Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(65)

RAE CALLED HIM. “We’re here.”

“Cheesecake Factory,” Lucas said.

On the way, the valet called. “We got that car.”

Lucas hurried back to the front of the casino, and the valet took him to the parking structure and pointed out the car, which he said hadn’t been moved since it was first checked in. Lucas looked through the windows and saw absolutely nothing inside.

“If he shows up and asks for the car, take a while to get it and call me,” Lucas told the valet. “This guy is dangerous, so don’t mess with him. Be polite.”

He headed back to the Cheesecake Factory, called Harvey as he walked there, told him about the car.

“We’ll put more pressure on the casino to find him,” Harvey said. “That small city thing is mostly bullshit: there may be that many people here, but in a small city not everybody has to get off one of six elevators. We’ll see if we can get a security guy on the elevator banks.”


BOB AND RAE were waiting, pacing, and when Lucas showed up Rae said, “I caught Sandro at DFW. He was already on the plane. He’ll be here in a couple of hours. He said he’d get the phone thing going with Roger Smith. Could be too late. He’s sure Smith’s got a secure phone. Santos might even be calling somebody else, one of Smith’s employees. There’s no way to know.”

“We were right on top of Deese until that asshole showed up,” Lucas said.

Rae shrugged. “Sort of. We had the neighborhood right. Didn’t exactly have a fix on the house.”

“I’ve worked deals where we had even less and it doesn’t take as long as you’d think to narrow it down,” Lucas said. “You talk to two or three houses per block, you’d find them eventually. Would have taken maybe two days. And if the Vegas cops had given us a couple of guys, we’d have had them in a day. Now . . .”

“What?”

“We’re sitting on his first car. If he goes to a valet, the head valet will call me. What are the chances?”

“Slim, but not none,” Rae said.

Bob said, “Two things: we’ve got no way to find him, unless he screws up. Even if we do find him, we don’t have anything on him, not really. There’s a chance that he doesn’t know where Deese is, even if he did originally.”

Lucas nodded. “That’s a point. If he shot Beauchamps, he’d be a fool to have kept the gun, and I didn’t get that feeling about him, that he’s a fool. And if he shot Beauchamps, he’s probably in trouble with Deese. He could be as much in the dark as we are.”

“Maybe Tremanty will have some ideas,” Bob said.

“Fuckin’ FBI,” Lucas said. “But maybe he will.”

They got a table, ordered chicken and shrimp and tacos, and coffee and shakes, and Lucas told them about the car and the four thousand rooms in six towers, and Rae said, “Listen, we’re not totally and finally fucked. Something good could happen.”

“Yeah. And I could crack one of those slot machines for a million bucks.”

“Drink your shake,” Bob said. “You’ll feel better.”


WHEN THEY eating, they poked around Caesars, hoping to stumble over Santos, because they had nothing better to do.

Tremanty got there, called from the airport, and they agreed to meet back at the Cheesecake Factory.

Tremanty and Rae sat close together.

Tremanty had nothing.





CHAPTER


SIXTEEN


The second house was a mile from the first, the closest they could get from the agent who managed the Airbnb rentals. Cox, freaking out, almost drove straight to the second house. But not quite straight: she made one ice-cold stop.

A half mile out of the shooting scene, she pulled into a Shell station, took the cash in the bag she’d taken from Beauchamps’s chest of drawers, counted it—forty-two thousand dollars—and hid it in the spare tire well, along with the pistol and the box of ammo. She’d managed to save three Rolexes, two in the wooden box and the one that came off Beauchamps’s wrist. They went in the tire well, too. Cole had done the same thing with his stash in LA and had lost it all, but she couldn’t think of anything better.

She left the cash in Beauchamps’s wallet, a few hundred dollars. He had five thousand in the roll in his pocket and she peeled off two and put them in her purse.

It took only a few minutes and then she was on her way again. Cole had stayed at the second house that afternoon when Deese went out and was waiting for her. The garage was empty, and they put the Cadillac inside to get it off the street.

Cole asked, “Sure he’s dead?”

“He’s dead, he’s dead. I managed to save some stuff: his pocket money, his wallet, some of my clothes. We can’t go back there; you couldn’t believe all the noise it made, the shooting. The cops’ll be there.”

Deese got to the house five minutes after Cox, just as she was finishing telling the story to Cole. The cannibal dropped the garage door and stalked inside and asked, “What the fuck happened? Are you lying? Did you leave him hurt, bitch?”

Cox, wide-eyed: “Deese! He was dead! Santos shot him like six times in the chest, he was about this far away.” She spread her arms to demonstrate. “I got right down with him when Santos left. I tried to bring him back, but he . . . Deese, he was a mess. I never saw a dead person before, I mean, all the blood . . . Jesus.”