Fools die

Chapter 18

On the night plane to New York Cully sat in the first class section, sipping a plain club soda. On his lap was a metal briefcase covered with leather and equipped with a complicated locking device. As long as Cully held the briefcase, nothing could happen to the million dollars inside it. He himself could not open it.

In Vegas Gronevelt had counted the money out in Cully’s presence, stacking the case neatly before he locked it and handed it over to Cully. The people in New York never knew how or when it was coming. Only Gronevelt decided. But still, Cully was nervous. Clutching the briefcase beside him, he thought about the last years. He had come a long way, he had learned a lot and he would go further and learn more. But he knew that he was leading a dangerous life, gambling for big stakes.

Why had Gronevelt chosen him? What had Gronevelt seen? What did he foresee? Cully Cross, metal briefcase clutched to his lap, tried to divine his fate. As he had counted down the cards in the blackjack shoe, as he had waited for the strength to flow in his strong right arm to throw countless passes with the dice, he now used all his powers of memory and intuition to read what each chance in his life added up to and what could be left in the shoe.

– -

Nearly four years ago, Gronevelt started to make Cully into his right-hand man. Cully had already been his spy in the Xanadu Hotel long before Merlyn and Jordan arrived and had performed his job well. Gronevelt was a little disappointed in him when he became friends with Merlyn and Jordan. And angry when Cully took Jordan ’s side in the now-famous baccarat table showdown. Cully had thought his career finished, but oddly enough, after that incident, Gronevelt gave him a real job. Cully often wondered about that.

For the first year Gronevelt made Cully a blackjack dealer, which seemed a hell of a way to begin a career as a right-hand man. Cully suspected that he would be used as a spy all over again. But Gronevelt had a more specific purpose in mind. He had chosen Cully as the prime mover in the hotel skimming operation.

Gronevelt felt that hotel owners who skimmed money in the casino counting room were jerks, that the FBI would catch up with them sooner or later. The counting room skimming was too obvious. The owners or their reps meeting there in person and each taking a packet of money before they reported to the Nevada Gaming Commission struck him as foolhardy. Especially when there were five or six owners quarreling about how much they should skim off the top. Gronevelt had set up what he thought was a far superior system. Or so he told Cully.

He knew Cully was a “mechanic.” Not a top-notch mechanic but one who could easily deal seconds. That is, Cully could keep the top card for himself and deal the second card from the top. And so an hour before his midnight-to-morning graveyard shift Cully would report to Gronevelt’s suite and receive instructions. At a certain time, either 1 A.M. or 4 A.M. a blackjack player dressed in a certain colored suit would make a certain number of sequence bets starting with one hundred dollars, then five hundred, then a twenty-five-dollar bet. This would identify the privileged customer, who would win ten or twenty thousand dollars in a few hours’ gambling. The man would play with his cards face up, not unusual for big players in blackjack. Seeing the player’s hand, Cully could save a good card for the customer by dealing seconds around the table. Cully didn’t know how the money finally got back to Gronevelt and his partners. He just did his job without asking questions. And he never opened his mouth.

But as he could count down every card in the shoe, he easily kept track of these manufactured player winnings, and over the year he figured that he had on the average lost ten thousand dollars a week to these Gronevelt players. Over the year he worked as a dealer he knew close to the exact figure. It was around a half million dollars, give or take a ten grand. A beautiful scam without a tax bite and without cutting it up with the official point sharers in the hotel and the casino. Gronevelt was also skimming some of his partners.

To keep the losses from being pinpointed, Gronevelt had Cully transferred to different tables each night. He also sometimes switched his shifts. Still, Cully worried about the casino manager’s picking up the whole deal. Except that maybe Gronevelt had warned the casino manager off.

So to cover his losses Cully used his mechanic’s skill to wipe out the straight players. He did this for three weeks and then one day he received a phone call summoning him to Gronevelt’s suite.

As usual Gronevelt made him sit down and gave him a drink. Then he said, “Cully, cut out the bullshit. No cheating the customers.”

Cully said, “I thought maybe that’s what you wanted, without telling me.”

Gronevelt smiled. “A good smart thought. But it’s not necessary. Your losses are covered with paperwork. You won’t be spotted. And if you are, I’ll call off the dogs.” He paused for a moment. “Just deal a straight game with the suckers. Then we won’t get into any trouble we can’t handle.”

“Is the second card business showing up on films?” Cully asked.

Gronevelt shook his head. “No, you’re pretty good. That’s not the problem. But the Nevada Gaming Commission boys might send in a player that can hear the tick and link it up with your sweeping the table. Now true, that could happen when you’re dealing to one of my customers, but then they would just assume you’re cheating the hotel. So I’m clean. Also I have a pretty good idea when the Gaming Commission sends in their people. That’s why I give you special times to dump out the money. But when you’re operating on your own, I can’t protect you. And then you’re cheating the customer for the hotel. A big difference. Those Gaming Commission guys don’t get too hot when we get beat, but the straight suckers are another story. It would cost a lot in political payoffs to set that straight.”

“OK,” Cully said. “But how did you pick it up?”

Gronevelt said impatiently, “Percentages. Percentages never lie. We built all these hotels on percentages. We stay rich on the percentage. So all of a sudden your dealer sheet shows you making money when you’re dumping out for me. That can’t happen unless you’re the luckiest dealer in the history of Vegas.”

Cully followed orders, but he wondered about how it all worked. Why Gronevelt went to all the trouble. It was only later, when he had become Xanadu Two that he found out the details. That Gronevelt had been skimming not only to beat the government but most of the point owners of the casino. It was only years later he learned that the winning customers had been sent out of New York by Gronevelt’s secret partner, a man named Santadio. That the customers thought that he, Cully, was a crooked dealer fixed by the partner in New York. That these customers thought they were victimizing Gronevelt. That Gronevelt and his beloved hotel were covered a dozen different ways.

Gronevelt had started his gambling career in Steubenville, Ohio, under the protection of the famous Cleveland mob with their control over local politics. He had worked the illegal joints and then finally made his way to Nevada. But he had a provincial patriotism. Every young man in Steubenville who wanted a dealing or croupier job in Vegas came to Gronevelt. If he couldn’t place him in his own casino, he would place him in some other casino. You could run across Steubenville, Ohio, alumni in the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, on the French Riviera and even in London. In Reno and Vegas you could count them by the hundreds. Many of them were casino managers and pit bosses. Gronevelt was a green felt Pied Piper.

Gronevelt could have picked his spy from these hundreds; in fact, the casino manager at the Xanadu was from Steubenville. Then why had Gronevelt picked on Cully, a comparative stranger from another part of the country? Cully often wondered about that. And of course, later on, when he came to know the intricacies of the many controls, he understood that the casino manager had to be in on it. And it hit Cully full force. He had been picked because he was expendable if anything went wrong. He would take the rap one way or another.

For Gronevelt, despite his bookishness, had come out of Cleveland into Vegas with a fearsome reputation. He was a man not to be trifled with, cheated or bamboozled. And he had demonstrated that to Cully in the last years. Once in a serious way and another time with high good humor, a special kind of Vegas gambling wit.

After a year Cully was given the office next to Gronevelt and named his special assistant. This involved driving Gronevelt around town and accompanying him to the floor of the casino at night when Gronevelt made his rounds to greet old friends and customers, especially those from out of town. Gronevelt also made Cully an aide to the casino manager so that he could learn the casino ropes. Cully got to know all the shift bosses well, the pit bosses, the floor walkers, the dealers and croupiers in all the pits.

Every morning Cully had breakfast at about ten o’clock in Gronevelt’s office suite. Before going up, he would get the win-loss figures for the casino’s previous twenty-four hours of play from the cashier cage boss. He would give Gronevelt the little slip of paper as they sat down to breakfast, and Gronevelt would study the figures as he scooped out his first chunk of Grenshaw melon. The slip was made out very simply.

Dice Pit $400,000 Drop Hold $60,000

Blackjack Pit $200,000 Drop Hold $40,000

Baccarat

Roulette $100,000 Drop Hold $40,000

Others (wheel of fortune, keno included in above)

– -

The slot machines were totaled up only once a week, and those figures were given to Gronevelt by the casino manager in a special report. The slots usually brought in a profit of about a hundred thousand dollars a week. This was the real gravy. The casino could never get unlucky on slots. It was sure money because the machines were set to pay off only a certain percentage of the money played into them. When the figures on the slots went off there could only be a scam going.

This was not true of the other games, like craps, blackjack and especially baccarat. In those games the house figured to hold sixteen percent of the drop. But even the house could get unlucky. Especially in baccarat, where the heavy gamblers sometimes plunged and caught a lucky streak.

Baccarat had wild fluctuations. There had been nights when the baccarat table lost enough money to wipe out the profits from all the other action in the casino that day. But then there would be weeks when the baccarat table won enormous amounts. Cully was sure that Gronevelt had a skim going on the baccarat table, but he couldn’t figure out how it worked. Then he noticed one night when the baccarat table cleaned out heavy players from South America that the next day’s figures on the slip were less than they should be.

It was every casino’s nightmare that the players would get a hot streak. In Las Vegas history there had been times when crap tables had gotten hot for weeks and the casino was lucky to break even for the day. Sometimes even the blackjack players got smart and beat the house for three or four days running. In roulette it was extremely rare to have even one losing day a month. And the wheel of fortune and keno were straight bust-out operations, the players sitting ducks for the casino.

But these were all the mechanical things to know about running a gambling casino. Things you could learn by the book, that anyone could learn, given the right training and sufficient time. Under Gronevelt, Cully learned a good deal more.

Gronevelt made everybody know he did not believe in luck. That his true and infallible god was the percentage. And he backed it up. Whenever the casino keno game was hit for the big prize of twenty-five thousand dollars, Gronevelt fired all the personnel in the keno operation. Two years after the Xanadu Hotel had begun operating, it got very unlucky. For three weeks the casino never had a winning day and lost nearly a million dollars. Gronevelt fired everybody except the casino manager from Steubenville.

And it seemed to work. After the firings the profits would begin, the losing streak would end. The casino had to average fifty grand a day in winnings for the hotel to break even. And to Cully’s knowledge the Xanadu had never had a losing year. Even with Gronevelt skimming off the top.

In the year he had been dealing and skimming for Gronevelt Cully had never been tempted into the error another man might make in his position: skimming on his own. After all, if it was so easy, why could not Cully have a friend of his drop around to win a few bucks? But Cully knew this would be fatal. And he was playing for bigger stakes. He sensed a loneliness in Gronevelt, a need for friendship, which Cully provided. And it paid off.

About twice a month Gronevelt took Cully into Los Angeles with him to go antique hunting. They would buy old gold watches, gilt-framed photographs of early Los Angeles and Vegas. They would search out old coffee grinders, ancient toy automobiles, children’s savings banks shaped as locomotives and church steeples made in the 1800’s, a gold set archaic money clip, into which Gronevelt would put a hundred-dollar black chip casa money for the recipient, or a rare coin. For special high rollers he picked up tiny exquisite dolls made in ancient China, Victorian jewel boxes filled with antique jewelry. Old lace scarves silky gray with age, ancient Nordic ale mugs.

These items would cost at least a hundred dollars each but rarely more than two hundred dollars. On these trips Gronevelt spent a few thousand dollars. He and Cully would have dinner in Los Angeles, and sleep over in the Beverly Hills Hotel and fly back to Vegas on an early-morning plane.

Cully would carry the antiques in his suitcase and back in the Xanadu would have them gift-wrapped and delivered to Gronevelt’s suite. And Gronevelt every night or nearly every night would slip one in his pocket and take it down to the casino and present it to one of his Texas oil or New York garment center high rollers who were good for fifty or a hundred grand a year at the tables.

Cully marveled at Gronevelt’s charm on these occasions. Gronevelt would unwrap the gift package and take out the gold watch and present it to the player. “I was in LA and saw this and I thought about you,” he’d say to the player. “Suits your personality. I’ve had it fixed up and cleaned, should keep perfect time.” Then he would add deprecatingly, “They told me it was made in 1870, but who the hell knows? You know what hustlers those antique shops are.”

And so he gave the impression that he had given extraordinary care and thought to this one player. He insinuated the idea that the watch was extremely valuable. And that he had taken extra pains to put it in good working condition. And there was a grain of truth in it all. The watch would work perfectly, he had thought about the player to an extraordinary degree. More than anything else was the feeling of personal friendship. Gronevelt had a gift for exuding affection when he presented one of these tokens of his esteem which made it even more flattering.

And Gronevelt used “The Pencil” liberally. Big players were, of course, comped, RFB-free room, food and beverage. But Gronevelt also granted this privilege to five-dollar chip bettors who were wealthy. He was a master at turning these customers into big players.

Another lesson Gronevelt taught Cully was not to hustle young girls. Gronevelt had been indignant. He had lectured Cully severely. “Where the fuck do you come off bullshittig those kids out of a piece of ass? Are you a fucking sneak thief? Would you go into their purses and snatch their small change? What kind of guy are you? Would you steal their car? Would you go into their house as a guest and lift their silverware? Then where do you come off stealing their cunt? That’s their only capital, especially when they’re beautiful. And remember once you slip them that Honeybee, you’re evened out with them. You’re free. No bullshit about a relationship. No bullshit about marriage or divorcing your wife. No asking for thousand-dollar loans. Or being faithful. And remember for five of those Honeybees, she’ll always be available, even on her wedding day.”

Cully had been amused by this outburst. Obviously Gronevelt had heard about his operation with women, but just as obviously Gronevelt didn’t understand women as well as he, Cully, did. Gronevelt didn’t understand their masochism. Their willingness, their need to believe in a con job. But he didn’t protest. He did say wryly, “It’s not as easy as you make it out to be, even your way. With some of them a thousand Honeybees don’t help.”

And surprisingly Gronevelt laughed and agreed. He even told a funny story about himself. Early in the Xanadu Hotel history a Texas woman worth many millions had gambled in the casino and he had presented her with an antique Japanese fan that cost him fifty dollars. The Texas heiress, a good-looking woman of forty and a widow, fell in love with him. Gronevelt was horrified. Though he was ten years older than she, he liked pretty young girls. But out of duty to the hotel bankroll he had taken her up to the hotel suite one night and went to bed with her. When she left, out of habit and perhaps out of foolish perversity or perhaps with the cruel Vegas sense of fun, he slipped her a Honeybee and told her to buy herself a present. To this day he didn’t know why.

The oil heiress had looked down at the Honeybee and slipped it into her purse. She thanked him prettily. She continued to come to the hotel and gamble, but she was no longer in love with him.

Three years later Gronevelt was looking for investors to build additional rooms to the hotel As Gronevelt explained, extra rooms were always desirable. “Players gamble where they shit,” he said. “They don’t go wandering around. Give them a show room, a lounge show, different restaurants. Keep them in the hotel the first forty-eight hours. By then they’re banged out.”

He had approached the oil heiress. She had nodded and said of course. She immediately wrote out a check and handed it to him with an extraordinarily sweet smile. The check was for a hundred dollars.

“The moral of that story,” Gronevelt said, “is never treat a smart rich broad like a dumb poor cunt”.

– -

Sometimes in LA Gronevelt would go shopping for old books. But usually, when he was in the mood, he would fly to Chicago to attend a rare books auction. He had a fine collection stored in a locked glass-paneled bookcase in his suite. When Cully moved into his new office, he found a present from Gronevelt: a first edition of a book on gambling published in 1847. Cully read it with interest and kept it on his desk for a while. Then, not knowing what to do with it, he brought it into Gronevelt’s suite and gave it back to him. “I appreciate the gift, but it’s wasted on me,” he said. Gronevelt nodded and didn’t say anything. Cully felt that he had disappointed him, but in a curious way it helped cement their relationship. A few days later he saw the book in Gronevelt’s special locked case. He knew then that he had not made a mistake, and he felt pleased that Gronevelt had tendered him such a genuine mark of affection, however misguided. But then he saw another side of Gronevelt that he had always known must exist.

Cully had made it a habit to be present when the casino chips were counted three times a day. He accompanied the pit bosses as they counted the chips on all the tables, blackjack, roulette, craps, and the cash at baccarat. He even went into the casino cage to count the chips there. The cage manager was always a little nervous to Cully’s eyes, but he dismissed this as his own suspicious nature because the cash and markers and chips in the safe always tallied correctly. And the casino cage manager was an old trusted member of Gronevelt’s early days.

But one day, on some impulse, Cully decided to have the trays of chips pulled out of the safe. He could never figure out this impulse later. But once the scores of metal racks had been taken out of the darkness of the safe and closely inspected it became obvious that two trays of the black hundred-dollar chips were false. They were blank black cylinders. In the darkness of the safe, thrust far in the back where they would never be used, they had been passed as legitimate on the daily counts. The casino cage manager professed horror and shock, but they both knew that the scam could never have been attempted without his consent. Cully picked up a phone and called Gronevelt’s suite. Gronevelt immediately came down to the cage and inspected the chips. The two trays amounted to a hundred thousand dollars. Gronevelt pointed a finger at the cage manager. It was a dreadful moment. Gronevelt’s ruddy, tanned face was white, but his voice was composed. “Get the luck out of this cage,” he said. Then he turned to Cully. “Make him sign over all his keys to you,” he said. “And then have all the pit bosses on all three of the shifts in my office right away. I don’t give a fuck where they are. The ones who are on vacation fly back to Vegas and check in with me as soon as they get here.” Then Gronevelt walked out of the cage and disappeared.

As Cully and the casino cage manager were doing the paperwork for signing over the keys, two men Cully had never seen before came in. The casino cage manager knew them because he turned very pale and his hands started shaking uncontrollably.

Both men nodded to him and he nodded back. One of the men said, “When you’re through, the boss wants to see you up in his office.” They were talking to the cage manager and ignored Cully. Cully picked up the phone and called Gronevelt’s office. He said to Gronevelt. “Two guys came down here, they say you sent them.”

Gronevelt’s voice was like ice. “That’s right,” be said.

“Just checking,” Cully said.

Gronevelt’s voice softened. “Good idea,” he said. “And you did a good job.” There was a slight pause. “The rest of it is none of your business, Cully. Forget about it. Understand?” His voice was almost gentle now, and there was even a note of weary sadness in it.

The cage manager was seen for the next few days around Las Vegas and then disappeared. After a month Cully learned that his wife had put in a missing persons report on him. He couldn’t believe the implication at first, despite the jokes he heard around town that the cage manager was now buried in the desert. He never dared mention anything to Gronevelt, and Gronevelt never spoke of the matter to him. Not even to compliment him upon his good work. Which was just as well. Cully didn’t want to think that his good work might have resulted in the cage manager’s being buried in the desert.

– -

But in the last few months Gronevelt had shown his mettle in a less macabre way. With typical Vegas nimbleness of foot and quick-wittedness.

All the casino owners in Vegas had started making a big pitch for foreign gamblers. The English were immediately written off, despite their history of being the biggest losers of the nineteenth century. The end of the British Empire had meant the end of their high rollers. The millions of Indians, Australians, South Sea Islanders and Canadians no longer poured money into the coffers of the gambling milords. England was now a poor country, whose very rich scrambled to beat taxes and hold on to their estates. Those few who could afford to gamble preferred the aristocratic high-toned clubs in France and Germany and their own London.

The French were also written off. The French didn’t travel and would never stand for the extra house double zero on the Vegas wheel.

But the Germans and Italians were wooed. Germany with its expanding postwar economy had many millionaires, and Germans loved to travel, loved to gamble and loved the Vegas women. There was something in the high-flying Vegas style that appealed to the Teutonic spirit, that brought back memories of Oktoberfest and maybe even Gotterdammerung. The Germans were also good-natured gamblers and more skillful than most.

Italian millionaires were big prizes in Vegas. They gambled recklessly while getting drunk; they let the soft hustlers employed by casinos keep them in the city a suicidal six or seven days. They seemed to have inexhaustible sums of money because none of them paid income tax. What should have gone into the public coffers of Rome slid into the hold boxes of air-conditioned casinos. The girls of Vegas loved the Italian millionaires because of their generous gifts and because for those six or seven days they fell in love with the same abandon they plunged on the sucker hard-way bets at the crap table.

The Mexican and South American gamblers were even bigger prizes. Nobody knew what was really going on down in South America, but special planes were sent there to bring the pampas millionaires to Vegas. Everything was free to these sporting gentlemen who left the hides of millions of cattle at the baccarat tables. They came with their wives and girlfriends, their adolescent sons eager to become gambling men. These customers too were favorites of the Las Vegas girls. They were less sincere than the Italians, perhaps a little less polished in their lovemaking according to some reports, but certainly with larger appetites. Cully had been in Gronevelt’s office one day when the casino manager came with a special problem. A South American gambler, a premier player, had put in a request for eight girls to be sent to his suite, blondes, redheads but no brunettes and none shorter than his own five feet six inches.

Gronevelt took the request coolly. “And what time today does he want this miracle to happen?” Gronevelt asked.

“About five o’clock,” the casino manager said. “He wants to take them all to dinner afterward and keep them for the night.”

Gronevelt didn’t crack a smile. “What will it cost?’

“About three grand,” the casino manager said. “The girls know they’ll get roulette and baccarat money from this guy.”

“OK, comp it,” Gronevelt said. “But tell those girls to keep him in the hotel as much as possible. I don’t want him losing his dough down the Strip.”

As the casino manager started to leave, Gronevelt said,” What the hell is he going to do with eight women?”

The casino manager shrugged. “I asked him the same thing. He says he has his son with him.”

For the first time in the conversation, Gronevelt smiled. “That’s what I call real paternal pride,” he said. Then, after the casino manager left the room, he shook his head and said to Cully, “Remember, they gamble where they shit and where they fuck. When the father dies, the son will keep coming here. For three grand he’ll have a night he’ll never forget. He’ll be worth a million bucks to the Xanadu unless they have a revolution in his country.”

But the prize, the champions, the pearl without price that every casino owner coveted were the Japanese. They were hair-raising gamblers, and they always arrived in Vegas in groups. The top echelon of an industrial combine would arrive to gamble tax-free dollars, and their losses in a four-day stay many times went over a million dollars. And it was Cully who snared the biggest Japanese prize for the Xanadu Hotel and Gronevelt.

Cully had been carrying on a friendly go-to-the-movies-and-fuck-afterward love affair with a dancer in the Oriental Follies playing a Strip hotel. The girl was called Daisy because her Japanese name was unpronounceable, and she was only about twenty years old, but she had been in Vegas for nearly five years. She was a terrific dancer, cute as a pearl in its shell, but she was thinking about getting operations to make her eyes Occidental and her bust puffed to corn-fed American. Cully was horrified and told her she would ruin her appeal. Daisy finally listened to his advice only when he pretended an ecstasy greater than he felt for her budlike breasts.

They became such friends that she gave him lessons in Japanese while they were in bed and he stayed overnight. In the mornings she would serve him soup for breakfast, and when he protested, she told him that in Japan everyone ate soup for breakfast and that she made the best breakfast soup in her village outside Tokyo. Cully was astonished to find the soup delicious and tangy and easy on the stomach after a fatiguing night of drinking and making love.

It was Daisy who alerted him to the fact that one of the great business tycoons of Japan was planning to visit Vegas. Daisy had Japanese newspapers airmailed to her by her family; she was homesick and enjoyed reading about Japan. She told Cully that a Tokyo tycoon, a Mr. Fummiro, had given an interview stating that he would come to America to open up overseas branches of his television manufacturing business. Daisy said that Mr. Fummiro was famous in Japan for being an outrageous gambler and would surely come to Vegas. She also told him that Mr. Fummiro was a pianist of great skill, had studied in Europe and would almost certainly have become a professional musician if his father had not ordered his son to take over the family firm.

That day Cully had Daisy come over to his office at the Xanadu and dictated a letter for her to write on the hotel stationery. With Daisy’s advice he constructed a letter that observed the, to Occidentals, subtle politesse of Japan and would not give Mr. Fummiro offense.

In the letter he invited Mr. Fummiro to be an honored guest at the Xanadu Hotel for as long as he wished and at any time he wished. He also invited Mr. Fummiro to bring as many guests as he desired, his whole entourage, including his business colleagues in the United States. In delicate language Daisy let Mr. Fummiro know that all this would not cost him one cent. That even the theater shows would be free. Before he mailed the letter, Cully got Gronevelt’s approval since Cully still did not have the full authority of “The Pencil.” Cully had been afraid that Gronevelt would sign the letter, but this did not happen. So now officially these Japanese were Cully’s clients, if they came. He would be their “Host.”

It was three weeks before he received an answer. And during that time Cully put in some more time studying with Daisy. He learned that he must always smile while talking to a Japanese client. That he always had to show the utmost courtesy in voice and gesture. She told him that when a slight hiss came into the speech of a Japanese man, it was a sign of anger, a danger signal. Like the rattle of a snake. Cully remembered that hiss in the speech of Japanese villains in WW II movies. He had thought it was just the mannerisms of the actor.

When the answer to the letter came, it was in the form of a phone call from Mr. Fummiro’s overseas branch office in Los Angeles. Could the Xanadu Hotel have two suites ready for Mr. Fummiro, the president of Japan Worldwide Sales Company and his executive vice-president, Mr. Niigeta? Plus another ten rooms for other members of Mr. Fummiro’s entourage? The call had been routed to Cully since he had been specifically asked for, and he answered yes. Then, wild with joy, he immediately called Daisy, and told her he would take her shopping in the next few days. He told her he would get Mr. Fummiro ten suites to make all the members of his entourage comfortable. She told him not to do so. That it would make Mr. Fummiro lose face if the rest of his party had equal accommodations. Then Cully asked Daisy to go out that very day and fly to Los Angeles to buy kimonos that Mr. Fummiro could wear in the privacy of his suite. She told him that this too would offend Mr. Fummiro, who prided himself on being Westernized, though he surely wore the comfortable Japanese traditional garments in the privacy of his own home. Cully, desperately seeking for every angle to get an edge, suggested that Daisy meet Mr. Fummiro and perhaps act as his interpreter and dinner companion. Daisy laughed and said that would be the last thing Mr. Fummiro would want. He would be extremely uncomfortable with a Westernized Japanese girl observing him in this foreign country.

Cully accepted all her decisions. But one thing he insisted on. He told Daisy to make fresh Japanese soup during Mr. Fummiro’s three-day stay. Cully would come to her apartment early every morning to pick it up and have it delivered to Mr. Fummiro’s suite when he ordered breakfast. Daisy groaned but promised to do so.

Late that afternoon Cully got a call from Gronevelt. “What the hell is a piano doing in Suite Four Ten?” Gronevelt said. “I just got a call from the hotel manager. He said you bypassed channels and caused a hell of a mess.”

Cully explained the arrival of Mr. Fummiro and his special tastes. Gronevelt chuckled and said, “Take my Rolls when you pick him up at the airport.” This was a car he used only for the richest of Texas millionaires or his favorite clients that he personally “Hosted.”

The next day Cully was at the airport with three bellmen from the hotel, the chauffeured Rolls and two Cadillac limos. He arranged for the Rolls and the limousines to go directly onto the flying field so that his clients would not have to go through the terminal. And he greeted Mr. Fummiro as soon as he came down the steps of the plane.

The party of Japanese was unmistakable not only for their features but because of the way they dressed. They were all in black business suits, badly tailored by Western standards, with white shirts and black ties. The ten of them looked like a band of very earnest clerks instead of the ruling board of Japan ’s richest and most powerful business conglomerate.

Mr. Fummiro was also easy to pick out. He was the tallest of the band, very tall in comparison, a good five feet ten. And he was handsome with wide massive features, broad shoulders and jet black hair. He could have passed for a movie star out of Hollywood cast in an exotic role that made him look falsely Oriental. For a brief second the thought flashed through Cully’s mind that this might be an elaborate scam.

Of the others only one stood close to Fummiro. He was slightly shorter than Fummiro, but much thinner. And he had the buckteeth of the caricature Japanese. The remaining men were tiny and inconspicuous. All of them carried elegant black imitation samite briefcases.

Cully extended his hand with utmost assurance to Fummiro and said, “I’m Cully Cross of the Xanadu Hotel. Welcome to Las Vegas.”

Mr. Fummiro flashed a brilliantly polite smile. His white teeth were large and perfect, and he said in only slightly accented English, “Very pleased to meet you.”

Then he introduced the buck-toothed man as Mr. Niigeta, his executive vice-president. He murmured the names of the others, all of whom ceremoniously shook hands with Cully. Cully took their baggage tickets and assured them all luggage would be delivered to their rooms in the hotel.

He ushered them into the waiting cars. He and Fummiro and Niigeta into the Rolls, the others into the Cadillacs. On the way to the hotel he told his passengers that credit had been arranged. Fummiro patted Niigeta’s briefcase and said in his slightly imperfect English, “We have brought you cash money.” The two men smiled at Cully. Cully smiled back. He remembered to smile whenever he spoke as he told them all the conveniences of the hotel and how they could see any show in Vegas. For a fraction of a second he thought about mentioning the companionship of women, but some instinct made him hold back.

At the hotel he led them directly to their rooms and had a desk clerk bring up the registration forms for them to sign. All were on the same floor, Fummiro and Niigeta had adjoining suites with a connecting door. Fummiro inspected the living accommodations for his whole party, and Cully saw the glint of satisfaction in his eyes when he noted that his own suite was by far the best. But Fummiro’s eyes really lit up when he saw the small piano in his suite. He immediately sat down and fingered the keys, listening. Cully hoped that it was in tune. He couldn’t tell, but Fummiro vigorously nodded his head and, smiling broadly and face alight with pleasure, said, “Very good, very kind,” and shook Cully’s hand effusively.

Then Fummiro motioned to Niigeta to open the brief case he was carrying. Cully’s eyes bulged a little. There were neatly banded stacks of currency filling the case. He had no idea how much it might be. “We would like to leave this on deposit in your casino cage,” Mr. Fummiro said. “Then we can just draw the money as we need it for our little vacation.”

“Certainly,” Cully said. Niigeta snapped the case shut, and the two of them went down to the casino, leaving Fummiro alone in his suite to freshen up.

They went into the casino manager’s office, where the money was counted out. It came to five hundred thousand dollars. Cully made sure Niigeta was given the proper receipt and the necessary clerical work done so that the money could be drawn on demand at the tables. The casino manager himself would be on the floor with Cully and would identify Fummiro and Niigeta to the pit bosses and the floor walkers. Then in every corner of the casino the two Japanese merely had to lift a finger and draw chips, then sign a marker. Without fuss, without showing identification. And they would get the royal treatment, the utmost deference. A deference especially pure since it related only to money.

For the next three days Cully was at the hotel early in the morning with Daisy’s breakfast soup. Room service had orders to notify him as soon as Mr. Fummiro called down for his breakfast. Cully would give him an hour to eat and then knock on his door to say good morning. He would find Fummiro already at his piano, playing soulfully, the serving bowl of soup empty on the table behind him. In these morning meetings Cully arranged show tickets and sightseeing trips for Mr. Fummiro and his friends. Mr. Fummiro was always smilingly polite and grateful, and Mr. Niigeta would come through the connecting door from his own suite to greet Cully and compliment him on the breakfast soup, which he had obviously shared. Cully remembered to keep smiling and nodding his head as they did.

Meanwhile, in their three days’ gambling in Vegas the band of ten Japanese terrorized the casinos of Vegas. They would travel together and gamble together at the same baccarat table. When Fummiro had the shoe, they all bet the limit with him on the Bank. They had some hot streaks but luckily not at the Xanadu. They only bet baccarat, and they played with a joie de vivre more Italian than Oriental. Fummiro would whip the sides of the shoe and bang the table when he dealt himself a natural eight or nine. He was a passionate gambler and gloated over winning a two-thousand-dollar bet. This amazed Cully. He knew Fummiro was worth over half a billion dollars. Why should such paltry (though up to the Vegas limit) gambling excite him?

Only once did he see the steel behind Fummiro’s handsome smiling facade. One night Niigeta placed a bet on Player’s when Fummiro had the shoe. Fummiro gave him a long look, eyebrows arching, and said something in Japanese. For the first time Cully caught the slight hissing sound that Daisy had warned him against. Niigeta stuttered something in apology through his buck teeth and immediately switched his money to ride with Fummiro.

The trip was a huge success for everybody. Fummiro and his band went back to Japan ahead over a hundred thousand dollars, but they had lost two hundred thousand to the Xanadu. They had made up for their losses at other casinos. And they had started a legend in Vegas. The band of ten men in their shiny black suits would leave one casino for another down the Strip. They were a frightening sight, marching ten strong into a casino, looking like undertakers come to collect the corpse of the casino’s bankroll. The baccarat pit boss would learn from the Rolls driver where they were going and call that casino to expect them and give them red-carpet treatment. All the pit bosses pooled their information. It was in this way that Cully learned that Niigeta was a horny Oriental and getting laid by top-class hookers at the other hotels. Which meant that for some reason he didn’t want Fummiro to know that he would rather fuck than gamble.

Cully took them to the airport when they left for Los Angeles. He had one of Gronevelt’s antique gold fob watches which he presented to Fummiro with Gronevelt’s compliments. Gronevelt himself had briefly stopped at the Japanese dining table to introduce himself and show the courtesies of the house.

Fummiro was genuinely effusive in his thanks, and Cully went through the usual rounds of handshakes and smiles before they got on their plane. Cully rushed back to the hotel, made a phone call to get the piano moved out of Fummiro’s Suite and then went into Gronevelt’s office. Gronevelt gave him a warm handshake and a congratulatory hug.

“One of the best ‘Host’ jobs I’ve seen in all my years in Vegas,” Gronevelt said. “Where did you find out about that soup business?”

“A little girl named Daisy,” Cully said. “OK if I buy her a present from the hotel?”

“You can go for a grand,” Gronevelt said. “That’s a very nice connection you made with those laps. Keep after them. The special Christmas gifts and invitations. That guy Fummiro is a bust-out gambler if I ever saw one.”

Cully frowned. “I was a little leery about laying on broads,” he said. “You know Fummiro is a hell of a nice guy, and I didn’t want to get too familiar first time out.”

Gronevelt nodded. “You were right. Don’t worry, he’ll be back. And if he wants a broad, he’ll ask for one. You don’t make his kind of money by being afraid to ask.”

– -

Gronevelt as usual was right. Three months later Fummiro was back and at the cabaret show asked about one of the leggy blond dancers. Cully knew she was in action despite being married to a dealer at the Sands. After the show he called the stage manager and asked him if the girl would have a drink with Fummiro and him. It was arranged, and Fummiro asked the girl out for a late-night dinner. The girl looked questioningly at Cully and he nodded. Then he left them alone. He went to his office and called the stage manager to tell him to schedule a replacement for the midnight show. The next morning Cully did not go up to Fummiro’s suite after breakfast was delivered. Later in the day he called the girl at her home and told her she could miss all her shows while Fummiro was in town.

On subsequent trips the pattern remained the same. By this time Daisy had taught one of the Xanadu chefs how to make the Japanese soup, and it was officially listed on the breakfast menu. One thing Cully learned was that Fummiro always watched the reruns of a certain long-lasting western TV show. He loved it. Especially the blond ingenue who played a plucky but very feminine, yet innocent dance hall girl. Cully had a brainstorm. Through his movie contacts he got in touch with the ingenue, who was named Linda Parsons. He flew into Los Angeles, bad lunch with her and told her about Fummiro’s passion for her and her show. She was fascinated by Cully’s stories about Fummiro’s gambling. How he checked into the Xanadu with briefcases holding a million dollars in cash, which he would sometimes lose in three days of baccarat. Cully could see the childish, innocent greed in her eyes. She told Cully that she would love to come to Vegas the next time Fummiro arrived.

A month later Fummiro and Niigeta checked into the Xanadu Hotel for a four-day stay. Cully immediately told Fummiro about Linda Parsons’ wishing to visit him. Fummiro’s eyes lit up. Despite being over forty, he had an incredible boyish handsomeness, which his evident joy made even more charming. He asked Cully to call the girl immediately, and Cully said he would, not mentioning that he had already spoken to her and she had promised to come into town the next afternoon. Fummiro was so excited that he gambled like a madman that night and dropped over three hundred thousand dollars.

The next morning Fummiro went shopping for a new blue suit. For some reason he thought blue suits were the height of American elegance, and Cully arranged with the Sy Devore people at the Sands Hotel to measure and fit him out and specially tailor it for him that day. Cully sent one of his Xanadu “Hosts” with Fummiro to make sure everything went smoothly.

But Linda Parsons caught an early plane and arrived in Vegas before noon. Cully met her plane and brought her to the hotel. She wanted to freshen up for Fummiro’s arrival, so Cully put her in Niigeta’s suite since he assumed that Niigeta was with his chief. It proved to be an almost fatal error.

Leaving her in the suite, Cully went back to his office and tried to locate Fummiro, but he had left the tailor shop and must have stopped off in one of the casinos along the way to gamble. He could not be traced. After about an hour he received a phone call from Fummiro’s suite. It was Linda Parsons. She sounded a little upset. “Could you come down?” she said. “I’m having a language problem with your friend.”

Cully didn’t wait to ask any questions. Fummiro spoke English well enough; for some reason he was pretending not to be able to. Maybe he was disappointed in the girl. Cully had noticed that the ingenue, in person, had more mileage on her than appeared in the carefully photographed TV shows. Or maybe Linda had said or done something that had offended his delicate Oriental sensibilities.

But it was Niigeta who let him into the suite. And Niigeta was preening himself with slightly drunken pride. Then Cully saw Linda Parsons come out of the bathroom clad in a Japanese kimono with golden dragons blazoned all over it.

“Jesus Christ,” Cully said.

Linda gave him a wan smile. “You sure bullshitted me,” she said. “He’s not that shy and he’s not that good-looking and doesn’t even understand English. I hope he’s rich at least.”

Niigeta was still smiling and preening, he even bowed toward Linda as she was talking. He had obviously not understood what she was saying.

“Did you fuck him?” Cully asked almost in despair.

Linda made a face. “He kept chasing me around the suite. I thought at least we’d have a romantic evening together with flowers and violins, but I couldn’t fight him off. So I figured what the hell. Let’s get it over with if he’s such a horny Jap. So I fucked him.”

Cully shook his head and said, “You fucked the wrong Jap.”

Linda looked at him for a moment with a mixture of shock and horror. Then she burst out laughing. It was a genuine laughter that became her. She fell onto the sofa still laughing, her white thigh bared by the flopping of the kimono. For that moment Cully was charmed by her. But then he shook his head. This was serious. He picked up the phone and got Daisy at her apartment. The first thing Daisy said was, “No more soup.” Cully told her to stop kidding around and to get down to the hotel. He told her it was terribly important and she had to be fast. Then he called Gronevelt and explained the situation. (Gronevelt said he would come right down. Meanwhile, Cully was praying that Fummiro would not appear.

Fifteen minutes later Gronevelt and Daisy were in the suite with them. Linda had made Cully and Niigeta and herself a drink from the suite bar, and she still had a grin on her face. Gronevelt was charming with her. “I’m sorry this happened,” he said. “But just be a little patient. We’ll get everything sorted out.” Then he turned to Daisy. “Explain to Mr. Niigeta exactly what happened. That he took Mr. Fummiro’s woman. That she thought he was Mr. Fummiro. Explain that Mr. Fummiro was madly in love with her and went out to buy a new suit for his meeting with her.”

Niigeta was listening intently with the same broad grin he always wore. But now there was a little alarm in his eyes. He asked Daisy a question in Japanese, and Cully noticed the little warning hiss in his speech. Daisy started talking to him rapidly in Japanese. She kept smiling as she talked, but Niigeta’s smile kept fading as her words poured out, and when she finished, he fell to the floor of the suite in a dead faint.

Daisy took charge. She grabbed a whiskey bottle and poured some down Niigeta’s throat, then helped him up and to the sofa. Linda looked at him pityingly. Niigeta was wringing his hands and pouring out speech to Daisy. Gronevelt asked what he was saying. Daisy shrugged. “He says it means the end of his career. He says that Mr. Fummiro will get rid of him. That he made Mr. Fummiro lose too much face.”

Gronevelt nodded. “Tell him to just keep his mouth shut. Tell him I’m going to have him put into the hospital for a day because he’s feeling ill, and then he’ll fly back to Los Angeles for treatment. We’ll make up a story for Mr. Fummiro. Tell him never to tell a soul, and we’ll make sure that Mr. Fummiro never finds out what happened.”

Daisy translated and Niigeta nodded. His polite smile came back, but it was a ghastly grimace. Gronevelt turned to Cully. “You and Miss Parsons wait for Fummiro. Act as if nothing happened. I’ll take care of Niigeta. We can’t leave him here; he’ll faint again when he sees his boss. I’ll ship him out.”

And that was how it worked. When Fummiro finally arrived an hour later, he found Linda Parsons, freshly dressed and made up, waiting for him with Cully. Fummiro was immediately enchanted, and Linda Parsons looked smitten with his handsomeness but as innocently as the ingenue of the western TV movie could be.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “But I took your friend’s suite so that I could be right next to you. That way we can spend more time with each other.”

Fummiro grasped the implication. She was not just some slut who would move right in with him. She would have to fall in love first. He nodded with a broad smile and said, “Of course, of course.” Cully heaved a sigh of relief. Linda was playing her cards just right. He said his good-byes and lingered for a moment in the hall. In a few minutes he could hear Fummiro playing the piano and Linda singing along with him.

In the three days that followed Fummiro and Linda Parsons had the classical, almost geometrically perfect Las Vegas love affair. They were mad for each other and spent each minute together. In bed, at the gambling tables good luck or bad, shopping in the fancy arcades and boutiques of the Strip hotels. Linda loved Japanese soup for breakfast and loved Fummiro’s piano playing. Fummiro loved Linda’s blond paleness, her milk-white and slightly heavy thighs, the longness of her legs, the soft, drooping fullness of her breasts. But most of all, he loved her constant good humor, her gaiety. He confided to Cully that Linda would have made a great geisha. Daisy told Cully that this was the highest compliment a man like Fummiro could give. Fummiro also claimed that Linda gave him luck when he gambled. When his stay was over, he had lost only two hundred thousand of the million in cash, American, that he had deposited in the casino cage. And that included a mink coat, a diamond ring, a palomino horse and a Mercedes car that he had bought for Linda Parsons. He had gotten away cheap. Without Linda the chances were good he would have dropped at least half a million or maybe even the full million at the baccarat tables.

At first Cully thought of Linda as a high-class soft hooker. But after Fummiro left Vegas, he had dinner with her before she took the night plane to Los Angeles. She was really crazy about Fummiro. “He’s such an interesting guy,” she said. “I loved that soup for breakfast and the piano playing. And he was just great in bed. No wonder the Japanese women do everything for their men.”

Cully smiled. “I don’t think he treats his women back home the way he treated you.”

Linda sighed. “Yeah, I know. Still, it was great. You know, he took hundreds of pictures of me with his camera. You’d think I’d be tired of that, but I really loved him doing it. I took pictures of him too. He’s a very handsome man.”

“And very rich,” Cully said.

Linda shrugged. “I’ve been with rich guys before. And I make good money. But he was just like a little kid. I really don’t like the way he gambles, though. God! I could live for ten years on what he loses in one day.”

Cully thought, is that so? And immediately made plans for Fummiro and Linda Parsons never to meet again. But he said with a wry smile, “Yeah, I hate to see him get hurt like that. Might discourage him from gambling.”

Linda grinned at him. “Yeah, I’ll bet,” she said. “But thanks for everything. I really had one of the best times of my life. Maybe I’ll see you again.”

He knew what she was angling for, but instead, he said smoothly, “Anytime you get the yen for Vegas just call me. Everything on the house except chips.”

Linda said a little pensively, “Do you think Fummiro will call me the next time he comes in? I gave him my phone number in LA. I even said I’d fly to Japan on my vacation when we finish taping the show, and he said he’d be delighted and to let him know when I was coming. But he was a little cool about that.”

Cully shook his head. “Japanese men don’t like women to be so aggressive. They’re a thousand years behind the times. Especially a big wheel like Fummiro. Your best bet is to lay back and play it cool.”

She sighed. “I guess so.”

He took her to the airport and kissed her on the cheek before she boarded her plane. “I’ll give you a call when Fummiro comes in again,” he said.

When he got back to the Xanadu, he went up to Gronevelt’s living suite and said wryly, “There’s such a thing as being too good to a player.”

Gronevelt said, “Don’t be disappointed. We didn’t want his whole million this early in the game. But you’re right. That actress is not the girl to connect with a player. For one thing she’s not greedy enough. For another, she’s too straight. And worst of all, she’s intelligent.”

“How do you know?” Cully asked.

Gronevelt smiled. “Am I right?”

“Sure,” Cully said. “I’ll make sure to tout Fummiro off her when he comes in again.”

“You won’t have to,” Gronevelt said. “A guy like him has too much strength. He doesn’t need what she can give him.

Not more than once. Once is fun. But that’s all it was. If it were more, he would have taken better care of her when he left.”

Cully was a little startled. “A Mercedes, a mink coat and a diamond ring? That’s not taking care of her?”

“Nope,” Gronevelt said. And he was right. The next time Fummiro came into Vegas he never asked about Linda Parsons. And this time he lost his million cash in the cage.