He nodded emphatically and I wouldn’t have been surprised if his skull fell off and rolled across the floor to me. “We did. And he took our $25,000 campaign contribution, all right. Of course, I gave $100,000 each to Nixon and Humphrey, too. You learn to hedge your bets in Vegas.”
Right then I knew: If Hughes was being straight with me — and I thought he was — there was no percentage in him being part of a plot to assassinate Bobby Kennedy.
I asked, “Do you know a security guard named Thane Eugene Cesar? He’s supposed to have done work for you out here. And he was standing right behind Bob Kennedy when the fatal shot was made... from behind.”
He waved a parchment-skinned hand. “Cesar’s some minor leg-breaker. One of Maheu’s nasty little elves. We have need for that kind of thing, from time to time.”
“Maheu’s man?”
“Yes. He worked for Maheu’s security firm in L.A. What’s it called? Bel Air Patrol.”
“I’ll look into that.”
He sat up slightly in the recliner; it was a skeleton rising from a tomb. “Nate, if the CIA’s behind this, you won’t get very far. We both know that. If they’re behind it.”
“Somebody funded it,” I said. “Who do you think that could have been?”
He folded his hands above his exposed penis. “I could guess, but then so could you. Mobsters, spooks, right-wingers, military-industrial complex? Take your pick. Of course, I may have funded the thing.”
“What? You...?”
His shrug damn near creaked. “Maheu’s my man who deals with the CIA. If they wanted the Kennedy brat gone, he might well have facilitated it. I don’t dirty myself with politics anymore, local or national. Too damn distasteful.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
He reached for his TV remote with a gnarled hand. “Is there anything else, Nate? Good to see you again after so many years. But, uh... well, KLAS is airing The Outlaw in fifteen minutes.”
Owning a TV station had its perks.
Eighteen
In a cluttered stretch of the Strip between a coffee shop and motel, with rent-a-car and steakhouse signs shouldering in for attention, the most notorious dance club in Vegas nestled, its sign rising above all the others — the giant head of a cartoon black cat, black letters outlined in pink neon,
against startling yellow, a marquee below promising
(a band, apparently) and
Nita and I left the Jag in the parking lot behind the pink-and-gray vertical striped bunker that was the club and walked around front to go in under the black-and-white striped canopy.
In her sleeveless honeycomb dress with white hose and yellow low heels, Nita looked remarkably fresh for the long day we’d had; of course she’d grabbed a nap while I called on a nude old dude who saved his piss in jars, and that can be disconcerting. But I’d showered and shaved back at Caesar’s before getting into my navy blazer (cut to conceal a hip holster with a .38), white turtleneck, gray slacks and slip-ons. Nita claimed I looked presentable and who was I to contradict her?
We were, after all, going out to an “in” place known for getting its second wind after the earlier tourist crowd was long gone. Around two A.M., Sin City’s showgirls, musicians, dealers, and even headliners rolled in after work to party at the Pussycat. Though there was a race book attached, and a small casino area with half a dozen blackjack tables and a couple dozen slot machines, this was mostly a rock ’n’ roll dance club, where topless go-go girls gyrated on stage, echoed by fully clad patrons on a packed, good-size dance floor.
Just inside, to the right, was a wall of framed photos depicting various bands that had played here. Again, thanks to my son, I recognized about a third of the names, among them Sly and the Family Stone, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, and Paul Revere and the Raiders. Just beyond this were celebrity snapshots — Ike and Tina Turner giddily happy, Bobby Darin looking like a hippie, James Brown apparently bored and other famous faces, sometimes on the dance floor, other times laughing it up at the small pink-tableclothed tables. Right now out there, Johnny Carson was dancing, a trifle awkwardly, with a grateful, sexy Juliet Prowse.
The smoke in the room was a mix of tobacco and weed; as basically a non-smoker — I only revert under stress — it didn’t appeal. We secured a table on the front edge of the dance floor, ordered drinks — Coke for me, ginger ale for Nita, as we were not here to party — and took in the entertainment.
Stark Naked and the Car Thieves were alternating their own compositions (“Can You Dig It,” “Nice Legs, Shame About Her Face”) with covers (“Don’t Worry Baby,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry”). They wore matching brown pantsuits and orange-and-white scarfs, which I felt sure my son would have said was surprisingly corny for a band with such a cool name. Cool in his opinion.
The interior design of the place was given over to current psychedelic tastes — the bar that faced the stage was red padded faux leather and behind the bartenders, above the rows of bottles, a giant sparkly version of the club’s black cat logo rode a sparkly red wall. A side wall was given over to black-light Fillmore posters, glowing under fluorescent blue, another was red-draped, one was a vast red-and-black checkerboard, the stage backed with an array of circular designs in every color not in the rainbow. A mirrored ball right out of a 1920s nightclub in Berlin reflected all this back at a crowd of bare-armed, wonderfully miniskirted young women and ridiculously oversize-collared and flare-trousered men of various ages.
I wondered if I could have felt more out of place. Johnny Carson didn’t seem to be having any trouble fitting in. Of course he had his own clothing line.
Right now a single dancer was go-going centerstage under red lights and a strobe effect, the band positioned off to her left, stealing looks at her. Slender, curvy in a nicely narrow-waisted way, she seemed happy to be cavorting in her near altogether, shaking her long straight red hair, her firm pert breasts bouncing along, the gold lamé panties just barely sufficient to avoid arrest.
The band was playing an organ-dominated instrumental, the old bump-and-grind replaced by a more dreamy feel yet with an insistent beat. From behind red velvet curtains to the dancer’s right emerged two more naked-but-for-panties dancers, already swinging their arms and hips, as if they’d come to work boogeying, a blonde just as lovely as the redhead, and a brunette who was larger breasted, her hair a shoulder-length bob of wings and curls. Perhaps a little older than the others, she had a lot of personality... and a pug nose.
I nodded to Nita, acknowledging this as Elaine Nye, aka Marguerite.
And it didn’t take the topless dancer long to spot us — we were seated along one side of the dance floor and were only occasionally blocked by Johnny and Juliet and the other dancers. Miss Nye’s expression, just for a flash, broke character and betrayed alarm. But I smiled at her and waved a piece of paper. A green horizontal piece of paper inscribed 100. Now she smiled, too.
Two more songs from Stark Naked and the Car Thieves ensued with the go-go girls going through a range of dances: hitchhiker, Watutsi, loco-motion, pony, mashed potato, frug. It all seemed very freeform but they were all doing the same dance, so there was a nice minimal sense of choreography.
When the girls left, the band added vocals to their mix and — in about fifteen minutes, wrapped in a sheer red robe and with a red bra on — Elaine Nye came regally out from backstage and found a chair to join us at our little table.