and he took a pair of shot glasses from the same drawer and slapped them on the desk. He unscrewed the flask with his teeth.
“You a drinking man?” he asked.
Valentine felt something inside him snap. The shot glasses shattered as they hit the floor. The clerk jumped back like he’d been struck.
“Hey mister, I was just trying to be—”
“I don’t care what you were trying to be. I need to find these guys. Anything you can remember before you get drunk would help.”
Valentine put his hand on the flask. The clerk swallowed hard, realizing he wasn’t getting any hooch unless he cooperated. He scrunched his face up, giving it some effort.
“Come to think of it, there were a couple of things,” he said.
Amin and Pash Amanni had liked to eat pizza. They also went to the movies a lot. Those were the two things the clerk remembered.
It wasn’t much, but better than nothing, and Valentine killed the evening visiting every pizza shop and movie theater in Henderson. At each he showed Amin’s surveillance photo to the help, asked if anyone recognized him.
None of the ringed and pierced employees did.
By midnight he felt ready to drop from exhaustion. Sitting in a strip mall parking lot, he ate a slice of pizza that tasted like cardboard with catsup. He washed it down with a soda, told himself he had to keep looking. If Amin knew he’d been photographed in the MGM the night before, he was probably staying away from Las Vegas. That left Henderson as his only real hiding place, unless he was camped out in the desert.
Valentine realized he was dying for a smoke. He’d gone cold turkey a year ago, and didn’t get the cravings for nicotine unless he was under stress. He pulled Mr. Beauregard’s cigar from his pocket, peeled away the plastic, and passed it beneath his nose. The tobacco was dry, but still smelled wonderful.
He fired up the cigar with the rental’s lighter and filled his mouth with the great-tasting smoke. It lifted his spirits and calmed his nerves at the same time.
He saw the lights go out in the pizza parlor. Other stores around Henderson were probably closing as well. Which left fewer places for Amin to hide.
He started up the car and was backing out of his spot when he heard the explosion. It was right in his face, and very loud. It snapped his head back, and he saw nothing but eternal blackness.
The banging on his window brought him back to the real world, and Valentine stared at the kid who’d served him the pizza standing beside his car. He rolled his window down.
“Hey mister, you all right?” the kid anxiously asked.
Valentine touched his arms, and then his face. Everything felt fine.
“Yeah, I think so,” he mumbled.
“What happened?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he replied.
The kid sauntered off. Valentine inspected the car. The windshield wasn’t broken, nor were any of the windows. He turned on the interior light and stared at his reflection in the mirror. His lips and chin were covered in black soot. It slowly dawned on him what had happened. Mr. Beauregard had given him an exploding cigar.
Valentine thought back to the chimp handing him the pack of matches. He hated to be played for a fool, and thought about calling Ray Hicks, and giving him a piece of his mind. Then his cell phone rang.
He stared at the luminous clock on the dashboard. It was twelve-oh-five.
“I need more time,” he told Fuller.
“You just ran out of that,” the director of the FBI replied.
37
Hog-tied and gagged, Gerry lay across the backseat of Amin’s rental car and watched the sun break over the horizon.
Dawn was different in Las Vegas. Before the sun ever came up, the sky put on a show, turning from black to magenta to a magnificent dark blue. The changes were gradual, yet also severe, as if the colors were being sucked from the desert.
Soon sunlight flooded the rental, and he heard Pash and Amin stir in the front seats. They had driven into the desert around eleven o’clock, parked behind a deserted building, and promptly gone to sleep. Gerry hadn’t slept at all, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might explode.
Amin rubbed the cobwebs from his eyes, then climbed out of the rental and walked away. Lifting his head, Gerry looked through the side window and saw Amin standing twenty yards away, pissing on a cactus. He kicked the back of Pash’s seat.
“Wake up,” he said through his gag.
Pash turned around and stared at him. His happy-go-lucky expression had been replaced by one of mounting dread. “Be quiet,” he whispered.
“Not until you tell me what’s going on.”
Pash reached over and tugged his gag down. “Be quiet, or my brother will put a bullet in your head.”
“The truth,” Gerry said. “I think I deserve that.”
“My brother will kill you, do you understand?”
“Big fucking deal.”
That hit Pash hard. “You are not afraid of dying?” he asked.
Gerry lifted his head. Amin was still draining the monster. During the night, he’d realized he might die not knowing what the brothers were up to, and he said, “Come on. I have a right to know.”
“How so?” Pash said, staring straight ahead.
“I saved your lives yesterday, didn’t I? Just tell me the truth.”
“Stop it. Please.”
“You’re not drug dealers. I figured that out.”
Pash stiffened like a thousand watts of electricity had been jolted through his body. His chin dropped down and touched his chest, and Gerry realized he was fighting back the overwhelming urge to cry. “How did you know that?” he asked.
“You didn’t sample the merchandise.”
Pash lifted his chin and looked over his shoulder into the backseat.
“Please explain.”
“The meeting with the Mexicans,” Gerry said. “You gave them cash, and they gave you drugs. Only you didn’t try the drugs, or test them with chemicals. For all you knew, they could have sold you cornstarch.”
A guilty look spread across Pash’s face.
“What I can’t figure out is, what the hell did they sell you?” Gerry said. “Amin got a beat-up briefcase. It was too small to be filled with weapons. So what was in it?”
Pash was trembling, as if the secret were burrowing a hole in him. He reached between the seats and readjusted the gag over Gerry’s mouth.
“I am sorry this is happening,” he said.
Valentine dragged himself through the Acropolis’s deserted lobby. He’d driven around Henderson until three AM, then stopped at an all-night gas station for a coffee and a jelly doughnut. The next thing he remembered was waking up in his car at nine o’clock with a pancake-sized coffee stain on his shirt.
He heard someone call his name. It was Lou Ann, the pleasant receptionist he’d chatted with yesterday. He shuffled over to the front desk.
“I’ve got some terrific news for you,” Lou Ann said.
Terrific news? He thought he’d run out of that. He waited expectantly.
