by Lou Berney
23
Big Ed Zingel. Where to begin? Guidry met him for the first time in 1955, at a shindig Moe Dalitz threw to celebrate the opening of the Dunes. Sinatra was there, Rita Hayworth and her husband, Dick Haymes. After the show in the main room, Vera-Ellen stopped by to mingle and play craps.
Then as now Ed was at the center of the spiderweb in Vegas. Moe Dalitz’s associates back east preferred to make money, not spend it, so they needed someone who could line up straight investors to build and expand the casinos. Ed brought in Valley National Bank in Phoenix, schoolteacher pension funds from California, you name it. He had the touch. He’d already made one fortune during the war, buying old silver mines and stripping them for construction materials.
At the Dunes party in ’55, Big Ed had handed Guidry a business card with his name, a telephone number, and two words in elegant embossed script: “Big Ideas.”
They’d chatted. Ed had taken a shine to Guidry. “I like the cut of your jib, kid.” Until Ed discovered that Guidry worked for Carlos Marcello.
“You know what I’d like to see?” Ed grabbed another glass of champagne from the waiter and mused. “I’d like to see that backstabbing cocksucker’s face when he opens a package and inside it’s full of pieces of you. How sore would he be, do you think?”
Big Ed, dead serious. Guidry could play this one of two ways: the right way or the wrong way. Which was which?
“It depends on the pieces,” Guidry said.
Ed laughed and laughed. The kid with the well-cut jib wiped sweat from his brow, relieved. Because Big Ed Zingel was no joke. That very night he’d given a toast to his old friend and business partner Maury Schiffman that was so heartfelt not an eye remained dry. Two weeks later Maury and his wife were found dead in their vacation cabin in Tahoe, Maury strangled and the wife shot in the head. Rumor had it that Big Ed killed them himself, just for kicks. Sofa pillows had been placed around the wife’s head so her brains wouldn’t leak onto the expensive Oriental rug.
More recently, a year or so ago, Hoover had wanted an inside peek at Ed’s operation. The FBI didn’t have any female agents, so they picked a number from the typing pool to go undercover. The girl never stood a chance. Ed sniffed her out and sent Hoover a message.
“He’s a real sweetheart, humble as pie,” Guidry told Charlotte. She’d never have to meet Ed, so Guidry could lay it on thick. “He built a hospital in Las Vegas, every dime out of his own pocket, but he wouldn’t let them put his name on it.”
“And you really think he’ll just … loan me a car?” she said.
“I do think so,” Guidry said. “He’s out of town for the next couple of days, but once he gets back, you can count on it.”
“How do you two know each other?”
“Besides the dealerships he owns the biggest insurance agency in Nevada. That’s how we met, at a convention in Minneapolis. We started jawing about policy proceeds.”
Guidry made it to Vegas only once every year or so. Ed always made time for drinks or dinner. At the end of the evening, he’d give Guidry a bear hug. “Guys like us, we have to stick together.”
Las Vegas approached. Too bad it was only one o’clock in the afternoon. Vegas was best at dusk. The mountains banded with different shades of purple, the lights of the Strip heating the low-hanging clouds like coals.
Guidry looked over at Charlotte. He moved his knee so that it touched hers. She smiled and pressed her knee back against his. In bed last night, he’d had the usual good time. Better than the usual. He hadn’t lost interest halfway through. He hadn’t wanted to be somewhere else.
“I read in a magazine that they test atomic bombs near Las Vegas,” Charlotte said. The girls were asleep in the backseat. “I read that families drive out to watch, like they’re watching a drive-in movie.”
“Not for the last few years,” Guidry said. “Before that, yes. You could see the blast from the top floor of the hotels downtown. From the roofs.”
“Really?” she said.
“Kiss me.”
Charlotte smiled again but didn’t turn from the window. “An atomic bomb. I don’t think I’d want to see something like that.”
“Neither would I,” Guidry said.
“I know it’s supposed to be beautiful. Maybe I’d take a picture of the people watching the explosion instead.”
Keep your eye on the ball, Guidry cautioned himself again. A man like Big Ed required one’s complete attention. Ed enjoyed the sport of life, and Guidry could expect, in the best of circumstances, a surprise twist or two. In the worst of circumstances, Ed had lured Guidry to Vegas so that he could sell him back to Carlos. Ed was a businessman, after all, and what profiteth it a man if he made no profit?
And even if Ed fully intended to honor his promise to Guidry today, his mood might shift on a whim tomorrow. Ed’s mood was notorious for doing just that.
“You take pictures of shadows,” Guidry said. “You take pictures of people watching the thing, but not of the thing they’re watching.”
She laughed. “You’re baffled.”
“I’m intrigued,” he said.
“I like … what gets missed.”
“What gets missed?”
“Every morning when I step out the front door, I always look over to the left, to see if Mr. Broom is on his porch. And I always think the same thing: He’s such a grouch, why do I even bother to wave? And then I look to the right, at the crepe myrtle by the fence. And I always think the same thing, that I wish it bloomed for more than just a few weeks every summer.”
He liked how he didn’t know which turn her mind might take next. “Now I’m baffled,” he said.
“When I have a camera in my hand, it reminds me to look in new places. To have new thoughts, I suppose.” She laughed again, embarrassed. “Just listen to me. Or rather please don’t.”
“Please don’t stop,” Guidry said. “I beg of you.”
The Hacienda suited Guidry’s needs to a tee. The only casino and resort in Las Vegas aimed at squares and families, with a miniature-golf course and a go-kart track. The only casino and resort stranded at the southern end of the Strip, across from the airport and far from all the swinging joints. The only casino and resort with no mob connection. The Hacienda lost money every year, even without a rake. It wasn’t worth the trouble.
Sure, never say never, Guidry might run into someone he knew at the Hacienda, but it was unlikely. And with Charlotte and the girls by his side, he’d blend right in.
The sign towered above the parking lot, a cowboy on a bucking bronco waving hello, hello, hello, to the passing motorists—or maybe good-bye, good-bye, good-bye to his money. He put old Big Chief back in Arizona to shame.
Rosemary and Joan oohed and aahed. There was a Bonnie Best dress shop in the lobby, and the theater marquee advertised a puppet show called Les Poupées de Paris. Guidry translated for them: The Dolls of Paris.
“Mommy,” Rosemary said, her voice hushed, like she was in church. “Do you know what this is just like?”
“What, sweetie?” Charlotte said.
“It’s just like the movie,” Joan said, her voice hushed, too. “Like The Wizard of Oz.”
The desk clerk barely glanced at the dog. Las Vegas was like New Orleans in that respect: Anything goes, as long as you had the dough to pay for it. God bless America.
Too chilly to swim this time of year but warm enough to eat lunch outside by the sparkling pool. The hot dogs came with ketchup, mustard, and pickle relish, each condiment in its own dish with its own tiny spoon. Rosemary and Joan had died and gone to heaven.
Lists and more lists. Favorite colors. Favorite songs. Favorite foods. Guidry tried to add fried eggs to the list of favorite foods and was duly corrected. Favorite lunch foods.
He hadn’t realized until now just how much the girls resembled their mother. They had the same set to the jaw, the same way of looking life right in the eye. Letting it know, Go ahead and just try, I dare you.
Favorite bo
oks. Favorite fairy tales. Favorite characters in fairy tales. The wind ruffled the surface of the pool.
He didn’t hit the girls, the father. That was Guidry’s well-educated guess, now that he’d spent a few days around them. Maybe the guy was crazy about his daughters. Guidry couldn’t see any reason he wouldn’t be. Did the guy, now that he’d lost his kids, feel like his heart had been torn from his chest? How did it feel to feel that way? Guidry had forgotten. He had no desire to find out again.
“Hey,” he said. “Who wants to go drive the go-karts?”
But you had to be at least twelve years old to get behind the wheel. So they played miniature golf instead. Guidry discovered that he was a bad miniature golfer. Truly awful. He skipped the ball off the slope of the volcano, sank it in the drink, missed the windmill entirely. The girls remained unfailingly polite. “Don’t worry, that was a very hard hole.”
Before her last putt, Charlotte paused. She looked up, around. At the palm trees and the casino towers down the Strip. At Guidry.
“Where am I?” she said.
Guidry didn’t have to ask what she meant. He understood exactly.
In bed that night, Guidry once again couldn’t get enough of Charlotte. You’d have thought that Charlotte was the first naked woman he’d ever had his hands on, his mouth.
Afterward he lifted his arm and she slipped underneath to lay her head on his chest. A perfect fit, like the tumblers of a lock clicking into place. He turned his knee, and she hooked a bare leg over. They’d left the drapes open. The moonlight hummed.
With most women Guidry would’ve been shot out of the cannon by now, already dressed and halfway out the door. But he had to play the part, didn’t he? Frank Wainwright. The skin of her inner thigh was warm and silky and sticky. He could feel her pulse just beneath the skin, the beat of the band slowing bar by bar. So what if he happened to like the role he was acting, the part he was playing? It was still only that, a role, a part.
She ran her palm over his chest, almost touching it but not quite, like she was checking to see if a stove burner was hot.
“You’re hairy,” she said.
“You’ve just now noticed?” he said.
In the drowsy, dreamy moonlight, it wasn’t hard for Guidry to imagine that this was really his life. It wasn’t hard to imagine a different life for Annette, too. Where would his baby sister be right now? Not stuck in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, Guidry could promise you that.
A nurse. Yes. The cool head in a crisis, up to her elbows in blood and guts, never batting an eyelash, keeping boys alive during the war until the doctors could sew them back together.
She fell for one of those dogfaces, a big-beamed, broad-shouldered sergeant, jovial and kindhearted. Were there those sorts of men in the world? Maybe there were. Guidry came to every Christmas dinner, he spoiled his nieces and nephews rotten. Annette lectured him affectionately. She told him to find a woman as smart as him, or smarter, even better. Don’t be scared, Frick, she won’t bite. She still called him Frick, from when she was a fat, wobbly toddler and couldn’t pronounce his name. He still called her Frack.
Someday she’d have to die, but this time in a hospital bed, surrounded by kids and grandkids and flowers in vases, her big brother holding her hand.
“Were you ever married, Frank?” Charlotte said.
“No.”
Her hand had moved to his face. Her fingers traced the outline of his lips, his nose, his cheek, the scar.
“I don’t want to go,” she said.
He didn’t want her to go either. When she left, the curtain would come down and Frank Wainwright would exit stage left. He’d already put off the call to Ed longer than was wise. He couldn’t put it off any longer.
“You know you can spend the night here,” he said.
“You know I can’t,” she said.
“The girls are just across the hall, and they’re sound sleepers. You said so yourself.”
She swung out of bed and got dressed. When she finished, she gathered the hair off her long, bare neck, twisted, snapped a rubber band in place. He reached for her hand, but she was already moving toward the bureau. She buttoned the last button of her blouse and gave herself a quick appraising glance in the mirror.
“I fell out of a tree once, too,” she said.
Guidry lagged for a beat. And then, when she noticed, when she turned to look at him, he realized that she was talking about the scar under his eye, the lie he’d told about it. He tried to cover with a yawn and a stretch. Get your head out of your ass, he warned himself again. If he got lazy or too comfortable around Big Ed Zingel, the hammer would drop.
“Most kids do, I imagine,” he said. “I just happen to have the ding to prove it.”
She studied him for another moment and then put on her shoes.
“I remember lying on my back and staring up at the sky,” she said. “I wasn’t hurt, just the wind knocked out of me. Stunned. One second I was in the tree, the next second I was down on the ground. I remember thinking, ‘Now, how did that happen?’”
“I’m impressed,” he said. “I started bawling, probably.”
She leaned down to kiss him good-bye. “I don’t really know much about you, do I?”
Guidry, prepared now, plenty of lies at hand, started to say, What do you want to know about me? But as she moved toward the door, he realized that she’d been observing, not wondering.
“Shall we all have breakfast together tomorrow morning?” he said.
“It’s a date,” she said.
The Hacienda was only two stories tall. From his window Guidry couldn’t see the Strip or the mountains or even the pool. Just the moon and the razor-cut silhouettes of a few palm trees. He stood and listened to the faint fizzing and pop-pop-pop from the go-kart track for a while, and then he watched old reruns of Janet Dean, Registered Nurse. Poor Ella Raines, that good heart of hers always landing her in hot water.
Almost midnight. Quit stalling. Pick up the phone and dial the fucking thing.
The guy with the silky British accent answered. “Good evening,” he said. “The Zingel residence.”
“It’s Ed’s old pal from New Orleans,” Guidry said.
Guidry waited. Here we go. His last chance to read the tea leaves, to get a bead on Ed’s true intentions, good or evil, before it was too late. In the pulp westerns that Guidry had loved as a youth, the cowboy outlaw hero would put his ear to the iron rail and try to feel the vibrations of a train barreling down the tracks.
“Where are you?” Big Ed asked. “I thought you said you’d be here yesterday.”
“You’re eager to see me,” Guidry said.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Guidry smiled. Some men played cards, others chased girls. Ed liked to make you sweat. “Stop toying with me, Ed. I’m already worried down to a nub.”
“Stop what?” Ed said. “All right, all right. You can count on me, boychick. I haven’t changed my mind. There. Does that make you feel better?”
Guidry tried to pick up the vibrations in the smooth iron rail of Ed’s voice. Did Ed mean what he said? Or did he just believe that he meant it? Had he even made up his mind yet, what he was going to do about Guidry?
“You know when I’ll feel better, Ed?” Guidry said.
“When you’re on a plane to beautiful Indochina,” Ed said.
No. When the plane had landed in Indochina and Guidry hadn’t been shoved out of the cargo door somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
“We have a lot to talk about,” Ed said. “Now, tell me where you’re staying. I’ll send Leo to pick you up. Tomorrow at one o’clock. We’ll have a nice lunch.”
“I’ll take a cab,” Guidry said. “I don’t want to put you out.”
Ed laughed. “Where are you staying?”
“The Hacienda.”
“The Hacienda? What, you want to die of boredom?”
“I’m lying low, Ed. Maybe it slipped your mind why I’m here.”
“Who wan
ts a life without a little snap, crackle, and pop?” Ed said.
Guidry thought about the moment, during the game of miniature golf, when Charlotte looked up and around. Where am I? How did I get here?
“Tomorrow at one,” Guidry said. “I’ll be ready.”
24
Sunday morning. Pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast. A stroll around the resort. Joan spotted a lizard, baking on the sidewalk. Blinking, blinking, and then pop, gone. A game of checkers, fetch with the dog, more miniature golf. Guidry finally started to get the hang of the golf. Rosemary and Joan cheered his every putt. I could become accustomed to this, he thought. Accustomed to what, exactly? He wasn’t sure.
After the last hole, Guidry told Charlotte that he was off to meet his friend, the saintly and charitable car dealer. He made the girls promise, cross their hearts, not to have too much fun without him.
“I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” he said. “Wish me luck.”
Out front idled a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. The driver opened the rear door for Guidry. He was in his early seventies, tall and slender and debonair as hell, with a pencil-line mustache and a black-on-black Savile Row suit.
“Welcome to Las Vegas,” he said. The silky English accent from the phone. “I’m Leo, Mr. Zingel’s assistant. I trust you had a pleasant journey?”
Guidry looked over Leo. Guidry looked over the Rolls. The car was a mile long, sleek and gleaming, painted the metallic green shade of a menacing sky.
“Ed likes to make an impression, doesn’t he?” Guidry said.
Leo kept a straight face, but Guidry spotted a wry twinkle in his eye. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
They drove north up the Strip and then turned east on Bonanza. Guidry had never been to Ed’s house before. He envisioned a stone Tudor manor, gardens and manicured lawns, a secret room down in the basement with tile walls and a drain in the middle of the floor.
“Leo,” Guidry said. “Tell me. How long have you worked for Ed?”
