Speaking of relationships, if Martybeth and Louise were lovers, then what did that make Martybeth’s come-on to me? A purely professional move? Ouch, my feelings.

  The hours passed. I think I nodded off.

  “He shoots, he scores!”

  What?

  “He shoots, he scores!”

  Yutzes! They left my cell phone in my pants, and left my pants … where? I tried to echolocate the sound of Vic’s voice, but it bounced indiscriminately within the bare concrete box. Then I remembered that my phone also lit when it rang and … yes, there it was, a faint pulse of light, diffused through denim, in the far back corner. But how to get there? You’d be surprised how big a ten-by-twelve storage space can be when it’s pitch-black and your only means of movement involves struggling to your knees, flopping forward, rolling over, then getting back to your knees and repeating that clumsy dance.

  Of course the phone stopped ringing just as I reached it. Not that I could’ve answered it anyhow. Feeling now truly forlorn, I took what comfort I could in having found my jeans. At least I had a pillow.

  “He shoots, he scores!”

  Oh, now that’s just mean. The caller must’ve thought so, too, because the phone cut off after one ring.

  Then it rang again, and just as quickly cut off. Then it rang twice, then silence.

  Well, this went on for a while, and it gradually dawned on me that someone was trying to send me a message.

  Someone who knew Morse code.

  30

  Allie knew Morse code; we’d messed with it together that night so long ago at that Mexican bar, when Operation Citizen began. They say you can identify Morse senders by their “fist,” the characteristic way they send a string of dashes and dots, but I imagine that the cell-phone ringtone method wreaks havoc with an operator’s fist. It certainly takes forever. With one ring representing a dot and two rings a dash, you’re looking at fifteen phone calls just to say (Hello). Hope your battery’s charged. Anyway, I figured it was Allie, especially when the first phrase I deciphered was (It’s Allie).

  Of course, Allie couldn’t know my circumstances: Someone else might be listening in, someone who knew Morse or could coerce me to decode. Therefore, her message was crafted as music both to my and my captors’ ears, basically stating that she’d soon have the cash in hand and was prepared to trade, straight up, one million dollars for one Hoverlander. Everything, she averred, would go according to the script. The use of the word script was key, because it assured any eavesdropping antagonists that she was glatt kosher but also alerted me that someone, somewhere, presumably Woody, was improvising new plays for the playbook. I’ll tell you one thing: For the first time since this whole thing began, I felt faith in my father. I just knew—gut knew—that he wouldn’t let me down. I’ll tell you another thing: By the time silence ensued, I was goddamn sick of Uncle Joe. Gotta change that ringtone. Really. First chance I get when my hands are free.

  I spent some time attacking that goal, for I’d discovered by feel (using my cheek) that the interior walls of the storage locker were cross-braced with rebar, and if that’s where Woody got his, then there might be a raw edge left where he’d jimmied a piece free. So I flop-and-rolled my way around the perimeter, pausing at intervals to investigate the wall with my face. By the time I’d done two walls, I was pretty exhausted and had to take a break to flop-and-roll back to my water bowl. I flailed around like a bobbing bird until I hit water, then sucked up a few mouthfuls through the straw taped into my gag. This is not the normal way one drinks, of course; some of the water went down the wrong pipe, and I coughed it back up into my mouth. So unpleasant on so many levels.

  Halfway along the third wall I found what I needed: a jagged end of metal, either Woody’s doing or some other, unrelated mishap. Trouble was, it was too high to get my hands on. My only choice was to lie on my back, stick my feet up, and have at it.

  Okay, easier said than done. Much easier said than done when you’re naked in the dark, your legs move as one cumbersome unit, and lying on your back actually means lying on your heavily wadded hands on your back. It was like bedding down on a bowling ball. Nevertheless, I gave it my best effort, and through a combination of sawing and hacking, soon made some inroads into the great glump of tape binding my feet.

  I’m a whistle-while-you-work type. Always have been. Give me a goal, something to focus my energy on, and my mood inevitably lifts. That happened here. I fell into a certain rhythm—saw, hack, flex, wrest, rest, saw, hack, flex, wrest, rest—and found that the effort soothed me. I hadn’t forgotten my dire nocturnal straits. Even if I managed to cut myself loose, I was still alone in a dark place, with a million-dollar price tag, crazy chicks who would probably try to kill me at some point, the unresolved threat of Jay Wolfredian, and the equally unresolved question of whether Woody could, as claimed, button up his old enemy. I figured I was still a good four or five big moves from clear of this thing—assuming I got clear and didn’t, in fact, get dead.

  And I never felt more alive.

  Call me perverse, I don’t mind. But there in that storage locker, scraping duct tape off my bound feet, I realized that the grift was graphite for my life, the dry lubricant that kept everything running smoothly. Forget about leopards and forget about spots, just keep your eye on that sign over there, the one that reads, “Love what you do. If you don’t love it, you won’t do it well.” Even this ridiculous scenario appealed to me. It stimulated me and commanded my powers. I desperately wanted to get out of the current bind, of course, but at the same time, if I were being truly honest with myself (and hadn’t bedrock honesty been the whole point of Operation Citizen?), I equally desperately wanted to get into some other subsequent bind and maybe just a bind or two after that. At that moment, I attained clarity. A grifter I was, and a grifter I would remain. I hoped and trusted that when it came to it, I could make Allie see things my way. She was my betrothed, after all. We should try to walk the same path.

  Then, suddenly, sproing! The last sticky shred of duct tape gave way and my feet fell free. This let me attack the tape around my knees, which freed rather more quickly than my feet, and after that it was a simple matter to shred the rest of the hogtie. Soon I could stand upright again, and man, that felt good. Primordial. Like I’d just come down from the trees.

  My hands took a surprisingly long time to unwrap. Maybe there was a lot more duct tape, or maybe I was just getting tired, but in any case, the effort extended through the long, slow hours of the night. Eventually I noticed a weak gray light rising—daylight, crawling in under the rolling metal door, most notably through the part that Woody’d pried up and the girls had hastily banged back into place. I knew I could go out the same way. Just get these hands free, I thought to myself, and I am outta here.

  Finally the tape gave way and I pulled away the tape on my mouth, too. And there I stood, jaybird naked, but for the gooey adhesive residue clinging to various body parts. In the growing light, I headed to my clothes to put them on. First, though, I stopped at the slop bucket and had myself a good, long piss. It seemed like a piss of triumph.

  Until the steel door rolled up, and Louise and Martybeth caught me relieving my horse in midstream.

  And that’s what we call bad timing.

  Suspiciously bad, in fact. A suspicion instantly borne out by Martybeth, who smugly waggled her smartphone. I didn’t bother looking around for the infrared pinhole camera they’d planted; like the one in my hotel room, it would be small enough not to be seen. It must’ve amused the hell out of them to watch me struggle through the long hours of the night, and meanwhile, they were building quite a collection of Hoverlander porn.

  Keeping me covered with her gun, Louise waved Martybeth to my pile of pants. Martybeth plucked out my cell phone and tossed it to Louise, who eyed it suspiciously. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me what this was all about.”

  “Wrong number.” I shrugged. “Very persistent.”

  “Uh-huh.” She dropped the phone to the floor and ground it beneath the heel of her work boot. Farewell, Uncle Joe. So much for changing my ringtone.

  “Get dressed,” said Red. “You look ridiculous.” This was true, but tell me who doesn’t when they’re naked and gooey, only half peed, and everyone around them is in clothes? As I skivvied into my jeans, she said, “Hurry up. We have a long drive.”

  “Why not save us all the long drive,” I asked, “and kack me here. Price of gas and whatnot.” I looked around and spotted the Segue. “And you must measure the mileage on that thing in feet.”

  Louise came up to me and stood close. “Know what your problem is, Radar?”

  “Irritable bowel syndrome?”

  “You think you’re funny. And you think that matters.”

  “What can I tell you? Laughter is the best medicine. It works a treat against gunshot wounds.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Martybeth. “No one’s going to hurt you, not if your girlfriend holds up her end.” From the way she said girlfriend, I could tell she meant Allie, not Miriam. Red knew it too, and threw her partner an angry hiss. Loose lips on that one.

  “You two,” I said, “really need to get on the same page if you’re planning to make a career of this.” I smiled at Martybeth. “How’d you find out?”

  “Find out what?” asked Martybeth, futilely slamming the barn door behind the cow.

  “Never mind,” I said. “You know what you know. Anyway, happy endings all around, that’s good news. So let’s get going.” I extended my wrists to Louise in surrender, naturally assuming it was duct tape time again.

  “Oh, no,” said Louise. “We’re way past that.” She shot me a fierce grin.

  Then gave me a shot of something that put me to sleep.

  I awoke curled up on the deck of the Segue’s cargo area, staring into the back of the back seat. Shaking off the sedative, I tried to sit up and found it a struggle. This I attributed to the unpredictable effects of off-label prescription tranquilizers, until I realized that my constraint was more physical than chemical: a choke chain of no small girth, circling my neck, thick and weighty, and secured by a heavy nylon lead to a tie-down on the deck of the Segue. Now he was a dog on a leash, and they have no free will.

  “Cute,” I muttered, when I could muster a voice.

  “I thought you’d like it,” said Louise. “Utilitarian and, one hopes, not too painful. How do you feel?”

  “Like my brain’s been turned inside out.”

  “That’ll pass. My advice: enjoy the ride, and invest faith in the faithfulness of your friends.”

  Faith being too abstract a concept to process just then, I rested my brain on available visual information, gleaned through the Segue’s side and rear windows. We were far out in the desert, the sort of blank, endless desert that Nevada does better than almost anywhere. The Segue was traveling north across an immense endorheic basin—a salt flat—pluming a spray of fine, white dust in its wake. Hundreds of other such plumes dotted the dry lake, all made by cars and trucks bombing along at speed, channeling Craig Breedlove. Many of these, I could see, were tricked out with psychedelic paint jobs and ambitious artistic add-ons, or towing trailers of odd shapes and designs. It made for a festive parade, which, as the lake bed narrowed into a canyon mouth at its northern end, merged and funneled into a festive traffic jam.

  The smoked glass of the Segue’s windows filtered the ferocious desert light as I studied the steeply angled canyon walls. Desperate vegetation clung to cracks in the rocks, demonstrating nature’s marvelous eptitude at making the best of a hellish situation. Then again, someone had built a road through this place long ago, so that’s human eptitude, too. Did they think they’d find gold here? Probably. They think they’ll find gold everywhere; it’s how guys like me stay in business.

  The road rose with the canyon, traversing a rocky streambed that may not have run with water for five or five thousand years. The walls closed in as the canyon narrowed, and I imagined the scene as seen from above: a line of amazingly funked-up vehicles penetrating the desert like a funeral procession on LSD. And all roads led to Mirplopalooza. Just ask the signs by the side of the road, or the drivers or perpetrators of any of the hundreds of art cars with Nelson mandalas on their quarter panels or plywood shark fins on their roofs. The theme of the show was “Be the Show,” and this crowd had enthusiastically bought in.

  The road climbed up the canyon to a ridgetop, where a line of prefab ticket booths slowed traffic to a walking pace as each vehicle stopped to hand over cash or printed tickets. Chipper ticket takers greeted each carload with enthusiastic approval for their artistic efforts. When it was our turn. Louise rolled down the window and a multiply pierced kid leaned in. “Welcome to Mirplopalooza,” he said. “Be the show.” As he took money from Louise, he glanced back and noticed my leash-and-chain ensemble. “Nice,” he said. “I like it.”

  Great. Now I’m art.

  The kid waved us on. We drove around a small hill and descended into the basin beyond.

  And I was moved. Just like a train.

  31

  Mirplopalooza

  Some places in the natural world, you look at them and can’t imagine how they possibly came to be. Your rational mind offers a scientific explanation: tectonic this; oxidized that. Your spiritual mind argues otherwise: “Well, God’s no slouch with aesthetics.”

  God, nature, ancient astronauts wielding laser chain saws, whatever, they sure did good work here.

  A wall of red cliffs leaped a thousand feet from the desert floor, topped at the plateau with a line of small pines that ran along the lip like stunty green teeth. Striations of color ranging from pale coral to deep sanguine bespoke the variable presence of iron in the original sandstone. Laser chain saws (or erosion) had carved away the base of the cliff, leaving it with a vertiginous overhang. The cliff formed a soaring curtain of stone that ran halfway around a flat basin of sand, itself giving off a soft glow the color of sunset. Opposite the cliff curtain stood a line of stone towers,* a dozen pink pinnacles of tuff, each bony finger topped by a knob of harder stone—basalt, most likely. Some had lost their capstones and eroded down to nubs, not much more than head high. Others rose majestically, and these had been fully Mirploed: wound around with sheets of linen and strung between with flags of shiny Mylar that flapped in the breeze and refracted light like oil slicks in sunshine. Kites filled the air around the spires, hand painted with strange flying beasts, some loosely based on myth—your dragons, your griffins and such—but most pure Mirplovian invention, and you didn’t know exactly what you were looking at, but you knew what it meant: The good guys were the good guys, the bad guys were the bad guys, and say, fellas, who’s up for a kite fight?

  Between the stone fingers and the red cliff lay the broad expanse of the basin, bare as an airfield, and aptly so, for there stood a fleet of helium balloons tied to stone anchors on the desert floor. These were Mylar too, but hardly like you’d find in the hospital gift shop. For one thing, they were huge: giant floating sausages. For another, they had control surfaces—stubby wings and rudders—plus propeller packages aft and stilettolike spikes up front. Like the kites, they rocked the livery of heroes and villains, and once again you had no trouble knowing who the good guys were. Teams of young men and women tended taut tethers as someone somewhere tested the blimps’ remote guidance systems, making them fight their handlers like fish on a line.

  From walls of loudspeakers, music filled the basin, a sonorous blanket of tranquility that reminded me of new-mown grass, of nap time in kindergarten, of the night before Christmas. I recognized Vic’s signature tonalities, and found my spirit rising to the sound. It changed, though. Subtly and by degrees it shifted through neutral into uncomfortable, then heaving and joyless; ultimately, a dirge. Intellectually I understood that this was the mere manipulation of major and minor chords, of finding certain disharmonic combinations that strike the ear the way clashing reds and greens strike the eye. But when is music understood intellectually? I suffered until it stopped.

  Attendants directed us to a parking area apart from the basin, and here a party had broken out, as arriving festivalgoers poured out of cars, vans, and buses wearing costumes of every level of complexity, from thrift-store throw-ons to grandiloquent Rio regalia. The most ambitious displays were not so much costumes as constructions. Here you’d see a walking castle, and there its counterpoint, a trebuchet that fired balls of dye-soaked sponge, so that the castle became, over time, its own terrible history of conflict. And more than a few guests wore the homage of elaborate papier-mâché Mirplo heads. Whatever he was selling, these avid fans seemed to have bought in bulk. And credit the infosphere for getting the word out so well and so quickly; back in the day, it took legwork and luck to create such fads and ride their fast-burn trajectories. Hits, as we know, have a life of their own, but it never hurts to goose them with a little flash-mob APB.

  Judging from available evidence, Mirplopalooza was a hit.

  I, meanwhile, was still a dog on a leash. After we parked, Martybeth opened the cargo door and tugged me out of the Segue by my neck. To my choke chain she now added garlands of red peppers, face-painted whiskers, a sombrero, and a faded wool poncho. “If anyone asks,” she said, tugging again on the nylon line to show my neck who’s boss, “you’re a Chihuahua. Say sí.”

  I said, “Sí.” As a costume concept, it was wholly hokey, yet you had to admire the job it did of hiding a kidnap victim in plain sight. I hardly stood out, for I wasn’t the only visitor in light bondage drag. And whatever protest I might voice would be interpreted as just an overamped actor getting carried away with his role.