Overlooking the park was a big, orange brick building with a soaring T-shaped sign reading HOTEL SAL SAGEV. Its front was ablaze with lights.
“Las Vegas backwards,” said Dunc in swift comprehension.
Davenport rumbled with laughter as he stopped at the gray 1942 Ford four-door Dunc had admired that afternoon.
“Took me two weeks to figger that out!”
Artis got into the front seat, Dunc slid into the middle of the backseat.
“Two years ago I drove a car just like this up to Alaska. A 1942 Ford four-door sedan. I called it the Grey Ghost.”
“Ain’t hardly anyone knows Ford sold any ’42s. Quit when the fuckin’ Japs attacked Pearl Harbor, and when they started civilian production again in ’46, they was just jazzed-up ’42s.”
Pearl Harbor. December 7, 1941. Dunc remembered listening to President Roosevelt’s “date which will live in infamy” radio speech and feeling scared and solemn. He’d been eighteen days short of his tenth birthday.
Ned was saying in a flat voice, “Not that I can bitch about my war. I spent my army years in the ring fighting soldiers with my fists ’stead of Japs with a rifle.”
He didn’t sound happy about it. Only now did Artis realize that her big lumbering fighter, who always bragged about how he’d sat out the war, had actually wanted in on the fighting desperately.
He’d U-turned the car through the lights and crowds of Glitter Gulch, people crossing Fremont without regard for traffic. He turned off into Fifth Street, then into Clark and finally Las Vegas Boulevard, and the city fell away behind them. Seven miles southwest of Glitter Gulch on the wide dusty boulevard was the fabled Strip: a big splash of light marking a hotel or casino, then relative darkness until the next glamorous resort.
Artis said, with a sudden strain in her voice, “Here it comes, the Fabulous Flamingo.”
She remembered opening night vividly: December 26, 1946.They had been rained out. She had worked her first party for the mob guys from back east that night. Start of her downhill slide.
“Built by Bugsy Siegel, right?” asked Dunc, fooling a little bit like a native listening to Nicky and Pepe talk about Siegel and the sprawling he shaped complex.
“I knew him,” said Davenport. “He liked the horses, liked pugs like me. He was a quiet little guy.”
“Unless you called him Bugsy to his face — or said something nasty about Virginia Hill,” said Artis.
The lush hotel dropped away behind them. Before Bugsy, before Flamingo, this had been a nice little town. She had met Carny Largo at a party at the Flamingo. Even with Bugsy dead and Virginia run off to Europe, the people who had blasted Bugsy scared her. Cross them you got buried in the desert. And you never knew who they were, watching, waiting...
She’d been lucky, maybe the luck of Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt and destroyer of men. She shivered. She had the money fever, true enough; but couldn’t she get what she wanted without helping destroy someone else?
She stole a glance back at Dunc. Just a few years younger than she was, but it felt... nice to be here in the car with her hulking fighter and the kid. Felt as if nothing too bad could happen to her while they surrounded her.
Brightly lit letters spelled out the turn to McCarran Airfield. Built just five years ago, but now there were one-arm bandits in the terminal and the sign was flanked by husky towers aflame with glowing neon propellers.
After another couple of miles, Ned turned left into a narrow sandy road. Their lights, jumping and swooping with the dips and twists of the track, cast long shadows of creosote bush and rabbitbrush out across the desert floor, then locked onto a low rambling adobe ranch house that seemed to go on forever.
“Home sweet home,” said Artis in her ironic voice.
The Ford squealed to a stop. Dunc was ravenous; he hadn’t eaten since Lucius Breen’s big pancake breakfast eighteen hours before.
But Nitro Ned said, “I’ll show you the bunkhouse, kid. Four A.M. comes mighty early.”
Chapter Twelve
“Okay, guys, drop your cocks and grab your socks.”
It seemed that Dunc’s head had hardly hit the lumpy pillow filled with what felt like corn husks. Yawning, he sat up on the edge of the bed. A kerosene pressure lamp was lit, evoking sudden Georgia memories. Thank God no dreams had brought him up yelling in the night. Nothing more embarrassing in a room full of tough guys than crying out like a girl in your sleep.
Some kind soul had neatly stacked sweat clothes and jockstrap on the foot of his bunk. Dunc washed up sketchily and dressed, wearing his own tennis shoes. He walked up to the main house drawing in great lungfuls of air rich with sage, horse manure, and, elusively, food. When was he going to get fed?
A band of predawn light lay against the eastern horizon, so fragile the very pale gold looked off-white. The gray line of cloud above it had a delicate lemon belly. Ned was just coming down the front steps in his own gray sweat suit. He held out a bottle.
“Take a gulp of this.” It was hot water with a lemon squeezed into it. “How long since you’ve done any roadwork?”
“Month, month and a half.”
“You’ll be okay, then. We’re just loosenin’ up anyway. Five little miles, then breakfast.”
They walked side by side out into the desert. By the dim light, Dunc could see they were in twin ruts that would make a ninety-degree left when they met a barbed-wire perimeter fence some distance ahead. Ned suddenly started talking, the words tumbling out as if until now heel had no one to say them to.
“Listen, kid, this is my chance, this fight. My last chance. I take Terlazzo, Marciano’s gotta deal with me. I been close to a shot before, but never this close.”
“I’ll do anything I can to help,” Dunc said lamely.
But what could he do? He’d done a bit of Golden Gloves sparring, but his first loves had been football and the weights.
“Just don’t let me dog it,” said Ned. He started a slow jog. Dunc kept up with him. “We got only about two weeks now.”
Dunc felt the sweat starting out on his body, felt his muscles start to loosen up, get limber. He felt good. The track made another ninety-degree angle to the left inside the boundary fence. A startled snort, the brief drumming of nervous hooves, huge hinking shadows throwing heads in near-dark.
“Horse ranch,” said Ned. He started tossing punches as he ran, snorting like the horses. “Better’n staying in town and trainin’ in a gym — too many distractions, an’ anyone can watch, check your moves. Grub’s better out here, too.”
Dunc’s mind drifted to Artis. What a woman. Ned’s woman. He started snorting and tossing punches of his own as he ran.
“That’s it, kid.” A grin was in his voice. “You’re a natural.”
Ned was throwing combinations, shoulders dipping and weaving as he jogged and jabbed. Dunc kept stumbling while trying to watch those slashing hands in the dim predawn light. He didn’t know enough to do Ned any good.
The fence turned again. The horses in the center of the paddock were trotting to keep up with them, dimly seen in the lifting darkness, throwing their heads in delight with the game.
“They run with me every morning I’m out here,” said Ned, then suddenly yelled, “Okay, I race you the last hundred yards!”
Dunc was surprised but turned it loose, legs flashing, arms pumping, but Ned skittered around the corner of the ranch house two strides ahead of him. Hadn’t seemed like five miles.
“Hah! Got ya!”