“Please get up, Mr. Robert,” he said, slicking back his hair and tucking in his shirt. “It’s time for you to go.”
“What are you going to do to him?”
“It has nothing to do with you. I’m letting you leave. Be satisfied with that.”
“You can’t expect me to see this and just go.”
“That’s very heroic of you. But I’m giving Victor what he deserves.”
“He doesn’t deserve to. . I won’t let you.”
“You misunderstand. I have no intention of killing Victor. He will be fine — you have my word. He’s like a brother to me. He’s all the family I have now. But punishment is punishment. We all get our due sooner or later.”
Junior walked over to the wall clock beside the geisha painting. He said to me, “Menendez will take you to your car. This will be the last time we see each other. As far as I am concerned, I do not know you, I have never met you, and you have never been to Las Vegas in your life. In return, I recommend you never set foot back in this city.”
He turned the hands of the clock in the same combination he did five months before.
As the painting crept open, as Victor continued groaning and writhing on the floor five feet from me, I thought of Sonny and Happy and of all the letters that surely went up in flames alongside their bodies.
Menendez followed me down the dark stairway, but as the painting started closing behind us, I called over my shoulder, “I was here, though. I was here, and everything happened.”
I could no longer see Junior. I was not sure he even heard me.
18
AS I DROVE OUT of the city, the sun shone as intensely as it had the previous morning. The sky was the color of the Pacific in July. The farther south I drove on the 15, the less snow I could see. Only a few unmelted patches on the shoulders of the highway, the broken lumps on the tops of passing cars, spitting flurries onto my windshield. It was strange to see green palm trees swaying in the breeze and beyond them the vague warm mountains, because in the bright sunlight, if you squint, it all seems like a vision from some tropical island.
I held on to that thought to lessen the pain in my head. To bury as much as I could of the last two days.
It was my second and my last time leaving Las Vegas. The farther away I got, the more I felt I was shedding some pitch-dark side of myself that the place had awoken. Maybe it was my most genuine side. It doesn’t matter ultimately — who you think you are. Sonny and Happy had died, and mourning one and cursing the other made me no more wiser about the things that people do to each other. In the end, good and bad people perish all the same.
I felt inside my duffel bag for the videotape. It was still there, though its value was lost on me now. It would never tell me where Suzy went or what new life she would find for herself. It would never tell me what she had actually written me or what else had happened in that hotel room. All it contained were darkened glimpses of two people whose love for each other somehow lasted for over twenty years.
Two hours out, I stopped at a gas station to fill up my car and change out of my bloody clothes. I threw away the food and painkillers Junior had given me and bought a bottle of ibuprofen, some cold sandwiches and hot coffee, and a pair of cheap sunglasses to cover up my bruised eye and shade myself from the harsh sunlight.
It was still desert all around me, gray mountains behind brown mountains, miles of hoary creosote bushes blanketing the flat land like a bed of thorns. I ate all the sandwiches sitting on the frigid hood of my car and drank my coffee slowly and decided I was never coming back to this or any desert.
Only then did I call Tommy.
As soon as he heard my voice, he said, “What the hell did you do, man?”
“I can explain the girl,” I said.
“What girl? There’s no girl. All I see is a suitcase at my front door with fifty fucking grand inside and a note with your name on it. And oh yeah, your badge.”
He grilled me with a string of questions, but I wasn’t listening. I hung up without saying another word.
I sat in the car for a while, sifting through my surprise, my disappointment, and eventually the realization that I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.
I considered tossing the videotape then. Run over it with my car first. Burn it and let it melt into the desert dust. If Mai was gone now, why hold on to anything else, especially this?
But I kept it. I would never watch it again, but somehow it felt right to save this one reminder. At least it wasn’t some heartfelt memento of something we once had. On the tape was everything I knew about her and everything I would never know. That wasn’t enough, but at least it was real.
Acknowledgments
A humble and heartfelt thanks to the following people:
My parents, Son and Nhai, for their love, their sacrifices, and their countless stories.
My sister Mai, who fights crime, is a fount of invaluable information, and has always taken care of me.
My brother Joseph, who has exceptional taste and an exceptionally good heart and is also one of my best friends.
My editor, Alane Salierno Mason, who made this book a great deal better, whose judgment I implicitly trust, and whose tremendous support I will always be grateful for.
My agent, Ellen Levine, whose patience and commitment and enthusiasm over so many years — including the uncertain ones — has meant the world to me.
My 12th-grade English teacher, Pat Sherbert, who taught me how to value literature.
My teachers at the University of Tulsa: Grace Mojtabai, Lars Engle, Gordon Taylor, James Watson, and George Gilpin.
My teachers at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop: Ethan Canin, Chris Offutt, Frank Conroy, Sam Chang, and Marilynne Robinson. And of course Connie Brothers.
Everyone at the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, including Carol Harter and my indispensable mentors, Doug Unger and Richard Wiley, who have both given me so so much. Also from Las Vegas: the generous Glenn Schaeffer and the incomparable Dave Hickey, who sharpened my tastes and ambitions and gave me a little necessary edge.
My colleagues in the Committee on Creative Writing at the University of Chicago, especially Dan Raeburn, an outstanding writer and an outstanding friend.
Jenny Swann, a fantastic and crucial reader.
Julie Thi Underhill, who has believed in me since the sixth grade.
Stuart Jacobsen, my first serious reader.
Jarret Keene, who asked me to write the story that became this novel.
Embry Clark, Jess McCall, Aimee Phan, Matt Shears, John Nardone, Jason Coley, Ingrid Truman, and Peyton Marshall — whose friendship has been a refuge.
All the generous and supportive people at the Whiting Foundation and the Vilcek Foundation.
And finally, Kate Hoctor, my best reader and my best friend, without whom so much of this book could not have been improved, figured out, or struggled through into the light of day.