Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 14

"You're the One-Eyed Jack," he said. "And this must be the Suicide King."

I shook, and so did Stewart. "You've heard of us?"

"Show folk bend our luck a lot," he said. "It pays to know who the intermediaries are. Have you come for a t.i.the?"

I reached into my satchel and found a handful of thick poker chips. The Silver Slipper ones were just collectors' items now, but the ones from the Stratosphere had intrinsic value. I laid three thousand dollars in stamped, high-impact plastic on the card table and said, "Actually, we've come for information. This is Stewart. Call me Jackie. Everybody else does, and I want us to be friends."

He eyed the chips suspiciously, did not touch them, and sat back down. "Information is not something I'm generally comfortable giving out," he said. "Especially when it commands that sort of price. Too many people think they can buy more than anybody ought to be able to buy for a couple thousand dollars."

"Mmm," Stewart said. "You have kids, Bartolomj? Grandkids? They have health insurance? Take the money. It's nothing to us. It's useful to you."

He eyed the stack. "Tell me what you want to know."

I looked at Stewart. Stewart looked at me. I shrugged and did the talking. "Did you have an uncle or an older brother, maybe, who jumped ship here in Vegas some time ago and married a local girl?"

Bartolomj did not look away from my face. But his left hand crept out, encompa.s.sed the chips, and swept them to his side of the table.

"That," he said, "I don't mind talking about. But you have the story backward."

"We do?" Stewart, doing his best wide-eyed innocent. It's amazing how people will rush to fill that perceived void.

"Absolutely," Bartolomj said. "You are thinking of my aunt, Branislava. My father's oldest sister. I never knew her; she left before I was born. She was a flyer, very beautiful, I'm told."

"I don't think it can be," I said. "The woman I'm thinking of is about ten years older than you, I'd guess. But not well. She looks her age."

"Are you sure?" He raised an eyebrow. "Branka would be in her eighties. Maybe older. Of course, we do tend to live a long time in my family..."

He shrugged.

I put another thousand in chips on the table, and he raised an eyebrow. "I told you I would help."

"I'm helping, too," I said. When he grinned he showed a gold tooth, which made me realize he hadn't smiled before. "What would you say if I told you your Aunt Branka was still alive and needed your help?"

"This kind of help?" He tapped the chips.

I shrugged, copying his gesture.

"I'd say we look after our own." He sucked on his teeth and pulled his hand back. "And I'd say she left us, and it was up to her to come back and ask if she wants that changed."

"I don't think she can ask," I said, and pulled out the chair across from him without actually ever being invited. "Tell me all about it, why don't you?"

Bartolomj gave me that look again, and I pushed the chips toward him with a fingertip. "Good faith gesture."

He swept them to him much less tentatively. "We came through when the dam was going up, according to my father. She met a man and she married out," he said. "I don't know what else to tell you. We never heard from her after."

Stewart, standing behind me, cleared his throat. "Who did she marry?"

"Some guy," Bartolomj answered. "I can call my dad at the home and check. He's still pretty sharp for a guy in his eighties. He'll remember."

"That'd be great," I said. "Bartolomj, can you answer me one more question, maybe?"

"I can but try."

"If she married out," I asked, "why did she keep her own name?"

"She did?"

I nodded.

He let his head linger in that tilted pose for a moment before he shook his head. "I can't say, Jackie. It wasn't done, in those days."

"She's divorced," Stewart said in the car, quite abruptly. He always was the smart one, blond or not.

"We can pull the marriage license," I said.

Charleston Boulevard runs west all the way to Red Rock and the mountains from which it takes its name. Stewart and I go up there when we need to think, and we had planned to take our cell phones and wait for Bartolomj Bukvajova to call. But Stewart pulled a U-turn right in the middle of Charleston, while I bent my luck hard to make sure that if there were any cops in the neighborhood, they were distracted by a flock of pa.s.sing teenagers. It seemed like the least I could do.

Twenty minutes later, we had parked at a downtown casino and were crossing the street to the courthouse. Pulling the marriage license was easier than you'd expect; we're not really big on the expectation of privacy around here, and anyway it was a matter of public record. The hardest part was figuring out the date, but it was slow-just after lunch-and we got a helpful clerk, and I made sure she got lucky.

Sure, it's abuse of power. What's the point in power if you can't abuse it? Anyway, it was in a good cause. And it's how I make my living.

You know, it's more honest than what a lot of guys do.

She brought the photocopy to the window of a waiting room where we sat side by side in scoop-shaped plastic chairs, me slumped and Stewart kicked forward like a vulture on a bender. Stewart was on his feet first, and so he paid the fee and collected the copy. When he glanced at it, the color faded from his cheeks. He looked up at the clerk, who was regarding him with raised eyebrows, obviously waiting for some response. She smiled when she got it: "Thank you," Stewart said automatically. Then he caught my elbow and, without explanation, steered me toward the street.

When we pa.s.sed outside the courthouse door, into the wall of heat, onto fresh-mown gra.s.s dotted with sleeping vagrants and fat palm trees, I planted my feet and jerked him to a stop, because he didn't let go of my arm. He looked at me as if startled to realize I was still there and had opinions, and then shook his head. "What?"

"Still not a mind reader," I answered, and held out my left hand-the one he wasn't using as a tiller. And Stewart blushed right up under his hairline and handed me the still-warm photocopy.

"Sorry?"

"S'okay." The paper shook in my hand; the day seemed very bright. "Elijah Powers? Eli Powers? Babylon Hotel and Casino? That Eli Powers?"

"Shh," he said. He took the paper, folded it one-handed, and tucked it into his pocket. But he was still looking at me, and when I mouthed, "She married Eli Powers," he nodded.

Well.

s.h.i.t.

Just then, my cell rang. It was Bartolomj Bukvajova, calling to tell us that his dad said his sister married some guy who ran a gambling hall in Block 16-the old red-light zone-when the dam was going in over in Boulder City and Vegas was where the workers came to blow money and chase skirts on weekends. He thought it had been annulled shortly after, but he never spoke to her again.

Elijah Porter, his father thought. Some Biblical name like that.

Stewart took me to the Lucky 7's buffet at the Plaza, plunked me down in a corner, and brought me a plate before he fetched his own. I ordered him a Sprite and a gla.s.s of the house red-you try to get ginger ale in Vegas; it's worth your life-and coffee and an ice water for me. I waited to start eating the fried shrimp until he got back the second time.

"So," he said, settling himself behind a plate of roast beef and cornbread, "how are we going to get at Eli Powers?"

"He's ninety years old and he owns half of Las Vegas. Why the h.e.l.l would we want to get at him?" There's something about the way breaded fried shrimp crunch that's deeply satisfying. The battered ones just aren't as good.

"Please tell me you're kidding." His cheap knife squeaked on the cheap plate as he cut his meat.

I winced. "Kidding?"

"s.h.i.t," he said. "Oh, s.h.i.t. Branislava Bukvajova? No? Nothing?"

"Bukvajova," I said. "I swear I know that name."

"Of course," he said. "Who can make a city forget like the guy who runs it? Jackie, I think I know what's going on. I think I know what the problem is."

"Good," I said. "Can you explain it to me?"

"Drink your coffee and I'll try."

But I wasn't finished with the food yet, so I ate that and drank the ice water, smushing army-green peas between the tines of my fork. They tasted more like porridge than like a vegetable.

"Powers wasn't anybody yet when he married Bukvajova, was he?"

"Wait," I said. "Who did Powers marry? He's got a wife, doesn't he? His third one. The brunette. Used to be an actress."

"Not a very good one," Stewart agreed. "That's beside the point. She's his fourth wife, according to this. He married Branka Bukvajova in 1935. It seems like it was annulled less than a year later, but she never went back to the circus. Like she was stuck here, or she didn't remember that she could go home."

"Everybody forgets stuff in Vegas," I said, and didn't understand why Stewart would find it so troubling. It was only true. "Vegas forgets stuff. Imploded, bulldozed, blown away."

"Yeah," Stewart said, and stole one of my shrimp. "Almost makes you think somebody's stealing its memory, doesn't it? Do you want some chocolate cake, Jackie?"

"Jackie?" I said, picking up the cooling coffee in its white inst.i.tutional stoneware cup. "Then who are you?"

I didn't really believe him when he said I was Jackie-isn't that a girl's name?-but it didn't bother me.

It really did bother me that I didn't know who he was, though. That seemed really rude. Especially when he was apparently buying me dinner. "Stewart," he said, and the strain on his voice cracked it clean across. He rose to fetch me cake, which made me feel bad that I couldn't remember how I'd met him. Surely I wasn't drunk? Surely I hadn't been that drunk?

"Am I drunk?" I asked, as he put the cake down before me and waved our busser over to refill my coffee mug.

"I wish," he answered, and patted my arm. Following the line of his motion, I realized suddenly that there was an awful lot of ink on my arm. I put down my fork, a bite of cake still speared untasted on the tines, and poked my bicep with a finger.

"Huh."

"Eat," he said. "You need your strength. And then we're going back to visit Ms. Bukvajova, and we're not leaving until we figure out what's going on."

I swallowed a mouthful of cake. "Who's Ms. Bukvajova?"

The afternoon was full of light when we walked out onto a promenade covered by an arch that seemed to be made of millions of small lights hung from a lattice. The day was like a kiln. I deduced we must be in the desert. "Stewart, where are we?"

His face very still, he said, "Fremont Street."

"Fremont Street? Isn't that in Tombstone? Where the Earps shot up the Clantons. Familiarly called the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, as misrepresented in a Star Trek episode."

"All right," Stewart said. "You're still Jackie. And we have seriously got to get this fixed."

I should probably have been scared, standing on a strange street corner in a strange town with a strange man, unable to remember my own name. Had I ever known my name? But Stewart was a soothing presence, for all his twisted lips and wrinkled forehead.

"I don't think this would bother me so much if you weren't a walking encyclopedia of forgotten Las Vegas."

"We're in Las Vegas? Oh. Then this will all get pulled down in a couple of years anyway, won't it? I don't know why they even bother naming things."

His hand was hard on my shoulder as he pulled me along. "Come on. I'm not sure how to handle this, Jackie. As long as I've known you-"

"-As long as you've known me?"

"-Whatever happens in this place, whatever falls down or gets buried or goes forgotten, you always seem to remember that it's here, or that it was here." He led me through crowds deftly, and I let him. He seemed to know where he was going, and I had no idea. "All that dead history never dies, in you. And now..." He shrugged.

I put my hand over his fingers on my arm, because it seemed like the thing to do, and he smiled at me, very briefly. My heart jumped. Huh. Was he my boyfriend?

I thought that over. It seemed appealing.

"Do you remember me?" he asked.

"Maybe," I said. "A little. Are we together?"

"Yes," he said. "Well, only for the last hundred years. But what I was trying to say was, all that time, I've had this idea that you were, I dunno, the memory of Las Vegas. Where all its ghosts went. Where they wound up. And now, if you can't remember anything..."

"Do you think I'm going senile?"

"Cities don't go senile," he said. We ducked between an arguing couple.

"You talk like I'm somehow linked to the city-"

"Jackie, you are the city. You're its genius. Its spirit. One of them. I'm the other one."

And you know, that sounded right. Completely bizarre, mind you, but right. "So if I'm the city's memory," I said, "and I can't remember anything...."

"Yeah," he said. "You see why I'm a little worried now."

"Well then," I said-and there was no excuse for my tone, because I'm sure he would have seen it if he wasn't too worried to think straight-"it's obvious what's going on. Either somebody is using the city to get to me, or me to get to the city."

The first thing I noticed about the battered old block house on the neglected ranch estate was a glorious bottle tree in the side yard, moaning softly in the breeze. It caught the sunlight in all colors, cobalt and ruby and amber and emerald, commonplace and lovely.

I imagine most of us never really look at gla.s.s. But there it was, sun stained through it. I felt the whimpers of the ghosts trapped inside. Felt, yes. It wasn't exactly hearing.

I stepped away from the still-open door of the parked car, and the blond man caught my arm. "Jackie," he said. "Don't go too close to that."