and coffee. But he ate little, a few bites, and then coffee. I had a rare steak, which I loved in the morning but never had except in Vegas.
While we were eating, Cully came breezing in, his right hand full of red five-dollar chips.
“Made my expenses for the day,” he said, full of confidence. “Counted down on one shoe and caught my percentage bet for a hundred.” He sat down with us and ordered melon and coffee.
“Merlyn, I got good news for you,” he said. “You don’t have to leave town. Cheech made a big mistake last night.”
Now for some reason that really pissed me off. He was still going on about that. He was like my wife, who keeps telling me I have to adjust. I don’t have to do
Cully had a quick nervous way of eating and talking. He had a lot of energy, just like Cheech. Only his energy seemed to be charged with goodwill, to make the world run smoother. “You know the croupier that Cheech punched in the nose and all that blood? Ruined the kid’s shirt. Well, that kid is the favorite nephew of the deputy police chief of Las Vegas.”
At that time I had no sense of values. Cheech was a genuine tough guy, a killer, a big gambler, maybe one of the hoods who helped run Vegas. So what was a deputy police chief’s nephew?
“You have to understand,” Cully said, “that the deputy police chief of Las Vegas is what the old kings used to be. He’s a big fat guy who wears a Stetson and a holster with a forty-five. His family has been in Nevada since the early days. The people elect him every year. His word is law. He gets paid off by every hotel in this town. Every casino begged to have the nephew working for them and pay him top baccarat croupier money. He makes as much as the ladderman. Now you have to understand the chief considers the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights as an aberration of milksop Easterners. For instance, any visitor with any kind of criminal record has to register as soon as he comes to town. And believe me he’d better. Our chief also doesn’t like hippies. You notice there’s no long-haired kids in this town? Black people, he’s not crazy about them. Or bums and pan handlers. Vegas may be the only city in the United States where there are no panhandlers. He likes girls, good for casino business, but he doesn’t like pimps. He doesn’t mind a dealer living off his girlfriend hustling or stuff like that. But if some wise guy builds up a string of girls, look out. Prostitutes are always hanging themselves in their cells, slashing their wrists. Bust-out gamblers commit suicide in prison. Convicted murderers, bank embezzlers. A lot of people in prison do themselves in. But have you ever heard of a pimp committing suicide? Well, Vegas has the record. Three pimps have committed suicide in our chief’s jail. Are you getting the picture?”
“So what happened to Cheech?” I said. “Is he in jail?”
Cully smiled. “He never got there. He tried to get Gronevelt’s help.”
Jordan murmured, “Xanadu Number One?”
Cully looked at him, a little startled.
Jordan smiled. “I listen to the telephone pages when I’m not gambling.”
For just a minute Cully looked a little uncomfortable. Then he went on.
“Cheech asked Gronevelt to cover him and get him out of town.”
“Who’s Gronevelt?” I asked.
“He owns the hotel,” Cully said. “And let me tell you, his ass was in a sling. Cheech isn’t alone, you know.”
I looked at him. I didn’t know what that meant.
“Cheech, he’s connected,” Cully said significantly. “Still and all Gronevelt had to give him to the chief. So now Cheech is in the Community Hospital. He has a skull fracture, internal injuries, and he’ll need plastic surgery.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“Resisting arrest,” Cully said. “That’s our chief. And when Cheech recovers, he’s barred forever from Vegas. Not only that, the baccarat pit boss got fired. He was responsible for watching out for the nephew. The chief blames him. And now that pit boss can’t work in Vegas. He’ll have to get a job in the Caribbean.”
“Nobody else will hire him?” I asked.
“It’s not that,” Cully said. “The chief told him he doesn’t want him in town.”
“And that’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it,” Cully said. “There was one pit boss that sneaked back into town and got another job. The chief happened to walk in and just dragged him out of the casino. Beat the shit out of him. Everybody got the message.”
“How the hell can he get away with that shit?” I said.
“Because he’s a duly appointed representative of the people,” Cully said. And for the first time Jordan laughed. He had a great laugh. It washed away the remoteness and coldness you always felt coming off him.
Later that evening Cully brought Diane over to the lounge where Jordan and I were taking a break from our gambling. She had recovered from whatever Cheech had done to her the night before. It was obvious she knew Cully pretty well. And it became obvious that Cully was offering her as bait to me and Jordan. We could take her to bed whenever we wanted to.
Cully made little jokes about her breasts and legs and her mouth, how lovely they were, how she used her mane of jet black hair as a whip. But mixed in the crude compliments were solemn remarks on her good character, things like:
“This is one of the few girls in this town who won’t hustle you.” And “she never hustles for a free bet. She’s such a good kid, she doesn’t belong in this town.” And then to show his devotion he held out the palm of his hand for Diane to tip her cigarette ash into so that she wouldn’t have to reach for the ashtray. It was primitive gallantry, the Vegas equivalent of kissing the hand of a duchess.
Diane was very quiet, and I was a little put out that she was more interested in Jordan than me. After all, hadn’t I avenged her like the gallant knight that I was? Hadn’t I humiliated the terrible Cheech? But when she left for her tour of duty shilling baccarat, she leaned over and kissed my cheek and, smiling a little sadly, said, “I’m glad you’re OK. I was worried about you. But you shouldn’t be so silly.” And then she was gone.
In the weeks that followed we told each other our stories and got to know each other. An afternoon drink became a ritual, and most of the time we had dinner together at one in the morning, when Diane finished her shift on the baccarat table. But it all depended on our gambling patterns. If one of us got hot, he’d skip eating until his luck turned. This happened most often with Jordan.
But then there were long afternoons when we’d sit around out by the pool and talk under the burning desert sun. Or take midnight walks along the neon-drowned Strip, the glittering hotels planted like mirages in the middle of the desert, or lean against the gray railing of the baccarat table. And so we told each other our lives.
Jordan ’s story seemed the most simple and the most banal, and he seemed the most ordinary person in the group. He’d had a perfectly happy life and a common ordinary destiny. He was some sort of executive genius and by the age of thirty-five had his own company dealing in the buying and selling of steel. Some sort of middleman, it made him a handsome living. He married a beautiful woman, and they had three children and a big house and everything they wanted. Friends, money, career and true love. And that lasted for twenty years. And then, as Jordan put it, his wife grew out of him. He had concentrated all his energies on making his family safe from the terrors of a jungle economy. It had taken all his will and his energies. His wife had done her duty as a wife and mother. But there came a time when she wanted more out of life. She was a witty woman, curious, intelligent, well read. She devoured novels and plays, went to museums, joined all the town cultural groups, and she eagerly shared everything with Jordan. He loved her even more. Until the day she told him she wanted a divorce. Then he ceased loving her and he ceased loving his kids or his family and his work. He had done everything in the world for his nuclear family. He had guarded them from all the dangers of the outside world, built fortresses of money and power, never dreaming the gates could be opened from within.
Which was not how he told it, but how I listened to it. He just said quite simply that he didn’t “grow with his wife.” That he had been too immersed in his business and hadn’t paid proper attention to his family. That he didn’t blame her at all when she divorced him to marry one of his friends. Because that friend was just like her; they had the same tastes, the same kind of wit, the same flair for enjoying life.
