The Lost (Celestial Blues, Book 2) - By Vicki Pettersson Page 0,37

I’d finished up the case that’d brought me to Vegas, and she had a girlfriend, Jane, who lived in Naked City. She worked the center bar at the Jolly Trolley.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that.” Kit gave a small laugh, getting into the telling. She was a sucker for nostalgia and thinking of her city’s heyday always made her dreamy. “It was supposed to have the best steak in town.”

“Dollar ninety-nine,” Grif confirmed. He and Evie had eaten there right after visiting Jane, though he didn’t mention that now.

“So Jane was a showgirl?” Kit guessed, and Grif nodded, because that’s how Naked City had gotten its name. The women, mostly single, lived there like a coterie of hens, due to the location’s proximity to their jobs on the Strip. They also had a habit of sunbathing topless in groups on the buildings’ roofs to avoid tan lines, which could cost them their jobs.

“Well, the place took a spectacular swan-dive from famous to infamous in the years since you were last there,” Kit said, and Grif was glad to hear her voice was back to normal, though her driving was still lousy. He cringed as she zigzagged between two cars and a delivery truck ambling on the two-lane road. “Those women would be sunbathing on our finest crack houses today, and Naked City now references prostitution, not chorus lines.”

Grif shook his head. “Evie would be so disappointed.”

This time the silence rose between them like a wall.

“We’re here,” Kit said softly, as they turned into a lot that sagged and tilted. Grif caught her wrist as she shoved the gear into park.

“Baby—” he began.

Though her smile was more of a wince, she closed her other hand over his own. “I know.”

And she let the tension, the past—the worry over Evie and Grif’s misplaced dreams—roll from her shoulders just like that. She gave his hand a squeeze, took a deep breath, then got out of the car.

A single patrol car was already parked sideways at the Shangri-La apartment complex, along with Dennis, who’d somehow managed to arrive first. Kit headed his way, but Grif held back to observe events from the Duetto’s bumper. A curious crowd was already beginning to gather on the sidewalk . . . though not so curious that they wouldn’t take note of a vintage convertible sports car in a neighborhood littered with vehicles that looked like tuna cans on inner tubes.

Staring down a teen already eyeing the rims, Grif leaned against the hood. Kit was right. The neighborhood couldn’t have gotten any more run-down if someone dropped a bomb on it. And the Shangri-La was damned well the same complex Jane had lived in all those years ago. Its white facade had been re-stuccoed in a nauseating pastel pink, and green doors popped along the top railing like dark bruises. Fifty years ago, a tidy row of rose bushes had burst with blooms along the ground level, proudly attended by all the pretty residents. But nothing thrived here now, Grif thought, eyeing the chipped tile of the in-ground pool in the front courtyard. Algae had stained the rim to match the complex’s doors.

“What they looking for this time?” A kid, small for his age, and barely into double digits, sidled up to Grif. He was dark-skinned, but not exactly African-American. He had a rat-a-tat accent, too, so likely had roots someplace south of the border. Someplace warm. But he shivered now, alert with nerves, as he waited for Grif’s answer.

“Get home, kid.” Grif crossed his arms as he watched the officers begin their door-to-doors. “It’s not safe around here.”

“No shit it’s not safe around here, pendejo. It’s my ’hood.”

Grif did a double-take at the kid’s language, then asked, “Know it well?”

Motioning with his arms, the kid tilted his head. “Man, what’d I just say?”

Yeah, the kid was street all right, and after the day he’d had, Grif couldn’t help but wonder where this soul would be in another fifty years. Not in Naked City, that was for sure. This wasn’t a place that sustained life.

“What’s your name?”

“Oye,” the boy shot back. “I’m the one asking the questions around here.”

Unblinking, Grif lifted an eyebrow.

The boy, either unused to being seen, or too used to being watched, fidgeted, jerking on his jeans. Poor kid. Didn’t even have a belt to his name. “It’s Luis, man. Why you wanna know?”

“We’re looking for a couple of junkies, Luis. A man and a woman.”

Luis just motioned behind him, at the block of mismatched homes