Private Vegas (Private 9)

Tommy’s red Ferrari was thirty yards up ahead, our side of the street. His ride was conspicuous by design, but in this scraping-the-bottom, have-not neighborhood, it was like waving a red freaking flag.

I didn’t get it.

A clump of hooded kids were standing around the Ferrari, not jacking it, which told me that Tommy had hired them to stand guard.

Cruz got out of the car without saying why. He’s an imposing guy. Muscular, and the bulge under his jacket made it clear that he was packing.

I wasn’t looking for trouble. Not this kind, and as Cruz headed toward the group of kids, I yelled, “Emilio. Come back.”

He waved to me as he kept going, signaling, Don’t worry. It’s okay.

By then, the kids had seen Cruz coming toward them, and they shouted catcalls and showed a lot of junior-punk attitude. Cruz yelled out something in Spanish, and the kids stopped shouting. But they stood their ground.

The situation looked like it could break bad in an instant.

I opened the car door and was ready to join the party, but by the time my foot touched pavement, the body language had changed and the tension had died. Cruz handed something over to the biggest kid, then came back to our car.

We both got in, closed the doors, and Cruz said, “Well, that was twenty bucks well spent. Tommy’s in there.”

He hooked a thumb behind us, indicating the Lutheran church down the block. It was an adobe-style building with sand-colored stucco walls, a red-brick roof, and security gates on the front doors.

“Tommy’s at church? That would be a first,” I said.

Cruz said, “They got a Gamblers Anonymous meeting on Sunday nights.”

I turned in my seat, saw that the church was emptying out, people leaving in ones and twos. I saw my brother walking with another man, and they were absorbed in intense conversation, maybe arguing.

Tommy’s companion seemed familiar to me, but he was out of context and I struggled to put a name to the face. The two of them walked under a streetlight, then into the shadows, then they crossed the street and moved farther away.

Soon, I was looking at the streetlight shining on the back of the guy’s balding head as he called good night to my brother and unlocked his car.

Who was he?

I couldn’t quite grab the guy’s name, but I knew that I had to do it, that something big was at stake. As his car door slammed and his engine caught, it came to me. I remembered him and had a good idea how he was linked to Tommy.

I had to make a move.

I had to do it right now.

Chapter 90

RICK HAD HIS butt in his hard seat behind the defense table, and Caine was sitting beside him in a chair on the aisle. Now there was a badass cop sitting right behind Rick, keeping his eyes on the back of his head, ready to

leap over the bar and throw him to the floor if he got out of his chair.

The cop was assigned because of the shots Rick took at Dexter Lewis. Lucky for him that Lewis, that prick, hadn’t revoked his bail, or he would’ve spent his weekend in the Men’s Central Jail, protecting his ass and trying not to get puked on by drunks.

Today, both sides were going to give their closing arguments, and then the jury would decide if Rick would be either (a) living in his house on the canal, working with Cruz and Jack, leading the good life, or (b) spending ten years in a cell, eating slop, being strip-searched, goaded, insulted. Having a murderous thug for a cellie—or worse.

And why was he in this jam?

Because that shit, Sutter Brown Truck, had put him at the scene of a crime he hadn’t committed. He wasn’t just innocent, he was as innocent as a little baby lamb. He was a retired officer of the U.S. Marine Corps, for God’s sake. He’d seen action. He was decorated.

This whole pile of crap about Vicky was a frame.

And that made Rick want to lunge across the aisle and punch Dexter Lewis’s face again. If he was found guilty, he just might do it.

There was a soft whoosh of robes as the judge came through the door behind the bench. The bailiff told everyone to rise, and they did, and then everyone sat down. In that moment, Rick turned his head, looked to see who had come to the show.