Casino Moon

8

“WHEN I FIRST come out here, there was nothing,” Teddy was saying the next day. “We had to build it up. The Boardwalk was so empty, you could’ve fired a cannonball and not hit anybody.”

“Yeah, I heard that,” said Jackie, the new mob boss visiting from New York.

“It was right after the Democratic Convention in ’64,” Teddy went on. “When all the press said Atlantic City was a shithole. ‘The glory days are over.’ You know. Because people weren’t coming down to the shore anymore. But I tell you, it only really got bad after the stories in the media. Right? Correct me, Vin. Anytime anything goes wrong you’ll either find a lawyer or a newsman behind it.”

They were sitting in Teddy’s backyard at the Florida Avenue house. A gentle breeze rustled the rose garden by the twelve-foot-high brick wall. Teddy and Vin were sitting on one side of a brown picnic table under a large white umbrella. Jackie “J.J.” Pugnitore and his underboss Sal Matera were on the other side. A platter full of cold cuts sat between them. Jackie still had not touched any food. He was forty-nine years old and wore a beige linen suit with a bright red shirt and a black handkerchief in his breast pocket. His nostrils were as wide and dark as his eyes. He’d first made his name as a street fighter in the Bronx, beating up blacks for being in the wrong neighborhood. He would’ve been disturbed to know that his ancestors in Sicily were referred to as “those Africans” by their neighbors on the Italian mainland.

His underboss Sal had slicked-back hair and a closed-off face. His designer polo shirt was a size too small, to emphasize the roundness of his pectorals and the broadness of his shoulders.

“Eat something,” Vin urged the guests.

“In a minute.” Jackie touched his heart.

“Anyway that’s what Vin and I inherited when we came out here,” Teddy continued, enjoying the sunny day and the attention of his visitors. “A pile of shit. We had to lay the foundations. Us and a guy named Mike Dillon.”

Vin flinched a little when Teddy said the name.

“In fact,” Teddy went on, “I got sent out here as punishment by the old man in Philadelphia. Vin and I beat up a shine liquor salesman who wouldn’t give up his parking space on Rosemount Avenue.”

“There was a Mercury behind it we wanted to steal,” Vin explained, rolling up the sleeve of his blue-and-white running suit so he wouldn’t get oil stains on it.

“It wasn’t our fault the guy dropped dead four days later in the hospital.” Teddy took two slices of salami off the platter and put them in his mouth. “Poor Vin got charged with manslaughter and did a five-year stretch in Graterford for the both of us.”

Teddy laid a heavy, appreciative hand on Vin’s shoulder. “He never once opened his mouth either,” he said. “He did his time like a man. Not like these rat kids, running around now. Can’t wait to find a federal agent to snitch to.”

Jackie seemed interested in something Teddy said before, though. “You were in Graterford, Vin?” he asked, one eyebrow arching up toward his perfectly coiffed gray-black hair.

“Five years.” Vin took two slices of rye bread and made Teddy a sandwich.

“You know Billy Nose while you were in there?” Jackie asked.

They were all quiet. Billy Nose had been boss of the biggest crew in New York. Jackie had had him killed two months before in a power struggle.

“Yeah.” Vin put mayo on the sandwich. “I think he was doing a stretch for driving somebody else’s Rambler on the Turnpike with thirty G’s in the back.”

Jackie gave his underboss a sidelong glance and then turned back to Vin. “And how’d he do his time?”

“How’d he do his time?” Vin handed over the sandwich. “The worst I ever seen.”

“Really?” Jackie seemed pleased.

“I’m telling you.” Vin scratched his nuts. “He was always running to me whenever he had a problem. Always crying, always. He said, ‘Vin, when I’m with you, I’m so comfortable, it’s like I’m sucking on my own mother’s tit.’”

Both of Jackie’s eyebrows shot up. “He said that? Those were his words?” His mouth twisted in disgust.

“You show me someone who can prove he didn’t, I’ll let you fuck me in the ass,” Vin said.

Everyone smiled. Teddy’s wife, Camille, came out of the house with a tray full of glasses. She moved slowly, as though permanently stunned, and wore a dark pair of Ray-Ban shades. She put the tray down with trembling, bony hands and returned to the house without looking at any of the men.

“Thank you, Mrs. Marino,” Jackie called after her.

Teddy poured each of the four of them a glass of Remy Martin and proposed a toast. “Here’s lookin’ at you, Jackie,” he said. “No one deserved to be boss more.”

They raised their glasses and clinked them together. Teddy and Vin downed about half their drinks. Jackie and Sal barely sipped theirs.

“Tell you the truth, I’m glad Billy Nose is dead.” Vin turned sideways and looked out toward the rose garden.

“I heard he was an old scumbag,” Teddy added, biting into his sandwich.

Jackie ran his fingers along his lapels and looked philosophical. “You know what the trouble was?” he said. “He was an old man. No offense, Teddy.”

Teddy lifted and dropped his shoulders. No offense taken. He was only about eleven years older than Jackie himself.

“I mean, he thought like an old man,” Jackie elaborated. His underboss Sal nodded. “He was afraid to make changes. He wouldn’t move anybody up. He was jealous of the young guys like me.”

Teddy wiped his hands on a paper napkin and looked over at Vin. “We were just saying, our old man in Philadelphia was the same way,” he said. “All them old greaseballs are like that. They see a young guy like you, Jackie, and it reminds them they’re gonna die one day.”

“Right,” said Jackie as Sal Matera leaned back and grabbed his own crotch. “Billy Nose just stopped making people. I’m serious. After Apalachin, he didn’t induct one soldier. Not one. Until the eighties. You had a whole generation of guys backed up, because they couldn’t go anywhere. It’s frustrating, you know.”

“Yeah,” said Vin, seeing an opportunity and jumping in. “We got a young guy just like that ourselves. Very capable. My own boy, in fact. We’re trying to move him up .. .”

Teddy cut him off with an angry glance.

Mrs. Marino came out of the house again with another tray full of glasses and a tall green bottle of Pellegrino water. She poured two glasses for Jackie and Sal and they smiled appreciatively. She returned to the house and could be seen weeping through the kitchen curtains.

“Ted,” said Jackie, raising the water glass. “I just want you to know we went through proper channels before Billy got whacked. We talked to everyone on the Commission before it happened. I know you weren’t able to make it down to the last meeting, but I just wanted you to know we did the right thing.”

“Jackie, on my son’s grave, it never entered my mind.”

They all stopped talking a moment and looked out at the garden. Since Atlantic City was set on a barrier island, it was difficult to plant anything more than a rose garden out here. Another salt breeze riffled the plain short blades of grass. Smoke from a barbecue rose from the other side of the brick wall. Teddy sniffed, looked down at his glass of Remy Martin, and finished the rest of it.

Jackie watched him carefully. “I wasn’t sure if anybody mentioned it to you, Ted, but there was something else on the agenda the last time the Commission met.”

“What’s that?”

“We were talking about some of the unions down here and it was decided that Ralphie Sasso over at the hotel workers’ should now belong to us.”

Jackie sat back with a hand on each of his lapels, waiting to be challenged.

“What’re you talking about?” Teddy’s face began to burn. “That’s been our union for twenty years. You can’t just come in and claim it!”

Jackie folded his arms across his chest and Sal Matera sat up a little straighter.

“I’m sorry, Ted, but that’s the way the Commission wanted it,” Jackie explained.

Teddy’s mouth was hanging open. Vin was tearing furiously at his shock of gray hair.

“Look, Ted,” said Jackie, crossing his legs. “We’re all getting squeezed now with these federal cases and the economy the way it is. We’re gonna have to learn to share.”

Vin shook his head. “I just saw Ralphie the other day. He didn’t say a thing to me.”

Teddy was furious. “This is unbelievable, Jackie. You think you can come in here and put my balls in your pocket?”

“Hey,” Jackie interrupted him. “It wouldn’t hurt so bad if you hadn’t given up the narcotics to the niggers or if you’d gotten a little further with the casinos.”

“What’re you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Jackie raised his voice, “that everyone knows you’ve never placed an executive at one of these places.”

“You try doing it with all these cameras and state troopers around,” Teddy protested. “It’s off-limits. You can’t get in there. It can’t be done. They got regulations up the ying-yang. No one’s ever had an amica nostra on the payroll.”

“And for twenty years, you’ve been feeding off the crumbs from the unions.” Jackie put a hand flat on the picnic table and stared him down. “And now it’s time for you to share it with the rest of us.”

Teddy started to stand up. “This is bullshit, Jackie!” he shouted. “It’s absolutely indecent. You’re trying to cut my fucking balls off!”

Jackie looked over at Sal, who reached down toward his sock as though he had a gun holstered there.

Vin put his arm across Teddy’s wide chest, trying to calm him down.

“Listen, Ted,” said Jackie, standing up and buttoning his jacket. “You got a problem with this, take it up with the Commission. Otherwise, that’s the way it’s gonna be. It’s decided.”

Teddy sat down, still sputtering angrily, but afraid to do anything about it. Vin put an arm around his shoulders. Jackie checked his Rolex and then signaled for Sal to stand up and leave with him.

“It’s not right, Jackie, not right.” Teddy wouldn’t look at him. He stared down at the picnic table as his stubby fingers grappled with each other on his lap. “You come down here, eat our food, and then you stab us in the back.”

“Hey,” said Jackie, pointing to the platter, which was still piled high with cold cuts. “We hardly ate anything.”

The two guests left abruptly, without saying goodbye. Teddy sat quietly stroking his middle for a few minutes while Vin tried to comfort him. More smoke came from the barbecue on the other side of the brick wall. Mrs. Marino peered out once from behind the kitchen curtains and went back to crying about her dead son.

Teddy stuck a finger into the platter of cold cuts and poked at them awhile.

“All this food I just bought,” he said to Vin. “It’s all gonna turn to shit.”