Her real name was Matilda. But she’d left Matilda back in Ely.
Years ago, when I’d been too young to complain, Matilda had moved to Vegas, changed her name, enlarged her bust, dyed her hair, and become one of the family, thanks to the poor taste of my mother. An honorary family member, Mona called her. To me, she was what she’d always been—a pain in the ass.
When she’d trekked south to Vegas, Darlin’ had brought with her a family fortune made from mining a variety of minor minerals in northern Nevada. With a fraction thereof, she’d bought a very down-on-its-luck property. With the rest of her money, she’d exerted her influence, making the French Quarter the most profitable off-Strip property by a long shot. In doing so, she’d also become the first female owner of a Vegas casino and managed to navigate the local topography of cheats, wiseguys, unions, and outright thieves. Yes, she earned major respect points from me for that, grudging as they were. Still, that didn’t mean she wasn’t a total pain.
Continuing in stealth mode, Paolo had worked his way back toward the French Quarter, making several turns through the dark neighborhoods on the wrong side of the Fifteen. Dotted with warehouses surrounded in chain-link and topped with concertina wire, it struck me as a bad choice for eluding bad guys until I spied all the security cameras recording every movement, our license number, and the faces they could capture.
Vegas was nothing more than a citywide set for a modern version of Candid Camera. Most days that fact had me checking my teeth for green stuff, and half-expecting someone with a camera to jump from behind a statue or a street performer. Tonight, the fact that someone was recording all of this let me not be quite so concerned about looking over my shoulder.
The four-story pink, blue, and yellow sign out front, flashed and danced. Tonight was an extra fight night—a special card to meet demand, according to the smaller text. A has-been singer from the seventies was also “Back by Demand” to headline in her small theater. My aunt, catering to a slightly different crowd than the big properties on expensive real estate like the Babylon, knew her crowd and appreciated the fact that their money was just as green as the fancy-pants, as she referred to the glitterati and those wanting to bask in their glow. The Quarter’s largest drawing card besides loose slots was a slate of prizefights held every Friday night, which always attracted a huge, rabid crowd.
In an effort to avoid squandering even a single opportunity to separate patrons from their money, the Quarter also boasted a bowling alley, a twelve-screen movieplex with reclining chairs and two-dollar buckets of popcorn, and a kid zone where parents could deposit the next generation, sometimes forgetting to collect them.
No wonder the parking lot was jammed as we cruised by. “On second thought, Paolo, let’s go in the front. More people. Pull right up front like we’re important.” In order to deal with my aunt, I needed to get my game-face on. Getting my swagger on would help, too.
“Can I get up now?” Fox asked, his voice a bit choked—Paolo had made a quick right.
“Ladies?” I cocked an eyebrow indicating a question. “I believe Mr. Fox’s excuse for putting you in harm’s way was that you were expendable.”
“Hey, that’s not true!” His voice cracked in the lie. “Nothing bad was going to happen at the party.”
“Weak, but it’s up to them. What do you say?” I asked Stella and Olivia. “Death or dismemberment?”
That got everyone’s attention.
Paolo eased the big car to the curb, and a valet jumped to open the back door.
“Allow me.” A voice I wasn’t expecting but wasn’t surprised to hear.
Romeo elbowed the valet aside and then extended a hand.
I let him lever me out of the car. “Ah, my bad penny.”
Like a karate fighter, he gave me a shallow bow but cocked his head to keep me in sight in case of a sucker punch.
As if.
The kid’s face had aged another decade in the last hour or so. “What is it?”
“Marion Whiteside was injured in a drive-by. Somebody shot up the pawnshop. They got Frenchie, too.”
“How bad?”
“Whiteside took it through his right shoulder. Not life-threatening.”
“Not his life, anyway. If Whiteside gets the shooter in close range, all bets are off. Any idea who that might be?”
“Not yet. Non-descript car, witnesses with bad memories, license plates covered. Weird, they peppered the place with a rifle. Got the slugs, .30-.30, but they’re no good without a gun.” He raked a hand through his sandy hair, which, in the odd multi-colored light, looked gray. His light blue eyes picked up the purple, his skin, the pink. The kid was fading into the background.
“Did you get a slug out of Lake?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d compare the two,” I said, leading him down a path he should’ve seen.
“Same shooter?” Romeo considered the possibility.
“I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.” The kid should’ve seen the synchronicity. But, trying to save his own bacon could be distracting, though, so I cut him some slack. Each of us had his or her limit. “Any idea who they were gunning for?”
“Don’t know for sure. They used the scatter-bombing approach—kill everything and you’d get your man. But, my bet’s on Frenchie.”
“Is he alive?” Not that my heart would bleed, but I didn’t need to lose a key witness to all these fun and games.
“Last I heard. Even though Frenchie squealed like a pig, the docs didn’t seem to share his concern.”
“You have a detail on him? I have a feeling he has some numbers we’d like to plug into the equation.”
“Around the clock, two of my best. Are you any closer to figuring this out?”
I glanced around Romeo. Fox glared at me from under Stella’s heel. “Yep. Pieces are fitting; I’m getting the picture.”
Romeo pulled in a deep breath. My comment was water to a man lost in the desert. “I knew I could count on you.”
We would discuss his “faith” in me later. But I’d be the first to admit that, given my distracted state, he could’ve played me, too. Any chump could do it, and had.
“What should we do with him?” the girls asked, indicating Fox.
Guess I’d drawn the short straw, and the decision was mine. All manner of painful prospects crowded my pea brain, none of them legal, but all of them delightful. I turned to the detective. “Since you’re standing here and not under house arrest or something, you clearly are many moves ahead of me in this chess game, so your call.”
Romeo brightened a bit at Fox’s predicament. “He’s a bit player. And with the heat up on Ponder and Boudreaux, Fox’ll keep his nose clean. He knows they’re playing in a whole different league, and murder is part of the playbook.”
The girls let Fox up, then scrambled out of the car after him.
Fox glared at Romeo. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Romeo was rubbing salt in an ego wound on purpose. Also, his zeal to let Fox go concerned me.
“Thanks, Paolo. I owe you.” I shut the door but not before I heard, “No, you owe Mr.—” The door slammed on his words, cutting him off. Perfect timing. Tomorrow’s problem. “Fox, go with Detective Romeo to the station. He may think you’re a bit player. I intend to prove otherwise.”
Romeo didn’t fight me. “And what am I holding him on?” The detective might be a few moves ahead, but he was having trouble keeping up.
“Protective custody?” Not too quick on my feet—that was so lame. “Haven’t you heard? There’s a killer on the loose.”
“That’s only in the movies. I need something solid.” Romeo wanted nothing to do with Fox; he made that much clear.
“Fine. Blackmail.” I turned to the women who waited just beyond Fox’s reach. “He confessed. The ladies here and I heard him. Right, ladies?”
“If you say so,” Stella waffled. Olivia looked over my shoulder, avoiding my question.
Hookers and police—water and oil. I got it, bu
t I would win. “See?” If they crossed me, the water board wasn’t out of the question. No way would I let a hooker’s reticence to cooperate with the police undercut a solid felony.
A gloat slipped over Fox’s piggish face.
But my sly grin shot his gloat out of the water. “And attempted murder.”
“What?” he squealed. “Of whom? You got nothing. ”
“Fine.” Romeo motioned to a uniformed cop I hadn’t noticed. He whispered in the guy’s ear, then relinquished Fox to him. “Twenty-four hours to get me something solid or I’ll have to let him go.”
“You’ll get it.”
“Who’d he try to kill?”
As we watched the large man leave with the much smaller cop, a sense of foreboding settled over me. I brushed it off.
Courage, don’t fail me now.
“Frenchie Nixon, for starters.” I raised a hand to fend off the questions. Frankly, I didn’t have all the answers…yet. But I was close, so very close. “Work with me. Have I failed you yet?”
“No, but I’d sure like to be in the loop.”
I gave him a pointed stare.
He hung his head. “Okay, point taken. What can I do to make it up to you?”
“Protect me from my aunt.”
Resigned to his fate, he reached out to guide the girls toward the door. “Top floor, right?”
“Yeah. You go ahead. I need to make a quick stop.” I pulled him aside and whispered. “Make sure you get the girls there and keep them in your sight. I’m not done with them yet.”
With their shoulders back, the girls threw haughty looks at Fox’s back as the crowd swallowed him. The girls took a moment to rearrange their dignity. The crowd did dart a few looks our way—three women, two looking like they were on their way to a BDSM party and one dressed as a cow. Even for Vegas we pushed the envelope.
“You do know how to make an entrance,” Romeo said, then turned and disappeared into the French Quarter. Mired in dread, I gathered up the ladies, then trailed behind.
Once inside, we dove into the crowd. Like Mardi Gras throngs on Bourbon Street, most of the patrons wore ropes of beads and clutched tall glasses of Hurricanes as they ogled each other. Dixieland jazz pumped over the crowd, keeping the energy just short of explosive levels. At the French Quarter, every night was like Fat Tuesday.
An almost nauseating mixture of aromas filled the air—deep-fried beignets, strong Cajun spices, chicory coffee, last night’s excesses, and tonight’s to come.
An eardrum-shattering trumpet blast high above announced the aerial show. Perfect timing. Now the mass of humanity that had been creeping along at a glacial pace would solidify while everyone watched the show. Every hour, on the hour, the French Quarter put on its own version of a Mardi Gras parade. Wisely, Matilda hung it from the ceiling rather than trying to navigate the throngs in the casino. A bit of brilliance, really. She and my father, they each knew their market and how to pack them in. On a track over the crowd, buckets decorated like floats and filled with costumed revelers tossing beaded trinkets into the crowd meandered as carnival music blared.
“Keep moving,” I shouted to the girls in front of me. We snaked single file, letting the cop cut a path. “Follow Romeo. I’ll be right there.”
Aunt Matilda had two vices, handsome young men and cheap gin.
Romeo would have to sub as the young man even though he was a bit too buttoned-down for her proclivities and wore too many clothes. Good rotgut, to the extent that wasn’t an oxymoron, would balance him out.
Cheap men and a cheap drunk—my aunt’s idea of a perfect evening.
TO MAKE THINGS EASY, DARLIN’ had made sure to have a tiny liquor store tucked into an inconspicuous corner of the sportsbook at the French Quarter. No hotelier wanted their guests to buy by the bottle when by the drink was much more lucrative for the house. But, Darlin’ knew her crowd, and most of them weren’t the Cristal type.
Only one customer stood at the counter. A tallish gal, her brown hair tastefully gathered at her neck, her face showing only hints of makeup, she had the pinched look of the terminally underfed with traces of Southern insincerity. She wore a simple cotton dress, no hose, and espadrilles as if she’d stepped out of the pages of Southern Style. In deference to the chill, she’d also donned a tailored jacket—white leather with “designer” written in each silver rivet.
Nolan Ponder’s money gal. And she owed me a favor.
She was waiting to pay for an identical bottle of gin.
Guess her tastes weren’t as high-brow as her presentation. Or we were both running with the same crowd.
In Vegas, a book could never be judged by its cover. Strippers were English majors at UNLV, dancers were their professors, and hookers were schoolteachers from Iowa. Not one to judge, that didn’t mean occasionally some stories didn’t get to me.
I set my bottle down next to hers. “You’re a long way from the Babylon. Ever find who you were looking for?”
She shot me a glance, then did a double-take. “Your evening has clearly been more colorful than mine. Is a Furby convention in town?”
The world clearly conspired to offend even the few sensibilities that remained after decades in Vegas. I’d managed to avoid the Furby conventions, so I wasn’t intimately familiar—a good thing as they had something to do with having sex with people dressed in fur costumes. I couldn’t imagine being violated as a cow. The whole idea presented a Pandora’s Box of legal, ethical, and moral questions best left unopened.
The cashier, a tall, greasy guy with a last-meal look about him, slipped back behind the desk. He eyed us, then, apparently finding us worthy, gave us a yellow-toothed grin. From the cloud enveloping him, he’d been out for a toke.
“I’ll pay for both,” the gal with the changing costumes pushed a twenty across the pockmarked counter. “Not every day I get to buy cheap gin for a cow.”
That analogy actually held water when it came to my aunt as well, although I’d never tell her that. Matilda took herself very seriously, while the rest of the world hid their smiles.
I’d love some of that moxie, not that I’d ever admit that to her. Admitting it to my badass self was hard enough. “I can pay for my own, but thank you. Rarely do I impersonate a farm animal, but tonight it was expedient and far better than the alternative.” Just the thought of my oversized body in a G-string, bedazzled bra, and dog collar, and carrying a whip was enough to send me to bed for a week.
“You make a good cow.” The gal lifted her chin at the cashier as she pushed across a twenty.
“Insulting people you don’t know. Is this a new approach to winning friends and influencing people?”
She gave me the side-eye. “You don’t remember?”
The cashier held up the bill. “This’ll pay for one. I’ll need a two spot from you too, Ms. O’Toole.” The cashier gave me a look that captured indifference and unimaginable sadness.
I guess, either way you looked at it, one bred the other.
While a twenty wasn’t a two-spot, correcting him wouldn’t do a thing to improve my current situation. “Twenty bucks for a ten-dollar bottle. Welcome to Vegas.” She’d dangled the bait. Question was, did I really want to know what I’d forgotten? But even I knew that would be an impossibility. Curiosity killed the corporate cow—unanswered questions, my Kryptonite. “What don’t I remember?”
“We were seven. You had a pony. My parents sent me to visit my older sister. They had no idea she was a hooker working for your mother.”
The dim bulb of a childhood barely illuminated the dark corners I’d worked hard to forget. “You stayed with Trudie just off the kitchen.”
“You sure I can’t buy your booze? I owe you. You never told my mother what we were doing. She would’ve shit a brick. I got to ride the pony and shoot a gun. You even taught me how not to get pushed into a corner by some guy and then how to break his nose if I miscalculated. Can’t tell you how many times that saved me through the years.” She had a bill ready to
slap down for my bottle.
Yeah, me too.
“At least you got a summer of being a kid.” As life went on, I came to appreciate how much being let to roam free as a kid had shaped my personality. “But somehow, letting the seven-year-old I vaguely remember buy me gin cheapens the whole memory. Appreciate it, though.” My pride intact, there was just one problem. Zipped into the cow carcass, I couldn’t reach a pocket without a knife or some help. I didn’t have a knife, and I so wasn’t asking for help, so I took the path of least damage to my pride. “My credit is good here?” I asked the cashier.
“Sure thing. But it’ll cost you a ten-spot to bring the bill to your office for collection.”
That one he got right. My pride and the sanctity of my memories were worth ten bucks. “You have me at a disadvantage.”
My implication as to his lack of chivalry fell on deaf ears as he drew up a handwritten chit and made me sign it. Thirty bucks—perilously close to any value my aunt might have, even taking into account the value of the gin. “What are you doing back in Vegas? Reliving good memories?”
“As much as I’d like to wander down memory lane with you, I’m trying to find Nolan Ponder.”
“And you think he might be here?”
Clutching her bottle of gin by the neck, she gave me the once-over, a smile playing with her lips. “No. He wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this. I’m looking for answers.”
“Maybe I can help? Inside the cow costume lurks a fearless corporate drone with access.”
“Good point. And I’d hardly call you a drone. Only a fool would underestimate someone who can tame Darlin’ Delacroix.”
After dropping that little bomb, she turned on her espadrilles and headed toward the door.
We met again at the elevator. Our reflections were pure irony. Many times, I’d felt like a cow next to some skinny, petite thing, and now I was one.
A New Age metaphysical bit of manifesting gone way wrong.
One thing the cow suit was good for was keeping people at a distance. Nobody joined us in the elevator. My finger hovered over the buttons. “Floor?” I asked unnecessarily.
Lucky Score Page 29
