Murder in Vegas

THE DOPE SHOW by K.j.a. Wishnia

“You know, you’re probably the only guy I know who opens a porno mag and reads the fine print,” said Hughie, taking his eyes off the three-girl routine on the runway.

“You gotta hear this,” said the big man from Turkey. “‘The photos, words, and illustrations in this magazine are intended for fantasy purposes only. The editors do not suggest or encourage readers to act out fantasies contained herein-’”

“Tell me the sleazebag editor came up with that legal language-”

“‘We encourage safe sex practices and present this magazine as a safe fantasy alternative to dangerous sex practices.’”

“So now it’s a public service. Wonderful.” Hughie leaned against the bar and lit a cigarette. “I wish I’d have thought of that when Father Dougan caught me with a stack of his old Playboys. Jeez, they still cropped off the bush in those days.”

Hughie exhaled up at the pin spots defining a smoky shaft of light over the bar, and looked around the place. It was small enough to be comfortable, with only one way in but four waysout, including two fire exits and the stage door, and that made him less comfortable. Too much craziness could take off in too many directions. Still, it was slightly off the beaten path, smoky and anonymous. Perfect. Or almost.

His gaze returned to the twisting trio.

Then the DJ broke into the thumping strip tune, interrupting Hughie’s concentration with a voice that belonged in a sports arena: “And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment pleasure, please give it up for Candee’s own vixen with the fixin’s, Tracy Tetons!”

Tracy strutted on stage and started shaking those implanted things, just like she did five times a day, Tuesday through Sunday. Mondays off. Hughie watched her using the pole in a way that was functional but mechanical. Oh, it got the job done, all right, but something was missing.

“She’s getting better,” Hughie said.

Yilmaz either grunted something noncommittal or hocked up a loogie. Hughie couldn’t tell which.

“How’d she come up with the name Tracy Tetons?” said Hughie.

“Because Alyssa Alps and Pandora Peaks were taken.”

“She could have called herself Plenty O’Cleavage.”

“Also taken.”

“You’re kidding.”

Yilmaz shook his head, his iridescent blazer outlining a pair of pumped-up deltoids. “I think she should have called herself Persistence Pays.”

“It’s lyrical, but it’s not ironic.”

“It’s not in on the joke?”

“It’s too bitchy.”

“Bitchy sells, too, my friend.”

Hughie took a deep drag on his death stick and blew it out through his nose.

Yilmaz said, “I need to get some air.”

“Wait a minute, I’ll go with you.”

Hughie took one more look around the dark interior of the club. His mark hadn’t come in yet, but it was a good habit to double-check even a sure thing.

It was one of his few good habits.

They leaned outside and breathed in the clean desert air. Thestreet off Fremont was all quiet, and misty with late afternoon shadows, portending a shower.

“Boy, rain in Vegas,” said Hughie. “What are the odds of that?”

“That’s not real rain,” said Yilmaz, looking up at the sky. “That’s a special effect.”

Earl’s butt was hurting. Eleven hours in the driver’s seat and it was starting to feel as if eyeless robots had spot-welded his can to the truck’s cold steel undercarriage as it rolled off the assembly line back in Flint, when they were still hiring. And for what? A long container full of sand. Nothing worth skimming from this haul. No compensation at all for a royal pain in the butt gig like this, and to make things worse, there was no one to laugh it off with.

So when he finally saw the great pyramids of dirt rising over the leafless trees and razor wire-topped steel mesh along the narrow, deserted road, he started to expel the hours of pent-up venom, releasing all that nastiness through his hairy nostrils with several deep breaths.

Okay, okay, under control-dump the load, check into the Motel 21 a few miles back, shower, and hit the bars on the edge of town until he found a semicircle of truckers who would understand the trip from hell and help him forget about it.

Earl could practically taste the foam on that first beer when he pulled up and found the steel gate closed and padlocked.

“Aw, fer chrissakes.” He honked a few times, long and loud, and sat there idling. Just twenty feet beyond the galvanized gate, two big pickup trucks and a rot-fringed four-door sat in front of a low white building. A six-foot-wide American flag was flapping on a pole as the sky darkened. Huge piles of broken concrete waited to be ground down into lofty ziggurats of rock and further refined into mounds of sand. Earl checked his watch. The dispatcher had told him that the place closed at 4 p.m. on Saturdays and here he was a few minutes early, so where the heck were they?

He waited some more, as the rain started to pit-pat on theroof of his cab. Soon, tiny rivers of dirty water were running down the windshield. He honked again, three, four times, and sat there waiting.

Finally some bone-thin guy came out of the building and trotted over to the gate, trying to button his after-work shirt, looking just like a scrap of newspaper as the loose white flaps were whipped by the wet wind. Earl threw the truck into gear, but the guy just stood there yelling something. Earl rolled down the window, letting big drops of dirty rain spatter his arm, but he still couldn’t hear the guy over the drone of the big diesel engine. So he set it in neutral, opened the door and leaned out into the hard rain and yelled, “What’s goin’ on, buddy?”

“We’re closed!”

“Whadaya mean, you’re closed? I’ve got a delivery here for you!”

“We’re closed! Come back Monday!”

“Monday? What the heck am I supposed to do till Monday?” But the guy was already running back inside, white shirt flaps flying behind him.

Jesus, if they think I’m going to… Earl decided to sit there until whoever was in there wanted to leave for the night. They’d have to open the gate, and then he could at least push his way in and drop the load. He waited while the rain hammered out hard knocks on the metal roof. The office lights stayed off. No one approached any of the vehicles. It got dark.

Two hours after nightfall, Earl cursed the heartless bastards inside the gate and turned the truck around.

He laid out twenty-nine dollars for a room, then went to a roadside diner with a special seating area for truckers only, and sat there under the pale fluorescent lights staring blankly out the window at the dreary sheets of rain bathing his truck with slick reflections of cold blue and green neon. But thin gray burgers speckled with globular coagulations and single-serving slices of apple pie shrink-wrapped in another state were not enough to satisfy his appetite as he sat there wondering what he was going to do for two whole nights in a hot town like this with only seventy bucks in his pocket.

“So what are you saying?” asked Hughie, lighting another cigarette.

“I’m saying that some porn is arousing, but I don’t like these spread-fingered pussy shots. They make it look like a gynecology textbook,” Yilmaz explained, waving the sulfrous fumes away from his nostrils. “No mystery.”

“You mean they’re giving porn a bad image?”

“I mean there’s a fine line between seductive and repulsive.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Hughie, nodding. “Like when you got a buzz on, those sixty-inch tits look fantastic. But when you examine them under the cold light of reason, they’re merely incredible.”

“Okay, okay. Maybe because there was so much repression back in my country, you don’t appreciate how excessive it seems to me. But you’d think one of these would be enough. So why do guys subscribe to porno mags?”

“Because they’re guys.”

“Yes, but I mean, why do they keep consuming new images?”

“Obviously, because we can’t get enough of the stuff.”

“Exactly. You keep coming back for more. Why?”

“You gotta ask why?”

“Yes. Why the need to keep coming back? Most of it’s the same old stuff wrapped in a new package.”

“Well, let’s hear it for new packages,” said Hughie, faux-toasting with a glass of sparkling water.

“It’s all about consumption, even if it’s only paper. Because porn isn’t just selling you body parts, it’s selling a myth.”

“You mean the myth that in any town in the world, there are girls who’ll fuck you ’cause they just love to have hot sex with total strangers.”

“Yeah, I guess so. There’s all this build-up, and then nothing-just emptiness.”

“Just like real sex,” said Hughie.

“Maybe for you.”

“Droppen-zie dead, you freaking Turk.” He went back to watching Tracy, who had started using the American flag as a prop. “She sure ain’t made of paper.”

“And the emptiness creates a new search for fulfillment.”

“It’s a vicious cycle.”

“It’s the dope show.”

“Tracy’s got talent, ya big bouncer,” he said, blowing smokeout with each word. Back when she was Sherri Kayne, she had stolen the show in Vampire Women of Mars. She had something special, Hughie thought, some kind of-presence. And she hadn’t asked for trouble. First that king-of-the-cheapies director pulls her from a crowd of hot-waxed bikini-lined extras and starts making her over into a B-movie up-and-comer. Natch he starts putting the moves on her. Then her friggin’ creep-of-a-boyfriend, Jimmy Crowell, aka Jimmy Crowbar, a three-time loser wanted by the LAPD for chopping up a few late model vehicles, gets his nuts in a knot and tries to wrap a tire iron around said director’s throat. And now lots of people want to talk to Jimmy C., but only Empire Studios laid down the real money, which is why this PI from East L.A. is hanging around this crummy Vegas strip club waiting to see if Jimmy the ex-boyfriend turns up or not.

“Drink?” offered Yilmaz.

“Too early. I’m working.”

“Oh, right.”

It was practically bounty hunting. But it wasn’t easy to find a guy like Jimmy C., if he wanted to stay hidden. Jimmy used to hang with the West Coast Hog Fuckers and so he had about a hundred ganged-up places to scurry into like a rat up a drainpipe. Yes, Jimmy C. was sure hard to find. But she was a whole other story. He found her easily enough. She had been pumped full of implants, had a few skin tucks, and changed her name to Tracy Tetons-and was still hot as hell at 43. But she could also hear her biological clock clanging away like a two-ton church bell in her ears.

“You know where Jimmy is?” he had asked her, leaning against the coats in the tiny dressing room.

“Who the hell cares? Men are pigs. Fuck ’em all,” she replied, jamming her eyeliner back into the tube.

“A word to the willfully ignorant. If you don’t pay attention to what’s going on around you, you are in for a lifetime of being screwed. And the people who are doing the screwing would like nothing better than to hear you say, ‘Who the hell cares?’ Just a warning.”

“Everything he ever told me was a lie, okay? So how am I supposed to know where he is? I just hope I never see the freakin’ SOB again,” she said.

So he’d had no choice, really, but to pay a few subcontractors to spread the word around the ex-boyfriend’s most recent hangouts letting it be known where Sherri, aka Tracy, could be found, then sit back and wait for the schmuck to walk right into his hands. And to stop him before he broke her neck, which he had threatened to do. But then, every guy feels like killing his girl at some point, Hughie thought. The only difference is that this guy might actually do it.

“You think he’ll show up?” said Yilmaz.

“He’ll show up.”

“Ain’t you confident.”

“Only way to be in this town.” Hughie turned his eyes back to Tracy’s act.

He said, “Now, that’s what I call wrapping yourself in the flag.”

Earl looked up at the cloudless neon skies of downtown Vegas and thought that things were definitely looking better. Twenty dollars had effervesced into beer-and-shot combos, and he was just drunk enough to enjoy the feeling, with plenty of room leftover for some more fun. Then some local hick had walked him around and around the blocks promising him some face time with a legal 18-year-old named Crystal or Chrissy, till his mind was going in such circles that the guy pulled the old give-me-the-money-so-I-can-run-around-the-corner-and-get-her scam and he just handed over a twenty and watched the guy go, and immediately felt like a dope for letting himself get taken in like that.

So when another local hick approached him on the sidewalk and asked,

“What’s your favorite color?”

He answered, “Screw you blue.”

“Okay,” said the hick, ignoring the rest and handing him a blue card that said FREE PLAY on it. “You go in here with that and tell them I said you could have a free play.”

Earl wandered up to a wooden shed in the gap between two buildings. Some fat guy who looked like a puffy-necked, cigar-smoking toad occupied a stool behind the painted greencounter. On the wall in back of him were rows of numbers and an array of photos of smooth, rosy bodies cut from magazines that caused a stirring in his chest, and fire down below. Blemish-free photos of fecund and callipygous women who silently offered themselves to him in an unspoken promise of what he could do later with his winnings.

The old gray toad took a look at Earl’s card.

“Free play?” said the toad. “Free play it is,” and he had Earl roll six dice at once from a cup. “Hey! Good roll!” He added up the numbers on the dice. “Two, eight, thirteen, sixteen, twenty, twenty-four.” He pointed to the number 24 on the green felt square laid across the counter between them. “What’s that say?”

Earl looked at the small green print under the number: “Fifty points.”

“Fifty points. Remember, one hundred wins. You’re half-way there already. You wanna roll again for a dollar?”

“What do I win?”

“A hundred bucks and your choice of one of these fine gifts,” the old gray toad said, jerking his thumb toward a flimsy shelf behind him that held some electronic gadgets and other, unlicensed entertainments. One free roll and he was already halfway there. He looked at all those gorgeous females, and their smiles sweetly sang to him, urging him to do it.

He bet a dollar and rolled.

“Hey!” said the toad, counting up the score and pointing to the number on the board. “What’s that say?”

“Twenty points,” said Earl.

“Great, you’ve got seventy points. Just a dollar for another roll.”

He rolled. Mr. Toad counted up the score. “Hey! Two for one! You get two dollars back. You’re doing great! Want to roll again?”

Hell, he was getting closer, and so far it hadn’t cost him a dime. He rolled. The old toad counted up the numbers.

“Twenty-eight! What’s that say?”

“Bonus!”

“Bonus! The pot doubles to two hundred dollars, for a five-dollar bet. Okay? Five dollars.”

He rolled.

“Three, five, six, ten, sixteen, twenty-two. What’s that say?”

“Fifteen points.”

“That’s eighty-five points. All you need is fifteen. Five dollar bet?”

The women on the wall told him that if he kept going, they would soon be his.

“Okay.”

“One good roll will do it. Two, three, six, eight, eleven, thirteen-sorry, buddy, you lose. No play. Try again?”

He plunked down a five and rolled.

“Four, nine, twelve, seventeen, twenty-three-I don’t believe this. What’s that say?”

“Twenty-eight.”

‘Twenty-eight! Bonus! The pot doubles to four hundreds dollars for a ten-dollar bet. Ten dollars? One good roll will do it. Ten dollars?”

He took up the offer.

“Two, three, seven, thirteen, nineteen, twenty-what’s that say?”

“Five points.”

“You’ve got ninety points. One good roll will do it.”

He rolled.

“Twenty-eight! I don’t believe this! The pot is eight hundred, for a twenty-dollar bet.”

He rolled. It was a winning roll. But the old toad counted wrong. He knew the numbers. He pulled the old “What’s that say?” bit and Earl shifted his eyes to the board for less than a second as the mottled old toad scooped the dice up.

“Three points,” said Earl.

“Three points. Ya got a ninety-three. All you need is seven for a twenty-dollar bet.”

And suddenly Earl realized that he had dropped fifty dollars already. It happened so quickly. But his pockets were definitely empty. He had no more cash. How could that be? But he was so close! How could that be?

“And this,” said Yilmaz, pointing to the text.

“What?”

“Boobalicious. Is that even a word?”

“Aw, give it a rest already,” said Hughie, lighting another cigarette.

“Wish you’d give it a rest,” said Yilmaz, waving the smoke away with the tit mag.

“You picked a hell of a profession for a guy who doesn’t like the smell of smoke. It’s still legal here, isn’t it?”

“For now.”

“What’s that mean?”

“The service staff are talking about getting a ban on smoking in the workplace.”

“Get outa here. I thought anything goes in this town.”

“It does, but it’s also a strong union town.”

“How is that possible?”

“Because the big hotels and casinos can’t pull up stakes and fuck off to Mexico or Malaysia. That’s how.”

“Oh. Can I still get that drink?”

“You ready for one?”

“Tracy’s last show starts in ten minutes, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m ready.”

Yilmaz two-finger waved the bartender over.

“Your bosses okay with this?” asked Hughie.

“I’m okay with this.”

“Okay, okay. I wanna check out the street again.”

The place was called Candee’s, and it offered just what it said in red-and-white neon, like a candy cane that’s bad for your teeth. Earl parked his truck curbside and walked up to the entrance. Two big guys in suits looked his truck over, and rolled their eyes at each other as he went inside.

The one who was smoking said, “This just keeps getting better.”

But Earl had been suckered twice on his way to the land of enchantment, and he wasn’t taking any more detours. He sidled up to a stool at the edge of the runway and straddled it heavily, the cushion deflating with a faint pffff as his well-worntrucker’s butt settled in for a ten-hour ride. Then he ordered a double bourbon with a beer chaser from the waitress who appeared instantly at his elbow.

Now this was more like it. Definitely more like it. Warm, welcoming atmo-sphere. No one looking at his grease-stained jeans. Instant service. His every desire fulfilled. And her. She was beautiful. She was marvelous. She gave him everything she had to offer, yet she still seemed to be holding back. The contradiction was excruciating.

“She’s the real thing,” he said, throat dry.

“Huh?” said the guy next to him, bewildered by the suggestion, given the vast anatomical evidence before his eyes.

Earl felt a keen electrical tingling, as if Tracy’s pendulous orbs were positively charged particles which repelled each other on exposure to air and gave rise to goosebumps as pristine as the bright mountains of the moon.

He erased the memory that there were no more dollar bills in his pocket by ordering another double shot and beer, then another, then some others, as he stared, dazzled by the glitter, and wooed by the dark, seductive valleys between her perfectly smooth golden globes.

When they asked for money, he drew some loopy dollar signs on a Candee’s cocktail napkin with a flaky yellow pencil and tried to fill in the numbers, but the napkin kept getting wet and it was hard to draw those screwy fives when the paper kept tearing and he was laughing so hard and by then the bouncers were hauling him off, anyway.

Constellations had spun half the night away before Earl dribbled his name on an IOU or something and passed out on a mildewy mattress whose springs rose up like bits of ironwood in a furrow of hard-packed earth.

Now he sat there, rubbing at the grit around his eyes. His eyeballs felt like there was sand in them, somewhere deep inside where he couldn’t reach.

He had been dreaming of somebody’s white ancestors meeting a group of natives, hands held out in greeting, but they didnot speak a word of each other’s languages, and the whites ended up slaughtering the redskins with repeating rifles.

He sat there for quite a while, rubbing the images from his mind, not knowing what to do with a truckload of sand and too little money to have the only kind of fun that would get a man through a lonely Sunday in this heartless land. But when he reached into his pockets and found no reassuring crinkle of paper, just the dull clink of a few humble coins, he realized something:

He didn’t remember a thing.

About last night, that is.

In fact, the only thing he remembered was that he had another day to kill.

He sat there mumbling, “How am I going to make it to Monday?” And he turned toward the corroding aluminum window frame and looked out at the truck.

For a moment he thought it had been knocked over by the wind, then his vision corrected for hangovers and he realized that the rear gate was open and swinging in the early morning breeze.

He shivered reflexively while peeing, then he pulled on his heavy work boots and got a cool whiff of distant prairie as he stepped over the puddles in the gravel parking lot and approached the creaking metal door.

The sand was missing.

He went back to the diner first, driving his empty rig along the highway under heavy gray clouds that made the wet black asphalt look blacker still, thinking about that desk guy at the motel who didn’t know squat. I’m just the night I’m just the night clerk. Jee-zus!

As he pushed the glass door’s tubular metal handle, the sharp smell of frying onions bit into his nose hairs and the smoke seemed to leave a layer of grease on his skin.

He fished around in his pockets and came up with a handful of nickels and quarters, blew the lint off the coins, and got himself coffee and two donuts, then a couple of refills on the coffee.

He sat and stared at a sticker on the cash register declaringUNITED WE STAND in red, white, and blue letters. But the shifts had changed, and nobody remembered having seen a rig with a bone-white cargo container coming through around two in the morning.

He drove slowly back downtown to see if somehow-somehow-he could have possibly lost the load on the way to the motel. But even as he scanned the reddish-brown-encrusted hubcaps and broken bottles lining the edge of the road, he knew this was one of those silly dead ends your mind races into when it can’t separate the maybes from the are-you-kiddings because it isn’t quite ready to face the reality that it managed to lose track of five tons of mother-loving sand.

Get a grip, dude. Reconstruct. No. What’s the word? Retrace. Yeah. Retrace your steps. That’s it. Because he was sure that his cargo was still there when he had pulled into town. And that was only a few hours ago, really. Well, it was-let me see-twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours ago. Shoot. Had it been that long?

The music twanged, familiar and comfortable, describing a love gone sour in a collection of metaphors relating to farm equipment with bad traction. The light was smoky and warm, just dim enough to bury the grime in the shadows. God, he felt at home here.

Old Glory’s stripes hung horizontally on the wall behind the bar, not stretched too tightly, so the thing kind of sagged in the middle.

“What’ll it be, sugar?” The hostess smiled at him from her spot over by the plastic-topped beer taps.

“I was here last night.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“Sure I was.”

“You must be thinking of somewhere else.”

“You must’ve been drunk.” Others cut in.

“Buddy, we’re gonna have to ask you to leave.”

Several minutes later he realized he was back in the parking lot.

Thrown out of a bar? Just for asking if they saw his truck? Unless he really was in the wrong place.

No, that’s crazy. He remembered the flag.

He pulled into a truck stop and let the engine idle, filling the cab with burnt, intestinal smells. No. Was somebody yanking his chain? He figured he’d have noticed a big pile of sand along the road if someone had decided to take it for a joyride and dump it in the middle of an intersection as their idea of a prank.

He had retraced his steps, and they led nowhere. So much for trying to figure this out on his own.

Well, I guess it’s time to bring the law into it, he reasoned.

“You’re a-telling me that someone stole your sand?”

“Well, yeah, okay?”

“Five tons of sand.”

“Yeah.”

The flag curled around the sheriff’s sleeve, the only color on the crisp tan fabric. It caught his eye.

“Let me see your license.”

He handed it over.

The sheriff squinted at it.

“Earl Q. Sparer,” the sheriff said. “What’s the Q for?”

“Cucumber.”

“Smart guy, eh?”

“Sorry. It’s been a long day.”

The sheriff looked at Earl’s rig. Dark gray clouds were rolling across his mirrorshades.

“Must’ve been a long night, too, huh?” he said finally. “There’s no sign of sand in the parking lot. You’d think they’d have spilled some.”

“Well, I don’t figure they stole it off the truck while it was parked here,” Earl explained. “They took the truck and dumped the cargo somewheres else.”

“And brought the truck back to you, all vacuumed, with the gas tank full? Sure they didn’t leave a mint on your pillow at the motel, too?”

“That would explain the sticky stuff I found on the back of my neck this morning.”

“You leave it idling?”

“No, sir.”

“Then they must’ve had a key. Any idea how they’d get a key? Anybody in this town got a copy of the keys to your truck, mister?”

Cars whizzed wetly by, indifferent to his puzzlement, patriotic colors stamped on their windows and bumpers.

“Must’ve been some mighty special kind of sand, I guess.”

“Yeah, it was real coarse-”

“Quit wasting my time, ya drunk.”

He watched the sheriff go.

This place was smack in the middle of some of the friendliest country on earth, but it was starting to feel like the flat butthole of the universe right now.

He sat inside the truck, put his head down in the crook of his elbow for a second and awoke, stiff and numb, about two hours later. It was getting late.

The neon lights were all ablaze, and he drove around staring at them, his eyes bulging and tongue drooping out like a fish slowly expiring in a bucket. So when he caught a glimpse of the curvy red-and-white letters spelling out the magical name Candee’s, it seemed like he had rediscovered a lost treasure from his youthful days gone by.

The inside of the club was both new and familiar to him, but when he saw her strutting across the boards with the old red, white and blue snapping the air behind her, he knew he had found his way back home.

He accepted the immediate offer of a drink before he remembered that there was nothing but lint in his pockets. Oh well, he thought, placing his elbows on the edge of the glorious runway. He propped his head up with his hands, and stared at the heavens above.

He was feeling fine enough to order another round when four hands dropped from the heavens and gripped his arms in a firm, friendly way.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“You ran up quite a tab here last night,” said Yilmaz.

“Oh. Was that here?”

“Sure was,” said Yilmaz. The other guy said nothing.

Nobody took their hands off him, either.

“Hey, no hard feelings,” said Yilmaz, easing Earl off the stool and leading him over to the bar.

“Yeah, it’s Vegas,” said Hughie. “Crossroads of the world. We’ll work it out. No problem.”

“You sure?” asked Earl.

“We can work it out,” said Hughie, letting go of Earl’s arm.

“And just to show you there’s no hard feelings-” Yilmaz laid a huge hand on Earl’s shoulder and called the bartender over. “Hey Eddie, bring my friend here whatever he wants.”

“Really? No kiddin’?” asked Earl.

“Really.”

Behind his back, Yilmaz crossed two fingers and shook them twice, the sign for the bartender to spike the chump’s drink with a couple of grams of chloral hydrate.

“Say, you guys are all right,” said Earl, turning to watch Tracy grind away. She was getting near the climax of her act. “Ain’t she something?”

“She sure is,” Hughie assured him.

Yilmaz spoke close to Hughie’s ear: “It’s slow-acting. It’ll take a good half-hour.”

“Oh, great. Another half-hour of this B.S.,” said Hughie.

“What’s your problem? It’s the club’s money.”

“He’s a distraction.”

“We could always hit him with a baseball bat.”

“Wood or aluminum?”

“Call me old-fashioned.”

“Wood it is, then.”

But Earl was oblivious to their words. He was mesmerized. Then as he watched the music of Tracy’s perfect hemispheres tracing geometrical arcs and bisecting them on the return swing, something seemingly unrelated clicked in his mind.

Where would you hide a twenty-foot high pile of sand? And suddenly he knew the truth in his heart.

In the refinery.

But just as he was finishing his drink, the double doors swung open, flooding the floor with neon, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a sharp-nosed biker with a thin vato mustache come in and stride too quickly toward the runway.

“That’s my guy! It’s Crowell!” said Hughie, dropping his cigarette on the floor.

Tracy froze in mid-pivot, horrified, but the music kept on pounding as the two big guys jumped on the biker, took himdown with a pair of knees in the back, and slammed his face repeatedly into the linoleum floor tiles in near-perfect accompaniment to the slamming beat.

Yilmaz held Jimmy C. down and twisted one of the punk’s wrists up so Hughie could slap the handcuffs on it. Tracy was screaming something nasty, Jimmy was flipping like a shark on a hook, and Yilmaz and Hughie had broken out in a sweat trying to get Jimmy’s other wrist shackled up. But finally it was all over. Hughie stood up, wiped his brow with a couple of bev naps the waitress handed him, and looked around the room.

“Hey, where’s the freaking truck driver?”

He looked outside and saw that the truck was gone.

The dusky wind blew up great puffs of dirt, blocking out the sky in a small region of this wide planet. Then the rain picked up, and that settled the dirt some. Earl parked the truck a little way past the big steel gate, and walked slowly downhill to the refinery, loose chunks of asphalt and broken glass scraping under his thick-soled work boots.

The ground had been excavated, the dirt mined. The soil had fallen away in so many places it was easy for a big guy like him to slip in under the chain link fence. But the grade was steep and loose, and he slipped half-way down the pile of dirt and pebbles, which skittered after him and hopped into his boots.

He carefully slid the rest of the way down the sloping walls of the big sand pit and landed on a reassuringly flat surface of dark granular crystals. Pulverized rock of some kind. Coal or garnet, maybe. He shook the pebbles out of his boots, and kept wandering, searching for a particular kind of sand.

The amber glow of the security lights licked the curved wet surfaces of three metallic storage towers, making them look like three tall church candles standing in a row. The glow turned the treetops orange, too, as if they were about to ignite into flames. Sporadic clumps of dead leaves clung to the branches like tiny pterodactyls, ready to spring.

He was staring up at them when he stepped off the flat granular path and slipped more than a dozen feet down a loose dirt hill, so soft he sank up to his ankles and got dirt in his shoes.

And it rained hard blows.

Damn! So much frustration.

He was so tired of looking. Tired of having to go from here to there, and always having to make repairs, and fill out forms, and wait, and wait to fill out more forms. Tired of always stumbling through the mud.

The rain was softer now.

He thought of Tracy’s tender touches.

Yes. It was good to finally sleep in the sand.

He went through the power screen six times, until he was as refined as the sand they mixed him with.