Cash Out

by Marshall Thornton

  Becky frowned at her. “Reba, don’t you own anything that’s not black?”

  “Black is a very flattering color.” She looked very L.A. in her black miniskirt, black sweater and black tights.

  “Does he have to be filming now?” Becky asked. “Can’t it wait until the wedding?”

  “It’s for posterity,” Marc said.

  Becky was still rolling her eyes but decided to move on from Marc, “Black is so depressing.”

  “We’re not kids anymore, Becky. You don’t get to pick out my clothes.”

  “I should pick out your clothes. Maybe you’d find a husband if you brightened up a bit.”

  “Girls,” Cotton said. “Knock it off.” Then he said to us all, “Why don’t we go to the Horseshoe Grill for dinner?”

  “Do you think they have barbequed salad?” Tina asked.

  “We’ll have to see when we get there,” Cotton said, giving her a friendly pat on the shoulder.

  Tina’s job included many, many breakfast and lunch meetings. Most of her diet consisted of the protein scramble at Hugo’s, the barbequed salad at The Ivy, afterwork drinks, and an occasional Lean Cuisine.

  En masse, we moved through the casino. Aunt Katie talked about some of the wonderful restaurants in Scottsdale and gave us a listing of all the different salads they had. This caused Becky to stick up for the salad choices in Chicago—all of which seemed to be exactly what they had in Arizona and L.A. Quickly, it became the most in-depth conversation about salad I’d ever been involved in. Luckily, Marc videoed the whole thing. For posterity.

  As we stood at the entrance to the Horseshoe Grill, which resembled a stable, I asked, “So is everyone all unpacked?”

  My mother glared at me. I might have been a little obvious.

  “Of course,” Becky bubbled. “Lucky Days is like a second home.”

  “How often do you and Sonny come?” I asked.

  “Lately, just a few times a year.”

  A few is probably three. Maybe four. So, was he laundering four million a year?

  “And you, Cotton, how often do you come to Las Vegas?” I asked.

  “The girls and I have been coming for holidays since they were little.”

  Also, three or four times a year. If it was Cotton’s bag, then he was laundering four million a year.

  But wait, that didn’t really make sense. What about the Cayman’s? Why bring a million dollars from Grand Rapids to Las Vegas and then to the Caribbean? Why not go straight to the Cayman’s?

  Unless… was Cotton stealing from the mob? That caused all sorts of anxiety in my stomach. I thought I might puke. Meanwhile, Louis asked Becky, “Is Sonny joining us?”

  “Of course. He just had to call his office and check in.” I wondered if that might mean he was calling to mention he’d lost the money? No, the money wasn’t lost. He knew where the money was. He had to.

  “And your other sister?” I asked.

  “Oh God! Who knows if we’ll even see Reggie. She gambles. Blackjack.” Lowering her voice, she added, “She’s probably at Caesars. It’s her favorite casino.”

  “Ah, I see,” I said.

  “Where does she live?” Louis asked.

  “She’s in L.A. with you guys,” she said, as though we should have known, as though we were friends and neighbors. “She used to work at Monumental Studios as an accountant.”

  “But she doesn’t anymore?” Louis asked, fishing for more information. Marc was filming over Louis’ shoulder.

  Becky shook her head, whispering, “Embezzlement.”

  Reba hissed at her, “Becky!”

  “What? It’s common knowledge.”

  “Where does Reggie work now?” I asked, but what I really wanted to know was why she wasn’t in prison.

  “Boeing,” Becky said. Answering our looks, she added, “Monumental kept the whole thing hush-hush. She didn’t take enough money to justify the bad publicity.”

  I wondered if she could have embezzled a million in cash from Monumental. Or Boeing for that matter. But why would she bring it to Las Vegas? Well, to gamble, obviously. Was she planning to gamble a million into two million? And if so, since my mother had her bag, what was she gambling with now?

  No, wait. It couldn’t have been Reggie’s bag. She’d gotten there before us. Her bag couldn’t have gotten mixed up with anyone else’s. So the money definitely wasn’t hers.

  The hostess led us to a table for ten at the back of the restaurant. Inside, the Horseshoe Lounge was done up like a stable with booths that looked like they might need mucking out. Next to the long table we were led to, stood a life-size brown-and-white pony fashioned of some kind of plastic. It looked like a child’s toy—if that child was three stories tall.

  Cotton took the head of the table after he helped my mother and Aunt Katie into the chairs on either side of him. I sat down next to my mother with Becky on my left. Marc and Louis sat across from me.

  “I feel like the pony is staring at me,” Marc said, only to be shushed by Louis.

  Tina sat down next to Louis, which left Reba taking the chair at the end, opposite her father. There was an empty seat waiting for Sonny in between Becky and Reba.

  We did what people do when they’re dining with virtual strangers, we dove into the menus. The food was traditionally American—huge steaks, football-sized baked potatoes, scant vegetables. Tina and Reba immediately began analyzing the three salads: Niçoise, Cobb and chef, wondering if they’d be able to choose ingredients from each and create salads to their liking.

  Marc carefully filmed his menu.

  “Louis is a wonderful cook, dear,” my mother said. My first thought was, ‘Why was she telling me something I obviously knew?’ But then I realized that by ‘dear’ she meant Cotton. And that made me a little sad. I mean, I was always ‘dear.’ But now he was. Also. Or possibly instead of.

  She continued, “His Thanksgiving dinner was just marvelous.”

  “Thank you, Angie. It was lovely to have you this year.”

  “I had the best time,” she said, winking at him. She’d gotten us involved in a murder, committed a B&E, and watched a man get shot and nearly bleed to death. What was her idea of a bad time?

  “What looks good, Louis?” Cotton asked of the menu. As though simply being a good cook meant he could divine good choices from a menu he’d never seen.

  “It looks like their specialty is beef, so I’d stick to that,” Louis said diplomatically.

  Setting my menu aside, I’d decided on the petite filet mignon. Everything else seemed to have ‘sixteen-ounces’ in front of its name, which seemed like far too much food. Six ounces was still probably too much, but it was less too much.

  Aunt Katie suddenly burst out, “John Forsythe! I’ve been trying to think of it all day long. That’s who you remind me of, Cotton. John Forsythe.”

  I couldn’t say I agreed. They didn’t look very much alike at all. In fact, I was fairly certain John Forsythe was much older than Cotton.

  “I don’t know…” my mother said, agreeing with my train of thought.

  “Well, I’ve always had a crush on John Forsythe,” Aunt Katie said, then gave Cotton a big smile and rested her hand on the back of his.

  My God, was she flirting with him? I glanced over to make sure Marc was getting that on video. He was. Just then, Sonny Leone found us and sat down at the table next to Becky. That caught everyone’s attention but Becky’s. She barely noticed him as she had just figured out that Marc had once been on a TV show called Kapowie—she’d adored the show when she was nine—and was peppering him with questions—something which made it difficult for him to continue filming.

  The rest of us smiled or said hello to Sonny. Reba was most affected by his arrival. She’d even noticed him while he was still walking across the dining room. I could have sworn she looked as though she might burst into tears. I wondered what that might mean, but was quickly distracted when I realized that Sonny had changed his clothes. And so had Reba. />
  That raised several questions. Had they each brought more than one bag? Why hadn’t Becky changed? Were her clothes missing? Why did the three of them look so relaxed? Well, they didn’t actually look relaxed. Reba and Sonny both looked… guilty.

  Suddenly, I remembered something from the baggage claim: I was sure Sonny and Becky had just one suitcase each. If Sonny’s suitcase was full of money, then his clothes must have been in the other bag with his wife’s. If that was the case, then she must know about the cash. But she couldn’t. Becky, at least, looked far too calm to have recently misplaced a million dollars.

  “The rooms are lovely, Sonny,” Aunt Katie said. “Thank you so much.”

  “Oh, don’t thank him,” Becky said. “I did all the arrangements. I’m super close with the concierge.”

  Sonny smiled. “It’s true. She planned the whole thing. Right down to which fruit you have in your fruit basket.”

  “The fruit is lovely,” Louis said.

  “Do you know much about the hotel, Becky?” Marc asked. “I mean, its history?”

  “Well,” she said, broadly, “it was originally built during the late fifties. The Flamingo had been doing well, but that was owned by the New York mob. The Outfit noticed how much they were making and wanted in. I think it was some guy with the nickname Doves.”

  “Becky,” Sonny warned.

  “What? He’s dead. Anyway, they built this place. They say he sometimes haunts the Presidential Suite.”

  “No one says that,” Sonny said. “I don’t know where she gets ideas like that.”

  “He was killed in there, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, but that was just four years ago. That’s a little recent for a haunting.” Then to us he said, “All the old Outfit guys are gone now. It’s a whole new crowd. Much more legit. Corporate even.”

  I wasn’t sure whether to believe that.

  “Anyway, you asked about the hotel,” Becky said. “It’s been rehabbed twice. Once in 1969—that was a disaster. Reba do you remember the green shag carpet they had everywhere? And then again in 1982, I think. Oh, and the people who used to come here? Famous people, mostly in the sixties. Things went downhill fast after the shag carpet was put in.”

  There was something I wanted to ask, but I was distracted by the conversation to my right. Aunt Katie, my mom and Cotton were talking about places they used to go in Grand Rapids when they were young.

  “I always loved the old-timey places,” Aunt Katie said. “Nick Fink’s and The Cottage Bar.”

  Then I remembered what I wanted to ask Becky. They had moved on to complaining about seventies-style. “I had this friend,” Becky was saying. “Her family had done their entire house in avocado paneling.”

  “That was Marlene Shreve and she was my friend.”

  “Whatever.”

  It seemed a good time to change the subject, so I asked, “So, you’ve been coming here for years? To Lucky Days?” Earlier Cotton has said they came to Las Vegas for holidays. I assumed that meant they’d stayed at lots of hotels.

  “We came here a lot when we were kids, yes. But since I met Sonny it’s our only hotel.”

  “How did you and Sonny meet?” Tina asked. In many ways, Tina was an ardent feminist, except when it came to Laura Ashley slip dresses, red lipstick and romance.

  Meanwhile, on the other side of me, Aunt Katie was rattling off names, asking if they were still alive and if they still lived in Grand Rapids.

  “Oh gosh, how did Sonny and I meet? I don’t always tell people but it was a blind date. I was going to Loyola in Chicago. Barely nineteen. And this friend of mine set us up on a date.”

  “Deanna Hansen,” Sonny inserted as if that mattered.

  “And it was love at first sight?” Tina asked. You could tell she wanted it to be.

  “God no. By the middle of the date I never wanted to see him again. So I decided to sleep with him.”

  “What? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  I could barely see Sonny since he was on the other side of Becky, but I swore he rolled his eyes. He would have heard this story before.

  “The sorority I was in was very clear that you never sleep with a guy on the first date. That if you do, you’ll never see him again. So, I thought, perfect. Totally backfired. He was like a dog with a bone. Once he got himself some he just would not go away.”

  “How romantic,” Louis said, though I think he was being snide.

  “She doesn’t give herself enough credit,” Sonny said. “She was a beautiful, vivacious, freshman.”

  “Sophomore.”

  “All right, sophomore.”

  “And what kind of things did you do here as children?” Marc asked. “It can’t have been a very kid-friendly place.”

  “Oh, we got up to all sorts of fun, didn’t we Reba?”

  “It wasn’t as bad as you’d think,” she said. “Reggie was always the fearless one. She’d devise these elaborate games where we’d steal towels off the maids’ carts. I mean, it wasn’t really stealing. They would have given them to us if we’d asked. But it was more fun to sneak into the staff area and steal them.”

  “Reggie knew where every hiding place was in this hotel,” Becky said, proudly almost.

  “And there was always the swimming pool,” Reba said. “I think there were kids’ hours in the morning and afternoon. I remember being down there a lot.”

  “Oh, oh, funny story—” Becky said, excited. “When we got to our room, Sonny had Reba’s bag and Reba had Sonny’s bag. Isn’t that hysterical?”

  “It’s not funny, Becky. Or even that surprising, we all have the same bag, after all.”

  “Well, you didn’t see Sonny’s face when he saw all that black. That part was hysterical.”

  Particularly if he were expecting nothing but green cash, I thought.

  “You find the strangest things funny,” Sonny told his wife. “It was a simple mistake. That’s all. Easily rectified.”

  I glanced at Marc and Louis, and deliberately did not glance at my mother. Did Becky know about the money? Is that why she brought it up? Or had the bags really been switched? But wait, the suitcase with the money belonged to Sonny. Or at least we thought so. Reba couldn’t have had his bag. Unless we were wrong about whose money had ended up in my mother’s room. Or was Becky lying? Was she trying to flush out who had the money?

  Sonny stood up again. I noticed he had two rectangular gift-wrapped boxes in his hands. He smiled at everyone at the table and then said, “Becky and I would like to present the bride and groom with a small token of our affection.” He walked down to the end of the table and handed Cotton and my mother each a box.

  Gifts? I hadn’t brought a gift. My mother had said not to, that simply coming to the wedding was gift enough, which was good because I couldn’t think of anything she might want or need, and also, I hadn’t really had a lot of time to go out and get them anything.

  Cotton was unwrapping his gift. I glanced at Marc and Louis. From the looks on their faces it was obvious that they hadn’t brought anything either.

  Then my mother said, “But Sonny, we said no gifts.”

  “Did we?” Cotton asked.

  “Yes, dear. We talked about this.”

  “I don’t remember,” he said, under his breath. He didn’t stop unwrapping his gift.

  “Everyone says ‘no gifts’ but no one means it,” Becky said, her voice a bit too sweet.

  “We did. We meant it,” my mother said.

  “Oh, Angie look,” Cotton said. “It’s a Rolex.”

  Cotton stood up and opened his arms for his son-in-law. Sonny stepped into them.

  “His and hers,” Sonny said, though my mother had made no move toward opening hers.

  6

  Believe it or not, things got even more uncomfortable after that. Aunt Katie continued flirting with Cotton, when she wasn’t flirting with Sonny. In between her extravagant compliments, there was a long discussion about whether or not Cotton and my mother s
hould get married by an Elvis impersonator the way Bette Midler had. Becky and Aunt Katie loved the idea, failing to notice that my mother looked miserable when it was brought up. Marc looked like he might be about to fall in with the Elvis-impersonator supporters, so I kicked him under the table.

  “Ouch.”

  “I think Angie has a good idea what she wants,” Cotton said, putting an end to that. Of course, my mother’s disinterest in something so classically Vegas made me wonder, why Vegas? Why were we there at all? Why weren’t they getting married in Grand Rapids? I mean, half the party was from the Midwest. We had a nice backyard, I mean, my mom did. Wouldn’t it have been easier if I’d flown there? Marc and Louis might even have come along.

  Naturally, that would have meant the suitcase full of cash wouldn’t have gotten delivered to Las Vegas or the Cayman Islands or wherever it was on its way to. Was that the whole point of my mother’s wedding? To launder money? That was an awful thought.

  The waitress arrived, a perky girl named Jeanette in a cowgirl getup, who asked if we wanted drinks. It was just after three, but everyone wanted a drink except me. My mother ordered a strawberry margarita and, since she’d been drinking on the plane, I wondered if marriage might not be turning her into an alcoholic.

  Cotton ordered a Glenfiddich and soda, Sonny followed suit. Marc and Louis shared a bottle of chardonnay. Aunt Katie had a margarita like my mother, Tina asked for a spritzer made with Perrier. Reba and Sonny both had Beefeater martinis, while Becky ordered a Midori sour. I decided I was fine with the water they’d brought.

  Before she left the table, our cowgirl told us the day’s special was a sixteen-ounce chicken pot pie. I nearly groaned. Instead, I coughed a few times into my fist. Just a tickle in my throat. I drank some water, hoping it would go away.

  “Medicare is running out of money,” Cotton pronounced. “There won’t be enough to pay people’s bills after the year two thousand.”

  I couldn’t figure out why he’d said that. Did it have something to do with my coughing? I cleared my throat trying to avoid the inevitable and then gave in to another round of coughing.