“Arright listen up. You go get your car an meet us out front on Free-mon in ten minutes.”

“No goin, Smokes.” The hitchhiker had to cut in, and he had to use that hated universal moniker he lavished on all Negroes. “The whole place is heatin up on us, and the strip is definitely a no-go. We need to go with your guys all the way, or we’ve got no deal.”

“Fine.” Smokey spits out a curt end to all further negotiation and he doesn’t look any happier for it. The hitchhiker knows to avoid crossing Smokey if it can be avoided, but it also often pays off to drive a hard bargain with a man known for being himself immovable. It could earn something of a professional respect, from one asshole to another. Or it can get a person killed; but that would have been the end result anyway if the hitchhiker allowed Smokey and his boys to drag those two out onto Freemont Avenue for all the world to see.

“Give us your keys.” Smokey unceremoniously puts his hand out to the hitchhiker. His level of casualness jars with the actual weight of the situation, as the hitchhiker sees it. Plus he can already see a difficulty with Smokey’s command.

“Uh, he’s drivin’ ac’shly..” The hitchhiker nods to the driver. “…an, well….”

“I ain’t givin ma keys ta no ni…..ta nobody.” The driver is right to be so adamant. Smokey and his boys can get them out of the city just as well with the driver at the wheel. Asking him to hand his pickup over is unnecessary and, frankly, unsettling. Smokey react surprisingly amused.

“Ha ha. Fine.” There’s that word again. This time, it’s lost its hard edge and serves as a veiled concession that perhaps Smokey had gone too far.

“We’re goin to a liddle shindig at Jeanie Meriwether’s place out on Indian Hill, on the outskirts. You boys eva heard a’ her?”

“A’course,” replies the driver, but he knows Smokey doesn’t care if he actually recognizes the name of one of Hollywood’s best-paid actresses. It doesn’t even seem so odd to the driver that a character as disreputable as this Smokey would think nothing of dropping by a young starlet’s soirée, especially with a couple of bums who just rolled in from the desert. After all, he’s Smokey: the foulest part of Vegas’s criminal underbelly. Who’s going to tell him no?