David Lazar

by Robert Kalich

  Debbie Turner was not wholesome, well-intentioned, or virtuous. Maybe this is my own sour grapes, but in truth, Debbie Turner was as insincere and ambitious as Leslie Kore. Only Debbie had a more backdoor presentation, and real estate guys and Wall Street guys, CEOs, almost all guys, can be duped by a pretty face, perfect melons, an amicable young woman who appears guileless and nonthreatening. She could capture a male heart, whether the male’s a college student or a billionaire real estate developer. I wasn’t shocked that the nearly unsullied Debbie Turner got what she had fantasized about.

  When Debbie arrived at the Welfare Department, all she did was fold her arms over her bountiful bosom and smile, and I bought into the whole package. When it comes to women, men are fools, and I’m not close to the top of the list.

  I’m not denying that Debbie Turner was my “happiness pill.” I loved her with a full, dumb heart. Thought she was a great person. Perhaps she still is, on a given day. But when friends of mine run into Debbie at elite restaurants like Caravaggio or Harry Cipriani or Per Se, she’ll always tell them without blinking, “I think of David all the time; I love David. Please tell him to call me.”

  That’s the kind of insincerity that you get from most people. I just didn’t think it would be from Debbie Turner.

  I take a breath, two breaths. Resentment? Or do I just want to tell myself I wasn’t as bad as I think I was. As I was.

  Last night. I watched a TV show honoring Al Pacino. I remember Pacino way back in 1968, at the Astor Place Theatre doing Israel Horovitz’s The Indian Wants the Bronx. Then, I turned to Leslie and whispered, “That actor’s going to be the next Brando.” Even before 1968, I had often gone to serious theater. Seeing the great Paul Muni in 1955 in Inherit the Wind hooked me on drama. I’m thinking about Pacino instead of what to tell Elizabeth for no reason other than at my age, everything’s unwieldy. I no longer have the energy to remain focused. How long would it take me to write a book these days?

  Chapter 12

  I’m squinting at a photo of Amy Cho. I must have a dozen photographs of Amy tucked away in my desk drawer, and four dozen of her incorporated into my collage. Comforting memories because the only person I believe I was good for in my entire life besides Elizabeth was Amy Cho.

  It was 1983, when I had achieved what most people would call success. I’d written American Racism, a book that you can find in university libraries from Howard to Harvard. I’d written four novels that can go on the shelves with the Big Boys. I’d written a best seller. I’d done things that my mother and father would be proud of. I had beaten down the demons, at least some of them. Had recovered from losing Leslie Kore to traditional values and an Atlantic Ocean filled with sharks and seaweed. Had moved on from Debbie Turner, who had married her billionaire, whom I read about frequently in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Crain’s.

  I met Amy Cho one night when I was having dinner with friends at George Martin’s and got in an altercation with Reggie Jackson. Amy and I spoke at George Martin’s bar for perhaps five or ten minutes before I returned to my table. I told Amy what I had told Debbie, “Leslie and I were never on the same page. Hell, we weren’t even in the same book. When we walked out of City Hall after getting married, Leslie wanted Japanese and I wanted Chinese. We had an argument. She left in one cab. I left in another. We didn’t see each other for two weeks. Believe me, Amy, those were our best two weeks.”

  Once Amy moved in with me it didn’t take her long to realize that I would still be struggling for a dollar if it weren’t for my need to show Leslie I could make it.

  “Gambling worked for me in a big, big way, Amy,” I said. “During these past ten years, I burnished my handicapping bona fides, as my friend, The Colonel, liked to say. I exceeded seventy-four percent in winnings four times.”

  I even started to blab and brag to Amy about how many millions I had accumulated. Somehow, I managed to stop myself from going too far. “I found the money tree, Amy. Or more aptly put, I found ‘God!’ in handicapping college basketball. ‘Blasphemy!’ my father would say if he heard me. ‘Life is two and two adding up to faith,’ my observant cantor-father preached. For me, Amy, handicapping has added up to a providential five.”

  Amy was in my life from 1983 through 1988. When she lived with me, I’d peek at her every morning while she was sleeping. Gazing at her face was the perfect way to begin my day.

  In the beginning, I nursed Amy back to health. She was only twenty-

  two but already beaten down by life. The first year we were together, I made sure she received professional help for her dyslexia, and I persuaded her to get her GED. The second year, I convinced her to go to Hunter College. I helped her study, I helped with her term papers. I did my best to keep her motivated.

  Before the second year ended, she said, “David, I think I can write my own papers. I’d like to try if you don’t mind.”

  The third year, she made the Dean’s List and that, along with my walking her to school every day, are some of my best memories. Those five years with Amy Cho were the happiest years of my life. Of course, it helped that I was making important money. And I was working on a novel, which always pleased me. But it wasn’t the money or my writing. It was Amy Cho.

  Most people in my life think that I rescued Amy Cho. In truth, it was Amy who rescued me. She provided that exhilarating feeling of wanting to be alive. The two of us didn’t do anything that was profound or earth shattering; we just liked each other, were considerate of each other. I guess the absolute truth was we were always there for each other during those five years we shared.

  The thing that I recall more than anything is the day Amy played her first basketball game for Hunter College. She raced onto the court, got involved in the antics; then, when one of her teammates passed her the ball, she put her head down and started dribbling. The thing was that Amy drove straight to the opposing team’s basket.

  “David, I don’t think I’m very good at basketball,” she said to me after the game.

  There are always watershed moments in a friendship. There was one in our relationship.

  I was at my peak as far as picking winners went. Counting wads of bills almost every Tuesday. I would collect them with my bodyguard, Champ Holden, at my side, from two, three, or as many as a dozen bookmakers and beards who owed me for the week’s bets. When I returned home, I would toss the winnings on the bed and tell Amy, “Start counting.”

  As she did so, I would begin to kiss her brow, her cheeks, her ears, her bare shoulders, her knees, thighs. Everywhere. Invariably she would lose her concentration.

  “David, now I have to start all over again!”

  Those were the best of times. On one of those Tuesdays, Amy said, “David, you’re almost fifty. You’ve stopped exercising and when you fall asleep at night, your breathing sounds kinda funny.” She paused. “I think it would be a good idea if you got a complete

  check-up.”

  The doctor looked exactly like Peter Lorre in Casablanca. Only this wasn’t Ugarte; it was Dr. Paul Schweitzer, a concierge cardiologist, whom Amy had found for me. I forked over a large check for Dr. Schweitzer to take me on as a patient.

  I spent an unpleasant two-and-a-half hours with Dr. Schweitzer. He conducted the most comprehensive examination I had ever experienced. Even did an echo-something-or-other on me. When Dr. S. finished, he asked, “Do you want your wife with you in my office when I tell you what I think?

  “We have no secrets,” I said.

  “You have six months to a year.”

  I bit my lip. Reached for the 1877 silver dollar that I carried with me at all times. To this day, I have callouses on my palm from clenching that coin. I gripped it tightly every time I got a score. I tried like hell to control my emotions. Amy was already sobbing.

  “I don’t think you have any kidney problems. Your lungs seem fine. It’s your heart. Your heart seems to me more like th
at of a man of

  seventy-five with heart disease.” Dr. Schweitzer stopped. Stroked his chin. “It’s heart disease all right.” He said I must have a sleep study done. “I’m sure you’re going to have to wear a mask.”

  Amy reacted immediately. “David’s been wheezing through the night, Dr. Schweitzer. Sometimes it seems as if he stops breathing.”

  Dr. Schweitzer nodded his head. “Your husband needs to have an X-ray. Also, some blood tests. And make sure he takes these medications I’m prescribing.” On and on he went.

  In all that time, neither one of us thought it necessary to contradict Dr. Schweitzer about our marital status.

  I glanced at Amy. What do you say to a barely twenty-five-year-old woman who’s in love with a man twice her age? What do you tell yourself? I tried to take a few deep breaths. Process the electric waves of my own mortality. My first instinct was predictable: I didn’t want to die. I loved life. I loved Amy. My life was great. I couldn’t ask for anything more. Now this!

  My second response was less weepy. Solomon Lepidus would warn me just about every other week, “Be prepared, Davey boy. Guys who live by the sword usually die by the sword.”

  I certainly was handicapping by the sword. Cutting corners. Outwitting mobsters. Collecting in brutal ways when necessary. Dying with every loss. It wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t pretty. I had been expanding my dehumanizing business for fifteen years. The more that I expanded my business the more I had to look over my shoulder. Check under restaurant tables for wires, sit with one eye always watching the crowd. When it came to writing checks, I had to be extremely careful. By that time, Nathan Rubin was one of my two largest partners. He sent over one of his Metropolitan Cable Company technicians to sweep my “special phones” every week. These “special phones” were located on my rooftop during the college basketball season. I used them from 11:00 A.M. until one the next morning, seven days a week.

  Winters in New York City, with the wind chill, are painful. During the seventeen-week college basketball season, I would be on my rooftop receiving calls from beards with information on injuries, changing lines, confirmation on bets, and much more. The calls were synchronized, precise, coded. If a beard made even one mistake, he was gone. During my prime years, I’d begin in early November with over 100 beards. By December 15th, I would have fired half of them and replaced them with a fresh crop. Mistakes were not, could not, ever be tolerated. It meant dollars. Important dollars. I was cold. Had to be. Needed to be. I masterminded all of it. Placed these beards across the country. Mostly on college campuses, because that was where the information was. Who’s having problems with his girlfriend? Who missed practice because of a scratch or a turned ankle? Who...And what about the coaches? Beards relocated from Bowling Green, Kentucky to Kalamazoo, Michigan to Gary, Indiana to Manhattan, Kansas to Boston, Massachusetts to Athens, Georgia. On paradisiacal campuses. With students like my son, Liam, innocently cheering for their schools. I used bookmakers from Las Vegas to New York to Toronto, Canada to Costa Rica.

  Fuck the schools! Fuck the students! Fuck the players! As far as I was concerned, every player who had ever lived could drop dead if I lost the game. Everyone was the enemy. It was war, a war in which I was taking no prisoners, a war in which I wouldn’t be a prisoner.

  I had expanded! And with expansion came contracts on my head. By this time, Solomon Lepidus had had to step in two more times to save my ass. And there would be several more life-and-death “contracts” on me in the coming years. But in 1987 there were only five. And even the well-connected Solomon Lepidus had difficulty neutralizing them. Bookmakers didn’t like people like me. Not as a person but me as an opponent. I have no hard feelings. People are people. Greed! Ego! Animals! Money! In those things, most of us wear the same scarred skin, are in the same war. I looked over my shoulder every day.

  Stress became my middle name. Amy started calling me “Mister Stress.” I tried to be careful. More and more, I was using code names, secret agents improvising techniques and mechanisms to thwart a constantly evolving and murderous enemy. My strategies made it almost impossible for my enemies to know how much I was getting down. I might be wagering $50,000 on a basketball game when divided by, let’s say, twenty-five bookmaking offices and telephoned in by, let’s say, twenty-five of my beards, it seemed as if I were wagering no more than $2,000 on any of them. At one time, I had forty-nine bookmakers. One hundred and twelve beards. And, of course, I had my own wits and Nathan Rubin and Solomon Lepidus as resources as well.

  I can honestly tell you that “I lived by the sword, but I didn’t die by the sword.”

  Dr. Schweitzer continued, “You must lose fifty pounds. Stop eating! Eliminate stress! You must do this and that, and we’ll know a whole lot more after you’ve had those tests I’m ordering.”

  Dr. Schweitzer walked over to his desk. Looked at some notes he had scribbled during that two-and-a-half-hour siege.

  “I don’t think any of the results are going to be good,” he said.

  I clenched my silver dollar. Took a quick glance at Amy. She looked as if she were five years old.

  When we returned home, I told Amy that I was going to make long-term provisions for her. That she wouldn’t ever have to worry about money.

  “David, you should quit gambling right now. I don’t care about money. I care about you.”

  I started to pontificate B.S. I espoused something I had read by a Holocaust survivor on how Americans are never prepared for death. For Americans, he said, death comes as a shock. They’re cowards, he said. I continued babbling through the night. What brought me to a halt was when Amy stood up tall on top of our bed.

  “You’re not going to die, David. You’re going to get better. You’re going to eat better, exercise, and start living less like a crazy man.”

  I yanked Amy down on the bed. We made love.

  I loved Amy Cho.

  Every one of those days was lyrical, and they stayed precious until eleven months later when she said, “I have something to tell you.”

  “David, the last thing I would ever want to do is cause you pain. When I think of your pain, I shudder.”

  Amy Cho moved out. I couldn’t let go.

  “I can’t handle the pressure you place on me. Christian is a happy person. He’s so much easier to be with. We comb each other’s hair with our fingers. We go to concerts together, we like the same kind of music, we go clubbing together. You never went clubbing with

  me, David.”

  I couldn’t let go.

  “I know you love me. That’s not the problem. At night, I lock myself in the bathroom and agonize over what is missing. Some nights, I masturbate while you are watching a game or writing. Why is it that you aren’t aware that something is very wrong?”

  I couldn’t let go.

  “You have to move on. Be strong. You’re strong in so many ways. If it wasn’t for you, I would never have survived. Now you have to be strong for yourself.”

  I couldn’t. A telephone call. A letter. A not-so-chance meeting.

  “I upset Christian as much as I upset you. He’s also a very good person. He loves me, too. But I’ve become numb with him, too. I can’t go on hurting people, David. I have to stop. I’m scared, and I feel nothing. My body and the rest of me are far apart.”

  One month later.

  “What I want, David, is to not need Christian or you. I want to feel strong and independent. Not be dependent on any man. I have to take time to get to know who I am. I’m so in touch with what you and Christian want that I lose what I want. Why is it, David, that the less I want of men and the more I try to distance myself from them, the more men seem to need me? The closer they try to get?”

  Several months passed.

  “I’m searching for what the answer is. Not to just run away from you but to move closer because I feel a desperate need to stay away from you and, uhm, that�
�s all I can say right now. That’s what I’m feeling. I can’t look the other way. I’ve done that too much of my life—looked away from what I’m really feeling. David, take care of yourself, okay?”

  Two months later, Amy returned.

  “I thought about what our life would be like if we were married. I’d run my jewelry business, and that would be a full-time job. And you would work on your book. We’d go to the movies together, and the theater, when we had the time. We’d take long walks and talk. You’d read your creations to me and recommend books for me to read, and then we’d talk about them, as well as everything else. We’d travel, too. And, of course, we’d have lots of dinners with Mr. Lepidus and your friends. It would be a nice life. I think we could be happy.” Amy’s brow furrowed. “I’ve made up my mind. Let’s go down to City Hall today and get married. I’m ready now. Let’s jump right in! No, make it the day after tomorrow. That’ll give us time to get the blood tests.”

  We decided to go to the Palm Court in the Plaza Hotel for tiramisu and talk.

  “You’re my best friend, David, but it’s hard for me to remember the rest. I don’t know what it is,” Amy said anxiously. “I’m not in touch with those feelings any longer.” Amy looked up at me. “But we’ll get them back, won’t we?”

  As soon as we returned to the apartment, we sat down on the leather sofa. Amy crossed her arms over her chest. “I know how much I love you. I’ll be a good wife. I’ll always respect you, do anything you want me to. But do you think I’ll ever feel as I did? In those ways, I want to be with you, too.”