Jim Butcher: Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy

“Empire,” Stewart said, laying another piece of bloody glass in his pile. “I think that’s all of it, Jackie.”

“So the marriage didn’t work out?”

She pushed a greasy lock out of the way with a spotted hand and finished her tea. “Imploded like an outworn casino,” she said. “His other wives haven’t been so lucky.” She gestured around. “I got the marriage annulled—unmade—and he hasn’t been able to eat me up entire. The bottle tree keeps me going. Las Vegas is full of ghosts. Suicides, mostly. They taste all right.”

Stewart wrapped a paper towel around my palm to stanch the bleeding. The fluid in my glass tasted like cement and nitro, with too much sugar.

Stewart said, “So why is he coming after Jackie now?”

She shrugged. “Jackie came here? Jackie caught his attention? Jackie’s a better source of power than I ever was? I can feel my head filling back up again; I think he must be letting me alone.”

“You know the circus is in town?” It was mean of me to ask that way, just drop it in her lap and see what she did.

What she did was blanch. “They don’t want to hear from me.”

“If there was bad blood,” Stewart said softly, “I think they’ve forgotten it now. Why would all this start happening while your family is here?”

“Jeff,” she said. “I think he was waiting to bring you to me. Because I couldn’t have made much sense, unless you caught me just at the right time. You would have needed what my family could tell you. And Eli—Eli’s used so many women up.”

“Not just women,” Stewart said, with a sidelong glance at me.

I drank another swallow of sweet tea and Jeff Soble. “I wonder,” I said, “if he’s using me to get to something in particular. You wonder, if Vegas forgets stuff but I remember it—what happens to the parts of Vegas that I don’t remember?”

“Martin Powers,” Stewart said, without hesitation.

I remembered the newspaper. And nodded. “He’s trying to protect his grandson,” I said. “Martin Powers is up on racketeering charges. He’ll lose his gambling license. But Vegas is the city of second acts. We’ll forgive anything, as long as you give us half a chance to forget it.”

“And he can make the city forget,” Stewart said.

“Well,” I answered, sipping my tea, “he can make me forget. And Vegas forgets easier than I do.”

Tires crunched on the gravel drive.

Not just one set, but many.

Powers’s men surrounded the house and knocked on the door. Branka and I both gulped down the last mouthfuls of our tea before we filed out and went quietly. Every bit helps, right?

Well, maybe sometimes.

Most of the cars waiting for us were black sedans, but parked closest to the house was a limousine with Babylon Casino plates and a very polite driver who held the door wide. The implied arrogance never changes: No one can touch me here.

One of the gentlemen in black suits with an earpiece rode with us. I noticed that the bulletproof glass was up between the passenger compartment and the cab.

A long ride through rush hour followed. Vegas’s gridlock starts in the afternoon and persists into evening, and it seemed like we sat through most of it. A tractor trailer had jackknifed in the Spaghetti Bowl. I guess those effortless car rides only happen in movies.

The Tower of Babylon rose through a veil of transplanted jungle foliage and piped-in orchid scent to scrape a desert sky burned almost colorless by the Nevada sun. Visible the entire length of the Las Vegas Strip, it collapsed in fire and fury six times daily, six days a week, wind conditions permitting.

For a premium, you could ride it down.

Gold-glass ziggurats flanked it on either side. Shaded pathways led from the summer-scorched sidewalk and the broiling asphalt of the Strip through glades and grottoes, beside a bubbling piped waterfall. There was a slidewalk, for those who found the hundred meters or so under misters and date palms too far to walk in the Las Vegas heat.

The chattering monkeys caged behind “invisible” fencing on either side of the path were New World varieties, though most of the tourists could be counted on not to notice that, and the mossy ruined temples they played amongst were more Southeast Asian than Mesopotamian in character, but—authenticity aside—the “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” were a landscape designer’s masterpiece. A bare few feet from the bustle of the Strip, the plants and animals—the palm trees also teemed with brightly colored birds—and the chuckling water and the architectural sound-damping introduced a sort of mystic hush. Even the tourists walked through with lowered voices.

We didn’t. We came around the back, in the smoked-glass limousine, through a concealed gate that opened to the flash of the telemetry device clipped to the sun visor. I don’t know if it chirped: The bulletproof glass was up.

The limousine rolled silently into a tunnel jeweled with lanterns, and the gate scrolled shut behind us. Branka made a noise like one of those monkeys in distress, and Stewart squeezed her arm. I wished he’d squeeze mine, too, but not enough to whimper for attention.

When the limo rolled to a halt, I could fool myself that what I felt was relief, but really it was a cold, shallow kind of fear that sloshed over me like river water. Our silent warden—he hadn’t acknowledged anyone’s presence since he sat—reached for the door. He rose and ushered us out. We stepped onto plush carpet and stood blinking in the VIP tunnel of the Babylon Hotel and Casino.

Ornate doors paneled with mock ivory relief swung wide. Branka squeezed my hand with her salamander-damp one and drew me forward. I shook my head. I was the One-Eyed Jack, genius of Las Vegas. I could see magic and talk to ghosts. The City of Suicides was mine to protect. I didn’t need to be afraid of …

I leaned over and spoke into Stewart’s ear. “Stewart?”

“Shh,” he said, and I dropped my voice as we walked forward, escorted by more men with earpieces and dark suits.

I said, “What am I afraid of?”

The look he gave me was sad and bottomless. “Do you remember why we’re here?”

I should. I just had. I knew it was on the tip of my tongue. “Powers,” I said. “He’s making me forget.”

We three moved forward in the middle of a ring of security, as they led us along the tunnel to an elevator. I felt like a rock star on the way to the gallows.

“What are we going to do about it?” Stewart asked.

I looked down at my hands and shook my head. “Not let him?”

“Good plan,” Stewart said, as the doors chimed. “Let’s see what we can do about managing that.”

In the tiny paneled elevator, Branka’s sour sweat overpowered the piped-in aroma of gardenias and orchids, some functionary’s idea of how Babylon smelled. Were there such things as scent designers? Our ride—whisper-silent, crowded, tense—terminated in the penthouse, where, still ringed by all those refugees from The Matrix, we were herded forward onto oriental carpets, myself in the middle and Branka and Stewart one to each side.

I thought I knew what to expect. Eli Powers was as old as Las Vegas, but—in his rare television appearances—getting around under his own power, though wizened and leaning heavily on two crutches. I thought I would find an old man relying on a mechanized chair in the comfort of his own home. Instead, a man in his forties came forward to meet us, hair just graying at the temples, light eyes bright behind bifocals. He extended his hand, focusing a little behind me, and I accepted the handshake.

“Martin Powers,” he lied.

“Jackie,” I answered. “This is Stewart. Branka you already know. Tell me your right name, Mr. Powers.”