“Didn’t you just say something bitchy about canoes?”
He reached out and patted my arm. “It’s all right, sweetie. I’ll do the thinking for both of us now.”
I would have killed him myself.
If I hadn’t been laughing too hard.
Tribute and a Shot in the Light.
Hoover Dam. Summer, 2002.
For lack of anything better to do with my time, I was still singing when the assassin came back, looking a little the worse for wear. One eye was purpling, and he limped as he walked to the far corner and sat down on the floor, his back against the wall between the elevator and the side passage. He crossed his legs and laid out the Entertainment section of the Las Vegas Sun on the floor, and put a semi-automatic down on it. Beside the handgun, he set up a squeeze bottle, a cleaning rod, the usual cotton patches, and flat-head screwdriver. I watched through lowered eyelashes as he released the magazine, cleared the chamber, and left the slide locked back.
Reassuring. It looked like he meant to clean it, rather than kneecap me before he took it apart.
When he’d fieldstripped the Walther into four assemblies, he put together the cleaning rod and threaded a patch through it, then reached for the bottle. I kept right on singing as he soaked the patch and threaded it through the barrel, then repeated the process. He never looked up.
He was meticulous. And he didn’t notice in the slightest when Doc Holliday strolled around the corner, hands in his pockets like the American, and leaned against the wall by the lag-bolted staple holding my chain. “Stewart and Jackie wanted me to tell you they were coming back for you, King,” he said, rolling a cigarette with long pale fingers. The tobacco vanished when it drifted to the inlaid floor. “And ask you to soak up whatever you could, and pass it on to me. I pass it on to John Henry, and—”
Smart. That couldn’t be Jackie’s plan. If you don’t think so good, try not to think too much—
I nodded, because the assassin wasn’t looking. His head was still bent over his gun. “Also,” Doc said, crossing his arms over his chest, “you might want to think some about Jesse.”
Oh, sweet Jesus. It was just as well I was leaning into “Maybelline” until my gut ached, because I didn’t quite choke, or flinch. But I did manage to shake my head.
“Stewart says it’s about twins,” Doc continued, implacable. He licked his cigarette paper, twisted, and thrust the rolled-up end between his lips. I wanted to tell him even a ghost cigarette was going to make a ghost cough, but you get a sense, after a while, of when you might just be wasting your time. “The city of Los Angeles. The city of Las Vegas. Conjoined, after a fashion. Born at one birth, you might say. Of one mother. Midwived together.”
Just a little too true. I nodded and kept singing, the verse about the rainwater and the engine. It hurt.
Jesse.
My brother. My twin.
Who broke Momma’s heart in Tupelo, Mississippi, on a cold January night in 1935. I always wondered—
If I hadn’t been born with his death around my neck, if I hadn’t had that to make up for, what might not have been different? What might not have been?
Doc didn’t say another word, just smoked his cigarette until the song ended. I leaned forward, tugged to the end of my chain, rattled it hard to get the assassin’s attention as he reassembled his gun. The moving water scorched my hand when I reached out over it, towards him. I jerked back and called, instead. “Hey, man—”
He looked up. He let the action glide closed.
“You know, where I come from, we don’t take a gun apart without a little whisky. You know, to occupy the mind.”
“I don’t drink whisky. ‘Man.’” He slipped the magazine back in his pistol, delicate as a man slipping a ring on a woman’s finger. His eyebrow went up over the scarred eye and he smiled. “You hungry yet, Your Highness?”
“No,” I said.
He leveled the Walther and fired two shots into my heart.
It doesn’t work like in the movies, but the kick from a nine-millimeter’s enough to convince you to sit down pretty good, if you’re off balance, and almost everybody’s off balance when he’s just been shot. I sat down hard, left hand over the bloodless hole in my body, right hand still reaching out, just as it’d been knocked off the rail when I fell over.
The assassin grinned at me, stripped the magazine out of his pistol, and started to take it apart again. “How about now?”
The Russian and the Unquiet Grave.
Somewhere in North Las Vegas. Summer, 2002.
There wasn’t much left of the old Kiel Ranch.
The Russian pulled their van over along the roadside near an apparently deserted lot. The site Jackie pointed to consisted of six or seven acres of broken hardpan and scrub alongside a corrugated metal industrial campus with broad blue horizontal bands on the sides. It looked like any other desert lot in Las Vegas—if anything, a little more forbidding than some. The seared earth was the color of moonrock, lifeless brown and gray, clotted with gray-green scrub anywhere it could pry a toehold. Behind that, a chain-link fence sealed off the rear third of the site, and everything looked gritty and forgotten and gray. A slumped tin roof peered from behind taller bushes behind the fence, breaked on the east and north by clusters of four or five world-weary trees.
“He says the highway dust is over all,” the American muttered, laying a hand on the Russian’s shoulder for a moment before he slid out of the back seat and stood, arching, both hands fisted in the small of his back.
The Russian was grateful for the contact, but wouldn’t show it. He stole a glance at the Englishman, unsurprised to find him similarly impassive. Demonstrations changed nothing.
The Russian left the driver’s-side door latched and scooted across the front seat to the passenger side, where the wheel was tucked against the curb, following Jackie out of the minivan. It was trickier with bucket seats than it would have been in an older car, but not significantly so. There was plenty of room.
The American bumped his shoulder like a worried dog. The Russian gave him a distracted smile and glanced away, making sure he knew where Stewart was. The Englishman caught his eye this time and frowned, and glanced down, adjusting the tilt of his hat with two fingers.
“Give me the keys,” Stewart said. “We’ll bring the sleeping bags and stuff in after dark. No point in giving the game up.”
The Russian handed over the keys. “Where are you going?”
“Just moving the van over to the residential neighborhood back there before anybody thinks to come ask what we’re doing. You can get everybody through the fence, sugar?”
Men didn’t usually call the Russian ‘sugar.’ He arched an eyebrow at Stewart, and Stewart handed him a big, bright grin.
“We need to get you boys names,” he said, and turned back toward the van, whistling.
The Russian shrugged, and turned around to see Jackie eyeing him, with frank speculation. “He likes you,” Jackie said. “Come on. You heard the man. Get us through the fence.”
It was a relief to have an assignment, even an easy one. They ducked behind the scrub and were through in ninety seconds—before the van even pulled away—and the Russian hooked wire to close the gap he’d cut, while leaving Stewart access. Then he dusted his hands on his trousers, straightened his tie, and walked over to Jackie. “What are these plants?”
“Mormon tea and creosote bush, mostly,” Jackie said, leading the little band across dun-colored earth toward the trees. “Those are willows over there. The water will be down among their roots. That big tree’s a cottonwood.”
The Russian inhaled deeply, trying to smell the water, the way he’d heard you were supposed to be able too, in the desert. All he got was the scent of dust and automobile exhaust, and the air so hot inside his sinuses that it hurt.
“Give yourself a bloody nose doing that,” Jackie said.
The Russian coughed on dryness, and made a note. “What’s the feathery tree over there? The sort of purple-gray one, that looks like smoke?”
“Tamarisk,” Jackie answered, and there was no mistaking the loathing in his voice. “Salt cedar.”
“You don’t like it?”
“It sets deep tap roots, sucks up enough water to lower the water table, and when the other plants die of thirst, it seeds over everything. Whole huge thickets, acres of it.”
“So it’s competitive.”
“It’s an invasive species. Non-native.”
Unable to resist, the Russian offered, deadpan, “So are we,” and grinned when Jackie actually laughed, and shot him a startled glance.
Good. The defenses were in place, were functioning. No weakness slipped through the chinks in the armor, and that was what was important. Oh, the American would know—the American always knew—but the American was different.
It was all right if he knew.
The Russian stole another sideways glance at the widow’s partner, and caught him looking. They locked eyes for a moment, and looked down in unison.
Okay, maybe it was all right if the Englishman knew, as well. But he didn’t want to think about it, one way or the other, so he turned back to Jackie and said, “Stewart doesn’t want to be here, does he?”
Jackie didn’t answer, but his lips tightened and he shook his head. He’d secured dry, modern clothes for all of them—and he was back in his signature leather pants and heavy laced boots. He limped, too—the mincing step the Russian associated with blisters.
The American knew how to pick up a cue. “Your partner has history here, Jackie? I overheard something about ghosts back at the river—”
“We both have history all over this town. That’s how we got the job, you know. But you’ll have to ask Stewart if you want to know about Kiel Ranch.”
“Thanks,” the American said, as they came around the scrub concealing the tin-roofed structure. A crumpled little house huddled under the meager protection of an open-walled shed banged together out of corrugated tin and salvaged wood. Once-whitewashed adobe had scaled down to the dun earth underneath, and one wall of the house had fallen, revealing a two-roomed interior no bigger than a garage. The whole thing was reinforced and cobbled together with planks.
“I think I will. Hey, there’s shade.”
“Don’t go too near the house,” Jackie said. “It’s not safe. The foundation’s fallen out from under it.”
The American cocked his head to one side and shoved his hands in his pockets, regarding the house.
“Oldest structure in Las Vegas,” he read off a dilapidated sign. “Why isn’t it preserved?”
“Viva Las Vegas,” Jackie said, as if that explained everything. “The Mojave eats its young.”
“This doesn’t match my understanding of a ranch house very well,” the Englishman said, pausing beside Jackie. He had his umbrella propped open over his head now, an impromptu parasol. If the Russian hadn’t been looking, he never would have caught the lines of tension beside the Englishman’s eyes, or he would have thought them just a squint because of the sun.
“You’ve seen too many episodes of
Bonanza
.” But Jackie said it with a wry sort of resignation, as if it amused him. “There was a bigger ranch house, but it burned down about ten years ago. The graves are still around here somewhere, though.”
“Graves?” The American nudged the Russian, and the Russian very narrowly avoided kicking his partner as Jackie looked over and frowned at them both.
“Yes,” Jackie said, as footsteps crunched up behind them. The Russian recognized Stewart’s tread, dragging slightly as if weighted down. “The graves of the Kiel brothers. William and Edwin. Murdered in 1900.”
“October eleventh,” Stewart said, ignoring matched speculative looks from all three spies. “Some people say Edwin shot William, and killed himself in remorse. Some people aren’t so sure. We’ll need this.” He crouched down to lay two gallon bottles of water on the ground.
“They had enemies?”
“Yes,” Stewart said, looking up through bangs he still hadn’t had the time to gel into submission. “You see, some people also say their daddy, Conrad Kiel, shot old Archibald Stewart down in cold blood. Stewart had a wife and five children, the youngest born posthumously. Well, according to legend, one day the Stewart boys got the Kiel boys back.”
The Russian cleared his throat. He didn’t like unanswered questions. Especially those that could affect his future well-being. “And they’re buried here?”
“Well, William and Edwin were, before the university came and dug ’em up,” Stewart said. “The grave’s off that way.” A broad gesture with the back of his hand, and then he looked up at his partner, as if excluding all else. “I laid salt around, Jackie; I’ll do more after sunset. That and the brothers ought to keep Bugsy from figuring out where we are. Besides, this just isn’t his turf—no way.”
The Englishman tilted his improvised parasol forward and leaned one shoulder on one of the peeled tree trunks holding up the shed roof. “So, what do I do if I see a ghost?”
“Don’t worry,” Jackie answered, as Stewart walked off toward the cottonwood trees. “They’re little ghosts. Real people dead by violence. They’re more or less powerless.”
“More or less?” the Englishman asked, just as the American said, “You said Bugsy was a little ghost.”
“Lotta people
believe
in Bugsy, though.” Jackie shrugged. “He might be—sort of half and half. I’m just not sure.”
The American stared after Stewart. “Stewart’s not his first name, is it?”
Jackie’s smile bulged his cheek under the edge of his eyepatch. “No,” he said, turning to watch his partner disappear around the trunk of the much-maligned salt cedar.
“What is it?”
The smile went a little wider, but there wasn’t any warmth in it, and Jackie didn’t look at the American. The Russian dried his palms on his pants.
“Stewart’s his only name, these days. If you want to know the other one, you could ask him, but I can’t guarantee he’d remember it. We died a long time ago.” And then Jackie looked down, as if recollecting himself, and swallowed hard enough to bob his Adam’s apple in his wiry throat. “Come on; let’s get settled so we can figure out where the hell we go from here.”
Tribute and the Offer He Couldn’t Refuse.