Solstice

Two black-sleeved arms came from nowhere, jerked him backward, locked him in a hold. She could hear the sound of handcuffs getting slapped on. From somewhere there was the noise of the internal alarm. Cops, she guessed. Quite what you could charge the guy with was beyond her.

Linda the security woman came over, breathing hard. Geri Southern stared at her. She had a bad nosebleed and what looked like a formative black eye. 'Fucking weirdos. We're going to have to tag all this money, check it with the cops, honey. God knows where the jerk might have got it from.'

'He said to treat it like it was won at the table,' she said, half-hoping.

'I heard that. I know. Once the cops say it's okay, then it's clean. You get your cut.'

Geri felt her throat go a little dry, pulled the bills out from between her breasts, and said, 'He gave this to me. This wasn't won.'

Linda the security woman stared hard at her, the line of blood running down from her nose, over her beefy lips, into her open mouth. 'I'm going to pretend I didn't really hear that. You know where the money that goes across this table belongs. You don't really want to try and argue that one with the management, now, do you?'

Her head was swimming. He wasn't crazy. Not normal crazy, anyway.

'Take a break, Geri. Straighten up.'

'Yeah,' she said, and walked off to the staff quarters. It had the makings of a long night.

An hour later the man sat in the interview room in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's Southeast Area Command and stared at his hands. Mike Carney, the duty lieutenant, glowered at Sergeant Phyllis Simpson and said, 'You pulled me out of a budget meeting for this?'

Simpson swallowed hard and answered, 'Sir, we had those standing orders come through that said to look out for people making noises about this kind of thing.'

'Bad moon rising,' the man said. 'The world's coming to an end. You got a cigarette?'

'Sure. What's your name?' Carney asked, throwing a Marlboro across the table. 'Where did you get all this money?'

'My business.'

'Fine. You're free to go. Please don't cause any more disturbances in casinos. Some of these guys get upset by that kind of behaviour and deal with it directly themselves. Which can be a touch less caring than the service you get from us.'

The man puffed hard on the cigarette, not a normal smoker, Carney thought, he looked so uncomfortable with it. 'What?'

'You can go. Okay? We've no reason to hold you, and you've no reason to occupy our time.'

'Bullshit!'

Simpson tidied the money back into a big plastic evidence bag and pushed it over the table to him. 'This money is clean as far as we can tell. My advice would be to get it into a hotel safe-deposit box as soon as possible. Vegas is a nice, safe city in the main, but it's not a great idea to tempt people.'

He shook his head. 'Stupid, stupid bastards. Don't you understand me? Something's on the way here. Something awful.'

'Like what?' Carney asked.

'Take a look at the sky. Ask your people in Washington.'

'Right. It's this sun thing, huh? We had some more of you people earlier in the week. They said it was God and the end of the world. That right? Do we get Elvis too?'

'Not God,' the man said quietly. 'Not your kind of God anyway.'

'So,' Phyllis asked, 'how is the world going to end? I've always been a little curious about that one.'

'Fire,' the man said plaintively. 'Don't you know anything?'

Carney wished for one brief, sweet moment he'd lived in the days when you got to kick people from time to time. 'Okay. You're out of here — now.'

'No!' He was almost in tears again. 'You got to believe me!'

'Why?' the cop yelled. 'Why the fuck do I have to believe you any more than I have to believe all the other loons who wander in here because they've got nothing better to do?'

'Because it's true.'

'Hey,' Phyllis interrupted. 'Look at it from our point of view. You come in here. You won't give us your name. You won't do anything except sit there telling us the world's going to end. And you won't go. We can get you some help. We can call someone if you like.'

. 'Help?' He shook his head. 'You can help me? If you knew how dumb that idea was…'

Carney rapped softly on the table with his knuckles. 'Time's up, pal. We got better ways of occupying ourselves.'

'What's left of it.'

'Yeah. Anyway, the short of it is you're out of here. Now, do you want to walk? Or do you want to be carried? Your choice.'

'All I want is for you to listen.'

'Sorry,' Phyllis Simpson said, and touched his arm. He really was going to burst into tears, she thought. It might be best to get in the Samaritans.

'You go tell your people I know about Sundog,' the man said, head bowed. 'You tell them that and see if they want to speak to me.'

Phyllis took her hand off the man's arm and looked at Carney. Then she pushed over the closed folder in front of her and watched as he opened it and read the single sheet of paper there, with the Bureau seal on the top.

'This been in the papers? On the Net?' he asked her.

'No, sir.'

'Right.' He bent down, tried to get into the guy's line of vision, which seemed to be pitched directly at the tabletop. 'Hey. Cheer up. You just won something. You got my attention.'

'I have? You do surprise me. Tick-tock.'

'What?'

'Time just ticking away.'

'Right. So this Sundog thing. What do you mean by that?'

'Ask your bosses. They know.'

'It's a start, I guess,' Carney said, then pushed the piece of paper over the table. 'You can read that if you want. It's an alert from the FBI. Asks us to pick up people going around making unusual predictions of the end of the world — great request to us, I'm sure. We'd fill every cell we've got. And it gives us some clues as to what turns just your average Joe crazy into someone they'd like to speak with. That word 'Sundog' is one of them. Congratulations. You won. We got local Bureau guys here. I'll call, but if you want my opinion, they'll bring people in for this. It seems pretty important to them. So you probably just got yourself a couple of days in custody.'

The man stared at the piece of paper, blinking, and said, 'You got another cigarette?'

'No. Or rather, yes. But you're not having it. No point now, is there?'

'As a favour?'

Carney looked at the man. The room stank from his sweat. 'Jesus, I don't believe this,' he said, and threw another Marlboro over the desk, then watched the man's hands while he lit it. 'Make that call, Sergeant.'

He was almost choking on the cigarette. 'Why are you doing that?' Carney wanted to know. 'Hell, I don't think you even smoke.'

'Lot of things to fit in.'

'This being the end of the world and all that?'

'Sort of.'

'Sir,' Phyllis asked, 'who exactly do you want me to speak to?'

'Never mind. I'll do it. I need a break from this.'

'So,' the man said, half-choking on the cigarette, then stubbing it unfinished into a grubby tin ashtray, 'you really are going to call the FBI?'

'You heard, chum,' Carney replied.

'Good. Then that's me done. Some go early, she said. The best are always the first to go.'

Tears started to roll down his cheeks. Underneath the table, out of view, his hand was shaking as it came out of his jeans with a ball of silver foil.

'Who said that?' Phyllis asked.

'Nemesis,' he mumbled. 'Look it up in a book. She's the one who gets you for hubris, but I guess you dumb people think that's something you pick up in a Greek deli.'

Carney looked at Phyllis Simpson and shrugged his shoulders. 'I'm forgetting you said that, friend, I'm just saying to myself: This guy knew the magic word.'