A NICE PLACE TO VISIT
BY JEFFERY DEAVER
Hell’s Kitchen
When you’re a natural-born grifter, an operator, a player, you get this sixth sense for sniffing out opportunities, and that’s what Ricky Kelleher was doing now, watching two guys in the front of the smoky bar, near a greasy window that still had a five-year-old bullet hole in it.
Whatever was going down, neither of them looked real happy.
Ricky kept watching. He’d seen one guy here in Hanny’s a couple of times. He was wearing a suit and tie—it really made him stand out in this dive, the sore thumb thing. The other one, leather jacket and tight jeans, razor-cut bridge-and-tunnel hair, was some kind of Gambino wannabe, Ricky pegged him. Or Sopranos, more likely—yeah, he was the sort of prick who’d hock his wife for a big-screen TV. He was way pissed off, shaking his head at everything Mr. Suit was telling him. At one point he slammed his fist on the bar so hard glasses bounced. But nobody noticed. That was the kind of place Hanny’s was.
Ricky was in the rear, at the short L of the bar, his regular throne. The bartender, a dusty old guy, maybe black, maybe white, you couldn’t tell, kept an uneasy eye on the guys arguing. “It’s cool,” Ricky reassured him. “I’m on it.”
Mr. Suit had a briefcase open. A bunch of papers were inside. Most of the business in this pungent, dark Hell’s Kitchen bar involved trading bags of chopped-up plants and cases of Johnny Walker that’d fallen off the truck; the transactions were conducted in either the men’s room or alley out back. This was something different. Skinny, five-foot-four Ricky couldn’t tip to exactly what was going down, but that magic sense, his player’s eye, told him to pay attention.
“Well, fuck that,” Wannabe said to Mr. Suit.
“Sorry.” A shrug.
“Yeah, you said that before.” Wannabe slid off the stool. “But you don’t really sound that fucking sorry. And you know why? Because I’m the one out all the money.”
“Bullshit. I’m losing my whole fucking business.”
But Ricky’d learned that other people losing money doesn’t take the sting out of you losing money. Way of the world.
Wannabe was getting more and more agitated. “Listen careful here, my friend. I’ll make some phone calls. I got people I know down there. You don’t want to fuck with these guys.”
Mr. Suit tapped what looked like a newspaper article in the briefcase. “And what’re they gonna do?” His voice lowered and he whispered something that made Wannabe’s face screw up in disgust. “Now just go on home, keep your head down, and watch your back. And pray they can’t—” Again, the lowered voice. Ricky couldn’t hear what “they” might do.
Wannabe slammed his hand down on the bar again. “This isn’t gonna fly, asshole. Now—”
“Hey, gentlemen,” Ricky called. “Volume down, okay?”
“The fuck’re you, little man?” Wannabe snapped. Mr. Suit touched his arm to quiet him, but he pulled away and kept glaring.
Ricky slicked back his greasy, dark blond hair. Easing off the stool, he walked to the front of the bar, the heels of his boots tapping loudly on the scuffed floor. The guy had six inches and thirty pounds on him but Ricky had learned a long time ago that craziness scares people a fuck of a lot more than height or weight or muscle. And so he did what he always did when he was going one on one—threw a weird look into his eyes and got right up in the man’s face. He screamed, “Who I am is guy’s gonna drag your ass into the alley and fuck you over a dozen different ways, you don’t get the fuck out of here now!”
The punk reared back and blinked. He fired off an automatic “Fuck you, asshole.”
Ricky stayed right where he was, kind of grinning, kind of not, and let this poor bastard imagine what was going to happen now that he’d accidentally shot a little spit onto Ricky’s forehead.
A few seconds passed.
Finally, Wannabe drank down what was left of his beer with a shaking hand and, trying to hold on to a little dignity, he strolled out the door, laughing and muttering, “Prick.” Like it was Ricky backing down.
“Sorry about that,” Mr. Suit said, standing up, pulling out money for the drinks.
“No, you stay,” Ricky ordered.
“Me?”
“Yeah, you.”
The man hesitated and sat back down.
Ricky glanced into the briefcase, saw some pictures of nice-looking boats. “Just gotta keep things calm round here, you know. Keep the peace.”
Mr. Suit slowly closed the case, looked around at the faded beer promotion cut-outs, the stained sports posters, the cobwebs. “This your place?”
The bartender was out of earshot. Ricky said, “More or less.”
“Jersey.” Mr. Suit nodded at the door that Wannabe had just walked out of. Like that explained it all.
Ricky’s sister lived in Jersey and he wondered if maybe he should be pissed at the insult. He was a loyal guy. But then he decided loyalty didn’t have anything to do with states or cities and shit like that. “So. He lost some money?”
“Business deal went bad.”
“Uh-huh. How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Buy him another beer,” Ricky called to the bartender, then turned back. “You’re in business with him and you don’t know how much money he lost?”
“What I don’t know,” the guy said, his dark eyes looking right into Ricky’s, “is why I should fucking tell you.”
This was the time when it could get ugly. There was a tough moment of silence. Then Ricky laughed. “No worries.”
The beers arrived.
“Ricky Kelleher.” He clinked glasses.
“Bob Gardino.”
“I seen you before. You live around here?”
“Florida mostly. I come up here for business some. Delaware too. Baltimore, Jersey shore, Maryland.”
“Yeah? I got a summer place I go to a lot.”
“Where?”
“Ocean City. Four bedrooms, on the water.” Ricky didn’t mention that it was T.G.’s., not his.
“Sweet.” The man nodded, impressed.
“It’s okay. I’m looking at some other places too.”
“Man can never have too much real estate. Better than the stock market.”
“I do okay on Wall Street,” Ricky said. “You gotta know what to look for. You just can’t buy some stock ’cause it’s, you know, sexy.” He’d heard this on some TV show.
“Truer words.” Now Gardino tapped his glass into Ricky’s.
“Those were some nice fucking boats.” A nod toward the briefcase. “That your line?”
“Among other things. Whatta you do, Ricky?”
“I got my hand in a lot of stuff. Lot of businesses. All over the neighborhood here. Well, and other places too. Maryland, like I was saying. Good money to be made. For a man with a sharp eye.”
“And you have a sharp eye?”
“I think I do. Wanta know what it’s seeing right now?”
“What, your eye?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s it seeing?”
“A grifter.”
“A—?”
“A scam artist.”
“I know what a grifter is,” Gardino said. “I meant, why do you think that’s what I am?”
“Well, for instance, you don’t come into Hanny’s—”
“Hanny’s?”
“Here. Hanrahan’s.”
“Oh.”
“—to sell some loser asshole a boat. So what really happened?”
Gardino chuckled but said nothing.
“Look,” Ricky whispered, “I’m cool. Ask anybody on the street.”
“There’s nothing to tell. A deal went south is all. Happens.”
“I’m not a cop, that’s what you’re thinking.” Ricky looked around, reached into his pocket, and flashed a bag of hash he’d been carrying around for T.G. “I was, you think I’d have this on me?”
“Naw, I don’t think you’re a co
p. And you seem like an okay guy. But I don’t need to spill my guts to every okay guy I meet.”
“I hear that. Only … I’m just wondering there’s a chance we can do business together.”
Gardino drank some more beer. “Again, why?”
“Tell me how your con works.”
“It’s not a con. I was going to sell him a boat. It didn’t work out. End of story.”
“But … see, here’s what I’m thinking,” Ricky said in his best player’s voice. “I seen people pissed off ’cause they don’t get a car they wanted, or a house, or some pussy. But that asshole, he wasn’t pissed off about not getting a boat. He was pissed off about not getting his down payment back. So, how come he didn’t?”
Gardino shrugged.
Ricky tried again. “How’s about we play a game, you and me? I’ll ask you something and you tell me if I’m right or if I’m full of shit. How’s that?”
“Twenty questions.”
“Whatever. Okay, try this on: You borrow—” He held up his fingers and made quotation marks—“a boat, sell it to some poor asshole, but then on the way here it sinks.” Again the quotation marks. “And there’s nothing he can do about it. He loses his down payment. He’s fucked. Too bad, but who’s he going to complain to? It’s stolen merch.”
Gardino studied his beer. Son of a bitch still wasn’t giving away squat.
Ricky added, “Only there never was any boat. You never steal a fucking thing. You just show him pictures you took on the dock and a fake police report or something.”
The guy finally laughed. But nothing else.
“Your only risk is some asshole whaling on you when he loses the money. Not a bad grift.”
“I sell boats,” Gardino said. “That’s it.”
“Okay, you sell boats.” Ricky eyed him carefully. He’d try a different approach. “So that means you’re looking for buyers. How ’bout I find one for you?”
“You know somebody who’s interested in boats?”
“There’s a guy I know. He might be.”
Gardino thought for a minute. “This a friend of yours we’re talking?”
“I wouldn’ta brought him up, he was a friend.”
The sunlight came through some clouds over Eighth Avenue and hit Gardino’s beer. It cast a tint on the counter, the yellow of a sick man’s eye. Finally, he said to Ricky, “Pull your shirt up.”
“My—?”
“Your shirt. Pull it up and turn around.”
“You think I’m wired?”
“Or we just have our beers and bullshit about the Knicks and we go our separate ways. Up to you.”
Self-conscious of his skinny build, Ricky hesitated. But then he slipped off the stool, pulled up his leather jacket, and lifted his dirty T-shirt. He turned around.
“Okay. You do the same.”
Gardino laughed. Ricky thought he was laughing at him more than he was laughing at the situation but he held on to his temper.
The con man pulled up his jacket and shirt. The bartender glanced at them but he was looking like nothing was weird. This was, after all, Hanny’s.
The men sat down and Ricky called for more brews.
Gardino whispered, “Okay, I’ll tell you what I’m up to. But listen. You get some idea that you’re in the mood to snitch, I got two things to say: One, what I’m doing is not exactly legal, but it’s not like I’m clipping anybody or selling crack to kids, got it? So even if you go to the cops, the best they can get me for is some bullshit misrepresentation claim. They’ll laugh you out of the station.”
“No, man, seriously—”
Gardino held up a finger. “And number two, you dime me out, I’ve got associates in Florida’ll find you and make you bleed for days.” He grinned. “We copacetic?”
Whatever the fuck that meant. Ricky said, “No worries, mister. All I wanta do is make some money.”
“Okay, here’s how it works: Fuck down payments. The buyers pay everything right up front. A hundred, hundred fifty thousand.”
“No shit.”
“What I tell the buyer is my connections know where there’re these confiscated boats. This really happens. They’re towed off by the DEA for drugs or Coast Guard or State Police when the owner’s busted for sailing ’em while drunk. They go up for auction. But see, what happens is, in Florida, there’s so many boats that it takes time to log ’em all in. I tell the buyers my partners break into the pound at 3 in the morning and tow a boat away before there’s a record of it. We ship it to Delaware or Jersey, slap a new number on it, and bang, for a hundred thousand you get a half-million-dollar boat.
“Then, after I get the money, I break the bad news. Like I just did with our friend from Jersey.” He opened up his briefcase and pulled out a newspaper article. The headline was: “Three arrested in Coast Guard Impound Thefts.”
The article was about a series of thefts of confiscated boats from a federal government impound dock. It went on to add that security had been stepped up and the FBI and Florida police were looking into who might’ve bought the half-dozen missing boats. They’d arrested the principals and recovered nearly a million dollars in cash from buyers on the East Coast.
Ricky looked over the article. “You, what? Printed it up yourself?”
“Word processor. Tore the edges to make it look like I ripped it out of the paper and then Xeroxed it.”
“So you keep ’em scared shitless some cop’s going to find their name or trace the money to them. Now, just go on home, keep your head down, and watch your back. Some of ’em make a stink for a day or two, but mostly they just disappear.”
This warranted another clink of beer glasses. “Fucking brilliant.”
“Thanks.”
“So if I was to hook you up with a buyer? What’s in it for me?”
Gardino debated. “Twenty-five percent.”
“You give me fifty.” Ricky fixed him with the famous mad-guy Kelleher stare. Gardino held the gaze just fine. Which Ricky respected.
“I’ll give you twenty-five percent if the buyer pays a hundred Gs or less. Thirty, if it’s more than that.”
Ricky said, “Over one fifty, I want half.”
Gardino finally said, “Deal. You really know somebody can get his hands on that kind of money?”
Ricky finished his beer and, without paying, started for the door. “That’s what I’m going to go work on right now.”
Ricky walked into Mack’s bar.
It was pretty much like Hanrahan’s, four blocks away, but was busier, since it was closer to the convention center where hundreds of teamsters and union electricians and carpenters would take fifteen-minute breaks that lasted two hours. The neighborhood surrounding Mack’s was better too: redeveloped town houses and some new buildings, expensive as shit, and even a Starbucks. Way fucking different from the grim, hustling combat zone that Hell’s Kitchen had been until the ’70s.
T.G., a fat Irishman in his mid-thirties, was at the corner table with three, four buddies of his.
“It’s the Lime Rickey man!” T.G. shouted, not drunk, not sober—the way he usually seemed. Man used nicknames a lot, which he seemed to think was cute but always pissed off the person he was talking to, mostly because of the way he said it, not so much the names themselves. Like, Ricky didn’t even know what a Lime Rickey was, some drink or something, but the sneery tone in T.G.’s voice was a putdown. Still, you had to have major balls to say anything back to the big, psycho Irishman.
“Hey,” Ricky offered, walking up to the corner table, which was like T.G.’s office.
“The fuck you been?” T.G. asked, dropping his cigarette on the floor and crushing it under his boot.
“Hanny’s.”
“Doing what, Lime Rickey man?” Stretching out the nickname.
“Polishing me knob,” Ricky responded in a phoney brogue. A lot of times he said stuff like this, sort of putting himself down in front of T.G. and his crew. He didn’t want to, didn’t like it. It just happened. Alw
ays wondered why.
“You mean, polishing some altar boy’s knob,” T.G. roared. The more sober in the crew laughed.
Ricky got a Guinness. He really didn’t like it but T.G. had once said that Guinness and whiskey were the only things real men drank. And, since it was called stout, he figured it would make him fatter. All his life, trying to get bigger. Never succeeding.
Ricky sat down at the table, which was scarred with knife slashes and skid marks from cigarette burns. He nodded to T.G.’s crew, a half-dozen losers who sorta worked the trades, sorta worked the warehouses, sorta hung out. One was so drunk he couldn’t focus and kept trying to tell a joke, forgetting it halfway through. Ricky hoped the guy wouldn’t puke before he made it to the john, like yesterday.
T.G. was rambling on, insulting some of the people at the table in his cheerful-mean way and threatening guys who weren’t there.
Ricky just sat at the table, eating peanuts and sucking down his licorice-flavored stout, and took the insults when they were aimed at him. Mostly he was thinking about Gardino and the boats.
T.G. rubbed his round, craggy face and his curly red-brown hair. He spat out, “And, fuck me, the nigger got away.”
Ricky was wondering which nigger. He thought he’d been paying attention, but sometimes T.G.’s train of thought took its own route and left you behind.
He could see T.G. was upset, though, and so Ricky muttered a sympathetic, “That asshole.”
“Man, I see him, I will take that cocksucker out so fast.” He clapped his palms together in a loud slap that made a couple of the crew blink. The drunk one stood up and staggered toward the men’s room. Looked like he was going to make it this time.
“He been around?” Ricky asked.
T.G. snapped, “His black ass’s up in Buffalo. I just told you that. The fuck you asking if he’s here?”
“No, I don’t mean here,” Ricky said fast. “I mean, you know, around. ”
“Oh, yeah,” T.G. said, nodding, as if he caught some other meaning. “Sure. But that don’t help me any. I see him, he’s one dead nigger.”
“Buffalo,” Ricky said, shaking his head. “Christ.” He tried to listen more carefully, but he was still thinking about the boat scam. Yeah, that Gardino’d come up with a good one. And man, making a hundred thousand in a single grift—he and T.G.’d never come close to that before.
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