A Town so Tough Just Living is a Full-Time Job

I met Maisy Morgan in the pursuit of her profession as a practicing graphologist. Maisy Morgan. Real name Maureen Moran. Thirty-one years old. Former showgirl in the line at the Tropicana. That was the season her name occasionally appeared in Forrest Duke's column as being seen in the big room at the Riviera with someone in from New Orleans on a junket. Maisy Morgan did not much like people from New Orleans. They drank too much and when they were drunk they would sometimes ask her to beat them off under the tablecloth in the big room while the show was going on. Maisy Morgan thought this was Town So Tough(continued) disrespectful to her and also to the act onstage. She liked to say that she stood in awe of talent. Not that she had been struck dumb by any of the talent she had met in her season in the line at the Tropicana. There had been a comic in the lounge who had promised to marry her and after she had driven to Nogales and had the abortion, she discovered that the comic already had wives in both Pittsburgh and St. Louis. The trip to Nogales had cost her the job in the line at the Tropicana, because she had started to hemorrhage and had to stay in bed for a couple of weeks and when she got back to Vegas, the job was gone. In the past, she had occasionally spent weekends with people in on a junket when she needed money, so she free-lanced along the Strip for a while until the new Lido de Paris revue started holding auditions. The creator of the revue had once told her that she had the best nipples on the Strip, perky even when she was not getting laid, whereas most of the girls in the line had to rub ice cubes on their nipples to get them up before a show. Maisy Morgan was sure her nipples would get her a job in the Lido de Paris revue, but then one morning she noticed a lump on her left breast and two weeks later, she had a mastectomy.

Maisy Morgan never thought much about having one breast, although sometimes when she was drunk, she said she thought it was "freaky." She was 26 years old when she had the mastectomy and her condition was conducive neither to working in a line nor to freelancing. Whenever someone wanted to ball her, Maisy Morgan would carefully tell him that he was getting only half of what he expected up top and if that did not bother him, she would be honored to go to bed with him. In matters sexual, Maisy Morgan always affected a rococo speaking style. It was this manner of speech that had first attracted Dominick Di-Cicco, that and the fact, as he told Maisy Morgan later, that "fucking a girl with one tit was a first for old Dom." Dominick DiCicco was Maisy Morgan's second husband and she had not seen him in three years. Maisy Morgan Town So Tough(continued) had married for the first time when she was 15 and seven months pregnant. Her first husband's name was Eugene Pruitt and Eugene had not been inclined to marry Maisy when she told him that she had missed three months in a row. Eugene Pruitt was the high scorer on the Green City, Oklahoma, high school basketball team, which in 1957 had gone to the semifinals in the Class B state tournament. Even today, Maisy Morgan would recall, there was still a faded sign on the outskirts of Green City that had been erected by the chamber of commerce and that said, Welcome to Green City, home of the Green Hornets, 1957 Class b semifinalists, Oklahoma Inter-Scholastic Basketball Tourney.

Eugene Pruitt had been able to persuade the four other Green Hornet starters, plus two substitutes, that they all had had a whack at Maisy Morgan, a claim that Maisy said was not even half accurate. But Maisy Morgan's father had been able to convince Eugene Pruitt to marry his daughter with a promise of a half interest in his Phillips 66 station--that plus the vow to break Eugene Pruitt's legs with a tire iron if he did not do so. Maisy and Eugene were married in Carterville, Oklahoma, in March of 1957 with Maisy's father in attendance. Two days after the wedding, Eugene Pruitt left Green City and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Maisy Morgan's son was born in St. Augustine's Hospital in Tulsa and she named him Ralph, after her father. The child had six toes on each foot and only one arm and died four days after birth. Maisy called it a blessing. She never told Eugene Pruitt of either the birth or the death of her son, although she was reasonably sure that he was the father. Eugene Pruitt never returned to Green City, Oklahoma.

Now that she was 31 and had only one breast and was a practicing graphologist, Maisy Morgan was less interested in Forrest Duke than in Dr. Alvarez and Ann Landers. Every morning between 9 and 11, she would saturate her Nescafé with Coffee-mate and saccharin and settle down to see what Dr. Alvarez had to say about Pap smears. Maisy Morgan had a Pap smear every six months and her gynecologist, who attended all the name female acts on the Strip, mainly because of his philanthropy in dispensing reds, had told her she had nothing to worry about. But Maisy's absent breast often itched and the itching would make her think of Bartholin cysts and she would scour Dr. Alvarez to see what he had to say about vaginal disorders. Maisy no longer used a contraceptive, because she was convinced that the mastectomy protected her from ever again becoming pregnant. She readily admitted that this was a superstition without much basis in medical fact, but she said, "If you had had a kid with six toes on each foot, then I guess you'd be superstitious, too."

I readily agreed that I would be superstitious, too. It was nearly five in the morning and Maisy Morgan and I were sitting in the coffee shop at Caesars Palace. I was constantly amazed in the months that I was in Vegas by the encounter-group atmosphere prevailing in the bars and coffee shops of the casinos during the hour or two before dawn. Here in this anteroom of purgatory was a constituency of the emotionally dispossessed. It was as if the end were at hand and there were only one priest to hear all the confessions.

The first thing that Maisy Morgan had said about my handwriting was that I had "original ideas." I am sure that the reason she had said this was that she could not decipher my signature and had asked me to write down something longer, something that would give her more opportunity to decode the swirls and pressure points of my script. I was pretentious enough to jot down a few lines from Yeats:

O love is the crooked thing, There is nobody wise enough To find out all that is in it.

"You have such original ideas," Maisy Morgan had said. I was not altogether sure whether she (continued on page 310)Town So Tough(continued from page 220) found them in the handwriting or in the Yeats. "You're artistic, you dislike routine and you're a nonconformist."

Which was why I was on my sixth cup of coffee at Caesars with her, awaiting the arrival of her new boyfriend, Sonny Silver (this and all other names are fictitious). Writers, she had said, were good listeners, and she had filled me in on the mastectomy while polishing off the pastrami on pumpernickel.

"You're going to like Sonny," she said. "I read his hand and knew right away that he was in some kind of athletics. You could tell."

You certainly could. Sonny Silver was 4'9-3/4" tall and was an ex-jockey. He worked for one of the biggest comedians on the Strip as a combination gofer, masseur, bookie and pimp. His profession was unique to Vegas; he was a side-kick. He had been the side-kick to a singer before the comic and to one of the People before that. He made them laugh, he knew where to get a knish at five in the morning and that the fifth at Hollywood Park was a boat race and that there was a hooker on the Strip who would pop her glass eye and take it in the socket.

"How you hitting them, slugger?" he said when we shook hands. He pointed to Maisy Morgan. "She tell you about the boob?"

I did not quite know what to say.

"She tells everyone about that tit. You know, I think she's really looking for it. She's going to be driving down the Strip one night and here's this tit walking out the front door of the Desert Inn. With Howard Hughes. The first time anyone's seen Howard in forty-two years. But I knew Howard in the old days and if there was one thing he could never pass up, it was a good tit."

Maisy Morgan was slapping the table, shaking with mirth. "Sonny, you really make me laugh."

"You know, I could have made it in a big room," Sonny Silver said. "But you got to be five feet tall. I defy you to name me one comic under five feet tall."

"Mickey Rooney."

"Five, two and three eighths."

Sonny Silver ordered a Shirley Temple. He said he never drank hard liquor. The comic he worked for was a heavy boozer and Sonny said it was up to him to be a good example. The comic billed Sonny Silver as "entertainment coordinator."

"People ask me what an entertainment coordinator is," Sonny Silver said, "and you know what I tell them?" He cupped his hand over the side of his mouth. " 'How much does the chick cost?' "

"Sonny, show John your trick," Maisy Morgan said.

"You want to see my trick?"

"Sure."

"Then I'll show you my trick."

Sonny Silver reached into his jacket and drew out a long sheet of lined paper. At the top of the paper he wrote down the number 68,000.

"Sixty-eight thousand, Sonny," Maisy Morgan said. "It was only sixty thousand this morning."

"It's been a good day, champ," Sonny Silver said. He mentioned the comic. "We had the house debugged. You know, half this town is wired. My friend and I, we make a lot of bets around the country. I know people at all the tracks. They say, 'Maisy's Tit in the fourth,' so we get a little action down. Eight to one, that's thirty-two grand at Del Mar alone. The Feds know that, so they put a wire on your phone. I tell my friend I know a guy who can find the wire. So he comes in, finds the wire and for a couple of days you don't have the eagle on your ass. You get the eagle on your ass in this country and you are in big trouble. The bastards ruined Dick Haymes. It wasn't Rita Hay-worth, it was the eagle."

"You better start, Sonny," Maisy Morgan said.

Sonny Silver took a gold pencil from his pocket. He said it was a personal gift from Sammy Davis Jr. On the sheet of paper he began to write down numbers, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Maisy and I watched silently, trying not to interrupt Sonny Silver's concentration. The minutes passed. Sonny Silver wrote on, occasionally shaking his wrist to ward off writer's cramp. The numbers piled up on the paper: 434, 435, 436, 437. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. No one said a word. Finally, with a triumphant flourish, Sonny Silver wrote 69,000 at the bottom of the back of the paper.

"I bet you never seen anything like that in your life," Sonny Silver said.

I still was not quite sure what I had just spent 22 minutes watching.

"I counted to a thousand," Sonny Silver said.

"Why?"

"Because I'm counting to a million."

"Oh."

"I bet you never met anyone in your whole life who's counted to a million."

"No."

"I've done it three times."

"That means that Sonny's counted to three million, if you add it all up," Maisy Morgan said.

"I guess that's what it means," I said.

"It's a very simple operation," Sonny Silver said. "I take Sammy Davis' pencil here and three times a day I count up to a thousand."

"That's three thousand a day," Maisy Morgan said.

"I write it all down just so I got a record of it. You know, there's people in this town, you tell them you've counted to a million, they won't believe you."

"Yeah, I can believe that," I said.

"Takes about twenty minutes to a half hour every time I count to a thousand. I write the number I begin with at the top of the page, the number I end with at the bottom. To double-check, so to speak."

I nodded.

"Any more than three times a day, you tend to lose interest," Sonny Silver said. "Less than that, the whole operation would take too long."

"You wouldn't want that."

"Did it once in three hundred and thirty-three days. The longest was three hundred and forty-five days. And I got a record of every page. Signed, with the date. You want to witness this one?"

I signed my name with Sammy Davis' gold pencil on the page full of numbers. I asked what he did with the pages.

Sonny Silver said he gave them to the comic. "It makes him laugh. He shows them to real superstars. Buddy Hackett. Frank Gorshin."

"It really makes them laugh," Maisy Morgan said. "I've seen them."

"And people ask what an entertainment coordinator does," Sonny Silver said.

• • •

Artha was depressed. It had been a bad day at the Manhattan Beauty College. She blamed it on the recession. That fucking Nixon. She wasn't political, she had never registered to vote. Register to vote and she might be called to jury duty and if she were called to jury duty, it would be hard to work. Although it might be nice, when a judge asked what she did, to say, "I blow a lot of guys." That would shake up his Honor. Fuck him. And Nixon, too. There was a recession, he was in the White House, he should have fixed it. Artha blamed Nixon for getting busted. It was the first time she had been busted since Milwaukee, and that was for carrying reds. This time the bust was for hooking. It was Nixon's recession, it was his fault. When she applied to the Manhattan Beauty College, she had thought she would hook only on weekends. That would keep her going and leave her time to study on week nights. But the recession had hit Vegas so hard that she was now forced to work during the week. She was not doing her homework; she had begun to cut classes. It was difficult to take a three-o'clock date and then get up for an eight-o'clock class. It was better to cut the class altogether than to be tired and make a mistake in bluing or tinting. She was tired all the time now. The nights were longer. There were so few high rollers around that the pits were not coming through with the steady good tricks and she had started to cruise. Because of the recession. And cruising was how she got busted. Right off a blackjack table at the Landmark.

Artha had stopped to play a hand of 21. She did not gamble much. She just wanted to rest her feet. And be on display. A single girl at a blackjack table at three in the morning. Even the rubes could figure that out. She had been cruising since midnight with no luck. The secret of cruising was to keep moving. Caesars first, then the Tropicana, then the Sands. No luck. No more than two drinks in any casino. Stay for more than two drinks without making a connection and hotel security begins to get nervous. The hotels draw a very fine line. They like the girls available for the roller who wants a pop, but then they don't want the casino to look like a lamppost. So two drinks and move on. Artha had talked to a lot of guys. Lookers, talkers, guys who wanted to negotiate. The nice thing about working out of the pits was that there was no negotiating. That was all fixed beforehand. A hundred dollars, cash or chips. Cruising was different. There was always some dude who got his rocks off negotiating. A hundred dollars to $50, $50 to $30. At three o'clock in the morning with no hits, even $30 looked good. Then the guy would say no, he thought not, it was a little steep. Fuck him. That kind of guy was trouble. When she first got to Vegas, before she made her connections in the pits, she had always cruised with a friend. If she got a trick, she would tell her friend his room number. If she was not down in an hour, give the room a call. There were guys who liked to work a girl over, a little punch in the tit to liven up the evening. So call in an hour to see if I'm OK. It was better to be safe than sorry.

Artha was tired at the Landmark. Her feet hurt and she did not feel like moving on to the Sahara. That was her mistake; she did not keep moving. She looked up and saw the cop beckoning to her. She had never seen him before, but she knew he was not just another john. Johns never beckon. They always ask for a match or the time or say what a nice night it is or how lucky they feel. Only the vice crook their finger. When a dude snaps his finger, beckons with his hand and wears a small American flag in his lapel, a working girl can be sure it's the vice.

She went along. A girl always went along. It was not smart to cause trouble. She wanted to work the Landmark again and if she caused a scene, she never would. Hotel security would be on her ass before she got through the automatic door. Nor did the vice want to cause a scene. The hotel would disapprove and the hotel had too much juice downtown. The only difference between getting busted and walking out of the hotel with a trick was that she did not take the cop's arm. Nobody could tell what was happening except hotel security and some of the people in the pits. No one seemed to notice, not even a blackjack dealer who had turned a $50 pop over to her the night before. Before the recession, the dealer used to turn her on to a couple of tricks a week. Artha had never turned any money over to him. He had balled her a few times and there was one thing about him that she particularly liked. He had never asked to go to her apartment. She would have let him, but he never asked. He lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the west side of the Strip and sometimes after a date, she would play a couple of hands at his table and he would say that if she was not busy, he got off in a half hour or so. That was all, nothing more. Sometimes she would say yes and other times, when she was tired or had had too much action, she would smile and say no. "You're at the end of a long line," she would say, and he would laugh and deal her another hand. He never paid. That was part of the bargain. But she did not turn him down too often. Times were too tough and the supply far exceeded the demand. If a girl wanted to make a living, she could not tell a good contact in the pits to go take a cold shower every time he hinted around for a freebie.

Only her contacts got the free pussy. All the other locals paid. Artha had worked out an elaborate pay scale for the locals. She let a dealer go for a "quarter," or $25, a pit boss for a half, or $50. It was a flat $100 for the casino or hotel manager. There was one hotel manager who anted up $150 every time. The extra $50 was so the girl would not wash him. He had a phobia about being washed. It seemed to him too professional. The money did not make it professional, only the washing. That was how Artha had lost him as a trick. She had washed his joint first thing. He let her finish, but then wadded the two bills into her purse and dismissed her before they got anything going. It was a long time before Artha even worked his hotel. She was afraid that because she had soaped his joint he had put the word out for hotel security to lean on her if she ever came in. It was too bad, but she washed everyone, she did not care who he was. She said it was going to be difficult for her if she ever got married, because on her wedding night she was sure to take a washcloth, some soap and warm water, and that would not look right. But it had paid off. She had got the clap only once and that was when she was in high school in Wisconsin. She was almost sure she had caught it from a boy named Walter Keenan, whose brother was a Dominican priest and whose mother was active in the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul.

Artha often wondered how she had managed to catch the clap only once, even with all the washing. She had played around with a very rough group in Milwaukee, spades mainly, numbers people, pimps, second-story men, some dealers in reds. She had never taken to drugs. She simply did not like them. "They just don't agree with me," she said. She had taken up with a black pimp after her baby was born. There was a black girl in the maternity ward with her and the pimp had come to see her a couple of times, but he had spent most of his time talking to Artha. She had never balled a black man before, although at that time she never called them blacks. In the part of Milwaukee where she was brought up, blacks were "niggers," and it surprised her when she got out of the hospital and began going with the pimp that the blacks called each other nigger, although they did not much like it if a white person did. She went with the pimp for several months and he bought her clothes and paid for her apartment and one day when he asked her to do a white friend a favor and work a house in Antigo, Wisconsin, she said, "Why not?" Antigo is in the potato and lumber country and the house was a two-girl affair and she was expected to service anyone who came through the door. The other girl did not seem to be around and the madam said the other girl was having her period, but a couple of days later Artha learned that a lumberjack had laid open the girl's skull with an ax handle. It was an accident; he was drunk; the girl would live. Artha was not reassured. She had arrived in Antigo on the bus on a Tuesday and was back in Milwaukee Friday afternoon, missing the big weekend rush in the lumber country. But in the slow middle of the week in Antigo, Tuesday night, Wednesday night and Thursday night, she had serviced 31 potato farmers and lumberjacks, and that seemed more than adequate payment for the clothes and the apartment the pimp had given her.

She took up with another pimp, who took her to Chicago and set her up in a cheap hotel on the 1000 block of North Clark Street, three dollars a night for the room, and every trick paid the three, so the hotel did not mind the heavy traffic. There was a coin-operated television set in the room, 25 cents for a half hour of TV time, and she balled the night clerk for a roll of quarters in order to watch The Man from U. N. C. L. E. and her other favorites between tricks. The night clerk's name was Opatashu and he had cancer of the rectum and he shit out of his side into a little bag attached to his waist. But he was straight--on, off, no tricks, no gimmicks, not like some of the guys she met on North Clark Street, especially the one with the hot plate. The John with the hot plate would carry it around with him and when he picked up a girl, he would fry up a couple of eggs in her room, dump the eggs on her pussy and then eat them with a plastic knife and fork. That was all, nothing more, except the yolk from the sunny side up crusting in her pubes. Opatashu died while she was on North Clark Street and she went to his funeral. It was something to do, she did not like to waste her quarters on the game shows on TV in the afternoon and the local cooking show reminded her of the John with the hot plate. The assistant manager and the housekeeper of the hotel were at the cemetery, and it struck Artha that it was a sad way to die, cancer of the asshole, poor Opatashu, no place even to crap out of in the end, attended at death only by a fag, a hooker and a spade maid.

Chicago was the farthest east she had ever been. She wanted to see New York someday, but the place that really interested her was Buffalo. No reason. She just liked the name. She did not even know anyone there. She was like that about cities. If the name was nice, the city was probably nice. Another city she thought would be an all-right place was Macon, Georgia. Once she had tricked a john from Macon. He was in the dental-supply business and was in Vegas for a convention and told her he wanted "the W. F. W."

"What's that?"

"The whole fucking works," he had said. "It's a Macon expression."

W. F. W. She liked that and eased it into a conversation whenever she got the chance. In a restaurant she would order a schnitzel with the W. F. W. and if the waiter looked at her strangely, she would say, "The whole fucking works, it's a Macon expression." That was a nice thing about Vegas; the waiters never batted an eye. They had heard it all, the W. F. W. When a trick took her to dinner, she would immediately call for the wine list. She always ordered wine by the number on the list. "Number sixty-nine," she would say. It was cute the way the waiters always got the joke.

"May I recommend instead number sixty-five," they would say.

"That's four short," she would say.

She had been in Vegas five years. Long enough to learn all the tricks. She freelanced for a while, until she met a couple of bell captains. But the trouble with hooking through the bell captains or the cabdrivers was that they took 40 percent. Off the top. Working out of the pits was not as steady, but there was less over-head. Better free pussy to every dealer in town than 40 percent. The barmen got to know her. That was important. They would tell her when the vice was making a sweep through the hotel and she would disappear into the ladies' room. Once while she was cruising the Sands, the heat made a swing through the casino and when she disappeared into the can, an old broad in a silver pants suit offered $50 to watch her take a leak. Artha had to take a leak anyway, so it was no problem. That was another thing she liked about Vegas: It was possible to turn a profit just by taking a piss.

She kept moving, she never got busted. Until the recession. Nixon's recession. Not that she ever got careless. It was too easy to run afoul of the heat. One of the first things she did when she got to Vegas was to get herself a bail bondsman. Just in case she did get busted. The bail bondsman's name was Bill Parsons and most of the hookers on the Strip used him. It was easy to find him in the Yellow Pages. He advertised himself as "Friend of the Working Girl." She gave Bill Parsons a S50 cashier's check so that in case she did get busted, he could bail her right out. And she got herself a lawyer. Again, just in case. The charge in a hooking bust was usually vag loitering. It was just a harassing tactic the vice used to keep cruising in the casinos within reason. The vice would never bust a girl when she was with a trick. There was no knowing how much juice the trick had. He could be an optometrist, but then again he could be the chief of police in Broken Butte, Arkansas. Or one of the People. Or someone with a $50,000 line of credit at the Sahara. The kind of people it was best not to mess with.

It was just Artha's bad luck that she was alone and that it was after midnight. If she had been busted before midnight, she could have made bail and been back in the casinos within the hour. But after midnight you have to spend the night in the tank. She made her one call to Bill Parsons and he said he would get her out the next morning. She settled in for the night. Or what was left of it. In knee boots and a black-velvet pants suit. The only excitement was when a spade tried to pinch her sausage-curl wig. Artha told the spade she would get a kick in the cunt if she was not careful. It was tough enough to cruise in the recession without a boot up the twat. The spade got the message.

Artha was out by eight the next morning. She gave Bill Parsons another $50 check to cover the bond for the next time she was busted and went home to bed. She would not have to appear in court. Vag loitering was a misdemeanor and the cases were always dismissed. But the lawyer cost $100, and with Bill Parsons' $50, that meant a C and a half. And no tricks to cover it. She would have to cruise again that night. Which is what caused all the trouble at the Manhattan Beauty College.

The problem was that she had missed the lessons about applying the solution for a permanent. Because she was working nights and cutting classes the next day. At school she was now on the floor and over the past week she had picked up $7.85 in tips while doing $21.50 worth of work. What she had learned, she had learned well. She was good at dyes and tints and was now into cuts, practicing on the wigs and falls that the Manhattan Beauty College kept on blocks for the students to work on. The customers of the college were all women who worked downtown, older women, mostly, the kind who want rinses and permanents and want them done cheaply. Artha had done a rinse and a tint that morning and she had performed both jobs meticulously. She was not fast, but she was thorough, and speed would come later. What was important now was learning how to do the job right. Everything was going well until this old broad in bifocals came in and demanded a permanent. Artha was the only girl free on the floor. She did not have permanents down yet, but it was worth a try. She put on too much solution. The woman began to complain. Artha got flustered. She was tired, she began to make mistakes. She realized how little sleep she had been getting. First the night in the tank, then last night, trying to make up for it, with a man from Chicago who dealt in pork futures. She had spent the evening with him at the crap tables at the Riviera and then, when she finally got him to his room, he could not get it up. She worked on him for two hours, until 4:30 in the morning. The john was in for $100, but when he could not make it, he demanded $50 back. She had first told him to go fuck himself and then she remembered the night in the tank and returned the $50. Two nights in the tank were two too many. And now this old bitch was complaining about the solution. It was burning her scalp, it was splitting the hair ends. Mr. Luigi ordered Artha off the floor and began to soothe the customer. Her permanent would be free. Mr. Luigi would perform it himself. That old bitch. Fuck her. Fuck the recession. Fuck Nixon.

• • •

Buster Mano filleted a Hostess Twinkie as neatly as if it were a Dover sole. With a butter knife he scooped the cream filling from each half of the cake, leaving a hollow in each like a pitted avocado. Buster never ate the cream in a Twinkie; he claimed the filling made him bind up. His lower intestine was a Dunkirk always waiting to be evacuated and Buster kept up-to-the-minute status reports on the departure readiness of his bowels. He signaled the waitress for a half cup of coffee. Hot and weak. The waitress extracted a pencil from the northern extremities of her lavender-tinted beehive and pondered the order. A half cup, hot and weak.

"I don't know about that," she said. The plastic name tag on her uniform identified her as Reeta.

"Know about what?" Buster Mano said.

"We don't serve half cups at Denny's."

"A whole cup tends to get cold before you finish," Buster Mano said.

"I'd have to charge you for a full cup," Reeta persisted.

"The menu says all the coffee you can drink for the price of a cup," Buster Mano said. "So it doesn't matter if the first cup's a whole cup or a half cup, does it?"

"I guess I never really thought of it that way," Reeta said.

"Takes thinking," Buster Mano said. "A half cup, then."

Reeta studied her order pad. "You wouldn't mind if I wrote down a full cup on the check and not a half cup, would you?" she said. "The boss might think it's funny, you know, ordering a half cup."

"Sure thing."

"You're nice. You from Vegas?"

Buster shook his head and mentioned the name of a Midwestern city.

"The nice ones never come from Vegas," Reeta said. "I'm from Fresno and, believe me, have I got a story."

"I bet," Buster Mano said, not unkindly. "The coffee."

"Half cup coming up," Reeta said.

Buster quartered his Twinkie and dunked a quadrant into the half cup of coffee. He closed his eyes as he ate, smiling to himself, and then finally he said, eyes still shut, "Lester Pugh."

I did not realize I was supposed to reply.

Buster opened his eyes and dabbed a piece of Twinkie from his lips. "Lester Pugh," he repeated.

I took the bait. "Who is Lester Pugh?"

Buster Mano smiled. "Lester Pugh," he said, "is a loser."

A casino downtown had asked Buster Mano to locate Lester Pugh. It was a small matter. Lester Pugh had run out on a marker of $2700 and dropped out of sight. His telephone had been disconnected and a hooker named Moreen was now living in his apartment. Moreen had never heard of Lester Pugh. Moreen said she had put two months' rent down on the apartment and to leave her the fuck alone. She had juice, she had a boyfriend who had eight points in the Thunderbird and her boyfriend had connections downtown and his connections would lean on anyone who bothered her. Who the fuck was Lester Pugh, anyway? A nobody.

Moreen was right. Lester Pugh was a nobody and the casino decided to let matters drop. Gambling debts are legally uncollectible and $2700 was not enough to get upset over. Better to eat $2700, especially when it might cost two bills to find Lester Pugh. Nor was $2700 worth any rough stuff. Not that Lester Pugh's disappearance did not rankle. Money was money, there was a principle involved. It was just that it was hard to think of Lester Pugh in terms of principle. He was a steady player, a good player, he knew the layout and figured the percentages. A quiet little fellow from Fort Smith, Arkansas. The only thing that anyone could really remember about him was that he hated the niggers. His daughter had drowned in an integrated community swimming pool in Fort Smith and Lester Pugh blamed Martin Luther King. It was a stretch, but everything about Lester Pugh was a stretch. He came to Vegas after his daughter died and got a job selling dice. Dice and the Reverend M. L. King were the only things Lester Pugh ever talked about. Always M. L. King, never Martin Luther King. He liked to hold a pair of dice in his hand and talk about the tolerances. Precision milled to one ten-thousandth of an inch. Sand-finished rather than clear, because the added friction gave dice more action on the table. He would stand at a crap table at three o'clock in the morning and talk about dice. He always gambled downtown. There were too many Jews on the Strip. Jews and M. L. King, there was the trouble with the world. A pair of dice was the only thing that had any meaning. Lester Pugh claimed to sell 8000 pairs of dice a month, $1.40 a pair. It was a good living, he had no major expenses. Just a girlfriend, a dim number with no tits who had flunked the dealer's test at a gambling school--the blackjack test, the easiest one to learn. A typical Lester Pugh girlfriend. The girlfriend never went gambling with Lester Pugh. He would always stand at the table alone and go into his monolog about dice. Never to anyone in particular, just to himself. If anyone was listening, fine. It was for this reason that there was never much action at any table where Lester Pugh was playing. The voice was quiet, obsessive. Dice, the only thing in the world that has any meaning. Three quarters of an inch to a side, edges razor sharp, made from cellulose nitrate, you call it celluloid, heaviest of all the thermoplastics, the spots are flush, that's because recessed spots make the six side too light, I bet you didn't know the heat from your hand distorts the tolerance, 30 days, that's as long as you should keep dice on the shelf, after that give them to the U. S. O. Lester Pugh was a nut about dice, as he was about M. L. King.

It was a pit boss from the casino downtown who spotted Lester Pugh coming out of the Valley Bank of Nevada in Henderson. The pit boss had often talked to Lester Pugh about dice and he knew there was a $2700 marker and that Lester had quit his job and left town four months before. Or so everyone had surmised. The pit boss told his shift boss that he had seen Lester Pugh in Henderson and the shift manager told the casino manager and the casino manager called Buster Mano. It was not the sort of case that Buster Mano usually took on, but he was offered not only his time but five percent of the marker. Buster said ten percent or find another boy. Seven and a half, the casino manager said. Ten, Buster Mano repeated. It was a matter of some honor with him. It was Buster's considered opinion that the People controlled all the casinos and when dealing with the People, the only way one could salvage some dignity was to get top dollar. That is the only language they understand, Buster would say. Never mind that ten percent in this case is only $270, it is still top dollar. And $270 plus time is better than a kick in the ass.

Buster Mano got his ten percent and immediately went to work. He sent a letter in a windowed envelope to Lester Pugh's last-known address, knowing the post office would not forward the letter but would probably put the forwarding address he had requested on it before returning it to him. The letter came back to Buster Mano address unknown and he carefully noted on his expense sheet, "One U.S. stamp--eight cents." Next he checked his IBM print-out of power-meter credits. Anyone who had transferred his utilities over the past year was listed in that book. Again, no luck. Buster placed a call to the casino manager.

"What's the name of Lester Pugh's girlfriend?"

"The one with no tits?"

"She might have three tits, for all I know."

"I'll get back to you."

The name of the girl with no tits was LaVerne. No known last name. She had once worked as a cocktail waitress at the Stardust. Buster called a friend in the security office of the Stardust. The friend said he would see what he could do. On his expense sheet Buster noted, "Two telephone calls--20 cents."

The friend at the Stardust called back the next day. "LaVerne Burdette. A real dumbbell. No tits."

Buster checked the power-company print-out. Four months earlier, LaVerne Burdette had moved from an apartment on Rome in Las Vegas to another in Henderson. Her new telephone number was 555-2033. Buster dialed the number.

"Hello."

"LaVerne Burdette?" Buster's voice was up half an octave, quick, exhilarated.

"Yes."

"Les Lacy, LaVerne, KENO Radio, the sound of Las Vegas for over thirty years."

"Yes."

"How about that, LaVerne? I bet you're not even thirty yourself. You sound like a ... twenty-four."

"I'm twenty-seven, Les."

"How about that? Married, LaVerne?"

"Not yet, Les."

"But a boyfriend, though, right?"

"That's right."

"And what does that lucky young man do?"

"He's in sales."

"In sales! How about that? What does he sell?"

"Patio furniture."

"Patio furniture. How about that? It wouldn't be for White Front, would it? White Front is a sponsor, got to get in every plug we can, you understand that, I bet, LaVerne."

"I sure do, Les. He works for Mojave Lawn and Patio."

"Would you believe that's another sponsor, LaVerne?"

"This is just so wonderful, Les."

"And it's going to be even more wonderful, LaVerne. Now, listen, you've heard my show----"

"Oh, sure, Les."

"Well, you know we give away albums, LaVerne, if you can answer the lucky question."

"I never win anything, Les."

"Your luck is going to change right here, LaVerne. Ready or not, here it comes."

"I'm so scared."

"It's a tough one, LaVerne. Now, for the original sound-track album of The Sound of Music, I want you to tell me who was the star of the movie version of that hit Broadway musical."

"Julie ... Andrews."

"LaVerne, I thought you told me you never win anything, but you have just won an original sound-track album of The Sound of Music with Julie Andrews and all those other great stars. Isn't that exciting?"

"Oh, boy, Les. Listen, there's just one thing. I've already got Julie on The Sound of Music."

"LaVerne, sweetie, now you've got two. Let me ask you something. You got a mom?"

"Sure do, Les."

"Well, now, with your new album, you've got your mom her Christmas present next December. A little early Christmas shopping, LaVerne, isn't that exciting?"

"It sure is, Les."

"Ciao, LaVerne, it's been great talking to you."

Buster Mano hung up. His brow was beaded with sweat. A long low fart whistled through his office.

"Jesus, I thought I was going to cut one when I was talking to her," Buster Mano said. "It would have blown the whole number. Maybe I blew it anyway. I should have told her the show was on tape. She's probably twisting the dials right now, trying to find me." He farted again. "Oh, well, you live and learn," Buster Mano said.

• • •

"Why?" I asked.

"Why what?" Buster Mano said.

"Why do you do it?"

"You mean, what's my motivation?"

"Yes."

"You asshole."

It was the next morning and Buster Mano and I were driving to the casino downtown with the information about Lester Pugh. Buster had called Mojave Lawn and Patio and they had volunteered that Lester Pugh would that afternoon be setting up a patio display at a model home in a subdivision called Rio del Sol.

"Polished terrazzo benches?" Buster Mano had asked.

"Oh, absolutely. Stain resistant to any food and drink."

"Just what I'm looking for," Buster Mano had said.

There was a tape recorder beside me on the front seat of the car and the cassette was monitoring our conversation. Buster hefted the tape recorder in his hand.

"I'm trying to find Lester Pugh; you're trying to find me; there's no difference. You're the same kind of Peeping Tom I am. Except I don't give a shit. I like looking for people and I cleared eighteen grand last year before taxes. So don't give me that crap about motivation. Motivation is a very poor explanation of character."

I shut off the tape recorder.

"No dramatic gestures," Buster Mano said. He switched the machine back on. "By the way, did you fuck that spade who was in your apartment that night?"

We parked the car and went into the casino. Buster never gambled, but he knew a number of the players at the tables. Buster preferred downtown to the Strip. It was a city and he understood cities. Cities meant failure and he was a connoisseur of failure.

"Buster."

"How are you?"

"Jack Eastern, Buster."

"I'd know you anywhere, Jack."

"What's it been, Buster?"

"Three years anyway, Jack. You're looking good."

"Fuck looking good, Buster. I'm seventy-four years old."

"Never would have figured that, Jack."

"Stopped playing golf four years ago."

"What are you doing for exercise?"

"I'd walk up Fremont Street buck-ass naked if I could stop getting old."

"I'd like to take you up on that, Jack."

"Only thing worse than dying is getting old."

"That's a grim son-of-a-bitch thought," Buster Mano said.

The casino manager was pleased at the progress of Buster Mano's investigation. He sat in his Naugahyde desk chair, a heavy-set man with a walleye, and twirled the dial of a closed-circuit television set on the desk in front of him. Each channel zeroed in on a different pit. He was watching a blackjack game.

"Look at that losing son of a bitch," he said. "He'll hit an eighteen, you watch."

The player took a queen. The dealer paid 18.

The manager turned off the set. "With stiffs like him, this could be a good business," he said. He was wearing a white-on-white shirt with his initials monogrammed on the cuffs. It was hard to tell which was his good eye, whether he was looking at Buster or me.

"So you found Lester."

Buster Mano grunted. "What do you want me to do?"

"Get the money back."

"How bad you want it?"

"We'll settle. Even like his business back. Cash business."

"And if he won't settle?"

"That son of a bitch likes to gamble too much. I'll put his picture in every casino in town."

"You got his picture?"

"You got a Polaroid?"

"Gotcha."

• • •

The Rio del Sol subdivision was off Flamingo Road east of the Strip. Pastel ranch styles, terrazzo roofs, two-car garages. There was a developer's sign in front of the model house--Open for inspection--Low down--VHA/FHA--From $22,995.

Buster Mano walked through the living room with his Polaroid camera in hand.

"You don't mind if I take pictures?" he asked the real-estate agent. "For the little woman. She works days at the Sands."

"Really?" the real-estate woman said. She was a hefty blonde, nearing 60, in a miniskirt, and her voice was guarded, as if Low down--VHA/FHA--From $22.995 was too steep for the husband of what she seemed to assume was a cocktail waitress at the Sands.

Buster Mano caught the hesitation. "In the publicity department," he said.

"Of course, go right ahead," the real-estate woman said.

Buster Mano began snapping pictures with his Polaroid.

"You'll notice the light dimmer," the real-estate agent said.

"I like the push-button controls," Buster Mano said.

"And it's all name-brand furniture. Of course, it doesn't come with every house, but the manufacturer is willing to give a discount. And no separate financing. It would all come with the initial loan."

"With approval of credit, I presume," Buster Mano smiled.

"Oh, of course. And isn't the breakfast nook darling? An all-electric kitchen."

"We have butane now," Buster Mano said. "The wife hates it."

"Well, then, this is the place for you."

Buster Mano tore off a snapshot, nodded with satisfaction and put the photograph in his pocket.

"It's the patio I'm really interested in," he said. "We spend all our time on the patio. Ruth and the dog and myself. We don't have any children. Mustard, our dog, he's family enough for us."

"That's delightful."

We went out the sliding glass door to the patio. Lester Pugh was arranging a rattan grouping around the barbecue. On a rattan cocktail table, there was a tray full of empty plastic liquor bottles, a Scotch-plaid ice bucket and some tinted plastic patio glasses.

"I'd just love a picture of that," Buster Mano said. He motioned Lester Pugh to one of the rattan chairs. "Could you sit in a chair? I want my Ruth to get the full flavor of it."

Lester Pugh moved reluctantly into the chair. He was a small, ferret-faced man in a dark suit and a string tie. On his right pinkie finger was a diamond ring with the stones worked into the initials L. P.

Buster Mano raised the camera to his eye. "It's a wonderful effect with the bottles," he said. "A real selling point. Just like home."

The real-estate woman came out onto the patio. "I didn't give you my card. I'm Mrs. Becker. And this is Mr. Pugh from Mojave Lawn and Patio. I can't wait for your wife----"

"Ruth."

"Of course, Ruth. I can't wait for Ruth to see the patio."

"Do you have any other kind of patio suites?" Buster Mano said. He tore off the snapshot and showed it to Lester Pugh. "You should smile more," Buster Mano said.

"Contemporary or classic?" Lester Pugh said.

"Polished terrazzo," Buster Mano said.

"We'd have to order it," Lester Pugh said. "Six-week delivery."

"I'm afraid you'd skip town if we gave you six weeks, Lester," Buster Mano said.

Lester Pugh sat transfixed in the rattan chair. His bones seemed to have collapsed. He tried to wipe his forehead, but he could barely lift his arm.

"I'm sure Mr. Pugh could have it here quicker than six weeks," Mrs. Becker said.

"Five weeks, I could write you an order," Lester Pugh said weakly.

"Oh, shit, Lester," Buster Mano said. He looked at the snapshot once again. "You take such a good picture."

"I'm sure I don't understand," Mrs. Becker said.

"Tell her, Lester," Buster Mano said.

Lester Pugh tried to rise from the chair. "That stupid LaVerne," he said finally. "You know, that dumb bitch really thought she was going to get The Sound of Music."

Buster Mano extended a hand to help Lester Pugh from the chair.

"Oh, hell, I'll buy her the album, Lester," Buster Mano said.