Payback

by Mike Lupica

  “There’s no shame in bankruptcy,” I said. “My friend Spike would have done it in a heartbeat if it meant saving his business.”

  “Alex didn’t look at it that way,” Lawton said. “Death before dishonor. Like that. At least in his mind.” He shook his head. “He literally would have done anything to not look like a loser. And to still be Ace Drysdale. You know the type? His personal code of morality was actually amorality, but he just never saw it. Steal your money, steal your restaurant, steal your wife or your girlfriend. Didn’t matter to him. It was why I had to finally get away, as I tried to explain to you. But with all that? I knew him for half my life.”

  He picked up a fork, put it back down, stared at me.

  “Eddie’s a lot of things,” he said. “But he’s not a murderer.”

  “Who said he was?”

  “Something I intuited,” he said, smiling thinly.

  He looked at his watch.

  “I really need to get going if I’m going to get to my meeting on time,” he said.

  “When was the last time you saw Eddie Ross?”

  “When he first moved back to Boston,” Lawton said. “Maybe a year or so ago? Said he wanted to have a drink. But what he wanted was information, mostly about the dynamics of Alex’s and my partnership. Who was the real brains of the operation, me or him?”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Lawton smiled so thinly I wondered if I could have slipped a piece of paper between his lips.

  “I told him Alex’s specialty was BS,” he said. “Mine was making the money.”

  “Is there any chance you could get an address for me,” I said, “or at least a way to contact him?”

  “I can try,” he said. “But if I do find him for you? I’d appreciate you not telling him that I did.”

  “You never signed an NDA with him, right?” I said.

  “There was no reason, Eddie and I never did business together,” Lawton said. “But all the way back to Stanford, there was something about him that made me reluctant to turn my back on him.”

  “Could he be running the kind of poker games here he did in L.A.?” I said.

  “He was running them all the way back to college,” Lawton said. “Maybe nothing since college has changed with him.”

  “Alex play in those games?”

  Lawton laughed.

  “Only when Eddie would let him cheat his ass off,” he said.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I need some information,” I said to Tony Marcus.

  He smiled. I would have called it a Cheshire Cat smile if referencing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland didn’t make me feel older than Alice. So I just thought of it as a Tony smile, smug and condescending and arrogant as hell, all at once.

  “What am I,” he said, “fucking Google?”

  We were in his office at Buddy’s Fox. I had not been in contact with him since we had formed another of our temporary alliances to solve the murder of Lisa Morneau by a dirty cop. It changed none of the realities of our relationship. Mine and Tony’s. I still trusted him about as far as I could throw a vending machine.

  “I thought you still owed me a favor,” I said.

  “Ain’t no more owed between us no more,” he said. “You add it all up, the one who ought to be coming up with a little sugar is you, Sunny Randall.”

  “You ever notice how you occasionally talk to me like I’m one of your girls?” I said.

  “You still holdin’ on to your looks,” he said. “But truth be told, you a little past your sell-by date.”

  He’d grown a beard during COVID and still had it, even though there was a lot more gray to it than to the hair on top of his head. I loved it when guys did that. Who did they think they were fooling?

  He wore a dark suit today, white shirt, purple tie with a knot as big as a fist. As usual, his nails looked better manicured than my own. Junior, his body man, was on one side of the door, as wide as ever, making you wonder if he had to get himself at an angle to enter the room, like he was moving a desk in. Ty-Bop, Tony’s shooter, was on the other, a dreamy look on his face, staring at either nothing or eternity. But I knew how quickly he could produce whatever handgun he was carrying if necessary, and then shoot the numbers off a bank card.

  I jerked my head in their direction. “At this stage of our relationship,” I said to Tony, “do you really feel threatened in my presence?”

  “They get they feelings hurt they get left out,” he said.

  He asked me if I wanted some of the latte his bartender had made up special for him. I told him I’d pass, I didn’t want to take up too much of his time.

  “Bullllllllshit,” he said. “You just worried that I’m takin’ up too much of your time.”

  “I was hopeful that we could move things along,” I said.

  “You a piece of work,” he said.

  “Long since established,” I said.

  “So how can I help you, be I so inclined?”

  “You know a guy named Eddie Ross?” I said. “I think he might be into a lot of things, but I’m almost certain poker is one of them.”

  “Why do you want to know about him?” Tony said.

  “So you do know him?”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  “He’s involved in something I’m working on,” I said. “Couple things, actually.”

  “Does one of them have something to do with that rich white boy got his ass shot up in your neighborhood?” Tony said. “One you slapped upside his head at your buddy’s gay bar?”

  I didn’t acknowledge that he knew. He just did. He was Tony.

  “Spike’s gay,” I said. “The clientele at the restaurant is quite ecumenical.”

  “Ec-u-men-i-cal,” he said.

  “Eddie Ross,” I said.

  “Little Russian dude,” he said, “even though he trying to pass.”

  “So you do know him.”

  “Know of him,” Tony said. “Like I know of a lot of people I think I might need to keep eyes on, see if they might have something I want or need. He let it be known when he got to town, through somebody who knows somebody knows me, that there was some big-time money games about to be played, and did I want a seat at the table.”

  He smiled again. “I had to let it be known that if I was to get involved in a game like that, it would be my fucking table. That in games of chance, I ain’t likely to be the one taking the chances.”

  “His father ran a sports book in Russia,” I said, “which I believe is something in which you dabbled at one time.”

  “Hell, yeah,” he said. “Least back in the day, until the online shit and all the other legal sports betting took the entrepreneurialness of it out of play. I mean, all’s you got to do is turn on your television. They’s more commercials for sports gambling these days than they is about ways to save fifteen percent or whatever the fuck it is on your car insurance.”

  He looked over at Junior and pointed to his mug. Junior walked over and wordlessly picked it up, wordless generally being Junior’s normal state, and walked out the door toward the bar area.

  “One thing don’t change, though,” Tony continued. “Boys do love they poker games. So I’m keeping an eye on Mr. Eddie Ross, seeing if I might need to take some of those tables away from him one of these days, I feel one of my urges coming on.”

  “How big is the state of play?” I said.

  “Like he’s got a league of his own going,” Tony said. “Some big games, some smaller. These are the type of arrogant assholes think that if they had the time and inclination, they could be raking in the big pots at the World Series of Poker.”

  “Who gets in?”

  “Anybody willing to pay the buy-in,” Tony said.

  “How big is that?”

  “Depends on the game.”

  “Money
laundering involved?”

  “Lots of ways to rinse money and repeat,” he said, “poker being one of them.”

  Junior came back with a steaming mug. Tony sipped some of the latte, then almost daintily placed the mug back on the coaster in front of him. I knew enough by now of what he used to do with those manicured hands when he was making his way up on the street, before his troopers did that sort of work for him.

  “Give me a general idea of the floor for the buy-in,” I said.

  “What I hear?” he said. “Ten grand, or thereabouts.”

  I wondered, and not idly, if Emily Barnes would have been willing to steal that kind of money from her mother to buy into one of Eddie Ross’s games.

  “But the price goes up from there,” Tony said. “Twenty, twenty-five, up to a hundred for them that want to feel like a play-ah.”

  “At a poker game.”

  “They’d be the type that look at that like damn tipping money,” Tony said. “They got they private planes. They just bought the lot next to them in the Vineyard, so they don’t have to worry about a neighbor having a better goddamn view than they do. And some of them? They just happy to be out the house again after the virus, trying to take some money off some mo-fuck who’s got more than they do.”

  “Thrill of victory,” I said.

  “Like Viagra, just with poker chips,” he said. “Guys like we talking about would rather pay for poker than pussy. Thrill lasts longer.”

  “You know where I might find Eddie Ross?” I said.

  “Sure you want to?” Tony said. “I hear he thinks he’s bad, but you don’t set up an operation like this if you don’t have bad behind you.”

  “I’ve just got some questions for him,” I said. “And he did threaten me recently.”

  “I did mention that he’s Russian, did I not?” Tony said. “What I know and what I hear, Russians aren’t as understanding as somebody like me. Or as, uh, flexible when it comes to being transactional.”

  “Our friend Frank Belson referred to the shooting as being Russian-style,” I said.

  Tony closed his eyes and slowly nodded, as if appreciating the image.

  “Out the car, then you dead, then back in the car, goodbye,” he said.

  “I don’t believe those particular details were in the news account,” I said.

  He gave me a big smile now.

  “See right there?” he said. “That’s why you here, girl. I know how you slapped the boy and I know how he got it. Sometimes I do know more than Google and Safari and Firefly put together.”

  “Firefox.”

  “Who gives a shit.”

  “There you go,” I said.

  “Say I can get you an address for Eddie Ross,” he said. “You know that means we back to you owing me a favor.”

  “I just assumed I was running a tab.”

  Junior was already opening the door.

  “Couple more questions before I go?” I said.

  “Might mean we talking about two favors, then,” Tony said.

  “You ever hear about anybody cheating at poker games like the ones we’re talking about?” I said.

  Tony snorted out a laugh. “Hell, yeah,” he said. “All you need is a dealer willing to risk that shit.”

  “What about a player cheating and getting away with it?” I said.

  “Only if they in on it with a dealer,” he said.

  I stood and turned to leave. Tony said he’d let me know when he had something on Eddie Ross. Junior was still holding the door. Ty-Bop was still leaning against the wall.

  “How we goin’ there, Ty?” I said. “All your carry permits up to date?”

  He didn’t change expression, even though I knew he secretly wanted to. As I was walking out the door the sound of Tony’s voice stopped me.

  “Hey?” he said.

  I turned back around.

  “I might’ve heard one other thing about Eddie Ross,” he said. “Boy like his pussy.”

  “Good to know,” I said.

  “College pussy,” Tony said.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I dropped my car at home after leaving Tony at Buddy’s Fox and walked to my office from there.

  I hadn’t heard from Spike, or Lee. I’d been checking Emily’s Instagram account every day, but she hadn’t posted anything since she’d been roughed up. Frank Belson had not called about the murder of Alex Drysdale to pick my brain about investigative technique, or crime-solving in general. His loss.

  I opened my laptop and put a search on “Eddie Ross and poker” even though I was not expecting him to be advertising his games on social media. The only significant mention of Eddie I found was a Los Angeles Times story from a few years ago about celebrity poker. Eddie wasn’t described as the organizer of the games. Just one of the players. He was described as a “talent agent,” but only in passing, well into the body of the piece.

  There were two movie stars mentioned, one Oscar-winning director, a former Laker, former Dodger, the guy who’d made a small fortune with his chicken-burger franchise, a screenwriter, a former diving gold medalist in the Olympics. The basics of the piece were that playing poker for serious money had become as cool in Bel-Air and Beverly Hills and Brentwood as buying kids into college had been until the Feds started perp-walking the rich and famous into courthouses.

  It was three o’clock by now. Noon on the West Coast, where it was a little early for power lunches. I called a number that I had briefly known by heart, but now had to look up in my contacts.

  Tony Gault, an actual talent agent, picked up on the first ring. He did that, as if afraid his phone would explode in his hand if he didn’t.

  “I believe you might have told me when we last spoke that you were losing my number,” he said.

  “I reconsidered,” I said.

  “So since you haven’t lost my number, I can only conclude that you want me, or a favor,” he said. “Even though many see them as one in the same.”

  “Latter,” I said.

  “But you did want me once,” he said.

  “Not sure want is the word you’re looking for, Tony,” I said. “You were an occasional urge, like mint chocolate-chip ice cream.”

  “Is this how you want to begin our deal-making?”

  It had been fun with the other Tony in my life while it lasted, even if it hadn’t lasted very long. He was handsome, almost as charming as he thought he was, almost as good in bed. But he had become an even bigger Hollywood player since I’d last seen him, merging his agency with one of the other alphabet agencies Out There.

  “I’m looking for someone who once traveled in your circles,” I said.

  “Which one?” he said. “I have so many.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Name, please?”

  “Eddie Ross.”

  I heard Tony Gault chuckle.

  “Now, there is an authentic blast from the past,” he said. “Fast Eddie. I wondered what happened to him after he skipped town.”

  “Skipped?” I said. “Why?”

  “He got some people even more prominent than I . . .”

  “If such a thing could ever be possible.”

  “. . . into a couple investment-type things that ended up losing them a boatload of money.”

  “Did you play poker with him?”

  “Couple times,” Tony said, “with a couple of my brilliant actor clients.”

  He named them, and I stopped myself from pointing out the distinction between “brilliant” and “famous,” though he’d probably stopped making the distinction himself long ago. One was the second lead in a sitcom. The other was an action star who generally killed more people than the Allies had in World War II.

  “What were the ‘investment-type things’?” I asked.

  “I’m still not sur
e what he was talking about,” he said. “Microblogging, or some goddamn thing.”

  “What was he doing for a living?” I said.

  “He said he was a venture capitalist,” Tony said. “But his poker buddies were supposed to provide the capital. Eddie managed to convince them that if they didn’t get out ahead on it, they’d be kicking themselves like they’d missed buying Apple at the beginning. That was right up until the thing blew up the way the dot-com bubble did back in the day.”

  “How’d his poker buddies who’d coughed up dough take that?”

  “Couldn’t find him.”

  “Hard to take a flier in the modern world,” I said.

  “He did,” Tony said. “Hadn’t thought about him until you brought him up just now. So he’s in Boston?”

  “Still living the poker life,” I said. “Still hanging around with rich guys.”

  “If they shake hands with him,” Tony said, “tell them to count their fingers.”

  I heard a buzzing noise at his end of the call, then heard him say, “Tell her I’ll call her back.”

  To me he said, “Sorry.”

  “You gonna call whoever-she-is back?”

  He chuckled again. “Eventually.”

  “You may be the biggest bullshitter I’ve ever known,” I said.

  “No business,” he said, “like show business.”

  He asked me why I wanted to know about Eddie Ross. I told him. When I finished, Tony Gault said, “You think Eddie might lead you to the girl?”

  “Will lead me to the girl,” I said. “But I have to find him first.”

  “Wish I could help you,” he said. “I’m not sure anybody knew where he lived when he lived out here.”

  There was another pause.

  “Was I your first call on this?”

  “Actually, Tony Marcus was.”

  “The gangster you used to talk about?”

  “He considers himself kind of a talent agent,” I said. “With an even bigger commission than yours.”