Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(49)

“Well, I want the money, too,” Cole said.

Another minute, then Cox said, “Joan . . . the woman who fixed us up with the houses . . .”

“Yeah?”

“She makes all these real estate calls. She goes out to these houses with strange men. Alone. She carries a gun. I saw it, it’s small, but she said it’s powerful. She went to a concealed carry school and she liked it. She told me she’s got four guns now and she goes out to a shooting range. She’s even got two color-coordinated ones, blue and red. I’m wondering . . . maybe I could borrow one?”

“You know how to shoot?” Cole asked.

“Sure. I’ve gone shooting with Marion. It’s not rocket science.”

“It’s not how to work the gun that’s the problem. It’s killing somebody that’s the problem. We had rifles and shotguns on the farms, but the only pistol was this old rusty revolver, a .22. I take a 9mm into the houses with me, but I never have a round in the chamber because I don’t want to have an accident,” Cole said. “Maybe . . . Maybe when you start talking about guns, it’s time to leave. Without the guns. Get in the car and drive away. We could take this car, go together. We could figure out another way to get some money.”

“Like what?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. This robbery thing, this house thing, is the best gig I’ve ever had.”


COX THOUGHT about that for a moment, then said, “I want enough that I can go back to LA and live like a star for a few years. That’s all.”

“The cops got your prints.”

She shrugged. “So, they pick me up, I tell them everything I know about the three of you, which isn’t anything they don’t already know, and I tell them I was fuckin’ Marion for money. That I didn’t know you guys were crooks. That we ran out of the house in Altadena and you dropped me off in Pasadena, and that was that.”

Cole, who was biting his thumbnail, nodded. “Could work. I’d be a little pissed if you hung a lot of it on me. But if you hang it on Marion and Deese, I’ll be okay with it.”

“I can do that,” Cox said. “Hey! Harrelson’s place is coming up.”


THEY ALL CRUISED Harrelson’s place, which was tucked behind tan adobe walls and a gate. Cole had asked Larry O’Conner how he’d managed to get inside, to cruise the house, and O’Conner admitted that he hadn’t. What he’d done was, he’d gotten Harrelson’s address and then spotted the house on a Google satellite image.

O’Conner had called up a map on his laptop, then the satellite image, and they considered the neighborhood of upscale houses, almost all with pools, only one or two without. Almost all the houses had multiple pitched roofs covered with red tile. Though large, houses were still crowded together, only a few arm’s lengths between them, separated by thin screens of foliage.

Harrelson’s house backed up to the exterior wall of the subdivision. A pool was set just inside the wall, so they couldn’t cross in the middle of the lot, they’d have to cross between his house and the next one to the right. There was scrubby brush growing along the outside of the wall, so they’d have some concealment after Cox dropped them off.

“We could be seen from either house, so in and out fast as we can,” Beauchamps said. “I don’t know if they have armed security in there, but they could have.”

“We’ll have guns,” Deese said.

“Yeah, but we don’t use them unless it’s to save our lives. Damnit, we need more time. If those marshals weren’t here . . .”


WHEN THEY got back to the house where Beauchamps and Cox were staying, they agreed that they’d have to make some changes in the usual routine. If they even suspected that they’d been seen crossing the wall or in the yard, Cox had to be hovering nearby to make an instant pickup. If they got caught inside the wall, running would be virtually impossible—if they ran, Cox wouldn’t know where to get them, and the place would be crawling with security and cops within minutes.

“If we spot Harrelson’s car at the bar, after dark, we gotta go straight back to his place. We cross the wall and we hide there. In the brush. Geenie goes back to the bar and calls us when he’s leaving,” Cole said. “That way, we don’t have to follow him back, there’s no chance he could spot us.”

“You know, if we’re hiding in the yard and Harrelson’s old lady should come outside to the pool, we could grab her then and start taking the house apart. Maybe we wouldn’t even have to go up against Harrelson himself,” Beauchamps said.

“Larry said Harrelson carried money in his car,” Deese said. “We’d miss out on that.”

“Well, if we have a chance to grab her, I’d say we do it,” Cole said. “Then depending on what the take is, we either get out of there or we wait until Harrelson gets back. We don’t make the decision until we see what’s what.”

Deese: “What the man said.”

Beauchamps nodded. “Sounds logical to me. That bar’s got a big parking lot, Geenie could pull in there and sit for as long as she needs to.”

That, they decided, was what they’d do.


AND IT WORKED perfectly, up to a point. They started cruising Tina’s Wayside at nine o’clock, and Harrelson’s yellow Porsche Cayenne was already there. “Can’t be two of those,” Beauchamps said. The Porsche was painted the precise tint of a Yellow Cab.