Outside, I had the valet bring around the Mustang. I gave the kid twenty bucks—big spender—got in, hit the Strip, headed east at the next intersection. I went far enough that Lucy couldn’t see me from a window in our suite if she went back up. I pulled to a curb and phoned Russ.
“Yeah, what’s up?” he answered, guarded.
“Can you talk?”
“Give me a minute.”
I waited, top down on the car. Ten fifteen a.m. The day had already hit a hundred degrees. I wondered what Lucy was doing. If she wanted to split, now was the time to do it.
“Angel?” my favorite RPD detective said.
“Yep.”
“What’s up? You find Danya?”
“Not yet. Obviously you haven’t either. But I’m just getting started down here.”
“Down where?”
“Vegas.”
“Vegas! What the hell’s down there? I mean, other than Jo-X’s got a big place down there, but they’ve already been through it, the police. Didn’t find much of anything, except . . .”
“Except what?”
“Rohypnol. Guy had some in a drawer in his bar. Son of a bitch has his own in-house bar, thirty million bucks, and he needs a date rape drug? I’m glad that lowlife fucker is dead. Especially if Danya is Celine. You still think it’s possible?”
“Anything’s possible. Right now I’m at about fifty percent.” I wasn’t, but I was at least at fifty percent for Shanna.
“Last time it was twenty-five.”
“This is Vegas. Odds change every few minutes down here.”
“Well, shit. Got anything else goin’ on?”
“I don’t know. Might be something. But the police have things pretty well covered up there. I’d just get in the way.”
“So what’s down there? What’ve you got?”
“Not sure. I’ll let you know if or when I find anything.”
“If you find that goddamn secret hideaway of Jo-X’s, let me know. That is, if there is such a place.”
Which is what everyone else on the planet wanted to know. The fabled Jo-X “retreat,” his private getaway place when he’d finally had his fill of screaming fans and wanted to be alone. The place was a castle in the sky, a fantasy, media conjecture. It might not exist. Opinions varied. But Jo-X disappeared from time to time. When he did, there was no sign of him. Nothing at all. Then he would reappear, and when asked where he’d been, his response was invariably to stick his tongue out that also-fabled three and a half inches, except that wasn’t a fable but a tape-measured fact. Gross one, too.
“Haven’t come across it yet,” I told Russ. “What I’m doing, I’m following up on something of a lead down here.”
“What kind of a lead?”
“A vapor trail. Maybe a little less than that.”
“A vapor trail . . .”
But that Rohypnol thing might’ve thickened the mist. I would have to think about that. “What I need, Russ, is your okay to get someone else involved in this.”
“Someone else? Like who?”
“An assistant that I . . . that I came across.”
He was all over that half-second hesitation. “An assistant? You ‘came across’ an assistant?”
“Yep.”
“How’s that work? How do you do that?”
“It’s a knack.”
Well, he’d heard that before. “Jesus Christ, Angel. It’s a girl, isn’t it? Who is she? What’s the story?”
“Her name is Lucy. I’m checking her out as we speak, but it’s up to you, how much I tell her. Thing is, it’d be damn hard to work with an assistant who doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“How old is she?”
“What’s it to you?”
“How old?”
I gave him a weary sigh. “She says she’s thirty-one.” No need to tell him how old she looked.
“She says? I don’t like the sound of that.”
“It’s been more or less verified.”
“How do you ‘more or less’ do that?”
“I got a second opinion.”
Silence. Then: “You’re a hell of a hard guy to talk to.”
“So I’ve been told.”
He wanted to know more about my assistant so I gave him the bare-bones gist of how we met and how we decided to travel together, leaving out all mention of the various outfits Lucy had or hadn’t worn, or that she said she’d marry me, which might’ve been a joke and didn’t seem relevant in any case.
“Twelve thousand? She won twelve thousand bucks?”
“Rounded off a little, yeah.” Rounded down from thirty-six thousand, but he didn’t need to know that.
“How the hell’d she do that?”
“Roulette. She’s a pistol.”
“Sonofabitch, twelve grand is almost three months—”
“Is that a yes on the assistant, Russ? Tell her about Danya possibly being Celine?”
“Christ. You figure you can trust this girl, huh? Lucy?”
“We’re in test mode right now. If she passes, then, yeah. I have the feeling she’ll pass, and I have the feeling I could use the help. She seems like a nice-enough kid.”
“Kid?”
“It’s an expression we old farts use. And she’s sort of like having a set of keys, so there’s that.”
“Keys?”
“She’s the type that might open a few doors.”
“Sonofabitch. She that good-lookin’?”
“Pretty much.”
“Je-sus, I’m in the wrong—”
“Yeah, yeah. But I still haven’t heard that okay, Russell.”
“Yeah, fine. Do what you gotta. Just don’t let the media get hold of that Celine thing.”
“One other thing.”
“What?”
“Get me Jo-X’s address down here. I don’t know where it is.”
“And here I thought you were a PI, Angel.”
“I am. Good one, too. I’ve got a police detective in my pocket. That’s one way I get the information I need. Quick, too.”
“Shit. How old you say that girl was again?”
“They found Rohypnol? That’s really something. Call me back with that address. Shouldn’t take you five minutes.”
I could’ve had Russell try to check out Lucy, but I didn’t want to do that—not after that call to Lucy’s mother. Lucy hadn’t told the woman her name or age, and both had checked out. There was no way Lucy could have been waiting for me to show up in Tonopah, no way to set up that kind of a coincidence. That was just paranoia talking. Now it was up to the money I’d given her. In effect, I was betting
