TEXT: LAS VEGAS: 1968
  by kenneth hite
  
  cities  n  headers on this page 
  KEN WRITES ABOUT STUFF
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  2
  las vegas:
  PUBLISHER  
  CATHRIONA TOBIN 
  AUTHOR:  
  KENNETH HITE
  LAYOUT:  
  CATHRIONA TOBIN     
  ARTWORK: 
  JESÚS BLONES
  © 2015 PELGRANE PRESS LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
  Contents
  LAS VEGAS: 1968 
  1
  LAS VEGAS (1968): 
  ONE LOOK 
   
  3
  Population   
  3
  languages  
  3
  currency  
  3
  best hotel  
  3
  bad neighborhood 3
  special rules 
  effects 
   
  3
  LAY OF THE LAND 
  4
  Gateways  
  4
  Markets and 
  Masses 
   
  4
  The Strip  
  4
  Downtown  
  5
  Three Backdrops 5
  Area 51 
   
  5
  Hoover Dam 
  5
  Red Rock Canyon 5
  atomic city: 
  Las vegas  
  5
  CONFLICTS 
   
  6
  Factions 
   
  6
  The Mob  
  6
  Mr. Hughes  
  6
  Power Players 
  8
  las vegas stories 
  8
  thrilling 
  elements  
  8
  Seeds and Hooks 9
  zariamancy 
  9
  las vegas 
  mythos  
  9
  sources and 
  resources  
  10
  
  3
  Las Vegas: 1968 
  In 1946, New York gangster Benjamin 
  “Bugsy” Siegel came to this wide-open 
  casino town in a Mojave Desert oasis 
  and built the Flamingo, the first resort 
  casino hotel in the American West. 
  The Flamingo hemorrhaged money, 
  and soon enough Bugsy absorbed four 
  bullets in a Los Angeles living room, but 
  his Mob patron Meyer Lansky realized 
  Siegel’s vision was sound even if his 
  accounting was not. “The Syndicate” 
  of American organized crime funded 
  and founded casino after casino, 
  hotel upon hotel, drawing showbiz 
  celebrities, millionaires, and soon 
  enough millions of tourists annually. 
  Half a billion dollars a year, much of 
  it not even recorded, much less taxed, 
  poured into those casinos and into the 
  Syndicate’s various pockets under 
  the eternally bright neon skies of Las 
  Vegas, Nevada.
  From these dizzying heights, a 
  fall must come. The overconfident 
  psychopath Tony Spilotro manages to 
  alienate and splinter the Syndicate 
  and unify law enforcement, letting 
  the Mormon banks finally sideline 
  their far-from-silent partners. Under 
  their patronage new moguls like Kirk 
  Kerkorian and Steve Wynn remake 
  Las Vegas twice, as a “family friendly” 
  tourist destination and as a libertine 
  futurist oasis of fine dining and global 
  brands, where “what happens in Vegas, 
  stays in Vegas.”
  But that’s all in the future. For now, 
  the Mob hasn’t killed its golden goose. 
  Howard Hughes hasn’t fled to Atlantis. 
  Sinatra plays Caesars Palace. It’s 1968: 
  welcome to fabulous Las Vegas.
    
  This is one of the hallmarks of Vegas hospitality. The only bedrock rule is Don’t Burn the Locals. Beyond that, nobody cares. If Charlie Manson checked into 
  the Sahara tomorrow morning, nobody would hassle him as long as he tipped big.
   
  -- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
   
  LAS VEGAS (1968): ONE LOOK  
  Population
  125,000 (city), 250,000 (metropolitan area); plus an average of 45,000 tourists 
  at any given time
  languages
  English; approximately 5% Spanish-speakers.
  currency
  $1 in 1968 = $6.84 in 2015.
  best hotel
  Caesars Palace, the newest hotel on the Strip. A high-roller suite costs upwards of 
  $1,000 per night, if it’s not comped.
  bad neighborhood
  One good thing about Mob rule is that there’s not a lot of street crime in Las 
  Vegas, even off the Strip. In the 1960s, the city is just beginning to desegregate 
  (housing redlining officially ends in 1971), and the prosperous black middle 
  class is leaving the Westside ghetto to decay. North Las Vegas (where the 
  Hispanic population mostly lives) is another impoverished suburb, where the 
  Mob sends junkies and misbehaving soldiers to cool off.
  special rules effects
  Gambling: Agents with the Gambling ability in a casino can gamble and roll a 
  die: on a 1, lose 2 points from Gambling; on a 2-5, gain 1 on even and lose 1 on 
  odd; on a 6, refresh 3 points of Gambling.
  Guns: It’s very easy (-1 Difficulty) for an agent with Streetwise to get a 
  gun in Las Vegas, but the Mob doesn’t like people using guns in their town. Heat 
  (Night’s Black Agents, p. 87) for gun use in Las Vegas is +1 – and after firing 
  that shot, the agents have to make their Heat test twice: against both the law 
  and the Mob.
  Heat and Thirst: The desert outside Las Vegas can easily top 40°C in 
  summertime. Treat characters in direct desert summer sun as Hurt after an 
  hour’s exposure. Health tests may be needed if they go without water for 
  hours.
  Chases: Foot chases inside casinos are Cramped, but the traffic on the Strip 
  is not as horrendous now as it will become later. Car chases are Normal on 
  the Strip and downtown, and Open everywhere else in the city unless special 
  circumstances supervene.
  1968
  
  KEN WRITES ABOUT STUFF
  4
  The map of Las Vegas resembles a lollipop 
  with a bent stick pointing northeast in 
  the city proper and south outside it. The 
  south-pointing stick is South Las Vegas 
  Boulevard, better known as the Strip, lined 
  with fabulous resorts, hotels, and casinos. 
  That’s right, the Strip isn’t in Las Vegas at 
  all. It’s in the unincorporated township of 
  Paradise just south of Las Vegas, so all its 
  lovely tax money goes (after suitable bites 
  for the county commissioners who allowed 
  Paradise to stay separate in 1951) back into 
  its own pockets. The rest of Paradise holds 
  less fancy motels, shops, and the campus 
  of Nevada Southern University (which 
  changes its name to UNLV in January 
  1969).
  Northwest across the Union Pacific 
  railroad tracks (the city proper stick) is 
  Westside, the black ghetto. The southeast 
  half of the lollipop centers on “Downtown,” 
  along the old casino road Fremont 
  Street, nicknamed “Glitter Gulch” for its 
  extravagant lighting. The eastward bulge of 
  the lollipop is, like Paradise, well-watered 
  suburbia, housing not just casino workers 
  but airmen serving at Nellis Air Force 
  Base, 10 km northeast of downtown.
  32 km farther southeast still is the 
  town of Henderson, made possible by the 
  Basic Magnesium plant, the other major 
  employer in the region.
  Gateways 
  On average, around 19,000 people 
  a day arrive in Las Vegas, most of them 
  expecting to win. Until June 15, 1968 
  some of those travelers came in on the 
  City of Las Vegas streamlined passenger 
  train from Los Angeles, but Interstate 
  15 proved too convenient and too 
  tempting for day trippers, weekenders, 
  and motorists in love with their new 
  Camaros, Bonnevilles, Mustangs, and 
  Eldorados. The highway ends at Sahara 
  Avenue inside the city limits; tangled 
  real-estate negotiations so far prevent 
  its linkup with U.S. 91 running from 
  North Las Vegas to Salt Lake City. So far, 
  this means Las Vegas motels continue 
  to flourish as transcontinental drivers 
  stop to rest and recoup. Many of these 
  transients stay in Vegas for days or even 
  weeks, waiting for their luck to turn and 
  pave their way out of the valley of sin.
  McCarran Airport (renamed McCarran 
  International Airport this year) brings in a 
  different crowd: vacationers, not impulse 
  buyers. Given the cost of jet travel, these 
  customers can better afford their losses – 
  but their losses can mount much higher. 
  Over 150 flights daily bring thousands 
  of well-heeled visitors not just from Los 
  Angeles but San Francisco, Chicago, and 
  New York. They can see the Strip casinos 
  from the windows of their 737 as it rolls 
  to a halt on the taxiway.
  Markets and Masses 
  Las Vegas in 1968 is not the shopping 
  mecca it becomes in the 21st century. 
  In mid-May every year, thousands of 
  cowboys flood into town for three 
  “Helldorado Days” of parades, Old West 
  re-enactments, and rodeo competitions 
  – and then flow back out. The 7,000-
  seat Las Vegas Convention Center is far 
  from the nation’s largest though it does 
  occasionally host a national-scale event: a 
  Beatles concert in 1964, the Cassius Clay-
  Floyd Patterson championship boxing 
  match in 1965. Bottom line: in 1968 if 
  you’re looking for people in Las Vegas, 
  you’ll find them in a casino.
  The Strip
  This list covers many, but not all, of the 
  main Strip casinos, from south to north. 
  Although they’re far from the panopticon 
  surveillance palaces they will become, 
  someone is indeed always watching on the 
  floor at least.
  Hacienda: 
  Although 
  the 
  Civil 
  Aeronautics Board forced owner “Doc” 
  Bayley to shut down his “Hacienda Airlines” 
  charter service in 1962, Doc’s widow Judith 
  still operates four Lockheed Constellation 
  four-turboprop passenger planes, flying 
  customers from Burbank to McCarran.
  Tropicana: The “Tiffany Hotel of 
  the Strip” has the best jazz in town: the 
  Blue Room features Mel Torme, Benny 
  Goodman, Al Hirt, and Julie London. 
  In 1968, Texas Airlines buys the resort, 
  although it’s still run by and for Mafia 
  families: Costello (New York), Marcello 
  (New Orleans), and Civella (Kansas City) 
  primarily.
  Aladdin: The former Tally-Ho reopened 
  in 1966 as the Aladdin, including the largest 
  casino floor in the state and featuring a six-
  story neon “Aladdin’s lamp” sign costing 
  $750,000. Elvis Presley married Priscilla 
  Wagner here on May 1, 1967.
  Dunes: Added a new 24-story high-rise 
  tower (the tallest building in Vegas) in 1965, 
  as part of a comprehensive overhaul including 
  a new 60m neon sign and a revival of the 
  hundred-year-old “Casino de Paris” complete 
  with its legendary impresario Henri Varna. 
  Its main padrone is Providence, Rhode Island 
  mob boss Ray Patriarca.
  Flamingo: Bugsy Siegel’s original hotel 
  remains a home-from-home and cash cow 
  for Meyer Lansky’s Florida mob and the 
  Chicago Outfit. In 1967, airline mogul Kirk 
  Kerkorian bought it after a failed bid by 
  Japanese billionaire Kenji Osano.
  Caesars Palace: Jimmy Hoffa, the Chicago 
  Outfit, the Patriarca family, and Lansky capo 
  Vincent Alo greased this 14-story, 680-room 
  luxury hotel built in 1966. Developer Jay 
  Sarno incorporated the “magic shape” of the 
  oval into the hotel’s architecture, gaming 
  tables, pool, and furnishings.
  Sands: In 1967, Howard Hughes bought 
  the Sands and Frank Sinatra left his long-time 
  headquarters after a fistfight with casino 
  manager Carl Cohen.
  Desert 
  Inn: 
  Howard 
  Hughes’ 
  headquarters in Las Vegas. He and his 
  entourage occupy the top two floors of the 
  high-roller “St. Andrew’s Tower.” Cleveland 
  gangster and Vegas fixer Moe Dalitz still has 
  loyalists here, even though he sold the hotel 
  to Hughes in 1967 for $13.2 million.
  Frontier: A new skyscraper hotel built 
  on the site of the Pair O’Dice, a 1930 
  speakeasy and illegal gaming hall and the 
  oldest casino on the Strip. Howard Hughes 
  bought it before its opening in 1967, and 
  installed the first computerized reservation 
  system in Vegas. Young singer Wayne Newton 
  headlines here.
  Stardust: Another Dalitz-Outfit casino, 
  the Stardust boasts 1,460 rooms, making it 
  the largest hotel in the world. Frank “Lefty” 
  Rosenthal has been the Outfit “inside man” 
  at the Stardust since 1967, establishing 
  the first sports book inside a casino here. 
  Howard Hughes begins his attempt to buy 
  the Stardust in 1966; Justice Department 
  opposition stalls him.
  LAY OF THE LAND
  
  las Vegas: 1968
  5
  Riviera: This prime Outfit operation has 
  struggled financially ever since Chicago boss 
  Tony Accardo ordered its erratic manager 
  Gus Greenbaum murdered in 1958. The 
  Syndicate-connected 
  combine 
  Parvin-
  Dohrmann Group has a bid in to buy it, but 
  faces serious opposition from the Nevada 
  Gaming Commission.
  Circus Circus: Opening October 18, 
  this Hoffa-financed casino has no attached 
  hotel yet. It features the world’s largest big 
  top and plenty of nightmarish clowns in the 
  décor and on the staff.
  Sahara: The Portland and Chicago mobs 
  hold major stakes in this Moroccan-themed 
  resort, along with Meyer Lansky. Legendary 
  bartender Don the Beachcomber holds 
  court at his own restaurant here.
  Downtown
  The other major constellation of 
  Vegas casinos runs along Fremont Street 
  downtown. Like the Strip list, this list is 
  evocative, not exhaustive.
  Horseshoe: On the site of the former 
  Eldorado and Apache casinos, the Horseshoe 
  boasts “no limit” tables and a world-famous 
  million dollar display: 100 $10,000 bills 
  behind glass under a metal horseshoe. No 
  poker room, though: the floor is too small, 
  and poker draws too little money and 
  attention for the space.
  Golden Nugget: Former LAPD vice cop 
  Guy McAfee opened this iconic downtown 
  luxury casino in 1946. Although Costello-
  tied bookmaker Jerome Zarowitz owns a big 
  piece of the action, it’s relatively Mob-free.
  Mint: Owned by Bugsy Siegel’s foreman 
  Del Webb, now lord of a $60 million 
  construction and real estate empire. In 
  1967, Webb organized the first annual Mint 
  400 off-road race from the front of the Mint 
  downtown to the Sahara Hotel in Lake Tahoe.
  Three Backdrops 
  Backdrops are what you set your stories 
  against. They might be the main setting, 
  a scenic or thematic element, or just 
  somewhere to stage a fight scene. In this 
  case, the casinos and the gargantuan Yesco 
  neon signs are backdrop enough for Vegas 
  proper, so these three locations spread story 
  possibilities out of town a bit.
  Area 51
  About 150 km north-northwest of Las 
  Vegas, beside the dry bed of Groom Lake 
  inside the U.S. Air Force’s Nevada Test 
  Range, the USAF and CIA built a secret 
  complex of runways, hangars, and 
  factories nicknamed “Dreamland” or 
  “Paradise Ranch” or just “The Ranch.” 
  Some aeronautical charts denote the 
  forbidden airspace over the Ranch with 
  the number 51, but nobody calls it Area 
  51 for another dozen years.
  This top-secret facility hosts the 
  production and testing plant for 
  Lockheed’s U-2 and A-12 spy planes 
  and D-21 drone craft, as well as 
  the USAF/US Navy joint foreign 
  technology assessment program, “Have 
  Doughnut.” Test pilots fly captured 
  or illicitly acquired Soviet aircraft in 
  dogfights against US jets, learning the 
  enemy planes’ performance and limits. 
  Personnel for all these projects either 
  live on base or commute from Vegas on 
  “JANET” (Just Another Non Existent 
  Terminal): a clandestine airline running 
  DC-6 flights out of McCarran.
  In 1968, the few UFOlogists who 
  believe in a salvaged Roswell craft place 
  it at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio or 
  Kirtland AFB near Albuquerque, not in 
  the Nevada Test Range.
  Hoover Dam
  Built between 1931 and 1935 in the 
  Black Canyon of the Colorado River on 
  the border between Nevada and Arizona, 
  Hoover Dam generates the power that 
  drives Las Vegas, along with 4.2% of 
  the energy used in the U.S. The sixth-
  largest hydroelectric dam in the world, 
  its concrete face rises 221 meters above 
  the river, topped with distinctive Art 
  Deco revetments and U.S. Highway 93. 
  Artist Allen Tupper True incorporated 
  Navajo and Pueblo art and motifs into 
  the floors and walls of the power station, 
  and designed a star map for the terrazzo 
  floor of the memorial plaza depicting 
  the heavens as they were at 11 a.m. 
  September 30, 1935 when President 
  Roosevelt dedicated the dam.
  Hoover Dam created Lake Mead, the 
  largest reservoir in the U.S., filling the 
  Colorado River valley (including the 
  Virgin and Temple Basins) behind the 
  dam over three years. The lake drowned 
  the town of St. Thomas, Nevada, which 
  can still be seen breaking the surface 
  in dry months. Vegas jet setters and 
  vacationers travel the 60 km to Lake 
  Mead for boating, fishing, and hiking.
  Red Rock Canyon
  Crimson sandstone bluffs thrust 900 
  meters up through the earth 24 km west 
  of the Strip, easily visible on a clear day. 
  Plentiful springs in these hills attracted 
  Indian tribes for centuries, along with 
  mountain lions and antelope, and 
  campers and picnickers from the city. 
  In 1967, the federal Bureau of Land 
  Management designated the region the 
  Red Rock Canyon Recreation Lands. 
  The same year, Howard Hughes bought 
  the stretch of desert surrounding Red 
  Rock Canyon for unknown future 
  developments. On many rock faces 
  in the park, Indian shamans cut or 
  chipped petroglyphs: animals, hands, 
  geometric shapes, gods and spirits. They 
  considered such rocks doorways to the 
  sacred world; many of them have been 
  vandalized in the decades since.
  The Las Vegas area features many sets 
  of petroglyphs, some recorded only in 
  dusty ethnological reports from the last 
  century. Major sites include the Valley of 
  Fire park 80 km northeast of Las Vegas, 
  and the so-called “Anasazi Lost City” 
  near Overton.
  atomic city: Las vegas  
  From 1951 to 1962, the U.S. military conducted 100 aboveground 
  nuclear tests at Yucca Flat and Frenchman Flat in the Nevada Test Site, 
  105 km northwest of Las Vegas. Tourists gathered on hotel rooftops to 
  watch the blasts and party by mushroom cloud light; Las Vegas dubbed 
  itself the “Atomic City.” Among the evocative features of the Test Site 
  were two hollow towns built to test bomb effects on civil structures: 
  “Doomtown” in Area 5 and “Survival City” in Area 1. Populated with 
  dummies and mannequins, they slowly return to the desert now that 
  Nevada atomic testing is an entirely underground affair.
  
  KEN WRITES ABOUT STUFF
  6
  Mayor Oran Gragson is a reform 
  Republican in a town where corruption 
  is bipartisan. Committed to civil rights 
  and desegregation, he does what he 
  can in a city and a country roiling with 
  racial conflict. Integrated Rancho High 
  and Clark High see student fights that 
  become near race riots almost every 
  year from 1965 to 1971; in 1969 the 
  Westside explodes in a major riot that 
  hospitalizes dozens.
  Factions 
  For now, the Mob polices its own. 
  To help with that task it funnels bar 
  supply business to the brother of 
  Clark County Sheriff Ralph Lamb, 
  a major political power broker with a 
  convenient seat on the Clark County 
  Liquor & Control Board. Since the 
  city of Las Vegas doesn’t include the 
  Strip, the sheriff and his deputies have 
  jurisdiction there, not the Las Vegas 
  Police Department. Mayor Gragson 
  asked Chief Leo Kuykendall to resign in 
  1964 and appointed in his stead Clark 
  County Undersheriff Lorin Bunker, who 
  retires in June. Gragson next appoints 
  N.D. “Pete” Witcher, former chief of 
  security at the Flamingo and Dunes: in 
  other words, an Outfit-Lansky employee 
  serves as the Las Vegas chief of police.
  With Director J. Edgar Hoover 
  resolutely avoiding the Syndicate, 
  the Las Vegas Division of the FBI 
  (headquartered in the Federal Building 
  at 11th and Bridger) is a dumping 
  ground for problem agents such as, 
  perhaps, the PCs. The only enforcement 
  body with any real teeth in Las Vegas is 
  the Nevada Gaming Commission, 
  which (directed by the Nevada Gaming 
  Control Board) actively bars known 
  organized crime figures from owning 
  shares in or managing casinos. In extreme 
  cases, a mobster goes in the NGC Black 
  Book, and is barred even from setting 
  foot in a Nevada casino. The key word 
  in the foregoing is, of course, “known.” 
  As long as a soldier doesn’t park his 1948 
  Cadillac Coup de Ville with Chicago 
  plates in the owner’s spot outside the 
  Thunderbird Hotel, like Meyer Lansky’s 
  brother Jake famously did, he can get a 
  lot done in a town like this.
  The Mob
  “I wouldn’t say Caesars Palace is exactly 
  Roman. More kind of early Sicilian.”
   
  -- Alan King
  Ever since Bugsy Siegel spotted this 
  town’s potential, American organized 
  crime has run Las Vegas as a combination 
  gold mine, money-laundering scheme, 
  and source of connections (“juice”) 
  in show business and politics. They 
  keep the money and juice flowing by 
  following a few simple rules: no killing, 
  no drugs, no wars. You can’t hit a guy in 
  Vegas – you have to hit him out of town 
  like Bugsy Siegel or Gus Greenbaum. 
  You can’t sell drugs in Vegas, because 
  it attracts national attention and a bad 
  element. Users and junkies, Syndicate 
  or otherwise, get exiled to North Las 
  Vegas. Finally, Vegas is an open city: any 
  mob can play there. If you can raise the 
  cash and find a front guy, you can set up 
  your own casino.
  Former Cleveland bootlegger Moe 
  Dalitz acts as a general fixer, putting 
  money and mobsters together with 
  “Miami hotel men” (veterans of Lansky 
  casinos in Cuba) to run things. The 
  Chicago Outfit enforces the rules, so 
  far with very little trouble: when two 
  made men, Tony Brancato and Tony 
  Trombino, robbed the Flamingo in 
  1951, an unknown assailant shot them 
  both to death in L.A. a little over two 
  months later with the full cooperation 
  of Los Angeles capo Jack Dragna.
  To keep competition friendly, most 
  of the casinos give “points” of their 
  skim – cash taken from the casinos 
  before being declared as income – to a 
  number of different Syndicate mobs. For 
  example, the Detroit and Buffalo mafias 
  share the Frontier; Detroit and St. Louis 
  share the Aladdin. The Outfit has points 
  in most joints. And it gets even more 
  interlocked: the Desert Inn has a twelve-
  way skim. Each mob has an “inside man” 
  watching their interests in their casinos. 
  Meyer Lansky collects the skim from 
  all the hotels and divides it among the 
  participating mobs. Most of the money 
  to build hotels comes from loans made to 
  shell companies by the Teamsters’ Union 
  pension fund, itself completely mobbed 
  up under Jimmy Hoffa. So the Syndicate 
  borrows money from itself to build hotels, 
  leases the hotels to itself, hires its own to 
  run them, and skims a vast percentage off 
  the top – over $1 million a day -- as a bonus.
  Chicago Outfit capo Johnny Roselli 
  books talent for the casinos through his 
  Hollywood connections, and puts various 
  families into deals as well. In 1967 the FBI 
  raided a rigged card game at Los Angeles’ 
  Friars’ Club, arresting Roselli for installing 
  a covert casino surveillance system enabling 
  the fraud. Roselli’s trial lasts through most 
  of 1968; after his December 2 conviction, 
  his role as Chicago’s “outside man” or 
  representato in Vegas ends. In 1967, the 
  Outfit sent Roselli’s predecessor as “Don 
  of Las Vegas” Marshall Caifano (a.k.a. 
  “Johnny Marshall”) back to Vegas to enforce 
  its will with a backslap and a blowtorch. 
  Caifano killed ten Syndicate-linked figures 
  during his last term as representato, from 
  1958 to 1960, but he’s now listed in the 
  Black Book, perhaps limiting his range of 
  action this time around.
  Goals and Stories
  The Syndicate mostly wants to keep 
  everything calm and keep the skim flowing. 
  Open warfare almost wrecked everything 
  in 1952 and 1958, but as long as the system 
  keeps working everyone keeps winning. 
  And that’s the real goal in Vegas, right? The 
  trouble is that even Hoover’s distracted FBI 
  has informants planted at every level in the 
  Syndicate: high-profile trials can be just as 
  dangerous as high-profile killings, without 
  the upside. The result is a zero-sum game 
  where nobody trusts anyone, and anyone 
  could be out for number one.
  Mr. Hughes
  By Thanksgiving 1966, when Howard 
  Hughes slipped into the city on a secret 
  train car, he was no longer the legendary 
  moviemaker, 
  aviator, 
  inventor, 
  and 
  political powerhouse he had been. Forced 
  to sell his airline TWA by the government, 
  he was a sick, drug-addicted, obsessive-
  compulsive recluse with $547 million in 
  cash. So of course he came to Vegas. He 
  CONFLICTS
  
  las Vegas: 1968
  7
  and his “Mormon Mafia” moved into the 
  Desert Inn, and bought the hotel rather 
  than move when his reservation ran out. 
  Then he bought the Castaways, Frontier, 
  Landmark, Silver Slipper, and the Sands. 
  (He already owned the Green Valley Ranch 
  from a previous trip.) Even the NGC 
  backed down, allowing him to testify by 
  phone during his casino licensing hearing. 
  He bought virtually all the available gold 
  or silver mines in the state of Nevada, 
  no matter how tapped out they were. He 
  bought all the vacant lots on the Strip and 
  lots of land in the desert, both in the Vegas 
  valley and far away. Nobody knows what 
  he wants, or why he wants it. Nobody sees 
  him or communicates with him.
  Nobody except Robert Maheu, 
  that is, and Maheu doesn’t even see him. 
  Hughes’ confidant and communicator is 
  ex-FBI, who retired in 1947 to open a 
  private detective agency. Hughes hired 
  him in 1955, and Maheu now pulls down 
  $10,000 a week plus (unlimited) expenses 
  to get things done for the mogul. Maheu 
  also has juice: he and Johnny Roselli have 
  been friends ever since the two worked for 
  the CIA trying to hit Castro.
  There are two versions of the Howard 
  Hughes legend. The first is this: Nevada 
  and Utah banks, tired of dealing with 
  thugs and murderers, leveraged Hughes 
  into Vegas in the first place. Once 
  there, they could count on Mormon 
  probity and on Howard’s eccentricity to 
  begin the random walk of unstoppable 
  financial force that would finally break 
  the Syndicate’s hold on the city. Hughes 
  famously bought the Silver Slipper 
  because he worried the giant rotating 
  slipper atop its sign could see into his 
  room in the Desert Inn. He drove Sinatra 
  out of the Sands in a jealous fury at the 
  crooner’s behavior, ethnicity, and success 
  with Ava Gardner in the 1940s. Whatever 
  the inspiration, Syndicate ownership no 
  longer had Vegas on lockdown.
  The other is darker, and thus perhaps 
  more likely: the Nevada and Utah banks, 
  and the Syndicate, both saw Howard 
  Hughes as a billion-dollar mark, another 
  sucker to be taken. Maheu manipulated 
  the invalid, incompetent Hughes into 
  paying well over market value for a 
  string of hotels, all Lansky properties 
  conveniently owned in part by Moe 
  Dalitz or his partners with Teamsters 
  Union mortgages. Hoffa got his Vegas 
  investment repaid on an immense scale as 
  the Syndicate traded Teamster notes for 
  huge paychecks (with a fat percentage, 
  and the new mortgages and leases, going 
  to the Mormon banks) and kept their 
  own people in all the key positions in 
  Hughes casinos to continue the skim.
  Goals and Stories
  Literally anything is possible with 
  Howard Hughes in the picture. His goal 
  may be to morally cleanse the valley 
  and create a luxurious resort complex 
  in its place, to help the USAF reverse-
  engineer flying saucers in the desert, 
  or to just eat all the banana nut ice 
  cream in the world. (When Hughes 
  changed his favorite flavor to chocolate 
  marshmallow in 1967, the Desert Inn 
  offered free banana nut ice cream to 
  all its guests for a year.) The goal of 
  everyone around him is to keep the gravy 
  train going, and possibly to divert some 
  of it to private projects. The FBI and CIA 
  and other more shadowy government 
  agencies aren’t shy about requesting 
  
  KEN WRITES ABOUT STUFF
  8
  Hughes’ help, usually through Maheu. 
  The king of deniable actions, Maheu 
  claimed his agency was the model for the 
  IMF in Mission: Impossible. Maybe Hughes 
  has more than one deniable team of 
  experts at his beck and call – the player 
  characters?
  Power Players
  In a rich game like Vegas, there’s room 
  for a few more power players at the 
  table with the Syndicate and the mogul. 
  Intertel is another deniable-services 
  team, composed primarily of former 
  CIA, FBI, IRS, Justice Department, and 
  Secret Service investigators. Owned by 
  Resorts International (and working with 
  Meyer Lansky), in 1970 it spearheads 
  the palace coup against Maheu that 
  exfiltrates Hughes from Vegas to the 
  Resorts 
  International-controlled 
  Bahamas. It might be doing anything in 
  Vegas now.
  Former Dallas mob boss Benny 
  Binion founded the Horseshoe and 
  runs it from his “office” in a corner booth 
  of the Horseshoe restaurant. Although 
  he likely killed four men in Dallas, he 
  actually did his time in Leavenworth for 
  tax evasion. (He and Hughes knew each 
  other back in the Dallas days.) He got 
  out in 1957 and recovered complete 
  control of the Horseshoe by 1964. 
  Although the law says convicted felons 
  can’t run casinos, it also says they can’t 
  carry guns, and that doesn’t stop Benny 
  from packing a .45 pistol and sawed-off 
  shotgun. His sons Jack and Ted, and wife 
  Teddy Jane, run the Horseshoe on paper. 
  Binion’s solid police connections (cops 
  can always borrow money from the cage to 
  use in sting operations) and ties to Lansky 
  keep the Horseshoe mostly independent.
  Las Vegas Sun editor and publisher 
  Hank Greenspun is the most powerful 
  newsman in Vegas. He hit town as Bugsy 
  Siegel’s public relations man, and took a few 
  years off to run guns for the Haganah and 
  Israel in 1947-1949. He is also, of course, 
  on the take: his juice comes from Buffalo, 
  he holds a half-million dollar Teamster 
  loan from Hoffa, he’s pals with Sinatra and 
  Outfit boss Sam Giancana, and Howard 
  Hughes pays him an “advertising retainer” 
  of over $900,000 per year. He hasn’t left 
  all his Mossad and CIA connections behind 
  him, either. A self-proclaimed reforming 
  crusader, Greenspun instead makes and 
  breaks stories that profit him and his friends 
  and allies, and spikes those that don’t.
  las vegas stories
  Thrilling Elements: las vegas
  Here are ten thrilling elements to introduce into a Las Vegas chase scene (see Night’s Black Agents, p. 54):
  • 
  Tourists with cameras eagerly taking your picture
  • 
  A bland but narrow concrete alley behind the glittering façade 
  • 
  Casino security, well-heeled heels
  • 
  Giant neon sign that moves into your path, or at least explodes dramatically when hit
  • 
  Enormous roulette wheel, piles of chips, tables to run on
  • 
  Crowd of drunks
  • 
  A convention of policemen from out of state, wandering around and packing guns
  • 
  Famous starlet attracting crowds of press and photographers
  • 
  Construction debris: cement mixer, wheelbarrows, picks and shovels, steel cables hanging down half-finished wall 
  frames
  • 
  The Mint 400 road rally, or a similar drag race
  Las Vegas in 1968 has an immediate 
  appeal for The Fall of Delta Green 
  agents, given the prevalence of secret-
  government bad actors there already. The 
  CIA already works with both the Mob 
  and Howard Hughes, and the military-
  industrial-alien complex beavers away 
  at Area 51. Lots of promising NPCs 
  with lots of promising secrets fill the 
  area already, even without a drinking, 
  gambling, or blackmail problem for the 
  agents to intervene in.
  Time-traveling tourists flock to 
  the Rat Pack era when the dollar is 
  powerful and the music likewise, and 
  that means TimeWatch troubleshooters 
  do too. The temptation to cure Howard 
  Hughes or meet Elvis (or vice versa) 
  draws temporal do-gooders, and as for 
  temporal do-badders, Vegas has more 
  than enough of the regular temptations in 
  stock. (As well as the actual Temptations, 
  appearing in the Flamingo Room from 
  May to August 1968.) Nuclear bombs 
  are handy for would-be time changers, 
  as are oceans of untraceable cash.
  Between them, Diamonds Are Forever 
  and The Night Stalker demonstrate that 
  bell-bottom Night’s Black Agents 
  games have real potential on the Strip, 
  although both films were shot in 1971 
  rather than 1968. But the vampiric vibes 
  in Howard Hughes as hidden recluse and 
  the Mafia as hidden, clannish parasites have 
  hardly been scratched: between those two 
  and Intertel, Vegas 1968 is practically an 
  NBA campaign already.
  A city full of image-crazed, superstitious 
  obsessives sounds like an Esoterrorists 
  Station Duty setting in any decade. If you 
  wanted to move The Hills Have Eyes back 
  from 1977, the Nevada desert invites a 
  Fear Itself experience, a villain-forward 
  Mutant City Blues crossed with Ocean’s 
  11 cries out to be gamed, and the Trail of 
  Cthulhu leads everywhere and everywhen. 
  Tom Wolfe and Robert Venturi discovered 
  the newborn postmodern in 1960s Vegas 
  
  las Vegas: 1968
  9
  neon – an updated Dreamhounds of Vegas 
  game might present drug-addled sign-
  makers and architects building mirrored 
  doors into the Dreamlands from the land 
  of broken dreams.
  Seeds and Hooks
  These tidbits of lore and history turned 
  up during my research. Any of them might 
  be the kernel of a good villainous plot, or 
  the intriguing backstory to an otherwise 
  conventional adventure.
    Along with Bugsy Siegel’s killing, the 
  other “founding death” of Las Vegas was 
  Tony “Mr. Lucky” Cornero’s mysterious 
  demise at the Desert Inn craps table on July 
  31, 1955. Cornero had run gambling boats 
  off L.A. for the Syndicate before coming 
  to Vegas to build the Stardust. Moe Dalitz 
  expertly played him until the Cleveland 
  mob owned the Stardust’s notes, at which 
  point Cornero died at Dalitz’ casino 
  drinking Seven and Seven. His glass was 
  washed and his body was not autopsied.
    On April 18, 1962, dozens of witnesses 
  in Las Vegas saw a UFO shaped like a “flaming 
  sword” overhead and heard an explosion to 
  the northeast over Nellis AFB. This may 
  have been the same UFO reported over 
  Oneida, New York and reported landing in 
  Eureka, Utah that same night.
    John Wayne Gacy worked in the 
  Palm Mortuary in Las Vegas for a few 
  months in 1962 before returning to 
  Chicago. Did he commune with or 
  contract some murder-spirit that led 
  him to begin his serial-killing career a 
  decade later?
    In 1965 the pulp writer, former 
  Scientology “clear,” and yoga enthusiast 
  Paul Twitchell declared himself the 
  “971st ECK Master” in Las Vegas and 
  founded 
  the 
  vaguely Theosophist 
  Eckankar movement. Twitchell divides 
  his time between San Diego and Las 
  Vegas, initiating acolytes, practicing 
  astral projection, publishing earnest 
  tomes, and feuding with L. Ron Hubbard.
    Small-time hood and cab driver 
  Marvin Shumate plotted to kidnap Ted 
  Binion and unwisely shared his plans. On 
  December 2, 1967, sheriff’s deputies 
  found Shumate’s body in the desert a 
  mile from the Strip with a shotgun hole 
  in his chest and a pistol wound in the 
  head. The killing remains “unsolved.”
    Having 
  finally 
  unloaded 
  his 
  unfinished “Leaning Tower of Vegas” 
  Landmark casino on Howard Hughes, 
  developer Frank Carroll (born Francis 
  Carraciola in Kansas City) builds the 
  New Orleans-themed DeVille Casino 
  across the street in 1968 and even prints 
  up chips for it. Carroll never obtains a 
  casino license, and it stands empty until 
  1992. Recall Dracula’s pseudonym in 
  London: could the Count have secretly 
  created the empty – and very dark – 
  DeVille as his local base?
    For Moon Dust Men, 1968 UFO 
  sightings in Las Vegas include a close 
  encounter with UFO inhabitants (May 
  19), a meeting with bearded “Dodonians” 
  on a dirt road near their landed saucer 
  (June 23), encounters with aliens in 
  “divers’ suits” (July 2), nocturnal lights 
  over Vegas (Sep. 10) and Nellis AFB 
  (Sep. 17), and the sighting on Tropicana 
  Boulevard of a “nebulous figure” behind 
  a square UFO edged in blinking lights 
  (Oct. 28).
  Las Vegas Mythos
  Neither Lovecraft nor his immediate 
  epigones mention Nevada, much less 
  Las Vegas, in their tales. The cult of 
  Yig of course extends across the desert 
  Southwest, the various Navajo legends 
  of skinwalkers and snake-demons 
  indicate Serpent Folk at work, Derleth’s 
  sand-dwellers doubtless haunt the area, 
  Robert Bloch’s Ambrose Dexter (“The 
  Shadow From the Steeple”) may work 
  ZARIAMANCY
  Vegas is already a city haunted by enormous inhuman presences, not just the Bomb and the Mob but its weird Tarot 
  trumps: Vegas Vic, the Pioneer’s neon embodiment of the town’s cowboy past; the djinn conjured by the Aladdin and the 
  Sahara; Dorothy’s (or Cinderella’s) witchly Silver Slipper; the black-and-white Joker of the bankrupted Moulin Rouge; 
  the Suicide Kings and Black Queens that reincarnate in various would-be lords of Vegas. Combine this pantheon with 
  the kabbalistic beauty of odds and numbers constantly forming and shifting, the cartomantic fortunes (both kinds) won 
  and lost on every deal, and the chaos-magickal potential of postmodern Vegas and a thousand dice rolls a minute and 
  you have some real juju to go with the juice.
  A Vegas campaign of any sort can thus benefit from Idiosyncratic Magic (Trail of Cthulhu, p. 212) derived from this 
  sort of weird power and iconography. Rather than spend her own Stability straight up, a Vegas magus must gamble with 
  the Powers: she rolls a die instead of spending Stability points to improve General tests.
  1-2: A bad deal, pay 4 Stability points for +1 to a General test.
  3-4: A normal trade, 2 Stability points for +1 to a General test.
  5: A good deal, 3 Stability points for +2 to a General test.
  6: The best deal, 1 Stability point for +1 to a General test.
  Actions that placate the Power (the more obsessive, ritualistic, and weirdly focused the better) might grant bonuses 
  to the die at the GM’s discretion.
  A zariamancer (from the Greek zaria, specifically a version of craps but generally applied to all gambling) can always 
  open a “line of credit” if she doesn’t want to spend all that Stability right now. The GM should keep track, however, and 
  once her borrowed Stability equals her Stability rating, the Power can literally commandeer her body and mind to do 
  anything it wants. Getting out of Stability debt requires a favor, of course…
  Clever GMs can blend zariamancy with the various charms and effects given in the KWAS Voodoo singles for extra 
  fun, swapping out Vegas icons for the Invisibles.
  
  KEN WRITES ABOUT STUFF
  10
  at the Nevada Test Site, and Bloch’s 
  doomed Boston gangster Joe Regetti 
  (from “Creeper in the Crypt”) may 
  have had brothers who fled west to 
  a younger city away from the ghouls 
  that gnawed him. Here are three more 
  possible Vegas Mythos story seeds to 
  grow on:
    The Patriarca family in Providence 
  obviously has a Mythos connection, 
  probably extending back to the 
  bootleggers of Innsmouth in the 1920s. 
  Whether they are deniable allies of the 
  FBI in the war against Cthulhu, or trying 
  to leverage their elder knowledge to 
  take over Vegas by sorcerous subterfuge, 
  is up to the Keeper.
    The roiling flood of numbers 
  and images constantly conjured at Las 
  Vegas gaming tables may inadvertently 
  summon or empower an avatar or 
  permutation of one of the more 
  mathematical gods or titans: Daoloth, 
  of course, but also Yog-Sothoth or 
  Nyarlathotep 
  might 
  apply 
  here. 
  Quachil Uttaus seems apropos for a 
  desert metropolis invoking the past 
  and desperate for immortality. Hastur 
  immanentizes when despair is near, which 
  is every day in the Atomic City.
    OSS veteran and Provencal native 
  Gilbert Pierrel is the head chef at the 
  Frontier. He worked with Project 
  Covenant or its equivalent Mythos-
  fighting force during WWII and now 
  recognizes the rise of a Cthulhu cult at 
  the Stardust. They carry out their rites 
  around the giant Easter Island moai head 
  outside the Aku-Aku tiki restaurant, 
  attempting to reconcile the madness of 
  R’lyeh with the chaos of Vegas.
  sources and resources
  Many websites feature photographs 
  of “Classic Las Vegas” or even fuller 
  essays on the trivia of individual 
  casinos, but there’s also no shortage 
  of film footage lovingly recording the 
  Vegas of the 1960s. The original “Rat 
  Pack” Ocean’s 11 (Lewis Milestone, 
  1960), the best of the Elvis vehicles 
  Viva Las Vegas (George Sidney, 1964), 
  and even the mediocre Euro-crime 
  film They Came to Rob Las Vegas (Antonio 
  Isasi, 1968) provide windows to the 
  past amid their sporadic virtues as 
  cinema. The 2012 CBS TV show Vegas 
  also covers this era. Only slightly out 
  of period, Diamonds Are Forever (Guy 
  Hamilton, 1971) fictionalizes Howard 
  Hughes amidst a late-Connery Bond plot, 
  and The Night Stalker (John Llewellyn 
  Moxey, 1972) is not just the debut of Carl 
  Kolchak but a great period vampire Vegas 
  TV movie. 
  The middle book of James Ellroy’s 
  Underground Trilogy of crime novels, 
  
  las Vegas: 1968
  11
  The Cold Six Thousand, uses 1960s Vegas 
  as a main location and provides great 
  material for games of Hughes-Mafia-
  FBI skullduggery. Tim Powers’ secret-
  historical fantasy novel Last Call is set 
  in the late 1980s, but flashes back to 
  the 1960s and gives great Vegas magic 
  vibe besides. Even Ian Fleming’s 1956 
  novel Diamonds Are Forever has much 
  to recommend it as a location study, 
  although a nuanced portrait of the Mob 
  it isn’t.
  On the hazy boundary between 
  fiction and nonfiction we have Tom 
  Wolfe’s 1964 essay “Las Vegas (What?) 
  Las Vegas (Can’t hear you! Too noisy) 
  Las Vegas!!!” and of course Hunter S. 
  Thompson’s magnificent yawp Fear and 
  Loathing in Las Vegas (1971). (The Terry 
  Gilliam film takes you into yet another 
  version of Vegas chaos.) Mitch Pileggi’s 
  book Casino (and the 1995 Martin 
  Scorsese film) and Dennis Griffin’s The 
  Battle for Las Vegas deal with the 1970s 
  fall of the Syndicate in Vegas, but still 
  have lots of thematic juice along with 
  the other kind. In 1963 Ed Reid and 
  Ovid Demaris wrote the first, and far 
  from the last, expose of Sin City, The 
  Green Felt Jungle. In that same tradition 
  comes Sally Denton and Roger Morris’ 
  2001 heavy-breather The Money and 
  the Power, while Steve Fischer’s When 
  the Mob Ran Vegas is more anecdotal 
  and friendly and thus perhaps more 
  immediately gameable.
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Ken Writes About Stuff/Ken Writes About Stuff Vol. 3/Las Vegas - 1968.pdf