Immunity (Dr. Alexandra Blake Novels, Band 3) - Hardcover

LORI ANDREWS, a frequent guest on Nightline, 60 Minutes, CBS Morning News, and Oprah, is a lawyer and expert on genetics, called in by groups ranging from the French Parliament to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She’s taught at Princeton and Chicago-Kent College of Law, written for a television legal drama, and published ten nonfiction books. The American Bar Association Journal describes her as “a lawyer with a literary bent who has the scientific chops to rival any CSI investigator.”

Prologue

After bad booze in six bars, Castro’s room at the Wanderlust Motel beckoned him like the arms of a lover.  At 4:00 a.m., the Vegas Strip dazzled like a dowager’s jewels in the distance, while the flickering neon on his hotel looked like a battered sequin on the pasties of an over-the-hill showgirl.

He scanned the area to make sure no one was lying in wait for him.  A lot of guys wanted a pound of his flesh, payback for his past acts—or just the chance to treat someone like a punching bag to batten down their demons.  His tired glance registered Lil Joe, a jittery speed freak who some nights had the $15 to rent a room, but more often just paced the broken sidewalk outside the motel.  Lil Joe glared at him and paced backwards, away from Castro’s six foot two, well-muscled frame.  “Is cool.  Is cool,” said Joe through cracked lips.

A screeching car stopped at the end of the parking lot.  The passenger door opened, followed by a scream and then a thump as the car sped away.  Castro got to the spot in less than a minute.  Looking at the body on the ground, he realized that being pushed from a moving car was the least of the girl’s problems.  Her clothes were torn, her face pummeled, and a large pool of blood was soaking through the crotch of her jeans.

As he bent down to feel for a pulse in her neck, she croaked weakly, “No more, stop it.”  Tears pouring down her cheek, she reached up and scratched his face with her broken nails.

Pinning her arm gently so she couldn’t reach him, he said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”  But she didn’t seem to hear him through her sobs.  She curled into a fetal ball as he fished his cell phone out of his pocket.  He was about to dial when he heard the unmistakable metallic wallop of a round being chambered behind him.

He put his arms out to his sides and slowly straightened up, cursing himself for not considering that the driver might park the car and double back.  But when he turned his head, he saw the motel manager, a tough old broad pointing a Baretta 9mm.

“I didn’t do it,” he said.

He realized how bad this looked, what with the girl down and the scratches on his face.  Lil Joe could alibi him, but the wiry junkie had slipped away.  He pivoted slowly, keeping his hands up, cell phone pointed to the sky. He knew Ted would have handled it differently.  Ted could sweet talk any woman into doing anything.  The man had the gift of gab.  Castro could only understand a woman after months or years in her arms.

His blue eyes blazed at the older woman.  “Dolores,” he said, “put down the gun and let me call 911.”  He said it calmly, watching her image strobe in and out in the flickering light of the Wanderlust sign.  If she didn’t lower the gun by the time he counted mentally to ten, he would pounce and break her arm.

Her gun went down.  His fingers sped over the numbers and he gave their location to the emergency operator.  As Dolores bent to soothe the scared teen, he dialed Ted.  “We’ve got another one,” he said.  “Black Mercedes.  Nevada plates, FAN 231.”

***

By 7:00 a.m., the man who’d tossed her from the car was in custody.  He’d stopped for a drink after his little errand, not even bothering to clean the blood off the passenger seat.

Ted and Castro watched his interrogation through the one-way glass in the Vegas police department where they were the DEA end of a joint LVPD/DEA investigation into a date rape drug simply called J.  The women who were slipped this beauty became sedated, then aroused, then aggressive.  It pushed them further than anyone would have imagined, a sick game to the men who used it.  But young girls were ending up mutilated or dead.

The driver—clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer—claimed he was just helping out a friend at the Fantasy Resort on the Strip.  “The girl was like that in the hotel room,” he told the interrogator.  “Woulda been bad for business to leave her there.”

Through the glass, Castro could only see the back of the interrogator’s head, but he could imagine his eyes rolling at that comment.  The interrogator said, “So, Joey, you’re telling me it’s good for business to throw one of the guests out of a moving car?”

Joey sat up straight, as if offended by the question.  “She wasn’t no guest.  A working girl like her booking a $1000 a night room? Get real.”

On the other side of the mirror, Castro thought about whether the owner of the Fantasy Resort, Frankie “the Bayonet” DiBondi, could be moving J.  Why go for the piddly markup on a drug for lowlifes when you ran a legal brothel (a million a month declared on taxes, with an unimaginable sum socked away under the radar) and owned the hottest casino on the Strip ($150 million annually with everyone from Bette Midler to Shakira wanting to play the 5000-seat showroom).

“Why would the Bayonet move down the alphabet to J when he could make the big bucks moving H?” Castro said.

“We need still need to get on his ass,” Ted said.  “Could be someone else dealing inside the Fantasy.”

Castro nodded.  If this had occurred under DiBondi’s nose, what he did about it in the next 24 hours could tip them off to who was selling and, more importantly, who was producing the drug.

***

When they reached the Fantasy Resort, it was barely 9:00 a.m.  Castro headed straight to the casino, the surest place to find DiBondi.  The 70-year-old don had a penthouse in the hotel, but was constantly in motion, greeting guests, throwing dinners for the headliners, and storming past the blackjack tables, eyeing the dealers so they didn’t dick with his money.  Sure, he had state-of-the-art security and a slew of ex-cops on retainer, but he was old school.

At the bar in the main casino, Castro caught sight of DiBondi approaching a blond-haired man in his 40s.  Dressed in a navy suit with a prep school tie, the younger man stuck out in the casino, where the dress code encompassed either tuxedoed men escorting women in Cher-like beaded numbers or overweight Middle Americans in Bermuda shorts or sweat pants.

DiBondi put his arm around the blond man.  But rather than buying him a drink, he steered the conservatively-dressed man toward the exit.  Castro moved into the flow of people headed out of the sumptuous breakfast buffet so it wouldn’t be so obvious he was trailing DiBondi.  But he needed to stay close.  A valet was turning over a Cadillac with the plates FAN OO1 to the older man.  Castro needed to make sure he was back in his own car with Ted before the man hit the road.

DiBondi handed his keys over to the guy Castro pegged to be a businessman.  That term in Vegas covered a lot of territory.  The DEA agent didn’t know what the connection might be to J, or even if there was any.  Someone producing the drug would have known better than to show up at the casino dressed like that.  And DiBondi wouldn’t have been seen in public with him.  But this was going down strangely enough to make them both persons of interest.

***

Castro’s weary body, which hadn’t felt sleep for nearly two days, slumped over the wheel as DiBondi and his pal pulled into a gas station outside of Flagstaff, Arizona.  It was their first stop since they’d left Vegas five hours earlier.  Ted woke up as Castro eased on the brakes. “Fuck,” Ted said. “Where the hell is he taking us?”

Castro didn’t bother to respond.  He switched positions with Ted and, once in the passenger seat, immediately fell asleep.  When he next woke up, it was dusk and they were across the street from the Hotel La Fonda in Taos.  He stepped out of the car, took a seat in the lobby and surreptitiously snapped a photo of DiBondi’s companion on his cell phone, transmitting the image to DEA headquarters for identification.

He and Ted waited until the two men got in the elevator before they approached the desk themselves, checking in as a gay couple.  Each of them had now gotten a good five hours sleep and were pumped for whatever DiBondi dished out.  Ted took Castro’s hand as they waited for the elevator.  Once inside, Castro let go and laughed.  “Next time,” he said, “remind me to get assigned a woman as a partner.”

“Nah, you love me,” said Ted.  And he was right.  He was Castro’s closest friend.

In the room, Castro looked out the window at the flame of the setting sun and noticed that the valet hadn’t parked DiBondi’s car.  “Get ready to roll,” he said to Ted as he grabbed a map from the desk.  “They’re just making a pit stop.”

They took the stairs back down.  Ted disappeared into the park across from the hotel for a moment, then got into the passenger seat of the car, just as DiBondi and his buddy were pulling out.

Castro’s cell phone rang and he maneuvered his car onto the road, falling a safe distance behind DiBondi’s Cadillac.  “He’s not in the system,” the voice on the other end said.  The photo didn’t match any known felons or anyone with ties to the Mob.

“Much obliged,” said Castro, who hung up and turned to his partner.

“I heard,” Ted said.

“Doesn’t seem like family either.”

Ninety minutes later, the Cadillac turned onto an unpaved road.

“Th...