My palms were suddenly sweating. “When did you spot him?”
“Almost immediately,” True said. “It is Sin City, after alclass="underline" our surveillance coverage of the Strip is more comprehensive than the casinos’ own. Also, he registered under his real name.”
“Sounds like I’m not the only one being used as bait. You have his room number?”
“He’s staying in one of the penthouse suites.”
“OK, then. Let’s go see him…”
Wise, who’d been quietly eating his pancakes this whole time, put down his fork and cleared his throat. “Not so fast,” he said. “Before you go to the Venetian, we need to make a stop at Harrah’s.”
“What for?” asked True, looking annoyed.
“Love wants to meet her.”
“Who’s Love?” I said.
“I thought we agreed we weren’t going to have this sort of interference,” said True.
“I don’t know what you agreed to,” said Wise, “but my orders come from the man himself. Love isn’t happy with the way the Ozymandias op played out. Before we take this any further, he wants to be sure of her.”
“And he couldn’t have met with her yesterday, or the day before?”
“He’s got a full schedule. This is when he had time.”
“Who’s Love?” I repeated.
“The Trickster-in-Chief,” said True. “The leader of the Scary Clowns.” To Wise: “Very well. We’ll go see him.”
“Not ‘we.’ Love wants to talk to her in private. You’re welcome to wait in the casino, but she goes up to the Mudgett Suite alone.”
At that point, True got more pissed off than I’d ever seen him. He bitched at Wise about how totally unacceptable this was. Wise listened impassively, like he knew True had to complain for the sake of form, even though it wasn’t going to change anything.
A new waitress came to collect our plates. Once we’d settled the bill, Wise was in a hurry to get going, but when we got outside, I broke away from him and followed True to his car.
“What’s this Mudgett Suite?” I asked him. “And what did Wise mean about Love wanting to be sure of me? Am I going to have to do another one of those shibboleth tests?”
“I don’t know,” True said, still steaming. “As you may have gathered, I wasn’t consulted about this.”
“Well OK then, let’s just blow him off. Go straight to the Venetian.”
“No. That won’t work.”
“Jane!” Wise called. “Come on!”
“True…”
“No.” He shook his head firmly. “Go with him. I’ll meet you afterwards.”
I could see there was no point in arguing, so reluctantly I let him go. As I headed back to the SUV, I heard True get into his car, start the motor, and drive off. The sound of the engine was just beginning to fade with distance when the world changed color again.
I was far enough from the blast this time that I didn’t fall down, just stumbled. When I caught my balance and looked back, I saw True’s car rolling to a stop in the middle of the road, with all its windows gone and no one in the driver’s seat.
I ran for the SUV. Wise had the door open and was reaching for something. He came out holding a fire ax. Then he dropped it and collapsed.
“Wise?” I crouched down to check on him, then looked up, sensing another presence. But the parking lot was empty.
And then it wasn’t. Maybe five yards off to my left, the air seemed to shimmer, and this person just…materialized. It was Jane, the waitress. She’d swapped her work uniform for a pair of black jeans and a T-shirt silk-screened with a mandrill face, and she was holding an orange pistol.
I jumped up, raising my own gun to fire, but the air shimmered again, and suddenly she wasn’t five yards away, she was right in my face. She slapped my gun aside. She punched me, two quick jabs that dropped me helpless to my knees. A hand cupped my chin, and a plastic pistol muzzle pressed against my forehead.
“Welcome to Las Vegas, Jane,” she said. “Little brother sends his regards.”
She pulled the trigger.
The world went away for a while. When it came back, I was lying in a morgue with my skull blown open. That was my first guess, anyway: I was stretched out on my back on a hard, cold surface; I was paralyzed, blind, and had a headache a hundred times worse than anything I’d ever experienced.
A couple centuries went by while I waited for someone to either cut my chest open or dump me into a coffin. Then the pain lowered a notch, and I could see again—not well, but enough to know that I still had eyes. The feeling came back in my arms, and I ran my hands over the thing I was lying on. It wasn’t a metal slab. It was lumpy, and covered in some kind of stiff hide: a leather couch. I raised a hand to my scalp. It hurt, but it was still there.
Now that I knew my brains weren’t going to fall out, I started to wiggle my head around experimentally. That’s when I saw the clown. He was about nine feet tall. He wore a cone-shaped hat cocked to one side, and a frilly silk suit with a ruffed collar and cuffs. His face was painted white; there was a black teardrop under his left eye and a wicked red grin around his mouth. He stood just at the end of the couch, above and behind me, poised like he was about to bend down and take a bite out of my face.
The sight of him got me up. There was a blur of motion and pain, and then I was at the couch’s far end, screaming at the top of my lungs. The screams drove needles into my brain, but the clown didn’t react, just stood there leering at me, and around the time my voice gave out I realized he was a mannequin, set up on a wooden pedestal.
I panned my head around slowly, wary of more surprises. The room was lit by old-fashioned gas lamps, their flames set just high enough to throw shadows. The lamps weren’t the only antique touch: the wallpaper, rugs, and most of the furniture looked like they could have come straight out of a Victorian-period shop. The only exception was a television, set up discreetly in a corner under a faded poster advertising something called the World’s Columbian Exposition.
There were no windows. The only exit I could see was a set of double doors. I wanted to run to them, but to do that I’d have to go past the clown mannequin.
The TV came on, showing a blue screen. It cast more light than all the gas lamps combined, and by its glow I saw a figure sitting in the shadowy hollow of a wing chair. Something told me this wasn’t a mannequin.
“Phil?” I whispered.
The figure leaned forward. Pebble-glass lenses flashed in the blue light. “Guess again.”
“Dixon…You work for the Troop?”
The lenses tilted as he cocked his head. “What an interesting question. I was just going to ask you the same thing.”
“You mean you’re a prisoner too?”
“A prisoner?”
“Yeah. Isn’t this…Where are we?”
“The Mudgett Suite.”
“Scary Clown headquarters? In Harrah’s?”
“This week.”
“So the Troop didn’t capture me? What happened, then? Why does my head hurt like this?”
“You were shot with an NC gun.”
“Yeah, I know, but narcolepsy’s not supposed to be painful.”
“It isn’t. You were poisoned by your own endocrine system. The effects are superficially similar to a drug overdose.”
“What about Wise?”
“Dead at the scene. He was hit with an aortic dissection and bled out internally.”
“NC guns don’t have a setting for that.”
“Organization NC guns don’t,” Dixon said. “And organization operatives don’t typically plant Mandrill bombs in cars, or feed strychnine-laced apple pie to shadow security teams. Which brings us back to the question of your allegiance.”