Virtual Virgin

Chapter Twenty-six

“WHY THE POSTADOLESCENT noisy sports car?” Tallgrass asked Ric after breakfast was just a fond memory.

“I was not much more than a postadolescent when I bought it?” Ric suggested as he cruised the Corvette through the concrete canyon made by massive pyramids, domes, towers, and 3-D billboards known as the Las Vegas Strip.

“So. Why aren’t Miss Delilah and what that butler-sorta fellah, Godfrey, calls Master Quicksilver with us on our sightseeing expedition?”

“I have a big decision to make, Tallgrass.”

“So? I’m an ex-coworker. I don’t share your soul and I sure as hell don’t sleep with you.”

“It involves what I brought to life in Wichita. You were there.”

Tallgrass’s espresso-dark eyes bored into Ric’s eyes, looking for his soul. “So was she. I think the phrase today is ‘significant other,’ amigo. Is that ‘she’ Miss Delilah, or is it that damn ghost of a machine?”

“It’s that I might be poison to associate with because of the ghostly machine.”

Tallgrass lifted his deeply seamed palms. “Stop the sports car. Let me out. I am good enough to swallow poison, and Miss Delilah is not? I would like to hear her opinion on the subject. Did you even ask her?”

Ric put the ’Vette through the purposes it was made for, a slash across four lanes of less gutsy traffic and into the long drive up to the Inferno Hotel.

“I need your opinion on something,” he said. Admitted.

“Some thing?”

“Some one. Maybe a something.”

“Miss Delilah is full of opinions.”

“That’s the problem. She may be prejudiced.”

“If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be worth much.” Tallgrass grinned. “These days are not for those who weigh left hand against right until they are paralyzed. It is a time to act.”

“Exactly.” Ric nodded as Delilah’s favorite parking valet appeared in a puff of STP-scented cologne at the ’Vette’s driver-side door. He handed the orange-scaled demon a twenty-dollar bill.

“You mind if I rev her up the ramp?” Manny asked, a devilish arch to his green eyebrows.

“Be my guest,” Ric said.

“Bonsai tree!” the demon shrieked from the driver’s seat as the ’Vette vanished in a cloud of genuine gas exhaust.

“Self-indulgent and not very green despite the valet’s eyebrows,” Tallgrass decreed.

“Wait’ll you go inside,” Ric promised.

As Delilah had pointed out, Tallgrass was not a hick. He observed and nodded sagely as they entered the Inferno’s interior glitz.

“IT’S TOO EARLY for the Boss to be up and receiving guests,” Grizelle said, eyeing Tallgrass after Ric had her paged.

“You’re a shaman,” Tallgrass told her. “What is a creature of earth and sky doing caged in all this artificial light?”

“I’m security chief here. Chief.”

He nodded. “Of course. You are like that Corvette sports car Ric drives. There is a tiger in your tank.”

Grizelle slashed Ric a look, part awe, part anger. “Don’t make me show my claws,” she told Tallgrass.

“Nor me, mine,” he said.

“Neither of you needs to resort to postadolescent noise,” Ric said. “Christophe made it clear that I was welcome at any time,” he told Grizelle. He might call the Inferno boss Snow to his face, as invited, but he preferred thinking of him as the mogul Christophe.

Grizelle inclined her elaborately decorated braids. “May I offer you earplugs for the elevator journey?” she asked Tallgrass.

He snorted.

Ric had thought Delilah tweaked Grizelle’s tail. Tallgrass jerked her braids.

“Most impressive,” Tallgrass muttered in the short elevator spurt to the top.

Ric wasn’t sure whether he referred to the Inferno Hotel, or Grizelle.

Christophe was waiting as the elevator doors opened like a stainless-steel stage curtain on his dramatically bizarre figure of white skin and hair. He wore a white linen Cuban guayabera shirt with its subtle four pockets and pleats, but the long sleeves were rolled up in a display of casual cool.

Ric was annoyed to see the Inferno bigwig sporting a classic item of Hispanic menswear with such aplomb. His own tropical suit the color of a cappuccino latte seemed formal and stuffy by comparison despite the open neck of his silk shirt.

And Tallgrass. He looked fresh off the ranch. Not that it bothered Tallgrass one whit.

The Native American had not doffed his pale straw Western hat in Christophe’s quarters, as Christophe recently had kept on his riverboat-gambler white hat at the Emerald City hotel-casino he’d bought in Wichita.

So it would be a battle of white hats.

“I understand,” the ex-FBI man opened the parlay, “no one knows what brand of supernatural you are.”

“That disturb you, Mr. Tallgrass?”

Christophe led them into the expansive living area and gestured to an arrangement of leather sofas so supernaturally white they must have come from ghost cattle.

Ric wandered to the window wall to survey the Strip from this spectacular viewpoint.

In daylight the framework of the neon icons looked as drab and shabby as the half-constructed hulks of glamorous towers-to-be, including one so close Ric could count the rivets on the I beams. He wondered how the rock-star mogul liked having his hotel crowded by another new Vegas venue going up.

Probably as little as Ric wanted to be crowded by him.

“Not much disturbs me, except labels,” Tallgrass had responded, stretching out his untidy middle-aged frame dead center on a curve of the endless sectional sofa. “No one can figure out what tribe I’m from. Most of my kind has vanished from my home state.”

“Which is Kansas,” Christophe stated, sprawling on another long sofa dead center, but opposite Tallgrass.

“Maybe.” Tallgrass’s smile was short and not very sweet at all. “Our people were moved all over the map by the US government, usually with some excuse that it was for our own good.”

“I see Mr. Montoya has brought a private contractor to eye his possible future property.” Christophe turned to quirk a white eyebrow at Ric over the rim of his black sunglasses. “I’m glad you brought your agent into our discussion.”

“FBI agent,” Ric said. He had to smile to himself at how each man had spread his arms and legs to occupy the most territory on his chosen seat.

“Formerly,” Christophe noted, “the way I like all my agents. Those who’ve fled overcontrolling entities best suit my purposes.”

“And you’re not overcontrolling?” Ric asked, pacing behind Christophe’s sofa.

The rock-star mogul kept his face focused on Tallgrass. “That’s why it’d benefit your friend’s interests to deal with me. The devil you know, and all that.”

“Are you a devil?” Ric had stopped behind Christophe, bracketing his hands on the sofa back on either side of him. Now Ric leaned close enough to knife him between the shoulder blades, claiming his own negotiating territory.

“Depends who you ask.” Snow’s sunglasses lifted and aimed to the side of the room. “It seems you have a groupie of your own.”

Ric jerked his gaze in that direction to spot the Silver Zombie moving smoothly across the white plush carpeting toward their conversational gathering. Toward Ric.

“Still silent,” Tallgrass observed.

Ric stood, partly because he would when any lady entered a room, partly in the nervous awe she always stirred in him.

The other men also stood, as if he’d cued them. Tallgrass turned to Ric, nodding and brushing his palms lightly together. “She moves with a whisper like soft sandpaper, a slight snare drum brush.”

Trust a veteran tracker to notice. Ric realized he heard that too.

Tallgrass had seen the Metropolis robot in the guest penthouse atop the Emerald City hotel-casino in his home city of Wichita. In this more sophisticated yet austere environment, all laboratory white, she shone like a polished suit of armor walking through a snowstorm.

She stopped in front of Ric. “Master.”

“No one’s your master now,” he said.

Her streamlined metal features turned to regard Christophe and Tallgrass before returning to face him. “I must answer to my maker, my caretaker. If not you, who else?”

It was her first sentence.

Ric found Christophe’s head and sunglasses bowed, looking down, staying neutral. Tallgrass’s dark eyes, often so noncommittal, had gone blank with shock.

There it was. The quandary.

If Ric didn’t use his natural power over this complex homemade CinSim, this brave new creature who was as diverse as mogul Christophe/rock star Cocaine/acquaintance Snow, who or what would fill that vacuum? She could be Good Maria/Bad Maria/robot/actress.

“Thank you . . . Brigitte,” he said, using the actress’s name to establish himself as . . . director. “You may go.”

She turned and strode away to the ajar double doors Ric knew led to the home theater. Could she even sit down in that wooden bodysuit? Did CinSims need to?

Tallgrass released a windy sigh. “Certainly not one of the spirit-walkers of my forefathers.”

Snow looked up at Ric, smiling. “In this case, looking out for my own interests dovetails with your needs, Montoya. Who can argue that this entity doesn’t harbor a demon, as the drug lord Torbellino maintained. He’ll want her and his cartel has limitless reach. You need powerful allies too.”

He directed his gaze at Tallgrass. “You might have need of a dragon again,” Christophe added, referring to a recent battle with El Demonio’s forces in Wichita.

“And you, Mr. Christophe, of a Wendigo.” Tallgrass smiled.

“HE’S A SUPERNATURAL something,” Tallgrass told Ric once they’d reached the Inferno’s main floor again. “That’s my opinion. We know Christophe’s powers are impressive. You’ll never know their extent unless you watch him as closely as he seems to want to watch you.”

“‘Watch over me,’” Ric said. “That’s his claim.”

Tallgrass grinned. “You already have Miss Delilah doing a much more personal job of that. It’s hard to tell these days, Ricardo, who or what has anyone’s best interests at heart. If you can strike a mutually advantageous deal with this smooth operator, you’re doing well. I worry about you too. Meanwhile you and me have to keep the government working for us as we work for it. That’s our priority now.”

“Before we leave, want to meet Godfrey’s ‘cousin’ at the Inferno Bar?” Ric asked.

“Home of Miss Delilah’s Albino Vampire martini?” Tallgrass’s laugh boomed out, attracting amused stares. “She nailed Mr. Christophe but good by inventing that at his own bar. Sure, if they serve plain spring water. We’ll need our sharpest wits soon.”

“That’s all right. We can let Nick Charles do all our drinking for us.”