women, it was not hard to look past the makeup, to see the damage time was doing underneath.
Hannibal and his small team had stepped off the plane into intense morning sunshine. His first act after renting cars for them all was to buy several maps. After seeing just how small the town really was, he had divided it between Quaker, Sarge, Virgil and himself. Each had a map rectangle to cover, about fifty miles long and maybe ten miles wide. Within that space, they each had a list of about fifty plates to check out. The job was even bigger than it seemed. Hannibal had prowled the city’s back streets and pocket neighborhoods all day, whittling down his list of possible license plates. Now, the neon fronted gambling houses were just lighting up, like the flying insect traps he had seen hanging in suburban backyards. He saw the night flies hovering at the entrances, not even trying to avoid being drawn in and zapped.
The guidebook told Hannibal that Las Vegas was a city of barely a quarter of a million people, not counting tourists. The tiny District of Columbia held two and a half times as many people. To Hannibal, Las Vegas looked like a frontier town from a western movie. The Hollywood style main street was a series of gaudy flats. Behind them, you could see the sagebrush between houses. There were no condemned buildings standing in a row, their shoulders pressed together to remain upright the way they were back home. But he was surprised at the number of addresses that turned out to be trailers surrounded by sand. And when the houses really were houses, they seemed too far away for his taste.
Driving down uncluttered blacktops with the desert receding flat and brown in every direction, he had to admit that his body liked it out there. The air tasted different, sweeter than he was used to. It was warmer, but dry enough to keep his clothes from sticking to him. And every time he stopped his car, the silence fell in on him, as refreshing as a massage. And when people saw him staring at their cars, or at them, they smiled. Dropping back into his seat and pulling the door closed he considered it again. His body really liked it here.
His mind, however, was restless. It was like some form of sensory deprivation. He realized that some part of him craved clutter, needed the background noise a real functioning city provides. So he breathed easier as the nightlife stirred into wakefulness. And he found himself smiling when his telephone rang.
“Hey Hannibal!” Quaker’s frantic voice jumped into Hannibal’s ear. “I think we got a pretty good suspect here. Tall guy inside. Big black car outside. Come take a look.”
Hannibal reached the address Quaker gave him in less than two minutes. The old, rambling house was styled like a Mexican hacienda with stucco walls and a low-pillared porch. There were no other structures within easy walking distance, giving the impression that this one grew up out of the desert sand of its own accord. Frantic music pouring out of the building did not cover the laughter or the sound of dancing feet. Rolling slowly past, Hannibal saw two figures doing a spastic dance on the porch, shadowed by the light behind them. It was evident that they were dancing together, but by form both were clearly male.
A low wall wrapped its stone arms around the large parking lot just past the house. Quaker sat atop it not far from the entrance. As Hannibal approached, he stood, his gangly arms waving Hannibal in. As he brought the car to a stop, Hannibal powered his window down.
“This is somebody’s house?”
Quaker thrust his face forward, wearing a weary grin. “Nope. I was stopped behind this guy at a light and I noticed the plate was like the ones we were looking for. The car kind of looked right, so I followed him. When he parked here I called you. Come on around inside and I’ll lead you to the car. Sure hope it ain’t another false alarm.”
“Amen to that,” Hannibal said. He had already done this eight times that day, on occasions when Quaker, or Sarge, had found a car that could be right, but could not find the owner to confirm they fit the description.
As Hannibal turned the wheel to follow Quaker across the hard ground of the parking lot, another Ford slid up behind him. Headlights bounced off his rear bumper, allowed him to see Sarge’s silhouette in his rear view mirror. Seconds later he saw yet another similar vehicle fall into line behind Sarge. Their short convoy bounced along the path through close-parked cars, reminding Hannibal of a trip through a drive-in theater’s grounds. The cars were mostly new and expensive at the beginning of his journey. As they neared the back of the lot they approached a small gathering of older models.
Finally Quaker stopped and pointed at a large, dark-colored vehicle. The space beside it on the driver’s side was vacant, and Hannibal pulled into it, stopping too close to the target car. Sarge parked in the nearest space, seven cars away. The other car, Virgil’s, passed him to park in the next row. Hannibal killed the engine, listening again to the way the open spaces seemed to suck the sound away. Voices carried clearly from the house nearly a hundred yards away. And as he opened the door he stared up into a very clear, star-speckled night sky. A broad full moon hung directly overhead. Just what I need, Hannibal thought.
Sarge’s footsteps crunched toward them, the beam from the flashlight in his beefy fist jiggling across the ground to finally rest on the bumper of the big car Hannibal now stood behind. Hannibal nodded his head at the bright silver characters raised against a cobalt blue background: 902, a dot, then JZB. More important to him was that he recognized the shape of the deep blue vehicle, a Lincoln Town Car at least a decade old. The differences between this car and the new vehicles he had seen earlier in the day were subtle but at the same time obvious. He hissed, “Yes,” in a very soft voice. “This is the car that almost hit me.”
“Neat ain’t it?” Quaker said. “Now we know the guy you want’s a fag.”
“Excuse me?”
“This place is a gay club,” Quaker said, his pale angular face a grinning death’s head in the moonlight. “If he’s in there, he’s a fag.”
Hannibal paced a few feet away. “A customer you think?”
Virgil’s gravely voice rumbled in from behind him. “Not by this car. A hustler. Working the crowd.”
“Sure,” Hannibal said, looking around himself. “This is where the hired help park.”
“So, you’ll know him when you see him?” Sarge asked. When Hannibal nodded, he added, “So I guess we go in and get him.”
Hannibal leaned against his car’s trunk. “That might not be the best plan. He might have a lot of friends in there, he might recognize me. It could get messy.”
“Well, I sure ain’t up to waiting out here all night until he decides his night is over,” Sarge said.
“Besides,” Quaker added, “when he does come out, he’ll probably have company, if you know what I mean.”
Virgil listened to the others, then took a deep breath and let out a long breath through his nose. “I’ll go get him,” he said in a low monotone.
“But you don’t even know what this guy looks like,” Hannibal said.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Virgil was dressed in casual slacks and a knit shirt, but he drew several stares when he entered. First, he was taller than almost anyone in the room. He was a big, solid man and his skin had a sheen like black leather. He strode through the crowded room and something about his manner made the sea of writhing bodies part before him. He looked neither left nor right on his path toward the DJ’s station. The flashing lights in the darkened room did not seem to affect him, nor did he react in any way to the booming music battering his ears. It seemed to be some bizarre hybrid of country and disco, and the men on the floor were twisting themselves into pretzels trying to dance to it.
Inside him, Virgil’s entire being was clenched like a fist. The all male group here made his flesh crawl. Memories clawed at his mind, memories of days and nights in prison when he had to fight both the drug addiction he could not feed and the predators who needed sexual release so much that they turned to members of their own sex and sometimes did not care if their partners were willing or not. Years of successfully defending himself did not make the thought any more pleasant.
At the far end of the dance floor he leaned forward but still had to shout to the bald, leather-clad DJ over the music. After a second iteration the DJ nodded, winked at him, and gave him a thumbs up sign. Virgil turned and made it most of the way across the floor before the DJ lowered the music and spoke into his microphone in a voice just a bit higher than Virgil thought it should be.
“That tall, dark, beefy man heading toward the door has a message for you all. He’s had a little mistake in the parking area and he wants to make it good. So if your license plate number is 902 — JZB, catch him at the door to talk about what he’s willing to do to make it up to you.”
