Siegel’s face tensed with thought. “And if he convinces them I’m a bad manager, they’ll ask him to step in?”
“Yeah. He seems to be in pretty thick with Lansky.”
Siegel nodded. “He is at that. You know what Meyer said to me last night? He said, ‘Ben, you’re a smart dreamer, but a lousy engineer.’ Can you imagine?”
“Ben, none of this is my business…I’ve told you what I know, and what I think.” I was getting uncomfortable being privy to Siegel’s inside thoughts.
But he pressed on: “He just got back, Meyer did, from Havana. They just had a big meeting down there, with Charlie Lucky.”
Luciano. A big secret syndicate confab in Havana, and I knew about it. Great.
I rose. “Ben, you’re getting into areas…”
“Sit down, Nate. I trust you.”
“That isn’t the point…”
“Sit down, Nate.”
I sat.
“Meyer said the boys aren’t happy with me, the money I spent, here. They want me to bring in a top hotel man. They want to hire somebody from one of the downtown joints to run my casino.” He grinned but there was desperation in it. “You know what else?”
I said nothing.
“You’ll get a kick out of this, being Ragen’s pal and all. They want me to fold Trans-American up. Guzik has control of Continental now, through that McBride character. I told Meyer, sure-just buy me out.”
My mouth was dry. Nonetheless, I managed to ask, “How much did you ask?”
“Two million.”
Jesus.
“I’m pulling in twenty-five grand a week,” he said. “Why should I give it up, otherwise? They’ll make their money back in less than two years. It’s a fair offer.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I need the money,” he said. “This place eats money.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Moey, huh?” he said. Then, reflective, he went on: “Meyer said they heard bad things about me. Some of the boys said they heard I was skimming off the top of the construction money. Jeez!” He shook his head, gestured toward the two picture windows, out of which the terraced lawn and the scalloped-edged pool could be seen. “Those wop bastards, don’t they know I put every available penny into this place, including my own? And my heart and my fuckin’ soul? This is my…what, monument, the thing that’ll be around when I’m gone that’ll make people know I was here.”
“When you get the kinks ironed out,” I said, carefully, “it’ll be a great success, I think.”
“I think so, too. But Meyer’s putting the pressure on me. Something else they heard was I got half a million stashed away in Switzerland. I sent Tabby to Zurich to pick out some furniture for the hotel rooms and from that they figure I’m stuffing their dough in a numbered account. Jesus!”
“What pressure are they putting on you?”
He sipped his tonic water, shrugged. “They expect me to make a good showing, quick.”
I smiled thinly. “That seals it. Sedway.”
He looked at me and slowly began to nod. “Sure. He’s sabotaging my casino-that’s where I gotta make it to make it.”
“Right.”
Siegel stood and walked to the window, surveyed his kingdom with a smile. “I’m gonna fool the bastards. I’m gonna pull it off.”
I stood. “I hope you do. Look, I’m going to go back to the casino and keep an eye on the security staff.”
He turned back to me. “Nate, I was serious about giving you a permanent position, here.”
“Well, uh, I was serious when I said I was flattered…”
“I know, I know, but you don’t want to work under Quinn. Well hell, I plan to fire the fat little crooked son of a bitch, anyway. You think I don’t know how you managed to stop the pilferage so goddamn fast? You weren’t here five minutes before you spotted the problem.”
“You would’ve, too, if you weren’t trying to do so much.”
“I know, I know. And I will hire some of those people the boys want me to hire, hotel man, casino manager, down the road. I’ll start hiring now, right this minute. How’s this for openers? Stay on and be my security chief, Nate. It’ll pay you sixty grand a year and fringes. You can live right here at the Flamingo.”
“That’s good money. That’s attractive. But I have my own business.”
He shrugged. “You could keep it going. Own it, keep an eye on it, but put somebody you trust in charge. Like Fred’s going to run your west coast office.”
“Fred’s a partner. That’s different.”
He patted the air with one hand, setting his tonic water on the bar. “Just think about it. For the time being, let’s go back to the casino and see if there’s anymore dishonest dealers who need a kick in the ass.”
I laughed. “I imagine the cheating’s been cut way back since that little scene.”
“It’s what the cops call a deterrent, right?”
“Right.”
Siegel laughed and we went out a side exit that led down a slanted ramp-like passageway that opened at the side of the hotel nearest the main building. We walked back toward the pool.
Sedway was standing near one of the youngest-looking of the bathing beauties, a little busty blonde number, coming on to her as subtly as a safe falling out a window; but then she could see it coming and didn’t seem to be moving out of the way, so what the hell. He was wearing a white jacket with a red carnation, similar to Ben’s apparel of the evening before; but a weasel in a dinner jacket is still a weasel.
“Moe!” Siegel called out.
Moey looked over at Siegel and gave him a slippery sideways smile and reluctantly left his quiff and trotted over.
“Yes, Ben?”
Siegel put a hand on the little man’s shoulder. “What’s the idea badmouthing me to Meyer?”
Moey’s eyes began to move back and forth. “What do you mean, Ben?”
“Don’t shit me. You think Meyer would keep something like that from me? You know how far back Meyer and me go? They used to call him ‘Bugs,’ too, you know.”
“Ben, I don’t know what to say.”
Siegel’s hand began to squeeze the shoulder, like an orange you want to turn into a glass of juice. Pulp and all.
“Tell me, Moey. I already know, but I wanna hear it from you.”
The rat-faced little man swallowed and said, “I just told ’em the truth. That I thought you were dangerous to their interests.”
“Really. Because I ain’t up to running a big place like this, is that it?”
“Well, I think you need more help, anyway. I don’t mean any offense.”
He didn’t let up the pressure on Moe’s shoulder. “You don’t mean any offense. Going to Meyer and Christ knows who else behind my back. They were voting down there whether to have me hit or not, Moey. Down in Havana? Bet you didn’t tell ’em you were fixing my casino room so I’d lose, did ya? Or that you were setting me up with crooked dealers?”
Moey’s face fell; he tried to move back.
Siegel said, “Goodbye, Moey. If you ever set foot at the Flamingo again, I’m gonna break the rules. There’s gonna be a killing in Vegas, and you’re the guy that’s gonna get killed, and I’m the guy that’s gonna do the killing.”
He let go of Moey’s shoulder and Moey turned and moved quickly away, disappearing into the casino.
Siegel sighed, looked at me, shaking his head. “It ain’t easy being an executive,” he said.
And we walked back inside the fabulous Flamingo.
Even with Sedway’s absence, the Flamingo’s losing streak rolled on. And I knew why: the dealers, alerted by the literal booting out of one of their own, not to mention the ousting of Sedway himself, would only do their cheating all the more carefully now; and members of the security staff, whose attention I’d called to the problem and who were supposedly keeping an eye out, might well be in on the scam. In the case of either or both, Siegel was flat out screwed. Short of firing everybody on his casino crew and closing down and starting over after rehiring-which Siegel of course could (or anyway, would) not do-there was no way around it. Friday night the house didn’t lose as badly as it had Thursday, but it did lose. To the tune of fifteen thousand dollars.