“You mean the Virgin store on Collins?”
Silver nodded enthusiastically. “There’s already a huge crowd. This baby’s going to go platinum in six weeks. Mark my words. Six weeks.”
Candy looked at Nigel. They had gone shopping in the Virgin store three nights ago. It was two blocks from the hotel. Sensing her confusion, he explained. “I can’t just show up, my dear. My fans would not tolerate it. I must appear in an impossibly expensive car being driven by a menacing-looking fellow who may or may not be a homicidal maniac.”
“It’s in the contract,” Silver explained.
Candy looked at the driver, then at Nigel. “Is he?”
“Is he what?”
“A homicidal maniac?”
“He’s an actor,” Silver said. “We hired him because he fits the bill.”
Candy fell back in her seat.
“Oh, wow” was all she could think to say.
The line outside the Virgin store stretched around the block, the faithful done up in leather and chains and motorcycle boots. They would have looked real tough if not for the gray hair and potbellies. The driver got out and opened their door.
“It’s show time,” Silver declared.
He walked Nigel and Candy to the front door, where they were greeted by the gushing store manager and a handful of employees. Introductions were made. Nigel shook everyone’s hand while clutching Candy to his side. Candy played along, smiling and giggling and showing plenty of leg.
“I saw you at Shea Stadium in 1980,” the store manager said. His name tag said Trip. A forty-year-old hippie who looked like he smoked his breakfast. “Greatest concert I’ve ever seen. You went through three drum kits and two cases of beer.”
“I was sick that night,” Nigel said.
“You were?”
Nigel nodded. “Had to take it easy.”
Trip laughed. So did Silver and the driver. Candy didn’t get it but laughed anyway, because that was what you did around a celebrity.
The store was a high-ceilinged monster with the personality of an airplane hangar. Trip escorted them to the back. A large area had been cleared. Sitting on a table were stacks of CDs and DVDs. Hanging behind the table, a giant poster of Nigel’s famous Rolling Stone cover, his naked upper torso swathed in rusty chains, his eyes gleaming like a maniac’s. Candy had always thought it was the ugliest picture she’d ever seen.
“Ohhh,” she purred into Nigel’s ear.
“Does it turn you on?” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
A devilish gleam spread across his face. He got behind the table and took the chair. A pen was produced. He took it in his right fist, poised for the onslaught.
“Ready?” Trip said.
“Bring on the mob,” Nigel replied.
Trip clapped his hands like a dance instructor, and the employees opened up the store. The crowd came in a little faster than Candy would have liked, and she got behind Nigel and stayed there as he chatted and signed autographs. She’d seen her share of celebrities, and Nigel was a class act. He was friendly and didn’t mind pumping the flesh.
Soon the store was mobbed. No one was leaving, and Candy found herself staring at a big white sheet on the other side of the room. It was covering something fairly large, and at first she thought it was a car. Only, it was too small to be a car.
A voice came over the store’s PA. Nigel lifted his head. Trip was standing by the sheet, mike in hand.
“Folks, we have a real treat for you this afternoon. Through the generosity of Polyester Records and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in beautiful Cleveland, Ohio, we have flown in one of the most famous musical instruments in the world.” Grasping the sheet with his free hand, Trip whisked it away to reveal a gleaming drum kit, the initials NM written in block letters on the face of the base. “Used in the famous East End recording sessions for One-Eyed Pig’s first album, Baby, You Need It Bad, here they are, Nigel Moon’s own drums!”
The crowd hooted and hollered. Someone started to chant “Nigel, Nigel” until it became a chorus. Nigel got out of his chair and wrapped his arm around Candy’s waist.
Candy could feel his heart beating wildly.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course,” he said.
They walked over to where Trip stood, and Nigel took the mike. “Monster, Monster,” the crowd chanted, that being the name of the band’s most famous song. Nigel tried to speak. The crowd would not stop.
“Would you?” Trip asked, holding up a pair of sticks.
Nigel stared at them, then him.
“Where’s your bathroom?”
Trip pointed across the room. Nigel handed him the mike, then bowed to the crowd. Still chanting, they parted and let him through.
He was moving quickly, like he really had to go, and Candy saw him pick up speed as he reached the front of the store. Instead of veering to his left—in the bathroom’s direction—he went straight instead.
His body hit the front doors hard.
31
“You look like a bag of wet doughnuts,” Victor Marks said.
“It’s been a long week,” Rico admitted.
“Appearances are important,” Victor said, his tone scolding. “In this racket, they’re the most important thing you’ve got.”
They were sitting at the Seafood Bar in Victor’s favorite hangout, the Breakers in Palm Beach. The bar was an aquarium, and Victor identified the fish as they swam past. “The orange and white one is a clown fish. That one’s a purple damsel. And that big guy is a spotted eel. Every day, the eel eats one of the other fish. It costs the hotel a lot of money to keep replacing them. Know why they leave the eel in the aquarium?”
“No,” Rico said.
“Appearances.” Victor motioned for the bartender. “Two more,” he said, pointing at their glasses. When the bartender was gone, he said, “How’s the basketball scam going?”
“It’s going to be tough to pull off.”
“Of course it’s going to be tough to pull off. If pulling cons was easy, every blowhard from here to Cincinnati would be in the racket. You’ve got to play the part.”
“I’m trying.”
Victor touched Rico’s sleeve. “Look at me.”
“Okay.”
“What do you see?”
What Rico saw was the best-dressed guy in the hotel, an eighty-year-old with a perfect haircut and capped teeth and tailored clothes. He saw a guy he’d like to be one day.
“A guy on top of the world,” Rico said.
“That’s right. And I’m working a job, right now.”
“Here?”
“Yup. Surprised?”
“Yeah . . .”
“It’s called the confidence game, kid. You’ve got to exude confidence, otherwise you won’t fool a blind man.”
“What you got going?”
Victor dropped his voice. “I come here three or four times a year, and I always leave with a bag of money. Twenty grand, sometimes more. Pays for my vacation and the broad on my arm.”
Rico felt his spirits pick up. Victor did that to him. Victor was the epitome of what a criminal was supposed to be, the master of a universe of his own creating. Every pearl he passed along, Rico knew would bring him closer to his own dream.
“Come on. Tell me.”
“It’s the Titanic Thompson/Arnold Rothstein con.”
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t read the book I gave you?”
Rico lowered his head in shame. He hadn’t read a book in twenty years.
“No.”
Victor looked out the window as two well-kept women walked by. He spoke in a normal voice, no longer caring who heard. “I give you a book, you’re supposed to read it. Titanic Thompson was the greatest con man of the twentieth century. Arnold Rothstein was one of the greatest gamblers of the twentieth century. He fixed the 1919 World Series.”