No Rest for the Wicked - Chapter 7

Flip found the envelope tucked beneath the day’s Wall Street Journal, its edges flush against the brushed steel of his mailbox like it belonged there.

He didn’t open it right away.

He placed it beside the espresso machine in his kitchen, poured a shot into a porcelain demitasse, and walked barefoot across the polished floor of his luxurious two-bedroom town home. The floor-to-ceiling windows let in a stream of morning haze off the Strip, turning the skyline gold.

When he returned, he was wearing a crisp white button-up shirt and slate-gray trousers, sleeves casually rolled just enough to show his watch, a vintage Jaeger-LeCoultre. Over the years, he’s found an appreciation for the finer things in life, and the extra salary he receives from his…other work has helped grow that appreciation. He opened the envelope with a single flourish of his letter opener.

Inside: a burner phone, smooth and matte black. Utilitarian. Discreet.

He powered it on.

No welcome screen. No signal bars. Just one voice mail. He tapped play.

A man’s voice. Mid-50s, clipped and cold. Flip recognized the voice as the one from his handler, and the man who had recruited him many years ago.

“Hello, Mr. Ives. Time to realign priorities. We’re done waiting on the Davenports. They’ve grown sentimental and sloppy. Their bloodline holds what we need, but they refuse to yield. You’ll use West to pry it from them for us.”

Flip sipped his coffee.

“You’ve earned a casual friendship. It’s time to secure his trust. Give him a reason to go sniffing where the Davenports don’t want him. Once he’s inside, he’ll do what he does…disturb the dust, knock over the right dominoes. Use his need for truth.”

Click.

Flip put the phone down on a marble counter. Outside, a red-tailed hawk circled somewhere over the canyon ridge that split Las Vegas in two. The hawk reminded him of when he first started with the Eidolon Group.

The memory hit like déjà vu…a taste of blood in the back of his throat.

He was seventeen. Bleeding from the mouth and laughing through it.

Three cops had him against the wall behind a liquor store on Tropicana. One of them was swinging his baton like he was trying to kill a snake.

“Got a mouth on you, don’t you?” the cop said.

Flip just smiled. Didn’t give them the satisfaction of an answer.

Then headlights cut through the alley. A black car. Out stepped a man in a tailored gray coat, dark hair slicked back, one hand behind his back, one holding a cigarette.

“Gentlemen,” the man said. “This one’s mine.”

The cop hesitated. Then stepped back.

Flip coughed and wiped his lip. “Who the hell are you?”

The man smiled faintly. “Someone who sees potential in you. Would you like a way out?”

Flip hesitated.

The man reached into his coat and handed him a single key…small, brass, old-fashioned. “It won’t be freedom. But it’ll be more than you’ve got.”

That was the night Flip Ives stopped being a street kid and became something else entirely. Above, a red-tailed hawk circled, looking for his prey.

Flip stared at the burner phone for a moment longer, then slipped it into the inner pocket of his jacket blazer before grabbing his detective badge and keys.