Stride knew they had problems when no one took their statements on the roof.
It was a crime scene. Shots had been fired. A man, however evil, however many others he had killed, lay dead on the ground far below them. Deliberately murdered. They should be spilling their guts now, explaining what happened and how it happened for the inevitable investigation and trial to follow.
It didn’t work out that way.
Sawhill arrived and took charge of the crime scene personally, which meant, for the most part, keeping people out. He spent the first twenty minutes talking to Boni Fisso, not his own détectives. The two men hugged like old friends. That was the first bad sign. Then Sawhill asked a uniformed officer to take Claire home to her apartment. Not Serena. Not Stride. Claire looked longingly back at the two of them but allowed herself to be led away.
“You two,” Sawhill finally said. “Why don’t you go get some sleep?”
The next bad sign.
“You need our statements,” Stride protested blandly.
“It can wait until tomorrow. You’ve both had a hell of a night. Job well done. You got a mass murderer off the street. Now get out of here, and we’ll talk in the morning.”
Sawhill smiled at them, trying to act like the proud parent, but Stride knew it was a politician’s smile. He was in damage control mode. The whitewash was coming down, painting over the sins, preparing to detonate them once and for all next week along with the Sheherezade. Stride was too tired to complain. The bandaged flesh wound on his calf was throbbing. He hurt all over. He was happy to leave.
He and Serena went home. They didn’t have the energy to talk. They fell into bed and were soon unconscious, and the only sensation that managed to penetrate Stride’s brain was that the tangled sheets smelled like Claire’s perfume. He drifted away and had erotic dreams that were interrupted by violence, by people falling, by screams of rape.
They slept for ten hours.
It was early afternoon when they made it into the station. There was a buzz of exhilaration inside the building. Case solved. Cops came up to clap them on the back and congratulate them. High fives all around. Blake took a dive. Way to go. Sawhill was there, too, still smiling as he ushered them into his office. It was the same politician’s smile he had worn last night, and Stride knew they were about to be rolled.
As he closed the door, Sawhill said the unthinkable to his assistant. “Hold my calls.”
Stride and Serena settled into the chairs in front of Sawhill’s desk. The lieutenant didn’t pick up his stress ball; he seemed to be stress-free today. “Congratulations, both of you,” he told them. “Governor Durand asked me to extend his personal thanks.”
They didn’t reply.
“I don’t need to tell you how sorry I am about Amanda,” Sawhill continued. “But you got the guy. Good for you. And the taxpayers don’t have to pay his room and board for the next forty years. Even better.”
“Who’s running the investigation now?” Stride asked.
“What investigation?”
“Into Blake’s death.”
“Oh, we wrapped that up last night,” Sawhill replied. His smile grew wider, as if it were his nose growing longer.
“Wrapped it up?” Stride asked. “Who killed him?”
“The head of Boni’s security agency. David Kamen. He’s a sharpshooter, as you’ll recall. Fortunately, Boni thought to take precautions when Blake called him, and he had Kamen take position in the Charlcombe Towers opposite the Sheherezade.”
Stride nodded. He had figured that. “Is Boni under arrest?”
Sawhill looked shocked. “Whatever for?”
“He had Blake killed. This was an assassination. Blake was secure, sir. Boni gave a green flag for Kamen to kill him, because he didn’t want dirt coming out at Blake’s trial about Amira’s death.”
“You’re mistaken, Detective. I talked to Kamen personally last night. He had Blake under his scope the entire time, and he shot him when Blake began reaching for a backup gun he had in an ankle holster.”
“Blake never moved,” Stride said.
“Are you absolutely sure about that? I understand you were focused on Boni and Claire at the time. Good thing Kamen was there, Detective. This could have been another mistake on your part. A fatal one. Blake could have had his gun out and taken you both out in less than a second.”
Stride frowned. He couldn’t swear in court that his attention hadn’t wavered, at least for a second, during the confrontation between Boni and Claire. A tiny space of time was all Blake would have needed.
Except it was a lie. They all knew it.
“We found a gun on the ground near the body,” Sawhill continued. “A Walther. Small but deadly. Blake still had the holster strapped to his ankle.”
Isn’t that convenient? Stride thought. “So that’s it?” he asked.
“That’s it.”
“Who’s Mickey?” Stride asked. He watched Sawhill’s eyes but couldn’t read anything in the man’s level stare.
“Mickey? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What about Amira?” Stride persisted.
Sawhill smiled. “Like I told you at the very beginning, Detective, Amira Luz was killed by a deranged fan.”
Stride lit a cigarette. Serena looked at him, frowning. They sat in a park a few blocks from the station. It was late afternoon. The heat wave had finally broken, and the October sunshine felt like another day in paradise. Midseventies, endless blue sky. The smog was taking a day off, leaving the mountains sharp and crisp on the horizon.
He was half hooked again, and he knew it. The smoke in his lungs felt like an old friend he had missed. He didn’t look back at Serena. “I wouldn’t say anything if you had a drink,” he said.
“Like hell. You’d rip it out of my hand and pour the bottle down the sink.”
“Okay, yeah, I would,” he admitted.
Serena reached over and grabbed the cigarette from his lips. She flicked it to the ground and crushed it under her foot. A few embers fizzled in the dirt. Stride felt an immediate longing and wondered if he could win the war twice.
“You haven’t asked anything about me and Claire,” Serena said. She squinted into the sun, and Stride saw her tongue flick over her dry lips.
“That’s true,” Stride replied flatly. It had been in and out of his thoughts all day. The sweet aroma of Claire in their bed. But he wasn’t going to say anything. He waited, needing a cigarette.
“I get it,” Serena said. “It’s up to me. Tell you or not tell you. A lot of guys couldn’t live without knowing.”
“I’m not saying I can,” Stride said.
She stuthed her fingernails and looked incredibly nervous.
“We had sex,” Serena told him.
The words hung there between them, and Stride tried to read Serena’s face. She was embarrassed. Guilty. Scared. Proud.
“I mean, we were going to have sex,” she rushed on. “Blake interrupted before anything could really happen. But that doesn’t matter. We had started. I was going to let her make love to me. I was going to make love to her. That’s the truth.”
She wanted him to tell her everything was all right. He hoped the blankness on his own face didn’t register as disapproval.
“Are you going to say something?” Serena asked.
Stride said the first thing that occurred to him. “I have a raging hard-on.”
Serena burst out laughing. Stride did, too. When the laughter died away, she kissed him hard and then whispered, “What about the rest of you?”
“It doesn’t change anything for me. The real question is you.”
“I feel like I purged a demon. But I was afraid I’d lose you because of it.”
“That wasn’t going to happen.”
“I’m sorry,” she told him.
“You don’t need to be, not for this.”
“I need to tell Claire the truth. Let her down gently.”
“Have you talked to her?” Stride asked.
Serena shook her head. “I’m worried. I tried her home, her cell phone, the club. Nothing. I don’t know where she is.”
“Boni has her under wraps.”
“That’s what scares me.”
“I don’t think he’d actually harm her” Stride said.
“No? He killed his own son. I don’t want her winding up as a so-called suicide. ‘My daughter was upset, couldn’t handle the stress,’ that kind of shit.”
“You really care about her.”
Serena hesitated. “Yes, I do. I could love her. But I don’t.”
Stride was surprised at the depth of relief he felt, hearing her say those words. “She wanted the truth to come out. Now it’s probably not going to. Can Claire live with that?”
“Boni won’t give her a choice.”
“How about us? Can we live with the whitewash?”
Serena shrugged. “It’s not thefirsttime, is it?”
Stride heard and understood the message. They had resolved the murder of Rachel Deese, the case that had brought them together, in a way that left part of the truth hidden. At Stride’s request. It was their secret.
“Sometimes politics and money win out, Jonny,” she added.
“In Vegas?”
“Everywhere.”
“The bigger question is whether he’ll let us live,” Stride said. “We heard things we weren’t supposed to hear.”
“Mickey.”
“Exactly. Whoever he is, he’s at the heart of Boni’s power.”
“But he must have been a kid back then,” Serena said.
“Helen Truax said he was a pool boy. A lifeguard, looking to get lucky with gamblers’ wives. Maybe he tried to seduce Amira, and things got out of hand.”
Serena shook her head. “No way. He was with Amira because Boni wanted him there. He called Rucci when the job was done. The fight story was just a ruse.”
“And from that day forward, Boni owned his soul,” Stride said. He took out his cell phone and began dialing. “Let’s find out who the bastard is.”
“Helen didn’t know.”
“Maybe Moose will.”
Stride heard the big comedian’s voice on the phone, and he reintroduced himself. Moose began to fall all over himself, congratulating Stride on catching Tierney’s killer. Stride let the man gush. He could imagine his eyebrows dancing with joy.
“I have a question for you,” Stride said when Moose finally took a breath.
“Anything.”
“Do you remember a lifeguard at the Sheherezade back in 1967 named Mickey?”
There was a long pause on the phone, and Moose began to backtrack. “There were a lot of college kids around back then.”
“That’s not an answer, Moose. Did you know him?”
“Why? What’s this about?”
“It’s just a loose end we’re trying to clear up.”
He could hear Moose breathing. “Well, I don’t think he makes a big secret of it. He put himself through law school working at the Sheherezade. A lot of the big shots did.”
Stride began to feel uneasy. He wondered if he had made a mistake that would get him and Serena killed. “So you’ve stayed in touch with him?”
“Of course. Mickey Durand is the best damn friend the entertainment industry has ever had in this state. God and the voters willing, he’ll be reelected as governor next month.”
Beatrice Erdspring punched the volume button on the television remote control repeatedly, but it didn’t make any difference in the sound. The newscasters kept whispering, and she couldn’t hear a thing.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she grumbled, pulling the cream-colored blanket up over her nightgown.
She tried several channels, but it was all the same, so she went back to the local CBS station, where that nice Hispanic man with the black hair read the news. Raul was his name. He looked strong and trustworthy, and he had an attractive mustache. Her husband, Emmett, had always worn a mustache.
It wasn’t like Raul to whisper, but even when Beatrice craned her neck and cupped a hand behind her ear, she could barely make out a word.
“Speak up, Raul,” she said to the television.
Beatrice was frustrated, because she recognized the attractive woman in the old photograph on the screen, and she wanted to hear what they were saying about her.
“Can you hear that, Rowena?” Beatrice called to her roommate. “I think the television is broken again. Or maybe the remote control needs batteries.”
Rowena was in the other bed in the one-room studio they shared in the assisted living facility in Boulder City. Beatrice looked over and saw that Rowena was sleeping again. She slept most of the time. Beatrice had gone through three roommates in the past year, and she was afraid that Rowena would be gone soon, too. It was too bad, because when she was awake, Rowena was a stitch. She had raised six children on a dairy farm in Iowa, and the stories she told could keep you laughing for hours.
Like the one about her eight-year-old daughter trying to “milk” a bull. Well, wasn’t that a surprise for both of them!
Beatrice stared at the television again and sighed. Raul had moved on to another story.
She looked out the window at the main street of Boulder City. Cars whizzed by, heading off to Lake Mead or Hoover Dam. Flora had taken the residents on an outing to Lake Mead the previous month, and although the wind had mussed her hair, it had been lovely to see the water again. Not that Lake Mead was as pretty as Lake Tahoe, where she had lived for so many years, but it was good to be outside again. She enjoyed the heat, although she did miss the chill of those winter nights long ago, when she and Emmett would snuggle under the quilt together. She couldn’t handle the cold anymore, though. That was why she had retired in the southern part of the state.
Flora came running into the room, her hands over her ears. She made a beeline for the television, clicked it off at the switch, and then put a hand over her heart, breathing heavily. She wagged a finger and said something that Beatrice couldn’t hear.
“You’re mumbling again, Flora,” Beatrice told her. “Speak up, will you?”
Flora came up to the side of the bed and looked like she was shouting, but the words were far away. “Bea, honey, you forgot to put in your hearing aids.”
“Oh, dear.”
Flora rustled in the nightstand drawer by Beatrice’s bed and came out triumphantly with two beige plugs that Beatricefitted in her ears each morning. She helped Beatrice insert them and then stood back, laughing. Flora was a three-hundred-pound Filipino woman, and her body jiggled all over when she laughed.
“Is that better, honey?”
“You don’t need to shout, Flora,” Beatrice said, which made Flora laugh again.
“Do you want the television back on?” Flora asked.
Beatrice shook her head. “No, I missed the story I wanted to see.”
“Wha t story was that?”
“Well, I missed it, so I don’t know! But they were showing a photograph of a lovely girl I knew back when I was a nurse.”
“That’s nice,” Flora said. She was bustling around the room, straightening up, and had stopped paying attention. “Did you see they caught that terrible man? The one who killed all those people? Shot him off the top of a building. Bang, bang.”
Flora fussed at the bedside. She nudged Beatrice forward, then grabbed and fluffed her two pillows with a meaty brown fist. “It’s romantic, though. He killed all those people to get revenge for his mother. His mother! My boys, it’s hard enoiigh getting them to show up for my birthday party.”
“Who was his mother?” Beatrice asked.
“What? Oh, one of those showgirls from the 1960s. She had to give up her baby. Isn’t that tragic? Can you imagine? I would go crazy giving up one of my babies. I’d be happy if they were living here when they were fifty. Of course, the way my boys are going, they might well be!”
Beatrice frowned. “Are you talking about Amira Luz?”
But Flora was already on her way out of the room and didn’t look back. Beatrice was alone again, except for Rowena, who was snoring. She remembered now-that was why she had taken her hearing aids out. Rowena snored like a 727 on takeoff.
Beatrice thought about Amira Luz and smiled. It was so funny to see this beautiful, pregnant woman on the balcony of the suite, trying to do these strange, erotic dance moves while her bulging stomach got in the way.
Flora must have been talking about Amira. Why else would her picture be on television after all these years?
It didn’t make sense, though. Flora must have got it wrong.
Beatrice turned on the television again and quickly lowered the volume with the remote. She waved at Raul, then began switching channels to see if someone else would have the story. Amira? No. They had made a mistake.
The invitation came, just as Stride expected. The following night at ten o’clock, they found themselves back in the bone white foyer of Boni’s penthouse suite in the Charlcombe Towers. Boni himself let them in through the double doors and guided them into the mammoth cowboy room. The light was low, just a few pale lamps and the glow from the tower outside.
Boni wore a dark suit again. Stride caught the aroma of cigars and cologne. He still had an easy, charming smile, and Stride wondered if he was like the Cheshire cat, who could disappear and leave only the smile behind to fool people. He used a two-handed grip to shake both their hands.
“You saved our lives, Detectives. Me and Claire. I felt I owed you a celebratory drink.”
“That’s why we’re here?” Stride asked, suspicion in his voice.
“Of course. You will drink with me, won’t you? You’re certainly not on duty now.”
Message received and understood, Stride thought. This was all off the record.
“Ms. Dial, I know you’d prefer mineral water or juice, of course. Detective Stride, what about you? Brandy?”
Stride nodded.
“I have an excellent brandy I think you’ll like,” Boni told Stride. He retired to the bar to pour a glass, as well as three fingers of whiskey for himself.
Stride took a sip. It seemed to melt on his tongue.
“Good, huh?” Boni asked.
“Outstanding.”
“Where’s Claire?” Serena asked.
“I thought she needed a break,” Boni said. “These last few days have been stressful for her. I flew her down to St. Thomas. She’ll be back soon.”
“I’d like to talk with her,” Serena said.
“Of course. I’ll give you the number for the resort before you go. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.”
Stride took another sip of brandy. He wondered how this game was played. Who would start? How would they dance? What it really came down to was who would say the name first. It was foolish to pretend they didn’t all know what this was about.
As it turned out, Boni moved the first pawn.
“There’s someone here who would like to meet you,” he told them. “I bet you’d like to meet him, too.”
Stride heard a swish of movement behind them, and when he turned, he saw the silver-haired governor of Nevada joining them from one of the interior rooms of the suite.
“Mickey,” Boni called. “Come on in here. Meet those detectives who saved my neck.”
Mike Durand was tall and imposing. He was heavily suntanned, but his aging skin was tight and unblemished. A face-lift, probably, with laser surgery to burn off the blotches of sixty-five years. Capped teeth, too, that gave him a huge alabaster smile. He was dressed in a black tuxedo that practically glowed, and he already had a whiskey in his hand, twice the size of Boni’s. Stride also noticed something that he hadn’t spotted before when he saw the man on television or in photographs. Durand had the meanest, most cutthroat eyes he had ever seen, worse than any hardened criminal’s. He could smile as he slit your throat. A perfect politician.
Durand extended his hand. Stride and Serena didn’t smile back or try to shake hands, and Stride could see a barely contained fury in the governor’s face.
No more pretenses.
“I don’t think they’re going to keep this quiet,” Durand told Boni, as if they were alone in the room. “I thought you said you had this under control.”
Stride watched Boni and realized to his surprise that the old man hated Mickey Durand. There was undisguised contempt in his stare, as if Mickey were a parasite that fed off him, but one that had wrapped itself around his entrails until he couldn’t tell anymore where one organism ended and the other began. Kill one, kill them both.
“They’re police, Mickey,” Boni replied calmly. “Police don’t stop until they know the truth. So you and I, we’re going to tell them the truth. Then we can all put this behind us.”
“They’ll talk. Hell, they could be wired.”
Boni shook his head. “Ihave scanners in the foyer. They aren’t wired. As for talking, don’t worry. I think we can come to an arrangement that keeps us all happy.” He took a slug of whiskey and nodded at Stride. “You already know about Mickey. I know you talked to Moose. What else do you want to know?”
Stride looked at Durand. “Amira,” he said. “Why did you do it? We both know Boni put you up to it. What did he have on you back then?”
Durand didn’t answer. Boni interrupted smoothly. “I saved Mickey’s mother from some problems she was having with the district attorney. She was one of my casino employees. She murdered her sister when she found her in bed with her husband, and I got the charges dropped. So there were debts to be paid, you see. I was already putting Mickey through law school. I saw the kind of potential he had.”
Durand shrugged. “He really didn’t have to convince me, you know. Have you seen what Amira looked like? I would have volunteered.”
“Were you supposed to kill her?” Serena asked.
“No,” Boni said sharply, with another glance at Durand that suggested how much he loathed the relationship between them. “It was just supposed to be a lesson in loyalty.”
“She was afighter,”Durand said. “It was an accident.”
“An accident?” Serena retorted cynically. “Crushing her skull?”
“These days I guess we would call it rough sex,” Durand said, laughing.
“These days we call it rape and murder,” Serena told him coldly.
Stride saw that Boni wasn’t laughing. “I’m amazed you didn’t kill him for what he did.”
Boni took a moment to rein in his temper. “I’m a businessman, Detective. Sometimes you make difficult choices for the greater gain. Amira was already dead to me, and Mickey was a prime investment.” He added, with a glance at Durand, “But don’t think it didn’t occur to me.”
“We’re blood brothers,” Durand said, seemingly unconcerned with the powder keg that stood near him. “Both climbing the heights of power. It’s been a hell of aride. Congressional aide, state assembly, speaker, then governor. Who knows, maybe the Senate in two years. I love DC. And they’re making noises about tighter gaming regulations, all those fucking preachers.”
“What about Claire?” Serena asked. “Was raping her an accident, too?”
For the first time, Stride saw nervousness in Durand’s cold eyes. “That was miscommunication,” he murmured. “We had both been drinking. Boni knows I would never deliberately hurt her.”
Stride didn’t think Boni knew that at all. He wondered how far it went, being a businessman. Making difficult choices for the greater gain. Durand was a psychotic, and Boni had the keys to the cage. Stride saw Boni struggling with it, as he must have struggled his whole life. Tolerating the intolerable. He didn’t think Boni had lied to Claire. He had loved Amira, and this man had killed her. Had raped his daughter. All for power.
“You know the truth now” Boni told them, his voice tight. “It’s time to walk away.”
Silence lingered in the room. One of the lightbulbs in a lamp on the nearest desk flickered. Somewhere outside, in the darkness over the valley, Stride saw the blinking of a plane climbing from the city.
“What if we don’t?” Stride asked.
Boni sighed. “Let’s not go there.”
“Hypothetically,” Serena said.
“You can’t prove anything,” Boni reminded them. “You have no evidence. Your superiors won’t investigate. The two of you are smart enough to know how power works in this city. Sometimes you’re the fly, and sometimes you’re the swatter’
“We might go to the press,” Stride suggested.
Boni shrugged. “Don’t make me spell it out for you. You’d be discredited. Your lives would be ruined. I really don’t want to do that. I mean that sincerely, Detective. I respect you both, but things would come out.”
“Things?” Serena asked.
“Such as your sleeping with my daughter, Detective. In the middle of an investigation? It wouldn’t look good.”
Serena didn’t bother asking how he knew that. “You wouldn’t do that to Claire,” she said.
“Like I said, difficult choices. There’s more. You’d lose your jobs. Probably go to prison, too. Obstruction of justice.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Stride asked.
“I imagine the Minnesota police would be interested in how you resolved your last case. The murder of Rachel Deese and what really happened to her. So you wouldn’t be the only one to suffer, would you, Detective?”
Stride couldn’t help it. His mouth fell open in disbelief. How did he know? Then it was obvious. Boni had bugged their town home. He had been listening in on everything. Their secrets. Their sex. The investigation.
“So really, it would be better for all of us if this just remained a story that the four of us know about and no one else. Okay? Because that would just be the beginning. That would be just the things that are true. Once the media sinks its teeth into you, they’ll believe anything, won’t they? You know how it works.” Boni spread his hands.
The governor was smiling as he stood by the window. The lights illuminated half his face and left the rest in shadow.
Stride’s mind was working furiously, wondering if they had talked about their plans inside the town home in the last day. Had they exposed their hole card? He couldn’t remember, but it didn’t matter. He had to play it and hope for the best.
Stride looked at Serena, and she nodded.
“Leo Rucci wanted it to stay a secret, too,” Stride said.
Boni didn’t say anything. He simply arched a curious eyebrow.
“But he wrote it down,” Stride said. “He wrote down what really happened to Amira.”
Boni laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Really, Detective, that’s a weak gambit. Leo Rucci was as loyal to me as anyone in my life.”
“We searched his home this morning,” Stride said. “You know that, though. You already had people there to clean it out. Make sure there was nothing incriminating. His office, too. They had already been rolled.”
Boni shrugged, not bothering to deny it.
“The trouble is, they missed something. A safe deposit box. The key was on the key chain in his pocket when he was killed. Not in his home. Not in his office.”
Stride thought he saw a glimmer of unease in Boni’s face.
“We opened it today. There was an envelope addressed to his son inside-but of course, Gino’s dead.” He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and held it casually in his hand, enough so that Boni could see the one word written on the outside. Gino.
“Leo would never do this to me,” Boni said.
“He didn’t. He just wanted an insurance policy for his boy. In case something happened to him. Leo knew that Gino was the kind of kid that might need a Get Out of Jail Free card down the line. Literally.”
“Give it to me,” Boni said.
Stride extended a hand, and Boni snatched it away. He stuthed the envelope, which was yellowed and looked to be more than a decade old. It bore the logo from Rucci’s quicklube business. Boni yanked the letter out from inside and unfolded it.
“This is a copy,” he said.
“The original is in a lawyer’s office outside the city,” Stride said. “Just in case.”
Boni started reading it. Stride knew how it began.
Gino,
If you’re reading this, it means Yve croaked. Hope it was quick, you know? Bullet to the brain, that’s the way to go. Or maybe a heart attack while I was doing some blonde. Listen, kid, Yve got a few secrets from the old days. When me and Boni were on top of the world. You share any of this to anybody, so help me God, I’llcome back from the grave and kick your ass. If you get into trouble, call Boni. He’ll help you, no questions asked. But if Boni’s not around, there’s somebody else to call. His name’s Mickey…
They waited while Bonifinishedthe letter. Stride saw his hand was trembling. The rosy flush in his old face drained away until he looked fragile and pale. When he was done, he looked up, his eyes vacant, his mind hard at work. Looking for a way out. An escape. A way to turn it back.
“This won’t ever stand up in court,” he said. “You can’t touch either of us.”
Stride nodded. “True enough. But it’s plenty for the press. And the voters.”
Boni chewed on this thought. He knew they were right.
“You’ll go down, too,” Boni said. “The information about Rachel Deese will come out. It will be war. You’ll be destroyed.”
“We’ll take thatrisk,”Serena said.
“We’re a lot closer to the ground, so it doesn’t hurt as much when we fall,” Stride added.
He watched Boni taking their measure, assessing the steel in their eyes. It was a game of poker, and both of them stared back without blinking, daring him to call. This was the moment where it all rose or fell, Stride knew. He knew Boni couldn’t believe that he had been outsmarted, that he might actually play and lose. He had built his empire for half a century, and just like that, in the space of a few seconds, it would be gone.
Stride realized he was holding his breath. Waiting.
There was only one thing Boni could do. Fight. That was the nuclear option. Destroy all of them on the way down. Stride hoped the old man was too shrewd for mutual annihilation.
“What do you want?” Boni asked quietly.
Stride kept the relief off his face. His expression was stone. “The governor resigns. You give up control of your company.”
“Give up control? To who?”
“To Claire,” Serena said.
Stride hoped that Serena was right and Claire would agree to take over.
“The empire stays in the family,” Stride explained. “You’re out, Claire’s in.”
“This is bullshit,” Durand burst out from across the room. “Kill them, Boni. They disappear, this goes away.”
Stride shook his head. “If we disappear, this letter goes to the press.”
Boni had a look of admiration on his face, as if he appreciated how they had played the game. “Nicely done, Detectives. It’s a good plan. You’re not suggesting I go in the Black Book, are you?”
“No, not at all. This is clean and simple. You’re giving up the Orient project to someone younger, who can see it all the way through. Someone you trust. It may not be justice, but it’s closer than we’d get in court. And if you live long enough, you still get to see your last dream realized.” He hoped Boni didn’t realize that the whole point was not to make any of this public. To get it all done in private. Before questions started getting asked.
To get Durand out of office. That was the main thing.
Durand saw it, too. “Boni, you’re not buying this, are you? These two are nothing. We can beat them.”
“Shut up, Mickey.”
Durand’s tan face grew red with rage. “Don’t you talk to me like that, old man. I could have brought you down any time I wanted. We are not going to give in to these fucking cops.”
“You’ve forgotten who’s really got the power, Mickey. I pull the strings. You dance.”
“No, we both dance. I’m not resigning.”
“The only reason you stay alive is because I want you where you are. Think about that.”
“You need me,” Durand shouted. “You’re nothing without me.”
“Tomorrow you’ll release a statement,” Boni replied calmly. “You’re resigning immediately and quitting the campaign because of a serious knee injury. It’s left you incapacitated and unable to perform your duties.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Durand said. “What knee injury?”
Boni reached into the right-hand pocket of his coat and extracted a gun barely larger than his hand. In one smooth motion, he aimed and fired perfectly, not flinching at the explosion, drilling a bullet through the ball of Durand’s kneecap. “That one,” he said.
Durand screeched in agony and lurched forward, toppling to the ground.
Boni held up his hand and stopped Stride, who was reaching for his own gun. “It’s over, Detective.” He slid the gun back into his pocket. “That was for Claire and Amira.”
Stride and Serena both recoiled as Durand wailed, rolling on the floor, grabbing his leg and crying like a baby animal caught in the claws of a crow. Blood seeped through his fingers. The pain was monstrous, and the horrible look in the man’s eyes begged for unconsciousness. For death. For any-thing that would make it stop.
Stride felt frozen, as if he should do something to intervene. He looked for a phone to dial 911 but realized there was no phone in the room. He glanced at Serena, who was looking back at him. The seconds stretched out. Their hearts hardened. He realized he had no sympathy at all for Mickey Durand.
Violence was part of the city, Stride realized. Part of the immoral world.
Boni didn’t even look at Durand. “Don’t worry, I’ll get my doctor here in a few minutes. He’ll live.”
He reached into his pocket and took out a piece of paper and scribbled something on it. He handed the paper to Serena. “This is Claire’s number in St. Thomas. You can tell her she’s in charge if she wants it. I won’t go to the ceremony next week, but I figure you won’t mind if I watch from up here as she blows up my hotel.”
When they visited Nicholas Humphrey the next morning, the retired detective was in a deck chair on his lawn, still wearing his green terrycloth robe. He had furry slippers lying near him in the grass. His decades-long lover, Harvey Washington, was in a matching chair next to him. The two men were holding hands. It was strangely sweet.
Their little Westie was a blur of white motion, running around the chairs and stopping long enough to roll over to be petted. Humphrey and Washington took turns rubbing the dog’s belly with their feet. The noon sun made the shabby neighborhood around them look bright. A small airplane whined overhead, floatingthrough the blue sky.
Humphrey waved as Stride and Serena climbed the driveway. The sour detective looked happy this morning, as if a long-overdue debt had been paid.
“Heard it on the radio,” he called to them. “I can’t believe you actually pulled it off.”
Stride nodded. “It may not be prison, but for Boni, it may even be worse not to be calling the shots anymore.”
“And our governor? How did he take the news?”
“He wasn’t kidding about a knee injury.” Stride explained what had happened in Boni’s suite, and both older men winced, hearing how Boni had calmly shot Durand.
“Ouch,” Harvey said. “Man, that must be like getting your balls in a vise.”
“Worse,” Humphrey said. “I’ve seen guys who’ve been through it. They say that’s the most excruciating pain you can inflict on someone. Well, too bad, so sad. Payback’s a bitch.”
He was tossing his Willie Mays autographed baseball from hand to hand. Finally, he tossed it to Stride, who caught it and smiled.
“Harvey and I, we thought you should have this,” Humphrey said.
“Just don’t go selling it on eBay,” Harvey added, with a crinkle of his brown lips.
Stride looked at the signature on the ball. If it had been genuine, it would have been worth a lot of money.
Of course, it was a fake, courtesy of Harvey Washington’s magic hands. Like everything else in Humphrey’s celebrity archives. Like his note from Dean Martin. Like his photo of Marilyn Monroe and her sexy message.
Like the letter from Leo Rucci to his son.
Fake.
“I was nervous when Boni pulled the letter out,” Serena told them. “I was sure he was going to realize we were conning him.”
“You have to have faith in me,” Harvey said, as if the very idea that one of his forgeries would be detected was an insult. “’Course, you hunted down that old envelope from Leo’s office. That helps. If the package is authentic, people just assume that what’s inside is genuine, too.” He pronounced it gen-yoo-ine.
“It would have fooled me,” Stride said.
“But Boni knew Leo,” Serena added.
“So did I,” Humphrey retorted. “That was how the son of a bitch talked. No, we had those bastards nailed. They were going down. Thanks for letting me and Harvey be a part of it. Feels good to make up for what I did all those years ago, you know?”
The Westie jumped in his lap. Humphrey scratched its head and let it kiss him all over his face.
“We couldn’t have done it without you,” Stride told them. “Boni had all the cards.”
Harvey laughed. The dog scampered from one chair to the other and nestled in his lap. “Well, hell, this is Vegas, baby. When you don’t have the cards, you bluff.”
It was later the same day. Stride had dropped Serena back at the station.
He hated hospitals. The antiseptic smell reminded him of the days he had spent in the Duluth hospital in January a handful of years earlier, holding Cindy’s hand as she grew weaker and weaker, until finally she slipped away. Dying in front of his eyes in the warm room, as the snow hissed and whipped outside. He tried to force the memories away.
He saw patients stretched out on beds in their rooms as he passed through the maze of corridors. Nurses tending to them. Anxious family members sitting beside them. As he had done.
He got lost and had to ask for directions, and the nurse was pleasant and patient, pointing him to where he had to go. When he found it, the door was closed, and Stride hovered outside nervously, not sure if he should knock or go in or wait in the corridor. He wasn’t used to being indecisive, but places like this sapped his strength.
The door opened suddenly, and a man appeared in the doorway, almost filling it.
“I’m sorry,” Stride said, feeling stupid, holding flowers. “I was looking for Amanda Gillen.”
The man nodded. He was at least six-foot-five, and Stride had to confess he was one of the most strikingly handsome men he had ever seen, as if he had come to life from the pages of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. Early thirties. Perfect features. Clothes that fit as if they had been sewn for him.
“She’s in here,” the man said. “I’m Bobby.”
Stride tried not to gape. “You’re Bobby?”
He wasn’t sure how he had pictured Amanda’s boyfriend, but certainly not like some male god.
“Are you Stride?” Bobby asked. “It’s great to meet you.”
They shook hands. He had a rock-hard grip.
“I want to thank you for being so supportive of her,” Bobby said. “I don’t have to tell you, you’re the first.”
“She’s a great cop,” Stride said. He found himself adding, “A great woman, too.”
Bobby smiled. “That’s nice.”
“Can I see her?”
“Sure, go on in. I was going for coffee.” He added, “She’s better than she looks. It’ll take her a while to get back on her feet, but she’s going to make it.”
“I’m very relieved.”
“She’s a little groggy from the morphine, but she can talk.”
“I won’t stay long,” Stride said.
Bobby headed off down the corridor, and Stride noticed the nurses’ eyes following him.
Stride went inside. He was careful to close the door behind him. When he went around the other side of the curtain, his heart seized. He knew Amanda was going to recover, but the sight of her there, motionless and pale, was an instant reminder of Cindy. A battery of devices measured her vital signs and fed them back on LED monitors. A tube across her face blew oxygen into her nose, and another tube was buried in her chest. She had an IV drip taped to her hand. Her hair was limp against the pillow, and her eyes were closed. The wrinkled white sheet was bunched at her waist.
He sat down on the chair next to the bed. He didn’t say anything, because he didn’t want to wake her. Tearsfilledhis eyes. It was an automatic reaction. He choked up, consumed by the past.
“Hey.”
He saw her watching him. Her voice was weak, as if it were a struggle to draw the air into her lungs and push it out. She had tired, heavy eyes.
Stride reached over and squeezed her hand. “Bobby tells me you’re going to be okay.”
“Hurts like hell,” Amanda said.
“That’s God’s way of telling you to call for backup next time”
She was able to move her hand enough to give him the finger. Stride laughed.
“I hear two of the nurses fainted when they stripped you for the OR,” he added.
Her lips puckered into a smile. “Ha ha.”
“You had me scared.”
“Sorry.”
“Bobby told you we got him?”
She nodded and gave him a thumbs-up with a loose fist.
“There’s more,” he said. Stride glanced at the door to make sure it was closed, then spent the next few minutes explaining everything else that had happened. About Boni. About Mickey. About the confrontation that he and Serena had had with them the previous night. She deserved to know the secrets.
When he was done, Amanda pointed a finger weakly at him and whispered, “You got balls.”
“So do you.” Stride laughed so hard he thought he would fall off the chair, and he felt a surge of happiness and relief. It sank in. She was really going to be fine. Amanda couldn’t laugh, but she smiled along with him, enjoying it.
“Wanna see?” she asked, as she had asked him the first time they met.
“No thanks, Amanda.”
“Chicken.”
Her eyes were fluttering closed. She was getting tired. “I’ll let you rest,” Stride said, getting up to leave.
“Serena?” Amanda asked groggily.
“She’s fine.”
Amanda took a deep breath, and Stride saw her flinch in pain. A few seconds passed, and then she held herself awake long enough to say, “You?”
There were many ways to take that. How was he after nearly losing his life and coming face to face with the sins of the city? How was he after his lover slept with another woman? How was he in dealing with the choice that was eating away at his gut: to stay or go?
Stride didn’t answer. It was easier that way. He let her fall back asleep, her chest rising and falling, her heart rate slowing on the monitor behind her. He crept from the room silently, closing the door behind him. Bobby was seated in a lounge across the corridor, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a magazine in the other. He looked up as Stride came out, and Stride mouthed, “Sleeping.” Bobby nodded.
Stride heard his cell phone ringing. One of the nurses looked at him sharply, and he nodded in apology. “I’m a police officer,” he said.
He found a quiet corner to answer the phone. “Stride.”
“Detective, my name is Flora Capati,” a woman said, her voice bright and foreign-accented. “I run a senior care facility in Boulder City. The Las Vegas police gave me your number.”
Stride was puzzled. “How can I help you, Ms. Capati?”
“It’s one of my residents. Her name is Beatrice. She’s been beside herself the last two days, and I promised I would call you in order to calm her down. She insists you’re making a terrible mistake.”
“A mistake?” Stride asked. “About what?”
“Well, Beatrice claims she knew Amira Luz.”
The crowd gathered like bloodthirsty witnesses to a hanging, ready for the Sheherezade to fall. Thousands of them trampled on the parking lot and green lawns of the Las Vegas Hilton, their eyes riveted on the old hotel across the street. They pushed and shoved for a better view and kept checking their watches. It was almost high noon. Hanging time.
The street was closed, traffic rerouted to the east and west a quarter mile away. The gawkers were cordoned off at a safe distance, away from the danger zone but close enough to see the action. Helicopters hovered overhead with their cameras poised, delivering a live feed for the lunchtime news. Stride could smell steak grilling and realized that dozens of people in the Charlcombe Towers were giving barbecue parties and staring at the spectacle from their balconies. Everyone was a voyeur today.
No doubt Boni was up there, too, alone on the top floor, with a drink in his hand, missing the spotlight. Waiting for his little girl. Saying good-bye to Amira one last time.
It was a beautiful day for an execution. The wind was still. The faces on the demolition team showed nervous excitement. They were pros who had done this dozens of times before, but the last few minutes before that little spark of electricity jumped through the wires had to be nerve-racking, no matter how much planning had gone into the job.
Radios chirped. The site was clear, ready to go.
“Where is she?” Serena asked, standing beside him. She looked around at the crowd with unease.
“She’ll be here,” Stride said. “It’s part of the show.”
As if on cue, a ripple of noise ran through the crowd. There was a car on the closed-off street, a limousine slowly rolling down the center of Paradise Road. It eased to a stop, and the driver hurried around to open the passenger door.
Claire climbed out of the limousine and blinked. Flashbulbs popped. Voices cheered. She seemed taken aback for a moment, and then she smiled and waved, looking every inch the performer. The new executive, cool and confident, who was probably wondering if she could make it to the stage without throwing up.
She glided through the roped passageway that led from the street to theriserconstructed on the parking lot opposite the Sheherezade. There was a red carpet along the route, and she took long, easy steps in her heels. People called her name from the crowd, and she beamed at them, warm and friendly. A man in a dark business suit hurried down the steps of the stage and met her halfway and whispered instructions in her ear. She nodded and looked unfazed.
The head of the demolition team met her, too. Stride could hear what he said. “Everything is ready for you, ma’am.”
Claire followed them to theriser, but she stopped when she saw Stride and Serena off by themselves, between the stage on one side and theflockingcrowds of people on the other. She whispered at the man in the suit, who looked pained and pointed to his watch. Claire calmly shook her head.
She came over to join them. All the eyes followed her.
Stride noticed that Claire stared at Serena the whole time.
“Look at you,” Serena said.
Claire smirked and gave them a mock curtsy. She was dressed in a burgundy business suit, custom tapered to her curves, with diamond accessories adorning her wrist and neck. Her flowing strawberry blond hair was carefully pinned up and styled.
“Do you like it?”
“You’re beautiful.”
Claire blushed. “I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”
“You’ll do fine.”
She soaked in the atmosphere around her. The sights, sounds, and smells. Her new world. “I haven’t had time to properly thank you both. For everything that happened with Mickey and Boni. I don’t know how you did it.”
“No thanks needed,” Stride said,
“A part of me wishes I was back at the Limelight. It was easier then. Singing my songs. Before all of this happened with Blake.”
Stride and Serena looked at each other.
“Do we tell her?” Stride asked.
He and Serena had talked about it through half the night, and they were genuinely torn. Maybe the truth wasn’t necessary. Maybe it was good enough to leave the lies in place that had been there so long.
“Tell me what?” Claire asked.
Their conversation seemed loud, but it was drowned out by the crowd. Stride felt exposed, talking about it here, but they had decided she needed to know before she pushed the button. Before the Sheherezade became dust and debris. So that she knew, as the building fell, what she was losing.
Except now, when they had to say it, Serena looked as if she couldn’t find the words. Stride knew there was a part of her that was in love with Claire, in a part of her soul that he couldn’t reach. She didn’t want to hurt her. But Serena had spent enough time running from the truth herself to know that there was no finish line.
“Blake wasn’t Amira’s son,” Serena told her.
Claire opened her mouth but didn’t find any words. She looked around as if everyone had heard. She stared at Serena, certain that she was joking, and then shook her head. “That can’t be.”
The dead seriousness in their faces was enough to convince her.
“But I could see it in his eyes,” she protested. “He was Boni’s son. He was my brother.”
Serena’s voice was sympathetic. “You saw what you wanted to see, Claire. So did Blake. You wanted to believe you weren’t alone. He wanted to believe that he’d found the mother he had been looking for his whole life. But he was wrong.”
“You mean everything he did was for nothing” All those innocent lives?”
“You’re here,” Stride said. “Boni’s not. Mickey’s not. So maybe it wasn’t all for nothing.”
“You can’t be sure about this,” Claire said.
“I’m sorry. We are sure. We talked to a woman named Beatrice Erdspring who was Amira’s nurse during the pregnancy. She knew what happened to the baby. It wasn’t Blake.”
“Then who was Blake’s real mother?” Claire asked.
Stride spread his hands. “We’ll probably never know. He was one of the throwaway babies from back then. Off the record and under the radar. He had the bad luck to wind up in a terrible home.”
Claire looked up at the Sheherezade, remembering, and Stride thought she was anxious now for it to be gone. She would push the button, and the memories would be rubble. He also wondered if her mind had leaped ahead of them and was dragging her places she didn’t want to go.
“Boni told you about Blake,” she said. “He sent you to Reno. Boni had to know Blake wasn’t Amira’s child.”
Serena nodded. “He did.”
“Then why?”
“He knew that Blake believed it,” Stride said. “As far as Blake was concerned, he was Amira’s son. Boni was happy for us and everyone else to believe it, too.”
“He could have stopped it,” Claire whispered. “That son of a bitch. He could have told Blake the truth. How many people could he have saved?”
“I don’t think Blake would have believed him,” Stride said. “Blake was too far gone.”
“He could have tried,” Clare insisted.
“Never,” Serena said gently. “There was no way Boni was going to tell the truth about Blake. Or Amira.”
“Oh, Serena, don’t protect him. He’s my father. I know what kind of a man he is. This time, he could have done the right thing. He could have told the truth.”
“It would have meant giving up the most important secret in his life,” Serena said.
Claire’s voice was bitter. “Mickey. I know.”
Serena shook her head. “No, not Mickey. He would have had to admit what really happened to Amira’s baby.”
Claire looked back and forth between them and read the discomfort in their eyes. “Why was that so important?”
Serena leaned forward and murmured in Claire’s ear, “Amira was your mother.”
Claire reacted as if she had been stung. She took a step back and shook her head violently. “No.”
Serena simply stared at her with sad eyes.
“I was born months later,” Claire told them. “My mother thed giving birth to me.”
“Boni’s wife thed in childbirth,” Stride said. “So did her baby.”
“That was me” Claire insisted.
“Boni went to Reno and found the family that adopted Amira’s child,” Stride said. “Not a son. A daughter. You.”
“You’re wrong.”
Serena put both arms on Claire’s shoulders and pulled her close. “Beatrice was the nurse in Reno who delivered you to them. She knew the story. She knew what happened. Boni wanted his daughter back. His only child.”
“He never wanted you to know,” Stride said. “He was afraid you’d find out the rest-that he was the one who had your mother murdered. That’s why he couldn’t let the truth about Blake come out.”
She took a step away from them. There were eyes and cameras on her everywhere, and for a moment Stride thought she might run.
“I’m Amira’s daughter?” Claire said, as if she were wrapping her mind around the idea. She was struggling not to cry. Then, in the next instant, her eyes sparked like flame. Amira’s eyes. “She wanted to be free. Just like me. God, I hate him. I hate what he did to us.”
“So did Blake,” Serena said. “It destroyed him. Don’t let it destroy you, Claire.”
“Are you saying I should forgive him? How can you say that?”
“I’m not saying that at all,” Serena told her. “I just don’t want this to consume you.”
Claire looked up at the riser, where the politicians and money men were gathered, waiting for her, watching her. It was her world now-Boni’s world-and Stride could see her questioning whether she really wanted it. Whether the prize meant anything at all.
Whether, knowing her past, she was different now than she had been moments before.
“You could have kept this from me,” Claire said.
“That’s true,” Serena said. “But you’re tough.”
Claire laughed and touched her shoulder. Something intimate flowed through their skin. “I don’t feel very tough right now.” She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and added, “Time to do what we do best in Vegas. Bury the past.”
“It’s just a building,” Stride said.
“Maybe, but I’ll be glad when it’s gone,” Claire said. “The ghosts can die with it.”
Serena shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”
“I know that.” Claire approached Serena and whispered, loud enough for Stride to hear, “I’d like you in my life.”
“I’m already in someone else’s life,” Serena told her. “I’m sorry.”
Claire smiled sadly. She looked at Stride. “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about what it would be like. The three of us together. Can’t we share?”
Serena answered for him. “There’s only one of me.”
Stride knew the truth. Sure, he had thought about it, but it was nothing but a wild fantasy. There would have been physical moments, ecstasy, like a drug, lingering for a few seconds that felt like forever, but in the end, it would have been a cancer eating them up and splitting them apart. Some lines you can’t cross.
Claire knew it, too. She kissed Serena’s cheek and told her, “You’re deeper than Vegas.”
The crowd was restless. Impatient. They wanted a body.
Claire retreated to the riser, climbed the steps, and waved to the crowd, which cheered wildly. She made the rounds on the platform. The mayor. The demolition team. Investors from New York. All of them taking her measure and studying her suspiciously, this girl who would oversee the rising of the Orient, a gleaming red tower to replace the old, tainted past of the Sheherezade. Stride could see behind their eyes and toothy grins and knew what they were thinking. It was okay to let her handle the ceremony, but behind the scenes, she would flounder, and others would grasp the real power.
Stride thought they were all going to be surprised. Claire was tough.
She didn’t give any speeches. She just placed both hands on the plunger that would trigger the explosion, and the crowd instantly fell silent. The hush lingered for several seconds as faces turned expectantly toward the hotel. Strange, Stride thought, how we’re so fascinated with destruction, with the tearing down of idols. Maybe because it was so fast. Years to put it up, years to visit, pass by, and play, seconds to bring it all to the ground.
No one was watching Claire anymore, except himself and Serena, who saw the smile fade from her face as she stared up at the sign, SHEHEREZADE. It looked tired in the daylight, not like the multicolored glow that washed over them at night. Tired and ready to fall. Claire’s eyes were wet. He saw her lips moving, whispering silently to herself.
Good-bye.
She pushed the plunger down. Electricity sparked through the wires and made its way to the dynamite packed inside the columns.
There was a long moment when nothing happened, when people held their breaths and wondered if it had all gone wrong.
Then bang bang bang bang, the charges detonated in a staccato rhythm like cannon fire, shooting from top to bottom with flashes of orange flame. The ground rumbled and shook under their feet, as if massive tectonic plates were grinding together somewhere beneath the earth. The hotel stood proudly for another few seconds, defying the dynamite, as if it could stand forever suspended against gravity-but it couldn’t. Deep inside its bowels, the hotel had been eviscerated; its supports were gone, leaving only the crushing weight behind to go down. From afar, as it began, the implosion looked as easy and graceful as a puff on a dandelion, not like the rape of thousands of tons of rock and steel. As if they were of no more substance than paper, the walls caved in on themselves, and the glamorous hotel collapsed like a body that had bled out. The force of the fall caused another earthquake under the street, strong enough that Stride felt they might all be lifted from the ground.
The crowd gasped and then cheered nervously, as if it were a litde dangerous to spit in the face of so much power. They knew what was coming, too. Fearsomely, a mammoth white dust cloud billowed up from the earth, growing like fallout from a bomb. People began backing up, wondering how far it would spread, and Stride was anxious for a moment that there would be panic. In the towers across the street, voyeurs scurried nervously inside from their balconies, shutting their glass doors against the wave of dirt. Forty years of it, an accumulated exhalation of grit, detritus, and skin. There was probably a little bit of Frank Sinatra in the cloud. Amira, too.
The dust began to rise long before it reached the crowd, bubbling up toward the sky. As it climbed higher, wind off the mountains caught it and carried it northward, sprinkling its ashes in particles over the city. The haze on the ground began to clear, revealing the remnants of the hotel-a fiftyfoot jagged pile of rubble, walls, roof, floors, tiles, porcelain, wood, and gold leaf, all of its elements jumbled together. Earthmovers and dump trucks were waiting a few blocks away, engines thundering, to begin picking at the mountain arid hauling it away.
The party began to disperse. The show was over. Curtain down.
Stride took a last look at the tower of debris and saw that a little piece of the hotel sign had somehow wound up on the top of the heap, a bent fragment of neon. He couldn’t even identify the letters. Something made him think of the old days, of the faded newspapers he had read, of the photographs of young people back then who had since lived their lives and died. Of 1967. The sun glinted on the lost fragment, and for an instant, it was as if the neon flashed one last time, giving up a burst of color that came and went, winking at him.
They left the demolition site along with thousands of other people, struggling through the crowded streets. Haze lingered in the air. Serena suggested that they take the afternoon off-go back home, relax, swim, make love, and then lie in the shadows of their bedroom and talk through the evening and the night. About nothing. About everything. She seemed aglow with his presence, and he felt it right down to the bottom of his soul.
He turned right on Las Vegas Boulevard, along with half the city, heading north. The Stratosphere tower loomed ahead of them. There were only two types of traffic jams on the Strip, bad and worse. Today was worse. They crawled forward, watching pedestrians make faster progress on the sidewalks. The street was a ribbon of steel, stretching through the stoplights. Horns blared, accomplishing nothing. When they reached the Stratosphere after what seemed like endless time, he looked up through the windshield, seeing the saucer of the tower more than a thousand feet above them.
When he had come back here from Minnesota in the summer, he had found Serena there in the middle of the night, staring at the city. The cool wind had enveloped them, and the neon everywhere had been dazzling. They had embraced. Kissed. He had thought then how their relationship was homeless, how it could never survive in this place, how sooner or later they would be forced to choose. At that moment, it hadn’t mattered. The future held no sway over them. Nothing had been real then except how they felt for each other.
This was a different moment.
Real and dirty and crowded, with no escape. The future wasn’t the future anymore; it was the present. It was here and now.
He left the Stratosphere behind them. The traffic eased a bit. He drove another block and then swung the car into the vacant driveway of a motel, shutting off the motor. His hands lingered on the steering wheel. He didn’t look at Serena, but he felt her looking at him. Felt her anxiety grow the longer they sat there in silence.
How to begin. Just say it.
“They’ve asked me to come back to Minnesota.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath. Then, calmly, slowly: “You want to go, don’t you?”
He turned and looked at her finally, and the pain in her face made him feel as if the weight of the Sheherezade were falling on him. “Yes.”
She got out of the car. Just like that, she was gone, slamming the door behind her, hurrying down the sidewalk with her arms tightly folded across her chest. He got out, too, and chased after her.
“Serena, wait!”
She didn’t want him to catch up with her, but he did, and he spun her around and saw the river of tears on her face. Her black hair stuck to her skin. She was angry at herself. Blaming herself.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I cheated on you. What the hell did I expect?”
“You didn’t let me finish,” Stride said.
“I always knew you would leave. That you would wake up one day and say you were going away. Don’t you think I know you’re not happy here?”
“You’re right. I’m not.”
“I knew you’d wind up going home.”
He shook his head. “Minnesota isn’t home. When I lived there, home was Cindy. I was restless for years after I lost her.”
He reached out and took her hands.
“Until I found you. Home is you now.”
“But you still want to go back to Duluth,” she said softly.
“That’s true. I’m a snowman here. I melt.”
She summoned up her courage, ready to set him free. “I don’t want to keep you where you don’t want to be. Not even forme.”
He said the words he had been longing to say for days. “Come with me.”
“To Minnesota?” she said. She looked down at herself, as if she were taking stock of who she was. She looked around at the Vegas street, the traffic flowing back and forth, the big sky, the lights. “Jonny, you know that would never work. I’d be as much a fish out of water there as you are here.”
“I don’t think so. Claire said it, too. You’re deeper than Vegas.”
“But this is my-” Serena began, but then she stopped. He knew she had been about to say home. Maybe she was thinking about what he had said. Or maybe she had begun to realize the depth of what he was asking her to do: to uproot herself, to commit.
People were passing by them on the sidewalk, but they were alone.
“What do you want us to be, Jonny? Partners? Lovers?” She had a quiet intensity in her face, feeling her way, as he was. “Or something else?”
He was afraid of saying the wrong thing. Every word felt like a land mine. “I’ve been married twice,” he reflected. “One was a perfect match. The other was a terrible mistake. I’m not scared of trying again, but I want us to be ready.”
“I have a long way to go,” Serena said. “Not because of you, but because of me.”
“I know that.”
“And you still want me to come with you?”
“That’s what I want.”
He watched the emotions battling behind her eyes and knew he had thrown her into a deep pool and asked her to swim. He knew what he was asking her to give up, the chance he was asking her to take.
It had been easy for him. At the moment he had chosen to leave Duluth a few months ago, his life had been in transition. His identity had been spirited away. In his short time in this electrified city, he had been forced to reexamine everything that had made him who he was-and who he was not.
Suddenly, he had a chance to rebuild what had been stolen from him. To go home again and make it something new.
Serena wandered away from him, back toward his truck. She stood there, with her hands jammed in her pockets, staring southward at the chaos on the Strip. He wished he could be inside her mind. He wondered if, as she absorbed the madness of the city through her green eyes, she was staring at her past or her future.
She shook her head, as if laughing at an old joke. Then she opened the truck door, got in, and leaned back out the window. “Hey, Jonny,” she called to him. “You coming or what?”
Stride smiled and went to join her. He took a glance at the warm blue sky and thought that on the shores of the great lake in Minnesota, the colored leaves had already fallen. Winter would be shouldering down from the north. Soon, the snow would fly.