Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

saw the gun in his hand.
    The stairway risers were covered with linoleum that had been worn through to the black underlayer and from there right down to the boards. He went up them quietly, keeping to the side of the steps where they were less likely to creak.
    Shapiro was in front of the TV. A tipped-over, empty quart of expensive bourbon lay on the couch next to him. The actors on the afternoon soap opera were humping tastefully beneath the sheets. When their choreographed cries faded, the action cut to an ad for toothpaste. Shapiro didn’t react.
    Shane thought the man was dead. It certainly would account for the smell. Then he heard the faint bubbling of a snore and realized that Shapiro was dead, all right.
    Dead drunk, so out of it that he had filled his pants like a baby.

Chapter 45
    Las Vegas
    November 4
    Late afternoon
    S hane’s office was cool, well furnished, and smelled like glory after hours spent on the dusty streets and in the ripe alleys of Las Vegas. Risa sat with her head resting on the back of a sea green brushed-leather couch and tried not to worry about Cherelle.
    “So far,” Shane said to Ian and Niall, “we’ve got one dead bottom feeder, and he’s the only one that matters. He’s the point where the gold entered the system. We’re assuming it went from Cline to Shapiro but can’t prove it because Shapiro says his computer crashed and took all his records, and that’s why he got drunk.”
    “Do you believe him?” Niall asked.
    Shane laughed.
    “Want me to squeeze him?” Ian asked.
    “Short of beating the crap out of Shapiro—”
    “Dana frowns on that method,” Niall cut in.
    “—we’re stuck. Like Covington, he has deniability, lawyers, and has been around this track before,” Shane finished.
    “Don’t forget Frank Firenze,” Ian said.
    “The one who was following us in the red car?” Risa asked.
    “Yeah. By the time I got his name, he wasn’t following you anymore. I called and asked him why he was following you. He didn’t know what I was talking about, his car had been in the shop, he wouldn’t follow you in the future, good-bye.”
    “If you see him tailing you again,” Niall said to Ian, “let me know. Otherwise . . .” He stretched and rubbed his short, dark hair. Even the corporate jet cramped his long frame, but Dana wanted the gold and that was that. “We’ll concentrate on the three other bottom feeders who are running around with the kind of treasure that the British Museum is screaming is rightfully theirs.”
    Risa was still flinching at the description of Cherelle as a bottom feeder when the rest of Niall’s words sank in. She sat up in a rush. “What? I missed that part. When did the British Museum get in on the act?”
    “As soon as we put out pictures on the Net,” Niall said, “the Brits jumped on them with both feet, yelling ‘Mine, mine, mine!’ The Irish leaped in right after, then the Austrians and—”
    “The Austrians!” Shane interrupted.
    “Hallstatt and La Tène,” Risa said. “Right?”
    “Right,” Niall said.
    Shane snorted. “Nice try. Doesn’t fly.”
    “Hey,” Ian said, “when it’s an international pissing contest, all that matters is volume, not quality.”
    “You’re brighter than you look, boyo,” Niall said to Ian.
    “That wouldn’t be hard,” Shane muttered.
    Ian flipped him off without real interest.
    “As Dana would say, ‘Shut it, children.’ “ Niall bent down and pulled a sheaf of printouts from a battered canvas map case that was older than he was. “Rap sheet on Timothy Edgar Seton, Cherelle Leticia Faulkner, and Cesar Firenze Marquez, street name Socks.”
    “Firenze?” Shane said. “Interesting.”
    “Any relation to Frank Firenze?” Ian asked.
    “Probably. The Firenze family was supposed to be Mob in Vegas back in the bad old days,” Shane said. “But they’re superclean now. The Gambling Control Board wouldn’t have it any other way. John Firenze—the head of the family—has a business degree and all the right political connections.”
    “Maybe that’s what Frank was after—Socks and the gold,” Ian said to Risa. “When he saw you looking in all the wrong places, he gave up on you.”
    She barely listened. She was still reeling from hearing Cherelle’s middle name for the first time. “I didn’t even know she had one.”
    “One what?” Niall asked.
    “Middle name,” Shane said before Risa could. “Cherelle’s. Leticia.”
    Ian looked from Shane to