Fools die

by Mario Puzo

  “So, Mr. Cross,” he said to Cully, “if you could come to Japan, I will pay you there in yen, and then I’m sure that you can find a way to get the money to America.”

  Cully wanted to assure Fummiro of the hotel’s complete trust and faith in him. “Mr. Fummiro,” he said, “there’s really no rush, your credit is good. The million dollars can wait until the next time you can come to Vegas. It’s really n~ problem. We’re always delighted to have you here. Your company is such a pleasure to us. Please don’t concern yourself. Just let me put myself at your service, and now, if there’s anything you would like, please tell me and I will arrange anything you wish. It’s an honor for us to have you owe us this money.”

  Fummiro’s handsome face relaxed. He was not dealing with a barbarian American, but one who was almost as polite as a Japanese. He said, “Mr. Cross, why don’t you come to visit me? We will have a wonderful time in Japan. I will take you to a geisha house, you will have the best of food, the best of liquor, the best of women. You will be my personal guest and I can repay you for some of the hospitality you have always shown me and I can give you the million dollars for the hotel.”

  Cully knew that the Japanese government had a tough law about smuggling yen out of the country. Fummiro was proposing a criminal act. He waited and just nodded his head, remembering to smile continuously.

  Fummiro went on. “I would like to do something for you. I trust you with all my heart, and that is the only reason I am saying this to you. My government is very strict on the exporting of yen. I would like to get my own money out. Now when you pick up a million for the Hotel Xanadu, if you could take one million out for me and deposit it in your cage, you receive fifty thousand dollars.”

  Cully felt the sweet satisfaction of counting down the shoe perfectly. He said sincerely, “Mr. Fummiro, I will do it out of my friendship for you. But of course, I must speak to Mr., Gronevelt.”

  “Of course,” Fummiro said. “I will also speak to him.”

  Immediately afterward Cully called Gronevelt’s suite and was told by his special operator that Gronevelt was busy and not taking any calls that afternoon. He left a message that the matter was urgent. He waited in his office. Three hours later the phone rang, and it was Gronevelt telling him to come down to the suite.

  Gronevelt had changed a great deal over the last few years. The red had drained from his skin, leaving it a ghostly white. His face was like that of a fragile hawk. He had very suddenly become old, and Cully knew that be rarely had a girl to while away his afternoons. He seemed more and more immersed in his books and left most of the detail of running the hotel to Cully. But every evening he still made his tour of the casino floor, checking all the pits, watching the dealers and the stickmen and the pit bosses with his hawk like eyes. He still had that capacity to draw the electric energy of the casino into his small-framed body.

  Gronevelt was dressed to go down to the casino floor. He fiddled with the control panel that would flood the casino pits with pure oxygen. But it was still too early in the evening. He would push the button sometime in the early-morning hours when the players were tiring and thinking of going to bed. Then he would revive them as if they were puppets. It was only in the past year that be had the oxygen controls wired directly to his suite.

  Gronevelt ordered dinner to be brought up to the suite. Cully was tense. Why had Gronevelt kept him waiting for three hours? Had Fummiro spoken to him first? And he knew instantly that this was what had happened. He felt resentment; the two of them were so strong, he was not yet at their eminence and so they had consulted together without him.

  Cully said smoothly, “I guess Fummiro told you about his idea. I told him I’d have to check it out with you.”

  Gronevelt smiled at him. “Cully, my boy, you’re a wonder. Perfect. I couldn’t have done better myself. You let that Jap come to you. I was afraid you might get impatient with all those markers piling up in the cage.”

  “That’s my girlfriend Daisy,” Cully said. “She made a Japanese citizen out of me.”

  Gronevelt frowned a little. “Women are dangerous,” he said. “Men like you and I can’t afford to let them get too close. That’s our strength. Women can get you killed over nothing. Men are more sensible and more trustworthy.” He sighed. “Well, I don’t have to worry about you in that area. You spread the Honeybees around pretty good.” He sighed, gave his head a little shake and returned to business.

  “The only trouble with this whole deal is that we’ve never found a safe way to get our money out of Japan. We have a fortune in markers there, but I wouldn’t give a nickel for them. We have a whole set of problems. One, if the Japanese government catches you, you’ll do years in the clink. Two, once you pick up the money you’ll be a target for hijackers. Japanese criminals have very good intelligence. They’ll know right away when you pick up the money. Three, two million dollars in yen will be a big, big suitcase. In Japan they X-ray baggage. How do you get it turned into U.S. dollars once you get it out? How do you get into the United States, and then, though I think I can guarantee you it won’t happen, bow about hijackers on this end? People in this hotel will know we are sending you there to pick up the money. I have partners, but I can’t guarantee the discretion of all of them. Also, by sheer accident, you could lose the money. Cully, here’s the position you will be in. If you lose the money, we will always suspect you of being guilty unless you get killed.”

  Cully said, “I thought of all that. I checked the cage, and I see we have at least another million or two million dollars in markers with other Japanese players. So I would be bringing out four million dollars.”

  Gronevelt laughed. “In one trip that would be an awful gamble. Bad percentage.”

  Cully said, “Well, maybe one trip, maybe two trips, maybe three trips. First I have to find out how it could be done.”

  Gronevelt said, “You’re taking all the risk in every way. As far as I can see, you’re getting nothing out of it. If you win, you win nothing. If you lose, you lose everything. If you take a position like that, then the years I’ve spent teaching you have been wasted. So why do you want to do this? There’s no percentage.”

  Cully said, “Look, I’ll do it on my own without help, I’ll take all the blame if it goes wrong. But if I bring back four million dollars, I would expect to be named general manager of the hotel. You know that I’m your man. I would never go against you.”

  Gronevelt sighed, “It’s an awful gamble on your part. I hate to see you do it.”

  “Then it’s OK?” Cully asked. He tried to keep the jubilation out of his voice. He didn’t want Gronevelt to know how eager he was.

  “Yeah,” Gronevelt said. “But just pick up Fummiro’s two million, never mind the money the other people owe us. If something goes wrong, then we only lose the two million.”

  Cully laughed, playing the game. “We only lose one million, the other million is Fummiro’s. Remember?”

  Gronevelt said completely serious, “It’s all ours. Once that money is in our cage, Fummiro will gamble it away. That’s the strength of this deal.”

  The next morning Cully took Fummiro to the airport in Gronevelt’s Rolls-Royce. He had an expensive gift for Fummiro, an antique coin bank made in the days of the Italian Renaissance. The bulk was filled with gold coins. Fummiro was ecstatic, but Cully sensed a sly amusement beneath his effusions of delight.

  Finally Fummiro said, “When are you coming to Japan?”

  “Between two weeks and a month from now,” Cully said. “Even Mr. Gronevelt will not know the exact day. You understand why.”

  Fummiro nodded. “Yes, you must be very careful. I will have the money waiting.”

  When Cully got back to the hotel, he put in a call to Merlyn in New York. “Merlyn, old buddy, how about keeping me company on a trip to Japan, all expenses paid and geisha girls thrown in?”

  There was a long pause on the other end, and then he heard Merlyn’s voice say, “Sure.”

  Chapter 35


  Going to Japan struck me as a good idea. I had to be in Los Angeles the following week to work on the movie anyway, so I’d be partway there. And I was fighting so much with Janelle that I wanted to take a break from her. I knew she would take my going to Japan as a personal insult, and that pleased me.

  Vallie asked me how long I would be in Japan and I said about a week. She didn’t mind my going, she never did mind. In fact, she was always happy to see me leave, I was too restless around the house, too nerve-racking. She spent a lot of time visiting her parents and other members of her family, and she took the kids with her.

  When I got off the plane in Las Vegas, Cully met me with the Rolls-Royce, right on the landing field, so that I wouldn’t have to walk through the terminal. That set off alarm bells in my head.

  A long time ago Cully had explained to me why he sometimes met people right on the landing field. He did this to escape FBI camera surveillance of all incoming passengers.

  Where all the gate corridors converged into the central waiting room of the terminal there was a huge clock. Behind this clock, in a specially constructed booth, were movie cameras that recorded the throngs of eager gamblers rushing to Las Vegas from every part of the world. At night the FBI team on duty would run all the film and check it against their wanted lists. Happy-go-lucky bank robbers, on-the-run embezzlers, counterfeit money artists, successful kidnappers and extortionists were astonished when they were picked up before they had a chance to gamble away their ill-gotten gains.

  When I asked Cully how he knew about this, he told me he had a former top FBI agent working as chief of security for the hotel. It was that simple.

  Now I noticed that Cully had driven the Rolls himself. There was no chauffeur. He guided the car around the terminal to the baggage area, and we sat in the car while we waited for my luggage to come down the chute. While we waited, Cully briefed me.

  First he warned me not to tell Gronevelt that we were going to Japan the following morning. To pretend that I had come in just for a gambling holiday. Then he told me about our mission, the two million dollars in yen he’d have to smuggle out of Japan and the hazards involved. He said very sincerely, “Look, I don’t think there’s any danger, but you may not feel the same way. So if you don’t want to go, I’ll understand.”

  He knew there was no way I could refuse him. I owed him the favor; in fact, I owed him two favors. One for keeping me out of jail. The other for handing me back my thirty-thousand-dollar stash when the troubles were all over. He had given me back my thirty grand in cash, twenty-dollar bills, and I had put the money in a savings bank account in Vegas. The cover story would be that I had won it gambling, and Cully and his people were prepared to back the cover. But it never came to that. The whole Army Reserve scandal died away.

  “I always wanted to see Japan,” I said. “I don’t mind being your bodyguard. Do I carry a gun?”

  Cully was horrified. “Do you want to get us killed? Shit, if they want to take the money away from us, let them take it. Our protection is secrecy and moving very fast. I have it all worked out.”

  “Then why do you need me?” I asked him. I was curious and a little wary. It didn’t make sense.

  Cully sighed. “It’s a hell of long trip to Japan,” Cully said. “I need some company. We can play gin on the plane and hang out in Tokyo and have some fun. Besides, you’re a big guy, and if some small-time snatch-and-run artists luck onto us, you can scare them off.”

  “OK,” I said. But it still sounded fishy.

  That night we had dinner with Gronevelt. He didn’t look well, but he was in great form telling stories about his early days in Vegas. How he had made his fortune in tax-free dollars before the federal government sent an army of spies and accountants to Nevada.

  “You have to get rich in the dark,” Gronevelt said. It was the bee in his bonnet, buzzing around as crazily as Osano’s Nobel Prize hornet. “Everybody in this country has to get rich in the dark. Those thousands of little stores and business firms skimming off the top, big companies creating a legal plain of darkness.” But none of them was so plentiful in opportunity as Vegas. Gronevelt tapped the edge of his Havana cigar and said with satisfaction, “That’s what makes Vegas so strong. You can get rich in the dark here easier than anyplace else. That’s the strength.”

  Cully said, “Merlyn is just staying the night. I figure I’ll go into Los Angeles with him tomorrow morning and pick up some antiques. And I can see some of those Hollywood people about their markers.”

  Gronevelt took a long puff on his Havana. “Good idea,” he said, “I’m running out of presents.” He laughed. “Do you know where I got that idea about giving presents? From a book published in 1870 about gambling. Education is a great thing.” He sighed and rose, a signal for us to leave. He shook my hand and then courteously escorted us to the door of his suite. As we went out the door, Gronevelt said gravely to Cully, “Good luck on your trip.”

  Outside on the false green grass of the terrace, I stood with Cully in the desert moonlight. We could see the Strip with its millions of red and green lights, the dark desert mountains far away. “He knows we’re going,” I said to Cully.

  “If he does, he does,” Cully said. “Meet me for breakfast at eight A.M. We have to get an early start.”

  The next morning we flew from Las Vegas to San Francisco. Cully carried a huge suitcase of rich brown leather, its corners made of dull shining brass. Strips of brass bound the case. The locking plate was also heavy. It was formidable-looking and strong. “It won’t bust open,” Cully said. “And it will be easy for us to keep track of it on the baggage trucks.”

  I had never seen a suitcase like it and said so. “Just an antique I picked up in LA,” Cully said smugly.

  We jumped on a Japan Airlines 747 with just fifteen minutes to spare. Cully had deliberately timed it very close. On the long flight we played gin, and when we landed in Tokyo, I had him beaten for six thousand dollars. But Cully didn’t seem to mind; he just slapped me on the back and said, “I’ll get you on the trip home.”

  We took a taxi from the airport to our Tokyo hotel. I was eager to see the fabulous city of the Far East. But it looked like a shabbier and smokier New York. It also seemed smaller in scale, the people shorter, the buildings flatter, the dusky skyline a miniaturization of the familiar and overpowering skyline of New York City. When we entered the heart of the city, I saw men wearing white surgical gauze masks. It made them look eerie. Cully told me that the Japanese in urban centers wore these masks to guard against lung infections from the heavily polluted air.

  We passed buildings and stores that seemed to be made of wood, as if they were sets on a movie lot, and intermingled with them were modern skyscrapers and office buildings. The streets were full of people, many of them in Western dress, others, mainly women, in some sort of kimono outfit. It was a bewildering collage of styles.

  The hotel was a disappointment. It was modern and American. The huge lobby had a chocolate-colored rug and a great many black leather armchairs. Small Japanese men in black American business suits sat in most of these chairs clutching briefcases. It could have been a Hilton hotel in New York.

  “This is the Orient?” I said to Cully.

  Cully shook his head impatiently. “We’re getting a good night’s snooze. Tomorrow I’ll do my business, and tomorrow night I’ll show you what Tokyo is really made of. You’ll have a great time. Don’t worry.”

  We had a big suite together, a two-bedroom suite. We unpacked our suitcases and I noticed that Cully had very little in his brassbound monster. We were both tired from the trip, and though it was only six o’clock Tokyo time, we went to bed.

  The next morning there was a knock at the door of my bedroom and Cully said, “Come on, time to get up.” Dawn was just breaking outside my window.

  He ordered breakfast in the suite, which disappointed me. I began to get the idea that I wasn’t going to see much of Japan. We had eggs and bacon, coffee and orange juice
and even some English muffins. The only thing Oriental were some pancakes. The pancakes were huge and twice as thick as a pancake should be. They were more like huge slabs of bread, and they were a very funny sickly yellow color rather than brown. I tasted one and I could swear that it tasted like fish.

  I said to Cully, “What the hell are these?”

  He said, “They’re pancakes but cooked in fish oil.”

  “I’ll pass,” I said, and I pushed the dish over to him.

  Cully finished them off with gusto. “All you have to do is get used to it,” he said.

  Over our coffee I asked him, “What’s the program?”

  “It’s a beautiful day out,” Cully said. “We’ll take a walk and I’ll lay it out for you.”

  I understood that he didn’t want to talk in the room. That he was afraid it might be bugged.

  We left the hotel. It was still very early in the morning, the sun just coming up. We turned down a side street and suddenly I was in the Orient. As far as the eye could see there were little ramshackle houses, small buildings and along the curb stretched huge piles of green-colored garbage so high that it formed a wall.

  There were a few people out in the streets, and a man went by us riding a bicycle, his black kimono floating behind him. Two wiry men in khaki work pants and khaki shirts, white gauze masks covering their faces, suddenly appeared before us. I gave a little jump and Cully laughed as the two men turned into another side street.

  “Jesus,” I said, “those masks are spooky.”