“By the way, when I got home last Saturday from your place, I found out I really took a bath. I dropped nearly nine hundred bucks and most of it to Ogden.”
“He needs it. His daughter’s starting to college next month.”
“Like shit he needs it. With what he knocks down he could send a dozen of them to college and never miss it.”
“Nobody’s that rich.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Parisi said. “It ain’t like when you and me were going to college. I don’t understand these kids today, always raising hell and trying to take over the schools.”
“They’re different,” I said.
“Maybe they ought to have to work their way through like we did,” Parisi said, apparently convinced that missing six set shots in a row qualified as work.
“You free for dinner tonight?” I said.
“I’ve got to see a guy downtown about ten.”
“Come over around eight and I’ll buy you a steak.”
“Dominic’s?” he said.
I sighed. Dominic’s meant a forty-dollar tab at least. “Dominic’s.”
“Okay,” Parisi said. “At eight.” I started to say good-by, but he said, “You’re working again, aren’t you?”
“I’m working.”
“I figured as much,” he said, and hung up.
Dominic’s was a medium-sized restaurant on West 54th Street that had leaped into popularity and a measure of notoriety after a Hollywood motion-picture star began to use it as his New York headquarters because it was quiet, the food was good, and a friend of his who was fairly prominent in the criminal hierarchy owned thirty percent of it. The actor once held court in a small alcove just off the main dining room until the word got around and the out-of-town tourists started to flock there and order things like spaghetti and meatballs and even pizza, which made the chef angry enough to threaten to quit. The movie star stopped coming, the owners raised the prices, and the out-of-towners flocked to other places where they could goggle at some celebrity who was worth talking about when they got back home to Joplin or Cedar Falls. Or to Chicago and Dallas for that matter. The citizens of Joplin and Cedar Falls are not the nation’s only celebrity gogglers.
Now Dominic’s was once more quiet, the food was excellent, the prices remained astronomic, the chef was happy, and the restaurant fulfilled its original purpose of losing money for its owners, whose accountants employed the deficit to offset the profits from other businesses which were not quite so respectable.
Parisi was already there, chewing on a piece of celery, when I arrived a few minutes after eight. He waved the stalk around as he chomped on the vegetable. “I’m trying to quit smoking,” he said. “They say that celery helps.”
“Good luck,” I said, and lighted a cigarette.
“Oh, hell,” Parisi said, and fished out his amber cigarette holder. “Let me borrow one from you; I’ll quit tomorrow.”
We ordered drinks, a martini each, and then began to study the menu.
“You hungry?” Parisi asked.
“Fairly so.”
“Me, too. I didn’t have any lunch. You want to go a Chateaubriand?” A chateaubriand was $27.50.
“Fine.”
Parisi grinned at me around his cigarette holder. “Like I said, I’m hungry.”
Parisi got into a long conversation in Italian with the waiter about how the steak should be cooked, the salad prepared, and what wine to order. I looked around the restaurant, which was only half full. The alcove where the actor formerly held court was dark and empty and I felt that perhaps it should be turned into a national shrine. While waiting for the steak, Parisi and I talked about poker and drank to absent friends.
“That guy Wisdom took a bath last Saturday, too,” Parisi said as he lit another borrowed cigarette.
“He can afford it.”
“How much did his grandma leave him, five million?”
“Seven, but it’s in a trust fund and he has to live off the income.”
“How much do you think that is?”
“At five percent it would be $350,000 a year, but he’s probably doing better than that.”
“Christ, with that much money he could sure dress a little better than he does.” Parisi liked people to be neat.
“With all that money he can afford to be a slob,” I said.
Parisi nodded, not so much in agreement, but as if expressing the universal conviction that if he had that much money, he could spend it far more efficiently than could Park Tyler Wisdom III who went around in sneakers and a sweat shirt, for God’s sake.
“What does he do?” Parisi said. “I mean he just doesn’t play poker all day long.”
“Jokes,” I said.
“Jokes? Like in the Reader’s Digest?”
“No, not like that. Wisdom likes to play elaborate jokes on fairly prominent people who don’t have a very good sense of humor.”
“Then they don’t get the joke.”
“That’s what makes it funny to Wisdom.”
Parisi was interested. “What kind of jokes? I mean do you remember any of them?”
“Well, there’s the Bonford Gentry Park story.”
“What’s that?”
“Wisdom has this farm or estate, I suppose you would call it, in Connecticut. He also had an old Airedale that was half blind who stayed on the estate with the caretaker. The dog must have been thirteen or fourteen years old and it drooled a lot. One time the caretaker took the dog into this small town which is near the estate and it got out of the car and wandered away. It was in the summer and the dog’s tongue was hanging out and it was slobbering like old dogs do, especially Airedales. Well, the mayor of the town happened to see it, called the local cops, and they shot it.”
“They thought it was a mad dog, huh?” Parisi said.
“That’s what they said.”
“So what happened?”
“The caretaker got the dog’s body and took it back to the estate and buried it. Then he called Wisdom and told him what had happened. Wisdom didn’t do anything for a couple of weeks and then he drove up to Connecticut and called on the mayor. There was some property that the city owned which it wanted to turn into a park. Wisdom offered to donate the money for the park improvements provided that they would call it Bonford Gentry Park after an old friend of his. He also offered to put up a fountain. The mayor agreed to all this, even to calling it Bonford Gentry Park. The mayor seemed to think that Wisdom was harmless enough for a millionaire. The park was developed and Wisdom paid for everything — the trees, the swings, the seesaws, the shrubs and what have you. The plumbing for the fountain was installed and the day before the park was to open Wisdom had the fountain trucked in at night, erected behind canvas, and connected to the plumbing.
“The next day was Saturday and the unveiling of the new fountain. After a speech that thanked Wisdom for his contribution to the town, the mayor pulled the cord that unveiled the fountain. The water was turned on at the same time. Around the base of the fountain was the inscription: To Bonford Gentry, Dear Friend and Close Companion, 1954–1968. The fountain was an eight-foot statue of Bonford Gentry, who, of course, was the Airedale that the mayor had ordered shot. His left leg was cocked up in the air and he was peeing the water. Wisdom said it made a pleasant splash.”
“Huh,” Parisi said. “What did the mayor do?”
“Nothing.”
“Didn’t he remember the dog and having it shot?”
“No.”
“Then he didn’t get the point.”
“No,” I said, “that’s what made it so funny to Wisdom.”
“Well, it’s sure not like those funny stories you read in Reader’s Digest,” Parisi said.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s nothing like those.”