Ghost Dancer aka Dance of Death

CHAPTER 48

A week can be a very long time. Long enough so that the woman who refilled the coffee urns and cereal dispensers in the breakfast room began to greet Burke with a friendly smile. “How’re you today?” she’d ask, realigning doughnuts and bagels between incursions of eaters.

He was ready to go back to Dublin. But he figured he might as well play the string out and wait for Madame Puletskaya’s call. Then he could honestly say he’d done everything he could do. And there was a chance, a Super Lotto kind of chance, that Wilson himself would show up – at Mandy’s, in Fallon. Maybe Burke would get lucky.

Meanwhile, he explored.

He went to Pyramid Lake, and then out to Grimes Point, where a millennium earlier Jack Wilson’s ancestors had carved petroglyphs into the boulders. You could be standing there in the front of the glyphs, gazing into the past, while right behind you matte-black fighter jets – Tomcats and Hornets – took off and landed at the Naval Air Station.

Tuesday. June 21.

Would Madame Puletskaya even call? He sat in a chair beside the bed in his room, with a newspaper at his feet, silently rehearsing his friend-of-the-groom voice. She says/I say… It was almost ten when the phone rang. He lifted the receiver to his ear. “Hullo?”

“This is Madame Puletskaya. Good morning!”

He introduced himself.

Olga must have briefed her because she got right to the point. “You are friend of Jack’s, you say? But how do I know this?”

“I’m a good friend of Jack’s,” he told her. “He gave me your number. Told me to call. To tell you the truth, he’s so delighted with Irina, he thought I might have the same luck.”

He could almost hear Madame Puletskaya’s crusty exterior cracking like packed ice. “Beautiful girl,” she said. “I am so happy for them. Very sweet, maybe shy – you like shy girl also?”

He didn’t know what to say. “Yeah! Shy girls are… something!”

“If you are signing up for our service,” she told him, her voice manifestly shrewd, “for the Sweet Sixteen, you get sixteen pictures and e-mail contact is all. For the Great Eight, you get photos and complete biographies of eight girls, e-mail contact, one letter translated, and one delivery of flowers. This is better deal. Is more selective. And for friend of Jack, I’m especially picking only most beautiful girls. One hundred twenty-five euros. Maybe one hundred fifty dollars. You have computer? Is extra to send, but if you like, we can do FedEx.”

“About Jack-”

“We settle business first, okay? You prefer Great Eight, yes? Is better deal. And you have computer?”

He got the picture. She might be willing to talk about Jack, but she wanted to make a sale first. “Yes,” he said, “I have a computer.”

“We take Visa and Master. Also PayPal, if you prefer.”

He pulled out his wallet, and read off the numbers from his Visa card. When she had finished giving him directions on how to access his “Great Eight,” he asked her again. “The thing is, about Jack and Irina-”

“You go to wedding?

He paused, realizing he didn’t know if the wedding had occurred or not. “I… no,” he said, “but I’d really like to send a present.”

“Very nice, yes, for bride couple.”

“The thing is, Jack gave me his new address, but I don’t have it with me.”

She hesitated, but she came through. “Oh? Is beautiful place, my goodness! Irina shows me pictures. She is lucky lucky girl.” He heard typing on a keyboard, and then, as he held his breath, he listened as she read out the address.

“Post Office Box one-two-four, Juniper, Nevada.” She gave him the zip code.

“Thanks so much,” he said, thinking – shit, a post office box. “Do you have a telephone number?” He was thinking that he might be able to pull up a street address using a reverse-lookup directory.

The Russian was quiet for a moment, then said. “This, I don’t release. Privacy rules, yes?”

“It’s just that sometimes FedEx wants a phone number, that’s all.”

“There is possibility of UPS,” she told him. Then changed the subject. “Such a couple!” she declared. “This one, I can tell it works out. Sometimes, you can tell… no! It’s… what do you say? A train wreck! But this one? This one is marriage made in heaven. And for Irina? I am so happy for this girl. If nothing else, God forbid, at least she gets good medical care.”

Burke thought he’d misheard. “Medical care?”

“Sure! You have best medical care in America. I tell her this.”

“That’s what they say.”

“In Ukraine, it’s not so good. Doctors, they are all becoming taxi drivers and waiters. I can’t blame them. It’s more money. So… U.S.? It’s better for my little Irina.”

“Is she… ill?”

“No-no-no-no-no-no-no. She’s perfectly healthy, of course! Her condition, it’s perfectly under control. Ukrainebrides guarantees this: healthy young women. Every girl can have children.”

“But she has a condition,” Burke said. “If I’m going to hook up with someone-”

“Yes, but I’m telling you it’s not serious.”

“I understand, but…” He could sense her thinking on the other end of the line, worrying that she was about to lose a client.

“Okay,” she said, “but maybe you don’t mention this, okay? Irina, she’s shy about this. You’re promising?”

“Not a word. I just want to be sure – for myself.”

“Well,” Madame Puletskaya said with a sigh, “it’s like this…”

A post office box might not be the most useful address, but it was all Burke had. And when he looked up the location of Juniper, it seemed like it just might be enough. Juniper was a speck (Pop. 320) near the Idaho border, the kind of place where people would know about the new guy in town, especially if the new guy had a lot of money.

It was close to noon when he checked out. And he was beginning to worry. For the first time, the question arose in his mind: What if I actually find the sonofabitch? Then what? As he recalled, Francisco d’Anconia was kinda big. And, seemingly, pretty fit. Which wasn’t surprising when you considered that he’d spent the last ten years doing push-ups, lifting weights, and jogging around his cage.

Fortunately, this was Nevada, and gun stores were about as common as Dunkin’ Donuts shops in Massachusetts. On the way out of town, he passed a store with a rearing wooden Grizzly outside, and a sign that read “Gun & Sun.” Making a U-turn, he parked in the lot and went inside. It was a gun store that doubled as a tanning salon.

The girl behind the counter couldn’t have been more helpful. She would probably have sold him an RPG, if he’d asked. But there was a problem. “The phones are down,” she said.

“So what?” Burke asked, eyeing a sleek Beretta.

“We have to do an instant check with the state police before we can sell you a gun – to see if you have a criminal record. You don’t have a criminal record, do you?” she teased.

“No,” Burke replied.

“Sometimes they’re down for a minute – if there was a storm, or something? But sometimes it’s an hour or more. You want to wait? I could put you in one of the pods at the back, get you some color.”

Burke shook his head. “Not today. I’m kind of busy. How about a gun show? They don’t have to do a check, do they?”

“No. And you can get anything you want at one of them. Only I don’t think there is one until the weekend,” she told him. “And we’ll have our phones up before then. You sure you don’t want to get a tan?”

“No, but… is that a cell phone?” He pointed to a glass case, which held an arsenal of handguns and miscellanea. A crossbow. Some kind of… wands. Cell phones.

“It looks like a cell phone,” she said. “But it’s a stun gun. One hundred eighty thousand volts.”

“What do you do with it?” Burke asked.

“Basically, you just touch someone and… he kinda loses it.” She paused. “I could sell you that!” she said. “Cuz it’s nonlethal.”

He took I-95 to I-80 and followed it all the way to Elko. Eight hours later, he veered north in the direction of Jackpot. Soon, the pavement gave way to dirt and gravel. He drove on in a cloud of dust, locking headlights with a single car.

It was close to ten p.m. when the darkness brightened a few miles ahead. Juniper. The town consisted of two stick-built houses, facing each other across the road, and a cluster of trailers. “Downtown” was a post office, a general store, and a bar with a sign that read BUCKET OF BLOOD.

The saloon reminded Burke of the nightmare bar in Quentin Tarantino’s vampire film, but it was the only place that was open – and he was thirsty.

The Bucket of Blood had been decorated at the whim of its eccentric owner. Driven by a solar battery, a porcelain Hello Kitty sat on the bar, waving its paw unceasingly. A collection of dusty plastic horses marched along a ledge near a sign for the restroom. There was an entire wall covered with postcards, and a television set framed by a rack of elk antlers.

The Diamondbacks were at bat.

In a corner of the bar, a poker game was in progress. An old woman – her scalp visible beneath her thin red hair – pulled listlessly at one of the slots near the door. Burke bellied up to the bar, where a weedy man in a camouflage jumpsuit lifted his chin with a questioning look, as he dried a glass.

“Beer,” Burke said.

“Sierra Nevada’s on draft. Coors Light, Bud, Bud Light-”

“Sierra Nevada would be grand.” He was so tired that he didn’t really want to get into it. What he wanted was to go to bed. So he was halfway into his second beer before he got up the gumption to ask the question.

“You know a guy named Jack Wilson… lives around here?”

The bartender eyed him warily. “Who wants to know?”

Burke was about to answer, when one of the poker players looked up and laughed. “What do you care who wants to know, Denny? It’s not like the guy’s a friend of yours.”

“Maybe not, but what do you care if I care?” the bartender asked. “Play the fuckin’ game.”

“Yeah! Play the fuckin’ game,” one of the other players said.

“You in or not?” asked a third.

Burke didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The bartender put a glass of beer in front of him, and raised an eyebrow. “So?”

Burke took a sip. “Jesus, that’s good.” After a moment, he added, “Mike Burke.”

“Denny.” The bartender polished another glass.

Burke sighed. “Wilson’s foster mother is sick.”

“No shit,” the bartender replied, his voice thick with skepticism.

“No,” Burke said. “Really, she’s in a trailer, over in Fallon. The only address she had for him is a P.O. box. I said I’d try to find him, but…”

“She ain’t been up here?”

Burke shook his head. “No. But he hasn’t been up here all that long himself.”

The bartender thought about this for a moment. “About three, four months is all,” he said.

“Building a plan-e-tar-i-um,” one of the poker players remarked.

“He’s not building a planetarium,” the bartender corrected, “he’s just building a place for a telescope.”

“Big difference,” the poker player declared. “He’s still stargazin’.”

The bartender ignored everyone, his eyes on the television.

Burke wanted to get to the point, but he sensed that if he tried to rush it, he wouldn’t get anything out of these men.

“I’ll bet he’s stargazin’ right now,” said one of the players at the card table. “You got your solstice tomorrow. Longest day of the year.”

“That concerns the sun,” the bartender told him.

“Uhhh, Denny?” the poker player said. “The sun’s a star?!” The other players at the table laughed.

The bartender turned to Burke. “This foster mother,” he said, “she doesn’t have his telephone number?”

A shout rose up from around the card table. “H-whoaa! The Bat was bluffin’! The Bat was bluffin’ your ass!”

The lady at the slot machine came over to the bar and pushed her glass toward Denny. She had the wistful eyes of a child, and a weather-beaten face. She was forty or sixty, Burke couldn’t be sure. The bartender mixed her a 7 & 7, then turned to Burke and pointed west.

“It’s about sixty miles,” he said. “Nice place. National forest all around him.” He drew a tiny map on the back of a coaster, keeping up a running commentary as he made it. “There’s a blue trailer on your right, all beat to shit. Got some of them pink flamingo statues in the front. You see that, you hang a left, and it’s about fifteen miles from there. You’ll see the sign over the fence. B-Lazy-B. Can’t miss it.”

“Bullshit!” someone exclaimed.

The bartender smiled. “Well, yeah, I guess you could miss it, but…” He handed the coaster to Burke. “What are you drivin’?”

Burke shrugged, and laughed to himself. “I forget. It’s a rental.”

“Off-road?”

“No.”

The bartender leaned back. “But it’s an SUV, right?”

“No. It’s just… a sedan.”

An incredulous wince. “Well, that’s gonna be exciting.”

The slot machine gushed, and a siren went off. A waterfall of coins crashed to the floor. The woman just stared.

“You want one for the road?” the bartender asked.

Before Burke could answer, one of the poker players corrected him. “You mean one for the goat track!”

Everyone laughed.

Burke, too.