"Hell with it. I just bought that new place.*'
CeUini sat up. "You bought it? What for?"
Danzig came over and sat down on the edge of the bed. "You've been in Miami and Palm Springs."
"So what?"
"So you've seen some big resort hotels, the ones where they soak you fifty bucks a day up."
"So I've seen them."
"I'm going to bmld the biggest, swankiest hotel this Goddamn country ever saw."
Celhni choked down his gasp. He knew with a sudden certainty that Benji Danzig had finally lost his mind. "Benji, you're a smart operator, but where in heU did you get this screwy idea?"
"It just come to me, like that." He snapped his fingers. "I saw the place, I could see a big hotel standing there, like a
vision." Danzig walked the floor with short nervous steps. "We build a big, fancy place, the best—restaurants, bars, floor shows, nice lawns, the biggest swimming pool in the world. And we've got gambling. Legal gambling. Think of it. We can draw on all the loose dough in Hollywood that's waiting to come across our crap tables."
"Those people will never come to Vegas."
Danzig swung to face him, his eyes savage. "What do you know about it, you two-bit punk? Don't I go to all their parties? Don't they feel proud to call me Benji? This is going to be the biggest, most exclusive joint in the whole world."
Danzig meant it. Cellini knew there was no arguing with him when he was in this mood. "How much will it cost?"
Benji Danzig had never considered the cost of anything. He had climbed to the top of gangland on the bodies of the people he had murdered, and never before had he wanted anything as he now wanted this hotel. "Three milHon, five, seven. Who cares what it will cost? It will pay off. It will be the biggest gold mine this country has ever seen."
Cellini knew about what Benji Danzig had, call it a million plus. But money ran through his fingers. "Where are you going to get the dough?"
"I'll go East tomorrow. I'll tell the big boys they have to chip in. They'll never have a chance like this again."
Celhni was nervous. "You ain't in such good standing back there. They don't like you holding out on the wire-service take."
"To hell with the wire service. Can't you understand, this is big, the biggest thing the Syndicate ever had a chance at."
Cellini had one more objection. "Maybe you won't get a license."
Danzig snorted. "I'll get one. Why do you think I've been building my fences in Carson City? Other guys may not, but I've got no record, remember that. I've been arrested twenty-three times and they never hung a rap on me yet." He turned to the door and went out. CeUini did not see him until after midnight when he returned, bringing the contractor with him.
The contractor's name was Johnson. He had worked on the big dam and the housing units the government had under-
written at Henderson for the magnesium workers, and had taken a flyer, starting his auto court on cheap land, hoping to sell the building when it was finished.
He certainly had not expected to find a buyer before the foundations were dry, a buyer he regarded as a crazy man, scrapping the plans Johnson had had and talking wildly of building the biggest hotel in North America.
When Benji went into the bathroom, Johnson glanced at Celhni. "He's not crazy is he?"
"Don't let him hear you say that or he'll blow the top of your head off."
Johnson was startled. He said slowly, "I've tried to talk sense to him. There's a war on and material is on priority, and labor is short. He just laughs. He tells me to build it cost plus. That way I can't lose, but how can he hope to come out on it?"
Danzig heard this as he came back into the room. "Don't worry about me. You just get that muss cleared off the ground. I'll be ready to go in a week."
He flew to New York in the morning. It was the first of seventeen quick trips. Cellini never did learn the full details of the trip, but Danzig brought three milhon dollars back with him. To this he added every cent he could raise himself, milking the bookmakers and the dope peddlers unmercifully.
And he spent every waking hour working on details of the hotel, spending more and more of his time in Vegas when he was not flying East to quiet the growing protests of his associates.
He left Cellini to run the wire service with a free hand, and used Cellini's Beverly office for finding material. A whole army of black-market operators moved through that office, quoting absurd prices for steel, lumber, fixtures and furnishings. Danzig never argued. Nothing was too good for his hotel. Money poured out like waste water.
Danzig looked more drawn, tired. He raised another million in the East, but he had trouble getting it and he was in an ill humor. "The cheap bastards." He was talking about his fellow members of the Syndicate. "All they can do is carp
about the dough I've spent. How in hell can you build this kind of a place without dough?"
Cellini shrugged. He was relieved when Danzig went back to Vegas. Danzig's temper, which had always been uncertain, was hair-triggered. The least aigument caused him to explode.
The next morning a quiet man in a neat double-breasted gray suit walked into the office and introduced himself as Harry Manski.
Cellini caught his breath. He had never met Manski. Harry and his brother Joe were members of the Syndicate's top board. Out of New Jersey originally, they now had gambling holdings in Trenton, Newark, Atlantic City, the west shore of the Hudson resorts, and Florida.
Manski sat down. He examined Cellini as if he were a piece of furniture, then said in a high, yet flat, childish voice, "Benji gone back to Vegas?"
Celhni nodded. Cellini was being very careful. He did not know why Manski was here. "He blown his buttons?" Cellini was still cautious. "I couldn't say." "Sure you could." Manski's pale eyes were as unblinking as a snake's. "He thinks of nothing but that lousy hotel. He don't handle the regular business and he's getting big write-ups in the papers. We don't Hke the way things are." Cellini did not speak.
"We been watching. We know you're rurming things. You do a good job."
Cellini swelled. Praise from this quarter was important. "Benji's in us for four million. He don't get no more, and he'd better open that spot fast, and it better pay oflp Hke he promises."
He sat considering, as if wondering whether he had said enough. "You tell Benji that, and you keep in touch with us. Anything you think we should know, just make a phone call." He passed over a slip with a number written on it. Then he was on his feet, bending forward. "Just keep in touch. Who knows?" He was gone, leaving Celhni alone in the plush office, leaving CeUini alone to think and to dream.
Benji Danzig was in trouble. Cellini knew how much money remained and how much it would take to finish the hotel. He could not finish it without more mone)^ a lot more, and Manski had not been joking. There would be no more.
What would the Syndicate do? If something happened to Danzig, who would take over the Coast, Phoenix and Vegas? Wasn't he the logical choice?
He shuddered deliciously as the thought came. Still, he must be careful. If Danzig got the idea that Cellini was trying to take over, Cellini was dead.
Ralph Cellini tried to wipe the whole thing from his mind, but the thought kept coming back. He could be boss of the Coast, if Danzig was out of the way. He rose. This would take careful thought. In the meanwhile he had a chore to do, one he dreaded, yet he dared not fail to relay Manski's message to Danzig. He debated phoning and decided that he had better drive to Vegas.
He drove steadily. He had covered the road so often that the car seemed to know the way. Six hours later he pulled up before the new hotel and got out. The roof was on. The outside walls were up and already being painted.
Danzig was really pushing. The lawn was graded, the parking space being paved, while inside an army of plumbers studded in the outlets and water pipes, and carpenters and plasterers sv/armed through the rooms.
Danzig was in the future supper room. There were five workmen on scafiFolding near the ceiling,
setting the wood panels. Danzig had been watching them. He turned as Cellini came up.
"What are you doing here?"
Cellini wet his lips. "I got some bad news. I didn't think you'd want it on the phone. Harry Manski came out from New York. The word is, you gotta finish the place with the dough you have, and you gotta finish it fast."
Danzig looked startled. Then his sallow face darkened and murderous rage shrank the pupils of his dark eyes. "You kidding?"
"Manski never kids, you know that. They mean it, Benji." "Christ." Danzig brushed a hand across his eyes and then 176
wiped a fleck of foam from the comer of his thin mouth. "Christ."
Cellini watched him with attention. Danzig had changed. He was driving himself and the workmen to a state of near exhaustion. But with Danzig it went further than that. There was a wild look in his eyes, a tautness about his body as if his nerves were coiled springs which might snap at any moment.
"They can't cut me oflP."
"They have."
Danzig looked as if he wanted to grab Cellini by the throat and shake him. Then he managed to get a grip on himself and said in a half-strangled voice, "All right, let them. To hell with them. I'll get the money somewhere else."
"Wherer
"Where? Where?" He paced around the room like a crazy man. "Where?" He turned without another word and bolted from the hotel.
Celhni did not see him for two weeks. When he came back, he had borrowed two milhon eight hundred thousand from a Texas banking family. Cellini never knew what arguments Danzig had employed, but he had the money. He never went to New York again. He told CeUini flatly that morning that he was through with the Syndicate. He meant it.
C^n^tten, fS
Chance had long recognized that gossip was one of Vegas' chief amusements, a heritage of its small-town days. For this reason he at first ignored the reports that Danzig was building a resort hotel. But the reports persisted until he was curious enough to drive by and see. The project had stirred the townspeople from the outset, and opinion was sharply divided, some extravagantly optimistic about Danzig's hotel, others equally certain it would fail.
Chance did not think it would fail. The town was in the grip of a rising boom. In his own club, he had leased the building next door and almost doubled the size of its gambling quari:ers.
The months since Judy had gone to Hollyw^ood had been the busiest period of his life. Expanding the club had left him very little time to think of her or to wonder that CeUini had made no eflPori: to retahate for his beating.
Now Danzig was so engrossed with his hotel that the pressure he and Cellini had exerted on the club-owners was eased. It showed in many small ways, but mostly in the town's changing attitude toward Danzig himself.
From being a hated and feared outsider who levied tribute on the town, he became in some ways almost its leading citizen. This new feehng about Danzig was engendered by his approach to the town.
He seemed actually to be trying to make friends in Vegas. He bought all the supphes he could through local channels. He employed local labor, and he told everyone who would hsten that Vegas was destined to become the greatest play-gi'ound in the country.
The town's new attitude angered Chance. To him Danzig was still a cold-blooded murderer, and the fact that he was building his hotel did not alter this opinion.
Then, too. Chance admitted to himself, some of his feeling was based on jealousy. He had wanted to build just such a hotel, and he could not get the backing. Further, he feared that Danzig's hotel would be the opening wedge, the advance guard, for a full-scale gangster invasion.
John Kern had been sick for months, but he answered Chance's phone call by coming to Vegas.
They rode out the highway to Danzig's building site, past the ^vV0 motor hotels and past the barbwire which fenced off the north side as an army reserve. As they pulled up, Chance said, "Danzig isn't here. There's rumor that he's running short of money. One of the workmen overheard him talking to Cellini."
"How did you happen to hear this?"
"I didn't happen to." Chance was looking at him squarely. "I hired two private detectives to take jobs out here."
"And what did your men overhear?"
"Not too much. Cellini came over from Los Angeles. He brought some kind of bad news, something about money. Danzig caught a plane out of here that afternoon and he hasn't come back yet."
Kern was staring at the rising building. "Think it will pay to operate?"
Chance said bitterly, "I never told you, John, but I had the same idea a couple of years ago. I bought some land. It's two miles closer to town. I even had plans drawn. I was going to try to get Nevada money to back me. My theory was that if we controlled a big hotel we could keep just this from happening."
"And Danzig beat you.**
Chance nodded. "That's not the worst, John. Danzig has made a lot of friends down here, buying supplies, spending money with the local dealers. That's why I wanted to talk to you. He must be certain he's going to get a gambhng license."
"He is. If you think he's spent money down here, you should see what he's spent in Reno and Carson. We can't stop him, Chance. Did you know that although he's been arrested maybe twenty times, he's never been convicted of anything? He has no record."
Chance whistled softly in surprise.
"He has half a dozen lawyers lobbying for him. They are telling everyone that Danzig is the savior of the state, that before he moved in we were getting no place trying to bring the Hollywood players over here. Things have changed. Chance. A new crowd is in the legislature, a new crowd in the city council. They look on me and my friends as has-beens. They no longer Hsten. New leaders are coming up, men who hope to cash in on the business they think Danzig's hotel will bring."
Suddenly Chance forgot his own anger. Beside Kern's troubles, his shrank to unimportance. This was the end of an era. For nearly half a century Kern and his friends had run this state. Their grip had been sohd. It was shaken now, and they
themselves were responsible for bringing in the very thing that was destroying them.
He started the car and backed out onto the highway, then drove slowly toward town. On impulse, he pulled to a halt beside the piece of land he owned, looking at the uneven, ragged desert, at the straggling brush.
John Kern raised his head. "Something wrong with the car?"
"Just wanted you to see my real estate holding. Someday they will call it Elson's Folly."
"This where you wanted to build your hotel?" "My dream place, before Danzig stole the idea." "The fact he's building proves that maybe you weren't wrong. Benji Danzig is supposed to be a shrewd operator." "So what?"
"Maybe you can still build your hotel." "My purpose in building is already defeated. I wanted to be first. I wanted Nevada money in control. I wanted this state to be led by the people you represent."
Kern said, "Stop trying to live in the past, boy. I thought we could stay in control. I was wrong. We're old and tired. It's up to you. What you do now will be on your own."
Kern's voice was sad. Chance was thinking of this sadness four days later when one of the detectives he had working at the new hotel slipped into his office. "Danzig's back." "When?"
"This morning. He got a lot of money somewhere, and he's already driving to finish the place. They're putting on extra shifts. I heard him tell the contractor he had to open in a month."
The Peacock Hotel opened in one month. Gossip columns in the movie capital were filled with the news. Lists of the celebrities who would be at the opening ran daily. Vegas was in a sudden uproar. Local merchants were swamped with orders for food and liquor. The war still dragged on, but southern Nevada was barely conscious of it. Strings of cars drove out daily, their occupants staring in awe at the lawns which had been sodded, at the full-grown trees, trans-
planted, but looking as if they had spent their full life in the desert spot, at the white-gravel parking lot, the Italian flagstones bordering the patio, surrounding the
huge pool and making neatly hedged walks all around the building.
Everyone who could already had reservations for the opening show. Doc was surprised when Chance made reservations and told him that Kern was bringing a party down from Reno. "I don't get it. Are you and Benji pals now or what?"
Chance shrugged. "I may not hke Danzig, but all this pubHcity is good for the tov/n. You've got to admit he's done a swell job, and it wasn't easy. I hear he got that last dough from Texas because the gangs turned him down."
Doc's attention sharpened. "Turned him down?"
"That's the rumor. I hate his guts. I hate everything he stands for, but damnit, Doc, I understand how he feels. He had a dream and he had the guts to go ahead and finish it. He had the strength to do it against all opposition."
Chance took a long breath. "I wanted to build the first hotel, but I didn't do it. Danzig did, and I think it will be a success no matter how much he owes. If it is, well see half a dozen more places built in the next two years."
Doc said, "Aren't you forgetting that we are in a war boom? Wait until the shooting is over and business slacks oflF. Then we'll see how Danzig's milHon-dollar joint stands up."
The hotel was due to open Saturday. Judy got home Friday morning. She had grown an inch, and the spike heels made her seem taller, but it was not height that made the difference. She had gone away a school kid. She came back a woman, a really beautiful woman.
She could hardly wait to get to the ranch. When she did, she pulled off her shoes and stockings and ran across the grass to look at the chickens.
She had brought presents for all of them. She gave Dutch a purple shirt. He beamed as she kissed him. Dutch had always taken a lot of joy buying things for her. There was a new robe for Joe with letters in gold on the back: THE BRONX TIGER.
Joe cried. His old robe was rags, and she had remembered.
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