“A lot of bucks, yes. Just like your unnamed client, Blake.”
Ham abruptly moved, forcing Drew to rush to keep pace. “Go on,” he urged once she’d caught him.
“Here’s what I suggest. I’ve also got somewhere to go, some things to check out. You go watch those tapes, you and your mysterious client. I’m convinced you’ll find an eye opener. You check with your client, I’ll check with mine and assuming no absolute objections we’ll meet for dinner and compare notes. Hell, maybe we’ll even team up like in the old days, huh?” With a smile and a jab of her elbow to his waist, she jibed, “I’ll get you to Allen, Samuels and Thornton—and McCalister—yet.”
“Let’s hope you don’t die trying,” Ham responded dryly.
“One thing. Whatever he told you, he’s lying. I’d bet my pension on it.”
“Who? Blake?”
“Try to keep up, McCalister. I mean Carson King.”
“That’s impossible. He’s got a white aura.”
She blinked but otherwise ignored that nonsequitur. “So see you tonight?”
“Guess so.” Arriving at Blake’s condo building, Ham slowed and added, “Here’s where I get off.”
“Yeah, I know. And this is where I cross. See ya.”
Ham ducked into the underground entrance, sought the cover of shadow, stopped for what he considered to be due time, and returned to peer out across the street. He looked left, right, left again, then saw her. She paused, glanced both ways then apparently satisfied, disappeared into the building where Carson lived his working life. Curiouser and curiouser, he thought. But this time, not unexpected. Not unexpected at all.
Ham keyed the private elevator and ascended to the top floor where he found Blake and Charlie in pretty much the same positions he’d left them—albeit without the egg and debris décor. He tossed the envelope on the table and proclaimed, “I’m pretty sure where the shot came from. I don’t know who or why yet, but we’ll get there. To start with, let’s check this tape and see if either of you recognize anybody.”
Blake handed the envelope to Charlie. “Tape? You mean like in VCR or something? We don’t have anything to play it on, not here, not in years.”
“It’s a CD,” Ham assured him. “I take it you do have one of those?”
“The finest,” Charlie replied. “I’ll set it up.”
“Also, I met a guy, a guy I think can help. I’d like to bring him on board, if you’re okay with that.”
Blake’s reaction bordered on horror. “Forget it. That’s a sure way for this to get out to the damn paparazzi. Nope, no way that’s going to happen. I’m not paying you to put this in the papers, or putting my trust in you just to have you betray it.”
“No, listen to me. He’s an ex-Marine, bright, educated, street smart, guy by the name of Carson. He’s—”
“Carson King?” a wide eyed Charlie asked.
Ham swung his head from one to the other, surrendering to his by now normal state of confusion. Charlie bore a beguiling smile, while Blake’s twitching lips belied a serious countenance.
“Okay, what’s going on? What am I missing here?”
“Carson belongs to Martina,” Charlie informed him.
“And Martina is…?
“My psychic,” Blake announced.
“The ghost of Truckee River,” Charlie added.
Ham closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then peered down to study the floor. He twisted his hands between his knees, rubbing away the irrational as he contemplated fight or flight. Curiosity got the better of him, finally forced him, against his will, to ask the obvious. “A psychic ghost?”
“And that’s so hard to believe, why?” Charlie teased.
Without looking up, wringing more and more moisture from his hands, he declared, “There was a song, from the sixties or seventies, a drug song I’m told, something about Alice in Wonderland and—”
“White Rabbit,” Blake interrupted, “1967, released on Jefferson Airplane’s album ‘Surrealistic Pillow’, peaked at number eight on Billboard, written by Grace Slick, although that was previously when she was with The Great Society. She also wrote ‘Somebody To Love’ off that album, although that, too, was when she was with her former band.”
That brought Ham’s head up and his mouth open. “Okay, okay, okay! Jeez, sorry I brought it up. My point here, the one I was going to make, is simple and that is, is that what we got here? One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small?”
“Tell him ‘ah, hookah’, Popster.”
Ham’s snort of amazement turned to a grunt of disgust, even as his mind flashed light years beyond the merely flabbergasted. “What is it with you people?” he demanded when he regained his voice. “What you’ve told me so far is that you’ve got a murder-mongering psychic, who Charlie tells me is a ghost, who owns a security guard sniper who possesses a white aura, according to a mystic sumo wrestling bartender with a fetish for dirty glasses.” He shook his head sadly, a recourse to self pity. “Yep, I’ve truly done it. I really have fallen down that hole.”
Blake chortled that tinkling, lyrical laugh that Ham had already indelibly come to associate with the legend. “Here,” he said as he tossed across a check, “this might bring you back around.”
Ham reached half across the table and snatched the check to take a look. When he did, his eyes popped, all the surprises of the past two days paling by comparison.
He held in his unavoidably trembling hand a check for $150,000. A check that he knew would clear.
Now if he could just clear his mind—which would be vastly more than hard. He regarded himself as not unimaginative, but he had never daydreamed so many zeros, never fantasized he’d be the recipient of such largesse, not even in his town of mega million jackpots. That he was not a gambler might have some part to play in that, but still…
Why fantasize, he asked himself, about the real? He could pay off the few credit cards on which he carried small balances, could get rid of his clunker and get himself a real ride, maybe a Jeep Wrangler loaded to the max—no ridiculous little sports roadster that in his opinion represented a four wheel testament to narcissism or a desperate repudiation of declining testosterone. And not one of those ridiculous Sahara’s, those overgrown, overblown real Jeep wanna-bes, but the real thing, red, with a soft black top that he could take down, take the doors off, zip down the streets of Vegas and let the excitement take hold as onlookers nudged each and announced with wonder, “Hey, look, that’s the famous private eye, Ham McCalister, I recognize his car. He’s a friend of Blake Garrett’s, you know. Yeah, a really good friend. I wonder if we could get his autograph?”
He might even dump his ratty apartment, make a huge down payment on a previously unaffordable mortgage, get a small but tasteful house in suburbia, loaded with amenities like a whirlpool bath and glassed-in separate shower, maybe with a swimming pool of his own where he could skinny dip like a kid without inhibitions, host pool parties, be somebody, even if just a small somebody in a large Vegas pool.
And vacations. Travel the likes of which he’d never been able to afford before, like here in Hawaii, or maybe at a summer cabin, somewhere on a lake in Maine perhaps, where he could escape the stifling desert heat of Nevada at its August best.
Or, he thought, perhaps the best use of this kind of money was to make more. Remain in his apartment, keep the car, and invest. Study stocks, plunge where he dared, keep much in CDs, take up the pipe and the Wall Street Journal and nod with sage satisfaction as his portfolio grew at an envious rate, his financial wisdom plain for all to see. McCalister, the financial genius, they’d whisper as he walked through malls, popping into curio shops and otherwise occupying leisured time with airy pretension.
Ham blew out a frustrated sigh. Enough of that load, he chastised himself. What about the job? Why this obscene amount? Nobody, not even a tycoon like Blake, handed out this kind of cash without a damn good reason. If he had trashed his wealth with such reckless abandon, frittered money b
eyond all reason, he would have long ago descended into rock’s version of that providential lottery winner whose profligacy sadly but inevitably leads to insolvency. Of course, using all the resources at your command to save your life qualified as a splendid reason, but reason demanded skepticism in this case. It didn’t take a rabid pessimist to assert that blind devotion to a psychic ghost reached well beyond the merely laughable. Just plain pathetic best described it, even on the upside.
Too, why this kind of money for an unknown dick from out of town? He could think of any number of alternatives to that misuse of funds. If discretion was the key, Blake could buy that from the majors. Or at least he probably could. Ham had to admit that the temptation to cash in would be great and that the larger the staff the greater the probability of a weak link acting it out. Still, were it his life in danger, he’d consider the practical benefits of a superior, more proactive staff as more than an offset to such a risk. Then again, he had so much less to lose than Blake, a comparison of risk that was so inapt that it was not for him to judge. Maybe pure cynicism was making him miss the obvious—though whatever that obscure obvious was remained shrouded by doubt.
One obvious was that Blake did not strike him as a fool—on the absolute contrary, his gut told him that Blake was nobody’s fool. As for Charlie, she lived by her own code, a set of tenets that precluded deceit. Maybe not so much a moral imperative as a simple belief that life is short and she couldn’t be bothered. Either way, she may be bent, but she was definitely straight. By his reckoning, then, this was no foolish scam.
Oh, well done, McCalister! You finally figured out that a rich superstar is not running a scam to drain your empty bank account. Wow. What a detective! No wonder you get the big bucks.
No scam, but it could be a ploy for reasons that very likely involved him not at all. Something much deeper than that, maybe something related to Blake’s convoluted business empire. Which was all fine and good, except why this ruse of ghosts, auras, and other psychic nonsense? A ruse that definitely included this morning’s little episode, a melodrama clearly designed for his benefit—though precisely why Blake would think it necessary puzzled him. But no more so than discovering that Drew was here in Hawaii and somehow involved in Blake’s affairs, or that strangers anticipate his every move and deliver cryptic clues apropos of nothing. These simply cemented the obvious, which was that a psychic ghost was a laughable and pathetic reason for his employment. And he’d been too awestruck to admit it.
Since what he thought of now as “The Call” had rocked his world, he’d let others set the agenda, let them lead him by his proverbial nose. When his instincts, so well developed over the course of a career that they were normally second nature, tried to warn him of all this, he’d pushed them away, cursed them for their nagging intervention. He’d become no more than a groupie, and much less helpful than that. Well not anymore. His exercise in star struck admiration ended here, and right this very now.
He didn’t really know these people, he reminded himself. Blake not at all except as a legend. Not Carson, nor the sumo bartender, or even Charlie, really. Though it disappointed him to think of her as a conspirator in a sting that, though not meant to harm him, certainly intended to use him, he sure as hell couldn’t rule it out. That he was in the midst of a sting, a conspiracy of which she played a major role. He’d broken up more than several dozens of those over the course of his career, a crime that was as normal for Las Vegas as its August heat. Even Drew, as straight an arrow as there ever was, might be tempted to conspire with them if the kind of money he was staring down at now was representative of her take.
Ham instantly rejected that as even remotely possible. Everybody else, maybe, but not Drew. No, more likely they both occupied the same pot, with the same water set to boil. But if they thought he’d roll over, they’d roll over, even for this amount of money, they’d missed their mark and badly. Clearly, they were willing to pay, and pay big. But he wasn’t buying.
Ham threw the check back across the table. “What is this? A down payment?”
Blake leaned back and cocked his head in inquiry. “Are you bargaining with me, Ham? That’s one-hundred and fifty grand for four days work. Not enough?”
“Nope. If I have to interview a ghost, I’m going to want a hell of a lot more than that. You know, to buy paranormal equipment and all that stuff.”
Charlie, to this point, had said nothing, merely, he noted, studying her hands, staring down at them as if mesmerized by what she saw there. Now she glanced up, gave him a baleful look, and said, “Ham, this is serious business, deadly serious. Please don’t make light.”
Ham was stung as much by the use of his name, unadulterated, as he was her soft pleading words. “I’m sorry, Charlie, I…”
Blake’s eyes revealed more sadness than anger when he snapped, “I guess that’s a joke of some kind. Anyway, about the money, maybe you’ve heard or read some of those fantasmagoric estimates of my worth. I am not a billionaire as has sometimes been claimed, so if you’re looking to score retirement you can put that away. That said, this is what I’m offering, though it comes with one caveat.”
Ham nodded, as if in expectation. “Which is?”
“If I am still alive one day after the four—meaning at 12:01 a.m. on day five—you will get another one-hundred and fifty thousand dollars. If I am not, consider yourself paid in full.”
Ham stood up and turned to the bank of windows, staring out at the normality which now escaped him. Finally, he turned back, his anger dissipated, and slowly neared the table. He put a gentle hand on Charlie’s shoulder and mouthed, “I’m sorry.” Though she never looked up, and he didn’t see how she could have heard him, she nodded acceptance of the proffered apology.
Returning his attention to Blake, he explained, “I’m sorry, I really am, but I just don’t get this. What if this is all a bunch of hooey? What do you know about this psychic, anyway? How long have you known her and how often is she right? Why does Charlie say she’s the ghost of Truckee River? I mean, what does that even mean? And my main point is this. If you’re not going to be killed, if there isn’t some curse a ghost has warned you to avoid and you’re alive because it’s a lie, I’ve taken you for a ride. And my piss poor joke aside, I’m not that greedy. I don’t use people and spit them out because there’s profit in it, like everybody else I’ve ever met. And so I can’t deal with the fact that not only do I get a boatload of cash to start with, but then I get rewarded because God granted you life, not me.” After a long pause, he added, “You see my problem here?”
Blake grinned mischievously. “You’re problem is that I have too much money and want to give you some?”
That brought a laugh from Ham. “Yeah, I guess maybe it is.”
Blake turned serious. “I’ve known her since I was in my early teens. She predicted my stardom. She’s never been wrong, at least with what she’s predicted for me.”
“So she’s like what, eighty?”
Blake just shrugged while Charlie laughed. “Who knows how old she really is?” was all she said.
“And you, Charlie…” Ham prompted.
“I call her the Ghost of Truckee River because that’s what she calls herself.”
“So she’s not a ghost?”
“I didn’t say that, Ham.”
Still not “Hamster” he noted. She was either still royally pissed or seriously worried. Or very, very both, he decided. It was, after all, her dad, and a threat on her dad’s life that he’d tastelessly mocked.
Ham started to reclaim his seat at the table when weariness got the better of him, spurred no doubt by the time and reality changes. “Is there any coffee on?” he asked Charlie.
“Sure, sounds good to me, too.” She popped up, heading to the kitchen. “Want some, Popster?” she threw over her shoulder.
Ham smiled inwardly. Clearly, her anger was not directed at her dad.
“Yeah, better bring the pot,” Blake shouted at her departing figure. Talki
ng to Ham, he said, “This started yesterday, shortly before I called you. Martina showed up here, white as a…well, you know…”
After being chastened by Charlie for his flip attitude, Ham was not about to toss around another inadvisable or cheeky quip. He contented himself with a serious nod, encouraging Blake to continue. Which turned out to be fortunate, as Charlie chose that moment to return with a platter of cups and the carafe of coffee—and a look that would have made him a ghost had he blurted out a flippant retort.
“Martina’s the psychic?”
Blake nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her tremble before, but she did, almost uncontrollably. It took Charlie awhile, murmuring whatever in her ear, before Martina found voice enough to tell me what she’d come to say.”
“What did you say to her?” Ham inquired of Charlie.
“Why? Is that important? If so, I don’t see how.”
“That’s why you’re paying me,” Ham reminded her. “And I won’t know if it’s important until I know what you said.”
Charlie set the tray down with a sigh, poured coffee all around and stared woodenly at Ham as she explained. “I told her that I knew why she was here, or at least I thought I did. I’d had the vision the night before.”
Blake’s face blanched white as he stared open mouthed at his daughter. “You never told me this,” he accused. “You saw this? You knew? You’ve seen it, too?”
Her voice was flat as she announced, “I saw the funeral, Pop. Your funeral. The same death Martina foresaw in her dream.” As Blake opened his mouth, she stopped him short. “Don’t ask me how, Pop, I don’t know. It’s never happened before, not to me. And the fact that it did now scares the hell out of me. I don’t want to know why I saw what I saw, I don’t want to be able to explain it and I don’t want to discuss it, so don’t ask.”
Blake, still pale, his eyes a bit wider than normal, continued to stare at his daughter, though he addressed his comments to Ham. “She saw me in the morgue, not at a funeral as…as I guess Charlie did. There was a day calendar sitting on the desk. It read Saturday, three days hence. That’s all her vision had revealed at that point.”
The Ghost of Truckee River (A Ham McCalister Mystery Book 1) Page 8
