Free Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) by Shelley Singer Page B

now.”
    Leslie slid off her stool and looked me up and down in a way that could have been a challenge. “See you?”
    “Sure.”
    It was unavoidable.
    She headed toward Red’s table, swaying her chunky little hips all the way. A couple of the guys eyed her, but only for a second. They didn’t look interested enough to follow through.
    Isn’t that always the way? You dress in the style they supposedly like, you pierce your nose, you shave your head, and the damn men still don’t ask you out.
    But I’d said I was leaving. “ ’Bye, Gilly.”
    “ ’Bye, Jase.” She didn’t look up.
    I pushed through the front door. There was something I’d been meaning to do. Before I headed off for dinner with Royal, I needed to scope the place out better. I sauntered across the sidewalk and put my foot up on a fireplug, facing the front of the bar, untying and re-tying my bootlaces.
    When I’d reconnoitered the hallway at Thor’s, I’d noticed, along with the doors to the toilets and the back room, another door, the exit way at the back, with a deadlock and a bolt on the inside.
    A PI never knows when he’ll have to use a back door.
    First, I took a good look at the front of the building. On the north, an eight-foot fence inches from the bar marked the boundary between Thor’s and the auto repair shop next door. On the south, another tall piece of fence, this one with a gate, ran from the corner of Thor’s and across the front of the bar’s narrow side yard. But the tall fencing ended there. The piece with the gate joined a flimsy four-foot tall fence that enclosed the yard of the rundown cottage next door. The four-foot fence was all that separated the cottage lot from the bar’s side yard. I glanced around. No one was in sight, so I gave the gate a nudge. Locked.
    Casually, I strolled past the cottage. The driveway was open and gateless. There was nothing but that four-foot fence between the street and the side and back of Thor’s.
    If I ever needed to slide out and run like hell, this would be the way.

– 8 –
    Royal and I had planned to meet at an Oakland Chinatown restaurant that I knew would be empty.
    It was. He wasn’t there yet, so I ordered some tea and spring rolls.
    When Royal walked in, the man who’d brought my order— waiter, manager, owner?— hurried to intercept him. Royal jerked a thumb in my direction, and earned an escort to my table. A nervous escort. Apparently the addition of Royal’s youth and baldness to the leather and boots we both wore made the mix a bit too strong for the poor guy.
    And the boy was looking particularly skin-ish that day. The stitching on his greasy Doc Martens looked a brighter yellow, his flight jacket gave him a powerful, broad-shouldered look, his jeans had been ironed, and his head gleamed.
    He grabbed a spring roll before he even sat down, dunked it in the sweet red sauce, and chewed. The waiter handed us menus, asked Royal if he wanted anything to drink, and zipped off toward the kitchen to get the milk he’d ordered.
    Royal handed me a fat envelope. I looked inside. A wad of bills.
    “Five thousand in cash,” he mumbled. I’d count it later.
    “We’ll be depositing this in the agency account, Royal, so there will be a record of it. I don’t know why you’re paying with cash, but—”
    “It don’t matter.”
    He took off his jacket. He had taken me seriously when I’d insisted that he wear a Band-Aid over his tattoo when he was with me. We’d had to modify that agreement so he could wave the damned thing in front of his cronies, even if I was around. But now there was no one to wave it at.
    Kid-like, though, or maybe just Royal-like, he’d half messed up. He was wearing only one Band-Aid, which covered the center of the thing and left one bent piece of arm, or leg, or whatever it was, and one straight piece sticking out of both the bottom and the top. Anyone who bothered to really think about how those bits might connect would get the idea.
    “You