clean. Cars rushed by on the highway, passengers oblivious, their minds blissfully free from speculative exercises involving kidnapped Chihuahuas, women with machine guns, men with top hats, and rattlesnakes.
Jack wiped rattler blood from his mouth as he walked to the rear of the gas station. There was no sign of Pack O’ Weenies. As he returned to the limo, Jack wondered what had happened to the driver.
Pack’s fate wasn’t important at the moment. Getting to Vegas was. Jack had to explain things to Freddy G.
He was behind the wheel, ready to key the ignition, when he heard his cellular phone ringing.
The dognappers had left it behind.
Jack followed the ringing sound-by now it was surprisingly familiar-and found the phone in a tangle of brush.
Jack answered the phone.
Angel Gemignani said, “Where’s my goddamn dog?”
PART TWO
ONE
There were four other men with Jack Baddalach and Freddy Gemignani in the big penthouse office high atop the Casbah Hotel amp; Casino, but it was Freddy who held Jack’s attention.
The casino boss furiously crunched a stalk of celery that wore a sheen of Snap-E-Tom tomato cocktail and vodka, all that remained of the third Bloody Mary he’d mixed since Jack walked through the big double doors of the suite of rooms overlooking the Las Vegas Strip.
“The woman in the trunk was our driver,” Freddy said between bites. “Kitty Crocetti, from Chicago. Jimmy Two-Nose Crocetti’s niece. Christ on a cross, Jack. First someone does her point blank with a hand cannon, then you set her on fire with an emergency flare, and now I gotta ship her ass home in a box. Jimmy Two-Nose is gonna be pissed.”
Jack wanted to ask how a guy got a nickname like Jimmy Two-Nose, but he knew that this was not the time to play name-that-gangster. Freddy G had been grilling him for almost an hour, his cohorts watching the action without a word.
It was plain that Freddy wasn’t happy. Neither were his companions. Their expressions grew sterner in direct proportion with the level of Freddy’s unhappiness. Jack couldn’t blame them. As employees of the last old-guard casino owner on the Vegas Strip, they knew all too well that an unhappy Freddy Gemignani was a dangerous thing.
When Freddy G became unhappy, somebody usually ended up taking a dirt nap in a remote comer of the Mojave Desert. Jack Baddalach did not want to be that somebody. He looked at the other men in the room and was distressed to find that none of them would make eye contact. Most likely they figured there was no use getting attached to a man who might very soon be sleeping with the prairie dogs. That’s how bad Jack’s story was playing out.
Jack massaged the knotted bruise high on his forehead. Right now he could have done quite nicely without it, but it was too late to tell that to the woman who’d slugged him with the butt of her machine gun. If he wanted to keep on sucking air he’d better start playing detective, and start playing good. But he had to have a place to start.
Not with the kidnapped Chihuahua. Obviously. And not with the bullet-ridden, toasted Mafia princess.
“So the driver was a plant,” he said, because he had to start somewhere. “He was working with the dognappers.”
Gemignani cringed at the very mention of the last word. “Yeah. Must be. Most likely he’s the one popped a cap on Miss Kitty, then took her place.” Freddy shook his head. “Christ on a cross. Poor little girl got her head blown off over a Chihuahua. Thank God it wasn’t my grandbaby in that limo. This crew we’re dealing with must be nuts.”
“Yeah.”
Freddy made himself another Bloody Mary. “Now about this driver. Let’s talk about him. What was he like?”
“Well, the guy seemed a little squirrely. He talked an awful lot. Told me all kinds of things about himself. Too many things. Especially for a guy who was a plant. That’s the only thing that makes me wonder how he fits into the deal.”
“He probably fed you a bunch of bullshit, Jack. Wanted to get you to drop your guard. Make sure you wouldn’t suspect him until it was too late.”
“Yeah. Could be. But maybe not. Maybe the stuff he told me was true. Maybe he figured I was a dead man, and it didn’t matter what he said.”
“Slow down, Jack. First things first. Let’s start off with the basics.” Freddy nodded at one of the other men-a thin guy with a big bunch of stencils and some kind of sketch pad. “Guido here is an artist. Used to work for Vegas PD. Now he works for me. He’s gonna ask you some questions about the driver and his gang, then come up with some pictures that we can use to track ’em down.”
Jack nodded. Freddy came around the desk. He looked Jack dead in the eye-Jack looking up, Freddy looking down.
Jack got the funny feeling his boss was looking for something specific. A sign of some sort.
The casino owner didn’t blink. After a moment he turned away and headed for the doors with his Bloody Mary in hand and the three other wise-guys in tow.
Freddy said, “Do your best, Jack.”
The double doors swung open. As they started to close Jack heard the casino owner take a big bite out of a fresh celery stalk, and then all that was left of Freddy was his shadow, a heavy blotch on the white carpet.
The door slammed closed.
Freddy’s shadow was gone.
Guido passed a stack of stencils to Jack, who shuffled through them intently.
Every stencil held a different nose. Noses that resembled potatoes or yams or bananas. Roman noses. Hooked beaks. Gnarled W. C. Fields specials, Michael Jackson chop jobs, Dick Nixon ski jumps.
Jack thumbed through the samples, trying to remember the limo driver. The thing he’d mistaken for a sketch pad lay before him on Freddy G’s big mahogany desk. It was the kind of pad used by police artists, and the only thing it held was an empty head, round and bald. That part had been easy to remember. But it was Jack’s job to fill in the rest of it, and right now he couldn’t seem to remember-
Guido coaxed him along. “Just take your time, Jack.”
Jack sighed. “I’m having kind of a hard time with this. I mostly only saw the guy from the back.”
“Okay. But you must remember something about him. Maybe his eyes. Maybe you saw them in the rearview mirror. Or his mouth.” Guido patted Jack on the shoulder. “Try closing your eyes and picturing him. Sometimes that helps.”
Jack closed his eyes, trying to remember the driver. The guy’s voice was in his head, right there, telling that goofy story about his ex-wife’s anaconda tattoo, and Jack concentrated on the voice, reaching out. . and he felt that
