The Wrong Goodbye (29 page)

  I pulled the Caddy up to a pump out of sight of the main building next to a municipal truck stacked high with orange traffic barrels and caked with hot-mix asphalt. The faded state seal stenciled across the side of the truck bed read
Ditat Deus. God Enriches
, if my rusty Latin served. Though as I watched the trucks belch black diesel fumes into the cloudless sky and set out across the lifeless earth, I didn't see much evidence to support that claim.

  Even in the shade, the pavement burned my soles. I trotted barefoot to the door, thinking inconspicuous thoughts. Turns out, I needn't have bothered; bare feet aside, I wasn't any rougher around the edges than half their clientele.

  The store inside was more Walmart than 7-Eleven. Everything from tube socks and trucker caps to televisions and toaster ovens, the latter two made special to plug into a truck's cigarette lighter. The clothes – mostly novelty Ts and off-brand jeans – weren't much my style, but they were tempting nonetheless. Still, tough to walk off with a whole outfit hidden in your pants, so instead I settled on pocketing a hammer and a flat-head screwdriver. Wish I could've snagged some aloe vera while I was at it; after two hours of being chased westward by the sunrise, the back of my neck was hot enough to fry an egg. But all pharmacy items were on a rack up by the register. Guess they didn't want the truckers lifting the No-Doz.

  The signs for the showers led me down a long, narrow white-tiled hallway, cracked here and there and yellowed with age, but clean enough not to put the lie to the signs outside. As I pushed through the swinging door to the men's locker room, I heard the sound of running water. The locker room was only slightly wider than the hall, with two benches running parallel to one another in the center, and a wall of lockers on either side. To my right, a doorway led to a series of toilet stalls, a wall of sinks and mirrors opposite. Another doorway on the far left of the room led to the showers, if the steam billowing through the aperture was any indication. 

  Sounded like at least a couple of them were running, which I was psyched about. Meant I'd have me some selection. Occasionally, one of the showers' occupants let slip a line or two of Skynyrd, neither tuneful nor lyrically accurate. That I could've lived without.

  I turned my attention to the lockers. Two banks of small, square boxes, painted institutional gray. The kind where you put in quarters and take the key, which was perfect for my purposes, since a) you can tell at a glance which ones are occupied, and b) they're by far the shittiest-constructed type of lockers on the planet.

  Three of them were occupied. I popped 'em each in turn. A nosy parent with a paperclip would've had more trouble with their daughter's diary than I had with these bad boys. Insert screwdriver in lock and tap with hammer, as easy as you please. Hell, I even had the sound of running water to drown out my hammering, and its sudden absence would let me know if the owners of this crap were coming back. My only worry in the world right then was that these guys would be too short or too fat for their clothes to fit.

  I laid out the contents of the lockers on the wooden bench nearest me. Grayed with age and damp and mildew, the bench was bolted to the floor nonetheless. Who'd want to take the fucking thing was beyond me, and that's even granting my only purpose for being there was to steal shit.

  I played Goldilocks a second, poked through my potential haul. A pair of cargo shorts, size 48: too big. Bright red shirt, all fringe and piping, and some skinny ink-blue jeans to match: too cowboy. Wellworn pair of boot-cut Levis and plain black T-shirt: just right.

  I dressed quickly. The shirt smelled of sweat, but likely far less than did I – and anyways, it fit, or near enough. The pants were maybe a size or two too big, but had a studded belt threaded through their loops. I buckled it, and all was well.

  The shoe situation was a tougher nut to crack. I looked to be a twelve at least. But all I had to work with was a pair of steel-toe work boots, pair of cowboys, and a ratty pair of high-tops – nines, tens, and (I shit you not) seven-and-a-halfs, respectively. The tiny high-tops came from the same locker as the tent-like cargos. I wondered how the guy stayed upright.

  Cowboy had a travel stick of Old Spice. I slathered some on. Big Dude and Just Right had left their wallets in their lockers; I guess Cowboy left his in his truck. I thumbed through them, fixing to take them both, but something stopped me.

  Pictures, encased in those cheap-ass clear vinyl books that you get with wallets – the ones most folks throw out. Big Dude hadn't, though. Instead, he'd stuffed them full of shots of him and his little girls. Smiling, happy. Had a smiling wife, too. In a couple pics, they had themselves a dog – a handsome little mutt, all ears and lolling tongue. Even
he
looked like he was smiling.

  I swiped his cash and cards, but left his wallet on the bench. What I took, he could replace. But those vinyl-wrapped pictures were like happy trapped in amber. Like little glinting slivers of skim, only without the nasty comedown. Last thing I wanted to do was deprive Big Dude of that.

  The only picture in Just Right's wallet was torn out of a girly magazine. That one I kept.
  The wallet, I mean. Jesus.

  I strolled out of the locker room whistling before one of them shut off the tap. Grabbed some jerky, bottled water, and a pair of flimsy flip-flops, and brought them to the counter. Told the kid behind the register to grab me one of the pre-paid cell phones hanging up behind him, and paid for fifty bucks in gas. Then I said, "Fuck it," and had him ring up some aloe vera while he was at it.

  I was in and out in less than seven minutes, and long gone before the shouting started. Of course, I didn't realize at the time I'd just taken a star turn on no fewer than two dozen security cameras, or that the cops who'd spotted us lowriding through the Rosita's parking lot would ID me from that footage right around the time I stopped in Phoenix to take a leak. I didn't know that they'd tie Bertha – and by extension, me – to the explosion at the strip club, or that a piece of shrapnel containing the Fiesta's VIN would lead the Feds to Ethan's doorstep around the time I hit the Nevada state line. The way I hear it, Ethan's breathless (if not entirely sensical) statement to the Federales tied a bow around the whole damned affair and set some junior G-man salivating at the prospect of nabbing the nefarious perpetrator of a real-live transcontinental crime spree. 

  Said perpetrator being me, in case that wasn't clear.

  But like I said, I wasn't aware of any of that. I just drove blithely on toward Vegas, as one by one the pieces clicked into place.

 

As I pushed open the storefront door, I was greeted by the sound of crashing surf. After two days of wandering in the desert like some latter-day Moses – you know, if Moses were undead and damned and playing for the black-hats and, OK maybe it ain't the best comparison after all – I thought maybe God was mocking me. Then a pan-flute sounded, and I spotted the boom box on the counter by the register. Propped against it was a CD case that read
Reaching Elysium: Divinity Through Relaxation
. That's when I knew for sure that God was mocking me. 

  The place wasn't much to look at. Outside, it was a bland commercial storefront in a bland commercial district of Las Vegas, cut off from the glamor of the Strip – and the benefit of its tourist dollars – by the Las Vegas Freeway. Sandwiched as it was between a nail emporium and an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, the reek of chemicals and cooking oil seemed designed to speed what little foot-traffic might happen by on their way without a second glance. Not that a second glance would've done much good. The sign over the door was cheap, hand-lettered, and simply read: PALMISTRY TAROT DIVINATION PSYCHIC READINGS LOST ITEMS FOUND. No name, no phone number, no punctuation. But from what I could dig up online on my piece-of-shit cell phone, the place had been in business for five years, and the ratings I'd read were glowing to a one. Maybe there was more to the place than its appearance would suggest.

  There fucking oughta be, I thought, or I just spent half of my last day on Earth running down a bogus lead.

  It was Gio who brought me here. With that stupid rhyme he made Roscoe memorize. With something he said back in Las Cruces.
This research shit would go a hell of a lot faster if you had an iPhone
, he'd told me.
A little Google access would make your life a whole lot easier.

  So I took his advice. Googled as much as I could remember of Roscoe's poem. Turned out, it really was a jingle – not for a psychic hotline, but for a real, live psychic hailing from Gio's old stomping grounds. She had an ad in the online edition of the
Las Vegas Weekly
, sandwiched between one touting the loosest slots in town, and one the loosest women. So if this lead didn't pan out, maybe I'd spend my last remaining hours on one of those.

  Inside, the shop was dim and close, the air-conditioned air thick with musky incense. The walls were lined with shelves stacked high with crystals and candles, charms and amulets, books of spells and jars of herbs. The ceiling was draped with fabric – an ornate batik in blue and purple. The tapestry was not quite as large as the dimensions of the ceiling itself, and was set at a forty-five degree angle to the room so that yellow-stained acoustical tiles showed in all four corners.

  At the center of the shop was a table and two chairs. The table was small and round and covered in raw silk of vibrant orange. Atop it sat a deck of Tarot cards and a wooden incense burner filled with ash. The chair nearest me looked to be one scavenged from a dining set. The one opposite the table was a threadbare lime-green wing-backed armchair. 

  In the armchair was a woman. Damn near seven
feet
of woman.

  Honestly, I don't know how I'd missed her. Her stillness, perhaps, or the fact that her garish outfit blended into the chromatic assault of the room at large. Though she was seated, she and I were nearly eye-to-eye. Her naked shoulders were even with the top of the chair back, and the yellow head wrap that hid her hair dimpled the tapestry above. She wore a scant halter of the same yellow as the head wrap and a pair of low-slung Daisy Dukes. The outfit would've been revealing on a woman half her height. Dark brown and well-muscled, she sat cockeyed on the armchair, nestled in the crook of wing and backrest, one arm slung across the chair back. Her broad shoulders and strong jaw bordered on masculine. A good six inches of cleavage tipped the scale the other way. Her legs were crossed at the knee such that one of her platform heels touched the floor, while the other dangled a ways off the ground, her shin a long diagonal. A pair of oversized Jackie O sunglasses hid her eyes from sight. As she tilted her head toward me, I caught a glimpse of my own matched-pair reflections staring back at me – twin strangers who stirred in me neither memory nor sentiment.

  "Can I help you, sugar?" she asked. Her voice was husky and well modulated. She spoke without looking at me, her head angled slightly as though listening carefully to my every move.

  "You're Lady Theresa?"
  "That's right."

  "Then I believe you can. I'm looking for someone," I said, and before I could continue, she raised a hand to hush me.

  "Darlin', ain't we all." She gestured toward the seat opposite her, cut the deck on the table. "Please, sit down."

  I sat down. She drew herself upright, and swung her legs around to face me. Seated across from her, I felt like a child. She shuffled the cards with a showman's flourish, and laid one down – a man and woman intertwined. The Lovers. "The first card dealt represents the question you've come to ask," she said. "It would seem yours centers on a matter of the heart." 

  "How can you tell?"

  She smiled. "The cards know all," she said, misunderstanding my question.

  "No," I said. "What I meant was, your ad claims you're blind. How can you tell what card you just laid down?"

  "Ah – I see. You're a skeptic. Of course, when I say, 'I see,'" she said, sliding down her sunglasses to reveal a tangle of mottled scar tissue surrounding eyes clouded white by cataracts, "you understand I'm speaking figuratively." She slid her glasses back up on her nose. "The cards speak to me," she said. "In fact, I'm pretty sure they speak to everyone. Most just don't listen well enough to hear them." 

  She laid down another card, this one above the first. A woman among the clouds with a staff in each hand, surrounded by a wreath of some sort – or perhaps an ouroboros, a serpent eating itself. "The World," she said. "It represents an ending, completion – or perhaps the culmination of a quest." 

  To the left of the first card she placed The Devil, in which a winged, horned demon held captive a man and woman, chains biting their naked flesh. She claimed it represented ignorance, obsession, lust, and hedonism. I thought it was a tad more literal than that. 

  To the right she placed Judgment, which depicted an angel sounding a trumpet, while below, gray figures rose up from stone tombs. What she said of it I didn't hear – I was too entranced by the background image of the card itself. For far behind the rising dead was a massive wave, cresting high above them all. 

  Below The Lovers, rounding out the cardinal points, she laid the card of Death.

  I'd seen enough. I pushed back from the table, my chair toppling as I rose suddenly to my feet. 

  "Is something wrong?" asked Lady Theresa. Her voice and manner were calm, as though I hadn't just freaked out and knocked over my chair. In fact, her only physical response was to slouch against the wing of the chair – legs once more out to one side, right arm draped casually over the chair back so that her hand hung out of sight.

  "I don't have time for this," I said, my voice shakier than I would've liked. "I'm looking for Francis Giordano. Do you know where I can find him?"