Casino Moon

21

ON JULY 4TH, Richie Amato and I were sitting in a borrowed car on a side street near the Inlet. I think it was a red 1991 Reliant. Richie was in the driver’s seat running his mouth.

“Let me tell you something. I got a lot of respect for Joey Snails but he’s a no-good motherfucker.”

“Why’s that?” I looked over the dashboard at the street in front of us.

At any moment Nick DiGregorio’s car would come rolling along, and then one of us would have to get out and shoot him. And with the way my stomach was turning itself inside out, I hoped it wouldn’t be me.

“I’ll tell you what Joey’s problem is,” Richie said, shifting in his seat and jangling the chains on his runway-sized chest. “He’s a dumb shit, that’s what he is. The other night we’re supposed to do a job, right? So what does he do? He shows up shit-faced and instead of bringing a gun like he’s supposed to, he’s got a crowbar, a radio, and a coat hanger ...”

“A coat hanger?” I had trouble focusing. My mind was on what we were about to do.

“Yeah, he thinks he’s gonna go in through the side and puncture the intestines,” Richie said. “I know it’s fuckin’ stupid, but I figured with the crowbar is okay. I mean, we’re only supposed to be breaking legs here. We’re not animals, are we? Anyway, fuckin’ Joey Snails. As we’re coming into the stall, he trips over a fuckin’ bale of hay or something ...”

I came back into the conversation. “Wait a second. As you were going into the stall?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“Wait.” I gave him the time-out sign. “You went into a stall to whack somebody?”

“That was the contract.”

“What were you doing? Putting a hit on a horse?”

“Yeah,” said Richie. “You didn’t know about this? Ted worked out a deal with someone he knows at an insurance agent. We do this racehorse and he’s supposed to split the money. Except fuckin’ Joey Snails let the horse out of the barn. He got this idea in his head he’s gonna get this horse Snowflake to stand in a tub of water while he throws a radio in. Make it look like a heart attack. Instead he lets it out and we have to go chasing it in the middle of the fuckin’ night. With a crowbar, a coat hanger, and a radio. I tell you the guy’s an idiot.”

You should know, I thought, adjusting the rearview mirror. Look at him sitting there. Fuckin’ Richie Amato. Poster child for anabolic steroids. Who once made a bartender who owed him money blow him in front of a room full of people and then got mad when somebody called him a faggot afterwards. Fuckin’ Richie. With his monobrow and his $250 Italian loafers and the light slacks he paid a hundred dollars for and still couldn’t fit into. Richie’s idea of a good time was carrying around Ted’s coat for him on a summer afternoon and then hanging out in a bar with him all night, laughing at Teddy’s jokes and checking his own hair in the mirror.

What a life. Everything you did, you gave half to Teddy. And if you were a dope like Richie, half the money you got to keep you wasted on clothes, gambling, or broads. God forbid you should get pinched driving around drunk or something stupid like that, because then the Big Guy would make you pay for your own lawyer.

But here was Richie smiling away at himself in the mirror. Like his life was just so terrific. He wasn’t even a made guy yet, but anything Teddy told him to do he’d do. Go ahead. Shoot somebody in broad daylight. Do it cowboy style. Make some fuckin’ noise. That’s what the Big Guy wanted. Hell, if I’d left it up to Richie we’d be doing this hit in the lobby of the Taj Mahal instead of a quiet side street near the Inlet.

In a way it didn’t matter. I was just counting on Richie to pull the actual trigger. I didn’t want to be responsible myself.

“I hope this fuckin’ guy shows up soon,” Richie was saying. “I got a date later tonight with this broad in Ventnor and I wanna be in the mood for some serious helmet when I get there . .. Jeez, I hope nothing happened to this Nick.”

“Yeah, I have to do something too.”

I was supposed to pick up Rosemary after work at the club.

“Oh yeah?” Richie looked at me. “She anybody I oughta know?”

I froze for a second, wondering what he knew. Richie and I have always been competitive. Ever since Carla broke up with him and started dating me. It only made it worse that he knew I hadn’t really killed Larry DiGregorio like my father had said.

“I’m not seeing any girl,” I lied. “I’m talking to Danny Klein about borrowing some money.”

Richie suddenly put his arm out for me to stop talking.

Behind us, I heard twigs and old cans crunching and crinkling under an auto’s wheels and the sound of an engine dying. A slamming car door took a chunk out of the night.

Up in the rearview mirror, there was Nick DiGregorio getting out the driver’s side of the car. Twenty-seven years old and as chinless as Larry.

One of those laser-beam headaches started to sear the back of my eyes. I wanted to put the key back into the ignition and drive away from there as fast as I could. I’d been putting this moment off all my life, it seemed. But here it was, like a math test where you didn’t know any of the answers.

I watched in the mirror as Nick crossed in front of his I-Roc and went over to the passenger’s side. Someone else was getting out and Nick was holding the door solicitously like an animal trainer trying to coax a chimp out of a red wagon. Finally she emerged. Just under five feet tall, just over eighty years old. But built like a little buffalo in her flowered sundress.

“Ah shit,” I said. “That’s his goddamn grandmother. Now what are we gonna do?”

“We’re gonna finish the fuckin’ job.” Richie checked his gun and opened his door. “We been following this bastardall fuckin’ week. I’m not gonna waste another night on him.”

With that, he was out of the car, running toward Nick and his grandmother. I had no choice but to follow. I took a second to close the car door behind me and then broke into a trot. The air was warm and felt good in my lungs.

Richie was already closing in on Nick and his grandmother. Trees rustled and garbage cans rattled. When Nick saw Richie raise his gun, he began to run the other way across the street, leaving his grandmother rooted to the spot on Rhode Island Avenue.

She reached up as Richie went by and grabbed him by the throat. He sank down to one knee and yelped in agony. And as I caught up to them, I saw her long red nails digging into the back of Richie’s neck.

“Ah lemme go you old bitch!” Richie shrieked, trying to swat her off his back. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes. “Go get that piece of shit! And watch out if he has a gun!”

Thirty yards away, Nick was disappearing between two drab wood-framed houses across the street. I went after him.

The moon was like a bare lightbulb throwing light around the sky.

I followed Nick’s path and heard two dogs start barking. There was a Cyclone fence and beyond it the weeds were swaying. I hesitated for a couple of seconds and then started climbing it. About halfway up, my pants got caught on a loose wire and the left pocket started to rip. A brand-new pair of linen pants. I must’ve paid seventy-five dollars for them. It was one thing when an imbecile like Richie got all worked up about his clothes, but these were really nice pants.

I jumped down the other side of the fence where the dogs’ barking was much louder. The ground was soft and muddy and my Bally shoes sank down an inch or two. I lifted my eyes to curse the heavens, but then I heard the bushes shaking about ten yards away and I remembered what Richie said about Nick’s having a gun.

I ducked down and kept moving forward. The area was more swamp than woods. Weeds stretched a foot or two higher than my head. The air was heavy and fetid; sweatsoaked my shirt collar and mosquitoes probed my ears. Roots like giant arteries swelled out of the ground and almost tripped me.

For some reason, I started thinking about being a kid and going out for a night with Vin. I remembered being in the car with him and driving out to the Pine Barrens. I could picture the top of the dashboard and the car headlights flashing by when he left me by myself for a few minutes to do something. I couldn’t have been more than eight years old. I remember being afraid and starting to cry because I thought he’d never come back for me and I’d die by myself in the woods. And when he came back, wiping the dirt off his hands, it was as if my life had begun again. Afterwards, he took me for a walk on the Boardwalk and bought me a milkshake, while the moon was shining on the water and Sinatra was singing on the jukebox.

A burst of red, white, and blue firecrackers over my head brought me back to the present. It was a fireworks display sponsored by one of the casinos.

I pulled out the .25 Vin had given me and walked on carefully. I went where the weeds were stirring and followed a mossy path about a quarter mile out toward some lights. I found myself coming out on New Hampshire Avenue, facing the ocean and a rotting section of the Boardwalk. On the street directly in front of me were rows of two-and three-story houses with lousy paint jobs and lopsided roofs.

Black people lived here. When I looked up, I saw some of their houses had yellow lights pouring out the windows as if the families inside were having dinner. For a moment, I felt a stab of envy. I should’ve been home with my family. But then I’d have Nicky lurking around outside, waiting to get us.

I saw him suddenly darting out from between two of the houses and heading for the Boardwalk. The chinless bastard was limping a little, but he managed to keep up a brisk pace when he heard my footsteps coming after him down the empty street.

Just as I seemed to be gaining on him, Nick ran under the Boardwalk. I hesitated for a split second and then followed him under.

It was dark under the Boardwalk. As soon as I heard rats scurrying, I knew he hadn’t gone far. A smell hit me that was a cross between fresh seaweed and a fart that had lingered in the air about three hundred years. Little bits of light seeped through the slats overhead and a weak flashlight shone against a wall about a hundred yards away. Within a few seconds, my eyes began to trace the outline of sleeping bags and lanterns. I’d always heard people lived under here. There were boxes of cereal, pots and pans, and even a small television. And crouching behind one of the wooden beams was Nick DiGregorio.

“Anthony I’m begging you,” he said in a shaky voice. “We’ve known each other since kindergarten.”

That was certainly true, though I didn’t remember much about Nick except he was one of the boys who teased me the day after the cops came and said my real father, Mike, probably wasn’t coming back.

I took my gun and aimed it. The ocean tossed and roared and tossed some more. God’s indigestion.

I still didn’t know if I had the nerve to go through with this. But I wasn’t sure if Nicky had a gun either.

In the distance, I heard faint pops and explosions from the fireworks display.

“Come on, Anthony, let’s be men about this,” he said in a slightly stronger voice. “I know you had nothing to do with what happened to my father. I wasn’t gonna let nothing happen to you.”

He had come out from behind the beam. Even in the dim light, I could see his eyes were the same color as the oysters you found in the sand. I could even hear what was going on in Nick’s stomach from ten yards away. A noisy question mark of gas swallowed itself backwards up his intestine.

“Anthony,” he said, once more using my name as a form of supplication. “I swear on my grandmother’s life I wasn’t gonna do nothin’ to you or anybody else in your family.”

But Nick’s grandmother was with Richie, and swearing on her life didn’t mean much. We both realized it at the same time. I thought of this little prayer I used to recite sometimes when I was young before I went to bed. Please Dear Lord, make it so I am not myself living this life. Make it go quickand fast, so it’s like I am a million miles away watching it.

Nick reached into his jacket like he was about to pull out a gun. The .25 in my hand choked and spit fire at him.

The noise was lost in the last burst of fireworks overhead.

When I came out there was no one around. All I saw was a solitary seagull circling and screaming over the Boardwalk and a cloud drifting across the moon.