The black-suited, hard-jowled operator slid around the table toward him, his pale brown eyes fixed on Lee. Lee stared at him, spat on the table, and threw the stack of chips in his face. He grabbed Lee, and Lee hit him hard in the stomach. People began shouting, dealers and security people came running, surrounding him. He grabbed up a stool, swung it hard, charging them, forcing customers to stumble over each other, getting out of his way. He glimpsed a man in Levi’s leaning over a gaming table grabbing up a stack of chips and then the place was filled with cops, cops storming in. Lee paused, waiting, weaving drunkenly, ready to light into the bastards the minute they touched him.
When two of them grabbed Lee, he raked the edge of his boot down a uniformed shin so hard the cop swore, swung his nightstick and hit him in the kidneys. As Lee doubled over they hit him again across the shoulders, pulled his wrists behind him, and snapped on the cuffs. He fought and kicked as they dragged him away, he swore at them slurred and drunkenly as they hauled him out through the crowd, the tourists backing away opening a path for him, as wary as if the cops were leading a wild man.
Outside on the street the uniforms pushed him into the backseat of a patrol car, behind the wire barrier. He cursed them loudly all the way to the station, calling them every name he could think of. In the station, while they booked him, he managed to knock the sergeant’s coffee cup off the desk and break it. He was booked for being drunk and disorderly, for fighting in a public place, for assaulting several officers, and destroying police property. When they searched him they found his parole officer’s card in his hip pocket, folded in with the address of Delgado Ranch, and Jake Ellson’s phone number. The booking officer, a short, heavyset sergeant, studied Lee.
“You’re under the feds?”
“That’s what they like to think. If I want to leave the damn district and have a little fun, that’s my business.”
“Where and when were you released?”
“McNeil. March eighth, this year.”
Sergeant Peterson raised an eyebrow.“Not long. Mr. Raygor will be interested to know how you feel about his supervision. Any message, when we call San Bernardino?”
Lee scowled at him, and said nothing. He watched Sergeant Peterson seal his pocketknife, his savings book, three hundred dollars in loose bills, and Mae’s picture into a brown envelope. “I want the picture back in good shape, not broken.”
Sergeant Peterson looked at the photo of the little girl.“Granddaughter?”
“My sister.”
Peterson studied the yellowed, faded photograph.“Long time ago. Where is she now?”
“I have no idea. Haven’t seen her since she was little.”
Peterson looked at him a long time.“No other family? Anyone you want us to contact?”
“If there was, my PO would do that.”
Peterson said nothing more. He nodded to a young, redheaded officer who ushered Lee on back to the tank, walking behind him, very likely his hand resting on his weapon. He unlocked the barred door, gave Lee a shove, and locked him in. The big cell was half full, mostly of drunks, the place smelled as sour as a cheap bar, that stink mixed with the invasive smell of the dirty latrine. Lee picked a top bunk at the far end of the long cell, stood with his back to the ladder glaring around him, looking for trouble, for any challenge to his chosen space.
There wasn’t any, most of the men were asleep or passed out. A sick young man lay curled on the floor in one corner, shivering. Lee climbed to the upper bunk and stretched out. He checked the ceiling for roaches, then rolled onto his side with his face to the wall. The mattress and thin blanket stunk of stale sweat. But in spite of the depressing atmosphere of another lockup, Lee lay smiling.
His moves had come off just as he’d planned. All he had to do now was wait. If he got lucky, he’d do his time right here in the Vegas jail, and he could think of worse places. Why would the feds bother to send him back to the federal pen just for drunk and disorderly? They sure wouldn’t send him back to McNeil for such a small infraction. Maybe they’d tack some extra time on his parole, but what was the difference? As soon as he was out again, he meant to jump parole anyway. No one would come looking for him in Mexico, or be likely to find him, if they did. The money was there in the desert waiting for him, and they sure wouldn’t get him on the post office charge. What court or jury could put him in Blythe when he was nearly three hundred miles away at the time, tearing up a Vegas casino?
Turning over, ignoring the stink of the cell, Lee drifted off toward sleep, quite content with his fate. Unaware, as yet, of the long, dangerous, and tangled route he had chosen, oblivious to the precipitous road he had embarked upon. He hadn’t a clue to the tangled connections he was yet to encounter and to the many long, dangerous months before he would return to Blythe to claim his bounty and head for the border. And if, three thousand miles away in Georgia, a young man waited, puzzled, for the old cowboy’s fate to play out, forthe cowboy’s future to join his own, Lee did not know that, either.
If Morgan Blake, sitting hunched on his sagging bunk in the Rome jail, waited with a desperate hope that indeed a miracle was in the making as predicted by Sammie’s dream, if he clung to his wild belief that his little girl had seen truly, who could blame him? He had nothing else to hang on to. If their attorney failed to free him, Sammie’s prediction was the only hope Morgan had.
Maybe only the cat, sitting unseen in Lee’s jail cell in Vegas, saw clearly the direction the two men were headed, saw how they were connected, saw how their futures were drawing together. Crouched invisibly at the foot of Lee’s bunk, so weightless now that Lee was unaware of him, Misto looked around at the human scum that occupied Lee’s cell—a worse lot, by far, than the men in the Rome lockup where Morgan waited. Though, in Rome, Morgan’s view of the future was far more agonizing than the future that Lee envisioned.
For Lee, the dark spirit seemed to have pulled back, his aura of evil to have thinned, easing off the pressure on Fontana. Perhaps, Misto thought, Satan had grown bored with Lee, maybe he was soured at the effort he’d made that had garnered no satisfying results. Whatever the cause, Misto sensed that, at least for the moment, the devil had stepped back, that all was well with the world; and the invisible cat twitched his tail with pleasure.
Lee and Morgan and his family would keep Misto tethered to this time, to the drama that was only now unfolding and that would lead ultimately to the cowboy’s final fate. One day, not far off, the cat must return to the world as a living part of it, as a mortal beast only, without the powers and the freedom and vision he presently enjoyed. But, the great powers willing, he meant to remain close to Lee, as spirit, until Lee broke Satan’s curse for good and forever, until Satan gave up the chase, admitted defeat, and turned to tormenting other men, weaker souls who would be more amenable to his wiles.
You are the loser, the ghost cat thought, sensing Lucifer watching now, curious and waiting.You are the loser, Misto thought, soonLee will drive you away and the child will drive you away, forever. You are wasting your time in this quest of Dobbs’s heirs, you will fail, you will finally and ultimately fail.And, smiling, the ghost cat rolled over across Lee’s feet, making himself heavy suddenly, purring mightily, jarring Lee awake. Lee looked down at him, and laughed. And in that moment Lee knew the cat would stay with him, that Misto wouldn’t leave him. In a rare instance of half-dreaming perception, Lee knew the ghost cat would remain beside him as Lee wove through a longer and more complicated tangle than he had imagined, as he fought through the encounters and trials that were laid out for him; as he was united with the child he had dreamed of and, surprised by the relationship, he discovered new partners and, with them, fought his way to his final and eternal freedom.