Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(66)

She suddenly sat down on the floor, really falling, her legs giving way.

“What did Marion do? Just stand there?”

“No. Marion . . . Deese, I think Marion started it. He brought a gun out of the bedroom and he pulled it out and he pointed it at Santos but it didn’t go off at first. I think he forgot about the safety thing. Then Santos pulled a gun out, and they both started shooting.”

She went through the whole scene, once, twice, watching as Deese worked himself into a rage, ripping off his shirt, throwing it in a corner, shouting at her as she sat there on the floor. Cole eventually cornered him, talking quietly. “Deese, it wasn’t Geenie who did it, it was Santos. And probably Smith.”

“That’s what she says,” Deese shouted at him.

“Why would she lie? She and Marion were friends.”

“Because she’s a whore and whores lie about everything.”

“I’m not a fuckin’ whore,” Cox shouted. “Marion was my friend.”

Cole eventually managed to get Deese focused on Santos and not Cox. “Do you know what’s going on?” he asked.

“You sound like you know,” Deese shouted. “So tell me,”

“Your pal back in New Orleans decided you’re too big a liability. He sent Santos out to kill you.”

Deese looked at Cox. “You said he had the money?”

“He said he did. In his car. I never saw it. When he and Marion started shooting, I think Santos tried to stop it. He yelled, ‘Wait!” but Marion had already pulled his gun out. One second before that, they were talking like old friends. It was like a cowboy movie,” Cox cried. “They stood there and shot their guns at each other. And Marion . . . He shot Marion, like, fifteen times, or something.”

“Fucker,” Deese said. “I’m gonna kill that motherfucker. But a real shooter wouldn’t have done it like that. If he was a real shooter, Marion never would have seen it coming.”

Cole: “Whatever. We gotta get out of here. The cops know who we are. The best thing we can do is get the hell out.”

Deese asked, “How much cash you got?”

“What we got from the raid, plus maybe ten K. So less than fifty,” Cole said. “How about you?”

“Two. I was borrowing from Marion. I had a bad run of luck.” They both looked at Cox, who shrugged and lied. “I got Marion’s billfold and his pocket roll. I haven’t counted it, but it’s not a lot,” she said.

“Let’s see it,” Deese said.

Beauchamps’s roll added up to three thousand dollars, and he’d carried six hundred in his wallet.

“What we got would just about get us to Ohio,” Deese said. He took a turn around the room, breathing hard again, the anger and frustration climbing all over him. “That won’t work.”

“Farther than Ohio. Between us, we got almost sixty thousand,” Cole said to Deese. “Let’s split it. You take twenty, twenty-five. Geenie and I get the rest, because there are two of us. And most of it was mine to begin with anyway. You got a late-model truck you can sell it down in Miami, or somewhere, probably get another fifteen and go hide out in Puerto Rico until things cool off. You can live a long time down there on forty K.”

“Maybe you can, but I can’t,” Deese said. “We got something else going for us: we know where there’s five million dollars in cash. Harrelson’s.”

“No. We know where there’s a rumor of five million dollars cash,” Cole said.

“There’ll be something, with him being a big-time gambler, and we need it now,” Deese said. “There are too many cops around for us to hide here and work out another plan. Even if we get out of Harrelson’s with a few hundred thousand, we’re way ahead of where we are now. I agree with you on one thing: we gotta get out of here. Get out of Vegas.”

Cole looked at Cox. “What do you think?”

“You’re the criminals, not me,” she said. Then to Cole: “If you and me had thirty-five or forty thousand dollars, even back where you come from if we had to rent a house or an apartment, it’d only get us six months. We doneed more money.”

Cole looked at Deese. “All right. Lay low until it’s time to go, hit Harrelson tonight, and run.”

“What if Harrelson isn’t there tonight?” Cox asked.

“If we stay cool, if we don’t leave the house, then I don’t know how they’d find us. We’ve hardly seen any of the neighbors around here,” Cole said. “We could hunker down for a day or two.”

“What about that Joan chick?” Deese asked. Joan was the agent who rented them the houses.

“She’s only seen me and Cole,” Cox said. “Her husband’s a poker dealer here in town. Even if she suspected something, they’re the kind of people who know when they should be looking the other way.”

Cole bobbed his head. “Okay. We take the risk.” He looked at his watch. “We’ll go at nine. I’m going to watch the news, see if we’re on it.”

“I’m going to call back to New Orleans, see if I can figure out what the fuck is going on,” Deese said.

“Another risk, the cops are all over the phones now,” Cole said.

“The phone’s clean, a throwaway,” Deese said. “And I need to know.”