Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(40)

“I looked you up on the internet and saw that stuff about the fight back in May.” He looked at Lucas. “You seem to be doing okay.”

“I am now. Felt bad at the time.”

“Lucky you’re not completely dead,” Mallow said. “I got shot once, but it was a .22. Got hit in the foot. Not life-threatening, or anything, but it hurt like hell for a year. And still hurts sometimes . . . Anyway, I looked you up, I read all that stuff about the home invasion guys, this Beauchamps and Cole, and the cannibal guy, and I guess there’s some woman running with them, maybe. A month ago, early July, here in Vegas, up at the Kensington Gardens, three guys in masks went into a house at eleven o’clock at night, scared the living shit out of this casino exec and his wife, and got out with a half million in cash and valuables. That doesn’t happen here. We didn’t make the connection with the LA gang until you called this afternoon. They sound like the guys you’re looking for. The descriptions we have fit Beauchamps, Cole, and Deese well enough. The MO is the same as the LA robberies, the battering ram, going after the wife, threatening rape—all that. I talked to your robbery sergeant down in LA, Rocha, about an hour ago, and she agrees. She’s interested. And she says hello, says you’re not as bad a bunch as you might be.”

“Thank her for that,” Lucas said. “What about the cars?”

“Yeah. A lot of cars go through here, and there were a couple of dozen used F-150s re-registered around the first of June. Most popular single vehicle in America. Three Escalades, which wasn’t so much of a problem, so I checked those and none of them sounds likely. I talked to all the sellers and they were all legitimately registered here in Nevada.”

“This is good stuff, Bart,” Lucas said. “Confirms what we thought: they’re here.”

“We’d love to catch them—we don’t like people messing with casino execs,” Mallow said. “I’ll give you any help I can.”


THEY TALKED for a while longer, and Mallow left them with the paper on the home invasion. Lucas told Mallow that he might want to talk to the victims and Mallow said he would fix it. “It’s clear that they had been researched and watched, but they never felt a thing, never had a clue that somebody was watching them,” Mallow said.

When Mallow was gone, Lucas, Bob, and Rae went up to their rooms, changed into cargo shorts and loose short-sleeved shirts, to cover their pistols. Lucas hadn’t been able to avoid the shorts because of all the crap cops carry around in them, like badge cases and extra magazines. He checked himself in the full-length mirror before he left the room and shook his head. He didn’t often see his knees in the sunshine. Not his look.

They met in the lobby, walked through a mass of slot machines and up and down some escalators and stairs and out into the incredible heat and into the front of Caesars. The Forum shopping mall was on the far side of what looked like two hundred yards of slot machines, most of them unoccupied, and Bob said, “I could drop ten bucks while we’re here. Maybe twelve.”

“Don’t burn out your bank account all at once,” Rae said. To Lucas: “Your legs are so white, they’re transparent. Look at that, Bob. You can see right through them.”

“Gimme a break,” Lucas said. “I hate shorts. I feel like a fuckin’ golfer.”

They were coming up to the entrance to the Forum when a man in a black suit wearing a brass name tag caught up to them and touched Lucas’s shoulder and said, “Excuse me . . .”

There were two other men with black suits with him, and the lead man asked, “Law enforcement?”

Lucas said, “Federal marshals.” And, “I know, we’re wearing shorts, but it’s hot outside.”

The three men looked like ex–heavy-duty cops of some kind, maybe FBI or ATF, all in shape, with carefully greased-back black hair and bright neckties. They’d spotted the weapons that the marshals were carrying. Lucas, Bob, and Rae took their IDs out of their pockets and the three men checked them. And the leader asked, “Do you have something going on here?”

“We’re not sure,” Lucas said. “We’re tracking some people who made phone calls from the Forum. We’re checking out the territory.”

“All right. Be aware of how crowded it is.”

Lucas smiled and said, “We won’t shoot anyone. Promise.”

The man didn’t smile back, but said, “Okay . . . Try real hard.”

Lucas said, “If you give me an email, I’ll send you some mug shots of the people we’re looking for. Maybe you’ve seen them.”

“What’d they do?”

“Hard-core stickup guys,” Bob said. “Part of a gang that shot a couple cops in LA last May. Home invasion. They probably took down a casino exec from Cyril’s, and the guy’s wife, here in Vegas a few weeks ago.”

“Toni and Cal? The night robbery?”

“That’s the one,” Lucas said.

“That was ugly,” the lead man said. “I heard Toni is still messed up about it. Hope you get them . . . though it took you a while to get here.”

“Yeah, well, I was one of the guys they shot,” Lucas said.

The security men glanced at one another, and the leader said, “Ouch,” and another one said, “Bet that smarted,” and the leader took a card from his pocket and wrote an email address on the back.