The Eyes of Darkness Page 3

  Joel had convinced her that she’d have no difficulty matching his pace or meeting his standards, and that she was equal to the challenge. He helped her to discover new reserves of energy, new areas of competence in herself. He had become not just a valued business associate, but a good friend as well, a big brother.

  Now they seemed to have shaped a hit show together.

  As Tina stood in this beautiful theater, glancing down at the colorfully costumed people milling about on the stage, then looking at Joel’s rubbery face, listening as her co-producer unblushingly raved about their handiwork, she was happier than she had been in a long time. If the audience at this evening’s VIP premiere reacted enthusiastically, she might have to buy lead weights to keep herself from floating off the floor when she walked.

  Twenty minutes later, at 3:45, she stepped onto the smooth cobblestones in front of the hotel’s main entrance and handed her claim check to the valet parking attendant. While he went to fetch her Honda, she stood in the warm late-afternoon sunshine, unable to stop grinning.

  She turned and looked back at the Golden Pyramid Hotel-Casino. Her future was inextricably linked to that gaudy but undeniably impressive pile of concrete and steel. The heavy bronze and glass revolving doors glittered as they spun with a steady flow of people. Ramparts of pale pink stone stretched hundreds of feet on both sides of the entrance; those walls were windowless and garishly decorated with giant stone coins, a gushing torrent of coins flooding from a stone cornucopia. Directly overhead, the ceiling of the immense porte cochere was lined with hundreds of lights; none of the bulbs were burning now, but after nightfall they would rain dazzling, golden luminosity upon the glossy cobblestones below. The Pyramid had been built at a cost in excess of four hundred million dollars, and the owners had made certain that every last dime showed. Tina supposed that some people would say this hotel was gross, crass, tasteless, ugly — but she loved the place because it was here that she had been given her big chance.

  Thus far, the thirtieth of December had been a busy, noisy, exciting day at the Pyramid. After the relative quiet of Christmas week, an uninterrupted stream of guests was pouring through the front doors. Advance bookings indicated a record New Year’s holiday crowd for Las Vegas. The Pyramid, with almost three thousand rooms, was booked to capacity, as was every hotel in the city. At a few minutes past eleven o’clock, a secretary from San Diego put five dollars in a slot machine and hit a jackpot worth $495,000; word of that even reached backstage in the showroom. Shortly before noon, two high rollers from Dallas sat down at a blackjack table and, in three hours, lost a quarter of a million bucks; they were laughing and joking when they left the table to try another game. Carol Hirson, a cocktail waitress who was a friend of Tina’s, had told her about the unlucky Texans a few minutes ago. Carol had been shiny-eyed and breathless because the high rollers had tipped her with green chips, as if they’d been winning instead of losing; for bringing them half a dozen drinks, she had collected twelve hundred dollars.

  Sinatra was in town, at Caesar’s Palace, perhaps for the last time, and even at eighty years of age, he generated more excitement in Vegas than any other famous name. Along the entire Strip and in the less posh but nonetheless jammed casinos downtown, things were jumping, sparking.

  And in just four hours Magyck! would premiere.

  The valet brought Tina’s car, and she tipped him.

  He said, “Break a leg tonight, Tina.”

  “God, I hope so.”

  She was home by 4:15. She had two and a half hours to fill before she had to leave for the hotel again.

  She didn’t need that much time to shower, apply her makeup, and dress, so she decided to pack some of Danny’s belongings. Now was the right time to begin the unpleasant chore. She was in such an excellent mood that she didn’t think even the sight of his room would be able to bring her down, as it usually did. No use putting it off until Thursday, as she had planned. She had at least enough time to make a start, box up the boy’s clothes, if nothing else.

  When she went into Danny’s bedroom, she saw at once that the easel-chalkboard had been knocked over again. She put it right.

  Two words were printed on the slate:

  NOT DEAD

  A chill swept down her back.

  Last night, after drinking the bourbon, had she come back here in some kind of fugue and…?

  No.

  She hadn’t blacked out. She had not printed those words. She wasn’t going crazy. She wasn’t the sort of person who would snap over a thing like this. Not even a thing like this. She was tough. She had always prided herself on her toughness and her resiliency.

  Snatching up the felt eraser, she vigorously wiped the slate clean.

  Someone was playing a sick, nasty trick on her. Someone had come into the house while she was out and had printed those two words on the chalkboard again. Whoever it was, he wanted to rub her face in the tragedy that she was trying so hard to forget.

  The only other person who had a right to be in the house was the cleaning woman, Vivienne Neddler. Vivienne had been scheduled to work this afternoon, but she’d canceled. Instead, she was coming in for a few hours this evening, while Tina was at the premiere.

  But even if Vivienne had kept her scheduled appointment, she never would have written those words on the chalkboard. She was a sweet old woman, feisty and independent-minded but not the type to play cruel pranks.

  For a moment Tina racked her mind, searching for someone to blame, and then a name occurred to her. It was the only possible suspect. Michael. Her ex-husband. There was no sign that anyone had broken into the house, no obvious evidence of forced entry, and Michael was the only other person with a key. She hadn’t changed the locks after the divorce.

  Shattered by the loss of his son, Michael had been irrationally vicious with Tina for months after the funeral, accusing her of being responsible for Danny’s death. She had given Danny permission to go on the field trip, and as far as Michael was concerned, that had been equivalent to driving the bus off the cliff. But Danny had wanted to go to the mountains more than anything else in the world. Besides, Mr. Jaborski, the scoutmaster, had taken other groups of scouts on winter survival hikes every year for sixteen years, and no one had been even slightly injured. They didn’t hike all the way into the true wilderness, just a reasonable distance off the beaten path, and they planned for every contingency. The experience was supposed to be good for a boy. Safe. Carefully managed. Everyone assured her there was no chance of trouble. She’d had no way of knowing that Jaborski’s seventeenth trip would end in disaster, yet Michael blamed her. She’d thought he had regained his perspective during the last few months, but evidently not.

  She stared at the chalkboard, thought of the two words that had been printed there, and anger swelled in her. Michael was behaving like a spiteful child. Didn’t he realize that her grief was as difficult to bear as his? What was he trying to prove?

  Furious, she went into the kitchen, picked up the telephone, and dialed Michael’s number. After five rings she realized that he was at work, and she hung up.

  In her mind the two words burned, white on black: NOT DEAD.

  This evening she would call Michael, when she got home from the premiere and the party afterward. She was certain to be quite late, but she wasn’t going to worry about waking him.

  She stood indecisively in the center of the small kitchen, trying to find the willpower to go to Danny’s room and box his clothes, as she had planned. But she had lost her nerve. She couldn’t go in there again. Not today. Maybe not for a few days.

  Damn Michael.

  In the refrigerator was a half-empty bottle of white wine. She poured a glassful and carried it into the master bath.

  She was drinking too much. Bourbon last night. Wine now. Until recently, she had rarely used alcohol to calm her nerves — but now it was her cure of first resort. Once she had gotten through the premiere of Magyck!, she’d better start cutting back on the booze. Now she
desperately needed it.

  She took a long shower. She let the hot water beat down on her neck for several minutes, until the stiffness in her muscles melted and flowed away.

  After the shower, the chilled wine further relaxed her body, although it did little to calm her mind and allay her anxiety. She kept thinking of the chalkboard.

  NOT DEAD.

  Chapter Four

  At 6:50 Tina was again backstage in the showroom. The place was relatively quiet, except for the muffled oceanic roar of the VIP crowd that waited in the main showroom, beyond the velvet curtains.

  Eighteen hundred guests had been invited — Las Vegas movers and shakers, plus high rollers from out of town. More than fifteen hundred had returned their RSVP cards.

  Already, a platoon of white-coated waiters, waitresses in crisp blue uniforms, and scurrying busboys had begun serving the dinners. The choice was filet mignon with Bernaise sauce or lobster in butter sauce, because Las Vegas was the one place in the United States where people at least temporarily set aside concerns about cholesterol. In the health-obsessed final decade of the century, eating fatty foods was widely regarded as a far more delicious — and more damning — sin than envy, sloth, thievery, and adultery.

  By seven-thirty the backstage area was bustling. Technicians double-checked the motorized sets, the electrical connections, and the hydraulic pumps that raised and lowered portions of the stage. Stagehands counted and arranged props. Wardrobe women mended tears and sewed up unraveled hems that had been discovered at the last minute. Hairdressers and lighting technicians rushed about on urgent tasks. Male dancers, wearing black tuxedos for the opening number, stood tensely, an eye-pleasing collection of lean, handsome types.

  Dozens of beautiful dancers and showgirls were backstage too. Some wore satin and lace. Others wore velvet and rhinestones — or feathers or sequins or furs, and a few were topless. Many were still in the communal dressing rooms, while other girls, already costumed, waited in the halls or at the edge of the big stage, talking about children and husbands and boyfriends and recipes, as if they were secretaries on a coffee break and not some of the most beautiful women in the world.

  Tina wanted to stay in the wings throughout the performance, but she could do nothing more behind the curtains. Magyck! was now in the hands of the performers and technicians.

  Twenty-five minutes before showtime Tina left the stage and went into the noisy showroom. She headed toward the center booth in the VIP row, where Charles Mainway, general manager and principal stockholder of the Golden Pyramid Hotel, waited for her.

  She stopped first at the booth next to Mainway’s. Joel Bandiri was with Eva, his wife of eight years, and two of their friends. Eva was twenty-nine, seventeen years younger than Joel, and at five foot eight, she was also four inches taller than he was. She was an ex-showgirl, blond, willowy, delicately beautiful. She gently squeezed Tina’s hand. “Don’t worry. You’re too good to fail.”

  “We got a hit, kid,” Joel assured Tina once more.

  In the next semicircular booth, Charles Mainway greeted Tina with a warm smile. Mainway carried and held himself as if he were an aristocrat, and his mane of silver hair and his clear blue eyes contributed to the image he wished to project. However, his features were large, square, and utterly without evidence of patrician blood, and even after the mellowing influences of elocution teachers, his naturally low, gravelly voice belied his origins in a rough Brooklyn neighborhood.

  As Tina slid into the booth beside Mainway, a tuxedoed captain appeared and filled her glass with Dom Pérignon.

  Helen Mainway, Charlie’s wife, sat at his left side. Helen was by nature everything that poor Charlie struggled to be: impeccably well-mannered, sophisticated, graceful, at ease and confident in any situation. She was tall, slender, striking, fifty-five years old but able to pass for a well-preserved forty.

  “Tina, my dear, I want you to meet a friend of ours,” Helen said, indicating the fourth person in the booth. “This is Elliot Stryker. Elliot, this lovely young lady is Christina Evans, the guiding hand behind Magyck!”

  “One of two guiding hands,” Tina said. “Joel Bandiri is more responsible for the show than I am — especially if it’s a flop.”

  Stryker laughed. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Evans.”

  “Just plain Tina,” she said.

  “And I’m just plain Elliot.”

  He was a rugged, good-looking man, neither big nor small, about forty. His dark eyes were deeply set, quick, marked by intelligence and amusement.

  “Elliot’s my attorney,” Charlie Mainway said.

  “Oh,” Tina said, “I thought Harry Simpson—”

  “Harry’s a hotel attorney. Elliot handles my private affairs.”

  “And handles them very well,” Helen said. “Tina, if you need an attorney, this is the best in Las Vegas.”

  To Tina, Stryker said, “But if it’s flattery you need — and I’m sure you already get a lot of it, lovely as you are — no one in Vegas can flatter with more charm and style than Helen.”

  “You see what he just did?” Helen asked Tina, clapping her hands with delight. “In one sentence he managed to flatter you, flatter me, and impress all of us with his modesty. You see what a wonderful attorney he is?”

  “Imagine him arguing a point in court,” Charlie said.

  “A very smooth character indeed,” Helen said.

  Stryker winked at Tina. “Smooth as I might be, I’m no match for these two.”

  They made pleasant small talk for the next fifteen minutes, and none of it had to do with Magyck! Tina was aware that they were trying to take her mind off the show, and she appreciated their effort.

  Of course no amount of amusing talk, no quantity of icy Dom Pérignon could render her unaware of the excitement that was building in the showroom as curtain time drew near. Minute by minute the cloud of cigarette smoke overhead thickened. Waitresses, waiters, and captains rushed back and forth to fill the drink orders before the show began. The roar of conversation grew louder as the sounds ticked away, and the quality of the roar became more frenetic, gayer, and more often punctuated with laughter.

  Somehow, even though her attention was partly on the mood of the crowd, partly on Helen and Charlie Mainway, Tina was nevertheless aware of Elliot Stryker’s reaction to her. He made no great show of being more than ordinarily interested in her, but the attraction she held for him was evident in his eyes. Beneath his cordial, witty, slightly cool exterior, his secret response was that of a healthy male animal, and her awareness of it was more instinctual than intellectual, like a mare’s response to the stallion’s first faint stirrings of desire.

  At least a year and a half, maybe two years, had passed since a man had looked at her in quite that fashion. Or perhaps this was the first time in all those months that she had been aware of being the object of such interest. Fighting with Michael, coping with the shock of separation and divorce, grieving for Danny, and putting together the show with Joel Bandiri had filled her days and nights, so she’d had no chance to think of romance.

  Responding to the unspoken need in Elliot’s eyes with a need of her own, she was suddenly warm.

  She thought: My God, I’ve been letting myself dry up! How could I have forgotten this!

  Now that she had spent more than a year grieving for her broken marriage and for her lost son, now that Magyck! was almost behind her, she would have time to be a woman again. She would make time.

  Time for Elliot Stryker? She wasn’t sure. No reason to be in a hurry to make up for lost pleasures. She shouldn’t jump at the first man who wanted her. Surely that wasn’t the smart thing to do. On the other hand, he was handsome, and in his face was an appealing gentleness. She had to admit that he sparked the same feelings in her that she apparently enflamed in him.

  The evening was turning out to be even more interesting than she had expected.

  Chapter Five

  Vivienne Neddler parked her vintage 1955 Nash Rambler
at the curb in front of the Evans house, being careful not to scrape the whitewalls. The car was immaculate, in better shape than most new cars these days. In a world of planned obsolescence, Vivienne took pleasure in getting long, full use out of everything that she bought, whether it was a toaster or an automobile. She enjoyed making things last.

  She had lasted quite a while herself. She was seventy, still in excellent health, a short sturdy woman with the sweet face of a Botticelli Madonna and the no-nonsense walk of an army sergeant.

  She got out of the car and, carrying a purse the size of a small suitcase, marched up the walk toward the house, angling away from the front door and past the garage.

  The sulfur-yellow light from the street lamps failed to reach all the way across the lawn. Beside the front walkway and then along the side of the house, low-voltage landscape lighting revealed the path.

  Oleander bushes rustled in the breeze. Overhead, palm fronds scraped softly against one another.

  As Vivienne reached the back of the house, the crescent moon slid out from behind one of the few thin clouds, like a scimitar being drawn from a scabbard, and the pale shadows of palms and melaleucas shivered on the lunar-silvered concrete patio.

  Vivienne let herself in through the kitchen door. She’d been cleaning for Tina Evans for two years, and she had been entrusted with a key nearly that long.

  The house was silent except for the softly humming refrigerator.

  Vivienne began work in the kitchen. She wiped the counters and the appliances, sponged off the slats of the Levolor blinds, and mopped the Mexican-tile floor. She did a first-rate job. She believed in the moral value of hard work, and she always gave her employers their money’s worth.