Codes of Betrayal (11 page)

Nick O’Hara thought about Sam Speigel for the first time in years after he returned to the job. The precinct had been well represented at his son’s wake and funeral. Guys had come to talk with him; kept in touch by telephone. But that was during the mourning period. Now that he was back at work he sensed a sudden quieting whenever he entered the squad room. He was acutely aware that everyone was very careful to gear their conversation away from anything to do with their kids, since his was dead, or to their wives, since his had left him. It was better to avoid him rather than blurt out something about a kid that might be hurtful to Nick.

Eddie Manganaro told him to ease up. The guys all felt so terrible about his son, they just didn’t know what the hell to do about it. They didn’t want to keep bringing it up or say or do anything that would make Nick feel bad.

“I feel bad every day of my life, Eddie. Nothing they can say or do about their own kid can hurt me.”

Eddie squeezed Nick’s arm. “They’re trying, partner. Just let it slide. They’ll come around.”

“Well, what the fuck, I’ll try real hard to be patient. I don’t want to put pressure on anybody.”

But Nick knew how Sam Speigel must have felt. He had become, if not quite invisible, someone to look past.

In a way, it worked to Nick’s advantage. It gave him the freedom he needed to get on with what he had to do.

None of the men he worked with, except Ed, knew that in the past Nick had had a gambling problem. Hell, everyone bet on a prize fight, a ball game, an election, played the lottery. No big deal.

Years ago, he had gotten himself into a seriously embarrassing situation. He’d been sent down to Atlantic City to pick up a witness in a domestic murder case. The guy had been hiding out for nearly two months, trying to decide whether or not he should turn in his brother for hacking off his live-in girlfriend’s head. According to the A.C. cops, the witness was flat broke and wanted to go home. So, the hell with his brother, who he said was a no-good lowlife anyway. Apparently, the murdering brother had failed to come through with a much-needed couple hundred dollars.

Nick got into Atlantic City a few hours early. He just wanted to look around, check it out. Within an hour, he had run up his travel expense and pocket money from two hundred dollars to five thousand. Within the second hour, he was totally wiped out. Not even a coin to call home. He had to walk the couple of miles to the station where his witness waited. Deeply embarrassed, Nick spoke quietly to the detective squad commander. He explained how some light-fingered pro picked him clean when he was standing around, taking in the action at Trump’s place. The lieutenant studied him with a knowing look, a slight shake of his head, then smiled and asked Nick if he wanted to make a crime report.

“Hell, no. The guy was so good I didn’t even get a quick look at him.”

The squad commander hit the squad’s petty cash box, plus threw in a twenty of his own so that Nick could get himself and his witness back to New York. Didn’t even ask Nick to sign a tab: he had no doubt at all that Nick would pay him back as soon as he reached home.

The witness who gave up being his brother’s keeper complained all the way to New York about the discomfort of the crowded bus—all those old people with their rolls of coins. He had expected, if not a limo, at least a decent car ride.

After paying the money back, Nick vowed never to get in that position again. It was very hard. On the job, you get a lot of tips from people in the know. On the night their son was born, Nick took one look at them, Madonna and child, and promised Kathy he’d never bet again. It was all she asked him for a gift. But it was the night of the NBA playoff, and Nick, in a grand final gesture, made the right bet: He won eight hundred dollars. Kathy wouldn’t touch it, so he lost it within two days. After seeing the hurt and disgust and sorrow in his wife’s face, Nick never again bet on anything.

For a recovering alcoholic, the first drink is the fatal one. For a recovering heroin addict, the first hit is nirvana, the next moment filled with a need so quickly elevated, so persistent, that the clean years disappear and the horror is back.

For Nick, his return to gambling was ludicrous. He was standing on the elevated IRT platform in Brooklyn on his way back from trying to interview a complainant who never showed. A completely wasted day with an in-basket filled with cases. He stood, absently watching as a construction crew systematically took apart an old four-story industrial building, according to the faded legend on the old brick facade, once the home of “Mina and Mimmi’s Customade Corsets.”

The crew chief motioned his men away, positioned himself on a rig that operated a large iron wrecking ball suspended by long steel cables. In a jerky motion, the ball swung closer and closer to the standing wall, then hit it with a resounding thud.

He wasn’t aware of the guy standing next to him until a raspy voice announced, “He’ll take it down in two more hits.”

Nick shrugged. “Naw, that’s good construction. Take at least four.”

“For ten bucks?”

Nick dug out his ten to match the other guy’s. “You’re on.”

It took four more solid slams for the wall to collapse. That was Nick’s return to gambling.

It wasn’t the winning. No one could ever understand that it had little to do with winning. It was the chance, the dare, the sudden drop in the stomach, the rise in adrenaline, the breath held at the moment of truth: the challenge; the
possibility.

It was a lot of things, but whatever it was, Nick was hooked again.

A
S FAR AS HIS
partner could tell, Nick had settled into his solitary life without any complaints. Unlike other guys, he didn’t blame or accuse his wife. He just never mentioned her name. He came to seem more at ease with the other squad guys—or maybe they grew more at ease with him. On a few occasions, he offered Eddie a tip on a horse race—good odds on an unknown young filly. Eddie laid down twenty alongside Nick’s fifty at the local deli, where the book was run by a twitchy winking-blinking waif of a man who kept everything in his head: no slips, no pieces of paper. No evidence. It was Ed’s first and last loss; he wouldn’t bet again.

“Ed, I got this tip right from the cousin of the trainer down at the Saratoga dog track. These things are fixed, trust me. You can recoup your twenty in less than the minute it takes these dogs to run the course.”

Ed Manganaro shook his head. “I hate losing, Nick. Thanks anyway.”

The whole squad had been keeping up with the O. J. trial out in L.A. They began making bets on every aspect of the case: what color suit would Cochran wear; what would Marsha do next? Nick won a hundred bucks when she changed her hairstyle. They bet on how many jurors would be replaced; when; who would hit Geraldo for a TV interview. No one would take a bet on the verdict.

“He’ll walk,” everyone agreed.

Nick reported on his first 4:00
P.M.
to 1:00
A.M.
tour the day the case went to the jury. He offered odds, ten to one on a guilty verdict; top bet ten dollars. Everyone got in on the action. O’Hara was nuts.

“Hey, Nick, you gotta be kidding. You got some loose money you need to get rid of, give it to me. I’m your partner.”

Nick shrugged. “You want a piece of the action.”

Ed shook his head. “No way. I’m your friend, right?”

When the jury asked for a readback of the testimony of the limo chauffeur, who the prosecution said was the one totally disinterested witness, Nick offered to up the odds: Twenty to one, but no one took him on.

After the verdict, Ed drove the squad Chevy to the Avenue B location of a triple homicide. He glanced a few times at Nick, who didn’t seem the slightest bit disturbed by the thousand bucks he’d just lost.

“C’mon, quit it, will ya, Eddie? I lost more than that on a single card. Hell, I’ll recoup on the next ball game.”

They waited for the Homicide Squad to take over, prepared notes and spoke to witnesses. The usual drug dealers’ war: a couple of punks crossed to the wrong side of the street, a corner owned by another crew. Hell, they had to be taught a lesson.

Detective Tom Leary caught the case for Homicide. “Tomorrow, there’ll be four dead—payback. Jeez, I wish they’d all get together in Yankee Stadium and have it out once and for all.”

Nick grinned at Leary, who hadn’t yet spotted him. “What odds would you give and what side: Latin Kings or Island Starboys?”

“Jesus, Nick O’Hara, I haven’t seen you in years. You disappeared on me.”

“Uh-uh. You moved uptown. They got you back here, huh?”

“Temporary. I’m fillin’ in. So, who do you pick of these two fine sterling young representatives of our brave new society? The punks or the punks?”

Tom Leary had been one of Nick’s closest gambling pals. Between them they’d won and lost thousands of dollars. Leary played regularly in a heavy-hitters’ poker game on the Upper West Side every Tuesday night, if he wasn’t stuck with dead bodies. He wore a Brooks Brothers blazer, dark gray slacks, white shirt, neatly patterned silk tie, and a really good gold watch. He had apparently been doing the right things.

“Ever want to get into a game, Nick, gimme a call. Take my card—home number’s on the back.”

Nick played heavy poker for nearly a month, winning and losing several thousand dollars. He lost more than he won. It wasn’t a social game: it was strictly business. Money on the table; out of money, out of the game.

Nick placed bets on any and every sports event—soccer, basketball, football, baseball: series; title games; hockey; races, horse and dog; tennis matches; boxing; wrestling. Even when you knew for certain it was a fixed match, sometimes you bet the underdog just in case. Just maybe.

Between extra assignments and extra tours and court time, Nick and Ed had plenty of overtime coming to them. When Ed invited him to come to dinner, Nick shook his head. Had plans.

“You seein’ somebody? You holding out on me, pal?”

Nick smiled mysteriously. Less said the better.

He went to Atlantic City, and in four hours at the Tropicana he won ten thousand dollars at roulette; in thirty minutes he lost twenty-five thousand dollars. His losses at the Tuesday night poker game totaled nearly thirty thousand dollars. His joint savings account with Kathy was cut in half.

It was a rotten thing to do to Kathy. He didn’t want her to know about it. He went to the bank; couldn’t take out a second mortgage. She would learn of it.

Mr. Grazier, a bone-thin man with strands of oily black hair stretched across his bald skull, looked exactly the way he did when Nick had seen him on his TV ads. “Need some cash? Bank turned you down? Debts getting heavy? See me. I won’t turn you down. Grant Grazier will be there for you.”

Nick examined the document, which seemed to contain print that got smaller and smaller as he read it. Bottom line: sign here for a loan of fifty thousand dollars, payable in
x
number of installments. Default and you lose the house put up for security.

“But the house is worth a hundred fifty thousand easy on the market today,” Nick said.

Grant Grazier shrugged elaborately. “So? Sell it.”

What he intended to do was to put thirty thousand dollars in the joint account with Kathy. That’s what he truly intended to do. But somehow, he took the money in cash, and in a four-day time-off—which used up all his remaining overtime—Nick flew out to Las Vegas.

He didn’t play right away. He wandered around; looked things over. He passed through the tourist games, the penny ante stuff; watched the frantic penny pinchers stuffing quarters into the hungry machines, guarding the machines with their bodies while husbands or wives ran over to turn tens and twenties into cups of quarters. This machine was due to hit any time now; damned if some lucky slob would walk over, drop a quarter, and hit big bucks. Of course, every now and then, someone
did
hit. Sometimes it was the first quarter dropped on an available machine. Lights would flash, bells ring, people would scream and point at the dazed honeymoon couple or fortieth-anniversary celebrants who just hit a cool million. From then on, there wouldn’t be an available jackpot machine for days at a time.

He played the roulette table, craps, twenty-one. He won; lost; won; lost. Won more than the lost. Was up thirty thousand in a day and a half. He was noticed. He seemed a steady, serious, knowledgeable gambler. As he bought some fifty-dollar chips, a houseman, neat in his ink blue tux, approached, smiling: offered to comp his room and food service, a gratuity for our serious players. You don’t have to be bothered with this: You are our guest.

Nick learned the house held a heavy-money poker game; discreet, invitation only, limited to eight players. It was held in a fourth-floor suite; food, drinks, any refreshments were served as needed. Inquiries were made, and within a few hours Nick sat across the table from some very serious people: a woman, about forty, whose makeup had faded as she kept licking her lips; a heavyset, white-haired man who affected western clothing though his accent was pure New York; a familiar guy—actor, singer, what?—he recognized from somewhere; a bookkeeper type in a buttoned-up, double-breasted brown suit, whose expression seemed frozen into a look of puzzled interest.

He began slowly; that was okay. The stakes were a thousand to open, a thousand a raise. Nick folded a few times, then began to feel a rhythm within himself: an electricity, a certainty. The world was right here at this round table with these strangers, all holding rectangular cards, all betting that he could be beaten. But he could not be beaten. This is what he realized at a particular moment when he asked for two cards, and knew,
knew
before he even looked at them, what they were. Two kings; to go with his other two kings.

There was an absolute knowledge at a precise moment of each game: Drop out. Go for it. Drop; raise. Scoop it up. Win. Win. Win.

There was a feeling of power that Nick hadn’t had in a very long time. An infallible, perfect knowledge that this was
his
night. He was a winner and nothing, no one, could best him. He
knew
how many cards to ask for; how much to bet, raise.