by J. D. Allen
Most bounty hunters and PIs made great efforts to blend into the crowd. It increased the possibility of maintaining the element of surprise until the last minute. Good for sneaking up and gaining custody of the skip tracer. Not Double O. Nope. He made his way through the world larger than life. His stature, his personality, and his appearance. He was a big boy. No changing that, so he made it work for him. Instead of sneaking up on bail skippers, he walked straight on and intimidated the shit out of them.
But as with most things hard, O had a soft side. Jim had seen O’s and that made the big man much less of a threat. Oh, he could still whip Jim seven ways in seven seconds, but Jim figured he wouldn’t.
After O balanced his helmet on the handlebars, he stopped just shy of the door to wait for Jim.
“O! You’re here,” Sandy cooed as they entered. She rushed over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Morning, beautiful.” His voice was smooth. The kind used in life insurance and Viagra commercials. The girls melted every time O started talking. Also a good tool to have on your side. A trusting voice made people comfortable, helped them let their guard down. His size quit being so intimidating as soon as he opened his mouth. Unless he wanted you to shake in your boots, then that deep booming voice was only slightly less frightening than your mom screaming your full name after discovering you broke her favorite lamp while throwing the football inside the house. Again.
They slid into the usual spot, corner booth in the rear of the restaurant. Jim sat with his back to the wall. O had no fear of putting his back to the world.
Sandy trotted up with the coffeepot. “Do me a favor, O.” She ignored Jim.
O gave her a look with an overdramatic brow arch.
“Say, ‘Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.’” She poured as she made the request.
Jim laughed. She was so cute. And he’d bet the contents of his wallet she’d get the big guy to do it too.
“What?”
With a quick slosh, she poured Jim’s coffee. Maybe a half cup. Her attention barely left the big bounty hunter. “You know, that commercial Sam Elliott does? The one for the beef people. They showed a pretty steak and then you heard him say it.”
O closed his eyes with a little headshake. Evidently, this was not the first time he’d heard the request. “Unfortunately, I do. And no.”
“Oh, come on. Please.” She looked back. The other morning-shift waitress had moved in close. She wore the same pretty pretty please look young girls achieved with ease.
“I told Lisa you sounded just like Sam Elliott. And she loves Sam Elliott.” She clutched her hands over her heart. “Please.”
O gave Jim a tepid look, as if this were all his fault. Maybe his silent chuckle wasn’t helping anything. “I didn’t ask you to say shit.”
Sandy then pulled out the big guns, played dirty. She reached out and put her dainty little hand on O’s tattooed arm. “Come on, Oscar, it’s just one sentence.” She’d used his first name. Like she was his little girl or baby sister. Her expectant face was more than either of them could refuse.
He growled. “If you promise not to utter that man’s name around me ever again, I’ll say it once. And never again.”
“Yay.” She set the coffeepot down and did a little dance. Lisa loomed closer.
“First Roadhouse, then that commercial came out, I thought I’d never get to speak again without people mentioning him or that ad.” O sat up straight up. “Just once.”
She nodded. Behind her Lisa mirrored the gesture. He cleared his throat. Took a long sip of the coffee. The girls were patiently waiting, but Jim thought Lisa was gonna bust if O didn’t speak soon.
“Beef.” He said it slow and with that Texas drawl Elliott had made a living off of. “It’s what’s for dinner.”
Lisa clapped. Sandy squealed.
“And if you don’t find me some real beef in this joint, I might just have to gnaw on you for protein.”
She smacked his shoulder. “You’re so sweet.”
“Oh. My. God.” Lisa rushed off as if to share her experience with the next person she encountered.
Jim didn’t try to hide his mirth. Opened his mouth to speak, but—
“Not one fucking word from you, Bean.”
“Not me.”
“Now. Seriously. When is the pecker-head in the kitchen going to give up this green menu and start serving real food?”
Sandy rushed back over to retrieve her pot. “Maybe soon.” She looked over her shoulder. Lisa no longer shadowed her. “Business has been really, really slow.”
Jim pushed his already empty cup toward her. “So my regular business isn’t enough to keep the place open?”
She gave him a little smirk and a wink. “Your tips sure aren’t.”
“Go on. Bring us something resembling breakfast,” O said.
She sashayed off.
O looked at Jim. “I bet your tips are the only reason she can feed herself.”
Jim shrugged. Sandy was one of the few women he did trust. Not that there was any kind of relationship there. She was a hardworking girl trying to make a living. That could be difficult in Vegas, and he couldn’t bear to see the girl hit the streets to make her bills. He was known to leave a twenty or two on the table at times.
“She puts up with me almost every morning. Should get more than a couple bucks.”
They sat quietly for a minute. O looked out the window at the passing traffic. It was a comfortable silence that comes from spending time with a guy. Time and danger made men comfortable with one another. And they’d shared both.
O took another drink. The action brought them back into conversation position. “You lookin’ for some work?”
O often let Jim pick up some skips in his bounty hunter business for extra cash when things got slim in Jim’s world. The offer usually came with the suggestion that if Jim advertised and had a better website, he might get more clients, or better-paying ones. But that was for a later conversation. Today Jim was the one with the offer.
“Nope. I want to hire you this time.”
O’s brows rose. “As in a bondsman? You get arrested and I didn’t hear about it?”
“No.” I got drugged and screwed by a serial killer and need your help finding the bitch. “My last client hired me to find her brother. Said he’d been into drugs.”
“Sounds about normal for you.”
“Well, that’s where the normal ended. Turns out my client was only pretending to be the target’s sister. She killed the target’s sister and stole her identity.”
“Oh?”
“I need the backup.” Jim liked to work alone. But heading into unknown territory without backup was risky. And he might be lazy, but never intentionally stupid.
This was his burden. His problem. And sooner or later his night with Sophie might become pertinent to the investigation. But if he was going to tell anyone, O would be the guy. Still, he’d wait until that info was need-to-know. Sophie Evers was a grade-A whack job who made his usual list of clients seem like church ladies. Miller had been right. Having some backup with this bitch out there would be smart.
“With your help I’ll find her faster. I got a young man and his elderly mother stashed in a safe house, along with her care worker.”
“And a couple badges, I’d guess.”
“Yep. Not ideal.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“We’d need to head to Dallas, today. I have a couple leads to work and a copy of an FBI file to decipher.”
“How’d you get an FBI file?”
Jim shrugged.
O took a sip of his coffee. “Get to fight with the Feds too, then?”
“More than likely. Pretty female Fed.”
“I’ll be. This day is getting better.”
“I can even pay you.”
“Now you’re just pulling my leg.” He winked but sadly it wasn’t too far a stretch.
Jim took a deep breath, unsure why telling O this seemed embarrassing. Probably because Sophie had shown him she could get to him. That he’d been stupid. He rarely repeated stupid.
“We’re thinking this chick’s killed around ten people, O. Some of the corpses have been scumbags and some are just regular civies. I’m invested in this. I fell for her lies, found her ultimate target, and served him right up to her. Almost left him to her too. I’m responsible. I’ve spent time with her. She’s very good at being bad.”
“Dang. You have the strangest shit come across your desk.”
“Tell me about it. You in? I know you have a business to run here.”
“I got people who can do my job while I’m gone. You could use someone working for you too. Then you wouldn’t have to pull me away from picking up strays every time you need help.”
“Build my business and hire someone reliable?” He mimicked the advice that O tossed his way every time they talked.
O rolled his eyes at Jim’s sarcastic tone.
“That means I’d have to deal with that someone. I hate that someone already and I haven’t even hired him yet.”
“Why do you hate everyone?”
“I don’t hate you.”
O smiled. “Yet.” He pointed a long, ringed finger at Jim. His late wife’s name was tattooed along his knuckles. He’d lost her here, in Vegas, on their honeymoon. Traffickers grabbed her in a club, right under O’s nose. He’d stayed to find the creeps, but only found a trail to a dead body.
“I’ll be your Huckleberry … on one condition.” O leaned back in the booth, his body language suddenly cocky. “Gun range.”
Jim let his head hit the back of the booth. “I don’t want a gun.” He sounded like a whiney teenage boy being assigned chores.
“You need one. I’ll help you.”
Not the range. Anything but the range. It was bad enough he was feeling like a weak-ass punk after letting Sophie get him by the balls, now he had to prove to O he couldn’t shoot for shit.
“I’ll hire someone else.”
“You really that afraid to shoot, man?”
“Not fear. I told you, I suck with a gun. You want me to carry a gun, give me a sawed-off shotgun. Hell, a grenade. Cuz anything that takes more skill than that, I’m useless.”
“Grenades? That’s subtle.” O pulled a ten out of a beat-up leather wallet and tossed it onto the table. “Two hours. Scruffies.”
Jim knew it. The outdoor range on the west side. “The food’s not even here yet.”
“No real food is ever gonna show up here.” O stood and tapped the table. “Two hours.”
26
Shrill lyrics reverberated around the car. Not that Sophie could understand the words to any of the tracks. It was in Italian. She knew the story the opera told without the actual words. A count kills his countess after an affair in the afternoon. Classical opera, full of death and tragedy. It had taken years to understand why it spoke to her at such an early age. The death, the tragedy, it all mimicked her childhood, her life.
The crap audio system in the late-model minivan was not designed for the tonal depth of the piece. Not many speakers were. But the intense harmonics and the riot of sharp voices battling deep emotion worked to calm her scattered thoughts.
That the pup slept through it amazed her. It was loud and obnoxious and she loved it. That affinity had started in high school. The music had made her foster parents insane. Anything to annoy them had become a fast favorite.
In the process, she’d acquired the taste for the bloodlust themes and desperation in what little of the lyrics she understood. The passion of the music always made her blood run hot.
Music was one of the few things Sophie felt a passion for. The rest of the entitled and commercialistic culture could cease to exist and she’d miss little of it. Everyone on the planet could dissolve and she’d miss no one. Well, no one but Daniel Kent Hodge. A therapist once told her those weren’t real feelings, just a mere obsession. Fuck him. She felt them. Danny would too. Either way, the music fueled it and her.
After graduation, when she’d held a series of meaningless small jobs, classical music had helped her move up in the world. Escaping to it helped curtail her anger. She could disappear and the stress of working with the inane idiots at the Taco Hut would slip away.
In a way, it pushed her and was part of the plan on how to get out of the lifestyle she was doomed to live because her dumb whore of a mother had dumped her. It had been while lost in the frenzied notes and octaves that she decided she could use her body and her anger to rise above the carnage of her existence. She could work herself into a musical trance and think through her issues. It had helped her decide that taking out pimps and drug-dealing scum would be far more lucrative than selling pretzels or burritos at the mall.
A flash of blue caught her eye, followed by another, blaring for her acknowledgement. Fuck. She did not need this now. How long had the annoying cop been back there with his lights flashing at her? She glanced down. Apparently the music had worked its way from her brain to her right foot.
She turned down the music and considered just driving on. Her tool bag was in the floorboard on the passenger side. Close enough to reach out and snag her blade sitting snug in its sheath.
She slowed to pull over. Carla raised her little head from the seat next to her.
“Don’t worry, sweet pea, it’s just the stupid cops.”
She fished for her current set of documents as the officer took his time to run the plates. She made sure the name was the one she wanted to present at the moment. No worries there. The van was registered to Eloise Fowler, Noblesville, Indiana.
She waited.
The cop stayed in the car.
Checking her plates shouldn’t take that long.
Time passed, but Sophie didn’t worry, nor would the ice job intimidate her. She glanced at the clock on the dash. Five minutes since she’d come to a halt. If he was looking for any sign of criminal activity, he’d find none. She was getting peeved.
Finally the silver door on the squad car opened. Sophie let the window down as a young officer stood. A small, round female approached. The woman tugged her black slacks up by the utility belt. Different to see a female officer alone at night. Sophie assumed another cruiser was close by in case of trouble.
“License and registration, ma’am.”
Sophie shoved the required documents toward the window, sighing loud enough to show her displeasure at the interruption of her travels. And the bitch cop had the nerve to closely examine the license as if she suspected a forgery. There was nothing to suspect. The minivan was bought and paid for with cash at Herb’s Used Cars last month by Eloise Fowler. Registered in the same name. Insurance carried by Eloise Fowler. Driver’s license with Sophie’s picture read Eloise Fowler.
And her van wasn’t suspicious either. They were near the Yosemite National Park. Several duffle bags and a cooler occupied the back, and a puppy happily riding by her side made for a great cover. A camping adventure. Nothing out of sorts, nothing to see here.
“You realize you were going twenty miles per hour over the limit, Ms. Fowler?”
“Of course I do. The speedometer is directly in front of my face. Any moron who tries to tell you they don’t know they’re speeding is lying.”
Sophie didn’t look away from Carla to see the cop’s reaction to the frank comment. She was in a hurry and wanted to get the ticket and move on. She didn’t care. Nothing would be on her record, no need to pay whatever fine might come along with such a grievous disrespect for California speed laws.
She glanced at the out-of-shape woman. Her collar rode high on a squat neck. No sign of an Adam’s apple moving as she preached the cops’ sermon.
“That’s considered reckless driving. I can’t let this one go. That far over, you’re facing a loss of driving privileges. Probably going to lose this license for at least six months.”
Sophie sat silent as the policewoman waited for an elaborate lie. The plea for a warning ticket. Sophie checked her nails.
“But hey, no excuses, no argument. I like that.”
“I don’t give a shit what you like. I have places to be. Can you cut the chit-chat and let’s get this over with?” She shooed her with a wiggle of the fingers.
“Don’t antagonize me, Ms. Fowler.” The cop hitched up her belt again and Sophie caught her checking to see that her weapon was at the ready.
For an instant Sophie’s fingers itched to take the challenge. Who could kill faster on this deserted bit of highway? She was at a distinct disadvantage sitting in the van. But the cop was fat and several years older than when she’d passed the physical requirements of the training academy. Sophie was fit. Strong. And smart.
If she irritated the bitch cop enough, the officer would have Sophie step out of the car. Advantage was definitely on Sophie’s side then. She would have the upper hand in close combat. The element of surprise alone was a winning factor. The completely unexpected ability to turn from belligerent speeder to killer in an instant. This cop would never see it coming. Sophie could disarm her, and then kill her with ease. Who did she think she was dealing with anyway?
“There’s no law that says I have to be nice to you, is there?” She didn’t give the officer a chance to respond because she knew very well she was right. “Are we done?”
She looked the cop directly in the eye, showing no fear, no intimidation.
The officer shoved her citation through the window. “I’ll see you in court. There is a law that says that.”
Sophie smiled at the woman, genuinely pleased, knowing she would not be going to court. “Thank you very much.”
“Slow down.” The cop handed her the license before walking back toward her cruiser. Sophie could go after her and slit that short little neck in an instant. But she had other, more pressing things to attend to.
