Authors: Subterranean Press
In ‘99, the rain nearly washed the whole damned town
away. Just goes to show you never can tell.
In any case, the moisture in the air warmed the sunlight
to a glow less like a welding arc and more like the sort of thing you might
want to go out and walk around in and feel on your hair. It shone through the
John Henrys, rendering them momentarily translucent, until they stepped into
the shadow of the overhang.
“Did you find him?” asked the steel-driving man,
shifting his hammer over his shoulder. Doc coughed into his handkerchief and
reached for his flask.
I nodded and looked back up at the mountains remote
behind a forest of power lines, billboards, and low-pitched roofs. I didn’t
feel like looking anybody in the eye, and the center of my chest felt like John
Henry had caved it in with his hammer. “I found him. I want to thank you
gentlemen for your help–”
“You know you can’t dismiss us now,” Doc said, and wiped
his mouth on his sleeve. “Not ’til the business you called us up for is
finished. And this isn’t it.”
“No. This isn’t it.”
John Henry’s hammer didn’t ring on the concrete when he
set it down by his feet and leaned the handle against his bulky thigh. He
hooked thumbs as thick as two of my fingers together through the beltloops of
his canvas trousers and dropped his head, staring at the ground in between my
boots. “Do you want us to stick around and make sure he leaves town?”
“He’s not leaving town,” I said. They fell into step
alongside me, Doc on the left and John Henry on the right. “He’s helping me
find Angel.”
Doc’s laugh turned into a coughing fit, his bony elegant
white hand pressed against his lips hard enough to blanch away the little color
left in them. “Think he’ll be any use?”
“I think so,” I said. “Turns out Angel offered him a
job.”
John Henry tossed his hammer idly, letting it turn in
the air, end over end, before he caught it by the handle again. His muscles
slid and writhed under glossy skin. “What kinda job?”
Stewart.
“Protecting her from me.”
#
The American, the Russian, and the man who shot JFK.
Somewhere in Las Vegas. Summer 1964.
When the American rejoined the Russian some hours later,
the Russian was crosslegged on one of the twin beds in their hotel room, his
Walther disassembled on newspaper in front of him. His jacket was tossed
carelessly over the foot of the bed. The black leather of his shoulder holster
cut across an impossibly white shirt; the American made a note to find out what
laundry he used.
“The mechanism won’t rust in the desert,” the American
said, closing and locking the door.
“Sand,” the Russian answered acidly, capping the bottle
of gun oil without looking up. “You believe them.”
“Don’t you?”
“As much as I dislike admitting it.” He reassembled the
mechanism while the American leaned against the wall beside the yellow louvered
closet door and watched. “Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that we would be the
last to know.”
“There are implications that could be worked to our
advantage, once we understand the process.”
This time the Russian did glance up, a flicker of a
smile twitching his lips as he slid the magazine home. The click as it latched
echoed with finality. “My thoughts exactly. I finalized some details with our
colleagues while you were indisposed”–the American coughed–“and we
are to serve as the primary bait. The other team will attempt to locate the
assassin through more proactive measures.”
“Tovarisch,” the American said, delighted. “You’ve
weaseled us out of the footwork, haven’t you?”
“Weaseled may be an unfairly pejorative term.”
“You have a better one?”
“Given how thoroughly you despise footwork–” The
Russian rose from his place on the bed without using his hands, tucking his gun
away as he fluidly stood. “I think you could manage politeness. You’ll please
remember this the next time you’re sweating in the passenger seat of a
Chevrolet, complaining how much your feet hurt.”
“Still, your master plan leaves us getting shot at.”
“All our plans leave us getting shot at.”
The Russian ducked into the bathroom to wash his face
and let cool water run over his arms, despite the air conditioning. His hair was
still wet from what the American suspected was the latest in a series of cold
showers. The American walked past him, crossed the garish carpet to the window,
and flicked aside heavy drapes geometrically patterned in shades of rust and
tan. “So, how do we play at being bait?”
“An endless succession of pricey meals and dinner
theatre, leaving us ostentatiously exposed, would be too obvious a lure,
unfortunately.”
“Besides, we’re not on an expense account.” The American
let the drapery fall. “Very frugal of the old man, getting us out here on our
own nickel.”
The Russian snorted. “He’s nothing if not cheap.”
“Pot.”
“I am thrifty. I am also not eternally broke, like some
profligate, bourgeois Americans I could name–” Their eyes met, and they
both grinned in affectionate understanding.
“There’s also the issue of Jackie,” the American said,
when the silence had lasted long enough.
“Ah, Jackie.” The Russian snagged his jacket and
shrugged into it, leaving it unbuttoned over his shirt. “Yes. He will expect us
to pay his toll–and I admit to rather liking the fellow. If we can bring
him this Angel person he described…spreading good will and so forth.”
“Besides,” the American said, “she killed his partner.
And his partner looked like you. There’s got to be an angle there somewhere…”
The American looked down and fiddled with his pinky ring, attempting to conceal
his second-hand wrath on behalf of Jackie, and Jackie’s partner, and failing.
“It, ah. It occurs to me–”
The Russian was looking at him, an expression playing
across his face that would have been unreadable to anybody else. “You want to
see if we can combine our tasks? Go back to two thousand and two?”
“I don’t know,” the American said. “How do you go about
finding the genius of Los Angeles within Las Vegas City limits?”
The Russian looked at the American, and smiled.
“Footwork.”
#
The Russian’s feet baked in his shoes and his toes felt
as if they’d been gone over once lightly with a carrot grater, but he’d never
let it show on his face. Not when his partner limped ostentatiously behind,
muttering under his breath. At least the malevolent desert sun had slipped
behind the mountains. “We haven’t talked about the…the spooky thing.”
“Jackie mistaking you for his partner?”
“Did he seem a little innocent to you? A bit of
un
naïf
for his role?”
“His role as the spirit of Sin City?” The American
craned his head back, looking up at the simulated skyline of New York City
rendered in bright primary colors that lorded it over the south end of the
Strip, wrapped in the yellow garland of a roller coaster reminiscent of
something from a science fiction film. “Tovarisch, what could possibly be more
naive than that? New York City with no crime, no grime, no Greenwich Village,
no Soho, no Harlem–”
“–no jazz–”
“I bet the hookers even have all their teeth. Look at
that place.”
“I take your point. Venice without the toxic water.
Remember how sick you got?…”
“Intimately.” The American made a moue, and the Russian
laughed at him, quite silently. It didn’t matter; the American always knew when
he was being laughed at. “You know, it occurs to me that our chances of finding
one girl in all of Las Vegas when we have no photo, and the best description we
have is ‘brunette, five-three, one-ten, looks like an LA hooker who thought she
could get a role in pictures’ is probably a lost cause. We’ve been trying for
hours. What do you say we call it a night?”
“Have we been shot at yet?”
The American checked his watch. “Not since 1964.”
“Then we’re not trying hard enough. The British team
can’t nab the assassin if we don’t lure him into the open. Come on–three
more bourgeois excrescences to go.”
They walked in silence for a while. The American never
seemed to sweat. The Russian mopped his brow with a formerly clean white
handkerchief. The Luxor and the Excalibur yielded them nothing, and they
wandered shoulder to shoulder, aimlessly, once they entered the tall gold
building called Mandalay Bay. Some artificial scent on the air made the Russian
sneeze. He dabbed his nose with the same handkerchief, and wiped his watering
eyes. The place was huge, arched cavernous hallways oppressive as the sewers
and catacombs of Paris. “Oh, brother. Is this the last hotel?”
“It’s the last hotel on the whole goddamned
planet–”
“Groovy. We haven’t been shot at yet. Where to next?”
The American sighed and set his heels. “Did you just say
groovy
?”
“I like slang. Do you want to start on downtown?”
“What if I promised you dinner?”
The Russian bit back a grin. He’d been holding out for
the trump card. “A casino buffet?”
“Bait,” the American said, and pointed over his
shoulder, back the way they’d come.
“A sushi bar in Las Vegas? Don’t be ridi–”
“This is the millennium, tovarisch. There was a place in
the last casino but one called
Hamada of Japan.
Looked promis…oh, my
god.”
“What?” The Russian turned, following the direction of
his partner’s shellshocked gaze, his smooth-soled shoes turning on the shiny,
dark floor without a squeak. Years of training kept his jaw from actually dropping.
“That’s Lenin.”
“Correction,” the Russian said, starting forward. “It’s
Lenin–without his head. Funky….”
“Did you just say?…”
“I wanted to see if you were paying attention. It
appears to be a restaurant. And the statue is a replica.”
“That’s a relief. I’d hate to think any real works of
art got their heads knocked off. Even Soviet propagandist works of art.” The
American was still grinning when the Russian shot him the filthiest look he
could muster. He continued, “We eat here.”
“We do not.”
“Don’t you ever get homesick?”
Constantly,
the Russian thought.
But not
for this.
But he stopped anyway, looking up at the bulky broad-shouldered
statue, encrusted with faux pigeon droppings, and said, “Vladimir Ilyich, where
is
your head?”
“It’s in the vodka locker,” a smooth familiar voice said
from the restaurant’s doorway. “Viva Las Vegas. I think you two have a bit of
history to catch up on. And I hear you’re looking for a girl.”
The Russian and his partner turned as one, shoulder to
shoulder, reaching for but not producing their weapons. The man leaned against
the marble framed entry, hands in the pockets of a voluptuous leather
trenchcoat, dark blond hair fallen over his forehead, sunglasses concealing his
eyes despite the dimness of the casino.
“Wow,” the American said. “You know you look
like–”
“Yeah, I get that a lot. Come on.” He jerked his thumb
in direction and turned his back.
Helplessly, the Russian exchanged a glance with his
partner. They fell into step behind the stranger, who was carrying on a running
monologue without bothering to glance over his shoulder and see if the spies
were keeping up. “You’re friends of Jackie’s. And, unless I miss my guess, a
little behind the times?”
The American coughed. “A little.”
“American politics have been running downhill since the
Kennedy assassinations, really. But the former Soviet Union’s in even worse
shape.” The man in the leather trenchcoat shot a speculative glance at the
Russian. “I doubt you’ll be pleased–”
“Assassinations? Plural?” the American interrupted, at
the same moment that the Russian said “
Former?
“
“Bobby Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles in June of 1968,”
the man who looked–and sounded–like the King of Rock and Roll said,
checking his stride a little. The Russian hurried to keep up, matching his gait
to the American’s. “The Soviet Union dissolved its government peaceably in
December of 1991, dividing into fifteen separate countries, most of which are
still struggling, economically devastated, eleven years later. It happened just
a little more than two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was actually
in Kiev when it happened–Ukraine’s had a rough time of it.”
“Ukraine always does,” the Russian said, resignation in
his breast. “Are there still roses?”
“Roses?”
“In Kiev.”
The stranger stopped so short that the American almost
walked into him. He paused and frowned. The Russian held his breath, his heart
tight in his chest, and couldn’t say why the roses mattered, except they did.
His hands were sweating. He shoved them into his pockets, ignoring his
partner’s concerned glance. The man who looked like Elvis Presley pulled his
sunglasses off, tucked them carefully into his breast pocket, looked the
Russian in the eye and said, “There were in 1991. There’s worse.”