the Second Horseman (2006) Page 7

  Hamdi nodded silently. "Then perhaps it's time for you to be a little more forceful in the way you convince him what is and isn't in his best interest."

  Chapter ELEVEN

  The maid shook her head disapprovingly as Brandon stood there in a towel, dripping all over the carpet and telling his sad story about going to the pool and forgetting his key. Or maybe she was shaking her head at his atrocious Spanish. It was hard to be sure. After a little begging and a few of his best embarrassed grins, she finally used her passkey to let him into a room he'd chosen based solely on the fact that no one had answered his knock.

  "Gracias!" he said, ducking into the room and pushing the door closed before the maid could peek inside.

  He latched the chain and pressed his back against the wall after confirming that no one was in the bathroom or asleep in the unmade bed. Maybe his luck was changing.

  He powered up the laptop sitting on the desk and then began rifling through the open suitcase next to it, hoping the room wasn't occupied by a couple of five-foot-tall, middle-aged women.

  It turned out it was a somewhat taller middle-aged man. Brandon slipped on a very roomy pair of plaid shorts and a golf shirt that would be perfectly complemented by the collection of black socks and brown dress shoes that were his only choices. On the bright side, the loafers were actually the right size.

  He heard someone talking outside and froze, but they just passed by. If there was one thing in life that drove him nuts, it was relying on luck instead of planning. But how the hell could he plan for getting thrown out of prison by Betty Crocker's much hotter sister? Sometimes you just had no choice but to improvise.

  The overall effect of the clothes wasn't as bad as he expected. Except the socks. He took them off and slid the loafers back on. With a little luck, people would think he was going for a baggy, neo-preppy thing. Luck. There it was again.

  After another nervous glance at the door, he sat down in front of the laptop. There was no password and he made a quick inventory of its contents. All business stuff -- no credit card numbers or anything else he could use. But it was connected through the hotel's WiFi, so he pulled up Explorer and started tapping in addresses.

  "Shit," he muttered after a few minutes of effort. Mostly he was pissed off, but he also had to admit to being a little bit impressed. He'd checked four bank accounts and all four had come up closed. That was almost a hundred grand of emergency funds up in smoke. No wonder Catherine had gone for the filet. He'd paid for it.

  Another ten minutes confirmed that these assholes were really irritatingly efficient. His net worth had sunk to sixteen thousand dollars -- Canadian, no less -- in an account in Banff. What was even more annoying was that he didn't have any way of accessing that money personally. He could use his still-operational Internet bill-paying service to send him a check, but he had no ID to cash it, and Vegas was a notoriously suspicious town. He could, however, send checks to other people. Real people with identities and lives and houses and families.

  Ironically, he hadn't stashed a single ID or bag of cash in Vegas. The idea was that it was the first place anyone would look for him, so he'd have every reason to avoid it. Yet another mistake in what was becoming a long list of mistakes. His closest stash was in Salt Lake City. And, of course, there was no guarantee that instead of fake driver's licenses and cash, he wouldn't find a herd of well-armed goons or a booby trap. But what choice did he have?

  Brandon removed his glasses and squinted against the bright sun. He could see well enough not to bump into anyone and skipping the glasses would make him slightly less recognizable. Of course, crossing the road was going to be fairly death defying. What was it the bumper sticker said? Live on the edge: There's a better view.

  After only a few minutes of walking along the Strip, the heat had plastered his new shirt to his back and his hand was sweating profusely around the sixty dollars in his pocket. He'd found it in a pair of slacks hanging in the closet of his unknown benefactor and was reluctant to release it since it was all he had to live on for the foreseeable future.

  His best -- only -- option was to make it to Salt Lake and take his chances getting his IDs. Then buy a reliable old truck and head to Central America for a few years. If he could track down some local talent, he might even be able to pull a small job or two and live a fairly comfortable little lifestyle. A quiet hut by the beach had never really been his vision of paradise, but it beat the hell out of a prison cell or a coffin.

  But first, a little information. This Catherine woman knowing everything about him while he knew nothing about her and her playmates had to go. It was time to balance the scales a bit.

  He wandered over to a pay phone and thumbed through the yellow pages until he found the section for private investigators. He found a national outfit that he'd never used and dialed the number. Admittedly kind of dull, but the truth was that Pis were a great way to gather information without introducing the often unpredictable criminal element.

  "Hi. I'd like to hire an investigator, please."

  "You've got one," came the pleasantly motivated voice on the other end of the line. She sounded cute, too . . .

  He punched himself in the forehead "Focus!"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Nothing. Sorry."

  "What can I do for you?"

  "I need information on a private plane and a house."

  "What kind of information?"

  "I dunno. Whatever you can get."

  "Yo! Could I get some more peanuts over here?"

  The bartender frowned and dipped the bowl behind the counter, returning it filled with what was to be Brandon Vale's dinner.

  He'd managed to get a room at a dive hotel about six blocks away by wiring double the price of the room into the front desk guy's personal bank account.

  Thank God for dishonesty. Without it, the world would just plain cease to function. It could be a bit of a two-edged sword, though. The clerk had drawn the line at kicking Brandon back any cash. He obviously was only confident enough to play if it was the hotel and not him that was at risk.

  Brandon crammed a handful of peanuts in his mouth and washed them down with a small sip of Pepsi, careful not to accidentally swallow the maraschino cherry floating in it. That was dessert.

  While he chewed, he pulled out the phone Daly had given him and turned it over in his hand. It was a heavy model, built for durability more than sleekness, but beyond the dents and scratches it had gotten in their short time together, it had no identifying marks at all.

  Who were these guys? The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that Catherine was no career crook. More like a combination between June Cleaver, Salma Hayek, and that nervous old dentist he used to go to. Crook or not, though, she had someone big backing her. The mob? Probably not. He had a pretty good relationship with those guys. If they'd needed something, they'd just ask. A foreign outfit? Maybe. Probably. Between the Asians, the South Americans, and those damn Eastern Europeans, you could hardly breathe anymore without catching the eye of some overseas psycho killer.

  "South Americans," he mumbled before jamming another fistful of nuts in his mouth. Catherine did have a kind of south-of-the-border look. And those guys loved buying private jets with all that drug cash. But what could they possibly need him for? Next to selling coke, all other enterprises were almost comically unprofitable.

  He looked down at the phone again, memorizing the location of each button and testing his dexterity by punching a few. Satisfied, he slapped the battery back in and began quickly scrolling through the navigation screens. Within a few minutes, he had confirmed that the address book was empty, that the calls he'd received during his escape were from a blocked number, that there was no history of calls going out, and, most interestingly, that there was one voice message. He put the phone to his ear and played it.

  "Brandon. Come on. Where are you going to go? What are you going to do? Let's talk. That can't hurt, can it? Call me."

  So earnest, he though
t, yanking the battery back out of the phone. He just wanted to run into her arms every time he heard her voice. But then, who wouldn't?

  He finished his Pepsi in a single swallow, catching the cherry between his teeth and dumping the rest of the peanuts in his pocket. The bartender had his back turned, chatting seductively with an older woman who had the look of a Mary Kay rep. Their eyes were firmly locked together and Brandon took the opportunity to skip out on his bill.

  Chapter TWELVE

  One of the unfortunate by-products of his father's unfailing honesty and his mother's lack of hard and fast criminal skills was that Brandon never learned any of the more practical survival-type crimes. Things that you could use to get by if you really had your back against the wall. What he wouldn't give to be a decent pickpocket right about now.

  On the bright side, though, his mother had been cursed with an obsession for poker and Brandon had inherited her aptitude, if not her style. He was a little rusty from spending the past few years playing with Kassem and his entourage, but in the end poker was like riding a bike.

  He held his cards close to his chest, peeking at them for a moment and then sliding a few chips onto the table under the watchful eye of the dealer. The other people around the table weren't as bad as he'd become accustomed to -- rating between a two and a four and a half on a scale of one to ten. Based on his current financial situation, he'd walk if he calculated the table's average skill level above a three. He didn't need a challenge -- he needed cash.

  A guy who looked like he'd mugged an Elvis impersonator for his shades called and aimed his shiny lenses at Brandon. He was the four and a half -- a man whose body language suggested he regretted that poker wasn't a contact sport.

  "Nines over deuces," Brandon said laying his cards on the table to a chorus of frowns from the other players. Not Elvis, though. He just smiled.

  "Three sevens."

  Brandon looked around at the carefully created chaos in the casino while the dealer gathered the cards. Above him, people were floating by in fake hot-air balloons and model ships, tossing stuff to the crowd. Music blared, vividly costumed performers danced, tourists smoked and fed coins to the slots. As far as he was concerned, the Rio was the best of the bigger casinos to get lost in.

  A quick glance at his new hand revealed that it was crap, and he laid it back down on the table, trying to decide what to do.

  Elvis's eyebrows came up slightly, and the chunky lady next to him let her cigarette quiver perceptibly between her gloss-smeared lips. Brandon had been playing for nearly two days straight and had thirteen hundred dollars in his pocket -- more than enough for a fake mustache, a cowboy hat, and a rusted-out truck that could make it to Salt Lake.

  "I'm out," he said, sliding a couple of chips to the dealer and taking the rest for himself. "Hey. Do you have a business center?"

  "Susan Fallow, please," Brandon said into the phone as he sat down in a small booth neatly arranged with office supplies. There was an audible click and then the cheerful voice of his private dick.

  "This is Susan."

  "Hey, it's Brandon. Do you have anything for me?"

  "Yup. You got a fax?"

  He gave her the number and a moment later the printer next to him began spitting out pages.

  "The house you wanted to know about is owned by an elderly couple who've retired to Arizona," she said. "They rented it about a month ago and got all the money up front--in cash, apparently. I talked to the wife. Nice lady. Chatty. The lease was signed by a Ray Bradburn. I've checked the name, but come up with zip so far. Do you want me to --"

  "Nah, it's fake."

  "Seems likely based on the cash thing."

  "What about the plane?"

  "I managed to narrow it down to three possibilities based on your description and the general flight plan. The first is owned by a private individual named Robert Palmer--like the singer. He's a retired real estate developer. I forwarded you some newspaper clippings on him."

  Brandon retrieved the pages from the printer and shuffled through them, finding a carefully posed photo of Palmer smiling out from beneath a hard hat.

  "Ring any bells?"

  "Nope," Brandon said. "Never seen him before in my life."

  "I don't know exactly what you're looking for, but this guy seems pretty much on the up-and-up. Well known in the community, gives a lot of money to charities, lives in a modest house . . ."

  "Next," Brandon prompted.

  "The second is owned by a New York law firm."

  Brandon perked up a bit. Interesting in a John Grisham kind of way.

  "There are about a hundred attorneys working there. The link to their Web site is on one of the pages I sent you. Do you see it?"

  "Uh-huh," Brandon said, typing the address into the computer on the desk. A stuffy home page with limited information appeared.

  "You can get into individual profiles on all their people through that site. It also talks a bit about some of their bigger clients. They do mostly corporate work."

  He clicked through a few profiles, examining the serious, smartly coiffed headshots. It would be interesting to see if he could find Catherine's beautiful face in there anywhere. Advertising had been his first-blush reaction, but he could see lawyer, too.

  "Is any of this exciting you?" Susan said.

  "I'm not getting sweaty or anything, but I kinda like this one."

  Maybe someone he knew had told his lawyer about the job Brandon had been planning before he got busted. Then that lawyer got to thinking about it and figured it sounded pretty profitable.

  "The third is owned by a corporation: American Security Holdings, Inc. It's some kind of government contractor, but I can't figure out exactly what they do. They're privately held, so the information isn't just floating around in the public record."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I did get you a filing that lists the officers and some other basic information. I could dig deeper, but it would cost you more."

  Brandon found the document she was talking about and began flipping through it disinterestedly. The law firm was clearly the front-runner. Shady bunch, lawyers. He got to the last page and ran a finger down a list of the ASHI's board members.

  "This is good stuff, Suze. I need a chance to go through it and then I'll ca--"

  "Brandon? I didn't catch that. Could you say it again?"

  He didn't respond, instead staring down at the words printed above his index finger.

  Richard Scanlon, CEO.

  "Brandon?"

  He slammed the phone back into its cradle and shoved the fax pages down the back of his shorts.

  The corridor seemed impossibly long as he walked briskly up it, keeping his nose pointed at the floor. It eventually led back to the casino, but not before going beneath God knows how many little black bowls in the ceiling that hid the casino's surveillance cameras. He was going to be okay, he told himself. He'd been basically living in the casinos for two days and nothing had happened. The gods would really have to hate him to --

  "Excuse me, sir?"

  He kept walking, acting as though he hadn't heard. A moment later a thick hand slipped around his left biceps. Then another clamped on to his right.

  "Hey, guys, I realize you're just doing your job, but somebody's lying to you. I haven't done anything."

  Well, other than breaking out of prison and the whole life-of-crime thing before that. But why nitpick?

  "If you want me out of here," he continued, "I'm gone. Seriously. There's no need for any rough stuff, right?"

  They ignored him and continued half pushing, half dragging him forward in a well-coordinated effort that suggested they'd done this a few times before.

  When they turned right, away from the Rio's exit, Brandon tried to dig his heels in, but it did nothing other than cause him to lose one of his loafers.

  And on they went -- through a set of metal doors, down a bare concrete hallway, and finally to another metal door that they opened by slamming his head into
it.

  At precisely the right moment, one of the guards stuck a foot out and Brandon tripped, bouncing off a Dumpster and landing hard on the hot asphalt. The hotel guards weren't the only ones experienced at this kind of thing, though, and Brandon immediately rolled into a ball, covering his head to mitigate the damage from the inevitable kicks he was about to absorb. He tensed, but nothing happened. A trick. They were waiting for him to look up so they could get a shot at his face. Unfortunately for them, he was nowhere near that stupid.

  A moment later their footsteps started to recede and he heard the screech of the metal door closing. He still didn't move, though.

  "Brandon?"

  When he opened his eyes, he found himself looking at a set of subtle but artistically painted toenails.

  "Come on, Brandon. We both know you're not hurt. Get up."

  Instead, he just lay there, soaking in this latest humiliation. Finally he moved his arm from in front of his face and squinted up as Catherine's expression of irritation faded into one of mild disgust. "When's the last time you took a shower?"

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  This time they were taking no chances.

  The comforting blandness of the Chevy Impala Brandon jumped from two days ago had been replaced by a much more intimidating black Suburban with deeply tinted windows that didn't roll down. He was sitting in the back, belted to the seat and handcuffed to the man who had chased him down the sidewalk in front of Treasure Island.

  Brandon examined him out of the corner of his eye, trying not to be too obvious. He wasn't super heavily muscled like the guys in prison, but was certainly broad-shouldered and narrow at the waist. His hair was a little shaggier than seemed natural and framed features that could be described as chiseled, but by a vaguely careless sculptor. Overall impression: extremely dangerous. His old prison protector Kassem probably outweighed this guy by a hundred pounds, but if they got into it, Brandon wouldn't put money on Kassem with less than nine-to-one odds.