STAYING ALIVE (Book Three of The Miami Crime Trilogy) by Don Donovan

Author:Don Donovan [Donovan, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

32

Jimmy

Las Vegas, Nevada

Monday, August 27, 2012

10:50 PM

THE HEAT WAS ALMOST TOO MUCH FOR JIMMY to bear. Just before landing, the pilot had announced the temperature: one hundred one degrees. He only felt a taste of it as he stepped off the plane to enter the jetway, but once he left the terminal building, he knew he'd never been anywhere like this.

His first time out of Florida and he's thrown into a fucking microwave. Even though he was in the breezeway outside the terminal doors, the burning sensation on his skin made him want to turn around and go back into the air conditioning. And this was nearly eleven o'clock at night.

He stepped into the taxi zone and the first of the cabs lined up to his left moved in front of him. Air conditioning covered him immediately and he took a deep breath.

"Where to?" the cabbie asked.

"Aria Hotel."

The cab sped out of the breezeway and into the night. Within a remarkably short period of time, it turned onto Las Vegas Boulevard, the Strip. Jimmy had only seen this place in photos and on TV and in the movie Casino — and that was set in the 1970s — and he gazed in wonder at this monument to excess. Lights as far as the eye could see in front of him, the street lined with the biggest hotels he had ever seen.

He remembered the scene in Casino where they showed the money pouring in via coin sorting machines and bundles of paper currency. He recalled the count room, where they arranged and counted the cash on a glass-topped table. And then there was the mob guy who came every week to pick up the cash and bring it back to the fat wop bosses in the Midwest. When the bosses asked how much he had, he said, "Oh, about twenty pounds. Maybe seven hundred thousand." Jimmy wondered why Don Rafael never tried to move in out here.

Far too soon, the taxi deposited him at the imposing entrance to the Aria. He paid the driver, waved off a bellman who wanted to help him with his carry-on bag, and entered the hotel.

Right away, he didn't like this place. Big and grandiose, the lobby stretched outward and upward to breadths and heights he'd never experienced. A cold, corporate feel all the way around. The intimidation extended across the massive lobby and right up to the high, glassed-in ceiling showcasing the black sky above. The front desk reminded him of a factory assembly line where real people with real feelings and real thoughts were not in evidence. Nothing in Miami was like this. It looked like they could hold a dance in one corner of the lobby and no one would notice.

Even at this hour, there was a line for check-in, and it took him about twenty minutes to reach the front desk. He noticed some comfortable chairs and couches to one side, and realized he had found his spot to watch for Damien Kushnir.

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