Fury and the Power (39 page)

Grayle had been born in Ladue, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. He was an only child. His father performed routine magic tricks for children's parties; he recognized that his son was a prodigy and generously encouraged him to study the techniques of great illusionists. Linc's twin passion was gymnastics; he excelled in prep school competitions while lopping off fake heads with a guillotine at assemblies.

His parents died within weeks of each other when he was eighteen, leaving Grayle with enough insurance money to support himself while ascending the learning curve of his career in magic. (Sherard wondered at just what point the entity Mordaunt, looking for a new human persona, had settled on the bright and athletic teenager from the Show-Me state and moved himself in. The suspiciously convenient deaths of the elder Grayles might have been the starting point for an entirely new version of Lincoln Grayle.) At twenty-one the young man was a well-publicized escape artist. Headliner in a Vegas showroom a couple of years later.

It took the now-established illusionist six years to design and raise the money needed to begin construction on the Lincoln Grayle Theatre. From the day he announced he was building it he had a lot of detractors. The site he had chosen was fifteen miles west of downtown Las Vegas, and nearly inaccessible. It would have cost him half as much to build the same grandiose theatre on or near the Strip; who, the local showmen and casino owners wondered, would spend top dollar for dinner and a magic show they had to be bused into the mountains to see? He hadn't even applied for a casino license as an added attraction. Complete folly, according to an op-ed that ran in the
Sun
. Rock sildes and other mishaps during the early stages of construction only confirmed the majority opinion.

But Grayle knew how to put on a show. From opening night his theatre was a splashy success, the show a must-see. Six nights a week beginning at six-forty a dozen red and gray luxury buses began making the run from the shopping plaza he owned on Convention Center Drive. Dinner was at eight-thirty, show time ten sharp. During the day the buses transported tourists who had been unable to secure show tickets but wanted to tour the theatre and Grayle's Museum of Magic and have lunch with a great view while being entertained by apprentice magicians. Now and then Grayle himself made a surprise appearance, signing autographs and dazzling his guests with sleight-of-hand street magic.

The Web site offered a great deal of information on the construction of the theatre, which in its exposed location on the side of a mountain was subject to a lot of weather, from heavy snowfalls to baking heat to mica-laden desert winds that could exceed seventy miles-an-hour velocities. The tons of solar-gain glass had a metallic coating to withstand these violent sand blastings. Titanium steel framework allowed for flexing of the diamond-shaped panes. Rocks tumbling from higher elevations were caught or deflected by chainmail-like webbing tented above the spectacularly high, all-glass rotunda of the theatre.

Sherard looked over several photos of the completed theatre. Fragile in appearance from just a short distance away, impregnable as a medieval fortress within in spite of the adroit use of space, an artful illusion of openness. Lair of a monster. No way to tell from the Web-site description how many secret means of entering or leaving there might be into the heart of the mountain itself, perhaps, that Grayle had designed and constructed for his exclusive use.

Sherard turned off the laptop and put it aside.

He was a professional hunter who knew the nature of his quarry, but not its cunning. And nothing much about its habitat. That greatly lessened the permutations of what old-time white hunters referred to as chance control. Even if he were at full strength, stalking Mordaunt would require almost superhuman effort. He had a game leg and his years had begun to weigh against him. He was afraid. But, as a famous client of his father's had observed during his last African safari, being scared is better than being dead of carelessness.

The client whom Donal Sherard had called "Hemindinger," an offhand tribute to the bulky author's shooting ability.

On certain occasions of sinking morale Sherard could recall vividly the odor of tobacco smoke in his father's wiry beard. He smoked a corncob pipe. Recalling textures, hearing in the distances of a drowsy mind dark voices singing the lion song. And a remembrance of firelight shadows, the capering, foot-stomping Wakamba dance in honor of his first lion. His old man hadn't been there to see it. What would he have thought about the hunt his son was now pledged to, what advice might he have offered?

You will ha' two shots, Tommy. One to knock 'im down, one to plow 'im under.

Sure. He had wounded the were-beast already; next time he would plow it under.

Unfortunately the damned thing would not, could not die.

When he looked at the sleeping heads of the women he loved and had to protect, though one of them would be his bait, Sherard felt nearly sick from anxiety. Both Bertie and Eden had incredible powers and prowess; but to go against Mordaunt they literally had to achieve thermonuclear capabilities. There was no magic bullet, walking stick, talisman, or spell that would work on the magician. Undoubtedly he had seen them all.

Sherard reached for the glass Dumbo that Eden had manufactured, tossed it hand to hand. The glass warming from his touch. The little elephant seemed to be smiling at him.

LAS VEGAS

OCTOBER 24-26

THE SKY IS DARKENING LIKE A STAIN;

SOMETHING IS GOING TO FALL LIKE RAIN,

AND IT WON'T BE FLOWERS.

—W. H. AUDEN, "THE WITNESS"

L
as Vegas by night—and when else did it matter? It made plutonium look tame, its neural mainline a monster canyon of light like a borrowed galaxy, apocalyptic surge confined, reshaped for entertainment purposes but commanding awe.

Vegas was a city of resurrections and apostasies, of quick love and last flings and second acts that weren't happening; of lifestyle as creed.

Yeah.

Vegas was a deadly sort of flatterer; it beguiled the gullible and put a serious hurt on many of the unwary. Vegas was dreamtime in overdrive, show time anytime, where even the strays and drifters had production values. Vegas outhustled the hustlers with the dispassionate ease of a jaded old carny.

Yeah.

Vegas—when he first saw it—had the look of something immense but still temporary, the greatest show in the Milky Way but with the wagons parked somewhere just out of sight, ready to roll again when the desert scene was maximally juiced, the last exhausted fun-seeker on a smoky bus to someplace else.

A young man wise to his own needs, totally aware of how well he fitted in, Lincoln Grayle had fallen for Las Vegas the moment he set foot in town, feeling the energy on his skin like the energy of a populace under a state of siege.

Yeah
.

OCTOBER 24

7:45-8:10 P.M.

"W
hat did we do to deserve this?" Lewis Gruvver said, looking around the grand salon of the high-roller's villa. To which they had been escorted by Bahla's Vice President of Operations. Charmaine couldn't say anything. She was staring at the heated pool, bathed in pale blue light, just outside the forty-foot square room in a flowery walled garden illuminated by colored floodlights. "I don't think," Gruvver continued, "that I can begin to pay for—"

"But the suite is compliments of Bahla, Mr. Gruvver! We want you to know how badly we feel about the damage done to your clothing and personal effects."

"Oh," Gruvver said, noting the blissful hypnotized expression on Charmaine's face. "Any idea what caused the flood in our room? I mean, we didn't leave anything running in the—"

"No, no, obviously it was a broken pipe in the wall. Some other rooms were damaged as well, but they were unoccupied. Of course you'll be reimbursed for clothing that can't be cleaned. We put in a rush order; everything that was, ah, salvageable should be back from the laundry and dry cleaners in a couple of hours."

"Well, that's—"

"Please continue to enjoy your stay with us." The Operations VP handed Gruvver his business card. "Let me know if I can be of further assistance. Oh, and dinner is on us tonight."

"Appreciate that, Mr."—Gruvver glanced at the gold and green card—"Havens."

"My pleasure."

The Operations VP wasn't far out the door when Charmaine took a flying leap onto a silk brocade sofa, buried her face in a pillow, and let out a muffled, joyful scream before rolling over on her back and kicking her legs in the air.

"Lewis, I am not
believing
this! A high-roller villa! It's like the Taj Mahal."

"Hope not" Gruvver said superstitiously, looking at a basket of fruit and other goodies the size of a small canoe. There were bottles of French wine on the ebony table with the fruit boat. "Taj Mahal's pretty, but it's a tomb."

"Oh, well, you know what I mean." Charmaine kicked off her sandals in another paroxysm of delight. "So this is how the big shots get treated when they're stayin' here. Wonder who's in the other villas? Think we might be rubbing up against some movie stars?"

"I still don't quite get why they didn't just move us to another room like the one we had?"

"Who knows, maybe half our stuff got ruined. I want to go for a swim and I don't have a bikini." She jumped up and went to the glass doors that opened onto a secluded terrace the kidney-shaped pool embraced. "Or does it matter if wear a suit; these villas are designed for total privacy, aren't they? Come on, Gruvver, let's take a dip in the altogether, then we'll hot tub it for a while."

"Not now, Charmaine. I had a good workout in the lap pool this afternoon. My shoulders are still sore. And the back of my neck has this tender spot."

"From bumping headfirst into the swimming pool wall?" Charmaine came dancing barefoot back to him, emulating the carioca women depicted in a
Carnivale
frieze that decorated the grand salon. "That's not like you, hem' clumsy, Gruvver." She put an arm around him and rubbed the tender spot just above his occipital bulge. "Hot tub, then. What you need to get rid of those aches and pains."

"Hot tub would put me to sleep, and I need to eat something first." Gruvver closed his eyes, giving himself over to her solicitude. "Don't know how that happened to me. Misjudged my distance, I suppose." He flexed his shoulders. "Funny thing. I was lookin' in a mirror gettin' dressed after my shower and it felt like I was lookin' through somebody else's eyes at a face I had trouble recognizing." He flexed again, stretched, bent to touch his toes while Charmaine watched with a small frown of concern. "Can't seem to get comfortable," Gruvver said. "It's like I'm wearin' a suit that's too tight on me."

"Lewis, you are close to weirding me out here. Why don't we open a bottle of that Bordeaux wine, relax, and decide what to do about dinner? I'm gonna see if I can find a powder room.
Les Dames
. Wonder how you say tinkle in French?"

"
Le peepee
," Gruvver suggested.

He was prying the cork out of the bottle of red Bordeaux when he heard Charmaine call, "Gruvver, there's a big rec room back here with a pool table and a poker table and a home theatre with one of those flat plasma screens on the wall that cost a fortune even at Sam's Club."

"Do you want a glass of wine?" he called back. "It's just a couple years younger than you are."

"Is that good or bad?"

"I don't think either one of you is past your peak yet" Gruvver judged, sampling.

A little later she called, "Gruvver, you will not believe this! One wall of the master suite is like a waterfall, but quiet as a whisper. And there's tropical fish in a pool."

"Don't fall in; some of 'em might bite."

"And there's a hammock for a bed, feels like pure silk?"

"Find the potty yet?"

"Oh, I almost forgot. Be right there."

Gruvver ran his hands over the smooth cocobolo wood rumps of sculpted Brazilian women lazing on a pedestal beneath a series of angled spotlights. He felt, superstitious again and a little wary, that there had to be more to all of this luxury they'd been introduced to than a mere apology on the part of the Bahla's management.

Palm fronds in the theatrically lighted garden swayed in a cool evening breeze. The pool and octagonal hot tub steamed invitingly. All of it was a poor boy's dream of paradise. He felt both intimidated and resentful. Mostly it was just pretentious. Four chandeliers in one room? Waiting on Charmaine, he sipped his wine too fast, wondering where he could lay his hands on a room service menu.

But that wasn't how it worked on High-Rollers' Street. No sooner had his hunger pangs sharpened than he heard muted door chimes. Gruvver opened the door in the sky-lighted foyer to find a full-dress butler outside. Swallowtail coat, white gloves. Name of Sven. Nordic blond but not aloof. Whatever they desired for the rest of the evening, Sven was there to provide it. He looked a little dismayed that Gruvver had already opened one of the bottles of wine, and asked anxious questions about the quality. Room service for dinner? Not at all. The villa contained a well-equipped kitchen, and Sven was a master chef.