Part 15 (1/2)

”It's pretty.”

”I know,” he said, and gentled me with a hand on my hair. ”Come away. We need to talk to Ms. Bukvajova.”

”You know,” I said, ”I swear I've heard that name.”

”I know.” His voice did something funny. ”I've heard it too.”

He lead me under the porch roof, in out of the sun-we must be somewhere in the South for there to be bottle trees, and the sun sure felt like it-and thumped on the security door because the doorbell was busted. Or if it wasn't busted, anyway, you couldn't hear it chime from the outside, so he knocked to be sure.

A moment later, the inside door swung open a crack, and bright cloudy eyes peered through the crevice, half obscured by strings of yellowed hair. ”Boys!” the old woman said. ”Stewart! Jackie! Come in. Come in. Would you like an iced tea?”

”Yes, please, Ms. Bukvajova,” the blond man said, and I gaped. But Miss Bukvajova was suddenly young, all auburn hair and sparkle and aerialist muscles, power and grace....

The person overwhelmed by that memory was not me.

But for a moment I saw her as she had been, a short, hourgla.s.s-shaped, broad-shouldered woman with a ballerina waddle, and someone else's grief filled up my throat. She lead us through a cluttered red-flannel living room, fussy and terrible, every surface cluttered with dusty photographs, and I could not hold her steady in my sight.

”Drink.”

My elbows propped rudely on her kitchen table, I sat in a creaking ladder-back chair with my hands cupped loosely around a cold empty gla.s.s.

”Drink,” she said, and poured more tea.

Though it tasted of cement dust and brackish water, I drank. I saw her again, and this time she swung with perfect grace on a flying trapeze, as if she were dancing there. She somersaulted through the air, and a strong man caught her. I stung my throat shouting, stung my palms clapping, felt fingers close on my wrists and pull my hands apart. Stewart-and my blood was dripping over his nails. ”You idiot,” he said. ”You broke the gla.s.s.”

”Stewart?”

He met my eyes, and his mouth went thin. ”Jackie?”

”Sort of,” I said. I felt thin as a watercolor of myself, but I was there. He looked down quickly. Holding my hand still, he began to pick the slivers of broken gla.s.s out of the palm, leaving the ice melting on the table. ”Miss Bukvajova?”

”You remember me?” she said.

”Yes,” I said. ”We do.” Because it wasn't just me remembering her. ”That was Jeff Soble,” I said, and winced as Stewart picked another shard of gla.s.s from my palm. I turned away, so I wouldn't have to watch him, and watched the sun glint off the bottle tree on the other side of the slatted blinds. ”In the tea.”

”It works,” she said, and made a moue like a much-younger woman. ”He was a friend of mine. He worked on the dam.”

”But you married Powers.”

She rose from the table, fetched another blocky Anchor Hocking gla.s.s from the cabinet, and plunked it to one side of the puddle of ice and broken gla.s.s. She added ice with her fingers and poured the tea from a scarred yellow Rubbermaid pitcher with a push-b.u.t.ton top. She said, ”It's like getting dehydrated. You need more to catch up than you think you will. Keep drinking. I'll get a towel.”

Keep drinking the memory of her friend. The one who brought me here to save her.

”You married Powers,” I said again, and drank the tea with my left hand, which was only cut a little. The cold gla.s.s stung the sc.r.a.pes on my palm. ”Not Jeff.”

I couldn't call him Soble when I was drinking his memory.

”Wouldn't you?” She poured herself a gla.s.s too, and drank. ”Not that Eli was anything special then. He owned a gambling hall downtown, on Fremont Street. And you all know where that led.”

”Empire,” Stewart said, laying another piece of b.l.o.o.d.y gla.s.s in his pile. ”I think that's all of it, Jackie.”

”So the marriage didn't work out?”

She pushed a greasy lock out of the way with a spotted hand and finished her tea. ”Imploded like an outworn casino,” she said. ”His other wives haven't been so lucky.” She gestured around. ”I got the marriage annulled-unmade-and he hasn't been able to eat me up entire. The bottle tree keeps me going. Las Vegas is full of ghosts. Suicides, mostly. They taste all right.”

Stewart wrapped a paper towel around my palm to stanch the bleeding. The fluid in my gla.s.s tasted like cement and nitro, with too much sugar.

Stewart said, ”So why is he coming after Jackie now?”

She shrugged. ”Jackie came here? Jackie caught his attention? Jackie's a better source of power than I ever was? I can feel my head filling back up again; I think he must be letting me alone.”

”You know the circus is in town?” It was mean of me to ask that way, just drop it in her lap and see what she did.

What she did was blanch. ”They don't want to hear from me.”

”If there was bad blood,” Stewart said softly, ”I think they've forgotten it now. Why would all this start happening while your family is here?”

”Jeff,” she said. ”I think he was waiting to bring you to me. Because I couldn't have made much sense, unless you caught me just at the right time. You would have needed what my family could tell you. And Eli-Eli's used so many women up.”

”Not just women,” Stewart said, with a sidelong glance at me.

I drank another swallow of sweet tea and Jeff Soble. ”I wonder,” I said, ”if he's using me to get to something in particular. You wonder, if Vegas forgets stuff but I remember it-what happens to the parts of Vegas that I don't remember?”

”Martin Powers,” Stewart said, without hesitation.

I remembered the newspaper. And nodded. ”He's trying to protect his grandson,” I said. ”Martin Powers is up on racketeering charges. He'll lose his gambling license. But Vegas is the city of second acts. We'll forgive anything, as long as you give us half a chance to forget it.”

”And he can make the city forget,” Stewart said.

”Well,” I answered, sipping my tea, ”he can make me forget. And Vegas forgets easier than I do.”

Tires crunched on the gravel drive.

Not just one set, but many.

Powers's men surrounded the house and knocked on the door. Branka and I both gulped down the last mouthfuls of our tea before we filed out and went quietly. Every bit helps, right?

Well, maybe sometimes.

Most of the cars waiting for us were black sedans, but parked closest to the house was a limousine with Babylon Casino plates and a very polite driver who held the door wide. The implied arrogance never changes: No one can touch me here.

One of the gentlemen in black suits with an earpiece rode with us. I noticed that the bulletproof gla.s.s was up between the pa.s.senger compartment and the cab.

A long ride through rush hour followed. Vegas's gridlock starts in the afternoon and persists into evening, and it seemed like we sat through most of it. A tractor trailer had jackknifed in the Spaghetti Bowl. I guess those effortless car rides only happen in movies.

The Tower of Babylon rose through a veil of transplanted jungle foliage and piped-in orchid scent to sc.r.a.pe a desert sky burned almost colorless by the Nevada sun. Visible the entire length of the Las Vegas Strip, it collapsed in fire and fury six times daily, six days a week, wind conditions permitting.