2
I didn't see how Elodie was going to win any votes at all.
I was looking out from the side of the stage into a theater half full of middle-aged people, almost all of them women, searching for their seats and admiring the fake baroque Frenchness of the decor.
These people were genuinely French. Elodie told me they'd all been shipped into Vegas from the Paris region. They were fans of Clint Highway, who was shut away in his dressing room with a "pardee" pack of drugs. Just enough to keep him going, Elodie said. She didn't want him falling into the crowd again and turning into a matchstick, even if American fire restrictions meant that there wouldn't be any naked flames in the room.
"Why will this persuade Las Vegas to vote for France?" I asked. Wasn't Elodie giving the city what it wanted too quickly, just as she'd accused me of doing?
She answered my question as we sat in the box closest to the stage, only a matter of yards from the large white line on the boards that told Clint where to stand. He had been briefed that if he crossed the line, there was a danger of diving into the front row. Apparently, to make sure he didn't forget, Elodie had had the instruction implanted in his shriveled brain by a hypnotist, the only inconvenience being that he was now incapable of crossing a road. Not that he often had to do so. He was flown, limoed, or cabbed everywhere.
"This concert is just a sample," Elodie said. "The rest is a secret, but you are an honest Englishman, so I can tell you." She leaned close and whispered, "But not yet."
As her self-satisfied laugh faded away, the house lights dimmed and the roar of conversation from the audience changed to a mixture of applause and very un-middle-aged squeals.
"Cleent, Cleent, Cleent," a few women started to chant.
A drum roll boomed out from the speakers right next to our box.
"And now, for the very first time in Vegas," an announcer brayed hysterically. An organ swelled a dramatic chord. "All the way from Paris, France . . ." The organ added a second chord and took us to new heights of anticipation. "Paris Las Vegas is honored to give you ..." The organ seemed about to explode with excitement. It stayed at the same frantic fever pitch for ten, fifteen, twenty seconds. What was happening behind the curtain, I wondered—were they having trouble rolling Clint on stage or was the announcer just trying to remember the name of this unknown Frenchman?
"Clint Highway!"
Simultaneously, the curtain disappeared, a white explosion covered the stage with smoke, and a rock band appeared against a giant French Tricolor backdrop. The band was playing a chugging rock beat and someone was singing a melody that I vaguely recognized, but it wasn't clear where the voice was coming from. Then the mist dissipated enough to reveal a leather-suited Clint, who'd been swallowed up by the dry ice like an elf in a two-foot snowdrift. First-night rustiness, I guessed. The theater's special-effects guys hadn't been told that their star was even smaller than Elton John.
The ex-girls in the audience were on their feet, singing along. And I had to admit Clint had a lot of stage presence. He was doing all the rock-star poses that a pair of skin-tight leather trousers encourage a man to do, and only occasionally did he wince as he pulled himself back to the vertical,
The musicians seemed to arrive at a chorus. Now I got it. He was opening with his hit, the rehash (with the emphasis on the hash) of "Strawberry Fields Forever"—"Tarte Aux Fraises"—and I managed to pick out the words as the audience chanted them over and over.
"Je suis une tarte aux fraises, croque-moi à ton aise. Couvre-moi de crime, fouettée c'est ce que j'aime." Which translates more or less as "I am a strawberry tart, eat me at your own pace. Cover me in cream, whipped is what I like." Typically French. While John Lennon was singing about psychedelic visions, Clint stuck to sex.
It was all building to the third or fourth chorus when my phone began to vibrate.
I'd received a text message saying simply, "Call me NOW Larry." I showed Elodie the screen and went out into the corridor to phone.
Larry, I quickly found out, wasn't happy. He wasn't exactly pleasant when he was happy, and now he was like a guard dog who's just been ordered not to bite the intruder's balls off. A mass of barely controlled rage.
"I warned you about fucking around," he said.
"What?" Pretty well everything I'd done in Vegas could have been classified as fucking around, so I really needed specifics.
"In the casino. When you started balls-aching about the odds."
"Ah."
"Yeah, ah."
"Is there an issue with that?" I asked, trying to tone things down American-style.
"Yes there's a fucken issue. One of the TV guys—and I'm gonna find out which one—let a fucken liberal national news fucken station see the pictures and they ran the fucken story. Brit guy lifts the kilt on Vegas, or some shit like that. The odds at blackjack, and you being a smartass about craps, and me placing the dice. Made the whole fucken operation look like a total fucken scam."
I didn't think that a "sorry" would help. It had always struck me that he wasn't the kind of guy you could apologize to other than by falling off a high building.
"What can I do?" I asked.
"Do? Undo, you mean. You can't undo a fucken TV story. Once people see something on TV, it fucken exists. You can't unexist it."
"Ah."
"Will you stop fucken saying 'ah.'" You sound like a guy who's getting a blowjob from a rat." Which was, in my opinion, a weird image to have in stock. "There is one thing you can do. It won't undo the damage, but it will help me pay off a debt to a friend of mine."
"Yes?"
"Where are you?"
I told him.
"I'll pick you up in twenty minutes. Be out front under the Ark D. Triumph."
There is a time and a place for French pronunciation lessons, and it wasn't now.
3
The car that pulled up wasn't a limo. It was a long silver sedan of some kind, a car that would be impossible to park in Paris but was just another midrange luxury vehicle over here in the land of the extreme.
I got into the passenger seat, and Larry dropped a heavy black weight on my groin. The violence was starting already. I began to feel glad that I'd told Elodie where I was going. If I disappeared, she'd be the last person to see me alive. She might even get arrested as an accomplice and ruin France's reputation once and for all.
"Open it," Larry said.
It was a box. I undipped the lock and swung a lid upwards.
"Shit," I said, recoiling instantly.
"Take it out."
I did as I was told, lifting the dead thing inside as if it might wake up and sink its fangs into my arm. Which it could have done if I'd mishandled it, at a rate of God knows how many fangs a second. It was an Uzi.
"Ever fired one? No, don't answer that. You look like the kind of guy who'd shit himself paintballing."
"Well, no, actually I used to go paint—"
"It's not loaded. But it soon will be, and you're gonna fire it. OK?"
"At what?" I asked.
He didn't answer. He gunned the engine, and swung us around the Arc de Triomphe and out into the flow of traffic on the Strip.
The drive gave me fifteen long minutes of agonizing about what to do. At every traffic light or traffic jam, I thought about jumping out of the car. But like the law-abiding idiot I am, I'd put on my seatbelt. Undoing it would have made my next move too obvious.
I could have phoned for help. But who?
I could have hit Larry over the head with his gun, but it might not have knocked him out, and that would only have made him more furious. And besides, I was the one holding die gun. Unloaded or not, he'd given it to me, which presumably meant that no actual bullets were coming my way. Not yet, at least.
We passed floodlit malls, neon motels, gas stations. We headed five or ten miles away from the Strip, and the river of cars didn't ebb at all. Everyone in Vegas seemed to have to be somewhere else very quickly. Somewhere else in Vegas, that is. In the dis
tance, the desert was pitch black.
Larry pulled into a parking area outside a row of low-rise retail outlets. There was a pawn shop and check-cashing office—Open 24/7, it boasted—a pizza-delivery service, and a building painted with stars and stripes and topped with a flashing sign saying Girls 'n' Guns. Beside die lettering, a red neon cowgirl was rodeo-riding a pistol.
Larry parked in front of the pizza place, but I didn't think we'd come to demand a calzone at gunpoint.
"Let's go get some ammo," Larry said. "And put the goddamn gun back in the case."
I looked down at my lap. I'd been holding the Uzi all diis time, a finger wrapped round die trigger.
Inside Girls 'n' Guns, die first tiling I saw was the kind of wall display diat you don't get in your average European shop.
I recognized the AK-47, the M-16 Vietnam rifle, an old English Sten, and even one of those Nazi machine guns you see in the movies—a Scheisser or something like that.
There were also heavier weapons on tripods, their barrels as thick as a dog's snout. All in all, there must have been twenty or thirty guns decorating the room.
Below this display was a rack of ammo, with magazines in little plastic drawers like candy. The sales counter was made of glass, and underneath it were shelves of handguns, dozens of them lined up waiting to be taken home.
A gigantic black guy was examining one of the guns through the glass, squinting as if he was wondering whedier the shade of steel would go with his watch.
A girl in a gold halter top and red miniskirt came out from the back of the shop.
"Yes gents, how may I. . . ? Oh, hey." An embarrassed smile froze on her face.
"Candy?" I said.
"Yeah, I. . ." She didn't need to explain. So many Americans have more than one job. Her two jobs were pretty similar, really. Both involved putting on a short skirt and pulling in the customers. A lot like my own work.
"Go get Dave, will you?" Larry told her.
Candy disappeared and I had time to look around. Behind us were stands of accessories—gun cases, telescopic sights, cans of oil. And to one side of the counter was a row of posters that seemed way out of place in here. Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, a turbanned guerrilla. Surely these guys weren't poster heroes in Las Vegas, I thought.
Just then a war seemed to break out in the back of the shop. A clatter of machine-gun fire—akakakakakakak— answered by a slow volley from a rifle or pistol—dah dah dah dah. I was the only one who flinched.
Candy returned, the slap of her gold thigh boots against her legs almost as loud as the pistol.
"Dave's coming," she told us. She made a gesture that said she'd like to stop and chat but she had to see to die black guy. She bent low across the counter to help him find his weapon of choice. He looked more than grateful for her shapely offer of assistance.
A small stocky white man came out from the back room, a pair of blue earphones around his neck. He was much more in tune with the shop's decor theme than Candy. He had an army crew cut and hard stubbly beard, and wore a black uniform that was bristling with pouches and pockets.
"Hey, Larry," he said.
The two men shook hands, unsmiling, comrades in arms.
"This is him," Larry said.
Dave nodded and crushed my hand. I crushed back as hard as I could. No way was I going to let him know he'd just fractured my knuckles.
"I brought your Uzi back. We'll need fifty shells," Larry said. "No, make it a hundred."
" 'Kay." Dave swiveled and picked up a rectangular white box that he slammed down on the counter. "Five seconds of pure pleasure," he said, grinning at me.
"Five seconds?"
"Amazing, huh?" Dave seemed to think I was impressed.
"I prefer to make my pleasures last a bit longer," I said, earning a chuckle from the black guy and a weak smile from Candy.
Dave and Larry didn't like that.
"I see what your problem was," Dave said. "A joker."
"Yeah." Larry gave me the look I'd seen in the casino. He was wondering, How shall I kill him—slowly or very slowly?
"What do we want a hundred bullets for?" I asked loudly, as another war started up behind the scenes. I wanted witnesses to the fact that I didn't know why I was holding a gun.
"You didn't tell him, Larry?" Dave laughed at this, making his pectorals shake through the black material of his combat shirt. "Come out back," he said, "into the killing zone."
4
A row of tall girls in miniskirts and thigh boots were hugging men of all sizes and types. A short guy in camouflage fatigues had a long bare female arm around his shoulders. A lanky kid in an ice-hockey shirt was being gripped around the waist.
Everyone—including Dave, Larry, and myself—was wearing ear protection now. The shots being fired registered more in my stomach than in my ears. The smell, though, was strong. A sort of fireworks-display tang in the air.
I saw what the posters had been for. The clients were firing at a human-looking target rather than a bull's eye. Osama seemed to be the firing squad's favorite, and was getting ripped to shreds in at least four of the ten shooting lanes. Saddam had also lost his head a couple of times. Here, it seemed, the war on terror was getting played out with real bullets and fake terrorists.
Dave beckoned us into a soundproof booth. Well, sound-proofish. It still sounded as though someone was hitting the windows with a baseball bat.
"Look at this," he said, and pushed a leaflet at me.
It was an ad for the shop, promising customers "the experience of a lifetime." They could shoot a machine gun and then relieve the stress of battle with "the best massage in town." Shit, I thought, so Candy has to do that, too? No wonder she looked embarrassed. Though it was also no surprise she was building up a real estate empire. All those tips were being put to good use.
The photo on Dave's ad showed a girl licking the barrel of a machine gun. Standing over her was a blobby tourist with a cigar in his mouth and a manly grin on his face, suggesting that he'd just wiped out world terror single-handed and still had enough energy to shag a whole women's army. And maybe win a million-dollar poker game as well.
"What do you want me to do?" I asked.
"Fire a few rounds," Dave said. "You're a famous guy, kinda. I'll film you, you give us an endorsement, you'll bring in a few customers. Some a them Europeans don't like the idea of shooting a machine gun." He shook his cropped head and tutted.
"Is this part of the contract with Visitor Resources: Britain?" I asked Larry.
"Contract?" He guffawed. "You tore that up in the casino." His voice suddenly became more appeasing. "You do this, though, and we might just reconsider."
I personally hadn't signed any contract, so there was no way I could have breached one, but what the hell. It was just a schoolboy fantasy come true, really. You blast a couple of bullets (well, a hundred) at a piece of paper and that's that. It was just like mechanized darts.
Dave seemed to sense my assent. He put a clipboard on top of the leaflet.
"Sign this." He pointed a gold-ringed finger at the weirdest contract I'd ever read.
I would have to acknowledge that "guns can cause injury or death"—OK so far. It sounded no different to the warnings about hazelnuts in Boston and oysters in New Orleans. I also had to swear that I was over eighteen, and not mentally ill or under the influence of illegal drugs. Legal drugs and alcohol were presumably OK, though. I then had to agree that it wasn't a good idea to fire a machine gun while pregnant. Well, I thought, doctors do say that Mozart is better for the fetus than deafening explosions. And finally, I was meant to absolve the store's owner, employees, and their goldfish from all responsibility for an accident, "even if it is caused by the inadvertence or recklessness of an employee." So if one of the girls tickled me as I pulled the trigger and I wiped out everyone in the shooting gallery, it'd be my fault. Great.
"Can't sign that, I'm afraid," I said. "My contract with Visitor Resources stipulates that I can't sign anythin
g without getting it read by their lawyers. Who are in India," I added.
This was pure bullshit, and Larry treated it as such.
"What the fuck, I'll sign for him," he said. "My responsibility. What can go wrong?"
As he scribbled on the bottom of the contract, I looked out of the booth and counted the number of things that could go very wrong indeed. Ten guns, times as many bullets as each one could hold, times all those people not wearing body armor.
And so here I was, a half-dressed Candy wrapped around me, my finger on the trigger of one of the world's most lethal weapons—a product that is as famous a brand as any perfume, sports shoe, or phone in the world. Its barrel was pointed at a poster of Saddam Hussein that Dave had selected for me.
"Just squeeze," Candy said, breathing on my cheek.
I looked along the row of other guys getting fondled by their personal instructresses. Dave had told them to hold their fire so he could film me without too much background noise. Most of the men wore the expression of a guy in a nightclub when he's got a girl dancing and knows he's going to score. They were looking at me as if I'd just got lucky, too.
"Come on, Paul." Candy reached down and seemed about to give my trigger finger a decisive press.
"You gonna shoot the fucker or what?" Larry said.
Something clicked, and it wasn't the trigger.
"You know what?" I said. "I'm not." I put the gun down, backed out of Candy's grasp and made for the soundproofed door.
Larry followed me out into die main part of the store.
"You fucking up again?" he growled at me.
The girl who'd taken over from Candy behind the counter looked ready to hit the floor. Raised voices in a gun shop cannot be good news.
"Me fucking up?" I turned to face Larry. "Me? In this country where oysters and hazelnuts are considered as dangerous as bullets? Where you can't sleep with a woman without going on three dates, but you can fire a Nazi machine gun? Where you can't compliment a female colleague without getting fired for sexual harassment, but where waitresses all have to show their boobs? Where everyone books a window seat and then refuses to look out the window? You call me fucked up?"