Gronevelt was alone. He had on white flannels and an open shirt. The man looked amazingly healthy and youthful for his over seventy years. Gronevelt had been reading. His book lay opened on the velvet tan couch.
Gronevelt motioned Cully toward the bar and Cully made himself a scotch and soda and the same for Gronevelt. They sat facing each other.
“That losing table in the blackjack pit is straight,” Cully said. “At least as far as I can see.”
“Not possible,” Gronevelt said. “You’ve learned a lot in the last four years, but the one thing you refuse to accept is the law of percentages. It’s not possible for that table to lose that amount of money over a three-week period without something fishy going on.”
Cully shrugged. “So what do I do?”
Gronevelt said calmly, “I’ll give the order to the casino manager to fire the dealers. He wants to shift them to another table and see what happens. I know what will happen. It’s better to fire them just like that.”
“OK,” Cully said. “You’re the boss.” He took a sip from his drink. “You remember my friend Merlyn, the guy who writes books?”
Gronevelt nodded. “Nice kid,” he said.
Cully put down his glass. He really didn’t like booze, but Gronevelt hated to drink alone. He said, “That chicken shit caper he’s involved in blew up. He needs my help. I have to fly into New York next week to see our collection people, so
I thought I’d just go earlier and leave tomorrow if that’s OK with you.”
“Sure,” Gronevelt said. “If there’s anything I can do, let me know. He’s a good writer.” He said this as if he had to have an excuse to help. Then he added, “We can always give him a job out here.”
“Thanks,” Cully said. “Before you fire those dealers, give me one more shot. If you say it’s a scam, then it is. It just pisses me off that I can’t figure it out.”
Gronevelt laughed. “OK,” he said. “If I were your age, I’d be curious too. Tell you what, get the video tapes sent down here and we’ll watch them together and go over a few things. Then you can catch the plane for New York tomorrow with a fresh mind. OK? Just have the tapes sent down for the night shifts, covering eight P.M. to two A.M. so we cover the busy times after the shows break.”
“Why do you figure those times?” Cully asked.
“Has to be,” Gronevelt said. When Cully picked up the phone, Gronevelt said, “Call room service and order us something to eat.”
As the two of them ate, they watched the video films of the losing table. Cully couldn’t enjoy his meal, he was so intent on the film. But Gronevelt hardly seemed to be glancing at the console screen. He ate calmly and slowly, relishing the half bottle of red wine that came with his steak. The film suddenly stopped as Gronevelt pushed the off button on his console panel.
“You didn’t see it?” Gronevelt asked.
“No,” Cully said.
“I'll give you a hint,” Gronevelt said. “The pit boss is clean. But not the floor walker. One dealer on that table is clean, but the other two are not. It all happens after the dinner show breaks. Another thing. The crooked dealers give a lot of five-dollar reds for change or payoffs. A lot of times when they could give twenty-five-dollar chips. Do you see it now?”
Cully shook his head. “Paint would show.”
Gronevelt leaned back and finally lit one of his huge Havana cigars. He was allowed one a day and always smoked it after dinner when he could. “You didn’t see it because it was so simple,” he said.
Gronevelt made a call down to the casino manager. Then he flicked the video switch on to show the suspected blackjack table in action. On the screen Cully could see the casino manager come behind the dealer. The casino manager was flanked by two security men in plain clothes, not armed guards.
On the screen the casino manager dipped his hand into the dealer’s money trays and took out a stack of red five-dollar chips. Gronevelt flicked off the screen.
Ten minutes later the casino manager came into the suite. He threw a stack of five-dollar chips on Gronevelt’s desk. To Cully’s surprise the stack of chips did not fall apart.
“You were right,” the casino manager said to Gronevelt.
Cully picked up the round red cylinder. It looked like a stack of five-dollar chips, but it was actually a five-dollar-chip-size cylinder with a hollow case. In the bottom the base moved inward on springs. Cully fooled around with the base and took it off with the scissors Gronevelt handed him. The red hollow cylinder, which looked like a stack of ten five-dollar red chips, disgorged five one-hundred-dollar black chips.
“You see how it works,” Gronevelt said. “A buddy comes into the game and hands over this five stack and gets change. The dealer puts it in a rack in front of the hundreds, presses it, and the bottom gobbles up the hundreds. A little later he makes change to the same guy and dumps out five hundred dollars. Twice a night, a thousand bucks a day tax-free. They get rich in the dark!”
“Jesus,” Cully said. “I’ll never keep up with these guys.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Gronevelt said. “Go to New York and help your buddy and get our business finished there. You’ll be delivering some money, so come see me about an hour before you catch the plane. And then when you get back here, I have some good news for you. You’re finally going to get a little piece of the action, meet some important people.”
Cully laughed. “I couldn’t solve that little scam at blackjack and I get promoted?”
“Sure,” Gronevelt said. “You just need a little more experience and a harder heart.”
Chapter 18
On the night plane to New York Cully sat in the first class section, sipping a plain club soda. On his lap was a metal briefcase covered with leather and equipped with a complicated locking device. As long as Cully held the briefcase, nothing could happen to the million dollars inside it. He himself could not open it.
In Vegas Gronevelt had counted the money out in Cully’s presence, stacking the case neatly before he locked it and handed it over to Cully. The people in New York never knew how or when it was coming. Only Gronevelt decided. But still, Cully was nervous. Clutching the briefcase beside him, he thought about the last years. He had come a long way, he had learned a lot and he would go further and learn more. But he knew that he was leading a dangerous life, gambling for big stakes.
Why had Gronevelt chosen him? What had Gronevelt seen? What did he foresee? Cully Cross, metal briefcase clutched to his lap, tried to divine his fate. As he had counted down the cards in the blackjack shoe, as he had waited for the strength to flow in his strong right arm to throw countless passes with the dice, he now used all his powers of memory and intuition to read what each chance in his life added up to and what could be left in the shoe.
– -
Nearly four years ago, Gronevelt started to make Cully into his right-hand man. Cully had already been his spy in the Xanadu Hotel long before Merlyn and Jordan arrived and had performed his job well. Gronevelt was a little disappointed in him when he became friends with Merlyn and Jordan. And angry when Cully took Jordan ’s side in the now-famous baccarat table showdown. Cully had thought his career finished, but oddly enough, after that incident, Gronevelt gave him a real job. Cully often wondered about that.
For the first year Gronevelt made Cully a blackjack dealer, which seemed a hell of a way to begin a career as a right-hand man. Cully suspected that he would be used as a spy all over again. But Gronevelt had a more specific purpose in mind. He had chosen Cully as the prime mover in the hotel skimming operation.
Gronevelt felt that hotel owners who skimmed money in the casino counting room were jerks, that the FBI would catch up with them sooner or later. The counting room skimming was too obvious. The owners or their reps meeting there in person and each taking a packet of money before they reported to the Nevada Gaming Commission struck him as foolhardy. Especially when there were five or six owners quarreling about how much they should skim off the top. Gronevelt had set up what he thought was a far superior system. Or so he told Cully.