The handler made a show of staring at the ball, as if he had some difficulty reading the single digit painted on its surface. Finally he raised it between a thumb and forefinger for the small crowd to examine.
"Nueve. Number nine."
Down on the betting floor two or three patrons gave a halfhearted cheer; the rest stood silent or groaned softly, crumpling the numbered betting slips they held in their hands.
Three winners, maybe twenty losers. It was just about the right proportion for a crowd this size, Ernesto Vargas thought.
At thirty-six, Vargas was the boss and operator of a moderate but lucrative bolita territory covering Coral Gables and surrounding neighborhoods. Some three years off the boat, he was already doing better than he ever dreamed was possible in Cuba.
Connections had got him started in bolita and staked him to his first successful parlor — a debt that he had long ago repaid with interest.
Common sense would take him to the top in time, if he did not step on any lethal toes along the way.
Ernesto Vargas had been learning from the moment he set foot upon the mainland of America. Studying the people who had come before him, and the Anglos who were there before them all. He made a special study of the native laws and how to circumvent them with a minimum of risk.
It was simple, really. You bought a franchise from the Mob, you greased the cops... and generally speaking, you were free to operate in peace around south Florida, as long as you did not attract undue attention to yourself.
Ernesto Vargas knew the art of living inconspicuously. He might be known within Coral Gables as the man to see for certain favors, but his name had not been splashed across the headlines like the goddamned cocaine cowboys with their fast cars and machine guns, killing people in the streets like rabid dogs.
If Vargas needed someone taken care of... perhaps roughed up a little, or perhaps a lot... he took care of it privately, without the fanfare that attended so much of Miami's recent violence. A kneecap here, an elbow dislocated there. His debtors paid, for the most part on time, and life went on.
It was the American dream.
He had already learned to screw the peasants on bolita and the Cuban lottery he dabbled in, nickel and diming them out of a cool one hundred thousand a year. Not bad for an ex-convict who had been loaded on a boat at gunpoint, in Mariel harbor, not so long ago.
Seated on the dais, back behind his handlers, Vargas scanned the little crowd of players. It was daylight yet, with hours to go before the darkness brought the real money in, but for a morning shift the crowd was far from disappointing. With any luck at all, Vargas would clear an easy grand before lunchtime, half for himself, the rest divided up between his handlers, catchers and the muscle he maintained at every game to watch for trouble.
They were meeting in a private dwelling, one of half a dozen Vargas rented for his floating games. He rotated locations on a regular schedule, helping the Vice cops save face, keeping up the charade. For their trouble and the inconvenience of having strangers, often drunks, arrive and gamble in their homes, the actual tenants made a hundred dollars daily.
It was cheap insurance, a damn sight cheaper than his pad with the local sheriff's department. If there had been a way to eliminate the cops and politicians with their hands out, Vargas was convinced he could rake off another twenty-five percent of gross each month to keep for himself and to invest in other projects.
He dismissed the thought, half smiling to himself. The system had existed for two centuries, and it resisted the way a slab of granite stood against the wind and rain. In time, it might be altered, but to observe the changes in a single lifetime....
The handler was shaking his bag again, and bets were going down around the room. The writers were working quickly, pretending the handler was likely to throw before they had a chance to siphon every nickel from the audience. The all-male audience was noisy now, each man calling out his bets, some of them digging deeper for the cash than they had earlier, but still coming up with it just this one tune.
And the next time, right. And the next.
Vargas knew his people, knew they loved bolita and the lottery the way black people were supposed to love the numbers, or the rich old Jewesses their slot machines up north, around Atlantic City.
Everybody gambled, and the fact that it might be against the law would never alter human nature. In the back of his mind Ernesto Vargas saw himself as part of some great public service, giving men and women what they wanted, something that the heartless politicians had decreed was out of bounds.
He was a hero, right. A man of his community, of the people.
The handler swung his bag overhead, released it, aiming with precision at a different catcher, salted in another corner of the room. Vargas watched the burlap sack as it was airborne, tumbling gracelessly, a dark misshapen blur against the backdrop of the parlor windows.
Windows that were suddenly imploding, collapsing inward in a shower of fractured glass. Someone screamed, then everyone was babbling at once, turning to gape at the windows.
The catcher was turning with them, missing the bag and never really noticing as it struck him on the shoulder and tumbled to the floor. Its ties became unfastened, and the numbered balls were spilling everywhere — all except unlucky thirteen, fastened to the burlap with a tiny patch of Velcro for the catcher's convenience.
A wasted play now, but Ernesto Vargas had his mind on other things, momentarily forgetting lost profits as he stood up, kicking over his folding metal chair and shouldering past his handlers toward the front of the dais.
"What the..."
And he saw an oval object in the middle of the parlor floor, still spinning from the force of impact, spewing colored smoke now in a blinding cloud. The bettors were scattering away from the grenade, seeking out the available exits as they ran. Some of them were dropping money all along the way, and Vargas made a mental note to pick it up as soon as he could get a handle on exactly what the hell was happening.
It could not be police, he was confident of that. They had been greased, and anyway, they always called ahead. Whenever it was necessary to sacrifice a game for the sake of appearances, Vice made certain that Ernesto was not in, and that the lion's share of his daily take was safely evacuated before they rolled in, arresting handlers and bettors on various misdemeanor charges.
No, it would not be the cops.
But who?
A burst of automatic fire erupted from the direction of the home's adjacent kitchen. There was a sudden scream, cut off abruptly, and Vargas imagined that he recognized the voice of his back-door lookout, Esteban.
He saw his gunners, Ramon and Paco, moving fast in that direction, digging at the handguns they wore underneath their jackets. They were young and quick, and whoever had the frigging nerve to crash this party would regret the day that he had met them.
Vargas circled, putting the wooden podium between him and the kitchen doorway, sliding one hand down in the direction of the pistol that he carried in his belt. Ramon and Paco were almost to the door when it burst open, to reveal a tall dark figure dressed in camouflage fatigues, a smoking Uzi submachine gun in his hands.