Michael Connelly - Murder in Vegas

“What is it, what does it mean?”

“He said it was for the entity who delivers calm after the storm. Pretty cool, don’t you think?”

Jessie nodded.

“The old man called it, The Lightning Rider.”

Two Knives walked into the ocean, leaving Scout standing alone on the beach brushing her tears, feeling the warmth of the fading sun.

Ed Krause lay on his back, staring up at the night sky, his sports jacket surprisingly comfortable as a pillow beneath his head. The desert air in mid-May was still warm, considering how long the sun’d been down. And the stars so bright-Jesus, you could almost understand why they called it the Milky Way, account of out here, away from any city lights, more white star showed than black background.

At least until Ed turned his head to the east, toward Las Vegas, which glittered on the horizon, like a cut jewel somebody kept turning under a lamp.

Jewel?

Ed coughed, not quite a laugh. Better you stuck with carrying diamonds and jade. But no, this new deal had sounded too good to pass up, especially the final destination and the cash you’d have for enjoying it. From that first day, at Felix…

… Wasserman’s house. In San Francisco, on one of those crazy fucking hill streets near Fisherman’s Wharf that had to be terraced and handrailed before even an ex-paratrooper like Ed Krause could climb up it.

Felix Wasserman was an importer, which is how Ed had met him in the first place, seven-no, more like eight-years ago. Just after Ed had mustered out of the Army and was nosing around for something to do with his life. A buddy from the airborne put him onto being a courier, which at first sounded like the most boring duty Ed could imagine, worse even than KP in the Mess Hall or standing Guard Mount outside some Godforsaken barracks in the pits of a Southern fort.

Until the buddy also told him how much money could be made for carrying the right kind of stuff. And being able to stop somebody from taking it away from you.

After climbing thirty-five fucking steps, Ed found himself outside Wasserman’s house. Or townhouse, maybe, since it shared both its side walls with other structures, what Ed thought was maybe earthquake protection, since he’d seen signs down on more normal streets for stores that were temporarily closed for “seismic retrofitting.” Wasserman had his front garden looking like a Caribbean jungle, and Ed had to duck under flowers in every shade of red that grew tall as trees before he could ring the guy’s bell.

His doorbell, that is, seeing as how Ed Krause was what he liked to call in San Fran’ a “confirmed heterosexual.”

Wasserman himself answered, turned out in a silk shirt that looked as though his flower trees out front had been spun into cloth for it Pleated slacks and soft leather loafers that probably cost-in one of the tonier “shoppes” off Union Square-as much as Ed’s first car.

“Felix, how you doing?”

“Marvelously, Edward,” said Wasserman, elegantly waving him inside. “Simply marvelously.”

Give him this: The guy didn’t seem to age much. In fact, Wasserman didn’t look to Ed any older than he had that day when Ed-working for a legitimate, bonded courier service then-first laid eyes on him. It was after maybe the third or fourth above-board job he’d carried for the gay blade that Wasserman had felt him out-conversationally-on maybe carrying something else for his “import” business. At a commission of ten percent against the value of the parcel involved.

Now Ed just followed the guy up the stairs to a second-floor room with the kind of three-sided window that let you look out over the red-flower trees across to the facing houses and up or down the slope of the hill at other people’s front gardens. Only, while there were two easy chairs and a table in the window area, Wasserman never had Ed sit there during business.

Too conspicuous.

Another elegant wave of the hand, this time toward the wet bar set back against one wall. “Drink?”

“Jim and Coke, you got them.”

“Edward,” Wasserman seeming almost hurt in both voice and expression, “knowing you were coming to see me, of course I stocked Mr. Beam and your mixer.”

Ed took his usual seat on one couch while his host first made the simple bourbon and cola cocktail, then fussed over some kind of glass-sided machine with arching tubes that always looked to Ed like a life-support system for wine bottles. Coming away holding a normal glass with brown liquid in it and another like a kid’s clear balloon with some kind of red-is this guy predictable or what, colorwise?-Wasserman handed Ed his drink before settling into the opposing couch, a stuffed accordion envelope on the redwood-see?-coffee table between them.

“Edward, to our continued, and mutual, good fortune.”

Clinking with the guy, Ed took a slug of his drink, just what the doctor ordered for that forced march up the screwy, terraced street. Wasserman rolled his wine around in the balloon glass about twelve times before sniffing it, then barely wetting his lips with the actual grape juice. Ed wondered sometimes if the wine was that good, or if the dapper gay guy just didn’t want to get too smashed too quick.

“So, Felix,” gesturing toward the big envelope, “what’ve we got this time?”

Wasserman smiled, and for the first time, Ed wondered if maybe the guy had gone for a face-lift, account of his ears came forward a little. But after putting down the wine glass, Felix used an index finger to just nudge the package an inch toward his guest. “Open it and see.”

Ed took a second slug of the Jim and Coke, then set his glass down, too. Sliding the elastic off the bottom of the envelope and lifting the flap, he saw stacks of hundred-dollar bills, probably fifty to the pack.

Ed resisted the urge to whistle through his bottom teeth. “Total?”

“One-quarter million.”

Since they both knew Ed would have to count it out in Wasserman’s presence over a second drink, the courier just put the big envelope back on the table, three packs of cash sliding casually over the open flap and onto the redwood.

Ed said, “For?”

A sigh and a frown, as Wasserman delicately retrieved his glass by its stem and settled back into his couch. “I expect you’re aware-if only in a general way-of the rather distressing state of the economy?”

“I remember hearing something about it, yeah.”

A small smile, not enough to make the ears hunch. “Ah, Edward, both dry and droll. My compliments.” Wasserman’s lips went back to neutral. “My rather well-heeled clientele hasn’t been consuming quite as conspicuously these last few seasons, feeling that fine jewels, no matter the rarity nor brilliance, can’t quite replace cash as hedges against the uncertain miasma within which we find ourselves floundering.”

Ed just sipped his drink this time, kind of getting off on the way Wasserman made up sentences more elaborate than his garden out front.

“However, the landlord still expects his rent for my shop, and the bank its mortgage payments for my home. And so I’ve shifted my sights a bit, importwise.”

“Meaning?”

Wasserman took an almost normal person’s belt of his wine. “Heroin.”

Ed would have bet cocaine. “Let me guess. I take the package of money from here to there, and pick up the powder.”

“Precisely. Which, of course, would do me no good, since fine Cabernet,” swirling the wine in his glass now, “constitutes my only source of substance abuse. Fortunately, though, I have a business contact in the Lake Tahoe area who will gladly buy said powder from you, as my representative, at… twice the price.”

Ed did the math. “You’re saying my cut of this will be ten percent of five hundred thousand?”