Lucky Catch

by Deborah Coonts

  Romeo took his food. “You guys are doing a great job of ruining my appetite.” But one bite, and I could see his attitude change. “Oh, man,” was all he managed through a full mouth.

  Beanie and I exchanged knowing smiles.

  “It’s so good to see you, girl.”

  “You, too.” I took a dainty bite, anticipating the firepower inside the tiny taco. “Even better than I remember—and I remember it all.”

  Beanie gave me a lopsided grin and a cock of his head as he waggled his eyebrows in silent appreciation of the memory of “it all.”

  “How’d you get wrangled into this little soiree?” I asked as I blinked back the tears of appreciation for the Jamaican spice. My game had gotten rusty—I used to be able to eat Beanie’s stuff until I couldn’t feel my lips, and I was sure I’d lost at least the first couple of layers of skin from the inside of my mouth.

  “Girl, all high and mighty you’ve become—lost your toughness.” Beanie handed me a paper napkin. While I was struggling, Romeo silently powered through, popping a taco at a time into his mouth and then groaning with happiness. Age, or lack thereof, sometimes created a chasm.

  Beanie looked at me as if he could read my thoughts. “The word went out there was some kind of show. You know me, I never miss a party—I was the first one here. Well, except for that guy over there.” He nodded toward Brett Baker, the sushi truck guy and Jean-Charles’s second in the cook-off.

  A school of painted fish in different shapes, sizes, and colors swam across the rear and the side of the food truck. The large, open mouth of a grouper encircled the order window. The words one fish, two fish were stenciled above the window in bright red, childlike letters—like the cover of a kid’s book. Dr. Seuss. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish . . . Two chef, one chef . . .

  Chills chased down my spine. “Cute.” I tried to be flip, act like nothing had creeped me out. From the looks of Beanie and Romeo, I pulled it off, although Romeo eyed me a bit more intently. I watched Brett Baker, using his wide, white smile and easy manner to lure the passersby, mostly women. “What’s his story?”

  Beanie leaned on his arms, resting his elbows on the shelf of the order window. “Don’t really know—he keeps to himself mostly. But I can tell you he showed up here out of the blue—none of us had even seen him around or nothing. He’s got serious shit though, top quality. And I heard people say he’s trained with the best in Japan, learned his sushi skills from masters.”

  “Wonder why he’s driving a food truck then, if he’s so good,” Romeo added, making me fight the urge to dive out of the line of fire.

  Beanie bristled. Pushing himself up off his elbows, he glared down at the detective. “You just ate my food, yet you still think we’re all glorified burger-flippers.”

  Romeo shot a look of distress my way.

  “Nothing like a faux pas to get a friendship off on the right foot, eh?” I teased, knowing Beanie wouldn’t take offense. “Kid, I love you, but I’m not falling on your sword.”

  Putting on his most hangdog look, Romeo returned his attention to the guy he’d just stuck a knife in. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I’m afraid. I don’t know what I was thinking.” The kid actually looked contrite..

  I’d lost that ability decades ago. “Not thinking at all, I should think,” I added just for fun.

  Beanie beamed—he had that wonderful Caribbean ability to laugh insults away. “No worries, mon.”

  “If you say ‘be happy’ I’ll slap you,” I added, stopping him before he could trot out that overused lyric—one of his favorites. “He showed up with good shit, you say? I sure would like to know more.”

  Beanie gave me a sage nod. “I’ll ask around.” Inclining his head, he directed my attention behind me. The line had been growing while we chatted.

  I stepped to the side, motioning the man behind me to the front. “Sorry.”

  Beanie gave me another full-wattage grin. “Been doing some interesting things with exotic fish lately that’s been going over pretty good. Great to see you, girl. Don’t stay away so long next time. Like I said, my ceviche tacos are killer.”

  * * *

  Romeo and I wandered through the crowd. The show, whatever it was, had drawn quite a crowd, one that was still arriving. In a space designed to hold far fewer, the swelling throng pressed tightly together, making movement difficult. A cool breeze wafted through carrying smoke and tantalizing smells from the gathered food trucks, making the crush bearable and my mouth water.

  We ambled a bit, absorbing the atmosphere. Romeo dogged my heels chivalrously, allowing me to cut a path as I turned back toward the food trucks.

  “Care to go for Round Two?” I asked him as we ambled, angling my head toward Brett Baker’s truck, which held the primo spot closest to the action. Personally, I thought Romeo was way too thin, but I’d already commented on that and I didn’t think I needed to hit it again.. “Want some sushi?”

  “Can’t stomach the stuff.” He tossed off the line like the true burger man I knew him to be. “So, what did you get from your friend? Whatever it was, I missed it, but I can see your wheels grinding.”

  “Nothing concrete, just a hunch.” I kept my eyes scanning over the crowd as I talked. “One of the frustrating things about a tourist town like Vegas is, the local restaurants often can’t get the quality products they’d like. All the top-end stuff is reserved by the big-name chefs and the hotels.”

  Romeo caught on quickly. “That must make it doubly hard for these truck guys.”

  “And Brett Baker breezes into town with ‘good shit,’ taking the street food world by storm.”

  “And?”

  “Wonder where he gets his good shit.”

  A second person poked her head out of Brett Baker’s food truck window. Chitza DeStefano.

  Romeo and I glanced at each other. “Interesting,” we both said.

  Chitza caught me looking at her. She held my gaze for a moment. She didn’t smile. Breaking eye contact, she ducked back inside the truck, out of sight.

  On my second pass over the crowd, my eyes hit on another familiar face. “Wonder what Chef Gregor is doing here.”

  Apparently unaware he was being watched, the chef pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his face. He stepped back into the cover of a shadow.

  Romeo followed my gaze. “Gregor looks pretty hot around the collar, especially on such a cool day.”

  As we watched, another man joined him, smaller, bald, twitchy. Chef Gregor bent down to hear what the man was saying—the chef didn’t look happy.

  I narrowed my eyes. The shorter guy looked familiar—something in the way he moved, his mannerisms. It took me a moment, but I finally placed him—Mr. Livermore, without the bad toupee.

  “You know that guy?”

  “He came snooping around the office. He wasn’t who he said he was.” Romeo started to speak, but I raised a hand, stopping him. “Let’s give him some rope just yet—I’ve got my people working on it.”

  Romeo didn’t argue—he was well aware that sometimes my network worked much more efficiently than the rusty cogs of the ponderous Metro bureaucracy.

  Both men stayed in the shadow.

  “Guess the crowd is big enough to draw the paramedics.” Romeo nodded toward an ambulance that had backed to the festivities, its rear doors folded back. One of the EMTs sat on the bumper. “Isn’t that . . . ?” Romeo trailed off as if he’d forgotten the paramedic’s name.

  This was a weak ploy to draw me out, so I cut him off at the pass. “Nick. His name is Nick, and yes, he’s cute. Yes, he asked me out. Yes, it’s none of your business.”

  Romeo seemed happy with that. “Are you going to tell me what this circus is about, or am I supposed to be surprised?”

  “I don’t know, and I’m not sure I care, although with all the interesting people gathered in the crowd, I am curious. But, right now, my goal is to find Dr. Phelps, he’s running this show.” Shielding my eyes, I scanned the cro
wd. On my third scan across the crowd, I spied another one of our chefs. “Look over there.” I pointed for Romeo’s benefit. Christian Wexler seemed to be angling toward Chef Gregor and Livermore, still arguing in the shadows. Time to see what they were up to. “Follow me.”

  Wexler paused in front of Gregor, stepping into the larger man’s face. He spat some words, punctuating them with pokes to the chest. Gregor looked incensed, his face an angry red. I moved faster, trying to get closer but losing sight of the three of them as the crowd moved and surged around me.

  By the time we reached the spot where the men had been standing, the little party had broken up. “Damn.” I scanned the crowd anew.

  “There!” Romeo’s hand appeared over my shoulder, pointing in front of me.

  I followed the line of sight and spied Dr. Phelps climbing up a thin metal ladder that shook with each rung he took. At the top, he stepped off to the side and onto the platform over the cinder-block wall. Grabbing a wireless mike, he tapped it with his finger. The thing was on, the volume up. He held it pressed close to his lips at a ninety-degree angle—he’d done this before. “Hello, I’d like to thank you all for coming to see our little demonstration. Frankly, I’m a bit amazed there are so many of you interested in the obscure construct of RFID technology.”

  The crowd, including me, waited in rapt attention. When the crane engine cranked to life, belching black smoke, I think we jumped collectively. Once the engine had settled into a smooth thrum, Dr. Phelps continued. “Refining and miniaturizing existing technology, my team at Cal has added some economically viable, industry-needed features that are quite impressive.”

  He raised his shirt, showing the world his washboard abs—a geek god. A black band encircled his chest. He raised his hand and shook a white tag dangling on a chain. “This chip contains our new technology. It will monitor my heart rate, my temperature, and my position via GPS. The power source is supplied through the radio beam of the reader, and all of this for less than a penny a tag, readable using readily available RFID readers.”

  Dr. Phelps gave a cue to the technician working the soundboard. He flipped a few switches, and the rhythmic sound of Dr. Phelps’s slightly elevated heartbeat reverberated through the speakers placed around the pit.

  “See and believe.” Dr. Phelps thumbed off the mike. Bending, he handed it to a young man who stepped to the platform—I thought I recognized him as one of the UC-Berkeley guys from last night.

  A flexible banner unscrolled behind him. The crowd collectively gasped when the white sheet sprang to life, revealing that it was in fact a video screen. Dr. Phelps’ heart rate, temperature, and latitude and longitude coordinates appeared in large numbers.

  Romeo fidgeted at my shoulder, glancing at his watch—thankfully, he resisted adding an exaggerated sigh. “What are we here for, exactly?”

  “Haven’t a clue.”

  A tall man standing in front of me turned and gave me a disdainful stare. “You are watching history being made. This will revolutionize the food industry and save this country from contaminated food products.”

  I smiled in return. “Thereby saving Fast Food Nation and its contribution to the exalted tradition of Escoffier and its fellow artistes gastronomiques.”

  To my delight, his face softened into a grin. “Our lasting legacy.”

  The sound of the crane’s engine deepened and grew louder, forestalling more banter and grabbing our attention. I could see a figure in the glass cage at the base of the crane’s arm working the levers, but I couldn’t make out his features or any identifying trait—I assumed he was another of Dr. Phelps’s colleagues.

  The arm, from which the chain and wrecking ball dangled, extended high above us, then eased the iron ball over to Dr. Phelps, who stepped on the ball and grabbed the chain. After testing his footing for a moment, he gave the thumbs-up sign to the operator. Lifted from the platform, he soared over the crowd. I shaded my eyes against the ever-lowering angle of the sun, trying to follow his path arcing above our heads.

  The staccato rhythm of his heartbeat sounded through the speakers, which I found vaguely disconcerting—the audible manifestation of Dr. Phelps’s increasing fear, which did little to allay mine. In an instinctive, sympathetic response, my heart rate accelerated.

  “Holy shit.” Romeo sounded awestruck.

  Glancing at the large screen, I realized the readout of Dr. Phelps’s vital signs was updating, the page scrolling as new information accumulated.

  “How’s he doing that?” Romeo asked as we both watched the crane swinging him in what looked to be a defined pattern.

  “It seems new info is added at the apex of each arc. Other than that, you got me.”

  The guy in front of us was no help, either.

  After watching a few more passes, which I suspected was the entire show, I decided to heed the lure of all the whiffs of delicious foods wafting through the crowd while I waited for Dr. Phelps to finish. As I turned to go, I caught the ball as it reached yet another apex. The young scientist hung on with one hand, waving to the crowd with the other.

  At the high point, the ball suddenly dropped, a jerky hitch to the fluidity.

  Slack in the chain. The crowd gasped. I probably did as well, which was a challenge, considering I was holding my breath.

  Startled, Dr. Phelps clutched the chain with both hands. His heart rate zoomed. A pulsing rhythm booming through the speakers, it pounded through my chest until my heart syncopated.

  The ball hit the bottom of the new length chain with a jolt. Dr. Phelps had bent his knees to absorb the impact, but it wasn’t enough. One foot lost its grip. He swung wildly as he tried to regain his footing. After a few failed attempts, he worked his foot back under him, but he stayed crouched.

  The crane moved, pulling the ball, increasing the arc. As the ball started down, slowly at first, then building speed . . . it headed straight for the cinder-block wall in the center of the pit. Mesmerized, I watched in growing horror.

  Finally, with pulsing certainty of the scene unfolding, adrenaline freed me, propelling me forward. Pushing people aside, I moved, driven by the need to stop the disaster unfolding in slow motion in front of me. I sensed Romeo behind me, but I didn’t look.

  As I ran, I shouted, “Jump!” to Dr. Phelps as he accelerated overhead in a downward arc. I knew he probably couldn’t hear me. And even if he could, he was most likely too scared to let go, but I still had to try. At the edge of the pit, I launched myself in the air. Hitting the sand, my feet sank a bit, stopping my momentum. Putting my hands out, I rolled, letting the momentum carry me until I hit my feet again and ran.

  The ball was coming down hard and fast now. I could see the terror on the young doctor’s face as he curled up, putting his back to the wall, cringing for impact.

  I had no idea what I was going to do. It didn’t matter.

  I was too slow.

  The ball, with its precious human cargo, hit the wall.

  The wall crumbled. Dr. Phelps disappeared in a cloud of dust.

  The world went quiet.

  Without thinking, I hit the hole in the wall. Grabbing at pieces of blocks, digging, scraping, I followed the chain into the pile of rumble. Romeo pushed in next to me. Together, we fought like panicked rescuers in a collapsed mine.

  “His heartbeat has stopped,” Romeo gasped through labored breathing.

  “No. It can’t have. Just the sound has stopped.”

  Romeo didn’t argue. I grabbed a huge chunk of stone, struggling with the weight. Romeo grabbed the other side. We turned to toss it behind us. Other hands grabbed it. Like a bucket brigade, others joined, helping to move the stones and clear a path for the paramedics, I hoped.

  The next time I reached, my hand hit cloth, then flesh. “I got him.”

  Romeo and I increased our pace—working as fast as we could, as quickly as we dared. First, we uncovered his legs; one was badly broken. Bone protruded from his thigh. Blood had pooled underneath his leg, staining the light
sand a dark, ugly reddish brown. The wound only oozed now . . . not a good sign. Romeo shucked off his shirt, ripping off a strip. Feverishly, I tied it tight above the wound, then kept working. It seemed like an eternity, but we finally cleared his chest, then his head.

  Two fingers against his neck, I felt for a pulse. Nothing. With a hand, I stilled Romeo and concentrated. Still nothing.

  Someone pressed in behind us. A hand squeezed my shoulder and a gentle, calm voice said, “Lucky, we’ll take it from here.”

  Turning, I met the blue eyes of Nick the paramedic. He’d ridden to my rescue several times before.

  Pressing to the side, I eased out past him—a very tight squeeze. It was funny how desperate need facilitated the normally impossible. On the other side, Romeo also flattened himself, allowing Nick’s colleague to join him. The path now clear, we backed out on our hands and knees, first Romeo, then me.

  The crowd huddled around, silent, round-eyed. Several of the men were dusty and bloodied. Glancing down, I realized I was the same. Several fingernails ripped and torn, the skin on my hands and arms scored with ugly bright red gashes as if I’d been mauled by an otherworldly beast—the clothes I stood in soiled and torn beyond repair. Thought stalled as I floundered in the aftermath of the adrenaline rush. Without a word, Romeo reached out, pulling me into a hug. Putting my head on his shoulder, I tried to breathe.

  An eerie silence enveloped us.

  Absorbing his strength, I finally pulled away. Holding vigil, we all waited.

  Raking my hand through my hair, I scanned the crowd. Christian Wexler stood above me on the other side of the pit, staring at me. We locked eyes. He tilted his chin in challenge, then stepped back, and the crowd swallowed him.

  Romeo filtered through the crowd, wandering, searching. Casually, I kept track of him as he talked with random folks, questioning the media people in the crowd. Occasionally, he pulled out his pad to jot a note. Other Metro officers arrived. Romeo directed them, and I watched as they fanned out through the crowd. I let Romeo do his thing—if I tried to help, I’d only be in the way—he’d told me that several times before.