Royal Flush (20 page)

The girl handed me what was left of her drink and headed over to the cabana. It was a time-tested trick: if a girl's walking around without a drink, it gives men an opportunity to buy her one. I didn't believe Charles was going to bite, but if she could distract him for just a minute it would allow me to take a peek in the cabana without Charles or Jojia knowing about it.

My new friend sauntered jauntily over to where Charles was standing, slowing as she got closer. She seemed to be examining him to see if he lived up to billing, then she approached. I couldn't tell what she was saying, of course, but her body language told me all I needed to know. And Charles
wasn't
trying to get rid of her.

I sprang into action and shadowed a couple of guys who were decked out in expensive-looking tracksuits and lots of gold bling. They provided me enough cover to peer into the cabana, but only for a second. When I got into position, they moved on, leaving me exposed and reliant on my blonde friend's charms for cover.

The cabana proved to be empty, except for Jojia and a pile of purses and other personal effects. At the moment, she was discreetly opening a small Louis Vuitton handbag and rifling through its contents. When she found the wallet, she opened it and laid out three or four credit cards, plus a driver's license, and methodically snapped a photo of them. Then she flipped them upside down and repeated the process, glancing up every few seconds to make sure her lookout was still standing guard.

I had seen enough, so I decided to move on. Unfortunately, Charles was a better lookout than conversationalist, and he had already gotten rid of the blonde girl. From twenty feet away, his hazel eyes were boring right into mine. This time, he didn't smile.

A chill ran down my spine and my face got so flushed that my eyes teared up. I couldn't hold his gaze any longer and turned away, abruptly, mad at myself and embarrassed for being caught. I walked away quickly, aimlessly, negotiating my way through the hazy air and throngs of people as I staggered toward the little corner I'd come from.

I needed to regroup. Breathing deeply, I propped myself up against the wall near the ladies' room and pretended to be using my phone, my standard
do-not-disturb
pose. Everything seemed obvious now. All of the fake friends Jojia had made, the use of Charles as a lookout. She was befriending all of these young people, showing them a good time at the clubs, getting them drunk or high or both, and then stealing their identities and credit cards while they were out on the floor dancing. It was a crime I found elegant in its simplicity. Young people had more money than ever, or at least more
credit
than ever, and at that age they were desperate to be popular, to have friends, and especially to have glamorous friends who themselves had lots of friends. Who wouldn't be flattered to be invited out to the clubs with someone like Jojia, who was pretty, rich, and had gobs of friends herself? It was the perfect crime. Had Melanie stumbled onto it, I wondered?

I finished the dregs of the drink the blonde girl had given me. It was a little sweeter than I was used to, but it took the edge off my nerves and steeled me for the walk home. Even at three in the morning, the Strip was a safe place. It seemed to be common knowledge that casinos had hundreds of hidden cameras everywhere, and with all the neon it never got darker than twilight, as long as you kept to Las Vegas Boulevard itself.

I emerged from the casino and crossed over to the west side of the street, where the Fashion Show Mall was. An escalator took me to the bridge over Sands Avenue, and another one took me down to the front of TI, which I still thought of as Treasure Island. People moved slower at this hour, despite the fact that the temperature had dropped into the fifties. In front of me, an overweight, middle-aged couple were stumbling their way back from God-knows-where, happy as could be, impossibly cute, their hands firmly implanted in each other's back pockets.

I wasn't in the mood to lollygag, so I reached down and pulled off my heels and started double-timing it on my bare feet. It might not have been the best idea I'd ever had, but there was more than enough light to allow me to avoid the obvious dangers, like shards of broken glass and little sharp-looking bits of asphalt or rocks. I padded my way past the middle-aged couple, and made good time up to the next stoplight, which miraculously turned green as soon as I arrived, allowing me and a couple of tiny Hispanic guys to cross together.

I slid past them and continued making good time up to the Mirage, still managing to avoid major foot injury and not caring the slightest that I must have looked pretty silly walking barefoot. My condo was only about a half a mile away, and I was already entertaining thoughts about making a grilled cheese sandwich and eating it in bed.

As I prepared to cross the driveway leading into the Mirage, however, a car turned right and pulled in front of my path, defying the red light. It wasn't a car, I realized, but a white SUV. A Range Rover. I couldn't see who was driving it, but glaring at me from the passenger seat was the now-familiar face of Charles. "Get in," he yelled.

I froze. Sensing that I wasn't going to comply, he opened the door and jumped out, racing up to me with frightening speed. When his hand grasped my arm, I turned away and yelled for help. The scene must have looked as violent as it felt, because the Hispanic guys walking behind me raced up and started yelling in Spanish at Charles. The taller of the two began grabbing his right arm, while the other one reached in his pocket and pulled out a shiny knife. They didn't say anything else, but they didn't need to. A taxi pulled up at the light, and other people had begun to notice what was happening. I could sense Charles's grip on me faltering, and I took the opportunity to yank his arm off of me and elbow him in the gut in the process, which elicited a well-deserved F word from Charles.

It was obvious he was outnumbered, so he spat on the ground and raced back into the SUV, which performed a tight U-turn in the driveway with Charles's door still open. They got the hell out of there, veering back to the Strip, and flooring it off to the south. A small crowd had gathered around me.

"Are you okay?" asked the middle-aged woman I had passed earlier. I felt bad for killing the buzz she had obviously been enjoying.

"I'm fine," I lied. Physically, I was fine, but my nerves were jangled. An attack on the Strip was so brazen, it was almost like robbing a bank in broad daylight. It meant I was dealing with a problem that lacked an easy solution.

The Latinos were still lingering around. "Thank you," I said. They both nodded and bowed their heads, no doubt pleased with their damsel-in-distress rescue. Part of me wanted to say
gracias
, but I reasoned that they knew what
thank you
meant and didn't want to insult their intelligence.

Someone offered to call the police, and another pointed me in the direction of a cab. I declined, explaining that I lived right up the street. This seemed to placate everyone, and we all parted and went our separate ways, although I made sure to stay within a hundred feet of the Mexican guys, who I hoped were walking in my direction for awhile.

I finally made it home without further incident, where I ignored my urgent need to use the bathroom and poured myself a half glass of gin and took a deep slug. Gin is not meant to be consumed at room temperature, but I didn't care. It went down hot and hard, so I fetched a couple of ice cubes and reluctantly let the glass cool down while I took care of my other pressing business.

I sat on my bed and placed the drink on the table next to me. I felt secure enough in my apartment because I was nowhere near here when Charles tried to abduct me in the Land Rover. And it was true that I had talked to both Kent and the fake Kent, and even given them my business cards. So if either of them were in touch with Charles, any of them would know where I worked. But my home address wasn't listed on my card or in the phone book, so they'd have no way of finding me here unless they'd had me watched, which seemed unlikely. If they really knew where I lived, I reasoned, there'd be no reason to stage a dramatic abduction attempt in the middle of one of the busiest and brightest streets in the world.

Somehow the TV magically found itself turned on, and I found an old
Seinfeld
rerun on the DVR. It was the one where Jerry is dating a girl whose stomach makes loud gurgling sounds all night, which causes Jerry and George to pretend the stomach has a personality all its own that only comes to life when the girlfriend is asleep. Naturally, the girlfriend took offense. It got me thinking about my own stomach, and the awful incident in the Los Angeles massage parlor, which got me thinking about how I needed another drink. But laziness won out, not for the first time, and I lay there trying to convince myself that all would be well.

By some small miracle I had actually fallen asleep, and by an even larger miracle it had been a restful night. When my eyes finally pried themselves open, I peered at the clock. It was an unintelligible smear of red that only cleared up after some effortful squinting, my eyes willing the glowing digital blobs to form themselves into discernible numbers. 10:16, it read. I
think
. I pulled myself out of bed, shielding my eyes from the bright sunlight pouring in, and trudged to the kitchen to make myself some coffee.

On the counter, the little light on my phone was blinking at me. I had missed a call an hour earlier—slept right through it—and there was a message from Detective Weakland telling me to call him back. A nice coincidence, since I needed to talk to
him
and tell him about the little identity theft ring I'd uncovered, as well as the half-assed attempt to snatch me off of Las Vegas Boulevard. I didn't know how much he'd care about what I had learned. Although it pointed to a criminal operation between Jojia and Charles, I had never seen Kent at the clubs with them, and Kent was the only link to Melanie. When I dialed Weakland, it jumped to
his
voice mail, so I left a short message and waited to be
it
when he called me back.

I forced myself to hit the gym, which was almost deserted in late morning, meaning I had the machines and the remote control all to myself. I wound up watching the Travel Channel, which over the years had morphed into the weird food channel, but I didn't mind. Anything that distracted the mind from the rigors of the elliptical machine was worth watching if it would get me through forty minutes of aerobic exercise. Watching a fat, bald guy eat bug larvae wasn't what I'd had in mind when I went down to the gym, but it did the trick.

Naturally, when I returned to my apartment my phone was blinking at me again, which made me realize it was silly to leave it behind when I had been expecting a callback from Weakland. But it wasn't Weakland. It was Kent. He was disturbingly vague, but the long and short of it was that he had thought of some new information he wanted to tell me about, and he had to do it in person. The back of my neck began tingling, sensing danger. All of a sudden he wants to meet with me, and it's only a few hours removed from Charles's attempt to pluck me right off the street? And why did it have to be in person?
Um, no,
I thought. I was not going to be baited into what was most likely a trap of some kind.

I lounged around my apartment the rest of the morning, not wanting to expose myself by showing up at the office, where Kent and everyone else knew I worked. By one o'clock, I was getting antsy to hear from Detective Weakland. He'd called me around nine that morning, so it was odd that he hadn't returned my call by now. I let another hour slide away and then phoned him again.

"Hello, this is Schmidt."

"Excuse me, I think I have the wrong number," I said.

"You calling for Weakland?"

"Yes."

"He's been reassigned. Temporary assignment out of town. I can help you with whatever you need, ma'am."

That was weird, I thought. Since when do LA cops get "out of town" assignments? "Um, okay. I was just returning his call from this morning."

"In that case, ma'am, I don't know what to tell you. If you have his personal number, maybe you can get ahold of him that way."

"Don't you have a contact number I can reach him at?"

He cleared his throat. "
No
," he said simply, using the kind of stern tone designed to preclude any further inquiry.

"All right," I muttered. "Thanks."
Thanks for nothing
.

I stewed in my apartment some more, pacing around and trying to work everything out. Weird stuff kept happening, and I began to realize that the central link, the hub of all the strange activity, was
me
. I considered the possibility that I might just be paranoid and overly sensitive to my own role in all of these events, but I couldn't shake the feeling that my own involvement was central to unraveling this mystery. First my client dies, then I nearly get kidnapped, and then a cop I was working with disappears for some mysterious assignment with no contact number.

I ended up calling Mike, who picked up on his cell. He was out working an insurance fraud case involving a ninety-two-year-old woman who allegedly got her blouse caught in a slot machine, but he thought it was a setup. After politely listening to his explanation, I filled him in on my situation. His suggestion was to call Commander Bruskewitz. It wasn't a bad idea. Bruskewitz was a bigwig in the Department and personal friends with Phillippe LaGarde, my kind-of mentor here in Vegas, and he had been more than gracious during our brief meeting in his office.

I was surprised when he took my call right away.

"Raven," he said, sounding happy to talk to me. "Let me guess. You found me so charming and handsome that you can't stop thinking about me."

I giggled. "If you could see me right now, Commander, you'd see a woman rolling her eyes directly at the sky. So hard that it
hurts
."

"Well, I gave it a shot," he said, his voice still light and breezy. "What can I do for you?"