Dark Angel (Lassiter/Martinez Case Files #2) Page 7

  “Don’t you want the rest of your fee?”

  Matus made it to the meeting location with Race with barely a second to spare. He looked around the wedding chapel parking lot but didn’t spot Race’s Impala. Of course, that didn’t surprise him. He never saw Race unless Race wanted to be seen. His heart leaped when the rear door opened and Race entered the SUV. Matus turned to look at him.

  “No more jobs for a while,” Race said from the backseat. “I’m running on empty. Need to get some rest.”

  “I understand. I plan to drive up to Salt Lake and get some rest, too.”

  Race passed a plastic bag to him. “That’s the client’s share of the diamonds.”

  “Did you send the rest of the diamonds to California already?”

  “Why?”

  “Just wondering. If you hadn’t, I could have handled it.” He felt his face go hot and turned away from Race.

  “Thanks, but I already took them to FedEx. I sent an email message to the California Attorney General’s office to be on the lookout for them.” Race chuckled. “That ought to get the adrenaline flowing in Sacramento.”

  “Hmm.”

  “That’s kind of an anemic reaction. I thought you wanted to see the elderly and charity investors get their money back.”

  “Yeah . . . of course.”

  “What’s wrong, Eric?”

  “Oh, nothing. I guess I’m just tired.”

  “Bullshit. I’ve known you too long to fall for that. Something’s bothering you.”

  “No, no. I’m fine.”

  “I have a question, Eric. It’s bothered me since you told me about this job.”

  “Yeah, Race. What is it?”

  “How’d you learn about this embezzlement business? There was nothing in the news about it. I checked on the Internet. Nothing about this guy Whitaker, or whatever his real name is, embezzling from his clients.”

  Matus felt his face grow hot again. Sweat broke out on his forehead. “I . . . .”

  “Don’t lie to me, Eric. What going on?”

  “Ah-h-h, jeez. I screwed up, Race. Remember that guy who kidnapped the kid in Los Angeles two years ago?”

  “Of course. The Bukowski kid.”

  “His father was our client. I didn’t tell you, but I discovered after the job was done that Bukowski was connected to organized crime. He somehow had me followed all the way to Salt Lake when I returned home afterward. He knows who I am.”

  “Has he seen me?”

  Matus hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know. But he knows I have a partner.”

  “How’d Bukowski contact you?”

  “He called my office number in Salt Lake and left a message.”

  “Sonofabitch,” Race cursed.

  “I’m sorry, Race. I had no idea I was followed.”

  “That was careless, Eric, but it happened. What pisses me off is that you didn’t tell me Bukowski called you. You’ve put both of us in jeopardy.”

  “I know, I should have said something, but Bukowski owes us. After all, we saved his only son. He won’t do anything to hurt us.”

  Race thought about that for a minute. “Did you tell him that this Whitaker job isn’t what we do?”

  “Sure. I told—”

  “What did he say to that?”

  Matus covered his face with his hands. “I’m sorry, Race.”

  “What did he say, Eric?”

  “He threatened to turn us in.”

  “How do you plan to give Bukowski his share of the diamonds?”

  “We’re supposed to meet at some club in North Las Vegas at 9 this morning.”

  “Then what?”

  “He said he had another job for us.”

  “Bullshit. It’s a setup. The guy wants the rest of the stones.”

  Matus whined, “I’m really sorry. I should never have—”

  “Give me the name of the club.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Just give me the name. I’ll be outside when you meet him. And, for God’s sake, don’t tell him I already shipped the diamonds.”

  Matus was as frightened as he could ever remember being. He knew he had no other choice but to meet with Bukowski. If he didn’t, he figured there could be one of two outcomes: the guy could call the cops, which didn’t seem the most likely. Or he’d sic one of his enforcers on him. It gave him a small degree of comfort to know that Race planned to be outside the club, but it wasn’t enough to prevent him from feeling as though he might void his bladder at any moment.

  Matus felt his skin crawl as soon as he entered Gentleman Gil’s. It took a while for his eyes to adjust to the dark interior. The place was packed with men at tables and at a bar in front of a runway on which a nearly-naked woman danced. Other half-naked women meandered around the club floor. He thought this low-life strip joint was one small notch below a whore house. Then he spotted Stan Bukowski in a corner booth and wove his way around tables.

  “Hey, Eric,” Bukowski shouted. “Take a seat.”

  “You really want to do business here?”

  “Sure, why not? I got an interest in this joint. Sit down and take a load off.” He laughed. “Have a drink; then we’ll go back to the office.”

  A waitress came over. Bukowski shouted over the music at her, “Hey, honey, bring my friend here a double bourbon.”

  Matus waved a hand as though to decline, but Bukowski ignored him.

  When the waitress walked off, Bukowski rounded on Matus. “I got a job for you here in Vegas. Another rush job.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I’ll pay double your usual rate.”

  Matus felt a chill run down his spine. This was already the most profitable week of his life. O’Neil in Albuquerque, the three rapists, and Whitaker. It’s too bad, he thought, that Bukowski probably didn’t have another job for them. Race was more than likely correct that the promise of another job was just Bukowski’s tactic to seduce them into a compromising situation so he could steal all the diamonds. But, at that moment, he couldn’t have cared less about the money. He couldn’t spend money if he were dead.

  “I don’t think—”

  “I don’t give a shit what you think.”

  Matus’s heart seemed to beat a frenetic riff. The waitress placed a drink in front of him.

  “Drink up,” Bukowski said, “then we’ll finalize arrangements.”

  As soon as he walked into the office, Matus knew he’d made a terrible mistake.

  “What is this?” Matus demanded. “What—?”

  A large man spun Matus around and slugged him in the stomach. Matus fell to his knees and gasped for breath. He had just about caught his breath when a wave of nausea hit.

  “Pull a trash can under that asshole,” Bukowski shouted.

  The big man slid a waste basket over just in time for Matus to vomit into it. While he retched, the big guy reached into his jacket pocket and found the plastic bag with Bukowski’s three million dollars in diamonds. He tossed the bag to his boss.

  “Okay, Matus, here’s the deal. I know you got a partner. I figure you’re the booking agent, just like in Hollywood. So, you get your guy in here, or I’ll have Richie work you over.” Bukowski laughed. “Then I’ll have him kill you.”

  Matus pushed the trash can away and tried to stand. He made it to a crouch, but had to drop back to his knees as another wave of nausea struck. It took a minute before he could rise from the floor.

  Matus wiped his mouth with a handkerchief he took from his pants pocket. “What do you want him for?”

  “Are you fuckin’ stupid? I want the diamonds. All of them.”

  “He might have already mailed them.”

  “Then you’re dead.”

  Matus looked at the big man. He was about six feet tall, had to weigh at least two hundred fifty pounds, and had arms the size of most men’s thighs. Tattooed serpents ran around his neck and down both arms. He glared back at Matus, then smiled gleefully, as though he looked forward t
o beating him to a pulp.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “How do you make contact with your partner?”

  “My guy gives me a burner phone that I’m supposed to use only once. We arrange to meet, where I hand over information about the next assignment and he gives me another phone.”

  “How did he give you the diamonds for me?”

  “He called me on the cell. Told me to meet him.”

  “So you got a throwaway cell for the next contact?”

  Matus patted the side pocket of his sports jacket. “Yeah.”

  “Good. Call him and say you’ll meet him here.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. He only meets in places he chooses.”

  “Smart guy,” Bukowski said.

  Matus nodded. “He is.”

  “Then call him and say you have a new job.”

  Matus had no doubt that Bukowski planned to kill him the second he had his hands on the diamonds, had the stones still been available. He also had no doubt that he would kill him when he discovered there were no diamonds. As he fumbled the throwaway cell from his jacket pocket, he told himself to think, but the adrenaline that ripped through his system made clear thinking difficult. He hit the pre-programmed number to Race Thornton’s cell phone and waited.

  “Yeah,” Race answered.

  “We have another job.” Matus breathed out a loud breath. “Another assassination.”

  Race didn’t respond for several seconds. Then he said, “Another assassination?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Meet me in the parking lot of the big office complex on the 4200 block of Paradise. 3 p.m.”

  Race disconnected the call before Matus could ask any questions or try to change the meeting arrangements. In all the years he and Matus had worked together, the man had followed one of his rules to the letter: never mention the nature of an assignment over the phone. Until just now. When Matus said, ‘another assassination,’ Race concluded he was under duress. Bukowski had forced him to make the call.

  CHAPTER 14

  At 9:15 a.m., Albuquerque time, Barbara and Susan took a break from building a victim matrix and fast-walked to the Starbucks in the Hyatt hotel lobby. The wind had come up again and a scattering of snow flurries blew wildly in their faces.

  “Damn, I wish I’d worn a heavier coat,” Susan yelled over the wind.

  “Nah. It’s not cold out. Just ask the Chamber of Commerce. They tell tourists the temperature never drops below fifty in Albuquerque.”

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  Barbara scoffed. “I’m freezing.”

  Barbara fought to open the hotel’s front door against the wind. Susan slipped inside in front of her, and then Barbara battled another wind gust. Inside the lobby, she breathlessly exclaimed, “I’m about ready for a road trip to some place warm. You have to work on the lieutenant as soon as he gets in this morning.”

  “What? Without my short black skirt and red blouse.”

  “Bat your eyelashes at him.”

  “You bat your eyelashes at him.”

  “He’s hot for you,” Barbara said. “Not me.”

  Susan shrugged. “He’s hot for anything in a skirt.”

  They each ordered a grande coffee and a morning bun and found a place to sit in the hotel lobby’s lounge. Barbara had barely sipped her coffee when her cell phone rang. She looked at the screen and recognized Sophia Otero-Hansen’s number.

  “It’s my good friend, Sophia.”

  “I thought you said she wasn’t really your friend.”

  Barbara scrunched up her mouth. “Things change.” She answered the call. “Hey, Sophia.”

  “The guy who killed O’Neil might be in Las Vegas. At least, we think he was there a short while ago.”

  “What happened?’

  “Three twenty-year-old football players were found dead in their lawyer’s office.”

  “Liquid heroin?”

  “Yep. There were three nearly empty glasses on the lawyer’s conference room table. Lemonade laced with heroin. And the guy left calling cards. A rose under each of the kids’ hands.”

  “Why roses?”

  “We think it’s because the three guys assaulted a teenager named Rosa Puccini. She’s now in a mental hospital. The killer set up an appointment with the lawyer under false pretenses. Then he threatened to kill the lawyer if he didn’t call the men down to his office.”

  “The lawyer saw the guy?” Barbara asked. “Really?”

  “No kidding. He saw him all right. We got a description, which we’ll run through the computer.”

  “What about forensics?”

  “Nada. Zip. Zilch. The perp even screwed up the plumbing so the place flooded. If there had been any evidence, it’s washed into the Vegas sewer system by now.”

  “How the hell did the killer make three football players do what he wanted?”

  “He shot one of them in the shoulder.”

  “I’ll be damned. Well, thanks for keeping us informed. If we find anything, I’ll be in touch.”

  “Don’t you want to hear about the other case?”

  “There’s another case?”

  “Our boy—at least we think it’s the same guy—robbed a guy in a room at the Bellagio.”

  “You sure? That doesn’t sound like something the vigilante killer would do.”

  Otero-Hansen laughed. “On the surface, you’re correct. The police learned of the crime after someone called the Las Vegas Review-Journal and television stations and told them a man running a Ponzi scheme out of Los Angeles was in a room at the Bellagio. Told them the man was about to skip the country with loot he’d stolen from investors. One hundred million dollars converted to diamonds. The media called the police who went to the hotel room and found a man and woman bound and gagged. The police found false ID, including passports, airline tickets to Amsterdam, and several million in bearer bonds in a briefcase.”

  “I still don’t get the connection,” Barbara said.

  Otero-Hansen laughed again. “The guy left a calling card. The woman they found in the room was beside herself. She kept screaming that a thief broke into their room and forced her and her boyfriend to swallow diamonds. One each. We might not have connected the vigilante to the Bellagio room if not for the murdered football players being in the same city and the diamonds he forced the man and woman to swallow. I mean, how many crooks leave calling cards like this guy does? Three roses with the football players and diamonds with the two at the Bellagio.”

  “What happened to all the loot?”

  “The caller to the press said he would put it in a FedEx box and send it to the California Attorney General.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Barbara chuckled. “Pretty stupid.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman in the hotel room. She should have kept her mouth shut about the diamond she swallowed. Could have cashed in after nature took its course.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Race drove the ten blocks from his motel to the meeting site on Paradise Boulevard. The office complex, one of the biggest in Las Vegas, was surrounded by an expansive series of parking lots. Race reconnoitered the site until he found a spot that would serve his purpose. Then he drove to several retail stores and bought a bottle of granulated tree stump remover, table salt, a bundle of black yarn, a measuring tape, a set of measuring cups, a screwdriver, a disposable cigarette lighter, a roll of scotch tape, and four cookie sheets.

  Back at his extended-stay motel room, he unpacked his purchases and lined them up on the kitchen counter. He cut off four eight-foot lengths of yarn and placed them on the bed. He put a large skillet on the stove and turned on the burner. Then he measured out seventy-two grams of the stump remover and mixed it with forty-eight grams of table salt. He vigorously shook the mixture for a full minute. When the skillet was too hot to touch, he poured 2/3 cup of water into it and then added in the stump remover/table salt mixture and stirred the concoction. When the contents of the skille
t became frothy and much of the water had evaporated, he dropped the strips of yarn into the skillet. He held onto one end of each of the yarn lengths and watched as the water evaporated and the yarn became super-saturated with the chemical mixture. He then removed the yarn strips from the skillet and put one each on four cookie sheets in a serpentine pattern.

  Then Race moved two of the cookie sheets to the oven that had been pre-heated to three hundred degrees. After twenty minutes, he removed the cookie sheets, placed them on top of the stove to cool, and put the other two sheets in the oven. When the second set of cookie sheets was removed from the oven and allowed to cool, Race touched the yarn and found all four lengths had dried perfectly. He then carried the cookie sheets out to his car and placed them on the backseat.

  Race saw it was now 2:30 in the afternoon—thirty minutes to meet Matus. He drove back to the address on Paradise and pulled in between two parked cars near the back of the employee parking lot. The two cars had gas tank access doors on opposite sides. After Race checked to make certain no one was around, he used the screwdriver he’d purchased to pop open the fuel doors of the cars on either side of his car, unscrewed the gas caps, and inserted one end of a strip of treated yarn deep into each of the car’s gas tanks. He carefully closed the gas access doors to within a half-inch of the strips of yarn. Then he taped another length of yarn to each of the first two lengths and ran them under the two vehicles to his car. He placed the two ends behind the Impala’s left rear tire.

  He waited behind the wheel of his car until his dashboard clock read 2:55. Then he moved to the Impala’s rear end and peered through the bushes that separated the lot from the sidewalk and the street. When he spotted Matus’s SUV turn onto Paradise Boulevard, he squatted by the left rear tire of his car and lit the two lengths of yarn with the disposal cigarette lighter.

  Matus’s SUV pulled across the front of Race’s parked car and stopped just beyond it, its engine still running. Matus stepped out from behind the wheel and moved toward Race.

  Matus’s face was pale; he had deer-in-the-headlights eyes. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  Then two men piled out of Matus’s vehicle. One of them was built like an NFL linebacker; the other was overweight, swarthy, had mean black eyes and was dressed in a silk suit.