“You look like shit,” he said.
I resisted the temptation to say, “You too.”
“Did you sleep in that outfit?”
“I didn’t have money for a hotel.”
“You should’ve taken the cash I offered you, kid. You could’ve stayed in this hotel.”
Just then a stretch limousine pulled up to the porte cochere. Black and sleek, it looked as long as a city bus. The chauffeur popped out and ran to open the rear passenger door a few feet away from where Rosetti and I were standing. Out stepped the most elegant man I’d ever seen in my life.
He was wearing a dark blue pinstriped business suit, powder blue spread-collar shirt, and bright yellow tie with a subtle red pattern in it. A handkerchief in his suit coat pocket picked up the red in the tie. His cordovan shoes looked like they’d been custom-made on Saville Row. His socks were cashmere. It was an understated outfit, but he wore it so well, it draped on his thin body so elegantly, the effect was as if he’d stepped out of the limousine wearing a top hat, white tie, and tails.
“Keep the car nearby, Jimmy,” he said to his chauffeur. “This will take less than an hour. And call the pilots to make sure they’re fueled up and ready to roll. Have them file a flight plan for San Diego. I want to take off right after I’m finished here.”
“Yes, sir,” said the chauffeur.
I took a step toward the man in the suit and held out my hand.
“Hello, Mr. Beason. Good to see you again.”
“Joey Volpe. How are you? You look …”
He paused to come up with a polite way to describe my appearance. I waited because I was curious to see what he’d come up with.
“… like you’ve been working quite hard. I love to see diligence in a young man. And you must be Mr. Rosetti.”
They shook hands.
“Joey has told me all about you, Mr. Rosetti. I must say it’s an honor to meet a man of your stature in this great city.”
“Likewise,” said Rosetti.
“Well, gentlemen, shall we go inside and have some breakfast? I understand Joey has some ideas he wants to present to us, Mr. Rosetti, and I’m eager to hear them.”
“Call me Tony,” said Rosetti.
“Very well,” said Beason, “and please reciprocate. I’m Jonathan.”
As we walked from the lobby to the restaurant with Beason leading the way, Rosetti leaned over to me and whispered, “What does ‘reciprocate’ mean again?”
“It’s like returning a favor. I do something for you. Then you do something for me.”
“I know how that works,” said Rosetti, chuckling.
When we sat down at the table, there was an awkward moment of silence. I saw Rosetti take note of the stark contrast between the way Mr. Beason and I were dressed—Douglas Fairbanks on his left and Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp on his right. Like Fairbanks and Chaplin, we were business partners but not likely ones. He began by asking the obvious question, “How did you two meet?”
Beason and I glanced at each other.
“Shall I take this,” he said, “or do you want to?”
“You go ahead.”
“Well, as you know, Tony, I’m in the business of sponsoring popular-culture conventions, or what are widely known as Fan-Cons. I own the rights to Comic-Con in San Diego, for example, which is the granddaddy of them all. I also produce and sponsor about fifty smaller conventions around the country—around the world, actually. We have some in London, Paris, Berlin, and Sydney. Next year we’ll be expanding to South America and Asia. Japan is a particularly promising market. The Japanese adore a certain kind of computerized cartoons called anime.”
“The appeal of anime escapes me,” I said.
“Well, some people might say the same about Button Men, Joey.” He laughed. “Chacun a son gout, n’est-ce pas?”
Rosetti gave me a puzzled look.
“Each to his own taste,” I translated.
“At any rate, gentlemen, I’m not a fan of anime either. But I’m not opposed to making money off of it, if you know what I mean.”
Rosetti nodded. This much he understood.
“I’m not a fan of ninety-nine percent of the trash we promote in our conventions. Superheroes leave me utterly cold. As far as I’m concerned, fantasy novels like The Hobbit and Harry Potter comprise the most tedious genre of literature ever invented. Don’t even get me started on zombies and vampires. I think it’s among the most peculiar, and frankly disturbing, phenomena of the twenty-first century that we seem to be raising a generation obsessed with vampires. How in the world did that happen?”
“Perhaps because they combine romance with danger,” I said.
“That’s a good theory, Joey. You’re a bright boy. But let me get back to the story of how we met. Even though I’m not a fan of most of the stuff and nonsense we promote in our conventions, I’ve always had a weakness for … a weakness for …”
“For what?” said Rosetti.
“Mr. Rosetti. Tony. I don’t often find myself confused about the finer points of etiquette. But I must confess, with all due respect, I don’t know the proper way to refer to your business. Is it permissible to say organized crime, or the mob, or Mafia, or what? Forgive my ignorance, please.”
“We call it ‘this thing of ours.’ But I don’t mind what you call it, Jonathan. If the question comes up in court, I’ll plead the Fifth.”
It wasn’t a funny joke, but we all laughed anyway.
“Very well, then,” said Beason. “I confess I’ve always been a big fan of the Mafia. Mafia movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas. Mafia television shows like The Sopranos and Button Men. Plus books, too, of course. I think I’ve read every book about the Mafia since The Valachi Papers came out back in the 1960s.
He mispronounced Valachi. Beason pronounced it the way most people did, the way Valachi himself probably did, like this: Valatchi. My father, the Italian professor, would’ve corrected him in a heartbeat. But I wasn’t going to say anything. Rosetti, however, who’d been made to feel a little ignorant by the French phrase and the use of fancy words like reciprocate, jumped in to prove he was smarter than he looked.
“You said that wrong.”
“What?”
“You pronounced it Valatchi. It’s supposed to be pronounced Valacky.”
“Oh, dear me,” said Beason. “Thank you for letting me know, Tony. I’ve been saying it wrong for forty years. I’m sure you’ve spared me some dreadful embarrassment in the future.”
“No problem,” said Rosetti. “Valachi himself probably said it wrong. Some of these wiseguys can’t speak Italian worth shit. The only words they know have to do with food.”
“At any rate,” said Beason. “Back to the story of how I met Joey. I was at the Fan-Con in St. Louis when I heard that one of the actors from Button Men was in the exhibit hall signing autographs. I was a huge fan of Button Men.”
“So you were the one!” I said.
That line never failed to get a laugh. I wish I had more opportunities to use it.
“Yes, my dear boy, I’m afraid there were far too few of us, because it was a great show. To make a long story short, Tony, I went downstairs to meet Joey. I invited him to dinner that evening. We hit it off like a house on fire. The next day I gave him a lift back to New York City.”
“In his private jet,” I said.
“You have a private jet? What kind?” said Rosetti.
“Gulfstream Four. Don’t be too impressed, though, Tony. It’s old. But it’s serviceable. I need to travel often in my business. The plane gets me from point A to point B without having to go through that dreadful security at the airports.”
“They must have some security, though, don’t they?” said Rosetti.
“Oh, yes, they do. But it’s the difference between a tap on the shoulder and stop-and-frisk, if you know what I mean.”
“Joey tells me you have your own Caribbean island, too.”
“I’m afraid our young friend has a tendency to exagger
ate, Tony. It’s not an island. It’s more like a peninsula. It’s in the Turks and Caicos.”
“The what?”
“Here I’ll show you.”
Beason pulled a smartphone out of his pocket and clicked on Google Maps. He typed a few words into the phone and a map of the Caribbean came up. He widened the map with his fingers until the Turks and Caicos archipelago filled the screen.
“There it is, right there. It’s the area that looks like a little thumb jutting out into the ocean. That’s my spread, as they say in Texas. It’s about a thousand acres. I’d hardly call it owning my own Caribbean island, but it’s lovely, I’ll grant you that. When my airplane lands there, I turn off my cellphone, take off my clothes, and spend the whole weekend drinking margaritas and taking naps. If you’d ever like to go there on vacation, Tony, let me know and I’ll arrange it for you. I’m so busy with work, the bloody place stays empty most of the time. I’d rather have somebody there enjoying it, even if it’s not me.”
“Thanks, I’ll think about that,” said Rosetti. “Are you British, Jonathan? I thought I heard an accent.”
“No, not British. I’m American through and through. What you’re hearing is that rather obnoxious accent one develops after suffering the misfortune of being educated at Groton and Harvard. I know it sounds horribly arrogant and aristocratic, but I’m afraid it’s too late for me to change it.”
“You remind me of a movie star,” said Rosetti. “But I can’t think of his name.”
“George Clooney, of course,” said Beason with a smile.
“No, no. An old-timer type movie star.”
“Clark Gable, maybe.”
“No, I’m thinking of somebody else, some guy who used to dress in a tuxedo all the time. It’ll come to me. Anyway, maybe we should talk business. I’ve got to go soon.”
This was my cue.
“Mr. Beason, I gave Mr. Rosetti the broad outline of the idea you and I discussed on the phone. To recap, I’m proposing the three of us produce a popular-culture convention called Gangster-Con. The idea is that we’ll get all the actors we can find from every major mobster movie and television show from the past forty years, going all the way back to The Godfather. Some of those actors are dead, of course …”
“Natural causes and otherwise,” said Rosetti, and all three of us laughed.
“True enough,” I said. “But you’d be surprised how many of them are still alive. No, we won’t get Al Pacino or Diane Keaton. But some of the bit players and the smaller character actors will jump at the chance because they haven’t worked in years. We might even snag someone like James Caan. A ton of actors from The Sopranos will show up. Gandolfini is dead, of course. Edie Falco won’t do it. But everybody else is fair game. Some of them we’ll have to pay, of course, but some of them will come just for the autograph money. I can use my connections to get almost everyone from the Button Men cast. Plus, I think we can get some famous authors to come, too. Guys like Nicholas Pileggi, Gay Talese—”
“Forgive me for interrupting, Joey,” said Beason. “But I think I just had a brilliant idea, if I do say so myself. Before I reveal it, though, I must ask Mr. Rosetti a question to see if it’s feasible. Tony, do people ever come out of the witness protection program?”
“Once in a while, yes.”
“I thought so. Why do they do that? Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Some of them just get tired of living like a citizen in some suburb of Sheboygan. They get bored. Or they run out of money because they can’t hold down a regular job. Sometimes they even write a book and start doing book tours and TV interviews.”
“So why don’t they get killed?”
“Well, sometimes they do. But a lot of times the guys who want them dead are locked up in prison, or dead themselves. The guys who aren’t in prison figure, well, it was a long time ago, it’s water under the bridge, so why risk a murder rap just for killing a rat?”
“Excellent,” said Beason. “That’s what I thought. So here’s my idea. What if we invited some real mobsters, or should I say ex-mobsters, to come to the convention, too.”
“The fans would love that,” I said. “Do you know of anybody in that situation, Mr. Rosetti?”
“I might.”
“That’s a fantastic idea, Mr. Beason. But to get back to the basic concept for this convention,” I said, “here’s the long and short of it. Until now most popular-culture conventions have featured science-fiction programs like Star Trek or Star Wars. Comic book superheroes like Spiderman or The X-Men. Or fantasy series like Twilight, Hunger Games, or The Hobbit. Gangster movies and TV shows have played a small role at these conventions. Usually, there are just one or two actors like me carrying the flag for the Mafia. But I believe there’s a huge audience of Mafia fans out there who would flock to a convention called Gangster-Con. I’d bet my life on it.”
“What does it cost to put on one of these things, Jonathan?” asked Rosetti.
“If you’re talking about Comic-Con in San Diego next week, it’s in the millions. But I would never spend that much on a new concept like this. I’d want to test it first in a smaller market like Denver or Cleveland. Then if it worked we could roll it out to the bigger venues.”
“Las Vegas would seem like a no-brainer,” said Rosetti. “I mean with the mob history and all.”
“You know, Mr. Rosetti, you are absolutely correct. I hadn’t thought of that. Las Vegas is a bigger market than I had in mind. But the venue is ideal when it comes to matching the theme.”
Rosetti smiled.
“Plus, in Las Vegas, you have a wide range of different facilities. You can go with a smaller, cheaper hotel. Or you can go all the way up to a place like Bellagio. Which brings me back to your original question, Tony. As a test case, I would try to bring this convention in for under five hundred thousand in up-front cost.”
“And how much could you expect to make in profit?” said Rosetti.
“If it doesn’t work, we’ll get our money back. So it’s a low-risk proposition. Almost no risk. If it does work, well, the sky’s the limit. Two million. Four million. Maybe as much as five million dollars.”
“So that’s a thousand percent return on my … on your money.”
“Caribbean islands don’t come cheap, Mr. Rosetti. Even if they’re technically peninsulas.”
“Can you really make that kind of money running conventions?”
“Have you ever heard of a man named Sheldon Adelson, Mr. Rosetti?”
“Sure. He’s the guy who owns the Venetian Hotel in Vegas.”
“The Venetian and many other casino properties in America and overseas. He’s worth forty billion dollars, which makes him one of the richest people in the United States according to Forbes magazine. Do you know how he made his money, Tony?”
“In the casino business, of course.”
“Well, you don’t just waltz in and buy a casino with a home-equity loan, Tony. He got his start by doing what I do. He sponsored conventions. He started with one convention, in particular, called the Computer Dealers’ Exhibition or COMDEX. It wasn’t until he sold that business for a billion dollars that he started buying casinos like gumdrops.”
“He sold the rights to a trade show for a billion dollars?”
“Almost a billion, yes. It’s a lucrative business, Tony.”
“One thing I don’t understand.”
“Yes?”
“If this business makes so much money, and you’re so rich that you got your own airplane and island, why the fuck do you need help from someone like me?”
“Mr. Rosetti—” I started to say, but Beason interrupted me.
“No, Joey, let me answer. It’s a fair question. More than fair, it’s an important question and it deserves an answer. I don’t need help from you, Tony, but I want it. And here’s why.”
Beason paused to gather his thoughts and Rosetti said, “Well?”
“You’re correct when you say that I could afford to finance this myse
lf. When I go to Las Vegas, I often drop five hundred thousand at the baccarat tables. Sometimes more. But I didn’t get rich by being stupid, Tony. One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that in business you want to spread your risk around as much as possible. I believe in this idea of Joey’s. I truly do. But I’ve had a lot of ideas I believed in that wound up going belly-up. If I’d suffered all the losses by myself, my vacation home would be a condo in Miami and my airplane would be a Cessna 152.”
Rosetti nodded.
“Plus, and I’m not trying to butter you up here, we need your expertise. We need your connections. We need the wisdom and street smarts you’ve earned over the years by running a Mafia fam … an organization of your kind. I think your participation is crucial to the success of this venture. To be honest with you, Tony, I won’t take part unless we have you on board. I’ve already told Joey as much.”
“He has,” I said. I don’t know why I said that, I just felt like I hadn’t said anything in a while.
“As I said earlier, we need five hundred thousand in investment capital. I will personally put up half of that. I’m asking you to put up the other half. If the convention does as well as I think it will, you’ll get back two and a half million dollars, which, as you noted, is a thousand percent return on your investment. You can’t get that kind of return on Wall Street, Tony. You probably can’t even get it in your business.”
“I don’t know,” said Rosetti, “it’s really not my kinda thing. What do I know about putting on a convention?”
“You know more than you think you do,” said Beason. “Look, I’ll take this a step further. I hope I don’t regret this, but I think it’s the right thing to do.”
Beason reached into his suit jacket pocket, and I thought I saw Rosetti flinch. I guessed Rosetti had been in some meetings where a sudden reach for the pocket was not a good thing. Beason pulled out his checkbook.
“I’m going to write a check out for twenty-five thousand and give it to Joey for seed money. That’s ten percent of my total investment. I’m willing to lose every penny of that money if this thing doesn’t get off the ground.”
Beason pulled a Montblanc pen from his shirt pocket and began writing the check.
The Don Con Page 20