Max Collins - Neon Mirage

“I thought so,” I said again, to nobody.

The rest of that afternoon slipped away from me. I left the pool and returned to my room, dressed casually and found my way to the moderately busy casino, where I played blackjack till I lost what I’d won earlier, drinking several rum cocktails brought to me gratis by the cowgirl waitresses who kept the customers well lubricated and free spending.

At around seven I was back in my room and, thanks to the free drinks and a general glumness that had settled over me, I managed to fall asleep again, taking nap number four of the day. When I awoke, the room was dark but for a bathroom light I’d left on, and it was after eight.

Must’ve been hunger that woke me, because my gut was burning. The last food I’d had was a sandwich and fries on the dining car of the train. I couldn’t quite bring myself to wear a sportshirt to supper, so I put on my other suit, which had hung out pretty well by now, and went down to the restaurant.

Like the casino, the Last Frontier’s dining room was doing good if not spectacular business. I wasn’t the only guy wearing a suit in the rough-paneled room, but apparel again was definitely dude ranch, not Monte Carlo. I helped myself to the elaborate “chuck wagon buffet,” which I was relieved to find was not serving up the sort of pork-and-beans and barbecue fare one might expect. In fact, there was an ice sculpture of a swan lording it over a lot of fancy food items, particularly salads and cold cuts, fussily arranged on platters by a chef who obviously did not have “Come’n get it!” in his vocabulary.

I was sitting in a booth by myself, working on my second plate, seeing just how much rare roast beef a human could eat, when Ben Siegel and his party came in.

Siegel, looking very tan, was wearing a maroon sports jacket and navy slacks and alligator shoes; he wore no tie, the points of his off-white shirt’s collar reaching down so that one touched the embroidered BS on his breast pocket, from which came a slash of lighter maroon silk handkerchief. On his arm was Virginia Hill; she was wearing a black halter-top and matching slacks, her reddish brown hair pinned up. She wasn’t tan at all, her mouth a scarlet gash in her pale face; she’d put on some weight but carried it well. She didn’t look hard to know, as more than one mob guy had put it. Bringing up the rear was Sedway, in his black suit and red tie, and Peggy who alone among them looked touristy in her white eyelet blouse and full blue and white vertical-striped skirt. Peggy was not on Sedway’s arm; in fact, she stood apart from the mole-like Moe. Her make-up was subdued.

Siegel didn’t notice me at first; Virginia Hill did. She tugged his sleeve and pointed me out. He smiled like he’d spotted an old friend, and motioned his party over to the table reserved for them, and headed my way.

I patted a napkin to my mouth, slid out of the booth and shook hands with him.

“Good to see you, Nate. Why don’t you join us?”

Without waiting for my answer, he stopped a passing waiter and instructed him to move my food and iced tea (I’d had enough cocktails for one day) over to the larger table across the room where his party was even now ordering drinks.

He slipped an arm around my shoulder and we walked over there.

“I’m glad you decided to take me up on my offer,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll be sorry. We’re making history, and you’re going to be part of it.”

“I’m not all that interested in history,” I said, good-naturedly. “I’m more interested in money.”

“We’re going to make that, too. Sit down, sit down.”

Siegel took the head of the table. Virginia Hill was at his left, and the chair at his right was mine. Next to Miss Hill sat Sedway, and across from him-next to me-sat Peggy. I nodded at her and smiled politely; she smiled the same way, and looked away, as if fascinated by the activities of a waiter clearing a table nearby.

Siegel sipped his wine and smiled his dazzling smile. He was the same handsome, charming soul I’d met aboard the Lux, with one exception: beneath the almost feminine long lashes and baby-blue eyes were dark circles; he tried to cover that up with powder or make-up or something, but he couldn’t fool me. I’m a detective.

“Did you hear about Tony?” he asked me, the smile settling in one corner of his mouth.

“Tony?” I asked.

“Cornero,” he said, as if I should’ve known. “The Coast Guard shut the Lux down a couple weeks after she launched.”

“You had a hunch that would happen,” I said.

“Yeah, those gambling ship days are over. You’re sitting in the middle of legal gambling in America. Say, uh, I’m very sorry about your friend Ragen.”

I nodded my thanks. Peggy lowered her eyes.

“That’s that bastard Guzik for you,” he said.

I said nothing.

He clapped his hands, dismissing that subject. “Ready to get to work?” he asked. “You only have ten days to whip my little police force in shape.”

“It won’t take me long,” I shrugged. “I assume there’s not much for them to do till you open-that I can have their full attention for a while.”

“Whatever you need.”

“Should be no big deal. They’re ex-cops, aren’t they? They should pick up fast on this stuff. They probably had some pickpocket training already.”

“They’re good boys,” Siegel said, nodding. “They’ve been on my payroll for years.”

“Anybody mind if I eat?” Virginia Hill asked, with poor grace.

“Feel free to feed your face, Tab,” Siegel said, just a little snidely.

“Just be more of me to love,” she said, and rose.

Siegel and I stayed behind, as the rest of his party went to the chuck wagon buffet. Siegel ordered off the menu-a steak, medium rare, and a salad; he was drinking a single glass of white wine. “Tabby,” as he referred to Miss Hill, had already run through her first two stingers.

“I may have some other work for you, Nate,” Siegel said, now that we were for the moment alone.

“Oh?”

“I may have a little security problem that can best be served by somebody from the outside-somebody like you.”

“I don’t understand. You said the boys on your security staff are longtime, trusted employees…”

“I don’t remember saying I trusted them. These are ex-cops, remember. They’re tied to me by the juice I spread around when they carried badges. These boys are, remember, what washed ashore after the shake-up in L.A. when his honor Mayor Shaw got booted the hell out. The rest are vets of a similar house-cleaning in Beverly Hills.”

“What sort of security problem are we talking?”

He sighed, sipped his wine, shrugged with his eyes. “Priorities,” he said, disgustedly, shaking his head. “Trying to put up the Taj Mahal in a fucking desert in eight months is enough of job, let alone having to goddamn do it whilst dancing around postwar priorities. Building materials and labor…both in short supply.” He shrugged with his shoulders this time. “But I’m getting the job done just the same.”

“How?”

“How do you think? Pulling strings. Paying top dollar. You know who Billy Wilkerson is?”

I nodded. He was the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter and the restaurateur behind Ciro’s and the Trocadero. I’d seen the little man in the latter nitery, a few years back, kissing the collective ass of Willie Bioff and George Browne, Frank Nitti’s Hollywood union bosses.

“Wilkerson’s one of my investors,” Siegel said. “He’s got influence on the movie execs. He got me lumber, cement, pipe, and you wouldn’t believe what all, right off the studio lots. And I got enough political clout in this state to get me steel girders, copper tubing, fixtures, tile and so on.”