Casino Moon

4

“THE STONES,” SAID Vincent Russo. “I’m telling you, Ted. You can’t believe the stones on this kid.”

“Yeah?”

“He stands right up like a man, shoots Larry twice. I never lifted a finger. I was too scared, you know. Larry gets up, Anthony gives him two more for his health. Bang, bang. I had nothin’ to do with it. My ass was sucking. You know what I’m saying?”

Teddy Marino, his boss, watched him suspiciously and said nothing.

The two of them were standing in a third-floor bathroom, where they were sure their conversation wouldn’t be bugged. Noise filtered up from the social club on the first floor. The old lady down the hall turned her light off. Teddy, wearing a pinstripe suit without a tie, shifted uncomfortably in the doorway.

He was fat in the way of people who can’t help themselves, rather than those who actually enjoy eating. His stomach stuck out over his belt like scaffolding and his jowls flowed over his collar like lava. Though he was turning sixty in a week, the pudgy boy who’d been tormented by his reform school mates in the shower was still close to the surface, biding his time, waiting for revenge.

“So I was thinking,” said Vin, pulling on the hem of his green polo shirt. “Now might be a good time.”

“A good time for what?”

“You know.” Vin ran a hand through his shock of gray hair. “To think about inducting Anthony.”

Teddy inhaled deeply and his jowls reddened slightly. “How many times I gotta tell you, Vin? It’s a closed issue. Anthony hasn’t the Sicilian blood on both sides so there’s no way I can make him.”

Vin started to say something, but Teddy was already waving a chubby hand in his face. “Look, this isn’t my teaching,” he said. “It’s the way it’s always been. You can’t just pick and choose from tradition. It’s either all or nothing. Like believing in God. You either buy into the whole program or go fuck yourself.”

Vin bit his thumb and listened to the music pounding up from downstairs. Either “O Sole Mio” or Elvis Presley singing “It’s Now or Never.”

“There’ve been exceptions,” he said.

Teddy watched him through two eye sockets that were like, small ditches in his fleshy face. “Name one.”

“Neil up in New York,” said Vin. “He was gonna make his daughter. They had a date for the ceremony and everything.”

Teddy stuck his hands in the pockets of his pinstripe jacket. “It’s not the same thing. She was Sicilian. Like her father.”

“They were still gonna bend the rules.”

“Listen, Vin.” Teddy tugged on his ear and drew back his lips. “Forget about him getting made. When is this kid of yours Anthony gonna stop being a cripple?”

Vin looked stricken. “Wha?”

“He’s married to my favorite niece. Last month, I had to give her two hundred dollars to get a haircut and some shoes for the kids. Do I look like fuckin’ Jerry Lewis running a charity?”

“No, Ted, but . . .”

“But nothing,” Teddy huffed. “The kid’s a cripple. I love him, but he’s a cripple. I sent him to college and set him up in the concrete business. I haven’t seen dollar one back from him. I wonder should I be so trusting. Now you want me to get him inducted. Well, it ain’t that easy, Vin. If my own boy Charlie was still around, I’d have to go through channels ...”

He stopped talking a moment and spit into the toilet.

“Is that what this is about?” asked Vin. “Because my boy’s alive, and yours ain’t?”

“That’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Because that ain’t Anthony’s fault. He didn’t have nothing to do with what happened to Charlie.”

Teddy started to frown, but before he could say anything, the door down the hall opened and the old lady came out. She was using a walker, and wild wisps of white hair flew from her pinkish scalp. Teddy moved out of the bathroom to make room for her, his stomach grazing the door frame. Vin plodded out after him and they both bowed their heads respectfully as the old lady went in to use the can.

After a few minutes, a pale, oily-skinned ex-junkie named Joey Snails came upstairs and handed Teddy a thick envelope.

“It’s the pickup from the roofer’s union,” said Joey, who had crevices shaped like seahorses in his cheeks. “Richie said I oughta get it this week, because you didn’t want Nicky D. doin’ it no more.”

Teddy opened the envelope a little and made a point of touching each bill. “I hope it’s all here,” he said. “I’d hate to hear that you skimmed some and put it in your arm.”

Joey Snails looked gravely offended. “It’s all there.”

Teddy pinched Joey’s cheek hard enough to make the seahorse disappear. “Go on, get outa here. If I find two dollars missing, I’ll kick your ass.”

Teddy stuffed the envelope into his inside jacket pocket and swallowed hard. Money had been tight the last few years. The problem was the casinos. For all his time as a boss in Atlantic City, Teddy had never been inside a count room or placed a high-level executive in the industry. There were too many state watchdogs around. For a while, he’d had his share of crumbs spilling off the table—union pension funds, carting and linen businesses—but when the construction boom ended, there were fewer and fewer crumbs to go around.

He waited until Joey was down the hall and out of earshot before he turned back to Vin. “Remind me, I wanna get somebody else to do that pickup,” he muttered. “I still don’t trust that fuckin’ hophead.”

“I thought we were gonna give Anthony a shot at handling the envelope.”

“See if you can find somebody else, I’m not sure I trust that kid of yours either. He reminds me of his old man Mike.” Teddy loosened his belt a notch and closed his jacket. “Anyway, I haven’t got time to worry about it right now. I got Jackie and Sal coming down from New York to talk about something next week.”

“What do they want?”

“I don’t know. Something to do with the Commission. Some fuckin’ thing where they want to make a ruling.”

“Jackie. Ha?” Vin scratched his ass and looked impressed.

“Twenty-five years ago, guys from his crew would come into town and make me run to get their cigarettes.” Teddy patted his abdomen like he was trying to calm an anxious child inside. “We come a long way. Now they treat us like equals.”

“The way it should be,” said Vin.

“I remember when the old man Ang from Philly used to come into town with Johnny Blowjob and they used to treat us like their shoeshine boys.”

“Somebody shoulda put a bullet in his head long time before they did,” said Vin.

The old lady flushed the toilet and came out, barely acknowledging the two men as she went back to her bedroom.

Teddy took out an unfiltered cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. “You know what the problem was with that old greaseball?” he asked Vin. “He was like a pay toilet. He wouldn’t give a shit for nothing. He had dozens of young guys like you and me doing work for him, but never showed any gratitude. From ’57 to ’76 he wouldn’t open the books and make anybody. Remember? We were prisoners.” Teddy squinted through the smoke, still smarting from the memory. “He wouldn’t move any of us up in the organization. Oh, he was an old hard-on.”

Vin shrugged and sat against the rusty sink. “Well, now you know how Anthony feels,” he said to Teddy. “He’s a young guy, just like we were, and he don’t have any way to move up and make some money.”

Teddy gave him a look that was meant to cut like a buzz saw. “Don’t give me any more grief about that, Vin. I’m under enough pressure already.”

He coughed three more times and spit something else into the toilet. Before Vin could see what it was, Teddy flushed it down.

“Will you at least think about it, Ted?” Vin pleaded. “We been together a long time. It would mean a lot to me. At least let him handle the envelope.”

Teddy let the cigarette dangle out the side of his mouth, Humphrey Bogart-style. His face was splotchy and there was no luster in his slicked-back hair. “I’ll think about it. If you’ll think about getting him off my welfare roll. It’s embarrassing having to support my own niece.”

Vin looked like he would have fallen on his knees and kissed Teddy’s pinky ring if the floor hadn’t been so damp.

“Thanks, Ted. I feel more a man after talking to you.”

Teddy took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it warily, as if it had done something to offend him.

“You’re a good father, Vin,” he said, putting a hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “That kid don’t deserve you.”