The Las Vegas Strip was the beautiful side of Vegas. It was a dream. Everywhere there was beauty, everywhere illusion. It was a paradise of glitz and glamour--everything perfect and pristine. The billion dollar hotels were perfect visions of beauty and fantasy themselves—the Luxor with its iconic pyramid, the Pearl with its grand ocean, the Stratosphere with its rooftop roller coasters, and the Bellagio...Oh the Bellagio.

At the Bellagio Hotel, the familiar voice of Elvis Presley singing,"Viva Las Vegas," filled the air, as the beautiful Bellagio fountains danced to the music. They shot up to the sky like rockets. They zigged and zagged in majestic splendor. They twisted and turned all around, dancing like ballerinas to the music. On the street, thousands of spectators watched with spell bound amazement and cheered with oohs and ahhs.

It was a beautiful day in Vegas, with a high of eight-five and clear blue skies. It was spring. The season of love. The time of new beginnings. The town was booming—lots of tourists visiting the casinos, lots of weddings taking place, lots of money to be made. The Las Vegas strip was bumper to bumper—buses, taxis, and limousines everywhere. Manny D— fought his way through the traffic; he snaked his way through the congestion with the ease of a compact car and not a white stretch-limo. Fifteen years driving limos, and he knew how to get around. He knew the rules and knew how to break them. His company motto was, "We get you there fast, even if it kills you." Lucky for him, nobody had died (well there was that one guy).

Manny D— admired the Bellagio fountains from afar. He often sat in his car on his lunch break watching them. They always too his breath away. Whenever he saw them, he felt he was in an enchanted story book—with magical beasts and beautiful princesses. He was always glad to see them. He saw the world getting uglier day by day, and it was nice to know there was still beautiful things in it.

Manny went east on Flamingo Road, away from the beauty and glamour of the Vegas Strip, away from fantasy and illusion. On the street, he encountered the real. Sirens howling in the distance—the sound of gunfire too. The street was full of cops, hookers, and drug dealers. The bars and strip joints were packed. Homeless everywhere. A mile later, Manny disappeared down a side street—A big red sign with McGruff the Crime Dog warned: HIGH CRIME AREA.

High Crime was an understatement. To Manny, the neighborhood looked more like hell. The houses were in decay: broken windows, missing doors, covered in graffiti. The scent of meth hung in the air like a cheap cologne. All around were street demons, watching and waiting with sinister intent. Some twitched like zombies desperate for a fix, others flashed their guns hungry for a kill. The street demons were the living dead. The sight of blood was their entertainment. The screams of terror was music to their ears.

Twenty five homicides last month, and it was not even summer, thought Manny. He felt a chill in his spine and a pang in his gut that wasn't from the Spicy California Rolls he'd gotten at Vegas Sushi. This was the dead zone, an area so bad the police wouldn't enter. Victims were often found decapitated, others simply went missing. Manny could hear his wife's nagging voice in head saying, "Manny, what the hell you doing on that street, are you crazy?"

A glass bottle hit the side of the limo. Manny saw the street demons laughing. He locked his doors and sunk down in his seat. He wanted nothing to do with them. Manny always avoided this part of town, but he was there helping out a friend. He looked at his friend in the backseat who was either unconscious or dead. Some called him crazy, but most called him Gates. Mr. Gates had called Manny out of the blue, and said to pick him up. When Manny found him, Gates looked like he'd been attacked by street demons. He was in a dumpster, battered, and unconscious.

"Hey! Mr. Gates, you alive back there?"

"Alive...or am I dead?" said Gates, waking up from a dream.

"You okay, Mr. Gates? Sir, you look horrible."

Gates was covered in blood. He had bruises and cuts on his arms and face. He looked like a walking corpse. The cherry on top was the bloody shoe print on the back of his shirt. Manny wasn't surprised to see Gates looking like a crashed car. This was Las Vegas after all, the home to over twenty thousand gangsters. Gates was a private detective, and he was always getting into trouble.

"Why are we here? Ever ask yourself that, Dave?"

"Dave? I'm Manny, sir."

"What does it all mean, Eddie?"

"It's Manny...Mr. Gates, are you okay?"

"Is anyone ever really okay?"

"What?"

"That's right, Sammy, What is the question. What is real?"

"Mr. Gates, It's me, Manny...from the hotel."

"Whatever, man...Are you even real? Am I real? What if I'm not real? What if all this is just a dream...and I wonder...is this my dream or yours?"

Oh, this is your crazy dream, Mr. Gates, thought Manny, and he was sure Freddy Krueger was going to pop out any second. Gates often mumbled about what is real, other times about the end of the world. He ate pills like candy. Right now, he was as high as a kite. Gates' eyes rolled back. He began to speak in tongues and to shake uncontrollably. He looked possessed. Manny thought he was about to levitate off the floor—just like in the movies.

"This just ain't my day, " said Manny. He thought about taking Gates to a priest to get him exorcised, but perhaps, a hospital was a better choice. He didn't want Gates OD'ing. From Manny's experience, the smell of death was hard to get out.

"Mr. Gates, I'm taking you to a hospital."

"You know where we're going fool...No hospital!"

"But, you're gonna to die!" said Manny.

"I'm okay, Manny," said Gates. "I just pushed myself too far...now I'm paying for it."

"You working on a case or something?" asked Manny.

"No case...something else...something big.," said Gates. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

***

Manny saw a billboard of a woman and the caption, "Who is Sunny Bunny?" Sunny Bunny was beautiful. She was a mystery. She was all over the news. Everyone wanted to know her. Manny stared at her beautiful face. He was mesmerized. He always felt a spark when he saw Sunny. It's the reason he'd bought a cigarette lighter with her picture on it. When LIFE got him down, looking at Sunny Bunny made all the gray go away. And where he was going, he was going to need it.

Manny was so distracted by Sunny Bunny, he was not aware of the trouble he was in. On his left a gold seventies Cadillac, on his right a blue Impala low-rider with a skull on the hood. He was flanked by street demons. They eyed the limo like a pack of wolves, hungry for blood. The limo shook from the music that was so loud it could wake up the dead. Gates finally stirred from his dream

"What the hell's going on!" said Gates, plugging his ears.

"We got a problems, Mr. Gates," said Manny. Gates saw the street demons flash their guns and knew he was about to die.

"Manny, unless you want to be on the six o'clock news, get us the hell out of here!" said Gates."This ain't no time to be following the rules."

"This just ain't my day," said Manny. He slammed the accelerator and the limo backfired. The tires smoked and squealed; when they finally grabbed traction, the limo shot off. The Cadillac and the Impala raced down the highway like two pit-bulls after a poodle. Manny approached an intersection and saw semi coming from the side street. He began to slow down.

"What are you doing?" said Gates.

"There's a semi coming. We're in a limo. I can't clear it. It'll chop us in half," said Manny.

"Fuck the semi!" said Gates. "If we're going to die, I'll take my chances with the semi. Go!"

Manny drove on. He saw the semi truck coming. His heart jumped out of his chest. Gates screamed in the back as the semi approached like speeding train. It blew its angry horn to say, it was coming through. Get out of the way or it was going to kill. The world got slow and still. Manny saw is life flash before. He saw his wife and kids and the baby on the way. He knew he didn't want to die. He was not ready to die.

The limousine barely avoided getting clipped by the loud-honking tractor trailer and several cars coming from the side street. Manny thanked god for letting him live. Gates was busy looking out the window wondering how the semi-truck didn't hit them. By his calculations, the speed of the limo plus the speed of he semi, it should have hit them. Oh well.

It was a hot chase. Gates was tossed around in the back like a rock in a tin can. The Impala came upon the limo with a growl. Manny looked over and regretted it. He'd made eye contact. A big no-no. Never look a predator in the eyes, It only excites them more. Now Manny was more scared than ever. He raced on for his life. His glimmer of hope appeared in the distance...like a mirage. Is it real? Is it really real? He had to look twice to make sure what he was seeing was real.

He saw Industrial Park. A territory off limits to gangs. It was run by a Russian mobster named Ivan the Terrible. He was a man no gangs wanted to mess with.

The Cadillac charged and whacked the limo's bumper. The Impala, not to be out done, took a bite and hit the limo on the side in an attempt to make it fishtail. The street demons fired their guns. They came again fast and furious and rammed the limo again and again.

Manny floored the gas pedal, trying desperalty to get some distance, but the limousine moaned like a dying dog. The two street demons in the Impala fired their guns. Manny swerved and hit the Impala and sent it into oncoming traffic. The demons in the Cadillac fired shots and came up beside the limousine to force it off the road. Manny held his ground. It was a race to the finish line.

"Go, Manny, go!" said Gates, seeing the finish line up ahead.

The two cars were neck and neck.

"Hang on Mr .Gates we're going for a bumpy ride," said Manny. He flipped a switch on the console. It was NOS. Nitrous oxide. He'd never used it. His brother, Charon had installed it, but never tested it. Manny knew he was either going to turn the limo into a rocket or an exploding fire bomb. He flipped the switch. He heard a high pitched squeal like the sound of dentist drill. A loud explosion came from the back of the limo. Fire shot out of the tail pipe. The tires squealed and the limo shot off like rocket. The limo shook violently. Pieces began to fall off—hubcaps, bolts, screws, pins. Something popped. Manny closed his eyes and prayed. He couldn't lose this limo, the other two were in the shop.

He pulled a head from the Cadillac and crossed into Industrial park, like a NASCAR crossing the finish line. The large vacant buildings loomed like a cheering crowd. Gates saw the Cadillac and the Impala pull back. The limo backfired and chugged violently, as if it were dying. Gates grinned like a kid who'd just gotten off a roller coaster.

"Booyakasha! Now that's driving, Manny," said Gates. "Lets do that again."

"Lets not," said Manny, wiping his forehead, and trembling with fear. "You got anymore those pills, Mr. Gates, I could sure use one right now. Life is getting a bit too real for me."

"All out," said Gates.

Manny was feeling the ugliness of the world at the moment. He could barely breathe. The world was no longer in color, it was in black and white. He was out of the dream world and seeing the real. Seeing the real was hard. It was scary. He needed something to put him back in the dream, but Mr. Gates was out of pills. Manny took out his pink lighter with the picture of Sunny Bunny. He stared at her beautiful image, getting lost in the illusion. Like taking a pill, all the ugliness began to disappear. In a matter of minutes, the world was beautiful again.

***

Industrial Park. East of the Las Vegas Strip was Industrial Park. It was the antithesis of the beautiful Vegas most came to see; nothing but dirt, concrete, and steel—so barren weeds would not grow. Industrial Park was the Detroit of Nevada. Once the center of Nevada's industrial sector, it was now a graveyard of abandoned buildings. Remnants of the businesses that had run off to Big China and left in their wake—an ugly emptiness (a zombie); a haunting memory(a ghost) of something that had existed long ago, never to return (America).

Industrial Park was a funeral—gray and grim. It was the reason Ivan Smirnoff had fallen in love with it.

Ivan Smirnoff was a Russian mobster who controlled most of the Las Vegas underground. He bought Industrial Park because it reminded him of his hometown of Molotov, a town in Russia that once was a gulag. Ivan was KGB, and he left the Soviet Union before its collapse on Christmas Day, 1991. He sold secrets to Uncle Sam, who gave him diplomatic immunity and enough cash to keep him happy, so they thought. As Ivan saw it, one doesn't come to The Land of Opportunity to sit on a beach and drink Mai-Tai's. "Nyet!" Ivan had plans.

Ivan bought Industrial Park, dirt cheap. He turned it into a pseudo-embassy where he ran his operations—some legal, most illegal. Ivan was a ruthless savage and feared by all. It's why they called him Ivan the Terrible.

***

It didn't take long for Manny to find what he was looking for. On the side of the road, behind a barricade, and a MEN AT WORK sign, was a Nevada Water and Power utility truck. On the bumper was a sticker that said, I Love Vegas Sushi.

"Mr. Gates, we're here," said Manny.

Next to the truck stood a muscular man wearing a green uniform. Manny got out, said something in Spanish, and the two men laughed. Gates stumbled out of the limo and looked in the mirror. His reflection startled him. A haggard face, a Vegas tan with some crows feet, a three-week-old stubble that was full of gray. Old age was creeping up on him, and it wasn't slowing down to see the sights. What can you do?

"Mr. Gates, this is my brother Charon," said Manny. "He works for the Water Reclamation Department. I think he can help you."

Gates met eyes with Charon, and they sized each other up like two rams on a hill. Charon was older, with a worse face than Gates. His face was scarred with the deep grooves of a hard life, and he wore a scowl. Gates sensed there was something netherworld about Charon, like he'd crawled out of Hades. On Charon's arm was a tattoo of a skeleton-faced ferryman holding out a decrepit hand. Gates wondered if the ferryman was lending a hand, or asking for a bounty.

Charon looked at Gates with a threatening curiosity, and said," "Jee—zus, you look like hell!"

"I had a little accident," said Gates.

"A little? You look like you were hit by a bus, then it backed up and hit you again," said Charon.

"I feel like it," said Gates.

"So, how can I help you, amigo?" said Charon.

"I need to get into the Singrin."

"The Singrin! Don't we all...don't we all. They got the hottest women in there. Women you'd only meet in your wettest dreams. Some real love-you long time shit, know what I mean," said Charon, and Manny chuckled.

The Singrin was Las Vegas' little secret. People knew of it, but never spoke of it. Some called it heaven, others called it hell. It was an enclave of sin: casino, drug den, and whore house. Created by Ivan Smirnoff, though some say the Devil (or Ivan and the Devil were the same). The Singrin was hidden deep in Industrial Park and guarded better than Fort Knox.

Charon continued, "But there are easier ways to get a whore in Vegas than risking your life by sneaking into the Singrin. Especially when the guy who runs it, is Ivan the....the?"

"Terrible," said Manny.

"That's right...Ivan the Terrible," said Charon. "They don't call him Ivan the Terrible for nothing, I hear he can rip a man's head off with one hand."

"I believe it. I was at the Singrin last night. Me and Ivan had a falling out. I got kicked out, so I need another way in," said Gates.

"Wait a minute. I heard some crazy loco went Wrestle-Mania on Ivan last night. That was you?" said Charon.

"It was a big misunderstanding," said Gates.

"You got balls, amigo," said Charon, then looked suspiciously at Gates. "Or maybe you just got a death wish, huh? I know something ain't right about you...You got them vibes."

"No, I put too much work into living to die like that," said Gates.

"Then what's so important to risk your life?" asked Charon.

"My car's in there," said Gates. "It's a pink 1959 Cadillac Eldorado convertible. One of a kind. It was dead, and I brought it back to life; piece by piece, bolt by bolt,"

"Nice car, but it ain't worth dying for," said Charon.

"It belonged to Elvis," said Gates.

"Elvis Presley?" said Charon in disbelief.

"The King himself," said Gates.

"Huh....for Real? Elvis, is one of my favorites. Hound Dog, Jail House Rock, Viva Las Vegas. He's no Vicente Fernandez, but he's still great," said Charon, looking curiously over at Manny.

"Yeah, I've seen it, Charon. It's the real deal. He's got the papers and everything," said Manny.

"The real deal...huh...what's real anymore?" said Charon.

"I ask myself that every day," said Gates.

"Real is hard to come by, hard to find...like a virgin in a whore house," said Charon. "I guess, if you find something real these days, you better hold on to it."

"Truth," said Manny, nodding at a statement so profound. Sometimes, his brother had a way with words.

"You hit a soft spot with me, amigo. Elvis Presley's Cadillac, that's something I would die for," said Charon. "Okay, I'll help you...but for a small fee."

"A fee?" said Gates.

"Of course, amigo, this is America, nothing's free. I came to make my fortunes, to get the American Dream. So if you want me to help you, you have to help me. That's the American way."

"Manny, can you lend me a few bucks?" said Gates.

"No, amigo, this has to come from you," said Charon.

"But, I don't have any money. Everything I had...I lost last at the Singrin," said Gates.

"No money—No go!" said Charon. He started to walk away, but Gates jumped in front of him.

"Look, Charon, I know you don't know me, but I'm desperate....can't you do me a favor?"

"Favors are for suckers," said Charon.

"Manny, can you talk to him?" said Gates

"Sorry, Mr. Gates. Charon is the capitalist of the family, and he doesn't believe in charity," said Manny.

"Look, Charon, I'll pay you later. I promise," said Gates.

"I've heard that before. Promises get forgotten faster than a fart in the wind," said Charon. He looked Gates up and down and scowled in disgust.

"Damn it, look at you! No watch...no wallet...no nothing. You walk on water or something...cause you don't even have any shoes," said Charon, shaking his head. "Manny, where'd you find this guy? Of all the gringos in Las Vegas, you get me one that's all beat up and broke."

"My shoes are in the car," said Gates.

"Forget it," said Charon.

"I'm begging, Charon. I gotta get my car back, man. It's all I got," said Gates, getting on his knees. Charon looked down at Gates and saw a lost soul. He'd seen many lost souls in his life. He always tried to avoid them. They were bad luck, and had a way of infecting others. Bad luck was contagious. Charon stared keenly at Gates looking for something. What did he have? What was there? Then Charon's eyes lit up, and he flashed a wicked smile.

"Well, well, well...amigo, that's not all you got...You got gold!" said Charon.

"What?"

"Your tooth....it's pure gold!" said Charon.

"My tooth?" said Gates, feeling his molar. "You want my tooth?"

"You ain't got nothing else to give me, so if you want my help you...give me your gold tooth," said Charon.

Gates thought about it for second, but not a second more.

"Fine, take it," said Gates.

Charon laughed demoniacally.

"Mr. Gates, you're crazy," said Manny.

Charon got a rusty screwdriver and a mallet from the truck. Gates saw the medieval dental equipment and prayed.

"You gotta get me through this, King," said Gates.

"Gosh, Mr. Gates, I didn't know you were a religious man. I'm glad you've found Jesus," said Manny.

"I said King, Manny, not Jesus," said Gates, but Manny didn't get it. So Gates explained, 'The King' was Elvis Presley.

"You pray to Elvis Presley?" said Manny, laughing. He'd never heard of anything so crazy. Gates always prayed to Elvis. He figured, if he was going to pray to someone, it might as well be someone who'd gotten him through his darkest times.

Gates got on his knees, as if about to be executed. He opened his mouth, and Charon put the tip of screwdriver next to his molar.

"OK...here we go...ONE!" said Charon, never getting to two. He hit the tooth out, and it was lights out. Gates hit the ground. Blood oozed from his mouth. He laid unconscious on the street.

"K.O." said Charon, and held his hands up like a winning boxer. He picked up the gold tooth, and admired his prize.

Manny and Charon stared at Gates' body lying in the street, in a small puddle of blood, looking like he'd been murdered by a gang of street demons. All he needed was the chalk outline. Manny checked Gates' pulse, and saw he was breathing.

"Pleasant dreams, amigo," said Charon.

Gates' mind and thoughts left his mortal prison for a moment and escaped into the ether to a place of dreams, memories, and nightmares....where his life flashed before his eyes.