Summer 2007

by Subterranean Press

  Halfway down the fire stairs, the Russian reached back and laid a hand on the American’s sleeve, and the American glanced down to meet his partner’s sidelong glance. His hand slipped under his coat, but he didn’t draw the weapon, though his thumb rested against the safety lever. “Did you hear?”

  “—footsteps?” The Russian flattened himself against the wall, one hand raised unnecessarily for silence. The American held his breath.

  Always better to get trapped in a stairway than an elevator, if you have to get trapped. Of course, it could be a hotel guest, climbing for exercise. Two hotel guests. Climbing quickly. In complete silence, the American skipped four steps backward and crouched with his gun in his hands, covering his partner and the landing below them.

  The footsteps came closer, hesitated before the turn. The American heard a noisily indrawn breath. “Gentlemen. If we promise not to draw our guns, will you put yours away?” A familiar voice, pitched in a light, ironical range.

  “You tennis-playing son of a bitch,” the American called back, delightedly. The Russian had already stepped away from the cinderblock wall and holstered his piece, and was moving forward as two tall, muscular men—one Caucasian, one black—gained the landing, shoulder to shoulder, and paused. The American looked from one to the other, at their polo shirts and skin-tight white jeans, a contrast to his own and his partner’s sober suitjackets and monochrome ties. He burst out laughing, and was rewarded by a sideways, fleeting smile from the Russian. “What brings you two to Las Vegas?” He extended his hand to the tennis player, who clasped it heartily.

  The black man leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, biceps bulging under the tight sleeves of his shirt. “The same thing as you two, I presume,” he said, middle Atlantic accent and a light bass range. “Only a little more officially, if the rumors are true.”

  “We’re here to see a man about a horse,” the American answered, still grinning. The rational corner of his mind recognized the giddy relief as honorably discharged adrenaline, and his partner’s second sideways glance told him the Russian knew it too. I’m more worried about the assassin than I thought.

  “We’re on vacation,” the Russian elaborated, extending his right hand to the scholar. They clasped briefly, the scholar muttering something in a language the American didn’t recognize, but which his partner apparently knew well enough to answer in. “We were just about to get something to eat. Would you care to join us?”

  “Delighted,” the athlete said, reversing course lithely. He grinned over his shoulder, and the American spread his hands in bemused acquiescence. Obviously the Russian thought it would serve some purpose for the four of them to be seen in public together, and the other agents were willing to play along.

  “Do you, ah, need to head back to your hotel and get ties?”

  The athlete shrugged, as if letting the suggestion slide off his back. “At seven o’clock in the morning, in Las Vegas? You don’t suppose the Brown Derby’s still open this late? Or open again this early?”

  “There’s a Brown Derby in Las Vegas now? I only knew about the one in Hollywood.”

  “Age of globalization, man,” the scholar said, falling into step beside them. “Age of globalization.”

  #

  One-Eyed Jack and the King of Rock & Roll. Las Vegas. Summer, 2002.

  I paused on the east side of Las Vegas Boulevard, near the flat rubble-graveled lot where the old El Rancho had stood vacant for so many years, and watched the ghost of Bugsy Siegel smoke a cigar while brains dripped down the back of his collar. Bugsy didn’t seem to notice me, or my entourage, but I had the weirdest prickle as if he’d just been staring at me. Anyway, he wasn’t the sort of thing I was used to seeing in broad daylight; I preferred the John Henrys, frankly, who followed along single file, barely wincing when the tourists walked through them.

  Little ghosts don’t interact much, but they can be a damned pain in the ass if they’re mad enough, and powerful enough.

  Doc Holliday cleared his throat twice before I realized he wasn’t coughing. He just wanted my attention. “Speaking of ghosts and shadows, Jack—” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, and I followed the gesture.

  I’ve seen a lot of strange things. The ghost of an imploded hotel sitting healed and shimmering like a mirage in the evening sunshine wouldn’t take a prize by any means, but it was enough to make me blink and rub my eye. That was what Bugsy’d been looking at; a parking lot filled with tailfinned Cadillacs and Buicks with five-body trunks, with Nash Ramblers and a ‘63 Corvette, candy-apple red, a pedestrian in a close-tailored gray gabardine suitcoat and a skinny black tie slowing down to take a lingering look. I could see the rubble through his shoes.

  “That’s unusual,” I said. John Henry grunted on my left side, and I chuckled a little nervously. “I hope I didn’t call up every ghost in the city.”

  “If you did, you don’t know your own power, Jack.” Holliday ducked his head to light a cigarillo, shielding the flame of his Lucifer match with his hands. “That looks to my practiced eye like some sort of a natural supernatural manifestation, if you know what I mean. Where did you want to drink?”

  “The Brown Derby,” I said, checking the angle of the sun. It would be dark soon enough, and if we hurried we could hit the lull between the dinner rush and the post-show crowd.

  If we hurried.

  I beckoned the John Henrys along. We had a while to walk still, and I’d need better clothes for the Derby. Lucky for me there are shopping malls the length of the Strip these days. I hung on to my Doc Martens; they’d be fine if a little selfconsciously trendy under a suitpant, and the damned things take a year and a half to break in right. I changed in a washroom and stuffed my old clothes in a wastepaper basket. I never liked that t-shirt anyway, and the cargo pants were torn.

  We walked into the Brown Derby at eight fifteen p.m. and were seated right away. Or, I should say, I was seated. The John Henrys followed, drifting through the table to take their chairs. It wasn’t a bad table, in the smoking section with a view of the bar. I had just ordered a vodka martini and was hiding my small talk with the ghosts behind the menu when an Elvis walked past. Which is not unusual in Vegas, by any means.

  Except he looked like Elvis Presley.

  Nobody looks like Elvis. I don’t mean, nobody dresses like Elvis, or apes his hairstyle, or tries to move like Elvis. Because sure, people do.

  I knew Elvis Presley. Nobody looks like Elvis—except his daughter, that is—and nobody moves like him, either.

  And this guy wasn’t dressed like professional Elvi dress. Soft sandy blond hair fell down in his dark blue eyes, not dyed matte black, and not greased into a pompadour. He slunk across the gaudy casino carpet like a panther, total confidence and strength, and the collar of his black leather gothcoat was turned up to hide the hammer-edged line of his jaw. He scanned the crowd as if he were looking for somebody but he didn’t quite know who, and it hit me with the force of a kick in the belly who he was. What he was. Who he had to be.

  Elvis. Of course. I blinked hard. Which means Stewart is really—

  —gone.

  Surreptitiously, I raised my hand to flip the patch off my otherwise eye. And blinked harder, because the second I did it I could smell the old blood and the midnight on him, clots of darkness wound through his soul like so many slimy clumps of rotting leaves. Not what I thought he was, then. Not my new partner, my opposite number, my ally.

  Oh, Vegas has enough problems this summer without one of those. Muttering an excuse to the John Henrys, I came around the table on a jagged line to intercept as he made for the casino. I trailed him casually, sidestepping MegaBucks and scurrying around the blackjack tables, trying not to move so aggressively that the eye-in-the-sky would spot me for a threat. I didn’t mean to hurt him any; just warn him off. Tell him to head north for Chicago: the windy city’s animae have always had a habit of taking in strays.

  But I saw him stop, intent on something that had drawn his e
ye—a flash of golden hair alongside a strobing slot machine light—and my eye followed his, and I saw—

  “Stewart?”

  Walking hunched forward slightly as he made some sort of a point with his hands—jab, jab, jab—animated in conversation with three companions, the hairstyle different, longer, but the crooked nose unmistakably the same.

  He didn’t hear me. I wasn’t close.

  The vampire’s gaze fastened on the four men crossing the casino floor, and he stepped back into the shadows behind a row of video poker machines, obviously eager that Stewart and his three companions shouldn’t see his face. I glanced after the vampire as he faded from view, but Stewart took precedence. And if the bloodsucker chose to stay in my city, I’d run across him again eventually.

  I hurried toward Stewart, making a mental survey of his companions as I came, trying to decide if an intercession was in order, or an introduction. Introduction, I decided. By the tenor of the conversation, these were Stewart’s friends. Especially the shorter of the two strong-chinned, slender, black-haired men, who bore a superficial resemblance to one another. The final man was African-American, muscular and athletic, handsome in a rugged rather than a Tiger Woods sort of way. Familiar, too—but everybody looks like somebody famous, in Vegas.

  “Stewart,” I called, and held out my hand as the little group drew abreast of me and started to pass me by.

  Stewart blinked and turned to me, a thin vertical line between his eyes. “I beg your pardon. Do I know you?” he asked, and my heart thumped once in my chest and went still.

  It wasn’t him. It could have been, from fifteen feet. From close enough to shake his hand, however…no. Not quite. Not the face, and not the faint European accent and subtle precision of pronunciation. But another one was the coldness of the equal subtlety and precision in his eyes.

  “No,” I said, and backed away. “I beg your pardon. But you look very much like someone I—”

  I used to know.

  I turned on the heel of my Doc and went back to the restaurant, cursing myself for failing to follow the vampire instead. Cursing myself for the hope I’d felt, however briefly, and for the fresh sharpness of the broken ache in my chest.

  I knew who they were now; the penny had dropped.

  Not just not Stewart.

  Ghosts. More ghosts, summoned up out of the collective unconscious, called up out of the soup of story. I shook my head, sat down in my still-warm chair, and looked up into the eyes of the memory of two dead men.

  At least I’d thought of something the John Henrys could do to help until I figured out how to manage Angel, immaterial or not. I bet they could be pretty good at keeping track of a vampire, if they were careful, and stayed out of sight.

  Meanwhile, I could try to figure out what it was that I’d summoned home to Vegas. A namesake rite wasn’t supposed to work that way—and I shouldn’t have had the power to do it, even if it did. I was starting to think I’d managed to call home every ghost—media, legendary, and the ‘little’ ghosts, the ghosts of the unquiet dead, like Bugsy out there—with even the vaguest of connections to my city.

  That could get confusing.

  Especially if two or three Howard Hugheses showed up.

  #

  Part II

  Tribute and the Streetwalker With A Heart Of Gold. Las Vegas, Summer, 2002.

  It was full dark by the time I left the mint-green glow of the MGM Grand behind me and walked north, counting the cracks in the sidewalk. The desert itself was my enemy, but at least the mountains ringing the valley gave me a long anticipation of sunrise and cut the sun’s descent short when it slid down the sky in the West. Headed for California and points out to sea.

  The skinny kid with the eyepatch troubled me, but I didn’t know why I ran. Hell, I didn’t quite know what I was doing in the MGM to begin with, other than staying out of the sun: they’d be unlikely to hire an Elvis impersonator. I needed a club, a cabaret. Someplace that wouldn’t expect afternoon shows.

  I could live by murder and theft. When I exhausted the resources Sycorax had left me.

  That doesn’t put you on a stage, does it?

  But the kid. Thousand-dollar suitjacket bought off the rack, and a cheap high-school dye job. Scarred urban combat zone boots peeking out from under his pinstriped trousers. Hell, maybe he was a rock star. It wasn’t like I’d been keeping track.

  Except he’d been sitting at his table pretending not to talk to a couple of mismatched ghosts, and he’d practically leaped over it to give chase when he’d seen me. And then I’d run smack dab into the media ghosts I’d seen earlier, and they’d been all buddy-buddy with another pair, who also didn’t belong in Las Vegas, all of them dressed as if it were forty years ago and most of the country watching television in black and white.

  And I could swear I’d seen that black-haired kid’s profile somewhere, before.

  If I couldn’t have a milkshake, I was ready to kill for an explanation. But since I didn’t see a way to get either, I went out looking for gigs.

  I got a little interest, too, even with my shift requirements. It was good to know, after so long, that I could still lay down a tune, and by the time I finished my third cold call I was feeling pretty good about myself. The manager stood me a beer, and I sat down in a booth beside the juke box to pretend to drink it and retie my shoes.

  And found myself tidying the salt shakers while I watched a dark-haired girl who was far too young to be in a bar. Any bar, and the guy she was with wasn’t quite old enough to be her father. He didn’t look like anybody’s father, anyway; in fact—

  —in fact, he looked a lot like one of the media ghosts I’d ditched in the MGM Grand. The shaggy yellow hair, at least, and his profile when he turned just right. This one looked dazed, though, his eyes not quite tracking as he watched his skinny, no-doubt-about-it-hired-for-the-evening companion play with her French fries. What kind of a stoner John buys a hooker a meal and watches while she draws in the ketchup?

  Maybe she was his kid sister, after all. Even if they didn’t look a thing alike.

  “She’s trouble, Ace,” Jesse whispered in my ear. But I ignored him, or pretended to.

  I didn’t like him to know how much of a comfort it was, having him there.

  She looked up at me and quirked an eyebrow, then, and I saw the glow of city lights in her eyes. “Evening, King,” she said. Soprano, no breath control.

  “Name’s Tribute.” I abandoned my beer on the table when I walked over. The blond man scooted away from me at her hand gesture, and didn’t quite offer a grunt by way of acknowledgment. He was all twisted up inside himself like macramé—any fool could tell—but when he tracked me with a scarred sideways glance I could see the lights shimmering in his eyes, too. Interesting. They really didn’t look like they went together, if you know what I mean.

  “Funny sort of a name,” she said. “I’m Angel. This is Stewart. He’s a local.”

  “And you’re not?”

  Her eyes sparkled when she dimpled at me. She reached out and laid one hand on my arm. Her bitten fingernails were painted chipped, glittering green. “I’m from Los Angeles. And I hear you’re looking for a job.”

  “I might be.” I was trying to sound casual instead of wary, and I wasn’t sure I succeeded. There were thirteen fries on her plate, and seventy-two sesame seeds on the bun of her half-eaten burger.

  I looked down and straightened the unused place settings. The last thing I needed in my recently simplified life was to get involved in some sort of a turf war between the genii of cities. My kind generally tried to stay out of the way of their kind. Them, and the media ghosts and race memories and legendary men and critters like the sasquatch and the squonk. I worry about spending time with any creature who is essentially a story made flesh. They change too much, too easily—and too many of them aren’t even aware that a world outside their circumscribed reality even exists.

  I ran into Dracula once. I’m hoping I never meet Buffy the Vamp
ire Slayer. She’d kick my ass. “It would depend on the job.”

  “Bodyguard?” She smiled and reached out to take Stewart’s hand when he curled himself back into the corner of the booth, drawing his heels up onto the vinyl like a child. He tugged his hand free and wrapped the arm around his knees, shivering. I couldn’t quite tell if the look in his eyes was beseeching or simply flat blue madness, and I glanced back down at the girl.

  “That’s not really my kind of gig, baby—”

  “King,” she interrupted, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Do you want to hustle in a dive like this for people who have no idea what you really were? Who’ll think you’re a bad imitation because they’ve stopped seeing how bad all the other imitators are?”

  It was the wrong tack to take. Or maybe I was just tired of her coy, self-conscious gestures. Girls these days have an edge on them I don’t remember from befre; they were like cagebirds then, pampered doves, their naivete the core of their charm.

  Or maybe I’m talking about myself again.

  “Take your time,” she said, before I could say no. “Think about it. I’ll find you again and we’ll talk. Come on, Stewart.”

  I threw a twenty on the table to cover their tab, and stood up to let him follow her out.

  #

  The Russian and the Three Capitalists. Somewhere in Las Vegas. 1964.

  The Russian expected trouble. Which wasn’t unusual: he always expected trouble. Although it was true that conditions for Americans who weren’t white Anglo-Saxon Protestants weren’t quite as horrid as he’d been raised to believe, back home, they were bad enough. And Vegas wasn’t called the Mississippi of the West for nothing.

  So he was surprised and pleased when they were seated immediately, and not even tucked away in a corner near the kitchen doors.

  “Man,” the scholar said as the food arrived, laying his napkin across his lap. “Did we order enough?”

  The American grinned as the athlete and the Russian simultaneously reached for the fruit plate. “Have you ever seen my partner eat?”