Fools die

Book VI
Chapter 34

Over the years Cully Cross had counted down the shoe perfectly and finally caught the loaded winning hand. He was really Xanadu Two, loaded with “juice,” and had full power of “The Pencil.” A “Gold Pencil.” He could comp everything, not only room, food and beverage, the standard RFB, but air fares from all over the world, top-price call girls, the power to make customer markers disappear. He could even dispense free gambling chips to the top-rank entertainers who played the Xanadu Hotel.

During those years Gronevelt had been more like a father to him than a boss. Their friendship had become stronger. They had battled against hundreds of scams together, repelled the pirates, inside and out, who tried to buccaneer the Hotel Xanadu’s sacred bankroll. Claim agents reneging on markers, magnet toters trying to empty slot machines against all the laws of chance, junket masters who sneaked in bad-credit artists with phony ID’s, house dealers dumping out, keno ticket forgers, computer boys at blackjack tables, dice switchers by the thousand. Cully and Gronevelt had fought them off.

During those years Cully had won Gronevelt’s respect with his flair for attracting new customers to the hotel. He had organized a worldwide backgammon tournament to be held at the Xanadu. He had kept a million-dollar-a-year customer by giving him a new Rolls-Royce every Christmas. The hotel charged the car off to public relations, a tax deduction. The customer was happy to receive a sixty-thousand-dollar car which would have cost him a hundred eighty thousand dollars in tax dollars, a twenty percent cut of his losses. But Cully’s finest coup had been with Charles Hemsi. Gronevelt bragged about his protege’s cunning for years after that.

Gronevelt had had his reservations about Cully’s buying up all of Hemsi’s markers around Vegas for ten cents on the dollar. But he had given Cully his head. And sure enough Hemsi came to Vegas at least six times a year and always stayed at the Xanadu. On one trip he had had a fantastic roll at the crap table and won seventy thousand dollars. He used that money to pay off some of his markers, and so the Xanadu was already ahead of the game. But then Cully showed his genius.

On one trip Charlie Hemsi mentioned that his son was being married to a girl in Israel. Cully was overjoyed for his friend and insisted on the Hotel Xanadu’s picking up the whole tab for the wedding. Cully told Hemsi that the Hotel Xanadu jet plane (another Cully idea, the plane bought to steal business from the junkets) would fly the whole wedding party to Israel and pay for their hotels there. The Xanadu would pay for the wedding feast, the orchestra, all expenses. There was only one catch. Since the wedding guests were from all over the United States, they would have to board the plane in Las Vegas. But no sweat, they could all stay at the Xanadu, free of charge.

Cully calculated the cost to the hotel at two hundred thousand dollars. He convinced Gronevelt that it would pay off, and if it didn’t, they at least would have Charlie Hemsi and son as players for life. But it proved to be a great “Host” coup. Over a hundred wedding guests came to Vegas, and before they left for the wedding in Israel, they left nearly a million dollars in the hotel’s cashier cage.

– -

But today Cully planned to present Gronevelt with an even greater money-making scheme, one that would force Gronevelt and his partners to name him general manager of the Hotel Xanadu, the most powerful open official position next to Gronevelt. He was waiting for Fummiro. Fummiro had piled up markers in his last two trips; he was having trouble paying. Cully knew why and Cully had the solution. But he knew that he had to let Fummiro take the initiative, that he would shy away if Cully himself suggested the solution. Daisy had taught him that.

Fummiro finally came to town, played his piano in the morning and drank his soup for breakfast. He wasn’t interested in women. He was intent on gambling, and in three days he had lost all his cash and signed another three hundred thousand in markers. Before he left, he summoned Cully to his hotel room. Fummiro was very polite and just a little nervous. He didn’t want to lose face. He was afraid that Cully would think that he did not wish to pay his gambling debts, but very carefully he explained to Cully that though he had plenty of money in Tokyo and the million dollars was a mere trifle to him, the problem was getting the cash out of Japan, turning the Japanese yen into American dollars.

“So, Mr. Cross,” he said to Cully, “if you could come to Japan, I will pay you there in yen, and then I’m sure that you can find a way to get the money to America.”

Cully wanted to assure Fummiro of the hotel’s complete trust and faith in him. “Mr. Fummiro,” he said, “there’s really no rush, your credit is good. The million dollars can wait until the next time you can come to Vegas. It’s really n~ problem. We’re always delighted to have you here. Your company is such a pleasure to us. Please don’t concern yourself. Just let me put myself at your service, and now, if there’s anything you would like, please tell me and I will arrange anything you wish. It’s an honor for us to have you owe us this money.”

Fummiro’s handsome face relaxed. He was not dealing with a barbarian American, but one who was almost as polite as a Japanese. He said, “Mr. Cross, why don’t you come to visit me? We will have a wonderful time in Japan. I will take you to a geisha house, you will have the best of food, the best of liquor, the best of women. You will be my personal guest and I can repay you for some of the hospitality you have always shown me and I can give you the million dollars for the hotel.”

Cully knew that the Japanese government had a tough law about smuggling yen out of the country. Fummiro was proposing a criminal act. He waited and just nodded his head, remembering to smile continuously.

Fummiro went on. “I would like to do something for you. I trust you with all my heart, and that is the only reason I am saying this to you. My government is very strict on the exporting of yen. I would like to get my own money out. Now when you pick up a million for the Hotel Xanadu, if you could take one million out for me and deposit it in your cage, you receive fifty thousand dollars.”

Cully felt the sweet satisfaction of counting down the shoe perfectly. He said sincerely, “Mr. Fummiro, I will do it out of my friendship for you. But of course, I must speak to Mr., Gronevelt.”

“Of course,” Fummiro said. “I will also speak to him.”

Immediately afterward Cully called Gronevelt’s suite and was told by his special operator that Gronevelt was busy and not taking any calls that afternoon. He left a message that the matter was urgent. He waited in his office. Three hours later the phone rang, and it was Gronevelt telling him to come down to the suite.

Gronevelt had changed a great deal over the last few years. The red had drained from his skin, leaving it a ghostly white. His face was like that of a fragile hawk. He had very suddenly become old, and Cully knew that be rarely had a girl to while away his afternoons. He seemed more and more immersed in his books and left most of the detail of running the hotel to Cully. But every evening he still made his tour of the casino floor, checking all the pits, watching the dealers and the stickmen and the pit bosses with his hawk like eyes. He still had that capacity to draw the electric energy of the casino into his small-framed body.

Gronevelt was dressed to go down to the casino floor. He fiddled with the control panel that would flood the casino pits with pure oxygen. But it was still too early in the evening. He would push the button sometime in the early-morning hours when the players were tiring and thinking of going to bed. Then he would revive them as if they were puppets. It was only in the past year that be had the oxygen controls wired directly to his suite.

Gronevelt ordered dinner to be brought up to the suite. Cully was tense. Why had Gronevelt kept him waiting for three hours? Had Fummiro spoken to him first? And he knew instantly that this was what had happened. He felt resentment; the two of them were so strong, he was not yet at their eminence and so they had consulted together without him.

Cully said smoothly, “I guess Fummiro told you about his idea. I told him I’d have to check it out with you.”

Gronevelt smiled at him. “Cully, my boy, you’re a wonder. Perfect. I couldn’t have done better myself. You let that Jap come to you. I was afraid you might get impatient with all those markers piling up in the cage.”

“That’s my girlfriend Daisy,” Cully said. “She made a Japanese citizen out of me.”

Gronevelt frowned a little. “Women are dangerous,” he said. “Men like you and I can’t afford to let them get too close. That’s our strength. Women can get you killed over nothing. Men are more sensible and more trustworthy.” He sighed. “Well, I don’t have to worry about you in that area. You spread the Honeybees around pretty good.” He sighed, gave his head a little shake and returned to business.

“The only trouble with this whole deal is that we’ve never found a safe way to get our money out of Japan. We have a fortune in markers there, but I wouldn’t give a nickel for them. We have a whole set of problems. One, if the Japanese government catches you, you’ll do years in the clink. Two, once you pick up the money you’ll be a target for hijackers. Japanese criminals have very good intelligence. They’ll know right away when you pick up the money. Three, two million dollars in yen will be a big, big suitcase. In Japan they X-ray baggage. How do you get it turned into U.S. dollars once you get it out? How do you get into the United States, and then, though I think I can guarantee you it won’t happen, bow about hijackers on this end? People in this hotel will know we are sending you there to pick up the money. I have partners, but I can’t guarantee the discretion of all of them. Also, by sheer accident, you could lose the money. Cully, here’s the position you will be in. If you lose the money, we will always suspect you of being guilty unless you get killed.”

Cully said, “I thought of all that. I checked the cage, and I see we have at least another million or two million dollars in markers with other Japanese players. So I would be bringing out four million dollars.”

Gronevelt laughed. “In one trip that would be an awful gamble. Bad percentage.”

Cully said, “Well, maybe one trip, maybe two trips, maybe three trips. First I have to find out how it could be done.”

Gronevelt said, “You’re taking all the risk in every way. As far as I can see, you’re getting nothing out of it. If you win, you win nothing. If you lose, you lose everything. If you take a position like that, then the years I’ve spent teaching you have been wasted. So why do you want to do this? There’s no percentage.”

Cully said, “Look, I’ll do it on my own without help, I’ll take all the blame if it goes wrong. But if I bring back four million dollars, I would expect to be named general manager of the hotel. You know that I’m your man. I would never go against you.”

Gronevelt sighed, “It’s an awful gamble on your part. I hate to see you do it.”

“Then it’s OK?” Cully asked. He tried to keep the jubilation out of his voice. He didn’t want Gronevelt to know how eager he was.

“Yeah,” Gronevelt said. “But just pick up Fummiro’s two million, never mind the money the other people owe us. If something goes wrong, then we only lose the two million.”

Cully laughed, playing the game. “We only lose one million, the other million is Fummiro’s. Remember?”

Gronevelt said completely serious, “It’s all ours. Once that money is in our cage, Fummiro will gamble it away. That’s the strength of this deal.”

– -

The next morning Cully took Fummiro to the airport in Gronevelt’s Rolls-Royce. He had an expensive gift for Fummiro, an antique coin bank made in the days of the Italian Renaissance. The bulk was filled with gold coins. Fummiro was ecstatic, but Cully sensed a sly amusement beneath his effusions of delight.

Finally Fummiro said, “When are you coming to Japan?”

“Between two weeks and a month from now,” Cully said. “Even Mr. Gronevelt will not know the exact day. You understand why.”

Fummiro nodded. “Yes, you must be very careful. I will have the money waiting.”

When Cully got back to the hotel, he put in a call to Merlyn in New York. “Merlyn, old buddy, how about keeping me company on a trip to Japan, all expenses paid and geisha girls thrown in?”

There was a long pause on the other end, and then he heard Merlyn’s voice say, “Sure.”