by Mario Puzo
He duplicated this setup with a member of the Gaming Commission, and it was Charlie’s special qualities that made it all work. Her loving innocence, her great body. She was great fun. Judge Brianca took her on his vacation trips fishing. Some of the bankers took her on business trips to screw them when they weren’t busy. When they were busy, she went shopping, and when they were horny, she fucked them. She didn’t need to be courted with tender words, and she would take money only for shopping. She had the quality of making them believe that she was in love with them, that she found them wonderful to be with and to make love with, and this without making any demands. All they had to do was call her up or call Cully.
The only trouble with Charlie was that she was a slob at home. By this time her friend Sarah had moved from Salt Lake City to her apartment and Cully had “turned her out” too after a period of instruction. Sometimes when he went to their apartment, he was disgusted by the way they kept it, and one morning he was so enraged after looking around the kitchen he kicked them both out of bed, made them wash and clean up the black pots in the sink and hang up new curtains. They did it grouchily, but when he took them both out to dinner, they were so affectionate that all three of them wound up together in his suite that night.
Charlie Brown was the Vegas dream girl, and then, finally, when Cully needed her, she vanished with Osano. Cully never understood that. When she came back, she seemed to be the same, but Cully knew that if ever Osano called for her, she would leave Vegas.
For a long time Cully was Gronevelt’s loyal and devoted right-hand man. Then he started thinking of replacing Gronevelt.
The seed of betrayal had been sown in Cully’s mind when he had been made to buy ten points in the Xanadu Hotel and its casino.
Summoned to a meeting in Gronevelt’s suite, he had met Johnny Santadio. Santadio was a man of about forty, soberly but elegantly dressed in the English style. His bearing was erect, soldierly. Santadio had spent four years at West Point. His father, one of the great Mafia leaders in New York, used political connections to secure his son, Johnny, an appointment to the military academy.
Father and son were patriots. Until the father had been forced to go into hiding to avoid a congressional subpoena. The FBI had flushed him out by holding his son, Johnny, as a hostage and sending out word that the son would be harassed until the father gave himself up. The elder Santadio had done so and had appeared before a congressional committee, but then Johnny Santadio resigned from West Point.
Johnny Santadio had never been indicted or convicted of any crime. He had never even been arrested. But merely by being his father’s son, he had been denied a license to own points in the Xanadu Hotel by the Nevada Gaming Commission.
Cully was impressed by Johnny Santadio. He was quiet, well spoken and could even have passed for an Ivy League graduate from an old Yankee family. He did not even look Italian. There were just the three of them in the room, and Gronevelt opened the conversation by saying to Cully, “How would you like to own some points in the hotel?”
“Sure,” Cully said. “I’ll give you my marker.”
Johnny Santadio smiled. It was a gentle, almost sweet smile. “From what Gronevelt has told me about you,” Santadio said, “you have such a good character that I’ll put up the money for your points.”
Cully understood at once. He would own the points as a front for Santadio. “That’s OK with me,” Cully said.
Santadio said, “Are you clean enough to get a license from the Gaming Commission?”
“Sure,” Cully said. “Unless they’ve got a law against screwing broads.”
This time Santadio did not smile. He just waited until Cully had finished speaking, and then he said, “I will loan you money for the points. You’ll sign a note for the amount that I put up. The note will read that you pay six percent interest and you will pay. But you have my word that you won’t lose anything by paying that interest. Do you understand that?”
Cully said, “Sure.”
Gronevelt said, “This is an absolutely legal operation we’re doing here, Cully, I want to make that clear. But it’s important that nobody know that Mr. Santadio holds your note. The Gaming Commission just on its own can veto your being on our license for that.”
“I understand,” Cully said. “But what if something happens to me? What if I get hit by a car or I go down in a plane? Have you thought that out? How does Santadio get his points?”
Gronevelt smiled and patted his back and said, “Haven’t I been just like a father to you?”
“You really have,” Cully said sincerely. And he meant it. And the sincerity was in his voice and he could see that Santadio approved of it.
“Well then,” Gronevelt said, “you make out your will and you leave me the points in your will. If something should happen to you, Santadio knows I’ll get the points or his money back to him. Is that OK with you, Johnny?”
Johnny Santadio nodded. Then he said casually to Cully, “Do you know of any way that I could get on the license? Can the Gaming Commission pass me despite my father?”
Cully realized that Gronevelt must have told Santadio that he had one of the gaming commissioners in his pocket. “It would be tough,” Cully said, “and it would take time and it would cost money.”
“How much time?” Santadio said.
“A couple of years,” Cully said. “You do mean that you want to be directly on the license?”
“That’s right,” Santadio said.
“Will the Gaming Commission find anything on you when they investigate you?” Cully asked.
“Nothing, except that I’m my father’s son,” Santadio said. “And a lot of rumors and reports in the FBI files and New York police files. Just raw material. No proof of anything.”
Cully said, “That’s enough for the Gaming Commission to turn you down.”
“I know,” Santadio said. “That’s why I need your help.”
“I’ll give it a try,” Cully said.
“That’s fine,” Gronevelt said. “Cully, you can go to my lawyer to have your will made out so that I’ll get a copy, and Mr. Santadio and I will take care of all the other details.”
Santadio had shaken Cully’s hand and Cully left them.
It was a year after that Gronevelt suffered his stroke, and while Gronevelt was in the hospital, Santadio came to Vegas and met with Cully. Cully assured Santadio that Gronevelt would recover and that he was still working on the Gaming Commission.
And then Santadio said, “You know the ten percent you have is not my only interest in this casino. I have other friends of mine who own a piece of the Xanadu. We’re very concerned about whether Gronevelt can run the hotel after this stroke. Now, I want you to take this the right way. I have enormous respect for Gronevelt. If he can run the hotel, fine. But if he can’t, if the place starts going down, I’ll want you to let me know.”
At that moment Cully had to make his decision to be faithful to Gronevelt to the end or to find his own future. He operated purely on instinct. “Yes, I will,” he said to Santadio. “Not only for your interest and mine, but also for Mr. Gronevelt.”
Santadio smiled. “Gronevelt is a great man,” he said. “Anything we can do for him I would want to do. That’s understood. But it’s no good for any of us if the hotel goes down the drain.”
“Right,” Cully said. “I’ll let you know.”
When Gronevelt came out of the hospital, he seemed to be completely recovered and Cully reported directly to him. But after six months he could see that Gronevelt really did not have the strength to run the hotel and the casino, and he reported this to Johnny Santadio.
Santadio flew in and had a conference with Gronevelt and asked Gronevelt if he had considered selling his interest in the hotel and relinquishing control.
Gronevelt, much frailer now, sat quietly in his chair and looked at Cully and Santadio. “I see your point,” he said to Santadio. “But I think with a little time I can do the job. Let me say this to you. If in anoth
er six months things don’t get better, I’ll do as you suggest, and of course, you get first crack at my interest. Is that good enough for you, Johnny?”
“Sure,” Santadio said. “You know that I trust you more than any man I know and have more confidence in your ability. If you say you can do it in six months, I believe you, and when you say that you’ll quit in six months if you can’t do it, I believe you. I leave it all in your hands.”
And so the meeting ended. But that night, when Cully took Santadio to get his plane back to New York, Santadio said, “Keep a close eye on things. Let me know what’s happening. If he gets really bad, we can’t wait.”
It was then that Cully had to pause in his betrayal because in the next six months Gronevelt did improve, did get a greater grasp. But the reports that Cully gave to Santadio did not indicate this. The final recommendation to Santadio was that Gronevelt should be removed.
It was only a month later that Santadio’s nephew, a pit boss in one of the hotels on the Strip, was indicted for tax evasion and fraud by a federal grand jury and Johnny Santadio flew to Vegas to have a conference with Gronevelt. Ostensibly the meeting was to help the nephew, but Santadio started on another tack.
He said to Gronevelt, “You have about three months to go. Have you come to any decision about selling me your interest?”
Gronevelt looked at Cully, who saw his face was a little sad, a little tired. And then Gronevelt turned to Santadio and said, “What do you think?”
Santadio said, “I’m more concerned about your health and the hotel. I really think that maybe the business is too much for you now.”
Gronevelt sighed. “You may be right,” he said. “Let me think it over. I have to go see my doctor next week, and the report he gives me will probably make it tough for me no matter what I want But what about your nephew?” he said to Santadio. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
For the first time since Cully had known him Santadio looked angry. “So stupid. So stupid and unnecessary. I don’t give a damn if he goes to jail, but if he gets convicted, it’s another black mark on my name. Everybody will think I was behind him or had something to do with it. I came out here to help, but I really haven’t got any ideas.”
Gronevelt was sympathetic. “It’s not all that hopeless,” he said. “Cully here has a lock on the federal judge who will try the case. How about it, Cully? Do you still have Judge Branca in your pocket?”
Cully thought it over. What the advantages would be. This would be a tough one to spring with the judge. The judge would have to go out on a limb, but Cully, if he had to, would make him. It would be dangerous, but the rewards might be worth it. If he could do this for Santadio, then Santadio would surely let him run the hotel after Gronevelt sold out. It would cement his position. He would be ruler of the Xanadu.
Cully looked at Santadio very intently, he made his voice very serious, very sincere. “It would be tough,” he said. “It will cost money, but if you really must have it, Mr. Santadio, I promise you your nephew won’t go to jail.”
“You mean he’ll be acquitted?’ Santadio said.
“No, I can’t promise that,” Cully said. “Maybe it won’t go that far. But I promise you if he is convicted, he will only get a suspended sentence, and the odds are good the judge will handle the trial and charge the jury so that maybe your nephew can get off.”
“That would be great,” Santadio said. He shook his hand warmly. “You do this for me and you can ask me for anything you want.”
And then suddenly Gronevelt was in between them, placing his hand like a benediction on both of theirs locked together.
“That’s great,” Gronevelt said. “We have solved all the problems. Now let’s go out and have a good dinner and celebrate.”
It was a week later that Gronevelt called Cully into his office. “I got my doctor’s report,” Gronevelt said. “He advised me to retire. But before I go, I want to try something. I’ve told my bank to put a million dollars into my checking account and I’m going to take my shot at the other tables in town. I’d like you to hang out with me either till I go broke or double the million.”
Cully was incredulous. “You’re going to go against the percentage?” he said.
“I’d like to give it one more shot,” Gronevelt said. “I was a great gambler when I was a kid. If anybody can beat the percentage, I can. If I can’t beat the percentage, nobody can. We’ll have a great time, and I can afford the million bucks.”
Cully was astonished. Gronevelt’s belief in the percentage had been unshakable in all the years he had known him. Cully remembered one period in the history of the Xanadu Hotel when three months straight the Xanadu dice tables had lost money every night. The players were getting rich. Cully was sure there was a scam going on. He had fired all of the dice pit personnel. Gronevelt had had all the dice analyzed by scientific laboratories. Nothing helped. Cully and the casino manager were sure somebody had come up with a new scientific device to control the roll of the dice. There could be no other explanation. Only Gronevelt held fast.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “The percentage will work.”
And sure enough, after three months the dice had swung just as wildly the other way. The dice pit had winning tables every night for over three months. At the end of the year it had all evened out. Gronevelt had had a congratulatory drink with Cully and said, “You can lose faith in everything, religion and God, women and love, good and evil, war and peace. You name it. But the percentage will always stand fast.”
And during the next week, when Gronevelt gambled, Cully always kept that in mind. Gronevelt gambled better than any man he had ever seen. At the crap table he made all the bets that cut down the percentage of the house. He seemed to divine the ebb and flow of luck. When the dice ran cold, he switched sides. When the dice got hot, he pressed every bet to the limit. At baccarat he could smell out when the shoe would turn Banker and when the shoe would turn Player and ride the waves. At blackjack he dropped his bets to five dollars when the dealer hit a lucky streak and brought it up to the limit when the dealer was cold.
In the middle of the week Gronevelt was five hundred thousand dollars ahead. By the end of the week he was six hundred thousand dollars ahead. He kept going. Cully by his side. They would eat dinner together and gamble only until midnight. Gronevelt said you had to be in good shape to gamble. You couldn’t push, you had to get a good night’s sleep. You had to watch your diet and you should only get laid once every three or four nights.
By the middle of the second week Gronevelt, despite all his skill, was sliding downhill. The percentages were grinding him into dust. And at the end of two weeks he had lost his million dollars. When he bet his last stack of chips and lost, Gronevelt turned to Cully and smiled. He seemed to be delighted, which struck Cully as ominous. “It’s the only way to live,” Gronevelt said. “You have to live going with the percentage. Otherwise life is not worthwhile. Always remember that,” he told Cully. “Everything you do in life use percentage as your god.”
Chapter 48
On my last trip to California to do the final rewrite on Tri- Culture’s film I ran into Osano at the Beverly Hills Hotel lounge. I was so shocked by his physical appearance that at first I didn’t notice he had Charlie Brown with him. Osano must have put on about thirty pounds, and he had a huge gut that bulged out of an old tennis jacket. His face was bloated, it was speckled with tiny white fat dots. The green eyes that had once been so brilliant had faded into pale colorlessness that looked gray, and as he walked toward me, I could see that the curious lurch in his gait had become worse.
We had drinks in the Polo Lounge. As usual, Charlie drew the eyes of all the men in the room. This was not only because of her beauty and her innocent face. There were plenty of those in Beverly Hills, but there was something in her dress, something in the way she walked and glanced around the room that signaled an easy availability.
Osano said, “I look terrible, don’t I?”
“I
’ve seen you worse,” I said.
“Hell, I’ve seen myself worse,” Osano said. “You, you lucky bastard, can eat anything you want and you never put on an ounce.”
“But I’m not as good as Charlie,” I said. And I smiled at her and she smiled back.
Osano said, “We’re catching the afternoon plane. Eddie Lancer thought he could fix me up with a script job, but it fell through, so I might as well get the hell out of here. I think I’ll go to a fat farm, get in shape and finish my novel.”
“How’s the novel coming?” I asked.
“Great,” Osano said. “I got over two thousand pages, just five hundred more to go.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. By this time he had acquired a reputation for not delivering with magazine publishers, even on his nonfiction books. His novel was his last hope.
“You should just concentrate on the five hundred pages,” I said, “and get the goddamn book finished. That will solve all your troubles.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Osano said. “But I can’t rush it. Even my publisher wouldn’t want me to do that. This is the Nobel Prize for me, kid, when this is finished.”
I looked at Charlie Brown to see if she was impressed, and it struck me that she didn’t even know what the Nobel Prize Was.
“You’re lucky to have such a publisher,” I told Osano. “They’ve been waiting ten years for that book.”
Osano laughed. “Yeah, the classiest publishers in America. They’ve given me over a hundred grand and they haven’t seen a page. Real class, not like these fucking movie people.”
“I’ll be leaving for New York in a week,” I said. “I’ll call you for dinner there. What’s your new phone number?”
Osano said, “It’s the same one.”
I said, “I’ve called there and nobody ever answered.”
“Yeah,” Osano said. “I’ve been down in Mexico working on my book, eating those beans and tacos. That’s why I got so goddamn heavy. Charlie Brown here, she didn’t put on an ounce and she ate ten times as much as I did.” He patted Charlie Brown on the shoulder, squeezing her flesh. “Charlie Brown,” he said, “if you die before me, I’m going to have them dissect your body and find out what you got that keeps you skinny.”