CHRISTMAS AT THE SAHARA

Bobby Tucket was relieved to get away from his wife and kids so couldn't have been happier about working over Christmas at the Sahara.

"You cleared it with the boss Bobby?" his agent asked him sitting in the passenger seat of his Dual Ghia L6.4 as Bobby drove like a mad man through Death Valley to get to Vegas for the festive season.

"You mean the wife? Yeah I left her in the freezer with all the kids."

His off-colour jokes were generally accepted amongst his inner circle as baby faced Bobby was the most congenial seeming guy in the business. And the funniest too.

Christening his luxury hotel suite with a bottle of Champagne and a couple of hookers, Bobby hadn't felt this happy and festive since he was first travelling on the road with his old musician pals The High C's back in their 20's.

He'd been around the block a bit since then and had experienced the highs and lows of being a celebrity entertainer including a few scrapes with the law. But his infectious charm and killer one liners had always kept the wolf from his door and so he kept on rolling like a lucky dice, constantly doubling down on his risk-taking and tempting of fate.

"You need to be a bit edgy to make the audience respect you," he'd said in one famous interview with Playboy adding, "They don't want some choir boy telling them blue jokes. They want that guy they know is gonna try and sleep with their wife at the Christmas party before they lay them out."

Staring over the city of Vegas from his hotel balcony, an extremely drunk Bobby exclaimed loudly : "This is my island of lights and all my sins are absolved because no pious puritan would ever come to this city of vice to tarnish their soul."

Kim, one of Tucket's two paid escorts, wasn't sure what her client was raving on about but had a sense that he wasn't all happy back at home in his personal life. He'd admitted to her earlier there was "trouble in paradise" but she didn't probe too deep as she knew it was unprofessional to do so. She was happy enough to get free tickets to his Christmas show with a couple of her friends and get to sit front row with the best food and drink they could dream of.

"Eat all you want, just don't forget to clap loudly when I deliver my punchlines. After all, don't you know there's no such thing as a free lunch in this town?"

It was when Tucket semi-graphically delivered the final joke of his set on how all husbands fantasised about how to kill their wives without getting caught that Kim felt less inclined to eat any more of the ostentatious sea food platter she had laid out before her on their table.

Suddenly, something the comic had said casually back at the hotel suite came to her mind like an electric jolt. She had negotiated for more money up front for her and her friend than he had anticipated for their services. He'd laughed in her face at her request and then said coldly, "If you ever want to commit a crime, just tell everyone what you've doing in plain sight and they'll never believe you. They'll just think you're joking. Always worked for me."

As Bobby delivered his final pièce de résistance punchline to his elaborate joke, he looked at Kim who failed to applaud as he'd asked her to earlier that evening.

Luckily, the rest of the room went wild as he fixed his eyes on her and she felt an overwhelming desire to leave the venue as quickly as possible.

By the time Bobby had groggily woken up Christmas morning with some different girls from the agency, he found a tall man standing at the foot of his bed.

"Santa?"

"Come on, Bobby. It's time to face the music."

"But I haven't opened my presents yet."

"We'll make sure you get something nice when we get you to the station."

Indignant about this unwelcome intrusion from the law, Bobby reluctantly put his clothes on and accompanied the police officers out of the building and into the back of their patrol vehicle.

Hearing the breaking news about Bobby Tucket being arrested for murdering his wife and kids on the radio, Christmas Day afternoon, Kim felt troubled about her having slept with such a cold hearted killer but good that she had acted on her instincts to notify the authorities about what she suspected may have happened. She'd always prided herself on having a knack for sensing evil, just like a sniffer dog with blood.

Regardless of all the crazy drama from the night before she still managed to enjoy her Swanson brand TV dinner whilst watching Stewart Granger in The Prisoner Of Zenda on the tube. She didn't like to dwell on morbid things for too long.

As it turned out, it was Bobby's agent that was the last to find out that what he had assumed was mere jest on their way to Vegas was actually a bloody reality after going on a three day bender with his own entourage of hookers.

A Shakespearian quote that continued to resonate from Bobby's infamous playboy interview that struck at the heart of his murderous modus operandi all these years was ...

"In jest, there is truth."

Well, certainly. No one was laughing now.