Cloisters doesn’t have so much in the way of billboards and guilty handles. We have three gentlemen’s clubs that you wouldn’t know were there unless you knew they were there, with nothing but a small neon sign, square of red carpet and a velvet rope to drop a wink to those on the lookout. There are eight casinos in Cloisters, each one marked by a sign that city regulations restrict to a size slightly larger than a pizza.
After my transatlantic phone call, I take a brisk walk through the rain to the bus station to pick up my savings, then cross town to the strip and announce myself at the casino door.
‘Ta-dah,’ I sing, spreading my arms wide.
Jason gives me the diamond-fang smile. ‘Hey, Dan, buddy. Where the hell you been? Fucking Ireland or some shit? Seriously, Victor lost his nut here yesterday. Fired your ass in absentia.’
This is bad news, but I was expecting it. You don’t pull a no-show on Victor Jones and expect him to let it slide. Victor never lets anything slide.
That fucker wouldn’t let anything slide at a baseball game.
I chuckle. Zeb made this pronouncement one night after Victor cut off his tab.
Jason is not expecting a chuckle in response to his litany of doom. ‘I respect your balls, Dan. Chuckling and shit, showing up here like it’s business as usual after missing a shift, but you’re gonna have to pull some hocus-pocus outta your hat for Victor. You feel me?’
I envy Jason his ability to confidently use phrases like you feel me or off the hook, another of his favourites.
‘Okay. I better get inside and grovel.’
Jason cracks his neck, which always makes me wince.
‘Come on, Jason. I hate that. Do you want to give yourself arthritis?’
‘Sorry, Dan. I’m aggravated. We got no customers yet, so Vic’s rolling a couple of the new girls.’
Rolling the new girls is not as bad as it sounds.
Okay. Maybe it is as bad as it sounds. Just different bad.
Rolling the girls is one of Victor’s favourite pastimes, and he’s going to keep on doing it until one of the rolled girls goes crazy and spikes his Dom P with rat poison.
This thought brings on a dreamy sigh.
‘Hey, Dan, you dreaming about Oirland again?’
It’s Marco, the little barman, peeking out across the empty bar, smiling but not laughing because I’m a lot bigger than he is.
Then he notices my bruised face and his smile shrinks a few molars. ‘Holy shit, man. What happened to you?’
‘I was dreaming about Oirland,’ I say straight-faced. ‘And this guy interrupted me, so we had a talk. You should see the state he’s in.’ I mime drinking through a straw in the side of my mouth.
Marco wipes a glass like he’s trying to climb inside it. ‘You’re a funny man, Daniel. Hilarious. You know I’ve got a weak heart, right?’
I cut him some slack with a soft smile. ‘I know, Marco. Victor’s in back?’
Marco wipes harder, not happy with giving bad news to big people. ‘Yeah. Doing his favourite thang. He said to send you back if you showed up.’
‘Those exact words?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Give it to me straight.’
‘What he said exactly was “If that Irish monkey-fucker shows up, you send him back here for a bitch slapping.”’
My eyebrows shoot up to my hairline of old. ‘Monkey-fucker?’
Marco almost disappears behind the bar. ‘Not my words.’ Then he gets brave. ‘I would probably have said leprechaunfucker, to tie in with the Irish thing.’
‘Yeah, that’s much better. Do me a favour, Marco. Pour me a large Jameson; I should be out in a minute to drink it.’
‘You got it, Dan,’ says Marco, reaching for the optic. ‘I’m gonna miss you, man.’
‘I’m getting fired, not dying,’ I mutter and head for the back room.
The back room in Slotz is the only original part of the building. Nice little red-brick room with a row of head-height postbox windows. Vic installed a polished wooden bar in the corner that’s way too big for the space, and there’s an old green baize card table with brass corners wedged into the leftover room. This is where the real money is made in Slotz. The back room has been running a high-stakes game since Prohibition. To hear Vic tell it, you’d think that every New York gangster from Schultz to Gotti had lost a bundle in here.
When I push through the door, Vic is swizzling a green cocktail and treating a couple of teenage girls to a social studies lesson.
‘The entire room is living history. This table. This exact table is fifty years old.’
The girls are nodding eagerly hoping for Vic’s approval; I on the other hand have decided not to beg for my job back. I have realised suddenly that without Connie, this dump holds zero appeal for me. So I do not have to listen to Vic’s shit for one more second.
‘Fifty years? Back home we have fast-food joints older than that. We have bloody walls older than this entire country.’
Victor jumps. He was so into his spiel that he didn’t even notice me coming in.
‘What the hell?’ he stammers, for some reason grabbing at his purple bowler hat, like that’s the first thing a raider would go for. I notice that he’s wearing a bandanna under the hat, and another stuffed into his breast pocket. ‘McEvoy! You’re like a case of the clap. You arrive quiet, then flare up.’
Brandi is in the room, hovering at Vic’s shoulder like the spectre of death in heels, so obviously she laughs. Victor’s got one of his cousins there too: AJ, a prize moron. Rumour has it that AJ once twisted a model Statue of Liberty up his arse, then tried to tell the ER doctor he sat on it in Battery Park.
‘You know a lot about the clap, Vic?’
Victor sees my eyes then, and he knows I’m not here to petition.
‘You want to watch what you say to me, McEvoy. I’m connected.’
I am so sick of this man. This is the man who ordered his surveillance discs wiped on the night of Connie’s murder, even though there may have been evidence on one of them.
‘Connected? Give me a break, Vic. Your fat arse is connected to that chair, that’s about it. Your brain isn’t connected to your stupid mouth, that’s for sure.’
AJ is off his chair, baring his teeth, waiting on the word.
I eyeball him good. ‘You better sit down, Lady Liberty, unless you got room for my foot up there alongside that statue.’
Vic waves a pudgy finger. ‘Sit, AJ. This man could kill us all without breaking a sweat.’
‘Maybe you’re not as stupid as I thought.’
My former boss leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers, a cross between Al Pacino, P. Diddy and Elmer Fudd. ‘So, what can I do for you, doorman? Before I bar you for life?’
Barred for life. Not much of a threat.
‘You can pay me. It’s the end of the month.’
Vic is delighted; he pokes the table with a finger. ‘Yesterday was the end of the month. You didn’t work the full month, McEvoy.’
Typical. ‘Listen, Vic. . Mister Jones. I had an emergency so I missed a day. And okay, I didn’t call. So dock me for the time I missed and pay me the rest.’
It’s not really the money. I have fifty grand plus on my person, but this piece of slime owes me and he is going to pay. One way or the other.
Vic affects a pout. ‘I would love to pay you. Sincerely. But I got all my disposable cash tied up in this game with these lovely ladies.’
One of the lovely ladies simpers, like Vic’s doing them a favour taking her money. The other one knows how much trouble they’re in. She is pale and her fingers grip the table’s edge like it’s the railing of the Titanic.