Sin City (26 page)

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Authors: Harold Robbins

BOOK: Sin City
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MR. ZACK HALLIDAY
LAS VEGAS, 1983
It felt good stepping off the plane at McCarran Airport. I had left Vegas for Macao over a year ago. The route home had taken me to the world's premier gambling venues. I drank Champagne with a bona fide countess in her Louis XIV four-poster bed after playing baccarat in Monte Carlo, and bedded a croupier wearing a tuxedo—and skirt—after dropping a bundle at a casino in London. I even picked up some culture. I knew that taxis in London were all black—except for a few maroon ones—and cockney speakers dropped their h's. Ell, I even stuck me 'ead in the Louvre to get a peek at the
Mona Lisa.
I couldn't figure out what was so special about her; I've had better-looking dames. At the Guggenheim museum in New York I took one look at the screwy art on the walls and asked the guard where the dinosaurs were. After I hit Atlantic City, I had had enough “culture” for a while and was getting homesick.
As I left the plane, I grinned at the cute flight attendant who I'd been flirting with for nearly three thousand miles.
“Happy to be home, Mr. Riordan?”
“We globetrotters are always ready to return to home and hearth.” Yeah, that's what I was officially: I went around the world, so I was a globetrotter. Her flight was continuing on to L.A., so I didn't bother wasting anymore of my charm.
I took a taxi to the Sands. I decided to stay there because the assistant security manager had once worked for me at Halliday's and would be a good source to update me since I had been away.
I was feeling real good—and real rich. I had five million dollars burning a hole in my bank account—and that ain't no yen. It was a big bundle, not enough to finagle my way into a piece of the Strip, but maybe enough to buy into a club on Glitter Gulch and use it as a stepping stone to the Strip. There was one club I wouldn't be visiting. I had run into a croupier on the Cayman Islands who used to work
Vegas and he said that Halliday's was in trouble. The “boutique” look, with high prices for food and jacking up the slot return percentages to pay for it, had driven away the weekenders. The club looked great, a polished diamond in the mud of Glitter Gulch, but not doing enough business to keep the crystal chandeliers dusted.
“That son-in-law of Con's is a real prick,” the croupier said. “He walks around with his nose in the air. What really pisses off everyone is when he tries to act like one of the boys—and speaks to you like he was talking to an old family retainer. The employees who end up staying do it out of loyalty to Con and Morgan.”
He had more dirt. Bic was bringing undesirables into the club, and rumors about Con losing—big time—playing poker and craps in other clubs. Con had lost his license and Morgan had gotten herself licensed.
I ate up the dirt because I was a vindictive bastard by nature. As far as I was concerned, the croupier could have told me the earth opened up and swallowed the club and I wouldn't have shed a tear.
That night I went downstairs dressed in a tuxedo that I had bought in Paris and sat down at the baccarat table. A crowd had gathered because Rock Hudson was at the table. His assistant, a young guy who looked like an Adonis, stood by as half a dozen of us played. I made thousand-dollar bets and was down more than fifty thousand in a couple hours. Hudson, his assistant, and the crowd had long since evaporated when I stretched and yawned and mentioned that I'd had a long flight from London. It was a white lie—I'd left London weeks ago—but what the hell, I wanted the Sands management to know that Zack Riordan had class, culture, and money, remembering what Chenza had told me. Vegas was a small town with big ears. By morning the phone in my suite—now comped—would be ringing off the hook with opportunities to invest my mysterious bankroll. I hoped one of the calls would be from a club owner with money troubles.
A shill, a pretty ex-showgirl who had been at the table, gave me the signal she was available but she reminded me too much of Chenza. And I was too tired. I must be getting old, I thought, when my pecker is too tired to get it up. I went upstairs and crashed in bed.
The next sound I heard was an ill wind at my door.
I crawled out of bed and staggered to the door to relieve the pounding that the door and my head were taking. When I opened the door, I came face to face with Con Halliday. His big fist was a blur, coming
from out of nowhere. He hit me in the jaw and knocked me across the room. I stumbled and went down on my back. For a moment I saw and felt nothing. When the fog cleared and feeling returned, I felt like I'd kissed a sledgehammer and that an elephant was on my chest. The elephant was Con's knee. He was kneeling on my chest and had his long-barrel .44 pointed between my eyes.
“Kiss your ass good-bye, you sidewinder bastard.”
The most I could manage was a gasp for breath. He let up the pressure on my chest, probably so I would have the wind to beg for mercy.
“Where do you want it, boy? I consider this a mercy killing, meaning I'm gonna let you choose where you take the slug.”
I took a few deep breaths and tried pushing his knee off but it didn't go anywhere. I tried a little flattery instead. “You're too fat and old and red in the face to kill me. You crazy bastard, get the fuck off me before that thing goes off while you're having a heart attack.”
He stood up and I crawled over to the bed. Sitting on the edge, I rubbed my jaw and thought about what I'd like to do to him if he put away the cannon. He might have looked like he was ready to bite the dust, but he still had a fist that delivered the message.
“What's your beef, Con? The last time I was in Halliday's you were hiding your head while your bitch daughter ran me out of the place.”
The gun exploded in his hand and a bullet hit the bedpost, shattering it.
“Jesus Christ, you crazy sonofabitch, you'll bring security and a goddamn SWAT team.”
“Naw, these rooms are soundproof.”
“Not for that cannon, they're not. What's eating you?”
“Call Morgan a name again and the next one's taking off your dick. I may be old, but I can still hit something that small. You raped my daughter, boy.”
That one almost stopped me. There was nothing like the truth to shut me up. “If it's true—and it isn't—why isn't Mr. Blue Blood here? He need you to protect his wife's honor?”
“He's gone, left for back East. They're getting a divorce.”
“Yeah, I heard that things aren't going too well at the club. You've had your license pulled and Morgan's about to get her's jerked because your dickhead son has been frequenting the place with undesirables.
Not that he doesn't meet that qualification just walking into the place alone.”
“The club's knee-deep in cowshit, and it's all your fault. Because of you, Morgan had to turn over running the place to that worthless shit of a husband of hers, and he ran the place into the ground.”
“Look, all I did was knock off a piece of ass before I left town. I figured I had that coming.”
He cocked the big pistol.
“Okay, okay, I apologize for the comment, but I had nothing to do with the club taking a dive. That's Morgan's fault.”
He walked toward the door. “Yeah, well, whose fault is this?” When he opened the door, Nadine, Morgan's old nanny, was standing outside. She had a child in her arms. Noticing the blue blanket, I assumed the kid in her arms was a boy.
“Meet Zack Jr.,” Con said.
“Nice-looking kid.”
It wasn't the cleverest thing I could say to Morgan about our son, but that's what came out between the
anchovis à la grecque
and the
palais de boeuf en salade.
We were having dinner at the fancy French restaurant that Morgan's Four Seasons chef launched. It was called a “grill” because that made it more chic. Like boutique, chic did not translate into money. As with the rest of the casino, “Le Grill” was hemorrhaging money worse than the national debt. I wanted to tell her that serving salty little fish and ox tongue to low-budget weekenders wasn't the brightest marketing plan in the universe, but I was on my good behavior.
Con had made me an offer I couldn't refuse: I invest my five big ones in the club and take over complete management, with one-third interest. For me it was a hell of a bargain because a third was probably worth twice that much. If the club survived. Halliday's wasn't the Strip, but when I was running it, no one in Glitter Gulch could beat its revenues. There was only one kicker in the deal—I had to marry Morgan.
Neither one of us was making any pretense about the deal. Part of it was simply family business: Con wanted Halliday's to remain in the family—
his
family. And part of it was saving face. Morgan and Wonder Boy had a knockdown, drag-out fight in which about a hundred people heard his accusation that the baby was mine and she admitted it. Con wasn't quite as liberal about having a bastard in the family as my mother had been. I had some serious suspicion that he would shoot me if I didn't make an honest woman out of his daughter.
Marrying Morgan meant she and I would own two-thirds of the club when Con passed away. The other third would belong to Bic. Personally, I hoped he'd die soon from a drug overdose. The big problem was getting Morgan to marry me. Con was threatening to shoot me if I
didn't marry her and she was threatening to shoot me
and
herself if I did.
“The only reason why I would consider marrying you is that I don't want my son to grow up like you,” she admitted.
“I can understand that. The men in your own family are such terrific role models for a child. You know, the grandfather who's drinking himself into an early grave—if he doesn't blow a gasket porking every woman he can get his hands on. And there's the uncle—”
“Leave Bic out of this.”
“Why are you always defending him?”
“Why are you always bad-mouthing him?”
“Because he's treated me like crap since the first day I met him.”
“And have you ever wondered why? Let me tell you, it's a lot easier being Con Halliday's daughter than his son. Bic has never lived up to being the mustang stud that my father expected his son to be. Con took a liking to you. He bragged about you. He introduced you to people in front of Bic like you were his son. How do you think it made Bic feel?”
“Poor little rich boy.”
She threw her napkin down and started out of her chair. “I knew this wouldn't work.”
“How were the starters, Madame?” The frog who ran the place, Marcel, was at our table.
“The food—”
“Was wonderful,” Morgan said, finishing my sentence. She kissed the tips of her fingers. “As usual, you are a culinary master.”
He floated away, ecstatic.
“We need to get down to basics, Morgan. I'm very fond of you.”
“How romantic.”
“This isn't about romance. You don't exactly make me feel welcome.”
“Maybe you've forgotten how crude and rude you were to me when I was a kid.”
“Look, can't we just put aside the past and all the recriminations? You want to save Halliday's. I have the money and maybe the desire. We put up a front for your old man and the world until the club's back on its feet. It'll be strictly business.”
“I will marry you on two conditions: that you never touch me and you treat Bic with respect.”
“Okay. You got a deal. But when your brother's conduct threatens the club, I have to address it.” I planned to ignore the first condition and lied about the second. I thought that part about having to “address it” was a nice, businesslike touch. It even sounded sincere.
 
I drove her home to her faux Tudor-style house beside the ninth hole of a golf course at a private country club. She asked if I wanted to come in and see “William.” William Conway Halliday-Duvale was his full name. I said sure, why not. I had to admit I was a little apprehensive about the kid. I hadn't thought about being a father before and it was hard to concentrate on being one now. My life was unsettled and I needed to get it into order.
In William's room, I said all the nice things. He actually was a cute kid. Maybe that was how all kids looked before they grew up. We tiptoed out to the hallway.
“How about a nightcap?” I asked.
“No.”
“Morgan—”
“Absolutely not. No sex. We have a deal.”
“I had my fingers crossed.” I came closer to her and she backed up.
“You've got to leave. If you don't, I'm going to call Nadine.”
“If Nadine was a little younger, I'd say go ahead, we could make it a threesome.”
“You haven't changed, have you.”
She was about to swing at me but I grabbed her wrist and pulled her to me. This time she hardly put up a struggle. She smelled good. Her red lips were moist and inviting. Someone once told me that a man's attracted to a woman's lips because her sex organs are entered through the pink lips between her legs. Whatever the reason, I've always been a lip man. And Morgan had lips I wanted to kiss. In both places. I wanted to make love to her this time, wanted her to love me back.
 
Morgan tried to push him away, but not with any real effort. The moment he got close to her, a ripple of heat ran through her and her nipples swelled with desire.
Damn him!
It had been that way the first time she saw him when she was a teenager and he was a young hustler fresh off the streets. She had loved him from the first moment she
saw him. He had always been insensitive to her feelings and she had tried to hate him for it, but couldn't keep up the pretense.
He was a maniac and his intense passion lighted fires in her. He had her clothes off, scattered down the hallway and on the bedroom floor, by the time he laid her on the bed. He knelt beside the bed and pushed her legs apart. He started with his tongue on her belly, caressing her with its hot tip around her belly button and moving up the bare skin to her chest. His hot tongue teased her swollen nipples, dipped between her breasts, moved up to her neck. She quivered as his warm lips nibbled her neck. Then he moved back down, slowly, touching and tasting every part of her body, down to the soles of her feet before moving back up to where her hot-moist womanhood waited for him.
She wanted him, wanted his tongue inside her, wanted his maleness to fill her and join with her in the rhythm of love, but his lips caressed the inside of her thighs instead, working their way slowly closer, inch by inch, to the swollen lips between her legs.
Finally she couldn't stand it. Her legs widened involuntarily and her back arched as she reached down and pulled his head deep between her legs.
“Come inside me,” she whispered.

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