Neon Mirage

by Max Allan Collins

  “Yeah,” Sedway said, his moist eyes dreamy, cigar between his fingers like Churchill, “ain’t Vegas the greatest place?”

  I nodded, and looked back out the window, the sleazy landscape blurring when Sedway picked up speed as we passed the city limits.

  “Ben didn’t say why he brought you out,” he said, smiling over at me. He was smiling too much; I wondered why.

  “I’m going to give your security people the rundown on pickpockets,” I said.

  He shrugged with his eyebrows. “We open day after Christmas, you know.”

  “I know. Should be time enough.”

  “How well do you know Ben?”

  “I only met him once. He seems like a nice guy.”

  “Oh he is,” Sedway said, quickly, almost defensively. “We go way back, Ben and me. I known him since we was kids on the Lower East Side.”

  Fred Rubinski had told me about Little Moey Sedway. He had mentioned that Sedway and Siegel went “way back”—but he had also mentioned something Sedway neglected to.

  “Little Moey only recently got back in his boss’s good graces,” Fred told me. “For almost three years, Moey was given jobs out of Siegel’s sight and told to stay away from the Bug or risk getting hit in the head.”

  Seems Sedway, who’d never done too well for himself despite the constant help of his boyhood pal Ben (recent failures by Little Moey included botched bookmaking operations in both San Diego and L.A.), had become a big man in little Vegas. As Siegel’s on-site rep for the Trans-American race wire, Sedway wormed his way into part ownership of several Fremont Street casinos. He bought a nice house, a big car. He became chummy with the city fathers, dropping dough into charity and church hoppers. When a group of respectable citizens asked Mr. Sedway to run for city commissioner, he accepted.

  And when his boss found out, the man who didn’t like to be called Bugsy went bugsy, and started slapping Little Moey around.

  “We don’t run for office, you little schmuck!” Siegel had roared, slapping his stooge, whose name happened to be Moe, although he was getting slapped more like he was Larry or Shemp. “We own the politicians, you dumbass cocksucker!”

  Moey had done his best to back out of the election, but his name was already on the ballot. Sedway became a laughingstock in mob circles, the butt of a much-repeated anecdote (attested to by Rubinski relating the story to me) as the only politician who ever had to spread the graft around to make sure he didn’t get elected.

  All this was three years ago, more or less, and in recent months Ben Siegel had called upon his once trusted second-in-command to come back to his side.

  “You ought to be warned,” Moe was saying, “that Ben’s a little on edge these days. Lots of pressure on the boss. Lots of pressure.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you heard about the dough he’s laying out on this layout.”

  “I heard over a million.”

  “He’s spilled more than a million. I tell you, though, it’s gonna be a fabulous place, this Flamingo.”

  “So why’s he under pressure?”

  “To open on time. I don’t think the hotel’s gonna be finished.”

  “Then why open? What’s the rush?”

  Sedway shrugged. “Ben don’t like to wait on nobody or nothing. Everything’s now with him. Here we are.”

  Where we were was not the Flamingo, but the Hotel Last Frontier, or so said the horizontal sign, cartoon letters of crisscrossing logs outlined in neon, resting atop a short brick wall in the midst of a vast landscaped lawn. The Frontier, and the similar nearby El Rancho Vegas, were the only gambling resorts on the so-called Strip that was highway 91, the two-lane blacktop heading southwest to Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

  Sedway pulled in the drive of the sprawling, rustic hotel past a swimming pool near the highway, where a good number of bathers were sunning and splashing. He parked and got my bag out of the trunk and we walked up to the central thatch-roofed, whitewashed adobe building, which like the other buildings was low-slung and supported by rough wood beams, decorated by wagon wheels and steer horns and other dude-ranch touches. It was all about as authentic as a Gene Autry movie, maintaining the phony cowboy airs I’d witnessed in downtown Vegas, but admittedly establishing a friendly “come-as-you-are” atmosphere. Which only made me feel out of place in my gray suit and gray skin.

  “That’s a nice car you got, Moe,” I said, as we moved away from it. “Is that yours, or one of Ben’s?”

  “It’s mine,” Sedway said, with tight, quiet pride. “The race wire business pays good, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, resisting the urge to point out that an almost identical black Lincoln Continental had been driven by Jim Ragen a certain afternoon.

  “Ben’ll get you some wheels while you’re here,” he said. “He’ll fix you up royal.”

  I followed Sedway into the open-beamed lobby; the registration desk was at the left. The Western motif continued— wood-and-leather furniture, sandstone fireplaces, pony-express lanterns hanging from wagon wheels. The rough wood-paneled walls displayed mounted buffalo heads. Indian rugs and western prints, with the directions to the casino, dining room, showroom and coffee shop burned into the walls as if with a branding iron. The desk clerk wore a string tie and a plaid shirt. He was friendly, but stopped short of calling me “pod’ner.” Thank God for small favors.

  If there were bellboys, I didn’t see any. Sedway was carrying my bag and I let him lead me down a hallway and up one flight of stairs to my room, 404. The numbering apparently had something to do with which wing you were in, because not only was I not on the fourth floor, there wasn’t any fourth floor.

  My room was nice enough—not small, not large; modern furnishings and rustic walls and a print of an Indian chief. Sedway put my bag on a stand and I sat on the edge of the bed.

  “What now?” I said.

  “Ben may stop by and see you tonight,” he said, shrugging.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Up the road.”

  “Up the road?”

  “At the Flamingo. Working.”

  “Doing what, exactly, Moe? This is Sunday.”

  “Not at the Flamingo it ain’t. Workers are working damn near ’round the clock, up there. And Ben’s supervising. That’s his big problem, you know.”

  “What is?”

  “He wants to keep his eye on everything, his finger in all the pies. He’s hardly getting any sleep. Running himself ragged.” He made a tch-tch sound, and shook his head, trying to convince me he cared deeply about his boss’s health. Sure.

  “And you think he ought to delegate authority, more,” I said.

  “What?”

  “He ought to trust the people around him. Give them some responsibility.”

  “Yeah,” Moey said, smiling, nodding. “He ought to do that.”

  “Don’t you still handle the local end of Trans-American for him?”

  “Sure. He gets out of my way on that. It’s just the Flamingo he don’t want anybody touching. You’d think he was a goddamn artist. You’d think it was a goddamn picture he was painting.”

  “Maybe to him it is.”

  Sedway shrugged. “Maybe. But it ain’t his paint, entirely.”

  By that I took him to mean the money Siegel was spending was mostly that of the boys back east. Lansky and Costello and Adonis and Luciano—although Luciano wasn’t back east, anymore, unless you viewed Sicily as east of New York, which I guessed it was. Whatever the case, the deported “Charlie Lucky” was said to still be running things, albeit at a distance.

  “What am I supposed to do till Ben comes around?”

  “Have some fun. You can run a tab on anything except gambling. Food’s good here. Hit the bar. Ride a horse. Have a swim.”

  “I didn’t bring bathing trunks. Never occurred to me.” Back in Chicago, there was snow on the ground. A lot of it.

  Sedway was turning to go. “You can get a suit in the gift shop. I got to
hook back up with Ben. I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Why don’t I just come with you…?”

  He stopped and turned and looked at me. “Look, Nate. You better get this straight right now. You do things Ben’s way when you’re in Ben’s world, which is where you are. Ben wanted you to relax after your long train ride. So that’s what you’re going to do. Is relax.”

  He pointed a finger at me and went out.

  I slept for an hour, in my clothes, and then got up and undressed and showered and unpacked and put on a sportshirt and slacks and prowled the place. I had a rum cocktail in a replica of a forty-niner saloon, complete with bullet-scarred mahogany bar and saddle-shaped leather bar stools; then I rode on into the main casino, where the ceiling was covered with pony hide and the walls ornately papered and peppered with bawdy house nudes in heavy gold-gilt frames. Despite these distractions, I played blackjack for a couple hours and ended up ahead a few bucks. I bought a swimming suit in the gift shop, or rather charged it to my room, where I went back to put the thing on, feeling somehow foolish to be wandering across a landscaped lawn with a towel around my waist in the middle of December.

  But the pleasantly warm desert air took that thought away, and for a moment I wondered if I was still asleep, as this seemed nicer than real life; when I dove into the blue pool, the cool water refreshed and awoke me, making me realize I was not dreaming. I was in fact in a desert oasis, getting paid for this.

  I stretched out on a deck chair on the sandstone apron by the pool and let the sun have at me. It was getting late in the afternoon, but I could feel the warmth on me, like a soothing blanket. Maybe my Chicago pallor would go away. I would walk into the A-l office a bronze god, and sweep that pretty secretary of mine off her feet. Fat chance.

  I was sleeping again. It was my third nap of the day. But then for months now I’d been sleeping more than usual. My habit was to sleep six hours or so each night, especially since the war, after which I’d started having cold-sweat nightmares. Actually, immediately after I got back from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, I’d had mostly sleepless nights. It had taken a good long time to work up to six hours per.

  But lately I’d been sleeping twelve hours. And catching naps, too. I was working hard, sure, but no harder than normal, and doing damn little field work. Why was I so tired?

  Hell, I wasn’t tired. I was escaping. I was at a point in my life where I’d rather be asleep than awake. Where I’d rather be out like a light than alert and thinking.

  When I was asleep I was safe, safe from memories and pangs. I was kind to myself in dreams—with the exception, of course, of the occasional combat nightmare—and when Peggy came to me, in dreams, it was as a lover, not as a love lost.

  She would speak to me in my dreams. Tell me she loved me. Call out to me.

  “Nate,” she’d say. “Nate. Nate!”

  I opened my eyes, slowly.

  Before me, in the soft focus of Hollywood and the half-awake, was a vision of Peggy. The sun was behind her, making a halo around the dark curly mane of her hair; her skin was golden, not pale, but her eyes were as violet as ever, her mouth scarlet and smiling, teeth white as purity. This wasn’t Peggy. Not the Peggy who’d bolted from my office, hating me. This was the Peg of my heart. Of my dreams.

  “Nate!”

  I blinked. Sat up on the lounge chair.

  “Peggy?” I said. My mouth was thick with sleep. It tasted as bad as she looked good.

  And did she ever look good. She loomed over me, little woman that she was, her trim figure caught in a damp black swim suit, top half of her breasts peeking out whitely above the black. She was still smiling, but she’d hidden the white teeth away for the moment. She’d plucked the dark eyebrows some, making them more conventionally curved. The sun had made her freckles stand out more. She was a little thinner, the chipmunk chubbiness of her cheeks gone. She at once looked younger and older than I remembered her.

  She sat on the edge of the lounge chair.

  I ran a hand through my hair, waking up, wishing I could brush my teeth.

  “How are you, Nate?” she asked.

  “Okay.” I said. “Okay. How are you?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  She smiled tightly at me.

  I smiled tightly at her.

  “I didn’t write,” I said. “I didn’t know where to write.”

  “I know. I didn’t write, either.” She shrugged. “I thought a clean break was best.”

  I said nothing.

  She said, “You’re not surprised to see me, though.”

  “I thought maybe you might still be out here,” I admitted.

  “Didn’t you know?”

  “How could I?”

  “You’re a detective, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, not a psychic. You didn’t even tell your family where you were. You dropped off the face of the earth.”

  She shrugged again. “I just dropped off the face of Chicago.”

  “Same difference. Anyway, you look great.”

  “You look good, too.”

  “No I don’t. I’m fat.”

  A half-smile crinkled one cheek. “You are a little pudgy. How much do you weigh?”

  “Almost two hundred pounds.”

  “How do you account for that?”

  “I’m just your typical successful businessman. Fat and sassy.”

  “Really.”

  I sighed, smiled one-sidedly myself. “All I do these days is eat and sleep. It’s my way of compensating.”

  “Compensating for what?”

  “The loss of my girl.”

  Her smile disappeared, then returned briefly, just a twitch, and she said, “I hope you didn’t come looking for me.”

  “I didn’t. I’m here on a job.”

  “I know. Ben hired you. For pickpocket work.”

  I nodded. “He approached me months ago. Back on the S.S. Lux.”

  “Did you say yes then?”

  “More or less. He approached me again, through Fred Rubinski, who I’m in business with now. The money is good. It’s cold in Chicago. Good time of the year to go west. As Elmer Fudd says, west and wewaxation at wast.”

  She shook her head, smiled again, sadly. “I think you came looking for me, Nate.”

  “So do I. But I also came for the money, and the sun.”

  “The sun. How many times last summer did I get you to the beach?”

  I thought. “Three times?”

  “Once,” she said. “Nate, it’s a mistake.”

  “What is?”

  “Coming here. A part of me still loves you, but it’s over. I don’t want either one of us to get hurt. It’s just not going to happen again, do you understand?”

  “I don’t understand, but if you want me to keep my distance, fine. I may be pudgy these days, but I still don’t have to force my intentions on women.”

  “You’re a good-looking guy, a good catch for any girl.” She pointed at her half-exposed bosom, which was droplet pearled. “Except this girl.”

  “You got a new guy, is that it?”

  “That’s not really any of your business, at this point, is it?”

  “No need to get nasty. Just don’t tell me you want us to be friends, Peg. I’m not good at that.”

  “I know. Me too.”

  “It runs too deep. I can’t turn it into being pals. I might be able to turn it into hate. I could work on that, if you want.”

  She swallowed. Her eyes were as wet as her swim suit. “I don’t think I’d like that.”

  “Okay. Then why don’t I just love you at a distance, and you can feel about me however the hell you care to, at a distance, and I’ll do this job, and put half a continent between us as soon as possible.”

  She nodded. She stood. “I think you should pass on the job, too.”

  “Why?”

  “This is a bad time to be around Ben.”

  “I hear he’s under a lot of pressure.”

  She nodded. “He’s v
ery brave, and very smart. But I’m afraid for him.”

  “Well, if he called me out here to be his bodyguard, I’ll be on the next plane out. The last time I took a job like that, everybody got burned.”

  “Including…” She shook her head. Not finishing it.

  I finished it for her: “Including your uncle. You know, if you insist on getting attached to headstrong gangster types, you’re going to spend a lifetime crying over spilt blood.”

  “You can be cruel sometimes.”

  “Sure. I learned that from life. And from Chicago.”

  “Same difference,” she said.

  “Are you still Virginia Hill’s secretary?”

  “No. I’m working for Ben. His confidential secretary.”

  “That sounds very high-tone. What about La Hill?”

  “She’s in and out of here. She’s allergic to cactus, doesn’t like the climate.”

  “But she doesn’t like leaving her boyfriend’s side, either.”

  “No,” she admitted. “She goes on buying trips. She’s helping him decorate the Flamingo. The hotel part, anyway.”

  “Is she here now?”

  “Yes. She’s over there with him this afternoon.”

  “That must be hard on you.”

  “What?”

  “Knowing he’s with her.”

  “What do you mean?” She bit off the words.

  “Well, you love him, don’t you?”

  She squinted at me. Hatefully. Upper lip curling. But she said nothing.

  “I thought so,” I said.

  “It’s none of your business,” she said, and she turned and walked quickly away. Her legs were tan and bore not a trace of fat; the cheeks of her sweet ass showed under the cut of the black swim suit. I wanted her, in every way you could want a woman.

  I dove back into the cool water, but it didn’t do any good. I was a goddamn detective with a detective’s goddamn instincts. I climbed up on the side of the pool and water ran down my face, from my wet head, although a salty taste was mixed in.

  “I thought so,” I said again, to nobody.

  The rest of that afternoon slipped away from me. I left the pool and returned to my room, dressed casually and found my way to the moderately busy casino, where I played blackjack till I lost what I’d won earlier, drinking several rum cocktails brought to me gratis by the cowgirl waitresses who kept the customers well lubricated and free spending.