Casino Moon

by Peter Blauner

  “Just get the fuck outa here! And don’t let me see you again.”

  She snapped to it, realizing I was letting her get away with her life. She put the briefcase under her arm and reached for the door. But before she opened it, she hesitated and looked back at me.

  “Yeah, what is it?” I said. “Didn’t you get everything you came for?”

  “Take care of yourself, Anthony.”

  69

  SHE CLIMBED FROM THE car and went staggering across the slanted concrete floor in her high heels. She looked back and saw his silhouette through the rear window. Had he really meant to kill her? For some reason, she didn’t quite believe it. Even with a gun in his hand, he still seemed like a lonely frightened boy. She switched the heavy briefcase from her right hand to her left as she rounded a corner and headed down the ramp to the fourth floor.

  A black Acura roared by, narrowly missing her. She heard the echo of the young men inside laughing as they raced downstairs. But she no longer cared. She had money in her hand and the city lights still blazing below.

  Again, in spite of everything, she’d survived.

  70

  WHAT CAN I SAY? It was a night for long shots coming in. She was somebody’s mother, for crying out loud. I couldn’t kill her.

  I just sat in the front seat for a few minutes, overlooking the lip of the garage. Down below, traffic was slithering out of town slowly like a long electronic snake. If I’d had any kind of mind, I would’ve followed it. But I had accounts to settle and debts to pay, and I wanted to see my wife and kids. I’d done wrong by them for so long that I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye.

  I decided my first stop would be Vin’s house. I’d give him the money I had and tell him to divide it up between Carla and her uncle. I had it all worked out. The eventual pay-per-view receipts would go to my kids. But when I drove over and rang Vin’s door, there was no answer. I should’ve been glad to leave it at that, but after our talk on the Boardwalk the other day, I felt like there were things I wanted to say to him.

  I drove over to the stash house, hoping I might find him there. As I went up the stairs, I noticed I still had blurred vision and the ringing in my ears. This was what they meant by somebody punching you into next week. My eye sockets were sore and my skull felt swollen.

  I was so tired I could barely get the keys out of my pocket. The place was quiet as a tomb inside. I tripped once and fell into something wet and sticky on the floor. I got up and turned on the light. There was a smell of beer in there and another odor harder to identify. Paraffin, maybe, but mixed in with something much worse. My eyes began to adjust. I looked down and saw dried lumps of blue and red at the foot of the black leather sofa. Not huge lumps, but little bits with what looked like gray hairs mixed in between. Somebody had made a small effort to clean up the mess, before shoving the couch over most of it.

  It took me a good minute to realize I was looking at part of someone’s brain.

  My stomach heaved its contents up toward the top of my throat and I started to gag.

  They must have whacked a guy in here earlier tonight. I had to get out quick before someone called the police. I tried to remember if I’d left fingerprints anywhere. The stainless steel lamp. I needed something to wipe it with. I looked around for a cloth or a rag, but all I saw were untaxed liquor bottles on the bar and racks of men’s clothing along the wall. I started to step over the bloody mess to get some toilet paper out of the bathroom.

  But then I looked down and saw something that made my heart literally stop.

  A long, brown Ace comb at the edge of the spill. Five or six greasy hairs were still caught in its teeth. It was Vin’s, no doubt about it. All the circuits in my head blew out and I felt the floorboards giving way underneath me.

  The thought of Vin dead didn’t make sense. It was like a green sky or blue apples. I sat down at the edge of the couch and buried my face in my hands. All my life I’d only been sure of one thing: that he was this indomitable force that would always be there for me. If he was gone, nothing added up.

  I started to cry, thinking back on that last talk we’d had on the Boardwalk. What had I said to him? Had I thanked him for bringing me up? Had I told him I loved him? What had he said to me? I looked down at the carpet, trying to remember and hold a picture of him in my mind. But instead I got a thousand little things. I could see him walking me through the schoolyard. Teaching me how to play boccie. Telling me I had to be a man among men.

  There was no question that Teddy was the one who’d done this to him. And the reason probably had something to do with Vin standing up for me. That was the train running underneath our last conversation. Vin had been a loyalist all his life, and that was how he ended it. So now it was clear what I had to do.

  I stood up, making sure I still had bullets in my gun. I stepped on an almond shell and noticed the cable box on top of the television was set to Channel 38, the pay-per-view station. They must have been watching the fight when they killed Vin. Just two hours ago, I’d been ringside, thinking my life was about to change. But pride and ambition were no match for seven hundred years of tradition and the lessons Vin had drummed into me. If you’re brought up a certain way, you can spend your whole life denying it, but eventually some part of it’s going to come out.

  I went downstairs and got back in my car. Half of me was fighting it and asking myself: Why me, why now? Had I come all this way and done all these things just to fall back into the cycle? But in another part of my mind, I was calm and accepting of what had to be done. It had all been decided a long time ago, anyway.

  I drove slowly through the side streets, avoiding the main thoroughfares that were still jammed with people leaving the casinos. All the houses seemed to be low, gray, and falling apart. No matter how much I’d struggled and hustled, it seemed I hadn’t really gone anywhere. Every turn brought me back to Florida Avenue, or Georgia Avenue, or one of these other ugly little blocks.

  Since my house was on the way to Teddy’s, I made up my mind to stop there first to give Carla the rest of the money and see my kids one last time.

  I reached Texas Avenue just before two in the morning and cruised around the block once to make sure there weren’t any surveillance cars in the area.

  A perfect yellow moon was hanging over the water. The jagged casino buildings on the skyline reminded me of the teeth in an animal’s jaw.

  I parked across the street and walked up those crooked wooden steps, trying to think of what I’d say to Carla. But when the door opened, it was Richie Amato standing there. Blinking and squinting as if he’d just woke up. I was so surprised I couldn’t speak for a couple of seconds.

  “Don’t be here,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I said don’t be here. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get outa here.”

  “Fuck you, Richie. I wanna see my wife and kids.”

  “They’re all in bed,” he said.

  On the couch inside, Teddy was beginning to stir. He’d been having a dream about Vin. The two of them were trying to chase some mangy old dog out of the house, but it kept showing up under the sink and in the broom closets. Teddy was about to tell Vin to get a gun and kill it, but then he decided to take matters into his own hands. He pulled out his own Ruger and shot through the bathroom door, trying to get rid of the dog once and for all. But when he opened the door, it was Vin lying there dead. A sob choked Teddy’s chest. But before he had a chance to grieve over what he’d done, Anthony’s voice woke him up.

  “What the hell’s going on here?!”

  I couldn’t understand what Richie was doing on my porch. But then I remembered he used to go out with Carla and I felt a surge of jealousy. I still had the gun in my waistband.

  “Keep it down.” Richie held up his hand. “Teddy’s in there.”

  “Yeah? What’s he doing?”

  “He’s been looking for you. He’d like for me to put a couple of holes in you.”

  “Oh yeah
?” A shot of adrenaline ran through me.

  “He thinks you ratted him out for killing Nicky D. and his father. He’s about to get indicted for it.”

  “Not me,” I said, still smelling the stench from back at the stash house. “Someone else must be the stool.”

  Richie just shrugged.

  Now that he knew Anthony was out on the porch, Teddy sat up and looked for his gun. But Carla had taken it away with his wet trousers, leaving him stranded on the couch in his boxers. He tried to remember where Vin had hid the gun in the house all those months back. He’d put it somewhere in the kitchen during a late-night talk they’d had with Carla. Gripping the arm of the couch, he slowly got to his feet. His lap and legs were cold because he’d pissed himself hours before. The canisters, he remembered. Vin had left the gun in one of the canisters on the kitchen counter.

  “Enough of this,” I said to Richie. “I’ve got something to tell Teddy myself.”

  I pushed past him, went through the front door, and found myself face-to-face with Teddy in the living room. He looked even worse than the last time I’d seen him. His pants were off and his knees were trembling. His skin was gray and scaly. He reminded me of some frail old elephant on his way to the burial ground. But I knew he was still dangerous. My hand went down to the gun in my waistband.

  “The prodigal son,” he said. “You got some fuckin’ nerve showing your face around here.”

  “I was about to say the same about you.”

  I could see he was afraid of me.

  “What’d you come back here for anyway?”

  “I came back here to give you what you gave my father and what you gave Vin.”

  Teddy’s eyes roamed over my shoulder to Richie in the doorway behind me, as if asking how I could have known a thing like that. But Richie just looked dumbfounded.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Teddy started to back up into the kitchen. “Where’s my fucking cut, you punk?”

  “You want your cut?” I dug the casino chips out of my pocket and started throwing them at him. “There’s your cut, you pig. Go get it.”

  The green, red, and white discs bounced off his stomach and clattered across the kitchen floor, rolling under the refrigerator and the stove. They were for Carla and the kids anyway.

  Teddy looked at me with so much hate I could almost smell it.

  “Minchia,” he said. “If I ever get a chance to meet God, I’m gonna ask him how he could take my only son and let a piece of shit like you live.”

  “Well, you might get the chance to talk to him soon.” I took out the gun and pointed it at his heart.

  With a heavy cough, he fell against the kitchen counter and began rummaging through the red canisters, like he was looking for a cookie. I looked over my shoulder once and saw Richie was gone from the porch. I wondered how long it would be until Tommy Sick or the cops showed up.

  “Come on, let’s do this outside. I don’t want to wake the kids.”

  Teddy was still looking through drawers along the counter, like he was expecting to find something useful. “I always told Vin you were no good,” he muttered. “I said you can’t teach someone to love you. It’s either in the blood or it isn’t.”

  “You’re a stupid old man,” I said.

  He looked at me blankly, still not understanding he was about to die. Then his face seized up like he was suddenly in great pain.

  “Go ahead. You don’t have the nerve.” His eyes weren’t as brave as his voice.

  For a split second, he might have been right. I didn’t have the nerve to kill him in the house where my children were sleeping. There may have even been some spasm of conscience telling me I couldn’t just shoot an old man in cold blood. But then he suddenly stumbled toward the folded-up trousers on the breakfast table and pulled out a Ruger that had been tucked in there.

  I shot him before he could aim it. The sound echoed off the dishes in the cabinet and he fell to one knee. A dark worm of blood started to seep out of his belly. He cupped his hand over the wound and looked up at me in shock, like he couldn’t believe my manners. I shot him again, this time for Mike. The bullet caught him in the windpipe and a purplish red arterial spray gushed out. He fell sideways, gasping for air, trying to dig the bullet out of his throat with his fingers.

  Somehow I’d thought killing him wouldn’t be this hard—I was going to take away from him what he took away from me by killing Mike. But it was monstrous, unbearable. The lack of oxygen was turning his face blue. A horrible sucking sound escaped from his chest. I felt myself suffocating, thinking about the paramedics who’d come and stick useless tubes down his throat. Each second watching him was agony. So I shot him once more, hitting him mercifully between the eyes.

  He fell backwards and died locking up at our unpainted ceiling.

  I just stood there for a few seconds, feeling like I’d landed on some dark uninhabited planet, cut off from everything I’d known and loved before. I backed into the living room. The couch, the television, and the Ninja Turtle toys were all where they were supposed to be. But I wasn’t. I didn’t belong here anymore. I turned and saw Carla standing in the doorway, her face a map of every betrayal I’d put her through. By some miracle, the children didn’t wake up. That was one thing to be thankful for.

  I tried to say something to her, but the words wouldn’t come. How do you apologize for ruining someone’s life?

  71

  FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, I was still in shock as they put me in the back of the squad car.

  “You probably did him a favor,” said Detective Farley, sliding in next to me as another beefy detective got in the front.”He was dying of cancer, you know.”

  Great, I thought, as the car started and pulled away. I’d thrown away the rest of my life to kill a dead man.

  As the old house receded in the distance behind me, I thought about what I’d done to the kids. At least I’d left something for them. Thirty thousand dollars in chips wouldn’t go far, but once I got a lawyer, I’d get after Frank for the rest of the advance and the pay-per-view receipts. There had to be at least another hundred thousand coming.

  Besides, I thought, they were better off without me, though it broke my heart to know I’d never see them again. All I ever did was hurt the people I loved. Little Anthony and Rachel would have to grow up without an old man around.

  The driver started to make a left onto Atlantic Avenue and ran straight into a line of cars with their taillights glaring like a row of bloodshot eyes. More cars leaving the casinos at three in the morning.

  “Fucking traffic light’s broken on Missouri Avenue,” he said. “It’s only letting through six cars at a time.”

  “Atlantic City,” Farley sighed. He turned and looked at me. “We gotta take Route 40 out to Mays Landing so we can book you. You got any ideas how we can get there faster?”

  I sat up as the handcuffs dug into my wrists. “We could take the Boardwalk.”

  They looked at each other and lifted their shoulders. Why not?

  They hit the siren, cut through an alley, and went up a ramp onto the Boardwalk.

  With the window down a little, I was able to feel the salt breeze on my face one more time. It was a cool fall night. There were still a few stragglers out in front of the pizza joints and fortune-tellers’ storefronts. On the beachside, the last of those red-and-white-striped tents were shivering and the gulls were circling.

  “You get yourself a good lawyer, you could be out in five years,” Farley said.

  “Less if you can prove self-defense,” the detective behind the wheel added.

  I knew they were trying to soften me up to sign a confession. I kept my mouth shut. The way Vin would’ve wanted me to.

  “Plus you got extenuating circumstances, don’t forget that.” Farley leaned over, pushing his shoulder against mine as if we were suddenly the best of friends.

  “Like what?”

  “You know. You could talk about losing your father and all tha
t crap. Psychological distress.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I stared straight ahead through the windshield at the lighted casino towers shimmering in the distance. Vin never really got inside them and Mike never lived to see them. And now I realized I didn’t belong in them either.

  “Did I tell you before that you look like him?” Farley asked.

  “Who?”

  “Mike. Mike Dillon. He was classic. Years ago, he tried to get me to invest in some crazy scheme where he was going to buy up land along the Boardwalk and build another of those grand old hotels. He was always a dreamer, Mike. It must have been something, having him as your old man.”

  I shook my head as we passed the Doubloon and its blinking TAKE A CHANCE sign.

  Because when I thought back about being a kid going for those long walks on the Boardwalk, it was Vin’s hand, not Mike’s, holding mine. I remember him hoisting me up on his shoulders and telling me that someday the whole town would be mine. Vin showed me the way of the world and taught me that only the strong survive, though in Atlantic City, even that’s not a sure thing. And when the time came, I acted like his son by reaching for a gun to avenge his death. That was what was in my heart, and it couldn’t be any other way. I once thought I was something different or maybe even something better than him, but now I finally understood that what he was was also a part of me. And that in spite of everything, I would always love him.

  “My father’s name was Vin,” I said.

  A cold wind was whipping around the island. Probably a storm on the way, or at least a light rain. Sand rose off the dunes they’d piled up to keep the Atlantic from overtaking the beach.

  “Have it your way.” Farley shrugged.

  I took one last look out at the ocean. A full moon was shining on the water and pulling on the tide. The ripples caught the broken pieces of light and threw them back up at the sky.

  A Biography of Peter Blauner