Chris Abani - The Secret History of Las Vegas

A resentment that festered into a deep hate when they both fell for Jan. But she chose Sunil, and Eskia’s ego couldn’t take the blow. That someone like Sunil, a township rat with no pedigree, could have taken Jan from him was too much, was unimaginable to him. Over time, Eskia realized that it wasn’t just his pride that was wounded. He came to love Jan and he burned with the fire of unrequited love.

When Sunil left for Europe on an internship, Jan fell apart. Eskia consoled her and a firm friendship and then a romantic relationship grew between them. Eskia struggled though. As a member of the ANC it was seen as a betrayal to date a white woman, not to mention that it was illegal under the apartheid government. But all through their relationship, all five years of it, what was hardest was the knowledge, though unspoken, that Jan still loved Sunil. And not even hurting Sunil’s mother made Eskia feel better. Then Jan disappeared in a raid and just like that, Eskia lost her.

He turned his gaze back on Asia and watched her breathe. He smiled cruelly. The nicer you treat a person, the more it hurts when you turn on them. That was a pleasure he knew well. Asia was stretching and he admired the tattoo on her arm as she flexed. It read: Trae Dhah .

Breakfast, she said with a smile, spotting the room service cart and the two place settings. She helped herself and dug in. Eskia watched the unbridled pleasure with which she ate and found himself lost in her delight.

Not hungry, she asked, pausing briefly.

He shook his head.

She smiled, shoved the last of her eggs into her mouth, and stood up, crossed to her clothes, and began to dress.

You can use the shower, he said.

Thank you, she said. Maybe next time.

As the door closed behind her, Eskia returned to the window. Sitting in this kind of meditation was a discipline he knew well. When he was a boy, his father, a former sharpshooter from the British Army, had been very active in the ANC’s armed wing. Many a Boer policeman had fallen to his skill.

He sometimes took Eskia with him. Together they would cross the vast desert of stubby grass and garbage that marked the divide between Soweto and Johannesburg. Keeping to sewers, culverts, and other places only the blacks knew about, they would travel for miles in the night, Eskia bearing the weight of his father’s Lee-Enfield rifle. By all expectations, a Lee-Enfield wouldn’t make a very good sniper’s weapon with its limited range, but the caliber was solid, and in the right hands even a boomerang was a deadly weapon. A relic of the First and Second World Wars, it should not have fired evenly. But Eskia’s father kept the rust away with oil and a leather rag and a high-caliber bullet. In his expert hand, that projectile could travel nearly a quarter of a mile to bury itself into the resolve of his chosen target.

At first light they would arrive on the edge of a leafy, tree-shaded suburb and, climbing a select tree, they would sit the whole day, unmoving, until at dusk, just before the abrupt curtain of night, Eskia’s father would take the rifle from his son, hold it steady, and, with the tender caress of a whisper, pull the ratchet back. He would wait for a long moment and breathe slow, then he would squeeze the trigger, and before the crack could echo and reveal their location, they would be down the tree, melting back into the depth of night. Eskia, carrying the heavy rifle, always struggled to keep up. But this one time he tarried and saw the target fall. A plump man in his forties with a shiny bald spot. He saw a child running down a garden path to meet him. And then he saw the spurt of blood obliterating the bald spot and darkening the face of the child. And then Eskia turned away and ran after his father in the dark, the weight of the rifle heavier than usual.

He turned back from the view of Vegas, put his coffee mug down with exaggerated care, and walked into the bathroom to shower. He had much to do.

Salazar tipped the last of his coffee onto a white shell, staining it brown, flecks of coffee grounds standing out like black growths. He kicked sand at the shell, then watched the sun come up over Lake Mead. He was always amazed that something man-made here in the middle of the desert could look so natural and blue. The tire marks from the night before were still visible.

Unable to sleep after signing the twins over to Dr. Singh, he had returned to the station, typed up his report, and then driven to Jake’s, an all-night diner off Fremont Street. His other favorite diner, right next door to the Gutenberg Museum on South Main, had gone out of business. Now it was a Chinese fast-food joint that closed at ten. When the Library Gentlemen’s Club and the Gun Store, on the other side of the museum, went out of business as well, he figured he should move on and so he’d migrated to this diner ten years ago.

He liked the old parts of Vegas, ever since he moved here as a teenager. Parts that were now seedy and decrepit. Things seemed more honest here, less beguiling than the Strip or the new developments spreading into the desert. Jake’s had been in the same place for more than forty years, and it seemed that the staff hadn’t changed in that time either. It was the only place in Vegas that didn’t have any slot machines or gambling of any kind. Just a simple menu and a loyal clientele of people often down on their luck. He watched an old homeless man carry his bulldog past the diner, pause, then come in.

Spare some change, he asked Salazar.

Why the fuck are you carrying your dog, Salazar asked.

He’s tired, the homeless man said.

Who carries you when you’re tired?

Jesus, the man said. Spare me a dollar?

Get the fuck out of here, the cook yelled from the kitchen.

The old man shuffled out before Salazar could give him the dollar. He melted into the night with his dog, leaving Salazar with his thoughts, his guilt, and his desire. He really wanted to solve this case. Not just for his career, or because he had been working on it for so long, but because there was the matter of the dead teenage girl who had been found in the second batch of dead homeless men two years ago. Her discovery was a shock for everyone working that day. As they pulled the pile of bodies apart, there she was, like the dramatic reveal of a magic trick gone wrong. Salazar could still see it clearly in his mind’s eye. The near emerald-green dress in the midst of all that dirt and gray; an orange high-heeled pump on one foot, the other bare. A shock of red hair and a face twisted in agony. Everything about her was incongruous, not in keeping with the scene. There was no ID on her and even now, no one had come forward to claim her. Putting her to rest was what really drove him. The department therapist told him that his desire had nothing to do with putting her to rest. That it was really all about him.

Fuck you, he’d said then. Fuck you, he thought now. Even if she was right, there was still the fact of the dead girl. Buying a coffee to go, the size of a Big Gulp, he’d driven out to the lake.

All night he sat in the dark trying to figure it out, to get into the killer’s head as he liked to call it. Was it the twins? Why would they do it? How did they do it? The truth was, gruff and tactless as he was, Salazar was no criminal. He couldn’t really understand why people did the things they did, much less how. It was a severe limitation for a detective and he compensated for it by obsessively working his cases, going over the same ground again and again until something broke open for him.

So he sat in his car in the soft light waiting for that break, that crack in time.

In the kitchen Sunil filled the kettle and set it on the range. The burner was the only illumination as he opened the cupboards and reached for a teapot, which he then filled with loose-leaf Black Dragon tea. He liked this tactile relationship with the world and had consciously cultivated it — if he could find everything in the dark then there was still order in his world.