The Draining of Mandalay Bay

As we sit in front of our TVs, mesmerized by the updates from Las Vegas, freshly horrified by cellphone-video replays from every angle, and saddened by the stories of the identified dead, even as we are briefly buoyed by tales of heroic first responders and ordinary citizens springing into action to help the fallen and standing in line for hours to donate blood, here’s what I imagine is happening inside Mandalay Bay:

The hotel’s security and operations teams and its chief administrators have been piecing together a timeline, reviewing minute-by-minute closed-circuit camera footage from every angle, every point of entry, every corridor, every elevator or stairwell, every corner of the parking garage, every eye-in-the-sky, noting the time stamp every time Stephen Paddock’s room key was used, every time his girlfriend’s points card was used, marking his comings and goings and how full or empty his hands were, how many bags or cases he carried on each trip, retracing his every step over the previous three or four days — in addition to investigating any previous visits during which he stayed at their hotel, gambled in their casino, and possibly cased out the joint for the very weaknesses he exploited on this terrible occasion.

With each new revelation, each movement tracked, each breadcrumb unturned, Mandalay Bay is embarrassed, ashamed, and racing to recalculate their legal and financial liability to the families of the 59 dead and the more than 500 wounded. If it didn’t occur to them the instant the first shots rang out, they are now fully aware that they’re going to be buried under lawsuits. They’re going to have to hire more accountants because there’s a lot more math headed their way. They’re going to have to hire more lawyers because 580 or so victims could mean that at least as many as 580 or so lawyers are about to ring their phones off the hook. Which means they’re going to have to hire more switchboard operators. They’re going to exhaust however much insurance coverage they have and very probably declare bankruptcy to keep up with the sheer onslaught of plaintiffs that are headed their way as soon as those people’s grieving and pain abates long enough for them to think clearly again. Some heads are going to roll and some swords are going to be fallen upon. And when the dust settles down to a cloud that you can more or less see through, someone’s going to swoop in and buy the whole 11-acre shebang for a song (in Las Vegas–adjusted numbers) and slap another name on it so we can gradually forget the horrors with which we’ll forever associate the words Mandalay Bay.

I don’t gamble. And I’ve only been to Las Vegas twice. I’m just a writer with an aptitude for process and an occasionally active imagination, and this is just what I’ve come up with off the top of my head.

But you know who else’s imaginations are in overdrive right now? The trained professionals on every security team and every MBA-wielding front-office executive at every other casino and hotel on the Strip and on Fremont Street. This is what they do every day, so they are contemplating problems and weaknesses and scenarios that haven’t even occurred to me — and that maybe didn’t even occur to them until Sunday night. But I’m confident that among the sparks igniting many of their synapses are these two words: metal detectors.

Steven Soderbergh made two fun, lighthearted movies about how hard it is for a dozen motivated career criminals, give or take, to beat casino security, and Mandalay Bay just allowed one man with no apparent criminal record or history of red flags to walk a goddamn arsenal up to the 32nd floor of their hotel.

The house always wins, you say? The house has blind spots, just like everybody else. And this one didn’t even have to be big enough to drive a tank through. It took just one patient man, making multiple trips to his car and back, over the course of three or four days, in between visits to the casino, one suitcase or two at a time, to thread the needle and somehow not arouse the suspicion of a single member of a crack security team whose job it is to guard Fort Knox. They can catch you counting cards at a blackjack table, but they didn’t notice that a single occupant in one of their suites was moving in enough luggage to accommodate a basketball team for an extended stay.

So as we sit here for the umpteenth time waiting for our elected representatives to do anything meaningful, to do literally the least they can do to respond to this latest incident of “unthinkable, unfathomable, unprecedented” carnage, set your stopwatch for the demise of Mandalay Bay and watch how fast business as usual changes in Las Vegas. It’ll make your head spin like a roulette wheel.