Sin City by Harold Robbins

Hop spoke quietly but I felt the anger in his words.
    â€œI didn’t do anything to you,” Betty said. “I told Emerson I wasn’t paying any more of your bills.”
    â€œYou’re a fucking bitch.”
    â€œDon’t you talk that way in front of Zack! I don’t make enough money to keep you in beer.”
    â€œYou could join your friend Patty at the Pink Lady spreading your legs. That’s all a fucking cunt like you is good for.”
    â€œGet out of my house, you bastard.” She grabbed the sugar bowl off the table and threw it at him. “Get out! Get out! Get out!” she screamed.
    He came off the couch and started for her. I stepped in front of him.
    â€œKeep away from my—”
    He hit me hard, slamming me with his open hand across the side of the head. I saw stars and flew backward, slamming into the wall. Betty grabbed the pan of boiling water off of the stove and threw it in his face.
    We ran next door to Patty and Joe’s with Hop screaming he was going to kill us.
    Â 
    The next morning we waited for the Greyhound in front of Emerson’s bar. We didn’t say much. We never do at these times. I had my small duffel bag and Betty had her hard-shell suitcase. Anything else we owned—plates, dishes, my bike, things like that—was left for the landlord. Betty hadn’t paid last month’s rent, so the landlord could have the stuff.
    When the bus was getting ready to pull out, Gibbs and Gleason rode up on their bikes and scanned the windows, looking for me. In a town where a shout carries almost from one end to another, it didn’t take much time for everyone to know we were leaving. I crouched down so they couldn’t see me. I didn’t want to say anything to them. I liked Gibbs, and Gleason, too, though he was a little turd, and I even liked Mina. But I had to be tough and not care.
    We were an hour down the road before I realized the bus was heading in the opposite direction from Reno. Reno had always been our
hub, the center of a wheel with the little towns of northern Nevada spread out from it like spokes. This time we were heading south.
    â€œWhere we going?” I asked Betty.
    She took a deep breath. “Vegas, baby, we’re going back to my old stomping grounds.”
    Las Vegas. The name didn’t mean a whole lot to me. Reno was the biggest town I ever saw and I assumed Vegas was bigger than Mina and smaller than Reno, maybe something like Hawthorne.
    â€œIt’s been twelve years. They won’t remember me there.”
    She leaned closer and showed me a story in a day-old Reno newspaper. “See this guy, that’s Howard Hughes, your father.”
    Betty told me many times that my father was a big shot named Howard Hughes, but when your old man was someone you’d never seen or spoken to, it was like telling you about the tooth fairy. The article was about some big financial deal the Hughes guy was pulling off.
    â€œHow come he never comes around to see us?”
    â€œHoney, he’s busy and important. And he really doesn’t know about you. He comes to Vegas sometimes. Maybe you’ll meet him there.”

8
    In the wee hours of the morning, late in 1966, Thanksgiving weekend, a representative of the Desert Inn hotel-casino stood beside the tracks at the deserted North Las Vegas train station. In the distance, the rotating front light of a locomotive was visible coming down the track. A cold wind blew off the Spring Mountains. He shivered and pulled the parka that he wore over his business suit tighter. Behind him, two limos and a van were waiting.
    His orders had been very specific: A man would be getting off the train. He was not to attempt to speak to the man or even make eye contact. He was to ask no questions. He was to obey all instructions from the man’s bodyguards and aides. All he had to do was simply stand by with the vehicles and guide the convoy to the hotel. Entrance at the