Sin City (13 page)
Authors: Harold Robbins
Mintz came back to the club from a trip to L.A. with news that they were going to have visitors. “Bugsy Siegel and the Little Man are coming. You know who they are?”
“I read the papers. Siegel's some kind of gangster, New York or someplace.”
“You're in the stone age, Con. Lucky Luciano's the boss of bosses for the whole country, not just New York. The Little Man is his right hand and Bugsy's the Little Man's number one.”
“Who's the Little Man?”
“Meyer Lansky, that's who.”
“The guy who owns a piece of this place?”
Mintz glared at him. “Who told you that? That asshole Sol? He's got diarrhea of the mouth.”
“Naw, hell, I heard you talking to him on the phone.” That was true, but Con didn't know who Mintz had been talking to until Sol told him. It didn't take long for him to figure out that Mintz skimmed a cut off the top each month and sent it to Lansky, and put another cut away for himself, before he figured Uncle Sam's take.
“Keep your mouth shut about itâit ain't nobody's business.”
“These guys, they're all with the Syndicate?”
“That's what the papers call the boys, but Unione Siciliane, that's what Luciano likes to call it, like Frankie Yale used to call the rackets before Capone had him bumped off for hijacking his liquor. It's only for guineasâJews can't joinâbut the Italians all have muscles for brains, so Lansky runs the business end.”
“What about Bugsy Siegel? He got muscles for brains, too?”
“Don't you believe it. Ben's almost as smart as the Little Man and neither one needs outside muscle to handle their beefs. It's the other way around. All these boys were all tough Lower East Side kids, got to know each other running rackets on the streets. When Luciano
went into bootlegging, Bugsy and the Little Man formed the Bug and Meyer Gang and sold him protection, riding shotgun to fight off hijackers and hijacking when the money flowed that way. Now check that out, cowboy. A couple Jews, one not much taller than a bar stool, providing protection to Sicilian gunsels. That tell you how tough these guys are?
went into bootlegging, Bugsy and the Little Man formed the Bug and Meyer Gang and sold him protection, riding shotgun to fight off hijackers and hijacking when the money flowed that way. Now check that out, cowboy. A couple Jews, one not much taller than a bar stool, providing protection to Sicilian gunsels. That tell you how tough these guys are?
“You know how they met? The Jews on the Lower East Side had the Irish on one side and the Italians on the otherâand the guineas and the micks were both bigger than us. We had bigger brains and smaller muscles. The Irish toughs hung around waiting for us to get out of school and would make us drop our pants to show our circumcisions. But the Italians were more mercenary. When Luciano was a teenager, he ran a gang of toughs who sold protection to Jewish kids on their way to school and back. It was penny-ante stuff, but hey, in those days a nickel bought a beer. Luciano told this pint-sized runt to fork over his pennies for protection and the runt told him he didn't need protection: He put up his dukes and told Luciano to fuck himself. Now imagine that, here's this big guinea son-of-a-bitch backed up with his punks talking to this little kid, and you know something, Luciano took one look at the kid and said, shit, he don't need no protection. That little guy was Meyer Lansky.”
“Little guys are the toughest,” Con said.
“They have to be. Lansky's only about five-three, five-four. Bugsy's bigger, but he's not big like you dumb-ass cowboys.”
“Bugsy's a funny name for a guy.”
“He's
chaye,
it's Yiddish, it means he's crazy wild. Usually, the guy's pretty straightâhell, he can be a good joe, pick up the tab after a meal, be real polite to the ladiesâbut piss him off and hey, watch out, your ass is grass and he's a lawnmower.”
chaye,
it's Yiddish, it means he's crazy wild. Usually, the guy's pretty straightâhell, he can be a good joe, pick up the tab after a meal, be real polite to the ladiesâbut piss him off and hey, watch out, your ass is grass and he's a lawnmower.”
“How'd you get to know these guys?”
“I ran a carpet joint out on the Jersey shore for Meyer, a real sweet roadhouse, carpeting you could bury your toes in and a real cut-glass chandelier right in the middle of the place. Our sheriff lost the election and the new one came in with axes and busted up the place so the bum that paid for his election didn't have no competition. After that, I floated out west to Little Rock and Hot Springs before settling down here.”
Mintz poked his finger in Con's chest. “You watch yourself when
you're helping them out. It's
Mister
Siegel, you understand, and
Mister
Lansky, no Bugsy or Little Man stuff. Luciano is the only one who can call them by their street names. To the rest of us, they're Ben and Meyer. To punks like you, they're
Mister
. You got it?”
you're helping them out. It's
Mister
Siegel, you understand, and
Mister
Lansky, no Bugsy or Little Man stuff. Luciano is the only one who can call them by their street names. To the rest of us, they're Ben and Meyer. To punks like you, they're
Mister
. You got it?”
“Yeah,
Mister
Mintz, all except the part about helping them out.”
Mister
Mintz, all except the part about helping them out.”
“Sam Pollack at the Silver Horseshoe owes Meyer start-up money from when he was opening the club and he's missed a couple of payments. Bugsy was coming out to Vegas to look-see a club and Meyer came along to collect. Meyer asked me to accommodate him with some local muscle.”
Con grinned. “Is that what I am? Local muscle? Muscles between the ears like the Sicilians?”
“You're whatever these boys want you to beâand you'll shut up and like it. Don't let their hundred-dollar suits fool you; these guys would just as soon kill you as look at you.”
“I'm not rubbing out anyoneâ”
“Now don't be stupid, they only kill when it's absolutely necessary and then only each other. Luciano laid down the rules: Killing's bad for business. Killing civilians gets bad press and the boys hate bad press.”
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That evening Bugsy and Meyer ate dinner at the club with Mintz and Sol. Kosher delicacies were brought in from L.A.'s Fairfax district. “They're meat and potato guys, but I don't want them to think they can't get good kosher food in Vegas,” Mintz said.
He also didn't want them to be lonelyâhis B-girls joined them for dinner.
Con played the “Bones” dice slot machine as he listened with one ear to the table conversation. The machine used standard dice combosâseven, eleven, snake-eyes, and so forthâinstead of fruit, bells, and bars. From his eavesdropping he learned that Siegel had an itch to build a casino out on Highway 91, the ribbon of blacktop that left downtown and snaked across the desert to California.
Mintz bad-mouthed the idea. “Ben, you're talking a mile out of town. There's nothing out there but a couple fancy motels that pretend to be resorts, the Last Frontier and the El Rancho. No one wants to go out to that strip of sagebrush and rattlesnake nests to gamble when they can come downtown where all of the action is. For the size of
place you're talking about, people hav'ta come out from L.A. just to gamble. No one's gonna do that. If it weren't for the dog faces out at the army camp, we'd be a ghost town.”
place you're talking about, people hav'ta come out from L.A. just to gamble. No one's gonna do that. If it weren't for the dog faces out at the army camp, we'd be a ghost town.”
“No one comes out from L.A. because all you've got here is a bunch of nickel-dime sawdust joints,” Siegel said. “They got more action at Woolworth's counter than how you grind nickels from truck drivers and soldiers. Look what they got in Palm Springs? Indians own the town but Hollywood money has gone out there and turned it into an oasis. And there ain't a damn thing to do there except play golf and tennis. The Hollywood crowd likes excitement and they don't mind spending money. Give them a place to gamble with some class and they'll come out here. When they do, the rest of the suckers will follow.”
Sol had told Con earlier that he didn't like the gangsters. “Some people think these morons are glamorous, but they're just crooks who steal more than other crooks. Bugsy and Meyer started Murder, Inc., before Lepke Buchalter and Anastasia took over the action. Lepke had a reputation for hurting people, but he's no more. They fried him at Sing Sing and the warden lowered the juice so he'd cook slower. My cousin got mixed up in the rackets, was talking to the cops because the mob tried to kill him. They poisoned him when he was in the hospital.”
Sol warmed to the subject and went on with his harangue. “Back in the old days, the twenties and early thirties, the mob was divided between two Mustache Petes, two old-time Sicilians who had spaghetti bellies, thick lip hair, and made people call them âDon this' and âDon that' like they was manor born. One of the black mustachios had a handle of Masseria and the other was Maranzano. When Luciano and the boys were coming up in the rackets, these guys both squeezed Lucky to have him kill the other.
“Luciano knew he was being used and he had to play it clever to keep from getting rubbed out himself. He pretended to team up with Masseria and lured him to a restaurant without his body guards. When Lucky got up to take a piss, four of his boys came in and loaded the mustachio with lead. That made Maranzano head of the American mob with Luciano his number two. But Marazano ain't no dummy and he immediately puts a hit out on Lucky and gives the contract to Mad Dog Coll.
“Lucky got Bugsy and Meyer and the boys together to figure out how to hit Maranzano before Lucky got it. Once Lucky went down, so would all his boys, Jews first. Maranzano didn't want no Jews in the organization. It was Meyer who spotted Maranzano's weakness. Maranzano had a thing about the IRS. He was worried more about them than the FBI because he couldn't account for all the dough that came his way. So Meyer brought in four Jewish gunsels who could pass for IRS auditors and spent weeks training them to walk and talk like accountants. Then he sent them over to Maranzano's offices.
“A gunsel couldn't just walk into the offices because there was an army of thugs guarding the mustachio. But these four âaccountants' came in flashing phony government IDs, and Maranzano let them into his private office to check out books that had been cooked. They loaded him up with lead and gutted him like a slaughterhouse pig, and next thing you know Luciano was boss of bosses. Gave both of the Mustache Petes a big going away: Must have been a hundred black limos, bumper to bumper; goddamn flowers came in by the trainload. It was something to see, really something to see.”
The mob protected Vegas. “It's off-limits to hit any of the joints. One time two guys came in with shotguns and took the day's take. Mintz just shook his head and handed over the money. Then he made a phone call to a hotel down the street. When the bad guys hustled out of town, two of Albert Anastasia's boys were in a car behind them. Anastasia's boys waited until they crossed the state line and then pulled up beside them and sprayed 'em with a machine gun.” Sol shook his head. “You don't mess with these guys no how.”
“It's funny, you say the Jew mobsters and Italian mobsters are pals, but I hear Mintz calling Italians names every time he talks about them.”
“Yeah, I never said they were pals, they're business associates. And there's no name-calling face to face. We call them wops, guineas, or dagos behind their backs. They call us Hebes, mockies, or geese. But the Italians and Jews all eat from the pie, so they don't kill each other. Unless it's necessary.”
“What do they call guys like me?” Con asked.
“Schnooks.”
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Business must be good in the rackets, Con thought, looking over Bugsy's clothes when he was introduced to him. Bugsy dressed sharp in his snap-brimmed hat, pinstriped suit with high-waisted trousers, suspenders and narrow pegged cuffs, a rakishly tailored overcoat with fur-lined collar, handcrafted shoes with pointed toes that shined so you could comb your hair in the reflection, and a handmade silk shirt with six-inch collar points. Everything was monogrammed, Sol told Con.
That evening after dinner, Con dropped Bugsy and Meyer off and waited in an alley behind the Silver Horseshoe. He drove them in Mintz's 1942 Packard touring sedan, the most luxurious automobile Con had been in, and he loved to drive it. Black with dark red sides, it was a seven-passenger model with a running board, duel spare tires on side mounts, a jump seat behind the driver, and a minibar that pulled out from the back of the front passenger seat. Mintz had told him it was one of the last cars produced in America in late '41 and bought it the day the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. After that, American car factories started turning out tanks and airplane engines.
“The best American car made, better than a Cad,” Mintz had told him. “FDR rode in one to the inaugural the day he was sworn in. Hell, it's even Stalin's favorite car. That Ruskie liked a Packard so much FDR had the tooling sent to Moscow so the Ruskies could make them.”
Mintz claimed he once loaned the car to Warner Bros. for Bogart to ride in for the opening of
Casablanca
but Mintz made a lot of claims and Con sometimes wasn't sure what side of the line they fell on.
Casablanca
but Mintz made a lot of claims and Con sometimes wasn't sure what side of the line they fell on.
Bugsy and Meyer came out a few minutes later with a very frightened Sam Pollack. “Drive,” Bugsy said, after they hustled Pollack into the backseat. “Find a place where the sand is soft and the digging is easy.”
They put a shovel on the floor of the backseat so Pollack would feel it under his feet during the ride.
Con was uncomfortable taking orders from the gangster, especially an order like that, but he knew he had to wait to see how the hand played out.
When he had driven a few miles outside of town, Con turned off onto a dirt road that he knew went to an old abandoned mine.
“Bugsy, Iâ” Pollack said.
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