Hot Springs

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Authors: Stephen Hunter
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liar!
    She turned, and snatched a $200 lamp off a mahogany end table, lifted it and turned toward him. She advanced, nostrils flaring, eyes lit with pure craziness.
    But then his own sweet craziness skyrocketed out of control.
    “Don’t call me bughouse/” Ben shouted back. Nothing got him ticked faster than that. A white-hot flash of lightning zagged through his brain, taking all thought and reason from him. He stood, balled his fist and began to stalk his adversary, who approached savagely.
    But a knock on the door signaled the arrival of the help, and with a snort, Virginia set the lamp down, opened the door and headed toward the elevator.
    Virginia stared stonily at Hot Springs as it drifted by through the Caddy’s window. In the broad daylight, it was just another crappy burg, like Toledo or Paducah.
    “Virginia,” asked Owney, “did you take one of our famous baths? Very soothing.”
    “I ain’t letting no nigger scrub me with a steel-wool mitt while my hairdo melts and my toes wrinkle up like raisins,” Virginia said.
    “Ah, I see. Well, yes, there is that,” Owney replied.
    Ben shot him a little look. It said, She’s in one of “those” moods.
    Owney nodded, cleared his throat, and directed his gaze back to Ben.
    “It’s a humming joint,” said Ben. “You really got something going here.”
    “So I do. It’s called the future.”
    Ben nodded; it was clear that Owney saw himself not merely as a professional but as some sort of elder wise man, with rare and keen insights. That’s why a lot of New York people regarded him as a yakker and didn’t miss his pontifications and fake Englishisms a bit. But Ben was curious and had his own ideas.
    “The future?”
    “Yes. Do you see it yet, Ben? Can you feel it? It’s like that Braque hanging in my apartment. You have to feel it. If you feel it, its meanings are profound.”
    Ben’s placid face invited Owney onward, and also suggested that Ben was stupid and needed educating, neither of which was true.
    “The future. Ben, the wire is dead. The war killed it. It accelerated communications exponentially, old man. We used to control the wire because we controlled the communications. We were organized. We could get the race and sports data around the country in a flash, and no other organization, including the U. S. government, was capable of competing. Information is power. Information is wealth. But the war comes along and finally the government understands how important information is to running a global enterprise, and finally they begin to fund research. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there’s no putting him back. The next few years will amaze you, Ben. This television? Huge. Person-to-person calling? Instantaneous, without operators or trunk stations. Super adding machines, to make the most arcane calculations the property of the common man. So our great advantage is gone, and with it the source of our wealth and power. We must change! Change or die! They couldn’t see that in New York, but believe me, it is coming. Great change. One must ride it, not fear it, but be able to play it, don’t you see?”
    Ben nodded sagely. Once in 1940 with the Countess he had stayed at Mussolini’s summer retreat and heard that bombastic baldy talk in a similar vein. The future! Tomorrow! Fundamental change!
    What did it get him, but an upside-down ride on a meat hook at the end of a piano wire after the gunners got done stitching him, and old lady peasants spitting on his fat carcass?
    “Yeah, yeah, I see,” said Ben innocently.
    “Ben, the future is in casinos. That is where the great wealth will come. A city of casinos, a city we own and operate. That is what I’m trying to build here, slowly and surely, with the long-term goal of making gambling— gaming, we’ll call it—legal in Arkansas. It’s like a license to mint money. People will come in the millions. They can wander the trails in the afternoons, eat food that’s cheap, see the

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