“We see the walls,” Mafioso said, “names there one day, new names the next. The ghosts scratch name after name, over and over into those walls.” He glanced up at the dilapidated building. “This thing’s going to fall down someday.”
I was worried about that, too. “Actually, it’s a he. Well, a Rocket, to be more exact. He’s the one who carves the names into the walls. His sister’s here, too, but I’ve never met her.”
Their belief stilled them. The underlings looked back at the leader to see what he would say. He wanted to ask me questions, but I really didn’t have time to go into it. I decided to shoot for the Reader’s Digest version.
“Look,” I said, drawing a deep breath, “Rocket died sometime in the fifties. He has this … I don’t know, ability. He knows the names of every person ever born and knows if they’ve died or not. I use that to my advantage when investigating rather often. He’s a savant. He’s—” The thought of Rocket’s personality made me smile. “—he’s like a kid. Like a big, burly kid with a really bad case of ADD.”
They glanced at one another.
“Can I go?” I asked, hitching a thumb over my shoulder and inching that way. “I kind of have a missing woman to find.”
“Can you talk to him for us?” Fearless Leader asked.
“Sure can, any day but today.”
The prince’s head tilted as he watched my lower half appreciatively.
“You can go out the front,” the leader said, taking hold of Artemis’s collar. She was panting with her tongue hanging out, clearly wanting to play.
“Really? The front?” This was great. Scaling fences was not my forte.
“When you coming back?” one of them asked.
I was busy hightailing it to the front gate. “Soon!” I promised. I’d really wanted to talk to Rocket more, but now was not the time to get chummy with a biker gang. They always wanted lap dances, for some reason. As I rushed to Misery, I stopped dead in the middle of the street and looked back behind me. A large black truck sat about half a block away. The window slid down, and Garrett leaned out with a huge smile before saluting.
My jaw clamped shut. It was apparently his shift. My uncle had put him on my tail again. Reyes had escaped, and I was the obvious path of least resistance to find him.
I offered Garrett the best death stare I could conjure, hopefully blinding him for all eternity.
He chuckled and yelled, “Three! I’m dying to try that!”
Oh, my god, with the list already. I turned and stalked away, refusing to look back when he laughed out loud. Damn him. He could tell Uncle Bob no once in a while.
I hopped in Misery and started to dial Cookie’s number on my cell when Rocket popped in beside me. Just popped in and sat in the passenger’s seat. I’d never seen Rocket out of his element, so it took me a moment to adjust. And, well, to recognize him. He obviously needed a moment as well. He blinked, glanced around like he didn’t know where he was, then turned his childlike face toward me.
“You left.”
“Rocket, what are you doing here?”
A huge grin spread across his face; then he grew serious again. “You left.”
“Yes, I know, I’m sorry. Is everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, jumping when he remembered what he had to tell me. “Teresa Dean Yost.”
Startled, I asked, “What about her?” Surely her vital statistics hadn’t changed in the last few minutes.
He turned a concerned face toward me. “Hurry.”
Before I could say his name again, he was gone. Damn it. Hurry. I would if I knew where she was. What on planet Earth could the doctor have done with her?
I dialed Cookie.
“Do you think red and pink go well together?” she asked in lieu of a greeting.
“Only if you’re a cupcake. Teresa Yost is alive,” I said, turning the ignition and swerving onto the street.
“What? Really? A cupcake?”
* * *
Forty minutes later, I was driving a golf cart on the Isleta Golf Course. Uncle Bob had called. He’d gotten in touch with the detective who had been in charge of the forgery case, the one who’d flagged one Dr. Nathan Yost. I wanted to know why.
I picked up my phone and called Cook again. “Dude, we have to get a golf cart to go back and forth to work in.”
“It’s like a thirty-second walk.”
“Exactly! This will shave minutes off our commute every year.”
“Have you slept yet?”
“Sure. I took a power nap on the way over.”
“Didn’t you drive there?”
“Yeah. Other drivers kept waking me up. Car horns should be illegal.”
Before she could get too into scolding me—she was clearly still upset about the cupcake remark—I closed the phone and hung a left at the sand pit by the junipers. A small gathering of men stood on a grassy knoll, gazing at the long fairway before them. Or, possibly at me as I was practicing my evasive maneuvers in case I was ever shot at while driving a golf cart. This thing was just cool. But it needed flames. Possibly a lift kit.
I screeched to a halt in front of the men. Metaphorically. “Are any of you named Paul Ulibarri?”
One man stepped forward, an older gentleman with a nasty-looking club in his hand. “I’m Paul,” he said, slightly curious.
“Hi.” I stepped out and offered my hand. “I’m Charley Davidson.”
“Oh, of course, I just talked to your uncle. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”
“Well, we have a missing woman, and I need to find her as fast as humanly possible.”
“Of course. Howard,” he said, turning and handing the club to a man nearby, “I’ll be right back.”
They all smiled and nodded graciously, almost too graciously, as we walked a distance away. Only one seemed a little annoyed at having the game interrupted, a younger man with a goatee, a flashy watch, and a frown lining his face.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your game.”
“Oh, don’t be. We’re purposely taking our time. It seems we old farts don’t play fast enough, and young Caleb there has places to be and people to see.”
I laughed. “So, he’s in a hurry?”
“Yep. He promised his father a game of golf and has regretted it ever since.”