“Properly displayed,” she said, “the helmet will appear menacing rather than crudely made.”
His mouth turned down at one corner in a sour kind of smile. “ ‘Crudely made.’ Lovely. Do be sure that description appears in the catalog. They’ll be lined up from here to L.A. to get a look.”
She felt heat flare across her cheekbones. “I know my job, Mr. Tannahill.”
“Shane, remember?”
“That’s your good twin. I’m talking to the evil one right now.”
He laughed. She was one of the few people he employed who didn’t pull her punches with him. It was just one of the many appealing—and maddening—things about her.
“Assuming that we pay more than the helmet is worth—”
“It’s an auction, isn’t it?” she cut in dryly.
“—and end up owning it, how would you display it for maximum impact?”
“On you.”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
“At least for the catalog. I wouldn’t expect you to stand around half naked wearing a gold-foiled helmet while groups of female tourists drooled on you.”
“Just half naked? How disappointing. I thought Celtic warriors wore nothing but blue paint into battle.”
“Only a few of them went naked. Probably a warrior elite, like the SEALs or the SAS. Some people believe that the Celtic men in blue were Druids, but most people believe that the Druids were an intellectual elite rather than warriors.”
“The Samurai were both.”
“Good point. I won’t stand in the way if you want to rub limey clay into your hair, strip naked, and paint yourself blue for—”
“No,” he cut in quickly. “Not even for the catalog cover.”
“Well, dang, sugah,” she drawled. “It would have been a showstopper—you with your hair sticking up like an albino sea urchin, ice blue goose bumps all over your glorious body, and a gilded helmet held in front of your pride and joy.”
Shaking his head, Shane tried not to chuckle. It didn’t work. The image of himself in blue goose bumps and gold helmet held over his crotch was as ridiculous as he would have felt posing naked in the first place.
That was another of the things he liked about Risa. She made him laugh.
“Seriously, though,” she said, tilting her head to one side and studying him. “Do you have chest hair?”
“What?”
“Do you have—”
“Yes,” he interrupted. “Do you?”
She ignored him. “Okay. A shot from about here up”—she pointed to his breastbone—“elegantly inlaid haft of the sword placed diagonally across your hairy chest, the gold helmet emphasizing those stone green eyes and dark beard shadow . . . oh, yeah. It would have women lined up three deep around the parking lot.”
“I’m beginning to feel like a side of meat.”
“Now you know how a chorus girl feels.”
“Never touched one of them, so I’ll take your word for it.”
Shane was famous for keeping his hands off the help, so Risa just smiled from the teeth out and kept talking.
“Of course, Celtic warriors usually sported a mustache that drooped over the corners of their mouth and trickled down their chin. But,” she added, “we could always catch a shaggy dog and—”
Risa’s phone rang, saving Shane from having to listen to the rest of whatever mischief she had in mind. He watched while she answered the phone with the quickness that fascinated him, because her movements always appeared easygoing, almost lazy. It must have had something to do with the southern upbringing that he heard in her voice when she teased someone.
“Risa here,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
He saw the change that came over her, emotions crossing her face too quickly for him to read. Then nothing, as though a light had been turned out, leaving only a professional expression behind.
“Hey, it’s great to hear from you, and I’d love to talk to you, but I’m working right now. Can I call you back?” Risa turned away from Shane. “Lunch? Sure.” She looked at the clock. “One hour, the jazz bar off the lobby.”
Carefully Risa hung up. Before she turned back to Shane, she made sure her game face was in place. Hearing from Cherelle was always bittersweet. They had so many years together as children, so many shared memories. Without Cherelle, Risa wasn’t sure she would have survived to grow up.
Yet they had become such different adults.
The combination of love and guilt she felt toward Cherelle made Risa ache for the childhood laughter that had been and could never be again.
“A client?” Shane asked mildly, yet his eyes were intent.
He knew in his gut it wasn’t casino business she would be conducting in an hour. The thought of her meeting someone for lunch shouldn’t have bothered him. After all, he was the one who had encouraged her to be active in the private-appraisal business, if only as another way to ensure that he kept tabs on what was new in the old-gold market.
Yet something about her reaction to the call made every fey instinct in him wake up and sniff the air for danger. Niall would have called it things that go bump in the night. Shane just called it a hunch.
Risa was hiding something.
From him.
“No, not a client.” Deliberately she opened one of the seven auction books. “Have you looked at the figurine in lot 18B? Granted, it’s only gilt rather than solid gold, but the design is exquisite.”
Dutifully Shane looked at the figurine.
All he really saw was the moment when he would be alone with his own version of the Eye in the Sky, reviewing the input from the camera that covered the jazz bar just off the lobby of the Golden Fleece.
Chapter 14
Las Vegas
November 2
Noon
“You said you’d wait for Cherelle to—”
Socks didn’t let Tim finish the sentence. “I didn’t say shit. You did all the talking.”
With a heavy foot on the accelerator, Socks sent the car shooting into an intersection just as the light went red. Cars on either side honked. Socks hung his middle finger out the window.
“You shouldn’t bust lights when we have crack in the car,” Tim said. “I ain’t aching for any more time in the joint.”
“What are you? My old lady? Bitch, bitch, bitch. Can’t do anything but bitch. Besides, there ain’t enough rock left to cover a cockroach’s dick, remember? We finished it an hour ago.”
The next light was dead solid red when they approached the intersection. Socks considered blowing through just to hear Tim’s girly shriek, but there was a Budweiser delivery truck pulling into the intersection. Folks around here would hang him if he got in the way of their brew.
Tim stared out the window and wished he had some more coke. This was the no-collar section of Las Vegas, the part between Glitter Gulch and the Strip, where the gutters were filled with trash and the windows and doors with iron bars.
“Home sweet home,” Tim said bitterly.
Socks didn’t care. In fact, he felt real comfortable on these dirty streets. A man knew the score here: do unto others before they thought of doing it to you. He had grown up not far from this neighborhood.
So had Tim, but he didn’t like it nearly as much as Socks did. The five-year difference in their ages had kept them from meeting each other until Tim checked into the same prison cell as Socks. Tim had been in for card-sharping and humping a fifteen-year-old. Socks had been in for sticking up a 24/7 convenience store. Both of them had complained of their bad luck in getting caught doing what everyone else was doing.
Across the street a hooker spotted the shocking purple car. She was wearing a crotch-length leather skirt, mountainous platform sandals, and a stretchy midriff blouse that once had been white. She swung her hips in an improbable figure eight as she crossed the street and leaned in the open driver’s window.
Socks gave the goods a thorough once-over, then passed. She looked fifty and was probably
twenty-five. He could see the needle tracks on her dirty toes and the dead space in her eyes. The emptiness and dirt didn’t bother him, but he wasn’t nearly horny enough to take on a whacked-out hype. Not after watching a ripe number like Cherelle rub all over Tim. Socks might not be as pretty as his friend, but he was damned certain his equipment was just as good. That was one thing you did a lot of in jail—seeing how you measured up against other inmates.
The light changed to green. Ignoring the woman, Socks gunned the engine and turned off the main street. After a few blocks he cranked the wheel over and zoomed to the curb in front of two sun-beaten bungalows whose curtains were drawn as tight as the bars over the windows. Both houses had a small front porch shaded by an awning. The bungalow on the left had an old man in a wheelchair and a dog flaked out at his feet.
Tim would have noticed the old man only if he hadn’t been on the porch. For as long as he could remember, Mr. Parsons had been parked in that spot with a dog nearby. It was the same for the weeds and dust. Just there. Always.
The tiny cottages were crouched between a two-story apartment building that had seen better years—a lot of them—and the kind of single-level, low-rent strip mall that never seemed to go completely bankrupt, probably because there was a liquor store in the center of it.
Two middle-aged men sat in the apartment parking lot and sucked on bottles wrapped in brown paper. A thin, nervous old lady walked down from the second-story stairway with a mutt on a leash. The way she circled around the drinkers said that she thought alcoholism was contagious.
Tim looked at the unshaved men and told himself that at least his father wasn’t one of them. Maybe he had never seen his father up close, but he knew who he was. That was more than Socks could say. The only family he ever talked about were some broken-down lowlifes who had worked for the Mob way back when it was big in Vegas.
“Gimme your stuff,” Socks said as he fished a used-up cigarette pack out of his T-shirt sleeve. He lit the last wrinkled cigarette, tossed the trash out the window, and blew smoke at the dashboard. “I’ll meet you back here after I’ve talked with my fence.”
“I’ll keep mine until I see what you get for yours.”
Socks made a disgusted sound. “Pussy-whipped, that’s what you are. Just plain pussy-whipped.”
“Fuck you.”
“Like you could. You were the queen of the cell block.”
Tim grabbed the cigarette and took a quick drag. It tasted as bad as it looked, but the nicotine hit just fine. He wasn’t hooked on it like Socks was, but he enjoyed it from time to time. He sucked hard and deep before surrendering the cigarette to Socks again.
“Cherelle has more brains than both of us put together,” Tim said, blowing out a long stream of smoke. “If I was you, I’d wait and get more money.”
“You ain’t me.”
Tim shrugged.
“Why’d you let her keep some of your share, too?” Socks asked in a voice that was real close to a whine. “There were three fucking cartons, and all I have is two shitty little pieces.”
“She’s tired of taking pennies from your fences when the stuff I give you is worth thousands.” It wasn’t quite true, but what the hell. If Cherelle had known about all the fancy electronics he and Socks had stolen for pennies on the dollar, she would have screamed.
“Price of doing business,” Socks said. That, and a really sweet cut for himself, of course. What Tim didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. What Socks knew pissed him off. He was broke, and whatever he got for the gold likely wouldn’t be enough to change that for long. “Gimme what you have in your backpack.”
Tim shifted uncomfortably, as though the backpack sitting on his lap had suddenly gotten heavy. He reached for the door handle.
“Hey, buddy,” Socks said, grabbing Tim’s arm. “Just a piece or two, okay? I’m broke, and even a room a cockroach wouldn’t want costs fifty bucks a night here. I want a good-looking woman and five lines of white and a bottle of bourbon and a steak and a dessert some waiter with an attitude sets on fire, you get it? We been living like burger-flipping, minimum-wage jerks. I wanna rave.”
Tim thought of what Cherelle would say. But that was in the future, and he might find a way around her. Socks was here and now, and Tim hated fights.
“Well, shit,” Tim said. He reached into the backpack and dragged out two lumpy socks. He didn’t know which pieces he was handing over. He didn’t care. There was more where it came from, and it would shut Socks up. “Don’t come back with less than four hundred bucks for me.”
“Four hundred! You crazy?”
“Four hundred, you hear me?”
“Yeahyeahyeah.” Socks had heard it all before and hadn’t listened then.
“I mean it.” Backpack in hand, Tim climbed out of the car. He leaned in the open door and snagged his garbage bag from the backseat. “Cherelle thinks we’re onto something big. I don’t want to screw it up. Woman’s got a mean tongue.”
Socks held up his hands in surrender and smiled genially. “I hear ya, buddy.”
“And bring back my socks,” Tim added, straightening. “Nothing wrong with them my mama’s washing machine won’t cure.”
“What the hell would I do with your socks?”
Tim laughed. Socks had gotten his street name because he never wore any. If he had a real name, Tim had never heard it. For men like Socks, a street name was the only kind that mattered.
“When will you have the cash?” Tim asked.
“I’ll call your mama.”
It was the answer Tim had expected. He waved and headed for the front door of the shabby bungalow.
Socks watched for a moment. He might not have been university smart, but he was gutter clever. Tim had been easygoing and eager to please before Cherelle. There hadn’t been any change at first. But now . . . now Socks was getting the short end of the triangle. Tim was taking the bitch’s orders and ignoring the buddy he used to listen to. Half the time he and Tim were arguing like old marrieds.
What really bothered Socks was that he couldn’t shake the feeling he was losing.
Chapter 15
Las Vegas
November 2
Half past noon
For long minutes Cherelle stared at the Golden Fleece’s namesake suspended in a tank full of water. While crowds of people eddied around her and oooohed and murmured over the golden sheepskin, all she could think about was how much she’d like to break that tank and roll in the gold dust until she was a solid gold woman. Even her eyes. It would be really cool to have them gold instead of the boring pale blue she’d been born with.
“Hey, Max, look at this! They’re having a big gold show New Year’s Eve. We’ll have to come back.”
Cherelle gave the middle-aged couple a cold look for interrupting her fantasy. Then she saw the pamphlet the woman was waving at her husband. Gold flashed hypnotically from color photos.
“Where’d you get that?” Cherelle asked.
The woman pointed toward the holders placed around the big square pedestal that supported the tank and the fleece.
Cherelle elbowed forward, grabbed a pamphlet, and began reading eagerly. Then she looked at the photos again. They weren’t exactly like the gold she had, but they weren’t not like it either.
A note at the bottom next to a classy photo said risa sheridan, ph.d., curator.
Cherelle shoved the pamphlet into her purse and chewed on the inside corner of her mouth. She should have changed clothes, something fancier. But she didn’t have anything clean and didn’t want to go hang out with all the busted-up street people at the Laundromat near the motel while she watched her clothes do somersaults in the dryer. She was classier than that.
Well, screw it. She wasn’t the only woman in the Golden Fleece wearing jeans and high-heeled sandals.
After a last longing look at the fleece, Cherelle sauntered off toward the bar called Gabriel’s Horn for the golden trumpet that hung over the back mirror. The bar itself stuck like a gli
ttering toe into the casino that wrapped around the lobby. She knew that Risa hadn’t wanted to meet her old friend inside the Golden Fleece, but she’d given in when Cherelle had done what she used to do while they were kids—roll right over Risa’s halfway objections like they didn’t exist.
Cherelle had pushed the matter because she didn’t want Risa to see her in a roach palace like the motel she’d left her clothes in. She had always let on that she was doing real well, better than Risa in fact. Up until a few years ago, that had been close enough to the truth.
Soon it would be the truth. Hell, she would be doing better than Risa. She would get classy clothes like her old friend, and some sexy underwear, and some shoes that didn’t kill her feet. Then she and Tim could fire up the crack pipe and screw each other blind.
As soon as Cherelle sat at the bar, the bartender came over. She waved him off. She didn’t have five bucks for a glass of soda water. A well-dressed working girl farther down the bar sent her a hard look. Cherelle just shook her head slightly, silently telling the other woman that she didn’t need to worry about any poaching. Cherelle wasn’t in competition for a horny john.
“Sure I can’t get you something?” the bartender asked, giving Cherelle a knowing once-over.
“Sugah, I wish you could.” She leaned forward and gave him a good view of what he wasn’t going to get any of. “But I’m not working. I’m waiting for a friend.”
“You change your mind, ask for Slim John.”
She looked at the bartender. Tall, thin, in his forties, he seemed more like a schoolteacher than a bartender. “Well, you sure are one long drink of water, and that’s a fact.”
He winked at her and went down the bar toward a man who’d just sat down.
Cherelle wondered what time it was. Her watch didn’t work, and there wasn’t a clock anywhere in sight. Then she saw Risa crossing the lobby, headed toward Gabriel’s Horn. She was wearing the kind of soft gray slacks and jacket and intense blue blouse that fairly shouted money and class. Some kind of ID card swung on a silver chain around her neck. Just before she left the lobby area, a bellman ran up to her. She turned back toward the registration desk, where someone instantly handed her a phone.