“I wish he was,” said Little Moey. “I could use being born next to that much dough.” He paused for effect, then said: “That’s Meyer Lansky.”
I looked at Sedway like he was crazy. “That pipsqueak?”
“I wouldn’t call him that to his face,” Moey advised. “They come bigger, but they don’t come no more powerful.”
Lansky, in dark suit and dark tie, was smiling faintly, having a pleasant conversation, in low tones, with the wide-smiling Ben Siegel, who looked spiffy as hell in his white dinner jacket with red carnation in the lapel.
Surprisingly, Lansky didn’t seem to have any bodyguards, but then neither did Siegel. With the exception of his security force of ex-cops-whose job was watching the casino, after all-Siegel lacked the armed retinue you might expect. I’d figured Sedway was his bodyguard, at first, till I found Moey never carried a gun; besides, that little weasel couldn’t have cut it as bodyguard to a department store Santa.
I’d been around my share of mob guys, but Ben Siegel had me stumped. Despite occasional flare-ups of temper, he just didn’t gibe with the stories I’d heard about him. Look at him and Lansky standing there schmoozing. Lansky might have been a moderately successful garment-district businessman; Siegel someone from the movie industry, a director, a producer, perhaps. Were these two men really the founders of Murder, Incorporated? Was Lansky truly an underworld financial wizard the likes of which made Guzik seem an amateur? Was Siegel really the man who controlled narcotics on the West Coast?
Whatever the case, tonight Ben (Don’t-Call-Him-You-Know-What) Siegel was a charming, gladhanding host, although as Sedway and I stood along the periphery of the lobby, looking over the packed casino, Siegel did show his colors, momentarily. A heavy-set man in a plaid jacket, looking very out of place in this world of evening wear, was standing in front of a slot machine lackadaisically lighting up a cigar-and not a Havana like Sedway and Siegel smoked. Siegel excused himself from Lansky and walked over to the man.
“You’re blocking the machine,” Siegel told him. “Play, or move it along.”
The bewildered patron in plaid just moved it along.
I thought I could sense disapproval in Lansky’s deadpan expression; but the little man was smiling again, however faintly, when Siegel approached him and put a hand on his shoulder and led him down and through the big casino.
“You won’t see Meyer Lansky at the Saturday night grand opening,” Sedway said.
“Why’s that?”
“That’s when the reporters are going to show. And Mr. Lansky doesn’t like publicity much.”
“Ben doesn’t seem to mind it.”
“You’re tellin’ me. He got himself a goddamn press agent, the other day.”
“Yeah, I know. I met him. That guy Greenspun. Don’t you think a place like this
“Sure. But I don’t think some of the, uh, investors knew Ben was going to be so…prominent, in the scheme of things. Newspaper articles. Greeting guests at the door. Mingling.”
“Telling ’em to move it along.”
Sedway laughed shortly. Then he decided he’d said enough to me, and excused himself to do some mingling of his own.
There were plenty of people to mingle with. Earlier that week Siegel had been concerned about a rumor that Las Vegans would boycott his pastel palace. Resentment over the political strings he’d pulled to get building supplies was part of it; the rest came from a whispering campaign about the Flamingo being a den of gangsters, begun by his downtown competitors. These “short-sighted fucking vultures,” as Siegel referred to them, didn’t understand that (as Ben saw it) he would only bring them all more business by attracting more gamblers to Vegas.
Apparently the rumor had been just that-a rumor-or else the resentment and whispering campaign had been overcome by curiosity and Siegel’s pro-Las Vegas advertising: “The Flamingo has been built
Siegel wrote most of that himself, of course. He even told his PR guy what to do and how to do it.
Me he’d left pretty much alone, to do my job. Right now I was keeping an eye on the security people, seeing if my training over the past ten days or so had done any good. It was crowded enough tonight to make pickpocket control difficult, which would be a nice final exam for my ex-cop students. Some of them were posted here and there, others were mingling. All wore tuxes-all of Siegel’s staff did. Siegel himself had interviewed and hired, after Sedway thinned the pack, the eighty-five dealers, eighteen pit bosses and box men, and three slot-machine supervisors. All of whom, if you asked me, looked uncomfortable in their monkey suits.
Former LAPD lieutenant Quinn, looking in his tux like a tan but sickly penguin, came up to me and smiled and asked how I was doing. He’d been trying to be friendly ever since we tangled. I hadn’t gotten rough with him again, because I was pretty sure the pilferage had stopped. My spot checks of boxes I marked (and I’d marked some every day) indicated such, anyway.
Quinn assayed the casino. “Think my boys’ll find any dips workin’ the room?”
“If they can’t, they couldn’t find their ass with two hands.”
He couldn’t resist some sarcasm. “You really think there’s gonna be a ‘whiz team’ in the woodpile?”
“That’s the surest bet you could make here tonight.”
And I moved away from him. I don’t mind your average crooked cop; I used to be one myself. But a guy like Quinn gives corruption a bad name.
I walked out on the patio, which was lit in a soft-focus way by more red and blue spots spotted around. Around the pool, as if sunning in the moonlight, were various young women, all of them lovely, shapely, in bathing suits, mostly two-piece, lounging on the chaises. These women were in Siegel’s employ, although in what capacity exactly I couldn’t say. They’d been posing around the pool all week, for cheesecake photos for the wire-service boys. I knew some of these bathing beauties doubled as cigarette and change girls. Only a few were waitresses, from the lounge; the dining room was served exclusively by waiters, in tuxes, natch. (Siegel had drilled the waiters himself, until they worked with the precision of a Marine platoon.)
One of these women sunning in the moonlight, one who had not done any cheesecake posing earlier in the week, worked as Siegel’s confidential secretary.
“You look like a movie star,” I told Peggy.
She was wearing a dark blue two-piece.
“Thanks,” she said. Her reply was a little chilly. But then so was the air; it wasn’t cold out, but if I had a quarter for every erect nipple around this pool, I could’ve fed a slot machine till midnight.
I got down on my haunches next to her. “But isn’t this a little beneath a businesswoman like you?”
She looked down her nose at me, smiling with no warmth. “I don’t think so. Ben wanted some pretty girls to sit around the pool tonight, and I think I qualify, thank you.”
I pulled up a lounge chair. “Sure you do. I just thought you might have played a slightly more conspicuous, more important role in this grand event.”
She seemed to be studying the red and blue lights as they shimmered on the water in the pool.
“Certain parties wouldn’t have liked that,” she said.
“And yet, at the same time, by sitting here in your near altogether, you’re sort of thumbing your nose at ‘certain parties.’ I like that. You still got some of that Chicago fuck-you spirit. The desert air hasn’t dried you out entirely.”
Sadness tightened her eyes. “You hate me now, don’t you?”
I shook my head, smiled a little. “No. Are you still angry with me?”
She gave me a quick, burning look. “I should be. You had no right getting…” I think she was about to say “so personal,” but reconsidered, since that was absurd on the face of it. She just let her thought trail off and looked out at the pool again.
She was referring to a short conversation we’d had, in a Last Frontier hallway the second day of my stay, in which I had said to her as follows: “I don’t know if you’re sleeping with Siegel or not-but if you are, take my advice: don’t, at least not when ‘Tabby’ is in town.”
“Is that right?” she’d coldly said.
