Made in the U.S.A. (7 page)

But Nechia knew someone who could find out.

Her brother-in-law, Foster, worked in the records department of a prison just outside Vegas. Ely State. And since both were state prisons, she bet Foster could find out more about Jim McFee. Nechia said she’d give him a call at home that night. Then she asked Lutie to come back late the next afternoon, sometime between five and six. She said she’d share whatever she learned . . . if anything.

Lutie was in such a good mood when she left the office that she wasn’t even mad when she discovered that Fate had disappeared. She found him a few minutes later at the crap table where she’d almost lost him earlier. He was standing between a middle-aged woman screaming, “Come seven!” and a man blowing on a pair of dice just before he flung them the length of the table, where they landed to cheers and complaints from the crowd gathered there.

“Come on, Fate.”

“Lutie, watch this. See the man with that stick? Well—”

“Fate! We’ve got to stay on the path for kids or—”

“It’s called the nongaming walkway.”

“Right. Now come on! I’ve got to come back here tomorrow, but if we get kicked out—”

“Lutie, did you know that on six-sided dice, the opposite sides always add up to seven?”

Once they were back on the walkway, headed toward the exit, Lutie said, “Guess what? That jerk at the Hotel Nevada told us the truth. I think you scared him with that business about him being a perv. That’s why he told us about this place.”

“So Daddy really did work here? Did you find out where he is? Did you ask if—”

“A woman’s gonna try to help us, Fate, but she might not know anything for a day or two.”

As they passed a snack bar, Fate said, “Lutie, I’m starving. How much money do we have left?”

“Not enough.”

“I thought we might buy a hamburger. We could split it and—”

“We’re not in Spearfish anymore, Toto. Look up there.” She pointed to a menu posted over the grill. “Cheeseburger,” she read. “Nine ninety-five.”

“Wow. You think we’ve got enough to buy a bag of chips?”

“We’d still be hungry.”

“Then . . .”

“We’ll find a way. Let’s go.”

In the next block, Lutie led Fate up a winding staircase and into the Monte Carlo. “Now, stay behind me and keep quiet or we’ll both starve.”

At the first restaurant they came to, a place called the Garden Café, they stepped to the back of a line of people waiting to be seated. Lutie shot Fate a warning glance when they reached the front, where a hostess said, “Two for dinner?”

“Three, actually,” Lutie said. “Our grandmother’s playing poker, but she’ll join us in a minute.”

Lutie and Fate followed the hostess to a booth and took the menus she offered. “Your waitress will be with you soon.”

Fate studied his menu for several minutes, then peeked over the top and whispered, “What can I have, Lutie?”

“Whatever you want. All you want. This might have to do us for a while.”

“Hi, I’m Gail. I’ll be your server today,” the waitress said. “I understand there’ll be three at your table. Would you like to wait until the other member of your party arrives before you order?”

“No, our grandmother told us what she wanted, so I guess we’re ready.” She cut her eyes at Fate. “Isn’t that right, little brother?”

“I’ll have the fried-chicken dinner,” he said, “mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob, a side order of green beans, and Texas toast. Three slices, please. Also, a piece . . . no, two pieces of chocolate pie.”

“My,” Gail said, “you’ve got a big appetite, don’t you?”

“Boys,” Lutie said with distaste in her voice. “They eat like pigs, don’t they?” Then, without waiting for a comment, she ordered the same meal Fate had. “And our grandmother wants two supreme pizzas.”

“Two? They’re rather large.”

“So’s our grandmother. And Cokes. We’ll all have Cokes.”

“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 Fate 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

T
HE 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.