The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(25)

“This isn’t about us,” I said. “I’ve got a line on some homeless people going missing, and I think this is related. There’s some kind of drug residue on the back of this card, and I’d bet twenty bucks you’ll find the same chemicals in the sandwich. I need to know what the hell it is.”

“What you need is to refer this to the local authorities. Drugging someone is a crime. Report it and turn over your evidence.”

I leaned towards her, giving a quick glance left and right just to make sure nobody was wandering close enough to overhear.

“The guy who slipped me this stuff is one of our kind, agent. Some kind of magician. A good one. Slippery.”

That got her attention. She took the bag from me, wary, and in my second sight the silver bangles on her wrist glittered like diamonds in the sun. Warding spells.

“If you really want me to throw some blind cops up against somebody like us,” I said, “maybe more than one, then you just say the word and I’ll start the meat grinder. If you ask me, though, I think this is best handled off the books.”

“That’s not your call,” she said, setting the bag on her passenger’s seat. She pursed her lips, staring at it like it might bite her, then looked back at me. “All right. I’ll check into it, and that’s all I’m offering. I’ll be in touch.”

The hum of her engine hadn’t even faded away when my phone started buzzing. Nicky, said the caller ID. I almost let it go to voicemail, then second-guessed myself and picked up on the fourth ring.

“Dan,” he said. “We need to talk.”

“About?”

“Not on the phone. Come to the corner of Polaris and West Russell. Ten minutes.”

“I’m not in town,” I said.

“Yeah, you are. Ten minutes.”

The line went dead. I cursed under my breath and shifted into first gear, rolling out into the busy street. Part of me wanted to let him stew, but I needed to figure out where his head was at—for my and Jennifer’s sake, not to mention everybody else who would be wearing an orange jumpsuit if he decided to take a deal from the feds before we did.

Still, I didn’t like it. Nicky wasn’t terse by nature, and I’d seen what happened when he thought he was being backed into a corner. That was when bodies dropped.

He was waiting for me on the corner, dressed in a gray silk sports coat and titanium-rimmed glasses, looking like a movie producer on the hustle for a hot new deal. I pulled over to the curb, and he jumped in.

“Not here,” he said. “Keep driving. Take the next left. What are you wearing? You look like a bum.”

“Where are we going?”

“Just a little ride, that’s all. Not far.”

At the next light, I casually glanced toward his hip. His jacket was custom tailored, but I could still make out the bulge of his shoulder holster.

“This isn’t the way to the Gentlemen’s Bet,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. I knew what happened when people went for “little rides” with Nicky Agnelli. I’d been in the backseat for more than one of them.

He knew I had to be thinking it too, and that was a lousy way of setting somebody up for a kill. Even so, he didn’t have a single reassuring word for me. I decided to play it cool until I could figure out his game.

“I’m not working out of the Bet right now,” he said. “You know, with all this stuff going on, these wild allegations? I’m trying to stay mobile. Agile.”

His directions took us out to Eldorado, in North Vegas. Lots of sleepy little suburban houses baking in the sun, far from Nicky’s usual flair for glitz and glamor. We turned onto an access road and rolled into a half-finished housing development. It reminded me of those old pictures showing the evolution of man from ape. All along a freshly paved street the development grew from empty plots, to skeletons of plywood and drywall, to vacant and shiny houses waiting for buyers.

“This is us,” Nicky said. “Number twenty, right here.”

I pulled into a driveway and gave the freshly built house a hard look.

“Nice place. Thought you liked living closer to the action, though.”

“Thought I’d buy myself a quiet little getaway,” Nicky said. “C’mon, I wanna show you something. Let’s go around the back.”

I wondered, idly, if I could take Nicky in a fight. I’d never given it much thought before. I only knew one thing for sure: whatever he wanted to show me, it was nothing I wanted to see.





Twelve



I followed Nicky into a small yard shielded from the rest of the block by a birch picket fence. He turned to me and let out a heavy sigh, shaking his head.

“Danny, I’m gonna have to ask you something, and I know it’s gonna insult you, but I hope you’ll take it in the spirit of the situation and accept my honest apologies.”

“Yeah?” I said. “What’s that?”

“I need you to raise your arms.”

“So you can see if I’m wearing a wire,” I said.

“That’s right.”

“You son of a bitch.”

Nicky’s shoulders slumped.

“C’mon, buddy,” he said. “With all the shit that’s flying around here, you know I have to check. I have to. Now we can do this the friendly way, or we can do this the not-friendly way. Don’t make us go there. You know me, I wouldn’t ask if—”