Sucker Bet

3

On paper, it had seemed like a great idea.

The town of Davie sat fifteen miles due west of Fort Lauderdale. A carnival had arrived the day before, and sat in the middle of an empty cow pasture, the Ferris wheel and brightly colored tents visible for miles.

Rico’s idea was this: Candy would talk Nigel Moon into taking her to the carnival. Then she’d get Moon to play a few games, like throw the balls in the milk can, and cover the spot. Rico knew these games were rigged and could be juiced to let the players win or lose. All he had to do was bribe the carnival owner, and the Moon’s “lucky” streak would be alive and well.

Only Rico hadn’t counted on the carnival owner’s stubbornness. He was a Cajun named Ray Hicks, and he wore suspenders and a porkpie hat. Rico cornered him outside Hicks’s trailer, a beat-up rig with patched tires and a wheezing air conditioner, and stuck a C note in the old flattie’s face. Hicks looked at the money, then scoffed.

“Get away from me with that chicken scratch, boy.”

Rico upped his offer. He’d worked with carnival people back in Brooklyn when he was under John Gotti’s thumb. The carnival would rent a church parking lot and set up shop. For this privilege, the carnival paid Gotti half the apron, or daily take. Rico’s job had been to collect the apron and make sure Gotti didn’t get shortchanged.

Hicks spit on the ground. “You’re dreamin’, boy.”

On the other side of the carnival, Moon and Candy were riding the Ferris wheel. Candy wore a flaming red pants suit; Moon, Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt.

“I’m just asking you to let this guy win a couple of stinking Kewpie dolls,” Rico said, imagining himself strangling Hicks until his face turned purple. “It will take twenty minutes, tops. Then I’ll be out of your hair. Come on, what do you say?”

The sun came out and splashed on Hicks’s shoulders. He looked older than Rico had first thought, his face a chiseled road map of the hard life. He hooked his thumbs into his suspenders and snapped them against his chest.

“You wanna talk money, boy?”

Sweat marched down Rico’s face. Davie being away from the ocean, the sun was hotter than over on Miami Beach, and he felt himself burning up.

“Sure,” he said.

The first thing Rico noticed when he stepped inside Ray Hicks’s trailer was the overwhelming stench of shit. Not just any old shit, but animal shit, like at the zoo. The kind of smell that could burn a hole in your head.

The next thing Rico noticed was the big black metal cage sitting behind Hicks’s desk. And the chimpanzee in human clothes inside the cage. A big sucker, maybe 150 pounds, his thumbless paws strumming a ukulele.

“Have a seat,” Hicks said.

Rico sat in a folding chair directly across from Hicks’s desk. Plastered on the walls were black-and-white posters of the musical chimp and his proud owner. NAME ANY POPULAR TUNE, the posters said. THEN WATCH THE FUN!

“Say hello to Mr. Beauregard,” Hicks said.

“Hey,” Rico said stupidly.

Mr. Beauregard strummed away. The tinny music coming out of his dime-store instrument sounded familiar. Happy Days Are Here Again. The chimp made eye contact, and every hair on Rico’s body went stiff. Behind the chimp’s muddy brown eyes lurked something eerily human. Putting the ukelele down, he took a pack of Lucky Strikes from the floor of his cage and fired one up.

“You let him smoke?”

“Sure.”

“Isn’t it bad for his health?” Rico said.

“He likes it.”

“I get it. He’s already got a purple ass, so what’s a couple of black lungs.”

Hicks’s eyes grew into slits. “You’re not funny.”

Rico disagreed. He happened to think he was fucking hysterical. So had John Gotti, who’d nicknamed him the Mook, which in Italian loosely translated into big mouth. He watched Mr. Beauregard crush out his cigarette, then eat it.

“What kind of scam you got going?” Hicks said.

Rico shifted his gaze to his host. “Huh?”

“You heard me. You fleecing this guy?”

“What guy?”

“The bloated Brit with the hooker.”

“What I’ve got going is none of your fucking business.”

“Please don’t swear in my presence,” the carnival owner said.

Rico didn’t like the direction the conversation was going. He parted his jacket and exposed the .45 Smith & Wesson strapped to his side. It was his favorite piece, a present from the Teflon Don on Rico’s twenty-fifth birthday. Hicks made a face like he’d busted a tooth. Raising his voice, he said, “Mr. Beauregard, he has a gun!”

Mr. Beauregard flew out of his cage. It had never occurred to Rico that the cage wasn’t locked, and he sat helplessly as the chimp pinned him to his chair and pawed through his linen sports jacket. Mr. Beauregard slid the .45 across the desk along with Rico’s wallet.

“Thank you, Mr. Beauregard. You may resume your playing.”

Soon strains of Rocky Mountain High were competing with the noisy air conditioner. Hicks removed a business card from Rico’s wallet and stared at it.

“Club Hedo. That a tittie bar?”

“Yeah,” Rico said.

Hicks unloaded the gun and slid it back along with his wallet. “You are scamming the man with the hooker. Correct?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And by allowing him to win a few harmless games, you will be able to perpetuate your little charade.”

“Right again,” Rico said.

“Four thousand two hundred dollars,” Hicks said.

“Huh?”

“Four thousand two hundred dollars. That is my price.”

Rico screwed up his face. “What kind of number is that?”

Hicks made a clucking sound with his tongue. “Call it a permission fee. Four thousand two hundred dollars is what I pay the town clowns to run my carnival.”

“The what?”

“You’re not familiar with the term?”

“No.”

Hicks turned in his chair. “Town clowns, Mr. Beauregard?”

Mr. Beauregard’s crooked fingers froze on the strings of his beloved instrument. He picked up a tin sheriff’s badge from the floor of the cage and clipped it to his shirt. Striking a he-man pose, he pounded his chest.

“Thank you, Mr. Beauregard.”

The cops. Rico should have known. Organized crime had never gotten a strong foothold in south Florida, and for one simple reason. The local cops were too crooked to be influenced by the mob.

“Forty-two hundred it is,” Rico said.

Rico sat in his limo, staring through binoculars at Moon and Candy. They were standing at the Six-Cat booth. Knock three stuffed cats off a shelf, win a prize. It looked easy, only no one ever won. The operator made sure of that. By stepping on a foot break, he moved a loose board behind the cats back a few inches. By widening the shelf, the cats would not fall no matter how hard they were hit.

Rico watched Moon throw the baseballs. One, two, three cats fell in a row. By not touching the foot brake, the operator had given Moon a fair game. Candy squealed as the operator handed her a giant panda bear. She already had a Kewpie doll and a Big Bird, and looked like she’d robbed a toy store. The operator caught Moon’s eye and winked.

Rico loved it. Carnival people were great at building up suckers. He folded up his binoculars and put them on the seat.

“Forty-two hundred is too much,” Splinters said, sitting behind the wheel.

“I got what I wanted,” Rico said. “Moon’s having a gas.”

“Two grand, maybe,” Splinters said.

“You think so?”

“Yeah,” his Cuban driver said. “Two grand, tops.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Fucking guy robbed you.”

There it was again: the refusal to let things go. It was starting to get on Rico’s nerves. Splinters was not your ordinary Cuban refugee. He was sensitive about things like honor and a man’s reputation. Once, in South Beach, Rico had seen him carve up a guy just because he had found Splinters’s name funny.

“Fugettaboutit, will you?”

“Ahhh,” his driver said.

Splinters just didn’t understand how business was done in America. Hicks had given him good value on his dollar. Rico had no gripe with him.

Soon they were speeding south on I-95, and Splinters was blowing monster clouds of smoke out his window, obviously pissed off. That was the problem with Cubans, Rico had decided. They thought you cared how they felt.

Splinters needed to get over it, or Rico would have to get rid of him.