Mario Puzo - Fools die

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.