“Okay, you’re a hotshot.”
“Think it’ll hold up?”
“Don’t know. It’s thin, but like you said, those two, Arlene and Buddie, won’t be telling any tales. Cops will find that one video on her computer and come up with a story. I’ve got to talk to Danya and Shanna, get them tuned in. Shanna can say she was at the diner, but that’s all she knows. She won’t have any idea that that woman made a video of her, or why. Danya could also have been there in the ladies’ room when the video was made. They can back each other up. They’ll need to act surprised as hell to hear that there’s a video. But it explains how two murderers latched onto them and, as weak a link as that is without that first video, it must be how Xenon ended up in their garage. End of story. Which also means none of us knows anything about any video of Shanna. Not until we’re told, at least.”
“Lucy wants to be a private investigator.”
“She’s definitely got the smarts for it. But she’ll be another fuckin’ maverick, I can tell.”
“No doubt. But you should still have Ma get her out of here. The fewer stories the cops hear, the better. And get Ma thinking about all of this, figuring out what to say, what not to say. She’ll be real good at that.”
He stared at me for a moment, maybe wondering about why I thought Ma should chew on this, then he took off.
Bache and Webber returned with coffee and more questions, which I answered—truthfully whenever possible, evasively when evasion was necessary, and I tossed out a lot of “I don’t knows,” which would be impossible to disprove.
Russ returned, gave me a wink, which put a final seal on our buddyship, and I said to Clark County’s finest, “I can barely keep my eyes open, guys. How about coming back when I’m awake and feeling more like myself.”
“More like yourself, meaning what? Finding bodies?” Bache said.
“That’s good. If I use that in a TV interview, I’ll give you the credit, Detective.”
Apparently that reminded them they might be walking on eggshells here, career-wise. One wrong move and they could end up as IRS agents, which was the kiss of death if you were human. They closed their notebooks and stood up. Bache turned at the door and fed me Schwarzenegger’s line, complete with accent and dead-fish eyes: “I’ll be back.”
Funny guy.
Three days later, I left Vegas in the Chariot of Fire. Ma had stashed Lucy in her house in Reno and then came back to pick me up. We went north on US 95, so I’d seen the last of Arlene’s Diner and the Midnight Rider Motel. I never found out what happened to Melanie and Kirby, but cooking, room cleaning, and waitressing are transportable life skills so I didn’t worry.
Russ told me Arlene’s safe deposit box had been opened and they’d found forty-four ten-ounce gold bars. With the ones Lucy and I found in the storage shed, and a spot price of $1,205.66 per ounce, that came to a little over five hundred seventy thousand dollars, which would eventually be distributed among surviving family members of those who’d been murdered by the Hickses.
We’d lost the suite at the Luxor—inactivity—but we got the roulette money, so financially the entire southern Nevada venture turned out great. Medically, not so great. I paid the taxes on the winnings using the Stephen Brewer ID. I’d been with the IRS not long ago and still remembered some of the better dodges, but most active IRS agents don’t attempt an end run around the IRS because that bunch of folks would eat their own young.
For a while, television was interesting but depressing. They eventually dug fourteen bodies out of the desert, identified every one of them. Arlene and Buddie Hicks, mother and son serial murderers—not mass; glad they got that straightened out—were right up there with Bundy and Dahmer. If I’d been able to travel, I would’ve attended the Wharf Rat’s—okay, Ignacio’s—funeral service. I’d sort of liked the guy at the end. He didn’t deserve what he got. Celebrity News played it up big, of course, losing one of their own. Never let a story get away. So there I was with Vince, front page as people went through checkout lines. I sold two million copies and got a check from the News for $6,500 so they could use my picture. Worth it to them, too, now that I was once again a household name. Like Ty-D-Bol.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I WAS IN the Green Room at the Golden Goose Casino with Ma and Lucy when Holiday walked in. I was slowly working my way through my first Pete’s Wicked Ale since I’d been shot. The barkeep, Patrick O’Roarke, had given me a fistful of free-drink coupons. Lucy got the same. She and I were comparing gunshot wounds, but the poor girl was outclassed. Her scar wasn’t going to compare to my chunk of missing ear, even though she said not that much was missing and her scar was going to be bigger. I said mine would be more interesting and was likely to generate more comments. We could’ve played ping-pong with that all night long and gotten drunk, but the shoulder wound was my ace in the hole. In and out, two scars. She’d only been grazed. She’d had an IV for a few hours, no drain, no surgery with anesthesia,
