Frozen in Time

by Joseph Epstein

  “In high school I hung around with a bunch that modeled themselves on Syndicate guys. From the age of fourteen we smoked, shot craps, played nickel-dime-and-quarter poker, went to the harness races at night at Maywood, drove out to the cathouses in Braidwood and Kankakee. Gambling was at the center of everything.

  “I sat in classrooms bored out of my gourd. Nowadays they would no doubt test me for dyslexia or Attention Disorder Deficit or some other learning disability. I had the greatest learning disability of all—powerful boredom about anything that didn’t have a gambling element in it. The only way I could have been a good student would have been if someone bet me I couldn’t get A’s. I graduated somewhere in the lower quarter of my class at Von Steuben, and then lasted a single semester at Wright Junior College. Can’t go wrong with Wright, they used to say. Not true of me.

  “I began selling cars at the age of nineteen. I had an Uncle Earle, my mother’s brother, who had a used-car lot on Western, near Thorndale. Lots of down time on a car lot. I used mine to study the sports pages and call in bets. By now the need to stay in action was second among my priorities only behind the need to breathe. Baseball, football, college, and pro basketball, I had a bet going every day.

  “Las Vegas killed me. I went out there when I was twenty-three with two other guys I was working with at the time at Z. Frank Chevrolet. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. The glitz, the glamour, the show biz bullshit, it all blew me away. These were still in the days when the Mafia ran the town. I went away from that first trip eight-grand-and-change winners, most of it from the black-jack tables. A bad omen, my good luck my first time in Vegas. I was hooked.

  “I started making trips to Las Vegas every eight weeks or so. The time when I wasn’t there I didn’t quite feel alive. Soon I was down as a high-roller, which meant they comped my room at the Riviera, to which, after a night at the tables I would return to find a no-charge hooker waiting.

  “In those days, when people asked me what I did for a living, I used to say that I was working for the Mafia. Which, in effect, I was. I might as well have had Zolly Frank send my commission checks, which were not small, directly to Mr. Samuel ‘Lefty’ Abrams, Board of Directors, Riviera Hotel, for the Riviera, my casino of choice, wound up with all my dough anyway.

  “Was I a sucker, a chump, a loser? Of course I was, but I scarcely noticed. The question I would ask myself during those days was not how much did I lose but when would I have enough to go back. This was action to the highest power, around the clock, every day. I loved it.

  “Of course when the local casinos started up, I was done for. I used to stop off at them the way another guy might have stopped at a 7/11 to pick up a quart of milk. It didn’t take me long to rack up debts of more than two hundred grand. They just built a casino in Des Plaines, the Rivers it’s called, a fifteen-minute drive from where I lived with my ex-wife.

  “I neglected to mention that I was married and have a fifteen-year-old daughter. You want to talk about rotten luck, my wife’s first husband was an alcoholic, then she marries me, a guy hooked on gambling. The night she discovered that I had put a second mortgage on our house and had loans out on both our cars, she said, in a voice so calm that it spooked me, she said, ‘You know, Lenny, the nice thing about alcoholics is that at least they pass out.’

  “I’ve probably already gone on too long to say make a long story short, but the fact is that I’m up that famous creek without a paddle, and the bottom of the boat is starting to leak pretty badly. I’ve got to find a way to get out of action and stay out. The last thing I wanted to be in life was a loser, and I realize that this is what I’ve become. That’s why I’ve come here for help. I’ll shut up now. Apologies for going on so long.”

  Rothman couldn’t recall a better talk in his three years of coming to GA meetings. He sensed everyone else at the table was impressed. Rothman got up to say that if Adler ever needed any help, ever felt himself slipping, he hoped he’d call him. Lenny Adler smiled and said he appreciated the offer, and would no doubt one day take him up on it. The meeting was a fairly brief one. After it was over, Rothman came up to Lenny Adler to tell him that he meant his offer in all seriousness. He gave him his cell and business and home phone numbers.

  “The first few months are the toughest,” he said.

  “I’ll hang in there,” Adler said.

  At next Tuesday’s meeting a new member named Arnie Berman got up to say that he thought he might be unusual in this company for he thought of himself as an unusual breed, a conservative, a cautious gambler.

  “I’ve been cautious all my life,” he said. “I suppose I got this from my parents. My father was in his middle fifties when I was born, and he’d lived through the Depression. He was full of advice about saving and being careful generally about money. Maybe it was in reaction to him that I took up gambling.

  “But the odd part is that I took it up, as I say, conservatively. I bet only favorites. I like ponies, and I found myself betting favorites to place and sometimes even to show. A friend of mine, guy named Art Rosen, also big for the ponies, used to joke that instead of going to the track I should have bought Israeli Bonds—the return was about the same.

  “Of course, it wasn’t the same. You can bet conservatively and still lose your ass. Which over the years I have done. I might get down big on a heavy favorite—the Patriots against the Jaguars, say—and when I lost, usually owing to the spread, I felt the need to make it back quick. I found myself doubling down a lot. Not so conservative anymore. Anyhow I figure that over the past decade I’m down maybe a quarter of a million dollars. I’m single. I’m not out on the street. But I’d like to learn how to quit, which is why I’m here tonight.”

  After the meeting, Lenny came up to Rothman. “Takes all kinds, I guess,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of Arnie Berman. “But this guy ain’t my idea of a good time. Betting on a horse to show! I’d as soon bet on the Hancock Building to be still standing tomorrow morning. I’m more of a long-shot man myself. In fact, Eddie, I think of my entire life as a longshot.”

  Lenny Adler missed the next GA meeting, but in the middle of the following week, at 6:30 p.m., in his car on his way home to Northbrook, Rothman got a call from him on his cell.

  “Eddie,” he said. “I’m in my car and on the way to the Rivers Casino. Please tell me I’m a schmuck and to turn back.”

  “Easy to do,” Rothman said. “You’re a schmuck, now turn back. Where are you anyhow?”

  “I’m just about to get on the Kennedy at Foster.”

  “Get off it,” Rothman said, “and meet me twenty minutes from now for dinner at an old Chinese restaurant called Kow-Kow on Cicero and Pratt. Got that?”

  “Got it,” Adler said. “And thanks. You’re a friend.”

  Kow-Kow was an old Cantonese restaurant, at a time when Cantonese was all that was known of Chinese food in Chicago. Rothman remembered it when it was on Devon Avenue. The patrons in the place tonight, most in their eighties, seemed to date from that time. He took a table in the center of the room and ordered a Tsingtoa beer. He studied the menu, which still had Chop Suey and Chow Mein on it. Half an hour later, Adler hadn’t yet arrived.

  Nor would he. Rothman waited a full hour for him, then called his wife to say he would be home for dinner after all. He thought about calling Adler back. On second thought, he said to himself, screw him.

  Lenny Adler did show up for the next GA meeting. He came in ten or so minutes late, and did not greet Rothman. When his turn came to speak he got to his feet and said:

  “I missed the last meeting, for the disgraceful reason that I fell off the wagon. Last week I lost twelve hundred bucks, mostly at blackjack, at Rivers Casino. On my way out there I called my new friend Eddie Rothman, who is here with us tonight. Eddie told me to turn back and meet him for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I was going to do so, then the thought hit me that the problem
with Chinese food is that an hour later, you’re hungry to be back in action again. A bad joke, OK. But what I do want to say is that after my Rivers Casino adventure I not only felt like a loser, but a guilty loser. Is this progress? I’m not sure. What I am sure about is that it’s a mistake for me to miss GA meetings, and I’ll try my best not to miss another.”

  Listening to this, Rothman had his doubts. Lenny Adler was maybe a little too glib. When he suggested a drink to Rothman after the meeting, Rothman took a pass, saying that he had to be up early the next day.

  “Another time?” Adler said.

  “Right,” Rothman said. “Take care.”

  Driving home, Rothman thought about Lenny Adler’s sincerity. Was he serious about coming to Gamblers Anonymous. Or was he just killing time. During his three plus years there, lots of guys, after telling their stories of defeat and heartache, never returned. Maybe the GA arrangement just wasn’t for them; they weren’t comfortable in it, with its confessional mode. Maybe they were able to straighten themselves out on their own. But most, Rothman thought, went back into action, with predictably disastrous results.

  He recalled a young lawyer, guy named Jerry Feingold, a big guy, handsome, played basketball for New Trier, afterwards for Iowa. Went to law school, had a practice in the Loop. He broke down in tears his first night at GA. His father had twice bailed him out of heavy gambling debts, the second time for forty-odd grand. He never came back. A month or so later, Rothman read about his jumping from a window in his 17th floor LaSalle Street office. He’d heard from Marty Handler, the man who ran the Lawrence Avenue GA chapter, that Jerry Feingold had got back into the Mob for more than fifty grand, and felt he couldn’t return to his father to ask for more help. He left a wife and two little kids, ten and eight.

  When Rothman got home, Debbie told him he had a call from a man named Leonard Adler. She had written down the number.

  “Are you ticked off at me for any reason, Eddie?” Adler wanted to know when Rothman called him back. “Did I do something to piss you off?”

  “Don’t know why you’d think that. You call me for help, I offer it, and you don’t show up. Keep me waiting in a Chinese restaurant for an hour. Not so good.”

  “I owe you an apology. I thought I already made it in public earlier tonight at the meeting.”

  “What I wonder is whether you’re really serious about breaking your gambling fix. Fell off the wagon kinda early, I’d say. I mean, you’ll do what you want. But if you aren’t serious about this then I would ask you not to come to me for help you don’t really want.”

  “I am serious, Eddie, never been more serious about anything in my goddamn life. Give me another chance, another shot.”

  “Sure,” said Rothman. He thought his voice sounded unconvincing. “Of course. Why not?”

  “Thanks, pal. You won’t be sorry, I promise.”

  “I hope not,” Rothman said, hoping that in his voice he had buried the doubt he strongly felt.

  Lenny Adler showed up for the next four GA meetings. At each of them he sat next to Rothman. At each he spoke briefly, announcing that he had gone without action the week before and felt terrific about it but knew he still had a long ways to go.

  After the last of these meetings, he invited Rothman for a drink. Rothman wasn’t eager to go, but felt it would be unkind to say no, so they agreed to meet at Burke’s. The bar was more crowded tonight than on their previous meeting there. The soundless television sets showed tennis matches, soccer games, night baseball. To Rothman, even after all this time, these games were little more than porno by other means, and he kept himself from looking at the screens.

  They found a booth, ordered drinks—a martini for Adler, a vodka and tonic for Rothman.

  “Any interest in going to the Bears season’s opener on Sunday?” Adler asked. “I’ve got seats on the forty.”

  “None whatsoever.” Rothman said. “Watching a ball game, any ball game, without having a bet on it would be a torture. It would be like a big-game hunter going on safari with a water pistol. I do better to stay away.”

  “You really are a disciplinarian, Eddie.”

  “I may not have many strengths,” Rothman said, “but at least I know my weaknesses.”

  “You’re a philosopher.”

  “Sure,” Rothman said, “right. Someone said the unexamined life isn’t worth living. The problem is that the examined life isn’t much fun.”

  “Maybe you need a vice,” Adler said.

  “What’d you have in mind? Drugs? Adultery? Child molestation?”

  “I’ll need time to come up with the right vice for you. I’m sure it’s out there.”

  “How about you? Was another week out of action tough on you?”

  “Truth is, it was. They all are. I’m not as good at admitting to my weaknesses as you are.”

  “Nothing to do but tough it out.”

  “Sometimes I think a booze or drug problem might be easier.”

  “More likely it would only be sloppier.”

  “When did you know you had the gambling jones beat?”

  “I still don’t know it. I don’t think of having beat it. I think of holding it off. I’m playing for a tie, a draw.”

  “Not very glorious,” Adler said.

  “It is if you consider the other possibility. My goal is to avoid humiliation, because, given my style as a gambler, that’s the only place gambling can end up for me. Probably a good idea to have a goal here yourself.”

  “I’ll have to think about that,” Adler said. “Just now my only goal is not to give away all my money to strangers.”

  “Not good enough, is my guess,” said Rothman. “Something a little more specific is needed.”

  “I’ll think about it. Maybe you’ll help me on this one.”

  “Anything you need,” said Rothman, “say the word.”

  Adler came in late for the following week’s GA meeting, toward its close, looking harried. He barely greeted Rothman, then took off after the meeting. The following week he didn’t show up at all; nor the two weeks after that. Rothman assumed that he fell off the wagon, and was back in action, with the usual disastrous results.

  Then, on a Saturday night, at 2:13 a.m., according to the digital clock beside Rothman’s bed, the phone rang and it was Lenny Adler.

  “Eddie,” he said. “Lenny Adler. This is an outrageous time to call, I know, but I’m in deepest of deep shit, and need your help.”

  “I’m in my bedroom,” Rothman said. “Let me take this downstairs.”

  Rothman picked up the kitchen phone. He opened and stared into the refrigerator as Lenny Adler continued.

  “Here’s the thing, Eddie. I’m into the Baretta family for sixty grand. You know about the Barettas?”

  “No,” said Rothman, taking a pint of Häagen-Dazs peach sorbet out of the freezer. “Who are the Barettas?”

  “They’re the Mob in Oak Forest, and they’re real brutes, killers.”

  “So,” said Rothman, taking a spoon out of the silverware drawer.

  “So they showed me a photograph of another guy who owed them roughly the same amount I do. Actually, they showed me a photograph of his hands. They’d cut off his thumbs.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Rothman asked, though he already knew the answer.

  “Because if I don’t have twenty grand, a third of what I owe them, by Tuesday, I’m going to be in the same condition, fuckin’ thumbless. I need to borrow the twenty from you, Eddie. There’s no one else I can turn to.”

  “Any guarantee that I would get it back?” Rothman asked. “You haven’t exactly proved yourself the most reliable guy in the world, Lenny.” Rothman tried to penetrate the peach sorbet holding the spoon without using his thumbs. It couldn’t be done.

  “If I wasn’t scared shit, Eddie, I’d never have made this call.
I’ve never been so terrified in my life.”

  “Look, Lenny, it’s past two in the morning. I’ll call you when I get into work tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Eddie, thanks. I’ll wait to hear from you.”

  When Rothman arrived at his place on Washington, a block west of Halsted, he saw Lenny Adler’s Porsche out front. He had already decided to lend him the twenty grand. Not because he thought he would get it back; he doubted he would. He was stuck, Rothman was, with a conscience. He couldn’t allow another human being to be brutalized if he could help it. Rothman recalled the threat in his old bookie Ike Goldstein’s voice, and the fear it put into him. Besides, in the more than three years out of action, he had accumulated more than eighty grand in green deals that sat doing nothing in his Midcity Bank vault.

  Lenny Adler emerged from his car when Rothman appeared. They walked up the flight of stairs to the door marked Rothman Enterprises. Rothman changed nothing in his father’s simple office after his father died; there was still the metal desk, the small chair on wheels, the four metal file cabinets, the plastic chaise longue in which his father, in his last years, used to take twenty-minute naps.

  “All right, Lenny, I’ve decided to loan you the money. How about your car as collateral?”

  “The car isn’t mine,” Adler said. “It belongs to the dealership. But I’m not going to let you down, Eddie. How could I? You’re saving my life. I’m never going to forget it.”

  “I’m going to make out an IOU for you to sign. I’d also like to know how you plan to schedule your repayments on the twenty grand.”

  “First I’ll have to repay the Barettas back the other forty I owe them. Then I’ll pay you, how about at the rate of two grand a month, beginning six months from now? Does that sound reasonable?”

  “It does if it’s also realistic.”