He played poker every day, in ostrich-leather boots, a cowboy hat with an ostrich feather in the band, and a huge turquoise bolo around his neck. Mostly, he enjoyed the camaraderie and the inherent respect he was given as the oldest local at any table.
He enjoyed winning, but those other things, like the knowing, were even more pleasing to him. Having driven for the mob, he knew where the bodies were buried. Hell, he’d even helped bury some of them. He knew the answer to the mystery of Union General John C. Fremont’s lost cannon, left behind somewhere around Walker River, and knew the secret of Tahoe Tessie, the monster in the waters of Lake Tahoe.
Best of all, he boasted to Legs, he knew for a fact about some of the mysteries of Area 51. He told no details, named no names, except to warn Legs cryptically to stay off the road to Rachel.
“Time to close the circle,” Willie said to Legs that night. “Time to push the money to the pigeon at the table so they’ll have sommit to push to me.” He tapped his bulging wallet. “This here plus what’s in your mattress is half yours. Fifty big ones for you, fifty for our people.”
He reached for the hat he had placed on the floor next to his chair, rubbed the hatband as if for luck, and handed it to Legs.
“Put on the hat,” he commanded, “and give me my black book.”
Legs did as he was told. Willie ripped the notebook into small pieces. Legs felt like crying; Willie held outstanding markers from God, Satan, and half of the population of Las Vegas.
“Any questions before I go?” Willie asked.
“Go where?” Legs asked.
“They’re coming to get me.”
“They who?”
“You don’t need to know. Take me outside. Wheel me to the 7-Eleven and leave me there.”
There were times Legs wasn’t any too fond of the old man, but this was inhuman. “All you need is a nap,” he said.
“The man upstairs and I had a chat, and it’s time for the big dirt nap.”
“What about your spirit guide? You gonna take him with you?”
“Don’t mock him,” Willie said. “He’ll do what he does. Probably stick with you, I imagine.”
Legs laughed.
“You don’t disrespect him, now.” Willie sounded dead serious. “You make him mad, he’ll do you.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “You give our people their money, you hear?”
“What if I keep the cash?” Legs asked, parking Willie’s chair outside the 7-Eleven.
“You’ll be knee deep in shit,” Willie said. “Ostrich shit.”
Sure, Legs thought. He would run right over to the reservation and hand over fifty K. Not. Sitting at the slot machine closest to the door of the convenience store, he watched a white Jeep Cherokee pull up to Willie. A tall, slender woman in camouflage coveralls got out and wheeled the old man up to the back of the truck. Someone inside must have opened it up and let down a ramp. Willie was wheeled onto it and lifted into the vehicle. The door shut behind him. As the Cherokee pulled away, Legs caught a glimpse of a small decal of an ostrich on the corner of the rear window.
And Willie was gone.
Legs missed the old man, but his sense of loss was easily salved by having money to burn. He paid off some of his debts, bought a car and a new wardrobe, dated high-maintenance women, and ate only in the best of restaurants.
He also gambled. Badly.
A week before the movie company was due to film at the Towers, he was down to the second fifty thousand and rethinking his position on luck. Driven to do something, he visited a guy best known as the Chinaman to ask his advice about how to change his luck. He had to pay up front.
After much careful thought, the Chinaman told him he had to rid himself of the evil spirit of a big ugly animal, which was in close pursuit. “You see him, you smash his soul,” the Chinaman said.
“I do that how?” Legs asked.
The Chinaman’s advice was simple. Legs had to cover every surface of his home with mirrors. In that way, he could smash the image of the hovering spirit in the mirror and thus destroy its soul. “One, two, you crack mirror and creature turn into nothingness.”
Legs lost a thousand dollars that night. Deciding that he could do worse than take the Chinaman’s advice, he hired a workman to do the job.
“Done.” The workman laid down his tools and took out a pack of cigarettes. He held them up, as if asking permission to light one.
Legs nodded and poured a drink with a none-too-steady hand. “Inspection time,” he said.
They walked around his Country Club Towers apartment, with Legs intent on examining every surface. Mirrors now covered each one, including the refrigerator handle, the faucets, the toilets in both bathrooms. Satisfied, he opened a fireproof box full of cash and paid the rest of his tab.
When the workman left, he stood for a moment and surveyed his territory. He’d long since cleaned what he could of the old blood hidden under the sofa where the poor prior tenant had offed himself; what remained of the last fifty grand from Willie was in the fireproof box.
Everything was copasetic.
“There’s no way that vindictive son-of-a-bitching ostrich guide is going to get me now,” Legs said out loud.
By now, the filming of
Casino
was drawing to a close. Legs had managed to finagle an invitation to the wrap party and was admiring himself in the new living room mirror when he saw a large shadow behind him. Without missing a beat, he picked up one of the bricks he’d lined up in readiness and threw it at the image.
The mirror fractured into a thousand pieces.
“Got you,” he said, figuring he now owed the Chinaman another stack.
He called the man who had installed the mirrors and offered to pay him double if he fixed the damage right away. After he had let the guy in, he put on his late Uncle Willie’s cowboy hat and went downstairs to join the crew and whoever else showed up. One of the cameramen recognized him and offered him a drink. As he reached out for it, fire alarms ripped through the early evening and the party was over. It was a small fire, on his floor.
A cop tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and saw that it was the same one who had interviewed him about the body in the elevator.
“I remember you. It’s Cleveland, right?”
Legs nodded. “Where’s the fire?”
“Fire’s out.” He pointed upward. “That your apartment? Number 1201?”
Legs nodded again. “Can I go up there?”
“I’ll take you. Gotta question you anyhow.”
The apartment was gutted, but the fireproof box filled with cash was intact. The mirror man lay on the floor facedown.
“Smoke inhalation,” the cop said. “We’re waiting for the coroner. Know anything about him?”
“He installed my mirrors.”
“Was he a smoker?”
“Yeah,” Legs said.
The cop turned to greet the coroner, who examined the body, then turned it over. There was blood underneath and two odd-shaped holes in the man’s stomach.
“Looks like he was kicked by some big-ass mule,” the cop said.
“Can I go now?” Legs asked. “I don’t have a mule.”
“For now.” The cop looked at him as if he were examining a roach. “But don’t leave town. Where can I find you?”
“Horseshoe,” Legs said. “I’ll get a room.”
He’d been playing on the Strip since Willie had left. This time, he picked up his box of money and rode a bus downtown. His plan was to put his money in the cashier’s cage at the Horseshoe, play a little hold ’em, eat a late-night steak at the coffee shop, and get a player’s rate for a room. His warm welcome in the poker room was followed by repeated questions about his Uncle Willie.
“How’s old Willie?” “Where’s old Willie?” Even the waitress at the coffee shop asked, “Where’s the old boy?”
Tired of the questions, Legs said brusquely, “How should I know? He’s dead.”
Lying on his bed in the small hotel room, Legs tried to figure out why his life was overflowing with dead bodies. He stared at his uncle’s hat perched on top of the television set. “It’s your fault, you old bastard,” he said.
Too tired to get himself a woman and disinterested in watching TV, he thought back to Nattee-Tohaquetta—alias Willie Cleveland—and his last night in Las Vegas. He didn’t sleep any too well but he did wake up with a plan, something to clear his head. He would rent a convertible and drive out into the desert where the last of
Independence Day
was being filmed. The location was in Rachel, a small town in the middle of nowhere, five or ten miles from Area 51. Willie had warned him to stay away from there, but what the hell. Maybe he’d meet someone interesting, maybe not, but at least there wouldn’t be any bodies with strange holes in them or cops who thought he was a killer. Tomorrow he’d get back to business, start looking for new clients, maybe even make a plan to take what was left of Willie’s fifty K to the reservation.
One thing he knew for sure: He’d had enough of Country Club Towers. He should have known it would be a place of bizarre happenings, with its strange architecture—off-kilter walls, a swimming pool that got no sun, and a tennis court that got no shade. The owner was old and very rich. His trophy wife was a tough broad from south Texas who ruled the place like an army sergeant. Despite being one of only four high-rises in Vegas, there were always empty apartments. The trophy wife moved tenants around until she had emptied the whole penthouse floor, which had its own elevator and locked entry. The entire floor was given over to pimps and prostitutes.
Not that Legs had anything against them. It was the dead bodies he could do without.
Top down, radio on full blast, he dug out the rest of a joint he’d hidden at the bottom of his wallet. He followed it with a candy bar he’d picked up on his way out of the Horseshoe. The sun was shining, the top was down, and he felt good until he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw what looked like an unmarked cop car. He pulled over to let it pass, but it pulled over with him.
Careful to maintain the speed limit, he veered onto Highway 375, which would take him to Groom Lake Road. The street was gravel but not unpleasant to drive on. After about twelve miles, with the cop still behind him, he swerved to the right down a narrow unmarked road. The car behind him made a U-turn, but Legs kept driving. A mile or so down, he saw what looked like a very large animal lying across the road. He started to circle around it, then planted his foot on the brake as a white Jeep Cherokee like the one that had taken Willie came hurtling toward him.
There was nothing he could do but watch.
The Jeep screeched to a halt. The same tall woman stepped from the passenger side, holding a gun in her hand. A man, also dressed in camouflage, stepped out of the driver’s side, walked over to the animal, and kicked it. Legs didn’t know much about weapons, but the pistol in the woman’s hand looked real enough. Too late, Legs realized that these people were Camo Dudes who patrolled Area 51. He didn’t have a camera, so most likely they would simply ream him out and hand him over to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department.
“Ostrich is dead,” the man said. “Told you he wouldn’t make it to the road, not after what I shot into him.” He looked at Legs. “Dead as you’ll be if you don’t do what you’re told.”
“Move over,” the woman said, getting behind the wheel of Legs’s car.
“I … uh … uh …”
“We know who you are, Mr. Cleveland.”
“How …?”
“We figured your uncle might have told you a little too much about our business. Know what I mean?” Her laugh was harsh.
The man roped together the legs of the dead ostrich and looped it around the bumper of the van.
“Hope you’re into ostriches, Mr. Cleveland,” the woman said. “Dumb creatures. With Willie gone, someone’s got to take care of them.”
Twenty minutes down the road, the van pulled up in front of a huge barn, barricaded by a wide iron bar. The man removed the bar and Legs was shepherded inside. Corralled in the middle was a large flock of ostriches.
Legs closed his eyes, prayed for the cop who had been following him, and promised God that if he got out of this, he’d give Willie’s money to the Piutes right away. He’d never gamble again, never drink, never—
“Okay, Mr. Cleveland,” the woman said. “In you go. Our soldiers have been restless. Your job is to calm them down so that they do what we need them to do. Maybe later, if they don’t kill you, we’ll show you some of our other brigades. Noah knew what he was doing when he saved the animals.”
She handed him a key to the paddock.
“See you later, if there’s anything left of you to see,” the man said, and he and the woman walked out of the barn.
Legs heard the bar falling into place and felt the warm trickle of urine down his legs.
Moving to the far corner, he hunkered down and tried to control his fear. The ostriches looked calm enough to him. Most of them had their heads buried in the sand. The rest milled around in an almost listless manner, nudging each other occasionally. They were huge creatures, with small heads, long thin legs, and bodies that must have weighed three hundred pounds. Telling his story, Willie had said that his ostriches had marched away like a revolutionary army but never attacked unless provoked and that their brains were smaller than their eyes, which were none too large.
Maybe, Legs thought, he could find a way to free them, but what was the point if they killed whoever they’d been trained to kill? Or if they killed him.
Either way, it seemed to him, he was a dead man.
He was still staring at the birds when the barn door reopened. The man stood back while the woman, who had changed into a pair of short-shorts, came toward him. She held a large syringe in her right hand. Praying it wasn’t meant for him, he said, “You got some pair of legs. Get me out of here and I’ll make you a star.” He squinted at the name tag attached to the collar of her shirt. “Ava. Perfect. Why would you want to be here when you could be a headliner?”
“You’re a funny man, Mr. Cleveland.” She came closer.
“Legs,” he said. “Call me Legs.”
“All right, Legs. Let’s talk. What did Willie tell you about his work here?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? That’s hard to believe.”
“Believe it.”
For a moment the woman was silent. Legs figured he had nothing to lose by asking what was it they were doing to the ostriches to turn them into killing machines and why they were doing it. He was as good as dead anyway. Might as well know what he was dying for.