So, you fur-coated hasenpfeffer, you think I’m no smarter than Elmer Fudd, eh? Mickey’s lip curled at the thought of dumping the creature on the freeway, or leaving it in the desert to fend for itself. The overfed animal would probably die if it missed a meal.

The assistant nuzzled the rabbit’s face. “Don’t keep Cosmo out too late, Edgar.” She eyed Mickey with open distrust. “You neither.” With a wink to her boss, she turned on her heel and shook her hips down the hall.

“She gave up a successful dancing career to work with me,” Cosmo said as Mickey ushered him to the door.

Mickey looked back over his shoulder at the woman. With that figure, she’d probably left a lucrative exotic dancing career, and what she saw in the aging Casanova eluded him.

They stepped from the backstage entrance to the tiny service lot and Cosmo pointed to a beat-up Cadillac in champagne pink. “I’m parked over there.”

“Great, but we’re taking my car.” Mickey nudged him toward a dark nondescript Prelude. What he intended to do didn’t need extra advertising.

“I don’t know why you don’t like Edgar.” Cosmo folded himself and the rabbit into the passenger seat.

Mickey closed the door on them and scanned the lot as he walked around the car. “No witnesses,” he muttered to himself. He climbed into his seat and drove along a mile of service roads to get to Las Vegas Boulevard. Once he was headed toward McCarran Airport, he allowed himself a smile. “You know why they sent me, right?”

“I can imagine.” The old man didn’t sound afraid at all. His pasty hand stroked the rabbit’s white back.

“Where are they?” Mickey slowed as he approached a stoplight. Beyond the intersection, the metal skeleton of a new hotel under construction rose from the desert, its moonlit silhouette clawing the sky like some black specter. “You shouldn’t mess with these guys. I thought I made that clear.”