Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand

Chapter 9

We’d been on for an hour and no one had taken a shot at me. Halfway there. I considered it a victory.

Nevada State Senator Harry Burger, the man sitting next to me on the stylish office chair we’d set up for my guests, was a classic western politician, complete with cowboy hat and boots, big silver belt buckle, and swagger to match. He could defend the Second Amendment and denounce Washington politics with the best of them.

He was explaining why he had introduced a bill to the state legislature creating a law that would ban psychics, vampires, and anyone else with supernatural abilities from Nevada casinos.

“Here in the great state of Nevada we take the security of our casinos—and our guests—very seriously. When cheaters win, everyone else loses, that’s our motto, so the gaming industry has worked hard making sure none of these people get ahead. This is just another brand of cheater, and we won’t tolerate it, no sir.”

“You really think werewolves have an edge in gambling? Really?” I had to say that with a straight face, thinking of Ben.

“Ma’am, who knows what kind of powers any of them have? Not just predicting what card’s coming out of the shoe next, but mind control, telekinesis—you have any idea what kind of havoc telekinesis would play on a slot machine? I say it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Telekinesis on a slot machine? I wanted to see that. . . “Senator, seriously: is this sort of thing even a problem? Are there any kind of statistics showing how many gamblers might be beating the house because of psychic powers?”

Burger shifted, drawing himself up and taking on a serious, fatherly expression. A patriarch about to deliver his own brand of wisdom. I braced for the lecture.

“I think it’s in our best interest to be proactive on these matters. Sure, it’s easy enough to say that it isn’t a real problem. But just because we don’t see a problem doesn’t mean the problem isn’t there. By taking this kind of action we can stop problems like this before they become even bigger problems.”

None of this made any sense to me. If people were using psychic powers to cheat in casinos, they’d been doing it for a lot longer than these sorts of powers had been a subject of public-policy discussions. And no one had much noticed before. Was it really different than any other kind of cheating?

Carefully, I said, “Are you sure this isn’t inventing a problem that isn’t there?”

He gave me a patronizing smile. “I wouldn’t expect someone without a lot of experience in the gaming industry to understand.”

Ooh, that just made me mad. “And how do you propose enforcing this ban on supernatural beings? Especially if, as you suggest, some of them are capable of mind control and can convince security officers that they aren’t even there?”

Leaning back in his chair, Burger said expansively, “Well, that’ll have to be for the agencies involved to work out, won’t it?”

Government in action. I loved it.

I still had another guest and phone calls to get through, and time was moving on. “All right, then! Thanks very much for coming to talk with us tonight, Senator. Let’s hear it for Senator Burger.” We shook hands, and the senator graciously gave the clapping crowd a politician’s smile before heading offstage.

I didn’t even need someone holding up a sign reading “applause.” The best part about doing The Midnight Hour in front of an audience? I didn’t have to guess what my listeners were thinking. I could see them right in front of me, rows of faces looking a little shadowy behind the lights. I could react to them. Their applause made my heart rate speed up.

Never mind that it also made Wolf pitch a fit. We were trapped in the stares of hundreds of potentially dangerous faces, and they were challenging us, waiting for us to show weakness, waiting to strike. I had expected this, knowing I’d have to spend some attention clamping down on those animal instincts. But the instinct was powerful. Wolf wanted to growl a warning, then run to get out of danger. But we weren’t in danger. I kept repeating that. This was our shining moment. I was in charge here. I was the alpha. Smile, relax.

Of course, it didn’t help that I kept seeing people— suspicious people—out of the corner of my eye. On the fringes of the crowd. Maybe not Boris and Sylvia, but people who looked like them. Like the guy in the suit sitting in one of the seats farthest to my left, dressed with a lot of polish. He had a watchful expression and hadn’t laughed at any of my jokes. Very suspicious. And one more time, how many of these people were packing heat?

Never mind.

The setup looked like that of a typical late-night talk show, but with radio equipment. I had a desk with my monitor and microphone. Beside the desk was a sofa for my guests, who were wired with mikes. I pictured this being sort of a cross between The Tonight Show and Howard Stern. If I was lucky. Unlucky? There’d be some Jerry Springer involved. Also at my disposal, I had the rest of the stage, where I could do all kinds of things I never could on the radio. I wanted to take advantage of the visuals. My next guest would never have worked on radio.

“Moving on, I wouldn’t even think of hosting a show in Vegas without introducing you to my next guest, who is a member of a fine and noble breed of men. Say hello to Arty Gruberson. Arty?”

Arty Gruberson, Elvis impersonator, resplendent in a rhinestone-encrusted polyester bell-bottomed jumpsuit, jogged out from behind the curtain stage right. He had the sideburns, he had the sneer. He joined me in the guest chair, with its own microphone. I still had my radio audience—they’d hear everything.

“Arty, tell me: why do you believe that you’re the King reincarnated?”

“Well, you know, it’s just a matter of fate. And mathematics. And a little astronomy. And some basic meteorology.” He might have had the look pretty much nailed, but he had an unexpectedly high-pitched voice. Closer to Barry Manilow maybe.

“How so?”

“Well, first of all, I had a feeling growing up. When I listened to the King’s music, something came over me. It was more than liking the songs or being a fan. It’s like they made me understand who I was, know what I mean? So I started doing some research. I figured out a few things. See, I was born right in Memphis , just an hour after the King himself passed on. The hospital where I was born is sixteen miles from Graceland , where the King left his mortal shell behind.” He started drawing a map in the air. I nodded helpfully, trying to be encouraging. He went into a convoluted explanation involving the locations of the buildings, the barometric pressure of the atmosphere, the direction of the wind, and the angle of light cast by the sun. “If you believe—and I certainly do believe—that a body’s soul is made of pure energy, then if you calculate the time it would take for a soul to travel the speed of light from Graceland to heaven, which based on my calculations is somewhere near the asteroid belt”—huh?—“and back to this here hospital, it’s the exact amount of time between the King’s death and my birth.”

You know, it almost made sense. “That’s. . . awesome. I think. You certainly did a lot of work to, ah, establish your credentials.”

“I did. And I’ve got it all written down in a book I sell at my show—Friday and Saturday nights at the Hideaway, downtown off Fremont Street .”

“Another question: why you? There had to have been other babies born at that hospital that day. Why did the King choose you?”

“I think he knew I had the moves. He found a willing vessel in my little baby body.” He sat back, looking smug.

“And that’s the fate part of it?”

“You bet.”

“Do you ever have doubts?”

True believers always responded to that question exactly the same way. Arty said, “What do you mean?”

“If this is really the right path for your life. You’ve basically spent your whole life becoming someone else. That has to be. . . weird.”

“I’m dedicated to keeping his memory alive,” he explained.

I didn’t know quite how to put this. “Do you think that maybe if you’re Elvis Presley reincarnated you’d be happier, I don’t know, working on something original? Starting a new music career?”

“You think anything’ll top the last one?”

He had a point.

“Arty, would you do a song for us? What you do you guys say?” I asked the audience, which roared encouragement. Bet that sounded cool over the radio. Of course we’d planned this out ahead of time; we had a mike set up and music on cue.

Arty trotted off to the performance space we’d set aside at the edge of the stage. He had the moves down—he was, in fact, a pretty good Elvis impersonator. Grabbing the mike, he said, “Kitty, this one’s just for you.”

The bastard sang “Hound Dog.” And the crowd went wild.

In the back of my mind I worried that the cameras weren’t working right, that the microphone wasn’t picking up my voice, that something little was going to go wrong to ruin the whole broadcast. But that was why we had techs. It was their job to worry about it. I just had to keep the show moving.

How did Oprah do this every single day?

Besides having my parents in the audience, which gave the evening a sort of school-play undertone (before the show, Mom had insisted on giving me a hug and telling me that I’d do just fine, she was sure of it), I spotted Dom. He was standing in the back, exuding his elegant post-Mob gangster aura and surveying the theater like he owned the place and had set up the show himself. It gave me an urge to call him up to the microphone, just to see if it would shake that smug expression. But I’d promised.

I didn’t smell any other lycanthropes in the theater. There were a few vampires besides Dom. But nothing animal, nothing that suggested lycanthrope. I was disappointed. I liked to think that I did the show for them. That me talking about my own experiences helped them. But none of them had come. Dom had said there weren’t any outside of the show at the Hanging Gardens . Maybe I’d hoped that at least one of them would be in the crowd.

After saying farewell to Arty, I alternated between taking questions over the phone and from the audience. During commercial breaks, I had to keep my crowd entertained—no chance to sit back and stretch during station ID like I could on the radio. I did giveaways, raffle drawings using ticket stub numbers, CDs, T-shirts, copies of my book, all kinds of things. They loved it, which was all that really mattered. If the audience—whether it’s in front of you or listening on the radio—loves you, it’ll follow you anywhere. I had fun—in the same way that bungee jumping must be fun. Not that I’d ever wanted to try it.

I took another call. “Hello, I’ve got our next caller on the line. What’s your question?”

“Hi! Would sunscreen work for a vampire who really wanted to go out in daylight?”

I looked quizzically at the microphone. “I’m not sure anyone’s ever asked that question. And I’m not really sure I know the answer. Except I don’t think I’d want any of the vampires I actually like to try it.”

“I’m talking about sunblock. The really heavy-duty SPF 60 stuff.”

“They make SPF 60? Wow. But for it to work, I think that would assume that the UV radiation is what causes the damage to vampires. I’m not sure that’s a valid assumption. I’ll tell you what, I’ve got some vampires here in the audience—any of you guys want to take a stab at answering Dan’s question?”

And there was Lisa, coming toward the microphone below the stage where people came to ask their questions. She was wearing a kicky red dress today, and her hair was up in a ponytail, which bounced when she moved. She grinned and waved at me. Definitely the perkiest vampire I’d ever met.

Murmuring carried through the audience, heads bent together, whispering. Normal people who’d maybe come here for just this chance—to see a real live, sort of, vampire. The thing was she’d been sitting there the whole time, and people who didn’t know what to look for would never recognize her. But now she was spooky. Lisa glanced over them with a sly smile