“I’m sorry,” she said, turning her smile up a notch, “are you and your wife registered?”
“Why would I need a wife?” Gene looked around, mystified.
“I’m afraid we need to ask you to leave,” Easter Chick said.
Easter Egg wrapped a possessive arm around the woman and in a smug voice, announced. “This is a private event for Christian couples.”
Gene shrugged. “Don’t mind me. I’m just looking around.” He turned to leave when he stopped short. Wandering toward the food table, dressed in her short black skirt with her thick legs crammed into tight black high-heeled boots—which Gene immediately recognized as her “bad girl” get-up—was none other than Danise.
“Day-nice,” he called, and Danise immediately looked up, recognizing his voice and his special pronunciation of her name. She looked stunned, then guilty.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Easter Chick, “but I really must ask you to leave.”
“I don’t know what you’re sorry about,” Gene said, pointing to Danise. “I know her. She’s my—” and Gene almost said the word girlfriend, but that term certainly wasn’t right.
“Do I need to call security?” Easter Egg asked, flipping open his cell phone and threatening with a finger.
“It’s OK.” Danise headed toward them. “I know him.”
“He still can’t come in if he’s not married.” Easter Chick shook her head disapprovingly. “No single men. They are out in full force tonight!” She turned to the man Gene assumed was her husband. “How do they all hear about this?”
“Radar,” Easter Egg pronounced with disdain.
Danise grabbed Gene by his jacket and led him into a small empty lobby area down the hall. Two plush chairs were arranged against the walls with a small table between them, but they stood facing each other.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, trying to keep her voice down and almost hissing. It reminded him of the whisper fights they’d had when her kids were sleeping.
“What the hell is this thing?” Gene spoke in his normal voice and waved back toward the ballroom.
“Are you following me or something?”
“No!” Gene laughed. “I was just walking by. I’m …here … on business and stuck my head in.”
“Business? Bullshit!”
“Yeah, business. I’m a business man. What the fuck is going on in there, Danise? And who is staying with your kids?”
“If you must know, I drove them to Mee-maw’s for the weekend.”
Gene raised his eyebrows skeptically. Danise made no effort to give up any more information.
“What did you have to give her for that?”
Danise said nothing, her face blank.
“Danise,” he said, pronouncing her name correctly, “come on, what’s going on in there?”
“It’s none of your business, Gene Barnes.”
“I’m gonna find out one way or another,” he said, starting to walk back to the meeting room.
“Stop!”
Gene stopped but didn’t turn around.
“Don’t you dare cause a scene,” she said coming around to stand between him and the ballroom. “If you must to know, it’s a private party for Christians.”
“Christians? Who have to be married? Bullshit. And you’re not married. What the hell is it, Danise?”
Gene made a motion to continue around her toward the Grand Ballroom. Danise sidestepped to block his path, set her chin firmly, and tried not to look sheepish.
“Please don’t go back in.” They stood for a moment staring at each other until finally Danise said, “OK, but don’t you say a single word.”
“About what?”
“It’s a Christian Swingers happy hour. They hold it here once a month.”
“Christian Swingers?” Gene snorted, then as the idea took hold, he snorted several thunderous snorts and threw his head back, laughing convulsively. “Christian Swingers! Oh, gawd! I mean Jesus! Christian Swingers? You’re kidding me!”
“Shut up, you damn fool! It’s supposed to be discreet!”
“Oh, yeah, Danise, real discreet. It’s in the middle of a fucking hotel and casino! Christian Swingers! What would Jesus say about that?”
“You better shut the hell up, or I’ll have them call security.”
“Is that one of the Ten Commandments—do not covet thy neighbor’s wife, unless he wants to swap for yours?”
Danise’s mouth puckered into a short line, her jaw jutting out stubbornly. Her eyes squinted with anger.
“But why are you here? You’re not married or Christian.”
“I am too Christian!” she said, her eyes wide again with disbelief that anyone would doubt her conviction, then added pointedly, “I’m a good Christian girl! Besides, all the good men are already married.”
“Thanks, Danise,” Gene nodded appreciatively.
“If I’m going to meet a good man, of Christian faith, I might as well do it with the wife’s permission. Maybe even do the wife, too,” she added with a slight sneer to make Gene jealous. “Besides, as an attractive single woman, I am a very high commodity at an event like this.”
“You’re a commodity all right, Danise,” Gene said, scratching the back of his head, which was suddenly hot and itchy.
Danise spun on the toe of her high-heeled boot and strutted back down the hall to the reception, ass swaying beneath her black skirt. “By the way,” she added, turning around. “We’re over. Don’t ever call me again.”
“Danise, we never were,” Gene said, then added, “I never did call you anyway, you called me.” But Danise was already halfway down the hall. Before she walked into the room, Gene sang out in a loud baritone, “Swing low, sweet chariot,” but he doubted she heard him before walking back into the room which pulsated its Christian rock a notch higher. Too bad, he thought. That was a pretty good one.
Gene walked back down the hallway, humming “Swing low” without even glancing into the conference room. Instead he went back into the bathroom. He always thought he did his best thinking while walking out in the fields or taking a shower or taking a shit—a big reflective shit, as he called it—and since there were no fields to walk, no showers to be had, he sat on a toilet in a bright Play-Doh blue stall and considered how this trip continued to grow more and more surreal, and he had yet to set foot in the casino. The whole day had taken on a nightmarish, carnival-like quality painted in bright primary colors. He needed a drink.
On his way out of the bathroom he turned down the hall toward the main lobby and almost bumped into the Vongottens, the couple who owned the Carmi Funeral Home, the people who had buried many of his family members over the years. Bruce Vongotten was wearing a brown sport coat and matching pants, an open-collar shirt, and his best cowboy boots. His chubby wife, Jenny, wore a low-cut flowered dress and white stockings. Gene tried but couldn’t keep back a blast of laughter. The couple swerved, pretended they didn’t even see him as they kept walking. Gene shook his head and said to their backs, “What’s the matter? Tired of fucking dead people?” It wasn’t witty or funny, but it was the only thing he could think of, and the situation was so strange and funny he felt he had to say something. “And here’s a tip, you crazy Christian swingers—Danise loves it up the ass.” Bruce’s ears reddened and Jenny’s shoulders scrunched as they picked up the pace and hurried down the hall.
Hoping to erase the image of the Vongottens doing Danise in a threesome, Gene hurried in the other direction. He realized he’d never been in a casino before, and as far as he could remember, the only ones he’d ever seen were in Bond movies. He could hear the sounds, like a thousand cash drawers opening and closing at the same time, as he walked along the gangplank and onto the river itself. By Illinois law, casinos could not operate on Illinois state land, so they either operated on actual boats, like the Casino Queen near St. Louis, or fake boats built into the river and surrounded by small moats. An old man in a red and black paisley vest, bowtie, and straw
hat welcomed him and shook his hand, half carnival barker and half Walmart greeter. Above the rough wood doorway hung a cartoony picture of a grinning bushy-bearded pirate and, in letters that reminded him of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride, were the words:
CAPTAIN MASON’S GAMING QUARTERS CLIMB ABOARD ME HEARTIES!
Gene couldn’t believe it. Making a cartoon of a serial killer like Mason, giving him a wink and a Santa-like smile, and him not even being a Caribbean pirate—it was the icing on the whole surreal cake. Mystified, he shook his head and stepped across the threshold, over the water, and into the din.
The casino was an overwhelming spectacle of color and noise and blinking lights, all muted by a thick cigarette haze, despite the public smoking ban. All the ringing, bells, and beeps cascading from the slot machines created more of a continuous ringing drone, a chiming, chirping white noise that immediately worked on Gene’s nerves. Many of the games and slot machines and décor had Caribbean pirate themes—Jolly Rogers flags, flintlock pistol replicas on the walls, and grinning buccaneers with bandanas and earrings.
He wandered around for a while, dazed from the sensory overload, when finally a young woman in a ridiculously short skirt, white sleeveless shirt, vest, bow tie, and fishnet hose, reminding him of a prostitute in a western, came up to him and cocked a hip and a flirty half-smile. Her nametag said “Tammy.”
“Care for a cocktail?”
“No thanks.”
“Well, flag me down if you need me!”
“Actually, could I have two Bud Lights?”
“Coming right up,” she smiled, perhaps even winking.
She was working hard, and her forced lascivious cheer put Gene on edge as much as the droning bells and beeps did. While waiting for his beers, he walked over to the blackjack tables with different minimum bets. At a fifty-dollar table right across from him, Gene noticed somebody strangely familiar—a guy with sandy brown hair and a polo shirt. The guy looked back and nodded in recognition, too, and then he remembered seeing him earlier at Egyptian Trails. Gene walked over, a little hesitantly, to the table.
The man looked up. “You track down your brother yet?”
“Not yet.”
“I’m sure he’ll turn up sooner or later. You find Cora? I bet she knows where he’s at.”
“She hasn’t seen him, either.”
“I’m sure he’ll turn up sooner or later,” he said again.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Gene.
The man looked up at him, squinting one eye, which set Gene on edge and made him lash out with a bit of hostility.
“Don’t play dumb,” Gene said with disgust. “You know more than you let on. This isn’t some fucking game.”
“This is a game,” he said gesturing to the table. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit.”
“You better just go on back home, boy. You’re not gonna like where this road ends up if you keep walking down it.”
Gene said nothing. When he grew angry he had a hard time thinking of what to say, and he started clenching and unclenching his fist at his side.
“Look, you want trouble?” asked Polo Shirt, motioning to the blackjack dealer and pulling out his phone. She was a short black woman with a wide face and freckles. Gene considered that the guy at least knew enough to stay seated.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe I need to call someone,” he said, flipping open his phone. The blackjack dealer nodded.
“Maybe you should shove that phone up your ass before I do it for you,” Gene said, finally prying himself away before it grew ugly.
He’d already had enough of this place and was about to walk out when the cocktail waitress came up with his two beers on a tray.
“Four dollars,” she said, smiling up at him.
Gene handed her a five and left a dollar on her tray. All that flirting for a lousy dollar, he thought, walking to the door and swigging one of the bottles. Before he could step back through the threshold, the old greeter said, “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t take those bottles with you. You’ll have to leave them here.”
Without even blinking, Gene downed the rest of his first Bud Light in his right hand and, not even changing hands, chugged the other in his left and handed them both to greeter, who cheerfully took both bottles and said, “Thank you, sir!”
Gene could feel the alcohol beginning to cloud his mind. He wasn’t drunk yet by any means, but it did make him want more beer, and he decided to walk back to Egyptian Trails and talk to the Hansen guy Cora said would know more about Miller. He made it about halfway down the plank-like corridor when he heard a familiar voice behind him.
“Farmer Brown!”
He turned around and saw Jimmy Tosti and Zesty. They stopped walking, keeping a distance of fifteen feet. Tosti had put on a few more pounds in the past few years. Gene could picture him at fifty with a good-sized gut pulling down his shoulders. Zesty looked the same as he had that morning, lips pooching out over his braces with an adolescent sneer that made Gene want to crash his huge fist into Zesty’s face. Gene almost laughed when he realized the sneer reminded him of Jaws, the metal-toothed thug from another James Bond movie. But that Jaws was huge, seven feet tall, and Zesty was, at most, his size and self-conscious, a mini-Jaws that Gene hated instinctively.
“Haven’t had a chance to call you back yet,” laughed Jimmy Tosti, “but I knew it was you when they said somebody was making trouble.”
“I’m not making trouble,” Gene said. “I just want to find out what happened to my brother.”
Tosti and Zesty said nothing but came a couple steps closer. Gene could feel the sweat beading down his flanks from his underarms. His heart pulsed in his fingertips. He knew they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him, though maybe not right here. He wondered, and not for the first time, if he was bound to end up in his own hog shed.
“That was my brother you sent me, and I want to know what the fuck is going on.”
Jimmy Tosti looked blankly and said nothing for several moments.
“I feel bad that was your brother, Farmer Brown,” he said finally. “I didn’t know.”
Gene didn’t say anything.
“Look, dude, I’m sorry that was your bro—we fucked up there—but you chose your business yourself. Nobody made you. You know it’s an ugly business, but that’s what it is—business.”
“But why? What the hell did he do? He wasn’t hurting anybody.”
Zesty sneered again, about to say something, but Jimmy Tosti rapped him gently on the arm with the back of his hand.
“You know, I got no idea why. I don’t ask. I’m a good soldier. And you know what, Farmer Brown—don’t you go askin’ either.”
Gene knew this little reunion could end in a shootout on the red-carpeted corridor. He could just as easily imagine drinking beers with Tosti and reminiscing about Operation Dessert Storm. His hand hovered near his jacket pocket with its SIG as both possibilities alternated in his mind. Ever since he’d visited Egyptian Trails, Gene could tell his anger was starting to smolder, but he realized now that he wasn’t angry at Jimmy Tosti. He wasn’t even necessarily angry at Zesty, the guy who probably shot his brother, though he certainly would have liked to make a small junk pile of those braces. Gene was angry with the casino, whoever owned it and got rid of anybody in the way of their easy dollars. He was angry at Polo Shirt and the people of this town who had more allegiance to a schlocky casino like this and the little crumbs of money it tossed their way. And he was angry at the people of Metropolis for their cowardice. Most of all, he was angry at himself.
He was a part of this business, too, as much as Jimmy Tosti and Zesty and Polo Shirt, as complicit in his own decrepit state as the town was in its own destruction. He was at the very bottom of an ugly business, a bottom feeder, getting rid of the bodies by feeding them right back into casino breakfast buffets in the form of bacon, sausage links, and slices of Easter ham. Self-disgust swirled in
his belly along with the two Bud Lights he had just chugged, and he was suddenly as exhausted as he was anxious.
“I want to know what happened to my brother,” he said, putting his hands on hips.
“Look, dude,” said Tosti in a voice that seemed to indicate some real sympathy. “Farmer Brown. Lance Corporal Gene Barnes. You gotta do yourself a favor. You gotta do me a favor. And your brother. All of us. You need to go back home and try to forget about all this. Don’t keep digging around. We don’t need no more people dead, and your brother wouldn’t want that, either. Go home, Farmer Brown. There ain’t nothing else for you here. There’ll be some family money coming your way. Insurance money.”
“Keep your money,” Gene said, turning around and walking back down the corridor. His heart pounded in his ears and sweat streamed down his back and flanks. The twenty-four ounces of Bud Light made his head thick and dizzy, and he felt hotter than he had all day. What he needed right then more than anything else was some fresh night air—if he could find any with the summer storm brewing.
THIRTEEN
BEFORE HE’D EVEN STEPPED outside through the automatic sliding doors, Gene could smell the rain from the pavement dust and feel the tension easing in the cooler outside air. He walked past the pimply uniformed valets, ignoring them when one asked if he could get his vehicle for him, and strode from the covered carport straight into the drizzle. The west looked impenetrable with layers of low, menacing storm clouds, and he hoped he could make it to Egyptian Trails before it poured.
Gene trotted at a forced march up the gradual slope away from the river and past Hollywood Americana until he reached the square around the court house. He passed the police station and his solitary BMW, bright blue in the rain and parking lot lights. A bit out of breath and wishing he were in better shape, he walked from awning to awning, past the freshly painted but empty storefronts until he came to Egyptian Trails. The rain had picked up considerably by the last block, and he was drenched with cold water from head to boots by the time he stepped inside the smoky bar.
Graveyard of the Gods Page 11
