Unlike in New York, in Las Vegas Max made friends quick.
By 1977 he was running security for Birdie’s burgeoning escort service empire which consisted of an old crack whore named Connie and a semi-retarded 17-year-old.
Security consisted of Max hiding behind the trailer with a baseball bat hoping the johns didn’t get out of line.
Between 1979 and 1985 James “Birdie” Wallace became the biggest importer and distributor of cocaine in Clark County, NV.
He helped Las Vegas become known as “Sin City.”
He supplied coke to everyone who supplied coke to everyone in Las Vegas: dealers, valets, bartenders, taxi drivers, strippers, whores, hotel managers, stars and performers.
Steve & Edie, Phyllis Dyller, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis Jr., Brando, Eric Estrada, Goldie Hawn: either directly or indirectly, Max Steingrout sold cocaine to them all.
If you did blow in Las Vegas in the early ’80s it probably came from someone who got it from someone who go it from Birdie Wallace.
Birdie Wallace’s cocaine.
Peru was the world’s leading producer of cocaine. The Colombian traffickers turned it into a dirty, bloody business and the cartel cocaine wars turned violent. This spelled the end for ’60’s pacifists like Las Vegas’ Birdie Wallace.
He didn’t have the stomach for the rough stuff.
Birdie made too many people nervous and he started to make too much money.
Birdie was fine doing the hustle, rolling a junkie or slapping around an under-aged runaway hooker, but once he started to move mountains of coke and make the kind of money reserved for Wayne Newton, he no longer knew his place.
One day he flew away.
Allegedly with a bullet to the back of his head in the back of an El Dorado.
Danke schoen.
