husband-he’s not capable of a criminal act. Infidelity, oh yes, and questionable business practices, yes indeed, but those are his limits.”
That was the liquor talking. Nobody knows anybody else as well as they think they do, and that went double for wives and husbands.
“I’m sorry. The answer is still no.”
“There’s nothing I can say to convince you?”
“No.”
It was several seconds before she said, “Suppose I could help you find Court Spicer.”
“How could you do that?”
“I have access to my husband’s personal records. It’s possible he has Spicer’s current address written down somewhere or stored on his computer.”
“If that’s the case, why haven’t you looked before? Or have you?”
“Yes, but mainly I was searching for something that would explain Spicer’s hold on David. I may have overlooked an address or phone number. Or failed to look in the right place.
Fallon thought about it. Worth yet another gamble?
He was still thinking when she said, “I could confront Spicer myself, of course. But then I’m not particularly brave or aggressive outside the confines of this house. And it might compromise your efforts to return the child to his mother.”
“Yes, it might.”
“I could hire someone else to do the job. A professional. That might work to both our benefits.”
“It might also trade one blackmailer for another. There aren’t many reputable detectives who’d take on a job like this.”
“I’d run the same risk with you, wouldn’t I?”
“I’m not that kind of man.”
“No, I don’t think you are,” she said. “I wouldn’t have been as candid with you if I did. Which leaves you as my only option. Will you please help me?”
It was the “please” that made up his mind; the way it came out told him it was not a word she used often. “All right, Mrs. Rossi,” he said. “If you can give me a lead to Spicer, I’ll try to find out what you want to know.”
“And any… material you might recover?”
“You’ll get it, as long as it doesn’t put me in a legal bind.”
“I’ll have to be satisfied with that, then, won’t I,” she said.
Fallon traded his cell phone number and the name and location of the Best Western for her private number. “How long will it take you to search?” he asked then.
“Not long, unless I have to go to David’s office at Chemco. If there’s anything to find, I’ll have it tomorrow at the latest.”
She stood up when he did, steady on her feet despite all she’d had to drink. He didn’t think she’d keep on boozing after he left. Woman with a purpose now. The drinking was a product of loneliness and a less-than-happy marriage, but it was plain that she loved her husband and would do whatever was necessary to keep the relationship intact.
In a way, Fallon thought, she was a lot like him. A fighter at heart. All either of them really needed was something worth fighting for.
SEVEN
WILL RODRIGUEZ GOT BACK to him just as he was leaving the Hen-derson city limits. “I had to call in a favor of my own to get what you asked for,” Will said. “You owe me big time, amigo.”
“I know it. I won’t add to the debt.”
“Number you gave me is a cell phone registered to a woman named Harper, Constance Harper.”
Constance Harper. Constance-Candy’s real name? In character for a man like Bobby J. to use a phone registered in his girlfriend’s name.
“What’s the address?”
“Twenty-nine hundred Cactus Flower Court, unit twenty-two-B, Vegas.”
“Anything on her? Known associates, anything like that?”
“Not without a lot more checking than I had time to do. Pretty common name. What does she have to do with the missing kid?”
“Directly, nothing,” Fallon said. “But if I catch a break, she could be a way to find him.”
Twenty-nine hundred Cactus Flower Court turned out to be a collection of forty or so town-house-style apartment buildings, four units to each, that took up an entire block a mile northeast of the Strip. Long entrance drive at one end, rows of covered carports for the tenants, an open visitors’ parking area nearby. Low-maintenance desert landscaping with crisscrossing crushed-rock paths.
Fallon put the Jeep into one of the visitors’ slots and went first to check the carports. Each one was marked with a unit number; 22-B contained a dark blue Lexus a couple of years old-not the kind of car you’d expect a strong-arm pimp or a dancer in a Glitter Gulch casino to be driving.
He followed one of the paths into the complex. Kids and adults made a lot of Sunday-afternoon noise over at a pool and picnic area. The town houses were arranged in geometrical rows, separated by plantings and paths; he found his way to the building numbered 22. Apartment B was ground floor, its front windows and one beside the door covered by blinds.
When the door opened to his ring, it was on a chain and half of a woman’s face appeared in the aperture. A wrinkled, sixty-something face topped by gray-streaked red hair. The one eye studied him warily.
“Yes?”
“Constance Harper?”
“That’s right. I don’t know you. What do you want?”
“Is Candy here? Or Bobby J.?”
“Who?”
“Candy, from the Golden Horseshoe. Her boyfriend, Bobby J.”
“Never heard of them. You got the wrong unit, mister.”
“He has a dragon tattoo on his right wrist-”
That was as far as he got. She shut the door in his face.
Fallon went back to the Jeep with his teeth clenched tight. The woman hadn’t lied to him. The liar was Max Arbogast.
The son of a bitch had deliberately given him a wrong phone number.
Arbogast wasn’t home. Or if he was, he wasn’t answering his door.
Mild hunger prodded Fallon into a shopping-center coffee shop a few blocks from the Desert View Apartments. Lousy food and two glasses of weak iced tea used up half an hour. One more pass at Arbogast’s apartment, he decided, before he went back to the Best Western.
He couldn’t have timed it better. As he came down Ocotillo Street, Max Arbogast was just getting out of a parked Hyundai with a grocery bag under one arm.
Fallon swung the Jeep into a space opposite. Arbogast was on his way up the path to the entrance by then; he didn’t see Fallon cross the street and come up fast behind him, didn’t know he was there until he said, “Hey, Max.”
Arbogast stiffened, turning. “You again.”
“Me again. You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
“What you want now?”
“The truth this time.”
