Carole Douglas - Silver Zombie

“I hope you continue to enjoy the accommodations, Mr. Christopher,” he told the white man in white, “and that our … discussions down here didn’t disturb you in the penthouse.”

“Your CinSims fanning through the hotel disturbed me. You do understand that the farmyard chickens and pigs and horses are part of the package, as well as Miss Gulch’s bicycle?”

“Horses and pigs and chickens? Oh, my.” Ben cast me a helpless look. “Miss Street was right. I’ll need some sort of unifying attraction … perhaps around a theme of Kansas, the Barnyard State.”

Their byplay gave me mental time to insert Vegas’s one and only albino rock star into this place and time and enterprise. I wasn’t surprised that Hassard hadn’t recognized the stage persona of Cocaine, lead singer of the Seven Deadly Sins rock group. Snow in white-suit civvies looked like a taller, younger, sexier … oh, Mark Twain.

“ You’re the Vegas bigwig who’s been so generous with CinSims leases?” I asked, none too smoothly.

Shock does that to even a professional objective observer, and I was in no way objective about Snow.

His Western-style suit was not that different from the white Italian designer ones he wore offstage, but his river-boat gambler hat seemed so like the ghost of El Demonio’s black one it gave me shivers. Snow’s long white hair was tied back into a very passé mob-style ponytail that suddenly looked back again, big-time. And, of course, he wore the eternal dark sunglasses.

“Me, generous?” he replied.

I could tell his hidden eyes were taking in my plain navy suit. Some men’s looks could be said to undress a woman. His summation seemed to be burying my outfit under a chador.

“Hardly generous,” Snow addressed me again. “This was a business deal. Ben and I are both well satisfied, and now I have the unexpected bonus of … requisitioning Miss Street’s presence in my suite.”

“Ah,” Ben said. “Miss Street is not a potential, er, hostess, Mr. Christopher. Her presence is not a matter of acquisition. In a month, Emerald City will be fully staffed instead of running with a skeleton crew.”

“Mr. Christopher,” I put in, mispronouncing his name with glee, “knows perfectly well, from long experience, that I am not biddable. Is there a reason why I should accompany you upstairs?”

“The view,” Snow said, drawing it out like a slow sip of an Albino Vampire cocktail, “is spectacular.”

And … I’d get some private time to pump him on the what, how, and why of his astounding personal visit to the hinterlands.

I thanked Mr. Hassard, gave him my cell phone number, and asked him to alert me instantly if “my party” returned.

Snow waited beside the door the CinSims had just trooped through on a yellow brick road.

THE EMERALD CITY offered green glass elevators that shot riders atop each of the needle towers through an aquatic funnel of green gelatin, with a laser show of chartreuse lights lancing the emerald haze.

“I’m only here for the ride and the view,” I mentioned.

“Of course. Why do you care about any impression a sleazy operator like Ben Hassard has of you?”

Nah, we get a classy operator, Irma noted, happy to back me up with the Big Bad Wolf. She loved these settos of ours. That riverboat gambler suit fits Snow’s frame just a tad looser than his rock show catsuit … and did you catch those albino ostrich-skin cowboy boots with the ebony heels and platinum ankle chains? If I could get me a pair I would die right here and happily go to Hell.

Snow did resemble the quintessential Western dude, down to the white string tie with a platinum longhorn skull slide. I’m sure he impressed the local yokels no end.

“It’s not about me,” I told Snow. “It’s about the truth. Why did you wait to make your appearance until Ric and Leonard Tallgrass left? Did you want to separate me from them?”

“Just cutting you out from the common crime-chasing herd. You’re a devout Our Lady of the Lake graduate, I hear. I wanted to show you the Holy Grail.”

“Oh, come on.”

“You don’t believe the cup Christ sipped from at the Last Supper still exists in this world, somewhere?”

“Possibly, but that’s not my obsession.”

“Then you’ll be pleased that I’m going to … satisfy what is your obsession.”

Now that was a veiled threat if I’d ever heard one.

APPARENTLY PROGRAMMED, OUR elevator had reached the top. The faceted emerald doors split open on another vista so green it seemed to be underwater.

Gosh, Irma whispered. We’ve got a few of those obsession thingies. Wonder which one our sexy host is so bound and determined to cater to? He does owe you at least a spanking for transferring the physical pain and marks of Ric’s bullwhipped childhood slavery to his own truly porcelain albino body. I’ll watch.

Shut up, I told Irma. I was already jumpy, knowing we were dealing here with Christophe, the billionaire casino king. I was all too aware of his slick Oklahoma oilman wardrobe and the draw of the white silken shirt and suit jacket across the Snow-white skin of his back with every move. Yet he seemed all business, all entrepreneur now. Nothing of the raunchy rock star remained. And certainly nothing of the victim of a paranormal pain transfer.

The room beyond the private elevator sported a sprawling conversation pit upholstered in so many shades of green velvet I thought I was in mossy Ireland. I noted that the suite had his and her powder rooms off the entry hall, like the layout at werewolf warlord Cesar Cicereau’s Gehenna Hotel penthouse. Effete Vegas luxuries were infecting even Wichita.

Snow went ahead into the massive main room to open the verdigris-lacquered doors of a green-mirror-backed bar.

“I have absinthe and Albino Vampires and crème de menthe cocktails,” he offered. “Any preference?”

I stared at a trio of green glass bottles. “Wait a minute. You’ve bottled my Albino Vampire recipe?”

“Just add the vodka of your choice, from Grey Goose to lighter fluid. Much more economical than by the martini glass at the Inferno Bar. And of course, also much more profitable to me in the larger mass market.”

I shook my head. “I’m stunned that I’m allowed into this temple of greed wearing just my plain navy interview suit.”

“My mistake. You’re quite right. I’m violating the hospitality of the Emerald City Hotel and Casino. I should have directed you to the suite Green Room first thing. It’s a must for every occupant. You do want to taste what this theme-park gambling joint will offer the paying customers?”

He gestured to a pair of zebrawood doors striped in pale and vivid green.

“I’ll have the absinthe,” I said over my shoulder, stepping through.

Whoa. I was in some kind of New Age subway tunnel, with nowhere to go but forward.

The setup, despite its relentless laser-green glow, immediately reminded me of the detoxifying entrance tunnel to germ-phobic Howard Hughes’s 1001 Knights getaway on the low-rent end of the Strip.

Green laser lights buzzed and swiveled as they rose and fell on either side of me, etching my form as if I were a jigsaw puzzle piece. I walked through an emerald-green mist, feeling warm and then cool. Unseen air vents lifted my heavy plaits to writhe and untwine around my face and shoulders like Medusa’s serpents—not Kelly green, I hoped.

I came though the opposite doors feeling I’d enjoyed a steam room, sauna, and massage. In fact, I felt absolutely wonderful.

Snow was waiting with two tall, thin glasses of opaque, chartreuse-tinted absinthe. The drink had been a nineteenth-century fad with a bad rep because an herbal ingredient called wormwood had a marijuana-like effect.