‘So start talking,’ Hartmann said. He clenched his fists beneath the edge of the table, out of view. He willed himself not to lose patience. He was tired. He knew Schaeffer and Woodroffe and the other sixty agents assigned to this were tired also. They were all here, every last one of them, because of this man, and this man – this animal – was playing games with them.
‘Speak,’ Hartmann said. ‘Tell me what you want me to hear and let’s get this done, okay?’
Perez nodded. ‘You are fatigued, Mr Hartmann, no?’
Hartmann nodded. ‘I am fatigued, yes, Mr Perez. I am so dog-tired you have no idea. I am here because you insisted that I be here. I am willing to hear everything you have to say, and though everything you have told me so far makes me feel nothing but revulsion for what you have done, I am nevertheless obligated by duty and by loyalty to continue this charade.’
‘Emotions are strong,’ Perez said. ‘Revulsion? Duty? Loyalty? These are powerful words, Mr Hartmann. I would ask you not to lose your connection to reality until I am finished . . . I believe that is the very least I can ask of you, considering what I have done for you.’
‘For me?’ Hartmann asked, his tone incredulous. ‘What you have done for me? What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Your perception of yourself,’ Perez replied. ‘Already I perceive that your own view of yourself has shifted. You have come to realize that you are in fact solely and exclusively responsible for the situation within which you find yourself. You have been a troubled man, Mr Hartmann, and if nothing else my presence here has assisted you to put such things into perspective.’
Hartmann shook his head. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and yet at the same time there was a dark shadow of something that told him that the man was somehow right.
Had his perspective changed? And if so, had it been because of Perez?
‘Whatever,’ Hartmann said, simply because there was nothing appropriate he could think of to say. He would not be played by this man. He would sit and listen. He would do his part in helping to locate Catherine Ducane, and then he would go home and do his best to straighten out the Vietnam of his own existence.
‘So talk to me,’ Hartmann said. ‘I want to hear what you have to say, Mr Perez . . . I really do.’
‘Very well,’ Perez said. ‘Because you asked, and asked politely, I will tell you.’
‘Okay,’ Hartmann said, and reached out to close the door behind him.
FIFTEEN
Las Vegas was the promised land.
One time a jerkwater nothing of a place somewhere in the desert – gas stations, truckstops, a scattering of run-down and ramshackle slot-machine emporiums and greasy diners where the Blue Plate Special was the kind of mystery meat you wouldn’t serve to a dog – but envisioned as a glittering opportunity going to waste by Meyer Lansky. Lansky kept hounding Bugsy Siegel to see the possibilities, to open his mind and let it run wild – the legalized gambling, the unconquered territory – and finally, in 1941, Siegel sent a trusted lieutenant, Moe Sedway, to see if he couldn’t figure out what Lansky was talking about.
After the war was over, Siegel, far more interested in his Hollywood playboy lifestyle, finally looked for himself and got a glimpse of the Las Vegas that Lansky had conceived of. Las Vegas, and the six million dollars that Siegel ploughed not only into building The Flamingo but also into his own Swiss accounts, became the legacy that would not only memorialize his life, but also instigate his death.
Meyer Lansky, never a man to capitulate on his own vision, assumed control of The Flamingo, and within a year it turned a profit. Las Vegas became a honeypot for the wasps. Las Vegas State officials levied stringent rules and regulations to keep the families out, but it was futile. Lansky controlled The Thunder-bird; Moe Dalitz and the Cleveland mob assumed autonomy over The Desert Inn; The Sands was controlled jointly by Lansky, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello and Doc Stacher. George Raft, the Hollywood actor, came in on the deal, and even Frank Sinatra was sold a nine percent share. The Fischetti brothers – the same brothers who took Sinatra to provide entertainment at the Havana Conference, Christmas Eve of 1946 – controlled The Sahara and The Riviera, alongside Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana. New England’s head honcho, Raymond Patriarca, moved in and took possession of The Dunes.
And then there was Caesar’s Palace. Back of Caesar’s were Accardo, Giancana, Patriarca, Jerry Catena from Vito Genovese’s outfit, and Vincent ‘Jimmy Blue Eyes’ Alo. Conversations with Don Ceriano never failed to include the legendary Jimmy Hoffa, leader of the Teamsters’ Union, a man who orchestrated the investment of ten million into the Palace and another forty million around Vegas’s other numerous hotspots. The money masqueraded as loans, but those loans were as good as permanent and no-one ever thought to return a dime. No-one thought, either, of the hundreds of thousands of over-the-hill truck drivers who never did get their pension checks as they’d been promised.
I went to Caesar’s soon after the Alcatraz Swimming Team arrived in Vegas. It was vast and extravagant, a place guested by those who, some decades before, might have guested the Titanic. I had never seen anything like it before. The hotels we had frequented in Havana, places like The Nacional and The Riviera, paled in comparison. I walked barefoot on a carpet that almost reached my ankles. I took a bath in a tub in which I could have effortlessly drowned. I lay on a bed, wide like a football field, and when I called room service they were there within minutes. Las Vegas seemed to be everything I could never have imagined it to be, and though I was there in Caesar’s no more than forty-eight hours, I felt I had – at last – truly arrived.
Once Don Ceriano’s business at the hotel was done, I and the rest of the crew moved to the outskirts of the city. We took a house on Alvarado Street. Don Ceriano came down the following morning and he gathered us together.
‘People here,’ he said, ‘ain’t nothing like the people back in Miami. This is where the real deal lives. This is where we get the running orders, and we run just like they say. Job needs doing we do it, no questions asked, no answers expected.’
He smiled, leaned back in his chair. ‘We ain’t smalltime, never have been, never will be, but this is earned territory. Lot of blood got spilled to make Las Vegas, and that blood belonged to men like us, men who were better than us truth be known, and we keep our hands in our pockets and our eyes going both ways at once if we wanna stay alive. You get me?’
There was a consensual affirmative from the gathered crew.
‘Down here you got politics and kickbacks and folks in high places who wanna stay high. They don’t wanna get their shoes dirty kicking shit down the sidewalk. That’s where we come in, and if we do what we’re asked then there’ll never be a shortage of money or girls or respect. Key to all of this is knowing your place on the totem pole, and while we may not be feeling sand between our toes we sure as shit ain’t the fancy bit on top.’
Where we were on the totem pole was the hired hands, the wet crew, the guys that got a call in the early hours of the morning to go down to The Sands, come in quiet through the back kitchen doorway, turn left, left again, and there in the meat locker find some poor dumb schmuck who figured he could take the place with a blindside hand fat with Schaffners; figured he could get the dealer to catch the eye of some pretty cigarette girl and slip a jack where it shouldn’t have been; where we were was hammering that poor schmooze’s thumbs to a pulp and then kicking his ass six ways to Sunday so he and his confederates got the message loud and clear; where we were was driving a trailer jammed to the gunnels with stolen liquor and Luckies out of the desert at three in the a.m., parking it up behind a cheap bordello, unloading those cases into a lockdown garage, slipping away quietly and losing the trailer down a ravine near Devil’s Eyelid, and walking four miles back on foot as the sun rose and the heat got mighty and the shirt you were wearing stuck to your back like a second skin.
Where we were was things like that, and though there was always an element of edge to such
things, though the fun you got out of it was never more than the fun you made, there were times I believed that I was destined for so much more. And that’s why I spoke to Carlo Evangelisti, and that’s how I ended up involved in the death of Don Ceriano and taking an audience with Sam Giancana’s cousin, Fabio Calligaris.
Early part of 1970. Six months and I would be thirty-four years old. I was all grown up in some ways, other ways still like the kid from way back when. Watched the people around me, watched them well, saw them married, having kids, and then walking out on their wives and screwing some two-bit floozy who shifted smokes from a tray at one of the smaller casinos. Never made a deal of sense to me, but then I don’t know it was ever supposed to. Couldn’t understand how a man could have a family and then do such a thing. Taking a wife and children was the farthest thing from my mind at the time, but right back to my father and the way he treated my mother I could never really understand the seeming absence of loyalty that these people demonstrated. I spoke with Don Ceriano. He took me aside, and quietly he said, ‘There are some things you see, some things not. Likewise, there are some things you hear, and just as many you don’t. A wise man knows which is which, Ernesto,’ and we never spoke of it again.
Business was varied but good. There were younger men earning their scars in my place. Days came when I would be despatching one man to make collections, another for enforcement of an agreement made with the Ceriano crew. I would spend most of my time with Don Ceriano himself, there at his right hand, listening to him, speaking with him, learning more of the ways of the world. Only once during that year was I directly involved in the death of a man. A mile or so from the house, back of the intersection that split that quarter of the city in half, we ran a bookmaker’s shop out of a factory warehouse. Warehouse fronted for some frozen orange juice exporting scam, good-sized operation turning over something in the region of five million a year. Warehouse was owned by one of Slapsie Maxie’s cousins, man by the name of Roberto Albarelli. Fat guy, too fat by too much, and the way he’d lumber across the yard shouting and badmouthing the Ricans and niggers who worked the joint made me smile. Asshole was a good enough guy, but sure as hell he looked like a gunny-sack full of shit tied at the neck and busting in the middle. Rumor had it when he fucked his wife she always had to ride on top, otherwise he would’ve suffocated the poor bitch.
Weekend came around. Me and Slapsie, and another pair from the Alcatraz Swimming Team, went down there to make some book, to collect some dues for Don Ceriano. Found Roberto sweating like a stuck pig on barbecue day in the trailer office he managed on the backlot. Those days I was old enough to do the talking when Slapsie didn’t feel like it so the conversation went down between me and the lard-ass.
‘Jeez, stinks like a Turkish sauna bath in here, Roberto. What the fuck you been doin’?’
‘Got trouble,’ he started, and his voice went high-pitched at the end and I knew there was something he was excited about.
‘Trouble? Kinda trouble?’
‘Got skinned by some asshole Puerto Rican motherfucker for eight grand and change,’ Roberto said.
Slapsie pulled me up a chair and I sat down facing the fat guy. ‘Eight grand? What the fuck you talkin’ about? What Puerto Rican motherfucker?’
‘Puerto Rican motherfucker who skinned me for eight grand this morning,’ Roberto said. ‘That Puerto Rican motherfucker.’
‘Whoa there, slow the fuck down, Roberto. What the hell you talkin’ about?’
Roberto took several deep breaths. He murmured some Italian prayer under his breath. His shirt was black beneath the armpits and he smelled ripe like a sour watermelon.
‘Took a long shot on a mare that should’ve made it no further than the boneyard,’ he said. ‘Thing was nothing more than three pints of glue and a handbag. Took a thousand dollars and knew I had it made . . . dumb stupid motherfuckin’ Puerto Rican asshole wouldn’t know one end of a horse from the next. So anyways and whatever, I took the fucking bet, okay? I took the goddamned stupid fucking bet and the boneyard mule came in just before a pony that’d lost its rider halfway down the lane. Figured I had it made. Cut for Don Ceriano, cut for me, and we’s all happy as Larry for the weekend. Puerto Rican motherfucker comes down with his tab and claims an eight-to-one payback placing first in the line-up. I tells him he’s got a mouth full of shit and a head full of piss, and then in comes three of his asshole Puerto Rican motherfucker friends, and they got heat on them, one’s got a lead pipe and whatever the fuck. He shows me the ticket, and even my blind grandmother, may her soul rest in peace amen, coulda seen that they scratched out the name of the boneyarder and wrote in the name of the winning horse.’
I was watching Roberto with both my eyes going the same way. Roberto was family, as good as family got, but he had a reputation for varnishing the lies with a gloss of truth. He knew well enough that any lie around this place walked with mighty short legs, but that wouldn’t have stopped him hitting on the race winnings for a few grand. From what I could see he was telling the truth, and already my mind was asking premature questions.
‘So these assholes demanded a payback of eight grand, and shit I didn’t wanna die, Ernesto, I really didn’t wanna die today, so what the fuck was I gonna do? There was four of them and one of me, and you know I don’t move so fast these days, and they had heat and they had a freakin’ lead pipe, and it was right there in their eyes that they didn’t give one single scrawny rat’s ass about whacking me and taking everything I got.’
Roberto started blubbering then, shaking like Jell-O near a drum roll, and I gripped his shoulder and held it firm and made him look in my eyes and tell that what he was saying was the truth so help him God.
‘Sure as shit is brown and the Pope ain’t never got laid,’ he said.
‘It’s the fucking truth, Ernesto . . . those asshole Puerto Rican motherfuckers took eight grand off of me and Don Ceriano, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do.’
‘Where’re they at, Roberto?’
He looked surprised. ‘Who?’
‘The goddamned Puerto Ricans, Roberto, who the fuck d’ya think I mean? Jeez, goddammit, Roberto, sometimes you are the dumbest motherfucker ever to walk the face of God’s green earth.’
‘The bowling alley down on southside, you know?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t fucking know, Roberto. What bowling alley?’
‘Near Seventh and Stinson—’
‘I know where he means,’ Slapsie said quietly.
‘So I’m gonna go down there, Roberto, and I’m gonna find me some Puerto Ricans living the high-life with eight grand and change, and I’m gonna sort this thing out. But I’ll tell you once and once only . . . I go down there and you’ve pissed down my back and told me it’s rainin’ then I’m gonna come back and cut your goddamned pecker off and make you eat it, you get it?’
‘It’s true, all of it’s true,’ Roberto said, and then he started crying and blubbering again.
I stood up. I looked at Slapsie. ‘You come with me, and you,’ I said pointing to another of the crew. I turned back to Roberto. ‘I’m gonna leave one of the boys here to take care of you ’til we get back, okay? You try any weird shit and he’s gonna ventilate your fucking head, you understand?’
Roberto nodded. He nodded between one sobbing wretched sound and the next.
Me and Slapsie and the younger guy, kid with bad skin and crooked teeth called Marco who was related to Johnny the Limpet in some way or other – we took the car and headed southside. Slapsie drove, he knew the way, and within twenty-five minutes we’d pulled up outside some beat-to-shit bowling alley with a small greasy-looking diner attached to the side like a malignant tumor. Outside there was one teenager, couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, and from the look of him he was as high as Vesuvius on some filthy-smelling shit these assholes always smoked.
I nodded at Marco. He got out of the car and walked straight towards the kid. A handful of words. The kid nodded a
nd sat down on the ground. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, lowered his head until his chin touched his chest and he stayed there like a sleeping Mexican outside a five-dollar bordello.
Me and Slapsie came from the front of the car. Slapsie carried a baseball bat, a good solid wooden thing with a four-inch nail hammered through the head. See him coming like that and you’d piss your pants and reaffirm your belief in the baby Jesus. I smiled to myself. Adrenaline pumped like a jailhouse bodybuilder.
The door wasn’t locked. Me and Slapsie went through quietly. Could hear voices as soon as we were inside, that and the thunder of a bowling ball making its way down one of the lanes, the clatter of pins as the ball made its target, the whoops and hollers of three or four dumbass Puerto Rican motherfuckers who’d figured their luck was in when they took down Roberto Albarelli for eight grand and change.
They saw Slapsie first. The one nearest us couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. He looked for a second like someone had asked him to cut his own pecker off, and then he started screaming at us in Spanish. The second Rican came up behind him. He looked pissed, real pissed, and then the third one came, and the third one was reaching in back of his pants waistband for what could only have been his heat.
Slapsie was a big guy, big like Joe Louis, yet when he decided to run he ran like one of those small greyhound niggers, all stick-bones and painted-on muscles and not an ounce of fat to share around.
He came alongside the first guy and pushed him aside, the second one too, and then he let fly with his bat and caught the gun-puller in the upper arm with the four-inch nail.
Can’t remember a scream that ever sounded quite like that before or after. Later I figured it must have been the acoustics of that place, for the sound that erupted from his mouth was like some strange prehistoric bird. He went down like a bag of bricks and lay there for some time. Slapsie kicked him sideways into the bowling lane and he didn’t move. I don’t know whether he was out cold or frightened stiff, but whichever it was it was fine by me.
R. J. Ellory Page 28