The Neon Boneyard

by Craig Schaefer

  “Detective Kemper,” Gary said, flashing his shield at the closest uniform. “Got the hostage negotiator here, straight from the FBI.”

  The cop squinted at me. “We didn’t hear anything about a negotiator. Who called the feds in?”

  “Were you planning on not negotiating?” Gary shook his head like he’d just heard the dumbest thing in the world. “Look, you can let this guy do his thing, or you can be the one who explains why you, yes, you, personally, kept us waiting while the commish and the mayor were being held at gunpoint. I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, pal, but it’s not a good career move.”

  He let us through. In passing, he nodded at my shoulder. “What’s the sack for?”

  I patted the canvas mailbag. It trailed behind me, swaying across my back like a beggar’s cloak.

  “Pizza,” I said. “Trust me, I’m a negotiator. The bad guys always want pizza.”

  The entrance to the park was through the visitor’s center, a glass-fronted building with three sharp white peaks, flaring out like a nun’s wimple. A woman’s body lay facedown on the sidewalk out front, sprawled between a pair of pebble beds with a bullet in her back—the employee they’d gunned down on their way in.

  I glanced up the street, past the front doors. The museum shared a block with the Siegel Suites, a three-story motel ringed by palm trees. One look, that’s all I allowed myself, catching the distant glimmer of movement on the motel rooftop. Caitlin and Jennifer were getting in position, laying the foundation for my plan, but the rest was all on me.

  On me, and on Canton’s wand. My experiments, my attempts to control its dormant power, had all ended in failure so far. And here I was, about to try again. This time, though, there was more at stake than a little pride: I was betting my life, Seabrook’s, Harding’s, and my brother’s on it.

  One of the doors opened, and I stared down the barrel of a gun. A man in a black balaclava grunted at me.

  “That’s close enough,” he said. “Your gun. Toss it.”

  I took the pistol out with two fingers, nice and easy, and set it on the pebbles.

  “And your cards. We know you, Faust.”

  I had a vague, fuzzy hope that they might slip up and let me in with my deck of cards, but I knew better than to count on it. Unlike most of the goons I went up against, the Network actually knew who they were dealing with. The cards joined my gun on the ground.

  A stiff night wind kicked up. The breeze took my cards and sent them flying, fluttering across the cordoned-off street, forming ribbons at my back as they scattered and danced away.

  “What’s with the sack?” he asked me.

  “You wanted me to bring Canton’s top hat and his wand, didn’t you? C’mon, I’m not going to wear a top hat in public. Who does that?”

  He thought it over, shrugged, and waved me closer with the barrel of his gun.

  “Come inside,” he said. “She’s been waiting for you.”

  41.

  Beyond the visitor center, double doors opened onto the museum lot. The grounds were a loving tribute to Vegas history, a sprawling maze of salvaged signs from the city’s birth through its golden years to today. There was the jagged flair of the Stardust’s marquee, the Arabian Nights spire of the Sahara Hotel, the sleek red lines of the Riviera. Memories of casinos long gone, nothing left of them but siren calls forged from neon and steel.

  The signs and the footlights sat dark tonight, shadows under a muddy sky, and the only light came from the strobing police barricade beyond the perimeter wall. My host in the balaclava gave me a nudge with the barrel of his gun, marching me deeper inside.

  They had five hostages, not three. Along with my brother, Seabrook, and Harding, a pair of employees sat kneeling and cuffed with zip ties in the heart of a small clearing. They were sweating, but they weren’t bleeding. Teddy was the most disheveled of the bunch, his shirt torn and his face scuffed. He’d tried to fight. I figured he would. My escort in black had a pack of friends. I counted eight heads and eight guns, mostly rifles with a few sidearms in the mix. A couple circled the kneeling hostages like sharks. Another walked the top of a low steel sign, patrolling like a prison guard on a catwalk. They didn’t look nervous.

  Teddy’s eyes went wide when he saw me, but he kept his lips tight. I didn’t have time for a family reunion anyway. Ms. Fleiss, back in her human form, was striding my way.

  “If he takes one step toward his brother,” she said, “shoot him. In fact, shoot them both.”

  Now I had eight muzzles pointing right at me. Fleiss stood before me, imperious.

  “That was the plan, wasn’t it?” she asked. “We are aware of some of the wand’s properties. You were going to feign a surrender, lay hands on your brother, and teleport him to safety.”

  I let my shoulders sag, just a little. “You got me.”

  “And leave the others to die.” Fleiss tilted her head. I watched my reflection in her onyx sunglasses.

  “What can I say?” I replied. “I’m ruthless like that.”

  “Hand it over. Now.”

  I gave her the mailbag. She shook it out between us, opened it with both hands, and peered inside. Then she looked up at me, somewhere between puzzled and irritated.

  “What is this?”

  “Oh, that’s an empty sack,” I said.

  “You’re playing games with me? Now? With your brother’s life hanging in the balance? What do you think you’re doing, Faust?”

  “We were already playing a game. Your game, Elmer Donaghy’s, the monsters you both answer to. I didn’t have a choice. You forced me to join in. But here’s the thing: I’ve always believed that if you don’t like the rules of the game you’re playing, change the rules. If you can’t do that, cheat like your life depends on it.”

  Fleiss glanced to the closest gunman and snapped her fingers.

  “You. If Mr. Faust doesn’t produce the wand and the hat in the next ten seconds, shoot his brother in the left kneecap.”

  Teddy had kept his silence, not sure how to play this, but now he shot a nervous look in my direction. “Uh, Dan?”

  “We will start with the left kneecap,” Fleiss told me.

  “I came here with a gamble in mind,” I said. “Did you know the wand only works when you’re trying to save a life?”

  She curled her lips in a sneer. “Yes. And to transport someone away from danger, it only works with direct physical contact. There’s ten feet between the two of you, and unless you’ve developed some remarkable new abilities since we last met, you can’t outrun a bullet.”

  “That’s not the gamble I’m making. And it’s not his life I’m trying to save.”

  I flexed my wrist, triggered the spring sheath, and Canton’s wand dropped into my outstretched fingers. A spark of raw magic surged along my arm and the wand kicked in my hand like a conductor’s baton.

  I touched the bone tip to Fleiss’s heart, grabbed the rim of the sack with my other hand, and pulled it over both of our heads. The canvas billowed down and the darkness swallowed us whole.

  * * *

  The first and only time I’d teleported with the wand, it had been almost instantaneous. One moment I’d thrown myself into a locker and shut the door, the next I was bursting out onto a catwalk twenty feet above a firefight.

  This time, the darkness in-between lingered. I felt the bag trying to open, straining against my willpower as it struggled to disgorge its passengers. I breathed slow and steady, steeling myself.

  Beside me, Fleiss wheeled around, flailing in all directions and clawing at the void.

  “Where are we?” she snapped. “Let me go. Let me go!”

  “The wand wouldn’t work if you weren’t in danger, isn’t that right?”

  “Meaningless.”

  “It wouldn’t work if I wasn’t trying to save you,” I said. “If I didn’t want to help you.”

  She turned on me, seething. “I don’t need your help.”

  A thin gray rectangle opened in t
he darkness, off to our left. The exit. I wouldn’t be able to hold the bag back much longer before it spewed both of us out into the world again.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “Who taught you?”

  “What?”

  “Simple question. You’re a witch. Who taught you how to use magic?”

  “My…my lord did.” Fleiss took a halting half step back. “He created me. He taught me everything I know.”

  “Really? Is he a witch?”

  Her jaw clenched, her bottom lip starting to tremble. “No, but he knows things.”

  “Tell me about one time,” I said. “One memory where he taught you something. I mean, you must remember, right? I could tell you stories for days about when I was learning magic. Tell me one of yours.”

  “I don’t…I don’t want to.”

  “There’s one thing no magician ever forgets: the first time a spell actually worked. Everybody has a story about that. Tell me yours. What was it? What did you do?”

  The fuzzy gray oblong kept growing. Fleiss spotted it. She ran over, hooked her fingers around the edges, and tried to wrench it open.

  “He didn’t create you,” I said. “He just stole you. But this is your chance. You can run. You don’t have to go back to him. Let me help you. Let me take you home.”

  “He is my home,” she shouted, her voice edged with jagged-glass desperation.

  I only had a few seconds before the spell would shatter, before she’d escape and I’d lose any hope of saving her. There was one card left to play, the words of the Lady in Red.

  “What is a witch’s creed?”

  She froze. The oblong grew to the size of a door, crackling with static and cold gray fog. Wide open, but she didn’t step through.

  “You’re a witch,” I said, “so tell me: what is a witch’s creed?”

  “Freedom,” she whispered, in a voice too soft for the power of the word. A voice that didn’t believe.

  Then she plunged her arms into the gray and the spell ruptured, spitting us both into reality with a dizzying, ear-popping lurch of motion. I spilled onto hard gravel, rolling, and Caitlin’s hands caught me. She helped me up and Jennifer rushed to stand at my side.

  Wind whipped by, icy and swift, and I snatched the second half of the plan—the other canvas sack, my intended destination—before it could blow off the edge of the roof.

  We were on the other end of the block, up on the roof of the Siegel Suites. Fleiss looked to the distant cordon and then to the neon boneyard on the far side of a wall of cops. Her nails stretched, turning jagged and black, as she turned to face us.

  “I will kill you all,” she whispered.

  “Thank you,” I said. The wand flared, sensing the threat, and Caitlin and Jennifer both touched my shoulders. One riffle of canvas, a glimmer of shadow, and we were gone.

  * * *

  Caitlin was the first to burst loose on the other side, breaking free from the billowing sack in a full-on sprint. She ran, low like a panther, drawing a crackle of gunfire as she scrambled up a cold neon sign. The shooter on the makeshift catwalk had just enough time to scream before she was on him, her shark’s teeth tearing into his throat.

  The distraction turned heads and bought us the two seconds we needed, popping out right on her heels. One for Jennifer to toss me the backup deck of cards she’d been holding onto, and one for me to let it fly. The cards flew in a hornet swarm toward the hostages and I twirled my wand, evoking Canton’s Multiplication. Fifty-two cards sprouted and became five hundred and twenty, forming a whirlwind. A desperate peal of bullets plowed into the cards, dropping a handful to the dust, but the hostages inside the fluttering shell were still in one piece.

  Jennifer broke right, chrome gleaming in her fist. She let off two shots and a gunman’s head snapped back, blood spray trailing him down like an arc of wet rubies in the dark. I grabbed his fallen rifle, swung the barrel around, and let it rip, lighting up the park with short staccato bursts.

  A thunderclap sounded from the visitor center. The cops had heard the gunfire and assumed the hostages were being executed. They were coming in.

  I’m a lousy shot with a rifle, but all I had to do was keep the shooters by the exit pinned down. A ragged, wet howl off behind my left shoulder told me Caitlin was on the move, picking off anyone who tried to get close. Jennifer crouched low outside the whirlwind of cards, adding to the hail of bullets.

  My rifle ran dry as white smoke erupted from the visitor-center doors. More shots echoed from that direction, the hoarse shouts of the incoming SWAT troopers ringing out over the dying groans of one of Fleiss’s men. I tossed my empty weapon to the ground and let the whirlwind fall; playing cards clattered to the pavement in a cardboard hailstorm.

  Then I got on my knees next to the other hostages and laced my fingers behind my neck. Commissioner Harding was right beside me, looking like his eyes were about to jump out of his head.

  “Great job,” I told him. “Getting yourself free and grabbing a gun like you did, shooting all those bad guys. You saved us all.”

  The wind shifted and the white fog washed in. Sudden tears stung my eyes, and the back of my nose burned like I’d snorted a fistful of chopped red pepper. I looked to my left, seeing dark figures storm in through the smoke. And Caitlin and Jennifer, kneeling on my other side, following my lead and playing hostage. I figured I should say something pithy, but then I got a lungful of the smoke and the racking, heaving coughs began, and I couldn’t think about anything except how much I hated tear gas.

  42.

  Never underestimate people’s willingness to accept an obvious lie if it means they don’t have to think or work too hard. How had Earl Harding managed to slip his cuffs, overpower a gunman, steal his rifle, and kill at least six assailants without being shot? Because he was a goddamn hero, that’s why. Why did two of the bodies have .357 rounds in them, when the rifles were loaded with steel-cased 7.62? Silly question. You might as well ask why one of the corpses had his throat torn out and another was found with his chest ripped open, his shattered ribs bent outward like the bars of a broken cage.

  Or better yet, don’t ask at all. Especially when the police commissioner, the mayor, and six hostages all recited the same story. Anyone who poked around beyond that would get a very firm, very brusque phone call from city hall. At the end of the day, one thing was clear: people who wanted a long and happy career didn’t ask questions, and people who toed the line got a nice, discreet bonus with their next paycheck.

  My phone didn’t ring that night. Or the next day, or the next night. Teddy had just seen some impossible things, and he wasn’t ready to talk about it. I didn’t call him because…I want to say I don’t know why, but that’s not true. It was the realization that I’d managed to endanger his life just by brushing up against it.

  We’d been out of each other’s worlds for over twenty years, and the day after our reunion, I put him on the Network’s radar. Now they knew I had blood in town, they knew he was leverage, and they’d shown they weren’t afraid to use him. They’d do it again if I gave them the chance.

  So I couldn’t give them the chance.

  The first thing I did was call up some of my Commission buddies and swap a few favors. From that moment forward, Teddy and his family were under a discreet twenty-four-hour watch by hard-eyed guardian angels with guns. I couldn’t kid myself into thinking that would be enough. If I wanted to keep Teddy clear of the Network, I had to go after them head-on. Tear the whole thing down, or at least convince them that crossing me was the most expensive mistake they could ever make.

  Two days later, I got a chance to send a message. It came courtesy of Pixie, who had been tearing into Elmer Donaghy’s computer with a pair of tweezers and a microscope.

  “Still haven’t cracked their messaging protocol,” she told me, “but I’m getting closer. Need more samples. I did get something, though. Right before he left his hideout, Elmer was doing some online banking. He had a discretionary account, tied to
the waste-management company.”

  I leaned in over her shoulder and nodded my admiration. “If it leads us to another Network front, we might just get that data you need.”

  “Oh, it led somewhere, all right.”

  She rattled a few keys, showed me what she’d found, and a light clicked on.

  * * *

  “Sir? Sir, you can’t go in there. Sir?”

  I ignored Harding’s receptionist and pushed my way into his office with a smile. He had a wall of awards, a folded flag under glass and another standing proud in the corner, and a credenza littered with photographs of him glad-handing every celebrity he’d ever coordinated a security detail for. He pushed himself up from behind his cluttered desk, scowling at me.

  “I just want to shake the hand of a hero,” I said. “You know this man saved my life? He’s a national treasure.”

  “It’s fine, Dottie.” Harding waved her back. “He can come in. Briefly.”

  The door swung shut behind me. He took his seat. We didn’t shake hands.

  “I don’t know what kind of deal you’ve got going on with the mayor,” he told me, “and I don’t want to know, but get this straight: do not show your face around here. The last thing I need is anyone seeing us together.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Under present circumstances, especially.”

  His brow furrowed. “Present circumstances?”

  “You really are a hero. I hear you’ve been getting phone calls. Today wants to have you on the show. Might even get a five-minute spot on Jimmy Kimmel if you play your cards right.”

  His smile was more of a smirk. Tiny and mean.

  “Well, I did fight off a gang of terrorists and save the day. Hell, I’ve got people asking about the movie rights. Might have to hire an agent.”

  “You know, it’s funny,” I said. “In the aftermath, once the smoke settled, I started thinking. And there was one thing, one…little detail that just didn’t ring right. You ever speak to a man named Mr. Smith? He’s a fixer for the Network.”