Transcript from interview with Mike Unger by Barbara Tabach, January 21, 2016

AN INTERVIEW WITH MIKE UNGER An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader?s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Mike Unger was born in Queens, New York in 1947, and spent most of his childhood in Long Island, growing up in a predominantly Jewish and Italian community. As a young adult, Unger was already working hard, running one of his family?s restaurant after school. When he was in high school, his family moved to Los Angeles to accommodate his father?s health needs, and eventually end up in Las Vegas by 1967. Over the next two decades, Unger would work at nine properties in the city. Unger is one of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas? first hotel management graduates, and started his career with Summa Corporation in its management training program at the Frontier Hotel and Casino. After a brief stint at the Airport Marina Hotel in Los Angeles in 1972, Unger returned to Las Vegas, serving in management capacities at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino, Summa Corporation headquarters and Landmark Hotel and Casino. In 1978, he joined Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino management team, and was integral in creating the city?s first large boxing events, the World Series of Tavern Pool, and the Grand Prix race. Unger also ran properties for the White Mountain Apache and Colorado River Indian Tribes in Arizona, as well as the Showboat Hotel and Casino. In this interview, Unger reflects upon his long and successful career in hotel management in Las Vegas and also in Arizona and Pennsylvania. He shares stories as a local celebrity, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s when he worked at Caesars Palace, as well as the big projects he oversaw, including organizing the first big fight nights, World Series of Tavern Poker and Grand Prix race. He talks about working with Morris Shenker, Moe Dalitz, Cliff Perlman and Billy Weinberger, and the role of the Jewish community in the city, and specifically in the gaming industry. Unger also discusses his non-gaming industry ventures which have included a satellite communications business and a bagel business. Unger has been married to Roberta Cavadlo Unger since 1975. The couple has three children: Julie Unger, Shayna Unger Gilbert and Paul Unger. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Mike Unger on January 21, 2016 by Barbara Tabach in Las Vegas, Nevada Preface?????????????????????????????????..?..iv SESSION 1 Talks about Jewish heritage and role of religion in upbringing; running one of family?s delicatessens as teenager. Describes reconnecting to Judaism after moving to Las Vegas; his parents? decision to move west because of father?s illness, ending up in Los Angeles; father?s career in restaurant supply industry taking them to Las Vegas in 1967. Discusses success as student in UNLV?s then-new hotel management program??????????????...1-4 Shares experience working for Kentucky Fried Chicken, Colonel Sanders, when just starting franchise. More about his experience studying at UNLV, then later teaching there part-time. Talks about family joining Temple Beth Sholom; and serendipitously meeting wife Roberta, twice. Recalls working as general manager at Aladdin and its mob connections; stabilizing business; getting loan from Teamsters to expand?????????????????...5-12 Discusses working at Caesar?s Palace; creating the fight-night business, starting with Ali-Holmes fight; building stadium to accommodate fight; working for Cliff Perlman; bring Grand Prix to Caesar?s and building track on Strip. Talks about the power of the hotel manager network; how the Ali-Holmes fight was a great success for all Strip casinos; relationship with Morris Shenker; local celebrity status; creating World Series of Tavern Pool..????????????.13-20 Reflects upon less successful ideas, like hosting Olympic pretrial events; hosting VIPs as part of his job. Talks about overseeing Frontier?s lounge as assistant general manager; meeting Diana Ross to get advice on acts; other famous met. Describes a special event for Sinatra?s 64th birthday. Explains the loyalty that existed in the industry, leading people to move around properties. Tells story about Willie Nelson staying at Caesar?s Palace????????..21-28 Talks about growth of Las Vegas over the years; relationship with LeRoy Neiman. More about Holmes-Ali fight and other events in the arena, including Alan King Tennis Classic, Holmes-Cooney fight, Leonard-Hagler; shares related memorabilia with interviewer, including Nieman painting of Rocky Balboa. Talks about Ron and Arthur Laurie; being initiated into Las Vegas Saints and Sinners. Shares lots of photos, featuring Steve Savodelli, Al Bramlet????..29-36 More about World Series of Tavern Pool; winning pool table from Steve Mizerak in bet; co-branding event with Miller Brewing Company. Mentions relationship with man movie Scarface based upon???????????????????????????????....37-39 vi SESSION 2 Reflects upon first hotel job at Frontier in 1967, working several positions as the Summa Corporation?s first management trainee; ultimately becoming operations analyst, and soon assistant GM. Talks about working shorter stints at Airport Marina Hotel in L.A., Aladdin; implementing ideas at Aladdin to stabilize business. Returns to Summa Corporation as head of recruiting; shares strategies, stories from that experience??????????????40-46 Talks about desire to leave corporate and return to operations; becoming hotel manager of Landmark for short time; going to work for brother-in-law?s bagel business, before returning to gaming industry with Caesars position. Describes brother-in-law?s business, and its national success; working for Billy Weinberger at Caesers????????????????...47-51 Reflects on Morris Shenker?s role in city?s history and his interactions with the mob; Morris? son, Arthur; more about his personal relationship with Morris. Again recounts Holmes-Ali fight experience; network of hotel managers. Talks about starting satellite communications company, International Video Consultants, with three partners; describes revenue streams which included encryption for New York Racing Authority, in-room movie entertainment, streaming concerts on college campuses, and creating educational history videos???.....?????????52-60 Discusses Jewish community?s role in gaming industry growth. More details about satellite communications business; serving as private cable company, with New York real estate mogul Harry Helmsley as main customer. Talks about working for Wayne Newton, to get Pennsylvania hotel ready for gaming. Returns to Las Vegas and works at Dunes Hotel, under Burton Cohen; goes back to Landmark to try to save from foreclosure; leads closure of hotel?????...61-68 Talks about next working at Showboat; compares working at a locals? casino versus on the Strip. Mentions evolution of fire safety in casinos; assisting with various evacuations at different hotels, including rescuing Andy Williams. Recalls founding Las Vegas Hotel Managers Association, to foster networking; working with the local unions over the years. Reflects upon the growth of the Strip, facilitating professional opportunities; current project Aquaterra?.69-75 SESSION 3 Shares story of how his family decided to move to West Coast, along with Mike Katz, who started local Manpower franchise; relationship between Ungers and Katzes over the years. Talks about dominance of Jews and Italians in casino industry, except for Hughes hotels; working for Summa Corporation, for Bill Gay; Summa Corp?s secret government contracts. More about working at Landmark hotel. Thoughts on Cliff Perlman?????????????.?76-84 Tours his home ?museum,? describing various items to interviewer, including being featured in Sports Illustrated, Gambling Times Magazine. More about Caesars Palace hosting Grand Prix and its lack of success. Mentions selling cassette holders, starting Hotel Alumni Association. Talks about opening bag business in San Diego; partnering with Louis Winer and Ron Silverstein????????????????????????????????.85-92 vii Talks about working for White Mountain Apache Tribe?s casino in Arizona. Shares story about hosting Chubby Checker as lounge act; favorite acts over the years. Returns to memories of time working for White Mountain Apache Tribe; building trust with leadership and community; subsequently working for Colorado River Indian Tribe, opening casino. Recalls implosion of Frontier Hotel and Casino; attending christening of U.S.S. Arizona with daughter????93-99 Goes through various photos with interviewer, including those of and with: Morris Shenker, Larry Ruvo, Steve Savoldelli, Ron Lurie, Bill Briare, John McCain, Gerry Cooney, and Larry Holmes. Again mentions Steve Mizerak, world champion pool player. Mentions hiring Jack E. Leonard when overseeing Frontier?s entertainment program; becoming friends with scriptwriter Joan Winston after hosting as a Caesars? guest????????????????....100-103 Discusses innovating hotels? linen management process, working with suppliers to cut costs and improve efficiency; working with Robert J. Caverly at Frontier. More about working at Landmark, strategies to build business. Shares personal battle with rare virus Guillain?Barr?; continued involvement with advocacy and support networks???????????..104-111 Index....................................................................................................................................112-115 1 SESSION 1 This is Barbara Tabach. Today is January 21, 2016. I am sitting with Mike Unger in his home in Henderson, Nevada. We're going to start out about the Jewish part of your story, Mike, and then we'll go into the rest of your long career and great storytelling ability. I'd like to start with you giving me some sort of context of your family's Jewishness. What's your ancestral story? As far back as I can remember, my grandfather on my father's side was an Orthodox Jew and he would take me to services, particularly over High Holidays. I would sit there for hours and hours and hours through four? and five? and six?hour services. It was all very strange to me. I was a young man, somewhere between six and ten years old. The women sat in a different portion of the sanctuary. My grandfather had a house that was next to the orthodox temple's rabbi, so you would hear them davening over the wall. They built their own sukkahs. As a child, I was exposed to a lot of religion. My mom and dad were not really that religious per se that they attended a lot of Friday night services or whatever. We belonged to the local temple. It was a conservative temple called Massapequa Jewish Center. This is in what city? This is Massapequa, Long Island. That's where I was bar mitzvahed. We were members of the temple. We were socially active as Jews, but not necessarily religiously active. When I was about fourteen, my father required surgery, and at the time, they gave him about a 20 percent chance of living through the surgery. It was a very grave period in our lives. My dad owned and operated three restaurants and because of his illness, obviously he had to stay at a hospital or stay at home. My mom ran one restaurant, a family friend ran another restaurant, and at fourteen years old, I ran the third restaurant. I would get out of junior high school, get on the Long Island Railroad, train into Oceanside, Long Island, and get there. I had a small staff of people. But at fourteen years old I'm running 2 a restaurant. It was strictly out of need because of my dad's illness. What kind of restaurants were they? It was a delicatessen. So when I was about fourteen years old, when my dad had this surgery and chances were that he wasn't even going to live through the surgery, I'll never forget the surgery was on a Tuesday and I asked my mom if I could stay home from school. I didn't want to go to school that day. I wanted to think about my dad. They wouldn't let me at the hospital, so I stayed home. Our home was a quarter of a mile from the temple. I grew up like everybody else, watching these movies on TV with Bing Crosby and Pat O'Brien, and they were priests at Catholic churches and things like that and you can go and light a candle and pray whenever you want. I decided to walk down to the temple and I wanted to pray for my father, Tuesday afternoon. Guess what? Temple was locked. Went around to the administration building. Explained to the gal who was sitting there I wanted to say a prayer for my father. She says, "There's nobody here." Well, what do I do? She says, "Come back on Friday night." I never set foot in a temple again until I got married. I just lost it. It wasn't there for me when I needed it. That's a powerful story. I was very bitter. You come home and you watch these things on TV where any time anybody wants, they can go to the church, light a little candle, and pray before Mary or whatever. And it wasn't there for you. It wasn't there for me. Did you share that with your mom or anybody? Absolutely. Really, the family, because they weren't religious Jews to begin with, it was easy for us to un-affiliate ourselves with the temple. Did you talk to the rabbi after that experience? Not that rabbi, no. I started becoming connected to the temple after we moved to Las Vegas. The temple 3 then, which was Beth Sholom, the only temple in town, was very heavily connected to and dependent on the Strip where I was having a decent level of success. So suddenly, the members of the temple are wooing me to become involved, to become active, and join the men's club, B'nai B'rith and all that kind of stuff, which I did. But for a long, long time I didn't step foot in a temple. That's interesting. So your father had the surgery, and he survived? Right. So this is in New York. How did you eventually? I was about fourteen when he had the surgery. It saved his life. It relieved the paralysis, but it left him in a wheelchair and partially paralyzed. What was his disease, again? It was called manjima of the spinal cord. Jeff Chandler, the famous actor had it, also. He died on the operating table. But anyway, I was about fourteen when the surgery occurred. My father was reduced to a wheelchair. He was in constant pain. His mobility was limited. He was on Percodan for years, which eventually killed him. He needed to find something to do that didn't require a lot of mobility. His doctor suggested that a lot of his discomfort and pain was because he had a severe case of arthritis and rheumatism on the spinal cord as a result of all the surgeries that he had on his spine. They had opened him up four times. The doctor says to him, "You need to move out west; you need to move to where it's a dry climate; it will be easier on you." Around 1963 or 64, we moved to Los Angeles. My dad took a job with Interstate Restaurant Supply as a buyer. He sat at a desk all day long and on the phone. I think that was before computers. [Laughing] My mother worked as a night admitting clerk and a bookkeeper for Valley Doctors Hospital right off the Ventura freeway. I was in high school and Bob was in junior high. Mindy wasn't even around yet. 4 There's eighteen years? difference between Mindy and myself. In '66, my dad's company started getting incredible orders, truckloads and truckloads of merchandise, food products, equipment, tools and whatever from a new client in Las Vegas. So they decided to open up an office here and they asked my dad if he wanted to move here and he said, "Sure." So we moved here in July of '67 as a result of Caesars opening in August of '66. So for Caesars Palace; that was the big client. Right. How old are you in '67? Twenty. So you're a young man. You had already graduated from high school. I graduated from high school. In fact, I got a two?year Associates in Arts degree from Valley College in geological science. When my father asked me if I wanted to move to Las Vegas, I did some checking and found that the University of Nevada had one of the very best school of mines in the country. Okay, I'm a geology major; I'll go. We come to Las Vegas and I go to work at the Frontier Hotel, which isn't open yet. I started there about three weeks before it opened, carrying mattresses off of trucks and bringing them up to the rooms. Then I wound up working in the kitchen and all that. I got a two?year degree there. Transferred here. I go to register at UNLV for the school of mines and their registrar looks at me and she says, "Reno campus." Oh. "Well, what have you got?" She says, "Well, we have this new program that you might be interested in since you've been working in your dad's restaurants. Hotel management." Yeah, I'll give it a try. So I registered for hotel management and I went from a C student to straight As. I was president of the Hotel Men's Association, president of the Hotel 5 Alumni Association. Graduated. I don't know what my GPA was at the time, but it was like three?point?five or something. I found my niche. Something really clicked for you. I'd go into class and they'd talk about stuff... I forgot to tell you, after I worked in my dad's restaurant from fourteen years old and we moved to Los Angeles?I had just turned sixteen. I had just got my driver's license. Half a block down the street from where we moved there's this new place going in and it's called Kentucky Fried Chicken. I go and meet with the guys and I said, "I'd like to apply for a job as a driver, delivery boy." "We're not going to deliver." "What do you mean you're not going to deliver? You've got Chicken Delight; you've got this one; everybody delivers." "We're not going to deliver." "Well, I need a job." They said, "Come back next week; the owner will be here." I go back the next week and I sit down with a funny looking guy in a white suit and was interviewed by Colonel Sanders. The Colonel Sanders? The Colonel Sanders. He hired me and I helped open the eleventh Kentucky Fried Chicken in the United States. Wow. Three years later he had twenty?eight hundred stores. But it was the franchise boom. Everybody was getting into it. I worked for Colonel Sanders. Somewhere in my boxes of stuff, I've got pictures of him and me working together. As the company grew, it grew way out of his abilities. He was the creator and became the spokesman for it, but now you had hundreds of stores and all sorts of delivery and supply issues. They hired a guy, Robert Mackey, who was the first president of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I've got pictures with Robert Mackey. It was great. I went to work for him when I was sixteen. At nineteen, they made me an area manager for 6 Kentucky Fried Chicken. I had like a hundred stores under my control. They were all franchises. What was your job description? Investors that wanted in on this deal would pay the company good money. "I want to be a Kentucky Fried Chicken guy." They would send me to the store to help the people open it. Show them how to cook chicken. Show them how to get everything up. So every time there was an opening, I'd spend a week or two at that store, and then move on to another one, and move on to another one. When I was going to UNLV as a graduating senior, they would have Career Days and invite major employers to come and interview students. One of the employers that would always come for the hotel school was a company called Collins Foods International. I'm walking around and I'm talking to Sheraton and I'm talking to Marriott and I'm talking to this one. Collins Foods International...that sounds familiar. I sit down with the guy and he starts telling me about how Jim Collins started the company in Culver City, and he opened a Kentucky Fried Chicken and then he opened up another one and another one. Then he bought some Sizzler steakhouses and he opened a few of those. And now the guy's got like eighty stores and it all started in Culver City when he opened up the Kentucky Fried Chicken. I said to this guy, "I taught Jim Collins how to cook chicken." He looked at me like I was crazy. So I told him the story. I said, "I was interviewed and hired by Colonel Sanders. I helped open the eleventh store in the United States." He says, "You met the Colonel? You know the Colonel?" I said, "If you come back tomorrow, I'll show you pictures." The guy was blown away. What kind of personality was the Colonel? What do you remember about him other than his white suit? He really wore a white suit, huh? Yes. He was really the character that you see on TV. He was like a grandfather?type, just a nice guy from Kentucky that had this recipe. He wasn't a business dynamo. He was the sweet little grandfather. So he wasn't distinguished as a businessman as much as... 7 It's like mom makes a really great stew, so let's open up a restaurant and feature her stew. Anyway, I had worked my father's restaurants in Oceanside when I was fourteen. At sixteen, we moved to Los Angeles and the week after I got there I went to work for Kentucky Fried Chicken and worked my way up to area manager. Now I go to UNLV and I'm taking hotel management classes. I had been doing this for five, six years already. I had a head start on all the other students. I was a straight?A student in my hotel subjects. Jerry Vallen, who was the dean, took a fatherly interest in me and my career. I taught at UNLV for four years as a part?time instructor. When the hotel school was growing so fast, they couldn't find enough qualified instructors to fill the classrooms; Jerry decided to go to the Strip and ask people if they would teach classes in hotel management. For example, we had a number of hotel managers that would teach front office management. We had food and beverage directors that would teach classes in food and beverage. So for a while, a lot of the staff were adjunct professors that had bachelor's degrees but not master's degrees and we were teaching out there. We'll come back and talk more about that. Yes. I loved it. That's great. So you're here in Vegas in your early twenties. Your family has come here. Right. And you're alienated still at this time from your Judaism spiritually? Yes. Did your family join a synagogue? Yes. We joined Beth Sholom. Did you join? We joined for a couple of reasons. Bob had been bar mitzvahed in Los Angeles. Why did we join Beth 8 Sholom? And Mindy, your sister, was born in L.A.? My sister was born in L.A. I don't know. It may have been the Jewish connection with the Strip and my father was a restaurant supply company and it was important for him to rub elbows with a lot of the Strip hotel owners and the bosses of the Strip who were Jewish. Primarily, the makeup of the Strip was Jews and Italians, like it was in New York. In fact, a story...Massapequa, Long Island, was a community that was about 45 percent Jewish, 45 percent Italian, 10 percent everything else. It was so Jewish Italian that the people who lived there instead of calling it Massapequa, they called it Matzah Pizza. I love that. So you were accustomed to this cultural blend of the Jewish and the Italian businessmen together. Oh, yes. All of my friends growing up until we left New York were all Italian. If your last name didn't end in a vowel, there was something wrong; you must have been Jewish. How old were you when you met Roberta, your wife? Well, we met a couple of times. We met New Year's Eve at a Jewish singles' party December of '74 and then we got married in November of '75. I had met her five years earlier also on New Year's Eve. She was the date of a friend of mine; he and I had decided to double date on New Year's Eve and we went to dinner and to see a show and all that. That would have been like '69. She thought I was a creep until we met five years later. That's funny. Just a double date, not really any interaction with each other during that five?year period of time. No, never saw her. Actually, there were several people trying to get us hooked up. This brother?in?law of mine, Luis Gorbena, who was my friend, who I had met while working the kitchens at the Frontier 9 because he was a supplier?he was the bread supplier. I had also met him when my dad had his restaurants in New York, the one that I ran, which was in Oceanside, we used to take our breaks out back. It was a strip mall, so you had all these different stores connected down a long line, maybe fifteen stores in a row. Everybody used to take their breaks out back in the alley. In the alley where like the deliveries were made... Exactly. About four doors away from my dad's restaurant was this bakery. I would go in the back, sit back there and take my break. I was too young to smoke or anything like that, but I'd take my break. Four doors away there's this young guy, about the same age as I am, and he's working at the bagel bakery. We'd wave and we'd talk and we'd say hello and this and that. Then, of course, I moved to Los Angeles, and from Los Angeles we moved to Las Vegas; during that period of time, maybe six or eight years passes by. I'm working at the Frontier in the kitchen and all the sudden this guy comes walking in delivering bread, and looks at me and says, "I know you." I looked at him and I said, "I know you, too." "Oceanside, right?" I said, "Louie?" It was the same guy that I had known from the alleyway in Oceanside. Anyway, so he's trying to get me to go out with his sister?in?law. Louie is Mexican. I've never met his wife. I don't know anything about him. Louie said, "You've got to meet my sister?in?law." I thought he was trying to fix me up with some short, little, fat Mexican gal. I said, "I don't go out on blind dates; no thank you; no thank you; no thank you." This went on for a long time. "You've got to meet my sister?in?law; you really do." "No, I'm not going out on blind dates." I said, "I've got plenty of girlfriends; I don't need..." So I go to this Jewish singles' party and I didn't want to go. I had been general manager of the Aladdin Hotel. At the time, there was nobody that I was dating that I felt strong enough about that I 10 wanted to go out and spend several hundred dollars on New Year's Eve. There wasn't anybody in my life that was that important. So I didn't have a date and I wasn't going to go out. My mother says to me, "Go to the Jewish singles' party." I said, "Mom, do you know what kind of girls go to a Jewish singles' party on New Year's Eve? All the losers who can't get a date." I said, "I'm not going." "Oh, you've got to..." "No, I'm not going, no way." Well, it's about ten o'clock at night and now I'm starting to feel sorry for myself that I don't have a date. I decide, all right, I'm going to get dressed and I'll go to this party, but there's no way I'm bringing in New Year's at the party; I'm going to leave about eleven thirty. I'll say my hellos because I knew that there were people at the party that I knew, but I'm getting out of there at eleven thirty. I go to this gal's house and there's not too many people there, but all the losers in town. It's eleven thirty and I'm getting ready to leave. As I'm walking out...I've got to get props for this one. Please. We're doing a demonstration here, just for the record. Mike has left the room. As I'm walking out, this gal walks in. Here's a picture of Roberta. Wow. She's a pretty woman now, but wow. She walks in and I go, "Where the hell did she come from?" She walks right over to me and she says, "You're Mike Unger." I said, "How do you know me?" She says, "My brother?in?law has been trying to get me to go out with you for three years and I won't go out on a blind date." "Who's your brother?in?law?" "Luis Gorbena." I started to laugh. I said, "Oh, my god. I thought you were a short, fat Mexican girl." Instead she's tall and blond. So that's how I met Roberta. That's great. That's a good story. 11 Did you ever see the movie The Goodfellas? Yes, a long time ago. I'll show you what the other half of the couple looked like. There's Roberta. This is what I looked like. I looked like I just stepped out of the movie The Goodfellas. Yes, you do. I was general manager of the Aladdin. Very slick. I've got to get copies of these photos. These are fantastic. When that was taken I was sitting on a dais at a fundraising dinner next to Ralph Lamb, who's our sheriff. I said to Ralph, "I need a favor." He says, "What's that?" I said, "I need a concealed weapon permit." "What for?" I said, "I need one." He says, "Are you afraid of the customers?" "No." "Are you afraid of your employees?" "No." "Do you carry large sums of money at night?" "No." "Do you have business on the Westside that you have to go over there that you have to defend yourself?" "No." "Well, why do you want a concealed weapon permit?" "To protect myself from the people I work for." He says, "No, I can't give you one for that." Where were you working at that time? The Aladdin, which was St. Louis and Detroit mobs. They hated each other and I'm the GM. So if St. Louis asked me to do something, then I piss off Detroit. If Detroit asked me to do something, I piss off St. Louis. I'm caught in the middle on this deal. I turned to Ralph Lamb and said, "Well, if you're not going to give me a concealed weapon permit, I'm going to carry a gun anyway and I'd rather tell the judge than the doctor." So walk me through. When you took the job at Aladdin, what was the position? General manager. Were you aware of the animosity between the two? 12 Hell no. I didn't even know who I was working for. I was actually recruited by an accounting firm called Pannell Kerr Forster, which used to be Harris Kerr Forster, one of the big eight accounting firms, nationally known, with offices all over the world. One of the officers with that company was Bruce Baltin, who was one of my instructors when I was studying at UNLV. He got out of education and went to work for Pannell Kerr Forster. They get this placement assignment that the Aladdin is looking for a GM and that the Aladdin is going through severe business fluctuations where one month they make a whole bunch of money and then the next money they lose a whole bunch of money, then the next month they make a bunch of money and lose a bunch of money. They wanted to expand, but they needed somebody who could stabilize the fluctuations so that when you went to Wall Street or to a lender they would show a financial statement that was solid and showed continuous cash flow, and they could get the loan that they needed. I went to work at the Aladdin, stabilized the fluctuations, things like that. They didn't get a loan from the banks. They got their loan from the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund and that's when we built the first tower, the new tower at the Aladdin. When I ran the Aladdin, it was a two?story, two hundred and thirty?five rooms. While I was there, I was able to help them get the sixty?million?dollar loan and they built the first tower. I found out that I was working for St. Louis and Detroit mobs. How did you find out? What was your first clue? Maybe I should ask, why did you think you needed a concealed weapon? What was my first clue? I don't know. Although, two or three months after I was there, I got my first su