first place who said Joe Carver was the one who robbed me?”
Jimmy Gaffney said, “We were all asking around for two, three weeks, and two different girls mentioned him. They said he had arrived in L.A. about a month before, didn’t say much about where he came from, and he was in the habit of spending a lot of cash. They said he might be the one. Nobody said anybody else might be.”
“Who are the girls?”
“Just regular girls we met. One is named Sandy Belknap, and we met her in a club. The other is Sonia Rivers. We found her in line waiting to get into a concert at the Roxy.”
“So you don’t really know either of them.”
“No. We were just asking around, giving out cards. Jerry and I said we were private detectives working for the bank. We took their names and numbers.”
“I can’t believe you two sometimes,” said Voinovich.
“You can find them again?”
“Sure,” said Jerry Gaffney.
“Good. I want an update on Carver. Have they heard from him or seen him since the last time? Find out where he is and what he’s doing. If you need it, take a thousand each from the jar on the bookcase and take them out to dinner and all that.”
“We’ll get on it.”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Morning?”
“I meant when you wake up. Go get some sleep.”
Jerry and Jimmy Gaffney stopped at the big urn on the shelf in the hallway. Jimmy reached in and brought his hand out with some money. He counted it as they walked outside and closed the door.
Voinovich said, “Do you think he robbed himself?”
Kapak shook his head. “I could believe he did it. But Guzman wouldn’t let himself be shot in the leg for a third of thirty-eight grand. That’s not even thirteen thousand bucks. The hospital bill just for tonight should top that.”
“I guess that’s right. So what do you want me to do?”
“Tonight we’ll let the cops try to solve this for us. Corona is still hanging around the hospital to keep Guzman company. Give him a call tomorrow and we’ll get him to tell us what he thinks happened in the robbery.”
“Okay.”
“Good. See you tomorrow.”
Voinovich turned and went toward the door. As he passed out of the living room to the entry, he ducked his head to get through the doorway.
The only ones left now were Kapak and Spence. “Tomorrow you and I will make an arrangement with one of the armored car companies.”
“Maybe they’ll have some kind of deal to lease safes for Siren and Temptress that they open and close, so we’re not responsible.”
“I don’t think so,” said Kapak. “I don’t want a bunch of strangers to have the combination. There’s a pretty good safe in Siren. We can use that for now.”
“Whatever you want to do about money, it shouldn’t involve any of us carrying it around in cash. That’s primitive.”
“Cash is an opportunity, and it’s a problem. We just have to handle it right. Do you have the videotapes from the clubs?”
“They’re in the screening room. You want to see them now?”
“I’ll take a look at them before I go to sleep. The bar receipts at Temptress looked a little light tonight. I want to see if the camera picked anything up.” He walked to the small room off the same hall as the master bedroom, inserted the first tape labeled “Temptress,” and then sat down on a big leather chair before he pressed the remote control and started the video. He pressed Fast Forward so the people on the big high-definition screen went back and forth in quick, jerky movements. At one point he slowed the action to normal speed and watched carefully. “Spence!”
When Spence came in, he was rewinding the tape. “See something?”
“Watch this.” He started the tape again, and the camera showed the second assistant bartender, a man named Coulton. “He’s making a drink. Gives it to the customer, takes the money. Rings it up. The register drawer opens. He makes change, hands it over. All okay so far. Now see the waitress? While he’s still at the register, she comes in with the money from a round of drinks. He takes her money, gives her change, and she goes away. He never closed the register after the first sale, so hers didn’t get rung up. He’s still got it in his hand. He closes the register and his hand goes to his pocket. You only have to do that a couple of times a night, and you’ve got an extra hundred bucks.”
“Is that all he does?”
“No. Near closing time, he’s running tabs for some of the guys at the bar. When a couple of them get up and go, they leave a big bill to cover it. He picks up two or three at a time and rings up one. It’s enough for me.”
“You want me to have the manager do it?”
“No. We’ll do it ourselves, Voinovich and me.”
“Voinovich?”
“Yeah. When this guy goes, I don’t want him thinking about talking to the cops about anything he saw, heard, or imagined, or to say something to the people who are still there. I want him to take a look at Voinovich and be really glad that he gets to leave at all.”
“Want to look at more tapes?”
“No, I’m going to bed. Lock the doors and windows and turn on the alarm.”
Joe Carver closed the door he had opened and moved onto the path through the secluded garden. He would have to drive to a motel he’d found a couple of miles from here to think before he slept. Now that he knew what his enemies were doing, it was time to work out how to get rid of them.
13
CARRIE SAT in the lotus position on the bed and Jeff lay across from her with the pile of money dumped on the sheet between them. The rules at the start were that one of them would pick out a hundred-dollar bill and say “A hundred,” and the other would take a hundred-dollar bill and put it at his side. But now they had gone through most of the big bills, and they were down to saying “Twenty” or “Ten,” or even “Ten ones.”
Carrie yawned. “You know what?”
“What?”
“I’m really getting tired of this.” She looked at the pile of money beside her, stood, and began stuffing it into a dresser drawer.
“What’s going on?”
“I’ve got enough. You can have the rest.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure?”
“Sure. I didn’t come out tonight to make money. I wanted to have fun. More money than this doesn’t make it more fun.”
“All right.” He stuffed the rest of the money back into the bag while she closed the dresser drawer and went into the bathroom. As soon as the door closed, he reached under the covers where he had been hiding bills since they had started, and stuffed those into the bag too.
She came out of the bathroom, crawled onto the bed, and kissed him. “It’s really late.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is. Almost morning.”
“This is the best date I ever had in my life. So much happened—we pulled a robbery and I shot some guys. We picked up some money, had sex about a million times.”
“Really primo sex too.”
“Yeah.” She kissed him again. “I had a great night. It’s time for you to go home. I put my cell phone number in your wallet, and I want you to call me. Don’t send me flowers or call on the regular telephone, and don’t just
