— she’d won a prized role, he remembered. With a jolt he also recalled that Kim’s show was staged last week, and he’d missed her performance. The realization was so hurtful that Jack immediately pushed it aside. With an effort, he smiled down at the girl, shook her tiny hand. “Hello, Pamela,” he said.
Jack’s flaring emotions reined, his professional instincts reasserted themselves. He noted that the resemblance between mother and daughter was obvious. Both had wide, expressive blue eyes and high cheekbones. Lilly’s blond hair was a shade darker than her daughter’s and cut so short it curled around her ears. While Lilly was tall and willowy, her child was skinny, all arms and legs and a neck like a gazelle’s.
“Let’s go to the Tiki,” Jack coaxed. “The joint’s deserted this time of day. We’ll sit in the back and Pamela can have a ginger ale or something.”
Lilly hesitated, then nodded. Jack, mindful of their seedy surroundings, took them straight to a remote booth near an oasis of fake palm trees and a flock of plastic pink flamingoes. The waitress appeared at Jack’s shoulder. She wore a bikini top, grass skirt, and sneakers.
“Nancy, the young ladies will have ginger ales… Make it three.”
The drinks appeared in under a minute.
“How are things at the Babylon?” Jack asked.
Lilly curled her nose. “Big political event tonight. I’m doing double duty, hostess and server. It’s a nice gig with extra money attached.” While she spoke, Lilly fished in her tiny purse until she found her cell phone. Still talking, she checked her messages. “Sorry, Jaycee. I’m waiting to hear from my babysitter.”
She slipped the cell back into her purse.
Pamela seemed intrigued by the fake flamingoes, left the booth to get a better look. Jack leaned closer to Lilly.
“So,” he said softly. “You think it’s wise for Stella to go over to Hugo’s garage, after she dumped him for me?”
Lilly adjusted her pink blouse. “Stella and Hugo, they’re friendly. I mean, I don’t know what goes on between you and Hugo, but Bix seems civilized. And Stella steers business his way—”
She suddenly covered her mouth. “Oh, crap! Maybe I wasn’t supposed to say anything about that.”
Jack reassured her immediately. “Our relationship is personal, not business,” he said. “It’s just that Hugo’s been messing with me. I don’t want him messing with Stella.”
Lilly looked away, sipped her drink.
Jack reached into his pocket. “Here, Lilly, I want you to take this,” he said, displaying one of Jager’s business cards. He turned it over. On the back was another number, written in his own handwriting.
“That’s my personal cell phone number,” he explained. “If I don’t pick up, a guy named Morris O’Brian will. If Stella gets into a jam, or if you ever get into trouble, give me a call.”
Lilly accepted Jaycee’s card, but her expression said it all — the last thing she felt she needed was another sympathy play from a lowlife gangster who was banging her roommate.
“There you are.”
Jack and Lilly looked up. Stella had arrived. She was as put together as she’d been when she arrived. Dress in place, makeup perfect.
“Ready to go, Lil?”
“Sure,” Lilly said, jumping up. “I’ll just fetch Pamela.”
Stella Hawk watched her roommate chase after her daughter. “She dotes on that brat,” Stella said with a sigh.
“Will I see you later?” Jacked asked, wrapping his arm around Stella’s waist.
“Depends,” Stella replied, peeling his hand away.
Lilly appeared with Pamela in tow. “Say goodbye to Mr. Jager,” Lilly prompted.
“Nice to meet you, Pamela,” said Jack.
“Bye, Mr. Jager. Thank you for the soda,” Pamela replied. “Later, lover,” Stella said, blowing Jack a kiss.
An industrial area sparsely populated by air conditioning contractors and electrical engineering ser vices, Bix Automotive Center dominated this remote and sandy stretch of Browne End Road. The garage itself was the largest building on the block, and two adjacent lots on either side were ringed with twelve foot chain link fence that protected a decade’s worth of auto shop debris — stripped down car frames, engine blocks, broken axles, rusty radiators, mismatched hubcaps, and old tires stacked like poker chips.
A mammoth cinderblock rectangle constructed in the late 1950s, the windowless interior of the automotive center reeked of grease, worn rubber, waste oil and hot metal. It didn’t help the unsavory atmosphere that the garage doors were closed and locked tight, or that the bustling interior was crowded with five large trucks — all of them late-model Dodge Sprinters — and a dozen mechanics working them over.
Hugo Bix presided over the chaos from his office on the mezzanine — really a ramshackle wooden shack on stilts, with a flight of metal stairs leading to the only door. For the rising Vegas crime lord, this was shaping up to be the most important day of his criminal life. But if Hugo Bix was tense, he did not show it.
Surrounded by stacks of yellowing racing forms and old license plates, a large Pennzoil sign and an array of pornographic calendars highlighting sex industry beauties from the past decade, Hugo Bix was slumped in a sagging office chair. He clutched the sports page in his large, callused hands, his scuffed, size-thirteen boots resting on a battered wooden desk.
At thirty-four, Bix’s hard gray eyes and pockmarked features gave him the look of a man decades older. His skin browned by the sun, chin perpetually unshaven around a natty handlebar moustache, Bix resembled a cowpoke at a local rodeo more than Las Vegas’ most powerful crime lord. Bix wore his working class roots with pride. His arms were laced with prison tattoos and roped with muscle. His hair, bleached by the sun, was long and wavy.
A cell phone on the desk rang once. Bix put it to his ear but said nothing.
“It’s Roman, boss. I’m at the front gate.”
“Go on,”
“Big Ed’s here. He said Toomes and Drew are right behind him. They got the goods.”
A slight smile curled the corners of Bix’s thin lips. “Any sign of our friends from down south?”
“Not yet.”
“How about the Wildman and his boys?”
“They arrived last night. They’re holed up at Baxter’s Motel on the edge of town, and getting antsy.”
Bix grinned. “They’ll have plenty to do in a couple of hours. Wildman is my ace in the hole.”
Bix closed the phone. He swung his big feet off the desk, rose to his full height. Swaggering like a movie cowboy, or like the outlaw biker he once was, Bix walked to the door.
“How’s it going down there?” he called.
The lead mechanic looked up. “We’re almost done here. The trucks we have are loaded and there’s only a few stencils left to apply. We’re waiting for the other trucks you promised us.”
Bix nodded, turned his back on the workmen. “I reckon they’ll be here any minute.”
“Then what?” the mechanic called back.
“Then you’ll do your jobs and stop asking questions,” Bix replied before closing his door.
Jack waited in the Tiki Lounge, his mind still focused on Henderson’s phone call.
“You wanted to see me, Jaycee?”
Jack nodded. “Sit down, Curtis. Any sign of Ray Perry?”
Curtis shook his head. “Driscoll put out some feelers. Found out Perry wasn’t hiding out at Circus, Circus. Don talked to Perry’s girlfriend and she hasn’t seen him in two days.”
Curtis leaned close. “Do you think it was really Perry who wasted Max Farrow?”
Jack smiled humorlessly. “That would be convenient, sure. Ray’s gone so we don’t have a spy among us. That’s what someone wants us to think.”
“Who do you think it is then, Jack?”
“It could be anyone. It could be Ray Perry. Or Don Driscoll. Or Chick Hoffman. Hell, it could even be Nancy over there.” To Curtis Manning’s surprise, Jack laughed once. “We’ll know soon enough. I think Hugo’s about to make his move.”
“You think sending Max Farrow here was the beginning of something?”
