Max Collins - Neon Mirage

“Sounds like you got it dicked.”

He sighed. “It takes dough, but yes, I do. And Moe’s been on my case because the community’s unhappy-VFW here held protest meetings, ’cause they couldn’t get materials for their new homes when I could for the Flamingo. I tell Moe, let ’em thank me for the money I’m gonna be pumping into the town. But some people can’t see something that’s right in front of them, let alone the future. Anyway, thanks to those protests I ended up having to do some dealing with fucking lowlifes to get materials.”

“Black marketeers, you mean.”

He nodded, frowning. “And I’m getting suspicious.”

“Of?”

“Of why I’m spending so goddamn much money on materials.”

“You think maybe you’re paying for the same materials twice.”

He leaned forward, cocked his head. “A truck pulls up, and it’s full of lumber, and I pay for it. How am I to know where they got it? They could’ve got it the night before from our own construction site.”

“It’s a common enough scam,” I granted him. “Who’s in charge of purchasing and receiving?”

“Me. I am.”

The others were returning now, plates of food in hand. Both girls had modest platefuls; my guess was Virginia Hill’s added weight came from drinking. They all took their places, the conversation going on, as if Siegel and I were still alone.

I sipped my iced tea. “Handling the purchasing and receiving yourself…don’t you have bigger fish to fry?”

His smile was disarming but also, I thought, mildly crazed. “Nate, I fry all the fish at the Flamingo. I’m where the buck starts and stops. When we’re up and running, well, sure I’ll hire some people to take care of the day-to-day proceedings. Down the road, I will. But this is my dream, and it’s up to me to make it come true. It’s up to me to supervise the kitchen crew, hire the big name entertainers, appoint the pit bosses, choose the decor for the hotel rooms…not a single employee is getting hired without my personal approval.”

“You’ve hired a hotel manager, and a casino manager, I assume…”

“No. That I’ll get around to. Down the road. For the time being, I’m it.”

“You have an accountant, for Christ’s sake…”

He smiled over at Peggy and she smiled briefly, nervously, back. Virginia Hill smirked and sipped her latest stinger.

“Miss Hogan is helping me look after the books,” he said, toasting her with his wine glass. “She’s got a background in that area. Down the road, we’ll hire somebody, or maybe I’ll put Peg in charge and get myself another secretary. But right now I need to have my finger on the pulse, so to speak.”

I sighed. Said, “Look. Mr. Siegel. No offense meant…”

“Keep it Ben, and speak your mind, Nate.”

Sedway, concentrating on his food (or pretending to), lifted an eyebrow and put it down.

“You can’t handle a job this size by yourself,” I said, “and expect not to get taken advantage of. How much have you spent so far?”

A waiter put Siegel’s salad in front of him. “Well over five at this point,” he said, picking at the lettuce with his fork.

“Five? Million?”

“Million,” he said with some condescension. “You don’t build palaces for peanuts, you know.”

“Where has it gone?”

“Where hasn’t it gone? Hell, I spent a million bucks on plumbing alone.”

“Plumbing?”

He grinned, flushed with pride. “Sure. Every one of my two hundred and eighty hotel rooms has its own private sewer system, its own private septic tank.”

“Ben,” I said, trying to keep my jaw from scraping the floor. “The best hotels in Chicago don’t have that.”

“That’s good enough for Chicago, maybe, but not the Flamingo,” Siegel said, flatly confident, eating his salad. “That place is going to stand forever. No goddamn wind or earthquake is going to blow that place away. I built the walls out of concrete-double thick.”

What particular advantage that would be in a climate this mild, where chicken wire and plaster would suffice, I couldn’t guess. But I didn’t say anything. I’d been in this conversation long enough to know that disagreeing with Bugsy was like arguing with, well, with a cement wall. A double-thick one.

A waiter removed Siegel’s half-eaten and pushed-aside salad and put the steak before him. “You wouldn’t believe what I been through here,” Siegel said, ignoring the steak. “Everything went wrong…take the other day, the fuckin’ drapes. Turns out they’re highly flammable and got to be shipped back to L.A. for chemical treatment. Then they install the air-conditioning system with intakes but no outlets and that all has to be ripped out and re-done. And when the heating equipment shows up, the concrete housing in the boiler room turned out to be too goddamn small and had to be built over. Jesus, there’s no end to it. I been paying fifty bucks a day to carpenters, bricklayers, tinsmiths, steel workers. Twelve hour days, seven days a week. With this labor shortage, I have to fly most of ’em in, from all over the country. That means paying bonuses, providing living quarters…” He was working himself up into a lather, and sensed it apparently, because he backed off, shrugging “…but the job’s getting done, that’s the important thing.”

“Moe here said the hotel may not be ready in time.”

Sedway flashed me a dark look, as if I’d betrayed a confidence.

“It’ll be done,” Siegel said, his eyes narrowing momentarily, looking down at Sedway, who by this time was giving all his attention to his plate of food. “Tomorrow they’re doing the landscaping. It’ll be done.”

“If it isn’t,” I said, “can’t you just postpone?”

“I’d lose face,” Siegel said, “and that’s the one thing no gambler can afford to lose. Look, I’ll be straight with you, Nate…” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “…I got construction costs I gotta cover. Del Webb’s threatening to put a half-mil lien up against the place. If I can open up, take advantage of the holiday crowds, get the money flowing, then the people I owe will back off.”

By that he meant Lansky and company.

I said, carefully, “I take it you can’t go to your investors and ask for more…”

“You can only go to the well so many times.” His mouth tightened. “Besides, those thick-headed, unimaginative bastards, it’s them I want to show. They don’t think I know what I’m doing. Hell, I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“I’m sure you do,” I lied.

“There’s money to be made in the fucking desert. Just take a look around you.” And he gestured around at the rustic surroundings. “This place is fine, for what it is. But it’s the wrong fantasy. You want to take money away from people and make them smile while you’re doing it, give them Hollywood, not Tombstone. Give ’em chrome and winding staircases. Swirling silk, marble statues, Greek urns…”

“How much does a Greek earn, anyway?” Virginia Hill asked, stinger poised.

He ignored her. “Picture it, Nate: revolving stages with top-name entertainment. Water ballets for the chorus girls. Wheels of chance spinning every night, night and day, in a dream setting, a place where time stands still, ’cause there’s no goddamn clocks. It’s gonna make Monte Carlo look like a penny arcade. And it won’t just be the Flamingo, no. You’ll see this whole three-mile strip out to the airport lined all along with luxury hotels and fabulous casinos. Legal. All of it.” He smiled like a naughty child. “The beauty part is you can use it for a money laundry. The government’s got no idea how much the tables take in. You can skim the hell out of it and then write off other shit. It’s the perfect set-up. That’s what going legit can do for you, and one day, before you know it, the boys back east are gonna wake up to it.”