Cash Out

by Marshall Thornton

  We walked half-way across the casino, through the virtual forest of one-armed bandits, gaudy flashing lights and green felt-covered tables. Passing by a white-haired old lady squealing and holding a plastic bucket underneath a machine as it spewed coins, I noticed the people around her glaring as though she’d done something socially inept. I wondered if she had. Did people come to Vegas to win or were they here to lose? Did they want to lose?

  I shook my head. Too much Louise Hay.

  And then we stopped at a circle of blackjack tables. They all had tall bar stools sitting around them. In the center were two credenza-type cabinets and a tuxedoed guy in a wheelchair. Robert called out, “Hey Mickey. I want you to meet my friends.”

  Mickey spun the wheels of his chair and turned around. He was in his mid-thirties, with thinning black hair, thick stubble on his chin and cheeks surrounding a pair of ruby lips. He smiled, showing us nice white teeth, and came down to us.

  Robert introduced everyone and then said, “So Mickey, we need to ask some uncomfortable questions.”

  “I don’t talk about my sex life,” he said with a wink.

  “No, but Gary Glenn sure does,” Robert zinged him back. It took a moment for me to realize—Gary Glenn was the female impersonator from Les Femmes. They must be a couple.

  Mickey came out of the pit and led us over to a low pai gow table with regular-sized chairs. He pushed a chair aside and moved in. Placing an elbow on the table, he studied us as Tina and I took seats. Robert, Marc and Louis remained standing.

  “There sure are a lot of you,” Mickey said.

  Robert began, “Let’s say I have a friend, and her luggage got swapped with someone else’s and it turned out there was a lot of cash in that suitcase, and then, the bags got switched back.”

  “Luggage? Really? This is a very boring story.”

  “It is, yeah. So the next day, the person my friend thinks is the real owner of the suitcase full of money, well, he ends up dead and no one knows where the suitcase of money is.”

  “Okay, now it’s a more interesting story. Why are you telling me this?”

  “Who do you think killed the guy and stole the money?”

  “I’d guess someone who knew he had it.”

  Oh, that wasn’t good. The only people I was sure knew the money had been returned were my friends. But now, wait, the people whose money it was must have known.

  “We’re pretty sure the money doesn’t actually belong to the person who was carrying it around,” Louis said, practically reading my mind. “Do you happen to know how money laundering works at a casino?”

  “Not a clue,” Mickey said.

  “Could you guess?” Robert said.

  “Ah, well, yes I could guess. First, you need a courier. Someone to bring your ill-gotten gains into the casino. This should be someone nobody expects. Like the last person you’d think of. Then you need one of the cashiers or maybe, you know, say a pit boss...”

  He paused dramatically.

  “…to accept the cash. Then slowly, twenty, twenty-five thousand at a time, the cashier or maybe even the pit boss…”

  Another pause, then he scanned our faces. I thought he might wink at us.

  “…adds the money to the days’ take. You see, gambling is a cash business. There’s no way to know how much comes in, you know. Maybe it’s a hundred thousand a shift. Maybe it’s a hundred and twenty-five. You know?”

  Tina was nodding along as he spoke. This made sense. It made a lot of sense. In a business like my video store, I actually had records of every single transaction. If I wanted to launder money, I’d have to make up fake names, rent movies to these fake people and then pay myself with my ill-gotten gains. I couldn’t just dump money into the till and say, “Wow, we had a really good day.” But, you could basically do that with a casino.

  “So, in your example…” I said, picking up on how we were doing this.

  “Your example,” Mickey corrected. “I’m only guessing, remember?”

  “Oh sure. In our example, would the pit boss have been expecting a delivery from a particular attorney?”

  “My guess is the pit boss doesn’t always know who’ll be delivering the funds. But I can tell you they’ve never come from said attorney before.”

  “What about the Cayman Islands?” Tina asked.

  “Well, that’s a different game all together,” Mickey explains. “A casino like this is… it’s for turning bad money into good money real fast. The Cayman Islands, well, that’s for hiding money mostly. And if you’re going to turn bad money into good that way… well, it takes a long time. You gotta practically send it on a trip around the world, you know? You buy some Asian stock, some European mutual funds, you do that over and over again, and eventually the money’s been so many places no one remembers where it started.”

  Now that was confusing. It made sense that Sonny—or someone—might bring money to the casino to be laundered for The Outfit. But Cotton was the one taking my mother to the Cayman Islands. Was he actually the one who’d brought the money? Did it come from The Outfit or did it come from somewhere else?

  “What if the, uh, delivery was interrupted, or say misplaced?” I asked. “Would that be a reason to whack someone?”

  “Nobody uses a word like whack,” he caught himself. “My guess is… we just take care of business.”

  “Okay, so would losing the money cause someone to take care of business?”

  “Sure, I suppose,” Mickey said. “Sometimes it don’t take a lot to take care of business, you know? If certain people got up on the wrong side of the bed.” He made a slicing motion over his neck.

  My friends and I looked at one another. We all cringed a little.

  “So, it’s possible that whoever killed him didn’t take the money from him. Someone else might have already had it,” I said.

  “And he was killed because he lost the money,” Marc said, finishing my thought.

  “This is all hy-po-thetical, remember?” Mickey said. “There’s no friend. No suitcase full of money. No dead person.”

  “No.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Completely hypothetical.”

  “And it’s just a coincidence that some attorney fellow fell off the twentieth floor this morning.”

  “Totally,” Robert assured him.

  “And we never had a conversation like this.”

  We all shook our heads strenuously. Then Robert said, “Give Gary my love. And tell her I’ll have the Gauthier knockoff ready by next week.”

  “Yeah, she showed me the sketch,” Mickey said, then rolled his eyes. “Good luck with your… whatever this is.” And then he was off.

  Tina and I stood up. Marc immediately said, “What do you think?”

  “Well,” Louis said. “Sonny’s death was clearly planned, someone wanted Angie out of the way so he could be killed in her suite and take the fall.”

  “That lets out strangers,” Tina said. “They had to know things about Angie.”

  “Some things,” Marc said. “Really only what room she was in and that she was getting married. All of the hotel staff would know that.”

  “It does mean it wasn’t The Outfit, though,” Robert said. “If it was an Outfit hit, they’d have thrown him off his own balcony and just left no evidence.”

  “Is that true, though?” Tina asked. “It’s well known that this is an Outfit casino. And that Sonny was an Outfit attorney. They would be the first suspects if it hadn’t happened in Angie’s room.”

  “So, we didn’t learn anything new?”

  “No, that’s not true, Noah,” Louis said. “We have learned something. Mickey made it clear he wasn’t expecting a delivery from Sonny.”

  “Something’s not right about the money,” I said.

  “Maybe Sonny stole it,” Marc said.

  “One crime leads to another,” Tina said. “Not bad. I mean, plot-wise. I like it.”

  Marc said, “It has to do with the Cottons.”


  I was sure what he really meant was that it had to do with Cotton. “Or Aunt Katie,” I added, uncomfortably.

  “Oh, that’s true,” Tina said. “I really like her, though.”

  “Unless,” Marc said.

  “Unless what?” Louis asked.

  “We think someone was trying to frame Angie. What if it’s just a coincidence? She is getting married, maybe the free spa day was just a secret gift,” Marc suggested.

  “It’s not,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s say the spa day was a coincidence. Sonny still went over her balcony. That he went to her room would also have to be a coincidence, another coincidence. That’s kind of unbelievable.”

  Tina said, “I think he’s right. There’s a movie rule, you can only have once coincidence per script, and it has to be in the first act. They’ve got to be connected, it’s the only way they make sense. Whoever killed Sonny wanted Angie out of the way so they could kill him in her room. And blame it on her.”

  We were all silent for a moment, then Louis said, “We should go give the Cottons our condolences.” I think we were all a tiny a bit aghast. He raised an eyebrow as he continued, “And see what we can find out, of course.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t go,” Robert said. “I’ve never even met them.”

  “We’ve barely met them,” I said, and suddenly the half sandwich I had for lunch wasn’t sitting well. I was not looking forward to this.

  “Not to mention— I have actual work to do,” Robert added, just to avoid getting roped in. “I’m expecting Wilma’s person—"

  Suddenly, from behind me, I heard, “Him! That’s the boy who destroyed my life!”

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Wilma Wanderly pointing at me. She was tiny, a bit frail with flawless apricot-colored hair, and wearing a mink coat that was bigger than she was. With her was a tubby little man in his fifties with a bad comb-over and a kerchief around his neck. He carried a small, red toolbox, which meant he was probably Wilma’s makeup artist, though I suppose he could have been her very flamboyant personal plumber.

  At this point I had to wonder, was it me? Or Las Vegas? She was the third woman of a certain age to accost me since I’d arrived at Lucky Days. My Aunt Katie had wanted to eat me up, the red-haired woman wanted me to stop something—God knows what—and now, apparently, I’d destroyed Wilma Wanderly’s life.

  “My poor Arthur! He’s sitting in prison forever because of you!”

  Her son had taken a plea deal to avoid the gas chamber.

  “No, he killed three people,” I said. “That’s why he’s in prison.”

  “Lies! Lies! All lies!” she sobbed. Inhaling deeply, she added, “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a good assistant?”

  Arthur had acted as her assistant for most of his life. And, yes, I knew how hard it was to find good help, but I didn’t think I’d hire a murderer even if we were related.

  At that point, Wilma noticed Robert standing with us. “You,” she said, pointing at him. “You don’t know these terrible people, do you?”

  Wisely, he said, “I’ve never met them before in my life.”

  “Then come with us for God’s sake… away from these horrors.”

  She started off and Robert began to follow, shrugging at us, but then abruptly Wilma turned and said, “When you come to my show, and you will come to my show, do not sit in the front. I couldn’t bear to look at you. And don’t even try to ask for comps, there are no tickets available for love or money.”

  Dramatically, she spun around, clearly a well-practiced move, and swooped across the casino. Robert took one last look at us and shrugged again before he followed.

  12

  Anger. It rose off the three sisters like the desert heat. They sat huddled together on the giant, red sectional in the center of the very red honeymoon suite. While it was a relief from the endless greens and golds, there was far too much of it. Interlocking pink hearts made a pattern in the red carpet, the floor to ceiling drapery flowed like blood, the walls were a deep, nudist pink—a change I suppose but, yuck! Between the sectional and the far window was a heart-shaped, red porcelain bathtub with a jar of pink rose petals sitting next to it.

  I tried to take a good look at Reggie, the sister none of us had seen before. She was taller than the other two, with a pixie haircut, intense black eyes and a very pale skin. She wore no makeup, a dark purple asymmetrical blouse, and black linen slacks. She was every bit as angry as her sisters.

  My mother and Cotton sat at the shimmering ruby-colored bar, with their stools turned around facing the girls. The atmosphere when we entered was as thick as peanut butter.

  “Why are you here?” Becky demanded. The four of us, Marc and Louis, Tina and I, hovered near the door to the suite.

  “We came to say how sorry we are—” I began.

  “Thank you, Noah,” Cotton said. “That’s very kind—.”

  “Your mother killed my husband.”

  “Rebecca!”

  “It’s true, Daddy,” Reba said. “She killed poor Sonny.”

  “Um, I don’t think so,” I interrupted. “She wasn’t in her room at the time, and even if she had been, I don’t think she could—”

  “We don’t believe you,” Reggie spat. “Or her.”

  “She was at the Flamingo. I’m sure the police have already verified her alibi,” I said.

  “Um,” my mother said, shaking her head. “That’s not going well.

  I was afraid of that.

  “Detective Ryland said, well, apparently, there were three Virginia Hills and two Annette Benings at the Flamingo’s day spa this morning.”

  “Such an obvious lie,” Becky said.

  “Rebecca, you will show respect,” Cotton said. “It is simply not possible that Angie killed Sonny.”

  “Ha!”

  Ignoring them, my mother asked us, “Have you seen Katie? I haven’t seen her at all since breakfast.”

  “I saw her right after, you know, Sonny—” I said, very uncomfortably. “Then the police separated us.”

  “And where was that?” Cotton asked.

  “In the suite she and my mother—”

  “Wait, I thought you were downstairs at the valet when it happened?” he asked, I could sense the lawyer in him coming out.

  “Yes. With Marc and Louis. Then I went to look for my mother.”

  “I was having breakfast with my friend Robert,” Tina said, simply to avoid being accused of murder.

  Ignoring her, Cotton said, “You went up to Angie’s suite about how long after Sonny fell? Was it right away or did you stay with your friends for a bit?” Cotton asked me.

  I thought for a bit. “It was ten minutes at the most.”

  “And Katie was in the room when you arrived?”

  “Yes. She was wearing a kaftan and said she’d been swimming. She also said the room was messy when she got back, things were knocked over, so she was putting it back together.”

  “She didn’t say how long she’d been back or if she’d seen anyone else?” Cotton seemed a bit desperate.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “And we don’t know where she is now?”

  None of us knew. I thought it unlikely she was still with the police. Hours and hours had gone by, even though she had even less to tell them than I did. So, where was she?

  “Cotton, you’re making it sound like Katie might have done something,” my mother said. “She didn’t. She couldn’t. She’d never harm a fly.”

  “The two of you probably did it together,” Reggie said.

  “That’s probably the whole reason she’s here,” Reba said, rubbing her red eyes. “You haven’t seen each other in years. It makes perfect sense.”

  “I don’t understand you girls. Why would I kill Sonny?” my mother asked. She sounded genuinely interested, though I didn’t think she should be.

  “He went to your room to talk you out of marrying our father. He was doing it fo
r me,” Becky explained. “So, you—and your friend—pushed him off the balcony.”

  “As Noah said, I wasn’t even there. If he was pushed off the balcony, someone else pushed him.” Quickly, she added, “Someone other than Katie.”

  “I’m confused,” Tina said. “Why don’t you want your father to marry Angie? She’s very nice.”

  “We love our mother,” Reba said.

  “You want your parents to get back together? All of you?” Louis asked, kind of surprised. I mean, they were adults after all.

  “Oh my God,” Marc said under his breath. “It’s The Parent Trap all grown up and with murder.”

  “Hayley Mills,” Tina said. “I love that movie. Someone should remake that.”

  Reggie cleared her throat, then said, “My parents should never have divorced.” Her voice was deep and sonorous. “They loved each other. They still love each other.”

  “You’ve misunderstood, Reggie,” Cotton said. “I will always love your mother for giving me you girls, but that’s it. And I don’t believe she feels any more than that for me. What we feel toward each other is gratitude, not love.”

  At that particular moment, his daughters seemed like awful people. I wondered, How could anyone be grateful for these three?

  “You girls are being terribly unfair,” Tina said. “You wouldn’t want your father telling you who you can and cannot marry, would you?”

  “Shut up,” Reggie said. “You’re a stranger. Who are you to tell us how we should feel?”

  “And besides, don’t you think Sonny’s murder had something to do with the money?” Tina asked.

  My mother’s eyes opened wider and I realized she hadn’t yet told Cotton about the money

  “What money?” Cotton wanted to know. “Why are you talking about money, young lady?”

  “Yeah, what money?” Becky wanted to know, though I thought she was less convincing.

  “Oh, come on,” Tina said. “Your husband was carrying money for the mob. We all know it. Don’t pretend.”

  “No, it isn’t true—” Cotton said.

  “That’s racist,” Reba exclaimed. “You think because Sonny was Italian, he worked for the Mafia.”