Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(41)

“Send me those mug shots. I’ll have all our security personnel look around.”

Lucas nodded and handed a card of his own to him. “Call me about anything.”


“GOOD SECURITY,” Rae said, as they moved on.

“You know how you can tell they’re not ex-marshals?” Bob asked. “They’re too skinny.”

“Keen observation,” Lucas said.

“Bunch of sissies,” Bob muttered.

They walked into the Forum, an indoor shopping center with domed ceilings painted blue, orange, and white to look like a partly cloudy evening sky in the desert. The various hallways were punctuated by intersections that featured oversized tableaus of fake Roman sculpture—gods, goddesses, emperors, gladiators.

“Man, Roman women had really great tits,” Bob said, taking them in. “I mean ‘breasts.’”

Rae: “You know why? They all died when they were twenty-six.”

“I’m not saying this place is cheesy . . .” Lucas said.

“I’ll say it,” Rae said. “It’s cheesy. But not uninteresting. It’s like its own art form. Vegas cheddar. I kinda like it. Remind me to write something about it and use the phrase ‘Vegas cheddar.’ It’s both accurate and snarky.”

A security guard went rolling by on a Segway; another wandered past, wearing an old-fashioned brimmed hat, like the Stetson Open Road hats once worn by the Texas Highway Patrol. He eye-checked the three of them, nodded, and moved on. A few minutes later, another one went past. And then another.

Rae said, “They must not like shoplifters.”

“I get that impression,” Lucas said.

From where they were standing, Lucas could see the shops: Dior, Zegna, Armani, Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, Ferragamo, Versace, Cartier. Dozens of people were gawking at a fountain like they’d never seen water before, some of them stopping to take selfies with it as the backdrop.

“Fountain makes me want to pee,” Bob said.

“I’m not sure you’re the demographic the designers were looking for,” Rae said.

Lucas said, “You know what? Walking around here won’t get us anywhere. Too many people. Even if they were here, we wouldn’t see them.”

“We could break up, make a sweep,” Rae said.

“We could try that,” Lucas said. “Give it a half hour.”


AS THEY WERE doing that, one of the security guards took a slip of paper out of his wallet, called the number written on it, and said, “You asked me to look for a face. He walked past me just now.”

“Is he staying there?” A woman’s voice, which he hadn’t expected.

“I don’t know,” the guard said. “I’m just standing here like I’m looking for shoplifters. He was shopping, I think, so he could be staying anywhere.”

After a moment of silence, the woman on the other end said, “Probably there, I bet. It’s too hot to be walking outside to get to a shopping center. Not at five o’clock in the afternoon. Maybe at nine or ten.”

“Dunno. Anyway, I was told there’d be a hundred bucks in it for me, if I remember correctly.”

“Yes. We’ll catch you the next time we come through.”

Click.

The guard had the sudden feeling that the hundred bucks might not be coming through anytime soon. Fuckin’ hoodlums.


LUCAS WAS IN a Canali store, eying the ties, when his phone burped. A call from Russell Forte in Washington.

“You’re interrupting my shopping trip,” Lucas said. And, “What time is it? Are you calling from home?”

“Yeah. I’m watching HBO and eating popcorn. It’s after eight here. You wouldn’t be in the Forum Shops at Caesars, would you?” Forte asked.

Lucas frowned at his phone. “How’d you know that? You put a tracker on my phone?”

“No, I got a call from Earl the phone guy. An alert popped up on his screen. Somebody called the phone you’re watching. The call came from the Forum Shops. About six minutes ago.”

“You mean, like, somebody spotted me?”

“Or Bob or Rae. But probably you,” Forte said. “After you got shot, your name was in the papers in LA, so they may know who’s looking for them. There are about a million photos of you online, going back twenty years, in Minnesota.”

“Goddamnit. Where was the phone when it got answered?”

“Same place it got answered before, near that trailer park. I’ll bet they burn the phone after this call. They could already be moving.”


LUCAS CALLED Bob and Rae. “Back to the cars. Hurry.”

He hadn’t seen them because of the crowds in the casinos until they were headed back to the Bellagio. They all got in the Volvo, Rae in the back since she was the only one of them who’d fit there. Bob called up the mapping app on his phone and two minutes later they were out on the boulevard and around the block heading west.

Not much traffic. Wide streets, flat desert-colored houses with tile roofs. They arrived at the Jacaranda Estates Mobile Home Community fifteen minutes after they ran out of the Forum Shops, and a few minutes more than that since the phone call was made.

The community was a perfect square, a quarter mile on each side, wrapped by a six-foot-tall concrete wall with flaking white paint. The guardhouse at the entrance was empty.