by James Swain
35
“I want to go home,” Skip DeMarco said.
DeMarco sat on the couch with an ice pack pressed to his head, his uncle sitting beside him. It was midnight, and his head had finally cleared from the fall he’d taken. He still wasn’t sure what had happened. One minute he was standing in the doorway, listening to his uncle have a conversation with a visitor, the next he was being given smelling salts. His uncle said he’d been out cold for fifteen minutes.
“Once the tournament is over, we’ll go right home,” his uncle said.
“I want to go home right now,” DeMarco said.
“We can’t do that, Skipper.”
DeMarco snapped his head in his uncle’s direction. “We?”
“You can’t do that, Skipper.”
“Why not, Uncle George? Why not?”
“Because we’re committed, that’s why.”
DeMarco could hear his heart banging in his ears, drowning out the rest of the world. Being the nephew of a Mafia kingpin, he understood exactly what that meant. A lot of people were involved in this. His uncle had struck deals, paid people off, made promises that he was bound to keep. His cojones were on the chopping block.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass,” DeMarco said.
“You sound like you’re twelve when you say that,” his uncle scolded him. “Talk like a man, for Christ’s sake.”
“I want to go home. I don’t feel safe here.”
His uncle didn’t have an answer for that. DeMarco lowered the ice pack and took several deep breaths. The fifteen minutes he’d been unconscious had done a number on his head, and he’d woken up knowing something that had been lurking in his subconscious for a long time. He was in over his head. Way over.
“Skipper, I’m sorry for what happened. It won’t happen again.”
“Twice today I’ve been knocked flat on my ass,” DeMarco said, seeing his opening. “Twice. Once in the lobby by a gang; then tonight, right here in my own suite. How can you make a promise like that, considering what’s happened? I don’t feel safe here. Is this deal more important than my safety?”
His uncle’s breathing grew labored. When DeMarco was younger and his vision better, he’d memorized everything about anybody that mattered to him, his uncle George especially. At this very moment, his uncle was staring at the floor, at a loss for words.
“Nothing means more to me than your safety,” his uncle said.
“Even being committed?”
“I cannot back out of my commitments, Skipper, and neither can you. I’m deeply sorry about what happened. And it won’t happen again. I’ve made sure of that.”
DeMarco didn’t doubt that. He’d heard his uncle on the phone, telling someone named Jinky Harris how he wanted Tony Valentine taken out of the picture. Over a dozen times his uncle had called Jinky either a fat fuck, or a worthless piece of shit, obscenities that his uncle used when he wanted to make a point. But that still didn’t change things. His uncle had decided to stay in Las Vegas without consulting him. He pushed himself off the couch in anger.
“Skipper, sit down.”
“No thanks, Uncle George. You could have asked me, you know?”
“I gave these men my word. You wouldn’t ask me to go back on my word?”
It was his uncle’s argument for everything. That a man’s word was more important than his relationships. It said everything you needed to know about the Mafia.
“Would you put my life above your word?” DeMarco asked, bumping into the coffee table because he’d risen too fast, the sudden pain making him wince. He heard his uncle’s body leave the couch. “Don’t. I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Skipper, I would not put your life above anything. But these men are not trying to kill you. They want to discredit you, so you’ll be thrown out of the tournament. You don’t want that, do you?”
DeMarco’s leg was singing the blues where he’d banged it. He hated pain; it ignited too many memories buried deep in his soul. His uncle came over, and offered his arm. DeMarco pushed it away.
“Put yourself in my shoes for once,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” his uncle said.
“I’m blind. I don’t see this shit coming. It’s like running into a tree. I did that when I was little, hit the tree as fast as I could. I was on the ground for ten minutes.”
“I’m sorry, Skipper.”
“You’re always sorry, Uncle George, but you never do anything different.”
“I don’t like the way this conversation is going,” his uncle said.
“You don’t? You know what I think, Uncle George?”
“I never know what you’re thinking, Skipper.”
“I think this is another of your deals.”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me. This is just another deal. You figured out a way to make a killing on this tournament, and sweet-talked me into being your shill. Only you didn’t bother to tell me that I was going to get the shit kicked out of me in the process. Thanks, Uncle George, thanks—”
There was only so much lip that his uncle George would take and he slapped his nephew’s face. DeMarco grabbed his uncle’s wrist, and twisted it. His uncle tried to resist. DeMarco twisted harder.
“How does it feel, Uncle George? How does being helpless feel?”
“Skipper!”
“These are my shoes, Uncle George. Try them on.”
“Let me go!”
“It really stinks, doesn’t it, Uncle George?”
“Guido! Help me!”
DeMarco heard a door bang open and Guido’s patent leather shoes come plodding across the suite’s inch-thick carpet. As Guido’s hands came down on his arms, DeMarco shoved his uncle aside, and found Guido with his hands. He had enrolled in self-defense classes when he was a teenager and been a disciple of the martial arts ever since. If he managed to get his hands on someone, he could beat anyone.
Guido had hands shaped like cow udders. DeMarco got one of his thumbs and bent it back, paralyzing him. Guido groaned, and DeMarco pulled him close. “You know something, Guido? You were the first person to cheat me in cards. We were playing for nickels at the kitchen table and I felt the bends you were putting in them. Can you believe that, Uncle George? Guido picked the one way to cheat me that I’d catch on to. He bent the cards.”
“Let him go,” his uncle declared.
“Took a couple of steps back, didn’t you, Uncle George?” DeMarco said. “Not used to this dynamic, are you?”
“Please, Skipper.”
His uncle was using his nice voice. He didn’t do that very often. Like maybe five times since the turn of the century. DeMarco obliged him, and released the bodyguard. Guido stalked away, muttering under his breath.
“I did this for you, Skipper,” his uncle said. “This isn’t just another deal. I did it for you.”
“For me? That’s a new one.”
His uncle stepped very close. He was shaking his head emphatically, and wanted DeMarco so see it. He did this sometimes when he was desperate to make a point.
“For you, Skipper. As payback. How many times did you get cheated in those poker tournaments you entered in Atlantic City? Every time! You said the other players saw the injured animal, and took you out. You said they whipsawed you, by raising the bets so early that you couldn’t afford to stay in. Am I right?”
DeMarco nodded reluctantly. Whipsawing was a form of collusion between two players. The pair would raise and reraise early in the hand, convincing the other players to fold. Usually, the players had nothing, and would later split the pot between them.
“You also told me that your opponents played cousins, and signaled their hands when they thought you were weak. They used hand signals that you couldn’t see.”
DeMarco nodded again. It was becoming a night of painful memories.
“So this is payback, Skipper. You’re the best poker player in the world; you told me so yourself.�
��
DeMarco found himself nodding. He was the best poker player in the world, at least on the Internet. He’d won over twenty online tournaments and nearly a half a million dollars in prize money. Several poker Web sites had banned him, forcing DeMarco to play under pseudonyms. He was a blind guy playing under a fake name and he was beating everyone out there. Sure, it wasn’t the same as playing in live events, but in time, he was certain he would win all of those as well.
His uncle pinched DeMarco’s arm. He’d been doing that since DeMarco had gone to live with him. It was his way of being affectionate.
“Yes, Uncle George.”
“I’m sorry,” his uncle said. “You’ll be included in all decisions from now on.”
“No more keeping me in the dark?”
His uncle laughed under his breath. “That’s a good one.”
His uncle led him across the room, and parted a curtain. The suite looked down upon the casino, the neon lighting the glass so brilliantly that DeMarco could see it a foot from his face. It made him feel normal, even if just for a little while, and he continued to stand there long after his uncle had said good night.
36
Nothing worked quickly in law enforcement, and it was nearly three A.M. before Gerry was given a sworn statement by Detective Longo regarding the discovery of Russell John Watson’s body in Gerry’s motel room. The statement was three pages long, and typed on legal paper. Gerry read it twice, just to make sure the details were right, then scribbled his signature across the bottom and slid the statement across the desk to the detective. Longo stood up, and the two men shook hands.
“How long you planning to stay in Las Vegas?”
“A couple more days,” Gerry said.
“Try to stay out of trouble, okay?”
Longo led him to the reception area in the front of the station house, which was filled with angry-looking people and several mothers with screaming babies. The area had plastic benches molded to the walls and steel chairs hex-bolted to the floor, and Gerry felt like he’d been dropped into an asylum. The detective shook his hand again.
“Your friends should be out in another ten minutes or so,” Longo said.
Gerry thanked him again, then found an empty seat on a bench, and watched Longo be buzzed back into the station house. Then he spent a few minutes unwinding. He’d been in plenty of tight spots in his life, but today took the cake. He needed to call his father and tell him he was okay, and also to thank him. Mr. Black and White had pulled through again.
He took out his cell phone and powered it up. Several bars of music came out of the phone, indicating it was ready to be used. The large African American sitting beside him emitted a menacing growl. Gerry glanced at him.
“What’s up?”
“Make a cell call in here, and I’ll make you eat that thing,” the man said loudly.
The reception area got still, with even the babies quieting down. Gerry looked around the room, and noticed that he was the only person with a cell phone. Leave it to him to find the one place in the country where people were gathered, and weren’t talking on cell phones. He snapped his phone shut, then rose and went to the front doors. Pushing them open, he glanced back at the man who’d threatened him.
“Save my seat?”
No one in the reception area laughed. Tough crowd, Gerry thought.
He stood on the edge of the parking lot and made the call. His father’s cell phone was turned off, and he left a rambling message on voice mail, thanking his father more times than was necessary, which he guessed was his way of compensating for not thanking him enough for saving his neck when he’d been a kid. Someday it would all balance out, although Gerry knew that day was a long ways off.
He heard the front doors open and someone come out. There was a breeze in the air, and he smelled perfume, then felt a hand touch his sleeve.
“Excuse me, are you a cop?”
He turned to find a woman who resembled Heather Locklear standing beside him. She wore jeans that fit like baloney skins and a sweater molded to her ample bosom.
“No, are you?”
She let out a little-girl giggle. “I was just wondering if you’d walk me to my car.”
Gerry obliged her, and they walked across the visitor parking lot. He was able to pick out her car before they reached it, a bloodred Mustang convertible. She opened it by pressing a button on her key chain, then thanked him with a smile.
He walked back to find Vinny, Nunzie, and Frank waiting by the front doors.
“Where you been?” Nunzie wanted to know.
“Being a good Boy Scout. Ready to go?”
The three men nodded. The apprehension of being inside a police station was slow to leave their faces, and Vinny took out a pack of cigarettes and offered it around. They all accepted, and shared a silence while allowing themselves to relax.
“How we ever going to pay your father back for this?” Vinny asked.
Gerry stared at the cigarette he’d just lit up. Yolanda was bugging him to quit, and he guessed now was as good a time as any. He dropped the cigarette and ground it out with his shoe, then said, “You’re not.”
“Your father isn’t going to demand something in return?”
Gerry shook his head. He took a deep breath, sucking in the secondhand smoke all around him. Vinny had survived as a hoodlum because he’d learned that favors must always be paid back. Except it was different with his old man. You couldn’t pay him back because there wasn’t anything his old man wanted.
“I’d still like to do something for him,” Vinny said. “You know, show my respect.”
“Maybe you could send him a turkey at Thanksgiving,” Nunzie suggested.
“Or a ham,” Frank said, speaking for the first time. “They’ve got these places that precook them, and deliver.”
“You think he’d like a ham?” Vinny asked.
Gerry realized they were being serious, and tried to imagine what his father would do with a baked ham sent to him by a bunch of hoodlums. He’d either take it to a local homeless shelter, or to the neighbors, but he wouldn’t eat it himself.
“Sure,” Gerry said.
“Bah-zoom,” Nunzie said under his breath. “What do we have here?”
The four men’s attention shifted to the attractive member of the opposite sex coming across the visitor parking lot toward them. It was the young woman Gerry had escorted to her car, only now she had a pissed-off look on her face, and her car keys dangling from her fingertips.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, but my car’s engine is as dead as a doornail,” she said. “Is there any way you could give me a ride home? I don’t live that far.”
Gerry looked at his friends, and not seeing any objections, said, “Sure, but I’ve got to warn you, it’s not that big a car.”
“I’ll squeeze in,” she said.
Her name was Cindy Dupree, and she sat sandwiched between Vinny and Gerry in the front seat, and told them how she’d come to Las Vegas expecting to get a job as a blackjack dealer in a casino—“I heard you could live pretty decently on tips”—but had ended up working the graveyard shift as a bartender—“The tips suck”—and was hoping to scrounge up enough money to move to Los Angeles and enroll in a beautician’s school. She called Las Vegas a whorehouse sitting on a hot plate, and hoped never to return for as long as she lived.
While she talked, Cindy directed Vinny to a nameless subdivision on the northern outskirts of town. There were no streetlights, and Gerry squinted to see the street names, trying to remember them so they could get back to town. They passed a billboard for a smiling attorney named Ed Bernstein, then turned down a dead-end street named Cortez, and Cindy said, “This is it,” and pointed at a single-story ranch house in the middle of the block. Vinny pulled up to the curb, and threw the rental in park.
“Well, I guess this is where we part ways, gents,” Cindy said. “Thanks for helping a girl out of a tight spot. I really appreciate it.”
Gerry
slid out of the car and offered his hand to her. She took it, gave him a friendly kiss on the cheek when she was out of the car, then brushed past him on her way up the front path. She had her key ring out, and he saw her press a button that made her garage door automatically open. His father was always telling him that where there was smoke, there was usually fire, and he found himself questioning why she’d come to the police station by herself. She hadn’t felt safe walking across the parking lot, yet had been willing to let four strange guys give her a ride home. It didn’t make sense, and he jumped into the car while looking back at Cindy’s garage. The door had come up, and as she went inside, two men hiding in the garage swept out past her.
“Cute broad,” Vinny said.
“Get out of here!”
“What’s wrong—”
“I said go!”
A Pontiac Firebird was parked in front of them, twenty yards down the street. Its headlights came on, bathing their rental in light. The car’s engine roared, and it came forward as if to hit them, then suddenly stopped. Two men wearing jeans and sweatshirts jumped out. Together with the two men from Cindy’s garage, they surrounded the rental. In their hands were automatic pistols with silencers, and Gerry heard the quiet pop, pop, pop as they shot out their tires, the rental slowly sinking several inches. He glanced at the house, and saw Cindy standing in the garage. She’d turned the light on, and was watching the action. Their eyes briefly met, and she shrugged and killed the light.
One of the armed men tapped Vinny’s window with the tip of his silencer. Vinny rolled down his window while keeping his other hand visible on the wheel.
“Which one of you is Gerry Valentine?” the man asked.
Gerry said that he was. He’d put his hands on the dashboard and was trying to stop his bowels from exploding. The only thing worse than getting whacked was soiling yourself before it happened, and he struggled to retain his dignity.
“You and the driver get out of the car,” the man said.
Gerry got out of the rental and faced the man doing the talking. He’d inherited a lot of things from his father, one of which was his phenomenal memory. He’d seen this guy before, then it clicked where: the guy was a valet at the Sugar Shack. The fact that he wasn’t wearing a mask did not bode well for what was about to happen to them.
