Brian Freeman - Stripped

Along the way from Henderson to 1-15, she made her usual stop for coffee and a cigarette in the parking lot near McCarran. She watched the planes and thought more seriously about chucking her job and escaping the city. Funny how her thoughts could change in a day, when just yesterday she assumed she would never leave. She and Bobby had had a long talk overnight, when she got home from the crime scene in Lake Las Vegas. He always stayed up to greet her-it was sweet-but when he saw the slur scraped into the door of the Spyder, he threw a fit and wanted to storm down to city hall. He was tired of the harassment, and she was, too. She knew it would never change. As long as she stayed in Las Vegas, she would be a freak, hated and unwanted.

The trouble was, she loved her job. She didn’t like the idea of being bullied out of town.

She stubbed out her cigarette and drove to the Badlands golf course in the northwest corner of the city to find Leo Rucci. The clerk at the pro shop told her that Rucci’s foursome would be somewhere on the Diablo nine, and he let her take a golf cart to find him. As she followed the cart paths, she fell in love with the city again, as she always did. The fairways were lush emerald green, dropped in narrow strips amid the giant estates and golden brush of the desert and dotted with pure white sand traps. The razor peaks of the red rock mountains loomed overhead a mile to the west. The temperature was in the mideighties, but the rushing wind on her face kept her cool.

She found Rucci and his three partners on the green of one of the later holes. Their rough laughter carried on the wind. She waited until they had putted out and were on their way back to their own golf carts, then drove up and parked behind them. She got out with the police sketch flapping in her hand.

“Leo Rucci?” she called.

All four of them stopped and studied her suspiciously. One of the younger men slipped a hand inside his wind-breaker, and Amanda wondered if he was armed. Rucci waved the others off and approached her, twirling his putter in his hand. He was obviously the alpha male, the tallest and biggest of the group. He was in his late sixties, but he was physically imposing, with a shaved head and a neck that looked like a tree trunk. He wore sunglasses, a charcoal-and-black Tehama windshirt, and khaki shorts. She could easily imagine him as a younger man, busting heads for Boni as the casino manager of the Sheherezade.

“Yeah, I’m Rucci. So what? Who are you?”

“I’m Amanda Gillen, from the homicide division at Metro.”

Rucci’s face didn’t move. “Cop, huh? So what do you want with me?”

Amanda handed him the sketch. “I’d like to know if you recognize this man.”

Rucci took the sketch without looking at it and wadded it up, then tossed it into the air and let the wind blow it away. “No, don’t know him.”

“Thanks for studying it so carefully,” Amanda said.

“I don’t like cops. That means I don’t like you. You want to put someone away, you do it without me.”

“This man may be trying to kill you,” Amanda said. “Or your son.”

Rucci reached into his pocket and took out a golf ball. He put it between his two huge hands and laced his fingers together. With his elbows up, he squeezed. His fingers turned red, but the muscles in his face didn’t contract, as if he were making no effort at all. Amanda heard a crack as the casing of the golf ball split. He opened his hand and peeled the cover off the ball, then tossed the remnants away along with the core.

“No one messes with Leo, sweetheart. If somebody wants to come after me, I don’t need your help.”

“How about your son?” Amanda asked. “Do you watch his back, too?”

“My boy Gino can take care of himself,” Rucci said.

“Well, you better warn him that somebody might be painting a target on his back. Three people are dead, including a little boy. They all had family connections to the Sheherezade and Amira Luz. Like you, Leo. So you or your boy Gino could be next.”

“Thanks for the advice, Detective.” Rucci turned on his heel and headed back to his three stone-faced colleagues.

“Hey, Leo,” Amanda called after him. “Who killed Amira?”

Rucci stopped. He turned back and leaned on his putter. “It was some nutcase in L.A. Why don’t you ask Nick Humphrey about that? He was the cop on the case.”

“Some people think Walker Lane killed Amira.”

“Some people think Castro killed Kennedy. That don’t make it true.”

“I guess it would have taken balls for Walker to kill Amira. I mean, she was Boni’s mistress, wasn’t she? Did Walker know that?”

Rucci came toward her with an ugly snarl, brandishing the putter as if he might take a swing at her. Amanda involuntarily stepped backward. “Boni Fisso has done more for this city than all the cops and politicians put together. Got that? He’s one of the guys that made this town great. So don’t you go fucking around about him with me, okay? Boni’s farts are worth more to Las Vegas than anything you’ll ever do.”

Amanda recovered and stepped inside Rucci’s shadow. She was half a foot shorter than he was, and she knew damn well he could snap her in two with little effort, but she shoved her face close to his anyway. “Where were you when Amira got killed?”

“You know where I was,” Rucci retorted, grinning for the first time. “And you know what I was doing. I was balling one of the dancers. She could hardly walk straight when I was done with her. Maybe you’d like to know what that feels like, Detective.”

“Or maybe I’d just cut it off and use it as a paperweight, Leo,” Amanda said, smiling back. “Tell me about the fight that night.”

“What fight?”

“The dancer you were sleeping with, Helen, says you got a call from one of the lifeguards. Kid named Mickey. There was a drunken fight outside, and you went to break it up.”

Rucci shook his head. “Helen’s wrong. She should be keeping her mouth shut and not talking to cops, if she knows what’s good for her.”

“You threaten a witness, Leo, and you’re going to regret it.”

“I don’t need to make threats. There was no fight. There was no phone call. Helen’s memory is fucked up. That happens. She’s an old woman now, underneath all the Botox and plastic. We had drunks get rowdy all the time, and I used to break their noses and send them back where they came from. But not that night.”

“You think Mickey would tell the same story?” Amanda asked.

“You find him, you ask him,” Rucci said.

“Any idea where I can find him?”

“Sure. I stay in touch with every fucking kid who spent a summer at the casino helping girls out of their bikinis.”

“What was his last name?”

Rucci grinned. “Mouse.”

He lumbered back to his cart and slammed his putter back into his bag. The foursome drove off in their two carts, and as they left, one of them looked back and extended his middle finger at Amanda.

She waved back at them.

Serena let Cordy drive his PT Cruiser to the offices of Premium Security. She sat in the passenger seat and stared out the window, trying to figure out which emotion would get the upper hand. She was angry at herself for dwelling on the past, confused about her feelings for Claire, madly in love with Jonny, and horny as hell. Take your pick.

Cordy had a Spanish-language radio station on, and he was pounding his fingers against the steering wheel to the annoying, thumping beat of a song she didn’t understand. When Serena couldn’t take it anymore, she reached down and clicked the radio off.

“What’s eating you, mama?” Cordy asked.

“Nothing. I’m just not in a mood to do ‘ La Bamba ’ now, okay?”