Albedo laughs. Aw, don’t be jealous, man, he says. It’s unbecoming.
They’re walking under the porte-cochère, headed for the valet station. Albedo flicks away his cigarette, gives the Vietnamese boy standing there a folded bill and a quick and elaborate handshake. He jaws with the kid while the car comes around. Curtis fumes silently, staring at the battlements and parapets of the Excalibur across the street, until he hears the kid yell holy shit.
The car coming up the drive is massive, gleaming, thunderously loud. Black and silver and chrome. Boxy, with a few grooved recesses near the tail, like a block of balsa attacked halfheartedly with a router. Four headlights. A bumper that looks like it weighs more than Danielle’s Saturn. A steeply angled windshield that seems to jump forward ahead of the rest of the car. The silver hood-ornament a bold right-angled V inscribed in a circle. Ain’t she a beaut? Albedo’s saying.
The valet looks on, popeyed. What the fuck is that, man?
Mercury Montclair Phaeton sedan, my young friend. Manufactured in the year of our lord nineteen hundred and fifty-eight.
Is it real rare?
Naw, Albedo says. You see ’em around sometimes.
He tips the kid who’s stepping out of the car, slides the seat all the way back, leans in and unlocks the door on Curtis’s side. You restore it yourself? the kid asks.
Hell no, son, Albedo says, settling into his seat, flashing his yellow teeth. I don’t know shit about cars. I hit the progressive at Caesars last June, and I went a little crazy. Bought the whole thing as-is on eBay.
Curtis pops the door, sits down, and Albedo puts the machine in gear, pulls into the stream of traffic. Curtis reaches to fasten his seatbelt and finds that there isn’t one. Yeah, sorry, man, Albedo says. I never bothered to put a harness on yours. The girls always ride in the back.
Curtis cranes his neck to the left, and sure enough, Albedo is wearing both a standard lap belt and an aviator’s double-strap shoulder harness, bolted onto the back of his seat. No sweat, though, he’s saying, plucking the sunglasses from his T-shirt, sliding them onto his face. I promise I won’t wreck us. We going back to your hotel?
Curtis has been trying to come up with a gambit—a wild-goose chase he can lead Albedo on to take control of the situation, to trick him into revealing what he knows—but he’s got nothing. Yeah, he says at last. I’m staying at the— I know where you’re staying, man. Damon told me.
Most of the traffic coming off the freeway is turning onto the Strip, and their pace picks up after they get through the light. Curtis tries to settle in his seat, feeling naked without a belt. The Merc’s interior is cluttered and filthy, M&M wrappers and paper cups and empty In-N-Out bags on every flat surface. Curtis kicks aside a set of jumper cables, a slim attaché case, and a folded-over and underscored copy of Soldier of Fortune before his feet find solid purchase on the sticky floorboard.
Something else, Albedo says. Damon wants us to start leaning on Veronica.
Curtis blinks. What? he says.
Veronica, man. That skinny little bitch Stanley runs around with.
I know who Veronica is.
Well, Damon thinks we need to sweat her a little. The girl is weak, man. After a few days with Stanley being UA, she’s apt to be freaking out. Apply a little pressure, and she’s gonna roll.
Curtis stares at Albedo: his beaked nose, his slit of a mouth. Yeah? he says. And what the fuck does Damon know about it? I’m not gonna go around town extorting people just because—look, this is bullshit. Damon wants to keep playing, he’s got to show some cards. There’s shit going on that he’s not telling me about.
Albedo snickers, punches the cigarette lighter on the dash. You got that right, man, he says. And you are way better off without the details, believe me. I mean, jesus christ, Curtis, what’s with this wanting to know everything all of a sudden? I thought you were a marine, man.
That was very different from this, Curtis says.
Was it? Was the Desert very different from this? Isn’t it always about taking care of your buddies, and fuck the big picture? You know the answer, man.
The lighter pops up. Curtis jumps a little, but he doesn’t think Albedo notices. Albedo pulls it out, holds the orange coil to his cigarette, and smoke swirls between the half-open windows. Curtis turns away, looks outside. They’re at the light at Koval, on the edge of McCarran: Boeings and Airbuses are queuing up for takeoff, the heat from their engines bending the light, deforming the air.
You been checking out NA meetings? Albedo says.
Say again?