‘Where’s the cord to tie you up with?’ Henry asked.
‘Right here in my pocket,’ the bell-hop said, grinning.
Henry put on the bell-hop’s gold and green uniform, which wasn’t too bad a fit. Then he tied the man up good and proper with the cord and stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth. Finally, he pushed ten one-hundred dollar bills under the carpet for the bell-hop to collect later.
Down in the lobby, two short, thick, black-haired thugs were watching the people as they came out of the elevators. But they hardly glanced at the man in the green and gold bell-hop’s uniform who came out carrying a suitcase and who walked smartly across the lobby and out through the swing-doors that led to the street.
At the airport, Henry changed his flight and took the next plane to Los Angeles. Things were not going to be quite so easy from now on, he told himself. But that bell-hop had given him an idea.
In Los Angeles, and in nearby Hollywood and Beverly Hills, where the film people live, Henry sought out the very best make-up man in the business. This was Max Engelman. Henry called on him. He liked him immediately.
‘How much do you earn?’ Henry asked him.
‘Oh, about forty thousand dollars a year,’ Max told him.
‘I’ll give you a hundred thousand,’ Henry said, ‘if you will come with me and be my make-up artist.’
‘What’s the big idea?’ Max asked him.
‘I’ll tell you,’ Henry said. And he did.
Max was only the second person Henry had told. John Winston was the first. And when Henry showed Max how he could read the cards, Max was flabbergasted.
‘Great heavens, man!’ he cried. ‘You could make a fortune!’
‘I already have,’ Henry told him. ‘I’ve made ten fortunes. But I want to make ten more.’ He told Max about the orphanages. With John Winston’s help, he had already set up three of them, with more on the way.
Max was a small dark-skinned man who had escaped from Vienna when the Nazis went in. He had never married. He had no ties. He became wildly enthusiastic. ‘It’s crazy!’ he cried. ‘It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life! I’ll join you, man! Let’s go!’
From then on, Max Engelman travelled everywhere with Henry and he carried with him in a trunk such an assortment of wigs, false beards, sideburns, moustaches and make-up materials as you have never seen. He could turn his master into any one of thirty or forty unrecognizable people, and the casino managers, who were all watching for Henry now, never once saw him again as Mr Henry Sugar. As a matter of fact, only a year after the Las Vegas episode, Henry and Max actually went back to that dangerous city, and on a warm starry night Henry took a cool eighty thousand dollars from the first of the big casinos he had visited before. He went disguised as an elderly Brazilian diplomat, and they never knew what had hit them.
Now that Henry no longer appeared as himself in the casinos, there were, of course, a number of other details that had to be taken care of, such as false identity cards and passports. In Monte Carlo, for example, a visitor must always show his passport before being allowed to enter the casino. Henry visited Monte Carlo eleven more times with Max’s assistance, every time with a different passport and in a different disguise.
Max adored the work. He loved creating new characters for Henry. ‘I have an entirely fresh one for you today!’ he would announce. ‘Just wait till you see it! Today you will be an Arab sheikh from Kuwait!’
‘Do we have an Arab passport?’ Henry would ask. ‘And Arab papers?’
‘We have everything,’ Max would answer. ‘John Winston has sent me a lovely passport in the name of His Royal Highness Sheikh Abu Bin Bey!’
And so it went on. Over the years, Max and Henry became as close as brothers. They were crusading brothers, two men who moved swiftly through the skies, milking the casinos of the world and sending the money straight back to John Winston in Switzerland, where the company known as ORPHANAGES S.A. grew richer and richer.