Neon Mirage

by Max Allan Collins

  At around seven I was back in my room and, thanks to the free drinks and a general glumness that had settled over me, I managed to fall asleep again, taking nap number four of the day. When I awoke, the room was dark but for a bathroom light I’d left on, and it was after eight.

  Must’ve been hunger that woke me, because my gut was burning. The last food I’d had was a sandwich and fries on the dining car of the train. I couldn’t quite bring myself to wear a sportshirt to supper, so I put on my other suit, which had hung out pretty well by now, and went down to the restaurant.

  Like the casino, the Last Frontier’s dining room was doing good if not spectacular business. I wasn’t the only guy wearing a suit in the rough-paneled room, but apparel again was definitely dude ranch, not Monte Carlo. I helped myself to the elaborate “chuck wagon buffet,” which I was relieved to find was not serving up the sort of pork-and-beans and barbecue fare one might expect. In fact, there was an ice sculpture of a swan lording it over a lot of fancy food items, particularly salads and cold cuts, fussily arranged on platters by a chef who obviously did not have “Come’n get it!” in his vocabulary.

  I was sitting in a booth by myself, working on my second plate, seeing just how much rare roast beef a human could eat, when Ben Siegel and his party came in.

  Siegel, looking very tan, was wearing a maroon sports jacket and navy slacks and alligator shoes; he wore no tie, the points of his off-white shirt’s collar reaching down so that one touched the embroidered BS on his breast pocket, from which came a slash of lighter maroon silk handkerchief. On his arm was Virginia Hill; she was wearing a black halter-top and matching slacks, her reddish brown hair pinned up. She wasn’t tan at all, her mouth a scarlet gash in her pale face; she’d put on some weight but carried it well. She didn’t look hard to know, as more than one mob guy had put it. Bringing up the rear was Sedway, in his black suit and red tie, and Peggy who alone among them looked touristy in her white eyelet blouse and full blue and white vertical-striped skirt. Peggy was not on Sedway’s arm; in fact, she stood apart from the mole-like Moe. Her make-up was subdued.

  Siegel didn’t notice me at first; Virginia Hill did. She tugged his sleeve and pointed me out. He smiled like he’d spotted an old friend, and motioned his party over to the table reserved for them, and headed my way.

  I patted a napkin to my mouth, slid out of the booth and shook hands with him.

  “Good to see you, Nate. Why don’t you join us?”

  Without waiting for my answer, he stopped a passing waiter and instructed him to move my food and iced tea (I’d had enough cocktails for one day) over to the larger table across the room where his party was even now ordering drinks.

  He slipped an arm around my shoulder and we walked over there.

  “I’m glad you decided to take me up on my offer,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll be sorry. We’re making history, and you’re going to be part of it.”

  “I’m not all that interested in history,” I said, good-naturedly. “I’m more interested in money.”

  “We’re going to make that, too. Sit down, sit down.”

  Siegel took the head of the table. Virginia Hill was at his left, and the chair at his right was mine. Next to Miss Hill sat Sedway, and across from him—next to me—sat Peggy. I nodded at her and smiled politely; she smiled the same way, and looked away, as if fascinated by the activities of a waiter clearing a table nearby.

  Siegel sipped his wine and smiled his dazzling smile. He was the same handsome, charming soul I’d met aboard the Lux, with one exception: beneath the almost feminine long lashes and baby-blue eyes were dark circles; he tried to cover that up with powder or make-up or something, but he couldn’t fool me. I’m a detective.

  “Did you hear about Tony?” he asked me, the smile settling in one corner of his mouth.

  “Tony?” I asked.

  “Cornero,” he said, as if I should’ve known. “The Coast Guard shut the Lux down a couple weeks after she launched.”

  “You had a hunch that would happen,” I said.

  “Yeah, those gambling ship days are over. You’re sitting in the middle of legal gambling in America. Say, uh, I’m very sorry about your friend Ragen.”

  I nodded my thanks. Peggy lowered her eyes.

  “That’s that bastard Guzik for you,” he said.

  I said nothing.

  He clapped his hands, dismissing that subject. “Ready to get to work?” he asked. “You only have ten days to whip my little police force in shape.”

  “It won’t take me long,” I shrugged. “I assume there’s not much for them to do till you open—that I can have their full attention for a while.”

  “Whatever you need.”

  “Should be no big deal. They’re ex-cops, aren’t they? They should pick up fast on this stuff. They probably had some pickpocket training already.”

  “They’re good boys,” Siegel said, nodding. “They’ve been on my payroll for years.”

  “Anybody mind if I eat?” Virginia Hill asked, with poor grace.

  “Feel free to feed your face, Tab,” Siegel said, just a little snidely.

  “Just be more of me to love,” she said, and rose.

  Siegel and I stayed behind, as the rest of his party went to the chuck wagon buffet. Siegel ordered off the menu—a steak, medium rare, and a salad; he was drinking a single glass of white wine. “Tabby,” as he referred to Miss Hill, had already run through her first two stingers.

  “I may have some other work for you, Nate,” Siegel said, now that we were for the moment alone.

  “Oh?”

  “I may have a little security problem that can best be served by somebody from the outside—somebody like you.”

  “I don’t understand. You said the boys on your security staff are longtime, trusted employees…”

  “I don’t remember saying I trusted them. These are ex-cops, remember. They’re tied to me by the juice I spread around when they carried badges. These boys are, remember, what washed ashore after the shake-up in L.A. when his honor Mayor Shaw got booted the hell out. The rest are vets of a similar house-cleaning in Beverly Hills.”

  “What sort of security problem are we talking?”

  He sighed, sipped his wine, shrugged with his eyes. “Priorities,” he said, disgustedly, shaking his head. “Trying to put up the Taj Mahal in a fucking desert in eight months is enough of job, let alone having to goddamn do it whilst dancing around postwar priorities. Building materials and labor…both in short supply.” He shrugged with his shoulders this time. “But I’m getting the job done just the same.”

  “How?”

  “How do you think? Pulling strings. Paying top dollar. You know who Billy Wilkerson is?”

  I nodded. He was the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter and the restaurateur behind Ciro’s and the Trocadero. I’d seen the little man in the latter nitery, a few years back, kissing the collective ass of Willie Bioff and George Browne, Frank Nitti’s Hollywood union bosses.

  “Wilkerson’s one of my investors,” Siegel said. “He’s got influence on the movie execs. He got me lumber, cement, pipe, and you wouldn’t believe what all, right off the studio lots. And I got enough political clout in this state to get me steel girders, copper tubing, fixtures, tile and so on.”

  “Sounds like you got it dicked.”

  He sighed. “It takes dough, but yes, I do. And Moe’s been on my case because the community’s unhappy—VFW here held protest meetings, ’cause they couldn’t get materials for their new homes when I could for the Flamingo. I tell Moe, let ’em thank me for the money I’m gonna be pumping into the town. But some people can’t see something that’s right in front of them, let alone the future. Anyway, thanks to those protests I ended up having to do some dealing with fucking lowlifes to get materials.”

  “Black marketeers, you mean.”

  He nodded, frowning. “And I’m getting suspicious.”

  “Of?”

  “Of why I’m spending so
goddamn much money on materials.”

  “You think maybe you’re paying for the same materials twice.”

  He leaned forward, cocked his head. “A truck pulls up, and it’s full of lumber, and I pay for it. How am I to know where they got it? They could’ve got it the night before from our own construction site.”

  “It’s a common enough scam,” I granted him. “Who’s in charge of purchasing and receiving?”

  “Me. I am.”

  The others were returning now, plates of food in hand. Both girls had modest platefuls; my guess was Virginia Hill’s added weight came from drinking. They all took their places, the conversation going on, as if Siegel and I were still alone.

  I sipped my iced tea. “Handling the purchasing and receiving yourself…don’t you have bigger fish to fry?”

  His smile was disarming but also, I thought, mildly crazed. “Nate, I fry all the fish at the Flamingo. I’m where the buck starts and stops. When we’re up and running, well, sure I’ll hire some people to take care of the day-to-day proceedings. Down the road, I will. But this is my dream, and it’s up to me to make it come true. It’s up to me to supervise the kitchen crew, hire the big name entertainers, appoint the pit bosses, choose the decor for the hotel rooms…not a single employee is getting hired without my personal approval.”

  “You’ve hired a hotel manager, and a casino manager, I assume…”

  “No. That I’ll get around to. Down the road. For the time being, I’m it.”

  “You have an accountant, for Christ’s sake…”

  He smiled over at Peggy and she smiled briefly, nervously, back. Virginia Hill smirked and sipped her latest stinger.

  “Miss Hogan is helping me look after the books,” he said, toasting her with his wine glass. “She’s got a background in that area. Down the road, we’ll hire somebody, or maybe I’ll put Peg in charge and get myself another secretary. But right now I need to have my finger on the pulse, so to speak.”

  I sighed. Said, “Look. Mr. Siegel. No offense meant…”

  “Keep it Ben, and speak your mind, Nate.”

  Sedway, concentrating on his food (or pretending to), lifted an eyebrow and put it down.

  “You can’t handle a job this size by yourself,” I said, “and expect not to get taken advantage of. How much have you spent so far?”

  A waiter put Siegel’s salad in front of him. “Well over five at this point,” he said, picking at the lettuce with his fork.

  “Five? Million?”

  “Million,” he said with some condescension. “You don’t build palaces for peanuts, you know.”

  “Where has it gone?”

  “Where hasn’t it gone? Hell, I spent a million bucks on plumbing alone.”

  “Plumbing?”

  He grinned, flushed with pride. “Sure. Every one of my two hundred and eighty hotel rooms has its own private sewer system, its own private septic tank.”

  “Ben,” I said, trying to keep my jaw from scraping the floor. “The best hotels in Chicago don’t have that.”

  “That’s good enough for Chicago, maybe, but not the Flamingo,” Siegel said, flatly confident, eating his salad. “That place is going to stand forever. No goddamn wind or earthquake is going to blow that place away. I built the walls out of concrete—double thick.”

  What particular advantage that would be in a climate this mild, where chicken wire and plaster would suffice, I couldn’t guess. But I didn’t say anything. I’d been in this conversation long enough to know that disagreeing with Bugsy was like arguing with, well, with a cement wall. A double-thick one.

  A waiter removed Siegel’s half-eaten and pushed-aside salad and put the steak before him. “You wouldn’t believe what I been through here,” Siegel said, ignoring the steak. “Everything went wrong…take the other day, the fuckin’ drapes. Turns out they’re highly flammable and got to be shipped back to L.A. for chemical treatment. Then they install the air-conditioning system with intakes but no outlets and that all has to be ripped out and re-done. And when the heating equipment shows up, the concrete housing in the boiler room turned out to be too goddamn small and had to be built over. Jesus, there’s no end to it. I been paying fifty bucks a day to carpenters, bricklayers, tinsmiths, steel workers. Twelve hour days, seven days a week. With this labor shortage, I have to fly most of ’em in, from all over the country. That means paying bonuses, providing living quarters…” He was working himself up into a lather, and sensed it apparently, because he backed off, shrugging “…but the job’s getting done, that’s the important thing.”

  “Moe here said the hotel may not be ready in time.”

  Sedway flashed me a dark look, as if I’d betrayed a confidence.

  “It’ll be done,” Siegel said, his eyes narrowing momentarily, looking down at Sedway, who by this time was giving all his attention to his plate of food. “Tomorrow they’re doing the landscaping. It’ll be done.”

  “If it isn’t,” I said, “can’t you just postpone?”

  “I’d lose face,” Siegel said, “and that’s the one thing no gambler can afford to lose. Look, I’ll be straight with you, Nate…” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “…I got construction costs I gotta cover. Del Webb’s threatening to put a half-mil lien up against the place. If I can open up, take advantage of the holiday crowds, get the money flowing, then the people I owe will back off.”

  By that he meant Lansky and company.

  I said, carefully, “I take it you can’t go to your investors and ask for more…”

  “You can only go to the well so many times.” His mouth tightened. “Besides, those thick-headed, unimaginative bastards, it’s them I want to show. They don’t think I know what I’m doing. Hell, I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “I’m sure you do,” I lied.

  “There’s money to be made in the fucking desert. Just take a look around you.” And he gestured around at the rustic surroundings. “This place is fine, for what it is. But it’s the wrong fantasy. You want to take money away from people and make them smile while you’re doing it, give them Hollywood, not Tombstone. Give ’em chrome and winding staircases. Swirling silk, marble statues, Greek urns…”

  “How much does a Greek earn, anyway?” Virginia Hill asked, stinger poised.

  He ignored her. “Picture it, Nate: revolving stages with top-name entertainment. Water ballets for the chorus girls. Wheels of chance spinning every night, night and day, in a dream setting, a place where time stands still, ’cause there’s no goddamn clocks. It’s gonna make Monte Carlo look like a penny arcade. And it won’t just be the Flamingo, no. You’ll see this whole three-mile strip out to the airport lined all along with luxury hotels and fabulous casinos. Legal. All of it.” He smiled like a naughty child. “The beauty part is you can use it for a money laundry. The government’s got no idea how much the tables take in. You can skim the hell out of it and then write off other shit. It’s the perfect set-up. That’s what going legit can do for you, and one day, before you know it, the boys back east are gonna wake up to it.”

  I chewed on that for a while. Then I said, “I want to ask you something, Ben—and I need a very straight answer.”

  “Ask and I’ll answer,” he shrugged. “Straight.”

  “If I find out somebody’s been screwing you, where your black market supplies are concerned, what are you going to do about it?”

  “Put a stop to it, what else? Oh. I get you. You don’t want to be part of any rough stuff.”

  “I understand Miss Hill is allergic to cactus. Well, I’m allergic to being an accessory to murder.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t worry about that. I’m on my good behavior out here. I’m a legitimate businessman, after all. I’m building a tourist trap, Nate—neither me nor my backers are about to spill any blood in this sand. The only killin’ in Vegas is gonna be the one I make when the Flamingo opens, day after Christmas.”

  Virginia Hill, smirking as she sucked up her sixth stinger,
said, “Me, I wish you’d just sell the crummy joint, before you fall the fuck apart.”

  Siegel whipped his face around till it was bearing down on hers; his baby blues had turned to ice. Sedway was eating his food, calmly, seemingly oblivious to all this; Peggy was obviously unnerved. As for La Hill, she smiled at Ben blandly, untouched by his withering gaze.

  “I’m not falling apart, and don’t ever call the Flamingo a crummy joint, understand?”

  “Sure, Ben, sure.”

  “Falling apart,” he said. “What the hell do you know about it?”

  All the insolence melted away in her expression and she took his chin in her fingers and beamed at him in an apple-cheeked way that belied everything I knew about her. “I just think you deserve a rest, honey, that’s all. I think you should think about handing the Flamingo over to the boys—and take a piece of the action, a nice piece, for putting your heart and soul in it. And then go to Europe and live a little. Rest a little. You’ve earned it, the easy life.”

  His expression softened and he smiled back at her, the long lashes fluttering over the no longer icy blue eyes. “Maybe down the road. Right now, I don’t want to think about that—my baby ain’t even born yet. But thanks, Tab. Thanks for thinking of me.”

  “Your best interests are all I ever have in mind, baby,” she said, butter wouldn’t melt.

  I thought I saw something like a smirk, and a disgusted one at that, pass over Peggy’s face; but it was momentary and she returned to picking at her modest plate of food.

  “So, Nate,” Siegel said, turning his benevolent gaze on me, “tomorrow morning we get started?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But I got to caution you—I have a work problem that may take me back home on short notice.”

  “Oh?”

  “You know how it is,” I said, evasively, “when you run your own business. Damn thing’s falling apart without me.”