But there was no escape. Even as the Showboat threatened to befoul the Sands, another monstrosity was going up right next door to the Stardust—the Circus-Circus. It was something straight out of Hughes’s worst nightmare.
“The aspect of the Circus that has me disturbed is the popcorn, peanuts, and kids side of it,” he wrote, describing with horror a Norman Rockwell vision of Americana. “And also the Carnival Freaks, and Animal side of it. In other words, the poor, dirty, shoddy side of Circus life. The dirt floor, sawdust and elephants. The part of a Circus that is associated with the poor boys in town, the hobo clowns, and, I repeat, the animals. The part of a circus that is synonymous with the common poor man—with the freckled face kids—the roustabouts driving the stakes with three men and three sledge hammers, etc., etc.
“It is the above aspects of a circus that I feel are all out of place on the Las Vegas Strip,” he continued, returning to his own vision of a high-class resort. “After all, the Strip is supposed to by synonymous with a good looking female all dressed up in a very expensive diamond studded evening gown and driving up to a multimillion dollar hotel in a Rolls-Royce. Now, you tell me what, in that picture, is compatible with a circus in its normal raiment, exuding its normal atmosphere and its normal smell.”
For most people, the real stench of Las Vegas came from the Mob. Organized crime had tainted it from the beginning. Long before Hughes arrived with his vision, Bugsy Siegel had a vision, and where there had been only a desert he built the first giant gambling casino on a highway to Los Angeles that became the Las Vegas Strip. Bugsy was long dead, rubbed out by his partners, but he had created Las Vegas in his own image and mobsters still set the tone of the town.
To Hughes, however, the Mob was just another form of contamination. And now Bugsy’s creation, the Flamingo, was back in the news. One of Siegel’s original partners, the underworld’s financial wizard, Meyer Lansky, had been caught siphoning off millions. Hughes was outraged. He saw the scandal pulling his new purified, respectable, blue-chip Las Vegas back down into the gutter. It was time to clean out the Mob.
“Bob, the Flamingo has been accused of skimming,” wrote the angry billionaire. “It is one more set-back in the reputation of the Strip. Now, I feel this kind of thing has gone too far.
“First there was Parvin and all their miserable dishonesty, then came the Circus, the Stardust and their personnel, then the Bonanza, and I failed to mention Caesar’s and their junket of hoods.
“Bob, I moved heaven and earth to try and persuade you to do something about the mess. In spite of my pleas, however, each of these activities has been gradually swept under the carpet with absolutely no real effort by anyone to do anything about it.
“Now, finally, in the case of the Flamingo, I beg you from bended knee please to take some action, and urgently, immediately.
“The Flamingo, because of its position at the top or entrance of the Strip, has always represented and epitomized Nevada gambling. Many motion pictures have been made using the Flamingo as the example of the grandeur and the luxury of plush gambling on the Las Vegas Strip.
“I made one myself, called ‘The Las Vegas Story,’ using the Flamingo to represent all that is glamorous and exciting about Las Vegas.
“Anyway, the Flamingo has represented Las Vegas ever since its unfortunate beginning with Bugsy Siegel. And I assure you that, as a result of this incident, the Bugsy Siegel episode will get the full treatment again.
“Bob, you have got to take some action about it this time. I truly plead with you.
“Bob, I am sick and tired of being the Patsy of the entire Las Vegas area.”
Hughes was sure he was the only honest man in town. He was certain that explained why all the unscrupulous rival casinos were piling up big profits, while his, against all odds, were losing money. “It goes without saying that you cannot have principles and high profits both,” he wrote.
In fact, Hughes may have been far more of a “Patsy” than he ever realized. Las Vegas seemed to be changing hands, from the mobsters who created it, to Hughes; but the billionaire may have been only an unwitting front man for the Mob. His arrival could not have been more timely for organized crime. After two decades of lucrative skimming, the heat was on. A massive FBI wiretap operation had become public, revealing that the casinos were controlled by hidden owners who routinely took their profits off the top, shipping the hot cash down to Miami, where the mastermind Meyer Lansky counted the take in his condo on Collins Avenue and made the split for his Mafia cohorts across the country. Just when it looked like the jig was up, Hughes arrived. A mark with an unlimited bankroll.
It may have been a setup from the start. Maheu’s Mafia pal John Roselli claimed the whole Desert Inn eviction crisis was a Syndicate scam. “We roped Hughes into buying the D.I.,” Roselli reportedly told hit-man-turned-informer Jimmy “the Weasel” Fratianno. “Now it looks like he wants to buy the whole town, if we let him. He’s just what we need, especially with Maheu running the show.”
Clearly, Hughes was not running it. Apparently the Mob kept real control of his casinos, sold him their gambling emporiums at inflated prices, and kept right on picking his pocket, raking off millions. A secret IRS investigation would later conclude that Hughes had been the victim of a vast Mob skim, perhaps topping $50 million.
If that was true, Hughes was blissfully unaware of it, and for the moment seemed surprisingly untroubled by his casinos’ puzzling losses. And while he saw the Mob as a dangerous contaminant, he also saw a way he could use their threat to get on with his Monopoly game.
He would save Las Vegas from the gangsters, and he would save it from the gangbusters as well. For a price.
“Today, the President is chaffing at the bit in his eagerness to get at Nevada with a massive crime crusade, in order to divert public attention away from his failure to improve the Vietnam situation,” wrote Hughes.
“I think that you can argue with Gov. Laxalt that every day the situation continues brings with it an ever increasing risk of the entire beautiful castle of Nevada gaming coming crashing down in one overwhelming debacle which could be blown up to rival Tea Pot Dome.
“The President and his advisors would like nothing in this world so much as to find a basis under which he may attack Nevada gambling, because that is where the really big money is being made.
“He comes out against organized crime, but, in the absence of uncovering some huge underworld casino or some huge undercover brothel, which is not likely—in the absence of something like this, the President has no photos, no actual symbol, no example he can point to, in his efforts to attack crime.
“Bob, if he could just blacken Nevada gaming to the point where he could link it to organized crime, and make Nevada gaming the symbol of organized crime, then he could use all the figures, all the photos of Nevada casinos, all the pictures of Fremont Street with the flashing signs.
“All this would immediately become the vivid symbol of organized crime. Las Vegas would be pictured as Sin City.
“All the figures of gross gaming revenue, the figures of employment, the increased population, all this would be pictured to the public as one gigantic beehive of crime, a vast metropolis of sin, a vast factory for the industry of sin.
“I tell you, when the nation reaches a point where they need only say a man is ‘linked to Nevada Gaming’ to villify him beyond measure, and practically strap him in the electric chair, then I say it is time to worry about it.”
Hughes was getting so carried away in his lurid presentation of the threat that he almost lost sight of his plot: to present himself as savior, as the man who could grant a stay of execution.