Double Blind (37 page)

“It was, once,” Sarah said. “But Billy Jr. wanted a bathroom in his office, and since we don’t do the skim anymore, the actual room wasn’t necessary. Once upon a time, though, this is where Herod’s kept the cooked books and the cash that hadn’t yet been sent out for laundering.” She shifted several of the towels to a lower shelf, then reached far into the back. “Now it’s mostly real laundry. We still keep the safe in here, though, and some things from the old days, because Mr. Crabtree likes to remember.”

“Where is Crabtree?” Ethan asked. Sarah only gave him an enigmatic smile. She leaned in a little farther, then withdrew a large envelope and handed it to Ethan.

“He wanted you to have this,” she said. “I think you’ll find everything you need in there. The keys are to your office, which is on the seventh floor. I’ll warn you that the air conditioning in there is a bit dodgy, but I have a maintenance order in for it now. If you use the box fan in the corner and keep your door open, you should be fine.”

“My office?” Ethan repeated. Then he peeked into the envelope and immediately dropped it on the floor. Several thousand dollars and an array of credit cards fell out, as well as a folder welcoming him to Bank of Nevada Checking.

Sarah bent and gathered the loose items back together. When she handed them back to Ethan, she gave him a stern look. “Really, Mr. Ellison, you should be more careful.”

“What—” Ethan shook his head and stared blankly at the envelope. “What is all this? Why are you giving me all this?”

She looked at him as if she couldn’t decide if he were very thick or making a bad joke at her expense. “You are the new casino manager, Mr. Ellison.” She nodded at the envelope. “Crabtree said you’d had a little bit of trouble, and so he’s set up these accounts for you. He said you didn’t need to be bothered with that sort of thing, because you have a lot of work to do. And you do, Mr. Ellison. I’ve laid it all out for you on your desk.”

Casino manager?
Ethan blinked for several seconds, then gave up. No, nothing was going to make sense. That was clear. And it was, he reasoned, something to do. He couldn’t decide if Crabtree’s involvement in this was comforting or not.

“Mr. Herod also opened an account for me,” Ethan said. “And I made a few purchases on the promise of it last night. Which reminds me that I need to write some checks. Would it be all right to use this one, since they’re ready?”

“Oh, you mean the limo? I took care of that already, Mr. Ellison. And Crabtree instructed me to combine Billy’s account with the one he opened for you. You’ll find everything to be in order, I’m sure, and if not, please don’t hesitate to call me. I’m extension number one on the casino line.” She smiled again. “Would you like me to show you upstairs now?”

“I can find it, thank you, if you give me the number.”

“Oh, it’s the only office up there,” she said cheerfully. “This elevator only goes to the corporate areas. Get out of the elevator and head three doors down, just past the closet and the bathroom. Can’t miss it. And welcome aboard, Mr. Ellison.”

“Thank you, Ms. Reynolds,” Ethan said, trying to sound professional and not bewildered.

He wandered back down the hall to find the elevator, clutching his envelope. The elevator was slow in coming, so he took the stairs instead, feeling better when he was moving. Using the keys he’d been given, he opened the door to the seventh floor and followed Sarah’s directions down the hall to the third door.

It was an office the approximate size of a postage stamp, and every available surface was full of ledgers.

Just the surfaces, though—there were three tall empty bookcases along the walls, leaving just enough space for the door and the small, depressing window which looked out into the back alley and the parking lot. There was, as Sarah had promised, a box fan against the wall. It was, also as promised, fantastically stuffy inside the small room.

Ethan sat down in the desk and stared a moment at the tower of ledgers. Then, almost as an afterthought, he opened the envelope again, nudged aside the cash—there had to be at least three thousand there, as every bill was a hundred dollar one—and opened the folder for the checking account. He scanned through until he found a listed balance. When he did, he stared at it for a few minutes, then closed the folder and put it in the middle desk drawer.

Then he bent over and put his head between his knees for some time.

When he was fairly certain he could sit up without vomiting, he put the envelope in the drawer as well before opening the first ledger with a shaking hand. He began to read, scanning at first, and then he slowed down. Then he opened another ledger, and another, and another. When a knock sounded on the door, it startled him, and he slammed the ledger he was working on shut and looked up at the nervous-looking young man standing in the doorway. He was holding a paper sack.

“Ms. Reynolds said you might want this, sir?” He held out the sack a little farther, but didn’t step into the room. He seemed afraid to. “It’s lunch, Mr. Ellison.”

“Oh.” Ethan blinked, then looked at his naked wrist. He pulled out Randy’s phone instead and blinked again when he saw the time. “Oh. Yes. Thank you.”

The boy scuttled in, left the bag on top of a stack of ledgers, then bolted back into the hallway.
Odd,
Ethan thought. He opened up the bag and ate the sandwich inside absently, not even aware of what he was eating. He’d finished most of it and a good bit of the cup of lemonade which had accompanied it when there was another knock on the door. This knock was loud and confident, and it was immediately followed by Billy Herod’s lusty sigh as he let himself into Ethan’s office.

“God, it’s stuffy in here!” Billy leaned over and turned on the fan, aiming it at himself as he sat down in the chair opposite Ethan. He sprawled out as best he could in the uncomfortable chair and looked expectantly at Ethan. “Well?”

Well, what?
Ethan took another sip of lemonade, swept his eyes over the ledgers again, then decided, fuck it. “Your finances are a mess,” he said.

Billy shrugged. “Yeah.”

“The casino isn’t making any money,” Ethan went on. “I mean, Mr. Herod, it is
bleeding
money. If things go on the way they are, you’ll be bankrupt by the end of the year. And it’s October right now, if you recall.”

“That’s why I want to sell it,” Billy said, as if he thought this should have been obvious. He nudged a ledger with his foot. “So. Can you move stuff around, so it looks okay?”

“
No,
Billy, I can’t. No one can. You can’t sell the casino until it’s making a profit, or until it appears to someone that it possibly could.”

Billy looked bored. “So make it look like it could. Honestly, you’re a little disappointing, for being Crabtree’s whiz kid.” He snorted a laugh. “Well, you’re not really a kid, are you? Whatever you are, just make it work. Because I have a plan.”

“Do you now,” Ethan said.

Billy either missed Ethan’s derision or ignored it. “I’m going to get out of this goddamned casino, that’s what I’m going to do. This place is going down, and I don’t want to be here when it crashes. And I don’t mean just the casino, either. The whole town is in the shitter. Nobody is coming now, not even to the big casinos, and they’re underwater with their corporate banks. Vegas isn’t any fun anymore. It’s worse than when they had this being a ‘family destination’. It’s just dead, dead and done. I’m going to get my money, and I’m going to get out of here. I’ll leave the country if I have to. Just so long as I don’t have this albatross around my neck.”

Ethan stared at Billy in disbelief. It was amazing to believe someone could live so far outside of reality, but Billy was managing it. So Ethan stopped trying to penetrate his illusion and worked on shoring up his own missing pieces instead.

“You must have quite a trust fund already,” Ethan said, thinking of the million dollar figures Billy had tossed at him to get him to take this job. “Why not just let it go bankrupt and let it go that way? Why all this work?”

Billy snorted. “Yeah, I’ve got a trust fund. Three hundred million. Except it’s all tied up in this fucking place. I can do whatever I want with the money, so long as Herod’s Poker Room and Casino is up and running.”

Three hundred million?
“Then why don’t you invest—”

“Because it’s
my money!
” Billy said, his inner four-year-old rising to the occasion. “It should be, anyway! It’s not fair that it’s all tied up in this shit hole! I’m not spending a single dime on it out of my trust fund.”

Three hundred million.
The number kept echoing in Ethan’s head. “What happens to the money if the casino goes bankrupt?”

Billy glared. “It goes to some cat sanctuary outside of Boulder City. But it isn’t going to go there, because you’re going to help me
sell it.
If I
sell it,
then I get to keep the money. So. Work your magic or whatever, and let me know when it’s ready.”

Ethan flipped through the ledger in front of him. “Billy, this place hasn’t turned a profit since 1992. If you had reserves, that would be a different story, but you don’t. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to invest some of your funds into the casino, or you will lose it all. And for the record, I don’t have magic. I’m an
investment broker.
That means that I
invest
. I do not conjure money out of thin air. To make money grow, I have to have something to start with.”

Billy glared. “What do you need, then? A million?”

“Ten,” Ethan said, looking down at the figures. “At least. And that’s just to even out the debt. If you want to actually start turning a profit, you’re going to have to bring in customers again. Many of them, and for some time. For a
sustained
amount of time.”

“No.” Billy leaned over the desk. “I want to sell this place by the middle of November. Sell it as a bargain, I don’t care. It just has to be at a profit, even of a dollar. If you do that, then I don’t care what else happens. You’re my man now, Ethan Ellison. I paid you. I bought your ass, and now it’s mine. And I want your ass to sell my casino.”

It would have been a powerful, almost frightening speech, except Billy always managed to look and sound like a spoiled child. “I can do that, Billy—if you give me access to thirty million dollars.”

“Thirty!” Billy’s cheeks were red. “You just said ten!”

“Ten to break even. If you want the kind of miracle you’re talking about, I need thirty. To make a profit right now, you’d need to sell this place for twenty-five million dollars. That means to get this place up to that mark, in addition to a miracle, I’m going to need that much money as padding in the assets, or no one will bite.”

“What the fuck is the other five for, then?” Billy demanded.

“The miracle,” Ethan replied. “We’re going to need at least a million dollars’ worth of sequins to start.” He shuffled the books again. “I’m going to need an assistant too. And is there some reason the casino manager is located up here in the dust in the smallest office in the building?”

“The casino manager is my best friend Mark Simmons, and his office is on the sixth floor, next to mine. But he’s on vacation until the end of November.” Billy gave him a funny look. “Why did you think his office was up here? This is the
only
office up here.”

Ethan blinked, then caught himself and kept his face carefully blank. “I just assumed that all these ledgers would be in the casino manager’s office,” he said, hoping it made more sense out loud.