“Savonia?” Shawn asked. “An entire country was cheating on him?”
“That’s Slovakia,” Gus said. “Or Slovenia. I can’t keep the two of them straight.”
“Apparently a problem you have in common with the bride,” Shawn said.
Henry turned an angry eye on Gus. “Don’t think I don’t blame you for this, too. You could have stopped him.”
Gus knew he couldn’t have, and he knew Henry knew it, too. But all that knowledge couldn’t spare him from the creeping feelings of guilt.
Shawn stepped between Gus and Henry. “I don’t know what you want from me. I just saved your buddy from ruining his life with a woman who was cheating on him with his best friend.”
“And tore his heart out,” Henry said. “He’s been lonely forever, he finally meets this lovely woman from Eastern Europe who turns his life around, and you smash it into pieces. Now he won’t even return my calls. Worse, I think he’s so angry, he turned his fiancee in to the feds-when I went down there to look for Bud, there were ICE agents parked outside. And Lyle, poor Lyle… I tried to talk to him and he just drove away. When I followed him, he went straight to a mental hospital. I think you gave him a nervous breakdown. And all I wanted you to do was deliver one lousy gag gift.”
“If it means anything, we didn’t do that, either,” Shawn said. “If you want it back, you’ll have to retrieve it from evidence. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a flight to catch. Be sure to lock the office when you go.”
Shawn marched out the door and Gus followed quickly. But even knowing the trouble he was leaving behind, Gus had gotten onto the Allegiant Air flight with a large set of reservations, which could have been a problem because it was nearly more weight than the thirty-four-seat MD-80 could carry.
He grew warier still when he noticed the cab driver was having a lengthy, quiet conversation on his cell phone, and that every time he listened to the person on the other end, he was staring back at them in his rearview mirror.
“Is something wrong?” Gus asked the driver, trying to keep the quiver of fear out of his voice. Ever since he saw Casino, he’d had an irrational fear of being vised to death and buried in a hole in the Nevada desert. Now he was beginning to worry that the fear wasn’t irrational after all.
“No wrong,” the driver sang out as he accelerated through a red light and across eight lanes of cross traffic. “Very, very right.”
“But you were supposed to turn left back there,” Gus said.
The driver said nothing, just stomped on the gas and wove through the cars ambling up the strip.
“Shawn, do something,” Gus whispered urgently.
Shawn pressed the button on his door, rolling his window down a couple of inches. “I am,” he said. “I’m enjoying the ride.”
“But he’s not taking us to the right place,” Gus hissed.
“That depends on whose definition of right you’re using,” Shawn said. “By the way, you might want to hold on.”
“Hold on?” Gus asked. “Why?”
The driver had drifted all the way into the far-right lane, his tires almost scraping the curb. The pedestrians who had spilled off the overloaded sidewalk were leaping back into the crowd. The driver took a quick glance at the road in front of him and yanked the wheel hard to the left. Cars slammed on the brakes as the cab screamed across four lanes of traffic, flew up over a divided median, and zoomed through the four opposing traffic lanes.
When the cab had come to a stop and Gus dared open his eyes, he found they had pulled into a porte cochere built to resemble the entrance to Klaatu’s flying saucer. A handsome blond man in a silver space suit was opening his door.
“Welcome to Outer Space,” the cabbie said.
“But we were supposed to go to Frontage Road,” Gus objected.
“Change of plans, Mr. Guster,” the driver said.
Gus stared at him. “How do you know my name?”
Shawn shoved Gus toward the door. “Come on, we’re going to be late.”
Gus wanted to stay in the cab and demand to be taken to their destination, but the seat was so worn and polished by the thousands of butts that had sat on it, he slid out under the slightest pressure of Shawn’s hand. If the space doorman hadn’t caught him, he would have landed on his butt.
“What’s this all about, Shawn?” Gus demanded.
“I’m guessing a hundred-dollar tip,” Shawn said.
Before Gus could demand clarification, Shawn nodded at a large man in an indistinct suit, black sunglasses, and white earpiece. The casino security agent walked quickly to the cabbie’s window, exchanged a word or two of pleasantries, and slipped a small sheaf of bills to him.
“What’s going on?” Gus said.
“The driver’s phone call was from the dispatcher,” Shawn said. “I couldn’t hear the whole thing, but he was apparently calling the entire fleet looking for the cab with us in it. He’d gotten orders to redirect us to Outer Space.”
“But who?” Gus said. “But how?”
“You forgot ‘but why,’ ” Shawn said.
“I didn’t forget. I was working my way up to it.”
“ ‘But who’ has to be Benny Fleck. No one else knew we were coming into town. Or even that we exist. ‘But how’ most likely involves some new technology such as the telephone.”
“Okay, now: But why?” Gus said.
“He didn’t feel like waiting in his office for us.”
“He couldn’t call your cell phone?” Gus said.
“He couldn’t,” Shawn said. “I’m sure Fleck hasn’t dialed his own phone in years. But he certainly could have had one of his assistants do it if the venue change was the only message he wanted to send.”
“What other message is there?”
“That this is his town, baby,” Shawn said. “And we’d better know who we’re working for.”
The security guard waved at the cabbie, and the car peeled off in a cloud of exhaust. Before it settled, an Asian spacegirl in a silver minidress materialized in the smoke.
“Mr. Spencer? Mr. Guster?” the spacegirl asked, although there didn’t seem to be any doubt in her voice. “Welcome to Outer Space. Mr. Fleck would like you to meet him in the Dark Side of the Moon.”
“Is that the space-facing side of Earth’s only natural satellite or the multiplatinum album by Pink Floyd?” Shawn said. “I only ask because I don’t know if we need to board a spaceship, or just inhale heavily.”
The spacegirl flashed them the same smile she would give to a nickel-slots player who spilled his free rum and-Diet Coke on her while trying to cop a feel. “The Dark Side of the Moon is Outer Space’s premier dining establishment, offering fresh fare prepared by Izgon Zubich, one of America’s hottest new chefs. I’ll be happy to lead you there.”
“Lead on,” Shawn said.
The spacegirl took off at a pace a racehorse might have envied, negotiating her way around the throngs of tourists and gamblers like a pinball zipping around the bumpers.
Gus was torn between wondering how anyone could move that fast on heels that high and wishing she’d slow down so he could see a little more of the casino. What he did see was everything he would have dreamed of when he was thirteen. The ceiling was an intense field of brightly burning stars, planets, and asteroids. At first he thought it was a static light display, but he quickly realized that it was all moving slowly, as if he were on a spaceship cruising through the galaxy. Every once in a while, the universe would freeze, then start to spin, and then the stars would expand into streaks of light before settling down to reveal a different quadrant of space. Gus recognized the effect as a knock-off of the hyperspace jump from the first Star Wars, but it was thrilling to look at nonetheless.
The ceiling only set the tone for the rest of the decor. Like the best casinos in Vegas, Outer Space carried its theme down to the tiniest details, and here everything was designed to look like the inside of a spaceship. The cocktail waitresses were all spacegirls like the one they were following, and the drinks they served came in lidded “zero-gravity” glasses. The dealers were made up as aliens with giant eyeballs bouncing from stalks attached to
