“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.
The French were also written off. The French didn’t travel and would never stand for the extra house double zero on the Vegas wheel.
But the Germans and Italians were wooed. Germany with its expanding postwar economy had many millionaires, and Germans loved to travel, loved to gamble and loved the Vegas women. There was something in the high-flying Vegas style that appealed to the Teutonic spirit, that brought back memories of Oktoberfest and maybe even Gotterdammerung. The Germans were also good-natured gamblers and more skillful than most.
Italian millionaires were big prizes in Vegas. They gambled recklessly while getting drunk; they let the soft hustlers employed by casinos keep them in the city a suicidal six or seven days. They seemed to have inexhaustible sums of money because none of them paid income tax. What should have gone into the public coffers of Rome slid into the hold boxes of air-conditioned casinos. The girls of Vegas loved the Italian millionaires because of their generous gifts and because for those six or seven days they fell in love with the same abandon they plunged on the sucker hard-way bets at the crap table.
The Mexican and South American gamblers were even bigger prizes. Nobody knew what was really going on down in South America, but special planes were sent there to bring the pampas millionaires to Vegas. Everything was free to these sporting gentlemen who left the hides of millions of cattle at the baccarat tables. They came with their wives and girlfriends, their adolescent sons eager to become gambling men. These customers too were favorites of the Las Vegas girls. They were less sincere than the Italians, perhaps a little less polished in their lovemaking according to some reports, but certainly with larger appetites. Cully had been in Gronevelt’s office one day when the casino manager came with a special problem. A South American gambler, a premier player, had put in a request for eight girls to be sent to his suite, blondes, redheads but no brunettes and none shorter than his own five feet six inches.
Gronevelt took the request coolly. “And what time today does he want this miracle to happen?” Gronevelt asked.
“About five o’clock,” the casino manager said. “He wants to take them all to dinner afterward and keep them for the night.”
Gronevelt didn’t crack a smile. “What will it cost?’
“About three grand,” the casino manager said. “The girls know they’ll get roulette and baccarat money from this guy.”
“OK, comp it,” Gronevelt said. “But tell those girls to keep him in the hotel as much as possible. I don’t want him losing his dough down the Strip.”