Chapter 11B: The Razor

Afterward, as they lay naked on their backs, staring up at the ceiling, smoking their cigarettes, she turned to him.

"I really am going to make it up to you," she said.

He grunted in response, feeling his usual post-coital guilt at giving into her emotional blackmail.

She gently kissed his ear. "Jake," she said, "I know I've been unfair to you. I've been parading you around like a toy, exposing you to all kinds of things and people you don't want to be exposed to. I've ruined your trip home. It's time we went somewhere where we can be anonymous."

"Where?" he asked, a note of bitterness plainly evident. "Madagascar? Or maybe Indonesia?"

"No," she said. "Somewhere close by, about two hours from here by plane. Georgette can make the arrangements tonight and we can be there by noon tomorrow."

"Where?" he repeated.

"Las Vegas," she said.

"Vegas?" he said. "You think we can be anonymous in Vegas? Are you insane? They'll be crawling over us from the moment we walk into the first casino."

"Au contraire," she said. "I've been there many times without anyone knowing. When you're considered one of the 'high rollers', as I am, they can be very discreet."

"I'm sure they can," he said, "but that still doesn't stop everyone in the casino from recognizing us and swarming us."

"Actually it does," she said. "There are special parts of the casino set aside just for the high rollers, parts the ordinary people never see. And the staff in this part of the casino will do anything for you. Forget about waiting for a cocktail waitress. There's one assigned to your table. And forget about some moron on third base while you're playing blackjack. No one is allowed at your table without your invite."

"Really?" he said, interested in spite of himself. "And you've done this a lot?"

She smiled. "Gambling is yet another one of my vices. I'm pretty good at it, too."

"But you're not twenty-one yet."

She chuckled. "When you take out enough in chips they don't give a rat's ass how old you are, they just give you the signature sheet and a gold-plated fountain pen. And they stuff you with free food, free drinks, free everything. Go with me, Jake. Let me show you what the high life is all about. I don't think you'll be disappointed."

"I don't know," he said.

"Know," she told him. "We'll bring Bill along too, he'll have a blast. In fact, let's invite your whole family. Bill's too. It's all on me."

"Mindy," he said, "my family is never going to let you pay for a trip to Vegas for them. Neither is Bill's."

She shrugged. "I wouldn't be paying for anything, really. They'll fly us out there and give us suites in the hotel. All I'll be providing them with is their casino chips."

"How much in casino chips?"

"Don't worry about that," she said. "I can afford it. You know that."

"They won't go for it."

"You never know until you ask, do you? Give them a call."

He did. Bill was happy to try out the Las Vegas experience. His parents were not, for exactly the reason that Jake had surmised. Jake's parents said it sounded like fun but they both had to work the next day — Tom on a court brief he was preparing regarding a young man who lost vision in one eye after being struck by a Heritage Police baton, Mary on a rehearsal for the Philharmonic Orchestra's coming winter concert series. Pauline was supposed to work the next day as well, but she decided that she'd just had a sudden onset of the flu and called in sick.

"High roller treatment in Vegas?" she said. "Count me in."

Mindy made another phone call to Georgette. Their conversation lasted less than thirty seconds but that was all it took to get the wheels rolling.

Jake, Mindy, and Bill drove to the airport (a smaller throng of reporters following behind them the entire way). They turned in their rental cars and found a place of relative privacy near the back of the general aviation terminal. Pauline arrived ten minutes later, stepping out of a limousine sent to her house and paid for by Caesar's Palace. She was giggly and wide-eyed — the result of drinking two bloody Marys in the limo — as she joined them in the lounge. She thanked Mindy profusely for inviting her along.

"It's my pleasure," Mindy assured her.

And Jake could see that it really was her pleasure. This little trip was probably going to cost her more than the average person earned in a year, but it was money she was glad to spend. She liked lavishing people with horribly expensive gifts. It was one of the things she lived for. And the more people she could lavish, the better.

Less than fifteen minutes after Pauline's arrival a uniformed stewardess told them their flight was ready. They followed her through the terminal, the reporters all screaming after them, demanding to know where they were going, what they were doing. No one answered or even acknowledged them.

They were led across the tarmac — the reporters were held back at the terminal exit by the security guards — to an idling Lear jet. The inside was cramped but luxurious, with padded leather seats, an entertainment center, and a full service bar. They found seats and the stewardess served a round of drinks while the plane was sealed up and began to taxi.

They roared into the sky, climbing steeply to forty-two thousand feet. As soon as they leveled off the stewardess presented them with a silver tray upon which white lines had been neatly formed.

"Can I offer anyone some cocaine?" she asked in the same tone of voice with which she'd offered the drinks.

They all took her up on the offer, Pauline included. She snorted up two of the lines in a manner that told Jake this was not her first time.

"Oh wow," she said, her eyes shining, a smile on her face. "This is some really good shit."

"Naturally," Mindy said.

They all had two more drinks and destroyed an ounce of Beluga caviar before the plane touched down at the Las Vegas airport. A limousine was standing by waiting for them and they piled in for the short trip to the opulent Caesar's Palace Casino. Instead of going to the main entrance, they were taken around to the side where three nearly identical looking tuxedoed men politely greeted them before escorting them to a small elevator that they rode to the top floor.

Pauline and Bill were each given their own suites. Jake and Mindy were given one to share. All were packed with every luxury that could conceivably be provided and had spectacular views of Las Vegas. Their tuxedoed man — who held the title of 'butler', Jake discovered — pointed out the various features of the room — the hot tub, the wet bar, the projection television set — and then let them know of some of the other services that were available to them.

"If you would care for a massage simply let me know, or, if you're down in the casino level, you can call extension 2976 from any phone and I will make the arrangements for a masseuse to come up to your room. Adult movies are available for your enjoyment as well. There is a menu of the selections inside the bar. If you fancy some intoxicating substances I can arrange for both cocaine and marijuana to be supplied to you. And, if you are desirous of some... uh... adult companionship, I can make those arrangements as well."

"Do you have a menu for that too?" Jake asked.

Mindy giggled. "Thank you, Roberto," she told him. "We'll let you know if we need any of those things. For now, I think we'll go hit the tables. Where might we find them?"

"Take the elevator you used to access this floor down to level seven. Turn right and your assigned casino room will be 703. Gaming and cocktail staff is already on duty."

"Thank you, Roberto," Mindy said, reaching in her purse and passing him a piece of currency. Jake didn't get a good look at it but he was pretty sure he'd seen a picture of Benjamin Franklin on its face.

Bill was suitably impressed with the services being offered. So impressed, in fact, that he wasn't quite ready to leave the room yet. "I'm going to imbibe in some of that adult companionship first," he told them. "Compensation is not required from me, correct?"

"Well, you are expected to tip your... uh... adult companion," Mindy told him. "You can use casino chips for that but you won't have any until you go down to the casino."

"Hmm," Bill said thoughtfully. "That does present a minor quandary. I wouldn't want to commit a breach of etiquette."

"Here," Mindy said, digging in her purse and coming out with another picture of Benjamin Franklin. "Give her this when she's done. That should suffice. You are only having one adult companion come up, right?"

"I can get more than one?"

"Oh yes," Mindy said. "There's plenty of companionship to go around."

"Hmmm," Bill said thoughtfully.

"You better give him another one," Jake told Mindy. "He's too shy to ask for it."

She laughed and dug out another bill. "Enjoy yourself, Bill. We'll see you down in the casino later?"

"Yes," he said, taking the money. "Thank you, Mindy. This is shaping up to be a superior vacation."

"My pleasure," she said, leaning in and giving him a kiss on the cheek, which made him blush.

If Bill was impressed, Pauline was completely dumbfounded. They found her wandering around her room, looking at everything, trying everything. She had a tall drink in her hand as she turned on the bathtub taps, fired up the hot tub jets, changed channels on the television.

"This is incredible!" she exclaimed, sounding like a child on Christmas morning. "My whole friggin' house isn't this big. And the view! My God! Do you live like this all the time, Mindy?"

"When I come to Vegas I do. It's one of the privileges of being a high roller."

"I need to make myself into a high roller then," she said, more than a hint of determination in her voice.

They went down the elevator, emerging into a wide, spacious hallway on the seventh floor. The section of the building they were in was completely isolated from the rest of the casino, the few entrances guarded by armed security personnel. There were several tinted glass doors on each side of the hallway, spaced every forty or fifty feet. Each one had a number on it. When they reached 703 Jake held the door open for the ladies. Another security guard stood just inside, manning a podium much like a maitre d's in a restaurant. He smiled and greeted them by name, waving them inside.

"Wow," Jake and Pauline said together as they entered, both of them looking around in awe. It was a windowless circular room, about two thousand square feet or so, done up in rich red carpeting that stretched from wall to wall. Standing upon this carpet, arranged symmetrically in a pattern that was pleasing to the eye, was every kind of gambling table the casino offered. There was a blackjack table, a craps table, two roulette wheels, and a pai gow table, all of them staffed and ready for action, all of them empty of players. There were three rows of slot machines, each with a padded leather chair before it. There were another two rows of video poker machines, each of them with the same chairs before them. A bar stood against the far wall, a bartender and two cocktail waitresses on duty. From hidden speakers in the wall soft music was playing.

"All this is for us?" Pauline asked.

"All for us," Mindy confirmed. "Our own private casino."

"Would you care to sign for your chips, Ms. Snow?" asked the security guard.

"You bet your ass," she said, taking a gold-plated pen from his hands and signing a form on his clipboard.

The guard passed out plastic racks to each of them, racks that contained nothing but black, purple, and yellow casino chips, the denominations of which were $100, $500, and $1000 respectively.

"This is fifteen thousand dollars worth," Pauline gasped as her accountant-like mind quickly added up the colors and came to a result.

"Oh, this is just for starters," Mindy said. "When you lose it all there will be more."

Pauline's mouth was agape.

"And what kind of music would you like to hear this evening?" the guard asked Mindy.

"Give us a variety," she told him. "A little hard rock, a little soft rock, a little country. Mix it up."

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

"Jake," Pauline whispered in his ear, "this is a third of my yearly salary she just handed me. Fifteen thousand dollars!"

"She can afford it," Jake whispered back. "Just go with the flow and have a good time."

"Shall we start out with some blackjack?" Mindy asked them. "That's always been my favorite."

"Uhhh, sure," Pauline said, still trying to come to grips. "Sounds good."

The sat down at the blackjack table, Mindy at third base, Jake at second, Pauline at first. The dealer — a buxom blonde of about twenty — greeted them by name. The cocktail waitress — a buxom brunette of about twenty — came over and offered them drinks. While they gave their drink orders Jake looked around again and saw that every one of the employees catering to them — man or woman — was physically attractive. Even the security guard was a buffed out male that most woman would describe as "a hunk".

"And would you like some cocaine to go with your drinks?" the cocktail waitress offered next.

"You know it," Mindy said. "Line us up."

"We're featuring Bolivian, Peruvian, and Venezuelan flake today. Do you have a preference?"

"Can we get a blend?" Mindy asked her.

"You can get anything you want," was the answer.

"I want a blend," Mindy said.

"I'll uh... have the same," Jake replied, wondering if there was some advantage to blending varieties of coke.

"No blend for me," Pauline said with a giggle. She was obviously starting to get into the experience. "I want Bolivian for the left nostril and Peruvian for the right."

"As you wish," the waitress replied. She headed off to the bar.

"The minimum bet is a hundred," Mindy told them, "but that's for pussies as far as I'm concerned." With that she dropped a purple chip down on the circle. "Oh, and no card counting in here. Its kind of easy for them to catch it, isn't it, hon?"

"I'm sure none of you would do something like that," the dealer replied.

"Just stick to basic strategy," Mindy said. "It's a slight house advantage, that's true, but I've walked out of here with almost a hundred grand before." She giggled. "Of course, I've also walked out of here missing nearly a quarter mil."

Mindy and the dealer shared a laugh at this. Jake and Pauline both began to look a little nervous however. They both put down black chips.

"Pussies," Mindy said with kind contempt.

Over the next hour they drank four potent drinks apiece and snorted four lines of potent, uncut cocaine. Mindy was a skillful and nerveless player, increasing her bets with every win to the point she was plopping down the thousand dollar chips two at a time. Her pile of chips grew from fifteen grand to more than sixty. Pauline was much more conservative with her betting, and not quite as skillful a player, but luck seemed to be with her. When she would hit on sixteen, the dealer would plop down a five or a four. When she would stand on seventeen with the dealer showing a ten, the dealer's down card would be four and the next hit would break her. She was up by more than ten thousand.

"Come on, sis," Mindy chided her companionably every time she plunked down another hundred-dollar chip, or, when she was feeling particularly daring, two or three of them. "Get some balls on you. Throw down one of them yellows."

Pauline, however, could not quite bring herself to plop down a thousand dollar chip on a turn of the cards. Not yet anyway.

Jake was the loser of the group. Though he fancied himself well versed in basic blackjack strategy nothing seemed to be going his way. When he would hit on a fourteen with the dealer showing a face card, it seemed inevitable that he would receive a face card as well. When he would stand on eighteen with the dealer showing a three, she would flip up a seven and then toss down a nine to go with it. Even though he was sticking to one and two hundred dollar bets, he was quickly down almost ten grand.

"I'm gonna go play some craps," he finally said, standing and gathering his remaining chips. "Anyone want to join me?"

"I will," said Bill, who had just come in and received his own share of chips. He was looking like he was in a fine mood.

"All right, Nerdly," Jake said. "Let's do it. Do you know how to play?"

Bill scoffed at him. "Of course I know how to play," he said. "Craps is the one game in the entire casino where it's mathematically possible to negate the house advantage down to even odds."

Everyone stared at him for a moment. Jake finally clapped him on the shoulder. "Does this guy know how to fuckin' party, or what?"

They partied on, drinking, snorting, and gambling while music played endlessly from the overhead sound system. Bill, putting down purple chips one and two at a time, playing the pass and don't pass lines exclusively, and utilizing a system that Jake couldn't even begin to guess at, stayed safely within three thousand dollars of his original fifteen grand. Jake tried playing the odds a little and quickly lost the remnants of his first fifteen grand. Mindy simply blew him a kiss and signed him out another fifteen thousand. She and Pauline, meanwhile, remained at the blackjack table, now sitting companionably together and giggling like old friends. Pauline's luck took a turn for the worse and she whittled away her stake on a series of poorly thought-out plays. Mindy signed her out another fifteen grand as well.

Before they knew it, it was six o'clock in the evening. Mindy suggested it was time for dinner. They were led to a private dining area two floors down and served a huge meal of filet mignon, cracked Alaskan crab legs, artichokes, spinach salad, and a bottle of 1969 Cabernet Sauvignon that went down smooth as silk. For dessert there was Cappuccino Chocolate Mousse Roulade. All were served by well-dressed, attentive wait staff who said little.

"Well," Mindy asked, as she lit her after-meal cigarette and sipped from her water, "what do you think? Do they know how to treat you in Vegas?"

Everyone had to agree that they certainly knew how to treat people.

"Do you know what I like about it?" Jake asked, his head reeling with alcohol and cocaine, his spirits unsurprisingly quite high.

"What's that?" Mindy asked, her hand caressing his thigh.

"Not a single person has asked me for my autograph, or told me how great they think my music is, or told me I was going to hell as a sinner, or even tried sidling up to me so they could tell their friends about it. They're catering to me without seeming to care who I am."

"Everyone who works in the VIP portion of the casino has been instructed on how to act," Mindy said. "They are expected to be friendly, efficient, and discreet."

"Discreet?" Bill asked. "Does that mean they will not give reports to the press about our presence here? Or about the things we did here?"

"What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," Mindy said. "That's the prime directive of the VIP staff. It has to be that way or we wouldn't come here and gamble a hundred grand at a time. The casino wouldn't even admit we were guests here, let alone what we did here. And if any of the staff leaked anything to a reporter, security would investigate with everything they had until they found the leaker and fired him or her."

"So Nerdly's mom won't hear about two hookers he had up in his room?" Jake asked.

Mindy laughed and Bill blushed.

"No," Mindy replied. "His mom won't hear about it."

"You had two hookers up in your room?" Pauline asked him. "You? William Michael Archer? Computer nerd and piano geek who was so shy you once threw up when you accidentally walked in on me in the bathroom?"

Bill blushed even darker. It was well known by both Kingsley siblings (as well as their parents) that Bill had always had a crush on the unobtainable Pauline, a crush that had started at roughly the age of four and continued probably to this day.

"When was that?" Mindy wanted to know.

"When he was about twelve," Pauline said, laughing at the memory. "I was sixteen. His mom had come over to visit our mom and had brought Bill along. I went in to go pee and must've forgot to lock the door. Bill forgot to knock and came walking right in on me." She laughed harder and had to take a moment to get herself under control. "You should've seen the look on his face. It was just like he'd seen the birth of the universe and the face of God all in one glance. And then he started to tremble all over and threw up in the sink."