Casino Moon

9

IT WAS TIME TO start raising money if I was going to get serious about the fight game. Fifty thousand dollars was what John B. said we needed. But I couldn’t have Teddy know I was going after that kind of money, or he’d want it all for himself.

That night I had to drop by Rafferty’s, to look at invoices. And since the place was usually crawling with wiseguys and union officials, I figured it might be a good time to renew old contacts and see about getting a little work for my contracting business.

I spotted Paulie Raymond, a guy who I knew had union connections, sitting with his brother Albert the hunchback at a round table. I went over to join them.

They looked like they were having the time of their lives. It was the first night we had Foxy Boxing and Hot Oil Wrestling at the club. Since topless dancing wasn’t allowed at bars in Atlantic City, Teddy decided to have the girls fight instead. Paulie had a ringside seat. He was all red, like a lobster, and every time you saw him he was wearing another piece of jewelry. This night, he had on a gold bracelet with his name spelled out in diamonds. Even though he was over sixty, the skin was tight around his jaw and lizardlike down his neck, as if he’d just had plastic surgery. It didn’t matter though; he still looked like an old fag you’d see hanging around the bus station late at night. It was hard to believe he’d been a detective with the Atlantic City Police Department for more than thirty years.

But Paulie was one of those cops who act more like wiseguys than wiseguys. The badge was just a license to steal. He was into everything: money laundering, ripping off drug dealers, securities frauds, insurance swindles. And on the side, he’d also gotten himself into a position where he was a go-between for Teddy’s crew and one of the local construction unions, where his uncles and cousins were all members. You had to treat him with respect because he had access to half the major building contracts in town.

“You’re lookin’ good, Paulie.”

“Yeah?” he said, watching the girls fight in the makeshift ring we’d set up.

A greased-blonde in a string bikini was throwing a body block on this busty redhead in a green one-piece bathing suit.

“I told that fuckin’ doctor to do something about my hands,” Paulie said.

“He’s got hands like an old woman,” said his brother Albert the hunchback. Albert was a quiet guy who liked to listen to classical music and go out with seventeen-year-old girls.

Paulie held up his hands. The knuckles were raw and the backs were well-mapped with blue and green veins.

He was wearing a fresh coat of clear nail polish and I thought of my mother lying there in the casket with her hands folded, after the last pill overdose. The memory made me gag and I had to stop myself from throwing up right there at ringside with the girls tossing each other around.

“It’s amazing what they can do with hands now,” Albert was saying. “They can give you another guy’s prints even. I swear, they had that when I was young, I wouldn’t have never had no record.”

“Larry felt bad about his hands too,” Paulie said, putting down his champagne glass.

“Who’s this?” I waved for the waitress to bring me a ginger ale.

“Larry DiGregorio, he had a carting business over in Brigantine,” said Paulie, looking right at me. “He was always looking at his hands and saying ‘How come I never hauled a piece of garbage in my life and I always look like I got dirt under my fingernails?’”

He shrugged and turned all the way back toward the girls in the ring. The redhead was biting the blonde’s arm now, even as the blonde had her in a headlock. Their bodies shined and rubbed together. I wondered if Paulie was watching them so intently just to prove he wasn’t a fag.

The waitress brought over my ginger ale. I thanked her and gave her a five-dollar tip.

“You know they found Larry in a Dumpster the other night,” said Paulie, without turning back to the table.

“Is that right?” I kept a poker face even as I stared at the spot by the bar where Vin stabbed him.

“Yeah. His son Nicky’s all hot about it. Says he’s gonna cut the heart out of the guy that did it.”

I just rubbed my fingers together and didn’t say anything.

In the ring, both girls were down on the canvas, wrestling. If you weren’t watching carefully, you’d think they were fooling around like kids in a sandbox. But as close as I was, I could see they were really grimacing and grabbing each other by the hair.

The blonde sank her teeth into the other girl’s arm. She was familiar, I decided. Thin nose and eyes just a bit too far apart. She looked a little like Shelly Francis, the girl I went with just before I met my wife. I started rooting for her for old time’s sake.

Paulie stuck his fat red claw with the gold rings into the popcorn bowl on the table. “So what’s your business with me?” he said. “I know you didn’t come over to inquire about my health plan.”

I acted insulted that he wanted to get to the point so quickly. “I was just interested. I heard Teddy wasn’t happy about Lenny Romano getting that job fixing the parking lot over at City Hall.”

He stuffed the popcorn into his mouth and just stared at me as he crunched it. I wasn’t sure if he knew what had happened with that contract. Normally the way it worked was that Teddy would have Paulie or one of his other contacts at the union threaten to throw a strike if one of Teddy’s phony construction firms didn’t get hired by a builder.

But in this case, that didn’t happen. I’d tried to get the contract legitimately. I went before the City Council with estimates for price, labor, and material, showing I could bring the job in for under three million dollars. But instead they awarded the contract to cross-eyed old Lenny Romano, whose lawyer Burt Ryan was also representing half the council members in their corruption trials. So I got screwed for playing it straight. If I’d gone through Teddy, he could’ve exerted pressure and gotten me the job. But I didn’t want to be any further in his debt, so I’d never asked him to get involved. I was gambling Paulie wouldn’t know that, though, so I could bully him into helping me get another job.

“So how ’bout it?” I said.

But Paulie saw through me immediately. He started huffing and puffing, like a bellows blowing into a fireplace. “Teddy didn’t have nothing to do with the City Hall parking lot. That was Burt Ryan’s contract.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” I stirred my drink. “It’s one of the first construction sites to open up in about a year and it doesn’t go to one of Teddy’s people. That’s why he’s upset about it.”

Paulie looked down his remodeled nose at me. “Well if Teddy’s got a problem, why doesn’t he come talk to me himself?”

I guess maybe he’d retained a few cop instincts. But I was still determined to try to bluff him out. I figured that if I acted like I had Teddy’s support, Paulie might go back to his people at the union and find me some work.

“Teddy doesn’t need to talk to you himself,” I said. “He knows he can rely on me. I’m married to his niece.”

“Oh, that’s bullshit!” said Paulie, spraying me with spit on the b sound. “What’re you trying to do, start trouble or something?”

“No.” I met his eyes. “I’m just saying what Teddy wants.”

Teddy had been dominating my whole life. I thought I should get something out of the association.

In the ring, the redhead threw the blonde against the ropes and got ready to kick her in her midsection. Paulie watched them a minute and then gave me his full attention.

“Let me tell you something, Anthony. Teddy ain’t such a big man anymore. In fact, as far as this union’s concerned, he’s out and Burt Ryan’s in. It’s a lawyer’s game now. So I wouldn’t go throwing around Teddy’s name like it meant something.”

“I’m not throwing his name around.” I frowned. “You know, you shouldn’t be so disrespectful, Paulie. My family goes back a long ways with you.”

“Listen, you little fuck,” he shot back. “I know all about you. I know how you got this act where you come on like you’re Mr. Nice Guy trying to make a buck and then you turn around and screw your partners into the ground.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Oh yeah?” He gripped his champagne glass like he was about to crack it. “What about them cigarettes?”

“What cigarettes? I don’t smoke cigarettes.”

“This fuckin’ guy.” Paulie leaned back to include his brother in our conversation. “He gets three thousand dollars off our cousin Bimmy and says he’s got a line on a truck full of untaxed cigarettes off an Indian reservation. Then he takes the money and leaves Bimmy waiting for the cigarettes.”

He was talking about a scheme Teddy and my father got me involved in years ago, back when I was in high school. They had me go to an albino grocery store owner named Bimmy and tell him I could get him the cigarettes for forty cents a pack. Then they took his money and gave him nothing in return for it. And now I was getting the blame.

“Look, Paulie,” I said. “That was a long time ago. I don’t do that type of thing anymore. And besides, I didn’t even know that guy was related to you.”

“You’re another fuckin’ con artist just like your old man,” said Paulie. I could smell the champagne excretions on his breath. “You’re both grown out of the same dirt even if you don’t smell the same. You’d fuck your grandmother if you could get a contract out of it. The only difference is you don’t have enough balls to squeeze a trigger when you have to.”

In the ring, I saw the blonde pick herself up off the canvas and give the redhead a stiff elbow to the jaw. I knew that if she was in my position, she wouldn’t take this type of abuse from Paulie.

All of a sudden I got a very cold feeling inside. “What do you know about my father?” I asked Paulie.

He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

“Hey.” I stuck a finger in his face and kept it there awhile. “Don’t you ever talk about my father.”

It was one of those moments when I was so mad that all the sound in the room cut off and all I could hear was the pounding in my head.

Whatever look I was giving, it sobered Paulie up. He turned pale and started fooling with his bracelet.

“You shouldn’t talk about things you don’t know about,” I said.

The blonde girl in the ring was getting kicked in the stomach again, but it didn’t slow her down. It just made her mad. There was something special about her, I decided. She wasn’t beautiful exactly. She had a little meat on her hips and some kind of weird scar down by her navel. When she tossed her hair, you could see the roots were dark. But you couldn’t take your eyes off her. It was the way she moved. She put her whole body into everything she did. When her hip went by you, it was like a force of nature passing through. In a funny way, she reminded me of Vin and Elijah. She was the kind of person who never quit. And in a flash, it came to me that I should’ve married someone like her instead of my wife.

Paulie moved his chair back and tried to give me a smile like we were really still friends after all.

In the meantime, the bell was sounding that the fight was over. The referee was holding up the redhead’s arm. The blonde girl was looking over at them with a mixture of disgust and determination. Like she’d known the fight was rigged all along, but she’d given it her best anyway. She was someone just like me. Who’d been put down all her life and had to struggle just to stay on par.

Seeing her fight had inspired me to stand up to Paulie, who was hunkered down at the table like some mean old toad protecting his stool. I knew he wasn’t going to help me get any contracts, but I wasn’t ready to take any more shit from him either.

“Just watch yourself, Paulie,” I said, standing up and giving him a pretty good knock on the shoulder. “Your cousin got what he deserved. No one gets taken who wasn’t greedy in the first place. If he’s got a problem he should talk to me himself. Otherwise I don’t wanna hear it. I’ve got no respect for people who can’t take care of themselves.”