Shadow Play Read online

  So many theories about vortexes, are they vortexes or vortices? One guy claimed that because the planet Pluto was first discovered from a telescope at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, about twenty-five miles to the north, Sedona remained under the influence of Pluto, except now astronomers claim that Pluto really isn’t a planet, just a cloud of space rocks that rotate somewhat in unison around the sun.

  Monica also had a negative vortex. Don’t go near there, she says, it’s a downer, a bummer, you feel energy sapped out of your body. But I always wonder how she knew it was there, if it was negative, did she ever go through it on purpose? What if one of the free-range cattle got into a vortex? A javelina or coyote or jackrabbit, did they feel worse or better?

  My head running around my body in circles, this is totally weird, I’m thinking, but who ever gets stuck in an elevator with a digital voice menu? Maybe it’s just that I only had two or three hours of sleep last night, but my head was foggy, so many planets swirling around in there. Leon Begay. Bob Good Fellow. Nathan, Nathan, crushing furniture because he believed in ghosts. Maybe it was because I hadn’t eaten any breakfast, had too much wine last night, too much adrenaline, too tired because I went on a late-night run, threw off my body rhythms.

  Some astrologers believe that Pluto in your personal chart of the heavens brings about major transition and rebirth.

  Weak-headed, you must be kinda weak yourself, reading this, hearing me babble without meaning, except all I had for meaning were two things. One Navajo supposedly shot a young woman and then turned the gun on himself. Another Navajo believed in chindi power.

  I rubbed fingers across the oval seat. Some kind of metal, anodized a metallic almost platinum color. I sat down, slumped against the back wall of the elevator, incredibly fatigued. My eyelids wavered, you’ve seen that in the movies, the star falls into a sleepy trance, they’re trying to stay awake, they can’t.

  Scientists never agree on much, they certainly don’t agree on the scientific reality of vortexes. Vortices. Electromagnetic powers or mental confusion, that’s pretty much the two poles of the argument.

  Have you ever been to one of those Mystery Spots? You see the signs for a hundred miles on the interstates. MYSTERY SPOT! WHAT IS IT! FIFTY MILES. TWENTY MILES. MYSTERY SPOT, NEXT EXIT. Don’t believe until you’ve seen it yourself. Or they’re called Spook Village or Gravity Hill and Anti-Gravity Hill and Mysterious Tomb. And around the world, psychics and mystics and hundreds of thousands of tourists and wanna-believers claim their bodies go through astonishing changes in these Mystery Spots. Weird houses where short people are taller than their six-foot high boyfriends. Strong stomachs suddenly queasy, unexplainably.

  The Oregon Vortex supposed to be the kinkiest Mystery Spot of them all. Even featured on an X-Files episode.

  Total bunkum, right out of P. T. Barnum, some scientists claim. People believe what their senses tell them, right or wrong, sensual perception controls mental and intellectual faculties.

  Look at our survey maps, other scientists say. Electromagnetic forces pulling in a dozen different directions. Compasses go mad, people get happy.

  The elevator abruptly started moving upward, jolting me awake. I barely had time to stand up, think where I was and why I was there, when the doors slid back and a huge black mastiff sat directly opposite me, a paw extended and his nubby tail whopping back and forth, four inches of tongue lolling out the left side of mouth.

  And behind him, coming toward me, there was Vincent Basaraba.

  20

  Vincent Basaraba.

  I inhaled everything about him.

  Five-ten, incredibly fit under his suit. I work out and I know good bodies when I see them. Profile, chiseled, there’s nothing but clichés that fit his wonderful, chiseled profile. He turned sideways to let me through the door, turning back to smile at me with capped teeth like perfectly formed white slabs of sugar. Black hair cropped to about an inch and a half, carefully layered, random flecks of gray close to matching his light gray silk suit, with a white linen shirt open at the collar.

  “Hi,” I said. Feeling like an idiot, there for such a serious thing, and I was ready to go on about his movie roles, except there were three other people in the room. Wes McCartney, another man, and a woman.

  “Vincent Basaraba,” he said. As if there was any doubt in my head. He reached out, took both of my hands in his. “Glad to meet you, Miss Winslow.”

  “Laura. Call me Laura.” Yikes, I thought, like a teenager here, Call me Laura. I’m probably even blushing.

  “So Laura,” looking at my left hand, at my ring finger, “married?”

  “Yes.” Was married, not a dishonest answer.

  “Widow,” McCartney said. “One daughter, age approximately twenty-three, served a few months in federal prison for theft of credit card numbers, pardoned last year. Laura Winslow, aka Laura Marana, possible other aliases. Federal warrants served, then voided when she helped the U. S. of A. solve some crimes.”

  “That’s not necessary, Wes.”

  “I’m an old fan of yours, Mister Basaraba. From the movies, I mean…that elevator,” I said, trying to recover, “it’s like, this will really sound weird, the longer I waited, the more I felt like I was in a vortex.”

  His eyes and smile, controlled until that moment, crinkled with delight.

  “Do you believe?” he said.

  “In vortexes?”

  “Their magnetic power?”

  “I can’t say I don’t believe.”

  “Ah.” He turned to the three other people in the room.

  “Wes McCartney. Security manager. Wes, this is Laura Winslow, the computer security person.”

  “We’ve met.” I said.

  “Of course. My apologies for the elevator problem. Wes realized it wasn’t working, called the security room to check the electronics. Hope it didn’t scare you. Who’d have thought, elevator as vortex. And this is Mya Nguyen. Manages all the hostesses, floor and bar girls.”

  “Miss Winslow,” she said, a slow, ready, and practiced smile that moved only because she’d opened her mouth. And aren’t you two a pair? I thought. Wes and Mya, professionals to the bone.

  “And Clive Davis. My gambling floor manager.”

  Another tuxedo, but an honest face, cherubic, glowing cheeks, earnest smile. He stood two feet apart from the others, a delineation of power.

  “Clive took second place once in the poker world series.”

  “Second place at the fifth table,” Davis said.

  “Clive and I should work on one of the cameras over pit six,” Wes said.

  “And I’ve got to check on next shift replacements,” Clive said. “Two dealers called in sick, one pit boss.”

  “First time with a movie star?” Wes asked.

  “Almost,” I said. Not totally goo-goo.

  Davis smiled. “Had a crush on Audrey Hepburn,” he said. “Been in love with her for years. Well. Now, I’m thinking of transferring my love to Cate Blanchett.”

  “Anything else you want?” McCartney said.

  “Nope, no problems here,” Vincent said. “I just wanted you all to meet Miss Winslow. In case she needs to talk to you later.”

  “Laura,” I said. “No, I’m only here to talk with you.” And maybe it was the elevator, maybe I was having a vortex moment, but something occurred to me and I usually give my instincts a shot.

  “I knew one of your dealers,” I said to Mya. “Or maybe she was wait staff.” She smiled, paused. “Young Latina. Jodhi Patroon.”

  Not a flicker from Mya or Wes. She shook her head at the door. “I know all my staff from the day we opened. I don’t believe that woman ever worked here.”

  Wes whispered something in Vincent’s ear. The mastiff lurched against my legs, pressing hard before it sat down and offered a paw. I reached down to shake the paw and the mastiff immediately went to a far corner of the room and curled up on a large sheepskin pad.

  I scanned the rest of the huge office suite.<
br />
  Just me and the movie star.

  I’d better get over this I-had-a-teenage-crush-on-you attitude.

  “I saw all your movies,” I said, bulling ahead what-the-hell-am-I-saying right into it, like a teenager on Hollywood Boulevard, you’re standing on one of those sidewalk stars and look up to see the actor in front of you.

  “I think I was in movies before you were born.”

  “Well. Not really, I mean, I did see them, though. Most of them in a movie theatre, the rest on TV, you know, VHS tapes.”

  “Let’s sit down over here.”

  Led me to white-leathered chairs in front of the window, Vincent waiting until I was comfortable before he sat down.

  “My father was an extra in Fort Apache,” Vincent said. “One of the Navajo actors, except they played Apaches in those movies. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, um, I’ve forgotten what the third was called.”

  “Rio Grande,” I said. “Another of those Ford things where you believe you’re right on the Rio Grande, the river, except the scenery is Monument Valley.”

  “New Mexico, Arizona, and Apaches. All in Monument Valley.”

  “Your father, what was his name? Was he an actor?”

  “Franklin,” he said. “Franklin Begay. No, he was just an extra among all those Navajo extras Ford hired. He needed the money. Food, sheep, whatever. He got jobs for me and my brother Leon. I was a kid, a child extra. Leon didn’t want his face on camera, he tinkered with things, they had him working with the grips.”

  I started to ask about Leon, hesitated because I didn’t want to spoil the moment, my moment with a movie star. If you’ve ever been around a movie star, you know what I mean. It’s their presence, it’s being in their presence, you see them on a big screen, in magazines, and on TV, then you meet them and they’re just people, except, somehow, special. I couldn’t ever remember feeling so giddy in my life.

  Vincent Basaraba.

  After the shootout at Pine Ridge, on the run with my husband Jonathan, just a teenager dodging from one low-down motel to another, I’d duck out to the movies every chance I’d get.

  For the first time, I looked around the office. Movie posters and memorabilia hung from every inch of wall space, artifacts piled on shelves and cabinets.

  “Would you like the tour?”

  “You look just like you did in Hangman,” I said, admiring one of the posters.

  “I was only sixteen then. Maybe seventeen.”

  “You played James Coburn’s young brother. Turned out bad, sheriff killed you early in the movie and Coburn swore revenge, killed the sheriff.”

  “Oh, yeah. The bad brother. I played that part a little too good. They always cast me as a bad guy after that.”

  “Like that gambler in Back to Tombstone. And the lead role in Billy, well, not the lead, that was what’s his-name, from the Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns. The Mexican who played Billy the Kid. And you were sheriff.”

  “You really saw all those movies?”

  “I even bought some of them the last few years. On DVD.”

  Somebody knocked on the door, opened it.

  “Security’s back up for pit six,” McCartney said. “And Deborah, in the cage, asked if you’d okay ten large for a Mrs. Brenda Mayfair. From Nashville.”

  “Nope,” Vincent said. “She already owes us seventy.” McCartney left without comment. “I need the money, I need action from people like Brenda Mayfair. But I don’t like to see them get into the barrel without I show them I might put the top back on and nail it down. What were you doing in Pine Ridge?”

  “When Joe Stuntz was killed. The siege.”

  “Most people remember that two FBI men were killed. Not an Indian.”

  “I loaded rifles for some AIM people. My husband, except he wasn’t my husband yet.” On the far wall, over his desk, two fabulous posters, one of his best movie. Billy. “Julie London was in Billy. Owned the saloon, wanted your body, you thought she was too old.”

  “Julie.” I saw him do the flashback, his eyes glazing for a moment. “God, she was beautiful, I’d’ve loved to spend a night with that woman, but Jack Webb might’ve arrested me.” He laughed, shook his head at the words as he came out of his memories. “Said that too blunt, I guess, but I sure loved every woman I could get my hands on, back in those days, they all wanted me.”

  “She played a whore. They should have written a scene between you two.”

  “Thirty years ago, they didn’t call ’em whores. Bar girls. They let the audiences imagine the whoring. Dressed the actresses in tight dresses, bunched their breasts up out of the lacy front, let ’em lean over to the camera and swish their petticoats. I don’t remember they ever cast me with a good woman character.”

  And the other poster. I had to walk over there, reached out, realized I shouldn’t touch it before I saw it was under glass.

  “Man of the West.”

  “It’s one of the few remaining original posters.”

  Gary Cooper upright, almost the entire right side of the poster, knees flexed, six-guns in each hand. Wide-brimmed hat, red bandanna flowing out, as though blown by winds ahead of the reddish cloud banks across near the bottom of the poster.

  GARY COOPER

  AS THE

  MAN OF THE WEST

  “The role that fits him like a gun fits a holster,” Vincent read.

  On the left side, the dark outline of another six-gun, a still from the movie inset showing Jack Lord holding a knife to Cooper’s throat as Julie London looks on.

  “Take those clothes off, girl,” I said, not even bothering to read the print, it was one of the best-known lines from the movie. “Real slow like. Great movie.”

  “You really liked it?”

  “One of my favorite Westerns.”

  “So. Why are you here?”

  I couldn’t make the shift that fast and he saw it in my eyes.

  “I haven’t made a film in over twenty years, Miss Winslow.”

  “Laura.”

  “Laura. I hardly even think about those days, except for the money I made and my agent was good enough to bank for me. That’s how I set up the syndicate that owns this casino, with movie money. I’m raising funds to make another movie.”

  “What was your last?” I said.

  “No idea. Look it up online. I’m told it’s really easy to get movie data that way.” He looked at his wristwatch, a Rolex of some kind. “So. I was having dinner with some people from the state gaming board. But, why don’t I cancel them out? You’ll have dinner with me?”

  “Well,” I said. “About your brother.”

  “Leon?” His head shivered, just for an instant. “My brother Leon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Leon left my village a long time ago.”

  “Uh,” I said, thinking What is this?

  “Mr. Basaraba,” I said. “Your brother died just last week.”

  “Yes. I suppose you think I’m…uncaring? Not sad enough?”

  “I wasn’t implying anything.”

  “Green Valley.” Astonished, unbelieving. “Just south of here. Three nights ago. My own brother commits suicide and I didn’t even know he lived so close.”

  He looked all around the room, eyes picking into every corner, for two or three minutes he seemed to forget I was even there. “I’ll, uh, do you have a phone number? I’ll call Michaela.”

  “Well. I don’t know how to say this. His wife Michaela died several years ago. Last week, your brother, before he committed suicide, well, first he killed a young woman, and then he killed himself.”

  Vincent rose, steady, walked to a side table, began leafing quickly through a stack of newspapers. The Tucson Arizona Star, Tucson Weekly, and the Republic from Phoenix.

  “Last week?” he said. “There’s nothing in here. Leon Begay? You’re sure about this?”

  “Yes. The sheriff’s office didn’t release their names.”

  “Why?”

  Because something wasn’t right, I t
hought. But I wasn’t going to tell him that, since I didn’t know yet what was right or wrong here.

  “Nobody’s claimed his body yet. For burial. So his name’s been kept out of the newspapers.”

  “Um.” He picked up his telephone, finger poised over the speed-dial buttons, realizing finally that his brother’s number wasn’t there. “Haven’t seen him in thirty years. We weren’t close, not after my father committed suicide. And now Leon.”

  “Man of the West,” I said. Unable to take my eyes off the poster. “One of my all-time favorite Westerns. Julie London was great in that movie, right?”

  “Would you like to see my fantasy?”

  He took me through a locked door, a small room, nothing in there except a landscape model, easily the size of a Ping-Pong table, four feet of space on all sides. Most of the model showing a large valley, cradled by several mountain ranges, three entrances to the valley across saddles in the ridgelines. Small white flags on silver hairpins, stuck at various places on the model.

  “May I?” I said, pointing at but not touching one of the flags. He nodded, smiling his perfect white smile, but not at me, I seemed to have no effect on him. I pulled out the hatpin. The label said KINO’S GOLD.

  “You don’t recognize the valley?”

  “No. What is this? Some real estate development? Another casino?”

  “Up here,” removing a billiard cue from under the table and pointing to one edge of the model, “Sedona. Tucson, here. Arivaca, Nogales. How long have you lived in southern Arizona, Miss Winslow?”

  “Six, seven years.”

  “And you don’t recognize this valley, you don’t know it’s name?”

  “I’ve heard something,” I said. “From my Reiki master.”

  “Reiki.” Always reassessing me, whatever else grasped his attention, he shifted back to me, the desire to communicate higher with each transition.

  “When you first came in, I asked, do you believe?”

  “The last time somebody asked me that,” I said, “I was in a broken-down old car, no muffler, brakes failing, and a cop stopped me, wrote me a ticket, and asked if I believed. I’d just bought that junker for a hat, that’s how bad the car was, and I never noticed the fish symbol on the trunk.”