The White Gold Score (A Daniel Faust Novella) (5 page)

“Dino Costa murdered Monty,” Tanesha said, her voice quavering, “but I’m the one who made it happen. I’m the one who walked him to the firing line.”

Caitlin put a gentle hand on Tanesha’s arm. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone makes their own choices. Monty made his.”

“You’re sure it was Dino?” I asked.

She nodded, taking a deep breath to steel herself. “Him or one of his thugs. You just met a few of them, out on my porch.”

“They seemed eager to have a word with you.”

“Dino’s not giving up on signing me to Blue Rhapsody. Except now, with Monty gone, he’s not asking nice anymore.” She sighed. “I should have brought my security team out here. I just wanted to be alone for a couple of days. Away from all the crazy. Been listening to the studio masters for my next album—best stuff I’ve ever done, no lie. When it was done, if he hadn’t ended up dead, Monty was going to be the first person to hear it.”

“
Promise me you won’t hurt her
” were the last words Monty Spears ever spoke. I remembered feeling the desperation as they spilled from his—my—lips, hallucinating his dying moments. The fear. Not for himself, but for someone else. Someone whose life he held more precious than his own.

For Tanesha. If I needed confirmation that Dino Costa was behind Monty’s murder, I’d just been handed it in spades.

She set the photo back on the mantel. A splash of light caught my eye. The white gold Rolex, snug on Monty’s wrist as he hugged her from behind.

“Weird question,” I said, “but did he always wear that watch?”

“Ever since that day, yeah. That was the day I bought it for him, to celebrate our success. There’s an inscription on the back:
Forever Gold
.” She tilted her head at me. “Why? What’s important about the watch?”

Bingo. A gift from the woman Monty was deeply in unrequited love with. Stealing a token like that off a dead man’s body was exactly how you ended up with angry ghosts in your penthouse suite.

“Nothing. Just a…pet theory.” I changed the subject. “So what are you going to do now? About Dino, I mean.”

She frowned, squaring her shoulders as she looked to the front door.

“Right now? Call up my bodyguards from my place in LA, get them out here, and tell ’em to hand out a world-class beatdown if his boys come poking their noses around here again. I don’t get scared, I get mad. Dino’s not making one dime off of my hard work. What are you gonna do?”

“Well,” I said, “I’ll be writing up everything we’ve learned and conveying it to my superiors at the company—”

“And then they’ll call the police?”

“Right. Then they’ll call the police.”

She folded her arms. “Good. Dino needs to pay for what he did.”

She walked us to the door and I tried not to feel guilty. The cops weren’t coming. Monty’s death was never going to be anything, on the record, but a heart attack. And the only payment was going to be another envelope of cash from Greenbriar, once I got that Rolex back and laid Monty’s ghost to rest. I didn’t like giving people false hope. There was no money in it.

“Just one thing,” she said, opening the door for us. “I watched the fight from the window. How did you do that…that thing with the cards?”

“Oh, that?” I smiled and shrugged it off. “It’s a trick deck. Spring-loaded. I do some sleight of hand in my free time, keeps my hands limber.”

She nodded, buying it. Of course she did. In a world of CGI and special effects, where you saw the impossible every time you turned on the TV, nothing covered up for real magic like saying, “It was just a trick.” It was easy to believe. Safe.

“Sounds like the plot of a TV show,” she said. “Like you’re some kind of…magic detective.”

I winced. I smiled, I shook her hand, but I winced.

“You know,” I muttered to Caitlin as we walked back to the car, the door swinging shut behind us, “back when I was a full-time gangster, Nicky Agnelli called me his ‘hired wand.’”

She wrinkled her nose at the mention of Nicky’s name. “So?”

“So it’s
cooler
.”

Caitlin unlocked the Camaro, and I slipped into the passenger seat. She fired up the engine and looked at the dashboard clock with a slight smile.

“We should get back to the city just in time for dinner.” She paused, glancing sidelong at me as she stepped on the gas. “My fearless magic detective.”

*     *     *

“Oh,” I said as I peered around the glossy room, my voice carrying over the thumping bass beat of a live DJ set, “STK.
Steak
. I get it now.”

The steakhouse sat inside the W Hotel in West Beverly Hills, rich wooden tables offering a splash of earth-tone color in a sea of slate and ivory. Dozens of steer horns bristled along one creamy wall like a battalion of curving spear tips, looming above rounded banquette tables where a bevy of B-listers and their entourages held court. I recognized a couple of TV actors—by face if not by name—perfectly positioned to see and be seen.

Caitlin had reserved a banquette just for us, sitting side by side in the big, curving booth. I caught an uncomfortable number of glances shooting our way, people trying to figure out if we were famous or not. Or maybe just eyeing my date, who’d stopped at our hotel room to slip into a little black Chanel dress.

“We’re ready to order,” Caitlin told the waitress, barely looking at the menu. “For entrees, he will have the Wagyu steak, and I’ll go with the spiced duck breast.”

The waitress gave me a questioning look. I handed over my unopened menu.

Once she left, I turned to Caitlin. “Wagyu? Really?”

“Certified A-five grade. Wagyu is a fine breed. Not like what they call Kobe in the States.” She sniffed. “Legally you can call
hamburger
‘Kobe beef.’ It’s a sin. And not the fun kind.”

“I just mean, it’s a little pricey.”

She arched one slender eyebrow. “And? You aren’t paying for it.”

We’d had our first meal together in a steakhouse, too, not long ago. Gordon Ramsay’s place, back in Vegas. Talking over a perfect meal, figuring each other out. We were still figuring each other out.

“I assumed we’d be splitting the bill,” I said.

“I asked you to dine, so it’s only appropriate that I pay for it. Besides,” she said, flashing a sly smile, “I fully intend to make you work it off later tonight.”

I lifted my drink—a dirty Grey Goose vodka martini garnished with a blue-cheese-stuffed olive—in wry salute. “Sounds like half come-on, half threat.”

“Good. Then you’re listening properly. So, what
is
our next move? I’m assuming involving the authorities is off the list.”

“It was never on the list in the first place. I figure that watch is the key to laying Monty to rest. All I have to do is get it back and slip it on his corpse’s wrist before they bury him.”

“What if he’s interred before you recover the watch?”

I shrugged. “Then I’m buying a shovel, and Greenbriar’s gonna have to pay me a
lot
more money. Bottom line, one way or another, reuniting the stiff with his precious Rolex should calm him down enough to shuffle off to his designated afterlife.”

“Excellent.” She wrinkled her nose. “I dislike the concept of remnant souls lingering past their time. It’s extremely…untidy.”

The waitress brought over a bread plate, and I slathered butter onto a warm, crusty slab, glad for something to do in the sudden silence. My mind was fifty feet under the streets of Las Vegas, remembering another restless wraith.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Caitlin said.

“Sometimes,” I said, catching electric light on my butter knife, “when we’re just…us. Talking, eating, just being us. It’s easy to forget that we aren’t, you know. The same.”

“That I’m not human, you mean.”

I glanced up, trying to read her expression. “I don’t mean any offense by that.”

“None taken. Besides, I should hope it’s easy. I’d be a terrible covert operative if I walked around wearing horns and bat wings, hmm?” Her fingertips trailed over the curve of my hand, teasing against the flat of the knife. “Seduction is what I was built for, Daniel. You know that neither begins nor ends at the bedroom door. Now what’s troubling you?”

“Stacy Pankow.”

“I thought we resolved that affair quite cleanly. A task well done.”

“You knew,” I said, “by looking at her ghost, that she was hellbound.”

Caitlin smiled and let out the faintest chuckle.

“That’s scarcely a trick. To my eyes, human souls are like little orbs of light. Some obscenely bright and garish, a disgusting shade of gold, and some beautifully smoky black. Most are somewhere in between, like clouds on a stormy day, with the sunlight struggling to shine through the dark. Or a glass of aged bourbon, complex and layered.” She reached up, curling her hand around the back of my neck. Her fingernails stroked my skin, teasing, sending an electric shiver down my spine. “Yours is right…here.”

“I know a guy on the east side,” I told her. “Used to be a tent-revival preacher until he spontaneously developed a gift for talking to the dead. Now he’s pretty much a full-time heroin junkie. Dope’s the only thing that makes the voices go quiet, he says. See, these dead people who call out to him, everywhere he goes—every single one of them is in hell.”

Her hand slid away from my neck, and she cradled her glass of pinot noir. “I’m hearing an unspoken question.”

“I’ve crossed paths with more than a few demons, but not one, before you, who I was actually on speaking terms with. So…I want to ask you something. Something that’s been eating at me for a while now.”

She lifted the glass to her lips. “Are you certain? Your hesitancy suggests you know, on some level, that you won’t like the answer.”

She was right, but I asked the question anyway.

“Is there a heaven?”

She paused mid-sip. A flash of irritation flickered over her face, a passing thundercloud. Then she replaced it with an indulgent smile.

“Daniel.” She set down her glass and put her hand over mine. “What difference does it make? If it exists, you’ll never see it. And would seeing it be a kindness, knowing you’ll never be allowed to set one foot upon its hallowed grounds? No. Of all the torments of the damned, nothing could possibly be crueler.”

“I’m not asking for myself.” I didn’t think I was, anyway. My own damnation was something I’d more or less taken as a given a long time ago. A man didn’t do the things I’d done with any hope of seeing the pearly gates, not if he was honest with himself.

“For who, then?”

“I’ve known some good people—better than me, anyway—who went down for the big sleep way ahead of their time. I’d like to know they’re in a better place.”

“And I’d like another glass of wine.
One
of us is going to get their wish.” She paused, catching my look. “I’m teasing. Daniel, the truth is, and it irks me to no end to admit this, I have no idea. None of us do. Some souls come to us; some go elsewhere. Wherever ‘elsewhere’ is, it’s a one-way trip, and quite barred to the likes of you and I.”

The waitress came around with our entrees. The cut of steak glistened on my plate, hot and red and bloody.

“Besides,” Caitlin said with a wink, “my homeland can be quite pleasant once you get used to it, if you know the right people. And
you
know the right people.”

I sliced into the steak, chuckling. The tender flesh parted like butter. “I’ll try to stay on your good side.”

“A capital notion. So, this precious watch. Where will you start looking for it?”

“I’m betting Dino took it off Monty’s body. Maybe as a trophy, or maybe he just wanted his own Rolex. Either way, it’s gonna be someplace close to him. I’m thinking I’ll break into his house tonight and take a look around. If I get lucky, this job will be all wrapped up by sunrise.”

“A burglary?” Her eyes lit up. “Excellent. We’ll go right after dinner.”

“Well, I mean,
I
was going to break in—”

“And leave me out of the fun? Did I not say I wanted to see what you do for a living?”

Some arguments just weren’t worth having. I lifted my martini glass in salute.

“Fine,” I said, “let’s go rob a house together.”

I called Curtis’s assistant’s assistant, which resulted in a callback ten minutes later with Dino Costa’s Los Angeles address.

“He also owns a condominium in Orlando,” the admin said. “Will you be needing that address as well?”

“Hopefully not,” I told her. “I’ll let you know.”

The GPS led us through syrup-thick night traffic, a parade of gleaming lights on an endless strip of hot asphalt. Caitlin took an off-ramp and snaked along side streets, the Camaro purring past palm trees and sleepy bungalows. We ended up a few streets off Ventura Boulevard, cruising into the hills where the price tags kept up with the altitude.

“Slow it down,” I said, craning my neck to check out the real estate. “Okay. Here, stop at this driveway.”

She looked dubious but pulled up to the garage door of a sprawling ranch house. No lights shone behind the curtained windows.

“This isn’t the place.”

“No,” I said, “but it’s the perfect spot to stash our getaway ride. Check out the mailbox: it’s stuffed to overflowing. Good bet these people are on vacation, which means we can leave the car here for a couple of hours. Just one thing to make sure.”

She killed the engine and followed me up the walk. I rang the doorbell.

“What if someone answers?” she asked as we waited.

“Then we’re lost tourists who need directions.” I shoved my thumb against the buzzer, listening to fifteen straight seconds of muffled chiming on the other side of the door. No response, not even a light clicking on or a ruffled curtain. “Yep, nobody’s home. Anyway, we
could
park on the street, but a passing cop might remember seeing a strange car if anything goes wrong tonight. Driveway’s a little farther out of sight.”

She smiled. “I didn’t know you were so detail oriented.”

“If you want to stay out of prison, you have to be. And on that note, Breaking and Entering one-oh-one.” I took out my phone and turned the screen toward her. “Please silence your cell phone before the performance begins.”

I set my ringer to silent, and she followed my lead.

“I knew a guy,” I told her, “who was robbing a mansion back in Miami. Slipped past infrared sensors, guard dogs, and three layers of embedded security. And just as he was about to seal the deal and make off with an original Rembrandt, some asshole called him. The mark’s security guards all got an earful of his ringtone: the ‘Macarena’ playing at full volume.”

“How embarrassing,” Caitlin said.

“Imagine how I felt. I was the asshole who called him.”

We strolled along the sidewalk, just an average couple out for an evening walk. A breeze ruffled my shirt, chasing away the arid heat for one blissful moment. Crickets trilled in the dark.

“This part’s crucial,” I said. “Self-preservation is more important than any score. If an alarm goes off, we
leave
, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. If the cops are coming and we get split up, don’t try to meet back at the car. They’ll be on the lookout for anyone strange to the neighborhood, and on a street this swank I guarantee they’ve got a ten-minute response time, tops. Just get lost any way you can, put as much distance behind you as possible, and we’ll meet up come sunrise. Run through a few backyards and try to get to Ventura, where the crowds are.”

Caitlin cracked her knuckles. “I’m hardly worried about the police. I’d think we could make short work of them.”

“Uh-uh. No dead cops, under any circumstances. Avoid and evade, never engage.”

She gave me the side-eye. “Why not? You don’t have any compunction about killing, at least not that I’ve seen.”

“You want a practical reason? The police are the biggest street gang in any given city. You mess with one of them, you’re messing with
all
of them. Nothing brings the hammer down like a dead cop. We don’t need that kind of trouble.”

We came up on Dino’s address. His house was modern, on the edge of brutalist, a pale white cube that married another cube and gave birth to a bunch of little baby cubes. Faint lights shone behind long, skinny windows and ivory Venetian blinds.

“And what about him?” Caitlin asked with a nod to the house.

I’d been thinking about that. With one hand in the coke game and the other on the gun that killed his business partner, Dino Costa was anything but a civilian. I wouldn’t lose any sleep if he didn’t survive the night. Then again, I wasn’t getting paid to pull that trigger and I don’t work for free.

“If he dies, he dies,” I said, thinking it through, “but there’s always the chance of blowback. I don’t particularly want a murder investigation following us back to Vegas. Besides, if we just grab the watch and split, it’s a perfect getaway. What’s he gonna do, call the cops and complain that somebody stole the Rolex he took off his victim’s corpse?”

“So he’ll know he was stolen from, and he’ll know the only thing taken was the evidence of his crime. Meaning someone knows what he’s done, and all he can do is wait for the consequences to descend. And wait. And wait.” An amused smile played on her lips. “That’s the sort of fear that could torment a man to madness. I
like
it.”

“It’s not the payback he deserves, but it’s better than nothing. Besides, guys like this always come to a bad end sooner or later. He’ll get too greedy, piss off the wrong coke dealer, and eat a shotgun in some back alley, I guarantee it. Keep walking. I want to overshoot the house a little.”

We strolled past the long, black, and winding drive, a murky ribbon leading up to a three-car garage, and past the next house. Perfect dark ranches on either side, his neighbors out for the night or snug in their beds. I didn’t expect to be making any noise, but a little breathing room wouldn’t hurt.

We kept low, scurrying across the rolling lawn and circling Dino’s garage. If I had to break into a house I didn’t have time to scout properly, smart money was always on the garage: you wouldn’t believe how many people left the door between their garage and the house unlocked, figuring the garage door was enough to keep them safe.

I checked for a side window, a back door, any other way in beside the big rolling doors out front, but Dino’s garage was sealed up tight. No luck. We skirted around to the backyard. Windows looked in on a darkened kitchen big enough for a family of six, done up in pristine stainless steel. Garlic cloves and copper pans dangled from a rustic iron grate suspended above a granite-topped island. Craning my neck, I could see the oblong white plastic box of an alarm panel not far from the door. And the tiny green light saying it wasn’t armed.

“He’s locked up for the night,” I said, giving the back door’s knob an experimental tug, “but I’m betting he’s one of those guys who only turns on his alarm when he leaves the house. That makes our job a hell of a lot easier.”

Caitlin frowned, eyes fixed on the kitchen beyond the glass.

“Given that he works with narcotics peddlers,” she said, “he’s likely armed.”

“That’s fine.” I fished an oilcloth bindle from my hip pocket, untying it and spreading out an array of picks in snug little holsters. “Unless he actually goes to the range and puts in training time, it’s not a big worry. Too many people think a gun is a magic talisman that makes burglars disappear.
Buying
the steel isn’t enough; you’ve gotta actually know what you’re doing with it.”

Unless he’s got a shotgun in there
, I didn’t bother adding. Shotguns were a dangerous equalizer, especially in a house with long, narrow hallways. Nothing I ever wanted to be standing downrange from. Still, I was feeling confident tonight.

And maybe I was showing off for Caitlin, just a little. I crouched down and worked the lock, gripping a pick and a tension wrench between my fingertips, concentrating on the feel of the tumblers.

“One thing’s a lot more dangerous than a gun,” I whispered, feeling a sliver-thin tumbler catch and roll over for me.

“A cluster of damned souls, bound together inside a suit of iron armor and driven mad with hunger, compelled to stalk and slay anyone who sets foot inside your lair?”

I blinked. The tumbler slipped.

“Or perhaps,” she said, tapping her chin thoughtfully, “a curse that melts the skin on your bones then causes it to reharden, trapping you forever inside the twisted, calcified husk of your own body?”

“Okay,” I said. “True. Both of those are true. But I’m talking about normal, average, non-insane houses.”

“Oh. In that case, I’m not certain.”

“
Dogs
.” I nodded over my shoulder at the empty, manicured lawn. “Last thing I ever want to see on a B-and-E job is any sign of a dog. Always check the yard and the kitchen for that. Take a peep through the window. You see any bowls, dog food, anything like that?”

While I worked on the lock, finding my groove again, she peered into the empty kitchen. “Nothing.”

“Good. Dogs were humanity’s first security system. They’re damn good at it, too. And—here we go.”

The last tumbler flipped and the lock gave a faint, satisfying
click
. I pocketed my picks and slowly pushed the knob, bracing for loud squeaks or the shrill of an unseen alarm. Nothing. The only sound came from deeper in the house, carried on a bed of audience laughter. Dino was watching television.

Caitlin followed me inside, stepping lightly across the smooth granite floor. If we were lucky, Dino had passed out in front of the TV, sound asleep. If not, it was going to take some real skill to slip in and out without catching his attention.

Realistically, nothing was at stake. I could grab a kitchen knife, storm in, and turn Dino into a human pincushion, then sack his place at my leisure. I couldn’t see any reason
not
to kill him, beyond the fact that I wasn’t getting paid to do it. The way I figured, he deserved anything he got.

Then I saw the reason, crouched next to me, eyes glittering in the dark, wearing an eager smile as she looked my way. Caitlin wanted to see what I did for a living. I could either show her Daniel the thug or Daniel the smooth operator. I wanted her to see the best side of me. To see that I had genuine skills, that I wasn’t some purse snatcher or penny-ante hood.

We were basically out on a date. A weird, fucked-up date by most people’s standards, but still. What did I really want tonight? Easy. I wanted my girlfriend to have a good time.

And that meant I had to do things the hard way.