War Lord

Four

I followed Alabama to an unmarked brown steel door with a combination lock. She tapped in the code, leaned into it with her shoulder, and we entered a brightly lit corridor that sloped down toward a flight of stairs and another door with NO ENTRY painted on it. Alabama ignored the instruction and pushed through. Another corridor opened out at right angles on either side behind it. This one was busy with men and women going back and forth, some chatting and joking, others deep in conversation or carrying costumes or tools, and others wearing makeup that singled them out as dancers. No one asked who I was or what I was doing there. Seal’s version of ‘My Vision’ came from a room with a sign over the door that read DRESSING ROOM I. We headed for it. The music underscored the sound of women laughing and chatting within.

‘Everyone decent?’ Alabama called out before entering.

‘Hang on,’ came the reply.

‘This is the topless talls’ dressing room,’ said Alabama, pausing at the doorway. I must have given her a look, because she translated, ‘The girls are tall, and they’re topless.’

‘Right,’ I said. Another tough day at the office for Special Agent Cooper.

‘Okay…’ a woman called from inside.

Alabama motioned for me to follow her in. The room was filled with sequined costumes and feather boas and fishnet stockings and makeup and hatter’s heads topped with headpieces and plenty of other items of clothing that I couldn’t identify, most of it covered in colored cut glass and sequins. A number of mirrors rimmed with warm yellow lights were set up round the walls. Most of the mirrors were adorned with photos of boyfriends or husbands, I supposed — a couple had snaps of young children — as well as news clippings and show reviews. There were books and magazines and iPods and hair dryers and portable fans and various items of makeup at each station, and the air smelled vaguely of warm soap. Around half the mirrors had their lights turned off, which suggested that the women who sat at them had already gone home. There were still plenty of showgirls in the room though, sitting at their stations taking off makeup or organizing their lives into overnight bags. Everyone was chatting over each other. One or two women smiled at me, but mostly I was ignored. The women who were standing were indeed very tall but, disappointingly, not a single one was topless.

Alabama went to a mirror at the end of one wall. Her station was no different from any of the others. A photo of a Siamese cat was tucked into the frame around her mirror and below it were two pictures of a guy I recognized. Randy. In one he was dressed in a flight suit, standing on the flight line, a C-17 behind him. In the other he and Alabama were cheek-to-cheek, Randy’s arm extended in front of them — one of those photos couples take when there’s no one else around to get the shot. In the background was the Statue of Liberty.

‘Nice-looking cat,’ I said.

‘That’s Fluffy. She’s our baby.’

Fluffy?

‘Was your obstetrician surprised?’ Even though you know it’s the wrong time and place, some questions just have to be asked.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I know Randy. Met him once,’ I said, getting things back on track.

I reached for the photo. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Please, go right ahead.’

I took the photo of Randy and the C-17 off the mirror for closer inspection. I’d seen thousands of photos like this over the years — guys with their planes. This one was taken in Afghanistan — Bagram, perhaps. It might even have been the plane I hitched a ride in.

‘So, you met Randy…?’

‘In Afghanistan, before he came to Nellis. He’s one of the good guys.’

Hope lit up her face. ‘I’m sure he’s okay. I’d know if he was in trouble. I’d feel it.’

I suspected that, even though she knew the hand wasn’t her boyfriend’s, the facts that it was wearing his ring and accompanied by a ransom note were more reliable indicators on the trouble scale. And they were saying that, no matter what her feelings told her, the shit was up to Randy’s nostrils.

‘Hey, I know who you are now,’ said Alabama, studying my face. ‘You were in the Congo, right? There was a court case and you got off.

I don’t watch the news — too depressing — but I sometimes read People. A couple of the girls buy it. That was you, wasn’t it?’

‘No,’ I said. I’d been trying hard to forget the place.

‘Yes it was,’ she insisted. ‘I was only reading about it the other day. Small world, isn’t it? I mean, Marnie told me that you and Anna were…’ Alabama didn’t finish the sentence. She cleared her throat and began again. ‘Even though I never met her, I was sad when I heard about, you know, what happened… Randy talked about Anna — they were good friends. We exchanged Christmas cards.’

Really? First I knew about that. ‘Do you know how Randy and Anna met?’ I asked.

Maybe it was the way I put the question, or maybe it was the way a woman’s mind worked, because the answer began with a reassurance. ‘Hey, don’t worry. They weren’t, like, lovers or anything. Randy did a tour at Ramstein. His car was stolen, used in a hit and run. There was a lot of crap with the local authorities. Anna did all the liaison work with the police, and they became friends. Randy told me about it when I found a Christmas card she’d sent him, a photo of her wearing reindeer antlers. She was pretty and I — well, I guess I pulled the jealous female routine.’ I remembered the Anna-wearing-reindeer-antlers card. I received the same one. ‘Randy set me straight, gave me the background and told me if he was ever in trouble with the law, Anna Masters would be the first person he’d turn to.’

I took another look at Randy’s photo. Yeah, small world.

‘Thanks for stepping in, Vin — you didn’t have to.’

‘I haven’t done anything yet.’

‘I guess not.’ She managed a wan smile. ‘You mind if I take my face off while we talk?’

I motioned at her to go right ahead and sat at the next mirror over while Alabama peeled those brooms off her eyelids. She put them in a box with a clear top, then snatched some wipes from out of a plastic container and went to work on her face.

‘Where’s the… you know…?’ she asked.

‘You mean, Thing?’

It took a few seconds. ‘Oh, Thing — as in the Addams Family? Yeah, I guess that’s funny.’ She wasn’t laughing.

‘I brought it back with me. You need to turn it over to Vegas PD.’

She stopped wiping her cheeks. Her forehead was lined with concern. ‘But the note says…’

‘I know what it says, but that’s what you have to do. I’ll be there with you to make the report — I’ve got a contact. We want their forensics people to have a good look at it.’

‘That makes me nervous.’

‘We’ve got no choice, and there’s a chance the FBI will become involved.’

‘The FBI? Why?’

‘They get brought in if a crime has been committed that crosses state lines. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just the way the turf is divided up.’ One of those tough questions I had to ask was up next and I wondered how she was going to take it. ‘Was Randy involved in anything illegal that you know of?’

Alabama shook her head and turned to face me. ‘No. No way. Randy’s a straight shooter.’

As reactions went, it was a good one. I believed that she believed her lover was squeaky clean, but that didn’t mean he was. Show me a relationship with no secrets and I’ll show you a unicorn. ‘And the ring. You’re sure it’s his?’ I asked.

‘Well, his name’s engraved inside the band, along with “Class of ’96”.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s exactly as I remember it…’

‘You checked it?’

Her nose wrinkled. ‘I picked at it with a chopstick. I… I had to.’

I was vaguely surprised that she’d had the nerve. Maybe Alabama was tougher than she looked.

The expression on her face morphed into one of hope, the possibility that it might have been a forgery evidently not having occurred to her before. ‘You think the ring could be a fake?’ she asked.

‘Don’t know, and that’s why we need a competent forensics report — if only to eliminate angles.’ Thing had been bouncing around for over four days now, mostly in his chicken bucket. The police weren’t going to be overjoyed about that — the time factor. Trails would have gone cold.

‘If it’s not genuine then that might explain something,’ she said, wiping her nose and leaning towards the mirror for a closer inspection.

‘What’s that?’

‘Randy works for an aircraft sales company. At this moment, he’s supposed to be delivering a plane to Australia.’

‘Really? You know that for sure?’ The Randy I knew was a good pilot, but not good enough to be in two places at once.

‘I guess… That’s what he told me he was doing.’

The makeup on her face was now transferred to a pile of dirty brown and black wipes on the bench in front of her. Alabama removed the hairnet and shook out her hair, running her long fingers through it. Thick and auburn, it fell down around her shoulders with a gentle wave. At least Randy was lucky in love — Alabama was a knockout punch, her eyes a soft blue-gray, cheekbones high, heart-shaped lips and smooth clear skin that glowed with all the rubbing.

‘Has he called since he left?’ I asked her.

‘From LA — that’s where he said he was. He told me he was about to depart for Hawaii. That was over a week ago. Hasn’t called since, which is unusual. He’s normally pretty good about that — staying in touch. I’ve left him a dozen messages…’ Those lines returned to her forehead and her eyes moistened.

‘What’s the name of the company he works for?’

Alabama reached into a bag hooked over the side of her chair and produced a purse from which she pulled a deck of business cards. ‘Nevada Aircraft Brokers,’ she said, shuffling through them. She took a card, eventually, and held it toward me between long index and middle fingers. ‘The guy to speak to is Ty Morrow. He’s the boss.’

I repeated the name to myself, to plant it in my memory, and took the card. ‘You still got the packaging the hand arrived in?’ I asked her.

‘Yes, I kept it in case it was important.’

‘Mind if I take a look?’

She bent down, glanced under the bench, then reached out with her foot and scooped back a FedEx-branded box. She handed it to me and I checked it over, moving it around with a makeup pencil. There was nothing to see with the naked eye, other than the consignment note taped to it. The sender was an illegible scribble with an address in Rio de Janeiro. I wrote down what I could make out. The FBI was firming as a certainty. ‘Vegas PD will want this packaging, too,’ I said.

‘Okay.’

‘You got something I can put it in?’

She opened a drawer under the bench and pulled out a large Bally’s branded paper bag and held it open while I placed the box inside it. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘Here — at Bally’s.’

‘Can you give me a minute?’ she asked. ‘I’m just going to change.’

‘You want me to leave?’ I prepared to stand.

‘No, I’ll just go round the corner.’ She motioned at an island of shelving stuffed with feathers and sequined fabrics that ran down the center of the room and divided it in half.

I sat back down and took the opportunity to give Randy’s card the once-over. It was plain gloss white with the words NEVADA AIRCRAFT BROKERS in dark blue and, below them, a set of gold wings with the initials NAB in the center. Under that was Randy’s name and his title: Pilot. Also included were phone, cell and fax numbers as well as email, website and street addresses. The card was blank on the flipside. I scribbled Morrow’s name on it with the makeup pencil and pocketed it. To pass the time, I opened the Bally’s bag and had another look at the packaging, thinking about what had arrived in it. I wondered who it belonged to and whether the right hand knew what the left hand was doing — hanging out with a topless dancer in Vegas. I also wondered how it came to be wearing Randy’s academy ring (assuming it wasn’t a copy), when, according to Alabama, Randy was supposedly airborne on the other side of the world. And how did Rio de Janeiro figure in all of this?

‘Excuse me,’ said an unfamiliar voice, interrupting my thoughts.

I looked up at a milk-coffee-colored woman wearing a black G-string so skimpy it could’ve been a shoelace. She stood beside me, tall and slim and sweet smelling, her bare breasts full and firm and crowned with generous dark-chocolate nipples. Leaning over me, one of those breasts brushing my shoulder, she reached languidly for a hair dryer on the bench. My mouth went dry and I nearly choked on my tongue. Little Coop woke up and sprang out of bed, causing me to shift in my seat.

‘Thanks,’ she said, sauntering away.

Alabama reappeared from around the island, now dressed in jeans and a blue cotton top, and not nearly as happy as I was.

‘Some of us are goin’ out for a bite t’eat, ’Bama,’ said the black woman. Her weight shifted to one hip and Alabama’s hair dryer dangled by its cord from her fingers. ‘Maybe you an’ your frien’ wanna join us.’

‘We’ll call you.’ Alabama frowned at me and said, ‘Shall we go?’

‘With her?’ I gestured at the topless tall. ‘To eat?’

‘No.’ Alabama picked up her shoulder bag and the Bally’s bag with the FedEx packaging inside and headed for the door. I had no choice but to follow. I glanced back in the direction I’d seen the black woman heading. She was now sitting at a mirror and I caught her reflection smiling at me. There was all kinds of trouble in that smile.

A short walk later, Alabama and I left the theater area and entered the lobby. ‘You want to ask me about Sugar, don’t you?’ Alabama said as we joined the throng of midnight gamblers moving between Bally’s and Paris.

‘Sugar?’

‘The black woman: Sugar. Not a stage name either. It’s on her driver’s license. I’m only asking because you’re a man and therefore susceptible. Hell, even I’m susceptible to Sugar.’

The thought of Alabama and Sugar rolling around in a clinch was something I was prepared to consider favorably, as was my mischievous little buddy who lived in his own cloistered world down below.

‘Everyone wants to fuck Sugar. She’s usually happy to oblige. I’m pretty sure she wants to fuck you.’

‘Me?’ I asked.

‘Why not? She wants to take everything she thinks is mine, and you’re with me, so… Perhaps she has something against me. I think she fucked Randy.’

I sensed that I was getting in the middle of something with sharp nails. Whatever, there seemed to be a lot of fucking going on here.

‘It’ll come with obligations, though,’ she continued.

‘What will?’

‘Doing Sugar.’

‘Okay,’ I said, as if taking this on board. The truth was that it had been well over eight months since I’d been with anyone, which was plenty long enough for even muscle memory to have amnesia, despite Little Coop’s antics.

‘I need a drink. You mind coming with me?’ she asked.

I still had questions and, I had to admit, one of them was the name of a half-decent bar. ‘Sure,’ I said.

Alabama led the way to the main exit. The guy managing the forecourt said hello to her and immediately took us to the head of the queue for cabs like we were Bally’s royalty. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked. There were plenty of places to drink at Bally’s.

‘Away from here. This is where I work.’ The forecourt guy closed her cab door after she palmed him a tip. ‘Caesars,’ she told the driver.

Outside, the Vegas Strip was just coming into its stride, the sidewalks packed, the neon adding a few degrees to global warming.

‘Tell me more about Randy’s job,’ I said.

‘He ferries aircraft around the country, mostly. Sometimes he goes away for a few days, interstate. Occasionally he flies to other countries. This is his first trip to Australia.’

‘What about Nevada Aircraft Brokers? Did Randy talk much about his job there?’ I took out the card she’d given me.

‘He’s a pilot — he loves flying, but sometimes the hours get him down.’

I turned the card over. ‘And what about his boss, Ty Morrow?’

Alabama’s phone rang. She cut the caller off, but then the cell rang again and this time she answered it. From what I could gather it was a girlfriend, the conversation small talk. Alabama rolled her eyes for my benefit like she wasn’t particularly interested but had to make out that she was. Her phone beeped with a couple of incoming texts. AT&T central.

By the time she was off the phone, we’d pulled into Caesars. I followed her through the casino, heading for the Forum shops, according to signs. Our destination was a place called Shadow Bar. Lined up outside the door was a queue, another one that didn’t seem to apply to us, as Alabama went up to the guy managing it, a black body builder in a black Lycra top with a secret service — style earpiece in his ear, and kissed him on the cheek. Inside, the place was popular but not overpopulated. The barkeeps, mostly Jake Gyllenhaal look-alikes, were finishing a show, flipping bottles, juggling glasses, spinning around, somersaulting. They should have no trouble putting a couple of rocks in a glass, I figured. Once they stopped dancing and started serving, the music selection slowed and the navy-blue silhouette of a woman appeared on each of the pink video screens up behind the bar and began moving to the beat, slow and sensuous. The dancing turned the mood-o-meter to erotic, as did Alabama’s nemesis, Sugar, who I was surprised to see was now also here. She’d changed into a black ultra-mini to go with her shoelace. The dress was a knockout — fitted and cut high at the front, but with a low back, rows of polished stones around the hemline. She swayed a little to the music as she talked to some college types at the bar, occasionally emulating the moves of the women behind the screens. She glanced at Alabama and blew her a kiss. Or maybe it was meant for me. Little Coop thought it was meant for him. Several other women seemed to be with Sugar, all of them tall. Topless talls, I guessed, though they were currently covered. Alabama didn’t seem too pleased to see her bosom buddies, even though I’d gathered from the behavior of the muscle at the door that this was a current favorite watering hole among them.

‘Can I buy you a drink?’ Alabama asked as she claimed a booth well away from her fellow dancers. ‘The least I can do…’

‘Sure. Glen Keith with rocks if they’ve got it, Maker’s Mark if they don’t.’

‘Back in a second,’ she said, and went over to Sugar and pulled her aside. The black woman rested her hand in the small of Alabama’s back while they talked, and let it drop six inches or so. Alabama didn’t seem to mind, smiling, engaged. In fact, it looked to me like the two were extra-specially good pals.

‘No Glen Keith, I’m afraid,’ said Alabama when she returned from the bar with two drinks, one of which was nuclear-waste-lime in color. ‘So I got you Maker’s.’

For a moment there I’d thought maybe the Green Lantern thing had my name on it. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief, said thanks and accepted the bourbon. ‘I thought you and Sugar didn’t get on.’

‘We don’t,’ Alabama replied, sipping her Three Mile Island or whatever. ‘You mean our little girl-hug a moment ago? We’ve got a love — hate thing.’

‘Have you been with her?’ I asked.

Alabama hesitated then said, ‘That’s a pretty direct question.’

‘Got a direct answer?’

‘Why’s it important for you to know?’

‘I don’t know what is and isn’t important at the moment.’

Another pause. Alabama sipped her drink. ‘Yes. Twice.’

‘Has Randy?’

‘I don’t know for sure, but Sugar was interested. And she is persistent.’

Glancing over at Sugar, I saw she had her arm around a woman and was laughing at something being whispered in her ear by one of the men in her orbit. She seemed the type that could get anything, and anyone, she wanted.

I pulled the business card from my pocket and changed the subject. ‘Let’s talk about the company Randy works for, about his boss.’

Alabama was shaking her head slowly. ‘Randy hasn’t said much of anything about either, except that there are always plenty of planes around, which he likes, of course. I’ve been out there a few times to pick him up after work.’

‘Have you met Morrow?’ I asked her.

‘We haven’t been formally introduced, but I know what he looks like.’

I looked at Alabama hard. She was undoubtedly hot, but she also seemed pretty clingy. Was she too clingy? Was it possible Randy had had enough and posted the hand himself to throw his needy girlfriend off the scent? Maybe Randy was just across town, living it up, now free to sleep with women who had cellulite, cankles or less than perfect breasts. ‘Is it possible,’ I asked her, ‘Randy staged his own disappearance?’

‘What? No! Why would he do that?’

‘People do,’ I said. ‘It’s not uncommon.’ Was I being unnecessarily cruel putting this thought in Alabama’s head, that maybe she was into Randy more than he was into her? Perhaps, but it did seem to me that two and two were adding up to three and a half here. I ran through the factors in my head:

1. It obviously wasn’t Randy’s hand.

2. Someone had quite possibly managed to get hold of Randy’s ring.

3. Randy was supposedly flying a plane to Australia, which, last time I looked, was a long way from the FedEx box’s origin in Rio de Janeiro.

3.5. Randy’s ring was placed on Thing’s finger and, just in case anyone had any doubts about his health prospects, a ransom note had been included.

My problem was that I had plenty of doubts. This business had the whiff of a hoax about it. If so, was Alabama in on it? And if she was, why? ‘Do you know whether Randy has an insurance policy?’ I asked her, probing this notion.

‘He’s a flyer, so I’d say he would.’

‘You haven’t seen it?’

‘No.’

‘He hasn’t discussed it with you?’

‘No.’

‘Who might the beneficiaries be?’

‘No idea.’ Alabama seemed agitated. Maybe our conversation wasn’t heading in the direction she’d hoped. ‘You really think something else is going on here, don’t you? And you think it has something to do with me.’

Alabama was quite possibly on the level about what she did and didn’t know. And her concern could easily be genuine fear for her missing lover’s safety, rather than the fact that I was rubbing her the wrong way. Nevertheless, I still had a test I wanted to put her through. ‘Did Randy tell you that he was running drugs back in Afghanistan?’

She froze, but recovered quickly and looked me dead in the eye. ‘He wasn’t. That was a lie. I thought you said he was one of the good guys, that you were his friend.’ She gathered her things.

I’d told her that I’d met him. I hadn’t said we’d graduated to friend status. ‘He was court-martialed,’ I continued. ‘The charges were serious.’

‘And they were dismissed,’ she said.

‘The Air Force still kicked him out.’

‘Okay, I think we’re done here.’ Alabama began to get up. ‘I’ll send you a check for your expenses.’

Alabama was a dancer, not an actress, so I was prepared to believe that she believed Randy was innocent of drug running. ‘Relax,’ I said. ‘Sit down.’

‘Stick it where the sun don’t shine, buddy.’

‘The story is loaded with inconsistencies. I just wanted to assure myself that…’

‘That I’m not one of your inconsistencies.’

I shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

‘Call me when you’re sure,’ she said.

‘As far as I can see, no crime has been committed here,’ I said as she turned to go.

That stopped her. ‘What?’

‘Okay, it might be illegal to courier amputated limbs around the country without a permit or some such, but, aside from that, where’s the crime?’

She stared at me, confused.

‘Look at it this way: the hand — it isn’t Randy’s, so we can reasonably conclude that he still probably has both of his. Also, there’s no concrete proof that the ring is his — even the engraving could be copied, and as far as we know he’s safely cruising along at thirty thousand somewhere over the Pacific. Bottom line, how do we know beyond any doubt that he’s being held captive?’

‘There’s the ransom note.’

‘It says you’re going to hear about where to take the money. Have the kidnappers got back to you?’

‘No.’

The note stated that Alabama would be contacted, but no such contact had been made. It had been close to five days now since she received the parcel.

‘What do you think that means?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe they lost your number.’

‘What?’

‘Silence doesn’t serve the hostage-takers’ agenda. What do they hope to gain with no further contact?’ And while I was on the subject of things I didn’t know, what was the significance of having twenty days to pay the ransom in the first place? Why not seven days, or three days, or twenty-four hours to come up with the money? In my experience, kidnappers gave their victims less time rather than more to produce the cash. It didn’t suit the perpetrators’ reasons for committing the crime to allow authorities the time to track them down and stomp on their asses before they’d split with the dough. Maybe Randy was already dead. Even if he was, that wouldn’t stop the hostage-takers’ attempts to extract a pile of cash from Alabama with assurances that it would be in exchange for his life. Kidnappers demanding large sums of money didn’t usually play fair. No, at the moment I had no idea what the lack of contact might mean. Or pretty much anything else connected with this case.

‘When exactly did you last see Randy?’ I asked her, going back over some details.

‘Nine days ago.’

‘So four days before the package arrived.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, he left on a Sunday — that would make it the twelfth.’

‘Was the fifth the day Randy left for Australia?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you received the package the following Thursday?’

‘Yes.’ Twenty days time from that Thursday would be Wednesday the fifth. I made a note of the date.

‘Who else knows about the package, aside from Marnie?’

‘As far as I know, only you.’

‘And you say you’ve been in contact with Nevada Aircraft Brokers?’

‘Yeah, pretty much every day since… since the package arrived. I’ve been asking them to tell Randy to call me.’

‘You didn’t say anything about the ransom angle?’

‘The note said no police. Letting Randy’s boss in on it, the police would’ve been called for sure.’

‘And do you know if Randy’s checked in with them at all while he’s been en route?’

‘They said they haven’t heard from him. But they also said they’re not expecting him to contact them until he lands in Darwin.’

‘Any problems with the flight that they know of?’

‘I didn’t ask them that, not exactly, but they know I’m stressed about it. They’d have told me if they were worried.’

‘When’s he expected in Darwin?’

‘Any time now. What do we do next?’ she asked.

I figured I could just hang around playing the slots and wait for Randy to show up, but that probably wasn’t what Alabama had in mind. ‘We could take the severed hand to the metro police.’

‘I could have done that.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I really don’t know. I thought there might be a better option — you, I guess.’ Her body language suggested having me here was no longer anything to break out the band for. I heard her phone buzz. She checked the caller ID on screen, got excited and plucked it up off the table. I went back to watching the shadow girls working the screens, and Sugar working the floor.

‘What?’ I heard Alabama say, suddenly in shock. ‘Oh my God… Yes, yes, of course…’

‘What’s up?’ I asked when she ended the call.

She looked at me, her eyes bathed in tears. ‘That was Ty Morrow. It’s Randy… Darwin expected him two hours ago but he hasn’t turned up. They think he crashed at sea.’