The last man, the pacer, was Joshua Keene, McKendry’s “partner in insanity,” according to Arthur. Keene was McKendry’s opposite, a wild man who placed great stock in his instincts and his intuition. He had a quick and winning smile and was the guy who always bought the next round of drinks. He’d dropped out of college after a succession of majors and was mostly self-taught, a voracious reader and learner who bounced from one fascination to the next and lived in and for the moment. He seemed to have succeeded in life by always doing the unexpected.
Peta had not found McKendry’s gruff manner particularly appealing. Keene, however, she’d found to be gregarious and likable.
“That’s all I know,” Ray said at last. In the ensuing silence, he added, “You’re all aware that Arthur wanted Peta to be his successor if something happened to him.”
Frik, who had stayed in the doorway listening to the details of his old friend’s death, stepped into the light. Peta immediately noticed burn scars on his face. He was wearing gloves, but she could see the traceries of more severe scars on his left hand in the gap between the sleeve and the glove.
“Peta’s entry fee for membership will have to be the same as it is for any man,” Frik said. “Proof of participation in a new adventure that makes her worthy of inclusion in the club.”
“Damn all of you.” Peta hurled her brandy glass in Frik’s direction. It hit the wall closest to him and splintered, leaving behind a golden brown trickle. “Your friend is dead. Dead. And why? For all I know, it’s because of some stunt he pulled to impress you.”
She pushed past Frik and went out onto the rooftop. In the distance, she could see the lights of a vessel making its way up the Hudson. Closer and down below, people streamed around the corner toward Times Square to wait for the ball to drop and for the new year to be upon them.
As if it mattered what year it was, she thought. The days and months—and years—would march on. Gradually the pain would leave her. For now, tending her island patients and Arthur’s was all she could think of doing to get herself through.
She looked up into the cloudy sky. “Happy New Year, Arthur,” she whispered as her tears once again rolled freely, “wherever you are.”
In the heat of her fury at the callousness of the men inside the apartment and despite the depth of her sorrow, she considered Arthur’s last wish—her inclusion in the club. She wasn’t willing to go outlooking for life-threatening stunts so that she could prove herself to the Daredevils. Her own line of work brought her into more than enough danger all of the time. Life-and-death decisions were her stock-in-trade. Then again, if the original members hadn’t considered the rescue of Arthur from prison dangerous enough to overcome the fact that she was female, these idiots certainly wouldn’t agree that what she accomplished daily was suitably perilous.
Behind her, inside the apartment, someone turned on the local news, apparently to see if the aftermath of the explosion was being televised. Peta moved close enough to see the screen.
Her timing was impeccable, although whether impeccably good or bad was, she thought briefly, up for grabs. Though she’d been unaware of it at the time, it seemed a cameraman had picked her out of the crowd. There she was, a full shot first, then her face filling the screen.
She walked into and across the living room and entered the small bedroom she’d so often shared with Arthur. She stared at herself in the small mirror she’d used to put on her makeup, took off the coat she was still wearing, and fingered the pendant Arthur had given her. Taking it off, she placed it lovingly in her handbag, and began to pack her things.
10
In the living room, Frik leaned forward, staring intently at the television screen. The announcer said that a lone Muslim extremist had claimed responsibility for the blast, and the camera closed once again on Peta. Encircled by a gold bezel, suspended from a gold chain, was a fragment of the artifact.
Filing away the certainty that she knew everything Arthur had known, he turned his attention to the people in the room. “Meeting’s in order,” he said. “You go first, Ray.”
With visible reluctance, Ray pulled a videotape out of his coat pocket and slipped it into the VCR. It began with Channel 8 hype about the preopening advertising for his hotel.
“Ray Arno, owner of the new Daredevil Casino, is much more than a wealthy investor in a business suit,” Paula Francis ofEyewitness News began. “He’s a well-known Hollywood stuntman, an Evel Knievel, if you will. You’re about to see him perform a spectacular, death-defying stunt to highlight his new adventure hotel, with its theme park full of thrill rides and its high-stakes casino.”
“Behold one of those stupid macho stunts Peta was talking about,” Ray said. “You will notice that there is no safety net.”
Followed by cameras and reporters, Ray could be seen climbing to the top of Las Vegas’s Stratosphere Tower—the tallest observation tower west of the Mississippi. He smiled, took a deep breath, and leaped into space. The camera tracked his shrinking figure until a rectangular skydiver’s parachute unfurled behind him.
The camera angle changed to a shot of a wedge-shaped building with what looked like a space shuttle jutting from one side. A large neon sign in front of the structure proclaimedTHE DAREDEVIL . The image panned up to show Ray in his bright jumpsuit, expertly gliding toward the roof of the casino.
The report switched to a cameraman on the Daredevil’s rooftop helipad. As Ray stuttered to a stop and removed his parachute, he said into the camera, “Follow me to the Daredevil.You may use the front door.”
The screen filled with snow as the tape ended. “That’ll do,” Frik said. No one disagreed. “Who’s next.”
Briefly, as if they were reading Cliff’s Notes, each of them, including Frik, added a tale of derring-do. Frik summarized an African man-faces-rhino ecoadventure that sounded like an outtake from Hemingway’sGreen Hills of Africa ; Keene and McKendry gave a précis about having infiltrated a white-supremacist group to rescue a black professor who had been taken hostage; and Simon described a shark attack during the exploration of a wreck near the Bermuda Triangle.
“Listen, everyone,” Ray said after Simon had finished. “Why not talk about next year and call it a night? We obviously won’t be able to meet here from now on, so how about my place in Vegas?”
“Your place?” Joshua Keene looked amused.
“My new hotel. Look, I realize this apartment was Damon Runyan’s home, which made it perfect for us, and the Strip isn’t Times Square—”
“But it’s the next best thing to being here.” Keene lifted his glass in a mock toast.
McKendry chuckled, appreciative as always of his friend’s sense of humor.
“Someday I’m going to buy this place and turn it into a casino,” Ray said. “But that’s not happening quite yet. Meanwhile, why not some desert R and R away from the…um”—he glanced at Arthur’s bedroom—“the memories?”
The venue was readily agreed upon. Glasses were refilled, and a few people munched on pretzels and nuts.
“About next year.” Frik got ready for what needed to be a convincing performance. “I have something to propose. Something urgent that I cleared with Arthur, on condition the rest of you agreed.”
He too glanced toward the bedroom where Peta had gone, then sat back and put forth his proposal. He went over what information he wished to divulge: the discovery of the artifacts; the fire that had killed Paul Trujold; a description of how he had sustained third-degree burns on his face and left hand.
Having gained the group’s attention, he went on to talk about his suspicion that Selene Trujold had at least one piece of the device, sent by her father, and he recounted her threats to destroy Oilstar. Of course, he said nothing about his true purpose, making it easy for everyone to agree upon a treasure hunt for the missing pieces of the artifact.