Max Collins - Neon Mirage

And when his boss found out, the man who didn’t like to be called Bugsy went bugsy, and started slapping Little Moey around.

“We don’t run for office, you little schmuck!” Siegel had roared, slapping his stooge, whose name happened to be Moe, although he was getting slapped more like he was Larry or Shemp. “We own the politicians, you dumbass cocksucker!”

Moey had done his best to back out of the election, but his name was already on the ballot. Sedway became a laughingstock in mob circles, the butt of a much-repeated anecdote (attested to by Rubinski relating the story to me) as the only politician who ever had to spread the graft around to make sure he didn’t get elected.

All this was three years ago, more or less, and in recent months Ben Siegel had called upon his once trusted second-in-command to come back to his side.

“You ought to be warned,” Moe was saying, “that Ben’s a little on edge these days. Lots of pressure on the boss. Lots of pressure.”

“Why?”

“Well, you heard about the dough he’s laying out on this layout.”

“I heard over a million.”

“He’s spilled more than a million. I tell you, though, it’s gonna be a fabulous place, this Flamingo.”

“So why’s he under pressure?”

“To open on time. I don’t think the hotel’s gonna be finished.”

“Then why open? What’s the rush?”

Sedway shrugged. “Ben don’t like to wait on nobody or nothing. Everything’s now with him. Here we are.”

Where we were was not the Flamingo, but the Hotel Last Frontier, or so said the horizontal sign, cartoon letters of crisscrossing logs outlined in neon, resting atop a short brick wall in the midst of a vast landscaped lawn. The Frontier, and the similar nearby El Rancho Vegas, were the only gambling resorts on the so-called Strip that was highway 91, the two-lane blacktop heading southwest to Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

Sedway pulled in the drive of the sprawling, rustic hotel past a swimming pool near the highway, where a good number of bathers were sunning and splashing. He parked and got my bag out of the trunk and we walked up to the central thatch-roofed, whitewashed adobe building, which like the other buildings was low-slung and supported by rough wood beams, decorated by wagon wheels and steer horns and other dude-ranch touches. It was all about as authentic as a Gene Autry movie, maintaining the phony cowboy airs I’d witnessed in downtown Vegas, but admittedly establishing a friendly “come-as-you-are” atmosphere. Which only made me feel out of place in my gray suit and gray skin.

“That’s a nice car you got, Moe,” I said, as we moved away from it. “Is that yours, or one of Ben’s?”

“It’s mine,” Sedway said, with tight, quiet pride. “The race wire business pays good, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, resisting the urge to point out that an almost identical black Lincoln Continental had been driven by Jim Ragen a certain afternoon.

“Ben’ll get you some wheels while you’re here,” he said. “He’ll fix you up royal.”

I followed Sedway into the open-beamed lobby; the registration desk was at the left. The Western motif continued- wood-and-leather furniture, sandstone fireplaces, pony-express lanterns hanging from wagon wheels. The rough wood-paneled walls displayed mounted buffalo heads. Indian rugs and western prints, with the directions to the casino, dining room, showroom and coffee shop burned into the walls as if with a branding iron. The desk clerk wore a string tie and a plaid shirt. He was friendly, but stopped short of calling me “pod’ner.” Thank God for small favors.

If there were bellboys, I didn’t see any. Sedway was carrying my bag and I let him lead me down a hallway and up one flight of stairs to my room, 404. The numbering apparently had something to do with which wing you were in, because not only was I not on the fourth floor, there wasn’t any fourth floor.

My room was nice enough-not small, not large; modern furnishings and rustic walls and a print of an Indian chief. Sedway put my bag on a stand and I sat on the edge of the bed.

“What now?” I said.

“Ben may stop by and see you tonight,” he said, shrugging.

“Where is he now?”

“Up the road.”

“Up the road?”

“At the Flamingo. Working.”

“Doing what, exactly, Moe? This is Sunday.”

“Not at the Flamingo it ain’t. Workers are working damn near ’round the clock, up there. And Ben’s supervising. That’s his big problem, you know.”

“What is?”

“He wants to keep his eye on everything, his finger in all the pies. He’s hardly getting any sleep. Running himself ragged.” He made a tch-tch sound, and shook his head, trying to convince me he cared deeply about his boss’s health. Sure.

“And you think he ought to delegate authority, more,” I said.

“What?”

“He ought to trust the people around him. Give them some responsibility.”

“Yeah,” Moey said, smiling, nodding. “He ought to do that.”

“Don’t you still handle the local end of Trans-American for him?”

“Sure. He gets out of my way on that. It’s just the Flamingo he don’t want anybody touching. You’d think he was a goddamn artist. You’d think it was a goddamn picture he was painting.”

“Maybe to him it is.”

Sedway shrugged. “Maybe. But it ain’t his paint, entirely.”

By that I took him to mean the money Siegel was spending was mostly that of the boys back east. Lansky and Costello and Adonis and Luciano-although Luciano wasn’t back east, anymore, unless you viewed Sicily as east of New York, which I guessed it was. Whatever the case, the deported “Charlie Lucky” was said to still be running things, albeit at a distance.

“What am I supposed to do till Ben comes around?”

“Have some fun. You can run a tab on anything except gambling. Food’s good here. Hit the bar. Ride a horse. Have a swim.”

“I didn’t bring bathing trunks. Never occurred to me.” Back in Chicago, there was snow on the ground. A lot of it.

Sedway was turning to go. “You can get a suit in the gift shop. I got to hook back up with Ben. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Why don’t I just come with you…?”

He stopped and turned and looked at me. “Look, Nate. You better get this straight right now. You do things Ben’s way when you’re in Ben’s world, which is where you are. Ben wanted you to relax after your long train ride. So that’s what you’re going to do. Is relax.”

He pointed a finger at me and went out.

I slept for an hour, in my clothes, and then got up and undressed and showered and unpacked and put on a sportshirt and slacks and prowled the place. I had a rum cocktail in a replica of a forty-niner saloon, complete with bullet-scarred mahogany bar and saddle-shaped leather bar stools; then I rode on into the main casino, where the ceiling was covered with pony hide and the walls ornately papered and peppered with bawdy house nudes in heavy gold-gilt frames. Despite these distractions, I played blackjack for a couple hours and ended up ahead a few bucks. I bought a swimming suit in the gift shop, or rather charged it to my room, where I went back to put the thing on, feeling somehow foolish to be wandering across a landscaped lawn with a towel around my waist in the middle of December.

But the pleasantly warm desert air took that thought away, and for a moment I wondered if I was still asleep, as this seemed nicer than real life; when I dove into the blue pool, the cool water refreshed and awoke me, making me realize I was not dreaming. I was in fact in a desert oasis, getting paid for this.

I stretched out on a deck chair on the sandstone apron by the pool and let the sun have at me. It was getting late in the afternoon, but I could feel the warmth on me, like a soothing blanket. Maybe my Chicago pallor would go away. I would walk into the A-l office a bronze god, and sweep that pretty secretary of mine off her feet. Fat chance.