Mario Puzo: Fools die

Cully said softly. “They only have fifteen minutes to go. Stay out of it.” Baccarat closed at 3 AM.

And then one of the Saints in black tie called out to Jordan, “We’re making up the last shoe, Mr. J. A Banker shoe.” He laughed. Jordan could see the cards all dumped out on the table, blue-backed, then scooped to be stacked before the shuffle, their inner white pale faces showing.

Jordan said, “How about you two guys coming in with me? I’ll put up the money and we’ll bet the limit in each chair.” Which meant that with the two-thousand limit Jordan would be betting six thousand on each hand.

“Are you crazy?” Cully said. “You can go to hell.”

“Just sit there,” Jordan said. “I’ll give you ten percent of everything your chair wins.”

“No,” Cully said and walked away from him and leaned against the baccarat railing.

Jordan said, “Merlyn, sit in a chair for me?”

Merlyn the Kid smiled at him and said quietly, “Yeah, I’ll sit in the chair.”

“You get ten percent,” Jordan said.

“Yeah, OK,” Merlyn said. They both went through the gate and sat down. Diane had the newly made up shoe, and Jordan sat down in the chair beside her so that he could get the shoe next. Diane bent her head to him.

“Jordy, don’t gamble anymore,” she said. He didn’t bet on her hand as she dealt blue cards out of the shoe. Diane lost, lost her casino’s twenty dollars and lost the bank and passed the shoe on to Jordan.

Jordan was busy emptying out all the outside pockets of his Vegas Winner sports jacket. Chips, black and green, hundred-dollar notes. He placed a stack of bills in front of Merlyn’s chair six. Then he took the shoe and placed twenty black chips in the Banker’s slot. “You too,” he said to Merlyn. Merlyn counted twenty hundred-dollar bills from the stack in front of him and placed them on his Banker’s slot.

The croupier held up one palm high to halt Jordan ’s dealing. Looked around the table to see that everyone had made his bet. His palm fell to a beckoning hand, and he sang out to Jordan, “A card for the Player.”

Jordan dealt out the cards. One to the croupier, one to himself. Then another one to the croupier and another one to himself. The croupier looked around the table and then threw his two cards to the man betting the highest amount on Player’s. The man peeked at his cards cautiously and then smiled and flung his two cards face up. He had a natural, invincible nine. Jordan tossed his cards face up without even looking at them. He had two picture cards. Zero. Bust-out. Jordan passed the shoe to Merlyn. Merlyn passed the shoe on to the next player. For one moment Jordan tried to halt the shoe, but something about Merlyn’s face stopped him. Neither of them spoke.

The golden brown box worked itself slowly around the table. It was chopping. Banker won. Then Player. No consecutive wins, for either. Jordan riding the Banker all the way, pressing, had lost over ten thousand dollars from his own pile, Merlyn still refusing to bet. Finally Jordan had the shoe once again.

He made his bet, the two-thousand-dollar limit. He reached over into Merlyn’s money and stripped off a sheaf of bills and threw them onto the Banker’s slot. He noticed briefly that Diane was no longer beside him. Then he was ready. He felt a tremendous surge of power, that he could will the cards to come out of the shoe as he wished them to.

Calmly and without emotion Jordan hit twenty-four straight passes. By the eighth pass the railing around the baccarat table was crowded and every gambler at the table was betting Bank, riding with luck. By the tenth pass the croupier in the money slot reached down and pulled out the special five-hundred-dollar chips. They were a beautiful creamy white threaded with gold.

Cully was pressed against the rail, watching, Diane standing with him. Jordan gave them a little wave. For the first time he was excited. Down at the other end of the table a South American gambler shouted, “Maestro,” as Jordan hit his thirteenth pass. And then the table became strangely silent as Jordan pressed on.

He dealt effortlessly from the shoe, his hands seemed to flow. Never once did a card stumble or slip as he passed it out from his hiding place in the wooden box. Never did he accidentally show a card’s pale white face. He flipped over his own cards with the same rhythmic movement each time, without looking, letting the head croupier call numbers and hits. When the croupier said, “A card for the Player,” Jordan slipped it out easily with no emphasis to make it good or bad. When the croupier called, “A card for the Banker,” again Jordan slipped it out smoothly and swiftly, without emotion. Finally going for the twenty-fifth pass, he lost to Player’s, the Player’s hand being played by the croupier because everyone was betting Bank.

Jordan passed the shoe on to Merlyn, who refused it and passed it on to the next chair. Merlyn, too, had stacks of gold five-hundred-dollar chip sin front of him. Since they had won on Bank, they had to pay the five percent house commission. The croupier counted out the commission plaques against their chair numbers. It was over five thousand dollars. Which meant that Jordan had won a hundred thousand dollars on that one hot hand. And every gambler around the table had bailed out.

Both laddermen high up in their chairs were on the phone calling the casino manager and the hotel owner with the bad news. An unlucky night at the baccarat table was one of the few serious dangers to the casino profit margin. Not that it meant anything in the long run, but an eye was always kept on natural disasters. Gronevelt himself came down from his penthouse suite and quietly stepped into the baccarat enclosure, standing in the corner with the pit boss, watching. Jordan saw him out of the corner of his eye and knew who he was, Merlyn had pointed him out one day.

The shoe traveled around the table and remained a coyly Banker’s shoe. Jordan made a little money. Then he had the shoe in his hand again.

This time effortlessly and easily, his hands balletic, he accomplished every baccarat player’s dream. He ran out the shoe with passes. There were no more cards left. Jordan had stack on stack of white gold chips in front of him.

Jordan threw four of the gold and white chips to the head croupier. “For you, gentlemen,” he said.

The baccarat pit boss said, “Mr. Jordan, why don’t you just sit here and we’ll get all this money turned into a check?”

Jordan stuffed the huge wad of hundred-dollar bills into his jacket, then the black hundred-dollar chips, leaving endless stacks of gold and white five-hundred-dollar chips on the table. “You can count them for me,” he said to the pit boss. He stood up to stretch his legs, and then he said casually, “Can you make up another shoe?”

The pit boss hesitated and turned to the casino manager standing with Gronevelt. The casino manager shook his head for a no. He had Jordan tabbed as a degenerate gambler. Jordan would surely stay in Vegas until he lost. But tonight was his hot night. And why buck him on his hot night? Tomorrow the cards would fall differently. He could not be lucky forever and then his end would be swift. The casino manager had seen it all before. The house had an infinity of nights and every one of them with the edge, the percentage. “Close the table,” the casino manager said.

Jordan bowed his head. He turned to look at Merlyn and said, “Keep track, you get ten percent of your chair’s win,” and to his surprise he saw a look almost of grief in Merlyn’s eyes and Merlyn said, “No.”

The money croupiers were counting up Jordan ’s gold chips and stacking them so that the laddermen, the pit boss and the casino manager could also keep track of their count. Finally they were finished. The pit boss looked up and said with reverence, “You got two hundred and ninety thousand dollars here, Mr. J. You want it all in a check?” Jordan nodded. His inside pockets were still lumpy with other chips, paper money. He didn’t want to turn them in.