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  “Your name?” he said, kneeling next to her.

  “B.J.,” she said.

  “B.J. what?” the cop said.

  “Just B.J.” She gave him her address, a condo on Tropicana Boulevard, Apartment #4.

  “Next of kin?”

  “None.”

  “Who shall we notify?”

  “No one.” Then she paused and looked at me. “Wait, notify him,” she said.

  I sighed. “It must be my lucky day.”

  The cop looked up at me. “Do you know her?”

  “Never laid eyes on her,” I said truthfully.

  The cop looked at B.J., suddenly suspicious. “Why him?”

  “He saved my black ass, that’s why.”

  The cop stood and snapped his book shut. Then he shook his head and started to walk away.

  I followed him. “Where will they take her?”

  The patrolman shrugged. “Probably Boulder City Community Hospital, it’s the closest one. It’s on North Broadway and Balsam.”

  I gingerly slipped into the bucket seat of my old restored Jag roadster. Damn! Does anything hurt worse than burns?

  While I followed the ambulance toward Boulder City, I thought about the accident. We’d been lucky. If the gas tank had blown while I was still in there trying to drag her out, we’d have both been reduced to crispy critters on the spot. Her most serious injury was to her ribs, and I had done that.

  She’ll probably wind up suing me.

  Chapter 2

  I waited for B.J. outside the emergency room entrance. When she finally made her appearance she gave me a big smile.

  “Well, imagine seeing you here.”

  “Thought you might need a ride home, since you tried to make an airplane out of your old GTO—and failed.”

  “Yeah, that didn’t work out, did it.” She shrugged. “Okay, I’ll take you up on it—but no strings attached, okay?”

  “Look at me. Is this the face of a lecherous old man?”

  “Old, maybe, but not lecherous.”

  We headed for the exit.

  “You seem taller than I remember,” I said. “What are you, six feet or so?”

  “Six-two,” she said.

  “How’re your ribs?”

  “How the hell do you think they are? You’re a load!”

  * * *

  It surprised me to find B.J.’s apartment spotlessly clean. Her life didn’t seem quite as tidy.

  As we stepped inside, she turned and smiled up at me. “Thanks for the lift. And I forgive you for breaking my ribs.”

  “Well that’s damn decent of you,” I said. I handed her my business card. “Call me if you need anything.”

  B.J. gave me a sly look, then peeled the tee-shirt up over her head and tossed it into the corner. She smiled at me while she scratched a perky nipple on one of her small, firm breasts.

  “Do you want to take a shower with me, Frost?”

  “Uh, ‘No strings attached,’ remember? Oh, and be sure you keep those bandages dry.”

  She glanced down at her bandaged ribs. “I forgot about that.” She looked up and gave me a dazzling smile. “Maybe some other time, okay?”

  And with that she turned and headed for the bathroom, somehow managing to shrug the shorts down over her legs as she went. She paused to step out of them, then continued on her way. When she reached the bathroom door, she slapped one hand against her bare fanny and gave me a sly smile, showing beautiful white teeth. “Black women have the greatest asses in the world, did you know that, Frost?”

  “I noticed,” I said. “See you later.”

  I stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind me. As I headed toward the elevator, I thought about that lovely round fanny and mumbled aloud, “Jeez, Frost, maybe you are getting old.”

  Chapter 3

  When I let myself into my rented motor home, J.T. Ripper was waiting for me, an accusing look on his face. The gigantic black and tan Doberman is one of Mother Nature’s private jokes. Weighing in at 150 pounds and standing 36” at the shoulders, his anti-social appearance is further accentuated by a badly scarred face—a face that wears a permanently pissed expression.

  My tour as an “advisor” on one of the CIA’s little ventures was cut short one bright April morning when I took in a bit more than my recommended daily dose of shrapnel. Since Ripper had been assigned to me, and I was going home, he was scheduled for termination. But thanks to a friend who worked in the paper shuffling department, we managed to smuggle him out of there and back to the States.

  Ripper’s not the kind of dog you take to the park to play with the kids. He’s a sociopath, with a mean streak running Grand Canyon deep and stretching a long way back into his ancestry. He doesn’t like anyone or anything—except an occasional shooter of Scotch.

  Personally, I think I’m very tolerant of his ugly traits. On the other hand, he barely puts up with me. We live together under an uneasy truce. He has saved my life twice, and I’ve yet to save his even once—and he never lets me forget it.

  Overall, he’s a royal pain in the ass, but there are times when he’s comforting to have around.

  All of the bad press that Dobermans the world over have collected could have been written about this dog. In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve only seen him display affection for one human being—and she’s dead now. He still misses her.

  So do I.

  I fed Ripper, then decided to take him for a short walk. You don’t just let a dog like J.T. Ripper “out” for a while, any more than you would your pet alligator.

  When we got back to the RV, I sat down and, on an impulse, dialed B.J.’s number. She answered quite cautiously, I thought. I disguised my voice and said, “This is the Acme Collection Agency. I would like to speak to B.J., please.”

  She paused, then I heard her give a little sob. “B.J. was raped and murdered in Los Angeles last week. I’m Raquel Welcher, her roommate. I’m just here packing her personal belongings.”

  I laughed. “It’s me,” I said in my own voice.

  “I knew that,” she said, recovering quickly.

  “No you didn’t!” I said.

  “Yes I did . . . did too!”

  There was a pause, then we both started laughing. “You’ve got a real mean streak, Frost!” she said.

  “Yeah, I’m workin’ on that . . . . Listen, since you’ve had your shower and you’re probably feeling better, want to have dinner with me?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, have dinner with me anyway.”

  “Why should I?”

  “I saved your life, for starters.”

  “You probably didn’t do me any favors.” She paused, then said, “Ah hell, why not. There’s nothing on TV anyway.”

  “You do terrific things for a guy’s ego.”

  * * *

  I tapped on the door to B.J.’s apartment. When she opened it, she stood there with an amused look, clearly waiting for my reaction. I looked her up and down and nodded appreciatively. Not too many women could get away with wearing anything as outlandish as what she had on, but on her it looked primitively sexy. She could have been a beautiful, extremely tall Zulu princess.

  I glanced down at her fluffy orange cat, purring contentedly while doing figure eights through and around my legs.

  “You like cats, Frost?”

  “Love ’em,” I said.

  She gave me a long suspicious look, then laughed. “Yeah, I can tell.” She scooped up the cat and nuzzled it. “It’s okay, Fido, he just doesn’t know any better.”

  “Fido?”

  “I really wanted a dog but I couldn’t have one in this apartment.”

  She parked the cat on a window sill, then turned to face me. “Like my outfit, Frost? I made it myself.”

  “You did?”

  “Do you like it?” She waited warily for my answer.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Really? Does it shock you?” she said with a grin, showing those great whit
e teeth. “If you say no I’ll be disappointed.”

  “I’m shocked speechless.”

  She looked at me for a moment. Then she laughed and said, “Bullshit. I don’t think anything shocks you.” She laughed again, a great bawdy laugh. “I like you, Frost. You’re kinda old, but you ain’t all that stuffy.”

  “Old! That’s the second time you’ve said that. I’m only thirty-four!”

  “Like I said, old. But definitely sexy for a white guy.”

  “Ah shucks,” I said.

  As we walked toward the car she looked up at me. “You’re not going to take me to some damn soul food restaurant, are you? Just because I’m black?”

  “Not unless you want to go.”

  “Soul food sucks,” she said. “I like Mexican food.”

  “Me too. I know a great place.”

  “Ah, dammit, I forgot something, Frost. I’ll be back in a minute.” She got out of the Jag and trotted to the entrance to her apartment building.

  She was back in about ten minutes. “Okay, let’s go get some good Mexican food,” she said.

  I hung a u-turn and headed back down Sahara. I glanced at her a couple of times.

  “What are you looking at?” she said.

  “It’s sorta like taking Janet Jackson to dinner,” I said, “except she’s not as flashy.”

  Chapter 4

  Having dinner with B.J. was like having dinner with a starved lioness. Her table manners were impeccable, which surprised me somehow. But she ate with a barely controlled intensity that amused me, whereas I suspected some other person would have irritated me. “You do love to eat,” I said. “You’re lucky it doesn’t show.”

  She patted her flat belly. Then she cupped her small breasts with both hands, lifted slightly and let them bounce. And they did bounce—just once. She caught my admiring look, and gave me a lascivious smile. “All natural ingredients, no additives.”

  I admired her beautiful young face in the glow of the candle. I shook my head sympathetically. “Raped and murdered. That poor woman.”

  She laughed. “You like that one, huh?”

  I reached over and touched a feather on the bracelet of her right hand. “You’re really into that ‘Roots’ thing, huh? Tracing your ancestors way back, and all that?”

  She made a “Hell no!” face and said, “I don’t give a damn where those guys came from. I’m from Compton. That’s all I need to know.”

  I laughed. She leaned on the table, cupping her chin in her hands. “What do you do for a living, Frost?”

  She caught me off guard. “Uh . . . I’m an entrepreneur.”

  “Yeah? That means you don’t work, right? Independent.”

  “Yeah, it sorta means that.”

  “You must have a lot of money. That means you don’t take crap from anyone, right?”

  I thought that over. “Basically correct. But then, neither do you.”

  She grinned at me. “There be ‘rich independent’ and ‘poor independent’ and I be ‘poor independent,’” she said. “The nice part about being ‘poor independent’ is you got nuthin’ to lose.”

  She paused for a moment, staring thoughtfully at my face. “I gotsa feeling that ‘rich independent’ is a lot more fun.”

  “That’s a cute little street dialect you throw in there for effect every now and then,” I said. “And you’re right, ‘rich independent’ is a hell of a lot more fun.”

  She paused, clearly wondering if I was making fun of her. When she realized I wasn’t, she smiled.

  “Where’d you go to school?” I said.

  “Why, I’s never finished school, Massah.”

  “Let me guess. UCLA?”

  Her eyes got big. “I wouldn’t be caught dead going to UCLA. I went to USC on a volleyball scholarship . . . and yeah, I lied—I did graduate, old man! Does that surprise you?”

  There was a hint of defiance in her voice.

  “Why should it?” I said.

  She mulled that over for a minute, then let out a big sigh. “Not that I’ve done anything with my education . . . yet. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up,” she said with a little laugh.

  This was no illiterate street kid, but somewhere along the line she’d strayed off course.

  Every eye on the place was on us as I paid the bill and we left. It was ten o’clock, but as we left the restaurant it was like walking into the proverbial blast furnace; the temperature was at least 105 degrees.

  B.J. inhaled deeply, her head back, eyes closed, a look of pure pleasure on her beautiful face. “Isn’t this fantastic! I love Vegas! I was made for this town, Frost.”

  With a smile she pulled on the end of the string which held the two halves of her top together. The flimsy, feathered outfit slid down over her dark shoulders. She stood on the steps of the Mexican restaurant and did a slow pirouette for me. Under the feathers she was wearing a brown gossamer spandex top, which in the dark simply disappeared.

  The nude effect was misleading and dazzling for people walking into the restaurant. She swung her feathers over her shoulder, slid her arm around my waist, and we strolled toward the car. “You’re fun, Frost,” she said. “A little old, but fun.”

  * * *

  I walked B.J. to her apartment. She glanced up at me. “How about an after dinner drink—”

  She stopped in mid-sentence. We both stared at the door as it swung inward slightly when she tried to insert her key. I quickly stepped around her and moved cautiously into the room. I stood for a moment, listening. “Stay right here,” I said softly. “You probably just forgot to lock the door when we left.”

  “No, I locked it.”

  I checked the bedroom, then moved cautiously into the kitchen. What I found took my breath away. B.J.’s disemboweled cat lay on the blood-covered countertop. One kitchen wall was covered with blood. Whoever killed B.J.’s cat had obviously used the bloody carcass like an eraser on a blackboard, smearing blood and gore everywhere.

  “Oh, God no!” I turned to see B.J.‘s horrified face as she stared at the wall. “Oh, my God, Jack!”

  “B.J., I—”

  Moaning, she pushed past me and scooped up her cat’s bloody carcass. She let out an anguished cry and held it close, then turned away and, head down, walked back into the living room. She sat down on the sofa and cried as she furiously stroked the dead cat in her lap, as if she were trying to will it back to life.

  I didn’t know what to say. “B.J., let me try to clean—”

  “—I want to be alone, Frost,” she said.

  “But—”

  “—No. I’ll take care of it . . . please go.”

  I paused. “Do you have a weapon?”

  She looked up at me and her tear-filled eyes hardened. “Damn straight I do,” she said. “And I know how to use it.”

  I hesitated. “Okay, then. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”

  I left quietly, making sure the door was locked behind me. I realized that was not much of a safeguard, considering that the creep who had done this had apparently gotten into her apartment quite easily. However, this time, with an armed and bitter B.J., the intruder might want to think twice before trying it again.

  Who would want to terrorize this kid? Maybe it was just some random freak—there’s certainly no shortage of them in Las Vegas. She certainly wouldn’t be the first girl who lived alone who was targeted by this kind of sicko.

  At street level I walked out into the suffocating heat. I unlocked my Jag and settled carefully on the sheepskin seatcover, because the burns still hurt like hell.

  As I pulled away from the curb I thought about B.J. To say that she’s “high profile” is an understatement. The kid is blessed with a body that would spin the head of a Shaolin Monk. Any of the crazies who inhabit the Las Vegas Strip would be drawn to her like a moth to a flame.

  Chapter 5

  Las Vegas at six o’clock in the morning is not the Las Vegas you see in your average travel brochure. The
city seems to wake up with a hangover which, unfortunately for her citizens and visitors, lasts most of the day. In the summer months, heat still seeps up out of the pavement, and the temperature hovers around 90 to 100 degrees.

  In the harsh morning light, the city looks like an over-the-hill showgirl caught without her makeup. Without the neon glitter, the garish decoration seems bizarre and cheap, created by designers who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

  The Ladies of the Evening are gone, scoured clean by the morning light, disappearing vampire-like at the first sign of dawn. Only the ever-present street people remain, poking at coin wrappers with their toes, hoping to find that dropped quarter or nickel; and the vacationing senior citizens, walking from their motels to grab what they hope will be an inexpensive breakfast at the nearest big casino.

  The so-called “beautiful people” are nowhere to be seen. Most of them staggered off to bed at four in the morning, or thereabouts, and are probably making love about now, or lying totally exhausted, snoring in a drunken stupor. When they awake, many will find they’ve been ravished by the world’s most efficient vacuum cleaner. They’ll look around their rooms with their dazed expressions and wonder what the hell happened. Some might even recall being several thousand dollars ahead, but now their pockets are empty.

  They can thank their own stupidity and greed, of course. Las Vegas casinos were designed that way. And after many years of honing their skills, separating their customers from their money is now an effortless—if not entirely painless—surgical procedure. For the vulnerable, the city can quickly become a nightmare in neon.

  I jogged along the city streets, well into the first mile of my daily self-imposed five miles of torture, trying to avoid the triple-digit heat that would be upon us within a few hours.