ent001673-006

This item has not been digitized in its entirety. The original item is available for research and handling at the UNLV University Libraries. Additional digitization is available upon request. Please contact Special Collections to request additional digitization or with any questions regarding access at special.collections@unlv.edu. ALL IN A GRAIN OF SAND rena s body. ?╟úThere was a little bit too much iron content in that pit. A small lens of iron-rich sediment ran through there from an old dry streambed.?╟Ñ When the D.E.A. had called Washington to report on their latest informant, they had said that he knew where people had left the road carrying Rade-lat?╟╓s and Walkers bodies but did not know exactly where the bodies were buried. There might be a need for dogs. The F.B.I. does not have cadaver dogs. Ra-walt called a training center and learned the whereabouts of America?╟╓s five best teams of cadaver dogs. From Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a team was soon in the air. On the ground in Primavera, they were initially useless. ?╟úCadaver dogs work hungry,?╟Ñ Rawalt explains, ?╟úThey locate a cadaver because they like the smell and they like the taste. Their reward is to eat part of the proud flesh?╟╓?╟÷the remains. So they work hungry. The dogs that first day were just listless as hell. It turned out someone had fed them. All the dogs were just gorged on dog food.?╟Ñ Cadaver dogs work singly as well as hungry. On the following day, the first dog released showed attention to a small depression some yards up the draw from Radelat and Walker?╟╓s open grave. The animal dug a little. It did not give a clear signal, but a new pit was worth trying. The pervasive odors of dead bodies made it all but impossible for a dog to be unambiguous about a location so near. During the digging, Rawalt took samples at ground level and down through six or seven soil horizons. As the depth of the pit approached five feet, there was fresh high smell. If this was where Camarena had been buried, the opalescent and the clear cristobalite would be present in equal amounts. Under his microscope, as sample followed sample, that is what he saw. Given the two cristobalites, in balance, the next indicating feature would be the rose-colored quartz. It had the rhombohedral shape of a sugar crystal. He even wondered if, somehow, sugar was what he was looking at. He culled out some crystals and tried to dissolve them. They would not dissolve. What he was seeing in his microscope was not candy. ?╟úAlmost pink-red, usually a negative crystal, it was just brilliant.?╟Ñ The slight difference was no longer there. He was matching the soil that Jack Dillon had removed from Camarena?╟╓s body in the morgue. ?╓¬ 69 PORTFOLIO BY ANNIE LEIBOVITZ SHOWGIRLS B'NE of the unwritten laws of Hollywood is ?╟úIf you build it, we will come.?╟Ñ In 1931, the Empire State Building was completed; in 1933, King Kong clambered up it. So it is with Las Vegas, which by the end of 1994 had transformed itself from Sin City to a kind of Slot MaS chine Disneyland. What the Mob had built, the corporations had rebuilt; where once crook-nosed goons had cavorted among the fleshpots, now kids played on thrill rides while their parents squandered the bank account at the roulette tables. The old Las Vegas was tawdry and crass, but there was nothing like it anywhere else. Now something extraordinary has become rather ordinary. And last year several movies, good and bad, contemplated the change: ?╟úLeaving Las Vegas,?╟╓If Casino,?╟Ñ and ?╟úShowgirls?╟Ñ were, in varying de?·/ grees, laments for a city?╟╓s lost romance. Yet tatters of that romance remain. There are still casinos that don?╟╓t pretend to be amusement parks. And there are still showrooms where, every night, customers watch the sort of vulgar, eyepopping musical production numbers that Vegas used to be famous for?╟÷ where the ordinary becomes extraordinary again. That is what the following portfolio of photographs by Annie Leibovitz is about. The women in these pictures are performers from the ?╟úJubilee!?╟Ñ show at Bally?╟╓s Hotel and the ?╟úEnter the Night?╟Ñ show at the Stardust. Except for the woman in the first pair of pictures, they are married; two of them have children; all of them work six days a week, two shows a night, for a salary ranging from around five hundred to eight hundred dollars a week. They call themselves- ?╟úshowgirls,?╟Ñ which means that, unlike ?╟údancers,?╟Ñ they perform topless. In exchange, they get flashier costumes, greater prominence in the show, and an extra fifty dollars a week. Their feathers alone can cost as much as five or six thousand dollars, and bearing them with the proper liquid hauteur around the stage?╟╓s runway, or passerelle, requires a particular skill. ?╟úWe have a special showgirl walk,?╟Ñ Narelle Brennan, the woman in the -fourth pair of photographs, says. ?╟úYou keep your whole body to the front, and your legs are crossing. You can?╟╓t have any open legs.?╟Ñ Susan McJB Namara, S the first pair of photographs, adds, ?╟úIn these Vegas shows,i they want that feeling that you?╟╓re untouchable. It?╟╓s ?╟ Here I am, look at me, but I?╟╓m not for you.?╟╓ It?╟╓s fun, because it?╟╓s not a side of me that I am in life.?╟Ñ In life, she, like the other women here, is a trained dancer; she spent three years with Nevada Dance Theatre. The woman in the second pair oft pictures, Linda Green, danced with the Harkness Ballet. She is the only mem-:; ?╟≤ ber of the original cast of ?╟úJubilee!?╟Ñ who is still in the show, and there are not many companies that would have allowed her to keep working as long as she has?╟÷she is now forty-two. Narelle Brennan, who is Australian, trained for ten years in ballet, tap, jazz, and Highland dancing. In fact, the only one who doesn?╟╓t regard herself as a s,erious|r dancer is Akke Alma, the woman in the third pair of photographs. Alma, who is Dutch, is familiar to Las Vegas habitues^ because her like-?╟╓ adorns the tail of one of Western Pacific?╟╓s airplanes, and billboards all over town proclaim her ?╟úA Showgirl for the 21st Century.?╟Ñ Alma speaks five languages, takes correspondence courses in Dutch law, and is married to a film professor at the University of Nevada; she starred in his most recent short film. ?╟úOnstage, it?╟╓s not only about dancing,?╟Ñ she says. ?╟úIt?╟╓s about personality?╟╓?╟÷by which she means what used to be called ?╟úsex appeal.?╟Ñ The showgirls of the 20th Century view themselves somewhat differently. T wear these big white feathers at the end,?╟Ñ Linda Green says. ?╟úAnd I look at people and they?╟╓re looking up at me, and I see tears in their eyes sometimes. The way it?╟╓s lit and sparkly?╟÷they?╟╓re looking at me like I?╟╓m this brilliant white angel:?╟Ñ/; ?╟÷Stephen Schiff