Chapter 5

Watching endless files of mostly amateur but very enthusiastic sex sharpened my memory for repeat performers, particularly any Casino staff or other local dancers or 'professionals' that might be regularly working for SP. Several girls started to become fairly familiar sights appearing in multiple videos and one particular girl on the nickel and dime blowjob circuit I recognized nearly right away, a good natured veteran whore with the working name of Tanya.

Tanya, a lady of bargain basement status on the Strip and of very negotiable virtue, worked the late night crowd, often out of our all-night buffet lounge and was really a little long in the tooth for the cash-for-gash circuit. She was only a couple of years older than I was, but the years had been somewhat less than kind. Her bread and butter was giving blow jobs, which she seemed to be really very good at, but she would pull a threesome if asked, and even run the odd train if the money was right. Money was always an issue to her as she was apparently always just on the verge of living out on the street, utterly homeless.

Since I was now working more than a few late nights myself, it wasn't hard to pretend to casually meet her in the buffet for just for a few moments. Expecting and hoping for business, she was flirty and very willing to meet me outside in the parking lot in five minutes in return for an additional twenty dollars in addition to the one that I'd slipped to her. I had little doubt that she would show, but I showed more than slight surprise that she willingly got into my Land Cruiser and showed little concern for her safety and security while I randomly drove around Vegas for the next half hour to slip any possible folks tailing us. She seemed to be far too trusting; in her profession in Vegas, this was a recipe for a fatal accident someday. She was more than a bit life-weary and I wouldn't have been at all surprised if she was actually looking forward to her occupationally likely fatal accident, just so that she could find future happiness and peace hopefully in the next life.

By the time I drove back to the Casino and parked near our IT trailer in forgotten most Outer Mongolia, parked at the remotest corner of the parking lot, Tanya and I had actually become quite good friends. She'd had one or two lonely customers that 'just wanted to talk' before, but I was certainly the most unusual one she'd had.

She had no particular loyalty to Wes, and admitted that from time to time some Special Projects goons had solicited her for her 'professional assistance'. She refused to comment upon her former clients out of her own sense of loyalty, even for more money. I was actually fairly pleased with that. Fortunately, Mr. DeLuca had been very kind to her on more than one occasion. He did keep track of the minutia, such as when a punk kid was raiding his trashcans or a beaten down on her luck whore needed a shower and a few days of rest in an unused hotel room. Using his name unlocked her willingness to be of help, and she agreed to be my eyes and ears on the street.

I got to know her quite a bit better over the next three hours, but I didn't let her unzip my pants to blow me, which she did attempt. I was still a loyal married man and faithful to my wife in those days. Stupid, yeah I know.

Tanya didn't have any particular vices. She like the bottle occasionally, but not excessively so and didn't use it as an escape. She never touched drugs and her arms and legs were completely clean of needle marks. Really there was little or no reason why she couldn't just call it quits on the street and resume a normal life. It was just habit that kept her there. Like me she lived pretty much in the 'now' of the moment and she just didn't worry too much about the future. She could see the future creeping up on her now a bit, but she had no skills or savings for a successful post-prostitution life. She came over as a bit of a ditzy blond, but like me her thoughts really tended to run deeper under the surface and she was by no means at all stupid.

Directly behind our IT trailer, there was another smaller one that used to be used for storage by the satellite guys, but even they had much nicer digs inside a new building on the other side of the dishes that was built for them a few years ago. As far as I knew no one had used this trailer for anything other than dead storage in over a year. It had a working bathroom and even a fairly decent bed with a good mattress on it for those pesky sat-telecom maintenance problems that required a good nap to straighten out. I had the lock rekeyed and offered the trailer to Tanya for her to use. Being always on the verge of being forced onto the street, she accepted at once. She had a bad habit of trusting roommates that never coughed up their share of the expenses and that would disappear with the household petty cash the day before rent was due.

She didn't quite stop hooking completely, but she soon became our IT department's unofficial secretary and hung around our office increasingly often. She cleaned up very nicely and soon she was nearly unrecognizable as Tanya the former Blowjob Queen. She taught herself every computer skill we could find her a reference book for, and sometimes for fun my desktop geeks would take her around the Casino whenever they had a problem to fix and would introduce her as a new trainee. No one in upper management ever caught on and she soon fit right in with our merry band of outcasts.

I liked Tanya very much, but more as a troubled sister I was trying to help. We were not lovers although she had made it clear she wouldn't mind that if our relationship progressed in that direction. I didn't love my wife anymore, but I didn't really love Tanya that way either.

I thought I might have trouble with her one late evening in November when I received a phone call at home to attend to a problem at work. The code words, 'dead power supplies for two computers' told me that I had two new dead bodies to be disposed of. As usual, I loaded up the stiffs into my Land Cruiser behind my office from out of the non-descript van that had hauled them from the murder scene, this blocked the view any watchers might have from the parking lot. Normally this loading area was extremely private. No one but me knew that the other trailer, which now had a curious face staring out a window was occupied.

It wouldn't have surprised me if Tanya had skipped out that very night after I left for Carcosa, but she stayed and never really asked me anything about my business, nor did it affect our relationship (still non-sexual) in any way. She did make one smiling comment to me upon our next meeting two days later that she was glad I had an 'odd part-time late night job too' to keep me from getting too bored. We nodded at each other and joked about the 'things we both had to do to keep a roof over our heads!'

It was on one of these last trips to Carcosa in the spring of 2003 that my eyes began to open about the wider and stranger world around me, in oh so many different ways.

It was the first couple of warm days of early spring and I had three bodies stacked up in a warehouse that were past due for being disposed of. It had been a very light year for snow, but I hadn't been willing to risk the mountain trip up to Carcosa until I was sure that all of the snow was off of the road. The route there in mid-summer is bad enough, but no one is crazy enough to make that drive in the snow.

I had travelled to that remote ghost town enough that I was starting to write the only modern definitive travel article about it (to be significantly revised over the next year) and me and my Toyota were becoming a familiar sight there. It had taken over ten years but the local resident miners were starting to show me a bit of interest.

For this visit, I was in unusually good humor and I decided to up the ante and I bought a few cases of whisky on my way out of town. Not top shelf stuff, but not bargain rotgut either. A case each of Jack Daniels, Jim Beam and Wild Turkey. I divided these up and left these gifts on the doorsteps of each of the miner's trailers. I didn't knock or anything, since I didn't really have anything to say to them other than 'thanks for leaving me alone — let's keep it that way!'

I did my usual business and then played around for a while at my favorite ruined house, the burned remains of what I was sure was the old town movie theater. I always fantasized that someday I'd hit the mother lode and discover a jackpot of old silent era movie film reels, protected in some buried basement. Since I always carried a shovel with me I usually killed a few hours each visit by moving a bit of the dirt out of the way of the exposed foundation, hoping to find some buried basement stairs someday.

"Body man, you won't find anything down there." I heard a voice behind me say matter of factly.

I turned around slowly with a hand on my holstered pistol to give him a look-over. He looked just like some archetypical wild western prospector complete with the grungy beard. His eyes were a bit wild looking and they didn't blink nearly as much as they ought to have done, in my opinion. Definitely a crazy old coot!

"Oh? I was rather hoping I would ... are you sure about that?"

"Quite. You won't find a single old silver coin there. For starters, you're at the wrong spot — the bank was across the street and two houses down that way."

"Good, then I am digging in the right spot. I think this was the old movie theater, and I'm looking for a different kind of silver altogether - silver halide on cellulose nitrate, that's what they made antique film stock out of. I'm looking for the remains of any old silent movies that the theater might have stored in their cellar before the big 1926 fire."

"Old movies ... kind of like them things wound up in metal reels, packed flat, maybe in wooden crates? Something sort of like that? I might have seen one or two of those kind of things about."

The old codger suddenly realized he might have said too much and went cold silent on me.

"I don't suppose for a suitable reward or finder's fee, you'd show me where you'd seen some crates like this ... maybe underground somewhere? I'd sure be plenty grateful."

"It's not safe for you to be poking around, no how. Especially now, especially underground. Too many bad strangers, like those church men around putting their noses into things that don't concern them none. The 'hidden ones' say that things are going to get bad soon — very bad. Only dreadful things will happen if you return. Dreadful! Mark my words. We thank you for your gifts today, and for feeding the 'old race', but you should stay away now — go home and don't return, it's not safe for your kind."

Something about his crazy unblinking eyes told me that he meant it and I'd never get another word out of him. He had secrets to protect and they'd go to his grave with him. I packed up my shovel and slowly left town, but not before noting which old trailer he retreated into. Warning or not, I was pretty sure that I'd be back again fairly soon. Wesley's little range war was still percolating on and off, and sooner or later there would be more food for the hidden and secretive 'old race'.

Old race indeed! Heh, that was just crazy talk from a grizzled old crazy prospector! I didn't give it a second thought until very late that night home in bed tossing and turning unable to sleep.