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. . .’ I shook my head and tsked. ‘The colonel could have gotten into a lot of trouble.’
    ‘So is he the guy or not?’
    ‘The colonel?’
    ‘Jesus, Vin.’
    ‘Okay, okay . . . My memory’s hazy on the details of the episode – understandably – but I do remember this Randy Sweetwater saying that he was about to go to Nellis AFB, which, as we all know, snuggles up to Vegas.’
    ‘Sometimes I’m surprised you remember anything.’
    That made two of us.
    ‘So, assuming the Randy Sweetwater you met is Alabama’s boyfriend,’ said Arlen, ‘and that this is not his hand, what’s Alabama worried about?’
    ‘Because Thing here is wearing Randy’s academy ring,’ I said, looking at Marnie. ‘Right?’
    ‘That’s right,’ she confirmed.
    ‘Well, like I said, this is a police matter,’ Arlen repeated.
    ‘And what are we, chopped liver?’
    He had a point, though. Randy was ex–Air Force, and the ‘ex’ bit took him beyond our frame of reference. Technically, we couldn’t get involved. At least, not officially.
    ‘What’s Alabama expecting us to do?’ I asked Marnie. ‘What are you expecting us to do?’ I sensed discomfort from Arlen that I was including him in ‘us’.
    ‘To help her, obviously. The ransom – she doesn’t know what to do or who to turn to. And she doesn’t have fifteen thousand, let alone fifteen million.’
    In this instance help could mean anything, except maybe assisting Alabama with a loan application for the ransom money. ‘And what about you?’ I asked Marnie. ‘What are you gonna do?’
    ‘Me?’ Marnie pointed at herself like I’d just accused her of something. ‘I’ve done my bit throwing you the ball. I’m going home. I’ve got a diving business to run.’ She looked at me and then at Arlen.
    The initial Anna Effect experienced when I’d opened the door and seen her standing there had worn off. Marnie had Anna’s eyes, hair and bone structure, and even the tone of her voice was similar, but in every other way she was the kid sister. Anna wouldn’t have looked elsewhere to offload this. I reached across and again lifted Arlen’s pen from his shirt pocket and signed the 988 with it. ‘Sorry,’ I told him.
    ‘What for?’
    ‘You’re gonna have to absquatulate on your own.’

Three
    I hitched a ride on the first plane heading for Vegas, a C-17 ferrying a load of practice missiles to Nellis. And five hours later, I was in the Nellis commissary buying an ice chest and freezer packs to go with it, condensation having terminally weakened the waxed paper seals on the KFC bucket. The amputated hand was in real danger of slipping out the side, and that would be tricky to explain. With Thing newly secured in a plastic ice chest, I caught a cab out past McCarran airport to Thrifty to pick up a rental. And half an hour after that I was driving down the Strip in the last of the early evening sunshine, the Ford Focus’s AC wound to the stops yet barely able to penetrate the midsummer desert heat.
    I drove nice and slow to soak up the sights. It’d been a few years since I’d visited Vegas, and while the town needed nighttime to show its true colors, there was a feeling of urgency in the air that reminded me of someone drowning. Maybe the global downturn had hit the place harder than anyone liked to admit. The guys on the sidewalk handing out calling cards for the hookers were going at it in broad daylight, scooting from prospect to prospect like rats on a foundering ship hunting for an exit. Several glossy new buildings stood vacant, others looked a little tired – none more so than Bally’s, ‘the home of Donn Arden’s Jubilee Showgirls’, as the posters up and down the Strip called the show. Bally’s was a refurbished seventies tower which, I’d learned when I’d booked a room online, was once the MGM Grand before it caught fire. In fact, looking at it on screen, if Bally’s were a dancer, I’d be hoping her clothes would be staying on.
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