Ivy League Stripper
Page 24
With Chuck and Angelo, the two slick characters always hanging in the club, I was standoffish at first. Chuck never gave me money, and although Angelo was generous, Bobbie the Bruiser had declared stomping rights on him: “He’s my customer, my regular.” This, and her strong temper, actively discouraged me from even talking to him.
Angelo had a soft spot for me, though, and once he realized he had unwittingly become Bobbie’s territory he made a point to approach me. Soft-spoken and gentlemanly, only twice did he run his manicured fingers up my leg. I quickly learned how to subtly position myself out of reach.
He kept a watchful eye on me, like a protective uncle. On slow nights he usually slipped me a large bill or two. “You’re a good kid, Heidi. Not like most,” he would say. He was intrigued with Brown University and impressed by my persistence at claiming a slice of Ivy League cake among “such an elite bunch of spoiled brats,” as he referred to my classmates.
Would he automatically consider me a spoiled brat if he saw me on campus?
The combination of stripping and Ivy League status created an irresistible mixture. He wanted me. “Whatever it takes, honey,” he murmured to me. “I’ll keep you a few years. After that, you do whatever you want. You’ll have the money. Seriously, Heidi, name your price.”
Ten bucks every three minutes during my shift. Just like every other customer.
“Three hundred thousand. Six hundred thousand,” he offered nonchalantly.
I gave him my best please-retain-your-dignity-if-not-for-yourself-then-for-me look. It was sincere, too. I had no interest in exploiting him.
Not that far, anyway.
Angelo and I left the offer open and became friends. His tipping slowed, but he was reliable for a smile and sincere conversation. And he was always in the club. Eventually he told me about his life and business. Golf, the dog track, Florida, fine dining, relaxation, and sports betting. Lots of sports betting. “Heidi,” he explained patiently one evening, “the Big Guy takes in five, six hundred thou a month. The tier below him does eighty to a hundred. That’s me and Chuck. It averages about five grand a day. But some days are slow, others could be fifteen, twenty.”
Questions filled my head, but I was more distracted by the income waiting in the wallets of the men milling around us. I had money to make; my gambling education would have to continue another night. Here and there I would find a few moments to huddle over a table with him, letting him tell me his stories.
I was curious. “Do you really break kneecaps when your bettors don’t pay up?” I asked, passing the time before a set one night.
“Oh, Heidi, no, no …”
Of course not. Only in the movies.
“… the enforcers take care of that end of the business.” He arched an eyebrow, judging my reaction.
Oh.
“Would you introduce me to one?” I asked innocently, tapping his forehead lightly with my magic wand.
“Anything for my Heidi.”
Hearing the DJ’s introduction — “Foxy Fairy, about to bewitch the main stage” — I kissed Angelo on the cheek and skipped toward the main stage in my fairy costume, satin opera gloves, and tiara, yards of white gauze floating behind me.
Twenty minutes later, Angelo did. Mick, the enforcer, was familiar, in fact. He was often in the club, although I didn’t know him very well. He never spent money. Now that I thought about it, he never spent a dollar and still had strippers smiling and waving hellos to him from onstage. He was an exceptional specimen of manhood. Well dressed in Armani, close-cropped, slicked-back hair, and an understated demeanor. I found him intriguing. The mystery of his work added greatly to his appeal.
“Mick, I’d like you to meet a very classy lady,” Angelo said, introducing us. “This is Heidi. Heidi, this is Mick.” Mick held my satin-gloved hand for a few seconds. “Very nice to meet you. You are a beautiful woman.” He was my age, broad-shouldered and tall. His expression was serious.
“Mick’s going to be in your neighborhood tomorrow,” Angelo said.
“Really?”
Mick turned to me, suave as could be. “Could I get you a coffee? I usually stop by Peaberry’s.”
Peaberry’s, the coffee shop on campus? He collects there?
We met early the next morning. “So you go to Brown. I thought you was different than the rest,” he said politely, sipping his raspberry mocha coffee.
“Why do I seem different?” I asked.
“Well,” he began, “I’ve seen you many times — you’re the cop, right? — and I noticed you’re always talking and friendly, even when you’re taking a guy’s paycheck. You’re not hard.”
“What do you do in the club? I see you everytime I work, it seems.” I was admiring his handsome face.
“You know,” he said, truly shy, “I see you talkin’ with Angelo.” He leaned back in his chair, causing his shirt to open at the neck. He had a nicely developed body.
I cocked my head, smiling. “Angelo didn’t tell me much about you.”
“I work for Angelo, and a few other guys.” He blushed a little. “Hey, why do you want to know?”
“I’m just curious. Angelo’s been explaining the bookmaking system to me …”
Angelo was the name he needed to hear. “Oh, hey, I’m sorry, I know you’re a good kid. I just gotta, you know —”
I looked at him blankly. “No, I don’t know. What?”
“Well, I got charges pending against me. I gotta watch my back.”
“Oh, I’m just a college kid! No danger here. Besides, it’s nice to meet you.”
He relaxed then and asked me about Brown and my life. As we made friends he was happy to tell me about his job. He explained that the bookies he worked for beeped him when they needed collection services. “I just know the name, address, and amount.”
“How do you get the money?”
“We usually work out a deal. I ask them, ‘How much you got? What can you give me?’ I’ll work up a payment plan. Sometimes I have them sign their title over, and take their car. “
“What do they do then?”
“Nothing. What can they do?”
“Do you ever have to hurt them?”
“I only had to get violent twice,” he boasted. “I usually don’t even carry a gun.”
“What did you do?”
“Mostly yelled really loud, to scare them. One guy tried to get out through the window. I caught him, though. Broke a finger or two. Nothing big. I don’t want to get rough. But what am I supposed to do? The guy was running. He was being stupid. You know what I’m sayin’?”
“It’s business,” I agreed.
His beeper sounded. He glanced at it, then turned back to me.
“Do you need to go?” I asked, unsure about his work hours. “Are you, um, on duty?”
“No, that was my lawyer. I’ll call him in a minute.”
“What are these charges you mentioned?”
“Extortion. That’s why I’m not really working much right now, because, well, you know, I’m hot.”
In more than one way.
“No, I didn’t know. You’re still coming to the club…”
“The club’s safe.”
“Oh. How’d you get caught for extortion?”
“Long story. Someone ratted. I was followed. Bad luck, that’s all.”
“Will you go to jail?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. My hearing is next week. I do know this — I’m gonna get outta collecting.”
“What will you do?”
“Construction.”
I knew better than to believe that generic answer.
“Mick, I know construction is what all you guys say you’re in.” From his twinkling eyes I could see I was right. Pleased with myself, I leaned across the table and stared into his eyes. “What will you really do?”
“I’m thinking of switching to narcotics, but just class three.”
“Really?” It was curious, he was discussing business, not crime.
Daring as it was, I found Mick attractive and interesting. He felt the same about me, and, after walking me to my morning class, gave me his beeper and home number. He lived with his grandmother, who had raised him, up on Federal Hill, the oldest Italian neighborhood in the city. Apparently she was quite elderly, and Mick helped her with the shopping and cleaning. She cooked for him. I’m sure we would have gone out but his court hearing didn’t go well. I didn’t see him for months. By then I’d chosen another Italian, just as handsome and not behind bars, Tony DeLorenzo, Jr.
I did thank Angelo, though, for introducing me to Mick the next time I saw him, a week later. I had more questions by then, too. “How do you make a profit?”
“When the bettors lose, I win. When they win, I lose, I pay them.”
“So, the odds are, um, I should say, with you.”
“What do you think, Heidi?” he said with a wink.
“Isn’t there a problem with all that cash?”
“Not really. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that actually.” “Me? Why?”
“I can turn your money over. You give me ten grand, I turn it into fifty.”
“Gee, Angelo,” I whispered, “I’m working a tuition deal with Brown right now, but I’ll keep you in mind for the future.”
He chuckled. “That’s OK, Heidi. Just let me know.”
“How does it work, anyway?”
“Loan-sharking, Heidi. I make loans to desperate people. Until they return the total amount, they pay me two hundred a week, every week, until they can come up with the original amount. “
“Whoa.”
“It can take years before they have it. In the meantime, you have a steady income.”
It sounded crazy. “Who would be that desperate?”
“Heidi, there are desperate people out there. They can’t go to a bank, they gotta do something.”
“What keeps them from running away or going to the cops?”
“Ah, they know better, Heidi. There’s a network, it extends everywhere.”
“Out of the country?”
“Oh, yes. It may take some time, but eventually we find them if they run. More often, they stay and think up excuses. They know I don’t want to get messy. One guy, poor sucker, he gave me this excuse” — Angelo started laughing — “about his turtle. The guy was actually crying, telling me he had to bury his turtle, or his kid’s turtle, I don’t know. But I let him off the hook — for the week.”
I had meant to ask him about his IRS tactics. (He had to have some.) A few weeks later, right before school started, I heard Cherry moaning in the locker room about being audited. (“I bought the condo with cash! What am I gonna do?”) Angelo was around, as usual, so I asked him, “What do you do about taxes?”
“I’ll tell you a little story. You know Chuck, my partner? He lives at home, with his mother.”
“His mother? But Chuck’s got to be sixty or …”
“She’s still hanging on. Anyways, the IRS came after him a few years back. He had no income to show. He told the agent, ‘My mom gives me an allowance. The Cadillac? She gave that to me, too.’“
“Angelo, come on!”
But it worked!
“You just have to be careful, Heidi. That’s something these strippers could learn. I knew one, sweet thing named Daisy. From before your time, Heidi. She put her tips in a safe in her closet. Didn’t realize the trouble she’d have when it came time to spend it. Cash attracts a lot of attention, in those denominations.”
I could just imagine. Honey, my co-worker and friend, claimed to have over a hundred grand put away. “For a house someday,” she said, unaware it seemed that her savings were due, overdue, to be taxed.
“That Daisy,”Angelo mused, “she was really something! Had these giant pet pythons she would wrap around her body. And she had a wallaby, too. Poor little critter.”
“Wallaby? A little kangaroo animal?”
“Yeah, it was part of her act, until, well … Let me tell you the story. Her boyfriend, Daisy’s boyfriend, he was a, um, business associate of mine. Eddie was the possessive type, you know? Made her move into one of his apartments. She had lived up on the east side, near Brown, in a nice old Victorian house. Problem was, the ceilings in the new place weren’t so tall. They were so low Eddie printed them with Daisy’s breasts dipped in glue and glitter. Anyways, the wallaby didn’t know what had happened with this ceiling. He knocked his furry head over and over. She couldn’t keep him there. Daisy was heartbroken. The wallaby was never the same. She sold the critter to a dancer from Connecticut, I think.”
Angelo was entertaining to talk with, but on busy nights I would allow myself only a hello and a kiss. I did wonder why he was still a bookie, after a supposedly long and profitable career. He wasn’t as old as Chuck, probably only in his late forties, but he had to have been financially secure.
“Why don’t you retire?” I finally asked, sipping champagne with him on a slow night. “Why not quit while you’re ahead?
“I am retired!” he cheered. “What do I with my time? I golf, I go to Florida, I eat well. You don’t understand, Fve done this for twenty years. I’m careful. I’ve always been careful — I’ve never been caught.”
“What does the Foxy Lady have to do with all this? Why do you conduct business here?”
He gave me a look of amusement, hand on my shoulder, and gently pulled me to him. He kissed me softly on the mouth — and I didn’t mind, it was such an intense moment. “Honey, we’ll leave that one alone. OK?”
OK.
But I didn’t overlook the furtive glances and secret conversations around me at work. I didn’t know if these suspicious — and often very charming — men were Mafia wannabes or the real thing. Had they learned their subtle hand signals, threatening stares, and wise guy poses from their fathers — or the movies?
My gambling education was all around me. It wasn’t only the customers who were “connected.” The first time I noticed Ricky quietly acting as a courier for unmarked packages, I knew something was fishy. He, seeing me observing him, became nervous and distracted, dribbling his chewing tobacco.
My well-phrased questions and focused ear did little to bare the mysterious situation any further. The bottom line for me remained constant — money. I didn’t have enough motivation to research the facts. Then the Providence Journal-Bulletin published the results of a months-long investigation as the front page story in their Sunday newspaper. “The ‘Lady’ and Her Friends” ran during Lent, upsetting many Rhode Island Catholics. (A picture of several Foxy Ladies was also on the cover.)
The owners were thought to be three men, Poochie, Jimmy, and Tommy. This information was debatable, but of substantial interest apparently, because the paper devoted three pages to the question without completely answering it. Poochie was described as a “local bookie who police say works for the Providence mob.” The article listed him as earning a consultant’s fee of $2,500 each week for checking in on the Foxy Lady between mornings at his “social club” and afternoons at the track. Tommy consistently denied any knowledge of Poochie’s wrongdoing,
I still don’t know what he’s done wrong, besides having a reputation!
adding that he respected Poochie so much he “wouldn’t sneeze without talking to him.” Tommy and Poochie, the owners I knew, were comfortable men to be around. From my experience, they made legitimate business a top priority.
Local wisdom dictated that where there is bookmaking there is money laundering and tax evasion. But the paper failed to connect bookmaking directly to the club. Poochie appeared to be an untouchable enigma, and Tommy the squeaky-clean image spinner for the club. Was it just another image game? From my conversations with Angelo I knew there were a lot more players.
A mob’s worth.
So this was no figment of my imagination; the Foxy Lady was, at least, the playing field for serious
“family” business.
Jojo, a typical low-level mafioso wannabe, made me an offer I found quite hard to take seriously.
“Heidi,” Jojo breathed heavily, “come ovah heah. I got something I want to ask you.” He leaned against the DJ booth, striking a suave pose. I slowly walked toward him, noticing the grime-coated plastic that protected the DJ booth rubbing against his formal suit. The DJ, Petie, made antennae with his fingers above Jojo’s oversize, overcoiffed head and smirked at me. I smiled back cheerfully then reached out for Jojo. He had puffed his chubby chest out, maximizing the impact of his tieless but fully buttoned burgundy shirt. He took my hand gently with his soft paws. “Hi, baby, how you doin’ tonight?” he asked softly, tilting his head.