The Mirror Thief(17)

We’ve been open for two years now. I’ve been on board since we broke ground.

How’s business?

It’s terrible. Maybe you didn’t notice, but most of our regulars are older than me. And I’m no spring chicken. On the upside, our owner’s a fruitcake. Silicon Valley zillionaire. He plans to operate this place at a loss for ten years, for fifteen: however long it takes the city to grow up to us. He’s a young guy, and he thinks he’s got the bankroll to make it work.

You think he’s right?

Kagami laughs. That depends, he says. It’s like anything else: there’s a window. If you’re there when the window opens, and you can get out before it closes, then you do real well. The city is growing in a hurry, that’s for damn sure. But here’s the other thing: we got no water out here. People tend to forget that. I’m talking about the entire valley. Lake Mead’s at a thirty-year low. That’s climate change: the water’s not coming back. Eventually we’re gonna dry out. And that’s assuming we’re even around long enough to have that problem. We could get avalanched onto North Hollywood by an earthquake long before then.

You get earthquakes up here?

Haven’t had one yet. But one is all it would take. We’re about two hundred yards from the Sunrise Fault. That’s an active fault. You saw the river rocks on the pillars at the entrance, where the nursing-home shuttles drop off? The big round ones? We’ve already had to mortar five of those bastards back into place. If the ground ever really starts to move, and Doctor Richter weighs us in anywhere north of five and some change, it’s gonna be Bowling for Biddies out there.

Damn.

Yeah, Kagami says, I figure one way or another, I’ll be long dead before this place ever turns a profit.

He wipes a hand on his jacket, reaches out to touch the spotless glass. The Mormon temple is below them, edging into view as they rise. All around it Curtis can see roofs of new houses going up: blond wood of exposed sheathing, patterned rows of underlayment.

This is the first straight job I’ve had since I was nineteen years old, Kagami says. I used to be a gambler, just like Stanley. But the grind finally wore me down. Trying to make a living off a two-percent edge—it’s too much for a senior citizen like me. Unless you’re working with a good team. And teams always come apart.

Curtis shifts his weight a little. I don’t know how Stanley does it, he says.

Well, Stanley’s got Veronica. And besides, Stanley doesn’t know anything else. Kagami smiles to himself. Stanley also has a supernatural gift, he says. You did not hear that from me.

The doors slide open on a little glassed-in chamber, which opens in turn onto a rubber-flagstone path bordered by rosemary and budding desertwillow. A tiny restaurant at the terrace’s edge: RAVENCREST branded on a wooden sign. White tablecloths flutter in the light breeze.

Kagami walks slowly, hands in his pockets. So, he says, how’s old Donald doing these days? I haven’t talked to him in years.

He’s doing real good. He’s not Donald anymore, though.

That’s right, I forgot. What is it now?

Badrudin Hassan. He remarried a couple years back, too. He’s playing gigs again. Being Muslim and being married both seem to suit him real well.

His wife’s a young little thing, isn’t she?

I don’t know about little, but she’s younger, yeah.

Kagami chuckles, kicks a stone chip from the rubber path. What about you, kid? he says. What’s a young fellow like you do after retirement? Work on your golf game?

Curtis smiles. A friend of mine is setting me up with a job, he says. Security supervisor. He’s a shift boss at a joint in Atlantic City, a new place. I know him from the Corps.

He anybody I’d know?

Damon Blackburn. He works at the Spectacular.

That’s in the Marina District, right? Kagami pulls the restaurant door open, holds it for Curtis. I don’t suppose, he says, that he’d be the friend of yours who’s looking for Stanley?

Yeah, Curtis says. He is.

The ma?tre d’ greets Kagami deferentially and seats them at the terrace’s edge. Curtis chooses the strip steak from the succinct leatherbound menu and looks down into the valley, shading his face with a cupped hand. Somewhere on the ridge above them a pair of ravens calls back and forth; Curtis can’t see them at first. Then one flutters down and lands atop the restaurant. The Mormon temple is in full view, below and a little to the north, like a dead bug at this angle, with its six spires and its battened brown roof. The spires’ golden tips blaze orange in the late-afternoon light.

Kagami’s talking to the waiter, ordering appetizers and wine. The waiter nods, walks away, and Kagami looks across the table, leans forward in his chair. So, Curtis, he says. I gotta ask. Are you sorry to be missing out on all the action? In Iraq, I mean?

Did the war start?

Not that I’ve heard. Sounds like pretty soon, though. I guess you probably know a lot of people who are over there.

Curtis takes a sip of water, then another one. It’s ice-cold, but the glass is barely sweating. The second raven joins its mate on the gambrel roof.

It’s complicated, Curtis says. In a lot of ways, sure, I wish I was over there. I trained for it. I trained other guys to do it. I’d like to be there taking care of my people. But in most ways—most ways that matter—I’m glad to be sitting this one out. I’m not a kid anymore. I got a wife to think about. And when I got hurt in Kosovo, that rearranged my thinking on a few things, I guess.