Jack of Diamonds

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Really?’ It was all I could think to say.

  ‘Yes, but, sadly, I don’t have the money. So, the Firebird was my best bet; I flew to Chicago and, I must say, it wasn’t pleasant.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  Bridgett looked at me. ‘No, Jack, I doubt you can. Tony Accardo can be a very frightening man. He told me plainly that if I took my Waldorf list to another casino, I’d be “one dead dame”. What’s more, he wouldn’t even listen to my plan for the Firebird. Said he had more important things to do than talk to some dumb broad who wanted to send him broke.’

  I shook my head, hardly believing my ears. ‘So, what did you do?’

  ‘I returned to Las Vegas and called my lawyers in New York, and several days later they paid Tony Accardo a visit.’

  ‘I don’t understand? Why? Why would that help?’

  ‘It’s because of my paperwork. They presented Tony Accardo with copies of it – years of carefully documented notes, about tax evasion, mostly; that’s how the FBI put Al Capone away. But more, much more: bribery of officials, state and federal; judges; police and others. The skim takings, money laundering and four cases of murder, with every detail – the why, how and when, and who ordered it – all documented. My lawyers pointed out to Mr Accardo that they felt sure killing me wasn’t the wisest option, since the original documents were in a very secure place, and that building the Firebird on the highway seemed like a very intelligent idea. As proof of my confidence in the decision and as a mark of his goodwill and trust, I respectfully requested two points in the new casino, with no provisos, and the profits to be audited by an independent accountant not under Manny de Costa’s supervision.’

  I felt cold all over. Wasn’t that blackmail? And of some of the most powerful and ruthless men in America?

  Bridgett paused, then continued. ‘The two points were a reward for my years of faithful service, during which I had added greatly to their wealth.’

  ‘Two points?’

  ‘Per cent.’ Bridgett grinned. ‘So, you can see, I’ve got a big personal investment in making the Firebird work.’

  ‘You must be pretty sure it will.’

  ‘Jack, I was right to tell Mr Accardo that the Flamingo would take our business if we didn’t act, and act fast. My ladies trust me and I trust them but, in most things, wives don’t have the final say.’ She paused. ‘Meyer Lansky made me an offer, but even if my paperwork prevented Chicago from killing me, I couldn’t have hoped to make anything like the kind of deal I wanted. I’ve got nothing on New York, so points in the Flamingo would have been out of the question. Thank god Bugsy Siegel is such an incompetent fool. He allowed me just enough breathing space to get Chicago to build the Firebird in a year. So, you see, Jack, it can’t fail. Every member of The Princess, every girlfriend and wife, has agreed to follow you to the Firebird.’

  It was a nice thing to say, but I knew they’d really be following the beautiful Mrs Bridgett Fuller.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  BRIDGETT PROVED TO BE correct, New York didn’t give up on the seemingly hapless Flamingo, and announced it would be closed until all building was completed. In Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel’s words, ‘It gonna make that cockamamie casino they got in Monaco look like a barn.’

  This gave us the opportunity to move to the Firebird, which had been completed on time and on budget. Bridgett, determined not to ‘do a Bugsy’, spent a month getting the kitchens working properly and the staff familiar with the premises. She tested everything, to discover any flaws ahead of time, then tested it again. She invited white staff members and their families to test the pool and poolside bar and restaurant, and some particularly hardworking staff were invited to use the luxury suites, to iron out any problems with them. The staff enthusiastically threw themselves into playing the roles of pernickety, fractious, wealthy guests, taking great delight in giving each other a hard time. Bridgett conducted daily meetings, listening to the complaints and the reactions to them, and working out ways to avoid problems in future.

  Alas, the coloured staff were not permitted to use the suites or the pool but simply played their accustomed roles; however, they did attend all the seminars. In an effort to make things up to them, Bridgett allowed them to invite their husbands, wives or parents to have dinner in the formal restaurant, with Chef Napoleon Nelson presiding over the kitchen, and the usual waiting staff and maître d’hôtel attending the tables. Although only volunteers were called for on these nights, not a single member of the restaurant staff refused to serve the black families. Furthermore, Barney, our usual bartender, volunteered to work the restaurant bar and we moved the Steinway grand in so I could play throughout the evening. For my part, I was able to invite the players from The Resurrection Brothers and their wives, as well as those other families who had so generously invited me to share their Sunday dinners.

  Getting the Firebird up and running was hard work but also great fun, and allowed staff to enjoy something they might never again experience. As a result, there was a sense of camaraderie and morale was at an all-time high. No casino could have been better prepared for a successful opening. Bridgett had drawn up the guest list from America’s wealthiest high rollers, their wives and girlfriends, including only bona fide members of the GAWP Bar. No big stars were invited, unless, of course, they’d previously frequented the El Marinero.

  In a true stroke of genius, Bridgett opened on the same day as the Flamingo – now renamed the Fabulous Flamingo – without any special fanfare. The Flamingo did all the publicity work, inviting the usual list of ritzy stars of stage and screen to the week-long celebrations. Meanwhile, back at the Firebird, the high rollers and their ladies settled into their complimentary suites, feeling infinitely superior. The Firebird seemed exclusive and distinctive by comparison without the razzamatazz of the Flamingo. As for the GAWP Bar, it was simply moving into its new home, which more accurately reflected the needs and expectations of the girlfriends and wives of America’s very rich gamblers.

  However, Bridgett hadn’t lost the common touch. The Firebird’s ‘slot casino’, carefully separated from the high-roller section, was as brash and brassy as anything in Vegas. As Lenny put it, ‘Mrs Fuller got all the bases covered, buddy. On the one hand, sheer class; on the other, sheer ass!’

  Although the Flamingo was supposed to be a state-of-the-art casino, rumour had it that, under Bugsy Siegel’s mismanagement, costs had finally blown out to almost six million dollars. Sadly, this astronomical sum was not reflected in the casino itself, due, no doubt, to theft, corruption and other shoddy practices. As Louella Parsons wrote in her Hollywood gossip column: My dears, the décor reflected the personal taste of Mr Benjamin Siegel and his actress girlfriend, Miss Virginia Hill. Need I say more!

  The interior of the smaller Firebird, designed by Anna-Lucia Hermes, was variously described by newspaper and radio commentators as elegant, luxurious, intimate, and infinitely superior in tone and ambience to the Flamingo. We earned three pictorial pages plus a spread in Architectural Digest, the magazine that, for close to a decade, had set the standard for American interior design. This earned us points with city hall because the accolades boosted the reputation of Anna-Lucia, the mayor’s wife, so that, in the next five years, she was frequently chosen to design the interiors of a number of the new casinos on what was to become known as The Strip.

  The local press covered the opening of both luxury resort casinos almost equally, so that the citizens of Las Vegas and the casino patrons spoke of little else for a week. The local folk had already seen the Flamingo fall flat on its face, and flocked to the next opening, hoping perhaps to see a repeat performance. These regular gamblers were equally curious about the Firebird, still an unknown quantity, and flocked to the ‘slots’ section, which was only a hop, skip and jump up the highway. As one newspaper put it, gamblers could ‘kill two birds with one stone’. In fact it was the gamblers who were at risk from the moment they wandered into the regular casino. Bridgett had ens
ured that it was completely sealed off from the outside. There were no windows and the exits all led to other areas within the complex. Once inside the Firebird, it wasn’t easy to get out again. What’s more, there were no clocks visible anywhere, thus insulating gamblers from any sense of passing time. There was no daylight, no temperature change, the tables operated twenty-four hours a day and the lights over the green baize tables were never turned off.

  But even if the atmosphere was designed to keep the players at the tables for as long as possible, Bridgett knew that even the most compulsive gambler ultimately has to have a break. He must be given the chance to eat and sleep, and acknowledge the wife or girlfriend he brought along on the pretext of a luxury holiday with the promise of a poolside tan from the desert sun, and the chance to meet and greet her social counterparts from every state in the Union.

  Bridgett had developed this concept at the El Marinero but now, at the Firebird, it came into its own. A GAWP Bar member was guaranteed a tan, entertainment, wining and dining with her husband or boyfriend; and, much, much more importantly, she was able to gather plenty of gossip, contacts, lifestyle tips, references and referrals to impress her envious friends back home. Only a woman could have figured out this heady combination. The new GAWP Bar, now known as The Phoenix, soon earned a reputation as the most glamorous, exciting and influential female meeting place in North America.

  I was personally responsible for keeping the wives and girlfriends safe, happy and sentimentally romantic while their husbands and boyfriends were glued to the gaming tables. This, in the simplest terms, was my role in the vast, greedy, money-munching machinery that made up the Firebird.

  With morale sky high, staff had a genuine willingness to please patrons at the Firebird, whereas at the Flamingo, there was an edgy sense of anxiety and false bonhomie. After the first week, the Firebird’s regular casino, under Lenny’s management, was clearly a huge success. Mr Meet ’n’ Greet Let Me Show You Your Suite was a thing of the past; Lenny had finally discovered his civilian vocation. Next door the high rollers gambled with more than their usual enthusiasm, confident that their girlfriends and wives were happily occupied at the new GAWP Bar. For my own part, I was more than content with the new piano bar. My brand-new Steinway grand stood on a generous stage in the centre of the room, and when I first sat down to play, to test out both the instrument and the acoustics, I honestly thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

  Had the godfather or any other members of the Family bothered to attend the opening of the Firebird, they would have been delighted by the profits from that first week under the joint management of Lenny and Bridgett. The joke was that they had stayed away because they were unwilling to risk facing the humiliation of a disastrous opening foreshadowed, they believed, by the calamitous first opening of the Flamingo.

  Instead, Manny ‘Asshole’ de Costa was sent along with Sammy, under the guise of organising the renovation of the El Marinero. Sammy, forbidden by Bridgett to enter the high-roller section, was nevertheless observed strutting around the regular casino, shooting off his mouth. Lenny and Johnny Diamond, flushed with success, put his complaints and criticisms down to sour grapes. As Lenny said to me, with a wry smile, ‘Jack, Sammy ain’t happy with our success because Chicago ain’t gonna be happy. Now the godfather gotta admit Bridgett was right and he was wrong . . . which he ain’t gonna wanna do. And hey, the takings for the first week are more than we made in a month at the El Marinero.’ He shrugged expressively. ‘It only natural they gonna be mad as hell. Sammy’s under instructions to stir . . . make trouble, you just wait and see.’

  After the second stupendous week, the godfather called Lenny and, mixing his metaphors, warned him, ‘Don’tcha count no chickens, ya hear? One swallow don’t make no goddamn Indian summer!’ However, the Firebird never looked back and, to the chagrin of Chicago, nor did ‘the fucking kikes’ at the Flamingo, as Manny ‘Asshole’ de Costa put it. Chicago took some comfort from the fact that the Flamingo was still hopelessly in debt and would likely take six years to recoup the original investment. But it was obvious after the first few months that The Strip was going to be America’s premier gambling venue. It was still early days, but with the post-war boom, it was clear that Bridgett had been right to back Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel’s vision and that, despite some initial hitches, the concept of the luxury resort casino was here to stay. Three years after the opening of the Firebird, Forbes Magazine would name Mrs Bridgett Fuller American Hotelier of the Year.

  One Friday, three months after the opening of the two luxury resort casinos, Bridgett and I were meeting in her office for our daily talk about the GAWP Bar. Barney, as was his custom, brought in Bridgett’s Manhattan and, with a predictable sigh, my sarsaparilla, except that on this particular day he shouted from the doorway, ‘Quick, turn on the radio. Bugsy Siegel’s bin murdered!’

  The local Las Vegas radio station kept repeating the news in flash bulletins, so we didn’t have long to wait for details. Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel had been shot several times by an unknown gunman firing through a window of Virginia Hill’s bungalow in Beverly Hills. The gangster with the movie-star looks and no head for accounting was shot several times, one bullet said to have blown an eye out of his skull and across the room.

  Barney stayed to listen and then left to prepare his bar for my first session. ‘Christ, what do you make of that?’ I exclaimed once he’d gone.

  Bridgett took a sip from her Manhattan, then said quietly, ‘Jack, Mr Siegel may well have been a Mobster, a standover merchant, a thug and a womaniser, none of which is seen as a character defect, in this town at least . . .’ She took a second sip from her cocktail. ‘But he was also a visionary and, in a real sense, I owe him everything.’

  No one was ever charged with Bugsy Siegel’s murder, although it was more or less accepted that some disenchanted investor had ordered it. Given that there was so much Mafia money tied up in the casino, the order for the hit could well have originated with the Family. There was no mention of Meyer Lansky as ‘accountant’ (read godfather) of the New York syndicate being implicated, even though it was generally allowed that he, of all people, had not only good reason but also the authority to order the killing of his fellow gangster and lifelong friend.

  In the same period that culminated in Bugsy Siegel’s execution, Sammy worked like a tiger to get the new El Marinero up and running, with frequent visits from Manny ‘Asshole’ de Costa. For some unknown reason, Tony Accardo decided that Sammy should be the one to be entrusted with running the refurbished El Marinero, a decision that was seriously flawed.

  While it is pretty hard to lose money running a casino, the new El Marinero lost it hand over fist, way beyond anything the Chicago accountant had estimated. Something was clearly wrong. Their publicity had been simple enough: they allowed word to get around among the local punters that they’d set their slots to pay out more frequently than those of any other casino in Glitter Gulch. Chicago had been prepared to take the lower returns involved, to gain a bigger share of the highly profitable slot-machine business known in casino parlance as ‘the grind’. The plan had been gradually to raise the percentage take from the machines until it was back to the usual level.

  The tactic had worked well and the new El Marinero was usually pumping, often with gamblers queuing to use the slots. But when Manny ‘Asshole’ de Costa temporarily lengthened the odds as a test, the losses continued. Moreover, there didn’t seem to be anyone except Sammy himself to blame.

  The Mafiosi knew their way around a gaming floor and how to set odds. Chicago, concerned, had sent two top lieutenants with previous casino experience to advise Sammy, but they’d mysteriously been reported as gangsters and quietly escorted out of town by two police officers. Manny de Costa knew which police were corrupt, but it seemed Sammy had employed a couple of extras.

  Now the proprietor of a casino, Sammy Schischka completely lost his head, helping himself to a share of the daily take and, to the immense deli
ght of the other Glitter Gulch casinos, losing enormous amounts in poker games. More than once, he gambled away the Mob’s money in a late-night game at the Flamingo.

  All of this soon became apparent to the frustrated Manny ‘Asshole’ de Costa, who, in an attempt to save his own butt, reported Sammy’s theft to the godfather in Chicago. But to censure Sammy, his own appointment, would mean a great loss of face to Tony Accardo, so, with the Firebird making plenty of cash, the godfather simply sold the new El Marinero and cut his losses. But then, to Lenny’s consternation, he decided that Sammy was ideally suited to becoming the Family debt collector. And so Sammy Schischka, the psychopath with his two hoods still in tow, now had every unfortunate or addicted gambler in Las Vegas potentially at his mercy.

  Lenny’s pleas and warnings about Sammy’s presence in town fell on deaf ears. In fact, they probably reinforced the godfather’s resolve to keep Sammy close to the Firebird and the two cleanskins he mistrusted most of all, Lenny and Bridgett. It was a neat enough solution, Sammy would appear to be gainfully employed while keeping an eye on Lenny and the ‘greedy bitch’, as well as taking care of any other local Mob business.

  To put it in a nutshell, we prospered hugely. Of course, the dirty little secret we all preferred not to talk about, even among ourselves, was that we were all there to help, in some way or another, separate gamblers from the contents of their wallets. But how, you may ask, can a simple piano player contribute to fleecing gamblers? How very easy it is to develop selective perception. The tiniest cog never seems important in itself but it adds as much to the smooth running of the machine as the larger cogs. My little cog in the giant, quietly humming robbery machine was playing good jazz for the wives’ and girlfriends’ pleasure on a very expensive Steinway piano.

  Gambling is seductive – god, I should know. Unlike any other addiction, it can continue until you drop from exhaustion or you run out of cash. An alcoholic can only drink so much before he falls down unconscious. A drug addict can only take so much of a particular poison before he loses his senses or his habit kills him. But there is no limit to a gambler’s addiction, provided he stays off strong drink and pills – Benzedrine (or ‘Bennies’) being the big temptation because it keeps you awake. The pills can also induce manic overconfidence, paranoia and other psychological problems not calculated to increase your chances of winning. The gambling bug isn’t a physical addiction but it might as well be.