20
Sunday
It was more of a light mist than actual rain, but it would still ruin Cindy’s hair. She stepped out of her taxi and straightened the skirt of her black suit, the one she only wore on occasions like this one. She stepped up the path toward Oscar Peters’ final resting place, balancing carefully on her heels which sank hazardously into the immaculately cared for turf. She had to admit there was no more beautiful or more solemn place for a burial than Arlington National Cemetery.
Oscar, of course, had no military experience. But she knew that being the son of a retired soldier he was entitled to a space in a national military cemetery. Someday his parents would certainly join him in that hallowed space. Still, she knew the schedule here was cramped, and remaining spaces few. Retired Sergeant Major Peters must have made at least one influential friend to get his son buried here, and to make it happen in so little time.
Traffic on the George Washington Parkway had been heavy for a Sunday morning and Cindy was barely on time. She would not reach the chairs beside the grave much before the pallbearers who were stepping slowly from the other direction, carrying their load with easy and palpable dignity. The Old Guard was the ultimate burial honor, ramrod straight soldiers of the same height in their dress blues and white gloves, glittering shoes and grim expressions. Their precision always took Cindy’s breath away.
Two women stood at the graveside as she approached and for a moment she was unsure which was in mourning. Hannibal had described Mrs. Ruth Peters welclass="underline" bluish tinted hair, slightly bent posture, soft, warm features. The other woman was taller with a cloud of white hair and thick glasses. She would be one of the Arlington Ladies, a little known group of veterans’ widows with a most charitable mission. One of these women attends every funeral at Arlington, to make sure no service member is ever buried there without someone on hand to mourn him. When a widow is present, they are there to comfort her.
Cindy stopped at the edge of the rows of chairs, observing the ceremony from behind the two women. She had not expected the man. He and Mrs. Peters were of the same generation and at first Cindy thought her husband must have come to his senses at the last minute. But this was not the man she met in Germany. They stood closely enough to make it clear that he was familiar. An old family friend perhaps, who hurried to her side when he learned she would attend her son’s funeral unescorted.
Well, she could not simply stand back and observe. Cindy shook herself into action and moved forward to introduce herself to Mrs. Peters before the chaplain began his service.
On the outskirts of Las Vegas, Hannibal stared at his twenty-fourth license plate of the day, sighed, and checked the number off on his list. All of the numbers on the list were similar, and one of them could well match the license plate on the car he saw only in the dark in Virginia. The plate he was looking at was number twenty-four on his long list of possibilities, but he was sure the gleaming new Lincoln Town Car attached to it was not the vehicle that nearly ran over him back home. There was no need to knock on the door looking for the tall, dark-haired driver.
Pale yellow sunbeams reached over the edge of the earth and poked in around the frames of his sunglasses as he returned to his rented Ford Taurus and consulted the map spread open on the passenger seat. He had hoped his quest would not continue beyond dinnertime, but here he was, still crisscrossing Las Vegas’ dusty streets. This kind of legwork was boring, even in a nice town.
After living in Berlin, New York and Washington, Hannibal found Las Vegas unexpectedly stale. Berlin was an ancient city, dating back to the thirteenth century. New York had three hundred years of history. Even Washington, the planned community that was young compared to most national capitols, went back a couple of hundred years. They all had their run down areas, their aging quarters. But they all had grown and aged through a normal life span, if cities can be said to have such things.
By contrast, Las Vegas was an infant, incorporated as a city almost a dozen years into the twentieth century. And while the other cities grew to adulthood in the normal, legitimate way, Las Vegas was corrupted when it was adopted by the criminal mastermind Benjamin Siegal, called Bugsy by the press of the time. So, while the city rose anew out of the desert in nineteen forty-six, it was corrupted by organized crime. Decay had set in early. The city had grown up and grown old in a very short time. It showed all the signs of decay generally found in cities several times older. Like prematurely aging women, Las Vegas wore way too much gaudy makeup. And like many aging women, it was not hard to look past the makeup, to see the damage time was doing underneath.
Hannibal and his small team had stepped off the plane into intense morning sunshine. His first act after renting cars for them all was to buy several maps. After seeing just how small the town really was, he had divided it between Quaker, Sarge, Virgil and himself. Each had a map rectangle to cover, about fifty miles long and maybe ten miles wide. Within that space, they each had a list of about fifty plates to check out. The job was even bigger than it seemed. Hannibal had prowled the city’s back streets and pocket neighborhoods all day, whittling down his list of possible license plates. Now, the neon fronted gambling houses were just lighting up, like the flying insect traps he had seen hanging in suburban backyards. He saw the night flies hovering at the entrances, not even trying to avoid being drawn in and zapped.
The guidebook told Hannibal that Las Vegas was a city of barely a quarter of a million people, not counting tourists. The tiny District of Columbia held two and a half times as many people. To Hannibal, Las Vegas looked like a frontier town from a western movie. The Hollywood style main street was a series of gaudy flats. Behind them, you could see the sagebrush between houses. There were no condemned buildings standing in a row, their shoulders pressed together to remain upright the way they were back home. But he was surprised at the number of addresses that turned out to be trailers surrounded by sand. And when the houses really were houses, they seemed too far away for his taste.
Driving down uncluttered blacktops with the desert receding flat and brown in every direction, he had to admit that his body liked it out there. The air tasted different, sweeter than he was used to. It was warmer, but dry enough to keep his clothes from sticking to him. And every time he stopped his car, the silence fell in on him, as refreshing as a massage. And when people saw him staring at their cars, or at them, they smiled. Dropping back into his seat and pulling the door closed he considered it again. His body really liked it here.
His mind, however, was restless. It was like some form of sensory deprivation. He realized that some part of him craved clutter, needed the background noise a real functioning city provides. So he breathed easier as the nightlife stirred into wakefulness. And he found himself smiling when his telephone rang.
“Hey Hannibal!” Quaker’s frantic voice jumped into Hannibal’s ear. “I think we got a pretty good suspect here. Tall guy inside. Big black car outside. Come take a look.”
Hannibal reached the address Quaker gave him in less than two minutes. The old, rambling house was styled like a Mexican hacienda with stucco walls and a low-pillared porch. There were no other structures within easy walking distance, giving the impression that this one grew up out of the desert sand of its own accord. Frantic music pouring out of the building did not cover the laughter or the sound of dancing feet. Rolling slowly past, Hannibal saw two figures doing a spastic dance on the porch, shadowed by the light behind them. It was evident that they were dancing together, but by form both were clearly male.
A low wall wrapped its stone arms around the large parking lot just past the house. Quaker sat atop it not far from the entrance. As Hannibal approached, he stood, his gangly arms waving Hannibal in. As he brought the car to a stop, Hannibal powered his window down.