I stepped into the Casino Grande, realized my mistake, and turned to go. At the edge of my field of view shimmered silver and gold surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. A gasp of amazement escaped from them.
The lady was at the craps table of the Grande tonight.
I wandered over to watch her for a few moments in her deep concentration. She laid down her chips. In a blur of action the rest of the players faded the bets. The dice rattled in her hand for an instant, then scampered across the felt.
Seven.
She let the money lie. It took a little longer for the crowd to cover her bets, but newcomers arrived every few seconds to add to the crush of gawkers and gamblers. She rolled again. The red cubes knocked along the table to stop at six and four.
"Ten," the croupier announced, sliding the dice back to her.
She rolled again. Ten. Several frustrated bettors left the table, looking at her as though she'd robbed their babies of pabulum. She ignored them and scooped up some of her winnings. I scanned the table, found a bet of hers that wouldn't wipe me out, and faded it.
She rattled the dice carelessly in her slender hand and let them loose. Boxcars.
"Twelve," the croupier said with relief, raking in the dice to give to someone else.
Blondie looked directly at me as if it were my fault. One of the boys handed her a tray with her pile of chips. She tipped heavily and left the table.
I picked up my share and sauntered to the bar.
While watching a whiskey sour fill up before me, a familiar metallic sheen approached and slipped into the chair at my right.
"Margarita. No salt." She spoke slowly. A low, intimate tone.
When the bartender slid the drink over to her, she handed him a couple of chips. He looked at them for a moment.
"Lady," he said, "there was a devaluation two days ago. A hundred new dollars is quite a bit."
She smiled and shrugged her lovely shoulders. The barkeep argued no further. A grin spread across his ruddy face.
"Thank you, lady!"
She ignored him to turn to me. "You don't belong here," she said in a quizzical voice.
"Okay," I said, "I don't. And what's a nice girl like you-"
"You're different. You notice me. You see me."
I eyeballed her up and down. Her long legs, as far as I could see, possessed the sleek lines of a professional dancer's. From there on up, she pulled in at the right places and flared out at the righter places. Her piercingly blue eyes imparted a startling power to her defiant visage. Anyone who trifled with her, it read, paid the price.
"You're hard to overlook." I turned back to my drink.
She sipped at her margarita. Her eyes continued to watch me.
"I want to thank you for what you did the other night." She smiled with friendly ease. "Things such as that don't usually happen to me."
"Me neither."
"What's your name?"
"Ammo. Dell Ammo."
She nodded. "It fits." She returned to her drink.
She wasn't going to tell me her name-that much was obvious. I gave the whiskey my undivided attention.
After a few minutes of nursing her drink, she spoke without turning to face me.
"What do you think they did with them? The robbers."
The thieves most likely had been sold to the kink caves on Auberge's lowest level. Both the living and the dead. I didn't think she wanted to hear that.
"I don't know" was all I said. "If you think they're after you, don't worry. They won't bother you again."
She set her glass down. "And what makes you think they were after me?" Her baby blues gazed at me with penetrating force.
"Someone's after you." I leaned back and groped around for a cigarette. "If it wasn't the little rat that happened to point his rod in your direction, then it must have been someone else. Why were you in such a hurry to leave?"
"Wouldn't most people try to run away from a shooting?"
"Most people last night stuck around to watch."
She shuddered. "Death… repels me." She took a long sip of her drink, then gulped the remainder down. The glass returned to the bar with a resounding clank. She stood, gazing toward the craps table.
I grinned. "Going to risk the management's curiosity at this casino, too?"
"Not after the way you changed my luck. I'm going to watch you play."
I shrugged and followed her over. It wasn't as if I'd had any plans for the money. I edged into the playing order behind several quick losers. She moved behind me to watch.
My turn came up fairly quickly. A lot of losers haunted that table. I asked for a new pair of dice, got them, twiddled with them awhile. What money I had went on the table. The crowd faded the bets, and I cut loose with the cubes.
"Nine," said the croupier-a woman my age with an expression of Stakhanovite gloom about her. She slid the dice back to me.
I rolled again. A three and a six. The money piled up, but I let it lay. The onlookers plunked their chips down. I glanced behind me to see Blondie watching me. Her beautiful brow frowned in vague puzzlement, as if the numbers the dice generated were some secret code she had to break. I grinned and returned to the work at hand.
I rolled a seven and left the chips showing. It took longer for the bets to get covered. More rubberneckers drifted to the table, drawn by the noise the others made every time I won.
The dice bounced across the green again. Seven. The crowd gasped. So did I. This time the covering bets came faster. I had to lose sooner or later, didn't I?
Roll. Seven!
A mania seized them. Chips clacked on top of chips, and paper rustled onto the cloth. I grinned at the lady behind me. She smiled and nodded at the dice, urging me on.
A pair of threes. Carefully maneuvering between the piles of chips, the croupier slid the dice back to me. I threw them down the emerald field, a pair of rubies dancing.
"Again six," the woman said.
I was beginning to amaze myself.
I picked up the dice, checked that my bets were faded, and rolled. Two and four.
The crowd had polarized into two factions. The bettors desperately wanted me to crap out. The onlookers cheered for me to roll another six. An intoxicating amount of wealth covered most of the table.
I rolled.
When the crowd gasped, I peered at the dice. A one and a five.
"Jesus Christ," I muttered. As I said it, the one tipped on its side to expose the two spot.
"Seven," the croupier announced with smug finality. I'd been obliterated. Sort of the way I'd be in a few months.
For the moment, though, I had a hundred friends. The gamblers all loved me. They gathered up their huge winnings and offered to buy me drinks, dinners, women.
The lady in silver laughed, her voice tinkling like small clear ice cubes in a glass of purest crystal.
I smiled at her over the heads and shoulders of the happy crowd. "The old man's had a big night and has to go to bed now." I pocketed what little money I had left.
"Don't fool yourself, Mr. Ammo. You're not quite as old as you think. Take a long hard look at yourself when you get home."
"Yeah, sure, dollface." She would take the opportunity to get away right about then, I thought. And sure as clockwork she turned away. She hesitated, though, like a vixen curious about a strange creature she sees before her.
"I-" She turned back to look at me, a desperate decision forming behind her eyes. "My name is Ann Perrine. I work at the Bautista Corporation on Cordova. If you ever need help, give me a call."
"What makes you think I'll need help?"
Her smile said it all. "I'm in charge of Final Accounts. Extension four-eighteen."
With that, she spun around in a swish of silver and gold. She walked quickly away, leaving me with a snappy reply left unspoken.
I cashed my few chips, found that I'd only just broken even. I retrieved my coat from the cloakroom and stepped into the cool L.A. night.
On the way up to my office, I decided to stop at La Vecque's floor. A puddle of light spilled out from under his door.
I rapped a few knuckles against the rotting wood veneer.
"Who the hell's bothering me at this hour?" He paused. "I've got a shotgun!"
"Relax, Doc. It's me."
"Dell? Get in here." The door unlocked.
I pushed it open and entered to see La Vecque duck into his record room. He emerged a moment later with a plaque and a file folder.
"Take a look at these." He punched the tiny keys on the plaque, calling up two nearly identical body-shaped images. Their only difference lay in their coloring.
"Me, right?" I balanced the plaque on my fingertips.
"Right. Last month's scan and today's. Notice the changes in coloration where your bones are? And the changes in places such as your intestines and prostate? They correspond to absorptive and transmissive differences in the oscillations of the magnetic waves we used to make the scan."
"Of course," I said with as much authority as I could. He had me stumped. The pictures seemed to be almost exact opposites in coloration.
"Your lab reports show large amounts of cancer cells in your urine and feces. I was sure it meant that the cancer had spread to your vital organs. The scan says otherwise. The incidence of cancer cells in your body has sharply declined. I don't understand the mechanism, but somehow you're excreting your sarcoma."
"What?"
"Damn it, Dell, you're pissing out your cancer. I couldn't be totally sure from the scan, but your lab reports and blood tests show it. You've gone into some kind of spontaneous remission and you're rapidly expelling both your metastatic cancer cells and the osteogenic cells." He ran a spotted hand over his bald, sweat-dappled head and waved his other hand around in helpless circles.
"I don't know what's causing it, I don't understand the transport mechanism, I don't even know if I'm just crazy. You're healing."
"Oh."
"`Oh' is all he can say. Look, Ammo, you're not dying anymore. You're-" He stared up at me and narrowed his eyes. He looked as if he'd seen his mother in a cathouse.
"Your hair!"
My hands shot up by reflex. It felt the same. "What's wrong?" He'd gotten me all fidgety.
"Your roots are black!"
That might have angered a showgirl. I was stunned. I turned to see my reflection in his sink mirror. My mess of grey hair seemed to float a millimeter above my scalp. Peering closer, I saw black roots at the base of the dull, old fibers.
"What is this?" I didn't like surprises.
"Don't ask me, Dell. I never majored in miracles. Give me a million bucks and I might be able to find an answer for you. Or just pay me the fifty you owe me and we'll call it square."
I peeled off a few orange sawbucks and handed them over. He tossed them onto an instrument tray and shut off the plaque. "Thanks. Now get out before scientific curiosity overwhelms me and I decide to vivisect you."
Easing the door shut behind me, I walked down the silent, musty hallway toward the stairs. I decided to perform my own test. The stairs seemed less formidable. I ran up two at a time.
My legs and lungs hardly noticed.
Mystified, I walked toward my office door. It stood halfway open, throwing a trapezoid of light across the cracked linoleum of the corridor.
There are times when the answer to a burning question lurks just beyond a door such as that. This was one of those times. I quietly slid my automatic from its holster. Something clattered inside my waiting room. A pair of feet scuffled about.
I edged closer to the door, keeping an eye on the shadow that flitted about into the hall. One step brought me inside the doorway.
His athletic body neatly filled the light gray suit. His back turned to me, all I could see was a head of brown hair and gloved hands clasping a walking stick.
"Mr. Ammo," he said before turning to see me.
"Reverend Zack." I slipped my pistol away and leaned against the jamb, arms folded.
"I'm expected, then?"
"Like famine after flood." I stood my ground. "What do you want?"
"The project we discussed. You've had time to reconsider my offer."
"The answer's still no."
He looked me up and down. A smile spread across his smooth face. "Nice head of hair you might be getting there."
I knew what he was getting at. I played dumb. Inside, something began to quiver.
"Yeah. So what? Maybe I've read a book on life extension."
"And your aches. Gone?"
"Yeah. Gone. For a while. What of it?" I knew what of it. And I knew what he would say next.
"I told you I'd give you something to help you reconsider my offer. Shall I take it back?"
That was it, then. I'd never before met someone with an offer I couldn't refuse. I was staring at the ultimate Godfather. If that term could be applied. I wasn't going to give in that easily, though.
"Take what back?" I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke arch upward. I put on my best act of calm assurance. Inwardly, I quaked.
"Come on, Dell. We can play ridiculous head games for hours. The truth is you don't want to die, and I'm offering you a way out."
I moved behind my desk to sit down, dousing the cigarette in a coffee cup. "What's the deal, Zack?"
He sat in the easy chair next to the couch. When he lit a cigarette this time, I tried to see exactly how he did it. I wasn't too sure he used a lighter.
"The project involves a single killing. One being." Waving the smoke away from his face, he smiled calmly.
"Being?"
"He is known by many names. Jehovah. Allah. Brahma. The King of Kings. The First Cause. God."
"I see."
"The All-Powerful. The Creator."
"I get you."
"Yahweh. Adonai. El Elion."
"Check."
"The Lord. The Infinite Spirit. The-"
"All right!" I shouted. "I understand. Kapish. Comprendo. You want me to bump off the Big One!"
"Uh-no, not really," he said quickly. "Well, yes."
"Zack-I don't believe in God."
"You don't have to. Just assassinate Him."
"You have flipped out."
"I have not. He exists just as surely as I do. He threatens my control of this spiritual plane. Kill Him."
I lit another coffin nail, whiffing the smoke carefully to make sure I hadn't been slipped anything funny. The chair creaked as I leaned back in it. "Okay. If I buy the premise, I buy the bit. Say He does exist. What happens if I kill Him?"
"You shall have eternal life. As long as you wish. Youth, health, vigor-"
"I've heard about your tricks. You'd welch somehow. Turn me into a young, healthy, vigorous grasshopper or something."
"No monkey's paws, Mr. Ammo. I promise you."
I had to laugh. "Why should I trust you? Aren't you called the Prince of Lies?"
It was his turn to laugh. "You listen too much to my detractors. Propaganda always paints the enemy as a hideous monster while whitewashing the favored side. I could tell you stories about the last few Creations that would make your hair sizzle."
I poured a final trickle of whiskey from the sack in the drawer, took a deep sip, and considered.
The whole thing stank. He could simply be an agent involved in some intricate scheme that included faked medical reports, mimetic drugs, spying, squealing-and a hell of a lot of gall.
"I doubt that there's anything you can do to convince me that any of this is real. But let's assume it is. What happens if I don't agree to kill Him?"
He stared at me coolly. "You'll be very painfully dead within three months."
"I could always kill myself before then."
"In the opinion of some theologians, that would send you right to me."
"Would it?"
He smiled and tapped his cane against the floor. "Far be it from me to disparage any religion. I'm the Prince of Lies, aren't I?"
I stood and rammed my fists against the desktop. "Listen, Zacharias, you're the one who doesn't want to play head games. Here it is straight. First you have a nervous breakdown on TV and declare yourself Earth's master. Then you come to me and tell me to kill God. You don't even ask. It's practically an order. You-or someone-is playing poison with my body. You know damn well that I want to live, so you threaten me with death. You want me to kill something I don't even believe exists. As far as I'm concerned, this is either some trick or you're psycho. But you're a rich psycho. I know what sort of bucks the evangelical racket brings in."
I paused for effect. I didn't have any. He just stared at me with a distant, aloof gaze.
"My fees on the case will be five hundred a day, plus expenses. And I mean five hundred grams of gold. To be deposited in the Casino Grande vault. I'm not taking chances with paper money again."
He calmly said, "Four hundred."
"You want me to kill God and we're haggling over the price?"
"Oh, all right. Five." He removed his glove and extended his hand. "Shake on it."
"Give it a rest."
His hand stayed up. "Really, Mr. Ammo. It's for your own protection."
I'd heard that from enough shysters in my life. We shook. His touch was hot, his grasp firm.
"No contract? No signing in blood?"
"Mr. Ammo." The corners of his mouth turned up like dead leaves curling. "If it is a sin merely to contemplate a venial or mortal sin, then I assure you that the spoken willingness to commit the one immortal sin is quite enough for my purpose."
"And what is that?"
"An end to sibling rivalry." He turned to leave the office-by ordinary means.
Before he had walked out of my waiting room, I called after him.
"Hey! Wait! Where do I find God?"
His voice trailed behind him as he spoke without turning. "That is a search many have conducted with much less reason than you, Dell Ammo. Good luck."
His footsteps resounded hollowly on the floor of the corridor. The elevator whined into life.
I wondered whether it would stop at any floor or just keep going…
"Jesus Christ," I said, sliding back in my chair. "Son of a bitch."