Max Collins - Neon Mirage

I expected that to improve her disposition.

It didn’t.

“But those men didn’t kill my uncle. They tried to, but they didn’t. What about whoever did ? What about whoever poisoned him?”

“The cops are looking into that. You know that.”

“Why don’t you look into it?”

“Why should I?”

“Why don’t you just go up to Jake Guzik and shoot him in his fat head?”

“That’s a swell idea. Then the prison chaplain can marry you and me while I’m walking down that long, long hall. I hope you like weird haircuts.”

“I don’t think you’re funny.”

“I don’t find any of this funny. There are things in this world you can’t do a fucking thing about, Peggy. There are battles that can’t be won. Sometimes you just got to be happy to be able to hang on to your life, for a while.”

“That’s you, all right. Nate Heller. You’re a real survivor.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

She stood. “Well, maybe I want more out of a man. Maybe I want more out of life.”

“And where are you going to find that ? Las Vegas?”

She lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me; sooner or later every woman I know does that to me. “Maybe I will. I don’t like this town. I don’t think I can live here anymore.”

“Peg. Why don’t you just sit back down…we’ll talk a little more and…”

“I’m sick of you. I’m sick of my family. I’m sick of Chicago.”

And she went out the door.

I thought about going after her, but I just kept my seat. She was as stubborn as her uncle, after all. And I’d had my fill of hopeless cases for one year.

But I did stand, to look out the window and watch her catch a cab. Wondering if she’d really do it. Really go running to Vegas and Siegel and that lunatic Virginia Hill, as if that were really an alternative to the madhouse of Chicago.

No , I thought. No way in hell.

She took the morning flight out.

I got on the train at Union Station on Alameda Boulevard at a quarter to seven that Sunday morning, and promptly fell asleep in my seat. When I woke up mid-morning and looked out the window, I found Los Angeles, and civilization (not that those terms necessarily have anything to do with each other), long gone. In their place was desolation, the literal kind, as opposed to the spiritual brand the City of Angels breeds. I spent the rest of the morning watching the desert roll by my window like a bleached tan carpet covering the world. I kept trying to picture somebody putting up a casino in the middle of all that sand and sagebrush, and couldn’t manage it.

It was after two when the train rolled into the modern, many-windowed Union Pacific Station at the west end of Fremont Street, and I soon found myself standing, single bag in hand, in a restful shaded park, enjoying a very dry breeze, looking down a busy street lined with wide-open casinos: the Las Vegas Club, the Monte Carlo, the Pioneer, the Boulder, the Golden Nugget. Despite the slight shock of seeing casinos sprawled over two very American blocks, I felt vaguely disappointed. While the Sunday afternoon crowds filled the sidewalks and kept Fremont’s two modest lanes hopping with traffic, it nonetheless looked a little shabby, not at all glamorous. A small boy’s idea of a sinful good time, complete with Hollywood-style frontier trimmings. Maybe at night, when neon lit up Glitter Gulch, I’d revise my jaded Chicagoan’s opinion.

Shortly before two-thirty, a black Lincoln Continental glided up to the curb. Out of it scrambled a balding, rodent-like man in a three-hundred-dollar black silk suit. His tie was wide and red and his face was oblong and pale.

“Nate Heller?” he said, with a sideways smile, thrusting a hand forward.

I nodded, took the hand, shook it, found it moist, let go of it and, trying not to call attention to the act, wiped the moisture from my palm on my pant leg.

“Moe Sedway,” he said, jerking a thumb to his chest, smiling nervously, his tiny, close-set eyes as moist as his handshake, his nose a big lumpy thing like a wad of modeling clay stuck there by some kid.

He took my bag and walked around to the rear of the Lincoln; I followed him there. He put the bag in the car’s trunk, which was bigger than some coldwater flats I’ve seen. “How was L.A.?” he asked.

“Swell,” I said.

“So you’re a pal of Fred Rubinski’s, huh?”

“Yeah. Business partners, actually.”

“You say that like it’s two different things. Where I come from business partners can be pals, too. In fact they should be.”

I shrugged at this piece of curbside philosophy. He shut the trunk. With nervous energy to spare, he moved around me and opened the car door on the rider’s side. He gestured for me to get in, smiling nervously.

I got in. He went around and got behind the wheel. “Ever been to Vegas before?” he said, lighting up a long, thick cigar that was much too big for his face.

“No,” I said.

“Want a cigar? Havanas. Two bucks a piece.”

“No thanks.”

He’d left the car running. He pulled out and headed up Fremont Street. Mixed in among the tourists, many of whom wore dude-ranch style Western clothes, were occasional real westerners: men with the weathered faces of the true rancher or ranch hand; an Indian woman with a baby cradled on her back; a toothless old prospector who made Gabby Hayes look like a Michigan Avenue playboy.

Beyond the casinos and clubs was a business district, Western-style souvenir shops and barbecue restaurants mingling with modern offices and the dime store chains.

“What do you think of our little town?” Sedway said, blowing smoke.

“It’s not Chicago,” I said.

Past the downtown was an unimpressive residential district; in fact some of it was downright shabby-trailers and cinder-block houses-distinguished only by tacky wedding chapels, often hooked up with motels, that lined the thoroughfare. Pastel stucco with neon wedding bells and hearts and such. The vows of a lifetime served up like a cheeseburger at a white-tile one-arm joint.

“Yeah,” Sedway said, his moist eyes dreamy, cigar between his fingers like Churchill, “ain’t Vegas the greatest place?”

I nodded, and looked back out the window, the sleazy landscape blurring when Sedway picked up speed as we passed the city limits.

“Ben didn’t say why he brought you out,” he said, smiling over at me. He was smiling too much; I wondered why.

“I’m going to give your security people the rundown on pickpockets,” I said.

He shrugged with his eyebrows. “We open day after Christmas, you know.”

“I know. Should be time enough.”

“How well do you know Ben?”

“I only met him once. He seems like a nice guy.”

“Oh he is,” Sedway said, quickly, almost defensively. “We go way back, Ben and me. I known him since we was kids on the Lower East Side.”

Fred Rubinski had told me about Little Moey Sedway. He had mentioned that Sedway and Siegel went “way back”-but he had also mentioned something Sedway neglected to.

“Little Moey only recently got back in his boss’s good graces,” Fred told me. “For almost three years, Moey was given jobs out of Siegel’s sight and told to stay away from the Bug or risk getting hit in the head.”

Seems Sedway, who’d never done too well for himself despite the constant help of his boyhood pal Ben (recent failures by Little Moey included botched bookmaking operations in both San Diego and L.A.), had become a big man in little Vegas. As Siegel’s on-site rep for the Trans-American race wire, Sedway wormed his way into part ownership of several Fremont Street casinos. He bought a nice house, a big car. He became chummy with the city fathers, dropping dough into charity and church hoppers. When a group of respectable citizens asked Mr. Sedway to run for city commissioner, he accepted.