All The Big Ones Are Dead

by Christopher A. Gray

John Logan patted his jacket pockets one last time before opening the door to leave his Upper West Side apartment, making sure he had his notepad and phone. In the hallway he locked the door, took three steps towards the elevator, then turned back to his apartment door to make sure it was locked. John performed this ritual every time. Not obsessive compulsive, he thought to himself. Lots of people check their door twice.

  His denial had its roots in his father’s many jibes directed at him while growing up. As a child at the dinner table, John would separate whatever was on his plate into equal piles. Typical dinners had up to four piles, all spaced equally around his plate. On Thanksgiving there might be six piles. “Will you stop doing that and eat like a normal person?” his father Mitch would sometimes say.

  John didn’t stop. When his father grabbed the fork from John’s hand and pushed the piles of food together, John wouldn’t eat until he was allowed to rearrange the food back the way he wanted. If Mitch got angry, John’s mother would interject. “Leave him alone,” she would say. “At least he’s not into cigarettes like the neighbor’s kids.”

  John rode the elevator down to the ground, mentally timing the ride. He noted the daily variation on the nine-floor trip, which took anywhere from nineteen to twenty-one seconds, provided it was an uninterrupted ride. He surmised that the variation depended on the temperature and the electrical load of the building, both of which affected the elevator motor’s efficiency. He cursed silently when he felt the elevator decelerate before reaching the lobby. Someone from the fifth floor would be getting on with him.

  The doors opened, and Mrs. Schmidt got on with her little dog, Pippi. John had no idea what breed it was. The animal’s hair was a stringy mixture of bronze and grey. It had a blue bow on its collar. Pippi was similar to the dogs owned by many of the other middle-agers and seniors in the building. John sometimes wondered, only half-joking, if some official automatically showed up on your sixtieth birthday to hand you a little dog, a retractable leash and one of the little green plastic tubes full of disposal stoop and scoop bags.

  “Good morning, John,” Mrs. Schmidt said. “I think it is supposed to be cooler today.”

  “Yes, I think so,” John replied. He wasn’t very comfortable with elevator conversation. In fact, he wasn’t comfortable with most conversations, except those with colleagues that involved advanced mathematics. Nevertheless, he liked Mrs. Schmidt. She was harmless, she meant well, and even John could see past her little dog to a woman who was at peace with the world. She smiled at him, and he brightened up.

  The dog sniffed at his jeans. Great. Dog spit, John thought. Why do dogs always have to press their noses against your clothes?

  John wasn’t particularly mindful of his clothes, but he didn’t like contaminants like dropped food or, in this case, dog spit, clinging to him. He was wearing his usual jeans and dark olive-brown blazer. On a typical professional, his jacket and jeans would have been a forward fashion choice, but John managed to nearly destroy a perfectly good outfit with neglect.

  The collar of the old jacket had a slight curl, and the cuffs were starting to fray. His large keychain created a weighty lump in the left pocket, and dragged the entire jacket down on that side, so that it didn’t fit properly around his shoulders. The darker distressed jeans were fine, aside from the fact that John had six pairs in the exact same style. Once he found jeans or pants he liked, he bought several pairs. The only variation in his daily dress was his shirt color, today a natural cotton.

  As the elevator opened to the lobby, John walked quickly past Mrs. Schmidt, stepping over Pippi’s leash. He knew the action was slightly rude, but he didn’t want to be stuck behind the slow-walking elderly woman and her dog. Better to be rude and remain on a scheduled routine than polite and hindered.

  “Have a nice day, John,” Mrs. Schmidt said. John looked back and waved, then strode at his usual quick pace towards his usual coffee shop.

  John liked the selection of coffee shops in the neighborhood. There were six within a five-minute walk, but he only went to one, the quietest one. It was tucked in a side street a few doors in from West 85th, so it only got a fraction of the usual crush of sleepy pedestrians seeking their morning caffeine. ‘Quiet’ was a relative term. Despite the lack of significant lineups for service, throughout the day the place did good business and was noisy with conversation. John’s favorite table, the one furthest from the entrance, was usually available. The tables near the bright front window were almost always occupied.

  John stood at the order counter, glad that Julie, his regular barista, was working today. The unfamiliar young man who worked yesterday had served John a double Americano, not the triple that he had ordered. Even so, John didn’t complain, since there seemed to be an unusually high volume of customers that day.

  “Hi John,” Julie said as she prepared his drink.

  “Hi,” John replied.

  Julie was an undergrad student at Columbia. She always looked tired, which was trait she shared with many other full-time students who had part-time jobs. It was the reality of high tuition fees and a high cost of living that forced almost every student to find work and roommates to share the rent. Nevertheless, she was very attractive, with short, dark hair framing a finely featured oval face and she tried to stay in shape by working diligently at her Yoga classes when she could. All that and an affable, forthright personality ensured that in any given week she was usually asked out more than once by a customer. This was not lost on John.

  Despite her refusing dates from many other would-be suitors, John didn’t hold out much hope for a relationship with her. For one thing, at twenty-two, she was ten years younger. More significantly, John knew that he wasn’t particularly strong in the social skills that normally led to the development of mutual attraction. The sole relationship he had experienced thus far had been eleven years ago, at the tail end of his undergrad studies. April was a fellow teaching assistant whose relationship experience was almost as slim as his. They had dated for about ten weeks, had unsatisfying sex twice, and went their separate ways after graduation.

  John watched Julie as she filled his cup from the espresso machine. She seemed deep in thought, with a wisp of hair covering her left eye. She had lovely eyes, and such pretty features. Sometimes John wished they were together, but he reasoned that most relationships were complex and messy. He didn’t have the time or patience for one.

  “Here you go,” Julie handed the cup to him with a smile. “Thanks,” John replied, looking into her eyes for a fraction of a second before turning to the milk counter, chastising himself for not attempting more meaningful conversation with her. He sat down at his usual table and took out his phone, intending to read the morning headlines.

  He looked back at Julie for a moment. There were no customers in line, so she was using the time to wipe away some coffee residue from the espresso machine. Taking a deep breath, John got up and approached the counter again.

  As she saw John in the corner of her eye Julie looked up, momentarily surprised. John never came back after receiving his order.

  “Everything okay, John?”

  “Sure. Just wanted to ask ‘how’s things’?”

  “Great, or not so great, depending on your point of view.”

  “You’ve been busy lately. Here, I mean.”

  “I guess,” Julie replied. She was starting to wonder what John was getting at. “Personal issues have me, um, distracted.”

  “How’s Tom?” John asked.

  “We broke up last month. Didn’t I mention it?” Julie looked down at the counter and absent-mindedly wiped it as she answered.

  “Oh. Sorry to hear that,” John said, again shifting his weight. “Right. Personal issues. I get it.” He didn’t know what else to say to a person he liked who was having relationship issues.

  “It’s all right. He was more interested in his career than me. It was for the best, I think.”

  John wanted to say something like, the fool should have paid mor
e attention to you, but he was afraid of sounding trite, or worse, that he was desperately interested in Julie.

  “Well, I’m sure you will find a better guy. You deserve it.”

  Julie looked up at him. Thank you John.”

  They locked eyes for a moment. John was both elated and terrified at the eye contact. He wasn’t used to it, at least not with a woman he was attracted to. He gave a quick smile and turned, walking quickly out of the shop without his coffee. Julie watched him go, then resumed cleaning the espresso machine.

  Chapter Three

  “Julius!” Marc Dominican called out. “Over here. To your left.”

  Julius Coppola snapped his head around to try and spot the multimillionaire he was apprehensive about meeting. Dreading meeting was more like it. As a fellow alumnus of Columbia, Julius knew full well that Marc Dominican had parlayed his dollar-a-dozen MBA and his family’s money into an even larger fortune than he’d inherited. Julius wasn’t embarrassed about his own accomplishments by comparison though. Far from it. He knew exactly how well he’d done as the highly paid head of the Columbia’s IT department, and he knew that he was doing important work to keep the labs, research, administration and a lot of the future of the great university running like a finely tuned Swiss watch. Better than that even, and a lot more complicated.

  But he did not want to be in Central Park at this moment and he certainly did not want to be forced into meeting with Marc Dominican. Julius was apprehensive about what might be coming, even though he didn’t know exactly what it was. He’d received a cryptic text message the previous evening.

  “Had a grt chat with Bins who says you need my hlp RSN. Got what you need. CPrk at 3:30 nr BF. Use E72/Terrace Dr entrance only. I can help.”

  Fifteen years earlier, Julius had been doing post-grad computer science work when Marc was graduating with his bullshit MBA. They’d met during first year, through a mutual friend, and hung out in the local Columbia scene from time to time.

  Casual friends only, and they hadn’t spent all that much time together. But Julius still recognized the simple abbreviations Marc used. CPrk was Central Park—that was obvious and easy. BF had to be Bethesda Fountain—easy to get to and one of the most popular meeting spots in the park. “Bins” was something altogether less innocent though, and Julius broke out in a cold, prickly sweat when he read the word. Bins was the nickname of a man who haunted the shadows of the university gambling scene. He was always ready with cash—high interest loans—and always looking for favors and influence in return for a discount on the payback. If you were useful to Bins, he’d wipe the vig off the table and you’d only have to pay back the principle. And the favor. It was mostly small time stuff for a typical shylock.

  Bins also made friends easily—all sorts of friends inside the university crowd, among the IT staff and department heads and even among the younger professors. He was a rangy, affable guy whose voice never rose above a pleasant tone. He feigned shyness quite often, but he also kept a couple of nasty looking bruisers on retainer. Bins was always in a good mood. It’s only money was his favorite line, along with an accompanying shrug and a kind smile. His uniform of the day, every day, was jeans crushed over walking boots, a denim shirt under a corduroy sport jacket, and a Yankees ball cap to top it all off. In the colder weather he threw on a sweeper and a scarf as he made his way from place to place, from customer to customer, checking on his business. The rest of the time, Bins typically roosted in a quiet bar in Morningside Heights near 110th & Amsterdam. That’s where his new clients came to beg loans, that’s where the bruisers hung out, and that’s where Bins could be found when you had to make a payment. Nobody knew how old he was. A goatee masked the lower part of his face and the ever-present Yankees cap covered the upper part making it hard to guess his age. He could have been thirty or fifty.

  Rumor had it that Bins was tight with a couple of deans too. Julius knew that these sorts of rumors usually weren’t worth the dirt under his nails. On the other hand, Bins had an eerily detailed knowledge about everything to do with debt and gambling and unpaid apartment rents and late car payments among the people with whom he did his steady trade. Bins had found out that Julius had bigger gambling issues than just his losses at the local poker games. Bins caught wind of the debt Julius was racking up, losing money by the bucketful in the casinos in Ozone Park, Yonkers, ‘Toga and a couple of other spots. Julius was a classic slots and table game machine addict, and it wasn’t pretty. Nor was it amusing or even vaguely entertaining when he was losing, which was most of the time. Maxed-out credit cards, borrowed money from friends that hadn’t been paid back, sold off valuables including jewelry and wristwatches inherited from his father. Money owed, and more. Not amusing at all. The name Bins in Marc’s text message made Julius feel nauseated. He hadn’t slept much overnight, and he still felt vaguely sick to his stomach.

  The park entrance instructions were kind of odd, but Julius remembered that Marc could sometimes be weirdly anal about some things. The passage of fifteen years evidently hadn’t changed much about Marc.

  There had to be a hundred or more people in the general area around the fountain, sitting on the rim and lounging on the benches, standing in groups talking about everything and nothing. Julius craned his neck to get an angle on where Marc’s voice had come from. He shaded his eyes. At 3:30 PM in mid-September, the sun was at just the right angle to lance harsh reflections from the expensive condo and co-op windows on 5th Avenue that could momentarily blind you when you looked east. He spotted Marc after a moment, his hand raised as he waited for Julius to see him. Dominican waved him over.

  “Hey. Marc,” Julius said in the most casual, hey-haven’t-seen-you-in-a-while tone he could muster.

  “Jules,” Marc drawled with faint smile, “good to see you. It has been almost exactly six years. That alumni dinner reunion thing or whatever it was supposed to be. You still look great. University life is keeping you in good shape. You look alright.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Julius said. But then his nervousness and anticipation got the best of him. “So what’s happening, Marc?” he blurted tightly. “Your text message was, um, a bit surprising.”

  “Relax, Jules,” Dominican said with a smile, and a deprecatory wave. “Life is full of surprises. Some of them start off uncomfortable and turn pleasant. Some start off uncomfortable and stay that way. Some start uncomfortable and then get a lot worse.”

  “Huh,” Julius grunted. “You don’t waste much time.” It was a flat statement. Julius hadn’t known what to expect, he was deeply stressed about his gambling and his debts and his addiction and all the projects going on at the university, and Marc Dominican sounded like he was trying to scare him. It was working.

  “Marc,” Julius said, his voice a little too high pitched, “I’m here because you’ve upset me. What’s the deal here? I mean, what do you want from me and what does any of it have to do with Bins?”

  “Your mother’s co-op, where you live; the one she left you when she died two years ago. You did get the card and flowers I sent, didn’t you? You owned it free and clear, Jules. You know—your home? Now it’s mortgaged. You borrowed against the equity. One hundred and six thousand dollars. You’ve also got five, high-limit credit cards that are almost all maxed out. That’s another ninety one thousand. I could go on, but I won’t.”

  Julius drifted. He couldn’t help himself. He was counting up his debt again, just like he did every night. All Marc had to do was mention the co-op apartment to start Julius thinking about his enormous losses and his enormous debts.

  “Julius!” Marc snapped when he noticed that Julius was just staring at the park bench, eyes fixed. Julius snapped out of it and looked the other man in the eyes again.

  “Marc, thanks for the card and flowers two years ago. I haven’t physically seen you in six years though and now, right out of the blue you want something from me. I’m impressed you’ve got connections that you can use to dig into my stressed-out life. What are
you, now? Desperate for fun? You’re here with your latest billion or hundred million or whatever it is to show me what a cool cat you are? Slumming with the poor people? Is that what this is?” Julius barely got the last syllable out as he ran out of breath. It made him sound frantic rather than angry.

  Marc Dominican just smiled and looked down at his three thousand dollar Bruno Magli boots for a few moments.

  “Julius, you, ah, you were always smarter than everybody around you. But you never made it obvious. You always stayed within yourself. It was endearing; it made you a good friend. But your brains never helped you see yourself the way others see you. And one part of your brain still hasn’t informed any other part that you’re a degenerate fuckin’ gambler who’s going to piss away everything he’s built—career, respect, reputation, everything—all because you can’t play poker and you’ll never learn, and because you’ve deluded yourself into believing that the statistical principle of regression to the mean will eventually dump a fortune in your lap. One part of your brain has succeeded in getting all the other parts of your brain to ignore everything you’ve ever learned about gambling, addictive marketing, how the Rake works, and the statistical advantage for the House built into every game. For such a smart guy, you’ve made a relentlessly stupid series of decisions over quite a few years, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.”

  “Marc. I . . . I . . .” Julius stuttered, then turned and slumped down on the park bench next to Dominican. “You’re right,” Julius said hoarsely, staring at the pavement. “I’m in trouble. I’m not sleeping. I’m thinking about this all the time. Every time I get deep into it though, all I can think about is winning big at the tables or the slots. I’m fucked up. Badly. I know it.”

  “Huh,” Marc said, leaning back on the bench somewhat surprised, “I really didn’t think you’d admit it so readily. Seems like you’re ready for a solution, then? Real help to get you permanently out from underneath. Help to get you back to being the bright, sharp Julius we all know and love, yes?”