Conduct Unbecoming

Chapter 1

As far as Dante
Giancana was concerned, there were six, maybe seven months out of the year when living in Las Vegas made sense.  November through April, May if you were lucky.  Skies were sunny and temps ranged in the high 60's to low 70's.  Rain was rare, snow virtually unheard of.  Hell, he'd grown up in the Midwest; the no-snow thing was a biggie.

Jesus, he wished it was one of those months.

Bracing himself for the inevitable wave of scorching heat, he opened the door, narrowed his eyes at the acrid smell of hot, blistering asphalt.  “Christ,” he hissed under his breath, “two in the morning and it's
still
103 degrees.”

Traffic outside the Long Shot had let up some during his shift behind the bar, but off in the distance he could see a steady, seemingly endless stream of headlights.  Even now, with the city hotter than the hubs of Hell and the night winding down, tourists swarmed the other end of the Strip like drunken, frenzied bees. 
Gorging themselves on copious amounts of alcohol and rich, heavy foods, pissing away more money in a weekend than most people made in a month, a
year
.

On this side, a handful of decaying regulars did God-knows-what to
eek out the meagerest of existences, just to immerse themselves in cheap, second shelf liquor at the Long Shot.

It felt... arbitrary.  
Random.  One guy steps off a curb and finds a twenty dollar bill in the gutter, another steps off the same curb and gets hit by a bus.  He shook his head, dragged a hand over his mouth, his jaw.  Frowned at the lazy roll of rusty-sounding laughter that snagged his attention from behind.

“
Aw, what's the matta, suga',” the tall, leggy brunette drawled - what the Hell was her name?  Suzanne?  Roxanne?  The waitress Murray hired a week ago to replace Carla when the flighty blonde ran off to Tahoe with her lowlife ex.  “Too hot for ya?” she asked.

She was probably in her late 20's, maybe early 30's.
  Younger than Carla.  Hell, younger than the other waitresses at The Long Shot, too.  Older than the girls who worked the casinos and hotels nearer the Strip though.  Pretty, but in a desperate, trying-too-hard kind of way.  Fake boobs and fake lips, fake eyelashes.  She was like everything else in this city, all smoke and mirrors and silicone.

The only thing even remotely distinctive about her was her accent, a honeyed string of long, drawn out vowels and soft consonants that sounded like red Georgia clay and the buzz of cicadas at dusk.
 Like sex, or really, really good whiskey.

“
Hell yes it is,” he snuck a quick look at her nametag, “Luanne.”

She lifted a shoulder, hips swaying as she brushed past him in a faint cloud of cigarette smoke and too-sweet perfume to sashay out onto the sidewalk. 
“At least it‘s a-”

“
Uh uh.”  Dante cut her off, shook his head.  ”Don’t give me any of that dry heat bullshit.  Dry heat, my ass,” he snorted.  “103 degrees is a 103 degrees, I don't care
how
dry it is.”

“
They say ya get used to it.”  She laughed, but there wasn't a lot of
oomph
behind it.  “Couldn't prove it by me.”

             
“You're not local?”  

             
“Local?  With this accent?”  She looped an arm through his like she was some sort of southern belle and leaned in close, pressing an impossibly perfect, silicone-enhanced breast against his shoulder in the process. Stayed that way, too - despite the heat - clinging to his arm like ivy.  Long, sparkly nails biting into his flesh - just this side of painful - while they walked through the dimly lit parking lot.

“
This is Vegas, honey,” she told him.  “Nobody's local.  We're all... passin' through.  Some of us just takin' longer to do it than others.”

 
               When Dante lifted his eyebrows, Luanne made a face.  She sighed, “Sorry,” and stopped next to a beat-up Chevy Nova at the back of the lot.  Instead of unlocking the door, she settled back against it, crossed her pretty ankles.  “Long night.”

 
                “So how long have you been here?” he asked her quietly.  “In Vegas, I mean.”

             
Luanne scooted over a little to make room for him, and he settled back next to her, hip to hip.  She seemed to think about it for a minute - adding it up, maybe? - then said “nineteen years, come April” like it was nothing.   

 
                 “Jesus,” Dante sputtered.  “What, were you in grade school?”  Her makeup was flawless, but on second look he could see the crow's-feet around her eyes, the deeper, more pronounced lines bracketing her mouth, creasing her forehead. More
late
30's than early, he realized now.  Which probably made a difference when your tips paid the rent.     

             
Something that looked a lot like gratitude flashed in Luanne’s eyes.  “I was seventeen,” she said, letting the leather bag slide off her shoulder and down her arm, drop to the ground between them with a faint thud.  “Seventeen goin’ on forty.”  She shook her head.  “And too damn smart for my own good.”

“
Yeah well, I think that’s probably an occupational hazard of being seventeen,” Dante muttered quietly, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“
Maybe so, but I have it on good authority that I was the only seventeen year old from Climax, Georgia dumb enough to quit school and leave home in the middle of the night - two weeks shy of graduation, mind you - with just the clothes on her back.  Hell-bent on bein’...”  She lifted her hands, palms up; her long, slightly-curved nails slicing through the air like weapons.  Did a pretty little bow and said, “a showgirl.”

“
Wait.”  He laughed.  Stopped.  Lifted his eyebrows and laughed again.  “Seriously? 
Climax
?”

She smiled back at him, a quick flash of white teeth. 
“Population 296.”

“
Whoa.”  He drew it out, emphasizing the O, shook his head.  “Nothing like-”

“
Living in a fishbowl?  Honey, you have no idea,” she muttered.  Leaned down to dig in her bag for cigarettes, a lighter.

“
Ever think about going back?” he asked her.       

“
God yes.”  She nodded.  “Every day.  But I burned my bridges.  Nothing to go back
to
.”  Luanne rolled the lighter back and forth between her fingers, her thumb.  Watched him through a heavy fringe of dark lashes.  “How ‘bout you?  Where you from?”

Dante hesitated, just for a second or two, lifted his shoulders. 
“Nowhere in particular.”

“
Puh-lease,” she snorted a laugh.  “I just came clean about growin' up in Climax, Georgia.  You’re gonna have to do better than that.”  She lit a cigarette, drew smoke into her lungs.  Held it there for a minute before she blew a hazy stream of it in the opposite direction.

He looked away, as if considering, then back again. 
Shifted his weight from one foot to the other, stalling.  “I’ve been moving around a while, but I’m... I’m from Chicago.”  There, he’d said it.  He was from Chicago.  He’d had a
life
in Chicago.

Had being the operative word.

Luanne leaned closer, lowered her voice. 
“I know.”

Dante shifted away from her, frowned. 
“Know what?”

“
I know who you are,” she whispered, “and I know where you’re from.  I mean, you're not in uniform, and the hair is longer,” she laughed softly, rolled her eyes, “obviously.  But I’d know that face anywhere.”  Jesus, the look on her face made his skin crawl.  “Tell me the truth.  Did you do it?” she asked breathlessly, even eagerly.  “Did you kill your partner?”

“
No,” Dante hissed.  He swallowed the golf ball-sized lump in the back of his throat, shook his head.

But she kept going as though she didn’t hear him, and now the throaty, hint-of-Southern-moonshine voice no longer held the same appeal. 
“Six years ago you were all over the news.  For weeks, for
months
.  The trial, the funeral, all of it.”

He pushed himself away from the car.  Did a quick scan of the parking lot, hissed,
“The charges were dropped.  All of them.”

“
Mmm, maybe,” she hummed, reached out to tap one of those long, painted nails to his sternum.  Snaked a lazy line down his chest to his stomach.  “Not the same as being innocent though, is it?”

She was inches from the snap on his jeans when he made a grab for her hand, close enough that he could feel her breath on his skin.  He wanted to argue, to explain.  Instead he shoved her hand away, just a little harder than was necessary.

Because she was right.  It wasn’t the same as being innocent at all.

* * * *

“Shit.”  Dante shoved his hair back off his face with both hands, planted his fists on his hips.  He looked up to glare at the dingy, water-stained ceiling.  Muttered, “Fucking figures,” at the sign on the elevator door.

Once again,
Out of Order
was scrawled in marker on the back of an old take-out menu and taped to the door.  Irritating, yes, but no real surprise.  Hell, it happened often enough that the Super kept a stack of menus and a couple rolls of tape behind the front desk for just such an occasion.

It’s the sort of thing you expected when you lived in a dump.

After the trial, the Department had insisted on a therapist.  Someone who w
as supposed to root around inside his head to determine if he was fit for duty.  Nice enough guy, asked what Dante assumed were the usual questions.  Was Dante drinking too much? 
Yes
.  Sleeping at night? 
No
.  Angry? 
Hell yes
.  And the guy had made an interesting observation.

Perhaps, Dr. Rosen had speculated, Dante believed he
deserved
the sleepless nights.  Perhaps the alcohol and the anger were simply his way of dealing with the guilt.  Survivor’s guilt.      

Who knows, maybe Dr. Rosen was right.  After all, home sweet home
was
a decrepit, pepto pink monstrosity that smelled like stale cigarettes and piss; with cockroaches the size of poker chips and no hot water to speak of.   

Of course it wasn’t all bad.  It was within walking distance of the Long Shot.  He had a car, an old beater with upwards of 220,000 miles and bad tires, but he seldom drove it.  Traffic here was vicious.  Worse than Chicago,
which was saying something.  Besides, after spending a couple of hours behind the bar, it felt good to... to move.  Just move.

Back in Chicago he used to play a little basketball. 
Pickup games at St. Michael’s mostly.  Street ball with kids from the neighborhood who spent every waking moment on the court.  He’d done some sparring at Ray’s, too.  A South Side gym that catered to real fighters, not the pretty boys who worked on Whacker or the anorexic housewives who shopped and did Pilates and... lunch, or whatever the Hell they did. 

Here he walked to work.

Fucking pathetic.

Dante shook his head and took the stairs, his shoes squeaking on the scarred linoleum.  The stairwell was empty and dimly lit, as was the hallway outside his apartment, but far from quiet.

He could hear the television blaring from the apartment next door, shrill, ugly voices screaming about cheating spouses and retribution through paper-thin walls.  A baby wailed from the one on the other side, it’s thin, reedy cries like nails on a chalkboard.

Perfect.  Now his head ached, too.

Dante unlocked the door and stepped inside, shut the door behind him again, locked it.  He cut through the tiny living room portion of the apartment into the even tinier bedroom to empty his pockets onto the table next to the bed - his cash and keys, his cellphone. 

He grabbed two beers from
the frig, twisted the top off the first one, drank most of it in one long gulp.  Before cracking open the second one, he reached back over his shoulder and grabbed a fistful of T-shirt, peeled it off over his head.

 
                 Dante tossed it aside on his way into the bathroom, then his shoes, his jeans and boxers.  Drank the second beer in the shower, the combination of alcohol in his system and cool water sluicing over his skin taking his headache down a little.  Just a notch.  Enough that he could ignore it while he dried off, stepped into a clean pair of boxers.  Enough that when he finally stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes, he was able to forget, at least for a little while, Luanne’s questions.  Enough that he could sleep.

Not easily, or peacefully, but he slept. 
Was still sleeping when his cellphone started shimmying its way across the bedside table, ricocheting back and forth between empty beer bottles and an ugly ceramic lamp, knocking a small pile of change off onto the floor in the process.