“Journalist,” Ma said. “That was magnanimous of them.”
“At least they didn’t call him the Wharf Rat,” Lucy said.
“Wharf Rat?”
“Long story, Ma,” I said, yawning, then my eyelids turned to lead plates. It happened suddenly, which was startling. I tried to keep them from banging shut, but they got too heavy and I slipped away.
When I awoke, Ma and Lucy were gone. Russell Fairchild and a pair of Clark County detectives were in the room, talking quietly. Finally, Russ noticed that I was awake, so then I got all the attention. Which was only as it should be.
The smile muscles of the two Clark plainclothes guys had atrophied, a medical condition that no doubt served them as well in their professional lives as it did mine in my IRS days, back when I was rounding up tax dodgers who thought, oh so wrongly, that the money they had earned was rightfully their own. People who actually work for a living have funny ideas.
I had a hospital lunch of fruit cocktail fresh out of the can, and lime Jell-O, while Detective Bache and Detective Webber, both with that same unusual first name, asked their questions and listened with job-related expert skepticism to answers.
Russ mopped his forehead several times during this initial Q&A session, but I managed to keep Danya and Shanna out of it, which left the story rather unlikely and a bit thin—but like I told Detective and Detective, luck happens—like the time I opened the trunk of my ex-wife’s Mercedes and found the decapitated head of Reno’s mayor. Pure dumb luck. So—Lucy and I were at the motel a few days ago when a Lexus left late at night—same night a backhoe was digging out in the desert not long after. That of course piqued our interest—the backhoe, not the Lexus. Then we were out there looking at the Milky Way when a searchlight over by the diner came on and scanned the desert, which piqued our interest even further. So Lucy and I went out there in daylight and Bigfoot rolled up in a pickup truck wondering what we were doing out there and, yes, that did nothing to keep our interest from piquing even further—which, as this continuing saga of dumb luck would have it, evidently piqued the interest of Buddie and Arlene to the point that they smoked us out of our motel room and tried to kill us.
“Talk about luck,” I said.
“Talk about a lot of piquing,” Webber said laconically. I’d finally identified him as the younger of the two, the one with the Groucho moustache and the overlapping incisors.
“Sure was,” I responded laconically.
“So you found that Jonnie Xenon character up in Reno,” he said. “What brought you down to these parts?”
“These parts?”
His eyes narrowed. “Vegas, Caliente, that motel, diner.”
“Vacation.”
“Vacation.” His voice was as flat as a slab of concrete.
I looked around. “This room has a hell of an echo.”
“You find that fuckin’ Xenon, get on national TV all over the country, then take a vacation.”
“A very concise summation. Good job. After all that success, I was pooped. You would be, too.” Back in your court, Detective.
I’ve been told that talking with me is like talking with your average tree stump. Speaking of stumped, Webber just stared at me for a while after my last comment.
“Huh,” he said finally.
“Then,” I elaborated, “we got caught up in all that piquing of interest stuff, which turned out badly, since, look, I’ve got a drain in my shoulder, except that it probably saved taxpayers a million dollars since no trial is needed, so you’re welcome.”
“By ‘we,’ you mean”—he checked his notebook—“you and this Lucy Landry, age thirty-one, address in San Francisco?”
“That’s her. And I wonder if I could have a brief moment alone with my compadre here,” I said, nodding at Russ. “Who is also acting on my behalf as an interim legal advisor.”
That earned me a pair of lifted eyebrows and flinty looks, but they stood up, and the older one with the encouraging affable smile and the ball-bearing eyes, Bache, said, “Let’s go find some coffee.”
They left.
“Legal advisor?” Russ said. “Good one, Mort.”
“Notice that they’re gone. Is Lucy well enough to travel?”
“Probably. No IVs or drains. What’s up?”
“Find Ma—Maude Clary—get Lucy checked out of here and on her way to Reno. My story didn’t include Danya and Shanna, but hers might. We need to be on the same page.”
“Probably a good idea, but it might not be necessary. That Lucy’s a pretty sharp gal.”
“Knew that. And it sounds like you’re on a first-name basis with her, which is interesting considering that she threatened to throw you out a window a few days ago. What’d she do?”
“Cliff and Maude drove you to the hospital. In my car, since Maude said her Caddy is a ground sloth. Lucy made me hang back. She took me into the diner, into the back rooms where those two murderers lived, and got into their computer. She deleted one of the videos, the one where Shanna is walking with Xenon to that helicopter of his.”
“Just that one? Why?”
“Because she’s sharper than you, Angel.”
“I know that. But I’m at something of a disadvantage right now, wounded like this. Gimme a few minutes.”
“Take your time.”
Russ looked up at the TV where the sound was off, vehicles being dragged out of holes in the blazing sun. I thought about those videos, what they might mean. Shanna walking with Xenon to the helicopter. That tied her directly to Xenon. The second one didn’t, but it put Shanna at Arlene’s Diner, which was . . .
“Ah-hah,” I said.
Russ turned to me, eyes bright, a half-grin on his face. “So, why’d she do it, hotshot?”
“It explains, sort of, how Xenon got in the girls’ garage. Not directly, but it gives the police a way to piece it together, in the absence of other information. Buddie put him there. He’d seen Shanna at the diner. He killed Xenon, must’ve followed Shanna all
