Burke's Gamble

by William F. Brown

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Dimitri Karides. Dimi, I won’t bother introducing you to everyone, since you’re not going to be here all that long. Suffice it to say, Dimi is one of the world’s most renowned ‘hand magicians,’ as he prefers to call himself. If you have something in a pocket, hanging around your neck, or fastened around your wrist that Dimi takes a fancy to, it will be gone in a matter of seconds.”

  “Oh, Captain Travers, you so exaggerate,” Karides laughed and dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. “I prefer to think of myself as a ‘financial liberationist.’ I only ‘acquire’ things from people who will never miss them,” he said with a stern wag of his finger, “and I never, ever steal from the poor.”

  “Whatever.” Ernie looked around the room. “Just keep your hands on your wallets.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Bob told them. “We all fall in the poor category.”

  “The poor category?” Karides scoffed as he looked around. “That wonderful airplane you sent for me, and now this sailing yacht…?

  “All short-term rentals, I assure you,” Bob answered as he looked at the clothes Karides was wearing. “But it looks like your business has been good.”

  “Oh, these?” Dimitri looked down at his topcoat and slacks. “They are nice, aren’t they? I made Ernest stop at one of the finer men’s clothing stores in Woodfield Mall on the way to the airport. Cook County jail managed to misplace all my clothes. No doubt, they augmented some guard’s retirement fund. Anyway, I told Ernest he could either put me to work down here in one of those bright orange jumpsuits or buy me a new outfit. So I suspect I have your expense account to thank, Mister Burke. But that orange jumpsuit would never do in the casino tonight, would it?” he said with a pleased smile.

  “I guess not, so long as you can get us what we want,” Bob replied.

  “Mister Burke,” Karides smiled politely, “surely you jest. In return for these lovely clothes and a fine dinner, perhaps accompanied by one of your beautiful young ladies…”

  “You’ll have to settle for Ernie,” Bob replied.

  “Oh, let Dorothy go with them,” Ace laughed. “They’ve been flying all day, so she deserves a good meal, too.”

  “Most excellent,” Dimitri said with a polite bow toward both Ace and Dorothy, and then looked at his watch. “And I know exactly where we shall go. If you do not mind, though, perhaps there is a place where I can take a nap. It has been a very long day, and one should be at the top of one’s game, given what I was told about tonight’s opposition.”

  At 8:30 p.m., a car containing Dorothy and Dimitri Karides in the front and Ernie Travers in the back drove out of the marina parking lot and headed south to Atlantic Avenue, with Dorothy behind the wheel. When they reached South Albion, a small residential street, Dimitri directed her west to Chef Vola’s “old school” classic Italian restaurant hidden away in the basement of a big 1920s house at the end of the block.

  Two hours later, Ernie finally pushed his plate away and said, “Unbelievable. That was the best veal parmesan I’ve ever eaten, and believe me, I’ve eaten my share.”

  “Same for the linguine with white clam sauce,” Dorothy agreed. “How did you ever find this place?”

  Dimitri smiled contentedly. “When one is incarcerated twenty-four hours a day, one has ample time for every back issue of Conde Nast and Gourmet Magazine.”

  “But you told me you’d been dreaming of a big steak?” Ernie asked.

  “Ah, that was before you told me our destination was Atlantic City. The condemned man is entitled to a dinner of his choice, is he not?”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Ernie said.

  “Ernest, you forget I am the very best. It will not come to anything, I assure you. The dinner, however, is a different story. This superb restaurant has been at the top of my list for years.”

  Ernie looked at his watch and saw it was almost 11:00 p.m. “We need to get going. The others will be at the casino by now, and we need to allow time to look around.”

  “True, but we cannot leave without pie; it is the specialty of the house.”

  “Pie? I don’t know where I’d put it,” Dorothy told him.

  “Then we shall order a slice of the banana cream pie, a slice of ricotta cheesecake, and three forks. I have dreamt about them for two years. Besides, it will take your friends at least an hour to sufficiently rattle the casino pit bosses so that they summon the demons to drag them away from the tables. That is the moment to strike.”

  “When there is a lot of movement and distraction?”

  “Precisely.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  More than half of the tables on the main floor were full by the time Ernie, Dorothy, and Dimitri arrived around midnight. They had come straight from the restaurant, and despite the pleasant weather, Dimitri still wore his bulky, camel-colored mohair overcoat. The other two followed him as he strolled around the interior of the casino and circled the gambling tables, which were arranged in back-to-back rows running down the center of the casino’s three wings. Each table was semicircular, designed for a specific game and to accommodate up to eight players, each of them playing against the dealer, not each other.

  Ernie looked at his watch. A large crowd of amused onlookers had gathered around the blackjack table at the far end of the row. They were watching two geeky young men who sat at opposite ends of the table, each with a large stack of chips in front of him. One wore a black, flat-brimmed, Chicago White Sox hat and a dark blue sweatshirt with the name “Berkeley” and the university’s large, circular seal in gold on the front. The other was hatless, dressed in a red-and-blue-plaid flannel shirt and a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses held together at the nose bridge with a thick wrap of white masking tape.

  As they played, they had become the center of attention. Laughing and bantering back and forth with the crowd in loud voices, they insulted the onlookers behind them, the dealer, the other players at the table, the pit boss in his black suit, and even the security guards in their blue blazers, who had crowded around the two ends of the table. The young men were cocky to a fault, apparently competing to see who could be the louder and more obnoxious. That said, it was hard to deny the growing stacks of chips sitting in front of them.

  Scanning the faces in the crowd behind them, Ernie quickly picked out The Batman, Bulldog, and Ace spaced out around the outer edge. They saw Ernie too, and quickly exchanged brief nods. Dorothy walked around to the other side of the crowd, where Ace stood and slipped her arm inside his, leaving Ernie and Dimitri alone on the dealer’s side. Dimi was a foot and a half shorter than the Chicago police captain. He raised his hand and motioned for Ernie to bend down and lean closer as he whispered, “Do you see the two awkwardly dressed gentlemen behind Jimmy and Ronald? I assume those are some of your New York City adversaries?”

  Ernie followed Dimitri’s eyes and saw two men standing together at the rear of the crowd, conspicuous by their ill-fitting sports coats, open collared shirts, and far too much bling. Ernie sighed. “Well, I can’t see the St. Anthony medals around their necks or their Knights of Columbus pins, but I’d say you’re right.”

  Dimi scoffed. “If that is the best that the opposition has to offer, then I assure you they are schoolboys compared to the Russians and Serbs I have had to deal with. Nonetheless, they are the ones I want.”

  For the moment at least, it appeared as if the two Mafiosi were content to stand there with their arms crossed over their chests and stare unhappily at the two young men. However, as Ronald raked in another stack of chips, Ernie whispered to Dimi, “You’d better get ready. I don’t think they’re gonna wait much longer.”

  A scantily clad casino cocktail waitress walked by carrying a crowded tray of drinks. Dimitri looked up at her with a pleasant smile, and took two of them.

  “Hey!” she began to object. “Those are for…”

  “Give this delightful young woman twenty dollars, Ernest, and try to keep u
p,” Dimitri said as he slipped through the crowd like a snake through tall grass and around to the other side.

  Ernie pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and dropped it on her tray, which satisfied whatever moral outrage she was having from the little guy’s rudeness. Ernie turned and tried to catch up with the short Greek; but as he did, he saw the two thugs nod to each other and begin move in on Jimmy and Ronald. They nodded to the pit boss, who stepped forward with four uniformed security guards. The dealer was about to deal the next hand, but he immediately stopped and announced, “Sorry, folks, but this table’s closed for a shift change.”

  “Hey! What the hell, man,” Ronald complained loudly. He turned toward the crowd and said, “You people don’t want them to close us down, do you? Come on, give it up for keeping the table open!” He stood, raised his hands over his head, and began rhythmically clapping. As the rest of the crowd began clapping and hooting along with him, the dealer leaned forward and raked-in his stack of chips and Ronald’s.

  “Those are my chips!” Jimmy complained loudly as two security guards stepped in and grabbed his arms. Two more guards grabbed Ronald’s and lifted him out of his chair.

  “If you’ll come with us, sir, we’ll pay you out in the office,” the pit boss said as he led the way, pushing through the crowd of onlookers and opening a path for the others toward the service corridor. As the two Gumbahs turned and began to follow, Dimitri stepped in front of them, stumbled drunkenly, and fell into them. His drinks went flying, hitting one Gumbah in the face with the ice and cold liquid, and the other in his shirt-front, with the rest running down the fronts of their suits. As he went down, Dimitri reached out and wrapped his arms around the two men to break his fall, but only succeeded in knocking them off-balance.

  “Oh, my! Terribly sorry,” he babbled as he danced around in a small circle with the two men. “Excuse me, I can’t seem to…” he said, continuing to push, pull, and paw them, until they all fell to the floor, with Dimitri on top.

  “You dumb bastard!” one of the Gumbahs swore.

  “Watch out,” the other one warned as Dimitri attempted to get back up at the same time the Mafioso was pushing Dimitri away. “Jeez!” the gunman said as Dimitri fell on top of him again.

  “Whoa, where do I get off this ride,” Dimitri continued to blubber.

  “You’ll have to pardon my friend,” Ernie said as he stepped in and tried to help Dimitri up, but the short Greek kept tipping over and falling on top of the two mobsters.

  “I’ll break his freakin’ neck, is what I’ll do!” the first one replied as he rolled over and got to his knees, brushing the ice and drink off the front of his suit. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Sorry, my friend had one too many,” Ernie said. “He needs some air.”

  “I’m going to be sick,” Dimitri mumbled as he suddenly leaned over them again and began to gag. The Gumbahs were still trying to get to their feet, and that was all it took for them to shove Dimitri away and try to crawl out of the potential blast zone.

  Ernie got his arms under Dimitri and pulled him to his feet. As the little man continued to say, “Sorry, sorry,” Ernie turned him around and pushed him into the crowd, which quickly opened and closed behind them as he coughed and gagged. They then ducked behind one of the bars, headed for the door to the Self-Parking ramp, and were gone in a matter of seconds. They ran up the stairs to the next level, both men laughing hysterically, and then weaved through the rows of parked cars until they reached the other side of the garage and took the stairs down to Ernie’s parked car.

  “That was brilliant, my friend,” Ernie told him. “You had me so convinced that you were about to throw up that I wasn’t sure I wanted to touch you either.”

  “And surrender that fine dinner? That was not going to happen, Ernest.”

  “You’re hurting me!” Jimmy complained as the beefy security guards pulled him down the service corridor. It wasn’t much of a contest, he had to admit. The guards' fingers easily circled his biceps and Ronald’s, and they could probably have picked up the two Geeks and carried them down the hall one-handed if they wanted to, without even breaking a sweat.

  “Easy, dude! We got rights, you know,” Ronald complained.

  “Yeah?” The pit boss quickly answered. “Well, they don’t include card counting.”

  “Card counting? We didn’t do anything,” Jimmy said. “And you can’t prove we did.”

  “Shut up!” the first Gumbah added as he caught up, still trying to brush the drink off his suit jacket, eager to smack something. His name was Marco Bianchi and his long-time classmate from auto shop at Thomas Edison Vocational High School in Queens was Selmo Lombardi. Both were recent graduates of the Midstate Correctional Facility in Attica, New York. It seems that their youthful interest in automotive mechanics had blossomed into multiple counts of Grand Theft Auto, Intent to Deprive, Grand Larceny, Auto Stripping, and Possession.

  “Godammit, I ought to break your freakin’ fingers, both ’a youse,” Bianchi went on until he saw the blue and gold sweatshirt and fumed, “Berkeley? I lost five hundred on you dumb bastards in dat bowl game last year. I oughta rip that out of your freakin’ hides!”

  In less than a minute, with more pushing and shoving, the group had continued down the corridor and around the corner, where the pit boss knocked on the last door on the left, marked Business Office. That was when Selmo finally caught up, even angrier than his pal. “Where’d that little weasel in the camel-colored coat go, Marco? I’ll kill him if I catch him; I swear I will!”

  Suddenly, Lombardi stopped in the center of the hallway and began patting his jacket pockets. “Ey! What the hell?” he asked, “Where’s my radio? And my cell phone…?”

  Marco Bianchi turned, looked back at him, and quickly felt his own pockets. “Damn, Selmo! Me, too. My wallet’s gone… My keys, and my goddamn gun, too!”

  The two burly, middle-aged men stopped and stared at each other, dumbfounded, until their surprised expressions were suddenly replaced by looks of angry recognition.

  “That little bastard picked our pockets, didn’t he?” Lombardi asked.

  “You can’t kill him. He’s mine, and I’ll kill him with my bare hands if I have to!” Bianchi growled as the office door opened and they found a puzzled Martijn Van Gries staring out at them.

  “Who are you going to kill?” the Dutchman frowned.

  “Nobody… nothing!” Lombardi quickly answered. “Here’s dese two freakin’ card counters you spotted on the blackjack table. Marco and I gotta go. There’s somethin’ we gotta take care of,” he told Van Gries as he and Bianchi turned and ran back down the hallway toward the casino floor.

  Unfortunately for the two Mafiosi, they were already far too late to catch up with Ernie and Dimitri, who were already in Ernie’s rental car and exiting the parking lot into one of the side streets to the west. Ernie continued on to Pennsylvania Avenue, and turned south.

  “I hate to say that looked easy,” Ernie began, “but that looked easy.”

  “Things always do, when you are not the one who is doing them.”

  “Well, whatever you did, I couldn’t see a thing.”

  “Some police detective, you are.”

  “Okay, I deserved that. Did you get much off them?”

  Dimitri gave him an amused look and shook his head. “You have seen me work before. You are supposed to observe these things, Ernest” he said as he reached into the inside pockets of his large overcoat and began pulling out various things.

  Ernie’s mouth dropped open as he saw a two-way radio, two cell phones, two wallets, two plastic Bimini Bay key cards, a key chain with at least a dozen keys dangling from it, and a .38-caliber snub-nose revolver.

  “Whoa!” Ernie looked down, wide-eyed. “You’ve got to be kidding. I didn’t see you take any of this stuff, or even see your hands inside their clothes. Then again, I never saw what you did back in Chicago, either. Jeez, you are good Dimitri, I gotta give you that.”


  “Good?” the little man raised an eyebrow, clearly offended. “I am not merely good, Ernest; by now, you must admit I am the best.”

  Once they reached Baltic Avenue, Ernie turned west and pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot, swinging the rental car into a space along the outside row under one of the tall pole lights. First, he picked up the small, commercial Motorola RDV two-way radio, looked at it for a moment, and then took a close look at the two iPhones.

  “The guys back on the boat are going to have a lot of fun with these,” he said, “and I’ll bet my old pal Carmine Bonafacio with the New Jersey state police in Trenton will have even more.” Ernie then looked at the key chain, which had all sorts of odd-looking keys hanging from it. “These will take a bit of research to figure out which locks they go to, but that’s very doable,” he said as he picked up the two plastic key cards, both of which had the words “Casino Operations” printed across the front in red letters.

  “I think you hit the jackpot with these, Dimi,” Ernie grinned from ear to ear. “I’ll bet my pension these are masters.” Finally, he picked up the two wallets and pulled out the driver’s licenses. “New York, with addresses in Brooklyn. Figures,” he said as he quickly poked through the rest of the wallet’s contents and saw a rather mundane collection of credit cards, health club membership cards, and the like. Finally, he opened the back of each wallet, pulled out two rather thick stacks of large bills. Quickly fanning the bills, he said, “Looks like more than three grand here, maybe four, not a bad haul.”

  “For your retirement fund, captain?” Dimitri asked.

  “You know me better than that,” Ernie answered.

  Dimitri turned away and looked out the window. “All right, Ernest, what now? Do I at least get to sleep in a soft bed with clean sheets and have one more good meal before you return me to that god-awful Cook County jail of yours?”