What Happens in Vegas

by Halliday, Gemma

  In this particular case, I was in a fairly lukewarm state of mind. Sure, Kelly and I had been snipping a little at each other, but it was all in good fun. And, sure, my finances weren’t exactly where I wanted them to be, but I wasn’t particularly stressed over it; at least, not at the present. The song, however, didn’t appear to be coming from over the store’s speakers, and so I took Kelly’s hand, searching for the source.

  And what I found was highly unexpected.

  I had heard of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, of course. Any musician in the industry would have immediately taken note of popular video games that feature rock bands and rock songs.

  Not too many things surprised me these days, but I was, admittedly, surprised to see this.

  “Elvis Presley: Rock Band,” said Kelly, picking up a box and examining the back of it. “Cute.”

  Three kids were crowded around the game, although only one seemed to be actually demoing it. By demoing, I mean he was using a plastic guitar and rapidly pressing various buttons built into the guitar’s fretboard, all while a computer generated image of the King of Rock, Elvis Presley himself, sang “Jailhouse Rock” in front of a screaming, raucous crowd. On one side of the screen, multi-colored notes appeared and disappeared. I assumed the colors were associated with the colored buttons on the fretboard. No doubt the object of the game was to press the buttons in conjunction with the appearance of the musical notes, in a simulation of playing a real guitar.

  I found it fascinating, perhaps even more fascinating because the game featured my music. No doubt the royalties off this game alone would set me up for the rest of my life.

  Dead men don’t get royalties.

  True enough, and dead men can’t sue, either. Years ago, just prior to faking my death, I had set aside a small fortune to live off comfortably. That small fortune disappeared quickly, due in part to my own poor judgment and to outright theft by my money handlers. The money handlers hadn’t been privy to my hoax and had promptly raided my account with news of my alleged death. With most of my money gone, I was soon forced to find real work; in particular, work that had nothing to do with the music industry. I answered an ad in the want-ads and soon ended up working for a local private investigator. The work was fun and challenging and I decided to keep at it. When the time came for me to get my P.I. license—and thus get fingerprinted—I had only mild concerns that the prints would come back belonging to one Elvis Aaron Presley, deceased. Back in 1977, when I had had my massive face-altering plastic surgery, I also had the prints from all ten digits shuffled around. The procedure throws off most fingerprint databases and, luckily, it had thrown off the Department of Justice’s database back in the early ’80s, too. My ruse worked, and I was given my investigator’s license.

  Now, as I watched the kid rock out to one of my own songs, I could give a shit about all the royalties I was missing out on. All I wanted to do was play, too.

  Kelly tugged on my arm to get us moving again, but I told her to hold on. She said fine and wandered off to look around.

  When “Jailhouse Rock” came to an end, and the on-screen Elvis avatar bowed to the screaming crowd, the kid playing the game turned to one of his friends and said, “Beat that, bitch!”

  The pull was too great. The chance to play one of my own songs and watch a computer generated image of me on-screen, was just too cool to pass up. I stepped forward, “Actually, do you mind if this old bitch has a try at it?”

  One of the kids laughed, maybe at my joke, maybe at me. Or both. The one playing the game shrugged and handed me the fake guitar and even showed me how to use it. He next started a new game for me, or a new song, and before I knew it, the computerized Elvis, circa 1968, was back on stage. Kelly, appearing like a groupie, was by my side again, shaking her head and grinning. “Why am I not surprised?” she said. “You always had a thing for Elvis.”

  “Maybe it’s a man-crush,” I said.

  On the big screen in front of me, notes appeared and disappeared, traveling along a sort of blue highway and coming at me rapidly. I looked from the screen to my hand, and tried pressing the corresponding colored button.

  “Too late,” said the kid helping me. “You have to press them sooner, as soon as they appear.”

  I nodded, getting it. The other kid laughed again as I missed the next few notes, too. Hell, even the computerized crowd started booing.

  “Just ignore them,” said the first kid. “You’ll get it.”

  He explained further: When the note reached the bottom of the screen, I was also to use the plastic strum bar, and for each successive note, strum again, using the music’s beat and melody to help me gauge when to play.

  Easy, right? No. The game, although simple enough, required ludicrously dexterous fingers. Perhaps too dexterous for my old hands, but I wanted to give it a shot.

  After all, these were my songs, right?

  After a few more seconds of failure, and laughing from the other kid, I eventually associated the colored buttons to my matching fingers. Playing the thing was all about rhythm and muscle memory, and luckily I had plenty of rhythm—and even some ancient muscle memory stored away in my old fingers. After all, I had played real guitars on real stages to these very songs.

  The plastic guitar had a nice feel to it. I hadn’t held a guitar in decades, but this was already bringing back old memories. Fond memories. Damn good memories, in fact.

  “Hey, you’re getting it,” said the first kid.

  “Not bad,” said Kelly, nudging me with her elbow. “At least the crowd quit booing.”

  Now the song picked up in temp, and the notes and colors came at me faster and faster. My fingers, now fully warmed up, flew over the colored key pad. I strummed when I was supposed to. I could almost—almost—imagine being back on stage and doing this for real.

  More kids had come up to watch. The one who had been laughing wasn’t laughing any more. My fingers, I knew, were a blur. My advantage was easy: I knew this song in my sleep. Hell, I knew the notes and chords in my sleep, too, even after all these years.

  A couple of Best Buy workers came over as well, and now I heard people whispering behind me. I heard the first kid tell them that I had never played before. Someone else said, “No way.”

  Yes way, I thought.

  I blocked them all out and finished the song in a flourish, strumming and pressing buttons so fast that I knew my fingers would be swollen and sore for days or weeks to come. And when the song was over, when the last button had been pressed, I realized I was gasping for breath and holding the guitar out in front of me as I had done countless times on stage. Sweat was on my brow; I might have been dancing, too, but I couldn’t recall. I had been, as they say, in the zone and oblivious to those around me.

  When I opened my eyes and settled back on planet earth, the first kid who helped me was staring up at me in disbelief. Everyone, in fact, was staring at me. Even Kelly. Their faces ranged from humor to surprise.

  I handed the guitar back to the kid, who was still staring me. “What?” I asked him.

  “You were playing with your eyes closed,” he said.

  “Probably not a good thing, huh?”

  “But you scored perfectly, hitting every note, without looking. It was incredible.”

  I grinned. “Sometimes you get lucky.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I was at a bar called Skippers in Hollywood, drinking Newcastle straight from the bottle and, thanks to a handful of Vicodins, working on one hell of a good buzz.

  Booze and Vicodins. Don’t try this at home, kids.

  Normally, I take about five a day, but lately I’ve been noticing the effects were not the same. Not as strong. I felt good, sure, but not great, and sometimes the aches and pains came back sooner than anticipated.

  Can’t have that.

  Nope.

  Maybe I should start taking six or seven a day.

  The idea appealed immensely. I reached inside my jacket pocket, found the bottle of Vicodins, pop
ped the cap with my thumb, shook two more pills out and clicked the cap back on. All with one hand, a real pro at this stuff. Something I’m not necessarily proud of. Anyway, I knocked them back with a beer chaser.

  Okay, so now we’re officially up to seven a day. Two weeks ago I had gone from four to five. Now it’s five to seven.

  I’m making bigger jumps.

  Ten minutes later the prescription drugs were having the desired effect. Blessed numbness, followed by a stronger than normal buzz thanks to the beer. Suddenly, the stool I was sitting on didn’t seem very stable. Maybe it was lopsided.

  Funny, it wasn’t lopsided when you first sat down.

  No. It wasn’t.

  Seven Vicodins was a lot. Too many. And soon even that amount wouldn’t be enough, would it? Soon I would be up to ten, fifteen, twenty. But you don’t care, do you? Because you feel good now. You feel good and pain-free and life isn’t so miserable because of the Vicodins.

  Fuck the Vicodins.

  Okay, I didn’t mean that.

  I drank some more beer and removed the framed photograph from my pocket. It was Miranda, of course, and she was staring back at me with a twinkle in her eye, a half-smile on her lips, her cheekbones high, her hair a flowing glossy wave of black. She was wearing an open-neck white blouse, and I saw behind the half smile. I saw an insecure little girl who still loved Minnie Mouse.

  I took another drink and continued staring at the picture and thought of my own daughter again. And again.

  And again....

  “Is she your daughter?” asked the bartender. He was an older man with a thick mustache.

  “Not quite,” I said.

  He grinned easily. “She’s very beautiful,” he said.

  “Yes, she is.”

  At the back of the bar, near a small stage, there was some activity. I’m always on the lookout for stages. Call it a habit. Someone was setting up a karaoke machine.

  Oh, goody.

  The bartender moved away. I turned back to the picture, drank some more beer. Someone spoke into a microphone, testing it. Ten minutes later, someone else was singing something by Tom Petty. I liked Tom Petty. Ugly as sin, but I like him.

  No one followed the Tom Petty act, and so the karaoke DJ filled the lull by singing “Love Me Tender” by Elvis Presley.

  And butchered the hell out of it.

  Disgusted, I set a twenty on the table and tried to stand but somehow tripped over the wobbly stool. I fell hard and loudly. The bartender was instantly by my side.

  “Let me call you a cab, pal,” he said, helping me to my feet. “Or you can cool off over there.” He pointed to some seats in front of the stage and motioned to the singer. “He sounds alright after a few beers.”

  I said something derogatory under my breath. Apparently, I wasn’t a good judge of volume these days.

  The bartender laughed. “Well, guy, if you think you can do better, why don’t you give it a shot? Would probably clear your head a little.”

  “No...I can’t,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t sing anymore.” The last time I sang was for little Beth Ann, but I was not yet in the habit of breaking out in song, especially when drunk.

  “Anymore? So you used to?”

  I hesitated. “Yes.”

  “C’mon. Let’s sober you up.” He took my arm and guided me through the mostly empty bar, and up onto the small karaoke stage. The DJ was still singing—and still butchering.

  “Here’s one for you, Rick,” said the bartender.

  Rick nodded and, still singing, found an extra microphone and tossed it over to me. Except I saw three microphones. I swiped at the middle one, and missed. Someone in the crowd laughed. Rick, without missing a beat, picked it up and wrapped my hands securely around it. He smiled encouragingly. The small crowd clapped encouragingly. Hell, I was encouraged. But I was also nearly drunk.

  I looked dumbly at the microphone. I hadn’t held a microphone in years. Decades.

  I swallowed hard.

  “Love Me Tender” was still pumping through the speakers. Suddenly, I no longer cared that Rick had sounded bad.

  I continued staring at the microphone. The crowd clapped louder. Rick nudged me, trying to catch my eye, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the object in my hand.

  The microphone.

  The song continued playing. Rick continued butchering.

  Rick gave up on me and moved to the opposite side of the stage, distancing himself from the drunk old man. He must have said something or gestured toward me, because there was a smattering of laughter.

  Laughing at me.

  I stared at the microphone.

  The song ended and Rick put a gentle hand on my elbow and guided me off the stage and back to a booth. There I sat until I sobered, and while I sobered all I could think about was how perfect and natural the microphone had felt in my hand.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I was in Detective Colbert’s office. We were both drinking Starbucks coffee from paper cups. The paper cups were wrapped with a thickish sort of brown sleeve.

  “Here’s a question for you, King,” said Colbert. “Why don’t these cups start with the cardboard sleeve, rather than slipping them on later?”

  “As in built in?”

  “Yeah, that’s it, built in.”

  “Makes too much sense,” I said.

  He nodded. “Nothing much makes sense in that place.”

  “Nope.”

  “How much did these two coffees cost you?” he asked.

  “I bought a scone, too,” I said.

  “What the fuck is a scone?”

  “It’s Irish, I think, for stale bread.”

  “So how much for two large coffees and a scone?”

  “Twelve bucks,” I said. “And some change.”

  “If you were trying to bribe me, King,” said Colbert. “Just give me the twelve bucks and change.”

  “It’s illegal to bribe a cop.”

  He held up his coffee. “What do you call this?”

  “Damn expensive coffee.”

  “Exactly. So what do you need, King? You don’t just show up here with coffee worth its weight in gold for nothing.”

  “I’m working on the Miranda Scott case.”

  Colbert was a small man with a thick neck. His fingers were short and blunt, which often made for the best fists. Those fingers were now laced around the coffee’s protective cardboard sleeve, safe from the heat within. He snorted.

  “You’re the third private dick to come in here about this case, King. I happen to be a busy man, you know.”

  “If you were any busier,” I said, “you would be a blur.”

  He searched absently for the tiny hole in the lid, found it and sipped. “Fucking thing’s not even hot,” he said.

  He pulled off the sleeve and tossed it in the wastebasket under his desk.

  “Almost seems naked,” I said. “Without the sleeve.”

  Colbert sat back and looked at me. “You come in here bribing me with cold coffee and insulting my investigative techniques.” He shook his head. “It’s a good thing I like you, King.”

  “What’s not to like?”

  “Your accent, for one. How long you fucking been in California?”

  “Nearly thirty years.”

  “And yet you still sound like you should be calling pigs.”

  “It’s my Southern charm.”

  He sipped some more coffee, turned in his chair and looked out over Los Angeles. We were on the fifth floor of LAPD’s downtown office. A chopper flew past the window, catching some of the bright afternoon sun. Colbert inhaled deeply. Not quite a sigh. He was too tough to sigh.

  “We have nothing,” he said. “And if we had something, that would be twice as much as we have now.”

  “Which is nothing.”

  “You got it.”

  “No leads?” I asked.

  “Only one. A neighbor saw a white van parked along the street
on the day she went missing.”

  “Plates?”

  “Nope.”

  “Description of the driver?”

  “Caucasian male. And that’s it.”

  “No one approached him?” I asked.

  “Nope; he was simply observed.”

  “And that’s it?” I said.

  “So far. We’re following up with everyone she’d ever known. But no one can explain why she didn’t come home from Trader Joe’s or where she could be now. From all appearances, she’s disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “A random kidnapping?”

  He shrugged. He still wasn’t looking at me. Cops didn’t like private investigators as a general rule. Which is why I played the kindly old man card and brought the coffee and tried not to trample on toes. I needed him, and I needed to know what stones had been turned.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Hard to say. Maybe she just ran away.”

  “She just finished filming a movie,” I said. “She presumably has a lot to live for. This is a very exciting time in her life. Why would she run away now?”

  “Maybe she cracked under the pressure,” said Colbert.

  “Being an actress is her life’s dream.”

  “So then maybe she’s celebrating in Hawaii with her co-stars and didn’t bother to tell dear old mom.”

  “Except she tells her mother everything.”

  “You think she’s telling her mom about every guy she fools around with?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  He shook his head. “I still think she’s out partying somewhere. Vegas maybe. She’ll show up.”

  “Or not.”

  He studied me a moment. “You’re here for the file,” he said. He stretched his short legs under his desk and crossed his ankles. He didn’t look like a man who was looking very hard for a missing girl. Maybe his instincts were right and mine were wrong.

  “Well,” I said. “Maybe just a peek.”