Silver Zombie

Chapter Twenty-three

HONEST TO GOD, when you opened the glass doors to enter Emerald City’s first-floor, business-operation office, your toes encountered a yellow brick road painted on the recycled glass floor tile.

“Cute,” Ric said, tight-lipped and suspicious.

“It’s a homegrown operation,” Tallgrass noted, “but don’t kid yourself. Millions are at stake here. Ben has been nervous as hell about the final costs, so nervous that he spilled something to me about ‘outside pressures’ on the project.”

Tallgrass flicked me a stern look.

“So you and your oversize Toto here give us Kansas rubes a break, Miss Ex-reporter. Just because we’re ‘country’ doesn’t mean major crime isn’t trying to mop up the cornfields with us. I think Ben is finally scared enough to let us in on what’s happening.”

I nodded, glad I was wearing my serious navy suit and pumps and not checked gingham, pigtails, and ankle socks.

I started down the yellow brick road. Quicksilver sniffed and studiously avoided putting one furry foot down on the design.

A small sign outside the main office read WICKED WITCHES NEED NOT APPLY.

Tallgrass knocked, and then entered, the three of us following. A plump receptionist with long, skinny fingernails nodded Tallgrass through to the inner office.

The place was unadorned business vanilla, not trying to broadcast the usual developer ego.

The man behind the desk jumped up to greet us. “Leonard Tallgrass, you old Cayuse! You see what a mighty fine hot spot on the prairie we’ve raised here? Way bigger than barns. All we need to install is a few more showstopping features and this hotel-casino is gonna make Wichita and Wicked Wild West the new destination vacation.”

He stepped around the desk. “These are your FBI friends, with a K-9 dog, yet? Don’t think we need that, but you never know. Sit down, folks.”

You had to like Ben Hassard. He ran close to three hundred pounds. He wore his Sears white dress-shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows and his tie knot down toward the first flush of curly gray hairs on his chest.

“Pardon my informal air, folks. I’ve just finished some scary negotiations with a big shot from Vegas. Very showy fella. I woulda sworn he was going to sweat deal-killing concessions outa me, but I bought him off with a taste of Emerald City hospitality, a sweet bit of luck, and a bottle of Old Crow.”

He came around the desk for introductory handshakes with Tallgrass’s crew.

“Ric, eh. Nice suit for an FBI type. Almost as good as that Vegas bigwig’s. Miss Street. Glad Tallgrass brought some class along.”

He hesitated, then held out a hand to Quicksilver.

Quicksilver didn’t do doggy tricks. I held my breath as Quick’s intelligent, almost-human blue eyes studied the plump, lined palm, then looked in Ben’s eyes. He slapped a clawed paw into the hand. Ben had the sense to give it one, firm shake and retreat behind the desk.

“Old Crow?” he asked.

Tallgrass nodded, so Ben pulled four water-spotted lowball glasses and a half-empty bottle of whiskey from a desk drawer. I couldn’t imagine which “Vegas bigwig” would negotiate in person in these modest circumstances. Or for what. Except maybe Hector.

“You seem in a better mood, Ben,” Tallgrass noted, sipping the amber alcohol.

“Yup. Drink up. I got the special features Emerald City needed to open. At an unbelievably good price, which is lucky, because construction overrun costs were killing me and the backers. Really, I kinda think I took the guy, Las Vegas or not.”

“What kind of construction overruns, Mr. Hassard?” Ric asked, setting down his homely glass after a polite sip.

“Oh, the usual.” He waved away Ric’s question to eye Tallgrass. “Leonard, I overreacted on the phone with you earlier. Things aren’t that bad. We just have to open fast to start recouping investment, and now the last, best pieces are in place. Wanta see?”

Tallgrass sat there with his black pupils lost in his most skeptical scout squint, but Ben pressed a button on his desktop intercom.

“Geraldine, send in the CinSims.” He winked at us. “We never had any of these in Kansas before. This is the jackpot, trust me. Fresh from the download.”

Mystified, Ric and I exchanged a glance. I deigned to drink some cheap whiskey neat. Ugh. Tepid, strong as rubbing alcohol, and throat-stinging. I’d never met a spirit that needed a cocktail recipe more.

Let’s see … we were at Emerald City. How about … an Old Scarecrow Old-fashioned?

Quicksilver’s claws scrambled as he rushed to his feet behind me.

I heard what sounded like a high-pitched crosscut saw belaboring a twig. Quick growled warning.

I turned to see a small creature with enough spiked hair to serve as a toupee for a male American Idol contestant dance down the middle of the painted yellow brick road into the office. I bent to pat the dog.

“Toto,” a light, worried voice called, “stay away from that witch!”

I straightened and jumped back just as a sextet of black-and-white CinSims trouped in, fresh from the film and the farm. I knew them instantly, even though they were bathed in a soft yellow light.

The original black-and-white film of the movie’s prologue was later “colored” to make it sepia-toned. That was a “fan fact” most people wouldn’t know. Only characters filmed on the silver nitrate of black-and-white film could be bonded with zombie bodies to create the signature Vegas Cinema Simulacrums, familiarly known as CinSims. So Ben’s Vegas CinSim-supplying bigwig was a vintage film expert. Who? Smelling more and more like Hector.

I must say my hackles rose to match Quicksilver’s. Was nothing sacred from exploitation, even the sepia-colored prologue to The Wizard of Oz?

Dorothy Gale, with her earnest face and curled—not braided—pigtails, was still calling her little terrier, but frowning at someone behind me.

I turned, and nearly jumped out of my plaits and navy pumps to see the scowling Almira Gulch, as thin and mean as a barbed-wire hangman’s noose, chasing the agile little dog around my intervening body.

I bent to scoop up Toto, so the dog could “arf” and snap at the squinty-eyed woman’s face. Like my own Achilles, Toto was a spot-on judge of character.

Dorothy’s Auntie Em, sweet and worried, came up behind her niece, along with kindly Uncle Henry and the trio of fedora-hatted oddball farmworkers, Hunk, Hickory, and Zeke.

Oh, had the descriptive connotations of the word “hunk” changed since 1939. The prologue’s Hunk became the sweet-natured but weak-kneed Scarecrow searching for a brain in Oz. The carnival huckster who’d doubled as the wizard himself, Professor Marvel, brought up the rear.

“Look at them CinSims go!” Ben Hassard crowed. “I feel like the brave little tailor. ‘Eight at one blow.’”

I reluctantly handed a warm, soft, wriggling Toto back to Dorothy Gale, a bit unnerved. I’d never seriously touched a CinSim, and couldn’t believe they felt so … lifelike.

Ric and Tallgrass edged nearer to inspect the flock of CinSims while Almira Gulch kept a vindictive eye on Toto in Dorothy’s arms and Quicksilver shadowed her every move.

These CinSims reminded me of Ric’s Zobos, disoriented and not in touch with their surroundings, interacting only with themselves. They hadn’t had enough exposure to the paying public yet. The Vegas CinSims I knew were firmly themselves and adapted to their fates. These newly hatched celluloid “chicks” made me feel sorry for them … except for Almira Gulch.

I slipped back to Hassard’s side.

“Are you planning to build a special attraction around them, like the MGM Grand did before it dumped the Oz theme?”

“I don’t know what those Las Vegas hotels did. All I know is I got these very Kansas characters in exchange for one old movie just found in the restored Augusta film palace basement down the road.” He shook his head. “Vegas moguls. One night in the penthouse suite and he was all hot to deal. I do have some classy ‘amenities’ in that suite.” He winked. “And awomenities too.”

I stepped back, hoping Hassard wasn’t referring to imported party girls.

It was becoming clear who the visiting Vegas bigwig was, and the thought of Hector Nightwine cavorting with hired heartland hostesses was too ugly to bear.

I could see him parting with the Oz CinSims. They were far too homey and wholesome for the producer of the CSI V forensics TV franchise. I wondered what he’d got in exchange. Some notorious X-rated early foreign film, no doubt, like Hedy Lamarr’s Ecstasy with the first feature-film nude scene. Hector mentioned she and Dorothy Lamour had been guests at the Enchanted Cottage decades ago.

That reminded me that Howard Hughes in his heyday had dated both of those black-and-white film bombshells and he’d be chasing after classic girlie movies too.

“No,” Hassard was saying in answer to my question. I can’t afford to put all my eggs in one basket. I’m going to let these CinSims make themselves at home throughout the hotel-casino. That way, customers will keep running into them in different areas and think we’ve got more than we do.”

“You might keep Almira Gulch microchipped and confined to one location,” I suggested. “She is the villain of the piece.”

“That old gal in the battle-axe hat?” Hassard squinted her way and was met with a withering stare. “I see what you’re getting at. Yeah. Maybe I’ll station her at a casino cashier’s cage. She’s ugly enough to scare folks off from bothering to collect their winnings. I’ll have my tech person handle that in the morning. Meanwhile …”

Hassard stepped up to the milling group. “Okay, you CinSim people. I need you to scatter throughout the building. Check it out. Find some casino spots that appeal to you. And you, miss. Yes, the girl in the checked jumper. Make sure to get your little dog outside for enough ‘walks,’ if you know what I mean.”

For the first time I considered the embarrassing issue of CinSim elimination. I hoped the zombie element of the combo ruled there, although feral film zombies certainly … ate.

“Okay, gang.” Hassard clapped his hands and shooed the CinSims out of his office like a flock of farm chickens, Quicksilver escorting Almira Gulch and giving her a last warning growl.

Ric, who’d been conferring with Tallgrass all the while the CinSims had offered comic relief, approached Ben and me.

“Old friend,” Tallgrass said to Hassard. “We four”— Quicksilver nosed his hand—“ah, five, need to sit and powwow, as they say in the cowboy movies.”

“Waal, sure,” Ben said. “Pull up your chairs again. Here’s one for the little lady.”

I’m taller than he, but I accepted the chair Ben Hassard scooted under my navy-skirted rear.

“Another round of Old Crow, gentlemen and lady? Big doggy? Maybe you need to walk the dog, Miss Street?”

Quick and I gave him such a tandem look of disdain that he hastily sat behind the desk and began pouring more of the Old Crow into glasses.

“None for me,” I said, fanning my fingers over the glass. Ric followed suit, but Tallgrass nodded, then drank it all in one go.

“Ben, my friend,” he said. “We gotta have a frank talk here.”

Ben gulped from his glass, and then added Ric’s and my portions to what was left.

“You saw it, Tallgrass,” Ben said. “I’ve got the final piece of the hotel-casino in place. Those silly CinSims haven’t their like in a thousand-mile circumference. I know they’re kinda corny, but—”

“Corny?” I exploded. “You have an iconic CinSim coup here.”

“Sorry, miss. Of course I know that. I just don’t know what to do with them. Yet. The tribal casinos have been hit harder than Las Vegas with this Millennium Revelation thing and the economic crash. I got a lot of Indian money riding on this. Not your Native American charity stuff. This is our investment for the new century.”

“We see that,” Tallgrass said. “This is a major and impressive construction, Ben. And it’s Kansas grown and bred. But you haven’t been honest with us, and that’s a bad start.”

“Honest?” Beads of sweat appeared on Ben’s brow as if dowsed up by an invisible crown of thorns. “Tallgrass, you’re the consortium’s ally. If you—”

“Consortium, Ben?” Tallgrass sounded angrier than I’d ever like to confront. “You had the dream and the tribes gave you the money. Now we want an accounting. Who’s been blackmailing you and who have you paid off and how much?”

“That’s what you’ve been doing?” Ben asked bitterly. “Sniffing around with your slick FBI friend and this woman and that dog?”

“Look the dog in the eyes when you ask that,” Tallgrass said.

Hey, what about Ric and my totally righteous histories?

Quicksilver lifted his clawed paws onto the desk edge and thrust his big, fur-aureoled head nose to nose with Hassard.

Ben Hassard wiped the back of his hand across the sweat streaming down his forehead.

“Every contractor pays extra here and there,” he said. “If not to the union, then to what’s left of the mob or to meet some government regulation a crooked congressman put in for his local lobbyist. We know that. That’s the way things run.”

“That is not the Indian way,” Tallgrass said. “We dealt with honor.”

“Honor was a European myth and our stupidity, Tallgrass. You know that. I had to pay off some people. That’s all.”

Ric and I exchanged a glance. We were the “White Eyes” in an old argument.

I realized it was best we keep our mouths shut and our ears open. Quicksilver and his wolfish heritage had more cred here than we did. We could say the Irish and the Mexicans had as many bones to pick with history as Native Americans, including genocide, but this was not our personal risk or our showdown.

“Who did you pay off?” Tallgrass wasn’t leaving here without an answer.

Hassard just looked scared.

“Wait,” I said.

Both men glared at me. Ric shook his head slightly, warning me to back off. This was an all-male, all Native American powwow.

Quicksilver pulled his paws from the desk to my knees and regarded me intently.

I wrapped my hands around his collar and went, like Tallgrass, with the dog.

“Mr. Hassard, I filmed something the other day at my old workplace, WTCH-TV.”

Hassard froze like an ice sculpture. For some reason, that TV station was not only familiar, but an object of fear.

“Let me dig out my phone. Ric, while you, Tallgrass, and Quicksilver were off on rural investigations, I was delving into my history here in Wichita … which included this bitchy local weather witch, Sheena Coleman and … the station’s vampire anchorman I call Undead Ted.”

By then I’d got the film on-screen. The familiar had become a wrist bangle etched with an Egyptian Eye of Horus symbol, all the better to peek.

“A contact of mine at the station downloaded some … personal film to me, including the footage we got at the first cow mutilation site a few months ago. Before I left, I filmed Sheena and Ted returning from what looked like a payoff lunch meeting. They were chauffeured with a likely suspect, aka an ugly customer. I’ve never seen, not even since the Millennium Revelation, a man who walked more like a snake. Anybody recognize Mr. Rattlesnake-skin Briefcase?”

I ran the first part of the sequence by Ric and Tallgrass and, finally, Hassard.

“That’s her,” Hassard finally admitted. “That blasted local TV weather witch has been hitting our construction site with out-of-season rainstorms and hail and threatening lightning strikes to bring the entire structure down unless we pay up big. We’re at the breaking point, Tallgrass. I don’t dare stop paying or all the tribes’ money is kaput.”

He put his head in his hands and shook it. “We’re so close to launch time and to EC making enough to get these blackmailers off our back.”

“You’ll never get blackmailers off your back unless you become the worst bucking bronco around,” Tallgrass said.

“And here’s the money man,” I said.

Tallgrass and Hassard shook their heads at the paused scene.

Ric got my phone screen last and stared in silence. He kept so uncharacteristically still I began to feel like I’d goofed.

“I should have uploaded this to all your cell phones right away,” I said. “I was distracted by Sheena’s parting weather volleys and … visiting some sentimental spots in town.”

“Not what’s bothering me,” Ric said.

He licked his lips, maybe nervous or maybe getting ready to confess.

“I recognize the man with the money. The less he’s on our radar the better for us. He might have some way of tracking his presence on neighborhood networks, and he’s the kind of bastard you really need to get the jump on.”

“Ric?” I asked.

He looked me hard in the eyes. “It’s the drug cartel kingpin, El Demonio. Torbellino is his surname.”

“Your scumball kidnapper and zombie smuggler from years ago in Mexico? A kingpin now? Here in Kansas? Why? No … it can’t be.”

“Think I’d ever forget his inhuman face, Delilah? If El Demonio has expanded his foul drug smuggling and zombie-running operations from the crime cesspool of the border up into Kansas heartland, where he’s allied with weather witches, we have to grab the chance to take him and his cartel down before the whole country is fouled.”

“‘We’?” I asked incredulously. “Without backup or state troopers or the Reserves? He must have a ton of really fast zombies, not to mention his usual crime-lord army of gunmen.”

Tallgrass objected in his low-key way. “We must find Torbellino’s base of operations first.”

“We didn’t have the bastard’s stink before,” Ric said. “We’ll start tracking at the WTCH-TV parking lot. When El Demonio made the mistake of setting shoe sole on asphalt, he made himself Quicksilver meat.”

Quick had already leaped up to view the film. Now he was lunging for the office exit, ready to track and tackle.

“Delilah.” Ric turned to me. “Stay with Ben in case he gets fresh contact from the blackmailers.”

I was about to object to being left out of the track-down my minifilm had made possible, but I knew I’d blown it by regarding Sheena and Ted’s unsavory connections as part of my personal history instead of something bigger.

So I nodded.

Ben lifted the Old Crow bottle to me with a questioning look as a peace offering. We’d both failed to recognize and report something important to our best friends.

I watched Quicksilver’s thick, plumy tail flash out the office door, Tallgrass and Ric right behind him.

After a moment of mentally bemoaning being left behind, I pulled my chair up to the desk just as Ben, his hand shaking, poured amber whiskey into the water-spotted glass that had been mine.

“Miss Street prefers a smoother and costlier blend of poison,” a beautifully resonant but all too recognizable voice said behind me.

My silver familiar turned tail and slipped down my clothes to wrap itself around my right upper thigh like a garter as I gulped down two fingers of Old Crow straight anyway.

Then I turned to confront the unexpected newcomer.