The Albuquerque Turkey: A Novel (21 page)

I spun her a quick yarn about how the NBGI had inserted me undercover as a casino host to dig into Wolfredian’s operation, of which there was suspicion of money laundering, tax evasion, hummery, flummery, and crimes against nature. I had intended, I told her, to run a measured investigation. “But you screwed that up.”

“Me? How?”

“By telling Wolfredian about that call this morning. You’re going to have to make that right.”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“Just tell me”—I spread my hands and smiled—“everything.”

Martybeth didn’t know everything, but what she did know was enlightening. Wolfredian had assigned her to train the new host—me—but also to stay watchful and report if I did anything strange. I suppose she regarded running out on sex with her as strange, and that’s how Wolfredian learned I was off to Blue Hills and got Red Louise there first.

“He doesn’t trust you,” said Martybeth. She glanced at the pocket holding my badge. “Apparently with good reason.”

“You said he thought I was a
macher.
”

“I made that up. I wanted you to feel at home.” She pouted like a hurt kitten.

“You did a good job,” I said, and she brightened. “You’re still doing a good job. Tell me more.”

This popped the lid on Martybeth, and all sorts of interesting tidbits spilled out, chief among them that Gaia hosts were paid a big bonus for getting Wolfredian next to their guests. “Not even whales,” said Martybeth. “Midlevel players. Anyone who might have loose cash in their pocket.” It was an open secret that he routinely worked the clientele for investments. “He’s really more interested in that,” she said, “than even in having them gamble.” She became thoughtful. “Which I really don’t understand,” she said, “since his job has to pay, like, anyhow, seven figures.”

“He must have a jones,” I said.

“Jones?”

“Habit. If a seven-figure salary’s not covering his nut, there must be a big leak somewhere.”

“Drugs?” said Martybeth. “Girls? Gambling?” She was trying to be helpful, but it was clear to me that Wolfredian’s addiction was simply not in her database. “You might ask his consultant.”

“Consultant?”

“You see him from time to time. What’s his name?” She scrunched her brain to remember. “Something weird. Harrison? No. Hannibal! That’s it, Hannibal Hamlin. Funny name, huh?”

Yeah, funny. Lincoln’s other vice president.

“They hang around?”

“Used to,” she said. “Not so much lately, at least not the last few days.”

Used to hang around, huh? If so, then Woody’s tale of his and Jay’s adversarial relationship was both less and more than he’d led me to believe. I chased the significance of this information for a moment, but that was a mistake, for it left Martybeth alone with her thoughts, and the light began to dawn that I might not be who I said I was. Her brow furrowed, and I could see the structure of my bluff starting to break down. Any second now, she’d be asking for another look at my tickets.

Time to wrap this up.

Special Agent Ysmygu spent a few hard moments impressing upon Martybeth the seriousness of the situation, then carrot-and-sticked her with promises of immunity but threats of legal hellfire should she breathe a word of this to anyone. I had little hope the lip glue would set, but it was the best I could do on the fly. And, hey, if she took the story to Wolfredian, maybe it would further muddy the waters of my true intent.

In the elevator back downstairs, I sent Vic a long text, outlining some refinements I needed in his script, and ending with: “Time 2 make yr ntrance.”

But his ntrance was already under way.

T
here’s a class of pop culture one might call stunt art. Christo’s
Umbrellas
. Banksy’s graffiti. Big stuff. Impactful. But ephemeral, and soon gone. Christo once said, “I think it takes much greater courage to create things to be gone than to create things that will remain.” I think that’s a little self-serving, but whatever. The point is that big installations are as much about the artist as they are about the art. With the wave on which Vic—excuse me, Mirplo—rode toward Vegas just then, I shouldn’t have been surprised at the magnitude of the stunt art he whipped up for himself. After all, I’d invited his superfueled ambition to town in the first place and inspired him to fire it off in all directions in that supercharged air. True, too, we’d held some strategic consultations, so that what he contrived outside the casino easily conformed to the picture he’d create within its walls. Too easily, in fact. By dint of early success, self-fulfilling self-confidence (my own behind-the-scenes fluffing efforts), and the love of a good woman, Vic was morphing quickly from large to larger than life, no longer the clumsy dumb yutz whose most marketable skill had once been his ability to wheedle free drinks. Maybe the best thing about art is its impact on the artist.

Be that as it may, Mirplo the would-be superstar was coming to town as the superstar he would be. You could read it on all the signs. And I don’t mean signs like portents or tea leaves. I mean signs like giant temporary billboards placed along Las Vegas Boulevard—the
Strip—at hundred-yard intervals from the Stratosphere at the north end all the way down to Mandalay Bay.

“Think big,” I had advised him, and think big he had.

The colors were electric: reds and greens that shimmered in the sun, vibrating hard, clashing loud, yet somehow harmonizing into a test of visual acuity that, if you passed it, emerged as Mirplo’s face and the words
BE THE SHOW!
Each billboard housed a huge video monitor, with streaming images from the camera feeds of tiny, radio-controlled helicopters flying lazy loops over the Strip. The baby choppers fed to the crowds below liberal and extensive shots of themselves, so that folks looking up at the screens saw imaginatively manipulated shots of folks looking up at screens, a fun-house mirror effect that was (like all of Mirplo’s art, I would say) at once refreshing and subtly disturbing, equal parts You are here and Where are you? The billboards formed the centerpiece of a viral marketing campaign for something big, arty, and conceptually Mirplovian coming very soon to an undisclosed desert location near you.

With advance word of Mirplo the phenomenon in place, all that remained was the arrival of Mirplo the man. For this grand entrance, I stationed myself in the Gaia’s porte cochere and kept an eye peeled for his limo. I was still fretting about Woody, of course, still trying to quell my anxiety by the following logic: Woody would be safe (I tried to persuade myself) unless and until Mirplo tanked as a whale. Of course, merely succeeding as a whale wouldn’t entirely do the trick either. He had to be—I coined a phrase here—a value-added whale, one worth more to the Gaia than his earn and churn, one worth more to Wolfredian than just his deep and seemingly easy pocket to pick. All of a sudden, I had a lot riding on the performance (in many senses of the world) of a man I used to not trust with a dry-cleaning ticket. How things had changed. Well, at least I hoped they had.

And now here he came, his limo sliding to a stop at the VIP entrance, a section of the valet area set apart by stanchions, velvet ropes, and an honest-to-God red carpet. A young Gaia employee in upmarket
livery opened the passenger door for Vic, who stepped out grandly, and struck a pose like Columbus landing on Hispaniola. A growth of new beard graced his face, giving it an unexpectedly rugged aspect. His hair, gelled, spiked, and frosted, betrayed the handiwork of some high-priced stylist. This from a guy who used to attack his own greasy locks with kitchen shears rather than part with ten bucks for a Supercuts. He wore big tinted glasses, like something from the bottom of Elton John’s prop closet. Matching linen shirt and slacks. Versace black leather Chelsea boots.

And a cape.

It swirled as he moved, and the word M
IRPLO!
glittered in sequins and LEDs. The overall effect was that of Mick Jagger by way of Siegfried or Roy. And did I see a tiny flashing © after the word M
IRPLO?
My God, he’s copyrighted.

Vic reached back into the limo and offered a hand to Zoe, who alit, resplendent in a shimmery lime jumpsuit—hair dyed to match—accessorized with a feather boa, stacked platform heels, and substantial crystal earrings that refracted the headlights of passing cabs and cars. She took Vic’s hand, queen to his king. Say this for them, when they sold a thing, they sold it hard.

More entourage disgorged. Next out was a familiar face in a completely unexpected context. Wearing Western drag—leather shitkickers, Levi’s, snap-button shirt, tan cowboy hat, and a silver-tipped bolo tie secured with a chunky turquoise slide—stood none other than Honey Moon. Since when did he roll with Vic? I tried to catch his eye, but he looked right through me; from his point of view, I was just another face in the crowd.

And that was nothing to who came next.

Allie.

Stepping out of the limo, she bent to straighten the lines of her perfect white business suit skirt, then looked up and surveyed the area. She wore librarian glasses, with her hair secured in a French twist, and a Gucci briefcase tucked under her arm. As with Honey, I
tried to make eye contact, but as with Honey, I seemed to have become transparent.

At this point, Vic saw me (allowed himself to see me, I’d say), and greeted me with a brassy, “Radar!” He came over and hugged me with the sort of
Hail, fellow, well met
bonhomie you’d expect between old frat brothers or country club cohorts. “It’s good to see you, man. I’ve missed you.”

“Vic—”

“Mirplo,” corrected Zoe.

“Mirplo,” I said, “it’s only been a few days.”

“But it seems like longer, doesn’t it?” I paused to absorb the moment: Vic’s attitude, his costume, his crew. And let’s not forget the PR efforts in full swing out there on the Strip and elsewhere. He was right. It did seem like longer. He was growing fast, like summer squash. “Come on,” he said, “meet the team.” First he brought me to Zoe. “Zoe you know,” he said. I offered Zoe a hand, but she waved it away, for she’d withdrawn a Geoid from its rubberized case and was completely absorbed in it. Vic just laughed. “Work, work, work,” he said. “She never quits.” He threw a convivial arm around Honey and said, “This is Cookie Carter. He’s kind of my muscle.”

“You won’t need muscle when you’re here,” I told Vic. “We’re pretty well equipped in that area.”

“You never know,” he replied. “My fans are off the hook. Your security could be overrun.” He turned to Allie. “And here we have Ms. Miriam Plowright. She’s my guilty conscience.”

“Financial manager,” Allie corrected.

“Yeah,” agreed Vic. “It’s her job to tell me when I’ve gambled too much, and my job to ignore her.” He emitted a laugh that fell just short of the boisterous guffaw of a self-satisfied prick.

“Hello, Mr. Hoverlander,” said Allie.

She extended her hand. It was cold and dry as snakeskin. I looked deep into her eyes, trying to find some spark of connection, but she
maintained her million-mile stare. I didn’t bother trying to deconstruct whether this was part of Mirplo’s play or Allie’s real reaction to seeing me again. At this point, I didn’t have a logical leg to stand on. So I just kind of teetered. “I assume you’ll be handling Mirplo’s house account?” I said. She nodded. “I’ll have someone get with you for the paperwork. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.” I turned back to Vic. “In the meantime, maybe you’d like some food? I’ve made a reservation at—”

“Nuck that,” said Vic. “I didn’t come here to eat. Let’s gamble!”

It turned out that the Gucci briefcase held a fair amount of cash, most of which Allie placed through the casino cage into a prearranged safe-deposit box, and the rest of which she gave to Vic, banded packets of Franklins that he tucked into his pants pockets or, in the case of one bundle, slipped down the front of Zoe’s jumpsuit. “For luck,” he insisted.

Zoe, buried in her Geoid, barely noticed.

Over the next few hours, Vic established his bona fides as the type of whale who spews money—and attitude—all over a casino. He didn’t stray far from the betting system we’d used at Sandia, but slathered every bet with a giant sense of entitlement, quite effectively creating the image of a megalomaniac on a meltdown. Playing blackjack, he’d berate the dealer for putting him over 21, though even a Mirplo (even in his heightened state of self-aggrandizement) knows that the dealer has no control over what card comes off the deck next. Similarly did he take it out on the craps stickman who “psychically poisoned” Vic’s roll with bad attitude, and caused him to seven out.

Such superstitious nonsense was not unusual for high rollers, but Vic ran it much hotter than that. Everything he did seemed less about gambling than about
being Mirplo
gambling. I knew that casino surveillance, the so-called eye in the sky, would be tracking this new whale and that Jay was likely somewhere up in security country, his eyes glued to the feed. Would Vic strike him as a guy with his head shoved so far up his own ego that he ran the real risk of—I coined a
neolopism—assphyxiation? That was the script, but Vic was far beyond the script. Simply put, he went over the top, admired the view, and settled in for a stay.

At one point, running bad at roulette, he felt the need for some lucky money and put his hand down Zoe’s jumpsuit to pull out his stash of cash. This drew a dark look from a pit boss, which triggered Vic’s rage, fueled by the combustible mix of grim fortune and overblown arrogance (with just a hint of scripted accelerant). “What?” demanded Vic. “You got a problem with this?”

“It would be better if you didn’t—”