“Larry!” I shouted, leaning so far south metal cut into my wrists. “Where are you?”
He hesitated. And I feared for a minute I’d lost the connection.
“Larry? Can you hear me?” I asked, my voice starting to go hoarse from shouting.
“I need to talk to you,” he finally answered, so quietly it was barely more than a whisper. “But I don’t want to do it over the phone. Can we meet somewhere?”
I looked back up at the handcuffs.
“Uh…I’m kind of tied up at the moment. Can’t you just tell me what’s going on now?”
“No. No, it’s too…I’d feel better doing this in person.”
I sighed. “I’m not exactly mobile at the moment.” Understatement alert.
“Fine,” Larry responded. “I’ll have Felix come pick you up.”
“No, I-”
But he’d already handed the phone back to Felix. “Maddie, where are you, love?” he asked.
“No,” I shook my head at the phone. “No, you can’t come here. Ram-uh, Bruno will be out any second.”
Felix paused. “What’s going on over there?”
I sighed. “I’m handcuffed in the backseat of Bruno’s car.”
I wasn’t sure being so far away from the earpiece, but I could have sworn I heard Felix laughing. “Kinky.”
“No, not kinky. False imprisonment. And quit laughing!”
I think I heard him snort. “Okay, where exactly is this car?”
“The employee parking lot of the Victoria Club.”
“Give me five minutes.”
“No, Bruno will be back any-” But he’d already hung up.
I hit the end button with my big toe. So much for my date with the Keebler boys.
I watched the numbers on Ramirez’s dash clock crawl by, all the while keeping one eye on the back door of the Victoria. If Ramirez came out before Felix got here, I had no doubt he’d make good on his promise to shove me onto the first flight home, and I’d miss my one chance to see Larry. Maybe forever. I wondered what Larry wanted to tell me. I hoped something bad about Monaldo. Really bad. As in bad enough for the Feds to arrest him and end this whole Godfather meets Tootsie my life had become. Then I could go back to my real life where my biggest worries included finishing the Rainbow Brite jellies on time (which, the longer I stayed in Vegas, was becoming a bigger worry), sitting in traffic on the 405, and wondering when those adorable wedge sandals were going on sale at Macy’s.
I was just wondering exactly when the sales clerk had said those wedges would be on sale when a blue Dodge Neon pulled into the parking lot and killed its lights. I waved the best I could with my foot (since in addition to being immobilized, my hands had completely fallen asleep), and finally Felix spotted me. He pulled the Neon into the empty space beside the SUV and got out. He allowed himself a little smirk for my benefit before trying the door handle. Not surprisingly, it didn’t open.
“It’s locked!” I shouted through the tinted windows.
Felix nodded. Then he went back to his car and returned with something that looked like a long nail file. With a little maneuvering, he wedged it between the doorframe and the window of the passenger side. I kept one eye on the back door of the club, knowing that if Ramirez caught him tampering with his car, Felix was a dead man.
The nail file wiggled and twisted, making a couple of awful grinding noises that I prayed weren’t the sounds of black paint being chipped away. Finally the door locks popped up. I was so happy I could have laughed.
Felix opened the door. He took one look at the handcuffs and did laugh.
“It’s not funny.”
“No, not at all,” he responded, starting to snort again.
“Just get them off, smartass.”
He pulled a pocketknife out of his khakis and flipped it open. To my surprise, it didn’t contain scissors and bottle openers, but a series of different sized and shaped files. He fit one in the keyhole of the handcuffs and after doing the same sort of shimmy and wiggle thing he’d done with the giant nail file, one metal bracelet finally popped off my wrist.
I could have hugged him. That is, if I’d had any feeling left in my arms whatsoever. I shook my hand, feeling little pins and needles race over my skin as the blood surged back into my limbs. Felix made short work of the second bracelet and as soon as I was accessory free, I jumped out of the SUV and into the Neon’s passenger seat.
“Let’s go!” I shouted as Felix tucked his handy-dandy lock picks back into his pocket. “Trust me, you do not want to be here when Bruno sees this.” While no paint had been actually chipped in the making of this great escape, the little rubber strips between the car door and his window were kind of stretched out. And bulging. And there might have been one or two teeny tiny marks on his windows. Those, coupled with the fact that an empty pair of handcuffs was dangling from his passenger seat, were enough to put Bad Cop in a really bad mood. We’re talking back-in-a-holding-cell bad. Not something I wanted to be around to witness.
Felix seemed to get my drift, sliding behind the wheel and gunning the engine. I kept my eyes on the back door, chanting “please don’t open, please don’t open, please don’t open,” as Felix flipped on the lights and pulled out of the parking lot, heading west on Fremont.
I heaved a sigh of relief as the Victoria shrank in the rearview mirror, glad that at least one thing had gone my way today.
“So was that a reporter thing back there?” I asked, rubbing the feeling back into my hands.
“What?”
“Breaking into cars. Picking locks.”
He grinned. Then did a noncommittal “Maybe.”
“Not that I’m being judgmental or anything. I’m actually quite impressed. I know how hard it is to open a locked door. Trust me, that whole credit card thing they do on TV doesn’t work.”
Felix raised an eyebrow at me. “Been doing some breaking and entering of our own lately, have we?”
I shrugged and mimicked his “Maybe.”
“Touché,” he muttered.
“So where did you learn how to do that?”
“Liverpool.”
I gave him my “and…” look, gesturing for the long version of that answer.
“Tell you what,” he said, turning to face me as we stopped for a red light. “I’ll answer your probing question if you answer one of mine.”
Uh oh. Never good when a reporter used the word “probing.” But, then again, I reasoned, what did I really have to lose? This guy already knew everything about me. Besides, it wasn’t every day a girl ran into someone with his very own lock-picking set outside of HBO’s primetime lineup. I admit, curiosity won out over good judgment. (And for those of you keeping track, yes, this was a recurring theme in my life.)
“Deal,” I said.
Felix swiveled back in his seat as the light turned green. “All right then. When I was a kid, my friend Rodney’s father owned a towing service. When we got bored we used to borrow his tools and break into parked cars.”
“You’re a car thief?” Okay, I knew tabloid reporters were pretty low on the food chain, but hadn’t figured I was actually riding with a criminal.
“No, no, no.” He shook his head. “We just borrowed them for a bit. Always put them back.”
“More like a car borrower, then?”
“More like, yes.”
“Did you ever get caught?”
Felix shook his head at me, doing a tsk, tsk, tsk thing with his tongue. “That’s two questions, love.”
“Hmmm.” I sat back in my seat, pretty sure I wasn’t getting the whole story out of him.
“My turn,” Felix said, his eyes twinkling.
“All right, what do you want to know?”
“You and that Bruno fellow. What’s really going on there?”
“Nothing,” I said, a little too quickly.
“Nothing?” Felix gave me a sidelong glance.
“Absolutely nothing,” I replied. Which was almost the truth. (Almost.) From Ramirez I got no sex, no trust, no respect…see? Nothing.
“So,” Felix prodded, not any more satisfied with my answer than I had been with his. “The words ‘boyfriend,’ ‘dating,’ not entering into this situation at all then?”
I shook my head until whips of blond hair smacked against my cheeks. “Nope. Not at all.” The whole truth and nothing but the truth this time. Ramirez hadn’t uttered either one of those words. And I had a sinking feeling it would take an event more miraculous than the Red Sox winning another World Series to make it happen. Bad Cop didn’t have happily-ever-after in his repertoire. Hell, we couldn’t even do happily-sleeping-together-just-once.
“Hmmm,” Felix said, taking his eyes off the road to give my barely-B-hugging tank top a healthy stare. “Interesting.”
I shifted in my seat, not sure I wanted to probe what that “interesting” might mean. “So, uh, where are we going anyway?” I asked instead, clearing my throat.
Felix gave me a little half smile and I could swear he was enjoying how uncomfortable his attention made me. “The New York, New York. Larry’s waiting for us in my room.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“He called me about an hour ago, trying to get a hold of you again. Said he needed to see you.”
“Any idea what about?”
Felix shook his head. “No. But he seemed rather shaken up about something. I almost didn’t want to leave the poor fellow alone, but he said there was no way he was going near the Victoria again. Apparently some bad blood there.”
I cringed, thinking of Hank’s swan dive. Felix didn’t know how true that statement was.
Ten minutes later we pulled up to New York, New York. Felix, slowed down at Tropicana and I could see him mentally debating between the valet and the milelong hike in from self-park that would save a whopping two dollars.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “You can afford the Marquis suite, but you’re too cheap to pay for parking?”
Felix shot me another one of those crooked smiles. “What can I say, Maddie? I’m an enigma.”
“Hmmm.” I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Family money,” he confessed, pulling to the right as he opted for the valet after all. “From my father’s side,” he explained. “The thriftiness,” he emphasized, with a look that said he did not appreciate my cheap comment, “is from my mother’s side. She’s Scottish.”
“So you’re a stingy rich guy?” Okay, I admit, I kind of enjoyed making him uncomfortable too.
He let my question go without comment, instead handing his keys over to the valet as we got out of the car. He didn’t wait for me to follow before making quick strides through the casino to the elevator doors. We rode up in silence. Once we got to the fifteenth floor, Felix unlocked his door with a key card and I got my first glimpse of Larry.
He was sitting on the edge of Felix’s bed, fidgeting worse than a heroin addict. He looked like he’d aged fifteen years in the last three days. His eyes were bloodshot, his girdle twisted around his waist to revealing an unflattering pooch (that made me instantly suck in), and his pantyhose were running a marathon all the way down to his scuffed heels. All in all, he looked so pathetic I couldn’t help myself. Despite my earlier vow to let all men rot in Hades, I ran over and gave him a big hug.
Larry hugged me back, his arms wrapping tightly around my middle, and I got a warm, fuzzy, Hallmark moment feeling.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I said, my voice threatening to crack as I pulled away. Only he didn’t look all that okay. To be honest, he looked terrible. “Larry, what’s going on?”
He did a deep sigh. Then looked from me to Felix.
“I’m in big trouble, Maddie.”
Well, duh. “Tell me,” I said instead, sitting down on the flowered bedspread beside him.
He sighed again and looked down at his hands as he spoke, picking at his flaking ruby red nail polish.
“I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Start with what you told me,” Felix prompted.
I shot him a hurt look. My dad had confided in Tabloid Boy first?
Larry nodded. He took a deep breath, picked a little more nail polish and finally started in a shaky voice. “I’ve been dancing at the Victoria Club for about five years now. Before that I was on the Strip, but, well, you know how it is when we girls get older. Weight starts climbing, things start to sag, there’s more shaving…”
“Got it, moving on,” I interrupted, fighting the urge to stick my fingers in my ears and chant, “I can’t hear you! I’m doing denial!”
“Right. Anyway, Hank and I both moved to the Victoria. The pay was all right, not Strip good, but all right. It might have been enough but…well, see, I’ve got this little problem.”
Uh oh. Here it was. I was going to find out I was genetically predisposed to alcoholism or a gambling addiction. “What kind of problem?” I asked. “Drugs? Gambling? Booze?”
“Shoes.”
Mental forehead smack.
“Shoes?”
Larry nodded. “I can’t help it, I just love shoes. I see a pair of heels and I can’t stop myself. I need to have them. Pumps, slingbacks, mules-it doesn’t matter. I love them all. And let me tell you, finding heels in a size eleven wide is not cheap. But I can’t stop. You don’t know what it’s like. I buy them and it’s like a rush of happiness just courses through me.”
Sadly enough, I did know what it was like.
“Okay, so you were in debt over shoes. What happened next?”
“Well,” he said, “one day Monaldo said he had a delivery to make and would Hank and I like to do it for a little extra cash. I was about to have my car repossessed over an adorable pair of ballerina-strap wedges in lime green, so I jumped at it. It was simple, really. Monaldo gave us a handbag that we took to one of his warehouses out in the desert. We handed it off to these two Italian guys in business suits, then we came back to the club. Simple.”
Right. Simple. Somehow the Italians in business suits would have tipped me off, but then again, I wasn’t in shoe debt. (Okay, at least not that much shoe debt.)
Though I had to hand it to Monaldo, the plan was brilliant. The last place Ramirez and the Feds would be searching for Monaldo’s payoff to the Marsuccis was in a bunch of drag queens’ handbags.
“What then?” I asked, almost giddy that I’d finally found the proof Ramirez needed to put Monaldo away for good.
“Well, the next week Monaldo had another errand for us. This time he sent me and Bobbi. Pretty soon it became a regular thing. We’d trade off; whichever of the three of us wasn’t on stage that night, we’d go make the run. Worked out great for a couple of months.”
“So what went wrong?”
Larry shook his head and sighed again. “One day the guys in suits were late. It was Bobbi and me out there. We got bored waiting, so we started looking around the warehouse. We opened a couple of boxes and found out they were all filled with shoes. Bobbi and I…” He paused, looking sheepish. “We each took a pair. I know it was wrong, but we honestly figured no one would miss two little pairs. The place was filled with them. I mean, thousands of designer shoes, Maddie. Can you imagine?”
I tried not to salivate, reminding myself they were probably all fakes. “So you took the shoes?”
“Yes. I took a pair of Dior pumps and Bobbi chose some black Prada stilettos. Then when the suits showed up we gave them the bag like always and went home. It was a couple of weeks later that Bobbi decided he could raise some extra money by selling his pair on eBay. Being that they were Prada, he figured he could get a whole month’s child support out of them. Only when he put the auction up, the lady he tried to sell them to said they were knockoffs. I looked more closely at my pair and sure enough, they were fake too. Look, if we had known that Monaldo was dealing in fake designer shoes, we never would have gotten involved.”
Mobster he didn’t blink an eye at. But fake shoes were where he drew the line. I would have rolled my eyes if deep down I didn’t kind of agree with him.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing,” he said, his eyes filling with tears. “Bobbi disappeared the next day. I didn’t know what to do. I filed a missing persons report, but the officer didn’t seem to think anything had happened to Bobbi. He said these deadbeat dads skipped town all the time. So I told Hank everything we’d found and told him I was going to tell the police about the shoe warehouse. Hank didn’t want me to do it. He…” Larry paused. Then looked down at his hands again. “Well, Hank liked the money too much. He didn’t want it to stop. That’s when I decided to call you for help. I’d seen your picture in his paper.” He gestured toward Felix, who had been silently standing near the door this whole time. “I read how you got that lawyer out of trouble last summer and helped put a murderer behind bars. I thought maybe, well, maybe you could do something here. Only as I was dialing, Hank came into the room waving a gun. He was talking crazy, about how he couldn’t afford to go back to a dancer’s salary. We fought and the gun went off. Blew a hole right through Hank’s favorite chair.”
At least that explained the gunshot I’d heard. “Then what happened?”
“I promised Hank I wouldn’t tell anyone if he’d put the gun away. We went back to work like nothing had happened. Then three days later, Hank got pushed off the roof.” His eyes teared up again.
“Do you think it was Monaldo?” I asked slowly, watching Felix out of the corner of my eye. His expression was placid but I’d bet anything he was mentally taking notes like a fiend.
Larry nodded. “Who else would it be? He must have killed them both.”
I chewed on a fingernail, the hamster running overtime in my little wheel as I tried to digest all he’d said. I could see Monaldo wanting to silence Bobbi. Advertising their counterfeit merchandise on eBay probably wasn’t good for business. But it sounded like of the three, Hank was most happy to keep his mouth shut. So why go after him? I admit, so many pieces of random information were swirling through my brain that I was having a hard time connecting the dots.
And then Larry gave me another one to add to the mix.
“That’s not all,” he said. “Monaldo called me.” He paused, his eyes shifting to Felix again. “And he wants me to do another drop for him.”
“Another drop?” I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Larry nodded. “Uh huh. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Monaldo left me a message a couple of hours ago. I don’t know what to do.”
“When is it?”
“Tonight.”
I bit my lip. “You have to tell the police, Larry.”
He shook his head, his red wig swishing back and forth. “Unh uh. No way. I wouldn’t last a second in jail. Look at me!”
He had a point. I’d seen OZ, I knew what those places were like. Inmates weren’t exactly the most tolerant bunch of people around.
“Maybe you wouldn’t have to go to jail,” I reasoned. “Ramirez said if you testify against Monaldo, you could be put into some kind of protective custody.”
“Ramirez?” he asked.
Oops. I shifted my gaze from Felix (who had suddenly become much more interested in our conversation) to Larry. “Uh, he’s a police officer I kind of know. Not important. Point is, if you go to the police they can protect you.”
Larry looked down at himself. Then up at me. “I don’t think I’d exactly blend into witness protection, do you?”
I wrinkled my forehead. “Well maybe if you…” I looked down at his shoes. Pink Mary Janes. Okay, bad place to start. I moved my gaze upward. “If you just changed the…” Pink pleather skirt? Ruffled white blouse? Sparkly red two-tone nail polish?
I sighed. Forget it. He was right.
As much faith as I had in Ramirez, it would take a Lance Burton-sized illusion to hide Larry from Monaldo. I mean, how many six-foot-tall red-headed drag queens were there? Besides, once Larry went into protection it was out of Ramirez’s hands. And into the hands of the Feds. After the way they’d handled this case so far (not to mention shortchanged me on my tax return the last two years in a row), I didn’t have a whole lot of faith in them. All it would take was one little slip and my dad would be flying off a building or stuffed in with the frozen peas.
As much as I’d had a martini shaker of mixed feelings about Larry in the last few days, seeing him sit across from me-his pantyhose run, his mascara smudged, and his love handles drooping out the side of a too-tight girdle-I wasn’t ready to let some Mafia shoe runner rob me of the chance to get to know my dad. Instinctively I leaned over and caught him in a hug so fierce it surprised even me.
“Don’t worry, Dad, we’ll think of something.”
Larry pulled away, shock mixing with a faint smile on his face.
“What?” I asked.
“That’s…” He paused, his voice choking up. “That’s the first time you’ve called me ‘Dad’.”
He was right, it was. I hugged him again, feeling that warm, fuzzy Hallmark thing wash over me again.
Only this time, it was mixed with dread.
After promising Larry we’d find a way to get him out of this, I sent him into the bathroom to shower, change, and (denial, denial, denial) touch up his makeup. Felix booted up his laptop, his fingers flying over the keypad as he typed out the story of his career. Visions of tacky headlines danced in my head, but there wasn’t much I could do to stop him at this point. Instead, I pulled out my cell and dialed Dana’s number, filling her in on where I was and giving her the abridged version of Larry’s monologue. She assured me she had Mom and Mrs. R. under control, showing them the finer points of blackjack while Marco bought everyone “Viva Las Vegas” T-shirts.
I hung up and stared out the window at the shapes of the Excalibur, the MGM Grand, and the Luxor shining in the distance. Everything about this town seemed larger than life. Including its problems. I watched the endless stream of tourists glide down the moving walkways as I mulled over Larry’s options, all the while listening to the constant hum of Felix’s keyboard.
“Some story, huh?” I asked.
Felix didn’t look up. “Uh huh.”
“What if I could give you an even better one?”
He cocked an eyebrow my way. “I don’t quite see how it could get better than this.”
I paused. See, here’s the thing: As Ramirez had said over and over again, it all came down to proof. If Larry wasn’t willing to testify about being the missing link between Monaldo and the Marsuccis, we needed some other proof of what had gone on. Like pictures. And I knew one person who had a knack for snapping photos of the unaware.
“What if I promised you an exclusive?”
“An exclusive?” He looked up, giving me his full attention now.
I nodded. “If…”
“Aha. I knew there was a catch.”
I ignored him. “If you help me.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Help you do what?”
“I’m going to do the drop for Monaldo.”
“Pardon?” he said, giving me the “this chick’s crazy” look.
“I need you to call Monaldo and pretend to be Larry. Tell him you’ll do his little errand for him. Only you’re really going to be taking pictures of me while I dress as Larry, go get the bag from Monaldo, and take it to the Marsuccis.”
“Who?” Felix asked, scanning his notes.
I bit my lip. I felt a little bit like I was making a pact with the devil himself, here. I weighed the possibility of Larry being wed to a cellmate named Bubba versus the amount of Spanish I was going to have to learn to translate the onslaught of Ramirez’s curses when he saw my name splashed across the Informer’s front page. Again.
I looked from the steamy bathroom door to Felix.
What the hell.
“The Marsuccis are an organized crime family,” I said.
Felix did the one eyebrow raise again. “As in Mafia?”
I nodded. Then, to the tune of his fingers furiously typing out his golden story, I told him everything Ramirez had shared about the dead customs agent, the Fed’s investigation, the containers of counterfeit shoes, and the link to Monaldo’s club.
“I knew there was something fishy about that Bruno,” he said when I’d finished. “You didn’t strike me as a bouncer’s girlfriend.”
“For the last time, I’m not his girlfriend. I’m just his…Look, that’s not important. What’s important is that we have enough pictures to hand over proof of Monaldo and the Marsuccis’ connection so that Monaldo goes to prison and Larry doesn’t end up doing a pancake impression on the asphalt. Are you in?”
Felix stuck the end of a hotel-issue ballpoint in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “It sounds a little dangerous,” he finally said.
I put my hands on my hips, thrust my chest out, and put on my best tough-chick voice. “Look, I’m a grown woman. I can handle this. Why is it everyone thinks I’m just some girly little shoe chick who can’t do anything except wait for the big boys to work this stuff out? I left it to the big boys. Look what happened. Hank’s dead, Bobbi’s dead. I am not-you hear me?-N-O-T,” I spelled out for him, “going to sit around while my dad gets picked off like some sitting duck in heels just because you think it’s too dangerous for the girly blonde. Well, let me tell you something, pal. I’m no little girl. I’m a big bad woman!”
Wow, that felt good. Okay, so it might have felt even better had I actually been saying it to Ramirez, but I had a picture of his face in my head the entire time, so it was sort of like he was there. I could feel all my anger and frustration disappearing, leaving a big bubble of confidence that I could feel filling the entire room. I was woman, hear me roar!
That is, until the corner of Felix’s mouth began to quirk upward.
“Actually, love,” he said, laughter escaping him, “I was thinking it was a bit dangerous for me.”
Pop. There went my bubble.
“Oh. Right.”
“But,” he said, actually making an effort to control his giggles, “if you’re that determined-”
“I am.”
“-and you really do agree to an exclusive, complete with pictures and everything-”
I cringed, hoping at least he used my own body to go with my head this time. “I do.”
“-then, you have yourself a deal. I’ll be your photographer.” He stuck his hand out. I shook it, half expecting his hidden horns and forked tail to come popping out.
I didn’t waste time, knowing Larry would be out of the shower any minute. I quickly dialed Information and got the number of the Victoria Club.
“You can do an American accent, right?” I asked, handing the number to Felix.
He grinned. “Ya’ll don’t have nothing to worry yo’ purty little head about, darlin’,” he drawled, doing a bad John Wayne.
“Uh, maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all…”
“Just give me the phone,” he said, snatching my cell.
I held my breath as he dialed, crossing both fingers and toes and saying a little prayer to the saint of deception and fake accents. Luckily someone up there was listening, as Felix did a perfect Californian into the phone. Okay, so maybe he was a tad more Keanu Reeves than Larry’s natural voice, but it seemed to pass muster with Monaldo.
I kept one eye on the bathroom, where steam from Larry’s shower was still seeping under the door, as I listened to Felix’s side of the conversation. It was brief and to the point. Basically a lot of “uh huh”s and “I’ll be there”s. My stomach played host to a butterfly convention as Felix asked Monaldo to remind him of the address, taking down the information on a pad of hotel stationery.
Finally Felix hung up.
“Well?” I asked.
“Tonight. Eight o’clock.”
The butterflies formed a conga line.