Max Collins - Neon Mirage

Raft grinned, showing his teeth, looking at me. “He’s a frustrated actor; he’d love to have a movie career.” He leaned forward, sharing a confidence. “He’s always coming around the set, standing on the sidelines, asking the technicians questions. He owns more cameras, projectors and other movie shit than half the studios on Poverty Row.”

“What for?”

“Homemade screen tests. He had me photograph him one day. I took some footage of him with his camera in my dressing room.” Raft smiled some more, and shook his head. “He re-did one of my scenes. Wanted to show me where I got it wrong.”

“He isn’t serious about acting…”

“Not anymore. This was years ago. But he showed some footage around. He let it be known he was available for parts. Nobody ever hired him. Not with his background. I’m no saint, but I don’t have no rape arrests on my rap sheet.”

“Is he as crazy as they say?”

“He’s got a streak. But that name he hates-Bugsy-he didn’t get that ’cause he’s bugs, you know. It comes from when a judge at a trial, years and years ago, real disgusted, called him and Meyer Lansky a couple of bugs.”

“But the name ‘Bugsy’ stuck, even though nobody uses it in front of him.”

“Nobody uses it in front of him for long,” Raft said, nodding slowly. “He’s got a bad temper, all right. Particularly if you insult him. He’s real vain. He dresses great. He works out every day at the Hollywood YMCA. Goes weekly to Drucker’s barber shop in Beverly Hills. He showers for hours, goes to bed early, hardly drinks at all. He’s real sensitive about his hair.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, when he was a kid it was nice and thick and curly. But he’s losing it, now. I tell you, I damn near bought it when I pulled a gag on him on his birthday last year. I sent over a gift-wrapped toup. Thinking he’d laugh. He drove over here pissed off as hell and it took me an hour to settle him down. Lucky I know what button to push with him.”

“What button is that, George?”

“Well, I just call him ‘baby blue eyes.’ It compliments him and calms him right down. I don’t think it’d work for anybody else, though.”

“He sounds like a real interesting fella. I’d like to meet him-no matter how things go for me with Virginia Hill.”

“How long will you be out here?”

“How long do I need to be out here?”

“Well, Ben’s not in town much these days. He’s in Vegas, most of the time.”

“Oh, because of that casino he’s building-”

“Yeah, only it’s more than just a casino-it’s a full-fledged resort. Hotel, restaurants, swimming pool. Gonna be a real class joint. He’s putting it up out on the strip of land between the airport and Vegas. Sinking a lot of dough into it.”

“His own?”

“His own and everybody else he knows. Me included. Mostly guys back east, I think; and guys from your neck of the woods. Ben says it’s gonna be so fabulous it’ll make DeMille look like a piker.”

“I didn’t know DeMille was in the gambling business.”

“You don’t think the movie business is a gamble? Nate, you don’t get where I am unless the dice has been good to you.”

Killer came out and refilled our iced tea glasses from a sweating glass pitcher. Raft asked him if he’d got a cab for the girl and the Killer said yes, then went back into the house.

I sipped my tea. “Why isn’t Virginia Hill out in Vegas with him?”

“She is part of the time. But she comes back here a lot.”

“Why?”

“She hates the desert.”

“I hope she’s not a typical customer. So, I have to go to Vegas if I want to meet Ben Siegel?”

“No, he’s going to be back in town this weekend. Friday night. It’s the grand opening of the S.S. Lux.”

“What’s that?”

“Tony Cornero’s new gambling ship. Ben was one of Tony’s partners on the old S.S. Rex. You want to go? You can go with me, if you want.”

“That’d be swell.”

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Raft said, standing, tightening the sash of his robe over an expansive gut, “I want to catch a nap. I got a date tonight.”

Beverly Hills wasn’t always a big deal. The Hollywood hills were where movie actors, denied access to the country clubs and social circles of Los Angeles, fled, building fabulous mansions, riding their money past stuffy respectability into cheerful decadence. One of the first of those mansions was the sixteen-room Falcon’s Lair, Rudolph Valentino’s home for the year or so before his death.

Perched on a Benedict Canyon hillside, on Bella Drive, the place was impressive in size but otherwise looked just like another of these overinflated mud huts to me, bleached white with scalloped burnt-red clay tile roof; it was two stories with occasional dips to a single floor, and lavishly landscaped, lots of trees doing their best to shield the mansion, but not obscuring the hilltop view of Beverly Hills, Los Angeles and even Catalina Island on this clear, pleasantly warm July afternoon. The panoramic view stretched before me like a not quite convincing miniature in a movie. That was California for you-almost like real life.

I left Rubinski’s ’41 Ford in the open cement area before the mission-like front of the place. No other cars were around, but a stable converted to a garage was nearby. You walked through an archway to get to the front entry, a big dark double door, a pair of Mediterranean slabs you could break your knuckles on, knocking. Which is why they invented doorbells, I guess, and Falcon’s Lair had one and I rang it.

And I rang it.

Raft had called ahead for me, and Virginia Hill was supposed to be home, and she supposedly knew I was coming. It had been less than fifteen minutes since Raft’s call, and yet nobody was answering the door.

I rang again, the church bell-like chimes of it mellow and muffled behind the massive doors.

Which finally swung open, and there she was, poised within their V, fingers with red-painted nails caressing either door, a wry one-sided smile cracking her cool deadpan face, framed by flowing shoulder-length hair that was redder than it used to be, and green-gray eyes that laughed. Well, they didn’t say ha ha ha or anything, but you get the idea.

And did I mention she was naked?

Well, she was. I was starting to feel like a private eye in a quarter pocketbook. This made two naked babes today and it wasn’t even dark yet. Or maybe that was just what they were wearing in California this year. Nothing.

“Hiya, Heller. Long time no see. Come on in.”

Her Alabama accent was still there, but it seemed less lilting than I remembered it. A harshness had crept into the voice, giving it a smokiness that was not altogether unappealing, though she was slurring her words a little. If calling her drunk was less than fair, calling her sober was less than accurate.

I followed her through a high-ceilinged entryway that you could’ve put my Morrison suite in and still had room to hold a cotillion. The place was lavish, tapestries and armor, wrought-iron wall hangings; but it was pretty much a blur to me. I was following a naked woman whose flesh was as creamy white as a carved ivory statuette, a few of which graced an occasional table here in Rudy’s shack.

Jiggling a bit, not being actual ivory, she led me into a big living room where she walked to a Hoover plugged in the wall on a long cord and began sweeping. The sound of it was fairly loud, but she managed to bray above it: “Sorry I didn’t hear you ring the doorbell, Heller!”

“That’s okay!” I yelled back.

She kept at it, sweeping an oriental carpet that extended out before a white marble fire place and its Tara-like pillars like a multi-colored lawn. Over the fireplace hung a dark murky painting with an Old Dutch Master look to it. By which I mean it was like a Rembrandt seen through a lot of cigar smoke.