I could use an assistant. Anytime you want to move your family to Vegas you got a good job with me.”
“Thanks,” I said. I was really touched. At the same time I wondered about his affection for me. I knew he was not a man who cared about anyone easily. I said, “About the job I can’t answer you now. But I came out here to ask a favor. If you can’t do it for me, I’ll understand. Just tell me straight, and whatever the answer is, we’ll at least have a couple of days together and have a good time.”
“You got it,” Cully said. “Whatever it is.”
I laughed. “Wait until you hear,” I said.
For a moment Cully seemed angry. “I don’t give a shit what it is. You got it. If I can do it, you got it.”
I told him about the whole graft operation. That I was taking bribes and that I had thirty-three grand in my jacket that I had to stash in case the whole operation blew up. Cully listened to me intently, watching my face. At the end he was smiling broadly.
“What the hell are you smiling at?” I said.
Cully laughed. “You sounded like a guy confessing to a priest that he committed murder. Shit, what you’re doing everybody does if he ever gets the chance. But I have to admit I’m surprised. I can’t picture you telling a guy he has to pay blackmail.”
I could feel my face getting red. “I never asked any of those guys for money,” I said. “They always come to me. And I never take the money upfront. After I do it for them, they can pay me what they promised or they can stiff me. I don’t give a shit.” I grinned at him. “I’m a soft hustler, not a hooker.”
“Some crook,” Cully said. “First thing, I think you’re too worried. It sounds like the kind of operation that can go on indefinitely. And even if it blows up, the worst that can happen to you is that you lose your job and get a suspended sentence. But you’re right, you have to stash the dough in a good place. Those Feds are real bloodhounds, and when they find it, they’ll take it all away from you.”
I was interested in the first part of what he said. One of my nightmares was that I would go to jail and Vallie and the kids would be without me. That’s why I had kept everything from my wife. I didn’t want her to worry. Also, I didn’t want her to think less of me. She had an image of me as the pure, uncorrupted artist.
“What makes you think I won’t go to jail if I'm caught?” I asked Cully.
“It’s a white-collar crime,” Cully said. “Hell, you didn’t stick up a bank or shoot some poor bastard store owner or defraud a widow. You just took dough from some young punks who were trying to get an edge and cut down their Army time. Jesus, that’s some unbelievable scam. Guys paying to get into the Army. Nobody would believe it. A jury would laugh themselves sick.”
“Yeah, it strikes me funny too,” I said.
Cully was all business suddenly. “OK, tell me what you want me to do right now. It’s done. And if the Feds nail you, promise you’ll call me right away. I'll get you out. OK?” He smiled at me affectionately.
I told him my plan. That I would turn in my cash for chips a thousand dollars at a time and gamble but for small stakes. I’d do that in all the casinos in Vegas, and then, when I cashed in my chips for cash, I would just take a receipt and leave the money in the cashier’s cages as a gambling credit. The FBI would never think to look in the casinos. And the cash receipts I could stash with Cully and pick up whenever I needed some ready money.
Cully smiled at me. “Why don’t you let me hold your money? Don’t you trust me?”
I knew he was kidding, but I handled the crack seriously. “I thought about that,” I said. “But what if something happens to you? Like a plane crash. Or you get your gambling bug back? I trust you now. But how do I know you won’t go crazy tomorrow or next year?”
Cully nodded his head approvingly. Then he asked, “What about your brother, Artie? You and him are so close. Can’t he hold the money for you?”
“I can’t ask him to do that for me,” I said.
Cully nodded again. “Yeah, I guess you can’t. He’s too honest, right?”
“Right,” I said. I didn’t want to go into any long explanation about how I felt. “What’s wrong with my plan? Don’t you think it’s any good?”
Cully got up and began pacing up and down the room. “It’s not bad,” he said. “But you don’t want to have credits in all the casinos. That looks fishy. Especially if the money stays there a long time. That is really fishy. People only leave their money in the cage until they gamble it away or they leave Vegas. Here’s what you do. Buy chips in all the casinos and check them into our cage here. You know, about three or four times a day cash in for a few thousand and take a receipt. So all your cash receipts will be in our cage. Now if the Feds do nose around or write to the hotel, it has to go through me. And I’ll cover you.”
I was worried about him. “Won’t that get you into trouble?” I asked him.
Cully sighed patiently. “I do that stuff all the time. We get a lot of inquiries from Internal Revenue. About how much guys have lost. I just send them old files. There’s no way they can check me out. I make sure files don’t exist that will help them.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I don’t want my cage record to disappear. I won’t be able to collect on my receipts.”
Cully laughed. “Come on, Merlyn,” he said. “You’re just a two-bit bribe taker. The Feds don’t come in here with a gang of auditors for you. They send a letter or subpoena. Which they will never even think of doing, by the way. Or look at it another way. If you spend the dough and they find out your income exceeded what you earned on your pay, you can say you won it gambling. They can’t prove otherwise.”
“And I can’t prove I did,” I said.
“Sure you can,” Cully said. “I’ll testify for you, and so will a pit boss and a stickman at the crap table. That you had a tremendous roll with the dice. So don’t worry about the deal no matter how it falls. Your only problem is where to hide the casino cage receipts.”
We both thought that over for a while. Then Cully came up with an answer. “Do you have a lawyer?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “but my brother, Artie, has a friend who is a lawyer.”
“Then make out your will,” Cully said. “In your will you put in that you have cash deposits in this hotel to the amount of thirty-three thousand dollars and you leave it to your wife. No, never mind your brother’s lawyer. We’ll use a lawyer I know here in Vegas that we can trust. Then the lawyer will mail your copy of the will to Artie in a specially legally sealed envelope. Tell Artie not to open it. That way he won’t know.
All you have to tell him is that he is not to open the envelope but hold it for you. The lawyer will send a letter to that effect also. There’s no way Artie can get into trouble. And he won’t know anything. You just dream up a story why you want him to have the will.”
“Artie won’t ask me for a story,” I said. “He’ll just do it and never ask a question.”
“That’s a good brother you got there,” Cully said. “But now what do you do with the receipts? The Feds will sniff out a bank vault if you get one. Why don’t you just bury it with your old manuscripts like you did the cash? Even if they get a search warrant, they’ll never notice those pieces of paper.”
“I can’t take that chance,” I said. “Let me worry about the receipts. What happens if I lose them?”
Cully didn’t catch on or made believe he didn’t. “We’ll have records in our file,” he said. “We just make you sign a receipt certifying that you lost your receipts when you get your money. You just have to sign when you get your cash.”
Of course, he knew what I was going to do. That I would tear up the receipts but not tell him so he could never be sure, so that he couldn’t mess with the records of the casino owing me money. It meant that I didn’t completely trust him, but he accepted that easily.