The dance floor was small and concrete, the lighting was dim, the fixtures old and badly in need of repair; but the place sprawled out over several rooms, built when land in Vegas was cheap, and featured three different stages. It was one of Greg’s favorite spots in Vegas, and he wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
Tonight the place was full of Burners. They dressed the same way they would out in the desert, in costumes that ranged from the practical to the bizarre: cargo shorts and mesh tops; leather chaps and chain-mail vests; Hawaiian shirts and grass skirts; Star Wars stormtrooper outfits; Santa suits. There were people dressed as winged fairies, as kung-fu monks, as zombie cheerleaders, as space pimps, robot gorillas, mad scientists, and evil clowns.
Greg paid the door fee to a large, hairy man wearing a torn wedding dress and foot-long glow-in-the-dark antennae. “Slow night, huh?”
The doorman shrugged. “What can you do?”
Greg strolled inside and glanced around. A DJ was spinning house music, something catchy and hypnotic with samples of an old M arx Brothers routine for lyrics. He grinned and looked around, then spotted a fire spinner he recognized as Glowbug.
He showed her the picture he’d brought along of Hal Kanamu. “Yeah, I know him,” Glowbug said. She wore a short silver wig, a silver Mylar corset, bright orange fishnets, and five-inch platform boots. “That’s Kahuna Man. Met him at the Burn last year.”
“Yeah? What was he like?”
“He seemed okay. He was a first-timer, so he was really into it. Didn’t see him that much at the festival, but that’s how it is-you can spend the entire week camping with the same group of people and be so busy you never see them twice.”
“How about since then?”
“Yeah, he came to the decompression party in October. He seemed a lot more intense then.”
Greg nodded. Decompression parties were usually thrown a month or two after the event itself, functioning as the sociological equivalent of a hyperbaric chamber that gradually introduced a diver to increasing levels of pressure so he wouldn’t suffer from the bends. The festival itself was such an intense and all-encompassing experience that the return to normal life-what some Burners called “the default world”-could be something of a shock. Decompression helped lessen that.
But Hal Kanamu had experienced another massive shock to his system by then-he was seve ral million dollars richer. “Intense how?”
She shrugged. “Hey, I don’t want to get the guy in trouble with the cops.”
“You can’t,” said Greg. “He’s dead. I’m trying to find out how it happened.”
Her eyes got wider. “Oh, wow. Was he… was it drugs?”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because the last time I saw him he was using. Hey, I try not to judge, but meth will kill you, man. There are other ways to have fun, you know?”
“Sure. Was he hanging around with anyone in particular?”
She hesitated. “Look, I’m just trying to retrace his movements,” he said. “I’m not here to bust anyone, I’m just collecting information.”
“No, yeah, sure. He was hanging out with Doozer and his crew a lot.”
“They’re the guys who built the Fire Truck, right?” The Fire Truck had been exactly that, an old hook-and-ladder that had been retrofitted into a vehicle covered in gas jets and flamethrowers; the ladder itself became a mobile fire sculpture extending sixty feet into the air.
“Yeah, that’s them. They’re not here tonight, though. I think they’re pretty busy working on next year’s project. Oh, look, there’s Neon Girl. I’ll, uh, see you later, huh?”
And then she was gone.
“Great,” Greg muttered. “Just great.”
The paparazzi caught Grissom by surprise.
They ambushed him coming out of the police station with Jim Brass, snapping flash pictures and yelling questions. “Grissom! Do you have any suspects in the killing of Paul Fairwick?”
“Captain Brass! Is it true Athena Jordanson has been receiving death threats?”
“Gil! Gil! Is it true Fairwick died of an overdose?”
Grissom stopped. “The Fairwick case is still in the preliminary stages,” he said. “I cannot comment on any details at this time.” He knew it wouldn’t stop the barrage, but it was like tossing a bone to a pack of wild dogs; it might slow them down enough to let him get away.
They followed him to the Artemis Hotel, of course. It was where Athena Jordanson was currently headlining and had been for the past four years. What Brass had discovered was that Paul Fairwick wasn’t just a guy with a backstage pass-he was Athena Jordanson’s personal assistant.
The billboard at the front of the hotel made sure everyone knew who their star was, too: ATHENA JORDANSON, QUEEN OF SOUL glittered in electroluminescent letters twenty feet high and flashing every color of the rainbow.
Grissom parked and went inside, Brass meeting him in the lobby. Hotel security met them and took them to the diva’s penthouse suite via private elevator, leaving the swarm of photojournalists behind.
“So if Athena’s the queen of soul,” asked Brass as they rode up, “what does that make Paul Fairwick? Earl? Duke? Baron-in-waiting?”
“Corpse,” said Grissom. “In morgue.”
The elevator doors opened onto a lobby that looked more like the entrance to a jungle. Palms, ferns, and tropical flowers reached from floor to ceiling, with springy green moss underfoot. Water trickled down the front of an abstract crystal sculpture and into a stone-lined pool. The two hotel security men who had ridden up with them rode back down again, leaving Grissom and Brass alone.
“After you, Bwana,” said Brass.
They made their way along a mossy path that led to a huge living room, just as filled with greenery but with one curving glass wall that looked out over the Strip. It had been widely reported that Ms. Jordanson had asked for-and received-the penthouse suite, built to her specifications, as part of her contract.
The queen of soul herself was reclining on a moss-green couch that looked like it had grown out of the floor. She wore a bright pink tracksuit, her brown feet were bare, and her famous Afro looked like she’d been sleeping on her left side. She had a box of Kleenex in her lap, and used tissue littered the floor like crumpled white flowers.
“Ms. Jordanson?” said Brass. “I’m Captain Jim Brass, and this is Gil Grissom with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. We have a few questions for you, if you don’t mind.”
She shook her head. “No, I-of course. Please sit down.”
Brass chose the other end of the couch, while Grissom settled into an armchair. Its legs seemed to branch out into polished roots.
“When was the last time you talked to Paul?” asked Brass.
“Last night, just before my ten o’clock performance. We talked backstage, I told him what I wanted to eat afterward-that was the last thing I said to him, you know? ‘Make sure my steak is medium-rare.’ I can’t believe it.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “What a stupid thing to say to my best friend. To be the last thing I said to him.”
“Did Paul have any enemies?”
“It’s my fault,” she sobbed. “All my fault.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because I’m always getting threats. Nobody wanted to hurt Paul-he was a sweetheart, a saint. He put up with me and all my bullshit, and that’s saying a lot. No, the only reason someone would hurt Paul would be to get at me.”
Brass and Grissom had dealt with celebrities before. They tended to live in worlds that centered around them, and any significant event-like a death-was naturally assumed to be about them, not the actual victim. Sometimes they were even right.