As the shift ends the doors are opened, and the n\an in the charcoal suit leaves the room and walks, with—the guards, through the corridors, their feet shushing along the monogrammed carpets. The money, in strongboxes, is wheeled to an interior loading bay, where it is loaded into armored cars. As the ramp door swings open, to allow\the armored car out onto the early streets of Las Vegas, the man in the charcoal suit walks, Unnoticed, through, the doorway, and saunters up the ramp, out onto the sidewalk. He does not even glance up to see the imitation of New York on his left.
Las Vegas has become a child’s picture-book dream of a city—here a storybook castle, there a sphinx-flanked black pyramid beaming white light into the darkness as a landing beam for UFOs, and everywhere neon oracles and twisting screens predict happiness and good fortune, announce singers and comedians and magicians in residence or on their way, and the lights always flash and beckon and call. Once every hour a volcano erupts in light and flame. Once every hour a pirate ship sinks a man o’ war.
The man in the charcoal suit ambles comfortably along the sidewalk, feeling the flow of the money through the town. In the summer the streets are baking, and each store doorway he passes breathes wintry A/C out into the Sweaty warmth and chills the sweat on his face. Now, in the desert winter, there’s a dry cold, which he appreciates. In his mind the movement of money forms a fine latticework, a three dimensional cat’s cradle of light and motion. What he finds attractive about this desert city is the speed of movement, the way the money moves from place to place and hand to hand: it’s a rush for him, a high, and it pulls him like an addict to the street.
A taxi follows him slowly down the street, keeping its distance. He does not notice it; it does not occur to him to notice it: he is so rarely noticed himself that he finds the concept that he could be being followed almost inconceivable.
It’s four in the morning, and he finds himself drawn to a hotel and casino that has been out of style for thirty years, still running until tomorrow or six months from now when they ‘II implode it and knock it down and build a pleasure palace where it was, and forget it forever. Nobody knows him, nobody remembers him, but the lobby bar is tacky and quiet, and the air is blue with old cigarette smoke and someone’s about to drop several million dollars on a poker game in a private room upstairs. The man in the charcoal suit settles himself in the bar several floors below the game, and is ignored by a waitress. A Muzak version of “Why Can’t He Be You?” is playing, almost subliminally. Five Elvis Presley impersonators, each man wearing a different-colored jumpsuit, watch a late night rerun of a football game on the bar TV.
A big man in a light gray suit sits at the man in the charcoal suit’s table, and, noticing him even if she does not notice the man in the charcoal suit, the waitress, who is too thin to be pretty, too obviously anorectic to work Luxor or the Tropicana, and who is counting the minutes until she gets off work, comes straight over and smiles. He grins widely at her. “You ‘re looking a treat tonight, m ‘dear, a fine sight for these poor old eyes,” he says, and, scenting a large tip, she smiles broadly at him. The man in the light gray suit orders a Jack Daniel’s for himself and a Laphroaig and water for the man in the charcoal suit sitting beside him.
“You know,” says the man in the light gray suit, when his drink arrives, “the finest line of poetry ever uttered in the history of this whole damn country was said by Canada Bill Jones in 1853, in Baton Rouge, while he was being robbed blind in a crooked game of faro. George Devol, who was, like Canada Bill, not a man who was averse to fleecing the odd sucker, drew Bill aside and asked him if he couldn ‘t see that the game was crooked. And Canada Bill sighed, and shrugged his shoulders, and said 7 know. But it’s the only game in town.’And he went back to the game.”
Dark eyes stare at the man in the light gray suit mistrustfully. The man in the charcoal suit says something in reply. ‘The man in the light suit, who has a graying reddish beard, shakes his head. ‘ ‘““‘“‘,
“Look,” he says, “I’m sorry about what went down in Wisconsin. But I got you all out safely, didn ‘t I? No one was hurt.”
The man in the dark suit sips his Laphroaig and water, savoring the marshy taste, the body-in-the-bog quality of the whiskey. He asks a question.
“I don’t know. Everything’s moving faster than I expected. Everyone’s got a hard-on for the kid I hired to run errands—I’ve got him outside, waiting in the taxi. Are you still in?”
The man in the dark suit replies.
The bearded man shakes his head. “She’s not been seen for two hundred years. If she isn’t dead she’s taken herself out of the picture.”
Something else is said.
“Look,” says the bearded man, knocking back his Jack Daniel’s. “You come in, be there when we needyou, and I’ll take care of you. Whaddayou want? Soma? I can get you a bottle of Soma. The real stuff.”
The man in the dark suit stares. Then he nods hi&head, reluctantly, and makes a comment.