Authors: Elizabeth Lowell
Las Vegas
November 4
Midafternoon
R
isa and Shane drove
by Shapiro’s business, which was located close to the failing downtown and its downscale casinos. It was an area of small businesses that aspired to middle class and didn’t quite make it. Shapiro’s show windows were barred, the blue neon sign advertised payday loans, and the storefronts on either side were taken by a travel agent and something called Woman’s Needs, which could have been anything from a sex shop to a free clinic.
Shane darted into a parking spot on the street a block away from Shapiro’s business. The red Lexus that had been following them had no place to hide, no choice but to roll on by while Shane memorized the license plate. Without taking his eyes off the car, he keyed a number into his cell phone, waited until someone answered, and read out the plate number.
A slanting sideways look was Risa’s only comment, but curiosity got the better of her. “Was that Factoid or one of your own computer moles?”
“Factoid. No point in duplicating his efforts. He’s cracked every motor-vehicle registration bureau in every state of the union. Canada, too. He’s working on Mexico but claims the system is so corrupt that no one drives the vehicle the plate is issued to. I told him he just doesn’t understand the system yet.”
Shane looked back toward Shapiro’s business. If there were any lights on inside, they didn’t show up against the glare of daylight.
“It looks closed to me,” Risa said.
“Yeah.”
He keyed in another command on his hand unit, checked the numbers that had called him, and accessed Ian’s message. It wasn’t chatty, but it was long. Phone to his ear, he listened with growing intensity.
Watching Shane’s face, Risa wondered what had gone wrong. She knew something must have. Other people might not be able to see past Shane’s impassive expression, but she could. With rising impatience she waited until he put the cell phone down.
“What?” she demanded.
“Joey Cline was murdered.”
“Do we know him?”
“Not directly, but whoever killed him left bloody marks from the pawnshop murder site to 113 Oasis Lane, and whoever lives at that number knows Cherelle. My guess is that Cline bought the gold and turned it to Shapiro, who turned it to Covington, who turned it to Smith-White.”
Risa forced herself to breathe. “You’re sure about Cherelle. She’s linked to a murdered man.”
They weren’t quite questions. Shane answered them anyway. “A neighbor on Oasis Lane recognized Cherelle from the photo. A man called Socks—the one you call Bozo—was also recognized. Mrs. Seton, who is probably related to the man who killed Cline and left bloody marks in the alley, lives at 113. Her no-good son visits occasionally, according to the neighbor. Cherelle comes with the no-good son.”
“Seton,” Risa said, remembering the brochure Cherelle had left behind. “Tim Seton. He’s Cherelle’s partner in the channeling business.”
“What about Socks?”
“Bozo?” Risa laughed shortly. “He wasn’t mentioned in the brochure.”
“He drives a purple car with a loud muffler.”
Risa’s fingers drummed on her thigh. She didn’t like what she was hearing. She liked what she was thinking even less. “All right. So we have Socks in a purple car, Cherelle probably in an old Bronco, and Tim at the motel and then at the house on Oasis Lane. What does Mrs. Seton have to say for herself?”
“She isn’t home. A black limo came for her yesterday afternoon. From what Ian could gather, Cline was probably killed yesterday. Rigor mortis had already come and gone.”
Risa grimaced. “What about the guy who left bloody marks? Where is he?”
“Ian will check the house tonight, but I’ve got a hunch it was Tim who was hurt, so his mama loaded him into a limo and took him somewhere for some real quiet doctoring.”
“A hunch, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“The kind that made you into a multimillionaire?”
“Yeah.”
She blew out a breath so hard her hair shivered. She couldn’t think of a single comforting reason for Tim crawling away from the site of a murder covered in blood. The memory of Cherelle’s full, wild laugh when she found out how much Shane’s collection of Celtic gold might be worth was equally uncomfortable.
Damn it, Cherelle. Why didn’t you come to me? I could have helped you. You didn’t have to get tied up with . . . whatever it is you’re tied up with.
Then Risa realized that Cherelle had come to her, and in doing so had sicced a thug on her.
Maybe she didn’t have any choice.
Risa’s mouth turned down. You always had a choice.
And sometimes the choice you made was bad.
“Why wait for night to check the house?” she asked.
Shane looked at her with jade green eyes that had both comfort and shadows in them. “Because Ian doesn’t have a key.”
“Then why not phone in an anonymous call for help from that address? Or tell the cops that whoever killed Cline went there?”
“Ian will do just that after he makes sure there aren’t any more gold artifacts inside the house.”
“But—”
“Dana’s orders,” Shane said, ignoring the interruption. “She doesn’t want the artifacts scooped up or lost in the bureaucratic shuffle by a system that doesn’t haven’t the faintest idea of the gold’s cultural worth.”
“ ‘Buy, Sell, Appraise, Protect,’ “ Risa said, remembering Rarities’s motto. “The art comes first and the client second.”
“I knew that when I signed on. It’s
why
I signed on.”
Smiling faintly, she leaned her head against the leather upholstery. “But you work very hard to look like a sleazy collector. You aren’t.”
“Would crooks approach a Boy Scout with stolen cultural artifacts?”
“No, but most people care too much for their reputation to ruin it by looking dirty.”
A lift of Shane’s shoulder told her how much he cared about his good name.
Risa went back to drumming her fingers against her thigh. “What if someone comes back to the house before dark?”
“Ian is watching it.”
“Do you think Cherelle is there?” Risa asked before she could stop herself. “Do you think she’s hurt? If she is, shouldn’t we . . . ?” Risa closed her eyes and took a careful breath. No matter what Cherelle had done, it was hard to sit and do nothing while her friend might be in pain. Or worse. “Shouldn’t we break in?”
Shane took Risa’s hand to still its restless motions. Her fingers were cool. He warmed them between his palms while he waited for her to settle. He knew what was worrying her. She was imagining her friend on the run, hurt, hiding, needing help. All those warm and fuzzy feelings left over from childhood running smack up against the cold edges of adult reality, and not a damn thing to be done about any of it.
“I’m okay,” she said on a sigh. “Really.” Her attempt at a smile turned upside down. “But one way or another it’s been a big ol’ bitch of a day. What really grinds on me is that it’s not over yet.”
Slowly he smoothed her fingers against his cheek. “The neighbor didn’t see anyone but Mrs. Seton come or go. If Cherelle and Mrs. Seton didn’t get along—and, according to the neighbor, they didn’t—it’s not real likely that Cherelle would go there if she was hurt.” He kissed Risa’s fingers and released them. “Especially when she had a friend like you to go to.”
“You mean stupid?”
“No. Generous.” More generous than Cherelle deserved, but he wasn’t going to add to Risa’s unhappiness by saying it.
She shifted and raked her fingers through her short black hair. “Damn, I hate not knowing. Wondering. Waiting. She could be hurt.”
“It’s far more likely that no-good Tim is the one who left his blood on the pawnshop floor.”
Risa knew that was true. It just didn’t make her feel any better.
“Come on,” Shane said. “Let’s see if Shapiro is home.”
“The sign says ‘closed’.”
“Shapiro lives above the shop,” Shane said.
“How do you know?”
“You don’t want to know,” he said, thinking of a spectacular piece of Mayan gold he had bought from Shapiro in his upstairs quarters. After hours, of course. Shapiro did his most profitable work then.
“You sure I don’t want to know?”
“Yes.”
Risa shut up and followed him toward the shop that was closed up tight in the middle of the business day.
Without so much as looking around to see if anyone was watching, Shane sauntered past the shop, around the corner, and into the alley where full trash bins awaited pickup. In addition to a secondhand-clothes store, a used-office-furniture store, and a shoe-repair shop, there were two cafés and a taco stand opening onto the alley. The trash bins gave off odors that flies found irresistible.
Shane wrapped his hand in his jacket and tried the back door of Shapiro’s Loan and Pawn Shop. It wasn’t locked. He pushed it open, pulled Risa though, and shut the door again. Voices came from somewhere overhead.
The smell wasn’t any better inside. If anything, it was worse.
“Shit,” Shane said very softly. “Stay here.”
“But—” Her objections dried up when she saw the gun in his hand.
The stairway risers were covered with linoleum that had been worn through to the black underlayer and from there right down to the boards. He went up them quietly, keeping to the side of the steps where they were less likely to creak.
Shapiro was in front of the TV. A tipped-over, empty quart of expensive bourbon lay on the couch next to him. The actors on the afternoon soap opera were humping tastefully beneath the sheets. When their choreographed cries faded, the action cut to an ad for toothpaste. Shapiro didn’t react.
Shane thought the man was dead. It certainly would account for the smell. Then he heard the faint bubbling of a snore and realized that Shapiro was dead, all right.
Dead drunk, so out of it that he had filled his pants like a baby.
Las Vegas
November 4
Late afternoon
S
hane’s office was cool,
well furnished, and smelled like glory after hours spent on the dusty streets and in the ripe alleys of Las Vegas. Risa sat with her head resting on the back of a sea green brushed-leather couch and tried not to worry about Cherelle.
“So far,” Shane said to Ian and Niall, “we’ve got one dead bottom feeder, and he’s the only one that matters. He’s the point where the gold entered the system. We’re assuming it went from Cline to Shapiro but can’t prove it because Shapiro says his computer crashed and took all his records, and that’s why he got drunk.”
“Do you believe him?” Niall asked.
Shane laughed.
“Want me to squeeze him?” Ian asked.
“Short of beating the crap out of Shapiro—”
“Dana frowns on that method,” Niall cut in.
“—we’re stuck. Like Covington, he has deniability, lawyers, and has been around this track before,” Shane finished.
“Don’t forget Frank Firenze,” Ian said.
“The one who was following us in the red car?” Risa asked.
“Yeah. By the time I got his name, he wasn’t following you anymore. I called and asked him why he was following you. He didn’t know what I was talking about, his car had been in the shop, he wouldn’t follow you in the future, good-bye.”
“If you see him tailing you again,” Niall said to Ian, “let me know. Otherwise . . .” He stretched and rubbed his short, dark hair. Even the corporate jet cramped his long frame, but Dana wanted the gold and that was that. “We’ll concentrate on the three other bottom feeders who are running around with the kind of treasure that the British Museum is screaming is rightfully theirs.”
Risa was still flinching at the description of Cherelle as a bottom feeder when the rest of Niall’s words sank in. She sat up in a rush. “What? I missed that part. When did the British Museum get in on the act?”
“As soon as we put out pictures on the Net,” Niall said, “the Brits jumped on them with both feet, yelling ‘Mine, mine, mine!’ The Irish leaped in right after, then the Austrians and—”
“The Austrians!” Shane interrupted.
“Hallstatt and La Tène,” Risa said. “Right?”
“Right,” Niall said.
Shane snorted. “Nice try. Doesn’t fly.”
“Hey,” Ian said, “when it’s an international pissing contest, all that matters is volume, not quality.”
“You’re brighter than you look, boyo,” Niall said to Ian.
“That wouldn’t be hard,” Shane muttered.
Ian flipped him off without real interest.
“As Dana would say, ‘Shut it, children.’ “ Niall bent down and pulled a sheaf of printouts from a battered canvas map case that was older than he was. “Rap sheet on Timothy Edgar Seton, Cherelle Leticia Faulkner, and Cesar Firenze Marquez, street name Socks.”
“Firenze?” Shane said. “Interesting.”
“Any relation to Frank Firenze?” Ian asked.
“Probably. The Firenze family was supposed to be Mob in Vegas back in the bad old days,” Shane said. “But they’re superclean now. The Gambling Control Board wouldn’t have it any other way. John Firenze—the head of the family—has a business degree and all the right political connections.”
“Maybe that’s what Frank was after—Socks and the gold,” Ian said to Risa. “When he saw you looking in all the wrong places, he gave up on you.”
She barely listened. She was still reeling from hearing Cherelle’s middle name for the first time. “I didn’t even know she had one.”
“One what?” Niall asked.
“Middle name,” Shane said before Risa could. “Cherelle’s. Leticia.”
Ian looked from Shane to Risa and shook his head sadly. “It’s already started.”
“What has?” Niall asked.
“Finishing each other’s sentences. Reading each other’s minds.” He glanced at Niall. “Like you and Dana. Enough to make a man swear off women.”
“Your sentences could use some finishing,” Niall retorted, scanning the first printout for the highlights. “This Socks is the kind of boy who keeps the penal system in business. In and out since he was ten. He’s been on the streets a whole eighteen months now.”
Risa rubbed her temples. “Will wonders never cease.”
“Hey, it’s a record,” Niall said. “Most time he’s spent on the outside since he graduated.”
“High school?” Ian asked.
“Juvie,” Niall said. “Once he turned sixteen, he started going away for longer times as an adult. Hard time.”
Shane went to the wet bar, pulled a bottle of sparkling water out of the small refrigerator, and handed it to Risa. She gave him a surprised look that told him she’d just figured out she was thirsty and wondered how he’d known.
Ian gave her an I-told-you-so smile.
“Is that where Socks picked up Seton?” Shane asked. “In jail?”
Niall nodded and scanned the page rapidly. “Cellmates. Socks is suspected of shanking an old guy in prison. No proof. No charges.”
“Shanking?” Risa asked.
“Killing him with a homemade knife,” Shane said.
She grimaced as she unscrewed the bottle top. “Nice guy.”
“Oh, he’s a sweetheart,” Niall agreed. “Armed robbery the last time out. Assault and battery before then. Burglary. Attempted rape. And after his dance through the Golden Fleece, you can add kidnapping, burglary, assault, and attempted murder. Car registered in Nevada. Nevada driver’s license suspended for driving under the influence. No wife. No kids to speak of. No home address. Mother dead. Father a drunken small-time crook whose specialty was drying out in county jails in between running cigarettes from Indian reservations and selling them out of his trunk at swap meets. But that was only when he wasn’t breaking legs for loan sharks.”
“Hard to see someone like Socks having the contacts to steal the kind of high-end antiquities Smith-White sold us,” Risa said. Water gurgled lightly as she raised the bottle to drink. A lemony tang spread over her tongue. She gave Shane a grateful look and decided she might forgive him for being overly protective. “Where would Socks find that quality of goods? Ditto for Cherelle. What about Tim?”
Niall grunted. “I doubt that Timothy Edgar Seton had them lying around the house. A really pretty face and a badly spotted soul. Underage drinking and gambling. Statutory rape and accessory to armed robbery. No high school graduation, but he went to the Gentleman’s Deal, an expensive training ground for casino dealers and ‘escorts.’ Dealt blackjack, slept with women who paid his bills, buddied around with the hard-asses. His mother is Miranda Caroline Seton, never married, lives at 113 Oasis Lane in a house registered to a rental company. Father not listed on birth certificate. No other relatives. Seton lists his mother’s place as his home address. Driver’s license. No car.”
Ian made a sound of disgust. “I’m not seeing any road to gold in Tim’s background.”
“Does credit count?” Niall asked. “Seton has four active credit cards. All maxed and late.”
“I’m shocked,” Shane said. With a sharp motion he twisted off the top of another bottle of water. “Where are the bills sent?”
“His mother’s place.”
Shane took a long swallow of water. He was still trying to wash the taste of Shapiro’s apartment and Cline’s death out of his mouth. By tomorrow, cop reports would be entered on the central computer. Whatever the cops knew, Shane would know, thanks to a boyhood spent trying to please—and surpass—Bastard Merit, king of the hackers.
“Cherelle Leticia Faulkner,” Niall said, picking up another sheet of paper. “She’s done a few nights with the county mounties for vagrancy, prostitution, shoplifting, petty grifting. The kind of childhood that a muckraking tabloid would love to cry croc tears over. Foster homes, abuse, more foster homes, suspected abuse, finally landed in an Arkansas trailer park and stuck for almost eight years. She ran away at seventeen with a drug salesman who sold illegal stuff along with the legal. After that she dropped off the scope. No marriage license. No known kids.”
Risa didn’t realize she was rubbing her temples again until Shane stroked his hand over her hair. Listening to Niall’s deep, slightly rough voice recite the bare statistics of Cherelle’s life made Risa’s throat ache. Nowhere did she hear the laughter or see the sparkling mischief and lightning quickness of a much younger Cherelle.
“I’ll go back to the Seton house at dark,” Ian said. “I don’t expect to find anything, but it’s a base we have to cover.”
Niall looked at Shane, “You’re sure these three jokers were the source of your Druid gold?”
“Yes.”
“Would it hold up in court?”
“Not with Cline dead. But I’m sure.”
Niall’s mouth turned down.
Things that go bump in the night.
He had learned not to question them. “Right. So we’re sitting here with four gold pieces the Brits are screaming at Uncle Sam to hand over.”
“What’s their proof of ownership?” Risa asked.
“They’re cobbling it together as fast as they can.”
“They better cobble up a beaut,” Shane said. “In the absence of clear provenance, possession counts for a lot.”
“I’ll let you explain that to April Joy.”
Shane’s dark eyebrows went up. April Joy was one of Uncle Sam’s up-and-comers in the murky sphere of geopolitics. She was intelligent, pragmatic, beautiful, and utterly ruthless when the job required it. Given the people she played with, that was most of the time. A few months ago she had tried to recruit him for a sting against the Red Phoenix triad that involved using Tannahill Inc. as a laundry for dirty money. He had declined. She hadn’t liked it, but she didn’t have any leverage on him, so she’d taken his refusal like an adult.
“I thought she was working on Asian gangs that were penetrating the U.S.,” Shane said.
“She is.”
“What does that have to do with Celtic gold?”
“Good question,” Niall said. “Be sure to ask her if you see her.”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” Shane said. “I’m not getting in that tiger’s face unless she gets in mine first.”
“Your mother didn’t raise any dumb ones,” Niall said, grinning.
“Actually, it was my father who taught me how the world really works.”
The careful neutrality of Shane’s voice made Risa wince. She had always felt she’d missed something by not knowing her parents. Then again, from what she’d heard about Shane’s father, maybe she was better off.
“What’s the basis of the British claim on the gold artifacts we bought?” Risa asked.
“Probability,” Niall said. “For damn sure they didn’t originate in, say, Africa.”
“If origin was the only requirement for ownership, the contents of the world’s museums would undergo massive redistribution,” Risa said.
“That’s why we have politicians and bureaucrats—they swap favors and tell us peons where to send the goodies.”
“Speak for yourself,” Shane said. “I’m not sending that gold anywhere on the say-so of some D.C. political hack who wants a free tour of London in return for sticking it to me over the gold.”
“That’s why you wanted me to bring the goodies back, isn’t it?” Niall asked, smiling.
Shane’s answering smile would have looked good on a crocodile with a full belly. “From time to time Rarities Unlimited has to trade favors with governments in order to survive. I don’t.”
“Sure you do, boyo. You just haven’t been brought to it yet. Hell, even your old man finally learned to bend his knee to Uncle Sam.”
“I’ll savor that image all the way to Sedona.”
Risa sat up suddenly. “Sedona? I’m going with you.”
“I never doubted it.” Shane’s mouth turned down. He didn’t want her to go, but his instincts said not only that she would go but that she
should.
“What’s in Sedona?” Ian asked.
“The last known address for Cherelle Leticia Faulkner.”