Murder in Vegas

by Connelly, Michael

  “Things have changed.”

  “Not for her, not for China, and not for me,” I told him. “I’m going to John Jeffries, I expect you know who he is. I’m going to report to my client. His father is very rich, and that means connections as well as the money to pay Jeffries. I’ve already talked to Larry Norris at the Times. He loves the Chinese spin on this story.”

  “The Times won’t print it.”

  “Norris will write it, and someone will print it. It’s too good a story. That’s America too. At the very least it’ll embarrass your bosses. Everything is spin these days, and a lot of their supporters won’t like this spin.”

  He thought about that. “I could stop you.”

  “Not with lawyers and feature writers already knowing exactly what I’m doing. Too big a kettle of fish. Very bad PR. I’ll make the same deal I came to make. I’ll talk to her before I do anything else. It could change my mind.”

  He hesitated longer than Lieutenant Yost had three days ago. Then shook his head. “It’s not going to happen.”

  I stood. “You’ll hear from Jeffries. Do I get a ride home?”

  He reached for his phone. “Drive Fortune back to his hotel.”

  I didn’t look back as I left. I didn’t have to. By the time I was in the midnight blue sedan down in the garage he’d be on the phone to the director in D.C. The director would call the attorney general. In the car, I watched the lights of Vegas, bright and busy at any hour. Traffic was still heavy. We’re a busy people, too busy most of the time to think about yesterday or tomorrow.

  I heard the car phone ring. The conversation in the front seat was muted.

  Then the agent in the passenger seat turned and said, “We’re going back.”

  I took out my cell, called Kay. I knew she wouldn’t be asleep. “It’s okay. Go to bed. I’ll be in the hotel by morning if not earlier.”

  They had Xiang Fei in an isolation cell. She lay on the bottom bunk reading a book, still wearing the clothes she’d disappeared in.

  “I’m Dan Fortune, a private investigator hired by Donald Lewis to find you.” I held out my card. “He thinks he’s your fiancé.”

  She lowered her book. “He’s a nice boy.”

  “What’s your non-Chinese name, and which Central Asian ethnic group are you? Kazakh? Kirghiz? Uighur? Uzbek? Maybe Tajik?”

  She closed the book. “Why have they let you talk to me?”

  “Let’s say you’re a special case, I have connections, and Donald has money.”

  She stood, and walked to the window. Taller than I’d thought from the snapshot, leaner and sturdier. A woman who could ride a horse all day with a baby on her back and a rifle over her shoulder. None of which would help her here. She looked out at the shining glitz of Las Vegas. “My name is Aimur Imin. I’m a Uighur from Kashgar.”

  “Yet the Chinese sent you abroad for an education. Isn’t that unusual?”

  She turned. “What do you know about the Uighurs?”

  “You’re a Turkic people of Central Asia, mostly in China, and you’re Muslims.”

  “An ancient Turkic people long before we were Muslims. We rode with Ghengis Khan and Timur, perhaps with the Huns. Nomadic warriors and sheepherders who have mostly settled down and become farmers. The Han Chinese want to destroy our ethnic identity and our culture. The Han don’t recognize anyone else on earth as people, and they want to assimilate us.”

  “Like the Borg in the Star Trek television show?”

  She smiled. “There is a similarity. One of China’s ways is to offer a Han and Western education to special Uighurs who will then teach Han and Western culture to Uighur children. I am half Han, so I was the perfect candidate.”

  “But to yourself you’re all Uighur, have no intention of helping the Han, and somehow they found out.”

  “It would seem so.”

  “What’s the name of your ‘terrorist’ organization?”

  “Uighurstan Liberation Organization.”

  “Which is now on our attorney general’s list of terrorist groups.”

  She shrugged. “We have never acted against anyone but the Han, never attacked civilians, never acted outside Central Asia, but your government wants China as an ally in your war on terrorism, so we are now terrorists.”

  I said, “I look at you, and I see a highly educated, sophisticated, independent woman. Someone ethnicity should sit lightly on, if it sits at all, and who knows as well as anyone that Uighurstan is a remote dream in today’s world.”

  She sat down again on the edge of her bunk. “Do you know Kashgar?” She caressed the word, Kashgar, as if it were the name of a lover.

  “I know it’s a city on the Silk Road.”

  “We call the ancient trade route the Golden Road. The Golden Road to Kashgar, to Samarkand, to India, to ancient Rome, to the entire world. Kashgar lies between the deserts to the east, and twenty-thousand foot mountains to the west. The Chinese arrived to claim us in your first century A.D. Kashgar had already been a trading center of the known world for over a thousand years. Marco Polo came and rediscovered Kashgar for Europe in 1274, when it was over two thousand years old.” Her intense eyes could see the deserts and the mountains and the two thousand years. “We’ve been governed by Ghengis Khan’s Mongols, Timur himself, many Turkic empires, and, from time to time, by the Chinese who never controlled us for long. The last Turkic kingdom was that of the great Yakub Beg, who was not Turkic but a Tajik general who made Kashgar the center of a kingdom in 1865, and remained there, opening ties with Britain, until 1876 when the Chinese came again. In 1930 my grandfather and a Chinese Muslim general declared a Republic of East Turkestan, but the Chinese came once more. The Chinese always come.”

  She could see the Chinese. “I will tell you two stories. In Kashgar, the tomb of Abakh Hoja, an Islamic prophet who died in 1639, is a great hall with a dome of brilliant green tiles. Also in the hall is the tomb of his granddaughter, Iparhan. She was captured by one more Chinese army in the mid-eighteenth century, and taken to the Forbidden City to be concubine to the Qing emperor. But she cried every day for her desert home, and rejected all his advances. Some legends say she refused him for twenty-five years, others that she survived less than a year, but in the end she killed herself. The devastated emperor sent her in death on the three-year return journey to Kashgar. She is known in Chinese history as Xiang Fei, the Fragrant Concubine. When I disowned my Han father, I changed my Han name to Xiang Fei.”

  She began to pace the tiny cell. “The second is modern. In 1953 the Chinese sent a thousand soldiers into the desert of our remote Xinjiang, and told them to build a city. There were wolves, heat, little water, and they lived in holes in the ground, as many of your own early pioneers did. They used cannon as plows, machine guns to mark furrows, and they built Shihezi that is now a city of six hundred thousand. It has movie theaters, visiting music and dance groups from eastern China, a Mandarin radio and TV station that broadcasts only within Shihezi, and the population is ninety percent Han. There are no minorities in Shihezi, and nearby villagers are not allowed to enter.”

  She let the silence in the cell stretch for a full minute. “In their eyes, the Han are your westward pioneers in a thousand Hollywood movies. We are the Indians.”

  By noon the next day I was in L.A. in Jeffries’s office. I told him everything I knew, and everything Aimur Imin had said.

  Jeffries radiated outrage. “She’s no threat to the U.S.! For God’s sake, she’s one of the people for whom we demand democracy. You get Norris to write the story, and I’ll get her into court.”

  I wasn’t as optimistic. In anxious times of fear, crisis and hysteria—real, imagined, or invented—standing up against the tide is not the way to get ahead. “Norris will write the story, but the bureau chief is right. There’s a good chance the Times won’t publish it, and judges aren’t in a human rights mood these days.”

  “You find out all you can about these Uighurs and the Chinese, and I’ll find a federal ju
dge who doesn’t believe in suspending the constitution for any reason.”

  I said, “Maybe you won’t want to, John. When I reported to my client, he wasn’t all that pleased to have been right. He’s suddenly not certain his father’s going to foot your bill, and he’s not so sure he wants him to. He doesn’t seem as enamored of Aimur Imin as he was of Xiang Fei. Maybe because taking an unpopular position won’t help his father sell a lot of widgets.”

  “Yeah,” Jeffries said with disgust. “So this one I do pro bono. I never really wanted to be rich. She’ll be back in class in a month, trust me.”

  I wanted to believe him, but Aimur Imin and her Uighurs were the Indians, and it’s not only in revolutions that eggs are broken. Deserts and oases vanish, small animals become extinct, societies are destroyed, and people disappear and die in the march of progress, the building of empires.

  KILLER HEELS KILL TWICE AS DEAD

  T. P. KEATING

  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 me miss 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 visit to 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?