DOUBLE MINT (23 page)

The platinum was removed from the Chevrolet van and when we took off, I could see
it being escorted to a police station in Snead. (Around the corner.) Fantasy’s three
partners went the other way to be processed in Altoona. (At the fork, go left, then
up the hill.) The Chevy van was towed to the Oneneta police station (just past Jimmy
Irvine’s mother’s second husband’s place), the only station around with a secure impound
lot. At one o’clock, on the dot, when it was to have been in the airport long-term
lot and full of Fantasy and platinum thieves, it blew sky high.

Twenty-Five

The Bellissimo roof caught us by surprise, which is to say we dropped through the
sky like a brick and slammed into a thirty-story building. Thud.

“Whoops.” (Dewey.)

No Hair met us on the roof. He put his big arms around Fantasy and she stayed there
a beat. She asked him if she could have a minute to (decide what to do with the rest
of her life) shower and change before we sat down to talk. “We can wait until tomorrow,
Fantasy.” No Hair’s tie was a bottle of Heinz ketchup. He wears distracting neckties
so no one will notice he’s bald. It doesn’t work.

“No,” she said. “I’ll tell you what you need to know, then I’m going—” she stumbled,
not at all sure of where to go from here.

“I’ve got her.” I led her into the building.

We rode three different elevators down to 3B. By the time I swiped us in, it was so
far into Saturday, if we kept it up much longer, we could catch the sunrise. And we
weren’t finished yet. We stumbled down the hall to the shower and she peeled off her
burglar clothes along the way.

“Have you talked to Reggie?”

“Bradley has.”

“So he knows?”

“Yes.”

She stopped dead in her tracks. “Knows what?”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

“Does he know I’m okay?”

I pushed her into the shower. “Yes.”

Thirty minutes later, we met in Event Hall B, where a Bellissimo drop crew was relieving
the Mint Condition machines of cash and platinum, transferring it to a rolling cage.
Two representatives from the Gaming Commission were there—this might get ugly—along
with several Bellissimo attorneys who’d been dragged from their warm beds, plus two
auditors from Hammond Stevenson Morris & Chase, also rudely awakened.

We found a corner conversation pit in Event Hall B with sofas and easy chairs, we
found liquor, and we stared at one another. Fantasy was downright shell-shocked. I
would have tucked her in and let her sleep it off, but I was too afraid to leave her
alone and she was too afraid to be left alone. I activated a phone for her while she
was in the shower, and after repeated attempts, her husband still wouldn’t take her
calls. Conner Hughes looked like someone had kicked him across the state of Mississippi
and back. No Hair had been away so long he looked out of place, and Bradley looked
like, well, Bradley looked like a man who’d dropped everything to be with his wife,
bobbed around the entire state of Alabama for four hours, witnessed a gruesome death
scene, and a multi-jurisdictional takedown with a six-foot-tall black woman having
a meltdown in the middle of a two-lane Alabama highway. He hadn’t given me the gun
back.

In our loose circle, all the attention focused on Bradley. I’d have been looking at
him anyway. Everyone else was looking to him for permission to go home, to bed, anywhere
but here.

“Where is Dionne Warwick?” Bradley asked.

“She and her band loaded up two hours ago,” No Hair said, “headed for New Orleans.”

“Where is Josh Groban?”

“Gone,” No Hair said, “on his way to California.”

“Where’s Baylor?” Bradley asked.

“Who’s Baylor?” Conner Hughes asked.

“He’s with us.” I pointed. “He fell out of the ceiling.”

Conner Hughes nodded.

“That boy took one in the face,” No Hair said. “He’s with Bianca’s lady doctor.”

“What happened to Baylor?” Fantasy asked.

I patted her leg. “Long story.”

“It couldn’t be too long if he’s with Bianca’s gynecologist.”

“Where
is
Bianca?” Bradley took control of the conversation before it ran away.

It happens.

“I put her at your place,” No Hair said. “She understood she was to stay put. She
should be there.”

If Bianca is in the Great Gumbo Getaway, someone pass me a blanket and I’ll sleep
here.

Bradley focused his attention on Conner Hughes and Fantasy. “The three men in custody
in Alabama,” he said, “the same three men who inspected and repaired the vault,” he
took a breath, “the same three men who were in charge of the Mint Condition machines—”

“The bad guys,” I said. All heads turned my way.

“—is there anyone else, Conner? Fantasy?” Bradley asked. “Is there anyone else in
this building who worked with, worked for, knew Miles Davenport, said boo to Miles
Holloway, rode in the elevator with Miles Davenport—”

I raised my hand. “I rode in the elevator with him.” All heads turned my way again.

“To the best of my knowledge,” Conner Hughes said, “if you have him and if you have
his three men, you have everyone.”

“Right,” No Hair spoke up. “We need him. Where is
he
? What’s the plan?”

I heard a ringing in my ears, a clacking, then a siren.

No Hair scanned the faces of his very attentive and suddenly very awake audience.
“Am I missing something?”

I could see the rapid rise and fall of Fantasy’s chest out of the corner of my eye.

“Oh, hell no.” Conner Hughes slowly turned his head from side to side. “No, hell,
no. Oh, no. No. Hell no.”

“I asked if there’d been any problems at the airport,” Bradley said to No Hair.

“And I said no,” No Hair said. “Because there weren’t. Bianca didn’t show up for her
flight, I already had her at your place, and there were no problems.”

“Miles Davenport not being taken down at the airport is a problem.”

* * *

The long night got longer. The bar glasses disappeared and the coffee cups came out.
It was three in the morning and we began furiously backpedaling.

Granted, too much had happened in a short amount of time, as evidenced by the fact
that all of us looked like we’d been hit by a bus, three times, by three different
buses, successively larger buses, and No Hair had been the last one onboard. Bradley
thought I’d gone over it with No Hair and in all the Alabama activity, I thought he’d
gone over it with No Hair.

As it turns out, neither of us had specifically instructed No Hair to lead the airport
charge against Miles Davenport. So Miles Davenport not showing up at the airport didn’t
even register on No Hair’s radar, because he knew nothing about it in the first place.

“I thought you had him, No Hair,” I said. “This whole time we’ve been sitting here,
I thought he was locked up.”

“I never had him, Davis. I had confirmation that he’d tried to book a Bellissimo jet
in Bianca’s name.”

“How did he even know enough about our internal operations to call transportation?”

A question I should have asked hours ago. In my defense, I’d been three hundred miles
away and a little busy.

Fantasy found her voice. “You’re forgetting he
knows
Bianca.” Fantasy found her legs. “He replaced her eyelashes.” Fantasy walks and taps
her lips when she’s thinking. The fingertips of her right hand were red and raw. Don’t
play with nitroglycerin. “Not to mention he’s had our operating manual for months,”
she said, “because he’s had Holder.”

Conner Hughes raised and shook a me-too finger.

No one said, but it was the elephant, that Miles Davenport’s ticket this week had
been Fantasy. She’d played right into his (bed) hands. Holder Darby’s life was ruined.
Christopher Hall’s life was over. It was yet to be seen if Conner Hughes would land
on his feet after the dust cleared, but in the long run, I had a bad feeling the price
Fantasy paid for being caught in Miles Davenport’s web would be the highest.

* * *

We contacted surveillance and had them bring up whatever footage they could from the
casino floor and all elevators that could be accessed from room 2631. I issued a property-wide
APB on him with all of security, pit bosses, slot attendants, valet, the guy emptying
ashtrays, and my favorite Friday night hooker in the main casino bar. (Sadie. She
knows everyone.) I thought about calling Kinko’s and having flyers printed. All in
vain. No sightings, and the video showed only one item of interest: A woman wearing
a black trench coat, a wide-brimmed black straw hat, and dark glasses knocking on
the door of room 2631.

“Who is that?” Bradley asked.

My heart jumped to my throat when I answered. “It’s Bianca.”

“Surely not,” No Hair said.

We ran the video feed forward and back, then again, and never saw anything but a woman
in black knocking on the door.

I turned to No Hair. “You’re sure she’s upstairs at our place?”

“I’m positive.”

“Call her,” Bradley said.

I dialed. “Mrs. Sanders? Where are you?”

“I’m at your home, David, and it is atrocious. I need to speak to you immediately.”

I hung up.

“She’s fine.”

We called transportation and waited to be patched through to the fleet supervisor.
We crowded around the gold marble table where my phone, on speaker, was keeping company
with coffee cups.

“Walk us through it.”

“The call came in at nine o’clock,” he said, “on the dot, from a man who identified
himself as Mrs. Sanders’s butler. He said she would take off at midnight. Exactly
midnight. Forty-five minutes before the flight, we called to tell her the car was
downstairs waiting to take her to the airport, but she didn’t answer. And she never
showed. We waited an hour, then pulled the plane back in the hangar. It’s not the
first time Mrs. Sanders has changed her mind or given us conflicting and confusing
instructions. Several months ago, we landed in Denver and she said she meant Dallas,
and expected us to know it, because she wasn’t wearing her snow boots. She fired the
entire crew.”

That’s our girl.

Miles Davenport could have walked out the front door, hailed a cab, and been on his
way to Bangkok. Miles Davenport could have easily stolen or carjacked a vehicle and
driven to Birmingham to meet up with his platinum. Miles Davenport might still be
at the Bellissimo. Watching us right now.

“I know where he is.” All heads turned my way. “He’s at Jay Leno’s place.”

* * *

Except he wasn’t.

I had sensory overload from being with too many people for too many hours and vertigo
from the helicopter rides and lack of sleep. I was jittery from the two cups of coffee,
and now I had déjà vu.

Inside Jay Leno’s door, Dr. Paisley’s clothes were in a trail to the sofa, a bright
red bra dangled off a solid white lampshade, and Baylor, naked from the waist up,
his nose still very very broken, sat up from the sofa and pulled a gun on us. “Shith!”

Paisley, her hair styled Light Socket, also naked as far as we could see, rose up
from the same sofa.

There’s just no telling what all that sofa has seen.

I picked up Baylor’s pants from the pile and threw them at him. “Get up.”

“Davis,” Paisley said. “I need to talk to you.”

“Not now.”

When they joined us in the hall five minutes later, neither Baylor’s nose nor Paisley’s
hair in any better shape than it had been five minutes earlier, Bradley called it.
“We’re done. Everyone get some sleep. We’ll meet again in the morning.”

My nice warm bed was just steps away.

“Jeremy, if you would, escort Bianca home.”

No Hair nodded.

“Fantasy, stay with us.”

“I need to go home,” she said.

Bradley didn’t hesitate when he said, “That’s not an option for you right now.”

She paled. She swallowed. She studied the floor.

“Conner, stay here.” He threw a thumb at Jay’s door. “I’ll post guards at the elevator
and at the door.”

Conner nodded. He was so beaten up, he’d have agreed to take the other end of the
sofa from Baylor and Paisley.

It was a long walk home down the hall and around the corner. When we got there, neither
I nor Bradley had a key.

“No one’s given me a key, Bradley.”

“How have you gotten in?”

“Sears,” I said. “Sears has let me in and out.”

“Stand back,” my husband said. He pulled the gun from under his jacket and shot through
the lock before any of us could stop him. I honestly didn’t know how much more I could
take. We looked at one another when we heard a loud thud and extreme crying from the
other side of the door. Bianca.

Bradley, gun drawn, kicked the double doors open with his foot.

We stared into the foyer of the Big Easy Flea Market.

This one room.

If these fleur-de-lis walls could talk.

We were too stunned to move and the noise, obviously from the cat, was deafening.
The cat’s amplified cries bounced and echoed around the room, origin unknown. The
magnolia tree in front of us had been decorated with wool streamers. The cat had shredded
Bradley’s Armani and Brooks Brothers dress pants and they hung from the tree in ribbons.
Every sock Bradley owned was in the foyer, either in the tree or on the floor. The
cries were coming
from
the tree. I ran. Something was so very wrong with the cat.

Bianca was against the back wall wearing my pink bathrobe and drag queen false eyelashes,
two sets, tops and bottoms, none anywhere near straight. She blinked the big things
and I swear the accompanying draft blew my hair from my face.

The cat was crying its cat heart out. I was at the base of the tree moving branches
and magnolia leaves as fast as I could and I couldn’t find it, I could only hear it.
Changing positions, I caught a different view of Bianca through the tree limbs. She
was standing between two chairs holding a taser gun.

“
Bianca
?” I heard Bradley’s footsteps cross to her. “Where did you get the gun?”

“It’s David’s.”

“What have you
done
?” he asked.

I couldn’t see the cat, but I could see the scene from between the branches. Bound
and gagged in one of the chairs was poor Sears, and his face was a maze of crisscrossed
lines of dry blood: His eyes, his lips, and ears were slashed slices of inflamed flesh.
He looked like he’d walked through a glass door, and he rocked in his prison chair,
wild-eyed.