Brass in Pocket

by Jeff Mariotte

  “A couple of years ago they moved to Vegas. He called it a fresh start. In some ways it was, she said, but not in every way. The other women became even more numerous and in her face. He had stopped using drugs and drinking so much, but it didn’t take long before he started up again. When he used, he got mean. She figured if they were really making a fresh start, then the best way for her to start over was to get out. But she wasn’t sure how to get away clean. He had always kept her in the dark where business was concerned, so she didn’t know enough details about his criminal activities to turn state’s evidence and get into a witness protection program. Besides, she knew he had people on the police force and, for all she knew, in the district attorney’s office and the FBI. She was stuck, with nowhere to go.”

  “Until she saw you on TV and recognized her former main squeeze.”

  “Exactly. She said she knew I would never end up on Blago’s payroll. I was too much of a good guy. I thought she was gaslighting me, playing me like she did all the boys back in high school.”

  “She was right, though. You are a good guy. Some things don’t change, I guess.”

  “I guess.” Hands in his pockets, Brass kicked a pebble, and for an instant Catherine could imagine him as he might have been in his younger days. She understood why Antoinette might have fallen for him in the first place. “Anyway, my first inclination was to tell her to get lost. She hurt me a lot, way back when, and that had never seemed to bother her. Tell you the truth, I was glad we lost track of each other when I went to Vietnam. I didn’t sit around pining for her, I can tell you that. Well… maybe a little. For a while. But then I’d remind myself how she tore my heart out, and I’d feel better.”

  “She was an attractive girl,” Catherine said. “She’s still good-looking.”

  “I never said she wasn’t, just that I wasn’t interested in getting mixed up in her life again. She went around looking for trouble, and whenever it got too deep, she looked for someone to get her out of it. That was always her MO, and I was tired of being the dumb guy who got tangled up in it.”

  “So what happened?”

  “She took me to her place and took off her blouse.”

  Catherine had started to be proud of him for resisting temptation. This new admission surprised her. “And that’s all it took?”

  “She showed me her back,” Brass said. “She asked Blago for a divorce once, a few years ago. They were in the kitchen. I guess she was searing some steaks in a frying pan. His response was to dump the steaks on the floor and press the bottom of the hot pan against her back.”

  Catherine winced. “Prince of a guy.”

  “When she showed it to me, she was weeping. Real tears, not the crocodile kind I had gone there expecting. She went into incredible detail. I could smell the steaks cooling on the tile floor and that special, sharp stink of burning flesh and feel the sizzle of hot grease dripping down the back of her legs.”

  A shiver sliced through Catherine’s body.

  “Long story slightly shorter, I told her I would help her,” Brass said.

  “Of course you did.”

  Brass looked a little embarrassed. It wasn’t something Catherine had seen many times over the years she had known him. “He warned her that if she even brought up the subject again, he would kill her. Flat out.”

  “She should have had him arrested then.”

  “It would have been suicide. He wouldn’t have stayed away for long, and his people would have known who to blame. They wouldn’t have let that slide.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  “I tried to get her to open up about what she had on him. She told me a few things, but mostly smalltime stuff she had picked up here and there. She was right—she didn’t know enough to guarantee him a long prison term or herself protective custody. And even if I tried to build a case out of what she did know, as long as I was in the dark about who he has inside the LVPD, I couldn’t be sure that she’d be safe. I came to the conclusion that she needed a way out of the marriage that would prevent Blago from looking for her—or at least from finding her.”

  They reached the Yukon. Catherine leaned against the side that faced into the sun. A light, warm breeze had picked up and she let it waft across her face, bringing the smells of exhaust and fast food and city living with it. “You were stepping into a world of trouble, getting mixed up in something like that.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You could have reached out.”

  “To you or Gil, sure. A couple of others. But I thought I could handle it alone. Maybe that was a mistake.” He shrugged again. “I got her a new ID in her old name, because I wanted to make sure she’d remember it and be able to respond to it in a pinch. Got her a fake credit card, laid some groundwork. I wanted to move her out of the house first, and then once I knew she was safe, I’d worry about how to discourage Blago. When the day came, I parked her in a cheap motel because I knew that would be the last place Blago would expect her to go. She didn’t even like them when she was a kid, and since then she’s developed champagne tastes, you might say. I had hired Freeson to keep an eye on her, and made the handoff at the hotel.”

  His voice caught. Catherine glanced over, but he had turned his face away from her. “I didn’t mean for him to get hurt. I thought it would just be a babysitting job. Figured he might get laid, given Antoinette’s past habits, but nothing more dangerous than that. You should have seen her face when she walked into that room. She’s had money for a long time now, and she pretty much forgot dumps like that existed. It should have been the perfect setup. Just in case, we had a backup plan—Freeson’s car parked behind the room, keys under the seat, a piece in the glove. But we weren’t supposed to need it.”

  “Best-laid plans…”

  “That’s right. Once they were safely stashed, I went out to make some travel arrangements. She couldn’t go back to Newark, but I have some friends in Montana I thought might be able to take her in for a while. I wasn’t gone more than a couple of hours. I still don’t know what happened—someone at the motel must have recognized her, I guess. Lot of scumbags hang around that place, which I should have counted on. Somebody made a call, hoping to earn brownie points with Blago.”

  “And Blago sent Victor Whendt after her. No more fooling around—this time he wanted her dead.”

  “Just as he threatened. God bless him, Freeson tried, from what I hear.”

  “He did try,” Catherine assured him. “He took a round and returned fire, and then the second round took the back of his skull off and painted the ceiling. But he bought Antoinette time to get out through the bathroom window.”

  “That was the idea. Glad it worked, except for the price Deke paid.”

  “He knew the score going in.”

  “That doesn’t make it okay.”

  “I know, Jim. I’m just saying. We found your fingerprints in the room, and DNA. We knew you, Antoinette, and Whendt had been there. Plenty of other people, too. We just couldn’t tell in what order you were there.”

  “I knew you would figure out I’d been there. At the time I didn’t think it would become a crime scene.”

  “You should have come to me, Jim.”

  This time he met her gaze, his eyes steady. “I know. It hurt to not return your calls. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you. I just couldn’t be sure who else might get their hands on whatever you came up with. And I don’t trust everyone on the day shift or swing shift as much as I do you. I wanted to know how the investigation was going—once I even called Hodges.”

  Catherine let out a sharp laugh. “Hodges? He must have been thrilled.”

  “I think so, yeah. He didn’t know much.”

  “Good. I’d hate to have to suspend him for talking to a suspect.”

  “He’s all right. He may be a kiss-ass, but he’s all right.”

  “I know he is.”

  “What I wanted was to find Antoinette before Blago did. Then I could stick with my original pl
an. Hide her someplace else, lean on Blago, convince him to let her go. I spent all night trying to track her, but I haven’t known her for more than thirty years. I couldn’t predict her movements well enough. All I knew was that she was on the run.”

  “She didn’t call you?”

  “She couldn’t know whether or not I had set her up at the motel. By that point, she was as scared of me as she was of everyone else.”

  “I don’t blame her. Think how alone she must have felt. Watching Deke get shot, then running all over town with his blood on her. Not knowing if there was anyone she could trust.”

  Brass moved his big head solemnly. He projected solidity, gravitas. But under the growls and the grins, there was a guy who sincerely cared about victims and who wanted to make people’s pain go away. “I had the police radio on all night, just in case. I heard the shoplifting squawk and wondered if it was her. I even started heading this way. But when the guard who had caught her called the cops, she panicked and made him call me, too.”

  “Because she still trusted you more than she trusted strangers.”

  “I guess so. He told me he’d picked her up and was holding her for arrest, so I raced over. Apparently I got here a little too late.”

  “Later than Whendt, anyway. And those cops, Wolfson and Tuva.”

  “It’s a good thing you were around, Catherine. You and that uniform, what’s her name.”

  “Tavrin. Liz Tavrin. They had just spotted Deke’s car, so they were close by. Tavrin was told to wait for me, so she didn’t answer the call, and her partner was trying to see where Antoinette might have gone. Maybe he thought, like you, that she might have been the shoplifter.”

  “Anyway,” Brass continued, “far as I can tell, by the time he got here, Wolfson and Tuva were about to take custody of Antoinette. He made a fuss, and they shot him and the security guard who had caught her. I was just walking through the store, on my way to the back, when that happened. Then Whendt showed up and I showed up, got off one shot, and Antoinette ran for it. That’s about when you came in.”

  “We were just outside when the first shots were fired, trying to get the lay of the land.”

  “It could have been pretty hairy in there. I appreciate the help.”

  “I think you’ve left Antoinette alone long enough,” Catherine said. She didn’t want him to get mushy. “I think you should get a couple of cops you do trust to take her off your hands for a while.”

  “So I can do what?” he asked.

  “So you and I,” she said, emphasizing the last part, “can go see Emil Blago.”

  32

  NICK AND RILEY MOVED through a wide, shallow desert wash, trying to cover a lot of ground at a fast pace with a minimum of noise. The sun had risen high enough to throw long shadows and to offer the barest hint of the heat the day would bring. For the moment, they moved between pockets of warm and cool, passing from sunlight to shadow and back again.

  Tracks from an astonishing variety of creatures pocked the wash’s floor. Nick had spotted the marks of birds large and small, lizards, snakes, rabbits, rodents, dogs or coyotes, and something he believed was a bobcat. What he hadn’t found were the tracks of a man and a woman traveling together, or any vehicle tracks less than several days old.

  Riley had convinced him that her theory was correct. Dawson Upson knew his burial pit was compromised, but since he had never killed there, he should still feel safe at his original killing ground. And because Melinda Spence—if their operating theory was correct—would be his first actual human kill, he would want that extra edge of psychological security.

  On the way over Riley had called in a report, and even now a helicopter flew over the desert searching for Upson. But there was a lot of open desert around Las Vegas—if not much of it left in this neighborhood, as Riley had pointed out—and Upson had his Camry, so there was no guarantee that he did his killing anywhere near his dumping ground.

  It was the best shot they had, though. The two of them concentrated on the ground search of this area while the helicopter covered wider swaths of territory and search parties fanned out in other zones. Nick was pleased at how quickly and efficiently a plan had been made and carried out.

  “I wish it had stayed dark a little while longer,” Riley said. They went from the shade of a patch of blossom-filled desert willows into a bright stretch of sunlight, where no shrubs grew taller than knee-high. They hurried across the open space at a crouch.

  “You and everybody else in the city,” Nick said. “It’s gonna be a hot one.”

  “No, I mean, when Upson didn’t know we were looking for him, the dark gave us an advantage. Especially if he needed light to do his… work.”

  “Nice word for it,” Nick said sarcastically. “Work.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I know. And you’re right. We’re out in the wide-open spaces now. Depending on where he is, he could see us coming a mile away.”

  Another thought struck Nick. He must have made a face without realizing it. “What?” Riley asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s something. You’re pretty transparent, Nick.”

  He supposed he was, at that. Deceit had never been his strong suit. He liked for people to be straightforward with him, and he offered them the same courtesy. “I was just thinking, I hope he hasn’t set himself some sort of arbitrary deadline.”

  “What… like sunrise?”

  “Yeah, like that.”

  They picked up their pace even more.

  A hundred yards on, an old dirt road bisected the wash before curving off between two nearly identical rises with steep, rock-strewn slopes. They were the first of a series of hills that grew ever taller as they marched into the distance. Nearing the road, Nick saw something promising in the way the sun lay on the dirt. “Come on,” he said, breaking into a jog.

  Riley kept pace with him. Soon they were at the road, examining tire tracks that cut straight across the wash and disappeared between the hills in one direction, off toward civilization the other way. “You think they’re fresh?” she asked.

  Nick squatted and broke the edge off one of the treadmarks. “I think so, but it’s hard to tell out here,” he said. “There hasn’t been any rain in weeks, and not much wind. Tracks can last a long time in the desert. I can show you places where there are still tracks left over from pioneer wagons.”

  “That is a long time,” Riley said, impressed. “But these are pretty deep. And there aren’t any bird tracks or anything else on top of them.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’m thinking they’re pretty recent.”

  She stood tall, hands on hips, swiveling at the waist. “Which way do you think they’re headed?”

  Nick pointed toward flat desert. “That way goes toward the main road.” He jerked a thumb the other way, over his shoulder. “This way’s into the wilderness. So I’d say we go this way.”

  “That works for me.”

  They followed the arc of the road, which really wasn’t much more than a place where someone had driven across the desert and then other vehicles had followed in the first one’s tracks. It was gouged deep on the sides and rose a bit in the center, where thorny mesquites and stunted shrubs grew. Nick judged that a vehicle wouldn’t necessarily need high clearance or four-wheel drive to negotiate it, but both features would make the journey more comfortable.

  Inside the canyon cutting between the two low hills, the sun had not yet penetrated and the air remained cool. The roadway cut up through a couple of terraces as it climbed out of the canyon, growing rockier and more precarious almost by the yard.

  Around another bend, an empty silver Toyota Camry was pulled off the road on a relatively flat, shady spot. A tall mesquite partially shielded it from the air, and it was parked close to the base of the hill.

  “I guess you called it, Nick.”

  Riley kept her voice low, barely audible three feet away. Nick answered in the same manner. “You called it, Riley. We
might still be at his house looking for clues if you hadn’t insisted on coming out here.”

  “We haven’t found him yet,” she reminded him.

  “We’re closer than we were a few minutes ago, though.” He scanned the landscape, looking for any sign of Upson or Melinda Spence. On this side of the hills the desert was wilder, with more rises and gullies, thicker growths of yucca and mesquite and cholla, and even more desert willows than on the low side. The hills came closer together, marching toward higher ones in the near distance.

  “I’ve got some footprints,” Riley said. She had circled around the car, about eight feet away from it, where the dirt was softer than on the packed road. “Scuff marks, too.”

  Nick hurried to her side. Sure enough, two people had left footprints leading away from the car. A male in sneakers, and a woman in smooth-soled shoes with squared-off toes. Every few steps, at least at the beginning, she had apparently offered at least token resistance and he had dragged her along. Digging her heels in had cut deeper furrows in the earth. The tracks led into a canyon wedged between two steeper, taller mounds.

  “Let’s go over the hill,” Riley whispered.

  “Over it?”

  “If he’s in there, he might be watching for someone coming along his trail. Going up and over, we might be able to catch him by surprise, if he’s in there, or spot him if he’s not. We’ll get the jump on him.”

  “Literally,” Nick said with a quick grin. “Okay, I’m game.”

  They started up the southern slope of the hill. At first the short ascent was gradual, but nearer the top they found themselves leaning forward, grabbing embedded rocks and well-rooted plants for handholds. Breaking leaves and stems, combined with the warming rays of the rising sun, sent waves of spicy aroma wafting around them.

  As they reached the peak, they stayed low to keep stray shadows from giving away their position. The far side dropped sharply into the canyon. Nick was glad they had climbed the side they did, since the other side would have posed a far greater challenge. There were a few plants to hold on to—most thorny or barbed, as desert flora usually was—but otherwise the slope was covered in small, loose stones, with a few larger flat ones scattered about, until it reached a sheer cliff.