The Only Girl in the Game (3 page)

The Little Room is a shadowy place of leather, dark wood, white linen, small lamps that give a flattering orange glow. At the raised dais in the far corner there is always someone at the piano. It never stops.

Max Hanes was alone in a big leather booth on the far side of the room. He was a man of medium height with an astonishing breadth of shoulder, a hairless, shining head, a face that sagged into saffron foldings yet had a simian alertness. People frequently thought him an Oriental. The rumor went that from time to time during his life people had tried to nickname him Chink. And he had hospitalized each of them with his hands. He was thought to be a Latvian, and it was known he had been a wrestler long before the days of gilded bobby pins. The people who worked for him gave him that special, undiluted respect that can only be achieved through pure terror.

As Hugh sat opposite him, Max Hanes said, “I was listening to the slots. A man spends his life by the sea, he can tell you the size waves coming in without looking. I can tell the casino take for the afternoon to within a thousand bucks. The slots give you the picture of how the tables are going.”

“That’s interesting, Max.”

“Everything in this place is based on the slots, Darren. And that includes me and you, and all your fancy plans. Don’t ever forget that.”

“It’s a lousy way to start this little conference, Max. When I first came here you told me you’re more important than I am in this picture. No casino—no hotel. Okay. So you keep telling me. Should I put it in writing?”

“Maybe you should. You keep forgetting.”

“You won’t let me forget it, Max. I can depend on you.”

“Ten years ago it was easier around here. Not in this
place, because this place wasn’t built then. But the liquor was on the house, and a good meal was a dollar, and a room was three, and we didn’t have these problems. We didn’t need guys like you. Hotel managers!”

Hugh Darren leaned forward. “And when I came here eight months ago, Max, you were supposed to be running the casino and Jerry was supposed to be running the hotel. But both of you were messing in each other’s back yards, and the place was such a mess they had to bring somebody in to straighten it out. Now stop telling me how good it used to be and tell me something I want to know. Is your life a lot simpler and easier than it used to be?”

“I don’t know. I guess so. If you tell me it is.”

“You know it is, Max. You want all the hotel operations run in such a way that you get maximum play in the casino. That’s what I’m giving you. And when you have any beef, you know where to come. People who have had bad food, short measure on their drinks and dirty rooms don’t come back and play your tables. So I’m building a new reputation for this place.”

“It’s slow play out there this week. How come?”

“You know how come. You booked a dog into the Safari Room, and when that show moves out and the Swede opens in her show, you’re going to get more play. So it’s your own fault, isn’t it? You book every bit of entertainment in here, and it comes out of the casino take, and I have nothing to do with it.”

“Too much comes out of the casino take lately.”

“Max, when you request me to give away food, drinks and lodging to special people who gamble heavy, I have to charge it to the casino. Otherwise, how can I keep logical books on my own operation? And the thirty per cent of all overhead wasn’t set up by me. You know that.”

“What you’re trying to do, Darren, you’re trying to operate the hotel part with a profit,” Max Hanes said accusingly.

“That’s what I was
ordered
to do, damn it! And I should be almost over into the black by the end of this year.”

“It isn’t right. The hotel should run at a loss. It’s a service to bring the big play around, to sweeten the casino take.”

“Don’t argue with me, Max. Argue with the management of every hotel on the Strip. That’s what they’re all aiming for. It’s the trend.”

“It’s a bad trend.”

A waitress came over to the booth. Hugh ordered a pot of coffee. Max Hanes asked for another sherry. The wine
glass looked incongruous in his hairy, thick-fingered paw, as out of character as the ancient yellow of his long ivory cigarette holder and his salmon-pink sports jacket. He always reminded Hugh of some cynical old chimpanzee who goes through his act for the sake of the bananas.

Hugh grinned at him. “No matter how much it bugs you, Max, we
are
working together, and it is becoming a better place to eat, sleep, drink and … lose your money.”

“Every operation is getting so goddam legitimate lately,” Max said. “So I got to put up with changes. What do you want now? I should move out some slots so you got room for tea-dancing?”

“You know damn well you’re stealing half my lobby next month.”

“One third.”

“Max, I want your advice. I want Jerry Buckler out of my hair. He’s a problem drunk. I spend too much time patching up his mistakes. I want him out of the picture as far as running the hotel end is concerned.”

Max Hanes leaned back and the sallow lids hid most of his quick black eyes. “
You
want him out of the way. You’re a pretty ambitious kid.”

“Max, is he a drunk?”

“Yes. It didn’t used to be so bad. The last couple of years, yes. And it gets worse, so old friends got to care for him.”

“Is he incompetent?”

“Would you be here if he wasn’t? At fancy pay and with a free hand?”

“It should be a free hand, but it isn’t.”

“You must be getting smart, talking about this to me, Darren.”

“How do you mean?”

“Suppose you took it right to Al. Al checks with me. I say I don’t see any reason to change anything so Al Marta says to you to take it the way it is or get out, and we get another smart boy who
will
take it.”

“But why?”

“Don’t you have the picture yet? One of those big New York hotels, a manager starts to fall apart, they fire him. It’s a cold business. Here you got to figure on sentiment.”

“I can’t feel very sentimental about Jerry Buckler, Max.”

“A lot of people can, kid. Al Marta, for one. You take Jerry, he operated a place on the Florida Keys way back. Way, way back, when the stuff was coming in from Cuba in thousand-case lots. It was, like you could say, a gathering
place. Lots of deals were made there. Later on Jerry was in on the Miami thing when it was going good, managing one of Fats McCabe’s places out near Miami Shores. Then he managed one of the places in Havana. From there to Reno, and from Reno to here, and it was Al Marta brought him in here. It goes way back, Darren, to old times and old places. Al let him run this until he damn near ran it into the ground before Al went out and brought you in to clean up.”

“I’m not saying throw him out into the street.”

“You just want to keep him from having any say at all in the running of the hotel end. That would hurt him, wouldn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“I don’t think Al would want to hurt him, and I don’t think I would want to hurt him.”

“Because he knows too much?”

Max Hanes gave him a pitying look and shook his head sadly. “Honest to God, how do you get the time to watch that crime crap on TV? That’s the only place you could get an idea like that. First, you never let a drunk know anything he might hurt you with. Second, if he ever tried to use old stuff to pressure you, he’d get himself a shallow hole out on the lone praireee. Third, you take care of your own all the way down the line because there comes a time when maybe you need it yourself. This isn’t the Hilton Hotel Corporation, kid.” He made a gesture with an ape arm that included all Las Vegas. “A lot of this town is just a bunch of old buddies taking care of each other.”

“The Cameroon Corporation is paying me too much salary to have me wasting my time patching up things after Jerry goes staggering through, Max. So is there any way he can be kicked upstairs—so his pride won’t be hurt?”

“You might not like that as well as you think you would.”

“What do you mean?”

“You might not have the whole picture.”

There had been a sudden shift in the direction of the conversation. During his eight months at the Cameroon it had happened to Hugh before, and it annoyed him each time. It was like being a school kid again and, while standing and talking to several kids, suddenly realizing from a veiled comment that they all belonged to some secret society. You had not been invited to join, and you knew you would not be.

“Max, I don’t want the whole picture, or whatever it is you’re talking about. I want to run a hotel.”

“You listen close, Darren. Learn a little. I’m on the casino end. Jerry is on the hotel end. I can come to you with the routine stuff. But suppose something special comes up, something where the hotel and the casino have to work close? Jerry talks my language. Together we do what has to be done.”

“Why is this special thing, whatever the hell you’re hinting at, something I can’t do?”

“You could do it. But these special things, you never learned them in college. Maybe you wouldn’t want to do them.”

“Why not?”

“Two reasons. First, being the kind of kid you are, maybe your conscience gets in the way. Second, if you go along with what we want, Al Marta and me, maybe that gives us a handle, so some time if you want to leave and we don’t want you to, we’ve got some good arguments to use for you staying.”

“Blackmail, Max?”

“Back to the TV again,” Hanes said in a disgusted way.

“If I got some clue from you as to what you’re talking about, maybe I could make more sense.”

Max Hanes closed his small eyes for nearly ten seconds, and sat with his heavy lips pursed. He opened his eyes. “I’ll make you up one. All the tables are straight. We don’t dare operate any other way. So we set the rules to give us the biggest percentage we can. There can still be streaks of luck. Mr. Smith comes from Oklahoma and stays in the house. He wins a little, loses a little, and then he has a long hot streak and cashes out sixty-two thousand bucks. That’s a bruise we don’t want to take. He’s lined up for a flight out of here, to take all that bread back to Oklahoma. So Jerry and I get together. There’s plenty of ways the hotel side can help out. Maybe you can think of some. We want to get him back onto a table so the percentages will catch up with him. If we think of the right things, and we usually do, Al okays a little bonus, maybe five per cent. It comes right out of the money room, kid. Right off the top before any accounting takes place, so it’s nice loose money.”

“Bonus? Off the top? You’re going too fast, Max.”

“You got to have it like a grade-school reader, maybe? I see the cat. Okay. You’ve got no way to prove I told you this. On every table there is a slot. Every mark who buys chips, his cash money goes down the slot into the lock box fastened under the table. I got boys who make the rounds.
They unlock the money boxes from the underside of the tables and put empty ones in place. They take the boxes to the money room. In the money room it is sorted and counted and bundled, and it goes into the vault We keep a three-hundred-thousand cash float on hand. If the float is running low, the table take builds it up to where it should be. If the float is fat enough, we make cash deposits in the bank. You’ve seen the armored car come for the pickups.”

“That’s clear enough, but …”

“In the money room we keep records. Right? For the books. For the owners. For the tax guys. Everybody keeps books. But when I talk about a bonus off the top, I’m talking about money that never gets on the books at all, kid. Take that Mr. Smith from Oklahoma. He’s cashed out sixty-two thousand. He figures to grab it and run. But he gets sucked into trying for more, so he puts it all back. So Al says to the people who helped Smith put it back, cut yourself three grand, boys. So the next time the table boxes are emptied, I just take out three thousand in cash, right off the top. I can do that because there is no such thing as any kind of outsider getting into any money room in Vegas. No tax cop has ever seen the inside of a Vegas money room. That’s the way it works.”

“But if Al can … approve that kind of a bonus, doesn’t it mean the owners are being screwed out of that money, Max?”

Hanes stared at him with sad impatience. “Just when I begin to think you’re maybe bright, you.… Listen, kid. Al is an owner. There are two kinds of owners. There are the ‘insid’ owners and the ‘outsid’ owners. We don’t ever let the casino show up too fat, for tax reasons. So there is money coming off the top all the time. It gets spread to Al and the other inside owners, and all the outside owners get is their share of what shows on the books after taxes. But they can’t prove anything and they aren’t what you call anxious to sue.”

“But.…”

“Al has to play it straight with everything that comes off the top. The most stupid thing he could do would be try to pick off more than his share. And he has the okay from the other inside owners to spread around some of the money off the top in the way of bonuses to guys like me and Jerry when we’ve done something special to fatten the take, like suckering that Mr. Smith into some more heavy play. It’s a fat green world, kid. It’s a money machine. You should
ought to come in for a piece of it here and there, not hurting anybody.”

“I … don’t think so.”

“In a barn where they got cows, what are those things hold the cow’s head?”

“Huh? Head stalls, I think.”

“So we got the barn and we got the cows, but no head stalls, and no lock on the barn door. So, a cow with a lot of milk, you got to use psychology to make it stand still, and like every minute of it. Psychology around here, kid, means women and liquor and the red carpet, and sometimes little tricks Jerry Buckler and I cook up.”

“Tell me one.”

“Once we had a fat Greek fairy in the shipping business, got into us heavy and was about to leave. Jerry come up with the idea of a fake morals charge, so we hired the right kid and put him in a bellhop uniform and gave him a pass key. We brought in fake detectives and even an imitation lawyer, and we hung him up for four days and scared him green and then cleared him, with big apologies. He was so damn glad to be in the clear, he settled down nice with Jerry and nibbled on free champagne and Jerry steered him down to the casino and we plucked him clean. And so for that kind of cooperation, Al tells me to go ahead and give Jerry a slice off the top—the kind of bread you don’t report. Can you see me coming to you on a deal like that?”