“Something better, Josh. Something better. That’s the human cry.
“Animals, too, for your information. Animals run, birds fly, fish swim upstream for miles and miles because there is better than here. Instinct--the pursuit of something better. Even a fish thinks his creator done him wrong.
“People, it’s true, don’t wise up so fast, so you’ll notice most of our clientele is middle-aged. That’s no coincidence, Josh. The young, they still think there’s a whole life ahead.
“Later they find out, hey, my life’s half-over and what’s this? What have I got? This isn’t right. This isn’t fair. I’ve been cheated. I’ve got better coming to me, and so here they are, Josh--watch them at the tables, watch them at the slots.
“Look at their faces and tell me, are they playing? Are they? They’re not playing. This isn’t a game. This isn’t even fun. This is serious. Seen anybody smile at blackjack or baccarat or the slots?
“Ever see anybody take in our lounge acts? We bring in the best, and for what?”
“Fun,” I said. “People come here to have fun.”
Sy laughed. “Yeah, fun-in-the-sun. Listen, we’ve got people coming here who don’t even know there’s an ocean across the street. Yeah. Oh we sell it as fun, the whole package. You’ve seen our ads, and there is an element of fun, but it’s serious, Josh, too serious.
“Had one guy here the other day playing way, way over his head at roulette. I mean this guy was going through torture, losing bundle after bundle, sweating and swearing. Never seen a guy so miserable. Up comes his father, tugs his sleeve, you know, to pull him away, to tell him to leave some money for the wife and kids. This guy wheels around and says, ‘Leave me alone, Dad. Can’t you see I’m having fun?’
“Take it from me, Josh. The word is vulnerable. That’s where we come in.
“The guy who invented gambling...what a genius! He knew just where to tap in.
“That’s us. We put out the bait. We say here it is, come and get it, win that million dollars, and they come. They come with a vengeance.
“Here’s a number for you--thirty million. That’s how many people hit the casinos here during the course of a year. There’s no other place on earth that gets that many people. Thirty million. Do that many people go to church?”
I said if all the world’s churches were in one place, you’d get your thirty million.
He said, “Not on your life. People have given up on religion. Oh they go to church to pay their respects, but that’s out of fear. Just in case there is a God. But you don’t need faith to believe in a slot machine. Just take a bus and there it is. Just pull the handle and, who knows, you may never again have to pray for a better life.
“Because that’s what we do here Josh, we promise a better life, the thing we’re all after, even you. True, we spend all kinds of money, but there’s a reason. More money! We’ll spend a million bucks to move a staircase from here to there because why? Because in the end it’ll bring us a million bucks more. The point is this: in the casino business money is first, last and everything in between. Up and down the Boardwalk we’re all in the business of buying people. Sometimes all it takes is a tee-shirt. Sometimes it takes more. But I’ve never met the man, or woman, who could not be bought. We’re just talking price.”
Chapter 10
A PRIVATE ELEVATOR, hidden from public view, shot up to the suites of the very rich. It was in a secluded corner, in a room that served as a graveyard for dead slot machines.
I had been directed to it by the Versailles’s bell captain, who had first made a phone call, mentioning my name. So Ibrahim knew I was coming. Instead of Joan.
Now I pressed the button for the elevator and when it came for me I had second thoughts, as always. Elevators were not my favorite pastime. I had no fear of heights, or of flying, or even of combat or any of the other usual things, but elevators terrified me.
Being closed in! Worse, being forgotten--yes, that was my biggest fear. Someday I’d be stuck in an elevator and nobody would know. For hours, days, weeks, months, years. Nobody would miss me enough to know or care. Being forgotten. I could think of nothing more dreadful.
Being dead would not be half as bad--if people knew you were dead. But suppose you were dead and people didn’t even know you were dead? That would be awful.
Suppose you were alive and people didn’t even know you were alive? That would be worse--the worst.
In the elevator, riding up to number eighteen, I thought of what to say. Stop propositioning my wife? That wouldn’t go. I thought of what to do. Challenge him to a duel? That was outdated. So I really had no plan, other than to show up and satisfy--more than curiosity. Something much more than curiosity.
I did have doubts about whether I was doing the right thing. Joan and I had quarreled most of the afternoon about this. She thought I was being foolish. “The old macho thing,” she had said. She had also said something else. “You can’t win against a man like that.” Close to what Sy had said--Even when the man loses he wins. He cannot lose. That did trouble me now, that thought.
When I stepped off the elevator a man who looked like Paul Newman--though I’m sure he wasn’t--welcomed me by saying, “Follow, please.” I detected an accent other than Arabic.
Apart from the Paul Newman resemblance, I recognized this man. Then I remembered that I had seen him the night before at an adjoining table while the four of us were dining in the Trop.
Soon other faces began to appear in the corridors as I followed Paul Newman--familiar faces. It became clear to me that Ibrahim did indeed have a retinue, and they were everywhere.
I was escorted to a room that surprised me for its lack of décor. There was a beige sofa, twin chairs, a coffee table and a bar. Of course this was but one of many rooms, for Ibrahim had the whole floor to himself. Besides, maybe Ibrahim liked his rooms sparse. A rich man did not have to be rich all the time, as opposed to a poor man, who had to be poor all the time.
I was left alone for some time. Was I being watched? I thought I was. In fact, I’d had that sensation even in the elevator, and even before that on the Boardwalk, walking over.
Paranoid, maybe. Maybe not.
Ibrahim strolled in wearing his black suit and white smile. Women would no doubt call him dashing. Now he was so jovial that by impulse I got up from my chair and shook his extended hand. We were alone in the room. He offered me a Manhattan and made himself a cognac.
“I knew you’d come,” he said and when he sat down, facing me, I noticed a peculiar gesture. Rather than hitch up his pants by the knee as some men do to save the crease, he needlessly made a crosswise motion with his right hand, a sign that at home he wore flowing robes.
The Sultan of Mahareen!
“Not my wife?”
“No, I expected you, and I’m so glad you came. We have much to talk about.”
“You have interesting bodyguards,” I said.
“Oh?”
“They’re Israeli, aren’t they?”
He stilled a cough, as close as he’d ever come to expressing astonishment.
“Excellent,” he said. “How did you know?”
“The accents. And not one of them is wearing a tie.”
“Are you surprised?”
“No. King David’s bodyguards were Philistines. In a man’s palace his enemies are to be trusted more than his friends.”
“But surely you wonder how such an arrangement came about.”
“Yes, I do wonder.”
“Then I’ll tell you. On the surface, for the sake of Arab unity, my country is in a perpetual state of war with Israel. We say all the right things against them, for public consumption, and don’t even recognize their right to exist. The reality is different. We’re friends. Not for love, perhaps--though I find them good people--but for necessity. We both live on dry land. They have no oil. We have no water. We send them our oil. They send us their irrigation experts. Of such necessities friendships are made, Mr. Kane, even in times of war
. The same can be said for individuals, like the two of us. All I have to do is find your necessity. You already know mine.”
“Am I expected to be civil after a remark like that?”
“Yes, because we’re talking business.”
“We are?”
“I’m prepared to understand that your wife will continue to spurn me. That’s why I’m talking to you.”
“Business,” I said.
“Business,” he said. “Business is two people exchanging necessities.”
“My wife is not business, Mr. Hassan.”
“Oh everything is business, Mr. Kane. Everything is a transaction. Everything is business and I will show you how. I am offering you one million dollars for one night with your wife.”
And a camel to be named later?
Okay, I thought, this is the most stunning moment of your life, Joshua Kane. The rudest compliment! Has any man ever been so insulted? Has any man ever been so flattered? What can be higher? What can be lower?
“One night and one night only,” Ibrahim continued. “One million dollars. Tax free.”
I laughed and said something stupid: “I’ve never heard anything like this!”
“I have never seen anything like your wife, Mr. Kane. That makes it even odds. That makes it business.”
“Never.”
“Please, I’m not asking you to decide now. Think it over. Think of the million dollars. But remember...the night will come and go. The money lasts a lifetime. So don’t say never, Mr. Kane. It’s something to think about.”
I got up and put my drink down. That was the problem--something to think about.
“So soon?” he said. “I thought you were a gambler, Mr. Kane. Well here it is. The jackpot! For what? The stakes are not so high. A million dollars is nothing to me. One night with your wife--that should be nothing to you. One night.”
“I don’t gamble my wife.”
“Gambling is gambling. Your wife herself agreed she is a compulsive gambler. So this is one more gamble.”
“When did you first see my wife?”
“Together with you on the casino floor of the Galaxy.”
“Does Sy Rodrigo have anything to do with this?”
“Very little. I did ask him to identify you--you and your beautiful wife.”
“So you already knew me when you asked me to join you at the Versailles table for good luck.”
“Yes, I already knew you, and yes, I befriended you for this purpose.”
He was obviously prepared to slay me with candor.
“Does Sy know anything about this offer?”
“I did not mention it to him. But Sy Rodrigo is nobody’s fool.”
“Yes, he’s a man who lives by the verities of clichés. He believes every man can be bought. The only issue is the price, and you’re offering me a million dollars. Tell me, Mr. Hassan, did you promise to play at his tables in exchange for the sacrifice of my wife? Was that the deal?”
“There was no deal. Perhaps an understanding, and why do you say sacrifice? I am not going to kill her. We’re only talking, well, since we are being frank, we’re only talking sex. You’ve already had many nights with her and you’ll have many more. I’m only asking for one. Are you afraid she’ll fall in love with me?”
“No, but I am disgusted with myself for even hearing you out.”
“Yes, you have your pride, your integrity, your values. But you do not have a million dollars!”
“No money is enough for what you’re asking.”
“So you say now. But I assure you you’ll give it thought. I guarantee, in fact, that that’s all you’ll think about.”
I picked up my drink and sat down again. Somewhere there was the perfect response to all this but I could not call it in. I sought a phrase or a dramatic gesture to bring this thing to a conclusion, now, in this room. Before it got out and became a fixation of my days. But I was witless.
I had stupidly walked into a world where I could not win. Even if I won I lost. Just the reverse was true with him. Even if he lost he won. As Joan had said. As Sy had said. Right, this was a man who could not lose.
In his world there were no limits. In my world there was nothing but limits.
At the blackjack table I had had my first insight into how a man of incredible wealth could turn everything upside down, could cheapen even the priceless. Like an idiot I had stepped right in, into where duty of man to God, honor of man to man, fidelity of man to woman, were a mockery in the shadow of a mountain that loomed larger than Sinai.
Yes, people were vulnerable because everybody wants something better. That was what Ibrahim had seen in me. I thought I had been so cool there as his partner in blackjack, but he had sniffed out my hunger, even my desperation. He had the measure of me, which was to say that, in his eyes, I was like the rest, a piddling creature, pathetic for his yearnings.
Now it was too late to turn back. The discussion itself, the fact that I was partaking, already made me an accomplice--already tarnished me and certainly Joan. Like it or not, I had anted up and I was in.
“I guarantee you that I will not think about it,” I said remembering that doubt, hesitation, was the wedge he sought, the wedge he had found when Joan had failed to rebuff him promptly. Only yesterday, I thought, he had tried her for free.
“Perhaps,” he said, “Joan will want to think about it, and I do hope you will bring it up with her.”
“If I don’t?”
“If you don’t, I will.”
“Your arrogance, sir is...”
“If you intend to insult me you’re wasting your time, Mr. Kane. I expect you to be outraged. But I also expect you to be reasonable and open-minded. I have made you an offer. You have no choice but to accept. Think of the gains. You’re losing nothing. Sex? We live in an age where sex is nothing. Something else, Mr. Kane. Sooner or later Joan will have an affair with another man. I assure you she will. I know her type. She is too beautiful for one man. So why not now and make a profit from it.”
At that phrase in particular I should have been wildly offended. But I wasn’t. I was charmed, as awful as that is to admit. Charmed by his reasoning, his candor, his talent for reducing the complex to the simple. What’s more, the smile never left his face, a smile that somehow brought us together under the same joke.
He was serious, of course. But he left room for humor, enough humor to keep me sharing his disdain for my world. I envied him. Not his money. But to be so impervious to the treasures of middle-class values was a freedom to be coveted.
His eyes clung to me--and still I did not know which one was made of glass. To make a point he’d sometimes get up from his chair and tower over me, though not menacingly. He moved with the grace of an athlete, powered by the assurance of self-adulation. He loved himself, and that too was charming.
If you stripped him of his mystique--which was tough to do--he was a spoiled child and nothing more. Surely he had never been denied even the most outlandish fancy. If he wanted something, he got it. If he wanted something that belonged to someone else, he got that too.
So it was when you were the Sultan of Mahareen, where it rained oil--and blessings came to be the blessed. His wealth was not only in money but also in dangerous good looks. In his desert kingdom he was certainly known as God’s Beloved.
Now he leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, made the royal motion over his pants again, and gave me his most mischievous smile yet.
“Suppose I suffered from Jake Barnes syndrome? Would that make a difference?”
Now I hesitated. But I said, “No. We all suffer from that occasionally.”
“Just checking you for exceptions. My, but you’re so resolute! You wouldn’t let your wife be touched even by an impotent man?”
He was chiding me.
“Something tells me you’re not impotent.”
“But if I was?”
For a million dollars? Maybe I would. I had to be honest. Maybe I would. Finally, he had me submit
ting to doubt, visibly so, judging from his pleased reaction. Student that he was of human frailties, he could tell I was thinking, tallying in my mind the new odds, suddenly quite favorable.
The risk on my part was significantly reduced, if he were indeed impotent, which I doubted. But arguing exceptions was the same as arguing price, and arguing either was a fall from the heights of righteousness.
Whether he was impotent or not was almost beside the point. The purpose was to get me thinking, doubting my absolutes. There were no absolutes, he was saying. There were no truths. Name the absolute, he was saying, name the truth--and I’ll name the price. Let’s see which prevails.
“Of course I’m not impotent,” he said. “But maybe I am. I’m paying you a million dollars to find out. You’re a gambler, Mr. Kane! Why else are you in Atlantic City?”
Good question, I thought. I was in Atlantic City to win big money. But not like this. There had to be a way to win it clean. Or maybe there wasn’t. Maybe this was the only way. To gain a million dollars you had to give up the equivalent, something as valuable, or even more valuable.
“I saw your face at the blackjack table,” Ibrahim continued. “The face of a loser, Mr. Kane. Am I right? Of course I’m right. You want to be rich! Everybody wants to be rich. I must tell you this--no man on earth would reject the offer I’m making you. One million dollars? That is money no man can refuse. It is almost like turning down eternity. It is almost like renouncing paradise. For all that what do I ask? One night.” Now he paused for a theatrical afterthought--“And I may just be impotent.”
That was his down-card. Offer your wife and he flips it over.
That was the gamble.
“Think of it as blackjack,” he said. “Think of it as any game of chance.”
One night. With a man who may be impotent. For a million dollars.
The unthinkable had become thinkable.
The next thing to say was this: And what if he is not impotent? It’s only one night.
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