Sucker Bet

35

Bill Higgins was reading the last section of the Sunday newspaper when Saul Hyman’s rattling Toyota pulled up alongside his rental. The passenger window on the Toyota came down, and Saul said, “Don’t you ever go home?”

Higgins stared at the elderly con man. He’d stayed outside Saul’s condo because he didn’t feel like staying in his hotel room. It was a pleasant day, and he’d read the newspaper from cover to cover while listening to a baseball game in Spanish on the radio.

“No,” he said.

“Tony asked you to watch me, didn’t he?” Saul asked.

“Tony who?”

“Valentine. I just saw him. I gave him enough evidence to put that scumbag Rico Blanco behind bars.”

Bill put his newspaper down. Maybe hanging around hadn’t been a waste of time. A bus had pulled up behind Saul’s car and blared its horn. Saul shook his fist at the driver in his mirror, then said, “Want to come inside for a drink?”

“You’re on,” Higgins said.

Saul’s condo was about what Higgins had expected. Nothing great. He’d known lots of criminals in his life. Few ended up with much when they got old. He stared at the apartment houses across the street that were blocking Saul’s view of the ocean. Between them, he could see a tiny slit of blue, but just barely. Saul appeared and handed him a glass of ice tea.

“Salud,” he said, clinking glasses.

Higgins took a sip. “Remember when I ran you out of Vegas?”

“Like it was yesterday,” Saul said. “You were very nice about it, as I remember.”

“Don’t think I didn’t consider roughing you up,” Higgins replied.

Saul acted like no cop had ever laid a hand on him. “Why didn’t you?” His guest shrugged, and he said, “Because of my size? I avoided a lot of beatings because I was small.”

“That had nothing to do with it,” Higgins said.

The phone rang. Saul picked it up, listened, then said, “Who sends packages on a Sunday?” He listened some more. “It’s from Tony Valentine? Okay, send the guy up.” He hung up, then said, “Indulge an old man. Why didn’t you?”

“The guy you ripped off had been caught cheating at poker at one of the casinos,” Higgins explained. “The casino looked the other way because he was a high roller. I never liked it, and figured he got his due when you fleeced him.”

Saul smiled. “The arm of justice is long, huh?”

“Something like that,” Higgins said.

“Would you mind telling me what you’re doing in Miami with Tony Valentine?”

“None of your business,” Higgins said.

The doorbell buzzed. Saul said, “Excuse me,” and left the room.

Higgins raised his glass to his lips. Sunlight flooded the room, exposing the old and faded furniture, and he guessed Saul was living on Social Security, with maybe a little something stashed away. Not a lot, but enough to get by. Higgins would be up for retirement himself in a few years. The thought did not thrill him.

He heard the angry retort of a gun being fired, then Saul’s scream. He jumped off the couch, the drink’s ice cubes hit the floor, and his hand reached for a pistol that wasn’t there. Saul came into the living room with blood pouring down his face.

“Run,” he said.

Higgins didn’t know which way to run. Saul bolted past him, followed by a man with a stocking over his face. He was holding a .45 Smith & Wesson and pointed it at Higgins. The next moment, Higgins was lying on the floor, clutching his thigh.

From the rear of the condo he heard the shattering of glass. Then the stockinged man returned. Kneeling, he went through Higgins’s pockets. He rose, holding Higgins’s cell phone, and left the condo.

Higgins examined the wound in his leg. Blood was spitting out like a geyser. Taking off his socks, he tied them together, then crawled into the kitchen and found a wooden serving spoon in a drawer. With the socks and the spoon he made a tourniquet, tied it an inch above his wound, and twisted it until the bleeding stopped.

He found the phone and dialed 911. He told the operator he’d been shot, and stumbled with the address.

“Just hang on,” the operator reassured him.

He limped through the condo, looking for his host. In the back was a guest bedroom, and Higgins peered through the open doorway. Blood was on the floor and bedspread, and the wind blew stiffly through a busted window. The room began to spin, and he realized he was about to pass out.

He took several deep breaths, then forced himself over to the broken window and looked down. Four floors below, Saul Hyman floated in the condo’s rectangular swimming pool, the water clouded with blood.

Laughing, Rico Blanco sped south on I-95. The look on the old man’s face as he’d jumped through the window had been a real keeper. Terrified, but also ashamed, like he’d known deep down that this was what happened to rats. They got drowned.

He turned on the radio. The three o’clock news came on. The day was still young. That had been one of John Gotti’s favorite expressions. They would steal something—a truckload of furs, or a container out of a plane at Kennedy airport, or something off the docks—and the Teflon Don would say, “The day is still young,” and they’d go out and steal something else. A real taskmaster.

His cell phone rang. Rico picked it up, then realized it was the cell phone he’d just stolen. He answered it anyway. The line was filled with static.

“Hey, Bill, it’s Tony Valentine,” the voice said.

So the guy he’d shot in the leg was also part of this. Rico wished he’d killed him.

“You’re a dead man,” he told Valentine.

Then he tossed the cell phone out the window and laughed some more.

Five minutes later, his own cell phone rang. Rico looked at the caller ID. It was Jorge. Rico gritted his teeth. Jorge was never supposed to call him, especially on his cell phone where it might be overheard. Soon the ringing stopped. He drove until I-95 ended and became Dixie Highway.

He took Dixie into Coral Gables and drove to an apartment complex. The complex straddled the line between dumpy Little Havana and ultrapricey Coral Gables. That was what you got in south Miami. The haves and the have-nots.

He went to the first building and took the elevator to the fourth floor. Jorge looked surprised when he opened the door and saw Rico. Jorge was dressed in his underwear, his six-foot-six body filling the doorway.

“I told you never to call me,” Rico said.

“Yeah, well, I got a problem,” Jorge said, ushering him in.

The apartment was trashed, the walls covered with Miami Dolphin cheerleader posters and a naked Pamela Lee stained by food. Jorge’s roommate, Lupe, slept on the couch, the TV bathing him in artificial light. He was two inches taller than Jorge, and his legs stuck comically over the edge. They went into the kitchen, and Jorge shut the door.

“It’s like this,” Jorge said. “I got this girlfriend, and she—”

Rico cut him short. “You need money?”

Jorge looked sheepishly at the floor. He was from Brazil, where men were supposed to act like men and not have to ask for things like money. “Yeah,” he whispered.

“You knock her up?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How far along is she?”

“Three months. She wants two grand for you-know-what.”

Rico hid a smile. Jorge was twenty-four and talked like he was twelve. A boy in a man’s body. “You’ll have all your money tomorrow.”

“All of it?”

“That’s right. Once the game is over.”

“Who we playing?”

“Duke.”

Jorge’s eyes lit up. The kitchen door swung in. Lupe entered, his Frankenstein hair standing on end. God had made him menacing-looking, and he stretched his impossibly long arms as he yawned, then slapped Rico good-naturedly on the shoulder, sending him sideways into the stove.

“You gonna give Jorge heeez money?” he asked.

“Tomorrow,” Rico said, clutching his arm. “You’ll get all your money tomorrow. Both of you.”

“What he talking about?” Lupe asked.

Jorge retrieved a basketball from behind the refrigerator and began dribbling it behind his back. Lupe had no education and relied on Jorge to fill in the blanks. They were both dumb as paint, and getting them accepted into Miami College had cost Rico a small fortune.

Jorge stopped dribbling the basketball and tossed it across the room. Missing Rico’s nose by inches, it landed with a loud fhap! in one of Lupe’s enormous palms.

“Tomorrow we play for real,” Jorge said.