With Criss Angel in town, I figured something as mundane as a giant flying vampire bat would go unnoticed.
And so I stood on the ledge of my fifteen-floor balcony at the MGM Grand, one of the few hotels in Vegas with open balconies. It was perfect for viewing the Vegas skyline from...or leaping from.
Don't try this at home, kids.
The hot desert wind buffeted my naked body. My longish hair snapped behind me horizontally. Standing naked on a balcony's edge was liberating. Despite being perpetually cold and despite the hot desert wind, I shivered slightly.
After all, the wind was blowing where, as they say, the sun don't shine.
I looked down at the city. An image of the young boxer collapsing in the ring came to me as I stood there. No surprise. This was the city where he'd died, where his autopsy had been conducted, and where I was beginning to suspect he had possibly been killed.
And not by Russell Baker.
Whether or not Caesar Marquez's death was an accident - or something else - remained to be seen.
I didn't need a psychic hit to know that something screwy was going on here. Something wasn't right. What exactly, I didn't know. Maybe I would never know.
I tilted my head back and spread my arms and deeply inhaled the heated desert air - air that was suffused with something that smelled suspiciously like all-you-can-eat $1.99 BBQ ribs.
I stood like that for some time, and the longer I did so, the more I was certain of one thing: I was becoming less and less human.
And more and more something else.