Lucky Read Free

bottle.
    ‘I wanna take Lennie over to the hotel,’ Jess said restlessly, when the baby was asleep again.
    Wayland nodded. He didn’t have much to say about anything.
    Out in the car she lit up a joint, blew smoke in Lennie’s face, and said aggressively, ‘I don’t want to talk about it, okay?’
    ‘Who’s asking?’ he replied calmly.
    She gunned the car into action and sped all the way to the Magiriano, where she drew up to the entrance without cutting the engine. ‘I’ll meet you here in a couple of hours,’ she said. ‘Ask for Matt Traynor. He’s the guy who booked you. He’ll get someone to show you around.’
    ‘Where are you going?’
    ‘I got an . . . er . . . appointment.’
    ‘Screwin’ around already?’
    ‘Give me a reason not to.’
    Having met Wayland he couldn’t think of one.
    Matt Traynor was a fifty-five-year-old silver-haired fox in a three-piece beige suit. Apart from being the best entertainment director in Vegas, he had points in the hotel. Lucky Santangelo had personally pursued him to take the job, and only the lure of a piece of the action had persuaded him.
    He told Lennie he loved the video tape Jess had shown him of his work, and then proceeded to fire off questions about her as if hoping to find out every detail of her life.
    Lennie made a stab at a few answers, but when Matt started asking about her marriage, Lennie felt the time had come to move on. Quickly he said he wanted to check out the lounge he would be appearing in, and generally get the feel of the place. Matt Traynor agreed, gave a few vague directions, and waved him on his way.
    Las Vegas. The heat. The special smell. The hustle.
    Las Vegas. Home. From birth to seventeen.
    Las Vegas. Youthful memories crowding his head. The first time he got laid, drunk, stoned, busted. The first time he fell in love, ran away from home, stole his parents’ car.
    Mom and Pop. The odd couple.
    Pop, an old-fashioned stand-up comic. Jack Golden. Dependable, a real hack. But a name everyone in show business knew – everyone except the general public. Dead thirteen years now. Cancer of the gall bladder.
    And mom, Alice Golden – formerly known as The Swizzle – one of the hottest strippers in town. Good old mom, fifty nine years old and living in a condo in California. From Las Vegas to Marina del Rey in one fell swoop with a used car salesman from Sausolito. Alice was not your average Jewish mother. She wore short shorts, strapless tops, dyed her hair, shaved her legs, and got laid a lot after the Sausolito salesman skipped town with ten thousand dollars worth of her jewellery.
    Alice . . . she was something else. He had never felt close to her. When he was a kid she bossed him around, sent him on endless errands, and used him as a lackey. She never cooked a meal in her life. While other kids took neat brown bags to school with home-made meatloaf sandwiches, cookies and cheese, he was lucky to scrounge an apple from a tree in the garden.
    ‘You gotta learn to be independent,’ Alice told him when he was about seven.
    He had learned the lesson well.
    Living with Alice and Jack was exciting. Their untidy apartment was always filled with dancers and singers, casino people, and general show-biz. Life was fun if you forgot about childhood.
    Alice. A real character. He had learned to accept the way she was.
    Las Vegas. Why had he come back?
    Because a job was a job was a job. And as he’d told Jess, he had to get out of New York. The police were on his case after he’d punched out a fat drunk who was heckling him during his act at a Soho club. The fat drunk turned out to be a shyster lawyer, who, when he woke up the next morning with a black eye and split lip, decided Lennie Golden needed to be put away, and set about doing so. The aggravation of a law suit was not something Lennie needed in his life. Leaving town seemed the best way to deal with it. Besides, Eden was on the West Coast, and for months he had been thinking about