To get caught up, read CAPER: Heist At The MGM, Chapter 1 & Chapter 2
It was four in the morning when Jack made it home from Putter’s. He lived in a downstairs one-bedroom condo off of Tropicana and Pecos. It was late enough at night and early enough in the morning that he arrived home to an uncommon silence. He welcomed it.
On the weekend, Jack’s upstairs neighbors played the Grateful Dead and other endless jam band instrumentals. If he stood outside long enough he could get a contact high from the smoke coming through the couple’s window.
Other than their choice of music though, Jack didn’t mind them. Their worst offense was smelling like patchouli. They occasionally invited him to hang out and smoke weed but Jack never accepted their invitation. He didn’t do drugs and he didn’t want to return the invite.
The only people he let in his house were Elio, Gil, and Lon.
When he was fourteen years old, Jack moved to Las Vegas to live with his grandmother Susan and her boyfriend Gil. He had grown up in Oakland with his mother but spent every summer with Susan. Between his grandmother’s affection and the lure of Las Vegas even at his young age, Jack knew where he wanted to be. When he was ready for high school, Jack told Linda he wanted to live full-time with his grandmother.
Linda agreed—too easily for Jack, but he’d never admit it.
Jack’s mother, born and raised in Las Vegas, left the city the weekend after she graduated from high school, hoping to never come back.
Two years after she left, she was pregnant with Jack. If Linda was going to make a respectable life for herself, she’d need to lean on her mother. It was irony at its best. Linda left Las Vegas because she didn’t want to be like her mother—working in casinos, playing slot machines on her days off, eating in buffets every holiday. Linda wanted a better, traditional life. But after she became pregnant with Jack, she was forced to keep a connection to Susan and Las Vegas.
When Jack moved to Vegas, his grandmother had been with Gil for ten years. Having been around Gil since he was a toddler, Jack considered him a grandfather and Gil was happy to play that role. Susan and Gil adored Jack.
Everything Jack’s mother hated about Las Vegas Jack loved. Prime rib at the Horseshoe on Christmas Day, ninety-nine cent breakfasts at the Klondike on Sundays, wearing sunglasses to hide his age and explore the downtown casinos while his grandmother played slots. Jack enjoyed her and Gil’s stories of old Vegas and he especially liked spending time with their colorful friends.
The kind of person who has a natural attachment to a place like Las Vegas skipped a generation. Linda thought Las Vegas was a desert wasteland—Jack thought it was everything.
