Lucy pointed straight ahead. “The pyramid. Go there.”
The Luxor.
Traffic was stop and go past Paris Las Vegas, New York New York, Excalibur. The temperature was a hundred four at almost six in the afternoon. I stopped on a street parallel to the Strip and dug through the lockbox in the trunk. It held weapons and various wigs—long dishwater blond, a snow-white one with shaggy five-inch hair, short black, long brown with a single braid down the back, unkempt light-brown in a bad cut.
Lucy grabbed the white wig. “This one.”
“Just what I was thinking.”
“I’m sure.” She picked up a dark-gray Stetson, held it out. I put on the wig and the hat. Lucy dug through the box and found a salt-and-pepper moustache. “This, too.” I put it on, then she gave me a critical look, gave it a little adjustment. Lastly, she found a pair of glasses with just enough purple tint to half-conceal my eyes. She smiled at me, lips twitching slightly. “Perfect.”
I was getting used to wearing disguises, even when they itch like a son of a gun. All part and parcel of being world-famous.
I pulled in at the Luxor, valet parking. Lucy and I got out. Lucy got a long admiring up-down-up look from the kid who took the Mustang’s keys. I got my bag from the trunk and Lucy’s suitcase from the backseat, money in an envelope out of the lockbox, waved off a uniformed bellhop who had hustled out to grab the luggage from me, and we went inside.
“How much money you got with you?” Lucy asked.
“What’s it to you?”
“Jesus, Mort. How much?”
“Eight grand, give or take.”
She stared at me for a moment, then said, “Coolarama. Okay, first thing, let’s get the hotel desk to hold our stuff so we don’t have to lug it around. Then you’ve got to buy me a dress.”
“A dress?”
“Yep. Fairly good one, but not too good. Mostly it’s gotta be sexy.”
“Sexy.”
“Baby-doll sexy.”
I didn’t ask.
A blond, beautiful desk clerk took our rudimentary luggage without batting an eye, and gave me a claim check. Lucy took me by the arm and hauled me through the pyramid toward a line of interior shops where, without having to interact with the outside world, folks could buy clothing, jewelry, oil paintings, original bronze or pewter sculptures, get a manicure, pedicure, purchase gold coins and unset diamonds, load up on magazines, Snickers bars, key chains, tiny slot machines, Luxor T-shirts, fuzzy dice.
Lucy stopped in front of a shop that sold women’s stuff, which was the only way to describe it. “Wait here.” She went in, came out ten minutes later carrying a plastic bag with the shop’s logo on it. “Got some stuff for later.”
Stuff, so I was right.
She handed me the bag. “Don’t peek.”
“Nice earrings,” I said. She’d come out with gold hoops two inches in diameter dangling from her ears.
“You like? Pretty gaudy. Makes me look cheap.”
Women. You gotta love their crypto-talk.
We went down two stores to a place that sold dresses, gowns, expensive women’s clothing. “Okay, now I’ll probably need five hundred dollars,” Lucy said. “Or more.”
“Nice goddamn dress for five hundred, Sweetheart.”
“You kidding? Five hundred’ll be low midrange, but I like the sweetheart. Keep it up. It’ll play well in this place.” She made a “gimme” gesture with her fingers.
I gave her seven hundred. She told me to wait outside, then went in. Mannequins in a window display were draped in silk and leather, sequined dresses, scarves that probably cost two hundred each, purses for a thousand. From the hallway in front of the shop, I watched her amble in wearing a tank top and jogging shorts. I had an image of Pretty Woman—hooker going into a ritzy shop on Rodeo Drive. But Lucy didn’t look like a hooker, just like a kid who couldn’t afford pantyhose in that place, maybe looking for a ladies’ room.
She could disappear. Find a back entrance and end up in some sort of a service catacomb that ran behind all the stores, take off with seven hundred bucks. She’d told me to wait outside. But I had five thousand from Russ, so I could afford it if Lucy bolted. She’d been at least seven hundred dollars’ worth of company during the drive from Tonopah, so what the hell.
She came out fifteen minutes later in a wow dress. My eyes bulged. Red shimmery fabric, tight around her small waist with a loose cheerleader skirt with a hem twelve inches above the knee that looked as if it’d fly up around her waist in a little updraft; the sweetly rounded tops of her breasts showing, a little red piece of dental floss around her neck to keep the top up, shoulders bare, shapely arms. She was barefoot, a bag in one hand that held the clothes she’d worn into the place, and she had a tiny gold chain around one ankle that hadn’t been there before. Now the blood-red nail polish worked, or at least matched the outfit.
“Ho-ly smoke, woman.”
She smiled. A pirouette flared the skirt and showed even more thigh. “Like it?”
“Yep. But not if my daughter was wearing it.”
“Good. Five hundred sixty-two dollars. Now I need shoes.” She handed me that bag, too, turned me into a pack horse, hauled me over to a shoe store, got several more hundred dollar bills, went in and again I waited.
Shoes take longer, but she was a female, so I knew that. I was prepared. I should’ve wandered off and found a cheeseburger. Forty minutes later, out she came in sparkly silver heels three inches high, which put her at five eight. “How much?” I asked.
“Two-eighty.” She handed back a small wad of bills.
“How long have I known you?”
“I don’t know. Five hours, maybe six?”
“Call it six. That’s a hundred forty bucks an hour.”
She stared at me.
I shrugged. “Figures just pop out.”
She looked at the front of her dress. “They do, don’t they? Nice of you to notice.”
“Not
