‘Me?’ I asked.
‘Why not? She wants to take everything she thinks is mine, and you’re with me, so . . . Perhaps she has something against me. I think she fucked Randy.’
I sensed that I was getting in the middle of something with sharp nails. Whatever, there seemed to be a lot of fucking going on here.
‘It’ll come with obligations, though,’ she continued.
‘What will?’
‘Doing Sugar.’
‘Okay,’ I said, as if taking this on board. The truth was that it had been well over eight months since I’d been with anyone, which was plenty long enough for even muscle memory to have amnesia, despite Little Coop’s antics.
‘I need a drink. You mind coming with me?’ she asked.
I still had questions and, I had to admit, one of them was the name of a half-decent bar. ‘Sure,’ I said.
Alabama led the way to the main exit. The guy managing the forecourt said hello to her and immediately took us to the head of the queue for cabs like we were Bally’s royalty. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked. There were plenty of places to drink at Bally’s.
‘Away from here. This is where I work.’ The forecourt guy closed her cab door after she palmed him a tip. ‘Caesars,’ she told the driver.
Outside, the Vegas Strip was just coming into its stride, the sidewalks packed, the neon adding a few degrees to global warming.
‘Tell me more about Randy’s job,’ I said.
‘He ferries aircraft around the country, mostly. Sometimes he goes away for a few days, interstate. Occasionally he flies to other countries. This is his first trip to Australia.’
‘What about Nevada Aircraft Brokers? Did Randy talk much about his job there?’ I took out the card she’d given me.
‘He’s a pilot – he loves flying, but sometimes the hours get him down.’
I turned the card over. ‘And what about his boss, Ty Morrow?’
Alabama’s phone rang. She cut the caller off, but then the cell rang again and this time she answered it. From what I could gather it was a girlfriend, the conversation small talk. Alabama rolled her eyes for my benefit like she wasn’t particularly interested but had to make out that she was. Her phone beeped with a couple of incoming texts. AT&T central.
By the time she was off the phone, we’d pulled into Caesars. I followed her through the casino, heading for the Forum shops, according to signs. Our destination was a place called Shadow Bar. Lined up outside the door was a queue, another one that didn’t seem to apply to us, as Alabama went up to the guy managing it, a black body builder in a black Lycra top with a secret service–style earpiece in his ear, and kissed him on the cheek. Inside, the place was popular but not overpopulated. The barkeeps, mostly Jake Gyllenhaal look-alikes, were finishing a show, flipping bottles, juggling glasses, spinning around, somersaulting. They should have no trouble putting a couple of rocks in a glass, I figured. Once they stopped dancing and started serving, the music selection slowed and the navy-blue silhouette of a woman appeared on each of the pink video screens up behind the bar and began moving to the beat, slow and sensuous. The dancing turned the mood-o-meter to erotic, as did Alabama’s nemesis, Sugar, who I was surprised to see was now also here. She’d changed into a black ultra-mini to go with her shoelace. The dress was a knockout – fitted and cut high at the front, but with a low back, rows of polished stones around the hemline. She swayed a little to the music as she talked to some college types at the bar, occasionally emulating the moves of the women behind the screens. She glanced at Alabama and blew her a kiss. Or maybe it was meant for me. Little Coop thought it was meant for him. Several other women seemed to be with Sugar, all of them tall. Topless talls, I guessed, though they were currently covered. Alabama didn’t seem too pleased to see her bosom buddies, even though I’d gathered from the behavior of the muscle at the door that this was a current favorite watering hole among them.
‘Can I buy you a drink?’ Alabama asked as she claimed a booth well away from her fellow dancers. ‘The least I can do . . .’
‘Sure. Glen Keith with rocks if they’ve got it, Maker’s Mark if they don’t.’
‘Back in a second,’ she said, and went over to Sugar and pulled her aside. The black woman rested her hand in the small of Alabama’s back while they talked, and let it drop six inches or so. Alabama didn’t seem to mind, smiling, engaged. In fact, it looked to me like the two were extra-specially good pals.
‘No Glen Keith, I’m afraid,’ said Alabama when she returned from the bar with two drinks, one of which was nuclear-waste-lime in color. ‘So I got you Maker’s.’
For a moment there I’d thought maybe the Green Lantern thing had my name on it. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief, said thanks and accepted the bourbon. ‘I thought you and Sugar didn’t get on.’
‘We don’t,’ Alabama replied, sipping her Three Mile Island or whatever. ‘You mean our little girl-hug a moment ago? We’ve got a love–hate thing.’
‘Have you been with her?’ I asked.
Alabama hesitated then said, ‘That’s a pretty direct question.’
‘Got a direct answer?’
‘Why’s it important for you to know?’
‘I don’t know what is and isn’t important at the moment.’
Another pause. Alabama sipped her drink. ‘Yes. Twice.’
‘Has Randy?’
‘I don’t know for sure, but Sugar was interested. And she is persistent.’
Glancing over at Sugar, I saw she had her arm around a woman and was laughing at something being whispered in her ear by one of the men in her orbit. She seemed the type that could get anything, and anyone, she wanted.
I pulled the business card from my pocket and changed the subject. ‘Let’s talk about the company Randy works for, about his boss.’
Alabama was shaking her head slowly. ‘Randy hasn’t said much of anything about either, except that there are always plenty of planes around, which he likes, of course. I’ve been out there a few times to pick him up after work.’
‘Have you met Morrow?’ I asked her.
‘We haven’t been formally introduced, but I know what he looks like.’
I looked at Alabama hard. She was undoubtedly hot, but she also seemed pretty clingy. Was she too clingy? Was it possible Randy had had enough and posted the hand himself to throw his needy girlfriend off the scent? Maybe Randy was just across town, living it up, now free to sleep with women who had cellulite, cankles or less than perfect breasts. ‘Is it possible,’ I asked her, ‘Randy staged his own disappearance?’
‘What? No! Why would he do that?’
‘People do,’ I said. ‘It’s not uncommon.’ Was I being unnecessarily cruel putting this thought in Alabama’s head, that maybe she was into Randy more than he was into her? Perhaps, but it did seem to me that two and two were adding up to three and a half here. I ran through the factors in my head:
1. It obviously wasn’t Randy’s hand.
2. Someone had quite possibly managed to get hold of Randy’s ring.
3. Randy was supposedly flying a plane to Australia, which, last time I looked, was a long way from the FedEx box’s origin in Rio de Janeiro.
3.5. Randy’s ring was placed on Thing’s finger and, just in case anyone had any doubts about his health prospects, a ransom note had been included.
My problem was that I had plenty of doubts. This business had the whiff of a hoax about it. If so, was Alabama in on it? And if she was, why? ‘Do you know whether Randy has an insurance policy?’ I asked her, probing this notion.
‘He’s a flyer, so I’d say he would.’
‘You haven’t seen it?’
‘No.’
‘He hasn’t discussed it with you?’
‘No.’
‘Who might the beneficiaries be?’
‘No idea.’ Alabama seemed agitated. Maybe our conversation wasn’t heading in the direction she’d hoped. ‘You really think something else is going on here, don’t you? And you think it has something to do with me.’
Alabama was quite possibly on the level about what she did and didn’t know. And her concern could easily be genuine fear for her missing lover’s safety, rather than the fact that I was rubbing her the wrong way. Nevertheless, I still had a test I wanted to put her through. ‘Did Randy tell you that he was running drugs back in Afghanistan?’
She froze, but recovered quickly and looked me dead in the eye. ‘He wasn’t. That was a lie. I thought you said he was one of the good guys, that you were his friend.’ She gathered her things.
I’d told her that I’d met him. I hadn’t said we’d graduated to friend status. ‘He was court-martialed,’ I continued. ‘The charges were serious.’
‘And they were dismissed,’ she said.
‘The Air Force still kicked him out.’
‘Okay, I think we’re done here.’ Alabama began to get up. ‘I’ll send you a check for your expenses.’
Alabama was a dancer, not an actress, so I was prepared to believe that
she
believed Randy was innocent of drug running. ‘Relax,’ I said. ‘Sit down.’
‘Stick it where the sun don’t shine, buddy.’
‘The story is loaded with inconsistencies. I just wanted to assure myself that . . .’
‘That I’m not one of your inconsistencies.’
I shrugged. ‘Yeah.’
‘Call me when you’re sure,’ she said.
‘As far as I can see, no crime has been committed here,’ I said as she turned to go.
That stopped her. ‘What?’
‘Okay, it might be illegal to courier amputated limbs around the country without a permit or some such, but, aside from that, where’s the crime?’
She stared at me, confused.
‘Look at it this way: the hand – it isn’t Randy’s, so we can reasonably conclude that he still probably has both of his. Also, there’s no concrete proof that the ring is his – even the engraving could be copied, and as far as we know he’s safely cruising along at thirty thousand somewhere over the Pacific. Bottom line, how do we know beyond any doubt that he’s being held captive?’
‘There’s the ransom note.’
‘It says you’re going to hear about where to take the money. Have the kidnappers got back to you?’
‘No.’
The note stated that Alabama would be contacted, but no such contact had been made. It had been close to five days now since she received the parcel.
‘What do you think that means?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe they lost your number.’
‘What?’
‘Silence doesn’t serve the hostage-takers’ agenda. What do they hope to gain with no further contact?’ And while I was on the subject of things I didn’t know, what was the significance of having twenty days to pay the ransom in the first place? Why not seven days, or three days, or twenty-four hours to come up with the money? In my experience, kidnappers gave their victims less time rather than more to produce the cash. It didn’t suit the perpetrators’ reasons for committing the crime to allow authorities the time to track them down and stomp on their asses before they’d split with the dough. Maybe Randy was already dead. Even if he was, that wouldn’t stop the hostage-takers’ attempts to extract a pile of cash from Alabama with assurances that it would be in exchange for his life. Kidnappers demanding large sums of money didn’t usually play fair. No, at the moment I had no idea what the lack of contact might mean. Or pretty much anything else connected with this case.
‘When exactly did you last see Randy?’ I asked her, going back over some details.
‘Nine days ago.’
‘So four days before the package arrived.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, he left on a Sunday – that would make it the twelfth.’
‘Was the fifth the day Randy left for Australia?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you received the package the following Thursday?’
‘Yes.’ Twenty days time from that Thursday would be Wednesday the fifth. I made a note of the date.
‘Who else knows about the package, aside from Marnie?’
‘As far as I know, only you.’
‘And you say you’ve been in contact with Nevada Aircraft Brokers?’
‘Yeah, pretty much every day since . . . since the package arrived. I’ve been asking them to tell Randy to call me.’
‘You didn’t say anything about the ransom angle?’
‘The note said no police. Letting Randy’s boss in on it, the police would’ve been called for sure.’
‘And do you know if Randy’s checked in with them at all while he’s been en route?’
‘They said they haven’t heard from him. But they also said they’re not expecting him to contact them until he lands in Darwin.’
‘Any problems with the flight that they know of?’
‘I didn’t ask them that, not exactly, but they know I’m stressed about it. They’d have told me if they were worried.’
‘When’s he expected in Darwin?’
‘Any time now. What do we do next?’ she asked.
I figured I could just hang around playing the slots and wait for Randy to show up, but that probably wasn’t what Alabama had in mind. ‘We could take the severed hand to the metro police.’
‘I could have done that.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I really don’t know. I thought there might be a better option – you, I guess.’ Her body language suggested having me here was no longer anything to break out the band for. I heard her phone buzz. She checked the caller ID on screen, got excited and plucked it up off the table. I went back to watching the shadow girls working the screens, and Sugar working the floor.
‘What?’ I heard Alabama say, suddenly in shock. ‘Oh my God . . . Yes, yes, of course . . .’
‘What’s up?’ I asked when she ended the call.
She looked at me, her eyes bathed in tears. ‘That was Ty Morrow. It’s Randy . . . Darwin expected him two hours ago but he hasn’t turned up. They think he crashed at sea.’
I
called Morrow back. The guy told me the police had been notified, along with the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Bureau. Beyond that, he said, nothing could be done – not until morning. It was late – or, rather, early – by the time we left Shadow Bar. The place was closed to the public at two a.m., but management kept it open for Alabama and a couple of her close friends from Bally’s. I also stayed back in case I was needed – I wasn’t.
Nevertheless, it was almost three a.m. by the time I hailed a cab for Alabama and her friends, who she’d asked to stay over at her place to keep her company. I flagged down another cab for myself, and a yellow and green Prius pulled to the sidewalk. As I opened the door, a woman slid in ahead of me to claim the back seat. I stood there holding the door, working up to being indignant.
‘You goin’ my way, honey?’ called a voice from inside.
There weren’t many ways to go in Vegas, so there was a good chance I just might be. I bent down to say sure and noticed the black dress with the polished stones around the hemline. Sugar.
‘It’s Vin, right?’ she asked when I hesitated.
‘Yeah,’ I said and got in.
She held out her hand. ‘Sugar.’
‘I know,’ I told her. ‘We’ve met already, at Bally’s, in the change room. You might not remember.’ Her fingers were long and slender, the fingernails real and painted a soft pink, her skin warm, moisturized and fragrant.
‘Sure I remember. But we never exchanged names, so it ain’t official. An’ y’all have seen me naked, so y’all have me at a disadvantage.’
I had, and I’d like to again.
The driver was getting edgy sitting in traffic, banking it up. ‘We headin’ somewheres, folks?’ he asked, half turning in his seat.
‘Where you goin’?’ Sugar asked me.
‘Bally’s.’
‘What do you know, me too. Bally’s, please,’ she said to the driver, then to me: ‘You’re stayin’ there, ain’t you? I heard you say something about it to ’Bama.’
‘Yes.’
‘You a frien’ of hers?’
‘I’m helping her out with a problem.’
‘You’re from back East. I can tell by yo’ accent. That’s a long way to come. Must be a big problem she got.’ Sugar shifted in her seat, uncrossed her leg one way and recrossed it the other, her body curling like smoke, her perfume fresh and imported. She smiled at me, eyes set to bedroom mode. ‘I think I’m gonna like you. ’Bama has good taste.’ Something amused her. ‘I sure liked the taste of Randy.’ She licked her lips. There was no mistaking her meaning.
My collar felt tight. The driver was somehow managing to avoid colliding with other vehicles, despite the fact that his eyes were superglued to the rear-view mirror.
‘I spoke with one of the girls about half an hour ago,’ Sugar continued. ‘She said somethin’ had happened and that ’Bama was upset. Somethin’ about Randy.’
‘You’ll have to ask Alabama,’ I said.
Sugar smiled at me, her lips parting, one eyebrow arched. One leg rubbed against the other. If I’d been required to say anything more at that moment, I probably would have stuttered.
‘Yes, good idea. I’ll do that,’ she continued. ‘So, the important question is, how long will y’all be stayin’ in Vegas?’
A thud followed by a lift under the cab’s front wheels told me we’d hit the ramp leading up to Bally’s forecourt.
‘Until I leave,’ I said, more cryptically than I’d intended.
‘Well, obviously.’ Sugar did that uncrossing thing again with her legs, preparing to get out, the cab coming to a stop. ‘Sounds like longer than a day or two, at least.’
‘Who knows,’ I said. The meter said eight bucks. I gave the driver twelve and asked for a receipt.
‘Maybe we could have a drink. You got a card?’ she asked me.
I handed one over and she held it up to the light. ‘So, Mr Special Agent, y’all have come all the way from Andrews Air Force Base, Washington DC. What’s so
special
about you?’
‘I’ll tell you some other time, perhaps. You probably want to get to bed before the sun rises.’ That’s what I wanted to say, but what came out was, ‘Umm . . . er . . .’ followed by a croaky kind of swallowing sound that ended in a squeak.
‘Can I borrow your pen, please, honey?’ Sugar asked the driver.
The way the guy looked at her told me he’d have been prepared to hand over his Prius.
She made a slow circular motion at me with the pen. I got the message and turned around. She rested the card on my shoulder and wrote on it. Then she whispered in my ear, ‘Use it, don’t lose it,’ and let the card flutter into my lap. ‘Goodnight,’ she said, her door opening.
‘’Night,’ I replied to her bare, smooth back. I fumbled for the card when she was gone. A phone number, ending with an exclamation mark, was penned on the flipside.
Once she’d disappeared from view, and time and space returned to normal, the driver twisted around in his seat and said, ‘So who’s a lucky motherfucker?’
*
The street Alabama and Randy lived on was in Summerlin, a suburb twelve miles northwest of the Strip. The street itself seemed, at best, semi-occupied. Every third house or so was on the market, a faded ‘For Sale’ sign out front with a bleached photo of a smiling agent looking more like a ghost. The front yards of these unsold houses were mostly mini dustbowls of dead plant life and brown grass, the houses looking as discarded and dried out as shed rattlesnake skins. Alabama and Randy’s place was in the middle of a small green belt of occupancy, a little island holding out against the rising tide of foreclosure. A sprinkler system soaked the green lawn of the house next door, a miniature rainbow hanging over a flowerbed bursting with purple and red flowers.
I got out of the rental and went up the short path to the stairs to Randy and Alabama’s veranda. My knuckles were poised to rap on the front door when it opened and Alabama appeared. She didn’t say a word. I caught a glimpse of her eyes as she walked out and made for the car. They were red-rimmed behind a pair of large black sunglasses that took up half her face. Despite the sunglasses, or maybe even because of them, she looked haggard, as much as someone like Alabama could look haggard. I figured she hadn’t slept much, if at all, and if she had it was probably in the old blue jeans and faded Giants t-shirt she was wearing. A red Caesars ball cap completed her ensemble for the morning’s unpleasantness. For me, it was jeans, a plain white tee and runners. I opened the car door for her and she slid in, still without saying a word.
Shortly thereafter we pulled into the lot outside Nevada Aircraft Brokers. Two vehicles were parked outside. They had a federal look about them, that is to say tired and worn out. Alabama didn’t comment on their presence, perhaps because I’d already briefed her on what to expect as we drove there. Keeping us company on the rear passenger seat was the small ice chest and a Bally’s branded bag.
I parked beside a white Ford Explorer with darkened windows and an FAA sticker on the rear bumper, and got out. The desert heat was thick with the smell of kerosene and burned aviation jet fuel. Three hundred yards over on the active runway, a United Airlines 767 lifted its chin and strained for height, its engines grinding through the heat of the morning. I collected the ice chest and bag off the rear seat – I didn’t want the hand fricasseed in the oven the rental would soon become in the morning sun.
Nevada Aircraft Brokers was housed in a large white modular building, gold heat-reflecting film on its windows and front double doors. Behind the flat-roofed box, beyond a mesh fence topped with razor wire, several white executive jets gleamed on the ramp. Alabama and I walked toward the building’s gold-filmed front door just as a man and woman opened it, both in their early thirties, slightly overweight and dressed in a hundred percent polyester. The two walked out, not in any particular hurry, and headed for the Ford Explorer with the FAA decal. The guy smiled at Alabama; the woman gave her a frown. Nothing unusual in Alabama’s universe, I figured.
On the other side of those gold doors the temperature dropped into the low twenties. We stepped into a waiting room that took up half the width of the building, a white Laminex reception desk at one end occupied by a large older woman with brassy hair, and down the other end a frosted glass wall with a door. Behind the woman hung framed photos of executive jets like the ones outside, the pilots visible in their cockpit windows. There was a leather couch to sit on and a low coffee table in front of it scattered with assorted financial and aircraft magazines and newspapers. A coffee machine and a water cooler stood in one corner, and a slot machine held down the one opposite;
SLEEPING BEAUTY
said the colorful lettering on it. Now that I thought about it, there was a musical hum in the air, sprinkled with what I supposed were meant to be magical bells, the same sound I’d heard dominating the reception foyer at Bally’s. A pictorial showed Sleeping Beauty herself comatose on a bed, Prince Charming coming through the window behind her. From the looks of it, Ms Beauty was in for either some morning glory or a rude awakening, depending on how she felt about strangers in her bedroom. The slot took quarters for a chance at winning a cool hundred-thousand-dollar jackpot. I had some change in my pocket – maybe later, on our way out.
The receptionist peeked at us over bifocals, her eyes small in the expanse of heavily made-up flesh around them, like marbles pushed into dough. Chubby gold-ringed fingers paused over a keyboard. She touched a mole on her cheek like it was a button that would switch on recognition, but doing so failed to help her penetrate Alabama’s cunning disguise of sunglasses and ball cap. ‘Can I help you folks at all?’
‘Special Agent Vin Cooper, here to see Ty Morrow,’ I said, placing the bag and esky down and my card on her desk, the gold leaf on the embossed OSI agent badge a nice match for the windows. ‘And this is Randy Sweetwater’s partner,’ I said.
‘Oh,
Alabama
! Is that you, honey? I didn’t recognize you with those glasses on.’
Why did I ever doubt how Clark Kent got away with it?
‘Hello, Carol,’ said Alabama, taking off the sunglasses, revealing red eyes above deep black, sleep-deprived shadows.
‘Oh, you poor thing,’ said Carol. ‘Can I get you something, honey? A cup of coffee? Water?’
‘No thanks, really . . .’
‘Well, whatever you need, just ask. Mr Morrow is busy with some folks. Shouldn’t be long now.’
Carol seemed uncomfortable. I wondered whether it was because we chose to remain standing or the fact that neither Alabama nor I appeared at all interested in playing slots. Whatever, after a few moments she got up, went to the door in the frosted glass wall, opened it and popped her head around the corner. I heard her murmur something in a low voice before turning and informing us that Ty would just be a minute.
Less than a minute later, dark shapes appeared in the frosted glass and the door swung open. Two men in suits that were coffee-stain brown came out. NTSB, I figured, given the authorities Morrow said he’d notified. They turned and said words like ‘thanks’ and ‘we’ll be in touch’ to a short guy in his late fifties wearing polished black shoes, navy-blue suit pants, a pale blue shirt and pink striped tie, loosened at the collar. Had to be Ty Morrow. He looked well kept, like he rolled in money on a regular basis. His tan face glowed with a laser-burnished gloss, and his shaped and dyed black eyebrows sat above light gray eyes that matched the professionally layered silver hair swept back behind his ears. The guy had country club written all over him. But, like they say – mustn’t judge.
‘Alabama,’ he said, putting an arm around her shoulder. ‘I’m
soooo
sorry.’
This apology seemed to confirm Alabama’s worst fears and her hand went to cover her eyes as her face crumpled.
‘Agent Cooper,’ Morrow said, offering a quick handshake as he ushered Alabama into the meeting room. Morrow was Texan, longhorn cows in his drawl. ‘Good of y’all both to come on over.’
He guided Alabama into one of the expensive-looking aluminum and black mesh chairs arrayed around a table, the top of which had been made to look like the skin of an airplane – white, powder-coated and riveted aluminum – the winged NAB logo in the center. I took the chair beside her and put the ice chest and bag on the floor. Morrow sat opposite, hands clasped together in front of him.
‘So, what’s the latest from the authorities?’ I asked.
‘Nothing new, I’m afraid,’ Morrow said. ‘Randy departed Henderson International slightly ahead of schedule, after taking the required break. He was vectored into the airway, cleared to twenty thousand feet. Local air traffic control handed him on to the flight information region for southwest vectors, and he flew on his way. He made all the scheduled stops on his flight plan, as well as all mandatory radio calls, and no problems were reported. Everything was normal until he failed to make the appropriate radio calls approaching Darwin. I received notice that he was missing late yesterday.’ Morrow glanced at Alabama. ‘Ah’m sorry, honey,’ he said again.
‘He make
any
calls in that sector?’ I asked.
‘No. The standard ones departing Henderson Field in the Solomons, but nothing after that.’
‘No Mayday call?’
‘No.’
‘He didn’t phone me from Hawaii or anywhere,’ said Alabama, blowing her nose with a tissue, her face red, her eyes redder. ‘He
always
phones me.’
‘There’s a search underway,’ said Morrow.
I didn’t ask where they were searching. Haystacks didn’t get much bigger than the Pacific. Ask Amelia Earhart.
‘Randy was a great guy and a hell of a pilot,’ Morrow continued, issuing the last rites.
‘What kind of plane was he flying?’ I asked.
‘A Hawker Beechcraft Super King Air 350.’ He opened up a folder, took out a color photo and passed it to me. ‘That’s the actual aircraft. Eighteen months old. Practically new. The type has an unbeatable reputation for reliability.’
A reputation Randy had just dented. I glanced at the photo. The King Air was a large, sleek-looking twin turboprop with a T-tail. Windows down its side indicated that it could take maybe a dozen passengers. ‘What’s the range of a plane like this?’ I asked.