Summer 2007 (16 page)

“And the Englishman,” the scholar added.

Something still tickled the back of the Russian’s neck,
and he gave the appearance of paying rapt attention to the conversation while,
in fact, his eyes flickered from one reflective surface to another. He sat back
in his chair, gnawing on a fingernail as the American protested. “But what does
that have to do with
any—”

And then the scholar and the athlete exchanged a look
that the Russian knew very well: it was a look he had traded with his own
partner many, many times. And the scholar shook his head, and said, “Pal, they
don’t know.”

The athlete’s eyes got wide, and the fork moved back and
forth again.
You-me-them?

The American ran a thumbnail along his jaw. “We don’t
know
what
?”

The Russian cleared his throat as a flash of movement in
a silver cream pitcher on an adjoining table finally resolved itself into the
image he’d sought. The black-haired young man in the strangely cut suit who had
accosted them on the casino floor. Watching over his shoulder from a dark table
in the corner. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Explanations may have to wait. I believe
we are being observed.”

The American glanced over his shoulder, abrupt and
unsubtle. The Russian felt him about to rise from his chair and braced himself
to stand, but the athlete reached out and placed a hand on the American’s
sleeve. “Talk to us before you talk to him,” the athlete said, when the
American’s golden-brown eyes locked on his own near-black ones.

The American hesitated, glanced at the Russian, and
shook his head. “I’m just going to go make friends,” he answered. “You can stay
here if you prefer.”

Silence, and then the athlete shook his head and
withdrew his hand. “I think my man and I had better be there to hear this.”

#

The Assassin is troubled. Las Vegas. Summer, 2002.

The assassin squinted through a telescopic sight which,
for once, was not attached to a firearm, cursing convenience. Too convenient,
rather, that all of his targets should gather in one place, at one time. Too
convenient, and a bit unsettling that they had followed him successfully to Las
Vegas.

He must have been careless. Carelessness would not do.

He would have to manufacture a convincing errand here in
Sin City. The spies couldn’t be permitted to discover the purpose of his visit,
to discover his links to Angel. At least not before he could remove the Russian
and the scholar, and…prevent their partners from reporting in.

He needed them. But he didn’t need them here, and he
didn’t need them now. What he needed here and now was a sacrifice—and a
ghost would not suffice. He pushed his forelock out of his eyes irritably and
frowned. “All stories are true,” he muttered under his breath, pocketing the scope
and fading behind a half-wall as the four men slid their chairs back and stood,
as one. “But some stories are truer than others.”

Which made him think about pigs.

Which made him think about the Russian, and laugh.

#

One-Eyed Jack and the Four of a Kind. Las Vegas. Summer,
2002.

He didn’t
really
look that much like Stewart. Not
really, not now that I was studying rather than reacting. Broken nose, sure,
but the jaw was different, and the way he moved, and the muscle on his
forearms, and the exact shade of his hair—

I got caught looking, of course.

All four chairs slid back as if they were wired and all
four men stood at once as if somebody had pulled on their strings. I didn’t
rise.

Instead I let the city lights shine in my eye and fixed
their apparent leader with a stare. He didn’t stop short, which impressed me. I
can be pretty intimidating, when I try.

Instead he tucked his hands into the pockets of his
trousers without bothering to unbutton his slate-gray suit-jacket first. “We’re
still not whoever you thought we were,” he said, an American with a flat
Midwestern accent. He slouched, dropping his chin against his collar, his
forehead wrinkling as he looked at me through his lashes. “But seeing as this
is a second date, I thought it might be interesting to find out a little more
about
you
.”

The direct regard was meant to be unsettling, the body
language disconcerting. He was good at it, and the blond with the accent hung
back right where I would catch his cold blue stare any time my eye happened to
slide off those of the spokesman. I wasn’t about to let that happen, though.

I stood up and extended my hand. “I’m Las Vegas,” I
said. “But you can call me Jackie.”

He drew one hand out of his pocket. His jacket pulled
taut, momentarily, over the bulge in his left armpit, and I knew he saw me see
it. “Las Vegas,” he said, brow creasing more as he straightened and extended
his hand. He glanced left and right, as if looking for the cameraman. “You’re
named after the city?”

“He is the city,” the black man said in educated tones.
“That’s what my man here was going to explain to you before you got all hot and
bothered.”

The American’s clasp was dry and callused, and he didn’t
flinch, although he angled a disbelieving glance at the taller men. Obviously,
he thought he was used to getting some pretty strange things in his breakfast
cereal.

“Pleased to meet you, Las Vegas,” he said, eyes meeting
mine again as our hands dropped apart. “I’m the Wreck of the
Hesperus
.
Now that we’re acquainted, do you mind explaining why you’re following us?”

Oh, what the hell. These are the good guys, right?
Always the good guys, modern day knights in their modern-day armor of suitcoats
and shoulder holsters. That’s why the world remembers them, hummed under its
breath like the rhythm of a rhyme learned in childhood after half the words
have been forgotten. A little something to kick the darkness back.

Sin City’s not afraid to talk turkey, even to ghosts.
Little ghosts can be a problem; a lot of the time they haven’t got much of
themselves left, and the ones that do are generally real angry about something
or another. They might not even be people anymore: just collections of energy
patterns. Legendary ghosts, like the John Henrys, are strong because they’re
made up of so many layers of fact and myth and memory. Media ghosts are really
just modern legendary ghosts, but they’re usually not as powerful, not having
been…
laminated
out of the stuff of story for so many years. On the other
hand, based on their games with the salt shaker, apparently media ghosts can do
what legendary ghosts cannot, and lay hands on things.

And like Doc Holliday, all four of these carried guns.
“Well,” I said, keeping my hands in sight, “how much do you gentlemen know about
animae and ghosts?”

“Animae?” the Russian asked, just as the scholar glanced
over his shoulder at his partner and said, “some,” out of the corner of his
mouth.

“Geniuses,” the athlete said, his eyes very dark. He
held out a hand and I took it; his had ridged callus, like somebody who spends
a lot of time holding a golf club or a tennis racket.

The scholar shook his head and shrugged apology at me. “
Genii
is the word the tennis bum is scratching his head over.”

“Hey, man—”

It was a game, I realized—and the other pair knew
it too, from the sly communicating smile they shared. The Russian stayed a
little behind the American, covering his back, as the athlete stepped away.
“All right,” the American said, scratchy tenor voice and an arched eyebrow.
“I’ll play the idiot child. What are animae?”

The scholar coughed, and licked his lips. “This was the
thing we were just going to explain before we came over here”—he
shrugged, and looked helplessly at his partner, and tugged the American’s
sleeve a little to turn him away—“y’see, you and me, man…all of us,
really. We’re not exactly real.”

#

Part III

The American and the end of an era. Somewhere in Las
Vegas. Summer 1964/2002.

The American looked at the Russian, who crossed his arms
and tilted his head before nodding slightly–a gesture that encompassed a
fifteen-minute conversation, brought them into concord, and formalized a plan.
<>We’re not exactly real. “You have five minutes,” the American said.
“Go.”

The kid knotted both hands in his strangely cut hair.
“It’ll take more than five minutes, sir. Look–can we maybe sit down? Join
me at my table–”

“We have to settle the bill,” the athlete said, with a
glance back at the spies’ own table.

“I run a tab. I’ll pay for it. Please. Just sit.” He
stepped aside and tugged a chair away from the table, turning it to display its
seat. “You see, I think it’s half my fault you’re all here in the desert, and
I’ve got problems of my own. And I’d like to buy you a drink and sort things
out.”

“My man doesn’t drink.” The athlete glanced over his
shoulder.

The scholar wasn’t smiling, and his brow had furrowed a
little deeper. He leaned forward and crossed his arms. “I’ll take a coffee,” he
said, and placed himself very definitely in the chair Jackie had drawn out.

“I’ll take a coffee too.” The Russian sat down across
from the scholar.

The American watched, unsettled.
We’re not exactly
real.
He pulled out the chair beside his partner, while the athlete
retrieved one from an empty nearby table, tilted it, and spun it around. The
American leaned forward on his elbows once everyone was settled; the chill in
his gut wouldn’t slack. “All right,” he said. “So you’re the whole box top.
Let’s, ah, hear it. Explain to me why we’re not–”

“–exactly real?” The young man smiled, showing
even teeth above a pronounced jaw. “When it comes right down to it, I’m not
exactly real either. We’re conjured beings, embodiments of the collective
unconscious, if you will.”

“The zeitgeist.” The Russian, sounding unwilling, but
fascinated. The American shot his partner a look; he shrugged. It wasn’t an
apology. “Funky.”

“Prove it,” the American said.

“Well, for one thing,” the scholar said, leaning back in
his chair and stretching his legs, “there was no Brown Derby in Vegas in the
sixties–”

“You say ‘in the sixties’ as if it’s something else
now.”

“It’s two thousand and two,” the athlete said. “Don’t
look at me like that, man. I only know ’cause they woke
us
up again. We
were walking through all the old ghosts and dreams same as you, caught up in
our story.”

“Who’s they?” the American asked.

The athlete gestured broadly, taking in the restaurant
patrons, the casino beyond it, the city and the world. “The ones who tell the
stories,” he said. “And your next question is going to be, ‘What do you mean,
ghosts and dreams?’ Isn’t it?”

“Yes–”

“Take an example.” The athlete glanced up at the
ceiling. “The MGM Grand wasn’t here in the sixties. There wasn’t anything here
in the sixties. And the Desert Inn, where you’re staying–it’s a ghost as
well. They imploded it. You guys are sort of a memory, something that got left
over, created by the world’s collective memory of the stories that were told
about you.”

“Jetways.” The Russian, and the American knew that
focused tone in his voice very well. It was the tone that meant a clue had just
snapped into place, revealing a much larger section of the puzzle. It was a
tone he trusted, although he couldn’t always follow the twists that brought it
on. “Jetways, jetways.”

The kid–
Jackie
–was looking at the
Russian, a thin smile playing with the corners of his mouth until the American
couldn’t take it any more and snapped, “
What
?”

“There are no jetways at McCarran Field–”

“There were no jetways at McCarran Field,” Jackie said
calmly. “It’s McCarran International Airport now, and the seventh busiest in
America.”

“The lights I saw when we were flying in.” The
American’s gut gave one more squeeze of denial, and then it settled down and
let him think.
When you’ve eliminated the impossible–

Hell, it wasn’t as if his career hadn’t spanned U.F.O.s,
killer robots, and radio controlled vampire bats. His own nonexistence wasn’t
such a big stretch, after that. “You’re telling me I’m a fairy tale?
Make-believe?”

He ignored the Russian’s sharp, offended stare. Whatever
his partner had been about to say was cut off when the waitress arrived, was
roundly charmed by the assembled, and departed with their orders. The American
looked at Jackie again as Jackie shrugged, one-shouldered, and lit a cigarette.
“I’m telling you what I know.”

“Fine. All right. I believe you–” He could almost
be amused by the surprise his friends evinced at his willingness to believe
what they were telling him. Mind control rays, earthquake machines, being told
one’s life was a mass hallucination: all in a day’s work. The coffee came, and
he picked up his cup to hide the way his hands wanted to shake. “–now on
to the interesting question, Mr., ah–

“Just call me Jackie.”

“–Jackie.” Smoke curled around the young man’s
fingertips and outlined the patch over his eye as he raised the cigarette
again, but didn’t puff.