Three bucks and change in tips.
The cheap bastards had sat there for two hours, and left three bucks and change. Frank took two twenties out of his wallet and laid them on the table.
Lunch with Donna was great.
He took her to a little French place off the Strip, and the lady knew her away around a menu. They were at the table for two and a half hours, talking, drinking wine, eating good food, enjoying each other’s company.
She was from Detroit originally, her father had spent his life on the Ford line, and she knew she didn’t want that life. She was good at dancing-she had the body and the legs-so she studied dance: ballet, until she got too tall, then tap and jazz. She went to Vegas with a boy she thought she was in love with, got married, but it didn’t work out.
“He liked hitting on cocktail waitresses even more than he liked wailing on me,” Donna said.
The boy went home; she stayed.
She met an entertainment director in the buffet at the Mirage and he got her an audition for the line at the Tropicana. She went to bed with him out of gratitude and because he was a nice guy, but nothing came of it except that she got the job.
“I saw other girls,” she said, “sleeping around, getting into the coke thing, trying to party their way into something better. I realized that therewas nothing better and the party scene was a dead-end street, so I pretty much just did my job and went home and washed my hair.”
She did get married again, to the chief of security at Circus Circus. The marriage lasted three years-“No kids, thank God”-and then she discovered he was sleeping around with chip girls and was blowing their money hitting on eighteen.
“Why am I telling you all this?” she asked Frank. “I’m usually a very reserved person.”
“It’s my eyes,” Frank said. “I have kind eyes-people tell me things.”
“You do have kind eyes.”
“You have fantastic eyes.”
She told him all about her “business plan.”
“I’m going to stay ‘on the line’ for two more years,” she said. “Then I’m going to open a little shop.”
“What kind of shop?”
“Women’s clothing,” she said. “A boutique, upscale but not out of reach.”
“Where?” he asked. “Here in Vegas?”
“I think so.”
He leaned across the table a little. “Have you ever thought about San Diego?”
She didn’t go back to his room with him that afternoon, but she did agree to go out to San Diego when she got a couple of free days. He offered to buy her airline ticket and get her a hotel room, but she said she preferred to pay her own way.
“I decided a long time ago,” she said, “that a woman in this world needs to take care of herself. I prefer it that way. I like it.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” Frank said.
“You didn’t,” she said. “I can see your heart.”
He and Mike met up that night and went over to Herbie’s house. They rang the bell and there was no answer, but they could hear the television and there were lights on. The door was unlocked, so they let themselves in.
“Herbie?” Frank called.
They found him in front of the TV, slumped in his big easy chair.
Three bullet holes in the back of his head.
His mouth gaping open.
“Jesus,” Mike said.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Frank said, surprised that he felt an angry heat coming up on his face.
The place was a mess. It had been tossed-burglarized.
“We better get out of here,” Mike said.
“One second,” Frank said. He pulled his shirtsleeve down over his fingers, picked up the phone, and dialed 911. Gave them Herbie’s address and said that the resident there had suffered a heart attack.
“What the fuck, Frank?” Mike asked.
“I didn’t want him decomposing,” Frank said as they walked out. “He doesn’t deserve that. He didn’t deservethis. ”
“Look,” Mike said as they were driving away, “half the hustlers in town knew what a pack rat Herbie was.”
“What are you saying?” Frank asked. “This was a coincidence?”
“Could have been anybody.”
“You know better than that.”
Frank checked out of the Mirage, got into his car, and drove all the way to L.A. It was morning when he got to Westlake Village and found Mouse Senior at his coffeehouse, drinking an espresso, munching on apain au chocolat, and reading theLos Angeles Times. He looked surprised to see Frank, who ordered a cappuccino and an apricot Danish and sat down next to him.
“It’s probably better you don’t come to see mehere, ” Mouse said, “at my place of business.”
“You want to go someplace else…”
“No, it’s okay this once,” Mouse said. “So, did you get Herbie straightened out?”
“No,” Frank said, looking into his face. “Youdid.”
It was there. Just a flicker, but it was there, before Mouse composed his face, looked irritated, and asked, “What are you talking about?”
“You gave the nod,” Frank said. “Half wasn’t good enough for you. You wanted a bigger pie to cut up, so you gave the nod.”
Mouse put thatboss tone in his voice. “The nod for fuckingwhat, exactly?”
“To have Herbie done.”
Mouse set his newspaper down. “Herbie’s gone?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you-”
“I saw the body.”
“There’s a million junkies in Vegas,” Mouse said. “They all knew what a pack rat Herbie was. Any one of them-”
Interesting, Frank thought, he used the exact same phrase as Mike-“what a pack rat Herbie was.” He shook his head, “Three twenty-twos, to the back of the head. Professionals.”
“Herbie made a lot of enemies in his-”
“Cut the crap.”
“What are you, drunk?” Mouse asked. “Talking to your boss like that?”
Frank leaned across the table. “What are you going to do about it, Mouse? What are you going to do about it?”
Mouse didn’t say anything.
“That’s right,” Frank said.
He was walking away when the young waiter came over with the coffee and Danish. “You don’t want your-”
“Nothing personal,” Frank said to him, “but your coffee is garbage and your pastry is crap. You serve cheap shit to suckers who don’t know any better. I know better.”
He walked out and waited for the blowback.
It didn’t take long.
Two days later, Mike showed up at the bait shop.
“That was stupid, what you did up in Westlake,” Mike told him.
“You here to straighten me out?”
Mike looked hurt. “The fuck could you ask me that? I’d do them before I took a run at you. We should have our own fucking thing, anyway, not be tied to those limp dicks. Watch, they’ll find a way to fuck this Binion thing up.”
“What happened, Mike?” Frank asked. “When we left the table, we were supposed totalk to Herbie.”
“I don’t know. I was gone.”
“Mouse has something to answer for,” Frank said.
“Don’t get crazy on me,” Mike said. “It’s one thing to go insult a boss in his place of business-you get a pass for that because you’re Frankie fucking Machine. It’s another thing you go looking to square Herbie on a fuckingboss. Let it go.”
“So we just let them get away with it?”
“Hey, Frank,” Mike said. “Herbie wasn’t exactly Saint Francis of fucking Assisi himself. He didplenty, believe me. What we’re going to do now is swallow the shit, smile like it was chocolate cake, and get back to business.”
Which they did.
As usual, Mike was right.
You have an ex-wife to support, Frank told himself, and a kid who needs orthodonture. You have a man’s responsibilities, and you can’t go getting yourself killed to get revenge for Herbie Goldstein.
As it turned out, L.A. never took over Vegas, not even a piece of it. Teddy Binion’s jewelry collection got cut up and made an appearance on the street for a while, but the Martinis never succeeded in taking over his casino and busting it out. Binion held on until he died of an other-inflicted drug overdose, and his young wife and her young lover took the fall for that.