Double Strike (A Davis Way Crime Caper Book 3) (2 page)

“I’m thirsty.” My prisoner was shuffling his feet.

I gave him a little poke with my gun. “Be still, you little punk.”

“What?” (Fantasy.)

“We’re in big trouble, Fantasy.”

“I agree.”

“No. I mean the code,” I said. “I don’t remember it.”

“You have thirty flights of steps to remember it, Davis. Get up here.”

“Get me a beer and I’ll get you in, lady.”

“You shut up. And sit down.” I used my gun as a pointer. “You’re sick.”

“Who are you talking to?” Fantasy asked.

The lobby was eerily quiet except for the lady on the loudspeaker asking us to leave. Whoop whoop.

“A baby car thief who tried to drive the Mercedes off the casino floor,” I said. “I’ve got him with me.”

“A baby was driving a car? In the casino?”

I looked at my prisoner. “He’s tall for his age.”

“Get rid of him,” Fantasy said, “and get up here with your finger and that code.”

I’m pretty sure I entered the code backwards under the notes app of my phone. Fourteen phones ago.

“I can get you in,” the tall baby said.

“I thought I told you to be quiet.”

“Look, lady,” he said, “I started a car without a key, right?”

That was true.

“I’ll get you in.”

*     *     *

I’ve never been on a stair machine and I’ll never get on one. By the tenth-floor landing, my legs were on fire and I was panting like a dog. By the twelfth floor, I had to sit down.

“You should work out,” the boy, who had yet to break a sweat, said.

“You should shut up.” I didn’t have enough air in my lungs to waste any arguing with him.

I made him give me a piggy-back ride for the last eighteen flights of stairs, which was quite the trick since his hands were cuffed and I had no way to uncuff them other than shoot through the plastic.

I was all for it, but using the one ounce of brain he had in his head, he voted it down. He had the nerve to begin negotiations with me, the clock ticking away upstairs, my family, including my eighty-three-year-old grandmother, across the street shivering in a dark parking lot.

“Give me your hat.”

“I am not giving you my hat, you little brat.”

“And your sunglasses.”

They weren’t my sunglasses. They were Bradley’s. I’d grabbed them out of my car, part of my hurry-up disguise. A part I had no intention of giving this kid. He already had my jacket. I’d shed the dark blue windbreaker somewhere between the fourth and fifth floors, and he’d refused to take another step until I tied it around his waist.

“You’re a little kleptomaniac, kid. You want other people’s stuff. Don’t you have stuff of your own?”

“Dude. It’s a good disguise.”

“Which is why
I’m
wearing it.”

“Who are you hiding from, lady?”

“None of your business.”

I work undercover for the Bellissimo, and I look too much like the boss’s wife, so for the most part, I hide from everyone. And this brat didn’t need the details.

“I’m not carrying you up the stairs if you don’t give me your hat.”

Had he been any kind of decent criminal, he would have disarmed me, shot me, and left me for dead. As it was, he only wanted my hat. My hair tumbled out of it.

“Nice.” His blond head tilted on a leer.

“I’m old enough to be your mother, you pervy little freak.”

“Put it on my head.”

“I’ve had about enough of you, young man.”

He took eighteen flights of steps, with a hundred pounds of me hanging around his neck, my legs hooked through his cuffed arms, like he was skipping through a field of daisies. When we finally reached the emergency door that would get us through to the thirtieth floor receiving area, he used the backside of me to push against the metal bar, almost knocking my head off, then he tipped back, dumping me on the floor.

“What the hell?” No Hair, my extra-large boss, Fantasy, my partner, and Baylor, the latest addition to our team, all stared at me and the carjacker.

I scrambled to my feet and gave the juvenile offender a shove. “This little punk hotwired the Mercedes in the casino and was trying to drive it out the front door.”

The juvenile carjacker grinned at everyone from underneath my CDC hat and from behind Bradley’s RayBans.

No Hair growled, grabbed him by the meat of his arm, and pushed him through the security door into the Sanders residence.

What. A. Mess.

There were a dozen firemen, each wearing fifty pounds of gear. There was no fire and the smoke had cleared, but there was a sharp sting of hot electricity in the air, like a hundred toasters had fried, a smell I knew, having been toaster challenged all my life.

Everything was dripping, trampled, not one stick of furniture was where it should have been, and a movie-screen-sized oil portrait of Bianca Sanders and her beloved pooches hung diagonally on the wall by one thread.

I took a second to check my phone, now that I wasn’t singularly in charge of an underage joyrider. Bradley Cole had my family and was taking them back to our place.

Your grandmother is wearing a lace top and very shiny short shorts
.

(OMG.)

“You’re clear,” a suited fireman holding his helmet under his arm said to No Hair. “Good luck.”

“How do we know they’re in here?” I asked.

“Because they’re not anywhere else,” he said. “It looks like they jumped out of the bed in a hurry. I found their phones on the nightstands.” He patted the breast pocket of his jacket, partially obscuring my view of the scissors, dozens of pairs of them in various stages of cutting, on his tie. No Hair only wore a tie once, and at his age (washed up), he’d gone through every normal tie ever made, so he wore increasingly strange neckties.

The hardwood floors were sludgy with what felt like mud. The rain from the ceiling sprinklers had married the dirt from the fire boots, at which point I realized I probably wouldn’t be getting married this weekend. This was a mess of gigantic proportions, and it wouldn’t be cleaned up before Saturday at seven.

We all stepped into the son’s closet. It was the size of my first apartment. My whole first apartment. No Hair and Baylor ripped a tall stack of shelves away from the wall, because there was no electricity to operate the slidey.

The steel door held a keypad and a touchscreen. No Hair pressed a meaty finger pad against the screen and it flew through several fingerprints before it locked on his. He pushed four buttons on the keypad. Beep, beep. He stepped back and waved me forward.

I stayed put.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Davis.” A beam of flashlight was trained on the crown of No Hair’s bald head. “You don’t remember your half?”

I pushed the juvenile delinquent to the door. “Do it.”

The little thief hacked the fingerprint touchscreen in two seconds and the code keypad in three—I was beyond impressed—then pulled open the six-inch-thick steel fire door.

Battery powered can lights illuminated the stunned faces of Richard and Bianca Sanders. Our invasion was also noted by her killer Yorkshire terriers, Gianna and Ghita, by way of piercing, reverberating, diabolical song. Such little dogs, so many teeth. They raced our way. I climbed up Baylor’s leg (those dogs hate me), but they flew right past me without their regular attempt at a pound of my flesh and instead, set their sights on the baby carjacker. Who they seemed to like.

Mr. Sanders’s head snapped back. “Thomas?”

Mrs. Sanders’s snapped up. “Thomas?”

My head just snapped. “
Thomas
?”

The baby carjacker scooped up the dogs. He said, “Hey Mom, Dad.”

TWO

The safe room was, as Thomas Sanders announced, “Amazeballs.” His and his father’s heads grazed the ceiling. No Hair, the size of three men, didn’t even try to get one of his big feet in the door.

Thomas studied a built-out Lego space city taking up two feet of shelf that had, at some point, been locked up in here, along with a sofa, emergency supplies, a satellite phone (dead), and more boy treasures. “I haven’t been in here since I was a kid.”

When was that? Last week? By my count, he was fifteen.

“David, give me your clothes.” Bianca breezed past me. “Mine smell.”

“It’s Davis.” She asked for the clothes off my back because we’re the same size. We’re almost the same everything, and that would make me Bianca’s celebrity lookalike, which is how I got this job in the first place. We’re all but twins, with a few exceptions: She’s blonde with chilly green eyes. My hair is caramel red and my eyes are one shade darker on the caramel side. I wear colored contact lenses and spray my hair Honey Kiss Gold when I take care of business—corporate, philanthropic, monkey—for her. Sometimes it’s fun. This year, so far, I’ve been queen of my own Mardi Gras parade float, sat beside Cindy Crawford at a Save the Dolphins brunch, and ridden on Air Force Two from Gulfport to Jackson. Often, it isn’t fun. Bianca insists I be famished and dehydrated, wear bras named Bombshell and Balconette, and looking like her had landed me behind bars. Which was, like, two lifetimes ago. Not that I’d forgiven or forgotten.

I gave her my clothes.

“Where do you shop, David? At a shelter for the homeless?”

I was forced to wear what she’d worn into the safe room, a salmon-colored silk robe that hit four inches above my knees. That was it. A robe. And it smelled fine. Her car-thief son dug deep, found an ounce of humanity, and gave me back the CDC jacket. Now I was wearing a disease windbreaker over an orange silk nightie with Nike Airs.

*     *     *

Fire barriers between the floors had kept the fire from spreading. The sum total of the storm’s physical damage was limited to a large corner of the Sanders’s residence. The sum total of lost revenue from the hotel and casino being evacuated was through the singed roof.

By eight o’clock that morning, the sun promising a glorious after-storm day, power was restored throughout the building, and the towel-clad guests were ushered back in. Local, cable, and even national news outlets recorded their reentry. The casino wouldn’t reopen until the Gaming Commission said so. The front desk was closed to arriving guests, but was very busy with guests checking out.

“This is ridiculous,” a lady said. “My only vacation this year. And you people treat me like this?”

“We’re very sorry for the inconvenience, ma’am.”

This went on until vouchers were issued for future three-night stays, free slot-machine credits, buffets, and spa gift certificates.

Complimentary pastry and coffee kiosks were set up like soup lines all over the lobby. Ambulance-chasing attorneys wove in and out of the crowd passing out business cards. The Mercedes Thomas Sanders confiscated and I shot the wheels off of had disappeared. At the casino entrance, a hundred hotel guests were pressed against the red ropes separating them from their blackjack tables and slot machines, chanting, “Let us in! Let us in!” Suits, hardhats, and badges tried to control the chaos. The whole place smelled like bacon because Plethora, the buffet adjacent to the casino, was trying to minimize the losses by cooking everything immediately.

We convened in Mr. Sanders’s office—me, No Hair, Fantasy, and Mr. Sanders. Baylor had been placed on Thomas Sanders patrol.

“Okay,” Mr. Sanders, not dressed for success, was behind his desk. “What happened?”

No Hair had a cheat sheet from the hard-hat people. “We have one lightning rod for every ten feet of perimeter. They catch lightning strikes and send the charge down to a rod buried twelve feet in the ground, safely bypassing the building.” He flipped his cheat sheet over. “A cable conductor for one of the rods on the roof was cut, probably by a construction worker, allowing a strike to hit the building,” he folded the paper, “directly above your head, Richard.”

Well, that’s terrifying. Even more terrifying, Thomas Sanders would tell his parents I tried to shoot him. I wondered where I’d work after I was fired. Maybe I’d just be demoted. Maybe they’d let me run a cash register in one of the gift shops.

“We have no construction on the roof,” Mr. Sanders said.

No Hair cleared his big throat and shuffled his big feet.

Fantasy and I whistled and admired different lofty corners of Mr. Sanders’s office.

Mr. Sanders threw down the pen he was holding. “Just tell me.”

No Hair ripped off the Band-Aid. “Bianca’s having a small pool installed on the southwest corner of the roof.”

“No, she’s not.”

“I’m afraid she is.”

Mr. Sanders held up both hands.
Why
?

“For the dogs.” No Hair said it to the floor.

Every drop of blood drained from Mr. Sanders’s face. “Did you know about this, Jeremy?”

“Not until fifteen minutes ago.”

“Did either of you?”

Fantasy and I pointed at each other. “She did.”

Mr. Sanders turned to me for an explanation. I’d been at the Bellissimo longer, and was the mouthpiece. Mouthpiece, scapegoat, butt of everyone’s jokes.

“I only know about it because Mrs. Sanders asked me to go over a few things with the construction workers.” Twice a day for two weeks now, I’ve had to dress up as Bianca, trek up there, and threaten the crew with their very lives if they didn’t get every single mosaic and topiary detail right.

Three days ago she suggested I shoot the air conditioner man. (“You have a gun, right, David? Use it.”) He had the nerve to suggest she couldn’t “condition” the air without enclosing it. She had me suggest he find a way or die right then and there.

Mr. Sanders closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I suppose you all knew my son was going to drop in for an unscheduled visit, too?”

We all shook our heads no. We did not.

“My son shows up with no warning and my wife’s having a kiddie pool built for her dogs.” He looked up. “And those are the least of my problems. Who shot a gun in the lobby during the evacuation? Do any of you know anything about that?”

“What?” (No Hair.)

“What?” (Fantasy.)

“
What
?” (Me.)

“Several hundred guests are claiming shots were fired in the lobby.”

“That can’t be true,” No Hair said. “What kind of idiot would shoot a gun during an evacuation?”

At moments like these, I like to smooth my eyebrows.

“Can someone look into it?”

Smooth, smooth.

“You look into it, Davis.”

Smooth, smooth, smooth.

“But first,” Mr. Sanders pushed back from his desk, “Davis, you and Fantasy get upstairs with Bianca, settle her down and see what she needs.”

Settling Bianca down would take a baseball bat. And what she needed were stronger meds.

“I have Newman waiting,” he said, “so you two get going.” He gave a nod to door number two, the door he wanted Fantasy and me to exit, so Newman could come in door number one. And not see us. Because we’re secret spies.

Newman is Levi Newman, Casino Manager. He’s a new fixture at the Bellissimo, but certainly not new to casino gambling. He’s a Las Vegas transplant from the Montecito, where he’d been the casino manager for fourteen years. He moved here to be our casino manager, and brought his wild wild west ideas with him, including a huge event just days away, the Strike It Rich Sweepstakes. From what I could see, he worked twenty-five-hour days and didn’t have a life, spouse, pet, or concern past the Bellissimo property lines.

“Davis.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Put some clothes on?”

*     *     *

Three months ago, Mr. Sanders’s private jet, a Gulfstream 650, left Biloxi without passengers. First stop, Cape Town, South Africa, to pick up Dr. Fenyang Itumeleng, the world’s top authority in facial fillers and lipostructure. Next stop, Buenos Aires, Argentina, to retrieve Dr. Adolfina Aguirre, renowned developer of the TAME (tool-assisted malor elevation) procedure. Last stop, Beverly Hills, California, where the party of pilots and doctors had Asian Fusion catered by Urasawa while they waited on the tarmac for Dr. Tootles Turney, inventor of the Tootles Lift, rejuvenation without downtime. Dr. Turney said she was late because she’d been tied up with Mel Gibson.

After a week of consultation, it was determined that Bianca Sanders could dodge a facelift for at least five years if she’d give up cigarettes. She wasn’t the least bit concerned with her heart or lung function, never used the C word, and she couldn’t care less about anyone breathing her secondhand smoke. But once convinced she’d see a dramatic improvement in her skin tone and elasticity, plus avoid going under the knife for several more years, she quit. Cold turkey. And took it out on all of us.

“Let me assure you, David,” Bianca had both me and Fantasy held captive, “the remodel of my living quarters will go quickly and smoothly. And I expect the two of you to see to it.”

“It’s Davis,” I mumbled.

She rattled off instructions: secure her jewelry, restock her collections—wardrobe, Rembrandts, cosmetics—and replace her half-million dollar solid rock crystal bathtub by her regularly scheduled bath time. Five o’clock.

Fantasy was taking notes. “Who do we call about the bathtub, Mrs. Sanders?”

She blinked twice. “It’s from the rainforest. Ecuador, I believe.”

The Bellissimo Resort and Casino, a world-class five-star destination, is a big place. With more than seventeen hundred guest rooms, two hundred of those swanky suites, fifty of those extra-luxurious two-bedroom swanky suites, and two of those were ultra, über, over-the-top luxurious four-bedroom swanky suites, only occupied by Jay Leno and such. Which is where we were. The Sanders would be slumming it here. Here already had two swimming pools. One inside, one out. She could take her five o’clock bath in one of those. Maybe they should move here, give one of the pools to the dogs, and be done with it.

Bianca finished giving us our marching orders, which was more of an extensive shopping list than anything else, so we made a run for it. Her parting words: “David. Get dressed. You look ridiculous.”

Fantasy and I shared a weary look in the elevator.

“Think you’re going to be able to pull it off?”

“I doubt it.”

“It really only takes three minutes to get married, Davis.”

I rested my head on the mirrored wall of the elevator and closed my eyes. “My half-plan is to see when they reschedule the Strike it Rich thing and go from there.”

Fantasy and I were supposed to have attended an all-day training session today for our next assignment, the Strike it Rich shindig. To keep an eye on things. We were to have spent today orienting ourselves for it. The building catching fire and the hotel being evacuated at three this morning had nixed the orientation, and we were waiting for word on the reschedule. Which would probably interfere with the wedding. And if it didn’t, it would most certainly interfere with the honeymoon. And only the orientation would be rescheduled, not the Strike It Rich bash. It was set in solid rock crystal, and nothing stopped the casino train. This building could have burned to the ground this morning and somehow, someway, the Strike it Rich Sweepstakes would still start next weekend.

“Do you think it’s a sign, Fantasy?”

“Is what a sign?” We stepped off the elevator.

“Lightning striking the building,” I said. “Do you think it’s a sign?”

“A sign of what?”

“That Bradley and I shouldn’t get married. This weekend.”

“Davis. Lightning striking the building is a sign of weather. And nothing more.”

*     *     *

It was a Grand Theft Auto XIV showdown.

Fantasy and I entered the bullpen of our 3B offices (B is for Basement) to find Baylor lost in a big bean bag chair and Thomas Sanders deep in another, neither of which we had room for or I’d ever laid eyes on, with Xbox One all over the flat screen. There were two empty pizza boxes and at least eight empty green bottles. At ten in the morning.

“Where did you get an Xbox, Baylor?”

“Target.”

Fantasy stepped over them and went straight to control central, through a door on the right, to start knocking off Bianca’s chore list. The list started with La Prairie of Switzerland and ended with a partridge in a pear tree. Fantasy would order the restock of all Bianca’s cosmetics and skin care necessities by phone, then send a Bellissimo limo and an armed guard to New Orleans to pick it all up. Bianca wanted the exercise completed within a half hour. New Orleans is ninety miles away.

I picked up an empty green bottle and waved it in Baylor’s face. He leaned around it and kept poking his game control thing. “Move, Davis.”

“Are you drinking beer while you’re on the clock, Baylor, or are you letting this one drink beer?” I waved the bottle in Little Sanders’s direction.

“It’s O’Doul’s, Davis. Non-alcoholic.
Move
.”

I moved. To the wall outlet behind the television. The room went quiet.

“Now.” I settled in beside Thomas. “Let’s talk.” I yanked a non-beer bottle out of his hand and passed it to my co-worker. Baylor, regaining a few of his senses, began a clean-up. Clank, clank, clank. I cleared my throat. “Your dad is very busy, Thomas. There’s a lot of damage to the building and the casino is
closed.
Do you get what a big deal that is around here?”

He barely shrugged. Not his problem.

“I need to know how you got here and why you’re here. Then I need to relay all this information to your dad.” I sat back and folded my arms across my chest. “Start talking.”

“Dude.”

“Thomas.” I held up a hand. “I’m not your dude. Call me Davis.”

He was a bundle of energy, sitting on the edge of the cushion, his features animated, his eyes bright and busy, and he looked like he might jump across the room grasshopper-style any second. I truly believe the next generation of gamblers, having cut their teeth on Xbox, will take it to another, higher, unheard of, level of casino gaming, because they’ll bring their Xbox energy with them.

“So, dude.” He caught himself. “My bad. Davis. It’s fall break.”

“It’s your school’s fall break? Didn’t your parents know?”

He dropped his chin, then whipped his head up and to the right every three seconds as a hair-grooming gesture. “I do not know.”

I rolled a hand between us. Keep going.

“I got a ride.”

“You got a ride?”

I can’t imagine that he can continue whipping his head around like he does without surely, at some point, breaking his own neck.

“A kid in my residence hall? He was coming and I rode with him.”

“On what? A tractor? In a car? Delta?”

“Private.” Then, in the space of one second, noises came out of Little Sanders perfectly mimicking jet engines starting, a takeoff, a flight hugging the East Coast, hanging a right along the Gulf, then coming in for a smooth landing in Mississippi. All males are born with these noises. In addition, this male was born with a silver shovel in his mouth. He’d probably never even heard of Delta, unless maybe he owned half of it, which was not out of the question. His maternal grandfather, Salvatore Casimiro, owned half of the Las Vegas Strip.

“What’s this kid’s name, Thomas?”

“Quinn.”

“So his father is Mr. Quinn?”

“No. Quinn is the kid at my school.”

“What’s Quinn’s last name?”

“Jennings.”

“Were his parents with you?”

“Negative.”

“Do you know his parents’ names?”

Also negative.

“Do you know where he’s from, Thomas?”

“Down here somewhere.”

“Biloxi?” Jennings. Didn’t ring any loud bells. “Your friend is from Biloxi?”

“Somewhere close,” Thomas said. “Georgia. Maybe Kentucky.”

I’d get faster and more coherent answers from a computer than this one, which is what I intended to do before I reported back to Mr. Sanders.

“How long will you be here, Thomas?”

“Till, like, school starts again.”

I see. “When does school start again?”