The Mirror Thief(100)

She nods. I understand, she says. You’re smart to be careful.

Curtis smiles, shrugs.

Well, she says. I should go. I’m getting light on walking-around money.

You headed back inside?

No, she says, I can’t win here. If you win big or lose big, people start to notice. They’re paid to pay attention. I don’t want anybody to ever remember seeing me here.

Present company excluded, of course.

Of course. Anyway, the f*cking smell in this joint is killing me.

Smell? Curtis says. I guess I stopped noticing it.

They pipe it through the vents. All the Strip joints do it, but this one is by far the worst. It’s like ferrets f*cking in a potpourri bowl.

Curtis laughs. Veronica smiles, looks away.

Hey, Curtis says. Thanks for talking to me. Seriously. Thank you.

No sweat, she says. It was my pleasure. I hope all this shit works out.

She offers her hand, and he takes it. Then she steps behind him and heads toward the bridge to the Boulevard.

Hey, Veronica?

She stops, half-turned.

Is Stanley gonna talk to me?

Veronica looks at him for a second, squinting against the sun. Then she opens her mouth to speak.

I know you talked to him last night, Curtis says. You don’t have to tell me where he is. I’m not even gonna ask. Do you think he’ll talk to me?

A challenge appears in her eyes, then fades, replaced by something closer to pity. I think so, she says. But not now. He’s not ready yet.

She turns again to walk away, then turns back. You shouldn’t wait around for him, Curtis, she says. You should just go home.

Her long shadow slices between the balusters on the bridge, a moving beam of dark. Curtis watches her go. He could head over to McCarran first thing in the morning. Get on standby. He ought to call Danielle, let her know.

He hears a rush of wings: a flock of snow-white pigeons billows from the parking garage, pouring around the belltower in a formless spume. The shimmering cloud thins out over the city, banking across the sun; the white wings go black in silhouette. Curtis looks for Mount Charleston in the distance, but with the sun behind them the mountains are indistinguishable, shrunken, and he can’t make out its shape.

On his way topside Curtis digs out his cell to call his wife, but he winds up phoning Walter Kagami instead.





37


The Strip gets shabbier north of the New Frontier, but Curtis opts to walk it anyway, to give himself time and space to think.

The block ahead is Old Vegas: the neon clowns of Circus Circus, the Stardust’s psychedelic mushroom cloud, the flashing incandescent egg-beaters of the Westward Ho. Jarhead joints: places Curtis knows. Half the properties are boarded up, waiting for the wreckingball. The equilateral A-frame of the Guardian Angel Cathedral overlooks the droning gorge of the superarterial, the blue mosaic on its western face lit weakly from below, its sleek freestanding spire echoing the distant tower of the Stratosphere.

The night is cool, maybe fifty degrees, and ambivalent breezes rustle palmfronds, spread exhaust. Curtis sticks close to the curb on the boulevard’s east side, nothing to his left but eight lanes of traffic. He walks quickly, although he’s not in any hurry: Kagami won’t be able to meet until late. He pushes forward, lengthening his stride. As if trying to gain ground on a thought he should be having. He’s pissed off, mostly at himself, and ready to be gone.

What little Curtis knows about playing blackjack he learned in joints like these—Slots A Fun, the Riv, the Ho—after years of fruitless lessons from Stanley and his father. Pit bosses don’t believe black folks can count, so they’ll never catch you. I’m giving you the keys to the kingdom, Little Man. You won’t have to work a day in your life. But blackjack with his dad was like driver’s ed with Richard Petty: Curtis had no point of entry. And even back then Stanley was playing an entirely different game.

It was Damon who finally taught him basic strategy: mornings spent sobering up at the two-buck tables at Slots. By the time Curtis rotated back to Lejeune, he’d worked his way through all the North Strip casinos, figured out how to stay afloat for hours of free drinks. He even grossed a little, although his take came out way under minimum wage. Still, he went back to North Carolina with a new understanding of what his dad and Stanley actually did, even if he was still foggy on exactly how they did it. He owes Damon for that, at least. Doesn’t he?

It was two weeks ago today that the call came. As Curtis rode the Broad Street Line south to Marconi Plaza, as he walked the half-mile past the bocce courts and the Quartermaster Depot to the Penrose Diner, his head was buzzing with questions he’d been afraid to ask himself, questions he knew Damon would understand, would maybe even have some answers to. What should he be doing? Should he go back to school? With Curtis’s employment handicap and thirty-percent disability, Voc Rehab would pay tuition, would maybe even offer subsistence allowance, but is it worth the trouble? Was it dumb for him to get married so soon after getting hurt? With marines mounting up for the Desert again, would it be crazy to think about reenlisting?

Curtis never got to ask Damon those questions. It’s starting to look like he never will. At no point did he believe the story Damon told him, not for a second. But he didn’t exactly disbelieve it, either. Damon has talked him into plenty of questionable shit over the years, but Curtis has never felt suckered or used. Not till now.