Vegas, Lies, and Murder

by Sibel Hodge

  ‘Give me da moneee.’ He didn’t look in the least ashamed.

  I thrust some dollar bills at him.

  He counted the money. ‘Where my teeep?’

  ‘What’s a teeep?’ I asked.

  ‘Teeep?’ he repeated.

  ‘Oh, you mean tip?’ I tilted my head, pretending I was considering this.

  Mum said, ‘No teeep. You don’t deserve one for being a sleazebag.’

  ‘Actually, I’ll give you a tip,’ I said.

  His eyes lit up and he held his hand out.

  ‘Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time because then you won’t have a leg to stand on.’ And I slammed the door on him.

  Tia opened the door after me and shouted, ‘Grossburger!’ at him as he hurried down the hallway, but I didn’t know if that was in reference to him or what she’d ordered.

  I handed out the food and tucked into a chicken fajita wrap.

  Elvis, still on a liquid diet, hit the whiskey.

  ‘Here, have some of mine.’ Suzy offered him her quesadilla—minus the cheese and beans and with some sloppy lettuce on the side. ‘You need to keep your strength up.’

  I was on my last mouthful when Brad said, ‘While we’re waiting for Jerry Dansinger, we need to carry on with our own surveillance as planned so we can get an idea of the layout of Peppermint Rhino to pass on to the FBI.’

  ‘I’m coming with you to the Peppermint Rhino,’ Elvis said.

  I wasn’t entirely sure that was a good idea. At the rate he was going, he’d be severely shitfaced by the time they rocked up at the club later, and that could lead to all sorts of complications.

  I glanced at Brad, eyebrows raised in a question, while he tucked into his vegetable burrito. He shrugged at me and gave a nod as if to say, It will be OK.

  ‘So, we’ve got about eight hours to kill before we’re due at Polesque,’ Mum said. ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘Don’t say kill!’ Suzy said. ‘That’s very insensitive.’

  I opened my mouth to point out how she’d said something even more insensitive earlier but ended up holding it inside, though I think I might’ve muttered something under my breath.

  Mum rolled her eyes at Suzy. ‘Well, we need to do something. We can’t sit round here all day, waiting. It’ll drive me looney. Let’s go out and take our mind off things.’

  As we were deciding what to do, Suzy managed to coax Elvis back to her room, supposedly to ‘talk about his feelings.’ But I had my doubts. Maybe she was finally going to make her move and pounce on him. And maybe it was a good idea. At least it might take his mind off Dana for a while.

  ‘I need to do something physical to blow off steam,’ Brad said to me.

  ‘Not a bad idea.’ I arched an eyebrow. ‘But I don’t really want to do it with an audience.’ I pointed to Mum, Dad, Tia, and Hacker.

  Brad grabbed my hand and my bag and led me out the door, telling the others we’d meet up later.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re going shooting.’ His voice was dark and dangerous.

  Chapter 18

  I knew Brad had killed before. He’d done it for Queen and Country when he was in the SAS, which was understandable. But he’d also done it in the past to save my life when I’d been kidnapped following an investigation I was working on. It was either me or the bad guy, and Brad had no choice. He and his friends had got rid of the body, and it had never been found. I could understand him wanting to shoot Ivan for what he’d done to Dana. Hell, I wanted to shoot him, too. But we were in America now. We didn’t have a cleanup crew at our disposal. What if something went wrong and we got caught?

  ‘Look, I know you want to kill Ivan for what he and his thugs did to Dana, but we can’t,’ I said as we walked towards the Strip, hand in hand.

  ‘We’re not going to kill anyone. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Then where are we going?’

  ‘When I was looking through those guidebooks, I found a gun range not far from here. I thought we could shoot some rounds and pretend it’s Ivan. I need to let out some inner anger.’

  ‘Don’t you need to have a gun and a license to shoot at a range here?’

  ‘This is America.’ He shrugged. ‘Gun capital of the world. They want you to shoot something.’

  Brad hailed a taxi, and we arrived at The Gun Shack five minutes later. It wasn’t anything like a shack. It was huge. To the left of the reception was a shop where you could buy any kind of firepower you wanted. I thought about all the nutters out there who could get hold of a gun as easily as buying a carton of milk. Scary.

  The tiny brunette receptionist welcomed us with a huge smile and told us about the different shooting packages we could buy. They had a standard package, a coalition package, a WWII package, a machine-gun package, a zombie package—WTF?—and even a wedding package, where couples could get married in between an arsenal of firearms and walk down the aisle to gunfire. Bizarre. It brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Shotgun Wedding.’

  ‘I don’t want the WWII or the coalition package,’ Brad said. ‘I’ve had enough of war. What do you fancy?’

  The only thing I’d ever shot was a pistol. I even shot my ex-boss in the arse when I was a copper. To make a long story short, she totally deserved it. My own inner anger about what had happened to Dana and my ruined wedding bubbled to the surface, and I had the urge to shoot something meaty.

  ‘How about the machine-gun package?’

  ‘Oh, that’s a good one!’ the receptionist enthused. ‘You get to use an AK47, an Uzi, a Colt M16, and an MP40.’

  ‘Fabulous!’ I said.

  Our own dedicated range instructor, Hank, took us to pick up the guns and ammo before giving a safety talk and explaining about how the weapons worked.

  ‘Have you ever shot before?’ he asked us.

  ‘I was in the army, so you could say I know a thing or two,’ Brad said.

  I nodded. ‘I’m an ex-cop. I shot my boss once.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Hank raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Don’t worry. I promise to only shoot the target today.’

  Hank led us to an indoor forty-lane range at the rear of the building. It had booths with glass walls on either side that ran up to the ceiling, partitioning each shooter from the next. We found two empty booths. To our right was a twenty-something woman wearing stilettos, the tiniest denim shorts that weren’t even worth wearing—if she’d come out in a thong, she’d have been more covered up—and a very low-cut top that showed off her surgically enhanced cleavage. Perfect shooting attire. On the other side of her was an old man with a walking stick propped up against the counter in front of him, shooting a pistol.

  Brad put two of the machine guns on his counter, and I did the same with mine. When we’d fired our allocated rounds of each, we were going to play swapsies.

  ‘OK, if you have any questions, just ask,’ Hank said. ‘I’ll be standing right here behind you for safety procedures.’ He pointed to a button on the side of my booth. ‘Press here to bring the target holder towards you, and you can load your target on. Press it again, and it goes back to the end of the range.’

  I pressed my button and loaded up a target sheet, which wasn’t the usual black-and-white head and torso—it was actually a scary-looking clown. I sent the target back again.

  ‘Ready, guys?’ Hank asked.

  ‘Hell, yeah,’ I said, donning my ear mufflers to drown out the loud bangs and positioning myself with a fixed stance, ready to shoot the AK47.

  And then I was off in my own little world, blasting away and imagining Ivan was the clown.

  Yay, headshot! Take that, you arsehole. Ooooh, one in the heart, woo-hoo! That’s for Dana!

  My ammo was gone much too quickly. I put the AK47 down on the counter and stole a glance at Brad. The muscles rippled underneath his shirt. He finished his ammo and caught my glance, winking. We both recalled our targets, removed them, and compared our accuracy. His were deadly spot-on
in head and heart shots. Mine were pretty good, but nothing like when I shot with a pistol.

  I used the Uzi next and annihilated my target. When I’d finished, Brad and I swapped our guns and loaded up with ammo and new targets. I got to work on the MP40.

  As I was reloading a new clown, movement from the girl in the booth next to me caught my eye. I looked over. She was jumping up and down, gun in one hand, screaming her head off while her other hand scrabbled down the front of her top.

  ‘Argh! Hot! Hot!’ she yelped, waving the gun hand around. ‘It’s burning!’

  I guessed that a hot shell casing had flown out of her gun, bounced off the stall divider, and landed down her top. Ouchie!

  ‘Put the gun down on the counter!’ Hank yelled at her, but she didn’t seem to hear.

  ‘Helppppppppp! Get it out!’ She screamed, turning around to Hank, thrusting her chest in his face, carrying on waving the gun madly as she tried to dig the casing out of her cleavage with her other hand.

  ‘Ma’am, put the gun on the—’ But Hank didn’t get to finish what he was saying. In her panic, she pulled the trigger and shot the old man next to her in the arse.

  Double ouchie!

  ‘Shit!’ Hank yelled, taking hold of the woman’s hand and extracting the gun before she could do any more damage.

  ‘What the hell!’ the old man yelled, clutching his backside, eyes wide with pain. ‘You shot me, you idiot!’ He glared at the woman.

  ‘It was burning me! I panicked and forgot to put the gun down.’ The woman pulled out the offending spent shell cartridge from in between her boobs, rubbing them and pulling down her T-shirt to get a look.

  ‘I need a paramedic,’ the old man shouted, slumping to his knees and doing a face plant on the floor, hands clutching his backside, and groaning.

  ‘I need a paramedic!’ the woman yelled. ‘I’ve got third-degree nipple burns!’

  Hank spoke on the radio that was clipped to his belt and said they needed medical assistance for a gunshot wound and casing burns then kneeled beside the man. ‘Are you OK, sir?’

  ‘Of course I’m not OK. I’ve got a bullet in my ass!’ he yelped.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ the woman said.

  ‘Sorry? You shot me.’ The man’s voice was muffled into the ground.

  ‘At least it wasn’t me this time,’ I said to Brad.

  Brad shook his head slowly. ‘This is why you can’t just walk in off the street and shoot a gun in the UK.’

  The mood was kind of ruined then by the old guy groaning and the woman crying hysterically, so we decided not to bother shooting our last machine gun and left before anything else decided to spontaneously happen around us.

  Chapter 19

  Suzy had a coy smile on her face when I met up with her, Tia, and Mum to walk to Polesque. Despite the poor old boy getting shot, blasting the machine guns had refocused me, and I was ready for action again, hoping to bring down Ivan and his cronies.

  ‘Go on, then. Spill the beans.’ I bumped my shoulder with Suzy’s.

  She glanced down at her shoulder and grimaced. Weird that she didn’t mind bumping and grinding against all those poles and laps but yet she hated the thought of me passing on germs to her.

  ‘What beans?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t have beans. I had a quesadilla without them.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Did you have sex with him?’

  Suzy gasped. ‘Do you mind? That’s private! Just because you lot like talking about your sex life every second of the day doesn’t mean I want to.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t have one.’ OK, maybe that was a bit mean, but whatever.

  ‘Yes, I do!’ she snapped. ‘Anyway, Elvis is grieving.’ She stuck her nose in the air and tried to ignore me.

  ‘Yeah, and you know what happens when people hear bad news like that, don’t you?’ I said knowingly.

  ‘What?’ Tia asked.

  ‘They have sex,’ I said. ‘I read an article about it once. Apparently, there’s a relationship between grief and sex. In the same way some people turn to alcohol when they’re in mourning, others turn to sex. Sometimes when people close to you die, it triggers off a survival instinct that makes you want to procreate, which actually makes sense when you think about it. I mean, for one thing, it’s an escape and a way to crave comfort. But death is also a reminder of our own fragile existence, so some people have an urge to get as much out of life as possible while they’re still able to. Having a connection with someone else is a way of holding on when your own mortality is suddenly questioned.’

  ‘Yes, that can happen sometimes.’ Suzy glared at me. ‘But it didn’t in this case.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Mum said, unconvinced. ‘Well, I still think you need a boyfriend.’

  ‘I’m not going to sleep with him when he’s upset about Dana. I can’t even believe you’re all talking about my SEX LIFE!’ She shouted out the last two words.

  A huge, fat guy dressed as another Elvis impersonator walked past at that second. He was squeezed into a shiny gold suit with tight trousers that looked as if he’d been shrink-wrapped into them. He winked at Suzy. ‘You ain’t nothing but a “Hound Dog”, ain’t cha?’

  ‘Oh, go away, Fat Elvis!’ Suzy narrowed her eyes at him.

  Fat Elvis slunk away from us.

  ‘No wonder you can’t meet anyone when you’re so grumpy,’ I said.

  ‘You can shut up, too. You always talk too much.’

  I shrugged. I couldn’t really argue with that. It is pretty impossible to make me shut up. I even talk in my sleep sometimes.

  ‘Come on, now,’ Mum said. ‘Stop arguing. We’ve got more important things to worry about. Jerry Dansinger still hasn’t got back to your father.’ She chewed on her lip, a frown creasing up her forehead. ‘What if he can’t get hold of him? Are we just going to watch them planting drugs at Peppermint Rhino ourselves with no backup?’

  ‘We’ll probably end up getting arrested if we do that. Or shot,’ Suzy snapped. ‘It’s a ridiculous idea! And I don’t want anything to do with it.’

  I stopped walking and turned to Suzy, the anger I’d so far held in check with her bubbling to the surface. ‘It might be ridiculous to you, but it’s what Brad and I do for a living. You always mock my job and the fact people are usually trying to kill me, but don’t forget, they murdered Dana and wrecked my wedding. I’m not going to let them get away with it! You might be more interested in whether you’ve broken a nail or not, but there are more important things going on here!’

  ‘You’re mad!’

  ‘Is that a professional diagnosis?’ I cocked my head and folded my arms. ‘Is “mad” a politically correct term to use for your patients? No wonder Doctor Spork has still got issues.’ Doctor Spork was a patient of Suzy’s I’d unfortunately run into during a previous case, who’d developed a rather bizarre fixation on me. ‘I think you need to see a psychiatrist yourself for your own issues. You should spend more time being Sympathetic Suzy. She’s a lot nicer than Self-Centred Suzy.’

  She huffed out a sigh. ‘I can’t believe I’m part of the same genetics as you.’

  ‘Well, I have wondered about that myself sometimes. You were obviously switched at birth and replaced by a hormonal Tyrannosaurus rex.’

  ‘Me?’ she gasped.

  ‘Stop it.’ Mum put a hand on Suzy’s arm. ‘Amber’s right. There are more important things we should be putting our efforts into.’

  ‘So, if it comes to that, yeah, we might have to stake out Peppermint Rhino on our own when Ivan’s guys are there,’ I said. ‘At least, we can get it on film and then pass it on to Jerry afterwards so his people can deal with those bastards. But I’m way past getting mad now. I’m going to get even with them, for Dana’s sake, so doing nothing is not an option.’

  We walked the rest of the way to the club in silence. Inside, I was seething at Suzy for being so heartless, but then I felt guilty. Suzy wasn’t really a bad person. She was just… well, opinionated and difficult—to pu
t it politely. Not to mention grumpy and selfish. And quite a few other things. To her, my job might seem crazy, but it was all I knew. It was part of my genetic makeup.

  We arrived a sweaty twenty minutes later. The place was already heaving when we started our shift. Mum and Tia got to work on the poles on stage while Suzy angled for VIP lap dances, flirting with the customers and giving them bedroom eyes. None of the girls were talking about Dana, so I guessed they hadn’t heard anything about her death yet.

  Ivan was in a happy mood out on the club floor, strutting round the place like lord of the manor. It took all my strength not to stab him in the eyes with a cocktail stick or spike his drink with the laxatives that I knew Suzy had in her bag in case of constipation emergencies. Why was the all-you-can-eat buffet closed just when I needed a serrated steak knife? Maybe I could ram my knee into his groin and watch him retch in agony. That would be much more satisfying anyway.

  I kept my eyes peeled for any sign of Paul Winger, hoping to overhear any info that might help, but by two in the morning, there was still no sign of him, and Ivan had sloped off to his office to check out the action from his cameras.

  I watched Suzy doing a table dance for a single guy in his forties while I waited for Cooper to hand me the night’s takings to give to Ivan. Even though I hated to admit it, Suzy was very good at it. Don’t ever tell her I said so, though. I’ll deny it.

  ‘Here you go.’ Cooper handed me the cash box.

  I walked up the private corridor and found Bruce stationed outside the door. ‘Hey. Howth it going?’

  He shrugged. ‘Ith OK. Turn around, pleathe.’

  I assumed the position, my head close to Ivan’s door, while Bruce ran his fingers up and down my sides. For once, I ignored where his hands were because I was too busy listening to a conversation going on inside the office.

  ‘We’re leaving at eleven-thirty. We should get there by midnight. You did a good job finding Dana, but I don’t want any more mistakes. Got it?’ Ivan said.

  ‘Sure thing, boss.’ It was Pinhead’s voice.

  ‘This time tomorrow we’ll be laughing.’