Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(59)

I expected Angel, but it wasn’t her.

A male voice growled into my ear, “You must be careful, se?or. Vegas is not Vegas anymore. You understand?”

I was looking at a short, squat man in a white jumpsuit sewn with bits of colored glass. A black pompadour, stiff as wire mesh, bulged over his brow, and narrow little eyes peered out from under it.

He patted my cheek. He pulled my eyelid down and checked the color.

“Elvis Perez,” he announced himself. “You have camera? For photo, I charge ten dollar, but to you, my friend, I charge only five. You—me.” He grinned, a row of yellow teeth. “Selfie, yes?”





Chapter 49

Running Boy




Angel watched me with her head on one side. She had a look as if I’d just tripped over my own shoes.

I asked her, “Are you OK?”

“Course I’m OK. I didn’t try walking up and saying hi, did I?”

“Is that what I did . . . ?”

“Might as well. Jeez. And you’re the one keeps telling me, be careful . . .”

Se?or Perez clapped me on the shoulder. He spoke to her with all the reassurance of a hospital physician. “He will be good. It is just a tingle that they give, no more. And he is strong. Strong, handsome man, yes? Handsome man and beautiful lady! And, best of all—” He seized our wrists, pulling our hands together. “You are real, yes? You are real!”

I leaned against the wall. After a time my heart stopped knocking in my ears. My arms stopped shaking. “What the hell just happened?”

I looked up and down the alley. Everything was normal. I heard traffic noise; I heard rock music, blaring from an open door.

Se?or Perez clicked his tongue. “Las Sombras, my friends. Today, they are everywhere. Most often one, two. Easy—” he sidestepped, with a little flourish, like a matador. “But sometimes, many more. Then, I think, you need a friend to help.”

Mock-modestly, he spread a hand across his chest.

“It is a service I provide, a small service. And for twenty bucks, I serenade the lady, too. You take video. Twenty bucks—fifteen, because you are my friend! Yes?”

“Las Sombras . . . ?”

“Shadows,” Angel said.

“Shadows, yes. Shadows here, there—they make my life unlivable.” He pressed his fingers to his head. “My friends, my friends. What I do, it is not easy. It gets harder every year. People here, they no longer want Elvis—they want Spider-Man, and film stars! But I tell a story. Only yesterday this happens. I meet a man. He is rich—I know this from the way he walks, the way he stands. It is my job to know. His hair is white. The woman with him, she is young. This is the best for tips, always. I sing to her, and she is happy. Both are happy, he and she. It is perfection! I am counting up the dollars in my head, when suddenly, las Sombras come. One is tall, stretched out like chewing gum. There are others with him. They blow along the sidewalk,” he fluttered his fingers, “and away blow both my friends, and my tip with them. What can a man do? It is as I say: Vegas is not Vegas anymore.”

“These things are new?” I said.

“A month—maybe more. The police say they will do something. But what? And when?”

I gave him ten, and he posed between us, grinning fit to bust his cheeks. I took our picture.

“You will see me in the big parade tomorrow. They ask for me to lead, but I say, no, I am too famous! People will see me, then go home!” He leveled a finger at my chest. “Remember, friend! I save your life!”

“I’m not sure about that. But I’m grateful.”

“Then gratitude is my reward.”

He stood on tiptoe, kissed Angel on the cheek.

“Beautiful lady. Do you want to know a secret?”

“If you trust me.”

“Oh, I trust you! So I tell you. My real name,” and he dropped his voice, “is not Elvis Perez.”

“Well, I’m shocked.”

“Yes. Shocked.” He shook his head, then looked up, slyly. “My real name—it is Elvis Garcia!”

And his whole body shook with mirth.



At the Harley Davidson Café, a motorbike the size of a small bus jutted out over the doorway. Buildings leaned like drunks in a bar. A small, elderly woman handed me a card with a phone number and a picture of a naked girl. “Enter to win,” it said. I handed it to Angel. She wrinkled her nose.

Slow crowds went ambling through the dusk. Short pants, short sleeves, T-shirts sharp with colorful motifs: Lucky 7, Tiger Boy and Las Vegas Correctional Department. The Strip was settling down into that weird neon glaze they pass off as nighttime. Loose knots of pedestrians, drifting on a lazy current, while we drifted with them, past another Elvis, and a woman in a cop uniform—almost—legs and midriff bare, billy club bumping on her crotch. A man dressed as Chewbacca rested by a wall, smoking a cigarette through a hole in his neck. So much weirdness, one more piece of it would hardly even raise an eyebrow.

And here it came.

A child, skipping down the street, a boy of ten or twelve, with cherub curls and shoes that flashed each time they hit the ground, a T-shirt with BABES LOVE ME in a big red heart. And straightaway, I said to Angel, “Watch him.”

He looked a nice kid, full of bounce. But he didn’t respond. To anything. The world went on around and he was not a part of it. He’d duck and weave and jump and people near him would get out the way, and once, I swear, he clipped a street sign, and the sign did not so much as shake. He seemed to pass straight through it.