by John McEvoy
“Since when do you know so much about blackjack?” Lucarelli said.
“I been reading some books about it. Playing it on the internet at my cousin’s house. No shit, man, I’ve got some good angles to play. Let me handle it.”
The first dealer they faced was a young Asian woman, Korean maybe, perhaps Vietnamese, who zipped the cards in a brown handed blur across the green baize. Shannon took a half step back from the table before again leaning his hands on its rim. He shook his head, as if he’d just taken a good punch. Concentrated.
Shannon was to the dealer’s immediate left, the “first base” position, and had to lead the betting. The dealer prodded him into action, forcing him to play much faster than he wanted. Uncomfortable, struggling to keep up, Shannon hit seventeen one time, eighteen another, stayed on fourteen twice, double downed on sixes, playing $40, then $50 and $100 a hand, all the while working his way through a succession of Courvosiers and a huge chunk of his bankroll.
He keeps smiling that stupid smile, like he knows what he’s doing, Lucarelli thought, frowning at his buddy through a haze of cigar smoke. Lucarelli stood back occasionally, walking over to observe the action at other tables, then returning to find Shannon’s initial buy-in mounds of chips almost all gone. Then Shannon shoved another wad of their cash forward, buying replacements. After nearly three hours of this, the Asian woman having been succeeded by a young black man, then a middle aged white woman dealer, “every goddam one of them throwing me shit cards,” according to Shannon, the bankroll had dwindled by nearly $27,000.
There was a commotion at one of the crowded wheels in the nearby roulette area. Several young men were whooping and high fiving each other, evidently having hit a number or numbers in a big way. “About fucking time,” one of them shouted. Another, a tall guy in a Yale sweatshirt who looked like he’d been drinking heavily for hours, dropped his empty beer bottle on the carpet and lurched toward the tray of a passing waitress. He bumped her arm hard. The tray and its glasses went airborne. More laughter from his group. Furious, the waitress turned on the tall man, but a casino manager grabbed her elbow and led her away, talking earnestly. The waitress listened, then hurried to the bar, got a Beck’s, and brought it back to the lout who’d caused the accident. He grinned as he grabbed the bottle out of her hand.
A casually dressed, white-haired gambler standing next to Lucarelli said, “Those punks are having somebody’s bachelor party here. Ever since last night they’ve been throwing money around like they were printing it. I guess management is going to keep them going in that direction as long as possible.” He shook his head, smiling. “What a racket this is,” he said. “Unfortunately, I love it.” He turned back to the $5 slot machine he’d been playing with limited success for the last five hours.
Shannon was semi-drunk by now, not giving a damn about his losing streak, when Lucarelli tugged him off his stool and walked him away from the blackjack table. “Hey, it’s only money, man,” Danny said, words slurred. “We got plenty of that.”
“Shut up,” Lucarelli snarled. He walked Shannon into the casino’s Village Square Buffet, advertised as “All you can eat…food stations that take you around the globe…China Town, Little Italy, Home Cooking.” Lucarelli ate voraciously. Shannon said he wasn’t hungry. Later, they walked outside the casino and sat on a bench overlooking a parking lot that, at almost 4:30 a.m., contained more than a thousand cars, their hopeful owners inside butting their heads and their bankrolls against an opponent that kicked ninety percent of them in the pocketbook each night. A cool breeze drifted over the marina. Lucarelli checked to see if the Saturn was where he’d parked it, with nearly $100,000 still in the trunk.
Lucarelli reached into his jacket for another of the $25 cigars they’d purchased from the sexy coat check girl at the steak house in Chicago. He said, “This ain’t the place for us right now. Plus, I’m beat.”
Shannon reared up. “I’m not going fucking home,” he said. “Not with all the money we got. Not tonight. No way.”
The statement seemed to exhaust him and he slumped back down onto the bench. Lucarelli said, “We’ll get a room over in the hotel. We’ll get some sleep. Have another crack at ’em later today.”
Lucarelli watched a pay-per-view pro wrestling program in their hotel room, “$59 per night.” Shannon slept on one of the double beds, his snores nearly rattling the frames of the generic prints on the walls. Finally, Lucarelli did a hundred push ups and sit ups and lay down on top of the coverlet of the other bed. He was antsy and had a hard time drifting off, which was very unusual for him. He thought about going down to the Taurus and bringing the satchel up to the room. He’d meant to do that, but forgot. He fell asleep instead.
***
Sunlight slapped them square in the face when they walked out of the hotel just after noon. Lucarelli opened the trunk. The money was all there. “Okay,” he said, “now we can go back and get some breakfast. Or lunch.” He stretched, feeling good, and gave Shannon a playful punch on the shoulder. Shannon, still bleary eyed, appeared not to notice.
They switched to the slots when they went back into the Horseshoe, both playing now, starting with the $25 machines. “I got a system for this, too,” Shannon had announced, and early in the afternoon he hit two $500 jackpots within minutes of each other. They high fived each other and a couple of cocktail waitresses. Lucarelli, not drinking but taking several crystal meth hits as the day wore on, left to shoot craps.
He blew more than $28,000 in ninety minutes. That called for another trip to the Taurus trunk. Aiden took out a bundle of bills for Shannon, too, who was now playing the two-coin $25 slot, making plays every five seconds. At 1:47 p.m., a woman next to Shannon hit a five grand jackpot. Shannon cursed her, his bad luck, and resumed his frantic play. When he staggered from his seat at a quarter to four, he’d dropped another $45,000. Denny found Aiden at a nearby bar, drinking rum and Coke. The pile of swizzle sticks in front of him indicated he’d been knocking them back at a good pace. Shannon said, “The hell with this dump. Let’s go over to Trump’s.”
Four hours in Trump’s Lake Michigan Casino, interrupted only by a hurried lunch in the Top Deck Deli, served to empty out the satchel that had once sat, full, in the Taurus’ trunk. Near the end, down to their last few thousand, both Shannon and Lucarelli attacked the $100 slots, then, finally, the $500 machine, assuring each other, “We’re bound to hit one soon.”
“This place sucks,” Lucarelli said, thumb pointed back over his shoulder at the giant river boat in the Taurus’ rear view mirror. The late afternoon sun was in his eyes as he drove back to Chicago. He reached for his sun glasses before remembering he’d put them down on a shelf in the men’s room when he’d snuck in for his last meth hit. “They can sink fucking Trump and his fucking boat, too, far as I’m concerned.”
Looking as depressed as he felt, Shannon slumped in his seat, head back, eyes closed. “I was figuring we wouldn’t have to work for at least a year. I was going to call Boots (Robert “Boots” Lee, the foreman of their Bonadio Construction Company crew) and tell him to shove the fucking job. Good thing I didn’t,” he sighed.
Lucarelli reached into the glove compartment for the only cigar left. He gave Shannon a withering look. “You and your fuckin’ gambling systems.”
Shannon, eyes closed, muttered, “What a couple of losers we are.”
Lucarelli swung his fist against Shannon’s left arm. His eyes were wild. He nearly sideswiped a dilapidated looking landscaper’s truck, its back filled with tired looking Latino laborers. “Don’t you ever fuckin’ say that,” he screamed at Shannon. “Not fuckin’ ever. We’re not fuckin’ losers.”
Shannon sat up in his seat, eyes wide open, startled by his friend’s fury. “Yeah, okay, Aiden,” he said. “I got it.”
The two sat silently until, back in the neighborhood, Lucarelli pulled into the parking lot of Haller’s Pub. “We’ve got enough drinking money left for a week,” he said. “L
et’s get to using it. I’ll call Riley tomorrow. Maybe he’s got something else for us.”
Chapter 14
Riley had really reamed them out. Lucarelli and Shannon rode the elevator down from his law office in silence. Shannon was about to say something before the doors opened to the lobby. But one look at his buddy, and he knew better. He knew Aiden was furious, a condition that, in Denny’s experience, did not bode well for anyone.
A heavy Loop haze, the combination of early evening heat and the residue of day-long pollution-spewing auto traffic, hung over south LaSalle Street. Pedestrians immediately began to sweat as they hurried away from their air-conditioned work places. Shannon’s forehead was gleaming before they’d walked the two blocks to where Lucarelli had parked his car, in a loading zone around the corner on Van Buren, directly across the street from a private lot that charged $12 an hour. There was a $100 parking ticket under the windshield wiper on the driver’s side. Lucarelli yanked it off and ripped it apart before unlocking his door.
Inside, motor going, air-conditioner laboring, Lucarelli sat for several minutes, staring straight ahead. He could still hear that fuckin’ Riley, his doughy face red with anger, lecturing them. They were in Riley’s small office in one of the older, more casually maintained LaSalle Street office buildings. The view out of the dust streaked window was of the gritty, gray brick building just across the air shaft next door. “I don’t give a damn that you blew all that racetrack money you stole,” Riley had said, pacing back and forth in the small room. “Any garden variety idiots could have done that. But it takes a special brand of idiot to do it so quickly, and in one weekend, at just two casinos in the same area.”
He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. He said, “You’d think somebody might notice a couple of guys who were dropping nearly a hundred thirty grand in less time than it’d take you to drive to Florida. Honest to God, boys, what were you thinking?”
They sat there, silent. Finally, Aiden asked, “How do you know this?”
Riley said, “My brother-in-law Marty is a shift manager at the Trump. You two were pointed out to him as first division losers. They’ll probably send a limo for you the next time you want to go gambling there. Jesus,” Riley said, “a hundred thirty grand down the tubes so fast. You don’t have much respect for money, do you?”
Riley had sat down then, Lucarelli, his head down, watching out of the tops of his eyes, listening to the old leather chair creak as Riley plumped his fat ass onto it. Shannon had his head down too, sitting in a chair before the desk alongside Lucarelli, like bad boys in the principal’s office. Lucarelli looked up, sneering at the attorney, “Well, so what? It was our goddam money. At least it was at that point,” he’d added, laughing at his own cleverness, jabbing Shannon with his elbow.
“You still don’t get it, Aiden,” Riley barked. “The last thing you’d want to do after pulling off a job like Monee Park is get noticed. The way you get noticed? You throw money around in public places in a hurry. That’s how.” Riley shook his head. “You’re just damned lucky there was a bachelor party for some young, hot shot Chicago trader going on at those casinos last weekend. That group went from one boat to another and back, drinking, raising hell, losing their asses. One of those cocaine-fueled nitwits lost a quarter of a million dollars in three hours at a roulette table. These jerkos drew all the attention. You can be thankful for that.”
Riley’s lecture had continued for another ten minutes, Lucarelli really starting to steam as it went on. Finally, he leaned forward and banged his fist on Riley’s desk. “Can we move on to something else?” he snarled. “This ain’t working for me.”
Riley stifled a sharp retort. He said, “Do you get my point, boys?” They said yes. Riley didn’t offer to shake hands with them, and they didn’t reach for his. Walking to the office door Shannon kept his head down, like a chastised juvenile. Before closing the door behind them, Riley said, “We’ll work through this, lads. Remember the other times I’ve helped you out. I’ll be in touch.”
Exhausted from his confrontation with these two galoots, Riley sat down in his creaky chair. He took the Wild Turkey bottle out of the lower right hand drawer and didn’t cheat himself. Sighing, he reviewed that day’s depressing news, that Monee Park, despite being robbed, was not going to miss a night’s racing, having somehow come up with the badly needed money. He sighed again, knowing he’d have to reach out and call on the two cousins another time in the near future. Unfortunately, they were the best he had to work with. Their predecessors, a half-dozen or so Canaryville punks, had unfortunately fallen within the grasp of the justice system.
***
Still sitting on Van Buren in the Taurus, Lucarelli bitterly quoted the attorney. “Remember the other times I’ve helped you.’ Big fuckin’ deal. It wasn’t just Art the Fart’s efforts got us off.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t forget Canaryville Amnesia,” Aiden said, starting to feel a little better, especially when he heard Denny laugh and say, “You’re right about that, man.”
It wasn’t getting any cooler in the Taurus. Lucarelli was about to pull out into traffic when he looked in the side view mirror and stopped. One of Chicago’s mounted police officers was coming up on his left. The cop stopped and peered down from his horse at the scraps of parking ticket on the concrete. Lucarelli gave him a dirty look, aiming another one at the horse. Horse and rider continued on their way. Lucarelli, smirking at Shannon, said, “Let’s go get a pop.” He put the car in motion. Shannon was relieved at the lowered level of tension now emanating from his volatile cousin. “Go for it, man,” he said.
Lucarelli at first drove east on Van Buren. Then he said, “I don’t feel like Rush Street tonight.” He turned right on Wells.
They left the Taurus in an unattended, self-pay parking lot on South Dearborn and entered Mackie’s, a long established saloon featuring great hamburgers and, since the gentrification of the old loft buildings in the South Loop area, a popular place for young professionals. This was a neighborhood that years before had seen Hollywood movie stars stop between trains at the Dearborn Street Station and be photographed for the Chicago newspapers. That impressive old structure today was an indoor mall, surrounded by recently developed condo buildings.
“I was here for my cousin Lily’s birthday party last month,” Aiden said to Shannon as they walked in. “She lives around here.” Shannon, dressed like Aiden in jeans and work shirt, looked around uneasily. “Not our type in here, Aiden,” he said. Aiden paid no attention to him. He muscled his way through the crowd to the bar and told the bartender “Jack Daniel’s shots, a couple of taps back.” Chris, an Art Institute student who’d only recently taken up bartending at nights, said, “What should be back?” He looked so puzzled that Aiden had to laugh. “Taps,” Aiden said. “Tap beer. Beer on tap. Draft beer,” he explained, grinning, but still kind of pissed that this yoyo acted like he was hearing a fuckin’ foreign language. “Pull a couple of beers and put them behind the shots. My man,” he added, jabbing Shannon in the side.
They had four quick rounds, Aiden working some of the few remaining Monee Park twenties out of his back pocket. Half an hour into it, Aiden offered to buy a round for the party of six to their right, two guys and three decent looking girls, one outstanding one. The men hesitated. But Aiden gave them one of his looks, suggesting they’d be better off goddam well accepting his generous offer, and they did. The outstanding looking girl at the end lit a cigarette. Aiden could see her eyeing him in the long mirror behind the bar. She was tall and tanned with a body she wasn’t shy about displaying, tank top and shorts, like she’d just come from tennis on a nearby Grant Park court. Aiden figured his head probably came up no farther than her clavicle, a spot both lower and higher than from where he wouldn’t mind starting on her. He flexed his forearm as he reached for his beer, muscles jumping underneath his snake tattoo. She didn’t appear to notice.
While Chris worked up a
nother round for the two of them, one of the guys they bought now buying for them, Aiden patted his jeans jacket pocket. He said to Denny, “You want a little bump?” Denny, eyes semi-glazed, said, “No, man, I’m already flying along here. I’ve got to order some food. You want a burger?”
Aiden didn’t reply. He was in motion now, brushing past these stuck up yuppies on his way to the washroom, fondling his stash of meth. Into one of the men’s room stalls, out with the pocket mirror, laying the precious powder onto the glass. A careful inhale. Magic time! The click hit him before he’d even finished washing his hands. He looked at the “Employees Must Wash Hands” sign. “No shit they should,” he said, feeling frisky now. Suddenly he lashed out at the towel machine with his right hand, putting a pretty good dent in the metal. He was rolling now. He yanked the washroom door open so violently it nearly left its hinges.
Denny was talking to some guy about the White Sox current pitching woes when Aiden returned to the bar. He sidled over next to the outstanding looking chick. She was smoking another cigarette. He said, “Want a drink?” She didn’t turn, didn’t respond, didn’t even look at him out of the corner of her eye. For a second he wondered if maybe she was deaf. Then she turned to the girl next to her and said something in a low, cool voice that Aiden couldn’t hear. They both laughed.
He could feel his face burning when the young woman turned back to look at him in the mirror back of the bar, a faint smile on her lips. She still didn’t say anything. Aiden snatched the Virginia Slim out of her hand and plunged it into her half-filled cranberry martini glass. It made a hissing noise. She looked at him in astonishment. “Should learn to answer when you’re talked to, bitch,” he said. A guy behind him said, “Hey, watch that talk.” Lucarelli shoved him aside as he grabbed Shannon’s arm with his other hand and headed for the door. “Let’s blow this fag joint,” he said loudly.
“I was having a good time in there, Aiden,” Shannon complained as they walked to the car. Lucarelli didn’t answer him. Approaching the Taurus, Lucarelli suddenly stopped. There was a figure on the ground next to the car’s left rear wheel. “What the hell?” Lucarelli said, running forward. “Get the fuck away from there,” he shouted.