The Royal Family (85 page)

The cab driver just laughed.

They now rolled between Gerson Park’s low pale cubes close together, the roofs reminiscent of those toys they make by hand in Madagascar out of insecticide tins; here and there a few Christmas trees; calm and vacant, fences in place. Alienated by many nights of light, Tyler nonetheless did not find this darkness restful. It was ugly, monotonous, and dangerous. The ugly realness of the night crouched chillingly around him. He saw Grace Temple with its Biblical murals, then another brick cube:
PAWN
with some letters missing; and it occurred to him that a pawnshop is really the same as a casino. —
Yeah, the owner of the Nugget lost a lot of money on his boxers . . . the driver was saying, almost to himself. As for Robinson Crusoe’s, this guy’s on a lucky streak . . .

On the corner stood some kids who looked as evil as the brass skulls on the Treasure Island’s doors.

We have a police substation here now, and walking police, the driver said. Now, over that way is Nucleus Plaza. That place got burned during the Rodney King copycat riots.

But on the Strip it’s pretty safe?

Casinos have got such a strong security force that they’ve eliminated crime in their area, but as a result of getting that security, they can also keep crime from getting to press. Every now and then there’s violence, but they hush it up. That’s what I say, but course you’ll never be able to prove it.

Vacant lots that smelled like piss, a bar, a dry cleaner and laundromat, these were all good
clues
as Mr. Private Eye Tyler might have said, but although Tyler and the driver kept looking for the good stuff (the driver half-heartedly) they could not find any crackhouse that was open. Tyler didn’t really care.

The driver was telling him a story about a fare who wanted crack:

I picked ’im up at a nudie place and he asked me to take him downtown, and he pulled over in one of those light industrial places. I said, look, I don’t want you doing that business in my cab. He throws me a ten (it was like a four dollar fare) and he says to me: Drive around the block, and if you don’t get another fare come back and pick me up. Well, so I came back and got ’im, and boy was he hopping mad! Man, but they’d sold him some rock—real rock! He’d paid for crack cocaine and what he got was a quartz crystal.

That was Las Vegas ersatz for you, Tyler thought. Casinos and the crackhouses, it was all the same.

Feminine Circus is a product of Circus-Circus and Excalibur, the driver was saying. They know everything there is to know about making money. They only operate out of cash flow. They do everything reasonably well . . .

Yeah, that applies to crack dealers, too, said Tyler.

The driver chuckled.

So you think Brady’s pretty smart, huh?

He’s the man of the hour. He’s the great American untouchable. And Feminine Circus, well, I’m just amazed no one ever thought of it before. It sums up the national mood, you could almost say. It’s brilliant. It’s as real as you want it to be. It’s . . .

Have you been there? asked Tyler.

Hey, man, you getting nosy on me? What are you, some kind of cop?

I didn’t mean it like that. I was just wondering if Feminine Circus is worth going to, that’s all.

Well, it’s pretty wild in there, the driver said. Everybody tries it once. I guess I don’t mind telling you I’ve tried it. You go in, and they have all these ugly girls who stink, and they drool all over you. That Brady, I have to say, I respect his balls, when everything else in Vegas is so pretty-pretty, to come up with something that looks like where we are now. . .

So those girls of his, those virtualettes—

Oh, that’s a standing joke, said the driver. Don’t tell me you believe those girls aren’t real . . .

They were swinging back in to town again, passing the Satin Saddle, a topless place, and the Palomino, which was bottomless, and the driver said: The Palomino has a cover of ten bucks and a two drink minimum at six bucks apiece, and Tyler thought: why, that’s a step ahead of the crack dealers! I never met a crack dealer who charged a cover.

You think Feminine Circus will do well? he said idly.

You mean, will they get raided?

Well, if they’re real girls . . .

See, that’s Brady’s genius, said the driver. Nobody cares about retarded girls. But sooner or later some feminist will bust his balls. If he’s smart he’ll make his bundle and leave the country . . .

You build a new one and it’ll always be full, the driver went on. Whether that’s going to be enough to make the whole city go, I don’t know. I don’t see that the owners care, either. If Brady’s new seven thousand bed fuckhouse creates seven thousand vacancies someplace else, Brady won’t care. But you have to believe that the stock market will keep going up in the long run, and Vegas will keep growing, and people will keep spending money on products no one’s even thought of yet. Me, I’m working on a certain kind of virtual pet. If I can just unkink one glitch, then you won’t see me driving this cab anymore . . .

•

For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil. But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.

 

P
ROVERBS
5.3–5

•

On Larkin and McAllister just past the old library rose another grimy granite mausoleum, whose neoclassical statues on high were speckled and pitted by polluted air so that they now resembled the flesh of a Capp Street girl, and beneath these poxed entities rose from a sleeping bag, not unlike those of a priest elevating the host, a pair of arms. The arms embraced a dog, which opened its mouth and softly panted, while the hair of homeless outcasts blew in the wind. The dog was tied to the left arm with a length of clothesline because he sometimes liked to wander beyond his own good. He almost never barked. When he was a puppy, the biker he’d then belonged to had trained him in the ways of silence by biting his ear whenever he uttered any sound, even a whimper. The biker had moved to Ohio, abandoning this dog now skilled in silence. It was evening, and the arms were both tired. Their owner was a man named Crutches, who whispered: They tried to gimme a ticket for littering. Can you believe it? Yeah, well, I be rollin’ it up so quick so they don’t see . . . Well, I be movin’ so fast . . .

Crutches’s comrades were squatting and smoking.

One of them pointed. Brady’s Boys were patrolling past.

Vigs! Better let the Queen know, whispered Crutches with a wink.

I saw one right over there, a vig was saying. Right behind the sheriff’s office.

And I seen
you,
too, said Crutches to himself. You can’t slip nothin’ by me.

Ready to do it again? said the first vig.

Okay, his colleague replied. Here’s an easy one. Leviticus 18.3.

Let’s skip the Egypt part. That’s irrelevant. God says to Moses:
You shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you.

Good, but you forgot to say Amen. Now Leviticus 20.23.

And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation which I am casting out before you; for they did all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.
Amen.

Sighing, Crutches got up, gripping one of his eponymous instruments of locomotion in each armpit while the dog waited patiently, then slowly grated, dragged and clattered his weary way down to the Turk Street parking garage, outside of which Strawberry was trolling for sex work. As Crutches wheezed and cackled
Aintcha an eyeful now?
the dog with surprising initiative lunged forward, almost pulling the homeless man down, and licked her miniskirt.

Aw, ain’t that sweet, the whore said. He wants to kiss me.

Hey, Killer, cut that out! Listen, Strawberry. Tell your Big Bitch there’s new vigs in town. They got like uniforms and everything. It looks bad. I told Maj before, I . . .

Okay, Crutches, I’ll tell her. She’s already heard. But I gotta go now. I’m kinda busy right now, okay?

Any luck?

Oh, my regular shoulda showed up half an hour ago. I was hoping to do that one quick flatback and . . .

An’ tell her I don’t want no reward or anything, but . . .

But you didn’t tell us just out of the goodness of your goddamned heart, right?

Amen, sister! Sure has been one tough month. And they got these red jerseys, well, maybe vermillion you might call it, with the letters
B.B.
embroidered on the front. They say it means
Brady’s Boys . . .

All right, Crutches, thanks. I appreciate it. Now lemme do my job.

I guess I’ll never see it. I guess you streetcrawling bitches won’t send one goddamned rock my way. Do I get cynical? Sometimes I don’t feel like doing
my
job.

Now, did anyone see my little encounter with the man across the street? said Rodrigo.

Yes, we posted you.

That man is
scum.
That man’s a
Queen’s man.
Put him in the database. His name’s Crutches. He talked back to me. He practically threatened me. But I got the last word. Remember that, troops. The last word must be yours. Sometimes you gotta draw your line in the sand. Form up, form up!

Rodrigo paced like a tiger and went up to the flag-wavers who were ignoring him, and he cried: Hey, why aren’t you training with us to stamp out dirt?

A teen approached, and soon Rodrigo was shaking his hand, saying: Good to meet you, man!

The tall gangbanger types would smile, wad Rodrigo’s leaflets up and toss them. Rodrigo kept smiling. —You gotta be loud, he told his shyest soldiers. You’re
Brady’s Boys.

Can I take a picture of you with my little girl? a grandmother said.

Sure, lady. Right over here. Post me, boys.

Someone threw a bottle on the sidewalk, and a Brady’s Boy rolled it carefully away with the toe of his boot . . .

Shyly and halfheartedly, a Brady’s Boy got out a leaflet and handed it to the small, slender black woman.

Mm hm, said the Queen.

And, ma’am, if you’d care to help us with a small d-d-donation . . . said the boy.

What is it you’re tryin’ to do, honey? Put the hookers out of business?

That’s right, ma’am.

What do you have against hookers?

We have n-n-n-nothing
against
them, ma’am. We want to help them. They’re all abused . . .

You mean raped.

Th-th-that’s right, ma’am.

Here’s a dollar, said the Queen. You seem like a nice boy. Have you ever been with a prostitute?

No, ma’am. Excuse me. Ma’am?

Yes.

Wh-wh-where are you from, ma’am?

And you ask everybody that, don’t you?

Yes, ma’am, said the boy, remembering his squad leader’s instructions: Royce, you gotta smile at ’em, say hi, how ya doin’? Then you’re gonna ask ’em: Are you interested in getting involved?

Well, I’m from the South, said the Queen.

A-a-ah, said the boy uncertainly. That’s good.

Yeah, but now it changed a whole lot since I been there last time, it seems.

Like how?

Like it’s raggedy now. The house I was raised in, that’s gone. Just an empty lot. I was hopin’ to see the house I was raised in.

The boy had run entirely out of utterances. Returning the leaflet to his hand, the Queen returned to Justin’s side, sighing: The younger generation . . .

Marching proudly back on down the parade path, the boy reached HQ: a small, grimy storefront on Golden Gate just past Polk, where beneath a wall of plastic cartons filled with empty beer cans his colleagues were being videotaped by Channel Seven News. He was afraid, and ran to go get doughnuts.