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It's the ultimate Las Vegas vacation offer:
Three days, two nights, one kidney removal.
Why, not even Bob Stupak in his heyday could have offered such a deal.
The city is known for its off-the-wall marketing concepts, but something tells me the Discount Kidney Junket is destined not to catch on. It turns out that when people take vacations, they don't mind dropping their money, but they hate to leave behind internal organs.
Cash, yes.
Kidneys, no, sir.
Go figure.
Surely by now you have heard the one about the Las Vegas tourist who meets the willing woman, escorts her to his hotel room, only to be drugged, knocked out and become yet another Man Without a Kidney.
Hey, why doesn't this ever happen in Reno?
Anyway, after his kidney is plucked out, the dupe is stitched up, bandaged and set in a bathtub of ice. You know, to prevent the pain and discomfort that often accompany such surgical procedures.
By the time he wakes up, his kidney is being brokered hundreds of miles away on the human organ black market, where this week there's a two-for-one special on hearts and livers. Personally, I don't shop there because they don't take coupons and their produce is weird, but that's another subject.
As it turns out, the kidney incident always happens to a friend of a friend.
Ah, urban legends. You gotta love 'em.
As fast as you can put a puppy in a microwave and sing "Pop goes the weasel," the Las Vegas kidney kidnapping story has circulated the planet.
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority spokesman Rob Powers continues to field inquiries from curious travelers and travel agents regarding the secret kidney-snatching story. So far, his bosses are not considering changing the convention authority's current slogan, "Las Vegas: Open 24 Hours," to "Las Vegas: You've got to be Kidney," "Las Vegas: Urine the Money" or even "Las Vegas: Bladder Ask Your Travel Agent."
As an aside, the "I Lost My Kidney in Las Vegas" T-shirt is an anemic seller at downtown gift shops.
But I digress.
"The vast majority of people with common sense would realize that it's a silly story that has no basis in fact," Powers says. "We see it as one of those urban folklore things that the vast majority of people with common sense will see for what it is -- a silly story."
But then it figures he'd say something like that. The guy works for the convention bureau.
The fact is, this silly story has gone off dialysis and taken on a life of its own. Powers says virtually every call his office has received has come after the caller has encountered the tale floating on the Internet. At least some of the Internet stories have appeared under the heading "Traveler's Warning." Apparently that attracts more attention from browsers than "Suckers, Read This."
The Las Vegas police homicide section is aware of the kidney story, too. Its detectives have heard breathless tourists and head-scratching cops from out of state report the tale of the hooker who knocks out her customer and swipes his kidney but, apparently, leaves his wallet and watch. (A fact which surely proves the story is not based in reality.)
After many years investigating real stories of mayhem, mutilation and murder, Sgt. Bill Keeton shrugs at the urban legends that buzz like gnats around the city. The frequency of the kidney story did, however, lead him to place a call to the convention authority to inform its officials of the bad news.
Keeton, the homicide section's unofficial urban myths curator, likens the kidney caper to the smelly old story of the dead prostitute stuffed under the bed at the Strip resort and discovered after she began to get gamy. The story was false -- do you really believe union housekeepers never vacuum under the bed? -- but it has persisted in various versions for a decade.
For my part, I have been contacted on the subject by journalists from out of state, at least one of whom figured she had entered Pulitzer territory with the kidney story. She was pretty disappointed when I told her there was no truth to it. I imagine the British author who recently wrote to the newspaper for assistance in researching the American kidney theft phenomenon will be downright depressed when he finds out there is no big story.
Meanwhile, the calls keep coming.
"It's absolutely ridiculous," Keeton says.
Easy for him to say. He didn't have a friend of a friend lose a kidney in Vegas.
John L. Smith's column appears Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. He can be reached at John_L._Smith@lvrj.com.
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