by Tara Janzen
“And if it wasn’t stolen and could be bought legitimately?” he asked.
“One point five to two million.”
He didn’t whistle at that. He just kept driving.
Two million dollars, sitting in his car.
He’d known life was going to be interesting, being back in Denver, being part of SDF, or at least almost part of SDF, but, man, he’d come up with Esme Alden and a two-million-dollar painting all on his own. And any girl dealing in two million dollars’ worth of art had done damn well by herself, her screwup dad aside. Private investigations on that scale were a few cuts above following errant spouses around with a long lens, or tracking down the guy who hadn’t paid his construction lien.
The sudden vibration of his phone had him reaching in his pocket to pull it out. He automatically looked at the screen before he answered.
“Skeets, wazzup?”
“General Grant, Johnny-boy. He’s here, up on The Beach with a bottle of Scotch.”
Johnny sat up a little straighter behind the wheel. Oh-kay.
He might not have been an official member of the SDF team yet, but he’d been working at Steele Street and living in the annex at the Commerce City Garage for almost ten years, and of the few times that General Grant had come to Denver, he’d only gotten plastered up on The Beach once, when he’d come to mourn J. T. Chronopoulos, one of the original chop-shop boys and one of the original members of SDF.
“Did someone die?” It was a hard question, an awful question, the kind a guy felt in his gut, but with a few of the operators out on missions, anything was possible, and the hard questions always needed to be asked first.
“No. I ran everybody down as soon as I realized where Grant had gone and that the Scotch was missing from the guest suite,” Skeeter said. “He’s called a meeting for the A.M., and he wants everyone here.”
“Red Dog and Travis-” Johnny started, but she cut him off.
“They won’t make it. Senators rule, SDF drools when it comes to fact-finding tours of Third World countries. They stay put.”
“Smith?” C. Smith Rydell was the other operator currently deployed.
“Arriving at Peterson in a couple of hours. Everyone else is either driving in or flying in before dawn, and we’re all meeting up here. Your name is on the guest list.”
The news set him back for a second. He’d expected it, sure, but to hear it.
Hoo-yah … he grinned-except if Grant was here to deliver good news, what was up with the Scotch?
“Yeah, I’m wondering the same damn thing,” Skeeter said, reading his mind-business as usual with SDF’s spooky long-legged blonde. He’d spent enough time with her under the hood of a car not to be surprised when she knew exactly what he’d been thinking.
“Exit,” Esme whispered, pointing up ahead to an exit ramp.
He nodded and pulled over into the right-hand lane.
“Who all’s at the garage?” The building at 738 Steele Street had thirteen floors, seven of which housed cars, mostly American muscle from the sixties and early seventies.
“The jungle boy and I have been working on Mercy all night, and Superman is here.”
“And the meeting?”
“Eight A.M., everybody on board, front and center. Creed and I will be hosting. The coffee will be Jamaican, hot, and strong, and the doughnuts will be fresh from Sugarbombs.”
Excellent. Everything was excellent. He and Skeeter had been living on Sugarbomb doughnuts since he’d gotten home, and Creed’s coffee could stand in a corner without a cup, which was just the way Johnny liked it.
And the timing was perfect. Eight A.M.-plenty of time for him to do the Bleak deal for Esme and still get to Steele Street with time to spare. No one at SDF need ever know he’d spent the night skirting some pretty sketchy edges.
“I’ll be there at seven-thirty,” he said.
“Good. Are you still at the Blue Iguana?”
“Not quite.”
That gave her a little pause.
“Did you get lucky, chico?” She was grinning. He could tell.
“Not quite.”
She let out a short laugh. “Well, if you run out of places to go, come here before you go home. Creed and I could use some help with Mercy’s-”
The rest of her words were lost in static, and then he lost the whole connection.
It happened in the mountains. He could call her back later.
Putting his phone back in his pocket, he slipped off the interstate onto the exit-Genesee, Isaac Nachman in sight, Bleak on the horizon, and in between, him and Easy Alex finally getting where they’d always needed to be, naked in bed.
Yeah, he needed that. He’d needed it for a long time, and never more so than since he’d gotten back from his last tour of duty.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Standing in the doorway between the hostess desk and the rest of the restaurant, Dax checked out the people sitting in the bar at Mama Guadalupe’s. Then he checked his watch. Charo had made good time once he’d gotten her off the interstate. He was early.
He let his gaze go back over the people filling up the tables. The place was packed on a Friday night, with music blaring, folks dancing, drinking, eating, and talk, talk, talking. Jazz was the music, Santa Fe gourmet was the food, and Mama Guadalupe’s was obviously the place to be. Mama herself was working the tables at the front of the house, charming the diners and snapping her fingers at the waitstaff to keep them moving. Dax knew it was all for show. The young men didn’t need the added incentive. They had to work long and hard to get out of the busboy crew and into the ranks of Mama’s howlingwolf waiters. Not only did the job supply them with plenty of ready cash, there wasn’t a girl on the west side who didn’t want to date one of Guadalupe’s waiters. The job was cool, always had been.
“Sir? Mr. Killian?”
He looked down at the young, dark-haired hostess standing at his elbow. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen and was dressed very neatly in a black skirt to her knees, a white button-up shirt, and a black vest with a name tag pinned to it-Dulcinea.
He agreed. She looked real sweet with her hair swept back in a pair of tidy braids, her warm smile, and her Holy Cross earrings.
“Yes?” he answered, only slightly surprised to hear his name. The city of Denver would have to undergo a pretty dramatic population change for him not to run into people he knew, especially in this part of town.
“Señor Rick requests your company for a drink.” She pointed to the far dark corner of the long bar, and Dax grinned. He’d be damned. Rick Graydon, the only gringo in the place, was still in the place.
“Gracias.” He smiled at the girl before heading across the room.
“Dax.” The bartender greeted him with a smile, a bright flash of false teeth. Dax knew Rick kept the choppers by his bed at night in a cup of peroxide with a touch of water and a whisper of bleach- shaken, not stirred. The guy was seventy, if he was a day, still lively, but definitely old enough to be a piece of Denver history, and he very freely shared the secret of his blindingly white smile with anyone willing to listen.
“Rick.” Dax reached across the bar and shook the guy’s hand. The older man’s grip was still strong, like an ox. Rick was rightly infamous for his mescal margaritas. “Good to see you still working.”
“ ’Til I drop, Dax. ’Til I drop, probably right here behind the bar.”
Dax slipped a five across the bar, and Rick reached under his side and slid a pack of cigarettes back over to him.
To Dax’s knowledge, Rick was the only importer of Faro cigarettes in the state. He was also the only importer of Oaxacan mescal. Both sidelines were illegal, Rick’s idea of a pension fund for his old age. Considering how long he’d been in the “import” business, Dax figured he must have quite a fund sitting somewhere-knowing Rick, probably buried in his backyard.
“Can I get you a beer? On the house.”
“Not tonight, thanks, but will you keep an eye out for my
cousin? I’m supposed to meet her here, but I have another stop I need to make.”
“You mean that little Esme gal?”
“Yeah, that’s the one, but you be careful with her, Rick. She’s all grown-up now and meaner than a junkyard dog.”
Rick burst out laughing, and Dax grinned.
He wasn’t kidding, not really.
“Sure, Dax. I’ll watch for her, let her know you’ve been in and want her to stay put.”
“Thanks, Rick.”
A couple of minutes later, he was back in Charo and heading toward Speer Boulevard and LoDo. He hadn’t wanted Esme going by the office, in case Bleak still had some jerk staking out the place, but Dax wanted to go by the office, in case Bleak still had some jerk staking out the place. He’d given it quite a bit of thought on his way up from the Springs, and getting his hands on one of Bleak’s guys seemed like the most expedient method available for gathering intelligence on tomorrow morning’s deal, some real hands-on, in-your-face, up-close-and-personal intelligence gathering.
Dax’s grin returned. Without a doubt, that was the best way to find out what kind of setup Bleak had in mind for the meeting.
“Lieutenant?”
Loretta looked up from hanging up the phone on her desk. Connor Ford was in her doorway. “What is it?”
“We found Dixie and Benny-boy Jackman.”
She tilted her head and looked around him, through the window into the squad room.
“Where?” she asked. “I’m not seeing them.”
“Denver General. In the emergency room. Seems like Benny-boy had a run-in with another rock-and-roll star over by Five Points, over a new girl they were both trying to recruit.”
“Recruit?” she asked. “Is that what they call it now?”
“When they’re talking to the cops it is,” Connor said. “What we know for sure is that during the negotiations with the girl and her current pimp, Benny-boy got cut. Dixie was with him, and after all the prerequisite theatrics and threats, she drove him over to Denver General. They’ve been there since about five o’clock this evening.”
And there went the easy theory, right down the drain.
“Is Benny-boy going to pull through?”
“ ’Fraid so.”
“Well, maybe our luck will be better tomorrow.” She glanced at the phone before going back to her paperwork. A grin flitted across her mouth. She had a strange job sometimes, damned intriguing. Hell.
A sigh replaced her grin. Her shift had been over two hours ago, and she’d like to get going. She didn’t have much of a personal life, but what little she had, she liked to enjoy.
“Actually, Lieutenant, our luck is looking pretty damn good right now.”
That got her attention.
She glanced back up. “What have you got?”
“The phone number the blonde gave to the valet at the Oxford?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve located the phone through its GPS emergency signal. It’s not too far from the hotel. I thought you might like to go over with us and see who’s there.”
“In case it’s a knife-wielding hooker?” She wasn’t smiling, not yet. Nothing was ever this easy.
“If we’re lucky, yes.”
“And if we’re not lucky, we end up standing next to a Dumpster in some LoDo alley, digging through trash, trying to find a phone our S and M expert tossed.”
“Yes, ma’am. We call that detective work.”
He was right, of course, and she needed to get her mind back on her business and off her social life.
“We’ve got a good lock on it, though, Lieutenant,” he continued, “and it looks like the phone is in the old Faber Building.”
Dammit. There was nothing like some really great news to screw up a person’s schedule.
She looked at her watch. She could have skipped Dumpster diving and just let the boys and girls in blue have at it-but if they’d tracked the phone to the Faber Building, well, hell, then she ought to be there, in case there was a person still attached to the damn thing.
“Lieutenant?” Officer Weisman leaned into her office, holding a sheaf of papers. “Gail came up with a portrait the maid positively identifies as our police impersonator.”
“Let’s see it.” Loretta held out her hand.
Weisman crossed her office and gave her the drawings the artist had done on the computer. “The top one, Lieutenant. That’s the one the maid says is closest.”
Loretta took one look and swore under her breath. Goddammit. Somebody better have an explanation for this.
Fortunately, somebody did, and she knew exactly who that somebody would be.
“Connor?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Get Skeeter on the phone, and ask her what in the hell Johnny Ramos was doing at the Oxford Hotel tonight, impersonating one of my fine Denver police officers.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lost. Rangers were never lost. Never.
Johnny could have been dropped in the middle of a damn desert blindfolded, and with a compass and a map, screw the GPS, have known where he was on the planet in a couple of minutes. Guaranteed. Rangers were the ultimate Eagle Scouts.
But he’d been on more than one mission in the Middle East where they’d had a local guide, and sometimes, those boys had gotten lost. The Rangers would still know where they were. The trick was in knowing where they were supposed to be, or finding a target that wasn’t where the guide had “known” it would be.
No target, no mission.
That’s where he and his current guide, otherwise known as Esme Alexandria Alden, were: off target. According to her, Isaac Nachman’s mansion was humongous, fifty thousand square feet of castlelike log-and-stone lodge set on a thousand acres.
And the girl couldn’t find it, even with her directions in her hand. Even with having done her recon work less than seven days ago.
So how, he wondered, did a person forget the coordinates of a fifty-thousand-square-foot castle? There was only one way-by never knowing them in the first place.
She’d counted on the roads, and remembering where to turn, without measuring distances and mapping them out. That was the big difference between the pros and the amateurs, between the big boys and the-well, he hated to say it, but between the big boys and the girls.
Esme was all girl, and she was lost, and she’d dragged him with her.
And he wasn’t the only one.
In the traffic on the interstate, he hadn’t noticed anybody following them, but he knew the rear end of a 1968 Mercury Cyclone had a distinct vehicular signature even at night. It would have been easy to follow Solange’s taillights-and somebody had done exactly that, because he and Esme weren’t alone out here in the wilderness.
Every now and then, he saw another set of headlights cutting through the darkness below them. He wasn’t too worried, because the other car was losing ground, falling further and further behind. Nachman’s place was in the back of beyond of Genesee, with dozens of roads snaking off into the night in every which direction.
Rangers were never lost, though. Never. And despite all the twists and turns, and all the roads, Johnny knew exactly how to get back to the interstate. If Esme could just remember how to get them to the lodge, he could get them home.
“There.” She pointed out the windshield. “To the right. Just beyond those two big trees.”
Two. Big. Trees.
Right. There weren’t two big trees on this mountainside. There were thousands-thousands and thousands of big trees.
“Esme-”
“You just missed it.”
Missed what?
He looked back over his shoulder-and he’d be damned. There was a road, or rather a track between two big trees.
“A thousand-acre hunting preserve with a fifty-thousand-square-foot lodge on it, and the entrance is a dirt track no more than eight feet wide?” In his limited experience, guys like Nachman liked to announce their munificence with elaborate gates. There wa
sn’t so much as a string of barbed wire across the track.
He threw Solange into reverse and backed up a couple of feet.
“The road widens out in a mile. The first thing we’ll see is a massive wall running for about a quarter mile in either direction off a huge gate. It’s like the Great Wall of China. There’ll be a gatehouse and a guard to call us in. This road is meant to throw off the day-trippers.”
A guard-he’d expected as much.
“You’re carrying a sidearm,” he said, stopping the car and shifting back into first. “Were you armed the last time you were here?”
“Yes, and I kept my weapon with me the whole time, if that’s what you’re asking.”
That’s exactly what he was asking.
“Does Nachman’s staff make a habit of frisking uninvited male guests?” There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he looked more dangerous than her.
He eased the Cyclone onto the rutted path, heading for the Great Wall of China. It was possible Isaac’s security staff simply hadn’t considered Esme a threat. She was short, blond, cute. Actually, with the right training, she’d make a helluva bodyguard for somebody.
“It’s possible we won’t see any staff, other than the guard at the gate. They’re there. They have to be. The lodge doesn’t run by itself, but the other two times I was here, with my father, I never actually saw anyone at the house except Nachman.”
Well, that was damned odd. Maybe the staff was just incredibly discreet.
“If you button up and tuck in your shirt, though, it won’t look so much like a gun drape,” she added. “That might help, if you’re concerned.”
He left his shirt unbuttoned and untucked so he’d have easier access to his weapon if he needed it, but she was right. To anyone who was aware, it was a dead giveaway that he just might be packing a pistol, almost as bad as a guy with a fanny pack.
Slowing Solange back to a stop, he put her in neutral and engaged the parking brake, then followed Esme’s advice, stepping out of the car and buttoning up his shirt and tucking it into his jeans. He wasn’t in the mood to have his weapon confiscated for security reasons. But neither was he in the mood to be stuck in the car while she went inside alone-and he knew those would be his choices, if Nachman’s security guys were paying attention and doing their jobs.
