Glenn Cooper - Secret of the Seventh Son

“Mr. Benedict,” the pit boss said. “I wonder if you could come with us?”

Gil Flores moved back and forth with quick little steps like one of the Siberian tigers in Siegfried and Roy’s old act. The meek humiliated man sitting before him could almost feel plumes of hot breath on his bald pate.

“What the fuck were you thinking of,” Flores demanded. “Did you think we wouldn’t spot this, Peter?”

Mark didn’t answer.

“You’re not talking to me? This isn’t a fucking court of law. It’s not like you’re innocent till proven guilty. You are guilty, my friend. You basically fucked me up the ass and I do not like my sex that way.”

A blank, mute stare.

“I think you should answer me. I really think you’d fucking better answer me.”

Mark swallowed hard, a dry, difficult swallow that produced a comical gulp. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did it.”

Gil ran his hand through his thick black hair, mussing himself in exasperation. “How can an intelligent man say ‘I don’t know why I did something’? To me, that doesn’t make any sense. Of course you know why you did it. Why did you do this?”

Mark looked at him finally and started to cry.

“Don’t be crying at me,” Flores warned. “I’m not your fucking mother.” That said, he tossed a box of tissues into Mark’s lap.

He dabbed his eyes. “I had a disappointment today. I was angry. I felt angry and this is how I reacted. It was stupid and I apologize. You can keep the money.”

Flores had almost been mollified until the last concept, which threw him into a tizzy. “I can keep the money? You mean the money you stole from me? This is your solution? To let me keep that which already fucking belongs to me!”

Mark winced at the shouting and needed another tissue.

The desk phone rang.

Flores picked it up and listened for a while. “You sure about this?” After a pause, he continued, “Of course. Absolutely.”

He put the phone down and moved in front of Mark, making him crane his neck. “Okay, Peter, this is how we’re going to handle this.”

“Please don’t report this to the police,” Mark begged. “I’ll lose my job.”

“Would you please shut your mouth and listen to me. This is not a conversation. I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen. That’s the asymmetry that your actions have brought upon you.”

A whisper. “Okay.”

“Number one: you’re permanently banned from the Constellation. If you walk into this casino again you will be arrested and we will seek your prosecution for criminal trespass. Number two: you are leaving with the $8,500 you walked in with. Not a penny more, not a penny less. Number three: you violated a trust and a friendship so I want you to get the fuck out of my office and out of my casino right now.”

Mark blinked at him.

“Why are you still here?”

“You’re not going to call the police?”

“Were you not listening to me?”

“And you’re not going to have me banned at other casinos?”

Flores shook his head in amazement. “Are you giving me ideas? Believe me, I could think of a lot of things I’d like to do to you including sending you to an orthopedic surgeon. Get lost, Peter Benedict.” He spit out the last words: “You are persona non grata.”

From the penthouse, Victor Kemp watched the stoop-shouldered man push himself out of a chair and shuffle out the door, and on other video feeds he followed him, accompanied by security as he made his way back into the casino, where he scanned the planetarium dome a final time in a last-ditch effort to spot Coma Berineces, through the lobby, and out into the parking lot and the authentic night sky.

Kemp freshened his drink and spoke out loud in a rich tenor to the colossal empty living room: “Victor, you will never make a buck trusting people.”

Mark slowly drove his Corvette down the Strip in stop-and-go traffic. It was three hours till midnight and the town was getting busy as people were settling on the evening’s entertainment. He was heading south, the Constellation in his rearview mirror, but he had no particular destination. He tried not to think about what had just happened. He was cast out. Banished. The Constellation was his home away from home and he could never return. What had he done?

He didn’t want to be alone in his house, he wanted to be in a casino bar, with giddy action and loopy slot-machine jingles to distract him. Thank God Flores hadn’t put the word out and blasted his photo to every casino in the state. He had caught a break. So, the question he mulled as he jerked down the Strip was: where should he go? He could drink anywhere. He could play blackjack anywhere. What he needed was a place with the right atmosphere to suit his peculiar temperament-a place like the Constellation, which had an intellectual component, albeit a token one.

He passed Caesars then the Venetian, but they were too fakey and Disneylike. Harrahs and the Flamingo left him cold. The Bellagio was too flash. New York New York, another theme park. He was running out of Strip. The MGM Grand was a possibility. He didn’t love it but he didn’t hate it either. At the corner of Tropicana he almost made a left to swing into the MGM parking lot. But then he saw it and knew it was going to be his new place.

Of course, he had seen it before, thousands of times, since after all it was a Las Vegas landmark. Thirty stories of black glass, the Luxor pyramid rose 350 feet into the desert sky. An obelisk and the Great Sphinx of Giza marked the entrance, but the true marker was at the apex, a spotlight pointing straight upward, piercing the darkness, the brightest beacon on the planet, putting out an insane forty-one gigacandela of luminosity, more than enough to blind an unsuspecting pilot making an approach into McCarran. He drove toward the glass edifice and drank in the mathematical perfection of the triangular faces. His mind filled with the geometrical equations of pyramids and triangles, and then a name tenderly slipped from his lips.

“Pythagoras.”

Before Mark settled into the sedate bar at the casino-level steakhouse, he gave the property a once-over as if he were a prospective house buyer. It wasn’t the Constellation but it punched a lot of tickets. He liked the bold hieroglyph designs on the gold, red, and lapis carpets, the towering lobby re-creation of the temple statues of Luxor, and the museum quality mock-up of Tutankhamen’s tomb. Yes, it was kitschy but this was Vegas, for heaven’s sake, not the Louvre.

He drank his second Heineken and pondered his next move. He had located the high-limit rooms behind frosted glass partitions to the rear of the casino floor. He had money in his pocket and knew that even if he refused to acknowledge the count in his head he could still spend a few diverting hours at the tables. Tomorrow was Friday, a workday, and his alarm would sound at five-thirty. But tonight there was something titillating about being in a new casino; it was like a first date, and he was feeling shy and stimulated.

The bar was nearing capacity, clumps of diners awaiting tables, couples and groups spouting animated conversation and throaty laughter. He had chosen the empty middle stool in a row of three and as the alcohol took effect wondered why the stools on either side of him remained unoccupied. Was he radioactive, tainted? Did these people know he was a failed writer? Had they heard he was a card cheat? Even the bartender had treated him coolly, hardly making the effort for a decent tip. His mood darkened again. He drank the last of his beer fast and tapped the bar for another.

As the alcohol soaked into his brain he had a paranoid notion: what if they also knew his real secret? No, they were clueless, he decided contemptuously. You people have no idea, he thought angrily, no fucking idea. I know things you’ll never know in your whole fucking insignificant lives.