Killer Year Page 8

  “Add a little water,” Scully said, “and you’d have Hurricane Katrina.”

  Apparently Jennings wasn’t the only one who thought Holly had left something behind.

  But what?

  He found it in the shower, pressed deep into a new bar of soap that lay in the tray above the spigot. If he had bothered to bathe last night, had bothered to wash off the chlorine that had soaked through to his bones, he would have found it then: a locker key.

  Holly had once told him that after she first arrived in Vegas she’d lived out of a locker for nearly a month. A locker at the Greyhound bus station.

  He turned to Scully. “Let’s go downtown.”

  Twenty minutes later, they waded through a crowd of passengers heading for a departing bus, and worked their way to locker 223. Jennings slipped the key in, turned it.

  There was a manila envelope inside. Dumping out its contents, he found a wallet-size photograph and a bright pink cell phone—which would explain why Holly had used the pay phone at Abe’s.

  Jennings stared at the photo. Two girls stared back at him with reticent smiles: a much younger Holly, about sixteen, and a smaller girl who couldn’t have been more than six. There was something oddly familiar about the smaller girl’s face.

  His stomach clutched up when he realized what it was, and suddenly everything made sense. Holly wasn’t the only member of her family to kiss her drunken mother good-bye.

  The girl in the Megadeth T-shirt was Holly’s sister.

  Picking up the phone, he clicked it on, immediately noticing a symbol in the upper left corner that indicated there were photos waiting to be viewed.

  He thumbed a button, flicking quickly through the photographs, feeling his heart pump faster with each new frame.

  “Guess we know what they were after,” Scully said, looking over Jennings’s shoulder. “Is that who I think it is?”

  Jennings nodded. “That B&E we were planning for tonight? We just found a new target.”

  He waited for them in the upstairs hallway. The alarm system had been sophisticated, but relatively easy to breach. A window overlooked the front drive.

  Despite the size of the house, a fifteen-room Tudor in the heart of Red Rock, the support staff—according to Scully’s contact at the security company—was minimal. The maid left at five every night, the gardeners were contracted, and the hired muscle, whom Jennings had no desire to tangle with, lived off premises. Wife and stepson were away for the weekend, so that left only the owner and the lone security man who accompanied him at all times.

  Despite his wealth, the owner apparently believed in keeping his life as uncomplicated as possible. His house was tastefully furnished, but offered no overt signs of the man’s considerable fortune. Even the car he drove was modest: a black Ford Expedition.

  As it pulled into the driveway, Jennings receded into the shadows and watched as the headlights went dark and two men emerged. To his surprise, however, there was a third person in the car.

  Yanking open the rear passenger door, the security man barked an order. A moment later, Holly’s sister climbed out, her movements slow and clumsy as if she’d been drugged. She was wearing the same black T-shirt she’d worn the night before.

  Jennings saw not only a younger version of Holly, but something in her that reminded him of his own daughter. His Michelle. And with that reminder came an even stronger sense of resolve.

  The security man turned to his boss, his voice muffled through the windowpane. “I still say we should get rid of her. Cut our losses.”

  “Not until she tells us where it is. Get Tank and Brian over here to do a little work on her. I’m gonna go upstairs and take a hot one.”

  The security man nodded and grabbed the girl by the arm, pushing her toward the house. All three of them disappeared from view and Jennings heard the front door slam.

  Crossing the hallway, he disappeared into the darkness of a bedroom.

  The owner was stepping out of the shower, pulling on a neatly monogrammed terry cloth robe, when he realized Jennings was standing just inside the bathroom doorway. Startled, he recovered quickly. “What is this? Who are you?”

  “Just call me Houdini,” Jennings said. “I owe you a hundred large, remember?”

  Emile Garlin’s eyes narrowed. He reached for a telephone on the wall.

  “Don’t bother. The line’s been cut.” With a quick flourish, Jennings produced Holly’s cell phone and set it on the counter. “Why don’t you try this one instead. It’s what you’ve been looking for, right?”

  Garlin eyed the phone, then slowly shifted his gaze to Jennings. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come on, Emile. You’ve already killed two people to get it. Probably three.”

  “I think you’re mistaking me for somebody else.”

  “Am I? You look remarkably like one of the guys in those photos.”

  “What photos?”

  “Don’t waste my time,” Jennings said.

  As if this was some kind of cue, Garlin suddenly moved toward him, but Jennings produced his nine mil. “Easy.”

  Garlin stopped in his tracks, his voice flat. “You’re a dead man.”

  “I got the life sucked out of me a long time ago. Not much damage you can do now.”

  There was no sign of fear in Garlin’s eyes. He just looked annoyed. “What do you want?”

  “I’m curious,” Jennings said. “Did you know that Holly and I were connected when you sent your goons after me?”

  “Pure coincidence,” Garlin said. “But those are the hazards of living in a small town.” The guy wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

  “How do you sleep at night, Garlin?”

  “Meaning?”

  Jennings gestured to the cell phone. “Consenting adults is one thing, but fourteen-year-old girls?”

  “I see you don’t spend much time on the Internet,” Garlin said. “Teens are all the rage. And I didn’t create the market.”

  Jennings felt something tighten inside. Felt his finger against the trigger of the nine.

  When he’d first played the photos back, he’d wondered what Garlin would have to say about them. Slimeballs can rationalize anything.

  He and Scully had talked it through, and had a pretty good idea how the whole thing had played out. A lot of it was conjecture, sure, but he didn’t think they were too far off the mark.

  There had long been rumors of a Lolita Club in Vegas, an elite and very secretive group of businessmen who traded teenage girls like baseball cards and videotaped their adventures. Even as a cop, Jennings had assumed it was an urban myth, but the photos on that cell phone had dispelled any doubt that it really did exist.

  Joseph Fine, of Hartley-Fine Real Estate, was a member of that club. Shortly after Chuck Hartley and Holly broke up, Fine had decided to let his old buddy in on his secret, showing him a few videotaped samples, hoping maybe to cheer his partner up.

  But Hartley wasn’t into jailbait. He was, in fact, appalled by what he saw. And one of the girls on the video looked remarkably like Holly. So much so that he went to his estranged wife and told her about it.

  The rest played out like a bad spy movie, Holly and Hartley doing a whacked-out version of Nick and Nora Charles, using the Diamond hotel as their base of operations. Hartley had feigned interest in the club, had offered up a good deal of money to get a closer look, had even snagged a personal tour of Garlin’s underage bunny ranch from the man himself.

  And all the while, he’d had Holly’s cell phone with him, snapping surreptitious, and very incriminating, photos.

  Somewhere along the line he’d asked Fine to arrange a private rendezvous at the corporate condo. The choice of girls was obvious: Holly’s sister.

  Then something went wrong. Somehow Garlin had been tipped off about the photos—probably by Fine, or maybe even Hartley himself. Whatever the case, Holly had already stored the phone in the Greyhound locker. Then she’d gone to the condo, grabbed her sister
, and called Jennings.

  Fine had been a casualty of the cleanup crew. And Hartley had been the man at the other end of Holly’s phone call from Abe’s.

  Jennings could see her standing there at the pay phone, looking out at the parking lot where her sister was waiting, giving his address to Hartley, not realizing that Hartley was already in Garlin’s custody.

  Later, as Holly and her sister left Jennings’s apartment, they were confronted by Garlin and his security man. And Jennings, true to form, was a day late and a dollar short.

  That was about to change.

  There was a muffled sound of a door slamming. Jennings had no doubt that the Hawaiian-shirt boys had just arrived.

  “Reinforcements,” Garlin said. “You’re one shout away from history.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Jennings told him. “The great thing about cell phone photos is that you can send them instantly to anyone on your network. You’d be surprised how many newspapers and law enforcement agencies share the same service. Not that it makes much difference at this point.”

  Garlin studied him as those last words sunk in. Then his expression changed almost imperceptibly. There was fear in his eyes now. He nodded to the nine. “What do you plan on doing with that?”

  Jennings smiled. A smile that hid the rage he felt. A rage that had been building for three long years and had finally reached the boiling point.

  The answer, he thought, was fairly obvious.

  The papers were still talking about it three days later. “The Garlin Mansion Massacre,” they called it. Four dead at the hands of an unknown assailant. A young runaway, one Teresa Jean Addison, was found cowering in a closet.

  The photos of the Lolita Club bunny ranch, its inhabitants, its owner, and a few of its better known members had made international headlines. Teresa Jean got her fifteen minutes of fame on the nightly news, talking about her ordeal.

  On the afternoon of that third day, after Jennings had just finished up his show at the Tally-Ho lounge, he found Cassandra waiting for him in the parking lot.

  “I suppose it’s too late for an ISID,” she said.

  Jennings stole a line from Garlin: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “My partner thinks you’re good for that thing in Red Rock.”

  “When are you gonna stop sleeping with that idiot?”

  “He’s coming after you, Nick. Consider yourself warned.” She started to turn away, but Jennings stopped her.

  “Let’s pretend for a moment that I did do it,” he said. “What would be my motive?”

  “We all know how you felt about Holly. Or maybe you just didn’t want to see another little girl wind up in a drainage ditch.”

  They were silent a moment, thinking about that and what it meant, Cassie’s eyes showing a trace of tears.

  “You’re forgetting who you’re talking to,” Jennings said. “I’m just a screwup, remember? A guy who can’t help himself.”

  She studied him sadly a moment. “That’s the problem, Nick. It always has been.”

  Then she turned and walked away.

  Jennings watched her cross toward her car, feeling the tug of emotion that always accompanied her visits, as infrequent as they were.

  Someday, he thought. Someday he’d make it right with her. And as he watched her drive away, he took his cell phone from his pocket and dialed.

  Maybe Scully could find him a game.

  Time of the Green

  by Ken Bruen

  Fake city

  Yeah, trot ’em out

  A phony

  A con man

  Grifter

  Flimflam guy

  I know ’em all

  Been ’em all

  To

  Varying degrees of success

  Currently, I’m washed up in the West of Ireland

  Time on my hands

  But not on my wrist

  That I’m gonna fix

  Bring that sucker to the bank

  Shooting craps

  And

  Dude, I can sure shoot the shit

  You’ll have noticed … my accent … see, I’m … talking real slow so

  you can keep up

  Accents

  More changes than a Brixton hooker on one of them wet November

  evenings, I’ve been there, Brixton, too.

  I flit from accent to accent like an alkie on down gear

  And you’re thinking,

  “Why?”

  ’Cos I can.

  Failed actor

  Yeah, maybe that’s it. Try it on for verification. I hadn’t what it takes,

  for acting. That zombied sponge ability to soak it up.

  And odd to tell, I’m not real good at taking direction. But hang me

  out to dry, shoot me now, I ’fess up.

  I wanted the kudos without the graft.

  Is that so wrong? Seems to me to be the spirit of the zeitgeist.

  I left London in a hurry, hung some paper and it was coming back to

  bite me in the ass and hard. Got me a cheapo flight outa there, in

  like, jig time. Just a carry-on.

  If I’d a little more of a window, I’d have gone to Prague, they like me

  there

  But Galway was first up and like I said, speed was of the essence.

  I’d never been to Ireland, swear to God.

  My periods Stateside, I knew lotsa micks.

  Mad demented bastards

  And like, I mean, do they ever—ever, shut the fuck up?

  A woman asked me,

  “Don’t you love their lyricism?”

  She was kidding, right? Wasn’t she?

  The harps, all the swearing

  Fook this, fook that

  By jaysus

  Yah bollix

  What’s with that?

  You want a crash course in cussin’, get you in the mick mode, watch

  Deadwood. The effing and blinding, set you right up.

  Our plane circled over Galway airport, no sign of us landing. A

  middle-aged woman at the window seat, smelling of Chanel and

  stale gin, said

  “Seagulls on the runway.”

  I asked,

  “And that tells us what?”

  She gave me a cursory glance, then,

  “We might be diverted to Knock, now that’d be a hoor.”

  As in whore?

  Then she let out a breath, said,

  “Ah, there’s Tommy, he’s shooing them.”

  For a moment I thought he was shooting them. I asked,

  “And Tommy, that’s his job?”

  She clucked her tongue, said,

  “Don’t be an eejit, he’s the air traffic controller.”

  Right

  With a final look at me she said,

  “You must be English.”

  Welcome to Ireland.

  I had two credit cards, good for tops, twenty days, then the flag went

  up. With about a hundred in sterling.

  Man, I love a challenge.

  I was wearing my Armani suit, the real job. Not one of those knockoff

  units. Most times, let the suit do the talking, gets you halfway there.

  In the lounge, I changed my cash to euro and had to check the

  time on the airport wall. My one aim, well, first one anyway, was a

  Rolex Oyster, the whole nine.

  My old man, the original loser, wore a Timex, plastic strap, to accessorise

  his soul, once, between beatings, said to me,

  “A man’s arrived when he wears The Oyster.”

  Stuck with me.

  I’d never quite got it together to attain one. And hey, I didn’t want it to

  fulfill his dream

  Fuck him

  It was solely to roar

  “This is for you, Pops.”

  To stick it up his ass

  We buried him two years ago, cheap box, cheap service. My mom,

>   glass-eyed on Valium, threw a dead rose into the hole, said,

  “He was a good man.”

  I looked right in her eyes, said,

  “You stupid cunt.”

  Liar, too

  Last I heard, she was down in Boca, working on her skin cancer.

  Coming out of Arrivals, I hailed a cab, took a moment and decided to

  go American. The flag still flew for the micks. The Brits, now they

  were always thin ice. The driver, his face a riot of broken veins, purple

  blotches, asked,

  “How’s it going?”

  I never quite worked out the it. Was it life, the weather, work?

  Most times in Ireland, it was the weather. I was sorely tempted to answer, “It’s a hoor.”

  Went with,

  “Going good, buddy, and you, how you doing?”

  Lots of vim in there

  Worked

  He put the cab in gear, no automatic for this guy, and he asked,

  “Yank, right?”

  “Outa Boston.”

  Why not? The Kennedys owned it and they still had sainthood here.

  He asked,

  “Where to?”

  “A good hotel, in the city centre?”

  “Ah, you’ll be wanting the Great Southern.”

  It would be neither southern nor great but it certainly had notions.

  The driver lit a cigarette. I asked,

  “Don’t you guys, like, have a smoking ban?”

  Blew a cloud of smoke at the Sacred Heart medallion on the dash,

  said,

  “Ary, fuck that.”

  My kind of country.

  I used my American Express at the hotel and it was hard to focus for a

  moment, my British birth always got me those moments, despite

  how I’d immersed myself in America, damn near raised there, the

  homeland still sang in me, if anything British can be said to sing.

  The receptionist provided me with a spacious room, overlooking

  Eyre Square, the heartbeat of the city. I booked for a week and they

  seemed delighted.

  The porter who showed me to the room reminded me of the first man