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.”
– -