The Bookmakers (22 page)

“I didn’t know Tuffy Franklin was a judge.”

“Fuck him,” said Packer decisively. “The other day, you said you could let me have a few thousand bucks, remember?”

Mack nodded.

“I need ten, can you swing that?”

“Ten’s a lot of money.”

“What’s the matter, Macky, you don’t trust me? I’ll get it back to you in a week, guaranteed. With fucking interest if you want.”

“You knew Linda was in town,” said Mack suddenly, realizing it for the first time. “Didn’t you?”

Packer shrugged. “Must have slipped my mind.”

“Bullshit. Why didn’t you say something when I asked you?”

“Tell you the truth, I thought it would be better for you if you didn’t get mixed up with her,” said Packer. “She’s a cunt.”

“Everybody’s a cunt to you,” said Mack. “Roy Ray. John McClain. Tuffy Franklin. Linda—”

“Yeah, I’ve got a real bad attitude. I’ll work on it. What about the money?”

“When we were kids I thought you were the coolest guy I ever met,” said Mack, looking at his old friend with professional detachment. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Like I told you that night at Stanley’s, I grew up,” said Packer. “Are you going to loan me the ten or not?”

“Uh-uh,” said Mack, shaking his head. “I can let you have two, if it helps.”

Packer peered down at Mack through his granny glasses. “Save your money,” he said. “I don’t need a fucking handout.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mack.

“Yeah, you are,” said Packer, his thin lips forming a nasty sneer. “You’re a sorry motherfucking cunt.”

Packer stalked out of the ballroom, stopped in the men’s room, where he did six quick lines of coke and stepped outside into the clear, cold Michigan night. He was pissed at himself for mishandling Mack—not telling him about Linda had been a stupid mistake—but it was too late to do anything about that now. As he walked through the quiet parking lot he recognized Mack’s rented black LeBaron. On an impulse he stopped, reared his leg back and kicked a good-sized dent into the right front door with his cowboy boot. Then he went over to his T-Bird, removed a six-inch knife from the glove compartment and walked back to the LeBaron. He took a quick look around, saw that no one was watching, and gouged a heart into the paint on the left front door. Under it he
scratched the words, “Mack and Linda Forever.” He walked around the side and added “Pussy Wagon” in big letters on the other door. Then, in a frenzy of angry creativity, he slashed all four tires. There, he thought, let Green explain that to the fucking Rent-a-Car people.

Packer went back to his own car, lit a joint and peeled out of the lot. A row away, sitting in his blue Mitsubishi, Arlen Nashua watched him drive off. He wasn’t sure, but he had a feeling that he had found what Herman Reggie was looking for.

Long before it became a familiar term in pop psychology, Herman Reggie considered himself a people person. He was in a business founded on understanding human nature and it was this that gave him his greatest satisfaction. There were other bookies who thought only of odds and numbers, who boiled everything down to a mechanical conjuring of sums, but Reggie pitied their soulless arithmetic. He cared about his clients, rejoiced with the winners and, if they paid up, sympathized with the losers. And so, the first time he had heard the phrase, on a radio talk show, he had recognized himself and thought: “That’s what I am. I’m a people person.”

Over the years, Reggie had established and cultivated a vast army of friends and associates around the country. In virtually every city and many small towns he knew someone who would be happy to do him a favor—lay off bets, collect a bad debt, provide
inside information, arrange the outcome of a sporting event, all the little things that meant prosperity in his business. Arlen Nashua was one of those people.

Like many of Herman’s friends in the Midwest, Nashua had worked for a labor union. He had also served five years in Marquette for committing mayhem in the line of duty. Nashua had a bad case of emphysema and was semiretired, but Herman respected his industry and his judgment. For that reason he had given him the Mack Green assignment, and Nashua hadn’t let him down.

“Tell me a little more about Packer,” he said to Nashua. It was the day before Christmas and they were at a corner table at the Anchor Bar in downtown Detroit. “Is he smart?”

“Not as smart as he thinks he is, but yeah, he’s no dummy.”

“Can he keep his mouth shut?”

“He’s got a good reputation,” said Nashua. “I checked him out with a couple guys he did time with. They say nice things about him.”

“And you say he needs money?”

“He’s been trying to scrounge dough all over,” said Nashua. “I think that might have something to do with his fight with Green, but I’m not sure.”

“Know what he needs it for?”

Nashua coughed and shrugged at the same time. “I could probably find out, you want me to.”

“It’s not important,” said Reggie. “Tell me, is there anything he wouldn’t do? Anything that might scare him?”

“I don’t think so,” said Nashua. “If you want to be a little more specific, maybe it would help.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” said Reggie. “Not that at all. You’ve done a terrific job.”

“Thanks,” wheezed Nashua.

“You’ve shown that a good man with a disability can accomplish anything,” Reggie said.

“Thanks,” Nashua repeated. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if Herman was putting him on or not.

“Tell me, is Packer a family man?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way, no.”

“In that case I’d like to invite him to Christmas lunch at Carl’s Chop House,” said Reggie. “Give him a call for me, will you? Tell him I’m a promoter who wants to talk about booking some of his fighters.”

“Sure,” said Nashua. “By the way, what does it matter if he has a family?”

“I wouldn’t want to take him away from his kids on Christmas,” said Reggie. “A man with a family should spend national holidays at home.”

As Christmas approached, the normal routine of the McClain household gave way to a burst of holiday preparations. John bought a large tree and decorated it himself with popcorn balls and little angels. He put a wreath on the door, hung stockings over the mantel and spent an entire day draping the front porch with colored lights. When Mack offered to help, he rebuffed him with jovial brusqueness. “You want to decorate the place, bring Linda for dinner on Christmas Eve,” he said. “The rest of this stuff I can do myself.”

Linda was delighted by the invitation, especially when she heard that Joyce had been cooking for three days. She arrived for dinner with a bottle of Pinot Noir, Acacia 1984, and a stack of CDs from the store. “Everybody except Henry Kissinger’s got a Christmas album out this year,” she said.

“We’ll put these on after supper,” said Joyce, kissing Linda on the cheek.

“But we’ve got our own Christmas sounds,” McClain protested, looking to his wife for confirmation.

“John thinks if he doesn’t play the same songs every year, Santa won’t find him,” said Joyce.

“What music do you have?” Mack laughed. “Bing Crosby and Gene Autry?”

“Charles Brown and Chuck Berry,” McClain said in his east side dialect. “They the baddest Christmas singers they is.”

“All right, Superfly,” Joyce said affectionately, “when you’re ready for supper, it’s ready for you.”

Joyce said grace, while Mack and Linda held hands under the table and McClain fidgeted in his seat, staring at the turkey. When Joyce murmured “Amen,” he was already on his feet, carving knife in hand.

“You must have had a lot of Christmas dinners in this room,” Joyce said to Mack.

“My mother always cooked a goose and my father made a toast. ‘God bless us every one!’ It was pretty corny.”

“That’s from
A Christmas Carol
,” said McClain. “It was a hell of a movie, right up there with
Dial M for Murder
and
Rocky III
.”

“Lord God Jesus, why did you send me this man?” Joyce said, laughing.

“Because he knew you had been a good little girl,” said McClain.

“That’s Santa Claus, not Jesus,” said Mack.

“Same thing,” said McClain.

“John, I will not have you blaspheming in this house, especially not on Christmas Eve,” said Joyce.

“You’re the one said Lord God Jesus,” said McClain. “Where I grew up, that was taking the name of the Lord in vain.”

“Where did you grow up?” asked Linda.

“Right here in Oriole, on the north side.”

“You know, the first time I ever went to the north side, it was to a synagogue. With Buddy Packer, if you can believe that.”

“Let’s not spoil dinner by talking about him,” said Joyce.

“Amen to that,” said Linda.

“I never thought I’d say this, but I feel sorry for him,” said Mack.

“Sorry my ass,” snorted McClain. “He’s scum. You know he was in prison?”

Mack nodded. “He told me, yeah. Something to do with arson.”

“You make it sound like a bonfire,” said McClain. “A man died in that fire.”

“John, it’s Christmas,” said Joyce.

“He had a club out on Monroe,” said McClain, undeterred. “A real dive. Called it Packer’s Airport Lounge for some stupid reason, although there wasn’t an airport within twenty miles.”

“You’ve got to know his sense of humor,” said Mack.

“I don’t have to know a damn thing about him,” said McClain. “I know too much already.”

“What about the arson?” asked Linda.

“I’m coming to that. He ran the place with his wife—”

“Buddy was married?” said Mack. “He never told me that.”

“Yeah, to a trailer-park hookerette named DeeDee Hunter. She had a kid named Donnie when she was about fifteen. By the time she married Packer, Donnie was nine or ten, around there. The kid was a real standout, too, even in this town. Half the burglaries on the north side were him.”

“When he was nine years old?” asked Mack.

“Naw, when he got older. The thing is, the kid worshiped Packer, that’s how screwed up he was. The only thing he really wanted was for Packer to adopt him, which naturally he refused to do. He wouldn’t even let the kid call him Dad, just Buddy.

“Then, one day Packer calls little Donnie in and says, ‘How would you like to be my son?’ ’Course the kid gets all excited, Buddy Packer’s gonna be his daddy. ‘Well,’ says Packer, ‘if you want me to adopt you, you’ve got to prove your love.’

“ ‘What do you want me to do?’ the kid asks. Know what Packer told him?”

Mack shook his head.

“Burn down the nightclub.”

“What for? The insurance?” asked Mack.

“Yeah,” said McClain. “He did it, too, only he burned down
more than he planned on. He caught a whole block and an old guy died of smoke inhalation.”

“How do you know so much about it?” asked Mack.

“Because I’m the one who arrested him,” said McClain. “It was my case.”

“You? That’s quite a coincidence.”

“It’s a small town, hotshot,” said McClain.

After dinner they went back to the living room. McClain lit a fire, poured a round of Hennessy VSOP and raised his glass. “God bless us every one!” he said, looking at Mack.

“I’m going to answer that they way I used to answer my father,” said Mack.

“How’s that?” asked Joyce.

Mack rose from the couch, reached out his hand for Linda’s and gently pulled her to her feet. Then he shook hands with McClain and kissed Joyce on the cheek. “Merry Christmas,” he said, grinning, “dinner was delicious, and I’ve got to go over to Linda Birney’s house now.”

When they were gone, McClain went up to Mack’s room, jimmied open the lock on his desk and returned to the living room with a stack of pages. “Just listen to this,” he said. He cleared his throat and began reading aloud:

“Looks like the Oriole Kid is back in championship form,” chortled McClain.

“I don’t think you should be reading that out loud,” said Joyce. “It’s not meant for us.”

“Are you kidding? If it wasn’t for us, none of this would be happening. Listen to what he wrote about you today:

“How’s that sound?” said McClain happily. “Is Mack out of the woods or what?” He set the pages down on the coffee table and put his arm around his wife. “Joy,” he said. “That’s a good name for you. Maybe I’ll call you that from now on.”