Shadow Play Read online

  It clicked.

  “Now, let the slide go back to normal.”

  I did. And felt a strange satisfaction at the precise mechanical movement of cocking the hammer, then a metallic snick as the slide racked forward.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s very strange,” I said, “to be holding a gun and learning how to fire it.”

  “Well, it’s ready to shoot. Just remember, don’t point it if you don’t want to shoot it. See this little button? See here? See here? That’s the safety. Push it to the left, it won’t fire. Push it the other way, you’re all set.”

  He punched a button on the wall. A motor hummed somewhere and a line above my head started moving, bringing a paper bull’s-eye target toward me.

  “Okay. That’s ten feet away. Aim right at the middle.”

  I held the gun out in front of me, turning my face slightly away.

  “Wait. Use both hands. Take your left hand, put the palm underneath the gun butt. Good. Wrap the fingers of your left hand around the right hand. Good. Look right down over the barrel. Take up the slack on the trigger. When you’re ready, like they say in the movies, just squeeze slowly.”

  The barrel wobbled and I tightened both hands and pulled the trigger fast, the sound incredibly loud in the small room. My ears started ringing.

  “Don’t I have to cock it again, or slide that thing back?”

  “No. It’ll just keep shooting until you run out of slugs.”

  I lined up on the bull’s-eye and squeezed until the gun fired. Without waiting for him to say anything, I carefully aimed and fired twice more.

  “There’s two left. This time, as soon as you’ve fired, do it again. Bang bang. It’s called a double tap. Most cops shoot twice. Go on.”

  Tap tap. The slide stayed back and I looked at Freddy. All six holes were grouped within the second smallest ring, and two were directly within the black bull’s-eye. He held the doors open for me and as we went back into the shop I dug the plugs out of my ears, which were still ringing.

  “Lady, you’re a natural. Look at this. Group of six, two in the bull.”

  The bull. My father, the rodeo bull rider. George Loma. We remember our parents as Mommy and Daddy, Mama and Father, we’re they’re children, we don’t call their names, I’d not remembered for a long time his name. George Loma.

  I’ve got only two pictures of my youth. No baby picture, no picture of the mother I never knew. In one picture, my father’s face etched against the sky, left arm bent at the elbow, holding the reins of a bareback bronc, right arm extended in a long graceful arc, hand flat like a knife ready to slice off a large chunk of life. The picture always reminded me of one I’d seen in a magazine of an Indonesian guerrilla, his hand clutching a machete-like knife, his smile revealing an eagerness to pose. At the guerrilla’s feet lay a corpse, its hands tied and its severed head lying several feet away.

  The other picture showed myself and my father, both smiling. I remembered the day specifically because it was my seventh birthday. I was having fun playing with a girlfriend while my father read a circular about a Sears sale in Flagstaff. Mingled with sales notices for clothing and energy-saving air conditioners, he found one of those special picture deals, one 8 × 10, two 5 × 7s, and four wallet-size, all for four ninety-five. I didn’t want to go, but he carried me to the pickup. When we got to Sears and it got to be our turn in the lights I wouldn’t stop crying, twisting my face away from the camera while the photographer fidgeted and frowned, a long line of other reluctant children waiting with their beaming parents. But I stopped crying immediately and smiled for the camera when my father put his hand around behind me, like he was holding his wonderful daughter. Missy, he said, if you don’t smile quick I’ll heat things up for you when we get home.

  I don’t remember being heated up by my father, I’m not sure these days what he meant. But then I don’t remember much love, either. Wish I’d known my mother. And then traffic cleared and ten minutes later I pulled into the casino lots.

  18

  Tastefully lit signs, no blinking neon, no outrageous colors, little on the huge electronic signboards except advertisements for performing stars or boxing matches. Colors somewhat like Santa Fe sand and pale greens and sky-washed turquoise blues, but with highlights to make them unique.

  ANASAZI FLAMINGO CASINO

  Built like a massive pueblo, not a solid wall anywhere from ground to top, the eight floors staggered, adobe-like facings, suggestive of legendary pueblo villages. Keet Seel. Chimney rock. The White Palace, at Canyon de Chelly.

  Under a drive-entrance with valet parking, the entrance topped with real wooden beams, and giant wooden ladders extending four stories up to the main restaurant floor.

  Outside the front door, I started to hand my car keys to a valet, but a uniformed security officer came over quickly, checking a clipboard. His pastel blue name tag said CHAVEZ SLIDING. Underneath in smaller letters, VERA CRUZ, MEXICO. Mexican Indian of some nation I couldn’t even identify, although his thin face and hatchet nose reminded me of an Apache I’d once dated.

  “Are you Miss Laura Winslow? Photo identification, if you would, please.”

  “Do I have to take my shoes off?” I said. Handing over my driver’s license.

  “Pardon?”

  “Sorry. Nothing. Are you Apache?”

  “Jicarillo Mountain,” he said. Smiled. “My grandmother was brought back from a raid into Sonora, seventy years ago. And you are Hopi.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He flexed the clipboard. “Mr. McCartney, he does good background security checks on everybody who comes to visit Mr. Basaraba.” He waved at the valet, who took my keys. “Follow me, please.”

  Inside the massive glass doors, whooshing open like Star Trek when we got near them, I could hear the dominant tones of the slot machines. When you first go into a big casino, you think it’s cacophony, all the different slots and their flashing lights, each machine seems to have a different noise and it becomes unbearable until you either start gambling or leave. But I knew that many casinos carefully orchestrated the electronic notes, allowing individuality while blending them all together by having enough machines playing the notes of a perfect major triad. Usually in the key of C, sometimes E.

  The Anasazi Flamingo emphasized the first, third, and fifth tones of a triad, a key I hadn’t the ear to identify, but some machines also featured music that rose and fell in water-fountain arpeggios, so the total sound invited you onto the slot floor.

  Unlike many of the smaller casinos, this one must have had powerful air filters, sucking up the cigarette smoke so that as Chavez Sliding led me through the machine maze I only smelled cigarettes when I passed nearby a smoker.

  “How many slot machines?” I said.

  “Almost two thousand.”

  Young men and women, all of them with some kind of Indian blood, circulated in carefully arranged uniforms, offering free drinks, change for the slots, smiling at anybody who approached them. Men in vaquero pants, flared at the bottom, braided-pattern jackets with high collars and golden buttons in the front, halfway up so the top of the jackets lay open. They wore no shirts underneath. All had woven black leather belts with buckles large enough for small rodeo trophy buckles, except these all had an intertwined AF. The women, most of whom couldn’t be much older than early twenties, wore short skirts and spaghetti-strap, brightly colored tops, some of them clearly bra-less, but the tops tight against their bodies so if they leaned over no cleavage showed. Women with that slimmer-than-slender look, and raised horizontal waves rising under the skin from their rib structure, plus above their uniforms, collarbones in all manner, some straight out to the shoulders, others veeing upward, most with well-defined muscles and good skin tone. Same body shapes for the men. Nobody overweight or over twenty-five, nobody underfed, all with genuine glowing skin and wide smiles and thank-you nods for gamblers who stuck chips into whatever part of the clothing was accessible.
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  I’d dressed for the meeting. The few expensive pieces of clothing I owned.

  An off-white cotton shirt, tailored with no collar but material rising an inch around my neck, unbuttoned a third of the way down, long sleeves, every inch thoroughly starched and ironed by my laundry, with the sleeves unbuttoned at the wrist, the starch holding the fabric steady.

  High lightweight wool slacks, black, sewn by a Mexican seamstress after a Calvin Klein design I ripped out of a Vogue at my dentist’s office, when he was so overbooked he kept me waiting an extra hour. Zelma, the seamstress, extended the waist up, like a stovepipe to emphasize my narrow waist and hips, making my legs seem longer than reality. Model legs, in those slacks.

  My taste only went as far as the shirt and slacks. I wore a lady’s black Resistol belt, a string of white beads sized somewhere between a golf ball and mothballs. Only one pair of decent-enough shoes in my collection from Payless, black suede slip-on pumps with a two-inch heel, slightly flared at the bottom.

  I usually wore this outfit when I visited a new client, never thinking I looked anything but above-adequate. Today I wanted some Jimmy Choo shoes.

  Chavez Sliding led me past several poker rooms crammed with all kinds of games. No Limit Texas Hold ’Em, Omaha, seven-card stud. At least thirty blackjack tables, very few low-limit tables. He stopped in front of an elevator, inserted a special key card, and pushed the single button. The doors opened immediately. I thought he was going to follow me inside, but he swept his hand, turned his back, and the door closed.

  No floor buttons, just two pale purple triangles, one pointing up, the other down. The cage rose swiftly, stopped, the doors opened before I had wits enough to think about what to say, trying out a smile, a movie star fan’s smile, deciding nothing much interested me in smiling this morning, frowning with indecision as the door slid open and I stepped forward, arm raising to shake Vincent Basaraba’s hand, but it wasn’t him at all.

  “Come with me,” the man said.

  Well over six feet tall, skinny as a fencepost, pockmarked cheeks and a rash of marks down the right side of his neck, but handsome, face narrowing toward the chin like the actor Wes Studi. Long denim vaquero pants, flared on the outside with inset gores highlighted by brass buttons, a wide black Resistol belt with a rodeo buckle that I couldn’t read it was so faded, but silver, not pot metal. His faded, black tee-shirt bore the legend IF YOU CAN’T LIMP, YOU AIN’T SHIT and as he turned without a word for me to follow him, the back of the shirt had a Harley-Davidson emblem. He didn’t limp.

  Leading me to a small, windowless office. Almost a cubicle, no desk, just two wooden chairs, looked like a police station interview room. He kicked the door shut behind him with a worn kangaroo-skin boot with a two-inch digger heel.

  “Wes McCartney,” he said. “Security. What are you doing here?”

  “You look like an actor,” I said, struggling to gain some composure. “Wes Studi. You know that actor?”

  “Cut the pleasant shit. What are you doing here?”

  I stood up, tried the door handle. Locked. “Please,” I said, looking around for hidden cameras or microphones. “Take me to Mr. Basaraba,” I said, resisting the anxiety of being locked in, resisting another test of the door handle.

  “Why?”

  “We have an appointment.”

  “Yeah. Well. Vincent’s the actor in this place. I’m head of security, I check out everybody who makes appointments with Vincent. What are you doing here?”

  “Your CD is slipping, you keep saying the same thing.” I sat down in the other chair, locked my knees together. “Zero,” I said. He cocked his head. “The plane crash was so horrible there weren’t any survivors.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Leon Begay,” I said. His persistence outlasted my patience. “Vincent’s brother. Leon and Vincent Begay are brothers, I know this, you know this. Leon was shot last week.”

  “Shot himself,” McCartney said, laying a pack of unfiltered Camels on his right knee, “murdered a woman, then shot himself.” Shook a Camel loose, took out a worn silver-plated lighter, got the smoke going, and tucked both lighter and cigarette pack back into his pants.

  “It’s just about the body,” I lied. “Somebody needs to claim the body, Vincent is the only surviving family member. If he doesn’t claim Leon’s body, nobody will.”

  “The body,” blowing smoke sideways, “that’s why you’re here?”

  “Yes,” I lied. Now more curious than ever why he was interrogating me.

  “How’d you know they were brothers?”

  “A friend told me.”

  “Friend name of who?”

  What is this? I thought. McCartney’s questions made no sense.

  “Navajo Tribal Policeman,” I said finally. “The Green Valley sheriff sent autopsy photos to Monument Valley, asking if the Tribal Police up there knew of any surviving family member that could claim Leon’s body.”

  “Name of who? The policeman.”

  “Good Fellow.”

  “Monument Valley Tribal Police. Good Fellow.” Said to himself, repeating the name twice as he rolled it around in his head. “Okay. Two standard questions for everybody with an appointment to see Vincent. You looking for employment in this casino?”

  “No.”

  “You’re some kind of computer security pro, right?”

  “Right.”

  “No need for anybody doing that here.”

  “I said, I didn’t want a job. What’s your other question?”

  “Somebody gives you two coins totaling fifty-five cents. One of them is not a fifty-cent piece. What are the two coins?”

  “One of them’s not a half dollar. But the other one is. Plus a nickel.”

  “After hiking all day in the wilderness, you reach your cabin at dark. Inside, there’s a wood stove all stuffed with fresh oak kindling and some newspaper, there’s a kerosene lantern, and there’s a propane stove. But you only have one match. So what do you light first?”

  “The match. Do you study history?” That brought a smile to his lips, not too much of a smile, his lips stayed shut. “How many animals,” I said, “of each species,” I said, “did Moses take aboard the ark?”

  “Two,” he said, quickly, too quickly, realizing his mistake when I kept silent. “Very good. Misdirection. You emphasized those early syllables, got me in the rhythm. Well, this is a casino. We have magicians from time to time. Illusionists. No tigers, no vanishing elephants, nothing in Vegas style. We also have all kinds of cheaters. Dice shavers, card counters, chip stealers…”

  “Are we done here?”

  “Not by half. But, that doesn’t really matter,” he said finally. “Come with me.” Took a small remote device from his pocket, like what you use to lock and unlock car doors and alarms. Pressed a button, the door latch clicked. He opened the door and didn’t bother holding it for me, walking away before I got up from the chair, hurrying to the door to grab it before it closed, afraid it would lock me inside.

  McCartney took me to another elevator, inserted a key card in the slot.

  “A word of advice,” he said. “Most people, when they see Vincent, they see the movie star, they think Vincent is just a movie star and they work real hard to get to know the real man underneath.” The elevator door opened. “There is no real man underneath.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He reached around the open door, pressed a red button, pulled his arm out as the door slid shut but I stuck a foot against the door, it reopened, the elevator clicked and whirred.

  “What do you mean?” I said again.

  “What you see in the movies, you think you see everything, but nobody really sees anything. Never. You watched the people on the screen, but you don’t really understand them.” The door started to close again, hit my foot, reopened. “You’re not what I expected. Woman of computer mystery. Hacker, cracker, invisible, calculating but never seen. But in person? What do I see? Sensuality. He’s
waiting.”

  I pulled my foot back, the door closed, but the elevator didn’t move.

  What’s happening? I thought. Where the hell am I?

  19

  “One moment,” the digital female voice said.

  A panel slid aside in the rear wall of the elevator, a small oval seat levering out of the panel until locking.

  “Please. Be seated. Your anticipated wait is…two minutes.”

  “Then open the door,” I said. Pounded a few times on it. Took off my right shoe, banged on the door.

  Like being in a vortex.

  My good friend Monica had two vortexes on her property in Arivaca.

  One is incredibly powerful and good, she says. When I need to feel energized, when yoga isn’t enough, or I’m tired from working all day, or there’s a monsoon and the roadway floods into Arivaca, and I have to get in line at mile nineteen marker to get across the wash, I finally get to my trailer and I take off my clothes and put on a swimsuit, sometimes I don’t put on anything, and I move into the power vortex and it lifts my spirit.

  “Waiting time is now three minutes,” the digital voice said.

  I mean, I ask you, have you ever been kept in an elevator that won’t go anywhere? Telephone menus, sure, no corporation wants you talking to a real live person, they want you to hunt around the menus until you give up.

  Willy Wonka. His elevator went sideways.

  What is a vortex, anyway?

  I’ve been to the power spots in Sedona, Arizona. Four magnificent-colored red-rock formations, one on the steep hill to the airport, then there was Cathedral Rock and Butterfly Woman, I forget the fourth spot. I visited there a long, long time ago, when I lived in my trailer in Tuba City and wound up tracing stolen artifacts in Sedona.

  The elevator didn’t move, I heard something clicking in the control panel. I punched the triangular pale purple button pointing up. Nothing happened.