White sister

Chapter 57

My little guy is just starting T-ball," Sally Quinn was saying. Rosey had gone to the head, and my partner's freckled face lit up by degrees as our conversation segued to her youngest son. "The Valley homicide unit was great for a soccer mom, because it's a light division and the rotation is slow, so I could swap out hours and still drive carpools."

I saw where this was heading. "You want, we can stay flexible as long as you don't stick me with all the autopsies," I said.

She smiled and patted my hand. "I wasn't looking for that, Shane. Just worried about missing games. I'll handle my end. You don't have to worry." She turned and looked out the window of the expensive jet. "I gotta hand you this much," she said. "This is a much sexier gig. Sure beats working dust-buster beat-downs in the Valley."

Then a shadow fell over me. I looked up and saw Elijah Mustafa standing in the aisle.

"You got a minute for me, Mister Scully?" His voice was soft and his expression stoic as always.

"Sure." I stood and followed him into the empty bedroom suite in the rear of the plane. He closed the door and turned to face me.

"What's in the black case?" he said without preamble.

"Jammies."

"What caliber jammies?" Not smiling.

"Look, Elijah, I'm not here to cause trouble. I'm here to prevent it. I hope you'll realize soon that we're on the same side."

"Mister Scully "

"Detective Scully," I corrected, trying for some status.

"This trip is a big problem," he went on. "Most of the men on this flight are street G's. Mister Wright tells me they're his friends, and since I'm his temporary employee, I must take him at his word. I've done my best to check them out, but he has instructed me to walk lightly because as you know, insults to honor can turn deadly."

"You're in a tough business," I said.

"Yes, I am." He favored me with another of his long, penetrating stares before adding, "So I ask you again, what kind of fire stick are you lugging around in that bag?"

"Beretta-seventy with two, thirty-round clips."

"Not exactly a close combat piece. Kinda hard to open fire with a full machine gun inside a populated casino. That gun is at best useless, at worst dangerous. You look smarter than that to me."

"I'll make you a deal. We'll leave it in the Navigator after we get to the Mandalay Bay. However, if something happens out on city streets, you may be glad we have it."

He gave it some thought, then finally nodded. "Can you hit anything with it?" he asked.

"Let's hope we don't have to find out." Then, to get his mind off it, I said, "Why don't you tell me which of these people you're worried about and I'll put a call in to the department from one of these air phones and see what comes back."

"I'm worried about all of them," he said. "Given what happened at the Oasis Awards, I'm looking for anybody who has an affiliation with those Sixtieth Street G's. Here's the passenger manifest." He reached into his pocket and handed me a sheet of paper. "How long will it take?" he asked.

"Ten, fifteen minutes."

Then he said, "That was good work at the El Rey Theatre. My people missed those two in the elevator. We almost walked into it."

"Thank you for the compliment, Mister Mustafa."

"It was only an observation," he said softly, but a smile so slight it was barely there, bent the edges of his stony expression.

I split the list with Rosey. Mustafa cleared two separate phones and we adjourned to the bedroom suite and closed the door to start running names. All fifteen men on the flight checked out mostly they were old homies of Lionel along with some music biz types and one or two poser wannabes, but no Sixtieth Street G's. I reported this to Mustafa, who nodded but said nothing.

We touched down at McCarran, and with the engines roaring in retrograde, the plane slowed quickly, then made a turn toward the east end of the tarmac where the small corporate jet center was located. The BBJ taxied to a stop at the end of a line of executive jets and the engines shut down. While our party of gun-toting, jewelry-encrusted fight fans waited, Mustafa hurried down the boarding stairs and walked the short distance to the flight center.

A few minutes later, I watched from the window as a line of ten black Navigators drove onto the field and pulled to a stop on the left side of the plane.

After we walked down the exit stairs, I found myself standing with Lionel and Patch near one of the Suburbans.

"Why don't you ride with us?" Lionel said. "Mustafa tells me you've got a street sweeper in that bag there. Never hurts to come prepared."

We got into the first SUV with Lionel. Elijah Mustafa was behind the wheel with another FOI security man in the far back. Curtis Clark and two attractive women I didn't know got in last, filling seven of the eight seats in the lead car. I had met with my group and we had agreed to split up and spread out. I watched out the back window as Rosey and Sally got in an SUV in the middle of the caravan and Rafie and Tommy boarded the last one in line. Once everyone was inside, the ten vehicles drove slowly off the tarmac, a metallic centipede of shiny black Navigators. Then we passed through the side gate of the executive jet terminal and out onto the city streets of Las Vegas.

"The pre-party starts in ten minutes," Lionel announced from the passenger side of the front seat. "Mustafa wants to come in the back way for security, so we're taking Paradise Road, then doubling back to the Las Vegas Strip."

Curtis Clark had settled in the second row and was glowering insolently. "If that busta and his white mama try doggin' me out, I'm gonna buck down on his ass. Them two is gonna curl up like bitches."

I glanced at him, but I didn't see any danger in his opaque eyes. He was just scared and talking trash.

Mustafa turned the lead vehicle onto the strip and we rolled in a showy, black procession toward the Mandalay Bay Hotel. A skyline of memorable building profiles passed outside our smoked glass windows: Harrah's, the MGM Grand, the Luxor, with its Sphinx and Egyptian pyramid motif. Off on the other side was the shiny new Wynn Las Vegas, a fifty-story sliver of glass. We were hardly sneaking into town. Our showy procession was turning heads all up and down the glittering strip.

Then the glass-fronted, forty-three-story, Mandalay Bay Hotel appeared out the front windshield half a block away. We turned into the underground parking structure and started down the ramp to the sub-basement where there was a secure entrance, which Mustafa had chosen in advance. Our line of black Navigators pulled up in front of four new Kufi hat-wearing security men.

Mustafa turned to look in at us. "Local brothers," he said, pointing at the men who, true to form, were all wearing NSA-style earpieces. "Stay here until I check the downstairs corridor." Then he exited the vehicle as Curtis Clark took off his blue Floor Score baseball cap and stuffed it in the seat pocket.

The tension in the car grew. Everybody knew that once we got out and headed into the hotel, there would be a million sight lines and no turning back. Several minutes later, Mustafa returned with a Las Vegas police sergeant.

"Okay," he said. "All clear. This is Sergeant Bowman with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police. He's in charge of the law enforcement contingent."

As promised, I left the street sweeper under the backseat of the Navigator and followed Lionel and the rest of his party into the Mandalay Bay Hotel.