The White Gold Score (A Daniel Faust Novella)

by Craig Schaefer

  Caitlin moved like a serpentine blur, striking with ruthless efficiency and leaving writhing and groaning bodies in her wake. She could have killed them as easily as hurting them, but I guessed she had the same idea I did. Fewer headaches this way.

  Fewer headaches for us anyway, the sting in my eyelid and the throbbing pain behind it notwithstanding. As the last thug dropped, hitting the blood-spattered beech planks like a sack of potatoes, I leaned against Caitlin to catch my breath. One of the men, one who could still walk, tried to tug his buddy to his feet. Another staggered over to one of the Lincolns, steadying himself against it with one hand and gripping his belly with the other as he threw up on the hood.

  “You should leave now,” Caitlin told them.

  “Yeah.” I took a deep breath, my lungs burning like I’d just run a marathon. “What she said.”

  We stood silently as the battered men bundled themselves into their cars. No parting shots from their boss, no threats of vengeance. Just gritted teeth and muffled whimpers of pain as they made their getaway. The Lincolns were well on their way down the drive, slipping almost out of sight, as I stretched out my fingers. The cards, scattered across the porch and spotted with droplets of blood, leaped through the air and riffled into my palm. I gave them a thankful pat before shoving them back into my pocket.

  The front door opened just a crack. A soft brown eye, like a perfect chip of amber, looked out at us.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Curtis sent us.”

  The door opened a little wider. Even dressed in a casual sweatshirt and jogging pants, Tanesha looked like a queen. Regal, high cheekbones, her hair braided in immaculate beehive cornrows, and eyes you could fall right into. No missing the worry in those eyes, though.

  “From the lawyer’s office?” she asked.

  “Law is a rough business.” I nodded over my shoulder. “I don’t think those guys are gonna be back anytime soon.”

  She opened the door all the way and stepped aside.

  “I wish I believed that. Come in.”

  Caitlin and I stepped into her foyer. She had the air conditioning running full blast, museum cold, and we stepped onto a span of polished dun tile as she shut the door behind us. She’d decorated the open, breezy lodge in southwestern style, all earth tones and rugs in Native weaves.

  “Who were those men?” Caitlin asked her.

  “You answer my questions first,” Tanesha said. “Who do you really work for? What are you after?”

  I shrugged. Honesty wasn’t always the best policy—in my experience, it was highly overrated—but the probate-lawyer line was dead in the water.

  “CMC Entertainment,” I said. “They own about half the casinos on the Vegas Strip. Including the one Monty Spears died at.”

  “On the phone, Curtis said they lied. That Monty didn’t have a heart attack.”

  “That’s right. He was murdered.”

  She shook her head, torn between not believing me and believing me but not wanting to. “Then why aren’t the police involved?”

  “Because CMC doesn’t want them involved,” Then I chased that little nugget of truth with a bald-faced lie: “At least, not until we’ve conducted an independent investigation. Given the high profiles of the people involved, and the risk of a media circus, my employer thinks this is a better way of getting at the facts.”

  “Monty,” she said, looking lost. She drifted through the house and we followed, through the living room to a row of framed photographs on her rough stone mantelpiece. Family photos, vacations someplace tropical, a gap-toothed little girl who might have been a cousin or a niece. And one of Monty and Tanesha in a recording studio, in front of a mixing console. Both of them with thousand-watt smiles, Monty embracing her from behind. In her hands, a gold record in plastic wrap.

  “That was the day,” she said. “That’s the day I knew I’d made it. My first single was blowing up all over the radio, album sales spiked, and I officially went from being Tanesha Brown to just…Tanesha. That was Monty’s idea, the one-name thing.”

  “He was your producer, back then,” I said. “But not lately.”

  She stared at the photo with something wistful in her eyes. A little distant, a little sad.

  “Once I made it big, he couldn’t take me where I needed to go. He didn’t have the juice, didn’t have the industry contacts. Not back then. So we parted ways. He got the juice later on, but…”

  “But he was keeping bad company. Curtis told me about Dino Costa, and the coke.”

  Tanesha turned and looked our way. She took a deep breath and let it out as a weary sigh.

  “Monty was a good man who made a whole lot of bad decisions. Working with Dino? Number one on the list. Everybody could see Monty was on the road to ruin. Everybody but him. I told him…”

  She trailed off. Her eyes flicked downward. Caitlin squinted, just a bit, reading her like a book.

  “You feel guilty,” she said. “Why?”

  Tanesha met her gaze.

  “Because I’m pretty sure I know who killed Monty,” she replied in a soft voice. “I did.”

  I blinked. “Murder isn’t a subjective kinda thing. Either you did or you didn’t.”

  “I don’t mean I did it with my own hands. But I made it happen. Look, you have to understand, Monty…he wasn’t too bright, but he had a big, big heart. And he carried a mile-high torch for me.”

  “You were in a relationship?”

  She shook her head. “Business. Friends. Nothing more than that. Didn’t stop him from following me around like a puppy dog, hoping for something he was never gonna get, but every time I said ‘no’ he heard ‘maybe someday.’ When we parted ways, he was determined to win me back. Thinking maybe if we worked together again, he’d have another shot with me. Blue Rhapsody? All those artists he poached, all those bridges he burned to make a name for himself in the industry? He did that for me.”

  “Nothing drives ambition like desire,” Caitlin mused. “And the more foolish the desire, the more fervent the drive.”

  “Got that right,” Tanesha said. “So my contract with EMI is up and I’m a free agent. Not one day goes by before he’s burning up my phone, trying to get me to sign with Blue Rhapsody.”

  “Curtis said he sounded worried to you,” I said.

  “Dino’s going all in with this streaming-music scheme of his. Sinking all the label’s cash into it. If it flops, Blue Rhapsody is finished. They need big names to give people a reason to subscribe.”

  “Names like yours,” Caitlin said.

  Tanesha turned. She took the studio photograph down from the mantel, running manicured fingernails along Monty’s smiling face.

  “I told him I knew about Dino, about the smuggling and the blow. I wanted nothing to do with it. I told him, grow a backbone, and force that viper out. He could have done it. Monty had controlling interest in Blue Rhapsody. He could have bought Dino out and kicked him to the curb, if he’d just stand up for himself for once in his life.”

  She looked up at us, silent for a moment.

  “I finally told him I was done. Done with watching him let Dino drag him down. I told him, either be a man and fight back, or never call me again. Not long after that, Monty left a voicemail for me. He said he was going to do it. He was going to put Dino in his place and take his label back.”

  She bit her bottom lip. A tear pooled in one amber eye.

  “Two days later,” she said, “Monty was dead.”

  8.

  “Dino Costa murdered Monty,” Tanesha said, her voice quavering, “but I’m the one who made it happen. I’m the one who walked him to the firing line.”

  Caitlin put a gentle hand on Tanesha’s arm. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone makes their own choices. Monty made his.”

  “You’re sure it was Dino?” I asked.

  She nodded, taking a deep breath to steel herself. “Him or one of his thugs. You just met a few of them, out on my porch.”

  “They seemed eager
to have a word with you.”

  “Dino’s not giving up on signing me to Blue Rhapsody. Except now, with Monty gone, he’s not asking nice anymore.” She sighed. “I should have brought my security team out here. I just wanted to be alone for a couple of days. Away from all the crazy. Been listening to the studio masters for my next album—best stuff I’ve ever done, no lie. When it was done, if he hadn’t ended up dead, Monty was going to be the first person to hear it.”

  “Promise me you won’t hurt her” were the last words Monty Spears ever spoke. I remembered feeling the desperation as they spilled from his—my—lips, hallucinating his dying moments. The fear. Not for himself, but for someone else. Someone whose life he held more precious than his own.

  For Tanesha. If I needed confirmation that Dino Costa was behind Monty’s murder, I’d just been handed it in spades.

  She set the photo back on the mantel. A splash of light caught my eye. The white gold Rolex, snug on Monty’s wrist as he hugged her from behind.

  “Weird question,” I said, “but did he always wear that watch?”

  “Ever since that day, yeah. That was the day I bought it for him, to celebrate our success. There’s an inscription on the back: Forever Gold.” She tilted her head at me. “Why? What’s important about the watch?”

  Bingo. A gift from the woman Monty was deeply in unrequited love with. Stealing a token like that off a dead man’s body was exactly how you ended up with angry ghosts in your penthouse suite.

  “Nothing. Just a…pet theory.” I changed the subject. “So what are you going to do now? About Dino, I mean.”

  She frowned, squaring her shoulders as she looked to the front door.

  “Right now? Call up my bodyguards from my place in LA, get them out here, and tell ’em to hand out a world-class beatdown if his boys come poking their noses around here again. I don’t get scared, I get mad. Dino’s not making one dime off of my hard work. What are you gonna do?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’ll be writing up everything we’ve learned and conveying it to my superiors at the company—”

  “And then they’ll call the police?”

  “Right. Then they’ll call the police.”

  She folded her arms. “Good. Dino needs to pay for what he did.”

  She walked us to the door and I tried not to feel guilty. The cops weren’t coming. Monty’s death was never going to be anything, on the record, but a heart attack. And the only payment was going to be another envelope of cash from Greenbriar, once I got that Rolex back and laid Monty’s ghost to rest. I didn’t like giving people false hope. There was no money in it.

  “Just one thing,” she said, opening the door for us. “I watched the fight from the window. How did you do that…that thing with the cards?”

  “Oh, that?” I smiled and shrugged it off. “It’s a trick deck. Spring-loaded. I do some sleight of hand in my free time, keeps my hands limber.”

  She nodded, buying it. Of course she did. In a world of CGI and special effects, where you saw the impossible every time you turned on the TV, nothing covered up for real magic like saying, “It was just a trick.” It was easy to believe. Safe.

  “Sounds like the plot of a TV show,” she said. “Like you’re some kind of…magic detective.”

  I winced. I smiled, I shook her hand, but I winced.

  “You know,” I muttered to Caitlin as we walked back to the car, the door swinging shut behind us, “back when I was a full-time gangster, Nicky Agnelli called me his ‘hired wand.’”

  She wrinkled her nose at the mention of Nicky’s name. “So?”

  “So it’s cooler.”

  Caitlin unlocked the Camaro, and I slipped into the passenger seat. She fired up the engine and looked at the dashboard clock with a slight smile.

  “We should get back to the city just in time for dinner.” She paused, glancing sidelong at me as she stepped on the gas. “My fearless magic detective.”

  * * *

  “Oh,” I said as I peered around the glossy room, my voice carrying over the thumping bass beat of a live DJ set, “STK. Steak. I get it now.”

  The steakhouse sat inside the W Hotel in West Beverly Hills, rich wooden tables offering a splash of earth-tone color in a sea of slate and ivory. Dozens of steer horns bristled along one creamy wall like a battalion of curving spear tips, looming above rounded banquette tables where a bevy of B-listers and their entourages held court. I recognized a couple of TV actors—by face if not by name—perfectly positioned to see and be seen.

  Caitlin had reserved a banquette just for us, sitting side by side in the big, curving booth. I caught an uncomfortable number of glances shooting our way, people trying to figure out if we were famous or not. Or maybe just eyeing my date, who’d stopped at our hotel room to slip into a little black Chanel dress.

  “We’re ready to order,” Caitlin told the waitress, barely looking at the menu. “For entrees, he will have the Wagyu steak, and I’ll go with the spiced duck breast.”

  The waitress gave me a questioning look. I handed over my unopened menu.

  Once she left, I turned to Caitlin. “Wagyu? Really?”

  “Certified A-five grade. Wagyu is a fine breed. Not like what they call Kobe in the States.” She sniffed. “Legally you can call hamburger ‘Kobe beef.’ It’s a sin. And not the fun kind.”

  “I just mean, it’s a little pricey.”

  She arched one slender eyebrow. “And? You aren’t paying for it.”

  We’d had our first meal together in a steakhouse, too, not long ago. Gordon Ramsay’s place, back in Vegas. Talking over a perfect meal, figuring each other out. We were still figuring each other out.

  “I assumed we’d be splitting the bill,” I said.

  “I asked you to dine, so it’s only appropriate that I pay for it. Besides,” she said, flashing a sly smile, “I fully intend to make you work it off later tonight.”

  I lifted my drink—a dirty Grey Goose vodka martini garnished with a blue-cheese-stuffed olive—in wry salute. “Sounds like half come-on, half threat.”

  “Good. Then you’re listening properly. So, what is our next move? I’m assuming involving the authorities is off the list.”

  “It was never on the list in the first place. I figure that watch is the key to laying Monty to rest. All I have to do is get it back and slip it on his corpse’s wrist before they bury him.”

  “What if he’s interred before you recover the watch?”

  I shrugged. “Then I’m buying a shovel, and Greenbriar’s gonna have to pay me a lot more money. Bottom line, one way or another, reuniting the stiff with his precious Rolex should calm him down enough to shuffle off to his designated afterlife.”

  “Excellent.” She wrinkled her nose. “I dislike the concept of remnant souls lingering past their time. It’s extremely…untidy.”

  The waitress brought over a bread plate, and I slathered butter onto a warm, crusty slab, glad for something to do in the sudden silence. My mind was fifty feet under the streets of Las Vegas, remembering another restless wraith.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Caitlin said.

  “Sometimes,” I said, catching electric light on my butter knife, “when we’re just…us. Talking, eating, just being us. It’s easy to forget that we aren’t, you know. The same.”

  “That I’m not human, you mean.”

  I glanced up, trying to read her expression. “I don’t mean any offense by that.”

  “None taken. Besides, I should hope it’s easy. I’d be a terrible covert operative if I walked around wearing horns and bat wings, hmm?” Her fingertips trailed over the curve of my hand, teasing against the flat of the knife. “Seduction is what I was built for, Daniel. You know that neither begins nor ends at the bedroom door. Now what’s troubling you?”

  “Stacy Pankow.”

  “I thought we resolved that affair quite cleanly. A task well done.”

  “You knew,” I said, “by looking at her ghost, that she was hellbound.�
��

  Caitlin smiled and let out the faintest chuckle.

  “That’s scarcely a trick. To my eyes, human souls are like little orbs of light. Some obscenely bright and garish, a disgusting shade of gold, and some beautifully smoky black. Most are somewhere in between, like clouds on a stormy day, with the sunlight struggling to shine through the dark. Or a glass of aged bourbon, complex and layered.” She reached up, curling her hand around the back of my neck. Her fingernails stroked my skin, teasing, sending an electric shiver down my spine. “Yours is right…here.”

  “I know a guy on the east side,” I told her. “Used to be a tent-revival preacher until he spontaneously developed a gift for talking to the dead. Now he’s pretty much a full-time heroin junkie. Dope’s the only thing that makes the voices go quiet, he says. See, these dead people who call out to him, everywhere he goes—every single one of them is in hell.”

  Her hand slid away from my neck, and she cradled her glass of pinot noir. “I’m hearing an unspoken question.”

  “I’ve crossed paths with more than a few demons, but not one, before you, who I was actually on speaking terms with. So…I want to ask you something. Something that’s been eating at me for a while now.”

  She lifted the glass to her lips. “Are you certain? Your hesitancy suggests you know, on some level, that you won’t like the answer.”

  She was right, but I asked the question anyway.

  “Is there a heaven?”

  She paused mid-sip. A flash of irritation flickered over her face, a passing thundercloud. Then she replaced it with an indulgent smile.

  “Daniel.” She set down her glass and put her hand over mine. “What difference does it make? If it exists, you’ll never see it. And would seeing it be a kindness, knowing you’ll never be allowed to set one foot upon its hallowed grounds? No. Of all the torments of the damned, nothing could possibly be crueler.”

  “I’m not asking for myself.” I didn’t think I was, anyway. My own damnation was something I’d more or less taken as a given a long time ago. A man didn’t do the things I’d done with any hope of seeing the pearly gates, not if he was honest with himself.