Bond caught a glimpse of endless miles of palm-lined avenues, of sprinklers whirling over emerald lawns in front of gracious homes, of sprawling1 aircraft factories, of the outside lots of film studios with their jumble2 of gimcrack sets-city streets, Western ranches3, what looked like a miniature motor-racing track, a full-size four-masted schooner4 planted in the ground-and then they were in the mountains and through them and over the interminable red desert that is the backstage of Los Angeles.
They flew over Barstow, the junction5 from which the single track of the Santa Fe strides off into the desert on its long run across the Colorado Plateau, skirting on their right the Calico Mountains, once the borax centre of the world, and leaving far away to the left the bone-strewn wastes of Death Valley. Then came more mountains, streaked6 with red like gums bleeding over rotten teeth, and then a glimpse of green in the midst of the blasted, Martian landscape, and then a slow- descent and 'please fasten your seat belts and extinguish your cigarettes'.
The heat hit Bond's face like a fist, and he had begun to sweat in the fifty yards between his cool plane and the blessed relief of the air-conditioned terminal building. The glass doors, operated by seeing-eye photo-electric cells, hissed7 open as he approached and slowly closed behind him, and already the slot-machines, four banks of them, were right in his path. It was natural to bring out the small change and jerk the handles and watch the lemons and the oranges and the cherries and the bell-fruits whirl round to their final click-pause-ting, followed by a soft mechanical sigh. Five cents, ten cents, a quarter. Bond gave them all a try, and only once two cherries and a bell fruit coughed back three coins for the one he had played.
As he moved away, waiting for the baggage of the half-dozen passengers to appear on the ramp8 near the exit, his eyes caught a notice over a big machine that might have been for iced water. It said: OXYGEN BAR. He strolled over to it and read the rest: BREATHE PURE OXYGEN, it Said. HEALTHFUL AND HARMLESS. FOR A QUICK LIFT. EASES DISTRESS9 OF OVER-INDULGENCE, DROWSINESS10, FATIGUE11, NERVOUSNESS AND MANY OTHER SYMPTOMS.
Bond obediently put a quarter into the slot and bent12 over so that his nose and mouth were enclosed in a wide black rubber mouthpiece. He pressed a button and, as instructed, breathed in and out slowly for a full minute. It was just like breathing very cold air-no taste, no smell. At the end of the minute there was a click from the machine and Bond straightened himself. He felt nothing but a slight dizziness, but later he recognized that there had been carelessness in the ironical13 grin he gave to a man with a leather shaving kit14 under his arm who had been standing15 watching him.
The man smiled briefly16 back and turned away.
The loudspeaker asked passengers to collect their luggage and Bond picked up his case and pushed through the swing doors of the exit into the red-hot arms of noon.
"You for the Tiara?" said a voice. A chunky man with large, very direct brown eyes under a chauffeur's peaked cap shot the question at him from a wide mouth from which a wooden toothpick jutted17.
"Yes."
"Okay. Let's go." The man didn't offer to carry Bond's suitcase for him. Bond followed him over to a smart-looking Chevrolet with a lucky raccoon tail tied to its chrome naked-lady mascot18. He threw his suitcase into the back and climbed in after it.
The car moved off and out of the airport on to the parkway. It crossed into the far lane and turned left. Other cars hissed by. Bond's driver kept to the inside lane, driving slowly. Bond felt himself being examined in the driving mirror. He looked up at the driver's identification tag. It said, 'ERNEST CUREO. No2584'.
And there was a photograph whose eyes also looked levelly at Bond.
The cab smelled of old cigar smoke and Bond pressed down the switch of the power-operated window. A furnace-blast of air made him close it again.
The driver half turned in his seat. "Don't want to do that, Mister Bond," he said in a friendly voice. "Cab's conditioned. May not seem so, but it's better'n outside."
"Thanks," said Bond, and then : "I believe you're a friend of Felix Leiter."
"Sure," said the driver, over his shoulder. "Nice guy. Told me to watch out for ya. Be glad if I can do anything while ya're here. Staying long?"
"I can't say," said Bond. "Few days anyway."
"Tell ya what," said the driver. "Don't think I'm trying to gyp ya, but if we're going to do some work together and ya got some dough19, mebbe ya better hire the cab by the day. Fifty bucks20, but I got to make a living. It'll make sense to the front boys at the hotels and so on. Don't see otherwise how I'm to keep close. Like that they'll understand me hanging about waiting for ya half the day. They're a suspicious lot of bastards21 on the Strip."
"Couldn't be better." Bond had at once liked and trusted the man. "It's a deal."
"Okay." The driver expanded a little. "Ya see, Mister Bond. The folks round here don't like anything out of the ordinary. What I say. They're suspicious. I mean. Ya look like anything 'cept a tourist who's come to lose his wad and they get a bad case of nose trouble. Take yaself. Anyone can see ya're a Limey even before ya start talking. Clothes and so forth22. Well, what's a Limey doing here? And what sort of a Limey is this? He looks kind of a tough guy. So let's just take a good look at him." He half turned. "Did ya see a feller hangin' around the terminal with a leather shaving kit under his arm?"
Bond remembered the man who had watched him at the Oxygen Bar. "Yes, I did," he said, and it was then he realized that the oxygen had made him careless.
"Bet ya life he's looking at ya pictures right now," said the driver. "Sixteen-millimetre camera in that shaving kit. Just pull down the zip and press y'arm against it and off it goes. He'll have taken fifty feet. Straight and profile. And that'll be with Mug Identification at Headquarters this afternoon, with a list of what ya got in ya bag. Ya don't look as if ya're carryin' a gun. Mebbe it's a flat holster job. But if ya're, there'll be another man with a gun alongside all the time ya're in the rooms. Word'll be sent down the line by this evening. Better watch out for any fellow with a coat on. Nobody wears 'em here save to house the artillery23."
"Well, thanks," said Bond, annoyed with himself. "I can see I'll have to keep a bit wider awake. Pretty good machine they seem to have here."
The driver grunted24 affirmatively and drove on in silence.
They were just entering the famous 'Strip'. The desert on both sides of the road, which had been empty except for occasional hoardings advertising25 the hotels, was beginning to sprout26 gas stations and motels. They passed a motel with a swimming pool which had built-up transparent27 glass sides. As they drove by, a girl dived into the bright green water and her body sliced through the tank in a cloud of bubbles. Then came a gas station with an elegant drive-in restaurant. GASETERIA, it said. FRESH-UP HERE! HOT DOGS! JUMBOBURGERS!! ATOMBURGERS!! ICE COOL DRINKS!!! DRIVE IN, and there were two or three cars being served by waitresses in high-heeled shoes and two-piece bathing suits.
The great six-lane highway stretched on through a forest of multi-coloured signs and frontages until it lost itself downtown in a dancing lake of heat waves. The day was as hot and sultry as a fire opal. The swollen28 sun burned straight down the middle of the frying concrete and there was no shade anywhere except under the few scattered29 palms in the forecourts of the motels. A glittering gunfire of light-splinters shot at Bond's eyes from the windscreens of oncoming cars and from their blaze of chrome styling, and he felt his wet shirt clinging to his skin.
"Coming into the Strip now," said the driver. "Otherwise known as the 'Rue30 de la Pay'. Spelt p.a.y. Joke. See?"
"Got it," said Bond.
"On ya right, The Flamingo," said Ernie Cureo as they passed a low-lying modernistic hotel with a huge tower of neon, now dead, outside it. "Bugsy Siegel built that back in 1946. He came over to Vegas from the coast one day and took a looki round. Had a lot of hot money looking for investment. Vegas was goin' great guns. Town wide open. Gambling31. Legalized cat-shops. Nice set-up. It didn't take long for Bugsy to catch on. He saw the possibilities."
Bond laughed at the pregnant phrase.
"Yes, Sir," continued the driver, "Bugsy saw the possibilities and moved right in. Stayed with it until 1947 when they blew some of his head off with so many bullets the cops never got around to finding them all. Then here's The Sands. Plenty of hot money behind that one. Don't rightly know whose. Built a couple of years ago. Front guy's a nice feller name of Jack32 Intratter. Used to be at the Copa in New York. Mebbe you heard of him?"
"Afraid not," said Bond.
"Well then, here's The Desert Inn. Wilbur Clark's place. But the money came from the old Cleveland-Cincinatti combination. And that dump with the flat-iron sign is The Sahara. Latest thing. Listed owners are a bunch of small-time gamblers from Oregon. Funny thing they lost $50,000 on their opening night. Would ya believe it! All the big shots come along with their pockets full of dough to make some courtesy play, make the fust night a success, y'unnerstand. It's a custom here for the rival outfits33 to gather round at an opening. But boy, the cards just wouldn't co-operate and the opposition34 guys walked off with fifty Grand! Town's laffing about it still. Then," he waved to the left where the neon was wrought35 into a twenty-foot covered wagon36 at full gallop37, "Ya get The Last Frontier. That's a dummy38 Western town on the left. Worth seein'. And over there's The Thunderbird, and across the road's The Tiara. Snazziest joint39 in Vegas. Guess ya know about Mister Spang and all that?" He slowed down and halted opposite the Spang hotel, which was topped by a ducal coronet of brilliant lights that winked40 on and off in a lost battle with the glaring sun and the reflections from the highway.
"Yes, I know the outlines," said Bond. "But I'd be glad for you to fill them in some time. And now what?"
"Whatever ya say, Mister."
Bond suddenly felt he had had enough of the ghastly glitter of The Strip. He only wanted to get indoors and out of the heat, have some lunch and perhaps a swim and take things easy until the night. He said so.
"Suits me," said Cureo. "Guess ya shouldn't get into much trouble ya first night. Take it easy though and act kmda natural. If ya got work to do in Vegas ya better wait till ya know ya way around. And watch the gambling, friend." He chuckled41. "Y'ever hear of those Silence Towers they have in India? They say it takes those vultures only twenty minutes to strip a guy to the bones. Guess they take a bit longer at The Tiara. Mebbe the unions slow 'em down." The driver banged the gear lever into first. "All 'a same," he said, watching the traffic in his driving mirror, "there was one guy left Vegas with a hundred Grand." He paused, waiting for a chance to cross the parkway. "Only thing, he had half a million when he started to play."
The car swung across the traffic and under the pillared portico42 in front of the wide glass doors of the sprawling, pink stucco building. The bell captain, in a sky blue uniform, opened the cab door and reached in for Bond's bag. Bond stepped out into the heat.
As he shouldered his way through the glass doors he heard Ernie Cureo say to the captain: "Some crazy Limey. Hired me for fifty bucks a day! Whaddya know about that?"
And then the door swung to behind him and the beautiful cold . air welcomed him with a chill kiss into the glittering palace of the man called Seraffimo Spang.
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1
sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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2
jumble
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| vt.使混乱，混杂；n.混乱；杂乱的一堆 | |
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3
ranches
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| 大农场， （兼种果树，养鸡等的）大牧场( ranch的名词复数 ) | |
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4
schooner
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| n.纵帆船 | |
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5
junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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6
streaked
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| adj.有条斑纹的，不安的v.快速移动( streak的过去式和过去分词 )；使布满条纹 | |
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7
hissed
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| 发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 )； 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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8
ramp
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| n.暴怒，斜坡，坡道；vi.作恐吓姿势，暴怒，加速；vt.加速 | |
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9
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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10
drowsiness
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| n.睡意；嗜睡 | |
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11
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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12
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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13
ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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14
kit
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| n.用具包，成套工具；随身携带物 | |
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15
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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16
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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17
jutted
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| v.（使）突出( jut的过去式和过去分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
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18
mascot
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| n.福神，吉祥的东西 | |
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19
dough
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| n.生面团；钱，现款 | |
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20
bucks
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| n.雄鹿( buck的名词复数 )；钱；（英国十九世纪初的）花花公子；（用于某些表达方式）责任v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的第三人称单数 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃 | |
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21
bastards
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| 私生子( bastard的名词复数 )； 坏蛋； 讨厌的事物； 麻烦事 （认为别人走运或不幸时说）家伙 | |
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22
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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23
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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24
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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25
advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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26
sprout
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| n.芽，萌芽；vt.使发芽，摘去芽；vi.长芽，抽条 | |
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27
transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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28
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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29
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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30
rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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31
gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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32
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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33
outfits
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| n.全套装备( outfit的名词复数 )；一套服装；集体；组织v.装备，配置设备，供给服装( outfit的第三人称单数 ) | |
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34
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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35
wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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36
wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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37
gallop
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| v./n.(马或骑马等)飞奔；飞速发展 | |
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38
dummy
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| n.假的东西；(哄婴儿的)橡皮奶头 | |
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39
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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40
winked
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| v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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41
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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42
portico
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| n.柱廊，门廊 | |
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