No Such Creature (4 page)

FOUR

Z
IG HATED THE SMELL OF HORSESHIT
, and he could detect it from a long way away. At first he couldn’t understand why a self-storage outfit would smell like manure. But the moment he and Clem had stepped off the huge freight elevator, he’d figured it out; you could tell by the shape of the units.

“Jesus,” Clem said. “Why’s it smell like horseshit in here?”

“Used to be a riding academy,” Zig said. “Remember there was a sign coming north off the Strip?”

“Why you gonna put a riding academy in the middle of Las fucking Vegas?”

“I don’t know, Clem. Why do certain assholes have to smell like a fucking distillery all the time?”

“I had an Irish coffee. What’s the big deal?”

They walked along the corridors of units, each one numbered and padlocked, until eventually they found 704. A security camera halfway down the corridor stared at them with a baleful purple gaze.

“Stu better be taking care of the kid on the front desk,” Zig said.

“He will. He was gonna start a big argument about missing items and insurance and threaten lawsuits, the whole bit. Kid won’t be looking at no camera. Anyway, that’s why we got ball caps.”

“He better be good, this guy.”

“Stu’s good. Known him for years.”

“I haven’t.”

Zig took the bolt cutters out of the duffle bag and sent the lock crashing to the floor. When they stepped inside the locker, the smell of horseshit was a lot stronger.

“Fuck me,” Zig said. “Fucking Melvin.”

Except for some loose plastic bags and pellets of Styrofoam, the locker was empty.

“I knew we shoulda kept that guy alive for a while.”

Zig turned on Clem. “Oh, yeah? You knew it, huh? You’re so fucking clairvoyant? I suppose that’s why you said something at the time, right? That’s why you said, ’Hey, Zig, maybe we better keep him alive till we make sure he’s telling the truth.”

“Okay, okay, you’re right. You’re right. I shoulda said something.”

Zig kicked the locker wall with the heel of his boot, making a dent.

He cursed himself silently as they headed back to the elevator. It should have been obvious that no one would store the proceeds from a jewellery heist in a place like this. A smart thief would put them in a safe somewhere, just like a jeweller. He’d been half expecting to find a safe inside the locker, which would have posed a problem, for sure, but he could see in retrospect why that didn’t make sense.

“I am sick and fucking tired,” he said, “of learning from mistakes.”

“I know what you mean, boss.”

“Next time’ll be different.”

“Way different.” Clem punched the elevator button.

“Next time we detain the guy someplace safe, someplace where speed is not required. We’re gonna be way more thorough. And we’re gonna make sure we got our hands on the goods before we do anything else. Melvin just panicked and made shit up.”

“I think you’re right,” Clem said. “He wanted that bag off in a big way.”

As the elevator rattled them back toward street level, the barnyard smells began to diminish. Zig kicked the door. Fucking Melvin.

It was Max and Owen’s practice to take back roads wherever possible. They sought out the old U.S. highways that had been superseded by the interstates. Partly this was a security measure—the old highways were less frequently patrolled than the interstates—but mostly it was for pleasure. Max always scheduled their shows so that there was no hurry, and he liked to see the small towns and the countryside. Otherwise, he said, you might as well leave the Rocket at home and take a bloody plane.

Consequently, it took them fourteen hours to drive from San Francisco to Las Vegas, taking US 93 down through Nevada. Along the way they listened to dialect CDs, practising accents as they drove. Max was particularly insistent on Australian at the moment. When they weren’t doing that, he liked to find the smallest radio stations to hear the local news and ads. “When Walker’s Shoes are what you wear, it’s almost like you’re walking on air.” And he enjoyed hearing the “so-called Christians,” as he called them, foaming at the mouth over homosexuals, liberals and other degenerates.

Sitting beside him all day, Owen tried to think up a good way to tell him his news. After the next town, he would think, then maybe after the next gas station. So far he hadn’t managed to work up the courage.

Max was at the wheel as they approached Vegas, and even though he was exhausted and yearning for his bunk, Owen felt as if they were landing on a distant planet. As the sun set, the sky turned lilac, then mauve, and in the dry desert twilight the lights of the city became visible when they were still a hundred miles away.

“It looks like an idea,” Max said. “Not even an idea—a notion—soon to become an idea.”

“You should’ve been a poet, Max.”

“I am a poet. Every poet’s a thief. Poets break into your mind and heart, and their verses are so many shards of glass they leave scattered around.”

“Except people like poets. They don’t like thieves.”

“They don’t like poets either. Any poet who dies rich is either a charlatan or a songwriter.”

“Shakespeare got rich. He owned the biggest house in Stratford, you told me.”

“Will Shakespeare, aside from being my hero, my angel, was a one-man corporation: actor, manager and playwright. He was also a dab hand with real estate. In my heyday I knew everything there was to know about the great Will.”

“I still don’t understand how you could give up acting. You must have been great.”

“Sadly, the world thought otherwise. There was a time, though—oh, there was a time. I wish you could have seen my Hamlet. The Old Vic—the Old Wreck we used to call it. I got to play that slippery little Dane for three months running before the most discerning audience in the Western world.” Max swept a hand grandly across the speeding desert. “Standing ovations every night. Dozens of letters I got. Dozens! Gielgud wrote me the most charming note. I thought to myself, ‘Max, your ship has come in. You’re going to be a second Olivier.”

“I can’t believe you never made it,” Owen said.

“Neither can I, my lad. Neither can I. You put your heart and soul into something, devote your life to it, you think success must surely come. But ambition is a one-armed bandit. The world spits out success just often enough to keep us mortal fools yanking that lever. But nothing came of it. No film offers, no great parts. It was as if there’d been no Hamlet, no letters, no standing ovations. As if it had been erased from the entire world’s memory banks, except my own.”

“It’s totally unfair.”

“Well, I made mistakes. Thought I could do anything. Took on roles I never should have considered. Turned down others that, in hindsight, might have been better bets. Offended a few people here and there.”

“No, Max. You?”

“It’s not funny, boy. It ate me up. I wanted it so badly. Perhaps I wanted it too badly. Tried too hard. Certainly a couple of critics took me to task for chewing the scenery. I learned from that. But possibly I learned too late.”

“Well, you’ve put on enough performances since,” Owen said, trying to cheer him up. “You’ve put on a lot of shows.”

“So I have, boy. So I have. It was either that or spend the rest of my life heaving sandbags backstage. That’s what they had me do! After a few years I was so desperate to stay in the theatre, I actually did it—on the sly, of course. Then the stagehands’ union got wind of it and had me cashiered, and that’s when I turned to my life of travel and romance. Note it well, lad: classical training will never see you wrong. Not that I’d want to see you become an actor—perish the thought.”

Owen had visited Las Vegas before, back when he was twelve years old, the first long trip he had ever taken with his uncle. That time, before the Rocket and before Owen was included in Max’s shows, they had stayed at Circus Circus, a children’s paradise, and Owen had loved every minute of it.

After they got settled in the trailer park, they took the car downtown to the El Cortez for dinner.

“Why did you pick this place?” Max said when they sat down to eat. “A sudden fit of thrift?”

“Bugsy Siegel used to own it,” Owen said. “It’s my theme this year. Criminal history. That’s why we had Alcatraz, and that’s why we’re having dinner at the El Cortez.”

“Poor Bugsy. Ended up with more holes in him than Saint Sebastian. You’re a peculiar boy, Owen, have I told you that today?”

“Well, look who brought me up.”

“Bollocks. I get to choose where we have dessert.”

Max chose Sir Slots-a-Lot’s Kitchen, just off the Strip. It was reasonably priced, served down-home cooking, and offered several rows of slot machines in case a diner should feel the urge to shed money between courses. It was decorated with suits of armour that had been shipped to Vegas all the way from a Hollywood movie set.

They ordered chocolate sundaes, with brandy for Max and a Coke for Owen. As they waited for the food to arrive, they stared dumbly at the array of television screens, all tuned to
Celebrity Poker
. The room rang with the intermittent
ka-ching
of the slots.

“Chocolate sundaes,” said Max, who had the sweet tooth of a ten-year-old. “Food of the gods.”

Owen couldn’t finish his.

“Why so down in the mouth, old chum? We put on a great show the other night, and you sit there like a death’s head.”

“I got accepted into Juilliard’s drama program.”

Max regarded him, spoon in mid-air. The blue eyes were bright and alert, but he suddenly looked very old.

“I’m gonna go, Max. I want to start my own life.”

Owen couldn’t meet Max’s gaze. He had to look away at the televised hands stacking their chips, gripping their fans of cards. Moans of disappointment wafted over from the slot machines.

“Don’t study theatre, boy,” Max said. “You’ll just end up another bloody waiter.”

“I have a good shot at it, Max. They loved my audition.”

Max sat back, rolled his shoulders bearlike against the booth, and leaned forward again as far as his bulk would permit. He spoke in what was for him a pretty soft voice. “Look at us, Owen. We’re free and easy. We have excitement, money, friends! Most boys your age would kill for this life.”

“It’s been fun,” Owen said. “It really has. We’ve had some great times. But I need to move on. I’ve saved a lot from our road trips, and there’s that money from Mom and Dad to cover the rest. Hey, listen, my marks were so good the school’s offered to pay half my tuition.”

“Of course. And who was it made you study? Who stood over you like a learned Colossus?”

“You did, Max. I could never have done it without you.”

“And not just the studies, mind. Do you have any conception of the life I saved you from? Modesty forbids I should raise the issue, but you force me. Think about it, boy. Do you have any idea where it was you were headed?”

Owen’s tenth birthday is the best birthday ever. He is an only child, and his parents—both British by birth, both physicians in a family practice in Norwalk, Connecticut—tend to go overboard on birthdays. In addition to his presents, which include a telescope, several books and five complete seasons of
Doctor Who
on DVD, they’ve driven down to New York City in the Volvo to see
The Lion King
on Broadway.

After the show, they stroll through the crowds and the noise and traffic, the ruby flashes and multicoloured pinwheels of Broadway’s light show, and make their way to Serendipity. New York seems to Owen the most brilliant creation in the universe—it
is
a universe, where everything is gaudy, loud, musical and fun. When Serendipity’s house specialty of frozen hot chocolate is set before him, Owen feels like a king himself.

He loved the musical, and can’t stop talking about it. To his parents’ amusement he breaks into an excellent reprise of “The Madness of King Scar,” singing at the table
I’m revered, I am reviled, I’m idolized, I am despised, I’m keeping calm, I’m going wild!

His parents beam at him across the table.

“Owen,” his mother says, “do you even know what ‘reviled’ means?”

“Nope. It sounds good, though.”