Made in the U.S.A. (8 page)

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 wads 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.”

“Listen to yourself, Lutie. We don’t have enough money for an order of fries, and the car is out of gas, we can’t even make a long-distance phone call, and you’re going to buy a pair of shoes.”

“Thongs, stupid, not shoes. Besides, I didn’t say I was going to buy them, did I?”

“Oh, I get it. You’re not going shopping, you’re going shop
lifting
.”

“No, I’m going window shopping. Just looking, that’s all. But when Daddy sends us some money—”

“
If
he sends us money.”

“Well, I can’t find out about him until late this afternoon. That’s what the woman at Harrah’s said. So let’s go back to the Strip and—”

“And do what? See the volcano explode again, watch the white tigers sleep?”

“Let’s go to that wedding chapel where Britney Spears got married. I’d like to see that. And we could go to the Elvis-A-Rama and the wax museum and the Hard Rock Cafe. Someone told me that—”

“And we can take our ‘grandmother’ with us. That’s all she’s talked about this whole vacation, eating at the Hard Rock Cafe.”

“I got you fed, though, didn’t I? And Granny, too.”

“Yeah,” Fate said grudgingly. “You did.”

When they reached the Pontiac and got shed of their dirty clothes, Lutie began to search for her lip liner. “So are you gonna go with me?” she asked.

“No. I think I’ll try to find that library.”

“Well, guess that’s why millions flock to Vegas every year. To spend days in the damned library.”

“Lutie, I’m not trying to be a hard case, but we did that tourist stuff yesterday and I don’t want to—”

“You meet me at six o’clock. And don’t be late because I won’t wait for you. If you’re here one minute past six, I’m gone.”

The Clark County Library didn’t open until nine, but Fate wasn’t the first there. The steps leading to the entrance were peppered with readers waiting to get in.

A Hispanic woman with a girl who looked to be seven or eight sat on the top step, flipping through pages of
The Lorax
. Two fair-skinned, redheaded teenagers, a boy and girl, each wearing a backpack, chatted in a language Fate didn’t recognize. An older man, dressed in baggy cargo pants, flip-flops, and a T-shirt with a faded peace sign, read a newspaper a couple of steps below where Fate was sitting.

A black woman in her thirties—obviously pregnant, hot, and tired—tried to corral a laughing toddler who was eating dirt as he ran circles around a palm tree growing near the stairs. An elderly white woman with a trickle of dried blood on her cheek sat on the bottom step beside a child’s wagon filled with paper sacks, a deflated basketball, a man’s worn work boot, a painted glass vase, and a small box of crumpled soda cans, glancing nervously about, guarding her possessions as if a thief might lurk nearby.

Fate studied the people around him from the oldest to the youngest, examined them as if he might be memorizing their images, wondering if one of them had left the note on Floy’s Pontiac last night. But he saw nothing in their eyes or demeanor that suggested any interest in him, nothing that gave away an intent to either harm or help him.

The library, a three-story building the color of rose rock, looked as if it had been constructed of giant concrete blocks stacked one upon another. But Fate was much less aware of the structure than of the people and the parking lot, wide and deep, fourteen rows stretching two football fields before him, the back row already parked with several vehicles that, he surmised, belonged to the librarians and staff.

Then, the sound of metal against metal—bolts sliding at the front door—signaled the opening of the library, prompting all those waiting to head for the entrance.

Fate was third in line at the front desk, standing just behind the teenagers, both of whom pulled books from their backpacks and pushed them across the counter to the librarian.

“So, Sena, what did you think of our Mr. Steinbeck?”

“I love this book,” the girl said with a strong European accent. “Now I will see the movie.”

“Uh-oh. Another James Dean fan in the making, huh? Do you know who he is?”

“Yes. Everyone in the world know James Dean, a beautiful boy.”

“And you, Josef? Did you read the book?”

“I tried,” he said, “but many idioms.”

When the teens’ business ended, Fate stepped up to the counter.

“What can I do for you, young man?”

“I’d like to get a library card,” he said.

“You have to be fourteen to get a card unless you have a parent or guardian sign our consent card. You’re not fourteen, are you?”

Fate shook his head.

“Do you have a school ID?”

“I just moved here.”

“Then . . .”

“Can I take the consent form with me? My dad’s not . . . well, he’s not in Las Vegas right now.”

“No, I’m sorry. You’ll need to have him or your mother with you so I can witness their signature.”

“How about my sister? Can she sign for me?”

“Yes, if she’s twenty-one.”

“Oh.” Unable to hide his disappointment, Fate turned away as if he intended to leave, but the librarian stopped him.

“You don’t need a card to read here. Stay all day if you want to.”

“Okay.” Grinning, he said, “Thanks, thanks a lot.”

He found the young people’s library on the third floor, and inside the circle of a round counter was a woman wearing a construction paper crown with “jewels” cut from bright reds, blues, and greens.

“Hi,” she said, flashing a smile. “Need any help?”

Fate would probably have said no, would probably have been content to wander around silently, running his fingers over the spines of books, reading their titles, loving the book smell that was, for him, sweeter than the smell of Floy’s hot apple pies just out of the oven.

But by then, he’d spotted the computers. Six of them. Two taken by the redheaded teenagers, leaving four free.

“Yes. I’d like to use a computer.”

“Great. Got plenty of room for you. If you’ll let me swipe your card, I’ll—”

“Oh, I don’t have a card. Yet.”

“No problem. I can give you a one-day pass. That okay?”

“Great. That’s great.”

“Here you go, but remember, it’s only temporary.”

“One day,” he said. “Yes, I know.”

As soon as he was settled, he Googled “newspapers” and pulled up the
Rapid City Journal
. In the archives, he started with the day after the night Floy had died. He found the story on the front page, all the details including his and Lutie’s names.

He found Floy’s obituary printed in the next day’s paper as well as a story about his and Lutie’s “disappearance.” The article said the police “did not believe the children had been victims of a crime, but admitted that they were missing, as was the automobile belonging to Ms. Satterfield.”