Maude Clary called at eight ten the next morning from somewhere in the mountains of Colorado, west of Denver.
“Jesus, Mort!”
I tried to open my eyes. The left one finally flipped open, but the right one was glued shut. “Yeah? Who’s this?”
“Jo-X? You found Jo-X?”
“What can I tell you? I don’t half try. It’s not a teachable skill, so don’t ask.” Finally, my right eye popped open, and the world was three dimensional again but still blurry.
“The train stops in Denver, boyo. It’s the nearest place with a decent airport. I’m comin’ home.”
“No you’re not.”
“I’m not?”
“I’ve got it under control. You’ve got a kid to visit. Grandkids, too. I’ll bet you’ve even got gifts for the precious little ones.”
“They’re not so little and not so precious, but of course I’ve got gifts. I’m their grandma. I’m duty-bound.”
“So, stay. Go. Have fun. Relax.”
“You’ve got it under control? You? Make me laugh before my first cigarette in the morning an’ I’ll collapse a lung.”
“This was just a hiccup. Anyway, Jo-X is dead. Been dead five or six days, so it’s not as if you could resuscitate him. No one’s that good at CPR. So, stay. Have fun.”
Silence.
I sat up, put my feet over the side of the bed, blinked at the morning glow behind the curtains. “You still there?”
“For hell’s sake, Mort . . .”
“Anything else I can do for you, Ma?”
“Yeah. Long as you’re on a roll, where’s that girl—Danya? They say she’s missing, too. And Shanna someone.”
“I’m workin’ on that.”
“Don’t.”
“Okay, then, I won’t.”
More disbelieving silence. Then: “They didn’t arrest you?”
“Nope. Just like last summer, all I do is find ’em. After that it’s up to them to figure things out. They sometimes don’t, which you and I both know is a good thing.”
“You didn’t say anything about all this when I phoned you last night.”
“I didn’t want to ruin your trip. Now I want you to keep going east and have yourself a mighty fine time.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
No response needed, so I waited. Sometimes it’s better to let it come to you.
“Anyway, are you okay, Mort?”
“Never better. Slept like a baby last night.” Except when I tore that drainpipe off the wall, which was sort of fun. Reminded me of something I did when I was fourteen. I might tell her about it when she got back home, but now was not the time.
“Well . . . okay, then. Now stay out of it, okay?”
“Fairchild might have a few more questions for me, but I’ll do my best.” I figured I was safe with the lies of omission now that she was a thousand miles away.
“I’ll give some thought about firing you while I’m away. I’ll let you know when I get back.”
“That’s my girl, always on the job.”
We hung up. I stood, stretched, didn’t feel like hitting the day yet, since I’d been up late, so I went back to bed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I FINALLY ROLLED out of bed at ten twenty, feeling pretty good after last night’s successful clandestine operation. But getting up in the morning is like turning on a computer. Hit the switch and it takes a while to boot up, load memory, move the cobwebs out, get the cursor blinking.
So—coffee first.
Then the morning paper, which I thought would be a hoot.
And there was Reno’s very own Mortimer Angel, PI, above the fold on the front page, in full stride, headed for the camera with a lethal gleam in his eye. Ignacio’s snapshot. And a nice story—not particularly accurate and missing a lot of critical information—but it had the basics down reasonably well: Mortimer Angel, age forty-two, finding gangsta rapper Jo-X strung up in the garage of the twenty-two-year-old daughter of Reno police detective Russell Fairchild. The New York Times would have the picture. And Le Monde in France, Der Spiegel in Germany, and a paper somewhere in, say, the middle of Colorado for Ma’s amusement. Since I may have left out a few details earlier that morning, I expected a call back at any time.
And I figured Ignacio was good for at least a quarter mil after selling those pictures, so my lawsuit was looking quite a bit better now.
Once the coffee took hold, I got a good look at the stuff from the drainpipe. “Celine” was written on the back of the flash drive in a somewhat flowery style. I fired up my computer and stuck the drive in, waited for it to be recognized, then found that it contained two video files. The first was short and shaky, no sound. A time stamp gave the date, which was nine days ago. In a desert field, a helicopter landed not far from a big industrial shed, blowing up clouds of dust. There was a sharp break in the video, then a slender blond girl was walking away from the camera, headed toward the helicopter, dressed in white shorts and a yellow halter. A man in a flight suit walked beside her, several inches taller. The video ended. I started up the second clip. The time stamp showed that it was the following day. In it, Shanna was indoors, at what looked like a restaurant table, wearing the same yellow halter top as in the first clip. A big plate-glass window was beside her with a view of dry gravel in front of the place and a fifty-yard stretch of deserted two-lane highway. She was in profile, staring at something outside. Daylight glare had darkened her features, but I had no doubt that it was Shanna—blond hair with the same pink streak, same lips and eyes, same extraordinary figure. The video bounced around as the camera approached. She looked up with an empty, distant expression as a menu was put in front of her, then the clip ended abruptly.
Shanna.
Alone at a table in what looked like a roadside
