Las Vegas Trip

-->

            True story.

            Thirty-odd years ago we took a two-week vacation to Hawaii. Having no desire to spend twenty continuous hours in the same plane, we arranged for stopovers in both directions. On the way west we spent a day in San Francisco with a college friend of mine. On the way back we decided to stop in Las Vegas so Nick could visit an old friend of a friend and I could see this legendary American Gomorrah for the first and – please, God – only time.

            The Las Vegas of 1979 was the strangest city I’d ever seen. Still has that dubious honor. I remember glassy-eyed people on the street who looked like they’d just come from tryouts for Night of the Living Dead, and casino patrons who’d smoked and drunk too much for decades. And the noise level inside the casinos . . . drinks glasses clattering, people groaning and screaming over losses and wins, bells dinging on slot machines. We spent half an hour looking for a relatively quiet place to have a drink.

            We’d planned to meet the friend of Nick’s friend from back East, a dealer at one of the larger hotel-casino complexes. Moe (I don’t really remember his name) had offered us a few nights at his house; but when we found him, he said his guest room was occupied by a new roommate and we’d have to spend our first night at the hotel.  So we booked a room that was incredibly cheap, about a third of what we’d expect to pay in Boston or New York. And the desk clerk somehow talked us into seeing their current “big show” with Buddy Hackett and Joey Heatherton. Who? You might well ask. Even then I had a hard time putting faces to those names.

             We had a few hours to shower and rest from our long flight. Our room did not disappoint – it was exactly what I expected a Las Vegas hotel room to look like, gaudy as anything I’d ever seen. Mirrors everywhere, all edged in fake gilt Grecian designs; a huge round felt-covered card table that could easily sit eight or ten; a bar for another half-dozen people; two full baths with enough tile and gilt-trimmed mirrors to outfit a sizeable Italianate house back East.

            But no bed. After a thorough search of the room for a secret, mirror-covered door to a bedroom, I called the desk and was told that there should be a bed in one of the sofas, though clearly the man who answered couldn’t imagine why we’d want one. People came here to drink and gamble, not sleep. We found it – the most uncomfortable sofa bed ever, so bad we pulled the mattress, such as it was, onto the floor and took a nap, praying we wouldn’t catch anything that couldn’t be cured by penicillin.

            The “big show” was one of the saddest events I’ve ever attended. Honestly, I’ve been to funerals that were more fun. The three drinks each, included with our tickets, came all at once; and apparently lots of people drank them all at once because Joey Heatherton’s opening song and dance act was interrupted several times by incredibly cruel people yelling, “Hey, Joey, how’s Lance?” even though she had divorced him years before. (Google Lance Rentzel for that sad story.) Buddy Hackett never appealed to me, but much of the audience seemed to think he was hilarious.

            The next night was a bit better. Moe’s roommate, Clyde (thankfully, I don’t remember his name either), had the overnight shift at the casino where he worked as a dealer and offered us his room for the night. We took a cab to Moe’s place and settled in the spare room.

            Fortunately we were fine living out of our bags because every inch of closet space was crammed with clothes – yards and yards of polyester – and the bathroom counter, medicine cabinet and shelf were covered with strange cosmetics for men like hair-growth creams and other “enhancers”, things that used to be advertised in the back of tacky magazines and on matchbook covers.

            I thought Moe was a sweet old man (he was probably younger than I am now). He asked if he could show us some pictures while we sat in his living room, waiting to go out to dinner. When he pulled out an overstuffed photo album, I steeled myself for the excruciating boredom of looking at dozens of family pictures.  But no, turned out Moe had no family. Instead I spent an hour looking at dozens of pictures of Moe’s special babies – racehorses he’d owned a piece of back in the day. Moe cooed over them the way a doting grandfather would talk about his grandchildren. More sadness.

            Moe and Clyde took us out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. They were wonderful company, filling the evening with stories about Las Vegas history and inner workings. After dinner they urged us to visit a few more casinos and instant wedding chapels (also open 24/7). The two old men left us and went off to work their respective shifts.  After less than a few hours, we decided we’d seen about as much as we ever wanted to see of Vegas and took a taxi back to Moe’s house. We had to catch a 7:00 AM flight back to Boston and decided to shower and go straight to bed.

            As soon as I stepped over the threshold of Clyde’s room, it felt strange, empty. The dresser top had been cleaned off.  The few decorative items on the walls were gone (calling them pictures would be a stretch). My uneasy feeling got stronger in the bathroom – every surface was empty.

            “Nick, check this out. Why would he clean out all his stuff in the bathroom?”

            “Maybe he was embarrassed and thought you hadn’t seen it yet.”

            But when he walked across the room and opened the closet, it too was empty. We couldn’t help wondering where Clyde had put a roomful of stuff, so we did a quick search of the apartment. No boxes of questionable toiletries, no piles of clothing anywhere. In the few hours we’d been gone, Clyde had cleaned out a ton of stuff. Instead of going to work?

            “You think maybe he was planning to leave and just never mentioned it?”

            “Weird. Let’s just forget it. We have to get up in six hours.”

            We went to bed and tried to sleep.

            At 1:00 AM, the phone next to our bed rang and Nick answered. Clyde’s girlfriend was looking for him. She worked the same casino. Clyde hadn’t turned up at work and the boss was mad. Nick played dumb and said only that he wasn’t there.

            Wondering what Clyde was doing running out on his girlfriend and Moe, we again tried to sleep.

            At 2:00 AM Moe came rushing in looking for Clyde. We pointed out the emptied bathroom, closet, etc. All he said was “Shit” and rushed off to his room. Soon we heard a loud series of shits. We followed the sound and found Moe sitting on the edge of his bed, head in his hands. 

            “He stole my gun,” Moe whispered.

            Now it was my turn to say, “Oh, shit.” I turned to Nick. “We might as well go to the airport because I’m definitely not going back to sleep in that bed.”

            “Why not?” Nick couldn’t imagine anyone would be stupid enough to do what Clyde had obviously done.

            I love mysteries and movies and knew what had happened. And Moe knew Vegas. I was the first to say it out loud, “Clyde’s been robbing the casino and he knows he’s about to get caught.”

            “Probably,” was all poor exhausted Moe could manage.

            “Nick, he stole money from the casino! Why else would he have taken off without a word to anyone? Why else would he steal a gun? Because he knows people with guns will be after him. We need to leave.”

            Moe agreed with me. “Linda’s right. You should get out of here. I can handle the guys who show up.”

            I started packing while holding the phone between my ear and shoulder waiting for the taxi company to answer. I did not want to be there when “the guys” showed up.

            We spent several very uncomfortable hours trying to sleep in vinyl chairs at McCarran airport with the constant noise of slot machines. (There was no public space in Las Vegas without a slot machine.) I couldn’t relax until we were on the plane. Finally back in Boston I almost kissed the disgusting Logan terminal floor, so happy was I to be home without having been shot.

            As for Vegas . . . never been back.