So to cover his losses Cully used his mechanic’s skill to wipe out the straight players. He did this for three weeks and then one day he received a phone call summoning him to Gronevelt’s suite.

As usual Gronevelt made him sit down and gave him a drink. Then he said, “Cully, cut out the bullshit. No cheating the customers.”

Cully said, “I thought maybe that’s what you wanted, without telling me.”

Gronevelt smiled. “A good smart thought. But it’s not necessary. Your losses are covered with paperwork. You won’t be spotted. And if you are, I’ll call off the dogs.” He paused for a moment. “Just deal a straight game with the suckers. Then we won’t get into any trouble we can’t handle.”

“Is the second card business showing up on films?” Cully asked.

Gronevelt shook his head. “No, you’re pretty good. That’s not the problem. But the Nevada Gaming Commission boys might send in a player that can hear the tick and link it up with your sweeping the table. Now true, that could happen when you’re dealing to one of my customers, but then they would just assume you’re cheating the hotel. So I’m clean. Also I have a pretty good idea when the Gaming Commission sends in their people. That’s why I give you special times to dump out the money. But when you’re operating on your own, I can’t protect you. And then you’re cheating the customer for the hotel. A big difference. Those Gaming Commission guys don’t get too hot when we get beat, but the straight suckers are another story. It would cost a lot in political payoffs to set that straight.”

“OK,” Cully said. “But how did you pick it up?”

Gronevelt said impatiently, “Percentages. Percentages never lie. We built all these hotels on percentages. We stay rich on the percentage. So all of a sudden your dealer sheet shows you making money when you’re dumping out for me. That can’t happen unless you’re the luckiest dealer in the history of Vegas.”

Cully followed orders, but he wondered about how it all worked. Why Gronevelt went to all the trouble. It was only later, when he had become Xanadu Two that he found out the details. That Gronevelt had been skimming not only to beat the government but most of the point owners of the casino. It was only years later he learned that the winning customers had been sent out of New York by Gronevelt’s secret partner, a man named Santadio. That the customers thought that he, Cully, was a crooked dealer fixed by the partner in New York. That these customers thought they were victimizing Gronevelt. That Gronevelt and his beloved hotel were covered a dozen different ways.

Gronevelt had started his gambling career in Steubenville, Ohio, under the protection of the famous Cleveland mob with their control over local politics. He had worked the illegal joints and then finally made his way to Nevada. But he had a provincial patriotism. Every young man in Steubenville who wanted a dealing or croupier job in Vegas came to Gronevelt. If he couldn’t place him in his own casino, he would place him in some other casino. You could run across Steubenville, Ohio, alumni in the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, on the French Riviera and even in London. In Reno and Vegas you could count them by the hundreds. Many of them were casino managers and pit bosses. Gronevelt was a green felt Pied Piper.

Gronevelt could have picked his spy from these hundreds; in fact, the casino manager at the Xanadu was from Steubenville. Then why had Gronevelt picked on Cully, a comparative stranger from another part of the country? Cully often wondered about that. And of course, later on, when he came to know the intricacies of the many controls, he understood that the casino manager had to be in on it. And it hit Cully full force. He had been picked because he was expendable if anything went wrong. He would take the rap one way or another.

For Gronevelt, despite his bookishness, had come out of Cleveland into Vegas with a fearsome reputation. He was a man not to be trifled with, cheated or bamboozled. And he had demonstrated that to Cully in the last years. Once in a serious way and another time with high good humor, a special kind of Vegas gambling wit.

After a year Cully was given the office next to Gronevelt and named his special assistant. This involved driving Gronevelt around town and accompanying him to the floor of the casino at night when Gronevelt made his rounds to greet old friends and customers, especially those from out of town. Gronevelt also made Cully an aide to the casino manager so that he could learn the casino ropes. Cully got to know all the shift bosses well, the pit bosses, the floor walkers, the dealers and croupiers in all the pits.

Every morning Cully had breakfast at about ten o’clock in Gronevelt’s office suite. Before going up, he would get the win-loss figures for the casino’s previous twenty-four hours of play from the cashier cage boss. He would give Gronevelt the little slip of paper as they sat down to breakfast, and Gronevelt would study the figures as he scooped out his first chunk of Grenshaw melon. The slip was made out very simply.

Dice Pit $400,000 Drop Hold $60,000

Blackjack Pit $200,000 Drop Hold $40,000

Baccarat

Roulette $100,000 Drop Hold $40,000

Others (wheel of fortune, keno included in above)

– -

The slot machines were totaled up only once a week, and those figures were given to Gronevelt by the casino manager in a special report. The slots usually brought in a profit of about a hundred thousand dollars a week. This was the real gravy. The casino could never get unlucky on slots. It was sure money because the machines were set to pay off only a certain percentage of the money played into them. When the figures on the slots went off there could only be a scam going.

This was not true of the other games, like craps, blackjack and especially baccarat. In those games the house figured to hold sixteen percent of the drop. But even the house could get unlucky. Especially in baccarat, where the heavy gamblers sometimes plunged and caught a lucky streak.

Baccarat had wild fluctuations. There had been nights when the baccarat table lost enough money to wipe out the profits from all the other action in the casino that day. But then there would be weeks when the baccarat table won enormous amounts. Cully was sure that Gronevelt had a skim going on the baccarat table, but he couldn’t figure out how it worked. Then he noticed one night when the baccarat table cleaned out heavy players from South America that the next day’s figures on the slip were less than they should be.

It was every casino’s nightmare that the players would get a hot streak. In Las Vegas history there had been times when crap tables had gotten hot for weeks and the casino was lucky to break even for the day. Sometimes even the blackjack players got smart and beat the house for three or four days running. In roulette it was extremely rare to have even one losing day a month. And the wheel of fortune and keno were straight bust-out operations, the players sitting ducks for the casino.

But these were all the mechanical things to know about running a gambling casino. Things you could learn by the book, that anyone could learn, given the right training and sufficient time. Under Gronevelt, Cully learned a good deal more.

Gronevelt made everybody know he did not believe in luck. That his true and infallible god was the percentage. And he backed it up. Whenever the casino keno game was hit for the big prize of twenty-five thousand dollars, Gronevelt fired all the personnel in the keno operation. Two years after the Xanadu Hotel had begun operating, it got very unlucky. For three weeks the casino never had a winning day and lost nearly a million dollars. Gronevelt fired everybody except the casino manager from Steubenville.

And it seemed to work. After the firings the profits would begin, the losing streak would end. The casino had to average fifty grand a day in winnings for the hotel to break even. And to Cully’s knowledge the Xanadu had never had a losing year. Even with Gronevelt skimming off the top.