Silver Zombie

Chapter Twenty-two

“DON’T WORRY, MOM-SHRINK,” a mischievous Ric told Helena Troy Burnside as we escorted her and her chic Chanel carry-on bag to the airport waiting area the next day. “It makes you look your age.”

He leaned in to kiss her cheek and drew quickly back, to duck her reaction.

“You cactus-tongued young devil.” Helena’s mock annoyance ended with a smile.

Then she eyed me. “I don’t get it. Yesterday was all revelation and darkness and angst, and now you two crazy kids are acting like”—she suddenly did get it—“… honey … moon … ers.”

“We’re working it out in private therapy,” Ric told her. “Hard.”

She shook her head. “Just don’t go off and do anything foolish without sending me and Philip an invitation.”

“Nothing rash,” I assured her, “or requiring dyed-to-match satin sandals.”

“I’m always an email or phone call away,” she reassured us in turn.

I leaned in, feeling awkward. I smelled an old-lady-type perfume like Estée Lauder White Linen (a name too evocative of ancient Egypt for me) and maybe a lingering whiff of psychic shell shock.

I imitated Ric in laying light hands on her silk-suited sleeves and kissed her smooth cheek.

Eek, Irma caroled. I kissed a girl.

“Delilah, dear—” Helena embraced me back to cover the sudden tears in her eyes. “It’s been a privilege to be with you at … this watershed time in your life.”

She turned almost blindly to click off on her kicky Stuart Weitzman pumps to check in at the gate.

“Kiss-ass,” Ric whispered mockingly in my ear. “I always thought Helena secretly would have liked a daughter.”

I couldn’t meet his eyes as fast as I wanted to. “She’s a cool lady. We both owe her.”

We walked away from the gate, not looking back. Ric slung an arm over my shoulders. “You did that like a pro, chica. Bueno. Brava.”

“So, favorite son,” I asked, overdue in moving on from my Hallmark moment with his foster mother, “why’d you need to get Helena out of town so fast?”

Our pace had picked up and Ric moved on the conversation too. “Tallgrass and I have haven’t been just spying on cows and zombie trail riders while you’ve been pursuing sentimental journeys to Old Wichita landmarks,” he said softly. “We’ve been looking for a nexus.”

“A new brand of car?”

“A Nexus. GM would love that. Not bad marketing, but no. We now know the what and why of weird events that have been going on in Wichita lately, but not the who and where. So, it’s time we all get back on the same investigative track and take these suckers down. Okay by you?”

“Very okay.”

“That doesn’t preclude nocturnal time-outs,” he added, grinning until I elbowed him in the Dos Equis six-pack.

BY THE TIME we reached a demure, top-up Dolly in the parking lot, Leonard Tallgrass’s big-wheel black pickup was parked alongside her, with Quicksilver on guard in its high empty bed.

“I saw you three heading into the terminal,” Tallgrass told Ric through his rolled-down window. “That your foster mother?”

Ric nodded.

“She married?”

Ric nodded.

Leonard Tallgrass shook his head and reinstalled his straw Stetson. “Always knew there wasn’t any justice in the universe.” He nodded at the high-riding pickup’s rear. “No dogs risk their lives to ride in my truck bed, not even your whip-smart Quicksilver, Miss Delilah. So get down your Dolly Parton’s top, and I’ll lead you three to the most amazing sight Wichita has ever seen.”

“TALLGRASS IS A character,” I told Ric as he drove Dolly two tailpipe-lengths behind the black pickup.

“He plays on that, yeah. Since he’s Native American, people underestimate him. Not even the Millennium Revelation changed that.”

“And you’re wearing your silky, pale Vegas suit today, dude,” I pointed out. “That for seeing off ‘Mom’?”

“That’s on Tallgrass’s orders. And, except for those fashionista hair plaits, you look ultra-reporterly, as I requested, in those closed-toed pumps and that navy Catholic girls’ school suit.”

“Was that a personal or professional request?” I asked.

I may have triggers of my own, but I was beginning to target his. Ric liked me either very buttoned up or very stripped and unzipped, although he’d put up with in-between if he had to.

“Professional,” he answered promptly. “We might be going into the devil’s den today.”

“And you won’t tell me any more?”

He shook his head. “You work better as an investigator on instinct.”

“Really? That could be a put-down.”

“Really, Del. And it’s a compliment. Tallgrass and I have an agenda where we’re going, but if you want to strike out on your own, do it. You have those sterling-silver instincts. Where is that little devil now, anyway?”

I had to think about it, finally dredging up a thin silver chain from the modest vee opening of my jacket.

“Would you believe,” I told him, “I’ve got an Our Lady of the Lake class ring on a chain around my neck? I couldn’t afford to buy a class ring when I graduated on scholarship.”

“I’m sure they can be ordered retroactively,” Ric said, following Tallgrass on a left turn and then gawking up at the sky. “Wow. Would you believe that?”

I was still clinging to the promise of a class ring when I looked up past Dolly’s red visor to an endless blue summer Kansas sky pierced by a seventy-story Hollywood sound-stage icon made real. We’d been exploring the wrong, west side of town. Obviously, the big-time action was all on the east side, where the sun rose.

Well, using my new “at least” philosophy, I at least had a watchdog and a couple of ex-FBI guys to accompany my triumphal entrance to the Emerald City of Wichita.

Hah! Even Quicksilver looked a tad worried about driving right under the Emerald City. Once Ric and Tallgrass had parked our bulky vehicles beside each other in the lot, we paused to gaze up and up at the slick towers so like a cluster of giant sparkling water bottles, green and shiny.

“Fits the prairie setting. They look like plastic silos,” I commented.

Tallgrass chuckled, looking down through his high driver’s seat window.

“Don’t tell my pal Ben Hassard that. He’s fought like a cornered wolverine to get this opportunity for our tribes.”

“This is a Native American project?” Ric asked.

“Yup. First one outside reservation land. Whole new world, amigo.” Tallgrass collapsed a couple sticks of Black Jack gum in his mouth and chewed it like a wad of Red Man. “I did my best to discourage Ben, but he’s got this far and is in there dealing with the white man even now.”

My eyes and ears were panoramic webcams, recording, recording. This was a Big Story, right here in Wichita, where the unending march of gambling money that funded state operating needs met the reinterpretation of what was owed the decimated Native populations. Entertainment entities from CSI to Emerald City were taking over the heartland’s minds and landscapes.

Too bad I didn’t have a venue to report anymore.

Quicksilver nudged his head under the loosely curled hand at my side and whimpered. He either agreed with me about the sad decline of professional news reporting in the post–Millennium Revelation world, or he wanted a puppy biscuit.

RIC WAS COUNTING on me to be a quick study, so I did my Wizard of Aahs fan-girl bit and filled them in.

First I had to go through the “dazzle” phase.

The Wizard of Oz, known for its spectacular Technicolor, was on my list of key black-and-white movies because it started with the classic Kansas farm and tornado scenes. Color technology was literally being expanded that very year, 1939, to become the forever-future format.

All black-and-white photo and film freaks felt nothing had the impact of a stark yet incredibly nuanced noncolor palette. Black resulted from all colors of the rainbow put together. White was the absence of all color. These perfect partners produced a new rainbow in shades of gray.

Like all near-Millennium babies, though, in real life I jonesed on opulent color in reel life. So the first glimpse of the Emerald City finally sold me on Oz, the motion picture. The studio artists, beset more by a tight schedule than the MGM budget, had blended a Disney cartoon castle with the blown-glass bubbles of futuristic space communities and had shown it all through green-colored lenses.

Add the nitrous-oxide, high-pitched voices of trilling Munchkins to the sound track, and I was in heaven.

Today, I gazed in real life at a double rainbow halo arching over seventy-some stories of gleaming gemstone-green glass towers. Then the genius of it hit me. The Emerald City was the quintessential green project. It was fantasy-futuristic for our times.

So cruising around the stunning structure again to park in the mostly deserted lot, we considered what to do.

“I don’t get,” Ric told Tallgrass, “why we’re here to snoop. Anybody who’d use domestic cows as drug mules and souped-up zombies on speed as herders wouldn’t be involved in an airy-fairy project like this Cloud Cuckoo-land extending umpteen stories above us.”

“Two big little words,” Tallgrass answered. “Money laundering. Fantasyland always comes down to profit, and don’t we Native Americans know it.”

WE ALL PILED into Tallgrass’s extended-cab pickup for a strategy session, me and Quicksilver all ears, Tallgrass laying it out on the dashboard computer.

He flashed a promo photo of the immense Emerald City.

“They haven’t even thought of gambling palaces this spectacular in Dubai or Macao,” Ric said.

“And it’s ‘native’ to the region legendry,” Tallgrass said with irony. “Also much glitzier than the usual Indian casino with Powwow Bars and teepee men’s rooms.”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “When I was first reporting there was a huge civic fight against opening an Indian casino in Wichita. The civic powers wanted gambling operations and all the negatives that go with them to stay in Oklahoma.”

“The ‘powers that were’ decades ago wanted all the Indians relocated to Oklahoma,” Tallgrass said, “and that’s where all the oil happened to turn up later. We up-prairie tribes lost out. Several U.S. tribes have sued for the right to establish casinos on land off the tiny reservations left to them. And won. After all, it was all ours once.”

“Borders make for murderous neighbors,” Ric said.

“I’ll give you the last say on that, amigo,” Tallgrass told him. “Your forebears, though, still have a nation despite the drug cartels. We Indians don’t.” He eyed me over his shoulder. “But we will have a nice Native American casino on the fringe of this new Wichita ‘megalopolis’ east. Kind of a sideshow like the Oz movie’s Professor Marvel is in.”

Ric and I exchanged glances. The western part of the state could barely support a dilapidated drive-in revival. How was the eastern side of Wichita supposed to draw a steady tourist influx?

“Who are the underwriters?” I asked.

“Megacorporations,” Tallgrass said. “They come in and things happen. When they’re through with us, you won’t be able to fly over Kansas without seeing a new neon galaxy spread over our waving fields of grain. Hell, we’re going to get our own CSI TV show too. Bet you could write up an episode about the serial cow murders, Miss Delilah, and make a pretty penny.” Tallgrass chuckled.

“TV scripts don’t pay that much,” I said. “You’re sure about this CSI thing?”

“It’s been previewed on the local station, WTCH.”

I was still frowning with unhappiness at the idea of Hector Nightwine Productions invading my former home-town while Tallgrass continued to bemoan—and brag about—the high-profile new enterprises coming to Kansas in general and Wichita in particular.

“This is way beyond the government having to lay out tax money to get business hiring. The international arms of your Vegas conglomerates are involved. Gonna call the concept ‘Wicked Wild West.’”

“Ah.” I got it. “A little Dodge City and a lotta Dorothy Gale.”

“Yup. Emerald City under glass is built where all the fertilizer plants used to be and stink up the air for miles around.”

“That is kind of genius,” I said. “Oz under the Ozone Dome. Everything would have to be licensed, though.”

“These hotel-casino outfits have billions to burn.” Tallgrass was cruising his Favorites menu for visuals. “Munchkins, flying monkeys, talking scarecrows and tin men, witches and wizards. They all fit in with the times. Sort of a metaphor for who we’ve got representing us in Congress these days.”

“Still the same old cynic,” Ric said, laughing. “Why hasn’t there been national news on this new gambling Mecca on the prairie? I can see there’s not much between Vegas and the Gulf Coast and Atlantic City, but aren’t you Wichita folks right on top of Branson, Missouri, and all the established country music theme parks?”

“One word,” Tallgrass said. “It almost sounds Native American. Old theme parks are ‘hokey,’ amigo. This new stuff that’s going up is big, slick, costly, and tapping into the American Dream.”

“What dream?” I asked.

Tallgrass winked at me. “About little country girls making it in the big city.”

“Like Dorothy Gale in the Emerald City. I get it,” I said. “What’s your involvement with this project?” I asked, sniffing a story.

“Me?” he said, spreading palms so dark and seamed I couldn’t even detect the major head, heart, and life lines scribed on them. They had to be there. Didn’t they?

I wouldn’t let his pseudo-innocence and time-inscribed palms distract me.

“Like you said, Tallgrass,” I went on, “the Kansas tribes are reduced and scattered, and the reservations are handkerchief-size. What’s left of the Kickapoo and Kiowa would need someone they could trust, but sophisticated to the ways of the white man’s chicanery. Someone with native blood—and FBI experience—to investigate the big boys so their fringe casino project doesn’t get taken or fail to pay off the tribe.”

Ric was eyeing our negotiation-cum-mutual interrogation, and enjoying it. Watching allies from his past and present interact, even spar with each other, said a lot about each of us.

I was not about to let him down by looking gullible.

“Yeah,” Tallgrass conceded. “I looked more than anyone expected into the major backers. And you.”

That had both Ric and me taking deep breaths.

Tallgrass picked up his remote control. “Ricky here told me he was bringing you back.”

Ricky?

I knew I looked offended, and I felt offended. My spine stiffened as I sat up straighter in the cramped backseat. Ric had been telling other people about me, and not me about them? He didn’t trust me, after I’d beaten down the gates of mortality and thrown the dice on my soul with Snow to save his life?

Tallgrass’s red-brown eyes on my face drove as deep as rusty railroad spikes.

“You understand,” he said softly, “we all have blood family, and some of us have foster family, but the wisest of us have chosen family. I have no children but one, and now maybe two, and possibly three.”

Wow. I was feeling adopted again. Was he saying Ric— and me and Quick—had a foster father?

“And now,” Tallgrass said, looking only at me, “I’ll show you what’s been running on WTCH-TV in the week before you two showed up here.”

Ric reached for my hand over the seat back. Stiffly, I extended it. It had been a rough couple of days. Holding hands like rapt teen lovers at a drive-in, we watched the tape Leonard Tallgrass had recorded from local TV.

A discordant synthesizer caught the ear. A streak of camera pan teased the eye.

“The mystery woman was first seen as an anonymous corpse on a Las Vegas autopsy table,” a deep male voice-over announced.

The camera panned over a naked Lilith from black hair to Glitz Blitz Red–polished toenails, pausing on her nostril pierced by that damn tiny blue topaz stud I used to wear. I flinched to see those staring blue eyes identical to mine. Tattoos would have added some visual interest and helped cover all that dead-white motionless flesh. Where had that adolescent ink gone? Body makeup? Or had it been removed?

I was cringing at Lilith’s exposure, which was my own.

Then the ad spot featured reflections of a faint face seen through a plastic visor. Mine, filmed far more recently. Hector Nightwine wasted no time, or no wine before its time. I could see the fat-cat bastard sipping a rare vintage as he previewed this totally unauthorized footage in his office.

“But …” his voice-over announced, “the drama continues on CSI Madame X, as this bewitching mystery woman lures a crack forensics team into deciphering the enigma of her life … or death, and finding that every turn of every criminal case on their books leads to the limpid corpse and possible reincarnation of … Lilith. Premiering in Wichita and worldwide for the fall season.”

“That bastard!” I was hopping in my seat, hitting my head on the headliner. “He’s using my attempt to use a bit part in his seriously sick show as a lure.”

“Naked?” Ric asked. “You filmed a bit for Nightwine as a corpse?”

“No! Not exactly. This is not the time to go into it, Ric, other than that when I get back to Vegas I’ll take the CinSim King, Hector Nightwine, apart from cravat to spats. I’ll liberate his CinSims and set up shop for my own show.” I sounded like the Cowardly Lion on a tear.

“What’s your definition of a bastard?” Tallgrass asked.

“You try to use him because he’s such a slimeball and find out he’s used you first.”

“Agreed,” he said. “I know a few of those. In fact, one such creep may have used the local man behind Wichita’s costly side trip to theme-park Oz.”

“It sounds like your local investigations on my behalf have borne unexpected fruit for your concerns,” Ric said.

Tallgrass’s lips twisted. “Underhanded dealings thrive where big money is involved. Sometimes too close to home. How about we soak the fuse on this particular would-be entrepreneur’s dynamite show concept in cold water?”

“We?” I asked.

“Mi hijo is a man of endurance and integrity. I am the long-tried soul of patience and power. Your dog is a creature of two times and one spirit. Your former city and talents are the intersection for us all, Delilah Street. Shall we go see what we can kick in the area of big crooked butt?”