Casino Moon (22 page)

46

P.F. WAITED UNTIL TEDDY
was about to sit down on thecrate outside the grocery store on Florida Avenue before he honked the horn and called him over.

“What do you want?” Teddy lumbered over to the driver’s side window. “I thought I said I had nothing to say to you.”

“People who need people are the luckiest people in the world,” P.F. sang.

“Yeah, you’re starting to look like Barbra Streisand too.”

Actually, it was Teddy who was starting to look like a woman. An old woman, to be precise. With round feminine haunches and a big butt replacing the sandbag he used to have on his stomach. P.F. wondered if he’d been taking estrogen hormones. Maybe the rumors about Teddy’s operation the other week were true.

“I heard you stopped by to see Mike Dillon’s boy the other day,” P.F. said laconically. “Funny.”

“Not as funny as the police having the biggest meateater in the department following me.” Teddy squinted. “How’s that television I gave you? Zenith, right? Is it still working?”

P.F. smiled as if the dig didn’t hurt. “I’m not here on police business. I’m just checking out something for a friend.”

“Bullshit. You don’t have any friends. Whores have customers. And that’s all you are, a whore.”

“Thanks, Ted. I love you too.”

P.F. caught sight of his own eyes crinkling in the side mirror. The crow’s feet had lifted a little since he’d cut back on his drinking. Instead of the long march around his eyes, the birds were just doing a light foxtrot.

”All right,” he told Teddy. “I’m not working for a friend. I’m here for a higher authority.”

Actually, he was there on behalf of the Golden Doubloon Hotel and Casino. Father Bobby D’Errico, the former Franciscan priest who’d just been named the casino’s new vice president for operations, had asked him to find out why there’d been a last-minute switch, with Elijah Barton replacing Meldrick Norman in the title fight. “Consider it your audition for the job as head of security,” Bobby had said. It seemed the casino’s new corporate management was somewhat concerned that Barton’s manager was a front for the mob. Though why that mattered to them P.F. couldn’t say. Half of these corporate outfits acted like mobsters themselves.

“I wanted to talk to you about the boxing thing,” he told Teddy.

“What boxing thing?”

“The story about Michael Dillon’s boy managing one of the guys in the fight next week.”

As frail and discolored as he looked, Teddy scrambled around and got in on the passenger side of P.F.’s cruiser.

“What do you know about this?” he said with grumpy aggression, like he was talking to an aging errand boy.

P.F. looked around and tightened his belt, as if he was in no great hurry to begin. “What I know is you’ve got your boy Anthony in there, representing you as manager of one of the fighters. But the thing is, he hasn’t applied for the proper licenses or tax exemptions from the state athletic commission ...”

Whether any of this was true or not, P.F. had no idea. It was just part of a strategy for finding how much Teddy was involved. He figured if he squeezed Teddy a little, there’d be an indignant phone call from Burt Ryan or some other lawyer within forty-eight hours demanding to review the boxing contracts and procedures, thus confirming the connection between Teddy and the fighter.

But instead of playing it cool with a Bogartesque tug of the ear, Teddy surprised him by rising to the bait immediately. “How much is he making from this fucking fight anyway?”

He leaned across the seat and P.F. caught a whiff of something like dead fish.

“I don’t know what Anthony’s take is, but the overall purse for the fight is something like ten million.”

Teddy began snorting through his nose like some beast about to come charging out of the swamp on
Wild Kingdom.

“I’ll kill him,” he muttered. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

P.F. tilted his head on one side. “Are you making a threat in front of an Atlantic City police officer?”

“Only one who used to come by my stash house with Paulie Raymond,” said Teddy, coming to his senses. “You’re as big a thief as your old man. Try putting that on your wiretap and playing it back in court.”

“Are you saying you don’t have anything to do with this kid managing the fighter?”

“What? Me? No. Fuck.” Teddy stared at the scratches on the windshield, as if they could explain his confusion.

“Then where would this Anthony get the kind of money to get started in the fight game?”

“I don’t know.” Phlegm rumbled in Teddy’s chest. “But if you meet the man handing out the cash, give him my name too.”

Just then, Richie Amato pulled up alongside of them, in the navy Impala. Teddy got out of P.F.’s car and went over to clap Richie on the ear with the flat of his hand.

“What’s the matter with you? You were supposed to be here five minutes ago. Don’t you keep none of your appointments these days?”

Richie winced resentfully. “I had to get my other taillight fixed. Remember how you warned me?”

Teddy shook his head and looked back at P.F. in exhausted dismay. “What can I tell you? You can’t trust anyone under thirty now.”

47

“HOW’S THIS THING WORKING?”
said Vin, sitting down in a chair beside Teddy and his hemodialysis machine.

Lying on his couch, Teddy stared up at the ceiling, with bored eyes and a grinding mouth. “It’s all right, unless it goes too slow or too fast. That’s when I start getting tired.”

The four-and-a-half-foot-tall machine hummed along quietly like a BMW. Since the prostate operation last month, Teddy had been having trouble with his kidneys and now he had a needle stuck in each of his lardy purplish yellow thighs. Long clear tubes siphoned the juices out of his body and into the machine for cleansing.

“It must be hard,” Vin said sympathetically.

Teddy grunted. “Fuck it, I ain’t worried. Every day of my life I’ve had some kinda cancer trying to eat me. You know what I’m saying? I don’t mean I had cancer cancer, but there was always something trying to nibble away. You know what I say? Fuck you, you cocksucker! You’ll never get me. You know why? I got too much life force.”

“That’s right.”

The effort of speaking left Teddy temporarily drained. His face went blank as he closed his eyes. After a moment, he clenched himself up inside, ready for another outburst.

“You try to put me down I’ll kick you over, fuck you right in the ass,” he said, struggling to clear his throat. It sounded like he was cooking a goulash in his chest. “That’s the way it is. You don’t like it, I’ll fuck you in the ass too. Because I’m a survivor.”

“Absolutely.”

“So that’s why I got so pissed when I realized you’d lied to me about your boy Anthony getting in the fight game.”

“What?!!” Vin reacted like his old friend had just put jumper cables on his eyelids.

“I heard it with my own ears.” Teddy said calmly. “Some fuckin’ cop has to tell me about it yesterday. Pigeater, whatever the fuck they call him. Paulie Raymond’s old partner. Says your Anthony’s managing a guy who’s gonna fight for ten million dollars. Then I turn on the TV to watch the weigh-in on SportsChannel, I think I see Anthony standing over in the corner.”

Vin’s eyes went back like the pictures of lemons on a slot machine. He stood up quickly and turned on the television in the corner, to drown out any wiretaps.

“You sure it was him?” he asked, returning to Teddy’s side.

“No respect.” Teddy sat up and sighed. “This fuckin’ kid don’t even give me the illusion of respect. It’s right on TV. Practically counting the money in my face. I thought I asked you to see about our end of it. And now I have to hear about this from a cop.”

“But Ted. . .”

“Not even the illusion. He puts it right in my face. Conquering the market under my fucking flag. The only reason Anthony’s getting in there with the casino people is ’cause he’s saying he’s with me. That’s the only reason. He’s in there talking like he’s an
amica nostra.
And not a penny of tribute to us. And you know what hurts me about this, Vin? You know what really hurts? The fact that you lied to me about it.”

Vin sputtered and pointed to his mouth, as if putting Teddy on notice that something worthwhile was about to come out. “I didn’t know nothin’ about this,” he finally managed to say. “What’s a, what’s a word you use? I was misinformed.”

“I wanna believe that,” Teddy said slowly, putting his head down on the pillow and trying to get back into the rhythm of the dialysis machine. “I wanna believe we mean more to each other than lies. But I already told you, Vin, I’m gonna have to get a piece of that. Didn’t I?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“So where’s my piece? All I’m hearing is lies. Anthony’s gotta be clearing a mil for this fight. What’re they gonna say about this in Philadelphia? In New York? On the Commission? The son of one of my own is giving me the finger.”

Vin put his hand over his heart. “Jeez, Ted, I, I don’t know. The kid must nota told me the truth.”

Teddy’s eyes stared straight up again. “That’s why he’s gotta go,” he said.

“But Ted...”

“He’s dying of ambition, your boy. See, I know he thinks I’m dying, because everyone’s talking about it, but he’s wrong. See, I still got the life force going inside me. But him, he’s the one that’s dying. You got no respect, it’s like a malignancy. It eats away inside you, a little bit at a time. You gotta cut it out or it’s gonna kill the whole body. You understand what I’m saying, Vin? Sometimes you gotta sacrifice a vital organ to save the rest.”

“Teddy, what’re you telling me? Now I gotta whack my own kid?”

Six more angry coughs racked Teddy and then a kind of serenity settled over him.

“Come on, Ted, you don’t mean that,” Vin beseeched him with clasped hands. “Lemme try and straighten him out. He’s a little confused, is all.”

A volcanic tremor came from somewhere deep inside Teddy. “What’re you, turning into a frail on me, Vin?”

Vin pushed himself up against the back of his chair. “Nah, I’m just saying, you give him an opportunity to stretch his wings and he’ll prove his loyalty,” he said with his voice cracking. “It’s like a little bird leaving his nest and coming back with twice as many twigs.”

“What’s the matter with you? Don’t you understand I want this fuckin’ kid clipped in the ass?”

“Let me talk to him one more time. I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm.”

Teddy just looked at him.

“Look at all the things I done in my life,” Vin went on. “Sometimes I look back and I think raising that boy was the only one that meant anything. After his mother died, it was just him and me. I brought him up like he was my own.”

Teddy kept glaring. There was a slightly jaundiced, yellowish tinge in his eyes.

Vin was almost off the couch and on his knees. “On my life, Ted. I’ll work this out. From now on, it’s my responsibility.”

“That’s what I’m telling you!” Teddy flared like old embers in a fireplace coming back to life. “It’s your responsibility to whack him.”

“But if I whack him, how are we ever gonna see any money out of this? See what I’m saying, Ted? Leave it to me. If I don’t turn Anthony around and make him work for you, you can give me all the blame. I’ll take whatever I got coming.”

Teddy touched his ear and the crease along his brow began to soften. With great effort, he leaned forward and slapped Vin’s knee with a pudgy, liver-spotted hand.

“All right,” he said with another cough. “You talk to him. Tell him I want sixty-five percent of whatever he’s making. And don’t take no for an answer. No more lies. That’s the end of it.”

“He’ll do the right thing.”

“Good, because otherwise he’s gonna get this.” Teddy made the sign of a gun with his hand.

The dialysis machine began to make a sputtering noise. Teddy slapped it a couple of times, but it didn’t help. Nothing was going through the tubes. Finally he turned a dial on the machine and some of the fluid began to flush through again.

“Life force, Vin, it’s a remarkable thing.” Teddy tried to roll onto his side without pulling one of the needles out of his thighs. “There’s days I think I’m gonna live forever.”

He coughed five times in a row. Vin leaned over and touched his hand. “You are, Ted. You are.”

“Yeah.” The machine seemed to shake. “But now I gotta go for my radiation three, four times a week and take this fuckin’ female hormone.”

“You’re still more a man than anyone I know,” Vin gripped his hand and kissed it.

Teddy looked up at the saline solution in the clear plastic bag over his head. “You know, Vin, the only part I’m sorry about is I don’t have a son of my own to pass things on to no more.”

“No one could blame you for that,” Vin assured him.

Teddy fell into another one of his long brooding silences, as his eyes followed the path of one single bubble in the clear tube, trying to make its way from his thigh to the humming machine.

48

THE DAY BEFORE THE
fight, my father asked me to meet him out on the Boardwalk at six o’clock in the morning. A chill wind strafed in from the Atlantic and a lazy sun was just beginning to climb out of the water. The sky was the color of a bruise.

“You remember when you were a kid and I used to take you for walks along here?” he began.

“Yeah, sure.”

How could I forget the way he took me by the hand after my real father died?

“You remember the stories I’d tell about the way Atlantic City used to be?” He handed me a cup of coffee.

“I’m not sure.”

The stories Vin told had a different flavor from the ones I heard from Mike. My real father liked to talk about the old hotel palaces, and Sinatra, and the diving horse on the Steel Pier. With Vin, it was another world.

“You know, they made history here once,” he said. “The old-timers. Capone, Luciano, Lansky, Siegel, Dutch Schultz, Maxie Hoff from Philadelphia. They all came into town one weekend in 1929 and decided to get rid of all the Mustache Petes from the old country who’d been running things. They wanted to make it more of an American business and not just a bunch of animals killing each other. They were supposed to be staying right down there at the Breakers.”

He waved his hand at the row of casinos and cut-rate hotels down toward the south end of the Boardwalk.

“I told you that story, right?” He took a sip from his coffee and smiled when it seemed to burn his tongue. “How they tried to check in all at once under assumed names, but the guy at the desk got wise and tried to throw them out?Lansky had to intervene just to keep them from shooting the place up. Instead they packed up their violin cases and moved on down to the Traymore.”

Steam rose off his coffee and evaporated in the salty air. Now that he’d brought it up, I realized he had told me the story about a million times before. But I had a feeling he was trying to make a different point this time.

“It’s all gone now,” he said, putting his coffee down on a green bench. “Back then, there was ...” He put his hands together, trying to think of a word.

“Cohesion?”

“Cooperation. They knew how to work together. They even helped each other move their bags to the other hotel when the Breakers wouldn’t take them in. And they had the greatest sit-down in the history of man. Divided up the whole country. That was the way they did it back then. They worked for a common goal. It all goes back to the old country. I ever tell you how they started this thing of ours?”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some French soldier raped a Sicilian girl on the day of her wedding and her mother cried
“Mia figlia, mia figlia”
and that night all the peasants sneaked out and killed the French soldiers. That story’s engraved on my cranium too. I still wasn’t sure what he was driving at.

“But that was the old country,” my father said with a sigh, briefly working over his hair again with the Ace comb. “Here, it’s different. It’s every man for himself. Like the way you live.”

Before I could defend myself, he put up a hand to cut me off.

“I’m not blaming anybody,” he said. “If I was starting off now, maybe I’d be the same as you. But that wasn’t the way I was brought up. I was brought up the old way, to think of the good of the whole
borgata
when I did something. Maybe if I was brought up your way, I could’ve learned to be more independent...”

I brought him up short. “So what’s the problem, Dad?”

He just looked out at the whitecaps rolling in and crashing on the beach. “Teddy found out that you still got a piece of this fight. And he wants to know when he’s getting his cut.”

“Tell him he’s got a long wait.”

“He ain’t gonna wanna hear that.”

“Then fuck him! What’s he going to do about it?”

Without a word, my father pulled up his shirttail and showed me the nine-millimeter tucked in his waistband. That knot tightened at the back of my skull.

“What are you saying? He was going to have you shoot me if I didn’t come across?”

The sun was rising higher, but my father still looked cold. The Boardwalk was empty at this hour, except for a couple of old bums rolled up in sleeping bags on the green wooden benches by the bathhouse.

“Look, I’m in a tough spot,” my father said, dropping the shirttail over his gun and looking embarrassed. “All my life I been a loyal soldier to Teddy. We came up in reform school together. I known him a helluva lot longer than I know you. Just throw him seventy, seventy-five thousand on top of what you already owe him. Show him some respect. You’ll make a sick man happy.”

“No!” I told him. “This was my deal all the way. I raised all the revenue, I took all the risks. Why should he be able to come in at the last minute and take a cut?”

“Because the man is dying. He feels like everything in his life’s been taken away from him. First he lost his son. Then Jackie from New York stole the unions. Now his health is going.” Vin gestured at the darkened casinos that sat like still white elephants along the Boardwalk. “Twenty years ago, he could walk around and feel like he owned this town. But then all these casino corporations and lawyers pushed him out. You don’t know what’s been taken from him

“What’s been taken from him?!” I exploded. “What’s been taken from him?!! What about what he took from me? He took my fucking childhood!! He took my fucking father from me!!”

Vin looked crestfallen. “I been a good father to you.”

But I wasn’t going to be put off any longer. This had been a long time coming, like rain after a humid spell. “I’m not talking about that,” I ripped into him. “I’m talking about Mike. The man whose blood runs in my veins. I want to know what happened to him.”

“Why, wha, I told you none of us know.” Vin couldn’t look me in the eye.

“All right, that’s enough,” I told him harshly. “That’s enough of the lies. Now I want to know the truth. I waited all my life. I already know Teddy killed Mike. Now I wanna know why and I want to know what you had to do with it.”

The tide flowed in and rolled out the way it had for five million years, but the breath my father exhaled sounded even older than that. A sandpiper ran along the shore with a clam in its mouth.

“Come on.” I stared at him. “You owe it to me.”

He ignored me for a few seconds and tried to light a cigarette. He flicked his lighter three times without producing a flame and then threw it across the beach. He stared after it for a long time before he spoke again.

“Well,” he said finally. “I guess you gotta be told sometime.”

I realized I was shaking, the way I did before I killed Nicky. “Tell the story.”

“Mike, yeah, Mike,” he mumbled, like he was trying to find the right place to begin. “He was a lifeguard, from over Margate. Good-lookin’, smoothtalker. He looked like that guy on television. What was his name? Edd ‘Kookie’ Byrnes.”

77 Sunset Strip.
I remembered the song Mike used to sing.

“Yeah, Mike did the whole California bit with the blonde girl and the red Corvette convertible. But what he really wanted to be was like Hugh Hefner and Howard Hughes rolled into one. A millionaire and a playboy. He was a dreamer, you know. Except he didn’t know how to do any of the things that got those guys where they were. He didn’t have any fuckin’ money. So that’s why he had to hook up with a couple of mugs like Teddy and me. He needed the muscle. And we needed somebody presentable-like like him to go in and talk to people in banks and such, because me and Teddy, we’d get thrown out before we got through the fuckin’ lobby.”

So that was Mike. I wondered if I would’ve gotten along with him as an adult.

“Anyway,” said Vin, looking down at the gray Boardwalk railing. “The three of us got involved in a real estate deal. We bought this hot dog place on the Boardwalk called Manny’s on the Boardwalk. I used to go in there once a week and slam the guy’s hand in the cash register. Eventually, they decided to just give us the deed instead of paying the protection money. So then about six months later, this hotshot lawyer from New York has a sit-down with us and wants to buy the property for a hundred twenty-five thousand dollars. Mike says fuck you, because he’s a dreamer.”

“What do you mean?” I strained to remember Mike’s face, but all I could picture at the moment was the back of his head and the shine on his shoes.

“You know,” said Vin. “He wanted to build one of these golden palace hotels like they used to have in the old days in Atlantic City. So he was holding out for more money. Which made Teddy nuts. He never liked Mike. Was always jealous, because Mike was so handsome and Teddy, he was kinda on the weighty side. And the two of them had a disagreement. Botta beep, botta bing, who remembers all the details? Mike wound up dead.”

“No botta beep. I want the real story. Tell me exactly what happened. Did Teddy get somebody to stick an ice pick in him?” I was in a rage. I wanted to tear the truth out of Vin.

He was already holding his sides like he was in pain. “Ah, shit. It was nothing. We were sitting around the living room, having some drinks, discussing things, and Mike went to the kitchen to get Teddy some pretzels. And when he came back in, Ted took a gun from behind one of the sofa cushions and shot him once.”

“Where?”

Vin’s mouth opened in disbelief. “What, do you gotta know everything?”

“Where did he shoot him?” I said louder.

“In the face. All right? Teddy shot him in the face. He never liked the way Mike looked. It was over in two seconds.”

A brief wind shifted the sands and another wave crashed onthebeach,breakingintoamillionfragments.But something inside me had turned to stone. “Then what happened?”

“Please,” Vin said in a quiet voice. “Don’t do this to me. I’m your father. I love you ...”

“Screw you. I want the rest.”

He threw his arms around himself. “It was all Teddy’s idea,” he said. “He had me pick you up in the car and the two of us drove out to bury Mike in the Pinelands. Teddy figured no one would stop a car with a little kid in front. Afterwards, I bought you a hot dog on the Boardwalk. I always thought you remembered it. That’s why I couldn’t understand that you’d keep asking me.”

I should’ve remembered it. I tried to bring it all back and picture it. But all I could see before me was the sea, the beach, and Vin, a trembling old man. The real memory was locked away behind some door I couldn’t open. Maybe it was better that way.

“So what happened to the real estate deal?” I asked, just to finish the story and lay it to rest.

Vin shook his head. “I guess Mike was right,” he sighed. “We wound up selling the property for a hundred twenty-five thousand dollars. And then the lawyers we sold it to went and tore down the hot dog stand and built the Doubloon Casino. We could’ve all been millionaires.”

I just stood there for a second, watching the Doubloon’s red
TAKE A CHANCE
sign thirty yards away blink on and off in the early-morning light. When the sun hit the casinos at this angle, they really did look like palaces and castles. Especially before all the losers, hustlers, scavengers, high rollers, hookers, sidewinders, and people who’ve just never caught on to how the world works came streaming out onto the beach.

All this time, it had been so obvious. But I didn’t want to see it. Now that I knew it all, I didn’t so much feel angry as half dead inside.

“I don’t think I can be around you anymore,” I told Vin.

A gust of wind blew through the tower of his hair, leaving it lopsided. “I understand,” he said.

“Tell Teddy whatever you want about the fight. I don’t see how I owe him anything else now.”

I started moving away, toward a broken part of the Boardwalk.

“What about you?” Vin tried to keep up with me. “What’re you gonna do.”

“Never mind about me.”

I still hadn’t worked out whether I was going to try to stay or get out of town after the fight. Either way, I wanted to make sure I’d have enough money to give my wife and kids.

“Anthony, gimme a hug.”

I turned to look at Vin. This murderous old man, who’d destroyed the life I could’ve had. I’d never noticed how hairy he was before. He had hair in his ears, hair in his nose, hair curling off the back of his neck. Larry DiGregorio must have felt his hairy fingers pressing down on his windpipe. Somehow I couldn’t find it in my heart to hate him. I just knew I had to get away from him.

He held out his arms to me.

“I’m not going to do that.” I stiffened.

Vin bowed his head, accepting that was the way it was going to be. “All right,” he said. “The only thing is, just make sure you get Teddy the sixty you already owe him. Otherwise, even I can’t protect you.”

“Don’t worry. He’ll get it.”

The wind whistled down the beach like a long train sigh and the tide crested along the nearest jetty. I looked down and saw the Boardwalk was littered with thousands of pieces of clamshells that had been dropped there by seagulls and crushed underfoot by tourists.

“Hey, Anthony.” Vin suddenly grabbed my arm and turned me to face him one last time. “I’m sorry.”

“About what?” Where could he begin?