The second person is a portly woman in a filthy apron and a hair wrapping, kind of cowering in the corner by the door. Her eyes cannot come anywhere near the sopping-wet, naked hitchhiker, but her hand motions towards a plate stacked with food on the dressing table.

“I, I, Mista Tilly a’told me ta bring you-a somethin ta eat….” She stutters in an overly put-on, deferential way. She holds a hand before her eyes. “Oh, excuse me, mist-ah.”

She makes to go for the door, but the hitchhiker holds up a finger and tells her, “Hold on. Wait jess a minute.” He runs back to the bathroom, where he has kicked his clothes into a pile in the corner. His white ass warbles for all to see as he rummages through his jacket. He returns with a five-dollar bill, not even attempting to cover himself with the towel. The hitchhiker comes closer to the woman and her discomfort grows to a mortifying degree. She squirms in the corner, straining her head away as far as it will go. Her legs march in place as if they are gearing to leave her, but there is nowhere to go.

“No, no, I cannot,” she insists.

The hitchhiker raises the bill closer to her face. “Go on.”

She is eager to get out of there, away from the damp things this pale, naked man is dangling in front of her.

“Oh thank you. Thank you mist-ah.” She reaches out for the dollar bill with a quivering hand and scoots out the door. The hitchhiker turns toward the man in the chair and grabs a hold of the pink bathrobe on a hook. It’s like wearing the warm breath of schoolgirl. He pulls the tie around his waste and grabs a leg of the sickly looking chicken on the plate. The cold grease runs down his chin and he hungrily slops up a stray piece of skin.

The animalistic grunts die down, until they subside to a faint whimper. A few more smacks of wet skin on skin and the only sounds that remain is the swish of water and a trickle as it runs down the drain.

The hitchhiker climbs out of the small shower in the back with the water still running. The dark creature he has just ravaged remains crumpled against the tiled wall, facing it with her head resting on her arm. She breathes deep and slow. The long black hair sticks down her back, almost to her ass. On two large cheeks, dimples quiver as the water pounds them in a steady flow. Her left hand gathers water to wash out her crotch. She notices how sore it is: a slow burn of friction and stretching. The water, at once, soothes and stings her insides.

Slop, slop, the hitchhiker’s feet splatter the concrete floor until he reaches the abrasion of carpet in the dressing room. He finds among a row of hooks –from which also hang fluorescent colored braziers and a bright pink robe- a lush towel of the same eye-searing color and material. He grabs it and slings it over his shoulder. There are two people in the room but this doesn’t cause him pause in the least.

The first is a dazed looking man half-sleeping, half-staring as he lies back in a chair. His right sleeve is pulled up and a belt is fastened around his arm, towards the top of the bicep. An enormous vein –it looks like a snake that has somehow burrowed just below the skin- traces the faint muscle until it gets to mid-arm. There, a blackened rash spreads out like the negative image of a solar system. It is scabbed over and most likely infected, judging from the puss and rot reaching down his forearm. A metal box, syringe and charred spoon lay on the sink next to him. He breathes with a heavy gurgle bringing bubbles to his lips. The man’s eyes roll back slightly while his eyelids flutter. Those in the midst of ecstasy are often taken for the gravely ill. There is no reason they can’t be both.

“Arright. You get me out of the city, I give you twenty five percent.”

“Tweny five percent a h’wat? Watchu into, cracka?” Smokey looks around to his associates with a forced chuckle. They never break their gaze with the floor. One, looking like a small boy in his oversized purple suit, swallows hard. Sweat dazzles the side of his face. It’s warm in the backroom, but not stiflingly so.

The hitchhiker pulls bills from every pocket, stuffed down into every garment. The black man’s eyes light up, similar to before, but now it is in amazement. He is stunned, not by the amount, but by the places in which the hitchhiker managed to cram his money.

The pile is laid out on the dressing table, sweaty clumps of bills stuck together. A dancer accidentally looks over, but Smokey catches her and doesn’t have to do much. His look says she’s going to get it later, whatever ‘it’ may be.

“Make it an even third, an it’ll be as good as you was neva he-ah.”

“Fine.” The hitchhiker doesn’t like the position he’s in, but there’s little choice. He only shows his reluctance with a tightening of his lips over his teeth. The word barely got out, but any sound of agreement was enough for the dark-skinned hustler.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Smokey motions from one of his men to the door. It opens with the loud swirls of catcalls over jump-blues spilling in. Smokey turns back into the dressing room.

“For now, you cool out he-ah. Take a showa, get some grub in ya, grab a chick if ya like, I don give a shit. I’ll let ya know when wah ready ta split.” The door slams behind him and the noise from outside returns to a loud muffle. The same girl who was staring at the cash is now stealing glances at the hitchhiker. He lies back in the clam and lets the powdery, femme-spritzed air wash over him. It has the greasy undercurrent of skillet-fried food, but it can’t entirely override the musk of female flesh, ripe for the taking.

The woman, of dark skin and darker eyes, steps out of her robe and enters the shower; but not before stripping the hitchhiker with a do-what-you-will look, teasingly polished with an I-doubt-you-will smile. The hitchhiker has settled cozily into the chair. The ridges of its clamshell back seemed uncomfortable at first, but its overall curve melts his back, like snowflakes in the awaiting palm of a child. Yet the woman has conspicuously left the shower door open, and now rubs herself down in full view of the hitchhiker, and anyone else who happens to walk in. She is not what the hitchhiker would call ‘pretty’, but this club, after all, is not the place for beauty pageants. The hitchhiker observes, drinks in, the way her skin slicks under the gush of water and he can sit still no longer. He suddenly needs to feel its suppleness give way completely under his grip. Better yet, he wants to rip it, penetrate it, and reduce it to the blubbering flesh he knows it really is. He’s up, leaving being a trail of clothes on the floor: sure beats riding shotgun through arid, desert ghost towns any day.

“What can I do ya for, then, my fare-skinned assembly-line workin friend?” The smile is back. This time it is wholly false and menacing. The hitchhiker is weighing how much, if any, of his spur-of-the-moment heist down at the old El Dorado he should run by Smokey. Anyone who knows anything about this unscrupulous character will also know his way of converting other people’s business into his own. Smokey can be considered the silent partner of all Las Vegas crime. Once he’s gotten windfall of it, even the most sophomoric of card-table scams, it’s as good as his. This club is not his, but he calls the shots as if it were his own; and both its patrons and employees revere him all the more for it.

Smokey is waiting, and not patiently. The tilted brim of his had accentuates the way he cocks his head in an irritated anticipation. His cane practically taps out the seconds against the ratty floor. The hitchhiker has to think fast. Holding everything from the man is sure to raise his suspicions. Regardless, won’t word of the heist get to him eventually? A complete omission will blow the entire operation, in the end. The hitchhiker relents and decides to feed Smokey just enough information to draw him in and make him feel useful. The hitchhiker collapses back, ridiculously, into the oversized chair and lets out with it.

“Y’know how I said I was passing through?”

Smokey nods in impatient agreement.

“Well, I’m only halfway there.” The hitchhiker pauses to read the black man. He is sitting on the edge of the dressing table. His face remains steadfast in concentration, as if it is considering the resonance of the hitchhiker’s words. Obviously, he does not feel this vague tidbit to be sufficient. He slams the cane and rises to his feet as an indication that the hitchhiker has only a matter of seconds to state his case.

“Damn it fool! I ain’t here to play riddles. Now you gonna spill what you got?”

“Shoulda known. Only corn-pone dizzy nuff ta wanda in he-ah.” It is a deep bark, barely audible above the commotion of horns and rattling percussion. “What? Things ain’t workin out fo’ ya in Dee-troy? Ha ha.” Smokey may have extended an olive branch rather than a sword, but his words retain the sting of a man who wants him dead. The hitchhiker did many rotten things in his short time here, but he can’t recall a single offense with which old Smokey could fault him. The hitchhiker is pretty sure of that. Tone of voice notwithstanding, he is grateful, and relieved, at the belated recognition.

“Don’t get all excited. Just passin through, Smokes.”

The man’s eyes grow white in an instant.

“You ain’t gonna suss me wi dat cracka shit. You he-ah me honkey?” The defenses are back.

“Sure thing, sure thing.” The hitchhiker’s promise dies in a whimper. It doesn’t matter because the invisible band has flared back up –and the girl onstage with the boa has been replaced with another toffee-colored girl, this time armed only with a fan- and Smokey is already ushering the hitchhiker into a rear dressing room. Anyone else would have quickly learned his lesson about avoiding back rooms in Vegas. To people like the hitchhiker, however, that is the only reason to be in Vegas.

The room is small but electric with activity. The walls are yellow in an unintentional way, and peeling. The carpet is so worn that it remains only a single layer of woven yarn. Its color is indistinguishable- unless one can imagine the exact shade of disgusting. The musk hanging in the air is similarly an indecipherable mix of female softness, fear, and cream of grits.

No one can focus on the décor, however, because the room is entirely taken up with the flashes of bare, female body parts. All of them are stolen from a spectrum of nutmeg and chocolate, which contrasts all the greater with the bright feminine colors –tope, rosemary, cherry blossom- that comprise the few garments lazily thrown over the dark, dripping flesh.

The women part the way to mark Smokey’s path. He doesn’t seem to notice the wobbling buttocks or jiggling breasts that scamper from him like so many exotic fish disturbed in mid-swim. Smokey’s powers of concentration, as with all ‘good’ criminals, are impervious to the base desires harbored by most men. Besides, what is there to get all bothered about when he can have any combination of leg, tit, and ass in that room as he desires? All he has to do is say the word. He knows it, the men out front know it, and God help the girl in here that doesn’t know it as well. He ushers the hitchhiker to a clamshell-backed chair in front of a cracked vanity mirror and gestures for him to sit.

The driver’s suspicions were correct: the hitchhiker’s arrival in Las Vegas is a return to his element. Among so many black, closely cropped heads, the hitchhiker is able to improvise and strut with the least self-awareness. He moves coolly, limb for limb, with a borrowed confidence. No one could be watching, or the whole room could set their eyes on him; it doesn’t matter.

Sure enough, there is at least one man watching. He does it with the slightest tilt of his head, yet even in this, there is a little too much interest. Smokey touches the rim of his hat with two gold-ringed fingers, and slides them as if he’s checking for dust. This could be a fatal sign, or merely a learned habit, but he won’t unlock eyes with the hitchhiker. The latter continues across the floor steadily. Sweaty suits part the way without the hitchhiker ever having to lay so much as a finger or muttering an “excuse me”. He’s close enough to see a flash of Smokey’s gold falsies as he laughs at whatever drabble one of his slow-witted hangers-on deems worthy of sharing with this dark-as-coal kingpin, but his eyes don’t leave the hitchhiker’s face, now dripping with sweat. If Smokey recognizes him, he doesn’t let on.

His lips close over the metal in his mouth, causing him to take on an intent stare. It’s not like all the other resentful looks that were thrown his way when he first entered. This one means business, and it actually has behind it the means and wherewithal to follow through on any course of action seen fit. The hitchhiker hesitates, or thinks he’s hesitated, but the insistent booming of a bass strum has led him through.

The hitchhiker gets within breathing distance, and it looks as if words are not even going to be exchanged. He supposes Smokey might rap him with the cane he is gripping up on as soon as he comes near, or maybe he has a more lethal weapon hidden on him. The smile reappears in a flash when the hitchhiker thinks he can’t possibly get any closer without provoking an altercation. So be it. At the last moment, a lanky, black hand extends out to bridge the distance.

The darkness is indistinct at first, but there emerges a soft red glow. It’s the warm but unwelcoming light of a place intent on remaining hidden. He’s surprised he didn’t noticed it right away, but there is a squealing loop of jazz; either on a record or being played live, he can’t tell, “cause I’s never into that nigger shit.”

That’s where he is though: Las Vegas’s hideaway for the most disreputable among an unrecognized class of men. Sullen faces -black and smoky, like the club itself or even the night outside- stare at the hitchhiker as he feels his way further down the hall.

He comes to a main room, almost completely red except for a haze of blue coming off the main stage at the front. The music is blaring now, to the point where notes, or even pitches, can’t be distinguished one from another. It’s obviously not from a band because the stage is empty, or almost empty.

In a red-feathered boa, and nothing else, writhes a light brown girl with skin so rich and silky, it looks like it can be drunk through a straw. The hitchhiker is given a little bit of hope. Not due to the appearance of a sultry, declothed female (though the way she thrusts her pelvis into the boa, as if it were a stand in for a sought-after lover, is absolutely magnetic); but because it dawns on him that he might know where he is. Or at the very least, he is sure to know the one man most likely to be found in Vegas’s own Negro purgatory.

Though the citizens of Las Vegas look down as unrepentantly on their own dark-skinned sons and daughters as any Southern town, the white, criminal establishment allows a for a few black faces among their foot-soldiers; namely, those willing to be the most ruthless, cold-hearted, back-stabbing son of a bitch around. Of course, the odd Negro able to rise up through the ranks is still shat on by his white mobster superiors, as much as he is despised by the law-abiding gentry; yet he proves to be indispensable, criminally speaking, through his willingness to do the ‘dirty jobs’ self-respecting gangsters won’t go near. Exemplary of such a man is a one, Mr. Chantilly Laforge.

The hitchhiker only knows him as Smokey. That’s not his nickname, that’s just the derogatory name the hitchhiker gives to any Negro that happens to cross his path. This Smokey has crossed his path plenty enough times, but that was mostly in the days when the hitchhiker had just wandered down from Michigan. He didn’t know his ass from a rigged slot, but he had aspirations, and in a short while he got connected to the right people. Then he got involved with little Paula, and all the trouble started. Before he knew it, he was sucked back to Dearborn and facing either a shotgun wedding and a resentful, pregnant Paula –not to mention an intolerable father-in-law; or five to ten in the can for grievous assault. Paula lost the baby in the attack. If it weren’t for the intervention of that Mexican boy, beaten to paralysis, she would have died as well. The hitchhiker considers it telling of a failed criminal justice system that it was only able to postpone her fate, not prevent it.

Luckily, no noise comes until the ladder hits its full extension, and it can drop no further. It stops eight feet short of the ground. The sudden jerk throws the men into a pile of various refuse, none of it smelling too good. The crash is loud. They immediately recover and inspect their surroundings. There doesn’t appear to be anyone at either end of the alley. They kick up into a sprint, further into the darker shadows of the large buildings.

There’s a rustle ahead. They hear it before they see anything. Then there’s the strike of a match and a disembodied hand covering the flame. It lights up a face as it draws nearer. The face is familiar, but it is taken up mostly by a fat cigar. There are others; three pairs of eyes lit in the ritualistic firelight of a sunken tomb. They all look over as one. Three menacing faces once again, but this time in a different combination of disgust and fury.

A glow from nowhere catches one side of a shiny, bald head. The driver recognizes the short figure -flanked by two sentries who are gigantic by comparison- as the pink-suited man. His face seems a lot sicklier in the diminished light of a back alley, but his cigar is perched as proudly as ever. A deep ember marks his sense of triumph. It must be pretty easy when he can pay off as much muscle as it takes to work his way up –up?- to sixth or seventh man of the city.

The group stares down into the alley. They’ve seen something, or heard the clatter from before. The man in pink leads the charge, confident that his lackeys will follow. They do, and their massive gait causes them to lurch, as if every step is going to follow through and wind up with their foot planted through the ground.

The driver still can’t be sure if they’ve actually been spotted or just suspected. The hitchhiker presses his back against a wall. His arms and fingers are outstretched in the dark, feeling along the sooty bricks until coming to cold metal: a door. He presses in and it gives. He pushes more, with his ass, and the door swings inward. There is a creek and a thud. He’s in.