Stepping out of the Chaisson Motor Cars showroom into the bright Vegas sunshine with a cashier’s check for eight thousand dollars in his pocket, Barney Leopold took a deep breath of the fresh desert air and hummed a joyful snatch of “We’re in the Money.”
With the two grand cash he’d got from the pawnbroker, that made ten thousand altogether. And that was all he needed to get it all back, every last cent of it and then some, because the losing streak was over. He knew it as surely as he knew the sun would set tonight and rise again tomorrow.
Leopold decided to walk to the Strip because he had better things to spend his money on than cabs.
For over five years, Barney Leopold had managed to conceal the truth from his family, his business partner, and himself.
On the surface, he was living the American Dream.
Barely into his fifties, the El Modena resident was of above-average height with thinning sandy hair, faded blue eyes, and a permanent California tan. Publicly, he was a successful homebuilder, a happily married man with a Stepford wife named Shirley who loved him quite unconditionally and three picture-book teenagers who trusted and respected him. He was active in his Orange County community, a member of the vestry at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church, and a member of the PTA.
Privately, he was living an emotional turmoil.
On the good days his spirit soared to the heights of ecstasy; on the bad days he plumbed the depths of hell.
His partner in A&L Construction, George Anderson, had been the first to suspect.
“Barney, how come I keep getting calls from our subs about unpaid bills?” Subcontractors were the lifeblood of A&L—the carpenters, roofers, plumbers, electricians, painters, plasterers, and other tradesmen who provided the skilled labor to build the medium-priced tract housing in which their company specialized. “I thought you’d taken care of them weeks ago.”
Leopold had always handled the sales and finances, while Anderson looked after the logistics of building. “Don’t worry about it, George. Everything’s under control.”
“That’s bullshit. Two of them are threatening us with liens.”
“Liens?”
“Court action. Seizures. Do I have to spell it out?”
“Okay. Maybe I’ve had a few personal expenses to take care of.”
“Personal expenses? With company money? Goddamn it, Barney, what kind of expenses?”
Leopold took a deep breath. “I owed big bucks to some guys. And frankly, they wouldn’t wait.”
In the beginning, it had been the horses. Small bets-fifty, a hundred. He thrived on the action and had actually come out ahead for a while. The gambling made him feel alive.
But inevitably, the losses started mounting. At first, they had been easy to cover, because A&L was a successful enterprise and Leopold took a substantial salary for his efforts. To recoup, he began betting larger amounts—five hundred, a thousand at a time. Sometimes he’d win, but more often he lost. Both his wife and his partner knew that he liked to gamble, but neither had any idea of the magnitude of his losses.
Vince Morini, the bartender at the Lido with whom he booked most of his action, was sympathetic. “Barney, you’ve dropped over eight grand this month alone. Maybe you ought to quit for a while.” Leopold was a good customer who always paid his debts, and the bartender hated to see him get hurt. “At least cut back a little.”
But Barney Leopold would have none of this well-intentioned advice. The gambling was in his blood now. He liked the uncertainty, the joy of winning, the threat of losing. Besides, he intended to get it all back. There were plenty of ways to get even. Bigger bets, some fresh action. “Maybe I’ll lay off the ponies for a while, Vince. What’s the line on the Lakers-Knicks game?”
“Lakers by eight. But, Barney—”
“That’s like a gift. I’ll take the Knicks. For five.”
“Five hundred?”
“Five thousand.”
The bartender almost dropped the glass he was wiping. “Holy Mother of God, Barney, are you out of your mind?”
“I can’t lose. I feel hot.”
The bartender recovered his composure. He started to say something, then shrugged in resignation. “Let me call Sal,” he said. Morini couldn’t lay off more than a grand on his own ticket; he needed authorization from the man for whom he fronted.
“Okay. But hurry.”
As the bartender dialed the private number of the local book, he looked at Leopold strangely. The man had a problem. He’d seen this before. But what the hell, it wasn’t his problem; he’d done his best to slow the guy down. He turned his back to the gambler, spoke quietly on the phone for a moment, and hung up. “Sal wants to talk to you, Barney. He’ll be over in ten minutes.”
Sal Tantorello would have topped any Hollywood casting agent’s dream sheet for the part of the mobbed-up bookmaker.
Sleazy, greasy, slick-haired, he’d have fit the role to perfection. Leopold’s skin crawled as he gingerly shook the hairy bejeweled hand, noting with disdain the pointed shoes, the black shirt buttoned to the top, the ice-cream-colored Armani suit with a discernible orange stain on the right lapel. People who wear white suits shouldn’t eat pasta, Barney thought.
“Mr. Leopold—Barney,” he said smarmily. “Nice to meet you after all this time! I hear you’re looking for some heavy action.”
“Right. I want the Knicks for five.”
“Let’s sit down and talk. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Sure. Vince knows.”
The book nodded to his agent and shepherded Leopold to a corner booth. Morini delivered the drinks and returned to his post behind the bar.
Tantorello extracted a cigarette from a silver case, lit up, and blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. “I’ll need the cash up front, Barney,” he said.
“I haven’t got that kind of money on me now. It’s too late to get it today. And the game’s tonight.”
“I don’t know. Five thousand’s a lot of dough.”
“Come on, Sal. You want the action, or not?” Leopold was starting to feel the anxiety again. He needed the action. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a little voice was saying, Don’t beg this slimeball. You’ve got an out now. He won’t give you the credit. But Barney disregarded it and persisted. “I’ve always paid on time. You know that.”
“Where will you get the money if you lose?”
“I won’t lose. Anyway, I’ve got over fifty thousand sitting in the bank.” That was a lie; he had less than twenty.
The bookmaker sized up his mark. He looked prosperous enough. “Okay, Barney, I’ll take a chance on you. But this is a cash business. I ain’t no finance company. I pay on the nose when I lose, and I collect on the button when I win.”
“Don’t worry,” replied Leopold.
As Barney Leopold’s cash reserves dwindled, his bets increased in frequency and magnitude.
The checking account was soon depleted, but there were plenty of other sources of cash. He maxed out his gold cards, all three of them, to the tune of more than $75,000. He took out a large personal loan at the local S and L. Without telling Shirley, he remortgaged the house, clearing another hundred grand. When he won, he was happy, but it was never enough to satisfy him. When he lost, which occurred with somewhat more regularity, he felt depressed, sometimes even suicidal, but strangely cleansed.
Sal Tantorello knew a good thing when he saw it. He now gave Leopold all the credit he asked for—on the unwritten understanding that the losing bets would be paid promptly, or, Barney suspected, matters could become very unpleasant.
The day finally came when there wasn’t enough ready cash to cover the last bet. He had taken Georgia Tech over Brown with a six-point spread, for Christ’s sake, and Tech had blown it.
Leopold was suddenly in debt for $25, 000 that he didn’t have. It was a strange feeling.
“Sal, give me a few weeks on this one,” he asked the book. “I’ve been a good customer.”
“No can do, my friend. I told you up front, I pay you when you win, you pay me when you lose.”
“Can you give me any time at all?”
“A week, max. And I’m doing you a big favor.”
“That’s really going to be a problem.” Sales at A&L had been slow. They were closing on a couple of houses, but not for a month.
Tantorello paused theatrically, lit a cigarette, and pretended to consider Leopold’s dilemma. In fact, he’d costarred in this particular movie many times before and had been expecting a rerun for some time now. “Okay, maybe I can help. I’ve got a friend who might possibly lend you the money. But don’t play games with him.”
“Hey, thanks. How do I reach your friend?”
“Here’s his name and number.” The book scribbled it on a Post-it note.
Carmine Vincelli resembled more closely a chartered accountant than a juice man. Yet he wore an air of menace like a cloak of office. It was not his size or his stature that threatened—he was a compact, slope-shouldered man of indeterminate age with a sallow, cratered complexion, wearing a conservative gray suit and quite an ordinary tie. The menace was in the eyes: hooded slits with dead black pupils that seemed to look right through you. This was not a man you fucked with.
Vincelli did not offer to shake hands but came straight to the point. “Sal tells me you’re stuck for twenty-five large.”
“I just need it for a couple of weeks.” So this is a shylock, Leopold thought. Funny how their names always end in vowels.
“What kind of collateral do you have?”
“My house. My car. And my business, I guess.”
“Your business? Tell me about it.”
“We’re in residential construction. I’m a fifty percent partner.”
“Numbers. Give me numbers.” Vincelli produced a small black notebook and a gold Waterman ballpoint pen.
Barney reeled off the figures from memory. “Gross sales last year, three and a half million. Net profit before taxes, four hundred thousand.”
“I’ll need the name of your company and the address. Plus where you live.” Leopold shuddered inwardly as the shylock wrote the information down in his black book. “And the name of your partner.”
“Don’t get him involved in this.”
“I won’t unless I have to. How much salary do you draw?”
“You really need to know that?”
“I got to know who I’m dealing with. I need to reassure my associates that you can handle this.”
“Ten thousand a month.”
“Pretax?”
“Yeah. Listen, Carmine, I’m good for it.”
“Okay, Mr. Leopold, I believe you. Now let me tell you something just so we understand each other perfectly. The vig is two points a week. On twenty-five thousand dollars, that comes to five hundred dollars cash, payable every Friday. No delays, no excuses.” He calmly replaced the pen in his inside pocket. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Sure. Where do I sign?”
The loan shark laughed humorlessly. “You don’t.”
Which was how Barney Leopold became a regular customer of Carmine Vincelli and the men whose names ended in vowels, under conditions that inevitably led to further indebtedness. Between the credit cards, the mortgage payments, the bank loan, and the shylocks, Barney Leopold’s interest payments were becoming an insurmountable burden. He didn’t dare think about the capital amounts he owed. To cover his mounting debts and to feed his ever-growing appetite for action, he sold his stocks and bonds, liquidated the kids’ college accounts, and eventually dipped into company funds. Because, sooner or later, he knew he’d win it all back. It just hadn’t happened yet.
Meanwhile, he had to face his partner.
“Is it the gambling?” his partner, George Anderson, had asked. “Is that where the money’s gone?”
In exchange for Leopold’s share of the business, Anderson agreed not to press charges, nor to seek the return of the money. “It’s the best deal you’ll ever get, Barney, when you consider the alternatives. The shares aren’t worth anything near what you … took. Believe me, I’m only doing this out of concern for your family.”
“And you won’t tell anyone?”
“As far as anybody else is concerned, it’s a buyout, pure and simple.”
“One day I’ll pay it all back and we can be partners again.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Right now, you’d better do some painful thinking.”
“What do you mean, George?”
“I guess what I mean is, when you come to terms with why you’re doing this to yourself, we’ll talk.”
Leopold stared blankly at his ex-partner.
He didn’t dare tell his wife the real reason he wasn’t going into the office anymore. Fortunately for Barney, Shirley had never taken an interest in the business and scarcely knew his ex-partner. He told her he’d sold out and ascribed his leaving to a “disagreement” with Anderson; she accepted the explanation at face value.
It was more difficult to explain the growing shortage of household money. Shirley had always handled the day-to-day family finances and was beginning to feel the pinch.
After a couple of weeks, she had asked innocently, “When do you get the settlement for your part of the business?”
“Soon, I hope,” he lied, “but it’s tied up in escrow until the final papers are signed.”
It isn’t a complete lie, he thought to himself. I am going to get the money. I’ll win it back the same way I lost it. But this time, I’ll be smart—no more sports action. I’ll get hot at the craps table. Somehow, it’ll all work out, he fantasized. He wasn’t completely broke. There was no cash or credit left, but he still had the car. And the Rolex watch, if push came to shove. As long as he could find action—any kind of action, it didn’t matter—he’d be more alive than ever. He’d be master of his destiny, a risk taker, pushing the envelope, daring Fate to destroy him.
And so it was that Barney Leopold found himself in Las Vegas on a sunny autumn day with a receipt for his Audi, a pawn ticket for his Rolex, and ten thousand dollars burning a hole in his pocket. He knew his luck would change.
What Barney Leopold didn’t know was that it would get worse.
Much worse.