The Evolutionite Chronicles Book Two: Dagger and Shadow Ninja in: Welcome to Las Vegas

by Timothy P. Callahan

  Tanaka teleported back to his room and quickly stripped off his ninja uniform. He looked at his clothes, some piled into a corner dirty, the rest still in his suitcase. He knew what he had packed, mostly jeans and tee shirts. He needed something better, something that made him look important. In Haven, that was his ninja uniform; in Vegas, he would look more like a street performer. What he needed was a nice suit.

  He quickly got into his jeans and tee shirt, checked to make sure he had his wallet and a credit card, then hurried out of the hotel room.

  Finding a place that sold nice suits in Vegas was like finding a place that sold Mickey Mouse ears at Disney. He found a nice suit in the shops at Circus Circus, spent more than Daniel would have been comfortable with, and headed outside. The sun hung low on the horizon, casting long shadows of buildings and people. Nighttime was the perfect time to go to a strip club. His only obstacle would be if Candy wasn’t dancing. He would have to stay there and wait. What a shame that would be—spending many hours watching beautiful woman dance naked. It was a sacrifice Tanaka was willing to make.

  He hailed a cab and told the drive which club to go to. The cab driver turned and asked, “You sure? That’s kind of a seedy place.”

  “I can take care of myself, thanks.”

  “There are some classier places nearby.”

  “No, that’s the one I want.”

  “All right, your funeral.”

  The taxi took a right off the strip and headed toward a dimly lit block a few miles out of the way. The bright lights from the casino faded into the background only to be replaced by the bright lights of the strip clubs. Street after street housed clubs whose names all seemed to end in Cabaret, Gentleman's Club, or Showgirls. Tanaka looked out his window, amazed at how many there were and thought about opening one with his brother if the courier business didn’t work out.

  The cab pulled over to the curb in front of a dirty looking building. “Is this it?” Tanaka asked.

  “Sure is,” the driver said.

  Tanaka gave the driver his fare and stepped out. The cab sped away as if scared to be in the area. Tanaka looked around, hoping to see someone else walk into the building. No one did; no one was around. Even the light seemed to shrink away from the street. Tanaka took a tentative step toward the door, aware of the tightening in his chest. He pictured Nancy walking into this building every night. Pictured her on the stage showing herself off to the people for money. He’d been in strip clubs before; he knew what went on there. A pang of guilt moved through his stomach as he remembered how excited he’d been to take this assignment. Daniel should be here. Daniel was way more professional than Tanaka. He wouldn’t let his own feelings stop him from entering. He would simply enter the building, ignore the girls, get the information he needed, then walk out. He would probably be so focused he wouldn’t be aroused by the site of naked woman. Tanaka, on the other hand, was aroused just thinking about going in.

  Focus, he told himself. Be more like Daniel and less like you.

  He walked up to a large man sitting on a stool. The man held his hand out and asked in a deep voice, “I.D.?”

  Tanaka pulled out his license and gave it to the man. He heard the booming of dance music’s bass line and saw the multicolor strobe lights from the room beyond the beaded curtain. The man handed the license back. “Welcome to Vegas. You here for vacation?”

  “Business, and pleasure.” Tanaka answered. “I’m really here to see Candy. Is she dancing tonight?”

  The man chuckled. “You need to be more specific. We have three girls who go by Candy.”

  “The one I’m looking for was recommended by Nancy.”

  “What’s her stage name? I don’t know anyone other than by their stage names.”

  “Um, oh.” Tanaka said. Nancy never told him her stage name, but he had the feeling he knew what it was. “I think she goes by Sparkle.”

  “Oh, Sparkle. Right. Girl with the glowing hands. She’s very popular. Haven’t seen her in a while, you know why?”

  Tanaka shrugged. “No, sorry. Do you know which Candy she was talking about?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Talk to the DJ, he’ll be able to tell you more.”

  “Thanks,” Tanaka said. He pulled the beaded curtain aside and walked into the club.

  It didn’t take him more than a second to realize that this would not be a place for Daniel. The strobe lights took a few minutes for him to get used too. Tanaka felt the bass from the music in his chest and saw two very large speakers next to a man behind a turntable, a large pair of headphones on his ears.

  Women in various stages of undress, most topless, walked around, talking to the men sitting around a bar which faced the multi-poled dance floor. Three women were on the stages using the pole in ways Tanaka didn’t think possible for a normal human. Vegas strippers were way more limber than Haven strippers.

  A few women walked arm in arm with men toward the back of the club through a door marked private. Round tables dotted the floor. Some naked woman sat with men dressed in suits, talking to them, even sharing some drinks. A few tables had younger men—most likely they’d just turned twenty-one—looking around with wide-eyed glee. Some laughed and pointed while other simply sat there with goofy grins on their faces.

  Tanaka took a step toward the DJ booth when two women walked up to him. Both topless, both had glitter dust covering their bodies. One of the women said, “Hey handsome, we’re running a two for one lap dance special today, what do you say?”

  “I just got here,” Tanaka replied. “I need some time to warm up.”

  “We’ll help,” the second girl said. “Just thirty bucks for the both of us for one song.”

  “Thirty bucks? That’s what a lap dance goes for in Vegas?”

  “It’s a bargain,” the first girls said. “What do you say?”

  Tanaka had to mentally shake his head to resist the temptation of going with these two girls instead of talking to Candy. Focus, he thought. Damn it, focus. “Well, are either of you Candy? Friends with Sparkle?”

  The two looked at each other as if they were having a mental conversation between them. They weren’t, though; Tanaka knew what that looked like. Finally, the first girl said, “Look, those two are trouble. We’re not. We’re the good girls here.”

  “How are they trouble?”

  The second girl tugged at the first girl’s arm. “Come on, this guy doesn’t want us. I see some frat boys over there. They’ll appreciate a good deal.”

  Tanaka watched as they walked away and toward a table with the younger guys.

  Walking up to the DJ booth, Tanaka motioned for the man to take his headphones off. The music was so loud he wondered if he’d have to use sign language to get his message across. Instead, he simply shouted, “I need to talk to Candy, the one who is friends with Sparkle!”

  The man nodded and pointed to the side. Tanaka walked over next to the speaker and stood while the DJ grabbed a microphone. He turned the music down a bit and said, “Candy to the booth, Candy to the booth.”

  Tanaka waited next to the speaker as the music cranked up some more. He observed the club, watching people getting drunk and tucking money into the G-string of the strippers walking up to them. He was mentally calculating how many dollar bills he had in his own wallet when a woman walked toward him. She had long dark hair hanging over her shoulder. Her face was childlike in its innocence, her eyes wide with delight and mirth. She wore transparent pink lingerie with a very sheer bra holding up a pair of beautiful breasts.

  The Police song “Roxanne” started to play in Tanaka’s head as she walked up to him. “You wanted to see me?” she asked, yelling above the music.

  “Is there a place we can talk?” Tanaka yelled.

  “Yeah, for thirty bucks!”

  Should have seen that one coming, Tanaka thought, pulling out his wallet. He pulled out a fifty and showed it to her. She yelled, “I don’t have any change!”

  “That’s fine. Let’s go.”<
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  She grabbed his hand and led him through the club toward the door marked private. She turned to him as they walked and said, “Where are you from?”

  “Haven,” Tanaka replied.

  Candy seemed to hesitate for a second as her smile dropped. She brought the bright smile back and asked, “What brings you Vegas?”

  “A friend,” Tanaka replied as they walked through the door. When it closed, the sound of the music seemed to stop. “Someone you might know.”

  She didn’t say anything else as she lead him down a hallway lined with closed doors. Tanaka heard muffled voices and music from the closed doors. She opened one of the doors and motioned Tanaka to walk in. The room had a couch and a speaker connected to an iPod. In the upper right corner, pointing to the couch, was a small video camera.

  Candy walked up to the iPod. “What kind of music do you like?”

  “Loud music that can drown out any conversation we might have.”

  She nodded then put on some very loud heavy metal music. Old school Metallica. She then stood in front of Tanaka and danced, slowly removing her shear top. “Where is Nancy? I haven’t heard from her in a while and I’m worried.”

  “She’s in the hospital. Got shot in the chest with an arrow.”

  “Oh, God,” Candy replied, stopping her striptease. “Will she be okay?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t tell me cause I’m not family. A while ago she asked me and my brother here to help her but never really told us what she needed protection from. We thought it was from her ex-husband, but he’s helping us protect her. Found out you were good friends with her, and I was kind of hoping you could help us figure out if anyone was after her.”

  “Oh my god! Are you Tanaka?” she asked with a small, giddy jump.

  He nodded. “You know me?”

  “She said she might call you if things got hairy. I didn’t think she did.”

  “Well, she did.”

  Candy looked up at the camera, then started to dance again, slowly removing her shirt. “They watch. If I stop dancing they’ll think something’s up and ask me questions. I can’t let anyone know I’m talking to you about Nancy.”

  “Why?”

  Candy slowly lowered her shirt to the floor, leaving her standing there in nothing but a very thin bra and underwear. She continued to dance, running her hands up and down her bare belly. “She didn’t give me a lot of detail about it. All I really know is she had a one-night-stand with the owner and discovered something about him. Something he didn’t want anyone else to know.”

  “But she didn’t tell you?”

  She shook her head no as she unhooked her bra. “No. I’m sorry. That’s all I know.”

  “Who’s the owner?”

  “His name is Sam Bulick.”

  “Is he here now?”

  She shook her head. “He rarely comes in anymore. He has an office upstairs but it’s always locked.”

  Tanaka stood from the couch. “Thanks, that’s very helpful.”

  “Hey, were are you going?” She slowly walked up to him. She placed a hand on his chest and gently pushed him back down onto the couch. “You still have like, forty bucks worth of me left. You want to leave now?”

  He smiled. “Well, I do like to get my money’s worth when I buy something.”

  “Good,” Candy replied slipping her bra off. “Let’s make this worth your time and money.”

  Tanaka leaned back into the couch and gave her a very big smile.

  # # #

  Daniel gave the taxi driver the address of the detective’s office as he and Grace sat down in the back. Daniel turned to Grace and asked, “Can you give me more information on this vision you saw?”

  “It started out weird, like we were flying over the desert, away from Vegas and toward some buildings.” She closed her eyes. “I think they were bunkers, like military bunkers or hangers.”

  “Most of Nevada is owned by the government,” Daniel said. “There are probably hundreds of them around the city.”

  “I know; they used to test nuclear bombs close enough for the people in Vegas to see. I don’t know if this was a base or not, I didn’t see anyone in the vision, just the bunkers. Then I saw an army of people dressed as poker dealers, they all had red eyes. Not like eyes... More like, I don’t know, lights? LEDs or something?”

  The taxi made a turn down a street and the traffic thinned considerably. Daniel looked out the window; the sun was going down quickly. It would be dark soon. “What else can you tell me?”

  “I started to feel emotions after that. Emotions that weren’t mine.”

  Daniel acknowledged that with a nod. “I’ve been mentally connected to people before. If you’re not properly trained for it, your emotions will leak out. I didn’t feel any of that; my training had taken over. What where you feeling?”

  “Everyone was getting nervous, scared of the vision. Everyone but one person—there was one person who seemed happy with it.”

  Daniel felt her heart speed up and her skin grow hot with rage. Tears formed under her eyes and she started to shake. He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Grace, relax.”

  She sniffed back some tears. “It was just so real. The dealers looked so evil. What do you think I saw?”

  Daniel shook his head and leaned back into the seat of the cab. “He told me that he needed my—our—help to see into the future. Turing told me he had that power, but could only see ahead a few hours, a day at most. It seems now that he was simply using us. Not to help him stop what was going to happen, but maybe see if what he was planning was going to work.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I can’t.” The cab slowed down as it turned another corner. Daniel looked at the street signs and saw they were on the same street as the detective’s office. “But I’ve had more than my fair share of fights with people like Turing. I know how they think, more or less. He obviously wanted us all dead, which is why he shot Whitebeard. Something like that would sever our connection, and in theory, our minds would snap. That didn’t happen and now you all shared that vision.”

  “No, it was just me.” Grace said as the taxi came to a stop.

  They stepped out and Daniel gave the taxi driver the fare. “How do you know it was only you?”

  “I asked the others,” Grace replied watching as the cab drove off. “I’m the only one who saw it.”

  “You detected the danger before I did. You saw the visions that no one else but Turing saw. You might be more powerful than you know. Do you sense any danger now?”

  She held up her hands, they were shaking. “Yeah, getting a slight tingle. But that could mean anything.”

  Daniel closed his eyes and reached deep into his own powers. He felt nothing. “I’m not getting anything at all.”

  “Not sure how to feel about that,” Grace replied.

  They walked up to the door of a small office building on the corner of a barren street. A few people milled about, drinking something from inside paper bags. One woman staggered around, seemingly unaware of where she was or what she was doing.

  She pointed to the building. “Is that were we need to go?”

  Daniel looked at the card and said, “Yes. You want to stay out here and wait or come with me?”

  She looked around. “This isn’t a great area, seems safer to be with you.”

  He nodded then rang the bell under the name Lance Star. Daniel figured it was probably a fake name. After a few seconds a male voice said, “Yeah.”

  “Detective Star?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I need to talk to you about a case you were working on. A person named Nancy Waddle.”

  “No, I don’t want to talk to you about her.”

  “Sir, I will make it worth your while.”

  “How so?”

  “Let me up and we can talk about it.”

  “How can I take your word that you won’t just come up here and beat the information out of me?”

  Da
niel looked around and saw a small camera pointing at him. “You can see me, correct?”

  “Yeah, you look like one of those street guys in front of the MGM.”

  “That’s because I’m Shadow Ninja, a Protector. Feel free to look that up while I wait.”

  He heard the line click dead. Grace smiled at him but neither said a word while they waited. After a few more minutes the door to the building buzzed. “Come on up,” Star said.

  Grace and Daniel walked up a flight of stairs that lead to a hallway. Daniel saw the sign pointing to Lance’s office and followed it. Grace followed, shaking her hands as if to get some feeling into them. Daniel still felt nothing and wondered if Grace might be sensing something bigger, something he couldn’t detect yet. That frightened him.

  They reached the door and Daniel opened it. The office was small and cluttered with discarded folders and papers. A large, disheveled man with a very bruised, swollen eye stood in front of the desk holding a folder. He looked at them with his one non-swollen eye. “So, you want to talk about Nancy? I have a question for you first. How much is the information I have worth to you?”

  “Like to get down to business right away,” Grace said.

  “I hate small talk,” he replied. “Look, Nancy cost me some really large medical bills. Broke my orbital bone and my nose. I’ll be lucky if I can see out this eye again. She’s a real piece of work. Strong has hell, didn’t count on that.”

  “Evos tend to be stronger than most normal people,” Daniel replied, pulling out his wallet then a business card. “Send me your bills. I’ll take care of any bills your insurance doesn’t cover.”

  “Insurance? Ha, can’t afford insurance.” He took the card and placed it into the pocket of his shirt. He then handed the folder over to Daniel. “That’s all I got. Photos, documents I copied, recordings from some phone conversations. I only worked the case for a few weeks but in that time, I found out a lot.”

  “Like what?”

  Lance walked behind his desk and sat down. He looked at them, his eyes shifting from Grace to Daniel. “Did you know she went missing for a few weeks?”

  “No,” Daniel replied.

  “Yeah. Her roommate, Kate Scallin, filed a missing persons report. It’s in there if you want to read it.”