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In the afternoon, outside the Empire of Night nightclub, two customers quickly walked in through the side door next to the main entrance. They went directly to the third floor and pounded hard on the door outside the main hall on the third floor.
It seemed that one of them was very familiar with the whole process. There was even some impatience on his face.
A moment later, the door opened a small crack, and in an instant, a special smell that only a casino would have wafted out from the crack.
The eyes of one of the two men lit up slightly.
The person in charge of the door looked at the two of them. One was a familiar face, but one was a stranger who seemed to have never been here before.
“Your friend?” he asked, standing at the door.
The regular gambling dog nodded. “My friend, he also likes to play a few hands. We don’t like to cause trouble, I promise.”
The doorman looked at them again, then opened the door. “You’d better not be lying, or you know the consequences.”
The two squeezed in through the crack in the door. The guy who came for the first time was just about to walk in when he was stopped by the doorman.
“Do you have a dagger or a pistol on you?”
The man shook his head. “I’m here to gamble, why would I bring that?”
The doorman stared at his face for a while. “Do you mind if I search you?”
The man hesitated for a moment but still agreed.
The doorman searched his body and found nothing dangerous, only then allowing him to enter, and finally warned them one last time, “Don’t cause trouble, or I won’t be polite to you.”
The two said thank you repeatedly as they walked a short distance and then lifted the leather-wrapped door curtain.
In an instant, a wave of heat seemed to rush towards them.
Alcohol, cigarettes, the smell of sweat, and the hysterical laughter and curses of the gambling dogs, all intertwined, forming an endless desire.
The regular customer glanced at the friend beside him who was actually not very familiar. If it weren’t for the five dollars, he wouldn’t have brought the other person here.
“Don’t cause trouble. You can leave on your own when you’re done, or you can find me and leave with me. I hope you have good luck today!”
After he finished speaking, without waiting for the man to respond, he rubbed his hands, took the money out of his pocket, and went to his most familiar gambling table.
They accepted chips here, but also cash. Sometimes cash was more convenient.
It had to be said that in Golden Port, apart from the Kodak family’s chips being very “solid” and reputable, people didn’t really recognize other chips.
The guy who came for the first time wandered around. He stopped at each gambling table for a moment, then found a table and took out the dozen or so dollars in his pocket.
Soon he was immersed in gambling, just like the other gambling dogs around him, immersed in desire and greed.
In fact, it wasn’t just here. Several other bars also welcomed some unfamiliar customers.
However, they didn’t look like police or agents, so they entered the bars smoothly.
Just the Empire District alone had a population of two hundred thousand. No one could guarantee that they knew every single one of these two hundred thousand people.
So there were often strangers coming to the bars to spend money. Lance’s requirement was that as long as it was ensured they were not agents from the Bureau of Dangerous Goods, then there was no problem.
After these people came in, they didn’t cause any trouble. They bought a glass of beer, or a glass of fruit wine, and found a corner to stay in.
Actually, the business of these bars was not particularly good; it had only started to warm up a little these past few days.
Through a low-price strategy, Lance made it impossible for the commercial bars in the Empire District to survive. The same liquor, which could earn them a dozen cents per glass in the Port District, could only earn them a few cents here.
Anyone knew how to make a choice.
This was actually an inevitable practice for capitalists to monopolize the market. Before monopolizing, they would definitely frantically give profits to consumers.
By using a price war to eliminate all competitors, once they monopolized the market share and grasped the pricing power, what they had lost before could be earned back from these consumers several times over.
Although there was nothing too profound about this trick, and capitalists had been using it for many years, sometimes the simpler the means, the more obvious the effect.
The Lance family was gradually controlling the pricing power of liquor in the Empire District, while also cultivating a habitual consumption market.
It wasn’t that no one had thought of giving Lance some suggestions, to ask them to raise the price a little, for example, the people from the Red Dog Gang.
But Lance never accepted this request. He seemed determined to carry out the low-price strategy to the end. This attitude gradually compressed the living space of the pubs and bars in the Empire District to the extreme.
Except for some pubs and bars that had been in business for many years, and were run by Empire people themselves who couldn’t move away, the others had basically all moved away.
Then, these past few days, the price of liquor began to rise, from a few cents to a dozen cents. The price increase for the best-selling liquor was relatively not that large.
But if calculated as a percentage, it was definitely not small.
A ten-cent beer rose to fifteen cents. Adding an ounce of potato liquor would cost twenty-five cents.
This price was really not cheap, but it was much better than the bars in other districts.
With the series of actions by the Bureau of Dangerous Goods during this period, the price of liquor continued to rise.
The price increase at Lance’s bars also caused the business of the bars under Eric’s name to warm up a little, but just a little.
On an ordinary day, in the evening, these people returned to the same place. Fleming had no interest in hearing them talk about the business of those bars.
Bars could indeed make money, but how much money could the bars in the Empire District make? And he had also heard that the business there was not very good.
This also made him a bit depressed. Eric also had some businesses that were legitimate. These businesses couldn’t possibly provide Eric with so much capital in the short term.
In this era, only two kinds of business could make money quickly.
The first was finance, and the second was criminal trade.
Just as Fleming was suspecting whether Eric had some other business that hadn’t been discovered, one of his subordinates came back from outside with an excited smile.
“Boss, they’ve opened a casino at the Empire of Night, eight gambling tables!”
The next moment, Fleming’s whole person, like a watered plant, suddenly unfurled.
“You saw it with your own eyes?”
The man nodded. “I know a few friends in the Empire District. We used to participate in some gambling games together. I asked them about the situation, and they got someone to take me in.”
“It’s on the third floor of the Empire of Night. There are a lot of people. It can provide them with an income of at least several thousand dollars a day!”
A smile appeared on Fleming’s face. He encouraged his subordinate and then picked up the phone.
“I remember we moved the gambling tables from the Empire of Night, right?”
On the other end of the phone was his cousin, who was currently in charge of a part of the family’s casino business.
“Yes, I arranged for people to move them. All the gambling tables and equipment were brought back. What’s wrong?”
“My men say their casino is open again, and they’ve even set up eight gambling tables!”
The other side seemed to be shocked by this news, pausing for two seconds. “I’ll ask around. Don’t hang up yet.”
After waiting for about a minute, the phone was connected again. “No one has talked to them about placing gambling tables. They set up this casino themselves. What do you want to do?”
Previously, the mayor’s agent, Lawyer Orson, had had an unpleasant time with them because the Kodak family not only didn’t give them a lower “tax rate,” but instead demanded that they follow the rules.
This was actually a very difficult matter. If the mayor agreed to the equal tax rate they demanded, it would mean that the mayor was bowing to the Kodak family, to the local forces.
So it was impossible for him to agree.
For the Kodak family, if they agreed to the mayor’s request to lower the tax rate, then should the tax rate also be lowered when councilors open casinos?
Should the tax rate also be lowered or even waived for other people with connections?
Then the entire casino industry in Golden Port would be completely ruined. This was the bottom line; they couldn’t possibly budge!
Both sides had reasons they couldn’t compromise, and in the end, they parted on bad terms.
Now, they had secretly opened the casino again, which was tantamount to slapping the Kodak family in the face. A trace of anger was in Fleming’s cousin’s tone.
“There are two ways.”
“First, we go through legal channels and have Charlie take people to shut down the Empire of Night.”
“They don’t have a license and are operating illegally. We have a suitable reason to do so.”
“But there’s not much point in doing this. That old dog Charlie is very cunning. At most, he will only arrest some small fry. This will not only not serve as a deterrent to those who are trying to do something, but it might even encourage their ideas.”
“The second way, we raid this casino.”
“Doing this will not only let those who are always probing us understand that even the mayor must abide by our rules here.”
“Besides, it can also let me vent my anger.”
Being beaten by Eric, this outsider bastard, although Fleming didn’t show any frantic emotions, he had indeed lost a lot of face.
His cousin thought for a moment and then said, “You decide. If you need to mobilize manpower, I can arrange it for you.”
Fleming took a deep breath. “Thanks. I want to mobilize more people and also take care of his other bars.”
His cousin laughed out loud. “No problem. I need two days to gather the manpower and arrange things. We’ll make our move in two days.”
Fleming, as if he had thought of something, asked, “I heard that so-called Lance family is helping them run these places.”
His cousin didn’t care at all. “A small character, never heard of them. Don’t worry about it!”
Hearing him say this, Fleming didn’t pursue it further. After all, the one in the family who was truly and completely handling gang and social matters was his cousin, not him.
The things he knew were definitely not as detailed as his cousin’s.
At this moment, his mood brightened. There were still two days!
He was now a little impatient to see Eric’s face, which would be red and blue from anger.
(End of this chapter)