Las Vegas Noir (14 page)

They promised me a job, Orlando said nervously. Rivulets of sweat ran down his face and moistened his collar. He was a man given to perspiring and every time the plane hit an air pocket more sweat poured out of him.

They promised me a job too, Bennie said. I’m not worried. I’m told Lansky is a man of his word.

Unless he isn’t.

Unless he isn’t, Bennie had to admit. If it weren’t for politics, Havana would be paradise. Maybe Las Vegas is paradise.

Las Vegas is in the desert.

Where do you think the Garden of Eden was located,
chico
, in the Caribbean?

Waiting for his bags in the claim area, it occurred to Bennie that Vegas was definitely not paradise but it sure was better than being unemployed in Havana living with a wife he couldn’t stand. Besides, the revolutionaries considered all casino employees to be part of a vast conspiracy of corruption: worms feeding on the dung heap of capitalism. It was only a matter of time before they came after Bennie and put him in one of their decrepit jails.

But Bennie was an honest man. Not once during his ten-year career as a twenty-one dealer did he skim, not once did he pass chips or take a hit or sell a customer short. And he didn’t get involved in politics or union business. All those complaints about unfair business practices and worker exploitation were not for him. He knew his bosses were not the most honest people in the world, but that wasn’t his concern. He did his job, put his time in, had a Cuba libre (a
mentirita
, people were calling them lately) with the other dealers after his shift, and went home to his hysterical wife, whom he referred to as Juana la Loca. No one had anything on him, except that, in this particular case, he was on the wrong side of the fence.

For a while after Fidel took over the casinos remained open and Bennie went to work as usual. There were still American tourists coming to Cuba, suckers willing to have their money taken while they drank themselves silly on
daiquirís
. Bennie’s job was to be a card dealer, not a priest. He’d see the
Ameri-canos
at the table with a couple of gorgeous Cuban redheads wrapped around them and say to himself, Man, if I only had the money, I’d be right there next to them. Then one day two men came around asking if anyone wanted to go work in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas? Where the hell is that? Bennie asked. In the middle of nowhere, one of the guys said. But soon it’s going to be the next Havana. You schmucks want to stay here and rot? Schmuck was an English word Bennie had never heard. The guy doing the talking kept straightening his tie as he spoke. He looked like a movie gangster except that he was very young, maybe twenty years old, and he spoke in a reedy falsetto.

I have a wife, Bennie started to say, then he remembered he hated his wife. This was a perfect opportunity to escape the clutches of his lousy marriage, to escape all he sensed was coming to the island.

Six other dealers volunteered that day as well as eight cooks, twenty showgirls, and an unknown number of musicians. Two weeks later Bennie was at the Las Vegas airport, waiting for his bags and making small talk with Orlando and three of his culinary colleagues. The taciturn man with the scar led the five of them to a Ford station wagon and drove them to a motel off Rancho Drive. It was mid-July and the heat rose from the asphalt, turning the station wagon into a pressure cooker. The heat of Havana was nothing compared to this. Bennie mentioned his discomfort to the cooks but they, used to the infernal atmosphere of commercial kitchens, thought nothing of it. Paradise indeed.

Another man met them at the motel and gave each of them a room key. Bennie’s was number 207.

Good number to play, he said to Orlando. Number two is butterfly. Number seven is seashell.

Mine is 112. One is horse. Twelve is whore, Orlando responded. Not too good. That Chinese system is foolishness. There are better ways to make money.

Then the man announced that someone would be by for them the next morning at 7:30 and left.

For seven years Bennie lived in that motel, caught between a present substantially narrowed by a dead-end job and a suffocating nostalgia for the glories and joys of a past that was neither glorious nor joyous. His one friend, Orlando, was a man of limited intellectual capacity and no imagination to speak of. His conversations never strayed from the perfect demi-glace he’d concocted that morning or the bread he’d baked for lunch or the celebrity who’d entered the kitchen and offered his compliments on the salmon mousse. When Bennie tried to engage him in more expansive topics, such as baseball or women, a blank look came over Orlando’s face and at the first opportunity he’d switch the conversation back to kitchen matters. Bennie worked the graveyard shift because nights were hardest for him to spend alone. He’d sleep mornings as much as he could, until about noon or so. Then he’d shower, pick up the local paper, and go to a cafeteria on Sahara where he’d have two eggs fried over easy, bacon, toast, and bad American coffee. The rest of the time was his to do as he wanted. He napped, read the paper again, and, in the cool months, took long walks on streets that led nowhere but back into themselves. His shift began at 11 p.m. but more often than not he did a double, starting at 3 o’clock and going straight through until 7 the next morning.

Making money wasn’t the object; he simply had too much time on his hands and no way of whiling it away. The summer was too hot for anything but sitting in air-conditioning; the winter was high season and Joey, his pit boss, threw as much work at him as he could handle. His wife, who had since moved to Miami, sent him divorce papers, which he signed and sent right back. There was no ocean to look at like there was in Havana; only desert and fancy casinos where the tourists dropped their money. Mostly there was a lot of dust which got in his eyes and made him teary, as if he wasn’t teary enough already. There were plenty of women, beautiful ones, but none was accessible to him, a simple dealer from the tropics with a thick Cuban accent—like Desi Arnaz chewing on a raw steak, Joey once said—and the looks of a Galician grocer. The way to attract women, an uncle of his told him long ago, is to impress them with your power and your wealth. Good looks will only go so far. The woman needs to see you as a god, and those attributes are the closest we humans have to divinity. And just when Bennie had resigned himself to a life of celibacy, he met a woman, a round Mexican who cooked him fiery dishes and made love like a Zapotec beast. She always brought food—enchiladas, tacos, moles—enough for him and for Orlando who lived downstairs. Her name was Mercedes. She took care of both of them, in more ways than one, but she had her eye on Bennie.
Barriga llena, corazón contento
, she would say with a sparkle in her eye, expecting any moment he would say back to her the magic words.

As he sat outside his room on his day off, Bennie heard a commotion on the first level of the motel, followed by a woman’s voice that sounded very much like Mercedes screaming,
Puto, cabrón, hijo de la chingada
. He rushed down the steps to the first level and saw Orlando the cook on the floor, leaning against the brick outer wall of his room with a butcher knife stuck half-way into his chest. His eyes were glazed and a string of bloody saliva hung from his lips. Orlando babbled something about someone taking twenty thousand and said nothing else. He looked up at Bennie before letting out a long sigh like a balloon deflating; then his eyes lost their bearing and his head drooped softly to the side.

Bennie’s first instinct was to go back upstairs and forget what he had seen, let someone else deal with the situation. Instead, out of deference to his friend, he looked around to make sure no one else had witnessed the killing, maneuvered Orlando away from the wall with great difficulty—he was a bulky guy, as cooks tend to be—and dragged him back into the room. Bennie shut the door and turned the air-conditioning as high as it would go, figuring it would help preserve Orlando. He sat on the unmade bed and tried to light a cigarette. His hands were shaking so badly it took four tries before he could bring the match to the tip and take the first drag. Sure, he’d seen plenty of people die, like his mother and her sisters, and a cousin with leukemia, but never like this, with a knife sticking out of them and their last words about money. This would never happen in Cuba, he thought, then thought again. Of course it would. Still, at this moment he wanted to be back there in his old apartment on Lagunas Street where his parents had lived and their parents before them, now occupied by his revolution-crazed cousin Aleida, who had beautiful eyes but farted like a foghorn.

Bennie surveyed the room and spied a half-full bottle of Don Q rum on the dresser, which he could reach without having to stand up. Two healthy swigs settled him somewhat and he considered the situation. Calling the police was out of the question. They’d snoop and his bosses weren’t fond of snooping. So he called Joey, his pit boss at the casino—he’d know what to do—and waited for him to show up.

It took Joey three hours to get to the motel. When he saw the cook lying on the carpet, his first words were Holy fucking shit. Orlando’s face had acquired a blue pallor and
rigor mortis
was beginning to set in, no matter that it was damn cold in the room. Those were Joey’s second words: It’s damn cold in here, followed by, What was your fight about?

Fight? Bennie kept to himself the fact that he heard Mercedes screaming just before he found the cook. Joey, he said, I didn’t kill Orlando. He was my friend.

Friends kill each other all the time. Why didn’t you take the knife out of him? The longer he’s dead, the harder it’s going to be. And next time, put a shower curtain under him. That way the blood won’t get on the rug.

You do it, Joey. You take the knife out. I couldn’t even watch my mother kill a chicken.

Didn’t they teach you anything in that damn country of yours? Fucking Latin lover can’t get his hands dirty.

Joey looked long and hard at Bennie, then he kneeled next to Orlando and jiggled the knife handle. Blood’s pretty much set. We won’t be needing the curtains. And before he’d finished saying the word curtains, he had the knife out and was holding it next to his head. It was a huge nasty thing. For an instant Bennie had the image of the blade entering Orlando and causing massive damage to his inner organs. The thought made him shiver.

This is a job for the rough riders, Joey said, and made a phone call. In ten minutes two men showed up, a tall slim guy in a gray suit and a short heavyset one in a blue shirt and beige linen trousers. Bennie noticed that the short man had a tomato sauce stain on his right pant leg. The men looked at dead Orlando on the floor and proceeded to ransack drawers, pulling them out of the dresser and upending their contents on the body. When they were done with the drawers they took the bed apart, then started on the closet and rifled through Orlando’s clothes, discarding them this way and that and making a huge mess. Finally, one of them turned to Bennie, who was now standing in a corner of the room, and said, Where’s the money?

Money? Bennie asked, trying to be as sheepish as possible. Now the three men were looking at him, waiting for an answer. I don’t know about no money. Bennie’s legs were shaking and his throat was beginning to tighten as it did every time he was nervous, making him cluck like a chicken.

We better cut him up, one of the men said. It’ll be easier that way.

Bennie made a move for the door.

Where you going? said the man in the blue shirt.

I live upstairs, said Bennie. I just thought I’d lie down for a while. I work tonight.

You staying right here, Jack. He turned to the man in the suit. Bring the tools.

Bennie needed to sit down but the mattress was up against the window leaning over the two armchairs. The only other chair was on the opposite side and he’d have to step over Orlando. He looked at Joey, who shrugged.

Joey, please, he implored him, I don’t want to watch this.

I don’t either. They’ll do it in the bathroom.

But I can hear.

Cover your ears.

After the two men carted Orlando’s pieces wrapped in wax paper and tied neatly with butcher string out of the room, they came back in and stood on either side of Bennie and asked again where the money was.

Bennie’s lips were shaking so badly they couldn’t meet to form words, to say simply, I don’t know, I didn’t take it. Despite the very real danger he was facing, however, there was a spot of coolness inside him that kept him from falling apart. It surprised him. He’d always thought of himself as a coward. That coolness led him to conclude with absolute certainty that Mercedes had taken the twenty thousand but he wasn’t about to tell these guys that. Right now every little bit of knowledge he kept from them was to his benefit.

Then Joey saved him. Guys, he said, Bennie don’t know anything. He’s a stupid Cuban. All he knows is dealing cards. Leave him alone.

The two men looked at each other, then back at Joey. The small one said, We don’t take orders from you.

Listen fuck-head, Bennie here doesn’t have the money. And if Archie gives you any grief, tell him I answer directly to Meyer and he can go suck a moose.

The men grumbled some curse words at Joey and left to drop pieces of Orlando all over the desert. Bennie asked Joey what was going on. Either Joey didn’t know or he didn’t let on. Later that night, as the two of them shared a six-pack of beer, Bennie asked Joey how he knew these thugs.

I got some juice in this town, Bennie. Me and Meyer grew up on the same block in the Lower East Side. You can’t fuck around with Lansky. He owns everyone in Vegas, including me. He owns you, except you don’t know it. Orlando tried to pull a fast one and he paid for it.

What did he do? Bennie asked.

I’d like to know that myself. The whole thing’s unsavory, I know, but there’s nothing to be done about it. Joey used the word unsavory with great delicacy, saying every sound as if it were a precious jewel. You sure you don’t know anything about that money those guys were talking about?

Bennie shook his head.

I have a feeling you do, Joey said. He finished his beer and left.