No Immunity

hadn’t noted the rumble of talk by the Chevy until it stopped.
    “What about you, Connie? Are you the safe house?”
    “No, not me.”
    “But you know who is, don’t you?”
    “I can guess.”
    “And you guess who?”
    She laughed, this time softly, dismissively.
    “What’s Jeff so involved in he’d call me here and hand me to the sheriff?”
    “Just take your good fortune and get out of here. The highway’s to your left.” Connie pulled free, loped to the Chevy, and climbed into the cab.
    Kiernan watched the Chevy take the sharp curves down the hill. From her vantage point she could see First Street, Jeff’s office, and the mortuary on the far side, and on her side the back of the saloon.
    It didn’t surprise her that Connie knew who ran the safe house. Nor that she knew a lot more about Jeff than she had admitted.
    Kiernan expected to lose sight of the Chevy as it pulled up in front of the saloon and the gang headed inside to help Jesse spend his five hundred. But it stopped in the same spot it had left from—in back—and only the passengers got out. Connie, the driver, headed east. She drove two blocks and made a right.
    Kiernan started the engine of her new vehicle and followed.

CHAPTER 30

    Tchernak turned on Grady Hummacher’s computer and sat in his chair. Was his machine at home this slow, flashing self-congratulatory’ graphics on the screen and all these numbers no one gave a shit about? He didn’t have time for this. Should have been out of Vegas an hour ago. Should have thought to check the e-mail when he was here before. At least Grady’s password was easy—Grady—or it would be taking weeks.
    Ah, but there was one message. He pulled it up. From BakDat Information Services. Bless Persis. “Your request filled, cher. Unwise to leave at unauthorized address. Call me.”
    A bolt of fear shot through Tchernak. Was she right? Had he been too green to see the danger? But this was Persis. He shook his head and grinned. Then he called her.
    “Tchernak, honey, you know I love talking to yon, but collect? From out of state? This is going to go on the harridan’s bill.” She laughed, a little trill.
    Tchernak had never seen Persis McEvoy, creator, owner, and by herself, the entire staff of Kiernan O’Shaughnessy’s preferred background service, but he pictured her as a tiny, voluptuous blonde, with bouncy blond curls and baby blue eyes. Just a bit plump all over. Pleasingly plump. He liked that. He pictured her in bed, in a teddy. He didn’t figure she conducted the rest of her business that way, and when he made the mistake of describing this scene to Kiernan once, on a drive back from LA., he found himself scrambling to defend the illogic of Persis hearing the phone, sensing it was him, tossing off her businesslike beige jacket and slacks, her one-size-fits-all running bra and cotton boxers, and slithering into the lacy black teddy before the third ring.
    “Right,” Kiernan had said, “this nubile charmer would choose to spend her days home alone with her computer.”
    “She’s self-employed like you are. She can go out.”
    “You’ve called her, day and night; when hasn’t she been there?”
    He hadn’t bothered answering that one.
    “Tchernak, here’s what she really looks like. She’s—”
    “Stop! I get whatever data you need from Persis, and I get it tout de suite, right?”
    “Sure, because she thinks you’re such hot stuff.”
    He had nodded seriously in the face of her sarcasm. “Persis comes on to me because I’m a sexy guy. No, wait! The reason I’m such a turn-on on the phone is because I’m picturing her stretching her plump white legs on her rumpled sheets while she takes down the data you need. If suddenly I’m picturing Mrs. Khrushchev, we’re not going to get our order bumped to the front of the line.”
    Kiernan had groaned.
    He had called Persis from the office only a couple times after that, but more gratifying than Persis’s come-hither voice, or his own double entendres had been the joy of watching Kiernan biting her tongue.
    Of course she hadn’t bitten it hard enough or soon enough, and among the terms Persis used for her, harridan was relatively kind.
    “Bill the call to me, Persis. I’m on my own now.”
    “Super, Tchernak. Every case you take, you call me right away and I’ll get you even,- little thing you need, you hear?”
    He gave a low laugh, picturing those golden-blond curls bouncing, her plump white breasts jiggling with