by Steve Alten
‘So? How bad’s the subsidence?’
‘According to the USGS, everything appears stable, but as my grandfather used to say, “Something ain’t kosher.” The readings we received look identical to data I collected three years ago. Between me and thee, I don’t trust the new USGS director.’
‘Alyssa Popov? I thought you liked her?’
‘Grinding her and trusting her are two different things, and I don’t have time for one of your feminist lectures. Things are happening behind the scenes here in Yellowstone. There are factors at play that we can’t see, covert deals being made between the White House and other factions outside the government. Late last night, Professor Danielak and I decided to take our own vertical motion readings, along with temperature readings of the hot springs at the preselected areas within the Yellowstone caldera.’
Lauren hears Sam enter her apartment. ‘What do you need me to do?’
‘I want you to analyze the results. We’ll upload everything directly to your computer in the lab.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t worry, we’re encoding it and rerouting through a dozen other servers. Once you start receiving data, I want you to run a full analysis of variance, comparing subsidence with the results we took in the fall of 2030.’
‘Hey, Lauren, where are you?’ Sam bursts into the bedroom.
She cuts her fiancé off with a harsh glare. ‘You’d better hurry with that data. Hurricane Kenneth was officially upgraded to a class-five storm two hours ago. Winds are expected to reach super-cane proportions by Tuesday evening. If the weather net doesn’t slow it down, we may have to evacuate the city as early as next weekend.’
‘Where’s the eye?’
Lauren presses CONTROL-6 on her keyboard. The screen splits, the right side showing a live satellite feed over the Atlantic Ocean. Using the mouse, she focuses on a swirling white vortex, the eye of the strengthening storm clearly defined.
‘Kenneth’s 361 miles due east of Antigua.’
‘Still pretty far out. Where’s the weather net?’
She types in another command. A series of crimson dots appears off Cuba. ‘En route to Havana’s port to refuel from the last cell.’
‘Which means they won’t be in place until Wednesday. You’re right, that’s calling it close.’
Sam lies by Lauren’s feet. Playfully, he reaches his hand beneath her towel.
She pushes him away with a calloused foot.
‘Any other cells developing in the Atlantic?’
She scans the screen. ‘Nothing.’
‘Analyze that data. I’ll be in touch when I can. And Lauren, mention this to no one.’
‘Understood.’
‘Gabeheart out.’
‘Wait—what about my grant? The committee meeting’s on Monday.’
‘You know you have my full support, now more than ever. We could sure use your brain down here.’
Sam makes an obscene gesture with his tongue.
‘Good luck on Monday. Gabeheart out.’
22
NOVEMBER 19, 2033: MABUS PLAZA HOTEL AND
CASINO, SOUTH BEACH, FLORIDA
Saturday Night
The Mabus Plaza Hotel and Casino is an L-shaped monstrosity of tinted black glass and bloodred neon lighting, occupying five full beach blocks along scenic Ocean Drive. The top six floors of the thirty-three-floor dwelling are all lavish apartment suites leased year-round to film stars, politicians, bankers, and foreign dignitaries. For those who can afford the five million-dollar price tag, there is a seven-year waiting list for availability. For those who can’t, reservations for hotel rooms on levels seven through twenty-seven must be made eighteen months in advance and require a nonrefundable five-thousand-dollar deposit. Still out of your league? You can always rent a room by the hour. Two hundred one-bedroom studios are located on floors four through six and are available twenty-four hours a day for clients of the Mabus Bordello, a state-licensed brothel that occupies most of level five. Businessmen specials run 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. daily. ‘Blue-ball Mondays are 10 percent off, Two is for Tuesdays (menage à trois), Wednesday’s are ‘hump-days,’ with ‘Fantasy Thursdays’ rounding out the weekdays (Friday through Sunday reserved for platinum-condom members only).
The first three floors of the Mabus Complex are dedicated strictly to gambling. Levels One and Two are where the general public goes to lose its money. Level Three is more private, strictly reserved for the high rollers and VIPs—by invitation only.
None of the bright lights and sparkles of the old Las Vegas-style casino can be found in this ‘Hideaway of the Rich and Decadent.’ Light is out, darkness in. The walls and floors of Level Three are decorated in crimson silks and ebony velvets, the ceiling in smoky mirrors. Half of the two hundred craps and blackjack tables are set up as islands inside giant hot tubs. High-priced ‘pink ladies of the evening’ wearing high-heeled pumps (and little else) sell drinks, drugs, and ultimately themselves, for each of these carnation-dyed beauties can be ‘rented’ by the hour or trick (whatever ‘cums’ first). Baccarat players at hundred-thousand-dollar-minimum tables often receive sexual favors while they gamble, their naked genitals pleasured beneath the tables’ overhanging satin aprons.
Welcome to the Mabus Plaza Hotel and Casino—a den of iniquity raking in an estimated million dollars every hour—the favorite jewel of Lucien Mabus’s thriving financial empire.
For newlyweds Danny Diaz and his bride, Sia, it has become their own private hell.
The young couple from Cocoa Beach had pushed the date of their wedding back eight months just so they could ‘Honeymoon at the Mabus.’ On their very first day, ‘Lady Luck’ had greeted them in the guise of an afternoon thundershower, forcing them to abandon ‘Emperor Nero’s Decadence at the Beach’ for a day at the casino. Changing into satin robes (provided free by the hotel) they had spent the next seven-plus hours on an amazing run at the roulette table. Sia had won over $30,000, Danny pocketing another $21,400. Delirious with joy, they returned to their room for a quick interlude of sandwiches and sex, hurrying back to the casino with visions of a down payment on a four-bedroom dream home on the coast dancing in their intoxicated heads.
But Lady Luck can be a nasty mistress, and by Saturday morning, the newlyweds had squandered all their winnings, plus another $7,200 in vacation money, a $12,000 advance on Danny’s credit card, and the $10,000 in credit Sia’s mother had given her daughter as a wedding gift. Worse, Danny had done the unthinkable, tapping into his department’s expense account to the tune of $7,300.
Their only consolation—they had received an engraved invitation from the hotel manager to visit Level Three on this, their final evening at the Mabus.
Danny clutches Sia’s sweaty palm, guiding her to an open spot at a roulette table, the fifty-six-hundred-dollar credit from her pawned engagement ring burning in his right pants pocket. Steam rises from a nearby hot tub, where an obese middle-aged man is playing poker, the fat on his back flushed pink beneath a mat of thick black hair. Danny pauses, watching enviously as the man bets a stack of ten-thousand-dollar chips.
‘Damn … uh, okay, honey, what do you think? Roulette or craps?’
Sia glances around the room, gazing at the half-naked celebrities and guests who are circling the tables like vultures. She is perspiring profusely, despite the heavy air-conditioning. ‘Look, isn’t that Tonja Davidson, the soap opera star? Look at those tits. God, she makes me sick.’
‘Honey, please, roulette or craps? I have to get those funds back into the department’s account before seven.’
‘Okay … okay … I say roulette.’ She leads him to the nearest table.
‘Chips, please.’ Danny tosses the attendant the credit, his gaze momentarily lost in her size 38-DD breasts. He squeezes Sia’s hand. ‘Red?’
She nods. ‘And lucky number 23. Let’s get it all back on the first roll.’
‘Right. Okay, quick, give me a kiss for luck.’
Their lips meet,
their tongues spreading saliva and vodka as the wheel is spun.
Two floors up, Benjamin Merchant, personal assistant to the casino’s president and CEO, sucks deeply on a pacifier bong as he watches the scene play out on his wrist monitor. Merchant’s piggish eyes, squirrel gray, remain half-closed behind rose-colored designer spectacles. A thin line of spittle drools from the pacifier and down his lower lip onto the ruffles of his ivory white embroidered dress shirt.
Ben Merchant has never met Danny and Sylvia Diaz, but he knows the couple well. Over the last three days he has been both their good luck charm and dark cloud. Seducing them with each roll of the roulette wheel, he has baited them with lingering tastes of success while encouraging them to reach deeper into their depleted savings. He has played the banker, personally signing off on their arrangements at the hotel’s pawn shop. He has played the ‘chef,’ lacing their meals with a potent form of Ecstasy.
Now he plays his favorite role of all—the Devil’s advocate—as he guides them deeper into bankruptcy.
In Merchant’s manicured hand is a small remote device linked to the casino’s roulette wheels. He dials up the table number, presses a button, then sucks in another hit from his bong.
‘Six black.’
Sia’s forehead collides with her husband’s shoulder. ‘ Fubishit! Where’s my goddam drink? Can we get something to drink here?’
A nubile waitress with salmon skin approaches, her gold nipple rings glittering beneath an overhead light. In drug-induced English, dripping with a Jersey accent, she manages, ‘Caligula wit’ a twist, right honey?’
Sia downs the cream-colored liquid, barely registering the flame in the pit of her empty stomach. Sylvia Cabella-Diaz has not eaten or slept in thirty-one hours.
‘Sia?’
‘Red again, Danny. Everything we’ve got.’
‘You sure?’
‘Just do it.’
Danny pushes the pile of chips across the emerald green felt.
Two floors up, Ben Merchant fingers the BLACK key again on his palm-sized remote.
Sia’s heart pounds like a timpani drum. She watches the steel ball jump across the wheel’s plastic spokes, slowing on the red, stopping on—
‘Nineteen, black.’
‘Fubishole!’ The twenty-six year-old’s forehead strikes the padded cushion in front of her.
Danny slides off the chair, the room spinning in his head as if he’s on a merry-go-round. ‘Oh, God, Sia, what are we gonna do? I’m dead. I’ll lose my job for sure. I could go into exile—’
Across the table, a pit boss listens intently as Ben Merchant’s commands are whispered through his ear piece.
‘I hate this place, Danny. I told you Friday we should have checked out.’
‘Excuse me? You’re the one who—’
‘Mr. and Mrs. Diaz?’
Sia looks up at the pit boss through bloodshot eyes. ‘What the hell do you want? Haven’t you vampires sucked enough of our blood for one night?’
‘My manager would like a word with the two of you. In private.’
‘What for?’
‘I believe it concerns your room charges. If you’ll follow me please.’
Danny shoots his wife a worried look. She shrugs, too weak to protest. ‘What can they do?’
They follow the pit boss across the casino floor to a private door hidden among the satin vermilion drapes.
The hydraulic door hisses open. ‘Up the stairs, please.’
‘What’s up the stairs?’
‘My manager. Now please, ma’am—’
A brass spiral staircase beckons. Sia goes first, her husband right behind her, the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Ben Merchant is waiting for them atop the landing, a Cheshire cat smile splitting his pasty complexion. ‘Well, good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Diaz.’ The heavy Louisiana drawl is as cheery as it is false.
‘About the room charges … can you just bill us? I promise we’ll—’
‘Tut-tut … all room charges have already been taken care of.’
Sia looks at Danny, then back at Merchant.
‘The two of you are lucky, very lucky indeed. It seems someone up there likes you.’ Merchant points a manicured finger toward the ceiling. ‘A guardian angel.’
‘I don’t understand,’ says Sia. ‘Who are you?’
‘The name’s Merchant, Benjamin Merchant, but you, dear Sylvia, may call me Ben. I have been and remain the private secretary and personal confidant of Mrs. Lucien Mabus, but for tonight, I’ll be your exclusive escort as you venture upward to Paradise Lost.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Paradise Lost, darlin’. A wondrous place just north of heaven. Come, dear cherubs, your chariot awaits.’ Merchant leads them down a short hall to a private glass elevator. ‘This lift will take you straight to the penthouse. Mrs. Mabus’ll be waiting for you there.’
‘Mrs. Mabus wants to see us?’
‘Nothing to fear, Danny Boy. Like I said, this is your lucky day. All your financial woes are about to disappear.’
Danny looks at Sia, then back to Merchant, who is holding the elevator door open, beckoning them in. The couple enters.
‘Bon voyage.’ The doors close on Merchant’s smile, sealing them in darkness.
‘Danny?’ Sia grabs his arm as the lift races skyward.
The elevator stops before they can exhale. The doors part.
Sparkling before them—the Miami skyline—a tapestry of mirrored skyscrapers blazing in rainbows of neon beneath a clear autumn night. Mesmerized, they step out onto the polished onyx-marble floor.
The elevator door hisses closed behind them.
‘Hello?’ Uncertain, they leave the alcove and enter a living room, the plush carpet the color of sable, the leather furniture and wraparound bar done in various shades of red. Immense bay windows wrap around 360 degrees.
‘I’m Lilith.’
Danny turns to see a woman pouring drinks behind the bar. The vixen’s skin is chocolate, her hair the color of pitch, long and wavy, trailing down her back. ‘Lucien wishes he could be here to greet you, but he’s been sick lately, poor dear.’
Danny’s eyes widen as she walks around the bar, handing them each a glass. Lilith is wearing a see-through negligee, her dark breasts and shaved crotch pressing against the sheer fabric. She motions them to a couch. ‘So the two of you are newlyweds?’
‘Uh, yes. Just married three days ago.’
‘Four.’ Sia shoots him an elbow, disrupting his gaze. ‘How long have you and Mr. Mabus been married?’
‘Just long enough to want him dead.’ A high, piercing cackle as she turns her sociopathic gaze toward Sia. ‘Thank Satan for vibrators, eh girl.’
Danny focuses his attention on Lilith’s exposed brown nipple, drooling like an intoxicated mouse eyeing the cheese.
‘It’s late,’ Sia stutters, feeling out of her element.
‘The night is young,’ Lilith purrs, ‘but you’re worried about something.’
‘We lost a lot of money. Danny borrowed from his expense account.’
‘Sia!’
‘Now, now, we’re all family here at the Mabus. Tell me, Daniel, how much did you lose tonight in our little lion’s den of inequity?’
Danny breaks eye contact. ‘I don’t know. Everything we had left.’
‘Sia’s ring, too?’
Danny nods, his emotions welling.
‘And all of your savings?’ Lilith Mabus—so endearing—like a priest at confession.
‘The credit card. Our wedding gifts.’ Danny pinches tears from his sleep-deprived eyes.
Sia eyes shoot daggers at Lilith as the vixen circles the coffee table to sit next to her husband.
‘Daniel, scoot closer and place your hand on the coffee table’s access pad.’
He complies, the woman’s scent filling his nostrils, wondering what he’d do if Sia wasn’t in the room.
‘Computer, access the financial statement of Mr. Daniel Diaz.
’
A holographic account ledger appears above the pewter coffee table. Danny’s eyes widen in disbelief.
The neon blue credit balance at the bottom indicates a recent deposit of $200,000.
‘I think that should more than cover your losses.’ Lilith sits back on the cushion.
‘This is … crazy,’ Danny says, ‘I don’t understand?’
Lilith smiles, her bleached white teeth bright against her Mesoamerican-African-American complexion. ‘A gift, Daniel. From one who has—to one in need.’