“Use this while you’re here,” Leeman told me.
“Who is she?” I asked, examining the license.
“From now on, Laura Barron is you.”
“Yes, but I can only stay in Las Vegas until August.”
“I know. You won’t regret it, Laura, this is a good job. One thing, though, nobody can know you’re here—not your family, not your friends. No one. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“We’re going to spread the word that you’re my girlfriend, to avoid problems. Nobody will dare to bother you.”
Leeman ordered his associates to buy a new mattress and sheets for my bed, then he took me to a lavish hair salon in a private health club, where a man with earrings and raspberry-colored pants exclaimed in disgust at the strident rainbow of my hair and diagnosed that the only solution would be to cut it off and bleach it. Two hours later I looked in the mirror and saw a long-necked Scandinavian hermaphrodite with mouse ears. The chemicals in the bleaching products had left my scalp in flames. “Very elegant,” said Brandon Leeman approvingly, and drove me on a pilgrimage from one mall to the next on the Boulevard. His shopping method was disconcerting: we’d go into a shop, he’d make me try on various outfits, and in the end he would choose just one article of clothing, paying with large-denomination bills. Then he’d take the change and we’d go to another place, where he’d buy something I’d already tried on in the previous one but that we hadn’t bought. I asked him if it wouldn’t be easier to buy everything in the same place, but he didn’t answer.
My new trousseau consisted of several sporty outfits, nothing provocative or bright—a simple black dress, daytime sandals and another gold, high-heeled pair, a bit of makeup, and two big handbags with the designer logo clearly visible that cost, according to my calculations, as much as my grandmother’s Volkswagen. Leeman got me a membership at his club, the place where I’d had my hair done, and he advised me to use the gym as much as possible, since I would have more than enough leisure time during the day. He paid in cash from rolls of dollar bills held together with an elastic band, and nobody thought it strange; from the looks of things in this city cash flowed like water. I noticed Leeman always paid with hundred-dollar bills, although the price might be a tenth of that, and I couldn’t find an explanation for this eccentricity.
At ten that night it was time for my first delivery. They dropped me off at the Mandalay Bay hotel. Following Leeman’s instructions, I headed for the swimming pool, where a couple approached me, having identified me by the brand of handbag I was carrying, which was apparently the sign Leeman had given them. The woman, wearing a long beach dress and a necklace of glass beads, didn’t even look at me, but the man, in gray pants, white T-shirt, and bare ankles, shook my hand. We chatted for a minute about nothing; then I discreetly passed them their order and received two hundred-dollar bills folded inside a tourist brochure, and we went our separate ways.
From the lobby I called another client on the internal hotel phone, went up to the tenth floor, passed under the nose of a guard stationed beside the elevator who didn’t give me a second glance, and knocked on the door. A man of about fifty, barefoot and in a bathrobe, told me to come in, took the little bag, paid me, and I left in a hurry. At the door I crossed paths with a tropical vision, a beautiful mulatta in a leather corset, very short skirt, and needle heels; I guessed that she was an escort, as high-class prostitutes are called these days. We looked each other up and down, without a word.
In the immense hotel lobby I finally took a deep breath, satisfied with my first mission, which had turned out to be very easy. Leeman was waiting for me in the car, with Chino at the wheel, to drive me to other hotels. Before midnight I’d collected more than four thousand dollars for my new boss.
At first glance, Brandon Leeman was different from other addicts I met during those months, people who’d been destroyed by drugs: he looked normal, although fragile, but living with him, I understood how sick he really was. He ate less than a sparrow, could keep almost nothing down, and sometimes lay so still in his bed that I didn’t know if he was asleep, unconscious, or dead. He gave off a peculiar odor, a mix of cigarettes, alcohol, and something toxic, like fertilizer. His mind was going, and he knew it; that’s why he kept me at his side—he said he trusted my memory more than his own. He was a nocturnal animal, spending the daylight hours resting in his air-conditioned room, in the evenings usually going to the club for a massage, a sauna, or a steam bath, and at night tending to his business. We saw each other around the gym, but we never arrived together, and the order was to pretend not to know each other; I wasn’t allowed to talk to anybody, which was very difficult, since I went every day and always saw the same faces.
Leeman was demanding with his poisons, as he said, the most expensive bourbon and the purest heroin, which he injected five or six times a day, always with brand-new needles. He had as much as he wanted at his disposal and kept to his routines, never falling into the unbearable desperation of withdrawal, like other poor souls who dragged themselves to his door in the final stage of need. I witnessed the ritual of the white lady—the spoon, the flame of a candle or a lighter, the syringe, the rubber strip tied around the arm or leg—admired his skill at jabbing collapsed, invisible veins, even in his groin, stomach, or neck. If his hand was trembling too much, he’d resort to Freddy, because I could not bring myself to help him; the needle made my hair stand on end. Leeman had used heroin for so long that he tolerated doses that would have been lethal for anyone else.
“Heroin doesn’t kill, it’s the addicts’ lifestyles that do: poverty, malnutrition, infections, dirt, used needles,” he explained.
“Then why won’t you let me try it?”
“Because a junkie is no use to me whatsoever.”
“Just once, just to know what it’s like . . .”
“No. Be content with what I give you.
He gave me booze, marijuana, hallucinogens, and pills, which I took blind, not caring too much what effect they’d have as long as my consciousness was altered enough to escape from reality, from my Nini’s voice calling me, from my body, from my anguish about the future. The only pills I could recognize were orange sleeping pills; those wonderful capsules defeated my chronic insomnia and gave me some hours of dreamless rest. The boss let me use a few lines of coke to keep me lively and alert at work, but he wouldn’t let me try crack, and wouldn’t let his bodyguards use it either. Joe Martin and Chino had their own addictions. “That junk is for depraved addicts,” Leeman said scornfully, although those were his most loyal customers, the ones he could wring out till death, force them to steal and turn tricks, any degradation to procure the next hit. I lost count of how many of those zombies there were around us, snotty skeletons with ulcers, agitated, trembling, sweaty, imprisoned in their hallucinations, sleepwalkers pursued by voices and bugs that crawled into their orifices.
Freddy went through states like that, poor kid; my heart broke seeing him in a crisis. Sometimes I helped him bring the welding torch up to the pipe and awaited with the same anxiety he suffered for the flame to break the yellow crystals with a dry sound and the magic smoke to fill up the glass tube. In thirty seconds Freddy would fly to another world. The pleasure, the grandiosity and euphoria, lasted just a few moments, and then he’d be agonizing again in a deep, absolute abyss, from which he could only emerge with another hit. He needed more each time to keep going, and Brandon Leeman, who was fond of him, would give it to him. “Why don’t we help him to detox?” I asked Leeman one time. “It’s too late for Freddy—there’s no going back from crack. That’s why I had to get rid of other girls who worked for me before you,” he answered me. I interpreted that as his having fired them. I didn’t know that in that atmosphere, “get rid of” usually has an irrevocable meaning.
It was impossible for me to evade Joe Martin and Chino’s vigilance. They were in charge of spying on me and were very conscientious about it. Chino, a furtive weasel, never spoke to me or looked
straight at me, while Joe Martin made his intentions obvious. “Lend me the chick for a blow job, boss,” I heard him say to Brandon Leeman once. “If I didn’t know you were joking, I’d shoot you right here for insolence,” he calmly replied. I deduced that as long as Leeman was in command, that pair of assholes wouldn’t dare touch me.
There was no mystery about what this gang did, but I didn’t consider Brandon Leeman a criminal, like Joe Martin and Chino, who according to Freddy had several deaths on their hands. Of course, it was quite likely that Leeman was a murderer too, but he didn’t look like one. In any case, it was better not to know, just as he preferred not to know anything about me. For the boss, Laura Barron had no past or future, and her feelings were irrelevant; the only thing that mattered was that she did what she was told. He confided various things about his business, which he was afraid of forgetting and it would have been imprudent to put in writing, so I would memorize them: how much he was owed and by whom, where to pick up a package, how much to pass to the cops, the day’s orders for the gang.
The boss was very frugal, living like a monk, but he was generous with me. He hadn’t assigned me a fixed salary or commission, but he gave me money from his inexhaustible roll of bills without counting, like tips, and he paid for my club membership and anything I bought. If I wanted more, he’d give it to me without a second thought, but I soon stopped asking, because there was nothing I needed, and besides, anything of value would disappear from the apartment anyway. We slept on either side of a narrow hallway, which he never showed the slightest intention of crossing. He’d forbidden me from having relations with other men as a matter of security. He said tongues got loosened in bed.
At sixteen, I’d had, as well as the disaster with Rick Laredo, some experiences with guys that had left me frustrated and resentful. Internet porn, which everyone at Berkeley High had access to, didn’t teach anything to the boys, who were grotesquely clumsy; they celebrated promiscuity as if they’d invented it—the fashionable term was “friends with benefits”—but it was very clear to me that the benefits were just for them. At the academy in Oregon, where the atmosphere was saturated with youthful hormones—we used to say the walls were dripping with testosterone—we were subject to close quarters and enforced chastity. That explosive combination gave the therapists inexhaustible material for the group sessions. The “agreement” with respect to sex was no hardship for me, though for others it was worse than abstaining from drugs, because apart from Steve, the psychologist, who didn’t get involved in seduction attempts, the male element was deplorable. In Las Vegas I didn’t rebel against the restriction imposed by Leeman; the disastrous night with Fedgewick was still too fresh in my mind. I didn’t want anyone to touch me.
Brandon Leeman assured his clients that he could satisfy their every whim, anything from a young child for a pervert to an automatic rifle for an extremist, but it was more boasting than reality. At least, I never saw any of that, just drug dealing and selling stolen property, small-scale businesses compared to others that went on with impunity in the city. Various sorts of prostitutes came to the apartment in search of drugs, some very high-priced, judging from their appearance, others in the last stages of misery; some paid cash, others were given credit, and sometimes, if the boss wasn’t around, Joe Martin or Chino would take payment in services rendered. Brandon Leeman supplemented his income with cars stolen by a gang of underage crack addicts. He modified them in a clandestine garage, changing their license plates and selling them in other states, which also allowed him to change his ride every two or three weeks, and thus avoid being identified. It all contributed to fattening his magical wad of bills.
“With your hen that lays golden eggs you could have a penthouse instead of this pigsty, a plane, a yacht, whatever you want,” I reproached him when the pipes burst with a gush of fetid water and we had to use the bathrooms at the gym.
“You want a yacht in Nevada?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“No! All I’m asking for is a decent bathroom! Why don’t we move to a different building?”
“This one’s convenient.”
“Then call in a plumber, for the love of God. And you could hire someone to do the cleaning while you’re at it.”
He started laughing his head off. The idea of an illegal immigrant keeping house for a band of delinquents and addicts struck him as hilarious. Actually, Freddy was supposed to do the cleaning—that was the pretext for his getting to stay there—but the kid just took out the garbage and got rid of evidence by burning it in a gasoline drum out back. Even though I completely lack any vocation when it comes to housework, sometimes I had to put on rubber gloves and break out the detergent—it was the only option if I was going to keep living there—but it was impossible to combat the deterioration and dirt, which invaded everything like an inexorable pestilence. It only mattered to me; the rest of them didn’t notice. For Brandon Leeman those apartments were a temporary arrangement; he was going to change his life as soon as some mysterious business he was fine-tuning with his brother came off.
My boss, as he liked to be called, owed a lot to his brother, Adam, as he explained to me. His family was from Georgia. His mother had abandoned them when they were little; his father died in prison, possibly murdered, although the official version was suicide, and his older brother took care of Brandon. Adam had never held down an honest job, but he’d never had any run-ins with the law either, unlike his younger brother, who by the age of thirteen had a juvenile record. “We had to separate so I wouldn’t damage Adam’s reputation with my problems,” Brandon confessed. By mutual agreement they decided Nevada was the ideal place for him, with more than 180 casinos open day and night, cash passing from hand to hand at dizzying speeds, and a handy number of corrupt cops.
Adam gave his brother a bundle of identity cards and passports with different names, which could be very useful to him, and money to start operations. Neither of them used credit cards. In a rare moment of relaxed conversation, Brandon Leeman told me that he’d never married; his brother was his only friend, and his nephew, Adam’s son, was his only emotional weakness. He showed me a family photo of his brother, a strapping, good-looking guy, very different from him, his plump sister-in-law, and his nephew, a little angel called Hank. Several times I went with him to buy very expensive electronic toys, not very appropriate for a two-year-old, to send to the boy.
Drugs were just a bit of fun for the tourists who came to Las Vegas for a weekend to escape the tedium and try their luck in the casinos, but they were the sole comfort of the prostitutes, vagrants, panhandlers, pickpockets, gangbangers, and other unhappy types who hung out in Leeman’s building, ready to sell the last vestiges of their humanity for a hit. Sometimes they arrived without a cent and begged until he gave them something out of charity, or just to keep them hooked. Others were already at death’s door, and it wasn’t worth the trouble of helping them; they’d be vomiting blood, having convulsions, and passing out. Leeman had those ones tossed out onto the street. Some were unforgettable, like a young guy from Indiana who survived an explosion in Afghanistan and ended up in Las Vegas, unable to remember his own name—“Lose your legs and they give you a medal, lose your mind and they give you nothing,” he repeated like a prayer in between drags of crack—or Margaret, a girl about my age, but with her body used up, who stole one of my designer handbags. Freddy saw her, and we got it back off her before she could sell it, because Brandon Leeman would have made her pay very dearly for that. On one occasion Margaret came up to the apartment, hallucinating, and not finding anyone who might help her, cut her veins open with a piece of glass. Freddy found her in the hallway in a pool of blood and managed to take her outside, leave her a block away, and phone for help. When the ambulance picked her up, she was still alive, but we never heard what happened to her or saw her again.
And how could I forget Freddy? I owe him my life. I developed a sisterly affection for that quiet, short, skinny boy, who couldn’t keep still, with glass
y eyes and a runny nose, hard on the outside and sweet inside, who could still laugh and snuggle up beside me to watch television. I used to give him vitamins and calcium so he’d grow, and I bought two pots and a recipe book to inaugurate the kitchen, but my dishes went straight into the garbage almost whole; Freddy would swallow two mouthfuls and lose his appetite. Sometimes he got really sick and couldn’t move from his mattress; other times he’d disappear for several days with no explanation. Brandon Leeman supplied him with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, whatever he asked for. “Don’t you see that you’re killing him?” I rebuked him. “I’m already dead, Laura. Don’t worry about it,” Freddy interrupted cheerfully. He consumed every toxic substance in existence. I don’t know how he could swallow, smoke, sniff, and inject so much filth! He really was half dead, but he had music in his blood and he could get rhythm out of a beer can or improvise novels in rhyming rap; his dream was to be discovered and to become a star, like Michael Jackson. “We’ll go to California together, Freddy. You can start a new life there. Mike O’Kelly will help you—he’s rehabilitated hundreds of kids, some of them way more fucked up than you, but if you saw them now, you’d never believe it. My grandma will help you too. She’s good at that sort of thing. You can live with us. What do you think?”
One night, in one of Caesar’s Palace’s garish salons, with its statues and Roman fountains, where I was waiting for a client, I ran into Officer Arana. I tried to slip away, but he’d seen me and came over smiling, with his hand out, and asked me how my uncle was. “My uncle?” I repeated, disconcerted, and then I remembered that the first time we met, in McDonald’s, Brandon Leeman had introduced me as his niece from Arizona. Anxiously, because I had the merchandise in my bag, I started to blurt out explanations that he hadn’t asked me for.