My ex, Dallas, shook her head when I ran that sorry pile of excuses past her. Her explanation charted a very different course: according to her, I was forty-one going on eighteen. I might argue that second number with her, but I couldn’t fault her logic.
My name is Mort. Mort Angel. Not Mortimer—although that mistake made its way onto my birth certificate all those years ago. My mother’s idea of a joke, no doubt. It would be just like her, but she says the name comes from a long-dead favorite uncle on her father’s side, and a bona fide war hero to boot—Guadalcanal—“so you oughta be proud of the name, kiddo.” Knowing mom, and not trusting her as far as I could spit a lug nut, I checked. There is no such uncle on her father’s side, which means there’s no Guadalcanal war hero, which in turn suggests the name Mortimer is, in fact, her idea of a joke. Someday I’ll have to get her drunk and ask her about it again. Sober, she would laugh and give me the finger, or pay someone else to give me the finger. She’s that rich.
So there I was, Sunday evening, not entirely sober at 10:58 p.m., TV remote in hand, a girl right out of wetxxxdreams.com all set to proposition me, and me as eager as a teenager to start my new adult life at my nephew’s firm, Carson & Rudd Investigative Services.
I was going to be a PI, the next Mike Hammer or Magnum, but not Hercule Poirot, which I’ve always thought sounded like a guy who might wear lace undies, which I don’t. I was transitioning from a man universally reviled to a man about to become steeped in dark mysteries—although I might’ve played the part better wearing a trench coat at a rundown, rathole bar over on Fourth, east of Virginia Street. A dark and dangerous place like Waley’s Tavern. I thought noir suited me. But I liked the electric air of the casino, too, the tension, the incessant money jangle and kinetic activity, the half-assed James Bond atmosphere—what would’ve been closer to a 007 atmosphere if not for the moronic siren song of the slots that have taken over—a slap-happy, nerve-shredding noise right out of Sesame Street.
The girl set a sparkly black purse the size of a gerbil on the bar in front of her, made herself more comfortable on the green leather stool with a dexterous wiggle, removed a Cricket lighter from her purse and casually placed it in the neutral zone between us, just within my reach. She tapped a cigarette out of a pack of Camel 99’s and held it absently between her fingers, unlit, not looking at me, sitting there as if momentarily distracted, waiting for me to pick up the lighter and act every inch the gentleman so she could act surprised, smile, and get on with the business at hand.
All of which shows how little she knew. I took another pull on my Wicked Ale, then hit a button on the remote to change channels, thinking I’d catch the news on Reno’s NBC affiliate, see if anything new had popped up about Jonnie and Dave, respectively our missing mayor and district attorney. Missing, to be clear, as in gone without a trace.
The girl sighed at my density, lit up, inhaled a lungful of carcinogens, God only knows how in that dress, then blew a smoke ring—a conversation piece. No comment from me even though it was a nice green-hued ring in the track lighting. She gave it another ten seconds, then turned and hit me with a smile so spontaneous and dazzling it had to have been rehearsed in a mirror on a daily basis.
“Buy a girl a drink?”
I knew she’d do that. Or something like it. I’d seen her around. A high-end hooker, she’d been working the Goose for a month or two. But, “Buy a girl a drink?” C’mon. She should’ve been able to do better than that even if she thought it wasn’t strictly necessary. A few hookers have class, but most don’t. Sleek or not, this one probably lived in a single-wide trailer out in the redneck wasteland of Sun Valley north of Reno, not because she didn’t have enough money but because she wouldn’t know any better.
Hookers can be fun if you don’t take them seriously, which I don’t. And I’d downed enough beer in the past three hours to fully appreciate the lighter side of life.
“Nope,” I said, just warming up.
She gave me a pout, something done entirely with her lips, but a calculating look never left her eyes as she continued to assess her chances. She crossed her legs slowly, revealing an interesting length of expensively tanned, aerobicized thigh. I figured her for twenty-one, twenty-two tops, still fairly new at the game, especially at the casino level, and cheating like a sonofabitch on her federal income taxes. Her tip income for services rendered was probably over a hundred fifty grand a year, maybe two hundred. If I’d still had my IRS badge, I could’ve stopped her heart.
So call it a hundred eighty thousand. Roughly three times what I’d been making as an
