The Blind Page 13

  “Carter Vandemere,” Evie said. “What can you tell us about your renter named Carter Vandemere? He was an artist.”

  “Don’t remember the name, but those artsy-fartsy types, some of ’em just go by initials. Had a renter named Z who tried to pay his rent with an original piece of art. Piece of shit is what I called it, and not the kind that leads to green.”

  “Carter Vandemere,” Evie said again. This guy was starting to piss her off.

  Jimmy Ho rolled his chair across the filthy floor to a row of metal file cabinets on the back wall. “What property did you say again?”

  “Warehouse off Sixth. Loft number three.”

  She stretched her fingers. Damn, Vandemere was so close she could picture her fingers wrapping around his neck.

  The landlord poked through a file drawer and eventually took out a single piece of paper. “Yep. Carter Vandemere. Deadbeat low-life. Lived there seven months total. Paid the first four months. All on time. All in cash.” He pounded a fist to his chest two times. “Love those renters. But looks like the guy turned into a real slacker. Got three months behind. Gave him the boot last December.”

  “The current renter says you sold off some of Vandemere’s stuff.”

  Jimmy Ho squirmed. As he should. There were very clear laws about how and when to sell off goods tenants left behind.

  “Vandemere did this.” With her phone, Evie showed him a picture of the third bombing victim’s right foot. “And this.” A snapshot of the first victim’s right thumb. “And this.” A jogger who got too close to the second bomb and had her right leg severed at the knee.

  Jimmy Ho blanched, a nice creamy white tinged with green. “Okay. Okay.” He pushed back the phone. “At the beginning of last December, I phoned Vandemere and told him to pay up or he’d be on the street. He told me he’d have the money that evening. I popped over to the warehouse in the afternoon ’cause I know these deadbeats. They think they’re smart, but they’re the ones who don’t have nothing, no brains, no property, no pot to piss in. So I get there around noon and find him loading up his car.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “Hell if I know.” The landlord shrugged. “Then he takes off.”

  “Where was he going? Was he alone?”

  “I have no idea, ’cause by that time, I was seeing red.” Jimmy held up both hands. “Hey, stop looking at me like that. I’m not the criminal here.”

  “Any forwarding address?” Evie asked. “List of references?”

  “I ain’t running no Ritz-Carlton. People come and go, and they leave enough money behind to keep everything running.”

  “What did Vandemere look like?” Ricci asked with the same level of irritation nipping at the back of her neck. “Race? Big guy? Little guy? Old? Young?”

  The landlord picked at his teeth with the sharp tip of a letter opener. “Is there any kind of reward money involved?”

  Evie’s hand shot out, her wrist slamming into Jimmy Ho’s hand. The letter opener flew across the room and clanked into the file cabinet. “Think harder, Mr. Horvath. You met Carter Vandemere at least once. What did your renter look like?”

  Jimmy dipped his head as if deep in thought, then shrugged. “Green, Agent Jimenez.” He smiled, a gold tooth on the side of his mouth glinting in the dirty light. “All I saw was green.”

  On the way to their cars, Ricci said, “Man, that guy is slime.”

  Evie ran her hands along the arms of her jacket and shimmied, trying to shake off the ick. “Yeah, and we just rolled around with him.”

  “The pisser is, the guy genuinely doesn’t remember a thing about Vandemere.”

  “Yeah, he’s too blinded by all his shiny riches.”

  They reached Ricci’s car. “I’m going back to the warehouse lofts. I’ll talk to the other renters and see if we can get a visual ID. You want to come?”

  Evie rapped the top of his car. “I’ll be there later.”

  After Ricci left, she turned in a slow circle. “My nephews love this game. I’ll play.” She put her hands to her mouth and called, “I spy with my little eye…Jack.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sunday, November 1

  3:09 p.m.

  How’d you know?” Jack stepped out from behind a car wash bay near Jimmy Ho’s Wash & Go corporate office.

  Evie stood with her arms crossed, her boot tapping the cracked concrete. “I smelled you.”

  He arched an eyebrow and picked his way through potholes to where she stood near her little red Beetle. The boot kept up a steady beat, like a ticking bomb ready to explode. Still, he walked toward her. He’d been following her all day, and he was surprised it took her this long to call him out.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “During a deployment in Afghanistan, I was at the site of a roadside bomb detonation. I didn’t have any ear protection and suffered irreversible hearing loss in my right ear. The interesting thing is when one of your senses starts to crap out, others get better. I have a wonky right ear, but I have eyes like an eagle and”—she tapped the side of her nose—“a nose like a bloodhound. But enough about me. You’re supposed to be in your office. Dammit, Jack, you don’t belong here. This man we’re hunting isn’t just dangerous. He’s deadly.”

  “All the more reason for me to help.”

  Evie’s lips pinched. “I get it. This is about Abby. You want to find this guy to find your sister. And I get the whole guilt thing and the control thing. But I also know you’re a really smart man, Jack, so what I don’t get is why you are acting like an idiot!”

  Jack scrubbed a hand across his jaw. “The woman who deals with bombs wants to know what makes me tick?” He hadn’t even tried to go to his office when she dropped him off at the Elliott Tower this morning. The last thing on his mind was business. “Fine. Abby’s part of it. So’s the guilt and control, and like you, I want to save the baby and the woman and anyone else within range of that bomb. But the biggest part is I know I can make a difference.”

  “You already have, Jack.”

  “I can do more. I know his home turf. I know the art world he’s skirting, and like you, I know this guy has a beef with me.”

  He watched the worry slide across her face. Worry for him. Worry for an unknown woman and child. Worry for a city gripped by terror. She was the kind of law enforcer who cared for everyone she was charged with protecting. “Eventually his path and mine are going to cross, and this entire city will be better off if you are at my side. You, more than anyone, know how to defuse this guy.” He kept his words calm even though he was simmering inside. “So if you think I’ll be of more use in my office making deals with Japan and Seattle, I’ll go back to the office. If your gut tells you I won’t be of use, send me away.”

  Evie jammed her hair from her face, her fingers tangling in the mass of curls. She pressed her fingers into her skull as if massaging away an ache. Seconds ticked. The heat and steam in the center of his chest expanded. She was smart. The best. That’s why he brought her on board.

  At last Evie’s hands dropped to her sides. “Here’s the deal, Jack. I am the CEO and chairman of this investigation, and you”—she flicked her fingers at his handkerchief—“can be my chauffeur.”

  “Your chauffeur?”

  “Can’t handle the job?”

  He almost laughed. He’d made the power play, and she’d come at him with a counteroffer. She was letting him in on the investigation but with a very limited and subservient role. Parker was right, Evie was damn good. He took the keys to her Beetle. “Where would you like to go, Agent Jimenez?”

  “Let’s head back to Vandemere’s former loft. I want to talk with neighbors and nearby merchants. I want to see if anyone remembers him.” Evie made her way to the passenger side door and dipped her head toward the door handle.

  Jack let out a soft laugh, bowed his head, and reached for the door.

  Just as she ducked in, Jimmy Ho, his gold chains jangling around his neck, came running out of his office.

/>   “Have a change of heart?” Evie asked.

  “After your pictures, Agent Jimenez, I almost had to change my pants,” Jimmy Ho said. “Listen, that bomber guy’s bad news, bad for business, and just plain bad. So I did some digging and got a name for you. When I put the press on Vandemere to pay back rent, one of his buddies forked over the rent payment. Here’s a copy of the bank deposit with the check.”

  Evie snatched it out of the landlord’s hand. “Rene Masson of the Masson Gallery in Venice. The notation reads: Advance on Fall Show.”

  * * *

  5:01 p.m.

  Jack unfolded his body from the front seat of Evie’s Beetle and straightened his suit jacket. “Next time there’s a congressional vote to increase the FBI’s budget, remind me to tell my representative to vote yes.”

  Evie dug a handful of coins out of the front pocket of her jeans. “The car suits me and my budget just fine.”

  He cocked his head looking from her to the red car. They really were a good fit. “Tiny and attitudinal.”

  She plinked the coins in the parking meter in the lot just off Venice Beach. “You have a problem with tiny and attitudinal?”

  Right now Jack wasn’t having a problem with much of anything. They were closing in on Carter Vandemere, which brought him one step closer to Abby. That tiny bit of hope that had sparked to life when he learned his sister hadn’t died in the river fifteen years ago had turned into a glowing ember, fanned by Evie’s all-out push to find the bomber. “Not at all.”

  Locking the car, they hurried down the boardwalk to a shop with a black awning and a giant skull and crossbones painted on the window. A bear of a man with a glassy expression and a bird’s talon tattooed across his face stood in the doorway.

  Jack frowned. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

  “This is the address on the check of the art gallery dealer who paid Vandemere’s back rent,” Evie said.

  “Why would Vandemere have an art show at a tattoo shop?”

  “Vandemere’s art is edgy, and this place has edge written all over it.”

  “This place has already leaped off the edge,” Jack said under his breath as Evie pulled open the door and charged into the shop that smelled of green soap and cigarette smoke from the last millennium.

  “I’m looking for Rene Masson,” she told the tattoo artist at the closest workstation who was outlining a pinup girl on a customer’s biceps.

  “The pretty lady wants a dude named Masson,” he called over his shoulder. “Anyone here named Masson?”

  “I’m Masson,” a skinny man with braids hanging to his waist said from another workstation.

  Another tattoo artist, who looked like his mild-mannered accounting manager, said, “I’m Masson.”

  “They’re fucking liars.” The man getting the pinup tattoo on his biceps winked at Evie. “I’m Masson. Wanna spend some alone time together?”

  Jack’s spine stiffened notch by notch, but Evie wasn’t fazed. She walked up to the man in the second workstation and flashed her badge. “Does Rene Masson work here?” She used her I’m-a-busy-don’t-take-no-bullshit-FBI-agent voice, which was exactly what she was at this moment.

  The chuckling died down, and the artist in the first station asked, “He a freelance inker?”

  “Not sure. He’s involved in the art community down here.”

  The tattoo artist turned back to the giant boobs. “Ask Tink. He’s the owner. He’s working a full body tat in the back.”

  In a small room off the back, they found a man who could moonlight as a Mac truck. He had wide shoulders and metal plates in his head that looked like the grille of a truck. On his right arm was a winged Pixie.

  “You must be Tink,” Evie said.

  The man sniffed the air. “You must be pork.”

  “Chorizo,” Evie said.

  The skin around the Mac grille wrinkled.

  “I got a helluva kick,” Evie explained.

  Tink’s chest rumbled, like an engine warming up. “Okay, I’ll bite. What do you want, Officer Chorizo?”

  “Agent Chorizo.” She flashed her shield, then tilted her head at the naked woman. “Would you like to do this in private?”

  Tink lifted the needle from the woman’s backside where he was adding green pigment to rows of dragon scales inked across her right butt cheek. “Nessa won’t mind, will you?”

  “Just don’t make him color outside the lines,” she said with a grin.

  “I’m looking for a man named Rene Masson. He could be an art gallery owner or broker. This is his last known address.”

  “Masson ain’t here no more, and he wasn’t into skin art.”

  “You know him?”

  “Never met him personally, but I heard of him. He rented this space up until last year.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  “Six feet under.”

  Jack saw more than heard the groan rattling around Evie’s chest and over her downturned lips. “What happened?”

  “Shot last year in a robbery attempt. Sad, but it’s part of doing business down here.”

  “Did Masson leave behind any office materials?” Jack asked. If Vandemere had a show scheduled in Masson’s gallery, there had to be a record of it. “Office files or even items like boxes of promotional material?”

  “Nope. By the time I moved in, the place had been emptied.”

  They needed to find Masson’s next of kin. Best-case scenario, they would have his work files in storage somewhere, which would include items like artist profiles and photos. A photo of Vandemere would be a huge break at this point in the case. He could see Evie pinning that photo to the wall in her temporary office at LAPD where she’d started a gallery of sorts.

  After she finished interviewing Tink, Evie hovered at the table. The dragon, outlined and partially colored, covered two-thirds of the woman’s body, its chest rising and falling with the woman’s as if it were a living, breathing beast.

  “Does it hurt?” Evie asked.

  “Only when the needle touches skin.” Nessa let loose a laugh, and the dragon scales rippled, catching light and taking on an iridescent glow. Evie lingered, as if mesmerized by the dragon.

  Once outside the shop Jack arched an eyebrow at her. “You’re not thinking of getting a full-size body tattoo, are you?”

  Evie shuddered. “I don’t need to make that kind of statement.”

  “Statement?”

  “Tattoos are very much like bombs in that respect, a way of shouting to the world, ‘Look at me and see my message!’”

  True. Someone like Evie made a loud enough statement without any added adornment. She was strong, powerful, and full of so much light and life. Abby would have loved to have painted her.

  Side by side, they headed back to the public parking lot near the beach. This time of evening street artists were packing up tables full of ragdolls made of bandannas and seascapes painted on shells the size of his palm.

  “If you must know,” she said, “I always thought I’d like to have a beaded chain tattooed around my ankle. Each bead would include the initials of each of my nephews. I figure if I’m going to make a statement, it needs to be something I will never, ever waver on. Although, the rate my brothers are going, I might need a double strand.”

  When they reached the parking lot, Evie paused to stare at the dipping sun setting the water on fire, the sand glistening like millions of sugar crystals.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “Doesn’t it make you want to kick off your shoes and dance?”

  “I don’t dance.” Even at the galas and fund-raisers he attended on a monthly basis, he never took to the dance floor. He was too busy doing business.

  Evie raised her face to the fire-streaked sky. “Maybe you should.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t.” He unlocked the car door. And right now, his business was Carter Vandemere. “A serial bomber is on the loose.”

  “Exactly. When things are dark and ugly, the wor
ld needs a little beauty.” She plopped down onto the hood of her rental car and lifted her boot. “It’ll be quicker if you help. Easiest way is to straddle the boot and pull.”

  For a moment he stood stock-still in the middle of the sidewalk. The world needed beauty, and Evie was standing before him, red cowboy boot extended. He shook his head. How could he turn away from that?

  Facing away from her, he straddled her calf and cupped her boot heel, the soft leather pressing against his thighs. A surge of blood rushed to his midsection. How long had it been since he’d been with a woman? A few months? Closer to a half year? The German deal had sidetracked him. He was getting turned on by a red cowboy boot.

  Evie’s other boot touched his ass. “I’ll push. You pull.”

  Or he could just stand here fantasizing about her wearing only red leather cowboy boots. He pulled, and the boot slid off. He straddled her other foot. This time her bare foot sank into his ass as she pushed off. He stood, holding a boot in each hand.

  She peeled off her socks and dug her toes into the sand, making a soft little humming sound at the back of her throat. She didn’t even realize how sexy she was, her bare toes burrowing into the beach. “Now you,” she said.

  Who was he to argue? This week he was the chauffeur. He slipped out of his oxfords and socks.

  She grabbed his hand and dragged him to the sand. “Well?” she asked. “How does it feel?”

  “Like warm sand.”

  A growl erupted in her throat. “Close your eyes.”

  He’d rather watch her, her face lit by the sun’s last grasp on the sky.

  “You are such a stick in the mud.” She stood on tiptoe and reached up, her palm sliding his eyelids closed.

  “Does Parker know you act this way in the middle of an investigation?”

  “Shut up and keep your eyes closed.”

  This was borderline ridiculous, standing on a beach and playing in the sand when his city, his past, and his future had been upended by a serial bomber. But Evie, whose job right now was catching a serial bomber, deemed right now was the perfect time to dig her toes into the sand. Crazy.