Lucky Bastard (34 page)

“Who?”

I pull out my wallet and dig through it until I find the photo of Mandy and me, which I hand to him. “From her. Her name is Amanda Hennings. She goes by Mandy.”

He studies the photo with that same, unnerving intensity, then looks up at me. “Who is Amanda Hennings?”

“She’s my sister.”

I then proceed to tell him how she got infected, how it was my fault, and how I’m trying to do what I can to make things right. I leave out the part about how she told me she never wanted to see me again.

He looks back down at the photo and continues to stare at it for nearly a minute as I stand there in the silence of his cold, empty kitchen, waiting for him to respond.

He hands the photo back to me. “Is no charge. Will do for free.”

“What? Why? I mean, not that I’m complaining but . . .”

“Because is your sister.”

A luck poacher doing a job for free? He’s going to give the rest of us a bad name.

“Thanks,” I say. “But let me help with something. Office supplies, travel expenses, meals and entertainment . . .”

“No money. Just address, please.”

So I give him Mandy’s address and thank him again for his generosity, then I pick up the ten grand and am about to put it away when another thought occurs to me. I reach into my wallet and pull out the business card Barry Manilow gave me with the address and tomorrow’s meeting time and I hand it to the Albino. Then I show him the cash again.

“Any chance you’d be willing to make a delivery?”

T
he next morning I wake up early and give Doug a call and ask him to meet me at my office at ten o’clock. Then I pack up a suitcase of personal items, a duffel bag full of clothes, several fake IDs with old aliases, an ice chest with some food, and any money I have hidden. It doesn’t come to much. Just a little more than twenty-five grand. But it’s enough to settle things up.

On my way out, I see the old homeless guy again with the cat wearing a clean sweatshirt and a new pair of Reeboks. The homeless guy, not the cat. The cat’s sleeping and content while the homeless guy digs into a to-go container of Thai food.

“You were right,” he says, through a mouthful of pad thai. “Tequila made that lemonade go down real smooth. And then I found this sweatshirt and shoes in a bag by the bus stop.”

“Try some rum with this one,” I say, handing him my last bottle of lemonade, which he takes without any complaints this time. “It’ll taste like a mojito.”

“A mojito? Nice!”

I reach the Drake just after nine o’clock and find Gigantor stationed out in front, watching me approach like he’s expecting me.

“Miss Knight doesn’t like to be kept waiting,” he says, opening the front door.

“Did we have an appointment?”

“No, but she wants to see you.”

At least it’s good to know my instincts haven’t completely abandoned me.

We ride up in the elevator to the twenty-first floor in silence for most of the way, until I finally turn to him after the sixteenth floor and say, “Come on. Say, ‘It is your destiny,’ just once.”

He takes a deep breath and stares straight ahead.

“I know you went home and practiced it in front of the bathroom mirror,” I say. “Admit it.”

Nothing. Not even a twitch or the hint of a smile.

“Party pooper,” I say, as the elevator doors open and I step out into the blackened and smoke-stained interior of Harry Denton’s.

Firemen and guys in suits whom I presume to be either insurance agents or hotel brass are walking around, pointing and gesturing and shaking their heads or nodding. I
find Tuesday Knight in the bar, which managed to escape relatively free from fire damage.

Tuesday has traded in the skintight, leopard-print skirt and matching high heels for a more conservative pair of Lucky Brand jeans and Doc Martens. Unfortunately, she’s also wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt and a bra.

“Mr. Monday,” she says, putting out a hand to shake mine.

Any other time, this would be an awkward moment with me trying to come up with an excuse for not shaking her hand or just poaching her luck for shits and giggles. But I’m wearing gloves, which allows me to reciprocate without any concerns. Plus they help to cut down on any questions about why my right hand is covered with a film of wax and postconsumer-recycled paper.

“What happened here?” I say, playing innocent, hoping some of it sticks.

“Apparently some woman stumbled into the remains of a buffet line late last night and ended up setting the place on fire.” She leads me away from the others to a more private spot at the other end of the bar.

“Anyone get hurt?”

“Nothing serious,” she says. “Except for an old Asian man who panicked and apparently jumped out of one of the windows.”

It’s nice to see the spin doctors already handing out prescriptions.

“So I heard you were expecting me,” I say.

“I was. According to some witnesses, the woman who set the club on fire was a brunette in a red dress, and I thought it might have been our mutual friend.”

“Doubtful. I’m pretty sure she checked out last night.”

“Of her hotel?”

“Sure,” I say. Honesty might be the best policy, but manipulating the truth requires a lot more skill.

“Did you find out anything about her?”

I hand Tuesday the information I wrote down. “Her name is Tracy King. She’s from Tucson, Arizona.”

Tuesday reads over my notes, then looks up. “Why was she impersonating me?”

“I don’t know,” I lie. “Her own father died, so maybe she was trying to pretend to have your father for a while. Or maybe she just wanted to get some free hotel rooms and club passes.”

Again, the whole honesty-is-the-best-policy thing? Sometimes it’s really more of a theory.

Tuesday looks over my notes again, then folds them up and puts them in her purse. “Thank you for the information, Mr. Monday. Quite frankly, I’m surprised you found it so quickly.”

“It’s nice to know I exceeded your expectations.”

“Well, I appreciate your efforts.” She reaches back into her purse. “And I make good on my promises.” She removes her billfold and flips it open to her checkbook and starts to write out a check to me for twenty thousand dollars.

“If you wouldn’t mind, could I get that in cash?”

O
n my way out of the Drake, I stop off in Starbucks and order a grande cappuccino from a twentysomething barista with fuchsia-colored hair and the glasses of a high school librarian. I don’t ask for her phone number and she doesn’t offer up anything other than a polite smile and a “Have a nice day.”

I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, but it’s definitely different.

Half an hour later, I’m sitting in my office and draining the last of my coffee when Doug shows up.

“Yo, Holmes,” he says, walking in the door. “How’s it hangin’?”

“Big and low,” I say, enjoying the smile on his face, fighting to keep the smile on mine, knowing it’s the last time I’ll ever say that to him.

This growing attached to people really sucks.

Doug sits down in the chair with his hands in his pockets
and immediately slides down into a slump that’s a perfected art form. “So what’s on tap for today?”

I consider telling Doug the truth, but that would just disappoint him, so instead I opt for telling him an edited version. “I’m leaving town for a while, Bow Wow.”

“Like a vacation?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“Swizzle,” he says. “You must have had itchy feet. So where you gonna be chillin’?”

“I’m playing it by ear. Making it up as I go.”

“That’s cool,” he says, nodding in approval. “When you comin’ back?”

“It’s open-ended. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Doug remains slouched but takes his hands out of his pockets and clasps them behind his head. “Lay it on me, Holmes.”

“How would you like to run the business while I’m gone?”

“No shit?” He sits up and drops his hands. “Forizzle?”

“Forizzle,” I say, though I’m still not really sure what that means. But Bow Wow does and apparently I’ve spoken well.

His face breaks open into the Grand Canyon of smiles and his eyes tear up. For a minute I think he’s going to run around the desk and give me a hug, but then he blinks back the tears and sucks it up. “I’d be honored, Holmes.”

At first I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea to make the offer to Doug, considering that I’d poached his good luck. But after watching him survive getting shot in the chest, I have a feeling he’s going to be just fine.

Sure, it goes against everything I’ve always believed in, but I’m beginning to think that maybe there’s more to good luck than just being born with it.

While waiting for Doug to show up, I arranged to have the rent on the office covered for the next two months, and I did the same with the phone Thug One took from me. I don’t know where the phone is and I don’t really care. After two months the service will be deactivated and Nick Monday will cease to exist. But for the next eight weeks, any phone calls for Nick Monday, private investigator, will continue to be received.

“I’ve set it up to have all of my calls forwarded to you,” I say. “Just let them know you’re handling things while I’m gone and give them your phone number so they can call you directly.”

“But what if I don’t know what to do, Holmes?”

“I’ll check in every now and then to see how things are going. But don’t worry about it, Bow Wow. You’ll do great.”

Although the first part is a lie, I have no doubts that Doug can probably run his investigations better than I did. Though he might want to cut down on the gangsta vernacular.

I show him the files in the cabinet and on the laptop,
which has all of the information about any legitimate jobs I’ve taken over the past couple of years. I took any personal files out of the cabinet and dumped all of my non-business-related information off the laptop and onto a flash drive this morning before Doug showed up.

“I think that’s about it,” I say. “Any questions?”

“When are you leaving, Holmes?”

“Today. In an hour. Which is something else I need to talk to you about.”

“You need a ride to the airport?”

“Not exactly.”

Fifteen minutes later, Doug has forty thousand in cash and the keys to my office and I have the keys to one screaming-lemon-colored Prius.

With the forty grand I figure Doug can get another car and either pay the rent for another six months or open up his own business in a new location. I know he’ll be upset once he realizes I’m not coming back, but I hope he’ll forgive me.

I drive to my apartment, pack up my duffel bag and suitcase and ice chest, and head out of San Francisco a little more than an hour before my scheduled meeting with Barry Manilow. With any luck, the Albino has already made his delivery and Barry won’t be bothering me anytime soon.

I plug in my smartphone, the one I use for poaching, and check the navigation, which tells me I should reach my destination in just over four hours. I’m not expecting to get
any business calls, and wouldn’t answer them if I did, but I need a phone and it’s billed to an alias that no one can trace back to me.

I drive north on 101 across the Golden Gate Bridge, then I cut across Highway 37 to Interstate 80 and head east until I reach a Motel 6 on the outskirts of Reno just past three in the afternoon, where I book a room and then grab some fast food before I head to the casinos to improve my financial situation.

I come back a few hours later with an additional eight thousand dollars.

I spend the next day bouncing from casino to casino, winning a few hundred on the slots and a thousand at blackjack before moving on to another game or another casino. I haven’t had this kind of luck since Tucson, and I wonder if I somehow managed to poach some of Jimmy’s good luck. Maybe the wax and paper coating on my right hand didn’t prevent the transfer of luck. Maybe it just acted as a filter, allowing something to trickle through.

Or maybe it’s just that for the first time in three years, I’m free of the bad luck I’ve been carrying around.

Except I don’t believe that’s the only reason. But the only other explanation for my change of good fortune goes against everything I’ve ever known about good luck, everything I’ve ever learned. It challenges me to believe that good luck can be manufactured by actions and conduct in addition to existing in someone’s genetic code. It challenges me to believe that there’s an additional answer for
how good luck works. And right now, the only challenge I’m interested in is making as much money as possible in a short time.