"And then"-His glance was as encompassing and lewd as when he mentioned his beloved black-and-white movies-"I've had a chance since your last visit to scan all of my security tapes from Sunset Park the first day you visited. And the day after."
He paused as though to allow me time to tremble in my boots. Never gonna happen. It was too hot here for boots. I was wearing my forties purple platform sandals that made me six feet tall, for courage.
He reached out a plump forefinger and pushed the horns on the bronze sculpture of a bull on his desk.
I heard a mechanical whirring sound and turned as one section of paneled library shelves slid away to reveal a wall of television monitors. The central flat-screen one was huge, seven feet or so.
Nightwine lifted a remote control sporting about a hundred luminous buttons and pressed one. What was he doing, showing me a soap opera in progress?
Oh. It was Ric's face maybe two feet high and it was fine. He was making love to…my hair, and I was writhing into his body like a mink in heat as the image drew back at the clicking command of Nightwine's remote control.
The camera panned down to document our totally compromising positions and lingered suggestively on the operative prong of the dowsing rod shaking and dragging my hands as it plunged toward the ground. Who did this guy think he was? Alfred Hitchcock?
This wasn’t just a security tape made by an automatic camera. Nightwine fancied himself a director. He'd taken control, captured every moment of the lost time when Ric and I had found the dead bodies and I'd channeled their last, lascivious, live moments.
I felt a flush sweep up from my chest over my cheekbones. God, we looked hot. Nightwine thought so too, or he'd have never stepped in to "direct" this routine surveillance moment personally. The original must have been an uninspiring long shot.
"This is when I realized that my Lilith," he said, "is worth far more alive. I could sell this…outtake…for hundreds of thousands."
"You're telling me that I'm a live dead sex symbol? You don't understand. That footage is not what it looks like."
"I do understand, Miss Street."
The remote chattered like a chicken. I was treated to a rapid run-through of the police scene the next day, the bodies in their excavated tomb, even me wandering over to the dog area to adopt Quicksilver.
"Perhaps you may be disinclined to believe it," Nightwine droned on in his prissy, pseudo-Brit diction, "but I actually am agoraphobic. I dread crowds and open spaces. I could use a…leg woman."
He leaned over his desk to eye my gams. I thought they were fairly okay too, hence my vintage shoe collection. Now I wished I'd worn leg warmers.
"You see, Miss Street, I am a victim of extreme success. I have so many spin-off franchised CSI shows that even an army of writers can't come up with sufficiently provocative scripts. So I mine the murders of yesteryear. Obscure ones, of course. Unsolved, as a matter of fact. You show more than a seasoned reporter's skills on my tapes. You have…something extra. And so does the most interesting Mr. Montoya. I agree that this cozy footage of you two is more than an idle turn-on for any passing voyeurs."
Ugh! Was he talking about himself? Yes!!
"I suspect that you are gifted as your equally attractive but lamentably absent 'sister' was not. You're a medium, my dear."
"Me? Ridiculous. I'm a reporter. I live and die by cold hard facts."
"I live and die by cold hard bodies. If you do indeed have a direct line to the dead, I want you to develop these skills. I want to know who those entwined corpses were. I want to know who killed them, and why. I want them to be the centerpiece of a Las Vegas CSI episode. I'll pay you well for any results you can…dig up. How you pay Mr. Montoya is your own business, but he is clearly an accessory before the fact."
I took a deep breath. So deep I felt a sharp pain in my side. Okay. I was alive. Unlike Lilith. Or unlike Lilith was presumed to be. I was also alive enough to really covet that footage of Ric and me, those close-ups of Ric's face while he held me. No one in memory had ever held me like that. No one had ever looked like that while holding me.
"I'll work for you," I said. Briskly. "I'll solve this case. And then I want those tapes. All the tapes of me and Ric, everything. No copies left."
"Not even one weensy one for my personal collection?"
"Not even one, Nightwine."
"You'll live on site?"
"Right."
How bad could it be? Besides, I could see that Lilith/me needed heavy security. And I didn't want Quicksilver exposed to any more werewolf gangs. He looked at me in a way no living thing ever had either. Except Achilles. I wasn’t going to lose Quicksilver too, by God.
"All right." Hector punched another button on the remote. The wall of living images vanished again behind a gilded façade of book spines.
"'There's more you need to know, Miss Street, more of the facts about underground life, and death, in Las Vegas that bear upon your investigatory efforts," he told me. "There's a thriving illegal traffic in the dead. Ask your Mr. Montoya if you can keep your mouths off each other long enough. Ah, I once was young myself, but it was so long and thin ago. The dead and the undead are being revived and employed: ghosts, zombies, vampires, and who-knows-what other supernatural creatures. They are being leased to the Vegas hospitality, entertainment, and sex industries by a mysterious consortium that makes the fictional and demonic Wolfram & Hart look angelic.
"I'm especially concerned about a related issue: some of the resurrected dead have even been peeled off the silver screen, the black-and-white movies whose images were filmed on silver nitrate. Do you know what travesties like this mean, Miss Street? They're taking Bogey out of Casablanca , Bette Davis out of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, and selling their soul-less selves as cheap tourist attractions. Some are even being prostituted."
I leaned back in my chair. "Godfrey?"
"Wonderful actor. Classic portrayal. Surely you recognized him from My Man Godfrey? William Powell in the title role. Nineteen thirty-six. Perhaps the greatest screwball comedy ever made. A socialite played by Carole Lombard picks up a Depression-era hobo during a scavenger hunt. He becomes her family's servant, also their therapist. He's really a wealthy man and, of course, there's a romance. Powell was Dapper Personified in that part. I am honored to have him running my household. You would not believe what nasty, demeaning use such a fine vintage performance could be put to in the local brothels had I not snapped up Godfrey for my major domo."
I gasped. Godfrey was already a pal and my inside man at Castle Nightwine. He did not deserve servitude as maitre d' in a brothel!
"I see you feel a bit of my pain, Miss Street."
"How can someone rip off vintage film characters?"
"Ah. By exploiting a long-misused population among the dead. Can you guess?"
I couldn't and shook my head. This was a lot of reel life to absorb, especially when I still didn't fully trust the source.
"You see…" Nightwine said, leaning back almost half-horizontal in his reclining leather chair.
The extreme position made my nerve endings jump. I didn't like seeing even Nightwine in such a vulnerable position, although I understood it was calculated to earn my trust: harmless old grandfather leaning back to tell grandbaby a story.
"Zombies, my dear," he announced.
"Not my favorites."
"No one's favorites, or they wouldn’t have been abused as slave labor for so many centuries in so many corners of the earth. They are the secret behind the construction of the pyramids, you know."
"The pharaohs used zombie labor?"
Hector nodded somberly. "That was in primitive times. Today the technique of overlaying a cinematic character on a zombie began forty years ago as part of an experimental 'black' project backed by a beloved kiddie animation movie company. Now it's a common, if concealed, reanimation project taken over by the immortality mob gone rogue. No one, nothing, is sacred or safe. Supernatural thugs of all descriptions harry anyone, including those who ask questions, as you have been doing."