I watched Dingo walk. Oh, he had some strut in him. Like fucking John Wayne. Like he was a real big man with that gun in his hand. Like his pockets were jinglin’ with silver dollars, and his belly was full of filet mignon and the best whiskey in the house.
Big John Dingo wasn’t walking like a man who repaired arcade games and sold T-shirts. He wasn’t walking like a man who ate bologna sandwiches for dinner while million-dollar schemes percolated in his brain. And he damn sure wasn’t walking like a man who turned out his own woman.
No. He was strutting like a gunslinger with notches on his gun.
Like the top hand at the fucking Mustang ranch.
I put the car in neutral.
I gunned the motor.
“Kurt!” Mitch yelled. “What the fuck are you DOING!”
Big John turned. I flicked the headlights on bright, and I saw it in his eyes. All the hate. All the self-loathing. All the lust for a buck. All those things that he bottled up day in and day out. All the misery that had tunneled up from the dark pit of his soul because he might have dropped a quarter on the floor of the Bucket of Blood Saloon.
It was a lot to take in all at once, but I knew the look in those eyes all too well.
I saw it every time I stared into a mirror.
I glanced down at the bucket of dollars between Mitch’s feet. At the same time I tapped my shirt pocket, heard the ten thousand dollar check crinkle within.
I glanced at my reflection in the rearview mirror.
My eyes were different now.
“Kurt!” Mitch said. “Jesus Christ! Turn the car around!”
I slammed the Mustang into gear just as Big John fired his pistol, and I ran over the bastard a couple of seconds after the bullets pitted the windshield, and I heard him scream as the Mustang dragged him a half-mile down the road.
When the Mustang spit out his miserable carcass and the back wheels kicked him loose, Big John was all done screaming.
Mitch is telling it again as we drive down the Strip.
“Last fool I shot was slower than Columbus comin’ to America, ” he says. “Miserable sidewinder shuffled off his mortal coil in the streets of Virginia City. That boy pissed on the wrong sombrero, and that’s for damn sure!”
I’m not listening. My senses are alive. I can smell the money here. Just like I can see the neon.
It shines through the bullet holes in the windshield. It bathes Mitch in an otherworldly glow. It spills over the slot bucket between his feet, pooling with the coins and Mitch’s blood.
But he’s okay. Mitch is okay.
He’s talking.
Even though he’s got a couple bullet holes in his chest, he’s talking.
I want everyone to hear what he has to say.
Gunslinger quick, I reach for the cassette deck and turn up the volume.
“HAHAHAHAHA!” Mitch screeches. “Another pencil-dicked pilgrim eats it! No one outdraws Big John Dingo! I can fuck longer and draw faster than any man alive! I never come up for air! I live on pussy and hot lead! Drop a quarter, ya redneck peckerwood! Try your luck! HAHAHAHAHA!”
UNDEAD ORIGAMI
NOVEMBER 25, 1970
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
ONE
As a star athlete at Brigham Young University in the late sixties, Walter Sands had caught footballs (serious business), dribbled basketballs (for fun), even smacked a few tennis balls (in pursuit of a banker’s daughter from Salt Lake City). These skills had earned him a college education, a couple inches of type in Sports Illustrated, and as much pussy as he could handle.
Walter graduated from BYU on a fine summer afternoon. The dean himself slapped the sheepskin into Walter’s hands. The banker’s daughter gave him head while he cruised the streets of Provo in his Mustang convertible, contemplating a bright future with the Cleveland Browns. (Sure, he hadn’t made the cut this year — an elbow injury, still tender, had kept him on the bench for the second half of the college season — but everything would fall into place next year. Walter was sure of that.)
The whole deal was pretty choice for a redneck from Moab. Walter was gonna keep on keepin’ on, as the soul brothers said. This season he’d do some serious kicking back, some equally serious rehabilitation on the elbow. Then he’d hit Cleveland for a tryout next year. Walk on the field and take his rightful place as the next Jim Brown. Right on.
Later that afternoon, after bidding a sad but nonetheless satisfying goodbye to the banker’s daughter, Walter returned to his apartment and found an envelope waiting for him. He ripped it open and unfolded the little piece of paper that would change his life.
Walter read it. He couldn’t believe it.
He’d been drafted.
Walter worried that he might tear the paper in half, the way he was shaking. Funny how a piece of paper could scare you so badly. But Walter knew that this piece of paper was seriously scary. A couple of his high school buddies from Moab had enlisted for no better reason than to escape the old Mormon-missionary-doufous-on-a-bicycle routine, and they’d come back from Vietnam in body bags.
His college deferment had evaporated. It was plain that Cleveland wasn’t about to cover the ass of an unsigned prospect, plainer still that the army doctors wouldn’t be too impressed by his tender elbow. But Walter didn’t panic. He called Uncle Jack.
Uncle Jack wasn’t really Walter’s uncle. He was an older guy who liked to hang around jocks. Not that he was queer or anything. Ask anybody about Uncle Jack, and they’d tell you that he was a man’s man.
Uncle Jack had connections — in business, in government, even with the draft board. He got Walter off the hook and informed him that he could use a kid with good hands. Would Walter mind very much moving to Las Vegas while he waited for the Cleveland Browns to come to their senses?
Walter agreed finger-snap quick, figuring he’d be shagging flies, coaching some pudgy corporate baseball team.
He was shagging flies all right. But these were the kind of flies with wings, legs, and bodies that were plump with black blood. And Walter was shagging them on the ninth floor of the Desert Inn, working for a rather eccentric gentleman by the name of Howard Hughes.
The fat insect buzzed Walter, tickling past his ear. His right hand shot out, made a quick pass, and missed. The fly circled lazily, staying just out of reach, then sped down the empty hallway.
Slowly, but determinedly, Walter followed. Howard Hughes didn’t like fast movements. According to Uncle Jack — the only employee who actually engaged Hughes in meaningful conversation — the billionaire believed that fast movements stirred up deadly germs, even in a sealed tomb like the ninth floor of the Desert Inn. The flyboys, as Uncle Jack called Walter and his associates, couldn’t use fly swatters for the same reason. And Hughes was terrified of chemicals, so insecticide was strictly forbidden.
So fast hands were the order of the day. It was some job, all right. Walter had been at it for five months, and he hated it. He’d killed exactly thirteen flies in that time, and Hughes had said maybe ten words to him.
Walter’s contact with the man who paid his salary had been limited to Hughes’ inspection of his fly kills. The ritual never varied. Walter had to present the dead insect wrapped in a Kleenex shroud. Hughes — generally sitting naked in bed, maybe with a Kleenex of his own covering his withered joint if Walter was real lucky — would reach out with his awful five-inch fingernails and unwrap the Kleenex like it was a birthday present or something. Then he’d spear the insect with a hatpin, just to be sure that it was good and dead. Finally, he’d push it back on the rusty pin with a long fingernail swathed in Kleenex, mounting it like a trophy.
There were plenty of trophies on the pin.
The only good part of the job came after Hughes speared the kill. That was when the billionaire would invariably send a tiny paper airplane floating Walter’s way, laughing as Walter tried to anticipate the craft’s aerodynamic abilities or lack thereof. Catching the plane would earn a slight nod from Hughes, a little tip-o
f-the-hat from the hotshot aviator he used to be.
Walter wasn’t allowed to unfold the paper airplane in Hughes’ presence. As soon as he was dismissed, he’d smooth it out, eliminating the folds as best he could, but the bank didn’t seem to care. They always cashed Hughes’ checks without a blink. It didn’t matter if they’d been folded or spindled or mutilated, not as long as they bore Hughes’ signature.
Still, money couldn’t eclipse Walter’s fear, and there was no doubt that Hughes scared him. The billionaire’s gray skin was crisscrossed with awful scars, the result of his infamous crash landings. His long beard was unkept, the color of a rusted pipe. And then there was the pure stink of him — his flesh, his breath… But the scariest thing of all was the wildfire that burned in his dark eyes, proof positive that despite all evidence to the contrary Howard Hughes was still very much alert and aware.
And to be left alone with him. Like tonight…
Walter tried to swallow the lump in his throat. Time to get back to work. The hallway was dark, the only sound the buzzing of the fat little insect as it bounced lightly from wall to wall, racing along the ceiling. Ten feet ahead, twenty, then thirty… and forty… all in a matter of seconds.
Up ahead, the door to Howard Hughes’ suite stood open, just a crack.
That was where the fly went.
Walter swore. If the fly actually entered Hughes’ bedroom… Well, Walter had heard all about the screaming fits the old man could throw if confronted by a live insect.
Walter hurried into the suite and flicked on the lights. He couldn’t hear the fly, but that was because Hughes, two rooms away in the bedroom, was watching a movie. The volume on the projector was cranked up to full; Hughes was practically stone deaf.
Walter moved slowly, searching thoroughly. There was no sign of the fly in the first room. He entered the middle room, Uncle Jack’s office, and now the noise from the projector was truly annoying. The piercing treble vibrated in his skull. Some Disney musical or something, that’s what Hughes was —
The fly shot straight toward him and brushed under his nostrils. Walter found himself spitting and swatting like some crazy Jerry Lewis imitator, but the tiny black devil only droned away from him, buzzing along the ceiling, dipping and diving among the models of Hughes’ aircraft that hung suspended on short lengths of fishing line.
Another lazy circle, and the fly returned. Walter didn’t move. He waited.
He didn’t move… didn’t move…
The stupid little bastard landed on his forehead. Dirty insect legs tickled over his hairline, but Walter only grinned. Very gently, he tugged a fresh tissue from the Kleenex box clipped to his belt. You’re dead, amigo, he thought. This time you’re up against the fastest Kleenex in the West.
The fly crawled across his bushy eyebrows, explored the twisted bridge of his nose… and stopped.
Walter slapped himself hard in the face, balling the Kleenex as soon as he made contact with his nose. But somehow the fly escaped, darting away, buzzing just out of reach, and Walter leaped forward, the Kleenex fluttering free, his naked hand grasping for the insect that sped toward Howard Hughes’ bedroom.
Walter’s fingers snapped into a fist. He landed hard, on his tender elbow, and bit back a scream of pain.
He opened his hand. Nothing
The fly dipped and rolled and entered the bedroom. The music was gone now. The collection wheel on the big 35mm projector squeaked round and round, the tail of the film slapping metal.
The fly buzzed.
But Howard Hughes did not scream. Walter got up, rubbing his elbow. Maybe he was lucky. Maybe the old man was asleep, crashed out on Valium or Demerol. The way his elbow felt, Walter could use a Demerol himself. He pulled a fresh Kleenex from his jerry-rigged holster and stepped through the doorway, squinting into the bright slab of light that poured from the projector.
The collection wheel squeaked, and the film slap slap slapped, but Walter could hear the fly, too. The buzzing sound was so damn loud. The fly had to be close.
“Do you hear what I hear, Walter?”
Walter froze. The voice was low, without intonation, nothing more than a drone. For a crazy second he thought that the fly was talking to him.
“Mr. Hughes?” Walter began. “Mr. Hughes, I’m sorry.”
Alien, unfeeling laughter was the only reply. Instinctively, Walter retreated, the Kleenex now damp in his sweaty grasp.
And then the fly came streaking from the core of bright light, and it was followed by another and another and another… and the insects swarmed over Walter’s face, dipping into his ears, brushing his lips until he fell back, ashamed by the feeble screams that spilled from his lips… terrified because he had to open his lips to allow his screams to escape… and he bumped into Uncle Jack’s desk, scattering papers and knocking over a model of a Hughes OH-6A helicopter but he didn’t care… he was too busy swatting, swatting, his hands a blur but none of it was doing any good and the buzzing was now a screeching whine… and Walter wanted to shut his eyes because the flies were crawling on them, but he couldn’t… he couldn’t because what he was seeing was too horrible… so horrible that he couldn’t bring himself to blink…
Howard Hughes stood in the doorway. The harsh light from the projector bathed his knobby gray shoulders, his gnarled fingernails … and the rusty hatpin that was clenched in his bony grasp.
Hughes laughed again. That cool, droning laugh. With the long nails of his thumb and forefinger, the billionaire aviator pinched the hatpin.
His nails ran the length of the rusty pin, and a dozen dead flies joined the battle and swarmed over Walter Sands.
TWO
The tall man with the pencil-thin moustache had a chauffeur, but the chauffeur didn’t get to do much because the tall man liked to drive.
He liked to drive fast. That was what he was doing at the moment. Oh, he was doing a couple of other things as well — namely smoking a cigarette and feeling sorry for himself. The things he did for Howard Hughes. Man oh man. Like they said in the whitebread calypso songs, how low can you go…
He was going there. Arriving any minute, you got that one right.
The man’s name was Jack Morton, but he didn’t hear it very often. Shortly after arriving in Vegas with the aged Mr. Hughes and his posse of Latter-day Saints, the hotel staff at the Desert Inn had taken to calling him Jack the Mormon. A mob guy who’d been a glorified gofer in Hughes’ purchase of the Desert Inn had taken one look at the cigarette dangling from Jack’s lips and shortened the tag to Jack Mormon. Jack took to the name the way it was intended, as a kind of half-assed compliment. The mob guys thought that he was okay. He knew how to make them smile — just by lighting up a cig, or chugging a tumbler of bourbon, or sipping black coffee, or whispering a four-letter word.
Make anyone smile, make them feel like they’ve got you all figured out, and they’ll give you just what you want without any trouble at all. That was Jack Mormon’s big secret. It was also his gift. He could size people up, the same way he’d sized up Howard Hughes. No one knew Hughes better than Jack. After all, he had worked for Hughes since the billionaire’s Hollywood days. He’d started as a stand-in, a guy who could pass for the famed recluse in a pinch, but he’d come a long way since the days when he was nothing more than a wet-nosed dreamer looking for a leg up in the world.
Come a long way, hell. That was the understatement of 1970. These days, Jack held the reins of Howard Hughes’ empire. He kept things running smoothly, and there were plenty of people who liked it that way, several of whom worked in a big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. To those people, Jack Mormon was Howard Hughes.
But that was important to Jack. As a kid growing up in a flyspeck Utah town, he’d often stared at the two steel rails that cut through the desert and didn’t stop until they hit the Pacific, wondering why no one ever used those rails to escape said flyspeck. He’d always wanted to be somebody, and that was why he’d jumped a freight at seventeen. And now here he was
, a lifetime away from those rails, and he was somebody, even if he was somebody else.
That in itself was something, and he wanted to hold on to it. Sometimes that meant attending to the smallest details. Like tonight. Tonight there was a small problem with Mr. Hughes’ dinner.
The chef had been detained.
Jack Mormon sucked cool menthol refreshment into his lungs, then simultaneously exhaled smoke and a dark chuckle. Dinner, you got that one right. Detained, oh yeah, that was putting a cherry on top of it. Because the chef, in this case, was a surgeon who’d had his license pulled in two states. And dinner, if you glanced at the menu, happened to be an aged lady with a blood disorder who was currently residing in a nursing home.
Yeah. Picture, if you will. That was the kind of night this was shaping up to be. Most of the boys were busy closing a deal with the CIA up at Nellis Air Force Base. Strictly dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, but no Hughes employee ever stepped onto a government installation without his own private security contingent. So when the call came in from the surgeon — hey, let’s not gild the lily, let’s call him a glorified body snatcher — Jack knew immediately that he had to handle it, even if it meant leaving the fossil who signed the checks under the not-so-watchful eye of a two hundred and forty-five pound hypochondriac who spent nearly every waking minute massaging his right elbow. Which was just like leaving Hughes alone, as far as Jack Mormon was concerned.
But this situation was every bit as delicate as the CIA deal at Nellis. It was mined with seriously explosive possibilities, and Jack was the only guy who could handle it. He certainly couldn’t hand the mess over to the nine-to-five lawyers — good breeding would go nowhere with a street cop, no matter how quaint an accent might spill from the messenger’s lips. Not likely to work in the still of this frigid night, monsieur.
So Jack Mormon was doing what he always did — thinking on his feet. Well, he was actually thinking on his butt while he was busy driving the car, but that was the kind of completely technical description that would captivate an anal-retentive like Howard Hughes. Jack was thinking, and that was the important thing. Thinking for a thing that waited on the ninth floor of the Desert Inn, hungry for its dinner, a thing that provided a pipeline to one of the most powerful portfolios know to man.
The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists Page 32