The Friendship of Criminals

by Robert Glinski

  So that’s what Nick Martin did.

  His primary success was a multimillion-dollar sports book he built from scratch. Launching with no clients or connections, he made customer service his calling card. Day or night, whatever the game, Martin was available. Yo, I know it’s three in the morning, but can I get a dime on the Packers? Setting the line wasn’t the hassle. Vegas pros handled the spreads. And rotten streaks straightened themselves out given enough time and patience. No, people were the rub. Some weren’t so bad; Martin actually liked a couple. But the big middle—the hump in the curve—were degenerate lowlifes who’d hock their kids’ toys for one more rush. He hated ninety percent of his clients. Anyone would. Ninety percent of the ninety percent hated themselves. Come on, Nick—you know I’m good for it. A year of hard knocks to learn most weren’t.

  His second moneymaker was a weekly poker game that ran a full night and into the next day. Players chatted Martin up before and after, sharing stories of the can’t-miss hands that did. He understood gamblers never remembered easy wins, only the lucky bastards raking in big pots on the draw. Regardless, he treated them all like they’d flown in on a private jet, hugging and shaking and kissing and feeding them to the point of dizziness. As the last one stumbled out into the midday sun, he paid the staff and grabbed a coffee before delivering an envelope to Rea’s main guy.

  Week in, week out, month after month, that was the routine. A rat running full speed on the wheel, plus meals with the crew and extra hustles to keep his reputation as an overachiever. Be a people person. Make them money. Real simple. Problem was—after ten years of treading water with gamblers, gangsters, and grifters—Nick Martin was surrounded but alone. And like a prisoner nearing the end of his sentence, he allowed himself to begin missing what he’d gone so long without.

  Which explained Fancy Tina’s. First two nights he had a halfway decent excuse, driving by on his way home from a road-widening project in Levittown where the contractor was getting lazy with his Komatsu PC300. A sparse line of pine trees separated the heavy equipment from a residential neighborhood. With a couple of assistants in gas company uniforms, maybe the loader could be driven through the backyards to a waiting trailer. A Komatsu in decent condition could fetch forty, fifty grand.

  When he returned for a second look, the equipment was gone. Jobs were like that. More than sometimes, actually—good opportunities were short-lived. Maybe the contractor realized he was pushing his luck. Maybe another player was quicker to the payday. Maybe another Levittown street needed widening. Who knows? For every dozen proposals, Martin moved on one or two. And even with those best of breed, he batted less than fifty percent because of bailing or stepping back. In his position, he couldn’t afford to be wrong. There wasn’t time to get pinched while Rea’s world moved on. His hustles had to work.

  So night three—with the Komatsu gone and Levittown off his route—he had no more excuses of convenience for swinging by Fancy Tina’s. Being there meant he was looking for the woman, the stripper with the hip tattoo. The one named Cheryl. The one he liked. The one who’d poisoned him.

  He stayed in his car, positioned to see the front door and rear employee entrance. Going inside didn’t seem the best idea, given his recent history. No telling how ownership might react. Hey, boss, you remember the guy we drugged? No, not that one—the one we handled for the Pole? Yeah, he’s back, sitting near Stage Four, sipping a club soda. Trouble? Yeah, I’d guess that’s what he’s looking for. So Martin sat low and watched. First night he waited an hour before driving away. He saw a dozen girls, none looking like his Cheryl. Same on night two. Smoking with the windows up, he figured night three would be the same. Give it an hour and drive home. Solitary. Alone.

  One hour turned into four, and that’s when his persistence paid off. Hair pulled up and dressed in a teal sweat suit, she exited the rear entrance thirty minutes past closing. Her eyes were down, and her left side sagged beneath an overloaded shoulder bag.

  He straightened himself and checked his teeth in the rearview mirror. A full ashtray and nothing to drink was tough on the scent front. Before he could look for gum or a mint, she was at his window, blocking his door.

  She tapped a ring on the glass. When he rolled the driver’s-side window down, she said, “You him?”

  The stripper was how Martin remembered. Still blond, still with lips and eyebrows made wide with makeup. Her hair was light, almost fragile, like a little kid’s. Last few weeks, Martin wondered if maybe the drugs clouded his mind’s picture. Waiting three nights, he even considered the possibility she wasn’t real. Just a dream, a couple of dancers swirled into one vision by the trauma. “I ever tell you my name?”

  “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “Nick Martin. That night, not sure we got to last names.”

  A pause to fish smokes from her bag. “I doubt you’re here to hurt me. Or you’re just real dumb going about it.”

  Martin flashed his lighter out the open window. As she bent to the flame, he shook his head. “Everyone was doing a job. I thought we were getting along pretty well before I fell asleep.”

  She must have seen something in his eyes, an assurance. “Then I’m still Cheryl.”

  “No last name?”

  Ignoring the question, she told him how a bouncer spotted his car. We’ve got a creeper, ladies. Nobody figured him for the guy from a few weeks back, the one who got the special treatment. She did, though. No reason except she was paid to make men chase her, make them want. Most stopped after an empty money clip and clothes smeared in body-glitter. For whatever reason, during the few hours they spent together, she’d figured this one for a different variety.

  “How much they pay you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Martin lit his own cigarette. “The plan—after the retrieval at your apartment—was to kill me. Hope you got the going rate for felony murder.”

  She wrapped an arm around her belly and used it as a ledge for her smoking arm. “You talk like a cop.”

  He dismissed the truth with a clogged, quarter laugh and wave of the hand. Yeah, she was a smart one. “Just words, baby.”

  “Anyway, I don’t think they were planning on killing you.”

  “I could agree, but we’d both be wrong.”

  Cheryl tapped her ash and smirked. “Looks like everything turned out. I mean, you know, I see all ten fingers, so it couldn’t have been too bad.”

  Martin didn’t ask who hired her, or how it worked. He knew. Bielakowski told Fancy Tina’s owner to be on the lookout for a South Philly shakedown. Whoever was the unlucky soul assigned to collect was getting a pill. Night-night, greaseball. Arriving for her shift, Cheryl wasn’t briefed on the politics or motivations behind the assignment. Fact was he picked her. If Martin was into gingers or dark hair, they’d have drugged him, too. Women on the clock, separating men from money—what difference did it make who did the paying or who earned it? Good for her. “Bygones. No hard feelings.”

  “Okay, so everybody forgives everybody.”

  “I’ve got something I want to ask you.”

  Cheryl shifted her weight. “I’m not like that. Dance in the club, sure. But I’m not for hire. Not like you think.”

  “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

  “Sure, doll.”

  He told himself it was okay, that he was close to the end, that he deserved a moment that wasn’t a lie or a twist. Something real and all his own with a woman he wouldn’t be ruining. “I’d like to cook you a meal. Sit-down with plates and the whole deal.”

  “I don’t need to be rescued, okay? Like I’m some kind of runaway or victim.”

  He resisted getting out of the car, knowing it’d tilt the dynamic toward what she feared. “This ain’t about me throwing you a line. I’m the one asking for a favor.”

  Unsure what to say, she peeked in his backseat and did a light scan of the parking lot, more to stall than anything. “Lonely, huh? Good-looking as you are, did
n’t figure finding dates as your problem.”

  He wanted to explain, wondering if opening up to Bielakowski had broken the seal, left him vulnerable to leaking on himself. “Without going into the details, I don’t have the kind of timeline to invest in a long-term romance.”

  “You sick or something?”

  “I’m just looking for a girl to have a nice meal with. I don’t know her friends or have to meet her family, she don’t get to know mine. That simple.”

  “Except we ain’t strangers.”

  “Nobody’s strangers after the first word. This is the best I can do.”

  She stepped back with the kind of side-to-side sway that reminded him why he was attracted in the first place. The girl had it going on. “All right, you gave me enough to consider this as a possibility. How do I get ahold of you?”

  “I’ll be back in a week. Right here, after you get off work.”

  “Late dinner?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Figure you cook pretty good Italian?”

  “I’ll cook you anything except Italian.”

  She backpedaled all the way to her car, fifteen spaces from him. “See you then, doll.”

  14.

  ANXIOUS FOR THE MEETING at Mollie Ollie’s Tavern, Sonny arrived early and took a stool at the bar. The bartender—in a pressed shirt and buttoned vest—looked up from cutting lemons and greeted his first customer with a heyhowareya.

  “If the coffee is fresh, I’ll take a cup.”

  “That pot has been burning all morning. I’ll brew a new one.”

  Sonny skimmed a newspaper as he waited for the bartender to return with a steaming mug and sidecar of cream. Preferring company to silence, Sonny asked his name and if he had any interesting stories. From his years in Bonnie’s Whiskey Room, Sonny appreciated a good yarn and wasn’t bad sharing a few himself. His personal favorite was sailing three hundred pounds of Jamaican ganja into the Florida Keys only to get spooked and dump it at the dock. A close second was the Bahamian prostitutes seeking sanctuary on his sailboat because a born-again governor ran them off the island. They had a high time partying together in international waters before the locals forced the governor to motor out and negotiate peace.

  For the next twenty minutes, he and the bartender took turns riffing, their voices rising with each exchange, until Sonny spotted Bielakowski through the tavern window limping across Cherry Street. His friend looked ten pounds lighter and fifteen years older.

  The bartender saw the shift in his guest’s face and asked if everything was okay.

  “No,” Sonny answered, “I’m a long damn day from being okay.”

  Sonny blamed the hip surgery and cursed the doctors who pushed and pushed and pushed until they split Bielakowski’s thigh, sawed off his femur, and installed the polished metal. He’d seen it with a few of his Florida buddies, men who emerged from surgical anesthesia as lesser versions of themselves, blurred images of an overdubbed video.

  From behind, a whisper interrupted Sonny’s internal rant. “I know,” said the voice. “I know.”

  The old bastard had him cold. Sonny tried clearing his face in the time it took to push back and shoot his cuffs. Off the stool, he turned and faced his friend. “Well, Peter Pan you ain’t.”

  The speed of Bielakowski’s feigned punches caught Sonny like a hiccup. The first was a right cross an inch from his button, followed by a left to his liver and an uppercut.

  “Fuck that leprechaun,” said Bielakowski.

  Sonny was liberated by the two-second sequence, a déjà vu moment that had him recalling his friend’s close-quarter skill set. In their youth, Sonny begged him to take a sanctioned fight. The sausage maker’s response was always the same. Between the family, the business, and the family business, he didn’t have time for slap fights in shorts.

  In the unique silence of an empty bar, the men hugged and exchanged a few pats on the back, newer physical expressions of their evolving relationship. Fifty years of rarely touching changed in the spring of ’93 after Bielakowski’s daughter died from ovarian cancer. Sonny arrived at the viewing, and before his overcoat was off, the grieving father pulled him in for an embrace reserved for wars and funerals.

  Sonny dropped a twenty on the bar for the coffee and five hundred for privacy. Down a hallway and past the toilet was a back room with a few tables pushed against a high-back wooden bench. Mollie Ollie’s specialty was hand-dipped beef, so each table came stocked with napkins, spicy brown mustard, and homemade horseradish. A corner fan oscillated air over paneled walls decorated with Bednarik and Frazier photos.

  Without comment, Sonny took the bench and gave his friend the more forgiving chair.

  Bielakowski sat down and transferred all the condiments to an adjacent table. He wore the same brown pants as the previous day along with a clean pale-yellow button-down shirt. The front pocket contained two pens, a notebook, and a fresh roll of antacids.

  Sonny started. “You still lighting candles at St. Adalbert’s?”

  “Two this morning.”

  “One for each of us, just like old times.”

  “No, both for you. My wife has me covered.”

  Sonny smiled at the irony of Anton Bielakowski praying for his soul. Either one of them making it to heaven proved the system was rigged. “How did last year work out?”

  Bielakowski shrugged. “Good enough that I’ve come back to the well.”

  Truth was, 1996’s ideas were some of the best yet. With the overheated stock market and emergence of online trading, Sonny saw an opportunity for modernizing the pump-and-dump stock scam. Dozens of boiler rooms were already hip to pushing prices with phone campaigns, but Sonny—after studying the technicalities and flow of information—believed two nerds with AOL accounts could do ten times more hype on electronic message boards than any team of smooth-talking Long Islanders. He also saw that with computers instead of phones, cleanup was easier, the circle of accomplices fewer, and multiple campaigns could be created and disassembled independent of one another.

  “I hope you made money on the stocks while the sun was high,” said Sonny, rubbing a smudge off the table. “And that you’re ready to move on to other opportunities.”

  Sonny and Bielakowski worked well together because both men honored risk’s relationship to time. All the best rackets soured sooner than most participants were willing to admit. Victims squawked to the patrol cops who talked with detectives who chatted with assistant district attorneys. Promises were made to seek justice, oaths taken for revenge. Most criminals ignored the rising danger because money was like vapor rub beneath their noses. Adrenaline and greed pushed them to seek more and more, stuffing their pockets while grand juries were impaneled and indictments drafted. For Sonny and Bielakowski, first in, first out, and leave the scraps. Their results were difficult to argue with.

  As Sonny started in on his presentation, Bielakowski raised a hand, coughed hard, and shouted for the bartender. Saying he needed to settle his throat, he ordered vodka and a second for Sonny. They sat in silence until the bartender returned with two glasses on a serving tray.

  Finishing first, Bielakowski gave a contented sigh. “I will have another when we’ve finished. Vodka makes me strong,” he said, staring into his glass. “Go ahead with the business. I always look forward to hearing what you have.”

  Sonny cleared his throat a second time, crossed his legs to the outside of the table, and picked a piece of lint off his tailored trousers. “You still own any fighters?”

  “I’ve got two guys in the ring this week at the Blue Horizon.”

  Sonny knew the phrasing was his friend’s way of saying he’d fixed a match. “While boxing has been good to you, its time has passed. Numbers have declined since Tyson crapped out and the networks dropped their weekly cards. Sure, there’s still money in that game, but it’s all bunched at the top.”

  “Beats owning a horse.”

  “The next big thing is coming out of Japan. It’s called mixed marti
al arts. Think of Bruce Lee fighting a wrestler, or a street fight with three-ounce gloves and kung fu kicking. Lots of blood, terrific action.”

  “Sounds barbaric, like a cockfight. There’s going to be problems getting that sanctioned. State athletic commissions will resist.”

  Sonny didn’t flinch at the challenge. He’d spent twelve months vetting his pitches and was confident they could withstand the scrutiny. “You have the people who can overcome those obstacles. Yeah, maybe the bigger boxing promoters will work the back channels, but they’ll eventually see the light. You want in before that happens.”

  Bielakowski enjoyed his partner’s theatrics and was impressed by his due diligence. No one delivered moneymakers like Sonny Bonhardt. “This explains the postcard from Tokyo.”

  Sonny nodded. “I saw two events over there. Forty thousand screaming Japanese, and half were women. Each paid fifty bucks, the fights were on pay-per-view, and everything for the next six months was sold out. What I’m proposing is you front-run a U.S.-based promotional team. Bring that fighting here by creating your own version of Don King for mixed martial arts. You’ll print money and have the perfect outlet with the vendors for laundering other proceeds.”

  While Bielakowski wasn’t taken with undermining boxing, the laundry angle had appeal. He was drowning in cash, and there were never enough soap-and-water mechanisms for cleaning it all. “They’re not like us, you know, those Japanese. It’s a warrior culture with all that ninja and samurai business. How do you know that type of fighting will translate here? Maybe Americans will thumb their noses, like with soccer.”

  “Because,” Sonny said, leaning forward to make the point, “half those fighters in Japan are Americans. These are guys who aren’t good enough to make it in the boxing ring. Maybe they played football, or wrestled in school, or grew up idolizing Chuck Norris. The point is they love fighting, and the Japanese treat them like rock stars. Our guys are going there and Brazil because they don’t have the opportunity here yet.”

  Bielakowski had owned fighters since the fifties and knew boxing was in a full dive. The reason wasn’t that Americans had grown soft. Anyone with a cable subscription or VCR could see that the public’s bloodlust had grown beyond what the sweet science provided. A combat sport allowing knees and elbows might be enough. “This I like,” he said, pointing at Sonny like a teacher praising a student. “The business is good. And the laundering puts it over the top. Big shows will have enough moving parts to mask my money.”