“This lawyer I was friends with once told me that when a guy gets shot, it’s not necessarily murder. If a cop shoots him while he’s doing a crime, that’s not murder. If the guy shoots himself in the head, that’s not murder. Murder’s, like, a legal thing. Whether or not it’s murder depends on who’s doing the shooting.”
“So . . . who’d do the shooting?”
“Not us. Remember how Deese keeps saying the cops won’t take him alive? I believe him.”
* * *
—
DEESE GOT BACK an hour later, carrying two twelve-packs of Coors and a couple of sacks of blue corn chips.
Cox asked, “Where in the heck were you? We were getting worried, we almost took off. And two twelve-packs?”
“No sweat,” Deese said. “Rog called me. He wanted me to meet Santos at Circus Circus to give me the money. I said, ‘Fuck that, I’m not meeting that asshole anywhere he wants to meet me.’ So I went to find a place, and I did. And the two twelve-packs are so we don’t have to stop if we need to get out of town.”
“Where’s the meeting?” Cole asked.
Deese squinted at him, and Cole said, “Come on, Deese, we already agreed. Santos might be set up to shoot you in the back. We’ll watch out for you.”
Deese popped a can of beer out of a twelve-pack, put the rest in the refrigerator, looking from Cox to Cole, then said, “All right. The Show Boat mall. Hundreds of people wandering around. He won’t take a chance of shooting me in there. We’ll tell him what time, we’ll meet in a Chipotle’s, won’t wait any more than five minutes, he can come in any entrance he wants, so he’ll know we won’t ambush him.”
Cole nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
“I gotta call Rog and tell him,” Deese said. He went back to the bedroom to make the call. As they had before, Cox and Cole slipped down the hall and listened outside the bedroom door.
They heard Deese say, “. . . called Show Boat, it’s a big mall. Seven o’clock, I’ll be at a table inside a Chipotle’s. It’s on the ground floor . . . Nobody’s gonna want to shoot nobody else in that place, they’d never get out with all the people around, the security guards with guns. Okay, well, you tell him . . . And tell him I got a gun, too.”
* * *
—
COX AND COLE slipped back down the hall when they heard the conversation winding up, with threats from Deese’s end, and probably from Smith’s as well.
Deese came out of the bedroom a minute later and said, “We’re all set. Seven o’clock. We’ll all go in early and scout the place.”
Cox had dropped onto a couch before Deese got out of the bedroom and now she bounced to her feet and mimed punching Deese. “Now we’re doing something. Now we’re getting there. Nobody gets hurt. And we’re out of Vegas, and fuck all those marshals.”
Cole said, “Sounds like Smith knew all about what happened.”
“Yeah, he did,” Deese said. “I gotta think on that. That motherfucker. Maybe get the money and eat his liver anyway.”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Tremanty was frustrated. Not angry, exactly, but unhappy, and as he sat next to Rae he was drumming his fingers on the tabletop. He had an overnight bag next to his shoe. His suit was rumpled and he hadn’t shaved. “You’re telling me that they know you’re here.”
Lucas nodded. “Probably. There are a couple of ways they could know, so we have to believe they do. Even if they don’t, Santos could have scared them off.”
“They could be most of the way to Idaho by now. Hell, they could already be there.”
“The Vegas cops might get Santo’s prints off the brass he left at the shooting. If they do, his ass is in a crack,” Bob said.
“Yeah, yeah, but I’m not holding my breath,” Tremanty said.
* * *
—
THEY WERE still talking, arguing, when a call came in for Lucas. He checked his phone and saw that it was from the Marshal Service’s district office. Lucas, Bob, and Rae had checked in with the Vegas marshal on the way into town. He answered, “Yeah? Davenport.”
“Davenport. This is Carl Young. Listen, we got a call, a woman trying to get ahold of you, and she asked for you by name. She said it’s a matter of life and death. She said I should tell you the name Deese. I understand that’s your