Tumblin' Dice Page 3

Jackie said, “Poor Angie.”

  Ritchie’d fallen hard for her. And she fell for him. They snuck around, Angie getting a kick out of it, calling him her “other man,” and saying she didn’t want to hurt Frank. Yeah, right, Ritchie knew better. Frank was getting her stoned all the time, it was the ’80s, coke everywhere, and Frank had the money and the power. Angie wanted to be in the music biz and Frank was showing her the way.

  Now Jackie was saying, “You know, I never told anybody, not even Dale,” and Ritchie said, never told him what?

  “About you and Angie.”

  Ritchie said, what about me and Angie?, thinking he really didn’t know this Jackie at all, looking at him like his mother did when he said the two ounces wasn’t his, he was holding it for a friend.

  He said, “When did you know?”

  “Probably pretty close to the beginning. Was the first time you got together at the launch party for ‘Out in the Cold’?”

  Ritchie said, yeah that was it, but it was before that, the first night they met, him and Angie in the alley behind the Horseshoe, getting away from some big hair metal band Frank signed, Ritchie saying, they can’t tell the difference between practising arpeggios and guitar solos, and Angie, in her acid-wash denim miniskirt, saying, they shouldn’t bother shoving the socks in their pants. Ritchie thinking he was the bigshot rock star, he was the one with albums out, he opened for Led Zeppelin. This chick looked like a teenager — should’ve been all giggles and nervous energy, passing out from the attention, but she was the one in charge. Pulled him in close and kissed him, kissed his face, licked his ear, and whispered, Frank can’t ever find out. Ritchie said he lived a couple blocks over, on Beverley, but Angie said she couldn’t wait and pulled him into a doorway, lifted up her skirt. Ritchie tore her panties off and they screwed right there.

  Jackie said, “I always thought you two could be good together,” and Ritchie said, what?

  “You and Angie. I don’t know why she didn’t dump Frank. I don’t know why she went out with him the first place. You have any idea?”

  Ritchie said no, but shit, it was all he thought about for years. Why did Angie string him along and keep seeing Frank, move in with Frank, get engaged to Frank? Because she was a fucked-up kid? Because she wanted it all? The drugs? She was like the girl in a million songs, and Ritchie couldn’t figure her out. When they were together it was great, the time they could steal to be together. Maybe that added to it, the excitement, the danger, but it was all phoney. All she had to do was dump Frank.

  “Must have been the drugs,” Jackie said.

  Ritchie said, yeah, “The drugs.”

  “Anyway,” Jackie said, “that’s water under the bridge a long time ago, isn’t it? We can all be adults now, can’t we?”

  Ritchie said, sure, why not? He was game if everybody else was.

  Looking in the back of the bus he saw the three amigos all serious, nodding and sipping their Scotch and he thought, hell, if we’re going to be adult about something, it’ll be a first.

  TWO

  Angie Maas was sitting across the desk from her boss thinking she liked him better when he was a music biz asshole, before he became a gangster asshole. She waited for him to finish his phone call, full of uh-huhs and yeahs and you know its and rolling his eyes. The phone was clipped to his ear, the tiny blue light on it looking like something out of Star Trek. He said, “Yeah, I know,” and made a face at Angie and she just waited, not laughing or even smiling.

  Frank said, “Okay, good. Talk to you Friday,” looked at Angie and said, “You’re in a shitty mood.”

  “Should I be in a good mood?”

  “Why not, Ange? You tell me, why not?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Frank,” she said. “Numbers are down across the board, shows are playing to half-empty houses, they’re breathing down our neck from Philly to cut costs,” and, she wanted to say, you just got off the phone with Vic from Niagara Falls telling you all about shylocks getting ripped off in their own parking lot, but she wasn’t supposed to know about that.

  Frank said to relax, shit, numbers go up and down. “That’s the casino business. It’s not your concern.”

  “Do you know the only show that’s sold out as of right now? Do you?”

  Frank looked at her, that you-tell-me look, and she said, “Bjorn Again. Do you what that is?” She knew he wasn’t going to answer her. When he hired her, making sure she knew what a favour he was doing her, he was running the Showroom. It was his baby, he loved it, hanging out with the stars — Tom Jones and Howie Mandel and the Doobie Brothers, even without Michael McDonald — but then it turned out he loved being a gangster even more.

  She said, “It’s an ABBA tribute band.”

  “So? That Mamma Mia! was a big hit.”

  “The Australian Pink Floyd show, that sold out in a day.”

  “Good. You should be happy. Try smiling, it won’t wrinkle up your face like that.”

  “And, of course,” she said, “the Chinese acts.”

  Frank got up and walked around his desk, just a big glass table really, with nothing on it but a phone and a laptop that, as far as Angie knew, he never opened. Behind his desk the wall was all glass, the view fantastic, if, as Frank said, you like trees and water and all that boring shit, which he let you know often enough he didn’t. All blue and green, he’d say. Nothing but fucking blue and green. Give me red and yellow and purple neon, give me people, shit, give me cars.

  Now he was saying, “We should get more,” and Angie said, what, more Cantopop?, and Frank said, what the fuck is Cantopop?, and Angie said, “Cantonese pop. Chinese.”

  “Yeah, more Chinese. Get that circus again, they were good, and those two sexy chicks.” He sat on the edge of his desk looking right at Angie. “I hate that fucking shrieking they call singing, but for Asian chicks they’re stacked. You think those tits are real?”

  “I don’t know,” Angie said, “because they don’t move at all and the nipples are always hard?”

  “Yeah, who cares, they’re sexy. And get more tribute bands.”

  “More?”

  Frank got up and walked around. “Sure, they’re cheaper, they don’t have rock star egos, and people like ’em.”

  Angie said, “The Pink Floyd act isn’t all that cheap, and they’ve got some egos,” but she knew Frank didn’t give a shit about that, he wasn’t interested in the Showroom anymore. She’d seen that develop, him getting more involved in the running of the casino, always trying to impress his bosses, and he sure didn’t mean the Indians who owned the land they were on or the government stooges that thought they were in charge. No, he meant Felix Alfano and the Pennsylvania Accommodation and Gaming Company that had the management contract to run the place. Back when Angie first started, Frank was making fun of them, saying, what, did central casting send these guys over — get me two wiseguys and half a dozen thugs, but the more he hung out with them, the more he started to become one of them.

  Or, from what Angie could see, the more he wanted to be one of them.

  Now he was saying, “I know why you’re so pissed, your old pals are coming. The High, they sell out?”

  “On a bill with Cheap Trick.”

  “Those dream police,” Frank said, “they live inside your head. C’mon, cheer up, you get a chance to see your old squeeze Ritchie boy.”

  Angie said yeah, thinking, old squeeze, if you had any idea we were fucking like rabbits behind your back all that time, thinking, not that you’d give a shit now, but you never know, the whole gangster image, it’s a lot more possessive than the wild rock’n’roller image. And Frank was all about the image.

  He said, “I can’t believe they’re out on the road again. Shit, they haven’t talked to each other in twenty years.”

  Angie said, “Twenty years,” but she didn’t want to take a trip down memory lane with Frank, coul
dn’t believe he’d want to, either. She said, “Anyway, after them we’ve got nothing selling tickets. Country all-stars, maybe. That’s it.”

  Frank stopped pacing, nodded, had a serious look like he was really thinking about it, which Angie couldn’t believe, but then he said, “I’ve got an idea,” and she thought, oh shit, no.

  She said, “Yeah?”

  “Why don’t we do a rock all-stars, but with tribute bands?”

  “I don’t know, maybe because it would suck?”

  “It’d be like seeing stadium bands in a small club. There must be some decent Stones tribute bands. Hell, remember the Blushing Brides? It’d be great to see the Stones in the Showroom. Intimate.” He was walking again, looking out the window at the trees and the lake. Angie knew anybody else’d say how beautiful it was.

  She said, “Sure, Stones cover band. Why don’t we get that guy who does Jimi Hendrix to open for them? Or the Who? Why not the Beatles?”

  Frank turned around and said, “I know you’re trying to be a smartass, but that’s not a bad idea.”

  “Oh come on, Frank.”

  “No really, call it something like A Night of Stars, or The Greatest Show That Never Was. Or maybe,” he was really getting into it, “we can call the Showroom the Crawdaddy and make it like a night in swinging London in the ’60s. Get a Stones band, somebody doing the Yardbirds, the Animals, Cream — the whole blues thing. The boomers’ll love it. Dress up the staff in minis and leather jackets.”

  Okay, Angie had to admit it wasn’t the dumbest idea she’d ever heard, just the wrong decade, so she said, “Might get more interest with ’80s nostalgia these days,” and then she was worried Frank would be pissed off, thinking she was trying to make him feel old but he just said, “Yeah, ’80 s, but good ’80s.”

  Angie said, “The waitresses with big hair and shoulder pads, the waiters in pastel jacket with the sleeves pushed up, no socks?”

  Frank said, you’re making fun, and Angie said no. He said, “Yeah, but the ’80s had some style. Yeah, there must be a Springsteen impersonator, doing all that ‘Born in the USA,’ none of that ‘Tom Joad’ depressing shit. U2, somebody’s got to be doing that prick Bono, or Phil Collins.”

  Angie said, “Madonna, Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper.”

  “You see,” Frank said, “lots of cool shit in the ’80s. Just no hair metal, shit. Maybe the Police. Be funny if the imitator had the same ego as Sting, eh?”

  Angie couldn’t help but smile, say yeah, and wait for Frank to smile, too. He could still have some fun with the Showroom, still pretend to like music, standing there looking out the window at the boring trees and lake and sky.

  Then he stopped smiling, looked at Angie, and said, “Okay, that it?”

  She said yeah, and got up to leave, but Frank called her back, held up a hand for her to wait, turned around, and said something on the phone, like he was reassuring this Danny Mac-something, then he turned around and said, “You’re going to have to meet Felix.”

  She said, I am? And Frank said, yeah, “He’ll be here about nine. I have to go into town.”

  She couldn’t even tell if he was still on the phone, this stupid headset thing, but he was waving her to go and she was getting a bad feeling. Shit, Frank pawning off Felix Alfano and the Philly Mob to go into Toronto and meet some guy named Danny Mac.

  Out of the office she was thinking it was too bad Frank was giving up on showbiz, he was actually pretty good at it. But here he was, walking around like somebody out of a Scorsese movie, blowing off a big-time Philly mobster to meet with Danny Mac. She just knew when Frank’s true nature got the better of him and he started ripping these guys off they wouldn’t sulk and pout the way the High did, fight with each other and break up.

  Then what she was wondering was if it made her a stone cold bitch that all she thought was if she’d take over as Entertainment Director with a line on being Casino Director.

  Well, hell, she was starting to feel like she really did want to see Ritchie. He could always make her feel better, for a little while anyway.

  • • •

  Looking at the porno on the flat screen in the living room of the townhouse Frank said, “I remember when chicks had a full bush,” and Burroughs, cell against his ear, said, “Everything else down there is the same.”

  Frank said, “We used to say, ‘By a cunt hair,’ remember? Something was really close, but we’d make it by a cunt hair. What’re these kids gonna say now when they’ve never seen a cunt hair?”

  Burroughs was listening to the phone, smiling and nodding, a good story.

  Frank said, “You remember when guys said the Chinese chicks had sideways twats,” and Burroughs said, “Fuck, man, how old are you?”

  Julie Qin came down the stairs saying, “Our vags have magic power, too. You heard that?”

  Frank said, yeah, I hear that, and all the weird Oriental Kama Sutra shit, and Julie said, “And it turns out Chinese guys just want a blowjob like everyone else.” She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and said, “Violet’s working, you want me to get her?” and Frank said, “That’s okay, I just stopped to talk to him.”

  Burroughs was still on the phone.

  Julie said, “You sure? She hasn’t seen anybody all day,” and Frank said he was sure, but he was thinking, maybe it would be a good idea, relax a little before going to see these bikers in town, but then Burroughs clipped his cell in that little plastic holster on his belt and said, “What’s up?”

  Julie said, “You gentlemen want coffee?” and walked into the kitchen.

  The townhouse was in a new development a few miles from the casino on the way to the 400, the highway to Toronto, filled mostly with dealers and bartenders and waiters and housekeeping staff, three or four to a unit and a couple of units set up with girls to serve the Chinese guys. Julie Qin and her mother had run massage parlours north of Toronto for some Hong Kong gangsters Burroughs knew from when he was a cop.

  Now Burroughs was saying, “Boys busted a grow op in Timmins, found a six-foot gator.”

  “How’d they get a fucking alligator to Timmins? It’s five hundred miles north of here.”

  “Five hundred plants and a bunch of magic mushrooms, too. They were working.”

  “And I can’t find anybody to do an eight-hour behind the bar.”

  Burroughs said, “I guess if they left a bear inside to scare people off it would’ve eaten the plants.”

  “Like I said, can’t find good help.”

  Then Burroughs said, “You talked to them about this place yet?”

  “I’m going into town now. They want to set up some chicks in the hotel.”

  Burroughs said, “I told you, not in the fucking hotel. We’ll get another unit here.”

  “I’ll talk to them.”

  “Okay good. And they aren’t as solid as they claim.”

  Frank said, no? And Burroughs said no. “I was talking to a buddy on the task force, city cop.”

  “You still have friends in the city?”

  “They’re bringing all the operations together — the provincial police, the city, Mounties. They’ve even got the Americans involved — Michigan, New York State.”

  Burroughs liked to sound plugged in, Frank knew, ever since him and pretty much his whole narco squad in Toronto got picked up by the Mounties. Of course, the investigation went to shit when they handed it back to the city — couldn’t find a single witness willing to testify, the evidence was screwed up, wiretaps accidentally erased. Cops really circled the wagons. Officially the case was still open, but Burroughs took early retirement and Felix Alfano hired him as head of security for the casino.

  So maybe he was still connected, Frank couldn’t be sure, but he knew Burroughs was okay with changing bosses. Pretty sure. He said, “All those jurisdictions, cops sharing information, trusting each other, yeah right.
You give me a call when that starts working out,” and Burroughs said, “They’re doing it now,” and Frank said, “So what, cops are having a convention, it’ll just be a big drunk, get everybody pissed off. They don’t even tip the hookers.”

  Burroughs said, “Public servant salaries aren’t much,” and Frank said, that’s right, “That’s why I never met a cop who lived on one.”

  Julie came into the living room, a mug in one hand and a cigarette in the other, said the coffee was ready, and went upstairs.

  Burroughs said, “They aren’t going to leave us alone forever,” and walked into the kitchen.

  Frank followed, feeling like a kid following his big brother. Shit, he could yank this guy’s chain all he wanted, never made an impression.

  In the kitchen Burroughs said, “My buddy’s on a course right now. All these cops, they’re going to do something — they’re spending all kinds of money so they’re going to need some kind of bust that plays big on the news.”

  “So?”

  “So.” Burroughs poured himself a coffee and put the pot back. “What looks better, dragging a bunch of greasy bikers out of a sleazy peeler bar or a bunch of guys in suits at a big, shiny casino?”

  “The government isn’t going to bust its own casino.”

  Burroughs leaned back against the counter, drinking his coffee and looking at Frank. “You don’t think there’s guys in the government pissed off at each other?”

  “You think these cops can get their act together long enough to pull something off?”

  “Go slow, that’s all I’m saying. Now may not be the right time to attract attention.”

  Frank nodded and said, yeah, okay, but really he was thinking, when the fuck is it ever the right time, you have to make it the right time. He was going to say that maybe it could even work for them, maybe if the cops got interested in the Philly boys they’d pull back a little, but then he realized they’d never do that, they’d just find a way to dump it all on him.

  Shit, it was trickier than ripping off a bunch of stoned rock stars. But worth it, he was sure. Pretty sure.