Stripped

by Brian Freeman

  He wasn’t sure how he had pictured Amanda’s boyfriend, but certainly not like some male god.

  “Are you Stride?” Bobby asked. “It’s great to meet you.”

  They shook hands. He had a rock-hard grip.

  “I want to thank you for being so supportive of her,” Bobby said. “I don’t have to tell you, you’re the first.”

  “She’s a great cop,” Stride said. He found himself adding, “A great woman, too.”

  Bobby smiled. “That’s nice.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Sure, go on in. I was going for coffee.” He added, “She’s better than she looks. It’ll take her a while to get back on her feet, but she’s going to make it.”

  “I’m very relieved.”

  “She’s a little groggy from the morphine, but she can talk.”

  “I won’t stay long,” Stride said.

  Bobby headed off down the corridor, and Stride noticed the nurses’ eyes following him.

  Stride went inside. He was careful to close the door behind him. When he went around the other side of the curtain, his heart seized. He knew Amanda was going to recover, but the sight of her there, motionless and pale, was an instant reminder of Cindy. A battery of devices measured her vital signs and fed them back on LED monitors. A tube across her face blew oxygen into her nose, and another tube was buried in her chest. She had an IV drip taped to her hand. Her hair was limp against the pillow, and her eyes were closed. The wrinkled white sheet was bunched at her waist.

  He sat down on the chair next to the bed. He didn’t say anything, because he didn’t want to wake her. Tearsfilledhis eyes. It was an automatic reaction. He choked up, consumed by the past.

  “Hey.”

  He saw her watching him. Her voice was weak, as if it were a struggle to draw the air into her lungs and push it out. She had tired, heavy eyes.

  Stride reached over and squeezed her hand. “Bobby tells me you’re going to be okay.”

  “Hurts like hell,” Amanda said.

  “That’s God’s way of telling you to call for backup next time”

  She was able to move her hand enough to give him the finger. Stride laughed.

  “I hear two of the nurses fainted when they stripped you for the OR,” he added.

  Her lips puckered into a smile. “Ha ha.”

  “You had me scared.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Bobby told you we got him?”

  She nodded and gave him a thumbs-up with a loose fist.

  “There’s more,” he said. Stride glanced at the door to make sure it was closed, then spent the next few minutes explaining everything else that had happened. About Boni. About Mickey. About the confrontation that he and Serena had had with them the previous night. She deserved to know the secrets.

  When he was done, Amanda pointed a finger weakly at him and whispered, “You got balls.”

  “So do you.” Stride laughed so hard he thought he would fall off the chair, and he felt a surge of happiness and relief. It sank in. She was really going to be fine. Amanda couldn’t laugh, but she smiled along with him, enjoying it.

  “Wanna see?” she asked, as she had asked him the first time they met.

  “No thanks, Amanda.”

  “Chicken.”

  Her eyes were fluttering closed. She was getting tired. “I’ll let you rest,” Stride said, getting up to leave.

  “Serena?” Amanda asked groggily.

  “She’s fine.”

  Amanda took a deep breath, and Stride saw her flinch in pain. A few seconds passed, and then she held herself awake long enough to say, “You?”

  There were many ways to take that. How was he after nearly losing his life and coming face to face with the sins of the city? How was he after his lover slept with another woman? How was he in dealing with the choice that was eating away at his gut: to stay or go?

  Stride didn’t answer. It was easier that way. He let her fall back asleep, her chest rising and falling, her heart rate slowing on the monitor behind her. He crept from the room silently, closing the door behind him. Bobby was seated in a lounge across the corridor, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a magazine in the other. He looked up as Stride came out, and Stride mouthed, “Sleeping.” Bobby nodded.

  Stride heard his cell phone ringing. One of the nurses looked at him sharply, and he nodded in apology. “I’m a police officer,” he said.

  He found a quiet corner to answer the phone. “Stride.”

  “Detective, my name is Flora Capati,” a woman said, her voice bright and foreign-accented. “I run a senior care facility in Boulder City. The Las Vegas police gave me your number.”

  Stride was puzzled. “How can I help you, Ms. Capati?”

  “It’s one of my residents. Her name is Beatrice. She’s been beside herself the last two days, and I promised I would call you in order to calm her down. She insists you’re making a terrible mistake.”

  “A mistake?” Stride asked. “About what?”

  “Well, Beatrice claims she knew Amira Luz.”

  FIFTY-FIVE

  The crowd gathered like bloodthirsty witnesses to a hanging, ready for the Sheherezade to fall. Thousands of them trampled on the parking lot and green lawns of the Las Vegas Hilton, their eyes riveted on the old hotel across the street. They pushed and shoved for a better view and kept checking their watches. It was almost high noon. Hanging time.

  The street was closed, traffic rerouted to the east and west a quarter mile away. The gawkers were cordoned off at a safe distance, away from the danger zone but close enough to see the action. Helicopters hovered overhead with their cameras poised, delivering a live feed for the lunchtime news. Stride could smell steak grilling and realized that dozens of people in the Charlcombe Towers were giving barbecue parties and staring at the spectacle from their balconies. Everyone was a voyeur today.

  No doubt Boni was up there, too, alone on the top floor, with a drink in his hand, missing the spotlight. Waiting for his little girl. Saying good-bye to Amira one last time.

  It was a beautiful day for an execution. The wind was still. The faces on the demolition team showed nervous excitement. They were pros who had done this dozens of times before, but the last few minutes before that little spark of electricity jumped through the wires had to be nerve-racking, no matter how much planning had gone into the job.

  Radios chirped. The site was clear, ready to go.

  “Where is she?” Serena asked, standing beside him. She looked around at the crowd with unease.

  “She’ll be here,” Stride said. “It’s part of the show.”

  As if on cue, a ripple of noise ran through the crowd. There was a car on the closed-off street, a limousine slowly rolling down the center of Paradise Road. It eased to a stop, and the driver hurried around to open the passenger door.

  Claire climbed out of the limousine and blinked. Flashbulbs popped. Voices cheered. She seemed taken aback for a moment, and then she smiled and waved, looking every inch the performer. The new executive, cool and confident, who was probably wondering if she could make it to the stage without throwing up.

  She glided through the roped passageway that led from the street to theriserconstructed on the parking lot opposite the Sheherezade. There was a red carpet along the route, and she took long, easy steps in her heels. People called her name from the crowd, and she beamed at them, warm and friendly. A man in a dark business suit hurried down the steps of the stage and met her halfway and whispered instructions in her ear. She nodded and looked unfazed.

  The head of the demolition team met her, too. Stride could hear what he said. “Everything is ready for you, ma’am.”

  Claire followed them to theriser, but she stopped when she saw Stride and Serena off by themselves, between the stage on one side and theflockingcrowds of people on the other. She whispered at the man in the suit, who looked pained and pointed to his watch. Claire calmly shook her head.

  She came over to join them. All th
e eyes followed her.

  Stride noticed that Claire stared at Serena the whole time.

  “Look at you,” Serena said.

  Claire smirked and gave them a mock curtsy. She was dressed in a burgundy business suit, custom tapered to her curves, with diamond accessories adorning her wrist and neck. Her flowing strawberry blond hair was carefully pinned up and styled.

  “Do you like it?”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  Claire blushed. “I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”

  “You’ll do fine.”

  She soaked in the atmosphere around her. The sights, sounds, and smells. Her new world. “I haven’t had time to properly thank you both. For everything that happened with Mickey and Boni. I don’t know how you did it.”

  “No thanks needed,” Stride said,

  “A part of me wishes I was back at the Limelight. It was easier then. Singing my songs. Before all of this happened with Blake.”

  Stride and Serena looked at each other.

  “Do we tell her?” Stride asked.

  He and Serena had talked about it through half the night, and they were genuinely torn. Maybe the truth wasn’t necessary. Maybe it was good enough to leave the lies in place that had been there so long.

  “Tell me what?” Claire asked.

  Their conversation seemed loud, but it was drowned out by the crowd. Stride felt exposed, talking about it here, but they had decided she needed to know before she pushed the button. Before the Sheherezade became dust and debris. So that she knew, as the building fell, what she was losing.

  Except now, when they had to say it, Serena looked as if she couldn’t find the words. Stride knew there was a part of her that was in love with Claire, in a part of her soul that he couldn’t reach. She didn’t want to hurt her. But Serena had spent enough time running from the truth herself to know that there was no finish line.

  “Blake wasn’t Amira’s son,” Serena told her.

  Claire opened her mouth but didn’t find any words. She looked around as if everyone had heard. She stared at Serena, certain that she was joking, and then shook her head. “That can’t be.”

  The dead seriousness in their faces was enough to convince her.

  “But I could see it in his eyes,” she protested. “He was Boni’s son. He was my brother.”

  Serena’s voice was sympathetic. “You saw what you wanted to see, Claire. So did Blake. You wanted to believe you weren’t alone. He wanted to believe that he’d found the mother he had been looking for his whole life. But he was wrong.”

  “You mean everything he did was for nothing” All those innocent lives?”

  “You’re here,” Stride said. “Boni’s not. Mickey’s not. So maybe it wasn’t all for nothing.”

  “You can’t be sure about this,” Claire said.

  “I’m sorry. We are sure. We talked to a woman named Beatrice Erdspring who was Amira’s nurse during the pregnancy. She knew what happened to the baby. It wasn’t Blake.”

  “Then who was Blake’s real mother?” Claire asked.

  Stride spread his hands. “We’ll probably never know. He was one of the throwaway babies from back then. Off the record and under the radar. He had the bad luck to wind up in a terrible home.”

  Claire looked up at the Sheherezade, remembering, and Stride thought she was anxious now for it to be gone. She would push the button, and the memories would be rubble. He also wondered if her mind had leaped ahead of them and was dragging her places she didn’t want to go.

  “Boni told you about Blake,” she said. “He sent you to Reno. Boni had to know Blake wasn’t Amira’s child.”

  Serena nodded. “He did.”

  “Then why?”

  “He knew that Blake believed it,” Stride said. “As far as Blake was concerned, he was Amira’s son. Boni was happy for us and everyone else to believe it, too.”

  “He could have stopped it,” Claire whispered. “That son of a bitch. He could have told Blake the truth. How many people could he have saved?”

  “I don’t think Blake would have believed him,” Stride said. “Blake was too far gone.”

  “He could have tried,” Clare insisted.

  “Never,” Serena said gently. “There was no way Boni was going to tell the truth about Blake. Or Amira.”

  “Oh, Serena, don’t protect him. He’s my father. I know what kind of a man he is. This time, he could have done the right thing. He could have told the truth.”

  “It would have meant giving up the most important secret in his life,” Serena said.

  Claire’s voice was bitter. “Mickey. I know.”

  Serena shook her head. “No, not Mickey. He would have had to admit what really happened to Amira’s baby.”

  Claire looked back and forth between them and read the discomfort in their eyes. “Why was that so important?”

  Serena leaned forward and murmured in Claire’s ear, “Amira was your mother.”

  Claire reacted as if she had been stung. She took a step back and shook her head violently. “No.”

  Serena simply stared at her with sad eyes.

  “I was born months later,” Claire told them. “My mother thed giving birth to me.”

  “Boni’s wife thed in childbirth,” Stride said. “So did her baby.”

  “That was me” Claire insisted.

  “Boni went to Reno and found the family that adopted Amira’s child,” Stride said. “Not a son. A daughter. You.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  Serena put both arms on Claire’s shoulders and pulled her close. “Beatrice was the nurse in Reno who delivered you to them. She knew the story. She knew what happened. Boni wanted his daughter back. His only child.”

  “He never wanted you to know,” Stride said. “He was afraid you’d find out the rest-that he was the one who had your mother murdered. That’s why he couldn’t let the truth about Blake come out.”

  She took a step away from them. There were eyes and cameras on her everywhere, and for a moment Stride thought she might run.

  “I’m Amira’s daughter?” Claire said, as if she were wrapping her mind around the idea. She was struggling not to cry. Then, in the next instant, her eyes sparked like flame. Amira’s eyes. “She wanted to be free. Just like me. God, I hate him. I hate what he did to us.”

  “So did Blake,” Serena said. “It destroyed him. Don’t let it destroy you, Claire.”

  “Are you saying I should forgive him? How can you say that?”

  “I’m not saying that at all,” Serena told her. “I just don’t want this to consume you.”

  Claire looked up at the riser, where the politicians and money men were gathered, waiting for her, watching her. It was her world now-Boni’s world-and Stride could see her questioning whether she really wanted it. Whether the prize meant anything at all.

  Whether, knowing her past, she was different now than she had been moments before.

  “You could have kept this from me,” Claire said.

  “That’s true,” Serena said. “But you’re tough.”

  Claire laughed and touched her shoulder. Something intimate flowed through their skin. “I don’t feel very tough right now.” She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and added, “Time to do what we do best in Vegas. Bury the past.”

  “It’s just a building,” Stride said.

  “Maybe, but I’ll be glad when it’s gone,” Claire said. “The ghosts can die with it.”

  Serena shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”

  “I know that.” Claire approached Serena and whispered, loud enough for Stride to hear, “I’d like you in my life.”

  “I’m already in someone else’s life,” Serena told her. “I’m sorry.”

  Claire smiled sadly. She looked at Stride. “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about what it would be like. The three of us together. Can’t we share?”

  Serena answered for him. “There’s only one of me.”

  Stride knew
the truth. Sure, he had thought about it, but it was nothing but a wild fantasy. There would have been physical moments, ecstasy, like a drug, lingering for a few seconds that felt like forever, but in the end, it would have been a cancer eating them up and splitting them apart. Some lines you can’t cross.

  Claire knew it, too. She kissed Serena’s cheek and told her, “You’re deeper than Vegas.”

  The crowd was restless. Impatient. They wanted a body.

  Claire retreated to the riser, climbed the steps, and waved to the crowd, which cheered wildly. She made the rounds on the platform. The mayor. The demolition team. Investors from New York. All of them taking her measure and studying her suspiciously, this girl who would oversee the rising of the Orient, a gleaming red tower to replace the old, tainted past of the Sheherezade. Stride could see behind their eyes and toothy grins and knew what they were thinking. It was okay to let her handle the ceremony, but behind the scenes, she would flounder, and others would grasp the real power.

  Stride thought they were all going to be surprised. Claire was tough.

  She didn’t give any speeches. She just placed both hands on the plunger that would trigger the explosion, and the crowd instantly fell silent. The hush lingered for several seconds as faces turned expectantly toward the hotel. Strange, Stride thought, how we’re so fascinated with destruction, with the tearing down of idols. Maybe because it was so fast. Years to put it up, years to visit, pass by, and play, seconds to bring it all to the ground.

  No one was watching Claire anymore, except himself and Serena, who saw the smile fade from her face as she stared up at the sign, SHEHEREZADE. It looked tired in the daylight, not like the multicolored glow that washed over them at night. Tired and ready to fall. Claire’s eyes were wet. He saw her lips moving, whispering silently to herself.

  Good-bye.

  She pushed the plunger down. Electricity sparked through the wires and made its way to the dynamite packed inside the columns.

  There was a long moment when nothing happened, when people held their breaths and wondered if it had all gone wrong.

  Then bang bang bang bang, the charges detonated in a staccato rhythm like cannon fire, shooting from top to bottom with flashes of orange flame. The ground rumbled and shook under their feet, as if massive tectonic plates were grinding together somewhere beneath the earth. The hotel stood proudly for another few seconds, defying the dynamite, as if it could stand forever suspended against gravity-but it couldn’t. Deep inside its bowels, the hotel had been eviscerated; its supports were gone, leaving only the crushing weight behind to go down. From afar, as it began, the implosion looked as easy and graceful as a puff on a dandelion, not like the rape of thousands of tons of rock and steel. As if they were of no more substance than paper, the walls caved in on themselves, and the glamorous hotel collapsed like a body that had bled out. The force of the fall caused another earthquake under the street, strong enough that Stride felt they might all be lifted from the ground.