Bob said. “It’s Forte who’s doing the bookings. Besides, after what happened last year in D.C., I don’t think anybody anywhere would want to take us to a trial.”
“So they’ll have the CIA kill us,” Rae said. “That’d be more economical, too.”
* * *
—
THEY HAD BREAKFAST, drove over to Santa Monica—Lucas was driving a rental Volvo S90 and Bob and Rae had a three-year-old government motor pool Tahoe arranged by Forte—and walked into a Nordstrom’s at the end of the Third Street Promenade as soon as the doors opened. At eleven o’clock, carrying shorts, short-sleeved shirts, and golf socks in their shopping bags, they were back in their cars and headed for Las Vegas.
Bob’s mapping app reported a traffic disaster on the 405 North across the Valley, that suggested they wouldn’t get to Las Vegas until September, so they went east across town, eventually catching the 210 into San Bernardino and then the 15 through Victorville, home of an ongoing federal prison humanitarian disaster, and then Barstow, across the hard desert and into Vegas.
The 15 at San Bernardino ran parallel to, and very close to— eventually crossing—the San Andreas Fault. Lucas had read in a magazine article that if the Fault slipped a disk, the 15 would wind up in the bottom of a canyon. Two months later, the story said, there’d be tumbleweeds blowing down a Las Vegas Strip that was cut off from the Los Angeles high rollers.
He didn’t necessarily believe that, because there was always the 405, but the 405 also crossed the Fault, so it might also be discombobulated by the Big One.
As a dedicated resident of Minnesota, he didn’t much care about all of that as long as the Big One didn’t pop open the earth as he was driving over the Fault.
Rae had ridden with Bob for the first part of the trip, but switched over to ride with Lucas at Victorville because Lucas wanted to talk through some ideas and to make some phone calls, which he didn’t want to do while he was driving.
* * *
—
THE FIRST CALL went to Investigative Services Division on the Las Vegas Metro Police. Rae got through to the relevant lieutenant, identified herself, and asked for help on recent home invasions in the Vegas area and for DMV auto transfers for any Cadillac Escalade or Ford F-150 around the first of June. The cop said he’d get the information and an investigator named Bart Mallow would meet them at the snack bar at the Bellagio. “Call when you get close. I’ll give you his direct line.”
They made it into Vegas, with a couple of stops, before four o’clock on an afternoon so hot that the waves of heat coming off the concrete made the Louisiana waves look like amateurs. They turned into the Bellagio, past a shirtless man wearing a red Speedo, red-striped toe socks, and lipstick, with glitter sprinkled on his cheeks and a plastic olive wreath atop his purple hair; he was rocking out to the street music. Three seminude fat women with glittery stars pasted on their nipples were digging his act.
As they checked into the hotel, Bob said, “Guess what they got over in the Caesars shopping mall?”
“Does it have something to do with food?” Rae asked.
“A Cheesecake Factory. We never got to go to the one in Marina del Rey.”
“Tomorrow maybe,” Lucas said, “though I can already hear my arteries seizing up. Let’s find this snack bar place and see what Mallow has to say for himself.”
* * *
—
MALLOW WAS a fortyish fireplug, something like Bob, but with more bounce and less muscle. He wore his hair in a neatly oiled blond flattop and had a nose that had been broken a few times. He had a white bandage on one side of it, sticking out like a chicken’s beak. “Mohs surgery for one of those cancer dealies. My looks are gone,” he said, as they introduced themselves.
“This’s gotta be ground zero for skin cancer,” Bob said. “I think I caught some on the drive up here.”
“You’re right, it is,” Mallow said. “On the other hand, I don’t get frostbite anymore. I was raised up in Rochester, New York.”
“Fair trade,” Rae said. And, “You got anything for us?”
Mallow nodded. “I do. If you want to get something to eat . . .”
They went through the line, for burgers and fries and pizza and Cokes, and settled back down to look at Mallow’s paper.