Cully was all business suddenly. “OK, tell me what you want me to do right now. It’s done. And if the Feds nail you, promise you’ll call me right away. I'll get you out. OK?” He smiled at me affectionately.
I told him my plan. That I would turn in my cash for chips a thousand dollars at a time and gamble but for small stakes. I’d do that in all the casinos in Vegas, and then, when I cashed in my chips for cash, I would just take a receipt and leave the money in the cashier’s cages as a gambling credit. The FBI would never think to look in the casinos. And the cash receipts I could stash with Cully and pick up whenever I needed some ready money.
Cully smiled at me. “Why don’t you let me hold your money? Don’t you trust me?”
I knew he was kidding, but I handled the crack seriously. “I thought about that,” I said. “But what if something happens to you? Like a plane crash. Or you get your gambling bug back? I trust you now. But how do I know you won’t go crazy tomorrow or next year?”
Cully nodded his head approvingly. Then he asked, “What about your brother, Artie? You and him are so close. Can’t he hold the money for you?”
“I can’t ask him to do that for me,” I said.
Cully nodded again. “Yeah, I guess you can’t. He’s too honest, right?”
“Right,” I said. I didn’t want to go into any long explanation about how I felt. “What’s wrong with my plan? Don’t you think it’s any good?”
Cully got up and began pacing up and down the room. “It’s not bad,” he said. “But you don’t want to have credits in all the casinos. That looks fishy. Especially if the money stays there a long time. That is really fishy. People only leave their money in the cage until they gamble it away or they leave Vegas. Here’s what you do. Buy chips in all the casinos and check them into our cage here. You know, about three or four times a day cash in for a few thousand and take a receipt. So all your cash receipts will be in our cage. Now if the Feds do nose around or write to the hotel, it has to go through me. And I’ll cover you.”
I was worried about him. “Won’t that get you into trouble?” I asked him.
Cully sighed patiently. “I do that stuff all the time. We get a lot of inquiries from Internal Revenue. About how much guys have lost. I just send them old files. There’s no way they can check me out. I make sure files don’t exist that will help them.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I don’t want my cage record to disappear. I won’t be able to collect on my receipts.”
Cully laughed. “Come on, Merlyn,” he said. “You’re just a two-bit bribe taker. The Feds don’t come in here with a gang of auditors for you. They send a letter or subpoena. Which they will never even think of doing, by the way. Or look at it another way. If you spend the dough and they find out your income exceeded what you earned on your pay, you can say you won it gambling. They can’t prove otherwise.”
“And I can’t prove I did,” I said.
“Sure you can,” Cully said. “I’ll testify for you, and so will a pit boss and a stickman at the crap table. That you had a tremendous roll with the dice. So don’t worry about the deal no matter how it falls. Your only problem is where to hide the casino cage receipts.”
We both thought that over for a while. Then Cully came up with an answer. “Do you have a lawyer?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “but my brother, Artie, has a friend who is a lawyer.”
“Then make out your will,” Cully said. “In your will you put in that you have cash deposits in this hotel to the amount of thirty-three thousand dollars and you leave it to your wife. No, never mind your brother’s lawyer. We’ll use a lawyer I know here in Vegas that we can trust. Then the lawyer will mail your copy of the will to Artie in a specially legally sealed envelope. Tell Artie not to open it. That way he won’t know.
All you have to tell him is that he is not to open the envelope but hold it for you. The lawyer will send a letter to that effect also. There’s no way Artie can get into trouble. And he won’t know anything. You just dream up a story why you want him to have the will.”
“Artie won’t ask me for a story,” I said. “He’ll just do it and never ask a question.”
“That’s a good brother you got there,” Cully said. “But now what do you do with the receipts? The Feds will sniff out a bank vault if you get one. Why don’t you just bury it with your old manuscripts like you did the cash? Even if they get a search warrant, they’ll never notice those pieces of paper.”
“I can’t take that chance,” I said. “Let me worry about the receipts. What happens if I lose them?”
Cully didn’t catch on or made believe he didn’t. “We’ll have records in our file,” he said. “We just make you sign a receipt certifying that you lost your receipts when you get your money. You just have to sign when you get your cash.”
Of course, he knew what I was going to do. That I would tear up the receipts but not tell him so he could never be sure, so that he couldn’t mess with the records of the casino owing me money. It meant that I didn’t completely trust him, but he accepted that easily.
Cully said, “I’ve got a big dinner laid on tonight for you with some friends. Two of the nicest-looking ladies in the show.”
“No woman for me,” I said.
Cully was amazed. “Jesus, aren’t you tired of just screwing your wife yet? All these years.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not tired.”
“You think you’re going to be faithful to her all your life? Cully said.
“Yep,” I said, laughing.
Cully shook his head, laughing too. “Then you’ll really be Merlyn the Magician.”
“That’s me,” I said.
So we went to dinner, just the two of us. And then Cully came around with me to all the casinos in Vegas as I bought chips in thousand-dollar lots. My Vegas Winner sports jacket really came in handy. At the different casinos we had drinks with pit bosses and shift managers of the casinos and the girls from the shows. They all treated Cully like an important man, and they all had great stories to tell about Vegas. It was fun. When we got back to the Xanadu, I pushed my chips into the cashier’s cage and got a receipt for fifteen thousand dollars. I tucked it into my wallet. I hadn’t made a bet all night. Cully was hanging all over me.
“I have to do a little gambling,” I said.
Cully smiled crookedly. “Sure you do, sure you do. As soon as you lose five hundred bucks, I’m going to break your fucking arm.”
At the crap table I pulled out five one-hundred-dollar bills and changed them into chips. I made five-dollar bets and bet all the numbers. I won and lost. I drifted into my old gambling patterns, moving from craps to blackjack and roulette. Soft, easy, dreamy gambling, betting small, winning and losing, playing loose percentages. It was one in the morning when I reached into my pocket and took out two thousand dollars and bought chips. Cully didn’t say anything.
I put the chips into my jacket pocket and walked over to cashier’s cage and turned them in for another cash receipt. Cully was leaning against an empty crap table, watching me. He nodded his head approvingly.
“So you’ve got it licked,” he said.
“Merlyn the Magician,” I said. “Not one of your lousy degenerate gamblers.” And it was true. I had felt none of the old excitement. There was no urge to take a flyer. I had enough money to buy my family a house and a bankroll for emergencies. I had good sources of income. I was happy again. I loved my wife and was working on a novel. Gambling was fun, that was all. I had lost only two hundred bucks the whole evening.
Cully took me into the coffee shop for a nightcap of milk and hamburgers. “I have to work during the day,” he said. “Can I trust you not to gamble?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be busy turning the cash into chips all over town. I’ll go down to five-hundred- dollar buys so I won’t be so noticeable.”
“That’s a good idea,” Cully said. “This town has more FBI agents than dealers.”
He paused for a moment. “You sure you don’t want a sleeping partner? I have some beauties.” He picked up one of the house phones on the ledge of our booth.
“I’m too tired,” I said. And it was true. It was after one in the morning here in Vegas, but New York time was 4 A.M. and I was still on New York time.
“If you need anything, just come up to my office,” he said. “Even if you just want to kill sometime and bullshit.”
“OK, I will,” I said.
The next day I woke up about noon and called Vallie. There was no answer. It was 3 P.M. New York time
