by Billie Letts
“Okay. I’ll get that turned in and have your drinks out in a jiffy,” Gail said.
As soon as she left the table, Fate whispered, “You think she suspects anything? We ordered a lot of food. And why’d you make that stuff up about our ‘grandmother’?”
“Fate, I told you to keep your mouth shut.”
“But—”
“If you give this away, get us caught, we’re probably gonna go to jail.”
Lutie didn’t have to repeat herself. The word jail made Fate shrink back into his side of the booth, his lips pressed together as if they were glued.
When Gail brought the tray containing their food and began to load dishes onto their table, she said, “Your grandmother’s not here yet?”
“Oh, she came by,” Lutie said. “Seems like she’s having a run of good luck right now. Guess she’ll eat later.”
“Sure. If she’s winning, she won’t care if her pizza gets cold.”
“No, she’s funny that way. I think she’d rather win than eat.”
“Okay. You kids need anything else, give me a wave.”
“Thanks.”
Fate dug into his food like a hungry hound. Before Lutie had finished with the salt and pepper, unwrapped her straw, and buttered her corn, Fate had eaten his fried chicken and most of his potatoes.
“Slow down, Fate. We don’t have to hurry.”
“I think we should eat fast and get out of here . . . if we can. But this sure is good,” he said, his upper lip sporting a mustache of milk gravy. “What’re we going to do with our ‘grandmother’s’ pizza?” he asked.
“Why, we’ll put it in a to-go box and take it to her.”
“Good idea. She’ll be hungry.”
By the time Fate finished the last piece of chocolate pie, Lutie was coasting to a stop. “Now, here comes the waitress. Don’t act surprised by anything I say.”
“So, she never made it, huh? Your grandmother.”
“No, but we’ll take her pizza to her in a to-go box. She’ll eat it later in our room.”
“Oh, you’re staying here in the hotel.”
“Right.”
“So will you be signing your check to your room, or—”
“To the room.”
“All right. I’ll be back with your ticket, a takeout box—”
“And another piece of chocolate pie,” Fate said. “For my grandmother.”
“Okay.”
“Now, listen,” Lutie said. “When she packs up the food, you take it and leave.”
Fate began to fidget, looked stricken.
“Fate, goddammit, don’t panic. You’re gonna be fine. Leave the casino fast, but don’t run. And try not to look like you’ve just committed murder. Understand?”
Fate nodded.
“Go the way we came in and meet me at the car.”
“The car,” he said, his courage wavering, his voice sounding far less confident than when he’d ordered pie for his “grandmother.”
“You think you can find it?” Lutie asked.
“What?”
“The car, you idiot. The car.”
“Yes.”
Moments later, with his arms cradling Styrofoam boxes, Fate strode toward the exit, making sure to stay on the nongaming walkway and following Lutie’s instructions exactly, although, unaware of his own demeanor, he did move as if he’d just cut someone’s throat.
Lutie moved the Pontiac a little before midnight, surprised it hadn’t been towed despite new parking tickets papering the windshield . . . and relieved the interior had cooled down to a temperature that might not cook them in their sleep.
Because the gas gauge registered below empty, she couldn’t chance driving far, but as it turned out, she didn’t have to. A few blocks away, Fate spied a fenced construction site that, according to what he could see as they circled the area twice, looked to be unguarded.
He’d unlatched the gate without much trouble, then scouted the grounds, creeping from spot to spot in the dark, peering around corners of an unfinished building already stretching some dozens of stories into the air, little more than a skeleton now of what it would become.
He checked out the heavy equipment—one very large crane and two smaller ones; motor-driven scissor lifts; several tractors and backhoes; flatbed trailers loaded with steel beams, pipes, concrete blocks; and two pickups, either of which could have a night watchman sitting inside, but neither did. Good sign or bad? Good if one watchman had walked off the job and a new one hadn’t been hired yet. Bad if the guy had slipped out to check the perimeter or to visit a nearby bar, tossing back a few as Fate’s father had done, causing him to be fired as regularly as a Friday paycheck.
Fate knew something about a construction site because his father had taken him to one just before he left Floy and the kids. Jim McFee, always a big talker who pretended to know more about everything than he actually knew, showed his boy the equipment and how it was used, throwing in a story here and there of some incident that made him seem, if not brave, at least important.
A few days later, a Friday payday, he was gone, headed to Las Vegas to make the fortune he felt awaited him there.
Finally, when Fate had completed his preliminary inspection, he motioned Lutie to pull in but warned her to keep the car lights off.
After he rewired the gate, he guided Lutie to a spot between the ground floor of the building and a huge pile of sand, a space almost entirely hidden from the street.
“What do you think?” Fate asked as he joined Lutie in the car.
“Perfect.”
“It is unless you count the rats in the Dumpsters or the snakes that slither into cars with open doors.”
“Stop it!” she said, already pushing debris from the seats onto the floorboards. “Get Floy’s afghans from the trunk. We can use them for pillows.”
As soon as they were bedded down, Fate said, “You know, Lutie, we’ll have to be out of here early. These construction guys probably start work by seven.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But if we stayed in a shelter—”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Fate? If we show up at a shelter, they’re gonna call the police or some child welfare agency. Besides, we’re not gonna live like this long. Let’s find out about Daddy first, then we’ll figure out the rest.”
Despite the heat, the discomfort of his “bed,” and his worry of being discovered, Fate—nearly asleep already—easily gave up the debate.
They’d had a long day. Even after hearing the bad news about their father, they’d found Las Vegas exciting, full of adventure, especially for a couple of kids from Spearfish, South Dakota.
They’d walked the Strip dozens of times, exploring the casinos and taking in the sights like a couple of carefree tourists. They’d strolled through the Forum Shops—a “forced march,” according to Fate—and watched the talking statues come to “life” at Caesars Palace; conned a free gondola ride at the Venetian; watched the volcano erupt and observed the white tigers as they slept behind glass at the Mirage. They’d seen the water ballet at Bellagio; stood through three acts at Circus Circus as jugglers, clowns, and aerialists performed; and shared in the fun of the pirate fight and the sinking of the ship at Treasure Island.
Fate, of course, peppered his conversations with bits of trivia that seemed appropriate to the spectacles of Vegas. For instance, when they went to Paris, he announced that four hundred sixteen people had committed suicide by jumping from the real Eiffel Tower in the real Paris; and at the Flamingo, he told Lutie that there were more plastic flamingos in the United States than real ones, a fact that actually made her laugh.
But Lutie had paid more attention to the cocktail waitresses in the casinos than to any of the sights. She’d studied their tight, showy costumes; the attention they received—almost entirely from men; and the bills and chips they were given as tips.
Now, after finishing off the last of “Grandmother’s” pizza and chocolate pie, both Lutie and Fa
te slept in Floy’s Pontiac at the back of a half-constructed building, their bodies curled and bent to fit the confines of the car seats, their faces dampened with sweat, two kids unaware and unconcerned with the glamour of the Las Vegas Strip only blocks away.
But they would have been aware and concerned if they’d seen a pair of dark eyes watching them, eyes that had been following them since the moment Lutie had driven through the gate and parked two stories beneath where he stood.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE SUN HAD just cleared Frenchman Mountain when Fate was half aroused from sleep by a popping sound that seemed to be coming from the roof of the Pontiac. Somehow he fitted the noise into his dream, a dream in which shots were being fired at him as he raced through darkened streets.
Moments later, as the sounds became more explosive, he awoke, sitting up in time to see several rocks bounce off the hood of the car.
He crawled out, shaded his eyes to scan the upper floors of the building beside him, but saw no one, nothing that looked out of the ordinary. However, just after he got back inside, another barrage of stones struck.
“Lutie,” he whispered, “wake up. We have to get out of here. Now.”
Since Lutie had slept through the noise of the riprap striking the automobile, Fate hadn’t expected a response to his warning, especially on his first attempt.
Well aware of his sister’s early morning tirades, he leaned over the front seat and nudged her shoulder, then pulled his hand back quickly before she had time to catch him and break one of his fingers.
But at that moment, another cluster of rocks, even larger and heavier than the last, bombarded the hood of the car, causing Lutie to bolt upright.
“What the hell’s going on?” she yelled in alarm. “Is this an earthquake?”
“No. That rubblework’s coming from one of those windows up there. I got out to look, didn’t see anyone. But someone’s there for sure. Might be the night watchman’s seen us, trying to scare us off.”
“Or maybe he’s trying to kill us.”
“Either way, we’d better get out of here.”
“Yeah.” Lutie started the car. “For once, I think you’re right,” she said as she raced across the lot.
She gunned the engine to show Fate her impatience as he worked to open the gate, then sped through after he succeeded, giving him only seconds to dive back in before she peeled out.
Once she was a safe distance away, she checked the rearview mirror to make sure they weren’t being followed. “Guess we got out just in time,” she said.
Fate turned to look back as a pickup followed by a panel truck pulled into the construction site.
“What do you think that was all about?” Lutie asked.
“I’m guessing the night watchman’s got him a cot set up on the second or third floor so he can sleep on the job. He probably didn’t hear us come in last night, but when he saw us this morning, he wanted us out of there before his boss showed up, figured out what was going on, and fired him.”
“Maybe,” Lutie said, but by then her attention had shifted. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Where?”
“There.” She pointed. “There on the hood.”
Fate followed her gaze to a slip of paper partially covered by a brick. As Lutie pulled to the curb, the paper fluttered in the breeze.
“I’ll get it,” he said. He got out, freed the paper, then tossed the brick onto the floorboard when he crawled back in.
“What is it?” Lutie asked.
Fate held out a jagged half page of smudged and stained paper torn from a notebook. The handwriting, in dull pencil, was uneven, some of the letters printed, others in cursive, a few of the words misspelled.
Together, he and Lutie read the message silently:
“You can park at the clark co. liberry on flamingo just east of maryland prkway. Sekurity usually walks around the liberry but not at the back of the parking lot.”
“Sounds like a trap to me,” Lutie said.
“Who would try to trap us?”
“That guard back at the construction site.”
“Lutie, if he’d wanted to catch us, he’d have done it there. Not at some library.”
“It was you, then.”
“Me? I was asleep. Besides, why would I do that?”
“Because you love libraries.”
“So how did I get up in that building and throw stones down on the car while I was in it?”
“I don’t know, but this note didn’t just fall on the hood under a brick, did it?”
“No,” he said as he stuffed the note in his pants pocket. “Someone put it there. Not me . . . but someone who wanted us to find it. You know, though, maybe we ought to go to this library, take a chance. See if—”
“Fate, we don’t even know where it is. Probably clear across town . . . and we’re out of gas. Out! Did you forget that little fact?”
“No, I didn’t forget.”
“Look, maybe it was some jerk who was trying to steer us wrong, get us in trouble.”
“Yeah. Like we’re not in enough trouble now.”
Lutie had no comeback to Fate’s comment. And the only person who knew at the moment just how much trouble this teenage girl and her little brother were in was the man with the dark, opaque eyes who watched the Pontiac until it turned a corner and disappeared from his sight.
Lutie squeezed into an unmetered parking space by pulling forward and back a half-dozen times, bouncing the Pontiac off a Toyota in front and a Mercedes behind, giving no thought to the damage she might have caused to either vehicle.
“I’m turned around,” Fate said. “We’re not close to where we parked yesterday, are we?”
“No, that’s on the other side of the Strip. We have to keep moving, keep changing places so we don’t draw attention. Big problem is gas. We’re so out we probably don’t even have enough left for a huffer to get high.”
“You haven’t ever done that, have you, Lutie?” Fate asked, unable to mask his apprehension. “You haven’t huffed, have you?”
“You are such a dweeb-brain. Now, let’s grab some clothes and get cleaned up.”
“I’m not dirty.”
“Then why do you smell like fungus feet?”
Lutie rummaged around in the plastic bags in the trunk until she came up with the least wrinkled clothes she could find for herself, along with a plaid shirt and almost clean jeans for Fate.
“Where are we going to get a shower?” Fate asked. “You thought of that?”
“We’re not, but we can take a whore’s bath in one of the casino restrooms.”
“Floy used to say she took a ‘whore’s bath,’ but I didn’t know why. She wasn’t a whore, was she?”
“You mean you couldn’t find ‘whore’s bath’ in one of your books of knowledge? No, she wasn’t a whore, but she was so fat she had trouble getting in and out of the bathtub. And I wasn’t about to help her. So she got naked, washed under her arms and between her legs with a wet, soapy rag, and called that a bath.”
“Oh.” Fate’s face and neck reddened up with embarrassment.
“Found out more than you wanted to know, didn’t you?” Lutie laughed at her brother’s discomfort. “There. Up on the corner. Terrible’s Casino. You can take your whore’s bath at Terrible’s.”
“How wonderfully appropriate.” Then he noticed a street sign, causing him to pull the note from his pocket. “Flamingo Road,” he said with excitement. “That’s where this library is.” He shoved the note at Lutie. “Clark County Library. See?”
Without a glance, Lutie said, “Whoopee.”
In the ladies’ at Terrible’s, she wet down a handful of paper towels at the sink, dousing some with hand soap from a wall dispenser. Inside a stall, she stripped, washed up, and changed into a pair of tight-fitting drawstring pants, pushing them so low that they barely covered her pubic hair. To avoid panty lines across her butt, she flushed her underwear down the toilet. After she padded her bra with w
ads of toilet paper, she pressed each cup until she had something on her chest resembling real breasts. Finally, she pulled on the sleeveless turtleneck she’d stolen from Wal-Mart the night Floy died, then went to the sinks to apply makeup.
A Mexican woman shining faucets watched Lutie for a few moments, then she pointed to a piece of toilet paper protruding from the armhole of the red turtleneck before she silently turned away and resumed her work.
After Lutie wet her hair, she pulled it up and fastened it with a plastic claw clamp, believing the style made her appear older. She then applied more makeup than usual, darkening her eyes with mascara and eyeliner until she had that Avril Lavigne look she was going for.
When she finished, she stood back from the mirror to test the high-fashion model pout she’d seen in magazines, along with her sexiest pose . . . making sure her toilet paper breasts were in proper position and of more or less equal size.
Just outside the bathroom door, she found Fate waiting for her. He’d washed his face, “combed” his hair with his fingers, and changed into the clothes Lutie had pulled from the trunk for him.
“What now?” he asked.
“We have to go back to the car. I forgot my lip liner.”
“Lutie, you’ve got on too much makeup now. You don’t need lip liner.”
“Yes, I do! And besides, I’m not going to carry around these dirty clothes all day. We can dump this stuff in the trunk so we won’t have to mess with it.”
“Then what?”
“I’m going to have my ears pierced and—”
“You had them pierced back in Spearfish. I remember because Floy had a fit when she saw them.”
“Well, dong-head, Floy’s dead, and we’re not in Spearfish, and I’m having my ears pierced again because I want a pair of black crosses to go with these.” She pulled out her earlobe to show him the tiny rhinestone studs she was wearing. “And I want a belly ring or a nose ring, I can’t decide. I might get both. And a tattoo. I’ve always wanted a pair of kissing lips right here on my neck so they’ll show.”
“You think sixty-two cents’ll cover three holes and a tattoo?”
“I’m going to get a Wonderbra, too, and a really awesome pedicure and a pair of lace thongs.”