by L. J. Martin
He’s quiet for a moment, giving me a very hard look, then he nods. “Okay, on your word. You know of the Muslim tradition of honor killings?”
4
I’m a bit taken aback as it seems they suspect Rashad of killing his own daughter. I catch my breath, then offer, “I know honor killings well. I appeared before a Courts Marshal because I and my guys, on my orders, cleaned house when a couple of young ladies were being subjected to same. Luckily, I got a general rather than a dishonorable as I had a couple of officers on the panel who had a brain. One of them is still one of my best friends. You’re not suggesting—”
He extends a palm, stopping me. “We’re looking at all options. Obviously Mr. Pointer would not want Rashad to suspect that we had any thoughts along that avenue…nor his daughter, Mrs. Rashad. However, it seems Lina was a little out of hand…dating a Hispanic kid, doing a little dope, embarrassing mom and pop. Mrs. Rashad discovered birth control pills hidden in the girl’s room. So keep it in mind.”
“Ten-four. You were military?”
“Army, wanted tank corps but I was too big. Ended up in artillery.”
“Okay, then ten-four. So, the judge is on top the list as a target, presuming Destroy Satan America are not our guys. Then who?”
“All the bodies are yet to be identified. However, a guy by the name of Baddovic is…was…a minor hustler who may have been the bomber, but we and the FBI suspect that if he was, it was unknowing. He boarded the bus with a heavy duffle…FBI got it off a savings and loan video.
“A bartender aboard worked at The Purple Parrot and was sticking it to the boss’s private poo, but we don’t think that’s motive enough, even though Tony Patrino, an ex-Dallas mobster, was the cuckoldee.
“Scuttlebutt is that one of the nuns, Sister Mary Margaret, overheard a confession given by Gino Giralbaldi, and was not bound by the code of silence. Giralbaldi’s involvement in those Union murders from last year is up before the grand jury now and she’s been…was…subpoenaed to testify. And there’s some other minor crap. It’s all in the binder.”
“That’s it?” I ask.
Pax speaks up for the first time. “Where’s the fifty grand expenses?”
“Let’s head over to the cage,” Butch says, and rises. As we walk, he offers some advice. “Pointer has an accounting background. If I were you I’d have pretty damn good back up, paper, for any expenses you incur. He’ll ask, and if you don’t have documentation, you better have a very good story.”
When we get to the cage, he instructs a manager at a desk behind the three girls working the drawers, “Cut these guys a check,” then turns to me, “payable to?”
“No checks,” Pax interrupts. “Cash will work.”
“Fine, but you’ll sign a receipt.”
“Nope, no check, no receipt, no paper.”
“Hold on.” He moves to a phone on the manager's desk, makes a call, I presume to Pointer, then instructs the manager to pull fifty grand from the drawer. When the rather officious little man gives him a questioning look, he snaps, “I’ll sign the receipt.”
The guy shrugs and heads into a vault.
Butch turns to us. “Keep good track, fellas. I’d hate for us to get crosswise.”
I merely smile, nod, and offer, “Give us a cell number as it seems you’re our primary contact here. We’ll talk daily. If we don’t, there’s something wrong.”
“Ten-four,” he says, and smiles.
“Talk to you tomorrow,” I say, and we turn to leave with twenty-five packets of twenty hundred dollar bills.
“Maybe sooner if we get you an appointment with Merrick. He's typical FBI, no bullshit, a little anal, but a sharp son of a bitch. Meetings with Merrick are pretty one way. Don't expect him to give up much.”
Now it’s detective time. Not our normal gig, but no one knows computers better than Pax and his crew, so our first effort is to find out everything we can about the victims. It’s a start.
The grungy little club is ten blocks from the Strip, east on Flamingo in a strip mall. One of the letters in SANDY’S, the neon sign on the front of the place is out, making it look like the SAND ‘S. But it isn’t as nice as the Sand’s was even at its worst, and its worst got very bad at one time. The Naugahyde seats at the bar are split and spitting horsehair and every table and stool in the joint is out of level. Thankfully, Texas Slim, who owns the place, keeps it forgivingly dark and the music loud and country.
Paula Sanduski, a rather non-descript forty year old, is working the bar as she does six nights a week.
Duane Pemberton, who’d hired Nobel Baddovic, is living in luxury. He’s already spent half the ten grand he’s been paid. He isn’t a gambler, but he does love booze and the ladies, and at five foot six, one hundred thirty pounds, with a very pockmarked face—the ravages of acne from thirty years before—his luck is not particularly good in that department. Unless he has a pocket full of money.
So he is surprised when a rather beautiful young woman half his age climbs up on one of Texas Slim’s barstools beside him.
A hooker, he presumes. Which is just fine with him. His bankroll is still fat.
“How much?” he asks.
She turns and looks him straight in the eye. “That’s a terrible thing to presume. Can’t a girl have a drink in this town without—”
“Hey, hey, I’m sorry. I just thought… You’re a beautiful woman and beautiful women don’t take a stool next to me when there are a dozen more at the bar.”
“Well,” she says, still seemingly offended, “I guess that’s as good an explanation as any.” Then she smiles. “You’re a fine looking man and don’t look like someone who would pay for…for…for attention.”
It was Duane’s turn to smile. “Thank you,” and to lie, “I don’t…I’ve never paid…I just thought—”
She bats her baby blues at him. “Since you thought wrong, I will allow you to buy me a drink.”
“I’m Duane.”
“And I’m Sugar,” she replies, extending a well-manicured hand.
“I'll bet you are,” he says, with a laugh, and is pleased to get a smile in return. Duane, for only the second time in his forty-eight years, begins to think he is about to get lucky without paying for it.
They down six drinks, Duane buys the first four and to his great surprise, after telling him how handsome he is, how generous, and how entertaining, she buys the next two rounds.
Dark comes late in Vegas in June, so when a patron comes in the front door and Duane realizes it is dark outside, he figures it’s time to make his move. She is sure as hell drunk enough, and he is worried he’s so drunk he might not be able to perform.
So he asks, “You live close by?”
“Sure ‘nuf,” she slurs. “Only six bocks...blocks. How ‘bout you?”
He’s in a room in a very cheap motel all the way out on the edge of Henderson, so he is in high hopes she has a place.
He slurs in return. “I’m out at Lake Las Vegas,” he lies, as Lake Las Vegas is a high-class area compared to his digs.
She takes the words right out of his mouth. “How ‘bout a nightcap at my place. We can order a pizza or sometin’. Maybe hit the hot tub.”
“Sounds hunky dory to me,” he mumbles. “I’m too drunk to drive…can’t get another DWI. You got wheels?” he asks her.
“I do, out back in the alley. I can make...can drive...six blocks.”
“There’s no parking in the alley,” he says, looking a little confused.
“There is for me,” she says, and giggles. Then reaches in her purse and grabs a cell phone. “Got to call my girlfriend who was gonna meet me here.”
“Good, I got to hit the pisser.”
“Hurry back,” she says, as she pokes in a number. As he disappears, she says only three words into the phone. “On our way.”
They leave a few bills on the bar, but only a one dollar tip on a tab that's nearly fifty. Paula Sanduski picks up the bills and wants to flip them the middle fi
nger, but doesn't.
5
She meets him at the small hallway where the men’s and women’s rooms reside, and gives him a little buss on the cheek as he exits the men’s room, then drags him out the back door.
As she said, a car is parked only a length away from the rear door of Sandy’s. Duane takes only four steps toward the Crown Vic when a guy, at least twice his size, steps out from behind a big air conditioning unit and drives a ham-sized fist into Duane’s gut…all the way to his backbone. He doubles, gasping, as another guy pops the trunk, then steps over and drives a powerhouse right into his kidney. He goes to his knees, gasping in pain. As they drag him to the rear of the Ford the first guy covers Duane’s mouth and nose with a foul-smelling rag, and he’s inhaling a knock-out concoction.
They slam the trunk and all goes dark on an unconscious Duane.
The second guy hands the girl, who said her name was Sugar, five crisp hundred dollar bills, and admonishes her. “Forget this, Patty. This will get you on a flight to LA like you wanted.”
“I’ll forget it. I will.”
“Don’t even tell your priest or you’ll end up fish food, or sharing a hole with Duane here.”
Her eyes widen, she nods, then runs down the alley the opposite way from where the Crown Vic faces.
One hour and twenty minutes later, well north of town on I 15, the Crown Vic takes an off ramp and kicks dust up on a gravel road another thirty minutes into the desert, then rocks on its soft springs onto a two track a hundred yards off that road.
They’ve not seen another car for a half hour.
The two big men exit and the passenger reaches into the back seat and pulls out a shovel. The night smells of dove weed and dust, and the stars glimmer as they only can in the desert. In the distance, a coyote howls his serenade to the moon, which is only a fingernail sliver in the star-peppered sky.
Duane is still unmoving when they drag him out of the trunk and fifty feet into the sage and mesquite.
“Should I shoot the prick?” the passenger asks.
“Hell no, Vic, too much noise. Bang him in the head with the shovel.”
Vic winds up like he’s batting four hundred. Duane is almost decapitated by the blow.
Vic laughs and turns to the driver. “That did it…what the fuck?”
The .44 mag in the driver’s hand makes a liar out of him, as the roar can be heard for miles across the desert. The big man takes the shot mid-chest and is blown back across Duane’s body, and is still as the lichen-covered rocks nearby before the echo of the shot reverberates from nearby hills.
“Goddamn it, Vic,” the driver mutters, “I should have waited for you to dig the damn hole.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls up an old flip phone and dials. In a few seconds, he says, “Hey, I’m finished up here in about an hour. Went well. How about a drink to celebrate?”
He laughs, and closes the phone.
He sheds his coat, picks up the shovel, and walks a few steps into the desert and kicks at the powdery earth, sighs deeply, then begins digging.
We get a phone call from Butch before valet parking recovers Pax's jeep. It seems Merrick will meet with us, but not until eight p.m.
It's time to go to work...paperwork. Or in this instance, hyperspace work. Computer work.
Paxton Weatherwax, my best buddy and oldest friend, was also a Force Recon Marine, the com guy in our squad...but now a computer expert who’s now an Internet Service Provider with offices in Vegas, Salt Lake City, Bakersfield, Fresno, and Sacramento. Six feet tall, curly black hair, two hundred twenty-five pounds, very, very tough. He’s my main line of communication with the outside world, and keeps my funds available and under the radar by opening accounts in his name and providing me with debit cards and PIN numbers.
Paxton’s brother, Rollie, is a bail enforcement officer in L.A. with lots of contacts. I saved Paxton’s life in Iraq, and Pax returned the favor, so two guys couldn’t be much closer.
Grubner Security LLC, a shell company owned and controlled by Pax, is a front for me. Pax has a left leg almost half an inch shorter than the right due to an AK47 knocking a chunk out of his femur, incurred saving my life. It cost him, but saved me, and consequently I'd get between him and a platoon of bad guys...but don't tell him I said so.
We go back to his office, a two-story storefront on Flamingo, park in the six-car rear parking lot and take private stairs up.
Pax has four employees in this office, and a bank of ominous appearing black servers almost as tall as my six two. Bruce Richardson, the receptionist, is a gay blade, personable as hell, impeccably groomed, and efficient to a fault. And three tech folks. Sol Abrams has been with him the longest and knows a lot about our past sub-rosa activities, maybe too much. But Sol's a great guy and too damn smart for his own good.
As soon as Pax has his butt in a Charles Eames chair, he buzzes Sol who joins us.
And hands him the file.
Pax gets serious. “Sol, I want to know every wart and mole on every name in this file. This is the bus bombing—”
“Bitching,” Sol says with his normal enthusiasm. Sol's a round face guy with faded but still penetrating blue eyes, a smattering of a beard, and full head of black hair. His belly is a little too obvious, even though he regularly does tae kwon do at a local dojo. And claims to run three miles a day, but I'm sure not in the Jesus sandals he normally wears. I think he jogs to the donut shop or more likely to IHOP where he enjoys one of those sickening stacks of hotcakes lathered in caramel and whipped cream.
But he's a good guy, if a bit of a sycophant. And smart won't touch it.
“Okay, in addition to those names in the file, Alex Pointer who's CEO at The Majestic. Rashad Al-Saud and his family...his daughter Lena who, of course, is Pointer's granddaughter, was killed in the bombing and Rashad is Pointer's son-in-law and the casino manager. Forget Nobel Baddovic who's thought to have brought the bomb aboard the bus. I'm doing him myself.”
“You take the easy ones, right.”
“I sign the checks so I take any I want. And I want you into the Majestic's computers and their email accounts. Particularly Pointer's, Rashad's, and that of Butch Flannigan who's head of security at the Majestic. Their personal computers as well. And get into the computer of every Mosque in Vegas. Any questions?”
“Okay if I transfer a couple of mil...chump change...into my account.”
“From Pointer? You'd be feeding the worms in a heartbeat.”
“How about the local cops and the FBI...I'll bet I can open a portal there?”
“Let's not take the risk. At least not yet. But before I leave here about seven fifteen, give me a rundown on Assistant Special Agent In Charge of Counterterrorism Maxwell Anthony Merrick. Just a little background stuff. “
“You want me to put Gilbert and Vanessa on some of it?”
Gilbert and Vanessa are the other two tech types in Pax's Vegas office.
“No, let them take care of biz as usual. And keep this close. I don't want anyone but the three of us to know where we're digging, and how. If you get in a bind with Spanish use Gilbert to translate. And with Arabic, or Farsi, use Vanessa. But let’s keep them out of the loop otherwise. What they don't know won't get them killed.”
“Cool. I'll route it through Taj in Malta and his brother in Mumbai—”
“Cover our tracks. Don't quit there. Bounce it off a half dozen servers, if possible.”
“You know I will.”
“We have an eight o'clock at the FBI building out on West Lake Mead. We'll meet you at nine thirty and buy you a steak.”
“You da man. Where?”
“How about the Via Brasil, it's close. All you can eat.”
“Oy vey, I'll have three inches of file put together by nine o'clock and see you there.”
“From now on, with any matter regarding this project, we'll use Snapchat for communication.”
“Done.”
You couldn't wipe the smile off Sol's fa
ce with a pound of C4. He does love his chow. And Pax knows exactly how to keep him working way overtime. Promise him a bottomless steak platter.
“Check you later,” I say, giving Pax a wave as I head for the stairway.
“Where the hell are you off to?”
“I'm gonna try and check a name off the list. Headed for The Purple Parrot for three fingers of hooch and, hopefully, lots of info.”
“It'll take us thirty minutes to get across town to the Bailey Building.”
“Bailey Building?”
“The John Lawrence Bailey Memorial Building, where the fibbies hang their hats.”
“I'll be back long before then.”
Presuming Tony Patrino, an old Dallas mob guy who's retired to running a loan shark scam or two, lending dough at street rates to local gambling addicts, does not take umbrage to my asking a few questions.
I've been in his joint a few times and know he keeps a couple of enforcers, AKA leg breakers, at his beck and call.
I'll be on my best behavior...unfortunately even that's got me in deep ka ka many times.
6
The Purple Parrot is not as pretty as a purple parrot might might be. It sits behind a potholed parking lot in a building that might have been a 7/11 at one time, now with windows painted black, striped with purple paint, and speckled with beer signs. A six-foot-high plastic parrot stands guard on the parapet over the door. It's way out on Warm Springs Road at the southeast side of Henderson. The lot is not only potholed but littered with Harleys, at least a dozen bikes with gleaming chrome, roaring flames, and reach-for-the-sky handlebars. I should have ridden up on my Sport, but it would have been sneered at.
A sign near the door says “non smoking establishment” which is quickly made a liar by smoke lingering down to belt level. Two pool tables are surrounded by guys in leather vests with an arched Vegas Rollers on the back, who look a little strange as it's a hundred degrees in the shade. They're big, hairy, and ugly enough that I'm not going to mention how stupid they look.
