by Beth Raymer
The Swedish, Bernard thought, make excellent meatballs.
None of the girls was actually Swedish, by the way. They were just trashy blond-haired girls from far Long Island. Not that it mattered. Across the room, Bernard watched as they giggled and did the hustle. Quick, quick, slow, slow, their hips swayed rhythmically inside their flare-legged jumpsuits. G.B. dropped Quaaludes into Bernard’s shirt pocket. It was at the height of the disco era—this was not the generic stuff. The pill kicked in and Bernard found the absence of compulsive thought soothing. Disco bulbs glowed red like meteorites sailing through the night and Bernard discovered he could be quite charming on Quaaludes. A raspberry-freckled Swede sat beside him on the davenport. Feeling that something was expected of him, he played with her hair. Between his fingertips, her dry, damaged split ends felt like crushed silk. The room pulsated.
Alas.
In the same way a gentle kiss leads to more passionate kissing, that night’s party led to more refined partying, until it was no longer a party but a lifestyle. The Swedish Connection doubled. Bernard bought a water bed. The penthouse became a magnet for every addictive personality on Long Island trying to escape his wife. Friends on benders walked through glass patio doors and kept walking. They flipped their cars in the condo’s parking lot. Everyone lusted over the Korean hooker who came over to give massages, except for Bernard, who fell in love with a beautiful lost soul named Natasha.
Miraculously, as drugs dragged his friends through gutters or turned them into arrogant jerks, Bernard kept his wits. On any given night at Roosevelt, twenty-one-year-old Bernard, now Long Island’s most illustrious bookmaker, could be seen with his young wife, Natasha, in their matching his-and-hers full-length fur coats, just like the kind Joe Namath wore.
His glitz, however, did lead to unwanted attention. One morning, after a busy day of pay and collects, Bernard was just inside his front gate when he heard a noise. Turning around, he saw two men jump out of a car. One pulled a gun, the other a knife. It happened fast. Bernard was scared.
“Special police unit!” yelled the man with the knife. “Get in the car!”
In the front passenger seat, Bernard felt the weight of the man behind him, leaning over the headrest, holding the knife to Bernard’s throat. Watching the exit signs whiz by as quick and vivid as a life review, he tried to anticipate their plan. The images in his head terrified him. He didn’t have much money on him, just thirty thousand in his pockets and forty thousand in his briefcase. Would they be mad there wasn’t more? Mad enough that he should risk jumping out of a car going sixty on the Union Turnpike?
In a chain-linked dirt lot, in an area nobody lived in, the robbers patted Bernard down and took the money from his pockets. They took Bernard’s Louis Vuitton briefcase, dumped the cash out, and then politely returned the case to him. “Minus the knife,” Bernard later recalled, “those guys were a real class act.”
Six months later: same place, different robbers, less class. Bernard felt the brunt of an object smashing the back of his head. When he opened his eyes, he was on his stomach. Change rolled from his pockets. Another blow and the robbers fled, with the briefcase.
Somebody was setting Bernard up and he didn’t want to stick around one more second to find out who. Bequeathing his penthouse to the Swedish Connection, he and Natasha, in her fringed-suede hot pants, took off for a safe, faraway place where nobody would know him and he could make book without worrying about getting killed. Another country? Well, maybe another zip code. On the corner of 60th and Columbus Circle in Manhattan, their new building had a rooftop swimming pool and a European bank just one block away.
From his desk, overlooking the horse-drawn carriages along Central Park South, Bernard made calls to friends and associates. “I’m somewheres far away,” he said, raising his voice for emphasis, as though the international connection was giving him trouble. “But I’m still open, I still want your business. I’m still taking bets, high as the sky. Just on the lam, that’s all.”
Bernard adapted quickly to big-city gloss. Looking svelte and stylish with his close-cropped hair and leisure suits, he walked to the European bank every day to visit his money. The concierge led Bernard through the marbled, gilded hallway to his safe-deposit boxes. With the concierge’s help, Bernard had figured out how much money could fit in each box. Using hundred-dollar bills, and depending on how much breathing room one felt the stacks needed, they guessed roughly six hundred thousand dollars. Bernard had six boxes.
Bernard took high tea at the Plaza most days, surrounded by crystal hurricane lamps and Park Avenue ladies setting aside their fur muffs. Keeping to himself, he ate cucumber finger sandwiches and admired whatever extravagant purchase he’d made while killing the hours between the bank and teatime. On one particular afternoon, this meant a five-foot-tall eighteenth-century cast-iron coat tree. The saleslady said it was famous and Bernard couldn’t resist. He finished the last of the petits fours. Awash in the sound of the harp’s weeping tune, Bernard enjoyed the straight sugar rush.
On the evening of January 30, 1983, Super Bowl XVII, Bernard felt a thrill in his belly. It was as though he’d been waiting his entire life for this very kickoff. Many of his customers’ teasers had carried forward—about nine hundred thousand dollars’ worth—and all he could do was hold on to their action and hope like hell that the Dolphins, who were favored by three, lost to the Redskins. His work spread on the coffee table before him, Bernard called the penalties in his favor, “Pass interference, Blackwood,” before the officials did.
With the Redskins down by four going into the fourth, pacing, mumbling Bernard looked just as agonized as the coaches on the sidelines. Feverish, he felt an overwhelming desire to symmetrically arrange the sodas in the refrigerator. A Quaalude slipped the world into C minor and gave Bernard the power he needed to endure the game’s pivotal moment when Washington, with time running out, ran its trademark play, the I-Right 70 Chip.
He’ll hand to Riggins. Good hole! He’s got the first down to the 40, the 30 …
Bernard’s kneecaps melted.
HE’S GONE, HE’S GONE!!! TOUCHDOWN, Washington Redskins!!
At game’s end, Bernard graded his work. Nine hundred thousand dollars richer, he flopped on the couch, let his jaw drop open in disbelief, and then smiled at the ceiling. On that cool, exhilarating evening, as light rain pattered the window and Natasha snuggled beside him, Bernard could not have foreseen that he would soon become obsessed with winning nine hundred thousand dollars every night, that he would immediately start dealing way too high, that his mathematical formulas would fail him, that he would see the piles of money go below three million, two million, and down to one point six, that desperation would send him chasing until the last pile of money had quickly dwindled down to the height of a book of matches, that within three weeks—three weeks!—of his legendary Super Bowl triumph he and Natasha, scared and stone broke, would be fighting in a roadside motel off I-95.
Greed is not a virtue. This wasn’t news to Bernard, he had guessed as much. But what he hadn’t guessed was that when his money left him, Natasha and his friends wouldn’t be far behind. Or that he would find himself twenty-three, divorced, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and working for his father. The people Bernard owed money to thought it was a cover. But it wasn’t. Bernard had gone straight and was now in the wholesale candy business. Truffles and coconut clusters, maple-nut goodies and Lindt Swiss classics—Bernard used food to soothe the heartbreak and depression. The waists on his brown and gray work slacks continued to grow: forty inches, forty-six, fifty-two. He slid the hangers, searching for something, anything, that might fit, stopping just short of the full-length fur coat hanging, shredded and dead, in the very back of the closet.
“Hello, I’m a wholesaler,” Bernard said to the store owners. “The products you sell, I have, so if you need anything, here’s my card.”
Squishing himself back into his Pontiac, he’d continue his commute.
&n
bsp; With time, Bernard took the candy business from $185,000 a year to $18 million in volume. Eventually he remarried. After Natasha, his new even-tempered, dedicated wife was a blessing. They had a child and bought a home in suburban Long Island. Bernard enjoyed being a father; he liked coaching his son’s sports teams. His parents, racked with worry when he was gambling, finally looked happy for him, and that made him feel good about himself. Everything was turning up wholesome; a strange twist to a life already marked by so many soaring highs and suicidal lows. At times, when he yearned for his gambling life, so charged with limitless possibility, he watched the movie Trading Places.
“Nothing you have ever experienced will prepare you for the absolute carnage you are about to witness,” says Dan Aykroyd, during Bernard’s favorite scene. “One minute you’re up half a million in soybeans and the next, boom, your kids don’t go to college and they’ve repossessed your Bentley. Are you with me?”
Watching the film gave Bernard hope and encouragement. He became a strong believer that people had the power to change. Human beings needn’t worry, they will adapt to whatever situation they find themselves in. No matter how big the swing, the sensations will pass and the mind will adjust.
It was by accident, really, the night his wife brought home a computer and he stumbled across an Internet sports book. Oddly, the casino was based somewhere in Antigua and you could click on it. Bernard sent in three thousand dollars. For the first time in fifteen years, the harmless maniac made a bet.
“We’re not cautious,” I said to Bernard as I regained my composure.
I had overreacted to a loud crash in our neighbor’s office. It was Maintenance doing construction. I thought it was a battering ram.
Working in the business, I sometimes imagined what it would be like if I were caught in an FBI raid. In my daydreams, I always had the luxury of seeing the police cars in the parking lot and having time to prepare myself. But BLT had no windows. I didn’t like that at all. It made me jumpy.
“We’re semi-cautious,” Bernard said.
“Nuh-uh, Bernard. I saw you had Sarah making copies of our who-owes-who-what sheets. That’s not cautious.”
“You’re making me nervous,” Bernard said. “Let’s change subjects.”
He continued humming along with the Cher tape crackling from the boom box and I prepared our take-out Chinese lunch. After spooning fried rice onto his plate, I topped it with Hot Lover’s Chicken and crispy noodles. A feast for a general, just the way he liked it.
“So,” I said, sitting back at my desk, legs crossed. “Did you have any dreams last night?”
CHAPTER TEN
Infighting
The more you sweat in battle, the less you bleed in war. That’s an idiom often heard in boxing gyms and one my teammates and I had in mind as we warmed up each evening by greasing our bodies with Albolene makeup remover, Saran-wrapping our waists, and shadowboxing in the ring. With each punch our breath quickened and by the end of the first round, our clothes were soaked.
Over the past three months my Golden Gloves journey had taken me to Coney Island rec centers and the blue-lit basements of Staten Island churches. Along with twenty other women, I would wait in bleakness for two, three hours while officials flipped through our boxing books, trying to arrange bouts according to weight and experience. Finally, a trainer, fellow boxer, or volunteer would explain that because our opponent had suffered an injury or a nervous breakdown or didn’t make weight, or because there was no opponent to begin with, we had won! Hollow victories were embarrassing, but with limited competition what could one do? Such was the state of women’s amateur boxing in 2003.
But at the semifinals, things changed for the better. Inside a rundown high school gymnasium, in front of a sparse crowd, I defeated my opponent so badly that her nose busted open, leaving her blond hair streaked with blood. Two weeks later I would be competing inside Madison Square Garden’s legendary Felt Forum in the finals of the Golden Gloves.
I was ecstatic. This was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time and it felt good to have something big to look forward to. A teammate of mine was a Golden Gloves champ and he wore his gold (plated) Golden Gloves pendant around his neck everywhere he went. Once, he let me try it on. The miniature gloves felt cold and heavy against my chest. If I won a pair, I thought to myself, I would never take them off.
Ray, my trainer, eyed each of us and barked out instructions. “Yo, Felson, no good. Let your hands go. Anna, no good. Turn your waist. Yo, Raymer …”
Wanting to impress him, I picked up the pace, letting my hands go and turning my waist. His studious expression morphed into a look of concern. With the fat of his palm, he eased out the wrinkles in his forehead. “Outta the ring,” he said.
Ray stepped on the two bottom ropes, pulled the top two up and I ducked through the opening and hopped onto the gym floor. “There’s something I want to talk to you about,” he said. Cupping his hand around the back of my neck, he steered me toward the mirrors on the back wall. He looked at me hard. “The woman you’re going to fight. Do-ming-a.”
On paper, my opponent, Dominga “La Tormenta,” was twenty-six. In reality, she was thirty-one and was rumored to have fought professionally in the Dominican Republic before immigrating to New York. She’d been fighting on the amateur circuit for as long as Ray could remember, knocking girls out in all five boroughs, kissing her biceps while her vanquished opponents squirmed on all fours.
“This gorilla lands punches and believe me, the entire room feels ’em,” Ray said. “I’ve only seen a few women make it past round two with her. That’s not to say you couldn’t do it. But what do you think about what I’m telling you?”
In his own subtle way, Ray was letting me know that I could forfeit the match and he would understand. Mismatches were one thing. A mismatch with a ringer in front of five thousand people and television cameras was something else.
I expressed to Ray the embarrassment I felt for making it to the finals after winning only one fight. If I won the gloves by beating the two-time defending champ, I would feel as though I’d actually earned something. Plus, I said, winning is a lot more fun when you beat someone good.
“You got it,” Ray said. “Just wanted to give you a heads-up.” He tightened the laces to my boxing gloves.
Looking for just a little more insight, I asked Ray to describe Dominga’s fighting style.
“Thunderous,” he said.
Over the next two weeks, fear sank its claws into the pit of my stomach and never let go. The feeling stayed with me during my lunch break when I ran laps in BLT’s vast parking lot, and lingered throughout my nightly workouts, making me feel as restless and jumpy as the double-end bag after a good whopping. Lying in bed, I imagined myself in the ring with Dominga. Pivoting, ducking, slipping around her, landing body shots to her rib cage. Exhilarated by my imagined finesse, I’d hop out of bed and run to the bathroom so I could watch myself shadowbox in the reflection of the medicine cabinet mirror. Jab cross hook. Jab cross hook. And finish with the jab.
Dominga stood on the scale, naked. Around her, girls with buzz cuts ate energy bars. I usually found comfort in seeing my opponent’s naked body at the weigh-ins. I could evaluate their muscle tone, and draw conclusions from their tattoos or stretch marks or C-section scars. Dominga’s skin was flawless and she was built like a Mack truck. A vein the width of an earthworm started at the tip of her widow’s peak and ran down the center of her scowling brown eyebrows, along the side of her neck, descending into her armpit and jutting out again, ending, finally, on the highest point of her biceps, which was as hard and round as a navel orange. Dropping my skirt, I reminded myself that boxing is the science of controlling fear.
“Remember, keep your right up,” Ray said. He sat across from me and wrapped my hands. “Bang and bring it back. Move. Bangbang. Not bang … bang. Bang-bang.”
My cut man rubbed my shoulders. “Feelin’ strong, kiddo?”
I wanted to sa
y something, but I feared that if I opened my mouth I would vomit. My knee bounced up and down. I cursed myself for not calling immigration and having Dominga deported. She’d be on JetBlue by now, leg-cuffed and la tormenting someone else.
“We’re losin’ her,” Ray said.
“You’re not losing me!” I said. “I’m here! I’m thinking positive thoughts!”
An official peeked his head into the room and told us to start making our way to the ring.
In the hallway, waiting for the summons, I scanned the near-sold-out crowd of five thousand screaming, bloodthirsty fans squished into stadium seating. An amplified voice buzzed incoherently and for one fleeting moment, I felt the sudden excitement of having arrived at the place I’d dreamed of. I was smack in the middle of Manhattan, about to fight in one of the most famous boxing venues in the world. It was staggering. And I started to think just how awesome it would be if I actually won. Sure, Dominga had more experience than me, but I doubted she’d be in better shape. I was running seven miles a day and training six days a week. Pumped with sudden hope, I did a quick little bob and weave. Middle section, center right, I spotted my dad, Dink, Bernard, and Mikey, sitting side by side. They came all the way from Florida, Vegas, and Ronkonkoma, respectively. It was a big deal and I couldn’t bear the thought of letting them down or embarrassing myself in front of them. Just the thought of it turned the swells and rolls of my nervous system into tsunami-sized waves and, once again, fear overshadowed all else. Now I understood why most boxers didn’t invite anyone to their fights. The official motioned us toward the ring. “Here we go,” Ray said. He continued shouting in my ear, but his words were lost in the raucous crowd.