IN THE OFFICE I wore a uniform of baggy T-shirts, baseball caps, and sneakers, so I welcomed the excuse to dress like a woman again. The guys wanted to take me out to celebrate my first real day of bookmaking. Dinner was at eight at Vitello’s, an Italian restaurant in Studio City, and I rushed home after work to get changed. I slipped into a figure-hugging dress and sandals and wore my hair down. I smiled approvingly at my reflection and dashed to my car.
When I arrived at Vitello’s, the others were already seated. I apologized for being late and made my way over to the empty seat. Danny jumped to his feet and pulled out the chair for me, letting out a long, approving wolf whistle. “Damn, girl,” he said, “I’d kinda forgot you were a woman.”
From across the table, Tony was glowering. “Don’t even think about it, Danny.”
“Aw, come on, man.”
“Come on, nothing. You don’t shit where you eat.”
Tony looked around the table. “Listen up,” he said. “I just added another rule to office policy. No drugs. No hangovers. No lateness. And no messing with RB. If I catch any of you assholes looking at RB like she’s a woman again, you’re fired.”
I was mortified by Tony’s outburst. Even Danny looked embarrassed. Addressing me directly, Tony sneered, “Save the pretty dresses for Jim. And in the future, have the courtesy to show up on time.”
I sat down, fuming. I was ten minutes late! As an awkward silence settled over the table, he picked up the oversized menu and opened it, shielding himself from my angry gaze. I grabbed my menu and tried to concentrate on my order. It was impossible. My mind kept drifting back to Tony and his ugly outburst. Everybody else treated me nicely; why couldn’t he? He never gave me so much as a grunt of approval.
When the waiter arrived, however, Tony was all smiles. He addressed him by name and asked about his family, even recalling the ages of his children. Soon they were chatting away, chuckling at a shared joke. I was struck by the sudden change in Tony’s demeanor. He could be quite charming when he wanted to. He just didn’t want to be that way with me.
My bad mood didn’t last long. The food was great and the conversation at the table soon flowed as easily as the wine. Away from the office, I learned a bit more about my coworkers. When Kyle wasn’t taking bets, he dressed up as a cowboy, crashing through windows and busting through doors as a stunt man for Knotsberry Farm. This despite the fact that he had diabetes. Danny, as was typical in L.A., was an aspiring actor. Mathew was married to a kindergarten teacher, and he and his wife were trying for children. Jay was a part-time student, taking college classes in the evenings after work.
Even Tony relaxed after a glass of wine, and was soon regaling the table with stories from his childhood. “One of my biggest regrets is giving Mom the cell-phone number,” he said. “She calls me sometimes, right in the middle of reading lines. I’m like, ‘Ma! What?’ and she says, ‘Baby, are you taking your vitamins?’”
“So how old are you, Tony?”
The laughter at the table died right down. I sensed that I had crossed an unspoken line by asking a personal question. “Twenty-nine,” he muttered.
Tony was six years older than me, I mused as I drove home that evening. I found my mind drifting back to our first encounter. He was rude, arrogant, and thuggish—an impression he seemed eager to reinforce at every given opportunity. But working so closely with him, I’d discovered that he was incredibly intelligent. He managed Ron’s multimillion-dollar business with ease, a fact that became doubly impressive when I learned that he not only managed the office where I worked, but also oversaw two others: the “Small Office,” dedicated to people with little gambling knowledge, and the “Baby Office,” where the maximum bet was five hundred dollars. Tony was so good at moving the lines that other bookmakers paid to access them. He might not be engaged in a legitimate business, but he was a respected businessman all the same.
Plus, I couldn’t deny the fact that Tony was quite … likable. He had a whiplash sense of humor and a mischievous smile that lit up his deep brown eyes. He had charisma. He was the kind of person who walked into a room and commanded it.
I wondered if Tony had a steady girlfriend. He was quite good-looking. Not my type, but handsome all the same. I could understand how women might find him attractive. Kyle had a girlfriend, as did Jay and Danny. Mathew was married. But Tony? I had no idea. All I really knew about his personal life were the snippets he had revealed over dinner. He kept his cards close to his chest.
Was I attracted to Tony? I pushed the thought out of my mind immediately. Of course I wasn’t! The very idea was crazy—Tony wasn’t my type. If I had a type, Tony would be the complete opposite of it. Why am I even thinking about this? I wondered. I supposed it might have been because he had declared me off-limits to everyone at the office. Was that the moment I had begun to think of him as attractive? It made sense in a weird way—it was typical of the way my mind worked. As soon as something was declared off-limits, I was intrigued.
I took a deep breath. I was being silly. Ridiculous. If Tony were to ask me out tomorrow, I’d say no. I wouldn’t even have to think twice.
A WEEK LATER WHEN I arrived at the office, I found a ticket waiting for me on my desk. It read “SD-3 100,” with a red circle around the 100, indicating that it had been graded the day before. “What’s this?”
Tony was at his desk, reading the sports section. Without looking up he informed me, “We were never three on that game. We opened at three and a half, closed at four and a half.”
I became defensive. “I never had three entered, Tony.”
Tony sighed and put the paper down. That’s when I saw the tape recorder. He pressed play.
“5056,” said a player’s voice, identifying himself. “What do you have on San Diego?”
Then I heard my voice. “Three and a half.” In the background I could hear the sounds of phones ringing furiously, bets being called out, and Tony yelling out the changes during the opening-line frenzy. “Gimme San Diego minus three for ten dimes,” the voice said. I looked down at the ticket. Amidst all of the noise and confusion I’d obviously lost my concentration, because that’s exactly what I wrote down. Minus three for ten dimes. Tony clicked the tape off.
“You just handed that joker half a point. Minus three and a half woulda been a loss for him. Minus three was a win. I had to credit him with ten dimes.”
My blood ran cold. This wasn’t just any mistake—this was a $10,000 mistake. I was convinced that Tony would fire me on the spot. But he didn’t. He didn’t say another word about it until the end of the day, when he called me over to his desk and handed me a stack of tickets a foot high. He informed me that I would be grading them tonight, his way of making sure that I would pay more attention in the future.
I knew I was going to have a long night. The other clerks always complained when it was their turn to correct the tickets, and I was about to find out why. At home, I called a toll-free number in Vegas at nine p.m. to get the final scores on the games. I entered these into the Don Best Sports booklet, then factored in the line to determine the winners and losers. I realized just how important those half-points were. Players who took the Lakers plus nine and a half won their wagers, but those who bet the game plus nine lost. With hundreds and hundreds of bets to grade, I came across countless examples of games that tied, or “pushed.” One game even fell on a number—meaning both sides won.
The straight bets were simple enough, but the gimmicks were complicated and time-consuming to work out. My fingers cramped and my eyes ached as I worked my way methodically down the pile. Once I had completed the stack, I had to go back and calculate each player’s total win or loss for the day and enter these figures next to their number on a long sheet of yellow legal paper. I worked my way through an entire pot of coffee, finishing my last cup at midnight, and eventually collapsed into bed at three in the morning.
As I drifted off to sleep, I thought of Tony again. I wasn’t angry with him for making me grade. It was part of the clerk’s job. But it baffled me how Tony managed to do this every night. Tony had to grade the original copies, and he boasted that it took him only a couple of hours. How did he do it?
The next step of grading was to meet with Tony in the morning to compare answers—a process known as “running numbers.” I was walking toward the warehouse, clutching a plastic bag that contained roughly a million dollars in bets, when I heard the guttural roar of a motorcycle approaching. The engine revved furiously as the bike came closer. My workmates were constantly reminding me to be careful, as this was a dangerous neighborhood. Pulling my baseball cap lower on my face, I transferred the bag to my other hand. I picked up my pace as the motorcycle drew nearer. The warehouse was just ahead.
You ’re fine. Keep going. Almost there.
The bike pulled in sharply, blocking my way. A man wearing a helmet and a leather jacket sat astride a brutal-looking Harley. Through his featureless black helmet I couldn’t make out the rider’s face—just my own distorted reflection. I was considering running when the man flipped open the visor.
It was Tony. I tried to keep the panic out of my face. He fumbled for the keys and tossed them to me. “Let yourself in,” he said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
THE WEEKS FLEW BY, and before I knew it the Christmas holidays were approaching. This was the time of year when leading college teams faced off against each other, resulting in a frenzy of betting on bowl games.
“Well, there’s the Super Bowl, of course,” Danny explained. “That’s the only pro football game. But then we’ve got the Orange Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Sugar Bowl … ”
We were all expected to work through the holiday season, which was fine by me. I didn’t relish the idea of flying to New York to join my family, where I would be bombarded with questions about my life in Los Angeles. Nobody would approve of the kind of work I was doing, no matter what kind of spin I put on it.
I was raised in a very different type of environment. Both of my parents are European, and my British-born father still traveled often for the U.N. I didn’t even live in America until I was seven. During the sixties our family lived in Rome. At that time Italian mothers wore housedresses to the beach and settled under umbrellas to supervise their children. Our mother, by contrast, had long, thick blond hair, blue eyes, and a dazzling smile. German-born, she looked like a movie star—not a housewife with three children born just fourteen months apart. Toned, tanned, and bikini-clad, she strode along the shoreline with the three of us toddling behind her. Even then I was aware of the attention she received.
My mother tongue was Italian, and the little English we had learned from my father seemed patently different from the slang and accents in America. It didn’t help that my sister and I began attending school dressed in dirndls, traditional German frocks, with our long blond hair in braids. We just didn’t fit in. We were Europeans living in the United States. Our furniture, the food we ate, the music we listened to, my parents’ conservative values—all remained the same as they had been in Rome.
My brother Peter was promptly dispatched to boarding school in the U.K. to get a “proper education.” He would grow up there, joining us only during summers and Christmases. There were few children in our upper-class neighborhood in Westchester, north of New York City, and in those early years my father was often traveling. We were a tiny family, living in a big house on a tree-lined esplanade. My sister Heather and I became fiercely close. Not only did we pass for twins, but we seemed to know each other’s thoughts and did everything together.
When I was nine, my sister and I were taking ballet, piano, gymnastics, and ice-skating lessons, and attending private school. We went skiing in the winter and traveled to Vancouver or Europe in the summer. By contrast, my mother was nine when Hitler attacked Poland; eleven when she was dispatched to the countryside for safety; and thirteen when she made her way back to Hamburg, alone, only to find it reduced to rubble. All the unimaginable horrors of war that she endured in her childhood became a very real part of ours through her stories. It was clear that nothing I would ever go through in my life could ever compare to what she had suffered.
My mother was even more exotic in America than she had been in Rome. She was well traveled, spoke four languages, and was a talented ice skater, skier, pianist, climber, and gymnast. She got up at six a.m. every day to do calisthenics before going to work at Stauffer Chemicals, where she was a research chemist. She was required to wear a lab coat and metal-tipped shoes, and had hers custom-made into high heels. Every day she came home after work, prepared a nutritious dinner for us, then continued on to the local college, where she took courses to satisfy her insatiable thirst for knowledge. She always looked perfect: hair in a French twist, classic suits or dresses, stockings and high heels. She was elegant, sophisticated, driven. She knew how and when to be charming, and she clearly enjoyed being the center of attention; but there was an absence of warmth—a coldness—about her as well.
She kept my sister and me busy. We were responsible for keeping our big house and garden immaculate. There was always work to be done: a lawn that needed mowing, leaves to be raked, a huge driveway to be weeded, snow to be shoveled, tables to be set and cleared, dishes to be washed, rooms to be dusted and vacuumed. Everything had to look perfect, all the time. My father described our house as “sterile,” which was a pretty accurate description.
Family meals became excruciating as the years passed. Conversation was forced, and restricted to current events and the weather. This polite adherence to the social niceties was merely a cover. Simmering under the surface was the unbearable strain of a marriage on the verge of fracturing. The open knowledge of my mother’s serial infidelities—and the fact that my father seemed to prefer working in remote African villages, where food was scarce and malaria rampant, to being with his wife—poisoned the atmosphere at home. Whatever bond had first brought my parents together had long since come undone.
My father packed his things and left when I was seventeen. Peter was in college at UBC by that time, but my sister and I were still at home, and we had to deal with my mother’s frequent and halfhearted suicide attempts, which were clearly meant to get my father back. She had spent years relentlessly berating him and carrying on with a string of lovers—one of whom bitterly complained to me when she broke off their relationship. She clearly didn’t love my father, but divorce meant losing the status and perks she enjoyed as a “U.N. wife.”
Even after I moved to Canada, I continued to field suicide calls from my mother. She would often call at four or five in the morning, Vancouver time, to tell me that she had a knife in her hand and was about to slash her wrists, or about to jump off someone’s balcony, gas herself in the garage, or swallow some pills. This went on for months.
So I dropped out of school, became a rally driver, and ended up bookmaking in L.A., where no one had any way to contact me. I didn’t have any intention of letting my parents know where I was or what I was doing; and for the time being, that meant staying put in L.A.
On Friday, December 26, Ron Sacco showed up at the office with a brown paper bag stuffed with our payroll and Christmas bonuses. When Tony distributed them and I discovered a thousand dollars in my envelope in addition to the week’s salary, it felt like I’d won the lottery.
Ron perched himself on the edge of Mathew’s desk, casually reached into his jacket pocket, and produced another envelope. He tossed it over to Tony. “Tickets for the Lakers–Houston game,” he said. “Starts at seven.” Ron looked around the room and winked. “Limo’s on me.”
An hour later, we were all piling into a stretch limo. The last time I had ridden in a limo, I was wearing a ridiculous fluffy dress and making awkward conversation on my way to the senior prom. Tonight was a different story. I was still dressed in my baggy sweatshirt, jeans, and baseball cap, with fifteen hundred-dollar bills stuffed into my pockets. I was on my way to my first live sporting event with my fellow bookmakers. It felt like the epitome of cool.
The atmosphere at the stadium was electric. As we made our way through the bustling crowd, I made sure to stick close to Tony. It was my express aim to wangle the seat next to his. When he found our row, however, he ushered me in first and let the others follow. He ended up sitting the farthest away from me. Disappointed, I wondered if he had done it intentionally.
The arena was buzzing, and soon I was caught up in the excitement along with everyone else. When the Lakers walked out onto the court, I rose to my feet and roared along with the rest of the crowd. With a surge of pride I realized that I knew not only the names of the players, but also the position that each of them played. I even recognized Pat Riley, the team’s coach.
Before the game the Laker Girls did a cheerleading routine, showing off their flawless figures and acrobatic moves to the enthusiastic approval of the crowd. Their lithe, muscular bodies were barely covered by their tiny purple-and-gold uniforms. I snuck a glance at Tony as they performed, noting the intense scrutiny on his face as he watched them. I sat back and sighed.
What was wrong with me? Of course he found them attractive; what straight man wouldn’t? I took off my hat and fluffed my hair in a vain attempt to make myself look more feminine. Why couldn’t Tony look at me like that? What did I have to do to get his attention? I tried to put him out of my mind and focused instead on the game at hand. It turned into a decisive victory for the Lakers, who beat Houston 134–111. By the end of the game, I was hoarse from cheering.
When the limo dropped us off back at the warehouse, it was late. Tony disappeared into the office to grab the tickets. Game or not, he still had work to do.
“Who’s grading?” I asked nonchalantly.
“Me,” Kyle moaned.
“I’ll do it, Kyle,” I offered. “I mean, if you want.”
Kyle couldn’t believe his ears. “Really? I mean, you sure?”
If I graded, I would get to run the numbers with Tony in the morning. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
Late that night, as I worked my way through a daunting pile of yellow slips, I found myself trying to explain my behavior. Over the past few weeks, Tony had been on my mind almost constantly. I found myself seeking any excuse to look at him, scrutinizing him for faults or flaws. I wanted to find a reason to dislike him. But so far I hadn’t found one. The more I got to know Tony, the more attracted to him I became. I liked his perfect teeth, his strong jawline, and his thick brown hair. I liked the curve of his neck, the shape of his nose, even the shape of his hands. I liked how he smelled.
Tony didn’t smoke or gamble. He kept his desk spotless, he treated the players with courtesy, and he made the office a fun place to work with his easy wit and charisma. He didn’t have a trace of arrogance, and he had an extraordinary mind. He was able to calculate the most complex bet instantly, even with a stinking hangover.
When Tony talked I was always listening, trying to glean any sliver of information that might give me more insight into his character. I learned that he had once been a talented football player. I discovered that his mother was Irish, and his father Sicilian. One day he made a casual reference to the fact that he skied, and I felt my heart leap suddenly as though I were a schoolgirl with a crush. I can ski! I thought, happy to have something in common with him.
A few weeks after the game, Tony bought us all tickets to see Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. It was my day off and I had already committed to training with Jim; but without a second’s hesitation I called him with a flimsy excuse and headed over to the Beverly Center instead. I splashed out on a new pair of jeans, a pale-blue gypsy blouse, and a pair of sandals. At home I showered again, shaved my legs, blow-dried my hair, and gave myself a manicure and pedicure. As I sat in front of the mirror carefully applying makeup, it occurred to me that I had never put this much effort into preparing for a date before. Tonight I would be going out with the entire office—I was hardly expecting it to be a romantic evening. The simple truth was, I wanted a reaction from Tony, some hint that he was looking at me with the same mixture of longing and curiosity that I felt for him.
Despite my careful preparations, however, he didn’t so much as pay me a compliment. Nobody did. I started to think that I would always just be considered “one of the guys” in this office, and the realization stung.
As I drove home alone that night, I had the terrible feeling that I had been rejected somehow. I knew I was being ridiculous. I should be going out and meeting men, I thought. The sad truth was, I didn’t want to meet other men. I wanted Tony.
I hated myself for being so attracted to him. I had hinted often enough that I was single, but he didn’t seem to care. I’d even come into work once feigning exhaustion, as though I’d been out late the night before on a hot date—all in the hopes of making him feel a prickle of jealousy.
I tried to put him out of my head. I literally ached for him, and as illogical as it was, I couldn’t control my feelings. Every time he talked about some girl he picked up at a club, it felt like a shard of ice stabbed through my heart. It took all of my self-control not to let my face betray the pain I felt, knowing that he had been with someone else. I began swimming lengths for hours in the evening, in a futile effort to clear my mind of him.
Jim was the first to notice that something was wrong. I no longer had my passion for racing. After a practice run one day, he turned to me.
“What the hell’s wrong, RB? You’re … sloppy. Is something up?”
I couldn’t tell him. I’d have felt like a fool. I made a vague excuse and vowed to focus on the upcoming race. That was my whole reason for coming to L.A., after all.
But then the race fell through.
In late January, Jim’s wife was hospitalized with a kidney infection, and went on to contract pneumonia. Jim was frantic, and I saw him age years overnight. She was discharged from the hospital in February—two days before the start of the Alcan—frail and in need of constant care.
Jim looked into having our entry fee transferred to the Alcan in October, but I barely cared. My mind was elsewhere. The original plan was for me to return to Vancouver in February, but I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t leave Los Angeles.
As February turned into March, the pace at the office increased. It was “March Madness,” when the NCAA tournament overlapped with the NBA schedule and offered seemingly unlimited games to bet on. The phones seemed never to stop ringing.
Just before closing time one day in late March, Ron showed up at the office unexpectedly. Looking unusually serious, he perched on Tony’s desk and took the cigar out of his mouth. “The Small Office got busted earlier today,” he said.
Mathew was the first to break the shocked silence. “You’re kidding!”
“No warning call?” Tony asked.
Ron shook his head. “Nope.”
This came as a shock. The mid-eighties were a troubled time in Los Angeles—gun crime, drugs, and gang violence were at an all-time high. Drive-by shootings were a common occurrence, as street gangs vied for control of the city’s lucrative crack and heroin trade. Why would the police waste their time going after a group of people answering phones? Especially when they were being paid not to?
“What about the tapes and the diverters?” Tony asked.
“They didn’t find them.” Ron cleared his throat. “In light of this, I need to know if anybody wants out.”
A long silence followed. I considered the possibility. I found the idea of not being around Tony infinitely more worrying than the possibility of being arrested.
“What would happen if we got busted?” I asked tentatively.
“Sweetheart, if you get arrested, your bail’s going to arrive before you even get to jail. I guarantee that. I’ll pay any fines or legal bills. So long as you work for me, I’ll take care of you. I do the same for all of my clerks.”
I nodded, my decision made. I trusted Ron. Some of the clerks had been with him for years, and nobody had a bad word to say about the man. The next Alcan was still seven long months away. I could pay off my car if I stayed until October. I’d work until then and quit after the race. I would go home afterward, finish college, do all of the things I was supposed to be doing. This was only temporary, after all. This wasn’t my life.
The fact that I was a Canadian citizen also eased my worries. Even if I did get arrested in L.A., it wouldn’t matter in Canada.
“I’m staying,” I said. Tony started to say something, but I cut him off. “I’m staying,” I repeated.
Ron smiled.
“Thatta girl.”
The following day, everything was back to normal. It was as if the bust never happened. The Small Office was back in business, and no one mentioned the raid again. The weeks flew by in a flurry of work. Suddenly it was May, and I was preparing for the Kentucky Derby.
The 1987 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs proved to be one of the most dramatic races in its 113-year history. The bets came in fast and furious, and we struggled to keep up with the players’ demands. As soon as the horses sprang from the starting gates, we gathered around the TV to watch what the pundits referred to as “the most exciting two minutes in sports.”
As Alysheba, the eventual winner, roared ahead, a crash shook the foundation of our building. I thought for a brief moment that it was an earthquake. Yet the cause was all too human. As Alysheba thundered across the finishing line, the warehouse was swarmed by LAPD officers.