Гарольд Роббинс - The Raiders

Lansky pursed his fleshy lips and frowned. He lit another cigarette. "You don't have to build a hotel to have a casino," he said.

"I know. If you invest two hundred thousand, they'll give you a gaming license. Surely you have two hundred thousand, Mr. Lansky."

"My money is tied up in a place called the Montmartre Club," said Lansky. "Ask around about it."

"I already have," said Bat. "You attract the high rollers because they know the Montmartre is run to the Meyer Lansky standards. Serious gamblers respect you and your club."

"But they leave my tables to go get something to eat, to see a show, to get laid. I can't afford to build a big swimming pool for their wives to lie around while they play. Look, Mr. Cord —"

"Call me Bat."

"Okay. And call me Meyer. You know the origin of the name Meyer? It comes from the name of a rabbi called Mei-or, meaning 'the bringer of light.' I was born Meier Suchowljanski. When we arrived in New York forty years ago, my father changed me from Meier to Meyer and changed us all from Suchowljanski to Lansky."

Bat smiled. "I am Jonas Enrique Raul Cord y Batista," he said.

"Anyway, Bat, I have an idea. I'd like to install a casino in a hotel like the Floresta — which is a hotel , with pool and shops and all that. I could attract the serious gamblers the way I do at the Montmartre. I'd also get the tourists, who'd know they were playing honest games."

"The way the new Vegas hotels work," said Bat.

"Exactly. Ben Siegel saw the connection. The difference is that Havana is a tropical paradise, not a dusty desert town. What's more important, Chicago and everything east of it are a lot closer to Havana than they are to Las Vegas."

"Are you making a proposition, Meyer?"

"A million dollars will build a gaming room and a show room on the Floresta," said Lansky. "It's a more modest operation, but the investment can be recovered in four years, maybe less."

"The President wants Cord Hotels, Incorporated, to build a casino-hotel."

"Tell him you want to test the waters by investing in the Floresta," said Lansky. "If that's a winning proposition, you'll do something more. I can assure you he'll welcome an investment of one million."

"I want to see the Floresta," said Bat. "I'll want to talk to President Batista."

"How much of a commitment did you make to him?" Jonas asked. They sat over lunch at the Four Seasons. Bat had returned from Mexico and was reporting to his father on his talks with Fulgencio Batista and Meyer Lansky.

"I made no commitment," said Bat. "I had no authority to make a commitment."

"But you think it may not be a bad deal?"

"It may not. The Floresta is known for quiet, sumptuous rooms, good food, and an interesting swimming pool set partly in living rock and surrounded with flowering shrubs and palms. Americans stay there. They come back to it as a refuge after a night in the gaudy, flashy places. Lansky means to keep it that way. The casino and show room would be in a separate wing. He wants to do higher-quality shows than are done at most of the Havana clubs. And of course the gambling will be honest."

"Do you trust Lansky?"

Jonas lifted his glass and took a sip of Jack Daniel's Black Label. It impressed Bat as a strange thing to be drinking with the famous Four Seasons crab cakes, but that was not the only strange habit his father had.

"No, and I don't trust Great-Uncle Fulgencio either. But let me tell you something about Meyer Lansky. In this country his reputation is that he's a gangster and nothing but. You know — 'the Chairman of the Board.' He —"

"It's exaggerated," said Jonas.

"When the government wanted the cooperation of Lucky Luciano in 1942, they used Lansky as the go-between," said Bat.

"I doubt that."

Bat shrugged. "You can look it up. I did."

"Did your homework, huh?"

"In the States," Bat continued, "Lansky is known as a gangster. In Cuba he's thought of as a businessman. And not just by Fulgencio Batista."

"He couldn't get a Nevada gaming license," said Jonas. "But for all his reputation, he has no criminal record. In his entire life he's spent only three months in jail."

"He couldn't be a silent partner in the Floresta," said Bat. "It would be his reputation that would attract the high rollers."

"We wouldn't buy the hotel, I assume," said Jonas.

"No. We'd build the wing for the casino and show room. The owners of the hotel would lease the wing to us. But we'd pay no cash for the lease for, say, fifty months, until we got our investment back."

"Who owns the Floresta?" asked Jonas.

Bat grinned. "A real estate group in Havana. But if this deal goes through, ten percent of it will be owned by my Great-Uncle Fulgencio."

"Insurance?" asked Jonas.

"Whatever you want to call it. I'm glad I went to Cuba. It was worth the trip to meet Lansky. He told me something we are going to have to think about."

"What?"

"Our friend Morris Chandler has been talking to some pretty rough characters. For one, Jimmy Hoffa went to Vegas and met with him."

"I know," said Jonas. "Angie saw him and called me."

"That's not the half of it," said Bat. "Lansky says he's been in touch with men like Murray the Camel in Chicago and Anthony Provenzano in New Jersey. If he's working for us, why would he contact people like that?"

"Because Nevada Smith is dead," said Jonas. He put down a gulp of whiskey. "That's why."

"Meaning?"

"He and Nevada were close. Besides, I think Nevada had something on him. With Nevada gone — Chandler resented my taking over The Seven Voyages. He doesn't like the way I make him run it. I'd guess he wants to muscle us out."

" Buy us out?"

Jonas shook his head. "Muscle us out. Your assignment is to get out to Las Vegas and take over the hotel. The Cuban thing is a sideshow. Where I want you is Las Vegas."

Bat nodded as he lifted a forkful of crab cake to his mouth. "Las Vegas? What am I going to be doing in Las Vegas?"

"As of today you're a vice president of Cord Hotels," he said. "The corporate headquarters is the fifth floor of The Seven Voyages."

Bat shook his head. "Wait a minute. Our deal is that I learn the business, the overall business, not just the hotel business. In New York or Los Angeles."

"I ran the overall business from the fifth floor of The Seven Voyages for months," said Jonas.

"But —"

"What do you think I'm doing? Sending you into exile? We'll be in touch every day."

"About the hotel business."

"Right now, about the hotel business chiefly. Jesus Christ, you've got to start somewhere! Right now, that's where I need you. I'm running a business. You're my son, and I want you with me. But you've got to go where I need you. Learn the business? Okay, learn the hotel business first. Then — Well, each piece in time."

Bat shook his head. "This isn't the deal we made. Las Vegas, for Christ's sake?"

"As a vice president of Cord Hotels, Incorporated, your salary will be a hundred thousand," said Jonas as he lifted his glass to sip bourbon.

"You can be very persuasive," said Bat. "Said another way, you have ways of getting what you want out of people."

Bat arrived in Las Vegas on an Inter-Continental corporate Beech flown from Los Angeles. From the moment he saw the town, he didn't much like it. It was what Meyer Lansky had called it: a dusty desert town. Only Lansky hadn't added that it was a pretentious dusty desert town. Without Nevada's laws allowing casino gambling, it would be nothing.

Though he hadn't said so to anyone, he hadn't much cared for the Cord ranch either, or for the land around it. As somebody in the army had put it, "Y' seen one boondocks, y' seen 'em all."