by J. D. Allen
Jim couldn’t hide his confusion. Was she trying to get him to help her suck in O or was she really thinking he would or could do this by himself? No way. He shook his head. Held out his hands.
“We’ll get the info from Karen Barnes and then we’ll track Edmond by his money.” She looked back at Oscar. “I don’t need you, Mr. Olsen. I don’t need your permission to be in Las Vegas, or to look for my sister.”
“If you get in the way … if you ruin my investigation …”
She stepped forward. “I won’t if we all work together. And you’ll have the funds you need to make this happen, to end it for good, to avenge your wife.”
Bingo, thought Jim. He was hers.
Oscar scowled at her, as much of the lion as Jim had ever seen brewing beneath his surface. None of the charmer was lingering in that glare. He was being arm wrestled by a client and hated it. But he needed that cash. Wanted that trafficking ring busted.
“This is win-win for you,” Erica kept on. “You get the cash backing. You get the legwork we’ve done. You get a couple extra eyes out there.”
“This is not some bank deal. These people carry guns. Knives. They kill. They rape. Do you really want to be exposed to all that?”
“I wish there was another way. I noticed the size on the stripper costumes that led us to the Showgirl. I noticed the doodle on the crate. The chance is too high that you’ll miss something Chris left behind, something I will see right away. I have to take the risk. So do you.”
“Son of a bitch.” He shoved one of the office chairs and then pointed at Jim. “She’s your responsibility. If you still don’t want to carry a gun, so be it. But you’re playing babysitter. You better not let her fuck this up.”
Exit stage left, thank you very much. This was Jim’s escape hatch, and he was going through. “No way.” He shook his head. “You two go right on without me.”
Erica spun on him, gaping like a fish.
“I don’t need any of this shit.” Relief washed over him. Erica would get good help, his thumb out of the pie would make Zant happy, and Alexis wouldn’t be put in danger. “I told you from the beginning that someone else would be better for this job. And now you’ve found him and used your money to retain a better man. You don’t need me anymore. I’ll sit right here with my cat and my Scotch, thank you very much.”
Oscar interrupted. “Oh no you don’t, Bean. You’re not dumping your problem on me.”
“You’re right. I’m not. My problem seems to be giving you a huge amount of cash and is leaving me. Just as I asked her to do two days ago.”
Erica seemed shocked. “You want out … still? After all you’ve seen, you can just walk away from this, from Chris?”
“I told you, I am an asshole.” He plopped right into his chair. “Why you doubted it, I have no clue. You now have more qualified help than I could ever be.” He looked at Oscar. “You have a set of eyes that has a personal connection with your target. I am not needed.”
She looked at Oscar. He looked as dumbfounded as she. He shook it off quicker. “So be it. She’s less a risk than your drunk ass.”
That would piss him off if it weren’t true. As it was, he intended to drink. A lot. “You can take her to one of your safe houses. I’ll call you if I hear from Miller.”
“Grab your belongings.” Oscar looked at her for a moment while she stood speechless. She seemed completely unsure how things had gotten so out of her control. “Now. We have things to do.”
“Fine.” She looked down at Jim, her eyes spears of hate hurling his way. “Why should I be so surprised? So hurt? I deserve it. But Chris does not.” She nodded to Oscar, flung her visual daggers at Jim once more, then headed upstairs.
After a shower, a restless nap, and a beer, Jim eased into his recliner. Yes, he was an asshole, but he’d managed to find her help and keep his cousin alive. He was out of it. He’d let Banks know that in the morning. Zant would know shortly thereafter. Alexis would continue to live her life with her little boy. He couldn’t have planned it better if he’d tried.
Of course, he had tried to plan a way out, but like with most things he touched these days, he’d failed. But now he was no longer between the rock and the hard place of choosing between Alexis or Erica. That had been a losing hand. Time to fold, check out. Vamos.
But Oscar Olsen had saved the day. Someday Jim would tell the big lug just how grateful he was for the unwanted heroism. Right now he wanted to watch something with a ball and big men smashing into one another. He flipped through the channels. Not much. He’d recorded last weekend’s games. He knew the outcomes, but he only wanted the noise anyway. He took a big bite of delivery pizza. Annie showed up. He tossed her a mushroom slice. She slapped at it a few times before taking off with it like it was a prize.
He looked over at the table. Wished Erica were sitting there. Cursed himself. He could not start that. He might need something stronger than beer. The Scotch was all in his office.
His phone buzzed. He was half afraid to look at it.
Ely. His tech guy. He was still working on Jim’s last intact case, the rich lady with the cheating husband who’d called the other day. He hadn’t called her back. “Yeah.”
“I need you to see something. You home?”
“I am.”
“I’ll be right there.” The phone went dead.
Ely lived in a converted commercial building about three blocks down the road. Usually delivered his info in person. Got his money directly that way, Jim figured.
Ely walked right in just like Oscar had. Maybe it was time to up his security. He could start with locking the door.
Ely was pretty old for a tech guy. Most were young, right out of college, but Ely was a Vietnam vet. A strange man with a lot of stories he held close to the vest. He was smart, talented, and had been doing this kind of thing since he got out of the army. Cash only. Jim thought he might even live completely off the grid. He created metal sculptures and oil paintings and sold them off the street and online.
Most of the time, Jim was sure Ely was stoned, but once Jim had seen him in action, he’d quit using anyone else for getting his equipment or ghosting computers. This guy could build a tracking device from scratch or crack into a bank’s system if needed. Not that he’d ask the man for such a thing, but Jim had no doubt Ely could do it.
Ely helped himself to the fridge. Grabbed one of the beers and plopped down on the couch. He pulled out his laptop, flipped it open, and fired it up. “You’re not going to believe this shit, dude.”
“Hello, Ely. Welcome. Have a beer. Grab a seat.”
“Yeah.” He slid forward and started typing. “You’ll be buying me more than a beer in about thirty seconds.”
A distraction stronger than football. The night might be looking up. “What’d this prick do?”
“Weird-o. And I don’t say that too often. Shit, I ain’t cracked all the encryption, but from what I’ve seen so far, dude is into some nasty shit.”
Jim sat forward. It was good to have something productive to work on. Something not about Erica or Chris or dog crates. “Why would a dry cleaner need encryption? Encryption you can’t crack.”
“Tat. Tat. Tat. I didn’t say can’t.” He wagged a long skinny finger with a silver ring at the knuckle at Jim. “I said I haven’t … yet.” He took a long swig of beer and grabbed a slice, shoving a large portion of it into his mouth. “I will. But you—know—shit’s—spensive.” It was garbled. Jim got the gist. A lot of time and money went into hiding something on that hard drive.
Ely typed some more with a half a slice of pizza hanging from his mouth. He took another bite and wiped his hands on his jeans before touching the keyboard. “So. Mr. Gregory Lake. Fifty-two. Married plus three. Owns a dozen dry cleaners in two states, Nevada and Utah. Primary investment is in an electronics manufacturer in California but has some other small holdings, spent las
t Christmas in Disney World with the family, pays his bills on time, plays a mean game of golf, graduated cum laude from USC, and has an excellent credit rating. His bank account and cash investments add up to about six and a half mil.”
He took another bite. Spoke with his mouth full. “And it appears the guy has a rape fetish.”
Jim closed his eyes. “Rape?”
Ely went on. “Seriously fucked-up dude. He has about thirty rape videos on here.” Meaning the hard drive they had copied from Mr. Lake’s desktop computer. With the permission of Mrs. Lake, of course. “I glanced at a few. Looked too real for me to even watch long enough to decide if they’re snuff vids or not. Most had some kind of opening credits, so I figure they’re actors and legit. But in the same folder was a file labeled with a date, no name. It was an image file, not a video. I opened that one. It was the ugly fucker himself with some Asian girl who looked none too happy to be there.”
“Christ.”
He steepled his hands as if in prayer, tapped his index fingers together. “Oh it gets better, J-Man.” Leisurely, Ely took another drink. Building the anticipation, Jim suspected. Ely loved this shit. The reveal of information he’d spent brain cells and time to mine from hard drives. Juicy things thought long deleted.
At the moment, Jim was about to punch the man for making him wait.
“Or worse, I guess. Then I found the encrypted stuff. Hacked at it for hours. When I finally got it open, there were several more pics and a couple videos. All dated, not titled. All of them are this dude forcing himself on some poor chick.”
“He’s raped that many girls and not gotten caught? Not even accused?” After the last day or so, Jim was ready to forget the word rape. Life was brutal with its allocation of irony. “This guy is a millionaire, public figure even, and he hasn’t been charged with anything? Nothing like that in his record, right?”
“Nope. I can’t stand to watch long enough to tell if they’re pros just going along with his weird fetish or if it’s real. Some of the chicks look pretty fucked up. One was even tied inside a dog crate when he did her.”
Jim’s head dropped to his chest. A fucking dog crate. What was the chance that was a coincidence? Fucking none. Oscar would be happy with this information.
“I think we need to turn this over to the cops, dude. Mrs. Client will get her share in the divorce, no question of that at all. May not need to even fight it at this point. Just let him get busted and then divorce him once he’s doing time. Take it all. She deserves it.”
Jim looked up and shook his head at Ely. “How much more is there?”
“Hard to tell, exactly. Not too much.”
“Sit right where you are and keep going. Have all the pizza you want. You want the Scotch?”
25
“Bring it on.” Ely grabbed the pizza box and his laptop. “But we have to slide over to my place. The drive is still decoding. There’s more buried deeper. Want to see what else this sick fuck is doing.”
Jim went and got the bottle. “You able to drink and crack a hard drive?”
One graying eyebrow rose. “I think I could manage for a bit.” He passed Jim in the hall on the way out. “The work part of the day is done, dude. The software is cranking away. Matter of patience now.”
It took about four minutes to drive to Ely’s place. Jim followed him as he scooted along on his homemade motorized tricycle. A small motor that looked like he’d ripped it off the back of a boat was welded into the frame. He had a large car headlight bolted on the front and the rear sported two oversized wheels. The ridiculous thing was painted to look like a cheetah. Ely’s silhouette was similarly laughable as he managed to carry the pizza box above his head like a waiter. Somehow he was able to balance the box and steer the trike contraption at the same time. Jim had offered to put it in the truck. Ely seemed reluctant to let go of the pie.
Ely lived in a Vegas rarity: architecture that was older than a college student. He’d rescued the building from destruction. It was a large old law firm. Ely gutted it, but left the catwalk library upstairs. It was still full of fifty-year-old books for the most part, but the closest section of shelving had been emptied of the boring law tomes and was filled with comics, graphic novels, and art books.
He’d welded several species of huge metal birds he’d created to the iron railing that overlooked the main room. Some of the creatures were low-hanging, and their angry expressions were a little unsettling to Jim at times. When the light hit them just right, he felt like some of Ely’s nightmares were watching him move around the room as if he were the next bit of roadkill they might pick to pieces. Hell, there was probably a camera mounted in more than one of them.
On the first floor, under the library walkway, was the tech area. The long wall full of servers, monitors, and four separate workstations with blinking lights and whirling fans was Ely’s temple. The man stopped in front of the second station with Jim looming over his shoulder. The program working on the encryption was humming away. Only half the progress had been made according to the blue bar on the screen. It was going, that was all Ely would say. “Relax, dude. You’ll make yourself old in a damned hurry. Quit churning about things you can’t control. It’s all about the chill. That’s how we survive this life we live. Believe me. I’ve seen it all. Done it all.” He slid the pizza box onto the bar.
The rest of the space was a long room that had been offices, but the walls had been removed long ago. Across from the tech wall, in the middle of the open room, he’d added a small, wall-less kitchen. Retro, as if he’d pried it from a house in the sixties and plopped it in the center of the open room. Table, long bar, and lighting, and lower cabinets. He pulled some beer out of his fridge that also looked recycled from the sixties. Small and burnt orange.
“I came crawling out of hell with a smile on my face. If you hold too tight to the wheel of life, stop it from spinning, it all stops. And life is not about the all stop.”
Jim had no clue what that meant. Ely had been in Vietnam, in the thick of the nasty part of that war. Had been captured. Two years a POW. Jim had no way to understand the hellish things he’d lived through. The thought made Jim reflect again on his own situation with some perspective. Yes, his life had taken a major turn. No, it was not what he had wanted or felt he deserved. But shit. Ely hadn’t run from his anger or pain. He’d become an eccentric dude with giant metal fowl in his living room. Jim looked around the ridiculous house. The sculptures, retro-designed furniture. He’d been changed. Affected. But he was rolling with those changes.
Ely reached under a cabinet and pulled out a tray. It was covered in weed. Lots of weed. Enough to send them both to prison for years. There were three very distinct piles. “Good. Better. Best.” Ely smiled like he’d delivered a Christmas pie. “I suggest the best, dude.”
Jim declined it all. “Why even have the good and better?”
The man tilted his balding head, cocked an eyebrow. “Customer relations.”
“More than I need to know.” Jim paced to the far end of the room, back near the monitor with the unmoving progress bar. He didn’t want the contact high as Ely lit up. He needed to think. It was curious that suddenly the life of the ugly Mr. Lake was colliding with his.
His phone vibrated in this pocket. The same unknown number from before. “Miller?”
“I need to see you. Now.” The detective was as short and as curt as usual.
“I’m in the middle of something. Can you come to me?” Jim watched Ely fire the end of a blunt the size of a Cuban cigar and changed his mind. “Never mind. That’s a bad idea. What’s the problem?”
“You’re under suspicion. No. That’s not entirely true. You’re the prime suspect for the Carver case now.”
That meant he was the suspect. The only suspect in Edmond Carver’s shooting. An APB would likely already be issued. His house was about to be swarmed. Maybe the SWAT team. He was
going to be arrested on sight. Charged. Thrown in a holding cell. Questioned.
Just as he had been in Ohio. Accused of something he did not do.
“On what basis?” His chest was getting tight. His vision blurred. The room closing in on him. He tried for deep breaths.
“Gun has your prints. That and the witnesses placing you at the scene. It all points to you. The captain’s so excited I thought he was going to cream himself in the briefing. One day I want to know what you did to make him so happy to see you burn.”
”You know I’m not carrying, Miller. You can’t like me for this?” he asked Miller.
“Holding out for now. You have a narrow window, Bean.” There was a long silence. “Don’t make me regret this.”
Jim nodded. Miller couldn’t see him, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t need to be verbalized. Miller hung up without a response.
He turned to Ely. “I have an issue.”
“You are an issue. I need to find a way to get you to relax, to enjoy life. You could benefit from smiling. Smiling brings clarity.”
“How’s this for clarity? I’m being accused of murder. The cops are looking for me right now.” Jim watched Ely’s face. Sure enough, being accused of murder brought less disgust and rage than being accused of sexual assault.
“Hard to smile about that, J-Man.”
But he found himself doing just that. “You know. You’re right.” He did feel better once he let some of the rage go. “How do you feel about a little aiding and abetting this evening?”
Ely took another long toke off the blunt. “All kinds of productive today. I love productive.”
“You’re on your own if you’re caught. The mess on that hard drive is deeper than you know. This accusation puts me in the wind. Not only from Vegas PD, but Zant as well. It’s deep. You can bow out now and I’ll understand.”
Ely stalked closer. He was medium, somewhat lean, and probably more dangerous than Oscar and Banks combined. What kinds of skills did one acquire in a life like his? In jungle-fighting survival conditions most would perish under? “I just told you, dude, no room for the all stop.” He tapped his index fingers together. “What’s the precious?”