Sin City Homicide

36

Night fell over Las Vegas, and the city came alive like a great hibernating animal awakened by the pang of hunger. The streets were packed with luxury cars, limousines, and SUVs just out of the carwash. On the sidewalks, crowds swarmed like ants over honey, and large swaths of people would suddenly divert into this or that casino to catch the latest show. Just above the cityscape, the tram zipped between casinos, carrying those who were too drunk to walk or families who didn’t want to push strollers through the crowds.

Above it all, Bill James sat sipping a Manhattan. The blonde between his legs bobbed up and down, then she finished, wiping her mouth with a napkin before standing up and sitting in the seat next to him on the massive balcony.

“How’s the show going?” James asked, lighting a cigarette. Although the dancers at his casinos were used as a comp for the high rollers and management, he always treated them well. He took three hundred-dollar bills from his wallet on a side table and handed them to her.

She took the money and stuffed it in her bra. “Making weight’s pretty hard. I’m down to just eating an egg and carrots all day. If we’re more than two pounds over, we’re taken off the show, and if we’re more than five pounds, we’re fired. But you’d never fire me, right, Slick Willy?”

He chuckled at the nickname he’d earned by ripping off tourists at three-card Monte on the sidewalks when he was a fifteen-year-old kid. Every casino pit boss had chased him away. He would run down the street and wait for them to go back inside before setting up shop again. The group of street acts in those days were a tight-knit bunch. They went to a diner at the end of every day to laugh and joke about the day’s experiences, always talking about their big dreams of someday riding in the limos they saw driving past every day.

He suddenly realized that the dancer had been speaking the entire time he was lost in thought, and he grew impatient. “I have business to attend to. You should leave.”

“Oh, okay.” She stood and leaned over him to kiss him on the cheek.

James blew smoke out of his nose then shouted, “Before you leave, bring me a drink, will ya?”

She brought him a gin and tonic, gave him one more kiss, and left. He sipped his drink and lit another cigarette before he had even finished the one he was smoking. He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there, staring at the lights, when the intercom buzzed in his suite.

“Mr. James?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Kamal and Mr. Henry are here to see you.”

“Send them in.”

A minute later, Raj and Milton walked in. They fixed themselves drinks and came out onto the balcony. Raj stood at the railing and looked down at the street below, while Milton relaxed in a leather chair and put his feet up on a footrest with gold-leaf trim.

“Who the fuck did you get, Milton? A fucking school teacher?”

“He came highly recommended. I’ll send someone else. Someone more experienced.”

“No, it’s too late. I know him, and he’s gonna be prepared now.”

Raj looked from one man to the other. “What’re we talking about?”

James glanced at him then out over the city. Milton cleared his throat and took a drink. He slipped off his Italian loafers and crossed his legs.

“Wait, hold on,” Raj said. “Tell me you’re not talking about what I think you’re talking about.”

“We didn’t want to get you involved,” Milton said. “The fewer people who knew, the better.”

“Bill, tell me he’s kidding.”

James wouldn’t look at him.

“Bill, tell me he’s kidding!”

“That’s life sometimes, kid. It’ll have you by the balls, and you gotta fight your way out.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Are you crazy? Cal’s on the fucking board. You’ve known the guy for thirty years.”

“It wasn’t an easy choice to make.”

“No shit it wasn’t an easy choice to make.” Raj shook his head and began pacing frantically around the balcony. “You put the whole fucking company in jeopardy. We got seven thousand employees. If shareholders lost faith in you, our stock would plummet. It would destroy this entire company if this got out.”

“It’s never gonna get out, kid. Relax.”

“Fuck you, relax!”

James threw his glass over the balcony. In less than a second, he had Raj by the throat and was pressing him against the railing.

“I did what I thought was best, you little prick. I built this company with my sweat and my blood, and I’ll be damned if some Polack bastard or some elephant-worshipping pissant is gonna take it away from me.”

Raj pushed back, but he was no match for James’s wiry strength. He began slipping backward, his feet coming off the balcony.

“Let him go, Bill,” Milton said calmly. “We have enough to deal with.”

James let him go, and Raj collapsed, gasping for air. He looked up at James with venom in his eyes as he got to his feet.

“I quit,” Raj said.

As Raj stormed out, James leaned against the railing and folded his arms, gazing down at the imported carpet that covered the balcony floor. “We really fucked this. We fucked this good this time.”

Milton shrugged. “You did what you thought was best. That’s what leaders do.”

“Cal’s goin’ to the Feds. I know the whiny prick, and he’s gonna go straight to the Feds.”

“With what? A story about how some Russian broke into his house, and he must’ve been sent by you? Where’s the evidence?”

“Not that. He’s got everything else.”

“What else does he know?”

“We’ve been pumping our stock up since before I hired you. Cal knows where the right documents are and who to ask the right questions to. It’s all fake, Milton. All of it. It’s pumped with naked short-selling, rumor mills, accountants I got on the payroll… this company’s going bankrupt. It would’ve been bankrupt a long time ago if it wasn’t for me. That’s why this Cuba deal is so important. It’s our last shot.”

Milton finished his drink and placed the glass down on the floor. “Well, then, there’s only one option that I see.”

“What’s that?”

“Let’s go to the Feds first. They tend to give immunity to whoever cooperates first. We’ll… adjust the paper trail and point the fingers at Raj and Cal. We’ll claim ignorance.”

James sighed. “I’d rather kill him than turn him in. I’m a lotta things, but a rat ain’t one of them.”

“You can have your integrity and sit in a prison cell the rest of your life, or you can retire to a beach house in Florida and give testimony for two weeks at a trial. It’s your choice.”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling the first twinges of a painful migraine coming on. “Fucking business. You know where it all went wrong? We got the government involved. Gaming commission, regulatory committee, treasury department… it’s too much. It’s strangling us.”

Milton stood up and slipped on his shoes. “Strangled or not, we need to go to the Feds first. We’ve lost control of this thing, Bill. It’s time to fold.”

As Milton left, James turned back to the city. He used to look at the lights, the naked women, and the glittering casino floors and see his city. It was an extension of himself. As he lived and breathed, so did the casinos. If the lights were to go out and the glitter to turn to dust, he felt as if his heart would stop, and he would turn to dust as well.

He knew he couldn’t be a rat, no matter what the prize was. Loyalty was ingrained in him. Back on the streets, when he was a kid, making one dollar here and five dollars there, the performers all knew there was a bond holding them together. If one street kid got busted, the others could count on him to never tell the cops anything. They were starving, broke, and hustling just to eat one candy bar a day, but they had their code.

James finished his drink and placed the glass down on a side table. He took off his watch and placed it down softly next to the glass. He walked to the railing, climbed over it, and looked down at the people below. He thought about the headlines the next day-“Casino Mogul Takes Out Six People on Sidewalk”-and it made him laugh. He felt warm tears on his cheeks, and he looked up at the stars, which were hardly visible. The lights from the city drowned them.

He took a deep breath and climbed back to his balcony before going inside to make another drink. There were times he felt absolutely drained, like a spent battery. Many people-including Hemingway, whom James had known for a time in the’50s-believed nature was where a man renewed himself. That had never worked for James. He thought of nature as a necessary evil. Where other men saw a mountain, he saw mining operations. Where they saw forests and fresh air, he saw condominiums and strip malls. There was one place he could go and feel the electricity of youth pump through him. He finished his drink then headed down to the casino floor.