Casino Moon

2

WHAT WAS THAT bonehead’s name?

Detective Pete “The Pigfucker” Farley watched the F.B.I. man duck under the yellow crime-scene tape and approach Larry DiGregorio’s corpse. What was this fed’s name? Something that rhymed with stain. Lane. Payne. Wayne, that was it. The F.B.I. man knelt down next to the body and began pawing through the pockets like a bear looking for honey.

Beautiful, thought Pigfucker. By the time he’s done, he’ll have his fingerprints on every useful piece of evidence.

The scene was beginning to take on the ambience of a nighttime baseball game. Dozens of people streamed over from the Golden Doubloon Casino across the street, trying to get a look at Larry lying in the dim, drafty alley behind an abandoned restaurant. Four heavyset bicycle cops in plastic helmets and blue shorts attempted to cordon off the area. A German shepherd barked from the back of a K-9 unit car by the curb and two guys from the medical examiner’s office hung out nearby, leisurely smoking cigarettes.

From twenty feet outside the crime scene tape, Pigfucker watched Wayne the F.B.I. man carefully lift a key chain out of Larry’s pants pocket with a pencil and then touch each key with his fingers. Brilliant that they sent people to Quantico to learn how to do that. No wonder most local cops and hoods called the feds “feebs.”

Pigfucker, or P.F. as he was known, stood back, chewing a Tums and admiring the way the blue strobes lit up the crime scene and the light rain. At forty-three, he was already as creased and jaded as Chairman Mao just before he died. He wore a brown sports jacket with dark blotches on it, tan slacks, and a wan smile meant to convey he didn’t care that people no longer thought highly of him. An unruly mop of black hair with gray frosting fell over his forehead and a thick mustache concealed the slight twitching of his mouth.

“What’s the cause of death?” he asked when one of the medical examiner’s guys walked by, carrying a transparent plastic bag.

“Four gunshots to the body and a stab wound through the kidney.”

“I see, natural cause for a guinea.” P.F. chuckled and tapped his foot in a gathering puddle of rain.

How many homicide scenes had he been at like this? Where the victim and perpetrator were clearly part of some great larger mechanism for controlling the ebb and flow of criminal enterprise. He told himself he didn’t care anymore. All these organized crime cases were in the jurisdiction of feebs like Wayne anyway. Local cops like P.F. were only there to set the table and search the gutters for spent shells.

A young patrol sergeant named Ken Lacey brought over a potential witness: a stubby little black man wearing a torn Malcolm X T-shirt, with a black Nike Solo Flight on one foot and a low-top white Fila on the other. A beard as coarse as barnacles roughened the sides of his face and a tangerine-sized bump rose from the left side of his forehead.

“Do you know me?” P.F. looked him up and down.

“I don’t even know myself no more.”

“Didn’t I used to chase you off this corner twenty years ago?” P.F. closed one eye and squinted through the other, like a jeweler examining a precious stone. “What’s your name again?”

“Steven Ray Banks. And don’t you wear it out.”

“You found the body, right?”

“Motherfucker was sleeping in my house,” Stevie Ray mumbled. “That’s my Dumpster. I been in there every night the last three nights.”

“I thought you were living under the Boardwalk. Didn’t I see you coming out of there last year?”

Stevie Ray shook his head. “It got bad there, man. They got a lot of riffraff come into town. You know? People who aren’t right in their heads. They see Merv Griffin on TV, they get themselves a bottle of pills and a one-way bus ticket to Atlantic City.”

A white jitney bus across the street discharged a squad of doughy older women carrying pink change cups.

“Eh, you didn’t happen to see who put him there, did you?” P.F. asked. “In the Dumpster, I mean.”

Stevie Ray pushed his mouth up toward his nose. “You sound like all them other damn police officers. I told them, ‘Motherfucker came in my house unannounced, just like all you motherfuckers do.’ Why is that, man? Everywhere I go, I gotta be somewhere else. People always be telling me, move on, motherfucker, move on. Ain’t I got a right to be somewhere?” He swung his leg like he was kicking an invisible ball across the street. “Got me living like a dog, without a home, man. And that is the sad truth.”

“What can I tell you, my friend?” P.F. swallowed the rest of his Tums. “It’s an imperfect world. Allow yourself to become nothing and you’ve got no place in it.”

“Don’t I know, don’t I know.”

Stevie Ray put his hands into his pockets and stared at the traffic whizzing by the open end of the alley. The TAKE A CHANCE sign for the Golden Doubloon casino blinked on and off as the F.B.I. man named Wayne got done looking through Larry DiGregorio’s pockets. It was just a matter of time before he’d want to talk to this witness.

“You didn’t know him by any chance, did you? The victim, I mean. Larry.” P.F. felt the antacids warring in his belly.

“No, man, I don’t have nothing to do with the Mafia.” Stevie Ray wagged his head like a dashboard ornament. “I was in the casino business. I used to work right across the street here. At the Doubloon.”

He stared off at the flashing TAKE A CHANCE sign across the street as if it were some distant constellation.

“Is that right?” said P.F.

“You’re damn straight! I gave them people the five best years of my life. And what’d I get for it?” He moved his hands around like he was looking for the right thing to compare it to. “What I got was .. . squat. They left me with a dog food bowl that didn’t have no food in it. It was all because of my damned shift manager, man. He say he caught me trying to steal chips out with my mouth. But that motherfucker wanted me to have sex with his sister and show it on public TV. So whenever I go over to someone’s house, they’ve got me on the TV having sex with his sister. That’s a damn shame. So now I have to live under the Boardwalk where they don’t get public TV.”

Half the time with guys like this, you couldn’t tell if they were really crazy or just faking to compensate for life’s disappointments. That’s what the casinos did for these people. They raised their expectations and let them down brutally. A couple of years ago, you might’ve found this Stevie Ray wearing a starched white shirt and gold cuff links, dealing blackjack over at the Doubloon. Talking about owning a house for the first time. But it never lasted. The casinos never delivered on all the wealth they promised. Eventually people like this Stevie would get laid off and wind up out on the street again. Amidst forty-eight blocks of drab poverty and gaudy desperation.

As they finally got done loading Larry’s body into the medical examiner’s van, Pigfucker saw Wayne the F.B.I. agent heading over his way.

“Say, man,” said Stevie Ray. “Things have been a little slow tonight. Why don’t you let me hold five dollars for you ’til tomorrow?”

“I’ll tell you what,” P.F. countered. “If you remember anything about someone unusual hanging around your Dumpster before they found the body, you got your five-spot.”

But it was too late. Wayne the F.B.I. man was already standing between him and the witness. Sadowsky, that was his last name. Wayne Sadowsky. The name flashed in P.F.’s mind like a half-screwed in light bulb. Big, pastyfaced Southern kid with huge linebacker shoulders and a brown perm that sat like a sick poodle on top of his head. He moved poorly, though, like he’d once been badly injured.

“Why don’t you-all just back off now, Officer Farley?” Sadowsky said, his accent rich with the kind of snide condescension young federal agents reserve for older local cops. “This here is going to be a legitimate investigation.”

Yes. Number 54, Wayne Sadowsky, out with a groin pull.

“Wonderful,” said P.F. “I’ve no need to engage in weenie-waggling with you anyway. You can have your grubby little case all to yourself.”

He scratched his crotch with regal indifference and started to walk away.

“Hey,” Stevie Ray called after him. “What about them five dollars? I wouldn’t forget it, man.”

“Ask your new friend with the federal government,” said P.F., glancing back at Stevie Ray and then Sadowsky. “They’re always ready to help out a man in need.”

The agent took Stevie Ray’s arm and pulled him away. The medical examiner’s guys finally slammed the van doors on Larry DiGregorio. And the strip of casinos on Pacific Avenue kept shining like a golden chain extending into the night, dividing Atlantic City into a realm of light on one side of the street and darkness on the other.