Nothing.
I cleared my throat again. “Uh, Trace?” I put a hand on his arm.
He glanced down at my hand, then back up at my face, seemingly snapping back to reality. “Jesus, Cam, they have Jamie Lee.”
Allie sucked in a breath at the other end of the table.
I immediately shot her a look. I swear, if she tried to print any of this…
“The bad guys?” Mrs. Rosenblatt interjected.
I nodded.
“This is all my fault,” Trace said. “God, if anything happens to her…”
“It won’t,” I said. With measurably more conviction than I felt. “We’re going to get that flash drive.” I grabbed Allie’s post it and shoved it into Trace’s hand. “Let’s go talk to Carla.”
* * *
By the time we all piled back into the clown car and traveled the four blocks to a street behind the Wynn casino that house the address on the Post-it, Trace had almost regain a natural skin color.
Almost. I still worried that Carla might lose a limb or two when he found her.
The house was a small stucco-coated affair that had seen one too many Vegas summers to be a solid color. One side was a pale mauve, the other a sun-faded pink. An awning provided shade for the front porch, the green stripes threadbare and, I suspected, crusty to the touch, fried from the relentless sun.
I knocked once on the screen door. No answer. I hit it again, then waited. Nada.
“Maybe he’s not home?”
“Maybe,” Trace said. Then before I could stop him, he had the screen open, and his leg cocked back. Then he kicked in the door, the faded wood splintered around the lock, the door flying in.
I felt my jaw drop open. “You just kicked the door down! I thought they only did that in movies.”
He sent me a wry smile.
“Wow.” Allie’s eyes were wide with a mix of emotions – surprised, awe, lust. Mostly lust. “That was awesome. Where did you learn to do that?”
“I do my own stunts,” Trace said, stepping through the doorway.
I followed a step behind and found myself standing in a small living room, a sad avocado green sofa sagging in front of a TV with a fifteen-inch screen and a thirty-five-inch casing. It was showing a muted Price Is Right across the screen. The top half of Drew Carey’s head was a green color that said this TV has seen better days. The place was trashed, clothes, shoes, newspapers and books covering every surface.
Beyond the living room was a kitchen, the white tiles cracked, the brown refrigerator covered in magnets and photos of people in various happy poses. A pile of dishes sat in the sink, a trio of aloe vera succulents sitting in the back window, wilting in the sunshine. Cupboards were opened, food all over the counter. To the right of the kitchen was a hallway, leading, I assumed, to the bedrooms.
“Carla?” I called out.
Nothing.
“Hello?”
“I don’t think she’s here,” Allie surmised, genius that she was.
Trace walked to the kitchen, rummaging through the mess on the counters. “Someone’s been here,” he mused.
He was right. No one lived in this kind of mess. The place had been searched. One guess what the guys were looking for.
“What was that?” Mrs. Rosenblatt froze, looking off into space.
“What?” I didn’t hear anything.
“That!”
At first I thought maybe she was having a psychic episode. Then, as I strained against the silence, I heard it too. A sound, faint, muffled. Coming form the hallway.
I dashed down the short hall to a single bedroom in the back of the bungalow.
Here the mess was even worse. A dresser was turned over, shoes covering the floor, clothes strewn across a double bed by the window. Cosmetics, wigs, and a couple empty pizza boxes littered the floor. A chair was upended in the corner, a mirror broken near the doorway.
I paused, stepping over the broken glass. “Hello?” I called.
The muffle piped up again in response, louder now. I followed the sound past the bed, to a closet on the wall beside it. I slid open the doors, shoving a pile of clothes out of the way.
Sitting on the floor, hands duct taped behind her, legs bound, a length of pantyhose tied around her mouth, sat Carla.
She mumbled and wiggled, looking like an oversized cocooned butterfly, her mini-skirt riding high on her thigh.
“Mmm, hmmmm, pmmm.”
“What?” I asked, leaning closer.
“Mmm! Hmmm! Pmmm!”
I leaned in and removed the pantyhose.
“Untie me, you twit!” she shouted.
I was tempted to put the pantyhose back in.
But, considering she was our one lead to finding the drive and freeing Jamie Lee, I fought the instinct, instead tugging at the tape binding Carla’s ankles.
“She’s in here,” I called over my shoulder to the rest of the gang.
“My hands. For the love of God, cut the tape. I’ve got a cramp in my legs so bad I may never dance again.”
I complied, though I wasn’t sure that loss would be altogether such a tragedy for the entertainment world.
Behind me, I could feel Trace burst into the room. Okay, I felt someone come in, but it wasn’t until he opened his mouth that I knew unmistakably that it was Trace.
“You sonofa-“ He lunged for Clara.
Clara made an “Eeep” sound, squealing as she ducked to the right behind a shoe rack. Trace tripped on a pair of heels, landing half on Carla and half on me.
“Uhn.” I felt the air rush out of me.
“I’m gonna kill you,” Trace said, undaunted. He wiggled off me (and I swear my body did not respond to the contact in any way shape or form. Not even a little. Nope. Not me.) and lunged again at the writhing form in the closet.
Carla scrambled onto her hands and knees (well, her knees anyway. Her hands were still taped behind her back.), crawling out of the closet just as Trace got hold of her right ankle.
“Help! Help,” she pleaded, kicking wildly. “He’s going to kill me!”
From the look on Trace’s face, I’d say that was a proper assessment of the situation.
Trace scrambled to his feet, pouncing on Carla and pulling her up to a standing position by the scruff of the neck. He only had an inch or two on the woman (man? I wasn’t sure what the PC pronoun was.), but his presence towered over hers as Carla whimpered like a dog about to be smacked on the nose from piddling on the carpet.
“You tried to blackmail me,” Trace ground out through clenched teeth.
“Sorry?” she squeaked. Only it sounded more like a question.
“You will be,” he threatened.
Clearly he was pulling out his “tough guy” face, the one he’d used in The Deceased, that gangster movie with Jack Nicholson. Eyes dark, jaw square, it was menacing, saying he’d had a hard life in a hard neighborhood and it would be easy for him to crack now. Violence oozed from his every pore, and I wondered just how much of this was an act and how much was genuine.
“What’s going on?” Mrs. Rosenblatt asked, shoving her frame into the doorway. Allie’s blonde head was visible behind her, jumping up and down to get a glimpse around the older woman’s frame.
“Who are they?” Carla asked, her drawn in brows knitting together. (Okay, only one knitted. The other had smudged in the struggle and was hanging halfway down her cheek.)
“Hey, you, we’ll ask the questions around here,” I said. What can I say? I’d watched The Deceased five times. I could do tough guy, too.
Ten minutes later we had Carla extricated from her duct tape womb, and the five of us were sitting in the living room, Carla shoved between Mrs. Rosenblatt and Allie on the sofa, Trace and I perched on the chairs across from them.
“You stood me up,” Trace said. I could tell it was taking all he had not to rip Carla limb from limb. Even though Carla was not the one holding Jamie Lee captive, she was the one in front of him, and was going to be the recipient of all of
his frustration and anger.
And, in his defense, she had tried to blackmail him.
“I didn’t mean to!” she protested. “I was just leaving to meet you when they attacked me.”
“They?” I asked.
Carla swallowed hard. She looked from left to right. But, considering Trace was still growling at her through his tough-guy face, any thought of escape she might have been entertaining, she kept to herself. “These two guys. I was just leaving, locking the front door after myself, when these two guys came up and shoved a gun at me. They forced me back in the house.”
“One with a crew cut and the other sort of ferrety?”
She nodded. “Yes! That was them. The big guy pointed his gun at me and told me that if I didn’t give them the flash drive, he was gonna shoot me. Can you believe it?”
I had a feeling they weren’t the first (or last) people who wanted to shoot Carla.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I screamed my fool head off, is what I did. That’s when the little guy shoved the pantyhose in my mouth and the big guy duct taped me all to hell and shoved me into the closet. I could hear them trashing the place, going through every room. Finally they just left. And left me in closet! I’ve been waiting in there for someone to find me ever since.”
I sat back in my seat, disappointment weighing my shoulders into a slump. “The drive really is gone then.” I wasn’t sure how that boded for Trace and Jaime Lee. On one hand, they had what they wanted. On the other, they still had Jamie Lee. What were the chances they were just going to let her go with no hard feelings?
Only, Carla cut those thoughts short, a sly smile spreading across her features. “Actually, it’s not.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“They searched for it, but they didn’t find it.”
“Where is it?” Trace asked. (translation: growled.)
We collectively leaned forward in our seats to get the answer.
“In a locker.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Somewhere safe.”
“I swear to God, I’m gonna pop you in the mouth…” Trace lifted off his seat.
“You wouldn’t.”
He growled.
Carla squealed.
“Okay, it’s at the bus station,” Carla confessed. “Just don’t hit me! My face is my livelihood.”
I rolled my eyes. Oh, brother.
“Let’s go get it.” Trace stood up and grabbed Carl by the arm. Hard.
She winced, but wisely kept her mouth shut.
The five of us made for the door. I thought about locking it, but, honestly, the place was so trashed I had a feeling burglars would take one look and move on. It was a lost cause.
We traipsed out to the VW, only when we got there, I paused. To say it was going to be a tight fit was the understatement of the year. After two different attempts, we finally, we threw Trace and Carla in the back, Mrs. Rosenblatt again shoved into the front seat where half of her hung out the window frame. I ended up shoved half on Trace’s lap, half on the floor. Not that I totally minded. Then again, it was a little like asking a nine-year-old if he minded eating all of his Halloween candy before dinner.
The bus station turned out to be a stop on the outskirts of Vegas along the old route 66. While public transit was the green mode of choice, most people still loved their cars enough to prefer traveling through the desert in an air-conditioned SUV. Not to mention that a car trip along the fifteen from Vegas to L.A. took four hours. The bus took six. For most travelers, it was a no brainer.
So it was no surprise that the station was sparsely filled, a smattering of the elderly (too tired to drive long distances) and the twenty-something crowd (who preferred to drink and ride rather than abstain the whole way in a car) the only occupants.
Inside the floors were made of linoleum, the ticket desk a rusted metal thing near the door and two vending machines in the corners selling peanut-butter crackers and Coke the only concessions to the new decade. Two rows of plastic orange chairs, held together a rusted metal bar served as the waiting area.
Along the far wall sat a row of orange metal lockers, eerily reminiscent of the ones I’d used in junior high. Each held a lock, half of them with keys hanging out, and a pay slot for coins beside it.
We traipsed to the lockers, drawing stares from the station’s occupants. Though I could hardly blame them. A three-hundred pound psychic in a muumuu, a blonde with a pair of breasts so big they could be used as flotation devises, a movie-star cowboy, and a six-foot-tall drag queen didn’t exactly make for an inconspicuous group.
After some minor prompting (Trace promised to make Carla a ‘true’ woman if she didn’t comply.), Carla led us to locker number 315.
“Where’s the key?” I asked.
Carla reached in to her shirt, extricating the tiny key from her bra. “I figured no one would look there.”
Not if they could help it.
She shoved the key into the slot and pulled the rusted, metal door open with a creak.
There, sitting all by its lonesome in the middle of the locker, was a small black flash drive.
I suddenly felt as though I’d found the holy grail, angels singing a chorus, a flooding light form heaven falling up on me.
“That’s it?” Allie asked. I could tell she was hoping for something lined in gold and flashing a neon sign that read, “Caution: scandal within!”
Trace reached in the locker to grab it.
But Carla was quicker.
Her manicured fingers jumped in and snatched the drive right out from under him. Just as quickly it disappeared into her bra where the key had come from.
“Not so fast, big boy,” Carla said, the sly smile reappearing. “This here drive is worth a cool hundred thou.”
Trace’s jaw clenched so tight I swear he could produce diamonds between his molars. “Give. Me. The. Drive.”
“When I get my money.”
“You really think you’re in a position to haggle?” I asked, putting a hand on my hip.
“Yes, I am. I have the drive,” Carla said, shaking her tatas.
Only, there was at least one person among us who didn’t mind grabbing a man’s breasts. In fact, I was beginning to get the feeling that nothing would stand in the way of Allie getting her story. She shoved a hand down Carla’s shirt before the drag queen could do more than let out another “Eeep” in protest. A second later she emerged with the flash drive. And a rolled-up sweat sock, leaving Carla noticeably flatter on one side.
“I got it!” Allie said, triumphantly holding it above her head.
Mrs. Rosenblatt immediately snatched it from her hands. “I’m getting a vibe!” she said. Her eyes rolled back in her head, doing a zombie impression as she clutched the drive tight both hands. “It holds… an embarrassing video. Involving a donkey. And a midget.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Give it to me,” Trace said, prying the drive from Mrs. Rosenblatt’s hands.
“No, it’s mine!” Carla shouted. She stomped one pump-clad heel down on Trace’s foot.
“Sonofa-“ he yelled, catching himself just in time to keep from tainting his good guy image for the public group assembled in the station. Only his surprise gave Carla just the edge she needed to pry the drive from Trace’s hands. She took off at a dead run toward the back entrance to the station, toward the platform.
Without thinking, I took off after her, feeling Trace at my back, Allie and Mrs. Rosenblatt bringing up the rear.
“A hundred thou, if you want the drive!” Carla shouted behind her as she pushed through the glass doors onto the loading platform, running the length of it.
If we’d made a funny group coming in, the five of us running down the platform at a full sprint must have been downright laughable. I, for one, would have been in hysterics, had the life of one kidnapped starlet not hung in the balance.
The platform was hardly what you’d call crowded, a group of frat boys wearing UCLA s
weatshirts hovering near the end of the platform the only ones waiting on the next bus. Which, I noticed, I could hear rumbling in the distance.
“Thief! Stop thief!” I heard Mrs. Rosenblatt calling from behind me.
The frat boys, clearly coming off a night-long bender of spending their monthly allowance looked up to see us approaching.
“He’s trying to attack me!” Carla shouted, pointing behind her at Trace. “Help!”
“Hey, buddy,” one of the frat boys with bloodshot eyes said, stepping between him and Carla. “What’s the problem here?”
Trace plowed through him like a linebacker making for the end zone.
“Hey!” Frat Boy yelled, his drunk ass bouncing off the platform.
“Hey!” his friends yelled. I saw one of them throw a rude hand gesture Trace’s way out of the corner of my eye. But I didn’t stop running.
I saw the bus coming closer, more people filtering out onto the platform from the waiting area, getting ready to jostle each other for window seats. The headlights of the bus were visible in the not too far distance.
And Carla was running out of platform.
Maybe it was her heels that slowed her down. Maybe it was the thickening crowd of people in her way. Or maybe she was just out of shape and cramping from having been tapped up in the closet for an hour.
But I closed in on her. Three feet. Two. I closed the gap to just a few inches, so close I could almost reach out and touch her sequin clad back. I went for it, taking a flying leap forward. My feet left the ground, all one hundred and ten pounds of me slamming into Carla from behind.
“Uhn.”
All the air went out of her in a whooshing sound as I body-slammed the drag queen.
It’s true that the bigger they are the harder they fall. And Carla was a big girl. She slammed onto the concrete platform knees first, skidding a full six inches forward, ripping her pantyhose in the process, before she slid to a halt. I held on for dear life, one arm wrapped around her neck, the other fisted in hair that I prayed it was not an easily detached wig.
Instinctively, she threw her hands out in front of her to break her fall. Which might have been a great way to save her livelihood-making face from smacking into the concert and leaving nasty road rash on her cheeks.
Hollywood Headlines 02 - The Perfect Shot Page 19