by Donn Cortez
“Charity?”
He rolled his eyes. “Please. This is Vegas—charity is just a line on your income-tax deductions. No, I told him he had to demonstrate loyalty. To her, obviously, but I was willing to go with a sports team or the good old US of A if I thought that was the way the wind was blowing. And loyalty to me and my court is always implied—management gets upset if I don’t toss in a corporate plug every now and then. Go ye forth and spend the coin of the realm at our fabulous games of chance!
“And the last one was hope. Same thing, that he had to not only share his hopes with her, he had to commit to those hopes. Big whoops from all the ladies in the house on that one.”
“Okay. How did he react to these. . . pronouncements?”
The king peered into the mirror and squinted, then dabbed at the corner of one eye. “He was kind of weird about the whole thing. I told you I thought he was on drugs, right? He seemed okay with the faith bit, and he was definitely onboard for loyalty, but when I mentioned hope, I got a little worried. He sort of tensed up, you know? I thought he might go all French Revolution on me.”
“What about the deal he was offering? The key he said he had?”
“Oh, that. You know, for a second, I thought he was coming on to me. But then I saw the look he gave her, and realized that he definitely wasn’t talking about his room key. In any case, I told him that upon the successful completion of his tasks he could keep the key, and I’d grant him the peace he was after as well.”
“Very generous of you.”
“I thought so.” The king smiled and settled back on his chair. “After all, what’s the point in being royalty if you can’t bring a little happiness to the people?”
Faith, Catherine thought. Where do you go to demonstrate faith when you’re trapped in hell?
Catherine herself put more faith in science than religion; the last religious act she’d performed was to light a candle in a church after her father died in her arms. Her relationship with Sam Braun had been rocky at times, but she still missed him. He’d been larger than life to Catherine even before she discovered she was his daughter, and the void left after his death was just as big.
Faith in Vegas usually boiled down to the belief that the next big win was just around the corner or that the lucky streak was never going to end. Mirages, about as real as the illusions crafted by magicians on the Strip—or the hallucinations that danced through the minds of Theria Kostapolis and John Bannister.
Faith in her, King Oswald had said. Where did you go in Vegas to demonstrate your faith in another human being?
She thought about the dozens of wedding chapels on the Strip as a possibility and after a moment rejected the idea. Getting married was the opposite of faith—it was demanding a declaration of love in writing, actual physical evidence as opposed to an intangible belief. Faith was something you could demonstrate through your actions, but saying “I do” in front of an Elvis impersonator didn’t qualify.
To demonstrate faith in another person meant taking a risk, it meant entrusting that person with your own fate. How did you do that when you were already convinced both of you were dead and in hell? When you’d already lost everything, what was left to risk?
Each other.
After their audience with the king of hell, Bannister gives the claim ticket from the pawn shop to Theria.
“Here,” he says. “You need to have this.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s power, Theria. Whoever holds this ticket holds the keys to Satan’s chariot, and that means something. If worse comes to worse, maybe you can use it as a bargaining chip. I have the feeling that demons are used to making deals, even behind their master’s back.”
“We’ve already made our bargain.”
“But we might fail, Theria. I might fail. If that happens, you need to have something as insurance.”
Again, that pale shadow of a smile. “And if I betray you? Make a deal of my own, sell you down the river?”
Bannister smiles back and presses the ticket into her limp hand. “You won’t. I know.”
“No, you don’t.” She closes her hand gently around the ticket and his own fingers. “But you believe you do. You believe in me. And so the first task is done . . .”
13
NICK STOKES HAD ALWAYS loved the circus. Not because of the animals, which he always felt vaguely sorry for, or the clowns—which he found creepy—but because of the acrobats. What they did seemed almost superhuman, and when his parents refused to let him build a trapeze in the backyard, he settled for spending a summer teaching himself how to juggle and walk on stilts.
The troupe that was performing at the Caribbean Hotel and Casino were an offshoot of the Moscow State Circus, but that was hardly unusual—that was the generic name once used by every traveling circus that toured outside Russia. These performers called themselves the Red Star Circus, and their poster claimed they were “the Royalty of Russian Circus performers.”
Although the actual performances took place in the hotel’s amphitheater, the circus itself—or at least the larger animals—was housed in tents and trailers in the hotel’s parking lot. A tall chain-link fence kept the curious at bay, but Nick’s CSI badge got him past the burly security guard without a problem.
Unlike many circuses that had gone the Cirque du Soleil route, the Red Star still featured animal acts. A man in coveralls led a lumbering elephant right past Nick’s eyes, and he couldn’t keep himself from grinning; even the occasional clown in full makeup walking past didn’t seem so bad.
But it wasn’t clowns or elephants he’d come to see. It was the acrobats.
The performers themselves were staying in rooms in the hotel, but Nick thought he might get lucky just by wandering around. That’s what he told himself, anyway; the truth was, he was enjoying the experience. His work ethic wouldn’t let him goof off for long, though. After only a few minutes, he sighed and got directions to the performers’ dressing rooms, in the hotel itself.
Nick eventually found himself in a long corridor backstage, looking for a particular door. Once he located it, he knocked, and a voice told him to come in.
The first thing he saw on entering was a woman in a leotard on a chair in the middle of the room. Not sitting, though—she was doing a handstand, one hand on the chair’s back and one on the edge of the seat. The chair was at an angle, too, balanced on its back two legs.
“Uh—hi,” said Nick.
The woman didn’t even look at him. “Yes? If you have something for me, please put it down and go.”
“That’ll be hard to do, since what I have are questions.”
The woman’s toes were together and pointed straight at the ceiling. She slowly brought each of them down, in opposite directions, until they formed a straight line parallel to the floor. “Questions about what?”
“Questions about what you were doing last night at around one A.M.”
“Last night? It was my night off—the show’s dark Sundays. I was in my room, sleeping.”
Nick glanced around the room. Costumes on a rack, makeup table, a couple of tumbling mats in one corner. He walked over to the makeup table. “Can anyone verify that?”
She brought her legs together once more, until they were pointed straight up again. “I was alone, if that’s what you mean. Why? And who are you, anyway?”
“Nick Stokes, Las Vegas Crime Lab. I’m investigating an incident at the Panhandle.” The mirror above the makeup table had a picture stuck in the frame; it was a publicity shot of a group of acrobats, all of them dressed in green and balanced one atop the other to form the outline of a Christmas tree. The one on top with the star on her head was the woman he was talking to.
“I’m Marta Golovina—but I suppose you already knew that.” She brought the chair down onto all four legs with a thump, then swiveled her body around so that she was suddenly kneeling on the seat. “And I suppose the hotel could verify I was in my room—don’t they have security cameras all ov
er?”
Nick studied her for a moment before replying. Marta Golovina seemed to be in her forties, but her body was as muscular and trim as an Olympic sprinter. Her hair—short, dark, and black—was streaked with gray, but the only wrinkles her face held were around her deep green eyes.
“Yes, they do—which means I shouldn’t have any trouble doing just that.” He tapped the photo on the mirror. “Can you tell me who this is, please?”
“That’s my niece, Alisa. She performs with me, as does her sister.”
“I’m going to need to speak with her.”
“Why?”
“Because,” said Nick, “it appears she’s been moonlighting as a nurse.”
Alisa Golovina stared coolly at Nick over the interview table, her body language alert but relaxed. She was in her early twenties, her blond hair cut very short and dyed purple on the sides. “I’m not sure why I’m here,” she said.
“Because of this.” Nick handed her a still from the video feed of the penthouse elevator. It showed a nurse with long black hair behind a wheelchair that held a large man swathed in bandages. “That’s a nice wig, but this is clearly you.”
“So?”
“You don’t deny it?”
“Why should I? Playing dress-up isn’t illegal.”
“How about your partner here? Why’s he all bandaged up?”
“He cut himself shaving.”
“Right. And the wheelchair?”
“All that shaving tired him out.”
“Sure. Lot of area to cover. What were you doing at Andolph Dell’s party in the first place?”
She shrugged. “What reason is there to go to any party? Have some laughs, have some drinks.”
“You weren’t invited.”
“Really? Someone let us in. Maybe you should be blaming him.”
“Hey, nobody’s blaming anyone for anything. I just have a few questions.”
“That’s good, because I just have a few answers. I’ll let you know when I run out.”
“Who’s the guy in the wheelchair?”
“My boyfriend. Sorry to break your heart, but it would have happened sooner or later.”
“What’s his name?”
“Bronislav Alexandrei. Or, as he’s better known, the Strongman of Minsk.”
Nick’s eyebrows went up. “He’s a strongman? As in circus strongman?”
“He tried being a strongman for Wal-Mart for a while, but it didn’t work out.”
“So you—a professional acrobat—and your strongman boyfriend crashed a party dressed as a nurse and a skiing accident.”
“What can I say? We lead such mundane lives, we need to make our own entertainment.”
“Uh-huh. You know, nobody noticed your boyfriend leave.”
“I’m not surprised. For a strongman, he’s remarkably forgettable.”
“Security cameras don’t show him, either.”
“Maybe they just missed him. He’s short.”
“Witnesses described him as being quite large.”
“It’s the bandages. They add a few pounds.”
Nick paused. “Miss Golovina, I’m going to have to ask you to take off your shoes.”
“Oh? Funny, you don’t look Japanese.”
“We found a toeprint at a crime scene. I could go to the trouble of getting a warrant, but considering where we found the print—and your profession—I don’t think that would be terribly difficult to obtain.”
“That won’t be necessary. I don’t want to make any trouble.” She smiled. “Or should I say, I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes?”
After he’d printed Alisa Golovina’s toes, Nick took the prints away to compare against the ones Sara and Greg had found on the hotel windows. Golovina had agreed to wait until he returned, which surprised him; she seemed awfully blasé about the whole thing.
Hodges intercepted him before he reached the print lab. “Guten abend, mein herr.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Sprechen sie Deutsch? Nein?”
“Hodges, I’m kind of busy. I don’t have time for a Hogan’s Heroes moment.”
“Then how about two minutes’ worth of Hindenburg?”
“You have the mass-spec results from the dirigible wreckage?”
“Jawohl, mein Kommandant.” Hodges handed Nick the sheaf of papers he was holding. “I did a little research on zeppelin fires for comparison and discovered some interesting things. Did you know that some people’s analysis of the Hindenburg disaster state that the whole thing burned in sixteen seconds? Most people put it at closer to thirty—between thirty-two and thirty-seven—but there’s no clear consensus.”
“And how does that relate to our crash?”
“Hydrogen—the gas used in the Hindenburg—burns quickly. Helium—the gas most often used in lighter-than-air craft today—isn’t flammable at all. What I found was traces of both.”
Nick studied the papers Hodges had handed him. “Huh. Not a lot of helium, either. But enough to slow the rate of the fire. I have footage from a number of cell-phone cameras that caught the whole thing, and it took the dirigible a good three minutes from the moment it started to burn until it stopped.”
“A nice, even-burning fire. Good for marshmallows.”
“But bad for clowns. The question is, what does it mean for an acrobat?”
“I can tell you what it meant for the one aboard the Hindenburg.”
“There was an acrobat aboard the Hindenburg?”
“Yes, a vaudeville performer named Joseph Spah who was filming the landing while onboard. When the fire started, he smashed the window with his camera and jumped out—let’s see you do that with a BlackBerry. Dropped about twenty feet and only twisted his ankle; both he and the film survived.”
“Lucky guy.”
“Maybe, maybe not. One of the theories about what caused the accident was a bomb, and Spah was one of the suspects. He made frequent trips during the flight into a freight room near the stern of the ship, ostensibly to feed his dog; he could have used the time to plant an incendiary device.”
“Sounds pretty circumstantial to me.”
“True. But he was also heard making anti-Nazi jokes during the flight.”
“Are there any other kind?”
Hodges considered this. “Good point. And if there are. . . I know nuhssing. Nuhhhhhhhhhsing . . .”
“Thanks for your help, Schultz.”
“Well, Miss Golovina,” said Nick. “I just compared your prints with the ones we pulled off several panes of glass. You mind telling me what you were doing eighteen stories above the ground on the wrong side of a hotel window outside the Panhandle?”
“Vodka.”
“Vodka?”
“Yes. The bar at the party didn’t carry my brand, so I thought I’d just swing by my room and pick up some.”
Nick grinned and shook his head. “That’s a very entertaining excuse, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
She pretended to pout. “We Russians are very particular about what we drink. Where we drink it and with whom, not quite so much. Besides, the elevator wasn’t working.”
“You couldn’t take the stairs?”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Nick thought about mentioning the fire hose but had a better idea. “How’d you manage it? You always carry a few dozen feet of rope with you when you go to a party?”
She studied him for a second before answering. “Depends on the party.”
“Miss Golovina, I’d appreciate some straight answers.”
“Then you’re asking the wrong person. I’m also a contortionist.”
Nick sighed. “I could have you arrested for fraud. Your hotel room was rented with a phony credit card—”
“Did I say my hotel room? My mistake. I was trying to find my hotel room, but they all look the same from the outside. I might have accidentally wound up in someone else’s room—but I didn’t take anything, I swear. Not even from the miniba
r.”
“There’s always trespassing.”
She gave him a mock frown. “Trespassing? Oh, no. My life is over. Take me away to prison, please.”
“Not just yet. What were you doing while the big fire show was going on outside?”
“What, the burning balloon man? Unfortunately, we missed it. We were enjoying a little privacy in one of the bedrooms. Quite the show, from what I heard.”
“Oh, it was. Only about three minutes long, but there’s all kinds of things you can do in three minutes, isn’t there?”
“If you’re flirting with me, Mr. Stokes, I should warn you that Bronislav is a very jealous man.”
Nick met her eyes, and now there was no smile on his face. “You’re very charming, Miss Golovina. But one way or another, I will get to the bottom of this.”
“Never say that to a trapeze artist,” she said. “It’s bad luck.”
14
RAY LANGSTON ARRANGED to have John Bannister transferred from a holding cell to a room in Las Vegas General Hospital; he was still restrained, but at least he was in a medical facility. Corticobasal degeneration was a serious disease, and Ray was worried about Bannister’s health. In less than twenty-four hours, he’d been exposed to hypothermia, dehydration, hyperthermia, and nerve gas.
There was a treatment for BZ exposure, but Ray was reluctant to try it. Physostigmine increased the concentration of acetylcholine at synapses, effectively counteracting the anticholinergic effect of the gas, but Bannister’s doctors had been treating his CBDS with a cocktail of atypical antipsychotics; adding a cholinesterase inhibitor might temporarily increase his lucidity but worsen other physical symptoms. Bannister had been through enough—Ray didn’t want to stress his body any more than he had to.
But Bannister’s life wasn’t the only one at stake.
Bannister’s hand twitched in the padded restraints when Ray entered the hospital room, but otherwise Bannister didn’t react to his presence at all.
“Hello, John. I hope you’re feeling better. The saline they’ve been giving you intravenously should have helped with your dehydration.”