Last Don

by Mario Puzo

  “Because it could cost the Hotel a hundred grand to a million bucks a night,” Cross said.

  Dante said, “But Giorgio gets a Villa.”

  “OK,” Cross said, “I’ll clear it with Giorgio.” They both knew Giorgio would be outraged by Dante’s request.

  “Fat chance,” Dante said.

  “When you get married,” Cross said, “you’ll get a Villa for your honeymoon.”

  Pippi said, “My operational plan depends on Big Tim’s character. Cross you have to cooperate just here in Vegas to set the guy up. You have to let Dante draw unlimited credit in the cage and then make his markers disappear. Timewise, the arrangements in L.A. are set. You have to make sure the guy gets here and doesn’t cancel his reservation. So you give him a party to present him with a Rolls-Royce. Then when he’s here you have to introduce him to Dante and me. After that you’re through.”

  It took Pippi more than an hour to tell the plan in detail. Dante said admiringly, “Giorgio always said you were the best. I was pissed off when the Don put you over me on this. But I can see he was right.”

  Pippi took this flattery stone-faced. He said to Dante, “Remember this is a Communion not a Confirmation. It has to look as if he took it on the lam. With his record and all the lawsuits against him, that will be plausible. Dante, don’t wear one of your fucking hats on this operation. People have funny memories. And remember that the Don said he would like the guy to give information about the fix, but it’s not really necessary. He’s the ringleader, when he’s gone the whole fix will disappear. So don’t do anything crazy.”

  Dante said coolly, “I feel unlucky without my hat.”

  Pippi shrugged. “Another thing, don’t try to cheat on your unlimited credit. That comes from the Don himself, he doesn’t want the Hotel to lose a fortune on this operation. They already have to put up the Rolls.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dante said. “My work is my pleasure.” He paused for a moment and then said with a sly grin, “I hope you give me a good report on this one.”

  This surprised Cross. It was plain that there was some hostility between them. And he was also surprised that Dante would try to intimidate his father. That could be disastrous, grandson of the Don or not.

  But Pippi seemed not to have noticed. “You’re a Cleri-cuzio,” he said. “Who am I to report on you?” He clapped Dante on the shoulder. “We have a job to do together. Let’s make it fun.”

  When Rustler Snedden arrived, Dante studied him. He was big and fat but the fat was hard, it stuck to his bones and didn’t roll. His shirt was blue denim with large pockets on each breast, a white button in the middle. In one pocket he stuffed the black hundred-dollar chips, and in the other, the white-and-gold five hundreds. The red fives and green twenty-fives he stuffed into the pocket of his wide-trousered white canvas pants. On his feet were floppy brown sandals.

  The Rustler played mostly craps, the best percentage game. Cross and Dante knew that he had already bet ten grand on two college basketball games and placed a five-thousand-dollar bet with the illegal books in town on a horse race in Santa Anita. The Rustler was not going to pay the taxes. And he seemed not to be worrying about his bets. He was having a grand time shooting craps.

  He was the mayor of the crap table, telling other gamblers to ride with his dice, shouting good-humoredly at them not to be chicken. He was betting the blacks, stacks of them covering all the numbers, betting right all the way. When the dice came to him he hurled them vigorously so that they bounced off the opposite wall of the table and came back to his easy reach. He would then try to grab them, but the stickman was always alert to catch them in the claw of his stick and hold them so that other players could make their bets.

  Dante took his place at the crap table and bet with Big Tim to win. Then he made all the ruinous side bets that would, unless he was very lucky, make him a sure loser. He bet the hard four and the hard ten. He bet the boxcars in one roll and the aces and eleven in one roll at odds of thirty and fifteen to one. He called for a twenty-thousand-dollar marker and, after signing for the black chips, spread them all over the table. He called for another marker. By this time, he had caught Big Tim’s attention.

  “Hey, you with the hat. Learn to play this game,” Big Tim said.

  Dante waved to him cheerily and continued his wild betting. When Big Tim sevened out, Dante took the dice and called for a fifty-thousand-dollar marker. He spread black chips all over the table hoping he wouldn’t get lucky. He didn’t. Now Big Tim was watching him with more than ordinary interest.

  Big Tim the Rustler ate in the coffee shop, which was also the restaurant that served plain American fare. Big Tim rarely ate in the Xanadu’s fancy French restaurant or its Northern Italian restaurant or its authentic English Royal Pub restaurant. Five friends joined him for dinner, and Big Tim the Rustler made out Keno tickets for everybody so they could watch the numbers board while eating. Cross and Dante sat in a corner booth.

  His short-cut blond hair made the Rustler resemble a Brueghel painting of a jolly German burgher. He ordered a great variety of dishes, the equivalent of three dinners, but to his credit he ate most of them while also dipping into his companions’ plates.

  “It’s really too bad,” Dante said. “I never saw a guy who enjoyed life so much.”

  “That’s one way to make enemies,” Cross said. “Especially when you enjoy it at other people’s expense.”

  They watched Big Tim sign the check, which he did not have to pay, and order one of his companions to tip in cash. After they left, Cross and Dante relaxed over their coffee. Cross loved this huge room with glass walls showing the night lit outside by pink lamps, green from the grass and trees outside reflecting into the room, softening the chandeliers.

  “I remember one night about three years ago,” Cross said to Dante. “The Rustler had a great streak at the crap table. I think he won over a hundred grand. It was about three in the morning. And when the pit boss took his chips to the cage, the Rustler jumped up on the crap table and pissed all over it.”

  “What did you do?” Dante asked.

  “I had the security guards take him to his room and charged him five grand for the piss on the table. Which he never paid.”

  “I would have ripped his fucking heart out,” Dante said.

  “If a man gives you a half million a year, wouldn’t you let him piss on a table?” Cross said. “But to tell the truth, I always held it against him. In fact, if he had done that in the Villas’ casino, who knows?”

  The next day Cross had lunch with Big Tim to brief him on his party and the presentation of the Rolls-Royce. Pippi joined them and was introduced.

  Big Tim always pushed for more. “I appreciate the Rolls but when do I get one of your Villas?”

  “Yeah, you deserve it,” Cross said. “The next time you come to Vegas, you get a Villa. That’s a promise, even if I have to kick somebody out.”

  Big Tim the Rustler said to Pippi, “Your son is a much nicer man than that old prick, Gronevelt.”

  “He was a little funny in his last years,” Pippi said. “I was maybe his best friend and he would never give me a Villa.”

  “Well, fuck him,” Big Tim said. “Now that your son is running the Hotel, you can get a Villa whenever you want.”

  “Never,” Cross said, “he’s not a gambler.” They all laughed.

  But now Big Tim was on another tack. “There’s a weird little guy who wears a funny hat and is the worst crapshooter I ever saw,” he said. “This guy signed nearly two hundred grand in markers in less than an hour. What can you tell me about him? You know I’m always looking for investors.”

  “I can’t tell you anything about my players,” Cross said. “How would you like it if I gave out information about you? I can tell you he can get a Villa anytime, but he never asks. He likes to keep a low profile.”

  “Just give me an intro,” Big Tim said. “If I make a deal, you’ll get a piece.”

  “No,” Cross said. “
But my father knows him.”

  “I could use some dough,” Pippi said.

  Big Tim said, “Good. Give me a big buildup.”

  Pippi turned on his charm. “You two guys would make a great team. This guy has a lot of money but he doesn’t have your flair for big business. I know you’re a fair guy, Tim, so just give me what you think I deserve.”

  Big Tim beamed at this. Pippi would be another of his suckers. “Great,” he said. “I’ll be at the crap table tonight, so bring him around.”

  When the introductions were made at the crap table, Big Tim the Rustler startled both Dante and Pippi by snatching Dante’s Renaissance cap off his head and replacing it with a Dodger baseball cap he was wearing. The result was hilarious. The Renaissance cap on Big Tim’s head made him look like one of Snow White’s dwarfs.

  “To change our luck,” Big Tim said. They all laughed but Pippi didn’t like the malevolent gleam in Dante’s eyes. Also, he was angry that Dante had ignored his instructions and was wearing the hat. He had introduced Dante as Steve Sharpe and had pumped Big Tim up with stories that Steve was the overlord of a drug empire on the Eastern Seaboard and had to “wash” many millions. Also that Steve was a degenerate gambler who had bet a million on the Super Bowl and had lost without batting an eye. And his markers in the casino cage were pure gold. Paid them right up.

  So now Big Tim threw his massive arm over Dante’s shoulders and said, “Stevie, we have to talk. Let’s have a little bite in the coffee shop.”

  There, Big Tim took a secluded booth. Dante ordered coffee but Big Tim ordered a whole array of desserts: strawberry ice cream, napoleons, and banana cream pie plus a dish of assorted cookies.

  Then he launched into an hour-long selling speech. He owned a small mall he wanted to get rid of, a long-term moneymaker, and he could arrange that the payment would be mostly under-the-table cash. There was a meat-packing plant and carloads of fresh produce that could be sold for undercover cash, then resold for a profit for white money. He had an “in” with the movie business so that he could help finance pictures that went direct to video or to porno theaters. “Great business,” Big Tim said. “You get to meet the stars and fuck the starlets and turn your money white.”

  Dante enjoyed the performance. Everything Big Tim said was with such confidence and brio that the victim could only believe in future riches. He asked questions that betrayed his eagerness but made a show of coyness.

  “Give me your card,” he said. “I’ll give you a call or have Pippi call you and then we can set up a dinner meeting and have a full discussion so I can make a commitment.”

  Big Tim gave him his card. “Let’s do it real quick,” he said. “I have one particular ‘no lose’ deal I’ll cut you in on. But we would have to move fast.” He paused for a moment. “It’s a sports thing.”

  Now Dante showed an enthusiasm he had not shown before. “Jesus, that has always been my dream. I love sports. You mean maybe buy a major league baseball team?”

  “Not that big,” Big Tim said hastily. “But big enough.”

  “So when do we meet?” Dante asked.

  Big Tim said proudly, “Tomorrow the Hotel is giving me a party and a Rolls. For being one of their best suckers. I go back to L.A. the day after. How about that night?”

  Dante pretended to give the question some thought. “Okay,” he said. “Pippi’s coming to L.A. with me and I’ll have him give you a call to set it up.”

  “Great,” Big Tim said. He wondered a bit about the man’s cautiousness but knew better than to queer a deal with unnecessary questions. “And tonight I’m going to show you how to shoot craps so that you have some chance of winning.”

  Dante made himself look sheepish. “I know the odds, I just like to fuck around. And then the word gets out and I can get a whack at the chorus girls.”

  “Then there’s no hope for you,” Big Tim said. “But you and me, we’ll make some money together anyway.”

  The next day the party for Big Tim the Rustler was held in the great ballroom of the Xanadu Hotel, which was often used for special events: the New Year’s Eve party, Christmas buffets, weddings for high rollers, presentations of special awards and gifts, Super Bowl parties, the World Series, and even political conventions.

  It was a huge, high-ceilinged room, with balloons floating everywhere and two enormous buffet tables, splitting the room in half. The buffets were shaped like huge ice glaciers, and encrushed in the ice were exotic fruits of all colors. Crenshaw melons, split open to show their yellow-gold flesh, great purple grapes with their juice bursting against the skin, porcupine pineapples, kiwi and kumquat, nectarines and lichee nuts, and a huge log of watermelon. Buckets of twelve different kinds of ice cream were buried like submarines. Then there was a passageway of hot dishes: a baron of beef as big as a buffalo, a huge turkey, a white, fat-ringed ham. Then there was a tray of different pastas, sprinkled green with pesto and red with tomato sauce. And then a great red pot, as big as a garbage can, with silver handles and steaming with a “wild boar” stew that was really a pork, beef, and veal mixture. Then came bread of all kinds and rolls heavy with flour. Another bank of ice held desserts, cream puffs, whipped-cream-filled doughnuts, an assortment of tiered cakes decorated with replicas of the Hotel Xanadu. Coffee and hard liquor would be served to the guests by the best-looking waitresses at the Hotel.

  Big Tim the Rustler was already wreaking havoc on these tables before the first guest arrived.

  In the full center of the room, mounted on a ramp separated by ropes from the crowd, was the Rolls-Royce. Creamy, white, luxurious, with true elegance and a certain genius in design, it stood in sharp contrast to the pretensions of this Vegas world. A wall of the room had been replaced by heavy golden draperies to allow its entrance and departure. Then off in a corner of the room was a purple Cadillac that was to be awarded as a door prize to those with numbered invitations: high rollers invited to the party and casino managers of the biggest hotels. This had been one of Gronevelt’s best ideas. These parties increased the Drop at the Hotel significantly.

  The party was a huge success because Big Tim was so flamboyant. Attended by his two waitresses, he almost single-handedly destroyed the buffet table. He loaded up three plates and gave an exhibition of eating that nearly made Dante’s mission unnecessary.

  Cross made the presentation speech for the Hotel. Then Big Tim made his acceptance speech.

  “I want to thank the Xanadu Hotel for this wonderful gift,” he said. “That two-hundred-thousand-dollar car is now mine for nothing. It’s my reward for coming to the Xanadu the last ten years, during which they treated me like a prince and emptied my wallet. I figure if they give me fifty Rolls we would be about even but what the hell, I can only drive one car at a time.”

  Here he was interrupted by applause and cheers. Cross grimaced. He was always embarrassed by these rituals that exposed the falseness of the Hotel’s goodwill.

  Big Tim threw his arms around the two waitresses flanking him. He squeezed their breasts in a friendly way. He waited like an experienced comic for the applause to die down.

  “No kidding, I’m truly grateful,” he said. “This is one of the happiest days of my life. Right up there with my divorce. One little thing. Who’s going to give me gas money to drive this car back to L.A.? The Xanadu cleaned me out again.”

  Big Tim knew when to stop. As the applause and cheers broke out again, he climbed the ramp and got into the car. The golden draperies that had replaced the wall now parted, and Big Tim drove out.

  The party speedily broke up after the Cadillac was won by a high roller. The festivities had lasted for four hours and everybody wanted to get back to the gambling tables.

  That night Gronevelt’s ghost would have been overjoyed with the results of the party. The Drop was nearly double the average. Sexual coupling could not be confirmed but the smell of semen seemed to seep out into the hallways. The great-looking call girls that had been invited to Big Tim’s party had quickly
snuggled into relationships with less dedicated high rollers, who gave them black chips to gamble.

  Gronevelt had often remarked to Cross that male and female gamblers had different sex patterns. And that it was important for casino owners to know them.

  First Gronevelt proclaimed the primacy of pussy, as he called it. Pussy could overcome anything. It could even make a degenerate gambler go straight. There had been many important men of the world who had been guests at the Hotel. Nobel Prize–winning scientists, billionaires, great religious revivalists, eminent literary icons. A Nobel Prize–winner in physics, the best brain maybe in the world, had frolicked with a whole line of chorus girls during his six-day stay. He didn’t gamble much but it was an honor for the Hotel. Gronevelt himself had to give gifts to each of the girls, it had never occurred to the Nobel Prize–winner to do so. The girls had reported he was the best screw in the world, eager, ardent, and skillful, no tricks, with one of the most beautiful cocks they had ever seen. And best of all, amusing, never boring them with serious talk. As gossipy and bitchy as any of the girls. For some reason this cheered Gronevelt up. That such a brain could please the opposite sex. Not like Ernest Vail, such a great writer but a middle-aged kid with a perpetual hard-on and no small talk to go with it. Then there was Senator Wavven, a possible future president of the United States, who treated sex like a game of golf. To say nothing of the dean of Yale, the cardinal of Chicago, the leader of the Civil Rights National Committee, and the crusty Republican bigwigs. All of them reduced to children by pussy. The only possible exceptions were the gays or druggies, but after all they were not typically gamblers.

  Gronevelt noted that male gamblers called for hookers before they set out to gamble. Women, however, preferred sex after they gambled. Since the Hotel had to cater to the sexual needs of everyone and there were no male hookers, just gigolos, the Hotel used barmen croupiers and junior pit boys for the women, and that was their report. So Gronevelt made a jump. Males need sex to prepare them to go into battle with confidence. Women need sex to assuage the sorrow of losing or as part of the reward for their victory.