Neon Mirage nh-4

by Max Allan Collins

  “Are you worried she’s gonna get seduced by the big bad Bug? Don’t be silly. Ben would never cheat on me.” She shrugged. “He knows I’d kill him.”

  “You kids warm my heart with this great love of yours, but just the same I don’t like Peg being down there all alone with him.”

  “There’s plenty of other people around. Ben isn’t looking for a new lay. He’s got the best lay in the world, right here. And he’s busy with his fucking Flamingo. That’s his mistress.”

  “How do he and Peg get along?”

  “Fine. I think she admires him. There’s a lot to admire.”

  I didn’t argue the point. I couldn’t risk telling Virginia Hill that my real worry was not seduction by the Jewish Casanova, but Peg’s own misguided search for “justice.” She was obviously kissing Siegel’s ass (figuratively speaking, one would hope) to get near him and try to determine if he was her uncle’s would-be killer. It was a dangerous game she was playing. Only it was no game at all.

  “I could drive down there,” I said.

  “Why bother? They’ll be back Friday. For the opening of Cornero’s new gambling ship. You can see her then. I can get you an invite.”

  “Maybe I should drive out there anyway.”

  “She’s fine, Heller. I know she misses you, if that’s any consolation.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She told me so. She told me you were the best thing that ever happened to her. Made me curious. Why else do you think I tried to get in your pants? I’m not just another horny broad, you know. Or did you just think I was trying to give you an early Christmas present?”

  I stood. “Maybe, but if you see Santa Claus, tell him something for me.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Tell him there is a Virginia.”

  And I got out of that place. Fucking place, as she would have said. Left it to the falcons, the ghost of Valentino, the frightened servants and a beautiful woman with a lovely face, a beautiful body and a mind more twisted than the road down into Hollywood.

  The lights of Santa Monica had disappeared behind us, as our speedboat slipped into the night, and ahead was the searchlight of the S.S. Lux, sweeping slowly over the black water like the beacon at Alcatraz looking for prisoners out for a swim. It had taken thirty-some minutes to get this far, seated on an open-air water taxi that carried Raft, his brunette “starlet” date (Judy something), half a dozen couples and myself-and the tough-looking, fiftyish customer who steered the boat, looking uncomfortable in captain’s cap and a spiffy white mess jacket with S.S. Lux crest.

  The couples ranged in age from early twenties into their sixties, and all were impressed by Raft’s suave famous presence, his cigarette making an amber glow and rarely leaving his lips, his profile as immobile as a ship’s prow. With the exception of Raft, however, who wore a white dinner jacket and black tie and red carnation, the other passengers weren’t dressed to the nines; like me, the men wore suits and ties, sure, but not tuxes, and the women-other than Judy the starlet-were smartly dressed but not in gowns. These were middle-class folks, maybe upper middle-class at best, wearing their Sunday Go To Meeting duds.

  The ride had been fairly smooth-whitecaps at a minimum tonight-but the shock of the spray and the wet cold and the occasional lurch of the launch was enough to remind a fella he was a landlubber. So was the salty fresh smell of the ocean-for all the times I’d been on the lake, this felt different; there was a vastness, a sense of the edge of the world. A continent left behind.

  After such lofty thoughts, the Lux itself was a letdown. Other than the searchlight and some blue neon trimming, the Lux didn’t stand out against the night like you’d expect it to. The only sound of merriment was some big band music coming out of tinny speakers on deck, “I Love You For Sentimental Reasons,” which echoed across the water like bad radio reception, barely heard over the motor of the launch. Any patron expecting a seafaring casino that glittered as well as floated was in for a disappointment, at least as far as the Lux’s exterior was concerned. She was a decommissoned Navy mine-layer, whose superstructure had been sheared away and replaced with a wooden shed that covered the deck but for outer walkways. The Lux looked more like Noah’s ark than Hollywood’s (or anybody’s) idea of a gambling ship.

  Nonetheless, we were three miles out in a world where there was only dark water and the Lux. The ship, which wore its name on its side in huge white painted letters, was moored with iron cables and looked steadier than the Santa Monica pier. Our launch glided up alongside thick ropes that served as fenders near the well-lit landing stage. Several men in white Lux mess jackets, big enough to be bouncers but well-groomed and polite enough not to intimidate, bent down from the docking float to help the passengers up off the launch. Raft was, of course, recognized and the red carpet rolled out, figuratively that is. It would’ve been hard to roll anything up the steep stairs to the deck.

  “You know in the old days,” Raft said, as he and Judy and I walked along the narrow deckway, “there were all sorts of gambling ships out here-the Johanna Smith, the Monte Carlo, the City of Panama, and plenty more. They were real popular.”

  “What happened?”

  “When Mayor Shaw got tossed out of office, things got moral all of a sudden. We had a crusading D.A. who wanted headlines. Him and that Attorney General character, what’s his name? Earl Warren. They decided to sink Tony’s fleet.”

  “What about the three-mile limit? How could the authorities get around that?”

  “With some cockamamie law that lets ’em go outside their ’mediate jurisdiction to, whaddya call it? Bait a nuisance.”

  I think George meant “abate,” but I got his drift.

  “How did Cornero manage to get the Lux afloat, then?”

  “The Rex and all that was before the war,” Raft said, shrugging, tossing his cigarette overboard. “Times change. New palms make themselves available for greasing.”

  We went on into the main casino room, where the joint was packed and jumping. If the exterior was a letdown, the interior was quite the pick-me-up. Owner Tony Cornero, the onetime cab driver who’d become “King of the Western Rumrunners” in the twenties, had sunk nearly two hundred grand in the place, Raft said, and it showed, and it obviously attracted a crowd. Sixteen water launches were being kept busy tonight, and my guess for the number of beans in this seagoing jar would’ve been well over a thousand.

  The upper deck’s casino room was paneled in rich dark wood and was easily two hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet wide. A mirrored bar ran the length of one wall, making the room seem even bigger, and on the other wall were the slots, scores of them, like a row of metal and glass tombstones before which customers paid their respects. In between were half a dozen roulette tables, half a dozen chuck-a-luck cages, eight crap tables, a Chinese lottery, a faro bank where Cornero himself reportedly dealt.

  And people. People and noise and smoke. The clink of drinks and chips, the laughter and wailing of winning and losing. I couldn’t spot any celebrities other than Raft, just middle-class types like those on our launch, with a scattering of socialites in evening dress. Also, some unattached beautiful girls in their early twenties, with their chests half showing, were circulating throughout the casino; when one would see a table doing slow business, she’d go there and play. A nice, subtle way to use a shill, if you ask me. Cornero obviously knew his way around running a casino.

  Despite the crowd, a few stools were available at the impossibly long bar. We took three, the little starlet crossing her legs through a slit in her gown; nice gams on her, though she had a vacant look in her very brown eyes.

  “Do you think Ben Siegel’s here?” I asked.

  “Yeah, or he soon will be,” Raft said. “It’s after nine. He don’t like to gamble, particularly, and he goes to bed early. He’ll put in an early appearance.”

  “Does he have money in the Lux?”

  “I don’t think so. He had plenty in the Rex. He borrowed some of it from
me, matter of fact, though he paid it back. For all the money he’s got rolling in, Ben’s always short of dough.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He plays the stock market, and not too damn well.”

  “I thought you said he doesn’t gamble.”

  “He doesn’t think of the stock market as gambling. He sees it as business.”

  “Tell that to the guys who took swan dives out their windows back in ’29.”

  Raft twitched a smile. “You’re telling me. Me, I stick to the ponies and craps. It’s more fun and you can now and then beat the odds.”

  A broad-shouldered, slightly stocky, roughly handsome guy in a tux eased through the crowd with a rolling gait, as if the ship were riding high waves. He came up and placed a hand on Raft’s shoulder. The man was in his mid-fifties and his neatly cut and combed gray hair had traces of its original black haunting it; his eyes were slate colored and just as hard.

  “Georgie,” he said, with a thin wide smile; there was some gravel in the voice. “It’s swell of you to come. Couldn’t launch this lady without ya.”

  “Tony Cornero,” George said, after being a gentleman and introducing Judy the Starlet to the man, “this is Nate Heller, from Chicago. Him and Frank Nitti were pals.”

  That was hardly the case, but I let it slide. Use whatever card you have to when you’re crashing a private club, I always say.

  “Welcome to the Lux, Mr. Heller,” he said, lighting up at the Nitti mention, offering his hand. He had a firm grip but his hands were tapered and soft, like an artist’s. “What line you in?”

  “I run the A-1 Detective Agency in the Loop,” I said.

  “You know Fred Rubinski? He’s from Chicago.”

  “Yeah. I’m out here to see him, as a matter of fact. We’re thinking of affiliating.”

  “Fred’s a good man,” Cornero said. “He’s gonna do my bad check work. How do you like this place, Mr. Heller?”

  “It’s a honey. Wish we had its like back in Chicago.”

  “Well, I treat the customer right. Out of every dollar bet on the Lux, 98.6 cents’ll get returned in winnings. Try to find odds like that in Reno or Vegas.”

  “Why do I think, in spite of that, you’ve got a floating mint, here?”

  Cornero smiled his broad thin smile; he was clearly in his element, enjoying this grand evening. “Because I do, Mr. Heller.” He leaned in to whisper conspiratorially; he smelled like Old Spice-what else? “Back in the old days, on the Rex, a half million in profit in a given year, we considered slow business.”

  Raft said, “Whatever happened to the old Rex? I heard you lost her in a twenty-four-hour crap game.”

  Cornero nodded. “Yeah, after that bastard Earl Warren shut me down. That grand old girl went to war, eventually. The Nazis sunk her off the coast of Africa.” He shook his head, a sad expression taking momentary hold, as he considered this most heinous of war atrocities.

  “You’re doing land-office business opening night,” I said. “Think you can keep it up?”

  “Oh Christ, yes,” Cornero said, with an extravagant wave of the hand, happy again. “We’ll be open twenty-four hours a day. There’ll always be a full crop of squirrels to keep my ship afloat.”

  “Squirrels? Is that anything like suckers?”

  “Naw, my customers aren’t suckers. They’re squirrels-you know, lookin’ only for fun, entertainment. And that’s what I give ’em.” He offered his hand again and we shook again. “Mr. Heller, it’s nice to have you aboard the Lux.”

  I smiled. “Always room for another squirrel, you mean?”

  “Always room,” Cornero smiled. Then he leaned across the bar and told the bartender not to charge us for our drinks; Raft, incidentally, was drinking soda water with a twist of lemon.

  Then the stubby broad-shouldered little guy disappeared back into his sea of squirrels, happy as a clam.

  “Let’s see if Ben’s downstairs,” Raft said, edging off his stool. “Besides, we can grab a bite to eat.”

  “Good idea,” I said, and I followed him and the starlet to a central stairway in the casino, leading down into a posh dining room trimmed in sky blue where the tables wore cloths and fancy place settings with dark blue napkins. The waiters were in tuxes and the bus boys were in white mess jackets, and it was like being in a fancy restaurant except that the air was a little dank. This dining room took up only half as much space as the casino above; an adjacent room, a five-hundred seat bingo parlor, took up the rest. According to Raft, the bingo parlor was used for off-track betting during the days, racing forms and scratch sheets provided free, cutting into Santa Anita’s action by paying track odds.

  The maitre d’ treated Raft like a god and didn’t blink when he said he needed a table for eight for his party of three, in anticipation of the Siegel party joining us. We were led there, and sat, and ordered cocktails-well, Raft ordered soda water again-and then selected from the menu offering “cuisine by Battista, formerly of the Trocadero.” I ordered a fish platter, since it wasn’t every day I ate out on the ocean; but Raft nibbled at a small filet mignon while starlet Judy wolfed down a porterhouse that would’ve fed a South Side of Chicago family of six for a week.

  We’d all decided against dessert when a pudgy, pasty-faced little man in a well-tailored dark gray pinstripe and blue and white striped tie, with an obvious underarm bulge, approached our table. The paleness of his flesh made his five o’clock shadow stand out, and he was just burly enough to make him seem bigger than he was. His nose had been broken any number of times, and a white scar stood out under his left eye; his mouth hung open, just a little, as if to say, I’m just a little thick, not terminally so. Nonetheless he looked like an exhibit for the defense in Clarence Darrow’s monkey trial.

  “Mickey Cohen,” Raft whispered to me.

  I nodded. I knew Mick from his Chicago stint; the little roughneck independent had run the biggest floating crap game in the Loop, before the war.

  Cohen planted himself, smiled a little. “Hiya, Georgie.”

  “Hiya, Mick. Ben here?”

  “Yeah. He’s up top. He’s et already. He wants you should join him up in the casino.”

  “We’ll be right up. How’d you get in with a piece on you? Cornero’s always had strict rules against hardware.”

  “Rules was made to be broken,” Cohen grinned, good-naturedly. He had an edgy energy and a don’t-give-a-shit cheerfulness that would make him dangerous indeed.

  “This is Nate Heller, by the way,” Raft said, gesturing to me. “Pal of mine from Chicago. Nate, Mickey Cohen.”

  “Yeah,” Cohen said, squinting at me, as it dawned on him. “Heller! How the hell are ya? How’s your pal Drury?”

  “Still kicking,” I said, smiling, shaking his hand.

  “That Drury, some cop,” Cohen grinned. “Hates them Capone boys damn near much as me.” He gave us a little forefinger salute. “See yas upstairs.”

  And he turned and went off with a bantam walk.

  “That suit must’ve set him back two hundred and fifty big ones,” I said, wonderingly. “He didn’t used to dress like that.”

  “He’s a regular clotheshorse now,” Raft said, matter of factly. “Ever since he got hooked up with Ben, anyway. If Ben takes one shower, Mickey takes two. If Ben gets his hair cut daily, Mickey goes twice.”

  “When do these guys have time for the rackets?”

  “The days out here are long,” Raft said, signing the check, getting up, putting Judy on his arm.

  Back up in the casino, we spotted Virginia Hill, decked out in a clinging white suit with a big white picture hat and white gloves and lots of jewelry, emeralds and diamonds. Her lipstick was bright red, her wide mouth like an attractive wound. She was at one of the dice tables, shaking the bones in her cupped-together gloved hands, her smile white and a little crazed, cheering herself on, “Come seven, come on baby!” She hit her seven and hopped up and down like a kid dressed up in mom’s clothes.

  Standi
ng nearby, lending support but more restrained, was Peggy Hogan. She looked great, all that hair and those big eyes and cherry-red mouth; it felt good seeing her and it hurt to look at her. She was in one of those Eisenhower jackets, they called them, a square-shouldered, cream-colored crepe blouse drawn in and tied at the waist, with a black collar and skirt; it had a fake military insignia over her right breast, and big pearl buttons. I’d never seen her in that outfit before.

  She was holding onto a big black purse-La Hill’s trademark bag, stuffed with cash no doubt-like the dutiful secretary she was. Neither she nor her boss lady spotted us as we moved along the edge of the crowd, heading toward the bar.

  Which was where Bugsy Siegel was waiting for us.

  He was perched on a bar stool, facing the casino, watching the action there with bland seeming indifference, a lean handsome man with languid light blue eyes, as sky blue as Jim Ragen’s, and dark, slightly thinning hair. He looked a little like Raft, actually, giving off that same sleepy sensuality that could get a guy inside a nun’s pants, a resemblance made startling by their wardrobe: Siegel, too, wore a white dinner jacket and black tie and carnation. Only in Siegel’s case the carnation was pink. I didn’t remember seeing a man wearing a pink carnation before, but I supposed if you were Ben Siegel you could wear a tulip in your ass if you wanted.

  He had a drink in one hand and a pool cue of a cigar in the other, and didn’t notice us approaching. Cohen did, tapping him on the shoulder. Siegel hopped off the stool, setting the drink on the bar, and grinned at Raft and put an arm around his shoulder and hugged.

  “How ya doin’, pal?” Siegel said, in a mellow medium-range voice. “Been a while.”

  “Nice to see you, Ben. You been a stranger lately.”

  “Lots of work to do on my baby, turning that desert into a paradise. You oughta come down and see the miracles we’re workin’. You’d be amazed.”

  They broke ground on the Flamingo last December, Rubinski had told me.

  “This is Nate Heller,” George said, nodding toward me.

  Siegel turned his smile on me; it was a dazzler-white as winter and warm as summer. He pumped my hand and said, “It’s a pleasure, Mr. Heller. Really is.”