Las Vegas Noir Read online

  This collection is comprised of works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Akashic Books

  ©2008 Akashic Books

  Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple

  Las Vegas map by Sohrab Habibion

  ePub ISBN-13: 978-1-936-07033-6

  ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-49-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007939596

  All rights reserved

  Akashic Books

  PO Box 1456

  New York, NY 10009

  [email protected]

  www.akashicbooks.com

  ALSO IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES:

  Baltimore Noir, edited by Laura Lippman

  Bronx Noir, edited by S.J. Rozan

  Brooklyn Noir, edited by Tim McLoughlin

  Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Tim McLoughlin

  Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing but the Truth

  edited by Tim McLoughlin & Thomas Adcock

  Chicago Noir, edited by Neal Pollack

  D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos

  Detroit Noir, edited by E.J. Olsen & John C. Hocking

  Dublin Noir (Ireland), edited by Ken Bruen

  Havana Noi (Cuba), edited by Achy Obejas

  London Noir, edited by Cathi Unsworth

  Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton

  Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block

  Miami Noir, edited by Les Standiford

  New Orleans Noir, edited by Julie Smith

  Queens Noir, edited by Robert Knightly

  San Francisco Noir, edited by Peter Maravelis

  Toronto Noir (Canada), edited by Janine Armin & Nathaniel G. Moore

  Twin Cities Noir, edited by Julie Schaper & Steven Horwitz

  Wall Street Noir, edited by Peter Spiegelman

  FORTHCOMING

  D.C. Noir 2: The Classics, edited by George Pelecanos

  Delhi Noir (India), edited by Hirsh Sawhney

  Istanbul Noir (Turkey), edited by Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler

  Lagos Noir (Nigeria), edited by Chris Abani

  Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Lawrence Block

  Mexico City Noir(Mexico), edited by Paco I. Taibo II

  Moscow Noir (Russia), edited by Natalia Smirnova & Julia Goumen

  Paris Noir (France), edited by Aurélien Masson

  Phoenix Noir, edited by Patrick Millikin

  Phoenix Noir, edited by Patrick Millikin

  Portland Noir, edited by Kevin Sampsell

  Richmond Noir, edited by Andrew Blossom,

  Brian Castleberry, & Tom De Haven

  Rome Noir (Italy), edited by Chiara Stangalino & Maxim Jakubowski

  San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Peter Maravelis

  Seattle Noir, edited by Curt Colbert

  Trinidad Noir, edited by Lisa Allen-Agostini & Jeanne Mason

  To John O’Brien and his sister Erin O’Brien

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  PART I: SIN CITY

  JOHN O’BRIEN Scotch 80s

  The Tik

  DAVID CORBETT Fremont

  Pretty Little Parasite

  TOD GOLDBERG Summerlin

  Mitzvah

  SCOTT PHILLIPS Naked City

  Babs

  VU TRAN Chinatown

  This or Any Desert

  PART II: NEON GRIT

  PABLO MEDINA West Las Vegas

  Benny Rojas and the Rough Riders

  CHRISTINE MCKELLAR Green Valley

  Bits and Pieces

  PRESTON L. ALLEN Nellis

  Crip

  LORI KOZLOWSKI North Las Vegas

  Three Times a Night, Every Other Night

  JAQ GREENSPON Sunset Park

  Disappear

  JOSÉ SKINNER East Las Vegas

  All About Balls

  PART III: TALES FROM THE OUTSKIRTS

  NORA PIERCE Test Site

  Atomic City

  CELESTE STARR Pahrump

  Dirty Blood

  BLISS ESPOSITO Centennial Hills

  Guns Don’t Kill People

  FELICIA CAMPBELL Mount Charleston

  Murder Is Academic

  JANET BERLINER Area 51

  The Road to Rachel

  About the Contributors

  INTRODUCTION

  THE MOST DANGEROUS CITY IN AMERICA

  Ooh, Las Vegas,” sang the pioneering country-rocker Gram Parsons. “Every time I hit your Crystal City, you know you’re gonna make a wreck out of me.” As Las Vegans, we regularly read about these wrecked lives in newspapers and magazines. We routinely observe people going about their wildly destructive antics on mainstream TV. Often we can’t believe these stories are unfolding in our city. They almost seem like put-ons, elaborate pranks borrowed from atrocious cut-rate screenplays. But there they are, these inhabitants of our city, their mug shots staring us down, making us wonder if what Parsons said is really true—that in Las Vegas your only real friend is the queen of spades.

  How crazy does crime get in Las Vegas? Well, consider these tales taken from local papers:

  Husband-and-wife champion bodybuilders strangle their personal assistant, torching her body in a red Jaguar in the Vegas desert. Eventually police apprehend the couple in a shopping center, where the killers are drinking root beer and getting manicures.

  Failing in his effort to sexually assault a female parishioner, a Catholic priest clobbers his intended victim with a wine bottle before going on the lam. According to a police report, he tells the church worker, her consciousness fading, “I am over the edge.”

  And then there’s this: O.J. Simpson, who years ago was found “not guilty” of decapitating his wife and her lover, storms into a hotel room with armed accomplices to “retrieve items that belonged to him,” sports memorabilia like his Hall of Fame certificate and photos of him standing beside J. Edgar Hoover.

  On it goes, a litany of wicked behavior and stupid folly. People come from all over the world to do dumb, dangerous things in Sin City, whether it’s someone locking himself in a Fremont Street motel to kick a nasty heroin habit, hooking up to an oxygen tank in a last-ditch scheme to double his nest egg at the downtown slots, or shooting a weekend porn flick that goes disastrously wrong once a rabid pit bull is introduced. In these true-life narratives, no one shows up in Las Vegas to do anything smart, tactful, or even kind. Instead, they come here to fuck up. Big time.

  The sheer range of true Las Vegas crime—no doubt spurred on by the city’s explosive growth (which recently passed the two million mark)—can be intimidating to crime writers and readers alike. How can literary fiction surpass the strangeness of this place? Indeed, it takes a lot to top the gaudy spectacle that is Las Vegas, and we’re happy to report that the writers who contributed to this volume have done just that. They’ve beaten the odds to conjure characters and stories that transcend any of the lurid dramas of Vegas you’ll read about in newspapers or watch on the tube.

  The stories gathered in Las Vegas Noir are written by longtime residents and avid chroniclers of Sin City, authors who take you far beyond the neon of Caesars Palace and into neighborhoods too dangerous for CSI. Absolutely cliché-free, these stories are full of flesh-and-blood characters trapped in dire circumstances that only real Las Vegas neighborhoods can spring.

  The late John O’Brien, author of Leaving Las Vegas, gives us the story “The Tik,” in which a junkie hooked on a mysterious drug reunites with his wealthy ex-lover to embark on a thrill-killing expedition. In David Corbett’s mysti
fying “Pretty Little Parasite,” a Fremont Street cocktail waitress plagued by Holocaust nightmares believes coke dealing is the best way to become a stay-at-home mom. In Lori Kozlowski’s “Three Times a Night, Every Other Night,” an Irish pub singer banished to North Las Vegas and at the end of his professional rope is destined for a mobbed-up fate. Jaq Greenspon’s “Disappear” centers on a down-and-out magician whose former assistant steals money—and may be fingering him to the bad guys. And in Celeste Starr’s chilling “Dirty Blood,” a simple pickup in a gay bar takes an unusual twist when the protagonist finds more than lubricant in his date’s sock drawer.

  There is plenty of heartbreak and humor (albeit of the blackest order) too. In Tod Goldberg’s “Mitzvah,” for instance, a con man masquerading as a rabbi feels trapped in the suburbs until he plans a brutal means of escape. In Scott Phillips’s “Babs,” an ex-stripper turned bar owner drags along a visiting Midwestern cartoon aficionado to reclaim some meth for a mutual friend. And Vu Tran’s devastating “This or Any Desert” explores the fractured psyche of a renegade cop looking to avenge his Asian ex-wife’s physical abuse at the hands of her new husband, a Chinatown businessman, with searing emotional and psychological insight.

  Like we said, as fantastic and diverse as the Strip can be at night, it’s got nothing on the vast array of stories collected here. Indeed, Las Vegas Noir, as you will soon discover, brings you into the gaudy bosom of our fair city—that is, the gaudy, lethal bosom that eventually presents itself once you wander far away from the Strip.

  Jarret Keene & Todd James Pierce

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  March 2008

  PART I

  SIN CITY

  THE TIK

  BY JOHN O’BRIEN

  Scotch 80s

  Part of me wished that I had asked the cab to wait. I hadn’t. I stared up at the big double doors, weathered from the desert sun, yes, but still so imposing that you half expected to see a muscled bodyguard when they opened. The doorbell didn’t work. It never had. I felt the familiar quiver begin in the back of my neck as twice I dropped the ornate knocker, an upside-down black iron cross. I peered over my back to see if the cab was still in sight. The long drive was empty.

  Despite the impending nightfall, I noticed the German shepherd asleep on the grass, his white face a beacon in the otherwise black lawn. I knew this dog and wondered if he would remember me. I walked over to nudge him awake.

  When I had last left this house over ten years ago, I was certain that I was through with this all-consuming part of my life, but as I bent over to pet the dog, it was clear this place was far from finished with me; rather, like the dog, it was merely lying in wait for some new awakening. The shepherd lifted his head and growled, but whether the snarl was for me or something else, I did not know. I followed his gaze and was startled to find that I was being watched by a tall slim figure, standing where only moments before the closed doors had been.

  “Timmers, you’re back,” she said, not at all surprised to see me.

  I cringed at her easy, reflexive use of my nickname; at her prosaic manner of observation, as if I’d just returned from a short walk—when in fact I had been gone for a decade. This meeting was nothing less than heart-stopping for me.

  “Melinda, I … I didn’t hear the door open. You startled me …” So much so, in fact, that I couldn’t remember anything that I had planned to say. “You sound as if you’ve been expecting me.” She ignored this.

  “Come in,” she said.

  As I followed her through the foyer and into the heart of the house, I began to feel a sort of resignation; a feeling that, now that I had set things in motion, I could sit back and relax, free from the burden of decision making. It was not an unpleasant outlook.

  “Christ,” I said as we walked into the living room, its windowed ceiling a full twenty feet above me. “I’d forgotten how damn big this place is.”

  “I doubt that,” she responded. “Still drink bourbon?”

  “Finally a question. Apparently there is at least one thing that you’re not sure of.” I was starting to feel cocky. How else could I feel? I’d come this far into the house, into my past. The less I thought about it, the better it felt. I was comfortable here. Melinda understood me in a way that no one else could.

  “Not really, Timmers.” She reached into an antique Spanish sideboard and extracted a dusty bottle of Wild Turkey.

  “My brand, even. I’m impressed.” I narrowed my eyes and grinned at her. Her presence was making me giddy. I was excited—this was so easy. She knew why I was here. It was like being in a cathouse—no pretense. You ask for sex and they give it to you. But a cathouse would seem like a church compared to this place.

  “Your bottle, actually,” she said.

  “Fuck it,” I said. “We can drink all we want later.”

  Without missing a beat she set down the bottle, picked up my hand, and turned silently toward the staircase. I willingly followed her determined walk and flowing silk robe. This was the beginning of the end of ten years’ anxiety. It seemed as if I’d barely been away. Right now nothing seemed less relevant than my time away from her.

  But I did have that time, and I had to remember that. I had to remember the futile years of trying to ignore this hidden life, with Melinda and this extravagant house standing at the center. I had to remember why I was here.

  Why was I here?

  What if I did like it? Liking it—living it—had been the whole point. I was back now and it was time to unlearn compassion and let Melinda take me again.

  We climbed the staircase to her bedroom; ten years since it had been our bedroom and yet it looked exactly the same to me. Perhaps it would always be our bedroom. Melinda dropped my hand and turned to face me. She stepped back and looked into my eyes as she untied her robe and let it fall to the floor. I was amazed at her perfection. Though life had left its many marks on my body, she was just as I remembered—flawless, still possessing all the curves and textures of a nineteen-year-old showgirl.

  She unbuttoned my shirt and in a moment I, too, was naked. Melinda wrapped herself around me. I lifted her onto the bed, the raw heat rising inside of me. It was exactly as I remembered. I ran my hands along her thighs, stopping short of the cleft of her. Her nipples were hard and brown. I took one between my teeth, one between thumb and finger, and bit and pinched with exacting pressure. Melinda cried out, but did not move to stop me. She was open beneath me, ready. It was time. I licked and tasted her until her legs quivered on the brink. I stopped short of her orgasm and lay on top of her, breathing in the intermission. Finally, I pushed into her. She climaxed in waves, acute bursts of pleasure. I was close behind, teetering on that exquisite edge.

  Melinda sensed this, as I knew she would, and stopped all her motion. At once my imminent climax was completely in her control. She slid from beneath me and sat up on the side of the bed. She opened the nightstand drawer. I waited, trembling, as she extracted a stainless steel tray and with slick efficiency prepared the injection. The glowing black fluid filled the syringe. My hardness raged. I swallowed against it all, my throat dry.

  At that moment it was impossible for me to understand how I had stayed away from this drug—we called it “The Tik”—for all those years. I had never heard of it outside this room and had never looked for it elsewhere. Somehow I knew that it existed nowhere but here. This place was as much a part of The Tik as I, moments before, had been a part of Me-linda. She lived here in a desert oasis with it, and the whole scene had always been one great, indivisible, seductive, eternal entity to me. I had once believed that I could escape it by running. Now I had run back, and was going to try to escape another way.

  Melinda tapped the needle of the syringe with a long red fingernail. The sexual tension and my own anticipation had my heart nearly beating out of my chest. My bloodstream was primed to rush the drug to my brain. Melinda turned, ready with the needle. I closed my eyes and offered my arm.

  The beautiful pin
ch.

  As the hot fluid rushed through my veins, Melinda prepared another hypo and injected herself. Then she dropped the syringe onto the tray and kicked it, lunging into me. As the stainless steel and empty vial clattered to the floor, Me-linda clutched my waist and took me into her mouth. The heat of The Tik inside of me and the heat of Melinda’s tongue outside of me combined into that perfect euphoria I’d known only within these walls. She held me on the brink for as long as she could. Then I yelled out, pumping into her.

  The feeling of being alive poured over me, elemental and singular. We were finally together again.

  The Tik.

  We blinked in the aftermath, verifying it was real. I lay on my back, Melinda’s head on my stomach. Then she reared up and playfully bit me. I laughed and pushed her off. Full of new energy, I bounded out of the bed and down the stairs, returning with the bottle of bourbon. Melinda already had her panties on and was rolling up her fishnets. I sucked the bottle as I watched her dress. She grabbed it from me and took a big swallow.

  “I have a surprise for you,” she said. She shoved the bottle back into my hand and pulled open the door of what had been my closet. I was stunned. Before me hung all my old clothes, just as I had left them.

  I laughed. “Unfuckingbelievable. Do you still have the Jag too?”

  “In the garage,” she said.

  Nothing had changed.

  Melinda and the drug were working in perfect harmony. My head spun with satisfaction and lust. I grinned wildly and shook on the leather jacket that had always fit me like a second skin. It still did. My boots, my jeans, everything was in place. I gulped some more bourbon and pounced on Melinda. We fell onto the bed and I ripped off the black lace bra she had just put on. She laughed as the zipper on my jacket scratched her. We fucked again, more perfunctorily this time, then got dressed.