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Authors: Harold Robbins

BOOK: Sin City
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THE MAN WHO BOUGHT LAS VEGAS
In the wee hours of the morning, late in 1966, Thanksgiving weekend, a representative of the Desert Inn hotel-casino stood beside the tracks at the deserted North Las Vegas train station. In the distance, the rotating front light of a locomotive was visible coming down the track. A cold wind blew off the Spring Mountains. He shivered and pulled the parka that he wore over his business suit tighter. Behind him, two limos and a van were waiting.
His orders had been very specific: A man would be getting off the train. He was not to attempt to speak to the man or even make eye contact. He was to ask no questions. He was to obey all instructions from the man's bodyguards and aides. All he had to do was simply stand by with the vehicles and guide the convoy to the hotel. Entrance at the hotel would be made through the back and up a service elevator. The entire top floor of the hotel, the penthouse wing, had been set aside for the unnamed visitor. The elevator had been programmed so a key was necessary before it would assent to the penthouse level. The doors to the two stairwells were locked from within, a violation of the fire code. Two armed guards were posted in the hallway. Two more guards were waiting at the rear of the hotel.
Even more bizarre requirements had been made. Workers from a medical supply company had sterilized the top floor, including all furnishings. Other workers had sealed holes and cracks that could let in any dust or pests. Heavy black curtains had been put up at all the windows.
Who the hell is on that train?
he wondered. He had some ideas, guesses. He thought nowadays no one but the president had a private train. It wasn't the president because the hotel would be swarming with Secret Service agents, but it had to be someone just as big. He had a name in mind, a guy who in his own way ran an organization that was not as big as the government, but was a government in and
of itself. Vegas was a mob town: Most of the casinos were indirectly owned or controlled by the Syndicate, and the guy who pulled the financial strings of all the mob “families” was a Palm Beach Jew named Meyer Lansky.
He wondered if Lansky was on the train. A few years ago he would have guessed that it was Lansky's boss, Lucky Luciano, the boss of bosses. But after a roller-coaster ride in which Luciano was sent to prison, released for putting a stop to enemy sabotage on the New York docks during World War II after the
Normandie
was blown up—he was that powerful, running the Syndicate from his prison cell—and deported to Italy, Luciano had died of a heart attack in '62. Lansky and Luciano had been the financial spiders behind the Vegas casino boom, financing Bugsy Siegel and then having him murdered when his fingers got sticky after he had sent his girlfriend to Switzerland to stash Flamingo construction “overrun” money in a Swiss bank account.
Lansky was still pulling the mob purse strings, overseeing the finances of not just the usual mob rackets—extortion, dope, prostitution—but controlling a worldwide gambling network built by mob money that included “legal” venues like Vegas, London, and the Carribbean. With Luciano dead, the boss of bosses shifted to Vito Genovese, but he was no more likely to be the man on the train than Luciano—Vito was serving a fifteen-year term in Leavenworth and ran the mob from there.
As the train's light got brighter, he thought about the last time he had stood by these same train tracks. It had been about seven years ago, back when Jack Kennedy was on the campaign trail for the presidency. Kennedy rolled into Vegas on a train, made a short speech from the back of the caboose, then stepped down and worked the crowd, shaking hands and kissing babies. He shook hands with Kennedy, sort of, although it was more a brushing of hands than a real grip, but the story grew in the telling. Too bad about Jack, though. That prick Oswald killed him and Ruby gunned Oswald down. Christ, it was like a movie the way things went down. Later Vegas swarmed with feds checking out Ruby's movements because he'd been in Vegas before the shooting and had a connection with Meyer Lansky and the whole fiasco over the Castro assassination that led to Kennedy getting knocked off.
They say Robert Kennedy was going to run for president in '68, but he wouldn't vote for him despite the fact the guy had balls. Robert Kennedy went after corruption like a retriever to a duck. He'd be bad for business, mob business, and he was too friendly with that Negro leader, Martin Luther King, who was causing so much turmoil in the country.
The train stopped and three well-dressed men stepped down. They were all clean shaven, clean cut, and the hotel representative suddenly realized they probably were Secret Service agents and that the train did carry the president.
One of the men approached him and the rep said, “I'm from the Desert Inn.”
“Fine. Just stay out of the way.”
The men fanned out, checking the perimeters. Once the “all clear” was yelled a van backed up near the Pullman train car. The back doors of the van opened and he saw oxygen tanks, medical apparatus, and a white uniformed attendant. A moment later a stretcher was carried down from the train. The stretcher had a back on it so the occupant could sit up and be carried like an Oriental potentate on a litter.
He had been told not to speak or even make eye contact with the man, but no one said he couldn't stare. The man was fragile-looking, thin and gaunt, almost emaciated. His expression was self-possessed with an edge of grimness.
He was a living legend. If not the richest man in the world, probably the richest in America. He had been orphaned at seventeen and immediately took control of his deceased's father's tool company, which made a drill bit that the petroleum-hungry world lusted after. During his career of the past thirty years, he had started an airplane manufacturing company; set the coast-to-coast air speed record; had a ticker-tape parade down Broadway when he set an around-the-world record; built the world's largest airplane (which flew only once and then for just a mile); founded TWA; owned two movie studios; launched the career of stars like Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, and Jean Harlow; had romantic interludes with Ava Gardner, Katharine Hepburn, and Yvonne De Carlo; married beautiful Jean Peters; and worked hand in glove with the CIA on international intrigue.
Now a month short of his sixty-first birthday, he was becoming a different kind of legend. His nervous system was polluted with codeine
and Valium. His mind was torn by obsessive-compulsive fears and paranoia.
Over the next four years, he would set out to buy up the poorest state in the nation, owning seven casinos and vast land holdings, accounting for nearly one out of every five tax dollars collected by the state. He singlehandedly did what the federal and state government could not do: drive much of the mob from Vegas. He did it not with a stick, but a checkbook. He simply bought them out.
He did all of this while sitting in a leather chair in a black-curtained penthouse, naked, refusing to see anyone but a few Mormon aides, paranoid, drugged, sick, and wasted. He peed into bottles he stored in the closet, kept a diary of his bowel movements and enemas, and had such a morbid fear of germs that he would not touch anything without handling it with a piece of tissue paper.
Howard Hughes had arrived in Las Vegas.
THE HUSTLER
LAS VEGAS, 1970
“Hey, Lucky, am I working today?”
The kid asking me the question was my age, sixteen, a kid from the same high school class I was in, but I didn't know him well because I didn't go to school much. I ran a rag delivery service, hiring kids to pass out advertisements on the Strip and in Glitter Gulch, the downtown gambling area. Everything from jewelry stores advertising wedding rings to escort services wanted handouts distributed to people on the streets, mostly to men. (“It's legal in Nevada,” the escort service handout said, but didn't define
what
was legal.)
Because I needed people over eighteen for the more racy stuff, I tried to use the winos who hung around the downtown soup kitchens, but they were unreliable, so I was always on the lookout for older-looking kids. Besides, even the massage parlors—aka whorehouses—didn't like seedy-looking characters handing out their stuff.
The truant officer used to bug Betty about me hooking, but since I had turned sixteen, there was no more flack. I would just quit school and no one could make me go back. But I kept up my school contacts for my business. I came by the school to pick up my crew and drop them off in their designated territories.
“I can't use you today, Frankie, hit me up on Friday. And, guy, my name is Zack.” I got real close to him and smiled when I said it. I've been told that when I'm annoyed I grin like a Doberman.
Kids who would come by the apartment picked up on Betty calling me “Lucky” and pretty soon they were doing it, but I didn't like it. I was superstitious about luck. I figured you only get so much luck in a lifetime. Sometimes I wondered whether I had used up all of mine that day when Betty rubbed a coin in my palm. A lifetime of luck for a quarter jackpot. Since then, life had been an uphill battle, but things weren't all that bad. Betty was working. She still changed jobs every six months, but Vegas was growing. I handled all of the bills and made
her hand over her whole weekly paycheck. Her check was minimum wage with the usual deductions but the real money was in tips. She still flushed every loose dime she got down the toilet—slot machines weren't called one-armed bandits for their generosity. But with what I earned and my handling her check, the rent and utilities got paid. Sometimes I even let her coach me out of a few bucks when she was out of money. “I'm a sucker for a good-looking dame,” I'd tell her.
Yeah, me and Betty were doing all right, and I had a couple hundred put away for a rainy day, but we still had our noses pressed up against that window.
I leaned against the fender of my '57 Olds Rocket 98 and shot the shit with Frankie while I waited for my crew to arrive. It was Friday night and I had one kid for downtown and three for the Strip. On Saturday nights, the crew was doubled. They got paid one-third of what the businesses paid me to distribute the fliers, but I didn't get to pocket the rest of it. I paid one-third of my cut to Tony Lardino, a dumb sonofabitch everyone called Tony the Bat—behind his back. Tony was eighteen, had hands the size of baseball gloves, a beer belly, and a big butt. He carried around a baseball bat as though always on his way to a game. His idea of fun was seeing who could fart the loudest and kicking ass on someone smaller than himself, maybe cracking one of the guy's kneecaps with the bat just for the fun of it. I would've liked nothing better than to put some tire marks from my Olds across the bastard's back, but his uncle was Morty Lardino. Morty controlled Vegas street crime, prostitution and drugs mostly, and reported to a guy in L.A. who reported to someone else, probably Giancana, in Chicago. There was always a pecking order. My scam was small-time stuff, but not too small for Tony to learn the ropes of the protection racket by shaking me down.
I couldn't keep change in my pockets and my Olds in gas and tires with everyone getting a cut, so I skimmed a little here and there.
I loaded my crew into the Olds and headed out to make the Strip drop-offs first. The transmission on the Olds banged into gear as I pulled from the curb. I liked the Olds because it was a lean, mean street machine and made me feel like I was one of the hardasses. I called it a salmon color, though Betty said it looked pink to her, not faggot-pink of course, but a masculine pink—like salmon. A two-door hardtop without the center post, it had chrome spinners, fender skirts,
white leather seat covers, a three-carb V8 with a 371-cubic-inch Rocket engine, automatic transmission, power windows, power steering, a rear end lowered by heating the springs and letting them flatten, and a Smithy muffler that rattled windows for a block when you let up on the gas. A kid's car, for sure, but that's what I was.
The problem with it was the power steering made a loud whinny noise when you turned and the transmission slammed into gear and bled. The guy who sold it to me said it just needed adjustment, but it hemorrhaged red fluid and a friend's old man told me I had gotten taken. I needed to figure out a way to dump the lemon on someone else before the transmission fell out. The problem with not having an old man and a mother who knew zilch about cars was that I didn't know a straight eight from a four banger. This was my first car and I didn't want to be taken on another one. I always figured I was entitled to one mistake. But just one.
I had made sure Naomi sat up front with me and put the three dudes in the backseat. She lived with her mother in the apartment below us. Naomi was Korean and Negro, her old man had knocked up her mother when he was stationed in Seoul and brought her home as a Korean War bride. She was the prettiest girl I ever saw, with curly black hair, golden tan skin, and big, dark, curious eyes. Her eyes reminded me of the pictures of European children after World War II, sad kids with big round eyes. You saw the pictures in department stores and casino gift shops. Naomi's eyes looked like that, big and intense. I got an erection just looking at her. I don't think God made any more beautiful creatures than the black-and-tans that came out of black GIs screwing Japanese and Korean girls.
I had a real crush on Naomi, but she was going with a guy on the school's football team. Everyone knew he was diddling her, but the closest I got was making out with her while watching Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine in
Two Mules for Sister Sara
at a drive-in. She let me feel her up and finger-fuck her. Next day I heard the jock was going to kick my ass. I backed off because Naomi said she wanted to go with him, which was a relief for me. I saw the guy naked showering after phys ed. He had muscles in his hair. A real intellectual who liked slapping guys on the ass with a wet towel. I didn't hang around school much and I started avoiding it even more when I found out a guy who could scare the peas out of the Jolly Green Giant wanted to kick my
ass. But I still wanted to dick Naomi. If the moron caught up with me, it wouldn't be the first time I got my ass kicked, but it would sure as hell be for the best reason.
“Listen up, we have a special this weekend,” I told the crew. “I got some rubbers that glow in the dark and have bumpy ribs on them. They're two bucks apiece. Tell the guys that not only will they protect them from the clap and syphilis, but even the most hardened whore will be begging for more.”
Everyone groaned. Hernández, a Mex kid whose family moved here from Tucson, was the first to give me some lip. “You're always pushing condoms or some other screwy thing, Zack. Last week it was porno comic books. None of this stuff sells worth shit.”
“They're shit to you, but I work off of volume,” I told him, my voice displaying the contempt we entrepreneurs feel toward the little people. “These extras add up in the long run, increasing the bottom line.” That was actually a lie. I had a closet full of junk that didn't sell, but I was waiting for the big one, the item that would take off and make me big bucks. It was just a matter of trying different things until something connected. Like pulling the handle of a slot machine—one day all three bullion bars line up and you hit the big one. Only difference was I used my brain. When you were pulling slots, the brains were all in the machine.
I let Naomi out last, leaning toward her and placing my hand on her thigh as I asked, “Elvis and Mary Tyler Moore are in
Change of Habit
. Want to see it with me tomorrow night?” God had invented drive-in theaters to give kids a place to make out. I heard half the babies in this country were conceived during dusk-to-dawn movie nights.
“Can't. Bobby's taking me to a team party. Besides, he would stomp you if I went out with you.”
“Let me take care of muscle head.” I gave her thigh a squeeze. “I just want to show you a good time.”
She leaned closer to me. “Tell me something.”
“Yeah.”
“How come you get a bulge in your pants every time we're alone for thirty seconds?”
She jumped out of the car, laughing.
I pulled away from the curb, transmission slamming into gear, and
hadn't gotten a hundred feet before Tony waved me over with his baseball bat. Shit.
He waited on the sidewalk with a couple of his buddies, little pricks hoping to grow up and pack a gun someday so they could be big pricks.
“I hear you been welshing on me, Riordan.”
Tony had his baseball cap pulled down low and hit the bat against the side of his shoe like he was wearing cleats and knocking dirt off of them. The accusation that I was skimming and not giving him his full cut had scared the crap out of me the first time I heard it, but it was Tony's favorite line and he pulled it on me at least once a week. Now it only pissed me off.
“Aw, Tony, I wouldn't do that to you, man, you know that, not after everything you do for me. Hey, man, look what I've got. These rubbers are from France, they glow in the dark.”
He squinted at me like it's the first time he ever saw me. “How come you ain't in the war? You're not one of those fucking peaceniks, are you?”
Tony was like that lately, asking everyone he bumped into why they weren't in uniform. He'd been real patriotic ever since the draft board gave him a 4F for high blood pressure.
“Man, I'm too young to be in the army. And if I wasn't, I wouldn't go anyway. Let the gooks fight it out themselves.”
“Yeah, sure, and when the Commies rule the world, guys like you will suck the dick of Ho Chi Hitler.”
 
I parked the Olds in front of our apartment house and climbed out. I usually spent my time checking the crew but I wanted to come home and check my closet of goodies. Not even Lardino liked the glow-in-the-dark rubbers and I wanted to see if I had anything else to try on the street—again.
Our place was on the second floor. It had only one bedroom and Betty insisted I take it. She sacked out on the couch in the living room. It worked out better that way because I actually used the apartment, even ate there once in a while, but I rarely saw Betty. Vegas was good for her—it was a twenty-four-hour town and she was a twenty-four-hour girl. She worked nights at a lounge in the Dunes and only came home to sleep during the day. She never brought a man home. I knew she dated, but she had too much class to let a man stay the night at
our apartment, not to mention the lack of privacy. A guy like Hop was different—she lived with him and considered him her husband. Once in a while she'd come home with a bruise on her face because some guy had hit her. I didn't go for hitting a woman. I carried a two-foot plumber's wrench in the Olds. Rather than a piece of lead pipe that would get me arrested, I could always claim that it was just a tool. If I ever caught some geek knocking around Betty, I'd lay that wrench across his teeth.
I started up the stairs when Naomi's mother, Suke, sounds like
Suekey
, came out from her apartment. She dealt blackjack at the Horseshoe. Naomi never mentioned what happened to her old man. Most of the kids I hung out with were like me—their father was a name or a memory.
“Lo-key, please come help me. I need strong man.”
Nothing got a man—or a boy's—adrenaline pumping like a woman talking about his strength. Even if she pronounced his name a little pidgin. And it wasn't just any woman—Suke was just as attractive to me as Naomi. She wasn't as pretty as her daughter, was a little fuller of figure, but she had a cute little china-doll figure with small breasts, a slim figure, and tight buns. And again, the irresistible eyes. Unlike her daughter's, they were small and secretive, her eyelids like temple doors. I had to admit I went for women from the mysterious East.
I followed her into the apartment, toward the cubbyhole-hallway at the intersection of the living room and the doors to the bathroom and bedroom.
“What ya need, Suke?”
“No light.” She showed me a new lightbulb. A glass light cover would have to be removed to change the bulb. She had a flimsy wooden stool beneath the light.
“No problem.” I started to get on the stool and she stopped me.
“Stool too weak for you. You hold stool, I screw.”
“Okay …”
I knelt by the stool and held it with both hands. She put her hand on my head to steady herself as she climbed onto the stool. My blood instantly heated from the smell of jasmine and the warmth that radiated from her.

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