“I do have one lead. Detective Ford?” She held out her hand again, and Connor gave her the drawing of Johnny Ramos. “This man was seen going into the German guy’s room at the Oxford, at about the time the attack took place. Have you seen him around the neighborhood at all tonight?”
She handed the drawing over, and watched Killian give it a quick once-over. In less than a couple of seconds, he was handing it back.
“No, ma’am. I haven’t seen him.”
“His name is Johnny Ramos. Have you heard of him?”
“No, ma’am.”
Dax Killian was a pretty good liar, but he was still a liar. He was probably pretty good at evading surveillance, too, but he’d just bought himself a night’s worth of it.
“Lieutenant?” Weisman said, standing outside a door in the corner of the office. “I think I’ve found our phone in there.”
“Open her up.” She didn’t ask permission. She didn’t need to ask permission.
Weisman opened the door and turned on the light. It was a bathroom with a wide-open, floor-toceiling, double-hung window. She walked over and leaned a little ways out the window, far enough to see the street two floors below.
It had been a night of open windows.
“Is it in there, Weisman?” she asked, looking back at the officer kneeling on the floor next to a tote bag.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“What’s that bag made out of?”
“Looks like vinyl to me, Lieutenant.”
“Vinyl,” she said. “Let’s get it back to the precinct without contaminating it, Weisman. I bet we can lift at least one good set of prints off it, and probably another real good set off the phone. What do you think, Detective Ford?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Connor said. “At least one good set off each.”
“Good.” She turned back to Dax Killian. “The phone in the bag belongs to that blond hooker I’m looking for, a dominatrix, maybe one with a knife. If she comes back here, looking for it, you watch yourself, and I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call.” She handed him one of her cards.
“Yes, ma’am.” Without a second’s hesitation, he took her card and slipped it in his pocket.
“And if you see this Johnny Ramos guy, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
And if Dax Killian gave her a call any time in the next forty years, she’d eat Weisman’s hat.
Sonuvabitch-that was the only thought Dax had, watching Lieutenant Loretta Bradley and her boys exiting the office. Sonuvabitch.
He closed the door behind them, threw the lock, and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.
“Come on, Easy, baby.” He speed-dialed the bad girl and put the phone to his ear. “Answer.”
Geezus. Erich Warner was in Denver, and he’d brought his favorite witch with him, the blade queen of Bangkok, coming straight out of Tokyo: Shoko. One name, innumerable knives.
A kanji and a swastika? Shoko had practically patented the design. She’d sure as hell perfected it on half a dozen people that he knew about, and who the hell knew how many more that he didn’t know about.
He strode into the bathroom and leaned partway out the window, scanning the sidewalks and the street. Kevin Harrell had made a helluva jump for a guy in handcuffs. Dax was amazed he wasn’t splatted all over the sidewalk below the window.
But he wasn’t. Oh, hell, no. He was off and running somewhere, and if the cops didn’t pick him up, somebody from Bleak’s outfit probably would, not that Harrell mattered anymore. Dax had gotten what he needed out of the guy.
When Easy’s voice mail picked up, he left a very succinct message. “Warner in town. Shoko with him, fully loaded. Stay out of Denver. Stick to Ramos like glue, and call me. I’ll meet you.”
Geezus. He looked at his watch. Five o’clock was looking a helluva long way away.
He dialed Burt, ready to read him the riot act if he answered. But Uncle Burt didn’t answer, so he left another very succinct message. “If you’re not at Bleak’s warehouse when I get there at five A.M., I’m going to come looking for you, Uncle Burt, and you ain’t gonna be happy when I find you. Don’t disappoint me.”
It was a threat, yes, but it was also the truth. The plan had been to leave good old Uncle Burt out of the deal, keep the fat out of the fire and that sort of thing, but Dax had changed his mind. The fat was going in feetfirst. Uncle Burt, God help him, was going to be his backup on the deal. It was Easy he was kicking off the team. He didn’t want her within a mile of Franklin Bleak. Even with Lucky Lindsey Larson in his arsenal of tricks, he didn’t want the bad girl anywhere in Bleak’s sight.
She was already in enough trouble.
And now Shoko. Christ.
Easy had a cool head on her shoulders, one of the coolest, but the Bangkok bitch had hurt her, marked her for life, and Dax knew the bad girl still had nightmares about it-which really pissed him off. He’d been waiting a long time to get Shoko in his sights, but it wasn’t going to happen tonight. Even more than the Bleak deal, he still owed Warner, and more than the debt was the prize Warner had offered, the little something. The German had information Dax wanted, the kind of information that was going to have him doing just about anything Erich Warner asked, short of treason, a designation that could get damned slippery, depending on how much the information proved to be worth on the E-ring in the Pentagon.
Closing the bathroom window, he wondered how in the hell he and Easy were going to talk their way out of this once the cops lifted her prints off the phone she’d used to set up her contact with the parking valet. A lot of people could place her at the Oxford at the right time for an assault with a deadly weapon charge at the very least, including Johnny Ramos.
Yeah, that guy. The one whose picture Lieutenant Loretta was flashing around. He had to be trouble, and yet Dax’s directive stood-he wanted Easy sticking to the guy like a hot lamination. Dom Ramos had been a punk, but he’d been a punk Dax had liked, a straightforward guy, no bullshit.
He reached in his back pocket and pulled out the angel picture postcard. It was an invitation for a showing at an art gallery over on Seventeenth, the Toussi Gallery next to the Oxford Hotel, and it had Ramos’s name on it. No address, just the guy’s name where the address would be, along with the note written in a loopy female hand Dax took the time to decipher this time-“Come be the star that you are, sweetie. Love, Nikki.”
He flipped the card back over to the angel side, and sure enough, the showing was for an artist named Nikki. That was all the postcard said, Nikki, like Picasso, or Rembrandt. From the looks of the painting on the front of the card, one name might be enough. She was good.
And this woman thought Johnny Ramos was a star.
Dax figured he better go find out if she was right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Afghanistan, Nuristan Province, not the Kunar- Johnny was looking right at it. He could smell it, feel the dust sifting down on him. There had been so many tunnels cut into the mountainsides, and Third Platoon’s job had been to search a section of them.
He knew better than to reach for his pistol. He was in Colorado, not a war zone, but the sight of the tunnel, actually being in one again, unnerved him.
It shouldn’t. He hadn’t been unnerved in Nuristan, not even the first time, when they’d gotten rocked by mortar fire on their way out. They’d spent another four weeks clearing tunnels, and he’d never broken a sweat-until now.
Shit.
He was still in the elevator, and Esme and Nachman were heading around a corner. He wasn’t going to let that happen, for her to go off in the darkness of a damn tunnel with a strange old man, and him just stand here and watch her disappear.