Archive for April, 2005
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A Surprise Call To An Old Friend
April 9
I spent that day in my rooms. I didn’t feel like seeing anyone, and I was a little paranoid. I felt that every woman was carrying a gun. Every guy seemed to be planning something against me. It was all I could do to sit and eat dinner in the restaurant that night. I had spent most of the day sleeping, the rest going over what had happened the night before. It still didn’t make sense to me.
I sat and ate dinner in the restaurant, then decided I needed to force myself to enjoy the company of others. I found a table in the back of the lounge and moved it so I was sitting with my back against the back wall. Frank Sinatra was performing that night; a favor to Sonny. There was no way I was going to miss this.
Ol’ Blue Eyes came out on stage and he owned the room. It was packed with people. All of the tables were filled, with extra seats in the aisles and lining the sides of the room. He sang and crooned for an hour or so, then Dean Martin joined him on stage. The two of them bounced jokes off of each other and sang a few more songs together. Frank left the stage to take a break and Dean did a few solo numbers and told a few more jokes. Finally Frank came back on stage and Dean left again. Frank did another song or two and then the show was over. The curtain fell and the house lights came up. Everyone applauded. I slipped out and headed back up to my room.
In my room, I poured myself a couple more drinks, then, most of the way to sauced-ville, I lay down in my clothes and fell asleep.
When I woke up the next morning, I called Sonny and told him I wanted another day or two off to figure out what was going on and to get back to normal. “No problem, kid. No problem. Take all the time you need.” He hung up the phone and I took another shower.
There’s nothing worse than the sticky feeling of being in the clothes you drunk yourself under the table in. And that’s even worse the next day when you wake up in them. I peeled the shirt and pants off, rolled my socks and underwear down and stood in the shower letting the cool water hit me for five minutes.
Then I switched to hotter water and washed thoroughly. I still felt like I couldn’t get all the of the sand off of me. I felt coated in the stuff, all grainy and somehow shiny. It was a horrible feeling, but the shower helped.
After I toweled off and dressed again, I decided to call Manny. He’d know what was going on and who it was that wanted me dead. He wasn’t home, so I tried the casino. Max answered.
“Hey, Max. It’s me.”
“Wh - What’re you doing? Uh. I mean, I thought you were going to the ocean.” Max sounded surprised.
“Yeah, that kind of fell through. Listen, is Manny around? I need him to find someone for me. Or, rather, find out about someone for me. Anyway, is he there?” I was tired and the effort of communicating my thoughts to someone was almost too much.
“No. No, he’s not here,” Max said, still a bit surprised or nervous. “Have you tried his house?”
“Yeah. First try. No one’s home there, either.” I sighed. “Listen, whenever he gets in, tell him to give me a call.” I gave Max the number for my room at the hotel. He recited it back to me and we hung up.
I didn’t make it back to Vegas that night, obviously. I found a shady spot on the side of the road and sat to wait for a car to come by once the sun came out. I wasn’t waiting too long, maybe an hour, before one did. My watch, it turned out, had been broken in the crash or in the roll down the hill, so I can’t tell you for sure how long I waited.
A car did come, though. A white Ford pickup. The driver was going through Vegas, so he agreed to give me a ride all that way. We weren’t in the car long, though, maybe two hours before the lights of Vegas winked at me. It was pretty early in the morning, maybe nine or ten o’clock, so there wasn’t a lot of traffic. I thanked him, offered to pay him again. He agreed this time, but only to breakfast. I bought him all he wanted to eat and then paid for him to fill up his truck with gas. He drove away an hour later, happy and wanting for nothing. I believe in revenge, but I believe in paying your debts more.
I walked down the Strip to the Flamingo and told the Mooch what had happened.
“She didn’t have a gun on her before you left here, did she?” Mooch asked.
“How the hell should I know?” I was tired, having missed a night’s sleep. I also hadn’t had time to take a shower yet. The Mooch wanted his news quickly and up front. He didn’t have time to wait for you to get comfortable. “Eh. Sorry, Mooch. No, as far as I know, she didn’t. But, I didn’t know she had one when she pulled it on me. She had to have had the sissy gun in her purse. I just want to know why she wanted to knock me off.”
“We’ll figure it out, kid.” Mooch patted me on the shoulder, then left my room. I locked the door behind him and got undressed for my shower.
After washing half the sand of the desert out of my hair and off my body, I was sitting on the bed when a knock came at the door. It was Sonny, with the Mooch again. Sonny wanted to hear my story for himself, so I told him.
“And then the bitch pulled a gun on me. I swerved off the hill. If I had known it was that high I wouldn’t have, but I didn’t so I did. Anyway, we went off, I jumped out of the car. I rolled down after it,” I showed him some of the bruises on my arms and back. “And ended up smacking into it at the bottom. She was already dead. Shot herself somehow with the gun. I don’t think she meant to. Anyway, everything was all busted up, so I grabbed my gun and some other stuff and high-tailed it back here. The rest you know ’cause I’m sure Mooch here told you how I came and told him all of this.” I finished up and looked at Sonny. “So, boss, what do you think?”
Sonny just looked at me. He shook his head and paced back and forth a few steps. Then he went over to the window and opened it up. It looked out over the back side of the Strip and had a nice view of the residential area of Vegas.
“Kid, we’ve been told to keep you high and dry. Someone higher up likes you. I don’t know why, Mooch here don’t know why. We just know we’re supposed to help you. You’ll have to forgive us if we don’t really know how, though. We’re just Vegas hoods, kid. We don’t do a lot of the deceitful stuff. We just shoot you in the head from behind or blow up your car. This is some of that crazy New York shit. Planting guns on a dame. What’s next? Your own mother taking pot shots at you?”
I nodded. I understood. Vegas is a big town with a lot of gangster and illegal movement in it. To know who has a gripe with who at any given moment is probably more than any one person can keep track of.
I also understood that Sonny and Mooch didn’t want to get too involved in it. I’m sure the bosses felt that way, too. Either I’d find the person responsible, and kill them, or I’d get killed along the way. Either way, the bosses and the Flamingo didn’t need to get their feet dirty.
It was a crappy situation to be in. I didn’t want to be left alone in this. I had always had the Mob there with me, taking care of the little details I forgot about. Watching my back. Keeping me safe. If I went out after whoever had done this, I was going out on my own. Sure, they’d probably pull strings to help me stay out of jail. They’d probably even set up a hit on the guy if I found out who it was. But they might not. And definitely weren’t going to help me look.
“Yeah, Sonny, I get you. I’ll let you know if I find anything out.” Sonny nodded and the two of them left the room.
I walked around the car again, looking to see if the trunk had come open. All of our stuff was in the trunk and I wanted to make sure I had a gun if I ended up stuck out here in the desert. It hadn’t, so I popped it opened and pulled out our suitcases. I also pulled out a brown bag I didn’t remember putting in there. I sat down on the ground to see what all was there.
My suitcase had my clothes in it. A couple of changes of underwear, a couple of shirts, three pairs of pants, a suit jacket, a tie. Toiletries like my shaving kit and a comb. It also had a novel I was reading. In a small bag in the suitcase was my gun. The snub-nosed pistol from way back when. I loaded it and stuck it in my pocket. I didn’t want to lose it.
Joy’s suitcase was a mishmash of clothing. Bras, panties, dresses, skirts, blouses, scarfs, a bikini, a one-piece bathing suit, a robe, some frilly nightgown, a plain nightgown, three pairs of shoes. The woman must have just thrown her whole closet into the suitcase. Nothing, though, that made it seem she was a killer. Odd. Very odd.
The brown bag that I didn’t remember was the desert kit from the Pueblo village. A blanket, some flares, a compass, and a shovel. I know there was supposed to be a canteen in there, too, but I must have never put it back with the kit. I know I had forgotten that the kit was even back there, so that made sense.
Well, I had to make the best of it somehow. I put the compass in my pocket, wrapped the flares and shovel in the blanket and tucked that all under my arm. I climbed the hill and started walking back toward Vegas.
It’s about 275 miles from Vegas to L.A. We got about a hundred of them under our tires before Joy went crazy.
We were driving along, talking about how pretty the desert and mountains were. She went quiet and just started answering whatever questions I’d put to her with short, one word sentences. Finally, I looked over at her. She had her head down and her purse in her lap.
“Joy, baby, what’s the matter?” I asked. She just shook her head and didnn’t move or say anything else. We were passing through some high hills or I would have pulled over and stopped, but I reached over and took her chin gently in my hand. “What’s wrong, sweetie? Do you need me to stop? I’ll have to go on a bit until we get off his hill, but I can –”
“Yes. Yes, you need to stop,” she was very forceful. I looked over at her and she had a small gun, some spitball-shooter I’m sure, pointed at me.
“Where’d you get that, doll face? You better put it away before something happens.” I tried not to show her how nervous I was. Anyone gets nervous with a gun pointing at their head.
“No, I don’t think I need to put it away. I want you to pull over. Now.” She held the gun a little higher, with both hands a little tighter. She wasn’t watching the road.
I pulled over. I pulled the car sharply to the right and we veered off the edge of the hill. It wasn’t a high hill, just a hundred feet or so. The car rolled, though. I popped open my door just before it flipped the first time and the car threw me out. I rolled down the hill after it, hitting rocks and brambles on the way down. One of the doors came off and I slammed down on it at one point.
Finally the car and I both ended up at the bottom of the hill. I was the only one that was going to move, though. I walked around the car, checking it out. It was smashed down on the driver’s side. The top and the hood were both caved in. The driver’s side door was the one that had come off and all the windows had broken out, too. It was a miracle I hadn’t been cut to shreds on one of those. I cared less about how I had survived and more about why I had been forced to drive off a cliff.
I peeked in through what was left of the front windshield. Joy lay on the ground visible through the driver’s side door. It looked like both of her legs were broken, but she still had the gun in her hand. I couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead. She didn’t move, but she could have just been knocked out. I climbed part way in through the window to move her. When I did, I saw the blood. At some point she had pulled the trigger on the gun. The bullet had hit her in the neck. Between the shock of the crash and the shock from the blood loss, she had died quickly.
I wasn’t sad.
The next week I had some time off coming my way. I decided I’d spend it at the beach. First, though, I wanted to find me a mouse to spend it with. A real cool chick, one that wouldn’t turn up her nose at a romp in the sack, or sand.
This one girl, a waitress at the Flamingo, had been eyeing me for a while now and I decided to ask her. Joy wasn’t as bombshell as some of the girls around, but she had a cute little turned-up nose. I asked her if she wanted to got to beach that weekend and she said “yeah.” I told her I’d pick her up that night at eight and we’d hit Max’s casino before we split for the sand and surf.
I packed a bag and showered and shaved. At eight o’clock, I was in front of the Flamingo, car running and waiting. She came out in a black satin dress that clung in all the right places. The rocket in my pocket didn’t really feel like going to the casino, but I had to play it cool if I wanted to sack this one. And I did.
We rolled up to the casino about ten minutes later and I tossed my keys to the valet. He got in and we entered the casino proper.
This place wasn’t like the Flamingo. It was more old school. The machines and tables were all farther back. You had to pass through the hotel lobby and past the restaurant and lounge before you found the tables. We weren’t there for the gambling, though. We turned in at the lounge and found a nice table in the middle. We were there for a show.
We ordered drinks and instead of the waitress bringing them to us, Max did. He said he’d seen us walk in and wanted to have drinks with us before the show. We invited him to join us at the table and he accepted. I introduced him to Joy and they shook hands.
“Lovely girl,” he said. She blushed and took a sip of her drink. I think she had gotten a daiquiri or something. I had ordered a scotch on the rocks. I nodded and took a sip of my drink, too. Max didn’t have anything, but he didn’t seem to mind. He kept taking small swigs from a hip flask. When I asked him, he said it had bourbon in it.
“So, how’s the casino business?” I asked him. He looked a bit startled, then smiled.
“Good, good. How’s the bouncing business?”
I chuckled and nodded at him. After another sip, I said, “Going great. I meet the nicest people.” We all three smiled and laughed quietly.
“I think I need to powder my nose,” Joy said, and Max volunteered to show her were the staff restroom was. They left and I sat down to really enjoy my drink. I finished it and ordered another before Max returned.
“Looks like a great girl,” he said, sitting down again.
“Yeah. She’s pretty fun,” I said. “Don’t really know her that well, though. We’re going for a weekend at the beach, near L.A. Should be fun.”
He nodded. “Yeah. L.A.’s great. You’ll like it there a lot, I think. The worst part is the drive between here and there. You’ll think you’re driving over the same stretch of highway for hours. Nothing out there but sand and sky.”
“Yeah.”
We sat there until Joy came back. She seemed flushed and nervous, but that could have just been for being on a date. She asked me if I wanted to get an earlier start and miss the show. It wasn’t anyone famous, just some crooner from back East so I agreed. I dropped a couple of dollars on the table to pay for the drinks and a tip and we left. Max walked with us, on the other side of Joy, and helped her into her side of the car.
I started the car up and Max leaned in the passenger window. “You kids have fun. Do me proud.” He patted the car and we drove off.
After I had been in Vegas for another month or so, I finally had time to meet up for dinner with Max. He had called me the first week I was in town, but with learning a new job and making sure my face was known around the casino, I hadn’t had time to do much outside of work.
We met at a diner a few blocks from our casinos. It was a quiet little place, stuck in the backside of the Strip. It had dark booths tucked away in the back and that’s where we sat. Max had things on his mind that he wanted cleared away.
After placing our orders and getting our drinks, we started talking. The pleasantries came through first, of course, then it started to get more serious. Dinner broke that up, though, as our orders arrive about the time Max really wanted to get down to brass tacks. When we had finished eating, he was anxious as ever to get back to what he wanted.
“So, tell me. What have they sent you here for?” Max stared at me across the table.
“I’m just here to work muscle at the Flamingo, Max. Didn’t you know that?”
“No no. I don’t want the cover story. What are you really here for? Why did they send you? You’re more than just muscle. You’re a made man.” Max was practically on the edge of his seat.
“I tell ya, Max. I’m just here for muscle. I’m a grunt. I fucked up in Chicago, didn’t watch what was going on around me, and I ended up throwing out drunks in Vegas. It happens.” I shrugged. It made sense to me, even if it wasn’t completely true. I hadn’t fucked up in Chi-town, but it was a good reason for me to be here. Get taught a lesson by being sent into the desert. Wasn’t that what happened to Moses?
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” Max was angry. “I know what kind of connections you have, what kind of worker you are. I did the books for years, remember? You are not muscle to them.”
I chuckled. “I’m glad you feel that way, Max. Really. It’s a compliment. But I’m nobody special. I’m just a grunt, a soldier, a peon. Trust me, Max. They sent me out here in a fucking car. If I was important, wouldn’t they have flown me out on a plane?”
Max seemed to buy this. He looked at me over the top of his wine glass and seemed to consider just dropping it there. I guess whatever part of his head said to drop it lost out, ’cause he started up again.
“You mean to tell me that they didn’t send you to take over one of the casinos? The one I run or the Flamingo? They didn’t send you out here to muscle your way and take some of it back over, take some of it back from these fucking spics that’re trying to run the place? They didn’t send you here to do that?”
So that was it. He thought I was going to take over his casino. And where would he be then? Probably dead in the desert, he thought. That or stashed away somewhere in a smoke-filled room reading through account logs and the day’s table takings. It was a scary thought, I’ll admit. But he should have known better. I wasn’t the type to run a casino. I didn’t know a damn thing about ‘em except that I knew better than to leave my money in one. I was a very unlucky gambler, always had been, always will be. I stopped gambling after a three-thousand dollar loss in Atlantic City when I turned 21. When I arrived in Vegas was the first time I had set foot in a casino since then.
“Yeah, Max. That’s what I’m telling you. I’m not the casino type, you know that. I suck at gambling, I don’t see when people cheat. I can’t count cards for the life of me, so I wouldn’t be able to catch people that can. And, besides that, I’m not a business type. I didn’t go to college like you. I don’t know anything about running a business. Trust me, Max. The casino is all yours. I’m just here to earn some money, win back my respect, and then I’m gone. I got plans on going to L.A. or San Francisco. Retire and live by the ocean. Or maybe I’ll go back to New York. But, yeah, Max. I’m not here to take over your casino.”
He seemed to believe me. We got up and left shortly after that. Max paid for the meal, he insisted, said he’d been an ass and had to pay me back somehow. I let him, even though I didn’t really agree.
We were standing outside the cafe, about to part ways. Max looked at me and asked, “So, whatever happened with that dead DA?”
The question stopped me, of course. What the hell did Max know about the dead DA? How the hell did Max know about the dead DA? Unless he was part of it, that was. Ray had said that the hit had come from Vegas. He’s also said it came from a boss in Vegas, so that ruled Max out. He wasn’t a boss, wasn’t even close. He was just a peon, like me. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He oversaw most of the work that went on in the casino he worked at, but he didn’t run it.
Then I started thinking about it. Max had called New York not too long after that whole Chicago mess had happened. Maybe Ray had told him about it. Yeah, that made a lot of sense. Ray would have wanted to know if Max knew of anything suspicious. He probably would have called Manny, too, to see if he had heard anything. With Manny, it’d probably be more of to see if he hadn’t heard anything, as Manny was one that always knew what was going on.
“Yeah, actually Ray says the found out how it happened. I don’t think they caught the guy or anything, but it’s going alright. Nothing coming my way.” I watched him, wanting to know if my first impression was right, but he didn’t give anything away. He just smiled at me and nodded. We said a few more pleasantries, then went our separate ways.