Preston Allen - Las Vegas Noir

Dora, in particular, pleased him. To his delight she felt the same way and they became a couple. She, of course, continued plying her trade, but she pleasured him on the side and, in what free time she had, taught him the skill of reading. One of the first books he chose to read was on the subject of ostriches.

His newly gained knowledge led him to his first and possibly most unique money-making idea. He would buy more ostriches and breed them for their skins, their feathers, and their meat. Thus, Willie’s Ostrich Farm and Whorehouse was born.

Legs motioned to show that he had a question.

“Go ahead,” Willie said. “Make it fast.”

“Were those ostriches mean, Uncle Willie?”

Willie laughed. “Mean and stupid. Kick a man to death right easy for no given reason.”

Legs zippered his mouth and Willie continued. He was happy, he said, until one gloomy day his ostrich conspired to lead her fellows away from Willie’s Farm and Whorehouse and onto the road that led from Austin to Belmont. Like some kind of revolutionary army, sixty-three strong, the ostriches crouched down upon the road and took occupation, leaving Willie no longer the owner of an Ostrich farm.

“It made no never mind to me,” Willie said. “I was tired of them stupid critters and wasn’t worried none about them being turned into steaks. Them buggers sure could run. Forty miles an hour sometimes. I knew they’d be okay. Knew my guide would keep an eye on me, anyhow.”

Willie proposed to Dora that she go with him to Las Vegas. When she showed no interest, he split the money from the sale and suggested she buy a house where she could ply her trade or not, as she pleased. They said a tearful farewell. When he reached Las Vegas, he settled into the life of a gambler as if he had been born to it.

He stopped to catch his breath and asked Legs for something to drink. Legs poured one for each of them. He was awed by Willie’s stamina. Though physically frail and confined to a wheelchair, the old man remained a guy to be reckoned with. He had become someone to whom knowing was everything, yet he felt no need to share his knowledge.

He played poker every day, in ostrich-leather boots, a cowboy hat with an ostrich feather in the band, and a huge turquoise bolo around his neck. Mostly, he enjoyed the camaraderie and the inherent respect he was given as the oldest local at any table.

He enjoyed winning, but those other things, like the knowing, were even more pleasing to him. Having driven for the mob, he knew where the bodies were buried. Hell, he’d even helped bury some of them. He knew the answer to the mystery of Union General John C. Fremont’s lost cannon, left behind somewhere around Walker River, and knew the secret of Tahoe Tessie, the monster in the waters of Lake Tahoe.

Best of all, he boasted to Legs, he knew for a fact about some of the mysteries of Area 51. He told no details, named no names, except to warn Legs cryptically to stay off the road to Rachel.

“Time to close the circle,” Willie said to Legs that night. “Time to push the money to the pigeon at the table so they’ll have sommit to push to me.” He tapped his bulging wallet. “This here plus what’s in your mattress is half yours. Fifty big ones for you, fifty for our people.”

He reached for the hat he had placed on the floor next to his chair, rubbed the hatband as if for luck, and handed it to Legs.

“Put on the hat,” he commanded, “and give me my black book.”

Legs did as he was told. Willie ripped the notebook into small pieces. Legs felt like crying; Willie held outstanding markers from God, Satan, and half of the population of Las Vegas.

“Any questions before I go?” Willie asked.

“Go where?” Legs asked.

“They’re coming to get me.”

“They who?”

“You don’t need to know. Take me outside. Wheel me to the 7-Eleven and leave me there.”

There were times Legs wasn’t any too fond of the old man, but this was inhuman. “All you need is a nap,” he said.

“The man upstairs and I had a chat, and it’s time for the big dirt nap.”

“What about your spirit guide? You gonna take him with you?”

“Don’t mock him,” Willie said. “He’ll do what he does. Probably stick with you, I imagine.”

Legs laughed.

“You don’t disrespect him, now.” Willie sounded dead serious. “You make him mad, he’ll do you.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “You give our people their money, you hear?”

“What if I keep the cash?” Legs asked, parking Willie’s chair outside the 7-Eleven.

“You’ll be knee deep in shit,” Willie said. “Ostrich shit.”

Sure, Legs thought. He would run right over to the reservation and hand over fifty K. Not. Sitting at the slot machine closest to the door of the convenience store, he watched a white Jeep Cherokee pull up to Willie. A tall, slender woman in camouflage coveralls got out and wheeled the old man up to the back of the truck. Someone inside must have opened it up and let down a ramp. Willie was wheeled onto it and lifted into the vehicle. The door shut behind him. As the Cherokee pulled away, Legs caught a glimpse of a small decal of an ostrich on the corner of the rear window.

And Willie was gone.

Legs missed the old man, but his sense of loss was easily salved by having money to burn. He paid off some of his debts, bought a car and a new wardrobe, dated high-maintenance women, and ate only in the best of restaurants.

He also gambled. Badly.

A week before the movie company was due to film at the Towers, he was down to the second fifty thousand and rethinking his position on luck. Driven to do something, he visited a guy best known as the Chinaman to ask his advice about how to change his luck. He had to pay up front.

After much careful thought, the Chinaman told him he had to rid himself of the evil spirit of a big ugly animal, which was in close pursuit. “You see him, you smash his soul,” the Chinaman said.

“I do that how?” Legs asked.

The Chinaman’s advice was simple. Legs had to cover every surface of his home with mirrors. In that way, he could smash the image of the hovering spirit in the mirror and thus destroy its soul. “One, two, you crack mirror and creature turn into nothingness.”

Legs lost a thousand dollars that night. Deciding that he could do worse than take the Chinaman’s advice, he hired a workman to do the job.

“Done.” The workman laid down his tools and took out a pack of cigarettes. He held them up, as if asking permission to light one.

Legs nodded and poured a drink with a none-too-steady hand. “Inspection time,” he said.

They walked around his Country Club Towers apartment, with Legs intent on examining every surface. Mirrors now covered each one, including the refrigerator handle, the faucets, the toilets in both bathrooms. Satisfied, he opened a fireproof box full of cash and paid the rest of his tab.

When the workman left, he stood for a moment and surveyed his territory. He’d long since cleaned what he could of the old blood hidden under the sofa where the poor prior tenant had offed himself; what remained of the last fifty grand from Willie was in the fireproof box.

Everything was copasetic.

“There’s no way that vindictive son-of-a-bitching ostrich guide is going to get me now,” Legs said out loud.

By now, the filming of Casino was drawing to a close. Legs had managed to finagle an invitation to the wrap party and was admiring himself in the new living room mirror when he saw a large shadow behind him. Without missing a beat, he picked up one of the bricks he’d lined up in readiness and threw it at the image.

The mirror fractured into a thousand pieces.

“Got you,” he said, figuring he now owed the Chinaman another stack.