Bolan smiled grimly and said, "Go."
"ASA has artists in just about every segment of show business. I mean like Broadway, television, movies — when you think of show business, you can't help thinking about ASA, they're that big. Can you imagine what that means? This mythological and invisible second 'Government of America' is taking over the show world."
Bolan said nothing. He lit a cigarette and scowled at the smoke rising toward the ceiling of the bungalow.
After a moment of silence, the comic said, "You can't buy that, eh?"
"Sure, I buy it," Bolan replied.
"I know it may not seem very important, but… I mean, show biz is just a thin layer of frosting on American life, I realize that, but hell God, Bolan… my guts shake every time I think of turning the whole thing over to..."
"I never liked cake without frosting," Bolan said, abruptly rising to his feet. "So where do you stand right now with ASA?"
"That's where Autry comes in," Landers replied. "I filed a formal complaint with the guild. They sent Autry up to talk to me, and to poke around in the local situation. Said to keep it quiet about this mob stuff until they've had a chance to look into it."
So that was it, Bolan was thinking. A federal strike force was probably investigating the thing, using obscure local cops in undercover roles. The term "California carousel" which Lyons had mentioned was probably the operational code name for the thing.
He asked Anders, "Did ASA book you here?"
"They did not!" the comic snorted. "I told those guys to get lost. The guild got me a court injunction allowing me to act as a free agent pending outcome of a suit to dissolve my ASA contract."
"So now you're getting muscled," Bolan mused.
"That's the picture," Anders said. "Look, let's be honest. I thought I was too big for them to mess with this way. I found out quick. No one is that big."
"But you're still waving this red flag at them all the while."
"Damn right. I figure that's my only defense now. The more fuss I raise publicly, I figure they'll be that much more reluctant to just haul off and rub me out. I mean, it would be too obvious, wouldn't it?"
Bolan sighed. "Hell, I don't know," he said. "Your best bet, I guess, would be to cooperate with Autry. And speaking of that, those two bodies backstage will be found sooner or later. The police will be pulling you in, for questioning if nothing else. When they do, tell them the truth."
"Hell I wouldn't..."
"Yes you would. Give it to them just exactly the way it happened, and don't worry about fingering me. I'm already on the books as a mass murderer. A couple more won't make any difference. In fact, you'd better be the one to report the deaths, Anders. As soon as you give me what I..."
Bolan stopped talking abruptly and wheeled about in response to a commotion behind him, the Beretta out and swinging into the line-up.
Four of the prettiest intruders he'd ever slapped leather on were frozen there in the open doorway, gaping at the black blaster greeting them from Bolan's fist.
Anders quickly announced, "It's okay, girls. Get in here and shut that door."
A wide-eyed blonde at the rear of the group shoved the others forward and quietly closed the door. All four had that dazzling, twenty-karat look that reminds a guy of his manhood, and Bolan was certainly not immune to that sort of thing. But he disciplined his eyes and put away the Beretta as the girls edged on into the room.
There was a hair color for every taste, but the major differences ended right there. They were dressed alike, in peekaboo hotpants and plunging see-through tops which, altogether, revealed seemingly infinite legs and an extra dimension or two in divines developments elsewhere, and Bolan found himself wondering if they needed some sort of license to walk about in public like that.
He showed them his back and growled to Anders, "Let's get out of here."
The blonde had come forward and he could feel her eyes measuring him at close range. "Better not," she said in a pleasantly modulated voice. "We just came through the lobby and it's like instant panic back there."
"I'm not surprised," Bolan quietly commented, visualizing that flaming foursome leaving a mind-blown wake wherever they passed.
"They girls are okay, Bo... Frankie," Anders said.
"That's the idea," Bolan told him. "They don't need to get involved in this."
"We're already involved." The report came from a warm-eyed brunette who joined the crowd at the bar. Her hip bumped against Bolan's and remained there. She smiled at Anders and said, "I'm glad you took my advice and got a bodyguard, Tommy."
"Some bodyguard," the blonde commented. She pulled the dark glasses away from Bolan's face and smiled solemnly at him. "The panic in the lobby is a fuzzbuzz, cuz. Do you want to hear the rest of it?"
Bolan took back his glasses and dropped them into a pocket. "Okay," he said. "Let's have it."
"Introductions first," the blonde replied, smiling. "Who's the Greek-God-with-gun, Tommy?"
Anders was staring at Bolan with question marks in his eyes.
"She knows," Bolan growled.
The blonde laughed softly and said, "Yes, she knows. The Man from Mad, Mr. My Gun Is Quicker, and you picked a lousy spot for an execution. There's a blood-splattered hallway just outside Tommy's dressing room, two dead goons just down the way, and fuzz buzzing all over the place." She fingered the lapels of Bolan's jacket, adding, "The deputies are looking for a tall man in a pale blue suit who checked in with casino security credentials."
"Is that right?" Bolan growled.
"That's right. Those are pretty, blue bloodstains you're wearing, Mr. Grouch."
Anders chuckled nervously and said, "Lay off, Toby. The guy saved my life." To Bolan, he said, "Mack, meet Toby Ranger, Mother Nature's answer to Women's Lib. And don't try to get ahead of her, it's impossible."
Bolan's face relaxed somewhat and he took the girl's hand. "Truce," he suggested.
"Shortest war since Adam and Eve," she replied, then completed the introductions.
The brunette at Bolan's hip was Georgette Chebleu, French-Canadian, a mischievous-eyed swinger who obviously liked body contact and made no bones about it. The auburn-haired one was a sober-puss with rosepetal skin and eyes that tended to brood; she met Bolan with a frown. She was identified as Smiley Dublin and said nothing to dispute the introduction. The fourth girl was Sally Palmer, a soft brunette with babydoll eyes and that open, ingenuous look of the small-town girl.
All four were tall, sleek, beautiful, and Bolan didn't have to catch their act to know they were good. There was a showbiz aura about them — in their movements, their actions, the way they held themselves — they had the mystique of the showbiz pro who had come and conquered.
"We don't usually run around town dressed this way," Sally Palmer was explaining, as though it were very important that she do so. "We just — this is our first Vegas date," she finished weakly. "We want to… be noticed."
"Never fear," Bolan said. He told Anders, "Give.me some other names and I'll be on my way."
"What names?" the blonde asked, before Anders could open his mouth.
"Buzz off, beautiful," Bolan said, without looking at her. He was glaring at Anders and thinking how easy it would be to act human with these girls — and how nice it would be. "Names, Anders," he snapped.
"Shortest truce since Bonnie and Clyde," Toby declared. 'Don't tell him a damn thing, Tommy."
"Hell God, you two cut it out," the comedian growled. He extracted a folded sheet of note paper from his wallet and passed it over the bar to Bolan. "You'll find it all right here," he told him. "My last will and monologue. Keep it, I got copies everywhere."
Bolan briefly studied the hand-scrawled sheet, grunted, and thrust it into his pocket. "Okay," he said. "Now make that call."
"What call?" the blonde wanted to know.
"He wants me to report the… uh… killings," Anders told her.
"Its a little late for that," she huffed.
"Better still
," Bolan said, ignoring the girl, "don't call. Go to the lobby and collar a cop. You're excited, shook-up. I pulled you out of the casino at gunpoint, took you to the parking lot, questioned you, then let you go. Other than eyeballing the killings, that's all you know."
"Yeah, that's all I know," Anders muttered. He finished his drink and moved around the end of the bar.
Toby stopped him there. "Hold it," she said. "That takes care of you, but what about Captain Puff here?" Her eyes raked Bolan in a quick inspection. "Do you also turn invisible?"
"Almost," Bolan replied, showing her a tight grin. "Don't worry, I'm leaving."
"Almost isn't good enough," she told him. "You haven't been listening to me. This place is crawling with police. I heard them talking. They have the entire place sealed off. And they're starting a room-to-room search. And they know whom they're looking for."
He briefly chewed the information, then asked her, "So what do you suggest?"
She flashed him a smile and announced, "It's a quick-change time, girls. Break out the bikinis, the fishnets." To Bolan, she said, "Strip."
He told her, "I do not turn invisible."
She said, "No, but you sure turn red. Don't worry, we're just going for a swim."
Two minutes later, four bewitching and giggling young women appeared on the patio — wearing, for all practical purposes, nothing. A dozen or so late hangers-on sat at poolside tables, talking quietly and sipping drinks. Heads turned and lounge chairs creaked in acknowledgement of the new quality added to nighttime bathing, and a middle-aged man sitting alone stood up to get a better view.
Two of the girls mounted the diving platform and went into a wild go-go routine under the floodlight there, while the other two gyrated at the water's edge just below.
A uniformed deputy sheriff moved into view across the way, arms crossed and head tilted to the diving platform.
And no one noticed the tall, lithe man in jockey shorts who strode from the shadows of a bungalow, quickly crossed the few yards of flagstones, and quietly entered the waters of the pool. None noticed, that is, except the four young women. They joined him then, diving in with playful shrieks and clustering about himin the water.
At the same moment, another man ran panting and wild-eyed into the main lobby to tell a breathless story of murder and kidnapping.
Bolan had swum away from the cops once, but that had been at Miami Beach and in the Atlantic Ocean. Now he was wondering if he could do as well treading water in a hotel pool at Vegas, with four dutiful attendants to keep reminding him how sweet life could be.
He felt a soft body gently gyrating against his beneath the water and a warm voice with a barely noticeable French accent was telling him, "You are a very attractive man, to be a killer."
For some odd reason, Bolan at that moment thought of Carl Lyons and of something the cop had said to him during that soft run into town such a short while earlier.
The busty blonde was hanging onto his shoulder and playfully touseling his hair. "Some killer," she said. "He didn't even bring his gun."
The breathless French accent protested, "Oh, but I think he has a very nice gun."
"Oh well," Bolan said to no one in particular, "we do."
Chapter Seven
Big winner
Vito Apostinni was a highly cautious Mafioso, and a cunning one. He had to be, to survive in a job which called for a continual and ever-changing mixture of vigilance, diplomacy, instinctive know-how, and ruth-lessness. Casino bosses are not generally renowned for longevity on the job, especially not in the mob casinos — and the Gold Duster was one of the oldest and largest mob joints on the strip. One had to be always certain to whom one was speaking, especially in the delicate matter of okaying credit and other rare privileges. One might even be speaking to an absentee and off-the-record owner, or to a close friend or associate of the same — or one could even be dealing with a fallen-from-grace ex-friend and persona non grata, a "leper," in the constantly shifting and treacherous jungle of the underworld social register.
Vito Apostinni, in sixteen years on the job, had never once crossed the wrong guy nor had he ever been "taken" by a smooth operator. That sort of record spelled success for a casino operator — if he could keep his other business in order, as well. For instance, a successful boss had better keep his winning percentages in good shape. Any continuing decline or bad run could begin to look suspicious. He should not drink too much, become overly ostentatious in his personal habits, nor indulge in too much action at his own tables. He also had better pay close attention to his skim percentage and accomplish the regular rake-offs without getting caught by state gaming agents or by the ever-present Internal Revenue boys.
This latter consideration was most important. The skim off the top, much of it, was used to settle off-the-record interests of owners who could not be issued casino licenses due to a narrow-minded state law which forbade the licensing of persons with criminal records. The Gold Duster was carrying more than a dozen such undercover partners, each of whom was provided weekly accountings and off-the-top payoffs. They got their regular profits too, of course — through their fronts — along with the other stockholders at dividend time, but there was always a need for black money in the lucrative cash markets of the underworld. The casinos provided an ever-flowing river of cash — hard cash — for quick opportunities and even larger profits in those market places.
Skim was also routinely funnelled into the "grease" routes, payoffs to various influence peddlers around the country. Much of these undeclared gambling profits also found their way into numbered bank accounts in Panama and Switzerland, for later investments in legitimate enterprises both abroad and at home, through foreign intermediaries.
Vito was a consummate skim artist. He had worked out a detection-proof system which would make a stage magician sick with envy. Vita's— system was no ordinary sleight-of-hand routine, however. It was built upon an elaborate code of signals between the dealers, the pit bosses, and the backroom accountants, and it involved a constant juggling of "fill" and "draw" records for each table in the casino. A "fill" constitutes a sum of chips and silver added to a table during a particular shift. A "draw" is the opposite case, the removal of excess table stakes. Paper currency flows across the game tables, also, from patron to dealer, the patron buying chips from the dealer and the latter immediately depositing the currency through a slot into the lock-box at the bottom of the table. It is this particular bit of action upon which Vito's "system" is based. Through an elaborate signalling arrangement, a constant tally was kept of the amount of currency going into the lock-boxes, making possible the pre-juggling of balance sheets for the official counts.
The three soberest moments of the day for most professional Vegans are the shift-changes; these are the times for "the count." State law demands that a balance sheet for each gaming table be prepared at the end of every shift. All the action stops while the silver and chips are counted, the "fills" and "draws" calculated, and the currency from the lock-boxes removed for counting behind locked doors and under extreme security conditions.
For Vito Apostinni, the thrice-daily rituals were the cardinal points of his twenty-four-hour routine. Ordinarily he retired immediately after the 4 a.m. count, slept until eleven o'clock, had breakfast, a shower, a shave, and a rubdown — in that order — and he was back on hand again for the noon count. Afternoons were a time for relaxation, for visiting with old friends and cultivating new ones, for "juicing" visiting politicos and other important transients, and for attending to image-making community functions.
Five o'clock to seven were his "paperwork hours," during which time he studiously reviewed shift audits, pit averages, and reports on high rollers and big losers. In gambling parlance, a high roller is a patron who consistently bets heavily at the tables.
At seven o'clock Apostinni had his second and final meal of the day, usually a twenty-four-ounce steak, a dry roll, and a half head of lettuce without dressing. He always dined alone, usually
in seclusion, and all of his food was prepared by the same chef, a man of unquestioned loyalty who had been with Vito for sixteen years.
At eight o'clock he presided over the final count of the day and began his own official workday, remaining on the casino floor and personally supervising the action until the 4 a.m. count. Vito was the hardest working boss on the strip — or anywhere in the valley for that matter — and he was generally acknowledged as such. The forty-eight-year-old bachelor maintained his only residence on the premises in a specially-constructed efficiency apartment above the casino, and he literally lived on the job — rarely going into the adjacent hotel except to pay respects to a visiting dignitary or to use the eighteen-hole pro golf course. He was soft-spoken, articulate, apparently well educated, and he was generally respected by his employees.
With a strong instinct for image-making, a week never passed when Vito did not appear at some civic function, always with a staff-publicist in the close background taking notes and pictures. He was "generous" in his regular donations to local churches and community service organizations, and at least once every day he "came across" for a heavy loser who had gone broke at the Gold Duster, providing the victim with a non-negotiable airline ticket and a hundred dollars in cash, deliverable at the airport boarding gate by a staff publicist with camera. Of such frail and insignificant charities was fostered the image of "Heart of Gold Vito," a romantic reincarnation of the old Mississippi gambling men who would never let a victim slink away stone broke.
The publicists were never around at count time, when the take was being martialed and massaged into tidy balance sheets of fraud, theft, and conspiracy. And even after the massage, the Gold Duster's official gross profits still managed to hover in the $20,000,000 per year bracket.
Publicity pictures were also not taken of those rare instances when a dealer was discovered working his own personal brand of fraud and theft, and the ensuing grim moments in the back room where "security agents" pulverized the culprit's hands with steel bars or emblazoned large X's on the backs of the thieving hands with a red-hot branding iron.
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