WE GOT BACK in the truck and Harper looked at me. “I don’t like this, Mort.”
I didn’t either. Attorney General Annette Leeman had disappeared four or five days ago. Her sister, Ellen Moore, was probably okay, but there was a rough-looking guy who might—might—be looking for Harper, a guy who might’ve been at Ellen’s house for a few minutes that morning, then took off. A guy who could still be around.
None of that constituted proof of anything, but things weren’t shaping up well.
I didn’t think I was going to be leaving Ely anytime soon. Certainly not today, which hinted at my next move.
I started the engine, pulled away from the curb.
“Where to?” Harper asked.
“See if Zola is up, then check out that Nevada Hotel-Casino.”
“It’s called Hotel Nevada, which is kind of backwards, I know. What’re you gonna do there?”
“Get a couple rooms for the night.”
“Seriously? We’ve got that great little guest house and it’s free and we’re gonna go to a hotel?”
“Yep. I’ll give you a few minutes to think outside the box and figure out why.”
“I hate that expression.”
“So why’d you use it?”
“I was speaking outside the box.”
“Oh, jeez.”
She sat with her arms folded across her chest for a few seconds, then she looked at me. “You don’t think it’s safe for us to stay at Ellen’s, do you?”
“I have my doubts. I don’t know what’s going on. It might be nothing and your aunt and Jeff will show up and we’ll never see that pickup truck again and everything will be fine, but until that or something like it happens, I don’t want to take chances.”
“Okay, but how about we get one room so you can save me if a big bearded, Yeti-looking guy breaks in.”
“How about two rooms, with an adjoining door?”
She squinted at me. “We’ve seen each other without clothes, Mort. And we both know that’s absolutely as far as that’ll ever get, and I think we’re friends—”
“All of which is true.”
She glared at me. “I hear a ‘but’ in there.”
“But, we’ll get two rooms anyway.”
“Well, shoot. Whatever you want, Mort. I give up.”
Probably not.
Zola didn’t respond to a light knock on her door, so we let her sleep. Next stop, Hotel Nevada.
The place was a rectangular box, six floors of red brick built in 1929. For a number of years, it had the distinction of being the tallest building in the state. I left the truck in one of their parking lots, a plot of hot cracked asphalt half a block east of the hotel. Ely wasn’t big enough to want or need multilevel or underground parking. Everything was out in the weather, sautéing in the summer, accumulating ice and snow in the winter.
We took the clothes we’d bought, cell phones, guns—with bullets—and bags to the hotel. I kept an eye out for a black pickup as we hiked toward the building. We went in a back entrance and down a short hallway to the casino.
The hotel’s interior was cool, but not chilled. I wasn’t sure the suggestion of “fine dining” was going to pan out since the main restaurant was a Denny’s, but it looked as if it might be a cut above a Reno or Vegas Denny’s. The bar would’ve been dark as a crypt except for half a dozen flat-screen TVs lining the walls.
A tour of the ground floor took two minutes, then we hit the hotel’s reservation alcove.
A lone girl was behind the desk. “Got two rooms with a connecting door between them?” I asked her. She had a silver ring in one nostril, another through an eyebrow, ears full of shrapnel. Her upper left arm and what I could see of her left shoulder were inked so solid it looked like a bruise she’d gotten running an ATV off a cliff. Tattoo regret was probably in her future, once the novelty wore off, which it tends to do. A plastic name tag on her shirt read “Aurora.” Pretty girl except for the self-destruction.
“Do you have a reservation?” she asked, ready to pounce on a computer keyboard.
“Nope.”
She dropped her hands. “Oh, well, then I’m sorry. It’s summer and we’re almost full.”
“But not completely full?”
“No. But we don’t have rooms with a connecting door. There’s not many of those in the hotel anyway.”
In a high corner behind the reservation alcove, Spade and Hammer guffawed and nudged each other, knowing how this was about to play out. The jerks.
“How about two rooms on the same floor?” I asked.
Aurora glanced at her monitor. “Uh, no. I’ve got one on the fifth floor, one on the fourth, and one on the second. That’s all we have right now. Just those three rooms.” She gave me an apologetic look.
Spade let out a high-pitched giggle.
Harper eased around me. “We’ll take the one on the fifth floor.” She turned to me. “How’s that? It probably has the best view, honey.”
“No good.” I turned to Aurora. “We’ll take the rooms on the fourth and fifth floors.”
Harper laughed. “My husband kids around like this all the time. You should hear him at family gatherings. He’s a riot.” She gave me a cross-eyed look and bumped my hip with hers. “That fifth-floor room will be fine,” she said to Aurora. “It sounds like you need all the rooms you can get. No sense in us taking two when one will do.”
“Fifth floor, room 512, comes with a single king bed.” Aurora looked up from her computer. “Is that okay?”
“Fabulous,” Harper said.
“What’s on the fourth floor?” I asked. “In the way of beds, I mean.”
“404 has two queens. And it’s nonsmoking.”
“That’ll be fine,” I said. “We’ll take it.” Aurora looked between me and Harper, trying to decide who was in the lead. “She tosses like … like a person tossing horseshoes in her sleep,” I added, pulling ahead by a nose.
“I do not,” Harper said, struggling to contain a laugh. “We’ll take the room with the king bed.” I got another hip bump as she held out a credit card.
I plucked the card out of her hand and glanced at it. To Aurora I said, “We’ll take the room with two queens. 404? How much is it?”
“Honeeyyy …” Harper said.
I held up a forefinger to Aurora. “Excuse us for a few seconds. Need a little conference here.” I took Harper ten feet away and held up her credit card. “Read the name on this card. Quietly.”
She pursed her lips. “Harper Leeman.”
“We’re trying to fly under the radar. How does waving your name around help us?”
“Oop.” Then she said, “But why is your card better, Mr. Mortimer Angel?”
“Hold that thought.” I kept her card and took her back to the desk. “We’ll take 404 with the two queens.”
“Are you sure?” She looked at Harper, who nodded reluctantly.
Aurora tried not to roll her eyes, then she sighed and said, “That’ll be ninety-six fifty. That’s with the room tax. And it includes two free breakfasts in the restaurant.”
Two Denny’s All-American Slams? What a bargain.
“Great,” I said, handing over a Visa card.
She read the name. “Stephen Brewer. I’ll need to see some ID, and I have to have a vehicle’s license plate.”
As I handed over my fake license, Harper gave me a questioning look. I slipped an arm around her waist, slid my hand up and pressed two fingers against the underside of her right breast to keep her quiet. Or occupied.
She jumped slightly. “Yow!”
Aurora looked up. “Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” Harper said. “Something kinda hit me. I’ll have to talk it over with my darling husband later.”
Aurora went back to her computer. Harper looked up at me and lifted an eyebrow. I gave her a little head shake. Ever since a certain trip to Paris, Ma and I had fake IDs and credit cards, passports. Lucy still had a fake ID her father got her for an entirely different reason. The three of us had made good use of our bogus paper last year when we went down to Phoenix and Ma stole a hundred twenty thousand dollars from a bank, but that’s a different story.
I didn’t want a record of Mortimer Angel registering at Hotel Nevada, so it was Stephen Brewer and his wife, Tammy. Tammy, since only one of us had to show an ID. I thought I’d have “Tammy” tell Lucy about “Steve’s” latest wife and room 404, a conversation I would record to play back during those riotous family gatherings.
This, I thought, was likely to end the Brewer identity. When we got back from the “Phoenix job” last year, my partner, Maude Clary, got Doc Saladin in New Mexico busy whipping up new identities for the three of us—Lucy, Ma, and me, so I had one more to fall back on: a driver’s license and a MasterCard in the name of David Peterson. I didn’t want to use the Peterson identity, at least not yet. For now, the Brewer ID would have to do. I didn’t think it had been burned, but odds were this was its last gasp. I only hoped I hadn’t pushed it one time too far. Given what Ma and I had done in Paris over a year and a half ago, it might have been smart to retire “Steve” right then, but it’s hard to give up a good fake ID.
Once the paperwork was completed and we got card keys for the room’s electronic lock, Harper led me over to the stairs.
“Got an elevator over here to the left, honey,” I said, pointing.
“Yeah, but over this way they’ve got this bitchin’ in-house Stairmaster, honey.”
So we trooped up, Harper in the lead which meant I had a view of panties much of the way. Or a panty liner. I still didn’t see that there was any significant difference, but that was one hellacious short skirt and it didn’t quite cover a hundred percent of a perfectly rounded fantail.
The room was reasonably okay. They probably didn’t have anything that basic at the Taj Mahal, if the Taj has rooms. I’ll have to Google that sometime.
Harper sat on one of the beds and bounced. “Down at the check-in desk you copped a feel, Mort.”
“Did I?”
“Uh-huh. I’ll take my turn later.” She got up, went into the bathroom, came back out. “Got an okay shower in there, in case you’re interested.”
“Jeez, this place has running water too?”
“Don’t know. I didn’t turn it on.”
Pretty quick comeback. I liked this girl.
I eased back a curtain and peered out the window. We had a nice view of the street below, a head-on view of the Jailhouse Motel-Casino directly across from us, distant brown hills to the north. A black pickup truck rolled slowly by, headed east. I turned back to the room.
“You have a credit card in someone else’s name. Why is that?” Harper asked me.
“That’s not worry I hear in your voice, is it?”
“Just … curious.”
“I’ll tell you later. Right now, how about you take the battery out of your phone.”
“Why?”
“We’re broadcasting our location.” I got out my cell phone and pulled its battery. “We should’ve gone dark before leaving Grange.”
Gumshoe in the dark. That was me the past two years, the world throwing me curveballs I didn’t see coming. All this subterfuge might not be necessary—cell phones, fake IDs, wigs, and moustaches—but it didn’t hurt to be safe.
Harper got her battery out. “You really think someone might try to track our phones?”
“It’s possible. The guy in that black truck still has me worried. We’re gonna have to buy a couple of burners.”
“Burners?”
“Cheap disposable cell phones. No GPS, not registered to anyone, in particular not to us.”
“My aunt won’t be able to contact me if we do that. If, you know, she tries to call.”
“Can’t be helped. We need to go dark, at least until we get this figured out. Some old guy hits on you and you end up at the side of the road. Then another guy comes along a few hours later and asks if I’ve seen anyone up there. He didn’t say who, just anyone. Those two events appear to be connected somehow.” I looked at her. “You still don’t know what any of that might mean, do you?”
“No. I never saw the old guy before yesterday, and I don’t know anyone with a black truck like you described.”
“Your mother is missing. She’s political, in the public eye. The country has never been so divided, ideologically speaking. She’ll have a lot of enemies.”
She pursed her lips. “I know. It’s a mess.”
I gave her an appraising look. “You need to get out of those clothes and into something less recognizable.”
“Well, shoot. I like what I’m wearing.”
“Wear whatever you want in here, Harp, but walking around a town this size in that outfit is like waving a flag.”
She smiled. “Well, good. You’re on record saying I can wear whatever I want in here.” Then her face grew serious. “Tell me again how long it was before Lucy said she would marry you.”
“Why?”
“Just … tell me. Unless you were kidding before.”
I didn’t need to think back. That day was embossed in my memory. “The marry word first came out of her mouth ten or twelve minutes after she plopped down in a booth with me in McGinty’s Café. Without asking if it was okay, by the way. I don’t count the twenty minutes before that since she was my waitress, but she got fired for dropping my plate of fried chicken. What she actually said was she would probably marry me if I asked, so I think that counts. The actual proposal, or something very much like it, came when we were about ten miles south of Tonopah on U.S. 95, headed for Vegas.”
“Was it real? The proposal?”
“Must’ve been, since she meant it. Not that I knew it at the time, but I’m slow that way.”
Harper sat cross-legged on the bed. “Less than an hour after the two of you met. That borders on spooky. It’s also so darn romantic I can hardly stand it.”
“Speaking of spooky, what do you get when you take the ‘k’ out of the word ‘lucky’?”
She thought for a moment. “Lucy.”
“There you go. She was born when four planets were lined up and Mars wasn’t one of them. She has intuition or luck like you wouldn’t believe. Whenever she says anything that relies on intuition, premonition, or luck, I listen. And I act on it.”
“She has you,” Harper said wistfully. Then her eyes widened. “Sorry, that came out so wrong. What I mean is, you have each other and nothing at all can come between you. Which is totally wonderful.”
“That’s right.”
She smiled. “Including me, so I’m not a threat. I like that. That must be why she doesn’t worry about how I’m dressed around you. Or not dressed.”
I shrugged. “Okay by me too, as long as you tell her what you’re wearing or not wearing so I don’t have to. She and I don’t keep secrets from each other, but I’d rather you do the telling since she razzes me unmercifully.”
“Cool.” She got off the bed. “I really want to meet her. She has to be a completely amazing person.”
“She is that.”
Harper changed into blue shorts and a T-shirt. We hiked downstairs and went outside. The day was still hot. We headed west on foot. I felt exposed on the main street like that, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it except move quickly. I still wore a wig, a moustache, dark glasses, a ball cap. I hoped we could pick up disposables at the place where we bought clothes, the Garnet Mercantile, a block from our hotel on our side of the street.
Before we ducked inside, I looked up and down the street, didn’t see a black pickup, which didn’t make me feel better since I still felt as if we had targets on our backs.
I might’ve been wrong about that. My paranoia gene flares up when unexplained things happen.
The store had burners, so we didn’t have to wander up and down the street hunting for them. We bought two, and Harper bought a used paperback and a man’s large T-shirt, sky blue, with mountains drawn on the front, then we went back to the hotel and up to our room.
Our new phones came with wall chargers. We got that going, then Harper stripped off her clothes—two items so it wasn’t a big production and didn’t require music. She put on the T-shirt which fell to mid-thigh and looked like a tent on her. She spun a three-sixty in the room and struck a hip-shot pose. “What do you think?”
“No underwear?”
“What on earth for?”
“Up to you. But you might want to be careful how you sit or lie on the bed, not plop down any old way.”
“Uh-huh.” She gazed around the room. “Now what, Mort?”
Now I didn’t know what. It was 2:45. Zola wouldn’t be in at the Jailhouse until after five, so the search for the opportunistic vanishing Elrood was on hold. I didn’t want to put the battery back in my cell phone to call Lucy, and my new burner wouldn’t be ready to go for another hour or two. I didn’t want to go back to Ellen’s place for the fourth time that day. We were better off staying out of sight in the room.
I looked at Harper. “How about a game of chess?”
“Got a set in your duffel bag?”
“Nope.”
“So … mental chess?”
“Looks like.”
“Okay, then. I’ve got white. Pawn from E2 to E4.”
Shit, it figured she was a ringer. “I fold,” I said. I dug The Day of the Jackal out of my duffel and settled into one of two easy chairs by the window.
“You’re just gonna read?” Harper said.
“You oughta be a detective.”
“I wonder if there’s a naturist park anywhere around here. Seems like there oughta be.”
“Google it, hon. Report back.”
She grinned. “Would you go if I found us one?”
“Nope.”
“Figures.”
I phoned Lucy at 4:10.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Hotel Nevada, room 404.”
“You and Harper?”
“Yup. Had to. Hotel is about full up.”
“It’s fine, Mort. Is the room nice? I’ve driven past the place but never stayed there.”
“It’s okay. Not the Taj Mahal but it has running water and everything.”
“Wowie. So what’s with you getting a new burner?”
“I left the old one in Reno. Didn’t think I’d need it. Harper has one too. I’ll get you her number in a while.”
“Same old same.”
Lucy laughed. “Really?”
I glanced at Harper. “Actually, no. She’s in a T-shirt that would fit someone eighty pounds heavier, reading a Barbara Parker novel she picked up for a dollar. We’re on hold, waiting on a waitress.”
“You’re waiting on a waitress in your hotel room?”
“An incredible bit of irony, I know. Even stranger, she doesn’t know we’re waiting on her. I’ll put you on speaker so Harper can keep up with this.”
“Groovy. Hi, Harper.”
“Hi, Lucy. Hey, you should get a man’s large T-shirt. Best lounge-around shirt ever—though maybe I should’ve got a medium. This thing’s huge.”
“I’ll have to do that. So, Mort, how’d you get a waitress in your room, and why are you waiting on her? Though I have to say that sounds so much like you.”
I had to explain about Zola and the shift change.
“Sounds like you’re having a good time. I will too, in a while. Mom and I are going out to dinner. Last one until after she … you know.”
“I’m sure she’s fine with you telling me all this.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m just giving you an update.”
“Thanks. Keep ’em coming.”
“They probably won’t be very detailed, but keep me in whatever loop you’re in. Especially tonight after you and Harper get settled in.”
Harper shot me a look.
“Worried?” I asked Lucy, knowing how that would go.
She laughed. “I’m more worried about earthquakes. I think Ely had one last century that knocked a brick or two out of the wall of the hotel you’re in.”
“Yeah, we’re on the fourth floor. Hate for this thing to lose another brick in a quake.”
“Anyway, what’re you doing next?”
“Zola’s supposed to get in at five over at the Jailhouse. With luck, we’ll get a bead on Elrood.”
“Great. Gotta run. Keep me posted. Bye, Harper.”
“Bye, Lucy.”
Lucy said, “I love you, Mort. Be safe.”
“Always. Love you too.”
We ended the call on that mushy note. Harper looked over at me. “She’s more concerned about an earthquake than us being here together? I really have to meet her.”
She went back to her novel, smiling faintly.
We didn’t wander over to the Jailhouse until 7:50. I wanted to wait until dark, but hunger drove us out of the room. Harper wore blue shorts and her skin tight tank top. She looked great, but she stood out, drawing appreciative and envious looks. We didn’t see the black pickup or the guy who’d been in it so maybe we were okay.
Zola was a buxom brunette in her early thirties in a one-piece outfit—a tight-fitting body suit with a push-up top that … pushed up. She was five-ten and wore five-inch heels, so she topped out an inch shorter than me.
“Yikes,” Harper said as we got closer to Zola. She was gliding by a bank of slot machines offering free booze to the players. Turns out, alcohol makes slot machines more festive. Harper and I had been aimed in Zola’s direction by the older of two bartenders behind a thirty-foot mahogany bar. Ugly video slot machines had been embedded in its surface. The casino owners evidently decided that preserving the old-time ambience of the place wasn’t as profitable as having voracious slots within easy reach of bored, tipsy customers.
Harper held my hand as I spoke to Zola. Zola had never heard the name Elrood before so I showed her his picture.
“He said his name was Sam,” Zola said. “You want to find that sweet-talking asshole?”
“Yep.” I liked the identifier, especially since he wasn’t giving out his real name.
“He jump bail, or what?” Zola asked.
That spun my head around. “He’s awaiting trial?”
She grinned. “Not that I know, but it wouldn’t shock me, the jerk. Sounds like you don’t know him.”
“I don’t. I’ve been hired to find him, that’s all.”
“Well, good luck, since he left sometime yesterday, as far as I know.”
The jerk.
“Where to?” I asked.
“Elko, last I heard.”
I sighed. I was getting a tour of rural Nevada courtesy of Elrood Wintergarden. “Any idea where in Elko?”
“No. All I heard was he was gonna see a girl named Olga. I only know that because he borrowed my phone to call her and I heard him talking.”
“Is her number still in your phone?”
“Uh, no. Sorry. I deleted it right after he made the call. I didn’t want it in my phone.”
No phone number. Nothing is easy.
Olga. I wondered how many Olgas lived in Elko, but it could have been a lot worse. He might’ve gone to see Mary Something.
“Any idea who she is or what she does, anything? A last name would be great.” And too much to hope for.
“No. All I heard was the name Olga. I wouldn’t have remembered it except it’s uncommon, like Russian or East European or something.”
“Did you know ‘Sam’ before? I mean in the past?”
“Never met him before three days ago. He was in here. The guy wouldn’t shut up, had a mouth on him like one of those old windup chattering teeth. Wish I didn’t have to be nice and smile to every customer who comes in. Fact is, I wish they would let me carry a gun.” She put a hand on my shoulder. “Kidding.”
“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with us. How long did you talk to the guy?”
“Too long, lemme tell you. Maybe thirty minutes total, on and off over a two-day period. I’d go behind the bar to get away from him, but I’m supposed to keep circulating so he would find me again. He tried to borrow five hundred dollars. Five hundred.” She looked around, lowered her voice. “The dimwit also wanted me to take him home and let him stay the night.”
“And, don’t tell me, when he borrowed your phone, he made not one call but two.”
She smiled. “Hey, you’re pretty good. He did, now that you mention it. I checked right after, saw that he also called someone in Tonopah. I deleted that number too.”
So. Dead end, except for the name Olga in Elko.
“Thing is,” Zola said, looking around again to make sure no one was listening, “he’s a very good-looking guy, a little over six feet tall, sort of boyishly sexy. Not my type, but a lot of women would really go for him. I can see him scamming around for money, which is the impression I got. Can I get you guys a drink? They’re on the house if you drop a quarter or two in a slot machine. Cheapest way to drink in town, if you don’t keep at it, thinking you’re gonna leave a winner—not that I told you that.”
“No thanks. Not yet anyway. We gotta get something to eat. Can’t drink and gamble on an empty stomach.”
“Smart. Anyway, I’ll be here ’til two in the morning if you change your mind.”
“Good to know. See you around.”
Harper still had my hand. We left the Jailhouse, jaywalked across the street to Hotel Nevada and went into the Denny’s restaurant.
We got a booth with a window seat, a nice view of the sporadic traffic on the street, the front of the Jailhouse, and a pair of drunks evidently trying to decide which way they wanted to go. We were almost through with dinner when the bearded guy who’d been driving the black pickup came in and spoke briefly to the hostess, a girl in her teens.
Oh, shit.
He was a few inches shorter than me, but built like an NFL tackle, or a jackhammer. Probably had me by twenty pounds, not that we were gonna box or wrestle. The girl was showing him to a table in the middle of the room when he paused and a smile broke out. He stopped at our table. “Hey, man, small world. Hell of a storm last night on that road, wasn’t it?” He gave Harper a glance, then turned his attention back to me.
“Sure was,” I said. Beneath the table I gave Harper’s calf a warning touch. Her eyes locked with mine for an instant, then she looked down at her food.
“Your hair looks different now,” the guy said to me. It would’ve been the strangest comment ever by a stranger but for the subtle hint of awareness and duplicity lurking in his words. He had to know I was wearing a wig.
“Must’ve been the rain,” I said, lying back at him. “I probably looked like a half-drowned golden retriever.”
“Actually, your hair looked shorter.”
“Huh. You find what you were looking for out there?”
“Yeah. My dad. Took a while. He’s gettin’ up in years. Turned right instead of left when he reached 93, made it all the way to Pioche of all places. He called me on his cell. I ended up driving most of the night. Anyway,” he nodded toward the young hostess who was still trying to seat him at a table, “Gotta go. Take ’er easy.” He left.
So that was that. He’d lost his dad.
Or not. How likely was it he would give Harper a one-second look, gorgeous girl like that? She was getting looks from almost every guy and girl in the room.
But that might also be nothing. It could depend on his “orientation”—a word or concept that had eased its way into the social consciousness and lexicon of the country in the past two or three decades. I glanced over at the guy. He dipped his head at me, then opened his menu.
“Don’t look at him,” I said to Harper.
She nodded unhappily.
Right then, my burner rang. I recognized the number. It was Lucy. “What’s up?” I said quietly.
“I think you should leave, Mort.”
“Leave?”
“The hotel where you’re staying. It doesn’t feel right. Get out now. I’ll call back in like ten minutes, but you need to leave right away. Bye.”
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I tossed two twenties on the table and Harper and I got out of there, leaving an eleven-dollar tip.
We piled into the elevator. “What’s goin’ on, Mort?” Harper asked on the way up. “That was the guy in the pickup truck, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Lucy told me, us, to get out of here.”
“Yes. I doubt that she knew why. But when she says things like that, I don’t ask questions, I just do it. It had to be because of that guy.”
Her eyes were wide. “That’s … spooky.”
“I know. She’s not, but the way she feels things is. Anyway, we’re gettin’ the hell out of here, now.”
We hustled to the room, grabbed our stuff, which took less than a minute, and were headed toward the elevator when I heard it start up down below.
“C’mon,” I said. I led her toward the stairs, opened a fire door to the stairwell, and we went in. I stopped, peered through a small window in the door, and saw the big guy come out of the elevator and head down the hallway in the direction of our room.
“Time to go,” I said. “Fast.” We went down as if the place were on fire, or at least smoldering, through the hallway to the back of the hotel and out the back way. We jogged to my truck, got in, I started the engine, slammed the lever into drive, and we headed east.
Fast.