Neon Mirage

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.”

He nodded that he understood, said, “But I’d be very disappointed if you didn’t stick around.”

At least there was no menace in the voice.

I said, “I’d have Fred Rubinski send somebody top-notch to replace me.”

“You’re who I want, Nate.”

I waved it off. “It probably won’t happen, but I just wanted to be up-front with you, Ben.”

“I appreciate that,” he said, and he finally began to eat his steak, which was surely cold by now.

After dinner, he painted a picture of the gala opening he was planning, including dozens of Hollywood stars that George Raft and Billy Wilkerson were lining up for him. He had Jimmy Durante and Xavier Cugat booked in as the floor show.

He was still holding court, the little group drinking cocktails, when at a few minutes after ten I stood and excused myself.

“Where you headed?” Siegel wondered.

“To my room,” I said. “Train travel tires me out.”

“I’ll walk you there,” he said, and he did.

As we ambled down the hallway to 404, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I wanted to ask you something in private, Nate. Something personal.”

“Sure, Ben.”

“Did you take this job to get near Peggy Hogan again?”

“No,” I lied.

“I wouldn’t stand between you two, if…”

“There’s nothing between us anymore,” I said. That, I feared, was no lie.

He took his hand off my shoulder. He seemed almost embarrassed as he said, “I figured maybe this afternoon you might run into her, and sort the thing out…”

Had he planned it?

I said, “I did run into her. But like I said, there’s nothing between us, now.”

“Maybe you still got feelings that she doesn’t.” He made a clicking sound in his cheek. “That kind of thing can be rough. I figured maybe that was why you said something about going back to Chicago. Maybe the situation was making you uncomfortable…”

“I thought Virginia Hill was your girl, Ben.”

He shrugged, smiled his usual dazzling smile. “She is. And she’s a lot of girl. A lot of woman. Ain’t she a handful? She’d tell the Pope to go to hell.”

“What about Peggy?”

He shook his head no, the smile gone. “There’s nothing between her and me, either-strictly business.” And the smile reappeared, but a modified, only moderately dazzling version. “I think maybe she’s kind of sweet on me, but I’m not gonna take advantage of that, cute kid though she is. She’s gonna go far with my organization, if she wants to. Normally, I’m not much on career girls, but she’s got a good business head. Maybe it’s because she’s got Jim Ragen’s blood in her.”

“I can remember having Jim Ragen’s blood on me.”

His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that, Nate?”

“Nothing. I just…I’m just not crazy about getting involved in your business, Ben. Even though you are legit, these days. I’d like to shake this rep I have of being a mob hanger-on. Doing work for you isn’t going to help that.”

He was looking at me carefully, like a bug collector studying a specimen. “You did come out here to take her home, didn’t you? And you found out she doesn’t want to go back with you, and now you want to run out on me?”

I let out a sigh that must’ve betrayed how weary I was. “I don’t know, Ben. It wasn’t exactly like that. But it wasn’t exactly not like that, either.”

“Stick around, Nate. Time is short, and I need your help-a couple ways. There’s ten grand in it, if you stick it out till after the opening.”

That was a lot of money. Normally, I would’ve done jumping jacks in the nude in Marshall Field’s window, for dough like that. But in my present mood I didn’t much give a shit.

I said, “I’ll give you my decision first thing tomorrow morning, Ben.”

“I’ll respect what you decide, whatever it is. I like you, Nate. I think we could work well together.” He extended a hand, and smiled again, and we shook hands, and I found a smile to give him back. He walked back down the hall-swaggered, actually-and I shook my head and went into my room.

I sat on the edge of the bed; the Indian chief on the wall was staring at my balefully. Peggy wasn’t what was bothering me. Siegel himself was. He’d bitten off too much, here. Like all bad executives, he wanted to run his whole operation; thought he had to do every little job himself; thought only he was up to the job, any job, every job. For a smart guy, it was a stupid way to do things. And it would kill him.

Maybe literally, considering the people backing him. Six million bucks was a lot to spend pursuing a pipe dream, particularly when you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing where making it a reality is concerned. I’d seen first hand that the Last Frontier, while doing okay, was not exactly attracting land-office business. Siegel looked at the stretch of desert that was highway 91 and saw some vision of the future, a neon mirage that might or might not turn real someday. Whichever, I had a very strong feeling that this fabulous arena Siegel was erecting was nowhere I wanted to perform.

Peggy was a lost cause. And Siegel was playing a losing game.

There was no reason for me to get caught up in any of it.

I nodded, stood, and began to pack my bag. There was a midnight train back to L.A., where I could touch base with Fred, get a replacement lined up for Siegel, and fly home.

I had just latched my suitcase when somebody knocked at my door.

I answered it, wondering who the hell it could be.

And who the hell else could it be, the way this day had gone, but Virginia Hill.

She was a little swacked, but what else is new? She looked sexily zoftig in her halter top and slacks, her pale, slightly plump tummy pulsing.

“Can I come in?” she asked, and did.

I shut the door.

“I hope you came out here to take that little cunt back home with you,” she said, leaning against the door.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about that fucking little Irish slut. If you still care about her, take her home, get her the fuck out of here.”

“That isn’t up to me, Ginny.”

“Well, I’ll tell you this, pal: if she’s banging Ben, I’m gonna bang her.”

And, with a sneer as nasty as she was drunk, she raised her hand and made a gun of it and shot at me, saying, “Bang. She’s fucking dead.”

She went to the door, opened it, looked back over her shoulder at me, like a parody of a pin-up pose, and said, “Word to the wise.”

And she shut the door. Hard.

I stood looking at it.

Then I unpacked.

The sign said

F

L

A

M

I

N

G

O, and poised above it as if considering flight was a neon-outlined caricature of that unlikely long-legged bird that so embodies both awkwardness and grace. Its pleasure palace namesake had neither of these, but did manage to marry two contrary qualities: stark lines and soft pastels.

A ghostly olive-green structure in the modern geometric mode, the Flamingo sprawled across a stretch of sandy nothing along a blacktop road to nowhere, a.k.a. Los Angeles. It was on the left, several miles beyond the Vegas city limits, its Frank Lloyd Wrightish lines an aberration against the timelessness of the desert and the purpleness of Black Mountain shimmering aginst the morning sky, a morning that was blowing some, sending sand and stones and sagebrush skittering across the highway, some of the gritty tumbleweeds piling up in balls against the Flamingo’s foundation, as if nature were trying, without much luck, to topple the structure. Nature simply didn’t have the determination of Benjamin Siegel.

Off to the right was a lot where I parked the used Buick I’d been provided. Not surprisingly, that lot was fairly empty, but for a few pick-up trucks and other vehicles that probably belonged to those few workers within who were local. Siegel was putting his mostly imported workers up at motels and rooming houses in town, and bringing them in to his forty-acre playground by bus and truckload each morning.

Past an imposing stone waterfall and under a flamingo canopy, the fancy brick front entry led into a lobby lined with slot machines; a small check-in counter for hotel guests was at left, but at right, going down five steps, was the vast casino, with its various tables (21, roulette and craps), its plush carpeting and green leather walls, looking, in this somber unoccupied state, like a museum of gambling. There was no whir of the roulette wheel, no metallic ka-chunk from the one-armed bandits, no silver-dollar clink, no businesslike dealer voices calling out, “Are your bets down? The number is-,” and no crowd noise, winners and losers mixing together like equals in the din. Nothing but the echo of hammering from some other part of the building, as workmen tried to pound Bugsy’s dream into reality.

I found him behind the dining room beyond the casino, in the kitchen, which was a good-size, modern affair, blinding white formica here, shining stainless steel there, and not a chef in the place.

Unless you counted Ben Siegel, who was wearing a snappy gray suit and dark blue tie and pale blue shirt.

I was wearing a suit and tie, too, by the way-though hardly as natty an ensemble as Siegel; but I couldn’t get into the “Come as you are, pod’ner” swing, either. I was working.

“Much better,” Siegel was saying, to nobody in particular, hands on his hips, beaming, basking in the glow of the spotless kitchen.

“Ben?” I said.

He looked at me and grinned and waved me over. “Look at this,” he said. He was pointing to two facing walls of ovens. “Plenty of room there, wouldn’t you say?”

“Sure.”

“Before I had ’em do it over, these ovens opened right onto each other. What kinda layout is that? I’m not paying the top chefs in the business so they can fry their asses off!”

“What did this little remodeling job cost?”

“Thirty grand,” he shrugged. He looked tan and fit, but his eyes were bloodshot as well as bagged. “Come on, you need to meet somebody.”

He led me out through the restaurant area, where the smell of paste was in the air, half a dozen wallpaperers in white coveralls and painters’ caps at work, dealing with heavy brocade material that had to be tricky as hell. The plush carpet was covered by tarps; nonetheless, Siegel stopped in mid-track and bent and flicked at several spent cigarette butts, like Sherlock Holmes examining a muddy footprint.

“Hey!” he yelled.

The men, several of whom were up on ladders, stopped their work at once; turned in the direction of what by now was surely a familiar voice.

Siegel stood, having scraped the butts and ashes into his palm. “I’d like to catch the dirty pig who dropped these,” he snarled. Then he wadded the butts in his fist and walked over to a waste barrel and dumped them in.

The men exchanged looks and one of them, presumably the foreman, muttered, “Yes, Mr. Siegel,” and they turned back to their struggle.

Immediately pleasant again, he led me through a corridor of slot machines, saying, “The dining room is very important, you know. You can’t hope to make a profit on it-it’s a come-on. Food service has got to be tops for the high rollers, but at the same time the prices can’t scare away the two-dollar customers, either.”

“Keep an eye on your chefs,” I said.

“Why’s that?” he said.

“A chef can steal from you a hundred different ways. Kickbacks from suppliers. Selling prime cuts of meat as scrap. Lots of ways.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, giving me a pleased, appraising look. “You do know your stuff.”

“Security’s my racket. I can tell you right now that you need more people under you-people you can trust. Or everybody and his dog is going to steal you blind.”

He nodded. “And I’m gonna do that, Nate-down the road. Come on out and see the pool.”

We walked out onto an immense patio that led to a luxurious Olympic-size pool, the edges of which had a scalloped design; below the blue ripples of sun-reflecting water you could make out a mosaic pink flamingo. This patio was an oasis in the midst of a vast well-trodden expanse of barren desert real estate. Over to the right of the aridness, as I stood with the casino and restaurant complex behind me, was a rambling modern building which here was two-stories, there three-stories, and in the middle four, making it the tallest structure on the grounds. A crew of trowel-wielding plasterers on scaffolding was giving the massive building a skin of stucco, which clung to wire mesh covering the building’s cement surface.

A small fat man in an Hawaiian swim suit was sitting under an umbrella beside the pool; he had a bottle of beer on the table next to him and he was wearing sunglasses. He was as brown as a berry. His body was round and hairless, a beach ball with legs. And he had the face of a self-satisfied bulldog.

“This hardworking gentleman,” Siegel said good-naturedly, “is Bud Quinn, formerly of the LAPD.”

“Don’t get up,” I said.

Quinn smiled widely, making his cheeks tight, and it should have been a jolly smile, but it wasn’t really a smile at all. It was an expression the hard fat little man had adopted to use at appropriate times, to affect humanity.

“You’d be Nate Heller,” he said, removing the sunglasses, thrusting a pudgy hand forward.

Reluctantly I took it. Shook it. It was as moist as Sedway’s, and even more repellent.

“I didn’t know you were working for Ben,” I said. “Let alone his top security man.”

Piggy eyes narrowed in pouches of fat. “Have we met?”

“No. I’ve just heard about you.” I turned to Siegel. “I take it you haven’t mentioned to Fred Rubinski that Quinn’s in your employ.”

“Why, no,” Siegel said. Then with a little edge in his voice he added: “I didn’t know I needed to clear my staff with Fred.”

I shrugged. “It’s just that Fred’s late partner and Lt. Quinn had their share of run-ins.”

Quinn grinned yellowly. “Jake took a likin’ to my rubber hose. I never knew a boy who took to the goldfish like Jake.”

I pointed a finger at him. “Have some respect for the dead. You’re going to be that way yourself some day.”

“No disrespect meant,” Quinn said, standing now, gesturing with both hands, trying to smile away my ill will. “I liked Jake. He was a good boy. He put money in my pocket, time to time.”

Siegel, frowning slightly, said, “Is it going to be a problem, you fellas working together? I had no idea there was bad blood…”

“There’s no bad blood,” I said. “We don’t even know each other. Forget I said anything.”

Quinn smiled magnanimously. “No hard feelings, Nate. Mind if I call you Nate?”

I did, but said, “Not at all, Bud. We’ll get along fine, you and me.”

“Good,” Siegel said, putting a hand on either of our shoulders. “Bud isn’t working today, but I asked him to stop by so you two could get acquainted-set up a time to work with his people.”

“I hear you’re gonna teach us all about pickpockets,” Quinn said, in a sing-songey way. Pretending to be friendly but reeking condescension.

“Just a few pointers. Is this afternoon too soon?”

“Not at all,” Quinn said. “I got a few boys on the grounds, keeping an eye on the hired help and the delivery people. Can’t be too careful-pilferage can be a problem, you know, with all this building material here, in such short supply elsewhere.”

“Right,” I said. “What about the rest of your staff?”

“They’ve all settled in,” he said. “Found apartments and homes. Regular Las Vegas residents, now, looking forward to a long and happy association with the fine, fabulous Flamingo club.”

“Hotel,” Siegel corrected.

“Hotel,” Quinn amended.

“Why don’t you call ’em all in so we can meet here around one-thirty,” I said. “In the casino-it’s not being used for anything, and the construction there seems complete.”

“Nothing left but to put the new fireproofed curtains up,” Siegel said, smirking to himself.

“Casino’ll be just dandy, Nate,” Quinn said, putting his dark glasses back on. “Looky here, I’m sorry about your friend Fred’s partner. No offense meant. Got run down by a car, didn’t he?”

“Well, Fred’s more than a friend, Bud. He’s vice-president of my detective agency, and that makes his late partner an associate of mine, even though we never met.”

“That don’t make sense to me,” Quinn said, thoroughly puzzled, and a little disgusted.

“It does to me,” I said. “That’s what counts.”

Siegel was watching me warily, and then said, “You want to come along with me, Nate? I can show you around a bit.”

He took me across the stretch of scalp-like ground to the building where the plasterers on scaffolding hovered like a dozen Harold Lloyds as directed by Busby Berkeley. We went inside, where a carpet layer was at work in the small lobby; the ceiling rose through the floor above, creating a circular balcony, making room for a fancy chandelier. The sounds of carpentry echoed down, making the chandelier’s crystal shake and shiver. The carpet layer, on his hands and knees, looked up at Siegel and smiled and nodded, saying “Mr. Siegel.”

“What the hell is this?” Siegel snapped.

“Pardon?” The man had to work to get his voice over the hammering coming from above.

“Are you responsible for this?” He was pointing to a sooty palm-print on an as-yet-to-be-painted plaster wall.

“No, Mr. Siegel.”

“You tell your foreman for me that I’ll kick his ass back to Salt Lake City if I see that sort of thing again. What, do you people think you’re working in a cheap bar somewhere? This is the Flamingo-and don’t fuckin’ well forget it!”

He stalked up the nearby stairway. I shrugged at the kneeling carpet layer and he shrugged back and returned to his work and I followed our mutual boss up the stairs.

“What is this building, Ben?”

“The hotel. The check-in’s in the main building, but all the rooms are here.”

No carpet had been laid on the second floor, or the third, but when we got to the fourth, via a narrow out-of-the-way staircase, a plush money-colored carpet appeared. In fact, it began on those narrow stairs, which took us to a door, which Siegel unlocked, and he ushered me through a side entry into a penthouse suite that was entirely finished and furnished. More money-color carpet with lighter, pastel green walls.

We entered next to the well-stocked bar; to our right, picture windows looked out on the swimming pool. The room was tastefully if sparsely decorated, not at all garish; it reminded me a little of Ragen’s room at Meyer House. Siegel lounged on a chintz-covered sofa and grinned.

“There’s four bathrooms in this dump,” he said.

I wondered if each had its own septic tank.

“I’m moving in with Tabby later this week. Some of the furniture hasn’t arrived yet.”

“It’s quite a spread, Ben.”

“There’s four ways out of here.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Only thing is,” he said, looking upward, “that fucking beam.”

There was a massive central concrete beam, in the white plaster ceiling, running down the middle of the spacious living room, cutting it in half; it dipped low enough that a man six feet or more would have to duck some.

“I told ’em to tear the goddamn thing out,” he said, “but they said it was a support beam. It coulda been done, but it would’ve cost twenty-five grand or so. And there just wasn’t time.” He looked up at it with regret. Let out a weight-of-the-world sigh. “What the hell. You got to draw the line somewhere.”

No shit.

He slapped his thighs, stood, said, “Come on, Nate-I’ll finish the tour.”

He showed me throughout the facility, most of which was done, except for the hotel building; and he rattled off his plans for the months ahead: a wedding chapel; private cabins; a health club with gymnasium and steam room; courts for tennis, badminton, squash and handball; a stable with “forty head of fine riding stock”; a nine-hole golf course; and shopping promenade-nine “major stores” already signed up.

“When do you expect to have all that up and running?” I asked him.

“June,” he said. “Late June it’ll be finished.”

At a loading area behind the kitchen, a truckload of silverware and glassware, coming from L.A., was being delivered. Siegel signed for the stuff, after examining several boxes. Two delivery men were doing the unloading. One of Quinn’s security people was keeping an eye on them. Neither he, nor anybody else, saw me mark the sides of several boxes with a grease pencil.

Later a big truckload of linen, for the hotel, arrived, and Siegel signed for that as well. He did the same for a load of lumber, around by the hotel building.

At lunchtime, Siegel drove me down to the El Rancho Vegas, the other rambling rustic resort on the Strip, which had in fact preceded the Last Frontier; its chuck wagon buffet, however, was similarly not very frontier-like.

“What do you think of my baby?” he asked, pouring himself some tonic water. He had a meager plate of cold cuts before him.

“The Flamingo? I think it’s pretty amazing. I think you’re going to make some dough.”

“So do I.”

I was working on a heavy plate with something of everything from the considerable buffet; the ham was very good (I’m only technically a Jew). “Do you really think your hotel’s going to be ready in time? It’s clear you can open the casino and restaurant, but…”

“Once the landscaping’s done,” Siegel said, impatiently, “rest’ll be a piece of cake. So what do you think, have I got a pilferage problem?”

Piece of cake; that was a good idea-I’d have to get one. “I think you’re spreading yourself too thin; you shouldn’t be the guy who signs for fucking linen, for Christ’s sake.”

“Never mind that. Do you think they’re robbing me?”

“The chief of your security force is so crooked he can kiss his own ass without turning around.”

“You think I don’t know that? But those boys are used to working for Quinn…”

“I don’t mean to be critical. Anyway, I got it covered. Put it out of your mind.”

Siegel smiled; sipped his tonic water. “I knew my instincts about you were right.”

“Where was Sedway, today? And I didn’t see Peggy Hogan around, either.”

“Peggy’s doing some business over the phone for me, out of her suite. Moe’s tending my Trans-American interests.”

“I see.”

“It’s going to be a little dusty and crazy around the Flamingo today, anyway. I didn’t figure Peggy would appreciate that. Though I don’t think it will interfere with your pickpocket school.”

“What will?”

“I told you, didn’t I? We’re doing the landscaping today.” He checked his watch. “The trucks left L.A. early this morning-they should start showing anytime.”

We pulled into the Flamingo just as the fleet of trucks began arriving, thundering down highway 91 like the invading force they were, grain trucks filled with topsoil, gravel trucks hauling sod, tank trucks of water, flatbed trucks bearing imported trees (Oriental date palms, cork trees from Spain, among fifteen other varieties of fully-grown trees). Scores of trucks began roaring into the Flamingo parking lot and up onto the grounds, as dungaree-clad workers in tin hats hopped out of the vehicles and began getting to work.

And soon Siegel was leading them, Patton in a suit, his thinning hair blowing in the dry breeze, as he mingled with the foremen, pointing here and there, sculpting in the air, shaping his dream, an architect seeing to it his exact bidding was done.

I shook my head and went into the casino, where I found that Quinn-now dressed in a baggy brown business suit and an appropriately ugly tie-had gathered his staff of twenty, most of whom were casually dressed. They were sitting at a cluster of 21 tables.

I introduced myself and got quickly into it. I gave them the basic lecture on the whiz mob and solicited a trio of volunteers to stick around after, so we could work up for tomorrow some examples of typical two-handed, three-handed and four-handed stall and tool routines. (The stall sets up the mark for the tool, who works the mark.) By the time my session with the whole group was over, and training the volunteers was accomplished, it was early evening.

I thanked the three men, who faded away, and went over to Quinn, who’d been watching me work with them.

“You know your stuff, boy,” he said, pretending to be impressed, a stogie in the corner of his mouth.

“Yes I do,” I said, “but I could use some advice.”

“Glad to be of help.”

“This pilferage problem you mentioned…”

He shrugged expansively. “Well, I suppose a little of that’s natural in a undertaking this size.”

“I suppose so. But Mr. Siegel has asked me to help him curtail that little problem. Now, there’s several ways I could go about that. I could stick around at night and wait and see if trucks come back and pick up things they’ve already delivered one day, to deliver again another. I could treat some of the delivered goods with a slow-drying dye, or a dry dye, to stain the hands of thieves. Or I might use your so-called non-apparent dye, the kind that doesn’t show up to the naked eye, where you need ultraviolet light? That technique works even after the hands are washed.”

Quinn’s eyes were narrowed to slits. His stogie hung like a limp dick.

“It’s possible I’ve even already marked some of the goods delivered today,” I said. “By one of those methods, or some other one.”

His mouth twitched a humorless smile. “Your point being?”

“My point is this. Going to all that trouble-surveillance, dyes, ultraviolet light-it’s such a bother. We’re here in the sun. This beautiful weather. Swimming pools, pretty girls. We should enjoy life.”

Quinn was smiling knowingly, cheeks fat and taut. “You mean, you figure there’s enough gravy to go around.”

“No. I tell you what I figure. I figure if anymore pilferage goes on, any at all, I figure to tell Siegel you’re responsible.”

His mouth dropped open and he lost his stogie. “What proof do you have…”

“None. But I know that this couldn’t be going on without your benign neglect, which is a commodity you’ll gladly sell for a price. It’s on the same shelf as your integrity, right above your self-respect. So, anyway-I’m putting you in charge of putting a stop to the theft.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll turn you in to Siegel. I don’t need any proof, though I’m sure I’ll have some. But I got a hunch he’ll take my word for it. And then you’ll be fertilizing some rose garden out by that pool you love so dearly.”

“Listen to me, you little son of a bitch…”

“No. You listen to me. I’m going to check up on these various shipments of materials and supplies. At random. If I come across one missing towel, one missing dish, one missing spoon, you’re history, asshole. You’ll take the rap for all the stealing that’s been going on. And you’ll answer to Siegel.”

He looked hurt. “What have you got against me, anyway?”

“Fred Rubinski thinks you killed his partner.”

And now he laughed. A snort of a laugh. “Maybe I did. They say it was hit-and-run, but maybe I was drivin’. Maybe you shouldn’t oughta fuck with the likes of me.”

I poked him in his fat chest. “Maybe you shouldn’t oughta fuck with the likes of Bugsy Siegel.”

He swallowed thickly and finally nodded.

“I’ll take care of the situation,” he said.

“I know you will.”

And I walked outside, through the front doors of the Flamingo, out into a night lit up by blinding floodlights. The landscaping crew was still at it-they would work through the cool night, under the hot lights, dumping the truckloads of rich soil, terracing it, laying acres of lawn, planting entire gardens of exotic flowers and shrubs. Caterpillar tractors were pushing earth around; gravel trucks were spreading topsoil; trees, their roots bagged in burlap, were being eased down planks from the backs of flatbeds. Just before me, a small palm tree in a wheelbarrow was being guided past me by a young man in dungarees.

Ben Siegel showed him where to plant it.

I shook my head and smiled and, stepping over a tangle of electrical wiring, found my way to my Buick in the parking lot.

On the day after Christmas-a Thursday-Ben Siegel unwrapped his gift to the people and himself, flinging open the doors of the fabulous Flamingo to an apparently eager public. Even the colors of this glittering night suggested the Flamingo was Bugsy’s great big Christmas present to the world: forty acres of desert transformed into vivid, terraced green, imported shrubbery and trees back-lit by red and blue lights. Meanwhile, klieg lights stroked the sky, Hollywood-opening style, creating a veil of light that made the Flamingo, its Grand Opening banners fluttering, visible for miles. Lines of automobiles coming from both directions converged and jammed, while a couple of off-duty Las Vegas traffic cops (who just that afternoon had been moving along a prospector on a burro holding up the downtown flow) somehow coped, though obviously stunned by the size of the throng storming this castle on the sand.

The only opportunity Siegel had missed to further light up his big night was leaving the fountain, out front, dark. The imposing structure was designed to keep water tumbling twenty-four hours, with spotlights throwing color onto its waterfall.

I had been with Siegel that afternoon when he went to watch the fountain’s inaugural moments. But the grounds-keeper was down within the bowl of the thing on his knees, looking inside the rock-plaster-and-lumber affair.

“What the hell’s the deal?” Siegel asked him. “Are you ready to turn this baby on or not?”

“All set, except…”

“Except what?”

“Well, Mr. Siegel, we’re gonna have to flush out that damn cat first.”

“Cat?” Siegel stepped back. “Where in hell?”

“In the sump. Cat crawled in there last night and had kittens. We’ll just have to flood ’em outa there.”

“Listen,” Siegel said, pointing a finger like a gun, “you drown those cats and you’re out a job.”

“You’re the boss, Mr. Siegel,” the groundskeeper shrugged, “but you won’t have a fountain at the opening tonight.”

“Fuck the fountain. It can wait.”

As we walked away, I said, “You don’t look like the animal-lover type.”

“I hate cats. They make my skin crawl. But it’s bad luck for a gambler to touch a cat.”

I presumed this didn’t apply to “Tabby”-although I had a hunch he would’ve been better off if it had.

Despite the dry, dark fountain, Ben Siegel’s fabulous Flamingo was having a bang-up opening night-even if Jimmy Durante was heard to say, on his way to perform in the red velvet-draped showroom, “Da place looks like a cemetery wid slot machines!”

The Schnozola was referring to arrangements of fresh flowers littering the lobby and main casino, tributes from the movie industry and the underworld. Representatives of the former were due in for Saturday night’s “big gala Hollywood premiere”-posters around the Flamingo promised the presence of Veronica Lake, Ava Gardner, William Holden, Lucille Ball and a dozen others.

The only representative of the underworld, that I knew of, was a small dark man in his mid-forties, registered at the Last Frontier Hotel as George Lieberman.

“You know who that is?” Moey Sedway, bedecked in a tux, asked me smugly.

“Your brother?” I asked. Both men were tiny Jews with close-set eyes and prominent noses, though this other man had an air of quiet authority that Sedway could only hope for.

“I wish he was,” said Little Moey. “I could use being born next to that much dough.” He paused for effect, then said: “That’s Meyer Lansky.”

I looked at Sedway like he was crazy. “That pipsqueak?”

“I wouldn’t call him that to his face,” Moey advised. “They come bigger, but they don’t come no more powerful.”

Lansky, in dark suit and dark tie, was smiling faintly, having a pleasant conversation, in low tones, with the wide-smiling Ben Siegel, who looked spiffy as hell in his white dinner jacket with red carnation in the lapel.

Surprisingly, Lansky didn’t seem to have any bodyguards, but then neither did Siegel. With the exception of his security force of ex-cops-whose job was watching the casino, after all-Siegel lacked the armed retinue you might expect. I’d figured Sedway was his bodyguard, at first, till I found Moey never carried a gun; besides, that little weasel couldn’t have cut it as bodyguard to a department store Santa.

I’d been around my share of mob guys, but Ben Siegel had me stumped. Despite occasional flare-ups of temper, he just didn’t gibe with the stories I’d heard about him. Look at him and Lansky standing there schmoozing. Lansky might have been a moderately successful garment-district businessman; Siegel someone from the movie industry, a director, a producer, perhaps. Were these two men really the founders of Murder, Incorporated? Was Lansky truly an underworld financial wizard the likes of which made Guzik seem an amateur? Was Siegel really the man who controlled narcotics on the West Coast?

Whatever the case, tonight Ben (Don’t-Call-Him-You-Know-What) Siegel was a charming, gladhanding host, although as Sedway and I stood along the periphery of the lobby, looking over the packed casino, Siegel did show his colors, momentarily. A heavy-set man in a plaid jacket, looking very out of place in this world of evening wear, was standing in front of a slot machine lackadaisically lighting up a cigar-and not a Havana like Sedway and Siegel smoked. Siegel excused himself from Lansky and walked over to the man.

“You’re blocking the machine,” Siegel told him. “Play, or move it along.”

The bewildered patron in plaid just moved it along.

I thought I could sense disapproval in Lansky’s deadpan expression; but the little man was smiling again, however faintly, when Siegel approached him and put a hand on his shoulder and led him down and through the big casino.

“You won’t see Meyer Lansky at the Saturday night grand opening,” Sedway said.

“Why’s that?”

“That’s when the reporters are going to show. And Mr. Lansky doesn’t like publicity much.”

“Ben doesn’t seem to mind it.”

“You’re tellin’ me. He got himself a goddamn press agent, the other day.”

“Yeah, I know. I met him. That guy Greenspun. Don’t you think a place like this ought to have a press agent, Moe?”

“Sure. But I don’t think some of the, uh, investors knew Ben was going to be so…prominent, in the scheme of things. Newspaper articles. Greeting guests at the door. Mingling.”

“Telling ’em to move it along.”

Sedway laughed shortly. Then he decided he’d said enough to me, and excused himself to do some mingling of his own.

There were plenty of people to mingle with. Earlier that week Siegel had been concerned about a rumor that Las Vegans would boycott his pastel palace. Resentment over the political strings he’d pulled to get building supplies was part of it; the rest came from a whispering campaign about the Flamingo being a den of gangsters, begun by his downtown competitors. These “short-sighted fucking vultures,” as Siegel referred to them, didn’t understand that (as Ben saw it) he would only bring them all more business by attracting more gamblers to Vegas.

Apparently the rumor had been just that-a rumor-or else the resentment and whispering campaign had been overcome by curiosity and Siegel’s pro-Las Vegas advertising: “The Flamingo has been built for Las Vegas…the Flamingo owners believe in Las Vegas, its future as the greatest playground in the universe…the Flamingo will bring Las Vegas the best money can buy and brains can conceive.”

Siegel wrote most of that himself, of course. He even told his PR guy what to do and how to do it.

Me he’d left pretty much alone, to do my job. Right now I was keeping an eye on the security people, seeing if my training over the past ten days or so had done any good. It was crowded enough tonight to make pickpocket control difficult, which would be a nice final exam for my ex-cop students. Some of them were posted here and there, others were mingling. All wore tuxes-all of Siegel’s staff did. Siegel himself had interviewed and hired, after Sedway thinned the pack, the eighty-five dealers, eighteen pit bosses and box men, and three slot-machine supervisors. All of whom, if you asked me, looked uncomfortable in their monkey suits.

Former LAPD lieutenant Quinn, looking in his tux like a tan but sickly penguin, came up to me and smiled and asked how I was doing. He’d been trying to be friendly ever since we tangled. I hadn’t gotten rough with him again, because I was pretty sure the pilferage had stopped. My spot checks of boxes I marked (and I’d marked some every day) indicated such, anyway.

Quinn assayed the casino. “Think my boys’ll find any dips workin’ the room?”

“If they can’t, they couldn’t find their ass with two hands.”

He couldn’t resist some sarcasm. “You really think there’s gonna be a ‘whiz team’ in the woodpile?”

“That’s the surest bet you could make here tonight.”

And I moved away from him. I don’t mind your average crooked cop; I used to be one myself. But a guy like Quinn gives corruption a bad name.

I walked out on the patio, which was lit in a soft-focus way by more red and blue spots spotted around. Around the pool, as if sunning in the moonlight, were various young women, all of them lovely, shapely, in bathing suits, mostly two-piece, lounging on the chaises. These women were in Siegel’s employ, although in what capacity exactly I couldn’t say. They’d been posing around the pool all week, for cheesecake photos for the wire-service boys. I knew some of these bathing beauties doubled as cigarette and change girls. Only a few were waitresses, from the lounge; the dining room was served exclusively by waiters, in tuxes, natch. (Siegel had drilled the waiters himself, until they worked with the precision of a Marine platoon.)

One of these women sunning in the moonlight, one who had not done any cheesecake posing earlier in the week, worked as Siegel’s confidential secretary.

“You look like a movie star,” I told Peggy.

She was wearing a dark blue two-piece.

“Thanks,” she said. Her reply was a little chilly. But then so was the air; it wasn’t cold out, but if I had a quarter for every erect nipple around this pool, I could’ve fed a slot machine till midnight.

I got down on my haunches next to her. “But isn’t this a little beneath a businesswoman like you?”

She looked down her nose at me, smiling with no warmth. “I don’t think so. Ben wanted some pretty girls to sit around the pool tonight, and I think I qualify, thank you.”

I pulled up a lounge chair. “Sure you do. I just thought you might have played a slightly more conspicuous, more important role in this grand event.”

She seemed to be studying the red and blue lights as they shimmered on the water in the pool.

“Certain parties wouldn’t have liked that,” she said.

“And yet, at the same time, by sitting here in your near altogether, you’re sort of thumbing your nose at ‘certain parties.’ I like that. You still got some of that Chicago fuck-you spirit. The desert air hasn’t dried you out entirely.”

Sadness tightened her eyes. “You hate me now, don’t you?”

I shook my head, smiled a little. “No. Are you still angry with me?”

She gave me a quick, burning look. “I should be. You had no right getting…” I think she was about to say “so personal,” but reconsidered, since that was absurd on the face of it. She just let her thought trail off and looked out at the pool again.

She was referring to a short conversation we’d had, in a Last Frontier hallway the second day of my stay, in which I had said to her as follows: “I don’t know if you’re sleeping with Siegel or not-but if you are, take my advice: don’t, at least not when ‘Tabby’ is in town.”

“Is that right?” she’d coldly said.

“That’s right. But if you can’t help yourself, do it on the sly, and be goddamn careful.”

“Really?” Anger bubbling.

“Really. That cunt is capable of murder, you know.”

For a moment I’d thought she was going to slap me; but she just glared at me, tightly, and stalked off. We hadn’t talked since, except occasional polite, meaningless dinner table conversation, when Siegel held court nightly at the Last Frontier’s restaurant and, in these last pre-opening days, at the Flamingo dining room, where we had a few trial meals. Pretty good, too. Siegel’s French chef knew his stuff.

“Look,” I said. “I know it hasn’t been easy having me around. Anyway, I know it hasn’t been easy for me to be around…”

She looked at me and her expression softened; I could see in it the ghost of her love for me. And I wondered if it haunted her like it did me, at all.

“I’ll be going home soon,” I said. “Probably Monday, after this grand opening weekend’s dead and gone.”

“Why did you take the job, Nate?”

“Money.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Come on, baby. You know me better than that. Name something that matters to me more than money.”

She turned away and looked out at the pool. I thought maybe her lower lip was quivering. Maybe not.

I stood.

I was just going when she said, “I think you stayed to keep an eye on me.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“You…you think you’re protecting me, don’t you?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“You’ve been keeping an eye on me. I know you have.”

I didn’t say anything.

She looked at me. “You really think Ginny’s dangerous, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?”

“No. She’s all mouth. Big mouth. Ben can’t stand her.”

“Oh, really?”

“He’s just putting up with her.”

“Why’s he doing that?”

“She has her hooks into him. Monetarily. She has money in this place, you know.”

“So does George Raft, but Siegel isn’t sleeping with him.”

She looked away again. At the pool. “You know how tight she is with Ben’s people back East.”

“You mean gangsters? Is that what you think, he’s putting up with her, because she’s the darling of the syndicate? Maybe he keeps her around because he knows that she’s spying on him for them-and that lets him control what she reports back.”

“Well, doesn’t that make sense?”

“It’s bullshit. She was a courier for those guys; they trusted her. And they used to lay her, most of them, but now she’s Ben’s girl, and that’s all she is. You’re kidding yourself. Why don’t you go back to Chicago where you got family and friends?”

“Nate. Don’t…”

“I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about you. About putting a life together for yourself, a real life that isn’t the ersatz Hollywood your dreamboat’s trying to turn this desert into.”

She gestured around us with one hand, smiling wryly. “I think he’s done pretty well.”

“Tonight it looks like it. Looking at these palms and terraces and this swimming pool, sure. But you know better than I how wrong this is going.”

She swallowed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

I pointed over to the hotel building. “He didn’t make it, did he? His personal deadline. That hotel isn’t going to be open for weeks-maybe months. He had to book rooms at hotels all over town, when people called for reservations.”

“So what? You saw those crowds in there. The casino’s open. The restaurant. The showroom.”

“He’s not going to make any money on the restaurant; like he says, it’s strictly a come-on. Nor the showroom-he’s spending thirty-five grand a week on Cugat and Durante and the rest. Top-name talent don’t come cheap. So it’s all riding on the casino-and these opening-night type crowds aren’t going to hold up. Not even on opening night.”

“And why not?”

“Aren’t you listening? Aren’t you paying attention? He didn’t get the hotel open in time-the Flamingo drew people in, but those people are staying at other hotels, most of them at the Last Frontier and the El Rancho Vegas, which have their own casinos. The other hotels are close to all those open-door casinos downtown. People gamble where they’re staying, Peg. They may come to the Flamingo for an hour or two every day while they’re in town, but they’re going to do most of their gambling where they’re staying. That’s basic.”

She was shaking her head no. “He’ll make a go of it. You wait and see.”

“I don’t know. You notice that little guy he’s been talking to?”

“Mr. Lieberman?”

“That’s right, only it’s Lansky. Meyer Lansky.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Isn’t he…a gangster?”

“Isn’t Rita Hayworth a woman? I don’t think his being here is a good sign.”

“Maybe it’s a show of support.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think Ben has much time left to make a go of this place. He’s sunk six million bucks of mostly mob money into the Flamingo, and I have a hunch the boys want some results, fast. They want to see that Ben’s running this place to their satisfaction.”

“You think that’s why this…what is his name?”

“Lansky.”

“You think that’s why this Lansky is here. Checking up on Ben.”

“Possibly. Possibly warning him. They’re partners. They go way back.”

“You almost seem…worried about Ben.”

“I like the guy. Don’t ask me why. By all accounts, he’s a murderer and a narcotics trafficker, among other niceties, including he’s in my ex-fiancee’s pants. I oughta hate him.”

She winced at my remark about her pants, but was expressionless when she said, “But you don’t.”

“No. I kind of admire his chutzpah. And maybe he’ll pull this stunt off. Maybe. But I’m not waiting around to see. I’ll be in Chicago before you know it.”

“I love him, Nate.”

“You fall in love a lot, don’t you, kid? Me, it doesn’t come quite so easy.”

“I’m not going back to Chicago with you.”

“Well, here’s my advice, then. Stay out of Siegel’s bed. Tell him you’ll get back in, when Virginia Hill’s out of his life. Tell him you aren’t prepared to play side dish to her main course.”

“You’re cruel.”

“Not as cruel as you, and you aren’t even trying. Do what I said, and maybe you can hang on to your job here. Siegel does seem to respect you for your mind as well as your body. Be a career girl, if you want. You just might be in on the ground floor of something.”

“Why do you…why do you still care about me?”

“I haven’t the faintest fucking idea,” I said, and I went back into the casino.

Where Ben was in his element. He was shaking hands with guests (those who weren’t in plaid jackets, anyway), and on his arm was Virginia Hill, looking resplendent in her thirty-five-hundred dollar flaming orange-red gown; a diamond necklace caressed her bosom, and who could blame the lucky rocks? She seemed in her element, too, tapping back into her days as the belle of the social ball, when she was posing as an Arkansas heiress. Gone, for the moment, was her disdain for Siegel’s pastel dream castle. Here was a beautiful woman, charming, funny, and so very desirable. The psychopath was hiding.

I stayed away from her. I saw Lansky two more times that evening; in both instances he was speaking, off to one side, with Moe Sedway.

My pickpocket school graduates did all right. They stopped one whiz team, and two single-handers. They followed my suggested procedure and did not confront the dips till they had left the premises; that prevented any nasty embarrassing scene within the facility itself.

As I suspected, the crowd thinned out early, for a joint that never closed. People headed back to their own hotels, where they’d probably gamble some more before retiring.

A little after 3 a.m., I found Siegel in the small main counting room off the casino. Boxes of money were on the table before him. He and the top pit boss were counting the take. But I could see from Siegel’s fallen face that something was wrong.

“This is impossible,” he said, ashen.

The pit boss shrugged.

“I’ll, uh, report in later,” I said.

Siegel looked at me with the expression of a man who has been struck in the back of the head with a plank.

“We’re down almost thirty thousand,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“We lost tonight. How the fuck does the house lose?” I didn’t know.

But the way Siegel’s luck had been running, I wasn’t surprised he’d found a way.

“The place ain’t exactly hoppin’,” George Raft said, lighting up a cigarette as he viewed the moderately attended casino floor from the slightly raised perspective of the lobby. It was early Friday afternoon, and Raft had just arrived from Hollywood; he’d driven over in his shiny cobalt-blue Cadillac, only it wasn’t so shiny after the desert had been at it for seven hours. He was wearing a dark blue sportshirt and a lighter blue jacket and seemed tired; his hair was slicked immaculately back, but the rest of him looked slightly out of focus.

“Come evening it’ll be jammed again,” I said. “Without the hotel open, days are bound to be slow.”

He nodded. “How’s Benny holding up?”

“He’s a little frazzled. This morning he chewed out some poor customer who had the bad judgment to go up and call him ‘Bugsy.’”

“Ouch,” Raft said.

“And, too, he was down thirty grand last night.”

Raft gave me a disbelieving look. “Down?”

“Yeah. Partly it’s the pros from downtown coming in and playing smart. That includes his supposed pal Gus Greenbaum.”

The gregarious, fleshy Greeenbaum ran the Arizona branch of Trans-American for Siegel.

“Even the savviest gamblers are still up against house odds,” Raft said. “What’s really going on?”

“I think I know,” I said. “I’m just not ready to spring it on Siegel yet.”

Raft nodded again. “Where is he? I got more bad news for him.”

“Well, if that’s the case, I’m going to make myself scarce…”

“Too late. Here he is.”

Siegel was striding through the casino, wearing a tux with a red carnation; he was beaming, gladhanding, putting on a good front, but just the way he walked was a tip-off. This guy was teetering.

But he grinned widely at seeing Raft and said, “Georgie! Georgie, how are ya? Thanks for coming,” pumping his old friend’s hand. He didn’t seem to notice how forced Raft’s smile was.

“Let’s talk,” Raft said.

“Fine!”

“Private, someplace.”

Siegel shrugged. “Sure.”

“I’ll see you guys later,” I said.

“Naw,” Siegel said, “Georgie and me got no secrets from you, Nate.” And, Raft staying dutifully at his side, Siegel eased his arm around my shoulder and walked me to his small office behind the hotel check-in counter.

Siegel’s desk was cluttered with notepad notes to himself; there were four phones, making it look more like a hole-in-the-wall bookie joint than some big shot’s office. The pink plaster walls were decorated with framed photos of Ben and his Hollywood pals, chief among them Raft, including a portrait of the two of them smiling at each other after Raft stood up for his childhood chum in court.

Behind the desk, Siegel leaned back in his swivel chair and lit up one of his Havanas. Normally the health-conscious Bug only allowed himself one a day; the last several days I’d noticed he was going through them like he was chain smoking Camels.

Raft took a chair across from Siegel while I stood in the corner, next to a signed, framed Cary Grant 8 by 10 glossy.

Siegel pointed at me with his pool cue cigar and showed off his patented dazzling smile. “I oughta put you in my will, Georgie, for introducing me to Nate, here. He’s just about the most valuable guy I got around this joint.”

I swallowed. I didn’t know whether to say aw shucks or go screaming into the desert.

“He’s straightened out my pilferage problem overnight. He’s turned those flabby ex-flatfoots on my private police force into something like a real security staff. You used to be a dip, didn’t you, Georgie? Well, don’t try it around here-Nate’s got his boys trained to spot ya. Nate doesn’t know it yet,” he confided in Raft, as if I weren’t there, “but I’m going to offer him a permanent position.”

I said, “I’m flattered, Ben,” and let it go at that.

Raft said, “Hear you had quite a turnout last night.”

Siegel gave with a magnanimous wave of his cigar. “Jam-packed. Couldn’t ask for better.” His expression darkened momentarily. “We had a bad run of luck at the tables…” And then he brightened, or pretended to. “…but the house odds’ll turn that around.”

If he was counting on that, he was making a mistake, at least potentially so. Sure, assuming his tables were straight, the odds would even out in the house’s favor; that was a tide that would inevitably turn. But as over-extended as he was, his bankroll might be expended before said tide came in.

“Everything’s set for tomorrow night,” Siegel said. “I chartered a TWA Constellation to bring your pals down, and anybody that doesn’t want to fly can come by train, at my expense.”

“Ben,” Raft said, shifting in his chair, “we got a little problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“A few people can’t make it.”

“Like who?”

“Well. Like almost everybody.”

Siegel’s face went expressionless; and then it began to burn.

Raft seemed very uncomfortable. “It’s not easy for me to tell you this, Ben.”

“What’s the matter with those jerks? Since when don’t Hollywood wanna come to a big party?”

Raft shrugged, tried to find something to say, couldn’t. It was very strange seeing George Raft nervous; it made me at least as uncomfortable as he was.

Siegel gestured to the framed photos around him. “What about your buddies at MGM? Joan Crawford, Greer Garson, Spencer Tracy, Ronald Colman?”

“Ben. Look. Old man Hearst passed the word around the studios. He’s against the whole idea of stars coming out here for this-everybody’s been told to stay away.”

Siegel slammed a fist on his desk and his framed photos rattled. “That lousy cocksucker! What’s he got against me?”

“I don’t know, Ben.”

“It’s that fucking Louella Parsons. She’s always on my ass. Calls me a gangster, in print!”

“What can I say? I’ll be there.”

“Who else?”

“Lon McAllister, Sonny Tufts, Charlie Coburn…a few others.”

Siegel’s face had slowly gone from red to white. “I advertise Ava Gardner and instead give ’em Sonny Tufts, is that it?”

“Hell, I think it’s white of Tufts to show, considering the pressure.”

Siegel, calming, said, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m not gonna take it out on the ones with stones enough to show. What about Jessel?”

“He’s coming. He’s set to emcee.”

“Yeah, he can deliver the fuckin’ eulogy.”

“Ben, there’ll be enough stars to justify your advertising and everything. And Wilkerson says that all the reporters you invited are coming.”

Siegel smirked humorlessly. “After the free ride I promised ’em, you can bet on it. I sent out cases of whiskey to a couple dozen of the bastards.” Abruptly he stood, looked sharply my way. “Have you seen Chick around?”

Chick was Virginia Hill’s twenty-one-year-old brother, a nice enough kid, who was working as a robber, that is, one of the trusted hands who emptied the slot machines and hauled the bags of coin to the counting room.

“Yeah,” I said, “he’s working. If he isn’t on the floor, he’s in the counting room.”

“Get him, would you?”

I didn’t much like playing gopher to Siegel, but I didn’t much feel like telling him to go fuck himself, either. I found Chick in the counting room and hauled the boy back.

“What do you need, Ben?” he asked. He was wearing a white shirt and black pants-which was one of the two standard casino employee uniforms, the other and more common being a tux; even just the modified formal wear looked odd on Chick, who was a kid with dark blond hair, slicked back in the Raft manner, and pointed, callowly handsome features.

Siegel, still standing, dug in his pants pocket; he withdrew a wad of bills and peeled off ten one-hundred dollar bills; he scattered them on his desk like more notes to himself.

“There’s a grand,” he told the kid. “Take it and do some shopping in L.A. Get some nice presents for the reporters, the columnists. Neckties, shirts. Oh, hell, you know.”

“Sure, Ben. Should I drive, or what?”

“Naw, I want you back by tomorrow afternoon. Catch the first available flight.” He peeled off another hundred.

Chick collected the money, smiled goofily like a teenager whose dad just handed him the keys to the new DeSoto. He stood there with the money in his hands for a few moments, until Siegel rather irritatedly waved him off, and the kid slipped out the door.

“We’ll keep these reporters happy,” Siegel said. Then he put his cigar out in a tray and came out from behind the desk and Raft stood and the men went out into the lobby; I trailed behind, not having been dismissed yet.

“Let me show you the pool,” Siegel said, his arm around Raft now.

I was about to fall away, but then decided to go along. I wanted to see if Peggy was playing bathing beauty today.

Turned out she wasn’t. Just a bevy of waitresses, cigarette girls and hookers, soaking up the winter sun.

So was a guy in a tux, his tie loose around his neck.

Siegel’s face reddened again.

He broke away from Raft and went over and kicked the chaise longue, whose pale, round-faced, startled occupant sat up and looked at Siegel with wide, terror-filled eyes.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Siegel snarled.

“Just-just s-sitting here…”

“Get back to work, you bum, before I boot your ass out on the highway.”

The round-faced man looked at me and then at Raft, whom he obviously recognized but was too bewildered by Siegel’s performance to be impressed by the presence of a mere movie star.

The man could only stutter: “B-but I’m a ga-ga-ga…”

“Spit it out!”

“Guest!”

“What?” Siegel said. Taken aback.

“I don’t work here…I’m a guest.”

Raft covered his mouth but I didn’t bother. My hand wouldn’t have been big enough to hide the grin.

Siegel, very embarrassed, started brushing off the shoulders of the guy’s tux, as if it had gotten dirty, which it hadn’t. He did his best to make it up to the guy, handing him one of the same courtesy cards the newspapermen got, giving him a free ride on everything except gambling itself.

We walked back into the casino and Siegel said, “Brother, is my face red.”

Frequently.

“I guess I oughta watch my fuckin’ temper…shit! Do you see who that is?”

A tall, slightly heavy-set man in a pinstripe suit, with satanically shaggy eyebrows, was standing at a slot machine, studying it like a sociologist might a pygmy hut.

Raft said nothing, but the mask of his face was grim.

“Pegler,” I said.

Siegler looked at me with a vicious, self-satisfied smile. “Westbrook Pegler is right.”

I shrugged. “Well, you wanted to attract newspapermen.”

“That bastard’s been cutting me up. Called me a hoodlum and carpetbagger. Called me Bugsy. In syndication.”

I could see Siegel’s shoulders tensing; his hands were fists.

Raft put a hand on Siegel’s arm. “Ben-he’s been cutting me up in his column, too. Ever since that gambling bust, but so what? That’s his racket. Live and let live.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Siegel said, quietly, smiling, “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill him.”

It was times like these I wished I’d taken my father’s advice and finished college.

“You’re not killing anybody,” Raft said. “You’re going to ruin it for yourself, if you do. Get a grip, baby-blue eyes.”

Siegel visibly softened.

But he walked over to Pegler, who had inserted a quarter into the slot machine and was yanking back the arm.

Raft and I followed; we seemed to be backing Siegel up, but in reality we were poised to grab and brace him, if necessary. Pegler, who I’d had a run-in with in Chicago back in ’39, looked right at me and didn’t recognize me. Like him, I was older and heavier, now.

“Mr. Pegler,” Siegel said.

“Yes?” Pegler said, losing his quarter, turning his gaze on Siegel, eyebrows raised, voice patrician. Pegler was one of those columnists who made a big deal about being for the common man while at the same time considering himself above just about everybody.

“My name is Ben Siegel.”

Pegler began to smile; he was searching for the right pithy comment, when Siegel stopped him.

With Pegler’s own weapon, words: “This is my casino. If you’re not out of here in five minutes, I’m going to take you out. Personally.”

Pegler’s smile wilted. He looked at Siegel carefully, slowly. Siegel’s back was to me, so I don’t know what expression he was showing Pegler. Whatever it was, it was enough to make the powerful columnist swallow thickly, tuck tail between his legs and go.

Siegel turned to us and opened his two hands like a magician displaying something that had disappeared. “See? I can control my temper when I want to.”

“Good,” I said. “Because it’s time you knew something.”

“What’s that?”

I turned to Raft. “Why don’t you park yourself at a blackjack table or something, for a while? Your face attracts too much attention. We need to be a little less conspicuous for a few minutes.”

Raft shrugged. “I’ll try the chemin-de-fer room.”

“Good idea,” I said.

Then he moved off, and I took Siegel by the arm. “What do you have in mind,” I asked him, “where these gambling losses are concerned?”

“In mind?”

“What do you intend to do about it?”

He shrugged facially. “Well, we’re switching dice more frequent. Cards, too. Tonight I’m gonna move dealers from table to table…”

“Some of your dealers need to be moved farther away than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you patted them down on their way out the door, you’d find subs full of chips.” A “sub” was a hidden pocket.

His eyes tensed. “You’ve seen this?”

“Have you got your temper in check?”

“Nate, I’m cool as a cucumber.”

“Good, because the answer is yes. I’ve seen half a dozen dealers sweeping chips into subs.”

“Christ, I interviewed them all myself!”

“Never mind that. Just take a look there.”

I nudged his attention to the roulette table where I’d been leading him; we were now about five feet away from it, behind and to one side of the croupier, a thin, hawk-faced man who was pushing chips across the table to a pockmarked heavy-set gentleman in a brown suit. The problem was, the pockmarked heavy-set gentleman who was having chips pushed his way was not winning.

“That guy isn’t hitting any winning numbers,” Siegel whispered harshly to me, after a while, his eyes large.

“Right,” I said. I nodded toward the croupier. “You get the pit boss to take him off the table. I’ll handle the phony player.”

Siegel, eyes narrowing, nodded. He turned away.

I walked up to the pockmarked player, thinking Siegel was off getting the pit boss.

But the Bug had changed his mind, because he was standing right behind the hawk-faced croupier.

“I oughta kill you, you son of a bitch!” he said, and punted the croupier’s ass.

It lifted the man off the floor and sent him skidding across the table, chips scattering. When he came to a stop, his hawkish nose pointed to the double-00 on the numbered felt.

“You lose,” Siegel said, and reached over and picked him up like baggage and hurled him into the aisle.

Without looking back, the ex-croupier picked himself up and ran. The astonished onlookers-and the very pleased Ben Siegel-watched the guy hurtle up into the lobby and out the front doors.

Siegel gestured big with his hands, like a ringmaster. “No cover charge folks!” he said, letting loose his dazzler of a smile.

And people, smiling too, if not dazzlingly, shaking their heads, chattering amongst themselves, turned back to their gambling.

Siegel came over to me and slipped his arm around my shoulder. “Let’s go have a talk.”

We walked across the terraced green grounds that not so long ago had been barren, and he walked me across the painted, carpeted lobby of the unfinished hotel and took me up the elevator to the penthouse suite.

We sat on the chintz-covered sofa. He was drinking tonic water; I had some rum on ice.

He was shaking his head. “I hired those guys myself, Nate.”

He meant the dealers and other casino floor people.

“Most of them local?” I asked.

“Right. I screened them all personally.”

“After Sedway thinned the pack, you did.”

“Right.” His eyes slitted. “What are you saying?”

“I think there’s widespread cheating going on out there. And I don’t think it’s random.”

“You mean, it’s organized?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Moey?”

“Who else?”

“What about Quinn?”

I shook my head no. “He’s not smart enough, and besides, I put him on notice. He’s too scared of you to pull anything. He’s even scared of me. Moey? Moey resents you, and that breeds a kind of bravery.”

“Moey resents me?”

“I think it goes back to that scuffle you had over politics.”

He sat and thought about that.

I went on: “I think he’s angling to take over. My guess is he’s trying to make you look bad to your friends back east.”

Siegel’s face tensed with thought. “And if he convinces them I’m a bad manager, they’ll ask him to step in?”

“Yeah. He seems to be in pretty thick with Lansky.”

Siegel nodded. “He is at that. You know what Meyer said to me last night? He said, ‘Ben, you’re a smart dreamer, but a lousy engineer.’ Can you imagine?”

“Ben, none of this is my business…I’ve told you what I know, and what I think.” I was getting uncomfortable being privy to Siegel’s inside thoughts.

But he pressed on: “He just got back, Meyer did, from Havana. They just had a big meeting down there, with Charlie Lucky.”

Luciano. A big secret syndicate confab in Havana, and I knew about it. Great.

I rose. “Ben, you’re getting into areas…”

“Sit down, Nate. I trust you.”

“That isn’t the point…”

“Sit down, Nate.”

I sat.

“Meyer said the boys aren’t happy with me, the money I spent, here. They want me to bring in a top hotel man. They want to hire somebody from one of the downtown joints to run my casino.” He grinned but there was desperation in it. “You know what else?”

I said nothing.

“You’ll get a kick out of this, being Ragen’s pal and all. They want me to fold Trans-American up. Guzik has control of Continental now, through that McBride character. I told Meyer, sure-just buy me out.”

My mouth was dry. Nonetheless, I managed to ask, “How much did you ask?”

“Two million.”

Jesus.

“I’m pulling in twenty-five grand a week,” he said. “Why should I give it up, otherwise? They’ll make their money back in less than two years. It’s a fair offer.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I need the money,” he said. “This place eats money.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Moey, huh?” he said. Then, reflective, he went on: “Meyer said they heard bad things about me. Some of the boys said they heard I was skimming off the top of the construction money. Jeez!” He shook his head, gestured toward the two picture windows, out of which the terraced lawn and the scalloped-edged pool could be seen. “Those wop bastards, don’t they know I put every available penny into this place, including my own? And my heart and my fuckin’ soul? This is my…what, monument, the thing that’ll be around when I’m gone that’ll make people know I was here.”

“When you get the kinks ironed out,” I said, carefully, “it’ll be a great success, I think.”

“I think so, too. But Meyer’s putting the pressure on me. Something else they heard was I got half a million stashed away in Switzerland. I sent Tabby to Zurich to pick out some furniture for the hotel rooms and from that they figure I’m stuffing their dough in a numbered account. Jesus!”

“What pressure are they putting on you?”

He sipped his tonic water, shrugged. “They expect me to make a good showing, quick.”

I smiled thinly. “That seals it. Sedway.”

He looked at me and slowly began to nod. “Sure. He’s sabotaging my casino-that’s where I gotta make it to make it.”

“Right.”

Siegel stood and walked to the window, surveyed his kingdom with a smile. “I’m gonna fool the bastards. I’m gonna pull it off.”

I stood. “I hope you do. Look, I’m going to go back to the casino and keep an eye on the security staff.”

He turned back to me. “Nate, I was serious about giving you a permanent position, here.”

“Well, uh, I was serious when I said I was flattered…”

“I know, I know, but you don’t want to work under Quinn. Well hell, I plan to fire the fat little crooked son of a bitch, anyway. You think I don’t know how you managed to stop the pilferage so goddamn fast? You weren’t here five minutes before you spotted the problem.”

“You would’ve, too, if you weren’t trying to do so much.”

“I know, I know. And I will hire some of those people the boys want me to hire, hotel man, casino manager, down the road. I’ll start hiring now, right this minute. How’s this for openers? Stay on and be my security chief, Nate. It’ll pay you sixty grand a year and fringes. You can live right here at the Flamingo.”

“That’s good money. That’s attractive. But I have my own business.”

He shrugged. “You could keep it going. Own it, keep an eye on it, but put somebody you trust in charge. Like Fred’s going to run your west coast office.”

“Fred’s a partner. That’s different.”

He patted the air with one hand, setting his tonic water on the bar. “Just think about it. For the time being, let’s go back to the casino and see if there’s anymore dishonest dealers who need a kick in the ass.”

I laughed. “I imagine the cheating’s been cut way back since that little scene.”

“It’s what the cops call a deterrent, right?”

“Right.”

Siegel laughed and we went out a side exit that led down a slanted ramp-like passageway that opened at the side of the hotel nearest the main building. We walked back toward the pool.

Sedway was standing near one of the youngest-looking of the bathing beauties, a little busty blonde number, coming on to her as subtly as a safe falling out a window; but then she could see it coming and didn’t seem to be moving out of the way, so what the hell. He was wearing a white jacket with a red carnation, similar to Ben’s apparel of the evening before; but a weasel in a dinner jacket is still a weasel.

“Moe!” Siegel called out.

Moey looked over at Siegel and gave him a slippery sideways smile and reluctantly left his quiff and trotted over.

“Yes, Ben?”

Siegel put a hand on the little man’s shoulder. “What’s the idea badmouthing me to Meyer?”

Moey’s eyes began to move back and forth. “What do you mean, Ben?”

“Don’t shit me. You think Meyer would keep something like that from me? You know how far back Meyer and me go? They used to call him ‘Bugs,’ too, you know.”

“Ben, I don’t know what to say.”

Siegel’s hand began to squeeze the shoulder, like an orange you want to turn into a glass of juice. Pulp and all.

“Tell me, Moey. I already know, but I wanna hear it from you.”

The rat-faced little man swallowed and said, “I just told ’em the truth. That I thought you were dangerous to their interests.”

“Really. Because I ain’t up to running a big place like this, is that it?”

“Well, I think you need more help, anyway. I don’t mean any offense.”

He didn’t let up the pressure on Moe’s shoulder. “You don’t mean any offense. Going to Meyer and Christ knows who else behind my back. They were voting down there whether to have me hit or not, Moey. Down in Havana? Bet you didn’t tell ’em you were fixing my casino room so I’d lose, did ya? Or that you were setting me up with crooked dealers?”

Moey’s face fell; he tried to move back.

Siegel said, “Goodbye, Moey. If you ever set foot at the Flamingo again, I’m gonna break the rules. There’s gonna be a killing in Vegas, and you’re the guy that’s gonna get killed, and I’m the guy that’s gonna do the killing.”

He let go of Moey’s shoulder and Moey turned and moved quickly away, disappearing into the casino.

Siegel sighed, looked at me, shaking his head. “It ain’t easy being an executive,” he said.

And we walked back inside the fabulous Flamingo.

Even with Sedway’s absence, the Flamingo’s losing streak rolled on. And I knew why: the dealers, alerted by the literal booting out of one of their own, not to mention the ousting of Sedway himself, would only do their cheating all the more carefully now; and members of the security staff, whose attention I’d called to the problem and who were supposedly keeping an eye out, might well be in on the scam. In the case of either or both, Siegel was flat out screwed. Short of firing everybody on his casino crew and closing down and starting over after rehiring-which Siegel of course could (or anyway, would) not do-there was no way around it. Friday night the house didn’t lose as badly as it had Thursday, but it did lose. To the tune of fifteen thousand dollars.

On the surface, at least, the evening’s “Hollywood Premiere,” which of course was the grand finale of Ben’s gala opening, was going well. Newspaper, magazine and freelance photographers converged en masse, snapping leg art of the girls around the pool (Peggy not among them). Columnists and other newshounds were on hand to do write-ups and interviews, giving rave reviews to an especially demented Jimmy Durante, who hurled into a stunned and delighted audience beat-up old hats, a perplexed Cugat’s sheet music, and bits and pieces of a piano he was seemingly dismantling, only to be topped by the former child-star Rose Marie, looking a glamorous young woman now, nonetheless doing an uncanny showstopping imitation of the Schnoz.

A few more of Raft’s Hollywood friends showed than had been anticipated; not the glittering array Siegel had been promised-and had promised his patrons. But the respectable likes of George Sanders, Vivian Blaine and Eleanor Parker, as well as the expected Sonny Tufts, Lon McAllister and Charles Coburn, and a few others.

And the place was packed, with Hollywood industry figures like Jesse Lasky and Sid Grauman scattered amongst a crowd that mingled rank and file with Los Angeles society types. Siegel had instructed the security staff to enforce a dress code of sorts; it was vague-one of the few specifics was that men had to check their hats, which annoyed the natives who were used to wearing their Stetsons just about everywhere, bed and bathtub too I suspected-but it was working to the extent that the majority of patrons tonight were in formal wear.

Even I was in a rented tux, provided by Siegel, and I was determined that this would be my last night in his service. I’d trained his people and otherwise helped him. If nothing else, spotting the cheating on the floor, and helping him zero in on Sedway as his betrayer, had earned me my paycheck.

But I wasn’t confident that Siegel could keep his head-not to mention his temper-in the face of the pressures ahead, not the least of which was his conflict with the boys back east. Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano and the rest obviously wanted three things from Ben and the Flamingo: fast results on their investment; a slowdown on spending; and no more embarrassing publicity. They also wanted him to shitcan Trans-American, which had after all been intended as merely a stopgap measure till Ragen’s Continental could be bought out or taken over.

I wasn’t convinced Ben Siegel could deliver on any of those things. And I knew he was dreaming a bigger dream than the Flamingo itself in thinking the Combination would buy him out of their own race wire for two million. One determined man standing up against his old mob cronies who, past friendships or not, wanted him to hand over his race wire, well-that was where I came in. I wished him luck, but didn’t want to be around when, inevitably, the bullets would start flying. Sixty grand a year and fringes was nice. But breathing had it beat all to hell.

And Peggy? I wouldn’t be taking her home. That was the best bet of the night.

I spent the evening moving through the crowded casino, posting myself here and there, watching the dealers and croupiers, not spotting anything untoward; nor did any dips seem to be working the room tonight. Maybe the word had got around.

Shortly before midnight the Hollywood guests-Sonny Tufts and the rest of the luminaries-trooped out through the lobby, shaking hands, smiling, flash bulbs popping, Siegel lording over it all with a big shiteating grin. He was in the white dinner jacket again, tonight, with a pink carnation in his lapel, like that first night on the S.S. Lux. (Speaking of which, earlier that night I noticed Tony Cornero, looking gray and defeated, standing at one of the craps tables, looking for some luck. I doubt he found it.)

Raft and Siegel were bidding the stars goodbye, limos waiting outside to drive them to the nearby airport, where the chartered Constellation would wing them home. Standing near Siegel was Peggy, wearing an off-the-shoulder emerald green taffeta cocktail dress with a flamingo-shaped jeweled brooch. She looked very chic, short black gloves, hair piled high, tight curls framing her sweet face. God, it’s annoying still loving a woman after it’s over.

I was down in the casino, but well within viewing range. I wondered where La Hill was keeping herself. She’d been playing chemin-de-fer earlier, looking opening-night lovely in her white crepe formal gown, aglitter with gold sequins. And an hour ago or so I’d seen her in the bar, in a not untypically sloshed condition, buying the “best champagne in the house” for a honeymooning couple-using a thousand-dollar bill to do so. She’d moved on, latest stinger in hand, and left the $900 change on the bar. She was known to be a good tipper, but the bartender had nonetheless paged Siegel to pick up the dough.

I assumed Ben had tracked her down and deposited her in their penthouse suite. He would not want her at his side on this big night, not that drunk. Maybe Peggy was chosen as Ginny’s stand-in, so the boss would have a lovely woman at his side as the Hollywood crowd was bid fond farewell.

They were just going out the door, Tufts and all, photographers following on their heels (a fortunate break, as it turned out), when trouble came from the other direction, through the lobby, entering from the patio. At the very moment, so luck would have it, that Siegel was slipping an arm around Peggy’s waist and leaning over to give her a peck on the cheek.

Virginia Hill, legs swishing in the expensive crepe gown, saw this and was rolling inexorably toward them, bumping patrons out of the way like bowling pins. Her face was distorted by drink and anger.

I moved through the casino-floor crowd up the five steps to the lobby.

I was just in time to see Tabby attack with both clawed hands, her painted nails like ten scarlet knives. First she snatched the jeweled flamingo off Peg’s breast, tearing the taffeta, and hurled the bauble at Siegel, Then one hand scratched Peg’s face, viciously, leaving trails of red behind, and the other grabbed a handful of that curly hair and yanked.

Peg yelped and a stunned, silent crowd looked on, fascinated. This was better than the Christians versus the Lions.

Siegel was momentarily frozen as his two girl friends went crashing to the lobby carpet. Virginia sat on top of the dazed Peggy and smacked her with a small hard fist, twice, and then Peggy fought back, grabbing onto Virginia’s dress and ripping, exposing a breast. Then they were rolling over, biting and gouging and punching, Peggy screaming, Tabby growling.

We pulled them apart, Siegel yanking Virginia back roughly, and me cradling a shaking, stunned, bleeding, bruised Peggy in my arms; Peg was a tough cookie-she wasn’t crying. But she was badly shaken, and clung to me, without exactly knowing it was me, I think.

Siegel slapped Virginia Hill. It was a hard, ringing slap, and she looked at him, covering her exposed breast with one hand, with big eyes and a hurt expression that had nothing to do with the pain of the slap.

“You ain’t no fuckin’ lady,” he told her.

“Ben…”

Siegel swallowed, suddenly aware of the many eyes upon him, the awful silence around him; only the casino sounds, and even they seemed hushed, continued.

Quietly, under his breath so that only those nearest by could hear, he said to her, “You made me look like a bum.”

Trembling now, she covered her mouth with one hand, the other hand still protecting her breast, and with a rasping cry, she rushed out.

He looked after her with a scowl. Then he faced his public. He couldn’t cover for such a disaster; there was no dazzling smile to pull out of somewhere, no crack about “no cover charge, folks.” Just an angry and, somehow, hurt Ben Siegel.

Slowly, the crowd went back to entertaining themselves. The photographers came in from shooting the departing stars, not knowing they’d missed anything.

Siegel turned to Peggy, who I had up on her feet, now. Her hair had come undone; she looked generally undone, actually. He touched her shoulder.

“Are you okay?” he said, his voice soft now, seeming genuinely to care.

“I–I think so.”

He put his hand on her shoulder, gently. “Maybe we oughta get you to the hospital. Have you checked up.”

“It’s not that serious, Ben. I’m just…embarrassed.”

“Sure you are.” He smiled a softly wry smile. “Who isn’t?”

She managed to smile back at him, despite the caking blood on her cheek.

“Nate,” Siegel said to me, “why don’t you drive Miss Hogan back to the Last Frontier. She needs some rest.”

“Sure,” I said. “If that’s okay with Miss Hogan.”

She nodded, smiled bravely.

Siegel patted her cheek-the unbloodied one-and gave her a warm smile. His blue eyes seemed almost to twinkle. Fuck him, anyway. I had more hair than he did.

I walked her out to the Buick I was using. Guided her by the arm; just being helpful. Strictly business. Siegel’s gopher. Until tomorrow, and the hell with this noise.

We drove in silence; it wasn’t far.

I walked her to her room.

She paused at the doorway, her back to me. “Thanks, Nate.”

“Are you okay, kid?”

“Not really.”

“I’d offer you some company, but I don’t think you really want any.” Not mine, anyway.

“No…I don’t. But thanks. Thanks for not rubbing it in.”

“That’s okay.”

“You said all along she was dangerous.”

“She is dangerous. It could be a gun next time.”

She nodded. “I know. I’ll be careful.”

“Do that, would you?”

She went in, and I walked away.

Then she called out to me. “You could see I was right, though, couldn’t you?”

“What?”

“He doesn’t love her. He hates her. It was me he was concerned about.”

Right. That’s why he had his gopher drive you home.

“Sure, baby,” I said, and walked on out.

When I got back to the Flamingo, Siegel was sitting in the bar. It was not his usual wont to hang out there, nor was it his wont to drink a double Scotch. He was doing both.

“Rough,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. He gestured to the stool next to him.

I sat. “How’s Virginia?”

He shrugged. “She’s sleeping it off in the penthouse. I went up there and we went a few more rounds. I belted her in the belly and she puked. Got it out of her system, anyway.”

Ain’t love grand.

“Ben, uh…”

“You’re not gonna take my offer, are you?”

I shook my head no.

“You don’t like it.”

“What?”

“Me and your ex-girl.”

“Well, I’m not going to scratch your face over it, Ben. But I probably like it just a little less than Ginny does.”

He sighed. Nodded. “Fuckin’ broads, anyway. Too bad.”

“You mean it could’ve been the beginning of a beautiful friendship?”

He smirked. “Something like that, pal.” He raised his glass to me.

“Besides,” I said, not having a glass to raise, “I’m like you. I like running things. I like having my own agency. It started out just me, in a little ratty office, fourteen years ago. And now I got people working for me, and I’m moving into a big modern office. I got dreams, too, Ben. And they don’t include the Flamingo.”

He was nodding, slowly. “Fair enough. When you leaving?”

“Monday. And I don’t particularly want to work tomorrow.”

“Fine with me. I haven’t paid you yet, have I?”

“Just expenses as we’ve gone along. You promised me ten grand, you know.”

He nodded again. “Yeah, and you earned it. I oughta pay you a bonus, but I been told to watch my spending.”

I gave him a rueful grin. “Just my luck I’m where you decided to start.”

Of course, bad as my luck had been running, it was still better than Siegel’s. He told me to meet him in the counting room at 3 a.m., and he’d pay me, in cash. And I found him there with that familiar, sick, ashen look.

“Fuck,” he said, sitting at the table, money boxes before him, pit boss lurking nearby, staying out of the boss’s way but ready to be at his beck and call.

“How bad is it?” I asked, leaning against the table.

“Bad. Another thirty grand.”

“Christ…”

“If this keeps up, I’ll be down a hundred thou by weekend’s end.”

“You got to close up, Ben. You got dishonest sons of bitches on that floor, watched over by other dishonest sons of bitches, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll put the fear of God in ’em,” he said, with nasty resolve. “Better still, I’ll put the fear of me in ’em.”

I ignored that. “I think you ought to close up, and do some new hiring, and wait till the hotel’s open.”

“What the fuck do you know about it?” he spat.

I shrugged. “Why don’t you just pay me and I’ll go. Pay me while there’s still some cash in the till.”

He shook his head, his expression softening. “Sorry, Nate. Sorry. I’ll think about what you’re saying. Your advice has been good so far. I’ll think about it.”

“Good enough, Ben.”

He counted me out nine grand in hundreds, and another grand in fifties and twenties and a few tens.

“Let me know what you’re gonna declare on your taxes,” he said, “so we got our stories straight.”

“Good idea,” I said, folding the hundreds into one thick wad, the other grand of smaller bills into another. Put them away. A lot of money, but I earned it.

I was shaking hands with Siegel when Chick Hill came rushing in.

“Benny!” he said. “You gotta come quick! She’s killed herself, I think she’s killed herself!”

“Tabby?” he said, standing, eyes wide.

Chick nodded, pointed back behind him.

“Nate,” Siegel said, his eyes desperate, moving away from the table, “can you lend a hand?”

I nodded, and we rushed out through the lobby around to the patio and across the terrace garden to the unfinished hotel building.

“She’s swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills,” the frantic Chick explained. “I don’t think she’s breathing…”

“How’d you happen onto her?” I asked him, as we crossed the lobby to the private elevator.

“I wanted to check up on her,” her brother said. He looked with wounded eyes at Siegel, as we boarded the tiny elevator. “I heard you beat her up, Ben.”

“Shut up, Chick,” Siegel said tightly, looking upward, as if willing the elevator to rise more quickly.

We found her on the pink sheets of the big bed, on her back; she was still wearing the torn gown, one breast exposed, her eyes closed, a faint bluish tinge to her cheeks. Siegel bent over her.

“She’s breathing,” he said. “Shallow but breathing-get me some cold wet towels!”

Chick wetted some down in the nearest bathroom, on the floor of which I found the empty pill bottle. The kid handed Siegel the towels and he began slapping her with them.

“Wake up!” he said. “Goddamnit, wake up!”

Chick stood off to one side, helpless, near tears.

I said, “Ben, look, let’s get her to the hospital, get her stomach pumped. I can pull my Buick in the construction access out back. I’ll go right now, what do you say?”

He was cradling her in his arms now; he looked up at me, with a haunted expression, and nodded.

“Can you two haul her down okay?” I asked.

Siegel nodded, said, “Go on, get the car!”

I did.

Southern Nevada Hospital was five miles away, on Charleston Boulevard. Traffic was heavy, and I had to weave in and around it, hurtling along at upwards of eighty miles an hour.

Virginia Hill, dead to the world, was between Siegel and me in the front seat; he had his arm around her, holding her close to him, soothing her like a sleeping baby. Chick was riding in the back, nervous with worry.

“Step on it!” Siegel yelled at me.

“I am.”

“Goddamn stupid bitch,” he said, but quietly, in that previous, soothing voice. “Why did she have to do it?”

I pushed the Buick harder; the speedometer’s needle quivered at ninety. A siren cut the night behind us.

“Damn,” I said. “A cop…”

“Screw the cop,” Siegel said, holding her to him. “Keep stepping on it.”

The cop didn’t catch us till we pulled in the emergency entrance, by which time he’d more or less figured out what the score was; just the same, Siegel quickly, pointlessly, handed the guy a C-note, which would buy you twenty traffic tickets in Chicago.

The orderlies lifted Hill’s slack body onto a stretcher and wheeled her into the emergency room and before long we were in a private room and Siegel was shaking the hand of the doctor who had pumped Mrs. Siegel’s stomach.

You see, Virginia Hill, it turned out, was Mrs. Benjamin Siegel. That was the name she was admitted under, anyway.

“Doc,” Siegel said, turning on the charm, dazzling smile and all, pumping the man’s hand harder than Ginny’s stomach had been, “thanks a million. I just might donate a new wing to this joint.”

Virginia Hill, groggy, looked up and said her first words since rejoining the living: “Give ’em the fucking Flamingo for a wing. To hell with that dump. Get out, Ben, before you’re dead! Before you’re dead…”

And she was crying.

He began comforting her, and the doctor and Chick and I slipped away.

I said to Chick, “They’re married?”

Chick shrugged affirmatively. “It isn’t common knowledge. They did it in Mexico a while back.”

“Why’s it a secret?”

“It’s not exactly a secret, but I don’t think some of Ben’s friends back east approve of my sister.”

“Hell, I thought she was in tight with them.”

“That was before she and Ben got so close. She hasn’t done any business with them since.”

A few minutes later, Siegel came out. He smiled a little; it was almost a nervous smile, and I wondered why.

Then I found out.

“Nate,” he said, “I want you to take that little girl of yours home.”

“That little girl of mine.”

“Peggy Hogan. It’s just not going to work, having her around. It’s just gonna be a burr under Tabby’s saddle.”

Our voices echoed a little in the hospital corridor.

“Well, we can’t have that, now,” I said. “But what if Miss Hogan doesn’t care to go?”

“I took care of that already. You just go back to the Frontier. Knock on her door.”

“Christ, it’s almost four o’clock in the morning, Ben!”

“Do it, Nate. She’s up. I called her.” He swallowed. Then, as if mildly ashamed of himself, he grinned like a chagrined kid. “Tabby made me call her.”

But I didn’t knock on her door. I went back to my own room at the Last Frontier. I’d had quite enough emotional bullshit for one night.

And I was between the cool sheets of the warm bed, just tired enough to go right to sleep in spite of it all, when somebody knocked on my door. I let some air out. I stared up into the darkness where the ceiling was. And somebody knocked again, kept knocking. Then I hauled myself out of bed. I was in my skivvies but I didn’t give a damn.

I opened the door.

She was standing there in a dressing gown, her hair a mess, her face scratched, not a trace of make-up, her expression blank with despair. I couldn’t help myself. I touched her cheek, gently, where it was scratched.

“I’m sorry, Peg.”

Her voice was the voice of a small child. “Will you take me home, Nate?”

“Sure, baby.”

Her violet eyes stared into nothing. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

She turned to walk away. Her steps were halting. I went to her; I was in the hall in my underwear, but at this time of night- of morning-who the hell cared? I put an arm around her.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” she said, in the same small voice.

Then she tumbled into my arms. Grabbed me, like she was grabbing for dear life, and she wept. She wept.

I drunk-walked her back to my room, sat her on the edge of the bed, sat next to her, and let her cry into my chest as long as she wanted, which was a good long while.

“He…he called me…and said we were through.”

“I know,” I said.

In the midst of the emotional pain, she still managed to hear that; she squinted at me and said, “You…you know?”

I told her briefly about the suicide attempt.

“He…he was calling me from her hospital room, then?”

“That’s right.”

“She was there.”

“Sure.”

“You know what he said to me?”

“No.”

“He said she told him that he had to choose. That it was her or me.” She swallowed. “And he chose her.”

I said nothing: she had stopped crying.

“Can you beat that?” she said, wonderingly.

“I think I can,” I said. “They’re married.”

Her eyes went wide and, finally, angry. “Married?”

I nodded. “Married. Mexico. A while back.”

“I’ve been…having an affair with a married man. And I didn’t even know it.”

“That’s it.”

She sat there and brooded for a while.

Then she stood. She stripped off the dressing robe; the garment made a pool at her feet. She had her short sheer blue nightie on underneath; I remembered it well.

“Take your things off,” she said, through her teeth.

“Okay,” I said, and did.

She stepped out of the nightie. She was tan, now, except the patches of creamy pink where her two-piece bathing suit had been; the bushy triangle between her legs was startling against the pale flesh.

“Do it to me,” she said, laying back on the bed, parting her lips, her legs, herself.

She just wanted revenge on Siegel. I knew that.

But I’d take it anyway I could get it.

I plunged into her like a knife and took my own sweet revenge, and she was crying when she came. I didn’t give her my tears; I gave her my fucking seed. That was enough.

Then I held her in my arms, cradled her, soothed her, like Ben had the unconscious Virginia Hill, and she fell asleep there.

On Sunday, the day of rest, we made love half a dozen times, in between some silly bursts of sightseeing-Boulder Dam, anyone? — and yanking the arms off slot machines downtown and buying stupid touristy souvenirs for the folks back home. And then on Monday, before we caught our train, we found our way to one of those stucco and neon wedding chapels and did the deed. It was her idea, but I was game; what was Vegas for, if not to take a gamble?

The following June, on a warm but not scorching Friday afternoon, I was once again in Los Angeles, comparing notes with my partner Fred Rubinski in his fifth-floor Bradbury Building office. We were both pleased with the way our little merger had worked out. Technically, I was the boss, because I had bought fifty-one percent of his business; but I’d made him vice-president of A-1 Detective Agency, leaving him full rein over the L.A. end of the firm. The reality was our two agencies ran as independently as ever, only with me getting a piece of his action; and the appearance of being a nationwide agency now (I was working on lining up an office in New York, as well, which would make it more than just an appearance) was increasing business on both our ends, as well as making easier any investigations spanning both our parts of the country. I was up to ten operatives and Fred was up to half a dozen.

Business out of the way, talk turned social-although in our case such talk still ran to cops and crooks.

“I understand Bill Drury’s got himself in a jam,” Fred said, frowning, emphasizing the deep lines of his weathered face which so contrasted with his smooth shiny bald head.

“Sad but true,” I said. “And no surprise. State’s Attorney’s office has him up on charges.”

“What sort of charges?”

“Conspiring to obtain an indictment on false testimony. Two of Bill’s colored witnesses on the Ragen shooting went public about Bill offering ’em part of the twenty-five grand reward.”

“Shit. Great. Can he beat the rap?”

“I don’t know. And both colored witnesses recanted, to boot, so those three West Side bookies who pulled the shooting are home free.”

“What a world,” Fred said, shaking his head. “Drury may go to jail, and the shooters walk. How do you figure it?”

“I figure I’m better off in the private sector. If Bill shakes loose of this thing, I’m going to try to get him to come aboard A-1.”

“I’m for it,” Fred said, with a tight smile, nodding. Fred’s intercom buzzed and he answered. “Yes, Marcia?”

“A gentleman’s here to see you, Mr. Rubinski.”

“Does he have an appointment?”

“No…”

“Well, I’m in conference. Make an appointment.”

“It’s Mr. Siegel, Mr. Rubinski.”

“Ben Siegel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Send him in.”

Ben entered, looking dapper as ever in a gray plaid suit and a dark blue tie; but he’d lost weight, had a pallor odd for a guy who operated out of sunny Vegas. And he wasn’t even bothering to use make-up on the darkness circling his baby blues.

His smile was as dazzling as ever, though. “Nate Heller! Jesus, this is a pleasant surprise…”

I stood and grinned at him and we shook hands.

“What’s this I hear about you gonna be a father?” he said, still pumping my hand.

“It’s a fact,” I said. “Late September, if the docs know what they’re talking about.”

He pulled up a chair, and I sat back down. He said, “The little woman must not be so little, these days.”

“She’s out to here,” I admitted.

“You gonna name it after me?”

“Only if it’s a girl.”

Siegel frowned. “Just so you don’t call her Bugsy.”

And then he laughed and so did I.

Fred, smiling, said, “What’s the occasion, Ben?”

He pointed a thumb behind him. “I stopped in to see my lawyer, Joe Ross.”

Ross also had an office in the Bradbury Building.

“Went over the account books,” Siegel went on, “and some legal problems concerning the hotel. Joe’s doing Virginia’s tax returns, for one thing.”

“How’s Ginny doing?” I asked.

He shrugged, smirked. “She’s in Paris. We had a fight and she took off. She’ll get over it.”

“Hope it’s not serious.”

“Naw, it’s nothing. I’m even staying in her place. So, how are you guys getting along, now that you’re in bed together?”

“Fine,” I said.

“No complaints,” Fred said. “I’m glad you dropped by, Ben. You probably want to find out how I been doing with your checks.”

“That’s right,” Siegel said smiling, but a little anxious.

“It’s not good news,” Fred said, with a fatalistic shrug. “All I’ve got is five hundred dollars for you.”

Siegel’s mouth twitched disappointment in what was otherwise a business-like expression. “Hell, Fred, you’ve got better than one hundred thousand bucks worth of checks you’re working on…”

“There’s not much we can do. It’s not a violation of the law in this state to refuse paying gambling debts. Of course, these welshers can’t go back to Nevada, but if they were still in Nevada, you wouldn’t need me. We can call them, write them letters, go ’round and see them; but we don’t go in for bullying tactics. You knew that when you hired us.”

“That rough stuff’s no good for business, anyway,” Siegel said, distantly.

“More than that, I was informed just yesterday by the Bureau of Standards that our detective license doesn’t permit us to collect bad checks.”

“So,” Siegel said, a hint of irritation entering his voice, “you’re just going to kick ’em back to me?”

“No, not exactly,” Fred said, soothingly. “We’re just going to farm them out to a collection agency. Mutual. Any objections?”

Siegel shook his head no, his expression a little glazed. The baby blues looked quite bloodshot.

“How is business at the Flamingo, Ben?” I asked.

“Bad,” he said, distractedly. Then he turned his gaze and his smile on me: “Actually, real good. That advice you gave me to close up and clean house and start over was just the ticket.”

Siegel had closed up less than two weeks after his gala opening; he had re-opened in March, the hotel completed, a largely new staff in place.

“We cleared three hundred thousand in May,” he said, proudly. “Problem is, we still got a lot of creditors hounding us. And then that fucking Wilkerson…” Bitterness twisted his mouth. “…he gets a phone call from J. Edgar Hoover and pees his pants.”

“What?” I said. “Hoover called Wilkerson?”

“Yeah,” Ben said, waving it off. “Hoover calls Billy and asks him if he knows he’s ‘in league’ with a gangster. And the little fucker pretends he never knew a thing about my background. So he decides he has to get out of the Flamingo ‘immediately if not sooner,’ ’cause of how it ‘might look,’ publisher of the Hollywood Reporter ‘hobnobbing with unsavory characters.’”

“Christ, he was one of your first investors.”

“Well, all I know is, before I die, there’s two guys I’m gonna kill. Sedway and Wilkerson, the two biggest bastards that ever lived.”

I was used to hearing him say things like that, but it was still a little chilling.

Fred said to me, “Wilkerson insisted Ben buy him out, overnight, and said if he didn’t, he’d blackball him with the press.”

“Over a hundred grand, it cost me,” Siegel said.

“How’s the situation with the boys back east?” I asked.

“They know I’ve turned the corner,” he said, trying to sound confident and not quite making it. His smile was not dazzling at the moment, more like a wrinkle in his thin face.

“I understand Trans-American is still running,” I said.

He nodded. “I compromised. I withdrew my demand of two million dollars to shut the wire down. Instead, I just asked ’em to let me keep it running for one more lousy year. That should catch me up, financially…of course there’s some grumbling over my price hike…”

“What price hike?”

He shrugged matter-of-factly. “I doubled the cost of the wire to the bookies. That brings me over fifty grand a week, from Trans-American. A year of that, and a year of the Flamingo on a roll, and I’m in like Flynn.”

“How, uh, are your customers taking the price hike?”

“Who the fuck cares? Those bookies are rolling in dough. And so will I be, with their help-and now that the summer tourist season’s in swing.”

I couldn’t imagine the bookies would sit still for this gouge, nor that Lansky, Luciano and the Combination would approve. But it was none of my business, so I said nothing.

“Well,” Siegel said, slapping his thighs, standing. “I guess that’s it. You gonna keep me posted about the bad-check situation, Fred, or somebody at Mutual?”

“Mutual,” Fred said. “They’ll be contacting you.” He stood behind his desk and shook hands with Siegel.

Who crooked his finger at me, smiling a little, and said, “Walk me out, Nate.”

He went out and I followed, looking back at Fred and shrugging some.

Outside the office, dappled with sunlight filtering in the Bradbury Building skylight, Siegel put a hand on my shoulder. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Nothing,” I said, shrugging again. “Maybe I’ll go to Grauman’s Chinese and see if my feet fit Gable’s.”

“I got a better idea. Let me buy you some supper. We’ll talk old times.”

“Sure,” I said. “Shall I meet you somewhere?”

“Good idea. We’re trying a new place called Jack’s-at-the-Beach.”

“Where’s that?”

“At the beach, schmuck. It’s in Ocean Park.”

“Where’s Ocean Park?”

“Santa Monica. You can find the place. I got faith in you. You’re a detective.”

He flashed his smile and walked over to the open cage of the elevator. He was alone; no bodyguards. Despite his pallor, his loss of weight, his obvious lack of sleep, he didn’t seem worried for his life. I guessed it was safe to eat with him.

So I ate with him. Him and Chick Hill and Chick’s girlfriend, a cute little redhead who had taken over for Peggy as Virginia Hill’s secretary, and a smooth, silver-haired guy named Al Smiley, who was a business associate of Ben’s and wore a snappy checked jacket and snazzy blue patterned tie. Jack’s-at-the-Beach was an exclusive little joint, with rough-hewn wood and seafaring touches. We sat near a window where we could watch the waves roll slowly, foaming up onto the sand. It was peaceful, soothing, steady. The sea, the beach, were bathed in silvers and blues, thanks to a clear night and the moon and stars. I had the feeling of being on the edge of the world; and the feeling that that world was a tiny insignificant place in a vast universe. Of course, I’d had several glasses of wine, when all this occurred to me, so I wouldn’t put a whole hell of a lot of stock in it.

“Ben,” I said, after the remains of our seafood dinners had been cleared away and we sat chatting, “if you don’t mind my saying so, you look a little tired. Getting the Flamingo up on its feet’s been an ordeal for you. Why don’t you take a rest or a vacation or something?”

Siegel, who was sipping his single glass of wine for the evening, smiled almost shyly. “I am tired, Nate. And I am going to get away for a few days. My two daughters are coming out from New York by train. To meet me here.”

“Well, that’s great.”

He smiled more broadly, nodded. “They’re great kids. I promised to take them to Lake Louise up in Canada.”

“Now you’re talking,” I said, smiling back at him.

He glanced at his watch. “It’s early yet. Not even ten. How about coming back to the house with us? I got something I wouldn’t mind running past you.”

“I don’t know, Ben…”

He stood, picking up the check. “Aw, come on. Georgie’s gonna drop by around eleven or so, and we can play some cards or something.”

I hadn’t seen Raft this trip; I wouldn’t mind seeing him.

“Sure,” I said. “What house is this where we’re going?”

“Virginia’s bungalow,” he said. “Follow us up Wilshire. We’ll show you the way.”

Thirty-five minutes or so later, give or take, we drew up in front of the Beverly Hills haunts of La Hill, hardly a bungalow, rather a Moorish castle of pale pink adobe with a red tile roof on North Linden Drive. The near mansion had obviously cost big bucks, but it was surprisingly close on either side to its next-door neighbors, and the sloping lawn was relatively modest. I left my A-1 Agency Ford at the curb across the way, while the powder-blue Cadillac driven by Smiley (whose car it was) went up into the car port alongside the house.

Ben and his little party of three came down to greet me at the sidewalk and go up the short flight of cement steps to the walk, where at the front door Siegel produced a solid gold key (a gift from Tabby). Chick and Jerri, who seemed to be an item, had their arms around each other’s waists; Smiley had a newspaper, the early edition of tomorrow’s Times, courtesy of Jack’s-at-the-Beach. The night air was full of night-blooming jasmine.

Siegel unlocked the door, stepped inside, flicking on the hall light, and we all followed him into the spacious living room.

Which wasn’t a particularly attractive room, despite Virginia Hill’s redecorating efforts. I couldn’t help but think how classy Falcon’s Lair had been (a “dump” to Ginny) and how tacky this room was, with its bronze cupid statue, marble Bacchus statue, oil painting of an English dowager on the wall over the fireplace fighting a nearby art deco study of a nude with wine glass, French Provincial coffee table, the flowery chintz divan clashing with the flowery drapes of the windows behind it.

Siegel settled on that divan, at the right end of it, taking the newspaper from Smiley, who sat down at the divan’s left end. I took a comfortable easy chair to one side of Siegel, who said to Chick and his girl, “Why don’t you kids go upstairs? I want to talk some business with Al and Nate.”

Chick was agreeable to the notion of going upstairs with his little redhead-who wouldn’t have been? — and the redhead was equally agreeable and, so, they disappeared. Ben was glancing at the paper as he spoke: “I’d like you to come to work for me, Nate.”

“Ben, we’ve been down that road before…”

“No we haven’t. I’m not talking about security work.” He looked at me; bloodshot they may have been, but those baby blues were magnets when he trained them on you just right. “I think you got a lot on the ball. You gave me good advice at the Flamingo, when everybody else around me was either kissing my ass or stealing from me-or both, like Moey.”

“It was just common sense.”

“Yeah, well I seen how you’re doing with your own business. Which is to say, very well. I have a lot of legitimate business interests, now-that’s why I wanted you to meet Al, here. We got some feelers out on an oil deal; and we got a legitimate business in salvage materials called California Metals.”

Smiley was smiling, nodding. I didn’t know much about the guy, although Fred had mentioned this “business associate” of Ben’s had a rap sheet as long as a player-piano roll.

“Anyway, I want you to consider getting involved with me on a management level. An executive level.”

“That’s flattering, Ben-but I don’t really want to be doing business with the likes of Jack Dragna or even Mickey Cohen…”

“You won’t be. Those guys are involved in areas wholly outside what you would be. Nate, consider this…”

Glass crashed as gunfire rocked the room, shook Ben like a ragdoll, his right eye flying, nose crushed, and I hit the deck; so did Smiley, who yelped, a bullet nicking his arm. Rapidly, the gunfire, from a carbine, a.30–30 from the sound of it, chewed up Ben and the room, another slug entering from behind his head and turning his face into a mask of blood. Smiley was scrambling across the floor, like a crab, moving past the couch and the dead Siegel and from where I was plastered to the floor; he crawled inside the fireplace. I wish I’d thought of it.

Marble statues shattered; bullets ate patterns in the walls; the dowager in the picture took a slug; so did the nude with the wine glass. Meanwhile, Ben’s head rolled back against the divan as if he finally had found time to rest, but his body danced as more slugs came tearing through the couch behind him, cracking ribs, shearing muscle and organs.

Then silence.

There had been nine shots-a full carbine clip-and I waited, flat on my face on the floor, to see if another clip would follow.

Then Chick, in T-shirt and boxer shorts, was running into the room, a.38 in hand.

“Get down!” I yelled, and he had sense to.

A minute later, though, I moved toward the kid, staying low, and put my hand out. “Give me that-I’m going after them.”

“Who?”

“Whoever killed Ben. Give it to me!”

He did, and I crawled across the room and got up against the wall and edged along till I was next to the windows, that is the yawning place where the window glass had been. I thrust myself into that firing line, 38 held out in two hands, faced the jagged-edged former window, but there was nobody there: just the rose trellis beyond, where the carbine had no doubt been steadied.

I jumped out, feet landing on cement and glass, the latter crunching under my shoes.

I could see a figure moving across the enclosed back patio, by the pool; then he was hopping over the cement fence and into the alley, where a car no doubt waited.

Chick was looking out the window.

“Call Cohen,” I said. “Find out what he wants done, and then call the cops.”

“Why do it that way?”

“Because it’s what Ben would want. Do it!”

I didn’t wait for a response. I ran down to my Ford and got in and started it up. I did not turn on the lights. I sat and waited and watched the intersection of Linden and Whittier to my back. Seconds later a battered green Pontiac-very wrong for Beverly Hills-went lumbering by. In no hurry.

I was in no hurry, either. I did a slow, easy U-turn and turned past the small dividing island onto Whittier, a wooded, winding street, expensively residential. I kept my lights off. The Pontiac was up ahead.

Perhaps two minutes later, they turned right on Wilshire. I kept well back. At times I turned my lights on. Other times I pulled over and parked and waited while they (I could make out at least two shapes in the car) were stopped at a light. Westwood Boulevard was one such stop; Bundy, another. I kept at my quiet pursuit as Wilshire dropped ever so gradually to the ocean, through toney residential districts and blocks of apartment houses and a business district now and then. I kept thinking of that newspaper Ben had been reading, which had wound up bloody in his lap. The paper, given him courtesy of the restaurant’s management, had been stamped: Good night. Sleep well with our compliments.

I wanted a smoke, but I didn’t have any. We passed a military cemetery at Veteran and Wilshire, an infinity of white crosses; soon we crossed through a sprawling complex of modern wooden buildings, a V.A. hospital. I’d been following the enemy-and I hoped that was who they were, I hoped my instincts about the battered Pontiac were correct-for fifteen minutes, now.

Maybe there were some cigarettes in the glove compartment, yes! Camels, and I didn’t even have to walk a mile for them. I lit one up, sucked the harsh smoke into my lungs. Sweat beaded my forehead. The night was pleasantly warm, rushing in my rolled-down windows, but my eyes were burning.

I got up fairly close behind them, in Santa Monica. Three of them. Three shapes. I checked the.38. Six bullets.

Resting the gun on the seat beside me, I dropped back, kept my distance as they led me from Wilshire to Palisades Beach Road and up Pacific Coast Highway. The world had become strangely desolate, suddenly; the lights of Santa Monica winked in my rear view mirror, civilization bidding me a wry farewell, but to my right was a cliff side, and to my left, not more than five hundred yards, was the water line, waves beating against the shore every twenty seconds or so, sounding distant and yet a roar. That, and the hum of the motor, was all that kept me company on this eerily quiet drive along the coast; oh, and the sight of the red rear lights of the car glowing up ahead. I was driving with my lights on, now, but I was back well enough, and there was some traffic out here to cover me. Not much, though. Not much.

Just past where Sunset Boulevard emptied out, a busy street dissipating down to the middle of nowhere, the Pontiac pulled over, off the road, onto the sandy shoulder. They had another car waiting there. A dark blue Plymouth parked there, newer than what they were driving, which was either stolen or black-market untraceable.

I glided past them, and saw them, bathed in moonlight, one man in a Hawaiian shirt, two others wearing sportjackets, getting out of one car, heading to the other.

Old friends. Small world.

The man who’d been driving was Bud Quinn, formerly a lieutenant with the LAPD, formerly an employee of the late Benjamin Siegel; it was Quinn wearing the Hawaiian shirt, of course. His two riders were boys from out of town who needed a savvy chauffeur like Quinn.

They were from Chicago. West Side boys. Like me.

Well, not quite like me. They were bookies. Name of Davey Finkel and Joseph “Blinkey” Leonard.

And this time they’d pulled off a hit without a hitch.

Almost.

I slowed, threw it in reverse and hit the pedal.

The car had screeched to a stop just next to them, as they froze in their procession toward their nearby second car, and their eyes were wide and white in the night as I leaned out the window and said, “Any of you boys know the way to the V.A. hospital?”

Widow’s-peaked Finkel was just opposite me, and I opened the car door into him, hard, throwing him back, hard, onto the sandy ground. I jumped out, 38 in hand and before I could tell them not to, both Quinn and Blinkey went for guns, Quinn to a.38 stuck in his waistband, Blinkey clawing under his unbuttoned jacket.

Quinn I shot in the head, right above the bridge of his nose and he went back hard in a mist of red and thudded in the sand, his gun in hand, at the ready. Blinkey, having trouble maneuvering his gun from his shoulder holster, thought twice and ran, heading toward the beach and the lapping waves. Finkel was still on his back, but was making a move for his gun; I kicked him in the head and he stopped.

I ran after Blinkey; he had his gun out, now, and was looking back at me, moonlight glinting off the glass of his glasses, and he was shooting back at me, the gunshots sounding strangely hollow in this big empty landscape. We ran in slow motion, the sand under our feet making a mockery of the chase, but when he reached the shoreline, he seemed to pick up speed, feet leaving impressions in the wet sand, foam flicking his ankles, and he was smiling crazily as he looked back at me and aimed and I put a bullet in one of his eyes, glass cracking. His howl could barely be heard over the crash of the surf, and he went splashing back into the sea, his feet on the sand, toes up, his body covered, and then uncovered, and then covered by the tide.

I was walking back toward my car when another shot rang out, and I felt a bullet hit me just above the left temple; it threw me back, on my ass, and blood streamed down into my face, into my left eye. I wasn’t dead or even dying; it had to be just a bad graze, and I was pushing up with one hand when I saw Finkel looming above me, his impressively ugly face a symphony of bushy eyebrows, thick lips, and facial moles, his rotten teeth pulled into a ghastly smile. His head was bleeding some, too, from where I kicked him; he wasn’t dead, either, or dying, and he seemed to take glee in pointing his automatic down at me.

I shot him in the smile and his teeth went away and so did he; he went back, hard, though the sand cushioned the blow, not that it mattered, as now he was dead, or dying, and I struggled to my feet, wiping the blood off my temple and forehead, getting sand in the wound, blinking, the sand under my feet slowing me down as I moved toward my Ford.

I got behind the wheel. Put the gun on the seat beside me. Lit up a cigarette. Sat and smoked and glanced out at the landscape, littered with bodies, turned silver and blue in the moon and starlight.

Then I drove away.

I drove north. By all rights I should have headed back to the city, but I drove north. I was bleeding. Blood was flowing gently, not gushing or anything, just trickling down over my eyebrow into my eye. I held a handkerchief to my head and drove with one hand. The ocean at my left remained a constant, reassuring presence; to my right the cliffs moved gradually back and became hills.

Finally there was a T intersection with a diner and a gas station and a phone booth. I stumbled into the latter, feeling woozy.

I had enough change to put a call through to Fred Rubinski, at home.

“What the hell is it, Nate?” he said thickly. “It’s after midnight…”

“Do you have Cohen’s number?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mickey Cohen’s number. Can you reach Mickey Cohen?”

“Sure, yeah. I suppose. I got his unlisted number in my black book. Why?”

“Call him and give him this.” I read off the pay phone’s number. “Tell him that’s where he can reach me. Tell him to call right away.”

“Okay, but what’s up?”

“They hit Ben Siegel tonight.”

“Jesus!”

“He was sitting on the couch in Virginia Hill’s place and somebody outside the window with a carbine shot him, good and dead.”

“Jesus. Jesus. Where do you fit in?”

“What you don’t know can’t hurt you. But why don’t you get dressed and go over and sniff out the situation. Protect my interests.”

“Well, Christ, Nate, just how do your interests need protecting exactly?”

“Just do it, Fred. Play it by ear.”

“Were you there when it went down?”

“I don’t know yet. That’s one of the things I gotta find out.”

“Oh, brother.” He paused. “You know, you don’t sound so good. Are you all right?”

“I’m on top of the world. Call Cohen.”

I hung up.

I sat down in the booth, my butt inside it, my feet hanging out onto the cinder parking area of the diner. Nobody tried to use the phone, or if they did, saw me sitting there and said the hell with it.

My teeth were chattering, and my head was burning. What was this, a fucking malaria flare-up? Hell of a time. Why wouldn’t my forehead stop bleeding? I didn’t feel so good.

The phone rang.

“This is Heller.”

“This is Mick. What the fuck happened?”

I told him.

“Fuck a duck! You nailed all three of ’em?”

“That’s right. So what’s the score? Do I go to the cops, Mick, or do you just clean up after me?”

“Nobody saw it happen? Not a soul?”

“Not a living one.”

“I got to talk to somebody.”

“Who? Dragna?”

“What you don’t know won’t hurt you, pal.”

Where had I heard that before?

The phone clicked dead.

I hung up, sat down and waited some more. I still felt punk; feverish. Was I in shock? Did I have a concussion? Did I still have a screw loose that triggered some kind of ersatz malaria flare-up after a “combat” situation? Totally sane people don’t get mustered out on a Section Eight, after all.

The phone rang.

“You was never there.”

“Never where, Mick?”

“Anywheres. Not at Siegel’s house or the beach, neither. In fact, nothing happened at the beach.”

“If you say so.”

“What was you usin’?”

“A.38 I got from Chick, at Siegel’s house.”

“You’re calling from where, exactly?”

“I don’t know. I’m not exactly a native. Somewhere near Malibu, I suppose.”

I read off the name of the diner and the gas station.

“Toss the piece in the drink,” Cohen advised, meaning the.38.

“Just that easy, huh? Then head back to L.A.?”

“No. Keep driving. Before long you’ll see a motor court. El Camino Motel. Don’t even check in. You’ll find unit seven unlocked.”

“I could use some rest,” I admitted. “But I want to get out of here soon as I can. I got a flight out Sunday morning.”

“Good, ’cause with that wound of yours, you got to duck the cops.”

“But, Mick, I was seen with Ben at that restaurant.”

“Right. So they’re gonna want to talk to you. Fine. Just get out of town before they have a chance.”

“Maybe I ought to just drive back to the city and check in with the cops…”

“You just killed three guys. You left the scene of a shooting. Two shootings. You was with Bugsy Siegel when he was hit. Any of this sound like anything you wanna be tied up with in court? In the papers? Any of this sound good for business?”

“No,” I said.

“No is right. Meantime, we’ll get a doctor for you.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” I said, blinking blood out of my left eye.

“Jack says you got to have a doctor. We got our own guy who don’t report gunshot wounds, you know?”

“It’s just a graze,” I said, but my legs were wobbly.

“Better safe than sorry. Now do it.”

“Okay,” I said, and hung up.

I walked back to the car, feeling shaky, wondering if my judgment was worth a fuck. Was this a set-up? Was I a loose end they were going to tie off?

No. That wasn’t like Cohen at all. He was a straight shooter, and he hated the Capone crowd like poison-and this hit had obviously gone down from the Chicago end, either at the request, or with the complicity of, the east coast Combination.

As I mulled this over, behind the wheel of the Ford, I realized I was feeling better. The gash at the edge of my forehead had clotted over; no more blood in my eye.

I drove easily, but my thoughts were racing. Cohen and Dragna were Ben’s partners. I’d play it their way. If I got tied up with another mob killing this major, I’d never shake the “mob guy” reputation. That was not what A-1 needed right now. That was not what Nate Heller needed, either. I was going to have another mouth to feed, soon.

The motor court was on the right of the highway, with a view of the beach, a dozen stucco cottages lorded over by a neon sign incorporating a clock with the cursive neon letters, el camino motel. I parked in front of unit seven, found it unlocked and went on into the small, clean room with its plaster walls and ranch style furniture. It had a phone, a radio, a shower. This much civilization under one little red-tile roof was comforting to me, about now.

I stripped to my T-shirt and went in the john and threw cold water on my face, looked at my head, where it was grazed, which was scabbing over. I sat on the edge of the bed, still feeling shaken, but better. Better. What had happened on that beach, perhaps forty minutes ago, seemed distant. Unreal.

The lamp by my bedside had a three-way switch; I turned it to its lowest setting and sacked out on the bed, on top of the nubby spread. I felt bone tired but couldn’t seem to doze. I wished I could call Peggy, the nearby phone tempting me; but I didn’t dare. It was two hours later back there, anyway.

I hadn’t even faced yet whether this was something I would tell her about; of course, she’d be glad to hear the men who shot her uncle-two of the three involved, anyway-were gone. I’d probably be a hero to her. Nice to get something out of killing three people.

Finally I did doze, but the knock at my door ended that.

I sat up, tasting the film in my mouth, and took the gun off the nightstand and answered the knock.

“I’m the doctor,” the man standing there said. “I presume you’re the patient.”

He was a thin, dryly tan man in his forties, wearing thick-lensed glasses, a yellow short-sleeved sportshirt and tan slacks, and carrying a black medical bag in one hand. He might have stepped off a golf course, but for that bag, and a drowsy air of having been rudely awakened for a house call.

“I’m the patient,” I said, narrowing my eyes, studying him, making way for him as he came in.

I knew him. I knew this guy.

“Why, you’re Nate Heller,” he said, pointing at me, smiling. “Well, small world.” He extended his free hand and I shook it, moving the.38 over into my left hand.

“Dr. Snaden,” I said, gun back in my right hand again. “I’d forgotten you were heading out to California.”

“Gave up my Miami practice, yes. Isn’t this the most amazing coincidence,” he said, shaking his head, heading for the bed, where he opened the medical bag.

“An amazing coincidence,” I said. “I haven’t seen you since Meyer House. Since Jim Ragen died.”

He was sticking a hypodermic into a small bottle, filling it up with clear fluid. “Jim was a fine man. That was a rough one to lose.”

“You know, frankly, Doc, I think you’re wasting your time. I feel fine. It’s just a graze. I’m not bleeding. Why don’t you just go on home and back to bed. Sorry to bother.”

I was standing by the door.

“Nonsense,” he said. “You need something for pain, and for tetanus. I have my instructions.”

I trained the.38 on him. “I bet you do. Now, just get the fuck out of here. You wouldn’t be the first son of a bitch I shot tonight.”

His eyes were big behind the thick lenses. “Mr. Heller-what in the world is wrong?”

“You were Jim Ragen’s doctor in Miami. Christ. I should have known. How stupid could I be? You were a mob doctor down there. You moved there from Chicago, didn’t you? Capone, Nitti, Fischetti, it’s been an Outfit convention in Miami for twenty years. With Jim’s Outfit ties, who else would his Miami physician be but connected?”

“This is foolish.”

“Put the needle in the bag.”

“Mr. Heller…”

“Put. The. Needle. In. The. Fucking. Bag.”

He put the needle in the fucking bag.

“All my precautions,” I said, smiling bitterly, “monitoring who goes in and out of that room. All the investigating trying to figure who could’ve poisoned Jim. Was it in the food? A salve some nurse rubbed on him? Hell, no. It was his own goddamn family doctor.”

He seemed calm, but there was nervousness underneath. “Maybe I should leave. Even though it’s clear you’re in shock from your trauma…”

“I heard you were moving your practice out to California. I didn’t think much about it, at the time…but I’m thinking, now. I’m thinking your big-money Miami patients are thinning out-first Nitti up and dies, and then Ricca and the rest go to stir. And I hear a lot of the east coast boys are spending time on the west coast these days…business interests, homes in Palm Springs, and so on. Moving your practice out here starts to make sense.”

“You’re obviously very…disoriented right now, Mr. Heller…”

“This isn’t Cohen’s work, is it? Dragna, then? I don’t know much about him, though I’ve heard he has some east coast ties. So maybe that makes sense, too. But he slipped up sending you. You didn’t know it was me who was wounded out here, did you? And whoever sent you didn’t know that the two of us had run into each other before. Christ, did you do Cermak, too? You were one of his doctors. This is a consultation that’s been overdue for about thirteen years, Doc…”

He swallowed. Smiled, in a twitchy way, cracking his parchment tan. Said, “Perhaps I will just go. You’re a very confused man. I do recommend you see a physician tomorrow, as soon as possible.”

“Hey, heal your fuckin’ self, Doc.” I gestured toward the door with the gun. “Now get out of here before I give you the cure to everything…”

He snapped the bag shut, swallowed again, nodded to me, and moved quickly toward the door; as he opened it with one hand, he swung the black bag with savage speed and force and clipped me right on the head, where the wound was.

Gun flying from my fingers, I hit the wood floor on my back with a teeth-rattling thump, blood running down my face, into my eyes, consciousness slipping away…

Something was squeezing my arm.

I opened my eyes; I was still on my back, on the floor. A rubber strap was around my left forearm, tight, my veins standing out like a bas-relief map.

Thin, tan Snaden was leaning over me, looking like a mad scientist, eyes wide and intense behind his thick lenses, sweating, hypo in hand; with his thumb he tested it, and a little squirt of the stuff he intended for me ejaculated prematurely.

I watched this through slitted eyes; his big eyes behind the glasses were looking at my arm, one hand cradling it, as his other hand with the needle descended.

My other arm was free. And I lashed out and latched onto his wrist, gripping as hard as I could; he was surprised, and in the moment his surprise gave me, I brought up my knee and kneed him in the stomach. It sent him back, rattling into some furniture, knocking a chair over, and he hit his head; it stunned him. He wasn’t unconscious, but he was good and goddamned dazed. He was that way when I sank that needle into his own arm, pushing the plunger in all the way, covering his mouth with my hand to stifle his scream.

I don’t know what was in the hypo.

I only know it took him less than three minutes to pass out. He spent those three minutes weeping-“What have you done, oh God, oh God what have you done”-a pitiful pile of humanity on the wooden floor of the motel unit, a sack of flesh full of angular bones tossed up against an upended chair. Only I didn’t pity him. He had killed Jim Ragen and God knows how many others. And he had tried to add me to his list of patients who hadn’t pulled through.

He had some cigarettes in his breast pocket. I took the pack, Camels again, and shook one out and sat on the edge of the bed and smoked it, feeling calm; blood was caked on my face, but it wasn’t running down from the wound any longer. My heartbeat was slowing to normal. I didn’t feel feverish. I didn’t feel woozy.

I felt just fine.

After the smoke, I tested for a pulse in his neck and there was none. I went in and splashed some water on my face, washed the blood off. Then I wiped the room of prints, leaving the.38 in his medical bag; perhaps he’d get tagged for what I’d done on the beach; perhaps this would be written off as suicide. That was up to the cops, and the mob boys who threw the party.

I drove to another motor court, five miles up the highway, and checked in and slept till three the next afternoon. At a nearby diner, where I convinced them to serve me breakfast, I read the papers and Ben’s death was all over them. I wasn’t mentioned in any of the accounts.

Nor was Dr. Snaden’s death reported. Nor was there any mention of two West Side of Chicago bookies and one former LAPD police lieutenant being littered along the beach like so much bloody driftwood.

So I drove back to Los Angeles, and on the way stopped at the place where it had happened, the crime scene if you will, and the beach stretched to the ocean like a pristine blanket of sand. There wasn’t a single crumpled candy bar wrapper, let alone a corpse, and certainly no cops marking off the area for investigatory purposes. Nothing. Just the sound of gulls and the reflection of the sun off the sea and the gentle crash of the surf.

I touched my head where the grazed area was, scabbed over now. I did feel a little shaky, still. A warm breeze calmed me. Had all that happened last night? On this lonely stretch of sand? Or perhaps it was all a dream.

Like Ben Siegel’s Flamingo.

Something interesting had happened, the night before, that only days later, via Fred Rubinski, became known to me.

Twenty minutes after Ben Siegel’s handsome face was shattered by carbine fire through the window of Virginia Hill’s home, Moe Sedway and Gus Greenbaum walked into the Flamingo and, in the name of its eastern investors, took over operations.

Less than twenty-four hours later, a stockholder’s meeting was called. Greenbaum was put in charge of the resort; Sedway remained affiliated. The resort, after yet another million dollars was sunk into it, began to flourish. Hotels sprang up like cactuses on the Strip, albeit gaudy ones; the Thunderbird, the Desert Inn, the Sands, the Sahara.

And the Stardust, which was Tony Cornero’s last great dream. Tony dreamed even bigger than Siegel, envisioning the biggest resort hotel in the world. Working from a base of only ten grand, Tony got the 1,032-room hotel off the ground by luring in small investors via billboards and newspaper ads; unfortunately, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission didn’t like the way he was going about it, including his not having registered with the SEC. “I’ll win this battle or they’ll carry me out feet first,” Tony said, shortly before stepping up to a Desert Inn table where, while shooting craps, he fell across the green-felt table, dead of a heart attack.

Trans-American, of course, died just as suddenly; it was buried with Ben. Continental, run by Mickey McBride with certain silent partners, continued its land-office business until heat from the Kefauver Senate Crime Investigating Committee got it shut down.

Siegel’s funeral was attended by his ex-wife, his brother (a respectable, respected doctor), and his two teenaged daughters. Virginia Hill was not there; nor was Raft or Cohen or Smiley or Chick or me; nor was anyone who worked at the Flamingo.

I was never drawn into the Siegel shooting, other than having a deposition taken at Central Headquarters in Chicago, where the cops didn’t even ask about the bandage on my forehead; the deposition covered the dinner at Jack’s-at-the-Beach and nothing else. According to the papers, neighbors reported seeing a man fleeing the house out the front, taking off in a Ford, but this stopped short of a viable physical description and a license number.

Dr. Snaden’s death was ruled a suicide; the three dead men at the beach simply fell off the edge of the earth.

And I did tell Peggy about the beach shooting, and the “consultation” with Snaden, and she was delighted by the outcome of both, though reassuringly horrified by my having been through such scrapes.

My forehead remains scarred.

The indictment against Bill Drury was dropped due to a general unreliability of the two witnesses, but Bill was then called before a Grand Jury which demanded he reveal his dealings with those witnesses. Bill said he would gladly do so if he were promised immunity, should he reveal things indicating he might have been “shading” the law. Immunity wasn’t granted, Bill refused to testify, and was dismissed from the force by the Civil Service Board for refusing to give testimony before a grand jury.

Bill did come to work for A-1 for a time; and he worked for the Chicago American, as well, doing crime exposes. He was about to give testimony to the Kefauver Committee when he was murdered in his car by hitmen with shotguns-a familiar enough scenario.

Bill had brought Mickey Cohen into the Kefauver fold, but after Bill’s murder, Mickey turned out not to have anything much to say to the Committee. Incidentally, the Mick assured me, every time I encountered him in years to come, that he’d had no part of the attempt on my life at the El Camino. I believed him. When the clotheshorse roughneck died in 1976, I was sorry.

Mickey died of “natural causes”-not everybody in the rackets went out bloodily like Ben Siegel. Many a mob guy went quietly into that good night, including Meyer Lansky himself; Luciano, too; Sedway stepped off a plane in 1951 and had a heart attack and died (his partner Greenbaum, however, had his throat slit).

One evening in 1956, Jake Guzik died with greasy thumbs intact, having a heart attack while in the midst of pork chops and pay-offs at St. Hubert’s; he was buried in a five-grand bronze coffin, and one of the boys mourning him was heard to say, “Christ, we coulda buried him in a fuckin’ Cadillac for that!”

As for Virginia Hill, she became, of course, a star witness at the televised Kefauver hearings, managing to say very little while achieving a big celebrity. When next heard from, she’d taken a new husband and, fleeing the IRS, was living in Salzburg (Virginia had written the tax boys to tell them she’d not be setting foot in “your so-called Free World again,” concluding by saying, “So fuck you and the whole United States government”). Forty-nine years old, less beautiful, less ornery, she swallowed sleeping pills that March morning in 1966, and lay down in the bed of snow by a stream in the woods and watched the clouds until they turned forever dark.

A year or so ago I visited Las Vegas, my second wife and me. The place seemed full of old people, myself and the missus included. Vegas all seemed so innocent now, and the neon, the glitter, seemed faded, shopworn. Jimmy Durante was dead. In his place you got Wayne Newton and faggots making tigers disappear. I wondered what Ben Siegel would’ve thought.

Hell, he probably would’ve loved it. He would take one look at Caesar’s Palace or Circus Circus and be in heaven (as opposed to where he likely was now). He would ride up and down the wide neon-flung Strip and feel proud of what he’d accomplished with his life.

Funny, isn’t it? The mob had worried about the bad publicity Ben was generating, afraid it would scare customers away; but it was the urge of Puritan Americans to take a safely sinful timeout that drew them to Lost Wages. It was a killing in Vegas, by way of Beverly Hills, that sparked their morbid curiosity, sent them flocking to the Flamingo in the wake of Siegel’s bloody demise. To see where it all happened.

They still talk about him at the Flamingo Hilton, staff and guests alike; a flower bed near the pool is whispered about as being the grave for some hapless Siegel foe. Most of all, folks still want to see, even stay in, the penthouse (the Presidential Suite, now) where Ben and Tabby loved and fought.

You can see it, as clear as neon at night, can’t you?

It wasn’t Ben’s life that gave birth to Vegas.

It was Bugsy’s death.