Mob Rule: Part 14

What happens in Vegas…

Jack and Vanessa get a massage together, but if they don’t get the message you will: He’s strapped on his Doc Holliday double huckleberries, and he’s ready for whatever happens next…

By John Armstrong

Normally I wouldn’t fall asleep while someone is kneading and stroking me and anointing me with oils, but I somehow managed it. I was in a half-dreaming state the details of which are not suitable to go into here, and only awoke when urged to turn over, something I found with some embarrassment I needed to do carefully. Vanessa was making very interesting and encouraging moans of contentment practically in my ear which didn’t help matters any. My masseuse showed admirable professionalism by completely failing to notice anything was amiss while casually folding a large towel and laying it on the sheet just where it would do the most good.

When they had done about as much as was possible unless we were going to give up on a any semblance of a purely therapeutic setting, my new friend whispered that they would come back for their things later and they disappeared.

“So, what is it that you actually do, Mr. Kennedy?” She was up on one elbow, sheet tucked primly under her arm but doing almost nothing to disguise the fact that it was full of naked woman.

I sat up and looked at her with disbelief. “Do? I’m an executive, woman – I don’t do anything. I think deep thoughts and consider the big picture. Occasionally I ponder the ramifications and assess the merits but then I usually have to go lie down for a while. The whole thing would grind to a halt without me.”

There was a small whump. It was a massage pillow bouncing off my head.

“Someone’s cranky because they haven’t eaten – here.” I sat up and skimmed a  thick, leatherette covered room service menu to her.

“Maybe just something light, hummingbird tongues in aspic and pickled…. Oh my word!” She dropped the menu as if bitten.

“What’s wrong?” I thought a wasp or spider had gotten in while the patio doors were open then I saw the book where it had fallen open on the carpet – it was the carte du jour for hotel prostitutes, with color photos of men and women which left nothing to the imagination, except perhaps where they had found such physical specimens; maybe they grew them in vats. One who looked like an Olympic swimmer might have been, except that he would surely have been disqualified for having three legs.

“Oh Christ, I’m sorry. I thought it was room service.”

“What’s wrong?” I thought a wasp or spider had gotten in while the patio doors were open then I saw the book where it had fallen open on the carpet – it was the carte du jour for hotel prostitutes, with color photos of men and women which left nothing to the imagination…

She pulled the sheet up some more. “I suppose it is, isn’t it? I knew it was legal here, I just didn’t expect a … catalogue. They just leave it lying there, where anybody could open it up?”

“The room’s registered to a single adult. I imagine they put it out when they brought our bags up and did the room check for towels and soap. Otherwise the guest would have to call down for it.”

“Hmmmm.” She picked it back up, then reached for her glass and took a healthy drink. She lifted the cover at one corner as if bees might fly out, turned to the first page. “Women, Men, Couples … Special Services. I may need another drink for that one.”

“I need clothes,” I said. “The thought of putting that suit back on makes my skin crawl.”

“Why don’t you call down and have them send up something, if you know your sizes?”

Why didn’t I?

“You’re better at this VIP business than I am.” I picked up the phone and gave the desk my order. Twenty minutes later I was buckling my belt around a pair of cream linen slacks and buttoning a white silk sports shirt. The concierge had added several pairs of shoes and summer weight socks; I chose black loafers that felt like kid gloves for my feet. Shaved, showered, pampered, and dressed in good clothes, I felt like a new man. But what the new man wanted was pretty much exactly what the old one did so I got us both out the door before he could do anything about it.

 

 

I was asleep on a chaise lounge under an awning beside the pool when a waitress shook my arm gently.

“Mr. Kennedy? Telephone for you.”

It had been a long night, a longer morning, and a busy afternoon with several hours of shopping that yielded a few items for me and a small mountain of packages for Vanessa. She had to be coaxed into accepting them even after I explained how casino economics work.

“First, forget the price tag. The real thing is our cost, which, it’s marked up as much as a thousand per-cent, is not so much. If you just take all the zeroes off the ticket, you won’t be too far wrong.” She was holding a beautifully beaded evening bag that matched a low-cut, black satin dress the saleslady was urging on her for our dinner engagement with Mickey. I was just as anxious to see her in it.

“One of the reasons we mark things up so much is so it looks even more impressive when we give it to you. We – the hotel – give stuff away all the time; rooms, food, clothes, airplane tickets, car rentals … because the more we give away the more money we make.”

The clerk had run away to get shoes to match the outfit. Vanessa ran a hand over the dress and said, “Of course you do. Because they way to make money is not charge anything.”

“I’m serious. Look – have you noticed that except for check-in and check-out there’s no way to get anywhere in the hotel without going through the casino? We’re not in the hotel, clothes, food, or golf course business, we’re in the gambling business.

“Anytime the customer thinks he’s coming out ahead it means that much more he’s going to leave at the tables. Comp him a thousand bucks on his room and meals, tickets to a show, he feels better about dropping it on craps. The fact the thousand we ‘gave ‘ him only cost us $250, he never thinks about.”

“We send him back to the airport broke, with a complimentary upgrade to champagne service on the flight, and as happy as if he were going home with gold nuggets in his pockets instead of papers for the loan our bank wrote to finance his last few days at the tables.”

The lady had Vanessa in the chair now, slipping shoes on and off her feet, muttering and exclaiming to herself and separating the boxes into two piles. Vanessa and I ignored her. She was doing fine on her own.

“Isn’t it all a bit cynical?” Vanessa said. Done with shoes, the saleswoman added several pairs of hose and jewelry items to the pile. “Actually, grasping and rapacious come to mind as well. If I can be devil’s advocate.”

Again, people who don’t really know how the system works always think they have you cornered with arguments that were shot down in high school philosophy classes.

“Grasping? We don’t let them lose more than they can afford or lend them more than they can pay back – why would we? We want them back next vacation. Cynical? Because we let someone exercise their free will? This country was built on the principles of free market capitalism and marketing. Study economics – left alone the market always regulates itself. It’s a living thing, it operates out of survival instinct.”

“You sound like a farmer explaining how humanely you butcher your hogs,” she said.

“When the world stops eating pork chops, we’ll stop making them,” I replied.

“All right,” she said. “In that case, I’ll take it all.”

Vanessa went up to the room with the packages while I met with Mickey and his lieutenants in one of the showrooms. It was quick business: I described the situation to the crew leaders, Mickey told them to obey me the same as they would him, and we sent them off to pick their men. We’d leave in the morning and be back in NYC by early afternoon.

I couldn’t see anything else I needed to handle so I headed for the pool, changed into my new trunks and swam exactly one lap before the last 24 hours finally hit me. I fell asleep behind my sunglasses while the rest of the world splashed happily in the distance.

“Grasping? We don’t let them lose more than they can afford or lend them more than they can pay back – why would we? We want them back next vacation. Cynical? Because we let someone exercise their free will? This country was built on the principles of free market capitalism and marketing. Study economics – left alone the market always regulates itself. It’s a living thing, it operates out of survival instinct.”

The phone was a girl from Mickey’s office, reminding me we had dinner in an hour. I’d slept long enough that the clouds over the mountains were tinted red and gold by the setting sun and it was almost cool beside the water.  Upstairs my tux was hanging on the valet stand and I showered the chlorine off and shaved again before dressing. Before I got into the jacket I slipped on my big purchase from the afternoon, a gorgeous, handmade Doc Holliday ‘double huckleberry’ shoulder-rig in stamped leather with Mexican silver buckles, and a set of matched, ivory-handled forty-fives. With some small adjustment of the belts it sat perfectly, riding right between my bottom ribs and hips. I practiced a few cross-chest draws in the mirror and while, admittedly, I’m no gunsel, they flew out of the holsters as if I were Doc himself. His were probably not spring loaded, though.

I was wiggling the chest strap to get it straight when Vanessa came through the adjoining door. “How elegant. Some men would be content with a cummerbund.”

“Not me. I just don’t feel dressed unless I’m heeled.”

“It’s very striking but honestly, why wear such a thing? You’re not in any danger here are you?”

“No, I don’t think so. Mickey’s guys are everywhere. But better to be strapped than sorry. And you got to admit, it really adds something to the outfit.”

Good as I looked, even if I say so myself, I had nothing on Vanessa. The black satin dress shone like wet tar and fit her like a fresh coat of paint. Her hair was up in a glamorous pile to show off clumps of pearls dangling from her ears and a single strand around her neck. A silver fox stole around her shoulders looked very happy to be there. He looked like he’d bite your hand off if you tried to move him.

“Yes, I must say it really does.” She came close and fussed with one of my shirt studs.

“There. That’s better.” She smoothed the lapels of my jacket but stayed right where she was when she finished, hands on my chest. I smelled perfume of some kind but it was the shampoo in her hair that got me. I put one arm around her waist and pulled her close. She came along without resistance, her face turned up to mine to be kissed, eyes closed and lips parted.

I don’t think it was all the suit and the guns, but I don’t think they hurt, either.

 

Mob Rule continues regularly in The Ex-Press, to read past instalments click here.

 

THE EX-PRESS, October 29, 2015

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