The Gods of Greenwich

by Norb Vonnegut

  “Hey thanks, right?”

  “Oops, there’s Cy,” Bianca noted. “Gotta go.”

  Her swinging cadence sounded cheerful. And her choice of words, calling Jimmy “some kind of hug,” turned Bianca warm and oddly affectionate. There was energy about her, the kind of perkiness found in coffee beans and substances that come with twenty-year sentences. But after five seconds of dial tone, which were three more than necessary, Cusack decided things were still tense in the Leeser household.

  * * *

  “I’m in.”

  After a quick discussion, Cusack clicked off the phone with Geek. For the moment he forgot Durkin and Leeser’s secret sauce. He put Shannon and Victor out of his mind, as well as the warning from Daryle Lamonica. His attention shifted to the business of renting a car and driving to Foxwoods.

  Cusack had no idea he was being shadowed. He never trained with the CIA or FBI, the Delta Force, or countless other organizations where individuals acquire the special skills to observe, evade, and hunt. He never jumped from an airplane or shot a gun.

  Talk—that was Cusack’s job. He ate lunch with prospects. He lived inside a shark tank filled with numbers, either billions or basis points. When Cusack saw .25, he said “quarter.” He never heard the expression “deuce five” or interpreted .25 as the caliber of a gun. He lacked the espionage skills to spot surveillance or pick out a “pavement artist” from the crowd.

  The tail knew how to make himself invisible. He knew how to extricate himself from messy situations. And he knew how to crush larynxes with his bare hands. He had stabbed, punched, and gutted his enemies under the cover of night. He once dropped a man in broad daylight with a sniper shot of four thousand feet, hardly the longest strike ever, but respectable nevertheless. Long ago, his hand had molded to the grip of an M9 Beretta. The tail pulled triggers the way Cusack ran spreadsheets.

  * * *

  The tail was not the only person with special skills. That Friday afternoon Rachel called her employer. Something in his voice that morning had troubled her. Anger. Venom. Something not right.

  Emotions were a problem in her business. Mistakes accompany tempers—his spats of fury could cost her big time. It was that simple.

  “You sure everything’s under control, Kemosabe?”

  “What are you, some kind of fucking therapist now?”

  “I’m here if you need some help. That’s all I’m saying.” She had always controlled men, even Doc, and had never succumbed to the bad-boy moodiness that aroused other women. Any more guff, and she would tie his ears in a bowknot.

  “Do they ever shut up on your planet? Leave me alone, Rachel, and focus on Conrad Barnes.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  MONEY FOR NOTHING …

  Foxwoods Casino is Oz, orgy, and Thunderdome all in one. There is anticipation, the never-changing lust for jackpots and greener pastures. There is consumption, the nonstop sating of desire no matter what form it takes. And there is conflict worthy of Mad Max:

  Two men enter.

  One man leaves.

  The men entering Foxwoods are Jackson and Hamilton or any of the other faces printed on U.S. currency. Dead presidents find it tough to escape the 4.7 million square feet of casino games, luxury hotel rooms, and shops that hawk everything from carats to computers. The forefathers that find daylight are only a fraction of their former selves.

  Restaurants are everywhere. They wrap around the slots and craps like boa constrictors squeezing the few remaining dollars from outmanned wallets. The house can take everything, unless, of course, you know how to play the game.

  Cusack checked into the MGM Grand, where the staff greeted him like Julius Caesar. They made a big fuss and acted as though he belonged. They asked for his credit card but only to cover incidentals. The hotel, they explained, had comped Mr. Dimitris Georgiou’s party of four. The staff never referred to him as Geek.

  The tail checked in twenty minutes later under the alias Brandon Anderson. He paid cash, slipped two Franklins to the bell captain, and said, “You have a guest named Jimmy Cusack. Call me if he leaves the hotel.”

  * * *

  Inside his suite on the fifteenth floor, Cusack dialed Emi and left a message on her cell phone. Geek and the traders would arrive around seven P.M., summer beach traffic on I-95 permitting. The four already agreed, after swapping e-mails on their BlackBerrys all afternoon, to drink tequila and heat up the blackjack tables until all the other gamblers dropped.

  Who am I kidding?

  Cusack came to watch and hang with the guys, not drop money at the tables. He had seen his share of hose-jobs at Goldman—the times when traders bet wrong, blew their year-end bonuses, and avoided eye contact afterward. Jimmy pitched his stuff on the bed and ventured downstairs into a jungle of slots, where he identified one major difference between Foxwoods and his day job. The bells from thousands and thousands of one-armed bandits sounded like an electronic seizure. Trading floors were serene by comparison.

  A woman in her late sixties, sallow and oblivious to the racket, caught Jimmy’s attention as he drifted through the great hall. She wore three money cards, dog-tag style, with extra-long chains that allowed her to plug into a trio of slots. The woman gazed at lemons and cherries, locked in a Svengali trance, her nose only a few inches away from the tumblers. With her left hand she worked one machine’s arm. With her right she worked the other two. Three machines gorging her money at the same time. Cusack counted not one but two cigarettes dangling from her lips.

  She should start a hedge fund.

  Just once, Cusack sensed a presence among the retirees strolling the casino in stretchies and tennis shoes. He detected a shadow, a person, someone, somebody standing behind two roundish couples eating ice cream cones, somebody eyeing him with more than casual interest. When Jimmy checked again, the focused eyes were gone.

  Meandering through Racebook, Foxwood’s world of horse and greyhound racing on big-screen televisions, Cusack heard an unmistakable voice over his shoulder. “Since when are Yankees fans allowed in here?”

  It was Geek giving him grief, a good-natured jab from one Red Sox fanatic to another. With the UBS traders on either side, he added, “I thought we’d find you here.”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later the four men hovered around a blackjack table. The traders grabbed two chairs to Geek’s left. And Geek gestured for Jimmy to sit to his right. Dimitris was on a mission. The consummate casino man, he was teaching his flock and showing them the ropes. It was the one place on earth where people got him.

  “Geek, you’re the pro. Let me watch for a while and see how you do it.” Cusack had been practicing his excuses all afternoon. The truth was he had no stomach for sitting down at the $500 minimum table with $148,542 due in February. He knew the consequences, however. The traders would roast him for standing on the sidelines.

  “Sit down,” pressed Geek. “I’ll tell you what to do.”

  “This seat taken?” asked a pretty brunette, Hollywood body without the airbrush.

  Before anyone answered, the brunette parked herself in the chair to Geek’s right and winked at the UBS guys. It was a stroke of luck for Cusack. Because now the table was full, and the traders would rather flirt than tell him to man up and play cards.

  “I guess that settles it,” observed Cusack.

  “Suit yourself.” Before joining the game, Geek added with intense eyes magnified by Coke-bottle lenses: “Just remember I can always help.”

  What’s that mean?

  Geek was a thing of beauty at the tables. First he ordered $50,000 in chips. “That’s to get started.” Then he played with the panache of James Bond in Casino Royale.

  Other players began to take notice. Geek won three out of the first five hands, adding $5,000 to his stack in less than five minutes. Ten minutes later he pulled two aces, split them, and blackjacked with a king of spades and ten of diamonds. That hand raked in another $8,000.

  Within the hour Geek doubled his
money, pausing every so often to nurse his tequila or check on Cusack. The UBS traders gawked at Geek’s growing stack of chips. And spectators gathered round the table to witness the diminutive hedge fund maven, who made blackjack look simple.

  “Damn, Geek,” whistled one of the UBS traders.

  “Yeah, damn,” agreed the brunette, who appeared ready to adopt Dimitris.

  Cusack broke from the action only once. Emi texted, Here, safe, and I have good news.

  He always felt better when she checked in. Not that prosopagnosia was debilitating. It was more like annoying background music that never stopped. Tell me, tell me, he texted back.

  Dad is coming to Cy’s MoMA event.

  Roger that.

  You got any money left, Bert? she sent back.

  When Geek’s winnings hit $75,000, he ordered a bottle of champagne and asked if anyone at the table wanted a glass. “My usual,” he instructed the waitress. “And bring back a carving knife with it.”

  The pit boss looked up.

  Three minutes later the waitress returned with a bottle and a sixteen-inch carving knife. “Here you are, Mr. Georgiou.”

  “That’s a seven-hundred-dollar bottle,” observed one of the UBS traders.

  “Make way,” Geek ordered the small crowd round the table.

  He ripped the foil from the champagne bottle and twisted off the wire safety holding back the plastic cork. With deft motions he pointed the bottle away, grabbed the knife, and ran the flat side of the blade hard against the seam of the bottle. The knife whacked the bottle’s lip with a resounding clink of metal against glass. The crowd stopped buzzing, and one woman gasped.

  Off flew the lip. Cork and glass collar sailed together in one clean break. Out shot the champagne. It sprayed harmlessly into the aisle, fizzing over Geek’s hand. Up stood the brunette, who clapped and cheered along with everyone on the sidelines, including Cusack.

  “Anyone want a glass?” asked Geek in his most casual voice.

  “What was that?” asked the first trader.

  “Sabering,” explained Geek, “is how Napoleon’s armies celebrated their victories.”

  “Not with seven-hundred-dollar bottles,” protested the second trader.

  “Seven hundred wholesale. And that kind of money is the only way I get away with this shit,” explained Geek. “Now, who’s hungry? I’m starved. And I’m buying.”

  “Are you leaving?” objected the brunette. She winked at the traders again and said to Geek, “Why don’t you help me lose a good night’s sleep.”

  “Damn, Geek,” repeated the trader.

  “See ya,” said the other UBS guy.

  “Hang on,” replied Geek. He collected his chips and whispered something in the brunette’s ear. She smiled ear to ear.

  En route to David Burke’s steakhouse, where elongated glass udders with Dali-like proportions hang from the ceilings, Cusack asked Geek, “What did you say to that woman?”

  “I gave her my cell number.” Geek blinked through his thick lenses, still charming but not so powerful as at the table.

  “You make it look easy.”

  “Go ahead,” Geek instructed the guys from UBS. “We’ll catch up.” Then he whispered to Cusack, “Like I said before, I can always help. You know what I’m saying?”

  “No. What are you saying?”

  * * *

  The answer came later that evening. After two rounds of port that followed three bottles of $1,200 cabernet that chased vodka martinis, which flowed like tap water. Somebody recalled tequila shots during the procession of drinks and enthusiastic choruses: “Lemon, salt, and suck.” But nobody was sure.

  By the time dessert arrived, Geek abandoned his self-appointed role as host extraordinaire, casino insider, and camp counselor. The answer came shortly after he made a big show of paying the tab from his $75,000 payday and asked, “Now what?”

  The UBS traders looked at each other, then at Geek and Cusack. And with no further ado, they replied in unison, “Strip club.”

  “I know the place,” said Geek.

  The answer was not what Cusack expected. Nor did he notice the guy who had checked into the hotel as Brandon Anderson. The tail was recording everything.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  WORKS HARD FOR THE MONEY …

  “Ten dollars,” announced Danny Bag, which is what members called him at the club. His official title was “Danny Bag of Doughnuts.” At 350 pounds the big man was a crowd of one inside the small theater-style ticket booth. He wore his white oxford shirt like a diaper, cinched tight to rein back the overflow.

  Cusack, Geek, and the two UBS traders paid Danny Bag and became guest members for the night. That arrangement would never work at the Belle Haven Club back in Greenwich, a place where members dined on the deck and gazed at boats moored sleepily in the harbor. Or they admired waterfront estates belonging to hedge fund legends. It was there at the Belle Haven Club that a cannon roared every dusk as diners stood at attention while staff lowered the American flag over all Hedgistan.

  One by one, the foursome pushed through an iron turnstile and entered a different kind of club, not in Greenwich, but just outside Providence. No flag. No cannon. And not much by the way of clothes among women. The Foxy Lady was hopping at one in the morning, well worth their forty-five-minute pilgrimage in a stretch limo.

  Home to “Legs and Eggs” every Friday at breakfast, the Foxy Lady had been Rhode Island’s strip club of choice for forty years, more or less. Ever sensitive to its clientele, the bar tended to all details starting with credit cards. It billed as “Gulliver’s Tavern,” bump the Lilliputians, because the name “Foxy Lady” would shut down expense accounts from most stockbrokers and a few lawyers.

  Dancers lived year-round in the surrounding areas and led modest lives away from work; not modest in the sense they kept their clothes on, but modest as in no frills. These dancers were not the tour girls, who played Vegas and moved on. The Foxy Lady was their way of life. It was territory to defend as they crawled over laps and made men happy, whatever it took to supplement a husband’s salary, pay down a second mortgage, and make ends meet.

  “Nice tramp stamp,” observed one of the UBS traders. He pointed at a Goth pole dancer with bat wings tattooed on the flat of her back.

  Cusack’s head was spinning from fog of drink and thump of music. A thirty-something woman, blondish and sheathed in gold lamé, winked at him through the crowd. By now, Cusack had forgotten whatever Geek said that seemed so important earlier. Or so bizarre. He couldn’t remember.

  “Personally, I’d prefer thongs,” opined Geek, “something with the bat wing up front. The problem with tattoos is you can’t change them.” He was more sober than the others and spoke with authority.

  “You’re missing the point,” scolded the first trader, slurring his words.

  “Tramp stamps are reading material,” finished the second.

  “Maybe we should stay an extra day,” ventured Geek, “and explore the artwork around here. You can get some ideas, Jimmy, for painting your condo.”

  “Hey, is that a shot?”

  Geek flashed a knowing smile. It was the smile of a guy who knows a deep secret—something too dark and sub rosa for even the closest confidant to know. The look lasted no more than an instant. Then nothing. It faded, and he returned to the thump-thump of music and the foursome’s safari to the dark side.

  The traders never noticed Geek’s expression. Nor did others in the club, where well-oiled patrons savored the sea of implants that came in large, extra-large, and McDonald’s supersize. Even Brandon Anderson, watching from the shadows through black wraparound shades, missed the look. After twenty years of inspecting doors and windows for gunmen, he noticed everything. But not tonight. No one noticed.

  No one but Cusack. After all the wine and earlier choruses of “lemon, salt, and suck,” he saw the look. Wondered what it meant. Not that he cared. That was the great thing about hanging with Geek and the guys, about pounding
drinks. After a few belts nothing mattered. Everything came with rock-solid explanations until the next morning.

  Cusack started to speak, unaware the stripper with a bat-wing tattoo was marching toward their table. Focused and battle ready, she was on a mission. There was no stopping her advance.

  * * *

  The stripper with the bat tattoo leaned forward and spread her wings around the UBS guys. Cleavage at eye level, she invited the four men to check out her cave. “You boys on business?”

  “That’s some tat,” said one trader, attempting the difficult jump to urban cool but landing like a dumpy white guy from Wall Street. “Reminds me of Batgirl.”

  “Wait till you see my superpowers.” She crinkled her nose and cocked her head halfway to come hither.

  “I have powers all my own.” The trader thought it was a damn good line, especially when Batgirl boob-nuzzled him tight.

  She thought him boorish. She heard the same joke night after night and sometimes during the matinee shift.

  “Batgirl has gadgets,” argued the second trader. “She doesn’t have special powers.”

  “Take me into the VIP room,” the stripper purred, shoulders thrown back and breasts thrust forward like the nose of a 747, “and find out what disappears.” Her fingers drifted over to his chest, where she traced circles on the hair peeking from his collar. “You know what I’m saying, big boy?”

  “Done,” woofed the first trader. “Lap dances on me.”

  “Jimmy and I need to talk,” Geek announced. “Give us a few minutes, and we’ll join you.”

  “Are you holding out for something inflatable?” The second trader was incredulous. “The swap king of UBS just hit the bid, Geek.”

  “No rough stuff,” warned Batgirl, suddenly anxious. “You hit my bid, and Danny Bag will kick your ass.”

  “It’s not like that,” the second UBS guy soothed. “‘Hit the bid’ is how we talk about spreads.”

  “I do spreads.” She brightened, feeling more at ease.

  “We’ll be there in a minute,” Geek said. “You guys go ahead.”

  “Talk about what?” asked Cusack.