Authors: Harold Robbins

Sin City (5 page)

BOOK: Sin City

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I heard the screen door open and Patty yell, “Anyone home?” as she came in.

“I'm here.”

“Hi, Zack. I need to use my iron and board. I'm late for work.”

Patty was a prostitute who worked at the Pink Lady. Some of the women lived in trailers in back of the house of prostitution, but Patty lived next door with her husband, who worked at the same mine as Hop. She was Indian, but not full blood. Betty was the only woman in town who was friendly toward her.

Patty was the reason I had an “in” with MaryJane, the madam at the Pink Lady. I had never been inside the Pink Lady, but I'd stood at the door while the girls gave me money and told me what to pick up at the general store and got a peek inside at men and women standing at the bar. I know some of the girls by nameâDixie the Pixie and Barely Legal Holly were names I liked best.

All the kids liked the Pink Lady because at Halloween they gave a big bag of candy to each of us instead of the apple or home-baked cookie most people handed out, but I was the only one who ran errands for the girls.

The ironing board was already set up by the kitchen table and Patty turned on the iron. “I don't know where time goes. I just got up and now it's time to go to work.”

I wasn't exactly sure what Patty did at the Pink Lady. Gibbs said that she laid on her back and guys paid to stick their boners in her pee hole, but being told about it and actually being able to imagine it were two different things.

She slipped off her red dress and stood in black bra, panties, garter belt, dark hose, and black patent shoes with the highest heels I had ever seen. As I watched her from the couch, I got a boner. I didn't know why I got the hard-on. I would get them once in a while, even at school, and once in a while I woke up with one or with my underpants wet.

Sometimes Patty would sit on my couch smoking a cigarette and talking to Betty with her legs spread apart enough so I could see a dark place between her legs. I dreamed of what it would be like to stick a boner in her hole. I had money, over twenty dollars hidden in the couch and another five dollars in Betty's tip money I was going to
use tomorrow in Hawthorne. Gibbs said she'd do it with me for five dollars, but I wasn't exactly sure what “doing it” involved. Besides, I was afraid of her husband, even though Gibbs said he wouldn't care, that his father said Patty's husband “rented her out.”

“Patty, how much does a fuck cost?” My mouth was dry and I could barely got out the words. When I heard them, I was shocked.

“What did you say, honey?” She stared at me in surprise as she struggled into her dress.

“Nothin'.” I bowed my head and put my book across my lap so she couldn't see that my pants were bulging from my throbbing boner.

She turned off the iron and came over to the couch and grinned down at my book. “You're becoming a little man, aren't you, sweetie.” She sat down on the couch beside me and I smelled the lilac talcum powder she wore. It made the throbbing in my boner race faster. She moved the book and undid the buttons to my fly and slipped her hand inside and squeezed. “Pretty soon you're going to be old enough to give girls a real ride.”

I was paralyzed with fear and wonderment at the feel of her hand, but my hard-on was going wild. She put her arm around my neck. Her breath hit me with a warm smell of whiskey.

“Do you want some relief, honey?”

She leaned down and slipped my erection through the fly hole. Her hot lips went on it and I almost screamed. Her wets lips made a sucking sound and I immediately exploded in her mouth. My hips jerked and I instinctively pumped back and forth, trying to shove it further into her mouth. She took her mouth off my boner and spat into a tissue she pulled from her dress pocket.

She put the book back on top of my erection and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“You never forget the first time, sweetie. That's why I did it. So I'll always be remembered.”

She was right.

The next morning I met Gibbs and Gleason at the turntable where the train swung around and headed back toward Hawthorne. When the hard rock mines in the mountain had been operating full blast, Mina had been an important rail spur. Now the train only worked part-time and Gleason's dad always said that pretty soon they'd shut it down entirely and the family would have to move to a town where he could find work. Gibbs and Gleason didn't move as much as Betty and me, but Mina was the third school each had attended, and that was true about many kids. People moved to where the work was and little desert towns thrived when there were jobs. When a mine closed, so did the grocery store, barbershop, and clothing store. The restaurants, gas stations, and motels sometimes survived on the highway trade, but the rest of the town moved on.

I told Betty that Gleason's dad was taking us to the carnival in Hawthorne. We were going to the carnival after we handed out the pamphlets, but would hitchhike home because the train would have already made its last trip to Mina. I learned that it was better to lie to her so she didn't worry.

I had a hundred sheets of paper hidden under my shirt, ads for “pleasure services” at the Pink Lady, a “fully licensed and doctor-certified establishment.” I read one of the pamphlets and was surprised that it didn't say anything about the place being a whorehouse. MaryJane wanted me to be sure and tell the man she thought would be passing them out not to worry about sheriffs deputies, “they're my best customers,” but to watch out for the shore patrol. Hawthorne was in the middle of the Nevada desert, but had a navy base. For miles coming into Hawthorne we rolled by giant dirt mounds, extending out into the desert as far as the eye could see, looking like enormous burial mounds.

“My dad says there are dinosaur bones buried under those mounds,”
Gibbs said, “and the army and navy's keeping 'em secret.”

Gleason scoffed. “There's ammunition in them, bullets and artillery shells for the army and stuff for big navy guns.”

Gibbs slapped him on the back of the head, nearly knocking his glasses off. “Yeah, well maybe you don't know so much. Everyone knows there's a sea monster in Walker Lake. Could be the dinosaurs are its cousins.”

Walker Lake was the thirty-odd-mile-long lake on the north side of Hawthorne. It was said the lake was bottomless. Occasionally a fisherman disappeared and they'd be a lot of talk about the sea monster. The navy had a big research and bombing range at the lake.

“The navy keeps the monster a secret because it's using it for research,” Gleason said. “The monster is left over from the time when Nevada was at the bottom of a primeval sea, even before Lake Lahontan covered most of the state a couple million years ago. Back in those days dinosaurs swam in it, but they all died when the sea dried up, all except this one.”

“Naw,” Gibbs said, “The navy created the monster by feeding it radiation, like those giant ants created by the atomic bomb.”

The two argued about sea monsters and giant insects the rest of the way into Hawthorne.

We staked out the El Capitan Club, the only casino of any size in town. Even at that, it was a small fry compared to a place like the Harold's Club in Reno. I sent Gibbs around to one entrance and I took the other, with Gleason hanging out with me. We each carried a shoebox with black and brown wax polish, a brush, and a shine rag, and offered a quarter shine to every man who came by, along with a Pink Lady pamphlet. Most of the passersby were sailors and marines and they were more interested in the pamphlet than a shine.

“Spit shine, just two bits,” I told two marines, handing them each a pamphlet.

“Okay, kid, but if I can't see my face in it, you don't get paid.”

The two looked over the pamphlets as I got down on my hands and knees. Gibbs's old man had been in the army and he'd taught us how to spit shine. You put on polish, and get a shine going, then spit on the toe and keep applying more spit, polish, and elbow grease.

“Hey, kid, you get a bonus for every trick turned by guys who go there?” the one I was shining asked.

I spit on his shoe and looked up. “Naw, just a dime for each pamphlet I hand out.”

“You ought to ask for a bonus. Or offer extras. Sell rubbers.”

“He can take it out in trade,” his buddy laughed. “Hey, kid, you ever fuck any of them yourself?”

I flushed. “Yeah, all the time. Try Patty, she's the best lay.”

After his buddy left, I thought about his comments. I knew what rubbers were. I heard Hop and Patty's husband joking about them: Hop said it was like taking a shower with a raincoat. I was sure I could make more money selling rubbers to guys than handing out pamphlets and polishing shoes, but they were only sold behind the counter in drugstores and you had to be a grownup to buy them.

I passed out all fifty of my pamphlets and had made two dollars on shines by the time it was to hit the carnival. Gibbs had passed out only half of his.

“I threw the rest in a trash can.”

“You only get paid half,” I told him.

“Hell, no, just tell MaryJane you passed them all out.”

“You don't cheat the customers,” I sneered, repeating what Betty had said many times. “You get half.”

“Up yours.”

“Up yours, too, you queer.”

“Asshole.”

“Dip shit.”

We kept it up until I ran out of insults and had to pay Gibbs a quarter. Gleason then took on Gibbs in cussing and lost. Gibbs had the dirtiest mouth in school. He even knew a Mexican word for a woman's twat. You had to admire that kind of knowledge.

A carnival was my favorite of all things. Bright lights all over, with a rainbow of colors in red, blue, green, yellow, on everything, flashing and pulsating, the fun music that made you want to pick up your feet and open your wallet, the breathtaking Ferris wheel taking you up higher and higher, the big disk that spun while you sat in a compartment, the midway with its gyp games and hustlers urging you to “win
a goldfish, just toss a dime so it stays on a plate, it's easy, watchâ”

Yeah, sure, the carnie's dime stayed on a plate, but mine skidded off. Over where you threw baseballs at metal milk bottles to knock them off a stool, a woman no bigger than me was working the booth and could easily knock them off, but I swear I saw a guy who threw like Sy Young and couldn't get all three to fall off no matter what.

I bought cotton candy and wandered down the midway alone as Gibbs and Gleason went up together in the Ferris wheel. I wanted to check out the freak show.

“Boy, come here,” a voice beckoned.

A Gypsy woman dressed in silks and scarves and gold chains, her dark face wrinkled, gray eyes faded, stood in front of a small canvas booth not much bigger than a telephone booth and gestured for me to step inside.

“I'll tell your fortune for a dollar.”

“I don't have a dollar.” I kept on walking.

“You're a lucky young man.”

That made me stop. My mother called me Lucky every day of my life. It hung around my neck like Mrs. Wormly's double chin.

“I'm not lucky,” I said defiantly.

“You're lucky, boy, and you can have what you want.”

“I want everything,” I snapped back.

“You're going to get it. But you're going to lose something, too.” The old Gypsy woman gave a shrill laugh that got its claws into the skin of my back and clung there as I hurried away.

I didn't know what she meant, but she put me into a foul mood.

“Let's go,” I told Gibbs and Gleason after I saw the Alligator Man and a two-headed calf at the freak show. On the way to the highway to thumb a ride, I told them what the crazy old woman said.

“You're going to lose your dick,” Gibbs said, “that's what.”

The desert in late November had turned cold and the wind was mean. High desert was like thatâhot as a bitch in the summer, cold and dismal in the winter. I left school at lunchtime to run down to the restaurant and get money from Betty for lunch. Her tip jar next to the bed was empty when I crept in to get a handful of coins before leaving for school.

The lunch crowd was slow and Betty was in a bad temper.

“The customer says the gravy's too greasy,” she told the cook, sending back a plate of biscuits and gravy. The cook gave her a dirty look and Betty turned her back to him. “The bastard takes bacon left on breakfast plates and uses it for his gravy,” she whispered to me.

“There was no money in the jar.”

“Hop took it all for his beer. Now that he's laid off at the mine, he has nothing to do but drink and eat, with me doing the buying.”

She gave me a dollar in change and grabbed the coffeepot to refill a customer's cup. I left the cafÃ© with an uneasy feeling. Betty was even tempered most of the time. When she started getting mad at people, things would go to hell pretty damn quick.

That night I sat on my couch and watched a fuzzy version of
I Love Lucy
on TV. Gibbs claimed there were places where people got a whole bunch of TV channels, but that didn't happen in Mina. Hop sat on the other end of the couch drinking beer. Every once in a while he'd fart. That's why Betty hated beerâit made men fart. His face was red and he didn't look like a happy camper. Neither did Betty. She sat at the kitchen table doing her nails as she read
True Romance
magazine. She had come home from work early, saying she felt ill. Betty never got sick and would crawl to work if she had to carry her sickbed on her back. The only time she missed work was when she was down or mad.

The pan of water on the stove was boiling and I got up to get the Cream of Wheat out of the icebox.

“You eighty-sixed me at Emerson's.” Hop spoke quietly but I felt the anger in his words.

“I didn't do anything to you,” Betty said. “I told Emerson I wasn't paying any more of your bills.”

“You're a fucking bitch.”

“Don't you talk that way in front of Zack! I don't make enough money to keep you in beer.”

“You could join your friend Patty at the Pink Lady spreading your legs. That's all a fucking cunt like you is good for.”

“Get out of my house, you bastard.” She grabbed the sugar bowl off the table and threw it at him. “Get out! Get out! Get out!” she screamed.

He came off the couch and started for her. I stepped in front of him.

“Keep away from myâ”

He hit me hard, slamming me with his open hand across the side of the head. I saw stars and flew backward, slamming into the wall. Betty grabbed the pan of boiling water off of the stove and threw it in his face.

We ran next door to Patty and Joe's with Hop screaming he was going to kill us.

The next morning we waited for the Greyhound in front of Emerson's bar. We didn't say much. We never do at these times. I had my small duffel bag and Betty had her hard-shell suitcase. Anything else we ownedâplates, dishes, my bike, things like thatâwas left for the landlord. Betty hadn't paid last month's rent, so the landlord could have the stuff.

When the bus was getting ready to pull out, Gibbs and Gleason rode up on their bikes and scanned the windows, looking for me. In a town where a shout carries almost from one end to another, it didn't take much time for everyone to know we were leaving. I crouched down so they couldn't see me. I didn't want to say anything to them. I liked Gibbs, and Gleason, too, though he was a little turd, and I even liked Mina. But I had to be tough and not care.

We were an hour down the road before I realized the bus was heading in the opposite direction from Reno. Reno had always been our
hub, the center of a wheel with the little towns of northern Nevada spread out from it like spokes. This time we were heading south.

“Where we going?” I asked Betty.

She took a deep breath. “Vegas, baby, we're going back to my old stomping grounds.”

Las Vegas. The name didn't mean a whole lot to me. Reno was the biggest town I ever saw and I assumed Vegas was bigger than Mina and smaller than Reno, maybe something like Hawthorne.

“It's been twelve years. They won't remember me there.”

She leaned closer and showed me a story in a day-old Reno newspaper. “See this guy, that's Howard Hughes, your father.”

Betty told me many times that my father was a big shot named Howard Hughes, but when your old man was someone you'd never seen or spoken to, it was like telling you about the tooth fairy. The article was about some big financial deal the Hughes guy was pulling off.

“How come he never comes around to see us?”

“Honey, he's busy and important. And he really doesn't know about you. He comes to Vegas sometimes. Maybe you'll meet him there.”

BOOK: Sin City

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Read Book Download Book

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