If Romeo noticed my struggle, he kept it to himself. “The first time is the hardest, but it never gets easier. That guy had it coming for sure, but he’s someone’s child or brother, or something.”
“If you’re trying to make me feel better, please stop. You suck at it.”
“So, I’ve been told.” He scooted me over then squeezed one cheek onto my fender, propping himself there. “I’m just saying we all feel the same way. But, look at it this way, if you hadn’t shot that guy in the leg, I might not be sitting here.”
“Working so hard to improve my mood.”
Romeo nudged me with his shoulder and grinned. “You did the right thing. Even though you shot him before he could tell us what he was helping Sylvie Dane with.”
“As you said, I had one shot at saving Brandy, so I took it.”
“And a good thing you did, too.”
“Do you think he’s going to make it?” My voice came out all hushed.
“Slurry? I don’t know.” Romeo snaked an arm around my shoulders, pulling me tight. Somehow he must’ve sensed that offering platitudes would just ring hollow, so he stayed quiet.
I’d finally managed to negotiate a sip or two of coffee without scalding myself or decorating my front, when Watalsky appeared, trailed by two officers. “Detective, you gotta tell your goons I’m one of the good guys.”
“Really?” Romeo let go of my shoulders, but he didn’t move from his perch. “Convince me.”
“Me and Jerry over at the Babylon have been trying to get a bead on the cheating that was going on the other night. Those two, Slurry and Sylvie Dane had to be in cahoots, I just can’t figure out why.”
I pulled the blanket tighter around me—for some reason I couldn’t get warm. “Did Jerry know you were here?”
Watalsky looked at the ground as he scuffed his toes in the gravel. “Not really.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“We’re going to take the lot of you to the station. You’ll be there until we get the truth out of you.” Romeo motioned to the officers, who had each taken one of Watalsky’s arms, bracketing him. They didn’t need him to spell it out. Without a word, they led Watalsky away.
“You’re in for a long night.”
Romeo looked resigned. “Yeah, well, you know how it is.” With the excitement over, the adrenaline waning, the kid looked like he could use a month of good shut-eye. His hair slicked to his head, his face haggard, a stubble scratching his cheeks, a decade had been added to his appearance since the last time I’d seen him—and he hadn’t looked so hot then. The clothes were different. A new suit, but the same wilted white shirt, noosed by a tie loosely knotted and covered by his same tan overcoat—he looked like Clark Kent in need of a phone booth. With a casual glance, he assessed the area. “Things are under control here.”
“Saying those kinds of things does nothing but tempt fate,” I groused, thinking my emotions were far from under control—they still spiked and dove, twisted and flipped, a dizzying roller-coaster ride.
As Romeo started to say something, Brandy appeared out of the darkness and threw her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. Romeo grabbed her with both arms and held tight. Cole, hanging back in the shadows, didn’t look too pleased. Finally, out of patience, he strode into the light and tapped Brandy on the back. When she turned, he signed something to her.
“Right.” Her brows crinkled in worry as she glanced between Romeo and me. “Is the other girl okay?”
“What other girl?” we said in unison.
“The girl with the necklace.”
I dropped my coffee as I leaped to my feet. “She was here? Where?”
“She was in the game. She used the necklace to buy in.”
“Really?” Romeo was openly skeptical. “Why would anyone bring a red-hot piece of ice like that here?”
Cole rolled his eyes, his fingers flying.
“Where better?” Brandy interpreted. “Here nobody cares who you are, or where you got it. No records and it disappears into a melting pot at some local chop shop.”
“Can’t argue with the logic,” I said to Romeo.
Romeo turned to Cole. “You wouldn’t have any idea where she went, would you?”
“When the shooting started, she rabbited.” Brandy appeared to be picking up some interesting lingo hanging with the poker crowd. “God knows where.”
“And the necklace?” I asked out of curiosity.
Cole reached into his pocket. Then he grabbed Romeo’s hand, turned it palm up, and dropped Sylvie Dane’s pocket watch into his open hand.
***
“Well, we have the watch,” I said to my audience clustered in my office as I held it by the chain and watched as it twirled, fracturing the light like a disco ball. Romeo had dusted it in vain—any meaningful prints had long been obscured. “A pretty bauble. But no girl.”
Miss P and the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock sat molded together, Jeremy underneath, like a human stacking game. Entwined, they looked tired, but happy.
“Fuckin’ A!” Newton, never one to be ignored, trotted out the epithet with abandon. “Asshole! Asshole! Asshole!” He ducked and shimmied from one side of his cage to the other.
“What’s with the bird?” Miss P asked.
“A shiny bauble and an audience—bird heaven.”
“Gimme, gimme, gimme.” Newton’s vocabulary was clearly growing. The worst part of it was his word choices seemed to be appropriate, well, if four-letter words were ever appropriate.
Dropping the watch on the corner of Miss P’s desk, I reached for the cover to the birdcage. “Time for you to go to sleep, kiddo.”
“Bitch,” Newton murmured, making everyone laugh as I wrapped him in darkness.
“Where are the kids?” Jeremy asked, as he snaked out a hand to grab Sylvie’s watch. He turned it over in his hand then popped the cover. “Sweet.”
“Brandy and Cole went to the station with Romeo,” I explained as I plopped into my desk chair, kicked off my shoes, then put my feet on my desk. “He’s got Watalsky on the hot seat and wanted to use the kids’ stories to keep him honest.”
“Gotcha.” Jeremy grinned as Miss P nuzzled his ear. “Honey, that’s really distracting.”
“Go get a room, you two. I hear we have a few that are pretty nice.” I watched wishing for an ear of my own to nibble…perhaps one with a French flair. “As I was saying, Romeo is going to get everyone’s story straight, then he’s going to bust Dane’s ass with it.”
“Assuming that happens, what’s going to happen to Dane?” Jeremy asked. I wasn’t sure whether anger pinched his face or another emotion.
“Once Metro finds him…
if
they find him…he’ll be escorted through the criminal justice system, to much media fanfare, unless we can conjure up a killer.” Wiggling my toes, I pretended to be interested in them for a moment while the room fell silent, each of us lost in our own memories, our fears. “I hear a grand jury will be convened on Monday. It’s my guess they have enough evidence, albeit circumstantial, to indict.”
“I’m chasing some interesting money trails for your dead Poker Room manager, Johnstone.” Jeremy shook his head as he ducked away from Miss P. “It’s pretty convoluted, highly sophisticated. But it’s looking like he had his hand in a pretty large cookie jar.”
“Any offshore connections?” I asked. Sometimes a shot in the dark actually hits something.
“Why would you think that?” Jeremy’s eyes narrowed, his interest piqued.
“Kevin Slurry seems to be at the vortex of this hurricane. And he owned an offshore poker site. Money flows through there like shit though a goose, but comes out clean as a whistle on the other side.”
“Really?” He boosted Miss P off his lap. He set the watch back on my desk. “You might want to check the inside of the cover there.” He pointed to a section of the metal that was less shiny than the rest. “It looks like something’s been removed. Some initials or something, I can’t tell without a magnifying glass.” As I bent to look where he pointed, he grabbed his cell and started dialing, then disappeared through the office door.
Miss P brushed down her skirt, then pulled her shoulders back, stretching. Taking a deep breath, she leveled her gaze at me. “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything you need?”
“Any info on that sign in front of the dealership?”
“Maintenance is looking for the work order, but you know how they are.”
“Organization is not their strength.”
Jeremy had finished his call and poked his head back in the office. “I’ve got some preliminary news on Sylvie Dane’s phone. It was a burn phone, untraceable to any source, not that I expected to find any. And she didn’t make any outgoing calls, except to one number.”
“What was the number? Could you trace it?”
Jeremy nodded. “Don’t get all excited. The number is registered to a local charity that hands out phones to homeless kids.”
“Homeless?” That was a turn in the road I didn’t see coming.
“Don’t ask,” Jeremy shut my questions down. “I haven’t tied any of this together—still working on it.”
“Gotcha. Maybe you’ll know more when I meet you for breakfast tomorrow. Jamm’s, right?”
“Eight o‘clock.”
I turned my attention to Miss P. “Take your Aussie boy home. We’ve done enough for today.”
She didn’t argue. Miss P hooked her arm through her honey’s and they fell into easy conversation. She grabbed her purse off Brandy’s desk as she went by, then both of them stepped through the hole in the wall, my future office door. Quiet descended as their voices retreated down the hallway.
Alone with myself, I picked up the watch and held it to the light. The stones shattered the weak light into colorful sparkles. Flipping open the cover, I held it so it caught what light there was. On my second pass, I noticed a scuffed patch of metal on the inside as if something had been removed. The initials Jerry had mentioned. Why remove them? Whatever the reason, the deed had been done fairly recently from the looks of it.
I had no idea what it meant or if it was relevant at all. Like a blanket thrown over a smoldering fire, the quiet semidarkness pressed around me as I contemplated all the pieces to the puzzle. Despite my best efforts, my brain flipped to shutdown mode. Too little sleep, too many murders, too many elusive connections… and too little life. Not to mention I’d shot someone today. Okay, two someones.
Caught in the daily current of chaos, it was easy to avoid myself. Perhaps that’s why I sought the craziness—no time for introspection. But, according to the experts, sanity is based on a balance between life at full tilt and reflective time. God knew I had a tentative hold on reality as it was, so I relinquished myself to the silence and let my world turn inward. And, like horses galloping to the barn, when I let my thoughts run unbridled, they ran straight to my most personal problem—Teddie.
Someday I’d have to face him, I knew that. But, with multiple time zones between us, I’d been avoiding the inevitable. The searing heat of his betrayal still burned at the touch of a memory. Yes, Miss P was right, Teddie used to love me; he probably still did. He just loved himself more. And, if the best I could do was a distant second, I wasn’t entering the race, thank you very much.
In need of moral courage, I wandered into the kitchenette—Miss P kept an emergency ration of medicinal Wild Turkey 101 in the top cabinet, way in the back. Dropping one cube of ice in the double old-fashioned glass, I filled it with the golden elixir—nothing like Kentucky mash to dull the pain.
Dousing the lights, leaving the light filtering in from the lobby below as the only illumination, I sagged into Miss P’s chair. Pulling out the bottom drawer with the toe of my left foot, I rested both feet on it and tilted myself back. History had taught me, the first sip of whiskey is always the worst, leaving a trail of fire all the way down until it explodes in a ball of warmth. As I braced for the pain then relished the comfort, an inner voice sounded a warning that went unheeded.
I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to feel.
So, I did what any sane person would do: I hit the replay button on the message machine, then leaned back, bracing for the hit.
Like a sucker punch, Teddie’s voice hit me hard, leaving me gasping for air.
“Lucky,” he began. “I’ve been practicing this over and over, rewriting it in my head, trying to find the words. Finally, I realized, words are inadequate. Anything I say will fall so far short of what I feel. But, words are all I have.”
He paused. I could hear music in the background. I had no idea where he was, but he lived life to an accompanying soundtrack, subtle background music to set the mood. Perhaps that assessment was a bit unfair, but I wasn’t in a magnanimous mood. Sue me.
“When I left, I thought I was doing us both a favor.” He sounded like a lawyer for the accused pleading his case in summation.
My heart fell. Great. So, this was my fault. Somehow I’d had a feeling he’d lay the blame—no, not the blame…the justification…at my feet.
“No,” his voice interrupted my pity party. “Lucky, don’t go there. You know it’s not what I meant. This one is all on me.”
Apparently I was as easy to read as a billboard—even from half a world away. That gave him quite an advantage. But, he wasn’t the only clairvoyant…I had seen the end from the beginning. I’d warned him about spiking the cauldron of friendship with 200-proof love—a potent punch that would leave us with nothing but a headache…and a heartache.
“But,” Teddie continued, “I convinced myself that cutting you loose would be the best thing. Then I could let go of the guilt. It didn’t work out the way I’d planned.”
The games we play. The lengths we’ll go to justify really bad behavior.
“I told you so!” I threw the verbal dart into the darkness, but this was a one-sided conversation—he didn’t hear it. Of course, if I had the nerve to pick up the phone, which I didn’t, I could tell him myself. I just didn’t see the point—we’d worn a path through this ground before.
“You always told me, like the young woman who tried to leave Shangri-la, you’d die before you hit the city limits of Las Vegas. Point taken—your life is there. You were always honest about that. And you were honest about wanting a man to come home to every night.”
Yes, I’d wanted all of that. And, while we were dreaming, some of his mother’s coconut oatmeal raisin cookies wouldn’t be bad either.