Neon Mirage

“I don’t like it. I don’t like it all.”

“Are you worried she’s gonna get seduced by the big bad Bug? Don’t be silly. Ben would never cheat on me.” She shrugged. “He knows I’d kill him.”

“You kids warm my heart with this great love of yours, but just the same I don’t like Peg being down there all alone with him.”

“There’s plenty of other people around. Ben isn’t looking for a new lay. He’s got the best lay in the world, right here. And he’s busy with his fucking Flamingo. That’s his mistress.”

“How do he and Peg get along?”

“Fine. I think she admires him. There’s a lot to admire.”

I didn’t argue the point. I couldn’t risk telling Virginia Hill that my real worry was not seduction by the Jewish Casanova, but Peg’s own misguided search for “justice.” She was obviously kissing Siegel’s ass (figuratively speaking, one would hope) to get near him and try to determine if he was her uncle’s would-be killer. It was a dangerous game she was playing. Only it was no game at all.

“I could drive down there,” I said.

“Why bother? They’ll be back Friday. For the opening of Cornero’s new gambling ship. You can see her then. I can get you an invite.”

“Maybe I should drive out there anyway.”

“She’s fine, Heller. I know she misses you, if that’s any consolation.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me so. She told me you were the best thing that ever happened to her. Made me curious. Why else do you think I tried to get in your pants? I’m not just another horny broad, you know. Or did you just think I was trying to give you an early Christmas present?”

I stood. “Maybe, but if you see Santa Claus, tell him something for me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Tell him there is a Virginia.”

And I got out of that place. Fucking place, as she would have said. Left it to the falcons, the ghost of Valentino, the frightened servants and a beautiful woman with a lovely face, a beautiful body and a mind more twisted than the road down into Hollywood.

The lights of Santa Monica had disappeared behind us, as our speedboat slipped into the night, and ahead was the searchlight of the S.S. Lux, sweeping slowly over the black water like the beacon at Alcatraz looking for prisoners out for a swim. It had taken thirty-some minutes to get this far, seated on an open-air water taxi that carried Raft, his brunette “starlet” date (Judy something), half a dozen couples and myself-and the tough-looking, fiftyish customer who steered the boat, looking uncomfortable in captain’s cap and a spiffy white mess jacket with S.S. Lux crest.

The couples ranged in age from early twenties into their sixties, and all were impressed by Raft’s suave famous presence, his cigarette making an amber glow and rarely leaving his lips, his profile as immobile as a ship’s prow. With the exception of Raft, however, who wore a white dinner jacket and black tie and red carnation, the other passengers weren’t dressed to the nines; like me, the men wore suits and ties, sure, but not tuxes, and the women-other than Judy the starlet-were smartly dressed but not in gowns. These were middle-class folks, maybe upper middle-class at best, wearing their Sunday Go To Meeting duds.

The ride had been fairly smooth-whitecaps at a minimum tonight-but the shock of the spray and the wet cold and the occasional lurch of the launch was enough to remind a fella he was a landlubber. So was the salty fresh smell of the ocean-for all the times I’d been on the lake, this felt different; there was a vastness, a sense of the edge of the world. A continent left behind.

After such lofty thoughts, the Lux itself was a letdown. Other than the searchlight and some blue neon trimming, the Lux didn’t stand out against the night like you’d expect it to. The only sound of merriment was some big band music coming out of tinny speakers on deck, “I Love You For Sentimental Reasons,” which echoed across the water like bad radio reception, barely heard over the motor of the launch. Any patron expecting a seafaring casino that glittered as well as floated was in for a disappointment, at least as far as the Lux’s exterior was concerned. She was a decommissoned Navy mine-layer, whose superstructure had been sheared away and replaced with a wooden shed that covered the deck but for outer walkways. The Lux looked more like Noah’s ark than Hollywood’s (or anybody’s) idea of a gambling ship.

Nonetheless, we were three miles out in a world where there was only dark water and the Lux. The ship, which wore its name on its side in huge white painted letters, was moored with iron cables and looked steadier than the Santa Monica pier. Our launch glided up alongside thick ropes that served as fenders near the well-lit landing stage. Several men in white Lux mess jackets, big enough to be bouncers but well-groomed and polite enough not to intimidate, bent down from the docking float to help the passengers up off the launch. Raft was, of course, recognized and the red carpet rolled out, figuratively that is. It would’ve been hard to roll anything up the steep stairs to the deck.

“You know in the old days,” Raft said, as he and Judy and I walked along the narrow deckway, “there were all sorts of gambling ships out here-the Johanna Smith, the Monte Carlo, the City of Panama, and plenty more. They were real popular.”

“What happened?”

“When Mayor Shaw got tossed out of office, things got moral all of a sudden. We had a crusading D.A. who wanted headlines. Him and that Attorney General character, what’s his name? Earl Warren. They decided to sink Tony’s fleet.”

“What about the three-mile limit? How could the authorities get around that?”

“With some cockamamie law that lets ’em go outside their ’mediate jurisdiction to, whaddya call it? Bait a nuisance.”

I think George meant “abate,” but I got his drift.

“How did Cornero manage to get the Lux afloat, then?”

“The Rex and all that was before the war,” Raft said, shrugging, tossing his cigarette overboard. “Times change. New palms make themselves available for greasing.”

We went on into the main casino room, where the joint was packed and jumping. If the exterior was a letdown, the interior was quite the pick-me-up. Owner Tony Cornero, the onetime cab driver who’d become “King of the Western Rumrunners” in the twenties, had sunk nearly two hundred grand in the place, Raft said, and it showed, and it obviously attracted a crowd. Sixteen water launches were being kept busy tonight, and my guess for the number of beans in this seagoing jar would’ve been well over a thousand.

The upper deck’s casino room was paneled in rich dark wood and was easily two hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet wide. A mirrored bar ran the length of one wall, making the room seem even bigger, and on the other wall were the slots, scores of them, like a row of metal and glass tombstones before which customers paid their respects. In between were half a dozen roulette tables, half a dozen chuck-a-luck cages, eight crap tables, a Chinese lottery, a faro bank where Cornero himself reportedly dealt.

And people. People and noise and smoke. The clink of drinks and chips, the laughter and wailing of winning and losing. I couldn’t spot any celebrities other than Raft, just middle-class types like those on our launch, with a scattering of socialites in evening dress. Also, some unattached beautiful girls in their early twenties, with their chests half showing, were circulating throughout the casino; when one would see a table doing slow business, she’d go there and play. A nice, subtle way to use a shill, if you ask me. Cornero obviously knew his way around running a casino.

Despite the crowd, a few stools were available at the impossibly long bar. We took three, the little starlet crossing her legs through a slit in her gown; nice gams on her, though she had a vacant look in her very brown eyes.

“Do you think Ben Siegel’s here?” I asked.

“Yeah, or he soon will be,” Raft said. “It’s after nine. He don’t like to gamble, particularly, and he goes to bed early. He’ll put in an early appearance.”

“Does he have money in the Lux?”

“I don’t think so. He had plenty in the Rex. He borrowed some of it from me, matter of fact, though he paid it