by Chris Knopf
“You put coins in the slots at the top and push buttons or pull levers and if you’re lucky, an avalanche of coins comes out the bottom.”
“How lucky do you have to be?”
“Very.”
We moved on from there in search of the table games. They were harder to find than you’d think. Probably on the principle If you have to ask, you don’t belong.
The room was bigger and less intimate than I’d imagined it would be. The ceiling was high and filled with shadow, and the tables were the opposite—lit like a night game at Yankee Stadium.
“Better for the security cameras,” said Harry when I pointed that out.
It wasn’t until I was actually standing there looking at all those beautiful, thoroughly exotic green felt tables that I appreciated how little I knew about gambling. I hadn’t played a hand of cards since my dad’s poker games in the basement. So what I knew was next to nothing.
Luckily, I had Harry with me.
“What do you know about card games?” I asked him.
“Absolutely nothing.”
Okay, strangers in a strange land. Take that liability and turn it into an asset. Flaunt your failings.
I approached a table where a young woman in a crisp dealer’s outfit stood at the ready. I asked her what exactly went on there. The first few words out of her mouth made no sense to me at all, so I stopped her and told her we’d flown in from Mars, where they hadn’t evolved the art of gaming. She didn’t believe me, but she tried to explain the essentials of blackjack.
I only listened with half my brain, since I knew Harry would be listening with all of his. This was much more his bailiwick—a quantitative pursuit involving statistical analysis and probability theory. Judging from a look at the other tables, it also involved cigarettes, attitude, and alcoholic beverages, activities I was far better equipped to understand.
So when we sat down at the table, Harry was briefed on the rules of the game and I ordered strawberry mojitos.
The next hour wasn’t the agonizing bore I’d thought it would be. Quite the contrary. I was close to having a brain seizure from the suspense. I love it when the experience of other people’s lifetimes dawns on me in less than a few minutes. Oh, of course, I said to myself. This is why gambling is so crazy exciting and seductive. With blackjack, it was partly the rhythm—the lose, lose, win, win, win, lose, win, lose, lose, lose, win. It was exhausting when it wasn’t exhilarating. Harry, as cool a man as ever tapped a queen of hearts, never flinched through the whole thing, but I could see his competitive nature awakening by the cast of his shoulders and his steady, concentrated stare.
Harry had been down as far as two hundred dollars but was up about fifty when I snapped out of it and started asking about Betty and Sergey. I used the old Aunt Betty ploy, good old dead Aunt Betty. I told the dealer they’d made a lot of friends at the casino, and I wanted to spread the sad word of her demise.
“No, ma’am. I don’t think they ever played at my table,” she said. “But Logan Brice might’ve known them. He’s worked table games longer than any of us.”
She pointed to a slight, very dark man with a fringe of white hair and white moustache working a blackjack table across the room. He was playing with a single customer, a much younger, wider, and whiter guy wearing a T-shirt that said I’M ROOTING FOR ANY TEAM PLAYING THE NEW YORK YANKEES.
Harry took off to reconnoiter, and I headed for Logan’s table.
“Mr. Brice,” I said, looking at his name tag. “I’m Jackie Pontecello.”
I almost stuck out my hand but realized just in time he probably didn’t want to make physical contact with a customer.
“Nice to meet you, ma’am. What can I do for you?” he said without taking his eyes off the table or hesitating to deal out the guy’s next card. He had very long, slender fingers and dealt the cards with the barest flick of his wrist. His features were sharply defined, with a straight nose and squared-off chin that reminded me of Sammy Davis Jr.
“Does my last name ring a bell?”
When the customer folded his hand, Mr. Brice looked up.
“It does.”
“My Uncle Sergey and Aunt Betty came here a lot to play. They both recently passed away. Before he died Uncle Sergey asked me to inform his favorite dealers. He didn’t want you thinking he’d just started playing down the road. But he didn’t get a chance to tell me who to tell.”
“Signore Ponte Vecchio.”
“Pontecello.”
“I called him Signore Ponte Vecchio. A joke. He liked it, even if his wife didn’t so much. You ready, sir?” he asked his customer. The guy shook his head and without saying anything or looking at us, got up and left.
“Gee, sorry,” I said. “Did I do something wrong.”
Mr. Brice shook his head.
“Some people are just, you know. Some people. Care to play?”
“I really don’t know how,” I said, sitting at the table anyway. “Can you just show me?”
He smiled.
“Didn’t Melissa already do that for you?” he asked, looking pointedly over at our first stop along the way.
“You’re observant.”
He pointed at his right eye.
“A dealer’s curse.”
“So you remember what Sergey looked like. Little guy, slick dresser. Had an accent.”
He smiled again and this time pointed at his sternum.
“Are you referring to me?”
“I could be, you’re right. You guys related?”
“I didn’t know Pontecello was Ethiopian.”
“Or Brice, for that matter,” I said.
“No, that’s more vaudeville, as in Fanny Brice.”
“Where’d Logan come from?”
“Where I first touched America. Logan Airport. In my mother’s arms. It’s an easier name to get by on these days than Hakim.”
Of course the image he threw into my head—of a delicate, fragile child being held tightly by his terrified but hopeful mother—caused a lump to grow in my throat. I used the drink I’d just ordered, another mojito, to swallow it back down.
I told him an even more embellished story about how Sergey begged me on his deathbed to seek out all the people he’d come to know in the last years of his life and to tell them how much he appreciated their kindness and consideration. The mojitos were responsible for the story getting away from me a little bit, even though I still had a pretty clear image of the real Sergey, mangled and bloodied in the middle of the street. Between that and seeing little Hakim in swaddling clothes, I almost started to tear up.
Logan drew a handkerchief out of some invisible pocket and tossed it to me across the table.
“Clean this morning. Take it. I have plenty more.”
“That is so nice of you, Mr. Brice,” I said, dabbing the corners of my eyes and looking at the handkerchief for signs of dissolving mascara.
“My pleasure. To be honest, I don’t know who else your aunt and uncle might have spent time with here. They usually stopped by on the way to and from the Moon Club, where the high rollers play no-limit Texas Hold ’Em.”
“I guess the ‘from’ game was a lot less happy than the ‘to.’ ” I made sort of a hah sound meant to convey the obvious innuendo. The bait went untouched.
“Mr. Pontecello was always a gracious and cordial man,” said Logan. “To, from, and everywhere in between.”
He smiled elegantly, with no sign of duplicity.
I smiled back, I hoped as convincingly.
“That’s nice. He would have been pleased to hear that from you.”
Harry came out of nowhere and put his arm around my shoulder. I looked up at him.
“Mr. Brice tells me Uncle Sergey made out pretty well at the poker tables,” I told him.
Brice put a finger in the air.
“I said Mr. Pontecello was a gracious man. I have no knowledge of his success in the Moon Club, and here at blackjack, it’s improper to comment.”
I had assumed the dealers would hold their customers’ success, or lack thereof, in strict confidence. I just owed it to myself to try anyway.
“What’s the Moon Club?” Harry asked.
“High-stakes Texas Hold ’Em,” I told him.
I drank some more of my mojito and wondered how scary it would be to play a few hands ourselves at the Moon Club. I’d promised to cover Harry’s markers, assuming he’d keep things in check. That might not be possible if we stepped up to the big leagues.
Harry stood and looked at me expectantly.
“I think we’re ready to move along,” he said.
“We are?”
He nodded.
“Okay, sure,” I said, then thanked Mr. Brice and wished him luck, which in retrospect was a dumb thing to do. The only luck he needed was the casino’s statistical advantage.
“What’s up?” I asked Harry as we walked through a sea of green felt.
“Gotta get some Play Money.”
He wouldn’t explain until we got to a large glassed-in booth in the middle of the casino floor. We were now much closer to the slot machines, whose cacophony of sirens, trills, clangs, beeps, buzzing, and bells made coherent speech almost impossible. I could see the need for the booth.
The explanation was on a freestanding sign in the middle of the booth. Play Money was a reward program where you earned points in proportion to how much you spent at the tables and slot machines. You could start off fresh with Play One, then go to Play Two, which you could join by earning more than a thousand points in a six-month period. A sleepy-looking young woman standing behind a counter told us the approximate investment needed to reach Play Two and thus work your way up the next four levels until you reached something called Platinum Play, which she said only her manager was authorized to discuss.
In other words, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
“When you’re a member, you can check your points right over there,” she said, pointing with her two-inch-long nail at a row of PC monitors. I took a closer look at the log-in screen—you just had to punch in your user name and password, which you could also do from your home computer.
“I’d love to sign you up right away,” said the woman, with less enthusiasm than her words would suggest.
I went over and leaned on the counter.
“Say we got to be Play Three players. Where would we go for dinner?”
The question stymied her for a moment, but she recovered by remembering the stack of brochures in front of her. She picked up one and scanned it.
“I think you’d probably want to go to Le Canard,” which she pronounced “La Conrad.”
“Ducky,” I said as she handed me the brochure. Inside was a description of all the stores and restaurants where we could redeem our Play Money. Without explicitly calling out which places your level qualified you to walk into, you got the implicit idea.
Eventually I realized this wasn’t just a casino. It was more like a small city. A very prosperous city whose principal industry was providing a pleasant escape from reality.
And there wasn’t a shred of evidence that Sergey and Betty ever shopped at, ate in, or pilfered merchandise from any of the stores or restaurants, admissible via any level of gaming success. I used real money to buy Harry and me cocktails at a place made to recall your last visit to the Amazonian rain forest and gave up the fight.
“This is stupid,” I said to Harry.
“But fun,” he said, ever the optimist.
“I like the cops. I respect the cops. I enjoy working with them in close harmony. I shouldn’t try to be their bird dog.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“If I was an A.D.A., a half hour with a judge, followed by a phone call with my counterpart in Connecticut, and there’d be a blizzard of subpoenas falling on this place.”
“Isn’t that because we’re blessed with sacred rights that preserve our privacy and guard against the arbitrary exercise of government authority?”
“That’s right, Clarence Darrow, we are. Thank you for that perspective.”
I kissed him on the cheek, then pulled out my cell phone.
“Hey, Joe,” I said when Joe Sullivan came on the line. “I’ve narrowed your investigation of the Pontecellos’ gambling habits.”
“Isn’t that swell of you?”
I told him what Logan Brice had told me, at least confirming they played the tables.
“Or, he could just ask the IRS,” said Harry, speaking over the top of a brochure he’d picked up at the glass booth.
“Hold a second, Joe,” I said, then looked at Harry. “The IRS?”
“Sure. If you gamble over a certain amount, the casino requires you to fill out a win/loss statement. It’ll all be there.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
He waved the brochure.
“Didn’t know.”
Sullivan also knew about win/loss statements. He told me he was requesting them from the other casino in Connecticut and the ones in Atlantic City and Upstate New York. He also told me he was bringing Autumn Antonioni, Sergey’s personal banker, in for questioning at ten the next morning.
“What am I doing?” I asked Harry after hanging up with Joe Sullivan.
“Chewing the bone.”
“What bone?”
“The bone Sergey Pontecello left for you, that you’ll need to chew on until there’s nothing left,” he said.
“Interesting metaphor.”
“And what am I doing?” he asked.
“I don’t know. What?”
“Trying to understand you. I always knew you were a determined girl, when you’re in a certain mood. You hate things getting in your way. Maybe I didn’t appreciate what that really meant.”
“So what does it mean?” I asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to understand.”
“I hate circular logic. It gets in my way.”
“So where do you want to get to now?” he asked.
“Back to the real world, while we still can,” I said.
“Never thought that applied to Long Island, but lead on.”
On the way out we swung by Logan Brice’s table so I could ask him one last question. By then there was a full table of blackjack players to whom he dealt his cards with fluid, effortless grace.
I waited for a break in the action. It came when a young woman refilled Logan’s card dispenser.
“Sorry to bother you again, Mr. Brice, but I noticed you only talked about Sergey. What about his wife, my Aunt Betty?”
Logan thought about it.
“She liked to play on the way to the Moon Club, not so much afterward.”
“Too tired?”
He looked at me, unsure what to say.
“Yes, she was tired. Tired enough to be a little sleepy when they came back through. But, of course, you knew your aunt. How she might be after long hours of complimentary beverages.”
“Sloshed,” Harry whispered in my ear.
“Ah, of course,” I said to Mr. Brice, who smiled with relief when I also said, “I understand.”
Before we could leave, he stopped us.
“There’s just one other thing,” he said. “I think I can tell you this, but please, don’t attribute it to me.”
“Sure. What?” I said.
“I’m ashamed to say, but I was always as glad to see Mrs. Pontecello leave as I was to see her pull up to my table.”
“I know, drunks aren’t a lot of fun.”
“Not that. This drunk was without a doubt the best blackjack player I ever dealt to. After fifteen minutes of play I could hardly beat that woman, and I have the house advantage.”
He slapped the blackjack shoe and made a happy face despite himself.
12
Recent events must have conditioned me to be less vulnerable to surprise. That would explain my incredible poise when a call from Eunice Wolsonowicz woke me early the next morning.
“It’s a p
rofessional matter,” she told me. “You did say you represented my brother-in-law.”
“I met with him, yes,” I said.
“I need to discuss disposition of the remains.”
“The coroner called?”
“He did. There’s also the matter of his and Elizabeth’s belongings. I have them packed and ready to be shipped, but to where and by whom?”
“Hm,” I said professionally. “I may know of someone who could help. You’re sure there are no other family members who’d be interested?”
“None I’m aware of, Miss Swaitkowski, but perhaps that would be something you could determine.”
For the first time since getting the call from Joe Sullivan that he’d found a dead guy with my card in his pocket, I felt my heart soar toward the heavens. A divine gift was about to be bestowed upon me, one I thought so unlikely I hadn’t even bothered to pray for it.
“Certainly, Mrs. Wolsonowicz. I’ll take care of everything. You simply need to assign me coadministrator as it relates to Sergey and Elizabeth’s estate. Sandy Kalandro can handle the formalities with Surrogate’s Court,” I said briskly, then held my breath.
“Fine. I’ll give him a call. When do you think you might begin?”
“As soon as I can see Mr. Kalandro,” I said.
“Yes, yes, very well. Thank you.”
Then she hung up. No good-bye, but I didn’t care. I was in a near swoon over the implications. I climbed out of bed, did a dumb little dance, then called Harry.
“Goodlander GeoTransit.”
“You’re hired,” I said.
“That was easy.”
“I like your name. Sounds substantial.”
“Substance is our middle name,” he said.
“I’ll need a substantial truck and a substantial guy to help load and unload. And a place to store it all. Big enough to spread out and go through everything.”
“You’re not joking.”
“I never joke about shipping and handling.”
I told him about the call from Eunice Wolsonowicz. I filled him in on the legal implications.
“Excellent.”
“I need to sit in on Sullivan’s interview with the banker lady, then get over to Atkins Connors and Kalandro. Assuming no hitches, how quick can you set me up?”
