Fools die

Book VIII
Chapter 53

I got to Vegas late at night and Gronevelt asked me to have dinner in his suite. We had some drinks and the waiters brought up a table with the dinner we had ordered. I noticed that Gronevelt’s dish had very small portions. He looked older and faded. Cully had told me about his stroke, but I could see no evidence of it other than perhaps he moved more slowly and took more time to answer me when he spoke.

I glanced at the control panel behind his desk which Gronevelt used to pump pure oxygen into the casino. Gronevelt said, “Cully told you about that? He wasn’t supposed to.”

“Some things are too good not to tell,” I said, “and besides, Cully knew I wouldn’t spread it around.”

Gronevelt smiled. “Believe it or not, I use it as an act of kindness. It gives all those losers a little hope and a last shot before they go to bed. I hate to think of losers trying to go to sleep. I don’t mind winners,” Gronevelt said. “I can live with luck, it’s skill I can’t abide. Look, they can never beat the percentage and I have the percentage. That’s true in life as well as gambling. The percentage will grind you into dust.”

Gronevelt was rambling, thinking of his own approaching death. “You have to get rich in the dark,” he said, “you have to live with percentages. Forget about luck, that’s a very treacherous magic.” I nodded my head in agreement. After we had finished eating and were having brandy, Gronevelt said, “I don’t want you to worry about Cully, so I’ll tell you what happened to him. Remember that trip you made with him to Tokyo and Hong Kong to bring out that money? Well, for reasons of his own Cully decided to take another crack at it. I warned him against it. I told him the percentages were bad, that he had been lucky that first trip. But for reasons of his own which I can’t tell you, but which were important and valid at least to him, he decided to go.”

“You had to give the OK,” I said.

“Yes,” Gronevelt said. “It was to my benefit that he go there.”

“So what happened to him?” I asked Gronevelt.

“We don’t know,” Gronevelt said. “He picked up the money in his fancy suitcases, and then he just disappeared. Fummiro thinks he’s in Brazil or Costa Rica living like a king. But you and I know Cully better. He couldn’t live in any place but Vegas.”

“So what do you guess happened?” I asked Gronevelt again.

Gronevelt smiled at me. “Do you know Yeats’s poem? It begins, I think, ‘Many a soldier and sailor lies, far from customary skies,’ and that’s what happened to Cully. I think of him maybe in one of those beautiful ponds behind a geisha house in Japan lying on the bottom. And how he would have hated it. He wanted to die in Vegas.”

“Have you done anything about it?” I said. “Have you notified the police or the Japanese authorities?”

“No,” Gronevelt said. “That’s not possible and I don’t think that you should.”

“Whatever you say is good enough for me,” I said. “Maybe Cully will show up someday. Maybe he’ll walk into the casino with your money as if nothing ever happened.”

“That can’t be,” Gronevelt said. “Please don’t think like that. I would hate it that I left you with any hope. Just accept it. Think of him as another gambler that the percentage ground to dust.” He paused and then said softly, “He made a mistake counting down the shoe.” He smiled.

I knew my answer now. What Gronevelt was telling me really was that Cully had been sent on an errand that Gronevelt had engineered and that it was Gronevelt who had decided its final end. And looking at the man now, I knew that he had done so not out of any malicious cruelty, not out of any desire for revenge, but for what were to him good and sound reasons. That for him it was simply a part of his business.

And so we shook hands and Gronevelt said, “Stay as long as you like. It’s all comped.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But I think I’ll leave tomorrow.”

“Will you gamble tonight?” Gronevelt said.

“I think so,” I said. “Just a little bit.”

“Well, I hope you get lucky,” Gronevelt said.

Before I left the room, Gronevelt walked me to the door and pressed a stack of black hundred-dollar chips in my hand. “These were in Cully’s desk,” Gronevelt said. “I’m sure he’d like you to have them for one last shot at the table. Maybe it’s lucky money.” He paused for a moment. “I’m sorry about Cully, I miss him.”

“So do I,” I said. And I left.