The Orion Showroom was packed. An hour into his set, Tony Francisco was perched comfortably on a solitary stool, center stage, illuminated by a single blue spotlight. He had shed his sequined dinner jacket; his shirt collar was open and his tie hung loosely.
As usual, Francisco held the crowd in the palm of his hand. He had started slowly with some of the familiar favorites from his early years, the ones they always asked for. Between songs, he bantered with the audience, establishing a rapport, creating the easy mood of sparkling sophistication that was his trademark.
He built gradually to the climax of his performance. Timing was everything, and Francisco was a master of the art. His delivery was relaxed, his phrasing smooth and melodious. Behind the performer, partially hidden by a diaphanous curtain, a thirty-piece string orchestra played sweetly and harmoniously, complementing his song stylings as only the very best musicians in the business could.
Every eye was riveted on the entertainment legend as he launched into a medley of his biggest hits. Enthusiastic applause greeted each new title as people recognized the ballad from their favorite album, that unforgettable movie theme, the music they danced to at the senior prom. Almost every piece was “our song” to some moist-eyed couple holding hands under the table.
Francisco’s entourage—his current girlfriend, an ex-Vegas showgirl named Gloria Latorella; his manager, Solly Greenspan; his personal assistant, and two bodyguards—were seated around a deluxe banquette in the front tier of the showroom.
“He may be a mean-tempered son of a bitch, but he hasn’t lost the magic. Even after all these years,” Greenspan whispered to the personal assistant,
Mario Mastrodicasa, who in many respects shared his colleague’s private opinion of their mutual meal ticket.
One of the bodyguards, a swarthy ex-boxer, stifled a yawn. “Don’t you guys ever get tired of watching the show?” he asked.
“It’s kind of a drag when Tony has an off night,” Solly admitted. “But when he’s hot, which is most of the time … I got to say that I could listen to him forever.” He glanced at his gold Rolex, a gift from Francisco after a particularly successful tour. “Anyway, the show’s over in fifteen minutes.”
Not coincidentally, fifteen minutes was all the time Buster Malloy needed to complete his current project.
Malloy knocked on the door of Tony Francisco’s penthouse suite, expecting—and receiving—no response from within. After all, it was showtime and Francisco was currently downstairs entertaining the high rollers. Had anyone answered the door, Buster had rehearsed a totally plausible reason for his visit. “Galaxy Security,” he would have said. “We’ve had a report that there’s an intruder on this floor. They asked me to check the suite while Mr. Francisco was out.” But the ploy wasn’t necessary.
With a furtive glance down the corridor, Malloy opened the massive oak door, using his master key card and the universal access code which he had memorized.
He slipped inside, closing the door quietly behind him.
The suite was magnificent. Arranged on two floors, its focal point was a massive copper-hooded fireplace flickering with the glow of slow-burning Vermont maple logs, set in the middle of a sunken living room. Expensive, comfortable-looking armchairs and sofas were artfully scattered around the big room. A two-story picture window overlooking the bright lights of the Strip dominated an entire wall.
Upon a raised platform in front of the window a stately concert grand piano occupied center stage; on its polished ebony top were arranged the traveling trophies and memorabilia of a career that had spanned over half a century. A Masterpiece Theatre—style camera zoom across the piano top would have revealed a dazzling array of gold records and awards and statuettes, along with a panoply of expensively framed photographs: Tony Francisco shaking hands with presidents, Tony Francisco schmoozing with celebrities, youthful Tony Franciscos with pomaded hair, middle-aged
Tony Franciscos with miscellaneous offspring from various marriages, older Tony Franciscos in yachts and private jets and luxury sports cars. Malloy cast a derisive glance at the ostentatious display and resisted a strong impulse to sweep it all to the floor.
To the right of the suite, he noticed a full-size kitchen hung with gleaming copper pots. Next to it was a formal dining area featuring a richly burnished rosewood table with floral centerpiece and crystal chandelier. To the left stood a matching rosewood-and-brass bar with velvet-upholstered stools, softly lit by concealed overhead lighting. Above him, a brass-railed balcony formed a semicircular mezzanine that could be reached from the living room by a wide, curving staircase. Five bedrooms led off the mezzanine, four with a single door and one with a set of double doors. This was obviously Francisco’s private room, and Buster Malloy headed directly for it.
Lifestyles of the filthy rich, he muttered to himself, glancing disdainfully around at the huge circular bed, brocade draperies, and lavish mirrors. He waded through ankle-deep broadloom, passed through the dressing area, and strode purposefully into the huge bathroom en suite of Italian marble, white shag carpet, and glistening brass.
Malloy opened the shower door, removed various items from his pockets, and set to work.
The crowd cheered and applauded as Tony Francisco’s performance reached its climax and ended with a haunting rendition of his theme song, “My Town.”
Mario Mastrodicasa had dutifully rushed backstage and was waiting in the wings with a glass of ice water and a towel. He was a small, slender, dark-complexioned man in his mid-forties who wore his hair in a tightly pulled back ponytail. “What a set, Tony. You knocked ’em dead.”
“Yeah, right. That’s what I do.” The megastar slumped into a nearby chair. The stage presence had vanished; suddenly he was just an aging mortal, tired and irritable.
The applause continued. Mario peeked through a slit in the curtain. “They’re standing up and begging for an encore.”
Francisco wiped his face with the towel and took a sip of water. “Fuck ’em,” he snapped. “They’ve had enough. All I want now is a stiff drink and a hot shower.”
Steve Forrester walked reluctantly across the casino floor in the direction of the deserted executive offices. There was work piling up on his desk; decisions had to be made, business had to go on, extortion or no extortion.
His attention was attracted by a huge crowd surrounding one of the five-hundred-dollar-minimum craps tables. He walked over and caught the eye of the shift supervisor, Ed Kelly.
“What’s going on, Ed?” he asked.
“You’re not going to believe this, Steve, but we’ve caught ourselves a whale.” Whale was casino insiders’ irreverent jargon for a massive bettor. “This guy is going to bet a million five on the don’t side. One bet, win or lose, he said. No odds.”
Forrester whistled softly. “Is he one of our regulars?”
“No, he’s a walk-in. We’ve never seen him before. He’s a cash player, but he checks out. As far as we can tell, there’s no theft or money laundering involved. The guy won his poke in a lottery, for Chrissake.”
“Where is he?”
“That’s him over there, watching the game. With his lady. Rick’s doing a check change now in the cage.”
“Why the crowd?”
“I don’t know. Somehow the word got out.” Kelly spotted Rick Bloom, the floor supervisor, weaving his way back to the table through the throng of onlookers. He was flanked by two security guards, one of whom was bearing racks of chips in a Plexiglas case. “Excuse me, Steve. I’ve got to look after our whale.”
“Good luck. I’ll stick around and do a little whale watching myself, if you don’t mind.”
Like a Holy Week procession in Little Italy, Tony Francisco’s retinue slowly wound its way across the crowded casino floor toward the bank of elevators in the Saturn rocket, where they were holding a private car for the great man’s ascension to the penthouse. As always when he was obliged to run this gauntlet, the entertainer and his entourage were spearheaded by a phalanx of oversize Galaxy security guards.
An unusually dense throng around one of the craps tables caught Francisco’s attention. “What’s all the excitement?” he asked one of the guards.
“Some high roller’s gonna bet a million and a half on the don’ts, Mr. Francisco,” the guard replied. “One roll. That’s him over there with his lady.”
“A million and a half? No shit? This I gotta see,” Tony said. “Let’s go, troops.” With the guards running interference and his sycophants in tow, the singer threaded his way through the crowd toward the center of the action.
Other Galaxy security guards had cleared the table of players and were keeping the spectators at a respectable distance.
Ed Kelly, the shift supervisor, spotted Francisco and his lady friend immediately and greeted them. “Mr. F! Miss Latorella! How are you?” he asked, smiling nervously—with good reason. Francisco’s tantrums at the gaming tables were legendary. Even more disturbing were the stories about his shabby treatment of dealers and supervisory personnel. Of course, the entire staff had by now heard about Francisco’s latest contretemps in Lucy Baker’s blackjack pit. Crossing his fingers and uttering a silent prayer to Saint Jude, Kelly said, “If you’d care to watch, sir—”
“Let me get this straight,” Tony interrupted brusquely. “This guy is betting a million and a half? On one roll?”
“I believe so, Mr. F. They’re just arriving now with his checks, so it won’t be long—”
“I wanna get in on this.”
Saint Jude give me strength, the supervisor thought, here we go. “Well, it is a private game, Mr. F., and I believe the gentleman and his wife would prefer to play alone—”
“I don’t give a shit what the gentleman and his wife would prefer!” Francisco said loudly. “My money’s as good as theirs! Now you just get me a marker—”
“Problems here, Tony?” a familiar voice asked. Alerted by the arrival of the star, Steve Forrester had emerged from the crowd and joined the group. For Steve the feeling of déjà vu was almost tactile.
“You again!” Francisco snapped. “You’re the smart-ass who sent me off to play blackjack in that fucking Jupiter Room. You know I lost my goddamn shirt in there?”
“I’m real sorry to hear that, Tony,” Forrester lied.
“Yeah, right. Well, I wanna get into this game, and your pit boss here is giving me a hard time.”
“Sorry, Mr. F. How about … right after this roll?” Kelly said pleadingly.
“Not right after this roll,” Francisco hissed. “This roll.”
“Oh, Tony,” said Gloria, the star’s ex-showgirl companion. “Can’t you even wait for one lousy—”
“Shut up. I wanna play now!”
“Why don’t we just ask the other gentleman,” Steve suggested, “if he’d mind?”
Kelly grasped at the straw eagerly. “Good idea, Steve. I’ll go check.” He walked over to Jack and Sheila Wilson, alias Fred and Dorothy Langdon, at the other end of the table. “Excuse me, Mr. L., but do you mind if Mr. Francisco joins the game?”
Wilson shrugged noncomittally and looked at his wife, who was staring transfixed at the performer and his entourage. “Golly,” she asked the floor supervisor breathlessly, “is that really him? Tony Francisco?”
“None other,” replied Kelly, who was beginning to feel optimistic again about his chances of surviving this shift. “He just heard about your bet and he wants to get in on the action.”
Sheila Wilson glanced at her husband, who shrugged and nodded. “Oh my God,” she blurted, “w-we’d be honored if Mr. Francisco would join us. At least I would.” She looked hopefully at her husband. “Dear …?”
“I guess it would be something to remember,” said Jack Wilson unenthusiastically.
Saint Jude had come through! Kelly whispered a silent prayer of gratitude. “Thank you, folks,” he said with undisguised relief. The shift supervisor returned to Tony Francisco and Steve Forrester to report the good news.
“All right,” said the entertainer with a self-satisfied smirk; in the end he always got what he wanted. “Gimme a marker for the same amount as him.” Francisco waved at the Wilson/Langdons and flashed them his famous grin. Thrilled, Sheila Wilson waved back.
“One million, five hundred thousand, Mr. F.?” asked Kelly.
“What’s the matter? You don’t hear so well? Or are you saying I’m not good for it?”
“No, sir! No problem!” Ed Kelly nodded to the boxman. “Give Mr. Francisco a million and a half in browns.” He turned to Francisco and asked, “How are you playing them, sir?”
“What d’you mean, how am I playing them?”
“Are you betting the money all at one time?”
“Fucking right.”
“With the dice or against them?”
“That depends. What are those people doing?”
“I believe Mr. Langdon is betting the don’t pass line. Straight up, no odds.”
“Then I’ll take the pass line.”
Ed Kelly’s heart skipped a beat, and he stifled the urge to rub his hands together in glee. Suddenly the casino couldn’t lose! This was his day after all! Francisco had faded Langdon, and the two bets now canceled each other out! The shift supervisor raised his eyes heavenward and vowed to accompany his wife to Mass next Sunday like he’d been promising since Easter.
At the other end of the table, Jack Wilson laid his trays of brown chips on the don’t pass line. Chocolate chips, they called them. Five thousand dollars each. Three trays, five rows per tray, twenty chips per row. One point five million dollars.
The boxman addressed Wilson. “Would you care to shoot, sir?”
Players who bet against the dice often preferred to pass, but Jack had no such compunctions. “Sure,” he replied, then added impulsively, “but I’d like my wife to throw the dice.”
The boxman nodded to the stickman, who slid several dice over to the Wilsons. Dozens of pairs of eyes stared at the transparent red cubes with the bright white pips set flush into their six facets, perfect cubes, machined to a tolerance of one ten-thousandth of an inch—wonderful, magical cubes that were about to seal the fate of two breathlessly hopeful people from Redmond, Washington, and provide a moment’s diversion for a multimillionaire megastar from Jersey City, New Jersey.
“Good luck, everybody,” said the stickman, ironically importuning the impossible; somebody had to lose, and this time it wasn’t going to be the house. “Coming out!” he called.
All eyes were on Sheila, and she panicked momentarily. “But Ja—I mean Fred,” she whispered, wide-eyed, “I’ve never done this before.”
“It’s easy, babe,” he whispered back. “All you’ve got to do is pick out two dice. Then you throw them down the table hard enough to bounce off the other end.”
“Okay, I guess—if you really want me to, I’ll do it. What number should I try for?”
“A two or a three, we win and Tony loses. Seven or eleven, he wins and we lose. Anything else … I’ll explain later.”
The crowd fell silent as Sheila selected two dice.
Down the table, Tony Francisco stood stock-still in anticipation. Gloria Latorella nervously chewed a glittery fingernail. Even Steve Forrester was mesmerized. The tension was electric.
Sheila Wilson caressed the dice for a moment and stole a glance at her husband. He smiled back as if to say, This is it, I know we can do it.
She drew her arm back and released the two dice. In suspended time, they floated gracefully through the air. Hitting the end of the table perfectly, they bounced off the foam-rubber grid and slowly, so slowly it seemed, rolled to a stop.
The stickman peered closely at the glistening red cubes. He hesitated, glancing over at the boxman. “Winner seven,” he called. “Pay the line.”
Tony Francisco clenched a fist and raised it in the air like a victorious boxer. Scattered applause was followed by an excited undertone of conversation among the spectators.
Jack Wilson paled. In a heartbeat, the million and a half was gone! Miserably, he fingered the money belt under his shirt, the reserve fund, looking for reassurance. All of a sudden, a hundred and fifty thousand didn’t seem like so much money anymore. Sheila Wilson burst into tears.
“Oh Jack,” she sobbed, the alias forgotten. “I’m sorry. I did it wrong. It’s gone, isn’t it? And it’s all my—”
“Wait a minute,” cried the boxman, “Don’t touch those dice!”
Buster Malloy slipped quietly out of Tony Francisco’s suite, carefully locking the door behind him.
He was confident that there were no visible clues to his handiwork.