by Ace Atkins
A hostess walked us to a table in the back corner, where we found Rick Weinberg and a woman he quickly introduced as his wife, Rachel. Rachel Weinberg stayed seated and shook my hand. I introduced Susan. Rick smiled broadly and kissed her hand. He waved for the waiter, and drinks were ordered and served. We studied the menu and waited. Just old pals getting together for some laughs. I really hoped he didn’t start by calling me Spense.
“So, Spense,” Weinberg said after a few moments. He folded his menu and passed it to his wife. “That stuff, you know, with those hoods, I want you to know that wasn’t my idea. Someone working for me got a little carried away. It won’t happen again.”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s bullshit. I know guys like you. I grew up in Philly. If someone pulled crap like that in the neighborhood, on a friend of mine, someone would get hurt. Am I right? Or am I right?”
“Is there a third option?”
“I just want you to know you don’t have to keep busting my nuts,” he said. “Okay?”
Susan leaned in. She took a careful sip of white wine. “And why would you want to deprive him of the pleasure?”
Weinberg laughed, a little too much for my taste. His teeth were bone white and massive. His hair was the darkest shade of ink, and the hairline showed strong evidence of plugs. I smiled at him. He smiled back. His wife looked unconcerned with our discussion, continuing to study her menu and then looking up, as if just realizing where she was, and said, “What the fuck? We’re in Boston, I’ll have the lobster.”
Rachel Weinberg played with a strand of big chunky pearls that choked her neck. She had dark eyes and dark skin but very blond hair. She wore a lot of makeup and jewelry, and had bright red nails. As soon as she set down her reading glasses, she turned to Weinberg, who was still talking, and said, “Cool it, Rick. Let them eat first. Then lay on the bullshit.”
I liked her.
“How about a steak, Spense?” Weinberg asked.
Susan gripped my knee under the table.
“You bet, Ricky,” I said.
I took a sip of Blanton’s over ice. Susan continued micro-sips of the wine. The Weinbergs both drank gin martinis. We had not been seated five minutes when the other guests arrived. A second table was adjoined to ours and then a third. And a fourth. There were more cocktails and conversation and introductions. Susan smiled and dazzled as if we did this every night of the week. I shook hands, meeting a city councilman, a character actor who played toughs in a few Ben Affleck movies, a couple local CEO types, and finally Tony Bennett. Bennett did not stay; he only came over to say hello with Ron Della Chiesa, a local jazz disc jockey I much admired.
Tony gave Susan an appraising smile. He looked at me and said, “How ya doin’.” He hugged Weinberg and shook his hand warmly. He left in a wake of murmurs and pointing.
We all sat back down. Two waiters brought out the wine. I switched to beer, an Anchor Steam brought out with a frosted mug.
“Did I just hallucinate that?” I said.
“Yes,” Susan said. “You did.”
Susan started into small talk with the woman next to her in a way that a cat will play with a cornered mouse. The woman was dressed in a very sparkly silver dress that gave maximum exposure to surgically enhanced breasts. She was very tan and very fit. We learned that she had just returned from a week at an exclusive Caribbean resort to find she had missed recording two of her favorite reality shows. She owned a pampered bichon frise named Snowball. Her mate was an avid golfer. He also sported a Patriots Super Bowl ring.
“What position did you play?” I said. Susan tried to cover a quick laugh with a sip of wine.
“I’m friends with people in the organization,” the CEO said. “I travel with the team and often discuss strategies.”
“Tom Brady must take a lot of notes,” I said. “I guess you played in college?”
The corpulent man with a florid face shook his head. “I had a trick knee.”
“Ah,” I said.
Appetizers arrived before any further discussion with Weinberg, who sat at the head of the table and whose laughter echoed through the dining room. Lewis Blanchard sat in a booth toward the kitchen. The big man drank ice water and talked with the two toughs I had met earlier in the day. I nodded to him. He nodded back. I thought about ushering him over to see the CEO’s Super Bowl ring. But by then most of the conversation had turned to the Actor. Weinberg stoked his performance, throwing back his head, teeth gleaming with laughter. The Actor told us all about a real tough he’d met while filming a movie. The tough was a guy I knew who had been convicted of accessory in multiple murders.
I never found much about him funny.
The waiter brought another beer. Dinner was served.
The CEO sent back his steak twice. He looked at me while waiting for his food to be cooked to perfection. It was one of those drunken, one-eyed stares of slow realization. “So what do you do?” he said.
“To whom?” I said.
Susan laughed again. Actually more of a snort. Only Susan could snort with such elegance. She was having a ball with the guests.
“What do you do for work,” he said, raising his voice. “You know, for a living? What’s your profession?” The conversation around us hushed a bit.
“I sell women’s shoes at the mall at Quincy.”
He shook his head, annoyed with the response, and swilled more scotch, never taking his bloodshot eyes off me. He pulled a paw around his well-endowed wife and gave a self-satisfied grin. It was not until dessert, when one trophy wife staggered to the john and the Super Bowl CEO abruptly left, that conversation resumed with the Weinbergs. The Actor had amassed a nice following at the other side of the table. The waiter had returned with a small brush and pail to remove crumbs.
“Would you like some brandy with your coffee?” Weinberg said.
I did. Susan was fine with a splash of Riesling.
Rachel Weinberg scooted up her chair and took a bite of cheesecake. “Rick, where do you find these fucking people?” she said. “Madame Tussauds?”
“Business,” Weinberg said. I noted he was on only his second glass of wine. He sipped slower than Susan.
“Okay,” Rachel said. She motioned to me with her wineglass. “Now, you want to explain why you’ve been busting my husband’s balls?”
I waited for the brandy before I explained.
23
I DRANK BRANDY while Susan and Weinberg debated the ethics of gambling. The brandy was very good. The debate was a little heated. Rachel Weinberg and I followed, heads on swivel, and would occasionally interject some pithy comment. Some of mine were clever. But for the most part this was the Susan-and-Rick show. The Harvard shrink versus the Las Vegas billionaire. Weinberg did not stand a chance.
“What I offer is entertainment,” Weinberg said. His voice low and gravelly, his hands clasped in front of him. Earnest. “It’s about the experience. The fun. I don’t just do slot machines and craps.”
“But isn’t that how you make most of your money?”
“Not true,” Weinberg said. He picked up a wineglass and twirled it. “Most of our profits come from the hotels. The shows. It’s pizzazz and glitter.”
“But gambling is central,” Susan said.
“It’s part of the experience.”
“I’ve had several patients who say it is the only experience,” Susan said. “Not many leave your hotels winners.”
“Don’t you win if you have a good time?”
“Some might call that hyperbole,” Susan said. She smiled the smile that could disarm North Korea.
“And you?”
“I’m mainly curious about your take on what you do.”
“We try and discourage those kinds of people,” Weinberg said. “That’s not the clientele we want.”
“Ah.” Su
san leaned in and opened her brown eyes wide. “And you are not concerned about those who say crime and vice will feed off the neighborhood? When it’s public what you want, you’ll be faced with countless studies of increased prostitution and drug use.”
“I’ve been running casinos my whole adult life,” Weinberg said. “A little wind doesn’t scare me.”
“Boston is not Las Vegas,” she said.
Weinberg smiled and contemplated what Susan said while she sipped some wine. Rachel Weinberg cleared her throat and asked me why I thought the Sox were so goddamn lousy this year. She wore a pair of diamond earrings as big as fists.
I shrugged. “It keeps a long and storied tradition going.”
“Revere is a working-class town,” Susan said.
“So is Vegas.”
I smiled at Rachel. She rolled her eyes at me.
“I don’t mean to be judgmental,” Susan said. “Just a pragmatist, based on experience with addicts.”
Weinberg nodded. He grinned and spoke low enough to give careful emphasis to his words. “But you know how many jobs I’d bring to that town? Doesn’t that offset the losers? You know what this project will do to revitalize the beach? The customer we target isn’t from Boston. We don’t want local. We want the high roller. We want jobs and infrastructure. We want to bring back the original Wonderland.”
“I hate to break it to you, but it was never much of a pleasure palace,” I said. “Although I do have a soft spot for a hound named Momma’s Boy. Came in six-to-one on a twenty-buck bet. Kept me bucks up that week.”
“I can’t stop you from leaking my plans,” Weinberg said. He turned to me and finished his long-suffering glass of wine. “I don’t blame you for being upset about some extremely unprofessional behavior by my employees.”
“I’d use a much stronger term,” I said.
“I can promise you I will deal with it,” Weinberg said. “I can also promise you I will make a more-than-fair deal with your people. You open up Pandora’s box with other developers and this thing will go tits up. I have to own that parcel to present a complete plan to the state board. You fuck me, and you will fuck your clients.”
“Now, that’s a motto,” Susan said.
“He’s not kidding,” Rachel Weinberg said. “Can you get us a private meeting with the condo board? Let Rick do his shtick and see what they decide. You still want to go to the Globe and lay it out, go for it. But that’s bad business.”
“Bad business is sending leg breakers to harass residents and the people who protect them.”
“Agreed,” he said. “That’s not my style. Mr. Blanchard is conducting an internal investigation of how that happened.”
“I’d be glad to explain it to him.”
“What can I offer you?” Weinberg said.
“I want what’s best for my client,” I said.
Susan smiled at me. I think she was having a great time.
“Okay, then,” Weinberg said. There was much laughter at the end of the table. The Actor separated his hands by a foot and announced, “Like a fucking horse.” Laughter echoed throughout the dining room. Weinberg rolled his eyes and turned back. He looked appraisingly at me and Susan. He jabbed a thumb at me and said, “What’s a nice Jewish shrink doing with a goy with a twenty-inch neck?”
“Actually, it’s only nineteen and a half,” I said.
“Would you believe he recites poetry?” Susan said. “He even appreciates art without prodding.”
“No kidding,” Weinberg said. “Seriously. What about real art? You like Picasso?”
“I prefer my guitars without noses.”
“I just bought this fucking portrait Picasso did of his lover during the war,” Weinberg said. He stated it as if he’d just returned from a Labor Day sale at Sears. “It’s big and nuts. I’m going to design an entire casino around its colors. The shapes and energy of it reach out at you. I saved it, really. The asshole who owned it before put his fucking elbow through it. Can you believe that?”
“He likes to put art in the casinos,” Rachel said. “We both think art is meant to be seen by the masses. Why put art in a stuffy museum? Let everyone experience it in an amazing setting.”
“What was that broad’s name?” Weinberg said.
“Who?” Rachel said.
“Picasso’s mistress. The woman in the painting.”
“Dora Maar.”
“Yeah, Dora Maar. He ended up leaving her because she reminded him of World War Two. Crazy. It’s just called Woman Seated in a Chair,” Weinberg said. He smiled very big. “But it’s a knockout. I collect all that shit. Miró, Basquiat, Soutine. But Picasso. Picasso is my man. I could have bought a jumbo jet for what I paid for it. But you know what? There are a lot of jumbo jets. Only one Woman Seated in a Chair.”
I smiled at Susan.
“Plans call for an art wing at Wonderland,” Rachel said.
“So there’s already a blueprint?” Susan said. “That’s confidence.”
“I’ve seen this place in my head before the gambling law was passed,” he said. “What you remember as a dog track, I think of as the original Wonderland. The place that inspired Walt Disney. One of the first amusement parks in this country.”
“I remember some crummy rides during the summer at the beach,” I said. “And a peep show with a woman named Boom Boom Beatrice.”
“This was at the turn of the century,” Weinberg said. “It sat right where the dog track was built during the Depression. That’s how the track got the name. Last year I started collecting all this shit from the original amusement park. I had my designers try to match the décor. It was all Art Nouveau, just gorgeous. This was in 1907, ’08. Everything was constructed to match the drawings from the Alice book. The original engravings by Tenniel. Amazing. You must have felt like you were really going down the rabbit hole with these rides. Mushrooms bigger than cars. Disappearing cats with only the eyes. Rooms that would grow smaller and smaller as you walked into them. It was all like some crazy kind of dream.”
“That sounds like Revere,” Susan said. “A crazy dream.”
“I even want the cocktail waitresses to be blond and dress like Alice. Only sexy. You know? We’ll get chicks in bunny suits running through the casino every hour or so, holding on to a pocket watch like they got to take a piss.”
“Performance art,” I said.
“I know you two are being smart,” Weinberg said. “But I happen to like smartasses. You’ll see what I mean if I can present this all to the board. I can wrap in some incentives for them if we get the license.”
“I would have thought that had been decided,” Susan said.
“We have other problems,” Weinberg said.
The waiter walked over and dropped off a variety of desserts on white linen. Lemon sorbet. Cheesecake. Crème brûlée. Some type of chocolate mousse within a chocolate cake.
“It’s like falling into another world,” Weinberg said, stabbing at the chocolate cake. “You can leave all the outside-world shit and baggage and fall down the rabbit hole.”
“With Alice the waitress,” I said.
“Server,” Rachel Weinberg corrected. “Cocktail waitresses are tacky.”
Susan grinned, took a single bite of the crème brûlée, and passed it to me. Susan had an iron will. I, on the other hand, had a large neck.
“I can’t promise anything,” I said.
Weinberg slapped me on the shoulder. He grinned and winked at his wife. She ignored him and tried a bit of the lemon sorbet. Most of her brandy remained in her glass. The waiter swept away my empty glass.
“‘If everybody minded their own business,’” I said, “‘the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.’”
“Who said that?” Weinberg said.
“A powerful woman.”
“Hmm,” Weinbe
rg said. He tossed an AmEx Black card on the table. “Smart broad.”
Rachel smiled at her husband. Susan gave me a wicked grin. “‘Curiouser and curiouser.’”
24
“SO YOU NEGOTIATED a peaceful and profitable resolution for the Ocean View residents?” Susan said.
“Z won’t like it,” I said. “Nor will it make sense to him.”
“But it makes sense to you.”
“It works best for Henry,” I said, shrugging. “Z has to learn that the physical aspect of the job is separate.”
“That kind of beating would be hard not to take personally.”
“You don’t negotiate with the hired help.”
“And aren’t you the hired help?” Susan said.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “Just a simple interloper. Now that my work is done, I’ll ride off into the sunset.”
“Where’s the horse?”
“Parked on level three.”
Susan smiled, leaned in, and kissed me. We stood together for a long while outside security at Logan. People milled and swayed around us like a current. I had already handed over all three of Susan’s suitcases at ticketing. And had tipped extra for hernias.
“You really think Weinberg will keep his word?” I said.
“I would be surprised if he went back on what he said,” she said. “Might bruise his sense of ethics. However warped they might be.”
“I think he’s lying about not knowing about the sluggers.”
“Cynic.”
“You?”
She shrugged. “It’s possible for employees in a large company to make decisions without the boss.”
“Henry can decide what he wants to do,” I said. “If the money is as good as I think, he’s won the fight.”
“Just promise me that we never have to dine with that freak show again.”
“Promise,” I said. “Two weeks?”
“Two weeks.”
“And what am I to do with myself for two weeks?”