The Only Girl in the Game Read Free Page A

come back, or we’ll both be looking for work. Okay?”
    “On that basis, sure, Hugh. And … good luck.”
    After Hugh had set up an appointment with Max Hanes for two that afternoon in the Little Room, he made his rounds, conferring with his lieutenants. He went with his maintenance chief, old Walter Welch, to the men’s shop in the arcade off the lobby. The concessionaire wanted to take out a wall at his own expense. Walter said removal wouldn’t affect structural strength, so Darren gave his conditional approval based on a final approval by the hotel architect. He went back to his office and called his food chief, George Ladori, in for a forty-minute fight over the price changes on the dummy of a new menu overdue at the printer’s, and he won those points he had expected to win, while giving Ladori the feeling, so necessary to that man, that he had achieved victory.
    Next came John Trabe, Hugh’s liquor chief, with a satisfactory accounting for the discrepancy in the last liquor inventory, and the worried information that one of his best bartenders had been reliably reported as having been seen at the Showboat, gambling heavily. Hugh told John Trabe to perform his own discreet investigation and take the action he thought best. Trabe had obviously hoped to duck that responsibility, and so he accepted the orders grudgingly.
    After signing the letters Jane had typed up, Hugh once again prowled the big hotel. He went up to the sun deck and looked at the new sun lounges which had recently been delivered. He checked on the progress of redecoration of two suites on the fourth floor. He cautioned Red Elver, the head lifeguard, that two of his boys were hustling the guests too strenuously for tips.
    By the time he had returned to his office and dictatedmore replies to current correspondence, he barely had time for lunch before meeting Max Hanes. He angled across the main casino floor to the Little Room. In all the big hotel casinos of Las Vegas, it is always a few minutes after midnight. The sun never touches these places. The lighting is clever and directional—so that the playing surfaces are bright enough, and all the rest is shadowy—a half light that fosters indiscretion. They are big rooms, all darks and greens, sub-sea places. He saw the guests clotted close around one of the crap tables, their faces sick in the reflected light, the smoke rising, the stick man chanting, a casino waitress taking drink orders.
    The Little Room is a shadowy place of leather, dark wood, white linen, small lamps that give a flattering orange glow. At the raised dais in the far corner there is always someone at the piano. It never stops.
    Max Hanes was alone in a big leather booth on the far side of the room. He was a man of medium height with an astonishing breadth of shoulder, a hairless, shining head, a face that sagged into saffron foldings yet had a simian alertness. People frequently thought him an Oriental. The rumor went that from time to time during his life people had tried to nickname him Chink. And he had hospitalized each of them with his hands. He was thought to be a Latvian, and it was known he had been a wrestler long before the days of gilded bobby pins. The people who worked for him gave him that special, undiluted respect that can only be achieved through pure terror.
    As Hugh sat opposite him, Max Hanes said, “I was listening to the slots. A man spends his life by the sea, he can tell you the size waves coming in without looking. I can tell the casino take for the afternoon to within a thousand bucks. The slots give you the picture of how the tables are going.”
    “That’s interesting, Max.”
    “Everything in this place is based on the slots, Darren. And that includes me and you, and all your fancy plans. Don’t ever forget that.”
    “It’s a lousy way to start this little conference, Max. When I first came here you told me you’re more important than I am in this picture. No casino—no hotel. Okay. So