Odd Jobs (27 page)

Carey looks at me with amazement and says, “Yeah, how did you know?” I laugh a little to calm Carey down, but I should play this up and scare him. “What’s the deal? You know this dude?” Carey demands.

I better let them in on this. “Hell yeah, you do also. He’s been over a bunch of times. He’s gotten stoned with us a bunch of times.”

“Kevin, I don’t know any cops,” Carey insists.

“Yeah, you do.” I inform them. “Bartner’s been in the apartment a bunch of times, lounging on our couch, watching ball games and getting wasted.”

“He has?”

I smirk and answer, “Yeah, but he’s usually in a tank top and jeans. Didn’t you guys know he was a cop? When he was banging on the door, he must have just come back from work.”

Carey is still confused. “Why is your buddy threatening to bust the door down?”

“He was busting balls. With all the confusion
over
Ray, I forgot to mention that I told Bartner to come over this morning. He’s taking a vacation to Florida and I told him I would give him some dope for his trip. He was leaving this afternoon, so that’s why he came back a few times.” I laugh and say, “It’s all good. We’re not getting busted.”

“He was joking when he was pounding on the door?” Carey says incredulously.

I laugh and start imitating Bartner, “Open up or I’ll kick this shit down.” I laugh some more and say, “Yeah, Bartner’s got no bite.” But Rocky, Carey and Loot still aren’t smiling. Hell, they don’t even seem relieved.

Carey says, “Kevin, you should have told us.”

“What’s up, guys? No one’s going to jail, so what’s the problem?” Why aren’t they laughing and ragging on each other?

“The dope is gone,” Carey blurts out.

“What?”

“Kevin, you should have told us about Bartner,” Carey insists.

“How much is gone?”

“Kevin, you should have told us.”

“Okay, Carey, you could have called me also.” It was clearly a mistake offering that suggestion because simultaneously all three of them scream in an off-key chorus how they called a bazillion times but the messages weren’t reaching me. “Carey, what happened to the dope? Did you eat 20 pounds of pot, a half kilo of cocaine and a thousand Ecstasy pills? You don’t look like you gained any weight.”

The moment of truth comes when Carey says, “I flushed it, man. I’m sorry, Kevin, but I flushed it all.”

“About $50,000 in street value? It’s all gone?” I calmly ask.

“Yeah, man, it’s all gone. I didn’t think I had a choice.”

It’s a banner day today.
My
friend is in a coma and I just lost 50 fuckin’ grand. I sit down at the chair in my barren office. I put my hands over my face and try to regain my composure. You know, try to make some sense of this. I am fuming but I am trying to rationalize how it’s just some money and that’s not what I’m really after. This setback will sting, but my plan to get Balducci is in motion. This won’t kill that. While I am coming to grips with this situation, I hear Carey, Loot and Rocky talking quietly, almost whispering. I look up and see them conferring nervously. There is more.

CHAPTER 21

“I had a big problem in the bookie room,” Loot admits.

My left hand is covering my eyes while my thumb is massaging my left temple. I don’t know how to act as I begin to feel the weight of this garbage truck that is dumping its contents on me. I am doing everything to show grace under pressure because I have a hunch this is developing into a defining moment. I calmly smile and say, “Sure, lay it on me and we’ll figure out how to fix it.”

“This one won’t be that easy, Kevin.”

“Quit fucking around and tell me what happened.” So much for grace under pressure.

Loot hesitates and finally says, “Senator Murphy was in this morning.”

I need to find out what the fuck is going on. “So what? The Whale is in every weekend. He plays six favorites and bets against the Gorillas.”

Loot can barely make eye contact with me. “Right before I left to help Rocky with the pencil-stabbing dudes situation, the Whale called in. And he called in big. He bet his six favorites, and took the Gorilla’s basketball team getting eight-and-a-half vs. Cleveland University.”

“You mean he took Cleveland and gave eight-and-a-half,” I correct him.

“That’s my point. He took the Gorillas,” Loot insists.

“That’s strange. What made him change? Why today?” I look at my friends but they are silent. “How much did he play?”

Loot meekly says, “10 dimes.”

I feel my eyes widen. “You mean after 10 years of wagering, the Whale bets 100 grand in favor of the Gorillas? He hits his betting limit with us on that game? Get the fuck outta here!”

“It’s true,” Loot says. “He wanted more, but I told him he was at his limit. He used his color and number: Blue-425, plus I recognized his voice. When it was over, I did our mandatory checkout process and went over all the plays, spreads and amounts. The Whale bet on the Gorillas.”

“Okay, then what happened? Did you lay it off with Petro? You didn’t have us go naked on that big amount, of course. Tell me exactly what happened next.”

“I went down to help Rocky.”

“Before you laid off that big bet?”

“Kevin, it was bedlam in there! The girl called up screaming!”

I look over and Rocky is nodding to confirm what Loot just said. “Okay,” I say, “then what happened?”

Loot says, “I broke up the fight and sent the kid that got stabbed home. I figured if I got stabbed with pencils all over the place I wouldn’t be a very productive salesman. So I kept the guy here that did the stabbing.” Everyone nods in confirmation and I have to agree that’s good business.

I look at Loot and say, “So that’s when you laid off the bet?”

“I was going to lay it off then because it was getting late. By now it’s 1:30 and the Gorillas play at seven and it’s a pretty big number to lay off. I thought I might need a couple of guys. I thought if Petro didn’t want all the action, I could maybe use some of the guys I told you about.”

“Loot, did you lay the bet off?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Please explain this,” I plead.

“Okay. I had every intention to come back and lay off the bet. But Carey was calling about the cops banging down the door. He’s freaking because he’s going to get arrested with a mountain of drugs. The dude’s about to kill himself and I am trying to calm him down. We can’t get hold of you, and we’re going off the deep end over here. Finally we agree to flush the dope.”

“Go on.”

“We get it done, and that’s when it happened. I am so bummed that I then proceed to fuck up. I was like in a trance. I call Petro to lay off the bets and I’m going through the motions. I go to lay off the entire Whale bet; we don’t need to let any of this ride today. Who has time to manage the book today? So, I’m laying it off.”

“I agree, so where is the problem?” I ask incredulously.

“Like I said, I’m really distracted, so I call Petro and lay off the eight favorites and then, like an asshole, by force of habit, instead of betting against the Gorillas to offset the Whale’s typical bet, I lean the way we usually do and bet with Petro for the Gorillas. So with the Whale’s action, add another $100,000 on the Gorillas with Petro.”

“You bet the Gorillas for l00k?”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” Loot states.

His story takes a while to percolate through my brain. “So,” I say, “instead of offsetting the bet, instead of making that bet zero, you double it up. We actually have $200,000 exposure if the Gorillas cover the spread?”

“That’s right,” Loot confirms. Then he bites his lip and says, “But it’s actually about $250,000 because a lot of other dudes bet on the Gorillas today. Even Stinkfinger hit his limit with a dime bet on the Gorillas.”

“The gynecologist? C’mon!” I shake my head in disbelief. “Did Petro give you a hard time about the action?”

“No, as a matter of fact, he was thrilled. They confirmed, but they were trying to rush through the checkout process. At first I thought it was because he must be real busy, but now I think they were pushing it through as fast as they could.”

“So when did you realize that we were exposed to $250,000?”

Loot says it was about an hour ago, just before he reached me at the hospital. “I was organizing shit around here and planning on how we were going to tell you about flushing all those drugs, and then I heard some guys talking about the Gorilla game and something clicked. I looked at my notes and saw how I confirmed everything with Petro. At first I thought my notes were wrong, then I started remembering my conversation and I thought it was possible that my notes were right and I fucked up. I called Petro’s office and they confirmed that we have Cleveland University getting eight-and-a-half from the New York State Gorillas for ten dimes. So at this moment we have $100,000 on with the Whale and $100,000 on with Petro, not to mention 50 grand with our regular customers.”

“Did you try to lay off the big number?” I plead, “Tell me you reversed it. Tell me you got worse terms, but you got it done.”

“Kevin, I tried,” Loot says apologetically.

“What do you mean you tried?”

“There are guys dying to get some of our lay off action. They’ve been bothering us for a long time. And I’ve been bothering you because I hate dealing with Petro. I called these guys up, telling them that this is their big chance.”

“So what did they say?” I ask, trying to hide my desperation.

“No line,” Loot answers. “They took it down. Everyone took it down because the game stinks.”

“Loot, this is important. Tell me exactly what the guy said. Do you remember?”

“Yeah,” Loots says. “‘That line went down faster than a priest at a Boy Scout jamboree.’ That was exactly what he said.”

I feel a little faint; I have to sit down. It’s fucking amazing. Everything I worked so hard for and then some is about to come apart. How can I finish the job my father started? How can I stop us from getting killed? I look at Carey, Loot and Rocky, and there is no hiding my panic. “The game is fixed. Cleveland University is laying down,” I say wearily. “Everyone in the universe got wind of this, so why didn’t we?”

Carey attempts to answer. “Kevin, we were dealing with guys foaming on our carpet, police banging on our door and dudes getting stabbed with pencils. It was the perfect storm and we didn’t pick up on the fix. But we can deal with this. Even if we lose, we’ve been making pretty good money. We got to be able to cover that or at least come close enough to work through it.”

I give a gallows laugh because Carey has no idea how wrong he is. “Not only can’t we come close to covering that action, but can you think of any two worse people to be on the hook with? Any other schmuck we owe money to, what could they do? Squat, that’s what. But now we have a senator we owe big bucks to. Do you think that’s a good idea? Do you think he can make life hell?” More blank stares from my posse; no one has ever seen me in full rant mode. I laugh and go on. “I just remembered something. Senator Murphy can’t make my life hell because I owe 100 grand to a mobster like Petro. I won’t have a life. It’s really just a matter of how he decides to kill me. And by the way, it was always you two guys doing the laying off, so if you aren’t scared shitless right now, I would question your common sense.”

That certainly got their attention. I don’t think anyone thought about the mob being included in the worst-case scenario analysis. In the bookie business, if you are flat-out busted, most of the universe has no recourse. They ain’t calling the police, that’s for sure. A senator, that’s a different story; he’s got ways to make your life miserable. A mob guy, shit, this is what they jack off to.