Sin City Skeletons

By Chase Peace

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, may be true for a tourist. When you're born and raised in the devil's playground, and when the conditions are just right, what happens in Vegas is a closet bursting with skeletons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chase Peace
• Release date: Aug 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223878438

Book preview

Prologue

April 2013

Captured!

For the umpteenth time Carmine Maxwell—a risk-taker to the highest degree—stands in handcuffs at the hood of one out of many police squad cars. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Officers mill about in all directions and Carmine lifts his face to the sun, basking in the limited freedom of it. Above, the loud air-pounding vibration from the police helicopter’s rotating blades travel through his body and he ponders just exactly how this pleasant Sunday afternoon turned into something you would see on the big screen.

Desolate desert borders this residential area and as our life-giver penetrates the minuscule blood vesicles in his skin, delivering crucial vitamin D to his body, a small smile cracks on his face, thankful to have survived apprehension by the police department that has the most officer-involved shooting deaths per capita than anywhere else in the country.

They are the real gangsters. They kill and get smooth away.

Out the corner of his eye, he spots another police car speed up and come to an abrupt halt. A lieutenant with gold bars on his uniform pops out and strolls some hastily long strides directly at him, enters his personal space, and screams, Where the hell is your gun?

Carmine shakes his head, feigning surprise in his splendid blue eyes.

We already know about your bags full of drugs. I don’t care about that. I need to know where your gun is!

The mist ejaculating from the policeman’s mouth, Carmine doesn’t notice. He’s too busy thinking about how Slone—a blonde-haired, green-eyed ex-lover—spilled all the beans.

Sir, Carmine says, I’m a felon. I know better than to carry a gun.

Don’t you lie to me! The cop’s face inches ever so closer. Don’t play coy. I know one hundred percent for a fact that you have a gun. My units are out searching the desert where you were running. If you don’t come clean and some kid finds that gun and harms himself or someone else, I will personally put you away for a very long time. I’ll make up the charges if I have to.

Carmine daydreams only for a moment. The threat made, especially the last part, doesn’t faze him. He knows that if he dwells on it, it may materialize, and a long stay inside of a concrete box will await him. Instead, he reflects back on the past thirty minutes, and is thankful that Slone didn’t see him put his illicit belongings behind her dryer. The gig would really be up then! Twenty years in prison? Golly, that would be a tough pill to swallow. What a great feeling it is to know that he’s safe from getting caught. A good thing that she was too busy preparing for a gunfight with him, racking back her two large handguns, to notice the stash.

Glancing at the copper's name tag, Carmine says, Officer Brady, from one man to another, you must know that I appreciate the job you guys do every day. I’m not the bad guy Slone makes me out to be. She is off her rocker and off her meds. I never had no gun and no kid is going to find any gun of mine. A prize-winning lie.

Losing confidence in Slone's information, Carmine watches as the Lieutenant becomes deflated then turns to talk to a subordinate.

Carmine wonders how much more intense this situation would actually be if the police knew that the small handgun that is stashed at Slone's apartment, behind her dryer, is actually a stolen side ankle piece who's previous owner is a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Detective.

His spirits begin to lift until, four minutes later, the senior officer turns back and says, we're going back to the scene of the crime. Now, it’s Carmine’s turn to become deflated. Almighty! Back to where his mother load is stashed.

Reader, if you think you know how this story goes, another hood novel or some such thing, fat chance!

Chapter 1

December 2012

Amy, sex, money, and some good kush weed! These are the desires Clyde Carter—a cosmopolitan—has been obsessed with the past four long years. Damn incarceration. More than all else though, he longs to reconnect with his smart and exquisitely gorgeous wife Amy. Like the Universe’s awesome gravitational and magnetic forces, inexorably, he will forever be pulled to her.

Since she has no internet or social media footprint, and, considering the fact that she’s a heroiness (addicted to heroin,) who loves to roll the crystal meth dope pipe, diving head first into the dope game, gives him a starting point in his loyal husbandly duty to find her. And who can blame her for her hardcore drug habit after all that she’s been through?

Oh the God's! Oh providence! How cruel the swirling mists of fate can sometimes be. And oh how high a couple can fly! Yet, tick tick goes her life's clock, expiration date inhumane. The damn pervs! Will he ever be able to see her again before she goes?

Clyde has the mind to start an illicit drug enterprise to infiltrate the vast Las Vegas dope world. Would you search Earth’s end, all through the devil's playground, and risk the attention of law enforcement for the one you love?

First things first, make money to buy drugs. If only he knew then the can of worms he would open!

The City of Las Vegas flashes before his eyes from his seat on the City bus. Destination? His old stomping grounds... The Las Vegas Strip! Rapid eye movement is the game as he searches the face of every single person within eyesight, hoping against the impossible odds that he might spot Amy's pretty brown eyes and cute petite mouth.

Fire in his blood! Such fire! Speedy anxiety courses through his veins, during this look about, unmatched by any other human, anywhere else in the world.

His blood cools as he begins to focus on the mission ahead. Absentmindedly, he fingers the lone five-dollar bill that he has to his name, in all the world. He wonders if the hustle atmosphere on The Strip has changed or transformed in some way? Surely not if the small bill in the pocket of his Dickie shorts is going to grow.

Diving back in his mind, to his early and mid-twenties, he recalls past hustles and plots he would execute, making a business out of Las Vegas tourists. And He’s definitely not reminiscing back on the past four years. That awful dragged out time was incredibly dark and desolate. But to it’s credit, in it’s own way, inspirational!

No. He’s hyping himself up with money on his mind. A small smile cracks on his face as he recollects a childhood memory, and how his strong-willed mom prompted him to get on the grind.

Chapter 2

September 1995

I saw your mom’s building. When the other sixth graders would tell young Clyde this, it would make him feel like a mini-celebrity.

Following his daily after-school routine, he sits inside the reception waiting area of his mom’s medical office where, on the front of the building, a large sign reads: Bethany Carters Permanent Makeup. Accompanying the sign is the proportioned side profile of a woman's face that sports short-styled hair.

Inside, he fidgets aimlessly while listening to the motorized water fountains, waiting for ma to finish with a client, belly growling. Picking up one of mom's brochures, something he’s read 100 times, it boggles his mind that she charges $350.00 for eyebrows, eyeliner, lip liner, blush, and areola coloring. $400.00 for lips.

Finally, the door opens to the back, and he is stunned to see a beautiful woman stroll through who wears a tight white shirt showing off shapely breasts and some nice swollen nips! His face turns red now that he’s seen close up just exactly what areola coloring is. He, no dummy at age eleven and a half, thanks to what’s on t.v., he can tell that the pretty lady is a stripper.

She stops at the window to the Secretaries station to pay cash for mom's work. And mom appears in the doorway, leans against the door jam, crosses her arms and barely there’s a wrinkle on her signature black apron.

Elegant best describes her in this moment. At five foot three, her short stylish wine-red hair, full red self tatted lips, and the golden hazel color of her eyes are captivating to see. Canny in her own right, and not oblivious to her son’s discomfort, she can’t help but to beam a large toothy smile at the kid. It’s no wonder her clients are so fond of her. Not only do they receive a professional permanent make-up procedure, they also get a firm high-moral counseling session. And believe me! Clyde has an intimate knowledge of her high-handed lessons.

In fact, some weeks into the future, and while riding the Interstate in her red sporty two door Saturn, and as kids do, he was only half-listening to a one-sided conversation that went something like this: Do not take drugs, do not break the law, wait until your married to lie in bed with a girl. Don't dwell on the past, set goals for your future, and most important of all, live in the moment.

Live in the moment. Live in the moment. Now that’s something he can do! Just then, a large billboard sign appears on the right advertising the Crazy Horse Too strip club. And can you guess what woman plasters more than half the sign? That’s right! The pretty lady who had her nipples colored. Clyde points and says, Mom, isn’t that your client from the other day?

Yes. Yes it is. Now keep your eyes off that nonsense.

As his eyes veer from the quite naked woman, his ma's words echo in his mind. Live in the moment. Before they pass the billboard, his eyes shoot back up and finds the stripper's shapely breasts.

Back in time two weeks, and, inside the reception area, the exotic dancer paying at the window says, Bethany! Is this your son?

Yes.

Oh my, he’s so cute.

Clyde’s face is now glowing like a red candy apple, and, wanting to deflect attention away from himself, he turns his torso to mom and, awed by her prosperous radiance, says, Mom, you have royal blood running through your veins!

She squeaks a short sharp laugh, and, the Stripper, caught in wonder at his words, turns to Clyde, and says, You know that makes you a prince.

Boy did that backfire! His face is now too classic to see.

Little does he know it then, but, where would we be without Kingship? An organized society? A good order of things? Look at us now! Scientific progress where, in no time at all, technological advances bear forth production triple-fold.

Once farewells conclude, mom waves him to the back. While following her to the room where she works out of, and as they pass the rooms she rents out to massage therapists, her gait can be snatched straight from the Victorian era.

In-between clients, she cleans up, and sets up for her next appointment. As they chat about school and such, his eyes wander from one item to the next, and they settle on her tattoo gun.

She says, Do you want to know what it feels like?

His eyes spring open, anxious as he recalls the last time she caught him doing something bad.

The time? Two years ago. He and his younger brother Steven were caught red-handed by her, smoking cigarette butts. Furious, she put both boys in the car, drove to the nearest Circle K convenience store, and bought a pack of smokes.

Right there in that very storefront parking lot, she