and it was Saturday. Value had probably taken the kids to her father and mother’s house out on Long Island. So I called there and got her father. He asked a few suspicious questions about what I was doing in Vegas. I explained I was researching an article. He didn’t sound too convinced, and finally Vallie got on the phone. I told her I would catch the Monday plane home and would take a cab from the airport.
We had the usual husband and wife bullshit talk with such calls. I hated the phone. I told her I wouldn’t call again since it was a waste of time and money, and she agreed. I knew she would be at her parents the next day too, and I didn’t want to call her there. And I realized too that her going there made me angry. An infantile jealousy. Vallie and the kids were my family. They belonged to me; they were the only family I had except Artie. And I didn’t want to share them with grandparents. I knew it was silly, but still, I wasn’t going to call again. What the hell, it was only two days and she could always call me.
I spent the day going through all the casinos in town on the Strip and the sawdust joints in the center of town. There I traded my cash for chips in two- and three-hundred-dollar amounts. Again I’d do a little dollar-chip gambling before moving on to another casino.
I loved the dry, burning heat of Vegas, so I walked from casino to casino. I had a late-afternoon lunch in the Sands next to a table of pretty hookers having their before-going-to-work meal. They were young and pretty and high-spirited. A couple of them were in riding togs. They were laughing and telling stories like teenagers. They didn’t pay any attention tome, and I ate my lunch as if I weren’t paying any attention to them. But I tried to listen to their conversation. Once I thought I heard Cully’s name mentioned.
I took a taxi back to the Xanadu. Vegas cabdrivers are friendly and helpful. This one asked me if I wanted some action, and I told him no. When I left the cab, he wished me a pleasant good day and told me the name of a restaurant where they had good Chinese food.
In the Xanadu casino I changed the other casino chips into a cash receipt, which I stuck into my wallet. I now had nine receipts and only a little over ten thousand in cash to convert. I emptied the cash out of my Vegas Winner sports jacket and put it into a regular suit jacket. It was all hundreds and fitted into two regular long white envelopes. Then I slung the Vegas Winner sports jacket over my arm and went up to Cully’s office.
There was a whole wing of the hotel tacked on just for administration. I followed the corridor and took an offshoot corridor labeled “Executive Offices.” I came to one of the shingles that read “Executive Assistant to the President.” In the outer office was a very pretty young secretary. I gave her my name, and she buzzed the inner office and announced me. Cully came bouncing out with a big handshake and a hug. This new personality of his still threw me off. It was too demonstrative, too outgoing, not what we had been before.
He had a really stylish suite with couch and soft armchairs and low lighting and pictures on the wall, original oil paintings. I couldn’t tell if they were any good. He also had three TV screens operating. One showed a corridor of the hotel. Another showed one of the crap tables in the casino in action. The third screen showed the baccarat table. As I watched the first screen, I could see a guy opening his hotel room door in the corridor and leading a young girl in with his hand on her ass.
“Better programs than I get in New York,” I said.
Cully nodded. “I have to keep an eye on everything in this hotel,” he said. He pushed buttons on a console on his desk, and the three pictures on the TV’s changed. Now we saw a view of the hotel parking lot, a blackjack table in action and the cashier in the coffee shop ringing up money.
I threw the Vegas Winner sports jacket on Cully’s desk. “You can have it now,” I said.
Cully stared at the jacket for a long moment. Then he said absently, “You converted all your cash?”
“Most of it,” I said. “I won’t need the jacket anymore.” I laughed. “My wife hated it as much as you do.”
Cully picked up the jacket. “I don’t hate it,” he said.
“Gronevelt doesn’t like to see it around. What do you think happened to Jordan ’s?”
I shrugged. “His wife probably gave all his clothes to the Salvation Army.”
Cully was weighing the jacket in his hand. “Light,” he said. “But lucky. Jordan won over four hundred grand wearing it. And then he kills himself. Fucking dumb bastard.”
“Foolish,” I said.
Cully put the jacket gently down on his desk. Then he sat down and rocked back on his chair. “You know, I thought you were crazy for turning down his twenty grand. And I was really pissed off when you talked me out of taking mine. But it was maybe the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. I would have gambled it away, and then I would have felt like shit. But you know, after Jordan killed himself and I didn’t take that money, I got some pride. I don’t know how to explain it. But I felt I didn’t betray him. And you didn’t. And Diane didn’t. We were all strangers, and only the three of us cared something about Jordan. Not enough, I guess. Or it didn’t mean that much to him. But finally it meant something to me. Didn’t you feel that way?”
“No,” I said. “I just didn’t want his fucking money. I knew he was going to knock himself off.”
That startled Cully. “Bullshit you did. Merlyn the Magician. Fuck you.”
“Not consciously,” I said. “But way down underneath. I wasn’t surprised when you told me. Remember?”
“Yeah,” Cully said. “You didn’t even give a shit.”
I passed that one. “How about Diane?”
“She took it real hard,” Cully said. “She was in love with Jordan. You know I fucked her the day of the funeral. Weirdest fuck I ever had. She was crazy wild and crying and fucking. Scared the shit out of me.”
He sighed. “She spent the next couple of months getting drunk and crying on my shoulder. And then she met this square semi-millionaire, and now she’s a straight lady in Minnesota someplace.”
“So what are you going to do with the jacket?” I asked him.
Suddenly Cully was grinning. “I’m going to give it to Gronevelt. Come on, I want you to meet him anyway.” He got up out of his chair and grabbed the jacket and went out of the office. I followed him. We went down the corridor to another suite of offices. The secretary buzzed us in to Gronevelt’s huge private office.
Gronevelt rose from his chair. He looked older than I remembered him. He must be in his late seventies, I thought. He was immaculately dressed. His white hair made him look like a movie star in some character part. Cully introduced us.
Gronevelt shook my hand and then said quietly, “I read your book. Keep it up. You’ll be a big man someday. It’s very good.”
I was surprised. Gronevelt went way back in the gambling business, he had been a very bad guy at one time and he was still a feared man in Vegas. For some reason I never thought he was a man who read books. Another cliche shot.
I knew that Saturdays and Sundays were busy times for men like Gronevelt and Cully who ran big Vegas hotels like the Xanadu. They had customer friends from all over the United States who flew in for weekends of gambling and who had to be entertained in many diverse ways. So I thought I would just say hello to Gronevelt and beat it.
But Cully threw the bright red and blue Vegas Winner sports jacket on Gronevelt’s huge desk and said, “This is the last one. Merlyn finally gave it up.”
I noticed that Cully was grinning. The favorite nephew teasing the grouchy uncle he knew how to handle. And I noticed that Gronevelt played his role. The uncle who kidded around with his nephew who was the most trouble but in the long run the most talented and the most reliable. The nephew who would inherit.
Gronevelt rang the buzzer for his secretary, and when she came in, he said to her, “Bring me a big pair of scissors.” I wondered where the hell a secretary for the president of the Xanadu Hotel would get a big pair of scissors at 6 P.M. on a Saturday night. She was back with them in two minutes flat. Gronevelt took the scissors and started cutting my Vegas Winner sports jacket. He looked at my deadpan and said, “You don’t know how much I hated you three guys when you used to walk through my casino wearing these fucking jackets. Especially that night when Jordan won all the money.”
I watched him turn my jacket into a huge pile of jagged pieces on his desk, and then I realized he was waiting for me to answer him. “You really don’t mind winners, do you?” I said.
“It had nothing to do with winning money,” Gronevelt said. “It was so goddamn pathetic. Cully here wearing that jacket and a degenerate gambler in his heart. He still is and always will be. He’s in remission.”
Cully made a gesture of protest, said, “I’m a businessman,” but Gronevelt waved him off, and Cully fell silent, watching the cut patches of material on the desk.
