Max Collins: Neon Mirage

He was sticking a hypodermic into a small bottle, filling it up with clear fluid. “Jim was a fine man. That was a rough one to lose.”

“You know, frankly, Doc, I think you’re wasting your time. I feel fine. It’s just a graze. I’m not bleeding. Why don’t you just go on home and back to bed. Sorry to bother.”

I was standing by the door.

“Nonsense,” he said. “You need something for pain, and for tetanus. I have my instructions.”

I trained the.38 on him. “I bet you do. Now, just get the fuck out of here. You wouldn’t be the first son of a bitch I shot tonight.”

His eyes were big behind the thick lenses. “Mr. Heller-what in the world is wrong?”

“You were Jim Ragen’s doctor in Miami. Christ. I should have known. How stupid could I be? You were a mob doctor down there. You moved there from Chicago, didn’t you? Capone, Nitti, Fischetti, it’s been an Outfit convention in Miami for twenty years. With Jim’s Outfit ties, who else would his Miami physician be but connected?”

“This is foolish.”

“Put the needle in the bag.”

“Mr. Heller…”

“Put. The. Needle. In. The. Fucking. Bag.”

He put the needle in the fucking bag.

“All my precautions,” I said, smiling bitterly, “monitoring who goes in and out of that room. All the investigating trying to figure who could’ve poisoned Jim. Was it in the food? A salve some nurse rubbed on him? Hell, no. It was his own goddamn family doctor.”

He seemed calm, but there was nervousness underneath. “Maybe I should leave. Even though it’s clear you’re in shock from your trauma…”

“I heard you were moving your practice out to California. I didn’t think much about it, at the time…but I’m thinking, now. I’m thinking your big-money Miami patients are thinning out-first Nitti up and dies, and then Ricca and the rest go to stir. And I hear a lot of the east coast boys are spending time on the west coast these days…business interests, homes in Palm Springs, and so on. Moving your practice out here starts to make sense.”

“You’re obviously very…disoriented right now, Mr. Heller…”

“This isn’t Cohen’s work, is it? Dragna, then? I don’t know much about him, though I’ve heard he has some east coast ties. So maybe that makes sense, too. But he slipped up sending you. You didn’t know it was me who was wounded out here, did you? And whoever sent you didn’t know that the two of us had run into each other before. Christ, did you do Cermak, too? You were one of his doctors. This is a consultation that’s been overdue for about thirteen years, Doc…”

He swallowed. Smiled, in a twitchy way, cracking his parchment tan. Said, “Perhaps I will just go. You’re a very confused man. I do recommend you see a physician tomorrow, as soon as possible.”

“Hey, heal your fuckin’ self, Doc.” I gestured toward the door with the gun. “Now get out of here before I give you the cure to everything…”

He snapped the bag shut, swallowed again, nodded to me, and moved quickly toward the door; as he opened it with one hand, he swung the black bag with savage speed and force and clipped me right on the head, where the wound was.

Gun flying from my fingers, I hit the wood floor on my back with a teeth-rattling thump, blood running down my face, into my eyes, consciousness slipping away…

Something was squeezing my arm.

I opened my eyes; I was still on my back, on the floor. A rubber strap was around my left forearm, tight, my veins standing out like a bas-relief map.

Thin, tan Snaden was leaning over me, looking like a mad scientist, eyes wide and intense behind his thick lenses, sweating, hypo in hand; with his thumb he tested it, and a little squirt of the stuff he intended for me ejaculated prematurely.

I watched this through slitted eyes; his big eyes behind the glasses were looking at my arm, one hand cradling it, as his other hand with the needle descended.

My other arm was free. And I lashed out and latched onto his wrist, gripping as hard as I could; he was surprised, and in the moment his surprise gave me, I brought up my knee and kneed him in the stomach. It sent him back, rattling into some furniture, knocking a chair over, and he hit his head; it stunned him. He wasn’t unconscious, but he was good and goddamned dazed. He was that way when I sank that needle into his own arm, pushing the plunger in all the way, covering his mouth with my hand to stifle his scream.

I don’t know what was in the hypo.

I only know it took him less than three minutes to pass out. He spent those three minutes weeping-“What have you done, oh God, oh God what have you done”-a pitiful pile of humanity on the wooden floor of the motel unit, a sack of flesh full of angular bones tossed up against an upended chair. Only I didn’t pity him. He had killed Jim Ragen and God knows how many others. And he had tried to add me to his list of patients who hadn’t pulled through.

He had some cigarettes in his breast pocket. I took the pack, Camels again, and shook one out and sat on the edge of the bed and smoked it, feeling calm; blood was caked on my face, but it wasn’t running down from the wound any longer. My heartbeat was slowing to normal. I didn’t feel feverish. I didn’t feel woozy.

I felt just fine.

After the smoke, I tested for a pulse in his neck and there was none. I went in and splashed some water on my face, washed the blood off. Then I wiped the room of prints, leaving the.38 in his medical bag; perhaps he’d get tagged for what I’d done on the beach; perhaps this would be written off as suicide. That was up to the cops, and the mob boys who threw the party.

I drove to another motor court, five miles up the highway, and checked in and slept till three the next afternoon. At a nearby diner, where I convinced them to serve me breakfast, I read the papers and Ben’s death was all over them. I wasn’t mentioned in any of the accounts.

Nor was Dr. Snaden’s death reported. Nor was there any mention of two West Side of Chicago bookies and one former LAPD police lieutenant being littered along the beach like so much bloody driftwood.

So I drove back to Los Angeles, and on the way stopped at the place where it had happened, the crime scene if you will, and the beach stretched to the ocean like a pristine blanket of sand. There wasn’t a single crumpled candy bar wrapper, let alone a corpse, and certainly no cops marking off the area for investigatory purposes. Nothing. Just the sound of gulls and the reflection of the sun off the sea and the gentle crash of the surf.

I touched my head where the grazed area was, scabbed over now. I did feel a little shaky, still. A warm breeze calmed me. Had all that happened last night? On this lonely stretch of sand? Or perhaps it was all a dream.

Like Ben Siegel’s Flamingo.

Something interesting had happened, the night before, that only days later, via Fred Rubinski, became known to me.

Twenty minutes after Ben Siegel’s handsome face was shattered by carbine fire through the window of Virginia Hill’s home, Moe Sedway and Gus Greenbaum walked into the Flamingo and, in the name of its eastern investors, took over operations.

Less than twenty-four hours later, a stockholder’s meeting was called. Greenbaum was put in charge of the resort; Sedway remained affiliated. The resort, after yet another million dollars was sunk into it, began to flourish. Hotels sprang up like cactuses on the Strip, albeit gaudy ones; the Thunderbird, the Desert Inn, the Sands, the Sahara.

And the Stardust, which was Tony Cornero’s last great dream. Tony dreamed even bigger than Siegel, envisioning the biggest resort hotel in the world. Working from a base of only ten grand, Tony got the 1,032-room hotel off the ground by luring in small investors via billboards and newspaper ads; unfortunately, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission didn’t like the way he was going about it, including his not having registered with the SEC. “I’ll win this battle or they’ll carry me out feet first,” Tony said, shortly before stepping up to a Desert Inn table where, while shooting craps, he fell across the green-felt table, dead of a heart attack.