An anthology of stories edited by Michael Connelly, 2005

There is a saying in Las Vegas that is as crude as it is accurate. What they say is that in this town there is a paddle for everybody’s ass. What they mean by that is that you can’t know everything about Las Vegas. Just when you are foolish enough to think you do, just when you are dumb enough to think you have it figured out, a new paddle comes along and you get knocked down again. There is no sure thing in Las Vegas. There is no sure bet.

Las Vegas is a destination city. Whether you come here to live or to just play, it is one of the few places on the planet where most people come from somewhere else. They come with their hopes and desires on their sleeves. Their greed, too. But the city carries a big paddle in return. The city pays out in the smallest margin of returns. Not just at the tables, but in everything. Everybody who comes here with his or her dreams of a new life and a new existence faces a limited return. And that’s what makes it attractive to writers of mystery fiction. This town represents the ultimate long shot. For everyone who makes it, who hits the jackpot in life or at the blue felt tables, there are ninety-nine who don’t. And the line between those that do and those that don’t is where the grist of high stakes character and drama arises.

That’s what this book is about. Those ninety-nine people who walk away empty-handed. Vegas is the unifying vision, of course, but beneath all the neon and glitz is the unifying desire to win, to start over, to begin again. That is the true character of this place. Each one of these stories is in some way the story of a dreamer and a schemer. Someone looking for a small redemption. These are stories of characters at the raw edge of humanity. Why not place them in the city that represents the raw edge of our society?

Las Vegas may be the most monitored city in the world. On the strip alone there are more than ten thousand eyes in the sky.Those are the cameras that track you from the moment you step into a casino to try to take away their money until the moment you leave-with or without it. And that ten thousand doesn’t even count the cameras in the garages and elevators and hallways. Over the intersections and above the people movers. In the restaurants and showrooms and focused on the pools. When you come to Las Vegas you are never alone for long. Yet here is the place that draws the schemers. Here is the place where people transform themselves, where they become alter egos and the kind of people they are assuredly not when they are back home. Despite the unblinking eye of the camera, there is a dark freedom afforded by the neon city. It is its greatest draw.

The characters in these stories have been drawn by that darkness. Ride with them to and through this place. You’ll be met at the Nevada border by a seventy-five-cent grifter and from there it is onward to the city of sin. You’ll learn what it’s like to play craps when you have to win. I mean have to win because you’re just one step ahead of the kind of debt collector who takes late payments in blood. You’ll meet schemers who are out-schemed by other schemers or even their own marks. You’ll meet a class of clientele to which violence is a given. (I mean, when the first line of a story is “Is he dead?” and is delivered by a character named Snake, then you know you are riding in dark territory.) And then, when perhaps you think there is no hope left for humanity, you’ll come across a woman who just wants to preserve something good and natural in the desert from which the mirage of Las Vegas rises. So press on and you will find moments of human grace in these stories as well.

I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a paddle for everybody’s ass in this collection. Don’t think you know anything about Las Vegas until you ride with this group. But be warned. Don’t think you know everything there is to know about Las Vegas. Not ever.

Michael Connelly

“Welcome to Nevada,” the convenience store manager said.

The manager’s name was Huey Dollop. He was fifty, and he had tobacco-stained teeth and a head shaped like a honeydew. His store was the first thing motorists driving from California to Las Vegas saw when they crossed the state border on 1-15. A concrete pillbox sitting off the highway with a neon Budweiser sign in the window.

The couple who came into Huey’s store looked beat. Two tired kids driving a Volvo they’d stopped making fifteen years ago. The girl had red hair, and eyes that said she’d seen a lot. The guy, maybe the same age, wore a Dodgers cap and was built like a stump. He made a bee-line for the cold beverages, leaving the girl at the counter.

“Good afternoon,” Huey said. “What can I do for you today?”

Huey said his lines with a smile on his face. It was the way he addressed every customer that came into his store. It always put them at ease.

“This is our first time visiting Las Vegas,” she said, nodding at her boyfriend in the back of the store. “Troy won a chunk of change on the lottery, and figured maybe it was time to give lady luck a spin.”

Huey nodded. He’d been running his store twenty years, and had heard a lot of stories. Most were hard luck. This one wasn’t, only the girl seemed afraid, like she sensed that they were about to get taken. A pair of virgins in Sin City.

“Ever gambled before?” Huey asked.

She nodded. Then said, “We taught ourselves on the Internet. It was fun. But…” Her voice trailed off, and she lowered her eyes and stared at the faded counter top.

Huey picked up an open can of Dr. Pepper, and took a sip.They made it with prune juice, gave it a unique flavor. He said, “But?”

“We weren’t playing with real money.” She lowered her voice. “Troy’s afraid of getting cheated in a real casino. You know, like once he starts to win.”

“Casinos don’t have to cheat,” Huey said.

“Hey, Amy, what you want to drink?”

“Yoo-Hoo,” the girl replied. To Huey she said, “What do you mean?”

“The house has an edge in every game. That’s how they pay their bills.”

“An edge? Like a percentage?”

“That’s right. Locals call it the sunshine tax.”

“But do people ever win?”

“Sure,” Huey said. “People win all the time.”

Amy leaned her thin frame against the counter. “People like Troy?”

“People just like Troy. Last week, a man came in who’d won a million dollars on a slot machine at the Bellagio, looked just like Troy.”

“The what?”

“The Bellagio. It’s a casino on the Strip. It’s got the fountains in the front.”

“Did he tell you which machine?”

Huey smiled, and took another sip of his soda. Troy came to the front. He placed two drinks and some food on the counter. He wore a faded tee shirt with the words I’M BLIND, I’M DEAF, I WANT TO BE A REF!

Amy said, “This man says the games aren’t rigged.”

“I told you that last night,” Troy said, taking his wallet out. Throwing a twenty down, he said, “We just need to know which casinos to play. They all don’t have the same rules. Guys at the shop told me that.”

Amy looked at Huey. “That true? Are some places better?”

Huey rang up the items. “Several casinos have liberal rules for blackjack, and looser slot machines. They’re definitely better places to gamble.”

“Which ones?” Troy asked.

Huey lifted his eyes and met the big man’s gaze. “The Riviera,the Sahara, the Stardust, and all the casinos in old downtown, like the Nugget and the Horseshoe.”

“What are loose slot machines?” the girl asked.

Huey tore the receipt from the register’s printer, and handed it to Troy along with his change. “The management sets them to pay out better. Sometimes they have signs outside that say ninety-eight percent payoff on slots. Go to those places.”

“What’s the payout like at the other casinos?” Amy said.

“About ninety-four to ninety-five percent,” Huey said.

“That much less? That’s cheating.”

Huey said, “That’s the sunshine tax.”

Troy put his change into his pocket, and handed Amy the receipt. Then he scooped his things off the counter. Huey saw the girl’s eyes wander, and said, “I’ll tell you one other little secret about the slot machines.”

She looked up at him expectantly.

“The looser machines are usually near the doors, or places where people congregate inside the casino,” Huey said. “The management does that to create excitement, and entice other people to play. Play those machines.”

“Near the doors,” the girl said.

“That’s right.”

“Thanks,” she said under her breath.

The couple started to leave. Huey said, “One more thing,” and they came back to the counter. “This is really important,” he said. “Always bet the maximum number of coins the machine will take. That’s the only way you can win the jackpot.”

Troy looked at the girl. “You remembering all this?”

Amy recited the names of the casinos, and the pearls about the slots, saying it like it was the most important thing she’d ever been told.

“Much obliged,” Troy said.

“Good luck,” Huey replied.

Through the curly-cues of the Budweiser sign, Huey watched the couple get into their old Volvo. The car started up, and went about twenty feet. Then it stopped, and the girl got out, and marched into the store.

“Forget something?” Huey asked as she approached the counter.

She was holding the receipt, and pointing at it.

“What’s this?” she asked.

Huey stared at a charge for $.75. He scratched his chin. His eyes drifted to the Three Musketeers bar on the counter, next to the cigarette lighters. Picking it up, he said, “Your boyfriend didn’t take his candy bar.”

She shook her head. “Troy don’t eat no candy.”

“My mistake.”

Huey put the candy bar on the shelf behind him. Then he hit the NO SALE button on the register. The cash drawer popped open, and he fished out three quarters, and laid them onto her palm. She left the store without saying a word.

The Volvo left a cloud of dirt in the parking lot. When it settled, another car had taken its place. Four young women piled out. In the back of the car, Huey saw pillows, and guessed the women were planning to share a room.

He took the candy bar off the shelf, and placed it back on the counter on the spot it had occupied since he’d opened his store. The women came in, and he smiled at them.

“Welcome to Nevada,” he said.

Oh yes, he’d always hated Vegas.

The gambler’s Mecca. In the old days bad enough, fading shabby casinos forcing smiles. Putting out like weary whores: free drinks, cheap rooms. As though he gave a damn. He never gave a damn.

The first time, when he was young (he was very young), it was pulse-pounding thrilling. Staring out the window the minute anything below looked like desert (he’d never left the East before, Pittsburgh-Jesus Christ, Pittsburgh!-as far as he’d been). Leaned that way an hour, waiting. (Catch him doing that now. Forget it, now he took the aisle.) Practically first off the plane (buthe’d never been first), laughed like a kid to see slots at the airport. Had to stop and play them. Lost forty bucks. That was funny, too.

Then the rented car. (Red Thunderbird. Oh, he was one impressive stud, all right.) Then the ten-minute drive. (Too long for him, drumming on the wheel, bopping to the radio.) Then the truth.

The room small, too cold, the sun too hot, burning, relentless. Sand on the wind, stinging. The music too loud, the drinks watered, the girls smiling like their feet hurt.

He wondered if Muslims hated Mecca when they finally got there. Same-same, anyway: hideous buildings, sun and sand.

And Vegas just got uglier. Each time he came, he marveled. (Did pilgrims do that in Mecca, too?) Pirate ships and dancing water (in the desert!) and the Brooklyn Bridge. And hey, you want to talk who knew what and when they knew it, tell me why they never built the Twin Towers into the skyline of New York, New York.

He’d said that to Bennie a few months ago, like Bennie would know, like he’d give a damn.

“You’re an asshole, Taylor.” That’s what Bennie said. That’s what Bennie always said, unless you were placing a bet or paying one off. Or he was paying out, paying you. That did happen. Not often and God knows not to Taylor lately, but it did. Then Bennie handed you your cash and said, “Fuck you, Taylor.”

“Pleasure doing business with a gentleman,” he’d smile at Bennie. He’d always smile.

Bennie’d say, “Fuck you, Taylor.”

10:00 a.m., April 20 Red Rock Canyon, Nevada

Pansy Reynard lay on her belly inside a camouflaged bird blind, high-power Zeiss binoculars to her eyes, a digital sound amplifier hooked over her right ear, charting every movement and sound made by her observation target, an Aplomado falcon hatchling. As Pansy watched, the hatchling stretched his wings to their full thirty-inch span and gave them a few tentative flaps as if gathering courage to make his first foray out of the nest. He would need some courage to venture out, she thought. The ragged, abandoned nest his mother had appropriated for her use sat on a narrow rock ledge 450 vertical feet above the desert floor.

“Go, baby,” Pansy whispered when the chick craned back his neck and flapped his wings again. This was hour fourteen of her assigned nest watch. She felt stiff and cramped, and excited all at once. There had been no reported Aplomado falcon sightings in Nevada since 1910. For a mated Aplomado falcon pair to appear in the Red Rock Canyon area less than twenty miles west of the tawdry glitz and endless noise of Las Vegas, was singular, newsworthy even. But for the pair to claim a nest and successfully hatch an egg was an event so unexpected as to be considered a miracle by any committed raptor watcher, as Pansy Reynard considered herself to be.

The hatchling watch was uncomfortable, perhaps dangerous, because of the ruggedness of the desert canyons, the precariousness of Pansy’s rocky perch in a narrow cliff-top saddle opposite the nest, and the wild extremes of the weather. But the watch was very likely essential to the survival of this wonder child. It had been an honor, Pansy felt, to be assigned a shift towatch the nest. And then to have the great good fortune to be on site when the hatchling first emerged over the top of the nest was, well, nearly overwhelming.

Pansy lowered her binocs to wipe moisture from her eyes, but quickly raised them again so as not to miss one single moment in the life of this sleek-winged avian infant. She had been wakened inside her camouflage shelter at dawn by the insistent chittering of the hatchling as he demanded to be fed. From seemingly nowhere, as Pansy watched, the mother had soared down to tend him, the forty-inch span of her black and white wings as artful and graceful as a beautiful Japanese silk-print kite. The sight of the mother made Pansy almost forgive Lyle for standing her up the night before.

Almost forgive Lyle: This was supposed to be a two-man shift. Lyle, a pathologist with the Department of Fish and Game, was a fine bird-watcher and seemed to be in darned good physical shape. But he was new to the Las Vegas office and unsure about his readiness to face the desert overnight. And he was busy. Or so he said.

Pansy had done her best to assure Lyle that he would be safe in her hands. As preparation, she had packed two entire survival kits, one for herself and one for him, and had tucked in a very good bottle of red wine to make the long chilly night pass more gently. But he hadn’t come. Hadn’t even called.

Pansy sighed, curious to know which he had shunned, an evening in her company or the potential perils of the place. She had to admit there were actual, natural challenges to be addressed. It was only mid-April, but already the desert temperatures reached the century mark before noon. When the sun was overhead, the sheer vertical faces of the red sandstone bluffs reflected and intensified the heat until everything glowed like-and felt like-the inside of an oven. There was no shade other than the feathery shadows of spindly yucca and folds in the rock formations.

To make conditions yet more uncomfortable, it was sandstorm season. Winds typically began to pick up around noon, and could drive an impenetrable cloud of sand at speeds surpassing eighty miles an hour until sunset. When the winds blew, there was nearly no way to escape both the heat and the pervasive, intrusive blast of sand. Even cars were useless as shelter.With windows rolled up and without the AC turned on you’d fry in a hurry. With the AC turned on, both you and the car’s engine would be breathing grit. If you could somehow navigate blind and drive like hell, you might drive clear of the storm before sand fouled the engine. But only if you could navigate blind.

People like Pansy who knew the area well might find shelter in random hollows among the rocks, such as the niche where the hatchling sat in his nest. Or the well prepared, for instance Pansy, might hunker down inside a zip-up shelter made to military specs for desert troops, like the one that was tucked inside her survival pack. Or navigate using digital GPS via satellite-Global Positioning System.

Not an environment for neophytes, Pansy conceded, but she’d had high hopes for Lyle, and had looked forward to an evening alone with him and the falcons under the vast blackness of the desert sky, getting acquainted.

Pansy knew she could be a bit off-putting at first meeting. But in that place, during that season, Pansy was in her métier and at her best. Her preparations for the nest watch, she believed, were elegant in their simplicity, completeness, and flexibility: a pair of lightweight one-man camouflage all-weather shelters, plenty of water, a basic all-purpose tool, meals-ready-to-eat, a bodacious slingshot in case snakes or vultures came to visit the nest, good binocs, a two-channel sound amplifier to eavesdrop on the nest, a handheld GPS locator, and a digital palm-sized video recorder. Except for the water, each kit weighed a meager twenty-seven pounds and fit into compact, waterproof, dust proof saddlebags she carried on her all-terrain motorcycle. The bottle of wine and two nice glasses were tucked into a quick-release pocket attached to the cycle frame. She had everything: shelter, food, water, tools, the falcon, a little wine. But no Lyle.

Indeed, Lyle’s entire kit was still attached to the motorcycle she had stashed in a niche in the abandoned sandstone quarry below her perch.

A disturbing possibility occurred to Pansy as she watched the hatchling: Maybe Lyle was a little bit afraid of her. A champion triathlete and two-time Ironman medalist, Lieutenant Pansy Reynard, desert survival instructor with the Army’s SFOD-D, Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta Force, out ofthe Barstow military training center, admitted that she could be just a little bit intimidating.

As we walked along the strip hunched in jackets to keep warm-Vegas can be damned cold in November-Kay said, “There’s a dark blue Lincoln following us.”

We were on our way back to the Mirage from one of those cheap all-you-can-eat dinners where gimlet-eyes watch for people who try to stash extra prime rib or cheesecake under their shirts or bras.

“I know.” I didn’t look back. “Don’t worry, but listen. That car’s going to pass us and stop at the curb up ahead. A man is going to tell me to get in. I’ll get in. If I haven’t called by midnight-”

“I’ll call the police. Dan, what-”

“Not the police. Call a lawyer named John Jeffries in L.A. His number’s in my Rolodex.” I slipped one of my business cards into her hand. “Tell him to call the numbers I’ve written on the card.”

I squeezed her hand, and we walked briskly on toward the hotel, but my mind was racing. It had taken me the better part of three days to smoke them out. Now they were here.

The great thing about revenge is that, once decided upon, there’s not a great deal else to consider. Like a topless show, innovation isn’t necessary.

For stranding me in the Red Rock Mountains, for making memiss the TV audition in Los Angeles today, there’d be a huge price to pay. On the drive back to the city, I stopped my beat-up sedan to stretch my long legs and take the late morning desert air. A nearby burro regarded me, standing next to one of the evenly spaced creosote bushes that gave the valley floor a curiously gardenlike, arranged appearance. My pink spandex bikini, fishnet hose, and eight-inch heels no doubt drew its attention. For showgirl Lilah Starr, morning, even late morning, is a rarely sighted beast.

I’d determined to become Vegas personified. A place that feeds off the intoxicating rush of blood to the head, a red liquid that keeps the predator alive in the midst of arid desolation. That liquid now fueled the engine of my hate. I slipped into a less attention-grabbing outfit of gold hotpants and halter top before driving on. The donkeylike creature twitched its furry ears and maintained the cool stare at my departure. I decided to add the stubbornness of the burro to my approach.

My immediate quarry lived in a quiet street towards the southern city limits. Leaving my heels at the open back door, my dancing skills allowed me to skip nimbly over the white carpet and knock out the occupant. Georgia, a fellow showgirl from my revue, had been seeing huckster Jonn Brooks all spring. There are no easy rides when you sleep with the enemy.

I slipped on a pair of elbow-length pink cotton gloves and began my search. Then again, her collection of kitsch figurines could be considered as sufficient punishment, or simply a cry for help. I located her handbag and removed the address book. Sure enough, Jonn was listed in her childish scrawl. Hmmm, I could drive my vindictive heart to his house in three minutes.

Given the way he treated his employees, no wonder he kept his address private. Because today’s episode represented only part of a long list of his attacks on my dignity. The watertight contract that I’d signed when he got me drunk had been the start. Then came my enforced silicone implants. Didn’t the moron understand that skin is out and family-oriented offerings are in?

That’s when I began to organize my departure. Or escape, if you will. When I’d discussed the idea with Georgia, I didn’t realize I’d been talking directly to him. When he next visited my silicone valley, his head would literally be buried there.

Gee, that Jonn’s such a gentleman. Why, he’d thoughtfully abandoned me with my sedan. That more than compensated for being ambushed by his henchmen in my dressing room. A shame that the chloroform needed to wear off before I could slip behind the wheel. I’d cleared my head by putting on my false eyelashes one by one, while the time drifted by. Now my gun would make both Jonn and my contract null and void. The sight of the weapon in the glove compartment reassured me, along with the same phial of chloroform and ball of cotton wool that he’d used on me. A further deliberate sign of his swaggering arrogance. I winked a soft brown eye back at my luxurious lashes in the rear-view mirror, pausing briefly to consider the satisfying sight of applying several thick lashes to his own rear view.

The instant I saw his black SUV, spotless and gleaming, he swanked in and eased away from me. I let three cars overtake mine, and I stayed at that respectable distance. We turned left. Left again. The fourth left told me that, once more, I’d fallen short of respectable. He braked suddenly, clambered out and waddled his dumpy frame towards me. I stopped. If I shot him there and then, I’d have too many witnesses to an act of such selfless compassion. So I lowered the window, hoping that I could kidnap him if he stuck his ugly mug inside. No such luck, he kept to the sidewalk.

“Hi Lilah. Okay?”

“No-kay, you sewer rat”

“Surely, there’s no hard feelings over that little joke?” His chest strained against the dull cream-colored shirt, while a red and green check tie dangled over his beer belly. A light grey suit and ever-present cigar completed the ensemble.

“I want out, Jonn. Out of my contract and out of Nevada.”

“Honey, we’ve discussed it, remember? I’m very attached to my performers. Didn’t your trip to the mountains help clear your head?” I’d launched myself out of the car and pressed my gun into his gut in the flash of a downtown neon sign. “Hey, I’m meeting Senator Smythe later on. If I don’t show, questions will be asked.”

“What say you join me for a spin?” I roughly maneuvered him into the passenger seat and hit the gas. Unless his senator turned up right now with more firepower, he’d have to take his turn. That’s democracy.

“Lilah, be careful. Steering with one hand isn’t very sensible.” Funny, how he could be so confident when surrounded by his heavies at the venue.

“Yeah, and I’ve only got one eye on the road. Heck, wouldn’t want to be in the dead man’s seat right now.”

“Okay, I’ll revoke your contract. Only, I’ll need to speak with my lawyers first…” We screeched to a halt outside Georgia’s.

“No, Jonn. We go inside and you write out the change immediately. Capice?”

“Capicing you loud and clear.”

Carrying a handgun, Georgia let us in. When she saw my own gun trained on our Caesar’s back, she frowned deeply.

“Put the weapon down please, Georgia,” Jonn insisted. “She must’ve hit her head during a recent performance.” With a quizzical look my way she complied. As two tall, perfectly poised showgirls, we eyeballed each other at least a foot over Jonn’s balding head. I admired her surgeon. You’d need to be an expert to spot her nasal beautification and various other collagen injections. Though her bust was all natural, allegedly. I admired her front.

“Jonn wants a pen and some paper,” I explained. “He’s got a legal nicety to produce.” I shoved him onto a white settee, while I lounged against the white wall and kept my gun trained on him. The pen and paper duly arrived. He glanced my way, recoiled a bit at the lilac paper with the border of red hearts, took a deep breath and started to write.

Georgia, in her white catsuit and heels, leaned over his shoulder. “That’s all you’ve asked for, Lilah?” She looked genuinely astonished.

“Now now, honeybuns, it’s really no big deal,” Jonn soothed, too damn lightly for my tastes.

I pointed my loaded truth seeker straight at his head. “Care to elaborate on that pillow talk?”

“I’ve got a little bit stashed away in the desert for a rainy day, that’s all.”

“You’re telling me,” said Georgia. “Hey, Lilah, ever wondered why our glitzy venue took twice as long to build than the estimate? This here is the king of skimming. He probably owns the desert too.”

“You so-called ladies won’t be returning from your next visitto the mountains, and I’ll go to my grave before I show you where to find my money.” The petulant look came so naturally to him.

“Lilah, I’ll go with you. I’ve had enough of Vegas. Too much glamour can be fatal. This city ain’t what it used to be. For all the private security guards this guy maintains, I got attacked in my own home not half an hour ago. In this very room. I want out, and I made a duplicate of Jonn’s secret treasure map as insurance. See, Jonn, you’re not the only one with private security arrangements.” My, but his crest fell at that news like a wave hitting a stony beach.

We left him tied up and chloroformed in the brightly lit, whitewashed basement. By my estimate, we’d be in California with the booty when he surfaced, ready to appreciate the army of figurines that occupied the many display cases. I filled the tank with gas before leaving our twenty-four-hour neon city behind.

“Which way, Georgia?”

“Take the highway to the Red Rock Mountains.”

While jazz played on the radio and the air conditioning cranked it out at the max, I considered how I’d been wrong about my fellow showgirl. The Strip is packed full of hidden security cameras, which for legal reasons aren’t allowed to record audio. But that wouldn’t stop a feral gambler like Jonn. I shuddered at the intrusive nature of his surveillance. Best to consider the future, which lay thirty minutes or so in front of us.

The miles vanished under the wheels. Creosote bushes gave way to blackbush as we climbed, then Mojave yucca and Joshua trees. A shame I didn’t pursue botany in college. Instead of pursuing the boys in the clubs. Pretty soon I’d realized that I went for the clubs, not boys.

“We’re here,” Georgia announced.

“Here appears to be nowhere.”

“The next stage is on foot.” I changed into gold platform trainers (hers were white, of course) and we climbed a steep slope. More steep slope. Still with the slope. Ahead of me, she ducked behind a big boulder. I got a woozy feeling, and it wasn’t all because of the prickly heat. Had my plan for revenge, simple straight and true, been led astray by unnecessary, cluttered action?

The boulder hid the mouth of a cave. When I joined her, some ten yards inside, she was peering intently at a section of jagged wall. New doubts arose. I’d stranded myself with a less than stable showgirl and no means of defense. At least the air this far in was marginally cooler, and I appreciated the shade.

“Georgia?” My voice echoed slightly.

“I also brought along the key.” If she removed a key-shaped piece of rock from a pocket, I’d know she was insane and I’d have to act accordingly. My thoughts strayed to the chloroform in the glove compartment.

She removed a key-shaped piece of rock from a pocket and I slugged her out cold from behind. Again. Poor Georgia. For sure, Jonn must take responsibility for tipping her over the edge. Interesting key, though. I picked it up and wiped the dust off. On closer inspection, it was made of red metal, with a black button at the round end. The rock look was only a textured finish. What the heck. I pointed it at the wall and pressed. Then I wondered about my own sanity.

With a low reverberating rumble, a section of wall slowly rose to the ceiling, stirring a small cloud of debris as it did so. I closed my eyes, not solely to keep the debris out. If I opened them to see glitter balls and a casino, staffed by dwarves, I’d book myself into the nearest helpful medical institution. Hi Ho.

“What the…” asked an out-of-focus Georgia.

“A boulder fell from the ceiling. You’ll be okay.” She shook her short blonde curls. She accepted my hand and I helped to haul her back to her feet. Thankfully, her concussion concealed the total absence of boulders on the floor.

“Wow, thanks, Lilah. You’re the only true friend I ever made in Vegas. Is that the treasure?”

Glad for the distraction, I turned back to the breach in the rock wall. A whole bunch of silver and gold coins filled a dozen metal shelves, all in transparent plastic bags. Only in Vegas, my friend, only in Vegas. Once more, visionary human endeavor had created and sustained outrageous architecture in a harsh environment.

Together, each softly whistling her own tune, we carried the desert loot back to the car. After closing the rock door and sweeping our footprints, to leave no trace of our visit, we drove on through the mountains. For several minutes, the jazz and theair conditioning took the place of conversation. If detectives ever interviewed us separately, there’s no way that any cover story would stand the strain.

I slammed on the breaks and shouted, “It’s not enough!”

“Lilah, those coins will go a long way.”

“Not that. Jonn. This isn’t the revenge I wanted, damn it. He’s probably got secret hoards all the way between here and the Valley of Fire.” I curled a lock of my long blonde hair around my fingers and continued to fume.

Georgia drew her mouth into a thin line. “You have a plan?”

“Which means, he won’t be expecting us. And these coins should buy a way through his armor. What do you say?”

“A friend of mine is a coin dealer, no questions asked. Gary’s Numanistics on Sixth Street.”

“Don’t you mean Numismatics?”

“Whatever.”

“Yeah, I’m familiar with it.”

“Tell you what,” she suggested, “I could call in a favor with Senator Smythe, find out where he’s dining tonight.” It sounded like a plan to me. On our way back to Vegas, I added a few more illegal miles per hour to our speed. Truth be told, the thought of crossing the desert on a summer’s day didn’t exactly thrill me. What with the risk of the car overheating, the tires blowing out from the heat and getting stuck without water, even seeing Jonn again was more appealing. Well, marginally so. The image of Georgia using her recent wealth to buy yet more china and porcelain nightmares entered my head, and I shook it out immediately.

Back at Chateau Georgia, we found that Jonn had already escaped. No doubt his innate sliminess allowed him to slip through his bonds. She made the call, often dropping her voice low, probably to whisper sweet nothings.

ShowTime turned out to be in the Top of the World Restaurant, perched at the summit of the Stratosphere Tower. Stopping very briefly to retouch our makeup and fix a low-cal snack, we set off anew. With the curtain due to rise about ten minutes before we arrived, after dealing with the coins, it meant that we wouldn’t be cooling our high heels backstage for too long.

We turned off the Main Street and drove directly into a garage, where we parked. Three other cars were being workedon. Background electrodisco spilled into the foreground. A man in his early forties, no taller than Jonn but trim and fit, left a small office, wiping his hands on a clean towel. We stepped out to greet him.

“Hiya Lilah, hiya Georgia. I gotta say, you two don’t need any bodywork.”

“Gary, darling, this isn’t a social call,” Georgia trilled.

“Yeah, sorta figured you weren’t hankering to become car mechanics.”

“We’re here about your hobby.” At my comment his demeanor changed to full-on serious.

“You’ve got the spare change with you?” We nodded. “Hey boys, coffee break,” he shouted across the garage. Half a dozen employees trooped out in a well-rehearsed fashion and closed the garage door. I wondered if failed deals had led to their thralldom. “I love garage sales. What have you got for me?”

I opened the trunk. He picked up one of the bags, looked closely and gave an appreciative grunt. He delved deep and repeated the process. A third bag sealed the deal. “A check for each of you?”

“Gary, we love you,” I said.

“Say, did they take an interest in your topless War and Peace idea?” He didn’t smile, but the twinkle in his eyes betrayed him.

“Nope. They wouldn’t agree to my topless Crime and Punishment either,” I shot back.

“But they did say yes to my idea, a fully nude tribute to America’s cheerleaders,” Georgia enthused. We loved her too.

The Stratosphere drew closer. It marks the unofficial divide between Old Vegas and the new ritzy casinos of the strip. The town gets its bearings from the Stratosphere, so it made an ideal place for me to establish my bearings with Jonn, after way too long. The needle of my vengeance pointed due north.

“Georgia, you gotta tell me, what the hell is it with you and those figurines?” We’d stopped at a red light.

“Sweet, aren’t they?”

“Sickly you mean.”

“Well, perhaps my collection of commemorative plates will be more to your liking?” I eased us away from the junction.

“No, not commemorative plates. Anything but commemorativeplates. You’re going to waste your half of the bounty, aren’t you?”

“Lilah Starr, it ain’t none of your business what I spend Jonn’s money on.” She frowned, crossed her hands over her chest and found the cityscape engrossing to watch. “It’s not like your tiresome fixation on old show posters is worth a fig.”

“Actually, it’s worth quite a…”

“Shut up, Lilah.”

Shortly after 5 p.m., our ears popped as we rode the elevator from ground level. Sure, reservations are required to dine, but no one has reservations about showgirls on the Strip. When it comes to paying by plastic, 36FFs lead the way.

I slid mine into the space next to Jonn at their panoramic window seat. Georgia followed suit with hers next to Senator Smythe, a ruddy-faced, portly man in his sixties with a shock of suspiciously black hair. Suddenly, the panoramic view lost its appeal. A map of new territories to conquer occupied their greedy eyes.

“Evening boys,” I cooed, straightening Jonn’s boring tie.

“Evening ladies, care for some wine?” asked the senator, his bonhomie fully engaged. “If white’s not to your liking, just say.”

“Yes please, Senator, white’s fine,” Georgia replied. I nodded and he poured for us.

“Hey, you’re Georgia de la Rose, aren’t you?” The senator smiled at the happy memory who sat beside him.

“at shucks, Senator, it’s so nice for a girl to be recognized.” I saw his arm curl around her waist, and noticed that she didn’t object.

“Lilah, what’s this about?” Jonn asked. “I thought you two had left for the coast hours ago?”

“You wish, you mean,” I countered. “Senator, are you aware that Jonn is the only person ever caught cheating in the International Burro Biscuit Toss in Oatman?” The senator looked suitably disgusted. “Go on, Jonn, tell us about the steroid injections in your throwing arm.”

“Geez almighty, Jonn, is that true?” Smythe was grilling a slippery witness at a hearing on Capitol Hill. Georgia covered her mouth with her hand in mock horror.

Jonn put down the fork in his well-developed hand, the seafood no longer so appealing. “I’ll ask you again, Lilah, what’s the point of this visit?”

“Hey Jonn, no need for the hostility.” The senator didn’t want to antagonize the voters. “Lilah, Georgia, is it a matter that your ever-approachable representative could help with?”

Georgia held his gaze. “Can’t we go someplace quieter to discuss this? It’s a very personal issue, which needs a delicate touch.” Wow, Georgia, don’t be too subtle. But Senator Smythe had already melted over his seat. It suited me fine to be left alone with Jonn.

“We’d like that too,” Jonn piped up, rather nervously. So, he’d understood my train of thought. He’d become a worried man. Good. Even if a bodyguard could be called, they were obviously too far away to be of any use to him. For once, I felt grateful for his overbearing arrogance. He lit another foul cigar and inhaled deeply.

Four glasses of wine hastily finished, the senator ushered us to his suite of rooms in the hotel below. Whether he owned them or they came with the job didn’t matter to me. At that moment, they simply represented an ideal opportunity. On our way, he regaled us with his plans to extend the monorail, which didn’t exactly make for thrilling listening. The line, no, make that lines, would apparently stretch to infinity. Though I’m sure he mentioned the Hoover Dam. Or maybe I simply wished that’s where I could retreat to, not to hear his masterful voice projection.

“I’ve been considering collecting boring old movie posters,” Georgia trilled as we exited the elevator. “You’d be surprised how much money they can cost, and the dullest ones are the most expensive. In fact, it’s the dull ones I look out for.”

“Actually, I’ve just come to appreciate the value of figurines,” I airily confessed. “There’s no such expression as too mawkish for me, and no amount of money I’m not willing to pay. Heck, I’ll even take out a loan to get a particularly sickly looking specimen.”

“A loan, girlfriend? Why stop at a loan? Let’s be honest, if you want the item, why not sell your house?” She smiled.

“Girlfriend, no need to be all cautious. Sell your house and sell your soul in a contract with the devil too, that’s my motto.” I smiled harder.

Smythe and Brooks clearly struggled for a suitable reply to our outbursts, while we strode along the plushly carpeted corridor. I noted that my final comment had seriously turned the heat back up on Jonn’s discomfort, so well done, Georgia. My, didn’t he just run a finger inside his collar, to let out some steam? We came to a halt outside an unnumbered door. The senator tapped out a code on a keypad and we entered his inner sanctum.

The theme of Smythe’s many rooms was a Roman villa, with frescoes of topless Roman lovelies on every wall, mosaics of topless Roman lovelies on the floor, and topless Roman art all over the place. The large entrance contained a fountain, which depicted nymphs badly in need of a decent toga shop. Several shut doors to left and right whispered of secrets that lay beyond. A veritable Hideawayus Maximus, as the Ancients would’ve surely called it. Although I’d definitely call it a mock-Roman orgy of bad taste.

“We can party as loud as we want, these rooms are soundproof. Yeah, thought you’d enjoy the decor, Lilah. Care to see my bust?” Smythe asked Georgia, tugging her towards an inner door.

“Hey, that’s my line, Senator,” she giggled.

“You’ll find out why they call me a big shot.”

“I’m a bit of a collector myself,” Jonn announced, “can we see the bust too?”

The senator looked taken-aback. “Easy, pardner, this is strictly a private senatorial audience.” A consummate politician, he maintained his facade until the moment for action came. He produced a gun and made to aim at Jonn’s back.

“No!” I cried, managing to grab and deflect the arm before the blow could be struck. He shot into the air. I prized his chubby fingers from the handle, then pushed him away. He stumbled, whacked his head against a plinth and fell unconscious. Above him, a toga-clad statue of Senator Smythe struck a heroic pose. Though minus a nose, which he’d just blown away.

“But Lilah, didn’t you want revenge? Weren’t the coins supposed to find a way through to Jonn?”

“This is my revenge, my show, my choreography.”

“I knew you were up to no good.” Jonn’s eyes darted betweenGeorgia and me as he backed towards the door. He reached inside his light grey jacket. In front of me, Georgia fired a warning shot. The hand stopped.

“Stand over in the corner,” she insisted, carelessly pointing with the barrel in what I considered a rather dangerous, frankly unprofessional manner. He complied, enabling me to press the cotton wool, drenched in chloroform, over her mouth. Once more, I’d turned her lights out. Sorry babe. My own gun in hand, I faced Jonn.

“Now what, Lilah? You gonna waste me, that’s it? A little cheap psychiatric help from a bullet? What did I ever do to you?” Bad mistake. He made me remember all the stuff he’d done to me. Which in turn tensed my trigger finger and made me fire. That must’ve been his plan, as next second he hurled himself behind the plinth and through a door. King of skimming be damned, this here was the king of rats. I chased his tail.

In a faux forest clearing I had him pinned, crouching behind a marble discus thrower. Though I couldn’t recall reading of any female discus throwers in Ancient Rome, I strongly doubted that they’d go topless. Wouldn’t it hinder the throwing action? Panpipes softly played from hidden speakers, in amongst the plastic trees and shrubs.

“Look, Lilah, you don’t really want me dead, do you?”

“If you must plead for your pathetic life, get on with it.” My response surprised me. Could I be softening?

“The real loot is in Calico ghost town.”

“Keep going.”

“I’ve got the key right here. Just point it at the correct spot inside Maggie’s Mine and it’s all yours. The map is inside the key.”

“The key. Now.” Another metallic key tumbled through the air to land by my heels. “Step out from behind the statue.”

“A deal’s a deal, Lilah, okay? You leave and I promise not to follow you, okay? You trust me?” When he appeared, the gunshot I gave to his right knee meant that I trusted him. Wow, was I really going all caring and sharing in my dotage? Well, until he loosened off a round at my retreating back, grazing my left thigh and ruining my new gold hotpants, I was. I turned and fired as an automatic defense mode. He slumped, face down, in a growing pool of blood on the artificial turf. Pan, unfazed,played on regardless amongst the green foliage. This sacrifice hadn’t been in his honor.

Georgia and Smythe tottered in, their eyes glazed, leaning on each other for mutual support. At the sight of the body, Smythe let out a piercing scream and turned away, though he still remained propped up on Georgia’s shoulder.

“Is he…” Georgia began.

“Yep, show’s over. The fat lady sang, and she wasn’t even topless.”

“That’ll never do for the Strip.”

“What the hell are you two girls going on about?” He spoke with a tremor and stayed facing the door.

“With the soundproofing, no one heard the gunfire.” I began to stroll around the glade.

“But we can’t leave him here.”

“That thought had crossed my mind, Georgia. By the way, Senator, if you’re so squeamish, how come you were willing to shoot the late Chuckles?”

He looked sheepish. “Go on,” Georgia prompted, “no point trying to keep it a secret any longer.”

Shifty replaced sheepish. “I kinda owe my election victory to Jonn. And lately, well, he’d been asking me to do some, that is to cover up some, very, very bad things.”

“What, worse than vote rigging, you mean?” He let that remark go without a rebuttal. “Yeah, now you mention it, I did wonder about your late surge at the ballot box. You strike me as an early surger.” He swiveled to give me an annoyed look. Good, his grip was returning.

“I suggest that Jonn keeps watch on his mini-vault from the inside.” Georgia and Smythe concurred with my proposal. They would smuggle the body out of the hotel in a laundry basket. But not before Georgia had agreed to star in my next venture, a brand new show, and the senator had consented to support my planning application for a stunning new venue on the Strip. Naturally, I’d be the artistic director. I could almost hear the ecstatic applause of the audience, see the stacks of cash that rolled in at the box office. Lilah Starr proudly presents…

Damn, don’t henchmen announce their arrival by kicking down doors anymore? These two had probably disabled theelectrics, in order to creep with fox-like stealth into the faux forest clearing. So Jonn had managed to get a signal out after all. I suspected that his pockets would yield a hi-tech signaling contraption.

“Put your hands on your head,” one of them barked. As they were dressed from head to toe in black and brandished mean automatic rifles, we all sensibly complied. While one of them dropped down to one knee in the entrance, the other took a cautious route to Jonn past us startled deer. He glanced at the blood-soaked body then turned round to face us, peering intently at each of us in turn. In my opinion, he rather lingered over the exquisitely toned and shapely view of Lilah Starr that this posture afforded. All natural, unlike some.

“That’s Jonn Brooks. My employer, you know?” He spoke softly, with a faint Irish brogue. We all mumbled nothing in particular. “Hold on, you’re Senator Smythe, aren’t you?” he added.

“That’s right, son.”

“You, the one with the gun. You mentioned something about a new show?”

“Er, yeah.” Who says my mind freezes up in a crisis?

“I can sing. Very well too, though I say so myself. Name’s Craig Anthony.”

We all kinda mumbled hello.

“Over by the door, that’s James Quinn Marshall. He’s one killer dancer. You may have heard of him, he moonlights in several chorus lines. Goes by the name of El Gato.”

We turned about for further mumbled greetings and a serious case of the nodding heads. El Gato? A bell of recognition jangled slightly.

“We’re not sorry he’s dead,” James/El Gato declared, in an accent that could’ve hailed a New York taxi at half a mile. “In fact, if you hadn’t killed him, our own plan was well on the way to fruition. And I don’t believe that ours was the only plot.”

“I’m Lilah,” I announced. “This here is Georgia. Before we get roles in the new production assigned to each of you, Georgia and the senator could use a little help with disposing of the body.” They mucked in like true backstage troopers.

On my way to Calico, I vowed to never force the showgirls in my revue to get implants. With pecs like theirs, Craig and ElGato certainly didn’t need them. Hmmm, I considered stretching Georgia’s cheerleader idea to include a tribute to Jocks.

So, my gamble had paid off. In Vegas, the gamble always does, when you have the guts to make your own luck.

A true connoisseur of weed-and Herbert “Exemel” Knapsdale certainly qualified in all respects-knows that a new batch takes some adjusting to. Normally he bought his weed from Chuckster, but Chuckster was lying low in Tijuana, so he bought an ounce of Iggy’s stuff. Soil, light, acid rain, age, mold from a bad drying: all these things can tweak the chemistry of a natural substance. Your brain’s, like, test-driving a used car. The brakes are a little spongy; the steering’s tighter or looser.

That’s why Exemel didn’t immediately react to what he saw through the patio doors. Listing to the left because of the fifty-pound bucket of chlorine tablets and loops of vacuum hose on his right shoulder, he squinted behind his sunglasses. The wind was gusting, lifting dust off the desert. The light glinting from the pool slashed at his image in the glass.

But, yes, there, hovering above the reflection of the desert behind him, through himself, within his image, he could see the creamy white of a woman’s buttocks, their perfection narrowing pear-like to her broad shoulders, black hair, and her arms stretched over her head. She was dancing for him. She was stripping off a tee shirt. Her hands stretched above her. And she held-No, she didn’t hold. It was a rope, looped over an iron hook on the pine beam, wound around her wrists six or seven times. She was hanging there like a side of meat, swaying slightly.

Exemel blinked. He tore off his sunglasses leaned forward into the bright light, bending sideways to see better.

“Holy-!”

Exemel dropped the bucket and the hose and charged the door. He clawed at the latch, but it was locked on the inside. He put his face flat against the glass and was certain she was dead, but he banged on the glass. “Lady! Lady!”

She pushed the marble floor with her toes and twisted slightly. She only got halfway around before her foot slipped and she twisted back. He saw a blood-red rubber ball gagging her. There was frenzied terror in her eyes.

He clawed at the door again, then reached for the bucket of pool tablets. He swung it twice to build up power, then hurled it. The tempered glass exploded into a million rough diamonds. He skidded and slipped on the pebbly fragments as he rushed to her across the granite tiles.

“Are you okay, lady? Watch the glass. Who did this-?” He put his arms around her naked waist to hoist her up and get the rope off the hook. The scent of a strawberry oil came down to him from her bare breasts rubbing against his forehead, and the loop wasn’t slipping over the edge. The woman’s body tensed against him, and he looked up. She whined panicky noises out her nose against the gag. He turned and followed her line of sight.

A bulldog of a man had come out of the corridor wearing a leather mask, a spiked leather dog collar, and leather pants he hadn’t finished lacing down the side. He was bare from the waist up, wooly gray hair covering him like the unruly fleece of a neglected ram.

He looked at the glass on the granite tiles, then at Exemel.

“What the-?”

“You don’t move, dude,” said Exemel. “Who are you anyway?”

“Why, you son of a bitch!” he growled and started for Exemel with his huge fists raised.

“Hey! Hey!” said Exemel, backing away. “Stop it! I mean it! Don’t make me-! Stop-!”

Exemel didn’t even see the first punch, as it whizzed by, just clipping his nose. He stumbled backwards down two steps into the pit area around the fireplace, landing hard next to a campaign trunk used as a coffee table. The woman was twitching and swinging, screaming against her gag, trying to get off the hook. “Shut up!” said the man. He grinned with crooked teeth, snatched up the poker.

Still on his back, Exemel grabbed a tall bronze statue of Shiva off the trunk and held it across his torso to block the blows. The man raised the poker and savored the pleasure of what he was about to do. “You need a lesson, you son of a bitch!”

Exemel, however, kicked out, somehow tangled his shoe in the loose laces of the man’s leather pants, and with the downswing of the poker, it caused him to lose his balance and fall on Exemel. His bleary eyes stared into Exemel’s, and his whiskey breath beat on Exemel’s lips.

Exemel turned his face away but was pinned under the man, who hardly moved, as if he’d got the wind knocked out of him. The puffs of his breath, hot and wet, came out at long intervals, and Exemel began to squirm, pushing at him, desperately trying to get out from under him.

The man howled then, raised himself on all fours, then rolled onto his back. Shiva hung on his chest. The arm of Shiva had gone into him up to the bronze god’s shoulder.

“Man” whispered Exemel. “Man.” He crawled toward him and gingerly reached out to pull the statuette out of him, but hesitated, not sure how to grip it or even if he should.

The woman flexed her body and whined a muffled plea against her gag. Exemel left the man where he lay, arms spread by the fireplace, and went to get a chair from the ultramodern dinette table. Pink and blue and black sex toys of many sizes and odd configurations, as well as three bottles of bright lubricants, had been lined up on the table with the cold precision of instruments in an operating room. He dragged a chair across the floors and stood on it to lift her off the hook. She gasped for air, bending at the waist, as he unfastened the strap holding the ball gag. She was Asian, either Filipino or Vietnamese, he thought. Beautiful.

“Are you okay?” He tried to avoid looking at her nakedness as he picked at the tight knots on her wrist.

“What the hell took you so long?” she said. “You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”

He blinked. “Uhh, there was an accident out on 215, traffic was stopped both ways. A big truck-”

“I didn’t want to go through his crap again. Ever.” She turned toward the man by the fireplace, pulling her bound wrists from Exemel, and spit. “Sick bastard!”

“It’s a good thing I came along when I did,” said Exemel.

“Get something to cut these damned ropes!”

“Uh, yes, ma’am.” He spun toward the kitchen. On the other side of the dinette counter he saw a chef’s knife in a wooden holder. By the time he got back, the woman was standing over the man.

“He’s still breathing,” she said.

Exemel looked at him. “I don’t think so.”

“I tell you he’s still breathing. Garbage doesn’t die.”

“Maybe we should call the cops or something.”

“Oh, like right,” she said drooping her jaw. “Why don’t we just call the Sun? Or how about Fox News?” Her face twisted with anger. She lifted her foot and stomped the man’s lower belly with her heel. The man’s arm flew up, then dropped limp.

“Whoa!” said Exemel. “He moved.”

“I told you!” the woman shrieked. She grabbed the arm of Shiva that wasn’t embedded in the man. Her wrists still tied together, she rocked Shiva back and forth like a video game joystick, then tugged the statuette. It made a sucking sound. She raised it high and, with a grunt and an aiee!, threw it down. It bounced off the man’s head and clanked against the hearth. Shiva’s bloody arm was now bent in half.

“Whoa!” said Exemel, reaching to her, forgetting the twelve-inch knife was still in his hand.

“Watch it!” she barked. “You could cut me with that thing!”

“You shouldn’ta done that!”

“Will you please shut up and cut these damned ropes off!”

“Okay. I’m sorry.” He concentrated and carefully sawed the thick rope in the space between her wrists. “You’re gonna be okay now.”

“Just don’t cut me. How did you get in this business anyhow?”

Exemel shrugged. “I didn’t have any other possibilities. I hate not having possibilities. I was a games programmer. The business tanked. You ever play Galaxy B72?”

She laughed. “That’s what people used to ask me. How I got in the business.”

Exemel had sawed through the first strand, but the rest of them did not fall away. She struggled with them, staring at the dead man. “Then I thought I got out of the business. The Americandream! Right. Marriage is the same thing, only worse. Worse and boring. The time never runs out.”

Finally the ropes fell away. She rubbed the raw, red bands on her skin.

Her nakedness had distracted him and what she had said slipped through his grasp like a handful of sand. “I’ll get you something to cover up,” he said.

“Never mind that,” she said. “What are you going to do with him?”

“With him?”

“You’re supposed to clean it up.”

The pool?

“Well, what do you do? Bury him in the desert?”

What?

Her eyes narrowed and she took the chef’s knife out of his hand. “Do you need to cut him up? I want to help. I know exactly where I’ll start. You think he could still feel that? Maybe he’s looking down on us from somewhere. I’ll cut it off and leave it somewhere the coyotes could eat it.” She laughed. “It might make them sick.”

He grabbed her upper arm as she turned toward the body. “Whoa, Jesus, lady. We’re not going to chop him up. Man! Look, I understand you don’t like the dude. He hurt you. I’m with you on that, but he’s dead now. What if, like, coyotes dig him up and somebody finds him? How are you gonna explain that? They can find teeny-weeny drops of blood and hair and DNA and, uh, stuff.” He could see she was thinking. “You get me. You’re just going to, like, tell the truth, see?”

She suddenly tossed her head and laughed. “You’re right.”

“You’ve got to tell it like it happened. Exactly.”

“Then everything matches the clues. Ha! I love it.”

“There’ll be publicity, you can’t help that. It’ll be embarrassing, but people forget stuff and you’ll get over it.”

She smiled. “Sure. Perfect. You don’t look like you know what you’re doing, but you do.”

“Uh, thanks.” Exemel stuck his thumbs in his belt loops.

She rubbed her hands across her hard stomach, smearing two drops of blood towards her navel. She pursed her lips. “I ought to give you a bonus. I’d like that. How about it?”

This kind of thing had happened to Exemel before in the boredom of the upper class suburbs like Red Rock and Spanish Trail. Old man’s out golfing, the wife is sunning by the pool getting ideas from reading Cosmo or some book about men in riding boots. But the woman was usually so old or so fat or so ugly that turning them down wasn’t easy. They’d get offended after he left and call for a different pool boy. He said he was gay a couple of times, thought that would work, but one woman offered to cure him and another offered her husband, provided she could watch. He said he had an infection one time. She freaked and wouldn’t let him clean the pool. So sometimes, if he could stand it, it was easier to go ahead with it until she kept calling up over tiny spots of algae and he couldn’t stand it anymore and decided that cleaning that particular pool was more work than, well, really cleaning a pool. This time the woman looked a lot more like pleasure than work, but there was a guy who was, like, dead, ten feet in front of the huge leather sofa that she was lying back on.

“It would be, ahh, unprofessional,” he said. He waited for her anger, but she merely wiggled her hips.

“Oooh, a professional!,” she purred. “Now I know I would really enjoy it.”

“We got a code. Well, it’s not a code, but it’s sort of a code.”

She sat up and shrugged. “That’s amazing! Even more study.”

“Don’t, like, be offended or nothing.”

“I’m not. I’m impressed. I didn’t think you handled it well at all, being late and everything-”

“There was a big pile-up on 215-”

“-but the proof’s right there. My life’s about to get a whole lot better.” She flipped a finger at the dead man. “Sick bastard!”

“You want me to dial the cops for you?”

“I can handle it,” she said. “I’ll just concentrate on those five million reasons to say the right thing. Cha-ching. It’s my jackpot. The jackpot every tourist dreams about.”

He nodded.

“I’ll get your money,” she said, walking along the far wall and avoiding the glass.

“But I haven’t-” she was already in the corridor to the back “-done the pool yet.”

Exemel stared at the dead man. He knew he was missing something. This was like one of those games where you have to travel through some cyberspace world gathering objects like keys and talismans and sometimes you know where the last door is, but you can’t figure out what opens it. Of course you can always cheat and go to the chat board at Gamester.com and somebody will tell you, but only junior high kids who don’t appreciate the tao of gaming would ask or answer a question like that, though he’d have to admit that once or twice when he was really stuck…

He didn’t notice her return until she said, “Catch!” A sealed envelope hit his chest and before he could disengage his thumbs from his belt loop, it had fallen to the floor. He picked it up. It was almost an inch thick. Most people wrote a check, he thought. What was this? All ones?

“You want to count it?” she asked.

“Uh, if you’re trusting me, I’m trusting you. That’s what I say.” With a roll of his head, he smiled and stuffed the envelope in his back pocket. “I’d better get to work.”

“On what?”

“The pool,” he said.

“Very funny,” she said. “You get out of here, a long way out of here. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. Have a good life. I’ve got things to do. You’ll read it in the papers. The guy who broke in was black, about six feet, with a shaved head, a Mexican accent, and an earring.”

He squinted, still unable to decipher the lock on that last door, but nodded and picked up the bucket of chlorine tablets that still lay in the lake of broken glass. The handle was hot from lying in the open doorway and seemed a lot heavier than usual. The vacuum hose had unrolled all over the patio. As he wound it, he barely noticed the telephone ringing inside.

“Marty?” she said. “It’s just great! Just perfect! I’m going to call the cops and-”

Exemel straightened up and squinted into the house. Just great? Just perfect?

“You had to slip out to a pay phone? Why? No records, I understand, but-?” Suddenly she looked up at Exemel. “What?” she said. “That can’t be. He’s right here. Talk to him yourself. He’s about six foot two.” She listened carefully. “No,” she saidslowly. “This guy could fall down a drinking straw.” Her eyes widened. She walked toward Exemel. “Marty sent you, right?”

“Marty? No, it was Lester. Marty don’t work there no more.”

She shuddered her head trying to clear it. “Where? Where does Marty work-? Used to work?”

“Desert City Pool Services. My real name’s Herbert, but everybody calls me Exemel. Like in XML, you know, ‘Extensible Mark-up Language.’ It was kind of a joke.”

Her mouth fell open and she did not move. The phone was squawking in her hand. “Shut up, Marty,” she finally said. “Just a minute, damn it!” She blinked, thought, then smiled like a mother holding a newborn. “Uh, umm, Hex-abel, or whatever, could you come back inside for a minute?”

“Exemel. But really, ma’am, I’m flattered and all, but the code, you know… I got three more pools this afternoon and we don’t get overtime.”

“Just-” she said, barely controlling herself, “just come in for a minute. Please. My nerves are shot. Just a few seconds.”

Exemel crunched in across the glass. “You don’t look so good. I mean, you look good, but, you know, you don’t look good. I can wait for the cops with you. I got no problem with that.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Maybe a toke or two would help. I’ll just step out to the truck. It’s new stuff so it shouldn’t smell too much like chlorine yet.”

“Just-damnit-stay there. Don’t move. I-I want to get a robe. Promise?”

“Sure.”

Exemel gazed at the dead man sprawled in front of the fireplace. With the leather pants and mask, his skin pale and unreal, he looked like a really big action figure. An X-Man or something. Deathmaster. Sado-Man. Sick Bastard Dude.

He heard the padding of the woman’s feet on the granite floor. She was still naked, but she was holding an enormous nickel-plated pistol in front of her.

“Whoa,” said Exemel.

She stiffened her arms. The heavy gun wobbled in front of her. “Look, I’m really grateful for all you’ve done, but Marty knows about things like this and he says you’ve got to die.”

“Me?”

“You heard Marty’s name. It’s tough luck for you. What can I tell you? I mean, I didn’t know you weren’t the guy.”

“But I am the pool guy. Exemel Knapsdale. That’s me!”

“Not for the damned pool! The guy who was supposed to off Ted. He was killed on 215. All burned up. He was in Marty’s car.”

“This is the Marty who used to work with me?”

“No! The guy with the car! Will you pay attention?! Marty owns the Pleasure Garden! I used to work there. He hooked me up with Ted. I pretended to be just off the boat and the sick bastard married me. Marty said he’d arrange it. He knows people.”

“Okay,” said Exemel. “Okay. But what’s this got to do with the pool?”

She ground her teeth in frustration and closed her eyes. “Never mind! It wasn’t a black guy. You broke in, looking for drugs or something. Ted tried to defend me. I ran for the gun. You killed Ted. I killed you.” She licked her lips. “That will work. Yeah.”

“Well, I did kill that dude,” said Exemel. “That dude is Ted, right? It was an accident, but it’s still, like, killing. So it’s like karma coming back on me or something. I started work on a game called Karma once, but they pulled the plug on it because like Hindus or somebody might get the wrong impression-”

“Will you shut up?!” The gun wobbled, but she gritted her teeth and squeezed. Nothing happened. She looked at the gun in astonishment and tried again. Nothing happened. “What the-?”

“Some joke,” said Exemel, taking one step toward her. “That wasn’t funny! You really had me going there!”

The woman’s face twisted in fury. It seemed to morph and massage itself, and Exemel hesitated at the sight, waiting for her to turn into an American Werewolf or just explode like in Scanners. Before he could react, she snatched the chef’s knife off the dinette table, raised it, and charged him.

This was no joke, dude. His sneaker went out from under him as the glass pellets skidded. He stumbled over the patio door sill and dropped to one knee. He covered his face with his hands and braced to feel the knife in his back. He stared into the darkness of his hands to see what Death or God or Shiva or whatever it was really looked like.

But there was only the pain in his knee and a strange noise: whee! whee!, like the sound of a tiny, distant bird. He spread his fingers and saw the woman sitting in the glass pellets. She had slipped on them as well. The noise was her breathing, growing weaker and weaker. The knife was buried deep under her rib cage.

“Lady!” said Exemel. “I’ll get a doctor.”

Her eyes rolled up to look at him. Her mouth gaped. She seemed to want to say something to him, and shook her head. “The jackpot,” she said and her pupils rolled up like cherries on a slot machine. She fell back white-eyed.

“Lady?” he asked. “Lady?” He looked at her and wondered what she would have looked like with clothes on. He’d never see that now. She was seriously dead. He crossed the room. Ted was even deader than he’d been a while ago. He thought about the envelope of money in his back pocket, and about Marty, and about the dude who was burned up on 215 and blocked the traffic going both ways. If he could write a will for Ted, he’d be rich! Dude, would that be stupid. Greed is not good, no matter what the evangelists say. He thought about DNA, and blood spatter stuff, and he was glad he hadn’t taken her up on the offer, which he’d really wanted to, but not with the dead guy watching.

He concentrated. It wasn’t easy because he wasn’t in, like, that stoned way that makes you understand everything real clear. After thinking for what seemed a very long time, wandering through several mental detours about whether Shiva could materialize and be a witness, he picked up the woman’s phone.

“Man,” he told the woman who answered, “something’s happened at the house down here! Dude, it’s like Sharon Tate or something!”

A short while later, under the pergola by the pool house, the detective lifted his stetson and set it on the chaise lounge next to him. “Okay, Mr. Knapsdale-”

“My friends call me Exemel.” He had brought a bucket of granular chlorine from the truck and was using it as a stool.

“I’m not your friend, Mr. Knapsdale.”

“I thought-” He was going to say that the police were supposed to be our friends, at least that’s what they taught him inelementary school. “You can call me Exemel, anyway. If you like. My real name is Herbert.”

“So you’re sure she said ‘Marty’?”

“I think so. Sir.”

“She didn’t say a last name?”

Exemel narrowed his eyes and thought.

“Well?”

“No. Just ‘Marty.’” He nodded.

“And you don’t know who this Marty is?”

“There used to be a Marty who was my boss, but he moved to the coast a year ago.”

“And do you know his last name?”

Again, Exemel narrowed his eyes and thought. “No. Just ‘Marty.’”

The detective scribbled on his note pad.

“You think Marty knew these people?”

Exemel shrugged. “If we did their pool back then.”

“They moved in here seven months ago.”

“Marty was already gone. The good life in L.A., you know. I used to live in the Silicon, you know. Ever play Galaxy B72?”

The detective adjusted his underwear at the crotch and stood. Another detective, much younger, approached. “Mr. Knapsdale, when you went inside, what did you touch?”

Exemel thought. “I don’t know, man. I was, like, freaked out. I came around the corner with this bucket of chlorine-” he touched the container he sat on “-and the hose and saw the glass was smashed in and then I saw her on the floor and I ran inside and I saw the dead dude and, I don’t know, I was checking her out and him out and-”

“Yeah, yeah, so you said. Did you move anything? It’s all pretty much as you found it?”

“I might have moved something when I was checking them out, but I didn’t take nothing.”

The detective nodded. He spoke to his older partner. “It’s her, all right.”

“I knew it was her,” said the older man. “I busted her and Marty Grego bailed her. I figure he rolled her john, too, but the vic wouldn’t come back from Pennsylvania to testify. I made sure his wife found out about it, though.”

“You think Grego did this?”

“He or one of his goons.”

“The killer comes around back, maybe by the desert. There are some four-wheeler tracks out there, but the wind has been blowing. He grabs a bucket of chlorine tablets by the filter over there and smashes the patio door, surprising the couple, who are in the bedroom cleaning up after their afternoon recreation: untying, taking off the perv outfits. Out comes Ted Bigelow. They struggle, the killer smashes him in the head, then stabs him with something.”

“I think he used the statue for that, too.”

“That’s pretty weird,” said the younger detective. “The wound could be a bullet hole or some kind of knife.”

“The lab will figure it out. Either way, then out comes the missus with the gun.”

“She wasn’t able to fire it. It was loaded and the safety was off, but she didn’t jack a bullet into the chamber. Goon knocks it away, stabs her with her own knife. Or maybe he had a gun and forced her to put hers down.”

The older detective pulled at his lip. “Marty Grego would normally use Paul Champion, but he was killed in a car accident today.”

“There was an untraceable.22 in the car and the car was Grego’s, but it was coming this way.”

“Maybe Champion left here, went somewhere south, then turned back north. Make sure about the time of death. Of course, I’d rather pin it on Grego. A dead Champion is a little less likely to squeal on Grego than a live one, but only a little less.”

The younger detective suddenly cocked his head. They had forgotten about Exemel. The older detective turned to him. “You got big ears, Knapsdale? You been listening?”

“Huh?” said Exemel.

“You know a man named Marty Grego?”

Exemel narrowed his eyebrows. “I don’t think so. He the guy who moved to the coast?”

The detective shook his head. “Look, Knapsdale, you don’t breathe a word about what you’ve seen here. Anything about this crime scene gets out and you’re looking at obstruction of justice. You got me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll bet if we had a reason to get even with you, we wouldn’t have any trouble finding an illegal substance or two,” said the younger detective.

“You’ll get no trouble from me, sir.” Exemel stood up and hefted the bucket of chlorine. “If you need me for anything, you can just call Desert-”

“Goodbye, Mr. Knapsdale,” said the detective, picking up his stetson.

Exemel was relieved the questioning had ended. He didn’t know how long it might take the money in the envelope, buried in the granular chlorine, to get all burned up or bleached out. He felt like some fine weed had kicked in. Dude! He now had possibilities. Sweet possibilities! Maybe start up his own game company, and finish Karma. Maybe he could go to India and work the deal there. It would take some thinking how he could spend that ten thou, but you can’t spend it if it’s all eaten up or bleached white. He was also thinking he wouldn’t buy any more of Iggy’s stuff. Back to Chuckster and the tried and true. Iggy’s stuff was way too weird.

“Loser,” whispered the younger detective.

“To the problem at hand,” said the older. “Let’s find out how Grego spent his day.”

“He’d better have an explanation for every minute,” said the younger.

“Every minute,” repeated the older. “If Marty Grego even stepped out for a phone call-”

“Toast,” said the younger.

Dolores shuffled into the Solarium looking for the paper cups the nurses used to distribute the meds. It was a hobby of hers, collecting the tiny, fluted cups. She liked to put treasures in them and line them up on the windowsill of her hospital room.

Leonard was slouched on the sofa watching TV and scratching his head. Leonard was always scratching his head. It was sort of a hobby of his, Dolores thought. She spotted four abandoned cups on the card table, but just as she was gathering them up her attention was caught by an image on the TV. She sucked in her breath as Bryce and a young woman drove onto the screen riding a huge black motorcycle, the pink sand of the Nevada desert glowing behind them in the evening sun. They skidded to a stop, pulled off their helmets and waved at the camera. The woman shook her head, catching Bryce full across the face with a sheet of long blond hair. Bryce brushed the hair away, threw his arm around the blond girl’s shoulder and laughed. Then Leonard started laughing and Dolores had to flap her hands to shush him so she could hear the commentary.

“Bryce Campion, best known for his role in Worlds Apart, and Marie-France Lapin, of Jazz Hot, the all-girl band from Paris that’s been making waves all over the country, announced their upcoming nuptials today in Las Vegas. Bryce is currently headlining a brand new show at the Three Crowns…”

Her knees wobbled and she dropped into a chair, sending the paper cups skittering to the floor. That made Leonard laugh some more, but when she started to shush him again she caught herself. His eyes had that glittery look that meant something crazy was going on in his head and she’d better watch out.

She leaned closer to the screen. “The wedding will take place next week in the Little White Wedding Chapel, a Las Vegas landmark.”

Dolores began to hum two notes over and over. It was something she did when she could feel her heart beating too fast. She was going to have to decide what to do but she couldn’t think in here with the TV and Leonard scratching his head and laughing too loud in all the wrong places. She grunted as she leaned over and picked up the cups from the floor and then she pulled herself to her feet and shuffled away as fast as her swollen legs would carry her.

Back in her room, she tore a sheet from the steno pad Dr. Bradford gave her at their first session. She was supposed to be using it for a journal, writing about all the times she felt angry and all the times she felt sad. But the pages were mostly empty and every time he asked her about it she just hummed a bit andstared at the floor while he gripped the desk so hard his fingers went white.

She reached between the mattress and the box spring and fished out a silver pen she’d found on Dr. Bradford’s desk one day when he was looking at something in her file. After scribbling a few words on the paper, she reached into the crevice under the radiator where she’d hidden the blank stamped envelope she’d found a few weeks ago at the nursing station when the matron had gone to the bathroom. She addressed it to Bryce Campion, Three Crowns Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, and then tucked it into the zippered compartment of her bag. They were releasing her to the group home tomorrow and she’d be able to slip out and mail it once the social worker was through talking to her. She sat on the edge of the bed for a minute or two and then reached behind the radiator again to check the money hidden in there. She liked to think of it as her nest egg. That’s what her grandmother had called the money in the cookie tin she kept high up on the shelf over the icebox. Dolores had stood on a chair and reached for the tin one day when she thought her grandmother was lying down in the next room. It slipped out of her fingers, and the coins had clattered to the floor. Her grandmother had shot into the room and yanked the chair right out from under Dolores making her crack her head on the table as she fell. The social worker had asked how she’d hurt herself, but she never said. Not that time. Not ever.

Then three of us were hanging out in the kitchen that Saturday afternoon, when we heard the mail truck pull up at the end of our driveway. I’d come back from basketball practice a half-hour ago and was having a Coke. My mother was at the counter slicing vegetables for a stir-fry for supper that night. Dad was atthe table with the newspaper spread out in front of him. “I’ll go,” he said.

He was gone a while. Mom and I figured he’d probably run into the man next door, who liked to talk baseball, but as soon as Dad came back inside, I could tell something was up. His face had that tight look it gets when things aren’t quite right.

My mother heard him come in and stopped her chopping and turned around.

“It’s a letter from Shanghai,” he said, nodding at the light blue envelope in his hand. We could see he had opened it.

Mom stared at him. “From Shanghai? We don’t know anyone there.”

Both my parents had been born in China, but came to the states when they were little kids. They met one another in their last year at Northwestern and were married a couple of years after that. I was born in Chicago.

“It’s from Uncle Ho,” my father said.

My mother put down her knife and wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. “I thought Uncle Ho died in the Cultural Revolution.”

My father nodded. “That’s what I thought. That’s what everyone thought.”

By everyone, my father meant our relatives, who were scattered all over the U.S. In typical Chinese fashion we got together every few years for big reunions. The elders liked to exchange memories and tell Uncle Ho stories, which always led to talk of gambling. It seems, at a very early age, Uncle Ho had been a Gambling Master, which in Chinese lingo makes Michael Jordan a Basketball Master.

Everyone liked telling Uncle Ho stories. The relatives tried topping one another with a new piece to an old story, or an entirely new one. And since they all thought Uncle Ho was dead, it didn’t matter if the truth got bent a bit.

“Uncle Ho is coming here,” my father said.

My mother frowned. “What do you mean he’s coming here?”

“I mean here. Las Vegas.”

My mother had the next toss, but her sudden stony silence said she was deferring to my father.

The way he cleared his throat told me she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

“He’s coming to Vegas on one of those casino-sponsored deals there’s been so much talk about.”

“You mean Uncle Ho is one of those ‘whales’?”

My mother sent me a look that would freeze Salt Lake.

I should have known better, but it just popped out. I dipped my head in apology and tried to look contrite. I did a retake on the “whales” story.

It hit the news a couple of months ago. American casino interests had decided to take advantage of the big economic boom in China and the Chinese centuries-old love of gambling. They were sending agents over there to scout for rich guys who liked high-stakes games. They called them whales. Once a whale was sighted, the only thing he had to do was offer some proof of his wealth, then the agents took care of the rest. They helped with visas, air travel, and hotels. It was only at the gaming tables in Vegas that the high rollers were on their own. And guess what? The casinos were counting on them losing big.

The media loved the story and ran all over the place with it. Reporters speculated about where the whales’ money came from, with edgy suggestions that it was hot, embezzled, or siphoned off from companies and corrupt government agencies. Another flyer was that the money came from smuggling-drugs, arms, trafficking in women.

A few reporters got to the practical question of how these rich guys managed to get their money out of China, since the country had rigid restrictions on currency going offshore. The conclusion was that a lot of people were getting paid to look the other way.

“The whole thing is going to start all over again,” my mother said.

She was a little off the point, but I knew what she meant. So did my father. He nodded.

Three years ago the relatives had come to Vegas. It was the off-season, rates were good, and we took over one of the small hotels on the outskirts of town. There was a swimming pool for the kids and a room large enough to have a real Chinese banquet on our first and final nights. The Strip offered plenty of entertainment of all kinds. The relatives weren’t opposed to gambling, in fact they loved it.

My parents never went near the casinos. They skirted theslots, which were everywhere, as if they sprayed the plague. The relatives didn’t quite believe it. Some came close enough to suggesting my parents were secret gamblers. It was in our blood, after all. It could be traced to Uncle Ho, which is what my mother meant when she said it was going to start all over again.

In all fairness, when someone moves here it’s sort of taken for granted that gambling is a big draw. I was only five when my parents made the move, so I don’t remember a lot, but I’ve heard their story enough times so it feels like it’s my own. We had been living in Chicago, where my father had a good job as an accountant, when out of the blue, through one of his clients, he was offered a partnership in a big firm in downtown Las Vegas. Mom freaked out. Sin City!

The two words became a drumbeat in her head, until she was driving home from work one day and heard a long-range weather forecast for the Midwest. The coming winter was supposed to be the coldest in fifty years. Record snowfalls, ice storms, and power outages. She started thinking about the bitter winds off Lake Michigan and soon she was on the phone checking out housing, schools for me and job opportunities for herself. She was a physical therapist. When she discovered she could line up a job before we even left Illinois, the deal was done. Vegas it was.

According to my mother, when the relatives got wind of our Nevada move, the phone lines crackled with so much gossip they could have caused a power failure all their own. It went on, not just for months, but years. It’s sort of quieted down, but it’s not a dead issue. And now Uncle Ho was coming to our town.

The relatives would have to be told. First, of course, that he was alive and then that he was coming here to gamble, at the invitation of the casinos. It was easy to see why Mom was upset.

She looked at my father and reached for the letter. He handed it to her and pulled a chair away from the table and sat down.

“It’s in English,” she said.

Dad laughed. “Did you think I’d suddenly learned to read Chinese?”

Neither of them had ever learned to read the language.

“How is it that your Uncle Ho knows English?”

I was careful not to laugh. Actually, Uncle Ho was my father’s relative. It’s a bit complicated. He was the youngest son of my father’s grandfather’s youngest uncle. It’s easier to say in Chinese.

My father shook his head. “I don’t know any more about Uncle Ho than you do. I never met him. All I know are the stories. You’ve heard the same ones I have.”

“Maybe he had someone write the letter for him,” I said.

This time my mother eyed me with approval. “That’s a possibility. You were right about something else, James. It looks as though your Uncle Ho is one of those whales. He’s going to be put up at one of those fantasyland hotels on the Strip.”

Now he was my uncle.

She looked at my father. “At least that means he doesn’t expect to stay with us.”

This didn’t sound like my mother at all. It seemed a little inhospitable for the legendary Uncle Ho to come all the way from Shanghai and not stay with us, if only for an overnight. We had a guestroom with its own bath, so it isn’t as though we didn’t have the space. But I kept my mouth shut.

My mother handed the letter back to my father. “He’s arriving tomorrow. You didn’t tell me that.”

The level of electricity between them had just shot up. I decided to make myself scarce. I put my Coke can in the recycling bin, mumbled that I’d be back later and went out the side door, grabbing my basketball out of habit. It was hot, but I was used to it. The court was about three blocks away. Some of the guys were bound to be there. A few shots and another pickup game wouldn’t be bad. Then I’d run home and get cleaned up again in the outside shower. I didn’t remember much about Chicago, but in terms of climate the change had been a great trade.

At supper that night we sat down to the stir-fry and steamed rice and Dad gave me the news. “We’ve decided to meet Uncle Ho’s plane. His flight from Los Angeles gets in at four tomorrow afternoon. We’ll let him decide if he wants to spend time with us.”

Somehow I didn’t think Uncle Ho would be satisfied with a quick hello at the airport, otherwise he wouldn’t have sent us the letter. But my parents were feeling their way, and there was no point in my adding to their confusion.

“How will we recognize him?”

“Your mother thought of that. We’ll take along a sign with his name on it, put it on a stick and hold it up. That way he will be able to find us. Maybe you could take care of the sign, James.”

“Sure. What should it say? Uncle Ho?”

My mother was quick to answer. “No. Mr. Ho.”

“Got it.”

The other thing they decided was not to call the relatives just yet. “It’s better if we wait until Uncle Ho gets here. There will be more to tell them after that.”

If Marge Farley had known what was in store during her vacation to Las Vegas, she might have gone to the Wisconsin Dells instead. At the very least, she might not have taken the side trip into the desert. But she’d been craving something new and different, which was why they’d come to Vegas in the first place. And she’d surprised her husband Larry with a trip to Red Rock Canyon to cheer him up.

But Larry ignored the petrified sand dunes, the waterfalls cascading into the canyons, and the red-tailed hawks soaring high above the Mojave. Polishing off both bottles of water, he stomped back to the car. He swiped beads of sweat off his forehead. Wet bands ringed the back of his shirt. “This isn’t fun. It’s too hot. And dusty. Let’s go back.”

Marge tried to focus on the craggy rock formations in the distance. The desk clerk at the hotel concierge said this was the place to visit. And Dr. Phil said there were times you had to decide what was important in a relationship. Lord knows, she was trying. But Larry’d had what you might call a setback last night. A fifteen thousand-dollar setback.

“It’s not fair.” He moaned when they’d stumbled out of the casino. “Why couldn’t we have Benny Morrison’s luck?”

She’d heard the story a thousand times. How their friend Benny took his wife to Vegas and won fifty grand at the tables before they even unpacked. How he flew up to their room, grabbed their bags, and told Frances they were going home-that very minute-to build a swimming pool in their back yard. Larry still did a slow burn every time the Morrisons invited them over.

But Larry had never had much luck. Marge pulled the visor of her cap down and contemplated a pink cactus flower not faraway. So they’d skip the next vacation. Postpone the bathroom remodeling. Life wasn’t about money, anyway. It was a spiritual journey. Like they said on “Oxygen.” In fact, hadn’t some woman said something about mantras last week? How they made for peace and tranquility? She should share that with Larry. As she tried to remember exactly what the woman had said, something near the flowers glinted in the sun and broke her concentration. “Look at that!”

Larry grudgingly turned around. “What is it now?”

Marge took off her sunglasses. “Something’s over there. By the flowers. It’s glittering.”

“It’s probably a frigging gum wrapper.”

She headed over. “Then we should definitely pick it up. How could someone even think of littering in a place like this?”

“Marge…” Larry followed her over, bumping into her when she came to a sudden stop. “What the-?”

“Look!” Marge pointed. Behind the flowers a piece of metal was sticking out of the sand.

“Lemme see.” Larry squinted and crept closer. “Looks like some kind of box.” He peered at it, then felt around it with his shoe. They heard a metallic thump. Larry’s eyebrows shot up. He bent over the box.

“Wait!” Marge cut in. “Don’t touch it.” She hugged her arms and looked around. “You have no idea what’s in there.”

Larry looked up. “For Christ’s sake, Marge, it’s just a box.” He squatted down beside it.

“Hold on. Stop. Isn’t-isn’t this where they dump all the radiation stuff?”

“Huh?”

“You know, spent fuel rods, the waste from reactors? Like they talk about on TV? They transport it into the desert and dump it in places where nobody lives.”

“Marge, that’s in Wyoming. And you’re talking about huge containers. The size of railroad cars. Not little boxes.”

“Still…” She pleaded. “You never know.”

Larry shot her one of his looks, the kind where the lower part of his jaw pulsed, the way it did when he disagreed with her. An uneasy feeling fluttered her stomach. “You were right, Larry. This isn’t fun. Let’s go back to the car. We’ll get a nice, cold drink at the hotel.”

Instead, he knelt down and started scooping up chunks of dry, hard-packed sand.

“Honey, didn’t you hear what I said?”

But he kept scrabbling through the sand. Then he stopped digging and sat back on his haunches. Jiggling it to pry it loose, he lifted up a gray tackle box about a foot square and five inches deep. Its surface, at least the part not covered with sand, was dingy and battered.

Marge was just about ready to go back to the hotel without him. Let him get poisoned by some weird biological toxin. “Larry, you just leave that thing right there.”

His response was to shake the box from side to side. A swishing noise could be heard.

“Larry.” Marge started to feel anxious. “It doesn’t belong to you.”

He looked around, a strange light in his eyes. The sun was casting long shadows across the desert, suffusing everything with a rosy, warm light. No one else was in sight. “It does now.” Cradling the box under his arm, he started back toward the car. “Let’s go. And for the love of God, don’t say a word to anyone.”

Marge pursed her lips. She knew better than to argue. She’d spent her whole life following the rules. School rules. Secretary rules. Wife in the suburb rules. She pasted “Hints from Heloise” into a scrapbook. She knew ten ways to get out stains, how to keep potatoes from budding, how to keep her husband happy. And anything she didn’t know, she learned on Oprah. Rules were there for a reason. You play by the rules, you find what you’re looking for. So what if she’d been a little restless recently? That didn’t mean she was looking for trouble. She stole a worried look at her husband. She never understood rebels.

As they hurried back to the parking lot, a man in a car at the edge of the lot flicked a half-smoked cigarette out his window. He seemed to be watching them, Marge thought. She shook her head. She must be imagining things.

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know. I think so, but I’m not sure.”

“Well, maybe we should shoot him again.”

“Nah. He’ll be dead soon enough. Trust me on this.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“’Sides, whaddaya mean ‘we,’ Snake? I’m the one shot him.”

“Yeah, Artie, I know. It’s just a figure of speech. Like when the Queen of England says ‘we,’ you know? Like, ‘We are not amused.’ Like that.”

“What the hell you know about the Queen of England? You been hangin’ out with her lately? Huh, Snake? She your new best friend, or somethin’?”

“Uh, no, Artie.”

“Then shut the hell up.”

“Okay.”

“Here, help me roll him over. Yeah. Now take his feet. His feet, Snake! That’s it, that’s the ticket. Now let’s get him in the trunk. Count of three, okay? One-two-”

“Um, Artie?”

“Yeah?”

“Could you maybe not call me that?”

“Call you what?”

“You know. ‘Snake.’ I hate that, I really do.”

“Oh, for chrissakes-”

“No, really. One lousy roll, what, two years ago? And noweverybody calls me that. I don’t like it, okay? That’s all I’m saying.”

“Sure thing, Snake.”

“Knock it off, Artie. My name is Irwin.”

“Sure thing, Irwin. Anything you say. Now, could you maybe help me with the stiff, Irwin? We haven’t got all night here. Count of three. You ready?”

“Um, yeah.”

“One-two-Ouch!”

“Sorry. His shoe came off.”

“Well, put it back on! I nearly threw my back out! I swear to God, Snake, you’re so bright your mother called you ‘sun’!”

“Um, actually, she called me Irwin.”

“Oh, Sweet Mother of Pearl! Count of three, Irwin! Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Have we all got our shoes on now?!”

“Yeah.”

“Terrific. Okay, here we go. One-two-three.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, he’s a heavy son of a bitch. Now, get him in the trunk… that’s it… good… good… Okay, Snake, you can let go of him now.”

“Okay.”

“Now, get your hand out of the way. I’m closin’ the trunk.”

“Okay.”

“There. We’re ready to rock and roll. What time is it, Sna-um, Irwin?”

“Let me see. I have to get under the lamppost. Looks like it’s… ummmm… four forty-seven. Yeah, four forty-seven. Forty-eight. The minute hand just went past the-”

“Okay, okay! Sheesh! Let’s move. No, you get in the passenger side. I’m driving.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

“Right.”

Going down, I lifted my indoor shades brow-high to double-check, by the dim light of the elevator car, my final draft of the Dulcimer’s morning lines.

The numbers hadn’t rearranged themselves since my last. look. I still felt uneasy about them, but they were the best I could do with what I had. I stifled a sigh and slid the shades back in place.

I got out at the gaming floor, holding the printout close to my vest out of habit but ready to post at the sports book.

Then I spotted Betty. Betty Lyons, who runs the beauty salon concession and is her own best ad. Betty, who makes my heart beat faster.

To keep from seeing her, I had skipped our daily dawn session at the Dulcimer’s fitness center. Now I jammed the printout in my pocket and made myself one with the potted plant bookending a stand of slot machines.

Betty flagged a passing cocktail waitress and spoke over the ambient whirr and buzz. “Sally, have you seen Al Milledge?”

Wearing the uniform smile, Sally glanced past Betty, straight through the space in the greenery, into my shades.

A better-than-even bet: I shook my head.

It paid off with a nice ambiguity. “Sorry, Miss Lyons.”

I curved a limber green limb to mime a tip of the hat. Into my mental tickler file went: Tip Sally some spendable green.

Betty nodded ambiguous thanks. Sally went on her smile-lit way. Betty briskly mounted the stairs to the beauty salon on the mezzanine, all the while maintaining her stakeout of the sports book.

“Do you mind?” A woman with a paper cup of quarters elbowed in to arm-wrestle the end slot machine.

“Luck, lady.” An ambiguous wish.

Wasted on a mind set on hitting the jackpot at the end of the dream rainbow. She was already deaf to all but her deposited quarter. In her world, I existed only as an impediment. When I gave her elbow room I ceased to exist.

In my world, the problem was to reach the sports book uncaught. Close by, an exit to the parking lot offered itself.

Trouble was, I’d have to step outside the Dulcimer, pick my way through the parked cars, re-enter by another door. I could take the unconditioned furnace blast that would hit me. But the light…

I had blocked just how bad it had been the last time I ventured outside the Dulcimer during daylight hours. So I found myself betting that though my shades were neither UV-proof nor wraparound, if I moved fast enough, I could beat-or at least bear-the light.

The door opened for me. UV hit straight on and raw sunlight edged in. The explosive dazzle brought back why I stayed indoors during daylight hours.

After a few unsteady steps, I made for a palm tree. Fake but not a mirage, and cast real shadow.

I never reached that oasis. I bumped into a hurrying figure, scattered in semblance but solid in substance, and my shades jarred off.

A laid-back drawl. “Watch where you’re going, friend.”

Fractured light flashed, splinters of sunlight pierced. In a zigzag jungle of chrome and glass, headlight-eyes sprang to false life and burned into mine. I froze like a deer, unable to see or stir.

“Sorry.” My own voice jump-started me. I bent to feel around for my shades and we bumped again.

“No, Al. I’m sorry. I didn’t see it’s you… Don’t move… Here you go.”

He handed me the shades. I put them on, for all the good they did me. I saw after-images of the same scattered semblance of a man. But the laid-back drawl had finally sunk in. “Thanks, Chuck.”

Charles Everett Owens, multibillionaire CEO of DBA, the juggernaut conglomerate, oddly without his entourage.

I have two points in the Dulcimer Hotel & Casino, and had met Chuck Owens when he dickered with the board a few years back for controlling interest. But the Nevada Gaming Control Board began a media-prodded look into the Dulcimer’s alleged mob ties. Chuck lost interest in any kind of interest. He backed out, cartooned as saying, “Tain’t that I need the taint.” It surprised me. He could’ve put himself forward as a white knight and got himself a very sweet deal. And me a nice profit. But he had smiled at my paltry two points at our first meeting; I overcame the temptation to make the suggestion. Not the first time pride has cost me.

Now a clamp on my elbow. “Let me lend you a hand, Al.”

The friendly butcher in my home town had a way of remarking on the weather-“Nice day out, ain’t it?” or “Seem like it’s gonna rain?”-as he made to weigh the meat. That was your cue to look out. To turn your head and look out through the store window, if you were foolish. If you were wise, to keep your eyes on the scale and look out for his thumb.

I couldn’t keep an eye on Chuck’s friendly hand; I could wonder what was in it for him to spring to my aid. Many a collision is a collusion; the two of us had been in a rush. My time was merely measurement, his was MONEY.

“Appreciate it, Chuck. Can’t see a thing for the light.” My eyelids felt grainy, my eyeballs red hot, and for once I was not too proud.

The vise tightened. “My pleasure, Al.”

He had the build to build on, and more than likely a state-of-the-art exercise room and a world-class personal trainer. He surely felt, and showed he felt, like a guy in great shape.

“Thanks, Chuck. I’ll be fine once I get back inside.”

Back in we went. But he didn’t let go.

Just as well. I wasn’t fine. Everything was a blinding blur.

“Where we heading, Al?”

I didn’t want Betty to see me this way. “The elevator. Penthouse floor.”

Before we covered much carpet, Chuck’s grip transmitted sudden stiffness and we stopped dead.

A solid but wavery shadow blocked our path and a gravel voice backed it up. “Are you okay, Mr. Milledge?”

I grinned. “I am now. Chuck, meet Doug Page, our chief ofsecurity. A touch too much of the sun, Doug; Mr. Owens is lending me a hand.”

“Oh. Sure. Sorry I didn’t recognize you, Mr. Owens.”

I felt Chuck shrug. “No law says you have to. It’s good to see the Dulcimer’s security so quick off the mark.”

“Thanks, Mr. Owens.”

“Say, Doug.” My free hand fished the morning-line sheet out of my shirt pocket. “Will you give this to Joanna at the sports book?”

“Glad to, Mr. Milledge.”

Chuck started off with me, then stopped, also with me. “Oh, Page. Would you tell the front desk I’ll be in Mr. Milledge’s suite for the next few minutes? After that, I’ll be in my room if there are any calls.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Owens.”

Chuck steered me to the elevator and pressed the top button. A pair got on with us. On the ride up I caught a whispered “That’s Al Milledge” and a whispered-back “Zat so?”

His grip tightened, but he waited for the couple to get off before he spoke. “The price of fame.”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t help needling him. “How soon they forget, though. I didn’t hear ‘That’s Chuck Owens.’”

The smiley voice broadened its cheeks. “That’s because you can’t see my beat-up outfit and my week’s beard. I’ve been desert-ratting.”

“So that’s why Doug moved in.” Here I’d been thinking of Chuck Owens with the styled hair and the custom tailoring, extremely personable and eminently presentable.

“I must’ve looked like some loser putting the arm on the great Al Milledge.” By the tone, a fat grin shaped Chuck’s voice. “Page let me see the bulge of his gun when he braced me. Good man. A suspicious mind in a strong body.”

The car made its final stop and we got out.

“Mind if I ask why the desert-ratting?” Just making conversation as I gestured toward my suite.

“Every now and again I need to get away from civilization. Call it rest and recreation. How about you, Al? Aside from your little foray just now, do you ever leave the Dulcimer?”

“Haven’t got sick of it yet.” I came up against a door. “Here we are.”

I got out my card key, felt for the electric lock. On the second swipe I faced the magnetic strip the right way through the slot. Once inside, I turned and held out my hand.

“Thanks, Chuck.”

“I’m coming in. To see you safe, and to talk.”

“Fine.” If he wanted to pick my brains, I wanted to pick his. I pointed to where the wet bar ought to be. “Help yourself while I find the eye ointment in my medicine cabinet.”

“Take your time, Al. Mix you anything?”

“Plain soda, thanks.” I wanted a clear head while dealing with him.

I guessed he felt the same way. I heard no stirring or shaking while I tended to my eyes.

“You know, you’re probably the only guy I know who opens a porno mag and reads the fine print,” said Hughie, taking his eyes off the three-girl routine on the runway.

“You gotta hear this,” said the big man from Turkey. “‘The photos, words, and illustrations in this magazine are intended for fantasy purposes only. The editors do not suggest or encourage readers to act out fantasies contained herein-’”

“Tell me the sleazebag editor came up with that legal language-”

“‘We encourage safe sex practices and present this magazine as a safe fantasy alternative to dangerous sex practices.’”

“So now it’s a public service. Wonderful.” Hughie leaned against the bar and lit a cigarette. “I wish I’d have thought of that when Father Dougan caught me with a stack of his old Playboys. Jeez, they still cropped off the bush in those days.”

Hughie exhaled up at the pin spots defining a smoky shaft of light over the bar, and looked around the place. It was small enough to be comfortable, with only one way in but four waysout, including two fire exits and the stage door, and that made him less comfortable. Too much craziness could take off in too many directions. Still, it was slightly off the beaten path, smoky and anonymous. Perfect. Or almost.

His gaze returned to the twisting trio.

Then the DJ broke into the thumping strip tune, interrupting Hughie’s concentration with a voice that belonged in a sports arena: “And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment pleasure, please give it up for Candee’s own vixen with the fixin’s, Tracy Tetons!”

Tracy strutted on stage and started shaking those implanted things, just like she did five times a day, Tuesday through Sunday. Mondays off. Hughie watched her using the pole in a way that was functional but mechanical. Oh, it got the job done, all right, but something was missing.

“She’s getting better,” Hughie said.

Yilmaz either grunted something noncommittal or hocked up a loogie. Hughie couldn’t tell which.

“How’d she come up with the name Tracy Tetons?” said Hughie.

“Because Alyssa Alps and Pandora Peaks were taken.”

“She could have called herself Plenty O’Cleavage.”

“Also taken.”

“You’re kidding.”

Yilmaz shook his head, his iridescent blazer outlining a pair of pumped-up deltoids. “I think she should have called herself Persistence Pays.”

“It’s lyrical, but it’s not ironic.”

“It’s not in on the joke?”

“It’s too bitchy.”

“Bitchy sells, too, my friend.”

Hughie took a deep drag on his death stick and blew it out through his nose.

Yilmaz said, “I need to get some air.”

“Wait a minute, I’ll go with you.”

Hughie took one more look around the dark interior of the club. His mark hadn’t come in yet, but it was a good habit to double-check even a sure thing.

It was one of his few good habits.

They leaned outside and breathed in the clean desert air. Thestreet off Fremont was all quiet, and misty with late afternoon shadows, portending a shower.

“Boy, rain in Vegas,” said Hughie. “What are the odds of that?”

“That’s not real rain,” said Yilmaz, looking up at the sky. “That’s a special effect.”

“I’m not marrying your mother.”

Amanda Duncan whipped her head away from the window, the full force of her icy glare hitting Ken Marvin in the face. He immediately regretted the words, and began concentrating intently on opening his in-flight packet of peanuts.

“She’s been planning a church wedding for me for years,” she explained, “and it’s just easier to go along with her. Our running off to Vegas is killing her. She had such a fit when I told her, I’m surprised she even agreed to come. And please, don’t tell her we’re sharing a room tonight.”

“The mighty Deacon Duncan in Sin City. I’m glad we brought a camera!”

“Ken, stop it! She’s afraid your mother will tell everyone back home about this.”

Both women attended The Mt. Hope Church of the Redeemed, Faith Through Works Synod, where his mother waschoir director and hers served as a deacon. Whenever they met, there was a subtle competition for recognition of good works, or as her father called it, gaudy business.

“Well, my mother will be there too! They’re flying in for the ceremony tomorrow, then on to help Habitat for Humanity in Atlanta.”

“There, you see? She’ll spread the rumor that while she rushed on to house the homeless, Mom stayed to gamble!”

He didn’t see, but he pretended that he did. He munched his peanuts, which were as stale as this conversation was getting to be.

They sat in silence, both staring at the clouds zooming by. The trip to Las Vegas had been his idea. When Amanda’s dad, George Duncan, promised them twenty-five grand for a wedding present, he said they could use it for whatever they wanted: a wedding, the down payment on a house, or the honeymoon. Amanda ran right out to buy the latest issue of Bride’s Magazine. Ken, a financial advisor in a tight market, started house hunting. He wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass them by.

He found a stately ten-year-old brick house in a posh suburb not far from his work with a lap pool, wine cellar, multi-media room/office, total security system-including the grounds, and a five-stall garage. And best of all, it had an impressive circular driveway leading up to a portico with white pillars.

The house screamed success.

He needed this house.

It had been a hard battle, but here they were on their way to the Bellagio for a short, and hopefully sweet, honeymoon. The only problem was the wedding.

“How about the Justice of the Peace?” he asked. “I hear she’s a real character.” More silence.

“The Venetian does that incredibly romantic ceremony in a gondola, on the canal,” countered Amanda, snuggling up against his arm.

He estimated that would cost at least a couple of grand, and quickly rejected the idea.

“What you two need is a rockin’ wedding at the Church of Elvis, like we did.” The voice floated back from the seats in front. A blond-tipped crew-cut head popped up to eye level.“They pick you up in a pink Caddy. Dad would love it, Sis. Who doesn’t like the King? ‘Love Me Tender’? ‘Hawaiian Wedding Song’?” Robby, her brother, and his new wife, Carol Ann, had come along to stand up for them. They had eloped two months ago, causing quite a stir. He’d dropped out of college and so far hadn’t found a job, so she was supporting them with her two-year nursing degree, working the night shift in a nursing home. They’d jumped at a chance for a free trip to Vegas.

“Robby wanted that Viva Las Vegas package, the one with Ann-Margret in those crazy hot pants. It was great!” said Carol Ann, pausing from her knitting.

Amanda thought this over, a smile tickling her lips.

“That would be fun, and Mother adores Elvis.”

Ken sighed and began to relax, winking a thank-you to his future brother-in-law.

Harry Chase sat in the back of a small casino chapel watching as bikers dressed in wedding casual-black leather, chains optional-exchanged prayers for endless roads, a long happy life together. He was wondering if the Bulls had covered the spread. Another man might have been praying for his own wife back in Lockport, Illinois-another man wouldn’t have put five large on the Bulls in a rebuilding year-but Harry knew better than to ask for any favors. He assumed God was a player and had his own action.

It was early evening, Harry’s favorite time in Vegas. The chapel was full of dreams, the night was young, anything was possible. He would hit the buffet, eat light-he had another two pounds to lose, he was avoiding dairy-and then head for his favorite roulette table, number six, where Jackie the Beneficent turned the wheel-St. Jackie, goddess of the lucky spin, the perfect bounce.

A group of tourists peeked into the room. He watched them come up the aisle, heads craned, hands full of cameras, guidebooks, postcards. They held a lot of celebrity weddings in here-third-rate sitcom stars, eighties musicians-Harry knew the place as well as the guides, he thought. He’d listened to enough of them give their tired spiel.

This group was Italian, most in their fifties, with dice-shapednametags from EZ Tours in New York. Harry turned and watched them finding seats, listening to the guide run through the history of the casino and the wedding chapel. She wasn’t bad, Harry admitted. As a guide and as a woman. Tall, little granny glasses, a nice figure. Long blond hair, newly cut. She had a cute way of leaning against the pew, using one tan loafer to scratch her calf. Harry wondered if she was local. He’d never seen her before.

One of the men seemed to appreciate her, too. He sat directly in front of her, listening intently. He laughed at her jokes, smiled at her references. Harry knew just enough Italian to follow along. He stared at the man, then examined the others in the group, studied their clothes, their shoes. He watched, and waited for a sign or tell-a sideways glance, a half smile… I see you, Harry…

There were three men, but only one of them stood out. The one asking all the questions. He had a scar on one cheek, and a heavy build jammed into a cheap sport jacket. And he seemed to be alone. The other men each had wives.

Or was that a cover too?

Relax, Harry, he thought. It’s been ten years. You’re a thousand miles from home. Not even your family knows where you are. You covered your tracks like a goddamn Indian.

He needed a drink.

I knew he’d lost a couple though. He couldn’t stop whining about it. I didn’t know how my sister put up with his incessant carping: The pool was too cold, the room was too small, I left hair in the sink, the drinks were watered down and weren’t delivered fast enough. I knew he’d lose at the tables, and I knew he’d complain about it. But the telegram was the last straw.

Once upon a time, in the summer of 1973, there were two sisters who went on a car trip with their Mommy and their Daddy, who were both school teachers and thus had the whole summer off. They left from Long Island New York and were driving all the way to Los Angeles, where their Uncle Phil, Aunt Miriam, and their cousins Jon and Karen lived in the Valley. But Uncle Phil, Aunt Miriam, Jon, and Karen are not important to this story, so it’s perfectly all right for you to forget their names. Neither is Los Angeles or any of the other places, mostly Holiday Inns right off the Interstate, with game rooms and pools, where they stayed for one night at a time, or the dozens of Stuckey’s, where they stopped for bathroom breaks and root beer and an occasional pecan log.

It was a local scandal-the kind exciting enough that the neighborhood women kept making some excuse to run to the grocery store to discuss a new twist of the plot with their friends. First, Aaron Plotkin was leaving Akron and his good job at Topnotch Tire for some deserted place in the West. And why? As he put it, to “change his life for the better.”

“What could be so better?” inquired the women of one another. The rest of his life, he could stay at Topnotch Tire-he’s their genius, no? Could they make tires without him? Who else can add and subtract like Aaron Plotkin? [The speaker’s knowledge of accounting skills was not extensive.] “And in this Depression yet, where college graduates are selling apples on the sidewalk! And what about Molly? She’s supposed to go out to the middle of the desert with him? Thank God they aren’t already married! It’s meshuggah! Crazy!”

The desert wasn’t in Molly’s future. She flatly refused to go. “Leave Mr. MacReady in the lurch?” Molly felt the weight ofher position; she was Vice President MacReady’s private secretary. (The women speculated, possibly unfairly, just what that word “private” signified, in this case.) “Give up my own job?” Molly told Aaron scathingly. “Uh-uh! I stay here!”

But Aaron went. Leaving Molly, both parents and six siblings back in Akron, he followed his dream. The gossip chorus would really have sizzled if the women had got wind of that tidbit. Because Aaron’s almost lifelong dream was to cook for a living.

The bug had bit him as he watched his mother, who cooked for her brood with love and grumbles. But men didn’t cook-not unless they were paid for it, not unless it was their job, not unless they could be called “chefs.” Aaron wanted to be a professional chef. Reading in the newspaper about job opportunities in the West, he saw his chance. He’d live simply and work until he had enough saved to open a restaurant. A small one. No fancy stuff. Good home cooking. To start, at least. Later on-who knows?

And that’s how it worked out. He got a job. He rented a tiny room in a town called “Las Vegas.” A Mexican on his shift said the words meant “The Meadows.” Some “meadows” in the middle of the desert!

Aaron missed his family terribly, even Max, his wild younger brother. (Molly hardly at all). But his dream restaurant was taking shape in his mind. Las Vegas would grow from its present size-one church, a few rackety bars and the only store, selling whatever was available, to a place sought by tourists. Meanwhile, he worked, slept and saved.

He had made casual friends with a few of his coworkers, all men. He knew no women-the women in Las Vegas were either married or questionable. The few entertainers arriving with the new hotels, could, of course, have been from another planet as far as Aaron was concerned. And the “ladies of the night”-he found it embarrassing just to walk by the building near his rooming house where they held forth. He did invite Molly to come “just for a visit,” but her answer-“Not on your life!”-didn’t upset him the way he would have expected. Aaron was much more interested in his kitchen than his bedroom. Much as he’d like to see her, he would have had to step away from his stove and look after her. In spite of a rapidly growing influx of tourists, Las Vegas was still a gritty town. Fistfights were a regularfeature of barroom evenings. Visitors and some residents had been knocked out and robbed after midnight on the night streets, and the few respectable women in Vegas never went out unaccompanied after dark. There had been some shootouts, and there was talk of clandestine meetings of the Ku Klux Klan. Vegas kept the sheriff on his toes.

Now, with the horizon bright with the imminent repeal of the gambling ban, bad boys from the East were hurrying into the town. They were bad boys with money and visions of casinos as cornucopias overflowing with the gambling dollars of tourists from Los Angeles and other lucrative settlements as far as the Pacific Coast and-who knows?-the Atlantic Coast as well. But they were hardly making the town respectable; gangsters didn’t miraculously turn into gentlemen when they stepped off the train in Nevada.

There were plenty of rumors that some of the men paying visits to the new hotels on the street that had been named the Strip were bootleggers from the East, trying to set up moneymaking gambling deals. Only half believing it, Aaron stepped carefully when the new people were around.

From the start, Aaron’s Eats picked up a customer base. Well, it was the only real restaurant in town.

Howie Tabor had the fastest hands in town. None of the pros on the Vegas Strip, nor any of the street magicians on either coast, could do up-close magic like Howie. The only thing that kept Howie from the pro ranks and a career on stage was his speech: Howie made Gomer Pyle sound like Laurence Olivier.

One Sunday afternoon, Howie stuck a single silver dollar into Big Beulah and hit the two-million-dollar jackpot. He now hadenough money to buy the upscale tricks and illusions that set the big acts apart, and decided to make a run at a stage career. His idea was to develop a show that would not require him to speak. One murder and a few bizarre events later, I was in Las Vegas at Howie’s hire to find out “Whut in the hayell wuz goin’ awn.”

My shingle reads Peter Pansy∼ Private Eye, and, please, no wisecracks about the name. I used to be one of those by the book, gold-badge guys out of L.A. Robbery/Homicide. Now my beat is what I ever-lovingly refer to as Beverly the Hill.

As is my habit, I was sitting in my office at Numero Uno Rodeo Drive, wearing Gucci loafers, an Armani suit, Lagerfeld shirt, and a gold lamé shoulder holster, in which I keep “Golda,” my gold-plated.357 with mother-of-pearl grips. I was laid back, listening to the honeyed tones of Johnny Mathis, sipping on a Perrier, just waiting for who knows who, to come in and ask me to do who knows what, who knows where, when I got a phone call from my friend, Kam. I met Kamal Masik during my stint with Robbery/Homicide when he joined an investigation. He is an ex-Navy seal and real-life tough guy. Kamal, with his history of covert legal violence, is now the leading female impersonator in Las Vegas, yet he still does work he can’t talk about for one of those government alphabet agencies. Kam is my closest friend and a sometime work associate. It was he who recommended me to Howie.

I took advantage of the opportunity and drove my XKE, top down, to Vegas. When I pulled off of I-15 at Tropicana Avenue, I called Kam. He said to meet him and Howie at his place. Place my ass. Palace was more like it. They were waiting out front as I drove up. Kam, his olive complexion and Mediterranean look enhanced by Las Vegas solar power, looked as if he stepped from the cover of GQ. However, when he spoke, you didn’t know if you were going to get a young Anthony Quinn or Jane Russell.

“Peter, Howie. Howie, Peter,” Kam said.

“Ah’m pleasured to makin’ yer ’quaintance, Mister Pansy,” Howie said. “Thissa here’s a awful mess we got.” He was a good looker, a bit under six feet, muscular, and smart. He just sounded funny.

When I hit Las Vegas, which wasn’t often, I usually headed for the MGM and a certain blackjack table, my heart palpitating over its normal range-not good for a guy at fifty, and a beefy 6’2” one.

This time I strode into the Mirage, my heart in the same condition. A pair of beauties they were, I was told. Blue-eyed, white, with paws as big as dinner plates, the Siberian Tigers held court in their den with all of their admiring subjects on the other side of a thick glass partition.

The male paddled around in his pool, and just like every other male of any species, watched her, the female, sprawled ladylike on a ledge, one leg draped over the edge, asleep.

Perhaps.

Was he waiting for her to wake up so he’d have company? Or an audience? Was she sleeping, or just pretending? Would he wake her up when he couldn’t stand to be alone anymore?

Was he any different from me?

Everyone loved those tigers judging by the crowds in front of the glass, and in the shop buying stuffed replicas.

But someone loved them a lot more.

And that’s the real reason I was here.

Someone was planning to steal them. I was here to stop him.

“Why” was a question, but not the question. The question was how. If I knew that, my job as a P.I. would be a lot simpler. I liked simple these days, but that wasn’t what I was getting.

The other reason I was here was Marge. She’s a dental hygienist in Los Angeles, and she was attending a convention at the hotel.

I could tell them right off from the other conventioneers. The jokes. Like what ride in amusement parks do hygienists like most? The molar coaster. How can you not like them?

Oh, yeah, there was a third reason I was here.

My daughter.

Marge said I had to call her this time, arrange to meet her, blah, blah, blah.

Marge knows how to get me to do what she wants. So the call was on the agenda, but first I had to stop a catnapping.

Before I let the management know I was ready to start work, I started. I closed out those beautiful furry bodies and looked around the den. Fake rocks, cavelike on three sides, with a ledge on the left, walkways and a real cave on the right. Above, blue sky. Nothing in between.

Couldn’t imagine trying to steal those two. Pussycats they looked like, but I wasn’t going in there to find out. Not on your life, or rather mine.

I took out my notepad and jotted down a few things. Can’t believe how much I forget things these days. It can only get worse was a thought that didn’t thrill me, so I didn’t think about it anymore.

Instead, I took a moment to think about the good things in life-Marge, the tigers, and dinner tonight at Tillerman’s, where the locals go. A nice Chivas on the rocks in the lounge first, then seated at my favorite table with fresh lobster-and it always was, ironic for a place out here in the desert, but that’s Vegas-with a bottle of Raymond Cab.

Enough of that, back to work. I went to the Security Office and met up with Doug Hassenfeld, the Chief. We’d worked LAPD together. I’d done a few cases for him before.

We chatted a bit about life in general, what was it like back in Los Angeles now, how’s the wife. He knew mine was dead, the big C, about the time he took the job here. I hadn’t introduced him to Marge yet, but I would.

He had another officer, Karen Grafton, and one of the tigers’ trainers, Melissa Caldwell, show me everything. I mean everything. Somehow those two pussycats weren’t looking so cute anymore, particularly when I learned the amount of poop they produce and what it looks and smells like. Not too surprising that there was a lot of it when I saw what they ate. They ate well. But, again, that’s Las Vegas.

They herded the two out while I climbed around the den in borrowed boots. The smell was something I hadn’t expected.Did I think they’d smell of baby powder? Open at the top, the tigers got the desert heat but misting was a constant so it was damp and coolish.

“The tigers were bred in a wildlife park,” Melissa told me, “not a jungle, and they never had to hunt for food. They’re used to humans now, but that doesn’t mean they won’t revert to their wild nature in a blue-eyed blink.”

I didn’t plan to find out. Ever.

They showed me the security system-cameras, sensors, alarms, you name it, top of the line as far as I could tell-Las Vegas again. No way could anyone steal those two.

I shook hands with Melissa and Karen as we were now on a first-name basis. Melissa gave me her card. As soon as I was out of their sight, I jotted down that she talked about them like they were her children. She was maybe in her mid-twenties, Karen about five years older.

I heard my name being called and turned around. Melissa. “I forgot to ask you, Mr. Kendall,” she said, “when will the south camera be back in operation?”

I don’t think my mouth dropped physically, but it sure did mentally.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Your company said they were going to replace the south camera, but it’s still not working.”

“The south camera? I’ll check on that for you.” I pulled out her card. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Okay!” She strode off, her ponytail swinging.

South camera?

I looked around the walls and finally found a camera swiveling to watch the crowds. On the bottom of it was the label, “Kendall Security Agency.”

I sat down in the nearest chair.

Coincidence?

I didn’t think so.

I thought back to the way Doug had introduced me to them and that I was setting up a security system for a proposed wild animal park. News to me, but I thought that was supposed to be part of my cover.

Neither of them had even blinked.

They thought I was Kendall of Kendall Security Systems.

But I wasn’t.

I put that thought aside and thought about what Doug had really hired me for. The attempt was supposed to be made sometime during the July Fourth parade with fireworks, when the hotel’s security staff was watching out for pickpockets, room thieves and all the other arts of war that go on in a hotel. Especially a Las Vegas hotel. Doug had hired extra security, but there’s only so much that can be done. Doug couldn’t change the place into an armed camp. And even that might not work. Not many people knew about the proposed crime. I had learned about it from a guy I caught trying to burglarize one of my clients. Before I handed him over to LAPD, he tried to trade the information for a lighter charge. Told him I’d think about it, got on the horn to Doug and gave him the info. Silence on the other end of the line for a bit. Then he asked me to come over, look around and do what I could do. I went back to my guy in lockup and told him I needed more information. Too sketchy, he could have made it up. I let him think I was on his side, believed him, and that I was doing a little horsetrading with the D.A.’s office on his behalf. But that was all he had. Nada else. He’d given me his whole wad. I wanted to get him out so he could get more information for me. Especially the ‘how.’ Armed robbery, bail and transient are not used together positively in one legal sentence. So that option was out. I had to go with what I had, hoping he could pick up something else in jail which wasn’t an option I expected to be able to take to the bank.

I knew the target and the timing and that was it.

I went back to the den but all I saw was one of the workers hosing down the cement rocks. I knew what he was sluicing off. Then he hopped down into the drained pool and scrub brushed the sides and bottom.

Yuk.

A plan formed in my mind.

I turned away and looked at the small furry tigers in the shop’s window. But I could see the guy’s reflection. Thin, maybe 5’4”, no bulging muscles there. Bet he wasn’t thinking warm fuzzy thoughts about the tigers, as I’d bet that Melissa did all the time, no matter what the work involved. Just like any mother.

He glanced up occasionally. Pigeon shit from pigeons flying en masse around the opening. He was probably saying, “Thanks a lot, guys.” But he had enough sense not to keep facing up too long.

I made another note. “List / employees / access.”

Then I started thinking about the ‘why.’ Money was up there. Always tops the list of motives. But other reasons came to mind. A collector who wants rare things? A publicity stunt? I went through the other motives like the seven deadly sins, greed, revenge, envy. A sloth was not being stolen here. I gave up. Having met so many nutsoes in my days, most of the time their motives made no sense to me.

Time to rendezvous with my dental hygienist and see if I could get some lunch stuck in my teeth. Maybe she’d cut class and do some flossing. Up in our room.

“Bounced him on his head till his neck broke,” Aram said.

“What a stupid sonofabitch,” Eugene said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Aram said.

The overturned bucket on which Aram sat rocked, because the handle ends bent but did not flatten on the floor. He scooted the bucket nearer the wall and leaned his spine against a stud for better balance, then closed his eyes as if to saw some Zs.

Eugene did worry about it. He said, “Bo had better get his ass in gear or he’s gonna be meat hangin’ on the rack hisself one o’ these days, go around actin’ like that.”

“Shuddup, Eugene,” Aram said, like a man mumbling in his dreams.

“Shuddup yourself, Armpit.”

Jim Daniels walked around the two men and stopped a few feet from the window with the yellow coating bubbled up and cracked. Behind it, a flit of wings became a fast shadow and then was gone. Jim rotated his head to give the chubby one, Eugene, that look that would catch a shirt afire. “You’re it, Eugene. You’re gonna kill him.”

“Not me! No way. No fuckin’ way. I ain’t killin’ him.” He pushed off from a short file cabinet on which he had been perched. “I ain’t killed nobody in my whole damn life and I ain’t gonna start now.”

Jim looked through a peeled portion of the coated window again and said, “Your choice.”

And poor Eugene knew right then that if he didn’t give in to Jimmy D this time he’d have to the next. That, or Jimmy D would mark him for doom down the road. You were either with Jimmy or ag’in him. Eugene broke out in a cool sweat in the shed that served as an office for the auto salvage yard Jimmy Downed on the edge of Henderson. The thermometer outside read 98 degrees.

Jessie Scout tightened her grip on the wheel of the armored car when she spotted her crew members, Gask and Perez, emerging from the casino lobby. Their canvas bags were now empty of cash. Another delivery done.

Relax, she told herself.

Her utility belt and the holster cradling her Glock gave a leathery squeak as she ran a perimeter check of the mirrors around their truck. All clear. Wait. A stranger was getting way too close to her.

“Bobby? Hey Bob, check this out, buddy!” A man laughed.

Scout picked them up, distorted on the driver’s side convex mirror. A couple of all-night rollers. White guys. Forties. Midwesterners. Mid-management. Suburban. Wife and kids back home. Skip the buffet, Skippy. Bloody Marys for breakfast. Riding higher than the morning desert sun. Don’t come near the truck Don’t you dare.

“Hey Bob. Get this.” The first one is reaching into his pocket.

Scout’s right hand brushed the butt of her Glock. Her two crew members were still far off on her right side. They can’t see the guy or the flash of metal in his hand. He’s too close.

“What’s the pay off if I play a dollar here? Ha-ha.”

He starts to fiddle with a gunport. Jerk. Scout spanks the horn. He recoils, his reddening face contorting in anger aimed up at her as he passes by the front of the truck, hands up, palms open.

“What’s a matter? Can’t you take a joke?”

Scout eyeballs him hard and cold from behind her dark glasses.

He’s mesmerized. She’s a young goddess. Tanned, high cheekbones. Chestnut hair, long and braided. Her face betrays nothing. He concedes he is out of his league. No fun here. The rollers walk away.

She heard keys jingle, then the tap of metal on the steel passenger door. It was Gask and Perez, their faces moist, their shirts darkened with sweat under their armpits. “C’mon, Scout, we’re cookin’ here,” Gask shouted over the idling motor, air conditioner, and the truck’s sound-absorbing armor.

Scout unlocked the doors from the inside. Gask heaved himself into the passenger seat. Perez sprung up the step of the side delivery door, into the rear with the money. Both men locked their doors as Jessie eased the truck down the casino’s driveway and onto Las Vegas Boulevard.

“What’s the problem, you hittin’ the horn, Scout?” Gask studied his clipboard, then shouted through the sliding viewer window of the steel security wall separating the cab and the rear of the truck. “Next drop is ATMs, Perez. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“I asked you, what’s the problem, Scout?”

“No problem.”

“I think you still don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”

Scout didn’t answer. Gask’s face hardened.

“I swear to God, I don’t know why they hire you people.”

Scout said nothing.

“My last week on the job and this is what you give me?”

“I said it was no problem.”

“You sure? You seem a little tense today. Is it a woman thing?”

Scout rolled her eyes. What a pig. “A tourist was touching the truck. I scolded him. He backed off. No problem.”

“Fine. Put it in the log. Time. Place. Description. Incident. I’m retiring with a spotless record. Got it. Christ, you got a brain in there?”

“I know the procedure.”

“As long as you’re sure,” he grunted. “Call in the drop.”

Scout grabbed the radio handset and said: “Ten sixty-five.”

“Go sixty-five,” the radio responded.

“Six clear.”

“Ten four, sixty-five.”

Gask shifted in his seat. “Damn gun, digging into me.” He removed his uniform cap and dragged the back of his hairy forearm over his forehead. “You got the AC on full, Scout? You got it up full?”

“Full.”

“You sure you know how to operate that thing. Might be complicated for someone like you.”

Scout concentrated on the road. Gask had been her crew chief since she was hired as a driver for U.S. Forged Armored Inc., four months ago. Today was his first day back from a vacation and he was bursting to tell her and Perez about it that morning at the terminal while downing his ritual breakfast of chocolate glazed donuts. They were finishing up coffee, ready to head out on deliveries.

“Know where I went, Scout?” he’d asked.

As if she cared.

“Aryanfest,” he sucked on his teeth, working them over with a toothpick. “Up north, near your old reserve. Pretty country. Lots of white. On the mountaintops. We burned a cross,” Gask smiled. “Once I punch out of this job, I’m going to buy me a lake cabin near the border.”

Scout and Perez looked at each other, saying nothing. Gask did not keep his beliefs secret. Experience taught them to avoid trigger topics like Martin Luther King, the pope, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, or civil rights. Scout could deal with his insults but despised the way Gask treated Perez, who had three years with the company.

Gil Perez was a quiet, soft-spoken father of two little girls. He was loyal, honest. Hard working. Dreamed of starting his own car wash business, but one day he made the mistake of telling Gask, who’d spit on his dream every chance he could.

“Ain’t gonna happen for you, Refried. You just don’t have what it takes. Trust me. I know you, your abilities. It exceeds the reach of your people. Scout’s too. In both cases, your folks generally lack the motivation, the dedication, the drive of red-blooded Americans like me to succeed. You’d best invest all your energy in your job here and maybe one day, if you’re real lucky, which I doubt, but maybe one day, you’ll have your own crew like me.”

Like you?

Scout shuddered at the notion of anyone making themselves in the image of Elmer Gask, Forged’s most senior guard and legendary asshole. According to the dinosaurs who knew Gask’s story, Elmer was Mississippi white trash, whose familymoved in the night to avoid debts. Gask’s granddaddy was a Grand Dragon who oversaw the firebombing of churches before he died of complications arising from syphilis. Gask was a former bull with the Nevada State prison system, fired for severely beating a black con.

Then he was hired at U.S. Forged where he earned mythic status. Over his twenty-two years on the job, Gask safely moved up to twenty million dollars daily among the casinos and banks of Las Vegas without a single dollar loss. Not a cent. There had been attempts. Three men had died in botched hits on Gask’s watch. Two drifters from Minnesota in ’88 when they jumped him and his partner making a two million dollar drop at the Nugget. In 1983, Gask shot dead a 24-year-old Brit named Fitz-something, who was AWOL and wired on LSD when he tried to run off with two bags of newly minted one-hundred-dollar bills outside Caesar’s Palace.

No one had, or would, win against Gask. He was the money mover king of Las Vegas. He kept the casinos lubricated, kept things humming. In this town, where every move was a gamble, Gask had the edge and he enlightened every newcomer that his greatness was the reason U.S. Forged entrusted him with the heaviest deliveries and rookie staff. He knew the business and its vulnerabilities, how to inventory a casino during a drop. How to scan faces and sense trouble like a county sheriff’s bloodhound. Gask had no family. No wife. No kids. He was the job. U.S. Forged profited by his intense dedication and bigoted intimidation. All packaged in a six-foot-two-inch, two-hundred-thirty-pound button-straining frame.

The cost: $33,500 per annum. With a $22,000 retirement bonus coming his way for his twenty-two ‘loss-free’ years of service.

Moving north along the Strip, they stopped for a red light near the Hacienda. Gask scanned his clipboard. “We gotta load six ATMs at the next drop. Best use the dolly, Refried.”

Perez’s face appeared at the viewer window.

“Don’t call me Refried, Elmer, please.”

Gask’s eyebrows ascended. “Why’s that?”

“Because I don’t like it.”

“You don’t like it?” Gask watched the casinos roll by.

“Call me Gil, or Perez, please.”

“Or what? You gonna complain to the ACLU?” Gask bit hard on his toothpick. “You forget who you’re talking to?”

“I’m just making a respectful request.”

Gask sucked on his teeth. The muscles of his lower jaw pulsated.

“Well, well, well,” he said as they passed the mammoth Ex-calibur with its fairytale turrets. “Here I am in 1993, crew chief of ‘Gil, please don’t call me Refried Perez and Pocahontas.’ Ain’t America the land of equal opportunity. This is what I get for my last week on the job? Attitude from the two of you.” Gask shook his head. “And I get this shit-hole truck today, a heavy day. Still no transmitter. How many times have I told Rat to fix the goddammed transmitter in this one? Today I get the bottom of the heap.”

Gask had deliberately not mentioned that Scout had alerted him to the fact they were skedded to have this truck weeks ago. He couldn’t stomach anyone telling him anything, let alone a woman. Even worse, a Native American woman. He ignored her. The truck they had was a far cry from the war wagons they usually used. Today they had the company’s ten-year-old armor-plated Econoline van. The back up. Each crew used it for one shift every second week while the new trucks were serviced. But Scout thought it best not to debate facts. Let him rant. “Nothing better happen today on my goddamn watch, right Scout?”

She didn’t answer.

He looked at her. “What’s with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? I don’t think so.”

Gask sensed something wasn’t right. He was sniffing at something, Something about her was eating at him, something he couldn’t quite figure. She was as indifferent as she was on every shift. Maybe it was because he’d been away a week? He kept staring.

“Aren’t you embarrassed riding in this tin can today, Scout?”

“I’m embarrassed riding with you today, yes.”

Scout knew what Gask was thinking, that she was playing with him and he liked it. She was a challenge to him, an enigma. He knew virtually nothing about her. She said little and rarely smiled. But she knew men like Gask. Knew what theywanted. They told her with their eyes. She knew Gask enjoyed looking at her. Especially now. His eyes had lit on her uniform where a button had come undone, offering a glimpse of her ample breast. Firm and dark, bouncing in her bra until she caught him staring and, without a hint of shame, buttoned her shirt. Gask sucked on his teeth.

“You got a boyfriend, Scout?”

“I don’t need one.”

“Maybe you don’t know what you need.”

She said nothing and gazed beyond the glitz of the Strip west to the Spring Mountains, searching for answers. The meaning of her life. Jessica Mary Scout. Born in Browning, Montana. Her mother, Angela Scout, was Blackfoot. Her father was German, a philosophy student on exchange at MSU. He was conducting field research on Native American mysticism at the reserve when he met Angela. He was going to marry her and take her to Berlin. The day Jessie was born he borrowed a truck and was driving to the hospital. He swerved to miss a rabbit, the truck rolled. He was killed. Jessie’s mother was never the same. Her heart was broken, and she had buried a piece of it with the man she loved.

Jessie had grown up accepting that her life had brought death.

One of the old women called it the black wind, the bringer of misfortune. And when Jessie was ten, the old woman told her that it would never leave her until the Lightning Rider came for her.

“Grandmother, how will I know him?”

“You will see with your eyes and know in your heart, child.”

Until that time, the black wind would always be with her. Whispering. Laughing. Jessie began seeing it. Straw in a black wind. Hearing it in a crow’s cry. Felt its presence. She was its harbinger. This was her destiny. Did the mountains know, she wondered, for they reached back to her home.

Jessie had lived most of her life in Browning with her mother. She missed her. Ached for her sad sweet smile, her fragrance, her gentle hands, the way she filled their house with the aroma of bannock. She missed her voice. Was it out there in the mountains? She listened for it, but heard nothing. Jessie yearned at this moment to be with her mother. To ask her.Would it always be true, what the old woman said? Don’t think about it. But the black wind was kicking up, making her remember other times.

Several years after her father’s death, Jessie’s mother had a second child. A baby girl she’d named Olivia. The father was an alcoholic trucker Angela had met at a bar in Shelby. When Angela was in the hospital having Olivia, the trucker raped Jessie. After he finished, he threatened to kill them all if she told. Jessie was eleven. She didn’t tell. Then one winter day, they got word his rig had crashed near Standoff. He was dead. Angela locked herself away to mourn him as the cold winds blew down from the Bitteroot mountains.

As the armored car passed the Stardust, Jessie tried to drive the memories back. It was futile. Even now, a world away in Las Vegas. Please Olivia. Please… the wind… the black wind was there… scattering the snow. Blinding. Biting. The black wind was pushing her, punching her. Jessie was walking as fast as she could. The wind was stealing her breath. Snow melted in her eyes, blurring her vision. Faster. Walk faster. Holding her baby sister to her chest. Olivia naked against her skin. Feeling her tiny warmth. Growing colder. Wrapped in her shirt, worn coat, old blankets. Icy wind jabbing at Olivia through the holes. The halo of the car’s lights. Snow crunching under its tires as it crept beside her. Warmth spilling from it when the window dropped. “Where you going, there?” asked the Montana Highway Patrol officer. Jessie’s face was numb. “My sister’s sick.” The car squeaked to a halt. The door opened. “You got a baby under there! Let me see. Jesus! Get in. I’ll take you to the hospital in Cut Bank!” He was a young cop. Concern on his face. The rhythm of the wipers. He said things into his radio. The smell of his cologne. Her skin thawing, tingling and itching. Olivia is blue. Her eyes are wide open. She does not move. She does not breathe. The black wind is blowing, and the siren was screaming and screaming.

The armored car passed the Mirage. Jessie liked the way it caught the sun. She shrugged Gask off. People like Gask didn’t intimidate her. She feared no one. For the knowledge she possessed could not be measured by the twenty-six years of her life, a life steeped in pain, a life broiling with cosmic forces andancient truths. Her heart had traveled to regions few could conjure in dreams. It was reflected in her photo ID card clipped to her chest. Her pretty face was a mystery. A glint of arrogance in her eyes that squinted slightly to offer a smile. Or was it a sneer, one that revealed to people like Gask a hard fact they couldn’t bear: They were insignificant. Jessie’s face was a manifestation of righteous contempt for every injustice that had befallen her. It held a vengeful calm. Because she had purchased secrets. Paid in full with her tears. Her blood. Her life. She had come to Las Vegas, a city of risk, not to gamble.

But to collect.

They had come to the next delivery. The armored car exited Las Vegas Boulevard for the casino’s driveway. Gask initialed his clipboard. “Ready back there, Re-Gil?”

“Ready.”

“OK, Scout. We got a lot of ATMs here. Going to be thirty minutes inside then we got four more big loads. You know the drill. Drop us at the back and pick us up out front. Main entrance. Think your half-breed brain can manage that?”

She was silent, maneuvering the truck through the casino’s parking lot.

“You hear what I said, Scout?” Gask looked at her.

“I know my job.” She stopped the truck neatly at the casino’s rear entrance, looked at Gask then radioed their arrival to Forged’s dispatcher. Gask’s jaw twitched. He spat out his toothpick and leaned toward her.

“Before this day is done, Scout, you and me are going to have a talk about your goddammed attitude.” Gask’s breath smelled of coffee and the celebratory retirement whiskey he mixed with it. “Maybe you fail to realize how close you are to having your Pocahontas ass kicked back to the reserve where you’ll be reading numbers off ping pong balls to old squaws with no teeth.”

Jessie looked at Gask calmly and said nothing.

Gask stared back hard and cold for a long time, then said: “Let’s go, Refried.”

Gask and Perez got out. Perez quickly loaded the dolly with delivery bags containing nearly a million dollars in unmarked bills while Gask scanned the area. The casino’s security cameras recorded their work while rollers and families slowed towatch, making the old joke about their jackpots having arrived. They wheeled the cash into the casino, Gask glancing at the rear of the truck as Jessie headed for the main entrance.

A black wind was kicking up.

Ed Krause lay on his back, staring up at the night sky, his sports jacket surprisingly comfortable as a pillow beneath his head. The desert air in mid-May was still warm, considering how long the sun’d been down. And the stars so bright-Jesus, you could almost understand why they called it the Milky Way, account of out here, away from any city lights, more white star showed than black background.

At least until Ed turned his head to the east, toward Las Vegas, which glittered on the horizon, like a cut jewel somebody kept turning under a lamp.

Jewel?

Ed coughed, not quite a laugh. Better you stuck with carrying diamonds and jade. But no, this new deal had sounded too good to pass up, especially the final destination and the cash you’d have for enjoying it. From that first day, at Felix…

“Introduction,” copyright © 2005 by Michael Connelly

“The Sunshine Tax,” copyright © 2005 by James Swain

“Passline,” copyright © 2005 by S. J. Rozan

“Dust Up,” copyright © 2005 by Wendy Hornsby

“The Kidnapping of Xiang Fei,” copyright © 2005 by Dennis Lynds

“Killer Heels Kill Twice as Dead,” copyright © 2005 by T. P. Keating

“Iggy’s Stuff,” copyright © 2005 by J. Madison Davis

“A Temporary Crown,” copyright © 2005 by Sue Pike

“The Gambling Master of Shanghai,” copyright © 2005 by Joan Richter

“House Rules,” copyright © 2005 by Libby Fischer Hellmann

“Rolling the Bones,” copyright © 2005 by Tom Savage

“Oddsmaker,” copyright © 2005 by Edward Wellen

“The Dope Show,” copyright © 2005 by K.j.a. Wishnia

“Death of a Whale in the Church of Elvis,” copyright © 2005 by Linda Kerslake

“Neighbors,” copyright © 2005 by John Wessel

“The End of the World (As We Know It),” copyright © 2005 by Lise McClendon

“Nickels and Dimes,” copyright © 2005 by Ronnie Klaskin

“Even Gamblers Have to Eat,” copyright © 2005 by Ruth Cavin

“The Magic Touch,” copyright © 2005 by A. B. Robbins

“Catnapping,” copyright © 2005 by Gay Toltl Kinman

“Miscast,” copyright © 2005 by Noreen Ayres

“Lightning Rider,” copyright © 2005 by Rick Mofina

“Grieving Las Vegas,” copyright © 2005 by Jeremiah Healy

JAMES SWAIN is a native of New York, and went to college at New York University, where he studied with Ralph Ellison and Anatole Broyard. His first job out of college was as a magazine editor. Swain moved to Florida in 1982. For the next twenty years, he ran a successful advertising business. During that time, he continued to write, and published three books of nonfiction about magic, as well as a novel. In 2001, Swain began publishing a series of books about retired policeman Tony Valentine, who captures people who cheat casinos. Swain is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on casino scams and swindles.

S.J. ROZAN is the author of eight novels in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, and of the standalone Absent Friends. Her work has won the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Macavity, and Nero awards for Best Novel and the Edgar Award for Best Short Story. She is a former Mystery Writers of America National Board member, a current Sisters in Crime National Board member, and President of the Private Eye Writers of America. She lives in lower Manhattan.

The New York Times found the work of Edgar Award-winning author WENDY HORNSBY to be “refreshing, real, and raunchy.” Published internationally, and in many languages, she has written seven mystery novels and a collection of short stories, Nine Sons and Other Mysteries. A native of the western United States, she holds graduate degrees in Ancient and Medieval History and is a professor of history at Long Beach City College.

MICHAEL COLLINS writes the Dan Fortune detective series that began in 1967 with Act of Fear. The most recent Fortune book is Fortune’s World, published by Crippen & Landru, 2000. A collection of non-Fortune stories, Spies and Thieves, Cops and killers, Etc., was published in 2002 by Five Star Publishing.His awards include an MWA Edgar and two other nominations; three Shamus nominations; the PWA Lifetime Achievement Award; and the Marlowe Lifetime Achievement Award from MWA SoCal. He has published another twenty-four detective novels under the pen names Mark Sadler, John Crowe, William Arden, and Carl Dekker, and three nonmystery novels under his real name: Dennis Lynds.

Currently living in London, T. P. KEATING has found that the glitz of Vegas is visible the world over. If only the Vegas weather could be exported too! This story is dedicated to his wife, Marielle. She is his sympathetic reader and sole authority on what constitutes a killer pair of heels.

J. MADISON DAVIS has published seven novels, six nonfiction books, and over thirty short stories. He has been nominated for the Best First Novel Edgar and twice for the Best Novel Oklahoma Book award. He is a former president of IACW North America, and a professor of professional writing at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma. His latest novel, Dead Line, is an original Law and Order story. His novel The Van Gogh Conspiracy is scheduled for publication in the summer of 2005.

SUE PIKE lives and writes in Ottawa, Canada. Her stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Storyteller, and several collections of short crime fiction, including Cold Blood V, Bloody Words, and all five Ladies’ Killing Circle anthologies. She is the coeditor of Bone Dance, a collection of musical mysteries published by RendezVous Press, 2003. “Widow’s Weeds” from Cottage Country Killers won the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story of 1997.

JOAN RICHTER, a former New Yorker who now lives in Washington, D.C., got her start in mystery fiction in a creative writing class taught by Ellery Queen’s legendary first editor, Frederic Dannay. She spent two years in Kenya with the Peace Corps, was a stringer for the New York Times metropolitan section, and worked for American Express, where she was a delegate to the United Nations’ World Tourism Organization. She has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa,and continues to explore the world. Her fiction often draws upon her experiences with foreign cultures.

LIBBY FISCHER HELLMANN writes the Chicago-based series featuring video producer and single mom Ellie Foreman. An Eye for Murder debuted in 2002 and was nominated for an Anthony Award. A Picture of Guilt was released in 2003; An Image of Death in 2004. All three were simultaneously published by Poisoned Pen Press (in hardcover) and Berkley Prime Crime (mass market). Her short stories have appeared in American and British magazines. When not writing fiction, Libby produces industrial videos and trains individuals to be better speakers. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her family and a beagle, shamelessly named Shiloh.

TOM SAVAGE is the author of four bestselling suspense novels: Precipice, Valentine, The Inheritance, and Scavenger. Valentine was filmed by Warner Bros., and the others have been optioned for filming. He has served on the National Board of Mystery Writers of America, and he is a member of IACW. Raised in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, he now lives in New York City, where he works at Murder Ink, the world’s oldest mystery bookstore. “Rolling the Bones” is his second published short story: the first, “One of Us,” is in the MWA anthology, Blood on Their Hands, edited by Lawrence Block.

EDWARD WELLEN is a man of many talents who has had fiction published in almost every genre imaginable. His short stories have appeared in Universe, Imagination, Infinity, and numerous other science fiction and mystery magazines starting in the 1950s. His best known work, the comic “Galactic Origins” series, was a highlight in Galaxy, which between 1952 and 1962 published all nine of his pseudofactual examinations of the roots of future law, etiquette, medicine, philosophy, and other social doctrines. He is also no stranger to crime and mystery stories, having appeared in anthologies such as The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sci-Fi Private Eye, and Murder Is My Business. He is also the author of Hijack, a satirical novel of organized crime and space travel. Recently his short mystery fiction was collected in the anthology Perps.

K.j.a. WISHNIA broke into publishing when his self-published novel, 23 Shades of Black, was nominated for the Edgar and the Anthony Awards. He has written four other novels featuring Ecuadorian-American female sleuth, Filomena Buscarsela, including Red House, which was a Washington Post Book World “Rave” Book of the Year in 2002, and Blood Lake, the latest entry in what the Minneapolis Star-Tribune called “one of the most distinctive series in mystery fiction.” By day, he is an English professor, teaching writing and a notoriously amusing crime fiction course at Suffolk Community College on Long Island.

LINDA KERSLAKE is from the Northwest, where she manages a medical practice and moonlights as office help at the local police department. Her short stories have appeared in Mystery Times and Death Dance, another IACW anthology edited by Trevanian. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the International Association of Crime Writers. She has finished her first novel and continues to write short stories.

JOHN WESSEL is the author of the Harding series-This Far, No Further; Pretty Ballerina; Kiss It Goodbye. He lives outside Chicago.

LISE McCLENDON is the author of two mystery series, the Alix Thorssen series (Blue Wolf, etc.) set in Jackson Hole, and the Dorie Lennox series (Sweet and Lowdown) set in WW2-era Kansas City. She lives in Billings, Montana, with her family. She is a former board member of International Association of Crime Writers and currently on the national board of Mystery Writers of America.

RONNIE KLASKIN has had a number of stories published, some in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and Whittle Communications, Special Report, among others, the most recent of which was in the anthology, A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, edited by Jeffrey Deaver. She has won prizes for her short stories and poems. She has a MFA in fiction writing from Vermont College.

RUTH CAVIN was born in the very middle of the terrible 1918 flu epidemic, but recent events find her with Thomas Dunne Books at St. Martin’s Press for the past sixteen years. While she has published many mystery novels under the company’s Minotaur imprint, her output surprises some agents by being quite a bit more varied. Before taking her first editorial nine-to-five job, she was the author of several published books-none of them mysteries, all of them now long out of print. She lives in a suburb of New York and commutes daily to St. Martin’s offices in Manhattan’s historic Flatiron Building.

Brooklyn-born A. B. “ROBBIE” ROBBINS joined the Marines at seventeen, where he started on the road to his black belt in judo and brown belt in karate. He became a professional ballroom dancer at the age of twenty-one. During his career he garnered a national championship and status as a master performer, coach, and choreographer. Robbie is an outstanding chef and has written a cookbook, The Convenience Market Gourmet. Other writing credits include a feature-length screenplay, religious lyrics set to classical music, and a short story published in Magnolias and Mayhem. He is at work on a mystery novel called Dancing in the Darkness, plus a short story collection based on the character in this anthology. He plays classical and flamenco guitar, has owned a nightclub/restaurant in the New Orleans area, a judo/karate dojo in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, and health clubs in California, Washington, and Texas. He loves sailing, and his idol is Leonardo da Vinci.

DR. GAY TOLTL KINMAN has eight award nominations for her mysteries. She was the 2003 Edgars Chair for Best Children’s Mystery, and a presenter of the award; is a scholar for the Center for the Book, Library of Congress/UCLA “Women of Mystery” Program; and coordinates Workshops for Writers at Cal State, San Bernardino. She has published over one hundred and fifty articles and several mystery short stories; had a play produced; coedited a cookbook, Desserticide II: AKA Just Desserts and Deathly Advice; and has a recipe in A Second Helping of Murder. Anthology mysteries include “Miss Parker and the Cutter Sanborn Tables” in A Deadly Dozen: Tales of Murder from Los Angeles (Agatha nominee) and “Neither Tarnished nor Afraid” in Murder on Sunset Boulevard. Her gothic novel, Castle Reiner, is set in California in 1899. Five children’s mysteries featuring Alison Leigh Powers, Super Sleuth, were published by Amber Quill Press.

Sharing initials with Mickey Mouse, Mighty Mouse, Marilyn Monroe, Mitch Miller, and flying candy disks, MICKI MARZ writes stories beneath a two-hundred-year-old, moss-feathered oak tree in southeastern Louisiana. Micki, published under two other names, says trying on new identities suits a felonious mind. When not writing or teaching the occasional writing class, Micki edits abstruse technical documents about how to blow up things and clean up afterward. Fiction work in progress is a tale featuring a child runaway during Depression times, with, of course, a mystery attached to his exploits.

RICK MOFINA’S suspense novel, Blood of Others, the 2003 Arthur Ellis Award Winner for Best Novel, is a book from his acclaimed crime fiction series featuring reporter Tom Reed and detective Walt Sydowski. Series titles include If Angels Fall, Cold Fear, No Way Back, and Be Mine. Mofina is a former journalist who has reported from the Persian Gulf, Africa, and the Caribbean. His true-crime articles have appeared in The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, and Penthouse. Please visit him at www.rickmofina.com.

JEREMIAH HEALY is a graduate of Rutgers College and Harvard Law School. He is the creator of two mystery series, the John Francis Cuddy private-investigator novels under his own name, and the Mairead O’Clare legal-thriller novels under his pseudonym of Terry Devane. The most recent O’Clare novel, A Stain upon the Robe, deals with the Boston priest/rape scandal, and it was recently optioned for feature film. A past president of the Private Eye Writers of America, Jerry just finished a four-year term as president of the International Association of Crime Writers, a thousand-member organization with branches in twenty-two countries spread over four continents.

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