He watched them disappear and close the frame doors behind them. His head sank on the small square pillow. His body lustfully relaxed. He dozed into a light sleep. Far away he heard the sliding of the paper doors. Ah, he thought, they’re coming. And curious to see what they looked like, whether they were pretty, how they were dressed, he raised his head and to his astonishment he saw two men with surgeon’s gauze masks over their faces coming toward him.
At first he thought the girls misunderstood him. That comically inept, he had asked for a heavier massage. And then the gauze masks struck him with terror. The realization flashed through his mind that these masks were never worn in the country. And then his mind jumped to the truth, but he screamed out, “I haven’t got the money. I haven’t got the money!” He tried to rise from the mat, and the two men were upon him.
It was not painful or horrible. He seemed to sink again beneath the sea, the fragrant waters of the redwood tub. His eyes glazed over. And then he was quiet on the mat, the
The two men wrapped his body in towels and silently carried it out of the room.
Far across the ocean, Gronevelt in his suite worked the controls to pump pure oxygen into his casino.
Book VIII
Chapter 53
I got to Vegas late at night and Gronevelt asked me to have dinner in his suite. We had some drinks and the waiters brought up a table with the dinner we had ordered. I noticed that Gronevelt’s dish had very small portions. He looked older and faded. Cully had told me about his stroke, but I could see no evidence of it other than perhaps he moved more slowly and took more time to answer me when he spoke.
I glanced at the control panel behind his desk which Gronevelt used to pump pure oxygen into the casino. Gronevelt said, “Cully told you about that? He wasn’t supposed to.”
“Some things are too good not to tell,” I said, “and besides, Cully knew I wouldn’t spread it around.”
Gronevelt smiled. “Believe it or not, I use it as an act of kindness. It gives all those losers a little hope and a last shot before they go to bed. I hate to think of losers trying to go to sleep. I don’t mind winners,” Gronevelt said. “I can live with luck, it’s skill I can’t abide. Look, they can never beat the percentage and I have the percentage. That’s true in life as well as gambling. The percentage will grind you into dust.”
Gronevelt was rambling, thinking of his own approaching death. “You have to get rich in the dark,” he said, “you have to live with percentages. Forget about luck, that’s a very treacherous magic.” I nodded my head in agreement. After we had finished eating and were having brandy, Gronevelt said, “I don’t want you to worry about Cully, so I’ll tell you what happened to him. Remember that trip you made with him to Tokyo and Hong Kong to bring out that money? Well, for reasons of his own Cully decided to take another crack at it. I warned him against it. I told him the percentages were bad, that he had been lucky that first trip. But for reasons of his own which I can’t tell you, but which were important and valid at least to him, he decided to go.”
“You had to give the OK,” I said.
“Yes,” Gronevelt said. “It was to my benefit that he go there.”
“So what happened to him?” I asked Gronevelt.
“We don’t know,” Gronevelt said. “He picked up the money in his fancy suitcases, and then he just disappeared. Fummiro thinks he’s in Brazil or Costa Rica living like a king. But you and I know Cully better. He couldn’t live in any place but Vegas.”
“So what do you guess happened?” I asked Gronevelt again.
Gronevelt smiled at me. “Do you know Yeats’s poem? It begins, I think, ‘Many a soldier and sailor lies, far from customary skies,’ and that’s what happened to Cully. I think of him maybe in one of those beautiful ponds behind a geisha house in Japan lying on the bottom. And how he would have hated it. He wanted to die in Vegas.”
“Have you done anything about it?” I said. “Have you notified the police or the Japanese authorities?”
“No,” Gronevelt said. “That’s not possible and I don’t think that you should.”
“Whatever you say is good enough for me,” I said. “Maybe Cully will show up someday. Maybe he’ll walk into the casino with your money as if nothing ever happened.”
“That can’t be,” Gronevelt said. “Please don’t think like that. I would hate it that I left you with any hope. Just accept it. Think of him as another gambler that the percentage ground to dust.” He paused and then said softly, “He made a mistake counting down the shoe.” He smiled.
I knew my answer now. What Gronevelt was telling me really was that Cully had been sent on an errand that Gronevelt had engineered and that it was Gronevelt who had decided its final end. And looking at the man now, I knew that he had done so not out of any malicious cruelty, not out of any desire for revenge, but for what were to him good and sound reasons. That for him it was simply a part of his business.
And so we shook hands and Gronevelt said, “Stay as long as you like. It’s all comped.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I think I’ll leave tomorrow.”
“Will you gamble tonight?” Gronevelt said.
“I think so,” I said. “Just a little bit.”
“Well, I hope you get lucky,” Gronevelt said.
Before I left the room, Gronevelt walked me to the door and pressed a stack of black hundred-dollar chips in my hand. “These were in Cully’s desk,” Gronevelt said. “I’m sure he’d like you to have them for one last shot at the table. Maybe it’s lucky money.” He paused for a moment. “I’m sorry about Cully, I miss him.”
“So do I,” I said. And I left.
Chapter 54
Gronevelt had given me a suite, the living room decorated in rich browns, the colors over coordinated in the usual Vegas style. I didn’t feel like gambling and I was too tired to go to a movie. I counted the black chips, my inheritance from Cully. There were ten of them, an even thousand dollars. I thought how happy Cully would be if I stuck the chips in my suitcase and left Vegas without losing them. I thought that I might do that.
I was not surprised at what had happened to Cully. It was almost in the seed of his character that he would go finally against the percentage. In his heart, born hustler though he was, Cully was a gambler. Believing in his countdown, he could never be a match for Gronevelt. Gronevelt with his “iron maiden” percentages crushing everything to death.
I tried to sleep but had no luck. It was too late to call Valerie, at least 1 A.M. in New York. I took up the Vegas newspaper I had bought at the airport, and leafing through it, I saw a movie ad for Janelle’s last picture. It was the second female lead, a supporting role, but she had been so great in it that she had won an Academy Award nomination. It had opened in New York just a month ago and I had meant to see it, so I decided to go now. Even though I had never seen or spoken to Janelle since that night she left me in the hotel room.
It was a good movie. I watched Janelle on the screen and saw her do all the things she had done with me. On that huge screen her face expressed all the tenderness, all the affection, all the sensual craving that she had shown in our bed together. And as I watched, I wondered, what was the reality? How had she really felt in bed with me, how had she really felt up there on the screen? In one part of the film where she was crushed by the rejection by her lover, she had the same shattered look on her face that broke my heart when she thought I had been cruel to her. I was amazed by how strictly her performance followed our most intense and secret passions. Had she been acting with me, preparing for this role, or did her performance spring from the pain we had shared together? But I almost fell in love with her again just watching her on the screen, and I was glad that everything had turned out well for her. That she was becoming so successful, that she was getting everything she wanted, or thought she
