Free Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series) by Craig McDonald Page A

Dragnet shot me the address. "Now you owe me one, cocksucker," he said.
    "You ever get down south, you can collect." There was an implied "asshole" on my part there at the end.
    "We got a line on Emil," I said, rejoining Fiske and Alicia. She'd freshened up, brushed the wind tangles from her black hair. That lipstick she sported ... Scarlet Seduction, maybe? Should be called that. I swung in the booth close to her; felt her hip pressed tight against mine.
    Bud watched me scoping Alicia. Lad probably felt like a third wheel. I made a note to myself: I gotta buy this kid a woman .
    Bud said, "Holmdahl must be as old as dirt, too."
    Too ?
    I let that one pass. Maybe Bud was thinking of Rodolfo, the Butcher. "Yeah," I said, scowling in spite of myself. "He'd be seventy-five or upwards. But he remains in the game. He's tied up with some real estate deal in Punta Banda now, down San Diego way."
    "We'll call ahead?" Bud said.
    I waved a dismissive hand. "Why warn? Let's ambush the old campaigner," I said.
    I checked Bud's dusty, beat wingtips. "But I want to hit a Western outfitter first. Get you a proper pair of boots to go with that hat. Holmdahl's a horseman. Let's play to his sentiment for days gone. I'll do the talking, you'll just be like Tonto --- if Tonto was a cowpuncher."
    Alicia had spent a couple of hours the night before, captive to a bunch of Holmdahl stories. She said, "'Sentiment?' It doesn't sound like this Mr. Holmdahl has much of a heart, Héctor."
    "Naw, he really doesn't," I agreed. "But now he's getting up there and he may have old regrets that make him weak in some important places. And he lost his wife recently. Maybe that weakened him a bit, too."
    She searched my eyes. Her hand brushed my cheek and she shook her head. "So we go now?" She smiled --- a bittersweet, Scarlet-Seduction smile. I suddenly had the feeling she and Fiske had been talking about me in my absence ... maybe talking about presumed regrets and recent losses of my own.
    "Huh-uh," I said. "Not now. Now we go to bed. We're all beat-to-the-wide and look road-ragged. We'll stop and get you a couple of new outfits when we get Bud his boots. Then we'll find a good hotel. Grab some sleep and showers --- bath for you honey, if you prefer. We'll see Emil mañana , maybe. We need to be at our sharpest for that negotiation. This old bastard Emil doesn't draw a breath without thinking three moves out."
    The unspoken, additional motive --- I wanted to watch our tail for a time ... make sure we were not being shadowed by frat boys; Texas Republicans; by machine-gun toting banditos or old Mexican ghosts nicknamed "the Butcher."
    17
    The desk clerk was missing an arm. I asked, "Korea?"
    The maimed clerk shook his head. "Naw. Parachuting into Corregidor, February of '45."
    "You're older than you look," I said.
    "That's 'cause I can't drink with both fists anymore. They shot it off before I hit the ground," he said.
    I thanked him for his war service. There was some awkwardness after that.
    Two rooms?
    Three?
    We ended up with two. Me and Fiske ostensibly in one room, Alicia in the other ... a connecting door between them.
    But Fiske, bless him, said he wanted to get some notes organized, then he essentially commandeered one of the rooms, leaving Alicia and me together in the other. I had to smile at Bud's excuse that he needed time with his notes for his article --- as if he could truly print anything about what had been happening to us these past forty-eight or so hours.
    It was real publish-and-perish stuff --- write it down and you'd likely face indictment and the chair. Hell, we'd maybe face a firing squad if they extradited us to Mexico for killing those federales. But good ole Ike would never let that happen. The U.S. doesn't deport it's own gringos to mere Mexico, regardless of what bad things they might have done down there.
    As Alicia drew her bath, Bud and I talked, sharing a couple more cigarettes and some decaffeinated coffee. The sound of her