The Shadow Catcher

I tell him that two days ago I had received an unexpected call, myself, from Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas claiming that my father had suffered a possibly fatal heart attack.

“My father died on April 28, 1970, in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia. A date and place you might remember,” I say.

In the absence of a response I tell him the hospital representative had told me that the man in Sunrise Hospital had convincing documents to identify him as my father so I had driven from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to see him for myself.

“Events have proven that the man is, in fact, your father and that he adopted my father’s name after finding his body in the Park that April morning.” On his continued silence I ask, “Have you called the hospital yet, sir, as I previously suggested?”

I wait through another silence and then say, “I found your father’s Bible at his residence, sir, with your boyhood picture and I’d like to hand these over to you if you—”

“Am I to understand from this that you’re still in Las Vegas?”

“Yes, sir. If you’d like to meet I—”

“—in my office.”

“I could be there in an hour.”

“I’ll instruct the Gate.”

For a civilian, the combined terrain of Nellis Air Force Base and Range is as frightening a place as an orphaned foreign country under military occupation, or as segregated from the mainstream nation as the Sioux, Arapahoe or Apache were meant to be, on reservations. Maybe all our military bases are as tightly sealed as this one, but I doubt it, because with her multiple locations around Vegas, Nellie holds a record in land size as well as the questionable honor of having surrounded the nation’s official Atomic Testing Site throughout the 50s and into the next decade, and if you approach the Bombing and Gunnery Range from Tonopah, from the north, on Nevada Route 95, you begin to see the twisted logic of our government’s program of enlightened land use: there is just plain nothing else that could have been done with this godawful land so why not bomb the hell out of it and strafe it all to kingdom come.

When we were still marketing aboveground nuclear testing as NOT DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH and a dandy source of pyrotechnic entertainment for your neighborhood, the flyboys out at Nellis used to post the bombing schedule in the local papers so Vegas denizens could power up the briquettes in their backyard barbecues and get out the lawn chairs for a little bit of awesome fireworks courtesy of uncle sam. The last time we blew something up at Nellie, albeit underground, was 1991 and I suppose there may be some conspiracy theorists out here who might notice that that was around the time the Vegas Strip started going pyro-and hydrotechnic in its own way with crowd-pleasing sidewalk shows.

The Gunnery Range is still a hotbed of half-life particles and conspiracy speculation but the Base, where Nellie’s personnel are quartered, is tucked behind Sunrise Mountain, a twenty minute drive from the Strip, straight up Las Vegas Boulevard — and its entry regimen in these days of heightened Homeland Security is no laughing matter.

A smile will get you nowhere in this atmosphere.

Granted, I’m used to looser “secure” venues — even on the Sony lot or at Universal I have to show a photo I.D. to get through the gate and when I went for jury duty last month at the Van Nuys Court House in the San Fernando Valley I had to show two pieces of identification and have my bag X-rayed and walk through a microwave (just kidding). Rather than increasing my assurance in my safety these procedures make me feel the opposite of safe, they make me feel more vulnerable, less saved from what, exactly? From what exactly are these procedures designed to save me? Pull over to the side and step out of your vehicle, ma’am, please, I’m told at Nellie’s super-fortified Gate. I smile and say I’m here to see the Colonel. A German shepherd on a tight rein has some olfactory fun around my Michelins and two guys in white helmets and combat gear go over every inch of my car’s interior while another guy in a bulletproof vest investigates the undercarriage of my PT Cruiser with a tilted mirror on a stick. That makes me feel safe. A mirror. A device I use in my own bathroom. To tweeze my eyebrows.

A rectangular piece of plastic with the letter F is placed on my dashboard, the letter showing through the windshield, and I’m told to drive to the next checkpoint, several hundred feet away, and hand the piece of plastic to the MP there. He gives me another piece of plastic with the letter G on it and directs me to turn right, toward a parking lot about a quarter of a mile away down a well-patrolled thoroughfare, where I’m asked to show my photo I.D. again and then instructed where to park and where to enter the nondescript cement building straight ahead.