20

Michelangelo Amato sat in the back of his black Lincoln Town Car watching three TV monitors.

On one, this new Wednesday Night Football, first of the season, the 49ers were slaughtering the Giants. Ma liked that. Not only personally—he’d always hated the New York Giants, a bunch of schmucks, in his opinion—but professionally. The “smart” money had gone to New York. Ma would clean up.

On the second monitor, a filly named Miss America, now wasn’t that a great coincidence, was gaining on the outside in a breeders’ cup at Santa Anita. That was good for business, too. Big bucks had gone down on last year’s Preakness winner, a deep-chested bay called Double Dip.

On the third monitor was the second night of the pageant’s preliminary competition from Convention Hall.

“Hey, Willie.” Ma tapped on the glass to his driver, twice. Willie was getting a little deaf. “You know I’m the only person in the whole world watching the Miss America play-offs on TV?”

“That’s great, boss.” Willie would say that to anything, in his mushy way—he wouldn’t wear his dentures.

But it was great, and it came from having connections. Influence in the right places. Not bad for a kid from MacDougal Street, huh? And, well, okay, in his business there was more than a little happening in the electronics field. If it went over the phone lines, computers, modems, whatever, it was electric, you name it, Ma had incorporated it into his bookmaking operation.

So it was no big deal to have one of his guys figure out the way to go was to bribe the guy who ran the television equipment van for the pageant in the hall’s parking lot. The signal ran from the cameras inside through cables out to the van, then from there it traveled on phone lines to NBC in Rockefeller Center in New York. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights, they weren’t broadcasting the show, just recording and fiddling with it, figuring out the commercial spots, all that stuff. But the man with the van could tap into those phone lines, then, with cellular phone capability, dial it up and bring it to the monitor in the limo. No big deal.

But still, it was a kick in the pants to know this show was his alone. Now he was watching that silly whatsizname, the guy in the black suit, made Ma ashamed to be Italian, doing some faggy dance. The same one he’d seen last night. But on the first monitor, whoa! Way to go, Montana! Pop ’em for another 10-yard gainer. On the second monitor, the filly was now behind by only a nose. And a pretty nose it was. Ma threw the horse a kiss and told Willie to pull over.

He wanted to talk to a man inside Tommy’s, and it wasn’t about a horse, either. It was about Ma’s best girlfriend.

As Ma walked into the bar/pizza parlor, the man, a geezer named Angelo who ran his pizza businesses amd did some old-fashioned bookmaking, a little shylocking on the side, was polishing glasses behind the long stretch of mahogany. On the TV above the bar 49er Ronnie Lott almost ripped the head off a Giant receiver.

“Ma! How you doing?”

Michelangelo nodded. OK.

“You want a drink? What can I get for you?”

Michelangelo shook his head. Nothing. After all that fine wine, why did he need the rotgut in Tommy’s? And how did he know it was rotgut? He supplied it, that’s how.

“Hey, Ma? Cat got your tongue tonight?” Angelo was twisting his head around, getting a little nervous.

Ma knew that. You didn’t talk, guys would always blab faster. Guilt abhorred a silence. That was one of the things Ma believed.

When Michelangelo did talk, his speech was an interesting phenomenon. Put him at the dinner table at Va Bene with educated people, he spoke like an educated man—which he was, if you counted the school of hard knocks supplemented by a fine library of leather-bound editions, all well-thumbed, in his white brick mansion down in Margate. Put him at one end of a table of ebony and purple heartwood surrounded by other members of a legitimate board of directors, he could dazzle you with facts and figures. With a lady, he could quote Romantic poetry like an Oxford don. But put him on the street and he spoke the argot, blasting it out of the corner of his mouth like bursts from a sawed-off shotgun.

“Come here, Ange.” He knew Angelo wouldn’t want to do it, but he would. The old man limped forward. Come on, Ma gestured with one hand up, four cupped fingers gently goosing Angelo closer.

In a very quiet voice, so soft no one else in the place could have overheard him if they’d tried, not that they were, Ma said, “Ange, now you know I got no patience for arguing. I got a short temper, rather use my hands than talk, so don’t get me mad.”

“I don’t intend to get you mad, Ma.” Angelo laughed nervously. The old man had been around, had paid some dues in various federal establishments, which is where he got his bad leg, and could still break chops with the best of them, but with Ma—well, it paid to pay respect. Besides, he had a personal interest.

“Okay, good. Now here’s what I want you to do, no discussion. I want you to stay away from my mother.”

“Michelangelo!” Angelo’s hands went up, protesting his innocence. “Hey, listen. I mean no disrespect—”

“I know you don’t. But I also know you knew my father.”

“May he rest in peace.”

“May he rot in hell,” said Ma. “That son of a bitch was no damned good. But the point here is you knew them when they were married.”

“Right, Ma, I did, but—”

“No buts, Ange. You knew them, they were married before God.”

“I was best man in their wedding at St. Anthony’s in the old neighborhood. Sullivan Street. You know that.”

“That’s right. You were like my uncle. I brought you to Jersey with me, made sure you had a job, a good job, and now how do you repay me?”

“Ma, my intentions are—”

“There are no honorable intentions where my mother is concerned.”

“I took her to the pictures. I took her flowers. That’s all.” Angelo sweated when he lied. He wondered, could Ma smell him?

“Don’t say that! Don’t say that’s all! Don’t even make me think about other possibilities. I’ll go crazy, and you’ll go down an elevator shaft.”

“No, no. You’re right, Ma. You’re right. I just thought, you know, your dad’s been dead thirteen years, your mother might want a little company.”

“My mother don’t need company. She has me. I go over to her house for supper. She comes to mine. She wants to see a picture show, she turns on the big-screen TV I brought her. She gets cold on winter nights, I buy her another hot water bottle. You understand, Angelo?”

“I understand, Ma.”

Back in the car, Michelangelo lit a cigar and muttered, “Nobody’s got no respect anymore.”

Willie asked, “Where to, boss?”

“Ventnor,” Ma answered, and Willie headed the heavy car toward Michelangelo’s main office.

“How’d my filly do?”

“She won, boss. Eighteen to one.”

Great. And his boy Joe had pumped another one into the end zone. The 49ers were ahead by 14, three minutes left in the game. Up on the Convention Hall stage some old lady who was Miss America about a hundred years ago was trading jokes with that Gary Collins jerk.

But hey, wait a minute. Ma took a closer look. That wasn’t Collins. What the hell—? Was that who he thought it was?

Ma grabbed his remote and punched up the volume.

Oh, Christ, it was. It was Billy Carroll, that little schmuck. He was playing the lounge at the Monopoly, still doing his Sinatra look-alike thing he’d been practicing for twenty years. Now there he was.

“—what a privilege and honor it is to be asked to fill in on this show of shows. Not, of course, that anyone could ever fill the shoes of that grand gentleman, Gary Collins—and we hope you’re feeling better, Gary.” Carroll gave a big smile and wave out to TV land, out to Collins, wherever he was.

Probably home puking his guts out, thought Ma, if he wasn’t already, seeing this jerk up there. Ma had known little Billy Carroll since 1978, when the casinos first opened. Already a regular loser in Vegas, Billy couldn’t wait to come and drop a bundle in AC when he was on the East Coast.

That’s how guys with the sickness operated. They weren’t playing to win.

Little Billy there—looking even more like a midget up on the big stage, barely taller than that Phyllis George—would grab a bundle at baccarat, he couldn’t wait to get to a phone and drop it on the ponies. His horse’d come in, he’d be looking for the next race, the next game, the sure thing…that’d bust him. Guys like Billy who had the sickness didn’t know how to behave unless they were up to their eyebrows in hock—God love ’em.

And Ma was in the business of making it easy for Billy and all his brothers to give him their money.

Gone were the days of the MacDougal Street candy store owner who would leave you waiting while he went to the back of the store to take bets by phone. Kids like Ma who grew up making pocket money running errands, picking up betting slips for barbershop storefront gambling operations, had to look elsewhere.

Bookmaking had gone electronic and mobile. It was run on wheels, over the airways, and by phone mail.

In South Jersey, which was Ma’s territory, he operated a dozen “offices” out of vans equipped with cellular phones, laptop computers, digital beepers, printers, and statistical analyses of whatever sporting event was going down. The bets were heaviest within an hour of the event, when the odds had settled down, and as much as could be known about the variables—a quarterback’s broken finger, a fighter’s latest bout with his girlfriend—were in place.

Then customers, who came to the bookie on a referral basis only—and even then were run through a background check of financial and criminal history just as if they were applying for a major piece of plastic—called in to the vans’ cellular phones using their customer codes.

The clerks taking bets handled several lines. Then the clerks faxed the bets to a central office where a bookkeeper punched the information into a computer, in code.

Ma also had another dozen stationary locations, office space or apartments, that housed only telephones on call-forwarding. State-of-the-art electronic security systems alerted the main office if the satellite locations were being raided.

The cellular phone conversations were more difficult for the feds to monitor. Therefore, the vans were becoming the more preferable form of doing business.

Ma had recently read a newspaper article on the electronic bookmaking business that quoted a federal agent saying what with all the electronic gizmos, organized illegal gambling was not unlike the New York Stock Exchange.

Yeah, that was true. And the thought of it made Ma proud. Until he thought about the fact that those stockbroker clowns didn’t have to track people down when they got behind. Also, when the suits took money from gamooshes who had made the wrong call on a piece of business—exactly what he did—they didn’t stand to go to jail. Unless they were too greedy, like that Milken fella.

But hadn’t he had a grand ride—and when he finished his short time in some country club environs, the man wasn’t going to be exactly poor. And nobody was going to be harassing his wife and kids and grandma and grandpa, setting up wires on ’em so the feds knew every time they went to the bathroom.

That’s why Ma’s children by his ex-wife, the twins, Joey and Jennie, were both at Harvard—taking MBA’s, the both of ’em. None of this knocking around for them. They were going to learn to steal legit. Investment bankers. Bond traders. Whatever was going down big time when they were ready to hit the Street.

The Street—only about 25 blocks downtown in New York City from where he’d learned to hustle—on the street. Michelangelo leaned back with his cigar and watched Phyllis George and that fool Billy Carroll try to make the swimsuit competition sound like a bodybuilding contest instead of a good old-fashioned peep show and thought about how times had changed.

It was enough to make a 55-year-old man feel really old.

*

Though it made Michelangelo Amato very happy to think he was the only man in the world watching the preliminary competition of the Miss America Pageant on his own private signal, that wasn’t exactly the case.

Over at the Monopoly, Wayne Ward was sitting in his Action Central checking out the girls parading—stop, turn, stop, smile—in their shimmery white swimsuits. Copping this show had been a piece of cake for Wayne.

Just like Michelangelo’s techie, Wayne knew that the TV equipment van leased by the network was the way to go.

The guy who owned it was a regular joe. Wayne had got to talking with him a couple of days earlier. Busted his butt, this dude named Dean. That’s what it said, right over the pocket of his orange jumpsuit. What he did, he owned the van, the whole 18-wheeler tractor-trailer. It had a name, too. Said Mighty Mo in blue letters on the door. Dean owned all the equipment in the van. He showed it to Wayne, took him on a little tour, introduced him to his utility man. More monitors, cables, decks, recorders, cables, frames, racks, jacks, swing arms, you name it, Dean had it, if you needed it to put on a live TV show. That’s all Dean did, live. He ran Mighty Mo out of Easton, PA, the place he called home. He got by there about once a month. The rest of the time, the minute an event was over, he’d break down any of his equipment they’d taken inside, load it back into the truck, and hit the road. Drive 10, 12 hours to a hockey game they’re broadcasting live out of Toronto. Same drill there, then he’s back to Severance Hall in Cleveland, the orchestra’s playing. On and on it went. Drive 800, 1500 miles, set up, do the show, break down, load up, drive. Man gets tired. Man gets bored. Man gets crazy is what he gets, he’s not above doing a little number just to break things up. This Dean, he was a big guy with a ponytail, but you wouldn’t mistake him for some fruit. It was a righteous truck-driver ponytail, and he knew everything there was to know about each and every piece of equipment in his truck. Wayne could talk with a man like that.

Of course, once he’d heard Dougie say it probably couldn’t be done, he’d have copped that signal if it had meant he had to rewire all of Convention Hall lying on his belly up under the Boardwalk. He hadn’t had to, though. He’d jawed with Dean, bought him a beer, slipped him a wad of bills—bingo.

Now Wayne leaned back in his chair and munched on a hamburger and smiled, thinking about how much Mr. F was enjoying the show, too, from the privacy of his own office. Wayne had delivered the signal up there to Mr. F’s gigantic rear-screen projection TV. It was neat knowing how frosted Dougie must be that Wayne had delivered.

Yep, Dougie. You wanted a job done, you called Wayne Ward.

Wayne delivered. That was his slogan. In fact, he’d had those words embroidered on his black Monopoly Special Services cap, in red, on the back.

Just wait until Dougie got a load of that.

*

Driving Michelangelo down Fairmount Avenue on the way to the main office in Ventnor, Willie passed through Ducktown, the old Italian neighborhood where he still lived. It was getting shabby, but Willie was comfortable there. He was in a two-story brick, right around the corner from where Nicky Scarfo, who ran all the casino unions, had lived on Georgia before he moved to Philly.

Up ahead was the Albany Avenue Bridge. “They never gonna finish this thing,” Willie mumbled to himself. “Waste of the taxpayers’ money.” Not that Willie had ever paid taxes himself, but still it bugged him.

“What’re you saying?” called Ma.

“I said they’re never gonna finish this damned bridge. I don’t know why they need it anyway. The old one was fine.”

“That’s how you know you’re getting old,” said Ma. “Hey. Pull over here.”

“Where?” They were in the middle of a snarl of traffic. Night and day, this construction mess would drive you nuts.

“There.” Ma waved. “Down to the launch. Let’s drink a toast to Lana.” He’d found the grappa in the liquor cabinet. “Little lady’s about to do her swimsuit number.”

Willie wheeled the heavy car down to a dark dirt driveway that led to the boat launch on the inlet called Inside Thorofare. It was a familiar trip. The inlet was one of the deepest channels in New Jersey, so deep it was dredged only once a year—by the Atlantic City cops. Always something, someone, they were looking for popped up. Over on the other side was Bader Field, one of the first airports in the country. Ma had a Cessna tied down over there. He hated flying, and especially commercial. If he was going to die, it wasn’t going to be with a bunch of people he didn’t know puking and screaming and stomping on his feet trying to get to the exit.

“Get back here, Willie. Hurry up. There she is! Wha’dya think? Isn’t she something?”

Willie thought she looked exactly like Marilyn Monroe. Exactly.

It’d give you chills and thrills up and down your spine. He told Ma so.

“I know,” Ma said, after he drank salute! to Willie’s health and Lana’s good fortune. “The hair, the boobs, even that little bit of a belly that Marilyn had. You think that’ll lose her swimsuit?”

“Not in my book. But who knows what those judges think? Look at those other girls.” Willie pointed at the TV. “They look awfully skinny to me. I like a girl I can grab ahold of. Something to hold on to. You know what I mean?”

“I know what you mean.” Ma poured them each another shot. “You still grabbing girls, Willie? Good for you.”

“I do what I can. Not much.” Willie paused, and the two men sipped their drinks silently in the dark. There wasn’t a single light down here at the launch. Then Willie said, “She’s Big John’s niece, ain’t she?”

“Lana? Yeah.”

“So, you’re just looking after her.”

“Yeah. John asked me to. That’s all I’m doing. Making sure she’s comfortable. She’s a pain in the butt, though. Too pushy and not so smart. It’s not a good combination.”

“Uh-huh.” Willie sipped for a bit longer.

“You know what she does? She goes around pretending she is Marilyn. Marilyn in the movies. The other day, she says to me, ‘I like men who wear glasses. Especially if they get their weak eyes from reading those long tiny columns in the Wall Street Journal.”

“That’s not so dumb, she’s got an eye for the producers.”

“It’s a line right out of Some Like It Hot, Willie. She’s memorized Marilyn’s lines.”

“So? She’s not so stupid if she can memorize.”

“Forget it, okay?”

“Right, boss.” Willie poured himself another taste. “So, you’re making her comfortable.”

“I hear what you’re insinuating. Don’t go getting any ideas. She’s young enough to be my daughter.”

“Yeah, well, so are them girls you paint.”

“That’s right, Willie. They are. And that’s all I do with them. Paint.”

“I never said different.”

“Yeah, but that’s what everybody thinks. I know what goes through the filthy minds of gamooshes like you.” Ma reached over and clipped the old man on the side of the head with the edge of his hand, but gently. “That’s what’s wrong with the world today. Nobody has any respect for anybody anymore. The way I look at it, I hire a nude model, I hire a nude model. I pay a woman to take her clothes off so I can paint her, I didn’t pay to screw her. I wanted that, I shoulda hired a hoor. You know what I mean?”

Willie nodded in the big dark car.

“No respect. People throwing garbage in the streets, using language in front of anybody. Women. Children. Mothers.”

“I know. It’s terrible, boss.”

“Breaking in car windows. I tell you what. You show me a man who’ll break the windows of a Lincoln Town Car like this, or a Mercedes, a man who has no respect for a beautiful automobile like this, I’ll show you a man who’ll screw his mother.”

“You’re right, boss.”

“Awh, get out of here. You’d say that if I told you you ought to screw your mother. Right, boss. That’s what you’d say.”

“Right, boss.”

“Except that’d be kinda tough, wouldn’t it, Willie, considering that your mother, God rest her soul, hasn’t been with us for quite some time.”

“Right, boss,” Willie said, as he climbed back behind the wheel.

“So, we saw all those girls. Whaddya think of Lana’s chances to win swimsuit?”

“I dunno, boss. I told you I thought she looked pretty good.”

“You know, Willie,” said Michelangelo, leaning back into the soft black leather. “I been thinking, it’d be a nice thing, see what you think, for Big John—who’s been so generous to me, granting me permission to run South Jersey as an outsider, taking only a quarter of the proceeds ’stead of a half like the made guys—it’d be nice if his niece Lana, who he’s put under my protection for the time she’s here in AC, if something nice were to happen to her.”

“I think that’d be good, boss.”

“You know, you’re starting to sound like a parrot, Willie. Getting on my nerves.”

“I don’t mean to, boss.”

“You think a man who’s as well connected in this town as me, who’s got lots of guys working for him and electronic gizmos coming out his ears, so what he can’t tape a movie off his own TV, is capable of making something nice happen for a girl like Lana?”

“I’d think so, boss.”

“I’d think so, too. I’d think all it’d take is knowing a little bit more about how this Miss America thing works.”

“You mean, like who’d she have to screw?”

“Something like that. But watch your mouth, Willie. Talking disrespectful about Lana is like disrespecting my grandma.”

“You don’t have a grandma, Ma.”

“My mother, then. Same difference.”

With his left hand still on the wheel, Willie crossed himself with his right and muttered under his breath. Mary, Jesus, and Joseph. Dealing with Michelangelo, it was hard to keep up. An old man had to be on his toes all the time. It was tough. Very tough. But better than being legit.

“I heard that,” Ma chuckled from the back seat. “Keep your hands on the wheel. Your eyes on the road. Your mouth off my business.”

Jesus!