remembered all the stories Mike told me about how this used to be the Queen of Resorts before I was born. The place where all the old robber barons, industrial leaders, and flappers from the 1920s used to come and sun themselves. This was where they had the first Miss America Pageant, the first movie theater, the first Easter Parade, the first bra-burning, the first Ferris wheel, and the first color postcard. And down at the end of the Boardwalk, there was the Steel Pier, where thousands of people would come to watch Sinatra himself sing with Tommy Dorsey’s band while horses dove off the end of the pier.
All that was gone by the time my real father left. But there was always the chance that it would come back. “It’s Atlantic City,” I remember him saying. “Anything could happen here.” And even in those ghost town years, I knew he was right. There was a special feeling about the place. Something about the way the sea met the sky as the salt air rustled the red-and-white-striped tents on the beach. Summer always seemed right around the corner.
And then it finally came. The state decided to allow casino gambling in A.C., and soon those castles my real father had been talking about began appearing all along the Boardwalk. Places with names like Bally’s Grand, Caesar’s, the Taj Mahal. Huge rectangles of chrome and glass that turned gold when the sun hit them just the right way.
Except by then, I had no way into them. Because I had Vin as a stepfather and Teddy as an in-law, I couldn’t apply to work for any of the casinos. Any of the standard background checking would make it look like I was mobbed-up too.
So I was stuck on the porch of a rickety shack while these palaces went up literally in my backyard. And now, more than ever, I wanted to go into them. I had Larry’s murder weighing on my mind and Carla, the kids, and the bills waiting for me at home. There had to be some other kind of life out there.
I looked up again at that sign blinking TAKE A CHANCE, TAKE A CHANCE over the entrance of the Doubloon. I just watched it awhile. I thought nobody was supposed to have flashing lights like that in Atlantic City. The local politicians used to say they didn’t want anything too flashy or vulgar displayed. But here the Doubloon had this thing blinking so brightly you’d get the message if you were flying ten miles up in an airplane. I wondered how they got somebody to make an exception for them.
4
“THE STONES,” SAID Vincent Russo. “I’m telling you, Ted. You can’t believe the stones on this kid.”
“Yeah?”
“He stands right up like a man, shoots Larry twice. I never lifted a finger. I was too scared, you know. Larry gets up, Anthony gives him two more for his health. Bang, bang. I had nothin’ to do with it. My ass was sucking. You know what I’m saying?”
Teddy Marino, his boss, watched him suspiciously and said nothing.
The two of them were standing in a third-floor bathroom, where they were sure their conversation wouldn’t be bugged. Noise filtered up from the social club on the first floor. The old lady down the hall turned her light off. Teddy, wearing a pinstripe suit without a tie, shifted uncomfortably in the doorway.
He was fat in the way of people who can’t help themselves, rather than those who actually enjoy eating. His stomach stuck out over his belt like scaffolding and his jowls flowed over his collar like lava. Though he was turning sixty in a week, the pudgy boy who’d been tormented by his reform school mates in the shower was still close to the surface, biding his time, waiting for revenge.
“So I was thinking,” said Vin, pulling on the hem of his green polo shirt. “Now might be a good time.”
“A good time for what?”
“You know.” Vin ran a hand through his shock of gray hair. “To think about inducting Anthony.”
Teddy inhaled deeply and his jowls reddened slightly. “How many times I gotta tell you, Vin? It’s a closed issue. Anthony hasn’t the Sicilian blood on both sides so there’s no way I can make him.”
Vin started to say something, but Teddy was already waving a chubby hand in his face. “Look, this isn’t my teaching,” he said. “It’s the way it’s always been. You can’t just pick and choose from tradition. It’s either all or nothing. Like believing in God. You either buy into the whole program or go fuck yourself.”
Vin bit his thumb and listened to the music pounding up from downstairs. Either “O Sole Mio” or Elvis Presley singing “It’s Now or Never.”
“There’ve been exceptions,” he said.
Teddy watched him through two eye sockets that were like, small ditches in his fleshy face. “Name one.”
“Neil up in New York,” said Vin. “He was gonna make his daughter. They had a date for the ceremony and everything.”
Teddy stuck his hands in the pockets of his pinstripe jacket. “It’s not the same thing. She was Sicilian. Like her father.”
“They were still gonna bend the rules.”
“Listen, Vin.” Teddy tugged on his ear and drew back his lips. “Forget about him getting made. When is this kid of yours Anthony gonna stop being a cripple?”
Vin looked stricken. “Wha?”
“He’s married to my favorite niece. Last month, I had to give her two hundred dollars to get a haircut and some shoes for the kids. Do I look like fuckin’ Jerry Lewis running a charity?”
“No, Ted, but . . .”
“But nothing,” Teddy huffed. “The kid’s a cripple. I love him, but he’s a cripple. I sent him to college and set him up in the concrete business. I haven’t seen dollar one back from him. I wonder should I be so trusting. Now you want me to get him inducted. Well, it ain’t that easy, Vin. If my own boy Charlie was still around, I’d have to go through channels ...”
He stopped talking a moment and spit into the toilet.
“Is that what this is about?” asked Vin. “Because my boy’s alive, and yours ain’t?”
“That’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Because that ain’t Anthony’s fault. He didn’t have nothing to do with what happened to Charlie.”
Teddy started to frown, but before he could say anything, the door down the hall opened and the old lady came out. She was using a walker, and wild wisps of white hair flew from her pinkish scalp. Teddy moved out of the bathroom to make room for her, his stomach grazing the door frame. Vin plodded out after him and they both bowed their heads respectfully as the old lady went in to use the can.
After a few minutes, a pale, oily-skinned ex-junkie named Joey Snails came upstairs and handed Teddy a thick envelope.
“It’s the pickup from the roofer’s union,” said Joey, who had crevices shaped like seahorses in his cheeks. “Richie said I oughta get it this week, because you didn’t want Nicky D. doin’ it no more.”
Teddy opened the envelope a little and made a point of touching each bill. “I hope it’s all here,” he said. “I’d hate to hear that you skimmed some and put it in your arm.”
Joey Snails looked gravely offended. “It’s all there.”
Teddy pinched Joey’s cheek hard enough to make the seahorse disappear. “Go on, get outa here. If I find two dollars missing, I’ll kick your ass.”
Teddy stuffed the envelope into his inside jacket pocket and swallowed hard. Money had been tight the last few years. The problem was the casinos. For all his time as a boss in Atlantic City, Teddy had never been inside a count room or placed a high-level executive in the industry. There were too many state watchdogs around. For a while, he’d had his share of crumbs spilling off the table—union pension funds, carting and linen businesses—but when the construction boom ended, there were fewer and fewer crumbs to go around.
He waited until Joey was down the hall and out of earshot before he turned back to Vin. “Remind me, I wanna get somebody else to do that pickup,” he muttered. “I still don’t trust that fuckin’ hophead.”
“I thought we were gonna give Anthony a shot at handling the envelope.”
“See if you can find somebody else, I’m not sure I trust that kid of yours either. He reminds me of his old man
