“See?”
“If she’s cheating on you, she doesn’t deserve you.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“And if she’s not cheating?”
“Then I’m going to have a hell of a boring life.”
“Until the next time I call.”
“Until then.”
“It’s what you live for.”
“No. Waiting for Eva to get in the mood is what I live for.”
“Tell me what that’s like. When she’s in the mood.”
“Donovan?”
“Yeah?”
“I mean this in all honesty.”
“Go ahead.”
“If I were to start telling you about it, you’d cream your jeans before I got to the good part.”
I blink two, three times. Then say, “I love it when you talk dirty.”
“You should hear me with Eva.”
“Any chance of that happening?”
“No. You want a drink?”
“Maybe later. After my cold shower.”
She smiles.
“Eva must be a helluva woman,” I say, “especially in bed.”
“She’s a trapeze artist.”
“And that makes a big difference, right? I mean, all jokes aside?”
She smiles. “You can’t begin to comprehend.”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive.”
“How can you say that?”
“The fact you had to ask proves you have no point of reference from which to imagine it.”
3.
Phyllis Willis is thirty-eight years old and lives in a six-year-old, 4,600 square foot home on a small piece of Henderson real estate, a few miles south-east of Vegas. The house is one-and-a-half stories, with three bedrooms and four baths. The two-car garage faces the street, and has an iron gate that closes to make a concrete courtyard. There’s not much yard to maintain, but her lawn service does a good job. Personally, I think $260.00 a week is too much to pay for what she’s getting. Then again, it’s less than a botox treatment.
The troubled economy has hit Phyllis’s neighborhood hard. One out of every three houses is vacant, including the one to her right, which gives me a clear path to entry. You get a good feel for these things over time, so I know before breaking in that her house is empty. I did a walk-through anyway, before going through her desk and filing cabinet, where I found all the details about her house I told you about. In case you care, it set her back a cool seven-fifty. I wonder why a woman with no kids or husband would want such a large house.
I glance at her desktop. There’s an art to piecing together a person’s life by going through their personal effects. The bills stacked neatly on the left of her desk pad, ballpoint on the right, tells me she’s right-handed. There’s a small hand sanitizer with an orange top, and a colorful foam coaster beside it that appears to have been painted by a child. To the untrained eye, this probably means nothing.
I call Callie. When she answers, I say, “I’m in her house, but Phyllis isn’t here.”
“So?”
“She’s having an affair with a Las Vegas gambler named Jim “Lucky” Peters. Ever hear of him?”
“Of course. He’s like the most famous gambler in the world.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Does he win a lot?”
“Are you kidding me? He wins a million dollars a week, if the press can be trusted. He’s got an army of weirdoes all over the country who phone in data to him twenty-four-seven.”
“What kind of weirdoes?”
