by James Swain
A line of dirty-faced kids was waiting to buy cotton candy. The man who dispensed the candy had run out of change, so Hicks was standing there with a pocketful of coins, helping out. The man who dispensed the candy knew damn well that Hicks was not going to give him his money to hold. In a whisper, he asked Hicks, “Should I shut down?”
Hicks looked at the kids’ expectant faces. He’d been swindling people for years, but he was not in the business of disappointing them. “Give them free candy.”
“Free candy?”
“You heard me.” Hicks hitched up his trousers and hurried across the lot. If there had been a shooting, it would mean a visit from the town clowns, and another fat bribe to keep everyone happy. Some days, it just wasn’t worth getting out of bed.
The trailers were behind the concession stands, and he came around the corner to see a dozen employees running around like headless chickens. Pushing his way through the crowd, he found a ticket-taker named Smitty who had more brains than all of them combined.
“It looks bad,” Smitty told him.
“How bad is that?” Hicks said.
“He might die.”
Hicks twirled the plastic toothpick that had resided in his mouth since breakfast. “Who we talking about here? A customer?”
Smitty’s eyes went wide. “You don’t know?”
“Spit it out, boy.”
“Mr. Beauregard got shot by a robber.”
Hicks nearly knocked Smitty down as he barreled up the ramp to his trailer. Inside, a gang of employees was clustered around the desk. Mr. Beauregard lay with his eyes shut while a Mexican fortune-teller named Princess Fatima pressed a bloodstained towel to his forehead. Kneeling, he said, “Mr. Beauregard, it’s me. Mr. Beauregard, look at me.”
The chimp’s eyes did not open. Hicks thought of all the times Mr. Beauregard had feigned playing dead, just to get a rise out of him. From the cage he removed the ukulele and plucked a few chords. Mr. Beauregard’s eyelids fluttered. Princess Fatima caressed his brow and silently cried, knowing all too well what the future held.
An ambulance came, accompanied by two police cruisers. Hicks knew the best thing to tell the police was nothing at all, and he climbed into the back after Mr. Beauregard was wheeled in on a gurney. The EMT person was a bottled blond with a kind face. As the ambulance pulled out of the carnival grounds, she said, “We’re going to take him to a good animal hospital over in Fort Lauderdale. They deal with the circus animals when they come to town.”
“No,” Hicks said.
“Excuse me?”
“I want you to take him to a people hospital.”
“But, sir . . .”
“Please do as I say. I’ll pay you. Cash.”
The EMT woman discussed it with the driver. Hicks laid his hand on Mr. Beauregard’s forehead and tuned them out. Ten years ago, he’d found Mr. Beauregard in a strip shopping center in Louisiana, huddled in a cage. He’d bought him for a hundred dollars and moved him into a cage in his trailer, hoping to train Mr. Beauregard to do some simple tricks. But Mr. Beauregard had already been to school. Play a tune on the radio, and he would duplicate it on his ukulele. Tell him the name of a city, and he’d find it on a map. He could think, and add numbers, and he also knew things, just as people knew things—like hate and fear and jealousy and betrayal—and it had all sunk home for Hicks one day when Mr. Beauregard kicked a carnival worker in the balls for calling him a “dirty monkey.” That was when Hicks had realized that Mr. Beauregard wasn’t just a clever animal, but an evolutionary marvel. He heard the EMT woman talking to him and looked into her kind face.
“I said, we’re going to take your friend here to a regular hospital. Okay?”
Mr. Beauregard’s forehead had grown cold, and Hicks took his hand away.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
Opening a topless joint on South Beach had been Victor Marks’s idea.
“A man needs a place to do business,” Victor had told Rico. “It should be a strip club, too. No one knows how much money a strip club is supposed to make.”
Rico hadn’t understood Victor’s reasoning.
“You need a way to launder your money in case the IRS comes calling,” Victor explained. “That’s how your old boss, John Gotti, screwed up. He put on his tax return he sold kitchen fixtures for a living. And look at what happened to him.”
So Rico had opened Club Hedo. A former Arthur Murray Dance Studio, it sat a block removed from the beach. Every day, guys strolled in wearing flip-flops and sand stuck between their toes, paid a stripper twenty bucks to give them a lap dance, then went back to their families and their beach chairs. Weekends saw a lot of Europeans, but mostly it was the beer and T-shirt set.
It was Friday night, and the club was packed. Rico was in his office in back. Through a one-way mirror, he kept one eye on the action while watching basketball on TV.
Miami College, who he had money on, was getting slaughtered. They were a brand-new team and they stunk. The starters were freshmen, and the pressure had done a number on their heads. They hadn’t won a game all season.
His phone rang. It was big Bobby Jewel.
“You sweating through your underwear yet?” Jewel asked.
“It ain’t over till it’s over,” Rico said.
“I know who said that,” the bookie said.
“Hundred bucks says you don’t.”
“Yogi Bear.”
“It was Yogi Berra, you idiot. Yogi Bear was a cartoon character. You owe me a hundred.” Through the mirror he saw Splinters enter the club. He said good-bye to the bookie, expecting Splinters to come back and tell him how things had gone with Candy. Only, Splinters didn’t do that. Bellying up to the bar, he ordered a rum and coke and clicked his fingers to the music. The DJ liked disco, and Splinters sang along to an old Donna Summers song, having the time of his fucking life.
Rico picked up the phone and called the bar—“Send that asshole back here”—and looked at the TV. Fifty seconds left in the game, and Miami College was down by six. Splinters sauntered in. His starched white shirt was covered in tiny red dots.
“What did you do, cut her fucking head off?”
“I drowned her,” his driver said.
“In the ocean?”
“In the swamps, where we dumped the blackjack dealer.”
“So what’s with the shirt? You cut yourself shaving?”
Splinters glanced at the TV. He knew a little bit of what was going on, and how important Miami College was to the scheme of things. He removed two stacks of hundred-dollar bills from his jacket and dropped them on the desk.
“Where did you get that?”
The phone rang. Rico answered it.
“You’ve got a visitor,” his bartender said.
Rico stared into the mirror. Goofy Gerry Valentine from Brooklyn was sitting at his bar, nursing a Budweiser. What the hell did he want?
“Tell him I’m not here.”
“He says his father’s in town, wants to set up a meeting.”
“His father?”
“That’s what he said.”
An alarm went off in Rico’s head. Gerry’s old man had blown up the Mollo brothers in Atlantic City and was not someone to take lightly. “Tell him to come back tomorrow morning.”
The bartender relayed the message. Through the mirror, Rico watched Gerry leave. Splinters started to walk out.
“Tell me where you got the money,” Rico demanded.
“You don’t know?” his driver said.
Rico leaned back in his chair. That was the crazy thing about Cubans; they never answered you directly. “You shot the carny owner,” he guessed.
“His chimp.”
“You shot his chimp?”
“Fucker attacked me.”
Rico massaged his brow with his fingertips. The night before, he’d dreamed he was five years old and visiting the Bronx Zoo with his parents. They’d gotten separated, and Ray Hicks’s chimp had walked out of a cage, taken Rico by the hand, and
led him to his mom and dad. Everyone had been smiling, and then Rico woke up.
Through the wall, Rico heard hooting and hollering, the strippers taking turns spinning naked on a barber pole. He removed a leather bag from beneath his desk and tossed Ray Hicks’s money into it. Standing, he shoved the satchel into Splinters’s hands.
“I did good, huh,” his driver said.
Rico looked at the TV. A Miami College player was at the free throw line. He missed both shots. The buzzer sounded, ending the game. In one swift motion, Rico drew his .45 Smith & Wesson and shoved the barrel into the satchel’s folds.
“Not really,” he said, pulling the trigger.
22
Leaving the Fontainebleau, Candy walked around South Beach for several hours, thinking about how close she’d come to dying that afternoon. With each passing minute she reminded herself of all the things she wanted to do with her life.
It was dark when she returned to the Delano. The Alice in Wonderland lobby was filled with strung-out party people. Standing beneath a billowing white curtain, she called Nigel’s bungalow on a house phone, got no answer, then walked down to the Rose Bar and didn’t find him there. Going outside, she spotted him at a table in the patio restaurant, still in his golf clothes. With him, inhaling a shrimp cocktail, was Rico.
Payback time, Candy thought.
She sat down next to her boyfriend. He kissed her and said, “Where you been hiding?”
Rico stared at her. Then he started to cough.
“Shopping,” she said. “Hey, Rico, how’s it going?”
“Spend a lot of money?” Nigel asked.
“Window-shopping,” she said. “Cat got your tongue, Rico?”
“Rico was just telling me how we’re going to fleece a local bookie,” Nigel said, laughing like someone who’d been drinking all afternoon.
“Wow,” Candy said.
Rico’s face was turning blue, and he was smacking the table with his hand. An attentive waiter brought a glass of ice water. He downed it.
“Damn cocktail sauce,” he gasped. He composed himself, then glanced furtively around the restaurant. “Nigel, this isn’t exactly legal what we’re talking about, you know?”
“Is there anything fun that is legal?” Nigel asked.
“How much are we fleecing his bookie for?” Candy asked innocently.
Rico started choking again. His water glass was refilled, and he asked for the check. Two plump German girls approached the table and in halting English asked Nigel to autograph the restaurant’s paper menus. Nigel obliged, smiling when one kissed his cheek. Candy excused herself to the ladies’ room.
Only, she didn’t go in. Instead, she waited off the lobby until Rico walked past, and followed him outside to the hotel’s valet stand. Rico handed his stub to the attendant, who then disappeared through a thick stand of hedges.
“I want you to get lost,” she said to his back.
He spun around, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. “There you are.”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“What?”
“Sweet-talking me, you bastard.”
“It was my driver’s idea,” he said. “I told him to scare you off.”
“Go to hell.”
The valet brought up Rico’s limo. Rico tipped him, then waited until the valet was behind his stand. Popping the trunk, Rico said, “I want to show you something.”
“No.”
“Give me a chance.”
Candy walked around the vehicle. And nearly screamed. Inside the trunk was Rico’s Cuban driver wrapped in a plastic sheet. His shirt was soaked in blood, and his pink tongue hung out of his mouth like a dog’s. Rico slammed the trunk hard. Candy’s legs had turned to rubber, and he grabbed her arm and held her up.
“Work with me, will you?”
She tried to pull away. “No.”
“Don’t fall in love with Nigel Moon,” he said under his breath. “He’ll screw you for a couple of weeks, then get rid of you like a case of the clap. He’s bad news. That’s why I’m scamming him.”
She swallowed hard. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s a concert promoter in New York named Santo Bruno. He books all the big acts. Two years ago, Santo offered One-Eyed Pig fifty million dollars to do a reunion tour. I’m talking ten shows, Candy. Guess what happened?”
“What?”
“Nigel said no, and the deal fell apart.”
Candy vaguely remembered seeing it on the news. “Why did he do that?”
Rico flipped on his shades. “Why don’t you ask him?” he said.
23
The afternoon had turned into evening, and still no sign of Gerry.
Valentine sat on his balcony, growing worried. Gerry’s cell phone was in Puerto Rico with Yolanda, and there was no way to reach him. What if something had happened during his meeting with Rico? The phone in the room rang. Valentine ran inside and snatched it up.
“Where have you been?”
“Right where I’ve always been,” Mabel replied. “Someday, Tony, I’m going to convince you to keep your damn cell phone on.”
It was the first time Valentine had ever heard his neighbor swear. He swallowed the snappy retort about to trip off his tongue. Taking his cell phone out, he hit power.
“You just did,” he said.
“Oh, my,” she said. “Did you actually just turn your cell phone on for my benefit?”
“Yup.”
“I’m touched. I left a message for you earlier. Rather than repeat it, why don’t you just pick it up, and hear what I had to say?”
The line went dead. His cell phone beeped, a message waiting in voice mail. He retrieved it and heard Mabel’s voice. “Tony, it’s me. I’ve been trying to reach you. Now, you may not like this, but I made an executive decision an hour ago.”
“Uh-oh,” he said.
“Jacques called. He said the craps dealer admitted to shrinking the casino’s dice. The craps dealer told Jacques he wanted to cut a deal. He said another gang of cheaters was ripping the casino off for a thousand bucks a night at roulette. Jacques had the roulette wheel tested and also watched surveillance tapes of the table, but he didn’t see anything wrong. He wants you to look at the tapes.
“First I said no,” his neighbor said, “knowing how busy you are. But Jacques insisted and said he’d wired your fee to a nearby Western Union office. I called the office, and, yup, the money’s there, so I caved in and said yes. I mean, he has been a good customer.”
“And a jerk,” Valentine said into the phone.
“So here’s what I had Jacques do,” Mabel said. “He sent an E-mail to your hotel that contains a copy of the surveillance tape of the roulette wheel. Go to the front desk and ask for Jodisue. She’ll retrieve the E-mail from her computer, and you can have a look. And, Tony . . .”
“Yes, Mabel,” he said.
“Start leaving your cell phone on!”
Jodisue was the night manager, a gal his age who’d migrated down from Boston. As she led him back to her office, Valentine spied a half-finished letter on her computer screen and the remains of a club sandwich in a cardboard box on her desk. With eyes in the back of her head, she said, “You hungry?”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“Intuition.”
She pointed at an empty chair. As he sat, a bag of potato chips landed in his lap. Opening it, he shoved a handful in his mouth.
Closing out of her document, Jodisue went into E-mail and pulled up Jacques’s missive. There was a note and an attachment.
Dear Tony Valentine,
Here is the tape. I see nothing, but I am not you. Thanking you in advance, I remain,
Jacques Dugay
She double-clicked her mouse on the attachment. “You a cop or something?”
“I’m a consultant,” he said, staring at the static blue screen. “I catch people who cheat casinos.”
“I thought it was the other way around.”<
br />
“It’s pretty serious crime. About a hundred million a year alone in Las Vegas, and that’s just the cheating they know about.”
“Don’t you have to be there and actually see it?”
“The surveillance films are usually enough.”
Windows Media Player appeared on her computer screen. Jacques’s film was taking its time downloading. They bantered for several minutes, and Valentine felt like he was dancing. The film began to play. It was of good resolution, and showed a game of roulette with over a dozen players placing bets. Right away, Valentine saw something he didn’t like, and pointed at the screen.
“This guy bothers me,” he said.
The man in question was an employee. His job was to change the players’ cash into chips, which was called the buy-in.
“How come?” Jodisue asked.
“His body language is wrong.”
“Maybe he’s upset about something,” she suggested.
“He wouldn’t bring it with him to work.”
“How can you know that?”
“Casinos are strange places,” he said. “There’s constant energy flowing back and forth. It’s impossible not to get caught up in it. Now, look at the guy. He’s detached himself from the action. He’s on the outside, looking in.”
Jodisue stared at the screen. “You’re very perceptive.”
Valentine thought back to what Jacques had told Mabel. If the cheats were stealing a grand a night, it was probably going out in dribs and drabs, and not in one big killing, where it might be picked up by the cameras.
The film ended. Without being asked, Jodisue moved the cursor over the screen and hit replay. The film started over. This time, Valentine watched the change man to the exclusion of everyone else at the table.
Part of the change man’s job was to deposit the players’ money into a locked drop box. Twice the bills got stuck, and he had to jiggle the plunger to get them down the chute. Valentine leaned back in his chair, convinced he’d made the scam.
“You mind my asking you a question?” Jodisue said.
“Go ahead.”
“The lady who works for you . . .”
“Mabel?”
She nodded. “She your wife?”
