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"Step back and take a good look. You don't see many places like this."
It was what had come to be known as western sci-fi, the Martian ranch, a flamboyant creation of curved glass, angled steel beams and flat, kidney-shaped slabs of floating concrete. Somewhere, back around the middle of the twentieth century, an architect who must normally have worked on ice cream parlors had had a vision of the future.
"Like something the Jetsons would live in. It was built by some Hollywood sex goddess in the early sixties. It was supposed to be her desert retreat but she took an overdose before she could even move in. Her estate sold it to a rock star and then a dozen or so years later he had to give it to his cocaine dealer when his band hit the skids. The dealer went crazy and let this cult move in. From there it went through a procession of weirdos and hoods on the lam until, somehow, the titles became the property of the corporation. When the project came up, one bright boy in real estate suggests we make use of it. We've got a heart-shaped pool out back. If we stay here long enough we'll get it filled."
"You seem very proud of the place."
"I am. I've been here four months."
"Working on the project?"
"Right."
"The project that no one will tell me about?"
Streicher gri
They'd come into a big ranch-style living room with a sunken conversation pit and a futuristic chimney in black and baby-pink marble. Blue morning light was leaking through the not quite drawn drapes on an enormous picture window. A couple of hunched figures lay asleep among the cushions in the pit. One seemed to be clutching a whiskey bottle. The air in the room was heavy with booze and cigar smoke.
"Keep things fairly loose 'round here?"
"They'll tighten up before too long." Streicher jerked back the drapes, slid open a section of window and took a deep, satisfied breath. There were curses and mumblings from the pit. He ignored them and stepped out onto a wide patio. On the other side of the patio were a cluster of guest cottages that had all the ambiance of a motel. Streicher indicated that Vickers would be quartered in one of them and they started walking toward it. Vickers looked back at the house. It really was El Rancho Mars. There was even a strange steel pylon rising from the middle of it. In the first flush of the relentless desert dawn, it looked like the forgotten set for some B feature, ray gun movie. It was set on a piece of high ground and sheltered by a few scrubby trees and coarse bushes. Beyond them, Vickers couldn't remember when he'd seen so much nothing. A scarcely defined dirt road ran from horizon to house. To the east, a line of low hills was still casting deep purple shadows.
Streicher pushed open the door to the guest cottage. It was dark inside, just two beds and lots of chaotic debris. There appeared to be two figures in one of the beds. Streicher threw Vickers' case on the spare bed and indicated that Vickers should do the same. One of the figures protested with a man's voice.
"What the fuck is going on?"
"You're getting a new roommate."
"I already got one."
"An official roommate."
"Is that the guy you kept unconscious all yesterday?"
"You shut your mouth, Fenton." He glanced at Vickers. "You can leave your stuff here and sort it out later. Let's go and eat."
They walked on around the house, past the empty heart-shaped pool. Its bottom was covered with leaves.
"When the sun gets hotter, you have to watch out for rattlesnakes. They bask."
Beyond the pool was a circle of fake Greek pillars. One had been smashed. Streicher noticed him looking at them.
"The cult put them up."
They went through an arch and into an open doorway. They were inside a long, low, tiled kitchen. A small, balding man in a chef's apron was loading an industrial-size coffee machine.
"This is Vickers, Albert."
"How d'you do, Vickers."
"Albert cooks for us." To Albert: "Vickers has been asleep for a day and a half. He's hungry."
"I heard about them bringing him in. There ain't nothing ready yet, though. You'll both have to wait."
"You can cook him up some eggs."
"Damned if I can. It's going to throw out my whole schedule. I've got twenty others to feed."
Vickers stored the tidbit of data. Streicher gave Albert a hard look.
"Just make some coffee and cook us up some eggs, Albert; don't fuck with me at this time of the morning." He turned to Vickers. "You want a drink or is it too early for you?"
Vickers took a seat at a long, scrubbed kitchen table.
"Sure, I'd like a drink."
Streicher had a bottle of Wild Turkey and two glasses.
"The others will be down in a while."
One by one they came down for breakfast. Streicher made the introductions. In each case Vickers was eyed with extreme suspicion. The first to arrive was Bronce. He was another body freak who'd already run seven miles that morning, a short brown bullet of a man with slit eyes and flat, East European cheekbones. He ignored Albert's handiwork and fixed himself a creation of carrots, celery and yogurt. As they shook hands, Vickers noticed a number of old but once serious scars on his chest and a look in his eye that suggested he wasn't quite sane. Vickers figured him for a cop who'd been busted for brutality and then found that he could live a whole lot better on the freelance violence market.
Vickers had met Parkwood before. The thin, fastidious corpse was withdrawn to the point of anonymity. They'd worked together on the Louisville business when Parkwood had been attached to DTL. Vickers wouldn't in a million years claim to know him, but he knew that he could be trusted. Vickers had also worked with A
Sammy and Ralph were a two-man show, the classic combination of fast slender wit and linebacker power. Of course, Vickers had heard of them. Who hadn't? Two ghetto kids who'd taken a direct gutter meaness and sold it all the way to corporate hiring. The big debate was over whether they were also lovers. They appeared to deliberately distance themselves as far as possible from the rest.
The kitchen began to fill, both with people and the smell of bacon, waffles and coffee. Albert was now dishing out food and there started to be too many people for Vickers to absorb all the names and all the faces. The introductions became more perfunctory as people made increasing demands on Streicher's time and attenion. All Vickers could do was make a note of the ones who stood out from the crowd. Morse was a Dapper Dan dresser with a gold tooth who probably fancied himself as being in the tradition of the gunfighters of the Old West. Vickers couldn't imagine how he could have qualified for El Rancho Mars unless he was an amateur psycho with a private income. Eggy was subhuman, tatoos, chains, a shaved head and a look of desperate vacancy. Pointed at a target, he'd go off like a human buzz saw. There was no percentage in exchanging niceties with Eggy.
"Oh yeah, Vickers, meet our own chorus line. Zoe, Bobbie, Linda and Debbie."
The quartet was too hung over for Vickers to register with them but at least they didn't look at him as if he might be poisonous. What he couldn't fathom was what their role in the project might be, unless it was simple light relief. Even in their robes and in bad shape, they were so obviously Vegas that they looked undressed without feathers and spangles. Not just Vegas but creme de Vegas, they had to be either showgirls or hookers; Vickers didn't care which, he knew that within hours anything would be a relief from the gang of muscle and homicide that was otherwise assembled in the kitchen. Vickers started to make some calculations. Albert had said that he had to feed twenty other people. He assumed that the house held twenty-two including Streicher, twenty-three if Albert hadn't counted himself. There weren't twenty-two or twenty-three people in the kitchen. Maybe sixteen, seventeen tops. A half-dozen or so were still asleep or otherwise occupied. Those who were there could be divided into a number of distinct groups. Albert had developed an assistant who acted as busboy and dishwasher. Together they made up the domestic staff. Four men in various versions of military fatigues looked like simple ex-soldiers, maybe ex-marines. From the way they related to Streicher, he figured that they had to be his immediate staff. Subtracting the four showgirls and the nurses, it left a solid eight, nine or maybe more, all of whom were hired guns. Some were showboats like Morse or Sammy and Ralph. Others were cold calculators like Parkwood or meatgrinders like Eggy and A