before room service knocked on the door with food, Bradley’s cell phone rang in the bedroom with news.
A minute later, No Hair asked, “Is he speaking Spanish?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Go figure.”
“We’d better get moving.” Bradley appeared in the doorway, phone in hand. “She’s at Wild Bill’s.”
No Hair rose from his seat. The seat looked so relieved. “She’s there to get herself another payday.”
Just then Bradley’s phone rang again. He looked at the caller ID, then at me. “It’s Harrison County Department of Corrections.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Another line on my resume: fugitive from the law.
Meredith slept through a check-in, and that was strike three. Her first strike was stepping over the threshold to reach the newspaper at the elevator.
(“I swear it was not even two seconds.”)
She missed yet another hello-prison call when she was in the shower.
(“No one ever said, ‘Don’t take a shower.’”)
Then the nap.
(“I heard it, but I thought it was one of Riley’s toys.”)
They hauled her in only to find out she wasn’t me.
(“Jail people don’t listen. I told them I wasn’t you a million times.”)
Bradley was also in a bit of trouble, but he lied to give us more time. “Look,” he said. “My place has windows. She climbed out one while I was asleep.”
Someone on the other end yelled at him.
“Have you seen her?” Bradley demanded. “She could get out of the peephole of my front door if she wanted to.”
The person on the other end yelled at him a little more. He winked at me.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. Give me forty-eight hours.”
I was listening and pulling on clothes at the same time. I eyed the wig.
Not a chance.
The limo ride to Wild Bill’s wasn’t nearly as much fun with No Hair along.
“Did it take this long to get there yesterday?” I asked Bradley.
For the most part, we rode in silence, each of us examining our own personal worst-case-scenarios. Bradley, I’m sure, was in fear of being stripped of his license to practice law, I knew I was in more trouble in Harrison County, Mississippi than ever, and No Hair loudly lamented our leaving before room service arrived, thus putting him in grave danger of missing two meals in a row for the first time in his life and subsequently starving to death in a limo.
We were all concerned about how it would go down when we were face-to-face with Natalie Middleton. There were three of us, one of her, and No Hair was packing.
Still.
When we weren’t riding quietly with our individual demons, we were on cell phones: I talked to Daddy and an enraged Meredith, Bradley to his boss and then one of the other attorneys he worked with, and No Hair caught Mr. Sanders up, who sent me greetings, apologies for my troubles, and assurances that my job was safe (big whoop at the moment), and then No Hair called Mrs. No Hair, which was borderline nauseating. He actually blew smacky kisses to the woman over the phone. Then he whispered sweet nothings, and I do mean nothings: “No, I love you more. No, you don’t, I love you more. I don’t want to hang up first. You hang up first. No, you.” I rolled my eyes so far back in my head, I almost fell out of the limo. Bradley found it, as was his peaceful and accepting nature, quietly entertaining.
Soon enough, we were there. The driver stopped a block away this time.
“I’m not hiking through the woods,” No Hair said.
“There are no woods in Nevada, No Hair.”
“You really better watch yourself.” His finger was in my face.
“Hey, kids,” Bradley said, “be nice. Let’s stay focused here.”
The three of us looked at each other as we approached the entrance.
No Hair zeroed in on Bradley. “You’re the only one she doesn’t know,” he said. “You go to the game. That’ll get her, because she doesn’t want anyone to accidentally win it before she does.”
“No!” I grabbed Bradley’s arm.
“What’s she going to do?” No Hair asked. “Shoot him in the middle of the casino?”
“He’s right,” Bradley said. “She isn’t going to do anything.”
I was a nervous wreck.
“We’ll hold back,” No Hair said to me, “so she won’t see us.”
“You think?”
He actually growled at me.
During this tête-à-tête, we’d crossed most of the casino floor.
“No worries, guys,” I said. “She’s not going to see us.” I took another step. “We’re too late.”
As we approached the bank of machines, Bradley and No Hair could see there wasn’t anyone on the game, every seat empty.
“Maybe she’s not down from her hotel room yet,” No Hair scanned the area, “we’d better pull back so we don’t run her off.”
“She’s gone,” I said.
They both looked at me.
“Look at the total.” I pointed to the LCD display above the nine machines.
The progressive jackpot was $500,403. Make that $500,408.
“It resets at half a million. She already won it.”
* * *
“No way.”
“Davis,” Bradley said, “come on.”
“I’m not sitting in the same room with him, Bradley. Period.”
“You married him twice. You can’t sit in the same room with him once?”
We were in a large conference room at the Grand Palace. Most of the chairs were occupied, and most of the occupants were on their phones.
No Hair was devouring several pounds of raw cow, two heads of lettuce drowning in fragrant lumpy white stuff with a pound of yellow cheese grated on top, and a baked potato the size of my foot, another pound of cheese on it. He was washing it down with a gallon of milk.
“Milk?” I asked.
No Hair swallowed. “Calcium, Davis, vitamin D. You should try it.”
“When’s the last time you had that cholesterol checked, No Hair?”
“Excuse me, guys.” Bradley scooted my chair down the table with me in it, then put his, with him in it, between me and No Hair.
The General Manager of Las Vegas Grand Palace was there, accompanied by two note-taking staffers. Representatives from the Four Seasons, and the Casino Manager from Mandalay Bay were there. Four of Las Vegas’ boys in blue were there, huddled in a corner, waiting to take me into custody for extradition to Mississippi. Three representatives from the Nevada Gaming Control Board had arrived. Bianca Sanders and Eddie Crawford were on their way from the Casimiro’s Mother Ship, the Glitz Resort and Casino, half a mile away.
“The second he walks in and sees me, he’ll make a run for it anyway,” I said. “So,” I waved a whatever. “It doesn’t matter.”
A nosy policeman spoke up. “Don’t worry, ma’am. We won’t let him get away.”
When her limo finally pulled in and the entourage escorted up, the sun had set, and all the details had been worked out, which was fine, because Bianca hadn’t been invited to work out details anyway. She was there to have discharging a firearm in public, fleeing the scene, withholding information, and hindering an investigation explained to her. According to Mississippi, charges against me wouldn’t be dropped until charges against her were filed. Eddie Crawford was just a wart on her ass—we had to look at him until she decided to cut him off.
State Gaming Boards shut down Double Whammy Deuces Wild progressives across the map starting in the northeast: Atlantic City, Detroit, and Philly, then Tunica, Biloxi, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge. There were two banks in California; they’d been unplugged, along with the Wild Bill’s machines, just for good measure. Bellagio’s were roped off, just like Wynn’s.
The only game in town, coast-to-coast, was Mandalay Bay’s.
Four plainclothesmen were in place.
One of the Four Seasons’ representatives closed his phone and addressed the assembly. “There’s still no sign of her. The last time her hotel door opened was nine o’clock this morning when she rode in one of our limos to Wild Bill’s in Primm.”
We all knew the rest of the story. She’d instructed the driver to wait for her, that she’d be no more than an hour, but she never returned to the limo.
Wild Bill’s reviewed every inch of surveillance footage. One of the last images of Natalie Middleton was of her stepping into the main cage office to be paid her jackpot of more than $1.2 million dollars. She requested the payment in $50,000 cash and the balance in electronic transfer, which cost her a $5,000 cash tip, but would cost Wild Bill’s a fortune when the Gaming Board finished with them over the no-no. She’d presented—get this—Marci Dunlow’s identification, but with her likeness, not mine, on the Arizona driver’s license. (Note to self: find out if there really is a Marci Dunlow somewhere.)
There was no footage of her leaving the main cage office, but the cashier, two witnesses, and the casino manager all told the same story: Natalie/Marci asked for directions and was shown out a side door to the adjacent restrooms, where a camera clearly caught her pushing into the ladies’ room, and from there, she disappeared. She never exited the restroom.
They continued pouring over the footage, but it looked as if Natalie Middleton had simply evaporated.
Everyone turned to the three of us.
Well? Twenty faces asked.
Before we could issue any possible explanations or suggest any options, Bianca Casimiro Sanders burst in. While I was in the process of picking myself up off the floor, she was in the process of scanning the room. She found me.
“You only wish you looked like me.”
No, I most certainly did not.
Then she said, “Your ex-husband is an idiot.”
Now that, I couldn’t argue with.
TWENTY-SIX
Bianca Sanders was traveling to Las Vegas for her father’s 70th birthday. The male passenger on the flight manifest (I’d hacked) was not Eddie Crawford, it was her and Richard Sanders’ thirteen-year-old son, Thomas. The Casimiro family was gathering from all over to celebrate.
Or so she said.
She hadn’t come to Vegas for a family reunion, she’d come to Vegas for a makeover party.
The Bianca Sanders who burst through the double doors had Steven Tyler’s mouth on her. I swear, it was as if someone had taken a bicycle-tire pump to the woman’s smackers. Her engorged lips were snarled so far away from everything else on her face, we could see all of her gums. Her lips entered the room a full minute before she did, and as she began her tirade, spitting venom with every word, it soon became obvious that in addition to the lips (as if that weren’t enough) her facial features were completely frozen. She kept the same icy mask on her face for every word, be they “fluffy baby bunnies” or “I will slit your throat in your sleep.”
Under the weather? The woman looked like she’d been tossed under a train.
“I’ve seen her this way before,” No Hair said from behind his hand. “She’ll go back to normal in a week or so.”
In the end, Bianca very reluctantly agreed to return to Biloxi within twenty-four hours to face trumped-up felony charges that would be dismissed as soon as they were read, but the formalities were necessary for my release. No one doubted how little she thought of the program.
The room fell completely silent in her wake: jaws were slack, heads shook, liquor flowed freely.
One of the Grand Palace Vegas attorneys turned to Bradley. “I wonder if that’s where your girl is,” he said. “At a doctor’s office, having her facial features rearranged.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, and we were out of good ideas, so police details woke plastic surgeons all around town with Natalie’s photograph, but the next morning as I was boarding the plane to return to prison in Mississippi, they hadn’t scared her up.
Natalie Middleton was gone.
* * *
There are worse ways to travel, but still, five hours in the Casimiro jet with two U.S. Marshals—one mine and one Bianca’s—was unsettling for me and the end of the world for her.
Salvatore Casimiro offered me the ride, not giving his science-experiment of a daughter a choice. I certainly had another choice—Con Air—but I’d have to wait in a Vegas jail cell for days, if not weeks, to catch one of those chartered flights, then zigzag across the country in an air bus with felons being assigned and reassigned. Mississippi was adamant: Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200. And, no, you aren’t in the custody of your attorney any longer, in fact, we have a few choice words for him, too.
Bianca washed down two Xanex with vodka, then retreated to the in-flight bedroom for the duration of the trip, her escort dozing at the door. I slept most of the way, too. When I woke, I panicked about going back to jail and I missed Bradley Cole.
It took more than thirty hours to process me at the prison. If Bianca Sanders had been the least bit cooperative it might have only taken three. As it turns out, Bianca was supposed to spend most of her first forty-eight post-op hours on her back, so the fresh toxins in her face wouldn’t run amok. So every hour, on the hour, proceedings came to a complete stop while Bianca stretched out and a masseuse shuttled over from the Bellissimo manipulated her face. She whined, to everyone within earshot, she had no intention of ever shooting a gun again, because the aftermath of red tape was unbearable, the locale deplorable.
By the time I was finally released, Bradley had returned to Biloxi. He was waiting for me in the lobby. He stood, he put an arm around me, then led me out of a correctional institution for the second time since we’d met.
“Did you drive by, Bradley?”
“He’s not there, Davis.”
“Can you take me there?”
“Davis, honey,” Bradley stopped me in the dark parking lot. “He’s not there. I asked the limo drivers if they’d seen him, and they haven’t. In more than two weeks.”
My heart hurt. I looked up and memorized every line of sweet Bradley’s face. “Could you take me there anyway?”
“Why, Davis?”
“I need some sleep!”
“Then let’s take you home,” he said.
“I can’t go to Pine Apple, Bradley. I can’t cross a state line until this mess if over.”
“Davis,” he said. “Your lease isn’t up for another two months.”
* * *
Richard Sanders returned to the Bellissimo with much fanfare. It was a new day. On his arm, his wife. Neither No Hair nor I said a word. A large part of our job was to look the other way. Bianca Casimiro Sanders s
ummoned me her first morning back in Biloxi. She picked a really bad time to call.
“Don’t answer it!”
“I have to, Bradley. It’s the Bat phone!”
I stepped off the elevator onto the Elvis floor, and I was escorted to Mrs. Sanders. She wore full makeup, perfect hair, a purple silk robe, and matching purple stiletto heels at eight in the morning. At her feet were two furry rats. They may have been dogs, because I don’t think rats yip like that, and they both had purple silk bows on their heads that matched Bianca’s getup. The urgent matter she so rudely interrupted my morning for went like this: “You’ll need to stand in for me at events. Ribbon-cuttings and such. That’ll be all.”
Mr. Sanders hired a new secretary who was just that—a secretary. She answered the phone, made appointments and coffee, and ushered people in and out. When five o’clock rolled around, she punched out. She didn’t know what blood type Richard Sanders was and she never would.
I got a raise and an office. No Hair was promoted; he was my new boss, and we were looking for a third, and possibly fourth, addition to the team. I tracked down Fantasy Erb from my behind-bars days—not that many days ago, actually—and No Hair agreed to interview her. She was savvy, strong, she knew how to follow rules and when to show mercy. I wanted her in quickly because there was something fishy going on at Club Meridian, Bellissimo’s ridiculously popular (and ridiculously loud) nightclub, that involved the almost-naked dancers and I wanted no part of almost-naked dancing. In public, anyway.
Meanwhile, No Hair and I spent long days digging, pouring, and searching for clues as to Natalie’s whereabouts, but there were none to be found. It had been six days since she’d disappeared from the restroom in Primm, Nevada, and with each tick of the clock, the possibility of finding her diminished.
“She’s in Jamaica,” No Hair suggested. “Or St. Bart’s. We’ll never catch her.”
Double Whammy (A Davis Way Crime Caper) Page 27