1: Yours Just For Playing

 

          My name is Jim Rafferty and I surf Las Vegas. Not like you might think of, with waves and wax and boards and that. What I do, I move through this city collecting things that are free. Mostly I surf the Strip, all those casinos, all their giveaways: key chains, hats and mugs, dice and cards, t-shirts. Face it, if you could beat Las Vegas, Vegas wouldn’t be there. The house always has an edge. So no wonder they dangle carrots – "Yours just for playing!" – and when they do, surf’s up.

          Just in the sports books alone you’ve got Super Bowl shot glasses, Derby Day souvenir wallets, World Series watches, cheap and digital, but cool and collectible with the baseball face.  Or the poker room with high-hand hats and bad-beat crying towels. When it's free, it's apt to get left behind. In my long experience, something of everything always gets left behind.

          Like slot cards, that earn comp points on slot play, redeemable for discounted show tickets or free meals or yet more key chains and coffee mugs. All the time you see people join the slot clubs, play the pull toys, then forget  their pretty plastic cards in the electronic card readers. Then I surf and collect them. I've been at it for years. 

          I collect coin tubs, what you put your quarters in when you win. Some I store, others I use to hold promotional pins and chips that I’ve found. Or slot tokens. If you look, you'll see: tokens get left in trays. I could play them back into the pull toys, but I'd rather collect them. It's what I like to do.

          There's this joke they tell on people like me, about a magazine called Obsessive Collector's Monthly and its special souvenir issue...

          But I did Vietnam and it did me; afterwards rain always spooked me.  So Margaret brought us to Vegas, the desert, far away from the rain, and then I wasn’t spooked. She made us buy a house, so now I have a house. But I don’t have Margaret, my Meg, who died young and didn’t deserve it, especially the pain which the VA docs said it was against VA regs to kill. And me there thinking, well, I had morphine in Vietnam –  ampoules once when I was wounded – and if I’d only collected them then, then Meggy wouldn’t have had to die in pain.

So that's when I started collecting. I collect sealed ketchup and tabasco mini bottles and mustard and jam jars abandoned on room service trays. They make a nice display in the kitchen. Not a shrine to the wife, nothing so morbid as that. But Meg liked the bright thing, magpie to my pack rat. I think she’d like her kitchen now. But it’s not a shrine, no. Don’t think that.

Trade shows are great to surf, especially tech shows, where it rains CD-ROMs and screwdriver sets, calculators, mouse pads, promotional pens, more than you could use in a lifetime. Easy to get in, just stake out the exits on the last day. People throw their badges away. Then it’s like trick or treat, and you even get a bag to haul away your loot, canvas or nylon, with a company logo printed on the side, so that's collectible too.  

          Ever since Vegas went Disney, my collection has taken a turn for the young. Tin dubloons from Treasure Island, Popeye pogs from the MGM Grand. Slammers and spinners. One casino has trading cards. Pretty soon they all will probably. And I’ll have a nice collection.

          Remember the Dunes?  I've got glass ashtrays from there, from before they blew it up; also the Park and the Mint and Castaways, the Silver Slipper, the Thunderbird if you remember back that far. I have something of everything from those places. Poker chips of course. Matchbooks. Sugar packets and swizzle sticks. Once there was a martini glass craze. Olives Up at the Holster Club! and Wally’s No-Weenie Martini. I have many of those.

There's a Sunday swap meet at the local junior college where I rent a table occasionally when the house starts to get out of control, which it can. Meg, she never would stand for it. For example, I brought home napkins. Perfectly good paper napkins from the Hacienda coffee shop, with a picture of a sleeping amigo and different riddles or jokes. They were pretty, plus free, and what could be better than that? I’ll never understand why Meggy bought napkins. I never bought a napkin in my life.

But you can have too many of them. Or lobby phone scratch pads, or sports book pens, or tiny hotel shampoos and hand lotions and soaps, which people will pay a quarter or a dollar for sometimes, so sometimes I box up the surplus and take it down to sell. I’ll take my old goods too, if I’m deep in a particular area, for example press kits from the World Series of Poker, which every year I find a press pass to.

One Sunday on display I had some logo shoe horns and sewing kits from downtown hotels, and a whole big bunch of green bow ties that O’Shea’s gave away one St. Patrick’s Day. Plus the usual chuffa: souvenir lighters; UNLV booster cups; jacket patches from the Alan King Tennis Classic. And these wooden chip racks from the El Rancho Vegas Casino, all varnished and embossed, virtually mint.

You may remember that particular week. It was the week of the big earthquake, the one that bounced the casinos all around. I remember it for when my chip racks caught a young lady’s eye, and so I met Megan, the second Meg in my life.

She wore Guess jeans and Oakley sunglasses and a billowy shirt with a huge Nike swoosh. Plus Reebok socks and Converse All-Star sneakers. She was a billboard. Many billboards. Blonde hair poked in a pony tail through the hole in the back of her No Fear hat. She had long, slender hands with ringless fingers, and a smooth, peach-fuzzy face, which split with a smile when she saw my chip racks and, "These," she said, "I'll take every last one of these."

Then it came out about this theme restaurant she worked for, Gangster’s, just now going up on the Strip, how they wanted to deck it with old cards and postcards, show posters, counter checks, coin wrappers, and blackjack shoes, stools and tables. Like the Hard Rock Café or Planet Hollywood, only not for music or movies, but the Golden Age of Vegas. Megan’s job was to buy props to trick the place out.

"But the stuff is just not out there," said Megan. "Matchbooks you find, ashtrays." She shot me this smile, this charm the old guy smile. "I’ll bet you’ve got ashtrays up the yin-yang." Then back to the chip racks. "But these things? You can’t find these. They’re gold." She became coyly self-conscious. "Probably shouldn’t have said that, huh? Probably the price just went up. That’s my problem. I’m too enthusiastic. I always get out ahead of my hand." Which she told me was poker talk for going too far too fast with cards that don't hold up. 

"So okay," she said, and took a theatrical deep breath. "How much for the chip racks? Be nice, my job’s on the line. By the way, I’m Megan." She stuck out a hand. "Meg." But Meg was my wife’s name, the departed Margaret, and it didn’t wear well on this glib young thing, not to me, not at all.

"They’re not for sale," I said.

"Oh, you’re good," she snarled jokily. "I never should’ve said I was desperate. Now seriously, how much?"

I said it again, "They’re not for sale." I don’t know why. She just irked me.

"Then what did you bring them out for? Show and tell?"

"I like to let them breathe," I said, which was true, but it made her testy, which made me testy too.

"Sell them to me. They’ll breathe every night on the Strip."

"Smoke’s not good for the wood," I said.

"We’ll put ‘em under glass!"

"No, I need these."

"How can you possibly need twenty chip racks from a dead casino?"

"I can't get any more. Do you have any idea how rare these are?"

"Of course I do. Why do you think I want them? Just sell me a few, huh? I've got to have something to show Jack."

"Jack?"

"My boss."

"Is he your boyfriend?"

"Screw you."

"You don’t usually call a boss Jack is all."

"Maybe not in your day, Gramps."

"Gramps?" I really almost shouted this, so that some people looked. Then it was awkward. We had ticked each other off and embarrassed each other in public. So I said at last, "I’ll sell you two." 

"Ten," she said. "Look, you have twenty."

"Five. And don’t ask what else I have. We’re done doing business."

She made a big production of choosing the choicest racks, then stuffed them angrily into a bag and snatched the receipt from my hand. "I would have been a good customer," she growled.

"I don't need customers," I growled back. As she walked away, she gave me the finger. I gave it right back, for she was rude and she had my wife’s name.

Like that should matter. It's only a name. But she came on so strong, and tried to run me over with pure youth. So I drove her off, and regretted it almost at once. After that I packed up and went home, a remorseful bad taste lingering in my mouth. I was certain that I'd never see her again.

Of course I was wrong within days.

2.  Crimes Against Value

 

That was Sunday; Monday I surfed the Luxor, and snacked a promotional disposable camera. Then next door to the Excalibur for the new football parlay card. Full color, coated silver paper, so a quality item and quite collectible. There in the sports book I scrounged a newspaper. I sat and read on a bench near the poker room, where the muffled clatter of chips, their soft bonk on the felt, felt soothing to my ears.

I thought about Meg, my Meg. She was Margaret when we met, Meggy when we married, Meg after that and for ten perfect years, then she died. After her I never bothered with women. My cousin comes in at Thanksgiving, with usually some contemporaneous female for me to meet, but I don’t have time for that. As for my sexual needs, I don’t mean to be coy but I have many collections.

I thought about Meg, my Meg.

Stupid to think about the other one anyhow.

Then it was Tuesday, Lucky Tuesday, when I always surf the Mirage, ever since the first Lucky Tuesday when I snacked a white satin jacket with The Mirage written in pastel script across the back. I found it abandoned in the race book, camped on it all day, then claimed it as salvage.  So Tuesdays I do the Mirage. You don’t like to wrinkle your luck. Late afternoon I found slot cards imprinted with the names Warren Peace and Finnegan Swake. People sign up with joke names, did you know? Pubdraft Vandermeer. Lunker Smallmouth. Although that could be real.

"They said you’d be here and, hey, here you are." I turned around and it was Meg again, looking, hey, really good, and looking not surprised to see me, which surprised me.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

"Tell you in a minute. Let's get some joe."

We stopped at a coffee stand. She bought us something called macchiato while I worked the condiments bar for just a couple of coffee creamers, the plastic cup kind sealed with foil, I might be running short at home. "You packed up fast," she said. "On Sunday."

"I was done for the day."

"I came back to apologize. You were gone, so I asked the other vendors about you."

"They don’t know me."

"They know your name. They know how you surf. They know about Lucky Tuesday. And here you struck me as a standoffish guy, Jim Rafferty."

 "So why did you want to find me so bad?" I rubbed my bare scalp. "Can it be my good looks, my bald and shining pate?"

"Raff, you’re a poet! And of course you’re gorgeous." We walked on through the casino. "Let me tell you about my boss."

That would be Jack. Jack the Hack Aldrete, whose delusions of tawdry splendor had already produced an adult theme park called Luv Land, where you could play live strip poker or ride in a vividly explicit tunnel of love, with yours or a rented loved one, or both. They give away souvenir nudie pens, the kind that strip when you turn them upside down; of course I have several.

"Jack's dad was skim boss at the Trop," said Megan. "Jack's got this big chip on his shoulder about why couldn't he be a wise guy too. He's invested pretty heavily in this restaurant. Emotionally, I mean."

"So he's got an image problem."

"And a temper problem. I showed him your chip racks. He thinks you should sell us more stuff. If you don't, he's going to start wondering what you've got against him. He's like that."

"Sounds like a jerk. Why do you work for him?"

Shrug. "It's a job." Another shrug. "Excellent dental." Yet another shrug.

Too many shrugs. Just then we passed a craps table. I watched a low roller crap out and turn away from the table, in visible pain. But as his wife approached, he flashed her a big fake grin, winner’s grin. People lie all the time. "Is any of this true?" I asked.

"You think I’m making it up?"

"Maybe you’re just trying to liven up a dull job."

"Or maybe scare you into selling your goods."

"That’s possible too."

"You’re a cagey old man," she said. "I’ll bet you live alone."

"I do," I said with dignity.

          "She wise up and dump you?" 

          "She died."

          "I’ll bet," said Megan. I suppose I was shocked and it showed. "What?" she said expressively. "Maybe you made her up. Maybe you’re just trying to liven up a dull life."

"I’ll go now." I started away.

Megan grabbed my hand. "I’m sorry," she said. "Really. That was over the top. Look, maybe you're right. Maybe I am just some flunky with a troublesome boss. People need their jobs. Would it kill you to help me out?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "I really can't help you."

          "Why not?"

          "You wouldn’t understand."

          "I think I would," she said. "I’m a bright girl." With a smile that said you may think you’ve said no, but I’m still young and blonde and interesting and I'm betting you won’t walk away.

Which, of course, she was right.

So I told her about value. Las Vegas assigns a value near zero to the things it gives away. But even so much as matchbooks have value to me. Someone went to the trouble of designing the logos, printing addresses and names, boxing them up by the dozens, putting them out for the world. This represents both effort and identity, and you measure value in effort and identity.

Also you measure value by time and space. If a thing is printed with a date or location, that's good, but if it has both that's better. Of course sheer age adds value. Older things are worth more than new, obviously, or Meg wouldn't be here now. But to me, everything stores value. Old, new, it doesn't matter. That's why I surf so hard.

"Raff," she said, "Do you mind if I call you Raff? I gotta tell you... This all looks a little nutty from the outside."

"Get inside then," I said. Give it a try." Have you ever seen a sports book pen? It's the simplest of stick pens, four inches long with a thin plastic cap that people tend to chew. Minimum effort, rudimentary identity, but if you have a bundle of them they look like something. I pointed her over toward the Mirage sports book. "Go get some," I said. "Start your collection."

"Sure, fine. Why not?" She walked away, and returned a moment later with a fistful of white stick pens, the word Mirage trailing down the barrel of each. "Now I have pens," she said.

"Mm-hmm. And when you have them from every casino in town, you have a collection."

          "Which brings us back to yours. Can't you sell me some stuff? I'll give it a good home."

"No. It would be too tawdry. A crime against value."

She shook her head, her blond hair floating like an afterthought. "So now we've got crimes against value. Well, I can't fight that. Nice knowing you, Raff." She handed me her pens. "Here, I don’t need these. Add them to your collection." Meg walked off through a clot of Japanese tourists, and I kicked myself again for letting her get away again.

Sometimes I think I'm getting old. 

          I surfed home. In case you’re wondering, I do have a car that I drive sometimes, an old Chevy El Camino, but I don’t use it much, don’t need to. The bus runs close, and I have a box of bus tokens that I found at the CAT maintenance yard. Plus which, many casinos have shuttles for your convenience, Gold Coast to Barbary Coast, Stardust to Sam’s Town; or the monorail between Bally’s and the MGM Grand. I took the Strip trolley to Circus Circus, and caught the bus home from there.

          On a shelf in my front hall I have a set of commemorative hockey pucks, Stanley Cup souvenirs from over the years. As I opened my front door, I noticed that these had been picked up and examined; they were all out of place or upside down. Someone was in my home. 

I found him in the living room, a small guy, but big across the shoulders, like the way a small guy will get big when he thinks people would push him around if he didn’t. Also big across the gut, which his orange rayon golf shirt and dacron Sansabelt pants did nothing to hide. I glanced in the kitchen. There was a broken-out panel in the back door, so that answered that question.

He picked up a snow globe from the Winter Palace, a stillborn casino which never made it past dream stage.  He shook it and made a snowstorm. "This is nice," he said. "I like this. You Rafferty?"

          "I am," I said.  "Are you Aldrete?" He nodded. I asked him how he found my house.

          "Duh, you gave Megan a receipt. Printed with your name and address. Guess that adds value, huh?" He tossed the snow globe from hand to hand.

          "Don’t do that, please."

          "Why? Are you afraid I might break it?" Which, as he said it, he hurled the snow globe straight at my head. I ducked, and it spattered all across the wall behind. "Sit down, Rafferty," said Jack the Hack. "Let me make something crisco clear."

 

3. Crisco Clear

 

          Water dripped down my living room wall, and flecks of former plastic snow. I mourned momentarily, then turned and asked Jack, "What do you want?"

          He shrugged his bulky shoulders. "This," he said, looking around. "All of this. These…" My mounted display of round, ridged, plastic cocktail lounge coasters. "These…" My wool baseball pennants from the California Club sports book. "And this especially…" an ashtray stand from Binion’s: waist-high, polished bronze, with a horseshoe-shaped heavy glass ashtray. "I see it in the voyeur."

"Voyeur?" I didn’t understand.

"The lobby of the restaurant, you bucklehead. The place where people walk in."

"The foyer?"

"What I said. It’ll look great there. How much?"

          "Like I told Megan, it's not for sale."

          "Yeah, yeah, I know, crimes against value. She phoned the whole thing in."

I keep vintage postcards in an old time-clock card rack mounted on the wall. Jack pulled one out and flicked it at a blown glass baccarat lamp, which hung from a chain over what was once a steamer trunk belonging to Joey Heatherton, and was now my coffee table. I gawked at Jack's destructive impulse as the corner of my 1952 Greetings from Hoover Dam became irreparably bent at the corner. 

          "Stop that!" I shouted. He stopped, but more out of curiosity than anything.

          "Did you say stop it? You don’t say stop it to me, I say stop it to you. Stop it! Stop it! See?" He picked up a cue stick, relic from some ancient 9-ball tournament, and cocked it at the baccarat lamp.

          "I see," I said grudgingly.

          "That’s better. Now. Let’s sit. Let’s talk." We sat at a nightclub table from the Copa Room at the Sands. "If you were going to sell that lamp," he asked, "how much would you charge? Just hypocritically."

          "Hypocritically?"

          "You know, imaginary question."  

          "Hypothetical?"

          "If you like. How much? A hundred dollars? A thousand? What’s it worth?"

          "I can’t begin to put a price on it."

          "Ah. See, now that’s where we’re different, because I can. Fifty bucks."

          "I certainly couldn't sell it for that."

          "Sure you can, because if you don’t, I’m going to break it, and then you won’t have the lamp, and you won’t have fifty bucks, and if you keep up this killerbustering too much longer you won’t have your legs to use for a while. Do you understand me now?"

          "No," I said. "Why would you want to…" I was at a loss "…break my legs?"

          "I wouldn’t want to. That’s what I’m trying to avoid." He sighed. "We have a problem. Listen, Jim, I am threatening you. You are being threatened here by me. Now I haven’t actually broken anything yet…"

          "You broke my snow globe."

          "Except that. And you can’t count on my continued relevance and generosity. So now here’s what you do. You inventory everything here, and you put a price on it. Fifty bucks a lamp, that’ll be your beachmark. You write it all up, bring me the list. I give you money, then I come and haul this crap away. Okay? Tomorrow." He pulled out a business card. "Here’s where you’ll find me," and dropped it in a fishbowl filled with business cards. 

          "Not in there," I said. "Those cards are all from floor managers and pit personnel."

          "What?"

          "I have cards from casino executives and security consultants, but they’re in another room. Come to think of it, I don’t have a category for hard guys." I plucked his card from the bowl. "Maybe I’ll start a collection."

          "Guy, you’re a nutbread, you know that?" He tapped his temple. "You need a phelbotomy." He picked up a Circus Circus clown doll that I've had for 23 years, and laid its ceramic head gently in the horseshoe-shaped ashtray. Then brutally smashed it with the heel of his fist. "Tomorrow," he said. "And you'd better come. Needless to say, I know where you preside."

          After Jack left… I don’t know… I walked around the house, Margaret’s house still, her curtains that I never changed, her picture in the bedroom where I see it all the time. I dumped the shards of the broken snow globe in the trash, and also the poor clown head, now dead, gone as dear Margaret, never to be seen again. Not ever on the life of this planet. How can you not mourn a thing like that?

          That’s the trap of collecting, which every collector knows. You find a thing you like. You buy it or trade for it or surf it and then you own it. And you go along thinking you can always sell it if you're strapped for cash, though of course the longer you hold onto it, the more value it stores and the more attached you get, and the harder it gets to sell. Eventually the thing becomes a part of you, like moss on a tree, and then you don’t own it, it owns you. Which every collector knows.

          But an animal caught in a trap will gnaw off its leg to get free, so I decided to part with part of my collection, to make the problem of Jack Aldrete disappear.

          I went through my catalog, which I keep in a beautiful old Jacaranda Hotel desk ledger, from back in the days when guests registered by hand. Mostly I just refreshed my memory over what I had, for instance a box of baseballs signed by some pitcher who they say had a big gambling problem. I don’t know about that, but he did a lot of autograph shows around town till the IRS cracked down.

          I could part with a ball or two. I could live without my fourth and fifth copies of Frank Sinatra's, "Live at the Flamingo," a commemorative 78 rpm record not sold in stores. Also a miniature electric Sands sign that the Sands gave to their best customers in 1962. Packs of Las Vegas Brand cigarettes from before the days of Surgeon General warnings. Old publicity stills, some autographed, some not. I put together a nice package. I wouldn’t even charge for it, either. I’d show Aldrete how a gentleman behaved.

          The address Jack gave me turned out to be far down Industrial Road in a dreary office park where weak sprinklers misted the grass, though in the heat the water mostly evaporated before it reached the ground.

          His offices weren’t much, which surprised me. I’d expected collectibles, or some sort of icons to all the time remind the great man of how great he was. But this was just a reception room with coffee-table copies of Restaurant News, and a hall leading back to some offices. I coughed to announce my arrival. Who came out of the back was Megan. She smiled when she saw me.

          "Jack said you decided to sell," she said. "I'm glad."

          "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

          "What do you mean?"

          Before I could answer, Aldrete huffed of his office. He shook my hand like a businessman, like a Rotary brother, like last night's little home invasion hadn’t taken place at all. He led me into his office, which wasn’t large, was barely decorated, but had a model of his restaurant-to-be on his desk. Set there amid the clutter of papers and paper clips and pens, the oversized fedora facade of the joint looked awkward and overblown; laughable.

          "You like the design? It’s mine," said Jack proudly. "I had to fire three archetypes to get it."

          "Archetypes?"

          "He means architects," said Megan, who had followed us into the room.

          "Yeah, yeah, sugar, that’s fine," said Aldrete. "Men are talking here. Here is being held conversation by men."

"Would the men enjoy some coffee?"

          "Sure, fine, whatever. Shut the door." She did. Jack turned his attention to me. I handed him a list of the things I intended to part with, including the late addition of some virgin church keys from the Castle Club. He scanned the list and then said, "Yeah? Where’s the rest?"

          "That’s all I’m giving you, but you can have all that for free."

          "Really? For free? That’s generous of you, Raff.  That’s what Megan calls you, right? Raff?" He ran his finger down the list. "You’ve saved me thousands of dollars here. I am awed by your largeness."

          "You mean largesse – "

          There are instants of surprise in your life, like when the car ahead of you stops suddenly and you don’t know for a frozen moment whether you’re going to hit it or not. It was like that with Jack the Hack’s hand, which shot toward my face, ducked under my chin, and pinned my throat in its grip. Jack lifted, and I almost left the floor.

          "Did you think you could negotiate?!" He shouted. "Did you think this was Let’s Make a fucking Deal?" He crumpled the list with his free hand, then threw me backward into a chair. "Look at this restaurant!" he said, waving vaguely toward the model. "It’s huge! Food service on three levels. Four bars. Two stages! 50,000 square feet! How do I decorate that? With beer mats? You’re standing in the way of progress here, Jim, my personal progress. And no one stands in the way of progress!"

          "You can have what’s on the list," I said. "That’s fair."

          "Fair? I care about fair? I give a rat's ass about fair?" His face was puffy and red now, and he must have become aware of it, because he stopped and took a deep breath, puffing it out through his cheeks. "You dipwhistle, I told you all this last night. We’re not negotiating. We’re not dealing. I’m taking your collection. All of it."

          "You would do that? You would put stolen property on public display?"

          "What's that, a crime against value? I don't have a problem with that. And if you continue to, I will plant you in the desert like a jupiter tree." I suppose he meant juniper tree, but I didn't have time to correct him, for just then Jack opened his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a heavy, blue-steel .45. He leveled it at my head like a fellow who's leveled guns at heads before. "How about now?" he asked. "Am I making myself clear now?"

          When you're staring down the barrel of a gun, many things become clear.  Yes, even crisco clear.

4. Boxcars!

 

Here's where I should have folded. Here's where I should've just given Jack my house key, let him slope in, take all my treasures and be done with it. That’s the smart thing to do when a little man points a big gun at you. But just then Megan came in with coffee and her face went white in such a cute way. 

          So I went a different way. "If you kill me," I said, "you’ll never see the boxcar."

"Boxcar?"

"And believe me, you would love the boxcar." 

          "What boxcar?" asked Jack.

Oh man, what boxcar. When the Ute Southern line went bankrupt, their rolling stock stopped rolling and started growing weeds. One day I heard you could have freight cars for the cost of hauling them away, so I picked out a beautiful old red Land/Sea container car with a big sliding door and had it moved out to the desert. "That," I said, "is where I keep my real collection."

          "So then the stuff in your house, that's just the tip of the icebag?"

          "Exactly. The tip of the icebag." Jack asked me what I had in the boxcar. I rattled off a list. "Chairs from the Moulin Rouge. Probably ten thousand poker chips. A craps tables from the Last Frontier, which, you may know, is what they called the Frontier before they called it the Frontier. Which makes the Last Frontier the first Frontier. Isn’t that strange?"

          "Shut up and keep talking."

          I shut up and kept talking. "Boxes and boxes of show programs. The desert is a great place to store things. It's dry. Steady weather. But you've got to watch out for the wind, because sand gets into everything."

          I had sort of forgotten about the gun, but Jack reminded me of it by fitting it to a nostril, which, funnily enough, made my nose itch. "I do not want to know about the wind," said Jack, "or the sand, or the isometric pressure. I want to know what you have."

          "Playing cards. Roulette wheels. Glassware, stemware, all logo stuff. Decanters. Dice. Croupier sticks. Coin wrappers. Showgirl costumes and big wigs. Rat Pack tie tacks. The Pioneer Club's last liquor license. Souvenir programs from 20 Helldorado parades. A motorcycle."

          "A motorcycle?"

          "Of Evel Knievel’s."

          "Now you’re jerking my chin."

          "Silver medallions from Caesar’s Palace, individually engraved with the faces of their highest high rollers. That’s from 1966. Also from '66, a hand-rolled reefer signed by Sammy Davis, Jr. I had it framed. I also have a framed picture of Richard Nixon shooting craps at the Stardust. Not signed; that was a casino surveillance shot. I have hidden camera shots too. Marilyn in the bath. Lenny Bruce shooting up. I have Benny Binion’s string tie, Bob Stupak’s elevator shoes and Don Rickles' boxer shorts."    

          "I gotta have that stuff."

"I know you do. But you don’t know where it is."

Can a gun go limp?

We came to terms after that. I would sell out and he would leave me alone. But it would be done properly, I insisted, or it wouldn't be done at all. And Aldrete would have to sign a contract.

"What kind of contract?"

"One that says you won't kill me."

That cracked him up. He doubled over, folding his soft belly into two bun-shaped rolls. "Or what? You'll sue me?"

"Do you want the boxcar or not?"

Jack stopped laughing and rolled his shoulders. "Yeah, okay, why not? I give you points for cabrones anyway." Cojones? He put away the gun. "I'll sign your contract. Now get out of here."

"Aren't you afraid I'll go to the police?"

"Which? The ones I own or the ones I rent?"

I left and went surfing. I stopped by Caesar's New Forum. They had a slot club, Praetorian Points or something, and the reward for joining was a toga t-shirt, so I stood in line for that. After that I figured I'd hit the Paddlewheel.

After that I figured I'd call the cops.

          Not locals, the state police. So I surfed until late afternoon, then collected my El Camino and drove to the state office building. I pulled into the lot. A hot red Mazda Miata pulled into the space beside me.

With Megan at the wheel. Damn. 

          "How did you find me?" I found myself asking again.

          "Duh. I've been following you."

"For Jack?"
"Of course for Jack. Raff, you'd better start taking this thing seriously."

"I gave in, didn't I? Without sacrificing my dignity."

          "It's your dignity he's after," said Meg. "Especially now that you've picked him off."

          "I what? I don't understand you."

          "After you left he said, 'That guy really picks me off.' He told me to follow you, make sure you didn't..." she looked up at the state office building "...do what you're doing."

          "Picking up tax forms?"

          "Don't play me, Raff. You can't go to the police. Jack really does have the cops locked up."

          "Even the state --"

          "-- tax forms, yes."

          She got out of her car and climbed into mine. First thing she did was flip open the glove compartment, where I keep a modest supply of logoed tire gauges, giveaway first-aid kits and other auto-related stuff that washes up when you surf Las Vegas. "Figures," said Megan. Then she asked, "Tell me, Raff, is this boxcar of yours on the level?"

          "As opposed to a slope?"

          "You know what I mean. Does it exist? Do you really have all that stuff? Or did you just make it up to get Jack's gun out of your face?"

          "Oh, no, it's real."

          She folded her knees under her on the white vinyl seat. "Because if it's not, you know, he'll kill you."      

          "He'll kill me anyhow, right?" I searched her face. "Right?"

          "Right," she said at last.

          "So what should I do?"

          "What I'd do is get him off my back for good.

          "Really?  How would I do that?"  

          Turns out that Meg had her own big Jack ax to grind. Turns out she wasn't working for him for the marvelous dental plan. Turns out she'd borrowed some money.

          "What for?"

          "To put myself through school," she answered sarcastically, "what do you think?"

          The light dawned. "Gambling debts," I said. "You have a gambling problem."

          "Had," she answered. "Now the only problem I have is working off what I owe Jack. But it's getting dicey. He's all out of whack, and it's getting worse. He loses his temper, and..." her voice trailed off. "I personally know of three guys that he's  boraxed."

          "Boraxed?"

          "What Jack calls it when you throw a body down a borax mine." Her eyes got big and soulful, like those paintings of  kitschy kids with tiny bodies and huge heads (which I collect.) "He's threatened to borax me."

          "Why?"

          "Maybe because I know of three guys he's boraxed. The point is, he's a treacherous, dangerous man. If he was a spider, you'd squash him and never think twice."

          So here was her plan. She'd go out to the boxcar tonight and be waiting there when I showed up with Jack the Hack. As soon as he opened the boxcar door, she'd blast him. She'd claim self-defense, which, she claimed, wouldn't be far from the truth, he being a treacherous, dangerous man. Call it self-defense in advance. A preemptive strike. All I had to do was back up her story, which she figured I'd be willing to do under the treacherous, dangerous circumstances and all. 

          "Do you have a gun?" I asked.

          "No, but I'll bet you have a collection."

"Well, a small one. A derringer of Howard Hughes', a tommygun Ace Rothstein once owned -- "

She stopped me. "Raff," she said, "sorry. But I don't really care. Do they fire? Will they put holes in things."

"Yes."

"Then give me any one you want. Are you in?"

I shrugged. I sighed. "I'm in."

          "Great," she said. "Now we seal it with a kiss."

Youth has everything going for it, including very soft lips.

          Since she was supposed to be tailing me anyhow, we decided to have dinner together, at this place called Desdemona's, out east on Tropicana. We swapped lies for a while, but Meg got all serious when I asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. Her lip grew quivery. "Don't you think I'm grown up?"

          "I'm not sure I am," I said, which was true. Involving yourself in a pert blonde's plans to borax her boss could not be called mature.

          "Anyway," she said in answer to my question, "I have a crush on tournament poker."

          "What about your former gambling problem?"

          "Poker's not gambling. It's risk management."

"And that's how you want to make your living."

"Not my living," she said, with passion rising from deep in her eyes. "My mark. It's how I want to make my mark."

          After dinner we drove back to my place. I gave her a gun, a very nice service automatic originally owned by some airman out at Nellis, but hocked around town till it fell in my lap. You may think that was stupid, giving her a gun, but believe me I had no intention of being anyplace near where it might go off.

"So how do I find the boxcar?" she asked.

"I'll tell you in the morning."

"Thought I'd head out now. Cover of darkness, all that."

"You'll never find it in the dark. I'll tell you in the morning. I'm supposed to meet Jack at noon. You'll have plenty of head start."

Sly grin. "How about if I sleep over?"

"And watch me take my dentures out? I don't think so."

So then Megan left, tooling off in her tomato Miata and promising to return with the dawn's early light.

I waved goodbye.

          I went inside.

I started to pack.

          Of course I was bolting. I figured to drive to LA, submerge at a cheap motel and not surface till I found some law enforcement I could trust. FBI? Someone. 

          So I filled a duffel bag (my old Army duffel -- guess I collected it too) with my smallest, most choice and portable morsels. Gold commemorative coins from the Tangiers Casino, Elvis Presley's cufflinks... some priceless documents authorizing brothels, bars and gaming halls in Area 16, Las Vegas' turn-of-the-century red light district. I slid Margaret's picture in last, then turned off the lights and stepped out the back door.

          Into a very nice service automatic. With Megan behind it, just sadly shaking her head.

 

 

5. "No Duh"

 

          She stood on my back porch with her feet squared beneath her shoulders, knees slightly bent. Shooter's stance. "Raff," she said, "you can't rabbit now. I'll be left holding the Jack bag." She put down the gun. "Can I come in? We're playing this scene for the neighbors."

          So we went into the kitchen. She asked me for tea of all things. Of course I have a collection, dozens of different tea bags which I keep in a safe-deposit box that I salvaged from the old Gold House Hotel. The box amused her. "Is there anything you don't collect?" She looked around my -- admittedly -- cluttered kitchen and home. "Man, I'd hate to be the one dealing with all this after -- " She trailed off, suddenly embarrassed.

          "After I die?"

          "I didn't say that."

          "It's not a dirty word."

          "I didn't say that either. Stop putting words in my mouth. God, you pick me off."

          "You're starting to talk like Jack."

          "Yeah, I'm infected. I've got Jack the Hack Syndrome."

          "Maybe you do," I said. "Suppose you inherited this collection. How would you treat it?"

          Not batting an eye. "Boil it down to a bankroll and go teach some men in this town how a lady plays poker."

          "You'd sell it."

          "Damn right."

          "You're off the list for executor."

She laughed and then said, "Seriously, Raff, you can't take it with you, you know. What will you do with it all?"

          "Donate it to a museum maybe."

          She snorted. "The Museum of Las Vegas Forgetables."

          I tried to make my eyes smolder. "Now I'm getting picked off."

          "Oh I've hurt your feelings." We had been sitting in chairs on opposite sides of my kitchen table. She came around to my side -- "Don't be picked off" -- and started rubbing my neck. "Raff, I say this with the utmost respect: I find you endearingly psychotic. Is that okay?"

          "A little lower in the shoulder then," I grumbled. "It's sore from sorting toothpicks."

          "Wrapped or unwrapped?"

          "Wrapped. You've got to draw the line somewhere."  

           She worked on my back, lost in thought. I thought about having her stop, but my old shoulders don't often get this close attention. Soon I no longer thought about having her stop. Instead I thought about our age difference and sternly told my fantasies to go to sleep, which stubbornly they did not.

          Suddenly she said, "Do you think it could work between us?" Damn it, stop reading my mind! "Raff?"

          "If I thought for one minute you were serious, I'd tell you to get serious."

          "I am, half. You've got experience, I've got youth. We've got balance."

          "That's one way of looking at it."

          "Raff, I'm not trying to come onto you, okay maybe I am. I just want you to know that your age doesn't freak me out. Does mine freak you?"

          "No, but the years between us do."

          "It's probably not so many. I'm older than I look."

          "So am I, child."

          She swung around and deposited her body in my lap. "Let me ask you," she said, "are there such things as collectible condoms?"

          "Of course."

          "Can you spare one?"

          "I don't think so."

          "Too bad. I only practice safe sex."

          "I'm reasonably certain," I said slowly, "that sex with you would not be safe."

          She grinned. "You're probably right."

          So we sipped our tea. Eventually I got out a cribbage board. We made the night go away.

***

BAM! BAM! BAM! Five a.m., and someone's killing my front door. Megan was up in an instant, gun drawn in the dawn, eyes darting down the hall. "It's Jack!" she whispered.

"No duh."

"Did you just say no duh? Raff, you're so hip. Now, where's the boxcar?"

I whispered swift instructions, told her which highway turnoff turned into which unimproved road, and which winding dirt track would take her to the end of which canyon. I told her of boulders she could hide her tiny car behind, and where the spare keys to the gate and padlock were hidden. She wished me luck, and slipped silently out the back door.

Hey Meg, you're so keen to kill Aldrete, why not do it now? The thought was in and out of my mind in an instant. And back in. It gave me pause.

          But Jack management just then involved stalling, so I stopped to put coffee on. Finally I opened the front door and found him hunched over his cell phone, caught in a hot argument. "I'll decide what's a waste of time," he muttered into the phone. "It's my restaurant. I'm the major dromo. Maybe you've forgotten what the phrase 'silent partner' means." He looked up and saw me, "Gotta go." He put his phone away.

          "Problems?" I asked.

          "Everybody's got problems. Let's go."

"You're early."

"It'll be hot later. I wanna be back in the pool by noon."

          That's when I noticed the truck parked in my driveway and part of my cactus garden. It was a 16-foot tiltbody flatbed with a hook and plenty of winch. "Guess you figure this for a done deal," I said.

          "Oh it's done, believe me, it's done." He peered past me into my living room. "I'll come back for this crap later."

          "If it's crap to you, why do you want it?"

          "What can I say? I love crap."

          We got in the truck. "Nice big rig," I said. "But, you know, it might be too much for the roads we'll be on."

          "That right?"

          "You don't think I'd put my boxcar right out by the highway? It's in the back country."

"You got it in, I'll get it out."

We took I-95 northwest past Tule Springs, then worked our way into Kyle Canyon, then Fletcher Canyon, then into canyons too small and remote to have names. The county road gave way to a fire road, which started to twist and climb. Jack took it as a challenge, barreling along ridges and diving into dry washes, where