by Farris, John
"Cheerio, dear one," Eden said.
Chapter 26
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
OCTOBER 21
9:20 P.M. PDT
Lourdes, Lewis Gruvver's sister-in-law, put their rambunctious kids to bed (too many kids, Lewis thought, wondering if he had it in him ever to be a daddy) with Charmaine's easygoing assistance. Lewis gave his half brother Cornell a hand clearing the soak-proof foam plates, empty one-liter plastic soda bottles, and other trash from the patio where they'd feasted on West Texas barbecue and some Honduran specialities from Lourdes's kitchen. Los Lobos on the speakers concealed in low shrubbery around the stake-fenced backyard and pool. Big black western sky with a gaunt moon and field of stars thick as crusty sugar on a doughnut.
While the women wrangled the youngsters with good-natured threats about their prospects for longevity if they didn't cooperate, Lewis and Cornell lit up two of the El Sublimados from the box of cigars Gruvver had brought along with a gift bottle of golden tequila, and they settled down on redwood gliders padded with fiesta cushions. A radiant heater on a pole nearby cut the gathering chill of high desert night.
Sports talk, then technical, aficionado car talk that aroused in both men the lust of pornography without the dirty words.
Cornell was ten years older than Lewis, just into his forties and with the gut of a settled-in family man, half a head of red-toned hair. He had a serious way of cocking his head to listen or observe. A slow-talking man with a deep voice, he only stuttered occasionally, having worked hard to overcome that blight in his life.
"So what's your interest in luh-Lincoln Grayle?" he asked, after their passion for hot wheels neither of them could afford had been talked to death.
"I heard he puts on a damn fine show. You seen it?"
"No. I'll go to hear Gladys Knight or Lou Rawls anytime. Lourdes can get me to Gloria Estefan without too much fuss. But magic shows're not my thing. There's a glut of 'em here anyhow. The Grayle Theatre's an expensive ticket, I know that, but they still sell out even though plenty of the hotel shows got rigor moths from the fuckin' economy." He looked in admiration at the cigar between his fingers. "Man, this here is a smoke. That cuh-cognac flavor comes right through, don't it?"
"Best smoke for the money I know of. By the way, Mama said to deliver you a message. E-mails are fine, and she knows you're a busy man, but she'd like for you to put the kids on the phone once in a while so she can hear their voices again before she's gone stone deaf."
"Her hearing's got that bad?"
"She hears what she wants to. Don't have any trouble singin' in the choir, Rascalla tells me."
"I invited her out to visit twice this year already" Cornell said with a defensive shrug. "Said I'd gladly put up the fare."
"You bring up the subject of manned flight, Mama says ain't no way, I'm not ready to be wait-listed for Eternity."
Cornell laughed. "Heard Peabo's latest fiancée bailed on him short of the altar. Too bad he couldn't hang on to this one. What I saw of her, she had auspicious ways."
"Yeah, Peabo. If love was golf, he'd be a do-over." Cornell cocked his head. "You hear that?"
"What, coyote?"
"It's quiet in the house. Mercy! We got through another day without a trip to the ER." He exhaled a perfect smoke ring in the direction of the moon. "And Lourdes is already talkin' up number five, if you can believe that."
"Well, Cornell, reckon you own the faucet, you can ration the water."
"It's a superstitious thing with Lourdes; or, you know, the Catholic influence that is in her blood, even though she don't practice. Those half-crazed priests they get in the deep buh-back country down there in Central America? Tell a woman that if she deliberately blocks a child from bein' conceived, then the Lord will surely smite her for it, take away one she's already got."
"The female mind. Need a road map nobody's invented yet."
"Speaking of women—that is one terrific package keepin' you company now. What she wants with a empty-pockets 'Lanta police like yourself?"
"I'm cute," Gruvver said, feeling relaxed, blissful, and a little smug. "Say, Charmaine's dying to see Lincoln Grayle. Think you could get us comped for his show?"
"Not me. Lourdes probably can, but I believe they're duh-dark right now. He's on vacation or shooting a TV special, Africa, I think it said in the paper."
"What do you know about Grayle, Cornell?"
"What I told you. That theatre's earned him a walk-in freezer full of cold cash. He's a big Vegas booster, like wuh-Wayne Newton. Sponsors a big tennis tournament for charity. I don't think I've heard a word said against him, which is not true of plenty other celebrities earn their bread here. Bad drunks, whore stompers, casino welshers. And you know somethin'? Most of those male actors look so imposing on the movie screen, they're runts. Need a stepladder to see over a dime." Cornell looked at the flicker of a bat just above the pool, a spreading ring in the water where an insect had been. "So where's your question comin' from?"
"Oh, I don't know. Just some coincidences got me to thinking."
"You on a case, Lewis?"
"Was." Gruvver explained about the murder of the evangelist Pledger Lee Skeldon, and identical incidents involving other religious leaders. Then that business about the "Lucky Tickets" to the Lincoln Grayle show.
"I don't know yet about the 'Nam kid who took a bus ride down to L.A. to greet the Dalai Lama with a piranha kiss, but I'll be looking into that tomorrow while
Charmaine has a back rub and a facial. Also I wouldn't mind getting a look at the list they have of Lucky Ticket holders over at the Grayle Theatre. Those folks who rate a special audience with him after the show. They probably have photographs too, lucky folks arm in arm with Mr. Magic." Gruvver picked a fleck of wrapper leaf off his lower lip with an index fingernail. "Audience. Isn't that what they call it when the Pope visits with dignitaries at his home place in Rome?"
"Believe so. Lewis, you care to hear a piece of good advice?"
"Why not?" Gruvver said, already sure of what Cornell's advice would be.
"You don't want to go near Lincoln Grayle or none of his people with off-the-wall speculations, especially since a vuh-visit by you is in no way connected to official business. Which you have no jurisdiction here anyhow."
"That's true." Gruvver placidly drew on his cigar, admiring his view of the starry night.
"It's all just a weird coincidence, what I'm saying."
"I've always found magicians to be a little scary, haven't you, Cornell?"
"Showmanship, man. Good scare is all part of the fun."
"Some of them are expert hypnotists too, aren't they?"
"Here it comes," Cornell said, puffing out his cheeks in exasperation. "What're you thinking, that Grayle is some kind of evil cult figure, follower of Satan, a spawn of the devil who can get people to do awful things against their will?"
"Spawn of the devil? Probably not. I wouldn't rule out that he is the devil." Gruvver put his cigar down on a smokeless ashtray and had a good stretch. "No matter he's not around this week, his business office will be open. I'll take a run over there tomorrow, see if they'll let me have a look at that list I'm curious about."
"Won't happen. You won't get to see nothing without a warrant, which a lawyer is going to read first under a microscope."
"Fuck warrants," Gruvver said, disagreeing with a smile. "Sometimes all you need to do is hit the right note of humble and nice to get their cooperation. One thing I do know about celebrities, there's no such thing as enough good PR."
The women had come out of the house and were walking toward them, ice cubes clinking in their glasses. Charmaine moved with the grace of a deer crossing a dawn meadow, head bent as she listened to squat, solid, cheerful Lourdes.
"And it's hard to say no to a pretty woman," Gruvver mused, studying on Charmaine, who lifted her head and called to him.
"Lewis! Lourdes is saying we don't want to miss the roller-coaster ride at the top of the Stratosphere. And tha
t other deal they got, the Big Shot, lifts you right to the tiptop of the needle and drops you, practically a free fall."
"Not tonight, girl. I'm digesting beans and barbecue and good tequila I don't want to be hurlin' all over Glitter Gulch. How about the late show at the Tropicana?"
"He means the Folies Bergere," Lourdes said with a laugh.
"Uh-uh. All those bare boobs? You don't need the stimulation."
"I take that as a compliment," Gruvver said, gathering Charmaine in with one arm. She perched in his lap with a twist and a wiggle and pressed her frosted margarita glass against his cheek as if branding him. He yelped, then had a sip of her drink. Lourdes laughing and laughing. Cornell still with his serious expression, head cocked to one side, watching Gruvver.
"You know there's twenty-four-hour wedding chapels all over Vegas," Lourdes said, giving Gruvver the needle, "and Cornell and me don't have anything to do for the next couple of hours."
"Gettin' hitched might spoil all our fun," Gruvver said, gazing up at Charmaine's face, waiting on that little lift of an eyebrow he knew was coming.
Charmaine bounced on him. "For sure it would spoil your life when my daddy got hold of you. You'd be better off dragged five miles behind a slow mule with a bad case of the farts. I'm still his baby and you better not forget it, Gruvver-man."
Chapter 27
ROME
OCTOBER 22
5:20 A.M.
"Have the police come up with anything?" Lincoln Grayle asked.
"If they have, we've not been notified" Tom Sherard said. "It's been a busy night for them anyway. There were eyewitnesses, but the closest was a block away."
"My chauffeur and one bodyguard are still unconscious in the hospital," Grayle said. "I called again before I came down to see you. As you may have heard, the other bodyguard is in the morgue. I'm sick about that."
"Were they reliable people?" Tom asked.
"I've used the same firm for years, every time I come to Rome. Sure, they're the best."
"Would you like coffee, Linc?" Bertie asked him.
"No, thanks. I'm coffee'd out." The magician flexed his talented large hands, strong-looking fingers a pickpocket or concert pianist would've envied, before clenching them helplessly. "I just wanted to express to you both how badly I feel about what's happened." He looked around the sitting room of the suite to which Eden Waring's doppelganger had not returned as if it were an uncomfortable stage without the props he was accustomed to, for bringing off miraculous reappearances. There was a suggestion of guilt in the set of his mouth. Bertie smiled sympathetically, poured tea for herself from the room-service cart, had another sidelong look at his aura, which was flashy as might be expected according to his personality and vibrant health, shimmering two feet out from his body, but also muddled by tension and sleeplessness at this melancholy hour. She settled herself by Tom again, crimson shuka floating around her bare ankles. There was a trace of light at the windows. A street sweeper passed on the Via Veneto, bringing dogs in their wrath to barred gates and windows along the wide avenue.
"The best I can come up with," Grayle reflected, "is that they were after me. But, if that were the case—"
"They shouldn't have taken Eden," Tom said. "There is a possibility they might have decided on her as a consolation prize, once they discovered you were not in the limousine as expected."
"Even if they didn't recognize Eden Waring?" Bertie said skeptically.
"An attractive young woman riding in a limo would indicate that eventually she could be worth money to them." To Grayle Tom said, "Did you let on to any of your chums who your date for the evening really was?"
"Of course not. I respected Eden's need for privacy."
"So what do we do now?" Bertie asked.
"Nothing to do but wait and hope we're contacted," Tom said, looking again at Grayle. "Do you plan to be in Rome for long?"
"I'll probably leave later today. After this most recent bombing, there's very little chance I'll be allowed to use the Colosseum for the illusion I planned. And I have plenty to do before I reopen my theatre in Vegas this weekend." He rose to his feet with a defeated little flourish of one hand. "We'll stay in touch," he said. "I do feel as if I let Eden down somehow."
Bertie spoke soothingly to him in a soft voice, accompanying him to the door in the trompe l'oeil vestibule of the suite. There, out of Tom's line of vision (he didn't happen to be watching anyway), she drew fingertips down Grayle's jaw that was blackening with stubble and gave him a mild kiss, sent him back to his own accommodations. She drifted again into the sitting room with a dense glazed face that wasn't entirely due to lack of sleep; Tom knew the look. She tasted and decided her tea had cooled too much and poured a fresh cup from the silver pot. Added sugar and milk, forgot that she had added sugar, and reached for more. Sherard's patience had ebbed.
"Bertie? What gives?"
"Oh," she said, shivering slightly as if he'd startled her. "Well, he's lying about something."
"About what happened to Gwen?"
"Relative to that." She walked around the pink marble floor with its oblongs of Turkish carpets, sipping from her teacup.
"Bertie," he said again.
She looked a little cross. "But I can't be specific. I'm able to brain-lock anyone. I can only Peep minds that are susceptible or unaware. His is neither."
"You have reason not to trust him, though. Or was it just one of your hunches?"
"Trust him? I'm afraid I haven't for a while. Linc is very sophisticated in defense of his arts, which may include the black arts. Always in control of himself, even while we were in danger at Amboseli." She whirled toward Tom before he could say anything, forgetting the teacup in her hand. The tea sloshed and burned her wrist. "Damn!" She put the cup down and licked. "By the way—something showed up in his aura that wasn't with him at Amboseli. A bullet fragment in his right shoulder. Big one. Maybe from a .470 or .50-caliber Kynoch. Recent wound. Happened only three or four days ago, I'd guess."
"And what does that tell us? One of his magic stunts went awry?"
"I'm not sure. I'll think about it. Meanwhile, shouldn't we get back to the real Eden Waring?"
"Yes. I'm afraid I've had a pretty bad thought. What if the kidnappers of her doppelganger have a change of heart and—"
"Try to do away with her? She can't be killed, Tom." Bertie drank her remaining tea. "You can't off a shape-shifter, either, as we've had a couple of chances to prove. At least not by conventional means." She crossed the sitting room, pulled Tom to his feet, put her arms around his neck, and rested her face in the hollow of his shoulder. She felt deeply flushed. He touched the back of her head, sensing the lightning inside her skull like a dim flare of firelight in a prehistoric cave.
"What unconventional means could be employed? Or is that too theoretical?"
"You could try pulling one of them apart atom by atom, and scattering those atoms from hell to breakfast. That would take a lot of energy. Probably enough to kill a couple of talented psychics in the bargain, even an Avatar."
"The only ammunition I've ever used is Kynoch," Sherard reminded her.
"I know."
He took a long breath and exhaled slowly, bathing an ear in his warmth; she shuddered slightly, holding him tighter.
"There's none better. But if 480 grains of powder can't get the job done—just what the hell are we in for, Alberta?"
"Not now. I need to talk to Eden. Then let's turn in and try to get some rest. Can I sleep with you, Tom?"
"No," he said, but in the timbre of his voice she detected reluctance to refuse her.
"Can I sleep next to you and be a perfect angel?"
"That you may."
"Good."
Chapter 28
CITTÀ DEL VATICANO
OCTOBER 22
3:25 P.M.
The ever-vigilant Laurent Colbert had detected a minute spot of relish from lunch—Leoncaro had invited as his guest the Black Pope (general of the Jesuits), whose guilt
y pleasure was American cheeseburgers—so there in his study on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace the Pope was obliged to hastily change into a fresh white satin cassock brought to him by his valet. While he was being buttoned up Leoncaro took advantage of this lull in his usual tightly scheduled day to study the photographs and quickly memorize the names of the eight American men whom, with their wives, he was about to meet. All were prominent lay Catholics singled out by their bishops for exemplary service and fund-raising prowess in their dioceses. Not incidentally, all of the men were members of Opus Dei, sometimes referred to by cynics or detractors as the "Holy Mafia." The uncompromising allegiance of Opus Dei to papal dogma was a source of comfort in these contentious days of cultural imperialism and secularism, and adversarial polemics from within the Church itself. (Speaking of certain members of the Curia he found it difficult to deal with, Leoncaro had grumbled to Colbert, "Whenever things are not going well with the home team, they invoke the spectre of Satan.")
Santa Rosa, California. San Antonio, Texas. Minneapolis, Minnesota—"I thought all of Minnesota had fallen into the hands of the Lutherans," Leoncaro said, setting up his joke as he and Colbert left the antechamber of the papal study and, for the fourth time that day, headed for the elevator that would take them to the appartamento nobile on the second floor, then down a corridor to the library. "Please fax Bishop Van Cuse my gratitude for sending me half of his flock today." The secretary chuckled dutifully. "Now tell me again, what is the business of Adamson from St. Louis?"
"His company distributes a line of processed meat products, Holiness."
"And is it Tubner or Taubner from California?"
"Tubner. Liquor wholesaler."
"Mad cow disease and double malt scotches" Leoncaro muttered, assuring himself of a couple of topics for conversation.