“We should go get dinner then do this again. Okay?”
“I’ll let you know.”
She giggled, then stretched out full-length on top of me and tucked her head beneath my chin. “You do that.”
Luck is a guileful thing. Good luck is sometimes disguised as bad. You miss your flight, stomp around angry, and the plane ends up scattered all over a mountainside somewhere. Good luck isn’t always apparent at first glance, but give it time. What looks like bad luck can save your life.
Lucy and I were in the Mustang headed north on the Strip. We were the first car at a red light, The light turned green, I hit the gas, and we were T-boned by a sixteen-year-old kid running the red. He was joyriding in his daddy’s Mercedes SUV, green, same kind of car that Jeri, Ma, and I were tracking last October, driven by Julia Reinhart. It seemed like a cosmic sign to me, but I misinterpreted it, which I tend to do.
It wasn’t a full-on T-bone, didn’t hit the passenger door. The SUV got the front quarter of the Mustang, gave us a one-eighty spin, glanced off and got a full T-bone on a zippy little Chevy Volt in the lane to our left, pushed it across the intersection where the Volt was hit head-on by a limousine. After our one-eighty we got front-ended by a Forester that had been behind us. When we came to rest, we were facing due south, watching the traffic that used to be behind us pile up, horns honking, as if that would help clear a five-car accident. Lucy’s side airbag had deployed, then deflated, leaving her with a thick dusting of talcum powder and cornstarch.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She didn’t answer for a few seconds, then she spit out some talcum and said, “Well, poop. I liked this car.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Uh-huh. My first ever car accident.”
“Good thing it was a rental. Not so much paperwork.”
Lucy and I had been headed back to Arlene’s since that seemed to be the epicenter of this Jo-X-Danya-Shanna case. That trip had just experienced what’s called an unexpected delay.
It was 10:08, full dark, or would’ve been if we hadn’t been on the Strip with a billion watts of neon illuminating the scene. Once I got my head back in the game, I thought about the lockbox in the trunk with its guns and disguises. It was probably a nonissue since the accident wasn’t our fault, but we were about to get inundated with cops and tow trucks, so I needed to keep that lockbox in mind.
I got out, checked the damage. The right front tire was tilted inward, crushed up against the engine. It looked like the entire front axle assembly was a total loss, steering, too, the hood was crumpled, radiator leaking, windshield had a big crack in it, lots of extraneous damage. Fifty-fifty odds, they would total the car.
Lucy and I endured the snail-paced paperwork nightmare that results from a major non-injury accident. Police statements, license, rental agreement. I’d taken the insurance policy with the rental, so they could hash it out with the insurance company of the kid’s father, who, as luck would have it, was an assistant DA. Later I found out there were three of them in the car, and the kid had a point one six blood alcohol level and they had been passing around an open bottle of Smirnoff’s vodka. The usual dumb.
An hour later, Lucy and I were in a taxi, headed back to the Luxor. I had the lockbox on my lap. Thing was constructed of sixteenth-inch steel plate. With weapons, ammo, knife, wigs, and so on, it weighed thirty-five pounds.
“Anyway,” Lucy said, “that rounded out the evening.”
“Yup.”
“We need a new car. Gonna get one in the morning?”
“Yup.”
She stared at me. “Your needle’s stuck.”
“Yup.”
She poked me in the ribs, then kissed me. “So, no Midnight Rider Motel. We’ll have to tough it out in the suite. And if you say ‘yup’ one more time, I’ll sleep in the other bed. Alone.”
“The other bed has fleas. And the suite’s got room service and a Jacuzzi, kiddo. This was meant to be.”
“Fleas, huh? Okay, then. Same bed.”
The taxi driver was a woman in her forties. She gave me a wink in the rearview mirror. Nice.
One of the perks we got with the suite was hassle-free car rental service. An assistant concierge contacted Avis who were thrilled that the Mustang might be a total loss, and we ended up with a Cadillac XTS. The convertible had been nice, but I’d been concerned about the lockbox. Go through the ragtop with a utility knife, drop the rear seats, and there was the box. Someone could take off with it in thirty seconds. So now we had a hardtop, which was that aforementioned bad-luck, good-luck thing. Up in the suite I signed the new rental agreement, and the Caddy was delivered to valet parking. The claim check was left for us at the front desk. Done.
I had to get out of the Jacuzzi when my phone lit up with “Monster Mash.” I caught it on “a graveyard smash.” Lucy was in bubbles up to her chin. She gave me a whistle and said, “Wow. Now there’s a sight.”
“Down, girl.”
She laughed. I told her to shush, then swiped the phone.
“Yeah?”
“You told my dad where we were, you cretin.”
“Cretin. That’s not a big word, two syllables, but it’s not in common usage. I’m impressed.”
“Shithead.”
“A term of endearment I’ve been called before.”
“For good reason, I’m sure,” Danya said. “Why the hell did you tell him? My dad?”
“Because he’s your dad. And he loves you. And he was more than a little worried.”
“You’re still a shithead.”
“Okay, then, keep in touch.”
I ended the call. It hadn’t lasted long enough for me to lose the erection, so I got a leer and a smile as I stepped back into the Jacuzzi. I kept the phone where I could reach it
