Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(91)

“I gotta stay with Ralph?”

“Yeah, you gotta stay with Ralph.”

Cox looked at Cole, who looked at Ralph and said, “You touch her, I’ll beat you to death with a fuckin’ shovel. I ain’t joking.”

Ralph held up both hands. “She’s safe with me.”

“That’s the way it’s gonna be,” Deese said.

Cox and Cole went outside, and Cox said, “Gloria knows who we are. We’re really . . . I don’t know. Ralph is crazy as a bedbug.”

“Then keep your gun close.”

They went to the Lexus and retrieved the gun, keeping an eye on the trailer. “Like Marion said, start pulling the trigger, that’s all you gotta do, if Ralph comes after you. Easy as pie.”

“Easy as pie, but you said you never shot anybody.”

“Never had to,” Cole said. “But now we’re in a bad spot, Geenie.”

“Ah, jeez . . .” She took the gun and tucked it into her back waistband, under her blouse. “You gotta be careful, Cole. We’re going to somewhere warm.”

“Like hell?” He grinned.

“Panama, like you said.”

“I’ll be careful. When we get back up here, you slip me that gun,” Cole said. “If Deese is gonna pull something, that’s when it’ll be, when he feels safe.”

The door of the trailer popped open and Deese stepped out. Cole kissed Cox and said, “We oughta be back by noon. If we’re not back by, say, two o’clock, you get in the Lexus and head north, up to Reno. Dump the car and take a Greyhound back to LA. Like you never heard of us.”

“Ah, that’s not going to happen,” Deese said. He walked over to Ralph’s motorcycle and said, “Help me get it in the truck.”

“You’re sure it works?”

Deese paused, said, “One way to find out.”

He straddled the bike, fired it up, rode a hundred yards down the track and back, then killed the engine. “Good as the day it was made.”

He and Cole lifted it into the truck, put the tailgate up, and locked it. “Let’s go.”

Cole kissed Cox again and she gave him a squeeze and said, “See you,” and a minute later Deese and Cole were rattling down the track toward the highway.


THEY WERE in Las Vegas at seven-thirty, and Deese sent Cole into a McDonald’s for Cokes and a sack of Triple Breakfast Stacks Biscuits; they both ate two—in the truck, in the parking lot—and then Cole drove them to the drainage channel and the entrances to the tunnels, with Deese pointing the way.

“I’ll be hiding under that bridge when he throws the money in and then I’ll ride like a motherfucker right into those tunnels.”

“Where do they come out?”

“That’s the important part. If you’re not there, they’ll catch my ass and nobody gets no money. You gotta be there. That’s why you’re driving.”

Deese pointed the way again, the turns, until they got to a spot under the Ferris wheel that had a couple of parking places for security personnel and was directly above the exit from the tunnels. “Ralph says their cars are hardly ever here. As soon as Harrelson throws the money, I’ll yell into the phone and be here one minute later. One minute. You jump out of the truck with the money box, meet me down there.”

“There’s bars across the tunnels looks like a jail cell,” Cole said, peering into the drainage channel.

“They can be pushed open.”

“Yeah, but if it turns out they can’t be, if somebody locked them since Ralph was here, you’re fucked.”

Deese nodded. “Okay, you’re right . . . Pull in there.”

Cole pulled into one of the empty spots, Deese climbed out of the car, crossed a low fence, and ran down into the channel. There was some garbage and paper trash at the tunnel entrance. As Cole watched, Deese grabbed one of the gate bars and yanked it a foot or so outward, almost enough to squeeze through. He yanked again and it moved another foot. Then he pushed it back in place and ran back up to the car.

“No sweat,” he said. “Soon as I call, you run down there with the money and yank it open.”

Cole said, “It’s after eight. We need to find a place for me to sit. And we need to get the bike off the truck and get you down in that ditch at the Hard Rock.”

Deese grinned at him. “You nervous?”

“Fuck, yeah. I always get nervous. But I’m always there.”


THEY FOUND A SPOT in a parking lot across a street from the bank’s lot. The bank’s was ringed by fifty-foot-tall pine trees, but it was easy enough to see between them. And there’d be cars coming and going from the lot where Cole would be. “I can watch him only until he gets in the truck,” Cole said. “Then I gotta go, if I’m gonna get back to the Ferris wheel.”

“Yeah, but you’ll see him when he gets there and gets out of the truck and make sure it’s him and not some cop. When you call me after you see him come back out of the bank, I’ll wait three or four minutes before I call him. That’ll get you on your way to the Ferris wheel. It’ll take him another five minutes to get to me. You’ll have plenty of time.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You getting spooked?”