Neon Mirage (23 page)

“Tabby?” he said, standing, eyes wide.

Chick nodded, pointed back behind him.

“Nate,” Siegel said, his eyes desperate, moving away from the table, “can you lend a hand?”

I nodded, and we rushed out through the lobby around to the patio and across the terrace garden to the unfinished hotel building.

“She’s swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills,” the frantic Chick explained. “I don’t think she’s breathing…”

“How’d you happen onto her?” I asked him, as we crossed the lobby to the private elevator.

“I wanted to check up on her,” her brother said. He looked with wounded eyes at Siegel, as we boarded the tiny elevator. “I heard you beat her up, Ben.”

“Shut up, Chick,” Siegel said tightly, looking upward, as if willing the elevator to rise more quickly.

We found her on the pink sheets of the big bed, on her back; she was still wearing the torn gown, one breast exposed, her eyes closed, a faint bluish tinge to her cheeks. Siegel bent over her.

“She’s breathing,” he said. “Shallow but breathing—get me some cold wet towels!”

Chick wetted some down in the nearest bathroom, on the floor of which I found the empty pill bottle. The kid handed Siegel the towels and he began slapping her with them.

“Wake up!” he said. “Goddamnit, wake up!”

Chick stood off to one side, helpless, near tears.

I said, “Ben, look, let’s get her to the hospital, get her stomach pumped. I can pull my Buick in the construction access out back. I’ll go right now, what do you say?”

He was cradling her in his arms now; he looked up at me, with a haunted expression, and nodded.

“Can you two haul her down okay?” I asked.

Siegel nodded, said, “Go on, get the car!”

I did.

Southern Nevada Hospital was five miles away, on Charleston Boulevard. Traffic was heavy, and I had to weave in and around it, hurtling along at upwards of eighty miles an hour.

Virginia Hill, dead to the world, was between Siegel and me in the front seat; he had his arm around her, holding her close to him, soothing her like a sleeping baby. Chick was riding in the back, nervous with worry.

“Step on it!” Siegel yelled at me.

“I am.”

“Goddamn stupid bitch,” he said, but quietly, in that previous, soothing voice. “Why did she have to do it?”

I pushed the Buick harder; the speedometer’s needle quivered at ninety. A siren cut the night behind us.

“Damn,” I said. “A cop…”

“Screw the cop,” Siegel said, holding her to him. “Keep stepping on it.”

The cop didn’t catch us till we pulled in the emergency entrance, by which time he’d more or less figured out what the score was; just the same, Siegel quickly, pointlessly, handed the guy a C-note, which would buy you twenty traffic tickets in Chicago.

The orderlies lifted Hill’s slack body onto a stretcher and wheeled her into the emergency room and before long we were in a private room and Siegel was shaking the hand of the doctor who had pumped Mrs. Siegel’s stomach.

You see, Virginia Hill, it turned out, was Mrs. Benjamin Siegel. That was the name she was admitted under, anyway.

“Doc,” Siegel said, turning on the charm, dazzling smile and all, pumping the man’s hand harder than Ginny’s stomach had been, “thanks a million. I just might donate a new wing to this joint.”

Virginia Hill, groggy, looked up and said her first words since rejoining the living: “Give ’em the fucking Flamingo for a wing. To hell with that dump. Get out, Ben, before you’re dead! Before you’re dead…”

And she was crying.

He began comforting her, and the doctor and Chick and I slipped away.

I said to Chick, “They’re
married?
”

Chick shrugged affirmatively. “It isn’t common knowledge. They did it in Mexico a while back.”

“Why’s it a secret?”

“It’s not exactly a secret, but I don’t think some of Ben’s friends back east approve of my sister.”

“Hell, I thought she was in tight with them.”

“That was before she and Ben got so close. She hasn’t done any business with them since.”

A few minutes later, Siegel came out. He smiled a little; it was almost a nervous smile, and I wondered why.

Then I found out.

“Nate,” he said, “I want you to take that little girl of yours home.”

“That little girl of mine.”

“Peggy Hogan. It’s just not going to work, having her around. It’s just gonna be a burr under Tabby’s saddle.”

Our voices echoed a little in the hospital corridor.

“Well, we can’t have that, now,” I said. “But what if Miss Hogan doesn’t care to go?”

“I took care of that already. You just go back to the Frontier. Knock on her door.”

“Christ, it’s almost four o’clock in the morning, Ben!”

“Do it, Nate. She’s up. I called her.” He swallowed. Then, as if mildly ashamed of himself, he grinned like a chagrined kid. “Tabby made me call her.”

But I didn’t knock on her door. I went back to my own room at the Last Frontier. I’d had quite enough emotional bullshit for one night.

And I was between the cool sheets of the warm bed, just tired enough to go right to sleep in spite of it all, when somebody knocked on my door. I let some air out. I stared up into the darkness where the ceiling was. And somebody knocked again, kept knocking. Then I hauled myself out of bed. I was in my skivvies but I didn’t give a damn.

I opened the door.

She was standing there in a dressing gown, her hair a mess, her face scratched, not a trace of make-up, her expression blank with despair. I couldn’t help myself. I touched her cheek, gently, where it was scratched.

“I’m sorry, Peg.”

Her voice was the voice of a small child. “Will you take me home, Nate?”

“Sure, baby.”

Her violet eyes stared into nothing. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

She turned to walk away. Her steps were halting. I went to her; I was in the hall in my underwear, but at this time of night— of morning—who the hell cared? I put an arm around her.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” she said, in the same small voice.

Then she tumbled into my arms. Grabbed me, like she was grabbing for dear life, and she wept. She wept.

I drunk-walked her back to my room, sat her on the edge of the bed, sat next to her, and let her cry into my chest as long as she wanted, which was a good long while.

“He…he called me…and said we were through.”

“I know,” I said.

In the midst of the emotional pain, she still managed to hear that; she squinted at me and said, “You…you
know?”

I told her briefly about the suicide attempt.

“He…he was calling me from her hospital room, then?”

“That’s right.”

“She was there.”

“Sure.”

“You know what he said to me?”

“No.”

“He said she told him that he had to choose. That it was her or me.” She swallowed. “And he chose her.”

I said nothing: she had stopped crying.

“Can you beat that?” she said, wonderingly.

“I think I can,” I said. “They’re married.”

Her eyes went wide and, finally, angry. “Married?”

I nodded. “Married. Mexico. A while back.”

“I’ve been…having an affair with a married man. And I didn’t even know it.”

“That’s it.”

She sat there and brooded for a while.

Then she stood. She stripped off the dressing robe; the garment made a pool at her feet. She had her short sheer blue nightie on underneath; I remembered it well.

“Take your things off,” she said, through her teeth.

“Okay,” I said, and did.

She stepped out of the nightie. She was tan, now, except the patches of creamy pink where her two-piece bathing suit had been; the bushy triangle between her legs was startling against the pale flesh.

“Do it to me,” she said, laying back on the bed, parting her lips, her legs, herself.

She just wanted revenge on Siegel. I knew that.

But I’d take it anyway I could get it.

I plunged into her like a knife and took my own sweet revenge, and she was crying when she came. I didn’t give her my tears; I gave her my fucking seed. That was enough.

Then I held her in my arms, cradled her, soothed her, like Ben had the unconscious Virginia Hill, and she fell asleep there.

On Sunday, the day of rest, we made love half a dozen times, in between some silly bursts of sightseeing—Boulder Dam, anyone?—and yanking the arms off slot machines downtown and buying stupid touristy souvenirs for the folks back home. And then on Monday, before we caught our train, we found our way to one of those stucco and neon wedding chapels and did the deed. It was her idea, but I was game; what was Vegas for, if not to take a gamble?

The following June, on a warm but not scorching Friday afternoon, I was once again in Los Angeles, comparing notes with my partner Fred Rubinski in his fifth-floor Bradbury Building office. We were both pleased with the way our little merger had worked out. Technically, I was the boss, because I had bought fifty-one percent of his business; but I’d made him vice-president of A-1 Detective Agency, leaving him full rein over the L.A. end of the firm. The reality was our two agencies ran as independently as ever, only with me getting a piece of his action; and the appearance of being a nationwide agency now (I was working on lining up an office in New York, as well, which would make it more than just an appearance) was increasing business on both our ends, as well as making easier any investigations spanning both our parts of the country. I was up to ten operatives and Fred was up to half a dozen.

Business out of the way, talk turned social—although in our case such talk still ran to cops and crooks.

“I understand Bill Drury’s got himself in a jam,” Fred said, frowning, emphasizing the deep lines of his weathered face which so contrasted with his smooth shiny bald head.

“Sad but true,” I said. “And no surprise. State’s Attorney’s office has him up on charges.”

“What sort of charges?”

“Conspiring to obtain an indictment on false testimony. Two of Bill’s colored witnesses on the Ragen shooting went public about Bill offering ’em part of the twenty-five grand reward.”

“Shit. Great. Can he beat the rap?”

“I don’t know. And both colored witnesses recanted, to boot, so those three West Side bookies who pulled the shooting are home free.”

“What a world,” Fred said, shaking his head. “Drury may go to jail, and the shooters walk. How do you figure it?”

“I figure I’m better off in the private sector. If Bill shakes loose of this thing, I’m going to try to get him to come aboard A-1.”

“I’m for it,” Fred said, with a tight smile, nodding. Fred’s intercom buzzed and he answered. “Yes, Marcia?”

“A gentleman’s here to see you, Mr. Rubinski.”

“Does he have an appointment?”

“No…”

“Well, I’m in conference. Make an appointment.”

“It’s Mr. Siegel, Mr. Rubinski.”

“Ben Siegel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Send him in.”

Ben entered, looking dapper as ever in a gray plaid suit and a dark blue tie; but he’d lost weight, had a pallor odd for a guy who operated out of sunny Vegas. And he wasn’t even bothering to use make-up on the darkness circling his baby blues.

His smile was as dazzling as ever, though. “Nate Heller! Jesus, this is a pleasant surprise…”

I stood and grinned at him and we shook hands.

“What’s this I hear about you gonna be a father?” he said, still pumping my hand.

“It’s a fact,” I said. “Late September, if the docs know what they’re talking about.”

He pulled up a chair, and I sat back down. He said, “The little woman must not be so little, these days.”

“She’s out to here,” I admitted.

“You gonna name it after me?”

“Only if it’s a girl.”

Siegel frowned. “Just so you don’t call her Bugsy.”

And then he laughed and so did I.

Fred, smiling, said, “What’s the occasion, Ben?”

He pointed a thumb behind him. “I stopped in to see my lawyer, Joe Ross.”

Ross also had an office in the Bradbury Building.

“Went over the account books,” Siegel went on, “and some legal problems concerning the hotel. Joe’s doing Virginia’s tax returns, for one thing.”

“How’s Ginny doing?” I asked.

He shrugged, smirked. “She’s in Paris. We had a fight and she took off. She’ll get over it.”

“Hope it’s not serious.”

“Naw, it’s nothing. I’m even staying in her place. So, how are you guys getting along, now that you’re in bed together?”

“Fine,” I said.

“No complaints,” Fred said. “I’m glad you dropped by, Ben. You probably want to find out how I been doing with your checks.”

“That’s right,” Siegel said smiling, but a little anxious.

“It’s not good news,” Fred said, with a fatalistic shrug. “All I’ve got is five hundred dollars for you.”

Siegel’s mouth twitched disappointment in what was otherwise a business-like expression. “Hell, Fred, you’ve got better than one hundred thousand bucks worth of checks you’re working on…”

“There’s not much we can do. It’s not a violation of the law in this state to refuse paying gambling debts. Of course, these welshers can’t go back to Nevada, but if they were still in Nevada, you wouldn’t need me. We can call them, write them letters, go ’round and see them; but we don’t go in for bullying tactics. You knew that when you hired us.”

“That rough stuff’s no good for business, anyway,” Siegel said, distantly.

“More than that, I was informed just yesterday by the Bureau of Standards that our detective license doesn’t permit us to collect bad checks.”

“So,” Siegel said, a hint of irritation entering his voice, “you’re just going to kick ’em back to me?”

“No, not exactly,” Fred said, soothingly. “We’re just going to farm them out to a collection agency. Mutual. Any objections?”

Siegel shook his head no, his expression a little glazed. The baby blues looked quite bloodshot.

“How
is
business at the Flamingo, Ben?” I asked.

“Bad,” he said, distractedly. Then he turned his gaze and his smile on me: “Actually, real good. That advice you gave me to close up and clean house and start over was just the ticket.”

Siegel had closed up less than two weeks after his gala opening; he had re-opened in March, the hotel completed, a largely new staff in place.

“We cleared three hundred thousand in May,” he said, proudly. “Problem is, we still got a lot of creditors hounding us. And then that fucking Wilkerson…” Bitterness twisted his mouth. “…he gets a phone call from J. Edgar Hoover and pees his pants.”

“What?” I said. “Hoover called Wilkerson?”

“Yeah,” Ben said, waving it off. “Hoover calls Billy and asks him if he knows he’s ‘in league’ with a gangster. And the little fucker pretends he never knew a thing about my background. So he decides he has to get out of the Flamingo ‘immediately if not sooner,’ ’cause of how it ‘might look,’ publisher of the Hollywood
Reporter
‘hobnobbing with unsavory characters.’”

“Christ, he was one of your first investors.”

“Well, all I know is, before I die, there’s two guys I’m gonna kill. Sedway and Wilkerson, the two biggest bastards that ever lived.”

I was used to hearing him say things like that, but it was still a little chilling.

Fred said to me, “Wilkerson insisted Ben buy him out, overnight, and said if he didn’t, he’d blackball him with the press.”

“Over a hundred grand, it cost me,” Siegel said.

“How’s the situation with the boys back east?” I asked.

“They know I’ve turned the corner,” he said, trying to sound confident and not quite making it. His smile was not dazzling at the moment, more like a wrinkle in his thin face.

“I understand Trans-American is still running,” I said.

He nodded. “I compromised. I withdrew my demand of two million dollars to shut the wire down. Instead, I just asked ’em to let me keep it running for one more lousy year. That should catch me up, financially…of course there’s some grumbling over my price hike…”

“What price hike?”

He shrugged matter-of-factly. “I doubled the cost of the wire to the bookies. That brings me over fifty grand a week, from Trans-American. A year of that, and a year of the Flamingo on a roll, and I’m in like Flynn.”

“How, uh, are your customers taking the price hike?”

“Who the fuck cares? Those bookies are rolling in dough. And so will I be, with their help—and now that the summer tourist season’s in swing.”

I couldn’t imagine the bookies would sit still for this gouge, nor that Lansky, Luciano and the Combination would approve. But it was none of my business, so I said nothing.

“Well,” Siegel said, slapping his thighs, standing. “I guess that’s it. You gonna keep me posted about the bad-check situation, Fred, or somebody at Mutual?”

“Mutual,” Fred said. “They’ll be contacting you.” He stood behind his desk and shook hands with Siegel.

Who crooked his finger at me, smiling a little, and said, “Walk me out, Nate.”

He went out and I followed, looking back at Fred and shrugging some.

Outside the office, dappled with sunlight filtering in the Bradbury Building skylight, Siegel put a hand on my shoulder. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Nothing,” I said, shrugging again. “Maybe I’ll go to Grauman’s Chinese and see if my feet fit Gable’s.”

“I got a better idea. Let me buy you some supper. We’ll talk old times.”

“Sure,” I said. “Shall I meet you somewhere?”

“Good idea. We’re trying a new place called Jack’s-at-the-Beach.”

“Where’s that?”

“At the beach, schmuck. It’s in Ocean Park.”

“Where’s Ocean Park?”

“Santa Monica. You can find the place. I got faith in you. You’re a detective.”

He flashed his smile and walked over to the open cage of the elevator. He was alone; no bodyguards. Despite his pallor, his loss of weight, his obvious lack of sleep, he didn’t seem worried for his life. I guessed it was safe to eat with him.

So I ate with him. Him and Chick Hill and Chick’s girlfriend, a cute little redhead who had taken over for Peggy as Virginia Hill’s secretary, and a smooth, silver-haired guy named Al Smiley, who was a business associate of Ben’s and wore a snappy checked jacket and snazzy blue patterned tie. Jack’s-at-the-Beach was an exclusive little joint, with rough-hewn wood and seafaring touches. We sat near a window where we could watch the waves roll slowly, foaming up onto the sand. It was peaceful, soothing, steady. The sea, the beach, were bathed in silvers and blues, thanks to a clear night and the moon and stars. I had the feeling of being on the edge of the world; and the feeling that that world was a tiny insignificant place in a vast universe. Of course, I’d had several glasses of wine, when all this occurred to me, so I wouldn’t put a whole hell of a lot of stock in it.

“Ben,” I said, after the remains of our seafood dinners had been cleared away and we sat chatting, “if you don’t mind my saying so, you look a little tired. Getting the Flamingo up on its feet’s been an ordeal for you. Why don’t you take a rest or a vacation or something?”

Siegel, who was sipping his single glass of wine for the evening, smiled almost shyly. “I am tired, Nate. And I am going to get away for a few days. My two daughters are coming out from New York by train. To meet me here.”

“Well, that’s great.”

He smiled more broadly, nodded. “They’re great kids. I promised to take them to Lake Louise up in Canada.”

“Now you’re talking,” I said, smiling back at him.

He glanced at his watch. “It’s early yet. Not even ten. How about coming back to the house with us? I got something I wouldn’t mind running past you.”

“I don’t know, Ben…”

He stood, picking up the check. “Aw, come on. Georgie’s gonna drop by around eleven or so, and we can play some cards or something.”

I hadn’t seen Raft this trip; I wouldn’t mind seeing him.

“Sure,” I said. “What house is this where we’re going?”

“Virginia’s bungalow,” he said. “Follow us up Wilshire. We’ll show you the way.”

Thirty-five minutes or so later, give or take, we drew up in front of the Beverly Hills haunts of La Hill, hardly a bungalow, rather a Moorish castle of pale pink adobe with a red tile roof on North Linden Drive. The near mansion had obviously cost big bucks, but it was surprisingly close on either side to its next-door neighbors, and the sloping lawn was relatively modest. I left my A-1 Agency Ford at the curb across the way, while the powder-blue Cadillac driven by Smiley (whose car it was) went up into the car port alongside the house.

Ben and his little party of three came down to greet me at the sidewalk and go up the short flight of cement steps to the walk, where at the front door Siegel produced a solid gold key (a gift from Tabby). Chick and Jerri, who seemed to be an item, had their arms around each other’s waists; Smiley had a newspaper, the early edition of tomorrow’s
Times,
courtesy of Jack’s-at-the-Beach. The night air was full of night-blooming jasmine.

Siegel unlocked the door, stepped inside, flicking on the hall light, and we all followed him into the spacious living room.

Which wasn’t a particularly attractive room, despite Virginia Hill’s redecorating efforts. I couldn’t help but think how classy Falcon’s Lair had been (a “dump” to Ginny) and how tacky this room was, with its bronze cupid statue, marble Bacchus statue, oil painting of an English dowager on the wall over the fireplace fighting a nearby art deco study of a nude with wine glass, French Provincial coffee table, the flowery chintz divan clashing with the flowery drapes of the windows behind it.

Siegel settled on that divan, at the right end of it, taking the newspaper from Smiley, who sat down at the divan’s left end. I took a comfortable easy chair to one side of Siegel, who said to Chick and his girl, “Why don’t you kids go upstairs? I want to talk some business with Al and Nate.”

Chick was agreeable to the notion of going upstairs with his little redhead—who wouldn’t have been?—and the redhead was equally agreeable and, so, they disappeared. Ben was glancing at the paper as he spoke: “I’d like you to come to work for me, Nate.”

“Ben, we’ve been down that road before…”

“No we haven’t. I’m not talking about security work.” He looked at me; bloodshot they may have been, but those baby blues were magnets when he trained them on you just right. “I think you got a lot on the ball. You gave me good advice at the Flamingo, when everybody else around me was either kissing my ass or stealing from me—or both, like Moey.”

“It was just common sense.”

“Yeah, well I seen how you’re doing with your own business. Which is to say, very well. I have a lot of legitimate business interests, now—that’s why I wanted you to meet Al, here. We got some feelers out on an oil deal; and we got a legitimate business in salvage materials called California Metals.”