She hesitated. He might spend this retainer on beer, of course. She had too little money to risk ten bucks on a gamble, let alone three hundred.
One thing about him, above all else, convinced her to put the cash atop the legal pad and weight it with the pen. Nouveau drunk or not, he was obviously a haunted man, and by Micky’s reckoning, that counted as a point in his favor. She didn’t know what loss or what failure haunted him, but her own journey had taught her that haunted people are not dissolute by nature and that they will try to exorcise their demons if a caring hand is extended to them at the right time.
Before leaving, she stepped around the desk to take a quick look at his computer. He was on-line. Skimming the displayed text, she discovered that it was part of an article exposing an epidemic of supposedly compassionate killing by nurses who considered themselves angels of death.
A shudder, less fear than wonder, traced the architecture of Micky’s spine as she sensed a strange synchronicity linking her life to Farrel’s. Gen often said that what we perceive to be coincidences are in fact carefully placed tiles in a mosaic pattern the rest of which we can’t apprehend. Now Micky sensed that intricate mosaic, vast and panoramic, and mysterious.
Leaving the apartment, she quietly closed the door behind her, as though she were a burglar making off with a treasure of jewels while her victim dozed unaware.
Hurriedly, she descended the palm-shaded stairs.
The rising heat of late morning had made the rats lethargic. Silent and unseen, they hung like foul fruit among the layers of collapsed brown fronds.
Chapter 51
Thanks to direct-to-brain megadata downloading, Curtis knows that whereas New Jersey has a population density of nearly eleven hundred people per square mile, Nevada has fewer than fifteen per square mile, most of whom are located in and around the gambling meccas of Las Vegas and Reno. Tens of thousands of the state’s 110,000 square miles are all but devoid of people, from the desert barrens in the south to the mountains in the north. Principal products include slot machines, other gaming devices, aerospace technology, gold, silver, potatoes, onions, and topless dancers. In Carson City Kid, Mr. Roy Rogers — with the courageous aid of the indispensable Mr. Gabby Hayes — successfully pursues a murderous Nevada gambler; however, this is a 1940 film, shot in a more innocent time, and it involves no bare-breasted women. If Mr. Rogers and Mr. Hayes were still engaged upon heroic deeds, they would no doubt these days be uncovering nefarious activity at Area 51, the famous Nevada military site widely believed to house extraterrestrials either alive or dead, or both, as well as spacecraft from other worlds, but which is in fact involved in far stranger and more disturbing business. Anyway, vast regions of Nevada are lonely, mysterious, forbidding, and particularly spooky at night.
From the crossroads store and service station — where the real mom and pop lie dead in the SUV, and where two tangled and bullet-riddled masses of preposterous physiology lie waiting to scare the living hell out of whoever finds them — Highway 93 leads north and isn’t intersected by a paved road until it meets highway 50. This occurs thirty miles south of Ely.
Piloting the Fleetwood with jet-jockey skill, coaxing more speed out of it than seems probable, Polly decides against turning east on Highway 50, which leads to the Utah state line.
Boasting a population in excess of 150,000, Reno lies to the west. Plenty of motion and commotion in Reno. But between here and there, Highway 50 crosses 330 miles of semiarid mountains, just the type of desolate landscape in which one boy and two showgirls— even two heavily armed showgirls — might vanish forever.
As the moon sets and the night deepens, Polly continues north on Highway 93 another 140 miles, until they intersect Interstate 80. One hundred seventy-seven miles to the west lies Winnemucca, where in 1900, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed the First National Bank. One hundred eighty-five miles to the east stands Salt Lake City, where Curtis would enjoy hearing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform under the world’s largest domed roof without center supports.
Cass, relieving Polly at the wheel, proceeds north on Highway 93, because neither sister is in a touristy mood. Sixty-eight miles ahead lies Jackpot, Nevada, just this side of the Idaho state line.
“When we get there, we’ll tank up and keep moving,” says Cass. From the co-pilot’s chair, Curtis admits to a gap in his mission preparation: “I don’t have any info about the town of Jackpot.”
“It’s not much of a town,” Cass declares. “It’s a wide place in the road where people throw away all their money.”
“Does this have religious significance?” he wonders. “Only if you worship a roulette wheel,” Polly explains from the lounge, where she’s resting on the sofa with Old Yeller. Though she’s gotten no answers, she’s been whispering questions to the dog. She speaks in a normal voice to Curtis: “Jackpot’s got like five hundred hotel rooms and two casinos, with a couple of first-rate buffets for six bucks, surrounded by thousands of empty acres. After a satisfying dinner and bankruptcy, you can drive to a nice barren place, commune with nature, and blow your brains out in private.”
“Maybe,” Curtis theorizes, “that’s why so many people back at the Neary Ranch were buying Grandma’s locally famous black bean-and-corn salsa. Maybe they were going to use it in Jackpot.”
Polly and Cass are quiet. Then Cass says, “Things don’t often go over my head, Curtis, but that one cleared my scalp by six inches.”
“It was so far over mine,” Polly admits, “I didn’t even feel the breeze when it passed.”
“They were selling cold drinks and T-shirts and stuff off the hay wagon,” Curtis explains. “The sign for Grandma’s salsa said it was hot enough to blow your head clean off, though I personally doubt that any method of decapitation could be clean.”
The twins are silent again, this time for a quarter of a mile. Then Polly says, “You’re a strange lad, Curtis Hammond.” “I’ve been told that I’m not quite right, too sweet for this world, and a stupid Gump,” Curtis acknowledges, “but I sure would like to fit in someday.”
“I’ve been thinking sort of Rain Man,” says Cass. “Good movie!” Curtis exclaims. “Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Did you know that Tom Cruise is friends with a serial killer?”
“I didn’t know that,” Polly confesses.
“A guy named Vern Tuttle, old enough to be your grandfather, collects the teeth of his victims. I heard him talking to Tom Cruise in a mirror, though I was so scared, I didn’t register whether the mirror was a communications device linking him to Mr. Cruise, like the mirror the evil queen uses in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or just an ordinary mirror. Anyway, I’m sure Mr. Cruise doesn’t know Vern Tuttle is a serial killer, cause if he did, he’d bring him to justice. What’s your favorite Tom Cruise movie?”
“Jerry Maguire,” says Cass.
“Top Gun,” says Polly.
“What’s your favorite Humphrey Bogart movie?” Curtis asks.
“Casablanca,” the twins say simultaneously.
“Mine too,” Curtis confirms. “Favorite Katharine Hepburn movie?”
Polly says, “Woman of the Year,” Cass says, “The Philadelphia Story,” but they change their minds in unison: “Bringing Up Baby.”
And so they proceed north through the night, socializing with the ease of old friends, never once discussing the shootout at the crossroads store, the shape-changing assassins, or the dog’s use of the laptop computer to warn Polly of the presence of evil aliens.