“Perfect. Thanks, Gerald.”

“Oh, and Tommy. Give Ms. Prouix my regards. I remember her well, I personally opened her account for her. How is she doing?”

“Fine, great. I mean, I can’t say anything about her personal life, but she looks like a million bucks.”

“That she does.”

“I’ll send along your regards, Gerald. Thanks.”

I STARED for another long moment at the picture of the stranger on the driver’s license. It didn’t look like Hailey, but it looked like someone. I didn’t know who, but it surely looked like someone. I told Ellie I’d be right back and I stepped out of my building and into the bookstore right next door. From the rack of reading glasses I searched among the pairs until I found one that matched, somewhat, the glasses in the photograph. Then I went back up to my floor and entered Beth’s office.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Pull your hair back and bind it with a rubber band.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

She looked at me like I’d gone over the edge and then went into her drawer and took out a rubber band. Beth’s hair was black and shiny and fell down about to her shoulders, so she was able to make a short ponytail of it.

“All right,” I said, “now put these on.”

She took the glasses and peered at them for a long moment. “What’s this all about?”

“Humor me,” I said.

When the glasses were on, I compared what I saw with the picture. It wasn’t a perfect match by any means. Beth’s eyes were green, not blue, and she was slightly taller. But there was a resemblance, an undeniable resemblance.

“How are you feeling, Beth? You a little tired?”

“No.”

“Worn down by your frantic pace? At the end of your rope?”

“No.”

“Are you feeling overwhelmed by life?”

“Not at all.”

“Funny, I am, too. You know what we should do? We should chuck it all for a bit and get out of here. Not just the office but the city, the state. Aren’t you sick of the East Coast?”

“Victor, what are you talking about? We have a trial to prepare for. Did someone spike your morning coffee? Are you sane?”

“Actually no, but that’s not what’s going on. Clear the weekend, partner, because you and I, we’re taking a road trip.”

Part Three. Desert Winds

22

AH, LAS VEGAS. Neon, flash, the crush of crowds opening for long-legged women in boots and short skirts. Artificial light, artificial air, proud entrances, meek exits, announcements, lines, doors hissing open and shut, chrome, chrome. The bells and whistles of the slot machines, the silver clatter of coins, the snarl of old ladies with cigarettes dangling feeding in quarter after quarter. Giant video screens advertising the latest shows, the fattest buffets, the newest hotels. Wheels spinning, luggage flying, money passing in every handshake, limos lined up like black lemmings at the doors. The infinite sense of promise in those arriving, the weary defeat in those departing. Signs, shops, restaurants, uniforms, joyous laughter cackling over the grand cacophony as a jackpot hits and the lights start flashing. Ah, Las Vegas.

And that was only the airport.

“Could you wait here a minute?” said Beth after we had departed our plane and were headed to the tramway into the main terminal. “I could use a pit stop.”

I stood in the gray concourse and looked around. The usual mall-like stores and fast-food joints intermixed with slot machines. Nothing of too much interest, until something in the window of a kiosk with a great neon Mardi Gras head on top captured my attention and knocked it cold. While Beth was taking care of business, I went to check it out.

It was a sports jacket, hanging on a rack just beside the snow globes with the Vegas skyline doused in glitter. I found one in my size and felt its material, the lapels a satiny black, the body a rough and sparkly gold lamé. Gold lamé, how apropos. It wasn’t well made – it had no lining, threads were fraying already from the shoulder seams – but it had pockets big enough to hold five jackpots and it glistened so brightly it should have had a switch. I slipped it on and did a spin in front of the narrow mirror and had to shield my eyes. It was money, baby.

“You sell many of these?” I asked the cute salesgirl with the green hair and the ring though her eyebrow.

She curled her lip. “Hardly.”

“It’s a little bright, hey?”

“A-yaah.”

“Could you think of anything tackier?”

“Not really.”

“Perfect. I’ll take it.”

Seventy-eight bucks, and worth every dime.

“By the way,” I said to the salesgirl as I left the store, the jacket packed safely away in my briefcase, “I like your hair,” and I meant it, and she blushed, which was like hitting three sevens on the slots.

While Beth waited for our luggage, I took the shuttle bus to pick up our rental car. A convertible, red, as cheaply made as the jacket, but still topless and red. Before I drove it back to the airport, I dropped the roof. I shucked on my new jacket despite the oppressive heat. I slipped on my sunglasses despite the fact that it was long past dark.

When I pulled in front of Beth at the loading curb, I was smiling like an idiot.

“Welcome to Vegas,” I said.

“You look like you’re about to do a very bad version of ‘Feelings.’”

“This city brings out the best in me.”

“I’d hate to be with you in any city that brings out your worst.”

“Boca Raton, where I break out my Sansabelt slacks and white shoes?”

“Victor, Sansabelt slacks and white shoes would be six steps up from that jacket.”

“Hop in, sweetheart, the night is young and my stake is burning a hole in my pocket.”

She dropped our bags into the back seat and opened the door. “I didn’t know a buck sixty-four could get so hot?”

“Let’s go shoot craps.”

“Do you know how to shoot craps?”

“No,” I said, “but I understand they teach you how to play right on the television in your room. How nice is that?”

“It’s going to be an expensive night, isn’t it?”

I squealed my tires on the blacktop and tore out of the airport, into the desert night.

Vegas was not in my normal route between the office, the diner, and my apartment, but I had been there before. After college, on the obligatory cross-country road trip, I had stopped in Vegas on the way to L.A. and stayed longer than I ever expected. I remembered the $1.99 breakfast buffet at Circus Circus, great troughs of eggs, mountains of bacon. I remembered the shabby old pool at the Dunes where I could sneak in without anyone caring enough to do a thing about it. I saw Wayne Newton at the Hilton, I saw an Elvis impersonator sing “Viva Las Vegas” at the Imperial Inn. I lost thirty bucks on a queen-high straight playing poker at Binion’s. I spent a Sunday afternoon in the Caesar’s sports book, sitting in a helmet, watching nine NFL games at once. I bought the little yellow card that detailed perfect blackjack strategy and still lost more than I could afford and then won half of it back on a royal straight flush at a video poker machine. It was a great tacky carnival and I loved it, and that was why I was in high spirits despite the grim nature of our errand.

Yes, we might be there to break open the safe-deposit box of my murdered lover, but, hell, I was going to have myself a time. It was, after all, still Vegas.

Or was it?

It had changed. It was no longer dominated by the hopelessly tacky, now it was all flash and pomposity. The Dunes had disappeared, spectacularly razed to make way for the Bellagio, with its great sign in front advertising the Picassos and Manets held in the hotel’s private museum. Just on the other side of Caesar’s was the Mirage, with its high-toned lobby and volcano out front. We could have stayed at Paris with its Eiffel Tower, at the Venetian with its Grand Canal, at the Monte Carlo or Mandalay Bay or the Rio or New York, New York. There was the MGM Grand, there was the sinister Pyramid of Luxor with its message beam of pyramid power soaring out to the heavens, there was the Excaliber. As we drove down the glory of the Strip, the city was different from how I remembered it to be, a place that now aspired to be something grander than the tacky heart of the American wasteland. It didn’t look like it was succeeding, but even the attempt was disappointing. My God, I wondered if it still had whores.