“Aw dangit, I lost him.” Dion spoke into the receiver on his suit cuffs. He looked up, past the heads of the giant crowd before him, looking east to west for Richter. He was gone, into the crowd, dissolved like a bad drug. And he left no taste, no aura, no shadow. He looked up to the floor above (there were three in total, he was in the middle). Nothing there.
Down below, even worse.
The sound of rolling roulette wheel balls diffused amongst the endless chatter of the guests. To them, after all, today was nothing more than another ball party, an excuse to play dress up and play on those superficial things we call network connections.
Today was to be the celebration of the new owner of the Casino, Thomas Wolfe Jr (Junior, for short). And they all sat in the ballroom, a grand three-story tall room that led to the rest of the casino. It was in some way, a heart with three channels. A heart, beating and dancing with the wild blood of the wild guests. There were tables set up of course, for poker and craps and roulette and blackjack and any game and any bargain worth its weight in money. On these tables, towering stacks of chips that shared and changed hands with as much attitude as a lazy hand flick. It seemed as though people did not care what wealth was lost, it seemed like they were excited just to play.
Dion sat back, head hunched over onto a stool near the guardrail on the edge of the floor.
“Well, fuck me, Dion. How the hell is he hard to lose track of? He looks like a god damn quarterback from hell.”
The queries began. Insults, parsed in between questions. Dion zoned out. His eyes closed and he took out the small, corded earpiece. It dangled on his shoulder.
“Look for Turnus, at least!” It screamed, at last. Turnus was below, talking to Salome. That much he knew and that much he kept in his periphery.
He looked back, to the crowd, in defeat. Richter was lost amongst the sea of anonymous faces.
Everyone wore masks. They came, small and fitting and exotic with waves of golden thread. The theme, ‘Modern Renaissance.’ Dion however, had decided to wear his own mask. The Vicar mask. With, in his black suit, made him look a bit like a black crow amongst the herd of peacocks.
A woman flashed her board of snacks and treats and little martini glasses. Dangled them really, like a pet toy. She walked in front of him and flashed a bit more than just drinks.
Legs. He looked up. Hips.
"How's it going, sweetheart?" She asked.
Sweetheart. His mouth dried up as he thought of his crippled love in Germany. The very utterance of the word sweetheart made his chest throb and pain. Dion stood, nearly ran past her. He slapped himself and wandered around, looking for the rest of the Wolfe family. A family that was amongst - what must have been three hundred guests in the flower patterned carpet floors.
His eyes were scattered, his thoughts more so. He felt weak, brittle to temptation and to his own fears. It seemed that, by looking at each glass and each happy couple, seemed to make him want. The wanting of women and of pleasures made him guilty. Guilt made him weak. And so he was stuck in that loop, walking, and standing, and staring and shaming, like a malfunctioning mechanical golem. One unable to watch, one unable to guard, one unable to act.
He stared west. He should have been staring east. He bumped someone's shoulder. Glass broke.
A man, drunk (he smelled drunk at least, like nail polish) came up to him and grabbed his coat.
“What the fuck are you on about?” He burped and pulled Dion left and right. Dion shook both hands but said nothing. He looked (shouldn’t have) at a young woman next to the man. The gaze of which, the drunk became aware of.
He pushed Dion a foot back.
“You’re looking at my girl too?” He paused, almost vomiting. “You think you’re a hardass, fuckface?”
He readied his fist but found it…still. Stuck in perpetual shaking. An inertia of the heart and of the body. The drunk acted on this fear. He slapped Dion across the mask. It made Dion think, as his head turned forcibly, why was even concerned of the stranger's hand? Why couldn’t he fight? And he went back and forth thinking that, as the man slapped his mask around and as the woman he was with, tugged at him to stop. Dion raised his arm to grab the drunk but found himself…still.
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So it went, him getting slapped around. Hurting more in his pride than on his face. Hurt by the shame of the group of people drinking and watching the little scuffle.
Someone grabbed the drunk by the back of his neck and threw him. He could tell who, by her voice and demeanor. The forward gait, the efficient movement. Aenea’s fingers snapped, guards came around to drag him away and to scare off the group of voyeurs.
“You can’t shake a drunk off?” She said. “I took you for a detective, not a defective. Go do your job.”
“I’m sorry,” Dion turned around. Turnus was missing. He hissed. “I get caught up easily.”
“You don’t have any conviction. Do you?” She looked him up and down. “Of course not, I can see it in the way you walk and breath. You’re carrying weights on your back. I can’t have that right now, not when the job is this important.”
“Don’t you worry,” Dion said. “I won’t hold us back. I can watch people, I can do that much at least.”
She took from a passing server, a small glass of tequila and drunk it quietly.
“You’re a little touched in your head, aren’t you?” She banged the glass by the guardrail. “You and your partner both. I caught him arguing with himself yesterday. Nearly screaming. Hysterics. I don’t know how either of you function in society.”
“I don’t want to hear this.” He mumbled, hoping it’d die within the crowd.
“What was that?” She asked.
“I don’t want to hear this from a corpse obsessed witch.”
“Me? Corpse obsessed? Why I don’t care what happens to that damn bag of flesh. Whether the worms eat it or the sun rots it, or if the sand renders it to dust.” She took another glass and another drink. “My mother was obsessed. But I don’t need to answer to you. That’s not my job, my job is to make sure I’m ready when you give me a proper accusation.”
“Really? I thought your job is to withhold information and to nearly get us killed.”
“It’s not my fault you can’t handle yourselves.”
“Apollo almost died.” He added.
“Maybe you should have helped him then.” There was a strange silence between the two of them as if every sound of the crowd before him had been rendered null and all there was was movement. Movement without sound, as both looked at each other. Both, masked. “But ss that my fault too?” She added.
He felt his hand clench again, and his nails dig deep. A cold sweat formed around his brow that dripped to the side of his head, outside the ends of his mask.
“I thought this mission wasn’t supposed to get that violent.” He said. “You could have warned us. We would have been prepared.”
“I know just as much about this family as you do, which is to say I know it less now than I did before.” She said. “I’ve got curiosity and questions, and I don’t like that. Before this whole mess, they were just extended strangers. But now? Now I’ve got to know. Because they’re dangerous and knowing knowledge. Information. That stuff will save you.”
“And you’ve made strides to gain information, haven’t you? All I see you do all day is walk around the casino floor bossing people around, entertaining yourself.” He clenched the guardrail. “We’re doing the heavy lifting. You could lend us a hand, you know.”
“If I need to help you, what was the point in ever hiring you two idiots?”
“I don’t know. Why are you chasing after a body?”
She gulped another shot of courage. Her breath smelled of it entirely now, her eyes were glossy and cheeks, rosy.
“I’m doing a fool's errand.” She said. “My mother’s will, a blood oath perhaps. Something that means more than the material garbage my half-siblings are chasing after. Something that means more than this damn casino. I don’t need anything else besides the corpse, I’ve made due by myself. I don’t need anything but closure from both of them…” Her voice wandered. Drifted into a memory, lost in a lost time. Then it returned, coming back from that tunnel, with great furor. “I need to settle something with my parents. That’s as much as I’m inclined to tell you. And that should be more than enough that you need to do your fucking job-”
The lights went out. The crowd spoke in that frightened here-say tone. Rumors, gossip.
The pillars that held every floor shook. The ground next. People tripped onto the floor, flat and wide-spread. The screaming was louder.
And each shake was followed by subsequent silence and fear and distressed murmurings and it shook again and no one spoke before the lights returned with flickering hope.
Dion fumbled for his earpiece. Aenea was holding herself by the guardrail, kneeling on the floor. He pressed down on his earpiece. It gave off static.
He ran up the stairs and went through twin, red doors.
There was sound. A midrange voice, tired and shaking. Shaking? From Apollo?
“Come to Salome’s bedroom.” He said. “And you have to trust me, I didn’t do it.”
He said it, Apollo. And Dion ran to that room, his heart beating. He zoomed past the stairs, reaching for the place where a small crowd collected behind a closed door. He pushed them aside and walked in, closing the doors behind him.
His eyes widened, and he took off his mask, the streaks of blood ran past him and in between his legs, like parted rivers.
Dion turned. But the image was ingrained. He looked back, nervously, to Apollo who knelt over the corpse.
The other family members approached (their voices were unique, for they were both angry and nervous and as they approached, cautioned too by the silence both Vicars emanated from behind the closed doors).
And Apollo turned, saying, looking with tired eyes (for he wore no mask to hide behind), pleading; “You’ve got to believe me. I found him like this.”
Junior’s body sat against the bed. His guts torn out of a wound on his belly. His head, purple and bleeding. His life, long since dead. For any moment, second or hour or year, after the final heartbeat was an eternities worth to the dead.
And Dion looking back, as the doors opened and as the gasps of the Wolfe’s filled the room, Dion saying; “What happened?” Screaming, with the rest of the Wolfe’s. “What the hell happened?”