Luke - Sex, Violence and Vice in Sin City

by Aaron Cohen

“I need another 100k for this guy.”

  “Done,” Ben says. “But not another dime. Final offer.”

  Hank extends his hand for a shake.

  “You’ve got yourself an enhanced recreational vehicle and a couple of hired hands.”

  Ben shakes his hand as Luke rolls his eyes.

  “We’ll meet you at The Stork in five minutes,” Hank says. “I need to take a leak.”

  ***

  Artie and Cecil are watching news crew vans pull up in front of the Booby Hatch. Channel 3, then 5, then 8. Hot women in tight business suits, tall heels and heavy makeup trot around the sidewalk, looking for the best place to shoot their stand up reports. Burly guys lugging TV cameras follow them around like servants.

  “Any one of those broads could walk inside, take off her top, and make three times what she’s making right now,” Artie says.

  “But then they would miss out on the honor and esteem of taking part in the noble profession of journalism.”

  “This is getting weird,” Artie says. “We need to get out of here. Whatever is going on, it can’t be good news when all three TV stations show up.”

  “There I must agree with you,” Cecil says. “But alas, I still don’t have the keys.”

  Two more cop cars pull up, joining the one that was there earlier. Out of them come four uniformed officers who walk to the main door and block the entrance. They begin turning away disappointed men who had been looking forward to bare breasts, crimson smiles and round asses sitting on their laps.

  “That seems bad,” Artie says.

  “Sometimes things are exactly what they seem,” Cecil says sadly.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Hank empties his bladder into the stainless steel urinal. The relief makes him feel a little better about life, not much, but a little. Sometimes a good piss gives you perspective, reminds you there are small pleasures even when everything else is going to shit. For Hank, taking a piss in a well-appointed john of a gentleman’s club is one of those small pleasures.

  For in a good gentleman’s club, the men’s room is a small oasis of comfort. A good men’s room features a bow-tied attendant offering a counter full of handy products, everything from aftershave to breath mints to cigarettes to combs to hair gel to condoms, just in case the impossible happens and you get lucky with a stripper. Even though the men’s room attendant is just a gimmick to make a sleazy place seem classy, Hank likes it.

  He especially likes the freshly laundered hand towel placed next to the sink when you finish washing your hands followed by a, “Can I get you anything, sir?”

  Hank washes his hands in hot water and splashes his face. That relaxes him a little, takes some of the tension out of the muscles around his eyes. He expects a fresh towel to appear, but there isn’t one. Disappointing.

  “Hey buddy,” Hank says. “Did you forget something?”

  He looks to his right expecting to see the old Mexican attendant who greeted him when he walked in, a fat guy with a bushy mustache and black bow tie. Instead, he sees Georgio, one of Joe-Joe’s goons, a slimy little stick of a man with greasy hair, hungry eyes and bad teeth. The little shit is holding a gun.

  “You owe Joe-Joe 200k and a finger,” Georgio says. “One finger for one-day late.”

  “I can get him the money,” Hank says. “I just need a day. Tomorrow morning, I’ll pay him off in full.”

  “Then I’ll take the finger right now.”

  “I’ve got a finger for you, you little shit.”

  Georgio pulls from his jacket pocket a long, thin boning knife, the kind used by chefs to do the delicate work of taking ribs out of chicken breasts.

  “Put your hand on the counter and I’ll make this quick.”

  “The fuck you will.”

  Georgio aims the gun at Hank’s chest.

  “I’ll kill you right here. Joe-Joe’s orders. He has a reputation to maintain.”

  “Goddamn it. All right. Make it fast.”

  Hank puts his hand on the granite counter, his fingers splayed. Georgio looks surprised, and then a little disappointed.

  “I was looking forward to shooting you,” he says.

  Georgio holsters his gun. He puts his clammy left hand on the back of Hank’s right hand. He lines up the knife above Hank’s right pinky, ready to push it down into the cartilage between the bone and knuckle.

  “You’re going to want to ice this afterward,” Georgio says.

  “Thanks for the tip,” Hank says.

  Hank, with his left hand, reaches out to the can of hair spray sitting next to the sink between a bottle of green mouthwash and a bottle of neon blue aftershave. Georgio, intent on his task, does not notice.

  Hank says, “Psst,” just enough to get the douche bag to look up.

  Hank sprays the world’s best hair holding spray (at least that’s what the can says) into Georgio’s eyes. He screams and drops the knife, stumbles backwards, rubbing his eyes.

  “You fuck! You fuck!” he screams.

  Hank says, “Shhhhhh” as he grabs a fresh, folded washcloth from a stack and rushes Georgio, shoving the cloth into his mouth while pulling back on his greasy, disgusting hair. Hank swipes the boning knife from counter and lifts it to Georgio’s chicken neck, putting the point into a prominent Adam’s apple, now quivering in fear.

  “You tell Joe-Joe I’ll get him his money, but I’ll be keeping my fingers and toes,” Hank says to the little bastard who seconds ago had been ready to perform amateur surgery with what looked to be an extremely sharp knife.

  Hank decides to see for himself how sharp. He lifts it up to a tiny ear, touching it just above the lobe, the blade barely biting into the soft, pink flesh, but breaking the skin enough to draw a drop of blood.

  “Nice knife,” Hank says. “Sharp. And well used. You like cutting things off of people, don’t you?”

  No answer.

  “You can tell me the truth,” Hank says. “You like it don’t you? You’re Joe-Joe’s specialist. His surgeon, aren’t you? His butcher.”

  He pushes the blade a little deeper into the lobe and draws another few drops of blood.

  “Tell me the truth,” Hank says. “Or I’ll cut your earlobe off.”

  “Yef,” Georgio says into the cloth stuffed into his mouth. “I lide id. Haddy nah?”

  “Thrilled,” Hank says and lifts his knee hard into Georgio’s groin, so hard he can feel the bulbous testicles almost burst. Hank winces in sympathetic pain as the greasy little man falls to the floor, his head near the sprinkle spatter of Hank’s urine underneath the urinal. He groans into the washcloth, his eyes closed.

  “You know,” Hank says. “I think losing an ear lobe might have been preferable.”

  He presses the thin knife blade against the granite counter top until it shatters. He drops a dollar into the tip basket. He walks out.

  Georgio cups his aching balls as tears stream out of his eyes.

  ***

  Ben and Luke push their way through the crowd and the noise to the front door. It’s 10 p.m. on a Friday night, working men want to celebrate another hellish week being over and nubile young women need to get their boob jobs paid for. The crowd is getting dense.

  They walk past the hostess at the front door who gives them a wink, a grin, and a, “Come back soon!”

  Ben opens the front door, sees cops, news crews, and cameras with lights. Ben closes the door and turns to the hostess.

  “What’s going on out there?” he asks her.

  “What do you mean?”

  She strides around her podium, her long black evening gown offering generous glimpses of long tan legs. She walks like a real lady, Ben thinks. Regal.

  She opens the door, sees the commotion, and shouts, “What the fuck? What do you cocksuckers want?”

  Her regalness only goes so far, Ben thinks as he does an about face and heads to the back, Luke right behind him.

  They meet Hank walking out of the men’s room, who looks in a hurry. “Are we leavin
g now or not? Now would be good.”

  “Out the back,” Ben says. “The front is not going to work for us.”

  ***

  Standing in front of The Booby Hatch is Jennifer Rand of Action News 11. Her assignment editor had told her to be there and be ready for big news, right in the middle of the 11 p.m. broadcast, right in front of the busiest strip bar in Las Vegas, if not the world.

  She has been at work since eight that morning. She is starving, having had a Twinkie and a Diet Coke for dinner, instead of overpriced pasta in a hot new restaurant with a guy she is considering sleeping with. Her feet are killing her after a day in 3-inch heels. Her cat hasn’t been fed and is probably trying to figure out some way to break into the refrigerator.

  “What the fuck is all this about?” she asks Chuck, her cameraman. “Where is the big story?”

  Chuck adjusts the lens, focusing in on her, something he does a lot. She has said more to him through that lens than she has said to his face.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “But I’m getting time and a half, so I don’t really care. You want to shoot some lines while we’re waiting?”

  “I’d love to, but I have no idea what to say. What is the story?”

  “No guesses?”

  “Well, in the last year we’ve done A Day in the Life of a Stripper, Stripper Aerobics, Strip Clubs – Now For Date Night?, Strippers Unionizing, How To Walk In Stripper Shoes, Working Your Way Through College As a Stripper, and, oh, I don’t know, about two dozen more stories on strippers. Is this the one about how bad stripping is, or about how cute and fun it is? I lose track.”

  “You’re getting cynical in your old age.”

  “I live in Las Vegas. They don’t give you a driver’s license unless you pass a cynicism test.”

  ***

  Luke, Ben, and Hank walk through the back parking lot and arrive at a massive RV parked in the alley behind a closed auto shop. Charlie is leaning against it, eating from a bucket of fried chicken.

  He nods a hello, and motions with a half-eaten drumstick that they should come inside.

  “What a giant, steaming pile of shit,” Luke says.

  “Hey, watch the language,” Hank says, looking injured. “Looks can be deceiving. The Stork is meant to look unassuming, but she’ll do 150 miles an hour if I ask her too.”

  “There is no way in hell…”

  “The Stork will do just fine,” Ben says. “It’s perfect in fact.”

  “She is indeed,” Hank says with pride. “Come on inside.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jennifer watches the three other news crews. They are set up and ready to go. The cameras are in position; the female reporters have their makeup refreshed. The one male reporter has his hair freshly blow-dried. Whenever whatever is supposed to happen happens, every station is going to say the same thing in the same way from the same angle. It feels staged. It doesn’t feel like news. This is someone else’s show, and Jennifer is only meant to be one of the players. She doesn’t care for that.

  A couple blocks away, she sees some guys, one real big guy, getting into a big something, a truck maybe. Its engine revs and it moves slowly toward the crowd of reporters. As it gets closer, she can make it out as an RV, and older one, rusty, about to fall apart. It pulls over to the side of the road, across the street. The lights are on inside of it and she can make out the driver, a cute guy with great hair. And in the passenger seat is an old man who looks kind of familiar. She has seen him before. Where has she seen him before?

  She walks over to Chuck, who has the camera up on a tripod and is ready to shoot. He peers through the view finder, his left eye shut. He must be taking shots of the front of the club to use as b-roll.

  “Chuck,” she says quietly.

  He looks up from his camera. “Yeah?”

  “Without letting the others see, turn the camera to that RV. I want to see who is in that passenger seat. I think I recognize him, but I can’t figure out from where.”

  Chuck nonchalantly turns the camera toward the RV. He hits the zoom button until the old man fills the screen.

  “Oh shit,” Chuck says. “You know who that is?”

  “Shhhhh. Keep your voice down. But no, who?”

  “That is Ben Two-Cans.”

  “Get the fuck out of here. What is he doing at The Booby Hatch?”

  “Is he the story?”

  “He will be.”

  ***

  Luke hops out of the side of the RV, trots over to the Ben’s black Escalade, and knocks on the door. Cecil rolls down the window.

  “We’re out of here,” Luke says. “I’ll explain when we’re on the road.”

  “On the road in what?”

  Luke points at The Stork. “That.”

  “Sir, you must be kidding. That vehicle has seen much better days, while this lovely Cadillac simply could not be more comfortable.”

  “Like I said, we’ll explain when we’re on the road.”

  “We going after Leanne?” Artie asks.

  “Yes we are,” Luke says.

  Artie issues a piercing whistle of enthusiasm and jumps out of the truck.

  Cecil wants to be back in his hot tub. He wants a steak dinner and a long, easy fuck with one the girls, Mandy maybe, or Joanie. He could leave now, grab a cab, be in Pahrump in about an hour, and…hell, it would be no good. Leanne wouldn’t be there. The place might not even be open. He might never have it so good again.

  “Oh all right,” Cecil says. “Let’s go storm the castle. It’s not like I wanted to live forever.”

  ***

  “Get your camera on your shoulder and follow me,” Jennifer whispers. “Nonchalantly.”

  Chuck hoists the camera onto his shoulder. “After you.”

  Jennifer and Chuck walk across the street to the RV. Chuck has the camera focused on Ben, the infamous gangster no one has heard from for about a decade. After all those years, Ben has become something of an urban legend. The rumors had him either in witness relocation somewhere in Nebraska or buried next to Jimmy Hoffa in the end zone of Giants stadium. And now, here he is.

  Jennifer sees the RV’s side door open, the light from inside putting a big, big man in silhouette. Around the back of the RV walk a tall blond guy (super hot!), an old guy with an insanely deep tan, and a dwarf. A dwarf? What the hell?

  She and Chuck head toward the blond guy. He seems to be the leader at the moment, or at least the most photogenic.

  “Excuse me,” she says. “Could I have just a few words with you?”

  Chuck hits the camera’s light, a blinding, white glare. Luke, Cecil and Artie freeze, staring into the camera like deer.

  “We see Ben Two-Cans is with you,” Jennifer says. “Can we speak with him?”

  Ben hides his face in his hands and ducks underneath the dashboard.

  Chuck, this not being his first day on the job, does what a good TV camera man does. He gets in the way of an interviewee trying to flee an interview. He is six-four, 250 pounds and is carrying a 25-pound camera on his shoulder the size of a bazooka. He blocks the open door to the RV while Jennifer jams her microphone into Luke’s face.

  “Lady, I’ve got shit to do,” Luke says. “Get out of my way.”

  Across the street, the other reporters have noticed the commotion. Something is clearly up. They can’t just leave a story to a competitor. The big news was supposed to happen at exactly 11:15 p.m., but the big news doesn’t seem to be materializing. Meanwhile, across the street, Jennifer Rand is ambush interviewing three guys, one of whom is a dwarf. It is too much to resist.

  The three reporters and cameramen in The Booby Hatch parking lot load up and trot across the street. It looks like a foot race between two women in tall heels and tight skirts, a guy in a steel gray business suit (he takes the immediate lead due to his more run-friendly footwear), and three burly guys in cargo shorts hefting big black video cameras on their shoulders.

  Hank sees the news crew stampede and says to Ben
(who is nestled underneath the front dashboard), “You are one popular guy.”

  Hank then shouts to the back: “Let’s go! Before we end up on the 11 o’clock news! Charlie! Take care of this!”

  Jennifer has her microphone in Luke’s face. He is getting pissed.

  “What is your association with the notorious gangster Ben Two-Cans?” she asks.

  “One more time, get out of my way,” Luke says.

  “Is Ben Two-Cans linked to The Booby Hatch in some way?” she asks.

  “I think this interview is over,” Luke says with a smile, looking into the van where he sees Charlie coming up behind the camera man. Two giant hands grab hold of the camera and lift it from Chuck’s shoulder like it was made of papier-mâché.

  Chuck spins to confront his assailant and sees Charlie, whose bulk fills the doorway almost blocking out the light from the van. Charlie, holding the camera with just his right hand, lifts it above his head and leans back, like a quarterback about to launch a Hail Mary.

  “Oh no,” Chuck says. “Come on. Just…”

  Charlie throws the camera and it sails across the street in a high arc over the heads of the ducking news people. It smashes through the windshield of a Dodge Dart.

  Luke, Cecil and Artie push around a dumbfounded Jennifer and Chuck, enter the RV and close the door behind them.

  “Let’s go!” Luke shouts.

  Hank pops the clutch, jams the gear shift into first, and The Stork’s transplanted truck engine roars, a thick plume of black smoke issuing from its twin exhaust pipes. Its tires squeal before catching hold and thrusting the behemoth forward and off into the night.

  “Well shit,” Jennifer says.

  “I’ve never seen an RV peel out before,” Chuck says. “That was cool.”

  The group of newsies stare down the highway after the mysteriously fast RV. They wonder what all that was about. It was weird, but not really news.

  They don’t notice that right behind them two SWAT team vans and three black and white police cars pull up in front of The Booby Hatch.

  District Attorney Hans Squelling pops out of one of the cop cars and shouts at the news crews, “What the hell are you people looking at over there! We’re about to shut down The Booby Hatch for good!”