HENRY WOKE to the Devil’s face.
For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming, and in that same moment knew his sleep had been long and deep and dreamless. No, the Devil’s Face was real enough. It stretched for several hundred yards across the red rock cliff of the mountain that greeted Henry’s sight, seen through a sheet of plate glass so clear it might as well not have been there. Only the hum of the air conditioner told that he was not outside, and then, as Henry came fully awake, the enveloping warmth of very expensive satin sheets. Otherwise, the panorama of sky and mountainside and mid-morning sun seemed to be the whole world.
With Maude S— sitting there, it nearly was.
Part of Henry’s heart wanted to rush to her, in joy and relief. But he only smiled to see her there, his limbs still caught in the net of exhaustion.
Maude sat on a low bench by the vast window, wrapped in a long, flowing, gray gown, its deep gray cowl pulled over her head. Her pensive profile wavered in the daylight, and she looked terribly lovely and terribly old, though her face was a smooth and alabaster as always. She sensed Henry’s gaze, and turned to look at him with the saddest smile he had ever seen. It made him ache to return it.
They regarded each other that way for a long moment.
“How long?” Henry asked at last, his voice a little weak.
“Almost a full day and night,” Maude replied. “Tell carried you up here like a rag doll, I fear. When I first saw the tableaux, I feared you were dead, though I knew you were safe.” Her smiled warmed, almost imperceptibly.
Henry smiled back. “Once I knew you were safe, I allowed myself the sleep of the dead.”
Maude turned her gaze back to the jagged gash that passed for Lucifer’s crooked smile, the uneven pockmarks of his eyes where rock had fallen away thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago, the two jutting outcrops of crimson-orange sandstone that stood in for his horns. Without looking back, she said in a very even voice, “I’m not used to saying I’m sorry, Henry. I haven’t had much occasion to say it through the years.” She turned to look at him again. He could not make out her gaze from behind her omnipresent green-tinted glasses. “But I’m so sorry, Henry, for all of this. For involving you in my nightmare.”
Henry sat up. He was wearing a pair of black silk pajamas with Win Stephenson’s trademark crest over the breast pocket. He glanced down with passing irritation—Win, soon enough he thought—and looked back at Maude.
“As I recall, I insisted on involving myself,” he said simply. “But I think the time has come you told me the precise nature of this nightmare, Maude.” He paused. “Before anyone else gets killed.”
Maude tilted her head down toward at her hands, once again gloved, in gray like the rest of her ensemble, and clasped over her knee. She seemed like one of her own sculptures for a long moment, before she spoke.
“Henry… Henry, I know I owe it to you to explain… But it’s…” She grew silent again as he waited.
“I wouldn’t believe it if you told me?” he said at last.
She looked up, and now it seemed as if he could see her anguished eyes right through her glasses. It suddenly struck him that he had never seen her with them off… that he had no idea what color her eyes were.
“It’s that I wouldn’t want you to believe it. Not all of it. Not the worst of it.”
“Try me.”
She sat still for a long moment, as if searching the air for something that should appear. But then she shifted her body slightly, and Henry could feel her withdrawing.
“Henry, I do owe you an explanation, not only because of what’s happened—because of the danger you put yourself in on my behalf—but because I’ve grown… fond of you.” It visibly took a great deal out of Maude to say this, Henry thought, but he simultaneously felt her rushing away at the speed of light. “I don’t want to put you in danger any longer. I don’t want… I don’t believe further association with me would do either of us any good.” Her voice had iced over.
Henry stared at her. “Maude,” he said simply.
She stared, impassively now.
“Maude,” he said again. “You know that I’ve come to care about you. You know, those long evening, those conversations… meant—mean—a great deal to me. Do you understand?”
She looked down at her hands again, and when she lifted her face it seemed like stone.
“Maude,” said Henry, his voice rising. “Maude…” He couldn’t get the words out. They would have been absurd, dropping like black toads the very moment they passed over his lips. She sat very, very still as he struggled to say something else, something, anything to dispel what was happening. And then something else entirely came out.
“Maude,” said Henry in a different tone, “what color are you eyes?”
She started as if slapped. She stood, her face a mask hanging from one ear, and fled the room before Henry could disentangle himself from the sheets. He was at the door, calling her name, when Stephanie appeared (she must have been outside the whole time). Henry barely registered that it was her, for the sleek, icy career woman had been replaced with a skeletal, haggard figure, dressed now in a robe like Maude’s and wearing, absurdly, a dark blue turban.
“Get out of my way, Stephanie,” Henry said, recovering as Maude disappeared down the hall.
“Why?” said Stephanie, whose voice had changed as well. It sounded ancient, like a harridan with a two pack a day habit. “So you can protect her?” Stephanie sneered, her eyes so bloodshot that her pupils seemed almost red. “You’ve done such an admirable job so far, haven’t you? Mucking about in things you couldn’t possibly understand!” Henry stepped back, unnerved by the woman’s changed appearance, the way she was positively hissing her words.
Just then Tell appeared behind her in the hall, as imposing as ever. Stephanie turned on her heel and slipped around him with a sound of disgust. Tell shook his head as she too disappeared up the hall.
“These are some strange chicks, man,” he said to Henry.
“You have no idea,” Henry said, his anger and urgency ebbing away. He felt defeated. Everything was unraveling, and he still felt as if he didn’t understand the least part of it. But as he stood there, looking past Tell’s bulk down the gleaming white hallway, several things dawned on him at once. He looked up at Tell with what he could only imagine was a dumbfounded expression.
“Mr. Stephenson sent me to see if you were awake, and so you are,” said Tell. “That’s good. He wants to see you.”
“I’ll bet he does,” said Henry.
“Twenty minutes?” asked Tell.
“Fifteen,” said Henry, his gut burning as he walked back into the bedroom.
RANCHO DIABLO, which included a one story, moderne house (so palatial that to call it a “ranch house” seemed laughable), along with stables, corrals, exercise track, pool, spa, guest houses and private golf course, stood in the shadow of the Diablo Mountains near Blast Springs, right where Howard Hughes had put it. Rumor had it that he’d gone to great expense to create a climate-controlled oasis right outside of Las Vegas, and that the first night he spent there he found that his airtight pleasuredome was so thoroughly climatized that the salad at dinner wilted before he could eat it. He packed up and left the next day, selling it to a succession of gaming moguls who left it more or less intact, a slice of late 1950s Western plush that only Win Stephensen would think of “improving.” It was Win who had added the ultra-exclusive golf course, Dante’s Circle, and turned the guest houses into a gilded hostel only a Trump could love.
But Win had left the main house, with its banks of floor to ceiling windows, intact. After dressing and following Tell down endless corridors, Henry traded his bright, Satanic view for the one that overlooked the golf course: Win’s expansive, empty office. An incongruous heavy oak desk the size of an aircraft carrier dominated the minimalist space, flanked by a Warhol portrait of Sinatra and a photo of Win shaking the Chairman’s hand at the opening of The Paradise. The barely concealed look of smiling boredom on Sinatra’s face, just a few years before his death, said it all: Good luck, clyde. Just wait. At least, that’s what Henry hoped Sinatra was thinking.
Win was nodding and making noise into a phone when Henry came in. He caught Henry’s eye, smiled grimly, and waved Henry to a low chair in front of the desk. Henry simply stood next to it.
“Fine, fine,” said Win, and hung up the phone in the manner of someone who hadn’t been paying attention, one of his affectations (for everyone knew perfectly well that nothing escaped Win Stephenson’s notice). “Bethel,” he said, still smiling his pained, business-smile. “How are you feeling?”
“Hm,” said Henry. “Let’s see… I saw an old friend die right in front of my eyes; was drugged, kidnapped, and taunted by a psychotic Greek, who very nearly killed me before I cut off his head with a sword; then raced across town thinking that Maude and her assistants were in the process of being murdered by some kind of gangster-cum-terrorist organization, only to find that they’d been whisked to safety by the most double-dealing, duplicitous robber baron in the city, who doubtless did so in order to get his hands on every sculpture the rescued and now-grateful artist had in her possession. And you?”
Win stared at Henry for a second, his smile firmly in place, his eyes flashing. Then he chuckled and sat back in his chair, long thin hands clasped across his Hermes tie, his diamond cufflinks winking. “You’re tired,” he said smoothly. “Probably starved, too.” Win pressed a button on his desk. “Bring in some breakfast for Mr. Bethel,” he said.
Henry stood, staring, while Win regarded him coolly. When a factotum brought in a silver cart loaded with food, Henry sighed, sat down, and began to eat. He was starving, of course. Win waited, smiling, until Henry’s mouth was quite full before he began to speak.
“First of all, Bethel, I’m sorry about your friend. Believe that. But with all due respect, you’ve been out of your depth from the beginning. If you’d stuck to writing about Maude’s work” (here Henry made a sound of protest) “or whatever it was you thought you were doing, Napoleon Hendryx would still be alive.”
Henry chewed slowly, deliberately. Win continued.
“Second, it wasn’t by chance that Maude S— came to Vegas for an exhibition and then decided to stay on to work.” Win’s smile became feline. “Of course, when I became aware of her work, through various connections—“
“Like the Hellenic League,” said Henry.
Win chuckled. “Yes, like the Hellenic League. When I became aware of her, I tried to induce her to town. You were right—I wanted something mysterious and controversial, something new, for the opening of the Dressler Las Vegas, and no one had more buzz and rumor than Maude. But my attempts were rebuffed, so I had to approach the matter from many other angles.”
Henry swallowed, and paused. “You arranged everything through Elise. She was the perfect beard. You swore her to secrecy, of course, and she was doubtless flattered to be acting as your secret agent—that’s Elise all over. That’s how you managed to buy The Hierophant before the opening.”
Win nodded. “It will make quite a splash, that piece: the first thing visitors will see when they enter the galleries.”
“But it wasn’t just using the sort of gallerist Maude had favored in the past, was it?” said Henry. “There were other reasons why Maude would want to come to Vegas. Because she was forced to continually move her studio in any case. Because she was on the run from something. From Mangopoulos.”
Win smiled broadly now. “Indeed. She might not want to have anything to do with someone like me, but she had trusted one or two of my fellow board members in the Hellenic League in the past. They were the ones who persuaded her that Vegas was too public a place, too much in the business of security, for Mangopoulos to try anything.”
Henry stared. “Considering the scene at Bobby Apollo’s house, I’d say you were wrong about that.”
Win laughed, and shook his head as if talking to a particularly thick-headed child. “Of course, Mangopoulos would turn up eventually, with plenty of his followers, all of them armed to the teeth. I was counting on that.”
Henry gaped. “You put Maude and her assistants in danger… just so you could rescue her? Just so she would then be entirely disposed to be your little prize on the international art scene?” He felt his outrage growing by the second.
Win’s smile vanished. “Don’t be stupid, Bethel. Maude was never in any real danger. Do you think any organization bent on making trouble, even a highly skilled and professional one, let alone one as sloppy as Mangopoulos’ demented little crew, could slip into my town unnoticed?” Win’s voice grew icy. “In my town?”
Win leaned forward. “The whole point was to draw these scumbags out into the open so that my people could deal with them. Then you had to go and fuck up the timetable with your knight-errant horseshit.” Color rose in Win’s face. “Thanks to you, they moved early—not so early we couldn’t set the evacuation of Maude and her work in motion, but too early for my men to be in place to deal with them. Thanks to you, Bethel, most of them slipped away from Apollo’s alive.”
Henry stood up, incredulous. “This is insane,” he spat. “Your men? Why the hell didn’t you call the F.B.I. the minute you knew Mangopoulos was on the move? These people are terrorists, for chrissakes.” Henry stopped short. “Wait, just who the fuck is Mangopoulos, anyway? Why is he trying to kill Maude?”
Win leaned back again, his self-satisfied smile back in place. “First, for any number of reasons I’m not getting into, I don’t want the F.B.I. around unless absolutely necessary. My security people are all ex-F.B.I. anyway. They could have handled the whole operation, quietly.
“Second, Mangopoulos, as perhaps you gathered, isn’t exactly a terrorist. Nor is he precisely a Mafioso, though he has roots in organized crime in Eastern Europe and Turkey.” Win paused.
“Well?” said Henry.
Win pursed his lips. “Well, Bethel, the fact of the matter is our brilliant little sculptor somehow pissed off a fanatical secret society of pagans.”
Henry laughed, but the laugh died in his throat. He stared at Win. “You’re not kidding, are you?” Henry gazed off into the artificial paradise of rolling grass, laid out in the noonday sun like a sacrifice. Several of the bizarre things that Mangopoulos and Gus had said clicked, fantastically but smoothly, into place.
“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Let’s let that one go by. No weirder an idea than anything else that’s happened to me in the past three days. A murderous religious cult. Okay.” Henry looked back at Win. “What does that have to do with Maude?”
Win looked back, evenly. “As a matter of fact, Bethel, I have no idea. I simply saw an opportunity. That’s how I operate. Why Maude had run afoul of these people was secondary. It could be anything, I suppose. Perhaps she’s a former cultist, an apostate. Perhaps she made something that offended their sensibilities, though from what I’ve seen of her work she doesn’t deal with Classical mythology as such.” And now Win smiled, as if he was in on a joke that hadn’t been spoken.
“Perhaps,” said Win Stephenson, nodding past Henry’s shoulder toward the door, “you should ask her yourself.”