The Mirror Thief Read Online Free Page A

anything is possible.
    He’s reached the door to his room, is swiping his keycard, when his cellphone throbs to life. The unfamiliar ringtone startles him; he jumps, the door swings open, and the keycard drops and slides along the tile just inside the jamb. Curtis digs for the phone as he stoops to retrieve it.
    A loud voice on the line, not one he can place. Curtis! it says. How you been, man?
    I’m good. What’s up?
    You know who this is? You recognize my voice? It’s Albedo, man! Remember me? I hear you’re in town!
    Curtis doesn’t know anybody named Albedo—or Al Beddow, for that matter. A white guy, probably his own age. Blue Ridge accent: North Carolina, Virginia. Crowd noise in the background. Yeah, Curtis says. I’m here for a few days.
    That’s great, man. We gotta hook up, we gotta hang out. What are you doing right now?
    I’m—I just got back to my hotel.
    Your hotel? Fuck, man, it’s like eleven. You can’t go back to your hotel. Look, I’m at the Hard Rock right now with some people. You need to get your ass over here. You know where it is?
    Curtis knows where it is. He’s half inside his doorway, dead phonecradled in his hand. Trying again to place that voice. Maybe somebody he talked to earlier. Maybe somebody who’s watching what he says because of who he’s with. Curtis closes his eyes, tries to form a picture of Albedo—shrouded in dim light, loud music, the clamor of raised voices, Stanley’s maybe among them—but at the center of Curtis’s picture is an absence, a void in the smoky air, and he quickly gives up.
    Leaning farther into the dark entryway, checking the fax and the message-light, he hears a door slam somewhere down the corridor and is suddenly uneasy, an interloper in shared space, aware of the closeness of unseen others. Somebody’s been here while he was out: housekeeping, of course. For a second he can sense the strata of odors in the room—a hidden history of cleansers, perfumes, sweat—before his nose habituates and they’re blended, gone. Due south, a block off the Strip, some kind of event is going on, the grand opening of something. Four times a minute the beam of a swiveling searchlight falls through the open curtains; the suite’s furnishings appear, disappear, appear. With each sweep, the air over the city turns a solid blue, flat and opaque, and the room seems telescoped, shallow, a diorama of itself.
    After a couple of passes, Curtis pulls his revolver and checks it in the wan light that leaks from the hallway. Then he hurries back to the elevators, and the door shuts itself behind him.

7
    The Hard Rock is on Paradise Road, between the Strip and the UNLV campus—not far, but Curtis doesn’t want to risk missing Albedo, so he hops a cab and is there in minutes.
    He’s been here before, but only briefly and drunkenly, and he doesn’t remember it well. It’s small, chalk-white and curvy, lit from below by purple-gelled spots; the glowing diodes of a streetside readerboard flash OZZY OSBOURNE! as the cab turns onto the palm-lined drive. A paradeof revelers—off-duty dancers and bartenders, highrollers from the coast—pours inside by the light of an enormous neon-strung guitar.
    As soon as he’s stepped through the Gibson-handled doors Curtis knows Stanley won’t be here. It’s all young MBA types inside, college kids on extended spring break: aside from Ozzy, Curtis is probably the oldest guy in the place. On his way through the crowded lobby he passes a cardigan-clad Britney Spears mannequin, somebody’s glassed-in drumkit, a chandelier made of gleaming saxophones. Aerosmith blasts from speakers overhead. In the circular casino Curtis stops to read the mulberry baize of a blackjack table: there, above a line of lyrics he can’t place—something about getting lucky—is a notice that dealers must hit soft seventeens. Stanley wouldn’t be caught dead within a hundred yards of this joint.
    Close to the disc-shaped bar it’s even louder. The crowd,