The Mirror Thief (42 page)

Curtis hadn’t been on a plane since they medevaced him home from Germany a year and a half ago; he was too doped up on Demerol then to register much. For the flight to Vegas Damon had booked him an aisle seat on the 757’s port side, but Curtis checked in early enough to swap it
for a starboard window. As the plane gathered altitude in its wide takeoff loop he looked down on acres of cranberry bogs in the woods southeast of Evesham, pools of spilt mercury ricocheting the sunrise, as if the earth were bursting with inner fire. Alone in his seat, watching the continent scroll below, a cool thrill stole over him, a calm like nothing he’d known in years—and it didn’t go away when the plane touched down. The whole time he’s been out here he’s felt like this: alert but detached, not quite involved or implicated, like he’s watching everything through a screen from a tremendous distance. It’s not a bad feeling, but he’s starting to mistrust it.

The night sky is busy with helicopters, mostly charter flights buzzing the glowing corridor from here to McCarran. One flies low to the south-west, an LVMPD chopper, and Curtis watches it aim a searchlight into Naked City, the residential blocks between here and Sahara Ave, at a spot where the blue-and-red pulses of police cruisers have congregated. The old neighborhood buildings multiply and divide the swirling lights like a kaleidoscope, and the noise of the sirens is muted by distance and thick glass. Curtis checks his watch, then heads below into the lounge and orders himself an Irish coffee, watching the restaurant, one deck lower, rotate glacially while the bartender pours the Bushmills. On the little stage, a jazz trio is playing Jobim to the disinterested room: “Inútil Paisagem,” the singer’s clear and icy delivery closer to Gilberto than Wanda Sá. She talks to the bassist and the piano player with shifts of her weight, small movements of her hands. The three of them seem content to be ignored.

Curtis snags a small table on the lounge’s southern side and looks down at the Strip as he waits for Kagami, sometimes redirecting his focus to his own dim reflection. Remembering things about Damon: stories he’s heard, and told, and retold. Seeing shadows in them that he’d always ignored. The time Damon commandeered a brand-new Z3 from some Simi Valley fucknut—just took the keys right out of the guy’s hand—so he could use it to pick up a girl he’d met at Mandalay Bay. Or the time he roped Curtis into running interference on the MPs at Twentynine Palms while he smuggled some shitbird PFC offbase in a laundry truck. Or the time he backed down a halfdozen goat-ropers in the parking lot of a Waynesville bar, M9
pressed against a lean cowboy cheek, the skin around the barrel making a livid ring, and Damon stone-cold sober. Curtis feels like he’s been working a crossword puzzle, staring at it for days, and he’s just now seeing that the first words he filled in were all wrong. Or it’s more like one of those pictures that were popular maybe ten years ago, the ones that were 3-D if you focused your eyes just right, a bunch of random dots if you didn’t. Curtis feels like he’s still not focusing right. He never could get those damn pictures to work for him, he recalls. And now, of course, he never will.

Kagami’s image pops up in the window: a dark shape full of stars where it blocks the overhead light. The lenses of his spectacles are twinned quartermoons hung in the black. Curtis turns, offers his hand. Thanks for agreeing to meet, Walter, he says.

No sweat, kid. You’re not putting me out. I just got done with an appointment down the hall. Hope you haven’t been waiting long.

Just enjoying the view.

Kagami eases into a chair. He seems distracted, like he’d rather not be here. Curtis almost doesn’t recognize him. His jacket and tie are gone, replaced by a purple-and-blue patterned sweater; he’s removed his jewelry aside from a gold wedding band. Curtis thinks of his own ring, locked in the safe, and moves his left hand into his lap.

Meeting on a Sunday night, huh? Curtis says. You closing a big deal?

Kagami smiles. This wasn’t business, he says. I was just socializing. Making some plans for next weekend.

What are you planning to do?

Oh, we’re gonna walk up and down Fremont for a couple hours. Wave some homemade signs around. Yell
no blood for oil
. That sort of thing. You can come too, if you want. Bring fifty or sixty friends. It’d be great to have more ex-military.

Curtis wonders if Kagami is baiting him, like last time with Gitmo. He tells himself to keep cool, then realizes that he’s not upset, then wonders whether he ought to be. I’ll be in Philly next weekend, he says. But I appreciate the invite. You think you’ll get a good crowd?

Kagami shrugs. We marched from Bellagio to the Trop back in
January. Drew a couple hundred people for that. I hope we get at least that many this time.

I guess that’s pretty good for Vegas.

There’s a solid group of anti-nuke folks out here, what with the old Nevada Test Site, and now Yucca Mountain. Plus there’s the university, and sometimes the unions. The Culinary got over a thousand pickets out on the sidewalk in front of your hotel when it opened back in ’99. You should get off the Strip sometime, kid. There’s a lot of stuff going on out here that you don’t know about.

I didn’t have to leave the Strip to figure that out, Walter.

Kagami grins. Still striking out on Stanley?

I’m not even swinging anymore, Curtis says. He looks evenly at Kagami for a moment, hoping to spot something in his face or his posture, some hint, but he knows that this is hopeless. Walter, he says, do you know a guy named Graham Argos?

Doesn’t ring any bells. Who is he?

He was on the team of counters that hit AC over Mardi Gras. He’s here in town now. I got a call from him last night on my cell.

Did he give you any leads?

No. I think he’s looking for Stanley too.

Kagami chuckles, shakes his head. I hope Stanley’s getting a kick out of this, he says. For years it seemed like Stanley was just part of the landscape out here. People took him for granted. Now all of a sudden everybody’s looking for him, and nobody knows where the hell he is.

I think you know where he is, Walter.

Kagami’s smile is steady, his expression unchanged.

I think Stanley’s got a firewall set up, Curtis says, between the people who know where he is and the people who know what really happened in Atlantic City. I don’t think you know what happened in Atlantic City.

Kagami remains statue-still, but his eyes flicker evenly across Curtis’s face, his chest, his hands. Taking him in. Curtis feels like he’s being sliced up, sorted into piles. I have to admit, Kagami says, that I am pretty curious about that.

Yeah. Me too.

Kagami shifts his weight, crosses his legs. Did you get the latest bulletin? he says. As of last night, the Casino Gaming Bureau is no longer running the show at the Spectacular. It is now a Major Crimes investigation.

Curtis blinks. What happened? he says.

Well, it seems that a couple of days ago this old geezer was out on Absecon Bay in his Boston Whaler. Trapping crabs. The old guy hauls in one of his traps—

Kagami hold out his hands as if cradling a regulation football.

—and there’s this enormous blue crab in it. A real monster. And the crab is gnawing on a chunk of human foot. Foot belongs to a Southeast Asian male in his late twenties or early thirties. The missing dealer from the Point is a twenty-eight-year-old Korean kid. So. Everybody say hello to the Major Crimes Division.

Curtis is aware of his pulse, an impatient tap in his neck and temples. He looks out the window. A long way off the ground. This is fucked up, Walter, he says.

A little more than you signed on for, ain’t it, kid?

Curtis stares at the table, rotates the empty mug beneath his fingers. Picturing Damon in the Penrose Diner. His red-rimmed eyes. His ripped sleeve. It was maybe a bad idea to drink the Irish coffee. He thinks he can feel the tower swaying in the wind, but there isn’t any wind. Walter, Curtis says, I’m not gonna ask you where Stanley is. I will ask you this. Did you put Graham Argos onto me? Did you give him my number?

You got a reason to think I did?

He tried to make me think he got it from a bartender or a pit boss or somebody. But I think he got it from you. He knew that I’d talked to you. And he knew Damon sent me out here. Only you and Veronica knew that. He hadn’t talked to Veronica.

What’s your point, kid?

That was not a nice surprise for me, man. That dude makes me nervous.

Yeah? Kagami says. Well, no shit, Curtis. He makes me nervous too. I was hoping you guys would short each other out.

You could’ve given me a heads-up. Why didn’t you call me?

Because I don’t like you, kid. You give me a bad feeling.

Kagami says it softly, almost apologetically. He crosses his arms over his chest, turns to look down at the Strip.

Curtis lets that hang for a few seconds, breathing in and out. You don’t even know me, man, he says.

Let’s just say that what I do know does not endear you to me.

They sit in silence for a while. Curtis clenches his jaw; Kagami slumps wearily in his chair. Curtis is angry, but he can’t shake the feeling that Kagami isn’t entirely out of line. He’s about to stand up, head for the door, when Kagami catches a passing waitress and orders a cognac. What’re you drinking, Curtis? he says. You want another coffee?

No, thanks. I’m good.

C’mon, kid. Hang around for a couple minutes.

Ginger ale, Curtis says, and settles back in his seat.

The lights have stopped flashing in Naked City aside from an ambulance headed west on Sahara; they watch it until it reaches the interstate and disappears. Then their eyes drift back to the Strip. Following its blazing path south as it grows denser and purer, a tracer round fired at Los Angeles.

Put yourself in my place, kid, Kagami says. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I still don’t. What would you have done?

I hear you. You just want to protect Stanley.

I just want to be a good goddamn citizen of the People’s Republic of Clark County, Nevada. That’s all I want. I want to defend Stanley’s inalienable right to disappear when he wants to, and to stay disappeared for as long as he likes. I take this stuff very seriously, Curtis.

The waitress comes back with their drinks. Curtis sips his ginger ale, sips again. Kagami swirls his brandy, looks out the window. You spend a lot of time out here, kid? he says.

In Vegas? Not too much. My last trip was about three years ago.

Have you heard the CVA’s new ad slogan yet? The official slogan?

What happens here stays here?
Curtis smiles. Yeah. I heard it.

It’s brilliant, Kagami says. It sums up everything. People call Las Vegas
an oasis in the desert.
No!
It
is
the fucking desert. That’s the key to the whole trick. Look down at that valley. You know what was down there a hundred years ago? Nothing. Some Mormons. A couple dozen cowboys. A few pissed-off Paiutes. The year I was born, there were ten thousand people living there. Today there’s a million five. That’s sixty years. Sixty years is nothing, it’s a heartbeat. What’s drawing all these people? Huh?
Nothing
. It’s like a big blackboard, or one of those—what do you call it?—a dry-erase board. Wipe it clean. Draw in what you like. I mean, read up on your history, kid. You wanna make something disappear? You wanna make it invisible? Haul it out here. The desert is the national memory hole. Manhattan Project? Never heard of it. American Indians? Hey, I don’t know
where
those guys went. Gambling. Hookers. Nuclear waste. I guess you probably noticed the Desert Inn.

I noticed that it’s gone, yeah.

Steve Wynn blew it up a couple years ago. October 2001. Collapsing buildings were not regarded as so much fun at the time, so he did it without the usual hoopla. But remember the party he threw back in ’93, when he imploded the Dunes? Or that New Year’s Eve when they brought down the Hacienda? Name me another place anywhere that routinely
blows up
its historic buildings. Las Vegas is a machine for forgetting.

Kagami sets his snifter on the table. I’m gonna smoke a cigar, he says, leaning over and reaching into his pocket. Do you want a cigar?

No, thank you.

Kagami produces a brown leather case, removes a dark panatela, and sets to work on it with a gold bulletcutter. You’ve been around, Curtis, he’s saying. You’ve seen the world. Europe. Asia. Middle East. Me and my wife, we travel as much as we can. We did a fun thing last year for our tenth anniversary. We went back to Italy for two weeks. Northern Italy, where we did our honeymoon. You know what we did? We used the same guidebooks. Just to see if we could. And it worked. Same restaurants, same hotels. I remember we ate at this one place, this bacaro, that had been in business since 1462. Blew my mind.

Kagami’s cigar case and cutter disappear. He takes a big naphtha lighter from his pocket and strikes it. A spritz of sparks. A two-inch
tongue of flame. After a few puffs he snaps it shut with a loud clear chime, like the sound of a flipped coin.

Okay, he says. Now imagine you and your better half are tooling around Las Vegas with a guidebook from 1993. How do you think you’re doing?
Ooh, honey, let’s go see the Sands!
Sorry, sweetie-pie. What about the Landmark? The Landmark’s a parking lot. The El Rancho? The Hacienda? You’ll never see the Hacienda, it doesn’t exist. The city is always changing. Always, just for the sake of doing it. And that’s why it’s always the same. Get it? That’s its nature, its essence. Invisible. Pure. Formless. Indestructible. What do you know about roads?

Say again?

Rhodes. Island in the Aegean Sea. Used to be a colossus there, right? Okay. What about Alexandria? Had a pretty nice library, I hear. New York? Couple tall buildings. I’m talking about ruined fortresses here, kid. Collapsed empires. Places become defined by what they lose. Once it’s gone, it’s eternal. Everything you see down there—everything!—is on its way out. Everything self-destructs. I mean, fuck Rome.
This
is the eternal city. Pure concept.

The waitress appears again out of nowhere with an ashtray and a fresh ginger ale that Curtis doesn’t really want. Kagami moves the tray a few inches closer, then takes a sip of cognac. The jazz trio is playing a sad French song that Curtis can’t quite place.
Les musées, les églises, ouvrent en vain leurs portes
, it goes.
Inutile beauté devant nos yeux déçus
.