Fools die

by Mario Puzo

  As Cully and the casino cage manager were doing the paperwork for signing over the keys, two men Cully had never seen before came in. The casino cage manager knew them because he turned very pale and his hands started shaking uncontrollably.

  Both men nodded to him and he nodded back. One of the men said, “When you’re through, the boss wants to see you up in his office.” They were talking to the cage manager and ignored Cully. Cully picked up the phone and called Gronevelt’s office. He said to Gronevelt. “Two guys came down here, they say you sent them.”

  Gronevelt’s voice was like ice. “That’s right,” be said.

  “Just checking,” Cully said.

  Gronevelt’s voice softened. “Good idea,” he said. “And you did a good job.” There was a slight pause. “The rest of it is none of your business, Cully. Forget about it. Understand?” His voice was almost gentle now, and there was even a note of weary sadness in it.

  The cage manager was seen for the next few days around Las Vegas and then disappeared. After a month Cully learned that his wife had put in a missing persons report on him. He couldn’t believe the implication at first, despite the jokes he heard around town that the cage manager was now buried in the desert. He never dared mention anything to Gronevelt, and Gronevelt never spoke of the matter to him. Not even to compliment him upon his good work. Which was just as well. Cully didn’t want to think that his good work might have resulted in the cage manager’s being buried in the desert.

  But in the last few months Gronevelt had shown his mettle in a less macabre way. With typical Vegas nimbleness of foot and quick-wittedness.

  All the casino owners in Vegas had started making a big pitch for foreign gamblers. The English were immediately written off, despite their history of being the biggest losers of the nineteenth century. The end of the British Empire had meant the end of their high rollers. The millions of Indians, Australians, South Sea Islanders and Canadians no longer poured money into the coffers of the gambling milords. England was now a poor country, whose very rich scrambled to beat taxes and hold on to their estates. Those few who could afford to gamble preferred the aristocratic high-toned clubs in France and Germany and their own London.

  The French were also written off. The French didn’t travel and would never stand for the extra house double zero on the Vegas wheel.

  But the Germans and Italians were wooed. Germany with its expanding postwar economy had many millionaires, and Germans loved to travel, loved to gamble and loved the Vegas women. There was something in the high-flying Vegas style that appealed to the Teutonic spirit, that brought back memories of Oktoberfest and maybe even Gotterdammerung. The Germans were also good-natured gamblers and more skillful than most.

  Italian millionaires were big prizes in Vegas. They gambled recklessly while getting drunk; they let the soft hustlers employed by casinos keep them in the city a suicidal six or seven days. They seemed to have inexhaustible sums of money because none of them paid income tax. What should have gone into the public coffers of Rome slid into the hold boxes of air-conditioned casinos. The girls of Vegas loved the Italian millionaires because of their generous gifts and because for those six or seven days they fell in love with the same abandon they plunged on the sucker hard-way bets at the crap table.

  The Mexican and South American gamblers were even bigger prizes. Nobody knew what was really going on down in South America, but special planes were sent there to bring the pampas millionaires to Vegas. Everything was free to these sporting gentlemen who left the hides of millions of cattle at the baccarat tables. They came with their wives and girlfriends, their adolescent sons eager to become gambling men. These customers too were favorites of the Las Vegas girls. They were less sincere than the Italians, perhaps a little less polished in their lovemaking according to some reports, but certainly with larger appetites. Cully had been in Gronevelt’s office one day when the casino manager came with a special problem. A South American gambler, a premier player, had put in a request for eight girls to be sent to his suite, blondes, redheads but no brunettes and none shorter than his own five feet six inches.

  Gronevelt took the request coolly. “And what time today does he want this miracle to happen?” Gronevelt asked.

  “About five o’clock,” the casino manager said. “He wants to take them all to dinner afterward and keep them for the night.”

  Gronevelt didn’t crack a smile. “What will it cost?’

  “About three grand,” the casino manager said. “The girls know they’ll get roulette and baccarat money from this guy.”

  “OK, comp it,” Gronevelt said. “But tell those girls to keep him in the hotel as much as possible. I don’t want him losing his dough down the Strip.”

  As the casino manager started to leave, Gronevelt said,” What the hell is he going to do with eight women?”

  The casino manager shrugged. “I asked him the same thing. He says he has his son with him.”

  For the first time in the conversation, Gronevelt smiled. “That’s what I call real paternal pride,” he said. Then, after the casino manager left the room, he shook his head and said to Cully, “Remember, they gamble where they shit and where they fuck. When the father dies, the son will keep coming here. For three grand he’ll have a night he’ll never forget. He’ll be worth a million bucks to the Xanadu unless they have a revolution in his country.”

  But the prize, the champions, the pearl without price that every casino owner coveted were the Japanese. They were hair-raising gamblers, and they always arrived in Vegas in groups. The top echelon of an industrial combine would arrive to gamble tax-free dollars, and their losses in a four-day stay many times went over a million dollars. And it was Cully who snared the biggest Japanese prize for the Xanadu Hotel and Gronevelt.

  Cully had been carrying on a friendly go-to-the-movies-and-fuck-afterward love affair with a dancer in the Oriental Follies playing a Strip hotel. The girl was called Daisy because her Japanese name was unpronounceable, and she was only about twenty years old, but she had been in Vegas for nearly five years. She was a terrific dancer, cute as a pearl in its shell, but she was thinking about getting operations to make her eyes Occidental and her bust puffed to corn-fed American. Cully was horrified and told her she would ruin her appeal. Daisy finally listened to his advice only when he pretended an ecstasy greater than he felt for her budlike breasts.

  They became such friends that she gave him lessons in Japanese while they were in bed and he stayed overnight. In the mornings she would serve him soup for breakfast, and when he protested, she told him that in Japan everyone ate soup for breakfast and that she made the best breakfast soup in her village outside Tokyo. Cully was astonished to find the soup delicious and tangy and easy on the stomach after a fatiguing night of drinking and making love.

  It was Daisy who alerted him to the fact that one of the great business tycoons of Japan was planning to visit Vegas. Daisy had Japanese newspapers airmailed to her by her family; she was homesick and enjoyed reading about Japan. She told Cully that a Tokyo tycoon, a Mr. Fummiro, had given an interview stating that he would come to America to open up overseas branches of his television manufacturing business. Daisy said that Mr. Fummiro was famous in Japan for being an outrageous gambler and would surely come to Vegas. She also told him that Mr. Fummiro was a pianist of great skill, had studied in Europe and would almost certainly have become a professional musician if his father had not ordered his son to take over the family firm.

  That day Cully had Daisy come over to his office at the Xanadu and dictated a letter for her to write on the hotel stationery. With Daisy’s advice he constructed a letter that observed the, to Occidentals, subtle politesse of Japan and would not give Mr. Fummiro offense.

  In the letter he invited Mr. Fummiro to be an honored guest at the Xanadu Hotel for as long as he wished and at any time he wished. He also invited Mr. Fummiro to bring as many guests as he desired, his whole entourage, including his business colleagues in the United
States. In delicate language Daisy let Mr. Fummiro know that all this would not cost him one cent. That even the theater shows would be free. Before he mailed the letter, Cully got Gronevelt’s approval since Cully still did not have the full authority of “The Pencil.” Cully had been afraid that Gronevelt would sign the letter, but this did not happen. So now officially these Japanese were Cully’s clients, if they came. He would be their “Host.”

  It was three weeks before he received an answer. And during that time Cully put in some more time studying with Daisy. He learned that he must always smile while talking to a Japanese client. That he always had to show the utmost courtesy in voice and gesture. She told him that when a slight hiss came into the speech of a Japanese man, it was a sign of anger, a danger signal. Like the rattle of a snake. Cully remembered that hiss in the speech of Japanese villains in WW II movies. He had thought it was just the mannerisms of the actor.

  When the answer to the letter came, it was in the form of a phone call from Mr. Fummiro’s overseas branch office in Los Angeles. Could the Xanadu Hotel have two suites ready for Mr. Fummiro, the president of Japan Worldwide Sales Company and his executive vice-president, Mr. Niigeta? Plus another ten rooms for other members of Mr. Fummiro’s entourage? The call had been routed to Cully since he had been specifically asked for, and he answered yes. Then, wild with joy, he immediately called Daisy, and told her he would take her shopping in the next few days. He told her he would get Mr. Fummiro ten suites to make all the members of his entourage comfortable. She told him not to do so. That it would make Mr. Fummiro lose face if the rest of his party had equal accommodations. Then Cully asked Daisy to go out that very day and fly to Los Angeles to buy kimonos that Mr. Fummiro could wear in the privacy of his suite. She told him that this too would offend Mr. Fummiro, who prided himself on being Westernized, though he surely wore the comfortable Japanese traditional garments in the privacy of his own home. Cully, desperately seeking for every angle to get an edge, suggested that Daisy meet Mr. Fummiro and perhaps act as his interpreter and dinner companion. Daisy laughed and said that would be the last thing Mr. Fummiro would want. He would be extremely uncomfortable with a Westernized Japanese girl observing him in this foreign country.

  Cully accepted all her decisions. But one thing he insisted on. He told Daisy to make fresh Japanese soup during Mr. Fummiro’s three-day stay. Cully would come to her apartment early every morning to pick it up and have it delivered to Mr. Fummiro’s suite when he ordered breakfast. Daisy groaned but promised to do so.

  Late that afternoon Cully got a call from Gronevelt. “What the hell is a piano doing in Suite Four Ten?” Gronevelt said. “I just got a call from the hotel manager. He said you bypassed channels and caused a hell of a mess.”

  Cully explained the arrival of Mr. Fummiro and his special tastes. Gronevelt chuckled and said, “Take my Rolls when you pick him up at the airport.” This was a car he used only for the richest of Texas millionaires or his favorite clients that he personally “Hosted.”

  The next day Cully was at the airport with three bellmen from the hotel, the chauffeured Rolls and two Cadillac limos. He arranged for the Rolls and the limousines to go directly onto the flying field so that his clients would not have to go through the terminal. And he greeted Mr. Fummiro as soon as he came down the steps of the plane.

  The party of Japanese was unmistakable not only for their features but because of the way they dressed. They were all in black business suits, badly tailored by Western standards, with white shirts and black ties. The ten of them looked like a band of very earnest clerks instead of the ruling board of Japan ’s richest and most powerful business conglomerate.

  Mr. Fummiro was also easy to pick out. He was the tallest of the band, very tall in comparison, a good five feet ten. And he was handsome with wide massive features, broad shoulders and jet black hair. He could have passed for a movie star out of Hollywood cast in an exotic role that made him look falsely Oriental. For a brief second the thought flashed through Cully’s mind that this might be an elaborate scam.

  Of the others only one stood close to Fummiro. He was slightly shorter than Fummiro, but much thinner. And he had the buckteeth of the caricature Japanese. The remaining men were tiny and inconspicuous. All of them carried elegant black imitation samite briefcases.

  Cully extended his hand with utmost assurance to Fummiro and said, “I’m Cully Cross of the Xanadu Hotel. Welcome to Las Vegas.”

  Mr. Fummiro flashed a brilliantly polite smile. His white teeth were large and perfect, and he said in only slightly accented English, “Very pleased to meet you.”

  Then he introduced the buck-toothed man as Mr. Niigeta, his executive vice-president. He murmured the names of the others, all of whom ceremoniously shook hands with Cully. Cully took their baggage tickets and assured them all luggage would be delivered to their rooms in the hotel.

  He ushered them into the waiting cars. He and Fummiro and Niigeta into the Rolls, the others into the Cadillacs. On the way to the hotel he told his passengers that credit had been arranged. Fummiro patted Niigeta’s briefcase and said in his slightly imperfect English, “We have brought you cash money.” The two men smiled at Cully. Cully smiled back. He remembered to smile whenever he spoke as he told them all the conveniences of the hotel and how they could see any show in Vegas. For a fraction of a second he thought about mentioning the companionship of women, but some instinct made him hold back.

  At the hotel he led them directly to their rooms and had a desk clerk bring up the registration forms for them to sign. All were on the same floor, Fummiro and Niigeta had adjoining suites with a connecting door. Fummiro inspected the living accommodations for his whole party, and Cully saw the glint of satisfaction in his eyes when he noted that his own suite was by far the best. But Fummiro’s eyes really lit up when he saw the small piano in his suite. He immediately sat down and fingered the keys, listening. Cully hoped that it was in tune. He couldn’t tell, but Fummiro vigorously nodded his head and, smiling broadly and face alight with pleasure, said, “Very good, very kind,” and shook Cully’s hand effusively.

  Then Fummiro motioned to Niigeta to open the brief case he was carrying. Cully’s eyes bulged a little. There were neatly banded stacks of currency filling the case. He had no idea how much it might be. “We would like to leave this on deposit in your casino cage,” Mr. Fummiro said. “Then we can just draw the money as we need it for our little vacation.”

  “Certainly,” Cully said. Niigeta snapped the case shut, and the two of them went down to the casino, leaving Fummiro alone in his suite to freshen up.

  They went into the casino manager’s office, where the money was counted out. It came to five hundred thousand dollars. Cully made sure Niigeta was given the proper receipt and the necessary clerical work done so that the money could be drawn on demand at the tables. The casino manager himself would be on the floor with Cully and would identify Fummiro and Niigeta to the pit bosses and the floor walkers. Then in every corner of the casino the two Japanese merely had to lift a finger and draw chips, then sign a marker. Without fuss, without showing identification. And they would get the royal treatment, the utmost deference. A deference especially pure since it related only to money.

  For the next three days Cully was at the hotel early in the morning with Daisy’s breakfast soup. Room service had orders to notify him as soon as Mr. Fummiro called down for his breakfast. Cully would give him an hour to eat and then knock on his door to say good morning. He would find Fummiro already at his piano, playing soulfully, the serving bowl of soup empty on the table behind him. In these morning meetings Cully arranged show tickets and sightseeing trips for Mr. Fummiro and his friends. Mr. Fummiro was always smilingly polite and grateful, and Mr. Niigeta would come through the connecting door from his own suite to greet Cully and compliment him on the breakfast soup, which he had obviously shared. Cully remembered to keep smiling and nodding his head as they did.

  Meanwhile, in their three da
ys’ gambling in Vegas the band of ten Japanese terrorized the casinos of Vegas. They would travel together and gamble together at the same baccarat table. When Fummiro had the shoe, they all bet the limit with him on the Bank. They had some hot streaks but luckily not at the Xanadu. They only bet baccarat, and they played with a joie de vivre more Italian than Oriental. Fummiro would whip the sides of the shoe and bang the table when he dealt himself a natural eight or nine. He was a passionate gambler and gloated over winning a two-thousand-dollar bet. This amazed Cully. He knew Fummiro was worth over half a billion dollars. Why should such paltry (though up to the Vegas limit) gambling excite him?

  Only once did he see the steel behind Fummiro’s handsome smiling facade. One night Niigeta placed a bet on Player’s when Fummiro had the shoe. Fummiro gave him a long look, eyebrows arching, and said something in Japanese. For the first time Cully caught the slight hissing sound that Daisy had warned him against. Niigeta stuttered something in apology through his buck teeth and immediately switched his money to ride with Fummiro.

  The trip was a huge success for everybody. Fummiro and his band went back to Japan ahead over a hundred thousand dollars, but they had lost two hundred thousand to the Xanadu. They had made up for their losses at other casinos. And they had started a legend in Vegas. The band of ten men in their shiny black suits would leave one casino for another down the Strip. They were a frightening sight, marching ten strong into a casino, looking like undertakers come to collect the corpse of the casino’s bankroll. The baccarat pit boss would learn from the Rolls driver where they were going and call that casino to expect them and give them red-carpet treatment. All the pit bosses pooled their information. It was in this way that Cully learned that Niigeta was a horny Oriental and getting laid by top-class hookers at the other hotels. Which meant that for some reason he didn’t want Fummiro to know that he would rather fuck than gamble.