The Bookmakers

by Zev Chafets

  “Yeah, so they use stereotypes in the movies, so what?”

  “Let’s take someone like you. You gamble, and if you come up short, you decide who to pay and who to stall, or maybe even stiff. Obviously you don’t know most of the bookies personally; probably you’ve just spoken to them on the phone. Maybe you only know their names.”

  “So?” asked Tommy, fingering a painful lump on the side of his head, just below the scalp line.

  “So you decide how to deal with a man based on ethnic stereotypes. But my clients don’t know what to expect from me. What would you say I am? What nationality?”

  “Who knows? A Polak, maybe?” said Russo, lulled into speculation by Reggie’s conversational tone.

  “Not at all.” The huge bookmaker laughed. “There isn’t a drop of Polish blood in my veins. Not that I’d be ashamed if there was, but I’m an American, plain and simple, and in this country, especially in my profession, that helps make me an enigma. Herman Reggie, Enigmatic American Bookmaker. It has a ring, don’t you agree?”

  “I guess,” said Russo. His head was pounding but he was willing to go on talking as long as the alternative was Afterbirth.

  “In other words, I’m a good citizen,” said Reggie. “I don’t discriminate. Anyone can bet with me, anyone can work for me—Italians, Mexicans, Irish, Jews, Danes—it doesn’t matter a bit.”

  “They ought to give you a brotherhood award,” said Tommy, massaging his ribs.

  “No awards, thank you,” said Reggie. “Just what I’m owed.”

  “I told you, I’ll get it,” said Tommy. “I’m working on a couple of things that will pay off next week.”

  Reggie shook his head. “Not soon enough. I want the money today, right now. Or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “Afterbirth,” said Herman Reggie. The tiny wrestler hopped across the room and delivered a powerful elbow to Russo’s abdomen, knocking the agent’s wind out and sending him to the carpet, retching again. Reggie waited calmly until Russo was able to sit up. Then, in a mild voice, he said, “Or else you are going to be beaten to death by a midget.”

  Tommy took a deep breath and tried to regain his composure. “Look, Herman, this isn’t the way things work. I owe you, I don’t pay, you rough me up. I pay and you leave me alone. But you don’t kill somebody over a gambling debt; you can’t collect that way.”

  “That’s logical,” said Reggie in a pleasant tone, “but my business doesn’t necessarily operate on logic. That’s why I’m an enigma, so that my customers won’t take me for granted. Sometimes I let a debt go on and on. Sometimes I collect the old-fashioned way. And sometimes I foreclose. You can never know when you bet with me. In fact, even I don’t always know.”

  “You’re talking about murder,” said Tommy.

  “Murder’s a bad word,” said Reggie. He turned to the midget who was peering out the window. “Cover your ears, Afterbirth,” he commanded. The little wrestler dutifully put his hands over his cauliflower ears as Reggie continued in a stage whisper. “I’ve had people killed over bad debts. I’ve burned down their houses with their children inside. I can’t even think of how many guys I’ve had maimed and crippled. Enigmatic’s not the same as weak.” He signaled to Afterbirth. “It’s okay, you can take your hands down now,” he said.

  “You got any diet soda?” the midget asked. “Sprite, 7Up, something non-Cola?”

  “In the refrigerator,” said Tommy dully, his mind racing. He didn’t really believe that Herman Reggie would kill him, but he didn’t doubt that he would come close. The word ringing in his mind was “maimed.”

  “What can I do to make things right?” he asked.

  “Like I say, pay up. If you don’t have the cash right now, think of something else. But I’m not leaving without settling. Are you, Afterbirth?”

  The midget shook his head without lowering his eyes from Russo.

  “What kind of something would you take?”

  “Well, in most cases—I’m letting you in on a professional secret now—in most cases what I do is, I take a piece of a man’s business. I don’t suppose you’ve got anything I could use?”

  Tommy thought it over. He had spoken to Kleinhouse earlier that day and the author wasn’t happy with Wolfowitz’s offer. Eventually he’d come around, but it would take a while. The Hollywood deal was going slowly, too; he probably wouldn’t see any money there until after the first of the year. At the moment he had only one sure thing.

  “How about 10 percent of a new novel?” he asked.

  “A new novel? Whose new novel?”

  “Mack Green,” said Russo. “The author of The Oriole Kid.”

  “Interesting proposition,” said Reggie. “How much would you say it was worth? In your professional opinion.”

  “My cut of the publisher’s advance comes to seventy-five hundred, but you’d also own 10 percent of everything else—paperback, movie and television, world rights. If the book takes off, it could be worth a hell of a lot more than eighteen thou.”

  “In other words, you want me to gamble,” said the bookie. “Green hasn’t had a bestseller in years. From what I hear, he’s a dog.”

  “What, you’re handicapping authors now?”

  “I follow everything,” said Reggie. “I was reading someplace that information is the most important single advantage in business. It’s the reason why you’re sitting here bleeding and not the other way around.”

  “Well, here’s some information,” said Russo. “Wolfowitz, the editor in chief at Gothic Books, happens to be one of Green’s best friends. He’s really behind the novel. And the book itself is a winner. Green’s got a great idea.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Reggie, leaning against the door frame. “Tell me about the great idea.”

  Talking quickly and, he hoped, convincingly, Russo explained the concept of The Diary of a Dying Man. He could see that Reggie was intrigued. “There’s just one problem,” said the bookie. “What if Green really kills himself and doesn’t finish the book? Then I’m out the money.”

  “I’ve known Mack for years, he’s not the type. This is strictly fiction. Whattya say? It’s a gamble but, hey, you’re a gambler.”

  “No, you’re a gambler, I’m a financier,” Reggie corrected him gently. “But I won’t deny that I’m attracted. I’ve never owned a piece of an author before. All right, I’ll take him. Draw up the paper—today—and I’ll send Afterbirth by for it.”

  Russo breathed a sigh of relief. “I don’t want Mack to know about this,” he said.

  “I won’t tell if you don’t,” said Reggie. “Unless you give me a reason to.”

  “Okay, I’ll have the papers ready by five,” said Tommy.

  “Good. Now that that’s finished, I have another topic I want to discuss with you. I was wondering if you know someone at the Vatican, somebody on the inside.”

  “No,” said Tommy, surprised. “Why?”

  “The pope’s not getting any younger,” said Reggie. “A man with reliable information could make a lot of money when the time comes to elect a new one.”

  “Sorry,” said Tommy tightly.

  “You disapprove. Ah well, I can understand that, I suppose. Considering that you were once in the Church.”

  “I’m still in the Church, I’m just not a priest anymore.”

  “Whatever,” said Reggie airly. “A man’s religion is his private business, that’s the American way. But if you do happen to hear something, I’d appreciate knowing who you like for pope. It would be worth money. In the meantime, we’ll stick to the business at hand. Mack Green’s contract makes us quits. If it isn’t ready by five, Afterbirth will beat you up until you die. Capiche?”

  “Yeah,” said Tommy sourly, “capiche.”

  “Good,” said Herman. “In that case, I’ll be running along. You go on handling Green like before if you want to. Just make sure I get what’s coming to me.”

  “Thanks for the soda, Father,” said Afterbirth,
moving to the door behind the massive Reggie.

  “You’re welcome,” said Tommy. “Drop in anytime.”

  “No need for sarcasm,” said Reggie. He opened the door, paused briefly and then turned to Tommy. “When I said ‘capiche’ before? That doesn’t mean I’m Italian. It’s a common word, something anyone might say. You knew that, right?”

  “Right,” said Tommy. “I knew that.”

  “Good,” said Reggie with his most enigmatic expression. “I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

  Ten

  Northwest Flight 108 landed in Detroit’s Metro Airport just past noon, and Mack emerged from the gangway carrying a blue gym bag and a copy of Rolling Stone. He hadn’t been in the airport for years, but it looked pretty much the same as it had when he left for New York, junior auto executives rushing to make flight connections and gleaming new American cars on display in the main hall. He ducked into the newsstand and inspected the book rack. There was a full selection of favorite son Elmore Leonard and, predictably, no Mack Green. Not even The Oriole Kid in paperback. As far as the public was concerned, he was a dead author.

  At the Hertz counter, a young woman with dyed blond hair and a slight overbite handed him the keys to a late model LeBaron, preordered and charged to his Visa.

  “Want a map?” she asked pertly.

  “What makes you think I need one?”

  “You look like a New Yorker.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “In this job you get to know where people are from. You meet a lot of interesting types.”

  Mack ignored the opening. “Matter of fact, I’m from Oriole. I grew up there.”

  “No offense, but for Oriole you don’t need a map, you need a bulletproof vest.”

  Mack smiled. In his early days in New York he had often entertained the crowd at the Flying Tiger with tales of his gritty hometown. But in truth, Oriole didn’t scare him. During his long absence it had taken on a legendary quality; he no more feared its residents than he did his own characters.

  “It can’t be any more dangerous than Walter T. Horton,” he said. The woman’s puzzled expression reminded him that he was no longer on the Upper West Side. “It’s sort of a writer’s joke,” he explained.

  A keen look came over the woman’s face. “I knew you were probably a writer or something like that,” she said, extravagantly pleased with her powers of observation. “Are you famous? Have I seen any of your books?”

  “You might have,” said Mack, looking around conspiratorially and lowering his voice. “I’m Elmore Leonard.”

  “Your driver’s license says Mack Green.”

  “I’m traveling incognito,” Mack whispered, picking up the keys. “Keep it to yourself.”

  Mack claimed his luggage, found the black LeBaron in the Hertz lot and headed down I-94. He was out of the habit of driving—in New York he didn’t own a car—and he tooled down the highway feeling as luxuriously free as a sixteen-year-old. He fiddled with the radio, found a Motown oldies station that fit his mood and began singing along with the Temptations, “You could have been anything that you wanted to and I can te-el, the way you do the things you do.”

  There was no familiar scenery along the highway, nothing particularly evocative, just fast-food restaurants, unremarkable housing developments and billboards advertising cheap motels. Mack headed north on I–94, until he turned off the freeway and saw a familiar sign: WELCOME TO ORIOLE, THE LITTLE GIANT; POP. 81,570.

  The population hadn’t changed much in Mack’s absence, but from the looks of the east side the town had gone from scruffy to ramshackle. He knew all about the collapse of the auto industry, but he was still unprepared for the sheer physical decline it had wrought. Many of the tiny, dirty-white shingle houses he recalled from his boyhood now stood vacant and cannibalized. Others had broken-down porches and overgrown lawns where unkempt kids played among the weeds and debris.

  Mack stopped at a red light on the corner of Monroe and Dixon and watched a group of defeated-looking men sharing a bottle in front of the Jive-5 party store. They huddled together under a billboard that pictured a giant black fist and the words: MINISTER ABIJAMIN MALIK TEACHES: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION—WHITE MAN’S DISTRACTION. SELF-RELIANCE MEANS BLACK DEFIANCE. JOIN ARCH AND START TO MARCH.

  Mack was surprised to see Malik’s name here; he thought he was a New York phenomenon. The sign seemed incongruous, even a little exotic for Oriole—the last time he had been on the corner of Monroe and Dixon, there had been a Wonder Bread billboard.

  Downtown, which Mack recollected as a cheerful, bustling area with a mock-Corinthian county courthouse, fine stores and three tall office buildings, looked like it had been hit by a neutron bomb. The courthouse and the stores—Federals, Kresges, Gottleib’s Fine Mens Wear—stood empty and abandoned. There were boards over the windows of the Oriole Hotel and steel bars on the doors of Golden’s Department Store. A few dazed-looking people wandered through the streets, but they seemed more like survivors of some horrible disaster than downtown shoppers.

  As he passed the State Bank Building, Mack simultaneously remembered the phone number of his father’s law office, and a conversation he had once had with Eddie Yew, a Korean freelance photographer who hung around the Flying Tiger drinking whiskey sours.

  “How much you weigh when you twenty years old, Mack?” Eddie had asked him one day.

  “One seventy-five.”

  “How much you weigh now?”

  “One ninety, give or take.”

  “All the food you eat in twenty year, maybe one thousand pound of food. And you only gain fifteen. Where rest of food go?”

  Green had shrugged and the Korean smiled broadly. “One thousand pound of food go right in you mouth and out you asshole.”

  It had been a sobering thought then, and it was now. How many bytes of information had his brain absorbed in the years since he had left Oriole? How much had gone straight out his asshole? And why did he still remember his father’s number? “Proust, Proust, you’re becoming a fucking Proust,” Mack said to himself over the sound of Junior Walker and the All Stars.

  Past downtown he took Bannister Avenue west, heading instinctively toward Nutmeg Village, his old neighborhood. He drove slowly, surveying the changes, and for the first time he began to feel a bittersweet nostalgia. The A&W, which had been his first Flying Tiger, was now an adult video rental shop. A new post office stood where his elementary school had been. Most of the little shops he remembered had vanished. But J. D. Murphy’s Funeral Home, to which Buddy Packer had once obtained a key and sold illicit glimpses of the corpses for fifty cents a peek, was still there. He wondered where Buddy was now; probably dead, he figured, or in jail. His name wasn’t in the phone book, Mack had checked from New York.

  He passed Two Brothers Market, where the Kazonis boys didn’t check IDs too carefully, and next to it, Vic Snipes’s drugstore, where Vic, Oriole’s Ping-Pong champion (how in the hell did he remember that?), had sold him Trojans with a manly wink and, after Green’s father dropped dead, filled the prescriptions for Mack’s mother’s sleeping pills. Just past Vic’s was the Oriole National Savings and Loan, where Mack had opened his first account. He was glad to see that the little bank hadn’t succumbed to the S&L scandal.

  The Bannister Theater was showing a Jodie Foster flick that had closed in New York eight months earlier. The summer Mack and Linda Birney fell in love they had gone to the Bannister almost every night; the little theater had a special nursery room for crying children that was unused after dark—except by them. He remembered the night the manager had found them, stoned and naked, lying on the carpet. Linda had looked up and said, “We’re having a private moment here, do you mind?” Twenty-five years and a thousand women later, Mack still couldn’t forget the cool, ironic sound of her voice, the fragrance of her long, silky hair, the taste of sex on her tongue, the contours of her willowy body.

  Linda wasn’t in Oriole anymore, either; he had no idea where she was,
although over the years he had often searched for her by calling telephone information in probable locations—New York, LA, Miami—asking for a Linda Birney or a Linda Flanders. But she was gone, vanished like Oriole’s downtown, the A&W, his old elementary school. Driving past the Bannister Theater, thinking about Linda, Mack’s stomach ached.

  At the corner of Berkley, he automatically turned left and the pain went away; there were too many other memories here. He cruised slowly down the street, effortlessly assigning a name to every house: Campanella, Graff, Walton, Rafferty, Moore, Valuchi, Hakenberger, Flite, Andersen with an e, Old Man Janowitz, who had a German shepherd that chewed tin cans, Mr. Chones, who drank and cried in his yard, Reverend Strickland, whose son, Terry, had been killed in Vietnam when Mack was a senior in high school. He hadn’t seen any of these people in years, but he remembered them and the pointless details of their lives—the cabbage smell that hung in the air at the Raffertys, the day the Waltons got their first color television, the drama when Al Campanella left his wife and then came back. He wondered if any of his old neighbors carried around memories of him, but he doubted it. Small-town people with families to raise and jobs to go to each day probably wouldn’t bother.

  Mack stopped the car across from 52 Berkley and inspected the house with the expert eyes of a maintenance man. The black wrought-iron door knocker he had installed as a teenager was still in place. The shutters on the front windows, upstairs and down, that he and his father painted every second April, had a fresh white look. The ivy his mother had planted wound up the red brick on the side of the house.

  There was no one on the street and only an occasional car passed by. Green sat in the LeBaron listening to Mary Wells sing “Two Lovers,” and stared at his house, wondering who lived there now. In New York, the idea of starting his diary with a visit to his boyhood home had been a simple literary strategy, but now that he was here, he felt a curious shyness. He pictured being greeted at the door by his own sixteen-year-old self. “You’re me?” the kid would say, disappointed.