I hadn't noticed that the crowded, classy joint I'd entered was the Casino of The Angels, not the Grande. To me, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. I just wanted to gamble away my dough.
The blackjack table wiped out half of what I had with me. I took the rest and drifted to a craps table. People milled around. Rich people, mostly. And a good portion of losers, such as yours truly, dressed up and ready to lose even more while feeling like a part of the diamond and dashing crowd.
I watched the game in progress, shifting my weight from leg to leg to ease the dull pains that poked at my bones. It was then that I saw her.
I had just muscled in between two kibitzers who looked as if they wouldn't let go of a dime to bet on the sun setting. The rest of the crowd around the table bet fast and loose. I saw why.
She stood at the head of the table holding the dice in her hand. Blond hair the color of unalloyed gold hung past her shoulders to touch the low-cut back of her silver evening gown. She tapped dark, bloodhued nails against the little green cubes. They rattled in her hand for a moment before being cast forward across the table. They landed near me. A two and a three.
"Bicycle tricycle," the croupier said in a tired voice. He looked as if he had once weighed a few hundred pounds and lost the weight but not the skin. He raked the dice back to the woman.
"Five again," someone marveled. The onlookers, especially the men, applauded. The croupier stoically shoved some chips her way.
She smiled. Not with the smile I usually associate with blondes. If there's one thing worse than the dull, brainless expression I see on most blondes, it's the faked look of intelligence I see on others. There were exceptions, and this lady was one.
She appeared unimpressed by her luck, though not bored-she seemed to be whiling away her time, not really paying attention.
The men, oddly enough, didn't pay much attention to her, either. Sure, the oily gigolos greedily eyed her mountain of chips. An occasional wolf gave lustful notice to the dress that clung skintight to skin that deserved to be clung tight to. And I could tell which of us sitting at the table knew we had no chance with her. We were the few who just stared at her arctic blue eyes and their blizzard gaze that never seemed to touch on anyone. Mostly, though, the crowd behaved as if she weren't much more than a mannequin propped up at the end of the table.
I broke away from watching her long enough to scan the room, and I noticed two interesting occurrences. First, one of the pit bosses appeared from behind a mirrored door to approach the owner of the establishment. He pointed toward the lady in silver.
Second, a trio of nervous weasels with hood written all over them strolled through the main door separately. They reunited as soon as they were inside. Amateurs.
I let my gaze wander back to the gaming floor. The owner and the pit boss were approaching the craps table.
Just before they got there, as if she had eyes in the back of her head, the golden lady scooped up most of her winnings and nodded courteously to the table. She made a straight line for the cashier.
To get there, she had to pass the owner. I braced myself for the quiet scene about to occur. It didn't. Instead, the owner and the pit boss drifted right past her, a sort of glaze coming over their eyes.
Reaching the table, the owner simply glanced around with a dull expression, counted the remaining chips, and quietly berated the pit boss. The fat man ran a hand through his toupee and shrugged. They went their separate ways.
The silver lady glided toward the cashier at about the same rate as the three jittery thugs in monkey suits. I looked around for guards. The only two visible were on the other side of the room taking care of a drunk.
When the unwholesome trinity reached to their waistbands, I knew what had to be done.
I shouldered my way over to the cashier, getting there ahead of Blondie to place my hulk between her and the approaching hit team. A calculated misstep permitted her to collide with me, spilling her chips.
The hoods had their guns out by the time the chips clattered to the floor. They clustered around the cashier, propositioning him. Blondie stooped to recover her goods.
"Next time why don't you watch-"
I crouched down, drawing my auto from its waistband holster.
"Keep down, beautiful, we're in for fun."
One of the little men socked somebody who had stepped up to the booth. A woman screamed, and the crowd surged backward.
The crooks panicked. One whipped about and pointed aimlessly at the bystanders, stark terror showing behind his eyes. Another one joined in, while the third continued to fill a sack with orange paper. The guards tried to push their way forward from the rear without catching the crooks' attention.
They were too busy to notice me, so I drew my aim upward. At about that time, the ugliest, most ill-dressed of the three slowly shifted the aim of his muzzle in my direction. I figured that the cloudy look in his eyes arose from his amateur standing.
Blondie gasped behind me-more in disbelief than in fear.
I fired.
The first creep fell, a bloody gap blooming red like a rose in his lapel. I snapped my aim over to the second squirt just as the guards used my diversion to rush forward and point their neural interruptors.
We were on the fringe of the field effect those things emit. I went numb. I would have been sure it was a heart attack or a stroke if I hadn't known better.
The two remaining thugs dropped, their lights knocked dim by the interruptor beams.
"We've got to get out," a voice behind me whispered.
Suddenly, out was what I wanted to get above all else. I rose up. Determining that I could walk without too much effort, I made tracks for the exit.
The guards seemed too busy to notice me, even though a crook lay dead at their feet and a .45 dangled in my right hand. One of them looked blankly at me, then turned back to the corpse and its snoring partners.
At the doorway, I turned to Blondie saying, "Hey-your chips-"
She was gone.
I scanned the casino for a moment. Not there. I turned to look down the hallway. A silver figure strode unnoticed down the corridor.
"Hey, lady!" I shouted. If she didn't want her chips, I thought, to hell with them. But she deserved some thanks for getting me out of there.
Bullshit.
I was irritated because she hadn't had the decency to thank me for saving her life. Why I ever expected decency from anyone hadn't occurred to me. I jammed the pistol back into my waistband.
Did she think she'd have a gunman at her side every time she needed one?
She heard my shout and turned around to stop dead in her tracks. She stared at me with the queerest expression I'd ever seen on a dame. She looked shocked. If I hadn't seen her up close under the previous circumstances, I would have chalked the look up to simple snootiness. Yet I think she genuinely expected no further notice from me.
She spun about in a swirl of glimmering silver and walked away, her haughtiness losing some of its cutting edge. She glanced back just before turning a corner, stared at me again, and vanished out of view.
I shrugged and headed for the exit from Auberge. Security was lax, as usual. The exit guards probably didn't even know that something had happened inside one of the casinos. They patrolled the corridors, leaving internal affairs to the owners of each establishment.
The redhead at the cloakroom had been replaced by a lovely black woman in a topaz-hued harem outfit. I retrieved my coat and strolled out into the night air.
Walking down Hope Street toward Flower, my thoughts drifted back to the blonde. Who was she, to watch one man kill another and take it in stride?
Ah hell, I thought, maybe she figured I worked for the club or something. Considering how handily she won those chips, maybe she didn't want to stick around to retrieve them, let alone carry on small talk.
I jammed my hands into my pockets and headed back to my office. The night air was warm for the end of October. I let it waft around me and carry my worries away. Before I knew it, I had reached the tower and climbed to my floor.
Lights glowed in the waiting room.
Normally, I leave my office door locked and my waiting room open. I find that I get more business that way. Sometimes, I just get Bennie the Dipso curled up on the couch.
This time, I had company.
He stood as I entered. Not more than an inch or two taller, he towered over me in that psychologically intimidating manner that marked him as a hustler of vast experience. I decided to counter by playing it tough.
"Mr. Dell Ammo, I presume?" He wore the most well-tailored suit of the finest beige material I'd ever seen. His dark brown hair exploded around his head in a loose shag style. Even though he was in his mid-forties, the style suited him. Everything about him fit to perfection. Even the soft brown eyes suited him. In body, clothes, manner, and self-assurance, he radiated perfection.
I disliked him already.
"So maybe you know me. And maybe I know the Reverend Emil Zacharias." Some name-it sounded as fake as the one I'd picked for myself. I opened up the office door and pocketed my keys. He followed me in after I'd switched on the lights.
"I seem to have a reputation that precedes me."
"I watch the news. Your breakdown got a lot of airplay. Not many other evangelists announce on live television that the earth is occupied territory and challenge God to meet him in battle to take it back."
"It was a momentary lapse, I assure you." He looked about my office with amused disdain. "Are you trying to create an image with this decor?"
I eased myself into the swivel chair. My bones felt like fragilestemmed roses with the thorns turned inward.
I pointed to the chair across the desk. He preferred to stand, leaning forward on an expensive-looking antique walking stick. It would have suited his image if it housed a sword dipped in curare. He seemed nothing like an evangelist.
"So," he said, turning to look me in the eye. "We both know each other. Perhaps you can guess why I'm here."
I leaned back and frowned. "It's not my business to guess."
He sat down, laying the stick against one leg. He folded his arms and took a deep breath.
"I understand, Mr. Ammo, that in the past you have provided solutions to rather, ah, difficult problems."
"That's what the brochures say."
"Yes." He fiddled with his walking stick, tapping it against one of the less worn spots on the rug. He seemed enormously troubled. Every trace of self-assurance dissolved in the midst of some internal battle. His words caught in his throat like fishhooks.
He stared directly at me. "I want someone…" He hesitated. The same look of struggle ran across him. I knew what word he wanted. I refrained from supplying it. He eventually realized that I wouldn't write his script for him and said, "Killed. I want someone killed, more or less. I want someone out of the way." With that, his confidence returned and he relaxed.
"Sorry," I said, "I don't operate in that field. I'm just a gumshoe."
"Oh?" He pulled a cigarette from a polished ebony case, tapped it, and stuck it between his lips. His motions employed a practiced slowness intended to hold my attention. He replaced the case in his pocket and raised both hands to his cigarette.
I didn't see what sort of lighter he had hidden in his fist, but the flame it put out danced red and yellow at the tip of the coffin nail. He inhaled deeply, then let a cloud of smoke escape through his mouth and nose.
"I have the ability to pay very well. The job will entail great difficulties, but the reward will be commensurate, I assure you."
"Out of the pocketbooks of the faithful, I suppose?" Before he could get too insulted, I continued. I was too conscious of my age, my health, and my emotions.
"Sorry, Zack. I'm not able to take on any clients, regardless of price. I'm taking an extended vacation. Maybe if you came back in a year-"
"That would be too late!"
Wouldn't it, though. "I'm sorry." I opened the last bag of whiskey I had in the office.
"Well." Emil stood, holding his walking stick loosely. "Perhaps I may leave you with something to think about during the next few days."
I automatically rose to shake his hand. His grasp was firm, not fishy as I'd expected.
"Thanks, but I don't accept advance considerations. Makes for misunderstandings. Good evening." I sat back down and clomped my feet on the desk.
"As you wish. However, I still think you shall find my offer foremost in your thoughts in days to come. Good night." He turned and walked out of my office.
I didn't like him. I didn't like his confidence, his total faith that I could be bent to his way of thought.
I didn't like getting drunk, either. It was preferable to thinking about him, though. I loosened my shoes and foulard and poured a glassful of the bourbon.
Halfway through my drunk, I staggered up to shut off the blower. I figured the ventilation system had screwed up again. I fell asleep with the distinct impression that the place smelled like an oil refinery.
I woke up in the same position in which I'd fallen asleep-feet on the desk, hands in my lap, my chair leaning against the stacks of books behind me.
I felt like Dante waking up in Hell.
A sick rushing sensation coursed through me. The dream I awoke with faded in my effort to reach the bathroom in the hall. I wasn't nauseated-I merely felt as if my insides had been shish-kabobbed.
The door slammed open under my urgings. Bennie the Dipso sat in one of the stalls, singing old sailor chanteys. I headed toward the wall. A certain portion of me was so filled that I thought it might burst. I faced the urinal and nearly fainted.
It felt like pissing thumbtacks. Blood and milky strands swirled around in the drain.
The room spun back and forth. My fingers clutched the edge of the urinal and held tight.
I wondered whether I'd make it to Dr. La Vecque.
I didn't notice any pain as I hurried down the stairs. My brain was working overtime on suspicion. Maybe Doc had lied about how much time I had. Maybe Zacharias had slipped me a contact poison-it was possible he knew what I had had to do with the murder of Pope John Paul I. I considered everything.
La Vecque frowned. "Doesn't look good. Aside from the blood, there're cancer cells and proteins. The cancer may have reached your kidneys. If so, it's metastasized further than I thought."
"And?"
"And I'd like another body scan. Tomorrow at the hospital. And I think you should stay there awhile."
"No, thanks." I stood. "If I go, I go. I'll see you tomorrow, but that's all. I've got a lot to do."
"I'm glad you feel that way."
He watched me leave as if I were walking into the Outer Limits.
Back in my office, I half-fretted about dying, half-wondered why I thought it mattered. A cog in a machine never wonders whether it can be replaced or whether its failure will stop the machine. My universe ends with me, sure, but all the other universes go on.
I spent the day and evening rereading an old book called The Dice Man. One of the lines that I remembered enough for it to bother me when I read it again was, "Life is islands of ecstasy in an ocean of ennui, and after the age of thirty land is seldom seen."
Except for those brief moments during an assassination-when I could feel the tides of history flow around me like a palpable, living stream-I'd been adrift in that featureless ocean.
I spent the night getting drunk.
The next morning-afternoon, actually-I rolled off the couch, poured myself breakfast, and made my way down First Street to Belvedere Hospital. I had a date with an NMR scanner. The walk took over an hour. I considered it a bad sign that my bones didn't bother me at all during that time. Maybe even my nervous system had entered the breakdown stage.
I reached the desk breathing heavily and wheezing. The short, fat girl behind the desk popped her chewing gum and handed me a plaque of forms to fill out. She stuck her thumb at a cracked coffee cup that held three styli. I picked out the cleanest one and punched up an image. The top right hand corner read, "Page 1 of 17."
An hour later, I lay naked on a table that had the look and feel of a block of ice. I was still beefy, I observed dispassionately, though a lot of my muscle had turned to flab in recent years. When I realized in what direction that line of thought led, I quit and turned to La Vecque.
"How's it going?"
"Shut up and turn your head back. Breathe normally. It's going fine." He looked even more birdlike, hovering over the tech's shoulder.
"Dr. La Vecque?" A scrawny kid with glasses stuck his head through the doorway, followed by a folder and a plaque. Doc took both from the boy and read through the reports.
"My latest sample?" I asked.
He waved his hand around as if a palsy had struck him and then sat down by the scanner technician. The tech showed him a readout of my condition. Beady eyes narrowed in interest. He said nothing for a long time.
"Can I get up, Doc?"
"Sure, Dell, sure." His fingers tapped against his jawline like a dancing spider.
"Is it something worse?" I reached for my slacks.
The tech moved around the two of us, preparing the machine for the next patient. I dressed and kept an eye on the good doctor. He looked like a sinking ship.
His first words in five minutes were, "Have you had a bowel movement today?"
His skill at charming banter was exceeded only by his taste in conversational topics.
"No," I said. "I haven't."
"Go to the lab."
The whole process was growing repulsive. With a sigh, I went to the lab to do what he wanted.
La Vecque told me that the computer analysis would be ready the next day.
"Go home and get some rest." He shook like a youngster commanding a firing squad for the first time. Or a man standing before one. His bedside manner instilled little hope for my future.
I hardly noticed the walk back to my office except to observe that my wheezing had eased up a bit. I stopped in the garment district to buy some evening clothes with money I'd taken from another bank under another name. I have that sort of build upon which even new clothes look as if I'd slept in them. I felt better, though, strolling to Auberge. If the news was as bad as La Vecque's demeanor indicated, I figured I should have some fun before I cashed it all in.
And maybe I had another reason to go there.
The redhead was there at the cloakroom again. As I headed toward the Casino of the Angels, I was aware of a feeling of… anticipation.
What if I saw her again?
The thought stopped me in midstride. What was I looking for-a final adventure? A last fling with a woman half my age?
Someone bumped me from behind. A sensation of enormous rage radiated from about two feet below my eyes. I turned around to see a kid. Not a normal kid, of course. My luck's not that good.
She wore a slinky peach satin dress that clung to what would in a few years be called her body. Her makeup, expertly applied, made her look mature and sensuous. Her long nails mimicked the color of her dress. I guessed that she wore high heels from the audible scuff they made on the carpet. She brushed back her long mane of tousled auburn hair and spoke in a low child's voice.
"Watch your fucking step, asshole."
I looked at her for a confused moment, then broke into a bellyful of laughter.
Her orange lips pouted. "Whyn't you watch where you're going?" she demanded. Small fists rested angrily on her hips; innocent green eyes stared up at me, filled with a child's fury.
"Why don't you?" I snapped back. "You were behind me." I expected her to run off crying. I wasn't in any mood to coddle.
"Ah, shut up." She whipped ahead of me and walked with womanly grace down the hallway. In a few steps she quickly vanished from sight in the twists and turns of the maze. I shook my head-half in amusement, half in pity.
I turned a corner and the kid stepped in front of me, her arms folded. The cigarette nipped between two of her small fingers looked as big as a cigar.
"Aren't you on the wrong level?" I asked. "Hooking is two floors down."
"Rules are made to be broken for a price. I've got a couple of the guards up here on the take. I walk around till someone picks me up, then we go down to Three."
"In that case," I said, "I'm restricting your business by hanging around. So long." Stepping past her, I noticed a look of amazement that her youth left undisguised.
"Hey, mister!" She trotted up behind me to pull at my coattails. "Don't you want to go to bed with me?" She struck a sultry pose.
"I'm not a politician, kid. I don't kiss babies."
"But every man I talk to wants to make it with me. And give me things."
I shrugged. "Consider me your first strikeout."
She pulled close enough to me that I could smell the heavy scent of Opium perfume. Her voice dropped half an octave lower.
"I can do anything you want. I can take it anywhere you want to give it to me."
"Can you take it out of here and bring it back when you've grown up?" I resumed my walk. She kept up with me, two steps to one, trotting alongside me like an unwelcome puppy.
"I give really good head."
"Good." I pointed. "Head in that direction and get lost."
She stopped and glowered. "You're supposed to want me!"
"Says who?"
"They all want me!" Her eyes narrowed in fierce concentration. Her face scrunched up like a bulldog's.
I felt a tremble inside me, as if the cancer were eating deeper. I looked at her. She wasn't wearing a satin dress anymore. An image appeared to me of how she would look naked except for stockings and high heels. She squatted astride me, her hands on my chest. Moving slowly, with an expert's skill.
We both looked ludicrous. Hideous.
I fought to shake the picture from my mind and regain my bearings. I glared at her. "Someone ought to give you a spanking."
"You can," she said with a smile. "Let's talk price."
I clammed up, figuring her to be hopeless. With a muttered curse, I muscled my way through the crowd toward the casino.
She practically yelped in shock. Her gaze shot daggers into my back. That satisfied me just fine.
The interlude distracted me so much that I followed a crowd of noise and people into the wrong casino.
Or maybe the right one.