The Making of Donald Trump (21 page)

Soon Kashiwagi was ahead $6.8 million. Together with the $12 million in chips he had bought, his pot now totaled $18.6 million—nearly halfway to doubling his money and winning the deal. His 3,720 chips took up more space than the green-felt table allowed, so rows of chips were arranged on the floor next to him. Crowds gathered along the low black marble wall just to stare at all the money. Kashiwagi, his back to them, seemed oblivious. He continued to wager steadily.

That night Trump panicked. He wanted the game stopped. He could stop it at any time by simply lowering the bet that the house would accept. Glasgow and everyone else involved knew that would be an insult and provoke Kashiwagi. He would almost certainly storm out, very comfortably in the black. Hoping to calm the casino owner—and keep him from appearing cowardly—Glasgow put Marcum on the phone to Trump.

“He’s on a winning streak,” Trump insisted, his voice gathering force for one of his frequent temperamental storms. “Is Kashiwagi cheating?”

“No,” Marcum reassured him, Kashiwagi was no cheat.
“Be patient. He wants to keep playing, and soon the wave will run the other way.” Trump said he would let the game go on a bit longer, but he wanted to know if Kashiwagi’s pot continued to grow.

Kashiwagi was still ahead late the next week, but by only $4.4 million, down from his $6.8 million peak. The wave was moving in Trump’s direction. In time, Marcum advised, Kashiwagi would lose all of the $12 million of chips he had begun with. Still, Trump could not sleep. He demanded the half-hour updates from Glasgow. Marcum, an old and now weary man, sat briefly at a table just outside the black marble wall, but a dealer made him get up, saying he had to play or stand, even though no other gamblers were waiting.

Kashiwagi knew the trend was going against him. He began saying he should get more credit, that he had been promised more credit so he could play with much more than the $12 million of chips he started with, even though half of those had been bought on credit.

The math, however, was not so neat, and Glasgow went home and fell into a brief, fitful sleep crunching the numbers. He had gotten the idea from me that the casino executives were wrong in their calculations of how much Kashiwagi was ahead or behind. Their numbers did not match the value of all the chips in the baccarat pit. Kashiwagi should have had about $480,000 more in chips at the table.

Glasgow called the Trump Plaza cage. “Anyone been cashing in five-thousand-dollar cheques?” he asked, using the casino term for such high-denomination chips that they bore serial numbers.

Well, yes, a clerk replied. Kashiwagi’s translator and aide had cashed in $474,000 worth of them during the week. Glasgow was astounded. The cash-ins meant that Kashiwagi had
converted nearly 10 percent of the credit chips into cash, money Trump Plaza would have a hard time getting back.

When Kashiwagi awoke that morning, he proposed that Trump extend him another $4 million credit. He needed more bullets to fire at his adversary. Ed Tracy, a polished executive who ran the Trump casinos at the time, met Kashiwagi in a lounge reserved for high rollers. Tracy, soon to be fired by Trump, would later run the incredibly profitable casinos that Sheldon Adelson owned in Macau. But Trump had a history of firing experts like Tracy and replacing them with less-experienced yes men.

The Warrior and Tracy sat near a large bronze Buddha that Trump Plaza had won from another high roller, Bob Libutti. Tracy explained that he was a simple man, not familiar with Japanese social graces, but that he was confident he and Kashiwagi could talk amicably as businessmen.

“You obviously have enough money to stay here and gamble forever,” Tracy said. “But frankly, I don’t want you to. I apologize if someone failed to fully negotiate the terms of the game, but our agreement stands.” Kashiwagi was to play until he had won $24 million or lost it all.

Tracy knew from Marcum’s pages of handmade calculations that the odds were eighty-seven to one against Kashiwagi coming back from his current state to double his original bankroll. He said no to the credit line increase. While the world still thought Donald Trump was a modern Midas, Tracy knew his boss had built a house of cards that could collapse if Kashiwagi won millions from the casino—just like the one in Australia.

Tracy said that while the credit line would not be increased after the current game ended, Mr. Trump would be honored to have his very best customer come up the Boardwalk to his
brand-new Trump Taj Mahal casino. If that was of interest, they could initiate new discussions about how much cash and how much credit would make for a worthwhile game there. At the Taj, though, Tracy hinted, the maximum bet might be just $100,000, half of what Trump Plaza allowed.

Kashiwagi kept his counsel to himself. In an elevator reserved for him and his entourage, he descended to the baccarat table and resumed playing. Kashiwagi was down to six rows of $5,000 chips, a bankroll worth $4.2 million bought entirely on credit. Just after midnight, Kashiwagi lost a bet. Then another. And another and another until he had lost eleven in a row. Soon he won some money back. Just before the 6 a.m. closing time, when Kashiwagi was down to $2 million and change, The Warrior rose, bowed to the dealers, and left for the best suite in the house.

Glasgow sauntered to a telephone on the casino wall and called Trump with the news about Kashiwagi’s bad luck.

“Isn’t he great,” Trump exulted. “He is really the greatest.”

Kashiwagi was furious. Trump lacked honor, his aide, Daryl Yong, told casino reporter Dan Heneghan. Kashiwagi had come all the way from Japan after Trump presented him with a signed copy of
The Art of the Deal
, and now Trump was not honoring his promise of more credit. But the aide said Kashiwagi would get his revenge. “We plan to burn it soon,” Yong said of Trump’s autobiography.

Kashiwagi called Caesars next door, which provided him a limousine to depart Trump Plaza. Trump would later brag that he proposed that Kashiwagi return, that he come to the Trump Taj Mahal casino on the next Pearl Harbor Day, but that was hot air.

Kashiwagi had no intention of paying his marker. Word was spreading among casino executives that Kashiwagi was
deeply in hock to the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia, known as the
yakuza
. He continued to seek high-profile deals at other casinos. Steve Wynn had him to the Mirage, though he was careful to limit Kashiwagi’s credit and not put the house at risk.

Then on January 3, 1992, in the middle of the week-long celebration of the New Year in Japan, an assailant entered the sprawling Kashiwagi Palace. Kashiwagi’s family came home with fresh strawberries to find The Warrior on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood, his face hacked beyond recognition by a samurai sword, a ritual murder weapon employed by the
yakuza
when dealing with deadbeats.

Kashiwagi died owing Trump almost $6 million. This was on top of the $5.4 million he had previously won, plus the chips his aide had cashed in during the May visit, as well as the expenses of twice bringing the player and his entourage from Japan. Trump lost big.

Meanwhile, Trump was facing serious problems with an even bigger customer, one whose married daughter he kept trying to bed.

B
ob Libutti held a dubious honor among the thirty-three million people who played in Atlantic City during its mid-1980s golden age. He was the biggest loser of them all. He was also Donald Trump’s best customer, and Trump treated him like a friend. Trump lavished gifts on Libutti, was generous with his time, and, less graciously, repeatedly tried to seduce the gambler’s grown daughter.

A squat man in his fifties, Libutti had a dome head, a big nose, and the fast-talking style of the con man he was known to be. He told me that he started out with a sweetheart job as a waterfront truck driver before getting into racehorse deals. Libutti said people including George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees baseball team, paid him as much as a quarter-million dollars just to evaluate racehorses. In the early 1970s, he was banned from the racehorse industry after three dozen widely publicized horse trade scandals. According to the United States Tax Court, the horse deals—transacted between 1968
and 1971—involved civil tax fraud. Including penalties and interest, Libutti and his wife were ordered to pay just short of $1 million, equal to $6 million in 2016 money.

While he said his name was Robert Libutti, various investigations into his business practices by the racehorse industry and by Congress found that he had used other names, including Robert Presti and Nicholas Spadea. His birth certificate said Rafaele Robert Libutti.

In the early 1980s, Libutti mainly played at Caesars, where he stayed in the Emperor’s Penthouse. There, in the hotel’s finest suite, a table piled high with an incongruous mix of potato chips, lobster, and Dom Perignon would already be prepared for him on arrival. The champagne was chilled to the 43 degrees Libutti favored, and it was served in the Lalique crystal flutes that the casino had bought specifically for him. Casinos will provide these accommodations for someone willing to spend day after day wagering as much as $20,000 on each roll of the craps dice.

Donald Trump wanted those high-stakes rolls to happen at Trump Plaza, and to lure this whale he hired the salesman who had been handling Libutti’s accommodations at Caesars. Libutti took the bait, walking the few hundred feet down the Boardwalk to Trump Plaza where he was treated like a dignitary. The salesman, security guards, and casino staff were waiting to see to his every need.

No one knew how deep Libutti’s pockets were, but no one believed he had felt the seams. Trump was determined to reach into the deepest recesses of those pockets, and to do it he gave Libutti far more than just lobster and precisely chilled bubbly. To keep Libutti’s lucrative business, Trump Plaza extended every privilege its best customer could imagine. Trump took Libutti on rides in his black Super Puma helicopter, brought
him to the most exclusive sporting events and shows, and provided him a car and driver. When Edie Libutti—Bob’s only daughter, a stylish divorcee to whom Trump was very attracted—turned thirty-five, Trump Plaza threw a lavish party including a professionally made video tribute. Donald Trump gave Edie a cream-colored Mercedes-Benz convertible for the occasion.

Steve Hyde, the Mormon elder who ran Trump Plaza casino, discouraged the lusty interest Trump took in Edie.

“Don’t ever let him go out with her, Bob, don’t ever,” Hyde warned him.

“Why?” Libutti asked.

“You’ll wind up killing him and you’ll never come back here again,” Hyde responded.

Furious that a married man would attempt to bed his daughter, Libutti confronted Trump, ordering him to stop asking her out. “Donald, I’ll f—ing pull your balls from your legs,” he threatened. Trump backed off, and Libutti continued pouring money into Trump Plaza.

One day Hyde called Libutti, urging him to come down to Atlantic City from his home in Saddle River, a wealthy North Jersey suburb where Richard Nixon lived a few blocks away. High rollers were supposedly beating the house big time, the gods of chance favoring the players instead of Trump, an argument that appealed to the superstitious player. Still, Libutti begged off, saying that his wife would kill him. He had lost too much money and Joan wanted him home. A limo soon showed up at Libutti’s door with two women from Trump Plaza who told Joan they had come to take her on a shopping spree in Manhattan. Anything her heart desired, Donald would be glad to pay. “They’ll do anything to get your money,” Joan said. “They’ll wreck your marriage if it will get them money.”

Libutti played with cash, which meant the casino was not obligated to investigate the sources of his funding. Sometimes other players bought chips on credit and then passed them to Libutti at his table—players like a horse trainer who had a $200,000 credit line. Trump Plaza kept such detailed records of Libutti’s play that it could determine his average 1987 bet to be precisely $13,929.52—but no one knew how many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, Libutti gambled and lost with chips obtained on other players’ credit.

To keep gambling, Libutti required certain favors, known as comps or complimentaries, but Libutti’s comps went far beyond the usual free suites and meals or, for select high rollers, helicopter rides to the casino and back. His demands were all satisfied, including a reliable $10,000 each month to pay his electric bill and the like: he received a monthly stack of show tickets from Trump Plaza, then traded them to a broker for $10,000 cash.

Trump Plaza also bought Libutti cars. Ferraris. Rolls-Royces. Whatever he wanted. The state’s casino rules required that the casino buy the cars, but Libutti was free to instantly sell them back to the dealership, which would deduct a commission and then give him cash. Trump Plaza did not bother to arrange titles to the cars—the casino simply gave the car dealers checks. The dealers then took a fee and gave Libutti the rest. Libutti received $1.6 million this way. Because the sales were never registered, the dealers could still offer the cars as new. This was exactly the kind of ruse that the Casino Control Act was designed to prevent. It is illegal. And it went on for years.

When the dice hit Bob Libutti’s numbers, he grew charming and generous. When it was time for his heart pills, the cocktail waitress who brought just the right water in just the
right glass and presented her tray in just the right way could be rewarded with a black chip worth $100. Libutti told me he always kept a last $1,000 in his pocket to tip the helicopter pilots and other Trump staffers he needed to reward for their services. He said he started each morning by counting out fifty crisp hundred-dollar bills, holding them in a money clip made from a $5 gold piece minted in 1932, the year he was born.

When Libutti crapped out, though, his superstition joined with his temper to bring forth a vile magma of denunciations at the poor devils who caused his loss by looking at the dice the wrong way or speaking at the wrong moment. The dealers and waitresses and others assigned to Libutti’s table ceased to be employees or servants or even human beings. They became “b----es” and “c--ts,” “motherf---ers” and “c--ksuckers,” “n----rs” and “k--es.”