by Mario Puzo
Cully took them to the airport when they left for Los Angeles. He had one of Gronevelt’s antique gold fob watches which he presented to Fummiro with Gronevelt’s compliments. Gronevelt himself had briefly stopped at the Japanese dining table to introduce himself and show the courtesies of the house.
Fummiro was genuinely effusive in his thanks, and Cully went through the usual rounds of handshakes and smiles before they got on their plane. Cully rushed back to the hotel, made a phone call to get the piano moved out of Fummiro’s Suite and then went into Gronevelt’s office. Gronevelt gave him a warm handshake and a congratulatory hug.
“One of the best ‘Host’ jobs I’ve seen in all my years in Vegas,” Gronevelt said. “Where did you find out about that soup business?”
“A little girl named Daisy,” Cully said. “OK if I buy her a present from the hotel?”
“You can go for a grand,” Gronevelt said. “That’s a very nice connection you made with those laps. Keep after them. The special Christmas gifts and invitations. That guy Fummiro is a bust-out gambler if I ever saw one.”
Cully frowned. “I was a little leery about laying on broads,” he said. “You know Fummiro is a hell of a nice guy, and I didn’t want to get too familiar first time out.”
Gronevelt nodded. “You were right. Don’t worry, he’ll be back. And if he wants a broad, he’ll ask for one. You don’t make his kind of money by being afraid to ask.”
Gronevelt as usual was right. Three months later Fummiro was back and at the cabaret show asked about one of the leggy blond dancers. Cully knew she was in action despite being married to a dealer at the Sands. After the show he called the stage manager and asked him if the girl would have a drink with Fummiro and him. It was arranged, and Fummiro asked the girl out for a late-night dinner. The girl looked questioningly at Cully and he nodded. Then he left them alone. He went to his office and called the stage manager to tell him to schedule a replacement for the midnight show. The next morning Cully did not go up to Fummiro’s suite after breakfast was delivered. Later in the day he called the girl at her home and told her she could miss all her shows while Fummiro was in town.
On subsequent trips the pattern remained the same. By this time Daisy had taught one of the Xanadu chefs how to make the Japanese soup, and it was officially listed on the breakfast menu. One thing Cully learned was that Fummiro always watched the reruns of a certain long-lasting western TV show. He loved it. Especially the blond ingenue who played a plucky but very feminine, yet innocent dance hall girl. Cully had a brainstorm. Through his movie contacts he got in touch with the ingenue, who was named Linda Parsons. He flew into Los Angeles, bad lunch with her and told her about Fummiro’s passion for her and her show. She was fascinated by Cully’s stories about Fummiro’s gambling. How he checked into the Xanadu with briefcases holding a million dollars in cash, which he would sometimes lose in three days of baccarat. Cully could see the childish, innocent greed in her eyes. She told Cully that she would love to come to Vegas the next time Fummiro arrived.
A month later Fummiro and Niigeta checked into the Xanadu Hotel for a four-day stay. Cully immediately told Fummiro about Linda Parsons’ wishing to visit him. Fummiro’s eyes lit up. Despite being over forty, he had an incredible boyish handsomeness, which his evident joy made even more charming. He asked Cully to call the girl immediately, and Cully said he would, not mentioning that he had already spoken to her and she had promised to come into town the next afternoon. Fummiro was so excited that he gambled like a madman that night and dropped over three hundred thousand dollars.
The next morning Fummiro went shopping for a new blue suit. For some reason he thought blue suits were the height of American elegance, and Cully arranged with the Sy Devore people at the Sands Hotel to measure and fit him out and specially tailor it for him that day. Cully sent one of his Xanadu “Hosts” with Fummiro to make sure everything went smoothly.
But Linda Parsons caught an early plane and arrived in Vegas before noon. Cully met her plane and brought her to the hotel. She wanted to freshen up for Fummiro’s arrival, so Cully put her in Niigeta’s suite since he assumed that Niigeta was with his chief. It proved to be an almost fatal error.
Leaving her in the suite, Cully went back to his office and tried to locate Fummiro, but he had left the tailor shop and must have stopped off in one of the casinos along the way to gamble. He could not be traced. After about an hour he received a phone call from Fummiro’s suite. It was Linda Parsons. She sounded a little upset. “Could you come down?” she said. “I’m having a language problem with your friend.”
Cully didn’t wait to ask any questions. Fummiro spoke English well enough; for some reason he was pretending not to be able to. Maybe he was disappointed in the girl. Cully had noticed that the ingenue, in person, had more mileage on her than appeared in the carefully photographed TV shows. Or maybe Linda had said or done something that had offended his delicate Oriental sensibilities.
But it was Niigeta who let him into the suite. And Niigeta was preening himself with slightly drunken pride. Then Cully saw Linda Parsons come out of the bathroom clad in a Japanese kimono with golden dragons blazoned all over it.
“Jesus Christ,” Cully said.
Linda gave him a wan smile. “You sure bullshitted me,” she said. “He’s not that shy and he’s not that good-looking and doesn’t even understand English. I hope he’s rich at least.”
Niigeta was still smiling and preening, he even bowed toward Linda as she was talking. He had obviously not understood what she was saying.
“Did you fuck him?” Cully asked almost in despair.
Linda made a face. “He kept chasing me around the suite. I thought at least we’d have a romantic evening together with flowers and violins, but I couldn’t fight him off. So I figured what the hell. Let’s get it over with if he’s such a horny Jap. So I fucked him.”
Cully shook his head and said, “You fucked the wrong Jap.”
Linda looked at him for a moment with a mixture of shock and horror. Then she burst out laughing. It was a genuine laughter that became her. She fell onto the sofa still laughing, her white thigh bared by the flopping of the kimono. For that moment Cully was charmed by her. But then he shook his head. This was serious. He picked up the phone and got Daisy at her apartment. The first thing Daisy said was, “No more soup.” Cully told her to stop kidding around and to get down to the hotel. He told her it was terribly important and she had to be fast. Then he called Gronevelt and explained the situation. (Gronevelt said he would come right down. Meanwhile, Cully was praying that Fummiro would not appear.
Fifteen minutes later Gronevelt and Daisy were in the suite with them. Linda had made Cully and Niigeta and herself a drink from the suite bar, and she still had a grin on her face. Gronevelt was charming with her. “I’m sorry this happened,” he said. “But just be a little patient. We’ll get everything sorted out.” Then he turned to Daisy. “Explain to Mr. Niigeta exactly what happened. That he took Mr. Fummiro’s woman. That she thought he was Mr. Fummiro. Explain that Mr. Fummiro was madly in love with her and went out to buy a new suit for his meeting with her.”
Niigeta was listening intently with the same broad grin he always wore. But now there was a little alarm in his eyes. He asked Daisy a question in Japanese, and Cully noticed the little warning hiss in his speech. Daisy started talking to him rapidly in Japanese. She kept smiling as she talked, but Niigeta’s smile kept fading as her words poured out, and when she finished, he fell to the floor of the suite in a dead faint.
Daisy took charge. She grabbed a whiskey bottle and poured some down Niigeta’s throat, then helped him up and to the sofa. Linda looked at him pityingly. Niigeta was wringing his hands and pouring out speech to Daisy. Gronevelt asked what he was saying. Daisy shrugged. “He says it means the end of his career. He says that Mr. Fummiro will get rid of him. That he made Mr. Fummiro lose too much face.”
Gronevelt nodded. “Tell him to just keep his mouth shut.
Tell him I’m going to have him put into the hospital for a day because he’s feeling ill, and then he’ll fly back to Los Angeles for treatment. We’ll make up a story for Mr. Fummiro. Tell him never to tell a soul, and we’ll make sure that Mr. Fummiro never finds out what happened.”
Daisy translated and Niigeta nodded. His polite smile came back, but it was a ghastly grimace. Gronevelt turned to Cully. “You and Miss Parsons wait for Fummiro. Act as if nothing happened. I’ll take care of Niigeta. We can’t leave him here; he’ll faint again when he sees his boss. I’ll ship him out.”
And that was how it worked. When Fummiro finally arrived an hour later, he found Linda Parsons, freshly dressed and made up, waiting for him with Cully. Fummiro was immediately enchanted, and Linda Parsons looked smitten with his handsomeness but as innocently as the ingenue of the western TV movie could be.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “But I took your friend’s suite so that I could be right next to you. That way we can spend more time with each other.”
Fummiro grasped the implication. She was not just some slut who would move right in with him. She would have to fall in love first. He nodded with a broad smile and said, “Of course, of course.” Cully heaved a sigh of relief. Linda was playing her cards just right. He said his good-byes and lingered for a moment in the hall. In a few minutes he could hear Fummiro playing the piano and Linda singing along with him.
In the three days that followed Fummiro and Linda Parsons had the classical, almost geometrically perfect Las Vegas love affair. They were mad for each other and spent each minute together. In bed, at the gambling tables good luck or bad, shopping in the fancy arcades and boutiques of the Strip hotels. Linda loved Japanese soup for breakfast and loved Fummiro’s piano playing. Fummiro loved Linda’s blond paleness, her milk-white and slightly heavy thighs, the longness of her legs, the soft, drooping fullness of her breasts. But most of all, he loved her constant good humor, her gaiety. He confided to Cully that Linda would have made a great geisha. Daisy told Cully that this was the highest compliment a man like Fummiro could give. Fummiro also claimed that Linda gave him luck when he gambled. When his stay was over, he had lost only two hundred thousand of the million in cash, American, that he had deposited in the casino cage. And that included a mink coat, a diamond ring, a palomino horse and a Mercedes car that he had bought for Linda Parsons. He had gotten away cheap. Without Linda the chances were good he would have dropped at least half a million or maybe even the full million at the baccarat tables.
At first Cully thought of Linda as a high-class soft hooker. But after Fummiro left Vegas, he had dinner with her before she took the night plane to Los Angeles. She was really crazy about Fummiro. “He’s such an interesting guy,” she said. “I loved that soup for breakfast and the piano playing. And he was just great in bed. No wonder the Japanese women do everything for their men.”
Cully smiled. “I don’t think he treats his women back home the way he treated you.”
Linda sighed. “Yeah, I know. Still, it was great. You know, he took hundreds of pictures of me with his camera. You’d think I’d be tired of that, but I really loved him doing it. I took pictures of him too. He’s a very handsome man.”
“And very rich,” Cully said.
Linda shrugged. “I’ve been with rich guys before. And I make good money. But he was just like a little kid. I really don’t like the way he gambles, though. God! I could live for ten years on what he loses in one day.”
Cully thought, is that so? And immediately made plans for Fummiro and Linda Parsons never to meet again. But he said with a wry smile, “Yeah, I hate to see him get hurt like that. Might discourage him from gambling.”
Linda grinned at him. “Yeah, I’ll bet,” she said. “But thanks for everything. I really had one of the best times of my life. Maybe I’ll see you again.”
He knew what she was angling for, but instead, he said smoothly, “Anytime you get the yen for Vegas just call me. Everything on the house except chips.”
Linda said a little pensively, “Do you think Fummiro will call me the next time he comes in? I gave him my phone number in LA. I even said I’d fly to Japan on my vacation when we finish taping the show, and he said he’d be delighted and to let him know when I was coming. But he was a little cool about that.”
Cully shook his head. “Japanese men don’t like women to be so aggressive. They’re a thousand years behind the times. Especially a big wheel like Fummiro. Your best bet is to lay back and play it cool.”
She sighed. “I guess so.”
He took her to the airport and kissed her on the cheek before she boarded her plane. “I’ll give you a call when Fummiro comes in again,” he said.
When he got back to the Xanadu, he went up to Gronevelt’s living suite and said wryly, “There’s such a thing as being too good to a player.”
Gronevelt said, “Don’t be disappointed. We didn’t want his whole million this early in the game. But you’re right. That actress is not the girl to connect with a player. For one thing she’s not greedy enough. For another, she’s too straight. And worst of all, she’s intelligent.”
“How do you know?” Cully asked.
Gronevelt smiled. “Am I right?”
“Sure,” Cully said. “I’ll make sure to tout Fummiro off her when he comes in again.”
“You won’t have to,” Gronevelt said. “A guy like him has too much strength. He doesn’t need what she can give him.
Not more than once. Once is fun. But that’s all it was. If it were more, he would have taken better care of her when he left.”
Cully was a little startled. “A Mercedes, a mink coat and a diamond ring? That’s not taking care of her?”
“Nope,” Gronevelt said. And he was right. The next time Fummiro came into Vegas he never asked about Linda Parsons. And this time he lost his million cash in the cage.
Chapter 19
The plane flew into morning light and the stewardess came around with coffee and breakfast. Cully kept the suitcase beside him as he ate and drank, and when he had finished, he saw New York ’s towers of steel on the horizon. The sight always awed him. As the desert stretched away from Vegas, so here the miles of steel and glass rooted and growing thickly toward the sky seemed limitless. And gave him a sense of despair.
The plane dipped and did a slow, graceful tilt to the left as it circled the city and then dropped down, white ceiling to blue ceiling, then to sunlit air with the cement gray runways and scattered green patches that formed the carpet earth. It touched down with a hard enough bump to wake those passengers who were still asleep.
Cully felt fresh and wide-awake. He was anxious to see Merlyn: the thought of it made him feel happy. Good old Merlyn, the original square, the only man in the world he trusted.
Chapter 20
On the day that I was to appear before the grand jury, my oldest son was graduating from the ninth grade and entering high school. Valerie wanted me to take off from work and go with her to the exercises. I told her I couldn’t because I had to go to a special meeting on the Army recall program. She still had no clue to the trouble I was in, and I didn’t tell her. She couldn’t help and she could only worry. If everything went OK, she’d never know. And that was how I wanted it. I really didn’t believe in sharing troubles with marriage partners when they couldn’t help.
Valerie was proud of her son’s graduating day. A few years ago we realized he really couldn’t read, yet was getting promoted each semester. Valerie was mad as hell and started teaching him to read, and she did a good job. Now he was getting top grades. Not that I wasn’t mad. It was another grudge I had against New York City. We lived in a low-income area, all working stiffs and blacks. The school system didn’t give a shit whether the kids learned anything or not. It just kept promoting them on to get rid of them, to get them out of the system without any trouble and with the least amount of effort.
Vallie was looking forward to moving into our new house. It was in a
great school district, a Long Island community where the teachers made sure all their students qualified for college. And though she didn’t say it, there were hardly any blacks. Her kids would grow up in the same kind of, to her, stable environment she had had as a Catholic schoolchild. That was OK with me. I didn’t want to tell her that the problems she was trying to escape were rooted in the illnesses of our entire society and that we wouldn’t escape them in the trees and lawns of Long Island.
And besides, I had other worries. I might be going to jail instead. It depended on the grand jury I would appear before today. Everything depended on that. I felt lousy when I got out of bed that morning. Vallie was taking the kids to school herself and staying there for the graduation exercises. I told her that I was going into work late, so they left before me. I got my own coffee, and as I drank it, I figured out all the things I had to do before the grand jury.
I had to deny everything. There was no way they could trace the bribe money I’d taken, Cully had assured me of that. But the thing that worried me was that I had had to fill out a questionnaire as to my assets. One question was did I own a house. And I had walked a thin line on that. The truth was that I had put a down payment on a Long Island home, a deposit, but there had not yet been a “closing” on the house. So I just said no. I figured I didn’t own a house and there was nothing said about a deposit. But I wondered if the FBI had found out about that. It seemed it must have.
So one of the questions I could expect the grand jury to ask would be if I had made a deposit on a house. And then I would have to answer yes. Then they would ask me why I hadn’t put it down on the sheet and I would have to explain that. Then what if Frank Alcore cracked and pleaded guilty and told them about our dealings when we had been partners? I had already made up my mind to lie about that. It would be Frank’s word against mine. He had always handled the deals by himself, nobody could back him up. And now I remembered one day when one of his customers had tried to pay me off with an envelope to deliver to Frank because Frank was not in the office that day. I had refused. And that had been very lucky. Because that customer was one of the guys who had written the anonymous letter to the FBI that started the whole investigation. And that had been pure luck. I had refused simply because I didn’t like the guy personally. Well, he would have to testify that I wouldn’t take the money and that would be a point in my favor.
