TEN
JIMMY slept like a log for four hours straight, after spending half the night in the sack fucking a pretty little Mexican custodial worker, more commonly referred to as a room cleaner.  She, Rosa, was as supple as a cougar and had all the moves. Before he showed her to the door at three a.m., Jimmy pushed a hundred-dollar bill in her bra as she got dressed. Getting it on with casino staff was one of the perks of the job.  As chief of security, he personally vetted all female applicants that applied for positions at the Cochise.  He took their personal details and gave the work to those that were most needy and would want to make extra tax-free bucks, by spending time between the sheets of the king-size bed in his detached house that stood next to a fairway of the casino’s golf course.
Showered and dressed, Jimmy fired up the coffeemaker and used the remote to switch on the wall-mounted TV in the kitchen.  The breaking news was that some psycho punk had walked into a Walmart in Kansas City and opened fire with an AK-47, killing twenty-nine people and wounding seventeen others, including two police officers, before being gunned down.
Jimmy shook his head.  Louis Armstrong had had the hit song ‘What a Wonderful World’ back in the sixties, way before Jimmy had been born, but Satchmo had got it wrong big-time, because in reality the world had never been somewhere as good as the lyrics he had sung.  Everything seemed to be sliding down the pan like a turd that needed to be flushed away before it had chance to stink up the bathroom.  What the hell, you had to look after number one and not let all the gloom and doom cast its giant shadow over you, as governments, conglomerates and bankers seemed to mindlessly fuck everything up.
Jimmy enjoyed his cup of Colombian, before switching off the TV and leaving the house.  He climbed into a golf cart and headed up a pathway covered in woodchips, through a serpentine avenue of live oaks to the staff parking lot at the side of the casino.
Smiling and greeting everyone he met, Jimmy made his way through the main gaming room to the security suite and asked Lester Perkins if he had found anything in the home file from Mitchell’s apartment that would help them to trace him.
“There was a lot of shit to go through,” Lester said.  “And most of the stuff was stuck together with damp, but I finally came up with something that could be a lead.  Mitchell was apparently left a property out in the boondocks; a cabin three or four miles west of Apache Trail.  There’s no official address for it, but there’s a map with a cross marking where it is.  I looked it up on Google maps and it’s just a rundown place at the end of a trail.”
“We can find it, then?”
“Yeah.  I put the details and map on the system,” Lester said as he opened a file on a monitor to show Jimmy.
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“OK, I want for you, Ben Reynolds and Yuma Mason to meet me out front in one of the SUVs in a couple of hours.  Have enough firepower necessary to deal with whatever we come up against.”
“It could be a wild goose chase, boss,” Lester said.  “There’s nothing concrete to link Mitchell to the bank robbery.”
“He was pally with the assistant manager, and that’s enough for me to believe that he robbed the bank and shot Cooper.  He’s the only lead that we’ve got, so we need to run him down and see what he has to say.”
Lester parked a metallic bronze Cadillac XT4 out front in a staff slot.  Ben and Yuma were in the rear, and Lester had loaded four AR-15 semi-automatic rifles and ample ammunition for the 20-round box magazines into the cargo hold.  All of them carried handguns.  They may or may not come face to face with armed bank robbers, but needed to be in a position to deal with whatever situation came up, and if necessary, negate any threat to them.
Heather and Zack pulled into the plant that Jack Mitchell had held down a job for several years.  They talked to the manager and were advised that Jack had been friendly with several other male workers, and that the bunch of them went drinking, bowling and gambling together. He, Leo Decker, a native New Yorker, wrote down a list of names and said that four of them: Jack Mitchell, Gil Boyett, Lee Roche and Joel Shaw had been laid off, but that the other two on the list, Billy Corbett and Glen Lancaster, were still employed and currently on site.
“Were either or both of them at work yesterday and the day before?” Heather said.
“Yeah, they were on dayshift both days.  Since the layoffs, staff has to work longer hours for the same pay.  They’re not happy about it, but know that if we close down, they’ll all be up shit creek.”
“We need to talk to them,” Have you got an office we can use?”
Leo led them across the concrete yard and into the first of a small complex of single storey portable buildings that were set in a fixed line, modified with doors leading through from one to another like the carriages of a train.  The kit-built room was long and narrow, with a desk covered in paperwork, two four-drawer file cabinets, a water cooler in a corner, and a few grubby white plastic stacker chairs.
“This is my office,” Leo said.  “Will it do?”
“Yeah,” Zack said.  “Can you arrange for Billy Corbett to come on over, without telling him why?”
Leo nodded, made a phone call and said to Heather and Zack, “He’s on his way.  Is he in some kind of trouble?”
“We don’t think so,” Heather said.  “But we need to talk to him about his buddies.”
Billy was worried as he trudged across the yard. There had been a whisper of more workers being given pink slips, and he was now shacked up with Denise, who was pregnant, and money was already as tight as a virgin’s snatch.
Leo answered the knock at the door, beckoned Billy in and told him that two police detectives wanted to talk to him.
Billy felt a sense of relief.  He had nothing to worry about; had not broken the law, and reckoned that his job was, for the time being, safe.
Heather showed Billy her ID and asked him to take a seat at the desk as Leo left them to it, before being requested to.
“Is there a problem?” Billy said, looking nervously from Heather to Zack.
“The Wells Fargo bank job,” Heather said.  “What do you know about it?”
Billy was nonplussed by the question.  “Nothing,” he said.  “Why do you think that I would?”
“Because you were close to a group of ex-workers that we believe were involved in several bank robberies.”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“Tell us about Jack Mitchell.”
“What about him?”
“Everything that you know.”
“Jack’s an OK guy.  His wife walked out on him and his stepson, and then he got laid off.  I haven’t seen him for a while, but I can’t believe that he would rob a freakin’ bank.”
“What is he like?” Zack said.
“Just a regular guy, I guess.  He enjoys a drink or two, has a good sense of humor, and doesn’t take shit from anyone.”
“Meaning?”
“He has a quick temper.  If someone offends him, he puts them down.”
“Verbally?”
“No, physically.  He’d done a lot of boxing at college back in the day and liked to use his fists.”
“What about his stepson? Did he look after him?”
“Will is a good kid, and Jack did right by him, but did tell me once that he was a bit heavy-handed at times, especially when he’d had one too many.”
“Who was Jack closest to at work?”
“A half dozen of us, up until the layoffs.  After that we didn’t see much of him or the others.”
Heather and Zack squeezed for more information, but there was nothing else.  They then interviewed Glen Lancaster but got almost the same answers.  Corbett and Lancaster came across as hard-working guys that had no knowledge of what Mitchell and the others had or had not done.
Leo gave Heather the addresses he had for Boyett, Roche and Shaw, and they left with more supposition than hard facts.
“What’s your take on it?” Heather said to Zack as they headed to the address of Lee Roche in a rough area on the west side of the city.
“That Mitchell, Roche, Shaw and Boyett are the crew that robbed the banks.”
Heather nodded in agreement.  The four buddies looked good for it.  They had lost their jobs and were hurting, and because Mitchell had befriended a bank official, it added up.  Time and shoe leather would tell.
Zack pulled into the open gates of the El Cortez Mobile Home Park, off a dead-end road that was in sight and sound of the Black Canyon Freeway that ran north to south just two hundred yards away.
Parking the unmarked Crown Victoria in front of a doublewide with a sign in a window that had OFFICE handwritten on it in six-inch block capitals, they stepped out of the car into the rising heat of the day and looked around them.  A half dozen kids were kicking a football around the dusty lot, but apart from them there was no sign of anyone else.
“Help you?” a small guy with a comb over, beer gut, and legs as thin as matchsticks protruding from under his baggy khaki shorts said, stepping out to squint against the glare of the sun.
“Maybe you can,” Heather said, flipping open her wallet to show the guy her badge.  “Are you the manager of this…this park?”
“I’m the owner.  My name’s Herbie Carson, and I’m a direct descendant of Kit Carson, the famous frontiersman, mountain man, wilderness guide, Indian agent and U.S. Army officer.  He was a legend in his own lifetime.”
Heather was taken aback.  This guy was a flake, even if what he said was true, which she doubted.
“That’s interesting,” Heather said.  “What we need to know is anything you can tell us about one of your residents.”
“What happens here at the Settlement, as I call it, stays at the Settlement,” Herbie said.  “I don’t talk out of turn.  We have a few problems with junkies, drunks and punks, but that all goes with the turf.”
“Very noble of you,” Zack said.  “But we’re investigating a murder case and would appreciate your telling us everything you know about Lee Roche.”
Herbie thought about it for all of three seconds.  “OK,” he said, pointing down the main drag.  “Lee lives at number eighteen on the right.  Just about where that dog is cocking its leg against a barrel cactus.  The mangy hound is killing it with piss, and I keep hoping it’ll get spines in its dick.”
“Tell us about Roche,” Zack said.
“He lives with a very nice young woman by the name of Carrie, and they have a little boy, Zane.  They keep their place clean and pay the rent on time.  Lee is a pleasant guy and always passes the time of day.”
“Do you know if he’s at home now?” Heather said.
“No.  I don’t watch the comings and goings of residents.  My wife, Jilly, God rest her soul, used to spend all day at the window, but I’d rather watch the tube.”
Leaving the car where it was, they walked down to eighteen.  Zack knocked on the partly open door and a woman in her late twenties or early thirties appeared.  She was slim with short dark hair and warm brown eyes that exuded a blend of both melancholy and kindness.
“Hi,” Heather said, yet again producing her ID.  “Is Lee in, we need to have a word with him?”
“What’s the problem?” Carrie said.  “Is he in trouble?”
“We just need to talk to him.”
“He isn’t home.  He took off on a fishing trip a couple of days ago.  I expected him back by now, but he loses track of time when he goes off with his buddies.”
“Who did he go fishing with?” Zack said.
“Three of the guys he used to work with.  They all got laid off from a plant south of the river and still hang out and look for work.”
“Do you know their names?”
“Yes, Jack Mitchell, Joel Shaw and Gil Boyett.”
“Doesn’t Lee phone you?”
“No.  And I don’t ask him to.  He needs space every now and then to keep his head straight, so I give it to him.”
“How’re you getting by, now that Lee is out of work?” Heather said.
“On a shoestring.  Lee does odd jobs here and there; painting houses, gardening, and part-time laboring for a construction company.  We pay the rent, eat, and somehow make ends meet.”
Heather and Zack left the depressing confines of the park and made their way to the apartment where Gil Boyett lived.  There was no answer to the door, and a neighbor said that Boyett had left it a couple of days ago, and that he knew because when Gil was at home the TV was always on far too loud.
The next call was at the home of Joel Shaw.  He lived in a first-floor duplex apartment south of Glendale.  He wasn’t home and neighbors said that he kept to himself and was unsociable.
“These four are looking really good for it,” Zack said.
“Prime suspects,” Heather said.  “What about Mitchell’s stepson, though, do you think he was in on it?”
Zack hiked his shoulders.  “He was probably with them, even if he didn’t take an active part in the robberies. It’s a given he knew what they were doing, because he’s missing.”
“All we can do is check out close friends and family of Mitchell and the others to find out where they would go to lay low.”
“They know that they’ll be charged with first degree murder.  It isn’t just bank robbery that they’re wanted for.  Shooting the guard and the assistant manager on their last job could land them all on gurneys with needles in their arms.”
“Do you reckon that they’ll leave the area?” Heather said.
“If we’re on the money and they are the perps, then I’d guess they’ll share out what they stole and go their separate ways.”
“And leave the Phoenix area?”
“Absolutely.”
“Terrific.  The only plus is that it isn’t a lone wolf robber.  It’s a team that we’re looking for, and there’s always a weak link.  We just have to find it.”
“Samson looked smug,” Heather said.  “Maybe he found something at Mitchell’s place.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know, but I think he took the duffel bag, and that whatever was in it helped him to locate Mitchell.”
“Too big a stretch.  The lieutenant isn’t going to let us watch Samson twenty-four seven and follow him wherever he goes.”
“We can put it to him.  Let him know that Samson is looking for Mitchell, and that we’re almost positive he found a clue to his whereabouts when he made a house call.”