Stung

by Gary Stephen Ross

  “Two fifty,” said Brian.

  “Come on. Two hundred and fifty bucks for everything?”

  “We’re on a special deal. Let’s go.”

  If the plane hadn’t been held they would have missed it. The dirty looks from other passengers only added to Brenda’s simmering resentment. On the flight home, Phil asked her how she’d done. She’d lost twenty dollars on the slots. Louise had dropped forty but at least had got a tan. Phil said he’d won on the ball games but lost more than $1,000 in the casino. He asked Brian how he’d made out.

  Ordinarily, no matter how intense the action, Molony knew at any moment exactly how much money he had. This time he’d lost so furiously it took him a moment to figure out where he stood. He’d asked the Barbary Coast to send $538,000 across the street to Caesars Palace, and instructed Caesars to transfer the balance of his account to New Jersey. He’d have $948,000 in Atlantic City. Was it possible? He’d run the original $800,000 to well over $2-million before hitting the cold streak. After three days of spectacular good fortune, had he really won only $148,000? Had he really lost more than a million dollars in the last two hours?

  Better to look on the bright side. He’d snapped his losing streak. He had Atlantic City money in place. He’d proven the big win was possible. If he could hang in long enough, it was inevitable. Maybe he hadn’t redeemed himself, but he’d taken a first step. Maybe he could get down to Atlantic City before the weekend.

  “Sir, I got out with my shirt,” he told Phil. “The important thing is that we all had a good time.” He nodded at Brenda, who was glumly turning the pages of a magazine. “Well,” he said quietly, “almost all of us.”

  April 14, 1982. Caesars Atlantic City. Al Wilson.

  9:05 p.m. Baccarat 1. B. Maloney sits in with $70,000 marker.

  9:10 p.m. Maloney gets $70,000 marker.

  9:55 p.m. Maloney taps out. Walks to Craps 11. Gets $50,000 marker.

  10:20 p.m. Baccarat 1. Maloney with $70,000 marker. Gets $60,000 marker. Table gets $300,000 fill. Maloney now has $650,000. Walks.

  11:30 p.m. Baccarat 1. Maloney back. Gets four $50,000 markers. Loses. Walks.

  3:00 a.m. Craps 11. Maloney strong purple play. Walks with $90,000 to Baccarat 1. Bets as much as $40,000 per hand. Winning heavily. Sends $300,000 to cage and walks.

  April 16, 1982. Caesars Atlantic City. Matt Wilson.

  10 p.m. Maloney on Baccarat 1 with about $75,000. Left with about $50,000.

  3:55 a.m. Craps 11. Maloney has approx. $80,000 betting Pass, Place, Come, and Don’t Place. Also betting hard ways and buys 4 and 10. Left game with approx. $65,000.

  At six o’clock Saturday morning, just before the casino bell signalled the end of play at Caesars, Molony put $10,000 on the bank at baccarat. That left him a single $500 chip, a purple, which he bet on a tie hand. Player won. Cleaned out. Every dollar was gone of the almost $1-million he’d sent from Las Vegas.

  “Bad timing,” said the floorman. “Just when it was going to turn around.”

  Molony went up to his suite and vomited in one of the marble bathrooms. He drank some water, composing himself, and headed for the limousine stand. Good timing, really, losing his last chips on the last hand. Losing all your money wasn’t like losing most of it and having to scale down. Losing most of it left you full of self-loathing. It made you think back over the mistakes you’d made, the little promises you’d broken, the pathetic rationalizations. Losing everything was pure. It gave you a surge of aching, almost overwhelming despair, but only for a time. Once you got through that you were liberated from what had happened. You were forced to look ahead, to wonder how you’d go about starting all over again. You had nothing to regret. You had nothing.

  At the magazine stand in the concourse, Molony picked up a newspaper to read on the plane. He gave the clerk a Canadian quarter. The tag on her blouse said her name was Darlene. She turned the coin in her hand.

  “This ain’t no good.”

  “It’s a quarter,” said Molony.

  “I can’t take this.”

  Molony checked his pockets but didn’t have an American quarter. He had no American change. He offered the girl another nickel, Canadian, but she didn’t want it.

  “Come on,” said Molony. “Thirty cents Canadian is worth twenty-five American.”

  “How my supposed to know that?”

  “Here, I’ve got a dime. Thirty-five cents Canadian. You know that’s worth more than a quarter.”

  “I don’t know nothing about that,” said the girl.

  “Need a quarter?” said Larry Woolf, who happened to be on his way to the lobby. He stopped and dug in the pocket of his suit trousers.

  “Kind of you, sir,” said Molony, folding the newspaper.

  “My pleasure,” said Woolf.

  On Monday, April 19, Molony put through a loan of $1.12-million, crediting the proceeds to the account of the numbered company. Madness. The numbered company was already over its supposed $3-million limit. But Molony could think of no other way to raise money. What difference? He had to win it back before the next return of irregular liabilities. Each month the branch had to report any loans not in accordance with authorized terms and conditions, or obtain an exemption from Credit Room. He had no idea how he’d finesse the numbered company through. If he could just get back to Atlantic City, get on a roll…

  Molony told the foreign-exchange clerk to prepare a draft for $920,000 U.S., payable to California Clearing Corporation, and to debit the numbered company’s account. She brought the draft up to his office. While she was at lunch he went back down to her desk and typed Colizzi’s name on the negotiable copy. He sealed the draft in an envelope and had it delivered to the Bank of Montreal across the street. He then phoned Michael Neustadter in Atlantic City. He was making a deposit in the California Clearing Corporation account — nine hundred and twenty thousand, he said, and swallowed. What if Neustadter balked? What if Neustadter told him, “Sorry, Brian, that’s it. We don’t want to see you anymore.”

  What if he couldn’t gamble?

  “Great,” said Neustadter. “We’ll pick you up in New York. What time should the pilot be there?” When Michael Neustadter got off the phone with Molony, he advised both the financial department and the casino cage at Caesars to expect the $920,000 deposit through the U.S.-dollar account at the Manulife branch of the Bank of Montreal in Toronto.

  A few hours later, Linc Ebert, the director of cage operations and Molony lookalike, received the transmittal form from the sister casino in Las Vegas indicating the $920,000 was on deposit. The form, however, showed the deposit as being in the name of “M. Colizzi.”

  Ebert spoke to Bill Hessel, the chain-smoking casino controller. Hessel didn’t see how the funds could be released to Molony. He went to Larry Bertsch, the chief financial officer of the company. Bertsch, a blunt, irascible man, agreed that funds forwarded in the name of Colizzi couldn’t be released to Molony. Hessel called Michael Neustadter in the casino.

  “We got a problem, Mike.”

  “Like what?”

  “The Toronto funds have been transferred, but they’re in somebody else’s name.”

  Neustadter explained the trouble to Larry Woolf. The two men tried to persuade Bill Hessel to release the funds. Hessel said no. What if Colizzi walked in and said, “Where’s my money?” What was the casino supposed to say? “We gave it to your friend Molony?” Suppose Colizzi said, “Who’s Molony?” No, the cage couldn’t release it unless Mario Colizzi accompanied Molony, presented identification, and signed the money over.

  Neustadter brainstormed with Woolf. There seemed no choice but to contact Molony and ask him to bring along his friend. Partner. Colleague. Whatever the hell Colizzi was. Talk about frustration. Million-dollar tuna on the line, begging to be landed. In Las Vegas you’d haul him in and say, “Welcome aboard, Mr. T. Great to see you. What can we do for you?” Here, according to the regs, you were supposed to say, “Sorry, sir, we really can’t help you, not
without contravening subsection this of paragraph that of the revised regulations.” New Jersey and its goddamn Casino Control Act. Tuna’s just going to swim off to a more accommodating boat.

  Neustadter phoned Michael Rosen at the Caesars office in Toronto and asked him to relay the bad news to Molony. But Molony was already en route to the airport and couldn’t be reached. Neustadter phoned Pearson International but got no response to his page. What now? This was turning into a full-fledged cockup. A hasty meeting was convened in the second-floor, corner office of Peter Boynton, the president of Caesars.

  Boynton was a hefty, easygoing man who worked out each day at the spa. He was not a typical casino executive. After studying political science and doing graduate work in finance, he’d worked for an aerospace manufacturing company and a national brokerage firm. He’d entered the gaming industry through Caesars World in Century City, California. Caesars World owned 100 per cent of Desert Palace Inc., the company that owned and operated Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and 86 per cent of Boardwalk Regency Corporation, the company that owned the Atlantic City operation. Boynton dealt with stock analysts, put together financial reports, and did liaison work with the subsidiaries before being put in charge of preparing the company’s entry into Atlantic City. He helped determine the structure and staffing requirements of the proposed hotel, and in 1979 joined Boardwalk Regency Corporation as vice-president operations. He oversaw everything but the gambling side until 1981, when he was named chief executive officer and assumed total responsibility.

  Boynton was more at home on Wall Street than in the dice pit. His tastefully decorated office might have been that of an insurance executive. It featured only one allusion to the corporate aegis. Instead of a clock marked by combinations of dice, or a wall of photographs of himself shaking hands with celebrities, he kept a model of the Caesars helicopter on a side table. One of his children was emotionally disturbed; he served on the board of the special school the boy attended. He’d also served on the Atlantic City Casino Hotel Association, an exercise in public relations. He was just the sort of gaming executive the Casino Control Commission liked to see in its jurisdiction.

  But he wasn’t a casino man, and he was viewed by people who worked for him as out of touch. A casino responds to action the way a teenaged boy responds to sexual instinct. The moment drives everything. If someone’s betting big money, keep him in action even it means violating the regulations, stonewalling the Casino Control Commission, making an end run around your own president. Get the money now, face the consequences later. In its first few years of operation Caesars had committed literally thousands of regulatory violations. The fines were always minor compared to the wins.

  Nobody wanted to miss out on $920,000 cash. Peter Boynton, Larry Woolf, Michael Neustadter, and Bill Hessel were joined by the two Jemm oldtimers, Milton Neustadter and Roy Goldberg. The problem discussed around Boynton’s coffee table was how to accommodate Brian Molony without violating CCC regulations and, more important, federal law. The Casino Control Commission maintains an office in every casino, but nobody was about to ask for an interpretation of the New Jersey regulations. For the moment, the fewer people who knew about Brian Molony the better.

  Bill Hessel maintained that the funds couldn’t be released. Maybe Colizzi’s coming down with Molony and all we’ll have to do is hand him a pen. Fine, but what if he’s not coming? Then we haul his ass down here. Or we send somebody up to Toronto to get his signature on a customer-deposit receipt and a release authorization. Any problem with that? Well, actually, cage transactions have to be performed in the cage. True, but all we’re doing is moving the cage to Toronto, right? Once the cage has the signatures up there, the money can be released to Molony down here. Wait a minute, is he still a cash player if we do it that way? Or does that make him a credit player? The distinction was important because the casino was obliged to have on file detailed financial information, including bank references, for credit players. Sure he’s still a cash player — “cash,” in the regs, means cash or a cash equivalent, and the transmittal form from Caesars Palace is arguably a cash equivalent. Let’s get a jet ready to go, just in case.

  Hessel wanted a casino employee to accompany the cage person on the flight to Toronto. He wanted it made perfectly clear that the procedure had been agreed upon by both departments.

  When the meeting broke up, Michael Neustadter went off to charter the Learjet. Larry Woolf had the documentation prepared and instructed that Molony’s computer number be changed. There were terminals throughout Caesars, and anyone could find out how much he was depositing and betting. No reason why the whole world had to know about Brian Molony.

  Bill Hessel, meanwhile, went to the casino cage. He spoke to Jane Blackton, the supervisor. How would she feel about flying up to Toronto that evening? She asked what for; when Hessel told her, she explained she had a fear of flying — could he maybe ask Claire Lodovico instead?

  Lodovico, an assistant cage manager, had spent fifteen years with First National State Bank in Ventnor before joining Caesars in 1979. A divorcee, she lived in a tiny bungalow with her cat and felt privileged to work in the gaming industry. It was more lively than the bank, and the money was better. She didn’t want to jeopardize her position. Still, the idea of flying to Toronto made her nervous, and she questioned the appropriateness of leaving the cage to perform a cage transaction. Hessel reassured her: he’d just come from Boynton’s office, he said, where that very question had been resolved.

  Lodovico’s close friend, Katherine Campellone, a credit executive, was chosen to represent the casino department. The two women were briefed by Hessel and Woolf.

  About eight o’clock, Brian Molony walked into Caesars. Michael Neustadter and Larry Woolf met him and said they needed to talk. One of the mirrored panels by the cage opened to reveal a private office. The two men explained the problem to Molony.

  “I don’t understand the difficulty,” said Molony. “Wasn’t it transferred the same way the last two times?”

  Woolf and Neustadter exchanged a glance.

  “We’ll look into that,” said Woolf. “The immediate concern is that we can’t release the funds that came through today.”

  “This is ridiculous. What’s the solution?”

  “One possibility would be to fly Mr. Colizzi down here to sign over the funds.”

  Out of the question. Colizzi didn’t know his name was being used and would have been stunned by the sums. Well, said Molony, actually, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get in touch with Colizzi.

  Woolf and Neustadter got the picture. What if we fly casino personnel to Toronto, Brian? Colizzi could sign off up there.

  Molony thought it over. Maybe, he said, but he wanted to see the documents Colizzi would be asked to sign. It was essential, he added, that Colizzi not be made aware of the amount of the transaction. Any forms had to be blank when he signed them, the details filled in later. And the Caesars people were not to answer any questions Colizzi might ask. All questions were to be referred to Molony himself.

  Sounded perfectly reasonable to Woolf and Neustadter.

  Molony asked them to step out while he made the call. A few minutes later he emerged from the office. Colizzi, he said, would be at the American Airlines ticket counter at Pearson International in Toronto. Terminal One. He’d be wearing tan slacks, a brown and black leather jacket, and crocodile boots. Molony repeated that he was not to be apprised of the sum involved.

  Unable to gamble, Molony wandered through the concourse to the lobby, past the black marble walls and oversized sculptures. A roar came from the casino and Molony hurried back to see what was going on. A whole table in the dice pit was on a roll. Painful, being a spectator. He went over to the casino lounge and stood listening to the bar band a moment. Dreadful music — strange he’d never noticed. He walked past row on row of slot machines and pushed through the doors to the Boardwalk. He had never been out here before. The air had a salty tang. The huge Caesars sign was eng
ulfed by a red aurora. The darkness seemed to move in time to a low, rhythmic roar, not unlike the sound from the crap table. Garish light from the hot-dog stands and souvenir shops on the Boardwalk spilled across the sand, revealing the water’s ragged edge. The roar was the surf, breaking, receding, and breaking again.

  Molony went up to his suite and turned on television. Killing time, knowing that downstairs dice were being thrown and cards dealt, was a kind of exquisite torture. To be so close to the purest concentrate of the energy that sustained him — action, they called it, but the word didn’t do it justice. Action was passing a finger through the flame. He sandpapered the fingertip, exposing every nerve end, then held it perfectly still and turned up the heat, filling the void of his life with distilled sensation. How long can the scream go unuttered?

  Molony ordered up ribs, no sauce, and a Coke, but found he had no appetite. He phoned Brenda and asked what she was doing; she knew better than to ask the same. He kicked off his shoes, then put them on again. He wanted to be ready when the word came. He sat listlessly through game shows and soap operas and a Jimmy Cagney film until 1:30 a.m., when the phone rang. Neustadter.

  “Good news, Brian. Your money’s waiting for you.”

  April 19, 1982. Caesars Atlantic City. Michael Francis.

  1:45 a.m. Craps 11. B. Maloney receiving markers for $50,000 and $60,000. Player betting Pass, Don’t, Come, Place, Field, and Don’t Place for $10,000-plus per bet. Player left game for Baccarat 1.

  3:00 a.m. Baccarat 1. B. Maloney receiving $50,000 and $100,000 markers and betting up to $50,000 per hand. Went back to craps for awhile and returned. Player had up to $500,000. Back down to $300,000. Player went to Craps 11 with $100,000.

  3:35 a.m. Baccarat 1. Maloney betting as before. Had $800,000. Moved to craps with $150,000 approx.

  3:45 a.m. Craps 11. Maloney betting as before. Lost the $150,000 and returned to Baccarat 1.