At five o’clock one Friday afternoon in early March 1961, the Boss received word from a lookout that Cleveland had just parked his new Cadillac in its usual place behind Foxy’s. Ten minutes later, Nevin Noll entered, went to the bar, and ordered a drink. The lounge was practically empty, but a band was setting up in a corner and preparations were underway for another busy night. Security was light but that would change in an hour or so.
Noll asked the bartender if Mr. Cleveland was in, said he wanted a word with him.
The bartender frowned, kept drying a beer mug, and said, “Not sure. Who wants to know?”
“Well, I do. Mr. Malco sent me over. You know Mr. Lance Malco, right?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t expect you to know much at all.” Noll was off the stool and headed to the end of the bar.
“Hey asshole!” the bartender said. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Going to see Mr. Cleveland. I know where he’s hiding back there.”
The bartender was not a small man and he’d broken up his share of fights. “Wait a minute, buddy,” he said, and he grabbed Noll’s left arm, a mistake. With his right, Noll spun and landed a crunching blow to the bartender’s left jaw, dropping him like a brick and into oblivion. A thug in a black cowboy hat materialized from the shadows and charged at Noll, who snatched an empty beer mug off the bar and bounced it off his ear. With both on the floor, Noll looked around. Two men at a table gawked at him in disbelief. The band members froze in place and were not sure what to do, if anything. Noll nodded to them, then disappeared through swinging doors. The hallway was dark, the kitchen was further ahead. A former bartender had told Malco that Cleveland’s office was behind a blue door at the end of the narrow hallway. Noll kicked it in and announced his arrival with “Hello Cleveland, got a minute?”
A thick boy in a coat and tie was bolting from a chair. He never made it, as Noll pummeled him with three quick punches to his face. He fell to the floor, groaning. Cleveland was behind his desk and had been on the phone, which he was now holding in midair. For a second or two he was too surprised to react. He dropped the phone and reached down to open a drawer, but he was too late. Noll lunged across the desk, slapped him hard in the face, and knocked him out of his chair. The objective was to beat soundly but not to kill. The Boss wanted Cleveland alive, at least for now. Using nothing but his fists, Noll broke both jawbones, split lips, knocked out teeth, closed eyes, lacerated cheeks and forehead, and separated the nasal bone from the cranial cavity. When the thick boy made more sounds, Noll took a heavy ashtray and drove it into the back of his skull.
A small side door opened and a platinum blonde of about thirty appeared and, seeing the carnage, almost screamed. She covered her mouth with both hands and looked in horror at Noll. He quickly removed a revolver from a rear pocket and nodded to a chair. “Sit down and shut up!” he growled. She backed into the chair, still unable to utter a sound. From a front pocket, Noll pulled out an eight-inch tube, a silencer, and screwed it over the revolver’s barrel. He fired one shot into the ceiling and the woman shrieked. He fired another shot into the wall three feet above her head and said, “Listen to me, dammit!”
She was too horrified to react. He fired another shot into the wall, the same muted thud.
He stood above her, pointed the pistol, and said, “Tell Cleveland he’s got seven days to shut this place down. Got it?”
She managed to nod. Yes.
“I’ll be back in seven days. If he’s here, he really gets hurt.” He unscrewed the silencer, tossed it into her lap as a souvenir, and stuck the revolver under his belt. He walked out of the office, ducked into the kitchen, and left through a rear door.
* * *
The price war was over.
Cleveland spent three weeks in a hospital, with lots of tubes and a ventilator. His brain swelled from time to time and his doctors induced one coma after another. Fearing another visit from Noll, his girlfriend, the platinum blonde, closed Foxy’s to await orders from Cleveland. When he was finally released from the hospital, he couldn’t walk and was rolled out in a wheelchair. Though brain-damaged, he had enough sense to realize his ambitious venture onto the Strip had come to an end.