Here it was Hallowe’en. She’d got the impression they’d go out — hadn’t he given her that impression? Go down Yonge Street maybe, see the outrageous people, she didn’t care so long as they did it together. She’d got herself into a great mood, joking with the girls at her branch, imagining the evening. And then he’d phoned and said he couldn’t see her, embarrassing her, making her feel presumptuous for having assumed they’d get together. He didn’t explain — Brian never explained — just said something had come up.
How humiliating! She hung up the phone and put on a brave face. She couldn’t tell the other girls at the branch what had happened, not after saying what fun she was going to have with Brian. No, she’d pretend they were going out just the same. Molony had made his own plans. He was back in the hole with Beck and Colizzi and feeling the iron weight of his deception. He slept poorly; his stomach had begun acting up; he had to do something.
He’d been to Las Vegas once before, putting up $1,500 front money in return for chips at the Stardust. The trip had sounded great — everything paid for — but turned into disaster. Not only did he lose $1,500 at blackjack, he lost $500 on the plane. It had been three years and he still recalled his despondency. But he needed a win in the worst way and Las Vegas held more promise than the racetrack.
First he needed working capital. Nick Beck was already over his supposed limit — no way Molony could tack on another advance. Besides, he wasn’t going to recoup $100,000 with a $20,000 win. He needed a new source of funds and recalled, some months earlier, having established a line of credit for Sun Crown Trading, a group of Italian businessmen intending to start an import-export operation. After setting up the credit, however, they had run into partnership problems and never bothered to take out a loan. The documentation and security, approved by Alex Osborne, were already in place.
Just before Hallowe’en, Molony had opened a loan account in Sun Crown’s name. He told the clerk in the discount department, “Sun Crown needs fifty thousand U.S.” She asked if it was to be credited to the current account. No, said Molony, they needed cash. The loan was the bank’s credit, the cash its debit. Just so long as everything balanced. On the loan card he indicated that all correspondence was to be referred to the manager of post 2 — himself.
Molony was unaware that any U.S. cash parcel of $50,000 or more had to have downtown approval. The tellers’ supervisor phoned Main Branch Treasury for the cash. She told Molony she had placed the order but that Main Branch Administration would be calling to get the manager’s approval.
God, no! He had to head off the call to Alex Osborne. He phoned Main Branch Administration himself.
“I don’t understand what’s going on. I’ve got a customer here who needs fifty thousand U.S. You’re telling me I can’t get it without approval? This is Bay and Richmond.”
“Those guys at Treasury, Jesus. All we do is phone the manager anyway. We’ve told them, if it’s a big branch, they don’t have to worry about approval.”
“Would you mind phoning them and looking after the paperwork? If you do need the manager’s approval I’ll have Alex Osborne call down.” A bluff: if approval were required, Molony would cancel the order.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get on it right away.”
Twice a week Brinks delivered cash and securities to Bay and Richmond. Molony envisioned a dozen things that could go wrong before the delivery. Nothing he could do but hope no further mention was made of the order. The wait was excruciating. He feared every phone call. Finally, on Friday afternoon, the tellers’ supervisor rang him.
“Brian, your cash is here.”
In ninth grade, at St. Michael’s College School, Brian Molony was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. In his awkward, left-handed script he printed: “1. Priest 2. Accountant 3. Store owner.” Partly it was emulation — the Woodcrofts next door, with two priests in the family, were held in high esteem. Partly it was a wish to please his parents — he had never made them happier than the day he brought home his prize, a crucifix, as top student in first grade at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Partly it was a deeply personal response to the majesty of the church. For two years he had attended St. Michael’s Choir School, where religious, voice, and musical instruction were part of the curriculum. He loved to sing at Massey Hall and at weddings and funerals, clad in red and black robes, just as he loved to throw hockey cards against the wall at recess. He considered himself privileged the year he served Mass at St. Michael’s Cathedral.
Yet even as he committed his aspirations to paper, they were changing. He couldn’t have said why. The process of disillusionment was a series of unpleasantries and letdowns rather than a conscious renunciation. The nun in eighth grade who tried to force him to switch his pen to his right hand. The monseigneur who, the day Brian arrived with a cut lip, told him to wash himself. Brian started downstairs. “Clean yourself here,” said the monseigneur, indicating the tap for holy water. How could he use holy water? “Go ahead, son, water’s water.” The day the other altar boy failed to show up and he had to give the Latin responses by himself. The congregation at St. Michael’s Cathedral was huge, and each time the priest uttered his amplified celebration and then fell silent, waiting for Brian to fill the monumental stillness with the response, everyone seemed to be sitting in judgement. With two you could fake it; when you were alone, it was obvious you didn’t know the Latin. Afterwards the monseigneur said, “You don’t have the responses down too well, do you?” He didn’t seem to care, though, and Brian was ceasing to care. The church, once a mysterious sanctuary, became a neutral presence, neither alluring nor repellent, like the smell of cooking fish when he got home from school on Fridays.
Having skipped a grade, Brian found himself one of the youngest in his ninth-grade class at St. Mike’s. The other boys were reaching puberty; he was immature, and getting acne. He won money in the lunch-hour card games, though, and usually won the hockey bets. His mother became concerned by the comments of his teachers: “Careless work habits.” “Improvement needed.” “Would like to see you on Parents Night.” The boy who had loved going to Mass was sneaking out to Harvey’s instead, eating french fries until it was time to go home. The boy who had stood atop his class got 44 in Mathematics, 51 in Geography, 46 in French. The boy who had read The Lives of the Saints each night in bed, eager to understand suffering and sacrifice, now studied the standard-bred entries.
At the store where kids from St. Mike’s went to smoke and hang out, Brian was one of the few boys the owner didn’t have to keep an eye on. Others pocketed gum, or candy, or drank three bottles of soda and paid for two. Brian nibbled chips, listened to race results, ate an ice-cream bar, bet the baseball game on the radio. When he left he said, “I owe you one-sixty,” and paid it. Yet one night at a neighbour’s he stole two hundred dollars, having run out of cash for the racetrack. His father strapped him and sent him off to repeat Grade 10 at boarding school.
Dr. Molony wished to discipline his son and remove him from the bad crowd he had evidently fallen in with; but he also wanted to give Brian the advantages he himself had enjoyed at private schools in Ireland and England. Regina Mundi had been established as a seminary; when it failed to attract sufficient numbers of aspiring priests it was turned into a boarding school. From a distance it resembled a modern, minimum-security prison, set off by itself on 138 flat acres outside London, a prosperous city of 250,000 a couple of hours west of Toronto. Many of the teachers were priests; the fostering of Christian values was central to the program. The atmosphere was intended, as the school’s brochure said, “to nurture a boy’s academic, social, physical, and spiritual growth.”
Soon after Brian arrived at Regina Mundi he met Doug Fox, a boy his own age from Sarnia. Brian’s acne flared terribly at times, making him self-conscious and a focus for the meanness of pubescent boys. They called him Lurch, after a ghoulish character on a TV show. Possessed of his father’s verbal gifts, Brian became adept at cloaking his insecurity in wit.
Doug, handsome and likeable, had embarked on adolescence with the same easy confidence he brought to the tennis court. He sympathized with Brian. They began spending time together, and before long they were friends.
Doug was social and outgoing; Brian was quiet and reserved. Doug started a rock band; Brian liked the Carpenters. Doug was a natural athlete; Brian was a dedicated plodder. Doug’s dark good looks made the girls giggle and whisper; Brian’s acne was the first thing they noticed. Doug asked to change roommates so that Brian could move in with him. Doug kept his side of the room spotless; Brian scattered clothes, newspapers, and junk-food wrappers all over.
Despite the surface differences, though, they had a good deal in common. Doug, too, had aspired as a boy to becoming a priest. He was bright, but Brian was brighter, and they were highly competitive. Doug studied diligently while Brian goofed around or went to the track. At the last minute Brian borrowed Doug’s notes, crammed, and aced the exam. They were always trying to outdo each other. Brian bet that Doug couldn’t drink a bottle of Listerine in three minutes. Doug chugged it, feigning enjoyment, ending with a dramatic belch. “Pay up, Molony.”
Doug knew about Brian’s fascination with the racetrack. He knew what happened to the $1,200 Brian earned one summer working fourteen-hour days on his father’s dairy farm. He knew why Brian went back to the farm and worked over the Christmas and Easter holidays. He knew Brian had a bookie in Toronto. Gambling just happened to be what Brian loved most, even if his parents disapproved. One night at dinner with Brian’s family Doug started to say something about the track, where he and Brian had spent the afternoon. Brian shot him a look that shut him up in mid-sentence. Later, Brian explained he’d written a bad cheque to the priest who ran the tuck shop at school. When he wrote a second cheque to cover it and that one bounced, too, Dr. Molony had had to make good the money. Best, said Brian, not to raise the subject of gambling at the house.
The boys at Regina Mundi often socialized with the girls at Mount St. Joseph’s, the Catholic girls’ school a few miles away. Doug started going out with a local girl, Trish Hilton. Usually they invited Brian along. Sometimes he went to the basketball game or the dance; more often they dropped him off at Western Raceway and, five hours later, picked him up. Brian’s idea of a perfect Saturday was to go to the track, have dinner by himself at Swiss Chalet, then see a movie. If he got cleaned out at the races, he ate a chocolate bar for dinner and watched TV. Doug, thinking Brian would have liked to date but was just too shy, tried to set him up with Trish’s friends. Great guy once you get to know him, Doug assured her, and Trish agreed. So did her parents, who came to see him as a model young man. Complicated, though, with a layer of cocky arrogance beneath his shy reserve, and a foundation of thoughtfulness beneath that. His glasses hid an air of fierce concentration. A bright, intense, decent kid, the sort who remembers to send a thank-you note after spending the weekend as a house guest.
Doug introduced him to his cousin, and Brian and Linda started going out. She liked the races, too, and they went as often as possible. Brian’s Irish ancestors had been involved in breeding for generations and his knowledge was extensive. He enjoyed passing on what he knew. Linda disliked the betting side of it, but she didn’t object to spending dates at the track. Then, out of the blue, she gave him a magazine article about Gamblers Anonymous. Brian pretended he wasn’t surprised and offended. He found a lesson in the incident — he shouldn’t have revealed so much of himself — and vowed not to make the same mistake again.
Brian went on to the University of Western Ontario. He dated a girl named Nicole, but she was attracted to Doug. Soon she and Doug were dating heavily. When they moved in together, Brian ended up spending most of his time at their place on Elias Street. It was only a couple of blocks from the track. He had been staying with an alcoholic couple — he didn’t want to waste gambling money on rent, and they charged him only seven dollars a week for a room. In third-year university Doug and Nicole announced their engagement. Doug’s brother was best man, Brian master of ceremonies. After graduation Doug went back to Sarnia and Brian joined the bank in Toronto. Sometimes Brian drove down for a visit, sometimes Doug came to Toronto. Brian took him to lunch at Hy’s, quietly pointing out the politicians and corporate heavyweights at nearby tables. Brian still handled their joint stock portfolio; they told each other how much they were making and talked about their investments. They remained best friends, but their lives were pulling them apart. When Brian phoned long distance one night to see if Doug could get away for a couple of days, Doug was enthusiastic. He was ready for a little R and R, and he hadn’t seen Brian in months. Las Vegas? With someone who loved gambling the way Brian did? You couldn’t ask for a better combination.
Molony hit a bad streak the moment he walked into the Marina. He shot craps through the desert night. At dawn he went around to the other casinos at the top of the Strip. Toward noon he had a run at the Tropicana but had to cash out to meet Doug’s plane. Red-eyed, sweat-stained, and unshaven, he went to the airport in the same clothes he’d worn down.
“Sir, good to see you.”
“Shouldn’t have got all dressed up to meet me.”
“Did you get the right plane? If it’s a fashion show you’re after, you should have gone to Paris.”
They had a lot of catching up to do. The friendship now had gaps that needed filling. Doug was doing well in the family hotel business, making good money and building his own house. He and Nicole had a little girl. Over dinner Brian brought him up to date on all the Molonys. Everyone was doing well. Sieg and Sheila were still running the farm in Milton. Maud — the housekeeper who had come from Ireland with Mrs. Molony — was looking after the monseigneur at a parish in Cheektowaga, New York. His parents were both fine, Brian said, or so they seemed. He didn’t see as much of them as he should have.
After a few drinks, Brian told Doug about something that had happened that morning. The way the casinos were laid out, it was a three-dollar fare from one to the next. Brian hated wasting money. He was hurrying along in the blistering heat when, outside the Dunes, he saw an elegant Oriental woman. Each time a man walked by, she approached him. She couldn’t have been a hooker. She was middle-aged and dressed in a silk blouse, black slacks, and black leather pumps. She wore a pearl necklace and delicate gold chains. Brian, intrigued, timed it so that he was within earshot when she intercepted a stooped man in a peaked cap. “Blowjob, ten dollar. You want good blowjob, mister?” Brian could hardly believe it. Something about the woman — her naked desperation — had upset him terribly. She had run out of money and was debasing herself to get back in action. Weird, he told Doug, shaking his head. It made no sense. What she’d been doing was so at odds with who she was.
That night they went to the Wayne Newton show. Afterwards, in the hotel room, Doug was putting away his things when he happened on a pile of deposit slips. They added up to more than $30,000. Doug was stunned, a bit scared. Stocks, pari-mutuel tickets, corner-store bookies were one thing. This was serious bucks. He took the slips into the bathroom and made Brian shut off the shower.
“Holy shit, Brian, have you lost all this money?”
Brian said he’d had wins, too, he was down a couple of thousand. Any luck and he’d be even in an hour. Doug wanted to know where he’d got so much money. Brian said a customer had loaned it to him. Doug wanted to know why he was playing for such high stakes. Brian said he was trying out a new system — a conservative system, low risk, but it required big bets. He was heading out now for an hour. Did Doug want to go with him? Doug looked at his watch and said no thanks. It was 3 a.m. and he needed his beauty sleep.
In the morning Doug awoke to find Brian’s bed had not been disturbed. Still at it, probably — Doug had never known anyone so fond of gambling. He showered and shaved and, when there was still no sign of Brian, began to feel anxious. What if he did owe money? What if his system had screwed up? Doug had heard stories about what happened to people who didn’t pay off. What if
Brian had run into trouble? Doug went downstairs to pick up the newspaper, and Brian walked into the lobby. Doug told him he’d started to worry — hadn’t Brian said he was going out for an hour? Brian shrugged and said he’d lost track of the time, you know what it’s like in these places.
Doug had breakfast while Brian took out his pen and scribbled on the sports page. Despite not having slept he was cheerful, and before long Doug was back in good spirits. They went around to all the casinos on the Strip. Doug had a drink while Brian tried his luck. He lost at one place after another. Finally, at the Aladdin, he got on a roll. He started playing with five-dollar chips, won, and moved up to twenty-fives. Before long he was playing with hundred-dollar blacks, four or five on the layout at a time. As he raked in chips he gave half to Doug, who stuffed them in his pockets.
“If I ask for them back,” said Brian, “don’t give them to me.”
Suddenly Brian was playing with five-hundred-dollar chips and Doug had $40,000 in his pockets. Doug was half thrilled, half petrified. In his jeans he had almost twice what he’d earned the previous year. It was a hefty down payment on a house, yet Brian treated it as if it were Monopoly money.
Brian started losing — you could feel the tide turn. Doug nudged him. Brian didn’t notice. Doug kicked his shin. Brian was oblivious. Doug kicked him again, hard.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Not yet.”
“Come on, Brian, fun’s over.”
“Hold on,” said Molony, his attention fixed on the layout.
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