He went out the door, came back five minutes later with ten casino chips worth a thousand each, put them in Jeri’s hand, and folded her fingers over them. “Don’t tear ’em up, sugar plum. Now, if y’all’re still willin’, I guess I wouldn’t mind that dance.”
Jeri and I were at Reno-Tahoe International Airport at seven forty the next morning. At under five-four, a hundred thirty pounds, white and female, Jeri profiled out as a likely terrorist so they gave her the full treatment, checking her shoes—sandals—for C-4, going through her purse to find bottles of exploding lotion. They look for the most unlikely things, then miss automatic weapons when FBI agents test airport security by sneaking Glocks and Uzis through. Granny can’t get through unmolested, but profiling Middle Eastern males with “Allahu Akbar” beards isn’t PC so they’re waved on through.
Before entering the security obstacle course, Jeri kissed me, long and hard. We drew envious stares.
“Go get ’em, tiger,” I said once we came up for air.
“Will do.”
“Got everything you need? Toothbrush, toothpaste, spare bottle of hydraulic fluid?”
“I usually stock up on fluid after I get there.”
“Good idea. Have fun in security. They’re waitin’ for you.”
“Yup. Love those strip searches.”
She gave me another quick kiss, then she was gone, into the red-hot security vortex that keeps our nation’s air travel safe. Like the IRS, of which I was no longer a part, it was a government-run operation.
Food for thought.
CHAPTER TWO
I SPENT THAT morning and early afternoon camped out a hundred feet down the block from Western Pacific Bank on Wells Avenue, waiting for one William Aaron Dryer, chief loan officer, to make an appearance. His wife suspected Billy-boy of cheating and Jeri had assigned me the task of watching the bank from eleven to four, for which she charged said wife two hundred fifty dollars. Easy money, boring, but I was still convalescing so I didn’t complain. The hours added up, even these. I had accumulated six hundred of the ten thousand hours it takes to become a licensed PI in Nevada. I was hoping to make it before I turned fifty.
At two forty-five, there was Billy in a blow-dry haircut, exiting a side parking lot onto a side street in a metallic blue Cadillac ATS-V coupe, the one with 464 horsepower and an eight-speed automatic transmission, not a hard car to follow in a helicopter or a rocket, but I was in my Toyota, a sorry, undernourished thing without air-conditioning or intermittent wipers.
But we only went half a mile so he was just a quarter mile away when he pulled into a driveway on Elm. I caught up as the garage door went down, concealing the Caddy, then all was quiet. Got the address off the house and put it into an iPad with Jeri’s PI authorization, found that Billy was entertaining a Mrs. Percival Yates—Yolanda. Initials YY. Or Percival himself, but I doubted it.
Percival. Christ, I wouldn’t trade my Mortimer for his Percival, the poor son of a bitch. The things parents do to their offspring. No wonder Yolanda was on the move.
I got an angle on the garage and parked across the street, put a camera with a 350 mm lens on the dash aimed at the garage, then settled in to see what would happen. I didn’t think Billy would leave the bank for long, so this ought to be a quickie.
Which, best guess, it was.
When the garage door started back up, I sank down further and watched the action on the screen of the digital camera, got thirteen shots off as Billy got a good-bye kiss in the garage and climbed into the Caddy, backed out, Percival’s wife giving him a wave as he drove off, and I got a good shot of that, too.
Which probably meant this job was over, and it was a stinky damn job. Not like the IRS, but it smelled all the same. It just didn’t have the patina of criminal activity that taints the IRS.
So I went home and took a long hot shower.
I was back in the Green Room at the Golden Goose watching a Padres game when the hooker, Holiday Breeze, strolled in and looked around. It was seven forty-five p.m., early for her, but she was perky and fresh, light blond hair in a casually tousled style, blue eyes clear and bright, looking good. As usual, the place was almost empty, and, as usual, she took a barstool next to mine. This of course was a cosmic, preordained thing linked in some mysterious way to me being a gumshoe and her being gorgeous. I hadn’t seen her in a month and a half. Since then, I’d gotten a concussion and that sword run through my chest, neither of which was her fault so I wasn’t unhappy to see her.
According to her, her name really was Holiday Breeze. But like lawyers and politicians, hookers lie for professional reasons, so I wasn’t buying it. I took a hit of Pete’s Wicked Ale and waited for her opening gambit, wondering if she’d upgraded her spiel from the last time I’d heard it.
She was still aerobicized and curvy, evidently trying out a new look: three-inch heels, tight black jeans, an emerald silk top with a deep plunge that revealed an expensive artificial tan the color of honey. Her shoulders were bare. Two inches of tight tummy and a very nice navel were exposed. Only two buttons held her top closed, which looked risky. A narrow band of material around her neck held the top up. A brisk wind might have gotten her arrested.
I figured her for twenty-one, no more than twenty-two, so I had twenty years on her. Which didn’t matter, at least not to me. She was an adult. Very.
About that time, however, I was starting to wonder if the girl had a brain. Last time we met, right
