Killer in High Heels

“No,” I shook my head at the phone. “No, you can’t come here. Ram-uh, Bruno will be out any second.”

Felix paused. “What’s going on over there?”

I sighed. “I’m handcuffed in the backseat of Bruno’s car.”

I wasn’t sure being so far away from the earpiece, but I could have sworn I heard Felix laughing. “Kinky.”

“No, not kinky. False imprisonment. And quit laughing!”

I think I heard him snort. “Okay, where exactly is this car?”

“The employee parking lot of the Victoria Club.”

“Give me five minutes.”

“No, Bruno will be back any-” But he’d already hung up.

I hit the end button with my big toe. So much for my date with the Keebler boys.

I watched the numbers on Ramirez’s dash clock crawl by, all the while keeping one eye on the back door of the Victoria. If Ramirez came out before Felix got here, I had no doubt he’d make good on his promise to shove me onto the first flight home, and I’d miss my one chance to see Larry. Maybe forever. I wondered what Larry wanted to tell me. I hoped something bad about Monaldo. Really bad. As in bad enough for the Feds to arrest him and end this whole Godfather meets Tootsie my life had become. Then I could go back to my real life where my biggest worries included finishing the Rainbow Brite jellies on time (which, the longer I stayed in Vegas, was becoming a bigger worry), sitting in traffic on the 405, and wondering when those adorable wedge sandals were going on sale at Macy’s.

I was just wondering exactly when the sales clerk had said those wedges would be on sale when a blue Dodge Neon pulled into the parking lot and killed its lights. I waved the best I could with my foot (since in addition to being immobilized, my hands had completely fallen asleep), and finally Felix spotted me. He pulled the Neon into the empty space beside the SUV and got out. He allowed himself a little smirk for my benefit before trying the door handle. Not surprisingly, it didn’t open.

“It’s locked!” I shouted through the tinted windows.

Felix nodded. Then he went back to his car and returned with something that looked like a long nail file. With a little maneuvering, he wedged it between the doorframe and the window of the passenger side. I kept one eye on the back door of the club, knowing that if Ramirez caught him tampering with his car, Felix was a dead man.

The nail file wiggled and twisted, making a couple of awful grinding noises that I prayed weren’t the sounds of black paint being chipped away. Finally the door locks popped up. I was so happy I could have laughed.

Felix opened the door. He took one look at the handcuffs and did laugh.

“It’s not funny.”

“No, not at all,” he responded, starting to snort again.

“Just get them off, smartass.”

He pulled a pocketknife out of his khakis and flipped it open. To my surprise, it didn’t contain scissors and bottle openers, but a series of different sized and shaped files. He fit one in the keyhole of the handcuffs and after doing the same sort of shimmy and wiggle thing he’d done with the giant nail file, one metal bracelet finally popped off my wrist.

I could have hugged him. That is, if I’d had any feeling left in my arms whatsoever. I shook my hand, feeling little pins and needles race over my skin as the blood surged back into my limbs. Felix made short work of the second bracelet and as soon as I was accessory free, I jumped out of the SUV and into the Neon’s passenger seat.

“Let’s go!” I shouted as Felix tucked his handy-dandy lock picks back into his pocket. “Trust me, you do not want to be here when Bruno sees this.” While no paint had been actually chipped in the making of this great escape, the little rubber strips between the car door and his window were kind of stretched out. And bulging. And there might have been one or two teeny tiny marks on his windows. Those, coupled with the fact that an empty pair of handcuffs was dangling from his passenger seat, were enough to put Bad Cop in a really bad mood. We’re talking back-in-a-holding-cell bad. Not something I wanted to be around to witness.

Felix seemed to get my drift, sliding behind the wheel and gunning the engine. I kept my eyes on the back door, chanting “please don’t open, please don’t open, please don’t open,” as Felix flipped on the lights and pulled out of the parking lot, heading west on Fremont.

I heaved a sigh of relief as the Victoria shrank in the rearview mirror, glad that at least one thing had gone my way today.

“So was that a reporter thing back there?” I asked, rubbing the feeling back into my hands.

“What?”

“Breaking into cars. Picking locks.”

He grinned. Then did a noncommittal “Maybe.”

“Not that I’m being judgmental or anything. I’m actually quite impressed. I know how hard it is to open a locked door. Trust me, that whole credit card thing they do on TV doesn’t work.”

Felix raised an eyebrow at me. “Been doing some breaking and entering of our own lately, have we?”

I shrugged and mimicked his “Maybe.”

“Touche,” he muttered.

“So where did you learn how to do that?”

“Liverpool.”

I gave him my “and…” look, gesturing for the long version of that answer.

“Tell you what,” he said, turning to face me as we stopped for a red light. “I’ll answer your probing question if you answer one of mine.”

Uh oh. Never good when a reporter used the word “probing.” But, then again, I reasoned, what did I really have to lose? This guy already knew everything about me. Besides, it wasn’t every day a girl ran into someone with his very own lock-picking set outside of HBO’s primetime lineup. I admit, curiosity won out over good judgment. (And for those of you keeping track, yes, this was a recurring theme in my life.)

“Deal,” I said.

Felix swiveled back in his seat as the light turned green. “All right then. When I was a kid, my friend Rodney’s father owned a towing service. When we got bored we used to borrow his tools and break into parked cars.”

“You’re a car thief?” Okay, I knew tabloid reporters were pretty low on the food chain, but hadn’t figured I was actually riding with a criminal.

“No, no, no.” He shook his head. “We just borrowed them for a bit. Always put them back.”

“More like a car borrower, then?”

“More like, yes.”

“Did you ever get caught?”

Felix shook his head at me, doing a tsk, tsk, tsk thing with his tongue. “That’s two questions, love.”

“Hmmm.” I sat back in my seat, pretty sure I wasn’t getting the whole story out of him.

“My turn,” Felix said, his eyes twinkling.

“All right, what do you want to know?”

“You and that Bruno fellow. What’s really going on there?”

“Nothing,” I said, a little too quickly.

“Nothing?” Felix gave me a sidelong glance.

“Absolutely nothing,” I replied. Which was almost the truth. (Almost.) From Ramirez I got no sex, no trust, no respect…see? Nothing.

“So,” Felix prodded, not any more satisfied with my answer than I had been with his. “The words ‘boyfriend,’ ‘dating,’ not entering into this situation at all then?”

I shook my head until whips of blond hair smacked against my cheeks. “Nope. Not at all.” The whole truth and nothing but the truth this time. Ramirez hadn’t uttered either one of those words. And I had a sinking feeling it would take an event more miraculous than the Red Sox winning another World Series to make it happen. Bad Cop didn’t have happily-ever-after in his repertoire. Hell, we couldn’t even do happily-sleeping-together-just-once.

“Hmmm,” Felix said, taking his eyes off the road to give my barely-B-hugging tank top a healthy stare. “Interesting.”

I shifted in my seat, not sure I wanted to probe what that “interesting” might mean. “So, uh, where are we going anyway?” I asked instead, clearing my throat.

Felix gave me a little half smile and I could swear he was enjoying how uncomfortable his attention made me.