Chapter Nineteen

I will never understand dogs. They see the returning master standing right in front of them right inside the front door and they still have to sniff your crotch to guarantee you're you.

Quicksilver was tall enough to make quick work of this ritual greeting but tonight he responded with a growl rather an eager leap to lick my face. I can't say I was all that fond of the face-lick anyway. He had a tongue the size of a Saks Fifth Avenue washcloth.

"Back, boy." I brushed past his second growl of parental distemper. It was kinda sweet that he cared about my dates, but a darn good thing I'd kept Ric out of sight and scent.

Quick's nails clicked over the wood floors to the kitchen, where I let him out the back door. The yard gnome, Woodrow, complained about picking up after Quick when I didn't manage a run in Sunset Park and do it myself. Tough. Growing things was his job and Quicksilver leavings made really potent fertilizer. Woodrow was, apparently, one of the perks of residing in the Enchanted Cottage of film fame.

But I was... what? Tired. In a way. And wired, in a way. I refilled Quick's water dish and leaned against the kitchen sink, daydreaming, until the dog's nails clattered on the stone back stoop and I let him back in.

To the background sound of the Loch Ness monster lapping at the giant stainless steel water bowl-another thing about dogs: they go out and then come in and drink up a storm-I ambled toward the bedroom. The fancy-framed full-length mirror at the end of the hall reflected all my bare-midriffed disheveled glory. I looked like a woman in a Calvin Klein perfume ad, hip, hot, and hungry.

I wasn't sure I felt the same way, but it was damn close. All so new, so alien to me.

I dropped my partying clothes over the chair and hesitated between the shower and the sheets. Nope. I didn't want to wash the night off just yet, so I slipped between the umpteenth-thread-count sheets and fell asleep before you could say "nightmare" and I could even think it.

Twittering birds announced the morning. The cottage always thronged with fragrant flora and noisy fauna, like a cartoon paradise.

I bounced out of bed humming "I Enjoy Being a Girl" from Flower Drum Song, took a long, hot shower, then donned sweatshirt and shorts to take Quicksilver for a gallop in the park.

Afterwards I had a quick, cold follow-up shower, gulped down some oatmeal and yogurt, and made a shopping list.

"You can come along, boy," I told an anxious Quick as I grabbed my denim hobo bag to leave, "but will have to guard the car. This is an indoor, girly expedition."

We both trotted outside. Although the cottage had a quaint carriage house that could function as a garage, I kept Dolly sitting under the carport. Sun was the only real enemy to an automobile finish in Las Vegas, just as it was for flesh-and-blood girls.

I stopped cold as I neared the car's side window. Quicksilver had turned it into a doggie door during the attack at the pet store lot. Now it was rolled up tight, perfectly whole and reflective. What kind of sneak thieves broke into your yard to replace an irreplaceable car window?

Quicksilver was dancing and panting at the passenger door, eager for a ride. I shrugged and went around to open the door and let him in. Yup. The window fit Dolly's massive frame perfectly. I shrugged and headed for the driver's seat.

In a minute, Dolly roared through the automatically opening gate onto Sunset Road. She loved Las Vegas as much as I did. No parallel parking slots except downtown. I headed for a big suburban mall. Lots to do before meeting Ric in the park. First a discount clothing store fringing the mall for, what else, clothing? My Kansas WTCH tailored suits and blazers looked like social-worker wear here in the casual West. And I bought a 30-inch, fine silver chain. I wore what I bought and bagged my old clothes as I went. It felt like I was changing skins, not styles.

Next, I wandered through the crystal and silver maze of the Saks Fifth Avenue cosmetics department. There was so much of this stuff, and my black eyelashes and eyebrows hadn't needed emphasis, not even for a TV camera. I'd had to wear the heavy masque-like foundation, though, to warm up my lily-white skin. Maybe that's why I avoided makeup off-camera. A woman behind one glittering counter with an awesomely flawless foundation job approached to ask if she could help me.

"Uh, yeah. I don't wear lipstick. It's too clownish for me."

"You're right. Your hair and eyes are so vivid. Have you tried lip gloss?"

"Just lip balm."

"Oh, there's lots more than that. With your black, white, and blue coloring you're one of the few that even orange would work on."

I made a face.

"You'll see," the salesclerk said, delving into the built-in drawers behind her.

And I did. It hadn't taken long after I smeared a sheeny sample across the back of my hand and remembered Ric's finger wetting my lips with my saliva. Three-two-one, liftoff! I left with three expensive little pots of tinted gloss named Orange Crush, Veiled Raspberry, and Goddess Gilt, for evening "sparkle."

I also left sold on a similar little product called Lip Venom.

According to the saleswoman, this spicy, tingly gloss "plumps the natural shape of the lips by increasing circulation with a blend of essential oils including cinnamon and ginger. Great for shiny, bee-stung lips." I bought the color called "Love in the Mist."

"And the tingle effect is catching," my saleswoman added with a wink.

I was feeling the tingling effect already, but left cosmetics and next applied myself to a mall bookstore. They had what I wanted, English-Spanish dictionaries, but not the exact type I needed. Then a thoroughly pierced teen clerk led me to the "slanguage" section where I found a tiny red leatherette-bound book titled Street Speak in Spanish.

If Ric's sexy murmurs included any dirty words I was going to know them. Already, just browsing, I'd learned that hembra meant "tigress." Really? Of course it could also mean "nut of a screw," which wasn't exactly complimentary. Or was it a different tense of embragar, which meant "to put in gear?" Ric had been doing a lot of embragar with both the Corvette and me last night.

Last stop was a shoe store, where I bought a pair of platform open-toed slides. I'd sometimes gotten a kick out of flaunting fire-engine red toenails while the videographers focused on my dead-serious face and stiff upper torso when I intoned my spiel for the camera. Maybe I'd always been a split personality.

Quicksilver was sitting by the car. I couldn't leave him locked inside and he liked playing guard dog.

Dolly approved of my new get-up. She was so anxious to get home her motor throbbed impatiently at the stoplights, which offered a low-rider next to us a chance to give a wolf whistle and shout a new phrase to look up. I wasn't sure if it was for Dolly or me, though. Besides, I was interested in impressing a high-rider.

"Who're you foolin', chica?" Irma's interior voice asked. "You are goin'for forcin' that man into an insanity plea." Maybe "Erma" was short for hermana, or "sister," in Spanish. Who knew I had so much Latin blood in me?

Quicksilver's nose inspected the crotch of my new jeans, but didn't seem to register that they were low-rise and nicely set off the thin silver chain around my bare hips. Or that the off-the-shoulder crop top was red and had ruffle-tiered sleeves like a flamenco dancer's skirt.

Okay, maybe this outfit was a little slutty. I couldn't help it. For the first time in my life I felt happy and strong at the same time and I wanted more of what made me feel that way. Who.

One-two-three, arriba!

Chapter Twenty

Of course everybody eyed me when I walked Quicksilver from the parking lot to the dog area. They always looked at me when I walked Quicksilver, so I couldn't tell if my new outfit had any pulling power of its own. I left him with a shelter lady, who was only too pleased to entertain him for a while, and worked my way up the Trail of Dead People's Trees to the picnic table area where I'd first met Ric.

He was sitting on it, feet on the bench seat, white-shirted, facing Sunset, expecting me to be coming from Nightwine's estate. Maybe he was contemplating the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse sculpture eternally charging out of the bland stucco wall.

"Hi."

He turned at my voice. Ric had that law enforcement professional face down cold: blank, noncommittal, and unflappable. The moment he saw me it melted, did a 180-turn, although I couldn't quite name his new expression, other than stunned.

He jumped down to the ground, met me coming toward him, still stunned. Now I knew how those night-time soap opera queens felt. He walked into me, or me into him, I don't know which. He hooked his fingers through my belt loops, brushed a kiss over my lips, cheek, neck, just under my ear.

I'd heard of skipping stones, not kisses.

"Delilah," he whispered. "Muy tempestado. A pity I have to go away soon."

"Away?"

"South of the border."

"Down Mexico way?"

"Yes, where exactly I can't say."

"For a long time?"

"It'll seem long now. Two or three weeks."

"But I wanted to find out about the dead couple. Nightwine will pay me for a solved case he can fictionalize on CSI. You have police access-"

"Not with Haskell on the case. Can't you use your reporter's wiles to check into it?"

"Librarians rarely need wiles and that's where I'd find information on missing persons from decades ago- newspaper archives."

"Good, a library is a fairly safe place." He grinned. "Then there's the angle of the Inferno gaming chip. And, if needed, I do have one police contact you might try: Captain Kennedy Malloy. See? Lots to keep you busy while I'm away. When I'm back, we'll go salsa dancing. The werewolves won't leave if they see you in this."

"It's not supposed to mean anything to the wolves."

"And that, Querida, means everything to me."

We'd billed and cooed as much as I felt comfortable doing in public. My Irish genes still had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the arena of open emotion.

I pushed off enough to capture Ric's eyes again. Seriously. "One thing. Does it bother you that our being so... simpatico... started over a couple of dead bodies?"

"In Mexico, we celebrate the dead, we don't fear them."

"I know, 'Day of the Dead' and all that. But-" I lowered my eyes, not because I went for that flirtatious crap, but because I couldn't quite face some things. Like my own history. "I don't mean the impact of death. I mean the... sensuality that came with it. It's almost like it took us... me... over. I mean, I've never-"

"I know. But I've never either."

"You've never?"

"Not that intensely. I agree. We were borrowing from the dead. It was like their last bequest."

"Isn't that... creepy? Doesn't it bother you?"

He ran his hands down my midriff to my hips. "You bother me. That's the way it should be, Querida."

Okay, I liked it. I'd been asking for it, in the shy honest truth of that phrase, not as an accusation. I'd trusted Ric to know and appreciate the difference, and he did. It was always so touchy for women to be sexual without being misinterpreted. Maybe that's why I'd never wanted to do it before. Or maybe Ric was why I'd never been able to do it before.

Or maybe the dead bones, the skeletal lovers buried in the limestone crypt, had been waiting for a couple of fools with our particular weird talents and my dicey personal history to be infected with their own lethal passions.

Maybe we were doomed to the same fate.

If so, I could only hope we'd enjoy getting there half as much as they apparently had.

The man-dog introduction was not as successful as the live-dead introduction in Sunset Park two days earlier.

When I escorted Ric to the dog area, Quicksilver's usual embarrassing crotch-sniff turned into a sudden snap. Ric's pelvis did an evasive maneuver as fast, skilled, and sexy as a matador's, but the fact remained that my dog had serious territorial issues.

"Bad boy!" the shelter lady and I shouted in unison.

"No!"

Quicksilver sat down and commenced to lick his privates while casting resentful glances at all concerned.

The shelter lady and I giggled. Ric was not amused.

"At least," he said, when he kissed me goodbye under Quicksilver's watchful ice-blue gaze, "I don't have to worry about your personal safety while I'm gone."

I was going to miss him. I forced myself not to look back as I led Quick back to Dolly at a trot, trying not to worry about Ric's personal safety on his vague quest south of the border. I didn't need to ask if it was risky; his tight-lipped dismissal of my questions said everything.

I latched Quick into his safety harness in the front passenger seat. We both knew that it would break away in a second if he wanted it to, but it was easier to look like I was following responsible pet ownership rules than to explain to traffic cops that he was more like a hyper-bright twelve-year-old than a dog. After he'd broken major automotive glass to roar to my rescue in the pet store parking lot I wasn't keen to tie him up.

"I'm going to be hitting the research trail," I told him as we pulled out of the park's lot.

"This town boasts two daily newspapers and a major university library. Somewhere in their records our dead folks must have left a trail."

Quick regarded me with such intelligent eyes that I wanted to put a pair of sunglasses over them so as not to give away his awesome IQ. While he was looking so Rhodes Scholarish, I added, "Ric is a great guy and I really, really like him, so you will not treat him like an appetizer tray, got it?"

Quicksilver growled softly and stared out the open side window, letting his tongue flap through his fangs so he looked like the usual idiot canine easy rider.

When your dog is better at undercover work than you are, you have a problem.

Chapter Twenty-One

With Ric gone, I decided to devote myself to chaste, boring research.

Before I tried to dig up any news stories from the forties, I used the laptop (high/low tech again, my quaint cottage had a flawless and fast wireless connection) for online searches to background the Inferno Hotel and Casino. It was the hellcat's pajamas, all right.

After a brief flirtation with becoming a family entertainment destination in the early nineteen-nineties, Las Vegas embraced its old reputation as the Millennium arrived and did an about-face back to being the best that it could be, or in its case, the worst: Sin City.

The Inferno, only three years old but born to be a wild child, was the latest in knock-down, drag-out adult entertainment, cultivating a wicked reputation in an already wicked town. The Hades theme was wrapped around the house rock attraction, a group called the Seven Deadly Sins. I'd never heard of them, but we don't hear about a lot of things in Kansas, and feel the better for it.

I decided to check with Nightwine. He'd been digging up Las Vegas murders a lot longer than Ric and I had.

"You're looking delightful," Godfrey observed as he greeted me at the mansion's back door.

"How do you manage to cover every entrance to this maze of a place?"

"We CinSims are light on our feet," he said with a wink.

"Sin-sims?

"Ah. You're new in town. That's what I am. 'CinSim' is short for Cinema Simulacrum."

"Godfrey, that's makes about as much sense as Pig Latin. Cinema I know. What's a simulacrum!"

"A delightful concept both medieval and modern. I'll let Mr. Nightwine explain this to you. It's a rather delicate topic for me to address."

I watched his gray ears (he was a walking symphony in tones of black, white, and all the shades in-between) tinge faintly darker. Red reads as black in black-and-white formats.

"Are we talking about something like the birds and the bees, Godfrey?"

"As it relates to my kind, yes, Miss. Now, let us repair to the master's quarters. I believe there has been sufficient time for him to have detected your arrival."

Nightwine and his spy cameras! I was sure we were bugged too, which may be why Godfrey had shut up about his exact, er, composition. He seemed totally physically present, just a bit monochromatic around the gills.

The double doors leading to Nightwine's office opened at our approach. The man seemed to have a remote control for everything, including his CinSims.

Godfrey paused at the threshold to announce me. " Miss Street, sir."

"Come in. Well, that is a fetching ensemble, despite being in the rough-and-ready mode favored by today's youth. Denim. Ugh. It should have stayed at Nimes in France, but at least it seems to be shrinking nicely this century."

I'd forgotten that Nightwine was even more eager to ogle me than Ric, and wished I'd changed out of the low-rise jeans back into denim coveralls.

"I will reluctantly invite you to sit down."

I happily complied, since that put my bare midsection out of view behind the massive desktop.

"You noticed the gambling chip the police took from the grave across the street?" I asked.

"Of course. Most provocative. From the Inferno. My cameras also recorded the mass of old silver dollars. Thirty, I presume?"

I nodded.

"Something old, something new. Do tell me there was something blue, for then we would have a wedded couple."

In fact my vision had revealed that the dead woman had worn a blue dress when she was killed, although time and decomposition had destroyed any but a psychic shred of it.

Odd how fast I was accepting that I must be psychic. But then I'd accepted a mutual attraction with Ric lickety-split too. More had happened to me in Las Vegas in a few days than in a quarter century in Kansas. Call it the Dorothy Syndrome, only Las Vegas was my Oz, Quicksilver my Toto. So who was my wizard, or my wicked witch? Maybe Nightwine won the first part. He always looked like he had something worth hiding behind a curtain.

"I hear the Inferno has an evil reputation," I went on.

"You've been talking to government men again." Nightwine lifted his bushy eyebrows.

"Ex-government man, singular, like I'm an ex-reporter."

"The Cadaver Kid is almost as interesting to me as you. Together, you're irresistible. He's going away, to judge by that parting peck in the park. Tsk. So soon infatuation over inconvenient corpses turns into... old hat."

When I didn't answer he lifted one eyebrow even higher. "Or are you two cheating my cameras?"

"You and your voyeuristic toys are pathetic, Nightwine."

"Hector, please. So few know me well enough to insult me. It's a good idea to follow the Inferno connection, though. The operation is owned by a muy misterioso fellow named Christophe."

Hector's lapse into Spanish made me think he was still eavesdropping on Ric and me, but that name he mentioned rang a whole carillon of bells in my head. "Christophe is a French name."

"Christopher in French, in fact. It can serve either as a given name or a surname. This particular Christophe doesn't indicate which it is in his case. He's just 'Christophe' and quite the enigma. He appeared out of the blue, with money enough to erect a multi-billion-dollar mega-bed hotel and casino that is rumored to have even more spacious private club levels underground. The place is crawling with CinSims, and you know how I feel about their commercial use. He has been ruthless in their acquisition, and in offering the best odds in Vegas, which of course gives him droves of customers. The man is simply not greedy enough for this town. Very suspicious. Of course the Inferno offers every variation of vice, including some I'd not heard of before, which is impressive. Keep your eyes wide open when you visit. It should be an intriguing experience and I'd be interested in your opinion of the operation. Do be careful that you aren't kidnapped by a white slave ring, though."

I wasn't worried. My modest scouting expedition would never bring me into contact with Mr. Big, anyway.

"Could you fill me in more on CinSims?"

"It's short for Cinema Simulacrums, which won't mean anything unless you know what a simulacrum is. Do you?"

I happily pled ignorance and got the full lecture.

"In occult writings, the word simulacrum designates some object meant to represent a whole for magical purposes. In voodoo, a fingernail or a hair can represent the whole person it belongs to and is believed to trap part of that individual's essence. Simulacra like hair or fingernails can be inserted into a doll representing the person to cast spells upon."

"I've heard of voodoo dolls, but not that fancy name for the body parts used."

"Science fiction, of course, has eagerly embraced the concept of simulacra as artificial creatures intended to impersonate a human being. Although imperfect imitations, they're based on idealized forms of humans. The authors imagine that such creatures wish to become human or replace their human model. Hence such literary immortals as Pinocchio and Commander Data from Star Trek."

"I've heard of those guys too. But I thought Data was an android?"

"Time and usage have blurred the meaning of 'android,' but technically an android is an anthropomorphic robot-mechanical. Broadly denned, simulcra can be robotic, but in this context the term applies to a non-mechanical imitation."

"Right," I said, although as far as I knew he could be wrong.

"Then there is the simulacrum that is a copy of a copy, a thing so... dissipated... in relation to the original that it can stand on its own. Consider the cartoon character of Betty Boop."

"The baby-voiced twenties flapper with the huge eyes and the spit curls... boop-boop-a-doop?"

"The cartoon was based on a singer named Helen Kane, but Kane grabbed her share of glory by imitating another singer, Annette Hanshaw. Both Kane and Hanshaw are pop culture footnotes today, almost a hundred years later, but Betty Boop has become a commercial icon of the flapper and lives on in cheesy merchandise everywhere."

"You're saying the resurrection or animation, whatever you want to call it, of film images here in Las Vegas is that last type. They have a life that their originals never did."

"No one but I would say so, but, yes, I think they do, Miss Street, or could. A lot of soul went into creating those on-screen characters. Souls never die. No one knows precisely how CinSims are created-perhaps by pure science implemented by a touch of magic. The Millennium Revelation showed us that what scientists used to call superstition and magic do work in some cases. And if that is indeed provably true, the mob of immortality industries that have sprung up will never admit it, because it's a gold mine. Their process and products are trade secrets.

"It's nothing to me if a rich old fart decides to live on in one of the Sunset Cities as a well-preserved shadow of himself. I might try it myself some day. But the CinSims are far more than the crude animatrons of the late twentieth century! They are a synthesis of two delicate forms: film and the actor's art of breathing life into fictional characters. That's why I deplore their careless use to enrich greedy pockets. If you find anything to tie the Inferno and Christophe to the murder victims in the park, I will broadcast it to the world and bring the bastard down. And I will acquire his stable of CinSims with a view to freeing them, or at least employing them in manners to their liking."

Wow. Ric was out to break the zombie-slave trade. Nightwine wanted to liberate the CinSims. I was working with both of them. What did that make me? Supergirl?

I thanked Nightwine for his information and warning, and then was forced to give him a rear-view departure that produced a giant sigh. What an old lech! Luckily he seemed chained to his desk and his wall of audio-visual surveillance equipment.

Godfrey opened the doors and escorted me back downstairs, steering me into a... broom closet at the bottom.

"The master does not oversee scullery rooms," he said. "He has an aversion to objects of domestic drudgery."

I tried not to sneeze from scents of lemon oil and dust while Godfrey pressed a business card into my hand in the semi-dark.

"Since you will be snooping around the most dangerous hotel in Las Vegas, I suggest you go in the guise of a CinSymbiant."

"A silver-screen revenant like you?"

"No, no. Cinema Symbiants are perfectly human fans of CinSims like myself. They dress to imitate us, that being the sincerest form of flattery. This card is for Deja-Vous, a vintage shop that accommodates CinSymbiants. There will be oodles of them at the Inferno, so you will fit right in and won't be molested. Christophe also owns Deja-Vous. In addition, you should introduce yourself to my, er, cousin, who is quite a fixture at the hotel's main bar, the Inferno. You can't miss him. He's my spitting image."

"Godfrey! I can't ever imagine you spitting, not even in an image. You are not only a handsome devil, but you are a doll!" I squeezed his hand as I took the card for Deja-Vous. His flesh was solid but on the chilly side. Oh, well, cold hands, warm heart. I wouldn't think about the zombie underpinnings. Zombies might be very decent folks.

We nipped back into the stairwell and into the brightly lit kitchen, where dinner aromas were already wafting about. I'd be eating a microwaved supper, then rushing over to Deja-Vous off Charleston before it closed at 7:00 pm so I could turn myself into a walking silver screen escapee. What fun! I fully expected to have a hell of a time at the Inferno.