“Bet ya life he’s looking at ya pictures right now,” said the driver. “Sixteen-millimetre camera in that shaving kit. Just pull down the zip and press y’arm against it and off it goes. He’ll have taken fifty feet. Straight and profile. And that’ll be with Mug Identification at Headquarters this afternoon, with a list of what ya got in ya bag. Ya don’t look as if ya’re carryin’ a gun. Mebbe it’s a flat holster job. But if ya’re, there’ll be another man with a gun alongside all the time ya’re in the rooms. Word’ll be sent down the line by this evening. Better watch out for any fellow with a coat on. Nobody wears ’em here save to house the artillery.”
“Well, thanks,” said Bond, annoyed with himself. “I can see I’ll have to keep a bit wider awake. Pretty good machine they seem to have here.”
The driver grunted affirmatively and drove on in silence.
They were just entering the famous ‘Strip’. The desert on both sides of the road, which had been empty except for occasional hoardings advertising the hotels, was beginning to sprout gas stations and motels. They passed a motel with a swimming pool which had built-up transparent glass sides. As they drove by, a girl dived into the bright green water and her body sliced through the tank in a cloud of bubbles. Then came a gas station with an elegant drive-in restaurant. GASETERIA, it said. FRESH-UP HERE! HOT DOGS! JUMBOBURGERS!! ATOMBURGERS!! ICE COOL DRINKS!!! DRIVE IN, and there were two or three cars being served by waitresses in high-heeled shoes and two-piece bathing suits.
The great six-lane highway stretched on through a forest of multi-coloured signs and frontages until it lost itself downtown in a dancing lake of heat waves. The day was as hot and sultry as a fire opal. The swollen sun burned straight down the middle of the frying concrete and there was no shade anywhere except under the few scattered palms in the forecourts of the motels. A glittering gunfire of light-splinters shot at Bond’s eyes from the windscreens of oncoming cars and from their blaze of chrome styling, and he felt his wet shirt clinging to his skin.
“Coming into the Strip now,” said the driver. “Otherwise known as the ‘Rue de la Pay’. Spelt p.a.y. Joke. See?”
“Got it,” said Bond.
“On ya right, The Flamingo,” said Ernie Cureo as they passed a low-lying modernistic hotel with a huge tower of neon, now dead, outside it. “Bugsy Siegel built that back in 1946. He came over to Vegas from the coast one day and took a looki round. Had a lot of hot money looking for investment. Vegas was goin’ great guns. Town wide open. Gambling. Legalized cat-shops. Nice set-up. It didn’t take long for Bugsy to catch on. He saw the possibilities.”
Bond laughed at the pregnant phrase.
“Yes, Sir,” continued the driver, “Bugsy saw the possibilities and moved right in. Stayed with it until 1947 when they blew some of his head off with so many bullets the cops never got around to finding them all. Then here’s The Sands. Plenty of hot money behind that one. Don’t rightly know whose. Built a couple of years ago. Front guy’s a nice feller name of Jack Intratter. Used to be at the Copa in New York. Mebbe you heard of him?”
“Afraid not,” said Bond.
“Well then, here’s The Desert Inn. Wilbur Clark’s place. But the money came from the old Cleveland-Cincinatti combination. And that dump with the flat-iron sign is The Sahara. Latest thing. Listed owners are a bunch of small-time gamblers from Oregon. Funny thing they lost $50,000 on their opening night. Would ya believe it! All the big shots come along with their pockets full of dough to make some courtesy play, make the fust night a success, y’unnerstand. It’s a custom here for the rival outfits to gather round at an opening. But boy, the cards just wouldn’t co-operate and the opposition guys walked off with fifty Grand! Town’s laffing about it still. Then,” he waved to the left where the neon was wrought into a twenty-foot covered wagon at full gallop, “Ya get The Last Frontier. That’s a dummy Western town on the left. Worth seein’. And over there’s The Thunderbird, and across the road’s The Tiara. Snazziest joint in Vegas. Guess ya know about Mister Spang and all that?” He slowed down and halted opposite the Spang hotel, which was topped by a ducal coronet of brilliant lights that winked on and off in a lost battle with the glaring sun and the reflections from the highway.