Skin Game

by J. D. Allen

  “I’m serious.”

  Pain shot through his knees as he got up off the floor. “Yeah?” He rubbed them, hoping to alleviate the burn.

  She looked around and realized where they were. “Sorry,” she said to the statue, but her glare snapped back to Jim. “Chris was here, in this building. My guess is that she didn’t write on that wall just to pass the time in the john. It’s part of a trail she’s leaving.”

  “I agree.” His instinct was to hide out for a day or two, rest, regroup. The girls were safe. Flush out Lake. But it was time to go against his instincts and do the hard thing.

  Erica followed as he made his way back to the double doors to the lounge room and the offices. The church offices. His weight hit the door and pressed on the metal bar that would release the latch. It was locked.

  “You’re right, locks from that side.”

  “Break in.” She was demanding. “Sister Nora knew who I was and didn’t say anything.”

  His internal clock was ticking. “We’re in a church. That part’s not public. Likely to have an alarm.” Her lip was trembling. She was exhausted. “Besides, we’re already putting this network at risk. People with lots of resources will be looking for them, and us. We need to go. If they find us here, Sister Nora won’t be able to help any more of these girls.”

  “Jim.” It was a plea. Her eyes were filling with tears again.

  “I’d love to, but we don’t have the tools or the time. The longer we’re here tonight, the more likely we’ll be spotted. That big shiny Escalade is not exactly inconspicuous.”

  She started to protest. He wanted to do what she asked, but not now. “We’ll be back. I promise. It will be better to question the sister anyway.” It would be hard, though. The woman was used to hiding evidence, protecting that network. She was fighting for God. “The likelihood she left something about Chris laying around her office is nil. We’ll come in the morning and ask her. Right now we need to get back to searching for Lake and the Thin Man. Those are the clues that will lead us to Chris. Think about it. The nun doesn’t have her. The bad guys do.”

  At least he hoped they still had her.

  She clenched her fists at her side. He saw the moment she decided she agreed with him. “Fine. But first thing tomorrow, we come back.”

  Detective Miller was leaning on Jim’s car when they pulled Oscar’s Escalade to the curb outside Ely’s place.

  “Is this trouble?” Erica asked. Her voice sounded like that of a lounge singer who’d smoked too much for too long. She needed food and sleep. Might could use a snort of his Scotch.

  “I don’t think so. Plainclothes.” Miller was dressed in jeans, a white tee, and a thin jacket. Warm for a jacket even in November. Still loaded with weapons, he presumed. Jim opened the door. Let his leg hang out. He displayed no hurry to meet him, no fear that the detective was there.

  Even for a man younger than Jim, Miller’s eyes were thick with dark circles, his face scruffy like that of a man who’d been at work for days. “Time for some sharing,” Jim said to Erica.

  She lingered in the truck when he got out.

  Miller walked to meet Jim halfway, his hand out in greeting. Jim took it. “I’ve been removed from duty as of this evening. IA investigation into supposed missing narcotics.”

  “Internal Affairs? That can get sticky. Must be some heavy hitters involved to make a frame job that big roll through the channels.” It was not especially helpful to have his one connection inside the police force now on the outside.

  “Seems the case.” He nodded at Erica. “Miss Floyd.” She started walking toward with them without an invitation.

  Jim looked around. “Do you have a tail?”

  He shook his head. “Wouldn’t bring you heat, man.”

  They rounded the corner a few hundred feet from Ely’s door.

  “I need some food and a shower. I’ll go back to the Paris and order room service if I don’t get both soon. And hell on you to try to stop me.”

  Miller looked taken aback, but Jim didn’t care. She had the right to be grumpy at this point.

  “You’ll get both here.” Jim slowed before a narrow alleyway. “Not so sure my host is going to be all too happy with you crashing his party, Miller.”

  “Ely’ll be cool. Damned smart old man. He tosses us a bone every now and then. Finds evidence before we know we have a crime. I was coming to see him to get intel on where your ass might be. All points up, cops all over Vegas looking for you, and I pull right up to your car on a coincidence.”

  Jim nodded. “Gotta love the lucky break.”

  “Not sure anything about you is lucky, Bean.”

  Erica was walking behind them like a zombie, but Miller’s quip made her laugh out loud. They both turned to look at her. She shrugged. “He’s right.”

  He was.

  Jim led them into the alley, behind a building, and up to a dark little door. He knocked. Oscar opened it after a short silent wait.

  Erica perked right up at the sight of the big bounty hunter. “You got him?”

  He looked at the ground, not her. Shook his head. “He seemed to vanish. Ely’s trying to track the truck.”

  Jim put his hand on her back. She moved because he pushed her forward. He was tired too. His bones felt like old Pick-up Stix, brittle and thin.

  “Oh. Look who’s joined us,” Oscar said loud enough for Ely to hear. “Detective Miller.” Oscar moved back, holding the door open.

  The detective hung back. “Give him time to get his things in order. I don’t like surprising people. Not why I’m here.”

  Ely must have been close enough to hear the entire conversation. Or maybe he could just hear that well. Either way he yelled from inside, “Nothing to stash, my good officer. Nothing to worry your little badge over.”

  “You guys can take your time all you want.” Erica, however, took Oscar’s invite and walked past them all.

  “Miss Erica.” Ely gave her a little bow, much like the nun had done. “I am at your disposal. Mi casa es su casa.”

  “Thank you.” She fell into his overstuffed couch like a drunk girl late in the evening. She closed her eyes. Jim grabbed a water bottle and handed it to her.

  Annie trotted past all the men and leaped on the couch. She gingerly made her way to Erica’s side. She sniffed her for a moment before turning a circle and snuggling down against Erica’s right hip.

  “Traitor,” Jim remarked and headed over to the bank of equipment where Ely had returned to his post and started typing away.

  It was time to share. He pulled out the charts for Miller and Double O. Putting it up on the wall made it a board game, like none of the players were real humans with families. He was marking off players as dead or unknown.

  Erica sat up when Miller started talking about Karen Barnes.

  “Large caliber. Nothing could have put that back together again,” he said.

  Jim looked at the board. Five dead bodies in three days. Two were the cretins at the ranch, but a dead man was a dead man.

  “Is there any way I could get a shower? Some clean clothes? And away from hearing all this right now?”

  They all stopped and turned their attention to her. The other three looked as if they’d forgotten she was sitting right there. Jim had not.

  “Sorry about that.” Oscar rubbed his face. “We have to take a step away from the reality of crimes like this. They call it a professional distance. We treat the crime like it’s something else, someone else, to keep our emotions from tainting evidence. Keeps perspective sharp.”

  And he should know better than most. His wife was one of those girls. How did he do it?

  “I get it. I … I just can’t do it. At least not right now.” She looked at Ely. “Shower?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He hustled toward the stairs at the far end of the room. “The
door at the end of the library shelves”—he pointed up—“is the guest suite. Big shower with great pressure and nice soft bed.” He glanced around. “I’ll see what I can rustle up for you to wear. And don’t be afraid of the dragon.”

  “Dragon?” She looked at Jim.

  Jim shrugged his ignorance. “Given the metal birds on the railing, it doesn’t surprise me to hear there’re dragons in the guest suite.”

  33

  Only five minutes later Erica came down the stairs like a girl on fire. Only this girl was clad in a too-small towel, her hair dripping water and soap like she’d jumped out of the shower and was running from something. All four men stopped and put their trigger fingers near their favored weapons. Jim braced for her to fall, slipping on the metal and concrete steps like a six-year-old on ice skates. He had an instant vision of broken bones and stitches.

  But somehow, she made it safely to the bottom. Not one of them had changed position as she slid into the room and over to the seating area.

  “My phone.” She grabbed the phone off the end table and tapped on it a few times.

  She looked directly at him. “Paper. I need paper.” She was waving her hand at him as if to fan him. Rushing him. He’d seen her do that before when she was excited. But Ely was the first to break his stance and move. He rushed to the kitchen area and grabbed a notepad from a drawer. She followed him over to the counter as he passed.

  “Shaun.” She barely gave this Shaun on the other end of the line time to answer. “Last year. Maybe the summer before, we passed on a big one. Lionbridge. Consortium, I think. Look it up.”

  She paced, still holding the towel with one hand, the phone with the other. “I know you’re busy, but I need it now.” Her voice was smooth but laced with a serious undertone that told this Shaun character this had better be his priority at the moment. “Please,” she added as an afterthought.

  She looked back to the men standing in the room. “It’s too much to be coincidence. The names of the two men you guys were talking about tingled at the back of my mind. Zant sounded familiar. And Lake. I knew those names. And Neal.” She turned and paced a few more feet and then turned back to them. “Andrew Zant. Gregory Lake. Neal. Something … Neal. Had to be a couple of summers ago. The Lionbridge Consortium.”

  Nobody answered her, because none of them knew what she was up to. Her attention swung back to the call. The towel almost fell.

  “Great.” She nodded. “Players?” She tapped the pad with the pencil. “Gregory Lake.” As she said the name, she made eye contact with Jim. “Andrew Zant. And Thomason Neal. I couldn’t remember the last one’s name. That’s it.”

  Jim couldn’t believe his ears. What did Erica—a Boston banker—have to do with Zant? And who was the third guy?

  “Remind me of the details.” She was quiet as she listened and took notes, her hair dripping soapy water on the pad as she wrote. “Shit.” She looked down. “The name of the Nevada development?”

  Erica looked back up at Jim. She bit her lip. “Coyote Springs.” She repeated the info back to the men in the room. “Thanks, Shaun. Sorry to have interrupted you. I owe you one.” She hung up and set the phone down on the counter.

  She looked back up to the four of them and resituated the towel. “Who are these men?” she said as she brandished the pad.

  “Vegas heavy hitters. Casino owners, businessmen,” Oscar answered.

  “Is Andrew Zant the one you suspect is behind this trafficking ring?”

  Jim came over to glance at the notepad. “What do you have to do with Zant?” He may have sounded madder than he intended, but …

  She shook her head, took a deep breath, resituated the towel to prevent it falling. “My bank facilitates large transactions, big development deals, corporate buyouts, foreclosures of major industrial sites, and such. Big-money deals that need the backing of lots of cash. Sometimes short term, sometimes long.”

  Ely slid up to sit on the countertop. Oscar and Miller closed in to be able to hear her as well.

  She pushed her wet hair off her face. “My job is to look over the deals and evaluate the risks and rewards. My employees look into the people involved, their assets and liabilities. With all that, I determine on behalf of the bank if a project is a healthy investment. Or not.”

  Oscar groaned. “I see where this is going.”

  “Yeah.” Erica nodded. “I said no to Lionbridge. If they didn’t find other funding—and given the state of Coyote Springs, I’d say they didn’t—my no cost them a bunch of cash they’d put out to start up the projects. Not only Coyote Springs, but two more similar developments were started in New Mexico.” She was starting to shake. He didn’t care if it was the situation or the room temperature. Jim grabbed her, pulled her to his chest. “What if this is all about me?” she said. “What if he took Chris because of me?”

  He didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want anyone else to either. He needed to think this out. Maybe it was coincidence.

  Ely was the one to break the silence. “How much?”

  She pulled away. More like pushed him away. It was that buzz of nerves and tension that made a person want to pace, to move as if they could shake off whatever horrible thing was pushing adrenaline thought their veins with the movement.

  If Zant had been after Erica all along, that changed the game. Changed everything. They’d been lucky. Really lucky. In the Peppermint Pony. At the ranch.

  She moved back to the couch, to where Annie was stretched out on the arm. She ran trembling fingers along her fur. “A hundred and eighty-eight million … plus or minus.”

  “You can cost people that much money in one deal?” Oscar whistled.

  “Sometimes they came to us because they’re already overextended on a project. We can afford to bear the risk, pull them out of the hole until income can equalize. Sometimes we do. For a hefty interest rate, of course. These guys were upside down in a drowning project package. The economy had turned, and the housing market with it. It looked bad. Too bad to risk. I said no.”

  “Since the man’s killed people over a few hundred bucks before, I’d say there’s more than a good chance this is about you, honey.” O lowered himself into the chair and stretched his legs out.

  Jim eased beside her. “Seems rather elaborate. To kidnap the sister, lure Erica here.”

  “Ha.” Ely jumped down from the counter. “Think about it. A megalomaniac like Zant wouldn’t see it as elaborate at all. The opposite, dude. He had Erica researched, stumbled on her sister living right here in Vegas, and found out she worked for Social Services. You said this girl had notes about an unnamed source? He couldn’t have planned it any better. A welcome boon. Haven’t you ever seen a Bond movie? The more money infects a villain, the more he wants to see the reach of his power, the more elaborate his schemes get. Andrew Zant is full up with power and greed. He thinks there’s nothing he can’t do or get away with. The man is torturing and selling humans to show his power.”

  “The crazy bastard has been selling girls to other crazy bastards in Asia and the Middle East for years. How much more evidence do you need that he’s psycho?” Oscar was right.

  Miller piped up. “If he’s got that much money and power, why go to a bank for help at all? Casinos are full of cash.”

  “A casino’s cash is monitored constantly by the gaming board,” Erica said. “His business, the hotel, is just like any other corporation and is not cash-based. Corporate money is all on paper, electronic, these days. He couldn’t cover all that red ink with casino money. Gambling regulators would notice.” She resituated the towel again. “And the other partners. All their assets were tied up too.” She looked down at her feet. “I should get dressed.”

  “You should be in a safe house. Now.” Miller pulled out a cell phone. “I have a friend in Henderson. Retired L.A. cop.” He looked at Jim. “No real connection to me through the force. He was
a friend of my dad’s. I’ve known him most of my life. I’d trust him with my own wife. He’ll take care of her until we can work this out.”

  “You don’t have a wife.” Jim watched Erica’s face. She wanted to protest. He could see it brewing. But she was so worn out he didn’t think she had it in her.

  Miller rolled his eyes. “You know what I was getting at. It’s the best we have.”

  Oscar nodded his agreement. “Dragging her around with us is making her an easy get. We’ve been lucky to keep her alive this long.”

  “Do I get a say?” She looked at him. Her damp hair was a mess, her eye blackened from the blow.

  “Not this time. We need to know you’re safe to make this play out right. You’re the target.”

  “But what about helping track Chris? What about talking to the nun?”

  Oscar stood. “We won’t be tracking her anymore.” He straightened the shirt tucked into his jeans. “It’s time to take off the head of the snake.”

  34

  Jim Bean stood at the door and considered exactly what to say to Erica. After seeing those girls, realizing the danger his cousin was in, and worrying over Chris, his perception of the world was wavering, changing. He’d made a deal with the devil himself apparently. And even though Alexis was alive, she’d always be living in fear of Andrew Zant.

  The past, his arrest—it had all seemed to be so big at the time. His hurt and the loss of Erica’s love was the driving emotion behind his anger, even if he hadn’t admitted that to himself. Anger at Erica was gone. Things were dicey now. He needed to tell her so much. Let her know how he felt. How deep he was in with Zant no matter how ashamed of it he was. Before he had a chance to gather his thoughts, solidify his intentions with this visit, the door opened.

  She was startled by his unexpected appearance in the doorway of Ely’s guest suite. She took a large jump back. She was nervous. Frazzled. The decision to send her into hiding was a good one.