Glitz

11

VINCENT TOLD THE BARTENDER at the Holmhurst he’d won 470 bucks playing blackjack. Just like that, in about three minutes. The bartender told him he’d lose it before he was through. Vincent said, no, he was going to buy some warm clothes as soon as the stores opened. He felt good. It was a snug, knotty-pine bar, more like somebody’s rec room than a saloon, and it was cold and rainy outside. He ordered another scotch and told the guy who came in and sat next to him at the bar he’d won 470 bucks at Spade’s Boardwalk. Just like that, in about three minutes. The guy said, big fucking deal; you want to keep it, get out of town, fast. The guy was a blackjack dealer at Resorts International, across the street. He had been a floorman at Tropicana, but he’d tapped out a dealer for looking away from the cards and it turned out the dealer had more juice than he did, so listen to this, he got fired for doing his job. Politics, man. Who you know. You don’t party with the right people, kiss your ass good-bye. It was 12:30. Linda should be here any minute. See, you got the dealer looking at the cards and the players. You got the floorman looking at the dealer. You got the pit boss looking at the floorman. You got the shift manager looking at the pit boss. Craps, you got the boxman looking at the stickman. You got the assistant casino manager looking at the shift manager. Wait, you got the slot manager in there. No, fuck the slot manager. You got the casino manager looking at the assistant manager. You got the vice-president of casino operations looking at the casino manager-

Vincent said, “Excuse me, but I have to meet somebody,” and got out of there.

He waited in the lobby, pacing, looking at old paintings, about to give up when Linda arrived a little before one. Everytime he saw her she looked different: a little weird this evening, wearing her stage makeup with the raincoat and jeans. Seeing the look in her eyes he said, “What’d I do?” She didn’t answer. She sat down at one end of a leather couch and lighted a cigarette.

“I won four hundred seventy bucks playing blackjack. You know how long it took?”

“I got fired,” Linda said. “You know how long that took? I’m the only thing those Jamaican yahoos had going for ’em and I get canned.”

“Why? What’d you do?”

“What do you mean, what’d I do?”

“Who told you?”

The kingfish-what’s his name, Cedric, the head Tuna. Man, that burns me up. I should’ve quit, you know it? But I didn’t. Jesus, get dropped out of that outfit-it doesn’t do a lot for your pride. Cedric goes, ‘They nothing I can do, mon. It’s the monagement give me the instruction.’ “

“Donovan?”

“Probably, the son of a bitch.”

“But he’s the head guy, chairman of the board.”

Linda looked up at him. She said, “He brought Iris here, didn’t he? All the way from Puerto Rico?”

Vincent had remained standing, looking at her dark hair, at her face now, her painted eyes staring at him. He said, “What do you want to drink?”

“Scotch.”

“Don’t move.”

He got two of them, doubles over ice, and brought the drinks out of the happy, crowded little bar to the empty lobby, to the girl in her stage makeup sitting alone. He pulled a leather chair over close, wanting to watch her face.

She said, “I wasn’t that bad.” Quiet now, subdued.

“Bad? You were the show. They loved you.”

“That’s why I’m thinking there’s more to it.” She blew cigarette smoke past him and it smelled good.

“Maybe the head Tuna didn’t like you cutting in on his act.”

“No, I believe Cedric. He had nothing to do with it. He was even starting to come on to me.”

“He was?…”

“That’s why I think it’s something else.” She looked at him, silent for a moment. “It might have to do with you. The two of us.”

Vincent didn’t move, sitting forward in the deep chair. “Tell me why.”

“If we were seen together. In the lounge, or maybe even at the funeral home.”

“We were the only ones there.”

“Somebody could’ve looked in.”

“Who are we talking about, Donovan?”

She hesitated. “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“And if he saw us together-what?”

“You’re Iris’s friend. You come all the way here from Puerto Rico and who’s the first person you talk to? Me.”

“And that’s why you were fired?”

“It’s possible. To get rid of me. I can’t hang around here if I’m not working.”

It was getting better. “All right, say Donovan saw us together. Why would that bother him?”

“You’re a cop, aren’t you? For all he knows I could be telling you things I shouldn’t.”

Better and better. Vincent said, “Let me have one of your cigarettes.” She handed him the pack. He lighted one, inhaled deeply-surprised at the sudden cold hit of menthol-and looked at the pack. Kools. He was smoking again, just like that. He said, “Donovan, even if he saw me, doesn’t know I’m a cop. I’ve never met the man.”

She said, “Then they’re afraid I might tell the other cops. I don’t know-I’ve got this feeling I’m being watched.”

“You talked to them, the police.”

“They talked to me.”

“Are you afraid?”

“You’re damn right I am.”

“Somebody advise you not to say anything?”

She shook her head. “I knew better. Once I found out what Iris was doing. She didn’t tell me. It was one of the guys in the band, a Puerto Rican, the only one Iris was the least bit close to.”

“He tell the cops anything?”

“Are you kidding? Those guys-they named their band La Tuna after a federal prison where they met, the whole bunch of them doing time for narcotics. The Puerto Rican, he thought I was like Iris’s big sister, so he said things when he was stoned he assumed I knew about. She was telling him everything.”

“What was she doing?”

Linda hesitated, on the edge of involving herself. He watched her light a cigarette and was aware of a tender feeling, looking into those painted eyes. She said, “I could be making a big mistake.”

Vincent said, “She was a party girl, she entertained high rollers… What was she doing in that apartment?”

Linda exhaled a slow stream of cigarette smoke, almost a sigh.

“They used the apartment for illegal gambling. They set up a crap game for this particular guy who must be very important but doesn’t speak much English. That’s why Iris was there. The guy is from Colombia, Bogotá, which should tell you something. The Puerto Rican was dying to meet him, score some cocaine. Iris couldn’t stand the guy. He made her take her clothes off, because he said a naked girl brought him luck. He’d rub the dice in her pubic hair.”

For a moment Vincent wondered if the guy had won or lost. But something didn’t make sense. He said, “How do you know that?”

“Iris told her friend, the Puerto Rican.”

“But she stayed in the apartment…”

“She was there with the guy two nights in a row. She told her friend about the first night and said she had to go back, but it was okay, the guy gave her five hundred bucks. Even though he lost about a hundred thousand.”

“The guy spend the night with her?”

“The first night-I don’t know. She got home about five.”

“The second night,” Vincent said, “she stayed. She was there all day. Let’s say she was. And somebody came back to see her that night.”

“Or somebody stayed with her,” Linda said.

“Who was there? Who brought the Colombian?”

“Well, he had a suite at Spade’s. They flew him up from Miami in their private jet, comped the room, meals, everything. If you can afford to lose a hundred grand, Vincent, it’s all on the house.”

“We talking about Donovan now? He set it up?”

“Or Jackie Garbo. He runs the casino. But Donovan would have to know about it, it’s his hotel.”

“Was Donovan at the apartment?”

“I don’t know, it’s possible.”

“Or Jackie-what’s the guy’s name, Garbo?”

“Yeah, it’s more likely he was there.”

“Who else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Local people?”

“What do you mean, local people?”

“Guy by the name of Ricky Catalina?”

“Never heard of him.”

Vincent eased back in the chair, finished his drink. He saw the condominium in Ventnor, the carpeted lobby, Jimmy Dunne’s neat desk and wondered what Ricky looked like-wanting to picture him in that lobby. Then wondered what a loan-shark collector would be doing there, acting as doorman. The lookout. Just a guy in the ranks, one of the soldiers. But he wouldn’t be there unless someone he worked for was upstairs. Vincent began to see a connection that made sense. The wise guys doing business with the Colombian; he was their supplier. They partied together when he came to town, arranged for Donovan or Garbo to bank an illegal game where Iris had to take her clothes off to bring the guy luck. Vincent was thinking he would like to try his luck with the Colombian, he sure would. If it wasn’t too late. They could disappear on you. He had known a few Colombians who posted half-million dollar bonds and took off in the night. It was only money. What this town was all about, money. Nothing else.

Linda was staring at him. She said, “There was another girl there.” Staring at him with those painted eyes. He watched her raise her glass and hesitate, looking off now.

Vincent waited.

“But I can’t think of her name. I know who she is, I saw her in the lounge with Jackie. She was Miss Oklahoma about five or six years ago.”

“Take your time,” Vincent said.

Teddy could see his mom’s scalp her curlers were turned so tight, wound up in thin tufts of her gold-colored hair. Coming home he’d thought it was a wig her hair was so bright. She told him, no, she still had her crowning glory, she had to just touch it up now and then. He said to her bird face glistening with beauty cream, covers up to her chin, “ ‘Night, Mom. Don’t let the bedbugs bite you,” closed her door and went out to the living room wondering if you could taste chloral hydrate in warm milk.

Get some up in Boystown, New York Avenue, those cute guys had anything you wanted, knockout drops, percs, street ludes, all kinds of meth.

Buddy cocked his green-and-orange head and stepped sideways along his perch saying, “Magic! Magic!” his parrot voice sounding like a movie cartoon witch.

Teddy said, “ ‘Ey, Buddy, ‘ey, Buddy boy. How’s my old buddy? I bought a handicraft bird looks just like you this PR girl was suppose to deliver, but I guess she never made it. You coulda played with it, Buddy, had yourself a little playmate.”

Buddy stepped sideways to the edge of the perch stained white and bluish green with parrot shit. His mom could offer Buddy a sunflower seed from her puckered mouth murmuring, “Kisser mom, kisser mom,” and Buddy would peck the seed out of the red goo of her lips, crack it and eat it without thinking twice. Teddy, all he had to do was approach the stand-there in the living room on spread newspapers-even offer a peanut, and Buddy would shit and become edgy. Why?

“ ‘Ey, I ain’t gonna eat you. Here, walk onto my hand… Okay, don’t then. I don’t care. The heck’re you nervous about?” Teddy hunched down to look into Buddy’s eyes as Buddy side-stepped back the other way now. It would show if Buddy saw something in his eyes. Did he? It was hard to tell with a parrot.

He had looked into the eyes of convicts, wondering if they saw something, and had got propositioned, proposed to and finally picked by a big colored guy, Monroe Ritchie, to be his old lady. But he had never seen the look in any con’s eyes like the look he had seen in the cop’s-that morning when they woke him up busting through the door and the cop held the gun in his face.

Not a look of hate exactly, it was more a look of knowing something.

Then saw the look in the cop’s eyes again, on the car ferry down in Puerto Rico, this time the cop holding the curved end of a walking stick in his face. This was like confirming it, he hadn’t just imagined the cop saw something that first time. No, seven and a half years later the cop still saw it.

Teddy said to Buddy, “How would you like it? Guy thinks he knows more about you than you do? Like he can look in your head and see things that make him want to blow your head right off. I mean a guy that shows he wants to kill you. What would you do, let him?” Teddy hunched in close to Buddy. “I make you nervous, don’t I? Huh? Would you like to peck my eyes out so I can’t look at you no more? Would you? ‘Ey, then you know what it feels like.”

He had watched Monroe Ritchie’s eyes cloud. “No, I don’t see nothing.” Then go milky soft. “ ’Cept my sweetie.”

He would lie spooned in Monroe’s arms on the lower bunk in darkness, Monroe’s bulk against his spine, Monroe’s big arm lying dead across him, Monroe’s sleepy breath on the back of his neck. “I want to kill him, Monroe.” And would hear Monroe say, “Do it, honey, and hurry back.” But how? Many conversations about that part. Monroe would say, “Walk up behind the man, what you do, and shoot him right here.” Teddy would feel Monroe’s finger poke into the groove at the base of his skull. Monroe told him where to buy a gun in Miami. Do it and throw the gun in the ocean. Told him a little .22 was all he needed.

But when Teddy saw the Colt .38 Super he couldn’t resist it. That was the start of what was becoming an expensive proposition. The gun, air fare to Puerto Rico, the hotel, the car… now back home and his mom wouldn’t give him any more money.

She actually believed he had worked for International Surveys, because he’d showed her the business cards he had printed and there was the company name and his own name with Research Representative under it. So when she asked him if he was going to get a job he told her he’d probably go back with I.S., they were a good outfit, offered a generous bonus plan and other benefits. His mom said, “That’s nice.” He told her, not right away though, he needed to readjust himself to the world, try to put the nightmare of prison out of his mind. He told her he had met other innocent men in there, like himself, unjustly accused. His mom patted his head and said, “My fine boy, treated like a criminal…” But would she break into one of her CDs or Treasury Bills and give him a few dollars, just a couple hundred say? No, her mind had more locks on it than her front door when it came to discussing money. She had given him $1,200 dollars and that was all he was getting, no more. “No. No. No,” his mom said. “Do you know what no means? It means no.” He said to her, “I met boys in there who turned to crime for less reason. Had to.” She wouldn’t budge, the old bitch.

What he’d have to do now, get next to some little old lady scooping a jackpot out of a slot tray. Offer to be of help and kid around, tell her he loved her blue hair. Take her for a nice walk on the Boardwalk. One good score might make him enough. He didn’t know how much time he had, how long the cop was going to hang around. He would like to walk in the cop’s hotel room, wake him up with a gun in his face, just like the cop had done it. Look in his eyes and say, “What do you see?” Look in his eyes first, then tell him to roll over and stick the barrel against that little groove at the base of the skull.

Tomorrow, though, he’d have to see about getting hold of some operating cash.