Las Vegas Noir

by Jarret Keene

  “This guy’s an asshole. I just want you to stand there and look big, and if things get tense you pull the grip out of your waistband so he can see it.”

  Not that I like anything I’ve heard in the last thirty seconds, but the thing I like least is the part where I stick a firearm down my pants. I can’t stand the idea of looking weak in Babs’s eyes, though, and by this time she’s out of the car, so I follow her to the door.

  When the door opens, an expressionless woman about seventy years old lets us in without a word. She has on a tank top and a pair of shorts that reveal a big scab on her shin. It looks like she slid all the way down her driveway with only one leg of her pants on.

  There are three medium-to-hot young women in the living room watching Cops. The action is taking place in North Las Vegas, and they’re excited because the bust onscreen is happening on a street they know.

  “There’s Lonnie’s, look,” one of them says. She has long, frizzy red hair and freckles as big as moles, and like the old lady, she has a big scab on one knee. She’s picking at it with one long, red fingernail as she watches.

  “I’ve totally seen that dude,” one of her friends says.

  “Which? The cop or the pimp?”

  “Wannabe pimp, more like. He comes in for a drink when he’s got cash.”

  “Gross.”

  “Where’s Kleindienst?” Babs asks, and when they ignore her she grabs the remote and shuts the TV off, which prompts a volley of protest until she asks again, louder.

  The redhead stops picking at the scab and half rises. “In the dining room, bitch. Gimme my fucking remote.”

  Babs throws the remote behind the television to another chorus of abuse, and I follow her through the kitchen into a dark room where a man in what I take to be a blackjack dealer’s vest and starched white shirt sits with an overhead light shining down on him.

  He’s playing solitaire and wearing a clear green visor, which gives him the pallor of a reanimated corpse and makes him look to my eye more like a dealer from a film than a real one. Remembering my role, I lean against the doorframe and fold my arms across my chest while Babs walks up to the table. I’m expecting something out of a movie, a tense, quiet negotiation followed by a quick exit, so I’m feeling suave and invulnerable, especially with the gun down my pants. It feels pretty cool, actually, like a second dick.

  Babs opens with, “You lying, ripping-off piece of shit.” This gets the man to glance up from his game for the first time. “You owe me, Kleindienst.”

  “I don’t owe you shit.” He looks over at me. I rise to my full height and move my hand toward my crotch. The adrenaline is pumping. “Who’s this cunt?” he asks. “One of your johns?”

  He has just insulted the woman I sort of love, and I’m still feeling the effect of too many cross-tops—I just remembered numbers seven and eight, popped at a filling station around 8 p.m. just in case—and between those and my instinctive gallantry and the drama of the thing, I commit what will in retrospect seem an error in tactics: I pull out the gun and point it at Kleindienst’s face.

  Babs looks at me for a millisecond, stricken. Then she pulls another pistol out of her bag and points it at the man’s face as well. “Turn the light on, Tate.”

  “Tate?” Kleindienst says. “Your muscle’s name is Tate? Oh, my goodness gracious.”

  I turn the light on. “Family name,” I say, trying to sound like a killer.

  The room is white with brass fittings and mirrors. It doesn’t look as cool now as it did in the dark, and I see that Kleindienst is quite a bit younger than I’d imagined, maybe thirty or thirty-five. “Tell that bitch Darva to get in here with everything you got,” Babs tells him.

  He yells through the kitchen and a girl appears who looks like a teenage runaway in a TV movie, complete with cutoff hot pants and a shirt tied at the midriff. “Run fetch me the whole batch,” he says. Then the three of us stand there feeling awkward, or at least the two men do. Babs looks perfectly comfortable.

  A minute later, Darva reappears in the doorway holding up four good-sized packages wrapped in aluminum foil.

  “Take ’em,” Kleindienst says. “No hard feelings?”

  “You douchebag,” Babs says, and she opens one of the packages, snorts a little bit off the end of her finger. Jangly as I am, I’m relieved when she doesn’t offer me a taste, and after a cursory glance at the other three packages, she seals them back up. “Don’t ever fuck around like that again.”

  We start toward the living room and before we get there Kleindienst yells something at us. I turn to find him holding a big fucking gun pointed in our general direction. I yelp and pull the trigger, and to my horror it just makes a clicking sound. I click again and again in Kleindienst’s direction as Babs fires, hitting him in the knee. He drops his gun, which sounds like a dumbell hitting the wooden floor, and falls clutching the gory knee, howling in an almost canine register. Poor Darva stands in the doorway of the dining room looking like she’s waiting for someone to tell her what to do.

  “You’re going to need to take Billy to the hospital,” she says to the paralyzed trio of Cops fans on the way out.

  We run to the car and I peel away from the curb. I don’t speak until we pull out of the subdivision. “How come mine didn’t go off?” I ask, mortified by my own whining tone.

  “Yeah, like I’m going to give you a loaded gun. I don’t even know you,” she says, and though my heart breaks a little, the events of the last five minutes have prepared me for the idea that there may be more to Babs than I previously fantasized. “Jesus, I didn’t tell you to pull the fucking gun on him. That could have gotten us both killed.”

  “Is the mob going to hunt you down now?” I ask.

  “What mob? Why?”

  “For robbing a big-time dealer?”

  “Billy Kleindienst? Give me a break. Billy’s a fucking courier. Was until tonight, anyway, now he’s just a crippled black-jack dealer. He’s about as low as you on the totem pole. What we took belongs to me and my friend Sandra anyway.”

  “You think they’re going to drive him to the hospital or call an ambulance?”

  She shakes her head. “Don’t give a shit, really. I did feel kind of sorry for that little Darva, though. I think she’s his girlfriend, which is just as pathetic as can be.” She looks over at me, shaking her head. “It all came out good, though, except for him getting it in the leg,” she says with a rueful, easy smile. “Billy fuckin’ Kleindienst.”

  I drive her to her house, in another subdivision. It’s on a rise, and we can see the lights of the Strip in the distance. She’s calmed down considerably, and the conversation is back in the realm of friendly flirtation. “You want to come in and taste some of this?” she asks.

  “No thanks,” I reply. I half-way think she’s going to insist, that the taste of speed is just a pretext for taking me inside and fucking me, but she doesn’t push it, just hands me Skip’s share of the crank and opens her door.

  “Nice meeting you,” she says.

  “If you ever come out to L.A., call me and we’ll go see an old movie,” I tell her. I wait until she gets inside before backing out of her driveway.

  Heading into town, I watch those lights blinking and illuminating the early-morning sky, no longer dreading the crashed-out sleeping jag that lies ahead, and for the first time it occurs to me that there’s something I really like about Las Vegas.

  THIS OR ANY DESERT

  BY VU TRAN

  Chinatown

  Six months ago, before all this, I drove into Las Vegas on a hot August twilight. My first time in the city. From the highway, I could see the Strip in the far distance, but also a lone dark cloud above it, flushed on a bed of light, glowing alien and purplish in the sky. My tired, pulpy brain at the time, I thought it was a UFO or something and nearly hit the truck ahead of me. Fifteen minutes later, at a gas station, I was told about the beam of light from atop that pyramid casino and how you can even see the beam from space, given no
clouds were in the way. My disappointment surprised me.

  The drive from Oakland had taken me almost a full day, so I checked into the Motel 6 near Chinatown and fell asleep with my shoes on and my gun still strapped to my ankle. I slept stupid for nine hours straight and woke up at 6 in the morning, my mouth and nostrils so dry it felt like someone had shoveled dirt over me in the night. The sun had not yet come out, but it was already 100 degrees outside. Not a cloud in the sky.

  After taking a long cold shower, I walked to the front office. The clerk—Chinese probably—was slurping his breakfast behind the counter and ignored me. I thought about flashing him my badge, but instead I brandished three days’ stay in advance, cash, which made him set down his chopsticks easily enough. He said nothing and hardly looked at me before handing me a receipt and walking back to his noodles or whatever the hell he was eating. When I asked him where I could get some eggs, he mumbled something in broken English, his mouth stuffed, glistening. In my younger days, I would have slapped him for his rudeness, just so I could. But I’d learned after Suzy left me to control my temper.

  I did see a ph. shop across the street and hoped they made it like she used to—the beef not too fatty, the soup not too sweet. Turned out theirs was even better, which didn’t surprise me, but it reminded me of something her best friend—a Vietnamese girl named Happy of all things—once told me four years ago when she was over at the house for Sunday ph.. Suzy had been mad at me that morning for nodding off at church, as I often did since my patrols didn’t end until midnight, and though she knew I’d only converted for her and had never really taken churchgoing seriously, she chewed me out all the way home, and with more venom than usual. So when she stepped outside to smoke after lunch, I asked Happy, “What’s bugging her lately?” Happy knew her better than anyone. She had been Suzy’s bridesmaid, and they talked on the phone every day in a mix of English and Vietnamese I never did understand—but she just shrugged at my question. I chuckled and said, “Only me, huh? I bet she tells you every bad thing about me.” But again she shrugged and said, very innocently, “She don’t talk about you much, Bob.” I’d long figured this much was true, but it burned to hear it acknowledged so casually. Suzy and I had been married ten years at the time. She’d leave me two years later.

  At the ph. shop, I stared out into the parking lot and watched a stout, middle-aged Asian man climb into a red BMW. It could have been him, but on his driver’s license Suzy’s new husband had broader cheeks and more stubborn eyes, and also sported a thin, sly mustache. DPS did list a silver Porsche and a brand-new red BMW under his name—Sonny Nguyen. The master files at Vegas Metro confirmed he was my age, that he owned a posh restaurant in town, that he once shot at a guy for insulting him—aggravated assault, no time done. It was Happy who told me he was a gambler, fully equipped apparently with a gambler’s temper and a gambler’s penchant for taking risks with little sense of the reward. Something in that reminded me of myself.

  In my twenty-five years on the Oakland force, I’d shot at people several times, in the arm, in the fleshy part of the thigh, mostly in response to them shooting at me; I had punched a hooker for biting my hand, choked out a belligerent Bible salesman, wrestled thugs twice my size and half my age; I once had to watch a five-year-old boy bleed to death after I night-sticked his mother, who had stabbed him, coked up out of her mind; and three or six times other officers have had to pull me off a scrotbag who’d gotten on my bad side. But never, not even once, had I come close to killing anyone.

  I walked down Spring Mountain Road and quickly regretted not taking my car. Vegas, outside of the Strip, is not a place for walkers, especially in this brutal heat. I’d pictured a Chinatown similar to Oakland’s or San Francisco’s, but the Vegas Chinatown was nothing more than a bloated strip mall—three or four blocks of it painted red and yellow, and pagodified, a theme park like the rest of the city. Nearly every establishment was a restaurant, and the one I was looking for was called Fuji West. I found it easily enough in one of those strip malls—nestled, with its dark temple-like entrance, between an Oriental art gallery and a two-story pet store. It was not set to open for another hour.

  Hardly surprising that a Vietnamese would own a sushi joint—Happy’s uncle owned a cowboy clothing store in Oakland. What did startle me was the seven-foot, white-aproned Mexican sweeping the patio, though you might as well have called it swinging a broom. He gazed down at me blankly when I asked for Sonny. He didn’t look dumb, just bored.

  “The owner,” I repeated. “Is he here?”

  “His name’s no Sonny.”

  “Well, can I speak to him, whatever his name is?”

  The Mexican, for whatever reason, handed me his broom and disappeared behind the two giant mahogany doors. A minute later a young Vietnamese man—late twenties probably, brightly groomed, dressed in a splendidly tailored charcoal suit and a precise pink tie—appeared in his place. He smiled at me, shook my hand. He relieved me of the broom and leaned it against one of the two wooden pillars that flanked the patio.

  “How may I help you, sir?” He spoke with a slight accent, his tone as formal as if he’d ironed it. He held his hands behind his back.

  “I’d like to see Sonny.”

  “I am sorry, but no one by that name works here. Perhaps you are mistaken? There are many sushi restaurants around here. If you like, I can direct you.”

  “I was told he owns this restaurant.”

  “Then you are mistaken. I am the owner.” He spoke like it was an innocent mistake, but his eyes had strayed twice from mine: once to the parking lot, once to my waist.

  “I’m not mistaken,” I replied, and looked at him hard to see if he would flinch.

  He did not. I was a head taller than him, my arms twice the size of his, but all I felt in his presence was my age. Even his hesitation seemed assured. He said, “I am not sure what I can do for you, sir.”

  “How about this. I’ll come back in two hours for some sushi and tea. And then, for dessert, all I’d like is a word or two with Mr. Nguyen. Please tell him that.”

  I turned to go, but then felt a movement toward me. The young man was no longer smiling. There was no meanness in his face, but his words had become chiseled.

  “Your name is Robert, isn’t it?” he declared. When I didn’t answer, he leaned in closer.

  “You should not be here. If you do not understand why I am saying this, then please understand my seriousness. Go back to your city and try to be happy.”

  That last thing somehow moved me. It was like he had patted my shoulder. I suddenly realized how handsome he was—how, if he wanted to, he could’ve modeled magazine ads for cologne or expensive sunglasses. For a moment I might have doubted that he was dangerous at all. He nodded at me, a succinct little bow, then grabbed the broom and walked back through the heavy mahogany doors of the restaurant.

  I felt tired again. Ph. always made me sleepy. I walked back to the hotel and in my room stripped down to my boxers and cranked up the AC before falling back into bed.

  People my age get certain feelings all the time, even if intuition had never been our strong suit in youth, and my inkling about this Sonny guy was that he was the type of restaurant owner who, if he came by at all, would only do so at night. My second inkling was that his dapper guard dog stayed on duty from open to close, and that he was just itching for the chance to eat me alive. I had a long night ahead of me. Before shutting my eyes, I decided to put my badge away, deep in the recesses of my suitcase. I would not need it.

  When Suzy left me two years ago, it was easy at first. No children. Few possessions to split up. And no one we knew really cared: Her family all still lived in Vietnam, my parents were long dead, and in our thirteen years together, I’d never gotten to know her Asian friends and the only things my cop buddies knew about her was her name and her temper. She gave me the news after Sunday dinner. I was sitting at the dining table, and she approached me from the kitchen, her mouth still swollen, and said, “I�
�m leaving tomorrow and I’m taking my clothes. You can have everything else.” Then she carried away my empty plate and I heard it shatter in the sink.

  The first time I met her I knew she was fearless. My partner and I were responding to a robbery at the flower shop where she worked. She’d been in America for a year. Her English was bad. When we arrived, she stood at the door with a baseball bat in one hand and pruning shears in the other. Before I could step out of the patrol car, she erupted in an angry, torrid description of what had happened. I barely understood a word—something about a gun and ruined roses—but I did know I liked her. The petite sprightly body. Her lips, her cheekbones, full and bold. Eyes that made me think of firecrackers. We found the perp two miles away limping and bleeding from a stab wound in his thigh. The pruning shears had done it. Suzy and I married four months later.

  Her real name was Hong, which meant rose in Vietnamese, but it sounded a bit piggish the way Americans pronounced it, so I suggested the name of my first girlfriend in high school, and this she did give me, even though her friends still called her Hong.

  Our first few years were happy. She took over the flower shop and I’d stop by every afternoon during my patrol to check in on her. We had a third of the week together and we spent it trying out every restaurant in Chinatown, going to the movies (she loved horror flicks), and walking the waterfront since the smell and the waves reminded her of Vietnam. At first I didn’t mind losing myself in her world: the Vietnamese church, the crosses in every room, the food, the sappy ballads on the stereo, all her friends who (with the exception of Happy) barely spoke a lick of English, even the morbid altar in the corner of the living room with the gruesome crucifix and the candles and pictures of dead grandparents and uncles and aunts. That was all fine, because being with her was like discovering a new, unexpected person in myself. But after two years of this, I finally noticed that she had no interest in discovering me: my job, my friends, my love for baseball, my craving for a burger or spaghetti now and then, the fact that until her I had not thought of Vietnam since 1973, when my unit just barely missed deployment. Vietnam was suddenly everything again … until she made it mean nothing. The least she could do was share her stories from the homeland, like how poor she’d grown up, or what cruel assholes the Communists were, or how her uncle or father or neighbor had gone to a concentration camp and was tortured or starved or something; but she’d only say her life back there was difficult and lonely, and she’d only speak of it with this kind of vague mysteriousness, like she was teaching me her language, like I’d never get it anyway. So I got nothing.