64
“HOW IS THAT?” said Teddy, looking at his niece’sswollen belly.
“How is it?” Carla took the teakettle off the stove and tapped her foot. “I’m fed up, that’s how it is. It’s almost two weeks to my due date, I feel like I’m about to burst, I’m thirsty and tired all the time, and I have to go to the bathroom every five minutes. Now I think I’m getting hemorrhoids. I want this thing out of me.”
Teddy was half reclining on the Spartz couch. He closed his eyes as if he had to concentrate to get the air in and out of his body.
“I’m thirsty all the time too,” he said with a shrug. “But I ain’t having any baby.”
“Fine.” Carla poured him a cup. “You wanna trade places?”
“You wouldn’t want to be where I am.”
It was just midnight and they were both watching the door. Richie would be back at any minute. After that would come Anthony, if Tommy Sick hadn’t taken care of him. Wind blew against the windows and crazed the leaves on the trees outside.
“It must be something,” he said. “Carrying around a life inside you. Taking a life, it’s nothing. It’s bullshit. Any moron can pull a trigger.”
That gurgling sound came again from down in his throat and that deep pain squeezed his guts again. “Jesus.” He sat up on the couch and waited for it to pass.
“You want I should call a doctor?”
“Nah, fuck it. It’s all right.” He put his head back on a cushion.
Then suddenly he propped himself up on his elbow and examined the couch. “Hey,” he said, stroking the fabric. “Where did this come from?”
“Oh.” Carla regarded him absently and went to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water. “I bought it from Spartz, the furniture store.”
Teddy’s mind flushed red with rage as the medication made the sweat pop out of him again. All the things he’d provided for these two and this lousy Anthony couldn’t even buy a couch for them. He was too busy ratting them out to the feds and making money he should’ve been sharing with Teddy. It was worse than a disgrace, it was an
What was it that black kid Terrence kept saying before the fight? Old man, old man. “Old man oughta stay in the old man home.” The words echoed in Teddy’s mind and he knew all at once, he was going to die. He would go through with the radiation and maybe even the chemotherapy, but the cancer would kill him, no matter what the doctor said. Terror seized his heart and shriveled his lungs.
Suddenly he didn’t want to leave this life. It was too soon. What did he have to show for himself? There was no son to inherit what little wealth and respect he’d accumulated. His daughter couldn’t even understand he was a boss. And with Vin dead, there wasn’t even anyone to share his twilight years. Why had he killed the one friend he had left? Out of a code? Out of vengeance? For what? Vin having a son when he didn’t?
His mind began to collapse in on itself. Who would remember him after he was gone? There was Carla, standing pregnant over by the refrigerator. But she was only a girl. Teddy had an urge to go running into her children’s bedroom to wake her son Anthony Jr., just to see if there was any family resemblance between them. Some small trace of Teddy to pass on to the next century.
But it was late and he knew he’d be out of energy before he had one foot on the floor.
And now the spreading warmth around his lap told him he’d given up the bag to hold his urine too quickly. He’d pissed on the couch. He started to tell his niece what he’d done, so she’d get him a towel and a blanket. But shame overcame him and he began to cry.
“Uncle Ted, what’s the matter?” she said, coming over to take his hand.
“It’s nothing.” He choked. “Lemme be.”
A grown man pissing and crying on a couch. You began this life like a baby and you finished it the same way. But in the end, you were alone, with no one to care for you. Especially if you didn’t have children to look after you. Maybe Vin was right. They all should have made more babies.
He buried his face in his hands as his niece put her arm around his shoulder. “It’s all right, Uncle Ted,” she said. “I’m with you.”
But she wasn’t with him. And she never would be. She’d married that mutt Anthony and they were all poisoned by his tainted blood. Everything Teddy had done in his life amounted to nothing, and the dream he’d once had of controlling all of Atlantic City, the entire neon forest, was gone now.
He reclined all the way back on the couch again and closed his eyes.
“I think I’m just gonna sleep awhile,” he said. “You get me up if anybody comes in.”
65
“I DON’T SEE WHY you find this so unusual,” Frank Diamond said.
“It’s not unusual, it’s irregular,” explained the F.B.I, agent named Wayne Sadowsky.
“Look,” said Frank. “You’ve been my case agent, investigating me for six years and you’ve never found anything. I’m a law-abiding citizen making a valid complaint. I’m entitled to have you investigate it and take action, as you would with anyone else.”
They were standing at the back of the room during the post-fight press conference. Elijah Barton was not present. His brother John stood at the microphone, explaining that Elijah was upstairs with his doctor trying to determine whether any of the blindness or hearing loss would be permanent. Terrence Mulvehill was half slumped over on the dais, wearing a black baseball cap with a white towel draped around his neck. He had a large ice pack pressed against the side of his face.
“All right,” said Sadowsky. “Run it by me one more time.”
“The charge would be fraud and extortion. Mr. Russo set my fighter up with this girl I was telling you about.”
“And why didn’t you file a complaint before the fight?”
“I have certain fiduciary responsibilities,” Frank said evenly. “If I’d had Mr. Russo arrested beforehand, I might’ve endangered the bout and cost my fighter a payday. I had to protect his rights.”
At the front of the room, Terrence was standing at the podium as the photographers snapped flashes at his bruised eyelids.
“And you-all want us to pick this Anthony up tonight?” Sadowsky asked, looking and sounding only slightly incredulous.
“Why not?” asked Frank. “You shouldn’t have any problem getting a warrant. I’ve seen a half dozen federal judges standing by the roulette wheel upstairs.
Sadowsky threw back his shoulders, as though he was ready to go twelve rounds himself. “Well, I suppose we could pick him up for questioning,” he said. “Have you already paid his people for their part in the fight?”
Up at the podium, John B. was smiling with the innocence of a holy fool with a gold-capped tooth and saying his brother could claim a moral victory tonight.
“Of course, they’ve been paid part of the advance,” said Frank, picking up a champagne glass. “But I can find at least five places where they’ve violated the spirit and letter of our contract.”
Sadowsky inhaled and rolled his eyes. “You drive some hard bargain, Mr. Diamond.”
“Well, what do you expect?” said Frank. “The object of this sport is to knock the other guy out.”
