The Mirror Thief (43 page)

Kagami rotates his cigar slowly, deposits a tidy gray mound in the cutglass tray. I love this silly fucking town, he says. I got desert running through my veins. I was born out here. Did you know that?

Curtis shakes his head. My dad told me you knew Stanley from California, he says. I figured you were from out there.

My family’s from Los Angeles. And L.A.’s where I grew up. But I was born out here. About a hundred fifty miles on the other side of those mountains.

Kagami aims a short finger in the general direction of Mount Charleston, lost somewhere in the darkness over Curtis’s right shoulder, far out of sight. Curtis doesn’t turn around.

You know where the Owens Valley is? Kagami says.

Not exactly. I know it’s west of Nellis, across the state line.

It’s about fifteen miles outside of Death Valley National Park. That should give you an idea of the climate. I was born there at a place called Manzanar. You ever heard of Manzanar, Curtis?

Curtis gives Kagami a tight smile. Kagami’s not even looking at him. Yeah, Curtis says. I’ve heard of it.

I was born there in 1943. I don’t remember it except in little pieces. How the Army blankets smelled. Brown dust in everything. You’d fill up a pitcher with water, and before you could get it to the table there’d be dust on the surface. Little swirls of it. I remember that. My mother wouldn’t talk about it, and my dad died in Italy, but over the years I’ve tried to educate myself a little bit. That led me to other things. If I’m remembering right, Curtis, your father spent the late Sixties and early Seventies playing clubs in Montréal. He ever tell you what I did during Vietnam, Curtis?

No, sir. He didn’t.

I went to prison. I walked into the Hall of Justice with my draft card and a Zippo lighter, and I spent twenty-two months at Terminal Island. I’m not trying to be an asshole here, kid. I’m not judging you, and I’m not gonna say you should live your life any different. But if I act a little hostile to the whole idea of military police, then I got some reasons. That’s all.

Kagami puts the cigar back in his mouth. A gray cloud rises toward the lights. Two thirtysomething women at the next table—flashy shoes, pricey coifs, monogrammed everything—get up and move to the other end of the room, fanning open hands before their disgusted faces. Curtis takes long breaths, counting them, until his teeth unclench.

I was an MP for twenty years, he says. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get myself to feel bad or regretful about that. Maybe that means that one of these days—when I’m in a real different mood—you and I’ll have to sit down and have ourselves a big old argument. That’s fine. Right now, all I’m going to say is this. I’m not an MP anymore, Walter. But I am still Badrudin Hassan’s son, Donald Stone’s son. And I’m still Stanley Glass’s friend. You and I may be at odds somewhere, but on this particular issue we want exactly the same thing. Which is to keep Stanley safe.

That may be so, kid. But we want it for completely different reasons.

I don’t see how that matters.

I know you don’t, Kagami snaps. That’s the whole problem. At this point, Curtis, it’s about the only thing that still matters.

Curtis can feel tightness in his neck and temples: the beginnings of a headache. He can taste it on the back of his tongue. He’s about ninety-eight percent sure that he’s wasting his time here, but that other two percent keeps winking at him, lifting up its skirts. The jazz combo is taking a break, and somebody’s forgotten to turn the piped-in music back on; it’s strangely quiet in the room.

I’m sick of this shit, Curtis says. I’ve been jerked around now in just about every direction. I am ready to go home. There’s only one thing keeping me from getting on a plane. If I leave, and later I find out that I brought something bad onto Stanley by coming out here, something that I had the power to stop, then I’m gonna feel real sorry about that. And I got enough stuff in my life to feel sorry about. So I guess what I want to hear from you is whether you think Stanley’s gonna be okay.

Kagami shoots him an incredulous look. No, he says. No, Stanley’s not gonna be okay. The man is dying, Curtis. Get it? It doesn’t matter what you do or you don’t do.

It does matter, Curtis says. It matters to me.

Kagami doesn’t respond. He’s staring at the night, looking very sad and very tired. Smoke rises from the ash of his cigar in a solid wavering column, like the ghost-white proboscis of butterfly, until the HVAC whisks it away. Curtis is watching it snake toward the ceiling when he notices a low rumble of turbofans outside. He looks out the window, searching the sky for moving lights.

Recognize that? Kagami says.

Curtis listens hard, then shakes his head.

New stealth fighter. I’m pretty sure. Haven’t seen it yet.

The sound of the engines fades. Heard any news about the war? Curtis asks.

Kagami shifts in his chair, leans forward. Curtis can see him getting
comfortable, shuffling facts in his head, winding himself up for another practiced run of summary and analysis. Then he stops, like he’s tapped out, like he just doesn’t have it in him. Curtis, he says, when’s the last time you talked to Damon?

I got a fax from him this morning. I haven’t talked to him since I been out here. He’s not returning my calls.

The waitress passes, and Kagami signals for the check, scribbling on an imaginary pad with the cigar. Then he lifts the panatela to his lips, takes a series of quick puffs, and crushes the stub in the cutglass tray.

Listen, kid, he says. Stanley’s gone. He left town this morning, before dawn. I dropped him at McCarran myself. He didn’t say where he was going, and I didn’t ask, but my guess is that he went back to AC to settle with Damon. I think he’s done about all the hiding out he can stand.

Veronica’s still here. I just saw her.

Well, she would be, right? If Veronica and Stanley both have the goods on Damon, then they’re gonna split up. They become each other’s insurance.

I figured they’d be watching each other’s back.

Kagami shakes his head. You got this all wrong, he says. You’re still talking about Stanley and Veronica like they’re regular people. They’re not. Different set of rules, different set of concerns. You’ve put yourself in a bad spot here. You want me to believe that you’re a stand-up guy, that you’re not some kind of thug? Okay. Be a stand-up guy. Go home to your wife. You can’t help Stanley, kid. You don’t have the juice. Not here, not anywhere. And that’s not something to be ashamed of, believe me. The best thing you can do for him is to forget about all of this. We’re not talking about your old Uncle Stanley who used to do magic tricks. You’re not in that scene anymore. I could tell you some stories. But I won’t. Because he wouldn’t want me to.

The check comes. Kagami lays a crisp bill in the plastic tray.

I will tell you this, he says. I heard this one maybe a year or two before I even met Stanley. Back when he was still a very young guy, he was in this poker game in Pasadena—

Stanley doesn’t play poker.

He did back then. He was never any good at it, so he quit. To play poker you have to understand people. Stanley doesn’t. It took him a while to figure that out. So. He’s in this poker game in Pasadena. Underground casino, very exclusive. And he’s not doing so great. The pots are bigger than he counted on. So he asks the house for a marker. And they just laugh at him.
Come back when you can afford to play here, kid
. Okay. Stanley gets up, walks over to the roulette wheel. Roulette’s a pure game of chance, right? No skill involved. Stanley takes a hundred bucks—four green chips, lot of money for a young kid in those days—and as soon as the ball drops, he puts them on four numbers. Bam-bam-bam-bam. So fast you can hardly see his hands move. The numbers are all over the board—but on the wheel, they’re consecutive. Right? One of his numbers hits. Now he’s got eight
black
chips. Then, right after the croupier drops the ball again, Stanley splits that stack across four more numbers. Also consecutive on the wheel. And one of
those
numbers comes up. Seven thousand dollars. He asks them to double the table limit. They call the boss. Boss says okay, but we’re switching croupiers. They bring in the new guy, new guy turns the ball loose, Stanley does it again. He’s sitting on twenty-one grand, and he asks them again to double the limit.
Don’t you want your money back?
Sure they do. And all of a sudden he’s got over fifty thousand dollars in front of him. By this point the place is shut down. Nobody is playing but Stanley. Everybody in the casino—bartenders, musicians—is gathered around that table. Stanley says he wants the limit upped again, he wants to bet twenty grand. Boss thinks about it, and says okay, but you gotta move to a different table. New table, new croupier. The ball drops. Stanley puts down his four stacks of big nickels. These stacks, he can barely fit his hands around them. The place is like a church. Dead silent, except for that clicking wheel. And then it explodes. Stanley Glass has just won a little over two hundred thousand dollars in five consecutive spins. The dealers are all looking at each other, wondering if they’re gonna have jobs tomorrow. It’s obvious that if Stanley keeps playing he’ll wind up owning the joint. Stanley collects his take, he looks up at the boss, and he says,
Do you want to keep playing here, or do you want to let me back
into your fucking poker game?
This happens, I believe, in 1961. Stanley is nineteen years old.

The waitress comes back. Kagami waves away his change. He puts his elbows on the table, looks out the window.

How did he do it? Curtis says.

What do you mean?

I mean, what was the trick?

Kagami gives Curtis a smug smile, lowers his voice, leans closer. The trick was, he says, there
was
no trick. Stanley saw where the ball was going to go.

Curtis blinks. How is that possible? he says.

With an open-palmed shrug, Kagami sags back into his chair. All Stanley’s abracadabra gobbledygook, he says. I used to think it was misdirection. Then I thought, maybe it’s real magic—like he was trying to make impossible things happen. Now I think it’s something else. Impossible stuff happens in Stanley’s world all the time. It’s no big deal to him. I think the magic is him trying to
make sense
of his world. Which is a very different place from the world you and I live in. And which is maybe some pretty lonely territory for a sick old man.

Curtis nods, then knocks back the last of his ginger ale. The combo is back on: Sleepy John Estes, barely recognizable.
Lord, I never will forget that floating bridge
. The piano and the bass are barely playing, setting soft suspended sevenths adrift over the clatter and murmur of the tabletops.
They tell me five minutes’ time underwater I was hid
. Beneath the music, the big windows shiver with a distant afterburner growl.

It’s getting late, Kagami says. Let me give you a lift back to your hotel.

Curtis’s sleep feels nothing like sleep, only a rapid and jittery dream-ridden wakefulness. He’s on a narrow cobblestone street, moonlit and shadowed, Stanley at one end, Damon at the other. There’s an explosion,
a pillow-muffled boom, and Curtis is in midair, suspended like one of the fake-fresco angels on the ceiling of the hotel lobby, jumping in front of the bullet. He jolts awake before it hits, not sure if he got to it in time, not sure who was shooting whom.

Still dark outside. He’s pressed every button on the bedside clock-radio before he recognizes the sound of his cellphone. Throwing off the tangled sheets, he reaches for the little well of pale blue light on the dresser, picks it up before the voicemail kicks in, glances at the display—
Whistler
—and answers. Yeah, he says.

Good morning, Curtis. Hope I didn’t wake you.

Curtis unplugs the charger, stumbles to the wall, finds a lightswitch. Rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand. What’s up? he says.

I want to meet.

When?

Right now. I’m in the parking garage at the Flamingo. The sixth floor. I’m sitting in a Fortune Cab. The guy’s got the meter running, so I’m not gonna stick around long. You better get it in gear.

Curtis looks again at the clock, lying where he left it, upsidedown on the mattress: 4:31. Yeah, he says. Okay. I’ll be right—

Listen, Curtis. Don’t call anybody, and don’t bring anybody with you. If you’re bringing somebody else, go ahead and dial 9-1-1 before you come, because I’m gonna shoot you and everybody else I see, and I am not bullshitting about that. Also, bring cash. At least a couple hundred dollars. Because this is going to be an expensive conversation. Got all that?

Yeah. I got it.

Say it back to me.

Curtis takes a breath. Flamingo parking lot, he says. Sixth floor. Fortune Cab. Two hundred dollars. Just me. Nobody else.

The call ends with a soft electric pop. Argos, Curtis thinks. Graham Argos. He’s not calling from any cab; he wouldn’t have said all that shooting-spree shit in front of a cabbie. This is some kind of setup.

He stands with the dead phone against his ear, eyeballing his reflection in the mirror over the dresser. Stubbly scalp, twisted-around skivvies.
Not too suave. He takes a long moment to sort his dreams from his memories, to remember what he knows, where he stands. Stanley has left town, or so Walter says. It sounds like Damon at this point is basically toast. People have turned up dead back in AC; Argos was involved somehow. Curtis has nothing to gain by meeting with him. This thought is like a weight coming off, a light from a familiar doorway: nothing to gain.

Curtis gets dressed, clips on his pistol, drops the speedloader in his jacket pocket and hits the door in a hurry, pressing the elevator callbutton in the hallway. Back in high school the coaches would rarely play him until the bleachers were emptying and the outcome of a game was no longer in doubt; it was embarrassing at first, but in time he developed a taste for it. It made everything purer, and gave him a kind of ownership of his efforts that the first-stringers could never claim. He catches something like that fourth-quarter feeling now as he waits by the sliding copper doors, tired and giddy and sure of himself. Today he is going to figure some shit out.