Nobody Dies in a Casino (31 page)

She crawled over all the bodies on the second balcony to slide down to the first floor. The smoke was much less here and she opted for trying to push everybody down here and then pull them out onto the pool deck, because the way to the front door appeared to be what was on fire.

She envisioned countless dead and broken necks as she shoved every body she could find on the second balcony down the stairs to the great room.

And then she dragged them one at a time outside to air, telling them to breathe, please, grabbing a breath herself and holding it before racing in for the next body.

Some body was stirring on one of her trips out. She'd become an automaton by now, hero or dupe. The last time in, she couldn't find another body but thought she could see flame.

No contacts, no glasses, no sleep, no mind—who knew what she saw? But she struggled back outside, and one of the bodies sat up.

“Charlie?”

Charlie would have sighed if she'd had breath. She'd saved Mitch Hilsten again and gotten caught in the act.

But he could see, so she convinced him to help her drag all the bodies on the patio to the boat.

He seemed to be coming to. She seemed to be going out. Next thing she knew, she was gone.

*   *   *

Charlie woke herself, coughing up the smoke in her burning lungs.

“You think you guys could keep it down?” Evan said from above her, and she realized she wasn't the only one coughing. He turned from the wheel of the small cabin cruiser to look at her and the mass of huddled bodies at his feet. “Thanks, Charlie. Already owed you one, remember? I was meant to go up in flames with my house. So now I owe you two.”

Since one of the tinted lenses was gone from his eyewear and since Charlie was in her groggy state, plus had no eyewear at all, Evan Black appeared to wear two expressions at once—the tinted side obscure and blank, the naked one animated with mischief. No one else seemed to notice the ambiguity here.

“God, I hate heroes.”

Mitch put a flask in her hand. “It's just water.”

Even with her foggy vision, Charlie could see the others, sort of, because of the light. A little of it was dawn. A lot of it was flames in the sky.

“Oh, Evan, your beautiful house.”

“That's okay—we got the can.” Mel grinned at his boss. “Drink some of that, will ya? Then hand it to me.”

Mitch, Evan, Bradone, Caryl, Mel—Charlie counted. “Not everybody made it, huh? I broke somebody's neck shoving you all downstairs, didn't I? I didn't know what else to do.”

“Oh God, there she goes with the guilt again.” Bradone grabbed the flask from Mel.

“Where's Toby, and Louie Deloese? Was there someone else?” Charlie had no idea how many people were in that house sending orange-red flares up into a dawning sky.

“Last I saw of Loopy Louie, he was dragging Toby ‘Merlin' Johnson out around the wall to the next yard,” Mitch told her. “I was so busy dragging people to the boat, I didn't have time to go after him. But they were on the pile of us you left out on Evan's pool deck.”

“Don't worry, my men will get them.” Detective Jerome Battista rolled over to face her.

“You? I thought
you
were with
them
,” Charlie said.

“Them. You. You sure you know the difference?”

Actually, she wasn't. She'd sort of hoped he knew.

All that questioning and public confession in the screening room was meant to show the whole story. There should be no need for inquiring minds, like Charlie's and Bradone's, for instance, to continue inquiring. If that didn't do it, the still pictures of loved ones should have made the point. And Battista had been in on it up to that point.

Everyone had been left with a terrible thirst and, except for Charlie and Bradone, with varying degrees of lost time.

“Could it have been that wand you used on the casino patrons at the Hilton?” Charlie asked Evan.

“It's possible they found it, turned the power up to black people out that long. What do you say, Detective, were we zapped with a fancy handheld laser developed at Area Fifty-one or stolen from aliens who landed out there in a giant orange?” The writer/producer turned his dual expressions on Jerome Battista.

Battista returned the look as calmly as he could with eyes still watering from smoke and coughing. “You all saw the film—there is no air base at Groom Lake, or Area Fifty-one, and that orange mist was stage smoke—thus there's no fancy laser either.”

“They left me and Bradone conscious in a closet that didn't lock, with Richard and Mitch outside in the hall, in need of rescuing, tucked the rest of you and Louie Deloese and Toby away unconscious in closets to burn to death. Bradone and I would be so busy dragging Mitch and Richard to safety, we wouldn't have time to look for you.”

“Give ya twenty to one ol' Loopy and his nephew land on their feet, somewhere out of the country,” Evan said.

“You're on,” Battista snapped back. “We got witnesses.”

Charlie would never understand men. “What happened to old Grizzlehead, your undisclosed flabby sidekick? What about Eddie Hackburger? I mean, why did I get the feeling that the three of you were running that show? And Bradone and I had been given all this unsolicited information so we could be witness to the facts as they wanted them presented. What made them think we'd be chucking up all that misinformation to the press right now in Evan's backyard while the rest of you were burning with the house? I don't get the logic.”

Evan and Battista took turns explaining that the retired ARPs expected to be believed no matter what, because their say-so should be enough.

“They are strangely out of the loop and can't handle people flaunting strict orders, questioning authority that has permission to use deadly force. Hey, they watch
Good Cops, Bad Guys
instead of
The X-Files
.” Jerome Battista added, “This is off the record you, understand. I'll deny any of it.”

“Even with all these witnesses?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“All of which makes them wonderful tools for private and public security forces at all levels.” Evan cut the engine and they drifted into a dock somewhere across the small lake from the burning house. The sirens and the helicopters did not sound that far away. “Even for police departments, casinos, and other corporations. And your government.”

“They have an intimidating air of authority and can get things done faster than public institutions, which get so much press coverage.” Detective Jerome Battista grimaced but met the eyes of a hushed and somber group of survivors. “The system could not function without them. There are so many limitations imposed on law enforcement.”

Charlie couldn't see well enough to be sure that all the expressions on the boat mirrored the haunted one she knew she wore. But she couldn't see why they wouldn't.

“They do tend to meet untimely ends, if that's any consolation,” he tried to reassure them.

“But they turned on you too.”

“We've worked with these same freelancers before, to our advantage. Problem is, you never can be sure who else they are working for at the same time. In this case, they had their own agenda, and I should have seen it coming. They are highly patriotic and totally lacking in humor. Evan's project and everything about it would be a slap in the face to that crowd. I was not let in on the very last play in this particular game.” Battista sat up straighter and clutched his ribs. “Which reminds me, Mr. Black—about the money from that illegal wager I've been hearing so much about—”

“All burned up,” Evan said sadly, and he and Mel began handing Richard and Bradone onto the dock. “Charlie saved you but not the loot.”

“It's still illegal—the wager itself.”

Mitch reached down to help the homicide detective out of the boat next. And then reached for Charlie's hand, but all movement between dock and deck stopped when what was left of Evan's house exploded. Sudden bolts of lightning flashed from a cloudless sky.

“Jesus, what could have done that?” Richard grabbed Bradone as if to save her. She pushed him away.

“Must have been the water heater, huh, Battista?” Evan watched the smoke roil and billow—turn orangy like a volcano or— “Couldn't have been anything from an air base that doesn't exist, huh?”

“Talk about your conspiracy theory,” Charlie told Evan as she left the boat. “You can't claim it was just our paranoia that created this whole last week.”

“In a way, it was, Charlie. Somebody's paranoia.”

CHAPTER
39

“C
HARLIE, ALL I
can say is how sorry I am for doubting you.” Bradone stood on the curb with the luggage she'd reclaimed from the lobby of an empty Loopy Louie's. Hotel guests had either taken planes out or relocated to other hotels after the raid. “I forgot in all the mayhem that you were a sensitive.”

“Sensitive about what?”

“About lying in front of those people, about the orange spaceship and what we really saw on Merlin's Ridge. I should have known you knew the truth all along. And you saved all our lives.”

“I didn't know any truth.”

“But I wanted to simply get Richard and Mitch and us out of the house to safety when we smelled smoke, like the elderly ex-ARPs wanted us to. You ran back upstairs, looking for the others. You must have known something I didn't.”

“No, I just figured that's what I'd do if I wanted to get rid of some of the people left unconscious in the house and use others who had been convinced to cooperate, by threatening their loved ones, to explain what happened afterward. That's why the silly confession staging to explain all the dead bodies ruining my vacation and why and how nothing of importance really happened out at Area Fifty-one. I was surprised they wanted to get rid of Detective Battista though.” And Evan Black had to know more than he admitted. What really happened to the real money?

“And burning down the house might also get rid of the true film shot by Mel on Merlin's Ridge.”

“And any other secret goodies spirited out of Groom Lake by Patrick Thompson.” Like lightning out of a cloudless sky. “Can't find what you want—burn the place down so nobody else can find it either.”

“Mel's film in its real state might prove my abduction, and maybe yours too.”

“Nobody was abducted, Bradone. I'm a sensitive and I know these things.” Jeesh.

But they hugged good-bye as the stargazer's limo drew up to take her to the airport. It stopped right where the hunk pilot Patrick Thompson died. Charlie wanted to go home too. Richard was finding them tickets.

Back in the lobby, some guests still sorted through piled luggage. Others looked for someone to complain to because they couldn't find theirs. The news sources reported the raid as a massive drug bust and excused the closing and search of the casino on evidence that Louie Deloese was a drug lord.

Charlie figured it was Evan's bet money the authorities were looking for here too, especially if he'd taken Louie up on his offer to provide a conduit to get it out of the country. It would have been embarrassing to reveal Evan Black's successful stunt of the decade. Charlie wondered if Loopy Louie'd been had by the authorities, both official and non. If Evan was about to make his first-ever big-budget picture. Louie might appear small and inconsequential, but Charlie wouldn't want him for an enemy.

Was the undisclosed motive behind everything ultimately to ensure Groom Lake remained undisclosed?

“Well, guess this is it till next year, huh?” Mitch Hilsten, superstar, said behind her.

“Next year?” Charlie turned with resignation. I should be so lucky.

Fans still blew the gauzy veils around on the ceiling. The one above Mitch hid and then revealed a nasty-looking scimitar with regular and sad monotony. Loopy Louie's had been gloriously, unabashedly silly in a seriously silly town.

“My astrologer says your cycles are winding down as you get older and—”

“As
I
get older? You're the one who has to eat raw oysters and insure all your parts. Not to mention that you have well over ten years on me.”

He put a finger to her lips and drew her close as cameras buzzed and clicked and whirred around them and mikes on booms lowered overhead.

“Yeah, but I'm a famous superstar.” He had to whisper in her ear so she could hear over the rude chorus of rude questions.

“Jesus, wait till Libby sees this.”

“I think it's about time Libby gets a life.” And then the jerk kissed her for the benefit of the rude intruders. “Charlie, would you consider becoming my—”

“No.”

“Agent?”

“No.”

“Why not? I get more work and publicity through you than I do Lazarus.”

“Tell me you and Evan aren't going through with the conspiracy project. Mel Gibson and
60 Minutes
and Oprah and everybody already has. It's going to take more than free money.” They stood close, spoke low. Charlie hoped all the noise the reporters were making would cover their conversation.

Evan Black had waited until the rest were on the dock before he took off with Mel and Caryl and presumably “the can,” leaving Battista shouting threats after the disappearing boat. The detective had been duped by the freelance ex-ARPs and now by a real professional—a Hollywood producer.

“You bring charges against my client,” Richard Morse warned, “you're going to open up a can of crocodiles. There are too many witnesses to Groom Lake and to your interrogation methods.”

Mitch said now, “I wouldn't miss this one for anything. Not only do I get to work for the young genius but we got stuff in the can, Charlie, that will make Spielberg jealous. Trust me.” And he was gone, half the cameras following and, damn him, the other half attacking Charlie.