Authors: Elizabeth Lowell
Las Vegas
November 4
Morning
T
he nurse poked
his head around one of the wide hospital-style doors that were about the only sign that Timothy Seton wasn’t staying at a small, expensive hotel. The Bateman-Molonari Clinic of Cosmetic Surgery was nothing if not exclusive. Discreet, too. Especially when their normal fee was tripled.
Miranda Seton would have preferred a real hospital, but as Tim’s father had curtly explained, real hospitals had to report real bullet wounds to real cops.
“Your son just woke up,” the nurse said in a hushed voice to Miranda. “You can talk to him as soon as the doctor leaves, but only for a few moments.”
Miranda whispered a prayer of thanksgiving to a God she had stopped believing in when she found herself pregnant by a man she hadn’t known was married. A man who not only could kill, but did. Her thin, almost frail hands clutched each other, pale but for the bleeding cuticles she picked at absently, constantly.
As soon as the nurse left, she opened her handbag, took a stiff drink from what was left of a pint bottle of vodka, and stuffed an industrial-strength mint into her mouth. Fortified, she pushed herself to her feet and hurried down the lime green carpet to Tim’s room. Perfectly framed pictures of perfectly sculpted faces smiled perfectly down at her from the cream-colored walls.
The door was numbered in brass, like that of a hotel room. And like a hotel room, its décor was both inviting and subdued, with framed Impressionist prints, soft colors, and lots of cushions on the furniture. The only jarring note was the patient laid out on pale rose sheets with monitors, machines, and tubes attached to parts of his body that Miranda didn’t want to think about.
He looked worse than he had when covered in blood.
She wanted to rush to the bed and cuddle him, but she didn’t. Her orders were quite specific: find out who had shot Tim. As soon as she did, there would be suitable vengeance.
“Oh, Timmy,” she said in a strangled voice.
He grunted and kept his eyes shut. The last thing he needed right now was his mother fluttering around him like a wounded moth.
“Who did this to you? Cherelle?”
His eyelids flickered open, then settled at half-mast. Even the room’s filtered, soothing light was more than he wanted right now. Speaking was an effort, but he managed. If he could send any trouble his old buddy’s way, he would be happy to do it.
“Socks,” Tim said painfully.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t bring any with me. Are your feet cold? Maybe one of the nurses will have a heating pad or something.”
Slowly, wearily, Tim moved his head from side to side. “Shot me.”
She hesitated. “Socks? Your friend shot you?”
“. . . yeah.”
“Why?”
Tim let out a thready breath, then another one. He wasn’t real sure of the answer. “Dunno.” He paused, swallowed, “Gold, I guess.”
“What gold?”
He ignored the question. It was too much effort to explain. The only thing that was worth the pain of talking was sending some bad luck down on Socks. “His name—Cesar.”
“Another man?”
“Socks.”
The word was a desperate exhalation.
“You mean that Socks’s real name is Cesar?”
A groan that might have been yes was Tim’s only answer. Then another groan. “I killed him.”
“Socks?”
“Cline. Don’t want prison. Never.”
“Don’t worry, Timmy. Your father will take care of you. He loves you.”
Tim would have laughed, but he was trying to find a place on his body that didn’t hurt. He was still trying when black closed around him again. He welcomed it like a lover.
Miranda picked at her cuticles and looked down at her frighteningly pale son.
Soon there was a light knock followed immediately by the door opening. The nurse looked in. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Seton, but the doctor wants your son to rest as much as possible. Please come with me. Dr. Wells can answer your questions.”
She started to object, saw that Tim had slid back into unconsciousness, and sighed. “How long before I can visit him again?”
“Several hours at least.” The nurse’s broad, hairy hand gently gripped Miranda’s elbow as he steered her out of the room. “Dr. Wells is waiting. There will be plenty of time for all your questions before your son wakes up again.”
And, the nurse thought cynically, plenty of time for the worried mother to slip out and buy more booze and mints. From what he’d seen on the clinic’s discreet surveillance cameras, she was about at the end of her bottle.
Not that the nurse really cared. He was used to alcoholics and their games. When the Bateman-Molonari Clinic wasn’t tucking up sagging skin, it was drying out and feeding up rich patrons so that they could go forth and drink themselves back into a coma. Between vanity and booze, the clinic always had a waiting list. Still, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for the lady. The patient might wake up a few more times, maybe even have a real lucid spell . . . but that would be it.
The lady’s son was dying.
Las Vegas
November 4
Morning
I
an pulled his car
up near Shane in the cracked parking lot of the Jackpot Motel. He noticed that Shane was doing the same thing Ian had been since they left the casino—looking over his shoulder.
“Where is he?” Shane asked as Ian walked over.
“Who?” asked Risa.
“The guy who followed us,” Shane said.
“The blonde in the red car?” she asked.
Shane gave her a quick look. He hadn’t thought she noticed.
The look she gave back to him said that there were a lot of things about her that
he
hadn’t noticed, and number one of all was that she could take care of herself.
“That’s the one,” Ian agreed, drawing their attention to him. “He’s half a block down.”
“You get his plate?” Shane asked.
“Already called it in to Rarities.”
“If they can’t access Nevada’s state license bureau in a hurry, I can.”
“Yeah, Niall said something about you learning to be a world-class hacker at your daddy’s knee.”
Risa said, “I’m not listening to this. I haven’t just heard my boss—my
ex
-boss—say that he can hack into government computers. Think of the blackmail possibilities. But I’m not listening.”
“Good call,” Shane said. “Let’s go.”
Armed with photos taken from the security cameras of Cherelle and “Bozo,” the three of them walked into the Jackpot Motel’s office door. The office reeked of smoke and the contents of an overflowing ashtray the size of a soup plate. The woman behind the fake wood counter looked old enough to have kids on Social Security. She was wearing a scoop-front, thigh-length orange sweater and black tights. Her hair was improbably black. Her face looked like it had been slept in for eighty years.
“Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Risa said, “but I’m trying to find my friend, Cherelle Faulkner.” As she spoke, Ian slid a photo onto the counter. “She was staying here a few days ago and might not have checked out yet.”
“You lose your friends often?” the woman asked in a raspy voice.
Risa smiled from the teeth out. “No. But Cherelle is a little careless about things like checking out and paying bills. So I kind of go along behind her and see that nobody ends up short. How much did she owe you?”
The woman glanced briefly at the photo. Then she lit a cigarillo and took a long, considering pull on it while she studied the three people in front of her. None of them looked down on their luck, and one of them looked vaguely familiar, like someone she might have seen on TV. She took another long nicotine hit while she decided how much money she could charge for information about the slut in the red sweater. Exhaling, she thought about going for a hundred. Two, if she played it right. Then she could kick back with the nickel slots downtown until her butt went numb and her hand ached too much to hit the play button again.
As smoke streamed around Risa, she wondered if holding her breath would do any good. In the end she went for breathing through her mouth. It didn’t make the air any better, but it didn’t insult her nose as much.
“A hundred,” the woman said.
Ian made a disgusted sound.
Shane reached for his wallet. Two fifties appeared in his fingers. He put one of the bills on the counter.
With startling speed one fifty disappeared into the woman’s wrinkled cleavage. She watched Shane with watery, demanding eyes.
He kept the second bill out of her reach.
“She checked out a couple days ago,” the woman said.
“Did she say where she was going?” Risa asked.
The woman hooted. “We weren’t pals, dearie.”
“Did she leave anything behind?”
“Dirty linen and fast-food trash.”
“Room number?” Shane asked.
“Five. Check it if you want.”
The fact that she was so willing to let them into the room told them there probably wasn’t anything worth seeing.
“Later maybe,” Ian said. “Was she driving a Ford Bronco, about ten years old, Arkansas plates?”
The woman shrugged and watched the fifty that Shane held just out of her reach.
“You’re supposed to write down a vehicle and license when people register,” Shane reminded her.
“Yeah, it was a Bronco. Didn’t notice the plates.”
“What about him?” Risa asked, putting Bozo’s picture on the counter.
“Our deal was for her,” the woman said.
Shane got out a third fifty, but he didn’t give it—or the second fifty—to the woman. “This covers everything.”
She drew smoke in and then shared it with her visitors in a coughing exhalation. “You cops?”
“No.”
“Mob?”
“Sorry,” Shane said.
She treated them to another round of dragon breath before she shrugged again. “Can’t blame a gal for hoping. I liked the Mob. They were real men, you get me?”
“What about this one?” Risa said, tapping the photo of Bozo. “Was he staying with Cherelle?”
“No, the other one was. This one just tagged along with his tongue hanging down to his pecker.”
“Either of those men have a name?” Risa asked.
“She called the other one Tim. He called that one”—she tapped the photo—“Socks.”
“Last names?” Risa asked.
“She’s the only one who ever registered.”
Ever. Implies more than once.
“How often did Cherelle come here?” Risa asked quickly.
“Couple times a year maybe. Had friends or kin nearby.”
“How near?” Ian asked.
She looked at the two fifties in Shane’s hand. He passed one of them over the counter to her. She stuffed the bill down the front of her bra, on the opposite side this time. One crisp bill for each limp boob. The hard edges of the money poked out against the sweater.
“Walking distance,” she said. “At least he walked some of the time. Whined about it, too. Car wasn’t his, I guess.”
“He?”
“The tall, pretty one. Tim. There’s some apartments a few blocks over to the north and a few old houses just beyond. That’s the direction he went when he walked. Wouldn’t go there at night, if I was you.”
“Did they make any phone calls?” Risa asked.
“No phone in the room.”
“Any visitors?”
She shrugged. “Didn’t see any.”
Risa looked at Shane and then at Ian.
“Did Socks drive a car?” Shane asked.
“You got another fifty?”
“Only if you have a description and a license plate.”
“No plate. Don’t see real good that far off.”
“You see the state?”
She nodded.
Shane reached for his wallet. “Talk to me. Make it good and I’ll make you good.”
“Purple coupe, the kind of purple that glows in the dark, you get me? Nevada plate.”
“Foreign or American car?”
“American. Big engine. Sounds like a street racer and tricked out like a whore’s Christmas. Lemme think a minute.” She nursed a long drag and sorted through recent memories. “It’s a Fire-something. Old American carmaker, like Ford or Chevy, but not that.”
“Pontiac?” Ian asked.
“Firebird?” Shane said at the same instant.
“That’s it. Glad you boys remembered. Things like that drive me nuts at four in the morning.” She squinted at Shane. “Hey, ain’t you that rich gambler fella? Prince Midas? Saw your picture on the news after that shooting.”
“A lot of people think I look like him,” Shane said. He moved his fingers, and three fifty-dollar bills fanned out.
A wide, yellow grin split the woman’s face. She grabbed the money and started shoving it down her sweater.
As the door shut behind them, Risa said, “You should have given her another fifty.”
“Why?” Shane asked.
“Two doesn’t go into five evenly, which leads to the question of where she stashed the last fifty.”
Ian snickered.
Shane said, “Want to ask her?”
“No, thanks. I’m thinking I don’t want to go there.”
“I’m thinking you’re right,” Ian said.
Shane gave a long look around the parking lot of the motel and the street beyond. So did Ian. The roof of a red car was just visible halfway down the block, parked between two pieces of road iron that looked like they hadn’t moved since the last rain.
Shane lifted his eyebrow in silent question.
“Not yet,” Ian said. “First we’ll see if can find out who’s following us without tipping our hand.”
Risa said, “He picked us up when we came out of the employee parking lot.”
“Is he the one who chased you through the casino?” Shane asked.
“Wrong color hair. Bozo’s was dark.”
“Too bad. I’m looking forward to meeting him.”
Shane’s smile made Risa uneasy. “Do we search for the kin he visited,” she asked, “or do we go yank Covington’s chain?”
“We could divide up,” Shane said. “Ian can go door-to-door with the photos, and we can do Covington.”
“Why don’t you do the door-to-door thing?” Ian asked without real hope.
“Two reasons,” Shane said. “The first is that, thanks to the camera-happy media, a half-blind old lady can ID me. The second reason is simple. Covington wouldn’t give you the time of day, but he’ll roll out the red carpet for me. Nothing personal. Just money.”
“Figures,” Ian muttered, reaching for his communications unit. “If Niall buys it, I’m out of your hair. Otherwise, get used to making like a dune buggy.”
“A what?” Then Shane laughed. “Got it. Three wheels and you’re the third.”
Risa put her hands on her hips and turned her back before she said something rash about not needing one bodyguard, much less two. But she was afraid she did. Bozo’s rough question kept echoing in her mind.
Where’s the gold?
She didn’t know. But she knew one thing. That kind of money on the loose brought out human predators. Cherelle knew it, too.
That was why she was running scared.