X Dames: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  X-DAMES

  ALSO BY J.J. HENDERSON

  The Lucy Ripken Series

  Murder on Naked Beach

  Mexican Booty

  Lucy’s Money

  Lost in New York

  Sex and Death: The Movie

  Utah

  X-DAMES

  J.J. Henderson

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 J.J. Henderson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Sarah Caley LLC, Seattle

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK

  Lucy happened to be standing in the kitchen staring at the main event, a semi-defrosted package of sliced turkey breast, when Harry called at nearly five pm—unforgiveably late as usual—to make excuses for not making it to dinner that night, voice crackling through a cell phone from somewhere in the vicinity of Caracas, Venezuela. Or so he claimed. Before she could hang up on him he got his story going and she had to admit it was a good one. It seems, he told her, that these two dope guys he knew from his bad old days in Provincetown once upon a time had buried a million in cocaine-generated cash in heavy-duty plastic bags exactly one hundred twenty meters due north of the northeast corner of a gas station on the edge of a small town called Snake Creek, near the northern edge of the Everglades National Park. So they’d told him, years back.

  The first guy had his head blown off in a dope-related shoot-out on a Bahama islet on New Year’s Eve in 1999, and now Harry’s sources had the second guy dead, heart stopped by a self-injected speedball sitting with the shades drawn, mid-day in a West Hollywood apartment. A miserable fate for a guy pushing sixty, Harry noted; but in any case, he went on, they’d told him about the stash of cash at least ten years ago, when he was in transition from bad boy to good cop, and at the time they’d both insisted, should they bite the dust, that no else knew and he should help himself to the money when the statute of limitations ran out. Now they were dead and it had. Harry didn’t see a whole lot of excess moral weight attached to the bags of cash, and so—“Harry, that’s enough,” Lucy said. “Just cut me ten per cent for stress and suffering when you dig it up.”

  “No problem, Luce,” he said. “I could even go twelve. But there’s more. Because once I was there, in Florida I mean, guess what? Or should I say guess who,” he added, intriguingly, “Got me from Florida to Venezuela?” He paused. “Do the initials MV ring any chimes?”

  “MV?” Lucy pondered. A truck squalled downstairs, gridlocked. “God, I’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “I’m going utterly insane.” A light dawned. “Maria Verde? You’re after Maria Verde?”

  “Was,” Harry said, disappointment surfacing. “There was a reported sighting. I was in Florida to organize my dig—unfortunately the gas station is gone, in fact the tire department of a Walmart appears to be positioned precisely atop the spot where the cash is supposedly buried, so I think it might stay buried for a while yet—when my amigo Rogelio el Camaron—“

  “Roger the Shrimp?” Lucy said. “This is a guy you never mentioned before.”

  “He is possessed, they say, of the largest tool in Latin America.”

  “And proud of it no doubt.”

  “He used to be a cop. Now he’s a porn star, hefting the heaviest wood south of the Rio Grande. But he’s always done right by me, from way back when. And naturally I had redflagged that psycho-bitch, right after Jamaica. So Roger called to inform me that a person looking very much like our Maria recently had been seen on a plane headed out of Rio bound for Caracas. There was even video footage from an airport security camera. I saw it, and I do believe it was possibly her, although the shades and hair were very large. So I zipped down, only to find the trail gone cold. But here I am.”

  “Yes, there you are,” said Lucy. “And here I am, not liking the thought of Maria Verde one bit, and wondering who’s going to help me eat the three pounds of turkey fajitas I planned on cooking.”

  “Your friend Mickey seems to have a reliable appetite,” Harry said.

  “That’s true—or was true, anyways, until she recently started taking anti-depressants and went on a crash and burn diet.”

  “Mickey on a diet! You’re kidding!”

  “Her butt had gotten epic, Harry. And now the girl has lost 27 pounds. Some kind of South Beach meets Atkins meets Weight Watchers in hell. She’s on drugs, plus she met a guy and got inspired. No booze, no carbs, no fat, no fun, God the forbidden list is endless. She’s not good company right now, to tell the truth. I think when she hits 140 or so she’ll start eating again. Or if he dumps her like the usual suspects usually do. Meanwhile—”

  “Hey, sorry, Luce. Really. Trust me. I am not in Venezuela because I want to be.”

  “Sure, Harry. I’ll share dinner with the dog.” She sighed. “At least he’s reliable.”

  “What can I say, it’s—”

  “I know, I know, not your fault. Listen, call me when you get back. I gotta go.”

  “Later Luce.” He hung up. She clicked off and almost threw the phone. Damn that guy. Why did she still see him, when she never knew when she’d see him again?

  The word for this moment was—whatever. She poked the turkey breast. It hadn’t really defrosted. She shoved it back in the freezer, bagged all the neatly sliced and diced vegetables and put them in the refrigerator, stuck her cell phone in her purse, then took off her sexy black translucent lounging jammies and put on a pair of modified homeboy street pants, cut to ride high because Lucy was decidedly not into butt cleavage or pubic hairstyling. She added a neo-hippie beaded top, a little black sweater, her black cat’s eye glasses, and open-toed sandals, for the late April breeze wafting in the windows carried early hints of summer. She woke the sleeping poodle with a “Yo, Claud, wanna hit it?” He leaped up and scrambled for the door. She checked make-up, brushed her currently medium-long blond hair back, did lipstick, grabbed leash and purse and headed out, not forgetting to lock the door.

  She tripped five flights down—the elevator had been out of commission for a month—and out the building door onto her beloved, kinetic, once-funky Broadway, transformed, before her very eyes, from downscale shopping paradise to streetfront shopping mall. Pseudo-hip corporate retail stores lined the street on both sides, in both directions, as far as her eye could see. Chasing after trendiness by moving into SoHo, these enterprises ended up chasing the trendies right out of the neighborhood. But that had been going on downtown long before Lucy Ripken had moved in, and she knew it was the inevitable evolution of the city. If bands of murderous, airplane-hijacking suicidal terrorists couldn’t change the economic dynamic, no one could. And they had failed, thank God. But still, the damned street used to have some soul, or at least some cheap places to buy clothing and food, and now it was ruled by corporate retail.

  She leashed the big white poodle, quite dashing
with his newly-shorn spring hair and his brilliant brown eyes, and walked west on Broome, then north on Wooster and west on Spring, dodging the packs of irksome wannabe hipsters and overdressed Eurotrash shoppers and noisy New Jersey noshers and the occasional, haunted-looking longtime SoHo resident, belatedly maneuvering baby- and grocery-packed stroller home through the once serene, dignified blocks. Lucy was headed for the sylvan banks of the Hudson, and on the way she emptied herself of all the things that currently worried her: Harry, the demise of her neighborhood, the flatlining sales of her Mexican book, the state of the union and the world. A girl could go nuts pondering the last, she thought, then let it go as a warm breeze rippled over from the river. On the other hand she couldn’t quite let go of the image of Maria Verde, with her cock-eyed kewpie doll grin, snarling in Jamaican moonlight as she pointed a gun at Lucy’s heart. Lucy had been maybe ten seconds from dead when Harry’s “associate” Prudence Fallowsmith, Jamaican cop, had tackled the raving, gun-toting bitch, saving Lucy’s life. Maria Verde, whose drug deal Lucy and Harry had foiled, disappeared up the beach and that was the last Lucy had seen or heard of her until today. They had stopped the drug deal, but still, Maria Verde had gotten away with murder.

  In the soft spring evening, with traffic hushed to a white roar, and the crowds of SoHo now behind her, Lucy let Maria Verde go as well.

  Soon she crossed the Westside Highway, and turned south on the ped and bike path. Forty minutes from her noisy front door, she settled on a bench under the lush green trees of Battery Park City. She gazed out, watching boats slide up and down the river as the lights of Jersey City rose before her.

  As she considered what to do about dinner, and Claud lazily chased the odd squirrel, and children played amidst the quirky bestiary of miniature statues in the park, she loved New York again for a minute. Then her cell phone rang, an organ riff snatched from an ancient Los Lobos song, Kiko and the Lavender Moon. She quickly fished it out of her purse and flipped it open. “Lucy here.”

  “That would be Lucy Ripken?”

  “Yeah. Who’s calling?” A female, didn’t sound like a telemarketer but you never knew.

  “Hey chill out. It’s me. Terry. Teresa MacDonald, you paranoid dame.”

  “Terry! Hey!” Terry lived in LA, wrote art criticism, had dated eccentric art world celebs for years, and ranked among the smartest people Lucy knew. A still-skinny reformed anorexic, red-haired, athletic, neurotic as hell but loads of fun. They’d met when Lucy did a piece for an LA magazine called SCRUB, devoted to bathing arcana, that had a moment of trendy glory and then went down the drain when the publisher made the mistake of moving the operation to New York, where the sharks made short work of it. Terry had been the Culture Editor in SCRUB’s glory years. Year. SCRUB was a short-lived phenom. Lucy had the complete set of back issues in a small box stuck in the depths of her closet. But she and Terry had stayed friendly. “What’s up, girl?”

  “Not too much. Still working on Milton Schamberg.”

  “God, how’s that going?” A few years ago Terry had started on an exhaustive biography of an obscure mid-20th century Southern California painter whom she decided had played a far larger role in the cultural evolution of Los Angeles than anyone knew. It was taking forever.

  “I’m into his thirties, so…”

  “Since he died at 44 you must be close.”

  “But the good parts are still to come.”

  “Right. The sixties and all that. Have you managed to get anyone to underwrite you yet?”

  “Grants are fewer and farther between than ever, especially in publishing, so the short answer is no. But—and this is why I’m calling you, Lucy. I’ve been scrambling for money as usual, and thanks to Milton’s son—“

  “His son?”

  “He’s a Hollywood guy. In his forties—or fifties. Who can tell around here? Anyway he’s a sick fuck but connected. So anyways I’ve got an interesting offer, and as soon as I heard it I thought of you.”

  “Really? What’s the deal?”

  “What do you think of when I say X Dames?”

  “X Dames? Um—pompous porn stars?”

  “No, you goon. Don’t you know about the X Games?”

  “Sure. That’s like radical skateboarding, right?”

  “And snowboarding, surfing, mountain biking, kite-sailing—all those crazy sports that started in Southern California and are now taking over the world. At least those parts wired for cable.”

  “So—”

  “Mix that with buff babes in bikinis and voila: a new reality TV show coming soon to your local cable channel, to be called the X Dames. A bunch of cute athletic women—a shifting cast of characters, depending on the sport and the locations and the available breast-enhanced yet athletic broads, I suspect—travel around to different places and engage in competitions. Surfing, biking, whatever. Between contests they’re theoretically up to the usual backbiting, catfighting, bitch-slapping, and the other thrills and chills that make reality TV so enticing. To win dolares, trips to exotic foreign lands, dates with c-list TV actors. Its basic trash, but there’s cash behind this trash, it seems kinda fun, and I have been anointed an associate producer-slash-writer with hiring power. So—you want a job?”

  “You want to hire me? To do what?” Lucy stood and walked over to the railing to look down into the dark waters of the river. This was getting interesting.

  “Reality TV is not always reality, Luce. I’m sure you know that. And this particular show is going to be fairly heavily scripted. But for some obscure reason they want to use only writers who’ve never worked in The Industry—hence the hire of yours truly, since I have never been near the tv biz, as you know—and the green light for me to hire you.”

  “So where does Milton Junior fit in?”

  “He’s the man behind the brilliant idea. He lives on top of Tuna Canyon, in his dad’s old house.”

  “Right, the one that looks like a flying saucer. Isn’t that where—”

  “His mother fell to her death.”

  “Or was pushed.”

  “That’s in my next chapter. But junior—his name is Bobby Schamberg, by the way, not Milton—doesn’t seem to have a problem living with mommy’s ghost. Especially since the pad has five bedrooms and a pool and views of the ocean you wouldn’t believe. The original American Schambergs made it big in lighting fixtures in Chicago a hundred years ago, and Milton surprised us all—well, me, anyway, since I always assume little-known artists must be starving—by being, behind his Bohemian facade, a stock market whiz. He left a pile of dough which Bobby’s been spending as fast as he can trying to play Hollywood. He’s got a production company and thus far he’s done a pair of seriously bad cable TV movies and a few sitcom pilots. The X Dames is his latest gambit. His ex-wife and current partner used to be a surfing champion, and they came up with the concept together. Since I was a writer and they knew me—I’ve been nosing around their lives for several years now, researching the book, and I think Bobby actually trusts me—they approached me, and I kind of helped them organize the initial proposal. Maybe they knew I needed money and did it out of pity. I don’t know. In any case they found some backers, pitched the thing to the Outside Network, where Bobby had a friend, and the next thing you know they got greenlighted and I got a sort of—job.” She stopped. Lucy waited. “So what do you think?”

  “Does this mean I get to get out of New York for the summer?”

  “Like next week. Now. And you can bring your dog. I’ve got you set up in a studio two blocks from the beach in Venice if you take the offer. It’s tiny and two thousand a month but the producers are willing to pay you about five times that, at least while they get the thing off the ground. You’ve got a bit of a rep thanks to the Mexico book—speaking of which, we have to go to Mexico right away because they want to jump-start the show by staging a surfing contest in this little town north of Puerto Vallarta called Sayulita, and they tell me it’s a north and west swell beach, so the waves will stop brea
king once summer settles in.”

  “Jesus,” said Lucy, awash in immediate and very cool possibilities. LA, working in TV, good money, another trip to Mexico, but this time the west coast, keeping those Isla Mujeres ghosts at bay a thousand miles away. A job! “It sounds too good to be true. Wow, Terry, I can’t believe you pulled this off.”

  “I can’t either. It fell on my head like a gold brick.”

  “I should say let me think about it for a couple of days but I’m more inclined, right now, to say, see you next week. I just have to deal with my loft and—“”

  “Perfect. I’ll tell them to email you a draft contract. You can read it, make changes, print it out, sign it, and send it back to me. Trust me, it’ll treat you right.”

  “Bueno. And Terry, thanks for thinking of me.”

  “I’ve seen you on a sailboard, Luce. You could probably be an X Dame yourself, were you so inclined.”

  “No way, Ter. I’m pushing 35 and way too Manhattanized for competition sports.”

  “But still, you know your way around the ocean.”

  “I guess. Listen, I gotta go get a bite. My dinner guest—none other than the fabulous Harry Ipswich—putzed out on me, so I’m wandering the streets in search of food.”

  “Again!? Doesn’t he do that all the time?”

  “His schedule is—unpredictable. And so I suffer. Instead of cooking for him I’m going to my favorite bistro and see what looks good. Wish you could join me.”

  “Cook up an X Dame location in New York and I will. Meanwhile next week we’ll make the LA dining rounds. I still hate TV but it is nice to be getting a lot of money for a little work.”

  “Instead of a little money for a lot of work, the writer’s usual fate. See you then.” Lucy shut her phone, jumped in the air , then laughed out loud. “Claud, we are moving to Southern California!”

  Fifteen minutes later, as she tethered Claud to a streetlamp and strolled into The Frog’s Grotto, her Tribeca bistro of the moment, it dawned on her that at ten grand a month she’d make her twelve per cent of Harry’s buried million in a year. She had no illusions that the gig would last that long, but even a couple of months at ten thousand per would add up to a pile of money. And getting out of Manhattan for the summer was, quite simply, priceless.