"Men whose names you can't afford to have associated with the operation," said Jonas.
"Have it your way. A point, you understand, is one percent."
"Does Lucky Luciano own any points, directly or indirectly?"
"Are you kidding? Luciano? No way."
"Frank Costello? Jimmy Blue Eyes?" Jonas asked.
Chandler shook his head emphatically.
"Meyer Lansky?"
"No. Meyer doesn't own any points. But he has a consulting contract with us."
"What's he consult about?"
"The contract is in writing and has been looked at by Justice Department snoops. It says he advises us on how to do our accounting and keep the casino honest. Everyone acknowledges he'd know. He's run plenty of illegal joints in his day. The Justice Department found nothing wrong with the contract, nothing wrong with our hiring him as a consultant. I don't know if you understand this, but Meyer Lansky has no criminal record."
"In point of fact," said Jonas dryly, "he tells you how to skim."
"In point of fact," said Chandler, "he tells us how to distribute the profits."
"Officially a corporation owns The Seven Voyages," said Jonas. "Seven Voyages Corporation owns the gaming license. You own all the stock."
"You checked," said Chandler. "Okay. Officially, legally, I own everything," said Chandler. "I'm like Meyer Lansky in one respect. I'm clean. I have no criminal record. So I make a perfect front man."
Nevada grinned. "Why, Maurie has never even had a ticket for jaywalking."
"I'm not going to ask you who really owns the points," said Jonas. "But I am interested in one thing. What does it cost to put up a casino hotel in Las Vegas?"
Chandler sipped wine. "When we first came out here, say in 1946, there was a rule of thumb," he said. "To set up a decent-size hotel and casino, you spent one million dollars, max — including the price of the land. By the time Siegel and his partners got the Flamingo into operation, they had three million in it. It cost five and a half to open The Seven Voyages."
"What would happen if you didn't skim?" Jonas asked.
Chandler shook his head. "You couldn't pay off your investors. Banks would never have put up five and a half million dollars to build a casino hotel in Las Vegas. We had to have investors."
Jonas nodded. "If you had the five and a half million, you wouldn't need to sell points, and then you wouldn't need to skim. You could run strictly legal and make a good profit."
Chandler grinned. "You thinking of building a casino hotel, Jonas?"
Jonas lifted his eyebrows and shrugged. "Well ... Suppose I offered package tours from LA and Frisco. Round-trip flight to Las Vegas, accommodations at a Cord hotel, with meals, at a fixed price. I —"
"Your people will fly in here, swim in your pool, eat your food, see your shows, and wouldn't gamble. Hell, they'll bring the kids."
"Okay. The price includes a chit, redeemable only in chips. Say a hundred dollars' worth. So they've paid for their gambling in advance."
"Smart guys will turn in their chits for chips, walk around the room, and come back and turn in their chips for cash."
"Junketeers can always do that," said Jonas. "The remedy is, you watch out for them. You don't let them do it to you twice. But the great majority will gamble with their chips, lose them, and buy some more. You get somebody hooked on casino gambling, they stay hooked. The junket is an investment."
Chandler laughed. "I see why you're a multimillionaire. I also see why you're holed up in The Seven Voyages ducking a subpoena."
When they had finished their lunch and conversation, Morris Chandler left the suite. Angie came in. Jonas's four young men, who had been working in the living room of Nevada's suite, came in.
Nevada stood with Chandler as he waited for the elevator.
"A word to the wise, Max," said Chandler quietly. "Your boy's awful sharp. Too sharp. I hope he has sense enough not to talk to other guys."
"Jonas has got brains he hasn't used yet," said Nevada. "Well, tell him to use them. I like the guy. I don't want him to get hurt."
3
The telephone rang as Jonas, Angie, and Nevada sat together on a sofa and sipped bourbon as the sun set in the desert. She picked it up. "Morris Chandler," she said.
"Problem," said Chandler grimly. "Guess who just checked into the hotel? Mrs. Jonas Cord!"
"Damn," Jonas muttered.
"She had a reservation. My guys took it. They don't know you're here. I couldn't refuse to accommodate her. She's in a room on the fourth floor, right under you. How the hell did she find out you're here?"
"Uh ... Maybe she didn't. Maybe she doesn't know."
"Even so, you can bet she's been tailed. If those subpoena hounds really want you, they'll be tailin' your wife. The way their minds work, they figure the divorce is just a cover."
"All right. We'll have to play it as smart as possible. My crowd has got to stay in their rooms, out of sight. She'd recognize any one of them."
"And so would the subpoena hounds, right?"
"Right. I'll get off the phone and get to each one of them."
4
Monica stripped and hurried into the shower. Alex followed her, dropping his clothes on the floor. In a moment he was under the shower with her, and they washed each other, running their soap-slick hands over each other's bodies, hardly able to finish and dry before their out-of-control carnal fervor overwhelmed them. They went half dry to the bed, and in a moment he was on her and rammed himself into her. Alex was like Jonas, she reflected for a moment — when he was aroused he was in a hurry. But he never failed to satisfy.
They lit cigarettes when they were finished and lay on the bed, satiated to exhaustion — never guessing that the management of the hotel on which Chandler's telescope focused had returned the favor, so that half a dozen men and women in the high-roller suite of that hotel had amused themselves immensely by watching Monica and Alex in their frenetic labors, through the window they had supposed was too high and remote to give anyone a look into their room.
"The casino's gonna lose money on us," said Monica. "I don't think I'll be able to spare five minutes after din-din before we come back up here and do it again."
"It's a great place, isn't it?" said Alex.
"How'd you know about it?"
"It's got a reputation as a place where people can go that want to be discreet."
"Well, we've been discreet. The reservation is in my name. The room is in my name. Your wife will never know."
5
The phone rang again. Morris Chandler. "It may be nothing but a coincidence," he said to Jonas. "She's got a man with her. No big stud, I'd guess. But not a bad-lookin' guy."
"Monica could always pick 'em," said Jonas.
"If it would help you, I can bug her room while they're down to dinner. They've just gone down."
"You mean I can listen to them when —"
"And we can tape it. Might be very useful when your lawyers sit down to discuss settlement with her."
"Do it, Morris. Wire it so I can listen up here, and we'll tape it, too."
When he put the phone down, Angie shook her head, smiled, and said, "You can be a real bastard, can't you?"
"You'll enjoy it," he said.
She grinned. "Yeah."
6
The voices and the other sounds came through as clearly as though the activity were taking place in the next room. Nevada went to his own suite, unsubtle in expressing his disapproval of what they were doing. Chandler remained, his cheeks drawn in between his teeth, frowning. Angie listened soberly, and so did Jonas, sipping bourbon.