The only person building anything major in the city at the time was Clive Fridell, who put up the Arête, where Charlene and I would be performing tomorrow night.
I’ve never verified this, but they say that during the day you can see the pilots’ faces as they make their final approach if you’re in the revolving restaurant on the top of the Stratosphere, the tallest observation tower in the United States. Who knows. It’s something nice to tell the tourists.
Most people don’t know it, but the Strip is not actually in Las Vegas but in a town called Paradise. Back in the forties there was a tax revenue dispute, and the casino owners established their own city to keep from paying taxes to Vegas. It’s a lot easier, however, to just refer to the whole metro area as Las Vegas.
But it is interesting to note that I make a living by doing illusions in Paradise.
A lot of the other magicians and performers who’ve found some success in Vegas live in Summerlin or Spanish Trail, but my heart is closer to Paradise and that’s where I wanted my home to be.
I’m not sure how many people can stay on the Strip. I’ve heard the number 125,000 tossed around. That sounds too high to me, but it’s possible, when you consider that some of the resort hotels have six or seven thousand rooms all by themselves.
There are more than a hundred casinos in Las Vegas, including the ten-billion-dollar City Center, the most expensive building project in the history of the world, and the nearby Arête. With five thousand rooms the Arête isn’t as big as the MGM Grand but at sixty-seven stories it’s the tallest hotel in Vegas.
And, of course, at the Arête is the 920-seat auditorium where Escape: The Jevin Banks Experience is playing.
I’m actually glad we’re bypassing the Strip tonight. Seeing billboard trucks and expansive digital screens with my face on them advertising my show always makes me feel a little odd, like I could never measure up to the hype.
Once you’ve lived in the public spotlight for any period of time, you know it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
We drive past Industrial Boulevard and the contrast strikes me — Strip Club Row versus the Strip.
There are basically two kinds of prostitutes in Las Vegas: the high-end call girls and the lower-priced pimped girls. If anything, the police take more notice of the second group since they work mostly out near the seedier Strip Club Row rather than on the Strip in Paradise.
Human trafficking is a big problem in Vegas. Pimps will invite girls to town for supposed jobs as dancers or models, get them addicted to drugs, and then drag them into prostitution.
In Nevada, prostitution is legal, but decisions are made county by county about whether or not to permit it. In Clark County, the county that both Las Vegas and Paradise are in, it’s illegal. So, as you cross the county line — especially out near Pahrump — you find a whole string of brothels.
However, the police have plenty of other things to deal with in metro Vegas, and they don’t really bother with solicitation charges much, especially with the higher-priced escorts.
If you want to meet one of them, just take the last flight to Vegas from LA on a Friday afternoon. The girls are reasonably easy to pick out: they’ll be gorgeous, dressed to kill, and traveling without a male companion.
On the Strip they’ll hang out at the most expensive resorts and clubs, frequently checking their cell phones and always keeping an eye out for who’s laying down the big money. Wherever you find the high rollers, you’ll find the LA escorts.
They fly in, work the weekend, then head back to LA to their modeling jobs, acting careers, or whatever they do during the week.
Some of them have become good friends of Charlene’s.
In fact, that’s how we first met her body double Nikki Manocha, who has since moved to Vegas and now performs in our show.
I’ve always preferred a small house to a large one, but the place where I live now is a sprawling six-bedroom home that feels much too large for a single guy living by himself. It used to belong to my mentor Grayson DeVos, who performed exclusive magic shows here during the seventies and eighties before he retired from performing and took up mentoring upcoming illusionists and escape artists instead.
With secret rooms behind fake bookcases, hidden stairwells, and trapdoors that lead to passageways beneath the property, it’s the perfect place for a magician to live.
For a while the property was in disrepair after a reclusive crime novelist named Alec Saule acquired it from Grayson, but when he died in a car accident last fall, the house went on auction and I was able to snap it up. It’s still being renovated, with the thirty-two-seat parlor theater being replicated just as it was when Grayson held his shows there.
A couple weeks before we left for our trip to the Philippines, Xavier suggested I ask Fionna and her kids to house-sit for me while we were gone. “The kids will love exploring the place, and Fionna can keep tabs on the guys remodeling the theater.”
Fionna went for the idea, and Xav was right, the kids were thrilled to come stay for a week at a historic magic mansion in Las Vegas. Actually, Xavier and Charlene are also staying with me for the time being, so it’s like one big happy family.
We arrive at the end of the drive and I tap in the security code. The cast-iron gates part, and our limo driver eases up the palm tree — lined driveway.
He glances curiously into the rearview mirror at the three of us.
Xavier gestures toward me. “You’re wondering who this is?”
Limo drivers aren’t supposed to ask personal questions, but they can certainly reply when spoken to, and now he simply says, “Someone important, no doubt.”
We snake along the drive to the house itself, and as it comes into view I can see the man’s face in the rearview mirror again.
Xav leans forward. “You ever heard of Criss Angel?”
Oh, don’t do this, Xav.
Our driver looks at Xavier then at me, his eyes widening. “You’re Criss Angel?”
“No, I’m not Criss Angel.”
Charlene gives me a glance but does nothing to help my cause. Xav leans forward and winks at the limo driver in the rearview mirror. “No. He’s not Criss Angel.”
That only serves to convince him more. “So you are Criss Angel.”
“No. I’m not.”
We arrive at the house, and as the driver is helping us with our bags he shakes his head. “Could you… um…”
“You want an autograph?”
“Oh, that’d be… Yeah, that would be amazing.”
Maybe this would actually clear things up. I produce my business card case from my pocket, pull out one card, vanish the case, and sign the back of the card for him.
I sign it, as neatly as I can, Jevin Banks.
He cradles it admiringly in his hand. “Wait till I tell everyone I met Criss Angel.”
Great.
As he drives away I tell Xavier, “I really wish you wouldn’t do that.”
“I know. That’s what makes it so much fun.”
Xavier’s home — an RV complete with a twelve-thousand-dollar telescope for searching for UFOs, the plaster casts he’s taken of supposed Bigfoot tracks, and the reams of paper and filing cabinets full of his “proof” that the Air Force is really doing tests on the next generation of autonomously flown unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in the desert near Groom Lake — sits to the side of my house, where he left it when we all went to the airport the other day.