The Castle Doctrine (Daniel Faust Book 6) Read online

  I dropped the twins off at a roach motel with hourly rates, a stone’s throw from the airport. Not the glamorous digs I was expecting. Juliette sighed, looking up at the grimy windows. “They threw us out of Nicky’s penthouse at the Metropolitan. Apparently you have to pay money to live there. I told them we were the hottest people in the hotel and they should be paying us to stay there because we make everything awesome, but some people just don’t listen to reason.”

  “But we have guns now,” Justine added, hefting one of the weapons.

  I wrote them a check. Alone with my thoughts and an old magician’s top hat, chasing dawn, I was too sleepy to plan my next move. I figured I’d swing by the Strip, find a cheap room, and crash for a few hours. Still, something nagged at me. Nicky. Caitlin and I both thought it was weird that he’d flee from the feds but not take the twins with him. I knew what kind of a man Nicky Agnelli was: egotistical, venal, cruel, and occasionally murderous, but if there was anyone in the world he felt genuine, bone-deep loyalty toward, it was the twins. So why would he skip town and leave his partners in crime to live in squalor?

  “Because he’s still here,” I said and pulled a U-turn at the next intersection.

  In a city with no shortage of dive bars and strip clubs, the Gentlemen’s Bet had never been on anybody’s top-ten list. Down on a seedy stretch of warehouses and vacant lots, it mostly catered to long-haul truckers, a few local barflies, and the occasional low-rent bachelor party. Now it didn’t cater to anybody; the yellow police tape over the front door saw to that. My car was the only one in the lot. I walked past the dead neon and the crimson-painted runner of Astroturf out front and skirted the building. A fence ringed the back, penning in an overstuffed and reeking Dumpster. I clambered up the fence, pulling myself over, dropping down to the broken asphalt on the other side.

  The back door was locked. I tugged out my picks and got through it in a minute flat, letting myself inside.

  The house lights glowed across the vacant club, turned down low, casting the stage in lonely shadows. I ran a finger along the mirrored bar, coming away with a few grains of dust. Then I walked around and surveyed the rows of bottom-shelf booze. The bartender’s caddy had gone rancid, the lemons and limes sprouting moldy fuzz. Not many options for a good cocktail. Still, I dug around past the cheap liquor and came up with half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The premium stuff, single-barrel aged. I set it on the bar next to a pair of water-spotted glasses.

  “You gonna come out?” I asked the empty room. “Or am I drinking alone tonight?”

  The door to the manager’s office creaked open. Slowly, uncertain, almost sheepish, a shadow emerged from the back hallway.

  “How’d you know?” Nicky asked me.

  “Because I know you.” I popped the bottle, catching the rich aroma of Tennessee whiskey. “Grab a stool. Let’s have a chat.”

  23.

  The King of Las Vegas had tumbled from his throne, and from the looks of him, he’d landed hard. Nicky’s tailored shirt was spotted with damp stains, cuff links gone and his sleeves sloppily rolled up. His matted hair, once movie-star sculpted, hadn’t seen a comb or a shower in a week. Bristle covered his cheeks, too long to be roguish, too short for a beard.

  I poured a splash of whiskey into each glass and slid one his way. “Probably shouldn’t be pouring for you, since I suspect you already drank half the shelf, but what the hell.”

  He lifted the glass in a tired, shaking hand. I saluted, knocking my glass against his.

  “I fucked up, Dan. Got blindsided. I was looking left when I shoulda been looking right.”

  “Happens to the best of us.” The whiskey tingled on my lips. “I was just in prison myself.”

  “I heard about that. The Outfit set you up. Used you to get at me.”

  “Planted all the evidence in my trunk. Everything the feds needed to come at both of us, full force.” I paused. “Damn, I miss that car. I’m driving a Spark now. Looks like a goddamn lime on wheels.”

  Nicky grunted out a chuckle.

  “So what have you been doing, besides hiding in here and murdering your liver?”

  He ran his fingers through his greasy hair. “Looking for a way out. The bastards burned me down, Dan. My businesses, my bank accounts, all that real estate out in Eldorado, the helicopter…the feds impounded everything. ‘Evidence.’ Even the stuff I had in a shell trust. The stuff I stashed under an assumed name. They must have been watching me for years. They had a dossier on me a mile thick. I was so sure, so damn sure I was made of Teflon. That as long as I greased all the right palms and covered my tracks, I’d be on top of the game forever. Now what’s this I’m hearing about Jennifer taking over?”

  “Not taking over,” I said, then paused. “Well, yeah, she kinda is, but it’s more of a ‘first among equals’ deal. Somebody had to rally the troops.”

  “I’m surprised it wasn’t you.”

  I shrugged. “Didn’t think I wanted that kind of power. It’s a trade-off: you get the big money, the big prizes, and the big risk right along with it. Play your cards wrong, you can go from the top of the world to…well, here.”

  “You said ‘didn’t.’ Past tense.”

  He held out his glass. I poured another dollop of Jack for both of us.

  “I made some bad decisions,” I told him. “Got knocked down. And instead of standing right back up, I laid there and took it. Laid there so long I fooled myself into thinking that’s where I belonged.”

  “You played yourself,” he said.

  “Now I understand what everybody’s been telling me. I got a clean slate when I broke out of Eisenberg. A new start. What I do with it, where I go, that’s all up to me. So now I’m thinking about the future. Making some hard choices about what I want, and what I’ll do to get it. By the way, I hung out with the twins tonight. You wanna tell me why they think you skipped town without ’em?”

  “You kidding me?” He ran a weary hand over his stubbly cheeks. “Look at me. I’m a loser, Dan. They’re better off without me.”

  “You call holing up in a roach motel by the airport ‘better off’?”

  He frowned. “Son of a bitch. My place at the Met was paid up five months in advance.”

  “Apparently management decided not to honor that arrangement.”

  “They’ve got money, though. I opened a bank account for ’em ages ago, and I kept it flush. None of that was in my name. The feds shouldn’t have been able to touch it.”

  “Did you ever make sure,” I asked him, “that Juliette and Justine actually know how banks work?”

  His shoulders slumped. “Knew I forgot something.”

  “They’re a little hazy on the concept of money in general.”

  “Those girls.” He sipped his whiskey. “The three of us came up from nothing. I was just a runny-nosed punk without a pot to piss in when they met me. They showed me, y’know—they showed me I could make something of myself. That I could be somebody. How can I face them now, huh? How can I let them see me like this?”

  I took a long look around the room. The faded lights, the tarnished mirrors, dust motes in the dark.

  “The Nicky I used to work for, he never sweated over setbacks. He’d take a hit, every now and then, but it didn’t slow him down. He always had a plan to get back on top.”

  “This is a little more than a setback, Dan.”

  “Is it? You said it yourself: you came up from nothing. So here you are, back at nothing again. How did you become the King of Las Vegas? Was it dumb luck or hard work?”

  “I put in the work,” he said.

  “Yeah, you did. So you can do it again. I thought I lost everything when I landed behind bars. Tonight I realized it was just the kick in the ass I needed. I’m lighter now. That makes me leaner. Faster. This isn’t the end of my road. It’s the start of a comeback. And if I can do it, you can do it too.” I raised my glass. “Here’s to the phoenix.”

  As he lifted his glass, a little of the old fire came
back into his eyes.

  “To the phoenix.” He tossed back a swig of whiskey, nodding to himself. “I got one move I haven’t made yet. One shot at getting my feet back under me. But I can’t do it alone.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He rapped his fingernails on the mirrored bar. “The feds might not have taken everything. I had a safe-deposit box at this credit union on West Sahara, under a cover name.”

  “What’s in the box?”

  “Clean cash. Fat stacks of it. Enough to bankroll me for a while. Enough money to start making more money, you get my drift? Thing is, I can’t get near it. I tried once. I think the feds might be watching the place, waiting to see if I try to pick it up. I circled the parking lot and got a real hinky feeling about some of the customers, so I took off before anybody spotted me. Course, I could be wrong. It was just a feeling I had.”

  I knew what he meant. Spend enough time in the underworld and you start growing a sixth sense for danger. Ignoring those bad vibrations was a good way to end up in jail or a shallow grave.

  “So they might be looking to grab anybody who opens that box,” I said.

  “Might be, yeah.”

  Of course, they’d be outside the vault room. So if somebody went in to open a different box…I played the angles in my mind, sorting out the rough sketch of a plan. It could work.

  “For old times’ sake,” I told him, “and a finder’s fee, I’ll go get your money. But you have to do something for me first.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I assume the FBI tapped the lines in here. You got a clean phone on you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then take it out of your pocket, get your shit together, and call the twins,” I said. “You need them, and they need you.”

  He finished his drink, long and slow, and set the empty glass down on the bar.

  “Yeah,” he said. “When you’re right, you’re right. Okay. I’ll do it.”

  “Good man.”

  He stepped into his office to make the call. I lingered, alone behind the bar, sipping my whiskey and contemplating the empty club. He was all smiles when he came back, wearing his relief on his face.

  “It’s cool,” he said. “They’re on their way over. Thanks, Dan. I mean it.”

  “Thank me with a cut from that safe-deposit box. I’ve got expenses.”

  I stifled a yawn behind my hand. No windows in the club, but the clock behind the bar told me the morning sun wasn’t too far away. I had come to that moment of truth every veteran drinker has faced at least once: the place where you either pack it in, sleep through the morning, and salvage what remains of the day, or throw good sense to the wind and pull an all-nighter. My choice was obvious; the adrenaline rush from the museum was long gone and I was coasting on fumes.

  “I gotta crash for a few hours,” I told Nicky. “I can barely see straight, and the booze isn’t helping.”

  He chuckled. “Weak. You used to be able to drink with one hand and shoot with the other, twenty-four hours a day.”

  “I used to not be nearly forty years old.”

  “I’m a couple years older than you are.”

  “You’ve got demon blood,” I said. “We mere humans are made of frailer stuff. You got a cot in here, somewhere I can rest my head for a few?”

  “Yeah, it’s—” He froze as a loud knocking echoed at the front door. Silent, Nicky nodded downward. I followed his eyes to the blue-metal .45 sitting on a low shelf behind the bar. I picked up the revolver and we padded to the door, flanking it. On a quiet three-count, I aimed down the sights and Nicky yanked the door open.

  Standing on the scarlet runner, Justine blinked at me. “Normally I’m the one who shoots people at the front door.”

  I lowered the gun. Nicky pulled her into a tight hug. “Goddamn, it’s good to see you. Where’s your sister?”

  “In the car.” Justine bounced on her heels. “We gotta go, now. We saw a police cruiser circling the block.”

  I sighed. “They probably spotted my car in the lot and wanna know why it’s there, since this place is supposed to be a crime scene. Okay, let’s split up and clear out. Nicky, I’ll call you when I wake up, and we’ll work out our next move with the safe-deposit box.”

  A warning klaxon rang out through the fog in my tipsy, sleep-deprived brain. Not surprising: some lucky beat cop could make his career if he picked this exact moment to look our way, catching a fugitive crime boss and a supposedly dead prison escapee in his headlights. I mostly just thought it was weird to see one of the twins without her sister in tow. As I walked ahead of Nicky and Justine, stepping out into the lot, I realized I’d never actually seen the twins more than ten feet apart.

  That’s when a hand clamped over my nose and mouth, holding a white handkerchief drenched in a pungent chemical brew. A sharp smell like rubbing alcohol flooded my sinuses, and my vision doubled, tripled, then faded to black. The .45 tumbled from my limp fingers, clattering on the pavement. I was right behind it.

  24.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out. My senses returned in scattered, random bursts, the world defying me to make sense of it. I felt a burning sensation against my back, then realized it was actually bitter cold. Heard a distant, rhythmic thudding, like somebody working out his frustrations on a punching bag. Voices, garbled and slow, swam in and out of my ears on tides of nausea.

  My vision blurred back into focus. Concrete cinder-block walls all around me. Bare metal supports above, and a single light bulb dangling over my head. I was naked. Strapped to a metal folding chair with my arms behind my back. Loops of duct tape clasped my crossed wrists and fixed each calf to the chair, forcing my knees apart.

  I was in a garage, I thought, some kind of auto body shop. A back office, bare-bones furniture and a pin-up calendar from five years ago tacked up on a corkboard, Miss June posing in a bikini on the hood of a T-Bird. Through the open door I looked out to a shadowy loading bay where nightingale-blue car lifts stood rusting and abandoned over an oil-stained concrete floor. Cast in a narrow bar of stray light from a boarded-over window, a body dangled from one of the lifts by bound wrists. His feet swung an inch above the floor.

  Not just a body. Nicky. His battered face looked my way, a strip of duct tape plastered over his mouth, while a couple of guys in cheap suits worked him over. A beefy fist thudded into his gut, drawing a wheezing grunt.

  They hadn’t started in on me yet, but my situation wasn’t looking any brighter. Not when I glanced to my left and saw the tools laid out on the desk. A claw hammer. A hacksaw and a pair of stainless-steel pliers. A box of nails and a canister of black pepper. A scalpel. A soldering iron, plugged in and ready to go. Everything precisely posed to ensure I’d see it as soon as I woke up.

  Footsteps heralded a new arrival. I would have recognized his arrogant, frat-boy sneer anywhere. Angelo Mancuso stood over me like an art collector surveying an expensive piece he’d just bought. I knew the slob in the Hawaiian shirt on his left, too: Sal, his bodyguard, who I’d met back in Chicago. The man on the right I’d only seen from a distance. He’d been one of the Outfit thugs I framed in a marijuana sting right after my prison break, while I was trying to rescue Jennifer. Apparently the charges hadn’t stuck. He was a wispy blond with high thick cheekbones and a recessed, tiny chin, like his face was a half-inflated balloon tethered to a scrawny neck.

  I tugged at my bonds. No good. Had to try anyway.

  “You know,” I told Angelo, “usually when I find myself tied up and naked, somebody at least buys me dinner first.”

  Angelo and Sal snickered. “This guy,” Angelo said. “I love this guy. This one’s got a sense of humor.”

  The man on his right fixed me with an unblinking stare. “That’s usually the first thing to go.”

  “Really, guys, don’t take this the wrong way, but none of you are my type.” I batted my eyes at Angelo. “You strike me as a selfish lover. And I only like men who cuddle.”

  The man
on the right stepped around to the desk, sorting through the tools. Placing and arranging them according to some inscrutable torturer’s feng shui.

  “Patient demonstrates the use of dismissive quips as a guard against his fear and vulnerability,” he murmured to himself. “A shield of false bravado. Not unexpected. Easily remedied.”

  Angelo looked back over his shoulder, where his guys were using Nicky as a human punching bag. “I gotta thank you. We’ve been combing the damn city looking for Nicky. See, the feds didn’t know about his backup burner. But we did. We had that thing tapped for a month, but he barely used it, and when he did we could never get a fix on where he was hiding out.”

  “So you overheard the call and sent Kirmira, disguised as Justine, to draw him out.”

  “Yeah, you were a bonus. Don’t feel bad: if you got past Tony the Tiger, there were another five guys hiding behind the cars, and three more out back behind the club. You two didn’t stand a chance.”

  “Sounds like you thought of everything. Except you fucked up, Angelo.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because now the twins know Nicky’s in town. And they’ll know, when they get to the club, that he’s been kidnapped. Justine and Juliette aren’t just hitters. They’re demon-blooded threshing machines, and they got an armload of brand-new guns tonight.”

  Angelo barked out a laugh and spread his hands wide.

  “And? Let ’em look! This garage is on the other side of town, it’s been boarded up for five years, and the only neighbors are a vacant lot and a couple of foreclosures. They ain’t gonna find you. Not in time to do anything, anyway. Lemme introduce you to a buddy of mine. This guy here? We call him the Doctor.”

  When Jennifer was abducted, the Outfit had flown in their very own torture specialist to wring her dry. I’d impersonated him, playing the part to get close and cut her loose.

  Now I was face-to-face with the real thing.

  “We know just about everything,” Angelo explained. “Who’s a part of this ‘New Commission,’ what they own, who their guys are. Some of your guys are our guys now.”