contacts for my business. I came by the school to pick up my crew and drop them off in their designated territories.
âI canât use you today, Frankie, hit me up on Friday. And, guy, my name is Zack.â I got real close to him and smiled when I said it. Iâve been told that when Iâm annoyed I grin like a Doberman.
Kids who would come by the apartment picked up on Betty calling me âLuckyâ and pretty soon they were doing it, but I didnât like it. I was superstitious about luck. I figured you only get so much luck in a lifetime. Sometimes I wondered whether I had used up all of mine that day when Betty rubbed a coin in my palm. A lifetime of luck for a quarter jackpot. Since then, life had been an uphill battle, but things werenât all that bad. Betty was working. She still changed jobs every six months, but Vegas was growing. I handled all of the bills and made
her hand over her whole weekly paycheck. Her check was minimum wage with the usual deductions but the real money was in tips. She still flushed every loose dime she got down the toiletâslot machines werenât called one-armed bandits for their generosity. But with what I earned and my handling her check, the rent and utilities got paid. Sometimes I even let her coach me out of a few bucks when she was out of money. âIâm a sucker for a good-looking dame,â Iâd tell her.
Yeah, me and Betty were doing all right, and I had a couple hundred put away for a rainy day, but we still had our noses pressed up against that window.
I leaned against the fender of my â57 Olds Rocket 98 and shot the shit with Frankie while I waited for my crew to arrive. It was Friday night and I had one kid for downtown and three for the Strip. On Saturday nights, the crew was doubled. They got paid one-third of what the businesses paid me to distribute the fliers, but I didnât get to pocket the rest of it. I paid one-third of my cut to Tony Lardino, a dumb sonofabitch everyone called Tony the Batâbehind his back. Tony was eighteen, had hands the size of baseball gloves, a beer belly, and a big butt. He carried around a baseball bat as though always on his way to a game. His idea of fun was seeing who could fart the loudest and kicking ass on someone smaller than himself, maybe cracking one of the guyâs kneecaps with the bat just for the fun of it. I wouldâve liked nothing better than to put some tire marks from my Olds across the bastardâs back, but his uncle was Morty Lardino. Morty controlled Vegas street crime, prostitution and drugs mostly, and reported to a guy in L.A. who reported to someone else, probably Giancana, in Chicago. There was always a pecking order. My scam was small-time stuff, but not too small for Tony to learn the ropes of the protection racket by shaking me down.
I couldnât keep change in my pockets and my Olds in gas and tires with everyone getting a cut, so I skimmed a little here and there.
I loaded my crew into the Olds and headed out to make the Strip drop-offs first. The transmission on the Olds banged into gear as I pulled from the curb. I liked the Olds because it was a lean, mean street machine and made me feel like I was one of the hardasses. I called it a salmon color, though Betty said it looked pink to her, not faggot-pink of course, but a masculine pinkâlike salmon. A two-door hardtop without the center post, it had chrome spinners, fender skirts,
white leather seat covers, a three-carb V8 with a 371-cubic-inch Rocket engine, automatic transmission, power windows, power steering, a rear end lowered by heating the springs and letting them flatten, and a Smithy muffler that rattled windows for a block when you let up on the gas. A kidâs car, for sure, but thatâs what I was.
The problem with it was the power steering made a loud whinny noise when you turned and the transmission slammed into gear and bled. The guy who sold it to me said it just
âI canât use you today, Frankie, hit me up on Friday. And, guy, my name is Zack.â I got real close to him and smiled when I said it. Iâve been told that when Iâm annoyed I grin like a Doberman.
Kids who would come by the apartment picked up on Betty calling me âLuckyâ and pretty soon they were doing it, but I didnât like it. I was superstitious about luck. I figured you only get so much luck in a lifetime. Sometimes I wondered whether I had used up all of mine that day when Betty rubbed a coin in my palm. A lifetime of luck for a quarter jackpot. Since then, life had been an uphill battle, but things werenât all that bad. Betty was working. She still changed jobs every six months, but Vegas was growing. I handled all of the bills and made
her hand over her whole weekly paycheck. Her check was minimum wage with the usual deductions but the real money was in tips. She still flushed every loose dime she got down the toiletâslot machines werenât called one-armed bandits for their generosity. But with what I earned and my handling her check, the rent and utilities got paid. Sometimes I even let her coach me out of a few bucks when she was out of money. âIâm a sucker for a good-looking dame,â Iâd tell her.
Yeah, me and Betty were doing all right, and I had a couple hundred put away for a rainy day, but we still had our noses pressed up against that window.
I leaned against the fender of my â57 Olds Rocket 98 and shot the shit with Frankie while I waited for my crew to arrive. It was Friday night and I had one kid for downtown and three for the Strip. On Saturday nights, the crew was doubled. They got paid one-third of what the businesses paid me to distribute the fliers, but I didnât get to pocket the rest of it. I paid one-third of my cut to Tony Lardino, a dumb sonofabitch everyone called Tony the Batâbehind his back. Tony was eighteen, had hands the size of baseball gloves, a beer belly, and a big butt. He carried around a baseball bat as though always on his way to a game. His idea of fun was seeing who could fart the loudest and kicking ass on someone smaller than himself, maybe cracking one of the guyâs kneecaps with the bat just for the fun of it. I wouldâve liked nothing better than to put some tire marks from my Olds across the bastardâs back, but his uncle was Morty Lardino. Morty controlled Vegas street crime, prostitution and drugs mostly, and reported to a guy in L.A. who reported to someone else, probably Giancana, in Chicago. There was always a pecking order. My scam was small-time stuff, but not too small for Tony to learn the ropes of the protection racket by shaking me down.
I couldnât keep change in my pockets and my Olds in gas and tires with everyone getting a cut, so I skimmed a little here and there.
I loaded my crew into the Olds and headed out to make the Strip drop-offs first. The transmission on the Olds banged into gear as I pulled from the curb. I liked the Olds because it was a lean, mean street machine and made me feel like I was one of the hardasses. I called it a salmon color, though Betty said it looked pink to her, not faggot-pink of course, but a masculine pinkâlike salmon. A two-door hardtop without the center post, it had chrome spinners, fender skirts,
white leather seat covers, a three-carb V8 with a 371-cubic-inch Rocket engine, automatic transmission, power windows, power steering, a rear end lowered by heating the springs and letting them flatten, and a Smithy muffler that rattled windows for a block when you let up on the gas. A kidâs car, for sure, but thatâs what I was.
The problem with it was the power steering made a loud whinny noise when you turned and the transmission slammed into gear and bled. The guy who sold it to me said it just
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