Indigo laughed, “So, Blackhawk didn’t just tell him to look for someone with an electro-magnetic pulse jammer?”
I shrugged. “He comped Blackhawk and Elena a suite for the week-end. Free dinner at his restaurant which sports a famous chef. Gave them money to gamble with, all the bells and whistles. No sense in telling him everything at once.”
“Copy that,” she said. “I guess I will have that drink.” She stood and moved to the bar. She studied all it had and finally made her choice. As she mixed a Grey Goose with tonic she said, “What’s the story on Blackhawk and Elena?”
I was looking at her. Still slim and fit. Hair was longer and lighter. Minimal make-up. She didn’t need it. You’d think a kick-ass Ranger would be kind of butch looking, but not her. Put her in a simple black dress with a string of pearls and she’d be ready for the ball.
“Story is Elena was performing here,” I said. “Place was run down, only one saloon. A lot of the building was closed up. Blackhawk stopped in for a drink, and the rest as they say, is history.”
“He bought it?”
“As long as she came with it. I think he was buying her as much as the place. I never saw it before, but I’m guessing he put a couple hundred thousand into it.”
She walked across the room and sat again. “Where’d he get the money?”
I shrugged. “Never asked.”
“You got a couple hundred thou hanging around? I sure don’t.”
I smiled. “I live a simpler life than Blackhawk.”
“Yeah,” she said. “You don’t have Elena.” She looked at me across the rim of her glass. “Or do you? You with someone?”
“Sitting here with you right now.”
“No wife, girlfriend?”
I shook my head.
She looked at my foot. “You get along okay?”
“I’m used to it. Why are you out?”
“You got hurt. Blackhawk and the others decided they didn’t want a replacement. I got offered a backroom desk job,” she laughed. “Can you imagine?”
“So what have you been doing?”
“Kicked around the coast for a while. Ended up in Vegas. You ever heard of Renny Savullo?”
I shook my head.
“Casino guy. Back in the day he was hooked up with what they used to call the syndicate, but now he’s straight. I worked for him, doing his security.”
“Worked? As in past tense?”
“Yeah.”
“But not now?”
“Two things went wrong. I got bored and he thought he was paying for more than security. Ended up a disagreement as to what I was being paid to do.”
“What then?”
“Thought I’d take a look at the East Coast. Bought an old junk car with salvage papers. Used another name. Started driving. Decided to take a break, ran into the girls, then ran into you.”
“Car’s still at the casino?”
“Yeah, I’m done with it. They’ll haul it off eventually.”
I finished my drink, then set the glass aside. I studied her as she studied me.
Finally, I said, “big coincidence.”
“Yep.”
“This Savullo guy looking for you, for any reason?”
“Nope.”
“He have anything to do with the girls? One of them said she came from Vegas.”
She nodded, “Nikki. Naw, he’s a casino guy. I know the sex trade is big in Vegas, but he’s not into it. Not that I ever saw, anyway.”
I was still watching her. “When super slick came through your door with his two gunnys he said Nikki had something of his. What was he talking about?”
She shrugged. She sat her mostly untouched drink aside. “No idea. Ask her.”
The door opened, and Blackhawk came in. We watched as he went over to the wet bar and opened a bottle of water.
He turned and looked at us. “You guys want to go down and watch Elena rehearse?”
“Love to,” Indigo said. As she stood, the girls came in from the back. Elena had also, somehow, found fresh clothes that fit them. Mostly. They were scrubbed up and without make-up. They looked like what they were. A couple of teenagers. They had dried their hair but not styled it. God, they looked young. They had heard Blackhawk.
“I want to go,” Simone said.
“Me too,” Nikki said.
Blackhawk said, “Come on then.” He moved to the door and opened it, holding it for us.
They started by me toward the door. I stopped Nikki, putting my hand on her shoulder. She looked at me.
“That guy Luis said you had something of his. What is it?”
She looked at me, hesitating. She looked at Simone.
Simone cocked her head. “Tell him,” she said.
Nikki looked back to me. “It’s my phone.”
“He wants your phone? He was going to kill you to get it?”
“Yeah, one time when he was asleep I downloaded his tablet into it.”
“So you were with him?” Indigo asked.
She shrugged. “He was the boss. Every once in a while, he’d take one of the girls with him.”
“What was on the tablet?” I asked.
Again, she shrugged. “I don’t know, but he used it all the time.”
“Why’d you download it?”
She looked at Simone. “Figured if I got in a bind, I could use it somehow.”
“How’d he find out you had downloaded it?” Blackhawk asked.
She looked sheepish.
Simone ruefully shook her head. She said, “Julie. We were doing some blow with Julie and she was messing with your phone, and that’s when you told us. So it was Julie told him.”
I looked at Indigo. She was looking at Nikki. I looked at Blackhawk. He was looking at Nikki. I joined the group and looked at Nikki.
“That’s how they found us so fast,” Indigo said, this time looking at Blackhawk.
7
We were downstairs at the bar. Elena and the band were running through a number, over and over. Elena was a perfectionist.
Jimmy had Nikki’s phone. Jimmy was our resident nerd. We were sitting at the rectangular bar. Nacho was across from me at his stool on the corner. Jimmy had his laptop on the bar with a USB cord attached to the phone. He fiddled with the phone for a while. Finally, he said, “All his stuff is password protected.”
The girls, Indigo included, were mesmerized by Elena. Blackhawk said above the band noise, “Can you get by it?”
Jimmy shook his head. “Maybe, probably not.”
“Can you disable the GPS?” I said.
“I think so,” he said. He fiddled some more. After a few minutes Jimmy set the phone on the bar. “Done. GPS is disabled. I’ve got a friend who could probably get by the password.”
“Call him,” Blackhawk said. Jimmy pulled out his own phone and dialed. As it connected he moved down the bar.
“You think that organization is going to try to find the girls?”
“Working premise.”
“Yeah, somebody whacks your guys and steals your girl, I’d go after them.”
“Prepare for the worst,” he said.
Jimmy came back. “He’s at work today. Says he can come tonight.”
I looked at Blackhawk. “We gonna be here that long?”
“When I disabled the GPS,” Jimmy said, “I put some addresses into the phone. Right now, the phone’s out at Westworld.”
“Westworld?” Blackhawk said.
“Big car show out there. Probably several thousand people milling around.”
I looked at Blackhawk and he looked at me. “You think that’ll do it?”
He said to Jimmy, “You think that’ll keep them off our backs?”
Jimmy shrugged, “No guarantee, but it might throw them off.”
“I think we should find another place first thing in the morning. Figure out how we’re going to handle this.”
“We handle it by eliminating the threat,” Indigo said, turning to look at us.
“You should have done that guy,” she said to Blackhawk. He shrugged. “You sure the surveillance tape was taken care of?”
“I erased it,” Blackhawk said.
“What guy?” Jimmy said. Then he said, “Never mind. I don’t want to know. My buddy will be in tonight, then we’ll know what’s on the phone.”
Blackhawk looked at Nacho. “Put Duane out front. Tell him to hit the button if he sees anyone that looks out of place.”
The button was an alarm that activated a low-light strobe that danced light on the floor behind the bar. It couldn’t be seen unless you were behind the bar. It was used to warn Nacho or Blackhawk that something was up at the front door. Blackhawk had installed it after Detective Boyce had taken a bullet in the parking lot.
We all watched Elena practice another hour, then she broke and went up to take her nap. It was her normal routine. Blackhawk followed her. The band came to the bar for a beer. The girls went to explore the nightclub. Indigo sat at the bar with me.
“Think we could get a beer?” she asked, watching the band drink theirs. They all spoke Spanish. My Spanish wasn’t that good, but I didn’t need to understand their words to see their interest in Indigo. Couldn’t blame them.
“Hey, Jimmy,” I held up two fingers. In a second, he was setting two Dos Equis in front of us. Indigo waved off the glasses he offered.
Sipping hers, Indigo said, “You think we are safe here?”
I sipped mine. “If they are using Nikki’s phone to find us, then probably. If it’s something else, then probably not.”
She grunted. Then she said, “What happened after you lost your foot? I wasn’t on that Op.”
“They flew me out to Germany. Stayed there until I could function. The colonel came to tell me I was out. Told me the unit was dissolved. Asked what I wanted to do, and I said I didn’t know, and I didn’t.”
“So you came back to the States?”
“They gave me some money, not much, but enough to come out here”
“Why here?”
“Arizona?”
She nodded.
“Always had a romantic view of Arizona. You know, cowboys and Indians, the old West. That thing. I wasn’t planning on staying but I wanted to see it.”
“So you live here?”
“You mean at the El Patron? Hell, no.”
She smiled. “Why hell no?”
“Elena wouldn’t allow it.”
“You don’t get along?”
“We get along fine, but she’s not keen on sharing Blackhawk.”
“I could have told her you two are a package deal.”
“Just hooked up again. For the first two years I lived in Phoenix I didn’t know he was here too.”
She looked at me, surprised, “You didn’t know he lived here?”
“Not till the colonel told me.”
She laughed, “Don’t tell me the colonel is here too?”
I smiled, “No, the colonel is living somewhere in Illinois.”
“I heard he was retired.”
“From the unit. But, believe me, he’s still active. Blackhawk and I just did a small job for him, pulling a guy out of Guatemala.”
“He hired you?”
“He has a lot of contacts. Pretty good pay.”
“Maybe I could get in on some of that? How can I get in touch with him?”
“I’ll call him. See if he wants you to have his number. But understand, if you cause him any trouble you’ll have trouble with me. And Blackhawk.”
She leaned back and looked at me. “I love that old man. I won’t cause him trouble.”
“He was pretty hard on you.”
“Hell yes, he was. Because I was a woman. The only woman. And he knew what I was up against. He made me do twice as much for twice as long as you guys. But that’s why I love him. He made me Indigo. So where do you live?” she said, swallowing the rest of her beer.
“Pleasant Lake Marina,” I said.
“On a lake?”
“On a houseboat on a lake.”
“A boat?”
“A houseboat.”
She grinned. “This I gotta see.”
“It isn’t much.”
She slid off her stool. “No, I mean it. I want to see it. What time does Elena start?”
“Not till nine.”
“We have time to kill.”
I slid off the stool, dropping a five. “We have time to kill,” I repeated.
“Cool,” she said.
8
There was a new kid on the shuttle cart. He saw me pull in and park in my slot, so he was waiting as we slid out of the Mustang. The visitors lot was all the way at the top of the hill. The assigned parking for the residents and staff was halfway down. It was still such a long trek that the Marina had shuttles running up and down to transport visitors and their wallets, and residents and their shopping bags. From the parking slot, it was a beautiful view of the large lake. Spreading below were the buildings that made up the large marina bar and gift shop. Roofs white and bright in the sunshine. The gift shop was also a general store which supplied the permanent residents, like me, with staples such as eggs, milk, bread and beer. There were several docks stretching out, including the rental dock on the west side that held multiple boats of various sizes and abilities. Some of the docks were covered. Mine was Dock C. It was uncovered. It housed a number of wet docked pleasure crafts and some houseboats. Most were much newer than my old scow. The previous owner had named my boat Tiger Lily. I never changed it. Yeah, I know. When Boyce wanted to irritate me, which was often, she would call me Peter Pan.
Indigo stood beside the shuttle cart the kid was driving. She was looking at the lake.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “But I’m used to lakes having green grass and trees all around them.”
“Welcome to Arizona,” I said. I slid into the cart. Indigo joined me.
The kid dropped us at the bottom. I tipped him. I took her on a short tour of the marina bar, the gift shop mini-mart and showed her the rental dock. I led her through the unsecure security gate and down my dock. Pete Dunn’s Six Episodes was closed up and shuttered. Pete was a neighbor who bought the boat with the money he had made writing six episodes of a reality TV show. When we reached the Tiger Lily, Eddie’s friend Diesel was lying on the dock in front of my boat. Diesel was a large dark mutt of undetermined breed that had showed up at the marina one day. The dog took a shine to Eddie, the marina handyman, and stayed.
I helped Indigo aboard. Diesel thumped his tail, but that was it. He was watching us but didn’t raise his head. While Indigo was looking at the dog, I disengaged the LED light that informed me if anyone had been, or was, aboard. It wasn’t blinking.
“He yours?” Indigo said.
“Belongs to Eddie,” I said. “Eddie lives in that River Runner across the way there.” I pointed across the water at another dock. “He’s the resident handyman here. But actually, Diesel doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“The dog just runs free?”
“Maureen likes it that Diesel keeps the geese and ducks off the docks. They make a mean mess. He’s the lesser of two evils. If he makes a mess, Eddie cleans it up.”
“Maureen?”
“She manages things here.”
I opened the sliding door to the lounge and ushered her in. The place smelled musty. I turned the air on. “This is it,” I said. “Like I said, not much. I’ll give you the tour, if you have twenty seconds to spare.”
“Lead on,” she laughed.
I stepped into the galley and opened the oversized refrigerator. I pulled two Dos Equis and opened them and handed one to her.
“This is what is called the galley.” I moved on into the hallway. I opened the pocket door to the first stateroom. “This is the guest stateroom,” I said. “Then the head. Nice big shower. And last but not least, the master stateroom.” I moved to the sliding bow doors and slid them open. A breeze immediately hit us.
“I’ve had apartments s
maller than this,” she said. “Nice big bed,” she said with a smile. “And it’s made. You didn’t even know I was coming.”
“Yes,” I said, retreating out onto the bow. “Let me show you the top deck.”
She followed me up the outside winding stairs to the top. I slid the aluminum frames of two chaise lounges over to the railing. I collected two cushions from their locker. She was looking out over the lake, then moved over where she could study the marina.
“Which one is the dog owner’s boat?”
I moved over beside her. “Not really the owner. They cohabitate.” I pointed at Eddie’s River Runner.
“Is he home now?” she said.
“If I know Eddie, he’s out in his skiff, fishing.”
She looked at me. “So you live here all the time?”
“Except when I visit the mansion in Beverly Hills.”
She shook her head. “What the hell do you do? I mean for fun.”
“I read, I fish, I listen to music.”
“Jesus, Jackson, really? I didn’t even see a television. And this place isn’t exactly close to much.”
“Actually, it’s only fifteen minutes to Noterra.”
“Noterra?”
“It’s a large shopping complex at Happy Valley Road. I try to keep it simple.”
“And you don’t have a woman?”
“You mean a full time, night-time woman?”
She looked at me, cocking her head. “That’s a funny way to put it.”
“Sorry, just a line from a movie. No, I don’t have a woman.”
“So you do watch movies?”
“Occasionally.”
“Tell me about the job you did for the colonel.”
I shrugged. “Not much to tell. He was hired to pull a guy out of a rebel village in Guatemala. So we did.”
“Just you and Blackhawk?”
“No, Adam, Echo and Fabian went along.”
She looked at me. Pissed. “Well shit, am I the only one not getting in on this stuff?”
I shrugged. “We didn’t talk much. We met the day before we went in. We were briefed and outfitted. We went in and did the job. We came out.”
“Who was the guy?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody? Someone spent a lot of money to get him out.”
“Yeah, a billionaire named Glick. I’m guessing this guy had info Glick didn’t want known.”
They Called Her Indigo Page 3
