After years of paying rent on a series of tacky bachelor apartments, interrupted only by a brief stay in married quarters, Steve Forrester had finally scraped up the cash and the courage to buy into the luxury Conquistador Trail development. He had felt some obligation to live up to his newfound prosperity as Vice President of Security of the Galaxy Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas’s premier megaresort. He also realized that with land values soaring, virtually any investment in Vegas real estate was a solid bet.
Located three miles west of Las Vegas Boulevard, the Conquistador Trail Country Club consisted of an upscale cluster of Spanish-tiled condominiums nestled around a lush private golf course. Access was through wrought-iron gates, where a cascading tiered waterfall welcomed owners and their guests. Conquistador Trail provided its residents all the amenities of estate living with none of the petty annoyances that plagued the middle class. Everything from grass cutting to pool maintenance was transparently provided; private cops patrolled the grounds; Avon ladies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other uninvited callers were politely but efficiently shooed away by twenty-four-hour security. The quiet, civilized luxury of the development suited both arrivé and upwardly mobile, the latter a class in which Steve Forrester definitely qualified for membership.
On the morning Forrester got the call from Druperman’s secretary, the day had dawned clear and bright at Conquistador Trail. While Steve dreamt fitfully, an enterprising foursome below his bedroom window cast long shadows across the dewy grass as they prepared to tee off. It was the best time of day to play golf in Vegas. Even now, at 8:15 on a fine October morning, the thermometer outside was nudging seventy degrees Fahrenheit. By eleven o’clock the temperature would be over eighty; by two it would be pushing ninety.
Forrester stirred. The dream was beginning to lose its form, but his body wasn’t quite ready to burst the cocoon of sleep. Then the phone rang, reducing the dream to forgotten shreds.
Disoriented, he kicked off the covers and scrabbled for the phone.
“Hello,” he croaked into the wrong end of the receiver.
“It’s Edith.” In the voice of Emmett Druperman’s secretary there was a distinct note of triumph at having woken Forrester, modulated by an undertone of accusation that he was still at home—and sleeping, to boot. “Did I wake you?”
He ignored the rhetorical question, righted the receiver, and forced himself to focus. “What time is it?”
“Eight-seventeen.”
“Jesus Christ, Edith.” Had he forgotten some appointment, missed some early meeting? “What’s up?”
“Mister Druperman wants to see you on the Bridge. Now.”
“Any idea why?”
“He sounded mad.”
“At me?”
She pressed her advantage relentlessly. “I think so. You’d better not keep him waiting.”
“All right. Tell Emmett half an hour.”
She hung up.
“Douche bag,” Forrester muttered as he clattered the phone back into its cradle and reached for the pack of Vantage 100s he kept on the bedside table. Then as the last wisps of sleep evaporated, he remembered—the cigarettes weren’t there anymore. He’d quit. God, had it actually been two days? Could he make it through another day without a smoke? Another hour? At that moment, he had his doubts.
With an effort, he rolled out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom. He lathered his face for shaving and winced at the reflection. Dark smudges under his eyes and a throbbing vein in his temple bespoke too much Jack Daniel’s the previous evening. Otherwise, it was a not-unpleasant mug: only a slightly off-center nose, memento of his high-school wrestling days, marred its symmetry. It featured hazel eyes—at this moment somewhat bloodshot—a strong chin, and a firm mouth. A sprinkle of gray appeared to have taken a foothold just above the ears, and the small laugh lines at the corners of the eyes were becoming a little more permanent, but these things did not bother Forrester. Below the neck he was still in reasonable shape,
never more than two or three pounds over his high-school wrestling team weight—thanks more to heredity than to any conscious effort at exercise on his part.
Showered and shaven, Forrester plugged in the electric kettle and popped a Nicorette. Instead of chewing it slowly as the package instructed, he bit down hard and swallowed the bitter juice. The nicotine rush felt so good that he immediately crunched down again. Maybe he could make it through the day. If he could just get past the goddamn 7-Eleven on the way to the Galaxy, he’d be too busy working to think about smoking. As far as he could remember, he hadn’t touched a cigarette last night. Which was something to be proud of. From three packs a day to none, cold turkey.
That just left the drinking; the insistent pounding in his skull was a painful reminder of that. Once he had the cigarettes beaten, really beaten, no bullshit, no bumming OPs, then maybe he’d start working on the booze. Not that it was a serious problem for him; unlike many of his colleagues in the high-pressure gaming industry, he wasn’t hooked on the stuff. It was just that he’d always had this tendency to overindulge. And at age thirty-eight, his body was starting to tell him: hey, pal, the party’s over, time to be healthy. For one thing, he had noticed that the hangovers with which he frequently paid for his alcoholic excesses, once minor annoyances to be shrugged off within minutes of rising, were becoming noticeably more uncomfortable—while lasting considerably longer into the day. And right now, he had to shake this one.
Caffeine, and lots of it, sometimes did the trick.
Optimistically, he dumped a heaping teaspoonful of Folgers Crystals into the cleanest mug he could find, slopped in the hot water, and slurped the pungent brew. Coffee and a Nicorette. Not exactly breakfast at Tiffany’s, Forrester rationalized, but it would help steel him against the wrath of Emmett Druperman. Whether or not that wrath, as Edith Frick hoped, really was directed at him.
The drive to the Galaxy was short, hardly more than ten minutes, but to Steve Forrester it was the best part of the day. He always looked forward to it during top-down weather; there was a fresh, cleansing quality to the early-morning desert air that magically absolved yesterday’s excesses, somehow wiped the grubbiest slate clean. Even after a rough night, the glorious sunrises airbrushed on the clear canvas of the desert sky never failed
to arouse his admiration. Compared with nature’s awesome displays, the glitzy monoliths along the Strip were nothing more than children’s building blocks, the neon spectaculars mere tinsel. In an uncharacteristic moment of insight, despite the dull ache that had now migrated to the back of his head, Forrester reflected upon the insignificance of himself in particular and of mankind in general. Yet as if to immediately discredit this notion, the Galaxy’s giant electronic billboard looming a hundred feet over his head shouted down in dancing red letters: TONY FRANCISCO. LIVE THE LEGEND.
Forrester noted that the picketers were already out, already circling in a prison-yard shuffle on the concrete sidewalks just beyond casino property. WE DEMAND A LIVING WAGE, one of their cardboard placards stated. UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES, complained another. THE GALAXY REFUSES TO NEGOTIATE, a third sign accused. The strikers, many of whom Forrester knew personally, made no attempt to hinder his progress, but neither was his halfhearted wave returned.
Nodding at the two security guards, he wheeled the silver Mercedes-Benz SL 500 convertible down the ramp toward his reserved parking space in the Galaxy’s cavernous garage. Aside from Conquistador Trail, which he considered more an investment than a luxury, Forrester’s only real indulgence was the car. It had cost him half a year’s salary (and his ex-wife more than one late alimony payment), but he had never regretted the purchase.
At the barrier he stopped the big car and fumbled for his magnetic pass card.
One of the valet parking attendants, a Hispanic youth, compliantly attired in the Galaxy’s regulation starship-officer uniform, ambled up to the car and leaned irreverently on the windshield frame. “Morny, boss. Jew luke like sheet.”
Forrester raised an eyebrow and regarded his young critic with a bleary eye. “Thanks for noticing, Ramon. I feel like shit.”
The attendant feigned concern. “Better lemme park it, my frien’. Jew gone scratch thees baby agay joss li’ jew deed las’ mont’.”
These guys were never short of excuses to burn rubber in his SL 500. At least today’s excuse incorporated a suggestion of concern for the welfare of his car. Anyway, the kid was probably right: there was a good chance that in his present condition he might indeed damage the Mercedes again. With a sigh, he capitulated and stepped out.
The attendant slid behind the wheel with thinly concealed glee. Forrester pushed the door closed with his fingertips, the solid, reassuring thunk
he normally relished causing his hangover-sensitized ears to ring in discomfort. “Leave the keys in the office, okay? And keep it under warp speed.”
“Jew got it, Cap’n Kirk.”
The young man jammed the big sports car into gear and roared away in a haze of blue smoke.
“I said, keep it under—,” Forrester called out, but his voice was drowned by the thunder of the SL 500’s twin exhausts. In spite of the headache, he smiled faintly as he turned toward the elevators. At least he’d provided one wannabe Indy racer with a little excitement during an otherwise boring day of squealing tires and two-dollar tips.
Steve secretly felt a trifle embarrassed for the people like Ramon who had to wear Galaxy uniforms—perhaps costumes was a more accurate description—although many of them admitted that they enjoyed working in the outfits. They make us feel special, they’d say.
For the Galaxy—like New York—New York, the Excalibur, the reincarnated MGM Grand—was one of the new Las Vegas breed of themed megaresorts, a mixture of Disneyland and casino gambling designed to attract the high-volume family trade with its something-for-everyone philosophy. The line staff was obliged to embody the Galaxy’s particular metaphor of intergalactic-life-sometime-in-the-future by wearing costumes that were clearly inspired by the popular TV and Hollywood space blockbusters. Unlike the old-style casinos, which had been conceived and operated by gangsters, the Las Vegas of the millennium was designed and run by lawyers and marketing men. Forrester appreciated that the Galaxy concept represented a triumph of marketing genius, attracting two generations of Trekkies and their families by the thousands.
The hotel-casino complex was built to resemble a giant space station. It consisted of a massive doughnut-shaped wheel invisibly suspended around a four-hundred-foot-tall central tower, much like a colossal gyroscope. The base of the tower around which the wheel hung was clad with millions of matte-black obsidian tiles, their nonreflecting surfaces adding to the illusion of the wheel’s “floating on air.” Within the tower, which tapered gracefully skyward from a base diameter of over five hundred feet to an apex of two hundred feet, four thousand guest rooms were accessed from circular balconies ringing an enormous atrium above the main casino floor. The wheel structure housed additional gaming areas, showrooms, lounges, bars, convention rooms, theme restaurants, and offices.
Within the central gaming area, rising almost to the peak of the atrium,
stood the Galaxy’s most flamboyant crowd-pleaser: a towering 365-foot replica of NASA’s venerable Saturn rocket. In a city founded on superlatives, where the Mirage boasted a simulated volcano and Treasure Island offered hearty pirate-ship battles, nothing quite topped the sheer pulse-quickening spectacle of the Galaxy’s star attraction. Every hour on the hour it “blasted off” among a maelstrom of colored lights and artificial smoke and rumbling THX sound. In a simulation that would have done David Copperfield proud, three-dimensional projections on the smoke caused the mighty rocket to seem to magically lift skyward on its five thundering F-1 engines. From any viewing angle in the main casino, a holographic clone of the Saturn rose smoothly and majestically on a realistic column of “fire,” masking the actual structure of the rocket as it appeared to vanish among the stars.
The first and second stages of the rocket contained a bank of elevators, connected by gantrylike Plexiglas-railed walkways radiating out to the circular balconies fronting the guest rooms. Above the rocket, the domed ceiling of the atrium, actually a highly sophisticated planetarium, featured a constantly changing panorama of stars generated by a Digistar II projector hidden in the “command module” of the rocket.
“Satellites” and “asteroids” were hung from invisible wires over the casino area to heighten the cosmic illusion, devices which doubled as housings for the high-definition video cameras that enabled security personnel to monitor and videotape the various games. Most casinos had years ago replaced, or augmented, the traditional peephole system hidden in false ceilings with video technology, but the name “eye in the sky,” or just plain “eye” in casino jargon, had stuck.
Backing on the main hotel-casino complex, the Galaxy’s domed Final Frontier Amusement Center occupied another fifty acres of prime Strip real estate. It enticed visitors with an imaginative escape from the bounds of Earth into the farthest reaches of interstellar space. For just a few dollars, enthralled guests could experience “weightlessness” as roaring jets of forced air floated them aloft in the Zero Gravity ride. Parents and kids could thrill to the 3-D simulation of a meteor shower on the Voyage to Venus. Or spin wildly in the cylinder of Galileo’s Black Hole as centrifugal force glued them to the padded wall like human flies. They could scream in delighted terror on the giant Wormhole Roller Coaster or battle indigenous monsters in virtual reality on Planet X, a 3-D first-person multiplayer “visit to a strange world.”
When the kids finally tired of the rides, a brilliantly lit, wonderfully noisy video arcade kept them occupied for hours, zapping aliens and saving Earth while moms and dads from all over America compliantly exchanged their spare cash for casino chips and slot tokens and impossible dreams.
Since its creation, the Galaxy’s unique motif had attracted visitors in ever-increasing numbers, with almost every month setting a new attendance record.
This month would be an exception, Steve Forrester knew, because of the strike.
But the long-term financial outlook for the Galaxy couldn’t be brighter. He could not imagine any shadow casting serious doubt upon the casino’s future.