“Lucas, this is terrific,” Weaver said. He’d been in the FBI too long to actually sound excited, but he was. “We’ll get all over it, starting tonight. What are you doing?”
“We’ll talk to one more of these hairdressers, named Meredith Duffy, then . . . mmm . . . we got another guy we want to talk to, but I don’t think we’ll make it today. He’s down in Miami.”
“Okay. Thanks again,” Weaver said. For the first time, he seemed to have a little hope in his voice.
When Lucas rang off, Bob said, “I feel kind of bad about that. They’ll find something good and guess who gets the credit?”
“Life sucks and then you die,” Lucas said. He looked both ways as they rolled out of the shopping center into heavy traffic. “Get on your phone and find the fastest way to this Bombshell place.”
Bob started tapping on his phone but said, “Life sucks and then you die, so you better take the credit where you can. You know the feds. When it comes to credit, they’re always the first in line. Look what happened with that 1919 guy you killed. I never even saw your name in the newspapers.”
“There’s still newspapers?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. Nobody knows I was involved but a bunch of U.S. senators,” Lucas said. “Who would you rather have on your side? Some bureaucrat halfway up the ranks of the FBI? Or a U.S. senator who sits on the Finance Committee and can fund a new machine gun for you?”
“You got a point,” Bob said. “Let me get this address.”
* * *
The Bombshell was in another crumbling mall and apparently aimed at a younger crowd. What Lucas thought of as soft rap was playing in the background, for the half dozen customers and hairdressers.
Lucas showed his badge to a woman at the reception desk, who said, “Yes, Meredith is here, she’s working at the moment . . .”
“We only need to talk to her for a few minutes . . .”
“I’ll see what I can do.” She walked down the line of hairdresser chairs and spoke to a tall dark-haired woman who looked over at Lucas and Bob, then said something to the receptionist, who came back and said, “She’s finishing a color touch-up, but she can’t stop now. Give her ten minutes.”
* * *
Meredith Duffy looked like she knocked off a 10K road race every morning before work; dark hair close-cut, no fat anywhere, long legs, her arms showing some gym muscle. As she left her chair and walked toward them, Bob muttered, “She moves like Rae.”
Duffy took them to the salon’s back room, a narrow rectangle with shelves on both sides filled with bottles and pieces of hairdressing equipment, and which smelled like vinegar. A small square window penetrated the wall at the far end, letting in some light; the window had two bars across it.
“I didn’t interact with those men,” she said, when Lucas explained that they were looking for witnesses who might recognize the men on the Mako. “They were not my type. At all. They were sort of porky and red-faced, like they might drop dead of a heart attack five minutes from now. Like they live on surf ’n’ turf and tequila. I don’t think any of them could have run a block.”
“There was a girl named Patty Pittman . . .”
“I heard rumors about her from a friend,” Duffy said. “She disappeared, but this was way after the boat thing.”
“You heard about her from Alicia?” Lucas asked.
“Yes, have you talked to her?”
“A while ago,” Lucas said. “She couldn’t identify anyone, either. We need to get to somebody who spent some time with these guys. We heard that some of the women from the boat may have dated them.”
Duffy’s eyebrows went up and she said, “Uh, you, uh, I . . . Um, I really haven’t stayed much in touch with the class, except for Alicia. I’d be perfectly happy to look at photos, if I thought I might help, but . . . I don’t think I can. I didn’t care about those guys. I was socializing with the other girls. I haven’t seen any of them since then—the girls, I mean.”
“Except Alicia.”
“Yes, except Alicia.”
They pushed her on exactly what she’d seen on the boat, and how she’d avoided the men from the Mako. She stubbornly insisted that she simply hadn’t paid attention to them. When they’d hit a dead end, Lucas gave her his card. “If you think of anything that might help, call us. These are bad people and they need to be taken out of circulation.”
“If I think of anything . . .”
* * *
As they were walking out to the car, Bob asked, “When do you think she started lying?”
“When I told her that Snow said she couldn’t identify anyone,” Lucas said. “Duffy thinks she can.”
“I got the feeling that Duffy is sure she can. You want to go back and jack up Snow?”
Lucas scraped his lower lip with his upper teeth, then looked at his watch. “It’s almost five, it’s getting dark, and Snow said she was about to start on her last customer an hour ago. She won’t be there. Besides, it might be better to let her stew on it overnight. The fact that she lied. We’ll hit her again tomorrow.”
“I looked up Magnus Elliot’s house on the iPad, the satellite view. That’s a place we might not want to go walking around in the dark.”
“Okay . . . we got a lot done,” Lucas said. He yawned. “Let’s find a new place to eat. Maybe the feds will run some of these women down tonight. We’ll find out in the morning.”
“There’s this street over in Fort Lauderdale, Los Feliz or something, supposed to have some good food.”
“Let’s go,” Lucas said. “I’m hungrier than hell.”
Turned out that the street was Las Olas, not Los Feliz. Parking was a nightmare, but they lucked into a slot a few blocks from the restaurant they’d picked and walked back. Bob was talking about palm trees and houses when Lucas interrupted: “Did we just make a mistake? Should we have hit Snow again? Or hit Elliot?”
“This investigation has been going on for months,” Bob said. “One more day . . .”
“That’s not what I asked,” Lucas said. He was strolling along with his hands in the sport coat pockets. “I asked, did we make a mistake?”
Bob considered, pursed lips, staring down at the sidewalk.
Then, “I don’t know. Maybe.”