HE IS FALLING down a shaft of light as bright as the hundred million suns of his potential, candlepower to the Nth, falling at last to the great black pyramid of the Underworld, to dwell forever as a Voice, a vibrating shadow unseen by any but the lonelyhearted and deranged, el hombre invisible at long last. He is pure light at last, pure in the sense that he was about to be extinguished forever and reborn as light’s blissed and unholy opposite, oblivion, darkness. Only the Voice to remain, only words burning in the void beneath the world…

Henry Bethel came awake. This time the dream was not shattered by the shrill ring of the ancient phone he never answered, nor by the knocks and insistent pressure on a doorbell whose wires had been cut, nor by the insistent morning pressure of his bladder—life’s only constant—forcing him out of his gray sheets and into the dull white bathroom down the hall, shuffling like a mental patient in search of the TV room. No, this time the dream was cut short by sudden below-zero chill that had come over the room, raising the hairs on his arms and washing over him like an occult hand. In fact, it was an occult hand that had pulled Henry Bethel painfully back into the conscious world he could little bear anymore.

It was the ghost of Jack Samson.

“Hello, Jack,” said Henry thickly. You had to initiate conversation with Jack because otherwise Jack would just hang there like the sick visceral memory of a bad bout of the stomach flu and, bereft of Jacob Marley-style chains, stare at you for what seemed like hours. But if you spoke to Jack he could speak back (and why this was, why Jack Samson, who never waited for anyone to speak before dominating them with his ink-sharpened tongue in his former life, had to wait for this permission was beyond Henry, who imagined it was either a karmic punishment or some obscure ectoplasmic rule that he had never stumbled upon during his long hours nodding over texts at Miskatonic U.), and speaking to Jack was the surest way of getting rid of him (something else that was utterly the opposite of Jack’s earthly existence).

“Time, time, time, see what’s become of you,” said Jack, whose voice sounded as if it was being run through a wah-wah pedal off in some distant room. “Hank, baby, what are you doing in bed at one in the p.m.?”

Henry opened his eyes fully and saw Jack hovering off to the left, wearing his black leather blazer as always, his porkpie askew on his shaved head, his eyes forever gone behind granny shades. It was how he always appeared. Henry once nearly asked if Jack, in his spectral state, could in fact take his sunglasses off, and then thought better of seeing what the actual eyes of a ghost might look like.

“Jesus, Hanky. You look like hell. You look worse than I do, and I’m dead. What’s with you?”

“Oh, you know,” said Henry quietly. “Just watching life’s rich pageant.” He had yet to move since waking, and he thought dimly that after Jack faded to white in a few minutes, so then could he.

Jack, in that irritating, otherworldly way he had now (and, come to think of it, had in life) sensed this. “Wow. You have a black dog the size of a VW sitting on you chest.”

Henry smiled. “Yes. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t get up.”

“Someone has done a number on you, Hanky. What was her name? Why aren’t you banging away at the typewriter in melodramatic exorcism?”

“I don’t write anymore, Jack,” said Henry.

Jack Samson snorted and lit a ghostly cigarette… or at least, went through the motions, there being no cigarette and no lighter in his hands as they wen through their dumb show of memory. “What a crock. This is not the Henry Bethel I know, prodigious thinker of Big Thoughts, aesthetic gadfly, devastating cultural critic-at-large. What’s happened, professore?”

“I’m not a professor anymore, Jack,” said Henry.

“Stop kidding around, boyo.” And Jack’s form and face wavered and stiffened as he realized Henry was not kidding. “What’s going on?”

“For a ghost, you’re woefully uninformed, Jack.” Henry realized he was not going to go back to sleep, and with a rueful creaking of muscle and bone, sat up. “I don’t do the art critic bit anymore. I gave it up after SOL folded. And I gave up the chair at the university.”

Jack floated and let out a long, sepulchral whistle. “Sorry, baby. I’ve been limboing, you know? What the hell happened?”

“Nothing happened, everything happened,” said Henry wearily.

“C’mon, Hanky, spill it. I walk into the disintegration of Mighty Henry Bethel, you gotta tell me about it.”

Fuck it, he thought. He wasn’t going to go over it all again with this fucking hallucination, not after going over it to the tune of $200 an hour with that other fucking hallucination known as therapy. Normally these visitations from Jack were pleasurably creepy, but this was too much like a superficial chitchat with some old asshole you once thought you were friends with. He hadn’t seen Jack for some time… maybe this was another step toward that blissful oblivion.

“It’s exhausting, Jack. Please let it go. I’m a different person these days. Re-invented myself like everyone else.”

“Jesus fuck,” said Jack, who drifted over to the spartan desk by the window whose blinds had been closed for so long it was uncertain if there was still a window behind them at all anymore. “Okay, baby, I won’t push it. I’m never in a hurry anymore,” he cackled, “and you’re still a stubborn ass. So what’s your brilliant new career if you’re not dispensing pearls of insight anymore?”

Henry rubbed his neck and go up, walking stiffly to the desk. He pulled open the drawer and took out a cream-colored business card and flung it toward the semi-translucent form of the person who was once his very best friend, if not his only true friend. The card read, in elegant Times Roman:

HENRY BETHEL Sinatraist Ivanhoe 4-5451

Embossed in the card’s center was the barely discernible image of a snap-brim hat with a very high band.

“Sinatraist?” barked Jack with that unsettling laugh the dead have. “What the fuck is that?”

Henry smiled. “I make my living buying and selling rare Sinatra recordings and memorabilia.”

“What? And his estate isn’t all over you?”

Henry yawned. “You forget The Favor.”

“Oh, right,” said Jack. The card slowly passed though his hand and fluttered to the floor. His face screwed up, and Henry prepared for the withering torrent of his dead friend’s scorn and wit.

But, weirdly, it was not forthcoming, not this time. A change came over Jack; his whole form shifting like smoke caught in a draft from an open door. “Well, that’s the damndest fucking thing, Hanky old boy. But I’ve got to go now.”

“Oh. Well, nice to see you Jack.” Now even Henry’s hallucinations were unstable and inconsistent. What did you expect, he sighed.

Jack was fading, the room temperature slowly rising back to normal. Suddenly he turned and mock-smacked his forehead. “Oh fuck! I nearly forgot why I was here!”

“Yeah,” said Henry, and suddenly, inexplicably, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up for real.

“The omen,” said Jack, smiling his old, wicked smile. “Heh. Or portent, whatever you want to call it.”

“Omen?” said Henry.

“Yeah. Apparently, you’re going to become Lord Hierophant of Las Vegas, Emperor of Stones.”

“Excuse me?”

“Hey, that’s how it was put to me.” Jack was fading fast, his voice beginning to resonate like a cell phone call inside an iron lung. “And something about your love will be your only shield, your shield your greatest sacrifice…”

Jack was almost smoke. “See you around, baby… oh, and there’s that pounding at the door tooooooooooo…”

It was like the hand of God letting the air out of your tires. Henry Bethel closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, and when he opened them Jack Samson was really and truly dead and there wasn’t a sound in the room, not even an echo real or imagined.

There was, however, a pounding at the door.

FROM THE POUNDING at his front door, Henry Bethel would have thought a very hefty repo man or hulking homicidal maniac (it was a toss-up which one he would be happier to see) was on the other side. “Hang on,” he half-shouted, fumbling into his old black robe and trying to shake off Jack’s visitation.

When he threw open the door, however, he was shocked to see a small, rather birdlike man, impeccably dressed in a dark gray suit. He was pale, almost translucent, with close-cropped fire red hair and elegant oval glasses alight on his sharp Roman nose. He was so thin he looked to Henry like a human matchstick. The incongruity between this and the thunderous knocking brought Henry up short.

“Uh, yes?” said Henry.

“Mr. Henry Bethel? I hope I didn’t rouse you from too deep a slumber.” The man’s voice was crisp and faintly acid, somewhere just this side of Basil Rathbone. “My name is Madison Monroe, and I have come to see you on urgent matter. May I come in?”

Henry half began to close the door with whatever protestations he used these days to get rid of people. But he stopped, vaguely intrigued by this odd creature. “I suppose I have a few minutes,” he said, opening the door and ushering the man inside.

Madison Monroe glided into the house. Henry had never actually seen anyone, not even runway models, actually “glide,” but this man did. He was like a wisp from a burning candle, and Henry looked past him to see if there was some burly brute lurking around the corner before closing the door.

If Madison Monroe was nonplussed by the décor of Henry’s front room, he did not betray it. There was a knockoff Eames chair in one corner, next to a freestanding lamp. Otherwise the hardwood floors were bare; the fireplace yawned blackly in the white wall. At the far end of the room, however, there as a giant photograph covering the entire north wall: a reproduction of the cover of Frank Sinatra’s album No One Cares (arranged and conducted by Gordon Jenkins). Sinatra, wearing trademark hat and a trenchcoat, sat at a bar and stared disconsolately into his glass as happy, blissfully unaware barflies chatted in the background. Monroe seemed to take all this in with a glance, and, unasked, moved directly to the chair and lowered himself into it with single, fluid motion.

“Drink?” Henry asked, rubbing his chin and already answering in the affirmative for himself.

“Thank you, no,” replied Monroe as Henry went into the kitchen. “You are a very difficult man to reach, Mr. Bethel.”

Henry poured himself a rum and coke. “Incommunicado, Mr. Monroe. It’s a pleasant place to be.” He walked back into the room to see Monroe arranging a slim leather portfolio across his knees. Monroe’s expression seemed one of earnest bemusement.

“It is unfortunate that an art critic of your standing should absent himself from the fray. May I say that I greatly admired your book of essays, Fiesta Machinery?”

“You can say it,” said Henry, stifling a yawn. “People say all sorts of things. What can I do for you, Mr. Monroe? I fear I’ve retired from the art world and gone into another line of work entirely, so if you’re a curator…”

Monroe’s short bark of a laugh stopped Henry’s thought. “No, no, Mr. Bethel, I’m not a curator. And I am aware of your recent career realignment. Sinatraist, isn’t it? My sister-in-law is herself an Yma Sumactrix. Very lucrative, especially here in Las Vegas, I’m sure.”

“It keeps me in contented silence, Mr. Monroe. Incommunicado.” Henry hoped his tone would be apparent, and that this strange little man, who he was already regretting letting in, bizarre knock or no, would get to his point and go.

“Yes. Silence is something to be desired in this brave new world of tomorrow, isn’t it, Mr. Bethel?” Monroe unsnapped his portfolio. “Let me go straight to the point, then. I represent the collector Don Ix Ixmal. You are familiar with his excellency?”

Bethel was vaguely familiar. “Um, yes. Specializes in Mayan art, doesn’t he? Some sort of big wheel in the Mexican government…”

Monroe smiled. “A former ambassador. Don Ix has worn many hats in his long life of philanthropy and public service, Mr. Bethel. And his taste ranges far and wide, from ancient to contemporary.” Monroe removed a long gray card from the portfolio. “And Don Ix is at present most interested in the work of this artist.”

Henry took the card from Monroe’s proffered hand. It was slate gray, the color of cold, dark stone. It read, in raised lettering:

SACRED MONSTERS An Exhibition of New Sculpture by Maude S— February 28-April 27 The Elise Valkenburg Gallery 1225 Industrial Road

“It’s nice to see Elise is still in business,” remarked Henry. “The market for art in Las Vegas, you may know, is rather limited to fourth-rate Venetian glass and paintings of dolphins." Who, he wondered to himself, was Maude S—?

“Maude S— is a recent and mysterious addition to the local art scene, Mr. Bethel,” said Monroe, as if reading his mind. “Don Ix has received very, shall we say, intriguing reports about her work. But these reports have been of a rather clandestine nature, for they refer to sculptures that almost no one has seen. In fact, they’ve likely been seen by the same handful of people who have actually seen the artists herself.”

“What do you mean?”

Monroe shifted slightly in the chair. “Maude S— came, as the cliché goes, literally out of nowhere. Her sculptures—the ones she shows in public—have appeared in odd places outside the international art circuit. But the works are so striking that they have slowly filtered into the art world, bit by bit, by mere word of mouth. Perhaps you saw the photographs of her works in Art in America three months ago?”

“I let my subscription lapse.” Henry didn’t bother to conceal his yawn. This was all so pleasantly distant now. Why did he not tell the Matchstick to go away?

“They’ve created quite a buzz, nonetheless,” said Monroe somewhat archly. “But the real buzz is the Garbo-like behavior of Maude S— herself. She is a recluse, dealing only with galleries through representatives, and spurning any kind of exclusive deal. She roams from one odd city to another, showing her works, selling several, than moving on as suddenly as she arrived. But most enigmatically she refuses to show any of her private works, the tales of which have started a furious rustling among collectors and other artists.”

Henry regarded Monroe over the top of his glass. “And now she’s come to our radiant city, has she.”

“Indeed. And Don Ix is anxious to make an assessment of her works before she disappears again. That, Mr. Bethel, is where you come in. Don Ix wishes to contract your services as a critic and advise him as to the quality and importance of this artist’s work.”

Henry sighed. “You’ve wasted your time, Mr. Monroe. As I stated before, I’m out of the whole dirty and dispiriting art game. Certainly a man as wealthy as Don Ix can hop on a lear jet to Vegas and see the works for himself.”

Monroe smiled. “Alas, Don Ix has duties elsewhere of the utmost urgency that prevent him from making a personal assessment.”

Henry waved his hand. “Then he can fly in somebody from L.A. or New York. I’m sad to say there are plenty of overpaid and underintelligent art consultants around.”

“Don Ix wants someone who is, shall we say, local. And you are the only art critic of any stature in the whole state of Nevada, I would wager.”

“I’m retired,” said Henry forcefully. “And what does being local have to do with this?”

At this, Madison Monroe’s smile paled somewhat, and he stood up with the same light grace as before. “The assessment of Maude S— that Don Ix most desires is not of her work at the Elise Valkenburg Gallery, Mr. Bethel.”

Monroe walked closer, as if for dramatic effect, and small as he was, achieved it. “Don Ix wants an assessment of the private works. The ones that no one has seen. We feel someone with experience in the city can get closer to the artist than is possible for some hired gun, as it were.”

Henry paused, than laughed, snorting, and shook his head. “I’m not interested, Mr. Monroe. Tell your boss he should talk to the people who’ve already seen these works.”

Monroe’s smile returned like a flickering lightbulb, oddly twitchy and bright. “Unfortunately, Mr. Bethel, those who have seen these works have proved to be very difficult to contact. Many seem to have vanished off the face of the earth.”

What is this, Henry thought to himself, Pickman’s Model meets the X-Files? “I’m very sorry, Mr. Monroe,” he said

“It it’s a question of your fee, Mr. Beth-"

Henry cut him off. “It has nothing to do with money. Nothing these days has anything to do with money, except for the Chairman of the Board. I am not an art critic, cultural commentator, talking head, pundit or writer of any kind for any price,” he said, handing him back the invitation.

Monroe deftly moved around him toward the door. “Keep it, Mr. Bethel. I will convey your refusal to Don Ix, who will naturally be deeply disappointed. But perhaps you will reconsider.”

“I’m afraid I won’t, Mr. Monroe.” He continued to hold out the card, a little unnerved by Monroe’s swiftness. Monroe already had the door open.

“Well, we’ll see, Mr. Bethel. It is my job, on occasion, to be an optimist.” He smiled once again. “It was a pleasure to meet you. Good day.” And with that he was gone with a soft click as the door closed behind him.

Henry stood there a moment, stupidly holding his breath. At last he let it go with a low whistle, and drained the rest of his drink. He wasn’t sure if he was more annoyed by the man’s disdainful, I-work-for-someone-important manner or by the whole bizarre scenario he had proposed. Was he considered a potential spy precisely because he had left the scene? And what would Don Ix do with the information once he had it? Obviously, the works are private because they’re not for sale. No doubt Don Ix was some obsessive rich weirdo who felt he could wave enough money around and have whatever he wanted.

“Feh,” said Henry aloud. He realized he was still holding the card for the show. He walked into the kitchen and, with great satisfaction, stepped on the pedal to the trash can and flung it into the depths.

It took a second to register what he had seen. He opened the lid again, and peered at it for a long moment before reaching down and retrieving it. He had neglected to turn the card over during his interview with Monroe. He now looked closely at it, and felt a horrible coldness in his gut, felt it spread up into his heart with all its sorrows and lodge there, heavy as a ton of ice. For he knew immediately that he would see the works of Maude S— in spite of himself.

There, on the other side of the card, was a photo of a sculpture. It was a recreation of a figure from the Tarot. It was, in fact, as the Roman letters carved into it’s base proclaimed, the Hierophant.

And it was the spitting image of Francis Albert Sinatra.

ONE’S REPUTATION should be a sword and shield, mused Henry as his decrepit red Karmen Ghia sailed through the Charleston Underpass, out of the smell of freshly baked bread that hovered like an invisible cloud around the Holsum Bakery (whose giant neon clock read one minute to midnight) and into the soot of a truck lumbering in front of him. Henry swung out of the noxious fumes and onto Commerce, the invitation to Sacred Monsters in the seat next to him. A sword and shield, and Henry felt as if he had hung up his armor for good, trading it in for a vulnerability that made him feel slightly human, and was bearable because it was secret—the vulnerability of an exile. But he knew that upon entering the Elise Valkenburg Gallery that half of the Vegas art crowd would see only the miraculous glinting of that armor while the other half would see him as more naked than he really was.

Henry sighed. His relinquishing of his identity—the persona that he had willingly and assiduously created over many years—had generated untold amounts of stories and gossip, both in Vegas and in L.A., New York, etc. Not that he cared, since he was no longer required to interact with anyone in the art scene anymore. They could mock him for his “Duchamp Lite” act (as one fellow critic had put it) all they wanted. He wasn’t around for it anymore, professionally, aesthetically, emotionally. Living in Vegas (something that gave him, he knew, an idiosyncratic charm) he was isolated from the heavy hitters anyway. But now he was showing his face in his own backyard—in the continually despairing, constantly embattled Las Vegas art scene. Which had always treated him with awe for his connections to the larger world or disgust for his perceived half-hearted contributions to their quixotic dreams of a town that gave a damn about “art.” He was no less tired of the dichotomy now then he was when he threw in the towel.

High above the city a full moon pressed its face against the mountainous clouds. He hoped that Elise was correct, that he would be able to avoid most of those dreaded and familiar faces in the candlelit interior of the gallery. For he had discovered that the mysterious Maude S—‘s sculptures were to be seen only by candlelight, and only after midnight. How terribly Goth, Henry had said on the phone to Elise.

“I know,” said Elise bemusedly. “But that was her condition. I think it will be fun. Anything to break up the wine and cheese monotony of these things.” Elise, he knew, was nearly as disenchanted as he was with the life of art with a capital “A.” But Elise was married to a retired casino magnate, and without the gallery would have nothing to do but slowly succumb to vast couches of Italian leather in the airy boredom of a house in Summerlin.

“And of course it will be wonderful to see you again, Henry,” she had continued. “I thought perhaps this might prick your interest, but I wasn’t very optimistic.”

“Nor should you be,” Henry had replied. “I’m not coming out of retirement; I have ulterior motives for wanting to see the show.” Henry had tried to arrange a private showing—which was why he had broken down and called Elise in the first place—but Elise talked him into coming to the opening. “It’ll be your only chance to meet Maude S—,” she said, “and even then I can’t guarantee she’ll show up. But when she does, it’s only on the opening night. I don’t know, Henry, either she’s the most melodramatic artist I’ve ever dealt with, or she’s in the Witness Protection Plan.”

(Considering that most of the artists Elise had dealt with were either outsized academic egos or minor figures safely dead, it was a safe bet that Elise hadn’t come into contact with the more outrageous figures in conceptual art circles. But Henry kept that thought to himself.)

“Mystery is the highest value a work of art can have, Elise,” said Henry, and winced inside at how easily one of his own tropes had rolled off his tongue.

“You should know,” said Elise. “It’s only been two years, but everyone still buzzes about you…”

“You’re not selling this when you tell me that.”

“Oh, please,” said Elise. “Slip in the back through my office after midnight, and hardly anyone will notice you. Wear a hat,” she added with a laugh.

So finally, against all misgivings and instincts to avoid this admittedly intriguing but disturbing turn of events, here he was, wearing an old fedora and turning into the alley that led, between rows of anonymous warehouses, to Elise’s reclaimed industrial laundry plant, it’s ceilings now strung with chic track lighting where once rows of fluorescent had washed over everything in their equalizing, benumbed light. As nice as the gallery space was, Henry had often wondered if the laundry hadn’t been a better work of art.

The parking lot was packed, of course. The artist’s enigmatic behavior had preceded her, and the midnight hour made the whole thing too good to resist. Henry gave his keys to the terminally bored valet and pulled his fedora down over his eyes, ducking around the side of the building to door to Elise’s office. He spoke a little mantra under his breath: “Please no Stan Dayton, please no Stan Dayton, please no Stan Dayton…”

Of course, Stan Dayton was standing just inside Elise’s office, his third glass of wine already in his hand.

“Henry! Good god, I thought this might bring you out!” Stan practically bellowed it. His walleyes behind thick glasses and mass of white beard made him resemble a demented Santa Claus.

“Hello, Stan,” said Henry with a tone so weary he hoped Stan would catch it.

“What the hell have you been up to? Did you see the piece on me in the paper?” Dayton was the chair of the art department, and somehow had managed to avoid the studied disdain of his colleagues. He always came off as enthusiastic and insincerely ebullient as a PR flak, even when he was demoting someone or breaking the bad news about some budget cut (doubtless the reason he had been made chair in the first place).

“No, Stan, I missed that. I was in Sumatra, you know.”

“Sumatra?” Dayton blinked as if he couldn’t quite process that.

“Oh, yes,” said Henry. “Became very ill”—he coughed into his hand—“you’ll excuse me”—and coughing slipped around Dayton to where Elise stood in the doorway. She looked as she always did; a middle-aged woman who was never beautiful but always oddly attractive, and who now always appeared as if she had just stepped out of an overpriced salon. Tonight she was in a black pants suit, and her hoop earrings were big enough to lob a grenade through. She beamed at Henry and gave his arm a squeeze, then whispered:

“Follow me.”

He smiled, and they moved like bosom conspirators down the short hallway and into the cavernous dark of the gallery, lit now with hundreds of candles. The soft glow spread away from them in wavering pools, congealing around a parade of figures as stately and grave as saints in a medieval cathedral. The candles, Henry was grateful to see, were only placed around the base of the statutes themselves, like votive offerings; it would indeed be easy to go unrecognized in the gloom, even though the gallery was quite full, the murmur of voices weaving in and out as the viewers walked slowly from work to work, each of which was ten feet tall on four foot pedestals. The installation had indeed created a medieval hush of sorts, and it seemed that most people were actually looking up at the statues, rather than engaging in the typical, butterflying banter that usually had everything to do with who was who and who was here and nothing to do with the art. (Henry often thought how amusing it would be to give exiting gallery types a little quiz on what they had actually seen; he was sure most of the form would be vague to the point of blankness).

Now, still close to Elise and moving along the wall, Henry approached the works themselves. They were indeed figures from the Tarot, but rendered as if they were Egyptian idols on ceremonial thrones, and each one was a figure associated with the history of Las Vegas. Some were obvious: Elvis as the Magician, Bugsy Siegel as the Hanged Man. But here was the Empress: Helen Stewart, whose husband had been killed in the late 19th Century leaving her with a vast ranch that was now the heart of the city, an obscure figure made even obscurer by a town that threw away its own past every three years. Henry moved from each to each with glowing admiration: the technique was stunning, with each figure looking stately and divinely unreachable yet somehow alive, like all the best religious sculpture.

“Masterful, don’t you think?” whispered Elise. The churchly hush had even blunted her usually high-pitched voice.

Henry murmured. They were impressive, but odd. A Las Vegas Tarot is a fun and logical conceit, especially for a city ripe with myth and symbol, with psychics and folks longing for second chances… but why in marble? Why not the deck itself? The figures felt so monumental for a city without monuments.

Henry stopped beneath the Devil, the cool stone figure floating, it seemed, above him in a warm cradle of light. His face was a blank: completely featureless, but for what appeared to be a head of coifed and blow-dried hair. Shadows flickered across his suit; his right hand grasping what appeared to be money trickling through his fingers. In his left, a fistful of earth and roots. Something caught Henry’s eyes and he squinted closer to see tiny figures in the roots, writhing in agony like sinners in Dante, carved in astonishing detail…

“Odd spelling, eh?” said Elise again.

Henry felt a slight chill. His eyes caught those of one of his former graduate students across the way, and nodded in embarrassed recognition. He quickly turned down to read the title at the base again:

THE DEVEL

“The Devel,” repeated Henry aloud.

“Give the Devel his due.”

For a moment, Henry thought Elise had spoke, so close was the phrase to his ear. But when he looked up again, he noticed a hush creeping over the gallery as the talk died away. Elise was looking up into the darkness to the old catwalks high above, and she nudged Henry with her elbow.

Standing with a huge candelabra in hand, looking for all the world like someone who had stepped out of a Roger Corman Sixties Poe flick, a hooded figure was standing above them. Instantly, Henry realized that it was her voice he had heard, even though it had been no more than a low rustling whisper.

“That’s her,” said Elise, and her breath came out with an excited little gasp. “That’s Maude S—.”

CONVERSATION CEASED as if the air had been sucked from the room, leaving it a soundless void, all eyes now fixed upon the dark, hooded figure above them. Henry peered through the gloom and could make out that Maude S— was wrapped in a long, burgundy velvet gown; her arms sheathed in black opera gloves, her face almost completely obscured by the great, owlish hood.

“Thank you all for entertaining my sacred monsters,” she said. Her voice was clear and strong, and somewhat light, not at all the voice Henry thought he had heard in his ear a second ago. That voice had been like water rushing in an underground river.

“And my thanks to Elise Valkenburg for giving these monsters a grotto in which to rest from their weary journey.” There was some laughter and a smattering of applause. “They are quite at home here in your radiant city, even though they have no fortune to give.” Some more laughter, somewhat nervous, thought Henry. He glanced around, seeing some rapt faces, some smirking at the theatricality of it all.

“Of course, fortune is never written in stone, is it?” Henry could swear she was smiling, even though he really couldn’t see her face. “At least, not until after the fact. Only Time enthrones us.” As she said this, her arm drifted out above them with a broad gesture, as Kristine and Oliver, Elise’s gallery assistants, slowly wheeled out another sculpture though the parted curtains that separated the storage room from the main space. It was the same base as the rest, but the grand throne upon it sat empty. The inscription was plain to see even in the gloom, for, unlike the rest, it was cut in gilded Roman letters:

THE EMPEROR

There was another smattering of bemused applause, and a guffaw or two. But when everyone’s eyes turned back to the catwalk, Maude S— was gone. There was a moment of confusion, broken at last by Elise’s clapping, which brought on a full-blown ovation of sorts.

“Who is she kidding with that The Lady Vanishes crap?” It was Doug Hardin, one of Henry’s former graduate students. He had sidled up to Henry in the dark, along with the ever-present Jenny Matsui and Ginger Arnold.

“Life is all about entrances and exits, Douglas,” said Henry. Hardin’s art consisted of keeping pictures of crooked politicians in clear jars filled with formaldehyde.

“You should know, professor,” said Jenny teasingly. Jenny painted oil portraits of violent war scenes onto the D cups of white bras. “Wow, it’s great to see you here. How are you? What have you been doing?”

“Practicing to be a sunshine millionaire,” said Henry. He was looking over her shoulder at Elise as she disappeared behind the storage room curtain. “How are you doing?”

“I graduated, and you didn’t even come to my show,” said Jenny with a pout.

“Sorry, kiddo, I can’t keep track of each fallen robin.”

Jenny gave him a quizzical look. “It’s a Leonard Cohen song, dummy,” said Ginger with the unkind affection that fast friends cultivate. Ginger took photographs of people’s knees.

“Yeah, you’re well out of it, prof,” said Doug. “Although I could use some help with my fucking committee.”

“That would require talking to Dayton. I don’t think you could afford my new hourly rate for talking to Dayton.”

Jenny laughed, and Ginger said, “What do you think of these, professor?”

“Please, Ginger, my name is Henry. And these are very interesting.”

“Vedddy interesting,” said Doug. “That’s what you say when you don’t want to say anything.”

Henry smiled. “Good, Doug, nice to see you weren’t always asleep.” Henry caught sight of Elise again. “Listen kids, nice to see you, but I’ve got to ask Elise something.”

“Are you writing again?” asked Jenny. “Is that why you’re here?”

“He’s not writing again,” said Ginger wearily (which was how she said everything). “You just wanted to check out the Garbo of sculpture, right?”

“If she was a real recluse, she wouldn’t leave her studio,” said Doug.

“Well maybe that wasn’t even her,” offered Jenny. “She probably hires someone to go around pretending to be her.”

“Oh, is that why the melodramatic bullshit is piled so high here?”

“Shut up, Dougie,” said Ginger. “These pieces are really beautiful. They have the drama, not her.”

“Well said. Nice to see you all,” said Henry, pulling his hat down again and moving around them. He smiled to himself and felt a brief pang at seeing his old students. He had liked most of his students, and the few that he didn’t like he had gently demolished. The pang became a bloom of pain and passed.

He caught Elise’s elbow as she was giving Kristine some instructions.

“That was pretty Gothic after all, wasn’t it?” he asked.

Elise shrugged. “That little display probably sold at least a couple of these.”

“Listen, where is she now? Can you make an introduction?”

Elise waved her hand in exasperation. “An introduction? I didn’t even know she was going to be here! Her assistant called an hour before to say that she wasn’t going to make an appearance. Suddenly she’s on the catwalk, which no one is supposed to have access to!” She shot a look at the hapless Kristine.

“I swear I don’t know how she got up there,” said Kristine. “The access ladder is still locked. All we were told was to roll out the last piece at the mention of Time.”

Elise grimaced. “Her cold fish assistant insisted on that too. Next time, Kristine, you better damn well double check these things with me.”

“Oliver said he got your approval!”

“What!? Go find Oliver and tell him to get his ass over here.”

“Elise, please,” said Henry. “You can sort this out later. Right now I really would like to meet Maude S—.”

Elise sighed. “You’re better off talking to that icy sliver over there.” Elise threw her hand in the direction of a tall, thin woman who now stood by the Fool (a hideous tourist replete with finely detailed camera around his neck and fanny pack). The woman struck Henry as a dead ringer for Sigourney Weaver, but with higher, severe cheekbones. She was wearing steel-framed elliptical glasses and her dark hair was pulled back in an elaborate French twist. Her suit was as elegant and gray as stone, and she appeared to be entering information into a palm pilot.

Elise walked over to her with Henry in tow, a pleasantly artificial smile surmounting her irritated expression.

“Henry, this is Stephanie No, assistant to Maude S—,” said Elise. “Ms. No, this is the critic Henry Bethel.”

“Former critic,” said Henry, and silently kicked himself. Don’t blow it right off the bat, he thought.

“I’m familiar with your writing,” said No, and Henry could see what Elise had meant. Her voice was like an unwarmed stethoscope on your heart. “But you won’t be writing on this exhibition, will you.” It was not a question.

“I haven’t made up my mind,” said Henry. “But if I did it would not be for publication.”

No made a face that passed, in her mind, for a smile. “That’s what all writers say,” she replied.

Henry chuckled. “I would actually like to discuss these works with the artist herself, if it is at all possible.”

“Anything is possible, but that would be unlikely,” said Ms. No. “Madame is highly selective about who she talks to in the press, whether they are active or inactive.”

Madame, thought Henry. They really are carrying this isolated genius thing to the limit.

“Believe me, Ms. No, my interest is purely aesthetic. I look for conversation these days when it comes to art, not commerce. My card,” he said, handing it to her.

Ms. No took it and studied Henry’s current profession without a flicker of interest. “I will convey this to Madame,” she said. “If you will excuse me,” she said.

“There’s something I want to discuss,” began Elise, but the sliver had already glided swiftly off. “Snooty bitch,” Elise fumed. “Anyone else I would tell where to get off.”

“But not the Riddle of the Year, eh?” said Henry staring after her. He realized that more people had spotted him now, and any moment would be descending to find out what he had been doing. He had to make a quick exit. But as he walked briskly with Elise through the candlelit gallery, he suddenly realized that something was missing from the icons around them.

“Elise, where’s the Hierophant?”

“The what? Oh, Sinatra,” she said. “I was wondering when you would notice that. It sold before the show even opened” She lowered her voice. “I snuck someone in for a very private showing last night, in violation of my agreement, I might add.”

As they reached her office, Henry paused. “Who? Who bought it?”

Elise smiled. “Who do you think?”

Henry felt the awful thought come over him. “Oh no. He didn’t, did he? Christ, please tell me he didn’t.”

Elise shrugged sadly. “Who else but Win Stevenson?”

SCOTCH ALWAYS HELPED, thought Henry to himself. It's helping me to get over this fence right now. He tottered, unsteady, as he swung his leg over a jagged ridge of chain link. He knew he wasn't going to land gracefully, sensed the pain in his knee before he even hit the ground. No matter. Scotch helps that too.

After he brushed himself off, patting his jacket pocket to make sure his silver-plated flask had not dislodged and spilled his little helper all over his lining, Henry walked toward the great skeleton of steel that rose in intersecting lines into the neon-drenched night. To the south, the clouds reflected an evil green, green like a cartoon character about to be sick, courtesy of the emerald monolith that was the MGM Grand. But here, just behind The Paradise Resort and Casino, there was only mundane orange-sodium light bouncing off of what was to be Win Stevenson's crowning glory in his bid to turn High Kulchur into an attraction that would pack the rubes in as surely as any white tigers or motion simulator rides.

Henry stared up into the spaces of night between the girders where no stars would ever be seen. Vegas had obliterated the stars quite efficiently, and somehow the knowledge that a mere hour's drive would put you into a wilderness so black you could see every jewel in the firmament didn't quite take the edge off of Henry's melancholy. He was now just drunk enough to trespass without a second thought, a direct result of the evening's oddly disturbing events.

Leaving the gallery, his mood had quickly spiraled downward. What the hell had he been doing there tonight? At first the whole thing had the intriguing camp appeal of a detective story: Poor Jack's weird warning, Madison Monroe's "mysterious employer" (Henry half-expected him to say he was working for Keyser Sose), the pulp theatrics of Maude S—, who clearly was a talented sculptor in no need of any smoke and mirrors (perhaps defensive because she was doing figurative work?). But to have Win Stevenson so richly thrown in his face at evening?s end, to see his old students and know that people had spotted him and were whispering madly about his sudden re-appearance had turned his soul sour. What had he been doing there?

Henry walked cautiously, stepping over construction detritus to get a better look at the new satellite branch of the Margaret C. Dressler Museum of Modern Art that was now opening like a grand weed in the Strip's money-soaked soil. He had seen the plans, of course, in what seemed like a million years ago in Win's panoramic office atop The Ravenna. "I couldn't get Pei," Win had boasted, "so I bought everyone who had ever worked for him." The result was going to be a vast, transparent museum, its structure wrapped in semi-opaque materials that would make it feel (in the language of his PR flacks) "like a palace of ice in the desert oasis of Las Vegas."

"More like an ice cube with some bits of metal frozen in it," Henry had opined.

Win looked up toward Henry's left and smirked. "That's why I hired your wife and not you, Bethel."

And Jill had smirked as well, but in a tolerant, such-is-the-humor-of-the-Patron manner she had long ago adopted. Jill always referred to Stevenson as The Patron, in a manner that combined mockery and flattery in equal measure. Win, naturally, got a big kick out of it. He had gotten a very big kick out of Jill Bethel ever since he had hired her to be the consultant to his buying spree of the few top Impressionist paintings still on the open market.

Jill, thought Henry. He took a sip from the flask, and tried her name aloud in the vast emptiness of the construction site. "Jill," he said thickly. Her name came out like a bit of nonsense, a piece of dada without meaning. "Jilljilljilljilljilljill?" Henry repeated, his voice trailing off. He smiled in the dark.

It was the conventional wisdom among his friends and colleagues, Henry knew, that his withdrawal had begun with the failure of his marriage. And why not? It was conventional wisdom for a conventional pattern. But Henry knew better. Hadn't his withdrawal begun much earlier, with Jack Samson's death? Or earlier still, in a way, when he had relocated to Vegas from L.A. in the first place? Or perhaps, Henry mused, couldn't it be said that his withdrawal had been ongoing before he ever even made a deposit?

Henry took another slip. Nothing is so simple as that. It's not one dramatic thing, but a whole series of them, like a string of firecrackers going off in your hand, racing up toward your flesh as you watch, paralyzed, dumbfounded. It's only the last one that blows your fingers off.

Henry walked a little ways into the structure. Shadows lengthened all around him; the dim bustle and noise of the Strip, only a few hundred yards away, seemed to be sucked into silence in his wake. Henry stood there some moments, listening to nothing in particular, looking up into the grid of dark steel. They should leave it like this, he thought, and hang the art from rusty chains. It will never look any more transparent then it does now.

"A good critic merely articulates his response to something," he said aloud in a soft voice. "And a great critic focuses his responses to the things that he loves, the things that bring him to passion."

Henry took another sip. "And when a critic can no longer look upon things with love, he should shut the hell up."

That was the secret, really. But most people, especially the lot of careerists and pedants he had suddenly found himself surrounded with, couldn't quite understand why he had thrown away the edifice that was Henry Bethel. Some of the artists he knew understood, of course. Jack would have understood implicitly.

"Where the hell are you when I really need you, Jack?" he said softly.

At some point, Henry looked at himself in the mirror and had seen a bit of a fraud. At some point, the only thing he really wanted to do was to sit in a dark room, listening to the Voice, to the perfection of Nelson Riddle's arrangements.

Someone had once written that Sinatra's only real subject was loneliness—even his up-tempo numbers were really just about the temporary relief from loneliness.

At some point, Henry began to suspect that it was his only subject as well. Even with Jill, sadly.

His mind was rambling now, moving from thought to thought, seeing Jill flash by every so often. He sat down on the cold concrete foundation, then stood back up when he realized that he might not get up again until much later. What was he doing here now? His disdain and resentment for the city's most successful success story couldn't really account for it. He didn't blame Win for Jill's leaving him, though Win had been the catalyst (he had even briefly harbored the fantasy that perhaps they were having an affair, a fantasy that had dissolved into laughter when he actually tried picturing them in the act). Win Stevenson had seduced his wife with something far more invidious then sex: the promise of a globe-trotting, jet set existence and professional autonomy that Henry had long ago turned his back on.

Suddenly the memory of Jill walking down the sidewalk swam into his brain for the briefest moment. "Enjoy your records," she had said in voice beyond contempt.

Henry pushed it away, taking a deep swig from his flask. No, it wasn't that. It wasn't even Win Stevenson's reduction of art to the level of Pirates of the Caribbean. Getting Middle America to stand for ten minutes with an audio wand to their ear while looking intently at a Braque wasn't such a bad thing at all, ultimately, no matter how casually vulgar Stevenson's presentation of such things could be. It wasn't even the whiff of legitimacy that he would now shrewdly exploit at the Dressler's expense that angered him.

It was his purchase of Maude S—'s version of Sinatra as the Hierophant.

Win Stevenson was a huge, monstrous fan of Sinatra, the sort of fan who made other fans question their devotion. For Win loved everything that was wrong and flawed with the singer: his egomania, his tough guy persona, his sadly dated Rat Pack myth. His knowledge of Sinatra's art went no further than tuxedoed "New York, New York" twilight of Frank's career. Win's office was crammed with the worst sort of Sinatra memorabilia, collector's plate-style dreck that had astonished Henry in the level of its banality.

Worse, when accompanying Jill to one of Win's bloated soirees, Henry had been appalled at the sight of him yukking it up with a set of inept Rat Pack imitators, even to the point of Win bellowing a wretched karoke version of "Luck Be A Lady." It had nothing to do with art or even music: Win's devotion was the knee-jerk response to Sinatra as Vegas icon, the same kind of know-nothingness that kept a half-dozen Elvis impersonators working the low-rent showrooms year round.

It was hard, in fact, to think of Win Stevenson as anything but the Anti-Sinatraist.

Henry laughed ruefully to himself. Now he'd bought the perfect trophy for his attraction. Henry wondered if he would insist on foisting it upon the Dressler's curators, or if he would stick it in the Paradise's lobby like the bronzed asses of the Crazy Girls at the Riviera. Or worse still, that he would place it in his private cactus garden at his estate, like some kind of ridiculous garden gnome. How would Maude S— feel about that?

"Win, you're a loser," Henry hissed into the darkness. The flask was empty and his head was beginning to hurt. As he was trying to slip the flask back into his pocket, a sliver of light suddenly flashed to his right.

Oh fuck, thought Henry. It was security, of course. The flashlight was bobbing this way and that in the distance, coming toward him. Had he been spotted? He had to get out here.

Henry crouched and began backing, crab-like, out of the structure. Fuck fuck fuck, he thought. His breathing came in heavy little gasps, and he realized he was drunker than he thought.

As he came out of the structure, he stood up a ways, ready to dart behind a stack of steel. "Hey!" a voice suddenly called out.

Fuck! Henry sprinted behind the girders toward the fence. He reached it only to find a huge ditch on the other side, one that would likely involve the breaking of his neck. The point at where he had hopped the fence was several yards to the north, and the flashlight was now sweeping that section.

Henry followed the fence south, feeling far too old for this sort of thing. At last he reached a point where the fence abutted the Paradise's parking garage. He scrambled up the fence, breathing hard, suddenly getting stuck at the top. "HEY!" the voice called again.

Fuck it, he thought. I'll tell them I took a wrong turn in the casino and wound up out here. Or something. He was about to let go, when suddenly a hand shot out from over the barrier at the garage's edge above him.

"Need a hand, prof?"

Henry looked up into the thick glasses of Claude Griffith, whose wide grin above his soul patch gave him a demented look. He grasped Griffith's arm, and two seconds later was lying in a heap between two white lines, his head spinning.

Griffith kept grinning, and raised his camera up, snapping a shot of the discombobulated Henry. "The Great Escape," he said with a laugh.

"PERHAPS SCOTCH isn't such a big help after all," said Henry Bethel from the depths of a booth at the Peppermill Coffee Shop where he lay with a hand over his eyes, a barely touched BLT on the plate above him.

"Depends on the scotch," replied Claude Griffith from the other side. He took out his bag of Drum and began to roll yet another cigarette; the deliberateness of the routine made his chain smoking seem somehow less manic than most.

"Spoken like a true snob," said Henry, seeking to cut Claude off before he launched into another discourse on the subtleties and betrayals of good and bad single malts.

Claude chuckled. "I thought you were the official snob," he said. "Or is that former snob, along with everything else?"

Henry kept his eyes closed. He was only now beginning to feel more sober, and he could feel the headache building within. "If only I could be the former Henry Bethel as well. If only we could all be the formers of ourselves."

"Not me," said Claude, lighting his cigarette and waving the waitress over for a refill of mediocre coffee. "I am at long last perfectly content with the slob in the mirror. It only took forty years, but what the hell."

Henry smiled. Sooner or later he was going to have get up, and thank Claude again for his sudden rescue from embarrassment. "You're a pretty ugly deus ex machina, you know," he said.

"Oh, do they still let you use Latin after you've been defrocked?"

"I wasn't defrocked, you idiot," said Henry from below the table. "I made a lateral move. Mid-life career change. Quite acceptable these days."

Claude exhaled and leaned back as the waitress refilled his cup. "Hm. Okay. From ivory tower to recluse, that's a definitely a lateral move, prof."

Henry snorted. It was terribly peaceful down here, laid out in this booth as if he was passed out. Luckily it was 3am and nobody seemed to care. "If I'm a recluse, Claude, what was I doing wandering around a construction site waiting to get nicked by security?"

Claude took off his glasses and began wiping them, cigarette held fast in the arms of his lips like a newborn. "I don't know, Hank, what were you doing wandering around there? No, wait, I can take a guess."

"Please don't start to analyze me, clyde," Henry said in mock irritation. "I've got that covered."

Claude laughed, and began singing, off-key:

I cover the waterfront,
I'm watching the sea,
Will the one I love
Be coming back to me…

"Nice," said Henry. "You sound like Billie Holiday after a particularly bad bender."

"That's why I hide behind the lens," said Claude. "Okay, fine. I won't play doctor. It's every man's right to get drunk and either tell the world all about it or willfully keep it locked up. Either way, you owe me."

"I know," said Henry. He opened his eyes, staring into the Peppermill's dark blue ceiling. He sat up slowly and looked over at Claude Griffith, photographer for the Las Vegas Desert Star, photographer to his deceased friend Jack Samson, someone Henry had come to know slowly, in the friend-of-a-friend manner, and who he liked for his no-nonsense wit, his shrug, hiS—yes—his obvious contentment with the path his life had taken. Claude regarded him over his own plate of half-eaten fries, a slightly bemused expression, at once tolerant yet ready to throw anyone on this ship of fools overboard.

"Claude," said Henry quietly. "Do you ever see Jack?"

"See Jack? You mean, do I think about Jack or…"

"No, I mean see him. His shade, his specter, his dread apparition stalking the night."

Claude laughed, then frowned. "No. Jack haunted me plenty when he was alive. What would he need my sorry ass for, unless it was to try to take pictures of an ectoplasmic Marilyn Monroe." He shrugged. "But I think about him, sure. Especially whenever I'm trying to get a woman into bed."

Henry smiled, and stared down at the BLT that seemed to rebuke him. When had he eaten last?

"Do you see him?" asked Claude, his cigarette leaving his mouth just long enough to allow in the other god, caffeine.

Henry was silent. He was also very sober now, he realized. Sober, but still not hungry. "Only when I sleep on my Ouija board, Claude."

Claude laughed. "Look, it really isn't any of my business. Sitting around all day selling Frank Sinatra stuff on eBay sounds like a nice life." He took deep drag and exhaled. "But why? Just burnt out? Too much crap from those assholes at UNLV?"

Henry stifled a yawn. Sure, burnt out. Why not? Burnt out as if there was never a fire in the first place. Henry was about to shrug it off again and suddenly found himself saying "I needed to change my life, Claude, and I couldn't find the way forward. So I went to some other place, it may be back, the past, I don't know…" He trailed off.

Claude nodded. "Say no more," and Henry hoped his relief didn't show.

They sat a while, each finishing their coffee, the murmur of the slightly lost, the ravenous insomniacs, the kids crawling out of the end of a bender drifting around them in the other booths, mixing with the sounds of short-order cookery coming from the kitchen. Then Henry said:

"Listen, will you do me a favor? A commission, I mean."

"Sure. I am a Camera," said Claude, smiling.

Henry laughed. "I want you to take some photos of the sculptures at Elise Valkenburg's gallery."

"Ah, rising from the art mafia dead already, eh?"

"Nothing like that. It's more of a personal project… you know, obsessive hermit stuff."

Claude laughed. "Okay. No problem. Who's the artist?"

"A rather talented and rather mysterious woman known as Maude S—."

Claude stopped for the briefest of moments, his cigarette suspended in his hand, frozen, his eyes a little blank and cold. Then it swiftly passed, and he dragged deep again.

"You've heard of her?" said Henry, surprised. Claude, like many a bitter fine arts graduate school dropout, made it a point to mock contemporary art and profess ignorance.

"Nope," he said. "Never heard of her." His manner had changed.

"Hm," said Henry, brow furrowed. "Okay. It seemed like you had—"

"Naw, screw art," said Claude, his smile restored. "Listen, I need to get out of here. I've got a shoot first thing."

"Of course," said Henry, who then insisted on picking up the check. "Least I can do for my prince charming," he said. They got up, Henry feeling rumpled, Claude looking distracted, and walked to Claude's old Toyota, out under the light from the Stardust's sign across the street

They were silent until they reached Henry's car, parked (he was thankful to see) a good two blocks away from the Paradise and the skeleton of the museum.

"Thanks again," said Henry.

"Hey, how often do I get to save a Sinatraist," said Claude with his trademark shrug.

"I'll call Elise and set things up."

Claude nodded, and seemed to look intently at Henry.

"Well, good night," he said. Henry caught himself at the last moment. "Hey, what the hell were you shooting tonight from the garage?"

Claude looked at him evenly. "Same thing as you, prof. Ghosts. The moon. Win Stevenson's ego." He smiled. "I'll catch you later."

As he sped away down Sands Boulevard, Henry stared after him, thinking about his words, but not really thinking. Tired, he turned and opened the door to his car and slipped in, thinking now only of his bed.

He nearly expired from a stroke when Madison Monroe, sitting as quiet and as invisible as a cat in the passenger seat suddenly spoke to him: "Good morning, Mr. Bethel. I was beginning to despair of you."

HE HELD HIS HEAD in his hands and knew that if he looked up the world would be moving. He felt it, the world moving. He felt the light streaming past the mask of his fingers and he didn't want to move. But he did move. He lifted his head and saw the streaming, the colors against the backdrop of night. He was not driving, but when he turned to look at who was driving he saw only himself.

"Where are we going?"

"We're going to the party."

And then they were moving through a rectangle of light into the party. He couldn't see the party at first, or the house, but he could see beyond it, into the dark maw of the golf course, the hissing of sprinklers, the sharp slapping sound as jets of water hit the trees.

Somebody handed him a drink. It was a cocktail party, and people were chatting, loudly, on the edge of drunkenness, and somewhere behind the crowd spilling on the white shag carpet (and oh, it was hideous white shag, he looked down and noted, the kind that some hostess somewhere was screaming over, locked in the basement in a straightjacket as elbows bumped and sloshed drinks over its whiteness), somewhere two people were arguing about what music to play, and a few notes drifted up and then there was a scratch.

He cringed at the sound. Someone, a blonde in a black dress, handed him a drink. He tasted it, but it was too sweet and familiar, like a gin and tonic during college, and for moment he thought he was in college.

"Drink up, Henry," said a red faced man in a sharkskin jacket, his tie askew.

"Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink anymore," said an old man next to him. Henry laughed, and others laughed, and he wondered for a moment why he was laughing. Then he saw Patricia Newell, oh god the lovely and distant Patricia Newell in a purple metallic cocktail dress and she was gliding and smiling and she had Jill on her arm and Jill was smiling, but Jill looked so much older, and gray, the gray of executive suits and hours in the shadows just to the right of colors, her voice diffused by the numb breathing of the projector.

"Is that Patricia Newell?" Henry asked the woman on his right.

The woman, who was brunette and whose face was vague and unfocused but for her teeth brayed with laughter. "DAH-ling, you know, 'rhythm control' doesn't mean you make it with every trio that plays the Blackhawk!"

More laughter, and someone talking about ice squeezed by on their way to the kitchen, another rectangle of light, and Henry moved away through the crowd, looking for Patricia and his wife, wondering where they were going, picturing dark bedrooms with piles of coats and the darker grass on the other side of the pool (surely there must be a pool), and he squeezed past his brother's stupid friend Tim, and thought about the comic books he ripped off from him again and was briefly angry and then realized that Tim was dead from cancer and so he would never, ever see those comic books again, that rare complete set of Steve Ditko's run on Dr. Strange, and the thought made Henry so sad, and he stood for a moment on a platform of green light and stared over at Dread Dormammu with his flaming face, and then Dormammu spoke with Jack Samson's voice.

"By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, Hank, your nerves are smashed. You'll never be able to operate again."

"Jack," said Henry. "Jack, did you see where Patricia and Jill went?"

And Jack must have known, because then Henry was outside, looking over the pool, and of course there was a pool, it was that kind of house on that kind of golf course, and Henry looked back inside and the party was even more crowded, and he could tell the hosts' house, whoever they were, had really, really, really bad taste, the kind bad taste that only a great deal of money could buy, but out here it was cool and the light was coming up from the bottom of the pool like star sapphires, and it was like a Hockney without a splash, and then of course there was a Hockney splash hovering above the water in the dark and the light, a splash where the dark and light met.

There was no one out there. The noise of the party was gone too, but Henry didn't look behind him. He looked out into the golf course, covered in a thick black velvet, dense and black except for the stars. Except they weren't really stars. Henry peered at them, walking around the pool to the edge where the lawn stopped and began again. They were twinkling like stars, and seemed to draw closer, and Henry perceived that they were mouths, female mouths, floating, lipsticked in the dark, disembodied mouths, and they were speaking, and he could not catch the words, and he was staring at them and straining as if to make out what they were saying. It was babble, and he felt frightened as words and phrases began to congeal:

"…not for nothing I did this not for nothing…" "…at last he came, at last…"
"…well what did you expect did you expect great expectations did you expect…" "…painted like this, held like this, in the paint…" "…and kissed and it was cold and wept cold, weeping cold…" "…three we were three…"
"…I want to say, I can't say, I must say, I can't say, I want to say…" "…hope forever, hope forever, hopeless forever…" "…my sisters won't allow it, they will kill it, they will gaze…" "…stay with me, stay, oh please, oh stay…"

Henry blinked. He thought he heard Patricia and Jill, and stared hard, like trying to see fireflies against a setting sun, and then he noticed a man standing next to him, a tall, thin man with a face like a hawk and light glinting off his spectacles.

"It's ahl wrang," the man said in a thick accent, waving his hand at the babble. "They're doing it ahl wrang…"

"Help them," said Henry, suddenly moved, and the man just stared at him, not unkindly, and then he looked down and said "Aren't you going to answer you phone?"

Henry looked down. A dwarf in a butler's outfit was holding Dali's lobster telephone on a silver platter, and it was ringing. Oh fuck, thought Henry, a dwarf with a lobster phone. He reached down and picked up the receiver.

"Hello," he said. "This is a dream, isn't it?"

A chuckle from the other end, a voice he couldn't quite place. "It's all a dream for you, isn't it, Mr. Bethel? It's never been real to you at all, has it?"

Henry looked back toward the house. The party was cacophonous now, but everyone inside beyond the sliding glass door looked gray, an ocean of gray, a horrible mass of gray, like stone, like angels abandoned in a tombstone cutter's workshop. Henry walked where the pool had been, straight toward the open door, almost running, he could see Jack Samson's shiny shaved head weaving amidst the tombstone angels, and when he reached the open door he walked right into the glass, and it shattered, and there was a rushing and darkness and the sound of a record being scratched…

HENRY CAME awake, his legs tangled in his sheets. He shook himself free from the dream and slowly sat up, shaking his head and softly slapping his legs to make himself fully conscious. Christ, what an odd dream, he said to himself. He looked around the room, and realized by the light shooting through the blinds that it must be mid-afternoon. What a horrible night, he thought. No wonder.

He stood up, stretched and stumbled into his robe, turning the fragments over in his mind. I haven't thought about Tim Boronsky and his swindle in years, he thought. And the appearance of Patricia Newell, the artist that he and Jill had briefly and ill-advisedly become entangled with, unsettled him deeply.

"Well," he said aloud, shuffling into the kitchen, "it's been an unsettling 24 hours." He was already beginning to regret being sucked into seeing Maude S—'s show, and he most certainly regretted the nearly maudlin romp through Win Stevenson's museum site. If not for Claude, he thought, and cringed slightly as he put a kettle on for tea. What a mess, he said to himself. One night out in his old life and he was wallowing in bitterness. Christ. Decent of Claude to sober me up and bring me home…

Henry stopped in mid-motion, his mug hanging from his frozen hand. Wait a minute. How had he gotten home? He didn't remember Claude bringing him home. Henry snapped the blinds up and looked out his kitchen window. His Karmen Ghia was parked where it should be. I don't remember driving home, he realized. He hadn't been so drunk as to black out… was he?

"What the hell…" said, Henry trailing off. And then he thought of Don Ix's lackey, Madison Monroe, for no clear reason, and his stomach went a little cold…

The phone rang. Henry snatched it off the wall without thinking.

"Hello?" he barked, trying to clear the fog.

"Mr. Bethel? This is Stephanie No. Maude S— will see you now."

BESIDES DEVELOPING a sudden twitch in his right eye—Henry kept thinking of Herbert Lom's character in the "Pink Panther" films, driven mad by Inspector Clouseau... perhaps he would wind up a super-villain as well—Henry felt much better. After hanging up with the icily precise Ms. No, he had taken a very long bath and drank a great deal of tea while listening to Sinatra sing in tribute on I Remember Tommy, the standards he had made famous with the Dorsey band early in his career. He wrote out everything that had transpired in the previous 24 hours in an old leather notebook, and writing had calmed him, just as it once had.

The fog had lifted somewhat and he now felt that the ease with which he had become slightly unhinged meant that he wasn't doing nearly as well as he supposed. But he also felt consoled by the knowledge that he had not turned into some kind of wise ascetic. He had not traded one false persona for another. He was still alone and still easily lost, and this made him feel perversely strong.

He was even humming "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" as he turned off Shadow Lane and into the Scotch 80s neighborhood, where the moneyed class of Vegas had built elaborate homes during the Sixties and where Maude S— had rented a sprawling ranch-style home for her stay in town. Henry had even recognized the address on Waldman Avenue that Ms. No had given him while setting up the appointment to meet the artist, an appointment whose swiftness had made Henry suspicious (now that he was thinking clearly, there were many questions and curious events that needed some answers).

Henry scratched at his twitching eye, silently requesting whatever gods there were to make it stop for the duration of his meeting, and pulled up to the elaborate wrought-iron gates of Bobby Apollo's former home. The late crooner, a poor man's Tony Bennett, had built the home in his Strip heyday, and it still presented itself in all its Palm Springs-meets-Greco-Roman tackiness. Henry pressed the intercom.

"Yes." The voice was pure machine.

"Henry Bethel. I have an appointment."

The gate slowly slid back and Henry pulled into the enormous half-moon driveway. No other car was in sight. The house, a cobalt fake-brick with white trim and semi-opaque glass brick windows, shimmered and sucked all the light out of the sky at the same time. Incongruously, a very old screw bean mesquite tree (the Scotch 80s residents had planted them all over) presented a picture of Desert Gothic in the yard between the driveway and the street. Its twisted dark branches curled like wisps of suspended smoke outward, low to the ground, like a tree that had once aspired to the heavens and then thought better of it.

No doubt the tree appealed to Maude S—, but Henry already guessed at why she should lease this house, besides its privacy. For Bobby Apollo had fancied himself a sculptor, creating clumsy abstract ballerinas out of bronze in his declining years. The house, Henry knew, surrounded a central studio with a skylight that Apollo had designed himself.

Henry rang the bell, just below the leonine face of a heavy brass door knocker. There was a long pause, and fast-moving clouds blotted out the sun as a breeze blew down the street. At last, the door swung open. Ms. No, if anything, looked more severe than the night before, and she was all-business.

"Hello again, Ms. No," Henry said, smiling.

She nodded. "Your punctuality is unexpected and appreciated." She stepped aside and ushered him in.

"Really? Did I seem so dissolute to you last night? Or does my reputation precede me?"

Ms. No looked at him evenly. "Save your charm for Madame, Mr. Bethel."

Henry smiled. "It appears you don't like me already, Ms. No."

She turned and gestured. "Please wait here. Madame will be with you momentarily."

"Here" was, as Henry expected, an expansive sunken living room, pale blue walls anchored by wall-to-wall slate gray carpeting. Faux Doric columns separated it from a formal dining area, and it was empty but for two Empire-style chaise lounges hovering like barges in the ocean of shag. They were exactly the sort of things the 18th Century had envisioned the ancient Greeks draped over. They were framed by vast picture window overlooking a ubiquitous pool. Henry felt queasy for a moment, but it was nothing like his dream.

"I assume the house came furnished," said Henry, but he was speaking to empty air. Maude S—'s assistant had vanished down a dark hallway to his left. Henry sat down on one of the lounges, casting a glance at the faux Greek pottery that lined one shelf. A moment later he stopped, and stood up, and looked again. He walked over to the urns, their black and orange lines vivid against the blue walls. He was not an expert on ancient art, but the hair raised on the back of his neck as he realized that these were not contemporary knockoffs, but originals. His finger hovered in the air above one urn, tracing the line of the hero's-Hercules?-arm…

"Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss," said an amused voice behind him.

Henry turned, and for a moment the air seemed charged with electricity, as if a spotlight had illuminated everything, the flash on a camera recording some spectacular thing. But it passed, and standing there in the dining room was merely a handsome woman of average height, her red hair plaited in odd, swirling braids around her head, wearing a smart, black Donna Karan suit. The only eccentric touches were dark oval glasses and a pair of short velvet gloves. Her lips were the same deep red as her hair, which seemed to Henry voluminous yet fiercely restrained.

"And how many Grecian urns, do you suppose, were created a hundred years ago so girls could quote Keats like that?" said Henry.

"Not enough, I'm sure," said Maude S—. Her voice was… well, Henry couldn't quite place what her voice was. It was husky, but light, as if unaccustomed to use but beautiful nonetheless. "There are never enough opportunities to quote Keats these days I'm afraid."

"Only to point out his failings as a dead white European male I imagine,"
said Henry.

"Well, dead white Europeans are my favorite kind of male." Maude S— smiled.

Henry approached, hand extended. "Henry Bethel."

"Yes," said Maude, shaking his hand firmly. "I know."

She stood there, silently, looking at him. Henry felt awkward, and gestured. "You've certainly picked a representative place for your Vegas stay. Well, representative of the myth at least, which is what's important."

"Is it?" Maude pursed her lips. "Sometimes, I think too much has been made of myths." She smiled again. "But I do always look for… representative experiences. Do you fit into that category, Mr. Bethel?"

"I suppose you'll only know after you get to know me," said Henry.

She had not moved since he had turned around. Now she stepped down into the living room abruptly, but with grace. "Won't you sit down?"

Maude eased into the lounge in a repose so artful it was almost comical. Henry half-expected to be asked to peel her a grape. He sat down on the edge of the other lounge facing her, and suddenly realized by her smile that the pose was a put-on for him.

"If only you had muses to attend you," said Henry jokingly.

Maude laughed, and the sound was charming yet… harsh to Henry's ear. "How do you know I don't? You might be one of them in disguise."

"I hope not. My track record as muse is pretty poor."

"I don't think so, Mr. Bethel. Many have been inspired by your writings."

Now it was Henry's turn to strike a pose. "That's kind of you to say."

Maude righted herself, crossing her legs. Henry had yet to see her eyes, and it was slightly unnerving.

"I'm never kind, Mr. Bethel. I mean what I say." Her expression was serious.

"Please, whatever else transpires between us, call me Henry."

Her expression did not change. "Well, Henry, I think your criticism is always first-rate. That's part of the reason we're having this discussion."

Henry's heart jumped a little. "I feel I should tell you that I have since—"

Maude waved her hand. "I'm aware of your retirement, Mr. Bethel. The art world hasn't ceased to be a small and petty place. I'm not expecting a piece about my work or me. There are plenty to fill that uninteresting void. Still, you came to my show." Her gaze remained even.

"And you would still like to hear my opinion, unpublished or not?" Henry smiled, and geared up to render his response.

"Actually, no," replied Maude, to his surprise. "If your impression was unfavorable last night, you wouldn't have asked to meet me. Your reputation is better known than perhaps you might think. You are known for keeping a certain distance from the artists you have written about. So the question, Henry…" and here she suddenly stood and walked toward him, her arms crossed, looking in an instant imperious and skeptical, "… is this: why did you want to meet me?"

Deep within, Henry felt a tiny crack, a fissure in his composure. Tell her about Don Ix and his interest, a voice said. Warn her… warn her? About what? Where did that come from?

Henry swallowed and smiled, hoping his eye did not take this moment to start its new twitch. "I wanted to meet you, Maude, because your reputation is well-known as well. Or should I say, the reputation of the sculptures you do not publicly show."

She seemed a frozen for a second. Then, Henry thought he saw her shoulders sag somewhat, even as she smiled brightly. "Oh, I see. The enigma of the unseen. Is that all?"

"You seem dismissive for someone who seems to have cultivated an air of mystery," said Henry.

"An air of mystery and mystery itself are different things," said Maude. Her tone had changed. "One is a useful for creating both privacy and publicity. The other…" She gave a little shrug. "The other is, sadly, what belongs to me."

She turned away then, and cleared her throat. Inwardly, Henry smacked his forehead. Idiot.

Ms. No appeared in the doorway.

"Is it time for the delivery of those materials?" said Maude S—.

"They just arrived, Madame."

Maude turned and smiled as before. "You must forgive me, Henry. I have a very busy schedule today."

"Of course," said Henry, standing. "I hope I haven't offended you with my directness."

"Well," said Maude with a little smile. "I am still calling you Henry."

Henry walked toward the door. You stupid fool, he thought. Ms. No held the door with a barely contained smirk.

"Perhaps we can see each other again. In less formal circumstances."

Henry turned, surprised, and from the corner of his eye caught the smirk draining away from Ms. No's face. "Thank you. That would be highly desirable. If for no other reason than to make up for my rudeness."

Maude S— smiled. "I believe I have your number," she said. Then she turned away, and Henry watched the door slowly swing shut in his face.

He stood for moment, thinking. The sky was completely overcast now, heavy with rain. "Unravished bride of quietness," he said aloud, unexpectedly. Then his eye began its twitching.

IT WAS TIME to go back to work. After his meeting with Maude S—, Henry spent a full day with the phone unplugged, dealing with email, and slipping back into his solitude as if the last few odd days had not happened. He needed to catch up on his neglected business, to slip into the world of selling and buying manifestations of Francis Albert Sinatra. Fortunately, WaxCon 2001 had arrived just in time to claim him. He called Housman on Friday morning after 24 blissful hours of isolation.

"The needle descends once again," Henry intoned.

"Already? Ahhhh, Jesus fuck," said Housman, sleepily. "Give me an hour."

An hour and twenty minutes later, they were on the escalator to the Sahara Hotel & Casino's convention center, Housman with a Parliament in the side of his mouth and clutching a large cup of 7-11 coffee; Henry feeling more calm and alert than he had in days, his large, leather satchel hung loosely over his shoulder, ready to be stuffed with old vinyl.

Henry looked over at Housman, whose hair hung over his thick glasses. His mustache looked like a definition of the word "scraggly." "Hous, I hope you're not expecting me to lug your finds around for you," said Henry.

Housman made a face. "I'm probably not going to buy anything. The store is overflowing with crap as it is."

"Right. As if you can ever resist."

"You'd be surprised how much I can resist these days," Housman said wearily. It was true: the turnover of rare stuff at Roomful of Mirrors CDs and Records had dropped off quite a bit in the last few months. Every time Henry saw Housman his enthusiasm had waned just that much more, the bright collector's fire in his eye had dimmed just that much further. Housman had entered the ennui stage of record collecting, had even sold off things that five years before he would have parted with only on pain of death. Housman himself looked grayer and grayer with each passing year. Perhaps if he had been Roomful of Mirror's owner his motivation would still be there, but he was merely its manager, constantly enduring petty humiliations at the hands of the absentee owner. Somewhere along the way, Henry reflected, Housman resigned himself to his fate as a used record store clerk, a figure sitting, Buddha-like, serenely smoking and occasionally ringing up a purchase or answering someone's question in a flat voice, drained of the excitement that music once generated in it.

As they flashed their badges at the desk and walked into the main hall, Henry, at least, allowed himself a little twinge of anticipation. He rarely spent a day at WaxCon without finding something, and the thought of being here after the hectic strangeness of the past week was very soothing. He stopped for a moment and appraised row upon row of vendor booths, with every conceivable kind of music represented, every desperate collector's urge ready to be satisfied or dashed. Bargains and rip-offs floated around in the grooves, a great black spinning that always made Henry a little dizzy with excitement. Trash or art, cherished or discarded, the music in the room drifted from passion to commodity and back again. Henry smiled, while Housman squinted and stubbed out his cigarette.

"Let's just work our way around the fringe first," said Henry.

Housman shrugged. They stepped into the desultory flow of scattered bodies. It was early yet, and many vendors and collectors looked fresh, not yet exhausted by hours of flipping through album after album or searching face after face hoping for a sale. Pompadours hovered in a booth selling 60s rockabilly, while a pale curtain of dark hair and silver rings hunched intently over industrial and goth imports from Germany. One booth was dominated by life-size statues of KISS; a cute girl was arguing with the vendor over the price of a hideous Journey baseball jersey while telling her friend in Spanish to "just hang on for a fucking minute." Henry lingered at a booth with some marvelous 78s of country blues, but saw nothing outstanding. Housman took an obscure Ornette Coleman live album out of its sleeve a half-dozen times, staring at it in the light like a jeweler, before finally putting it back in its bin to the disgust of the vendor, a graying hippie who looked almost as washed out as Housman.

They had only worked their way down to the end of the north side of the hall, where Henry was carefully going through a young lounge lizard's collection, when he heard a familiar voice. "Hey, Bethel."

Henry smiled to see Vaughn Ellison, a thin Englishman with an enormous beard, and embraced him. "I was wondering when you'd turn up."

"I've already picked up some fantastic garage stuff," said Vaughn, waving a slightly weathered copy of The Standells' Good Guys Don't Wear White at him. "Right off the bat too."

"Quit while you're ahead," smiled Henry.

"Hey, look at this," said Housman, butting in with a copy of something with a psychedelic cover.

"How much does he want?" said Vaughn.

"Forty-five."

"Feh. He's crazy. Offer twenty-five."

"I did. He's not budging."

Vaughn rolled his eyes. "Tell him he shouldn't be asking that from his worst enemy. You can find these for next to nothing."

Henry's attention wandered back to the lounge kid's stuff. The kid couldn't be more than twenty, standing there in his thin tie and thin-lapeled shiny suit. Yet, inexplicably, he seemed to have every disc Perry Como had every put out.

Henry regarded him. "Really into Como I see."

"Oh yeah. Oh yeah," said the kid, as if the pope had just appeared on the balcony. Henry shook his head. Como?

He moved on, walking just behind Housman and Vaughn as they continued to debate whether the vendor of this forgotten psychedelic band was clueless or a chiseler. "Twenty years old and into Perry Como. The lounge revival really has eaten itself," said Henry to no one in particular.

They continued their way through the growing throngs. Henry felt very happy, happier than he had in days. Even his twitch seemed to have vanished. He let his eye wander, looking at the crowd as much as the wares. So many pretty girls, he mused. A lovely, pale girl wearing a crucifix was blissfully clutching what looked like Czech Folk Songs to her chest. Another beautiful thin girl with striking eyes who looked as if she had stepped out The Ballad of the Sad Café was sitting at the back of a booth, strumming a guitar as if she was someplace else.

"Forget it," Vaughn was saying. "He's probably charging thirty bucks for Blue Cheer reissues."

Housman sighed. "Yeah, fuck it."

They stopped at a booth with row after row of multicolored electronica 12-inches. The vendor was a scrawny, dark-skinned boy actually wearing headphones and dancing as people wandered by. The booth next to him was a shrine to Doris Day manned by what appeared to be a middle-aged man in a bowling shirt with the most unfortunate crewcut in the world.

Someone shouted to Vaughn. "Hey, somebody is selling Nick Cave bootlegs the next aisle over."

Vaughn nodded, and turned back to Housman. "So what you're saying is you sold ALL of your original Zappas without calling me."

"I thought you had all that shit," Housman said defensively.

Henry flipped through some blues records, watching the Rev. Gary Davis' toothless face appear and disappear. He felt utterly relaxed, floating really. An academic type bumped his shoulder as she leaned into the adjoining booth.

"Have you got a copy of First World War Noises?"

The vendor looked blank. "Uhhh… is that by the Ronettes?"

"No, no, the French and the Germans."

"Look, please swear to me," Vaughn was saying. "Repeat after me. 'I will not sell off my personal stock without calling Vaughn.'"

"I'm in recovery," snorted Housman. "Why should I make your habit worse?"

Henry had yet to see any worthwhile Sinatra at all. But it didn't matter. He trailed behind Vaughn and Housman, listening to them bicker, pleased to be immersed in a world he still felt something for. The words even occurred to him: I still feel something for this. It was an adolescent feeling, nostalgic for a time when music was all, but Henry didn't mind. He had chosen to regress.

He looked over at a booth decorated with Frida Kahlo prints. A handsome woman, her dark hair tied in braids, was selling Mexican albums, wonderful old collections of corridos. She smiled at him in a friendly, look-at-my-wares way, and Henry smiled back. Conversations drifted around him. A girl with a distinct 1920s style walked by, telling her friend "He's gone, but I kept his ties." The booth behind him has some sort of Web demo going on, something about audio erotica. Naturally, Vaughn and Housman were transfixed as a smartly dressed woman on a web cam explained from her mysterious remote locale about the "radical reinvention of sonic pleasure" or some such.

"Amazing. Did you know that talking dirty was the wave of the future, Bethel?" asked Vaughn.

"I thought old record shows were supposed to be all about the past," grumbled Housman.

"Gentleman, you can't go wrong with being all about the past. Don't let any one tell you differently," said Henry, and that's when his eye spied it. A copy of Frank Sinatra Sings Songs of Great Britain, right between a Julie London and an Esquivel. He slipped between his fellow travelers and headed straight for it.

A very lovely woman with short blonde hair was sitting there. "Hi, can I show you something?" she asked Henry in a husky voice.

Henry smiled, pointing to the Sinatra. Luck was with him: it was an original English pressing in near mint, reasonably priced. "I'll take it," he said.

As she rung it up, he looked over the rest of the material, which was weirdly split between popular vocalists and Grateful Dead bootlegs. "You have an eclectic booth," Henry commented.

The woman laughed. "Thanks. I'm not really a collector. I'm just helping out a friend while I avoid my dissertation."

Henry smiled. "Avoid it as long as you can."

When he turned away, Vaughn and Housman were arguing again.

"How can you even say that? How can you even bear to live in a reality where you actually think that George Strait is more important than Johnny Cash?"

"Ahhhhh, what do you care what I think," said Housman.

Henry laughed. All around him people chased their obsessions, some free of irony, some drenched in it, but all united in love. Well, all except the professional collectors who had descended into fetish, for whom having a rare record was simply one more box to be checked off. But Henry didn't mind even those types today. He felt good and happily disposed toward everyone, and he was suddenly aware that he was trying to hold on to the feeling for as long as he could.

He looked over at one booth that dealt in nothing but soundtracks and saw the couple that ran it, happy in each other's company, bound no doubt by their shared enthusiasm. The man, wearing a Mexican wedding shirt and a dark goatee, was loudly regaling someone with an anecdote about Henry Mancini, and the woman, her eyes shining ridiculously bright behind her glasses, was drawing people to the table just by smiling at them, her charisma a palpable thing. Henry stood there a while, simply watching them, soaking up their obvious simpatico. They had their troubles, of course. There was no guarantee that things would not end badly for them. Yet here they were, right now, in the depths of their passion, fully in it. Even though they didn't look at each other you could tell they were in love.

Henry suddenly thought of Maude S— for some reason, alone but for efficient assistants in her ivory tower. Well, ivory ranch house. And as if the thought of her had conjured him, Henry suddenly saw Madison Monroe, standing on the other side of the row, staring at him. Henry blinked, and the crowd suddenly swallowed Monroe.

Henry's mouth dropped open a little. Had he just imagined that? And the dream with Monroe in his car came back in full force. "Excuse me," he said over his shoulder, unnoticed by Vaughn and Housman, and he dashed around the corner, moving down the aisle, searching for Monroe's red hair.

He went the length of the row when he caught a glimpse of Monroe exiting the hall through a side door. Henry sprinted after him, realizing that he was angry. Was Monroe following him?

He reached the door and pushed it open, only to be brought up short by a woman with a camera. "Smile," she cried, and flashed his picture, lowering her camera to reveal a bemused expression, piercing eyes atop high cheekbones. Henry pushed past her, rushing down the stairs, spots before his eyes.

Henry burst through the door and into the long enclosed walkway that led to the hotel's back parking lot. His eyes searched the hall for Monroe, when someone called his name and came into his field of vision.

"Henry Bethel? Wow, I thought that was you! What an honor!"

A fat man in a Panama hat thrust his hand out at Henry. "I'm Mark Bixby, with SCENE WEEKLY! I've wanted to meet you for the longest time!"

Henry smiled and shook the proffered hand, eyes still trying to pick out Monroe. He dimly realized that this was the pest who wrote art reviews for one of the local alternative newspapers. He had written to Henry on numerous occasions, asking for an interview. He had no discernible talent.

"It's a real pleasure, I'm such a big fan of yours," gushed Bixby. Henry sagged. He had lost Monroe completely. If that even was Monroe. "I hear you're working on a secret project, a book of some sort. I can't wait to see it!"

"I'm not working on a book," said Henry. His eye was twitching.

"Oh. Well, whatever you're working on I'm sure it will be brilliant!"
Bixby was the sort who used "brilliant" in every other sentence.

"Excuse me, it's nice to meet you, but I'm in a rush," said Henry.

"Oh, gosh! Sure! Here's my card," said Bixby, pressing it into Henry's hand. "Hey, I would love to do an interv—"

But Henry had broken off, smiling and walking quickly toward the exit. He was no longer floating. Now he felt the dark tide of the past week wash over him again, but it was tinged with anger now. Something was going on, and Henry had been stumbling along like a sleepwalker. It was time to get to the bottom of Madison Monroe and his enigmatic employer.

IT WASN'T HARD TO FIND Nap Hendryx these days. He had made a stool at the Double Down Saloon his afternoon home, playing video poker for hours and nursing his scotch as if it was in intensive care. Henry knew that Nap had finally thrown in the towel on steady PI work, having been reduced to divorce stuff and heartbreaking missing persons cases—children who would never be found and, worse, ones who would—and now merely did some "security consulting." Which meant whatever scraps his friends could throw his way. Henry hoped he still had enough motivation to do a little digging for an old friend.

Once Henry's eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see Nap at the far end of the bar, the grooves in his face deepened by the blue-red glow of the screen below. The Double Down had been an average dive near the airport, until several local artists had been invited to give it some distinction. Now the walls were covered with an ever-changing riot of murals, everything from Hindi elephant gods to elongated Goth girls to skeletons holding aloft martinis. Henry always looked up at the ceiling, painted by a local poet now long gone, its dark green swirls the only part of the bar's artscape that had survived successive re-inventions. It struck him as soothing, no doubt meant to be seen from the angle of someone about to pass out.

While the Double Down was filled with college kids, punks and bohemian types at night, its daytime crowd of barflies had taken the changes in stride. After all, no one had dared to violate the shuffling faces of kings, queens and jacks. Henry slid into the empty stool next to Nap without saying a word, merely watching him as his fingers worked across the hold and draw buttons.

"Hello Henry," said Nap without looking up.

"Amazing how you can do that, Nap."

"Peripheral vision. Mine is honed to a high degree. Haven't lost it yet." Nap glanced up now and smiled. His hair had turned pure white, but he still had the soft-but-tough good looks of a Robert Mitchum-type.

"What can I get you?" asked the bartender.

"Stoli tonic," said Henry. He looked over at Nap's face, its oddly serene expression. Once, Henry escorted a visiting artist at the university to some function at Mandalay Bay. Henry recalled her bewildered, disdainful expression as she watched row upon row of video poker players, each with the same zombie like expression. "What do people see in it?" she had asked.
"Do they really think they'll win?"

"That's beside the point," Henry had said. "These are the sort of people who, if they lived anywhere else, would watch television every evening, or drink steadily till last call. They do it for the calming effect it has, the narcotic aspect. Playing, watching the hands, making the automatic, split-second decision to hold or throw away: it's simply soothing, taking their minds away from whatever they don't care to think about. And, unlike television, they might just walk away with a thousand dollars."

The bartender brought his drink. "So what can I do for you, Henry?" asked Nap. "Unless you just decided to start drinking before five and thought this was the place to begin." He said all this without missing a beat, his hands and eyes reading, holding, and drawing, the cards flowing from the hands of an invisible dealer.

"I've been drinking before five for a while now," said Henry. "But I do in fact need your professional expertise."

Nap snorted. "Such as it is," he replied. "Please tell me it has nothing to do with a woman."

"I'm afraid it does, but not in the way you're thinking." Henry proceeded to tell Nap everything that had happened: The cloak and dagger visit from Don Ix's flunky, Madison Monroe, and his odd proposal, the enigmatic stories behind Maude S—'s work, Henry's meeting with her, the feeling he was being watched.

When he was finished, Henry downed the last of his drink and studied Nap's face, unchanged throughout the tale. Nap continued in his silent video poker mantra, and Henry wasn't sure if he was mulling over the story or mulling over his dwindling credits.

"Well, it's fairly obvious," he said at last. "This Don Ix character approached the artist about her works and she turned him down for some reason. Now he's trying to get you hooked on her work, so you'll eventually buy the works for him. He wants you to be the beard."

Henry shook his head. "These works apparently aren't for sale at any price. They're Maude's private collection. Many artists have works that are too personal or important to them to let go of. Even if I eventually see the works, they still won't be for sale."

Nap shrugged. "Well, maybe he is just a rich weirdo, and he wants to know what they look like because Maude wouldn't show him. Rich people are used to getting their way, and they'll go to great lengths sometimes to get what they want when someone says no."

Henry thought for a moment. "That's what I thought as well. But… well, I can't explain it, Nap, but there's something more to all this."

Nap laughed. "Please don't tell me you have a hunch."

"No, just a feeling. But a very strong feeling, a feeling that something's not quite right. I need to know more about this Don Ix. And about Madison Monroe."

"What about Maude S—? She seems more cloak and dagger than anything else."

Henry paused. "I think Maude S— is less mysterious than she seems. Besides, I know artists. I think I can uncover what I need to know there. Rich weirdoes with creepy assistants are more your territory."

Nap sighed. "It's all random, all chance." Henry was unsure if he was talking to him or to the screen below. "Ever see Night Moves?"

"Gene Hackman, private investigator," said Henry. "A sunlit film noir."

"That great scene at the end," said Nap. "Hackman's shot, lying on the floor of a boat going around in circles, still doesn't understand what happened or how." Naps fingers punched the hold buttons, capturing three aces. "That's private investigation in a nutshell. You construct a narrative for your client, and maybe it's what they want to hear or maybe not, but you never really know yourself. You don't tell them everything, because there's too much that doesn't connect, too much uncertainty. You tell them the puzzle is solved, but the puzzle is huge, unbelievably huge, every time. It's too much, too many little details that don't fit. But you make them fit, because that's what you're paid to do. Even if it makes you feel like a fraud."

Henry looked over at Nap, startled. Even if it makes you feel like a fraud.

"That's part of the reason I went into Security," Nap continued.

"Of course, I can make it worth your while," said Henry.

Nap smiled. "Don't worry about it. For you, I'll do it. If not for you, than to Jack's memory."

Henry smiled, and lifted his empty glass. "To Jack Samson."

Nap lifted his beer. "To our friend Jack Samson." He took a swig. "The dumb bastard."

Henry laughed. Nap wiped his mouth and took out a cigarette. "I'll see what I can dig up on Don Ix. Probably made everything he owns on drug money, so it shouldn't be hard."

"Thank you, Napoleon," said Henry. "Call me when you have something."

Henry stepped out of the Double Down, blinking at the mid-afternoon sun. His eye began to twitch again. Good grief, he thought, perhaps I need to see a doctor instead of a PI. He moved toward his car when suddenly a thin man in a tracksuit stepped next to him. The next thing he felt was something jabbing him in the ribs.

"Let's go, Mr. Bethel. No scene."

Henry looked down to see the barrel of a .45 in his side.

"Can this week be any more ridiculous?" sighed Henry, as the man grabbed his arm and pushed him toward the dark, waiting maw of an opened door on a long, black limousine.

THE DOOR SHUT BEHIND him and Henry found himself in the dark, cool interior of the limousine, sitting next to an olive-skinned man in an outfit that wouldn't have looked out of place on Jim Morrison: leather pants, leather boots and a leather blazer over a silk shirt open at the neck, all in black, as if an oil slick had suddenly gained the power to walk. The man looked to be in his forties, with curly black hair, but it was hard to tell as he was wearing very large, pitch black sunglasses to match. The only hint of light was on his ring finger, a bit of silver that caught Henry's eye only because the man held his hand clasped over the top of what looked to be, incongruously, a walking stick. When the man spoke his diction was perfect, clear and distinctly continental.

"Forgive the dramatics, Mr. Bethel, but time grows short and no action can suffer a wasted moment," he said.

"Oh not at all," said Henry. They appeared to be alone; smoked glass obscured the driver as the limo began to move. "I find a gun in my ribs to be quite refreshing. Makes me feel like James Garner."

The man paused, his face truly a mask, then burst into a hearty bark of a laugh. "Ahh, The Rockford Files! I remember, very amusing. That Angel, always causing great difficulties for the hero."

"Yes," said Henry, "perhaps we can have a Nick at Nite marathon later. Mind telling me why I've been kidnapped? Unless this is my secret induction into the Johnny Cash underground."

The man chuckled. "The Man in Black. Very droll, Mr. Bethel, just as your writings have shown. But we have not kidnapped you. We have taken you briefly into our confidence to impart information to you, information that will save many lives, including your own." The man did not seem to be looking at Henry as he spoke; his huge shades obscured all.

"What do you mean?" said Henry. "I'm just a Sinatraist. Did you need an autographed record? Forgot someone's birthday?"

The man's mouth grew serious. "My name is Konstantine Mangopoulos, Mr. Bethel. And your activities of late have been far more serious than trafficking in the ephemera of dead crooner."

"I'm beginning to think nothing is more important than ephemera," said Henry, trying to see out the heavily tinted window. "Straying from it has been nothing but trouble, it seems."

Mangopoulos laughed again, this time in the forced manner of a man unaccustomed to laughter. "Indeed, Mr. Bethel, you are, as they say, in over your head. Don Ix moves ever closer to his desire, and the Witch grows ever more cautious, more dangerous."

Henry stared at him. "The Witch?" He instinctively knew whom the man meant.

"Many names will do, but Witch will do for our purposes." Mangopoulos still refused to turn his head as he spoke, talking to Henry almost as if he was an underling, or a child. Henry began to feel angry.

"Strong name for an artist whose work you don't like, Mr. Mangopoulos. Or is this some personal matter?"

The man chuckled ruefully, his face more and more a mask. "You could say it was personal, Mr. Bethel, in as much as it's been a long time, a very long time…" His voice trailed off as Henry stared at his profile, hard. "But that is of little importance," Mangopoulos continued. "What is important is this fact, a fact you will scoff at but one which you must remember, from now until this battle has at last played itself out: Maude S— is death. Death for all those she comes in contact with."

"Don't tell me she broke your heart on the Riviera…" Henry began scornfully. Suddenly, he couldn't breathe: like a cobra the fingers of Mangopoulos' left hand were at one his windpipe, forcing him back into the seat while the dark man spoke, still staring at some fixed point in the distance.

"It is no good to warn you to stay away. This we already know. Don Ix has played his opening moves well. But you will listen and understand the time for joking is over. Your life is in peril, and if you do not listen carefully you will not survive."

Then, like a spring instantly recoiled, the dark man's hands were clasped again on the head of his stick, as Henry gasped for air.

"Forgive me, again, Mr. Bethel. But that is the level of danger you are in. Death will come to you so quick you will still be asking his name after you are cold."

"You've… made your point," Henry sputtered. If only Nap had followed him out of the bar… where was this headed? "What is this all about? Why does Don Ix want Maude S—'s private artworks? Why is Maude dangerous?"

Mangopoulos sighed heavily. "Alas, Mr. Bethel, we have reached the most difficult part of this interview. I wish you to understand the deadliness of the path you are on. But if I revealed to you why that path is so deadly… well," and here, a faint smile, "how do you say… you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Now it was Henry's turn to let loose a mirthless laugh. "Wonderful. I think it's time I threw this whole bad dream into the dustbin of unrewarding experiences and went to Tahiti for a few months."

"You will do nothing like that," said Mangopoulos. "Don Ix has gone to some trouble to make you his agent, whether you've been willing to be or not. He will not dispense with you so easily. And," he paused again, his head cocked as if to sniff the air, "the Witch already has you under her spell."

"Excuse me?" said Henry, baffled. "She's not that powerful of an artist."

"What is the cliché? Art is in the eye of the beholder?" Mangopoulos smiled his grim smile again. "And so is Death, Mr. Bethel. So is Death."

The limo took a hard right. Henry felt as if he'd been shook up and down inside a great, black bag. "Our time is near its end, Mr. Bethel. There are three more details to attend to."

Mangopoulos reached down to the floor by his feet and brought up an ornate box to his lap. Reaching into it without looking down he withdrew a small oval object in a leather case.

"Take this. Keep it on your person at all times. You will know what to do with it when the time comes… it will be your only defense."

Henry shoved it into his jacket. He felt rage building in him, rage more than fear. He was about to speak when Mangopoulos shoved another, larger object into his hands, something hard and heavy and wrapped in blue velvet.

"Take this as well. Know that this is but a small piece of the sorrow the Witch has inflicted."

The limo slowed to a stop. "Finally, Mr. Bethel, you must do one final thing, for your safety and the safety of others. Tell Don Ix you have seen the works in question. Make it as fanciful as you like. But give him a report, and make it good. Convince him you have seen the Witch's… art. It might be the only thread that shall lead you out of this labyrinth."

The door opened and sunlight slashed at Henry's eyes. The gunsel in the track suit stood there, and Henry realized he was Greek as well. "I now must bid you farewell," said Mangopoulos.

Henry put one foot on the pavement, then turned. "Thank you for the information and the ride, Mr. Mangopoulos, or whoever you really are, but understand this: I'm out of this labyrinth right now. I'm fed up with these dime store mysteries, yours and Maude's and Don Ix's and whoever else has been watching too many thrillers. This is my last stop: I'm not an art critic anymore, and I have no more tolerance for the games that rich assholes play in their off hours. So why don't you and Maude and Don Ix all go out for drinks on somebody's yacht and hash it out. I'm through with this bullshit. Are we clear?"

Mangopoulos smiled, a little sadly this time, still not looking at Henry directly. "Ah, but I fear you continue to make the same mistake," he said. Henry was now up and out of the limo, the gunsel pushing past him into its luxurious cave. Mangopoulos leaned toward him, and Henry now noticed his silver ring: it was a winged horse set in blue lapis.

"You are not the hero of this epic, Mr. Bethel." And with that he shut the door, leaving Henry Bethel standing in the parking lot of the Double Down Saloon, clutching a velvet bag and watching the long black shark glide into the traffic bound for the airport.

He stood there stupidly for a few moments, feeling his rage build, fuming, before weariness seized him and he stumbled toward his car, collapsing in the front seat and rubbing his temples. It was a few minutes later that he noticed the object the man in black had thrust at him. Shaking his head, he slowly unwrapped it, wondering if Maude S— had crossed the Greek Mafia or something. Was there even a Greek Mafia? At last, Henry stripped the velvet away and simply sat there, staring at the gray thing in his lap.

It was a hand.

And so it was that Henry found himself in a dark suit, riding the elevator to the House of Blues Foundation Room, an expensive, members-only club perched high above the Strip on the top floor of Mandalay Bay. Under his arm he carried a black velvet box, tied with a wide, gray and white marbled ribbon.

He exited into the Foundation Room's dimly lit corridor, the walls decorated in all manner of Eastern motifs, a dark labyrinth of exotica for the rich, the famous, the well-connected. He had been here many times before, usually for the after-event party of some fundraiser for the university, trying to lose himself in the various Buddha-infested nooks for a moment of quiet after being buttonholed by some bore who still thought "painting is dead" was a trenchant insight. For a moment, he could see Jill by the main bar's huge fireplace, charming some casino exec into doing more for the arts community, invariably squeezing very little cash out of them once they realized she wasn't going to sleep with them.

Straight ahead, one of the function room corridors were blocked by two large men in black blazers, the telltale wires dangling from their ears as if they were robots guarding some mad inventor's lab. Next to them, beneath a great elephant-headed statue of Ganesha, stood a sign:

HELLENIC LEAGUE 8pm—Midnight Please Check In

Henry handed one of his cards to the robot on the right. "Could you please give this to Ms. Stephanie No? She's expecting me. I'll be in the bar."

The robot squinted at the card, nodded, and walked down the corridor, disappearing into the reddish gloom.

A few minutes later, standing in the faux-candle glow of the huge main bar area with its tiny, private rooms off to the sides, Henry saw Maude S—, flanked by No and another woman, glide into the room. All three were in velvet, No and the other woman in tasteful evening gowns, Maude in long flowing dress with her full hood, cloak and long evening gloves. The few eyes in the room watched them move toward Henry with a respectful bemusement followed by whispers.

Henry surveyed them as they approached him, Maude with her hand extended. "Mr. Bethel," she said with a smile that lit up the darkness under her hood.

"One rarely sees the Weird Sisters from Macbeth at the top of Mandalay Bay," said Henry with a smile.

Maude laughed, Ms. No glowered, but the third woman looked as if Henry had just told her dog died. She looked a little wildly at Maude, who put her hand firmly on the woman's arm (who Henry now saw looked a little like Ms. No, only with a great deal of curly blonde hair).

"You'll have to excuse Mr. Bethel," said Maude, "he's only comfortable when he's making a joke."

"Touché," said Henry.

"Henry, this is my other assistant, Ms. Europa Yale. She is as invaluable to me in the studio as Stephanie is in the office."

Henry bowed toward the woman. "Not a descendant of the famous Yales?" he said, smiling.

"No," she replied simply. If Ms. No's voice was like ice, Ms. Yale's was as cold as the space between the stars. She looked at Henry and back at Maude with a slightly wild, questioning look.

"I only have a few minutes, as someone is presenting an award and my name will be mentioned and I will have to make my very brief appearance to very polite applause," said Maude.

"Of course," said Henry. "I won't take you away for long. I'm rather surprised to find you at a meeting of a rather secretive amateur archaeological society."

Maude smiled from under her hood. "Amateurs are very free with their money. I did a… commission for the League not long ago, and they were very grateful." Her face nodded toward the velvet box. "Is this my Trojan Horse?"

Henry laughed, then looked at her seriously. "If we may have a moment…?"

Maude nodded to her assistants, who left her side, reluctantly it seemed, and melted back into the darkness. Henry looked toward one of the private rooms, then back over at the large balcony behind the bar, which appeared to be empty. "Do you mind a little night air?"

"I prefer it," said Maude. He offered his arm, but she merely glided along at his side, out the door and into the desert air, where the moon fought a losing battle with the light from the top of the Luxor next door. Looking north, the hotel's name burned in 12-foot high gold letters, just one floor up from where they stood.

They sat across from each other, Maude pulling back her hood to reveal once again the tightly braided red hair, and her dark glasses perched on her lovely nose. Henry was struck by how luminous her skin looked in this light, glowing as if from inside.

"It is good of you to meet me like this," she said. "I hoped our next meeting wouldn't be so rushed, so…"

"Mysterious?" offered Henry.

"I would think you'd had enough mystery on our first meeting," said Maude. "Forgive my abruptness then, but there are certain areas of my private life I don't wish to discuss, with you or anyone." She smiled. "To be quite clear."

"Would that I could respect that wish," said Henry. "But more and more I find myself drawn into your life in ways that are both distressing and curious."

She frowned a little, and almost made a motion as if to stand, when Henry said, "Please. I have a few things to tell you, and something to give you, and I'm not going to ask you for anything but your ears." He gazed her, steadily, as she relaxed again. "What is it you wish to say?" she said quietly.

And so, Henry told her. All of it. About Madison Monroe's request that he be an agent for the enigmatic art collector Don Ix; about the strangeness attached to that request; about being followed; about the rumors and strained reactions swirling around her name; and finally about being kidnapped by Mangopoulos and his constant reference to her as "The Witch." When Henry reached this part of the narrative, he thought he say Maude shudder a little, and sink back into the chair, her face dejected.

At last Henry finished. The velvet box was on his knees. He paused, about to go on, when Maude spoke.

"I'm very sorry for this, Mr. Bethel," she said softly. "Very sorry that you should have been involved in anyway with my… difficulties… you of all people," she added, as if an afterthought. "You deserve an explanation, which… which I am unable to give you at this moment."

Henry held up his palm. "Maude. Listen. Hard as it may be to believe, at this moment, I don't want an explanation."

"But, Mr. Bethel…"

"No. Please. Stop right there," Henry continued. "I've been doing a great deal of thinking lately, something I used to do as a matter of course and somewhere along the way put aside. So far there are nothing but mysteries around me right now, but that's all right. So far I've been told from various quarters that I'm in danger from you, or that you are somehow dangerous to others. Which may be true. But all I've seen so far has been the fact that several rich and obviously powerful people are targeting an artist of obvious and immense talent as if she were something to be possessed or something to be… I don't know, destroyed, melodramatic as that sounds."

Henry placed the velvet box on the table between them, and took a breath. "I've spent most of my life, until two years ago, writing and talking about artists. Not to possess them, not to destroy them, but for no other reason than art has been my passion. I wanted to respond to that passion, and share the response with others. I've had as little truck with other critics, other writers, who want to possess and destroy as possible. And I will have no truck with rich assholes who want to possess and destroy, for whatever reasons, an artist's life or work."

Henry fell silent, searching Maude's face for a response. Behind her dark glasses she sat for a long moment, before saying "But you don't know what you're talking about, Henry." She paused again, and looked up at him. "I am dangerous." It was almost a whisper.

Henry smiled. "All right. So you're dangerous."

"I'm not being dramatic," she replied a harder tone. "People… people have come to bad ends through their association with me."

Henry shook his head. "I don't care. I've been running from this passion from mine for some time now. I replaced it with a different passion, but I can only say so much about the music of Sinatra, only live in that loneliness for so long. It's not what I do, what I was meant to do. Now I don't know if I'll ever do what I do again. I don't know if I'll ever pick up a pen because of a brushstroke that won't leave my brain. But I know this," and here Henry leaned forward, "that deep down in my self-pity I still believe in Art with a capital A, and I'll be damned if I'll stand by while a great artist is hounded by prying rich assholes and thugs with guns."

Maude looked at him, her mouth open as if a little astonished. "Henry, this is none of your affair. Please stay—"

"Open the box," he interrupted.

She looked at him. "Open it," he said again, "please."

There was rustle of velvet on velvet. A breeze picked up. The moon stood steadfast by a cloud.

Maude gasped as the lid came off. She looked up at Henry searchingly, then lifted the heavy, stone hand out of the box. "Where…?"

"Mangopoulos. He gave me that as some sort of warning. Clearly, it's one of your works, mutilated."

Maude gazed down. "Yes," she said. "Yes I suppose it is."

"The rest of the statue must be stunning," said Henry, staring at it as well. "The detail of this hand is beyond anything I've ever seen… the exquisite rendering of the rings, down to their diamonds and emeralds…"

"Yes," said Maude, her voice husky, quickly wrapping a perfectly realized image of a woman's hand in granite, and placing it back in the box.

Henry was quiet. She seemed to gaze at the box as if for many hours, but it was only a moment. "I… cannot express my gratitude to you for giving this to me. For telling me everything that has transpired. But you should…"

Henry suddenly stood up. "No. No warnings from you. If I'm in danger, so be it, rather from you (which I sincerely doubt) or from the people pursuing you, I don't care. Besides, this is Vegas, my dear." Henry smiled. "I will take the risk."

Maude looked up at him, as if to say something else, than smiled at last and said, "There are many who've been broken by that statement."

"I'm already broken," said Henry softly. "Allow me the privilege of feeling somewhat whole again."

And with that, Henry quickly bowed, making his pre-planned dramatic exit, through the shadows cast by the fireplace, past the quizzical expressions of Ms. No and Ms. Yale, past the robots, and into the elevator. When the doors closed, he let out a great heaving sigh, and gasped for breath, feeling his forehead. He felt relaxed, relieved—yet a little frightened. Whatever else, he thought, you're in it now. He swallowed, suddenly thirsty, his eye twitching, and leaned his head back against the elevator wall, as he rapidly descended, down, down, down.

MADISON MONROE looked slightly bewildered, staring myopically into the dim interior of the Algiers cocktail lounge, looking for all the world like a timid Baptist conventioneer from some tiny town, now in Vegas for the first time and uncertain as to when and where precisely he would be tempted. No doubt he cultivates just that impression, thought Henry from his booth at the back wall. Henry waved his scotch, and called softly "Mr. Monroe."

Monroe's eyes focused and a professional smile appeared, thin and bloodless, as he stepped quickly and gingerly to Henry's table. In spite of the heat, growing daily as May slipped into June, he still wore an expensive and heavy gray suit.

"Mr. Bethel," he said, without offering his hand. He looked around the darkened lounge, with its vague, North African accents. "Quaint. Do you hold all of your business meetings here?"

"Only those requiring discretion. Hardly anyone comes here anymore except for a few regulars. It's the last small '50s hotel property of its kind on the Strip, and the owners want to tear it down. C'est la Vegas. Please sit."

"I must confess I was surprised to receive your telephone call yesterday. We had quite given up on you." Monroe eased himself into the booth in his quick, birdlike manner, like a cardinal hopping onto a snowy branch.

"Come, Mr. Monroe," said Henry. "How desperate would I have seemed had I leapt at your initial offer? I had to make sure that the whole thing was worth my while."

"And it took you three months to come to that decision, Mr. Bethel? How could you be sure Don Ix would still be interested in your services?" Monroe's smile remained as grimly and falsely affixed as ever.

"Because," said Henry as he waved the waitress over, "I discovered fairly early on that Maude S— would not be moving on from Las Vegas as quickly as she has from other cities."

"Oh?" Monroe eyed him and ordered a vodka tonic. "And how did you come by this intelligence?"

"Why, my natural charm, Mr. Monroe," said Henry, smiling. "It's very simple. You approached me with an offer to try my hand at a little art world espionage, asking me to use my standing as a famed but steadfastly retired art critic to penetrate the mystery surrounding an enigmatic artist. I made a great show of refusing and subsequently avoiding contact with you of any kind. Which was necessary, if I were to get close to the reclusive and guarded Maude S—…" Henry paused and swirled his scotch, "which, incidentally, I have."

"Have you," said Monroe.

"Yes. Very close indeed, Mr. Monroe. A closeness built on three months of a careful nurturing of a friendship with Maude based on everything but my keen interest in her work, both the seen… and the unseen."

Monroe's smile faltered slightly. "Are you saying, Mr. Bethel, that you have seen…"

Henry stared at him. "That's precisely what I'm saying. I've her secret works. And, if your employer is still interested—and if not, he should be—I'm ready to write a confidential report on their nature and desirability."

Monroe's smile returned. He leaned back and took a lighting quick swig of his drink, returning it to the table with a clatter. "And you're still here to tell the tale, Mr. Bethel. Very impressive."

Henry snorted. "Those so-called 'disappearances' are so much hugger-mugger, Mr. Monroe. Some of them have even gone underground at the command of Maude S— herself."

"You're joking."

"Certainly not. They've various art world hanger-ons who Maude has paid to lay low. To enhance her image of danger and mystery. You see, Mr. Monroe, these private works that have been so whispered about are in fact for sale… at the right time and right price."

Monroe chuckled. "An elaborate shadow show to drive up their price. Very clever, Mr. Bethel." Monroe stared at him. "She must have paid extremely well for seven people to have dropped off the face of the earth… seven people who haven't contacted even their families."

Henry took another drink. "Not all of them, Mr. Monroe. Some seem to have coincidentally vanished of their own accord."

"And you know this because the artist told you, eh?"

Henry smiled. "She's told me a great deal, yes."

"And how do you know, Mr. Bethel, that she is telling you the truth?"

Now Henry chuckled. "I don't. But that's not my problem. Don Ix wants to know about her 'secret' sculptures. I have seen them and am ready to tell him what he wants to know."

"But if she is merely waiting for the right moment to make these works available for sale, then perhaps Don Ix will merely wait for her charade to end, and judge for himself." Monroe seemed to be enjoying the thought.

Henry shook his head. "No, Mr. Monroe. Because Maude S— already has another buyer in mind. A buyer who, for all of Don Ix's wealth, can easily out bid him."

There was a long pause as the smile hardened. "Who?"

"That information will make quite a climax to my report, don't you think?"

Monroe's face seemed like wax in the darkness, betraying nothing. Then he smiled again, saying, "I see I have underestimated you, Mr. Bethel. Well, I believe our original offer still stands." He took out a leather folio and with two quick strokes wrote down something on a piece of paper. He then folded it and pushed it across the table.

Henry opened it, and nodded. "Yes, that will do very nicely."

"For all of your time invested, as well as for the report," replied Monroe. "How soon can I receive this document? Remember, Don Ix has been waiting for some time now."

"Oh, it shouldn't take more than a week," said Henry, nonchalantly. "Next Friday?"

"That will be fine." Monroe stood up and made a little bow. The smile struck Henry as a little less professional, a little more… conspiratorial?
"I'm pleased this matter has worked out after all."

"Faith, Mr. Monroe," said Henry. "One has to have faith that things turn out well somehow."

Monroe laughed—a cruel, short bark of a laugh—turned on his hell and glided out of the bar. Henry stared at the doorway for a long time, not moving, as if he was trying to fix the image of Monroe on his mind's eye. Then, after three minutes, he let out a heavy sigh, wiping his brow as he finished off his drink. His eye began to twitch a little.

Well, that was almost too easy, thought Henry. The question is, did he buy it? He seemed to. But it was hard to tell. Hard to know whether Monroe spent the last three months occupied with other things, or if he's been watching things develop all along. But Henry had taken surveillance for granted. They had been very careful, meeting in such a way as to make the whole thing entirely credible. There was no way for them to penetrate Maude's security at the house and studio. He'd seen that system and had to admit it would take James Bond to crack it without detection. But who knows the resources and connections Ix might have? On the other hand, Ix might just be a rich flake after all. It was hard to know. Henry's research into Ix showed him to be just as mysterious as Maude, if not more. A few whispers here about this or that shadowy deal in his accumulation of wealth, but that had been all. Everything else was standard Fortune 500 boilerplate, with a little Latin exotica mixed in. If they buy it, thought Henry, wiping his brow again, it won't be for long. But long enough for their plan. If only there wasn't Mangopoulos somewhere in the mix. He had to be watching as well these past months, but not a sign. He needed to gently press Maude on the matter again tonight. Maude… Henry sat there, gazing into space, his thoughts suddenly pleasurable.

The reverie was broken by a hulking figure in the doorway. Claude Griffith walked over and sat down, an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

"Did you get him?" asked Henry.

"I got him. Odd looking duck, huh?" Claude lit and the cigarette and exhaled. "He looks like some weird bureaucrat they keep in the back of the office in a birdcage."

"I suspect no cage would hold him," said Henry. "Thank you."

Claude shrugged. "No problem. I love doing covert stuff. I'll have it developed tomorrow. What's this about?"

"Shhhhh," said Henry. "I can't tell you. I just need to dig up some more information, and the photo will come in handy."

"He's not selling Frank bootlegs on the black market?" cracked Claude.

"No, this is something else. Art stuff."

Claude nodded as Henry stood up. "I have to run," said Henry. "Can you call me as soon as you have them?"

"Sure," said Claude. He paused, looking up at Henry, his eyes wary behind his thick glasses. "Hey. Listen. Does this have anything to do with that artist?"

"Artist?" said Henry.

"You know. I took pictures of her work for you, the big Tarot sculptures."

"Ah." Henry paused. "Actually, yes, but keep that to yourself."

"Henry." Claude looked seriously at him.

"What? What is it?"

"Do you remember that graduate student I went out with, Amanda Welk?"

Henry thought back. "Mmm, yes, vaguely. Short, cute brunette? Photographer?"

Claude nodded. "Well, look. She moved to Austin last year, but we stayed in touch all the time. For what it's worth, the last email I got from her was gushing about how she had managed to hook into this very exclusive thing, this viewing."

Henry nodded, his heart swelling up uncomfortably in his chest.

"Well… the artist who she was going to see was a reclusive, female sculptor. But I never heard how it went, because the next thing I knew her roommate was emailing me that she had gone missing." Claude paused and took a drag. "For what it's worth."

Henry just looked at his friend for a moment. "Okay. Thanks." And then he was out the door, rubbing his twitching eye. He thought of Maude, and what had happened these past months, and he felt the same unease that had stolen over him, even in moments where it didn't belong. Because of all the glittering lies he'd fed Monroe, the stuff about the disappearances of people who had come into contact with Maude S— being hugger mugger was hugger mugger itself. In truth, Henry had yet to bring it up to Maude, even once, in all these nights, all their talk.

And now he wasn't sure if he could. Or even if he wanted to.

Henry got into his car. Maude, he thought to himself. He pictured her in his mind, looking at him, amused, smiling. Trusting. He saw her brightly melancholy eyes and the ringlets of hair he had never touched. He kept it in his mind, his eyes closed, his hands on the wheel, trying not to feel lost in something he couldn't understand, something dangerous. He didn't want to understand. Not yet.

Not yet.

AS SOON AS HENRY arrived home, he decided to call Maude, even though they would be having their usual rendezvous at midnight. She too was a night owl, and they had easily slipped into a strangely comforting routine of spending two or so hours together every other night. But the conversation with Claude had unnerved him slightly, and he felt an urge to hear her voice (or at least Ms. No's voice, telling him through pursed lips that Maude was temporarily unavailable; the many meetings these past weeks had done nothing to melt Maude's assistant). As he reached for the receiver, it rang.

"Hello?"

"You haven't given up all worldly pleasures, I hope." The self-satisfied and rapid voice of Win Stevenson filled his ear. "I'm on my way to Luv-It's. Care to join me?" It was said the way Win usually said things, somewhere between an order and a request.

"I'm on a diet, Win," said Henry, "and actually rather busy right now…"

"Good," said Win. "Then you'll be needing a break only a Vegas tradition can provide. I'm a block away, so be out front in a minute." And Win hung up.

A minute later, Henry watched a restored 1930's Rolls Royce glide into his driveway like a silver ghost. The back window slid down and Win Stevenson, his blonde-gray hair as carefully coifed as Robert Redford, his dimming vision protected by dark glasses, waved Henry over and into the back of the car.

"I hope this is worth my while, Win, as I've been spending too much time in rich men's cars lately," said Henry in an even tone.

"Oh, selling yourself on the street already, Bethel?" Win laughed. "I told you the bottom was about to fall out of the memorabilia business."

"Business is fine," said Henry, sinking back into the ridiculously plush leather seat. "After all, you're a big enough sucker to buy giant sculptures of Frank."

Win Stevenson chuckled, and rapped his ivory-tipped cane on the window, signaling the driver to go. "I like being a sucker for art and Sinatra, Bethel. Always a pleasure to bring the two together. You should see the piece in my atrium. It's masterful, as if Frank was about to come to life and scream at me about cutting off his credit." Win laughed again, the practiced laugh of a man who laughs whether he finds something funny or not. "She's quite an artist. And part of the reason I wanted to talk to you."

Henry tried not to give Win a sharp look. "Oh? And what would I have to say about that? I'm retired, remember?"

"The only writers I've ever met who were retired were dead," said Win.

"Look, what's this about?" said Henry.

"Soon enough. Custard first, then business."

Luv-It's Frozen Custard was indeed a Vegas tradition, a small, walk-up desert shack just a few blocks from Henry's house, on Oakey just south of Las Vegas Boulevard. In spite of its location, on a seedy stretch of the boulevard where various drunks and panhandlers could be found day or night, Luv-It was immensely popular and cut across class lines. Old time power brokers and yuppies rubbed shoulders with the working poor, all temporarily transported into the shared bliss of towering sundaes. Win's Rolls pulled up beside a monstrous SUV and an ancient orange jeep that had seen better days.

The driver—Win's bodyguard, of course—helped his boss out of the back. Despite his vitality, the open secret about Win Stevenson, first among equals when it came to casino moguls, was the fact that his eyesight was gradually fading away thanks to a hereditary degenerative disease. It was a condition which on occasion lent poignancy to his rapacious desire to constantly top himself with bigger and grander projects, but which more often lent itself to charges of a desperate egomania, a relentless empire-building that must be completed before the lamps finally went out. It seemed to Henry that Win acted as if his achievements would be nothing unless he could see the gilt on the walls of his hotels with his own eyes. But time was running out. When his new museum opened, the paintings would all look to Win like the fuzzy dabs of Impressionist canvases, whether they were or not.

Win squinted at the Flavors of the Day, then leaned into the service window. "Do you still have Mango?"

A lovely black girl looked over her shoulder and said in a bored voice, "We've got just enough left for a Junior."

"Ah, excellent, excellent," said Win. "A Junior Western then, with Mango."

"Your luck is as good as ever," said Henry. "They only make Mango a few times a year."

"Not luck," said Win with a smirk. "I know well in advance the dates that Luv-It offers Mango."

"Ah, the little pleasures the most powerful man in town can enjoy," said Henry.

"The little pleasures remain the best ones, Henry," said Win, his mouth twisting a little at the use of Henry's first name. "What will you have?"

"Seriously, I'm on a diet," said Henry. The thought of standing there with Win Stevenson and eating a sundae as if they were cutting class in high school was far too strange for Henry to stomach right now. He wanted to know what Win had to say about Maude.

"Well, you'll have to enjoy the view instead, since I can't," said Win, in an uncharacteristic allusion to his affliction. The view was also a Luv-It's tradition, since the shack was a stone's throw from the Olympic Garden Gentleman's Cabaret. If you went for a sundae around this time of night, you could mix a little silicone with your custard, as the dancers had to cross the Luv-It's parking lot on the way to their shift. But the parade of flesh, the exhausted, bored look on the women's faces as they trudged toward another night of lap dances, only made Henry wince.

As Win dug into his sundae with gusto, Henry said, impatiently, "What do you want to talk to me about?"

"Business with pleasure," said Win around a mouthful. "All right. As you know, the opening of the Dressler-Vegas is in two weeks."

"Indeed," said Henry, even though he hadn't thought about Win's museum project in weeks, being consumed with Maude. The thought of his maudlin, drunken jaunt around the construction site three months back made him inwardly wince.

"Of course, the gala is going to be spectacular, plenty of VIPs from New York and Europe in attendance. But as big as the Dressler-Vegas is, as pleased as I am with the opening exhibits, I want to make it truly spectacular. Unforgettable."

"I'm sure no one will soon forget the night the highbrows conquered the Strip, Win," said Henry sarcastically.

"No doubt. But I want a surprise that will knock even those East Coast snobs dead, Henry." His eyes, cloudy behind his dark glasses, fixed on Henry. "I want to present the person and work of the most mysterious, most talked-about artist on the scene." Win took a big bite of sundae, and licked his lips. "I want Maude S— to open my museum."

Henry paused. "That would certainly be a coup," he said carefully. "But she's a recluse. Even her appearance at Elise's gallery was brief in the extreme. And I don't think any amount of money would entice her to be your Art Star of the Moment, Win."

Win smiled. "That's where you come in."

"Me? I don't have anything to do with that stuff anymore, Win. You know that better than anyone." Henry looked at him steadily.

Win laughed with a snort, and took another big bite. "Come off it, Bethel," he said with his mouth full. "I know very well you've developed some kind of relationship with Maude since she came to town. The buzz has been growing steadily. Oh, you've been discreet about it, but this will always be a small town. This will always be my town." Win shoveled another scoop of custard into his arrogant smile.

Henry stared at him. "That's none of your business, Stevenson," he said.

Win shrugged. "Oh, but it is. Art is now my business in addition to everything else. Now, I don't want to upset what you're working on, Bethel," he said, his tone changing. "Clearly, you've decided to make your comeback as a critic with a study of a tantalizing artist who nobody has been able to dig up so much as a birth date on. Somehow—and I confess to being very impressed, as it couldn't just be your charm—you've managed to vault over the walls Maude S— has so carefully created. At this very moment, there's a manuscript, an outline at least, of a book all about this enigma, ready to shoot up the bestseller list sometime next year. Tell me I'm wrong."

Henry laughed, and shook his head. "You're wrong," he said.

"Of course I'm wrong," said Win, with a sardonic little smile. "The point is this: I'm not looking to derail your plans. I'm looking for you to put in the good word when I approach Maude with my plan. Not only will she open the gala, but I will show a work of hers—a work of her choosing, no strings—in the main atrium of the space, where it will be seen by thousands of visitors, VIPs, and very rich patrons."

"She won't do it," said Henry. "Not for any kind of exposure. She avoids exposure like no artist since Duchamp. Not for love or money, Win. You'll be wasting your time."

"I don't think so," said Win Stevenson, as he savored the last of the divine mango custard. "Because I'm going to make her an offer she can't refuse."

Henry looked at him sharply. "Whatever your offer is, Win, I'm not going to advise her to take it. I don't owe you any favors, frankly. And I don't need any of your money."

Win looked down at his empty cup, then handed it to his driver, who tossed it into the trash. He stood for a moment, leaning on his cane. A car filled with teenagers pulled up, and he nodded to his driver. "You know, when I told Jill you'd become the confidant of the infamous Maude S—, she refused to believe it."

Henry knew why Win now brought up his ex-wife, but he wasn't about to give him the slightest advantage. "Oh, is Jill still advising you? I thought she'd moved on long ago."

Win smiled. "She has, and she hasn't. Perhaps if you'd spoken to her in the last year, you'd know what she is doing."

Henry moved a little closer to Win, intending to say something, when he stopped short at the sight of the lapel pin in Win's charcoal Armani suit. It was a winged horse against a blue background. Where had he seen…

"I think this conversation is over, Stevenson," said Henry as coldly and calmly as he could, his eyes still fixed on the pin.

Win moved to the open door of the Rolls now, not looking at Henry. "I think you should think about this, Bethel. Because, if you haven't noticed by now, I tend to get what I want. And you could benefit greatly from doing me this favor, or you could be left behind in the dust when events spin out of your control. Which they will. They always do for people like you." And Win smiled his blind man's smile.

Henry felt a pressure in his forehead. "Stay away from Maude," he suddenly found himself saying, angrily. "And stop spying on her and on me, or there will be consequences you can't imagine."

"Spying?" said Win with a guffaw. "Get a hold of yourself, Bethel. You sound like you're living in a detective novel. And it's my business to know all the consequences. That's the difference between winners and losers." Win waved his cane in Henry's direction. "We'll see which camp you'll find yourself in soon enough." The driver shut his door, but Win swiftly lowered the window and said, "You should have that twitch looked at. You might wind up in a sanitarium before you can write that comeback." Moments later Henry found himself alone with a gang of giggling teens and the long train of strippers jiggling by.

As he walked home, rubbing his twitching eye, one thought seized him: he had to talk to Maude, and before he saw her at midnight. Things suddenly did feel as if they were spinning out of control. After all the careful planning, now was not the time to lose it, he said to himself. Don't lose it, he said, almost aloud like a mantra.

When he got back, he reached for the phone. Again, it rang before he could dial Maude.

"Hello?" he said, exasperated.

A raspy voice choked out a few words. Henry couldn't immediately understand what was being said. "Who is this?" he barked.

"Henry… important… for Christ's sake… it's worse, much worse… you've got to help me…"

Suddenly recognition dawned. "Nap? Nap Hendryx? Is that you? Where are you? What's wrong?"

Nap's voice came over in thick gasps, as if his lungs were collapsing. "Christ, Henry… fucking hurts… you've… you've got…"

"Nap? Where are you?!?"

"Atomic… behind Atomic… hurry… Christ, Nap… they're going to…"

"NAP! Hold on! I'll be right there!"

But the line had gone dead.

HENRY'S TIRES squealed as he cut across Charleston and onto 10th. He gunned it, picking up speed as he flew by darkened law offices and bail bondsmen. A voice kept saying call the police, but Henry ignored it. Something told him he had to reach Napoleon Hendryx before anyone else. Instinctively he knew that Nap was in danger because of the investigation that Henry had appealed to him to undertake: the investigation of Don Ix and his employee, Madison Monroe.

Atomic Liquors was a dive on Fremont Street distinguished by its name, emblazoned over the cracked sidewalks in a 50s-vintage neon sign, and not much else. As Henry came up behind it, he slowed, looking for Nap. The back of the bar emptied out onto an abandoned expanse of asphalt, lit by a single spotlight. A battered, green dumpster stood like a sleeping cow in field a few hundred yards from the back entrance. Henry dimmed his lights, and rolled across the cracked pavement, his tires crunching bits of gravel. There didn't appear to be a soul about, nor could he see any cars parked anywhere near Atomic's rear door.

Henry stopped and shut off his engine, hesitating. What if someone had found Nap already and carried him inside? Or… what if someone had taken Nap away? Henry's stomach lurched as he banished a picture of Nap bleeding inside somebody's trunk. He shook the image out of his mind and got out of his car.

It was quiet. Voices from Fremont Street carried over, but they seemed muffled, far away. Henry walked carefully toward the back of the bar, scanning the scene. He looked behind him twice: nothing. Even traffic seemed to have ceased, though he could hear a cars on Fremont, just the other side of the building. He kept walking, looking down at the ground, scanning for… what? A clue? This was ridiculous. Nap was likely in the bar. Injured, perhaps, but okay. Just go in to the bar and see, Henry said to himself. He moved quickly toward the door.

He nearly didn't hear the soft thump of a hand against metal to his right.

Henry froze, and turned toward the dumpster. He moved toward it, and broke into a run without realizing it. "Nap?" he called out, in a near panic. "Nap, is that you?" He reached the dumpster's lip, peered down, and nearly cried out.

Napoleon Hendryx stared up at him, barely alive. At one horrible glance, Henry realized he had been stabbed many, many times. He looked down into Nap's eyes, full of blood and blinking dimly, and saw too that something had been carved into his forehead, some kind of… was it a Greek letter?

"Nap," Henry said, choking. "Hang on, I'm going to call an ambulance."

Nap gurgled, and moaned, blood gurgling thickly out of his mouth. His eyes widened at Henry's face.

"Oh Christ, Nap," Henry said. Nap extended his bloody fist upward, thumping dully on the empty dumpster's side, as if he was trying to get Henry's attention. Henry's eyes filled with tears as he reached down and grasped Nap's hand with his. It was then he found that Nap was holding something tightly in hand. Henry grasped it with both of his, looking into Nap's eyes. "Hold on," he said in a voice that seemed to come from some other place. "Hold on, I'm going to get help, you've got to hold on, Nap."

Nap never took his eyes off of him. He gurgled again, his breathing ragged, gasping. "Christ, I'm sorry, Nap," Henry said, and Nap seemed to shake his head, to say it was okay, but his eyes were terrified. He shook his fist between Henry's hands, and a hideous sound came deep out of his throat, and with that his eyes lost all terror, lost everything.

"Oh fuck, no," whispered Henry, crying. It was some seconds before he discovered that he now held something in his hands, something that had slid into them as Nap's fingers had unclenched and gone slack. After a few moments, Henry at last let go of Nap's hand, and brought the object up to his face.

He couldn't make any sense out of it. It was small plastic figurine of a man dressed in pale greenish suit and wearing a hat. The man had a short black moustache, and his hands were clasped behind his back. It looked like the sort of figure you would see on a dashboard of a saint or something. Henry stared at it numbly, looking from it to Nap back and forth, trying to understand. I have to call the police, he heard himself finally say.

As he said it, he also suddenly understood the sound he had been hearing but not perceiving for the last minute or so… the sound of an idling engine. As Henry turned, a pair of high beams flashed over him. Tires screeched like prey in the grip of a jungle cat as a car tore over the parking lot straight for him at great speed. Everything froze, and then sped up as adrenaline hit his veins. Instead of trying to leap to the right or left, however, Henry pulled himself up and onto the dumpster a split second before the car slammed into it.

The impact threw Henry onto the hood of the car, hard. He rolled off, dazed, as the car threw itself into reverse, embedding more rubber into the asphalt. An acrid smell filled Henry's nostrils, and he thought The bar… I have to get into the bar… Henry scrambled to his feet and started running toward Atomic's back door. He heard the car throw itself back into gear, and the tires squealed again. They're not going to risk slamming into a building, Harry thought wildly, but it sounded as if that was exactly what they were doing. Henry heard the engine roar, louder and louder, as he grasped the handle and yanked the door open. There was a tremendous screech of brakes as he stumbled into the darkness of the bar's back hall.

For a second, he nearly dropped to his knees. He was dizzy, sick to his stomach, but the thought that whoever was in the car was the person who murdered Nap propelled him forward. Too many witnesses in the bar, thought Henry. If he could just get to the phone…

But when he emerged into Atomic Liquors' dingy, cramped space, he was amazed to see only two people: a bartender laconically wiping glasses, and a dark-haired woman in a long coat, sitting at the bar with a shot glass in front of her.

Henry leaned heavily on the bar. "There's been an accident," he gasped to the bartender. "Please, I need to use your phone."

The bartender looked at him as if he was babbling in Swahili. "Accident?" he repeated slowly.

"Yes!" said Henry, a little hysterically. His eyes shot back toward the door. They would be inside at any moment. "A man has been killed, and I was just nearly run over, so please, give me the phone, or call the police yourself!"

The woman at the end of the bar slammed back her shot and brought the empty glass down hard with a snort of disgust. "Did you just say you were nearly run over?" she asked Henry in a thick accent.

Henry looked at her, almost distractedly. "Yes," he said, and turned to the bartender again. "Look, this is no joke, call the police!"

"Idiots," the woman hissed, and slid off of her barstool. Her hair was jet-black, and thick; between it and her large, hook nose the rest of her face disdained to come into focus. She walked swiftly to wear Henry stood. "Here, use my cell," she said, handing an expensive flip phone to him.

"Thank you," said Henry, quickly dialing 911. He explained everything to the dispatcher, his eyes drifting to the back door every few seconds, still not convinced that the killers would be deterred so easily.

He hung up at last, and handed the phone back to the woman. "Thank you," he said again. His eye was twitching again like a live wire, and he rubbed it, sagging a little onto the barstool. Everything had an unreal aspect to it, and he realized he was probably in shock.

"You need a drink," the woman said again in her thick accent. He nodded absent-mindedly, saying "I think you're right."

"Another H-Bomb," said the woman to the bartender, whose eyes had all the spark of an iguana sunning itself on a rock.

"I don't know if a drink called an H-Bomb is just what I need right now," said Henry, still dazed. He looked around nervously once more. Why was this place so dead? It was a dive, sure, but a busy one. And something else was nagging at him… something about the 911 call… had he forgotten something? Where were the police? The Metro substation was literally two blocks away up the street, right across from the El Cortez… what was taking them so long?

A strangely colored shot was placed in front of him. "Drink," the woman said, handing it to him.

Henry massaged his temple. "What is this again?" he asked, craning his neck, looking out the front windows to see if there was anyone outside on Fremont.

"Drink," the woman repeated. She smiled, as if to a reluctant customer in a shop. "You'll feel calmer."

Henry looked down at his hands. They were stained with Nap's blood. He shuddered, and quickly knocked the shot back. It tasted woody and sweet, almost unpleasant, like a bad scotch that warms you nonetheless. A wonderful sensation spread though his body as it hit his stomach. His tongue immediately felt thick and tingly.

"That's something," he said, and coughed. "What is that?" he asked the bartender.

Now the bartender smiled, but still said nothing. "That," said the woman's heavily accented voice… the same accent, come to think of it, that the 911 dispatcher had, hey, isn't that funny… "That is your ticket to not being killed by idiots."

The wonderful sensation had dissipated, and now Henry felt slightly sick, as if he'd just swallowed a vat of cough syrup.

"Yeah," said the bartender at last in a flat voice, "it's always better to be killed by people who know what they're doing."

Henry tried to turn and say something to the woman, but she suddenly darted away into a corner of the room like a kite caught in a sudden gust. Then Henry realized that the ceiling tiles of Atomic Liquors were very, very dirty. Even with them spinning like that, you could tell they'd undergone extensive water damage over the years. And then, suddenly, his long dead friend Jack Samson was leaning over him, his ghostly face becoming less and less luminous as the light dimmed all around, and Jack was shaking his head, saying "Henry, you ass. You're out of your league. Shape up, or you got Nap killed for nothing… you reading me, Hank? Hanh?"

But darkness had closed in, and Henry Bethel was no longer reading anything at all.

EVERYTHING WAS PINK, the whole of the world a warm, golden-tinged pink. Consciousness itself was pink. It had to be, for that was all Henry could perceive for what seemed an eternity, a pink the shifted from light to dark as he tried to move his head, or drag his limbs, which mysteriously had been transformed to lead in some perverse alchemy, across the bed.

Bed? Yes, a bed. Henry was lying on a bed. The sudden realization filled him with unexpected relief, and he tried to let the pink and gold world go and slip back into the slumber from which he surely had prematurely awaken. But now there were voices in the pink, and dark, indistinct shapes passed through the golden light, which Henry now saw as a lamp. He tried to lift his head but nothing happened.

A blurry face blotted out the pink, hovering over his eyes. The face said something in a language Henry didn't understand, but he felt as if he knew. Then the face receded, and Henry tried to sink down away from the pink when something lifted his head up. Something cold pressed against his lips, and he found himself swallowing. He tried to say something but he only heard a low sound come out of his throat, and he laid his head back, wanting only for the fuzzy pinkness of reality to let go of him, let him go down into darkness.

Then the face from before peered down at him again, and this time he saw two dark eyes, malevolent as thunderheads on the horizon, and a name formed in his mind that shattered the glowing thickness of his senses.

Mangopoulos.

Everything came into horrifying focus. The numbness drained away from his limbs and head, and he realized that whatever he drank had restored him to his faculties. And then he saw his friend Napoleon Hendryx, his bloody body lying in a dumpster.

"Oh, Nap," Henry moaned, thickly. My fault, he thought.

Something between a sigh and a laugh came from Mangopoulos as his face receded. Henry tried to sit up, but he was still disoriented. He managed to roll over, and that's when he realized why the world was pink.

He was in an elaborately decorated bedroom where every single furnishing, from the Rococo nightstand to the velvet patterned wallpaper was in varying shades of pink. Pink drapes framed the window, trailing along the expensive pink Berber carpet on the floor. The golden glow came from a huge gilded lamp by the bed. Henry took all this in as he saw Mangopoulos turn and stride out of the room through two light pink French doors. There were other people, many in fact, outside the room, but Henry sensed this more than he saw. His vision was slowly coming into focus, and he heard martial voices, shouting, barking orders of some kind.

The room was familiar, terribly familiar. Henry at last managed to sit up, swinging his legs down to the floor like two heavy pendulums. He blinked, rubbing his temple and his eye (which he realized was once again twitching) and stared out the window. There was something weird about the light outside. Henry rubbed his eyes, and looked again and at last it hit him: the sky was fluorescent.

He was in the Underground House.

"Up? Good! No one does potions like my little Lethe!" A voice like gravel poured over cello strings came from behind him. Henry slowly turned, and had to blink and rub his eyes again.

The man couldn't be more than four feet tall, but he was built like a rhino: barrel-chested, stocky and thick-armed, as if Popeye had fallen into a trash compactor. He was completely bald, his head scarred and pitted, as was his face, at least the part of it that could be seen behind his thick, gray beard. One of his eyes was a milky white but the other was as blue as the Mediterranean Sea. He was wearing a thick black leather apron over some kind of uniform, and as he walked over to Henry, staring agape at him, he moved with the swiftness and ease of an antelope.

He took Henry's face into his hands, gently but firmly, his good eye appraising it as if Henry was a bill of goods. The man nodded, and smiled. "Yes. Good. No permanent damage. Not that it would have mattered! Except to an old man who likes a good conversation!" He laughed, and Henry felt as if it was the most menacing thing he had ever heard.

Over the man's shoulder, Henry was dimly aware that a great number of people were rushing about, in hurry but disciplined. Like troops, thought Henry wildly. He was still not sure what was happening. The transition from pink to awareness had been so quick that he felt like he was in shock.

"What.. what…" he struggled to say.

"Shhhh," said the man. "Soon enough, the talk. Good talk! But first, you come with me." The man lifted him off the bed like a child, directing him down the hall and into the grand, main living room of the secret home that Ronald R. Armstrong had created thirty years ago.

Of all the shocks now registering in Henry's addled brain, the most bewildering one was how he had passed out—drugged, he realized—at Atomic Liquors downtown and came to again 25 feet below the surface of southeast Las Vegas. For that is where he was: inside the house that Armstrong, a rich aviation pioneer who gave Howard Hughes a run for his money in the eccentricity department, had carved out of the ground, creating a 6000 square foot house surrounded by astroturf, steel trees and elaborate murals of distant vistas, a fluorescent sky that went from day to night, and a ceiling where the roof of the ranch-style abode would be.

Armstrong and his wife Betty—whose ultra-pink bedroom Henry had awoken in—lived in the house for the last two decades of their lives, and now the property belonged to a trust that occasionally rented it out or gave tours. Which brought Henry to his next thought: what were Mangopoulos and his Greek thugs doing here?

"Many questions, eh my friend?" said the man, smiling peculiarly as he led Henry through the living room, unchanged since the Sixties, its white shag carpet groaning under neoclassical kitsch sofas and Chinese cabinets. "Hah! We will see if we cannot answer them over Turkish coffee! Strong coffee for strong men!" The man laughed his horrible laugh again, and Henry recoiled as if a pit bull had thrust its face at him.

But he followed the man into the kitchen, and sat at the long table when the man motioned him to do so. Figures in dark clothes suddenly trotted by the windows, shadows against the mock vistas of oceans and mountains that Armstrong had had painted, so that every window in the house was a "room with a view." The figures passed out of earshot, and soon the sounds of activity at the far end of the house-where the elevator to the desert landscaped "roof" was-faded into silence. Henry realized, shuddering, that he and the man were alone.

"It is good to be down here where it is quiet, yes? A good place to go unseen in a place with so much sun, sun, sun!" said the man over his shoulder. "So simple, the matter of obtaining it. What money does to you Americans! And a little persuasion. Hah!"

It was a struggle to put his thoughts into order. He kept seeing Nap's bloodstained face, his own hands covered in his friend's blood. Mangopoulos… Mangopoulos had killed him. But where was Mangopoulos going with so many men? Henry stared at this strange old brute's back as the man busied himself, methodically, with a coffee press.

"Who… are you?" Henry said at last. It was an effort to get this out; his throat felt raw.

"Hah! A good question, one with many answers, yes?" The man spoke to Henry in a booming voice, without turning around. "Who are you, Henry Bethel? Art critic? Professor? Sinatraist? Dupe?" He laughed. "I have just as many names. But you may call me Gus, my friend. Gus will do for you!" He laughed after each exclamation, and each time he did it Henry's blood chilled.

"Yes, so many names. We change them, try them on like hats. Still the same heads underneath hats! Hah! We do not change. No one escapes the mirror. Not even the witches!"

"The… witches?" Henry looked around the room. He was starting to feel fully normal again. He knew what the man meant: Maude S— and her assistants. He spied a block filled with carving knives on the counter to his left.

"Hah!" barked Gus. He still had his back to Henry as he prepared the grounds. "Of course. You think you know what you are about, Henry Bethel, but you know nothing. Like all critics! You look at a statue, you say this and that, thinking you have described its truth, when in fact you are a million miles away from the hand that sculpted it, its real meaning! You are just hot air against that statue, like a summer wind blowing over rocks. Hah! Summer Wind!" Here, Gus laughed even harder, and began to sing "Summer Wind" in a voice like roadkill, his accented English growing thick.

Henry softly stood, his hand reaching out for the knives, very slowly. If he could just arm himself, make it to the elevator…

Gus broke off in mid-bar, paused and said in a different, gentle tone: "Do not think you can stab me, Henry Bethel. I will kill you before the knife leaves its sheath."

Henry's eyes widened and he sat back down like a man in a daze. Gus had not turned around to see what he was doing.

"You'll… forgive me," said Henry, his composure rising. "Having seen what you did to my friend, and finding myself kidnapped, I just now feared for my life, you understand."

"Friend?" said Gus, still with his back to Henry. "Ah yes. The detective! A, how do you say, has-been? Well, not so much of a has-been. He found out some things about Don Ix, and some things he was not looking for. Hah! He killed himself, I think. Had he done as was instructed—which was simply to call you, my friend, and tell you to meet him about an urgency, so that we could have our coffee this evening, as we are doing now—he would be alive to fill his bar stool. But he decided on heroics, yes? So, he is dead, and below us, with the shades. And we are still having our coffee!"

Gus turned around and brought two small, steaming cups of coffee to the table, placing one in front of Henry. "Strong as love, black as death! Hah!" Gus sat down opposite of him, and fixed his blue eye on him, Henry felt, like a laser sight from a high-powered rifle. They were silent for a long minute.

"So," Henry said. "You've killed my friend so that we could talk." Henry stared at him. "So talk. Tell me precisely what this is about while I figure out how to make sure you and Mangopoulos and whoever it is you work for pay for it." Henry wanted to sound determined, but his voice came out trembling. Nap, I'm so sorry, he thought to himself, a little knife already in his heart.

"Hah! Yes, talk is good. It fills the silence so thought cannot prey upon us. The thoughts that solitude gives us, not so good. Thoughts, they lead to trouble!" Gus grinned, a weirdly hideous sight, and sipped his still scalding hot coffee. Henry saw a large lapis ring embedded into the swollen flesh of his finger: an elaborate design of a peacock, green and blue glinting beneath the kitchen light.

"You had much too much solitude, Henry Bethel? Much better, all those nights of talk with the Witch. Hah! What things were said! But—how is it that Nietzsche said—you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you? Hah! Yes, my friend, you sitting there, blinded by the Witch's mask, walking a tightrope over a chasm like a sleepwalker! Mooning over a monster! Hah!" Gus slurped his coffee and grinned again, his yellow teeth giving off a fetid, diseased smell. "You have been—how do you say—a fool for love?" He fixed Henry not with his blue eye but with the clouded one, as if he could see right through him.

Henry stared at him evenly, even as his cheeks flushed. How could they know so much? How could this strange dwarf see into him as if he was glass? Focus, Henry, he thought, anger rising, coalescing within him.

"The only monsters I've seen are the ones who stabbed a man to death tonight, the ones who have persecuted a woman for reasons that are inexplicable." He leaned forward, trying to stare down that unnerving white eye. "So why don't you explain to me precisely who you people are and precisely why Maude S— is a 'witch.'"

Gus smiled, and shook his head. "Hah! Some perception, some art critic! You spend nights with this… thing, you see her unholy handiwork, and yet you see nothing!" Gus sipped his coffee again, and his smile faded. "Your friend died at the hands of soldiers, of warriors in a just cause, Henry Bethel." He leaned forward and said in a searing growl, "Untold thousands have died at the hands of your… artist." He spat the word out as if a bug had crawled into his mouth.

Gus leaned back and laughed. "But that will end, at long last, this glorious night, my friend! Patience and fools like you have brought us far, and this time the Witch shall not escape!"

Henry stared at him, hard. "What do you mean?" he said, but the sinking in his stomach told him. He knew where Mangopoulos and all the others had gone.

"Everything has come together. Such careful planning! You were the only, how do you say, wildcard? Important, not for you to be involved when the authorities investigate. Too many questions that might lead somewhere—might even lead our misguided friend Don Ix to us. So, our coffee!" Gus smiled, almost in rapture. "Now, nothing to obstruct us! At last, we complete our sacred mission!"

Maude, thought Henry. I have to get to Maude, and now.

"I presume you are to prevent me from… leaving your hospitality?"

Gus laughed, long and horribly. "Ah, such the gentleman! A gentleman who loves a monster!" Gus smiled, downed the rest of his coffee and slammed the drained cup against the table. "Yes, my friend. You and I will drink coffee until our general and soldiers return, victorious. If you try to leave, I will indeed kill you. If you keep me company, and we have much good talk, then our general will show you what you have kept company with, and you may yet live to be a fool for love again! Hah!"

Henry stared for a moment, then smiled a very weak smile. Small as Gus was, Henry sensed he was immensely strong—not to mention the fact he seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. "Well. I guess that's that then. I don't suppose we could enjoy our coffee in the comfort of the living room."

Gus roared. "Ah, so civilized! Where would we be without you civilized critics to tell us who we are! Come, we shall sit amidst the sea of white, here in our palace of a cave." He stood, poured out more coffee, and took Henry by the elbow, guiding him back into the living room.

"Well," said Henry, "since you have mocked me to my core, I feel I shouldn't let you down. Perhaps you'd like to know some of my ridiculous opinions about the art." Armstrong had indeed filled his hideaway with tons of art, most of it 19th and 18th century Chinese. Henry stood, coffee in hand, next to a large decorative mask of a dragon, its fierce mouth open, its blank eyes staring down into the mismatched eyes of Gus.

"Hah! Yes, that is good talk! Perhaps you are not so much the fool… or at least, not so much the hero!" Gus leered and chuckled happily to himself. "So tell me about this dragon!"

Now it was Henry's turn to smile, a smile that hardened as he spoke. "Of course, there's something very special about this piece. But before I tell you, there are two things you should know."

"Yes, my friend?" said Gus, sardonically amused, holding his coffee in his thick, scaly, and deadly hands as daintily as a society matron.

"First, there's another part to that famed quote by Nietzsche: 'If you do battle with monsters, be careful not to become a monster yourself.'"

"Hah!" said Gus. His eye fixed upon Henry's eyes.

"Secondly," said Henry, his hand reaching out toward the dragon as if to point out some feature of it, "the only fools are those who have never loved at all: not a woman, not an artwork… not even a monster."

And as Gus' smile instinctively vanished, Henry's hand slipped deep into the dragon's mouth and touched something that plunged Ronald R. Armstrong's Underground House into absolute darkness.

AS THE WORLD went pitch black, Henry Bethel's instinct told him that Gus would expect him to dive forward in his effort to escape. So in the split second that the Underground House was plunged into impenetrable darkness, Henry threw himself backwards onto the palms of his hands, then threw his leg out in a wide arc swiftly to his right. It worked: Gus cursed him in his native language and lunged forward to wear he expected Henry to be, only to have his shin connect with Henry's leg. There was tremendous crash as Gus tripped and pitched himself into a glass end table, bringing down a huge, ornate lamp on his head. Or so Henry hoped, as he got to his feet and began moving like desperate blind man down what he believed was the main hallway of the house.

If Mangopoulos' little terrorist organization had really done their homework on him, they might have discovered that Henry had given numerous tours of Armstrong's house as part of various Las Vegas art and architecture tours he'd been involved in. Even then, they might not have known about the master electrical switch that Armstrong had installed inside the dragon's mouth. It was one of his favorite party tricks: gathering his guests around him, then suddenly sending them into the perpetual night that his little elegantly decorated cave enjoyed without the benefit of electricity.

But Armstrong went one further. The switch inside the dragon worked in only one direction. The other switch was on the opposite side of the house, and Armstrong would make good on his boast that he could find his way there in the dark. "Sense like a bat!" he'd cry in delight as he nonchalantly walked in the unnerving darkness to the other switch without tripping or stumbling once. Then he would flip the on switch to the applause of his guests, each breathing an unexpected sigh of relief at how comforting being able to see again was.

Poor Gus had no idea of such elaborate tomfoolery. Henry heard what could only be the sound of the dragon's head being ripped from the wall as Gus fumbled with the switch, flipping it futilely up and down. He kept moving, going as fast as he dared, hands outstretched like a zombie in a hokey horror flick.

When Henry reached the sliding glass door at the end of the corridor, his hand brushing against a second before he would have walked square into it, he was relieved to find it halfway open. To have slid it would have told Gus instantly where he was, and he was hoping Gus would think he had headed for the front door instead. As he slipped his body cautiously through the opening, he paused, listening for sounds of pursuit.

The sounds of Gus' guttural cursing had died away a minute before. Now, as Henry stood there, his head cocked, listening, he could hear nothing. He turned to step into the mock Florida room at the end of the house when a chuckle, far off (but not that far off) came spiraling up the hall like a spider across the back of his neck.

"Hah! Very clever, my friend, very clever." Gus' voice was ragged, an edge of anger boiling below his forced aplomb. "But Gus, he sees better than you think! He sees everything!" The voice, Henry thought as sweat trickled down his temple, as he stood there, not daring to breathe, was at the edge of the hallway he'd just come down. Gus' breathing came down the dark in menacing little gasps, as if he was waiting, waiting for the slightest sound that would betray which way Henry had gone.

As quietly has he could, Henry stepped fully through the door, reaching down to remove his left shoe. Slowly he reached down and removed the right, and with shoes in hand crept toward the patio door that he was sure was directly in front of him. If he could double back around the side of the house, he might be able to reach the elevator before Gus realized he hadn't made a beeline for it. Unless, of course, Gus was making a beeline for the elevator himself, knowing that it was Henry's only way out.

But, Henry suddenly realized, it wasn't his only way out

Henry reached the patio door, his palm suddenly flat against its cool wood. His hand drifted down until it found the doorknob. The door was shut, and if it squeaked as he opened it...

Henry held his breath once more, ready to dash through the door at the first hint of noise. The soft click of the latch slipping out as he turned the knob was almost imperceptible, but to Henry it was as loud as a cannon. He pushed gently and door swung silently out before him.

Henry stepped into the patio area and immediately stubbed his toe on the leg of something, most likely a table. He swallowed his yelp and went into a half-crouch, hopping a little and swinging his shoes before him to ward off the chaise lounge that was likely in his way. At last he made it to the astroturf of the house's "yard," and turned to his right, in the direction he hoped would lead him around the house.

It was then that he saw the skyline.

Stupid, stupid, thought Henry. It wasn't as if he'd forgotten about the murals that lined the walls of the Underground House, but in his excitement over his plan to escape he hadn't fully reckoned them in. For the murals that Armstrong had commissioned, each a different vista from some part of the world that the billionaire had fancied, had been painted with overlays of phosphorescent paint, so that each day scene also had an equivalent night. The glittering dabs of glow in the dark paint now rose, faintly, to evoke the city of Sydney at night. It wasn't enough light to see by, but to move in front of the murals was to present a silhouette that even Gus, with his one good eye, could see.

Henry dropped to his knees and began to crawl along the wall beneath the scenes, moving from Sydney to Rome to Chicago, his ears pricked for any sound at all behind him or in front of him. The going was agonizingly slow, but to move too fast would betray him to Gus, who by now must be outside the house as well, though he could hear nothing. With each crawling step, images of Maude and her assistants at the mercy of Mangopoulos' thugs flashed before him, but he squelched them, thinking only that he had to hurry, that he had to get out of here. The thought that it was already too late rose sickeningly to his mind, but he pushed it away as well, and started to crawl faster.

After what seemed an endless period but at best was only five minutes, he turned the corner of the house and saw, several yards distant, the point at which the glowing dots of cityscapes terminated into a patch of blackness, like a galaxy set against the void. The elevator lay in that void and for all Henry knew Gus was already there, standing before it, waiting with his thick, scaly hands that had no doubt wrung a hundred necks.

But twenty or so feet from the elevator, and only a dozen yards from where he crouched, was a secret door set into the wall that led to a staircase that led directly to Armstrong's garage above. If Henry could reach it, he could shut the door behind him and lock it, but the emergency lights inside would spill out into the dark. How quickly could Gus cover those twenty feet, if he even was standing at the elevator? Henry paused, listening. There wasn't a sound. As quiet as the proverbial tomb, Henry thought, and then decided Well, it's not going to be my tomb.

He stood up, back to what he thought was the corner of the house, and slipped his shoes on, preparing himself for the sprint to where he thought (where he hoped) that secret door was. But as he leaned against the house to steady himself, he felt a cool smoothness against his back.

Two things happened at once: Henry realized Fuck, I'm leaning against a window just as that window shattered outward. Henry instinctively threw his arms over his head and tried to crouch, but something had hold of the back of his jacket, pinning his arms upward for a moment. He felt himself being pulled back up like a rag doll as Gus, his fingers entangled in the material of Henry's coat, began to draw him into the house.

Adrenaline kicked in, and Henry, one step from terror, straightened his arms behind him and threw himself forward like a high diver. Somehow, it worked: Henry fell face down into the sharp little blades of plastic grass and shards of broken glass, leaving his empty jacket fluttering in Gus' grasp. An unintelligible curse roared behind him as he got to his feet and started moving for the dark break in the skyline where the elevator was. He was running now, moving straight for the void. Gus was still inside the house, he could make it there before—

It was at that moment that Henry ran headlong into something that fell all around him as he fell to the ground with a resounding clatter. Something wet and sticky gushed down the lower half of his face as he lay, stunned, covered with several cold object. In his sudden stupor he realized he'd stumbled directly into the full suit of medieval armor that stood just to one side of the elevator. Fucking dust collectors he thought for one stupid moment as he struggled to get up, his hand going to his bleeding nose. His ears where ringing, but not so loud that he couldn't hear Gus' low, throaty chuckle just above him. He was already upon him.

"Well, well. Cat and mouse is fun, but the cat always wins, yes, my friend? A shame, when your last hours could have been filled with stimulating conversation! Someone should have told you that nothing escapes ol' Gus' eyes, eh, my poor friend?"

Gus laughed, more in mirth than menace, though Henry knew he was about to die. Sitting up now, he looked in the direction of that laugh, and for a moment thought he was hallucinating. He blinked and blinked, but still he saw, bright in the darkness, Gus' eyes, the ruined one and the good one, both open and shining a brilliant blue in the darkness, like twin gas flames. For a second, Henry could have sworn that each eye had the endless reflection of another eye behind it, a tunnel of eyes descending into the back of Gus' head for all infinity.

But in that same second Henry's addled mind realized his right hand was lying on the hilt of a sword.

Gus laughed again. "So! Our evening is at an end! Perhaps when our warriors return we'll put your head next to the witches! Hah! Yes, you can listen to her lies for all eternity, you poor lovesick fool!" He laughed heartily as he leaned down to take Henry's throat in his ancient, scarred fingers.

But it was Gus' throat that was ripped open as Henry, with every ounce of strength available to his aching arm, swung the still sharp sword into the space below his terrible glowing eyes. Gus gasped as the blade buried itself into his neck, and as Henry got to his feet, still holding the hilt, Henry pushed himself forward and brought the sword all the way down.

Gus' head hit the astroturf with soft plop, like a ripe fruit dropping from a tree.

Henry felt as if he would vomit. He stood unsteady, wiping the blood away from his face. After a few seconds he dropped the sword and moved toward the elevator. His ears were still ringing as he searched for the button. At last his fingers found it, and pressed it as a hideous, gurgling sound arose from where Gus' headless corpse lay.

He knew he shouldn't look back. But he did. There, in the dark, the fiend's horrible blue eyes still shone. A sound issued forth, and if Henry didn't know better, he would have sworn that Gus' tongue somehow formed the words "Not again..." But then the elevator arrived, and Henry turned and stepped into it, hitting the button without looking back again. As the doors slid shut, only one thought remained.

Maude, hang on... I'm coming. Please don't let it be too late. I'm coming.

WHATEVER GODS OF CHANCE that had smiled on Henry so far, allowing him to survive the increasingly dangerous and bizarre rabbit-hole he had fallen down, kept smiling. He found one white SUV in the aboveground garage of the Underground House just sitting there, keys dangling from the ignition. Moving now on sheer adrenaline, Henry drove like the devil toward Maude's rented house in the Scotch 80s.

He tried desperately not to think he was too late, drove pictures of Mangopoulos and his hitmen out of his mind. But they were all too readily replaced with images of Napoleon Hendryx, dying before him. Henry drove like a madman, hoping against hope some cop would tear off after him. He would lead them straight to these evil fuckers. Henry cursed himself, daring not to stop for a phone. Not too late, not too late...

But none of Metro's finest took notice. When Henry pulled off of Shadow Lane, he forced himself to slow down, realizing he might be blundering right into them, unarmed and covered in Gus' blood. He slowed a block away from the house, looking around the car's interior for anything he could use as a weapon. Fortune smiled, if for a moment, once more when he felt the long cold barrel on the floorboard behind him. Pulling it up, he found he held a sawed off shotgun in his hands.

Henry took a deep breath, and stopped the car. The street was utterly quiet. He got out, peering the length of the block, looking for some sign. But then, these killers wouldn't make a lot of noise, would they? Eyes darting this way and that, Henry jogged down the sidewalk, keeping as best he could to the shadows.

There were no cars anywhere near the house. Henry approached cautiously, holding the shotgun with both hands, hands that were trembling now. He peered around the edge of the open gate into the driveway. Nothing. The house was dark.

Henry breathed for a long minute, thinking. Should call the police, just call the police, a voice said. But he ignored it. This was beyond personal now, and Henry took another deep breath and exhaled, as an inarticulate rage and fear rose up in him again. With the next breath, he was running from the street up the driveway, ready to shoot the first Greek thug he saw.

Henry practically threw himself against the front door, slipping and hitting it with a heavy thump. Jesus, he thought to himself, hold the fuck up there, Mannix. He listened for a moment. Nothing, not a sound. The fear hit him in another, sickening wave. Too late, I'm too late, they're dead— He shook it off, and his hand went to the doorknob.

The door swung open into darkness.

Henry stopped breathing. He looked for a long terrible moment, then plunged into the pitch black vestibule. He listened, and fumbled for the light switch, bracing himself for what it would reveal. Like a condemned man watching the lever fall, he flipped it.

Everything was as it should be. The décor, the faux Grecian urns, the chaise lounge on which he and Maude had sat for many an evening, sometimes under the baleful eye of Stephanie or the distracted eye of Europa. The living room was empty, and perfectly undisturbed.

Henry blinked. At last he called out, "Maude?" Nothing. "MAUDE?" He moved swiftly through the house, calling, flipping on lights. The house looked as if it was a furnished model, untouched by habitation. He moved from room to room, coming at last to the small sculpture studio, the one where he had passed so many hours these past months, talking with her, watching her. He paused, afraid almost to swing the heavy door open.

When he did, he found it as empty as the rest, every piece, work in progress, every tool, gone. But it was clear from the dirt, scrapes and disordered dust of things moved that everything had been taken out in a hurry.

Henry stood there, a little dumbfounded. Had they taken them? But why take everything, all the materials, if their intentions were merely murderous? Henry called out again, this time to Stephanie, to Europa. Silence came back.

Henry looked around the bare studio, still cradling the shotgun like a child in his arms. As his thought raced, his eyes fell on the heavy steel door at the far end of the room, the one that led to Maude's private studio; a studio that even in all their nights of growing intimacy, she had never allowed him to enter. "I have to keep some secrets, or you shall grow bored, like all men," she said with a strange laugh, that at once was sparkling and strangled. Henry would merely smile, for the one time he had tried to tease her, saying "Careful, or I'll start feeling like Bluebeard's wife," a look so dark and painful passed over her face he felt he had just stabbed her.

All those nights these past months had been like that. Something light, warm growing, then shrinking away from unexpected blasts of frost, as if winter refused to yield. Now, Henry walked slowly toward that door, the shotgun dropping to his side. He wondered—

But no. When he pulled it open, the great dark space—much larger than he had anticipated—was empty, too. Completely empty. Looking down, he saw lighter squares checkerboarding the stained concrete. They were the same size, he realized in a flash, as the pedestals Maude had used for the Tarot sculptures.

Henry tried to think things through. Did they have enough men and vehicles to abduct all three women and such large pieces? Impossible, thought Henry... though his memories of coming to in the Underground House were sketchy. By the time he could make sense of things, they were gone. How many men did this maniac have? A small army? Henry looked around the room, about to cry out in helpless frustration.

That was when a soft, scuffling sound made the hair on his neck rise.

Henry turned around slowly. He could see nothing through the doors he had moved through. He stood absolutely still, head cocked. There, again: a scuffling, like a shoe on concrete. Someone was in the first studio behind him.

Henry barely breathed as he raised the shotgun with one hand, stepping gingerly toward the open door. He listened for a long moment until he thought he heard the sound again. It was close. Just around the corner.

Mannix time, thought Henry, his heart beating so loud he could almost hear nothing else. Grabbing the shotgun with his other hand he swung suddenly around the corner and screamed "Freeze!" in a voice so cracking it could have been an adolescent's.

An extraordinarily large wall slowly held up its hands. The wall, who Henry quickly realized was in fact a black man in a dark blue suit who could easily have been an entire defensive line, looked at Henry impassively. "Whoa, there," he said in an impossibly soft voice. "No need for that, hoss."

Henry leveled the shotgun at the wall's center, which looked as if a shell would have tickled it for a moment before the wall fell upon him and ripped his head off. "Who," managed Henry, practically panting, "are you?"

The wall stared at him with dark eyes that seemed very accustomed to having guns pointed at him. "That depends. Is your name Henry Bethel?"

Henry's own eyes narrowed in what he hoped was a dangerously crazy manner. "Yes," he said carefully, his finger sweaty and aching against the trigger.

The wall that walked like a man suddenly smiled. "Then my name is Tell. You're the man I was sent to find."

"By who? Who sent you? Where's Maude?" Henry barked in a rush, still waving the shotgun. Tell had not put his arms down, but now he did, like two great wings coming to rest on either side of an unperturbed and majestic eagle.

"This would be a lot less stressful, man, if you lowered that gun." Again, the soft voice, almost a whisper.

Henry looked at him, still holding the gun, a dim memory stirring. He had seen this character somewhere before... "I'll lower this gun when you've answered some questions... man." Henry was sweating, his stomach roiling; at any moment, he thought to himself, I'm going to throw up and this behemoth is going to kill me.

Tell shook his head softly, and was about to speak, when the tinny but unmistakable chimes of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" slid from his inside his breast pocket. Tell looked at Henry as the refrain repeated. "I really need to take that, man," he said.

Henry nodded, holding the shotgun steady as Tell reached into his pocket and removed a cell phone far too small for his massive hands. He flipped it open and said, clearly, "Tell."

He nodded, and held the phone out to Henry. "It's for you," he said simply.

Henry blinked, then edged forward, trying hard not to let the shotgun quiver in his grip, and took the proffered phone from the giant's mitt. He held it up to his ear.

"Henry? Henry, are you all right?" Her voice.

"Maude! My god, am I all right, are YOU all right? Where are you? What's happened?" It came out in a relieved babbling rush.

"Henry, it's all right. I'm all right, we're all right. We had a warning. We're someplace safe."

"Where? Maude, where are you?"

"Henry, I-I... just a moment..." Voices in the background. "Henry, I must go, I must attend to the sculptures. Go with Tell, he'll bring you to us."

"Oh Maude... Maude I thought—" Henry couldn't finish, his voice suddenly choking.

"Come to me, Henry. As quick as you can. Must go." And the line went dead.

Henry smiled, at last lowering the shotgun. His whole body slumped a little. "That was her," he said stupidly.

Tell smiled. "Yeah, man, I know," he said. "Listen. I'm supposed take you to her. We need to get you cleaned up, though." Henry looked down at his blood soaked shirt for the first time since he had escaped Gus, and very nearly did retch. Tell took him by the arm, putting the shotgun aside, leading him, as tenderly as a human wall could, down the hall. He felt as if he might collapse with each step, so exhausted in mind and body. But his heart was beating normally once more. Maude was safe.

As they exited the house, Henry felt a million questions rising to his lips, but instead he merely looked up at Tell and remembered where he had seen him. A little cloud of anxiety stole over his face once more. "You... you work for Win Stephenson, don't you? You're head of his whole security operation."

Tell smiled. "That's it, hoss."

Henry felt a little cold. "That means that Maude and her assistants... and all her works... if they're safe, they must be..."

"That's right," Tell said again in his low voice. The moon was high and full above Las Vegas as they walked down the driveway to the waiting hulk of a big, black Hummer. Tell opened the door and said, "Next stop, Rancho Diablo."

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.”

MAUDE STOOD in the doorway, as pale and distant as the moon. “It seems I’m interrupting,” she said, her voice small but resonant, with a touch of something angry and hard in it. Henry wondered how long she had been there, and what she had heard.

“Not at all, my dear,” said Win cheerfully. “We were just sparring. Bethel enjoys punching above his weight.” Win came around the desk and brushed past Henry as if he’d just dismissed an underling.

“Everything satisfactory? Do you require anything?” he asked Maude as he approached her.

“I require much and have little satisfaction, Mr. Stevenson,” Maude replied in a tone that brought Win up short. He paused, rocking back on his heels slightly. “But I am quite grateful for the kind arrangements you’ve made for my welfare and safety,” she continued.

Win’s smile returned like a lizard to its favorite rock. “Your thanks are unnecessary,” he said. “I would do the same for anyone in such a predicament.”

“Particularly one you staged managed yourself,” said Henry, barely under his breath.

Win ignored this as he walked to the door, saying, “I believe you two have some matters to discuss. Please use my office while I attend to other matters.” He bowed as Maude moved aside to let him pass, and then it was simply the two of them, standing there.

Henry sat back down. “Coffee?” he asked, gesturing to the tray.

“I never developed a taste for it,” said Maude as she crossed the room, her long gown trailing over the floor. She eased herself into a chair by the window a few feet away from Henry and gazed out over the emerald expanse of the golf course to the red rock ridges that cupped it. There was a long silence.

“Maude I’m—"

“Henry, please—"

They laughed. “You first,” Henry said in a gentle tone.

“Allow me to beg your forgiveness,” said Maude. “You have been a rare—you don’t know how rare—companion these past weeks. You have given generously of yourself and asked for nothing in return but the truth, and I… have hid the truth from you.”

“The satisfaction of helping someone in trouble was enough,” said Henry. “And the great pleasure of your company was an unexpected boon.” As he said this, he understood that they had tacitly retreated to the warm but self-protective formality that had characterized their friendship, and he knew instinctively that this was a relief to them both. “But you’re right,” continued Henry, quietly. “I need to know why you’re in danger, Maude. I need to know who Mangopoulos is, and why he’s trying to kill you and Stephanie and Europa. I need to know why he calls you a witch.” Henry paused, choosing his words carefully. “And I need to know what we can do to bring this to an end, Maude. Too many people around you have died, it seems, at the hands of these people.”

Maude turned her face away, letting out what seemed like a sigh—oddly, Henry thought the sound that escaped from Maude was exactly the sound of a deflating tire. Without looking at Henry, she said, “Henry, Mangopoulos is simply a man doing what he believes he has been directed to do by divine revelation.” Her voice was low, and a little hard. “His followers are less responsible than I for anyone’s death. Far less responsible.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “And the only end to this is my true death.”

A chill settled between them as surely as if the sun had winked out. “I won’t accept that outcome,” Henry said. “And I won’t accept you taking the blame on all of this yourself.” Maude remained silent, and Henry, staring at her profile, the sad downward turn of her face—she suddenly looked old—blurted out “Maude, are you a witch?”

She started, and laughed, a deep, bitter, throaty chuckle, and Henry laughed too. “Sorry, I know it’s absurd,” he said.

“No, no… I suppose I am… but I come by it honestly,” she said, smiling ruefully. “That’s how Mangopolous refers to me, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Henry. He paused. “Were you a part of his cult, Maude?”

And now Maude laughed like one of the damned, a sudden, shrill, mirthless laugh that sent an unexpected shiver up Henry’s spine. “A part?” she gasped at last. “Oh, Henry… I’m the very object of his cult!”

Henry stared. “I don’t understand.”

Maude’s expression turned fierce, imploring. Her eyes seemed to burn from behind their emerald shields. “Henry, listen. I want… want to show you something. But I want you to answer one question. Before I… show you, before I make you understand, I want you to reveal yourself to me.” She stood up and walked toward him with a quick, violence of motion, and knelt beside him. The suddenness of it unnerved him, but he faced her, and clasped her gloved hands in his, staring into her wan face.

“All right,” he said, after a moment. “I have hardly any secrets worth revealing, Maude.”

“Not true,” she said, emphatically. “You have one. It’s defined you for some time now.” Her mouth was pulled into an odd rictus. “Tell me why you stopped writing, Henry. Tell me why you abandoned your art.”

Now Henry laughed. “I was a critic, Maude. That’s hardly an art.”

“Nonsense,” said Maude. “What did one critic say? The criticism is the writing of little works of art about big works of art?”

“John Crowe Ransom,” said Henry, bemused. “And of course he said that, he was a critic.”

“And a poet,” said Maude.

Henry nodded, and paused. At last he let go of her hands, and stood up, walking to the window. It was a fair question, he thought, if seemingly irrelevant to the thousand more pressing mysteries swirling around them. But his answer would unlock Maude’s own secret. It was an answer he knew well. He’d known it for some time now. He spent a long moment, considering, before he turned to look at her.

“It’s simple,” he said at last. “I wanted to be a poet, Maude. When I was young I filled page after page of notebooks with poems. And it was all garbage. Well, perhaps not garbage. It was skilled enough, I guess. I got just enough praise from teachers and friends to keep at it. But after I while I could see that it was mediocre at best. I didn’t have whatever spark that true poets have, that way with the language that makes it seems as if you’re uttering something no one has ever uttered before.

“So I stopped, and channeled the impulse into prose, into writing about art, which I loved and excited me like nothing else. All sorts of art, too, at first, music and theater and film… and then as I got good at it—far better at it than I’d ever been as a poet—I focused more and more on visual arts. I made a name for myself, found a job with a newspaper. I met a girl, and got married, and did just well enough to have what everyone wants, or is supposed to want: house, car, wife, some measure of status, success…

“And after a time I came up empty. I didn’t notice it at first, but Jill did. And when she tried to tell me, I denied it or, far worse, blamed her somehow. I just went deeper and deeper into my own little world, one that admitted no one and wouldn’t admit to itself that there was nothing at its core. And then one day she left.

“And I realized after she was gone that I was lonely, Maude. That I had always been terrifyingly, stupendously lonely. That loneliness had been my true state ever since I could remember. That writing had never chipped away one ounce of that loneliness—that it had, naturally enough, enlarged it. And I lost all passion and interest for any art that didn’t deal with loneliness.”

Henry had paced slowly around Win’s office as he spoke, not looking at Maude, until he had reached that huge photo of Win and Sinatra on the wall. He looked up at it.

“A writer once observed that loneliness was Sinatra’s only true subject as an artist,” said Henry. “That his songs were either a cry from the wilderness of that loneliness, or a joyous exaltation of relief from that loneliness. Either your Angel Eyes ain’t here, or you make me feel so young. I stopped writing, and found myself doing nothing but listening to old records. I’d always been a collector, and I even had some connections to the family—I once wrote a pretty generous review of Frank’s career as an amateur painter for a catalog, free of charge. My bank account was dwindling, and all I could summon the energy for was to listen, again and again, to that tension between loneliness lost and loneliness regained. It was a short step from that to trading Sinatra memorabilia on eBay to make ends meet. And why not? I wasn’t a critic by that point, but simply a fan. I wasn’t even a writer anymore. I was just loneliness, personified and refined to the point of acceptance. I was simply a Sinatraist.”

Henry stopped, and sat back down in front of Maude, who had not moved. She regarded him impassively for a moment, and he stared back. A slight, rueful smile crept at last onto her face.

“Oh, Henry,” she said in a whisper. “You cannot escape from who you are. None of us can. Believe me, I’ve tried. For centuries, I’ve tried.”

Henry smiled, sadly. “Years can feel like centuries, can’t they?”

Maude shook her head. “No, Henry. Centuries feel like centuries.”

Henry leaned forward, before he quite understood what he was doing, and raised his hand tentatively to her cheek. He expected her to flinch, but she did not. He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand before turning to gently stroke it with his fingetips.

“You’re so cold,” he whispered, tenderly.

He imagined he could see her eyes shining behind those terrible shades. He imagined she trembled. He imagined…

“Henry,” she said in a strangled, but resolute voice. “Please… don’t.”

His hand dropped away, and he looked at the floor as he felt whatever would have happened drop away as well. Smiling sadly, he said, softly “I know… I know.”

Neither moved for a moment.

Finally, he said, “Fair is fair. You have something to show me now, I think.”

She stood up, slowly, and looked around the room.

“Henry, I want you to stand up and walk over to the right side of the doors,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice that fairly annulled the moment before.

Henry gave her a questioning look, but stood and walked over to the doors. On the right side of them stood a large mirror in a metallic frame.

“Now,” said Maude, “I want you to stand in front of the mirror, but just to one side, so you can see the room behind you. All right?”

Bemused, Henry did as instructed. “All right,” he said. Small and gray, Maude stood several feet behind him in the reversed image.

“Now, Henry… this is very, very important…” She lifted her hands to her cowl… “I need you to promise me—I want you to swear—that no matter what happens, you won’t—"

But Maude’s words were cut short as Win Stevenson burst back into the room, with Tell and several other men behind him.

“Sorry to cut short your little tete-a-tete, but I have some news I think you’ll both want to hear,” he said, grinning like a cat. “My security forces have just notified me that they’ve found Mangopoulos.

“He’s dead.”