And a cape.

  It swirled as he moved, and the word MIRPLO! 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 MIRPLO? 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 I offered Zoe a hand, but she waved it away, for she’d withdrawn a Geoid from its rubberized case and was completely absorbed in it.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—”

  “Didn’t what? Touch my girlfriend?”

  A confrontation loomed, and while such a confrontation would further cement Vic’s shambolic reputation, it was my job as casino host to prevent such unpleasantness, so I intervened, cooling Vic out with soothing words, and steering him off the casino floor into the tranquil confines of a nearby sports bar. There, his nose still out of joint, Vic started arguing with Zoe over which team was a better baseball bet, the Cincinnati Reds because red is a power color, or the Milwaukee Brewers because they have beer mojo. I couldn’t tell whether this was improvisational theater or the daft logic you sometimes see in, for example, rookie horse players who bet the steed called Steamboat because they went skiing there once and had fun. Allie offered no clues. She just sat there sipping mineral water and thinking her private thoughts. God, I wanted to get her alone for ten minutes, have a frank exchange of views. Because here’s the thing: Although Vic was running my script, he was so deeply in character that I couldn’t tell whether he was in character at all. And while you do this on the grift—play a role and don’t ever let on that you’re role-playing—I’d never known Vic to be that accomplished an actor. He’d either gotten tremendous game while I wasn’t looking, or else he’d drunk his own Kool-Aid and bought into the Mirplo myth.

  And Allie? I simply had no idea where she stood. She was in on the snuke, manifestly, for here she was, part of Vic’s entourage, but was she on my script, hers, his, Woody’s, or whose? All I got when I looked at her was the empty gaze of someone passing time by trying to remember, say, all the state capitals in alphabetical order. Albany, Annapolis, Atlanta …

  Nor was Honey—Cookie—any help. While not neglecting to keep scanning the crowd for real or imaginary threats, he set out, with great enthusiasm though no apparent success, to explain to Vic and Zoe what an over/under line was. “The bookmaker predicts how many total runs the teams will score, and then you decide whether the real outcome will be above or below that number.”

  “So then it doesn’t matter who wins?” asked Vic, vaguely grasping the concept.

  “That’s right.”

  “Why would you bet on a game if you don’t care who wins?”

  “That’s the bet,” said Honey. “That’s the over/under line.”

  “I’m not betting on a line,” Vic declared definitively. “I’m betting on a team.” He turned to Zoe. “Any of them wear purple? Purple’s lucky.”

  And that was Vic that night in a nutshell: a proto-pompous, self-important clown, the last float on the clueless parade, all ignorance and arrogance, with the high likelihood of going off for a very large number. Not to mix metaphors, but if casinos are sharks, then this whale was chum.

  Apparently attracted to the scent of blood in the water, Jay Wolfredian soon arrived. I was not altogether surprised to see him here, given Martybeth’s revelation about his pressing need for investors. And Vic had been hamming for the cameras with the awareness (mine, anyway, if not his) that Jay would no doubt be watching the new whale perform. Given all this, I would certainly have expected the Gaia’s VP of special projects to introduce himself to a new high roller and offer him the hospitality of the house. That’s just good business.

  But that’s not what happened, exactly.

  Playing the dutiful casino host, I facilitated introductions, and Jay wasted no time in schmoozing Vic, who wasted no energy pretending he wasn’t lapping it up. Each was on script, of course, with Wolfredian massaging the mark and Vic promoting the Mirplo brand in all its twisted glory. Yet beneath the scripted exchange, I detected something unguarded, something authentic from both. The fan and the man. It was weird.

  Jay made a point of mentioning that he’d just come into possession of a couple of Boggs notes—hand-drawn currency created not as counterfeits but as art and traded by the artist, J.S.G. Boggs, for whatever goods or services his traffic would bear. The way Jay eased this into the conversation, patently fishing for Vic’s approval, reminded me of a cat laying a dead mouse on his master’s doorstep. Vic, though, contemptuously rejected Boggs as a “ballpoint loser.”

  “His thing is a parlor trick,” Vic declared. “It’s not art.”

  “So then what’s art?” asked Jay.

  “Something that moves you.”

  “By that logic, a train is art.”

  Vic graced this comment with a laugh, which seemed to please Jay—delight him, almost—and again I got the sense of something going on here beyond a Gaia guy doing his job. Jay was tapping into something, with a surprisingly deep-dwelling sense of urgency. Vic, meanwhile, cantered on down his path of his self-importance. “Now if it’s art you want,” he said, “you’re going to want to see Mirplopalooza.”

  “Mirplopalooza?”

  “My installation out in the desert. You’ve seen the signs. BE THE SHOW?” Jay nodded. “I’m telling you,” said Vic, “when people get a load of what I’ve got planned …”

  “They’ll be moved?”

  “Just like a train.” Vic clapped a convivial hand on Jay’s back—and then proceeded to pimp Mirplopalooza, its grand design, musical guests, diversions and divertissements, things with balloons, kites, and ultralights. Vic pitched it like a fever dream, and though I’d been on the ground floor of the planning stage, those skeletal proposals lacked the weight of authenticity—and courage of conviction—with which Vic pronounced them now.

  Especially when he started talking numbers. “I’ll have five, ten thousand people there, easy. Next year, twice that.”

  “You’re already thinking about next year?”

  Vic leaned in close, conspiratorial. “I pulled a long-term-year lease on the site. Bureau of Land Management. They sell cheap. I’ll be doing Mirplopalooza till I die.”

  This brought Allie—Miriam—into the conversation. “We’ve done revenue projections through 2025,” she said. “Over that time span, the event will net—”

  Vic cut her off. “Big money. Who cares? Money’s only important to people who don’t have anything important in their lives.” He gave Jay a knowing look. “Like art, right? Like Boggs bucks.” He turned to Zoe. “Hey, do we got any sponsorship slots left?”

  Zoe consulted her Geoid. “A couple,” she said. “A silver and two platinums.”

  Vic turned back to Jay. “You want a hospitality tent?” He asked. “For the Gaia, I mean. There’ll be awesome foot traffic. Plus you can hang out. I’ll throw in some back-row seats to the show.”

  “You mean front-row.”

  “Don’t tell me what I mean. It’s my show. I know the best seats.”

  Jay and Vic exchanged more art talk for a time, then Jay took his leave, wishing Vic luck at the tables, which is the single most disingenuous thing any casino functionary can say to a guest. Not that Vic cared. Once Jay departed, he declared himself tired and pulled the plug on the party. I delivered the group to their suite, then straggled down to the hosts’ office, where I punched out for the night. As I engaged in this prosaic act, it occurred to me that I’d attained, in a sense, the worst of both worlds. I had a straight job that I didn’t particularly want or like, and I was running a snuke over which I seemed to be losing control. On that cheery note, I headed back to my room. This involved a long trek down grotty corridors to the far reaches of the hotel, a good fifteen minutes’ walk from the main casino floor. Reaching my room, I slotted in my card key, waited for the green light, then opened the door and stepped inside. At this point, something dark and metal swung out and hit me flush on the ear. I spun around and sat down. In the ambient light spilling in from the window, I saw Red Louise standing over me, brandishing brass knuckles with a self-satisfied smirk.

  “What was that for?” I asked.

  “Fun,” she said. “Just for fun.”

  24

  Choose Your Lies

  People have existential crises when they least expect it. Guy shoveling snow in Des Moines feels his chilblains and decides the time has come to buy that houseboat in Marathon. College girl crashes and burns in biochem and discovers that, hey, prelaw’s not such a crap choice after all. Man on the floor of a hotel room rubs ache from his ear and understands definitively that the merry of his merry-go-round is gone. The man likes to think he has an effect on women, though violently negative is not necessarily the one he’s going for.

  Red Louise pocketed her knuckles and pulled out a Glock.

  “Oh, what?” I muttered. “A gun? What for?”

  “Maybe to shoot you,” said Red.

  “Here in the hotel? No. Nope, sorry. I just can’t see that.”

  “Then maybe just to scare you some.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s take it as read that I’m some scared.”

  “I don’t think you’re anywhere near enough scared.” She grabbed me by the scruff of whatever, dragged me to my feet, and held the gun close to my face. My nose twitched to the odd conflation of her lemon chiffon shampoo and the gun’s sharp tang of Cosmoline. “So let me be clear. I’m going to ask you some questions. Choose your lies with care, because if I don’t like them, I will shoot you dead right here. Don’t worry about it being a hotel and all. The cleaning staff can be very discreet.”

  Then she kidney-punched me. I expelled the pain on a whoosh of sour-tasting breath. I admire strong women. Always have. But when they’re holding me at gunpoint and punching me and whatnot, I’m not so big a fan. Times like these, I wished I’d put more effort into bulking up, but that was water under the bench press now. There was no thought of getting the upper hand, or the drop, or whatever it is that the buff guys get. No, I’d just have to ride it out.

  Choose my lies with care.

  “Fine,” I said. “What do you want to know?”

  “First of all, what’s with the bogus cop routine?”

  “Dim Ysmygu? It means ‘no smoking,’ you know.”

  She gonked me with the gun on the top of my head. Just a tap, really, to demonstrate her not-so-frivolous mood. “I don’t give a crap what it means. Why’d you mess with Martybeth’s head?”

  “To find out why you snatched my dad.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Please,” I said. “You plucked him from Blue Hills five minutes before I got there. You almost ran me off the road. It wasn’t necessary, you know. I mean, what does it change? I brought Jay a deep pocket. The rest is up to him.”

  Red clouted me again. I fell down a little. “Man, stop hitting me,” I said. I may have only thought it.

  She straddled me. “This deep pocket,” she said. “How deep? How real?”

  Let me start by saying that I have a fairly high tolerance for pain. It doesn’t make me panic, and it doesn’t really cloud my thinking all that much. So as I lay there on the floor, slugged four times in three minutes, I understood without doubt that the snuke hung by a certain thread. Trouble was, I wasn’t sure which thread. Like if you’re James Bond dismantling a bomb and you don’t know whether to clip the yellow wire or the blue. What was Red telling me? That Wolfredian didn’t buy my whale? He’d certainly seemed engaged earlier, but now here was Louise very nearly calling Vic a fraud. So should I stick with my story, keep calling my spade a spade, or bail on the tale and jump to a new one?

  What’s it going to be, Mr. Bond? Yellow wire or blue?

  Choose your lies with care.

  I studied Louise in the half light. Who was she in all of this? I’d had her pegged as Jay’s right arm, but this visit felt very freelance, unsanctioned. Of course, Wolfredian could have sent her here with a nod and a wink, to present me with a disunited front, your standard misdirectomy. But this didn’t feel like that. It felt like a legitimate difference of opinion. Jay, I believed, made Mirplo as the real deal—the weak-minded mook whose fortunes Jay could Ponzi off at will. His view, however, may have been colored by his infatuation with Mirplo the artist—at least that’s what cynical Louise seemed to think. So here she was, independently attempting to confirm her doubts, with coercive outrages against tender Hoverlander flesh as the lie-detector of record if required. Like I said, I have a high tolerance for pain. I’d regret to have to test how high.