One-Eyed Jack (26 page)

“Very well.”

It was strange, but even in the bowels of Hoover Dam I could tell when he brought us back to 2002. The quality of the air was different, and there was thirty-eight years more grime and wear on the inlaid brass doors of the lift.

Doc pushed the button, seeming to revel in his ability to do so. The doors rolled open. We found ourselves in a narrow gray tunnel that should have been just like every other narrow gray tunnel in the dam. But there was something different about this one. The air was infested with the same thrumming sense of potential as the powerhouse, and I could tell by breathing that we—that Stewart and I—were just as unwelcome here.

“Feel that?” Doc asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

Stewart said, “I see what you mean. Is your room through here?”

Doc led on. The room we came out into was little and square and bare, just as gray as everything else inside the dam, and lit with the same horrible green fluorescence. It was, however, notable for the presence of a dark-haired spy chained to the far wall. The American slumped against the wall, watchful, knees drawn up. Sleeping, or faking it: that’s probably what I would have done as well, if I were blasé enough about being chained to walls to fall asleep.

“Rise and shine,” the Russian said cheerfully. The American startled, and the Russian handed his gun to him; he used the leverage of his chains to hop into a crouch for enough slack to aim as the Russian bent over the chains with a wire in his hand.

“Where’s the athlete?” the Russian asked.

The American shook his head, lips thin, and then looked up at me. “Watch the door.”

Oh, right. Although I wouldn’t do much good, compared to the spies, if anything did go down. The Englishman stood beside me, though, a steadying presence smelling of cologne. He spoke over his shoulder without turning his head, and I knew from the tone that it wasn’t for me. “I don’t suppose you—”

“We heard him singing,” the American said, as his hands came free of his chains and the Russian retrieved his gun. The American groaned chafed his wrist with the other.

“Back on the Chain Gang?” Stewart asked, deadpan. The widow kicked his ankle hard enough to make him wince.

“John Henry,” the American answered, pushing himself upright with considerable assistance from the wall. He looked at the Russian. “Did you seduce a pretty girl?”

The Russian’s eyebrow went up. “I see no signs of drugs or torture. I don’t think the bargain’s settled yet.”

“Damn.” Groaning, the American managed to force himself all the way to his feet. “I don’t suppose you brought a spare gun.”

“Two,” the widow said, palming a revolver to the American. He flipped open the cylinder, held out a hand, and slipped the cartridge the window handed him into the sixth chamber.

“The lift’s moving,” the Englishman—closest to the corridor—reported. He glanced over his shoulder at the American. “Is there another way out of here?”

“Passage back that way.” The American suited action to words, withdrawing through a low cement archway.

I went after—unarmed, I wasn’t helping anybody pretending to play rearguard—and found the Russian at my shoulder. Doc was sort of in with the crowd; the widow, the Englishman, and Stewart brought up the rear. I wasn’t too worried about Stewart. He’s been handling that Colt since he was six or seven, and time was a man shot his own horse—and his own rattlesnakes—around here.

“How do we get out?” the widow asked, voice low.

“How do we find Tribute?” the Russian countered.

“And when we do, are we going back to get John?” That from Doc, who paused to cough, the ghost of his pistol lowered in his hand.

“Do we need to?” Stewart. “I mean, he’s a ghost—”

“Huh,” Doc said, and wiped his bloody mouth again. “You got a point there, son. How about the bloodsucker, then?”

“If they could hear him singing,” the Englishman said, from the rear of the group, where he was walking backwards, “then he could hear us. But that would be unwise. Here’s the lift.”

“That’s all right,” the Russian replied, stopping so that I walked into him. “So is the opposition. Behind me, Jackie.”

I obeyed. I couldn’t see what happened, architecture-wise, up ahead, but the tunnel opened out into a brilliantly lit room—or maybe one of those ventilation shafts ran across it—and a figure had just stepped out into the bright bulls-eye. I didn’t need the Russian’s stiffly indrawn breath to tell me that the thing cradled in the assassin’s arms was a machine gun.

“Gentlemen,” the assassin said. “Lady. Please be so good as to put up your weapons?”

I expected somebody to open fire; he was framed very neatly. But I guess it does come down to superior firepower, and there wasn’t anywhere for us to go. Stewart and all three armed spies meekly raised their hands, fingers slack on their pistols. I thought the rustle at the back of the group was the Englishman raising his umbrella.

“Very good. Come forward, please, single-file—”

We advanced, the Russian and then me, the American and Stewart, the widow and the Englishman. And Doc, more or less stepping where I stepped. We walked out into a big bright room; I heard running water and caught a glimpse of a wrought-iron railing. Tribute stood behind it, looking a bit the worse for wear. “Jackie,” he said. “Stewart. Spies.” Doc huffed into his moustaches, but didn’t step out of me—just in case any of the bad guys could see him, I expected.

“King,” I said, and put my shoulder to him as I turned to face the assassin.

He wasn’t alone. Felix Luray was with him, all corporate polish except a Mage’s iron ring on the thumb of his left hand.

Luray cleared his throat. “There’s still time to work this out so nobody has to get shot. We just want to deal.”

“Mr. Luray,” the assassin said. “Do you mind terribly if I ask them to set their weapons down before we have this chat?”

“Not at all,” Luray answered, all slouched insouciance. The spies and Stewart crouched down softly, while I held my breath, and laid their weapons on the floor, and straightened up again. And everything was quiet for a good long time, until it also occurred to me that everybody in the room—including Stewart—was looking at me. Well, duh.

Somebody had to speak for Las Vegas. I stepped forward just a bit, feeling insulted when the assassin didn’t so much as tighten his grip on his rifle. I hadn’t heard the elevator door chime back in the room where we’d freed the American yet, and I was starting to hope that the elevator’s motion had nothing to do with us. It would be nice to have an escape route. “A deal?”

“Something that could help out you, and Las Vegas, and us.” There was another brass elevator door behind him, and once the shock of being held at gunpoint subsided a little, I started to realize what else was weird about this room—like the black inlaid dolomite floor laced with brass and steel, the constellations and symbols. The exact image, dammit, of the thaumaturgic inscription on the terrazzo.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

The Russian was tense beside me, his hands laced behind his head, his body almost trembling with fury—and as near as I could tell, it was all directed at the assassin. I felt Tribute leaning forward too, as if against a glass wall I couldn’t see, but he didn’t speak.
Interesting.

And Luray noticed it too. “Yes?” he said, acknowledging the Russian with a wave of his hand. A little smile lifted the corner of the Mage’s mouth, one I didn’t think any of us were intended to see.

“Mr. Luray,” the Russian said, with the air of a man rolling the dice, “your interest in this dam and its symbolism makes me believe you may be a patriotic American.”

Luray’s mouth twisted at the corner. I could tell he was playing up his English accent when he said, “I thought by your lights, I’d be a capitalist running dog.”

“The two are not always dissimilar.”

A risk, but it got a laugh out of Luray. “I do my best. Doing my best right now, if it comes right down to it—”

“I understand.”

I could feel his tension on my other side, too, in the American. Feel whatever was about to happen vibrating between them, communicated without a touch, without a glance. I gathered myself. Whatever it was, I would be ready—

“I would think a patriotic American would be more concerned with the company he kept,” the Russian continued smoothly, as the assassin stepped forward.

“That’s enough,” he said, in a reasonable tone. “Mr. Luray, may I suggest we get this lot under wraps somewhere, and question them at leisure? Where it’s
safe
?”

Luray’s eyes flickered sideways, and he nodded. “Sensible.” But then he glanced at the Russian again. “The company I keep? Actually, patriotism has a good deal to do with it. You thought there were only two sides in this splendid little war?”

The assassin’s weapon never wavered. It was trained quite plainly on the Russian now, and I felt the Russian’s ankle pressed against the back of mine. He was setting me up for a leg sweep, and I wasn’t too slow to figure out it was for my own good. The Russian’s smile was cold enough that
I
felt it, and I wasn’t even looking, but it was the American that spoke.

“Oh,” the American said, softly, as if startled, and shot a look past me to the Russian. The Russian never turned away from the assassin and his spray-and-pray gun. “Camelot.”

“Of course,” the Russian said. “How foolish of me. The
other
dream of America. The one that is cultural hegemony rather than corporate imperialism. Of course that story had to be ended, for yours to persist—”

“Well,” Luray answered, “not that I was involved at that point. Before my time. But you’re very clever, aren’t you?”

“You
know
about the Kennedys,” the American said, and as Luray’s lips parted to answer, the Russian’s foot kicked my leg out from under me—but I was ready for it and went down tucking my head, trying to land on my ass.

You know, machine guns really
don’t
sound like a sewing machine? Especially not seven hundred twenty feet under a pile of concrete and reinforcing bar. Cement chips spattered my hair for a second, and then the painful ringing in my ears was just ringing and not
gunfire
, and the American’s hand was on my collar and he was yanking me to my feet, yelling
run, run, run!

Tribute Sings the Blues.

Hoover Dam. Summer, 2002.

They came for me.

They didn’t
get
me, but somehow that didn’t change anything, because—in the middle of a repetitive conversation with the assassin, and a guy wearing a Mage’s iron ring who just had to be Felix Luray, though he had smiled thinly when I asked—they
came
for me.

I didn’t expect anybody to come for me. Especially not when I was starting to get hungry enough that I was thinking of allowing myself to be bought. And I didn’t expect that, just before they vanished to wherever it is that they vanished to, the Russian would turn his head and catch my eye, and there was a promise in the look. Not that I actually
believed
they’d be back . . . but I hadn’t believed they would come for me in the first place, either.

I rattled my chain, because I could, and crouched down on the inlaid floor as the Mage and the assassin stared at one another wildly, and then the assassin said, “Bugger,” and winked out too. And Felix looked at me, and Bugsy wandered in from down the hall on the left, dripping brains.

I was starting to get the picture. Angel wasn’t supposed to know about this. Angel wasn’t supposed to know about Bugsy or Felix the Mage. Angel was only allowed to know about me because they needed her to own me, the same way she was trying to own Stewart. Because they wanted me to take his place as the link between Hollywood and Vegas; they wanted me to taste her blood, and become a part of both cities, so that the assassin could consume me and step into my role. Like an insane game of corporate mergers. Or the ancient tendency of big cities to gobble up little ones.

Oh, yeah. There was nothing new about this.

Hey Jesse
, I said.

He shrugged and looked over. I thought he was examining the wall and the railing. “You got your own self into this, Elvis.”

Well, yeah. Yeah, I did. I rattled my ankle chain a bit more, put my back to the railing around my castaway’s island, and started to sing. “Viva Las Vegas,” because I was bored with “John Henry” and “House of the Rising Sun,” and because I hoped it might annoy someone. Besides, I was saving “Maybelline” for when I was alone and could really get into it.

I was out of practice, but being dead does wonders for your breath control. You wouldn’t believe how good it felt to dig in and let go—actually, after a little while, I had to stand up so I could get under it, and you know, fifteen feet of drop-forged steel makes an okay percussion section if you stamp your foot just right—but it had been a long, long time. It’s one thing to look like the King of Rock and Roll’s forty-year-old illegitimate son. It’s quite another thing to sound just like him, and one thing I’ve always had is a really distinctive voice—and before Momma died and I let myself get processed into a crooner, and all that crap I was shoving down my throat took its toll, I used to be able to hit my own high notes, too.

You know, I don’t mind the fat guys in glitter jumpsuits and the ratted black wigs. I deserve that. I earned it fair and square. But it does make me sad that almost nobody remembers that I used to be able to
sing
.

And these days, I don’t dare. I shade it off a little, like when I was playing Elvis Impersonator, and I don’t get down
in
it. Don’t fill up the dead lungs and let the dead throat and the empty belly swell, don’t howl, don’t resonate.

Except—being chained in a temple hidden in the belly of Hoover Dam gave me that back. What did I care if some tour group heard a dead man’s voice resonating out of a ventilation shaft? So the ghost of Elvis Presley is haunting Hoover Dam?

I mean, at this point, what’s one more crazy-ass white boy’s fairy tale?

So I closed my eyes and sang, and when I was done with “Viva Las Vegas,” I snuck a glance at the Mage. He was leaned up against the wall, watching me. Bugsy stood there too, fussing with the ghost of his cigar. He didn’t look like he was paying attention, but the corners of his mouth were turned down hard. I guess he didn’t like my choice of tunes.