The Chrysanthemum Palace

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I DECIDED TO GO TO Vegas to retrace their steps. (Later, I wondered if my motivation was born less from a sense of “closure” than the subconscious decision to tell this story.) No matter, I still needed to say good-bye; it felt just too miserable to let the memory of her last, plaintive phone message stand. Like some action hero, I craved pursuit — to chase the dispersed stardust of my first love.

To my surprise, when I told Miriam of the plan she actually wanted to come along. We’d always joked about going to see Celine Dion. Now, she said, was our chance.

I rented an obnoxious silver Porsche, and we headed out on the highway, looking for adventure (and whatever came our way). It wasn’t quite summer — the weather was tolerably warm. We used the Mirage as our headquarters; while Meerkat lay by the pool I got in touch with a detective who’d worked the case, and was naturally a mega-Starwatch buff. He provided me with a rough itinerary of Thad and Clea’s meanderings in the days before their deaths.

We didn’t get around to seeing Celine, though I did wind up at sundry downtown casinos offering $3.89 all-you-can-eat breakfast buffets. The detective said that once Mr. Michelet arrived, he managed to get his hands on a shitload of cash, wired from a bank in Fort Lauderdale. He blew through two hundred grand at blackjack (the irony of the name of the game wasn’t lost on me) at the Palms. According to phone records, Thad and Clea were in constant touch before she left L.A. When she joined him, they pissed away another $75,000 (most of her savings, no doubt) at a divey gaming parlor off the Strip and by then were in for an additional fifty “large.” I met with the owner, who was a fairly decent guy. His kids were huge fans of The Jetsons and when the hotelier saw the tough straits Thad was in, he offered to help. His son was being bar mitzvahed that weekend and the guy was ready to knock off $20,000 from the debt if the actor made an appearance at the party to sign autographs. They shook hands over it — but “Bonnie and Clyde,” he smirked, were no-shows.

Miriam and I hit the Wheel of Fortune slots and took in a raggedy-ass rock-’n’-roll lounge revue. In the spirit of “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” I sampled the Viagra I’d been carrying around in my wallet the last few months; it seemed the appropriate thing to do. The pill worked OK but I didn’t get much sleep, and not for the reason you might think. When I finally passed out, I had recurrent dreams of snorting coke. In the morning, Meerkat and I had a stupid argument — it was definitely time to decamp.

Death Valley would be the next and last stop. Miriam didn’t think she had it in her to go. I wasn’t sure I did either.

I dropped her at the airport around 2:00 P.M. She tenderly kissed me, not envying the ordeal ahead. I hate to be noir about it, but somewhere inside that good-bye was the thought we might be done with each other for good. We embraced long and hard, the subtext being that we’d shared forbidden fruits. We knew our friendship would survive regardless of what the future held. It was kind of a cinematic moment, part Casablanca, part Planet of the Apes (just before Heston rounds the corner to howl at Lady Liberty) — because neither of us could shake the feeling that some awesome, half-buried truth was waiting for me in the desert.