'Yeah, that's all I know,' Anders muttered. He finished his drink and moved around the end of the bar.
Toby stopped him there. 'Hold it,' she said. 'That takes care of you, but what about Captain Puff here?' Her eyes raked Bolan in a quick inspection. 'Do you also turn invisible?'
'Almost,' Bolan replied, showing her a tight grin. 'Don't worry, I'm leaving.'
'Almost isn't good enough,' she told him. 'You haven't been listening to me. This place is crawling with police. I heard them talking. They have the entire place sealed off. And they're starting a room-to-room search. And they know whom they're looking for.'
He briefly chewed the information, then asked her, 'So what do you suggest?'
She flashed him a smile and announced, 'It's a quick-change time, girls. Break out the bikinis, the fishnets.' To Bolan, she said, 'Strip.'
He told her, 'I do not turn invisible.'
She said, 'No, but you sure turn red. Don't worry, we're just going for a swim.'
Two minutes later, four bewitching and giggling young women appeared on the patio — wearing, for all practical purposes, nothing. A dozen or so late hangers-on sat at poolside tables, talking quietly and sipping drinks. Heads turned and lounge chairs creaked in acknowledgement of the new quality added to nighttime bathing, and a middle-aged man sitting alone stood up to get a better view.
Two of the girls mounted the diving platform and went into a wild go-go routine under the floodlight there, while the other two gyrated at the water's edge just below.
A uniformed deputy sheriff moved into view across the way, arms crossed and head tilted to the diving platform.
And no one noticed the tall, lithe man in jockey shorts who strode from the shadows of a bungalow, quickly crossed the few yards of flagstones, and quietly entered the waters of the pool. None noticed, that is, except the four young women. They joined him then, diving in with playful shrieks and clustering about himin the water.
At the same moment, another man ran panting and wild-eyed into the main lobby to tell a breathless story of murder and kidnapping.
Bolan had swum away from the cops once, but that had been at Miami Beach and in the Atlantic Ocean. Now he was wondering if he could do as well treading water in a hotel pool at Vegas, with four dutiful attendants to keep reminding him how sweet life could be.
He felt a soft body gently gyrating against his beneath the water and a warm voice with a barely noticeable French accent was telling him, 'You are a very attractive man, to be a killer.'
For some odd reason, Bolan at that moment thought of Carl Lyons and of something the cop had said to him during that soft run into town such a short while earlier.
The busty blonde was hanging onto his shoulder and playfully touseling his hair. 'Some killer,' she said. 'He didn't even bring his gun.'
The breathless French accent protested, 'Oh, but I think he has a very nice gun.'
'Oh well,' Bolan said to no one in particular, 'we do.'
Chapter Seven
Big winner
Vito Apostinni was a highly cautious Mafioso, and a cunning one. He had to be, to survive in a job which called for a continual and ever-changing mixture of vigilance, diplomacy, instinctive know-how, and ruth-lessness. Casino bosses are not generally renowned for longevity on the job, especially not in the mob casinos — and the Gold Duster was one of the oldest and largest mob joints on the strip. One had to be always certain to whom one was speaking, especially in the delicate matter of okaying credit and other rare privileges. One might even be speaking to an absentee and off-the-record owner, or to a close friend or associate of the same — or one could even be dealing with a fallen-from-grace ex-friend and persona non grata, a 'leper,' in the constantly shifting and treacherous jungle of the underworld social register.
Vito Apostinni, in sixteen years on the job, had never once crossed the wrong guy nor had he ever been 'taken' by a smooth operator. That sort of record spelled success for a casino operator — if he could keep his other business in order, as well. For instance, a successful boss had better keep his winning percentages in good shape. Any continuing decline or bad run could begin to look suspicious. He should not drink too much, become overly ostentatious in his personal habits, nor indulge in too much action at his own tables. He also had better pay close attention to his skim percentage and accomplish the regular rake-offs without getting caught by state gaming agents or by the ever-present Internal Revenue boys.
This latter consideration was most important. The skim off the top, much of it, was used to settle off-the- record interests of owners who could not be issued casino licenses due to a narrow-minded state law which forbade the licensing of persons with criminal records. The Gold Duster was carrying more than a dozen such undercover partners, each of whom was provided weekly accountings and off-the-top payoffs. They got their regular profits too, of course — through their fronts — along with the other stockholders at dividend time, but there was always a need for black money in the lucrative cash markets of the underworld. The casinos provided an ever-flowing river of cash — hard cash — for quick opportunities and even larger profits in those market places.
Skim was also routinely funnelled into the 'grease' routes, payoffs to various influence peddlers around the country. Much of these undeclared gambling profits also found their way into numbered bank accounts in Panama and Switzerland, for later investments in legitimate enterprises both abroad and at home, through foreign intermediaries.
Vito was a consummate skim artist. He had worked out a detection-proof system which would make a stage magician sick with envy. Vita's— system was no ordinary sleight-of-hand routine, however. It was built upon an elaborate code of signals between the dealers, the pit bosses, and the backroom accountants, and it involved a constant juggling of 'fill' and 'draw' records for each table in the casino. A 'fill' constitutes a sum of chips and silver added to a table during a particular shift. A 'draw' is the opposite case, the removal of excess table stakes. Paper currency flows across the game tables, also, from patron to dealer, the patron buying chips from the dealer and the latter immediately depositing the currency through a slot into the lock-box at the bottom of the table. It is this particular bit of action upon which Vito's 'system' is based. Through an elaborate signalling arrangement, a constant tally was kept of the amount of currency going into the lock-boxes, making possible the pre-juggling of balance sheets for the official counts.
The three soberest moments of the day for most professional Vegans are the shift-changes; these are the times for 'the count.' State law demands that a balance sheet for each gaming table be prepared at the end of every shift. All the action stops while the silver and chips are counted, the 'fills' and 'draws' calculated, and the currency from the lock-boxes removed for counting behind locked doors and under extreme security conditions.
For Vito Apostinni, the thrice-daily rituals were the cardinal points of his twenty-four-hour routine. Ordinarily he retired immediately after the 4 a.m. count, slept until eleven o'clock, had breakfast, a shower, a shave, and a rubdown — in that order — and he was back on hand again for the noon count. Afternoons were a time for relaxation, for visiting with old friends and cultivating new ones, for 'juicing' visiting politicos and other important transients, and for attending to image-making community functions.
Five o'clock to seven were his 'paperwork hours,' during which time he studiously reviewed shift audits, pit averages, and reports on high rollers and big losers. In gambling parlance, a high roller is a patron who consistently bets heavily at the tables.
At seven o'clock Apostinni had his second and final meal of the day, usually a twenty-four-ounce steak, a dry roll, and a half head of lettuce without dressing. He always dined alone, usually in seclusion, and all of his food was prepared by the same chef, a man of unquestioned loyalty who had been with Vito for sixteen years.
At eight o'clock he presided over the final count of the day and began his own official workday, remaining on the casino floor and personally supervising the action until the 4 a.m. count. Vito was the hardest working boss on the strip — or anywhere in the valley for that matter — and he was generally acknowledged as such. The forty- eight-year-old bachelor maintained his only residence on the premises in a specially-constructed efficiency apartment above the casino, and he literally lived on the job — rarely going into the adjacent hotel except to pay respects to a visiting dignitary or to use the eighteen-hole pro golf course. He was soft-spoken, articulate,
