Free Jump the Gun by Zoe Burke Page B

trust, except each other.” Mickey patted Luis on the back.
    â€œWell, Mickey, we could trust a United Airlines pilot, couldn’t we? How about we go to the airport and trust one of them to get us to San Francisco? How about we skip the hotel escapade, compadre?” It was really hot and my glasses were slipping down on my nose and I was pushing them back up as I posed this very logical question.
    Mickey walked up to me and touched my cheek. My scar. “If we go to the hotel, we might be helping Luis. We’ll make it quick, I promise. And then, as you say, we’ll get the hell out of Dodge.”
    His touch alone would probably have been enough to make me agree with him. But something else was holding me there. That gut thing again. A little-voice thing. Maybe a macho thing. I couldn’t let go of the idea that Nana could have been murdered. I was getting in touch with my inner male. “Luis,” I said, “Let’s go to the Royal Opal. One hand shakes the other, my friend.”
    I have no idea, really, what I meant by that. But Luis and Mickey were kind enough to let it slide, and we all got in the taxi and headed for the Strip.

Chapter Eight
    Las Vegas really is hell on earth. At about 11:00 in the morning the temperature felt like seven hundred degrees. Without my contacts, I could measure the heat by the rate of speed at which my glasses flew down my nose. Plus, I had been wearing the same clothes for far too long, my hair was plastered to my head like a bathing cap—and I had no hat to hide under—and I was developing some sort of rash—a heat rash, no doubt—right at my waistline where my pants buttoned. While my right hand was busy pushing my glasses up my face, my left was scratching around my navel. Luckily I had on my favorite pink T-shirt and my Levis because I look good in them, but at this point they were stretched out and wet and probably smelled.
    Mickey and Luis were quiet, and I started thinking about the two of them in the front seat, while I sat in the back. Why do the men always assume the front seat is theirs? Then I remembered that I had gotten in the cab first and had chosen the back seat, and come to think of it, I was more comfortable back there, as comfortable as I could be in Las Vegas. Apparently, they haven’t invented air conditioning cold enough for that wasteland. Either that or Luis’ cab’s AC needed a rebuild. I was hot and itchy and it was just as well that no one was sitting very near me. Luis, for some mysterious reason, did not seem to be sweating. This is as weird to me as people who eat whatever the hell they want and don’t gain any weight.
    I was looking at the back of Mickey’s head. Nice shape. Nice thick hair, black with some gray starting to show up. He told me that first night we met in Chicago that his mother had been a hair stylist and his father, a plumber. He was an only child and his parents doted on him and saved everything they could to put him through college. A real American story. But they were killed in a car accident when he was twenty-five. I thought about that, staring at his head, and my eyes filled up.
    He was looking for a stopgap job after college when he got into publishing. He found out he was good at sales and stuck with it. Sales people in publishing—and probably in any business—make the most money. Editors don’t make squat, unless they handle acquisitions for megapublishers and have their own imprints. It used to be that a sales rep could sell a blockbuster to Barnes and Noble and put his kid through college on that order alone. Okay, I might be exaggerating, but not by much. All of that was changing, what with e-books and iPads, but Mickey prepared well for that and was scouting for new opportunities. I wasn’t sure what that meant. Anyway, he didn’t have any kids, he had only himself to support, so for the time being he was sitting pretty, financially.