by Adam Bender
There are still police in Vegas. When public money stopped funding their paychecks, the corporate giants and the mafia stepped in. Unlike towns like Liberty, where the de-funding of law enforcement has wiped out formal law enforcement, the corrupt cops of Vegas have managed not only to survive, but to thrive like rats.
It would be an understatement to say this deregulation had an impact on the police’s priorities. In reaction to these changes, the city’s booming tourism industry has not shrunk so much as it has degenerated. Gone are the families of four and tech conference registrants; in their place are lowlifes looking for the kind of wealth, sex, and power they can’t buy back home.
This is why Vegas is one of the few places in America that was not renamed during the Born-Again Patriot movement. Vegas has always been synonymous with unchecked freedom.
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It’s Not Your House.
Rosa gazed with morbid interest out the car window at the parade of leather-clad women and tattoo-splashed thugs walking under the fluorescent streets of Vegas. She was sitting in the back of a limousine with Errol and Charlie. The driver had been Errol’s chauffer from long before the Wanderer even existed. He was a stocky, gray-haired man named José, who insisted he was loyal to only one Breck brother — “Al’s good boy.”
The reporter never had any reason or desire to come to this candy-coated urban hellhole before. The Wanderer and Kid Hunter appeared unconcerned, but she couldn’t help but watch for potential threats.
She once heard a story about a woman from Liberty named Betty who had been driving here when a man in a puffy jacket stepped out in the middle of the street. Betty had braked hard to avoid hitting him, but when she’d stopped, he’d had a Yossarian automatic rifle pointed at her windshield. Betty had ducked and floored the gas pedal as the first spray of bullets shattered the glass. She’d slammed the car into the shooter, killing him instantly. A crowd of merrymakers stopped to see what had happened, but the big casinos never shut down for a second. And why would they? This was all just part of the show.
The limo stopped outside tall, turquoise gates with the name Breck inscribed in gold across the middle. The doors parted, and Rosa found herself unable to look away from the great mansion within. The Breck Estate was an adobe-red palace in the style of an old-fashioned Mexican governor’s mansion, glowing brightly under the beams of carefully placed spot lighting. The two-floor building seemed to stretch endlessly in either direction. Despite Errol’s long absence, the lawn and garden surrounding the building appeared to be in good health, as if it’d never occurred to the servants that their master was gone at all. As the car pulled up to the front entrance, she asked, “You’re sure your stepbrother didn’t move in?”
“Gerard moved out a long time ago to a penthouse above the Strip,” Errol replied. “He hated it here, couldn’t wait to get out.”
José got out of the limo first and opened each of the back doors to let the others out. The Wanderer paused in front of the door to the mansion, as if he wanted to size it up before entering. Finally, he brought forward a key but seemed to have trouble with it, rattling it against the lock.
“You all right?” Rosa asked him.
He took a deep breath and unlocked the door. “Fine.”
*
Errol wanted to tell Rosie it wasn’t Gerard he was worried about, but the ghost of Helen. He hadn’t been back to the house since that horrible night, and it still didn’t feel right setting foot here again.
Kid Hunter hooted as they stepped inside. The grand entrance featured a tall ceiling and a redwood spiral staircase. “I think I’m gonna like living here!”
Living? “You can stay for a few days until we get things sorted out,” the Wanderer insisted.
Charlie laughed. “I’m just fucking with you, man. I know we can’t stay forever.” He paused a beat. “Or do I?”
Errol pointed to the stairs and gave directions to the guest rooms. When they’d gone, he took a deep breath and stepped quietly toward the kitchen. He paused briefly in front of a watercolor of the desert landscape, but his eyes crept down to the floor. The stain in the carpet was gone, but he still felt Helen’s presence. His legs weakened, and he had to brace himself against the gilded frame of the painting to keep from falling.
“Hey, careful. I always liked that piece,” came a syrupy voice from the kitchen.
Errol turned sharply and caught a tall man with a black mustache standing in the entrance.
“Welcome home, brother,” said Gerard.
Errol didn’t want to alert the others, so he spoke as forcefully as he could manage without raising his voice. “How dare you break into my house?”
“It’s not your house. It’s Dad’s house. And I didn’t break in. I still have a key. Anyway, it’s not like you’ve been around.”
He ushered Errol into the tiled room and pulled out a wooden chair. The Brecks sat across from each other at the solid oak table where, a lifetime ago, they had shared pancakes. The Wanderer glanced at a steel block of knives resting on the slate counter behind his stepbrother’s back. As far as he could tell, Gerard had come to the estate by himself, and a quick scan using his smart lens revealed he wasn’t armed. No reason to get out the Lassiter just yet.
“What are you doing here, Gerard?”
“It’s great to see you, too,” said Gerard, stroking his black mustache. “We didn’t really get to talk in Union, did we?”
“I reckon I wasn’t in the mood for conversation.”
“You ‘reckon.’ There you go again with that cowboy talk. I believe you may have read one too many of Dad’s Western books when we were growing up.” Gerard motioned to his eye and screwed up his face as if to indicate the presence of a gross pimple. “Hey, would you mind taking off the eyepiece? I know those things are supposed to glow red when they’re recording, but I’d feel a lot better if I knew for sure no one else was watching.”
Errol slipped the glass off of his face, made a show of clicking the power switch, and slipped the gadget into the front pocket of his flannel shirt. He then said, “I didn’t know you’d be here, but maybe I’m glad. You’re why I came back.”
Gerard smiled. “Oh yeah? Missed your bro?”
Errol maintained his serious expression. “It’s like I said in Union. I’ve got misgivings … about how you’re running the company.”
“Oh! The company’s just great. We have a new gun coming out. I call it the Breck 100X. Incredible thing. You must try it! It’s got this amazing—”
“Shut up. I’m here to shut you down.”
Gerard didn’t even blink. With a lick of his lips, he taunted, “I know why you ran from home.”
“What do you know?”
“I know that you shot poor, poor Helen.”
Speechless, Errol fell back into his chair. How? The reports of his wife’s death in the paper had blamed the house intruder. No one had ever tried to cast the blame in another direction.
“I know, I know. You want to know how I figured that one out. But of course I knew, and so did the police. They aren’t stupid! They’re just corrupt.” Gerard described how the police had removed the bullet from Helen’s skull and quickly determined it had come from Errol’s Breck 17. “Why do you think no one ever came after you? I paid them off.” He held out his palms like he was waiting for a thank-you.
“You helped me,” said Errol. “Why?”
Gerard shrugged. “I figured it would be better for the family and for Breck Ammunition if we didn’t have a murder scandal hanging over our heads. Don’t you reckon?”
“But wouldn’t it have been easier for you to take the company?”
“Easy, maybe, but what you don’t understand — what you’ve never understood — is that I wanted to earn the right to lead this company. But damn it, you always take away my opportunities! Do you remember when we were kids, and Dad used to take us to the baseball diamond to play? Just t
he three of us, Dad pitching, one of us up to bat, one of us in the outfield. You were always so much better at hitting than me, and I could see it in the way Dad looked at you that he knew it, too. You’d smash his pitches out of the park, but me, I could barely put down a bunt. He was proud of you and ashamed of me.
“One day though, when Dad was pitching and I was up to bat, something just clicked for me. He threw a pitch right over the plate. I reached back and swung — crack!” Gerard jumped up to his feet and held his hands high in the air. “The ball went sailing into the outfield! Back! Back!”
Gerard leaned over the table and scowled. “And then you just had to fucking leap and catch it.” He shook his head angrily. “So, of course, Dad, he runs over to you and starts cheering, ‘What a catch! What a catch!’ I finally do something right, and you still got all the applause!”
Errol leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I remember that day. I seem to recall you chasing me around with a baseball bat afterward.”
Gerard’s anger flicked to mirth in an instant. “Did I? Good!”
“So what’s your point, exactly?”
“I wanted to earn the right to lead this company, and I was prepared to fight you for it. But then you just went and left! I’m only in charge of this company because they had no choice, because of you! So the fucking board has doubted me from the start. They think I’m not fit for this job. But I’ll show them. The Breck 100X is going to be a success and then they’ll see I was always meant to lead this company!”
“You’ve run out of time, Gerard. You’ve managed the company terribly. You’re making deals with the Red Stripe Gang! Well, I reckon I’m back to fix your mistakes.”
“No, I don’t think you’re going to do anything.” Gerard sat back down, leaned over the table, and served up a Cheshire grin. “See, Errol, I might have paid off the cops to get them off your case, but I can just as easily bribe them to reopen Helen’s file.”
Errol frowned. Blackmail. So that was his stepbrother’s game.
“Don’t worry, I’m not a bad guy. As long as you’re willing to recognize me as the CEO of the company, you can stay right here in Dad’s mansion. Hell, I’ll even see my way past the thing with that bitch blogger. She can stay, too, provided she stops publishing that damn yellow rag. I’ll leave you two lovers alone and you can have a lot of sex or whatever.” Gerard turned to leave. “Just do the company one favor, okay? Try not to shoot her.”
The Wanderer pulled the Lassiter out of his belt and aimed it Gerard’s head. “Actually, I was thinking about shooting you.”
Gerard laughed. “You wouldn’t murder your own brother, would you? Besides, I may have asked you not to record this conversation, but that doesn’t mean I’m not. You know how I’ve always liked to watch.”
The Wanderer lowered his gun.
“By the way,” Gerard added, “I’d threaten the bounty hunter, too, but it sounds like he’s got bigger problems already. Word has it that El Tiburón himself wants his head!” He wriggled his fingers ominously. “Ooh … El Tiburón!”
*
As soon as Kid Hunter learned that Gerard had been in the house, he went to work checking the entire property for bugs. So that they could talk, the Wanderer showed them the laundry room in the basement, which was one place where Errol said he was sure there were no CCTV cameras.
“How long is this going to take?” whispered Rosa as she leaned against a silver washing machine.
Kid Hunter knocked on his tablet like a magician. “Done!”
He swiped quickly through the results on the screen. Sure enough, the Breck Estate’s surveillance system was broadcasting footage to Breck Ammo HQ.
“Turn off the broadcast,” directed the Wanderer.
The mercenary shook his head. “Not that simple. We don’t want Gerard to know that we know that he —”
“Movies made you this way, didn’t they?” interrupted Rosa, rolling her eyes.
Ignoring her, Charlie went to work reprogramming the cameras to broadcast a looping stream of old footage. It wasn’t perfect since they weren’t actually in any of it, but it was at least a temporary fix, and if Gerard’s goons were dumb enough, they might not even notice.
The Wanderer described Gerard’s demands. Errol was to support him as CEO of Breck Ammunition, and Rosa was to stop writing The New West.
“How’s he going to stop us?” asked Rosa.
“Blackmail,” said the Wanderer, staring accusingly at his Breck 17. “He … knows what I did … with the bad gun.”
“Wait, what do you mean?” said Charlie. He’d noticed that the Wanderer never used the Breck 17 but assumed it was some kind of superstition.
Errol looked at Rosa, who sent back a supportive smile. “Back in the woods, when we were camping around the fire and I told you what happened to Helen, I wasn’t completely honest. The truth is it weren’t no burglar who shot her. It was me.”
Rosa quickly came to the Wanderer’s defense. “It was an accident. Errol thought she was an intruder.”
“Shit, man … that’s heavy.” Charlie let out a deep breath. “That must have been hard to come back from.”
He could see from the Wanderer’s expression that he wasn’t back. Not really.
Charlie shook his head. “Well, you don’t have to defend your past around me, Wanderer. I know where your heart is, and frankly I’ve done some things myself that I’m ashamed of.”
“Thanks, Kid.”
Charlie rubbed his hand thoughtfully against the smooth arm of the easy chair. “So Breck said he’d tell. Is that it?”
“That’s the long and short of it. He says he’ll tell the cops the truth if we make any more moves against him.”
Rosa laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “The cops? What do they care about the truth? Or the law, for that matter?”
“They care about money,” said Errol, “and Gerard has lots of it.”
“You have money, too,” she pointed out.
“But Gerard has something more important than money. He runs Breck Ammunition, and Breck Ammunition supplies the police with guns and ammo.”
Kid Hunter shrugged. “All right, so what if we kill him?”
Rosa scowled at the idea, but the Wanderer just laughed. “Did you know I nearly shot him dead when we were kids? I mean … it was an accident.”
The reporter raised her eyebrows. “Gun deaths often are.”
“What happened?” asked Charlie, ignoring the wisecrack.
“It was back when Dad was first teaching us how to shoot. We were at a shooting range practicing with the Breck 17. It was the end of our lesson — time to unload our guns. So I ejected the magazine and handed the gun back to my Dad. I had the barrel facing Gerard. Well, I must have had my finger too close to the trigger because suddenly the gun went off. The bullet only clipped Gerard on the arm, but a few inches to the left and I would have struck him square in the chest. He would have died in an instant. So there was Gerard, writhing on the floor, wailing about his arm. Dad started screaming at me about how I forgot to check the chamber for a bullet after I ejected the clip. I couldn’t speak. I was so ashamed at what I’d done.”
Errol’s expression turned grim. “Lately, I’ve been wondering what might have happened if Gerard had died then.”
“That’s neither here nor there,” replied Rosa, shaking her head. “Assassinating Gerard Breck now isn’t going to get you the company back.”
Errol nodded. “You’re probably right.”
For a long time, they sat in sepulchral silence. Charlie couldn’t take it anymore. “So what, we give in to that lunatic’s demands?”
The Wanderer shook his head. “No. We’ll figure out another way.”
Rosa looked up in surprise. “Even if you have to reveal the truth?”
“I reckon it’s about time I faced up to it. Just have to decide the right way.”
“So we get in front of the story!” she exclaimed. “Errol, I’ve got an idea! Let m
e tell your story.”
The men looked at her. Errol beat Charlie to asking what she meant.
“Before Gerard can go to the police, I’ll tell your story in The New West. We’ll spoil his threat and get the American people on your side!”
“Heh,” he said. “You really think that will work?”
“Errol, I’ve been getting hundreds of thousands of hits on my articles about you. Not only that, but a lot of people are writing in. They think the Wanderer is a true American hero!”
It sounded pretty good to Charlie, but his partner took this all in without a flicker of emotion.
“Will they still think the Wanderer is a hero when they learn what I did?” asked Errol.
“I do. Charlie does.”
Kid Hunter offered a thumbs-up.
The Wanderer still looked uncertain.
“All we have to do,” said Rosa, holding out her hands like the scales of Lady Justice, “is put the truth against the context of you roaming the West saving lives. We’ll let the people decide whether you’re a good man or not.”
The Wanderer stroked the long stubble on his chin. “I reckon that might work, but we’d have to act fast. The police could still arrest me as long as Gerard’s in charge of the company. My original plan was to go to the board and convince them to vote to have me replace Gerard as CEO. We’ll have to time this article to come out just before the vote.” He sighed. “I don’t know. Kid, what do you think?”
Charlie grinned, “I think you’re going to need someone to watch your back.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
A Job is a Job.
The Wanderer entered a Greco-Roman paradise of olive trees, painted urns, and marble columns. Clashing with the classical ambience were neon-lit slot machines that dinged loudly over the groans of the clientele.