by John Farris
She had looked away at “news coverage” but smiled nonetheless.
“Why, thank you. Now which way is the Venetian? I’m just a tourist.”
“Up the Strip about a mile, opposite the Mirage. We can take a hotel limo.”
“Good night for a walk,” Eden observed.
“What about your knee?”
“I’m wearing a brace.”
“And you’ve got mighty Leo to lean on. Okay, we walk.”
At the Venetian there was a squall line of teenagers and other idolaters behind velvet ropes, flashcubes greeting celebrity arrivals: a gala was in progress. A twenty-year-old alley cat emerged from one stretch limousine that looked big enough to hold both houses of Congress. She was barely dressed in a silvery something, instantly selling her body to the cameras. The latest infection of showbiz mendacity: but no amount of choreographed overexposure and fervid flackery could breathe into her pale flame a meteor’s bright instant of talent.
On the Rialto Bridge over the driveway Eden suppressed a shudder of dismay at the size of the crowd, turning her face toward the canal side of the hotel while fits of rapture pursued the girl and her youthful entourage inside.
But not everyone’s attention was focused on the pop diva with the pipsqueak voice. Only Cody noticed the slight, bearded man with a pro rig whose camera was aimed at them from a cobbled sidewalk beside Las Vegas Boulevard. Cody was not an unknown face around Las Vegas. On the other hand, the papas were not likely to consider him newsworthy . . . unless he happened to be with someone who was. This shooter was taking a lot of pictures. So he had to be devoting his time to getting a good candid of Cody’s companion.
At the Lakers game she had kept her shades on—the lights, she said. And lowered her head whenever the roving cameras at courtside appeared to pan their way.
Instinctively Cody placed himself in the papa’s line of sight, putting an arm around Eden. The unease he saw in her eyes when she glanced at him wasn’t because of the casual embrace; at least he didn’t think so.
“Crowds get to you?” he said now.
“Yeah. I—”
“No explanations necessary. The Venetian shops and Canaletto’s closed around eleven, so there’s probably only a few strollers in St. Mark’s Square, where the gallery is.”
“Okay.”
When the Metro police car appeared behind Devon’s Jag outside the gated entrance to the Lincoln Grayle Theatre, Harlee pulled out her handkerchief and began working up some tears. Earthmovers were roaring not far away. Work lights provided a near-daylight emanation on the broken face of the mountain, a scattered glitter where the theatre’s facade and terrace had been.
The officer on the twelve–eight shift wasn’t many years older than their bogus birth certificates made Mordaunt’s Fetchlings out to be. With his flashlight he examined two knockout-lovely but sorrowing faces.
“Guys, you shouldn’t be parked here so close, with those monster trucks coming and going.” He shone his light around the interior of the scrupulously maintained luxury sedan, didn’t see so much as an empty soda can. No telltale sweetness of squantch. “Car’s acting okay? You waiting for someone?” Then with a second pass of his light up front he saw a box of votive candles in Harlee’s lap. “Oh.”
“D y’think it’s for real?” Harlee sobbed. “He’s buried in his car, like they said on the news, under that pile of boulders? But he can’t be dead. Oh, he just can’t be.”
Devon, her own eyes leaking, blew into her handkerchief. “We loved him so much.”
“No telling what happened to Mr. Grayle. What are the candles for—plan on holding a vigil?”
Harlee nodded.
“Well, like I said, it’s not safe here. So I have to ask you to move on. Don’t give up on Grayle yet. There’s always hope. He was one slick magician, so they say. Never made it to one of his shows.”
Harlee smiled and dabbed at her eyes.
“How long d’you think it will take to get all of the rubble out of there?”
“Beats me. They been going at it since about ten this morning.”
One of the dump trucks, of a size usually found in open-pit mines, rumbled up to the gates and flashed its lights. Inside the gatehouse, a Grayle company security guard let the truck through. When it passed on the other side of the parkway from Devon’s Jag, which was already dusty, more dirt sifted down over the windshield.
The cop knocked on the roof and Devon smiled obediently, shifted out of Park, and made a U-turn to follow the dump truck. She needed high beams to see through the pall of dust.
“Damn, look, my car’s a M-E-S-S. I won’t be able to sleep until I’ve washed my baby. Where do you want to go now, Harlee?”
“Linc’s house. There’s something I have to find, and he just might have left it there.”
Harlee’s cell phone chimed “The Bells of St. Mary’s.”
“Hi, Reese. Yes. No, I’m not sure I’ll be back tonight. Okay. Okay . . . I’ll leave it up to you. He’s had a tough day, so if he needs a little something just fix him up, give him a nimble fuck, then cry on his shoulder and tell him you’ve never done anything like that before but it was wonderful, he eats that shit up. Tell him you’re only thirteen; that will really give Bronc a guilty thrill.”
“The General asking where you are?” Devon said, grinning.
“The guys told him you took sick and I’m with you at the emergency. I doubt if he’s up to gobbling a piece of Reese tonight. He’s way stressed. The remainder of the Great One’s Elite 88 will be jetting in tomorrow for a summit. Superlawyers and financiers. Those who really rule the world.”
“TWRW,” Devon said. “Think they’ll try to defect, or get their hands on the G-O-L-D?”
“Bronc’s job is to keep them in line, even though he’s not a Malterran. But most of the gold is secure inside the mountain, first thing I checked. The Great One didn’t trust a soul with his stash but me. And of course I trust you, my heart. My own beautiful treasure.”
“Love you too, infinity. But . . . what if TWRW get onto us?”
“Bad Old Souls or not, there isn’t one of them we can’t handle.”
“Wish I had your confidence. They give me the creeps.”
“Fuck ’em. Mess with Harlee and Devon, they’ll regret it. Listen, light of my life. The Great One will return. We must hold that thought. Can’t let ourselves forget for one instant that he’s somewhere—I don’t mean under a rock slide—and no matter where he’s been taken or what shape he’s in, he exists now and forever, he’s aware. I just have to establish a channel of communication.”
The phone again.
“Virgie! Hi! No, matter of fact we’re just cruisin’. Stopped at the In-N-Out Burger by UNLV for malts, and we’re about to call it a night.” Harlee listened for a few seconds, her expression becoming beatific. “Really? So soon? Oh, that is just the most amazing—Uh-huh. Sure! Devon has one in her car, just a sec, Virgie.”
Harlee pushed a button on the Jaguar’s dash and Devon’s laptop slid out of its slot, opening up. “It’s devonoflaherty, at hotmail. Oh, I’m so excited.”
“Tell me,” Devon said, wanting to share the excitement.
“Virgie thinks she’s nailed EW,” Harlee whispered. “Sending us pix right now.”
Within twenty seconds the face of Eden Waring, enhanced, appeared on the laptop screen.
“Virgie . . . yes! I’m one hundred percent sure it’s her. Where was this taken? Yeah? A few minutes ago? And who is the guy she’s with? Could she be staying with him at the Venetian? Oh, just curious. Sure, I’ll hold on.” Harlee looked exultantly at Devon as her excitement ran rich; she nibbled at her lower lip. Devon smiled fondly and winked, one eye on the road. She was a careful driver.
Virgie Lovechild came back to Harlee.
“Cody Olds? Old, like in ancient? Who’s he? Oh. Never heard of him but I think I know the gallery. Good-looking dude. Well, Virgie—did Dev and I come through for you? You mean it? The pix are wo
rth how much? No, no, no! Wouldn’t dream. Gift certificates will be fantastico. Thank you thank you thank you. Love you, Virgie. Night.”
Devon said, “Change your mind about going up to Linc’s P-A-D?” She didn’t much want to make the drive late at night. The mountain road up through Kyle Canyon was a bitch.
“No. Eden Waring will keep. Could you pull over to the median for a minute?” Harlee was acting jittery in her seat. “Right now, please, nobody’s coming.”
“What’s up?”
“Silly. You know how I get. Gotta pee, gotta pee.”
OCTOBER 28 • 12:05 A.M.
My grandaddy Truett Olds was a collector of western art,” Cody said, showing Eden around the fifteen-hundred-square-foot gallery. “Edward Borein, Wyeth, Charles Russell. We had a couple of Remingtons in here a month or so ago. Depends on what becomes available at estate sales. That’s a Borein there.” He pointed to a framed painting with a brass nameplate. “A variation of Holding Up the Stage. Over here are a couple of Wyeths. But for the most part we showcase contemporary artists like Terri Kelly Moyers, Tom Browning, and our star this week, Carrie Ballantyne. Carrie’s subjects just seem to jump out of the frame at you, like this little cowgirl here in her dusty, sweat-streaked Stetson.”
They had the gallery, which was across the canal from the faux St. Mark’s Square within the vastness of the Venetian hotel, to themselves. The gallery was toward the end of a shopping concourse that ranged from pricey stores like Movado and Burberry to Krispy Kreme doughnuts. They were eating the last of the Krispy Kremes from a box of two dozen that had been left behind by the crew preparing for Wednesday’s show and washing them down with milk from a carton in the office fridge.
“Is there a lot of interest in western art?”
“Booming. We sell eighty, ninety works a month. We’ll open a fourth gallery in Telluride this winter. When I was about to get into the business my mother said I should specialize in native American art forms. I told her, Ma, there isn’t much money in bumper stickers, comic books, or Navajo blankets.” He waited for the laugh, but Eden’s broad smile was satisfaction enough. “We sell original oils and drawings, some sculpture. No prints or lithos. Our prices encourage serious collecting. Seven dimes and up, depending on the size of the piece and the artist’s reputation. A little oil by Howard Terpning, miniature actually, can fetch up to thirty dimes.”
“You don’t mean ten cents.”
“Sorry. That’s Vegas lingo for a thousand dollars.”
“I like this one,” Eden said, looking up at a large painting of a gunfight in an Old West saloon. “It has a lot of, I suppose this is the wrong word, energy. I feel like I’m off to the side in a shadowy corner, wearing net stockings and garters and holding my ears.”
“Now that would be one of the sincerest compliments anyone’s ever paid me.”
“You painted the gunfighter?”
“My signature’s in the right-hand corner if you look hard enough. That’s Bill Tilghman, by the way, with the .45. A peace officer, not a gunfighter. He killed a card-sharp in Fort Smith, Arkansas, who was fool enough to draw on him. The trail herder in the rain with his tired cow pony is mine too; and the bronc buster losin’ his seat at the Prescott Frontier Days Rodeo is my second cousin Averill Shadow Fox.”
“So you’re a painter.”
“That kinda sounds like you might be impressed.”
Eden smiled and nodded, absorbed in his work. “How long have you been doing this, Cody?”
“I sketched a lot from the time I was too old to eat my crayons. Drawing just kind of became important to me as I grew up. I studied for a year at the California School of Fine Arts, where they told me I had talent, and I’ve done workshops in Scottsdale, learning craft. Painting’s a good substitute for not puttin’ down roots; I’m a wanderer by nature. Disappointed the hell out of my old man for not bein’ a rancher born. But like I told you: can’t sit a horse too well these days, and I never could get the hang of flyin’ a helicopter like my youngest brother, Trey, who learned in the Navy.”
“Helicopter?”
“Well, that’s twenty-first-century ranchin’, if it’s a big enough spread. Reckon ours is.”
“So you must have this studio with great north light and groupies to bring you coffee and give you shoulder rubs when you can barely get your brush up after a hard day. Sorry. That didn’t come out quite right. I thought a little humor. But I blew it. Okay, from bad to worse.” She scowled down at the foam cup she was holding. “What’s in this milk?”
“Plein air’s more my style,” Cody said amiably. “So I work out of an RV. Not much room for groupies, but I could use a good Chinese chef.”
Eden said, crimson in her cheeks, “Right. So, uh, your studio is an RV.”
“Well, I travel a lot. Like that old Hank Snow song, I’ve been everywhere, man. Breathed the desert air. Indio to Winnemuca, Coeur d’Alene to the Sand Hills country. And, always, home again. For a little while.”
“When you miss your mother’s cooking?”
“Ma was always a total loss in the kitchen. Her true vocation is the law, now that she has no more kids to raise.”
“Big family?”
“All those brothers and sisters. I lose track sometimes.”
“Bet you don’t,” Eden said, now willing to look at him again. With a smile, but a shade of sadness came and went in her eyes. She didn’t mind if he saw.
“Still close to your own family?”
“My . . . foster parents. Parent,” Eden corrected. “Only one left. Never knew my biological parents.”
“Who did you lose recently?”
“Riley. Heart attack, a few months ago. He was a large-animal vet in Innisfall.”
“Northern California. I’ve been through there. Pretty country up that way. So you’ve always lived in Innisfall.” He hesitated for a few moments, but not as if he needed confirmation. Then he said, “Full ride at Cal State Shasta. The Lady Wolves. All-Conference first team your senior year.”
Eden seemed to back away from him without actually moving.
“Athletic Department’s Web page?”
“Yeah. The local paper too. After that I did a Google.”
Eden took a long slow breath, let it out.
“Why, Cody?”
“To try to understand . . . Eve . . . Eden Waring, better.”
She lowered her head, then gave him a look, self-mockery and despair.
“At least you know I’m not wanted for beheading hitchhikers with a dull ax.”
He smiled cautiously.
“I . . . just need to be left alone, Cody. Truly. Let that be the most important part of your understanding.”
He nodded, but looked perplexed, something on the tip of his tongue he couldn’t come out with until after a couple of halting starts.
“I have to help you,” he said finally.
“Excuse me?”
“Early this mornin’ when I saw you shooting buckets I thought you were someone I’d like to know. Passing thought. I probably see or meet a dozen women a day, in Vegas anyway, who I’d like to get to know better. But, one thing or another; and I’m no pickup artist, that’s for sure. I used to have a bad case of the shys. I wasn’t goin’ to make a move on you, either. Then . . . this is tough to explain. It was like something picked me up by the scruff of the neck, an ol’ puppy dog, and shoved me out there on the court with you.”
“Woof woof. That is so sweet. Original, too.”
“I know I’m not sayin’ this well—”
“It was fate. And you couldn’t fight it.” But she regretted her tone. A certain meanness. That hotheaded desire to get back at a player who had elbowed her on the court. He didn’t deserve ridicule even if he was sounding a little off the wall. Obsessive. But he had weathered her defensive retaliation okay, lifting his chin a little, squaring oxbow shoulders. He spoke calmly.
“I have to help you. I don’t know the why of it. Hasn’t got a damn thing to do with
whether I’m attracted to you or not. Or how you might come to feel about me. But I am goin’ to do my level best to—”
“You have some glaze from the last doughnut on your mustache,” she said. Trying to distract him. He was making her dizzy.
“Protect you.” He bit it off with the chill-factor eyes of a Bill Tilghman, who would pull a gun when he had to.
“Whoa, Cody.” But Eden felt unexpectedly, along with a surge of blood to her hairline, warmth. Pleasure. Maybe it had to do with all of the drama of the Wild West surrounding them, Cody’s milieu: proud hard-living men with a lot of backbone. Hombres.
“Somethin’ else. I dreamed about you when I was catchin’ a nap this afternoon. I don’t think I could begin to explain what that was all about. Navajo legend and symbolism. I’m part Navajo, I guess I didn’t tell you. Wolf Spider clan.”
“Oh really?” Eden nodded, feeling a little off the wall herself. “I’ve never been much attracted to men with mustaches,” she said, as if she were apologizing. “Cody, now let’s put an end to this. I’m involved with someone.”
“Figured you had to be. But it doesn’t make any difference.”
“Who, by the way, could probably do a better job of protecting me than you ever—Oh, hell. Why are we doing this? I don’t want to put you down. Challenge your manhood. It was such a fun evening, and I needed—”
“I had to tell you,” he said. “Didn’t think it would be right to put it off. Don’t blame you for the way you’re takin’ it. But you’ll get used to the idea.”
“What idea?”
“Havin’ me around. Lookin’ after you.”
“Wait a—”
“No, that’s the way it has to be. But only until I’m sure you’ll be okay, that no harm’s coming your way.”
Three or four seconds passed before Eden realized her mouth was open. She closed it.
“There is something in the milk.”
Cody smiled, tension gone from his stance now that he had declared himself.
“He’s not around right now, is he?” Cody asked.
“What? Who?”
“Fella you say you’re involved with.”
