Gumshoe for Two Read online

  “Slow down,” I said. “Lookit the size of that guy. We’re gonna need some decent odds here.”

  “Five to one,” Jim-Bob said.

  I laughed. “How ’bout ten to one?”

  “You’re on.”

  And we were. Jim-Bob, Barry, and Al were in for a hundred each. Pretty sporting, considering they’d only get ten bucks out of it if Earl won. Gill was in for two hundred. At that point Jeri and I were only in for fifty. Then Earl said, “Hundred to one, girlie. My ten grand against your hundred.”

  Whoa. The world slammed to another halt, then started to spin again, slowly. The air in the room changed.

  Barry said, “Earl, no.”

  I said, “No.”

  Jeri said, “No.”

  Earl stared at Jeri, eyes bright. “Or,” he said, “maybe we could mud rassle, honey bun. Win or lose, that’d be worth ten grand.”

  Honey bun? Mud wrestle? I took a step closer to save Earl a month in traction, but Jeri reined herself in and said, “Arm wrestle, buster. Our hundred bucks against your ten Gs.”

  Buster. I liked that. Made me proud of her. Even working for the IRS I’d never called anyone “buster.”

  “You’re on, sweet cheeks,” Earl said.

  I drew Barry aside. “Any way to stop this stagecoach before it sails off a cliff?”

  “Double shot of fast-acting Valium for both of ’em?”

  “Got any on you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Not sure why you brought it up, then.” I put my hands in my pockets. “Guy’s a bulldog-terrier mix, huh?”

  “Been that way long’s I’ve known him.”

  “So’s she.”

  “Yep, got that, too.” He looked at Jeri and pursed his lips. “I ever seen her before?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I sell insurance. I’m usually pretty good with faces.”

  “Uh-huh. So—is Earl good for that kind of money or is this just talk?”

  “Why? Think he’ll need it?”

  “One never knows.”

  “He’s good for it. Owns a company in East Texas that makes specialty valves.”

  “Valves?”

  “Gate valves, ball valves, valves for acids, sodium hydroxide, you name it, high-temperature and cryogenic stuff.”

  “Rich dude.”

  “You got it. More money than sense, ’specially stewed, out on the town like this.”

  “You probably still oughta rein this guy in.”

  “Trust me, that’s not happenin’. You shoulda seen what he did in Chicago two years ago. There’s a big-chain hotel there that won’t take Shriners anymore.”

  Jeri touched her toes. Earl watched her for a moment, then “harred” and drained another Kamikaze, courtesy of Gill, their resident genius.

  “Let’s have the barkeep hold the money,” Jim-Bob suggested.

  Wallets emptied—five hundred bucks landed on the bar. Earl quit chuckling long enough to write a check for ten grand, signed it, left the pay-to line blank. O’Roarke put all of it out of sight and out of reach behind the bar.

  Earl sat at a table. Jeri took a chair opposite him. Earl had a smile on his face the size of . . . well, Texas, but his eyes looked like ball bearings since his manhood was on the line. He plopped an elbow down on the table, arm up, waiting. Jeri put her arm up. Too short by five inches. She took his wrist, not his palm.

  “Bad leverage for the lady,” Barry observed. “Might want to do something about that. Put a telephone book or something under her arm.”

  “Yeah, well, Earl’s drunk. Let’s call it even,” I said. Fact is, I didn’t want Earl’s ten Gs or the five hundred. I figured we could afford a hundred fifty bucks if it came to that.

  Barry shrugged.

  O’Roarke put his hand on Earl’s. “Sudden slam don’t count,” he said. “Start slow or forfeit.” He looked over at me with a question in his eyes.

  I gave him a head tilt, then said to Jeri, “Go get ’im, honey bun.” She shot me a look and I knew I’d catch hell later that night.

  Earl grinned at Jeri. “Maybe you oughta roll up your sleeves, little lady.”

  “Why? There’s only one of you.”

  “Har, har, har.”

  O’Roarke gave me another look, then took his hand away and said, “Okay, then. Go get ’em.”

  Earl put on a little pressure and Jeri held him. Earl bore down a little harder. Jeri yawned. Earl’s eyes widened. Jeri smiled. Sweat glistened on Earl’s forehead. Jeri yawned again, audibly. Earl put his weight into it, then Jeri slammed his arm down so hard that Earl tumbled out of his chair and landed on the floor.

  Hard.

  A moment of silence ensued for the dearly departed.

  Money, that is.

  Then the groans started, and someone said, “What the hell, Earl, you shithead.”

  Earl lay on the floor for a moment, then slowly got to his feet. Jeri went back to her barstool. “Another End Wrench, Patrick,” she said as O’Roarke went behind the bar.

  “Third place,” Barry said to me. “Or was it fourth?”

  “Huh?”

  “Just remembered where I saw her. National power lifting championships last year in Miami, New York, someplace. She took third, right?”

  “Fourth,” I said. “In her weight class. But she’s stronger now and Nationals are this weekend in Atlantic City. I’m thinking she’ll take it all.”

  “Hell.” He looked at me. “You two’re engaged?”

  “Uh-huh. Three weeks ago.”

  “Well . . . good luck, man. Don’t ever piss her off.”

  Earl didn’t have much to say once he was on his feet. He was too busy being called a shithead and a pussy and other terms of endearment by his fellow Shriners. I got the folding money from O’Roarke. Our fifty, their five hundred, gave O’Roarke a hundred, then Jeri grabbed Earl’s check and tore it up.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Earl said, sounding like Fat Albert. “You won that money fair an’ square, sugar plum.”

  Okay, some guys are naturally slow learners, like me most of the time. To her credit, Jeri didn’t pick him up and body slam him. In fact, she said, “How ’bout that dance, Earl?”

  For a moment his eyes got bright and happy, then they shut down. “Guess not. So, little lady, what’s your name?”

  She smiled. “Jeri.”

  “Jerry? Man, they’re doin’ wonders with that sex change stuff nowadays, ain’t they?”

  I shut my eyes. Earl’s life passed before my eyes, which was eerie, but Jeri just patted his cheek, maybe a little hard, and said, “Let’s dance. I’ll let you lead.”

  Earl shook his head. “Not till you take my money. You stay right there and hang fire for a few.”

  He went out the door, came back five minutes later with ten casino chips worth a thousand each, put them in Jeri’s hand, and folded her fingers over them. “Don’t tear ’em up, sugar plum. Now, if y’all’re still willin’, I guess I wouldn’t mind that dance.”

  Jeri and I were at Reno-Tahoe International Airport at seven forty the next morning. At under five-four, a hundred thirty pounds, white and female, Jeri profiled out as a likely terrorist so they gave her the full treatment, checking her shoes—sandals—for C-4, going through her purse to find bottles of exploding lotion. They look for the most unlikely things, then miss automatic weapons when FBI agents test airport security by sneaking Glocks and Uzis through. Granny can’t get through unmolested, but profiling Middle Eastern males with “Allahu Akbar” beards isn’t PC so they’re waved on through.

  Before entering the security obstacle course, Jeri kissed me, long and hard. We drew envious stares.

  “Go get ’em, tiger,” I said once we came up for air.

  “Will do.”

  “Got everything you need? Toothbrush, toothpaste, spare bottle of hydraulic fluid?”

  “I usually stock up on fluid after I get there.”

  “Good idea. Have fun in security. They’re waitin�
�� for you.”

  “Yup. Love those strip searches.”

  She gave me another quick kiss, then she was gone, into the red-hot security vortex that keeps our nation’s air travel safe. Like the IRS, of which I was no longer a part, it was a government-run operation.

  Food for thought.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I SPENT THAT morning and early afternoon camped out a hundred feet down the block from Western Pacific Bank on Wells Avenue, waiting for one William Aaron Dryer, chief loan officer, to make an appearance. His wife suspected Billy-boy of cheating and Jeri had assigned me the task of watching the bank from eleven to four, for which she charged said wife two hundred fifty dollars. Easy money, boring, but I was still convalescing so I didn’t complain. The hours added up, even these. I had accumulated six hundred of the ten thousand hours it takes to become a licensed PI in Nevada. I was hoping to make it before I turned fifty.

  At two forty-five, there was Billy in a blow-dry haircut, exiting a side parking lot onto a side street in a metallic blue Cadillac ATS-V coupe, the one with 464 horsepower and an eight-speed automatic transmission, not a hard car to follow in a helicopter or a rocket, but I was in my Toyota, a sorry, undernourished thing without air-conditioning or intermittent wipers.

  But we only went half a mile so he was just a quarter mile away when he pulled into a driveway on Elm. I caught up as the garage door went down, concealing the Caddy, then all was quiet. Got the address off the house and put it into an iPad with Jeri’s PI authorization, found that Billy was entertaining a Mrs. Percival Yates—Yolanda. Initials YY. Or Percival himself, but I doubted it.

  Percival. Christ, I wouldn’t trade my Mortimer for his Percival, the poor son of a bitch. The things parents do to their offspring. No wonder Yolanda was on the move.

  I got an angle on the garage and parked across the street, put a camera with a 350 mm lens on the dash aimed at the garage, then settled in to see what would happen. I didn’t think Billy would leave the bank for long, so this ought to be a quickie.

  Which, best guess, it was.

  When the garage door started back up, I sank down further and watched the action on the screen of the digital camera, got thirteen shots off as Billy got a good-bye kiss in the garage and climbed into the Caddy, backed out, Percival’s wife giving him a wave as he drove off, and I got a good shot of that, too.

  Which probably meant this job was over, and it was a stinky damn job. Not like the IRS, but it smelled all the same. It just didn’t have the patina of criminal activity that taints the IRS.

  So I went home and took a long hot shower.

  I was back in the Green Room at the Golden Goose watching a Padres game when the hooker, Holiday Breeze, strolled in and looked around. It was seven forty-five p.m., early for her, but she was perky and fresh, light blond hair in a casually tousled style, blue eyes clear and bright, looking good. As usual, the place was almost empty, and, as usual, she took a barstool next to mine. This of course was a cosmic, preordained thing linked in some mysterious way to me being a gumshoe and her being gorgeous. I hadn’t seen her in a month and a half. Since then, I’d gotten a concussion and that sword run through my chest, neither of which was her fault so I wasn’t unhappy to see her.

  According to her, her name really was Holiday Breeze. But like lawyers and politicians, hookers lie for professional reasons, so I wasn’t buying it. I took a hit of Pete’s Wicked Ale and waited for her opening gambit, wondering if she’d upgraded her spiel from the last time I’d heard it.

  She was still aerobicized and curvy, evidently trying out a new look: three-inch heels, tight black jeans, an emerald silk top with a deep plunge that revealed an expensive artificial tan the color of honey. Her shoulders were bare. Two inches of tight tummy and a very nice navel were exposed. Only two buttons held her top closed, which looked risky. A narrow band of material around her neck held the top up. A brisk wind might have gotten her arrested.

  I figured her for twenty-one, no more than twenty-two, so I had twenty years on her. Which didn’t matter, at least not to me. She was an adult. Very.

  About that time, however, I was starting to wonder if the girl had a brain. Last time we met, right here, same barstools, Holiday had stormed out in a major-league huff. I didn’t know how she could have forgotten that treasured moment. Time to remind her.

  I turned toward her. “About that mirror on my car—”

  “Stuff your mirror, Mortimer.”

  Okay, that set me back. Mortimer? But, as one of the premier gumshoes in the Western Hemisphere—though I tend to specialize in missing persons—I gave her comment a few seconds’ thought.

  Finally, I said, “You have cable.”

  “Huh?”

  “Television. You keep up with the news.”

  She smiled, sort of. “You’re good, Mortimer.” Then, showing off, she added, “Angel.”

  I grimaced. “Mort.”

  “If you like. And I’m—”

  “Holiday. Which one, by the way?”

  “Huh?”

  “Doc, or Fourth of July?”

  “Okay, could we talk like normal people here?”

  Not my specialty, and not with a hooker, but I was willing to give it a try, so I said, “Let’s go back to that ‘stuff your mirror’ comment.”

  Late July she’d told me to glue a rat to the sonofabitch, which might require some explanation. The side mirror of my Toyota, vintage 1994 and the color of a urine specimen, yodels, up around sixty miles an hour. This is one of the finest imaginable conversation pieces if you want to drink alone, as I found out with Holiday a week or so before my stay in the hospital with its drips, catheters, and burly nurses who really hate the IRS.

  The mirror, designed by Toyota’s acoustic engineers, whistles—rather atonally—so how good those engineers are is open to question. During our second encounter, and before she stalked out in the second of two huffs, Holiday suggested that I glue a rat to the mirror. No explanation, of course, but the bartender—O’Rourke—and I eventually concluded that her suggestion was based on the sort of applied physics one doesn’t normally expect of a high-end call girl. Gluing a rat to the mirror would alter the air flow, thereby defeating one of Toyota’s finest engineering achievements.

  “I’m not here to talk about your mirror,” she said. I thought I heard that huff working its way to the surface again.

  “Yeah? What are you here for?”

  “You . . . you’re a private detective, right?”

  “One of North America’s finest.” It never hurts to advertise.

  She gave me the look I often get from Jeri as well as Dallas, my ex—one of pity mixed with a dash of incredulity and a pinch of weariness.

  Then she sighed. Her shoulders sagged.

  “Buy you a drink?” I said.

  “Sure. Why not? What the hell.”

  Don’t get too excited, I thought. “Tequila Sunrise?”

  She smiled. “Hey, you remembered.” Just then her cell phone rang.

  Her smile gave me a tingle that went all the way to my toes. Did I mention that I’m a pig? Man, she was a good-lookin’ kid. She let the call go to voice mail. Probably a hooker thing, when they’re with a prospective client. Hard to believe she was still working on me, though, after what we’d been through last month.

  “When I was an agent with the IRS,” I said, “I remembered all kinds of minutiae, which made me both invaluable and feared.”

  A frown replaced her smile. “The IRS?”

  I thought that might get her attention. Most people lose their tan the moment they realize they’re in the presence of our nation’s Gestapo. But that didn’t happen. She was a nice light brown, what I could see of her, which was a lot. Maybe spray-on tans weren’t susceptible.

  I nodded, then added, “Internal Revenue,” in case the acronym hadn’t struck home with enough force.

  She gave me a squint. “But you’re not still . . . ?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ho
w long ago’d you quit, or whatever?”

  “Three months, give or take. But I had to give it up. Turns out I discovered I had a soul.”

  “Do you still have friends in the . . . the business?”

  “The racket, you mean? IRS agents don’t have friends. They even hate and fear each other.”

  Her smile returned. “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “Ain’t it, though? You should’ve seen our Christmas parties. Punch was spiked with antifreeze.”

  O’Roarke arrived with her drink. I paid for it with a free-drink coupon. He’s a lean whip of a guy, slightly stooped, balding, with a red Yosemite Sam moustache. Best bartender ever. Even better after I gave him that hundred bucks the other night.

  Holiday turned toward me and rewound our conversation of a minute or two ago. “You’re a detective.”

  “Yes I am.” I don’t mention that I’m in training since it plays hell with my gravitas.

  “You found Mayor Sjorgen.”

  “Yes I did.” Just his head, but it was in the trunk of my ex-wife’s Mercedes, which made it fun.

  “And the DA.”

  “Guilty as charged, ma’am.”

  She put a hand on my arm. I think it might have sizzled. Man, she was beautiful, even if she was a hooker.

  “So you’re pretty good,” she said. She picked up her cell phone and swiped the screen—multitasking efficiently, which caused me to up the estimate of her income by forty thousand a year.

  “You have no idea, kiddo.”

  A slow smile. “Kiddo,” she said. “I like that.” She would, of course. Hookers like everything. Tell them you like sugar in your gas tank, and they’ll tell you they like it too. She put the phone to her ear and listened. Five seconds later I had my answer to that “tan” question—spray-on can lighten significantly if the underlying skin tone goes pasty white.

  “Allie,” she said into the phone, eyes wild. “Allie!” She stared at the glowing screen. “Omigod. Omigod.”

  One “Omigod” was someone telling her she’d left her front door wide open when she left home. Two “Omigods” was trouble of an entirely different stripe.

  She hit call back and listened, got no answer.