Playland (33 page)
In the background, the dispatcher was ordering Heller Sanitation’s garbage trucks into line for the nightly pickup.
“I’ve been to Havana, Jackie,” Jacob King said, drawing deeply on his cigar.
“Rum and Coca-Cola. Beautiful señoritas, regular Latin spitfires. Action like you never—”
“I’m not interested in Havana,” Jacob said, his face disappearing behind a cloud of smoke. “Morris doesn’t feel he can make a contribution in Havana.”
Eddie Binhoff stood at the door and watched Jackie Heller and Jacob King. He knew he made Jackie Heller nervous, favor or no favor owed him. He always felt better when he made people uncomfortable. More in charge.
“So, Eddie, tell me about Dom Conti’s fingerprints, I nearly shit when I heard about it …”
“We’re not here to talk about Dominic Conti,” Jacob said.
“Right,” Jackie Heller said, “you were asking about—”
“La Casa Nevada.”
“What you were asking … this question of possible labor problems … on a job like La Casa … you are speaking hypothetically, right?”
Jacob King smiled. “Hypothetically. Right.”
Jackie Heller went to the window, picked up a microphone, and yelled to a trucker below. “Off your butt, Two-oh-seven, I docked you last night and I’ll dock you again. Two-oh-four, you cover Boulder, move it the fuck out.” He came back and sat down across from Jacob King, wiping the sweat from his face. On the garage floor the diesels began revving up. “It’s only driving a fucking garbage truck, it’s not like they’re working on the atom bomb, you know what I mean, Jake?”
“No.”
“It’s the fucking desert.” Jackie Heller began to cough. His tubercular cough. It was always a good way to play for time. “There’s no organization,” he said finally. “By the time you count out the guys who just don’t show up because they got something pressing to do, like getting laid, I’m lucky I can get one crew out.” He turned to Eddie Binhoff, wiping the phlegm from his lips. “You agree with that, Eddie?”
“No.”
“He’s a fucking whacker, what does he know from organization?” Jackie Heller whispered to Jacob King.
“Enough to do Leo’s hitter,” Jacob said pleasantly. He rolled the cigar between his fingers, then held it under his nose, sniffing the aroma. “Stop stalling, Jackie.”
“Jake. Word of honor. Not stalling.” He chose his words with care. “You ever been in the Tombs?”
Jacob King did not reply.
“That’s right, you just did four months in the Tombs,” Jackie Heller said. “Well, then. So you know. You want a blanket in the Tombs, you got one. It costs you five dollars. Another buck, you get disinfectant. To delouse the blanket. Your mother write you a letter? No sweat, you’re in the Tombs, you’ll get it delivered to you. For another dollar. You want a five-dollar bottle of
booze? It’ll cost you ten, but you got it. You got a broad coming to visit? You got twenty-five dollars, the hacks are going to let you screw her on the lower tier. You get laid in the Tombs, Jake? I did once, I got the fucking crabs.”
“Meaning anything is possible, Jackie?”
“Hypothetically speaking.”
“At a price?”
“That’s why we don’t live in Red Russia, Jake.”
Jacob leaned close to Jackie Heller. “How much is Benny Draper paying you to run things here?”
“You can’t pay it.”
“I can do better. I can offer you a seat at the table.”
Jackie Heller looked at Jacob, then at Eddie Binhoff. “A piece?”
“Exactly.”
Jackie Heller wiped his brow. “You don’t have anything to give me a piece of.”
“I would if we built our own place. And opened it first.” “You don’t have a site.”
Jacob shrugged. “I don’t want to be the second guy across the Atlantic, Jackie. The one you remember is Lindbergh. But who was second? Tell me that, Jackie.”
“Morris wouldn’t do that.” Jackie Heller’s voice was almost plaintive. “This is L.A. territory.”
“Jackie, where is it written?”
“Jake. It’s only natural it’s L.A. You build a place out here, you got the entertainment angle. Benny and Lilo got it all sewed up, they got Moe French. Moe French wants the lights to go on when he makes his pictures, he plays ball with Benny. It’s cozy. He bitches, then he pays. Through the fucking nose. Benny threatens to strike him, what else is he going to do?”
Jacob tapped his cigar against the edge of Jackie Heller’s desk, leaving a pile of ash. “He could let Benny strike him.” He looked at Eddie Binhoff and smiled. Now he plays the card, Eddie Binhoff thought. Jake is very good at that. He did not know what the card was, but he knew Jacob would play it, and
he knew it would make Jackie Heller sweat. “He could let Benny strike him,” Jacob King repeated slowly, and then, after the words had sunk in, he said, “Then you could break the strike.”
Jackie Heller began to sweat. He went to the Coke machine and banged it until a bottle slid down the chute. He opened the bottle and drained it as Jacob and Eddie Binhoff watched.
“Look at it this way, Jackie,” Jacob said. “You could make Moe French very grateful. I bet Moe would get so grateful he’d see the advantage in stopping Benny Draper from siphoning the entire state of Nevada into his pension fund.”
“I did anything like that,” Jackie Heller said, “I’d need a definite message from Morris. A definite message he was behind me.”
Eddie Binhoff doubted that a definite message would be coming, a definite message was not Morris Lefkowitz’s way. He considered the possibility that if Morris had not given his blessing to what Jacob was proposing, perhaps he would not then have minded if he—Eddie—had taken Jacob out earlier that evening at La Casa Nevada. On the other hand, Morris Lefkowitz was a gambler, and maybe he had given Jacob the free hand he seemed to be playing.
“Morris is deeply committed to the future of this desert,” Jacob said. “He wants to see a thousand blossoms bloom here. Anything you could do that would help …”
“It’s Benny I’m worried about …”
When it’s Jake King you should be worried about, Eddie Binhoff thought.
“A doorknob’s got more brains than Benny Draper,” Jacob said.
“Look, Jake.” Jackie Heller looked doubtful, then began hyperventilating. “You want to do business here, there’s some people downtown you’re going to have to see, and I’m not sure they’ll see you.”
“Of course they will, Jackie,” Jacob said softly. “You just tell them Jacob King wants to see them. That ought to do the
trick.” He smiled and locked his arm around Jackie Heller’s neck. “I think they’ll make the time. I think you can count on it.” He tightened his grip. “Set it up.”
From the continuing testimony of Lyle Ledbetter, appearing before the federal grand jury impaneled in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, to investigate matters pertaining to the shooting death of Jacob King o/a December 1, 1948. Court was called to order at 9:11
A.M
., May 25, 1949, in Department C, U.S. District Courthouse, Las Vegas, Nevada, the Honorable Lucius Klinger, presiding. Stanley Prince, assistant United States attorney for southern Nevada, appeared for the government:
T
HE
C
OURT
:
Mr. Ledbetter, you are still sworn. Mr. Prince, you may proceed.
M
R
. S
TANLEY
P
RINCE
(hereinafter referred to as
“Q”
): Now, Mr. Ledbetter, you served five terms as a county supervisor, is that correct?
M
R
. L
YLE
L
EDBETTER
(hereinafter referred to as
“A”
): Until March of this year, that is correct, yes.
Q:
When you resigned?
A:
That is right.
Q:
And the circumstances of your resignation were not what we would call voluntary, is that right?
A:
That is correct.
Q:
The circumstances being that you were informed that you were under investigation for the acceptance of, uh, gratuities, and in the event that you cooperated with the state, the court might look with favor on the disposition of any charges that might be filed against you.
A:
I answered that yesterday.
Q:
But this is today. Answer the question, please. You don’t answer the questions, then the court might be less likely—
A:
I get the picture. Yes, I agreed to cooperate for the reasons you stated yesterday, today, and probably tomorrow, too.
Q:
It always helps when a cooperating witness gets the picture, Mr. Ledbetter. Especially in the looking-with-favor department. Now, when court adjourned yesterday, you were about to tell us the circumstances of your first meeting with Jacob King. So why don’t you tell us in your own words, the more details the better, I bet you’re a very good, a top-notch storyteller, and I and His Honor here love nothing better than to hear a good story well told.
T
HE
C
OURT
:
You made your point, Mr. Prince. Proceed, Mr. Ledbetter.
A:
Well, I get this call from Jackie …
Q:
Let the record reflect that Jackie is the late Jackie Heller, formerly owner of Heller Sanitation, is that correct, Mr. Ledbetter?
A:
Right.
Q:
The same late Mr. Heller who gave you a cashier’s check in the amount of five thousand dollars if you could swing the board of supervisors into awarding an exclusive garbage-hauling contract for Clark County to Heller Sanitation.
A:
How many times I got to answer that?
Q:
A pretty song you never get tired of listening to, Mr. Ledbetter. So sing it again, Sam. (
Laughter
.) It’s a line from the movie
Casablanca
, Mr. Ledbetter. Actually the line is “Play it again, Sam,” but you don’t mind if I put my own interpretation on it, do you?
A:
No. And, yes. Yes, I accepted five grand from Mr. Heller …
Q:
As a campaign contribution …
A:
Yes …
Q:
And you were able to convince your colleagues to award the garbage contract to Mr. Heller’s company …
A:
Yeah. To Jackie’s company.
Q:
So Jackie Heller called you … just proceed in your own words, Mr. Ledbetter.
A:
And Jackie said that a Mr. King wanted to see me, he had a proposition.
Q:
Did Jackie Heller identify Mr. King?
A:
He said he was Morris Lefkowitz’s right-hand man. I knew who he was. I read the papers. I knew who Morris Lefkowitz was, too. Who doesn’t?
Q:
And knowing this you still agreed to see Mr. King?
A:
You got to be nuts you think I’m not going to see Jacob King. I value living too much.
Q:
So Mr. King turns up at your office. Tell us what happened, Mr. Ledbetter.
A:
That’s what I been trying to do, but you interrupt all the time.
Q:
I take your point, Mr. Ledbetter. In your own words now.
A:
He makes me look out the window and not at him. And he asks me to tell him how I see Las Vegas. And I say to Jake, Mr. King, I say, the way I see it, we’ve got a city in its takeoff phase. A city determined to pull itself up by its bootstraps. It’s L.A. twenty years ago, and I’m determined not to let it make the same mistakes. And he says to me, You want clean air. And I say to him, That’s my franchise, that’s why I was elected, I want a community with clean air. A decent place to raise a family. And so naturally I have some concerns about making sure that this grows into that kind of city. And he says, Where a kid can have a paper route, unbothered by undesirable elements. And I say to him, I say, Jake, I can see we’re on the same wavelength …
Q:
You’re still looking out the window? At the splendor of the Las Vegas of the future?
A:
Right. I can see it. And I say to him, I think of Las Vegas as an unspoiled natural resource, and I’m looking for a way to protect that resource. And he says, You’re looking for a feedback on that resource. And I say, A feedback would definitely address my concerns, Jake. And in the window of my office I can see his reflection …
Q:
And what do you see in that reflection?
A:
I see this guy with a briefcase, Jake, of course, and he’s taking bills out of the briefcase, and the wrappers are still on the bills, and he’s laying the bills on my desk. And he says to me, Lyle, you are creating a wonderful business climate here, and I know if I want to buy some property you will make sure I got no trouble with the zoning, and you will speak to the liquor authority,
and I’m sure you got pals on the gaming commission, and I say, Yeah, I know somebody I can call. Then he says, When you turn around you’ll see two piles, the small pile on the left is to get Matty Cassady off my back.
Q:
Let the record reflect that Matty Cassady is Matteo Cassady, the sheriff of Clark County. What exactly was the relationship between Matty Cassady and Jacob King?
A:
Jake said Matty had his people tailing him from the moment he arrived in Clark County. In a big-ass white Cadillac you couldn’t miss, that was the point of it, I guess, so that Jake knows they know he’s there. I talk to Matty and he tells me that Benny Draper doesn’t want Jake King in Clark County. Anywhere. Over and out.
Q:
And that presented a problem?
A:
A big damn problem.
Q:
Unless the price was right?
A:
Let me put it this way. Matty’s a guy, he never liked his right hand to know what his left hand was doing.
Q:
So his right hand was taking money from Benny Draper and his left was prepared to grab some of Jacob King’s money?
A:
Or the other way around. (
Laughter
.)
Q:
Let me make the jokes, Mr. Ledbetter. How much money did Jacob King leave on your desk?
A:
Twenty-five thousand dollars.
Q:
And how much of that was to go to Matty Cassady?
A:
The twenty-five was for me. To help move things along. Condemn a site, that sort of thing. Matty’s pile was seventy-five hundred.
Q:
But in his court case, Mr. Ledbetter, Sheriff Cassady stood accused and was convicted of receiving only six thousand dollars.
A:
Well, there was a kind of finder’s fee, if you know what I mean.