The dusky room was filled with smoke like the polluted lungs of a cancer-stick sucking giant. What little light that fought through only dropped a few feet from the dangling lamps, tracing downwards in sickly yellow cones over each pool table, each inch of the bar, and over the six figures slapping cards in the middle of the room.

Superbad flipped up the brim of his fedora and bit into his ebony black cigarette. "Gaddamit Lawford, if you don't ante up or fold, I'm gonna kick you right in that no-talent ass of yours."

"You can't talk to me like that. Frank! Tell him he can't talk to me like that!"

The Chairman's ice blue eyes rose nervously above his hand, and darted back and forth over the faces at the table. "The man can talk to you anyway he wants, Petey. Now shut the hell up."

"Yeah, shut the hell up. Frank's a smart man, you listen to him. And now either lay your cards down or your money down, or I'm gonna empty my glock into you like I did Bugsy in this very same gaddam room."

"You didn't shoot Bugsy, man," piped in the singer, his ring-laden fingers glinting like golden sails on a distant horizon, "You couldn't have, man, like, you woulda been some crazy kinda kid, cat. Like, an infant yet."

SuperBad dragged long on his smoke, and put it out on the passed-out Martin's cufflink "Yeah, dammit, that's right. I did him when I was a baby. You tell 'em, Bad Mother, how we Scarfaced on Bugsy in this very room, and YOU GET THAT DAMN FREAKY EYE OFFA ME, DAVIS! Gaddamit!"

The singer jumped back as Superbad shoved the table towards him. "It's cool, cat, it's cool. I'll take it out."

"Gaddamit. What are you, some kinda evil Muppet? Jeezus. MF, take over."

Bad Mother drained the last from the broken neck of his Jack bottle and spat a bloody chunk of glass on the floor. "That's right," he slurred, "It was back in the day, and me and 'Bad toddled in here looking for some transplanted New York hooker to pretend to be our mommy for a couple hours. Siegel's like 'Hey, you kids get out of here,' and we're like 'Don't tell us what to do Bugsy,' and we planted him so far down in the dust that his ass was in Hell half an hour before the rest of him caught up. Then we dragged the body back to house and drank up all his whiskey and stole his gaddam wallet."

Superbad nodded, "I better not see that eye on me. What up, Lawford? You in?"

"I dunno. Stop pressuring me. You don't scare me. You can't talk to me that way. Frank!"

Superbad's eyes narrowed.

***

The smoke and fire kept burning as the casino debris - concrete and poker chips - rained down with a sound like a thousand engines backfiring in the distance. The fireball heaved its failing flame over the horizon - flipping the bird to the distant desert.

Superbad and Bad Mother slid into the BadAssMobile. "We didn't never really shoot no Bugsy Siegel, did we Superbad?" Bad Mother said as he coccooned in the pile of half empty Jack bottles on the back seat and damn near passed out.

"Damn if I know, but I know I got soul and I shtupped most of they moms before they was born, and if I ain't shot no Bugsy Siegel yet, I know I said I did. Someday I'll find a way to go back in time and double check, and if his ass is still warm in nineteen-fifty whatever I'll put it in the freezer for good."

Bad Mother chomped the open end of a warm bottle. "What if someone else cap him before you do?"

SuperBad revved the engine and gripped the shift. "Then dammit, I'll pile up the bodies of whoever beat me there, and whoever KNOWS that they beat me there, and whoever THINKS that they know that they beat me there, until everyone who even SMELLS like a credible witness is sinking in a peat bog. I'll do it, too."

"Damn right, 'Bad"

The chopped El Dorado tore out along the fiery dirt road leading to the wreck of the Sands hotel behind them."Damn right indeed, Bad Mother" was all he said til the engine grew hot, hours later, well into that night. Tearing along 66 at a hundred a twenty past the flipped wrecks of the State Police cruisers, only one thought occurred to him:

"I hate Las Vegas."