“I have to do a little gambling,” I said.

Cully smiled crookedly. “Sure you do, sure you do. As soon as you lose five hundred bucks, I’m going to break your fucking arm.”

At the crap table I pulled out five one-hundred-dollar bills and changed them into chips. I made five-dollar bets and bet all the numbers. I won and lost. I drifted into my old gambling patterns, moving from craps to blackjack and roulette. Soft, easy, dreamy gambling, betting small, winning and losing, playing loose percentages. It was one in the morning when I reached into my pocket and took out two thousand dollars and bought chips. Cully didn’t say anything.

I put the chips into my jacket pocket and walked over to cashier’s cage and turned them in for another cash receipt. Cully was leaning against an empty crap table, watching me. He nodded his head approvingly.

“So you’ve got it licked,” he said.

“Merlyn the Magician,” I said. “Not one of your lousy degenerate gamblers.” And it was true. I had felt none of the old excitement. There was no urge to take a flyer. I had enough money to buy my family a house and a bankroll for emergencies. I had good sources of income. I was happy again. I loved my wife and was working on a novel. Gambling was fun, that was all. I had lost only two hundred bucks the whole evening.

Cully took me into the coffee shop for a nightcap of milk and hamburgers. “I have to work during the day,” he said. “Can I trust you not to gamble?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be busy turning the cash into chips all over town. I’ll go down to five-hundred-dollar buys so I won’t be so noticeable.”

“That’s a good idea,” Cully said. “This town has more FBI agents than dealers.”

He paused for a moment. “You sure you don’t want a sleeping partner? I have some beauties.” He picked up one of the house phones on the ledge of our booth.

“I’m too tired,” I said. And it was true. It was after one in the morning here in Vegas, but New York time was 4 A.M. and I was still on New York time.

“If you need anything, just come up to my office,” he said. “Even if you just want to kill sometime and bullshit.”

“OK, I will,” I said.

The next day I woke up about noon and called Vallie. There was no answer. It was 3 P.M. New York time and it was Saturday. Value had probably taken the kids to her father and mother’s house out on Long Island. So I called there and got her father. He asked a few suspicious questions about what I was doing in Vegas. I explained I was researching an article. He didn’t sound too convinced, and finally Vallie got on the phone. I told her I would catch the Monday plane home and would take a cab from the airport.

We had the usual husband and wife bullshit talk with such calls. I hated the phone. I told her I wouldn’t call again since it was a waste of time and money, and she agreed. I knew she would be at her parents the next day too, and I didn’t want to call her there. And I realized too that her going there made me angry. An infantile jealousy. Vallie and the kids were my family. They belonged to me; they were the only family I had except Artie. And I didn’t want to share them with grandparents. I knew it was silly, but still, I wasn’t going to call again. What the hell, it was only two days and she could always call me.

I spent the day going through all the casinos in town on the Strip and the sawdust joints in the center of town. There I traded my cash for chips in two– and three-hundred-dollar amounts. Again I’d do a little dollar-chip gambling before moving on to another casino.

I loved the dry, burning heat of Vegas, so I walked from casino to casino. I had a late-afternoon lunch in the Sands next to a table of pretty hookers having their before-going-to-work meal. They were young and pretty and high-spirited. A couple of them were in riding togs. They were laughing and telling stories like teenagers. They didn’t pay any attention tome, and I ate my lunch as if I weren’t paying any attention to them. But I tried to listen to their conversation. Once I thought I heard Cully’s name mentioned.

I took a taxi back to the Xanadu. Vegas cabdrivers are friendly and helpful. This one asked me if I wanted some action, and I told him no. When I left the cab, he wished me a pleasant good day and told me the name of a restaurant where they had good Chinese food.

In the Xanadu casino I changed the other casino chips into a cash receipt, which I stuck into my wallet. I now had nine receipts and only a little over ten thousand in cash to convert. I emptied the cash out of my Vegas Winner sports jacket and put it into a regular suit jacket. It was all hundreds and fitted into two regular long white envelopes. Then I slung the Vegas Winner sports jacket over my arm and went up to Cully’s of-

There was a whole wing of the hotel tacked on just for administration. I followed the corridor and took an offshoot corridor labeled “Executive Offices.” I came to one of the shingles that read “Executive Assistant to the President.” In the outer office was a very pretty young secretary. I gave her my name, and she buzzed the inner office and announced me. Cully came bouncing out with a big handshake and a hug. This new personality of his still threw me off. It was too demonstrative, too outgoing, not what we had been before.

He had a really stylish suite with couch and soft armchairs and low lighting and pictures on the wall, original oil paintings. I couldn’t tell if they were any good. He also had three TV screens operating. One showed a corridor of the hotel. Another showed one of the crap tables in the casino in action. The third screen showed the baccarat table. As I watched the first screen, I could see a guy opening his hotel room door in the corridor and leading a young girl in with his hand on her ass.

“Better programs than I get in New York,” I said.

Cully nodded. “I have to keep an eye on everything in this hotel,” he said. He pushed buttons on a console on his desk, and the three pictures on the TV’s changed. Now we saw a view of the hotel parking lot, a blackjack table in action and the cashier in the coffee shop ringing up money.

I threw the Vegas Winner sports jacket on Cully’s desk. “You can have it now,” I said.

Cully stared at the jacket for a long moment. Then he said absently, “You converted all your cash?”

“Most of it,” I said. “I won’t need the jacket anymore.” I laughed. “My wife hated it as much as you do.”

Cully picked up the jacket. “I don’t hate it,” he said.

“Gronevelt doesn’t like to see it around. What do you think happened to Jordan ’s?”

I shrugged. “His wife probably gave all his clothes to the Salvation Army.”

Cully was weighing the jacket in his hand. “Light,” he said. “But lucky. Jordan won over four hundred grand wearing it. And then he kills himself. Fucking dumb bastard.”

“Foolish,” I said.

Cully put the jacket gently down on his desk. Then he sat down and rocked back on his chair. “You know, I thought you were crazy for turning down his twenty grand. And I was really pissed off when you talked me out of taking mine. But it was maybe the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. I would have gambled it away, and then I would have felt like shit. But you know, after Jordan killed himself and I didn’t take that money, I got some pride. I don’t know how to explain it. But I felt I didn’t betray him. And you didn’t. And Diane didn’t. We were all strangers, and only the three of us cared something about Jordan. Not enough, I guess. Or it didn’t mean that much to him. But finally it meant something to me. Didn’t you feel that way?”

“No,” I said. “I just didn’t want his fucking money. I knew he was going to knock himself off.”

That startled Cully. “Bullshit you did. Merlyn the Magician. Fuck you.”

“Not consciously,” I said. “But way down underneath. I wasn’t surprised when you told me. Remember?”