Sin City (28 page)
Authors: Harold Robbins
A-Ma sat at the dressing room table and examined her reflection in the mirror while the makeup artist put the finishing touches on her face.
“You have to rub the body oil all over,” the artist said.
“All
over. We want water to bead up on you when you come out of the river. The director wants to see not only wetness but drops of water on your skin.”
“All
over. We want water to bead up on you when you come out of the river. The director wants to see not only wetness but drops of water on your skin.”
As soon as the makeup artist left, A-Ma took off all of her clothes and applied the oily lotion to her body. The reality that she was actually acting in a movie finally struck her. She had seen hardly any movies in her life, reinforcing the fact that her acting seemed even more fanciful than anything she had ever imagined. Mr. Wan not only had given his blessing, he had insisted she take the opportunity. She knew nothing about the financial arrangements, had no interest in money or money matters, but knew that Mr. Wan did very little that was not related to increasing his wealth.
Wang Su, the director, came in without knocking.
She pulled on a robe. “Please knock before you enter.”
“Sorry. But you'll find that there isn't much time or need for modesty on a movie set.”
He knew when he hired her if she hadn't been Mr. Wan's property, he would have insisted she audition for the role on the casting room couch. During their first rehearsal session alone, he had tested the waters by touching her buttocks. She had stopped him cold from any further familiarities with her body. Besides her “guardian” there was something else that kept him from trying again, an almost elusive quality about her that made her untouchable.
“I just want to go over some things. I want you to be yourself,” he said. “You are very lucky because you have not been hired to play a
role. In a sense, the part has been written expressly for you. We are so impressed with your natural style that we want to film you as you are rather than having you assume a role.”
role. In a sense, the part has been written expressly for you. We are so impressed with your natural style that we want to film you as you are rather than having you assume a role.”
“Since I can't act, that works out nicely for all of us.”
He grinned. “Your lack of acting experience had occurred to us when we rewrote the script to add a small part for you.” He sat on the makeup artist's stool and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “To give a convincing performance, an actress must walk in the shoes of her character. She must think, feel, and act as the character would. That means not just putting on a mask and pretending you are the person in the role, but living the part. It's like a spirit enters your body and takes it over, and it's the soul of the spirit that the audience experiences. Am I making any sense?”
“Yes.”
“In your case, though, we want you to be yourself. It's your own soul we want to expose to the audience. The woman you are playing has been wronged. Her soul has been bruised. Ask yourself how
you
would react. Don't think about how the character in a movie would act. The harm was done to you,
you personally.”
you
would react. Don't think about how the character in a movie would act. The harm was done to you,
you personally.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “We have been over this many times.”
“And we'll do it again and again. Movies are very expensive products. Millions of dollars go into what ends up on a roll of film. I'm sure you are as anxious as I am to ensure that Mr. Wan gets a fair return on his money. Do you understand the scene?”
“What is there to understand? I take off my clothes and walk into a river to wash. I have washed many times in rivers, so that much will come naturally to me. But I never did it to entice the men who watch the movie. Or move the hearts of women who might sympathize with my predicament. If you want me to twist myself into a sex symbol or an object of pity, my performance will not satisfy you. I am nothing more, nor nothing less, than what you see before you. I am not an actress. You say you want me to be myself, but each time you say it, I hear doubt in your voice.”
“This movie is important to me and many other people. The producer was so eager to get Mr. Wan's financing, he would have cast Godzilla in a role. Not that I'm not happy to give you a chanceâyour
screen test was excellent. I just want to make sure you are comfortable with your part. You must relax completely. And have confidence in yourself.”
screen test was excellent. I just want to make sure you are comfortable with your part. You must relax completely. And have confidence in yourself.”
“As you have told me many times. I will be myself, Mr. Wang. Is there anything else we need to discuss? I have to finish my preparation.”
“No. I can see you're shy by the way you covered up when I came in. Remember you'll be exposing your breasts today to the whole cast, crew, and bystanders?”
“I am not shy, just particular.”
Â
Heaven's Warrior
was a film about a young warrior's odyssey through China's countryside at the time when the Manchu armies broke through the Great Wall and were at the gates of Beijing in the seventeenth century. A-Ma only had a few minutes of screen time as a woman brutalized by bandits. The hero-warrior single-handedly takes on a dozen bandits with his bare fists and feet, kills the bandits, and makes love to her before moving on. Her pivotal scene was to go into a river and cleanse her body and soul, washing off the filth of her attackers. The scene was difficult because there was no dialogueâlike a star of the silent movies, she had to capture and hold the audience's attention without speaking a word.
was a film about a young warrior's odyssey through China's countryside at the time when the Manchu armies broke through the Great Wall and were at the gates of Beijing in the seventeenth century. A-Ma only had a few minutes of screen time as a woman brutalized by bandits. The hero-warrior single-handedly takes on a dozen bandits with his bare fists and feet, kills the bandits, and makes love to her before moving on. Her pivotal scene was to go into a river and cleanse her body and soul, washing off the filth of her attackers. The scene was difficult because there was no dialogueâlike a star of the silent movies, she had to capture and hold the audience's attention without speaking a word.
She was naked up to her waist in the river scene. When the makeup artist tried to stimulate her nipples with a piece of ice, A-Ma pushed away her hands. “I am already cold and shivering.”
“Let's get some angles on her breasts,” the director told the cameraman. “They're not very large, we need to increase the impression of their size. A-Ma, can you arch your back a little to make your breasts strut out more?”
“No, I am sick and tired of the focus on my breasts. Breasts, breasts, breasts. What is it about a woman's breasts that so fascinates you men? I am not a side of beef to be touched and poked and examined.”
“All right, let's shoot the scene. Our actress is getting antsy.”
She went into the river wearing nothing but a ragged piece of cloth around her waist. Her breasts were bare, nipples tense, and her body shivering. She stood in knee-deep water and instead of thinking what was supposed to happen to her by make-believe bandits, she thought about the first time she had been alone with Mr. Wan.
She was thirteen years old and new in his house when she was instructed by a servant to present herself at his bedside late one winter night. As she came up to his bed, he instructed her to take off her robe. She let her robe slip down to her feet and stood shivering in the cold room. Her body had not completely filled out yet and it was still girlish and bony. When he threw open the blankets, he was naked as well, skinny and ill-formed, his small penis buried in a burr of black hair. “Get on the bed, child. Not next to me, down at my feet.” He had her sit with her back to the end of the bed and then spread her thighs open. Her recent growth of pubic hair had been shaved by a servant before she was called to Wan's room.
He put his icy cold feet between her opened legs, pressing them against her naked crotch.
“Ahhh,” he purred, “that feels good.”
Â
She came out of the cold water in a trance, oblivious to the cameras, the cast, and crew. She stood shivering on the riverbank, the oil on her skin faithfully beading the water. For a moment she froze as she came out of her trance, suddenly realizing that she was being watched by a hundred eyes. She felt that they had experienced her shame, the humiliation of having her female part being used as a foot warmer for an old man, and tears came down her eyes. She stared defiantly at the people and pulled back her shoulders, refusing to surrender to the emotional pain. She walked straight ahead and went directly to her dressing room. No one said a word or stepped in her way. She felt defeated.
I've failed,
she thought. She wanted to crawl the last few feet to the dressing room door. As she opened the door she heard her name called and turned around.
I've failed,
she thought. She wanted to crawl the last few feet to the dressing room door. As she opened the door she heard her name called and turned around.
They all began to clap and she stared at them, confused. Then they began to whistle and cheer.
The director told her later, “You were magnificent. You could see those bastard bandits bruised your body but never touched your soul.”
LAS VEGAS, 1987
I sat in the club's lounge and sipped a Jack Coke while I watched the Academy Awards. You didn't find TVs in the bars of most casinos, but Halliday's was never a typical gambling joint. We had locals who dropped in for a drink and a cheap lunch or used it as a watering hole for grabbing a couple beers after work. Few of them got away without paying their dues on the casino floor.
“Who's winning?” Manny Stuber asked. Manny was the casino manager, a gal who went to UNLV during the day while working nights, going from a Halliday cocktail waitress to dealer and then pit boss. I made her casino manager two years ago and I never regretted the choice.
“The Yankees,” I joked. But the name of a few sports teams I heard thrown around was about all I knew of who played. And I hadn't seen many movies since I groped Nadine in the backseat of my car at a drive-in theater a zillion years ago.
“Know why the man crossed the road?” Manny asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“He heard the chicken was a slut.”
Manny moved on, her eye catching everything. Sometimes she reminded me of myself, though no one in Vegas had an eye to catch a cold deck or a dealer-player going for the money like I did. Con Halliday could have done it, but we buried him over three years ago, a year after I took a .38 slug in my chest. I spent most of the first year after the shooting in bed, in therapy, or both. I was nearly thirty-four now, still young in an age where sixty-year-olds kicked up their heels and grandparents bragged about their sex lives, but I felt old. And looked it. I had some gray in my hair and lines on my face. People still said I could have doubled for Lee Marvin, but they no longer said a “young Lee Marvin.”
I had the casino off to a running start before I took the hit in the
alley and Morgan had been smart enough to keep the ball rolling, though it had to be pushed uphill sometimes during that first year when I was recuperating. She had to deal with a tough pregnancy and the birth of our daughter while worrying about how much of me would recover.
alley and Morgan had been smart enough to keep the ball rolling, though it had to be pushed uphill sometimes during that first year when I was recuperating. She had to deal with a tough pregnancy and the birth of our daughter while worrying about how much of me would recover.
Not all of me left that alley that day, but I was the only one who knew it. Besides the blood I left there, some part of me had spilled onto the pavement. I don't know what it was, but Morgan said I lost some of my tolerance for the world after that, that I became more ruthless and single-minded. I died in that alley, got revived by paramedics, and died again in the emergency ward. What I learned most of all was how capricious the gods were, especially the Dark Sisters who determine our fate and cackle when it suits them to cut the thread of a life.
I had a list of things I needed to accomplish before I died. Getting shot brought home the fact that there was only so much time on earth allotted to each of us. So did seeing small children growing before my eyes. The kids brought home to me my own mortality. They were the future, but I wasn't willing to give up my own wish list.
The only thing that mattered to me was to have the biggest casino in Vegas. Whatever got into my blood when I was twelve years old and saw the Strip for the first time was still there, an urgent need unsatisfied.
For me, Halliday's was just a prick teaser rather than a good piece of ass.
“Here's Chevy,” from someone imitating Ed McMahon, brought a laugh from the awards audience as Chevy Chase, hosting the program instead of the ubiquitous Johnny Carson, came back onstage to introduce the actor and actress who would announce the Best Actress winner.
It was unusual that one of the nominees was an actress in a foreign film with subtitles. A-Ma's performance in
White Flower,
her third movie, had gotten universal acclaim. I wasn't even aware she was an actress until I saw a newspaper article about
White Flower.
I was struck by her screen presence when I watched the movie. Every man in the audience that night could feel her body heat, her lush sensuality.
White Flower,
her third movie, had gotten universal acclaim. I wasn't even aware she was an actress until I saw a newspaper article about
White Flower.
I was struck by her screen presence when I watched the movie. Every man in the audience that night could feel her body heat, her lush sensuality.
The most amazing part was that although she barely spoke in the
movie, she was able to play her character with the sheer strength of her physical presence. Someone told me that when Alan Ladd came into the studio commissary for lunch and was asked how the morning shooting went, he said, “I got in one good look.” I guess he managed once that morning to get himself deep enough into the character to have an audience suspend disbelief that he was only “acting.” But Ladd lived during the golden age of movies, when actors were required to get deep into their character. Most actors today turn me off because they put on a thin façade and you know they're acting. A-Ma's role of a woman avenging her husband's murder was amazing because her sorrow and quiet hate seemed to emanate from someplace deep within. She didn't have to speak to the audience; she made you feel her pain and anger as if you were sharing her emotions.
movie, she was able to play her character with the sheer strength of her physical presence. Someone told me that when Alan Ladd came into the studio commissary for lunch and was asked how the morning shooting went, he said, “I got in one good look.” I guess he managed once that morning to get himself deep enough into the character to have an audience suspend disbelief that he was only “acting.” But Ladd lived during the golden age of movies, when actors were required to get deep into their character. Most actors today turn me off because they put on a thin façade and you know they're acting. A-Ma's role of a woman avenging her husband's murder was amazing because her sorrow and quiet hate seemed to emanate from someplace deep within. She didn't have to speak to the audience; she made you feel her pain and anger as if you were sharing her emotions.
Wan had been listed as executive producer in the credits, so I knew the yellow spider was still in her life. As I watched the movie, I realized that Wan could hold her prisoner but would never dominate her. She was too ethereal, too other-worldly for anyone to own.
She wasn't at the awards. The director of the movie was there to accept the award in case she won. She didn't. Cher took the Best Actress award for
Moonstruck.
It was just too much of a stretch for the American Academy members to give the Oscar to a woman who barely spoke in a Chinese movie shown only in art houses and with subtitles. I read in the papers A-Ma wouldn't attend the awards because she said she didn't speak English. That was a lie, of course; her English was excellent.
Moonstruck.
It was just too much of a stretch for the American Academy members to give the Oscar to a woman who barely spoke in a Chinese movie shown only in art houses and with subtitles. I read in the papers A-Ma wouldn't attend the awards because she said she didn't speak English. That was a lie, of course; her English was excellent.
I hadn't seen either Wan or A-Ma since I left Macao over four years ago and took off to become a “globetrotter” and checked out other gambling venues. Wan had been indicted in absentia in New York for illegal money transactions in the States. The long arm of the feds didn't reach to the Far East, so it was a standoff: He stayed away and they left him alone.
A security officer appeared at my side. “Mrs. Halliday and Bic are ready for you.” Morgan had kept her last name. I didn't mind that except when people inadvertently called me Mr. Halliday. Like Ben Siegel, I was touchy about what people called me.
I left the lounge for my office upstairs. Making an appointment to see my wife is what our married life had come down to. I couldn't get
back into the domestic shoe after dying twice in an alley from a gunshot wound. I moved into the room I kept at the club and led a life separate from Morgan's. The distemper in our relationship was entirely due to me. After the shooting occurred, in addition to running the casino during her pregnancy, when the police failed to find the shooter, she hired a former L.A. homicide dick to track him down, but nothing came of it. My suspicion was that Bic's buddy Bronco had a dirty hand in it. I would have gone after Bronco myself when I was back on my feet, but he apparently ran for Tijuana soon after the shooting. Morgan's detective believed he was MIA when a drug purchase down there went bad. Hopefully he was lying on his back in a shallow grave with a mouthful of dirt somewhere under the Baja desert. I figured Bic was too stupid and indecisive to have engineered the shooting, but I wouldn't have put it past him to have financed a hit on me. That brooding suspicion about her brother, and my physical retreat from her following the shooting, terminated anything left in our marriage. Of late, Morgan had been quietly seeing a UNLV history professor who was leaving a teaching career to write. Her plans were to take the kids and move to Martha's Vineyard with him. I said nothing about the move. There was only one thing I wantedâthe Strip. And that's what our meeting today was about.
back into the domestic shoe after dying twice in an alley from a gunshot wound. I moved into the room I kept at the club and led a life separate from Morgan's. The distemper in our relationship was entirely due to me. After the shooting occurred, in addition to running the casino during her pregnancy, when the police failed to find the shooter, she hired a former L.A. homicide dick to track him down, but nothing came of it. My suspicion was that Bic's buddy Bronco had a dirty hand in it. I would have gone after Bronco myself when I was back on my feet, but he apparently ran for Tijuana soon after the shooting. Morgan's detective believed he was MIA when a drug purchase down there went bad. Hopefully he was lying on his back in a shallow grave with a mouthful of dirt somewhere under the Baja desert. I figured Bic was too stupid and indecisive to have engineered the shooting, but I wouldn't have put it past him to have financed a hit on me. That brooding suspicion about her brother, and my physical retreat from her following the shooting, terminated anything left in our marriage. Of late, Morgan had been quietly seeing a UNLV history professor who was leaving a teaching career to write. Her plans were to take the kids and move to Martha's Vineyard with him. I said nothing about the move. There was only one thing I wantedâthe Strip. And that's what our meeting today was about.
I walked into my office and my past hit me with a shock. Janelle was there.
“What are you doing in here? You're banned from Halliday's.” I hadn't seen her since she did time for the quarter scam.
“Janelle's with me,” Bic said. “She's allowed where I go and I own a third of this clubâan honest third.”
“What isâ” Morgan started.
“She's a thief whose been barred by the gaming board. Your rocket scientist brother is still trying to get our license pulled.”
Bic jumped out of his chair. “Janelle was set up by you and your pal.”
I laughed. “I heard about her act in court. Don't forget, I know her. Get her ass out of here or I'll call security.”
“Fuck you, you asshole.”
Bic came at me ready to swing but Morgan put herself between us. “Stop it! Bic, is it true, is she barred from here?”
He didn't bother answering her but grabbed Janelle's arm. “Let's
get out of here! I'll sell my goddamn interest in the club and get my own place.”
get out of here! I'll sell my goddamn interest in the club and get my own place.”
Janelle gave me a smirk as she went out the door. But her eyes weren't smiling. There was a hardness to her, like the look a woman gets when she's been knocked around too much.
“What is going on here?” Morgan was near tears.
“Sit down and I'll explain.”
I told her about Janelle, starting with how I met her, leaving out the intimate parts. She bent over and buried her head in her hands and cried. I couldn't move three feet to comfort her. I didn't have that sort of feeling anymore for anyone. Not even myself.
“I just don't understand,” she said. “If she's barred, why would Bic bring her in here?”
“He's been trying to sabotage the place for years.”
“Does he hate you that much? And what about me? Would he hurt himself and me to harm you?”
“I've been getting a bum rap from you about Bic almost from the day we met. Bic was a grown man when I came on the scene. He was fucked up then. He's a creature of your old man, not me. He's self-destructive and a loser and he directs his hate at me so he doesn't have to face himself.”
I thought for a moment about Bic's threat to sell his share of the club. The threat was meaningless. His share went into a family trust that Con set up, and Morgan controlled the trust.
She blew her nose. “I've got to get away from here, out of Vegas. I can't stand it anymore. It's affected my father, my brother, and now you. I'm moving back East, you know that.”
I didn't say anything.
“I'm taking the kids, of course.”
That went without saying, but she said it anyway, to get a response from me, some sort of fatherly comment, like “I'll miss them.” But there was no emotion in me and I couldn't cross the gap between us to make a polite listening response about losing my son and daughter.
“You've changed, Zack.” She had said that a hundred times ever since the day I stared at her from a recuperation bed. And each time she looked at me it was as if she was trying to find the man she used to know.
“Maybe I haven't changed. Maybe this has been me all the time and
the only thing that has changed is taking off the mask I wore.”
the only thing that has changed is taking off the mask I wore.”
“You're so damn grim. There isn't an ounce of humor in you. You used to be funny. But you don't smile anymore. And your eyes are as dead as that girl that just left.”
I shook my head. “I can't give you whatever it is that you want from me. It's not in me.”
“No, but you want something from me, don't you.”
“I'm not asking you for charity. We still have Halliday's, thanks to me, and something worth almost as much as the club.”
The valuable “something” was linked back to Windell. Yeah, Windell, the nerd who could hack his way into the Pentagon or the Soviet Command Center but couldn't figure out how to get laid. The clever bastard had finally come up with a good one. He had contacted me two years ago with a new electronic concept for random-number generation. The random generation of numbers was what made a slot machine tick. If it worked right, a casino was guaranteed the exact return it programmed its slots for. The problem was it never worked exactly rightâuntil Windell figured out a way to do it. I bought the rights, gave Windell a good financial package that guaranteed him a return for the next twenty years, and started a company that provided the technology to casinos all over the world. Windell “retired” to Grand Cayman and the only connection with Nevada, other than a monthly check, was a chicken ranch near Reno that sent him a prostitute each month.
“Between what I can raise mortgaging Halliday's and selling the random-generator company, there'll be enough to exercise the option on the Condor.”
The Condor was an enormous, rundown budget motel complex on the Strip. It was an eyesore that needed to be torn down. Jack Evans had built it back in the early fifties. Somewhere along the line Con had acquired an option to buy the place, most likely during a poker game between the two Vegas old-timers. He never exercised the option, probably because he had to pay “current market value,” the value of Strip property being too rich for his blood. The option had laid dormant until Evans died and a property title search found it during probate. The option was in the name of the Halliday Corporation and could still be exercised. Since Morgan and I each owned a third interest in the corporation, as long as she sided with me, Bic was powerless
to stop me from using the club to raise the money to exercise the option.
to stop me from using the club to raise the money to exercise the option.
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