It was a global question, but I managed to concentrate on the immediate. "I want to know when the Inferno chose its chip design, and what that was."
His pale hands fanned the white drawing paper like cards in a deck. His fingernails, I noticed, had no moons at top or bottom, but were the uniform dead white French manicure nail-tips.
"You were right. The fangs, of course. Why did you want to know? So badly. "
"I investigate these things."
"The icons I choose for my hotel?"
"You're really Christophe?"
"Among other things."
"And I don't want to know that badly."
"No, not itinerant young ladies who show up at dangerous places in backless gowns."
He smiled as he dealt the sketches like a hand in a game of cards. It was hard to see him smile; the lips were so pale against that whitewashed skin and shark-strong teeth. His canines were slightly elongated, no more than I'd seen on some perfectly normal humans.
"The Inferno," he said, "has always been a dream, or a nightmare, in men's eyes. Trying to date it or its artifacts is like trying to pin down sand. Take these drawings, study them. They are all dust in the wind."
I stood. "No thanks. I've seen what I needed to. They imply the Inferno isn't the brand-new ‘concept’ it pretends to be. That somebody has been waiting and planned to spring it on the Strip for a long time. And now here you are."
I'd hoped my hint that I suspected he himself went "way back" like the chip designs would get a response, but I was disappointed. Snow remained enigmatic, saying nothing.
No tiger still stood behind me, though, when I turned to leave. I paused.
"What?" he asked.
"I don't want to give you my back."
"It's a little late, don't you think?"
"Never too late."
I started to turn, then whipped around to look back. He was gone, the chair empty, the precious drawings still lying there to be studied. Never trust a deal that came so easily. The Devil was good at those.
I walked out, heaving a huge mental sigh of relief, wondering what Ric Montoya and Hector Nightwine and my own investigative reporter's instincts had gotten this Kansas orphan into. Nothing I couldn't handle. I hoped.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I dropped the CinSymbiant clothes back at Deja-Vous the next morning. They rented or sold their wares and offered me the gown and clips for $600 but I settled for the gray contact lenses for $30. I'd enjoyed wearing undercover eyes and might want to use them in the future. Like a lot of people with vivid blue eyes, I was tired of being remembered only for that.
I did have to pay for the three missing hairpins I'd let the Cocaine groupie have. A buck-forty. I should have charged her the going rate for a Cocaine memento. Might have been able to afford the gown then.
It also turned out that the "owner" had ordered that I be given a twenty percent "handling discount" on the entire package. Cute. Call him Cocaine, Christophe, or Snow, this guy didn't miss a trick.
I hopped into Dolly with a high heart, my laptop in the passenger seat. Quicksilver was not institutionally welcome and I was visiting the Nevada Historical Society library to look up missing-person candidates for the lovers buried in Sunset Park. I'd even called the police captain Ric counted as a source, Kennedy Malloy.
I almost swallowed my wisdom teeth when an alto woman's voice answered to the name. She did tell me, reluctantly, the mint year of the silver dollars found at the site, 1921. Still in circulation in the seventies. I couldn't tell if her reluctance was the usual police reticence, or if she was as startled as I was to suddenly find Ric a bridge to a strange woman.
When I thought about it, it figured that his inside man at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police would be a woman. What woman wouldn’t want to tell Ric anything he'd want to know? Maybe I was prejudiced. As I drove I replayed our meeting. Had we been hit with some love potion that had been trapped with the dead lovers all these decades? Everyone liked to think romance was magic, a form of mysterious chemistry, but what if it was something catching, like the plague?
I was glad to be heading for a place where I'd always been able to keep my feet on the ground and my head in the here and now: a library.
A quick online search revealed the Clark County Library had the Las Vegas Evening Review Journal from 1930 through 1958 -when it had long been just the LV Review Journal-on microfilm. I explained "no dogs in the library" to Quick and soon had Dolly aimed toward the University of Nevada Las Vegas. The Clark County Library was only a block or so from campus on E. Flamingo Road.
Once there I settled in, grateful modern microfilm was nothing like those old reels of white-on-black filmstrips people had to reel past at seasick speeds years before, If I found anything of interest, I could simply print out a facsimile for a small fee.
My only distraction: the ads for what were now vintage clothes…oh my! Cheap as Saturday night sin. If only time travel was a post-Millennium Revelation option!
When I got home, I noticed a scent of lemon oil and Mr. Clean. Someone had been tidying the premises. Quick was out. That wasn’t unusual.
During our first night in the cottage, he'd pawed open the French lever on one of the living room windows. I didn't know he'd been gone until he jumped back in that way when I was making breakfast. I tried tying the window lever shut, but he used another one. The next night I tied them all shut…and he untied one with his teeth. This was not a dog that would sleep by a cold fake fireplace all night.
So I now left the window over the laundry table open and Quick spent his nights doing whatever really big dogs do. I couldn't blame him for not wanting to be cooped up. I just hoped he didn't get hurt. Even Superdog could run into trouble.
I put down my photocopies and headed along the hall to the bedroom to change into something comfy, like T-shirt and shorts. My image in the mirror at the hall's always-dusky end made me pause. Last night when I'd come in, it seemed as if I had glimpsed someone else in that mirror, a different girl in a different vintage dress.
Then my double vision had cleared and I saw it was me, only I had blue eyes in that reflection, not gray, despite the color-dampening contact lenses. Weird. But the hall was ill lit with a single overhead fixture, and I'd been drinking, not to mention scared and stressed. Now, in daylight, I just looked like me, only more casually dressed in slacks and a knit top. I'd barely changed before the doorbell rang with an old-fashioned melodic chime.
When I rushed to open it, I found a little green man standing on my stoop. No, he didn't have the big black bug-eyes of an extra-terrestrial. He just looked like an impish offspring of the Jolly Green Giant of TV commercial fame. The silver sandals he wore did nothing for his hairy hammertoes.
No ho-ho-ho from him. "Sign here, lady." As he handed me a computerized device I noticed a green delivery truck outside the open gate. The print on the side read Mercury Express. Homegrown Delivery Service.
The plain white box was big, flat, and light, but way too deep to be pizza, unless it was a triple deep-dish Chicago style one. Besides, it was only faintly warm from the summer's day and the sun-heated back of a metal truck.
I gave the green guy a three-dollar tip and got a nasty look in return. "I should get hazardous duty pay for delivering to Nightwine's place, lady."
Twinkletoes stalked away, chiming. I hadn't noticed the bells on the toe sandal straps before. Only in Las Vegas, where every service person wore bizarre themed costumes. It had been a costume, hadn't it?
I was chuckling to myself when I laid the box on the dining table and pulled off the annoying invisible tape at the sides. I heard the encouraging crinkle of tissue paper.
This was beginning to look like a present. Had Ric -?