Free Menaced Assassin by Joe Gores Page A

and got some erotic pleasure out of imagining her with them—with anyone but me. In Paris… maybe L.A.…”
    “Palm Desert,” said Dante. To Will’s suddenly dense silence, he added, “Her old man comped your wife and Gounaris to a long weekend at a resort near Palm Springs called the Desert Spa to celebrate her getting the position as San Francisco corporate counsel for Atlas. Legend says Al Capone—”
    “The Desert Spa,” said Will in a low, flat voice. “That’s where Moll and I had our honeymoon.”
    Dante had dropped in the Desert Spa hoping to jar Will into showing his hole card: all it did was make him fold his hand. He said nothing more until they arrived at the USAir terminal. Dante wasn’t about to leave him alone and unprotected at the gate; if there was going to be a hit, he wanted to be there, take down the fucker who tried it. Then Dalton would talk, by God!
    His eyes swept the unloading area; nothing suspicious. Armed with Will’s flight numbers and times, even his contact number in Nairobi, he showed his badge to the airport cop in front of USAir so his car wouldn’t be towed, used it again to follow Will through the metal detectors with the gun on his belt.
    At the commuter gate, Will said abruptly, “Do you think Kosta Gounaris had anything to do with Moll’s death?”
    “What do
you
think?”
    “That he’s a rich, powerful, manipulative, sadistic son of a bitch who seduced my wife.”
    “Which doesn’t make him a murderer.” Dante added, almost grudgingly, “But if I come up with anything definite on him or any aspect of the case, I’ll call you.”
    “
Call
me? Once I leave Nairobi, not even mail will reach me for at least three months, until I go to Fort Portal for supplies.” He paused. “Maybe I don’t want to know anyway.”
    And Will Dalton walked through the gate and down the ramp to the plane without shaking hands or looking back. Dante stared after him, irritated again. Will Dalton wanted…
something
. Help, maybe. But he wouldn’t give anything. Maybe Moll had felt that way, too. Dante owed the bastard nothing, except the pleasure of the case, but unexpectedly he had gotten something: Dalton actually suspected Gounaris of being directly involved in his wife’s death. He hadn’t actually said so, but…
    Did he have something beyond the obvious wishful thinking of revenge for his sexual humiliation? Something that might have been in that padded mailer—assuming it reallyhad come from Dalton’s wife? If Dante had voiced his own suspicions of Gounaris, would Dalton have talked to him?
    Dante returned to his car, started the long loop around the departure gates to get back onto 101 North to the city. How would he have acted in Dalton’s place? Probably no better, maybe worse. And he had gotten the man safely on the plane to L.A. for the British Air flight over the Pole to London and then on to Nairobi and his chosen jungle.
    Everyone chose a jungle of sorts in his life. A place of solitude where pain could be taken out and looked at. Maybe it was simple as that with Dalton. His synapses fusing, he had to get away to get sane again.
    Or maybe not. Will Dalton was a very smart man. Maybe he knew more than he was telling. Maybe his wife had left him something that let him know organized crime might be involved in Atlas Entertainment. Maybe he thought it would take Gounaris down while he was gone. Dante was no stranger to that sort of thing. Secret witnesses dying, months of work coming unraveled just because the wrong person overheard a single careless word. Because he knew cops who were stupid, casually venal, and frankly corrupt, his own work was one long secret from everyone but Rosa.
    Cops corrupt like Jack Lenington, as he was soon to learn.
    Kosta was getting jumpy. Ten fucking days after Moll’s funeral, her husband was still alive, and no word from Jack Lenington. He’d put on a bland face for the fat cop, Flanagan, during the questioning following