Tumblin' Dice (16 page)

Gayle said, no, that's okay, “Those days are gone. That work is done, served its purpose, you know? We don't need to be so public now.” She wanted to say everybody in the country knows who we are and how much manpower we have, but she was thinking this Felix knew that, he was just having fun with her.

And she was only half pissed off about that. He was all right, this young, old-time gangster from Philadelphia.

She said, “So now we have a lot of product we'd like to bring in here.” She looked from Frank — still sitting there like a deer in the headlights — to Felix and said, “If it's okay with you.”

And Felix smiled a little and then a lot and then he laughed and said, “You're good, honey. I like you.” He slapped Frank on the back and said, “Yeah, she's all right, Frank, isn't she?”

She watched Frank nod and say yeah, not even sure if that's what he was supposed to say, things happening a lot faster than he'd expected.

Then Felix drank some of his 7 and 7 and said, “The management contract on this casino runs another two years, same as the one in Niagara Falls, and then we're probably going to up for another five-year run.” He looked right at her, serious now, and said, “And I don't see anything changing in the way we do business.”

Gayle leaned back in the booth, wishing she could light a smoke, a distraction before she said anything too quickly, this guy telling her he wasn't going to back down. How much could she threaten him, how far could she push it?

She said, “You don't think there's room for more business here?”

Felix said no, and that was it, everybody was being reasonable, talking about it, but that's the way it was going to be.

Gayle nodded slowly, not sure what to say. She looked at Frank and he had no idea.

Then Felix said, “They have a caribou steak here. It's really good, not really local — these Indians were more fishermen and farmers — but it's good.”

Gayle said it was a little too early for a steak and Felix said, yeah, true enough, and just looked at her.

Gayle wasn't sure how she was going to play this, but there was no way she was going to just walk away now.

• • •

Frank walked back to his office thinking this was going to be weird. The bikers sent one of their wives — well, Frank was the one who met her and set up the money deal, the laundering, and then she suggested there might be more business they could do — but he just naturally thought the guys would take over.

Okay, fair enough, the chick seemed to know what she was doing — Felix sat there with a smug fucking smile on his face telling her they weren't going to budge and she just shrugged and said, okay fine, if that's the way you want to play this.

And then everybody shook hands and went back to work as if it was a sales pitch from a company looking to install new carpets but their bid was too high.

Back at his office Frank closed the door behind him and then it opened again right away and he turned around to tell whoever it was to leave him alone for ten fucking minutes but then he saw it was, of all people, Ritchie Stone, and Frank said, “Ritchie, what the hell do you want?”

Ritchie came right into the office and closed the door, saying, “Hey, Frank,” and looking around like he was impressed, like he was surprised, and Frank was thinking, fuck you, punk, but not about to give him the satisfaction, and walked across the big room to the bar.

Ritchie just stood there not saying anything, and Frank was wondering if this was going to be his play, if he was coming in here like Cliff and the stoned bass player looking for money from back in the dark ages, Frank thinking, shit, this could actually be funny.

So Frank said, “What do you want, Ritchie?” and Ritchie said, I want to talk to you, and Frank said, oh yeah, “What do you want to talk about?”

And Ritchie didn't say anything right away, so Frank said, here, “Let me tell you my foolproof method for not becoming an alcoholic,” and Ritchie said, “I hope it's better than your method for not becoming an asshole.”

“I have to hang around all these guys,” Frank said, getting out crystal highball glasses and ice, “all these old-timers and they always want to have a drink. The whole health craze never caught on, you know what I mean? No joggers, no treadmills in their offices.”

Ritchie said, “Gee, that's too bad, Frank — I'm sure you're disappointed,” and for a second Frank thought about turning around and throwing the fucking glass at the little prick's head but instead he just took a breath and said, “But three-hour lunch meetings every fucking day? Those they have. Every hotel room I ever stayed in was a suite, with a bar.” He had the bottle of Canadian Club in one hand and a glass full of ice in the other. “And every deal I closed, every shitty band that got signed to a record deal or picked up as an opening act, including you punks, Higher than shit, every deal was closed over a drink. Every one of those meetings you had to have a fucking glass in your hand.” He put the bottle down and picked up a little silver jigger, holding it in one hand and the glass of ice in the other, and said, “And this, my friend, is the secret.”

Ritchie said, what, a glass of ice?

“That's right, a glass full of ice and the jigger.” He filled it with the
CC
. “A glass of ice is really a third full of water. You add one ounce of booze, just one ounce, and the mix. Then you hold onto this fucking glass until the ice melts and you drink the water.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, that's all there is to it. Simple, eh?” He poured another jigger of
CC
into another glass filled with ice and added the ginger ale. “This way, you always have a drink in your hand, you're the life of the fucking party, but you know exactly how much booze you're drinking and you're always getting enough water. Booze dehydrates, did you know that?”

“No, I didn't.” Ritchie held out his hand and accepted the glass from Frank.

“I see my kids,” Frank said, “pouring straight from the bottle, I stop 'em right away, tell 'em, that's how you become an alcoholic.”

“You don't just make more drinks?”

Frank was leaning back against his desk then, looking right at Ritchie, saying, shit no, “You sip it while the assholes keep knocking 'em back. You see a guy on his way to becoming a boozehound, first thing, he stops using ice, takes up too much room in the glass. Then he starts pouring from the bottle, giving himself two, three ounces at a time, just enough mix to add colour, and then he stops with the mix altogether.”

Ritchie drank his rye and ginger, nodding, looked like he was considering it, thinking about it.

Frank was saying, it's easy to do, “I've seen so many guys do it.” Then he snapped his fingers saying, “Albert what's-his-name, program director at that station in Detroit,” and Ritchie said, McCauley, and Frank said, right, “Albert McCauley, watched the guy turn into an alkie right in front of me. Him and dozens more. A shame, really.”

Ritchie said, yeah, and then he said, “But you couldn't stop Angie?”

And Frank realized, shit, that's what this is about, Angie. Figures Ritchie wasn't coming in here for money, only guy Frank'd ever met really didn't seem to give a shit about the money — why he never had any. He shook his head and looked at Ritchie and said, “With Angie it was the drugs.”

He walked around his desk, looked out the wall of glass at the lake and the trees, any other country in the world it was a million-dollar view, now it was finally starting to get that way in Canada, too, now that it was getting scarce, and he said, “The drugs are different.”

Ritchie said yeah.

“Hey,” Frank said, turning back around and looking at Ritchie, taking a drink of his rye and ginger, “she's doing okay.”

Ritchie said, yeah, she's great.

“Is that what this is about?” Frank said. “You still want to get into Angie's pants?”

“I'm worried about her Frank, you running around with all these gangsters.”

“She's a big girl — she can take care of herself.”

“No doubt, but she likes you. She might stay too close and get caught in the crossfire.”

“There's not going to be any crossfire.”

“Frank, I saw that guy get shot in the parking lot. Angie'd just driven out two minutes before.”

Frank looked at Ritchie and said, she had? Then he watched Ritchie think about that, think maybe he'd tipped his hand but wasn't even sure. Then Frank said, “This really isn't any of your business.”

“Do you have any idea what you're doing? Have you ever had any idea what you were doing?”

Frank laughed and said, “Is this Ritchie-boy asking me if I have a plan? The kid who can't think past his next groupie, that's fucking hilarious.”

“You don't, do you?”

“You think this is about planning? You think you can sit down and figure out where everything's going and then do it? No, Ritchie, this is real life. It's like one of your lame-ass solos: you never know where it's gonna go.”

Ritchie said, yeah, well, “You should know where you don't want it to go.”

“You talking big picture? You think there's a big picture? You can only see that when it's over, Ritchie. In the meantime, day by day, you just get through it.”

“You've always been full of shit,” Ritchie said, “and some things never change.” He downed his drink, put the glass on Frank's desk, and started walking out of the office, and Frank said, “Look at you.”

Ritchie stopped and looked back and said, what?, and Frank said, “Walking away. You haven't changed, that's for damned sure.”

Ritchie gave him the finger as he walked out and Frank said, “Fuck you,” but then he sat down behind his desk and a lot of the energy drained out of him. He did feel like he was scrambling again, like he was trying to make another move that would pay off more and then he could make another one, and it was starting to feel like it was just the same shit on a different day.

But then he realized that wasn't true. This time he'd gone all in — there was no going back. If these fucking bikers didn't move in and take over there'd be no going back. It's not like he could put the band back together and head out on the road; it's not like he could go back to managing or running a showroom.

No, this was going to have to work. No matter who got hit in the crossfire.

Then the phone on his desk rang and he answered it and his receptionist told him that cop, Detective Bolduc, was here, and before he could say anything she walked right into his office and he put on his happy face and asked her if she wanted a drink.

Detective Loewen set up the meeting at a Boston Pizza in Barrie, not exactly halfway between Toronto and the casino, but close enough, and sitting down, Price said, “Hey, man, here you are actually doing some task force work, liaisoning,” and Loewen said, yeah, well, “Maybe someday I'll actually do it official — put it in a report and get some credit for it.”

McKeon said, “Everybody wants credit, but be careful, means you might get some of the blame if it goes bad,” and Price said, “If?”

Detective Sandra Bolduc came into the restaurant then and sat down with them saying, “Andre Price, I thought it might be you. We worked that one, the guy shot in the head and thrown out of the minivan on the 401,” and Price said, oh yeah, “That was a long time ago — we were both wearing uniforms.”

The waitress came over and Loewen and Bolduc ordered beers and Price and McKeon each ordered iced tea, McKeon saying, “You don't have to, Andre,” and him saying, “I'm watching my figure — I don't have that uniform to hide in anymore.”

McKeon looked at Bolduc and said, “I'm in the program, well unofficially,” and Price said, “Shit, we do everything unofficial.”

Loewen said, “Yeah, that's right,” getting to it now, looking at Bolduc and saying, “The shylock killed in the parking lot of the casino,” and Bolduc said, yeah?

McKeon said, “We were talking to a biker in Toronto, a hangaround, about a double homicide from last year but he thought we were talking about the guy killed at the casino.”

Price said, “We let it pass and the guy is whining about the double, saying it was last year, like it doesn't count anymore.”

“And,” McKeon said, “he didn't even shoot the guy he was supposed to — he picked up the wrong car and killed a husband and wife going home to the suburbs.”

Bolduc said, “I can't decide if I like the fact they're so stupid or not.”

The waitress brought the drinks then and all four cops ordered pasta off the specials of the day page.

Then Bolduc said, “I'm not really surprised to hear the bikers are involved. I found out there've been a few things happening at the casinos. A shylock went missing from the one in Montreal and a couple days ago his body washed up on the shore of the St. Lawrence River, some place called Boucherville?”

Price said, “South shore, used to play football against them, I grew up in LaSalle. The guy probably went in off the Jacques Cartier Bridge. Could've been a suicide.”

Bolduc said, could've been, yeah, “Body'd been in the water a while, not much evidence on it.”

Loewen said, “I also heard, unofficially, about shylocks being robbed at casinos in Niagara Falls and some in the States.”

Price said, “Unofficially,” and Loewen said, yeah, “Surprise, surprise, they aren't filling out police reports.”

“So,” McKeon said, “they're making a play for the casinos?”

Bolduc shrugged and drank a little of her beer. “Had to happen, I guess, all that money going through them right here in their backyard and now they're getting to be so big.”

“I was at a conference about money laundering,” Loewen said. “Cops from all over, ten, fifteen different forces — Ontario, Quebec, Michigan, New York State, Wisconsin, city cops, state troopers.”

Bolduc said, “You think the bad guys have so much trouble getting coordinated?”

Price said, “Anyway, we figured maybe we could work together on this guy, Boner,” and Bolduc said, “Boner?”

McKeon said, “Brent Andrew MacMillan. Brent became Bent and then Bent Boner and then just Boner.”

The waitress brought garlic bread and asked if they wanted another round, but only Price wanted another iced tea.

Bolduc said, the thing is, “It's very political.”

“A biker killing a shylock in a parking lot?”

“Parking lot of a government-owned casino on leased Native land.”

They all agreed on that and then McKeon said, “Still, I'd like someone to get jail time for killing a guy,” and Bolduc said, “You run any of this by Arthurs?”

Loewen looked at Price, who said, “Michael Arthurs, Crown Prosecutor, does most of the organized crime stuff,” and Loewen said, oh yeah.

Then Price looked at Bolduc and said, “Thing is, we didn't exactly bring him in officially.”

Bolduc drank some of her beer and said, “Now why didn't I see that coming.”

Loewen said, “The information is reliable,” and McKeon said, “Just not admissible in court.”

Bolduc said, “Fruit of the poisoned tree.”

“Well shit,” Loewen said, “the first thing they tell us on the task force is that this shit is complicated. These guys are all insulated: they have so many layers between the guys calling the shots and the guys pulling the trigger.”

McKeon said, “Even the guy pulling the trigger would be good if that's all we can get — better than nothing,” and Bolduc said, “Maybe we can do something with this. Maybe I can find a witness saw him in the parking lot close to the time of the shooting.”

McKeon said, “You've got a witness,” and Bolduc said, “Maybe.” Then Bolduc said, “You have a recent picture of this Boner?”

McKeon got out her phone, both thumbs working the touch screen and said, “Emailed to you.”

Bolduc said, “Okay, maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe he was stupid enough to use a credit card at the casino or the gas station across the street or something — just something to put him at the scene.”

Loewen said, “Maybe he's even on a surveillance camera,” liking what was happening now, saying, “they've got hundreds of them.”

Bolduc said, yeah, “But casino security is handled by your old friend Sergeant Burroughs.”

McKeon said, “Shit,” and Price said, “He's not a sergeant anymore,” and Bolduc said, no, “But he's still not very co-operative.”

Loewen said, “Fuck.”

McKeon finished off her iced tea and said, “It's worth going after, isn't it?” and Bolduc said, “Oh yeah, it's worth talking to the witness. If I get anything at all can you bring in Boner again?” McKeon said, oh yeah.

• • •

J.T. crawled out from under the Barracuda and said, yeah, “This is live.”

Gayle and Frank were standing beside the car, and Frank said, “Fucking guy,” and Gayle said, “You think Felix did this?”

Frank was pretty sure but he said, who else?, and J.T. said, “This looks just like one of Marcel Beauchemin's,” and tossed the grey pipe bomb to Frank, who caught it but jumped a foot off the ground.

Gayle said, “Marcel would've told us if one of these guys talked to him,” and J.T. said, yeah, “But this sure looks like one of his, right down to the note,” and he held up a piece of paper he'd taken from the pipe bomb that had “Boom!” written on it in cartoon letters.

“It's just a warning,” Gayle said, looking at Frank. Then she looked at J.T. and said, “But you're sure the charge is live?”

“Oh for sure. If you'd opened the door . . . boom.”

Frank said, “Not much of a warning. I could have missed that scratch.”

They stood there for a minute, no one saying anything, and then Gayle said, “You going to be okay?” and Frank said, yeah, of course, “I'm fine.”

Then Gayle turned to J.T. and said, “Marcel's still in Montreal, isn't he?” and J.T. said yeah, and they started to walk away, Gayle saying, “Do you think Felix went through the Italians and their guys in Montreal to get this?” and J.T. said, “Seems like a long throw for a pipe,” and Frank yelled after them, “Hey,” and they stopped and turned around.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”

Gayle said, “Keep it — we might need it,” and J.T. said, “Just don't drop it.”

“What?”

J.T. said, “I'm kidding,” and he turned around and walked away with Gayle, who was saying she had to go back to town, to Toronto.

Frank walked around back of the car and popped the trunk, put the pipe bomb inside, and closed the trunk gently. Then he looked down the side of the building to the east parking lot and all the buses taking all the gamblers back and forth to town.

And the tour buses.

Then he was thinking, shit, did the High play Montreal before they came here? Have to check with Angie.

• • •

Cliff was looking at his BlackBerry saying, “Jesus Christ, 120 guys arrested, holy fuck,” and scrolling through the story, reading it over and over, saying, “One of the biggest takedowns in
FBI
history,” and then saying, “Holy fuck, how does this affect us?”

Barry was looking at his laptop, reading the same story, but now he was thinking, “Us?”

Cliff saying, “I thought the Mafia was dead. I thought there was nothing left but old guys drinking shitty espresso.”

“That's right,” Barry said, “and there's no more drug smuggling or loan sharking or prostitution.”

Cliff said, “The nicknames are great: Jimmy Carwash, Johnny Bandana, Junior Lollipop, fucking Baby Shanks — imagine being called Baby Shanks.”

“He's eighty-three,” Barry said.

Cliff was laughing, “Lot of fat guys: Fat Larry, Fat Dennis — Dennis? Fat Tony.”

“That's
The Simpsons
.”

Cliff said, oh yeah, “It's Big Tony here. Jesus Christ, these guys.”

They were in Barry's room. Cliff came over first thing in the morning — which for Barry was two in the afternoon — telling him about this huge Mafia bust in New York, shoving his BlackBerry in his face. Barry had to go to the bathroom and then get on his laptop because he couldn't read anything on that small screen.

Now Cliff was looking out the window saying, “How long are the cops going to keep that taped off?”

Barry said, “Who knows? They're probably getting overtime, keep that going as long as they can,” and Cliff said, yeah, probably.

Then Cliff said, “You didn't kill the guy, did you?”

Barry said, no, but, “That is good for us.”

“How can that be good for us with cops crawling all over the place?”

“Gives Frank something to think about — how easy it is to shoot a guy in the parking lot.”

“You don't think you gave him a big enough warning?”

Barry said, “The bigger the better,” but he could tell Cliff was scared. Well, shit, he knew this wasn't going to go smooth, that's why he got Cliff involved. He knew the guy was always going to be hard to keep on track, shit he practically quit in Montreal when they had to throw that guy off the bridge, but he just had to keep him involved until they got the money out of Frank — till Barry got the money, then he could get rid of Cliff. Get rid of Cliff and Frank.

The way the bodies were falling there'd be so much shit going on Barry could just walk away — hell, ride off into the sunset on the tour bus.

Now Cliff was saying, “What if he didn't see the scratch? What if he'd opened his car door, what would we have done then?”

“Played the gig?”

“I'm serious.”

Barry shrugged and said, yeah, “Serious. That's the fucking point — had to show him how serious we are.”

“Could have ended it right there. We'd be empty handed.”

Shit, Barry was getting really tired of this guy. He said, “Risk you gotta take,” and scrolled through the website about the big bust in New York.

Cliff didn't say anything for a second and then said, “Shit they arrested union leaders, ex-cops, shit cops. They got them all on crimes going back thirty years. Fuck they never give up, these guys.”

Barry said they always get their man but then he said, no, “That's Mounties. I figured the
FBI
gave up all the time.”

Cliff said, “Murder, extortion, arson.”

“It's what they do.”

“Fuck,” Cliff said, “a double murder in an Irish bar over a spilled drink.”

Barry said, “It's just the
FBI
doing the Mafia's housecleaning for them.”

“What?”

Barry stood up and stretched, over six feet tall and never more than 180 pounds in his life, the Jenny Crank diet working great for him. “All the guys arrested are over sixty — shit, some of them are in their eighties. This is just the new generation taking over, getting rid of the old guys.”

“How do you know this stuff?”

Barry looked at Cliff and said, “I read it on the Internet.”

Cliff said, “I thought you just looked at porn,” and Barry said, that too. Then he said, “Okay, maybe we better talk to Frank again, see what kind of a mood he's in.”

Cliff said, “Let me ask you something,” and Barry was thinking, great, what could this be?, and Cliff said, “Did you know Frank was in the middle of something here, that he was dealing with all these guys?”

“Come on, it's a casino.”

“Yeah,” Cliff said, “but Frank, did you know how connected Frank is?”

“How connected is he?”

Now Cliff was getting pissed off, saying, “Come on, Barry, you know what I mean,” and Barry smiled a tight little smile and said, “It doesn't matter.”

“It doesn't matter that there's gangsters all over this place?”

“No,” Barry said, “it doesn't. But that's not what I meant — I meant it doesn't matter how much I knew about Frank's business. I knew for him to be in the job he's in he had to be connected. I knew the Philadelphia Gaming and Accommodation Company has the management contract for this casino.”

“You knew it was the Philly Mob?”

Barry said he knew. Then he said, “You knew it would be some Mob — Philly, Buffalo, they're connected all the way to Atlantic City. New York up through Montreal.”

“What about Toronto?”

Barry said, who knows, “And who cares? They have all kinds of shit between them. They have La Cosa Nostra, they have 'Ndrangheta, all kinds of shit. Somebody had to be running this place, somebody else probably looking to get in.”