Vincent Volante

Archetype: The House

The man who believes the floor is his, until he finds out he was the mark

Vincent Volante runs a house on the New Vegas Strip the way a careful man runs anything he cannot afford to see slip: from the floor, then from the glass office above it. His dealers track him without moving their heads. Cocktail staff change direction when he appears. He does not hurry. He rolls a chip across his knuckles out of habit, and he knows which table is dead and which door does not look like a door.

He is the house. That is not a metaphor he would bother saying out loud. It is how he walks into a room.

Basic Information

• Full Name: Vincent Volante
• Aliases: The Viper, Vince, Mr. Volante
• Occupation: Casino owner and floor boss
• Status: Alive; no longer the owner of the house
• First Appearance: Boss (Horizon's Dawn)

Physical Description

The story does not dress him for a portrait. What it gives you is how he occupies a room. He crosses his own pit without speeding up. He puts a hand on the back of an empty chair instead of raising his voice. He can stand through a hand so it does not look like someone else took the air with them. When he finally signs a note against the building, his hand is not as unhurried as he wants it to be.

He is known on sight. People who work for him call him Mr. Volante. A Thursday regular calls him Vince.

Story Appearances

• Boss: Protagonist. After a woman in a gray suit opens a folio on his salon felt and pitches Horizon City to his own guests, Vincent decides the city does not get built. He uses a night clerk to lose a truck, a county stamp to hold a permit, a highway driver to turn around, and a steel man to fail a pour. Each hole is filled faster than he can make the next one. He hunts the unnamed buyer, asks Marco a question he should not have asked, and then signs a friendly note against the building because Charles Dupont offers to be the bank for a while. Charles calls that paper and tells him the house is no longer his.

Connections

• Charles Dupont: The friend with a key. Charles comes up the private stairs with a bottle Vincent keeps for him and no one else, listens all the way through, and says he will back him. He floats the quiet money. He toasts the first hitch. He tells Vincent to go again, harder, after the desert trip. He is also the man who bought the remainder of the allocation the night the first truck went north, replaced what Vincent made vanish, and later laid a callable note on the desk beside the chip. Vincent asks him to find the other player. Charles says he will.
• Marco: His right hand. Marco appears in doorways without being called, takes the woman out the long way, brings names, drives him to the site, and stays on the floor when the note is called. When Vincent, hunting a buyer who always seems to arrive a day early, asks who else Marco has been talking to, Marco tells him not to do that. Not to him. Vincent does not call him back.

The Night the Folio Landed

Late enough that the real money has gone upstairs or gone home, a stray poker chip of Vincent's own color and stamp spins out of the shadows and stops at his feet. He picks it up. Clay, and a little heat left from someone else's hand. He goes looking for the table that lost it and finds his private salon in use: cards in the well, unused, and a woman he has never seen standing at the head of his table with a slim black folio open on his felt.

She is pitching Horizon City. Breaking ground in twelve months. Five years to opening. Takahashi's people attached. The desert site already under option. One of his Thursday whales is still holding a rack of color and telling him he should hear this. An older regular is looking at the folio instead of at him.

Vincent has her seen out the long way. The whale follows her, color leaving the room in a straight line toward the cage. Vincent tells the ones who stay to play or go home. They play. He watches one hand so it does not look like she took the air with her, and then he leaves anyway.

Upstairs he tells Marco he wants it stopped. Not competed with. Stopped. Before they pour anything.

The Friend With the Key

Charles Dupont comes in as if he has always had a key, because he has. He passed the visitor in the corridor. He pours. He sees the chip on the desk and does not touch it. He never sits until Vincent does.

Vincent tells him, and does not decorate it. Charles listens all the way through. They agree the city does not get built. Charles offers money that will not trace back to the building. People who can lose a shipment, slow a permit, make a site look cursed.

"You'll back it," Vincent says.

"I'll back you," Charles says. "Then we kill it."

That loosening in Vincent's chest is the start of the loss, though he cannot read it yet. He has a partner. The floor is still his. The chip sits between them while they drink.

The War He Thought He Was Winning

Vincent spends the next stretch of nights walking his own floor like it belongs to someone else, then trying to take it back by making holes in the desert.

A night clerk who has been playing over his head is taken into the counting room and told to lose a truck: stakes, a generator, the little trailer a survey crew sits in. The clerk does it. The trailer never leaves the east yard. The crew sits on packed dirt for three hours and drives home. Charles toasts the first hitch and leaves to have a conversation that will go better in person.

A permit notice arrives. A review. An indefinite hold. A driver on the south highway turns around at the junction because the road did not feel right. For one night the house feels like Vincent's again. He does not call Charles. He wants one night of it before he turns it into a toast.

The next afternoon they are restaking. A new trailer from a north-side yard. New generator. New crew. The groundbreaking date has not moved. Vincent has Marco get the car. They drive about three hours south-by-southwest, against the light, until work-lights stain the underside of the dark. Vincent walks as far as the first row of stakes. The nearest one has a strip of pink ribbon that ticks in the wind. He can feel the wanting in his fingers, the same reach as a man going for a chip that is not his. He leaves the ribbon alone. A tantrum traces back.

He tells Charles. Charles's anger on his behalf looks genuine. Go again. Harder. Vincent starts thinking about the next hole.

The next hole is a steel man in a prefab office, paid from Charles's account to find a problem with a rebar order and fail a pour. The letter comes back so careful it could be framed. Then the rebar arrives early from an out-of-state supplier nobody can name, paid up front, and the pour stays on the calendar. Faster. Someone is covering while Vincent is still in the room.

The Buyer He Could Not See

Vincent goes looking for a name. Filings. Shells behind shells. The remainder of the allocation was bought in a single block the same week the first truck went north. The trail gets polite and stops answering.

He asks Marco who else he has been talking to. It is the wrong question to ask the only loyal man in the building, and both of them know it.

He drives to the north-side yard himself and arrives a day late. He meets the woman from the salon in a hotel lobby that is not a casino, too much daylight, a chair that is too soft. She will not give him the last name. She says someone asked that they not come to his floor again, and that he should take it as a courtesy. She says the allocation was never really for sale after that night in his salon. They just had not written the last name down yet. The mistake of starting in his house, she says, was hers, not his.

Vincent takes the courtesy and turns it into a list of guests. A whale who will not take his call. An older regular who is clean and frightened. He wants every person who walked out of his salon that night. He does not look at the man who already has a key.

The count tells him what the floor has been trying not to say. High-limit is down in a trend, not a night. Thursday money is leaving early or not coming. Underneath that, his own reserves have been going out to match the account Charles floated. The cage man says it already looks like more than a bad month, not to the floor, to anyone who reads the sheets.

The Note

Charles comes after midnight. Vincent talks faster than he talks at a table, then makes himself slow down. Charles listens. The anger in his face still looks like a friend's.

Charles offers to hold paper against the building. Temporary. Friendly. Callable at his discretion. Vincent will not lose the house. Charles will just be the bank for a while. He will call the paper back when this is over.

Vincent looks at the language and hears a hand on the back of a chair. The chair in the hotel lobby was too soft. This one is his. He thinks of the cage, and the pink ribbon, and how few people he can stand to owe. He signs. Charles blots the signature, folds the paper, and puts it inside his jacket, over his heart.

"I'll back you," Charles says. "You know that."

"Find him with me," Vincent says.

"I will," Charles says.

Vincent walks him as far as the private stairs. He does not look at the door Charles used. Later he picks up the chip. Clay, no heat left in it now. He rolls it once and sets it down again.

The House That Wasn't His

When the note is called, Vincent knows the floor is wrong before anyone speaks to him. Two strangers are already in the cage with the sheets and the paper he signed. Marco is waiting with a please in his mouth. Charles is already upstairs, sitting before Vincent has sat, which he has never done. The desk has been cleared down to the wood. The chip is still there. Charles has not touched it.

Vincent tries to buy the paper out. There is not a week in the columns. He tells Charles he does not need the building.

"I don't need the building," Charles says. "I needed you to sign it."

Then Charles tells him the rest, without pleasure Vincent can use. He bought what was left the night the clerk lost the first truck. He told the woman that if her people needed to be in New Vegas again they could see him, not Vincent's floor. That courtesy Vincent took as a clue. Charles replaced the steel. He reserved the yard the day before Vincent drove out there. Every time Vincent made a hole, Charles filled it, and every time he filled it he told Vincent to go harder. He did not send the woman. He passed her in the corridor and came up because he knew what Vincent would do if someone put a city on his felt and asked his people to listen.

Vincent asked him to find the other player. Charles said he would. Charles was the other player.

"The house isn't yours, Vincent," Charles says. "It hasn't been since you signed." Before that it was, and Vincent was good at it. That is why it worked. He took it personally. Charles knew he would.

Vincent asks if Marco keeps his job. Charles says yes, if Marco wants it. Punishing people who were loyal would be decorating it.

They drink. It tastes like the other nights, which is the worst thing about it. Charles tells him he can stay through the evening. He will not walk him out.

Vincent goes downstairs anyway. The pit does not stop. He shakes his head once at Marco, a small no that covers the question and the offer to do something stupid. He walks the long way. He opens the salon door and does not go in. He stands at the edge of the pit long enough for a hand to finish, while the building still answers to his face.

Then he goes back up, puts both hands on the desk on either side of the chip, and looks at it until it is only clay again.

He does not pick it up.

The chip that had stopped at his feet already belonged to Charles.

Legacy

Vincent Volante is the man who tried to kill Horizon City while it was still dirt, lights, and a date that would not move. He is also the first clear picture the Dawn sequence gives of what the city's money does to a room that was already somebody's: it walks in as an opportunity, it listens to the man who takes it personally, and it leaves him standing on his own floor after the house has changed hands.

He goes on being Vincent Volante. He just does not go on being the house.