lucrative business. But then everything changed in the seventies. Hippies and free love cut into strip club profits. Off-track betting picked up, taking a chunk out of the bookkeeping operation. And the Feds finally started cracking down on organized crime. To top it all off, big business was moving into Vegas, squeezing the gangsters out. So by the mid-eighties Frank was running a pretty clean shop: waste disposal, restaurants and bars, vending machines, trucking.
During this time Sal had just graduated from college and was working in his father’s restaurant. When Frank came by for dinner one night, and mentioned he was looking for a bookkeeper for The Cleopatra, his Atlantic City casino, Sal jumped at the opportunity. After several dull months of analyzing the gaming revenue journal entries, Sal pitched Frank a plan that involved leasing slot machines to third parties, issuing mortgage bonds, and using equity financing to free up capital to reinvest in the casino and improve profit margins. A gambler by nature, Frank went with the suggestions.
Two years later The Cleo’s revenue was up forty-four percent while room occupancy had rocketed from sixty-three to ninety-five percent. Sal was promoted to vice president of finance. Over the next ten years he championed a string of successes, which included securing a seventy-million-dollar long term mortgage investment from a life insurance giant, the first deal of its kind, to build the largest and glitziest casino in Atlantic City.
Following this, Sal was the driving force behind the creation of the luxury management company Star International, which put up five-star resorts in Mexico, the Bahamas, and Jamaica. In the summer of ’95, after the president and CEO of Star suffered a stroke on the seventh hole of Poipu Bay Golf Course in Kauai, Frank, who was chairman of the board, nominated Sal for the top position. The vote was unanimous. At thirty-three years old Sal became the youngest CEO of any company to earn a ranking on Fortune 500 that year.
Then disaster struck. Police found Frank’s mutilated body in a dumpster in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Sal interviewed nearly fifty ex-soldiers before settling on Danny Zamir as his “security advisor.” Danny tracked down Frank’s killer, a Columbia Law student named Giuseppe Adamo who was the son of a gangster Frank had knocked off back in the early eighties. Danny took Sal to a ramshackle building on the Lower West Side where the punk was being held. The room smelled like a monkey house. Adamo was lying on the floor, dehydrated and emaciated, surrounded by his own excrement. Sal rolled him over so he could look him in the eyes. Then he left, to let Danny do what he had to do.
Sal kept Danny around as his security chief, but he never again used him for anything resembling the Adamo thing. Until now, that is. Because Don Xi had tried to kill him, and that was simply something he couldn’t forgive and forget.
Rocco, Beautiful Bernie, and Crazy Frank would have all concurred.
“We’ll land over there,” Cooper announced suddenly.
He told Kitoi their coordinates over the radio, then pulled the chord that opened the parachute valve. He remained holding it as the balloon sunk through the air. They came at the ground surprisingly fast, but Cooper bounced the basket across the flat savanna like a stone skipping water until they slowed to a gentle rest.
“Try that in a herd of wildebeest and see what happens,” he bellowed. “Lo! There’s our ride.”
Sal followed Cooper’s finger and spotted the Hilux angling toward them from the southwest, shooting up a contrail of dust. When the truck arrived two minutes later, they packed up the balloon and loaded it into the flatbed.
Sal and Scarlett didn’t say a word to each other during the long trip back to camp.
Chapter 11
Wednesday, December 25, 6:38 p.m.
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
“You can leave us now,” Qasim said to his wife in Arabic.
Raja, dressed in a
During this time Sal had just graduated from college and was working in his father’s restaurant. When Frank came by for dinner one night, and mentioned he was looking for a bookkeeper for The Cleopatra, his Atlantic City casino, Sal jumped at the opportunity. After several dull months of analyzing the gaming revenue journal entries, Sal pitched Frank a plan that involved leasing slot machines to third parties, issuing mortgage bonds, and using equity financing to free up capital to reinvest in the casino and improve profit margins. A gambler by nature, Frank went with the suggestions.
Two years later The Cleo’s revenue was up forty-four percent while room occupancy had rocketed from sixty-three to ninety-five percent. Sal was promoted to vice president of finance. Over the next ten years he championed a string of successes, which included securing a seventy-million-dollar long term mortgage investment from a life insurance giant, the first deal of its kind, to build the largest and glitziest casino in Atlantic City.
Following this, Sal was the driving force behind the creation of the luxury management company Star International, which put up five-star resorts in Mexico, the Bahamas, and Jamaica. In the summer of ’95, after the president and CEO of Star suffered a stroke on the seventh hole of Poipu Bay Golf Course in Kauai, Frank, who was chairman of the board, nominated Sal for the top position. The vote was unanimous. At thirty-three years old Sal became the youngest CEO of any company to earn a ranking on Fortune 500 that year.
Then disaster struck. Police found Frank’s mutilated body in a dumpster in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Sal interviewed nearly fifty ex-soldiers before settling on Danny Zamir as his “security advisor.” Danny tracked down Frank’s killer, a Columbia Law student named Giuseppe Adamo who was the son of a gangster Frank had knocked off back in the early eighties. Danny took Sal to a ramshackle building on the Lower West Side where the punk was being held. The room smelled like a monkey house. Adamo was lying on the floor, dehydrated and emaciated, surrounded by his own excrement. Sal rolled him over so he could look him in the eyes. Then he left, to let Danny do what he had to do.
Sal kept Danny around as his security chief, but he never again used him for anything resembling the Adamo thing. Until now, that is. Because Don Xi had tried to kill him, and that was simply something he couldn’t forgive and forget.
Rocco, Beautiful Bernie, and Crazy Frank would have all concurred.
“We’ll land over there,” Cooper announced suddenly.
He told Kitoi their coordinates over the radio, then pulled the chord that opened the parachute valve. He remained holding it as the balloon sunk through the air. They came at the ground surprisingly fast, but Cooper bounced the basket across the flat savanna like a stone skipping water until they slowed to a gentle rest.
“Try that in a herd of wildebeest and see what happens,” he bellowed. “Lo! There’s our ride.”
Sal followed Cooper’s finger and spotted the Hilux angling toward them from the southwest, shooting up a contrail of dust. When the truck arrived two minutes later, they packed up the balloon and loaded it into the flatbed.
Sal and Scarlett didn’t say a word to each other during the long trip back to camp.
Chapter 11
Wednesday, December 25, 6:38 p.m.
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
“You can leave us now,” Qasim said to his wife in Arabic.
Raja, dressed in a
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