“Screw you. I want the rest.”
He threw his arms around himself. “It was all Teddy’s idea,” he said. “He had me pick you up in the car and the two of us drove out to bury Mike in the Pinelands. Teddy figured no one would stop a car with a little kid in front. Afterwards, I bought you a hot dog on the Boardwalk. I always thought you remembered it. That’s why I couldn’t understand that you’d keep asking me.”
I should’ve remembered it. I tried to bring it all back and picture it. But all I could see before me was the sea, the beach, and Vin, a trembling old man. The real memory was locked away behind some door I couldn’t open. Maybe it was better that way.
“So what happened to the real estate deal?” I asked, just to finish the story and lay it to rest.
Vin shook his head. “I guess Mike was right,” he sighed. “We wound up selling the property for a hundred twenty-five thousand dollars. And then the lawyers we sold it to went and tore down the hot dog stand and built the Doubloon Casino. We could’ve all been millionaires.”
I just stood there for a second, watching the Doubloon’s red TAKE A CHANCE sign thirty yards away blink on and off in the early-morning light. When the sun hit the casinos at this angle, they really did look like palaces and castles. Especially before all the losers, hustlers, scavengers, high rollers, hookers, sidewinders, and people who’ve just never caught on to how the world works came streaming out onto the beach.
All this time, it had been so obvious. But I didn’t want to see it. Now that I knew it all, I didn’t so much feel angry as half dead inside.
“I don’t think I can be around you anymore,” I told Vin.
A gust of wind blew through the tower of his hair, leaving it lopsided. “I understand,” he said.
“Tell Teddy whatever you want about the fight. I don’t see how I owe him anything else now.”
I started moving away, toward a broken part of the Boardwalk.
“What about you?” Vin tried to keep up with me. “What’re you gonna do.”
“Never mind about me.”
I still hadn’t worked out whether I was going to try to stay or get out of town after the fight. Either way, I wanted to make sure I’d have enough money to give my wife and kids.
“Anthony, gimme a hug.”
I turned to look at Vin. This murderous old man, who’d destroyed the life I could’ve had. I’d never noticed how hairy he was before. He had hair in his ears, hair in his nose, hair curling off the back of his neck. Larry DiGregorio must have felt his hairy fingers pressing down on his windpipe. Somehow I couldn’t find it in my heart to hate him. I just knew I had to get away from him.
He held out his arms to me.
“I’m not going to do that.” I stiffened.
Vin bowed his head, accepting that was the way it was going to be. “All right,” he said. “The only thing is, just make sure you get Teddy the sixty you already owe him. Otherwise, even I can’t protect you.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll get it.”
The wind whistled down the beach like a long train sigh and the tide crested along the nearest jetty. I looked down and saw the Boardwalk was littered with thousands of pieces of clamshells that had been dropped there by seagulls and crushed underfoot by tourists.
“Hey, Anthony.” Vin suddenly grabbed my arm and turned me to face him one last time. “I’m sorry.”
“About what?” Where could he begin?
“I dunno.” He let go of me and started to walk away with his hands in his pockets. “I guess everybody oughta be sorry about something.”
49
ON THE AFTERNOON OF the fight, Rosemary stopped by the club called Rafferty’s to pick up a few clothes and the spare set of keys she’d left in her dressing room. She found a hugely pregnant young woman sitting in her chair, with a black vinyl handbag on her lap.
“You’re older than I thought you’d be,” said the young woman, thrusting a hand deep into the bag.
Rosemary had the unmistakable feeling there was a gun inside. “Excuse me?”
“I said I thought you’d be younger. I’m Carla. It’s my husband you’re stealing and my children whose mouths you’re taking food out of, you slut.”
The outline of what looked like a barrel poked against the side of the bag.
“I’m afraid you are making a mistake,” Rosemary said, looking back at the door and wondering who’d let this crazy person in.
“No, you’re the one making a mistake,” Carla informed her. “You think you can just walk away with my Anthony and not have to deal with the consequences? How old are you anyway?”
“I’m thirty-eight.” Rosemary suddenly wished she hadn’t worn the tight ribbed tank top and the short denim skirt that showed off her tan legs.
“Well, you’ve kept your figure very nice for a woman your age.” Carla swallowed hard and closed her eyes for a second. The baby was obviously kicking her. “You got a glass of water back here? My throat is killing me.”
Rosemary brought her a full cup from the water cooler in the corner. “How many months are you?”
“Eight.” Carla took the water and smiled gratefully. “I thought this was when it was gonna get easier. With my first two, I got all this energy toward the end.”
“This is what happens when you don’t eat right and don’t drink enough fluids.” Rosemary backed away from her. “The baby just takes what it needs. In my eighth month, I wasn’t getting enough calcium, so my daughter just took it from me. Sucked it right out of my bones. I thought my teeth were going to fall out.”
“You have kids?” Carla gave her a queasy look, but the outline of the gun was no longer visible against the bag.
“One and one that I lost.” Rosemary felt her bare knees knocking together.
“Well, at least Anthony went for a woman with some miles on her, and not some bimbo like I thought he would.”
Rosemary sensed this woman was not dangerous or even very angry. Just sad. But you had to be careful with guns and jealousy.
“I told you before. I am not having an affair with your husband.”
“Then how come the guy behind the bar told me you were his girlfriend?”
Rosemary froze, but just for a second. “It’s because I wouldn’t give him a blow job. You know how guys are. If you don’t come across, they’ll say anything about you.”
Carla narrowed her eyes. “I sure hope you’re telling the truth, because if it isn’t me coming after you, you’ll have the rest of my family to deal with.”
Rosemary thought of Anthony’s stepfather threatening her in this same spot a few weeks back, but didn’t say anything. These people were truly insane. She wondered how she’d allowed herself to get involved with them. After the fight tonight, she was going to take her money and her daughter and get the hell out of town before another of these crazy Russos popped up and tried to shoot her.
“Listen, I am sorry if your husband is having an affair,” she continued to lie out of self-preservation. “But it really has nothing to do with me. I’ve sworn off married men. Once you get mixed up with them, you spend your whole life waiting for miracles that’ll never happen.”
“That’s me,” Carla said, taking the words more seriously than Rosemary meant them. “I’m always waiting for miracles out of Anthony.”
“Well, you can’t live your life like that,” Rosemary said. She was just riffing now. Trying to move things along, so this pregnant girl would leave soon. Poor girl. In spite of the loaded handbag, Rosemary felt sorry for her. This Carla literally looked like she was dying for a little encouragement. She must’ve grown up around beasts like that Vin.
“You have to take charge of your life,” Rosemary counseled her. “Nobody else is going to rescue you.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right,” said Carla, struggling to her feet. “You know what I think? You got too much on the ball to be messing around with my Anthony. Now tell me if they got a bathroom back here. I’ve gotta pee like a racehorse.”<
br />
50
SEVEN HOURS BEFORE the fight, I was standing on my porch, watching my son spin some kind of disc on the concrete driveway.
“What’s that you got there?” I said, hoping it wasn’t one of my old Springsteen records.
He brought over a miniature roulette wheel, the type you can buy at a novelty store.
“Where’d you get this from?”
“Un-CLE TED brought it over.”
I gave it a good look. The number six slot was bigger than the others. Only another five-year-old could believe the game wasn’t fixed.
“So what are you supposed to do with this?”
Anthony Jr. took a deep breath. “Un-CLE Ted said I should bring IT to school and bet num-BER six.”
“He wants you to run a crooked game in kindergarten?”
I got down on one knee and gave it a spin. Sure enough, the ball nestled in number six.
“I hope he didn’t ask for a percentage.”
“He say I can keep anything LESS than five dol-LARS,” he said with earnest concentration.
“Is this what’s going to happen to you if I go away?” I took the wheel from him and tried to fit it in my pocket. “You’re going to grow up to be a little knucklehead?”
He looked alarmed. “Are you going somewhere?”
I didn’t meet his eye. “Look, forget the roulette. Go get me a baseball, will you? I wanna show you a few things about throwing it.”
He went tearing back into the house, eager for the chance to do anything with his daddy. But what kind of father was I, anyway? All the time I’d been sick—blackmailing, hustling to put the fight together, killing Nicky, turning myself into a monster—I told myself it was all for the kids, so I could provide for them. But what was this legacy I was leaving for them? I’d already turned into a thug like Vin and now I was thinking about disappearing from their lives like Mike.
Maybe it would be better if I just went away, I thought. I remembered how Teddy’s son, Charlie, used to get high and turn paranoid about his father’s karma catching up with him. “He’s done a lot of bad shit,” he’d say, “and it’s all gonna come back.” At the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about. But now I found myself worrying about what kind of damage I’d already done to my kids.
I almost didn’t notice that dark-haired detective with the basset-hound eyes moseying across my front lawn.
“Afternoon, junior,” he said in a husky voice. “Must be a big day for you.”
He looked me up and down. I was wearing my good blue suit with the trim waist and the peaked lapels.
“Do I know you?”
He flashed a badge and showed me some I.D. Detective Peter Farley, Atlantic City Police Department.
“What can I do for you?”
I felt my back teeth floating. Had somebody given me up for killing Nicky?
“Actually I’m not here on police business,” said Detective Farley, pulling out a roll of Turns and offering me one. “Some of our mutual friends at the Doubloon Casino had some questions they wanted me to ask. Seems they’re a little concerned about the sudden change on the bill. They don’t understand why Meldrick Norman is out and Elijah Barton is back in.”
“These things happen all the time in boxing.” An answer Frank Diamond would’ve been proud of.
“I know, but the casino people are a little worried that everything might not be—how shall I put this?—kosher.”
“Why’s that? I wonder.”
“Well, Vinny Russo’s your stepfather, isn’t he?” He sounded almost apologetic about asking.
“We’re estranged.” I folded my arms across my chest.
Little Anthony came charging out of the house, clutching a rubber softball. When he saw me talking to the cop, though, he stopped to watch us from the porch, about twenty feet away.
“If everyone had their family background held against them, half this town would be out of work,” I said, nervously clicking my heel on the driveway. “I am and always have been a legitimate businessman. And if you want to get technical, Detective, my real father was a man named Michael Dillon. He was legitimate too.”
“I know,” said this Farley. “I knew him.”
For a second, he looked like he wanted to tell me something about Mike. He’d half grimaced when I mentioned Mike’s name, as if it gave him some kind of pang. But then my son started tossing the softball against the porch railing and demanding to know when we could play catch.
“So cut to the chase,” I said to the detective. “Do you have any reason to believe I’m anything less than legitimate?”
If I was in trouble, I figured I wanted to know about it right away and get myself a good lawyer.
“No, no reason.” Farley shrugged.
“Then I don’t see any point in us continuing this conversation, do you?”
He hesitated, drawing back one corner of his mouth, as though he’d just realized he had a toothache. “No, I guess not.” He turned as if he was getting ready to walk away. “Just one thing, though,” he said. “You know, there are some people who might be less than pleased about your success in the fight game.”
Clearly he was talking about Teddy. Now it was my turn to shrug. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“Anytime.” He gave me one more thorough look before he backed down the drive. “I think Mike would’ve been pleased with the way you turned out. Anybody ever tell you you look like him?”
“No one who counts.”
He smiled and I went to play catch with my son.
51
THE PROSECUTOR IN A previous case had entered an AK-47 assault rifle into evidence in Judge Leonard Scibetta’s federal courtroom in Philadelphia, so when Teddy and his lawyer Burt Ryan walked in for a status conference to set a trial date, the judge was still looking down the sights and aiming the gun at the jury box.
“Judge, I was hoping we could move this along quickly,” said Burt, wheezing and ducking as the judge swung the barrel around and pointed the gun at a clerk. “It’s no secret my client is not in the best of health, and I think it’s in everyone’s interest to have a speedy trial.”
Teddy coughed into his fist as the judge, a cadaverous-looking man with a widow’s peak of dark hair, put the rifle down and began conferring with his clerk.
“I have a date open on the fourteenth of October,” the judge said as he flipped pages on a desk calendar. “Could we start jury selection at that time?”
“Your Honor, that won’t work for me.” Burt studied the appointment book he had open on the defense table.
“What do you got, another polo game?” sneered Teddy, standing beside him.
He’d lost even more weight in the four weeks since the operation. The skin under his chin and around his eyes was hanging off his face like loose crepe paper streamers.
The judge looked at his clerk and flipped through more pages. “How ’bout November second?”
At the prosecution table, a trim young lawyer named Nevins, who had shiny auburn hair and black horn-rimmed glasses, clicked his pen and stood up abruptly. “Your honor, we may need a little more time.”
“And why is that?”
“It’s hard to be definite.”
“I will not have you wreaking havoc on my docket.” The judge looked like he was ready to pick up the rifle again. “What do you have in mind, Mr. Nevins?”
“Judge, it’s not for me to say at this point.”
“Are you planning to bring a superseding indictment?”
“Well.” Nevins hesitated and looked down at his co-counsel, a young woman with straight dishwater-blonde hair, who was busy scribbling on a yellow legal pad.
“If you are, then I want you to give notice now what the additional charges are going to be,” the judge demanded.
Teddy and Burt exchanged nervous glances. The young prosecutor swallowed hard.
“Judge,” he said, clicking his pen several times. “As I believe Mr. Ryan knows, the grand jury has been considering
adding homicide charges as they relate to the DiGregorio situation. And they might supersede the simple racketeering indictment you have before you.”
Burt Ryan took out his asthma spray. Teddy cursed, winced, and delivered himself of a belch that sounded like something out of a county fair.
“Your Honor,” said Burt, taking a long shot from the spray as he prepared to feign outrage. “I want the names of these cooperating witnesses right now. I’m going to need a chance to prepare for cross-examination.”
Nevins approached the bench with a light bounce in his step. “Judge, I couldn’t possibly release any names,” he said. “It would seriously jeopardize the safety of a witness whose cooperation has not been fully secured yet.”
“Why don’t you wash your hair, you faggot?” Teddy said to the prosecutor.
“Your Honor,” said Nevins. “Will you please direct Mr. Ryan to tell his client to keep his invective to himself?”
The judge nodded as Teddy leaned over to whisper in Burt’s ear. Two paralegals rustled papers behind them.
“Judge, we want the name of that witness.” Burt put away his spray. “And we want it now, so we can begin our preparation. I have appointments in New York City later today and Mr. Marino has almost an hour’s drive back to Atlantic City for his dialysis.”
”And I’m sure you will get the name in due time,” said the judge, rubbing his forehead. “But at the moment, charges have not been filed and I see no reason to pressure Mr. Nevins any further.”
At the defense table, Teddy was quietly raging. So there was a Judas after all. Maybe even someone who’d stood alongside him when he was battling it out on the streets and spilling the blood of real men. Here it was all being settled in little brown rooms and corridors by men with shiny hair and asthma sprays. Another hot flash from the medication washed over him and he found himself on the verge of tears. It was those goddamn female hormones they were giving him. Bad enough he couldn’t get it up anymore, but now he was finding he could barely control his emotions.
“Fuck this,” he erupted. “I can’t face my own accuser? This is worse than the Nuremberg trials.”
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