“Who’s behind it? The mob?”
“I don’t know.”
“No secrets.”
“Yes, it’s the mob.”
Lois suddenly felt afraid. She put her hand on Liddy’s wrist and squeezed it.
“Is Tony scared?” she asked.
Liddy stared at the floor.
“They’re both scared,” she whispered.
That night, Lois and Tony slept on the floor of their bedroom on a mattress borrowed from a neighbor, while Gerry stayed down the street with friends. Lying beneath the bare window, Lois stared at the smiling face of the moon while remembering the night fifteen years ago when they’d moved in and had no furniture. Their lives had just been starting, the future filled with promise and unfulfilled dreams. Turning on her side, she propped her head on her hand. Tony’s eyes were closed. She licked his ear, and his eyes snapped open.
“We need to talk,” she said. “Liddy told me everything. Were you trying to protect us by not telling me what’s going on?”
He stared at the ceiling, as if considering the request.
“Yes,” he said.
“It didn’t work.”
Lois ran her fingers through her husband’s thick head of hair. He hadn’t been much to look at when he was a teenager, just a gangly kid with a thin face and a long Roman nose. As he’d gotten older, his face had taken on character, and he’d turned downright handsome. It had been like watching him grow into himself.
“I paid Nucky Balducci a visit last night,” he said, breaking the silence. “I confronted him, told him I wanted to know who’d robbed us.”
“What did he say?”
“He said it was the New York mob.”
For a moment, Lois couldn’t speak. “Is that who Nucky works for?”
“Yes. The mob has somehow gotten their fingers into Resorts’ operation. I have an address book they want. It has some names in it, all hoods. They’re tied to whatever’s going on. The trouble is, I can’t prove a damn thing.”
“Then why should Nucky or anyone else care?”
“Because I’ve been seen around town with the FBI. I told Nucky I was helping them find a serial killer, but he didn’t believe it.”
“What are you going to do?”
He took a deep breath. “Two things. I’m going to figure out what the mob is doing. And, I’m going to stay away from the FBI.”
“You’re not going to help them catch the killer?”
“Being connected to the FBI right now isn’t healthy,” he said. “I need to back away from it. It’s not worth jeopardizing our lives over. Nothingis worth that.”
“Oh,” she said.
Soon, her husband was asleep. Lois fell back on her pillow and stared into the darkest corner of the room. She had never heard Tony say he wasn’t willing to help someone. It was the thing she loved about him most, the quality that drawn her to him when they were teenagers, and made him so special in her heart. It saddened her to think that his job had changed him, and only after he had started to lightly snore did she let herself cry.
Chapter 24
Someone once said, the heart is a lonely hunter.
Izzie could not get Betty out of his mind. Trying to track his beloved down, he’d called around Nyack, and discovered she was renting a one room apartment over a butcher shop with freezing cold floors. He got her number from information, and called her every night. Most times, Betty cursed him and slammed down the phone. Once, she’d tortured him by talking dirty, then hung up. She could be rotten like that, but Izzie still missed her. He decided to send her a present. Not just any present, but a true expression of his love. Slipping out of the house in Ventnor one morning while Josh and Seymour were asleep, he drove up and down Atlantic Avenue until he found a pawnshop. The store was called Goldfarb’s, and could have given Fort Knox a lesson in security. Iron bars on the windows, multiple surveillance cameras, a burly armed guard by the door. The owner was a Rumpelstiltskin-like character named Herbie.
“What’s your pleasure?” Herbie asked.
Izzie placed a stack of hundred dollar bills on the counter. Herbie riffled the stack with his thumb to make sure they were all real.
“I’m looking for something special for my girlfriend,” Izzie said.
“She must be quite a lady.”
“She itches where I can’t scratch,” Izzie explained.
Herbie disappeared behind a beaded curtain. When he returned, he was carrying a metal strong box. It was heavy, and he placed it on the counter with a grunt, then popped the lid. Inside was a collection of the most beautiful jewelry Izzie had ever seen.
“Do you ship?” Izzie asked.
Two days later, he phoned Betty. This time, she’d wanted to talk.
“I can’t believe you bought this for me. It’s so beautiful,” she cooed.
Izzie was sitting in the second floor bedroom of the rented house with the phone pressed to his ear. He could hear the ice melting from his beloved’s voice. He had sent Betty a spectacular diamond bracelet along with a pair of fur-lined slippers.
“I wanted you to know how I felt,” he said.
“How many diamonds does it have?”
“Thirty-five.”
She purred into the phone. “One for every year.”
Izzie knew she was older than that, but played along. “That’s right.”
“Are they all real?”
“They sure are. No glass for you, baby.”
“And the metal. Is it silver?”
“Platinum.”
“God. It must have cost a small fortune.”
“It’s hot, so the guy gave me a good price.”
Betty screamed so loud that Izzie had to pull the phone away from his ear.
“ You sent me a hot bracelet?”
“Yeah,” Izzie replied. “Whatta you think, I got it from Tiffany’s?”
Betty called him a fucking asshole and slammed down the phone.
Izzie went downstairs feeling lower than a snake’s belly. This long-distance romancing wasn’t working. He needed to drive to Nyack and see Betty, and apologize to her before she tore a hole out of his heart as big as Manhattan.
The first floor was jumping. He and his brothers had brought home a dozen suckers from the casino, and everyone was drinking and smoking and having a good time. They had expanded their operation to include a pool table, which doubled as a craps table, and a second card table, where the suckers could play each other before Izzie cleaned them out. He found Josh in the kitchen fixing a tray of sandwiches. His brother looked worried.
“What’s eating you?” Izzie asked.
Josh said, “Whose idea was it to invite that guy Vinny Acosta?”
“Mine. He’s got a ton of money. And he’s dumb as a fence post.”
“He’s a scary guy. I want to get rid of him.”
“His money’s as green as anyone else’s. Leave Vinny to me,” Izzie said.
By four A.M., all of the suckers had left the house except for Vinny Acosta. He wasa scary guy, about six-two and two hundred and fifty pounds, with a nose turned sideways, slicked back hair, and a way of looking at you that made your skin crawl. Vinny had gotten drunk, sat down in front of the TV, and started watching a new cable station called ESPN that showed crazy stuff like sumo wrestling and log rolling. At four, a college basketball game came on, and Vinny killed the set, and came over to the card table where Izzie, Josh and Seymour were sitting.
“Basketball is for fags,” Vinny declared, throwing down a wad of cash. “Let’s play cards.”
Izzie whistled through his teeth. “What did you do, rob a bank?”
“None of your fucking business. Deal ‘em.”
Izzie shuffled the deck sitting on the table, and had Vinny give them a cut. Vinny was watching him like a hawk, and Izzie knew not to try and switch a deck on him. Instead, he held the deck over his Zippo lighter, and sailed cards around the table. It was called using a shiner, and let him see every card as it was dealt. He memorized only one hand — Vinny’s — and signaled it to his brothers when he was finished dealing. If Vinny was strong, they would all drop out. If not, Vinny would be raised and cleaned out.