The Bookmakers

by Zev Chafets

  Over the years, Reggie had established and cultivated a vast army of friends and associates around the country. In virtually every city and many small towns he knew someone who would be happy to do him a favor—lay off bets, collect a bad debt, provide inside information, arrange the outcome of a sporting event, all the little things that meant prosperity in his business. Arlen Nashua was one of those people.

  Like many of Herman’s friends in the Midwest, Nashua had worked for a labor union. He had also served five years in Marquette for committing mayhem in the line of duty. Nashua had a bad case of emphysema and was semiretired, but Herman respected his industry and his judgment. For that reason he had given him the Mack Green assignment, and Nashua hadn’t let him down.

  “Tell me a little more about Packer,” he said to Nashua. It was the day before Christmas and they were at a corner table at the Anchor Bar in downtown Detroit. “Is he smart?”

  “Not as smart as he thinks he is, but yeah, he’s no dummy.”

  “Can he keep his mouth shut?”

  “He’s got a good reputation,” said Nashua. “I checked him out with a couple guys he did time with. They say nice things about him.”

  “And you say he needs money?”

  “He’s been trying to scrounge dough all over,” said Nashua. “I think that might have something to do with his fight with Green, but I’m not sure.”

  “Know what he needs it for?”

  Nashua coughed and shrugged at the same time. “I could probably find out, you want me to.”

  “It’s not important,” said Reggie. “Tell me, is there anything he wouldn’t do? Anything that might scare him?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Nashua. “If you want to be a little more specific, maybe it would help.”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” said Reggie. “Not that at all. You’ve done a terrific job.”

  “Thanks,” wheezed Nashua.

  “You’ve shown that a good man with a disability can accomplish anything,” Reggie said.

  “Thanks,” Nashua repeated. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if Herman was putting him on or not.

  “Tell me, is Packer a family man?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way, no.”

  “In that case I’d like to invite him to Christmas lunch at Carl’s Chop House,” said Reggie. “Give him a call for me, will you? Tell him I’m a promoter who wants to talk about booking some of his fighters.”

  “Sure,” said Nashua. “By the way, what does it matter if he has a family?”

  “I wouldn’t want to take him away from his kids on Christmas,” said Reggie. “A man with a family should spend national holidays at home.”

  As Christmas approached, the normal routine of the McClain household gave way to a burst of holiday preparations. John bought a large tree and decorated it himself with popcorn balls and little angels. He put a wreath on the door, hung stockings over the mantel and spent an entire day draping the front porch with colored lights. When Mack offered to help, he rebuffed him with jovial brusqueness. “You want to decorate the place, bring Linda for dinner on Christmas Eve,” he said. “The rest of this stuff I can do myself.”

  Linda was delighted by the invitation, especially when she heard that Joyce had been cooking for three days. She arrived for dinner with a bottle of Pinot Noir, Acacia 1984, and a stack of CDs from the store. “Everybody except Henry Kissinger’s got a Christmas album out this year,” she said.

  “We’ll put these on after supper,” said Joyce, kissing Linda on the cheek.

  “But we’ve got our own Christmas sounds,” McClain protested, looking to his wife for confirmation.

  “John thinks if he doesn’t play the same songs every year, Santa won’t find him,” said Joyce.

  “What music do you have?” Mack laughed. “Bing Crosby and Gene Autry?”

  “Charles Brown and Chuck Berry,” McClain said in his east side dialect. “They the baddest Christmas singers they is.”

  “All right, Superfly,” Joyce said affectionately, “when you’re ready for supper, it’s ready for you.”

  Joyce said grace, while Mack and Linda held hands under the table and McClain fidgeted in his seat, staring at the turkey. When Joyce murmured “Amen,” he was already on his feet, carving knife in hand.

  “You must have had a lot of Christmas dinners in this room,” Joyce said to Mack.

  “My mother always cooked a goose and my father made a toast. ‘God bless us every one!’ It was pretty corny.”

  “That’s from A Christmas Carol,” said McClain. “It was a hell of a movie, right up there with Dial M for Murder and Rocky III.”

  “Lord God Jesus, why did you send me this man?” Joyce said, laughing.

  “Because he knew you had been a good little girl,” said McClain.

  “That’s Santa Claus, not Jesus,” said Mack.

  “Same thing,” said McClain.

  “John, I will not have you blaspheming in this house, especially not on Christmas Eve,” said Joyce.

  “You’re the one said Lord God Jesus,” said McClain. “Where I grew up, that was taking the name of the Lord in vain.”

  “Where did you grow up?” asked Linda.

  “Right here in Oriole, on the north side.”

  “You know, the first time I ever went to the north side, it was to a synagogue. With Buddy Packer, if you can believe that.”

  “Let’s not spoil dinner by talking about him,” said Joyce.

  “Amen to that,” said Linda.

  “I never thought I’d say this, but I feel sorry for him,” said Mack.

  “Sorry my ass,” snorted McClain. “He’s scum. You know he was in prison?”

  Mack nodded. “He told me, yeah. Something to do with arson.”

  “You make it sound like a bonfire,” said McClain. “A man died in that fire.”

  “John, it’s Christmas,” said Joyce.

  “He had a club out on Monroe,” said McClain, undeterred. “A real dive. Called it Packer’s Airport Lounge for some stupid reason, although there wasn’t an airport within twenty miles.”

  “You’ve got to know his sense of humor,” said Mack.

  “I don’t have to know a damn thing about him,” said McClain. “I know too much already.”

  “What about the arson?” asked Linda.

  “I’m coming to that. He ran the place with his wife—”

  “Buddy was married?” said Mack. “He never told me that.”

  “Yeah, to a trailer-park hookerette named DeeDee Hunter. She had a kid named Donnie when she was about fifteen. By the time she married Packer, Donnie was nine or ten, around there. The kid was a real standout, too, even in this town. Half the burglaries on the north side were him.”

  “When he was nine years old?” asked Mack.

  “Naw, when he got older. The thing is, the kid worshiped Packer, that’s how screwed up he was. The only thing he really wanted was for Packer to adopt him, which naturally he refused to do. He wouldn’t even let the kid call him Dad, just Buddy.

  “Then, one day Packer calls little Donnie in and says, ‘How would you like to be my son?’ ’Course the kid gets all excited, Buddy Packer’s gonna be his daddy. ‘Well,’ says Packer, ‘if you want me to adopt you, you’ve got to prove your love.’

  “ ‘What do you want me to do?’ the kid asks. Know what Packer told him?”

  Mack shook his head.

  “Burn down the nightclub.”

  “What for? The insurance?” asked Mack.

  “Yeah,” said McClain. “He did it, too, only he burned down more than he planned on. He caught a whole block and an old guy died of smoke inhalation.”

  “How do you know so much about it?” asked Mack.

  “Because I’m the one who arrested him,” said McClain. “It was my case.”

  “You? That’s quite a coincidence.”

  “It’s a small town, hotshot,” said McClain.

  After dinner they went back to the l
iving room. McClain lit a fire, poured a round of Hennessy VSOP and raised his glass. “God bless us every one!” he said, looking at Mack.

  “I’m going to answer that they way I used to answer my father,” said Mack.

  “How’s that?” asked Joyce.

  Mack rose from the couch, reached out his hand for Linda’s and gently pulled her to her feet. Then he shook hands with McClain and kissed Joyce on the cheek. “Merry Christmas,” he said, grinning, “dinner was delicious, and I’ve got to go over to Linda Birney’s house now.”

  When they were gone, McClain went up to Mack’s room, jimmied open the lock on his desk and returned to the living room with a stack of pages. “Just listen to this,” he said. He cleared his throat and began reading aloud:

  “It’s been a long time since I came three times in one night, and I was feeling pretty good about it. ‘You make me feel like my old self,’ I said.

  “L. flashed me her crooked grin and said, ‘You’re better than your old self. You may have lost a little off the ole fastball, but your slow stuff is terrific—’

  “Looks like the Oriole Kid is back in championship form,” chortled McClain.

  “I don’t think you should be reading that out loud,” said Joyce. “It’s not meant for us.”

  “Are you kidding? If it wasn’t for us, none of this would be happening. Listen to what he wrote about you today:

  ‘Joy’s hurting because her son isn’t coming home for Christmas, but you’d never know it. She’s such a strong woman. When things go wrong for her she just says, “I’m blessed anyway,” and she sounds like she means it. My own mother spent the last ten years of her life stoned on sleeping pills and vodka because she couldn’t face life without my dad, and I guess some of my own need to put liquor between me and reality comes from watching her do it. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about how blessed I am—what a weird thought—maybe even as weird as having a sixty-five-year-old black woman schoolteacher as a role model—’

  “How’s that sound?” said McClain happily. “Is Mack out of the woods or what?” He set the pages down on the coffee table and put his arm around his wife. “Joy,” he said. “That’s a good name for you. Maybe I’ll call you that from now on.”

  “And what am I supposed to call you? Big John?”

  “No, baby,” said McClain, kissing her exuberantly on the lips. “From now on, you can call me Doctor Feelgood.”

  Wolfowitz sat alone in his study, listening to Louise and the maid fussing over last-minute arrangements for Christmas lunch. In a few minutes Josh and his young wife Steffie would arrive; he had just enough time to give himself a little Christmas cheer. He opened his safe, took out the list of options he had drawn up after receiving Conlon’s report and privately contemplated Mack Green’s demise.

  The list, written on yellow legal paper in Wolfowitz’s precise script, was headed “Contingencies.” A list followed:

  1—Warn Mack that Reggie is after him. Pluses: a) None. Minuses: a) Reggie’s plan would fail; b) Reggie might break my legs.

  2—Cut a deal with Reggie. Pluses: a) Maybe I could talk Reggie into giving me a part of the movie money in return for silence or cooperation; b) Personal satisfaction in taking part in the operation. Minuses: a) Reggie would know about me and Mack, giving him leverage over me; b) Reggie might break my legs.

  3—Do nothing. Pluses: a) If Reggie succeeds, the Diary will be a bestseller and Mack will be dead; b) If Reggie fails, I can activate the Horton book. Minuses: None.

  As much as Wolfowitz regretted being relegated to passivity, there was no denying that logic dictated plan three. Even from a business standpoint, letting Reggie go ahead made sense. Mack’s pages, which continued to arrive on schedule, were terrific; much better than Walter Horton’s version, which he had delivered earlier that week. There had been a small scene when Wolfowitz had informed Horton that his book was being held and that he would receive no money unless it was actually published. Walter T. had pleaded, cajoled and eventually stormed out cursing, but Wolfowitz didn’t care. At this point the Horton diary was insurance, nothing more. If something went wrong with Reggie’s plan, Horton would get his money; if not—well, that was his problem. Nobody had told him to go out and get AIDS.

  Wolfowitz heard the front door open and the sound of loud, cheerful voices in the hall. It wouldn’t be long now, he reflected; Mack’s novel was almost finished. He carefully replaced his options list in the safe, glanced briefly at the photo of Louise on his desk and felt a brief, sharp pang of emptiness. The renewal of his vendetta had given him a sense of purpose and satisfaction he hadn’t known for years; losing Mack permanently would leave a void. As he left the room to greet his guests, Arthur Wolfowitz wondered, a bit sadly, what he would have to celebrate next Christmas.

  “How about the book?” Tommy Russo asked Joey Byrne. Like Russo, Bryne was an ex-priest. Every year they met at Antonelli’s for Christmas lunch, and every year Tommy began their meal with the same question.

  “I’m still working on it,” said Byrne with a wide grin. He was a heavyset redhead around Tommy’s age, with a broad boyish face set off by flaming ginger eyebrows that rose halfway up his forehead when he was amused. The pretense that he was writing a novel—writing anything, in fact—amused him greatly, especially since it enabled Tommy to write off their lunch as a business expense.

  “Well, keep at it,” Russo said, returning the grin. “What else you up to?”

  “Still coaching,” said Joey. “We’re fourteen and one right now. What’d you, stop following sports?”

  “I don’t usually bet junior high,” said Russo. “Why don’t you get a high school team, a junior college maybe? We could both make some money.”

  “Gambling’s your vice, not mine,” said Byrne. They both knew what Byrne’s vice was—and that it was the reason he liked coaching thirteen-year-old boys.

  “Well,” said Tommy, raising his glass, “Merry Christmas, Father Joseph.”

  “Merry Christmas to you, Father Tomas,” said Byrne, sipping his wine. “How you feeling this year?”

  It was another ritual question; Christmas was hard on ex-priests. Byrne and Russo were not close friends, not really friends at all. They met only once a year, on Christmas Day, to share a meal and a mood that others couldn’t understand. And, although neither one had ever actually articulated it, to act as each other’s confessors, one spoiled priest to another.

  “Not bad,” said Tommy. All morning he had been planning to tell Joey about his sellout of Mack Green and what he suspected might be happening. Now that they were here, though, he found it hard to talk about. It wasn’t that he was afraid—he had absolute confidence in Joey’s discretion. It was more a superstitious feeling that putting his suspicions into words would make them real.

  “That’s it? Not bad?” asked Joey after a moment.

  “Well, you know, middle age. I drink too much, I curse, I screw hoo-ers. And in my business, you have to cut a few corners—”

  “That’s true of most businesses,” said Joey, leaving Tommy plenty of room.

  “I guess. But there’s this one situation. You remember Mack Green? I’ve mentioned him to you before.”

  “Sure,” said Joey. “What about him?”

  “Well, he’s got this book I’m representing and—shit, that’s my phone,” said Tommy, removing the ringing cellular phone from his jacket pocket. “Who the hell calls on Christmas Day at lunch-time?” He hit the “on” button and said: “Russo.”

  “Russo?”

  “Yeah, I just said that.” Tommy snapped. “Who’s this?”

  “Otto Kelly, at the Flying Tiger.”

  “Kelly?” he said, immediately alert; Otto Kelly had never called him before in his life. “What’s the matter?”

  “You know a writer named Walter Horton?”

  “Walter T,” said Russo. “What about him?”

  “He’s in here right now, sitting at the bar drunk. Came in that way. Says Artie Wo
lfowitz screwed him on a new book he was writing.”

  “So what?” said Tommy. “He’s not my client.”

  “No, but Mack is,” said Otto. “You happen to have his number out in Michigan?”

  “No,” lied Russo. “What’s this got to do with Mack?”

  “I’m not sure,” Otto said, “but I think you better get over here and talk to Horton. Sounds to me like there’s two authors writing the same book.”

  “I’ll be over in a little while,” said Tommy. He clicked off the phone and put it back in his pocket.

  “Problem?” asked Joey Byrne.

  “Only if I make it one,” said Russo. All the years he had refrained from warning Mack about Wolfowitz, he had consoled himself with the excuse that, at worst, it was no more than a sin of omission. But if he went to the Tiger, learned what Wolfowitz was up to, he would have to call Mack or be guilty of a sin of commission. The word rattled in his brain. A 10 percent commission, right off the top. That’s what all his dealings with Wolfowitz amounted to: sins of commission.

  “Are you going to? Make it a problem?” asked Byrne.

  Russo shrugged and rose to his feet. “Listen, Jerry, something’s come up. You stay and finish your lunch.”

  “On Christmas? Can’t it wait?”

  “Nah,” said Tommy. “Believe it or not, I gotta go hear a confession.”

  Buddy Packer arrived at Carl’s ten minutes early and found Herman Reggie in the bar. He walked up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder with a bony finger and said, “I believe you’re waiting for me.”

  “How’d you know me?” asked Reggie.

  “Your name’s come up from time to time,” said Packer in his sardonic monotone. “Somebody in the joint once told me you’ve got a head like an Easter egg.”

  Reggie nodded at the justice of the description. “Let’s get a table,” he said. “I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Not fighters,” said Packer, making it a flat statement.