Every Little Crook and Nanny

10: The Jackass

Carmine Ganucci could not fall asleep again.

The more he thought about the deal Truffatore and Ladruncolo had proposed, the more it stunk. To begin with, despite his fancy maneuvering, the profit was still very low. On an investment of fifty thousand dollars, he would earn a profit of thirty thousand dollars when the gold medallions were delivered to New York. If the medallions were delivered. And if they were really gold. Because if they weren’t, he’d lose the whole fifty grand outright and besides have cleanup work to do in Naples, which meant hiring people you didn’t know and trusting your business to strangers. But even if the medallions were really silver-plated gold, and even if they were delivered to New York, he would have all the trouble of melting them down and then getting rid of the gold, which seemed like an operation for a jeweler and not a respectable businessman. If he loan-sharked that same amount of money, the interest would be twenty per cent a week. At the end of four weeks, he could realize a profit of forty thousand dollars, ten thousand more than the Naples deal would bring. And it was more convenient to be dealing with people in New York, where if they didn’t pay back the money, or if something else went wrong, you could always break their heads. And also, suppose those two Neapolitan morons got busted for bringing dope into Italy inside pearls, and suppose it got traced back to Carmine Ganucci, that he was responsible for the whole transaction, having provided the fifty G’s that made the deal viable, so then he would be connected to an international dope smuggling operation, wonderful. And also, was it a sin to melt down medallions of the Virgin Mary?

The whole thing stunk.

“Carmine?” Stella said.

“What?”

“Are you asleep?”

“No.”

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking.”

“Thinking?” Stella said.

“Yes. I have to send another cable in the morning. Jesus,” he said, “this is going to cost me a fortune.”

“What kind of a cable?” Stella asked.

“To my lawyers. To tell them to never mind.”

“Never mind what?”

“Never mind what,” Ganucci said. “Also, we have to get in touch with a travel agent.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m sick of this place and I want to go home and develop some of these pictures I’ve been taking.”

Stella held her breath for just an instant and then, in a very small voice, asked, “When, Carmine?”

“Tomorrow,” he said.

The night had turned hot and muggy.

All up and down the street, bare-armed women sat on front stoops and discussed the possibility of rain, while in the pizza parlor near the corner, men in shirt sleeves threw fingers at each other, deciding by the number showing on an outflung hand who would be Boss and who would be Under-Boss, who could drink beer and who could not.

Above the pizzeria, in Celia Mescolata’s kitchen, Benny Napkins was winning a fortune and wishing that The Jackass would get hit by a bus. The very thought of winning from such expert gamblers as Celia and the men in her kitchen was dizzying. Even though it had been necessary to find a last-minute replacement for Willie, who had never shown up (and this was a definite loss since Willie was reputed to be a very shrewd gambler, the originator in fact of the Hong Kong Cut), these four men and Celia were as classy a collection of poker players as Benny had ever seen assembled. Each of them appreciated the solemn, almost religious nature of the game and each was willing to lose or win enormous sums of money with all the dignity of a priest at the poor box.

Even Celia, who had been reluctant to organize the game, and who was now losing as heavily as the men at the table, seemed to be enjoying the electric excitement with which bets were made and called, hands bluffed, pots escalated. Celia’s game was blackjack, and she had told Benny flat out that afternoon that, as far as she was concerned, poker was always a losing proposition. The way she figured it (and she had spent a great deal of time figuring it, even though she could never master algebra at Julia Richman High School, which she had attended as a girl), the odds in blackjack were always in favor of the house because the dealer collected from players who went bust the moment they went bust, regardless of whether the dealer went bust later. Celia had painstakingly calculated that the odds (even after paying off for natural 21-counts, and adjusting for ties and standoffs) were almost six per cent in the dealer’s favor. That was better than a person could get from most savings banks. That was why she liked blackjack. On the few occasions when poker had been played in her kitchen, she had cut the pot for ten per cent each hand, which to the casual onlooker might have seemed like a better percentage than six per cent. But Celia had estimated that she could deal six blackjack hands in the time it took to play one poker hand. When she multiplied her six per cent by six, it came to thirty-six as against ten per cent for cutting the poker pot, or so she calculated. She preferred blackjack.

But Benny Napkins had convinced her that this was to be no penny-ante, Cheap Charlie affair. In addition to himself, he wanted her to come up with five players who were willing to invest ten thousand dollars each in a freewheeling, old-fashioned, table-stakes poker game. It did not take Celia long to reckon that six times ten thousand was sixty thousand, and that the house cut on the total sum invested would be six thousand dollars. Even if she decided to play herself (which she had) and even if she lost her entire stake (which she did not plan to do), her total investment would be no more than four thousand dollars as against the possibility of winning fifty thousand dollars. That came to odds of at least twelve-and-a-half-to-one in her favor which were not as good as the thirty-six-percent blackjack take, but which were certainly better than the normal ten-per-cent poker take. Or so Celia reasoned.

In the meantime, Benny Napkins was winning. It was five minutes to ten, and he was winning. This was table-stakes poker and each player, at the start of the game, had placed in front of him a ten-thousand-dollar bundle. (No one had actually counted the bills in each bundle, but Benny presumed the other players were at least slightly more honest than he and had brought into the game the price of admission as announced by Celia Mescolata.) He glanced around the table now as Ricco Locare, who was Willie’s replacement, dealt the cards. Benny’s quick estimate was that he had at least thirty thousand dollars in bills of various denominations sitting in front of him, whereas the other players’ piles had diminished respectively and noticeably.

It was now three minutes to ten, and Ricco was telling Celia to bet her ace.

Oh, please, Benny thought, if there is a God in heaven, please let The Jackass break his leg.

“Hundred for the ace,” Celia said.

“I’ll see you,” Morrie Goldstein said.

“Benny?”

“Raise it a hundred,” Benny said.

“What’ve you got there, a lousy pair of jacks?” Celia said, looking over at the open jack of diamonds.

“Be three of them on the next card,” Benny said, and grinned.

It was two minutes to ten.

“Two hundred to you, Angie,” Ricco said.

“Call.”

“I’ll take a chance too,” Ricco said, and anted, and then turned to the player on his left. “What do you say, Ralph?”

“What the hell,” Ralph said, and put his two hundred in the pot.

“Here we go,” Ricco said, and began dealing.

He gave Benny his third jack just as the hands on Celia’s kitchen clock reached the hour. Benny closed his eyes, and opened them again in the next instant, when the kitchen door was kicked in. A tall skinny man with a nylon stocking pulled over his face (always a goddamn nylon stocking, Benny thought, and sighed) and a stupid white hat pulled low on his forehead and a forty-five automatic pistol in his fist, barged into the room and said, “Don’t nobody move,” the automatic covering the table like a cannon over the Strait of Gibraltar. Nobody moved. Everybody knew better than to move because, with the possible exception of Celia, each of the players in the game had occasionally been on the other end of a cannon pointing at somebody, and they knew it was prudent not to move in such circumstances. So the tall skinny man with the stocking over his head moved swiftly around the table and scooped up all of the money there — exactly fifty-two thousand dollars, since at least some of the players were just as dishonest as Benny and had brought into the game less than the required admission stake. The man with the stocking over his head put all of the money into a large A & P shopping bag, and then backed toward the door, still waving the automatic.

He slammed the door behind him.

Benny Napkins wanted to weep.

Detective Lieutenant Alexander Bozzaris was heading up the street for Celia Mescolata’s apartment — where he intended to bust the card game unless the players took up a collection in his honor — when he saw a tall skinny guy running in his direction. The guy had a nylon stocking pulled over his head and a shopping bag in his hands. It looked as if dollar bills were spilling out of the shopping bag. Bozzaris right away figured something was up.

“Stop!” he yelled. “Police!”