Client On The Run (A Nick Teffinger Thriller)
Page 14
“Do you actually think that’s still on?”
Coyote shrugged.
“I don’t know. I’m going to wait and see.”
“Well, you’re going to have a long wait.”
She turned and left.
Coyote shouted after her, “By the way, how does it feel?”
She stopped and turned.
“How does what feel?”
“Walking around on the dock and knowing you won’t drown if you fall in.”
Yardley ignored her; but four steps later she said over her shoulder, “It feels good.”
“Show me,” Coyote shouted.
Yardley stopped and focused on the woman.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means, show me.”
“You expect me to jump in the water for you?”
“If you do, we’re even,” Coyote said. “You don’t have to bring any wine tonight.”
“We’d be even?”
“Right.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Because I swear I’ll do it, if that’s the deal.”
“That’s the deal. Go ahead.”
Yardley walked back to a vacant slip, stepped out of her flip-flops and jumped into the water. Then she muscled herself up onto the dock, picked up her flip-flops and headed to the sailboat without saying a word or looking back.
There.
Done.
They were even.
No wine tonight.
No more Coyote.
54
G -Drop didn’t show up for the concert. That didn’t derail the party afterwards, though. In fact, if anything, everyone was even more eager to go—to get in on the chat, to be seen and heard, to be a part of the night when G-Drop vanished. So far, everything was going exactly as it should. Everyone who was supposed to show up did show up—the DJs, bartenders, caterers, security, limos, escorts, etcetera. Every stripper in the club wandered upstairs between sets, where the serious money was.
Dalton got drunk, drunker than he should have.
He didn’t care.
He deserved it.
The last couple of days had been rough.
Most people there didn’t know him, but figured out that he was someone important, given his uninhibited access to the VIP room.
Young beauties walked up to him.
They said naughty stuff in his ear.
They rubbed their bodies on his lap.
They pulled tits out of their blouses and rubbed them on his chest.
That was in the main room.
The VIP room was cranked up several notches higher. There were at least twenty nude women in there, grinding and teasing, straddling the men and one other, getting their freak on. A thick marijuana haze set a nice base for cocaine and ecstasy. King Kong woofers pounded a heavy bass into the air.
Two woman—one black and one white—made out on a sofa.
Neither wore a stitch of clothing.
Dalton walked over and squeezed between them.
“Don’t let me stop you,” he said.
They didn’t.
They climbed on his lap and continued.
Their faces were so close that he could feel the warmth of their breath. They kissed each other, hard and deep and wet. Every so often one of them licked Dalton’s face or squeezed him between the legs.
He played with their bodies as they made out.
Then his cell phone rang.
55
T effinger left announcements on his answering machines for home and work, telling anyone who called that he’d be in New Orleans for the next several days—but leave a message. He set suitcases on the driveway next to the Tundra and left them there until it was time to head to the airport. He told his neighbors to watch the house because he’d be in New Orleans for the next several days. He printed a map of New Orleans from the web and set it on his computer desk, facing the window, in clear view if anyone looked inside. He left the curtains pulled back so the looking would be easy.
There.
Done.
That was a start to let the black woman know where he was going, short of spraying it in red paint on the front door.
Not that any of that would probably work.
So he had an even better plan for tomorrow.
Most of it would take place in New Orleans.
But also, on the Denver end, Geneva Vellone would tell FM 104 Hot Talk listeners tomorrow morning that her new co-host, Jessie-Rae Oceana, would be absent for several days—in New Orleans.
Jessie-Rae opened the passenger door of the Tundra, looked around for snake remnants and found none. “Who cleaned the interior?”
Teffinger rolled his eyes.
“A few people think I’m an okay guy, but no one thinks I’m okay enough to clean poisonous snake guts with me.”
She chuckled.
“I would have helped.”
“Not if you’d seen it,” he said.
They headed for the airport with three suitcases and a carryon bag that had the voodoo dolls inside. “It’s going to be a little weird if the security people make you take the dolls out,” Jessie-Rae said.
Teffinger raked his hair back.
“I already know they will,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s the way my life works.”
Five minutes later he pulled into thick 6th Avenue freeway traffic.
An 18-wheeler came out of nowhere and rode his bumper.
“Look under the seat and see if there’s a rattlesnake,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because there’s a truck on my tail,” he said. “That’s how it starts.”
She punched him in the arm and played with the radio buttons until she landed on an old Pussycat Dolls song, “Buttons.”
Somehow they flew all the way to New Orleans without dropping out of the sky and landing in a fireball. Neither of them had ever been there before, so after they checked into the hotel they headed over to the French Quarter to see if it measured up to all the hype.
A humid twilight sky hung overhead.
The city lights popped on, one by one.
Southern jazz spilled out of bars.
Loose.
People were everywhere.
Drunk.
Celebrating life.
Bar hopping.
The street had a feel to it, unlike anything Teffinger had experienced before—some type of rough mixture of history, music, food, chance encounters and danger. A feeling that made him want to drag Jessie-Rae into an alley, right here, right now, and rip her shorts off.
He didn’t, of course, because there were probably rules against that here.
But he did slip his hand down to her ass every now and then. She linked her arm through his, nestled in, and said, “This place gets me horny.”
“Good, that’s all part of my evil plan.”
People stared at Jessie-Rae as they passed, and not just the men, transfixed by her face, her body, her movement.
Most of the guys threw Teffinger a darting glance, to see who was with this beauty, and to gauge whether they could replace him if given a chance. Teffinger detected a few challenges, but not many.
He spotted a no cover sign and said, “There’s my name.” They went in. The place was big, dark and crowded. On stage was a young woman who looked and sounded a lot like Amy Winehouse. Teffinger immediately fell in love with her voice and her face.
He drank Bud Light.
Jessie-Rae drank wine.
A half hour later, Teffinger collided with a man as he pushed through the door of the men’s room. The guy was strong and bigger than him. He wore a blue bandanna.
“Sorry,” Teffinger said.
“No problem.”
When Teffinger came back out, he looked around for the guy. For some reason he seemed familiar, as if Teffinger had seen him before or maybe even knew him. The guy was gone, or at least not obvious if he w
as still here.
An hour later, he took Jessie-Rae to their hotel—the Cajun Blue—cranked the AC all the way up, and took his time with her.
She came twice and screamed louder the second time.
Hours later, he woke up.
It was the middle of the night.
The room was dark.
Jessie-Rae was next to him, lying naked on top of the covers, breathing deeply. A soft light wove through the window and accented the curves of her body.
Teffinger turned onto his back and closed his eyes.
He pulled up an image of the guy from the restroom. He pictured the guy without a bandanna. For some reason, he envisioned a scar on the guy’s forehead. When he did, the man looked a lot like the one who had been stalking Lindsay Vail.
The man no one from Denver had called about yet.
The one who was probably from out of town.
The pirate.
56
C oyote was still on the Searay when twilight settled over the marina. The heat of the day evaporated into the thin Rocky Mountain air and left a perfect temperature in its wake. Jimmy Buffet’s “Cheeseburger in Paradise” drifted over from a boat called Legal Add Vice on B-Dock.
Yardley was nervous.
She hadn’t bought any wine today, convinced that there would be no temptation to visit Coyote tonight. Now, as darkness approached, she wasn’t so confident.
She headed over to the beach and walked on the water’s edge in bare feet. A sandpiper scooted ahead of her on pretzel-thin legs. With most of the boaters gone, the lake hardly moved. A few miles to the west, the Colorado plains rose into the foothills, which cut a jagged swash of purple along the horizon. If Yardley didn’t go over to visit Coyote tonight, the woman would probably leave in the morning.
What to do?
She spotted a flat rock and skipped it.
Six hops.
Not bad.
Clouds hung over the mountains, meaning there would be a sunset tonight.
Suddenly her cell phone rang and Coyote’s voice came through. “Just because we’re even doesn’t mean you can’t come over.”
Yardley stopped.
The sand was squishy.
She wiggled her toes.
“I’m actually thinking about it,” she said.
“Well stop thinking about it and just do it.”
On the walk back to the marina, Yardley’s phone rang again. She thought it was Coyote, telling her to hurry up. But it wasn’t. It was someone she didn’t know.
A woman.
“Cotter down at the Ink Spot told me to call you,” she said.
Cotter—wife-beater shirt, beer gut.
Ink Spot.
This must have something to do with the guy she was trying to find—Mr. Scar-On-The-Forehead.
The pirate.
“My name’s Dawn Hooker,” the woman said. “Cotter has a picture of a guy up on his wall. I was in there today and recognized him.”
“You did? Do you know him?”
“Sort of,” she said. “I used to work in a tattoo shop called Body Art, down on Santa Fe. I gave the guy a tattoo there about five years ago.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“No. I’ve been trying to think of it, but I just can’t remember.”
“Do you think someone else at the place would?”
“It closed down, I don’t know, three years ago, maybe.”
“It did?”
“The owner robbed a bank,” Dawn said.
“Oh.”
“He didn’t do a very good job.”
“Understood,” Yardley said. “Would you remember the guy’s name if you heard it again?”
She paused.
“I don’t know. Maybe—”
“I have a list of names I’d like you to take a look at,” Yardley said. “Would you be willing to do that?”
“Sure. No problem. By the way, the tattoo that this guy wanted—it was really sick. That’s why I remember him.”
“Sick how? What was it?”
The woman told her and Yardley’s forehead tightened. “Did you take a picture of it?”
“Yeah, but that stayed at the shop. It’s gone.”
“Could you sketch it for me?”
Yes.
She could.
It wouldn’t be perfect.
But Yardley would get the general idea.
“I’ll do that tonight,” Dawn said.
“You’re an angel.”
The woman chuckled.
“I’ve been called a lot of things, but that’s never been one of ’em.”
They made arrangements to meet in the morning and then hung up.
Coyote wore a short, white, button-down dress that hugged her body.
Very sexy.
As soon as Yardley stepped on board, Coyote gave her a quick kiss on the lips. “I’m still officially on duty,” she said. “So don’t tell me anything you don’t want me to know.”
“Is this legal?” Yardley asked. “Getting your target drunk?”
“Probably not, so don’t tell anyone.”
They drank screwdrivers.
Coyote loosened more and more of her buttons as the night got darker. A white thong started to peek through with more and more regularity.
DAY FOUR
Thursday
July 15
57
D alton didn’t get up to leave the party until three in the morning. Just as he did, a buxom brunette with hypnotic brown eyes came up and said, “Isn’t it exciting?”
“What?”
She ran a finger down his chest.
“What I’m going to let you do to me.”
They took a limo to his LoDo loft, screwed for an hour and passed out. Ordinarily after a night like that, he would sleep for ten or twelve hours. But the phone call from last night still nagged him. He got up at ten, showered, walked to work, poured a cup of coffee and headed straight for Mandy Martin’s office. She wore an expensive white dress with black open-toed shoes.
Her lips were soft rouge.
Her fingernails and toenails were hot pink and flawless.
“How’d the party go?” she asked.
“No one got arrested and no one died,” Dalton said.
She grinned.
“That’s more than I hoped for.”
“Did you ever hear of that Roman guy called Caligula, who was famous for throwing wild sex parties?”
She nodded.
“It was something like that?”
“Let’s put it this way—he could have picked up a few pointers,” Dalton said.
“Sorry I missed it.”
Dalton sipped coffee.
“So what’s the news on G-Drop?” he asked.
Mandy shrugged.
“As far as I know, he still hasn’t surfaced. Apparently his buddy’s AWOL too. What’s his name?”
“Malcolm Smith.”
Right.
Him.
Weird.
“Thanks for getting the other acts to fill in the void,” she said. “It still amazes me how you can always pull things together.”
“Aw, shucks, Miss Mandy—”
She chuckled.
“I never talked money with them,” Dalton said. “Maybe in appreciation, we can pick up the tab for the party.”
She cocked her head.
“What’s the damage?”
Dalton ran the math in his head.
“I don’t know how many of the escorts ended up getting screwed,” he said. “My guess is, all of ’em. We’re probably looking at twenty grand or so, right there. That’ll push the total to forty or thereabouts.”
“I don’t mind picking that up, if no one presses for an addition to their base contract,” she said. “Make the offer today and see what they say. Think they’ll go for it?”
After that party?
He did.
He did indeed.
He shut the office door and called G-Drop’s manager, Alan Raspen.
Raspen was fifty, white, and looked like a longhaired rocker, past his prime, now busy getting bald, pudgy and cynical.
“You heard anything yet?” Dalton asked.
Negative.
“I didn’t share this with you before, but it’s nut-cutting time,” Dalton said. “Did you know that G-Drop is into S&M?”
Raspen hesitated.
Then he said, “I thought he might be.”
“He wanted me to set him up with a submissive here in Denver,” Dalton said. “That’s why he came to town a day early. I set him up, like he wanted. I’m thinking that what happened is that he got all jacked up on drugs and ended up killing the woman. The reason I say that is, I haven’t heard from her and neither has anyone else. I’m thinking that G-Drop and Malcolm are laying low and trying to cover their tracks.”
“You think?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Dalton said. “What I’m going to say next needs to stay with you and not go anywhere else. Is that fair?”
It was.
Absolutely.
“Between you and me,” Dalton said, “if they did what I think they did, they’re not going to be smart enough to cover their tracks. They need help. If they don’t get it, they’ll both end up on death row.”
Dalton paused and let the words hang.
He didn’t need to state the obvious, which was the fact that Raspen wouldn’t be getting a steady stream of checks in the mail if his money cow was in jail.
“What do you propose?”
“I’m willing to help them out,” Dalton said.
“Why?”
“Because they’re going to be grateful as hell and reward me like you can’t even believe,” Dalton said. “The first thing I need to do is find them. Where was Malcolm staying?”
Raspen didn’t know.
“What I need you to do is talk to your contacts or whatever and figure it out. I’m pretty sure it was someplace secluded, rather than a hotel or something; maybe a house rental or something. My guess is that they’re still there, probably trying to clean the place up. And if they’re not, at least I’ll have a place to start tracking them from.”