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When I walked past them on my way back outside, I saw I was right: the guy in the suit had a shoulder holster.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Crissy
I suppose a person can die in a car in a tunnel in Las Vegas, just like Diana. The loop that began beneath the Convention Center is growing.
But it isn’t likely. The cars don’t race through the tunnels we currently have. They’re Teslas that you borrow at one station or another and use like a subway to navigate that small section of the city so you are spared the congestion aboveground: vehicular on the streets and parking lots, pedestrian on the concourses and sidewalks.
You’re not driving fast.
And soon, I suppose, you won’t even be driving at all. The cars will be automated.
Moreover, I have never been chased by the paparazzi.
And so when thoughts of my death buzz near—and thoughts of our deaths buzz near us all, we never escape the gnawing awareness that we are but suet gnawed to nothing by birds—they don’t end with screams and the sound of crashing metal.
But for my sister? I can’t say.
In the end, I was grateful she came to Las Vegas.
* * *
Timing, any performer knows, is everything.
I had left the cabana, gone to my suite to get dressed, and was on my way to the theater because I hadn’t been there since Saturday night, and every Tuesday afternoon I went there to run through the show on my own. Run my lines, walk the small stage. Even when the world is unraveling, the show must go on, right?
When I was finished, I saw my niece had texted me forty minutes earlier:
I’m in trouble. I’m at Frankie’s house instead of school and he won’t let me leave. It’s like he’s kidnapped me. I don’t know where Betsy is, but she’s in trouble too. I’m texting you instead of her because they took my phone and I think they took hers. Or they’re watching her like they’re watching me. I’ve been in shitty situations before, but not like this. Also, there’s this congresswoman with Frankie and a guy with a gun. I don’t know if you should call 911. I didn’t because of Betsy. But maybe you know what’s best because you know this city. No one has hurt me yet. But this is bad AF. Don’t text back. I’m deleting this after I send it.
I wandered out to the casino floor, digesting this. I wouldn’t call 911. I would call Felicia Johnson. I trusted her. I was fumbling in my purse for her card, pushing aside the gun that Nigel had given me at the cabana, when I saw them: Damon and Betsy. They were passing a craps table and so I detoured toward the slots so I could ring the detective, but when I turned, there was Rory. The British slang would be frit, but I wasn’t merely frit—or frightened. I was scared to death. My hands were shaking. He was wearing a blazer, and I supposed it was because he had a gun in his waistband.
“Give me the phone,” he said. I hadn’t deleted Marisa’s text because I wanted to share it with the detective. But I pressed the lock button on the device with my trembling thumb before handing it to him.
“Well,” I said, “this is a pleasant surprise. Why in the world do you have need of my phone?”
“Zip it. Cut the accent.”
Betsy and Damon caught up to us, and the idea that among the last things I might see before I was executed was a cluster of Hobbit slots, a small throng of video Gandalfs and Gollums, was not lost on me.
“Hi, Sis,” said Betsy, her tone inscrutable.
I nodded. I had been told to zip it.
“Before we go,” Rory said, “you need to hug me right now. And you need to kiss Damon here on both cheeks.” His eyes moved in the direction of the nearest eye in the sky, the camera that was capturing our corner of casino carpet. I did as he said. I even hugged Betsy, though he hadn’t asked.
Then he ushered us toward the casino exit. They hadn’t taken my purse. Clearly it hadn’t crossed their mind I might have a gun.
* * *
“We’ll take the Mercedes,” Rory said. The steamy afternoon air was a slap after the air-conditioning inside the Buckingham Palace. Diana had died in a Mercedes-Benz—or, to be faithful to her story, had died in a hospital of injuries sustained in a Benz—and so I was not wild about his choice in vehicle.
We drove out toward Red Rocks, and I was unnerved because Red Rocks was where both Richie Morley and Yevgeny Orlov had been executed. This felt ominous. Damon was behind the wheel, and Betsy was beside him in the front. Rory and I were in the back seat, and Rory had a handgun in his hand in his lap.
For one of the few times in my life, I kept my mouth shut.
But my biggest fear was for my niece. If my phone rang or pinged, Rory invariably would look at it and discover, before the screen locked again, that there had been a text from Marisa. That was the real ticking time bomb. I held my purse in my lap, wondering what Rory would do if I unzipped it and reached inside it. Nigel had given me a brief tutorial on the Glock before leaving my cabana, and we’d loaded the pistol there. Would Rory stop me? Would he take my clutch from me? Despite the gun, I felt like I was one of Henry VIII’s wives in her dungeon, awaiting her execution.
