Las Vegas Noir Read Online Free PDF

“Sit back down, Mr. Perry.”
    “Don’t call me that.”
    “I said—sit down.”
    “You think you’re talking to some fart-fuck, asshole?”
    Finally, the cop closed the file. Removing a ballpoint pen from his hip pocket, he began thumbing the plunger manically. “I know who I’m talking to. Mike paints a pretty vivid picture.” He nudged the folder across the table. “Want a peek?”
    Despite himself, Nick recoiled a little. “Yeah. Maybe I’ll do that.”
    Leaning back in his chair, still clicking the pen, Jimmy Thornton said: “You first blew into town, when was it, ’74? Nick Perry, Chiller Theater , Saturday midnight. Weasled your way into the job, touting all this ‘network experience’ back east.”
    Nick shrugged. “Everybody lies on his résumé.”
    “Not everybody.”
    “My grandfather came over from Sicily, Perino was the family name. Ellis Island, he changed it to Perry. I just changed it back.”
    “Yeah, but not till you went to work for Johnny T.”
    Nick could feel the blood drain from his face. “What are you getting at?”
    The cop’s smile turned poisonous. “Know what Johnny said about you? You’re the only guy in Vegas ever added a vowel to the end of his name. Him and his brother saw you coming at the San Gennaro Feast, they couldn’t run the other way fast enough, even when you worked for them. Worst case of wannabe-wiseguy they’d ever seen.”
    Finally, Nick sat back down. “You heard this how? Johnny doesn’t, like—”
    “Know you were the snitch? Can’t answer that. I mean, he probably suspects.”
    Nick had been a CI in a state case against the Tintoretto brothers for prostitution and drugs, all run through their massage parlor out on Flamingo. Nick remained unidentified during trial, the case made on wiretaps. It seemed a wise play at the time—get down first, tell the story his way, cut a deal before the roof caved in. He was working as the manager there, only job he could find in town after getting canned at the station—a nigger joke, pussy in the punch line, didn’t know he was on the air.
    “All the employees got a pass,” Nick said, “not just me. Johnny couldn’t know for sure unless you guys told him.”
    “Relax.” Another punctuating sniff. “Nobody around here told him squat. We keep our promises, Mr. Perry.”
    Nick snorted. “Not from where I sit.”
    “Excuse me?” The guy leaned in. “Mike bent over backwards for you, pal. Set you up, perfect location, right downtown. Felons aren’t supposed to be locksmiths.”
    “Most of that stuff on my sheet was out of state. And it got expunged.”
    A chuckle: “Now there’s a word.”
    “Vacated, sealed, whatever.”
    “Because Mike took care of it. And how do you repay him?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Every time business gets slow, you send that fat freak you call a nephew out to the apartments off Maryland Parkway—middle of the night, spray can of Superglue, gum up a couple hundred locks. You can bank on at least a third of the calls, given your location—think we don’t know this?”
    “Who you talking to, Mike Lally over at All-Night Lock’n’Key? You wanna hammer a crook, there’s your guy, not me.”
    “Doesn’t have thirty-two grand in liens from the Tax Commission on his business, though, does he?”
    Nick blanched. They already knew. They knew everything. “I got screwed by my bookkeeper. Look, I came here with information. You wanna hear it or not?”
    “In exchange for getting the Tax Commission off your neck.”
    “Before they shut me down, yeah. That asking so much?”
    Jimmy Thornton opened the manila folder to the last page, clicked his pen one final time, and prepared to write. “That depends.”
    Sam sat in the shade at the playground two blocks from her apartment, listening to Nick go on. He’d just put in new locks at her apartment—she changed them every few weeks now, just being careful—and, stopping here to drop off the