“I'll give you a hint,” Gronevelt said. “The pit boss is clean. But not the floor walker. One dealer on that table is clean, but the other two are not. It all happens after the dinner show breaks. Another thing. The crooked dealers give a lot of five-dollar reds for change or payoffs. A lot of times when they could give twenty-five-dollar chips. Do you see it now?”
Cully shook his head. “Paint would show.”
Gronevelt leaned back and finally lit one of his huge Havana cigars. He was allowed one a day and always smoked it after dinner when he could. “You didn’t see it because it was so simple,” he said.
Gronevelt made a call down to the casino manager. Then he flicked the video switch on to show the suspected blackjack table in action. On the screen Cully could see the casino manager come behind the dealer. The casino manager was flanked by two security men in plain clothes, not armed guards.
On the screen the casino manager dipped his hand into the dealer’s money trays and took out a stack of red five-dollar chips. Gronevelt flicked off the screen.
Ten minutes later the casino manager came into the suite. He threw a stack of five-dollar chips on Gronevelt’s desk. To Cully’s surprise the stack of chips did not fall apart.
“You were right,” the casino manager said to Gronevelt.
Cully picked up the round red cylinder. It looked like a stack of five-dollar chips, but it was actually a five- dollar-chip-size cylinder with a hollow case. In the bottom the base moved inward on springs. Cully fooled around with the base and took it off with the scissors Gronevelt handed him. The red hollow cylinder, which looked like a stack of ten five-dollar red chips, disgorged five one-hundred-dollar black chips.
“You see how it works,” Gronevelt said. “A buddy comes into the game and hands over this five stack and gets change. The dealer puts it in a rack in front of the hundreds, presses it, and the bottom gobbles up the hundreds. A little later he makes change to the same guy and dumps out five hundred dollars. Twice a night, a thousand bucks a day tax-free. They get rich in the dark!”
“Jesus,” Cully said. “I’ll never keep up with these guys.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Gronevelt said. “Go to New York and help your buddy and get our business finished there. You’ll be delivering some money, so come see me about an hour before you catch the plane. And then when you get back here, I have some good news for you. You’re finally going to get a little piece of the action, meet some important people.”
Cully laughed. “I couldn’t solve that little scam at blackjack and I get promoted?”
“Sure,” Gronevelt said. “You just need a little more experience and a harder heart.”
Chapter 18
On the night plane to New York Cully sat in the first class section, sipping a plain club soda. On his lap was a metal briefcase covered with leather and equipped with a complicated locking device. As long as Cully held the briefcase, nothing could happen to the million dollars inside it. He himself could not open it.
In Vegas Gronevelt had counted the money out in Cully’s presence, stacking the case neatly before he locked it and handed it over to Cully. The people in New York never knew how or when it was coming. Only Gronevelt decided. But still, Cully was nervous. Clutching the briefcase beside him, he thought about the last years. He had come a long way, he had learned a lot and he would go further and learn more. But he knew that he was leading a dangerous life, gambling for big stakes.
Why had Gronevelt chosen him? What had Gronevelt seen? What did he foresee? Cully Cross, metal briefcase clutched to his lap, tried to divine his fate. As he had counted down the cards in the blackjack shoe, as he had waited for the strength to flow in his strong right arm to throw countless passes with the dice, he now used all his powers of memory and intuition to read what each chance in his life added up to and what could be left in the shoe.
Nearly four years ago, Gronevelt started to make Cully into his right-hand man. Cully had already been his spy in the Xanadu Hotel long before Merlyn and Jordan arrived and had performed his job well. Gronevelt was a little disappointed in him when he became friends with Merlyn and Jordan. And angry when Cully took Jordan ’s side in the now-famous baccarat table showdown. Cully had thought his career finished, but oddly enough, after that incident, Gronevelt gave him a real job. Cully often wondered about that.
For the first year Gronevelt made Cully a blackjack dealer, which seemed a hell of a way to begin a career as a right-hand man. Cully suspected that he would be used as a spy all over again. But Gronevelt had a more specific purpose in mind. He had chosen Cully as the prime mover in the hotel skimming operation.
Gronevelt felt that hotel owners who skimmed money in the casino counting room were jerks, that the FBI would catch up with them sooner or later. The counting room skimming was too obvious. The owners or their reps meeting there in person and each taking a packet of money before they reported to the Nevada Gaming Commission struck him as foolhardy. Especially when there were five or six owners quarreling about how much they should skim off the top. Gronevelt had set up what he thought was a far superior system. Or so he told Cully.
He knew Cully was a “mechanic.” Not a top-notch mechanic but one who could easily deal seconds. That is, Cully could keep the top card for himself and deal the second card from the top. And so an hour before his midnight-to-morning graveyard shift Cully would report to Gronevelt’s suite and receive instructions. At a certain time, either 1 A.M. or 4 A.M. a blackjack player dressed in a certain colored suit would make a certain number of sequence bets starting with one hundred dollars, then five hundred, then a twenty-five-dollar bet. This would identify the privileged customer, who would win ten or twenty thousand dollars in a few hours’ gambling. The man would play with his cards face up, not unusual for big players in blackjack. Seeing the player’s hand, Cully could save a good card for the customer by dealing seconds around the table. Cully didn’t know how the money finally got back to Gronevelt and his partners. He just did his job without asking questions. And he never opened his mouth.
But as he could count down every card in the shoe, he easily kept track of these manufactured player winnings, and over the year he figured that he had on the average lost ten thousand dollars a week to these Gronevelt players. Over the year he worked as a dealer he knew close to the exact figure. It was around a half million dollars, give or take a ten grand. A beautiful scam without a tax bite and without cutting it up with the official point sharers in the hotel and the casino. Gronevelt was also skimming some of his partners.
To keep the losses from being pinpointed, Gronevelt had Cully transferred to different tables each night. He also sometimes switched his shifts. Still, Cully worried about the casino manager’s picking up the whole deal. Except that maybe Gronevelt had warned the casino manager off.
So to cover his losses Cully used his mechanic’s skill to wipe out the straight players. He did this for three weeks and then one day he received a phone call summoning him to Gronevelt’s suite.
As usual Gronevelt made him sit down and gave him a drink. Then he said, “Cully, cut out the bullshit. No cheating the customers.”
Cully said, “I thought maybe that’s what you wanted, without telling me.”
Gronevelt smiled. “A good smart thought. But it’s not necessary. Your losses are covered with paperwork. You won’t be spotted. And if you are, I’ll call off the dogs.” He paused for a moment. “Just deal a straight game with the suckers. Then we won’t get into any trouble we can’t handle.”
“Is the second card business showing up on films?” Cully asked.
Gronevelt shook his head. “No, you’re pretty good. That’s not the problem. But the Nevada Gaming Commission boys might send in a player that can hear the tick and link it up with your sweeping the table. Now true, that could happen when you’re dealing to one of my customers, but then they would just assume you’re cheating the hotel. So I’m clean. Also I have a pretty good idea when the Gaming Commission sends in their people. That’s why I give you special times to dump out the money. But when you’re operating on your own, I can’t protect you. And then you’re cheating the customer for the hotel. A big difference. Those Gaming Commission guys don’t get too hot when we get beat, but the straight suckers are another story. It would cost a lot in political payoffs to set that straight.”
“OK,” Cully said. “But how did you pick it up?”
Gronevelt said impatiently, “Percentages. Percentages never lie. We built all these hotels on percentages. We stay rich on the percentage. So all of a sudden your dealer sheet shows you making money when you’re
