The Mirror Thief (7 page)

But Stanley is slippery, and seems to go everywhere, spinning Curtis back onto himself. His father. Kagami. Los Angeles, in the late Fifties. Art Pepper, dragging himself into the Contemporary studios, white junkie with a dried-up horn, Band-Aid on the broken cork.
Pepper was an MP too, Little Man. A prison guard, in London during the war
. Columns of orange flame off to the north. The sky burnt black at two in the afternoon. Oily poisoned rain.
Ijlis
. Sit down.
Inhad
. Stand up.
Sa tuffattash ilaan
. Now you will be searched.

Saad is still on the phone, becoming more animated, shuffling in bits of English and French: orange alert, Air Canada,
maison de passe
, Flamingo Road,
dépanneur
, oh my god, the Aladdin,
une ville lumière
, he’s a shithead, forget about him. An F-15 passes directly overhead; Curtis can’t
see it, but he knows the sound of the engines. They’re due south of the airbase now, nearing the northeastern edge of the valley. Ranks of white stucco houses topped with orange mission-tiles perch on the foothills ahead, crowding the borders of the government land.

Curtis is wondering if Saad is distracted, if maybe they’ve missed their turn, when they veer onto a sidestreet just past a Terrible Herbst gas station on the corner of North Hollywood Boulevard. The neighborhood is getting anonymous, purely residential; the houses are bigger, newer, farther apart, and suddenly there are none to be seen at all, only steep gated driveways sprouting off the road. The taxi’s transmission downshifts as they climb past cleared gravel pits and an old cement plant, winding slowly through slumps and dry washes and mounds of talus stanched by gabions. Then they crest a rise on a sickening turn and the entire valley is arrayed before them: a sea of roofs and palmtrees, the Strip towers flanked by the Luxor and the Stratosphere, the snows of Mount Charleston in the distance, white blotches hung in midair, the mountain itself vanished in the afternoon haze.

A flashing traffic signal comes into view—a two-lane road with a wide shoulder, cars towing fiberglass boats—but Saad hangs a sharp left before they get there, into a fresh and narrow roadcut marked by a blond limestone sign: QUICKSILVER
CASINO & RESORT
. The parking area is modest, crescent-shaped, following the curve of the hillside; it’s at maybe a quarter capacity, with Cadillacs and Town Cars and the odd Lexus or Mercedes clustered near the top. Wheelchair ramps stretch downhill like exposed roots, and the handicapped spaces are all full.

They bypass the parking lot and roll up to the entrance: a massive oak portico held aloft by thick columns of smooth riverstone orbs. A little pack of bluehaired white ladies is waiting in the shade, bingo bags and plastic coinpails dangling from their folded hands. A green-and-white placard by the entrance says
FIND YOUR POT O’ GOLD AT
QUICKSILVER!
ST. PATRICK
’
S DAY IS MARCH 17TH
.

Saad is ending his call. We have arrived, my friend, he says. This place will be lucky for you, I think.

It’s farther out than I thought, Curtis says, digging some of Damon’s cash from his wallet.

There is nothing farther. Government land, and then the lake. That is all.

I didn’t think you could build up here.

Saad shrugs. What can you pay? he says. Who is your friend? You can do what you want.

Curtis hands the folded bills over the seat and Saad takes them with practiced ease, watching Curtis in the rearview mirror. Smiling conspiratorially with his eyes. As if they share some secret knowledge about the world.

Curtis opens his door, steps out, leans back in. Hey, Saad, he says. You got a business card?

He glances at the card as the cab is pulling away:
SAAD ABOUGREISHA
, it says, and a phone number.

The sidewalk beneath Curtis’s feet, which had looked like mortared flagstones from inside the car, is really some kind of springy padding composited from shredded rubber; it gives a little under his weight. He rocks back and forth on his heels, testing the surface, thinking of the deck of the physical therapy room at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, where he first met Danielle.

A boxy shuttlebus sporting the Quicksilver logo—a jazzed-up Indian pictograph of a raven in flight: gaping beak, gleaming reflective eye—pulls into the space Saad vacated. A group of old people exits the bus with the help of a pair of minders, young kids with big smiles and loud voices. The ones standing under the portico wait patiently to board. Curtis watches all this for a while, not sure what he’s looking for. Then he turns and walks to the entrance.

The Quicksilver is high-class for a neighborhood joint: small, rustic, more country club than bingo parlor or shopping mall. The building looks like an Anasazi cliffpalace reworked by Frank Lloyd Wright: lots of exposed beams and slender limestone blocks. The whole thing’s built around an old quarry or open-pit mine, now converted into a sunken courtyard with a pond and a waterfall and a recirculating fountain in the middle. Through the bow window behind the gaming pit Curtis can see madrones and junipers, pergolas twined with wisteria and passionflower, the towering blooms of a couple of century-plants. A halfdozen plump guineafowl peck at the rubber sidewalks, and aside from them the courtyard is deserted.

Kagami is running late, stuck in a meeting, so Curtis gets a cup of grapefruit juice and plays a little blackjack to pass the time. The dealers are fresh-faced, easygoing, slow with the cards. Most of the action is at the machines and in the large bingo room; there are only four tables. Curtis’s sole companion is an elderly gentleman wearing a silk neckerchief and an oxygen mask. There’s a separate area for high rollers behind the bar, dim and sunken, and it’s busier than Curtis would have expected for a joint this far out of town. The players down there look like whales: East Asian heavyweights, the kind of guys who keep casinos in business. From time to time their cheers and shouts rise over the new-age flute music on the PA. Somebody like Stanley Glass could walk in and tear this place apart inside of an hour, Curtis thinks. Which is probably why the owners hired somebody like Walter Kagami as the manager.

Saad’s prediction is coming true: Curtis is up by nearly four hundred dollars when he feels a gentle hand on his shoulder. Mister Stone? Mister Kagami’s very sorry for the delay. If you’d like to wait in his office, he’ll meet you there in a few minutes.

Kagami’s office is small, cluttered, tucked away off the gaming floor. Nice oak desk. Navaho rug over scuffed parquetry. Picture window with a southern view: the Boulder Highway, toward Henderson and the dam. A sink and a tiny closet. A little slept-on couch. On a patch of bare wall between two overflowing bookcases hangs a column of old photographs, and Curtis spots his father’s laughing face in one. It looks like it was taken
at the Trop; the clothes and the eyewear seem to put it in the late ’70s, though with gamblers it can be hard to tell. Curtis’s dad is posed with an aloof-looking Stanley, an Asian guy who must be Kagami, some men Curtis doesn’t recognize, and, in the middle, Sammy Davis, Jr. Curtis blinks, leans closer, touches the frame. Smiling wryly. Thinking of Danielle: her favorite pet name for him. But his smile collapses, and he starts to feel uneasy. Self-conscious. Fraudulent. Like he’s performing as expected for the benefit of some unseen audience. Or for himself.

He shifts his attention to the shelves. Math and physics paperbacks with drab two-tone covers. Thick illustrated works on American Indian art and archaeology. Books on the history, the economy, the architecture of Las Vegas. A Peterson’s guide to western birds. A Jane’s guide to aircraft identification. Everything ever written on card counting, including fifteen different printings of Edward Thorp’s
Beat the Dealer
, most from prior to the 1966 revision.

A voice from behind him: That’s the book that started it all, you know.

Curtis has been standing with the door in his blindspot and didn’t see Kagami come in. He curses inwardly, tries not to register surprise. I read it a long time ago, he says, turning around. An old copy of my dad’s. I don’t remember it too well. I never had too much of a head for that stuff.

You know where that guy is these days? Ed Thorp, I mean?

Curtis shakes his head.

Take a wild guess. Shot in the dark. C’mon.

The yellow-edged paperback that Curtis was looking at protrudes slightly from the shelf; he extends a blunt finger, pushes its cracked spine flush with those of its siblings. Wall Street? he says.

See? Kagami says, grinning, moving into the room. You always were a smart kid.

Kagami is about Curtis’s height, stocky, in good shape for his age—probably older than his dad by a couple of years, though he looks younger. Gray herringbone trousers, brown tweed jacket, fawn shirt, classy tie with a gold pin. A pokerplayer’s tinted eyeglasses. Big rings on both hands. He
gives Curtis’s upper arm a friendly squeeze as they shake. Last time I saw you, Kagami says, you were probably about six years old. You’re looking good, real good. You’re a married man now, I hear.

Yes sir. It’ll be a year next month.

You still in the Marine Corps?

Just took my retirement.

Well, congratulations! That’s good. Looks like you got out just in time, too.

Kagami steps back, studies him. I heard you took a pretty good hit a couple of years ago, he says. Bosnia, was it?

Kosovo.

Well, it looks like you bounced right back.

Yeah, Curtis says. It took me a little while. I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice, Mister Kagami.

Walter! Christ, call me Walter. I’m glad you stopped in. Don’t know how much help I’m gonna be, though. You’re looking for Stanley Glass?

Yes sir. I’m trying to put him in touch with a friend of mine, and I heard he might be out here. Do you know how I can reach him?

Kagami moves behind his desk, looking out the window. Sunlight pours in sideways, and as he draws closer, his reflection meets him in the glass. I don’t know how to get in touch with Stanley, he says. But he has definitely been around. I had dinner with him just last week.

Did he say how long he’s going to be in town?

He didn’t. He said he was waiting for a connection to come through. Something he had going back East. He and Veronica had just flown in that afternoon: Wednesday, it would have been. Nine days ago. I remember because our waitress had the black smudge on her forehead. Stanley made a joke about it. Anyway, I comped them a suite, told them they could stay the week, but they were gone by morning. Didn’t say where to.

Kagami leans a little to the side, as if he’s trying to get a better view of something down below. Veronica was in college out here, he says. She used to be a dealer at the Rio, and I think maybe at Caesars before that. Stanley could be staying with her people.

I talked to Veronica last night. She says she doesn’t know where Stanley is. She’s looking for him, too.

You believe that?

Curtis tries to find Kagami’s eyes in the window reflection but can’t. I don’t know, he says. I don’t know why she’d lie.

She seemed pretty goosey when I saw her. Nervous.

Yeah. When I saw her, too. How did Stanley seem?

Kagami is quiet for a second. Then he laughs, turns back around. How does Stanley ever seem? he says. Listen, Curtis, I tell you what. If I can’t tell you where Stanley is, I can at least feed you a decent meal. We got the best restaurant in the state of Nevada right upstairs. My treat. Those Strip buffets’ll kill you.

The corridor outside Kagami’s office leads to an art-nouveau glass elevator that runs up the rocky hillside. The car is walled with lead-crystal, topped by stained-glass tracery in blazing sunset colors; it bears them smoothly toward a benchcut terrace about twenty feet overhead.

Real nice place you got here, Walter. How long you been doing this?

We’ve been open for two years now. I’ve been on board since we broke ground.

How’s business?

It’s terrible. Maybe you didn’t notice, but most of our regulars are older than me. And I’m no spring chicken. On the upside, our owner’s a fruitcake. Silicon Valley zillionaire. He plans to operate this place at a loss for ten years, for fifteen: however long it takes the city to grow up to us. He’s a young guy, and he thinks he’s got the bankroll to make it work.

You think he’s right?

Kagami laughs. That depends, he says. It’s like anything else: there’s a window. If you’re there when the window opens, and you can get out before it closes, then you do real well. The city is growing in a hurry, that’s for damn sure. But here’s the other thing: we got no water out here. People tend to forget that. I’m talking about the entire valley. Lake Mead’s at a thirty-year low. That’s climate change: the water’s not coming back. Eventually we’re gonna dry out. And that’s assuming we’re even around
long enough to have that problem. We could get avalanched onto North Hollywood by an earthquake long before then.

You get earthquakes up here?

Haven’t had one yet. But one is all it would take. We’re about two hundred yards from the Sunrise Fault. That’s an active fault. You saw the river rocks on the pillars at the entrance, where the nursing-home shuttles drop off? The big round ones? We’ve already had to mortar five of those bastards back into place. If the ground ever really starts to move, and Doctor Richter weighs us in anywhere north of five and some change, it’s gonna be Bowling for Biddies out there.

Damn.

Yeah, Kagami says, I figure one way or another, I’ll be long dead before this place ever turns a profit.

He wipes a hand on his jacket, reaches out to touch the spotless glass. The Mormon temple is below them, edging into view as they rise. All around it Curtis can see roofs of new houses going up: blond wood of exposed sheathing, patterned rows of underlayment.

This is the first straight job I’ve had since I was nineteen years old, Kagami says. I used to be a gambler, just like Stanley. But the grind finally wore me down. Trying to make a living off a two-percent edge—it’s too much for a senior citizen like me. Unless you’re working with a good team. And teams always come apart.