No Immunity

she was doing was Wasting time. She could get Hummacher’s address—probably listed—and see if Tchernak was there. What car was he driving? Had to be a rental. There were a dozen rental companies. If she had to call every one of them...
    No, that was the wrong end of the snake. “Start with the end you can put your hand on,” that’s what she’d told Tchernak each time she’d given him a lead to track down. Her own hand was nowhere near slimy scales. But if she were to make a grab?
    She’d grab on to Tchernak’s modus operandi. What would he do after his initial call to Adcock? Make plane reservations... on Southwest, just as she had.
    Headlights came up behind her fast. She was doing eighty-five, pedal to floorboards, but the lights had to be doing over a hundred. No red flashers, though. As the lights came closer, she could make out their height—truck lights on an eighteen-wheeler. She let out a great sigh as the truck pulled out around her and swept by. She dialed information, and then Southwest. “Listen, we’ve got this rental car we booked through you guys and we left all the papers in the motel yesterday morning. We’ve been driving all day, and, well, this is embarrassing, but we can’t remember where to return the car. You’ve got some record of this, right?”
    “I can’t give you directions, but you could call Budget direct for that.”
    So far so good. But she was holding her breath. Now for another way of asking, “What am I driving?” With Tchernak it wasn’t likely to be a compact. Or a midsized. At the client’s expense? “Just one more question. I think they said they had a special drop-off for off-road vehicles. Can you check on that?”
    “I’ll ask.”
    It was a minute before the voice came back on the line to tell her he didn’t know.
    She slowed and dialed.
    “Budget Rental Cars.”
    “What kind off-road vehicles do you have in Las Vegas?”
    “Jeeps.”
    “What colors?”
    “Gold, white, and blue. Which would you like?”
    “Thanks.” She hung up, checked the road, and redialed. “Budget Rental Cars.”
    “Listen, I am really embarrassed to be calling you about this. If my husband back in the hotel room knew this, he’d never let me out alone in Vegas again. But the thing is I went to the casino, you know the big green one?”
    “Miran.”
    “Well, you blow it’s got a parking lot the size of Dallas, and it’s not like I had anything to drink, I just got caught up in the quarter machines and wandering around and buying those cute little dog magnets, the ones you put on the fridge door? And I was playing different machines after that, and well, I got all turned around, and now I can’t remember where I left the Jeep Brad and I rented from you. Hell, I couldn’t even swear what color the damned thing is. I wanted the white, but you didn’t have that.”
    “Do you have the license number?”
    “Oh, jeez, no. All the papers are in the car. But you have the paperwork on file, right? Bradley Tchernak. We just got the car yesterday morning. We told you we might even turn it in last night, which we would have done if Brad hadn’t gotten luck}7 and we figured ‘go with it.’ And that was right. He’s three hundred and forty dollars up. ‘Course he spent a good bit of that celebrating, which is why he’s sacked out in the hotel room right now. Not bad, huh? At least not bad if I can find your Jeep. But, listen—”
    “It’s gold, Mrs. Tchernak. A gold Jeep, Grand Cherokee Laredo.”
    As she turned off the phone, she wondered if he would have given her the license number, too, just to stanch the flow of chatter.
    Coming at her, headlights grew fast and were gone before she had time to guess the make of the car. Not the sheriff. Where was the sheriff? What was pressing enough to drag him away from the woman who could tell the world about Gattozzi fever? Questions better considered across the Clark County line in Las Vegas.
    She checked the speedometer—eighty—and stepped on the gas.

CHAPTER 40

    Tchernak came over a hill and there it was! After the Hours of unbroken darkness the burst of bright lights ahead could have been the Emerald City, except that they were red and yellow. As he drew closer, he could differentiate between the glowing square of red and yellow dots atop a tall pole, the yellow dots in the bed of white that might indicate gas pumps, the yellow against yellow around the big square blur he figured was a building. Was this the