by Mario Puzo
Jordan smiled. “I understand.”
The croupier hesitated and said, “If you prefer, I can deal from the shoe.”
“No,” Jordan said. “That’s OK.” He was really excited. Not only for the money but because of the power flowing from him to cover the people and the casino.
The croupier said, holding up his palm, “One card to me, one card to yourself. Then one card to me and one card to yourself. Please.” He paused dramatically, held up his hand nearest Jordan and said, “A card for the Player.”
Jordan swiftly and effortlessly slid the blue-backed cards from the slotted shoe. His hands, again extraordinarily graceful, did not falter. They traveled the exact distance across the green felt to the waiting hands of the croupier, who quickly flipped them face up and then stood stunned by the invincible nine. Jordan couldn’t lose. Cully behind him let out a roar, “Natural nine.”
For the first time Jordan looked at his two cards before turning them over. He was actually playing Gronevelt’s hand and so hoping for losing cards. Now he smiled and turned up his Banker’s cards. “Natural nine,” he said. And so it was. The bet was a standoff. A draw. Jordan laughed. “I’m too lucky,” he said.
Jordan looked up at Gronevelt. “Again?” he asked.
Gronevelt shook his head. “No,” he said. And then to the croupier and the pit boss and the laddermen. “Close down the table.” Gronevelt walked out of the enclosure. He had enjoyed the bet, but he knew enough not to stretch life to a dangerous limit. One thrill at a time. Tomorrow he would have to square the unorthodox bet with the Gaming Commission. And he would have to have a long talk with Cully the next day. Maybe he had been wrong about Cully.
Like bodyguards, Cully, Merlyn and Diane surrounded Jordan and herded him out of the baccarat enclosure. Cully picked up the yellow jagged-edged check from the green felt table and stuffed it into Jordan’s left breast pocket and then zipped it up to make it safe. Jordan was laughing with delight. He looked at his watch. It was 4A.M. The night was almost over. “Let’s have coffee and breakfast,” he said. He led them all to the coffee shop with its yellow upholstered booths.
When they were seated, Cully said, “OK, he’s got close to four hundred grand. We have to get him out of here.”
“Jordy, you have to leave Vegas. You’re rich. You can do anything you want.” Jordan saw that Merlyn was watching him intently. Damn, that was getting irritating.
Diane touched Jordan on his arm and said, “Don’t play anymore. Please.” Her eyes were shining. And suddenly Jordan realized that they were acting as if he had escaped or been pardoned from some sort of exile. He felt their happiness for him, and to repay it he said, “Now let me stake you guys, you too, Diane. Twenty grand apiece.”
They were all a little stunned. Then Merlyn said, “I’ll take the money when you get on that plane leaving Vegas.”
Diane said, “That’s the deal, you have to get on the plane, you have to leave here. Right, Cully?”
Cully was not that enthusiastic. What was wrong with taking the twenty grand now, then putting him on the plane? The gambling was over. They couldn’t jinx him. But Cully had a guilty conscience and couldn’t speak his mind. And he knew this would probably be the last romantic gesture of his life. To show true friendship, like those two assholes Merlyn and Diane. Didn’t they know Jordan was crazy? That he could sneak away from them and lose the whole fortune?
Cully said, “Listen, we have to keep him away from the tables. We got to guard him and hogtie him until that plane leaves tomorrow for LA.”
Jordan shook his head. “I’m not going to Los Angeles. It has to be farther away. Anyplace in the world.” He smiled at them. “I’ve never been out of the United States.”
We need a map,” Diane said. “I’ll call the bell captain. He can get us a map of the world. Bell captains can do anything.” She picked up the phone on the ledge of the booth and made the call. The bell captain had once gotten her an abortion on ten minutes’ notice.
The table became covered with platters of food, eggs, bacon, pancakes and small breakfast steaks. Cully had ordered like a prince.
While they were eating, Merlyn said, “You sending the checks to your kids?” He didn’t look at Jordan, who studied him quietly, then shrugged. He really hadn’t thought about it. For some reason he was angry with Merlyn for asking the question, but just for a moment.
“Why should he give the money to his kids?” Cully said. “He took care of them pretty good. Next thing you’ll be saying he should send the checks to his wife.” He laughed as if it were beyond the realm of possibility, and again Jordan was a little angry. He had given a wrong picture of his wife. She was better than that.
Diane lit a cigarette. She was just drinking coffee, and she had a slight reflective smile on her face. For just one moment her hand brushed Jordan ’s sleeve in some act of complicity or understanding as if he too were a woman and she were allying herself with him. At that moment the bell captain came personally with an atlas. Jordan reached into a pocket and gave him a hundred-dollar bill. The bell captain almost ran away before Cully, outraged, could say anything. Diane started to unfold the atlas.
Merlyn the Kid was still intent on Jordan. “What does it feel like?” he asked.
“Great,” Jordan said. He smiled, amused at their passion.
Cully said, “You go near a crap table and we’re gonna climb all over you. No shit.” He slammed his hand down on the table. “No more.”
Diane had the map spread out over the table, covering the messy dishes of half-eaten food. They pored over it, except Jordan. Merlyn found a town in Africa. Jordan said calmly he didn’t want to go to Africa.
Merlyn was leaning back, not studying the map with the others. He was watching Jordan. Cully surprised them all when he said, “Here’s a town in Portugal I know, Mercedas.” They were surprised because for some reason they had never thought of him as living in any place but Vegas. Now suddenly he knew a town in Portugal.
“Yeah, Mercedas,” Cully said. “Nice and warm. Great beach. It has a small casino with a fifty-dollar top limit and the casino is only open six hours a night. You can gamble like a big shot and never even get hurt. How does that sound to you, Jordan? How about Mercedas?”
“OK,” Jordan said.
Diane began to plan the itinerary. “ Los Angeles over the North Pole to London. Then a flight to Lisbon. Then I guess you go by car to Mercedas.”
“No,” Cully said. “There’s planes to some big town near there. I forget which. And make sure he gets out of London fast. Their gambling clubs are murder.”
Jordan said, “I have to get some sleep.”
Cully looked at him. “Jesus, yeah, you look like shit. Go up to your room and conk out. We’ll make all the arrangements. We’ll wake you up before your plane leaves. And don’t try coming back down into the casino. Me and the Kid will be guarding the joint.”
Diane said, “ Jordan, you’ll have to give me some money for the tickets.” Jordan took a huge wad of hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and put them on the table. Diane carefully counted out thirty of them.
“It can’t cost more than three thousand first class all the way, could it?” she asked. Cully shook his head.
“Tops, two thousand,” Cully said. “Book his hotels too.” He picked the rest of the bills up from the table and stuffed them back into Jordan ’s pocket.
Jordan got up and said, trying for the last time, “Can I stake you now?”
Merlyn said quickly, “No, it’s bad luck, not until you get on the plane.” Jordan saw the look of pity and affection on Merlyn’s face. Then Merlyn said, “Get some sleep. When we call you, we’ll help you pack.”
“OK,” Jordan said and left the coffee shop and went down the corridor that led to his room. He knew Cully and Merlyn had followed him to where the corridor started, to make sure that he didn’t stop to gamble. He vaguely remembered Diane kissing him good-bye, and even Cully had gripped his shoulder with affectio
n. Who would have thought that a guy like Cully had ever been in Portugal.
When Jordan entered his room, he double bolted the door and put the interior chain on it. Now he was absolutely secure. He sat down on the edge of the bed. And suddenly he was terribly angry. He had a headache and his body was trembling uncontrollably.
How dare they feel affection for him? How dare they show him compassion? They had no reason-no reason. He had never complained. He had never sought their affection. He had never encouraged any love from them. He did not desire it. It disgusted him.
He slumped hack against the pillows, so tired he could not undress. The jacket, lumpy with chips and money, was too uncomfortable, and he wriggled out of it and let it drop to the carpeted floor. He closed his eyes and thought he would fall asleep instantly, but again that mysterious terror electrified his body, forcing him upward. He couldn’t control the violent trembling of his legs and arms.
The darkness of the room began to run with tiny ghosts of dawn. Jordan thought he might call his wife and tell her of the fortune he had won. But knew he could not. And could not tell his children. Or any of his old friends. In the last gray shreds of this night there was not a person in the world he wished to dazzle with his good luck. There was not one person in the world to share his joy in winning this great fortune.
He got up from the bed to pack. He was rich and must go to Mercedas. He began to weep; an overwhelming grief and rage drowned out everything. He saw the gun lying in the suitcase and then his mind was confused. All the gambling he had done in the last sixteen hours tumbled through his brain, the dice flashing winning numbers, the blackjack tables with their winning hands, the oblong baccarat table strewn with the pale white faces of turned dead cards. Shadowing those cards, a croupier, in black tie and dazzling white shirt, held up a palm, calling softly, “A card for the Player.”
In one smooth, swift motion Jordan scooped the gun up in his right hand. His mind icily clear. And then, as surely and swiftly as he had dealt his fabulous twenty-four winning hands in baccarat, he swung the muzzle up into the soft line of his neck and pulled the trigger. In that eternal second he felt a sweet release from terror. And his last conscious thought was that he would never go to Mercedas.
Chapter 3
Merlyn the Kid stepped out the casino glass doors. He loved to watch the rising sun while it was still a cold yellow disk, to feel the cool desert air blowing gently from mountains that rimmed the desert city. It was the only time of day he ever stepped out of the air-conditioned casino. They had often planned a picnic in those mountains. Diane had one day appeared with a lunch hamper. But Cully and Jordan refused to leave the casino.
He lit a cigarette, enjoyed it with long, slow puffs, though he rarely smoked. Already the sun was beginning to glow a little redder, a round grill plugged into an infinite neon galaxy. Merlyn turned to go back into the casino, and as he passed through the glass doors, he could spot Cully in his Vegas Winner sports coat hurrying through the dice pit, obviously looking for him. They met in front of the baccarat enclosure. Cully leaned against one of the ladder chairs. His lean dark face was contorted with hatred, fright and shock.
“That son of a bitch, Jordan,” Cully said, “he cheated us out of our twenty grand.” Then he laughed. “He blew his head off. He beat the house for over four hundred grand and he blew his fucking brains out.”
Merlyn didn’t even look surprised. He leaned back wearily against the baccarat enclosure, the cigarette slipped out his hand. “Oh, shit,” he said. “He never looked lucky.”
“We better wait here and catch Diane when she gets back from the airport,” Cully said. “We can split the money from the ticket refund.”
Merlyn looked at him, not with amazement, but with curiosity. Was Cully that unfeeling? He didn’t think so. He saw the sickly smile on Cully’s face, a face trying to be tough but filled with dismay that was close to fear. Merlyn sat down at the closed baccarat table. He felt a little dizzy from lack of sleep and from exhaustion. Like Cully, he felt rage, but for a different reason. He had studied Jordan carefully, watched his every movement. Had cunningly led him on to tell his story, his life history. He had sensed that Jordan did not wish to leave Las Vegas. That there was something wrong with him. Jordan had never told them about the gun. And Jordan had always reacted perfectly when he saw Merlyn watching him. Merlyn realized that Jordan had faked him out. Every fucking time. He had faked them out. What made Merlyn dizzy was that he had figured Jordan perfectly all the time they had known each other in Vegas. He’d put all the pieces together but simply through lack of imagination had failed to see the completed picture. Because, of course, now that Jordan was dead, Merlyn knew that there could have been no other ending. From the very beginning Jordan was to have died in Las Vegas.
Only Gronevelt was not surprised. High up in his penthouse suite, long night after night through the years, he never pondered the evil that lurked in the heart of man. He planned against it. Far below his cashier’s cage hid a million cash dollars the whole world plotted to steal, and he lay awake night after night, spinning spells to foil those plots. And so coming to know all the boring evil, some hours of the night he pondered other mysteries and was more afraid of the good in the soul of man. That it was the greater danger to his world and even to himself.
When security police reported the shot, Gronevelt immediately called the sheriff’s office and let them force entry into the room. But with his own men present. For an honest inventory. There were two casino checks totaling three hundred and forty thousand dollars. And there was close to one hundred thousand in bills and chips stuffed in that ridiculous linen duster jacket Jordan wore. Its zippered pockets held chips not dumped on the bed.
Gronevelt looked out the windows of his penthouse, at the reddening desert sun climbing over the sandy mountains. He sighed. Jordan could never lose his winnings back, the casino had forever lost that particular bankroll. Well, that was the only way a degenerate gambler could ever keep his lucky win. The only way.
But now Gronevelt had to get to work. The papers had to hush the suicide. How bad it would look, a four-hundred-grand winner blowing his brains out. And he didn’t want rumors spreading that there had been a murder so that the casino could recover its losses. Steps had to be taken. He placed the necessary calls to his Eastern offices. A former United States senator, a man of irreproachable integrity, was detailed to bring the sad news to the freshly made widow. And to tell her that her husband had left a fortune in winnings she could collect for the estate when she collected the body. Everyone would be discreet, nobody cheated, justice done. Finally it would only be a tale that gamblers told each other on bust-out nights, in the coffee shops on neon Vegas Strip. But to Gronevelt it was really not that interesting. He had stopped trying to figure out gamblers a long time ago.
The funeral was simple, the burial in a Protestant cemetery surrounded by the golden desert. Jordan ’s widow flew in and took care of everything. She was also briefed by Gronevelt and his staff as to what Jordan had won. Every cent was meticulously paid. The checks were turned over to her, and all the cash found on the corpse. The suicide was hushed up. With the cooperation of the authorities and the newspapers. It would look so bad for the image of Las Vegas, a four-hundred-grand winner being found dead. Jordan ’s widow signed a receipt for the checks and money. Gronevelt asked her discretion but had no worries on that score. If this good-looking broad was burying her husband in Vegas, not bringing him home, not letting Jordan ’s kids come to the funeral, then she had a few jokers to hide.
Gronevelt, the ex-senator and the lawyers escorted the widow out of the hotel to her waiting limousine (Xanadu’s courtesy, as everything was its courtesy). The Kid, who had been waiting for her, stepped in front of them. He said to the good-looking woman, “My name is Merlyn, your husband and I were friends. I’m sorry.”
The widow saw that he was watching her intently, studying her. She knew immediately he had no ulterior motive, that he was sincer
e. But he looked just a little too interested. She had seen him in the funeral chapel with a young girl whose face had been swollen with weeping. She wondered why he had not approached her then. Probably because the girl had been Jordan ’s.
She said quietly, “ I’m glad he had a friend here.” She was amused by the young man staring at her. She knew she had a special quality that attracted men, not so much her beauty as the intelligence superimposed on that beauty which enough men had told her was a very rare combination. For she had been unfaithful to her husband many times before she had found the one man she had decided she would live with. She wondered if this young man, Merlyn, knew about her and Jordan and what had happened that final night. But she was not concerned, she felt no guilt. His death, she knew, as no one else could know, had been an act of self-will and self choice. An act of malice by a gentle man.
She felt just a little flattered by the intensity, the obvious fascination with which the young man stared at her. She could not know that he saw not only the fair skin, the perfect bones beneath, the red, delicately sensual mouth, he saw too and would always see, her face as the mask of the angel of death.
Chapter 4
When I told Jordan ’s widow that my name was Merlyn, she gave me a cool, friendly stare, without guilt or grief. I recognized a woman who had complete control of her life, not from bitchiness or self-indulgence, but out of intelligence. I understood why Jordan had never said a harsh word against her. She was a very special woman, the kind a lot of men love. But I didn’t want to know her. I was too much on Jordan ’s side. Though I had always sensed his coldness, his rejection of all of us beneath his courtesy and seeming friendliness.
The first time I met Jordan I knew there was something out of sync with him. It was my second day in Vegas and I had hit it lucky playing percentage blackjack, so I jumped in for a crack at the baccarat table. Baccarat is strictly a luck game with a twenty-dollar minimum. You were completely in the hands of fate, and I always hated that feeling. I always felt I could control my destiny if I tried hard enough.