Monday, April 29, 2002 | 11:07 a.m.
A group of Harrah's cocktail waitresses starting the Sunday morning shift gathered around a waist-high hole in the wall next to their service station.
"Is that really a bullet hole?" said one.
"It wasn't there before," said Melissa, whose badge said she was from Louisiana.
The waitresses then walked away, past the taped-up Betty Boop slot machine that had been shot the night before. They went back to work in a casino scarred with bullet holes to serve a smattering of early-morning gamblers who hardly seemed to notice.
A little past 2 a.m. Saturday morning three people were killed and a dozen were injured in Harrah's when rival motorcycle gangs, the Hells Angels and the Mongols, fought with guns and knives.
After closing down Harrah's, police arrested one motorcycle gang member and were interviewing others, but the violence failed to put much of a damper on the 20th annual Laughlin River Run, a gathering of about 70,000 motorcycle enthusiasts.
By Sunday morning, a little more than a day after the worst casino shooting in state history, the River Run was slightly slower than normal for its final day, but life went on.
Participants dismissed the motorcycle gang violence as an anomaly, a blip in an otherwise successful event. And organizers and participants pledged to be back next year.
"You don't do this for 20 years and then just quit," said Jo Elle Hurns, executive director of the Laughlin Chamber of Commerce, whose board agreed with organizers to keep the event going through Sunday. "We never had the violence that we experienced (that) night."
Metro Police investigating the violence had shut down the hotel through much of the day Saturday and clamped down on the popular nightly parade in which motorcycle enthusiasts show off their machines to crowds of people lining Casino Center Drive.
Few mourned the dead.
"Something like this should have been handled somewhere else," Jack Dekker, a biking enthusiast from Phoenix, said. "Go do it at a local bar. But here, it's going to mess the rally up."
"If they're going to fight, they should fight like real men. With your fists, not guns," said Susan Sanchez, a biker from Saugus, Calif. She was taking pictures of her bearded boyfriend on a veranda at Harrah's overlooking the Colorado River. They were about to head inside for the Sunday buffet.
On Sunday vendors and hotel workers complained of slow sales at one of Laughlin's largest moneymakers of the year, downplaying the gang violence. They talked instead of the scores of doctors and lawyers who have taken up the pastime. And bikers worried that the rally might be forced to rein in future shows.
Despite the concerns, Laughlin business leaders said the show should, and will, go on.
"I think it was a one-time incident," said Riverside casion manager Ray Louis, whose boss -- town namesake Don Laughlin -- barred Mongols from the casino in recent years because of violent behavior.
The River Run last year brought 65,000 people to Laughlin and $7 million into town, Hurns said. She said the chamber had received hundreds of calls in support of continuing the River Run.
Debbie Dauenhauer, vice chair of the Laughlin Town Board, said she does not believe anyone will be excluded from the River Run in 2003.
"I don't think so," Dauenhauer said. "It was an isolated incident, the first in 20 years. The police can handle it. They'll be there to take care of it next year."
Hurns praised the planning that had police a few minutes from swarming the hotel and stopping the problems before they grew.
"While the ingredients were all there for something to happen, I think our police department was exemplary in its response," Hurns said.
The crowds and a majority of the motorcycle riders who returned Sunday seemed to agree.
The bikes were packed two to each lane, mostly idled in stopped traffic, but that only meant longer looks, more revving of the ear-splitting motors and more practice steadying motors with as much power as sports cars on the heels of a fresh pair of leather boots. When space opened up, the bikes lept down the street, leaving burning rubber behind them.
Roy Richardson, a retired Oregon trucker sitting on the grass outside the Ramada Express hotel, and his wife, Kathie, sat on the grass outside the Ramada Express hotel and enjoyed the motorcycles riding by.
"It's everybody's fantasy of what a motorcycle is," Kathie said. "It's freedom. You feel that wind on your face and your hair is blowing. You smell and hear things you wouldn't in a car. It just opens up this whole dimension for you."
"It's a tremendous feeling of power," Roy said.
Despite the thrill of the ride, not as many were buying.
Jeff Baker, a salesman for Staz's American Motorcycles in Henderson, said sales of their bikes, priced from $12,000 to $64,000, were down 50 percent from last year.
He attributed it to the shootings, but said no amount of precaution could have prevented them.
"There's enough police presence. It's just the 1 percent element that you don't have control over at an event like this. That's just a given," he said.
An autoshop owner who rides with his young daughters was leaving those long odds to God.
"What was it, two in the morning? We're in bed at that time. That kind of thing is in the Lord's hands," said Miguel Nieves, who is also chapter director of the Jamestown, Calif., Harley-Davidson owner's club. His daughters, 9 and 12, said they had been riding since they were 4 and 7, respectively. Frankie Briato, the godfather of Nieves' two daughters, said motorcycle gangs make up a small percentage of the biker culture.
"It's not the way it used to be," Briato said. "It's more of a fashion show. They're more professional people. Is vogue still a word? Because these people have the bucks."
Some from that "vogue" set thought the gangs should have less influence.
"It (the shootings) made us all a little nervous. We just stayed in our rooms," said a Las Vegan who gave her name as Sally. "The gangs shouldn't be running colors. The police should be down at the end of the strip. It's the only way in. And anyone wearing colors, goes to jail."
Jonathan Handler, his 10-year-old daughter Katherine and his girlfriend, Helen Arnold, all from Los Angeles, went to Harrah's beach Sunday because it had been closed the day before.
As the couple commented on the private jets taking off on the far side of the Colorado River, Katherine recounted how she'd slept through the shootings. She hadn't been scared after she heard the news, she said.
"No, not at all. I got over it pretty quick."
Outside the Colorado Belle hotel, Fred Schmutz, an insurance salesman from Orange County, Calif., was packing up his Harley for the ride home after his first time at the rally. He said he'd be back and that the killers should be put in jail. But he had one complaint.
"They charged way too much for the room. It was $196 and the room was tiny and there was only one elevator."
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