Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

it wasn’t casino business she would be conducting in an hour. The thought of her meeting someone for lunch shouldn’t have bothered him. After all, he was the one who had encouraged her to be active in the private-appraisal business, if only as another way to ensure that he kept tabs on what was new in the old-gold market.
    Yet something about her reaction to the call made every fey instinct in him wake up and sniff the air for danger. Niall would have called it things that go bump in the night. Shane just called it a hunch.
    Risa was hiding something.
    From him.
    “No, not a client.” Deliberately she opened one of the seven auction books. “Have you looked at the figurine in lot 18B? Granted, it’s only gilt rather than solid gold, but the design is exquisite.”
    Dutifully Shane looked at the figurine.
    All he really saw was the moment when he would be alone with his own version of the Eye in the Sky, reviewing the input from the camera that covered the jazz bar just off the lobby of the Golden Fleece.

Chapter 14
    Las Vegas
    November 2
    Noon
    “Y ou said you’d wait for Cherelle to—”
    Socks didn’t let Tim finish the sentence. “I didn’t say shit. You did all the talking.”
    With a heavy foot on the accelerator, Socks sent the car shooting into an intersection just as the light went red. Cars on either side honked. Socks hung his middle finger out the window.
    “You shouldn’t bust lights when we have crack in the car,” Tim said. “I ain’t aching for any more time in the joint.”
    “What are you? My old lady? Bitch, bitch, bitch. Can’t do anything but bitch. Besides, there ain’t enough rock left to cover a cockroach’s dick, remember? We finished it an hour ago.”
    The next light was dead solid red when they approached the intersection. Socks considered blowing through just to hear Tim’s girly shriek, but there was a Budweiser delivery truck pulling into the intersection. Folks around here would hang him if he got in the way of their brew.
    Tim stared out the window and wished he had some more coke. This was the no-collar section of Las Vegas, the part between Glitter Gulch and the Strip, where the gutters were filled with trash and the windows and doors with iron bars.
    “Home sweet home,” Tim said bitterly.
    Socks didn’t care. In fact, he felt real comfortable on these dirty streets. A man knew the score here: do unto others before they thought of doing it to you. He had grown up not far from this neighborhood.
    So had Tim, but he didn’t like it nearly as much as Socks did. The five-year difference in their ages had kept them from meeting each other until Tim checked into the same prison cell as Socks. Tim had been in for card-sharping and humping a fifteen-year-old. Socks had been in for sticking up a 24/7 convenience store. Both of them had complained of their bad luck in getting caught doing what everyone else was doing.
    Across the street a hooker spotted the shocking purple car. She was wearing a crotch-length leather skirt, mountainous platform sandals, and a stretchy midriff blouse that once had been white. She swung her hips in an improbable figure eight as she crossed the street and leaned in the open driver’s window.
    Socks gave the goods a thorough once-over, then passed. She looked fifty and was probably twenty-five. He could see the needle tracks on her dirty toes and the dead space in her eyes. The emptiness and dirt didn’t bother him, but he wasn’t nearly horny enough to take on a whacked-out hype. Not after watching a ripe number like Cherelle rub all over Tim. Socks might not be as pretty as his friend, but he was damned certain his equipment was just as good. That was one thing you did a lot of in jail—seeing how you measured up against other inmates.
    The light changed to green. Ignoring the woman, Socks gunned the engine and turned off the main street. After a few blocks he cranked the wheel over and zoomed to the curb in front of two sun-beaten bungalows whose curtains were drawn as tight as the bars over the windows. Both houses had a small front porch shaded by an awning. The bungalow on the left had an old man in a wheelchair and a dog flaked out at his feet.
    Tim would have noticed the old man only if he hadn’t been on the porch. For as long as he could remember, Mr. Parsons had been parked in that spot with a dog nearby. It was the same for the weeds and dust. Just there. Always.
    The tiny cottages were crouched between a two-story