by Bill Beverly
“City of sin, my niggers,” drawled Michael Wilson, steering now with one hand.
He and Walter leaned out their windows, ogling, here and there letting out a holler. Evening, desert air. East sounded out the names as they passed: MGM. Aladdin. Bellagio. Flamingo. Treasure Island. Stardust. Riviera.
“Just like Disneyland, man,” Michael Wilson added.
Couples. Women in pairs or threes. Men in vast teams. Families fitted out with prizes and bags. Wandering blind, their shadows spilling out in eight directions, walking like nobody walked in The Boxes.
“ ‘Biggest payouts on the strip,’ ” Michael Wilson read with a growl.
“But every sign’s saying that,” replied Walter.
Abruptly Michael Wilson sat up and swung the van into a parking lot. Wasn’t any gas station here, East noted, but he let Michael snake the van back where low glaring lights caromed off tall buses and campers. A colonnaded canopy shone ahead, dancing in neon light. Michael aimed them that way.
“Michael,” East prodded. “Just getting gas, right?”
“Sure,” Michael Wilson said. They swooped in under the overhang to find one yellow rectangle outlined on the pavement just down from the door, a car just pulling out of it. Michael eased the van in there and parked it. Lights dancing in the wet of his eyes.
“You boys want to take a look?”
“Hell yes,” Walter said, already rolling out.
“Hey,” East insisted.
“Don’t worry, E,” Michael Wilson said. “I know you’re on tight. But you basic street Negroes don’t get to Vegas every day. We got to see this, man. Half a minute.”
A tall lady in a silver cocktail dress and heels wafted by, shiny. Then it was Ty, brushing past without a word. East reached in vain, but his brother was already out the sliding door. Damn.
So this is how Michael Wilson was going to do it. Sudden turns and promises.
To his left, a line of columns and potted palms. Lights moving on everything. They riled East, set his mind jumping. To the right, Ty wandered on the pavement, skinny, behind him a long row of golden doors. East clutched at his red blanket unhappily.
“Come on, Easy. It can’t be that bad,” Michael Wilson crooned. “If you scared, later I’ll have fat boy read you a story.”
—
The black carpet seemed limitless. Patterned neon curlicues forever, up steps, down ramps, no ceiling above, just the blinking lights on a thousand machines with their nonstop ringing jangle. The din was aggravating. East had seen a casino on TV—that gave no hint of how it would be, like a factory, a city, clanging, clanging, bells that weren’t real, that couldn’t be stilled, from distances that weren’t real either. Clanging that didn’t matter, signaled nothing, just made up the air of the place. Everything clanging.
Just the banks and banks of lighted boxes, and placed before each one, a person, rapturously lit.
Signs on the pillars warned, NO PERSONS UNDER THE AGE OF 18! But nobody was stepping after them: the doormen, the head-nodding security with ear coils, the waitresses with drinks in monogrammed glasses, the burly Mexican women wheelchairing old folks with oxygen tanks. Nobody accused Ty. No one watched with a purpose.
These people looked drugged, East thought, or lost.
He straightened his shirt and made to catch up. Michael Wilson was monologuing: Yeah, yeah, I’m a show you what’s tight. Headed for something. Then at the end of a long, littered aisle, they came upon a clearing and a low, carpeted mesa—three shallow steps up. Glowing green tables in formation, ringed by white people. Michael Wilson took the steps at a trot, and the boys flocked along.
East hung back, parked himself on a column. Tried to see, not to be seen. He watched people eyeing the boys as Walter and Ty milled behind Michael’s shoulder, peering down at the green felt.
Michael wedged himself in between two white women in dresses that noted the bones of their backs. “Deal me in, man,” he demanded, fanning a handful of twenties. Sidney’s money, East thought. Fin’s money.
The dealer was the second black man at the table. Tall and prim with a silver clef on his tie. Neat. “Hey, brother,” Michael Wilson addressed him, more directly. “Deal me in.”
Now everyone looked up at this university Negro with his money hanging out.
The dealer pursed his lips; his politeness was contempt. “Please, sir. First you put value on a card. Then at the table you buy chips.”
The money levitated in Michael Wilson’s hand. His answer.
“This is not a cash game, sir.”
“Oh. It isn’t.” Not a question, a challenge. No one else spoke. “Okay, my brother,” Michael Wilson purred. “I see you in a minute.” He broke away, pushing between Walter and Ty, and East caught his look: humiliated. An acted-out sweetness, packed with rage.
Now East fell in beside Michael, got up shoulder-close as they walked.
“Mike. We got to get. You said a half minute. We ain’t supposed to be here.”
“Ten minutes, E,” Michael Wilson muttered, bulling high gear through the crowd. East glanced back at Walter and Ty, and they tried to keep up. Michael veered toward a spill of light jutting up: musical notes, blazing in turn, stepping up the wall into the dark. He found a service window, jailhouse bars over the counter, polished to a scream, and no one in line. Not a real window; like a window in a movie. Like The Wizard of Oz.
East caught up just as Michael put his hands on the white marble counter, the stack of twenties flat under his left. “We ain’t got time for this,” he argued.
“Sir?” came the voice behind the bars.
The cashier was not a young woman, but her cheeks and eyes were dolled up with glitter. She eyed them each in turn: Michael, East, and then Ty and Walter as they jostled in.
Michael Wilson faced the woman and lit his face up just like hers.
“I want one hundred dollars’ poker chips, ma’am,” he announced.
“Sir.” She inclined her head, as if reciting a rule in school. “You must be eighteen to enter, sir.”
Michael’s smile. “I’m twenty, ma’am.”
“Yes, but, sir,” the woman said. Patient, undeterred. “Are these gentlemen with you? Do they have ID?”
East watched Michael’s eyes: one flash. Then his smile hooked itself back on. “They aren’t gambling,” he said. “So, what? They can’t even watch? Can’t see me?” He laughed. “How I’m gonna leave my babies in the car?”
The woman took a step back out of Michael’s breathing room. She had decided. Michael saw it too.
Walter spoke first. “Mike. Let’s step out, man. We don’t want any trouble down here.”
East caught a movement from the direction of the card tables. A big blue suit with a headset was bearing down. A security guard, the size of a football player. “Now look out,” he warned.
At last something made Michael quit smiling. Now his strut became a hurry as he herded the three boys back. They skittered between the ringing machines, dodging players who careened, drugged, from stool to stool. But where had the door gone? Ty broke off ahead, scouting; East had lost his sense of direction entirely. Walter was lagging behind, and East waited up.
“Go, man,” he snapped.
“I’m going. I’m going.”
Something made him cruel, made him jab at Walter. “This is your fault,” he said. “First one out the van.”
“I said I’m going,” Walter panted.
The players saw them coming now, and they got out of Walter’s way, tokens rattling like chains in their plastic cups. East glanced back: the security man was cutting them room. But still he trailed, talking into a cupped hand.
A short whistle from ahead. They’d located the exits.
Past the first set of doors, they spilled out into the vestibule, piano music raining down. But now Michael Wilson had stopped, knelt to tie his shoe. East fished his keys out and slipped them to Walter: “Start the van.” The doors sucked air as the seals broke, and East ca
ught a slice of the night outside, the heat and sound of motors. The guard trailing them had stopped near the doors. They’d done what he wanted them to do.
Except Michael switched feet, began reknotting his second shoe.
East couldn’t watch. “Quit stalling, man.”
“Ain’t the most family-friendly establishment you could ask for, is it, E?” Michael finished the knot and admired it before he stood. Cheery now.
“Mike, I’m gonna tell you something,” East began.
“East, man.”
The grin on him. It didn’t matter what you said. It just came back.
East faced Michael Wilson up. “How long you gonna take in there? And how much money you gonna spend?”
“East,” Michael Wilson purred. “Just a taste.” He sized his thumb and finger a half inch apart. Like a U in the yard—he wasn’t even seeing East. He was staring back through the inner doors. “Slots, man—you put twenty dollars on a card, you can play it in a minute. Might even win. I’ll let you play, man. You gonna like it.”
“Fin’s twenty dollars?”
“Fin ain’t here. I’m in charge. Like Fin said.”
“Then be in charge.”
“I am,” grinned Michael Wilson. “All that’s holding me up is one whiny little bitch.”
The seal of the golden doors broke again as a pair of ancient women staggered in from outside, gasping, “Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness!” Then the revolving lights outside found their way in too, announcing it, some new, bright kind of trouble.
—
Outside, under the canopy three cars wide, things were sudden and sharp. Every sound, every fidget of the lights was back in focus; every sound had a maker. An engine whined. A woman was shrieking. The palm leaves shivering in an invisible breeze.
The yellow light was spinning off a big white tow truck, and somewhere East heard Walter’s hollering, a muffled squawk.
Michael Wilson: “Where’s the van?”
East pointed; then he ran.
The tow truck was bulky, a wide silver bed tipped back like a scoop, and a steel cable ran taut down under the little van’s nose, reeling it in. East’s stomach slid. High on the wall he glimpsed the sign now: RESERVED PARKING/TOW ZONE. Of course.
East headed to Walter’s window. Walter was pop-eyed and frantic in the driver’s seat. Nobody was paying him any mind.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m in the car,” Walter ranted. “They can’t tow it. It’s a rule. Tell him!”
“Tell who what?”
“Him!”
East saw then. Down low on the wrecker’s left flank, a burly guy with a beard was working the levers, making the winch squeal and spool the thick line. But it was running the wrong way: he was turning them loose.
“He’s letting us go?”
“Uh-huh,” Walter hyperventilated.
“How come?”
A quiver passed down Walter’s face. “Your brother.”
Again East looked. Ty was poised high on the running board, staring down like a wildcat. Below him, the tow truck guy hurried, one-armed, shielding his head.
Michael Wilson stepped right up to the tow guy, bellowing: “Man, get my car the fuck off this thing.”
Pushing a lever, the wrecker man stopped the winch. He stood and winced and spat something red on the pavement. “I am,” he said, and East saw it: Something had made a mess of his mouth. Beard full of blood. Plainly afraid, the wrecker man nodded quickly at Michael Wilson and got away, rolling himself under the van’s front bumper, out of sight.
Everything seemed to sizzle in the battling, shifting lights. Like they were caught in a camera flash that went on and on. Off to the left, by a concrete pillar, two security guys were watching everything.
East still could not comprehend. “Letting us go, right?” he asked Walter, and the fat boy said, “I think.”
“Fuck it, then.” East stepped off and whistled, beckoned Michael and Ty. Back in the van. Because the security twins, they were getting ready. Bow ties, shiny patent leather shoes, but he could tell by the necks—all muscle. “Come on,” East warned.
Michael Wilson cursed down at the wrecker man’s legs as he scampered by. Ty hopped down off the tow truck. “Oh, God,” said the shrieking woman, “look what you done!”
Only a minute, East thought. A minute ago they were making time. Rolling. He knelt and watched the wrecker man work. He’d watched tows before, broken-down cars or repossessions. But never like this, peering up under the fender and counting seconds. The grips and chains came off the left wheel, and the guy shimmied over to work the right.
“Start it up,” East barked to Walter.
“It is started,” Walter replied over the noise. A third security man arrived, triplet to the other two.
East tasted bile, spun around the back of the van, and climbed in shotgun. Michael and Ty huddled wide-eyed in the back. “You gotta wait for him,” he instructed Walter, “but when he comes up, get us the fuck out.”
They listened to the sounds, the wrestling going on below.
Then the tow driver’s legs flailed out and spun, and he was lifting himself upright. He uttered something inaudible, his mouth wet again with blood. What was it? Did it matter? Walter was already crawling the van back. Two more bow ties came bursting out the golden doors. Walter was clear: he found Drive, and swung the van out around the big wrecker.
“Steady,” East urged. The tow guy stood on the now-empty flatbed, cursing them. “Don’t give them a reason.”
“They got a motherfuckin reason,” moaned Walter. “They got one.”
“Just be cool,” East said. “Just get us out of here.”
Walter muttered and steered. East glanced back at the security crew spreading out across the pavement where they’d been. “They’re deciding do they want a piece of us.”
“Got our plates. Got our pictures. Everything,” mourned Walter.
“Drive, man,” East said wearily. To nobody in particular he added, “Who was the girl?”
“What girl?”
“The girl that kept screaming.”
“I don’t know,” Michael Wilson put in. “I didn’t hear no girl.”
“There was a girl,” Walter sighed. “But that ain’t had nothing to do with us.”
Past the buses, toward the street, the white blaze where each light now seemed aimed straight at them. A sign by the curb read: PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM!
—
The shining monuments slid away, but all the boys were watching was the road behind them. Walter ran yellows to get them back on the interstate. Cars and trucks flashed by on the left, roaring; Walter was too tense to speak. After three miles he took them off at an exit, picked out a gas station, and stopped at the pump. He closed his eyes for a long minute.
At last East remarked politely, “I’m beginning to feel you. About the cameras.”
“Got them here too,” sighed Walter. “Why we need to keep from doing stupid shit.”
East turned and shot a look at Michael Wilson. Michael saw East glaring and paused. “Mighty weird casino back there,” he began.
“You shut the fuck up.”
Walter bit his lips, looked sideways.
“Don’t freak out, Easy,” Michael Wilson said.
“Shit,” East said. “Lucky we ain’t facedown on a police car right now. You can’t even park without fucking up.”
Meticulously Michael Wilson wiped something from his brow. “What do you want?” he said. “You want a little note, I’m sorry? I’m a get you flowers? I’m sorry. But don’t say you didn’t want to go in too.”
“I didn’t want to go in.”
“But you went.” Michael Wilson opened the door and climbed out. He dabbed at his hairline. “This is when I go pay for things. Who’s pumping?”
East cursed. He climbed out and set the nozzle in, then stood waiting for the pump to click on. Just listening, the night sky starless, smeared pale by lights, by his pique. U
nacceptable. He blamed Walter almost as much as Michael. But he was too mad to even begin with it.
At last the pump beeped and the orange numerals zeroed out. He began running the tank full of regular and banged on Walter’s window. It rolled down.
“We got problems with that one.”
Walter moaned, ghost-faced. “He’s right, man. We all did go in.”
“You first,” East insisted. “None of us would have gone if you didn’t.”
“If I didn’t,” Walter said, “we’d still be there. Outside, waiting. Wondering was he gonna stop before all the money was gone. You think he was just gonna come back out in five minutes?”
East slid dead bug crisps around with his feet. “All right. What happened outside, then? The tow guy?”
Walter’s face pinched shut. He shook his head.
“You best tell me. I need to know.”
The pump kicked off, and East hung up the nozzle. Inside the bright station he saw Michael Wilson waiting in line, his head bobbing to a song inside it.
Walter squeezed himself out of the van. He glanced at East and stepped to the other side of the pump, furtively. East glanced back at the van where Ty was and followed Walter.
“It said No Parking. Right? We didn’t see it. When I walked back out, the van was already hooked up. They probably keep that truck in the lot all the time. So. The law says you can’t tow when somebody’s in it.”
“Don’t give me law. This ain’t California.”
“It ain’t just California.”
“Stop with the truck,” East sighed. “What happened with the guy?”
“So I’m yelling at the guy,” Walter continued, “telling him stop. Then whoop, here comes your brother.”
Walter swung his arm once.
“What’d he do? Hit him?” East scoffed. “Boy weighs a hundred pounds.”
“Hit him with a gun,” Walter whispered. “That’s what I believe.”
East frowned. “But Johnny searched him. He’s clean. You saw.”
“I know,” said Walter. “Whatever it was, that guy changed his mind quick. And security, standing back watching like they did—explain that.”