Double down, p.16
Double Down, page 16
“What a shame we can’t grow young again,” she said, soft as a voiced reverie, like a fragile word-filled balloon drifting above her head.
“The thing of it is, it would all doubtless come to the same.” Another quick glance over his shoulder confirmed this cheerless judgment. The two figures—one comic, one sinister, like the two halves of the dark joke of his life, prologue and punchline—still remained in the Sea Spray entrance. Still watched. “I have to go now. I’m hoping you’ll think to ask your husband to call. I’d be in your debt.”
“Oh, I’ll certainly think about it,” she said, suddenly brightening. She leaned over and laid a lingering kiss on his lips. “Meanwhile, that’s for you to think about.”
TWELVE
The phone lines were busy that night, Sunday, June 21.
Around eleven, after observing no further movement in or out of the Tropicaire apartment and after it appeared as though the two marks were safely tucked away for the night, D’Marco figured it was time to check in with Chicago. He didn’t feel like talking—day in the company of Captain Numbnuts, that was talk enough—so he instructed Sigurd to make the call. Nothing really to report, was the way Sigurd saw it, but he didn’t argue. He phoned Uncle Eugene and filled him on everything gone down since he and the Jewboy got off the plane yesterday afternoon, which of course was nothing much at all. He told him about this morning’s brief bit of action. Make that inaction, since it led nowhere, led to them hanging out in this room rest of the whole fucking day, nice way to see Florida—that’s what he thought, but he didn’t say it. He used a lot of we’s, making it sound like he and D’Marco were copartners in this enterprise, equals. He looked up from the phone once and saw D’Marco at the window, staring across the street, same as he’d been doing most of the day. Fucker got to be made out of a block of Greenland ice. Iceman.
Uncle Eugene listened to his elaborate, occasionally embroidered chronicle without comment, that is, until Sigurd was finished, and then all he asked him was if he’d been paying attention, keeping out of the way. Tone of voice like you’d use on a squirrely kid, got his eye on the jam jar. Like a warning. Somewhat indignantly, Sigurd told him Yeah yeah yeah, he was doin’ all that good stuff. He heard Uncle Eugene’s heavy sigh and then he heard a snappish, “Lemme have Frog.”
Sigurd put a hand over the speaker and said to D’Marco’s back, “He wants to talk to you.”
D’Marco didn’t turn. “What about? You covered it all. All ‘we’ been doing.”
“Beats shit outta me. He didn’t say.”
D’Marco came across the room and snatched the phone. He said, “Yeah?”
“Frog?”
“Yeah. Speaking.”
“How about you rewind it for me, huh?”
“It’s pretty much like he said.”
“They’re stickin’ that close to where they holed up?”
“Correct.”
“You hangin’ tight to ’em?”
“Tight enough they know I’m here,” D’Marco said. His use of the singular was deliberate.
“But you ain’t crowdin’ too close?” Voice was anxious, jittery, driven by doubt.
“Look, I’m doing it by the numbers. Your numbers. Way you said.”
“And they ain’t made no moves yet?”
“I just told you. What kind of moves we talking?”
“Loot-gathering moves.” Now the voice was exasperated, irked. “Layin’ bets, hustlin’ cards, movin’ goods—fuck, I dunno. Something. They owe money up here.”
“None of that going on. Unless the Jew made some bets while he was out this morning, or unless they’re phoning a wire. Otherwise only way they could be raising money is printing it over there.”
“How about that cunt Sigurd said? How you read her?”
“No way to tell. Probably just that, some cunt your badass running with.”
“Overall, like, how’s it look to you? You think they might be up to something? Lookin’ to break? Ride the wind?”
D’Marco was thinking what the fuck does this nutless shithead want—crystal ball reading? Wondering what kind of players come out of there anyway, Chicago. Losing all respect for that town if these two, radical hick here in the room and the whiny voice on the other end of the line, were any measure. He said, flatly, that which was incontestably true. “Who ever knows? You give them two weeks’ slack time, let them know you’re out here, sure, they could get some vanishing ideas. But that’s how you said you wanted it played. I’m going by your rules.”
“Can’t let that happen, Frog. That wind-ridin’, I’m sayin’. Too much turnin’ on this. For everybody.”
To D’Marco that sounded very near the edge of a threat. He didn’t like threats. “So what are you trying to tell me?” he said, putting some dead of winter into his own voice.
“Nothin’. Not tryin’ to tell you nothin’. Just sayin’ keep on top of it, willya?”
“You hire me for a job, it gets done. Think I already told you that before. You got to hear it again?”
“Okay, okay. Don’t get all twisted. Just lettin’ you know this is a serious piece a work here, okay?”
“What else?”
“Huh?”
“What else you got to let me know?”
“Uh, guess that’s about it. You stay in touch, okay?”
For reassurance and farewell, D’Marco gave him a dial tone. No sooner had he replaced the phone on the nightstand than Sigurd, slumped across a bed, reached for it. D’Marco stood there glowering at him.
“Who you calling?”
“Nobody particular.”
“That ‘nobody’ better not be your Greenhouse queen. Not having any fluff in here. You got that?”
“Ain’t callin’ Maylene,” Sigurd grouched right back at him. Jesus, sizzle your nerves, celling with a fucking monk like this one. “Callin’ my old lady up home, you got to know.”
Sigurd was careful to use the ambiguous “old lady” instead of mom in the slender hope he could keep the call private, though Christ only knew how you’d do that, room this size, especially with the Iceman monk sitting over on the other bed, couple feet away, like he was now, watching him, listening. Do a highwire, this conversation. Keep it short was the ticket. If you could.
After the tenth ring he was about to let it go when a croaky voice announced: “Stumpley residence. Yeallo.”
“Sigurd, hey. How’s she goin’?”
His mom expressed delight at the call, and then she proceeded to answer his how’s she goin’ question. In awesome detail. Daily play-by-play. Right down to the windup—what she ate for Sunday supper. Nytol Mom. Not going to be any trouble zonking off tonight, only trouble was keeping his eyelids boosted, all that wheeze rolling down the line. Maybe just as well though, took the weight off his end except for a now and again “That right?” or a “No kiddin’ ” or other assorted monosyllables, just enough to keep her tooling along.
Till she ran out of snooze gas and started asking what was he doing? Job going all right? Was he okay? Was he eating good? Taking care of himself? Sigurd danced around it best he could, never once used the word Mom, mostly just said Yeah, sure, doin’ real fine, can’t talk about it, phone. Smoke like that. But he could see D’Marco was taking it all in, not so much glowering anymore as smirking, wiseass smirk.
Sigurd said he had to hang up now, but before he could his mom told him to stay out of trouble and do his best that’s all anybody could ask, and then she said, in parting: Remember, Sig, yard by yard, life is hard; inch by inch, it’s a cinch. Whatever that meant. Another fucking warning, he supposed. Gut full of warnings today, he’d had.
Finally, mercifully, he was able to put up the phone. On the table there was one can left out of a sixer he’d ordered in, so he got off the bed and went over and popped it. He could feel D’Marco’s eyes on him. He avoided them.
“That’s real sweet,” D’Marco said, “you calling your mother.”
“Makes you think it’s my mom?”
“Wild guess.”
“Yeah, well, so what if it is. She’s old, she worries.”
“She tell you take a bath? Wash behind your ears? Be sure and change your underwear? Don’t do naughty things with naughty ladies?”
“Hey, you wanna lighten up, hey?”
“Boy always want to listen to what his mother tells him. She’s his best friend, isn’t that what they say?”
“Aah, fug off,” Sigurd growled, thinking next time he called Mom it would sure be from a phone booth.
D’Marco had one more call to make, but this one he didn’t mind so much since he wouldn’t have to do any talking. Even ragging on the sagass, giving him back a little of the grief he’d been enduring all day, even that got old quick. He picked up the phone, tapped out the number of his apartment in Boca, listened to his own chilly recorded greeting, and then hit his three-digit code. The message on the tape was cryptic, cautionary, and nothing he expected to hear: “Frog? About that Andy action, other night?—nice piece work, by the way, our people real happy with it—anyway, somebody must of made you out there, his place. Buzz comin’ in is the deafie’s laid paper on you. Thought you better know. So watch your back, man, hear?”
D’Marco ran the tape again. He listened thoughtfully, a distant alarm sounding in his head. This was something new to him, trackee instead of a tracker, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. Whole new ball game, with a whole new set of rules. Felt strange. When he looked up, Sigurd was watching him, wearing a shit-gargle smile of his own now.
“What’s matter? Your mom not home?”
D’Marco recradled the phone. “See that chair?”
“Yeah, I see it.”
“Drag it over by the window. Facing out.”
Sigurd did as he was told.
“Now sit in it.”
Sigurd sat. “Okay, now what?”
“You like to make up movies, right? Pretend this is a war one. I’m the officer, you get to be the grunt. It’s guard duty, those prisoners across the road. And you just pulled first watch.”
“So when’s it over?”
D’Marco stretched out on the bed and propped a pillow under his head. “When I say.”
Eugene had to think about it awhile before he dialed Dietz’s number. He wasn’t too fast on calling him at home this late hour, a Sunday night. He could wait till morning, but he figured that wasn’t a good idea either. Not with them goddam progress reports he was supposed to be making. Some fucking progress. By now you’d think the two marks be out scrambling instead of holing up with the covers pulled over their head, like if they say their prayers hard enough it maybe all go away. That’s what you’d think. Sure as fuck make for a better report. Dietz, he wasn’t gonna be happy. Be no happier in the morning though, maybe less. So finally Eugene decided the best thing to do was just get it over with.
Voice on the other end, sounded like a Jap, said, “Who calling, please?”
“Tell ’im Eugene.”
He heard footsteps receding, returning. “One moment, please.”
A moment passed. The next voice identified itself as Gunter Dietz.
“Eugene, Mr. Dietz. Sorry to be callin’ this late.”
“Perfectly all right, Eugene. I was just catching up on my reading.”
Pin a gold fucking star on you, Eugene thought, but he said, “Yeah, well, just got off the horn, down south. Figured you’d want an update.”
“Absolutely. So. What do you hear?”
Eugene told him everything he’d heard. He waited out the silence that followed his account.
“No movement of any sort,” Dietz said finally, not a question, more like thinking out loud. He didn’t sound too hacked, which was a relief.
“Just what I said. Course they could be layin’ off bets by phone,” Eugene added, appropriating the Frog theory.
“Very doubtful. They couldn’t raise that kind of money with some sideline wagers.”
“Maybe they lookin’ to push some product.”
“That’s even less likely, Eugene. Not from everything our sources tell us. These are five-and-dimers, pimp and a card scuffler. No. Only one way they could hope to put together the, uh, obligation package. They have to scare up some action, and my assessment is that’s exactly what they’re trying to do right now.”
“Thing bothers me, Mr. Dietz, is they might be gettin’ some bail-out ideas.”
There was another silence, a little longer this time. When he spoke, Dietz’s voice was still mild, even, but Eugene could feel a fire smoldering under it.
“That’s always a possibility, of course, but I’m assuming our people down there can, well, discourage any such notions. You engaged them, Eugene. You should know. This is a fair assumption, I, uh, trust. Am I right?”
“Oh yeah,” Eugene said quickly, not forgetting how one of them people he’d engaged was his single-cylinder nephew and wishing now he hadn’t and hoping the fuck this Frog lived up to his jacket. “But what I was thinkin’ was, they don’t start makin’ some right moves maybe we oughta just call in the pop. If this ain’t about the cash, like you said, I don’t see no percentage waitin’.”
It sounded good to Eugene, what he just said. Like reasonable. And it was what he really wanted to do: take them out, get it done now, before somebody—and he had a pretty solid idea who that somebody might be—jammed it up and he got squeezed in the middle. His suggestion was met with silence. Longer yet.
At last, in a tone clement and even a bit charitable about invariably being right, Dietz said, “One of your basic principles of business, Eugene, is what you see is what you see. Just that. Nothing more. Now, what you get, that can be something entirely different. Consider this present situation. Our Jew got back only yesterday. And today’s only Sunday. You’re absolutely right about the money; it’s not at issue anymore. Per se. Still, they could surprise us yet, make an honest effort and come up with part of the debt. Or even all. Who knows? In business, Eugene, it never pays to act too hasty. Panic.”
There goes the suggestion. Deep-sixed. Dietz-wise, Eugene was too screwed into the go-along to raise any protest. He said, “If that’s how you want it, Mr. Dietz.”
“That’s how. For now we’ll proceed as planned. Give them a little more squirm time. For now. But I’m hearing you, Eugene. If we don’t get any, uh, positive movement by, oh, say, Wednesday, then I think we’ll have to reassess.”
Earlier that evening, about ten o’clock, the call Waverly had been anticipating with neither patience nor confidence finally came through. He sprang off the La-Z-Boy and got to the phone on the second ring. Bennie, sprawled on the couch, made a flapping, slow-down gesture. Which was right, of course, wouldn’t do to appear too eager. On the fourth ring he picked up the receiver and said hello.
“Tim? Robbie. How you doing, boy?”
“Doing fine, Robbie. You?”
“Super. Well, okay, maybe just a little knocked back. Swinging clubs all day. That part’s not so bad, it’s that nineteenth hole catches up with you. Believe it.”
Waverly could believe it. The voice he was hearing was fueled by drink but its fraudulent heartiness seemed particularly forced, running on empty. He made a feeble joke about the hazards of drunken golfing. The preliminary dance.
Robbie’s dutiful chortle expired quickly. “So. What’s up? Care said you called.”
Near as he could tell from the sound of it, that’s all she’d told him. Left out the midday rendezvous. Shrewd girl. With a nonchalance as labored as the heartiness, Waverly said, “You remember that game your friend Appelgate mentioned? At the party?”
“Sure do. It’s on for tomorrow night. Why?”
Very flat why. On the temperature gauge of hearty, the reading was in steep plunge. “I think I’d like to play after all. If the invitation’s still open, that is.”
There was just enough of a pause to let him know the welcome mat was seriously frayed at the edges.
“Changed your mind, huh?”
“That’s right,” Waverly said stiffly. He needed this action, but he wasn’t quite ready to abase himself for it either. “Seems to me Appelgate wanted what he likes to call a pro at the table.”
“Hey, don’t get me wrong. Jock’ll be delighted.”
That makes one of you, Waverly thought. He said, “Pleased to hear that. I’m looking forward to the game.”
“Be warned, though. It’s like I told you, Jock’s a pretty sly player. And it won’t be any dime-ante table. I’ve seen him walk away with thirty, forty thou. And up.”
“Appreciate the alert.”
“Just so you know. At poker these good old boys are strictly out to punish. I mean, they go for the jugular.”
“What about you? Same instincts?”
“Oh, I don’t play. Only gambling I’ll do is on a sure thing.”
“But you’ll be there?”
“Listen, you couldn’t keep me away. It’s just the cards I don’t play.” The voice slid into confidential gear. Man to man wink in it. “Other games, that’s another story.”
“I see,” Waverly said, remembering his conversation with Caroline this morning and seeing only too well and more of the disastrous Crown union than he wanted or was entitled to see. To wind things down he asked for the game’s time and venue, and the information was delivered with all the enthusiasm of an advanced narcoleptic. “Tomorrow night, then,” he said.
“Ah, Tim, one thing. Can you maybe go light on your, y’know, past history? These fellows, they’re businessmen. They wouldn’t understand.”
