Mario Puzo - Fools die

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Carole never went back to Salt Lake City. She became Cully’s mistress and hung out in his suite although she lived in an apartment house next to the hotel. Cully made her take tennis lessons, dancing lessons. He got one of Xanadu’s classiest showgirls to teach her how to use makeup and dress properly. He arranged modeling jobs in Los Angeles and pretended to be jealous of her. He’d question her about how she spent nights in Los Angeles when she stayed over night and question her relationship with the photographers at the agency.

Carole would smother him with kisses and say, “Honey, I couldn’t make love with anybody but you now.”

And as far as he could tell, she was sincere. He could have checked on her, but it wasn’t important. He let the love affair go for three months, and then one night, when she was in his suite, he said to her, “Gronevelt is really feeling low tonight. He’s had some bad news. I tried to get him to come out for a drink with us, but he’s up in his suite all by himself.” Carole had met Gronevelt in her comings and goings in the hotel and one night had had dinner with him and Cully. Gronevelt had been charming with her in his courtly way. Carole liked him.

“Oh, how sad,” Carole said.

Cully smiled. “I know whenever he sees you, it cheers him up. You’re so beautiful,” he said. “With that great face of yours. Men love an innocent face.” And it was true. Her eyes were spaced wide in a face sprinkled with tiny freckles. She looked like a piece of candy. Her blond hair, tawny yellow, was tousled like a child’s.

“You look just like that kid in the comic strip,” Cully said. “Charlie Brown.” And that became her name in Vegas. She was delighted.

Charlie Brown said, “Older men always liked me. Some of my father’s friends would make passes at me.”

Cully said, “Sure they did. How do you feel about that?”

“Oh, I never got mad,” she said. “I was sort of flattered and I never told my father. They were really nice. They always brought me presents and they never really did anything bad.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Cully said. “Why don’t I call Gronevelt and you go up there and keep him company? I have some things to do down in the casino. Do your best to cheer him up.” He smiled at her, and she looked at him gravely.

“Okay,” she said.

Cully gave her a fatherly kiss. “You know what I mean, don’t you?” he said.

“I know what you mean.” And for a moment Cully, looking at that angelic face, felt a tiny arrow of guilt.

But she gave him a brilliant smile. “I don’t mind,” she said. “I really don’t, and I like him. But are you sure he wants me to?”

And then Cully was reassured. “Honey,” he said, “don’t worry. You just go up and I’ll give him a call. He’ll be expecting you, and you just be your natural self. He’ll absolutely love you. Believe me.” And as he said that, he reached for the phone.

He called Gronevelt’s suite and heard Gronevelt’s amused voice say, “If you’re sure she wants to come up, by all means. She’s a lovely girl.”

And Cully hung up the phone and said, “Come on, honey. I’ll take you up there.”

They went to Gronevelt’s suite. Cully introduced her as Charlie Brown and could see Gronevelt was delighted with the name. Cully made them all drinks and they sat around and talked. Then Cully excused himself, and said that he had to go down to the casino and left them together.

He didn’t see Charlie Brown that night at all and knew she had spent it with Gronevelt. The next day, when he saw Gronevelt, he said, “Was she OK?”

And Gronevelt said, “She was fine. Lovely, lovely girl. Sweet girl. I tried to give her some money, but se wouldn’t take it.”

“Well,” Cully said, “you know she’s a young girl. She’s a little new at this. But was she OK with you?”

Gronevelt said, “Fine.”

“Should I make sure that you could see her whenever you want to?”

“Oh, no,” Gronevelt said. “She’s a little too young for me, I’m a little uncomfortable with girls that young, especially when they don’t take money. In fact, why don’t you buy her a present for me in the jewelry shop?”

When Cully got back to his office, he called Charlie Brown’s apartment. “Did you have a good time?” Cully said.

“Oh, he was just great,” Charlie Brown said. “He was such a gentleman.”

Cully began to be a little worried. “What do you mean he was such a gentleman? Didn’t you do anything?”

“Oh, sure we did,” Charlie Brown said. “He was great. You wouldn’t think someone that old could be so great. I’ll cheer him up anytime he wants.”

Cully made a date with her to have dinner that night, and when he hung up the phone, he leaned back his chair and tried to think it out. He had hoped Gronevelt would fall in love and he could use her as a weapon against Gronevelt. But somehow Gronevelt had sensed all this. There was no way to get to Gronevelt through women. He had had too many of them. He had seen too many of them corrupted. He did not know the meaning of virtue and so could not fall in love. He could not fall in love with lust because it was too easy. “You don’t have a percentage going with you against women,” Gronevelt said. “You should never give away your edge.”

And so Cully thought, well, maybe not with Gronevelt, but there were plenty of other wheels in town that Charlie could wreck. At first he had thought that it was her lack of technical facility. After all, she was a young girl and not an expert. But in the past few months he had taught her a few things and she was much better than when he had first had her. OK. He couldn’t get Gronevelt, which would have been ideal for all of them, and now he would have to use her in a more general way. So in the months that followed Cully “turned her out” He fixed her up with weekend dates with the biggest high rollers that came to Vegas, and he taught her never to take money from them and not always to go to bed with them. He explained his reasoning to her. “You’re looking for the big shot only. Someone who’s going to fall in love with you and going to lay plenty of money on you and going to buy you plenty of presents. But they won’t do that if they think they can lay a couple of hundred on you just for screwing you. You’re going to have to play it like a soft, soft hustler. In fact, it could be a good idea sometimes not to screw them the first night. Just like the old days. But if you do, just make believe it’s because they overpowered you.”

He was not surprised that Charlie agreed to do everything that he told her. He had on the first night detected the masochism so often found in beautiful women. He was familiar with that. The lack of self-worth, the desire to please someone that they thought really cared about them. It was, of course, a pimp’s trick, and Cully was no pimp, but he was doing this for her good.

Charlie Brown had another virtue. She could eat more than any person he had ever met. The first time she had let herself go Cully had been amazed. She had eaten a steak with a baked potato, a lobster with french fried potatoes, cake, ice cream, then helped polish off Cully’s plate. He would show off her eating qualities, and some of the men, some of the high rollers, were infatuated by this quality in her. They would love to take her to dinner and watch her eat enormous quantities of food, which never seemed to distress her or make her less hungry and never added an inch of fat to her frame.

Charlie acquired a car, some horses to ride; she bought the town house in which she was renting an apartment and she gave her money to Cully to bank for her. Cully opened up a special guardian account. He had his own tax adviser do her taxes. He put her on the casino payroll of the hotel so that she could show a source of income. He never took a penny from her. But in a few years she fucked every powerful casino manager in Vegas, plus some of the hotel owners. She fucked high rollers from Texas, New York and California, and Cully was thinking of springing her on Fummiro. But when he suggested that to Gronevelt, Gronevelt, without giving any reason, said, “No, not Fummiro.”