by KJ Kalis
The hostess of Frank’s game turned and walked over to him, “Vince, it’s so nice to see you. I didn’t know you were coming tonight.” She laid a warm hand on his arm, her pale fingernails lacquer to a brilliant red sheen.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, truthfully,” he said. “I just started on a new project and was log-jammed all day with meetings and emails getting it started.” He hoped that explaining about the new project would soften the blow that he didn’t have his notebook with him. Maybe Jess would let Frank know he’d had a busy day at work. Maybe that would explain him not having his notebook, or at least until he could find it.
“A new project, that’s so exciting!” Jess said, leaving him over to the bar. “What are you drinking tonight?”
“Vodka tonic.”
The bartender gave a quick nod and within a moment, Vince had a fresh drink in front of him, served in a thick crystal tumbler. Vince guessed that the crystal used for the men’s club was probably more expensive than any complete set of dishes he had ever contemplated owning. Frank lived at a different level, that was for sure. As he took the first sip, the liquid running cold down his throat, Jess leaned over to him. “How about if we get you checked in and secure your favorite seat at the table?” she whispered.
Before Vince could answer, Gerald walked over to them. It seemed every time Vince saw him, he was wearing the same green sport coat. Gerald was toting a tablet with him. “Nice to see you, Vince,” he said. Gerald’s high voice squeaked. “May I see your book, please?”
Vince’s heart started to beat a bit faster in his chest. The reality of not having it with him landed heavily. “That’s the thing…” he said, speaking carefully. “I just got a new project and I’m moving offices. I have it in with my office stuff, but I forgot to grab it before I left the house.” Vince decided it was better to lie. That would give him time to find it.
Vince caught Jess and Gerald looking at each other before Gerald nodded, “I see. I’ll be right back.”
“While Gerald is away, I’ll secure your favorite spot at the table. Right-hand side, just one chair off-center like usual?” Jess said.
Vince nodded, “Yes, please.” Vince stayed at the bar and glanced over his shoulder in Gerald’s direction. Gerald was talking privately to Frank away from the other gamblers. Vince caught Frank looking at him. Vince quickly looked back down at his drink, wrapping his fingers around the cool glass. He pressed his lips together. Why the Battaglia’s needed to have the notebooks in the first place, he wasn’t sure. It seemed like a pain to him. Why not just do everything online, like everyone else? The thoughts tumbled through his mind as he waited. A surge of frustration and fear covered him. He should’ve known better. Before he thought about the notebook much more, he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Gerald. “Mr. Battaglia would like to speak to you out on the patio, please.” Gerald extended his hand toward the patio, ushering Vince outside. Vince grabbed his drink, knowing it would be good to have something to steady his hands.
Outside, the back patio doors slid silently closed behind him as Vince walked out to meet Frank. The Battaglia’s backyard, if you could call it that, looked more like a modern park setting, with carefully landscaped beds and ornamental trees dotting the acreage the house didn’t occupy. To the left, there was a fenced-in area. From his previous visits, Vince knew it was a chef’s garden. The first time he’d met Frank, Gerald had walked him outside only to find Frank bent over in the garden, picking tomatoes, before taking the tour of his grand home.
Frank’s arms were folded across his chest, looking out in the backyard. Vince walked up next to him, looking in the same direction, but not saying anything. “Beautiful night, isn’t it?” Frank said.
“Lovely.” Vince’s hands were clammy. He gripped the glass a little tighter.
“I’m not sure I got a chance to tell you, but the number of tomatoes I picked this year was enough for our chef to can for the entire winter. Nothing like fresh tomato sauce in January.”
Vince nodded, but only managed to mumble, “You have an amazing garden.” He almost kicked himself as the words came out of his mouth. How stupid could he be? It wasn’t his job to comment, only to stand there.
Frank glanced at him and then returned his gaze to the yard, “You know, having a garden is a lot of responsibility. It’s one thing to plant the seedlings in the spring, but it’s something entirely different to encourage them to bear fruit by the end of the season.”
Vince’s mind was spinning. What gardening had to do with him missing his notebook, he wasn’t sure. Was he supposed to stay silent? His throat tightened.
“Since Mrs. Battaglia and I moved into this house, I’ve had a garden. Each year, I have our landscapers come in and bring new leaf humus in and work it into the soil. I think that’s why our crop gets better each year.” Frank glanced at Vince, a smirk on his face. “Crop. Seems like a funny way to put it for so small of a garden, doesn’t it?”
Vince nodded in agreement but figured the garden wasn’t any smaller than half an acre itself. Not exactly small. Frank could probably have fed most of the neighborhood just on the produce it yielded every year. That was the thing about the Battaglia’s, they did everything big.
Vince couldn’t wait any longer, “Listen, Mr. Battaglia. I’m really sorry about the…”
Frank held up a hand, stopping Vince mid-sentence. “We’re talking about my garden, right?”
Vince nodded.
“The way I take care of my business is much the same way that I take care of the garden. We prepare the soil, we plan, the gardening staff helps me make it happen, and then I tend to the garden, very carefully, in great detail all summer long until it yields a harvest. We remove all the bugs, pull the weeds and remove all the suckers from the tomato plants.” Frank licked his bottom lip. “Vincent, that’s how I’ve been successful. Word on the street is that you just landed a big project.” He laid a hand on Vince’s shoulder, “I’m proud of you.” As soon as it was on his shoulder, it was off. “Here’s the thing. No matter what type of project someone is working on, the details matter. And, if someone can’t be trusted with the small details, then how can they be trusted with the larger ones?”
Vince knew without a doubt Frank was referring to the notebook. “As I said, it’s just been a hectic day. I just got the project with the Rossiter’s…”
“I know all about it. I’m good friends with Adam’s father. I’ve known Adam since he was a boy. They’re a good family. Not Italian, mind you, but a good family nonetheless.”
Vince stood in silence, not sure where the conversation was going. First, they were talking about tomatoes and gardening, and then they were talking about his project. He took another sip of his drink, which had become watery.
Frank checked the time on his watch. “It’s about time for us to go in, don’t you think?”
Vince nodded. “Yes,” he stammered. “Again, I’m sorry about the lapse.”
Frank turned toward Vince, moving towards the house, “It’s not just about the notebook, Vincent. As a man, you have obligations. I expect you to take care of them.”
As Frank turned to walk back into the house, he squeezed Vince’s arm. Vince didn’t know what to do. Part of him wanted to run around the outside of the house, jump in his Land Rover and go back into town, but he knew it wasn’t that easy. Vince knew the whole conversation hadn’t been about the red book being misplaced. It was about the debt he owed. Frank was losing patience. Vince took a long drink, finishing what was left in the glass in one swallow, hoping the alcohol would make him feel stronger. He had to win tonight. There was no way around it. He had to show Frank that he could be trusted and repay the Battaglia’s and the other gamblers.
Walking back into the room, Gerald met him at the door, the tablet extended to him. Gerald was ready for Vince to sign for a line of credit to start the game. On the screen, there were options. The Battaglia’s game had a one hundred thousand dollar buy-in each time
he went to play. There were also options for a quarter-million dollars and a half-million dollars. Knowing a little bit about the background of the other gamblers, Vince was sure some of them chose an even higher option, one that would have been arranged with Gerald and Frank ahead of time. He’d seen a couple of whale gamblers at the game, but not very often. They came in quietly around the second or third hand, played one game and then leave, or go outside and smoke a cigar with Frank. These were the kind of people that didn’t talk to Jess or Gerald. They came in, did their business, and left.
After signing the tablet, Vince took off his sport coat and hung it on the arms of the chair in front of the poker table. The waitress came over and whispered, “Can I get you another drink?”
“Club soda and lemon,” he said. There was no room for alcohol tonight. At least not more than he’d already had. Things had gotten very serious, very fast.
The waitress delivered the drink back to him, putting a coaster on the polished walnut edge of the table, just as the game began...
32
Emily was reading the last email in her inbox when her phone rang. It was Lou. “Hello?” she said.
“I think I’ve got some information for you,” Lou mumbled, not bothering with any pleasantries.
“That was fast.” From the noise in the background, it sounded like Lou was driving. Emily wondered if he was calling right after he got the information. With the quick turnaround — they had just met a couple of hours before — she guessed that was the case. Lou certainly was motivated. Anxiety prickled at the back of Emily’s neck.
“After you sent the image over, I ran over to see O’Malley. You remember her?”
“Sure. Bright red hair?”
Lou grunted. “That’s the one. She’s still in Vice. She’s worked a lot of gambling cases, so I took her the sheet you gave me.”
Emily chewed her lip. She felt like she was walking a tight rope. On one side was her need to keep her cases quiet and private so she didn’t expose herself to any prosecution. On the other was the fact that for this case, there was no way that she and Mike could solve it without help. One small slip and she was worried she’d fall off the rope. Where she would land, she didn’t know. “What did she say?”
“Well,” Lou started, “just a little background. Seems like a lot of the gambling rings in the city are going back to paper books. The cybersecurity guys — both ours in the city and at the federal level — were getting a little too close to cracking their systems. They’ve gone old school.”
“That’s what she thinks the sheet is?”
“Yeah, she agreed with you it was likely a gambler’s book. If I had to guess, I bet they have paper copies and online copies, just in case. At least, if I were a criminal that’s the way I would do it.”
For a second, Emily wondered if Lou was trying to make a point. After all, Emily had nearly been convicted of a crime while she was a police officer. With the things that she’d done in the years since, which included ending quite a few lives to get justice for people, she was a criminal, or at least would be considered that if she were ever prosecuted. She shook off the comment, hoping she was just being paranoid. This whole case had shaken her. She needed to focus. “Did O’Malley have any ideas who may control the game Vince is playing at?”
“She only had a guess. The Battaglia’s.”
Emily’s mind started to spin. She had heard of the family before but knew little about them. Her instinct was to hang up the phone and call Anthony, her father-in-law, to give her more information, but she took a deep breath. She had Lou on the line. What else did he know? “Did O’Malley say anything about the Battaglia’s? I don’t know much about them.”
“Not much. Just that they’re old school. Tied to Capone, back in the day.”
“You didn’t tell her who I was looking at, did you?” The question, although slightly paranoid, made sense. Emily needed to know how much information Lou leaked, if any.
“No need to worry, Emily. O’Malley knows it was you that asked the question, but that’s it. I didn’t give her any other information.”
A flash of anger passed in front of Emily’s eyes. “Why did you tell her it was for me?”
“I had to tell her something. Aldo almost caught me, too, but I slipped away from her before anything came out.”
Detective Aldo. Emily hadn’t thought about her in a long time. “She’s still in the building? Hasn’t retired yet?”
“She’s a lifer. You know how she is. Retirement wasn’t built for her. Work was.” There was a pause and then Lou continued, “Listen, I’ll keep this quiet. You don’t need to worry. Do what you need to do to help your client. If you need anything else, give me a call.”
“Thanks.”
As Emily hung up the phone, the tight rope she was walking on seemed to get a little wider. Not by much, but at least she felt like she wasn’t going to fall off of it at any moment. Emily walked over to the window. She felt like she did her best thinking staring outside. She ran through the facts of the case. Marlowe had been rooked out of twenty million and then raped by the man who did it. The perpetrator was a gambler in hot water with some dangerous old-school families and had visited the Lakeview building after the building had been condemned. Emily started to pace. Was Vince trying to get the building back? That was information she didn’t have. It wasn’t really pertinent to her part of the case, at least to the extent that Emily knew Vince needed to be punished for raping and stealing from Marlowe. The way he treated Marlowe was unacceptable. It required justice.
The fact that Vince was likely in hock with an old, well-established organized crime family in Chicago made the situation a little more complex and a little bit simpler at the same time. If Vince couldn’t pay his debt, Emily knew at some point, the family would take care of business. When that would be, she didn’t know. For a moment, she considered letting the Battaglia’s handle the problem, but that wouldn’t guarantee justice for Marlowe. With the money sitting in the bank, Vince could easily pay off his debt and start the cycle all over again, postponing the inevitable. Gamblers were that way. They very rarely got off of the rollercoaster high that winning offered.
Emily stopped for a second, staring back out the window again. She heard the tap of Miner’s nails on the wood floor and the nudge of his warm nose on her hand. She squatted down, scratching him between the ears. “Are you ready to get this case solved?” she asked him. His round brown eyes locked with hers for a second and then he flopped down on the floor rolling over on his back, asking to have his belly rubbed again.
“Any news on the case? I heard you talking in here.” Mike appeared at the doorway, setting a cup of coffee down on Emily’s desk.
“Lou just called. He said the sample we gave them out of the red notebook likely belongs to one of the gambling tables associated with the Battaglia family.”
“The Battaglia’s? They’re legendary!” Mike said, crossing his arms over his chest. “A couple of of my buddies thought it might be fun to try to hack into some off-the-books gambling sites. They bumped into a sport betting ring run by that family. They have top-of-the-line encryption, firewalls that rival the NSA, and pay their tech team well. Kinda makes you wonder what other secrets they have online.”
“That’s the thing. Lou said that a lot of the syndicates are going back to keeping paper copies of everything. I guess guys like you are getting a little too close to their operations,” Emily gave him a half-smile.
“Thanks, I think. Anyway, the one thing I know about the Battaglia’s is they don’t mess around. Let me go pull up a couple of files.”
Emily picked up the cup of coffee Mike brought into her office and followed him back into the kitchen. She sat down across from him at the table, wrapping her hands around the mug, sitting quietly, waiting for him to give her the information he had.
Silence settled over the room. It felt like the quiet before the storm. Something in Emily’s gut told her they were nearly at the end of
the case, that very shortly she’d be required to act. What action she would take, still wasn’t clear. But the time was coming, and coming fast.
33
The game at Frank Battaglia’s house went on nearly all night. At about four o’clock in the morning, the waitresses started brewing strong cups of coffee and espresso for the players that were left. Once again, it was the Ukrainians and Vince.
Vince was up seven hundred thousand on the night. He was high as a kite, though not from drugs. Frank didn’t allow any of that at his games. The strongest thing you could get was alcohol. Frank hung around at the game until about two o’clock in the morning, then at some point he disappeared. Vince wasn’t sure when that happened. He was too busy concentrating, calculating each move. During their coffee break, Gerald wandered over to check on him. “A streak of luck tonight,” he said, checking his tablet. “We’ve got time left to play about two more games. Are you in?”
The question hung in the air. Vince didn’t answer for a moment. Sure, he could join the next couple of games, but he could lose everything he’d earned that night. Or he could walk away. It was time he took the advice of some ultra-high rollers he’d seen walk in, play one game and walk out. He shook his head, staring at Gerald, who looked like he’d been frozen in time, “No, I’m out.”
“You sure? You know the Ukrainians, they love to play.”
For a second, Vince was confused. Gerald knew how much money Vince owed. Wouldn’t he want some of that to go back to the table? “I’m done.”
Gerald raised his eyebrows, “Okay. Do you want me to transfer your winnings to your bank account?”
It felt like a loaded question, especially given the conversation Vince had with Frank out in the garden. Sure, it would be nice to have close to one million to put back into his account, but the fact was that he owed a lot more than that to the table. He wanted to show good faith, to prove to Frank he was good for it, “No. Put it against what I owe.”
