On the Brinks

by Sam Millar

  A commotion at the front door made me turn just in time to see Rocky, our bouncer/doorman stagger in, his face covered in blood.

  “Nobody move!” screamed a Puerto Rican, sawn-off shotgun in hand. “Everybody hit the back wall – now!”

  Behind him came two more robbers, both armed and disguised as pizza-delivery men. Everything went silent, except for Rocky, who was groaning and holding his bloody nose.

  Their faces weren’t masked. This either meant that they didn’t care, or that they knew no one was going to live to identify them. Another ominous sign came next.

  “Who is the box-boss? We know he’s here. We even know his name is Sam.”

  I could feel the blood drain from my face.

  “Which of you is Sam?” he repeated, oh so calmly.

  I thought of the part in Spartacus when the Romans have him and his men captured, and they offer a deal: Give us Spartacus and we’ll send you back to the salt mines. Kirk is about to stand and admit who he is, when suddenly one of his men stands up, proclaiming, “I’m fucking Spartacus, you Roman bastard!” Then the next man stands, and the next, all claiming to be Spartacus. It brought tears to my eyes, that part, but as I looked about the casino, I realised there was little chance of any of my co-workers standing, shouting, ‘I’m Sam, you bastards! You’ll get no money here!’ Instead, the opposite would probably happen: ‘He’s Sam, the mick bastard, over there beside the fridge. Kill ’im!’

  To my surprise, no one said a word. But I knew we all feared the worst.

  “Okay. Play tough,” one of the gunmen said. “Everyone! On the floor! Now!”

  It was a race to see who could hit the floor first. I think I won by a good few seconds.

  “Take off your pants! Bitches, you included.”

  We did as ordered.

  I debated with myself about handing over the keys. If I did, what was to stop them shooting us anyway? Could I stall for time, hoping someone had seen something and was alerting the cops?

  In all honesty, I knew I would never hand over the keys. The Belfast stubbornness – the curse I had been born with – started to boil in me, and if it meant everyone in the room being shot – myself included – well, fuck it. No keys.

  “Don’t make us angry. Okay? We get the money, we leave. Simple. We don’t? Then someone has to die.” He aimed his weapon towards the ceiling and fired. Blam! Blam!

  The blast brought some of the ceiling down, snowing us with plaster. Each of us jerked our legs involuntarily, wondering what the hell was coming next.

  Inadvertently, those two shots saved all our lives. Someone, hearing that sound, called the cops, and within minutes they had arrived, screaming through a bullhorn for everyone to come out, and quickly.

  During the confusion, the would-be robbers escaped out the back grille, using a key that was known to only a few.

  We all walked out, minus our pants, into the beautiful Sunday morning sun. It felt great. We were alive. And even when the cops lined us up instead of the robbers, and allowed a local photographer to take our photo, no one complained. We were just glad it was over without anyone being seriously hurt.

  The front pages of the next day’s New York tabloids carried photos of us lined up outside the casino. One headline said it all: Dealers Caught With Their Pants Down …

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Titanic: Built by a Thousand Irishmen. Sunk by One Englishman

  We’re drinking my friend, To the end of a brief episode.

  Johnny Mercer, “One For My Baby”

  Lucky is he who has been able to understand the cause of things.

  Virgil, Georgics

  “What the hell happened?” Ronnie asked.

  “We got hit. That’s what fucking happened!”

  “Calm down, mate. Calm down.”

  “Someone could’ve been fucking killed. They knew my name, and the secret way out. So don’t tell me to calm fucking down. You tell me how they knew everything?”

  “I don’t know, mate, but we’ll soon find out. Three spics? Right? Okay. I’ll sort it out.”

  “You couldn’t sort out a box of Liquorice Allsorts. Everything’s crumbling all about you, and you don’t even see it.”

  “It’s only a robbery. Nobody got hurt.”

  “Someone could’ve been killed. Don’t you understand? It’s not just the robbery, but a million wee things starting to accumulate. And your family is part of the problem.”

  “My family? What do you mean?” His voice was soft, as if he had just been shot in the back.

  “First your sister and brother are brought into the casino. Then your bloody uncles and cousins. I’m waiting to hear your granny’ll be next.”

  “If you can’t take care of family –”

  I cut him off. “Listen, Ronnie. Rita installed those Joker Poker machines. She gets all the profit. Nothing goes to the casino. Same as the cig machines. Then there’s her girlfriend. She hires her as manager. Manager of what? The only time she shows up is at the end of a shift, to collect her and Rita’s wages! She’s walking on everyone’s toes, making enemies. I even heard a couple threaten to kick her in the dick.” It felt good, getting all this off my chest. Like confession on a wet Saturday afternoon.

  “Kick her in the dick?” He was mortified. “She hasn’t got a so-called girlfriend. At least not in the way you’re implying.”

  “There’s more,” I said, placing my hand inside my coat pocket and pulling out an envelope.

  “What’s the problem now?” he asked fearfully.

  “The master drop-cards. They’re out of sequence. Major problem.”

  “What? How the …” He picked up the cards and checked. Then double-checked.

  “Only four people have access to these,” I said. “Myself, Mac, you … and Rita.”

  “I think I’m going to have a heart attack, mate.” He wasn’t joking. “Between kicks in the dick, then this.” He tapped the cards with his fingers.

  “If Mac found out about this …” I left him with that kind thought as I walked out.

  * * *

  The very next day we went for coffee. He had a plan. Another one. He always had a plan.

  “First. The Joker Poker and cig machines now belong to the casino. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “All my cousins are out. Okay?”

  I said nothing.

  “Rita’s, er, friend is no longer on the payroll.”

  “And Rita?” I asked. “And the two missing drop-cards?”

  “We don’t know that it was Rita. It could have been an honest mistake on someone’s part.”

  “You don’t believe that. Neither do I. You’re thinking with your heart, not your head. What would happen if Mac found out? Bet your balls it never happened when he was running the show.”

  “What can I do? She’s my kid sister …”

  “Who’s probably screwing us. Get rid of her, or at least demote her, to where she won’t be able to do it again.”

  “That’s a tough order, mate. Let me talk to her.”

  “For all our sakes, do more than talk about it.”

  I suspected he wouldn’t even talk to her. For Ronnie, blood was thicker than water, even if the blood was contaminated. I knew it was only a matter of time before we were all out of a job. What he said next was ominous.

  “Look, a bit of good news for you. The new casino is almost ready. I’m thinkin’ of naming it Titanic.”

  “Haven’t you heard what happened to the Titanic?”

  “Stop being such a pessimist. This one is gonna take us further than our wildest dreams. Just you wait and see.”

  Wait and see? Wasn’t that what the captain of the Titanic did? As we got up to leave, I swore I saw an iceberg straight ahead of us.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Dodgy Drilling Dentist Devouring Danish

  JULY 1986

  The almighty dollar is the only object of worship.

  Anonymous

  “Curiouser
and curiouser!” cried Alice.

  Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland

  The new casino opened with a flourish. The best food, wine and entertainment were provided. Exotic flowers and plants swamped the place. A new dress code was introduced for all dealers. Gone were the coloured shirts and ties beloved of the Hispanic dealers. In their place came the conservative white shirt and black bow tie. No more drinking while on duty. And no more loitering on the premises after work.

  Outside 32nd Street, our bouncer, Mike, said hello as he let me in. Mike had replaced Tiny, who had died a week earlier from a massive heart attack brought on by an overdose of cocaine. Bob Seger’s “Main Street” was playing as I entered.

  Our clientele came from all walks of life. High rollers and low lifers, judges and crooks, or crooks and crooks, as Victor would say. There were actors and hookers (the best tippers); brokers from Wall Street (the cheapest tippers); Arabs and Hasidic rabbis from Brooklyn; a famous ballerina, Raging Bull and a Norman Rockwell grandmother called Anne.

  Customers who gambled a significant amount of money had access to our “blue book”, granting them credit of up to $5,000 dollars. Anne was in the blue book, but was having trouble paying back what she owed.

  I was given the unenviable task of getting it back, and hated the thought.

  I waited until she had finished her daily ritual at our buffet table: black, sweet coffee, a Danish thick with figs and a glass of brandy to wash down the aftertaste of the coffee.

  “Good morning, Anne. How are you this morning?” I asked, pouring myself a coffee, praying Stanley the Dentist didn’t spy me.

  “Top o’ the morning, Sam,” she smiled, a fake Irish lilt in her voice. “These Danish are lovely and fresh. Where do you get them? I’ve tried searching for them, but I can’t find them anywhere.”

  “A little café on the corner of 18th.”

  “Oh, lovely. What’s it called?”

  “A Little Café on the Corner …” I smiled, and then got back to business. “Could I talk to you, Anne, for a minute, in the office?”

  Reluctantly, she entered the room, her famous straw basket in her hand.

  “What’s this about?” she said, sitting down.

  “I really hate to bring this to your attention, Anne, but we’re trying to curtail expenses and recover some of the outstanding debt owed to us. Unfortunately, you’re near the top of the list. You’ve gone way over your credit limit.”

  “How much do I owe?”

  I showed her the blue book, with $6,200 beside her name.

  She looked slightly embarrassed. “I know, Sam. Usually I’m good at paying my bills, but the last month has been tough, with my husband passing away.” She rested her coffee on the table and brushed crumbs on her calico dress with its print of tiny birds in flight.

  I hated myself. “I’m sorry, Anne. I didn’t know about your husband. You should’ve told us. We’d have tried to help you out.”

  “Pride, Sam. When you get to my age, you try to maintain as much dignity as possible. I’m sorry about all this, but I promise you on my dead husband’s grave that I will have cleared all my debt by the weekend.” Her lipstick left a half-moon on the coffee cup.

  “You don’t have to clear it all right away.”

  She held up her hand. “This weekend. The club’s been more than good to me. Oh! I almost forgot.” She reached down into her straw basket. “This is for your daughter. It’s her birthday tomorrow, right?”

  “Anne, you’ve really got to stop buying gifts for everyone. You’d have cleared your debt by now.”

  She always knew whose birthday it was, and always bought them something.

  It was sad watching her leave. A lonely old lady, whose only enjoyment in life was this casino. I cursed Ronnie for putting me on the spot, and vowed that from now on, he could do his own dirty work. That was when Stanley the Dentist spotted me, holding Anne’s half-eaten Danish and half-finished coffee.

  “I’ve told you about that coffee, Sam. May as well paint your teeth with tar – oh, no. tell me that’s not a Danish?”

  There were plenty of perks to be had in the casino, provided you knew how to go about getting them. I thought I’d landed on a gold filling mine when Stanley offered to do my dental work free of charge. Little did I realise that I was substituting a pain in the mouth for an even bigger pain in the arse. He was the worst tipper and the most boring blackjack player in the world.

  “May as well just go out there and suck on one of those jackhammers on Fifth Avenue,” Stanley continued. “That’s how beneficial those Danish are to your teeth …”

  He went on and on. Just like one of his drills. He finally came to a halt when I threw the Danish and coffee in the bin.

  * * *

  “So, she fucked us then?” Ronnie said, a week later at the casino, after Anne had become a no-show. “You fell for all that shit from her, didn’t you?”

  “What did you want me to do? Get Mike to work her over a bit? Make her hand over her wedding ring? She just buried her husband, for fuck sake. She’ll be back to pay what she owes. I’m a good judge of character.”

  It was then that the news on Channel Two came on. A seventy- year-old woman was arrested at an upstate retirement home earlier this evening. She had tried to kidnap her husband – at gunpoint – from the grounds of the home. Police said the woman tried to abduct her husband, who suffers from Alzheimer’s …

  “I don’t believe this,” said Ronnie, staring incredulously at images of Anne being placed in a cop car, handcuffed.

  This was our grandmother? Our bearer of gifts? She of the $6,200 debt?

  As the story unfolded, we learned that Anne’s husband was not dead, but had, in fact, been convalescing at the private retirement home. Anne, fearful that her in-laws were trying to get their hands on her husband’s insurance money, kidnapped him pre-emptively, before the in-laws could.

  It was sad to witness the anguish on her face, as she was led away in handcuffs. But her look of anguish wasn’t half as bad as Ronnie’s.

  “I told you not to trust anyone, Sam. Now do you understand? That old bastard could’ve held us up at gunpoint. We’d never have lived it down. Who’s next on the list?” he asked, checking the blue book. “I hope it isn’t her sister. She’s probably got a machine gun concealed in her knickers.”

  * * *

  The casino was packed, and I was kept busy emptying cash boxes. The Russian gamblers were screaming and obnoxious as usual. The Koreans were unusually subdued, as their luck was going belly-up. Only Stanley the Dentist seemed to be winning, as black chips piled up like an oily pyramid in front of his grinning face.

  “Sam!” he shouted, winking at me before pointing at his tower of chips.

  I did a thumbs-up. “Good man, Stanley! Win a million!” You cheap fucking prick.

  “Great, mate, eh?” Ronnie said, scanning the tables. “Full to the brim. Just like a nice cup of Twinings tea.”

  “Yes. Brilliant,” I replied. “Who knows, if this keeps up, I might just get an increase in my wage?”

  Ronnie didn’t like to hear that sort of talk, so he left to mingle with the customers, bowing like an idiot at the Korean table. He’d been watching too many kung fu movies. Still, he was happy as a lark. Everything was going well for him. September would see another casino opening.

  Unfortunately, it all soon started to go terribly wrong. Having started with a bang in January, the casinos collapsed financially by August. Their strength, paradoxically, was their downfall. Ronnie had become complacent, believing they could run themselves. The nepotism he had promised to eradicate still prevailed, eating away under the surface like rust. He had tried to turn the casinos into a family business, forgetting that the one thing that can destroy a family business is the family.

  The final nail in the coffin came when one of the unused casinos – where we stored back-up blackjack tables – was burgled. The thieves made do with a few thousand dollars, along with the
small cache of guns kept hidden beneath floorboards in case of outside interference in the business.

  That was bad enough. Unfortunately, Rita and girlfriend – who stayed there rent-free – were also discovered by the intruders. They were forced to strip nude, before being tied up together in a sexual pose of lovers kissing.

  Some people believed Rita had stepped on the wrong toes, and got what she deserved. I told her to look on the bright side: neither of them had been hurt. And wasn’t it fortunate that Ronnie and myself had discovered them, and not Bronx Tommy or Doc?

  Just like Queen Victoria, she was not amused.

  When the casino eventually did collapse, it came as no surprise to anyone except Ronnie. Even so, he remained philosophical about it: easy come, easy go. Besides, he told me, another plan was in the making. Someone bigger than Johnny Mac was going to bankroll his next project – a new, bigger and better casino. He had learned from his mistakes – no more family. He would watch over every transaction, dotting and crossing. He would live in the new casino, so that if a problem arose, he would be on it like a fly on shit. In the meantime, would I mind if he stayed with me for a while? Just until he got the okay from this new, bigger-than-Mac partner of his?

  “I haven’t a bean, mate,” he said. “But as soon as this big deal is finalised, I’ll pay you back …”

  I wanted to say yes, but couldn’t. Should have said no, but wouldn’t. Let me see, was all I could promise. I’d let him know in a day or two. I wanted to ask him, where was the family blood now? Why had none of them offered to shelter him? And all his so-called friends? Not one of them had offered him help …

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Beers, Hotdogs and Money. Lots of Money. Did I Mention Money? Lots of it?

  AUGUST 1986