Hard Case Crime: Fake I.D. (3 page)

I went toward the front of the fronton, out to the grandstand. I walked up and down the aisle a few times, looking for Pete in the stands, but I didn’t see him anywhere. I started to walk faster, looking around in every direction. I looked all over the building—in the bathroom, in the simulcast area, near the concession stands. I was about to go outside and look for his car in the lot, when I saw him walking away from one of the betting windows. I jogged toward him, reaching him right at the entrance to the grandstand.

When I called out his name he turned around. He didn’t exactly look happy to see me.

“I was looking around for you all over the place,” I said. “I thought you might’ve taken off.”

“Why were you looking for me?” he asked.

“Just wanted to say hello,” I said. “I also wanted to say sorry for before. I was a real asshole.”

The lights in the grandstand dimmed, and the usual loud trumpet music came on as the jai-alai players marched on to the court for the next game.

“I don’t want to miss the game,” Pete said.

“I’ll come watch it with you,” I said. “Where you sitting?”

“I got a reserved seat—up front.”

“The usher won’t bust my balls if I sit with you for one game,” I said. “I mean they have what, fifty people here today?”

I could tell that Pete was still pissed off, but he motioned with his head for me to come sit with him anyway.

We sat in the center section, in the fourth row. The elevated court was at eye level, and we had a head-on view of the game through the mesh that separated the players and the stands. Pete still smelled, but for some reason it didn’t bother me anymore.

“So who do you got here?” I asked.

“The one in exotics,” Pete said.

“I’ll root you home,” I said.

The one served to start the game. The two hit a weak shot back that the one put away for an easy
chula
.

“That’s one,” I said, but Pete wasn’t looking at me.

The one took another point from the three, then lost to the four, hitting an easy shot right into the mesh. As usual, the game looked completely fixed and some people in the crowd started to boo.

“You’ll get’ em in the next round,” I said.

As we watched the four play the five I said, “So I was thinking about what you told me before—I mean in the car outside—about buying into a share of that horse. I was wondering if you could tell me a little more about that.”

“I thought you weren’t interested,” Pete said. He sounded pissed off again, but I didn’t think it had to do with me anymore. He was probably still mad about the one missing that easy shot.

“Yeah, well I’ve been giving it a little more thought,” I said. “I was thinking it might be kind of fun to own a piece of a race horse.”

The five missed an easy shot to give the four his second point. The whole crowd booed.

“It has to beat coming down here,” I said, “throwing your money away on these crooks.”

Pete smiled. I could tell he forgave me completely now for the way I had acted in the bathroom.

“The only problem is it’s a big risk,” Pete said. “Hopefully, we’ll make some money, but chances are we’re just throwing away ten grand apiece. The only reason I asked you to come on board in the first place was because I didn’t know what you did for a living. I thought you might have some expendable income or—what do the stockbrokers call it?—risk capital. But if you’re gonna have to go out on a limb—”

“Money’s no problem,” I lied. “I just wanted to know more details about it. You know, the way the contract works and shit like that.”

“I don’t have all the details with me,” Pete said. “But if you’re telling me you’re interested in this, Alan Schwartz, the Jewish guy I was talking about, can give you all the info. He has this package he printed up—you know, a prospectus. It explains how it all works. But I need to know one hundred percent because Alan’s a big-time Wall Street guy and I don’t want to waste his time.”

“I’ll have to think it over,” I said. “How about I let you know for sure in a day or two?”

“The sooner the better,” Pete said. “We’re looking to find somebody else by the end of the week. For all I know Alan already found somebody.”

The four made a great play, climbing the side wall to pull down a shot, then he backhanded a
chula
. A few people cheered.

“You’re right to stay away from this bullshit,” Pete said to me. “I have to be out of my mind, throwing my money away on these fucking
banditos
.”

“There’s just one thing I’m still wondering about,” I said, hardly paying attention to the game, “but I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.”

“Shoot,” Pete said.

“You own Logan’s shoe stores so you must have some serious money. Why don’t you just buy a horse on your own? Or, if you don’t want to buy a whole horse, why don’t you just buy the fifth share for another ten grand? Why do you have to go find somebody else?”

Pete smiled, like he was thinking about some old joke, then said, “You kiddin’ me? I’d love to own a horse myself, and if I had my way I’d own a whole stable of horses someday. But you can’t just jump into the horse business overnight. You have to know what you’re doing, you need contacts. That’s why I figured I’d go in on this syndicate. Alan Schwartz knows the trainers, knows all that shit. I figured it would show me the ropes, then I go out and start buying my own horses. But the reason I can’t put up the other ten grand—because, believe me, I would if I could—is Alan wants us all to be even owners, twenty percent a piece. He’s afraid if one guy got forty percent of the horse he’d start making all the decisions and he’s right. This way, with five guys, we vote on everything and the majority rules.”

Pete was checking his tickets, ripping them up one by one.

“That’s it for me,” he said. “I’ve given these assholes enough of my money for one afternoon.”

“Taking off?”

“Maybe I’ll hit Yonkers on my way back to Brooklyn,” he said. “See how I feel.”

I was thinking about asking Pete if he wanted some company at the trotters, but then I remembered how I was almost broke and how I didn’t even have any money left on my credit cards. So instead I said, “So how do I get in touch with you when I make up my mind?”

Pete dug into his pocket and took out a thick wallet. From one of the compartments he slid out a business card and handed it to me. “This is my card, but it’s not me you’re gonna have to talk to, it’s Alan. I’m gonna give you his work number. If he’s not there leave a message on his voice mail and tell him I told you to call. But don’t call him if you’re not serious. Alan’s a busy guy—he doesn’t fuck around.”

I looked at the front of the business card and saw the little picture of a shoe—the logo of Logan’s shoe stores—then the listing of the two locations in Brooklyn.
PETE LOGAN, OWNER
was printed in bold lettering across the top of the card. On the back of the card he’d written a phone number and “Alan Schwartz,” underlined twice.

I shook Pete’s sweaty hand, then I watched him walk up the aisle toward the exit. I pissed the rest of my money away on a couple of dog races and a few minutes later I was back on the Turnpike.

I was driving in the right lane, going about forty. I took out Pete’s card and put it on the dashboard. It looked like a real business card, but how hard would it be to print up some business cards saying you own the Logan’s shoe stores in Brooklyn? The whole thing could’ve been the old “give and take away” routine. Tell a guy he can have something, like a share of a horse, then when he wants it tell him he might not be able to have it and that makes him want it even more. Why else would Pete have said that they could’ve “already found somebody.” In the parking lot, he made it sound like the whole thing was up to me, then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t.

I put on the radio on WFAN, listening to Mike and the Mad Dog talking about the Jets’ playoff chances. A tractor trailer ahead of me moved into my lane, cutting me off.

“Motherfucker!” I yelled, braking hard. The business card shifted on the dashboard, almost falling down the heating grate.

“Jesus,” I said.

I took the card off the dashboard and put it away in my wallet for safekeeping.

I lived in a one-room walkup on Sixty-fourth Street between First and York. Frank, my boss at work, had fixed me up with a friend of his, a Greek guy named Costas, who owned some buildings in the neighborhood. There was no super in the building so Costas cut a deal with me—he gave me a break on the rent for taking care of the building. Nothing too fancy—I had to take out the garbage, fix leaky sinks, put down glue traps and roach baits. Sometimes it was a big pain in the ass but the rent was so cheap—four-eighty a month in a neighborhood where studios went for twelve hundred easy—it was worth it.

The only problem was the apartment was built for a midget—two hundred and fifty square feet and when they said “square feet” they meant it. It was like I was living in a jail cell, with a little kitchenette in one corner, a door to a small bathroom in another, and a pull-out couch in the corner to the left of where you walked in. The place was always a mess—covered with dirty laundry, newspaper, junk mail and other garbage. Dishes were piled up in the sink and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d washed a piece of silverware. I tried to keep it clean, but in a place so small it was impossible. I couldn’t decorate for shit so I didn’t even try. I didn’t know what to do with one wall so I banged some nails into it and hung up some old baseball caps. On another wall was a big poster of DeNiro in
Raging Bull
. Next to the poster was my latest eight-by-ten head shot—smiling, with the collar of my leather jacket flipped up like Travolta in
Grease
. There was never anything to eat in the fridge and I didn’t know how to cook anyway. I either ate my meals at the bar or ordered in.

The apartment might have been small, but it was a palace compared to some of the other places I’d lived. When I first moved to the city, after I left college, I had a job working in the kitchen at a Chinese restaurant on the Lower East Side. I was living in a small, run-down apartment above the restaurant with four Chinese guys. I slept on a mat on the floor and I woke up one night and there was a family of rats crawling on me. My other apartments weren’t much better—roach-infested shitholes without heat or hot water that probably should have been condemned by the Board of Health. When I was younger, where I lived never seemed to matter because I always knew it was temporary, that I’d eventually make it as an actor and then look back at my time when I was struggling as “the good old days.” I’d be interviewed on
Access Hollywood
or
Entertainment Tonight
and tell my rat story and everyone would laugh, like it was all a big joke. But, lately, I’d been getting tired of struggling. I wanted to live in a nice apartment and have money in the bank and I wanted it to happen soon.

I took off all my clothes, letting them drop onto the floor. I was famished, but I remembered that I was almost broke. I still had three dollars and some change left over from my toll-and-gas money. In the pockets of my coats and pants I found some more change, including a crumpled dollar, and I found sixty-eight cents under the couch cushions. Out of places to look, I counted all the money I’d found—five dollars and sixteen cents. It wasn’t even enough to order a hero from Pizza Park on First Avenue, unless I wanted to stiff the kid on the tip.

I thought about taking a walk around the corner, buying a couple of slices and a Coke and calling it dinner, but I decided it wasn’t worth freezing my ass off. Instead, I figured I’d just hold out a couple of hours until I went to work.

Sitting in front of the TV, flipping channels without paying attention to what was on, I decided I had to be crazy to even take Pete’s business card home with me. How could I come up with ten grand when I couldn’t even scrounge up enough money to order a pizza? Besides, I was an actor. Acting had been my dream since I was a kid. My mother and father were rough on me a lot, so I spent hours in my room alone with the door locked, looking at myself in the mirror, repeating the lines I’d heard on TV and in the movies over and over again. When I grew up, I wanted to be just like DeNiro in
Taxi Driver
or Pacino in
Scarface
. In high school, I had lead roles in all the productions and my drama teacher, Mrs. Warren, told me I had “can’t-miss talent.” I couldn’t quit now, just because things weren’t going my way. I had an audition tomorrow afternoon for a part in a dog food commercial. After I got that role, I’d land a part in a soap and then the movie people would start calling. Maybe it would take a little longer to get to Hollywood than I’d thought, but I’d get there eventually. I knew I had too much talent to go unnoticed forever.

I put on my usual work outfit—faded jeans, a tight black crew-neck T-shirt, my chain with a little gold barbell that I’d had since high school, and black motorcycle boots. Wearing my long black leather coat unbuttoned, I left my apartment.

O’Reilley’s was only a couple of blocks away on First Avenue between Sixty-fifth and Sixty-sixth. When I arrived, a few regulars were sitting at the bar by themselves. Like a lot of bars in Manhattan, O’Reilley’s had its “day crowd” and its “night crowd.” The day crowd was old men, construction workers, electricians, carpenters, and plain drunks. They came to drink hard liquor and to get away from their wives and bosses. Late in the afternoon, toward five, the day crowd started thinning out, and then the younger happy-hour crowd arrived. O’Reilley’s wasn’t a big-time happy-hour bar—we got about twenty people on a typical night—so I didn’t do much proofing at the door until the night crowd arrived, usually around eight or nine. Until then, I sometimes helped out at the bar, or I hung around doing nothing. I had to admit that, even though being a bouncer wasn’t the most exciting job in the world, at least it was easy. It beat the hell out of washing dishes and waiting tables and driving cabs and all the other shit jobs I’d had. Basically, all I had to do was sit on a bar stool and look tough. Once in a while, on Friday and Saturday nights, a guy would drink a few beers and turn into a big shot. Usually, it would be two guys fighting each other and I’d go in and break it up. A couple of times drunk guys took swings at me and I had to get a little rough, but I hated when that happened. I wasn’t one of those asshole bouncers who lived for the days I had to hit people. If two guys wanted to go at it I always let them go, as long as it wasn’t inside the bar.