Last Call (Last Call 1)

North of the wide casino doors a new front was being added onto the casino building, and a chain-link fence separated the Strip traffic from the dusty raw dirt under the new glass facade, over the top of which marched a procession of two-dimensional pink glass flamingos, some still with the manufacturer's stickers on them. Men in hard hats were hammering up wooden forms for concrete across the dirt, and Crane and Mavranos stood on the sidewalk outside the fence and leaned against the chain-link to let the streams of tourists walk past.

"Where was it your daddy hid his secrets?" Mavranos asked. A fat woman sweating in an orange sunsuit stared at him as she swung past.

"About where that guy's setting up rebar," said Crane. "But the ground's been planed off. There's nothing left from the old days."

Mavranos yawned a couple of times, frowning as if the yawns weren't catching. "Well, it ain't likely that any of the reconstruction would have caught him by surprise. Where would he have moved his hidey-hole to?"

Hidey-hole, Crane thought.

Bolt-hole and hidey-hole.

He stepped back from the fence. "To some place that hasn't changed since the old days. Let's go look at the original Flamingo building—what they call the Oregon Building now."

They retraced their steps to the front entrance and went inside and threaded their way through the cold, dark, clanging casino, between the banks of slot machines and the closely spaced tables—Mavranos craning his neck to see cards on the Blackjack layouts and no doubt wishing he'd brought along some kind of goldfish—and out the back doors into the hot glare of sun on splashing water and bone white deck and oiled, tanned bodies.

And there, across the glittering pool and framed by the curved trunks of palm trees, stood the long, low building that Crane viscerally remembered as the Flamingo.

It was painted pale tan now instead of pistachio green, and little wrought-iron false balconies had been bolted across the lower halves of the windows, and the narrow terrace on which he had seemed to stand with Benjamin Siegel yesterday was walled in now—though he thought he could still see its outline—and to the right the sky was blocked by another high-rise wing of the Flamingo Hilton, and to the left loomed a tall crane and beyond that the pagoda-roofed towers of the Imperial Palace; but this neglected building down here at the feet of the giants was the heart of the Flamingo, the heart of the Strip, the heart of Las Vegas.

"Your place, Dad," he said softly, stepping down to the concrete deck and starting around the right side of the pool.

He and Mavranos pushed open the narrow glass doors of the Oregon Building and wandered around in the quiet green-carpeted rotunda. Crane rapped on a wall, noting the cold silence of marble under the wallpaper. Siegel had built his castle solidly.

They took the elevator to the fourth floor, but one of the double doors to Siegel's penthouse suite had a brass plaque on it that read "Presidential Suite," and Crane decided that whatever high roller was renting the place wouldn't let a couple of bums come in and start prying shelves out of bookcases.

Back down the elevator they went, and out through the back doors to a sloping lawn with a pink metal flamingo standing on it. Crane remembered a parking lot back here, and a couple of bungalows with nothing but desert beyond, but now there was a driveway and the Arizona Building, with the new parking structure peeping up over its roof.

"Dig under that there flamingo?" suggested Mavranos.

Crane was looking back up at Siegel's penthouse. "In the … vision, or hallucination, he had a ladder hidden behind a bookcase," he said thoughtfully, "leading down. That would wind up in the basement, I guess." He pointed at a driveway off to the left that led down to an underground delivery and service entrance. "Let's go in there."

"Hope they aren't rough on trespassers in this town," Mavranos growled as they trudged forward.

"Act drunk, and tell 'em you were looking for the men's room."

"I think I am drunk. And I wouldn't mind finding a men's room."

Mavranos shook a Camel out of a pack and lit it, walking backward to shield the match flame. Then he waved the pack at Crane.

"No, thanks," Crane said.

"You haven't had a cigarette since you climbed out of the lake," Mavranos observed. "You on that wagon, too?"

Crane shrugged. "Just haven't wanted one. I'm getting healthy, I think."

The descending driveway ramp led them out of the sunlight to a dock area set back in under the building. A broad conveyor belt ran up to the surface of the dock, and big boxes of Soft Blend bathroom tissue were stacked on the extended forks of a little parked power-lift truck.