Max Collins - Neon Mirage

On the day after Christmas-a Thursday-Ben Siegel unwrapped his gift to the people and himself, flinging open the doors of the fabulous Flamingo to an apparently eager public. Even the colors of this glittering night suggested the Flamingo was Bugsy’s great big Christmas present to the world: forty acres of desert transformed into vivid, terraced green, imported shrubbery and trees back-lit by red and blue lights. Meanwhile, klieg lights stroked the sky, Hollywood-opening style, creating a veil of light that made the Flamingo, its Grand Opening banners fluttering, visible for miles. Lines of automobiles coming from both directions converged and jammed, while a couple of off-duty Las Vegas traffic cops (who just that afternoon had been moving along a prospector on a burro holding up the downtown flow) somehow coped, though obviously stunned by the size of the throng storming this castle on the sand.

The only opportunity Siegel had missed to further light up his big night was leaving the fountain, out front, dark. The imposing structure was designed to keep water tumbling twenty-four hours, with spotlights throwing color onto its waterfall.

I had been with Siegel that afternoon when he went to watch the fountain’s inaugural moments. But the grounds-keeper was down within the bowl of the thing on his knees, looking inside the rock-plaster-and-lumber affair.

“What the hell’s the deal?” Siegel asked him. “Are you ready to turn this baby on or not?”

“All set, except…”

“Except what?”

“Well, Mr. Siegel, we’re gonna have to flush out that damn cat first.”

“Cat?” Siegel stepped back. “Where in hell?”

“In the sump. Cat crawled in there last night and had kittens. We’ll just have to flood ’em outa there.”

“Listen,” Siegel said, pointing a finger like a gun, “you drown those cats and you’re out a job.”

“You’re the boss, Mr. Siegel,” the groundskeeper shrugged, “but you won’t have a fountain at the opening tonight.”

“Fuck the fountain. It can wait.”

As we walked away, I said, “You don’t look like the animal-lover type.”

“I hate cats. They make my skin crawl. But it’s bad luck for a gambler to touch a cat.”

I presumed this didn’t apply to “Tabby”-although I had a hunch he would’ve been better off if it had.

Despite the dry, dark fountain, Ben Siegel’s fabulous Flamingo was having a bang-up opening night-even if Jimmy Durante was heard to say, on his way to perform in the red velvet-draped showroom, “Da place looks like a cemetery wid slot machines!”

The Schnozola was referring to arrangements of fresh flowers littering the lobby and main casino, tributes from the movie industry and the underworld. Representatives of the former were due in for Saturday night’s “big gala Hollywood premiere”-posters around the Flamingo promised the presence of Veronica Lake, Ava Gardner, William Holden, Lucille Ball and a dozen others.

The only representative of the underworld, that I knew of, was a small dark man in his mid-forties, registered at the Last Frontier Hotel as George Lieberman.

“You know who that is?” Moey Sedway, bedecked in a tux, asked me smugly.

“Your brother?” I asked. Both men were tiny Jews with close-set eyes and prominent noses, though this other man had an air of quiet authority that Sedway could only hope for.

“I wish he was,” said Little Moey. “I could use being born next to that much dough.” He paused for effect, then said: “That’s Meyer Lansky.”

I looked at Sedway like he was crazy. “That pipsqueak?”

“I wouldn’t call him that to his face,” Moey advised. “They come bigger, but they don’t come no more powerful.”

Lansky, in dark suit and dark tie, was smiling faintly, having a pleasant conversation, in low tones, with the wide-smiling Ben Siegel, who looked spiffy as hell in his white dinner jacket with red carnation in the lapel.

Surprisingly, Lansky didn’t seem to have any bodyguards, but then neither did Siegel. With the exception of his security force of ex-cops-whose job was watching the casino, after all-Siegel lacked the armed retinue you might expect. I’d figured Sedway was his bodyguard, at first, till I found Moey never carried a gun; besides, that little weasel couldn’t have cut it as bodyguard to a department store Santa.

I’d been around my share of mob guys, but Ben Siegel had me stumped. Despite occasional flare-ups of temper, he just didn’t gibe with the stories I’d heard about him. Look at him and Lansky standing there schmoozing. Lansky might have been a moderately successful garment-district businessman; Siegel someone from the movie industry, a director, a producer, perhaps. Were these two men really the founders of Murder, Incorporated? Was Lansky truly an underworld financial wizard the likes of which made Guzik seem an amateur? Was Siegel really the man who controlled narcotics on the West Coast?

Whatever the case, tonight Ben (Don’t-Call-Him-You-Know-What) Siegel was a charming, gladhanding host, although as Sedway and I stood along the periphery of the lobby, looking over the packed casino, Siegel did show his colors, momentarily. A heavy-set man in a plaid jacket, looking very out of place in this world of evening wear, was standing in front of a slot machine lackadaisically lighting up a cigar-and not a Havana like Sedway and Siegel smoked. Siegel excused himself from Lansky and walked over to the man.

“You’re blocking the machine,” Siegel told him. “Play, or move it along.”

The bewildered patron in plaid just moved it along.

I thought I could sense disapproval in Lansky’s deadpan expression; but the little man was smiling again, however faintly, when Siegel approached him and put a hand on his shoulder and led him down and through the big casino.

“You won’t see Meyer Lansky at the Saturday night grand opening,” Sedway said.

“Why’s that?”

“That’s when the reporters are going to show. And Mr. Lansky doesn’t like publicity much.”

“Ben doesn’t seem to mind it.”

“You’re tellin’ me. He got himself a goddamn press agent, the other day.”

“Yeah, I know. I met him. That guy Greenspun. Don’t you think a place like this ought to have a press agent, Moe?”

“Sure. But I don’t think some of the, uh, investors knew Ben was going to be so…prominent, in the scheme of things. Newspaper articles. Greeting guests at the door. Mingling.”

“Telling ’em to move it along.”

Sedway laughed shortly. Then he decided he’d said enough to me, and excused himself to do some mingling of his own.

There were plenty of people to mingle with. Earlier that week Siegel had been concerned about a rumor that Las Vegans would boycott his pastel palace. Resentment over the political strings he’d pulled to get building supplies was part of it; the rest came from a whispering campaign about the Flamingo being a den of gangsters, begun by his downtown competitors. These “short-sighted fucking vultures,” as Siegel referred to them, didn’t understand that (as Ben saw it) he would only bring them all more business by attracting more gamblers to Vegas.

Apparently the rumor had been just that-a rumor-or else the resentment and whispering campaign had been overcome by curiosity and Siegel’s pro-Las Vegas advertising: “The Flamingo has been built for Las Vegas…the Flamingo owners believe in Las Vegas, its future as the greatest playground in the universe…the Flamingo will bring Las Vegas the best money can buy and brains can conceive.”

Siegel wrote most of that himself, of course. He even told his PR guy what to do and how to do it.