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Authors: Marlys Millhiser

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“Look, I may have elastic morals, and I wasn't there when Officer Graden got hit by that car, but I do know Pat Thompson was cold-bloodedly murdered. And Evan? Yesterday, I saw one of the goons who did it—he was in the Jacuzzi with me and Richard at the Vegas Hilton.”

“‘Elastic morals'?” His teeth didn't glint like Mitch Hilsten's but they showed off nicely against the olive skin and the dark clothing. The sight reminded Charlie that Libby's braces came off next month. “Charlie, who told you that? You are a very moral person. You're one of the straightest people I know.”

That says something about where you come from, guy.

“Which is why I need to ask you a favor.” He leaned toward her so earnestly, the flower at his throat nearly brushed his dirty plate.

“Because I'm morally straight, or because I'm seeing a conspiracy here, or because I'm your agent?” Actually, it took the whole agency to handle Evan Black. But Charlie got to take him out to lunch because he seemed to “interface” with her best. More bluntly, in his short association with Congdon and Morse, Charlie seemed able to talk Evan into or out of things Richard wanted him into or out of. “And what do I get in return?”

“Now you're talking.” He actually rubbed his hands together. “I'm going to offer you some totally free information.”

“Yeah, right.” Charlie slipped the agency's credit card to the waiter, who seemed disappointed he couldn't skewer them further.

“Charlie, I'm the one Patrick Thompson was flying over Yucca Mountain.”

“You?”

“Well, me and Mel, my main man on the camera, and Toby, my second-unit gofer.”

“And in return for this stunning piece of information, I am to…”

“Take a ride with me and Caryl? And Mel? There's something I want to show you.”

“In your plane.”

“Right.”

“No deal. I hate flying.”

“You're on a plane to New York every other time I call the agency.”

“That's because I have to for my job. I love my job. This, I don't. So, no thanks.”

When they were out in his car, he tried again, “I didn't think you were afraid of anything—fear of flying? Shit, this is even better.”

“I'll take a cab back to the Hilton.”

But his Land Rover pulled out into traffic. “Charlie, aren't you wondering what this is all about?”

“Well, let's see—two murders, a totally nasty type in the Jacuzzi with me”—not to mention an almost sexual attack by a Tami bodybuilder, and getting fired by a midlist author—“and I've been here what, three days?”

“No, not that—what I'm all about? What am I always all about. Really?”

Charlie had to stop and think. “Your work.”

“Hey, same as you. Right?”

“So Yucca Mountain, conspiracy, and all this is … the next film?” You didn't use the word
movie
with this type.

“Charlie, come with us. It's not nearly as dangerous as driving the Four-oh-five to work every day. Besides, you love to gamble.”

“Not with my life, I don't. Why can't we drive?”

“Take too long.”

“I'm on vacation. I have time.”

“The roads are restricted.”

“Evan, tell me this doesn't have anything to do with the tiny town of Rachel and Area Fifty-one. Please?”

He grinned and pulled onto Maryland Parkway.

“You're kidding. Not you. That's been parodied on every TV network and cable too. It's so old, it's panned in commercials. There are people on the Internet bragging about taking photographs of each other peeing on the black mailbox. That story is a dead story.”

Reaching across her, he pulled out a thick envelope from the glove compartment and began sorting through colored photographs as he drove.

Barry and Terry smiled at her from a mammoth billboard sporting the moral
ALL THE NEWS YOU NEED, WHEN YOU NEED IT
. Terry's teeth were brilliantly clean, but somebody had been taking drive-by potshots at Barry that had pretty much torn away one cheek and drooped his smile like the Phantom of the Opera's.

Evan handed her one of the photos. It showed a lean guy in Dockers pants and backpack clearly urinating against a post, grinning over his shoulder at the camera. You could just make out the tip of his penis at the end of his cupped hand and the lack of graffiti on the white mailbox atop the post.

“So?”

“So, I'm not as out of the traffic pattern as you think. So, I have a very good reason to want to involve you in this new project outside your wonderful agenting skills—two reasons, actually. And so”—he turned a quick grin to her before returning it to the traffic—“if you knew about the brouhaha on the Internet about the desecrating of the sacred black mailbox, you had to have been interested enough to go looking for it there, right?”

“But you'll be the laughingstock of the industry. Why would you do that to yourself? And this is a white mailbox. I know you, Evan, and your work. You are not into alien abduction and that kind of stuff.” The black mailbox belonging to a rancher was the only sign on a least-traveled road that told the woo-woo nuts where to turn off to the undisclosed Groom Lake air base, and peeing on it had become a sort of in-joke.

“Forget the fucking mailbox. It's probably been painted orange with blue daisies by now. What is the one constancy in my diverse works?”

“The critics seem to think you have different themes … all presented with dark humor.” Charlie had to be very careful when it came to talking “English lit.” That was her major in college, and everything she'd learned had been turned inside out once she'd hit live publishing in New York, where she'd worked until a little over three years ago. She could still spout the jargon, but without much conviction. “At least you have themes.”

“Exactly. And my theme in this project is conspiracy.”

“That's a theme?”

“People's use of and need for it is. You are obviously a subject to explore, since you hold to the conspiracy theory on Pat's and Officer Graden's deaths. You are determined that you are a connection and somehow partly responsible. And you checked out Rachel and Groom Lake on the World Wide Web.”

“Didn't Mel Gibson do this a couple of years ago?”

“We'll use a different title. And I have still another request to ask of you.”

“I haven't granted your first request yet.”

“We are making progress though—I've got you up to ‘yet.' Charlie, I want to approach Mitch Hilsten about this project. What do you think?”

“You know damn well there isn't an actor in Hollywood who wouldn't give his swimming pool to work with you and get to go to Cannes and Telluride and all. I would assume it would depend on his schedule. But Evan, you don't want him.”

“Of course I do. Who wouldn't?”

“He believes in this stuff. Really believes. Do you hear what I'm saying?”

“Yes, darling. That's why I want him.” And the Land Rover swirled into the Las Vegas Hilton's multilaned and curving “landing strip.”

“Well then, ask his agent.”

“I prefer to approach his girlfriend.”

A gorgeous uniformed kid opened her door. “I am not his girlfriend, Evan Black. He's a friend is all. I thought you were too. But tell you what—I'll go flying with you and Mel and Caryl if you and Caryl will go to the police station with me.”

CHAPTER
7

S
TARTLED AT HOW
smoothly she'd been maneuvered into this, Charlie watched the wind sock whip and the minuscule aircraft taxi from its parking space toward her.

Evan kept his plane at the small airport in North Vegas. And Caryl was his flight instructor as well as his pilot.

Caryl had not gone to the police station with them, but then, Charlie had no intention of approaching Mitch Hilsten about this conspiracy project either.

Charlie hadn't set foot in the Hilton, because Evan took her up on her offer immediately, calling Caryl and Mel on his cellular and telling them to meet him at the North Vegas airport. Caryl had been officially notified of her brother's accidental death and had identified his remains. Charlie swallowed hard at the thought and would never ask how.

At the police station, Charlie repeated her certainty that Pat Thompson had been murdered by the two men who'd walked him out of Loopy Louie's and her suspicion that Officer Graden's death was connected. And that she might be in danger from the same people. “They looked and acted like bouncers.”

A pleasant-faced woman took Charlie's statement, keying it in as Charlie gave it, printing it out for Charlie to check over and sign. The officer couldn't be very high up in police hierarchy, because she typed too fast and was able to see them right away. “Maybe Officer Graden believed what I told him that night enough to look into it on his own. Maybe he left some notes in his desk or mentioned it to another officer. I really think you should investigate the possibility.”

“Every effort is being made to find the person or persons responsible for Officer Graden's death. Thank you for your help. We'll be in touch.” And with a half-smile like Bradone's, the policewoman added, “Enjoy your visit. I'm fairly sure you're in no danger, Ms. Greene.”

“That was too easy,” Charlie grumbled when Evan whisked her off to North Las Vegas. “And you weren't any help.”

“That one is your conspiracy. Remember?”

“Isn't it a little late to be taking off now? Can't this wait till morning?”

“My aircraft may not be big and luxurious, Charlie, but it will actually fly at night.”

It certainly wasn't big and luxurious. Charlie always took the aisle seat when flying commercially, so she wouldn't see how far away the ground was. There were four seats in this plane, and they were all window seats.

She absolutely would not encourage Mitch Hilsten to take part in Evan Black's conspiracy project.

At least Evan didn't offer to fly the plane himself. Caryl Thompson, her nice nipples well clothed like any pilot's should be, might be younger than Evan but at least she was an instructor and not a student.

Charlie, however, took no comfort in the woman's swollen eyes and faraway expression. Could grief overcome her pilot training and endanger them all? And Charlie still could not fathom why her own presence should be important on this trip.

This was one of those planes where you had to climb up on the wing and then into your seat by bending your body in ways bodies don't bend. Those in back had to get in first. Charlie was the first to board and the gyrations she had to perform to get into the fourth seat made it pretty clear that the only way she could get out was by plane crash.

Charlie would handle this situation by fantasizing she was somewhere else.

Mel Goodall, the main-man cameraman, crawled in back beside Charlie, took one look at her, and broke up—his long face scrunching into a short one. “It's okay, sweetheart. Old Mel will see nothing bad happens to you.”

Old Mel was the angular guy with the penis tip and the backpack in the photograph Evan had shown her. He wore tan Dockers today too and looked more like an engineer than a cameraman. He was probably in his late forties—old enough to know better than to be on this rattletrap.

The pilot crawled in (literally) next and Evan last. Over the sound of the revving engine, hysterical propeller, and violently vibrating fuselage, the producer/director/writer bellowed back to Charlie, “You know my secret, Charlie? The rest have concept—I've got theme.”

Jesus, God, Allah, and Buddha save us from the artistes of this world and me from this one in particular.

The artiste put on a headset to match the pilot's and tossed two more over to Mel, who stuck one on Charlie.

Buffeted by gale-force crosswinds, the tiny aircraft hurtled down a too-short runway and made it into the air despite rolling balls of attacking tumbleweed. Charlie's client let out a triumphant whoop, sort of a cross between Tarzan and a football fan.

Charlie Greene closed her eyes.

*   *   *

There was no wind, only warm sun bathing the recreation deck of the Las Vegas Hilton, no nerve-jangling music, no screaming children to splash water and wash out her contacts. Just peaceful adults swimming laps or talking quietly on white lounge chairs. Charlie slipped out of her sandals and net swimsuit cover and stepped to the side of the pool. Her—

“Charlie, open your eyes. That's Yucca Mountain down there,” Evan Black shouted in her earphone, then began ordering pilot Caryl to turn and dive.

The midget plane was suddenly on its side, circling like a vulture, Mel manipulating a handheld mini through his window, which was a lot clearer and less scratched than hers. Up front, Evan manipulated outside cameras and watched the result on a monitor.

A flurry of clipped indecipherable messages in a male voice came from the headset.

“Radio contact,” Caryl said softly. “Next stop, Dreamland.”

“Dive,” their leader commanded.

Jesus, instead of slipping into a heated swimming pool, Charlie was about to get shot out of the air by her own government. She hadn't wanted to be here. She'd have taken off the headset, except the rickety plane's noise was more frightening than the cockpit communications.

She'd always been astonished when the flight attendant on an airliner announced passengers could listen to the cockpit communications on channel whatever through the headphones at their seat. It was terrifying enough
not
knowing.

“Charlie,” Evan said, “note that we are going in a straight line from Yucca Mountain to Groom Lake.”

You
are going in a straight line. I are going to lose my Brazilian lunch and yak crud.

“Open your eyes,” Mel yelled, and shook her shoulder. “Or you'll get sick.”

BOOK: Nobody Dies in a Casino
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