Prologue            

I am invincible.

Carmen Buxeda rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, exulting in his own strength. The sinews of his legs bulged with tension waiting to explode. He was hot and the sweat running down his bronzed face spread into the space between his taut lips. He could taste the salt. His opponent, Jose Barrena, looked back at him nervously.

Just serve the ball so that I can kick your Basque butt, Buxeda thought to himself. Barrena usually ate him for lunch, his cat-like reflexes and intuitive court sense rendering him the highest-ranked jai alai player in the fronton. But tonight the table was turned. Buxeda had him and Barrena knew it.

Barrena bounced the ball—the pelota—off the floor. He glanced furtively at the crowd through the shatterproof glass of the enclosed court, the cancha. Most of the afternoon’s patrons were slouched in the red-cushioned seats, staring at him with rheumy eyes while either stuffing their faces with greasy hot dogs or puffing on unfiltered cigarettes. Even from a distance, he could discern several irritated glares — those who were about to lose money if he blew this point.

He placed the pelota in his cesta, the two-foot wicker-basket extension of his right arm. He took a deceptively slow step towards the front wall. Suddenly, his right arm whirled, so that to the fans he looked like a windmill that was just pummeled with a sudden gale. The pelota accelerated along the length of the cesta, exiting at the top at the speed of 150 miles per hour. It struck the front wall of the cancha with a loud thud and arced towards the backcourt.

The muscles of Buxeda’s legs contracted as he scampered backwards, his eye following the trajectory of the pelota. Without waiting for it to bounce, he caught the pelota in his cesta and flung it against the front wall.

Barrena was annoyed, but not surprised that his serve was returned with such ease. That was the way the entire match had been played, an underdog unseating the king. He charged forward, scooping the pelota and lobbed it against the front wall, hoping it would bounce twice before Buxeda could respond. As he watched the pelota depart his cesta, he thought to himself that he couldn’t have executed a better shot. But to his chagrin, Buxeda was standing there actually waiting for the pelota. Waiting! How did he get there so quickly?

He began sprinting towards the back wall. But by the time he was at mid-court, Buxeda’s return was streaking six feet over his head. He leaped into the air, whirling around in his patented pirouette, but the pelota was too high. Buxeda had won the point and the match.

Barrena looked at the floor as he stalked off the court. Amid the apathy and a smattering of curses and booing, he heard one fan screaming wildly, thrilled that he had lost. Although curious to know who had the audacity to bet against him, he refused to veer his eyes into the audience. But he couldn’t help diverting his gaze towards the strutting peacock who had just vanquished him. He had never seen a player improve so quickly. “Good game, Carmen,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Gracias,” Buxeda responded while thinking confidently to himself: I am invincible.

Chapter 1            

Malcolm Rummel kept bobbing his head up and down, but he couldn’t get rid of the blur. He started again, this time more slowly, putting his chin against his chest and then gradually lifting his head, attempting to focus on the figures in front of him, just like the ophthalmologist who charged him $730 for his Armani glasses had instructed him to do. More blur. He twisted his neck to the left. The figures began to undulate, making him nauseous.

Finally, in disgust, he flung the useless spectacles on the polished oak boardroom table, reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the vermilion five-dollar magnifiers he had purchased while vacationing in Boca Raton.

The bleak numbers jumped up at him from the glossy pages of the monthly report. “What’s going on here, Gunther?”

Jack Gunther looked up but was afraid to make eye contact with his boss. “It doesn’t make sense, sir. It violates the laws of probability.”

“It’s not supposed to make sense, it’s supposed to make money. If it leaks to the press that someone is scamming us, our market share will be applying for welfare benefits.”

Rummel had no use for analytical thinking. Like most self-made billionaires, he believed money was made by making money. It was as natural as walking or taking a dump. If you didn't understand how to make money, no explanation was possible. If you did, no explanation was necessary.

Rummel had opened the jai alai fronton in Bridgeport years ago when Connecticut, the so-called Land of Steady Habits, allowede him to do so. The fronton had been a cash cow, attracting an unending stream of suckers who would bet on the point spread of an Alabama-Auburn game, the Belmont, or for that matter, what grasshopper was going to jump off the table first.

But then the Cold War ended and Connecticut — the Arsenal of Democracy — downsized. The politicians were forced to allow casinos to be built in the eastern part of the state to provide jobs for displaced workers. Displaced workers had the annoying tendency of voting out incumbents and this, the politicians — safely ensconced in their gerry-mandered seats—would not tolerate.

As Rummel discovered, there were a finite number of suckers in Connecticut, even with the help of the best marketing minds on Madison Avenue. But while the casinos cut into his profits, he was still standing while the other pari-mutuels — the dog track in Plainville, the fronton in Hartford and the OTBs in Stamford and New Haven — had either been relegated to the financial dust bin or were on the ropes.

But last month, two mediocre players—Ariz and Buxeda—had caught fire, upsetting the best players. Hot streaks in jai alai were not unusual, but what was disturbing is that large bets were placed on both Ariz and Buxeda when they had won, the red flag for a fixed game.

“Mr. Rummel, the odds of this happening are about the same as getting a royal flush,” Gunther said tentatively. The other members of the jai alai management team shifted in their chairs anticipating Gunther’s humiliation.

Rummel glared at Gunther. “Gunther, it is better to appear stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. You’re the guy who told me that you can use your computer crap to determine if the games are fixed, and now you tell me that this might be random chance.”

Jack Gunther was confounded by his analysis. While the betting patterns were consistent with the periodic scandals that afflicted jai alai, he had strong reasons to believe that their players were not being bribed. But he saw no sense in arguing with Rummel.

He knew Rummel wanted to humiliate him for the simple reason that he enjoyed humiliating him. Gunther was everything he hated — everything that he was not—a genetic Adonis whose easy smile, native intelligence, and athletic prowess made him popular with all. His full sandy hair rested easily, with a natural part, on his tanned chiseled visage. The high cheekbones gave way to a broad, rectangular chin, the face that the ingrams of the human brain were programmed to accept. The Jack Gunthers of the world walked through life from kindergarten to the Senior Club with immediate acceptance, their face, their habitus and their disposition—a passport—being better than any resume or introduction.

Malcolm Rummel, on the other hand —like many self-made billionaires — was ugly and short, standing a full 5’ 3” in his custom elevator Bostonian shoes. His earliest memories were that of neighborhood bullies deliberately tripping him and watching him fall on his face. They laughed at his short legs, his big ears and his ill-fitting clothes. His schoolmates wouldn’t choose him for baseball, even if they needed a ninth player. His initial attempts at dating were met with fits of uncontrollable laughter by the pubescent girls who would rather have spent an evening squeezing zits than be seen with such a dork in public.

But Rummel didn’t just get mad; he got even. The best revenge was living well and tormenting those of the ilk who once rejected you. The modern psychiatrists could say what they wanted, but in Rummel’s case, Wordsworth hit the bull’s eye: the child was the father of the man.

Some billionaires created products and companies that benefited humanity, but Rummel created nothing but misery. Only a man of Rummel’s malignant personality could buy companies, lay off workers, raid pensions, cancel health benefits and stuff the proceeds into Swiss bank accounts, parceling out small portions of his gains to tassel-loafered lawyers who found legal loopholes to justify his atrocities. He bankrolled think tanks replete with Darwinist economists who came up with public relations campaigns that explained how such behavior was actually good for the economy. He was what the Wall Street Community euphemistically called an “arbitrageur,” and thus far he had destroyed two airlines, a steel company and half a dozen small manufacturing companies.

He leered at Gunther, his pale thin lips twisting with glee, as his retort landed. He cocked his head, causing the vermilion spectacles to jump askew on his flattened nose, accentuating the asymmetry of his gigantic ears and oily brown hair.

Gunther smiled weakly. It was easier to accept insults from the Mutant — as he called him privately — along with his $180,000 annual salary than to grovel before downsizing insurance companies looking for another actuarial job.

Actually, Rummel was behaving better than usual. He had not attempted to impale Gunther with a pencil or spit on Parker’s gingham suit. The monthly meeting of the fronton management team was always an ordeal, but with a glut of unemployed corporate managers sending out resumes, tolerating the Mutant was a small price to pay for a six-figure salary. But they all knew that if the fronton started to lose money, they would all be history.

Gunther cleared his throat. “Mr. Rummel, some of our patrons have gotten extremely fortunate.”

“Gunther, the fronton is a pari-mutuel. What does that mean?” Answering his own question as if speaking to a wayward child, Rummel continued, his dark eyes glaring at Gunther’s stoic face. “The suckers walk into the fronton and they bet on who is going to win. All of their money is thrown into a pot and we take 15% of that money. The remaining money is then distributed to the lucky bozos that hit.”

Rummel paused and wiped his face with his tie. Although Rummel was capable of practicing the etiquette of polite society, he took pleasure in displaying uncouth behavior in front of his underlings to remind them of their insignificance, just like changing clothes in front of the dog.

“This system works fine as long as the dumbshits betting think that they have a chance of winning. We make money. They lose money. But if the newspaper finds out that some of these matches are fixed, the dumbshits will then drive to the casino, get scalped by the Indians and hock their watches for gas money to get home.”

Rummel pointed to one of the pages in front on him. “Look, here we have one guy who hit for over $13,000 by betting on both Ariz and Buxeda. Who is this guy?”

“We don’t know, sir,” Seth Parker, the fronton manager, noted. Rummel loved to be called “sir.” “We have interviewed the cashiers and no one can remember him.”

“You mean to tell me that it wasn’t until two months after this nonsense that you imbeciles finally spoke to cashiers.”

Actually, Seth Parker had spoken to the cashiers the first month they suspected the possibility of rigged matches, but if he said this, Rummel would probably throw his shoe at him. Rummel didn’t respect Parker any more than he did Gunther; and the feeling was mutual.

“We were unable to trace him, sir,” Gunther said, his voice cracking slightly.

“When do we report winnings to the IRS?” Rummel asked.

“Every winning over $1,199, sir.”

“So that means he had to present an ID and a social security number. Why don’t we know who he is?”

“Mr. Rummel, the ID was a fake and the social security number did not belong to the winner,” Gunther said with a tinge more confidence. “In fact, it belonged to an 87-year-old woman in Dothan, Alabama.”

“She has Alzheimer’s and has been in a nursing home for the past two years,” Parker added.

“I still don’t get it,” Rummel said. “What good is a check to the winner?”

Parker responded. “That check was cashed in the Cayman Islands, Mr. Rummel. Many professional gamblers have fake IDs with false names but they have accounts overseas registered to those false names. The banks don’t care as long as their checks don’t bounce.”

Rummel now viscerally grasped his dilemma. Having stashed tens of millions of dollars in the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes, he was well acquainted with the amorality of its bankers. Furthermore, he knew that the banks there would never release the true identity of any of their clients. Doing so would establish a precedent that could undermine confidence in their banking system, since numerous American politicians and judges stashed their bribes there.

“Do we have any of these people on videotape?” Rummel queried.

“The problem is that the videotapes are aimed at the entrances and exits and on the cashiers, to make sure they are not stealing,” Parker said.

“I know that, you idiot! Why don’t we aim cameras on the winners’ lines, and figure out exactly who these people are and how much they are winning?”

“That could be quite expensive, sir. We have to upgrade our computer system and get specialized software to compile the necessary information,” Parker said.

“So perhaps, Mr. Parker, we should continue to allow ourselves to be ripped off,” Rummel sneered, replicating Parker’s head tilt.

Parker had already spoken to Video Security Inc. to arrange this, but the whole purpose of this meeting was to manipulate Rummel to make him believe this was his idea. Had he done this without Rummel’s permission, he would have lost his job.

“Sir, you are a genius.”

“Parker, it is not that I am a genius, it is that you are a moron. Next month, I want a list of everyone who has won more than $1,000 along with their addresses. I don’t care what it costs. Just do it. This nonsense is going to come to an end.” He paused for a second and rubbed his chin. “But even if you bozos figure out who the winners are, how do they know how to bet? Buxeda and Ariz have to be on the take, but they are not smart enough to pull this off indefinitely.”

Frank Antonucci, the head of security, spoke for the first time. A graying neatly trimmed mustache accentuated his dark Mediterranean features. “With all due respect sir, I was a beat cop for twenty years. I can smell someone who’s dirty. The players are panicking. Jai alai is dying in Florida and if this place closes, they are either digging ditches, wiping bottoms in nursing homes or going back to Spain.”

“Let me get this straight,” Rummel said. “If nobody is on the take, we have a group of customers who can predict the future. Is that what you clowns are saying? Maybe they’re calling psychic hot lines. Perhaps they’re into astrology. Or perhaps you imbeciles have not figured out the obvious. These guys are on the take! What other explanation is there?”

Antonucci spoke again. “Mr. Rummel, when young men take bribes, they do stupid things in a predictable pattern. First they hide the cash either in their domicile or give it to a girlfriend or family member. We have secretly searched their domiciles and the domiciles of significant others and found nothing.”

“Couldn’t they just open an account in a small bank and hide it?” Rummel asked.

“It’s possible, but thanks to Coles’ connections at the IRS, we have done searches of all the banks in the area. No one has deposited large amounts of money anywhere. Ariz went to Miami to visit his mother two weeks ago. We even checked the banks there. Nothing. Buxeda is tooling around in a Jag XJR, but he leased it.”

The group expected Rummel to erupt any second, but he surprised them. He just sat there, rubbing his vascular temples while staring at the monthly report. “We have to come up with $3.8 million in principal to pay off the our bond debt. When is it due, Parker?” he asked in a surprisingly civil tone. Perhaps the Prozac was finally kicking in.

“Three months, sir.”

“Is there any way we can make the payment?” Rummel asked.

“No, sir. In fact, if we lose just 3% of the market, we won’t be able to make the payroll,” Parker replied.

Rummel already knew this. “Well if we can’t pay this, I guess the taxpayers are going to have to.”

Rummel, like most people who acquired great wealth, was a skin¬flint. He never paid for anything. He stiffed his lawyers, his doctors, his architects — anyone he could get away with. Once when he lost 75 cents in a soda machine, he kept the entire board of his real estate empire waiting 45 minutes until he got a promise from a high level Pepsi executive for a refund.

Malcolm Rummel had grasped early in his career that the best investment was giving money to politicians, a trait he shared with many successful businessmen. While the pretentious buffoons at the Greenwich Yacht Club bragged how they caught Microsoft at 10 and IBM at 22, Rummel could turn $20,000 in political contributions to millions. When another exit ramp was to be constructed off 1-95, he and his lobbyist Coles pressed the state senators they bankrolled and got them to place the exit near a swamp he purchased for $75,000. He then turned around and sold it to McDonald’s and Exxon for a total of $1.2 million. But his best coup was when he defaulted on a $400 million Manhattan landmark, let the FDIC take it over and then repurchased it at a government auction for $50 million. Will Rogers was right, Rummel often thought. We have the best politicians money can buy.

“Paul,” he said, “How are we going to pull this off?”

Paul Coles was a former Congressman. He retired in 1994 with a $96,000 pension, a guaranteed annual cost-of-living raise and lifetime health benefits, courtesy of the American taxpayers. Rummel paid him an additional $400,000 annually. He was worth much more.

Unlike most politicians, Coles was not slick. A product of a working class Ohio family, he managed to get the Democratic nomination in a district where a random name from the phone book on the Democratic line beat any Republican. While in Congress, he kept a low profile, realizing that his receding hairline, pendulous gut and bull neck precluded him from higher office or a visible cabinet post. He just brought home the bacon, did favors for the right people and had the sense to retire before the press caught him with his schlong in the cookie jar.

Coles grunted as he pulled his considerable girth towards the table. Because his pension made him financially independent, he did not fear Rummel. As such, he was one of the few employees whose opinion Rummel respected. In fact, Coles once responded to a Rummel tantrum by telling him to “Go shit in your hat.”

“As you are aware, a new governor will be elected in November and we already know who the players are,” Coles began. “The Democratic nominee will be Congressman Kincannon. A few candidates are challenging his nomination, but Kincannon already has seven figures in the bank and there is no close second. Unfortunately, he has been bought and paid for by the casino people who would like nothing better than to see us out of business. Thus, the only game in town for this cycle is the Republicans who are going to nominate our old friend Rich Campana.”

This disturbed Rummel. He usually contributed to both sides to hedge his bets. On the other hand, it was Campana who as state senator arranged a low interest loan from the state workers’ pension fund to finance the construction of his fronton. The balloon payment on this loan was due in three months, and even though Rummel could write the check from his personal account, he had no intention of doing so.

“Campana was very up front. If we raise plenty of cash for him, he will see to it that 10-year bonds are issued to reimburse the pension fund,” said Coles.

That’s what Rummel loved about Campana. He was honest about the fact that he was open to the highest bidder. Most politicians would have disguised such an obvious bribe as “a new frontier in the partnership between business and government.” But Campana didn’t even bother to pretend that this was nothing more than a legalized payoff. This quid pro quo was as American as apple pie. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

“This is all very nice, Paul, but the inside word is that Kincannon’s locked,” said Rummel. “With Kerri O. running his campaign, how can he lose? She hasn’t lost in years.”

“You have a point,” Coles replied. “Connecticut is a generally a Democratic state but it’s not Massachusetts. Reagan won it twice and even Bush took it in 1988. Nobody raises cash like Campana and his Italian name will bring some of the ethnic Democrats into the Republican corner. I give him a 3 to 1 shot. There is even a rumor that the Bortz may come on board in which case, the race is a toss-up.”

Rummel paused, contemplating the concept that the campaign managers were more important than the candidates themselves in determining electoral outcomes. “Did you try again to get to Kincannon?” he asked.

“Mr. Rummel, I met with him and his staff for a half hour. They are in the casino’s corner. He’s been with them from the beginning. Our only chance for a taxpayer bail out for the fronton is a Campana victory.”

“Well, I can see $15,000 going into his coffers right from this room,” Rummel said.

Rummel hired his employees with the provision that some of their bonuses would be used as political contributions. He could not personally write a check for $15,000 because the professional politicians had placed limits on the maximum contributions to give the voters the illusion that politicians weren’t dancing bears for big money. So he did what every major corporation did, he “encouraged” his executives to contribute to the candidate of his choice. Once he made Parker write a check from his 10-year-old daughter, but he did more harm than good to his candidate when the press got wind of the story.

There was a collective wince from the assembled crew with Antonucci letting out an audible gasp. But they all had stashed their Christmas bonus last year in the money market, because they knew they would have to ante up eventually.

“Paul, you talk to the Bimbo3 to arrange the fundraiser for Campana at the estate,” Rummel spoke with disdain of his latest wife. “Get her mind off those bridge lessons. She’s too stupid to learn the game, anyway.”

Gunther and Antonucci exchanged glances. Rummel obviously had a plan; unfortunately, there was no way of knowing who would emerge unscathed from his latest scheme.

Chapter 2            

“This is just the cat’s ass,” Antonucci enthused. “Jack, go stand in front of the camera.”

Jack Gunther walked over to the front of the cashier booth and peered at the surprisingly small camera. He could hear the pelotas ricocheting off the walls as the players practiced.

“Do you think the patrons will be upset by all these new cameras, Frank?”

“No way,” he said as his thick lips moved below his mustache. “I’m going to put a sign below each one explaining that these are here to protect our customers from pickpockets. The fear of crime is so great that the only place people won’t tolerate cameras is in the johns. We’re not going to put any in there. At least not yet.”

“Here, Jack, look at this,” Antonucci was as excited as Gunther’s daughters on Christmas day. Both men looked over the shoulder of the fronton’s computer wizard, Valerie Pierson. Gunther’s visage appeared on the computer screen with the clarity of a 35 mm photo. Pierson clicked on the icon depicting three parallel blue lines. Gunther’s face instantly became a collage of triangles and squares, with dozens of intersecting blue lines covering his picture. One line connected his two pupils. Others went from the tip of his chin to the ends of his lips. Many others traversed his entire face in either straight or oblique lines. On the side of his image, several columns of numbers appeared.

“How’s this work, Vai?” Gunther asked.

She leaned back in her chair. Her long black hair was parted in the middle and extended to her shoulders, partially obscuring her cherubic cheeks while accentuating her prominent hazel eyes. At the age of 27, she was already considered to be such a valuable employee that Parker talked Rummel into opening a day care center just to take care of her two-year-old son. Rummel loved her because she had rewritten the fronton’s computer software so that now two employees could do the work of ten, enabling him to decrease the payroll. Rummel enjoyed downsizing more than sex.

Her narrow nose presided over a broad smile as she turned towards Gunther. “You see, Jack, the original face-recognition software was based on eye color, hair color, nose shape, etc. It was good enough for government work, but it was not 100% accurate. People dye their hair, wear colored contact lenses, get nose jobs or grow a beard and guess what — you can’t identify them anymore.”

“But this,” she paused for effect. “This is based on phrenology.” “Phrenology?” Gunther asked.

“Yes, the shape of the human skull,” said Pierson. “Look here, this number is the distance between your pupils divided by the distance from the top to the bottom of your head.”

Pierson pointed to another number. “This number is the distance from the end of each cheek bone divided by the distance from the base of your chin to the bottom of your lower teeth.”

“Over fifty numbers are generated by a given face and every face has a unique set of numbers,” she continued to her small, but rapt audience. “The British used to believe that intelligence could be correlated to the configuration of the skull, especially the size of the cavity that contains the brain.”

Pierson swept her finger across the forehead of Gunther’s picture. “Naturally, they used phrenology to conclude that they were more intelligent than other races. It was one of the ways they justified colonialism. The concept is no longer politically or academically correct, but it is true that different races generate unique phrenological numbers.”

“Here, watch this.” Pierson clicked an icon depicting the world. “Northern European” appeared in the lower right hand corner.

“That’s amazing but not entirely accurate. My background is Scottish and English. According to this, I could be Swedish.”

“So maybe one of your distant grandmothers was raped by a Viking,” Antonucci said and then added, “A few of these in the airports and we could stop all the Arabs from ever getting on a plane again.”

“Here, this is really neat.” He pointed to the icon labeled “Age.” “Show him this, Vai.”

Pierson clicked the icon.

“43 ± 3 years” appeared below “Northern European.”

“You’re 42, aren’t you?” asked Antonucci.

“That’s right,” Gunther said.

“Watch, I hope you’re ready for this,” Pierson said as she clicked another icon, typed 17 into the input box and pushed “Enter.” After several seconds, the face of a towheaded adolescent appeared.

“My God! That’s me. That picture could be in my high school yearbook. Just add a little more hair.”

“And this one could be in your 50-year-reunion brochure,” Pierson said as she typed in 67. A distinguished-looking gray-haired Gunther appeared on the monitor.

“This is the state-of-the-art, Jack,” Antonucci said. “Rummel told me to spare no expense, so I just purchased what Vai asked for.”

“But what would happen if someone was wearing a hat or thick-framed glasses? Would this program still work?” Gunther wanted to be sure the bases were covered.

“I’m glad you asked,” Valerie replied. She clicked an icon that depicted an eye. Suddenly the screen was filled with Gunther’s right eye. She pointed to the colored part of the eye. “This is the iris of Jack’s right eye.”

“You mean the pupil,” Gunther replied.

“No. This is the pupil.” She pointed to the dark circle in the middle of the iris. “The iris is the colored part of the eye and no two are alike,” she said as she moved her finger around the circumference of the iris depicted on the computer screen. “In fact, even identical twins have different irises.”

Gunther cocked his head and concentrated on the picture. “What’s different about them?”

“The variation of these ridges and crevices are infinite,” she said as she ran her finger along the various landmarks on the depicted iris. Some people even have freckles on their iris. Others have prominent blood vessels.”

“How do you know all this?” Antonucci asked.

“For a reason that would never dawn on the male brain. I read the manual that came with the software package.”

Gunther laughed. “You’re right. That would never occur to me. But is there a data base to put these faces to a name?”

“Not really, but it shouldn’t be a problem,” Pierson said.

“That’s right,” Antonucci added. “Whoever’s scamming us are probably repeat customers who live nearby. Once we identify some consistent winners, I’ll just have one of the security guards follow them. We can get the license numbers and Coles can use his connections in the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

“You see Jack, Vai and I are going on your theory that there is a group of people who have a system. Every time a customer places a bet, the face recognition software will enter that bet to a given face. At the end of the evening, I will be able to present to you the winnings and losses of every customer. Over the period of several weeks, if your theory is correct, we’ll be able to give you the names of the consistent winners.”

“Will I be able to know how they bet and the timing?” Gunther asked.

“Of course, Jack,” Pierson said. “Each face will have a database that documents the amount of money they bet, whether they bet to win place or show, or if they bet the quiniella or the trifecta and of course which players they bet on.”

“One thing I don’t understand, Jack. Why are you so confused about the strange results?” Antonucci asked.

“That’s the problem. I don’t know. All I know is that we have seen a pattern of two inferior players, Buxeda and Ariz, winning only when an inordinate number of large bets are placed on them.”

“I still don’t get it,” Antonucci persisted.

Gunther pulled up a chair next to Pierson while the muscular head of security did the same. He placed his hands on the table beside the computer. While he had always made his living in corporate America, Gunther would have made a great teacher. He loved to explain things.

“Frank, jai alai, like most sports, is a predictable game. There are good players, there are bad players and there are average players. Just like betting on boxing, basketball or football, it is possible to predict who is going to win in the long run and who is going to lose. Yes, sometimes a Buster Douglas comes along and knocks out a Mike Tyson. Yes, one year the Minnesota Twins came from nowhere and won the World Series. Las Vegas is still licking its wounds from that one. But in the long run, statisticians like myself are able to look at past performance and predict future performance.”

Gunther took a sip of stale coffee, and then continued. “The ability to fix a sport depends on the number of players. For example, boxing is notoriously easy to fix because only one athlete needs to be bribed. Basketball and football, on the other hand, are much more difficult to fix since there are so many guys participating. If you can get to the quarterback or the point guard, it’s possible, but it’s not easy. Furthermore, you never know if some spectacular play will destroy the point spread. There was an instance several years ago when a dirty quarterback from Louisiana State had his team ahead by 27 points when he knew the spread was 24!4. He lobs a pass at the defensive end’s chest and the guy catches it and fumbles. A tackle picks up the ball and runs it into the end zone, beating the spread.”

“When betting first started on jai alai, it was a one-on-one sport and thus very easy to rig. Once it gets out that the fix is in, no one will bet, as the Mutant crudely pointed out at the board meeting,” continued Gunther calmly. “Thus, in jai alai, matches are set up with eight players participating at once. The order is chosen randomly. The first two players compete for only one point and the loser sits down while the winner continues. The next player comes out, and if he wins the point he continues playing. The first player to reach to seven points wins the match.”

Gunther paused, peering at Antonucci’s brown eyes to see if he understood.

“I get it,” Antonucci said. “Even if you bribe one player in a jai alai match, you have no assurance that player can affect the outcome.”

“Exactly. He could lose every point but if he doesn’t happen to be involved in the crucial points that determine who wins, the guys fixing the match can’t predict the outcome,” agreed Gunther.

“But still, a couple of guys could get together and fix a match,” Antonucci said.

“Of course they can,” Gunther responded. “That happened about twenty years ago. The problem is that it is just a matter of time until they screw up and blab about it. One of the players bragged to a bartender that he was making more money from bribes than he was playing jai alai. The bartender had just dropped $200 that night and his girlfriend dumped him. He squealed to the press. When the scandal was unearthed, it took five years for public confidence to return, costing the industry a fortune.”

“That’s why I had you search the homes of all the players and bug their phones,” Gunther said, his tone indicating he was somewhat embarrassed with these tactics.

“We found nothing,” Antonucci chimed in. “No hidden cash. No suspicious conversations, although I have to admit it was fun listening to Buxeda pledging his eternal love to three different women in one week.” Antonucci did not share Gunther’s compunctions.

“Sounds like normal male behavior to me,” Pierson added.

“Maybe Rummel is right. Maybe these guys really have their act together,” Antonucci said. “But all my years of experience tell me that it’s just impossible for macho young guys to pull this off. But I still don’t understand why you are suspicious.”

“It’s simple, Frank. After the last scandal, all the frontons established a system of tracking the bets. The fans tend to bet in a predictable pattern, with most of the wagers made on the better players. When we see large wagers placed on the inferior players, we get suspicious, especially if those players win. Over the past two months, both Ariz and Buxeda — mediocre players at best — have kicked everybody’s butt. But only on certain nights. And guess what? Large bets were made on them. The one $13,000 winner was when someone bet $100 on the exacta, accurately predicting that Buxeda would win and Ariz would come in second, a 130 to 1 shot.”

Antonucci pondered this for several seconds, his forehead wrinkling, while he stared at the computer screen. “Maybe just Ariz and Buxeda are on the take and are just too clever to be caught.”

“That can’t be,” Gunther said. “You can bribe great athletes to play poorly, but you can’t bribe poor athletes to play better. It’s like offering me $10,000 to beat the tennis pro at Darien Country Club. He’ll kick my butt even if he’s in a wheelchair. It is almost as if the gamblers know who is going to win even though the players don’t. Like they have a crystal ball.”

“Maybe Rummel is bribing the players. I wouldn’t put anything past that slimeball,” Antonucci said.

“That makes no sense. The man is a billionaire. He makes more money in interest in a day than most people earn in a year. Why would he be involved in this nonsense?” Pierson said.

Gunther responded. “Vai, you don’t understand the self-made rich. They’re very insecure. No matter how much money they have, they refuse to lose money on a given investment because it destroys their self-image. It’s sort of like the class bully in grade school. Even if everyone knew he was the strongest kid, he still had to pick on the class nerd anyway.”

Antonucci and Pierson nodded soberly, turning back to the computer screen, as though hoping it would become an oracle with an answer to the puzzle before them.

Chapter 3            

Adam Bortz was surveying the carnage. Through the stale haze of Marlboro exhaust that permeated his apartment, he analyzed the color-coded maps that depicted the results of the last gubernatorial battle. The red Republican towns started in the posh New York City suburbs of Fairfield County and spread up to the quaint old-money villages of Litchfield, Kent and Sharon, whose clapboard houses surrounded by stone walls graced the postcards of Connecticut. Then came a Continental divide to the blue Democratic strongholds—the Hartford metropolitan area, New Haven and its suburbs, and the poorer, rural Eastern towns that Adam Bortz collectively referred to as East Dumbshit. The result, a scant Democratic victory.

In medieval times, when power was acquired by seizing land and quelling rebellions, Bortz would have been a royal vizier. He would have arranged marriages, distributed titles and decided whom to execute. He would have looked into the eyes of rival monarchs and decided whether to fight or negotiate. But in post-industrial America, Adam Bortz was a campaign manager. In return for cash and the promise of a plum political post, he would analyze poll results, identify swing voters and target them with media blitzes designed to give his employer power — a seat in the U.S. Senate or residency in the Governor’s Mansion.

In Bortz’s mind, the price of power had decreased slightly over the past several centuries. There were no dismembered limbs, slit throats, disemboweled abdomens, crushed genitals or shattered skulls. Instead, there were bleeding ulcers, heart attacks, nervous breakdowns, shattered marriages and drug-addicted attention-starved children. To the winners and their supporters went the spoils—lucrative contracts, commissionerships, lifetime sinecures and the ability to live in neighborhoods devoid of pigmented faces. Churchill was right, he often thought. Democracy was a lousy system, but the best that could be devised, given the constraints of human nature.

Adam Bortz sauntered over to the kitchen. Although it was 10 o’clock at night, he poured himself another cup of his patented leaded java. The caffeine receptors in Bortz’s brain no longer functioned, having been destroyed by the bombardment of eight cups of coffee a day for the past two decades. He stared at the blinking red light on his answering machine; Bortz never answered the phone. He was determined to procrastinate, to let the message wait until the morning; but he gave in.

Pressing the only button not covered with dust, Bortz listened to the message he knew would be there. “Adam, even you do not get laid so often that you can’t return your calls,” Rich Campana’s stentorian voice spewed from the small machine. “I can’t beat Weasel Kincannon without your help. Do you really want the Democrats to completely control our state? You know the first thing they’re going to do is buy every welfare mother a Jag to increase their self-esteem.”

“Pick a job, any job—chief of staff, motor vehicle commissioner. I will even create a new post—the official state Virgin Deflowerer. Any one is yours.”

Adam Bortz was annoyed that Campana was stupid enough to leave such a politically incorrect message on tape. He probably even made the call from a cellular phone, running the risk that the Democrats could record him. But Campana, like most great politicians, believed that the rules applied to everybody but him.

“Come on old buddy, Firestone’s on board. We got seven figures in the bank,” continued the message. “The Hartford Journal says we are scum of the earth and the Yalies are flocking to the Weasel. I’ll be groveling in Greenwich at Rummel’s place on Thursday. Hope to see you there. The battle is joined.”

Campana had another characteristic of all great politicians. He was persuasive, even on a telephone answering machine. This was his fourth message and he knew what buttons to push. Bortz despised the media, especially The Hartford Journal. The same media slime that piously berated the politicians for raising obscene amounts of money from special interests then turned around and wanted $3,000 for a full- page advertisement in their Sunday edition.

And the Yalies — they refused to pay any taxes to the city of New Haven, claiming they were still a tax-exempt Church-affiliated institution even though their Divinity department was nothing but a collection of closet agnostics dedicated to finding theological ways to get laid as frequently as possible. Bortz especially hated their hypocrisy. The Yalies, who defended to the death the rights of workers in Thailand and South Africa, while busting their own clerical union so they didn’t have to touch their ten billion dollar endowment. The Yalies, whose social engineers talked about the need for affordable housing for the teeming masses while lobbying for zoning restrictions in the professors’ neighborhoods, so as to avoid the presence of pigmented faces — other than maids and nannies.

Campana’s message got Bortz’s juices flowing again. He powered up his 450 MHz Pentium III Compaq, took an empty Dixie cup out of the CD ROM holder, and threw in the CD ROM entitled “Gubernatorial Returns.” He looked at the numbers for the umpteenth time. He had sorted and resorted them, creating an overlapping array of voting blocks of infinitely complex stacked Venn diagrams—teachers, African-Americans, country clubbers, gays, Italians, state workers, gun nuts, veterans, union members, soccer moms, Evangelicals, Reagan Democrats, Clinton Republicans, environmentalists, swamp Yankees — and on and on and on. He typed in various percentages, trying to come up with the magic formula that could put Campana over the top.

A college physics major, Bortz approached politics according to Newton’s Third Law: for every action there was an equal and opposite reaction. He had modified the Law into what was known to political insiders as Bortz’s Law: For every action, there is an opposite reaction that is impossible to predict. If Campana tried to galvanize the single-issue gun nuts, would the soccer moms rebel? If he catered to the unions, would the country clubbers revolt? If he tried to mend fences with the gays, would the Evangelicals sway to the Democratic line?

But the main problem was that the gubernatorial race was not held in a presidential year; thus, Bortz could not count on the traditional Wall Street Republicans — who lived in Fairfield County and commuted to Manhattan — to vote in large numbers. On the other hand, those who lived off what he called the “public tit” would turn out in droves to flip the Democratic lever.

Why Adam Bortz was a Republican continued to be a subject of considerable debate among the political cognoscenti. Some felt that Bortz was naturally a contrarian. He was one of those guys who viscerally sided with the underdog. He would take the Buffalo Bills over the Dallas Cowboys, the Mets over the Yankees and, in Connecticut, the Republicans over the Democrats. If he lived in a Republican state such as Utah, he would have been a Democrat. Others felt that the Bortz disliked authority and the Democrats — from the teachers, to the police, to the bureaucrats in the Department of Motor Vehicles — represented authority.

But when asked, Bortz said he was a Republican because he hated paying taxes. A seminal event in Bortz’s life occurred during his first job while on summer break from St. Bonaventure’s. After working 120 hours for Louie’s Landscaping — mowing lawns, trimming hedges and chain sawing branches in 85-degree heat — he received his first paycheck. It should have been for $480, reflecting his four-dollar hourly wage. Instead, it was for $417.30.

“What’s this FICA shit?”

His boss, Louie Marino replied “Blame it on the Democrats.” Marino was a member of Stamford’s Republican Town Committee and active in local politics.

The Bortz family had little interest in politics and rarely voted. “A bunch of thieves and whores,” his father — a Sikorsky tool-and-die man — would say.

Bortz was apolitical at this point in his life, but had the impression that the Democrats were the superior party because they believed in civil rights, legalized pot and opposed the draft.

Marino laughed as Bortz revealed his political ignorance. “That’s all irrelevant crap. The main difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans go to the mailbox to send a check to the government and Democrats go to the mailbox to pick one up.”

According to legend, the next day Bortz stumbled into the Stamford Town Hall attired in cut-off blue jeans, a T-shirt that said “Eat Me” with his brown pony tail dangling to the small of his back. The Registrar of Voters gazed at his reefer-reddened globes over her half¬frame glasses.

“Party affiliation?” she asked.

She looked as if she was going to become incontinent when Bortz shot back, “Republican.”

Adam Bortz finished college and had planned to go to graduate school at MIT when Marino introduced him to an ambitious state senate candidate, Rich Campana, an unemployed law school graduate. The amiable Campana talked Bortz into volunteering on his campaign, even though Marino admitted to Bortz that Campana had no chance of winning. “The Democrats have held this seat for over 30 years. Campana can’t win it. But if he hustles, he’ll make Lorenzo get off his butt for a change and make a name for himself.”

But Campana did win thanks to Adam Bortz, who simultaneously established himself as a political prodigy. Bortz became mesmerized with the complexities of human behavior as it related to voting preferences and turnout. He analyzed the previous returns, created a software package that targeted the swing voters and pummeled them with direct mail. He created a program that automatically dialed voters for phone bankers while the hapless Democrats used old voter checkoff lists. Meanwhile, the tireless Campana went door-to-door in the swing areas that Bortz identified. Campana was even temporarily detained by the police because he was seen prowling around a posh neighborhood in Darien 11:30 one night, pounding his lawn signs into the ground. The day after the election, everyone was surprised, except for Bortz and Campana.

Bortz shelved his graduate school plans and quickly became the mastermind of the Republican Party while serving as Campana’s chief of staff. By just age 24, he was the ultimate political insider; negotiating critical legislation and determining what seats in the House and Senate could be won or lost. He could look at a candidate, look at a voting district, stick his finger in the wind, and predict the outcome within a percentage point.

But Bortz’s main strengths were that he never lied and he never lost his temper. He could sit in a committee meeting and maintain his cool while politicians vented the concerns of their constituents and then construct an agreement that was tolerable to all. The Democrats liked him. The Republicans liked him. The lobbyists liked him. Even the press liked him, despite the fact that the feeling wasn’t mutual.

He was unique, and his uniqueness was manifested by his name, for he was not referred to as “Adam” or “Bortz,” but as “The Bortz,” perhaps causing his Polish great-grandfather to roll over in his grave since he was eternally mad at the listless Ellis Island bureaucrat who changed Bortkowski to Bortz.

But even Bortz was perplexed by the impending gubernatorial battle. He gazed at his reflection on the monitor. He was 38, but appeared older. A full-faced beard that was graying prematurely replaced his long gone ponytail. The brown horn-rimmed glasses matched his sandy hair. His eyelids sagged and spread to deep crows’ feet emanating from his hazel eyes and down to his full-reddened cheeks. His cyanotic lips puckered as he inhaled his 37th cigarette of the day. So much for his New Year’s resolution.

Connecticut was basically a working class Democratic state but Campana with his Italian charm, working class mien, infinite energy, amoral personality and willingness to grovel anywhere and at anytime for money made him a formidable candidate. He had held the 27th Senatorial District seat for years even though the voting registration was two Democrats to each Republican.

Campana and Bortz had a falling out over Campana’s divorce last year. Adam could tolerate Campana’s tantrums, his drunkenness, and his endless lies. Bortz lost count of the times he told an outraged reporter, “He shouldn’t have said that.” He understood that politics was where the human traits of logic and emotion intersected and that whether he liked it or not, it was the Rich Campanas of the world who decided whether life was tolerable for the rest of humanity.

But Bortz could not forgive Campana for dumping his wife. For years, Marie had tolerated his abuse and infidelity with the stoicism that was only possible by a girl raised by Italians who survived the Depression. Politics turned wives into single mothers. For this she was rewarded custody of three children, $840 a month in child support and a case of refractory genital herpes.

For what? A socialite from Greenwich who saw Campana as a way to achieve the political power her arrogance precluded her from gamering on her own. But just like the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella united Aragon and Castile in fifteenth-century Spain, the marriage had been to Campana’s political advantage, uniting the working class and country club Republicans. Catherine had introduced her new husband to a higher class of pigeons capable of bankrolling them to new heights of political power.

But as mad as he was at Campana, the thought of Kincannon as Governor made Bortz sick. Kincannon had no concept of right or wrong. He believed that truth was whatever was to his political advantage at a given time. He could address the American Civil Liberties Union and rail against the barbarism of capital punishment, then two hours later tell working class union members that the first thing he would do when elected is fire up “Old Sparky,” the prison guards’ nickname for the electric chair. It wasn’t the Republicans who nicknamed him The Weasel — it was his fellow Democrats. At least with Campana, you knew where you stood.

Kincannon’s idea of recreation was snorting coke, humping a prostitute, and then smashing her face, yet the left-wing Hartford Journal protected Kincannon. They accused Campana of “sexual harassment” when he picked up a waitress who willingly slept with him, but they ignored it when Kincannon was reprimanded by the House of Representatives for seducing a 15-year-old page.

But what really annoyed Bortz is that he knew that Kincannon would spend the entire campaign sounding like a Republican and talking about the need to cut taxes to stimulate business and investment. After the election, he would be “shocked, shocked,” to find a large budget deficit and would “reluctantly” raise taxes. And Bortz hated taxes.

The longer Bortz stayed in politics, the more he was convinced that Marino was right. And so was his father.

Chapter 4            

Adam Bortz decided to leave before the sun set. He hated driving on 1-95 in the dark because the lunatic truck drivers seemed to be having a contest to see who could run him off the road first.

He opened the door of his rarely washed Honda Accord, swatting an empty coffee cup and Almond Joy wrapper that had found their way onto his front seat. He drove down Washington Street dodging the numerous interminable road repairs. “Pork barrel projects,” he thought condescendingly. Weaving around on several side streets to avoid the traffic lights, he pulled onto the entrance ramp.

“Connecticut is the best kept secret in America,” he thought to himself.

Although the third smallest state, after Rhode Island and Delaware, it was what is known among his political colleagues as a “bellwether” state. While the media concentrated on trends in California and New York, it was Connecticut that led the way when it came to social change. In the 1600s Reverend Thomas Hooker combined Puritan zealotry with Calvinistic humanism to form the Fundamental Orders, the precursor to the Constitution. In fact one state senator, who was the direct descendent of the Reverend, joked that he wanted to make a T-shirt that said, “My ancestors were Hookers.”

Bortz thought about the state’s proud tradition as he cruised at 80 in the left lane. Connecticut may have raised the speed limit to 65, but it was still too slow for his racing thoughts. Hartford resident Harriet Beecher Stowe penned Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the novel that accelerated the anti-slavery movement that culminated in the Civil War. Her neighbor, Samuel Colt, manufactured the arms necessary to defeat the South. Bortz always thought it ironic that Connecticut’s zoning laws made the state more segregated than the South, even during the height of the Jim Crow laws.

Bortz winced as he remembered that the temperance movement started in Connecticut. To this day, some of the old Yankee towns prohibited bars from serving liquor after 8:00 PM. A small smile creased his lips as he remembered how he won a local assembly race in East Dumbshit by portraying the Democrat challenger as a lush. Women’s suffrage began in Connecticut, and today almost half the state legislators were women. It was the first state to elect a woman governor who did not succeed her husband, Ella Grasso, one of the few Democrats that Bortz admired.

Connecticut was carved out of a receding glacier 20,000 years ago and while there was some fertile farmland, the rocky soil and gigantic swamps — every Indian word for Connecticut meant Big Swamp — forced its denizens to rely on Yankee ingenuity to survive. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin; Elias Howe, the sewing machine; John Fitch the steamboat; and David Bushnell, the submarine. The ingenuity continued to this day: the business section of The Hartford Journal was replete with the names of patents granted to Connecticut natives. All that had changed is that many of the inventors had last names that ended in vowels. Now the Internet entrepreneurs were setting up shop and Bortz was the first political insider to start shaking them down for political donations, claiming the Democrats couldn’t wait to tax and destroy their businesses.

This inventiveness also made Connecticut the wealthiest state and the center of this wealth was in Fairfield County, a suburb of New York City, or more accurately, the Island of Manhattan, south of 96th Street. Fairfield County had one of the largest concentrations of corporate headquarters on the planet—General Electric, Phillip Morris, Xerox, Playtex and Pitney Bowes. At one time or another, his clients had hit their executives up for cash.

Rock stars and movie stars owned estates in Fairfield County and he had met Paul Newman, Mel Gibson and even Meatloaf at charity balls. Except for Gibson, they tended to be in the Democratic corner.

Bortz got into the right lane, almost clipping a Hyundai that dared challenge his right to the road. Just as the country music station was fading out, he got off the Den Road exit to enter the crown jewel of Fairfield County — Greenwich. If you asked a Greenwich resident where they were from, they simply replied “Greenwich.” They refused to acknowledge that Greenwich owed any fealty to any state, nation or kingdom. Greenwich was its own world and those who were unaware of its prominence, wealth and power were not worth knowing.

In Greenwich, a starter house whose roof hadn’t collapsed went for half-a-million dollars. Traffic lights were rare, rather the town hired uniformed policemen wearing white gloves to wave the assortment of Japanese, British and German luxury cars through the intersections.

When it snowed in Greenwich, three groups of plows hit the road. The first were private contractors who saw to it that the rich and powerful had clear driveways. The second were employed by the town, and cleared the streets. But then came a third group. This group opened up the driveways of residents who had the misfortune of being plowed in by the second group; this kept the number of irate phone calls from the captains of industry to a minimum.

Greenwich was also ultra-conservative, prompting a local comedian to theorize that Greenwich was once the Indian word for “Republican.” But Greenwich Republicans were a unique breed. Unlike most Republicans who just wanted lower taxes, Greenwich Republicans didn’t want any taxes. They were the ultimate social Darwinists, and they were at the top of the food chain. For them, government had only two purposes: defend the country and bail out hedge funds. They viewed their fellow Republicans, especially the religious right, with disdain, seeing them only as useful idiots to help elect fellow country clubbers who would then bust unions and allow them to move jobs overseas when workers had the audacity to ask for a living wage. The typical Greenwich Republican was not only pro-abortion, but also believed that abortion should be mandatory for people on welfare.

The arrogance of the Greenwich Republicans annoyed Bortz, but it was the best place for his clients to raise campaign cash. As Bortz often said, “No cash, no campaign.” Every prominent Republican had a list of the Lords of Greenwich, individuals who could host a fund-raiser or pick up the phone and produce anywhere from $50,000 to $500,000. The practice was so prevalent that it was termed “groveling in Greenwich.”

Bortz drove past several car dealerships — Rolls Royce, Mercedes, BMW, and Ford —wondering how the Ford place got through the zoning board. That must have cost some cash. He noticed a license plate on a passing black Bentley that said “B4THRTY.” He turned down a side street that consisted of stretches of stone walls and towering oaks that obscured the palaces of the modern day robber barons — currency speculators, bond traders, internet wizards and mutual fund stewards. He glanced in his rearview mirror looking for one of Greenwich’s finest. He had been to Rummel’s estate at least a dozen times and had been pulled over on this street twice by police officers wondering if he had some difficulty “negotiating in our fair village.” It amazed him that each cop had used the same expression.

Dirty Hondas apparently were not part of the decor the natives were used to seeing.

Rummel’s compound appeared ahead, the towering ivy-laced brick walls obscuring the view of Long Island Sound. He pushed the buzzer and heard Tony’s voice. “Can I help you?”

“Tony, there’s no hope. You’ve been practicing that line for five years and you still sound like a guinea from the Bronx.”

“Bortz, you know people like you need a green card to enter Greenwich,” the security guard said. “I see you’re lacking a police escort. Bummer. I was looking forward to watching the look on your face when I pretended not to know you.”

“I guess Greenwich’s Finest have better things to do now,” Bortz said

“Yes, they tend to concentrate on more horrible crimes like DWB.”

“DWB?”

“Driving while black,” Tony responded.

He stepped out from behind the brick column and manually opened the towering wrought iron gate.

“You should tell Rummel to motorize the gate so that you don’t have to work so hard,” Bortz said as he pulled up beside the uniformed guard. “How can he sleep at night at the thought of you having a heart attack from over exertion?”

“Listen, I’m lucky the son-of-a-bitch doesn’t dig a moat around this place and make me crank a drawbridge up and down all day.”

“So what’s the scene?” Bortz asked.

“Campana arrived with Miss Charm School about an hour ago. He looked like he’s only getting it every other Tuesday.”

“I suspect that is an optimistic assessment. WASPs don’t believe in post-marital sex unless it’s in the pre-nup,” Bortz said.

“You’re all they’re talking about. Are you going to run Campana’s campaign?”

“Yes, Tony and you should be honored that you are the first to know,” Bortz said.

“But, I thought you and Campana weren’t on speaking terms.”

“We’re not. But that’s about to change.” Tony looked surprised, so Bortz added, “We don’t live in a perfect world. I can’t give Kincannon a free pass. Campana’s a piece of shit but he’s our piece of shit.”

“Like you always say, in politics, the scum rises to the top,” laughed Tony.

Bortz drove his Accord on the Belgian cobblestone towards the gray stone mansion, noting that Rummel had finally gotten rid of the statues of black-faced men holding lanterns. The press had a field day with that after the last fundraiser.

He stopped to look over the Sound. The distant sailboats, ostensibly motionless, had a hypnotic effect. He should be out on his 24-foot catamaran, dipping frozen cherries in cognac and scanning the beaches with his binoculars for topless debutantes rather than doing this nonsense again. His reverie was interrupted by a blond teenager attired in pressed knee-length pleated ocher shorts and a forest green collared shirt with the Greenwich Yacht Club emblem.

“Mr. Bortz, it will be my pleasure to park your car.”

Even the parking attendants knew who he was.

“Thanks,” he said taking the key off his chain and wondering if it really was a pleasure.

Absent his Honda, Adam Bortz looked quite dapper in his recently pressed tuxedo. Other than leaving him hopelessly cynical and over-caffeinated, politics had been good to him. His mother’s advice to always set aside a portion of every paycheck combined with his connections to the Republican business community resulted in a substantial nest egg. Actually, there was nothing to it. All he did was plow 10% of his salary into tax-free municipal bonds and General Electric stock while ignoring the rantings of the overpaid astrologers who babbled on the Financial News Network. No brains, just discipline. Since he had never married, he was now in a position to avail himself of life’s finer things when he so chose. His apartment was spacious and comfortable. His car was paid for and he had no credit card debt. He was in control of his life.

This confidence gave him a buoyant lilt as he climbed the marble stairs. He passed through the massive French doors and was ushered into a ballroom that could have housed an entire Haitian village. Immediately, he was the center of attention. The heads of movers and shakers rotated sharply as they espied their conduit to political power.

“Adam, Adam, Adam,” Campana intoned from across the room.

Without apologizing, he left his present conversation circle and jaunted to Bortz and gave him a bear hug. “You’re in, aren’t you, old buddy?”

Bortz paused for a moment. “Let the SOB sweat,” he thought, before responding, “I’m in.”

“It was that Yale crap that got you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Rich, it was,” Bortz conceded.

Richard Campana was the wunderkind of Connecticut politics, a man who had dedicated his life to the pursuit of pussy and power — in that order. Only in his late 30s, he had never lost a race and now had amassed enough political support to run a credible battle for the Governor’s mansion. Not being in his presence for a while, Bortz was once again reminded of his animal magnetism.

The great ones always looked good: Reagan, Clinton, Kennedy. They had appeal not only on television, but also in person. They could charm the ladies while picking their husbands’ wallets. And Campana was in their league. If he weren’t, Bortz wouldn’t be wasting his precious time.

Campana had lettered in both football and basketball at Stamford’s Cathedral High before becoming a respectable middle linebacker for Boston College. Unlike most former jocks, he mastered the most important exercise — the push away from the table—and thus was lacking the formidable paunch that was afflicting many middle-aged baby boomers. His tapered torso led up to the broad shoulders of his 6’2” frame. Although his father was pure Italian, the Irish DNA from his mother softened his features, giving him that blow-dry bland look that Americans loved in their politicians. His jet black hair rested comfortably on his broad forehead. His Roman nose — the only vestige of his Italian side - contrasted with blue eyes that melded comfortably with his creamy complexion and symmetrical slender lips. Jay Leno without the chin. Bill Clinton minus 40 IQ points.

“Katherine is dying to see you.” He was already lying. He just couldn’t help himself. “Come on.”

Bortz followed Campana, noticing that Rummel’s guests were barely acknowledging the politician’s presence as he obsequiously smiled at them. Times had really changed since he became involved in politics. It used to be that the donors perceived the candidate as their champion, the Knight in Shining Armor who would use their money to defend their beliefs. They fawned over him and entered into intense discussions about the issues and political strategy.

But not any more. With the collapse of communism and the triumph of global capitalism, ideology was dead. These people were here to buy access. They wanted contracts for road construction, low interest loans to start export businesses, health care contracts for state employees and bond money to finance minor league baseball stadiums. Half of them would be at Kincannon’s Greenwich fundraiser in two weeks. These fund-raisers were nothing more than legalized bribery and Campana was not their champion: he was their employee.

“I need a drink to get through this, Rich.”

“Sure, old buddy.”

Campana snatched a glass of champagne from a waiter’s tray and handed it to Bortz. He knew better than to take a drink himself. Bortz had told him he made enough stupid statements when he was sober and he had sunken more than his fair share of delicate negotiations when his tongue was loosened by alcohol.

“The coven is over there,” Campana said.

“Rich, engage brain before moving tongue. Better yet, just smile and wave.”

“Nobody heard me, old buddy and besides, you’re the one who coined the term ‘Witches of Greenwich,’ not me.”

“You’re missing a subtle point here, Rich. You’re the one running for governor, not me. And remember, the walls have ears.”

“I hear you, old buddy.”

Bortz wished that he would stop calling him “old buddy.”

Katherine was talking to the three women who represented Greenwich in the State Assembly, AKA the Witches of Greenwich.

“Katherine, you remember Adam.”

Katherine Brewster-Campana forced a smile at Bortz and then lasered a glare at Campana, confirming Bortz’s suspicion that Tony had been optimistic in his speculation on their sex life.

Bortz and Katherine — as she insisted on being called — had never been on friendly terms. She didn’t care what Bortz thought about her wrecking Campana’s marriage; but she couldn’t stand the fact that her trophy husband would always respect his opinion above hers.

Dorothy Phillips, the representative from Old Greenwich, expertly broke the ice with alacrity. “Adam, you got a new tuxedo.”

“I want to look good for the inaugural ball.”

“So you really think you can win.”

Campana wrapped his massive arm around Bortz’s shoulders. “Adam and I have never lost a race and we never will.”

“Dorothy, if we make no mistakes, we can take him by a point and a half,” Bortz said. “Just raise the cash, run the TV ads and avoid the press as much as possible.”

“Richard has been building a positive relationship based on mutual respect with the press. I think they’ll give us a fair shake this time,” Katherine chimed in with a fake smile.

It was starting already. Even Bortz’s decades of poker playing could not suppress the grimace that encompassed his face for a half second. “A positive relationship based on mutual respect,” he thought. “What planet was she from?”

Without making eye contact with Katherine, Bortz responded. “A liberal is someone with a high IQ and a low salary and unfortunately for us, most members of the press corps fit this definition. We will be cordial and accessible to a degree, but for us to win this race, we cannot regard the press as our friend.”

“I love it, a high IQ and a low salary,” Campana laughed.

“Rich, you have to mingle and I want to touch base with Firestone. We’ll chat later.”

Bortz headed immediately for the bar to get a real drink. It was going to take a lot of booze to get through this evening. It was going to take a lot of booze to get through this campaign. Bortz had never seen the bartender before, but before he opened his mouth, 18-year-old Glenlivit Scotch on the rocks appeared on the bar as he approached.

“Thank you.” Bortz stuffed a dollar into the jar. Probably the first tip the guy got all evening.

“Boy, I’d like to be a plastic surgeon in this town,” Bortz said.

“I don’t know. No matter how I mix the drinks, these people complain. You’d be getting sued a lot,” the bartender responded in a well-disguised Hispanic accent.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

He leaned against the bar and gazed at the assembled nobility. After golf and poker, Bortz’s favorite hobby was people watching. He loved to peruse a human being. He could correlate personality to shoes, voting patterns to ties, job descriptions to hairstyles and financial status to gaits.

Bortz had been seeing the same faces at Rummel’s fund-raisers for years. Cream-colored taffeta full-length evening gowns were apparently the rage, although some of the younger trophy wives were packaged in stretch viscose dresses. Before, only the women had taut faces, raised eyelids and cute perky noses. But now the men were availing themselves of the miracle of the competently wielded scalpel. The awkward toupees were replaced by meticulously woven hair transplants. Their tanned visages featured tight Aryan jawbones, authoritative schnozzles and glistening foreheads free of worry lines. While silicon cleavage and liposuctioned legs had been part of the Greenwich landscape for years, the broad shoulders, thin waists and rounded buttocks of the macho corporate overclass were now financing the yachts of the local guardians of the Hippocratic Oath.

The most stunning figure, eclipsing even the voluptuous escorts, was Rummel’s wife Tiffany. At an even six feet she towered over the assembled nobility turning the heads of all but Rummel’s employees. Her platinum locks tumbled over her bronzed shoulders leading to a translucent azure strapless silk gauze gown. As per Rummel’s instructions, her salient hardware was outlined in black undergarments.

Bimbo3, as Rummel called her whether she was present or not, was taller, blonder and sexier than his previous concubines. His first marriage to a former centerfold ended when she took up with her tennis instructor. Rummel hired private detectives to follow his second wife and they seemed to be living in monogamous bliss until the contractor repairing his patio offered to redo the sidewalk to his beach free of charge. Rummel never understood women but he understood money. Nobody works for free and a couple of well-hidden video cameras forced Bimbo2 to attempt to resurrect her modeling career. Now Rummel hired only women to landscape and repair his domicile. In fact, the joke in Fairfield County was that trophy wives had done more to make male-dominated jobs available to women than the entire Feminist Movement.

Bortz wondered whether Tiffany found the trade off worth it: status and luxury in return for faked orgasms. He’d never know. He just had to keep Campana away from her.

A waitress approached him presenting an assortment of canapes. He grabbed a smoked salmon one and was savoring it when Patti Becker, The Bridgeport Post political reporter, interrupted his restful solitude.

“So, the A-team is back together.”

“That depends on a multitude of complex variables,” Bortz responded.

“You mean if Campana is willing to pay your fee.”

“Yes, that’s the multitude of complex variables it depends on.”

Becker laughed. She liked Bortz because he was just as cynical as she was.

“I see that Rummel has made some architectural changes since the last soiree,” she said, referring to the removal of the black-faced lantern holders.

“We are trying to appeal to all elements of our diverse society.”

“Adam, a little effort, please. Certainly you can do better than that stock response. I hear Rummel was so mad that he wanted to pay some of the boys from the hood 800 bucks each to stand there holding lanterns” — here she paused for effect, watching his reaction — “or so rumor has it.”

How did she find that out? Firestone must have blabbed it. The first thing Bortz was going to do was see to it that the press was excluded from further fundraisers. This had to be Katherine’s doing.

Before Bortz could craft a reply, Gordon Firestone meandered over. “Adam Bortz and the redoubtable Ms. Becker.”

Gordon Firestone would be Campana’s pollster and produce his television advertisements. He had put on weight since Bortz had last seen him, but the tailored Bijan suit hid his new paunch well. His round face was graced with an omnipresent plastic smile, and the lenses of his avant-garde ovoid glasses were so thin that Bortz theorized they were plain glass. He combed his oily blond hair straight back with no part, or attempt to hide his receding hairline.

“I’d love to chat with you two intellectuals but I see that the prize steer is finally available.” Becker trotted off to harass Campana.

“Let’s nurture Connecticut. What do you think?” Firestone said.

“I think I need another drink.”

Bortz turned around and waiting for him was another glass of Scotch. “Am I that obvious?” he said to the bartender as he put another dollar in the jar. The bartender just smiled.

“Adam, the focus group data show that the women love the word ‘nurture.’ Every third word out of Campana’s mouth is going to be nurture,” Firestone chuckled. “We are going to nurture the schools...We are going to nurture the environment...We are going to nurture the roads...We are going to nurture our teachers...We are going to...”

“Just as long as Campana keeps nurturing all these suckers. We’re going to need six mil to win this race,” Bortz said, cutting off Firestone.

“He’s at the top of his game, Adam. This event alone is bringing in almost half a mil.”

Even Bortz was impressed. “So they’ll have no trouble paying my salary?” Bortz asked.

“Not unless you’re unreasonable.”

“I won’t be.”

“Rummel said we could use his cigar room to discuss terms later tonight.”

ppppp* * * * *

Bortz was the first to arrive in the cigar room, as etiquette demanded. The cigar room had become a staple of the Fairfield County nobility and Rummel’s was one of the best. The room itself was from Victorian England with mahogany wainscoting leading to red silk wallpaper framed with gilded moldings. The candlelight of the brass sconces illuminated the room with mellow apricot hues that reflected off the moldings. Several oxblood leather chairs formed a circle around an Irish Chippendale table.

Bortz wanted to remove his shoes and socks and sink his toes into the plush burgundy carpet when he noticed the barely conspicuous rheostat beside the hand carved mantelpiece over the fireplace. This controlled an air circulator that actually titrated the amount of smoke so that the room did not become unbearable, while still maintaining a diffuse haze that blended the various aromas of $30 Cuban cigars. The fire in the fireplace was peaking.

Campana arrived with Firestone, both acknowledging Bortz with minuscule nods. An attempt at idle chitchat was avoided as Rummel entered the room followed by a faceless butler. The four men sat down following Rummel’s lead while the butler appeared before Bortz with an opened walnut humidor. The pleasant cedar smell hit Bortz’s nostrils while he extracted a Cohiba Esplendido. The acquisition of this classic more than paid for the evening. Rummel’s personal sommelier poured each man a claret and exited.

The four men placed the midpoint of the cigars under their nostrils, pausing and then sniffing the foot and head. In unison, each pulled out a guillotine and slit a circular disc from the foot with the precision of a mohel at a bris.

Rummel let his disc fall to the carpet while the others placed the debris in the crystal ashtray. While silence still prevailed, each man struck a wooden match and held it for several seconds before rotating the Cohiba in the flame. They inhaled, paused, and ejected the valuable smoke together.

“If you Republicans hate Castro so much, why do you smoke his contraband?” Rummel asked mildly.

“We’re burning his crops,” Bortz replied.

Bortz was a cigar connoisseur, having smoked them long before they became fashionable. He resented the price escalation that status-conscience bozos like Rummel imposed on him. Hell, he probably couldn’t tell the difference between this cigar and a Swisher Sweet. He used to be able to buy bootlegged Partagas for three bucks; now he had to pay twelve even for the inferior machine-made varieties.

“Gentleman, it has been a long evening, so I will get to the point. The bonds that financed the construction of my fronton are coming due and I need to have them refinanced.” Rummel let his gaze rest on each man before turning his attention back to Campana.

Bortz knew what was coming. He left the Cohiba in the ashtray, praying that it would burn slowly so that he could savor the taste later under less reprehensible circumstances.

“Senator, as per our previous discussion, I have your word that if elected, you will make the refinancing of these bonds a top priority.”

“You have my word,” Campana said.

“Whatever that’s worth,” Bortz thought.

Rummel continued. “Let me remind you that the fronton provides over 250 jobs and endless recreation and it will close without your help. In fact, we may even need additional financing because even without considering the bond payments, we are losing money.”

“No problem. It is my hope that you continue to support my candidacy exclusively.”

“I’m not giving Kincannon a dime. You’re my man, Senator.”

Welfare for billionaires. This guy already cost the taxpayers more money than the annual bill for every welfare mother in Connecticut when he defaulted on his Manhattan real estate. Now he was going to cost the taxpayers even more, but the fact remained that billionaires contributed to campaigns and welfare mothers did not. No cash, no campaign. Bortz’s facial muscles did not budge, but Rummel glared at him as if he knew what he was thinking.

Rummel reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a stack of checks. He stood up, handed them to Campana and then without saying good-bye, left the room. Thirty dollars worth of Fidel’s finest was left smoldering in the ashtray.

Campana gleefully rifled through the checks. “There must be 500 grand here.”

Bortz knew the time to strike was now. He did not believe in foreplay when it came to negotiating with politicians. “Rich, while we are on the subject of cash, let’s discuss my fee. I want $100,000 for my services with $20,000 up front. Tonight. Also, I miss the game, Rich. After we win, I want to be your chief-of-staff and quite frankly, the less I have to deal with Katherine, the better off things will be.”

“That makes two of us, old buddy.”

Campana guzzled down the first-growth claret. He took a long draw from his Cohiba, Bortz noticing the tapered ash at the end. “You’re worth much more than you are asking but TV time is going to be expensive. I’ll tell you what. $15,000 right now. $80,000 total with a $20,000 bonus when we win. And of course you will be my chief-of-staff although I personally would take the Virgin Deflowerer post if I were you.”

Bortz liked the expression “when we win.” Campana was exuding the necessary confidence. “Rich, $15,000 now, $90,000 salary and no bonus when we win. Serving as your chief-of-staff will be bonus enough.”

“Done.”

Bortz knew he had just made an additional $10,000. Campana reached into his pocket and wrote in $15,000 on a check that had already been signed by the campaign’s treasurer.

“Thanks,” Bortz said while grabbing it.

Campana inhaled deeply and sat back in the chair. Firestone and Bortz followed suit. “Here is the law of the jungle, gentlemen. The inner circle of this campaign is in this room. I do not want committee upon committee giving me advice. You can set up as many advisory panels as you want to make the contributors feel important, but I don’t want to hear a word they say. I do not want to micromanage this campaign. You guys are the best in the business. I trust your judgment to delegate authority and come up with the proper plan of attack. I want to concentrate on one thing and one thing only — raising cash.”

He poured himself another glass of wine and turned towards Bortz. “Adam, our old friend Kerri O’Brien is running Kincannon’s show. She’s the best they have.”

“How are we doing on the delegate count? Can we stop a primary?” Bortz said.

In most states, a prospective candidate merely gathered a requisite number of signatures to be assured a spot on the ballot, but in Connecticut, delegates from every town assembled at a convention to pick the candidate. There would be 1,324 delegates at the Republican convention and the nomination went to the candidate who received at least 50% of the vote, but any candidate who attracted 15% support could force a primary.

“I don’t think so Adam,” Firestone said authoritatively. “Caruso has a strong base in New Haven and there are simply too many cranky Yankees out in East Dumbshit. We do have a shot at it though. The good news is that Kincannon will probably have a primary, too.”

Bortz sat forward in his chair. “Rich, when I meet with O’Brien, how many jobs can I barter away to prevent a primary? In my view, we must avoid a primary at all cost. It will just waste money and stir up passions. I’m sure she feels the same way.”

“As many as you need, Adam. Just do it.”

“What are the poll numbers now?” Bortz asked turning his head towards Firestone.

“Both Kincannon and Rich have a name recognition of 44%. If the election were held today, Kincannon pulls 37%, Rich 32% with the rest undecided,” Firestone responded.

“That’s not bad given the overwhelming advantage the Democrats have in voter registration,” Bortz added.

“It will be like every other statewide race. It will be won or lost in the final three weeks on television,” Campana said. “Like Adam says, ‘Raise the cash, run the ads and avoid the press as much as possible.’ ”

Chapter 5            

When Seth Parker took the job as manager of the jai alai fronton, he didn’t know the difference between a cesta and a pelota. But the game grew on him and now he loved it. When he sat in the skybox, he lived vicariously as he watched the lithe Basques hurl the pelota 180 miles per hour. In no other game — not baseball, not tennis, not even golf — did a ball achieve such speeds.

Sometimes he grabbed a cesta, a glove with a long basket attached, and fired the pelota against the front wall of the cancha. It reminded him of his boyhood practice of placing an apple at the end of a broken-off car antenna and flinging it over 300 feet, almost twice the distance he could throw the apple with his arm alone. There was one difference, though. When the pelota hit the wall, it bounced back with tremendous speed. The first time the rock-hard pelota took an abnormal bounce and hit his thigh; he had a welt the size of a grapefruit for a month. He realized why jai alai players were among the best athletes in the world, requiring the stamina of boxers, the agility of linebackers and the eye-hand coordination of ping-pong players.

There were a few American, Caribbean and South American players, but the game was dominated by its originators, the Basques, a proud race that to this day inhabit northern Spain and southern France. Parker was fascinated by their culture. Once thought to be descendants from the mythical lost city of Atlantis, recent genetic evidence revealed they were among the first migrants into Europe from the Cradle of Man — Africa. Their ancestors were probably the artists of the 15000-year-old animal paintings in the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet. The vast majority of Europeans — the French, the Spanish, the Italians, even the English —were relative newcomers who descended from later African migrants. In fact, the Basque language was unique, with no similarities to any of the Romance or Anglo-Saxon tongues.

The Basque males, before they are even toilet trained, have the cesta placed on their arms and master flinging the pelota. Even in adulthood, Parker could see the difference between the Basques and the non-Basques. While the non-Basques could master the technicalities of the game, the Basques used the cesta as if it were an extension of their arms, an appendage that had been there since they had left their mothers’ wombs.

After several days, Pierson and Gunther had worked the bugs out of the face-recognition software. It was now possible to trace every bet in the fronton to a face, even at the SAMs — the screen activated betting machines. At the end of every evening, Seth Parker received a list of anyone who had won over $1,000 along with the usual report of the night’s proceeds.

But not much was happening. Ariz and Buxeda had resumed their lackluster play, neither managing to even show. The winnings were distributed evenly as predicted by Gunther’s analysis. A few of the regulars had hit for several thousand dollars, but they gave it back almost immediately.

But tonight, as soon as Ariz walked onto the cancha, Parker could sense something was different. His confident gait telegraphed the annihilation of his first four opponents. In his fifth game, he was blowing away star player Jose Barrena. Game point was all that remained between Ariz and another victory.

Gunther and Parker sat forward in their chairs, both realizing that their employment was contingent upon their interpretation of the battle before them. In a whirl of his yellow uniform, Ariz served the pelota. Barrena responded by catching the streaking pelota in his cesta and firing it against the wall in a fluid motion.

Gunther sipped his beer nervously. “Barrena defeats Ariz 83% of the time. If he doesn’t win this point, Rummel could be on to something.”

Barrena ran to the sidewall, placed his foot against it, and propelled himself into the air while his cesta encompassed the whizzing pelota. A loud thud echoed through the fronton as the crowd gasped.

“He sure looks like he’s trying to me. That hurts.”

“It could just be an act. He knows we’re suspicious. We’ve talked to him several times and he knows that if the irregularities continue, he may as well return to Spain and join the Basque resistance,” Gunther said.

Parker admired the charismatic Basque and had had him to his house for dinner on several occasions. Fiercely competitive, he couldn’t imagine a set of circumstances —other than his children starving —th at would permit this proud warrior to lose on purpose. He pulled in $200,000 a year. His Greenwich house no longer had a mortgage and

his family was healthy. He did not gamble and he didn’t even have a mistress. His only passion was jai alai.

“Look at that, Seth.”

Barrena missed a straight shot, his cesta flailing helplessly as the pelota blurred past.

“Maybe the shot had a lot of English. You can’t tell from this angle,” Parker noted.

“Seth, Ariz is one of the weakest players. There is no way Barrena should have missed that shot.”

Parker’s plump cheeks flushed with anger, but he didn’t lose his temper. Gunther had a point. “Jack, you think Barrena’s on the take, but Ariz obliterated his previous four opponents. We’re back to the same argument. The problem is not that Barrena is playing worse; it is that Ariz is playing better. “Just not all the time,” he added, “and that’s what I can’t understand.”

Gunther sipped his beer. “I don’t know what you think, but collusion on a massive scale is possible. You can say what you want about Rummel, but his financial instincts are rarely wrong. That’s why he’s a billionaire. Besides, I have no other explanation.”

“Maybe Ariz is on performance-enhancing drugs. That would explain everything,” Parker said.

“I’ve considered that, but we need more information until we start doing blood and urine tests on these guys. They will be very insulted. But it does explain our dilemma. Ariz and Buxeda take the drugs on given days while collaborating with bettors. It just seems to me that such a plan would have been unearthed when we bugged their phones. Antonucci has had a lot of experience with this. Remember, his former job was getting court orders for wire taps and then doing the eavesdropping.”

“What about cell phones? Or computers?” asked Parker.

“Good thought,” Gunther nodded. “But neither of them owns a computer. And while Buxeda owns a cellular phone, he doesn’t use it much.”

Parker felt guilty for his previous anger at Gunther. It was obvious that Jack had spent several sleepless nights mulling over the possibilities and giving the players the benefit of the doubt, while still examining every angle.

His reverie was interrupted by a flummoxed Valerie Pierson bursting through the door. She pulled up a chair in front of Gunther and immediately shoved a computer-generated sheet of the last game into his hands.

“This is the win page. Look at this,” she said as her bejeweled index finger pointed to collection of figures at the bottom of the page.

Parker stretched his neck over Gunther’s shoulder. The pair stared silently at the figures. A horizontal row at the top of the page listed the players and their respective postpositions. Vertically were the bets, from the minimum $3 to the maximum $100.

Gunther quickly grasped Pierson’s point. A large number of wagers, much higher than would be expected from random choice, were placed on Ariz for the maximum of $100. At the bottom of the sheet, he saw the 17 to 1 payoff meaning that each of these wagers paid $1700.

“The fix has to be in,” Pierson said. “This has happened far too often for this to be coincidence.”

Parker remained quiet, shaking his head slightly, as the mounting evidence of player corruption unfolded. It still didn’t feel right to him. He wondered if his love of the game could possibly be clouding his judgement. But he doubted it.

Gunther sat forward and looked at the figures again, as if hoping that staring at them further could change them. “Valerie, did they bet to place and to show?” The show sheet displayed bets for the player to come in first, second or third; while the place ledger indicated wagers for the player to come in first or second.

Pierson quickly produced two other pieces of paper, presented them to Gunther and added, “Nothing unusual.”

Gunther scanned the place and show sheets, noting that there were no large bets on Ariz, the plurality being placed on Barrena, as would normally be expected. He settled back in his chair. “They’re getting greedy,” he said.

“You got that right,” Pierson responded.

“What do you mean?” asked Parker, feeling out of the loop.

Pierson quickly turned her head towards Parker, her black hair following her head like a twirling dancer’s dress. “When this nonsense started two months ago, the first heavy betting on Ariz and Buxeda was to show. As you know, this increases the chance of holding a winning ticket but decreases the payoff. Several weeks later, John and I noticed that the heavy betting was to place. Now they just bet on Ariz to win, resulting in a larger payola.”

“Do we know who ‘they’ are?” Parker asked.

“Not yet,” responded an animated Pierson. “But I bet my bottom dollar I’ll know by the end of the evening. You see, in the twelfth game, both Buxeda and Ariz are playing. If these guys are as greedy as I think, we should see them bet heavily on both. It should take only a few minutes after all the games are over to run the face-recognition software and pick out the guys who are scamming us.”

“How do we know it’s more than one guy?” Parker queried.

“How do we know it’s even a guy?” Pierson laughed, as the thought of a clever woman perpetrating this scam entered her mind. “John and I both feel that several people must be wagering to detract suspicion. Remember, these people have gone to the trouble of setting up a false identification complete with a stolen social security number and a Cayman Island bank account. Whoever is behind this is no imbecile.”

“It will be interesting to see if these people have been placing any other bets,” Gunther said.

“I’ll be able to figure that out, too,” said Pierson as she stood up. “But now I have to get back to the salt mines. I’ll see you guys later.”

She strode out of the skybox room, allowing the door to slam as she hurried down to her domain, the fronton’s computer room.

“This would almost be fun if the stakes weren’t so high. Valerie and I both love puzzles. I guess we math majors are all alike.”

Parker drummed his fingers on his chair’s arms. “The problem is that the stakes are our jobs, our livelihood, our ability to put food on the table.”

Both men made small talk as one game ran into the next, noticing the increased density of smoke as it spread into the so-called non-smoking area. Gunther figured that the politicians who passed the laws mandating non-smoking areas in public places were too dumb to get through a physics course, and never heard of diffusion.

By the time the twelfth game arrived, neither man took notice until the kinetic Ariz strutted onto the court. With savage ferocity, he returned the serve so that his hapless opponent was forced to resort to an impotent rebote, which Ariz slammed into the lower front wall, rendering a return impossible. He made short work of the next four opponents, earning him first place. He strutted off the court as the battle for second place began.

Buxeda, who had lost his second point by serving out of bounds, reappeared and waited for Gascon, a cagey veteran, to serve. As the pelota ricocheted off the front wall, Buxeda’s red jersey exploded in a windmill of sinewy arms that caught and hurled the streaking sphere to the base of the front wall with such velocity that Gascon could not respond. A bewildered Gascon stumbled off the court as two more players were quickly vanquished, earning Buxeda second place.

Valerie was not as excited as she entered the skybox for the second time. Rather she had a look of grim certitude, her eyes narrowed and her gait powerful and deliberate. “There’s no doubt about it. The fix is in. The maximum wagers were placed on both Ariz and Buxeda to win and place. But look at this. This is really fascinating.”

Pierson handed Gunther the sheet that displayed the quiniella wagers, in which gamblers picked who would come in first and second, but didn’t have to specify the order, unlike exacta wagering.

Gunther quickly spotted two $100 bets scattered among the plethora of single digit wagers before Pierson could point them out. Gamblers rarely bet large amounts on the quiniella because the chance of hitting was slim. Gunther sat forward in his chair, his lips tightened as his analytical mind quickly scanned the sheet.

“There were only two $100 bets and both were on Ariz and Buxeda,” he said. “The odds of this being random are about the same as getting a straight flush.”

“And look at the payoff,” Valerie said. “92 to 1. There are two tickets down there worth $9,200 each.”

“Their greed is going to be their downfall,” Parker said, as he shot out of his chair to grab the phone.

“I took the liberty of calling Antonucci already. He should be in the jackpot office by now,” Valerie said.

That’s what Parker loved about Valerie; she was super competent. The jackpot office was where the winners of over $1,199 were required by law to cash their tickets. They had to present identification and a social security number so that the IRS could take its cut immediately, in case the winners ‘forgot’ on April 15. The winners could insist on being paid with a check, although the fronton did its best to discourage this, since those who accepted cash blew it immediately, whereas those who took a check walked out of the fronton, quitting while they were still ahead.

Parker grabbed the first available phone and punched the digits quickly. Frank Antonucci felt the vibration of his cellular phone against the left side of his chest. He pulled it out of his jacket, flicked his wrist to open the mouthpiece and without even waiting for a voice said; “I’ve got him in my sight now.”

Chapter 6             

“You stupid sack of shit.”

“Bob. I’m sorry. I just couldn’t resist.”

“You stupid sack of shit.” Bob Dusza repeated, his chest broadening and his nostrils flaring as he glared into Bill Evans’ frightened eyes. Bill Evans squirmed in his chair, the wads of hundred dollar bills in each side pocket providing a cushion on either thigh as he attempted unsuccessfully to remedy his discomfort.

“We got a great thing going here. A great thing. But we’re gonna to lose it because of your goddamn stupidity and greed.” Bob Dusza was outraged. His lips moved evenly below his foam-stained brown mustache that intermixed with the uncut hair descending from his nostrils. The lip of his Yankee baseball cap protruded over his blazing green eyes while his graying brown hair poked out at right angles from his cap’s rim.

“None of us make no money. The goddamn garage pays me ten bucks an hour. Ten bucks. Ten lousy bucks with no pension and health insurance with an HMO that doesn’t cover a damn thing. You can’t even wipe your ass with that kind of money. Now every week, we’re all making $2,000 cash. Cash! You dumb shit! And what do you do? You risk it all.” Dusza’s red cheeks began to lose color as his anger abated. He quaffed half his beer. More foam appeared on the mustache.

“I’m sorry, Bob. I don’t know what I was thinking. It won’t happen again. I swear.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Dusza shot back.

“Are you ever going to tell us how you do it, Bob?” Rich Holtz asked, hoping to disperse some of the tension. Plus, he just couldn’t figure it out. But he liked the payoffs.

“I told you guys. I have a system.”

“Right. And I just got back from a menage a trois with two of the Rockettes,” Holtz laughed, his ponytail swaying like a pendulum as he turned his head. “You can’t even figure out to count trump when we play pinochle and you’re telling us you’ve outsmarted a bunch of professional bookies.”

“I told you guys when we started, no questions about how I did it. That was the deal,” Dusza said.

“Who the hell cares how he does it,” Frank Spano chimed in. “As far as I’m concerned, we should just stop right now. I’ve got 25 grand stuffed in my top drawer. That’s enough to get me and my family out of Bridgeport. I have the house picked out in Trumbull already. It’s small but at least, I won’t have to worry about my daughter being raped in some broom closet at the high school.”

Bob Dusza and Bill Evans, along with Dusza’s brother-in-law Frank Spano and their boyhood friend Rich Holtz, had missed the economic boom of bull market America. While the rest of Fairfield County prospered, the four men and their city — Bridgeport — were left in the dust.

They all wore ratty baseball caps that covered their balding heads and sweaty T-shirts that stretched around burgeoning beer guts, the uniform of lower middle class Connecticut. Absent significant lives of their own, they were all fanatical sports fans who would think nothing of blowing $200 to go to a Yankees game while complaining of the outrageous salaries the players commanded. Meanwhile, they had a hard time finding forty bucks to pay for an antibiotic when one of their kids got sick. Their marriages were surprisingly strong, perhaps because their wives never expected much.

They grew up in Bridgeport when it was a proud coastal industrial city that manufactured everything — clocks, sewing machines, guns, airplanes, cars, ships, torpedoes, corsets and even pie pans. But the manufacturing jobs that enabled their fathers to support their families on a single salary had been moved to North Carolina, Mexico and Malaysia, rendering Bridgeport into a montage of silent smoke stacks, boarded-up buildings and abandoned brick factories with rows of broken windows. The only growth industries were drug distribution and social services to care for the resultant neglected and abused children.

The small capes they proudly maintained now had negative equity — meaning that they owed more on the mortgage than the house was worth. They battled constantly, trying to keep homeless shelters, group homes for AIDS patients and drug rehabilitation centers proposed by trendy suburbanites from further destroying their neighborhoods. They took odd jobs in construction, landscaping and car repair trying to grab a few crumbs from the wizards of Wall Street who increasingly infested the wealthy suburbs of Westport, Darien and Greenwich.

Thus when Bob Dusza came to them with a plan three months ago that could earn them more than $2,000 a week in cash, they jumped, with Desert Storm veteran Frank Spano dubbing it “Operation Escape Bridgeport.” At first it seemed ridiculous. Dusza would give them cash and they would go to the jai alai fronton and bet the way Dusza said. But it worked. They would arrive separately at the fronton, sit in different spots, rotate cashiers when they wagered and leave separately. Afterwards, they met at Carlini’s Bar, with the three men each getting 15% of the night’s winnings. Dusza took the remaining cash, which he claimed had to be used to pay certain “fees.”

But Bill Evans thought he was smart. When Dusza told him that both Ariz and Buxeda would be hot, he saw no sense in betting as instructed when he could wager on the quiniella. Hey, when you’re hot you’re hot.

He now had over 18 grand in his pocket to prove it. But for the second time, his winnings exceeded $1,199 and he was forced to show the fake ID that Dusza provided each man in case he was questioned by security when collecting his winnings.

A well-endowed waitress plopped another pitcher of Samuel Adams on the chipped red Formica table. The still-nervous Evans pounced first, pouring himself a mug consisting of two-thirds foam. “Do you really think this is going to be a big problem? That place makes so much money they’ll never miss it.”

“They missed it enough the last time to try to chase the check. At least you had the sense to make them give you cash this time,” Dusza said.

“How do you know that they traced the check?”

“Believe me, I know.”

“But how do they know it’s us?” Evans said.

Dusza’s face reddened again. “Why do you think they put new cameras up all over the place? You really think they give a shit about pickpockets? They’re suspicious. I can just feel it — why the hell wouldn’t they be? Was anyone else there when you cashed the tickets?” The memory of the seemingly inconspicuous figure caused a momentary pause that betrayed his lie. “There was another guy cashing a ticket. That’s it.”

“Well, look on the bright side,” Holtz said, his devious smile quickly uplifting the others spirits. “We made $31,000 tonight, isn’t that right, Bob? That’s not too shabby for a night’s work.”

Dusza’s anger quickly vanished as the thought of how several grand could put his daughter in a private school. “Thirty-one grand, Rich. Each guy keeps over $4,650.”

Three envelopes quickly passed into Dusza’s hands. Bill Evans silently noted that although the others were quick to criticize his aggressive quiniella betting, nobody complained about the extra cash that resulted, not even Dusza.

“Any problems with the wives?” Dusza asked.

“I’m bursting to tell Susan, but I’ve managed to keep my trap shut,” Holtz said.

“This is important — you can’t tell no one. Not even your wives. This has to be between us.” Dusza’s intensity was disconcerting to the slightly buzzed group. “Don’t screw it up now. Keep the cash hidden. When we hit $40,000 each, we’ll figure out what to do. Until then, we have to keep our mouths shut.” He glared at Evans, hinting that his stupidity at the fronton could spill over to other aspects of his life.

“I still think we should stop now,” Spano said. “We have enough.” “We agreed to keep going until we got 40 grand each,” Evans said. “Barbara doesn’t like me gambling but I’ve managed to convince her that I’m breaking even. But she sure is suspicious. She already knows that I’m up to something because I keep looking at the Real Estate section in the Post," Spano said.

“You’re lucky. Susan is convinced I’m losing my shirt,” Holtz replied.

“Do you know when we go again?” Evans asked.

“I’ll contact you when I know. Remember, don’t talk to no one on the phone. I’ll stop by your houses when I know,” Dusza added as he began to get up.

“Aren’t you going to help us kill the pitcher?” Holtz said.

“I’m sure you guys can manage. I’m out-a-here.”

He limped for a second as an old wrestling injury came back to haunt him, then sauntered slowly through the cushioned door and into the parking lot.

“He’s got to be bribing those guys. How else would he know how to bet?” Evans said lowering his voice in spite of a blaring Bruce Springsteen.

Rich Holtz, the most intelligent of the bunch disagreed. “How could Bob pull it off? He would have to meet with the players, talk them into the scam and then arrange the payments. I’ve known him since we were six. Trust me, he’s not slick enough. Hell, he had trouble figuring out how to get laid even after he was married.” The two others laughed, Evans noting that Dusza was far from unique.

“Maybe he ran into some of the jai alai players at the garage he works at in Greenwich,” Spano mused.

“I doubt it,” said Evans. “Why would jai alai players live in Greenwich? It's just a bunch of greedy nerds and country clubbers.”

“Someone has to be helping him out,” Holtz said. “Everything is planned. The way we bet, split the money, avoid talking on the telephone and keep our families in the dark. He even had the fake ID handy when Bill needed it. It’s too much for him to have come up with.”

“Fake IDs are a dime a dozen,” Spano said. “Every other welfare bum has one. I gotta be honest — I don’t want to know how he does it. I’ll just be happy when this is over. I still think we should quit while we’re ahead.”

The conversation drifted to sports, as it always did, the three men debating the playoff chances of the Yankees as the beer level of the successive pitchers diminished. When the three men finally staggered out of the bar, none of them noticed the solitary figure sitting on a stool in the far corner. Antonucci had no intention of following them. He already had their license plate numbers and the bug in the napkin container had recorded their conversation. Besides, he had to finish his bourbon.

ppppp* * * * *

“As the more clever of you may have guessed, I didn’t get these pictures from Gentleman’s Quarterly," Pierson said as she pointed to the grainy visages taped to the portable writing board. Underneath from left to right were the names “Bill Evans, Frank Spano, Rich Holtz” and “Bob Dusza” written in red magic marker.

She walked across the front of Parker’s spacious office attired in baggy navy slacks and a Carnegie Mellon sweatshirt. Parker had learned that when dealing with computer geeks, imposing any sort of dress code only generated ill will and poor production. Valerie, in spite of her obvious physical charms, was no exception.

“I call them the Gang of Four. I was thinking of the Four Dirtballs but that doesn’t do them justice. After all, these guys are perpetrating the best scam the business has seen in decades,” she continued as she touched each individual picture with a swivel stick.

“Perhaps they are smarter than they appear,” Parker said.

“That wouldn’t be difficult,” Pierson added.

It was the afternoon following the big win for the Gang of Four, and the fronton management had assembled after doing their respective homework: Antonucci had analyzed the tape of their conversation. Pierson and Gunther had pored over their previous wagers while Parker had interviewed Barrena.

Parker took command. Attired in beige chinos, a navy blue Polo shirt and a black tweed jacket with elbow patches, he looked more like a recently tenured college professor than the manager of a jai alai fronton. The black half-frame glasses that usually dangled from a gold chain rested comfortably on his desk blotter as he sat forward. “Tell us about these pictures, Valerie.”

“These four men walked out of the fronton with combined winnings of over $31,000 last night,” Valerie began, her hand gesturing towards the pictures. “All four men placed maximum bets on Ariz to win in Game 4. All four of them placed maximum bets on Ariz to Place and Buxeda to Place in Game 12. This gentleman,” Valerie chuckled slightly as she pointed to Evans’ picture, “also made two maximum wagers on the quiniella for Ariz and Buxeda. The payoff — $9,200 for each bet for a total of over $ 18,000.”

Pierson grabbed some papers from a folder and distributed them to everyone. “Thanks to the face-recognition software, we were able to examine the betting patterns of these guys for the past two weeks. Jack will bring you up to speed.”

Rather than stand in front of the group, Jack Gunther merely rotated his chair so that he faced the others. His neat attire and grooming radiated a confidence that his voice did not possess. “I’m going to start from scratch. As you know, over two months ago, my statistical analysis of the betting patterns revealed that abnormally high wagers had been placed on both Ariz and Buxeda that resulted in large winnings that went to relatively few gamblers. We presumed this to be just another episode of player corruption that afflicts our business periodically; however, despite Frank’s best efforts, no evidence of player collusion was uncovered.”

Gunther became more animated, his hands cutting the air as he continued. “Thanks to Valerie’s wizardry, we were able to install video cameras at each cashier site and also at the SAMs. These cameras were linked to state-of-the-art face-recognition software that enabled us to track every wager to a specific individual. Last night we hit the jackpot. Ariz and Buxeda won consistently and we were able to identify these four individuals as the major beneficiaries.” Gunther pointed to the four pictures.

“Now here’s what’s fascinating. Please refer to the page Valerie handed you.”

The group collectively stared at the page. Under the names of each of the Gang of Four were listed three dates and the wagers each placed on the respective dates.

Gunther continued. “Over the past week since the instillation of the face-recognition software, these guys showed up at the fronton three times and only on days when either Ariz or Buxeda were scheduled to play in singles games. Last night they cleaned up, but look at the two earlier times. What do you see?”

Parker, his readers now perched on his peaked schnozzle, responded. “They only bet once and lost.”

“Exactly!” Gunther responded. “Look at the first date. All four of these guys bet $100 on Ariz to Place. That night Ariz got clobbered in his first game. So what happened?”

“They went home,” Pierson said.

“You got it, Vai. Even though Ariz played two more games, these guys were not interested in hanging around.”

“Did Buxeda play that night?” Parker asked.

“No,” Gunther said. “But both Buxeda and Ariz played the second night and look what happened.”

Pierson spoke again. “They bet the maximum on Buxeda, then bet the maximum on Ariz and got burned both times.”

“And then they went home again,” Gunther added. “It is almost as if these guys know that on certain nights, Ariz and Buxeda are going to play well but don’t know which nights. Thus, they show up and bet. If they win, they keep betting. If they lose, they leave.”

Parker sat back in his chair and paused for a second while digesting the information. “What do you have to say, Frank?”

Frank Antonucci stood up and walked to the board with the four pictures. He still retained his athletic body and in spite of his short size, he had a commanding presence. He cleared his throat and began to speak with a staccato impassive voice as if he was testifying in front of a jury. “When Valerie saw the quiniella come home in Game 12, she dispatched me immediately to the jackpot room. After seven minutes, a white male in his late thirties appeared with the winning tickets. This man was Bill Evans.”

Antonucci pointed at Evans’ picture, then turned his head and addressed Parker directly. “He insisted on being paid in cash and then left the fronton immediately. He proceeded to Carlini’s Bar on Park Street. I was able to maintain surveillance while placing a listening device at his booth. Within ten minutes, he was joined by the three other Caucasian males depicted on the board. Please note that Valerie independently came up with the same four individuals by use of the face-recognition software. Thus, we have incontestable evidence of a conspiracy to defraud the fronton by these four individuals.”

Antonucci turned his head and made eye contact with Gunther. “I was able to observe these individuals for approximately fifty minutes during which time they conversed and consumed seven pitchers of beer. I also obtained the license plate numbers and thanks to Bob Coles, we were able to get their names and addresses. You have all received transcripts of their conversation and although some portions were inaudible, the gist of their conversation is as follows.”

Antonucci took a step forward and pointed to Bob Dusza’s picture. “This individual is the leader. He tells the other three men when to show up and how to bet. He claims to have a system that he is unwilling to divulge to the others even though all four of these individuals have been friends since childhood. They total the evening’s winnings and Dusza takes 55% of the cash. The remaining 45% is distributed evenly among Spano, Evans and Holtz.” He pointed to the pictures of the other three men.

“Frank, what impressed me most about this conversation is that none of the other three guys is convinced that Dusza can pull this off,” Parker said.

Gunther turned to Parker. “Their system is very simple. They only bet on Ariz and Buxeda. Dusza doesn’t know when they are going to be hot. He is only aware that sometimes they will be.”

“But it’s not that simple,” Pierson bellowed, her eyebrows arching as she made her point. “They have fake identifications and social security numbers. We know that one check was laundered through the Cayman Islands. Dusza was smart enough to insist that they avoid betting the quiniella so that we wouldn’t become suspicious. He even deduced the purpose of the video cameras.”

“But Valerie, look at the guy,” Gunther said. “How could he figure this out?”

Gunther looked at Antonucci. “Frank, you have a good sense of these types. Do you think he could pull this off?”

“I agree with his friends. The guy couldn’t figure out how to get laid in a whorehouse. He’s also scared. You should have seen the look on his face in the bar last night. There has to be someone else masterminding this. Someone he doesn’t want to disappoint.”

“So, how do you rocket scientists explain what is going on?” Pierson said.

Gunther hung his head and then looked at Valerie. “I don’t know,” he said.

Parker broke the silence. “I had a long talk with Barrena this morning. He insists that there are days when Buxeda and Ariz play like they’re invincible. In fact, he even offered to talk to them and ask their permission for drug testing.”

“Okay. Let’s assume that Ariz and Buxeda are taking some stimulant that improves their game,” Valerie said. “Somehow Dusza finds out. He doesn’t know when they take it, but he knows that sometimes they do. So he and his friends bet on the hope that they get lucky. On the nights that they do, they make thousands. When Buxeda and Ariz are off, they only lose hundreds.”

“I follow you, Vai, but like Frank told us, there is no evidence that Ariz and Buxeda are involved in anything like this,” Gunther said. “Besides, why not take the stimulant every time they play?”

“What if they don’t know they’re taking it?” Valerie wondered. “What if some stimulant was put in their food or in their Gatorade?”

“Who could pull that off?” Gunther asked.

“Rummel,” Antonucci said, not missing a beat.

Several seconds passed as Antonucci’s theory landed. Gunther smiled at Antonucci, admiring his courage to say what he also suspected.

“So where’s the connection to Rummel and Dusza?” Parker said.

“The garage in Greenwich where Dusza works. I know for a fact that Rummel gets his Rolls serviced there,” Antonucci responded.

“But how would Rummel meet Dusza? Surely he doesn’t take the Rolls there himself,” Parker said as he sipped some coffee.

“That cheap bastard. You damn right he does. I once saw the son-of-a-bitch argue with the owner for twenty minutes over a bill,” Antonucci said. “It is easily possible that he and Dusza crossed paths.”

“But he’s a billionaire,” Valerie said. “Why would he try to hustle his own fronton for a few thousand bucks?”

“Why would he argue over a few hundred bucks on a car bill? Because he is evil.” Gunther responded as his eyes narrowing at the thought of numerous humiliations he had suffered at the hands of the Mutant.

“He is also our boss,” Parker said. “Whether we think he is involved in this mess or not, we have to report our findings to him. We have to tell him about these four guys and see how he wants to handle it. And the sooner, the better. I don’t think we should take further action without his consent.”

“Agreed,” said Gunther. “Meanwhile, I’ll get Coles on these guys. By the end of the week, we’ll know the brand of toilet paper they use. And how often.”

Chapter 7            

The ancient oaks and beeches provided a cozy canopy that arched over his head like a Gothic cathedral. Adam Bortz sighed, admiring the view. He felt privileged driving on the Merritt Parkway, the highway that traversed northern Fairfield County. He’d heard about how its construction in the 1930s unleashed an ugly political fight, with the WASP aristocracy objecting that the riff-raff could now invade their domain. But the advent of the car made its building inevitable, so a compromise was reached. The Merritt was constructed with oblique entrance and exit ramps to discourage traffic. Furthermore, all bridges that traversed the Parkway had to be aesthetically pleasing.

He cruised in the passing lane while watching in the rear view mirror in case some blond trophy wife in an SUV tried to run him off the road. The old stone bridges that traversed the Parkway looked liked they were transported from medieval England. He felt he was living in a bygone era.

Bortz pulled off at the Darien exit, hitting the brakes as he negotiated the tight curve and meandered along various side streets replete with manicured yards populated with designer shrubbery. Muscular young men with tanned skin, gold earrings and multiple tattoos tooled around the lawns on professional riding mowers while svelte blond women attired in Spandex tights engaged in animated conversation between sips of overpriced bottled water. Welcome to Prozac Nation.

O’Donnell’s Ale Shoppe appeared just as he hit the town’s main drag. He drove into the parking lot and pulled his Honda beside an Acura Legend with a red, white and blue Kincannon bumper sticker. Kerri O’Brien was a good Democrat and believed in keeping jobs in America, but not at the price of subsidizing the local mechanic. So when her last car, a Ford Taurus, died after only 60,000 miles, she went with the Land of the Rising Sun.

O’Donnell’s was one of those feel-good Irish bars with fake wood paneling littered with signed photographs of athletes, entertainers and local politicians. The politicians’ mugs were kept below eye level but a prominent signed picture of Mel Gibson in Road Warrior costume stared directly at him as he sauntered across the parquet floor, barely acknowledging the roly-poly bartender who momentarily took his attention off the Yankees game.

Bortz reflexively pulled in his incipient paunch when he made eye contact with O’Brien. She was sitting in a booth in the farthest corner of the bar nursing a Budweiser. He knew that O’Brien was not drinking a beer to look tough for the brutal negotiations that were to follow. She was drinking beer because she liked to drink beer.

He slid across the red plastic cushion and offered his hand. Her grasp was forceful; her smile, cautious.

“How’s your Dad?” he asked.

“He’s hanging in there. The doctors said that the heart bypass surgery went smoothly, but he still doesn’t have much energy.”

“My uncle had the same problem. It took him six months until he was back to his old self. Drove my aunt nuts.”

“Dad just had the surgery a month ago but he won’t listen to anybody. He’s out in the yard trying to saw branches and clip hedges and when he tires, he becomes ornery. Poor Mom. She’s afraid he’s going to have another heart attack but if she says anything, Dad blows up.”

Despite their opposing political views, Adam Bortz and Kerri O’Brien were friends. They first locked horns when Lorenzo tried to reclaim his seat from Campana. Having advised presidents and won U.S. Senate seats, the Democratic insiders felt that O’Brien would barely break a sweat vanquishing Campana and Bortz. But Bortz triumphed and their subsequent rivalry and reputed romance was the topic of endless political gossip.

Since then, they had negotiated numerous sensitive and acrimonious political patronage jobs for political hacks, pork barrel bonding for endless construction projects, the never ending battles between the lawyers and the insurance companies and the licensing battles among medical professionals fighting for a bigger piece of the pie — doctors, optometrists, nurse practitioners and chiropractors. Their constant proximity invariably resulted in several platonic dates that quickly degenerated into senseless ideological arguments that bruised feelings, but didn’t change minds.

Kerri O’Brien was a good old-fashioned liberal who got her political feet wet accompanying her father, a union shop steward, going door-to-door during the McGovern campaign. The presence of a skinny, black-haired third-grader with ribboned tresses and a frilly blue jumper muted the numerous tirades from macho tattooed carpenters and truck drivers who wondered why the Democratic Party abandoned them for “a pinko fag.” Her father would calmly explain that the Party came first. Individuals come and go but one thing remained constant—the only thing that prevented the rich from getting richer and the poor from getting poorer were the Democrats.

In the O’Brien household, it was better to have syphilis than to be a Republican. Like her father, Kerri viewed the banks, the insurance companies, the Wall Street brokerage firms and the multinational corporations as nothing more than legalized Mafia. She believed in taxing the rich to subsidize the poor and was heartbroken over the declining strength of unions.

Bortz actually agreed with her on several points and in their own way, each saw their mission as a protector of the middle class: O’Brien from Big Business and Bortz from Big Government.

Every two years, when Brendan Sweeny was up for re-election to the State Assembly, Kerri and her father managed the campaign. By the time she was in high school, her father proudly bragged she was the best political operator in the state. He was right. The young O’Brien had mastered the nuts and bolts of an aggressive grass roots campaign. She could organize a phone bank, arrange transportation to the polls, stuff envelopes with literature, design palm cards and get an entire nursing home full of Alzheimer’s victims — who thought Franklin Roosevelt was still the President — to vote Democratic via absentee ballot.

After college at the University of Connecticut and a master’s degree in political science from Yale, she plunged into politics, managing two successful U.S. Senate campaigns and several Congressional races. Unlike most professional campaign managers who just did polls and ran TV ads, her grass roots training at her father’s knee made her an expert at getting her people to the polls. She even advised President Clinton on strategy to keep the working class in the Democratic fold and her legend grew to the point that she could command a six-figure fee to run a campaign. One day, in a moment of weakness, she complained to Bortz about all the money she was paying in taxes and had to sheepishly watch her red-faced nemesis convulse with laughter, stop long enough to advise her to become a Republican, and resume guffawing so hard that tears came out of his normally sleepy eyes.

Other than the inevitable ticking of the biological clock, life had been good to Kerri O’Brien. She was wearing a light blue pleated skirt that matched her big-shouldered jacket. Her white silk blouse led to a creamy white neck, devoid of the subcutaneous tissue loss that characterized others approaching middle age. Penetrating emerald eyes that could be simultaneously alluring and intimidating highlighted her smooth triangular face. Her short auburn hair partially covered her ears from which dangled teardrop silver earrings. Her modern attire, professional accomplishments and confident face still could not hide a certain innocence, what Bortz called the Irish-Catholic you-can’t-get-into-my-pants-until-the-seventh-date look.

“So I hear Kincannon has a new girlfriend. What’s her name? Eileen Shapiro. Sounds like true love to me,” said Bortz as he smiled leeringly.

“It’s not what you think, Adam. They really like each other.”

“What ever happened to his other true love? What was her name? Maria Santos?”

“Sanchez,” O’Brien said, increasingly annoyed.

“Ah yes, the lovely Maria Sanchez. Doesn’t she have a cushy job in the Worker’s Comp office? I guess it’s the least you guys could do.”

Bortz was referring to Kincannon’s successful victory in the Democratic Primary several years back when the seat in the First Congressional opened up. O’Brien did some polling that showed that the Puerto Ricans were going to be the swing vote that determined the victor. She came up with an aggressive game plan to target them on Spanish language radio and TV. But Kincannon did one better. He convinced the naive Ms. Sanchez of his unending love and soon, every photo-op and TV appearance featured the open-minded Kincannon with his dark-skinned Latin conquest. The Puerto Ricans gave him 77% of their vote. After the general election, Ms. Sanchez was dumped faster than an HMO dumps an AIDS patient.

“Eileen doesn’t offer us any political advantages. She looks Waspier than Glenn Close and her family is very assimilated. They even put up a Christmas tree.”

Bortz laughed. “Do they put a star at the top?”

O’Brien lifted her right eyebrow in mild irritation. She was not bothered by the Bortz’s implication that Kincannon’s intentions were less than honorable. Nor did his recounting the sordid details of the Maria Sanchez affair bother her.

No, what bothered Kerri O’Brien is that she was bluntly reminded that she was about to walk into the ring with the best. Adam was the master of coalition building and he knew how to identify a voting block by what was known in the political trade as “trivial associations.” With the proliferation of cable channels and the Internet, the use of trivial associations was changing the face of political campaigns as managers and pollsters were given the ability to hit selected audiences with greater accuracy than ever before.

Bortz knew that Joe Frazier fans voted Republican and Muhammed Ali fans voted Democratic. He knew that David Letterman junkies preferred the Democrats while the Jay Leno patrons leaned Republican. He knew that the WASPs who still buried their dead in cemeteries voted Republican while those who used columbariums leaned Democratic. He knew that the working class Italians who strayed from the Democratic Party were those who still put a Madonna in the front yard, a trivial association that helped Campana hold his seat in several tight races. And he knew that Jewish Americans were firmly in the Democratic camp with the exception of the Orthodox and those who put a star on top of a Christmas tree.

A sneering black waitress appeared. “Wadda ya want to drink?”

“Any non-lite beer that you have on draft.” Bortz thought that both lite beer and decaffeinated coffee were Communist plots.

“Adam, are you ready to order?” O’Brien asked.

“A burger, rare, with fries.”

“I’ll have the antipasto,” O’Brien added.

The waitress sulked away. “Wonder what her problem is?” O’Brien asked.

“Her problem is she has to work. Until your hero Bill Clinton signed welfare reform, all she had to do was figure out how to get to the mail box and pick up her check.”

O’Brien just looked away from his gaze, treating his taunting with the silence it deserved. She then narrowed her eyes slightly. Bortz knew this meant trouble. “Adam, why do you insist on working for Campana? He’s such a piece of shit.”

“He’s a piece of shit, but he’s our piece of shit. He’s the only thing that can prevent you Democrats from raising taxes on the unsuspecting middle class.”

O’Brien looked around. No one was in earshot. Bortz was now sure that he was in trouble. “Adam, when Campana was in law school, he picked up a girl, got her drunk and tried to seduce her. When she refused, he beat the living crap out of her. He smashed her jaw and after she fell, kicked her and ruptured her spleen. She was in the operating room for six hours and was lucky to survive.”

Bortz had never heard this story but it didn’t surprise him. He was sure it was true. He had seen an enraged Campana on several occasions and concluded he was easily capable of killing. “So what? We both agree the guy’s a piece of shit. At least he didn’t kill anyone like your hero Ted Kennedy.”

“That was an accident,” O’Brien shot back. “And besides, I didn’t volunteer to run his campaign.”

Bortz ignored the personal attack, preferring to check his ethics at the door. “I suppose it was also an accident when your hero Bill Clinton was serviced by that Lewinsky girl then lied through his teeth about it.”

“Adam, all powerful men are pigs. This is something we can all agree on. They view life as one big sexual buffet whether they are Republicans or Democrats. At least Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton aren’t hypocrites. They support abortion rights and the assimilation of women into the workplace, unlike some of the Neanderthals from your party.”

“So what’s your point, Kerri?”

“The point is that we are ready to attack Campana on this issue. We have copies of the medical records and the woman has already made an attack ad for us.”

“Kerri, what’s wrong with you? Do you think that Campana and the Republican Party are going to cave because you have a woman that he beat up 15 years ago who is willing to go on TV?”

“Did the woman file a complaint against Campana when it happened?” Bortz asked. “No way. We would have heard about it. I bet she didn’t even mention his name in the medical report.”

O’Brien’s silence answered his question.

“The statute of limitations has surely expired. It’s her word against his,” Bortz said. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Kerri.”

“Adam, don’t give me this nonchalant crap. It’s not going to play well with the electorate,” O’Brien countered. She opened her brief case and pulled out a video. “Here, we’ve already made the ad. Take it home and take a look. Show it to Campana.”

Bortz just waved his hand at the video. “As long as we’re throwing stones, what about when Kincannon banged that page? The poor kid was only 15.”

“That was consensual,” O’Brien said.

“That was statutory rape,” he replied. “Check the law.”

Kerri shrugged. Bortz was amazed. Even with this explosive discussion, O’Brien kept her cool. She didn’t even raise her voice. Perhaps she thought she was still playing a winning hand.

“Do you mind if I have a cigarette, Kerri?”

“Be my guest but you’re going to make some doctor rich if you keep smoking. Can’t you quit?” O’Brien said sounding more concerned than she wanted to reveal.

“Sure I can quit. Quitting is easy. I’ve done it dozens of times.”

The waitress arrived with his beer. Bortz sucked down half of it in three seconds. “Can’t beat these iced mugs.”

Kerri sighed. “Adam, I’m tired of your mind games.”

“What mind games?”

“Every time I have you on the ropes, you try to change the subject.”

“It’s a natural human reaction. This is unpleasant. What we have here is a double standard. You and your buddies in the press put the white-glove test on Republicans but not Democrats. If Kincannon wants war, we’ll have war.”

“Adam, the press did go after Kincannon when he slept with that page. He won anyway.”

“Big deal. You could put Osama Bin Laden’s name on the Democratic line in the First Congressional and he’d win. Maybe even Pat Summitt.” Bortz replied.

O’Brien gritted her teeth to prevent herself from laughing.

“Did you put that video on CD ROM yet?” he asked

“There’s no need to at this point,” O’Brien said.

He opened his brief case and pulled out his new laptop. “We Republicans like to avail ourselves to modern technology. An IBM Thinkpad complete with a Pentium IV processor, 4.0 gigabytes of hard drive, a 56K Fax Modem and Multimedia capacity. Picked it up for $1500.”

“More mind games, Adam?”

Ignoring her, he lifted the screen and turned it on. “Doesn’t make much noise either but it does come with stereo speakers.” He pulled out two miniature speakers and plugged them into the computer. He clicked the CD ROM icon and turned the screen towards O’Brien.

“The volume control is right here Kerri. It’s turned down now so that the shrieking doesn’t disturb the customers.”

O’Brien watched in concealed horror as a naked Kincannon pummeled an obese woman with frizzy brown hair. Her breasts bounced as the screaming Kincannon shot right jabs into her face.

“Click the leftward arrow if you want to see it from the beginning. Kincannon had, shall we say, an ‘equipment failure.’ ”

Bortz watched her exquisite neck, waiting for the gulp. When playing hardball, Bortz always waited for his opponent’s stoic face to be betrayed by a slight bobbing of the Adam’s apple, a reflex that few could suppress when threatened or cornered. She was amazing. It never came. Instead she grabbed the mouse, clicked the minus sign on the screen, and Kincannon and the woman faded into oblivion.

“Very nice, Adam. What are you going to do with it; run it on the evening news?”

“Actually we were planning on sending it to his mother. Add it to the home movie collection along with his First Communion and Confirmation.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?”

“In a heartbeat, Kerri. Maybe his new girlfriend would find it interesting.” Still there was no gulp. She was either aware of the incident or was completely able to conceal her emotions. Her eyebrows didn’t budge a nanometer.

Bortz knew that O’Brien’s poker skills were legendary. When the old guard Democrats invited her to a game of strip poker, after winning the concession that her jewelry counted as clothing, she eventually had the most powerful Party insiders sitting bare-assed on metallic chairs while Kerri —minus her earrings, necklace and one shoe — made caustic comments about the “shortcomings” of their game.

“It’s going to take a lot of beer to get through this campaign,” O’Brien said.

“That’s one of the first things you’ve said that I agree with.”

“Adam, I think you should send the tape to Kincannon’s mother. In fact, if you want to, send it to his brothers and sisters, I’ll give you their addresses. You see, Adam, there is only one way that this tape can hurt us...and that’s if it ends up on television and there is no way you’re going to get it there, Adam. No way. So just enjoy the tape in the privacy of your own home.”

“Kerri, you need to get with the program here. Your liberal pals in the press can’t protect you anymore. We have reserved an interesting domain name www.beating.com, cute, huh?” Bortz said.

He typed in the URL and waited patiently until the rotating triangle on the screen finally stopped. An unflattering picture of the sneering Kincannon appeared. “We have not placed the video on this web page yet, Kerri, but we will unless you and I can come to some sort of an agreement.”

“Fascinating, Adam, but who’s going to watch it? A few nerds and the Republican faithful?” O’Brien scoffed.

“Kerri, everyone is going to watch it. We will put the URL on our TV ads. We will put it on billboards; we will put it on lawn signs. We’ll put it on palm cards, fliers and press releases. When Firestone and I are done with this campaign, you will not be able to take a piss without seeing www.beating.com. Teenagers will be watching it during recess. Every state worker — and I use the term loosely — will see it during their endless coffee breaks. The insurance company drones, the college professors, the yuppie stockbrokers, bored housewives, your pals in the press...”

The gulp finally appeared.

“All right. You made your point,” O’Brien conceded.

“I told Kincannon this threat wouldn’t work,” she added. She gulped down half her beer with the expertise of a longshoreman. She stared into the glass for several seconds, and then gulped down the rest of it.

“Look on the bright side, Kerri. We could have caught him doing something much worse—forgetting to recycle, smoking a cigarette or God forbid, telling a racist joke.”

“I should have listened to Dad. I don’t need this nonsense,” O’Brien said. “I wonder if there’s still time to join the Peace Corps?”

“What’s up with you? We’ve had this discussion a million times. Most political consultants believe that you can’t do any good unless you win but you and I both agree that our mission is to protect the public from the scumbags that hire us in case they do win. This is politics, Kerri, and in politics the scum rises to the top.”

He took a sip of his beer and continued. “The local politicians are the most honorable because they have to look their neighbors in the eye if they screw them. But the ones who rise up through the system, the congressmen, the senators, the governors have to grovel for money so that they can buy television time. There is no other way they can possibly win. Now they no longer represent the people, they represent their contributors. That’s just the way it is.”

“No matter who wins this race, you and I should be able to protect the voters from the evil instincts of either man.” Adam was on a roll and he continued without pausing for breath. “Whatever strand of DNA that gives a human being the desire to be in charge no matter what the cost exists in Kincannon and Campana, just like it existed in Stalin, Mussolini and Franco. These guys have only one core belief—that the rules don’t apply to them. In medieval times, it was called the droit du seigneur, the right of the lord. Technology advances, but human nature remains constant. Hell, Kerri, most of these guys could assign people to boxcars without raising their heartbeat.”

“Adam, I am not drunk enough to listen to your psychobabble. So don’t waste my time, agreed?” She looked at her empty glass. “So, what are we going to do with this mess?” she asked, fully back in control of herself.

“Kerri, it’s a push. You won’t mention the beating and we won’t put this tape on the Web. If the press gets wind of either, we’ll deny it.”

“It’s not that easy, Adam. The woman will go public with this incident, even if we don’t.”

“Oh great. How much is this going to cost?” Bortz asked.

“A lot,” O’Brien acknowledged. “It’s not easy to interfere with free speech, you know.”

“Not one thin dime, Kerri. Not one thin dime. You guys created this mess. You get yourselves out, otherwise Kincannon’s nephews will be watching the Uncle Andy in the Friday Night Fights.”

“You’re not being reasonable, Adam.”

The conversation stopped for a second as the waitress plopped down their meals. “I’m not being reasonable? You come in here with this trash and then have the audacity to tell me that Campana has to find the cash to pay this woman off.”

“I think we can get her down to $50,000. Both campaigns come up with 25 grand under the table, she keeps her mouth shut, and everybody is happy,” O’Brien said.

“Is the bank account set up yet?” Bortz queried.

O’Brien pondered the question for a fatal second and replied, “It’s in the works.”

Bortz bit into his hamburger. “Bullshit Kerri. It is not in the works. It is already set up. It had to be for you to pay her to do the ad to start with.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Adam. What would your country club buddies think?” O’Brien replied.

“They’d be too drunk to notice,” Bortz said.

“What I’m saying Adam, is I don’t have the number. The account is in the Cayman Islands.”

“Let me see what I can do,” Bortz said after he swallowed his bite.

“Not to change the subject, but what other fun topics do we have to discuss?” O’Brien asked.

“Debates.”

“We don’t want any,” O’Brien said.

“We don’t either but there is no way the press will let us get away with it. They will pontificate about the right of the public to hear a dialogue on the issues and then hope that one of the candidates picks his nose so that they can replay it ad nauseam on the 6 o’clock news,” Bortz responded.

“Maybe we can get away with just one. About a month before Election Day so that we can at least have a chance to recover if our candidates make a gaffe. Like you, I don’t like surprises.”

“What about avoiding a primary?” Bortz asked.

“This antipasto stinks,” O’Brien protested.

“You order antipasto in a restaurant named O’Donnells in the Waspiest town in the state and you expect it to be edible? You want half of my burger?” “No thanks. I’m in my vegetarian phase again.”

Bortz was the original carnivore and never understand how a human could go through life without meat. But Kerry did look great. “I’m impressed,” he said innocently.

She smiled briefly then continued. “We’ve gotten all of Kincannon’s potential challengers out except for Baker and we can’t stop her. Eighteen per cent of the delegates are black and some of the liberals love her.”

“African-American, Kerri. What’s wrong with you? You Democrats are supposed to be more sensitive.”

“At least we have African-Americans in our party. How many are going to be at your convention?” O’Brien asked.

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen out of 1,324 delegates. That’s impressive. A big improvement from the nine at the last convention.”

“Don’t laugh, Kerri. One of these days we’re going to get them back to the Party of Lincoln.”

“Probably around the same time Halley’s Comet is back.”

“Campana told me that I could barter away as many jobs as you guys want but I’m having second thoughts. A primary between Baker and Kincannon should be great sport. Let you Democrats show your true intentions.”

“Perhaps,” O’Brien countered.

“But it wouldn’t be as good as Campana and Caruso. All those pro-lifers and gun nuts running around. Maybe Caruso could bring Jesse Helms in for a few fundraisers. That should endear you Republicans to the general public.”

Bortz pondered this for a several seconds. “I don’t think we can stop Caruso either but we are sure going to try. Your convention is a week before ours. If Baker forces the primary, tell her that if Caruso is successful too, there will be at least 20 jobs available for her pals. She will have to avoid filing before our convention is over.”

“How about judgeships?” O’Brien asked.

“Baker is going to want at least five.”

Bortz pondered the prospect of Campana’s picking five African-Americans for the bench. He would be apologizing for months.

“I don’t know Kerri. Won’t she be happy with a few commissionerships?”

“I doubt it. The African-American community, as you insist on calling them, loves to see black faces on the bench,” she said.

“I know. These judgeships are always the biggest pain in the ass. Every lawyer in the state wants to be a judge and so many of them raise hoards of cash. It’s so painful telling them they didn’t get an appointment. Campana will undoubtedly make me do the dirty work.”

“So, it is agreed that each candidate has twenty patronage jobs to barter to prevent a primary and this includes five judgeships.”

“Agreed. But keep in mind we may be able to get away with less. Don’t show Baker your hand and we’ll keep Caruso in the dark.”

“This is going better than I thought, Adam, but now for some real fun issues.” O’Brien smiled.

“No secrets here, Kerri. The Weasel intends to raise taxes if he is elected and we are going to say it again and again and again. You guys will lie, as always, and pretend that you are Republicans and call for tax cuts.”

“Adam, you know as well as I do that there has to be a tax increase. The state workers’ pensions are underfunded.”

Bortz chortled. “State workers. There’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one.”

“I don’t recall hearing you complain about them when they stay up all night to clean the Merritt so all your pals can cruise around in their BMW’s,” O’Brien replied with an irritated tone.

“So why don’t you tell the voters the truth and say that a tax increase is necessary so that all your buddies who work for the state can retire at age 48 with health benefits and guaranteed inflation-adjusted pensions for the rest of their lives,” Bortz said, raising his voice slightly for the first time.

“Because we will lose, Adam. You know that as well as I do. Let’s stay away from philosophy. It’s a waste of time. Why don’t we just try to come to an agreement on what issues we can ignore.”

“Sounds good to me, Kerri. Let’s agree to not talk about abortion.”

“Fat chance. You think I’m a moron,” O’Brien said. “80% of the state is pro-choice.”

“As is Campana,” Bortz interrupted.

“I am still pissed about that, Adam. Still pissed.”

“I keep telling you, get over it.”

O’Brien was alluding to the first time she and Bortz locked horns when Lorenzo tried to recapture Campana’s State Senate seat. One week prior to the election, Lorenzo had an eight-point lead according to the internal polling of both campaigns. Bortz then created a direct mail piece with a smiling Campana standing with his mother in front of a statue of the Blessed Mother at St. Rocco’s Church. Beneath the picture was the caption “My son will protect the unborn child.”

Bortz timed the piece so that it hit the working class Catholics and Evangelicals the day before the election, before O’Brien and the media had a chance to respond. The result was that Campana held the seat by 173 votes, less than 0.2 % of the vote.

“I wouldn’t have cared if Campana believed that pro-life crap but during college and law school, his biggest expense after booze and drugs was paying for abortions. Hell, one summer he had two girls pregnant at once. You Republicans are such hypocrites. Hell, he’s probably still paying for them.” She was livid.

“He’s had a vasectomy,” Bortz deadpanned.

“That’s great to hear; the fewer of his genes that are out there, the better off humanity will be. We are going to attack you on that issue and point out how Campana flip-flopped. Expect it.”

p>

“Kerri, let’s be reasonable. You can attack him on the issue but don’t expect to win any converts. The pro-lifers are a small but vocal minority. They vote in every election and they always vote Republican. If you attack Campana, you’ll just energize them and they’ll turn out in droves to support him.”

“I don’t care if we lose a few votes. We have to stand for something.”

“Kerri, I admire your idealism but you’re being unrealistic. You can’t win this.

“You’ll draw some blood but the fact remains that Campana has voted pro-choice for the past several years and the pro-lifers have nowhere to go. The few feminists who can’t forgive Campana for his previous pro-life votes are firmly in your camp anyway. Also, Campana’s new wife is the former president of Connecticut Republicans for Choice. Her motto is ‘The fetus will not defeat us,’ ” Bortz said.

“Besides,” he added, “We’re going to have a field day telling the voters about Kincannon’s flip flop on the death penalty.”

“It’s a waste of time. Kincannon will be advocating the death penalty for jaywalking.”

“Kerri, I’m amazed. You were such an opponent of capital punishment. Now you’re Joe electric chair. I guess all these serial murderers and sex offenders that your liberal Democratic judges release have finally gotten to you,” Bortz said.

“The death penalty is wrong and you know it. But, I’m not going to let you clowns beat us on the crime issue. And as long as we’re on the subject of useless emotional issues, do you plan to attack Kincannon for his support of gay rights?” O’Brien asked.

“No promises, but I doubt it. Half the reporters are gay, so the press will be all over us at the first hint of homophobia. Some day science will prove that the gene for writing ability and the gene for homosexuality are located on the same chromosome.”

“Sorry to say, but I’ve got to hand it to you, you’re a true Republican.”

Bortz ignored her and continued. “Campana has actually tried to build bridges with the gays. If we could stop the Christian Coalition from scaring the hell out of them, they’d vote Republican. If you think the general public is pissed off about supporting single mothers on welfare, you should hear what these gays say.”

“I heard that his first foray with them was not well received. Did he really tell the Log Cabin Club that at least they don’t put kids on the welfare roles?”

Bortz smiled. “He was drunk when he said that. Campana is a great politician as long as he doesn’t drink.”

“Look on the bright side. At least he didn’t tell them about the time he poured a bucket of water on that guy who took his parking spot.”

“How the hell did you hear about that, Kerri?” Adam’s surprise was unmistakable.

“I am omniscient. You should know that by now,” she said, smiling triumphantly. “Now, you are going to do the right thing and not pander to racial fears? Aren’t you?”

On this issue, Bortz and O’Brien agreed. Both felt that generating racial fears, although a winning political strategy, was a reprehensible act. “I’ll do my best but Firestone is gung ho about attacking you guys on affirmative action. The early polling shows that we can dig into your base—working class union members and patronage-minded state workers by manipulating that issue. It’s not our fault that you Democrats despise affirmative action more than we do.”

“That’s because the only time you Republicans see a black face is when you are interviewing maids,” O’Brien said.

“Perhaps, but nonetheless, your pals the state workers, become livid when a minority leapfrogs them in their petty bureaucratic pecking order. I doubt if we’ll put the issue on TV. The press will go apeshit even though black editors are more rare than black Republicans. But I suspect you’ll have to contend with some direct mail on the issue.”

“I guess we can live with that, but like you said, our job is to protect the public from our candidates. Please don’t pander to racial fears. It’s ugly and it’s bad for the state and the country,” she pleaded.

Bortz actually admired O’Brien. She stood for something, a rarity in the political morass. “I’ll do my best.”

O’Brien continued. “So here’s the deal. No personal trash and each campaign has to come up with 25 grand under the table to pay off the girl. No debates if possible but if we have to, one debate, one month before the election. Twenty jobs to barter to avoid a primary including five judgeships. All other issues are fair game, but we’ll try to prevent the candidates from pandering to racial divides.”

Bortz reached over his beer and shook hands with O’Brien. While politicians and their consultants routinely lied to their constituents, they rarely lied to each other. The only way the system worked was if deals could be cut that satisfied big money contributors from each Party. This could only be done if the players had credibility with each other. There was honor among thieves.

Somehow sensing the completion of their discussions, the waitress appeared. “Any coffee?”

At O’Brien’s suggestion, both ordered cognac.

“By the way Kerri, let’s exchange numbers.”

Both warriors programmed their cellular phones so that they could contact each other quickly.

“So Adam, how’s your love life?” she teased.

Bortz was always cryptic about his personal life and quickly changed the subject. “I’m going to Vegas when this campaign is over. Get into some real poker games. You should try the high-low seven-stud game at Foxwoods. I won $500 last month.”

“Eight or better to win low?” she said.

“Yeah.”

Tough game,” she responded. “Sometimes you have to wait until the seventh card to see if you have a chance.”

“Not if you’re going high,” Bortz said.

As they babbled over the different strategies of Texas hold’em, Omaha, seven-card stud and five-card draw while sipping Courvoisier, they felt the tension being released from their craniums, like a slowly deflating balloon.

But the battle had just begun.

Chapter 8            

“Why does the ‘E’ look clearer with my left eye while the ‘V’ looks clearer with my right?” The patient continued to alternatively cover each eye with his manicured hands while looking at the bottom line of the eye chart.

Dr. Bryant Willoughby did his best to pretend that he cared. He folded his hands on his lap, sat forward in his chair and tilted his head exactly ten degrees to the right, just as the marketing consultant he just paid several grand told him to do. If you want them to write the check, you have to feel their pain.

“That’s an interesting observation, Keith,” he said as his eyes widened slightly in feigned surprise. “I am constantly amazed at your ability to discern subtle visual differences, even when looking at the small print.”

In actuality, the 58-year-old ophthalmologist would rather have dropped his whining patient into a vat of boiling oil than explain the nuances of astigmatism. But he needed the check and he needed it today, even though this patient was determined not to pay the balance due in spite of an excellent result.

“Well, I’m not satisfied. Before this operation, everything looked the same with each eye but now it’s different.”

“Keith, prior to surgery I told you that Lasik surgery would improve your vision so that you would not have to wear thick glasses anymore to achieve 20/20 vision in each eye. I also told you that you might need thin glasses to see perfectly clear.”

“That wasn’t my understanding. I’ve paid you three grand already and now I’m supposed to give you another two. And you said it wouldn’t hurt. I was in agony for days after you operated on me.”

“I explained that there might be some discomfort from the procedure. You know we discussed this,” Willoughby said while complimenting himself mentally for not having a trace of petulance in his voice. Thank God this was the last patient for the day.

“Why is it what you doctors call ‘discomfort’ always seems to be tremendous pain? The obstetrician used the same line of crap on my wife during the delivery. I wasn’t aware that ‘discomfort’ caused people to scream bloody murder.”

“Keith, you can now read the 20/20 line using both eyes. You can ski, scuba dive, and play squash without corrective glasses or contact ;lenses. That’s much better than before, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yeah, but what happens if I get glare down the road? You didn’t tell me about that possibility. I had to find out about it on the Web.”

“That’s not entirely true. I mentioned glare as a slight possibility and the consent form you signed also alluded to it. Furthermore, you are not having any trouble with glare at this point and I don’t anticipate it. Your corneas are crystal clear.” Petulance now invaded Willoughby’s ;voice, although he tried to rein it in.

“I could have had this done at the new laser clinic in Norwalk for half the price I’m paying you.”

“Perhaps, but you choose to have the surgery here and you signed a contract to pay me $5,000 for both eyes. Now I hope you would be kind enough to remit the payment due to my secretary.”

The final sentence was spoken with a slightly affected English accent. Whether this caused the social-climbing yuppie to yield was questionable; but Keith Loeffler, without another word, rose from the examining chair, wrote a check for the full amount and handed it to the secretary.

Willoughby sighed as he heard the door slam when the patient exited his office. He missed the good old days, the Golden Age of Medicine, when he waltzed from patient to patient making ex cathedra recommendations while giving them the impression that they were fortunate to have his capable hands and brilliant mind solve their visual problems. The Golden Age of Medicine, when the nurses and patients said, “Yes, doctor” instead of “Why, doctor?” The Golden Age of Medicine, when he cleared over $500,000 a year.

Now his income was less than half that. It wasn’t enough that the damn lawyers, insurance companies and media had to heave him off his pedestal. They had to keep kicking him while he was down. Hell, last year when he told a bossy nurse that she became a nurse because she was too horny to become a nun, he was forced to attend a seminar on “Sensitivity to the Feelings of Ancillary Professionals” or else lose his Greenwich Hospital privileges. He used to be an ophthalmologist. Now he was an “eye care provider.” And now he was reduced to groveling to a 33-year-old bond trader who tooled around in a red Ferrari and pulled in over $800,000 a year on Wall Street.

He stumbled to his office and fell into his high-backed leather chair. Peering through his thick glasses, he looked at the heap of paperwork that obscured his desk’s oak surface. He was a perfect candidate for the refractive surgery he pushed on his patients, but no one would ever touch him. No scalpel or laser would ever slice his cornea and reshape his eye. His vanity was limited to tailored suits, Italian shoes, designer ties and a chin lift, but there was no way he was going to risk his sight to even remote possibility of infection, dryness or permanent glare. He had to see clearly to make a living.

Before him were a dozen consults that had to be dictated. Innumerable forms needed to be filled out — recredentialing applications from insurance companies, referral forms to subspecialists, forms from patients trying to sleaze out of jury duty, incomprehensible managed-care contracts and a supposedly anonymous questionnaire from Greenwich Hospital.

Directly in his gaze was a stack of charts that required return phone calls. One was from Brad Wilson who was complaining because his left contact lens didn’t feel right. Not that Willoughby made any money fitting the lens. Brad insisted on his prescription so that he could save $12 by ordering his lenses from Lens Express. Why didn’t he call Lens Express and whine to them? Another was from a patient who read the package insert on her antibiotic eye drops and concluded that it was the cause of her mood swings. And there was another from Malcolm Rummel complaining that he couldn’t adapt to his new glasses. He’d probably have to listen to him complain at the Yacht Club too.

Every time he spoke with his accountant and lawyer, the meter was running and he got a bill. But for some reason, doctors were supposed to solve problems over the phone for nothing. He was musing over the unrealistic possibility of installing a 900 number when he glanced at a yellow sticky that said “Joshua Watkins called.”

In actuality, the call was from Bob Dusza. It was a signal to meet outside the McDonald’s on 1-95 at 7:30. Willoughby immediately stopped wallowing in self-pity and turned to his computer. He clicked the American Online icon; hoping that somewhere in Fairfield County, a collection of modems, silicon chips and fiber optic cables would deign to allow him access to the Internet. He was relieved to hear the familiar sequence of beeps and static that finally ended with an electronic voice announcing, “Welcome, You’ve Got Mail.” A few clicks of the mouse and before him appeared in bright red letters. “Bridgeport Jai Alai” over a graphic of a player hurling a pelota. He scrolled down the screen until he saw the schedule. After analyzing it for several minutes, he wrote down some figures on drug company stationery.

ppppp* * * * *

After a requisite twenty-minute wait, Seth Parker and Jack Gunther were ushered into Malcolm Rummel’s midtown Manhattan office by an officious secretary who mimicked her boss’s condescending visage. Rummel continued to stare at some papers but was unable to convince either of the two that he was actually reading them. In reality, he actually was.

This was the third time he was perusing Jack Gunther’s top-secret memo, detailing the betting patterns of the Gang of Four on Ariz and Buxeda and the profitability of their scam. Rummel was actually impressed with the memo’s succinctness, but irate over the apparent unsolvability of the puzzle. Still, he managed a faint smile when he looked at his employees. At least the source of the scam had finally been located.

“Have a seat.”

Both Parker and Gunther made their way to the Chippendale wing chairs.

“So, you don’t think these guys are on the take,” Rummel said.

“Maybe they are, sir, but this scam is different than anything we’ve ever seen before,” Parker said. “They were both mediocre players for the past four years. Now their level of play fluctuates for reasons we can’t explain.”

Rummel interrupted. “You’re sure they play better?”

“Sir, I interviewed Barrena,” Gunther responded. “He insisted that there are times when Buxeda and Ariz are invincible. So I got an idea. I analyzed the percent return on winning and losing nights.”

Rummel put both elbows on his desk and rested his head on the palms of his hands and stared blandly at Gunther as he continued. “On the nights where Ariz was playing well, he returned 91% of the shots rather than his usual 55%. Buxeda generated similar numbers.”

“Meaning?” Rummel asked.

“Meaning that Barrena is right, sir. Ariz and Buxeda have nights when they are almost impossible to beat. It practically rules out the massive collusion we considered previously, that is the possibility that the other players were allowing Ariz and Buxeda to win.”

“I assume you checked their urine for drugs on those nights.”

“Yes, we did, sir. We checked the entire team. We found nothing.”

“Is it possible that Ariz and Buxeda are great players who played beneath their ability for years so they could initiate this scam?”

No wonder Rummel was a billionaire, Gunther thought. This possibility had never entered his mind. “I suppose,” Gunther said, “but the level of discipline required would be highly unusual for young males. And besides, it’s only to their benefit to play as well as possible.”

Rummel was unhappy with the answer, but chose not to pursue this line of reasoning further, since he intuitively believed Gunther’s analysis was correct. “What I don’t understand is why these dirtballs, this so-called Gang of Four, bet on these guys at least once even when they’re having a mediocre night. It makes no sense.”

Seth Parker now spoke. “Mr. Rummel, it makes sense if you assume that The Gang of Four is aware that Ariz and Buxeda are capable of playing better but are unsure which nights they will do so.”

“What are you doing about it?” Rummel said.

“Once we identified the Gang of Four, Antonucci and Valerie went to work. Frank broke into their houses, got their credit card numbers, their income tax returns, their bank statements, their health insurance cards and their phone numbers. With this data, Valerie was able to use her computer wizardry to check for anything suspicious. Thanks to the Internet, everybody’s life is an open book today. There’s no privacy any more. For example, we know that one of the wives is on Prozac.”

Parker leaned back in his chair, feeling slightly more comfortable. “Anyway, we hoped that we could find some connection to the Gang of Four and Ariz and Buxeda. Valerie hacked her way into the phone company’s data bank and checked the phone calls made by the four households for the past year. Nothing. She even rechecked Buxeda and Ariz’s calls, just to see if any were made to unknown cellular phones or phone booths. She was able to check their credit card purchases, to see if anything suspicious came up. Again nothing except that these guys love to watch porn on pay-per-view.”

“How did she figure that out?” Rummel asked.

“She saw the large monthly cable TV bills,” Gunther said.

“So she just assumed that these were for porn movies. Maybe they just like to watch action movies or something like that,” Rummel said, a disturbed edge to his voice.

“Yes, but you see, Valerie is a genius. She was unable to get an itemized bill for each guy from the cable company because she couldn’t figure out the password. So what she did was break into the data bank that stores the sales of customer lists. The names of these guys were ;sold to strip joints and pom magazines. That’s how she figured out her ;husband watches pom when he’s on business trips.”

“But she was unable to connect these guys to any jai alai players?”

“No connection, sir.”

“So what do you recommend we do?” Rummel said.

“I think we should let them continue the scam until we can figure it out,” Parker said.

Rummel’s eyes narrowed as he lasered in on Parker. “You guys are all alike. You’re very generous with my money. No matter how much I pay in salaries, I can never find employees who understand the value of a buck. Let me tell you about the bozo I just fired from the Venture Capital Division. He comes from a family of investment bankers. He attended Exeter, Princeton and Wharton, earning the highest honors everywhere. He has a resume as long as a roll of toilet paper — Who’s Who, captain of the lacrosse team, chairman of Ivy League Gentlemen for George W. Bush and on and on and on. So I hire this pedigreed germ for $120,000 plus incentive.

“So this bozo is sitting with a window view of the East River in office space that I am paying for and he is interviewing these two Bulgarians who barely speak English. They give him the usual crap about globalization and the market place and how Bulgaria rivaled France in producing the best Merlots before World War I. They tell him that they now have access to an outstanding Bulgarian Merlot that they can export to the United States and distribute if only they had two million dollars. My two million dollars! And as luck would have it, they have a bottle of the prize swill right there.”

Rummel rustled some papers until he found his ex-employee’s report. “I can see the dumb shit now. He pours the wine in some crystal Paris goblet and then holds it up to the light as if he can tell the difference between garnet and ruby red. He then sticks his schnozzle into the glass and then proceeds to sip the swill, probably sticking his pinkie out like some faggot.” Rummel was the veteran of several wine tasting courses so he knew the standard procedure.

“Then the imbecile swirls the wine in his mouth and then spits it on my rug like one of those hired clowns at these idiotic Republican winetasting fundraisers. $67.45 to clean the spot. My $67.45!”

An animated Rummel then proceeded to give a hilarious imitation of a wine expert pretentiously holding a sip of wine in his mouth, his tongue moving against both cheeks before expectorating. Parker bit his lip to prevent himself from laughing.

“And what does our young Buffett conclude from this?”

Rummel put on his cheap reading glasses and began to read from the report. “ ‘The bouquet had the typical creamy fruitiness with a tincture of oak. The taste was surprisingly tannic with a silky texture and a subtle aromatic aftertaste of medium length. I found the Merlot nicely balanced, while having the rare ethereal quality somewhat reminiscent of the 1985 Bordeauxs.’ ”

Rummel looked at the two men, shrugged his shoulders and repeated “ ‘a silky texture and a subtle aromatic aftertaste.’ Any idea what the hell that means?” Both men shook their heads, wondering what his point was.

Rummel rifled through the report, showing the two men color-coded graphs that represented marketing targets and projected profits. “Sounds like we can’t miss, right? Outstanding wine that costs us $4.87 to put on the shelf and retails for $28.95. Not bad. Young Buffett conservatively estimates we recoup our investment in eight months.” He peered at the two men and thrust his massive head forward. “Do you guys see a problem here?”

Gunther and Parker knew better than to hazard a guess. “He forked over two million of my money to these vermin who then proceeded to import and distribute the wine. And guess what happened?” He paused for several seconds. “Nobody bought it. Do you know why?”

Again Gunther and Parker did not respond.

“Well gentleman, I invite you to taste our ‘surprisingly tannic’ Merlot.” Rummel walked over to his liquor cabinet, uncorked a bottle and poured both men a glass. “Enjoy gentlemen,” he said as he handed each man a small sample of the squandered $2,000,000 investment.

Parker winced immediately as he smelled the noxious liquid and then proceeded to allow a small portion to touch his lips after which he puckered them immediately.

“What do you think of the ‘subtle aromatic aftertaste,’ Mr. Parker?” Rummel queried with his eyebrows raised in mock inquisitiveness.

“Tastes like diluted vinegar to me, sir.”

“You are correct, Mr. Parker. That’s exactly what it is. You see, the slimeballs didn’t even bother to cork it right to prevent it from oxidizing. Our well-bred financier hit the nail on the head. The wine he tasted was from Bordeaux. He even got the year right. Our enterprising Bulgarian friends walked into a wine store, bought the most expensive Merlot and stuck their label on it. Now I could have hired a drug dealer from Harlem who couldn’t tell the difference between Chardonnay and horse piss and he would have spotted this scam in seconds. Why is this?” He paused for dramatic emphasis. “Because when a drug dealer buys drugs, he is buying it with his money!”

“So, what’s my point gentlemen? My point is that I don’t care how these guys are ripping off my fronton. I just want it to stop.” Rummel smashed his fist on his desk, the thud causing some papers to fly across the room.

“I don’t care if the drug tests are negative. I don’t care if for some inexplicable reason these slimeballs return shots with greater frequency. We are not here to solve puzzles. We are here to make money. Because if I don’t make money, you don’t have jobs.”

Both men nodded meekly.

“This scam stops and it stops right now.” Rummel rose from his chair to indicate the meeting was over. Neither Gunther nor Parker had any intention of wondering how Rummel planned to stop the scam. They didn’t want to know. Both men bid good-bye and took their leave.

As soon as the door closed, Rummel buzzed his secretary. “Get Coles in here now.”

Several minutes later, the portly political hack appeared. Rummel brought Coles up to date on the scam. Coles knew what was coming.

“So you think our friend Louie can handle these guys?” said Rummel laughing sarcastically.

Coles smiled. “I assure you, sir, these four guys will soon be developing a sudden disinterest in jai alai.”

“And I want the money back.”

Coles hesitated for a second. When Rummel saw the uncharacteristic skepticism on his face he blurted, “What’s the problem?”

“Are you sure these guys still have the money?”

“According to Antonucci’s tapes, they do. They have the noble goal of relocating out of Bridgeport.”

“How much do they have?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“I’ll have Louie and his friends start small but you realize that this will require more cash transfers because several ‘discussions’ with these dirtballs will be necessary to get them to pony up the cash.”

“I don’t care. I didn’t get to where I’m at by letting lowlifes rip me off. We are not just stopping this scam; we are sending a message. A message I expect to be heard in the highest places.” He paused for a second and stared at Coles then continued. “And the lowest.”

Chapter 9            

Dr. Bryant Willoughby pulled onto 1-95 with his Mercedes E430. He could not afford this requisite status symbol, which is why he was forced to beg for a lousy 2,000 bucks from his obnoxious yuppie patient. The leasing company was threatening to repossess it unless he at least made partial payment on the $7,400 he was in arrears. The thought of the repo man driving into his Greenwich neighborhood with the tow truck made him bristle. Not that he was the only person in the ;neighborhood who was in hock up to his eyeballs.

In fact, the supposedly posh lifestyle of his neighbors was due to the wizardry of creative financing. The $15,000 Rolex watches, the $40,000 sports utility vehicles, the $150,000 country club buy-ins, the $300,000 forty-foot sailboats and the well-toned trophy wives were purchased by cascading layers of home equity loans, credit cards, early pension withdrawals and outright subsidies from bewildered parents who still inhabited the small capes they had purchased forty years ago.

But he had to maintain appearances. His life was an orgy of profligacy —Concorde flights to Paris, skiing trips to Aspen, an Olympic-size swimming pool, sports cars and vintage wines. During the Golden Age of Medicine, he was the king of status symbol land. His gardener saw to it that the succession of colors of his perennials met the specifications of the Greenwich Garden Club with the irises and daffodils peaking in the spring, the primrose and roses by the summer and the asters by the fall. His house was a collection of English antique furniture —rolltop desks, yew secretaries, Windsor armchairs, serpentine console tables —all atop antique Persian rugs — silk on silk, of course — that went for twenty grand a pop.

Whatever was in vogue was purchased — the right clothes, the right skis, the right cars and the right pets. He even had the right charity — the Q’ero Indians, the descendants of the Incas who had built the famed ruins at Machu Picchu. Every year, he did volunteer trips to the Peruvian Andes and performed cataract surgery on them.

He paraded into the Greenwich Yacht Club and played bridge and poker with the Big Boys — the captains of industry, the lions of Wall Street and the piranhas of banking. He tooled around Long Island Sound in his 40-foot yacht sipping Louis XIII Cognac while complaining about his hired captain’s steering.

Everything was perfect except for one thing — his wife. Oh, not that Beverly wasn’t sweet and loving; but he wanted one of those twenty-something sculptured blondes, with locks to her shoulders, a thin waist and legs that never stopped. And now he could afford one. So he traded in Beverly for Heather, whose sexual gymnastics made him feel alive for the first time in twenty years.

The problem was that the terms of the trade-in were less than favorable. Why didn’t he listen? Why? He will never forget how his lawyer, Barry Hoffman, rolled his eyes when he told him — as Heather insisted — that there would no need for a pre-nuptial agreement. After all, this was true love. Barry advised him to look carefully at the divorce document, and not promise to pay $4,200 a month to Beverly. But he wanted her gone — out of sight and out of mind. And it was only money. He’d just make more! His surgeon’s ego precluded his taking advice from mere mortals. He cut into people’s eyes! He restored people’s sight! How could he possibly take the warnings of his attorney seriously?

An unending stream of patients came into his office complaining, “I can’t see the golf ball after I hit the three wood.” And he would expertly remove their cataracts, implant artificial lenses and not only get them seeing their three wood shots, but also seeing them without glasses. And for this he would be paid $4,000 a pop.

But then a problem arose that he never anticipated. The overwhelming majority of his cataract patients were over 65 years of age, meaning that the U.S. Government paid for their health insurance by a program called Medicare. And Medicare was funded by the taxpayers, who were getting tired of paying taxes. And when Congress decided to cut Medicare, their first target was fat and happy ophthalmologists.

At first, Willoughby wasn’t worried. He just gave the patients the bill. If they didn’t like it, they could take up bridge. But that’s not what his patients did. Instead, they wrote letters to their Congressmen about how they were being charged $4,000 to have their three-wood cataracts removed in an operation that took twenty minutes. And Congress responded.

The government simply declared that it was illegal for him to charge any Medicare patient over $1,100 for a cataract operation. How could they do this? He was forced to operate on multi-millionaires for a paltry $1,100 bucks. He was responsible for their sight. Hell, these people were paying their veterinarians more to take cataracts out of their dogs! He tried to charge more, but the affluent Greenwich senior citizens knew their rights. They were not about to have their scions’ inheritance reduced by some overpaid technician. They marched into his office armed with the actual statute and pointed out that he was subject to huge fines and possible imprisonment for fraud if he billed them above the government-allowed rates.

His income plummeted. His $500,000 income was based on a gross of $900,000, meaning the overhead on his office was $400,000. Congress did not mandate that his rent be reduced. They did not mandate that his malpractice insurance rates be reduced. They did not mandate that his staff take a salary cut. His net income dropped to $200,000! And while most people considered 200 grand to be a huge salary, trying to maintain an upper middle class existence in Greenwich Connecticut in bull-market America was impossible on such a paltry salary. It was like being on welfare. In fact, it was worse than being on welfare because at least if you were on welfare, you didn’t have to work!

Now the $4,200 to Beverly was not any annoyance; it was a huge burden. Who wrote these divorce laws anyway? Why couldn’t she fend for herself? Barry tried to get the payments reduced. After all, the $4,200 monthly payment was based on a $500,000 annual income. Surely, any judge would conclude that continuing such payments when he was earning less than half that amount was unreasonable. That was until his former wife’s lawyer waltzed into the courtroom with pictures of Willoughby’s six-bedroom Tudor, his Benz, Heather’s Jag and a rear view of Heather doing aerobics at the Yacht Club attired in a fluorescent blue Spandex jump suit with a pink thong traversing her sculptured buttocks. The judge banged down her gavel and growled at him: “If I ever see your sorry ass in here again, I’ll raise your alimony.”

Willoughby was down but not out. He figured out how to compensate. He just started to do useless tests to jack up his patients’ bills. Through the use of creative testing, he could turn a routine exam on perfectly healthy eyes into a $500 extravaganza. Every patient had a visual field to check the peripheral vision. He did corneal topography, automated refraction, retinal photographs, retinal angiograms, and serial tonometry along with extra visits to double check fictitious problems. Patients are enamored of useless high tech machines as long as they don’t get the bill for using them.

But just as he got back on his feet, a left hook came at his head — managed care. At first, he resisted joining any of the plans, but he started losing patients in droves. The loyalty he supposedly commanded from his patients faded into oblivion at the sight of a bill. He was forced to join a plethora of health care plans that denied half his fees, refused to pay for his superfluous tests while requiring him to hire more staff to navigate incomprehensible forms, master ever-changing software and argue with bureaucrats to get reimbursed. The Golden Age of Medicine had come to an abrupt end.

Not only was he once again reduced to making $200,000 a year, but also now he had to work sixty hours a week. This meant that after taxes, he was only making $120,000 or $10,000 a month. And maintaining appearances was getting more challenging by the day. Other than his pension plan, he had no savings. Barry had told him numerous times to throw fifty grand a year into the Magellan Fund or Berkshire Hathaway. If he had done this for only ten years, he would have had over $5,000,000, a gift from the 1990s bull market. Then he could have sent a picture of his rear end to the insurance company CEOs and retired — hiking in Machu Picchu, watching solar eclipses in Australia, floating over the Serengeti in a hot air balloon and blowing $500 on a Callaway driver so that he could shank his tee shots twenty yards further into the woods. If he had only listened.

But he had to maintain appearances. The Benz and Heather’s Jag were leased at $1,100 a month each. Mortgage payments and taxes on the house eclipsed $7,000 a month. Food, maid services, dry cleaning, home repairs, landscaping, greens fees, Yacht Club dues, health insurance, utilities, Heather’s wardrobe and overseas vacations cost him another $4,000 monthly. This combined with his alimony brought his monthly expenses to over $17,000. And he was only bringing home $10,000!

So he did what he promised himself he’d never do. He increased the credit limit on all his credit cards — easy for an ophthalmologist — and “Voila,” his problems were gone, at least for several months until the brutal mathematics of a compounding interest rate of 19.8% caught up with him.

He had to find new sources of revenue. He had to adapt. All his professional life, he had made a good living taking care of the sick, but now the only way to make money in medicine was to jettison the time consuming sick and cater to the wealthy and healthy. Thus, he started performing refractive and cosmetic surgery. He hated every minute of it. Although he was competent, actually gifted in the minds of his colleagues, the patients were never satisfied. The Greenwich czarinas fallaciously believed that blowing $3,500 to get their eyelids lifted would keep their husbands’ hands off the nubile twenty-somethings. Fat chance. The women of Generation X had figured out that entering the work force had the annoying consequence of having to work and were now resurrecting the ancient art of marrying rich. Not that he had any sympathy for the naive czarinas; it just made it harder to get paid.

But at least he was getting his head above water. That was until he got a letter from Beverly’s lawyer. “Pursuant to Paragraph 7c, subclause 4a, you are responsible for the higher education of biological offspring.” Since his former family was living in Larchmont, his daughter could attend the State University of New York for $2,000 a year. The problem is that Ashley wanted to go to Swarthmore, where the annual tuition plus expenses exceeded $35,000 a year.

Barry did his best. But when his wife’s lawyer pointed out that Willoughby was making a comfortable six-figure income and that Ashley had to undergo extensive psychotherapy to recover from the trauma of the divorce that the ophthalmologist’s lust precipitated, the least that the horny doctor could do was see to it that she got the best education possible. SUNY was out of the question. The judge looked at Willoughby as if he were a dog turd on her front lawn, banged down her gavel and Willoughby had to come up with $150,000 over the next four years, maybe more, since Ashley was talking about medical school.

Willoughby was forced to do the second thing he promised he would never do —tap his pension, which had become quite large thanks to ClearSight stock, the only smart investment he ever made. ClearSight manufactured one of the lasers that eliminated glasses. He bought 10,000 shares at $2 each and now it was trading at 23. But he couldn’t touch it without paying penalties. As the broker told him in a Brooklyn accent, “Doc, these pensions are like sex, there’s a substantial penalty for early withdrawal.” Thus, he was forced to use the pension as collateral for a loan from the brokerage firm, adding another two grand to his monthly expenses.

And where was Heather during his descent into hell? She was tooling around Greenwich in her Jag servicing the libidos of various tennis pros, yacht captains, assorted Eurotrash and any heterosexual hunk she could get her hands on. In a sense, Willoughby couldn’t blame her. What was it about his surgeon’s ego that convinced him that a well-proportioned aerobics instructor could be satisfied by a sagging 58-year-old man who combed his graying black hair over his bald spot and was so stressed out by day’s end that he didn’t have enough energy to lift the TV remote, let alone engage in carnal activity? At least she had the decency to be discreet, realizing that Willoughby would be much more upset by loss of social status than loss of consortium. Walking into the Yacht Club with a scantily clad Heather dangling on his arm gave him more satisfaction than having his dwindling sex drive assuaged.

As he pulled the Benz into the McDonald’s parking lot, he kept thinking. “Where did it all go?” He had made millions upon millions of dollars over the past thirty years and what did he have to show for it — a house that was owned by the bank, a yacht that was owned by mortgage brokers, two cars owned by leasing companies, a non-existent pension, a bitter ex-wife, a daughter that hated him and a wife who spent more time horizontally in other beds than their own. Now he was forced to deal with this moron, Bob Dusza, all to maintain appearances.

Dusza was already there, leaning against his brown Chevy Nova with a low-hanging muffler. He was sucking on a cup of coffee. Willoughby parked beside him and walked over. He had no intention of sitting down with him in McDonald’s. The less time he spent with this lowlife, the better.

“I don’t know how you do it, Doc!”

“And you never will,” Willoughby said cutting him off.

Dusza looked around furtively, and then pulled a yellow envelope from under his frayed jacket. As soon as Willoughby saw the thickness of the envelope, he knew that Dusza had screwed up again.

“This is too much!” He opened it and was simultaneously appalled and gratified as he gazed at the tied stacks of bills depicting Benjamin Franklin and Ulysses Grant. “There must $25,000 here! It’s way too much.”

Bryant Willoughby knew that the envelope should contain only $11,700. He was able to precisely calculate the exact winnings because he could check the final payoffs on specialized gambling software that linked to the Bridgeport jai alai web page.

His first encounter with Dusza occurred when the auto mechanic came into his office with a piece of metal lodged in his right eye, a gift from an uncooperative muffler. After applying Tetracaine, an eyenumbing anesthetic, he expertly removed the metallic fragment from the edge of Dusza’s cornea with a bent needle. Dusza didn’t budge, making Willoughby’s job easy. This didn’t surprise the ophthalmologist because both of Dusza’s corneas were full of scars from previous foreign body removals. He no longer told garage mechanics to wear safety glasses. It was a waste of time. To working class men, it was more important to appear macho than to worry about their own safety. Besides, metal in the eye was good for business, especially since he could bill Connecticut’s generous Workers Comp program $300 for thirty seconds of work.

Dusza was just what he was looking for: a perpetually broke family man of limited intelligence, but with the ability to blindly follow instructions. When Dusza returned for his follow up visit, Willoughby blocked off an extra fifteen minutes. He gingerly asked Dusza if he would be interested in making an extra $2,000 cash a week. Dusza’s face lit up like a pinball machine that just distributed a bonus game. He wanted in.

The first step was for Dusza to recruit three other guys. Willoughby told him that his plan entailed betting at the Bridgeport jai alai fronton but did not give him any further details. When Dusza returned for his third visit courtesy of the good Connecticut taxpayers, he told Willoughby that he had three other guys and they were ready to go.

Willoughby first outlined the plan to Dusza at this McDonald’s a few months ago. He would feed Dusza the information on what wagers to place and give him the cash to place them. Dusza would distribute this cash to three other guys who would then go to the Bridgeport fronton and bet. Dusza and his friends each got 15% and the rest went to Willoughby. He told Dusza that the key to the plan was secrecy. No one was to know his name — not his friends and especially not his wife.

ft worked brilliantly. Depending on the odds, Willoughby was making between $8,000 and $15,000 a week. Cash. He was actually making a dent on his credit card debt and accumulating some savings. He initially feared that the IRS would nail him, but a discussion with one of the Wall Street wizards at the Yacht Club gave him the knowledge of how to set up a Cayman Island bank account and launder his winnings. There was a remote possibility that the IRS could notice that his lifestyle expenses exceeded his income, but the computers and software required to figure this out had been slashed by the Republican Congress. All those years of political contributions had finally paid off.

Willoughby planned meticulously. He understood the concept of a pari-mutuel —that the house always won no matter what — but he feared that if his system were too successful, it would come to the fronton management’s attention. He pored over the financial statements of the fronton — they were a matter of public record — and determined that he could gross $20,000 a week and not be noticed. He had an analytical mind and was naturally a good gambler. Poker was his main source of spending money during medical school.

His plan would work as long as it was executed with discipline. Dusza and his pals had to do exactly what he said — bet the exact amount on specific matches. He knew that the fronton would chase down huge payoffs, so he only had them wager to win, place or show. Everything was fine until one of Dusza’s idiotic pals decided to bet $100 on the exacta at 160 to 1 odds. After deducting taxes, the bozo walked out of the fronton with a check for over thirteen grand. Willoughby went ballistic, telling Dusza that he had to control these guys or else they would be caught.

But then he had to decide what to do with the check. At first, he considered not cashing it and simply eating the $13,000. But the thought of another thirteen grand piled in his offshore account clouded his judgment. He deposited the check in his Cayman account.

Two days later, the bank president called him personally. “We’re getting what you Yanks call ‘heat’ about this check. We don’t mind if the purview of your deception is limited to your own government, but Malcolm Rummel is a different animal, if you get my drift.”

Willoughby apologized profusely, closed the account immediately and set up another, promising the bank president he would only deposit untraceable cash in the future. “We will always protect the anonymity of valued customers like you, but we do appreciate if you exercise discretion and prudence in your business endeavors.” Willoughby realized that he would be allowed to make this mistake only once.

“How many times do I have to say it?” Willoughby said. “You bet exactly the way I tell you.”

“I’m sorry, Doc.”

“You’re sorry. You don’t realize who we are dealing with here. The fronton is suspicious. The last time you did this, they traced the check.”

“There’s no check this time, Doc. Only cash.”

“You don’t understand. Nobody bets the maximum $100 wager on long shots like quiniellas, exactas and trifectas. It’s all three, five and maybe a few ten-dollar bets. When the fronton sees that someone hit a long shot on a $100 bet, they get suspicious. What am I going to do with you guys?”

Willoughby could see that Dusza was visibly shaken. He even set the coffee cup on the hood of his car so Willoughby couldn’t see his hands ;trembling. Maybe he had made a mistake in recruiting Dusza. But what else could he do? Initially, he had considered placing the bets himself but for one guy to win that much money consistently would raise suspicions. He considered recruiting some of his overleveraged medical colleagues. But given what he knew about the large egos of his friends, he couldn’t imagine them working together effectively as a team. No, Dusza and his pals were still his best bet, no pun intended, he thought without humor.

“Dusza, just do what I say.”

“Doc, the guys don’t always listen to me.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and the fronton won’t notice,” Willoughby said not believing himself. “If we can keep it up for several more months, we will all have enough cash to meet our goals.”

“Maybe we should just stop for a few weeks,” Dusza said. He didn’t have the guts to tell him that one of the guys wanted to stop now.

“No, the circumstances that enable me to predict the outcomes could easily change and we’d be out in the cold. We have to make hay while the sun shines.” Willoughby wondered if Dusza had enough abstract ability to grasp his metaphor. He then pulled out a small sheet of paper and recited the dates and bets for the next week. Dusza copied them down and Willoughby looked over his shoulder to make sure there were no mistakes. He couldn’t be too careful when dealing with this moron. When he was certain that Dusza understood, he abruptly turned away and entered his car without even saying good-bye.

Chapter 10            

For a man with no chance of winning, Nick Caruso appeared to be in good spirits. He stood at the entrance of Hartford’s Bushnell Theater, greeting the various delegates to the Republican Convention with a firm handshake and a plastic smile. The onslaught of “Campana for Governor” buttons did not seem to disturb him. In fact, when one delegate politely acknowledged that he was in Campana’s corner, Caruso replied, “We’re all Republicans; stop over to my headquarters and have a beer.”

But behind his jovial affect was a certain bitterness. Caruso had labored tirelessly for the Republican Party his entire adult life, first as a member of the New Haven City Council, then as a state assemblyman and now as a state senator. He had battled with the country clubbers and forced the Party to establish bonds with the labor unions, bringing ethnic Democrats into the Party. Last election he even took 32% of the African-American vote in his district, unheard of for a Republican.

He didn’t care that Campana’s handsome visage projected on television better than his hardened features. He didn’t care that Campana had raised ten times more money. He didn’t care that the polls showed Campana to be within striking distance of Kincannon whereas he wasn’t even within thirty points.

What he cared about was that he had paid his dues. He should be the nominee and he was outraged when so-called lifelong friends abandoned him for a cocky punk who was in diapers when he won his first election. And he was going to make them pay.

Caruso was convinced that he was close to having the requisite 15% delegate pledges to force a primary against Campana, a primary that even Caruso knew Campana would win easily. But he also knew that Campana and the Party insiders wanted to avoid a primary at all costs, thus putting him in a strong position to demand a slew of patronage jobs and judgeships for his cronies.

Adam Bortz nodded politely to Caruso as he scurried through the front hall on his way to Campana’s headquarters. The din of the collective conversations of 2,000 people rendered the exchange of pleasantries impossible over a distance of five feet. Attired in khaki pants and a forest green golf shirt, he wanted to remain inconspicuous, not even sporting a Campana button. The only possible indication of his importance was the small black cellular phone clipped to his belt. He had stamped out another brush fire, promising a job in the Motor Vehicles Department for the son-of-law of the Hartford Town Chairman who reciprocated by assuring the delivery of every vote in the delegation for Campana.

Arriving at the headquarters, he nodded to the guard and walked quickly into the back room, avoiding eye contact and therefore any conversation with the imbibing delegates in the atrium. Campana was sitting there chatting with Firestone. “So I’m kissing the ass of this imbecile from East Dumbshit. He asks me what my main goal is when I get into the governor’s mansion.”

“To get laid as frequently as possible?” Bortz asked while fiddling with the two computers at his desk. Firestone chortled while Campana shot an annoyed glance at Bortz.

“No, Adam. You would have been proud of me. I controlled myself. I gave the usual crap about lower taxes, less government interference, more local control of education and releasing the engine of small business to create jobs. The son-of-a-bitch seems to be buying it when all of a sudden he asks me ‘Do you consider yourself a constitutionalist in the Jeffersonian sense?’ ”

“A what?” Firestone said.

“A constitutionalist in the Jeffersonian sense.”

“What the hell is a ‘constitutionalist in the Jeffersonian sense?’ ” Firestone asked.

“How the hell should I know?” replied Campana.

“Jefferson was the third President and had some input into the ideas behind the Constitution, although James Madison was the main author. It probably has something to do with that, one might suppose,” Bortz said, not looking up from the computer. “A challenging question, even for an accomplished bullshit artist like yourself.”

“Adam, I looked straight ahead, held my chin up and paused for five seconds. Then I stared into his eyes and said with great sincerity, ‘Yes sir, I do consider myself to be a constitutionalist in the Jeffersonian sense.’ The goddamn imbecile sits there, looking at his hands and then rubbing his chin like he’s Truman at Yalta.”

“Potsdam,” Bortz said.

“Whatever. Then he looks me in the eye, nodding his head, and says ‘Governor, you have my vote.’ ”

“Yes, yes. A score. Excellent,” said Bortz as he punched a few keys. “Who was it again?”

“Daniel Chester,” said Campana.

“Sounds like a real American to me,” Bortz noted. He gleefully typed Chester onto the screen. Up came his name, address, the names of his wife and kids, along with his interests. Bortz changed the 2, which signified leaning toward Campana to a 1, meaning committed to Campana.

“Did we finally nail down Hartford?”

“Yep, they’re all ours,” said Bortz. “Nothing like free beer and publicly-financed sinecures to convince skeptical delegates.”

“So what’s the count?”

“I think that puts us over.” Bortz got to the main menu of his database program and typed the number 1. The number 1,127 appeared, followed by 85.1%. “We’re at 85.1%, one vote more than required to keep Caruso from forcing a primary.”

“Where’s he at?”

Bortz typed in the number 5 meaning committed to Caruso. “He’s got 195 votes or 14.7%, four short of what he needs. There are only two delegates who are uncommitted and they are both...” he paused while his hands played the keyboard. “They are both right in the middle. It doesn’t get any tighter than this. The key is to keep everyone here until the vote. If just five of our delegates leave without voting, it could shift Caruso to over 15%.”

Connecticut was one of the few states that allowed political parties to pick their candidates without direct primaries. In most states, a prospective candidate merely had to gather a certain number of signatures of registered voters to obtain a place on the ballot. But not Connecticut. A gubernatorial or U.S. Senate candidate had to contact the Party leaders in all of the state’s 169 towns and ask for their support. These leaders then assembled as delegates to a convention, where the candidates were chosen.

Most of the few states that retained the convention system — Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia — were among the original thirteen colonies. They exported the system from feudal England, where kings were chosen by various dukes and earls when the heir-apparent was not obvious.

The voters and the media occasionally revolted against the convention system because it was so undemocratic. The result was that the political insiders of both Parties were forced to allow primaries if a candidate could gamer 15% of a convention’s delegates. This was close to impossible for any political outsider, but when established politicians such as Campana and Caruso decided to seek a nomination, the result was a time-consuming battle royal.

Campana and Caruso had spent endless hours during the past eight months addressing town committees, holding delegate receptions, and then calling key delegates individually to beg for their support. Both men had attended countless political functions — Lincoln Day Dinners, fund-raisers, even a few First Communions and bar mitzvahs — while being forced to ingest stale chicken or burnt ziti while imbibing metallic-tasting Zinfandel. Both men were strong supporters of the convention system because it enabled them to avoid primaries while they were state senators. But now, having personally witnessed the colossal waste of time engendered by this feudal remnant, they were having second thoughts.

But Bortz loved the convention system because nobody could run a convention better than him. To him, a convention was a living, breathing organism, with a unique set of physical features and characteristics that could be mastered and manipulated. When he got on board with Campana, it looked like they had no chance of keeping Caruso under 15%. After all, it was impossible to get 85% of a group of people to agree on anything. Get 100 people in a room and ask them to determine the color of the sky and there will always be a few contrarians that say green.

The stakes were especially high because Kincannon was unable to keep Baker under 15% at the last week’s Democratic convention. Although he easily got the Party nod with 81% of the delegate vote, Baker had two weeks to decide whether or not to primary. She was holding out to see what happened at the Republican convention. If Campana kept Caruso under 15%, Baker would be in a position to demand numerous jobs for her cronies, not to mention a commissionership for herself. If the Kincannon supporters refused to meet her demands, she could force an ugly primary that highlighted the racial divisions in the Democratic Party, thus paving the way for an easy Campana victory.

Bortz was light years ahead of Caruso’s campaign. He had created a database with not only all 1,324 delegates, but also their alternates. For the past month, his staff had pounded the phone lines, getting commitments and pushing Campana towards the 85% threshold. Now he was there. While Caruso’s staff was wandering aimlessly on the convention floor trying to gauge their strength, Bortz knew exactly what was going on, down to the person.

His floor team consisted of 24 coordinators each assigned responsibility for approximately 60 delegates. Each coordinator marched up and down the auditorium floor aisles wearing fluorescent green “Campana” hats, constantly counting noses and putting out “brush fires” — delegates who were having second thoughts because Campana didn’t make eye contact when schmoozing them or local politicians extorting pork barrel demands. Each of these coordinators reported to one of six district coordinators who then reported to Matt Harkins, a law student gifted with a photographic memory for faces and names. Only when Harkins couldn’t handle a problem would he call Bortz, as in the case of the recent wavering of the Hartford delegation.

He placed his headset on and looked at the overhanging television. Patti Becker was interviewing Caruso, who now claimed to have 15%. He clicked “Print” with the mouse and the computer spat out the names of the two wavering delegates.

Campana grabbed the sheet. “Come on, Gordon. Maybe your august presence can convince these nebbishes to vote for us. If not, at least you can get an introduction to Ass Kissing 101.” Both men left the room to schmooze the two holdouts.

Just as Bortz was lighting a cigarette and feeling a modicum of decreased stress, the phone rang. He pushed the obnoxious orange blinking button and spoke into the microphone of his headset.

“What’s up, Matt?”

“Adam, you not going to believe this.”

“Try me.”

“Geese turds.”

“Geese turds? If it’s geese turds, it must be Westport.”

“Bingo. Caruso promised Bertil Anderson that if he delivers Westport’s twelve delegates, he will handle the geese turd problem. I even sent Campana’s wife over there. Nothing.”

Bortz typed Westport into the computer. The names of 12 delegates came up with Is after them, meaning that they were completely committed to Campana. “We sewed that delegation up months ago. Anderson gave me his word and we called each delegate personally last week just to make sure.”

“I’m sorry, Adam. What can I tell you? Anderson’s on his way up.” Just then the guard walked in. “A Mr. Bertil Anderson, Mr. Bortz.” “Let him in.”

A tall man with brown hair, a prominent chin and an air of genetic superiority strode into the room, the soft patter of his patent leather shoes hitting the carpet. Bortz took off his headset, rose and shook Anderson’s hand with a firm but fleeting grip. Before Bortz could offer him a seat, Anderson moved the cushioned chair and sat down. Bortz knew that moving the chair in his domain was Anderson’s way of asserting dominance.

“This is an issue of great concern. Great concern,” Anderson said.

“Is your word of any concern to you?” Bortz asked.

Anderson blinked rapidly, obviously unnerved at the Bortz’s lack of intimidation, but recovered quickly. “Circumstances have changed.”

Bortz looked at the computer screen and read. “May 16 - ‘Caruso’s a loser. You have my vote on the first ballot and that of the entire delegation.’ ” He stared directly into Anderson’s hazel eyes. “You gave me your word.”

“Perhaps I spoke prematurely,” said Anderson jutting his large chin forward.

“Perhaps you’re just a lying piece of shit.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Bortz wished he could reach into the air and retrieve them. The arrogant Anderson had made him lose his temper, a fatal error that only signaled weakness. Furthermore, if the entire Westport delegation swung to Caruso, there was no chance of keeping him under the 15% threshold.

This time Anderson was not intimidated and he was not about to be verbally abused by someone he considered to be a social inferior, especially when he had the upper hand. He rose from the chair and extended his hand. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Bortz.”

“I’m sorry, Bertil. Please have a seat.”

Anderson paused for what seemed like an eternity, obviously relishing putting Bortz in his place. He then moved the chair again and slowly flexed his athletic legs, resuming his previous position. “As I was saying, Adam, this is an issue of great concern. As you know, the Canada geese population of Westport has increased threefold over the past ten years.” He spoke pompously as though he were divulging the secrets of nuclear physics or revealing a cure for breast cancer, rather than whining about bird droppings.

Bortz, having once served on the Environment Commission in nearby Stamford, was well aware of the problem. During his childhood, the V-formation of migrating Canada geese silhouettes against the blue sky stirred the bucolic passions of all as they ushered in the spring. Everyone delighted in seeing the majestic birds floating in the town’s lakes, their brown bodies leading to slender black necks and heads with a brilliant patch of white behind their bills. The honking call was a reminder of a simpler time as suburbia encroached.

But not any more. As the geese flourished, they became a common sight on the lakes and even on the streams. Their droppings pushed the bacterial count in the lakes and the Sound to unhealthy levels, giving the local politicians the unpleasant task of closing the beaches during the dog days of August. Bortz didn’t know if it was his imagination or not, but over the past twenty years, the geese seemed to have prospered just as the denizens of Fairfield County — becoming so fat that they had to run further along the water until their corpulent bodies became airborne.

But the real problem came when the geese started foraging on the golf courses. Each goose produced a pound of excrement a day. The manicured greens and close-cropped fairways were now speckled with greenish-brown mounds and on a hot summer day, the nauseating scent of geese excrement found its way to the nostrils of the rich and influential. To get rid of the geese manure required hiring pigmented people who had to be paid. This combined with the increased green fees annoyed the captains of industry who were forced to close multimillion dollar deals while chipping their Titleists out of geese feces. The Canada goose had become the Canada rat.

“The environmental impact cannot be overstated. By reducing the fecal deposits at the Standish Country Club, we are contributing to a more healthy milieu to our most important asset, our children,” Anderson said with a tinge of sarcasm.

“Bertil, it’s going to be very difficult for Campana to earmark public funds for Westport so that you guys can hire pooper scoopers at the Standish Country Club and lower your green fees.”

“Mr. Caruso didn’t think it would be a problem.”

“Mr. Caruso is never going to be governor. That makes it easy to make promises.”

“Perhaps. But you never know what can happen in a primary,” Anderson said, smiling for the first time.

Bortz envisioned himself several months from now talking to Senator Hernandez. He could hear his words now. “My constituents are single mothers with hungry children that lack health insurance and you’re telling me that you want my committee to authorize $190,000 to clean up geese shit at a Westport country club? Perhaps you can come to the next town meeting in Bridgeport to explain this. How’s your Spanish?”

He knew he was powerless. “You can assure your delegation that the environmental impact of the increasing geese population in Westport is of great concern to the future Governor and will be addressed immediately upon his election. The future Governor hopes the Westport delegation will continue to support his candidacy and that discussion of this issue with the media is not in the best interests of the Republican Party.”

Anderson nodded and suppressed another smile. Even he had enough political savvy not to gloat after victory.

“You can also tell the Westport delegation that Adam Bortz keeps his word.” They shook hands and Anderson exited. Bortz wiped his hand on a paper towel as if he just stuck it in some of the geese manure he had promised to clean. “I can’t believe I lost my temper,” he thought to himself. “I hope this campaign isn’t getting to me already.”

But he knew to expect more. Across the convention floor, word was getting out that every vote counted. Bortz had even arranged for the Westbrook police to search Stannard Beach for a vacationing state rep so that she could vote. Now every delegate felt empowered to ask for favors. It was one of the few times in their lives that they actually felt important. He looked up at the television. The candidate for Comptroller was droning about the need to apply Generally Accepted Accounting Principles to the state budget. Perhaps he thought he was competing for the Nobel Prize for outstanding fiction.

The phone rang again. He pushed the orange blinking button. “Yeah, Matt.”

“I’m sorry, Adam.”

“Let me guess. Greenwich.”

“Your clairvoyance never ceases to amaze me. I’ll let Dorothy explain the situation.”

“Oh Adam, I’m just beside myself,” said the assemblywoman from Old Greenwich. “Caruso sandbagged us. It’s the tee time issue again.”

“How many, Dorothy?”

“Five.”

“Five! How’d he do that?”

“I don’t know. Caruso must have planned it months ago.”

“Will I need the Big Guy?”

“Most definitely.”

“Okay, bring them up. The voting starts in a few minutes. We have to be quick.” Bortz then pushed a clear button on the complex phone panel in front of him. Several seconds later Rich Campana’s irritated voice was assaulting his eardrums. “What’s up?”

“Greenwich is caving.”

“What! The Witches told me it was locked up three months ago.”

“Rich, remember last session when the women at the Greenwich Country Club demanded the same access to preferred tee times as the men?”

“How could I forget? What a pain in the ass that was.”

“Caruso figured out a way to sleaze five of them as delegates.”

“I’ll be right up.”

In what seemed like an instant, Campana barreled into the room with the sheet Bortz had given him. “I got them both.”

Bortz updated his data bank. Campana 1,130, Caruso 194. With just a few minutes before the vote, he now had every vote accounted for. “We’re up three if we can hold Greenwich.”

“No other disasters?” Campana said.

“Not that I couldn’t handle. You just promised to clean up all the geese crap at the Standish Country Club.” Campana just looked down and shook his head.

On the television, Patti Becker appeared. “One of Senator Campana’s supposedly strongest towns seems to be having second thoughts. I have a press release here from the a group of women that calls itself the Greenwich Five.” She looked down at the paper in her hand and began to read. “Senator Campana and the Republican Party are once again demonstrating an appalling insensitivity to the women of Connecticut. By ignoring our plea for justice, our Party risks alienating a voting block crucial to our victory in November.”

The television quickly segued to Jack Norton, the political columnist for The Hartford Journal. “Any idea what this is about?”

Patti Becker reappeared. “The women who make up the Greenwich Five are not talking but inside sources believe that this refers to the controversy over the tee times at the country clubs. Apparently at most clubs, men get preference over women in the distribution of the most convenient tee times even when the women have been in the clubs for the same number of years.”

Jack Norton’s voice boomed on the screen but the camera remained focused on Patti Becker. “Didn’t the legislature attempt to address this delicate issue during the last session?”

“They did,” Becker responded. “But the issue was tabled at the last minute.”

Campana started banging both fists against his head while Bortz squashed a just-lit cigarette into his ashtray, repeatedly twisting the crumpled white mass while smoke temporarily obscured his screen. “O’Brien is doing cartwheels. She’s got to have her hand in this. Caruso’s not Machiavellian enough to pull this off.”

The guard entered with the solemn-looking Assemblywoman, Dorothy Phillips, followed by five women in their forties who could have passed for quintuplets —pleated wool skirts, earth-toned cashmere sweaters, crocodile shoes and frosted blond hair neatly pulled back and tied. All were wearing white buttons emblazoned with the letters “Fairness!” along with “Caruso for Governor” stickers plastered on their cashmere sweaters. Bortz wondered in passing if the adhesive would ruin the sweaters.

“Adam, this is Sandra Belmont,” Phillips said quietly.

Bortz stood as graciously as he could and smiled meekly. “Of course. We’ve spoken on several occasions. Please have a seat. I’m sure you have met Richard Campana.” Belmont nodded to Campana. The other women followed suit, while Dorothy Phillips adroitly moved her eyes back and forth from Bortz to Campana.

Campana walked slowly to Bortz’s desk and sat on the edge. He scanned the faces of the five women taking great care not to let his eyes drop to look at their nametags. Finally he focused on Sandra Belmont’s face. “Sandra, it has always been my position that women have the right to equality in our society. What happens at the Greenwich Country Club is an outrage.” He paused and cleared his throat. “An outrage. The idea that you are excluded from using the golf course when you want to when you pay the same fees as the men goes against everything I have stood for my entire life. I have dedicated my career...”

“Liar,” Belmont said softly, practically a whisper. But everybody heard it.

Campana did not have the sense to quit while he was behind. “Sandra, I publicly supported equal access to tee times but Nick Caruso opposed this legislation. My vision of Connecticut is one where all diverse elements of our society are treated fairly, especially women who for centuries have bom the brunt of discrimination...”

What happened next even Bortz could not have predicted. He prided himself as a professor of human nature, able to anticipate the responses of the human beings based on his political experiences in dealing with the complex and subtle class system that existed in supposedly egalitarian America. But the classy, well-bred Sandra Belmont fooled him. Her eyes narrowed. Then her neck muscles suddenly protruded forming a prominent V that connected the concavity at the top of her meatless chest to her jawbones. Her face reddened through her foundation as she rose abruptly from her chair, thrusting her nose inches from Campana’s and yelling, “Liar, liar, liar!”

Campana recoiled his head, his face becoming ashen. He opened his lips instinctively but this time he had the sense to keep quiet. His eyes shifted to Dorothy Phillips, pleading for help.

“Sandra, we all agreed to support Senator Campana. That was a condition for becoming a delegate to this convention,” Phillips said.

“Bull...” Sandra Belmont stopped. Women of proper breeding do not use profanity regardless of the circumstances. “We lied to you, Dorothy, just like he lied to us,” Belmont responded pointing her index finger with a half-inch nail at Campana’s forehead. The four other women sat dourly, their legs crossed at the ankles.

Campana focused on one of them, realizing that convincing Sandra Belmont was a lost cause. He needed to convince two of them to prevent Caruso from obtaining 15%. “Politics is a process. I know you are impatient, but to build a consensus for this legislation requires time. I’m sure that during the next session, we will be able to achieve justice.”

Sandra Belmont sat down and folded her hands on her lap. “Everybody lies to me. My ex-husband lies to me. My lawyers lie to me. My doctors lie to me. My brokers, my maids, my gardeners. Everybody. Why can’t you just tell me the truth? That nobody cares whether or not some discarded rich ladies can play golf when they please. But instead you go through this charade.” She looked at Campana. “I know for a fact that you tabled this legislation in some smoke-filled room at the last minute. The Democrats took the blame in return for obtaining some contracts for their contributors. Our ex-husbands probably wrote you fat checks, too.”

She was right. At many country clubs, obtaining the best tee times — such as at 8:00 Saturday morning — was not only a matter of convenience but also a sign of prestige and social status. Thus, the assigning of these times required the diplomatic skills of the Israeli ambassador to Saudi Arabia. When women began demanding parity with men, assigning tee times to everybody’s satisfaction became impossible, thrusting the issue into the political arena. Technically, the legislature could not mandate the policy of a private club, but they could refuse to renew its liquor license, which is what the legislature threatened to do. Thus, the males at the country clubs had to choose between booze or inferior tee times.

It was a no-brainer; they took the booze. Campana was at the forefront of the issue, even personally sponsoring the legislation and arguing that he was “sensitive to the needs of the women who are the backbone of our society.” That was until he realized that the Democrats couldn’t wait to accuse him of elitism in the gubernatorial election, a point ironically made by Caruso. Who else but rich Republicans cared about tee times at country clubs? So Campana made a deal with the Democrats to table the legislation in return for allowing a construction company that contributed heavily to the Democratic Party to tear apart some perfectly good roads; politics as usual. The fact that Sandra Belmont was aware of this only confirmed Bortz’s suspicion that O’Brien’s fine hand was involved in this fiasco.

“Sandra, we will address this issue. But it does not look good for the outcome of this convention to hinge on this point. The biggest problem we Republicans have is we are perceived as the party of the rich,” Phillips said.

“We are the party of the rich,” Belmont fired back. Adam Bortz winced.

Ignoring her, Phillips continued. “It will not look good to struggling poor and middle class families if we highlight this issue at this time.”

“I don’t care. I am tired about hearing the plight of welfare mothers, and struggling working families. Who cares? At least these people have a place in the world. I don’t. Everyone thinks that because I am rich I should let everyone take advantage of me.” She thrust her petite body forward on her chair and glared at Dorothy Phillips. “You’re lucky. You’re a respected politician with a good law practice. If your husband dumps you, you still have a place in the world. What about us?” She waved her hand at the other four women who remained motionless. She glared at Campana. “What about us?”

“We played by the rules. We went to Miss Porters and Vasser. We learned to play Chopin’s nocturnes and pirouette to Debussy. We can discuss the transition from Impressionism to Cubism. We know the proper fork arrangement at formal dinners and I still shake a mean martini.” She continued to glare at Campana and then shrieked, “And why did we learn this bullshit?” So much for proper breeding, Bortz thought to himself. She paused while raw fury raged in her eyes. “So that we could marry the right men!”

Her voice softened but the intensity in her eyes remained. “But there is one crime we all committed. We got older. Our breasts started to sag. Our buttocks got soft. We developed bags under our eyes, wrinkles on our cheeks and fat under our chins. And what was the punishment for our crimes?” She paused again then said forcefully, “We got dumped!”

“Look at Stacy.” Campana continued to gaze at Sandra Belmont with his best I-feel-your-pain look. “Look at her!” Campana turned his head and focused on the woman in the ocher sweater. “Look at her face. You see how her eyelids are so low that they show the whites of her eyes? That’s because the surgeon took out too much skin when he eliminated the bags under her eyes. She has to take drops every hour to prevent her eyes from drying out and blurring her vision. Every time she chews something hard, she has pain. That’s because to get rid of her sloped chin, the oral surgeon had to break both her jaws and move them forward. The doctors say she will probably have that pain the rest of her life. If you include facelifts, she has had ten operations, seven on her face alone. She also had her legs liposuctioned, a tummy tuck and breast implants. What good did it do? As soon as Viagra came out, her husband married a 26-year-old graduate of Columbia Law School.” Tears welled up in Stacy Tremont’s eyes.

“But at least Stacy has two children. Look at Janet.” This time both Campana and the Bortz quickly turned their heads to the attractive but sullen woman sitting to Stacy Tremont’s left. “Her husband brought her a gift from a business trip to Thailand. Chlamydia. It scarred her Fallopian tubes so that she couldn’t conceive. She underwent two operations that were unsuccessful. Then she tried in vitro fertilization three times. When that didn’t work, her husband left her for a woman he had already impregnated. Now he is living in Riverside with his trophy wife and two beautiful daughters while Janet is alone and childless.”

“Sandra, you made your point,” Phillips said.

“No I haven’t!” screeched Belmont in a pitch that hurt Bortz’s ears. “You think this is about tee times. It isn’t. It is about our place in society. We are not plastic bags, to be used and discarded. When our husbands remarried, they tried to have us removed from the club to make room for their little tramps. They tried to take away our lockers and shame us into leaving. But we fought back. My family has been in that club for four generations. My ex-husband would never have been admitted if it weren’t for me. Now he struts around there with his slut like he owns the place.” Her lips curled as she uttered the word “slut.” Tomorrow, she would struggle with an anger hangover.

Bortz realized that further discussion was futile. He rose and said, “I am sorry for your suffering. Even though we do not have your votes, we will do everything in our power to address this issue in the next session.”

“Perhaps we can meet again under more pleasant circumstances,” Sandra Belmont said to Bortz as she walked out of the room — head held high — with her four compatriots.

Bortz was actually shaken by the dint of Belmont’s outburst, but Campana, his heart hardened by numerous tirades by people he had shafted, couldn’t care less. “Whining bitch,” he said.

Dorothy Phillips was even more callous. Mimicking Belmont she said in a sing-songy voice, “You’re a respected politician with a good law practice.” Returning to her normal tone she said, “I should have offered to trade my seat and law practice for her $8,000,000 trust fund and the monthly $10,000 alimony check her horny ex-husband sends her. I had to put the nanny’s wages on my credit card last month.”

Bortz brought them both back to reality. “We are now two votes short. All the delegates are fairly dug in but I think we can get two switches. Peterson promised to switch and I think Blackburn will too, but you’ll have to get on your knees and beg.”

“So what else is new?” Campana said.

Bortz played the computer, putting the five ladies from Greenwich in Caruso’s column. “Caruso now has 200 votes, and we have 1,124. We have to get him to 198 or lower and we’re set.” He pushed a button on the phone panel and Matt Harkin’s voice was there. “We lost them, Matt. We have to get the two switches. What’s Caruso camp up to?”

“They have no idea what’s going on but they know they’re close. The voting will begin any second now.”

Bortz turned his attention to the second computer screen on his desk. He was ready for the vote. It was amazing that the hardball politics of the last eight months culminated in the prosaic procession of town chairmen and super delegates, all politely walking up to a microphone and casting their votes. He was now in combat mode, complete with headset, ready to track every delegate vote.

On the television, Nancy Valentine, the town chairman of Ansonia, walked to the microphone for the first vote. The parliamentarian at the front of the auditorium said “Ansonia, six delegates.”

Valentine responded, “Campana 6, Caruso 0.”

Bortz clicked Ansonia on the screen and the running tally appeared in the upper right hand corner beside the anticipated tally. The process continued, town by town in each Congressional district. Campana pulled up a chair and watched, hurling insults at the scattered Caruso votes. Midway through the count, Campana was at 634 and Caruso at 98, exactly what Bortz had anticipated.

“You’re a genius, Adam,” said Phillips before she left to cast her vote.

“Rebecca Blackburn,” the parliamentarian said. Bortz and Campana stared at the television as an attractive brunette in her late forties approached the microphone. A former state senator, she was a super delegate because of her position on the State Central Committee.

“Nicholas Caruso,” she said.

“Get ready to grovel, Rich.” Bortz soon had Matt Harkins on the phone. “Please escort the lovely Ms. Blackburn up.”

Blackburn was the ultimate party insider, but she voted for Caruso for purely personal reasons. When she was a state senator, she had tried to get Campana to help her with some domestic-violence legislation. Campana liked to tease her because she was on the Board of Directors for the Girl Scouts of America. He suggested that he could be persuaded to support her bill if she were to don her Girl Scout garb sans undergarments and accompany Campana to one of the no-tell motels along the Berlin Turnpike for “a more penetrating analysis of this vital piece of legislation.” Senator Blackburn was not amused and although Campana eventually helped her in spite of her refusal, she was looking forward to extracting a humiliating revenge.

While the delegates droned on, Rebecca Blackburn pranced into the room unescorted. Giving Bortz a conspiratorial glance, she walked over to him as he rose and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Adam, a pleasure as always. And in the presence of such distinguished company.” Campana sunk in his chair. She looked at him and smiled broadly. “Remember what they say, Richard. Be nice to people on your way up, because you are going to meet them again on your way down.”

“Rebecca, I have matured. I have become more sensitive. I apologize for my poor behavior and hope you will consider forgiving me, and giving me your support. Nobody understands politics better than you. We must avoid a primary.”

Blackburn simply continued to smile and gaze at Campana like a cat looking at a canary.

“Rebecca, please. What to you want me to do?”

“I thought you’d never ask?” She reached into her purse and pulled out what appeared to be a green folder.” She tossed it into Campana’s lap.

He stared at it for several seconds and then sighed. “You’re not really serious?”

“But Richard, I think it will fit you perfectly.”

“Please. Do I really deserve this?”

“Deserve it? You’re getting off easy,” she chuckled. “It’s the price of insolence,” she said as her eyes turned to steel. “You’re a big boy. You know the rules.”

At first, Bortz tried not to laugh. But he couldn’t contain himself. There in front of him was the future gubernatorial nominee of the Republican Party donning a slightly askew oblong olive green Boy Scout hat that contrasted with his beet red cheeks. Bortz covered his mouth with his hand before erupting in an explosive guffaw. Blackburn simply continued to smile.

“Now what were you asking me, Richard?”

Campana looked at the carpet and mumbled, “I hope you will consider giving me your vote.”

“Of course I will give you my vote. A mere triviality. Especially since you asked so nicely.” Blackburn arose from the chair. “Again, Adam, always a pleasure.” She looked at Campana. “And in such distinguished company.” She disappeared out the door but stuck her head back in. “You can keep the hat, Richard.”

“Worthless slut,” said Campana, lifting his hand and exposing his middle finger to the door. Bortz was catching up with the voting, noting that the tally was exactly as anticipated. Greenwich had just gone for Campana, but only by a 20-5 margin thanks to Sandra Belmont and her minions.

“The price of power, Rich, the price of power.”

Campana flung the hat across the room. “It’s not worth it. It really isn’t worth it.”

The voting was almost finished with Campana at 1,057 and Caruso at 186. The panel buzzed again. “I just confirmed with Peterson. He’s going to switch like he promised,” said Matt Harkins.

Carter Peterson was one of the Party’s eminence grise and a close personal friend of Caruso’s. Bortz and Campana had spoken to him on several occasions. He wanted to vote for his old friend but not if it meant fracturing the Party.

“That puts us at exactly 1,124, Matt. No room for error. Any chance of another switch?”

“I don’t think so. Dorothy is still trying to get one of the ladies from Greenwich to switch, but it doesn’t appear likely.”

The parliamentarian was just acknowledging the final town. The tally: Campana 1,124 and Caruso 200.

“Hold it, Adam. Oh shit. Caruso’s on the floor. He’s running over to the microphone,” said Harkin’s voice.

“What’s he doing?”

“He’s just standing there beside the microphone.” Channel 5 observed the same event. On the television, the stone-faced Caruso appeared.

“Get down there, Rich!” Bortz yelled. Campana rushed out the door.

The parliamentarian’s voice came over the screen. “Any switches from the Fifth Congressional District?”

“Talk to me, Matt.”

“I think the crazy bastard is going to physically obstruct the microphone.”

“Get a dozen coordinators over there now to block him! No, stop! Don’t do that!” Bortz envisioned a fistfight breaking out between the opposing camps on the 6:00 o’clock news.

“Get your men to escort Blackburn and Peterson, but stay calm. He can’t block the microphone. Campana should be there any minute.”

Just then a composed and jovial Campana appeared on the television smiling amiably at Caruso. The guy was amazing. It was as if he had a switch in his brain that enabled him to change his mode from rage to pleasantness in seconds. Now the microphones were being thrust into both men’s faces. Caruso, realizing the cameras were rolling, smiled too, but it was a fake irritated smile. He wasn’t in Campana’s league.

“Any switches from the Second Congressional District?”

Rebecca Blackburn surrounded by three fluorescent green hats appeared before the microphone. Caruso was saying something. “Don’t do it, Rebecca. Don’t do it.”

Totally unflustered, Blackburn intoned, “I switch my vote from Nick Caruso to Richard Campana.”

“Good job, Matt. We just need one more. Get Peterson there.”

The voice came over the tube. “Any switches from the Third Congressional District?”

None was expected and none appeared.

“Any switches from the Fourth Congressional District?”

The microphone started to tilt. No, it wasn’t the microphone. Someone was pushing the cameraman. It was Caruso. He plowed through the increasing media hoard and thrust his face in front of the microphone. Where was Campana?

“Speak to me, Matt!”

“I can’t see, but Peterson should be there.”

“Where’s Campana?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see him.”

“The hell with the six o’clock news. Push your way through and get Peterson to the microphone.”

Then they appeared: Carter Peterson with his silver mane distorted, Nick Caruso with his gesticulating hands in Peterson’s face and Richard Campana composed with every hair in place.

Jack Horton’s voice boomed from the television. “This is politics at the gut level. What used to be fought out in the back rooms, live. Two men, the old guard and the up-and-coming, battling for their piece of the American dream.”

“He’s there, Adam. He’s there.”

Bortz did not respond. He was mesmerized.

“You gave me your word,” Caruso said. The microphones were there. The laundry was on the floor for all of Connecticut to watch.

“Why are you doing this, Nick? I love you like a brother, but I have to protect the Party. You’re tearing us apart,” Peterson said.

“You gave me your word!”

“But it’s senseless, Nick. You have no chance.”

“You gave me your word!”

The parliamentarian’s voice boomed. “Are there any switches from the Fourth Congressional District?”

“Please Nick, let him approach the microphone,” Campana said.

“You gave me your word!”

Caruso then stepped back and a rattled Carter Peterson approached the microphone surrounded by a sea of fluorescent green Campana hats. He cleared his throat as the auditorium became silent. Moisture appeared in his lower eyelids. His lips parted but no sound came out. Then suddenly he turned around and disappeared from the television screen.

“Are there any switches from the Fourth Congressional District?”

“Are there any switches from the Fourth Congressional District?”

The television segued to the balding parliamentarian, who banged down the gavel. “Richard Campana 1,125 at 84.9% and Nicholas Caruso 199 at 15.1%. The nominee is Richard Campana. Nicholas Caruso has earned the right to primary.”

Chapter 11            

Pop, pop, pop.

Was something wrong with the phone? Bortz thought he had dialed Kerri O’Brien but after the ringing stopped, all he heard was “pop, pop, pop.” His question was answered when O’Brien’s mellifluous voice interrupted. “I hope the sound of popping champagne corks didn’t disturb you.”

“As long as it isn’t the Dom Perignon. I was hoping we could split a bottle after the election.”

“If we’re still on speaking terms.”

“We should be. Unlike you, I don’t take dirty tricks personally.”

“Moi? Moi? Dirty tricks? What dirty tricks?”

“Those spurned women from Greenwich. Hell hath no fury and all that. I do have to admit, you are brilliant.” Bortz wished he could see her creamy neck to look for the gulp.

“Such a fascinating issue, Adam. Tee times. What makes you think I had anything to do with it?”

“These women knew about the deal Campana made to squash it. Caruso was out of the loop. We certainly didn’t tell them, so it must have been you.”

“Maybe it was a little bird. Or maybe it was a big bird, such as the Canada goose. I hear they’re causing all sorts of trouble these days. But then again, your problem with Canada geese was caused by another of their orifices.” Her spies were everywhere. “You Republicans really seem to be in touch with the concerns of the average voter.”

“So what is Baker saying?” Bortz asked.

“Her demands are unchanged. She has fifteen cronies and family members she wants to get jobs and she still insists on five judgeships going to African-Americans.”

“We’re going to meet with Caruso in a few minutes. I don’t know what his demands will be. He was so fired up that he may primary just to spite us, no matter what we offer.”

“I doubt that, Adam. He knows he’ll lose and then he’s out of the game, for sure. Just give him what he wants.”

“My understanding is that it could be thirty jobs.”

“Thirty? You’re pushing it. We agreed to twenty.”

“I’m sure Kincannon can find it in his heart to find twenty-five jobs for Caruso’s people to avoid a primary.”

“I suppose so,” O’Brien said sounding bored.

“Well, keep watching and I’ll be in touch.”

“Actually, Adam, there are so many fine programs on TV that I’m not sure your convention can hold my attention. Let’s see. The Brady Bunch, an Annette Funicello film festival...”

Bortz heard laughter in the background. “Just don’t switch to Wall Street Week, Kerri. You wouldn’t want all your Democratic pals there to know how much money you’ve stashed.”

“Good luck, Adam.” She placed her index finger on the inside of her cheek. He heard three more pops and then the click of the phone.

He took off his headset. Campana was sitting across from him playing with the broken pieces of the cellular phone that he had just hurled against the wall. “We can go to twenty-five, Rich. Let’s go face the music.”

They entered the atrium and were met by an onslaught of bright lights and reporters’ microphones.

“What job are you going to offer Caruso?”

“Will Caruso accept the Lieutenant Governor position?”

“Are there going to be debates during the primary?”

Campana smiled broadly while Bortz pushed through the crowd. The lights were hurting his eyes. It took several minutes to walk 100 feet, but they finally arrived at the Party Chairman’s suite. Martha Gilbert, her white coif perfectly placed, turned her head away from Caruso and his manager, Brenda Tolland. Bortz pushed the door shut and pulled the deadbolt over. He could still hear the din outside.

“Congratulations, Senator,” Caruso said sarcastically as Bortz and Campana took a seat in front of Gilbert’s desk.

“Congratulations to you, as well, Senator, for your persistence. You are a credit to the Party,” Campana responded obsequiously.

“I wish I could say the same about you. I have never seen such naked ambition and unmitigated ruthlessness in my entire political career.”

Bortz was about to interrupt to prevent passions from rising, but Gilbert spoke first. “Gentleman, please. It’s been a long day and we are all a trifle on edge. Let’s remember that our goal here is to capture the Governor’s mansion. Let’s see if we can come to an agreement that is to everybody’s satisfaction. Think politically, not emotionally.”

Caruso locked onto her gray-blue eyes. “I have an idea. Why doesn’t Senator Campana step aside and give me what is rightfully mine, the nomination?”

Campana laughed. “I kicked your butt fair and square. It’s time for you to get out. Since when does a loser like you demand the nomination?”

“Gentlemen, please,” Gilbert admonished again.

Caruso glared at her. “Martha, you were supposed to be neutral. Yet, you did everything in your power to keep me under 15%. Now you want me to just go away. It ain’t gonna happen.” He nodded his head as he finished.

“Nicholas, I decided to support Richard when I saw that the overwhelming majority of the delegates were supporting him. My job is to avoid a primary. You know that.”

Like most Party Chairman, Martha Gilbert did not believe in democracy. After forty years of looking at election returns, she knew who was electable and who wasn’t. If she could just hand pick the candidates herself, the Party would never lose a contested race. While the press and public viewed primaries as vital exercises in democracy, she viewed them as disasters. A primary would simply waste money and pull the candidates too far to the right. Furthermore, it would provide numerous opportunities for each candidate to insult the other, while bruising the feelings of their respective supporters. Uniting the Party afterwards would be impossible.

Bortz spoke. “We’ve had discussions with Kincannon’s camp. They want to avoid a primary as much as we do. It’s possible that arrangements can be made to ensure that everyone’s needs are met, regardless of the outcome of the general election.”

“You mean that Kincannon can arrange for me to get the nomination. Sounds good to me,” said Caruso.

“You’re not being reasonable,” Bortz said.

“I’m not being reasonable? I’m not being reasonable?” He pointed to Campana’s chest. “You’ve been threatening and harassing my supporters for the past six months. The Town Clerk from East Haven had a heart attack after one of your thugs told her she would lose her job if she voted for me. You told the First Selectman of Monroe that you would cut the funding for their Middle School expansion if she didn’t switch. You’ve turned the party of Lincoln into the party of Hitler.”

Campana grimaced and gave an insouciant wave of hand. “Maybe we should all cry and have a pity party. You poor baby. If you can’t protect your people, that’s your problem.”

The blood vessels traversing Caruso’s temples popped up. His nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed. “What gives you the right to talk to me like that? You think you’re hot shit, don’t you? Well let me tell you something, slimeball. I’ve been playing by your rules for the past year. Now you’re going to start playing by mine. You will never be Governor. By the time I am done with you, you’ll be lucky if you can stay out of jail.”

“You think I care, don’t you?” Campana said, his massive chest broadening as he faced Caruso. “I’ve been eating shit all day and my stomach is full. I’m not eating any more. I will outspend you 10 to 1. I don’t care if I bankrupt my campaign account. I’ll bomb you back to the Stone Age. We’ll start with that secretary you impregnated twenty-three years ago. Then we’ll go on to the three times you covered up your drunk driving escapades. By the time I am done with you, your own children won’t want to speak to you and your grandchildren will be embarrassed to show their face in school.”

“You son-of-a-bitch. I’ll smash your face,” Caruso yelled rising from his chair.

Gilbert’s worst fears were being realized. “Gentlemen, please. A little decorum. There are ladies present,” she said politely. She had been here before.

“I know, Martha. If you weren’t here, I beat this worthless punk to a pulp,” Caruso said.

Campana arose from his chair and pointed to Caruso’s gut. “The only thing you could beat me in is a pie eating contest.”

“I guess I should be scared,” Caruso said as a demented smile crossed his lips. “After all, you had plenty of practice with that girl you almost killed in law school. I hear she wouldn’t let you in her pants. Not that you could have done anything on the off chance that you got there.”

“Nicholas and Richard, you stop this right now.” The tone in her voice was that of a schoolteacher trying to stop two boys from shooting spitballs at each other.

Suddenly Campana’s red face returned to its normal hue. He smiled warmly, his exuberance now dominating the room. The switch in his brain had been flicked again. He looked over at the Party Chairman and said matter-of-factly, “You see, Martha, this is what happens when you let Italians into the Party.”

Gilbert tried to remain stone faced. She wanted to retain the dignity and decorum that was her trademark. Also, she did not want to offend Caruso. But in a matter of seconds, the matriarch of the state’s most prominent political family let out a belly laugh that reverberated across the room. It became contagious, enveloping everyone but Caruso. Even Brenda Tolland couldn’t contain herself. Bortz watched Caruso’s face. At first, the veins on his temples bulged more, the anger intensifying. But as the laughter continued, he began to mellow. The chemicals in Caruso’s brain that had contributed to his rage were abating. The veins became less prominent and Bortz no longer feared he would have to call 911.

“This is no joke, Campana. This is no joke.” He bellowed, but his face didn’t mimic the emotions of his words. Bortz even saw a faint smile that quickly faded.

Campana, the master politician, was now in control. “Nick, you fought the good fight. Your supporters are proud of you, your family is proud of you, Republicans across the state are proud of you. Can’t we come to some agreement here?”

Caruso sat back in his chair. “Nobody has worked harder for this Party than I have. Nobody. Many people have stuck their neck out for me and they must be protected. Also, my political career has been stressful on my family.”

“Anything, Nick, anything,” Campana said.

Bortz watched as Caruso reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper. The son-of-a-bitch. O’Brien was right. He never planned to primary. His entire tirade was nothing more than a well-orchestrated charade to increase his leverage.

“My brother-in-law can’t keep a job because he is arrogant and stupid. Every time he gets fired, he uses my poor sister’s face for a punching bag. He needs a defective rocket job with the State, where you don’t have to work and you can’t get fired.”

“No problem,” Campana said.

“Brenda here has worked tirelessly. I owe her $25,000 and I can’t pay her. I believe a deputy commissionership is in order.”

“I believe she would make an outstanding deputy commissioner. Don’t you, Adam?”

“Outstanding,” echoed Bortz, trying not to sound sarcastic.

The litany went on with Caruso demanding a total of 23 jobs, 2 judgeships and a paving contract for one of his contributors. When he finished, he looked at Campana. Both Bortz and Campana both leaned towards him simultaneously and uttered the same word in perfect unison. “Done.”

Chapter 12            

The four men arrived at Carlini’s Bar within minutes of each other. Happy Hour was not over yet, so beer was five dollars a pitcher. Normally, the simple pleasure of cheap beer would be enough to provide a temporary escape from their otherwise dreary lives, but not today.

“What have you gotten us into, Bob?” Frank Spano demanded.

“You said there was no risk,” said Rich Holtz, puffing on the first cigarette he had had in four years.

“That’s not true,” said Bob Dusza shooting a glance at Bill Evans. “I said there was no risk if you did what I said. That’s not what happened. Evans bet too much. That’s how we got caught.”

Evans partially covered his face with his beer mug. “Don’t blame me,” he said looking at Dusza. “You ripped the fronton off with our help. All these gambling places have mob connections. You can’t steal from these people and get away with it. It was just a matter of time until they figured it out. I was trying to make the money as fast as possible so we could get out.”

Spano reached into the pocket of his red flannel shirt and pulled out a piece of brown paper and unfolded it on the table. “You guys all get a letter like this?” His hand was shaking.

The letter consisted of multi-colored letters of various sizes pasted on a portion of a brown paper bag.

ppppp

>

WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND

WHERE YOU LIVE. IT’S PAYBACK

TIME OR FUNERAL TIME. YOU DECIDE.

ppppp

“That’s exactly what mine said. Found it on the front seat of my car yesterday,” said Holtz.

“Mine too,” said Dusza and Evans in unison.

“Why did they put it in our cars? Why didn’t they just mail it?” said Holtz.

“It would be easier to trace if they mailed it,” said Dusza.

“Bullshit,” said Spano while pouring his second beer. “They could’ve mailed it from anywhere. They wanted to let us know that they can invade our cars and our lives at will. They wanted to scare the shit out of us.”

“Well, they’ve succeeded. What are we going to do? We don’t even know where to give the money or how much they want.” Holtz said. He glared at Dusza. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this crap. It’s illegal for people like us to make money without working. Only those Wall Street pigs are allowed to do that.”

“It’s about time you told us what the hell is going on here,” said Spano. “And don’t give me that crap about your system.”

“There’s nothing to it,” said Dusza. “My system is fine. But you guys are better off not knowing about it. Trust me on that.”

“Listen, Bob. These people are threatening our lives. Our lives! You don’t mess with these guys. They’ll string us up by our balls. Don’t tell me it’s none of our business. It is our business,” Spano yelled with raw fury.

Dusza knew this moment would come, so the story was well rehearsed. “The owner of the fronton is a man named Malcolm Rummel. He gets his limo fixed at the garage. Someone placed a bug in his car and I overheard Rummel on the scanner saying that Ariz and Buxeda were on the take.”

“And you thought of this betting system all by yourself?” said Spano in total disbelief.

“Frank, it’s like I said. There’s nothing to it. All we did was bet on Ariz and Buxeda. We would have been fine if Evans didn’t bet the long shots. Nobody would have ever figured it out.”

“Stop blaming me for everything. Besides, they didn’t win every time. Your story doesn’t make sense.”

“I didn’t know what nights they would win on, only that they were on the take. If they won, we kept betting; if they lost, we went home.”

“And you’re the only guy who knew about this?” said Spano.

“Nobody else heard the scanner but me.”

“It wasn’t your idea to put the bug in this guy’s limo?”

“No, one of the guys stuck one under the back seat while doing a tune-up. He just did it for the fun of it. You wouldn’t believe the shit that goes on in these limos. The big shots hire hookers to make the ride more exciting. If we recorded this shit, we could make a fortune in blackmail.” A slight leer crept onto his lips.

“Don’t give me anymore of your brilliant ideas,” said Spano.

Holtz was not amused. “I’ll never walk into that fronton again. If they want my money back, they can have it.”

“Speak for yourself,” Evans said while he thrust his torso forward. “I’ve been trying to get out of Bridgeport all my life. Now I finally have a chance.” The three other men looked at Bill Evans’ rheumy eyes, hoping it was just the alcohol talking.

“Are you out of your goddamn head, Bill?” said Spano. “These people are serious.”

“So am I. I’m tired of worrying that my wife is going to be mugged every time she drives to the supermarket. I’m tired of worrying about my kids getting killed at school. Nobody gives a shit about us. I’ve got a loaded 9mm semi-automatic Glock in my car and a 32 in my house. Rich, you say it’s illegal for people like us to make money. Bullshit! My guns make it legal.”

“What if these people just blow your brains out?” said Holtz waving Spano’s note.

“Then I’ll be dead. It beats living the rest of my life in Bridgeport.”

The three other men realized that there was no point to further discussion. The table sat silent, each wondering if there was a way out, if there was some magic way to keep the money and move on.

“I hope you don’t plan to bet anymore?” said Holtz to Evans.

“Why not? Everything is rigged. Baseball, football, boxing, the stock market, the banks. It’s all rigged and it’s rigged to screw people like us. When some of us get lucky and get a piece of the action, the pigs in power want their money back. The hell with them.”

“So what should we do?” asked Holtz.

“Nothing,” said Evans emphatically. “Let them make the next move.”

The silence of the three others indicated that an uneasy consensus of sorts had been reached. The remaining time in Happy Hour ordinarily represented an excellent opportunity to imbibe large amounts of golden elixir, but that would require that the four men stay in each other’s presence, an increasingly unpleasant situation. They sauntered into the poorly lit parking lot, the cold air exacerbating their nervous state.

Bob Dusza headed towards his rusting Nova without saying goodbye to the others. He pulled out of the parking lot while fiddling with the radio’s dials, attempting to find some 70’s music. Even though Carlini’s was within walking distance of his house, he drove, since he had planned only to have a couple beers. Plus, it felt safer to be inside the car rather than walking on the street.

He turned onto his street. Since no houses on his block had garages, there was a general agreement that the parking spot in front of your house was yours, so he was somewhat annoyed when it was taken. He pulled into a spot in front of a deserted house with a cockeyed “For Sale” sign, throwing his half-finished cigarette on the broken asphalt street as he closed the car door.

Somewhere in the course of human evolution, an unnatural silence became programmed into the brain’s ingrams as a warning of impending danger. Perhaps it was the quiet in the forest that preceded the attack of a saber-toothed tiger, or the eerie calm prior to an assault by a pack of wolves. The combination of brain circuitry and hormones that directed this instinct became activated in Dusza’s body when a hulking figure exited the car that was parked in front of his house.

He continued to walk, his chest broadening, his abdominal muscles tightening, the hair on the nape of his neck becoming erect and his fists clenching. Just as he was about to pass the hulking figure, he felt a fist enter his solar plexus. Although somewhat prepared, the blow had enough force to make him double over in pain. As he tried to catch his breath, a sharp upper cut landed squarely on his chin. Dusza found himself on his knees with his hands protecting his head, anticipating another blow.

It never came. Instead he was peering at the bottom of straight-legged stonewashed jeans, white socks and hiking shoes. “Get up, you worthless scumball.” His breath returning, Dusza rolled backwards and staggered to his feet. His assailant was broad but short, with a triangular head and a continuous eyebrow that bridged the top of his nose. A quick jab stung his lips and he felt the salty taste of blood on his tongue.

“Come on, you pussy, defend yourself.”

Dusza peered at the figure whose arms were raised in the Marquis of Queensbury boxing stance. Then it came back to him. The endless wrestling practices in high school had inculcated into his sinews a rapid response. As the thug was about to pepper his nose with another jab, Dusza placed his right foot between the thug’s ankles and thrust his torso forward with his left leg. He heard a pained expiration as his right shoulder bludgeoned the thug’s testicles. He locked his arms around his knees, executed a perfect double-leg takedown and hurled the hapless thug onto the sidewalk.

“Get off me, you piece of shit. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.” As the thug reached back to grab Dusza’s head — a mistake made by all nonwrestlers — Dusza hooked his arm, grabbed his ankle and thrust the perplexed thug’s body forward.

“Get off me. Get off me,” he screeched to no avail.

“Make me, you pussy! Make me!” With the adrenaline at full throttle, Dusza was beginning to enjoy himself. He hooked the thug’s arm in a chicken wing and proceeded to twist it forward so that the thug’s arm was now perpendicular to his back.

“Stop. Please stop. Help me. Help me.” Dusza’s childhood had convinced him that all bullies were cowards at heart, and this thug was no exception. He gritted his teeth, dug his feet into the sidewalk and pushed the unnaturally positioned arm with all his might until he heard the grating pop of a dislocating shoulder.

“Arrrrrghh!"

The anguished scream was loud enough to wake the neighborhood but Dusza was no longer thinking logically. He did not care if he was arrested. The reptilian portion of his brain was in command as the cumulative frustration of recent events was being released. No compassion. No mercy. As the thug was writhing in pain, Dusza proceeded to grab his head and smash it into the concrete sidewalk while letting out a primitive ululation.

“Can’t you do anything right?” Dusza looked up just in time as a wooden baseball bat made contact with his left jaw. He fell to the side, almost losing consciousness, but was coherent enough to feel sharp pangs in his sides as the second thug kicked his ribs. Then it stopped.

“Come on. Stop whining and get up.” Dusza could not get up but he wasn’t whining. Finally he realized that the object of contempt wasn’t him, but rather the first thug, who was now on his knees holding his shoulder while tears of pain streamed down his face.

“The bastard broke my arm.”

“It’s not broken, you pansy. Your shoulder’s dislocated. From now on, I’ll have you stick to beating up the whores. You may not be able to handle the faggots. Some of them are in pretty good shape.”

Dusza pushed himself to his elbows, the force of the bat still ricocheting in his head as if his brain were sloshing back and forth.

“Don’t even think about it, scumball.” Dusza looked at the second thug who now was pointing a 357 Magnum at his head. “Must have been a good wrestler in your day. But smashing Charlie’s face into the sidewalk is not a legal move.” He pushed his hardened face in front of Dusza’s nose. “You’ve pissed off the wrong people. You and your playmates have three days to put together forty grand. Otherwise, you guys will learn the true meaning of the word pain.” Dusza coughed and felt something hard in his mouth. He wretched on the sidewalk and two bloody Chiclets, his teeth, fell out.

“Just in case you don’t have a good memory for details, here’s what you need to know.” He threw a yellow envelope on the sidewalk with his gloved hands. “Now if you are considering missing this payment, you may want make sure you’re caught up on your life insurance. If any of you ever walk into the fronton again, you’re all dead meat.”

Both men walked swiftly towards their car, one man holding his shoulder as Dusza sat up on the sidewalk. They left with squealing tires. Dusza arose slowly and made his way to his house. One of his neighbors, a retired schoolteacher, looked out her window then shoved the curtain in front of her face as soon as Dusza made eye contact.

He staggered up the crumbling steps of his small cape and fumbled with the keys. It was only 7:30 and Paula didn’t expect him home this early. “Daddy, Daddy,” he heard. His 8-year-old daughter still loved it when he came home. His daughter’s beaming face soon turned to tears.

“What happened, Daddy?”

“Nothing to worry about. Daddy’s okay. I just fell.”

Paula Dusza walked into the room, her lips tightening as she assessed her disheveled husband. The left side of his face was beginning to swell, extending from his lips to his upper eyelid. Blood was splattered on his mustache and had dribbled from his split lip down his chin and neck, soaking the front of his jacket. His left eye was almost completely closed.

“Lynn, go upstairs and finish your homework.”

“I’m already done.”

“Go upstairs right now! I have to help your father.” The Dusza family rarely resorted to corporal punishment when disciplining their daughter, but Lynn could tell from her mother’s tone that an exception was imminent if she didn’t obey.

She scurried upstairs while Dusza limped into the small family room, assisted by his wife. She grabbed the remote, bringing an episode of The Love Boat to a charitable end. She then brought him a moist towel from the kitchen and applied it to his face. He was beginning to have trouble taking a deep breath. At least one rib was broken.

“Let’s get you to the hospital now.”

“No, no. The HMO will never pay for it.”

“We can’t afford to have you permanently crippled. Now, let’s go.”

“Paula, I’m OK. I have a black eye and a couple of bruised ribs. I’m not going to sit in the emergency room all night with drug dealers and welfare mothers so some rich doctor can tell me to take some aspirin.”

While Paula was the brain in the family, she recognized her husband’s rare display of logic. “What happened?”

“I slipped on some gravel and lost my balance.”

“Please, Bob. I’m on your side. Tell me who hit you. Did you get into a fight at the bar?”

Normally Dusza, in a litany of macho bravado, would have instructed his wife to mind her own business in a less than tactful fashion. But when she gave him the opening for a white lie, he took it. “Some Puerto Ricans were drunk and tried to change the music.” In Bridgeport, it is customary to blame the Puerto Ricans for everything, so Paula was not suspicious.

A knock emanated from the front door. Without waiting for an answer, the next-door neighbor, Ralph Pavia burst into the family room.

“Is he all right?” he asked breathlessly.

“He seems to be. I can’t get him to go the hospital.”

“I knew that car in front of your house was suspicious. You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”

Paula now knew that her husband had lied, but opted to play along. “I thought the same thing,” she added.

Before Bob Dusza could think of a response, Pavia replied, “You betting on the college football games? Remember what happened to Vella.” Joe Vella was a former neighborhood resident who had a lawn care business that serviced Westport. He made more money than his clients, a bunch of overleveraged yuppies unwilling to risk the social ignominy of dirtying their hands in front of their equally overleveraged neighbors. Unfortunately, the mysteries of compounding interest eluded Vella and after borrowing $50,000 from the local loan sharks at 15% a week, he soon discovered that he had to work 240 hours a week just to pay the interest. His creditors were not sympathetic to his lack of mathematical acumen, first breaking his jaw, and then cracking several ribs. Finally, he simply disappeared, as if he never existed.

Bob had assured his wife that his visits to the fronton were harmless, an opportunity to hang out with his buddies, guzzle a few beers and drop a few bucks. She was suspicious, but there was always enough cash to make ends meet. She had mentally calculated Bob’s income. He made $12 and hour and worked 60 hours a week at the garage in Greenwich. Every week, he handed her a check for the proper amount. Now it all made sense. The bozo was borrowing from a loan shark.

“He’s okay, Ralph. Thanks for your concern,” she said, walking Ralph to the door. Like her daughter, Ralph could take a hint and exited with the door handle almost hitting him in the back.

Paula Dusza would have exploded, but her husband looked so pathetic — his eye was now completely closed — that she couldn’t. She loved him. “What are we going to do, Bob? How much do we owe?”

Bob Dusza did not respond. “Honey, please,” she pleaded. “Tell me what’s going on. How much do we owe?”

“I’m not sure,” he finally said. Dusza knew he had to tell her about their newly acquired wealth, so he repeated the lie he told Evans, Holtz and Spano. He told her how Malcolm Rummel had his limousine serviced at the garage. How one of his pals placed a bug in the limo and overheard Rummel’s suspicions that two players were on the take. He recounted how he, Spano, Evans and Holtz placed the wagers on these two players and how they collectively won over $100,000 over the past months.

She just nodded her head cynically; annoyed that he would insult her intelligence with such a canard. “What did you guys do with the money?” she asked sarcastically.

“I have it.” As he saw the disbelief in here eyes, he continued. “Go down to the basement and look under my workbench. You’ll see a loose concrete block in the wall. Pull it out and bring up the metal box behind it.”

Paula Dusza ran down to the dank basement, walking into her husband’s dark workshop and swinging her hand until she came across the cord that attached to the overhead light. After yanking on it, she went to the workbench and got on her knees. Unlike many of her neighbors, Paula exercised regularly to maintain her youthful figure and did not become short of breath as she groped furiously at the slightly ajar cement block. After splitting two nails, she finally managed to pull the block away from the wall. Reaching in, her hand touched a metallic object and soon she was sitting, legs akimbo, opening one of her husband’s tackle boxes. Depressing the switch, she sucked in wind as the lid popped open, revealing a large mound of $50 and $100 bills interspersed with a smattering of tens and twenties.

“My God!” She closed the box and ran upstairs with it. Her husband was sitting up holding the cold towel to his face while channel surfing. “You won all this at the fronton?”

“Every penny.”

“So why did these thugs beat you up?”

“They figured out that we were winning. The idiot Evans bet on the quiniellas and exactas and won too much money at once.” He continued, telling his mesmerized wife how they had planned to accumulate their earnings slowly so as to avoid suspicion.

“Do the other guys have as much cash as you?”

“Yes, we can pay them off but Evans doesn’t want to. He says he’d rather die than live in Bridgeport the rest of his life.”

“Maybe when he sees your face, he’ll have a change of heart. I’m calling Barbara right now.”

She got up from the couch but stopped when Dusza yelled, “No, Paula. Let me handle this. If you get the wives involved, it will be a mess.”

For the first time, Paula raised her voice. “I have a metal box with thousands of dollars. I have a husband with a rearranged face and you’re telling me that if the wives get involved we are going to have a mess? What do you call this?”

Bob Dusza considered spilling the beans, telling his wife about the secret meetings where Willoughby fed the betting information to him, but decided against it. Willoughby always knew what to do. If he could just speak to him. He couldn’t call him from home though. Willoughby had warned against it many times. The phone company would have a record. He would have to wait until tomorrow.

“I’ll talk to the guys tomorrow. When they see what happened, they’ll ante up. Even Evans.”

“Why, Bob? Why did you do this?”

He looked at her in disbelief. “For us, of course. With this cash, we can get the hell out of Bridgeport and buy a small ranch in Trumbull like you’ve always wanted. Lynn is going to be a teenager in a few years. The high schools in town are nothing but training grounds for criminals and drug dealers. My Dad saw to it that I was always safe. I have to do the same for you and my daughter.”

Paula put her arm around her husband. Now she felt guilty because she complained about the decaying neighborhood they lived in. “I know you work like a dog for this family. But you didn’t have to do this. When Lynn is a little older, I’ll work more hours at the deli so we can send her to St. Mary’s.”

“By then the tuition will be $8,000 a year. We’ll never be able to afford that. I finally managed to get health insurance and then the bastards found out that Lynn’s asthma was a pre-existing condition,” he said as tears welled up in his only open eye.

“The doctor says that she is outgrowing the asthma. She’ll be fine.”

“The same bastard who charged us $90 to look at her for five seconds when I forgot to get pre-approval from the HMO. I wonder if he knows how hard I have to work to make $90. Maybe Evans is right. I should buy a gun and if those thugs come after me again, blow their heads off. I would have killed one of them if his partner hadn’t saved his sorry ass. It’s time people like us start fighting back.”

“Bob, you’re not making sense. Let’s pay these animals and get on with our lives.”

Bob Dusza just stared at the television, changing the channel with the remote. The tears continued to stream out of his only open eye.

He woke up early the next day. He had slept poorly more from the emotional strain of recent events than from the pain of his broken ribs. Nonetheless, every time he coughed from his chronic smoker’s hack, it felt like someone was stabbing a knife into his side. He had finally convinced Paula to let him handle things, although he felt sure she would be on the phone to either Spano’s or Evans’ wife within a day.

He had read the contents of the yellow envelope several times. He had three days to obtain $40,000 and meet the thugs at the parking lot of the now-defunct Yankee Electronics. While he was once terrified, he was now mad. He was mad at the thugs who beat him, at Evans for screwing up the betting system and at Willoughby for dragging him into the mess to start with.

He dressed quickly, ignoring the pain. The ice to his face had partially opened his eye but now a deep blue hue was spreading below it. He shaved slowly with one eye, actually enjoying the anticipated reaction of Willoughby to his macabre visage.

“Be careful,” Paula said as Dusza exited the front door. He drove to the nearest phone booth and immediately dialed Willoughby’s number, informing the answering service operator that Joshua Watkins was suddenly going blind. One minute after hanging up, the phone rang.

“This is Dr. Willoughby.”

“We need to talk, Doc.”

“I can’t today. My office is a zoo and I have plans for the evening.”

“Doc, you’re just going to have to cancel your patients and your plans. Some of the fronton’s boys used my head for a baseball. I lost two teeth, my face looks like a balloon and my wife is pissed. She knows something is going on.”

“Did you tell her about me?”

“No,” Dusza said. “But it wasn’t easy.”

Willoughby was relieved that he still remained anonymous, but he knew the situation had changed dramatically. He was no longer in the position of power. “I’ll meet you at the usual spot in a half hour.”

“See you there.” Dusza hung up the phone and got on 1-95. Even though the sun was at his back, he found driving with one eye closed to be challenging during the early rush hour of commuters going into New York. He pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot and was surprised to see that Willoughby’s Mercedes was already there. Willoughby got out of his car cutting an elegant figure in his Burberry coat. He walked over while Dusza pulled into a nearby spot. He slid into the front seat accompanied by the pleasant aroma of the amaretto coffee he was holding.

“Are you sure nobody knows about me?”

“Doc, I’ve told no one. That line you gave me about the bug in Rummel’s limo worked perfectly. The other three guys and my wife took it hook, line and sinker.”

It was then that Willoughby got a good look at his accomplice, noting the closed left eye and the swollen left side of his face. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“It’s not your fault. One of the guys didn’t follow your plan. We could have gotten away with this forever if he had listened.”

“What happened exactly?”

Willoughby listened intently, not even sipping on his coffee, while Dusza told him of the lettered note, the meeting with the other three guys, his confrontation with the two thugs and the subsequent discussion with his wife. He found it interesting that they didn’t ask for the $300,000 they had collectively won. Did they just catch on to the scam or did they simply pick $40,000 out of the air? Or maybe they considered $40,000 to be the first payment.

“Let me see the note.”

The instructions were simple, clear and chilling: “On Friday at 11:00 PM, go to the parking lot of the Yankee Electronics Building. Park your car in the far corner with your headlights pointing towards the fence. Have $40,000 in cash in an envelope taped to your back. If you show this note to anybody, you will die. If you do not make the payment, you will die. Now burn this note.”

“Do all four of you guys still have the money?”

“We sure do. We all have over thirty grand each.”

Given what Willoughby understood about human nature, he was amazed that none of these guys had blown their winnings. “Do you think the other guys can be persuaded to give up some of their money?”

“All except one. But I think when he sees my face, he may change his mind.”

Willoughby rubbed his chin and then spoke. “I think we should give them the $40,000 and hope that’s the end of it. I’ll give you $20,000. You guys come up with $5,000 each.”

“That seems more than fair.”

“It’s the least I can do, given what you’ve been through. Give me a day to get the cash. Call my office. Make sure you tell my secretary that you were injured so she gives you an immediate appointment. Given the way your eye looks, I should check it out, anyway.”

“Do you think there is any damage, Doc?”

“Probably not. The eye is one of the most protected organs in the body. Even boxers who get their face pounded for years rarely have major eye damage. The only exception is when they get thumbed, like Sugar Ray Leonard.”

Willoughby approached Dusza and lifted up the ptotic left lid.

“It looks okay. You don’t even have a subconjunctival hemorrhage. Cover your right eye.”

Dusza obliged.

“Can you see out of the left eye?”

“Everything looks fine.”

“That’s usually the case. I’ll just check your peripheral vision when you come. I’ll also give you the twenty grand.”

As usual, Willoughby made great sense to Dusza and he was visibly relieved. Willoughby took a lighter out of his pocket. “We should do what they say.” He lit the note and both men watched it crumble to a black shell, before Willoughby crushed it with his patent leather shoes.

Chapter 13            

Bill Evans was raking leaves for the third time this month. His wife had informed him that there would be no football until they were packaged in the large brown paper sacks and placed on the curb. He doubted that the garbage men would condescend to pick them up, but he didn’t argue because he wanted to watch the Jets-Patriots game in peace.

A mellow breeze rustled through the few remaining oak leaves, jostling several more of them onto his lawn. A straggling robin bounced across the swath of cleared leaves. He didn’t mind the task. It was simple, non-stressful work, plus it gave him an excuse to be out of the house, free from his wife’s futile shrieks as she attempted to control their rampaging children. He wondered how long her moratorium on Saturday morning cartoons would last.

His blissful solitude was interrupted by the sound of crunching asphalt as a brown Nova pulled up onto his eroding driveway. While the car was familiar, he couldn’t recognize the driver. That was until he realized that beneath the black-and-blue swollen face was his friend Bob Dusza. He looked worse than expected. Rick Holtz emerged from the passenger side after struggling with his seat belt. He was the only person Evans knew that wore one regularly.

“Is Frank coming?” Evans asked.

“He said he’d be here,” Holtz responded. Just then Frank Spano, attired in a worn Hartford Whaler’s sweatshirt, appeared from around the corner of the house.

Bill Evans tried not to stare at Dusza, but he couldn’t help himself. Even though Dusza had applied an ice pack to his face for several hours a day, the left side remained swollen, giving his normally droopy mustache a bizarre twist. Dusza just stared back, the white of his left eye barely visible under the sagging blue eyelid. This non-verbal communication conveyed more than any words. Dusza had suffered for Evans’ sins and his pain was about to be used as leverage.

“We need your help,” Holtz said, giving Evans an opportunity to turn his stare away from Dusza without appearing weak.

“I’m willing to help but I think this is just the beginning,” Evans replied.

Since Willoughby had agreed to throw in twenty grand to pay off the fronton’s thugs, Dusza saw no sense in mentioning his name. As Willoughby suggested, he had made an appointment to check his left eye. The examination was surprisingly thorough, with Willoughby assaulting him with a variety of eye drops and bright lights that blurred his vision for several hours. He never understood why he often left Willoughby’s office seeing worse than when he arrived. Fortunately, there was no major injury. During the exam, Willoughby slipped him the twenty grand. The additional twenty grand would come by having each guy throwing in five thousand apiece.

“Are you sure they don’t want any more than twenty thousand?” Evans said.

“That’s what they told me. Of course that was after they smashed my face with a baseball bat so it’s possible I’m off a few bucks,” Dusza said.

Evans looked at him skeptically. “I figure the four of us have walked out of that place with over 300 grand. You took most of it. It makes no sense that they only want twenty back. I think they’re going to see how easily we come up with it and then just ask us for more. What’s to stop them?”

Rick Holtz leaned against the hood of his friend’s car. “Listen. They have no idea how much we won. Remember, they probably didn’t figure out our plan until they installed those cameras.”

“Rick, even if you’re right, we’ve won more than twenty grand since those cameras were put in; a lot more,” Evans said. “Hell. I won over eighteen grand on just one bet.”

“Yeah—and that bet is what caused the whole problem here,” Dusza said stroking his swollen face.

“Bob, look, I know I screwed up and I’m sorry, but these guys figured out that all four of us were involved, not just me. We did what you said. We sat in different places, used different tellers, used the SAMs sometimes and left at different times. Somehow they connected all four of us.”

“But you’re the one who made them suspicious. When you took that check, they tried to trace it,” Dusza said.

“Maybe so. But that means they would have just caught me. They caught all four of us,” Evans said.

“We don’t know that,” said Holtz. “Maybe they just sent that letter to everyone who’s won a lot of money lately.”

“But why would they have picked me to attack?” Dusza asked. “These guys know we have a system and that somehow I figured out how to bet on those two guys. That’s why they attacked me.”

“We’ve never discussed any of this on the phone. Even if they tapped them, they could not have connected us,” said Spano.

“Maybe we’re the only ones who bet a lot on Buxeda and Ariz. Maybe someone followed us to Carlini’s. Who knows? In any case, I think this is just the beginning,” Evans said.

“Maybe they just want us to stop betting,” Holtz responded trying his best to believe himself.

“We’ve already stopped,” said Evans in an exasperated voice. “Ever since they sent us those notes, none of us have even walked into the place.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash and gave it to Dusza. “I’ve agreed to give you guys $5,000, but I’m not giving any more.”

Dusza quickly grabbed the cash from Evan’s hand and shoved it into his pocket. He didn’t even bother to count it. “It could be your face next,” Dusza said. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

“Well they’re going to have to kill me,” Evans said. “I’m tired of living in this dump,” he said as he motioned towards his house with his hand. “It’s worth $55,000 if I’m lucky,” he continued.

“If I’m lucky!” he repeated. “And I’m paying $3,500 taxes on it. Why? So every cop, teacher, fireman and garbage collector who works in this goddamn town can afford not to live here. Hell, even the goddamn mayor is trying to move out. He puts his face all over TV saying what a great place Bridgeport is and the slimeball is bidding on houses in Easton. He even put his kids in private schools so that they can avoid the savages. I guess that’s why he was taking all those kick-backs, he had to pay the tuition.”

“We all want to get out of here, Bill. Let’s hope they don’t care about the rest of the money,” Holtz said. “Maybe they’ll figure that they’ve scared us enough so we don’t go back and bet. In my case, they got it right.”

“Mine too,” Dusza added, still stroking his swollen face.

“You’re both nuts,” Evans said. “It’s not the principle. It’s the money. It’s always the money. The minute Dusza hands the cash over to these animals; they’re going to ask for more. It’s not fair that they beat up on Bob and that’s why I agreed to pay. I would rather they have come after me. I’m even willing to go with you when you make the payment.”

“They said I have to come alone.”

“What are they going to do if you don’t? Not collect the money?”

“Listen Bob, these people beat the hell out of me and my family could be next. We’re going to do what they say. Exactly what they say,” he added for emphasis.

“I could hide in the background and blow their heads off while you’re delivering the money,” Evans responded.

Rich Holtz laughed. “Yeah, that’s a plan. And you’re saying we’re nuts? They’d kill us all. Like the note said, ‘We know who you are and where you live.’ ”

“There’s still time to go to the police,” Spano said.

Holtz laughed even louder. “And what are we going to tell them? We’ve ripped off the fronton for 300 grand and they want their money back?”

“Maybe if we showed them the notes we got, they could find fingerprints or something like that. They can figure out all sorts of stuff now a days with that DNR stuff,” Spano replied.

“DNA,” said Holtz. “Listen Bob, the only thing the cops would use those notes for is napkins, to wipe the donut crumbs off their lips. Our only chance is to give these animals the money and hope they leave us alone. As crazy as Bill’s idea sounds, it makes more sense than going to the police.”

“I have to make the payment today. I’ll let you guys know what they say,” Dusza said as he got into his car, making a painful wince as he lowered himself into the front seat.

ppppp* * * * *

Bob Dusza sat on the trunk of his Nova in of the parking lot of the defunct Yankee Electronics plant. Once the proud employer of 550 workers, it now was an abandoned ghost, its faded bricks melding with the shattered windows that peered over the weed-infested parking lot. Rumor had it that the replacement plant in Mexico didn’t look much better. While several streetlights were visible in the distance, the lot itself was almost black, illuminated only by the gibbous moon.

Dusza parked his car with the front end pointed towards the corner of the twisted rusted chain fence. According to the note, he was to stay there until the collectors arrived. For some reason, he wasn’t scared. Perhaps it was because he had dislocated one of the thug’s shoulders. In his primitive male mind, that more than countered the ignominy of having to pay blackmail.

A jet black Plymouth Roadrunner pulled off the street. Dusza viscerally grasped this was his contact as it immediately turned towards him. He shielded his eyes as the high beams glared in his face. The Roadrunner stopped two feet in front of his trunk. He had wondered why the note was so specific on how he was to park. Now he knew. There was no way he could possibly escape.

A figure emerged from the passenger side, a towering silhouette made more ominous by the glare of the headlights. “Hands in the air,” the silhouette said as it transformed into a beefy thug in a green flannel shirt that pointed the business end of a 9mm Baretta at his chest. Obviously, they weren’t taking any chances. Dusza complied, his courage rapidly vanishing as he tightened his anal sphincter to keep from defecating.

“Now turn very slowly and put your hands on the trunk of your car.” The tone was surprisingly business-like, not the high-pitched shouting replete with expletives depicted on television during similar confrontations. But Dusza did not find this comforting, surmising that this guy could put a hole in his head without raising his heart rate. His bowels under control, he now concentrated on preventing his bladder from emptying suddenly. He rotated his torso slowly, noting that the trunk of his car was quite cold as his hands made contact.

“Spread your legs slowly. No sudden movements.” As he followed the instructions, he saw another figure emerge from the driver’s side. Fearful of turning his head suddenly, he tracked the figure with his eyes as it walked to the opposite side of his car. It stopped directly in front of him.

“Well if it isn’t my old friend Hulk Hogan.” Dusza quickly recognized the figure as the thug who pummeled his head with the baseball bat. “I hope that the late hour hasn’t inconvenienced you.” Dusza felt hands running up and down his legs and around his crotch. The hands then slapped his chest and sides. He winced slightly as one of his cracked ribs was irritated.

“Still have a little pain there, huh, Hulk? If it makes you feel any better, Charlie is having a slow recovery, too. He wanted to come tonight —really wanted to come — but I felt that wouldn’t have been good for your health.”

Dusza felt a hand sneak up the back of his perspiration-drenched shirt. It grabbed the envelope he had taped to the upper lumbar portion of his back —a s per the note’s instructions — and ripped it off quickly. The high level of anxiety prevented any pain from registering in his brain.

“Got it,” the voice behind him said.

“See, that didn’t take long at all,” said the thug across his car. Dusza did not respond so the thug continued, seeming to enjoy the sound of his own voice. “You’re probably wondering why we’re not bothering to count the money.” He paused waiting for a response but Dusza just stared down at the trunk of his car. “That’s because we’re sure it’s all there. But if by some off-chance you miscounted —that’s no problem — because you can make it up with the next payment.”

“There won’t be a next payment,” Dusza stammered looking up.

“Oh, I see we have a comedian in our presence.” Dusza heard the click of a releasing safety. The business end of a 357 Magnum was now pointed directly between his eyes. At least there was a little variety in the type of weapon used to threaten his life. “Listen, pal. Pay or die. That’s how it goes.”

“This isn’t fair. We paid you. Just what you asked. Why can’t you just leave us alone?”

“Oh, it’s not fair,” the thug said in mocking sympathetic tone. “Who says it’s supposed to be fair? Was it fair that my drunken mother beat my butt until it turned blue? Was it fair when the cops knocked out half my father’s teeth after they handcuffed him? You took money from the wrong people and they tell me there is a lot more where this came from. I’ll see you next week. Same day, same time and same place. If you and your friends value your life, you’ll have another forty grand for us.”

“There isn’t any more money. That’s ail we got.”

“Well in that case, you’re going to make good target practice.” He thrust the gun towards Dusza’s face. “That is unless we decide to blow up your car when you turn the key. Doesn’t look like this model came equipped with one of those remote-control ignitions. Maybe you should invest in one.” He slapped Dusza’s Nova with his unoccupied gloved hand.

Dusza began to lift his hands from the trunk, more out of frustration than anger. Suddenly he felt a stabbing pain in his side as the thug behind sank a powerful jab into his ribcage. The pain literally blinded him. He fell to his knees as he fought to retain consciousness. He brought his elbows to his sides, splinting his ribs while slowing his breathing rate. The pain abated slightly.

“Get up.” He felt a shoe pushing on his back. “Get up.”

He staggered to his feet, the laughing face of the thug across his car coming into focus. “I was one of those kids who enjoyed burning ants with a magnifying glass. Having my friend dispense pain gives me great pleasure. In fact, I hope you don’t have the money so that Charlie and I can have more fun and games. He’s looking forward to a rematch.”

With a snarl the thug continued. “Now slowly place your hands back on the car.” Dusza complied. “As much as we enjoy your company, we have to leave now. I want you to count slowly to 500. Don’t even think about following us. Out loud please.”

“One, two, three, four...” Dusza began. The two men entered the Roadrunner, the thug entering the passenger side keeping the Barretta trained on him. Rather than turn around, the car backed up until it approached the side street attached to the parking lot. Dusza continued to count. He felt an unnatural coldness in his groin and then he became aware of the distinct pungent odor of urine.

“63, 64, 65,” he said. Then he stopped. He couldn’t remember what number came after 65. Then it began to get dark. But it was already dark. Then came the bright light, straight ahead. He closed his eyes. The light was still there. It began to dance and rotate and then it burst, like a crystal ball that was smashed with a hammer. His lips felt numb and cold, like the blood was being sucked out of them. His stomach was churning. He was going to vomit. Then the numbness began to spread. It actually felt soothing. He no longer cared what number came after 65. The nausea was gone. The cold was gone. The light condensed into a single bright point, then vanished, as if he had just pushed the “off’ button on his television remote.

Chapter 14            

Thwap!

Adam Bortz watched with envy as Senator Rowland followed through with a six iron, the ball rocketing through the crisp autumn air and landing on the green 190 yards away. The adjuster from the insurance company laughed nervously as the ball rolled several inches to the right of the pin.

“Just isn’t my day,” the Senator said jovially as he tapped the silver gray Mercedes ML 370 sports utility vehicle that would have been his, if he had made the shot.

When Firestone suggested a hole-in-one contest as a fund-raiser, Bortz could not imagine netting more than a few thousand. But even though the cost was $100 a stroke, they had already made $25,000 and the suckers were still lining up to shoot.

Gordon Firestone, his head obscured by the exhaust of a Cohiba, chuckled. “Have you finally figured out what is going on here, Adam?”

Bortz was amazed. As the Lords of Greenwich lined up to shoot, he assumed that they were happy to contribute to Campana and the party. But after each shot, they went to the back of the line to shoot again, as the adjuster prohibited consecutive shots. Several of Wall Street’s finest had already taken eight shots but they continued to try again, experimenting with various titanium irons made of graphite shafts of different stiffness. One of the Lords was peering through a Rangefinder, a binocular-like apparatus that measured the exact distance to the pin. As he overheard the discussions about wind velocity, ball choice, dimple depth and green speed, he finally grasped Firestone’s point.

“These idiots are actually trying to make the shot!” he said with his voice full of wonder. Guess even the great Bortz could still learn a new trick or two.

“Exactly,” said Firestone as if he had just beaten a full house with four of a kind. “It’s not quite as successful as shakedowns for favorable tax loopholes, but it’s a close second. These financial types are basically gamblers at heart and all gamblers believe they have an edge over the game in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

“How much is the adjuster charging?” Bortz asked.

“Three thousand plus five dollars per stroke over 100.”

“That’s a great profit margin for us but why is he doing it so cheaply? Someone could make the shot and drive away with the Mercedes.”

Firestone gave him a wry smile. “They won’t. The chances are 1 in 6,500 plus I arranged for the greens keeper to put the hole on the top of a small hill. The only way anyone is making this shot is if they bounce it in or put it in on the fly.”

Just then a collective sigh exuded from the gathered gentry as one of the Lords missed the hole by inches.

“See what I mean. They have to bounce it in. I bet we walk away from here with fifty grand.”

“Enough for five thirty-second spots for Fairfield County,” Bortz added with a smile. He looked over to the side, noticing that the Senator and Campana were in deep discussion. “They should be mingling with these saps.”

Firestone turned his head. “Probably trading sack stories.” An ephemeral lascivious grin on Campana’s face confirmed his suspicions.

“No doubt,” said Bortz. “Let’s get out of here. We can go over the numbers at the headquarters.”

Both men climbed into Bortz’s Honda. Although they would have preferred to be in Firestone’s Mercedes coupe, they felt that the presence of such a vehicle would have discouraged the Lords of Greenwich from participating to the fullest. Firestone continued to jabber as Bortz rode up the Merritt Parkway, but he didn’t hear a word. His eyes soaked in the beauty of the montage of leaves: red maples, fluorescent orange beeches and yellow oaks interspersed on a deep green canvas of the ancient pines and hemlocks. It was a tragedy that Monet never lived in Connecticut during peak leaf. His love of autumn almost bordered on the sentimental.

He exited into Stamford, meandering to the downtown area and arriving at the headquarters. Inside were rows of bingo tables that Bortz had borrowed from St. Rocco’s. Matt Harkins was on the phone trying to convince a reporter to resurrect some dirt on Kincannon. A half-a-dozen paid staffers were engaged in the mundane chores that determined whether or not candidates won tight elections: faxing stories to local newspapers, checking sign locations, dialing for dollars, downloading mailing lists and telling assorted vendors the line that made America great: The check is in the mail.

Several members of the local garden clubs were graciously taking time away from their busy social schedules to stuff envelopes. One silver-haired matron in pearls approached them both. “The Hartford Journal says we’re down six points, even after the debate.”

Bortz knew that they were only down four but the newspapers polls were always several days behind, and that didn’t include the infamous margin of error that people seemed to ignore when quoting the polls. Still the poll was of some concern because the further behind you were perceived to be, the more difficult it was to raise money. “Margaret. The margin of error for that poll is five points and you know how liberal The Hartford Journal is. Those pollsters can make a poll move ten points just by the inflection in their voice when they make the phone calls. As far as we’re concerned, it’s a dead heat and we’re going to pull it out. We always do.”

Then he and Firestone smiled as they left to enter Bortz’s inner sanctum, what Firestone half-jokingly called “The Holy of Holies.” It was a windowless eight by twelve room with faux wood paneling. The previous occupant had used it as the porn room of his video establishment, until Blockbuster opened up several doors down the street and forced him into early retirement. The yellowed tiled floor was covered with ostensibly random cables emanating from electrical outlets, fiber optic connections, cable boxes and telephone jacks. They converged into a single cord wrapped in duct tape that then split in three directions. The first slinked across the floor to the two 24-inch televisions with attached VCRs that sat atop an oblong cafeteria table in the right corner of the room. The second connected to two fax machines and a copier in the opposite corner while the third group connected to the two Compaq computers, a single Hewlett Packard color laser printer and a console telephone with a headset that completely obscured the top of a military gray desk. Bortz purposely arranged the computers so that no one entering the room could see him unless he peered around them. And they would be hard-pressed to see what was on the screens, as well.

At a right angle to the desk were two card tables, stacked with newspapers, correspondence and faxes. “Campana for Governor” signs were conspicuously absent. In fact, there were only two decorations on the walls, a headshot of Kincannon with several darts in his face and a Vince Lombardi quote: Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.

Bortz cleared a spot on his desk as both men sat down. Firestone placed the data from the post-debate poll in front of them. They had been pleased with the debate. With O’Brien’s consent, they had managed to schedule it opposite a television movie on the life of Princess Diana. As a result, hardly anyone watched the debate and those who made the mistake of doing so, quickly became bored. Even Campana’s mother reached for the remote half way through. The only downside was a few scattered editorials whining about the banalities uttered by both candidates while upbraiding voter apathy. Journalists were too naive to realize that apathy and the subsequent low voter turnout was a sign of political stability. As Bortz always said, “Show me an off-year election with over 65% turnout, and I’ll show you a bunch of skinheads with swastikas tattooed on their arms.”

Bortz fired up one of the Compaqs. Harkins had answered almost all his e-mail but passed along one letter from the New Haven Town Chairman, who was discouraged that Campana would not get more than 27% of the vote in the Democratic stronghold, eight points below the target. Bortz downloaded the names of every registered voter in New Haven. Entering his search program, he clicked Italian for last name, over 55 for age, and college graduate or less for level of education. No sense in wasting a postage stamp on retired Yalies, even if it was bulk rate. He then cross-referenced this list to the vehicle registration list he had purloined from the motor vehicle department, excluding Volvo owners and everyone who owned an American car more than 12 years old, as these individuals tended to be baseline Democrats. He then executed a subroutine that removed all women with hyphenated names, another group of baseline Democrats. He clicked “Print,” causing a laser printer to spew out 1,700 mailing labels in the adjoining room.

Firestone watched with amazement as he then entered the desktop publishing program and within three minutes created a direct mail piece, highlighting Campana’s involvement in Italian civic affairs, his membership in UNICO, his father’s membership in The Sons of Italy and his preference for the thin crust pizza that was New Haven’s specialty. Entering the photo bank, he added a picture of Campana standing outside of Pepe’s Restaurant, a local landmark.

He buzzed one of the staffers. A young man in a collared white shirt and striped wool tie appeared. “Get this out to Donnally toute de suite and have his Town Committee pollute the mail with this dreck,” pointing to the colored document coming out of his personal printer. He then sent Donnally an e-mail telling him that they would rename the Capitol after him if he got 35% of New Haven.

“I don’t like these numbers,” said Firestone. “Kincannon is up by 4 points and 78% of the voters have made up their mind.”

“78% seems high with three weeks left. That doesn’t give us much of a margin for error,” Bortz said as he clicked the mouse and entered the projection software. This program, which he designed personally, was his pride and joy. Requiring several gigabytes, it was able to access numerous data banks, both in memory and on the Web and create election returns based on various scenarios that he inputted. Unlike most programs that were based on percentages, his was based on raw turnout.

“What turnout are you getting?” asked Bortz.

Firestone checked his printout. “48% overall.”

“That gives us about 983,000 voters. We have to take 60% of the undecided,” said Bortz referring to his monitor. The two political wizards continued their discussion, with Firestone feeding Bortz information from his polling data—party preferences, ethnicity, issues and gender — and the estimated turnout of each group. But no matter how they twisted and turned the numbers, Campana came up 50,000 votes short.

“We have to figure out a way to increase our turnout,” Bortz said finally.

“Adam, you know I admire your savvy, but this time, I think you’re just wrong. I know you think we can win this with superior organizing skills, but these numbers say we have to do something dramatic or we’re going down. A couple of 30s during prime time just isn’t going to cut it. We have to invade their base with an aggressive media campaign.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

“The gender gap is 12%. If we narrow that to two to three points, we’re in. Why don’t we go after Kincannon on the sexual harassment issue, remind the voters of that statutory rape of that page? Women eat that stuff up.”

“Can’t do it. I promised O’Brien no personal attacks. Besides, the networks might veto the ads.” He didn’t mention the problem with the woman Campana had beaten as a law student.

“Fine. But we can’t just sit here and let them win.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Bortz said distractedly while starring at the computer screen. “It’s just that I am not desperate enough to roll the dice with an aggressive initiative. We don’t know how the media and O’Brien are going to react. I can’t predict it. At least with the present course, we can keep narrowing down the undecided voters and go after them. O’Brien does not have the database I have. Between cable television, e-mail, direct mail and global feel-good ads, I still think we can pull it off. We’re closing the gap. They were up twelve right after the convention.”

“Adam, we have been twisting these numbers for over an hour. Your program is the best in the business and every realistic scenario we’ve tried has us going down. Despite your considerable skill, we cannot win this by some clever formula where their supporters stay home and ours show up at the polls. We have to change minds.”

Firestone had a rare serious look on his face. He walked over to one of the televisions and grabbed the remote. He returned to his chair, inhaled deeply on his cigar and depressed the “On” button. A CNN reporter who looked like Barbie’s boyfriend Ken appeared on the screen. He changed the channel until he came across the Jerry Springer show.

“This is the real America, Adam. It may not be pretty, but ten times more people are watching this than CNN.” Bortz watched as some beer-bellied guy with a full auburn beard and a Pittsburgh Pirates hat explained to the audience that he took up with some seventeen-year-old because his wife was too fat. The bottle-blonde teen, attired in cut off shorts and a frilly pink halter-top that revealed as much as it covered, smiled into the camera, revealing a missing front tooth. The pathetic wife, who looked like a refrigerator with a head, was crying, leaving rivulets in her thick make-up. Jerry Springer asked the lothario who would take care of their three children. He was explaining how that wasn’t his job until the insults being hurled at him by the audience drowned him out.

“This is unbelievable. I’ve never seen this show before.”

“That’s my point, Adam. You may be a great technician but these are the people who pick our leaders. These are the people who sit on our juries and they are complete imbeciles. They do not think logically, they think emotionally. With the right advertising, we can tell them what they want to hear. Get them to vote our way. We just have to figure out what it is.”

“I bet the turnout among that group is 24% at best,” Bortz said.

“That’s not my point. It’s not just white trash. Even highly intelligent people can be manipulated.” He surfed with the remote, bypassing several steamy soap operas, a Columbo in its hundredth rerun and a couple of game shows. He finally settled on an infomercial. It featured a blond woman wearing a one-piece aquamarine Spandex suit that looked like it was applied with a spray can. She was doing sit-ups with some contraption out of a Rube Goldberg exhibit. Beside her was a bigtoothed black-haired Adonis in a muscle shirt, tight fluorescent blue bicycling shorts and a bulging crotch explaining how with this machine, anyone could have a washboard abdomen in a matter of weeks. As he was urging the viewers to fork over $79.95, an 800 number appeared over the woman’s thrusting hips.

“My colleague Ron Davis did this piece. So far, they’ve sold 1.3 million. Do you think it works?”

Bortz knew it didn’t work because one of them was gathering dust in his bedroom, but there was no way he would ever admit this to Firestone. “It seems to work for those two.”

Firestone let out a belly laugh. “That woman is a professional model and an aerobics instructor. She does 700 sit ups a day and not with that piece of junk. She has had breast implants, two liposuctions, a tummy tuck and two lower ribs removed. Incidentally, the guy has a sock stuffed in his groin in case you were getting jealous.” Bortz shifted nervously in his chair as Firestone continued. “The average income of households who buy this piece of crap is $72,000. It doesn’t work and the funny thing, Adam, is that when Ron did follow-up marketing surveys on those who purchased it, they knew it probably wasn’t going to work! That’s why you can offer a money-back guarantee. So why did they buy it?”

Firestone inhaled deeply on the Cuban and smiled omnisciently. “They were taking a chance. A chance that they could look like the people in the ads. They knew it was a long shot but for eighty bucks, what the hell.” Firestone turned and put his face directly in front of Bortz’s. “That’s what we need to win this campaign. We have to give the voters, especially the women, a chance to improve their lives by voting for us. Promise better pay scales for women, more anti-stalking laws or some breast cancer initiative.”

“O’Brien has those issues completely locked up.”

“How about some nurturing-the-environment crap? We could have Campana standing on the Sound, wind in his hair, pontificating about his concern over baby ducklings. What’s wrong with that?”

“It will make me puke every time I see it.”

“So buy some Mylanta.”

“I guess we could run it by the focus groups but O’Brien will have the Sierra Club and Audubon Society on prime time reminding the voters about the time Campana let Rummel drain that swamp in Norwalk.”

“You mean wetlands,” said Firestone laughing. “We must remember to use politically-correct language. And besides, what’s more compelling than a spiritual rebirth?” Bortz just nodded his head in disgust while Firestone continued. “I’ll tell you, Adam, what really worries the women in this state is child care, even the childless ones. What about promising increased funding for after-school daycare programs or all-day kindergarten?”

“It will cost a goddamn fortune. How are we going to cut taxes while starting an expensive program like that? You have to hire a whole new class of child-care professionals who will demand health care benefits and pensions, not to mention overtime. Imagine the workers comp claims that will flood us when these people start getting back injuries from lifting the kids. Hell, the liability alone will bankrupt us. We’ll be making promises we can’t possibly keep.”

“Since when has that ever stopped us before?”

“You media gurus are all the same. You come up with your clever campaign ads, collect your check after we win and then afterwards, I have to clean up the shit.”

“It beats unemployment,” Firestone said, pointing his cigar at the Lombardi quote.

Bortz stared at the television, watching the smiling beauty continue doing sit ups and sighed. Firestone knew the argument was over, and that he had won.

ppppp* * * * *

Parker and Gunther were enjoying the matches from the skybox. Buxeda was having another banner night and had just finished off one of the Basques, who was sulking as he walked off the court.

“He won again,” Parker said. “I wonder if there were any large bets on him?”

“We’ll know soon. Valerie should be here any second,” Gunther said walking over to the beer tap. “It’s been a week and no unusual betting. I guess Rummel put the kibosh on those guys; we haven’t seen them lately.”

“I hope he didn’t hurt them.”

“He may have had them roughed up a little but the funny thing is, Buxeda and Ariz still have their nights when they are invincible. Look at Buxeda tonight, nobody can touch him.”

“That is bizarre. I wish Rummel had allowed us to investigate further. How did those four lowlifes know that on some nights, Ariz and Buxeda would be hot?”

“Looks like we’ll never know, but as long as Rummel’s happy, let’s all be happy.”

The door opened and Valerie Pierson appeared. “You guys ate all the peanuts again.”

“Sorry, Val.” Parker got up and found another jar in the cabinet and poured some in the bowl where Valerie took a seat.

She pulled some papers out of a folder that illustrated the distribution pattern of the evening’s wagers. “Nothing unusual. There are a few more wagers for Buxeda and Ariz since that sportswriter from The Post noticed their improved game, but no big money.” She pulled out some sheets on the trifectas, quiniellas and exactas and handed them to Gunther. Parker looked over his shoulder. “No big wagers. All three, five and a few scattered tens. Nobody’s betting anything close to the max.”

“I would love to know what the hell is going on here,” said Gunther, his forehead furrowing in frustration. “Here we are, back to the normal betting patterns and yet, Buxeda is clobbering everybody tonight.”

“Remember the one guy who said he had a system. What was his name?”

“Dusza,” said Pierson.

“Yeah, Dusza,” continued Parker. “He must have been getting the information from some third party.”

“But if this third party knows that Buxeda and Ariz have their hot nights, why didn’t he send some new gamblers to capitalize?” Pierson asked.

“Well, whoever it is, must know that we’re suspicious. Whatever Rummel did to those dirtballs must have gotten back to him. He’s probably just lying low for a while,” Parker said.

“But why are Buxeda and Ariz still playing so well?” said Gunther. “If this so-called third party has a way of improving their game either by bribes or whatever, why continue to do so if he’s not making any money?”

“Maybe just to throw us off or maybe it’s Rummel,” said Parker. “The megalomaniac is just having fun making our lives miserable.”

“But he seemed so happy the scam had come to an end at the last board meeting. Hell, he hadn’t smiled like that since he started balling what’s-her-name,” said Gunther. “Besides, it’s out of character. Rummel would have had someone else in here betting immediately. The idea of having Buxeda and Ariz continue to play well so as to avoid our suspicions would never occur to him. It’s sort of like us picking up the worms on our driveway every morning so we don’t run over them.”

“I see your point,” said Pierson. “I’m not the sports junkies that you guys are, but couldn’t it be that Ariz and Buxeda improved their game by coincidence and that Dusza just happened to notice it. Maybe what he said on the tapes is true. He has a system. And now he’s just afraid to use it.”

“But Valerie, why would the return percentage of these guys increase by 35 percent on some nights? It’s unusual for athletes in any sport to have such large fluctuations in their ability,” Gunther said, trying not to sound condescending.

“I spoke to my husband about this. He used to be a catcher in college. He told me that the same pitcher could have the speed of his fastball vary ten miles an hour on a given day. In fact, he would help his manager determine the starting pitcher, depending upon who had a good fastball. Maybe we’re seeing the same phenomenon here.”

“She has a point,” said Parker.

“Not really,” Gunther replied. “Baseball pitchers usually have a good fast ball by the time they are 18. The whole issue is control. That’s why you see some pitchers start off in the majors with lousy records that improve after a few years. Sandy Koufax pitched for the Dodgers for nine years before he won 20 games. He always had a great fastball, but he couldn’t get it over. But it is almost unheard of for a pitcher to average 80 miles per hour on his fast ball at age 20 and 95 miles per hour by age 25.”

“Maybe baseball isn’t a good analogy,” said Pierson while nibbling on the peanuts. “Don’t a lot of athletes improve their performance by taking steroids?”

“But the steroids would have shown up in the drug tests.” said Parker.

“Not if they took them in the off season,” Gunther responded. “Do you remember when Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter, lost his medal for the 100 meter race?”

“I do. That was unbelievable,” Parker said.

Gunther assumed his preferred professorial tone. “The sports fans were outraged, but the reaction of the athletic community was much different; they belittled him for being stupid enough to get caught. You have to understand that many professional athletes take steroids or their derivatives. You simply can’t compete without them. Years ago, it was just weightlifters and football linemen. In fact, when they had weightlifting contests, they had two categories: one for those who took steroids and another for those who didn’t. But now, the use of steroids has spread to many sports—wrestling, swimming, and track. Even the women take them now.”

“Don’t they have a lot of side effects?” Valerie said.

“They do, but the athletes couldn’t care less. Professional football linemen have an average life span of 55 years, well below the national average. But when it comes to a choice of athletic glory, babes, fame and fortune versus a lower middle class existence of living paycheck to paycheck, it’s a no-brainer. They take the risk. They even did a survey of Olympic athletes. They were asked if they would take a pill that enabled them to win a gold medal, but killed them in ten years.”

“What did it show?” Valerie asked.

“The majority — 57% — would take the pill.”

“Amazing,” Valerie said. “So you’re saying that Buxeda and Ariz could have taken steroids to improve their game and that there is no way we could prove it?”

“Exactly, but you’re both missing the point. Even if they took these drugs, why would it increase their return percentage? Steroids increase strength; they do not improve agility. Besides, how would Dusza have figured this out? We have found absolutely no connection to Dusza and the jai alai players.”

“And the guy looks like such a dirtball,” Parker said in an exasperated tone. “I mean it’s not like this guy was a jai alai junkie. Remember, Antonucci talked to several of the regulars. They don’t recall seeing Dusza or any of his cohorts until several months ago.” “Maybe he just got lucky,” Valerie said.

“It could be,” said Parker. “But remember, Dusza works at the same garage where Rummel gets his cars repaired. That’s the only connection we have and I can’t help but think that it’s not a coincidence.”

Chapter 15            

Pierre Appollon was puzzled, but unlike most detectives, he enjoyed being puzzled. His colleagues had a morbid fascination with death. They enjoyed crime scenes with mangled corpses and blood-spattered walls. They voyeuristically delved into the private lives of the suspects and the family members of the deceased, and gossiped among themselves about the perversions, barbarism and hypocrisy that were part of the human psyche. But Detective Appollon was above all that. To him, a good case was like The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle, something to be savored and enjoyed until solved.

He gazed at the supine body of a middle-aged male while opening his 5 by 8 spiral binder. He was from the old school. No laptop, Thinkpad, Palm Pilot or tape recorder for him. The first word he wrote, in large capital letters was “WHITE.” Most scenes like this — a dead white male in Bridgeport — were simple: a drug deal gone bad. Some Yuppie brat in a leased Jag hops off 1-95 to get some coke. The dealer—a black or Puerto Rican who grew up in a rat-infested apartment—takes one look at the sneer of privilege and jacks up the price of his stash. The brat calls him a “nigger” or “spic” and Boom; his brains are splattered all over the leather upholstery. A no-brainer in the literal and figurative sense. The only problem was portraying the brat as an altar boy to mollify the suburban whining that invariably followed.

But this was not an aborted drug deal, at least not like one Appollon had ever seen before. First, the location was wrong. When a cokehead drives in from Greenwich, he doesn’t want to get out of the car. Thus, a little-traveled side street such as Pembroke — the locale being determined by the outcome of the most recent turf battle — is chosen. The cash and drugs are exchanged in ten seconds and within three minutes, the brat is on 1-95 heading back to Greenwich to party with his friends and some germ-free hookers. The local politicians try to stop this trade by blocking the streets with concrete barriers, but the dealers just sit on them and the yuppie brats kept coming.

But this guy was in the corner of a parking lot lying beside what appeared to be his car. He had no obvious knife or bullet wounds. Furthermore, he didn’t look like a typical druggie. He was too working class. The aging brown Nova with chipped paint, the St. Christopher statue on the dashboard, the low-hanging muffler in need of repair and the threadbare sweatshirt did not fit the life-in-the-fast-lane coke image.

“The scene is secure, sir,” Officer Kevin Bagley said. Appollon looked at the yellow tape that circumscribed the area. It began 20 feet behind the car and formed a semicircle with the body at the geometric center. Bagley had opened a small area for all who entered and left the scene.

“Are you done vacuuming yet?” Appollon asked the drone from the medical examiner’s office.

“Yes sir, except for the car.”

“Hold off on the car for now.” Appollon liked the scene to be as “pure,” as he termed it, as possible. Every officer and technician who invaded a crime scene left contaminating crumbs such as clothes fibers or shoe dirt. Thus, he vacuumed the scene first.

“OK. Let’s start with the pictures,” Appollon said. He still had a slight accent even though he had left Haiti forty years ago at the age of eight. His close-cropped black hair blended with his dark brown face. The high cheek bones and pointed nose placed him as a Caribbean immigrant, his ancestors being stolen from different tribes than from the blacks from the United States, a product of some deal that allowed the English to capture slaves from the eastern African continent while the French took the west. He was dressed in a blue blazer and gray cotton slacks. This combined with his white shirt and red striped tie gave him the appearance of some middle management corporate type.

“Doesn’t look like a drug deal gone bad to me,” Bagley said. “Maybe he just stopped here to get a lewinsky from one of the working girls.”

“Smell any perfume in the car, Art?” Appollon yelled at the man with the vacuum cleaner.

The drone opened the passenger door. “Just stale cigarette smoke, sir.”

“The windows aren’t open?”

“No, sir.”

Appollon looked at Bagley. “Could be, but you can usually smell their perfume. We’ve seen the prostitutes work here in the past though. The epithelial cells from the inside of her cheeks will be on his penis if that’s the case.”

“Maybe he was killed somewhere else and they just dumped the body here.”

“But why leave the car?” Appollon said.

The photographer started at the periphery of the crime scene, the shutter firing rapidly as he worked his way towards the body. He then opened the car door, continuing his rapid-fire documentation of the scene. Upon finishing, he followed the same sequence with a video camera under Appollon’s watchful gaze.

Normally, he would not be so rigorous in following standard procedure, but this case did not smell right and he wanted no mistakes. The photographs and videos immortalized the scene, allowing him to go over the case numerous times until it made sense. Everyone who entered the scene would be logged and their attire recorded so that possible contaminants would be documented should they turn up in the evidence. He had solved several cases by finding hair, dried saliva, and coalesced blood or skin cells that led a genetic path to the culprit’s door. Details. Details. Most were superfluous, but at this point, it was impossible to determine which ones.

“Make sure you get a video of under the car and the end of the tail pipe,” Appollon said. He had once solved a case by seeing a rag stuffed in the tail pipe that prevented a car from starting. There was no such thing as having too many pictures of a crime scene. Not only for what was there, but also for what was missing; the dog that didn’t bark.

The photographer complied. Appollon’s orders were never questioned. That was one of the many things he loved about his job. He had earned his position, working his way through the ranks of the Bridgeport police force. None of his fellow officers looked at him as a product of affirmative action. His brother, a pediatrician, complained that all through medical school, internship and residency, his so-called colleagues had assumed he was incompetent, until he proved them to be wrong.

After the cameraman was done, Appollon felt confident enough to enter the crime scene. He signed the logbook, noting the exact time. He inspected the body first. The smell was disgusting. Since the bladder and bowel muscles became flaccid upon death, urine and feces had oozed into the corpse’s pants. For some reason, television murder mysteries always neglected this not so subtle detail. The deceased appeared to be in his late thirties or early forties, his head lying in a pool of dried blood. He was attired in straight-legged black denim pants with a sweatshirt that advertised Nike sneakers. Appollon could never figure out why people paid money for clothes that advertised products they couldn’t afford, as appeared to be the case here. A poorly trimmed mustache obscured the pasty face. The glazed right eye stared blankly at the gray sky while the left eye was partially obscured by a purple eyelid that blended with a yellowing bruise that encompassed the orbital area. He made a note in his pad and then reached into the deceased’s left back pocket, deftly extracting a wallet. He then reached into the right front pocket, grabbing the car keys.

The wallet was brown with frayed edges and fibrous strings. He rifled through the cash, estimating the amount to be $120. He picked through several pictures of a child with auburn hair until he found a MasterCard. Robbery did not appear to be the motive. Then he found it — the Connecticut Driver’s License — complete with color picture and holographic imaging.

“Mr. Robert Dusza, 812 Griswold Street,” he shouted.

He waited while Officer Bagley pulled a small notebook out of his pocket.

“D-U-S-Z-A,” Bagley shouted.

“That is correct.”

“OK. Shoot.”

“Social Security number 186-40-9720.”

Bagley walked on the crunching asphalt to his cruiser. He flipped open the laptop bolted to the dashboard. Clearing the screen, he typed in the Social Security number. The digitized color image of the deceased appeared along with his address and date of birth. Bob Dusza was an outstanding citizen. No arrests, no speeding tickets, no parking tickets, not even any back taxes or child support. He pushed “Print” and a hard copy sputtered out. He slid out of the car, paper in hand.

Appollon lifted the body’s sweatshirt, looking for a knife or bullet wound. He didn’t expect to see one because there were no bloodstains or entrance wounds on the sweatshirt, but he had been fooled once by a stiletto thrust under a rib cage during his rookie year. He rotated the body, noting a pool of blood where the head touched the asphalt. Satisfied, he returned the body to its original state, not wishing to contaminate the scene for the arriving medical examiner.

“Don’t see one of these too often,” Bagley said, handing him the record sheet.

In fact, Detective Appollon did not remember the last time he saw this — a dead body in Bridgeport with no criminal record. There were no domestic violence calls, no drunk driving citations, not even a barroom brawl. His first thought was that it could be a mistake or that Dusza had some political connections that enabled him to clear his record. But as he looked back at the mustached pasty corpse with a black eye — a loser if there ever was one — he couldn’t imagine Dusza having the clout or the cash to wipe his record clean.

“Something is going on here. This doesn’t smell right,” he said pointing to his nose. He turned his head to the medical examiner who was now kneeling beside the body. “I get about eight to ten hours.”

Dr. Larry Cohen smiled over at him. “I don’t even know why they send me here. You’ve got everything figured out already.”

“I wish,” Appollon replied.

“Well you’re right about the time of death. Probably around midnight.” He lifted the left arm, watching its rate of descent impeded by the incipient rigor mortis.

“Any idea as to the cause?” Appollon said walking over to him.

Cohen rose to his full five feet seven inches. A white lab coat blanketed his compact frame. He peered at Appollon through circular wire-rimmed glasses. He still kept his hair long, a black bushy mop that partially lay over both ears. He had a baby face, his smooth jowls wrapping around a dimpled chin, making him appear ten years younger than his actual age of 45. “Nothing obvious,” he said. “No gunshot wounds, no knife wounds, no strangulation marks, no needle tracks, no coke crystals in the nasal hair.”

“How about the black eye?”

“That was there before he died,” Cohen responded.

He knelt beside the body and pointed above the upper eyelid where the purple skin intersected with the faded white skin. “Look. See this area here?” Appollon nodded. “I bet he got punched in the orbital area seven to ten days ago and a welt formed here.” He moved his finger down the body’s face until it was pointing to the lower eyelid. “Then the blood spread under the skin and down the cheek. Sort of like when you get a bruise on your arm that gets bigger before it fades and disappears.”

Appollon bent closer to the body’s face, staring at the black eye like a botanist studying a rare orchid. Cohen pointed under the body’s left temple and continued. “Look at this yellow area over here. This coloration is formed by the breakdown of blood products. You usually don’t see this until five days after an injury, sometimes longer.”

“So this man was in a fight about a week ago?” Appollon queried.

“Probably. He could have fallen, but that usually only happens with the elderly or the alcoholics. I overheard you say he had no priors.”

“None that we know of.”

“Could he have been punched again last night?”

“Maybe, but that’s not what killed him. It takes a powerful punch to kill a man and there is no evidence of any recent blows to his face or head. Wait. Let me check something.”

He placed his gloved hand into the body’s mouth and pried it open with his thumb and index finger. With his other hand, he pushed against the teeth. “None of the teeth are loose but several are recently missing. A blow powerful enough to kill him would certainly have dislodged several teeth even if it didn’t leave any facial bruises. That is unless he had an aneurysm that was ready to blow.”

“How about all the blood under his head? Could he have been hit hard enough to knock him down, and then died from the head injury when he hit the ground?”

“Again, it’s possible, but I doubt it.” He lifted the body’s head, straining slightly as he rotated the back towards Appollon. His gloved fingers spread the graying brown hair revealing a laceration in the scalp two inches in length surrounded by dried blood. Cohen’s gloved fingers pulled the laceration apart. “It’s almost to the bone. A wound this deep would bleed profusely, accounting for all the blood we see here.”

“Couldn’t he have died from one of those... what do you call it when they bleed into the brain?”

“A subdural hematoma?”

“That’s it.”

“Again, it’s possible, we’ll be certain after the autopsy, but I wouldn’t bet on it. He’s too young. The skull isn’t brittle enough to allow the transmission of force through the bone to cause the blood vessel rupture seen in subdurals. If he were sixty, I’d buy it. Now he could be on a blood thinner such as Coumadin in which case, even minor trauma could cause a subdural. We’ll check his medical records. But it’s unlikely that a young guy like this would need Coumadin. It’s usually given in older patients to prevent strokes. Sometimes it’s given to patients who have had surgery on their heart valves or carotid arteries, but he doesn’t have any scars that indicate that any of these procedures were done.”

Appollon loved working with Cohen. He could fire away questions without encountering medical arrogance. He continued. “Then why did he hit his head?”

“He must have lost consciousness rapidly before dying, maybe from a massive heart attack causing an arrhythmia.”

“So he would hit the ground hard?”

“Exactly. You see, there are two ways to lose consciousness,” said Cohen with an avuncular tone. “One way is all of a sudden. This is usually from a heart arrhythmia. The heart skips a few beats, the blood stops going to the brain and BANG.” Cohen clapped his hands for emphasis. “The patient hits the ground like a falling tree. These patients have bruises and lacerations on the parts of the body where they land. In this case, this guy was standing erect and fell backwards, accounting for the deep laceration on the back of his head. When someone losses consciousness slowly, say from a fainting spell, they fall to their knees and then use their arms to break their fall as they hit the ground. Deep scalp lacerations rarely occur.”

“But couldn’t a punch have done this?” Appollon responded.

“It could,” he said rubbing his chin, “but like I said, it would have to be a powerful punch. You ever watch boxing?”

“Sometimes, if the kids are in bed.”

“Notice how the guys go down. Usually they fall to one knee then topple over. Slow loss of consciousness. But every once in a while, you’ll see a punch so powerful — like in those early Mike Tyson mismatches — where the guy is literally knocked out while he is standing.”

“I got you,” said Appollon smiling with satisfaction as he grasped Cohen’s point. “Then he hits the canvas like a sack of potatoes.”

“That’s what I think happened here, Pierre, but not from a punch because the bruises on his face do not appear to be fresh.”

“So we don’t know why he died.”

“Not yet, but it does not appear to be violent. It smells like a heart attack to me. Even though he’s young, he’s overweight and out of shape. Looks like he’s a smoker too. See those dilated bluish veins on his nose? Bet he’s hypertensive, also.”

“Art says the car reeks with cigarette smoke.”

“The temple of truth will be in the autopsy.”

“Lieutenant, check this out,” Appollon turned his head to Ken Murtha, the finger print technician. “Prints all over the trunk here.”

Appollon walked over to the brown Nova. The gray powder of finger print dust lit up the right side of the trunk.

“Are they the deceased’s prints?”

Murtha walked to the corpse, grasped the right hand and pushed it against a mirror. He then returned to the car, carefully comparing the prints. “Most of them are smudged but there are a few sharp ones. These definitely are the prints of the deceased. Don’t know why there are so many here, though.”

Appollon studied the prints on the trunk, noting that the right hand and left hand were about two feet apart and that the two thumbs pointed to each other. He smiled to himself, the quick smile of satisfaction. Things were beginning to make sense. He called over to the technician with the vacuum cleaner. “Go over this area again. I want a separate bag of the sweepings from this area.” He paced a four-foot by four-foot square adjacent to the part of the trunk where the prints were located.

He then opened the passenger door of the car. Art was right. It reeked of stale cigarette smoke. There were some empty Styrofoam coffee cups near the frayed carpet protector on the passenger side. Dust covered the dashboard and the inside windshield was filthy. He noted that there were over 183,000 miles on the odometer. The guy must have been a mechanic to keep this heap going for that long. He opened the glove compartment, searching through maps and a few cassettes — Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen — until he found the registration. Seeing Dusza’s name on it satisfied him that it was his car. He climbed out of the car and opened the trunk with Dusza’s keys, taking care not to leave any prints on the car. There was no evidence that the body had been in the trunk. No blood and more importantly, no stench. Just a flat spare tire, some jumper cables and antifreeze.

“Art, you can vacuum the car now but I doubt if you’ll find anything. Have John dust the buttons on the radio and the handle that adjusts the seat distance from the pedals.” Appollon was amazed at how many criminals planned perfect crimes and then inadvertently left their prints on radio buttons and seat handles when they drove someone else’s car.

Officer Bagley approached his superior. “Sir, I just got word that he was reported missing by his wife last night around 2:00 AM.”

“What do you think happened here?” Appollon asked like a teacher challenging a student.

“I don’t know, sir, but just about every violent crime we see has something to do with drugs, alcohol or sex.”

“How about gambling?” Appollon said.

“Gambling? You mean he was here to make a payment?”

“You got it, Kevin, I don’t know why everyone says you’re so dumb.”

Bagley laughed, actually considering Appollon’s comment to be a compliment in an off-handed way.

Cohen, having supervised the proper bagging of the body, joined Bagley and Appollon. “What’s your theory here, Pierre?”

“As Officer Bagley just pointed out, he was here to make a payment. Dusza arrived here first. He was instructed to park here in the corner.” Appollon gestured with his right hand. “They didn’t meet in the middle of the lot, they met in the corner so as not to be conspicuous. Also, notice how the car is parked — with the front end against the fence. Whoever was picking up the payment told Dusza to park this way so that it would be more difficult for him to ram their car should he be so inclined. Also, it would make it harder for Dusza to follow them.

“Another car arrived. Unfortunately, because this is asphalt, there are no obvious tire tracks. However the dirt found over here,” Appollon gestured to behind the car, “is different in texture and color from the dirt in Dusza’s car’s tires. I bet there were at least two guys, maybe three. One of them aimed a gun at Dusza’s head, scaring the hell out of him. He then told Dusza to place his hands on the trunk of the car and spread his legs, a routine search for a weapon. That’s why those prints are there. Then the money changed hands. What happened after that, I am not sure.”

“It still could be drugs,” Bagley said.

“It could be, but I doubt it. This guy liked to gamble. Why do you think so many guys watch sports? Do you really think they care if Penn State beats Alabama? Not unless they’ve got 50 smackers riding on the outcome. Then these games become very exciting. Wait until we talk to his wife. I bet this guy spent at least ten hours every weekend in front of the tube.”

“Do you think they killed him?”

“That’s the $64,000 question. I don’t think so. I like the Doc’s idea. He had a heart attack, something like that. This guy was in over his head and couldn’t handle the stress of the situation.”

“Literally scared to death,” Cohen said. “A few shots to the gut, a kick in the groin, even a snarling threat and fright response induces the adrenal glands to release massive amounts of epinephrine. This constricts the coronary arteries, cuts off the blood supply to the heart and schools out.”

We’ve seen it before,” Appollon added.

“Could they have poisoned him?” Bagley said.

“That’s not their style. These collectors like to get baseball bats and beat people over the head. The like to smash jaws, break fingers and fracture legs. This discourages their customers from falling too far behind on their payment schedules.”

Appollon continued. “This guy made the payment. If he hadn’t, they would have beaten him to a pulp or used his face for target practice. There’s no evidence of this, right Doc?”

“Not that I can see at this point. Perhaps there was some blunt trauma that isn’t obvious from visual inspection. I’ve seen cases where a broken rib penetrates the lung, causing a pneumothorax and suffocation. I’ll know after the autopsy.”

Appollon started walking to his car. “Kevin, you find the widow and get her to identify the body. If she isn’t too hysterical, bring her to the station so that I can interview her.”

Chapter 16            

After hearing the knock on the door, Paula Dusza instinctively looked through the peephole. Her heart skipped a beat as she distinguished a solemn face with a clenched jaw and android-like eyes underneath a peaked navy blue hat. Even with the distorted view of the peephole, she could see the official uniform.

She quickly pushed the two dead bolts aside but the increasing tremor of her hands made it difficult to rotate the Stanley lock. Once successful, she pulled the door open with such force that the solemn face flinched.

There he was, a tower of rectitude, and he was young, in his late twenties. And like most young adults who occupied the bottom tier of the pecking order of their place of employment — in this instance, the Bridgeport Police Department — he was assigned the most unpleasant tasks.

The clenched jaw finally moved. “May I come in, ma’am?”

“What’s this about?” If she did not let him in, whatever horrible news he had would remain secret.

“May I come in, ma’am?” The tone and inflection did not change. Paula Dusza stepped back as the police officer entered her house. “Are you Mrs. Paula Dusza?”

Tears began to well in her eyes. “I am.”

“Perhaps you should sit down, ma’am,” Officer Bagley said. As unpleasant as it was, he had the routine down. His emotions had hardened quicker than many other of the young officers and he had learned to use his willingness to break bad news as leverage for lucrative overtime sinecures such as guarding potholes during repairs. His superior, Detective Appollon, rarely came with him to report deaths to next of kin, even though they were often the culprits in the murder cases. He claimed that his black skin frightened the families, but Bagley felt that Appollon just wanted to avoid seeing the hysterics. It was something he had never gotten used to, even though he witnessed it many times.

In this instance, Bagley’s job was made easier because Paula Dusza had already reported her husband missing. She sat down on the couch, staring blankly at the newly cleaned carpet. Her lower eyelids were swollen, forming oblong balloons under her hazel eyes, the consequence of a sleepless night.

Unable to make eye contact, Officer Bagley proceeded. “I regret to inform you that a body was found with identification bearing the name Robert Dusza. I am sorry to have to relay this information to you.”

Paula Dusza did not look up. She just leaned forward allowing the tears to fall on the carpet instead of her blouse. Bagley’s body tensed, in anticipation of the shrieks and sobs that often followed. But they never came. Instead Paula Dusza just continued to stare at the carpet, as the tears became a steady stream. After half a minute, Officer Bagley began to shift his feet. Although he was getting impatient, he didn’t say anything. He had learned that sacrificing an additional 30 seconds of silence often saved an hour of hysterics. At least the situation was controlled.

Finally she looked up. “What do you need me to do?”

“We need you to identify the body.”

“My daughter gets home from school at 3:30. Will I be back by then?”

“Yes. I will see to it personally.”

“I want to tell my daughter.”

“We will do our best to release no information to the media until all next of kin are notified.” The officer knew this was not always possible, so he hedged a little.

“I’ll get my keys.”

“I would prefer if you came with me. Driving is often difficult in the face of bad news. After you have identified the body, you will need to go the police station to speak with Detective Appollon. I’ll drive you home afterwards.”

She heard the words but they did not register in her brain. She moved in slow motion, as though someone else was controlling her actions. Without thinking, she grabbed her coat and left her house with the officer. After taking several steps down her sidewalk, she noticed the drizzle hitting her face. Looking up, she saw the overcast sky, the sun too impotent to peak through. Officer Bagley motioned for her to sit in the front seat. She complied mindlessly. Bagley thought it odd that she had no questions. No “What happened?” or “Where did you find the body?” Still, he did not think her to be a suspect. His experience was that murderers almost immediately pummeled him with questions while surreptitiously throwing in an alibi. He put the car in gear, leaving the dying neighborhood while silence prevailed.

As they pulled into the parking lot of the morgue, she finally spoke. “He was murdered.”

“What makes you say that?” Bagley asked.

“The jai alai people killed him. He had a system. He won thousands of dollars.”

Appollon was right again. The culprit was gambling. Her husband had obviously convinced her that he actually won at the fronton.

Sensing his skepticism, the new widow responded. “I’m not crazy. Bob won over $30,000 at the fronton. They beat him up. He was supposed to pay them back.” She was no longer crying, the emotion of grief slowly being replaced with anger, although Bagley was fairly sure that the grief would return.

Bagley was starting to believe her. Most widows held out a shred of hope that there was a mistake, until they identified the body. But not this lady. She was already convinced that her husband was dead. If she had been involved in his death, she would at least feign hope until she saw the body. “Ma’am, you will have an opportunity to explain everything to Detective Appollon. If there is evidence of foul play, he will get to the bottom of it. He always does.”

After parking in a handicapped spot, they exited the car and entered the morgue. Even by Bridgeport standards, the place was dreary. The gray concrete exterior gave way to a corridor of chipped faded yellow linoleum tiles with green swirls. They walked past an elevator with an “Out of Order” sign posted on the puke-colored green door. Officer Bagley pushed open a thick metal door, holding it with his massive arm until Paula Dusza passed. They descended a flight of concrete stairs with dust on each side of the individual steps. At the bottom were a half-dozen Styrofoam cups along with crinkled cellophane paper. No sense in using a garbage can if the entire building was a dumpster.

The police officer again held the door, allowing Paula Dusza to enter the bowels of the building. No linoleum tiles here. Just corridors of concrete and dirty white plaster walls.

“Wait here please, Mrs. Dusza,” Bagley said he stopped at a door that said in fading black letters “MORGUE.” The E was partially eroded. She stood in the hallway alone until the door opened from the inside. The officer ushered her to a window that enclosed a silver chicken-wire fence. Directly opposite the glass was a gurney with a yellow-white sheet covering an oblong mound. A tight-lipped black man with a shaved head and white coat looked up at Officer Bagley. The policeman nodded. She heard the rumbling of the heating system, like a premonitory drum roll for what she was about to see. The man grasped the sheet and pulled it down slowly, revealing a mustached sallow face with closed eyes.

Paula Dusza stared at the face for a minute. She recognized him immediately but her mind wandered. She recalled how the face of her husband had changed, from the creaseless happy-go-lucky visage of the young buck she married, to that of a harried stressed-out working class mechanic who did his best to come out ahead in the rigged game of life. But now he was back to baseline. The worry-lines on his forehead were gone. The dilated blood vessels on his nose and cheeks were now empty. To say he was now at peace was not exactly correct. A better word was acceptance. Yes, acceptance. The corpse of Bob Dusza appeared to accept what he never accepted in life —that the deck was stacked against him. It always had been.

The two men, separated by the chicken-wire glass stared blankly at each other, not wishing to give the woman an excuse to go into hysterics. Officer Bagley had no intention of shuffling his feet although he had positioned himself behind her to catch her in case she fainted.

The tears streamed her face again. “That’s him.” The emotion of sorrow had returned; but it did not replace the anger.

Officer Bagley nodded to her, but didn’t make eye contact. His experience was that expressions of sympathy often created more tears and made his job more difficult. She turned back to look at her husband’s body. After several seconds she said, “What do I do now?”

“I will take you to speak with Detective Appollon.”

The two left the morgue, ascended the stairs, exiting the same door where they entered. Other than a few questions about the disposition of her husband’s body, she remained silent for the ride. The police station was an impressive building, with marble stairs positioned between Doric columns, a reminder of more prosperous times, when the textile mills and manufacturing plants were humming. They ascended the stairs quickly, the drizzle having become rain, and passed through two massive oak doors and a metal detector.

After ascending to the third floor, the two approached Detective Appollon’s office shuffling through rows of gray metallic desks where the thin blue line processed the paperwork that attempted to restrain the criminal class from plying their trade. Bagley ignored the rantings of a handcuffed Hispanic man who was being arrested for turning his pregnant girlfriend’s face into a blue balloon, but Paula Dusza couldn’t help staring at him.

Have a seat, please.” Paula Dusza placed herself in a metallic chair that wobbled when she shifted her feet. The Hispanic man was only 15 feet away, his voice rising. She wasn’t scared, as the thick-necked officer presiding over his case seemed to relish the prospect of smashing his skull should the assailant make the mistake of lunging forward.

Bagley knocked, and then entered AppolIon’s office, a cozy niche filled with pictures of his four children and statuesque wife along with elongated mahogany carvings of tribal masks. Appollon was filling out forms regarding the Dusza case, since the paperwork was more important to his superiors than actually solving it.

“How is she handling it, Kevin?”

“Better than most. She expected him to be dead and identified the body without difficulty.”

“How is our theory holding up?”

“You’re right, sir. He was there to make a payment, but according the Mrs. Dusza, he had won money betting on jai alai and was being asked by thugs hired by the fronton to return it.”

“Are you serious?” Appollon asked while suppressing a laugh.

“I didn’t get into the details, but that’s what she believes. She was very sincere about it.”

“Show her in,” he said with a puzzled look on his face.

The young policeman ushered in the new widow. “This is Detective Appollon, who will be in charge of the case.”

Paula Dusza strode into Appollon’s office. Pierre Appollon quickly walked from behind his desk and extended his hand. “I am sorry for your loss and greatly appreciate your willingness to talk to me so soon after receiving such distressing news.”

In actuality, Paula Dusza had not been given an option of refusal, but she was not about to point this out. “Thank you for your sympathy.” Appollon gestured for her to take a seat. She complied as he circled his desk and returned to his chair.

“Officer Bagley tells me that you have an idea of what happened to your husband.” Appollon preferred to ask vague open-ended questions initially during his investigations, finding that potential suspects and innocent next-of-kin made revealing statements when allowed to speak freely.

“He was murdered.”

“You sound quite certain of that.”

“He and his friends had figured out a way to make money at the fronton. They each won at least $30,000. When the fronton figured out what they were up to, they killed my husband.”

“Our investigation is still in the preliminary stage, but it appears to us that your husband had a rendezvous with men to whom he made a payment. It appears to us that he died of a heart attack or some other medical cause. There is no preliminary evidence that he was assaulted during the meeting.”

“He was killed,” she said forcefully thrusting herself towards the startled Appollon.

“I am not disagreeing with you, Mrs. Dusza. I will need your help to get to the bottom of your husband’s death. Do you think it’s possible that your husband told you he was winning money at the fronton but was actually losing? Many husbands who gamble tell that to their wives.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Why are you so sure of that?”

“Because he had the cash, over $30,000. I saw it.”

Appollon raised his eyebrows and interrupted, “He had $30,000?” he asked with his voice rising.

“Yes. He told me that he and three of his buddies had a system to beat the fronton.” She continued for the next several minutes telling a mesmerized Appollon how her husband was assaulted in front of their house, his refusal to go to the emergency room, how he stored the money in the basement and how he was supposed to meet some thugs from the fronton to repay some of the money.

The facts of the case did not have the ring of truth. The idea of Bob Dusza and three of his working class pals having a system to rip off the fronton seemed ludicrous. But if Appollon relied only on facts, he would just be another detective rather than the crackerjack that he was.

“Did he return all the money to the thugs?”

“No, they didn’t ask for all it. Bob’s share was $5,000. I still have over $25,000 at the house.”

“Why didn’t they ask for all of it?”

“I don’t know. Bob said it was because the fronton was unsure how much they won. He said the fronton would never have figured out what happened if one the guys didn’t bet too much.”

“Bet too much?” Appollon asked.

“Something about quiniellas and exactas.”

Appollon, like most cops, believed that past behavior predicted future behavior. While he found the scam interesting, what was Dusza’s motive? Why did he take such risks?

“Did your husband use drugs?” he asked.

“We smoked pot a few times before we were married, but my husband was always a beer man. And none of that designer stuff, just Bud and Coors.”

“Did he ever use cocaine?”

“No. No way. I would have known. That makes people crazy. He never acted crazy. Stupid, yes, but not crazy.”

Appollon paused for several seconds but continued to write on his pad. Paula Dusza took a sip of her coffee. She was not becoming upset in spite of the staccato fire of somewhat insulting questions, even though she had just learned of her husband’s death. He decided to keep firing. “Were you having money problems?”

“We always had money problems. If we didn’t have family around here, we’d move to North Carolina. You can buy a three-bedroom cape in a safe neighborhood with good schools for $50,000. Here, a fixerupper in a town with a good school system costs $250,000.”

“But were you in debt?”

“Yes, but we were making our payments. Every time we would get a small nest egg, our — my — daughter would have an asthma attack and have to be hospitalized. We owe Bridgeport Hospital $3,000 and were paying $ 100 a month.”

Appollon wasn’t sure whether to believe her until she added, “I kept calling the credit card company to make sure they didn’t increase our limit. That’s how they get you, you know.”

“Did he like to watch sports?”

“Bob loved baseball and followed football,” she said slowly, wondering what the point of the question was.

“Yankees and Jets?”

Paula Dusza smiled for the first time. “How’d you know?”

Appollon just smiled back, not wishing to detract from his interrogation by discussing the transition line that began in neighboring Stratford. The line that separated Jets fans from Patriots fans, Yankees from Red Sox fans and for that matter, the New York City metropolitan area from New England.

“Did he gamble on sports?”

“Over my dead body. One of his friends lost everything — his family, his job — because he blew all his paychecks at Foxwoods. I told Bob that if he started gambling, I’d be out the door.”

Appollon raised his eyebrows. Unable to see an obvious motive and sensing Paula Dusza’s natural honesty, he went to the direct approach. “Mrs. Dusza, let me be honest with you. Your husband does not fit the type of person to be involved in this type of activity. Do you have any idea why he was doing this? You were making ends meet; he’s not a drug addict and doesn’t appear to be a compulsive gambler. He actually saved the money he won!”

The tears welled up in her eyes. “Of course I do. I wanted to get out of Bridgeport. Our — my — daughter will be a teenager in a few years and the schools aren’t safe. But no matter how hard he worked, he couldn’t get ahead. For every dollar we saved, the house lost two dollars in value.” She sobbed for several seconds. “And I kept bugging him. I guess I made him feel like he was a bad provider. Men hate that.”

Having gotten his family out of Bridgeport years ago, Appollon thought the motive was plausible. But he still couldn’t imagine how Dusza and his pals ripped off the fronton when professional gamblers often lost there. “How did your husband’s plan work?”

She dabbed her eyes with a tissue that Appollon offered. “Bob worked at a garage in Greenwich where a lot of big shots get their limos fixed. He said they bugged one that belonged to Malcolm Rummel and overheard that several players were being paid off. That’s how they knew how to bet.”

Appollon winced when he heard the name Rummel. This was no longer just a criminal investigation. Once a high profile name was bantered about, it became political and Appollon hated politics. His father was a respected lawyer in Haiti when the dictatorship of “Papa Doc” Duvalier began in 1957. When Duvalier started killing his political opponents, his father spoke out. He still heard the anguished cries of his mother while the Ton Ton Macoutes, Duvelier’s secret police, gang raped her while his handcuffed father was forced to watch. Then the Macoutes put two bullets in his parents’ heads. He and his brother were spared and allowed to immigrate to the United States where he was raised by his aunt and uncle.

“Do you understand?” she said.

His reverie interrupted, he responded, “Yes, what you say makes sense but why didn’t they ask for all the money? You said you have $25,000 left.”

“I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t realize how much Bob and his pals had won.” Appollon realized that he would have to discuss the betting method with Dusza’s partners so he obtained their names.

“You’ve been asking me a lot of questions; do you mind if I ask you one?”

“Not at all,” Appollon replied.

“What do you think happened to my husband?”

“The investigation is still in the preliminary stage but what you tell me makes sense except for one thing, there was no obvious evidence of trauma. Of course there will be an autopsy. It is required by state law in deaths of this nature.”

“So why is my husband dead?”

“We’re not sure. He probably met with the same people who assaulted him before. We think he was there to make a payment, just like you said. He may have had some blunt trauma that we haven’t detected yet or he may have had a heart attack or a stroke because of the stress of the situation.”

He rose from his chair but she remained seated. “You seem to be very good at what you do. Somebody killed my husband. He did not just fall over and die. Please do your best.” She then rose.

Appollon walked her out of his office. “Officer Bagley will take you home.” She noticed that the manacled Hispanic male was still present although more subdued.

Appollon returned to his office to collect his thoughts. Hopefully, the autopsy would show a cause of death. But it seemed to Appollon that the thugs had a vested interest in keeping Dusza alive. That is unless they wanted to set an example.

But what really bothered him was the tone in Paula Dusza’s voice. She would not accept a failure to solve the case and then the mess could end up in the press. And then the case would be political. And Appollon hated politics.

Chapter 17            

The vicious stare in Coles’ eyes told Louie that the wad of cash he had just slipped under the restaurant table was of little consolation. “I swear to God. we didn’t kill him,” Louie said vehemently. Nobody really knew his real name, but since his favorite weapon was a Louisville Slugger, the name had stuck.

Bob Coles looked into the pleading eyes of the former bouncer. It was unusual to see such an intimidating figure, with his massive bull neck and hardened jaw, suffused with fear. He then glanced down at the small article on the bottom of page 3 of The Bridgeport Post. As a community service, the editorial board of The Post rarely ran the crime stories on the front page, hoping to somehow bamboozle its readership into thinking the city was actually safe.

Bob Coles moved his beer to the side, placed his half frame glasses on his nose, made sure the waitress was out of earshot and began reading from the paper. “Man found dead. The body of a Bridgeport resident was found in the parking lot of the abandoned Yankee Electronics plant. Police sources stated the man was Mr. Robert Dusza, 39, of Griswold Street.”

His gray eyes lasered in on Louie’s. “Perhaps this rag put the story in here just to annoy me and Mr. Robert Dusza is alive and well and going to Disney World with his family for Thanksgiving.”

“Even the paper said the cause of death was unknown,” said Louie pointing to the article. They guy was probably snorting coke or something and OD’ed.”

“Our friends in the police department tell us that he probably had a heart attack because you scared the living shit out of him. He wasn’t a druggie. They even checked his blood to make sure.”

“Listen. This guy was no pussy. The first time we tried to scare him, he threw Charlie to the ground, ripped his arm out of its socket, and started smashing his head into the sidewalk. You should have seen the look on the guy’s face. If I wasn’t there, he would’ve killed Charlie.”

“Well, this guy’s widow is making noises. She knows her husband made a few bucks gambling at the fronton and believes we killed him to get the money back. If this gets in the press, Rummel is going to look for someone to blame.”

Louie’s worst suspicions were confirmed. His future existence was now at stake. “We didn’t touch him. I swear,” he said with a pleading tone in his voice.

“I see. Next, I suppose you’re going to tell me that you gave him a free toaster for his cooperation,” Coles smiled, amused at his own wit. Then he thrust his torso forward and pointed his finger in Louie’s face. “You forget something, Louie. I know you. I grew up with animals like you. You enjoy inflicting pain. You like to see the look of terror on some poor sap’s face when you scare the piss out of him. I bet when you were a kid you tied two cats’ tails together and hung them on a tree branch and watched them claw each other’s eyes out. You asked the class nerd for his lunch money and after he handed it over, you beat the crap out of him anyway. So don’t insult my intelligence and tell me you didn’t whack this punk around.”

The gulp in Louie’s throat told Coles he hit pay dirt. “Okay. Hammer hit him once, but that’s it. Just a love tap to his rib cage.”

“A love tap,” said Coles rolling his eyes. “You guys are so charitable. Maybe I should write a letter to the Pope and see if you can leapfrog Mother Teresa for canonization.”

Louie didn’t know what canonization was, but he knew he better appear apologetic, dropping his shoulders into submissive position. If Coles reported to Rummel that he had killed Dusza, he would join Jimmy Hoffa in having a permanent end zone seat.

“Why would we kill him? You told me that we could keep 20% of what we collected. A nice piece of change just for making a punk pee his pants. He was going to make several more payments.”

“Because you are dumbshits,” Coles said, his nostrils flaring. “You clowns watch too many Steven Seagal movies. You think you can just whack people around, and when you’re done they just get up and walk away with a bloody nose. What ever happened to professionalism? We used to be able to hire people and tell them — a broken arm, a black eye, a smashed hand — and that’s what we would get. Not a dead body. Nobody takes pride in their work anymore. No wonder the country is going to hell.”

“What do you want me to do, Mr. Coles? It’s not my fault if the guy had a problem with his ticker. This never happened before.”

“Well it better not happen again.”

Louie hoped that Coles did not see his sigh of relief when he used the future tense. “Do you mean that you still want us to pursue further collection on this guy’s pals?”

“No. Don’t touch any of them until I talk to Rummel. But my bet is that he’ll want to back off. He’s afraid that business will tank if it gets out that the jai alai games might be rigged. My problem is the police.” “There is no way they can trace this to us. We didn’t leave a clue.” “We don’t give a shit if the cops suspect you,” said Coles chuckling. “But if these other three guys start talking, the police are going to investigate further and it will just be a matter of time until it gets in the newspaper that the jai alai games may be rigged.”

A confused look crossed Louie’s face. “But you just said you didn’t want me to touch those three guys.”

“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean you can’t convince them to keep their mouths shut.” Coles smiled broadly. “My bottom dollar says they think they’re next. You contact these three guys and reinforce this perception. You tell them to keep the money, but hide it. If the police see it, they’re dead. If they talk to a reporter, they’re dead. But whatever you do, don’t touch any of these guys unless I say so.”

Louie nodded. “Rummel’s a real prick. Do you think he’ll go for this?”

“He’s on his yacht near Bermuda and I haven’t been able to get a hold of him, but I know how he thinks. He’s a prick but he’s a practical prick. He doesn’t do anything stupid that will cost him money and if this gets in the newspaper, it will cost him money, lots of money.”

Louie didn’t have the audacity to ask if he could collect more money from the three guys. This job would have to be on the house. Bob Coles slid out of the booth and smiled generously at Louie. “Stay out of trouble,” he said with a facetious smile while pushing the tab towards Louie.

Louie waited for him to leave and then took a seat at the bar, quickly ordering two shots of Jack Daniels from a barmaid with frilly black hair and painted-on jeans. His hands were trembling so much that he was afraid to pick up the shot, as it was filled to the brim. He pushed his lips to the glass, sucking up whiskey until the level was a quarter inch below the top of the glass. He then grasped the shot and chugged it, enjoying the burning sensation as the whiskey bathed his throat. He then chugged the second shot while ignoring the stare of the barmaid.

ppppp* * * * *

“My wife is going apeshit. Apeshit.” Rick Holtz pounded down another shot of tequila, not usually a big seller at Carlini’s Bar.

“What are we gonna do?” Frank Spano said. He had been in the bar only five minutes, and already he was working on his third beer.

“That guy sure sounded serious to me,” Bill Evans replied while lighting a cigarette.

“What did he tell you?” Holtz asked.

Evans sucked so hard on his cigarette that Holtz could see the glowing end shrinking in size. “I got this call. This voice — this voice from hell — says ‘You wanna end up like your friend?’ ”

“That’s what the bastard said to me, too,” Holtz said. “But he told me that I could keep the money as long as I didn’t talk to anyone.”

“That’s what he said to me too,” Spano chimed in.

“Why would they let us keep the money if they killed Bob to get it back?”

“Maybe they didn’t mean to kill him,” Holtz said. “I know Paula thinks they did, but there were no signs on his body that they beat him. He wasn’t even shot or knifed.”

“She wants us to tell the police about the gambling ring,” Spano said.

“So we can get killed just like poor Bob,” Evans replied sarcastically.

“Well, she convinced my wife,” Holtz said. “She wants me to go to the police and tell them everything.”

“That would be crazy,” Evans said.

“So what do you think we should do?” Spano said.

“Exactly what that goddamn animal told us to do. Keep the money and don’t talk to the police or the press,” Evans responded while crushing the cigarette into the cracked glass ashtray.”

Spano looked at Evans skeptically. “How are we gonna do that? If the cops show up, you have to talk to them. What if they have a warrant to search the house?” Spano asked.

Several seconds of silence followed, the three men oblivious to the increasing cacophony as more regulars shuffled in. Finally Holtz spoke. “Here’s what we do. Everybody get the cash out of the house. Put it in your safety deposit box.”

“I don’t have one,” Spano said.

“I don’t either,” Evans agreed.

“Well you have to get the cash out of the house. Hide it at work. Hide it at your parents’ house. But get it out of the house. You don’t want the cops to find it.” Holtz said emphatically.

“Can’t they search a safety deposit box?” Spano asked.

“No way. It’s illegal. How do you think all those rich pigs hide their money from the IRS? Their safety deposit boxes are full of cash and jewels. The only people who pay taxes are saps like us,” Evans said. “Rich is right. The safety deposit box is the way to go.” He looked at Holtz. “What do you think about Frank and me giving our money to you and you putting it in your box?”

“You guys trust me?” Holtz said smiling.

The three men laughed — a nervous laugh but a laugh, nonetheless — for the first time. “Of course we trust you,” Evans said. “With a little luck, this will blow over in a few months and we’ll be out of Bridgeport.” His words sounded like he was trying to convince himself that he was speaking the truth.

“But we’re still going to have to deal with the police?” Spano said.

“Just tell them that Dusza got lucky a couple of times. We never won. As long as we keep our story straight, there isn’t much they can do,” Holtz said.

“But he had thousands of dollars. The police won’t believe that he just got lucky a few times,” Evans said.

“There is a difference between what they believe and what they can prove,” Holtz replied. “For all they know, Dusza was saving that money for years.”

“But what if Dusza’s wife tells the police that we were all in it together,” Spano said.

“So what. If they don’t find the cash they can’t prove a thing,” Holtz replied.

“But what if the fronton tells the police about us?” Spano asked, his voice squeaking.

Rick Holtz stared at the rapidly decompensating Frank Spano. “I don’t like this either, Frank. But this guy said he would kill us if we talk to the police. And he already killed Bob. What’s our alternative?” When there was no reply he continued. “My bet is that the fronton is afraid this will get in the newspapers and they’ll lose money. They’re not going to tell the police about us.”

“I wish I was as sure as you are,” Spano said after chugging his beer. “And what if we get phone calls from the newspapers?”

“Just say ‘No comment’ like they do on TV,” Holtz said.

“I’ll tell you want I wanna do. I want to get on a plane and get out of the country,” Spano said forcefully.

“And go where?” Evans said with an annoyed sneer. “You can’t even afford to get out of Bridgeport.”

Spano did not respond. Rich Holtz sat back in the cushioned booth. “So you guys will give me your money and I’ll put it my safety deposit box. We’ll tell the police we gambled there but only Dusza won. And we won’t tell the reporters anything. If we stick together, we might just pull this off.”

Chapter 18            

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Larry Cohen said while brushing body dust off his white coat. “I’ve spent the past three days going through this poor guy with a fine-toothed comb and guess what?” he said while opening both hands to the air. “I don’t know why he’s dead. I’m getting nothing but grief from upstairs because I’m getting behind.”

Appollon chuckled. “Two drug dealers with holes in their chests and a junkie whose body looks like a pin cushion. True challenges to your diagnostic acumen. They can wait.”

“You know the drill, Pierre. The only thing that keeps the boys upstairs happy is filled-out forms, empty freezers and nothing in the newspaper.”

“I hear you,” Appollon said, “I hear you.” As he gazed around Cohen’s lab at the scattered remains of Bob Dusza, Appollon thought back to his native Haiti. There, those who disturbed the power structure were dismembered, ground up and fed to animals. Here, under the veneer of so-called civilization, there was not much difference. His instincts told him that the dispersion of Bob Dusza’s remains were somehow related to protecting the powers that be.

On top of an ebony-surfaced table in the center of the room were several large jars. One contained his mottled liver, a black-speckled reddish-purple amorphous mass the size of a toy football, squished against the jar’s inner surface. In another jar — floating in a sea of brine — was his heart, a cylindrical maroon ball with ballooning protuberances attached to overlapping beige pipes. It bore little resemblance to cherry-red hearts depicted on Valentine’s cards, causing Appollon to wonder why humanity had chosen such an ugly organ to represent the emotion of love.

Dr. Cohen addressed an intense-looking blond man attired in a long white lab coat that was covered with multiple blue and purple stains. “Ken, can you bring over the heart?” The technician complied.

“Look at this,” Cohen said while rotating the jar in front of Appollon’s face. The heart continued to spin in the jar even when Cohen stopped turning it. “Nothing,” he said.

Appollon nodded in agreement. Since he began working with Cohen, he had become a dilettante pathologist himself and knew to search for a telltale purplish blotch on Dusza’s heart caused by a lack of oxygen: a heart attack.

“The cardiac isoenzymes were negative?” Appollon said referring to the test used by physicians to rule out a heart attack.

The technician fixated on Appollon, pulled his head back and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly, in a subtle expression of surprise — what Appollon’s brother called The Look. Appollon first encountered The Look when he was eight years old, the first day he transferred into Wilbur Cross Grade School in Stamford. Miss Buford asked the class what 7 times 8 was. “56” shot out from the mouth of the only pigmented face in a sea of Caucasians. The startled Miss Buford raised her eyebrows and parted her lips ever so slightly, and then gave an embarrassed smile, complete with a subtle blush to her creamy cheeks.

It took several months for young Pierre to realize that The Look was only reserved for him. It was the look of surprise on a white face when an intelligent statement came out of a black mouth. Unlike his brother, The Look never bothered him. He felt that dealing with the subterranean neo-Darwinist feelings of white Americans was infinitely preferable to living in constant fear of being murdered or plundered in Haiti.

Cohen, unaware of his underling’s inadvertent rudeness, immediately responded. “I had the lab fractionate the isoenzymes twice because a very slight subendocardial infarction could have damaged his heart’s conduction system. They found nothing. I even double-checked the coronary arteries. For a smoker and a hypertensive, this guy had hardly any fatty deposits or plaques, meaning that the risk of a heart attack was low.”

Cohen then slowly lifted the dirty white sheet on the steel gurney, revealing the hollowed-out corpse of Bob Dusza, his lifeless dull eyes staring at the ceiling. Because Appollon didn’t bring a new officer with him, Cohen saw no sense in being dramatic. Appollon did his best to warn these neophytes of Cohen’s antics, but it never worked. Cohen would quickly pull off the sheet and Appollon would have to catch the fainting new officer while Cohen’s high-pitched laugh echoed through the lab.

The sound of snapping latex reverberated as Cohen put on a pair of surgical gloves. He grasped both sides of the incision that extended from the top of the breastbone down to the corpse’s groin. With little effort, he pulled the chest apart, revealing a hollow cavity that once contained the heart and lungs. “Pierre, I sectioned the lungs just to make sure. There was no pulmonary embolus.” Ken and I went over his skin, even under his fingernails. No puncture wounds. I even checked the eardrums to make sure that there wasn’t an entrance wound.”

He then walked over to the top of the gurney and grasped the top of the head with his right hand, twisting it like he was unscrewing a stuck lid. It made an eerie grating sound that reminded Appollon of fingernails on a chalkboard. Flashing the inside of the skull towards Appollon he said, “No subdural. But just to make sure, I removed the entire brain and sectioned it. No strokes. No blown aneurysms. No nothing.”

“Here, look at this.” Appollon walked over and peered into the cavity that once housed Dusza’s brain. “If he had a subdural from hitting his head when he fell, we’d see it right here.” Cohen’s gloved finger touched a glistening gray membrane that was on the opposite side of the point where Dusza’s head hit the pavement.

“How about the brainstem?” Appollon asked, recalling a case from several years ago when a minuscule stroke destroyed the brain’s breathing center, resulting in the death of a homeless man.

“I’m glad you asked.” Cohen fitted the top of the skull back onto Dusza’s head. The grating sound was not as annoying this time. He walked over to another laboratory table. This was equipped with five stereoscopic microscopes. Perched on some shelves over the microscopes where bottles of various solutions with labels such as Alcian Blue, Congo Red, H and E, and Trichrome, the various reagents used to stain the body tissues so that they could be examined microscopically. Cohen opened a small wooden box that resembled a cigar box. In it were three rows of slides including cross sections of Dusza’s brain, lungs, pancreas, tongue, stomach, liver, spleen, heart and intestines. He slid his finger down the left row, grabbing a slide and holding it up to the light. “Here it is, the pons.” He placed the slide under the three-headed oculus of one of the microscopes, rotating the oculus to lowest power and then peered through the two eyepieces.

“Check it out, Pierre. This is what is called a Weigert’s myelin stain. It darkens the myelin, the white sheath that covers many of the nerves.”

Appollon sat down at the microscope and looked through. He saw a black-gray crescent scattered with white streaks. At the base of the crescent was a white protuberance that looked like the cockpit of a dirigible.

“This is the pons?”

“That’s it. Pons is Latin for bridge. This part of the brain connects or ‘bridges’ the top of the brain to the spinal cord, thus the name. It also houses the dorsal medullary respiratory center. If it were destroyed, as in the case of the homeless man, the patient would die of suffocation because there would be no signal from the brain to breathe.”

“And you say that this breathing center in the brain is only the size of a pea?”

“Not even that,” Cohen answered. “But if a stroke wipes it out, school’s out forever. If that were the case, we’d see blood in this area.”

“So it is safe to say that trauma was not a cause of death.”

“Not direct trauma.”

Seeing the dejected look on Appollon’s face, Cohen continued. “I’ve even checked for zebras.”

“Zebras?”

“Very rare causes of death. For example, I looked at the nasal mucosa to make sure there were no hemorrhages that indicated a nasogastric tube was pushed into his stomach to administer some poison. I looked at the pancreas to make sure he wasn’t frozen to death.

“Frozen? It was 50 degrees the night he died.”

“There was a case in Florida where a guy who owned an ice cream truck killed his wife by getting her so drunk that she passed out. He then threw her in the truck where she died of hypothermia. After he thawed her out, he put the body in their bed and said that’s how he found her.”

“So how did he get caught?”

“The pathologist on the case looked at the liver and didn’t see any signs of alcoholism, so he looked at the pancreas. It had hemorrhages all through it, a sign of hypothermia. The guy folded as soon as the police confronted him.”

Cohen continued. “I’ve also searched for every conceivable toxin in spite of the lack of an entrance point.” Cohen motioned his hand to a dozen multi-colored tubes. “Blood, urine, spinal fluid and bile.” He grabbed several sheets of paper to the right of the racks of tubes. “The tox screens were negative and the spectrometer showed nothing but the medication he was taking for his high blood pressure.”

“The spectrometer is very accurate, but would it show any unknown substance?” Appollon queried.

“Sure,” Cohen responded. He pointed over to a futuristic appearing apparatus attached to a computer monitor. “You have to understand how the spectrometer works.” He picked up a clear plastic plate the size of a credit card but three times as thick. “I placed a drop of plasma from Dusza’s blood right here.” He flipped open a small window on the plastic plate. “The spectrometer then sends ionizing radiation, usually light energy, into the plasma. Any substance in the plasma will react to the radiation by emitting various wavelengths of light, producing a unique pattern, sort of like a fingerprint. With the old spectrometers, this pattern would be plotted on graph paper and then I would have to look through this huge book until I found an identical pattern. But with this sucker, the computer does all the work and even tells me the name of the substance.”

“But what if there was some toxin the computer never heard of?” Appollon queried. “Something new, something bizarre.”

“Then the computer would tell me it can’t identify the substance, but we would still know there was a foreign substance in the body fluid. Using the unique pattern produced, we could get a good idea as to the actual chemical structure.”

“Are there any toxins that could have killed him that would not show up?”

“It’s not likely, Pierre. At least not any toxin that killed him this quickly. The body’s enzymes would not have enough time to break it down. It would still be in the blood and the spectrometer would identify it.”

“But given that we know this guy was meeting with thugs that were extorting him, it makes it unlikely that he died from a toxin anyway. Do you have a theory at least?”

“The only thing I can think of is sick sinus syndrome.”

“That’s a new one.”

“It’s when the conduction system of the heart is slightly defective. Not enough to kill under normal circumstances, but potentially lethal in times of stress.”

“I thought the sinuses were in your head,” said Appollon pointing to under his right eye.

“They are. This is a different part of the body with the same name. The conduction system of the heart is regulated by what is called the sinus node. It’s sort of an internal clock — a pacemaker — that regulates the heartbeat. In sick sinus syndrome, fright or trivial trauma can cause a lethal heart arrhythmia. You’ve heard of those cases when some kid is playing baseball and gets hit in the chest with a pitch and dies?”

“Sure. It usually makes national news,” Appollon responded.

“Sick sinus syndrome. The energy from the ball hitting the chest is enough to disrupt the heart’s conduction system if it is regulated by a defective sinus node. The heart stops beating and death occurs, almost instantaneously.”

Appollon put his hand on his chin, and then responded. “So you’re saying that the fright caused by the situation could also produce a lethal arrhythmia.”

“That or a sharp blow to the chest. You see, when we become frightened, our adrenal glands produce large amounts of a hormone called epinephrine. When it bombards the sinus node, it increases the firing rate and thus the heart rate.”

“So that’s why your heart rate increases when you’re scared.”

“Exactly. But in sick sinus syndrome, high doses of epinephrine can result in a lethal arrhythmia by causing the sinus node to misfire.”

“Is there a way you can diagnosis sick sinus syndrome?”

Cohen picked up the jar containing Dusza’s heart. “I’ll biopsy the sinus node. Usually in sick sinus syndrome, there are some obvious defects in the specialized tissue comprising the node.”

He put the jar back down on the laboratory table and turned to Appollon. “I hate to tell you this Pierre, but sometimes we never figure out why people die.”

Appollon just nodded his head.

Chapter 19            

Pierre Appollon and Officer Bagley could hear loud noises coming from Bill Evans’ house before they knocked on the door. “I guess they’re not any better at controlling their kids than I am,” Bagley said. Appollon did not respond, but thought to himself how much better his kids behaved than these American brats.

Bagley knocked on the door while Appollon stayed in the background. He didn’t want his black face to be the first thing that Evans saw. Bagley flashed his badge when Bill Evans appeared. “Good evening, sir. We’re investigating the death of Mr. Robert Dusza. We’d like to speak to you.”

Evans looked up at the square jaw, but his eyes briefly darted to the dark man attired in civilian clothing. “Please come in,” he said while trying not to appear nervous.

Appollon quickly took command as both men entered. “My name is Detective Appollon and this is Officer Bagley.” For some reason, Evans found his Caribbean accent soothing as he ushered both men into his family room.

“Sorry the place is such a mess,” he said brushing several toy trucks off a sunken brown couch. Appollon took a seat while Bagley remained standing, doing his best to blend in with the Salvation Army decor.

“You knew Mr. Dusza?” Appollon said.

“Knew him? We grew up together. We were best friends.”

“Have you spoken to his widow recently?”

Bill Evans eyes began to blink rapidly as he started to lie. “Just to express my sorrow.”

“His wife believes he was killed by people demanding money from him. Was he in any financial trouble?”

“Not that I know of.” Evans seemed to become more at ease as he was able to give a truthful answer.

“Do you know of any problems with drugs or alcohol?”

“He liked to drink beer but I don’t think he had a problem. You know, four or five Buds during a football game. A few drafts at the bar. He didn’t do drugs. Or if he did, he never told me about it.”

“Did he like to gamble?”

Evans sat back, trying to appear nonchalant, but the eyes started to blink again. “Sometimes.”

“Football, basketball, boxing, dogs?”

“Every once in a while.”

“Bagley over there likes dogs. Me, I’m partial to the horses.” In actuality, it was difficult to get Appollon to part with two bucks at a church raffle and he considered the Lotto to be nothing more than a tax on stupidity, but he wanted to put Evans at ease while he circled in for the kill. “Mrs. Dusza tells us that you occasionally liked to visit the jai alai fronton.”

“Every once in a while. It never did much for me.”

“Ever win any money there?” Appollon asked.

“Every now and then. Usually I lost.”

Appollon gave Evans a friendly grin. “I usually lose, too. You’re an honest guy. Everyone else tells me they win all the time. But Mrs. Dusza, she gave us the impression that you and your buddies won a lot.”

“I don’t know where she got that impression. We just went there once in a while to have fun and drink a few beers.”

“That’s not quite what she told us. She showed us a large amount of cash, over $25,000. Said her husband won it at the fronton. Said he told her that you guys won that kind of money there too.”

Evans put out both hands. “Officer, would I be living like this if I had that kind of money?”

Appollon laughed. “We all have funny habits. I once saw a drug dealer in a rat-infested apartment with 120 grand stuffed in his mattress. So you don’t have any cash lying around here like Mr. Dusza?”

“You can look if you like, Officer,” Evans said confidently. The cash was already in Holtz’s safety deposit box.

“That won’t be necessary. But let me tell you something, Mr. Evans. I hope you are telling us the truth here because it is our belief that Mr. Dusza had obtained this large amount of money by illicit means.” He paused for a second. “Illicit means,” he said thrusting his head forward. “Officer Bagley and I, we are reasonable people. But the people who Mr. Dusza took this money from, they are not reasonable people. They smashed his face and broke two of his ribs. Just for sport.” He paused again and stared into Evan’s sullen eyes. “Then they asked him for money and while he was delivering that money, he died. We don’t think they killed him, at least not on purpose. Do you know why we think that?’’

Evans just nodded his now perspiring head back and forth.

“We think this was the first payment. We think they believe that there is more money. We think that these people may contact you and ask you for it. And if you don’t give it to them, you may end up like Mr. Dusza. Even if you do give it to them, you may end up like Dusza. So I will ask you again, Mr. Evans, did you win a large amount of money at the fronton?”

The perspiration was now dripping down his forehead and he was blinking so rapidly, it looked like he was trying to wash some dirt from his eyes. “We just went there for fun. I didn’t win any money,” he stammered impotently.

Detective Appollon rose from his chair. “For your sake, I hope you’re telling us the truth. Here is my card.” Appollon reached into his wallet. “If you remember anything, please give me a call.”

The two policemen departed from Evan’s house. As they entered the police car, Bagley commented. “He was a better liar than the other two.”

“Which isn’t saying much,” Appollon responded.

ppppp* * * * *

When Malcolm Rummel heard about Dusza’s death, he landed his yacht in Bermuda, took his waiting limo to the airport and hopped on his private Lear jet, stranding several of his herpes-free personal prostitutes at the Hamilton Princess. His Bentley was waiting near the tarmac at La Guardia and whisked him into Manhattan. The limo driver did not mind his constant screaming into the cellular phone, since it distracted Rummel from insulting his traffic-avoidance skills.

By the time they were cruising up First Avenue, dusk was falling on the City and the sidewalks were replete with energized yuppies in charcoal gray suits stalking the bars of Singles Heaven, hoping to score before they got too drunk to perform. The driver turned left at 53rd, one of the few streets not infested with backhoes. He turned up Park Avenue and pulled to the front of the hypermodem Lever House where the Rummel Empire occupied several floors. Rummel swished passed the uniformed gnats guarding the front entrance. When the elevator closed on him, one of the gnats picked up the phone. Bob Coles had slipped him a twenty for this simple service.

After exiting the elevator, he walked past the boardroom where the fronton management was waiting, entered the massive glass vestibule where his secretary normally terrorized all who entered, and charged into his office. Coles was sitting in one of the winged Chippendales, sipping some single malt scotch.

Rummel plopped himself in his high-backed leather chair and grabbed the envelope sitting on his blotter. He looked at the wad of cash inside. “How much?”

“$32,000.”

“You mean that incompetent had the gall to take his cut after he screwed up?”

“Louie is your friend, not mine, Mal.” Coles usually referred to his boss as Mr. Rummel but decided to use a more familiar form of address to reinforce the notion that he was not about to be blamed for Dusza’s death.

Rummel glared at him for several seconds. Coles looked like he had gained even more weight, his tight collar pressing on his massive neck. He decided to meet with Coles privately, preferring to isolate the fronton management from the seamier side of business. “Louie never let us down before. He was always the best. Remember how he handled that scumball lawyer representing Bimbo1? The bastard wanted me to pay the bitch $40,000 a month for the rest of her life. I figured it came to 100 grand a screw. Ridiculous. Louie and his pals kept dunking his head in a toilet full of shit until he agreed to drop the case.” Rummel laughed sadistically. “Louie’s a pro. He could always scare people without hurting them. What did he do, just lose his temper?”

“He swears they didn’t kill him and I believe him. Like you said. He’s a pro. Even the coroner can’t find a cause of death,” Coles said.

“What are the police up to?”

“That’s the problem. They’ve launched an aggressive investigation.”

“Why? It’s just another dead piece of shit in Bridgeport. Who cares? How can they link it to us?”

Coles looked down at the floor and then back at his boss. “Before Louie took the payoff, he and one of his pals assaulted Dusza. You know. Just to scare him. To make sure that he paid. Dusza told his wife that they were hired by the fronton.”

“The idiot! The imbecile! You mean Louie told this dead punk we hired him?”

“Of course not,” Coles said. “The wife just put two and two together.”

“Has anyone spoken to the police yet?”

“Parker spoke to a detective on the phone. This guy will be coming around in a few days to get a statement.”

“Has anything leaked to the press?”

“No. Not that I know of.”

“Not that you know of?” Rummel asked sarcastically.

“Our connections at the police department tell us that the wife is threatening to call the press,” Coles said.

Malcolm Rummel rubbed his chin and turned his head, staring at the Chagall on the sidewall. He hated the press. It was the only institution he couldn’t control. “Will they have a story?”

“No, but that’s never stopped them before.”

“I assume you had the sense to tell Louie not to collect any more money from the other three guys involved with this Dusza guy.”

“I did, but I also had Louie scare them. The deal was this. Let the three guys keep the money, but if they talk to anyone, paying back the money they won will be the least of their problems.”

Rummel smiled for the first time. Coles was earning his keep. “That’s good, Coles. That’s good. If the wife complains, she’ll just look like a delusional lunatic.”

Chapter 20            

“How many birthday parties did you have when you were a kid?” Gunther said.

Seth Parker took his feet off his desk. “One —wh en I turned eight. Twenty-one kids. All boys. My mother was pulling her hair out by the time it was over.”

“So why is it that my daughters have to have a party every year?”

“Because you let them,” Parker said without a trace of sympathy.

“What am I supposed to do? Every other kid has one. It’s sort of a Fairfield County birthright. And I have to hire a clown.”

“A clown?”

“175 bucks.”

“175 bucks!”

“If you want one who knows how to juggle, that’s the price.”

Both men were trying to avoid discussing the problem at hand, but Gunther finally broke the ice. “So you think we should tell him everything we know?”

Seth Parker sat forward in his chair, moved some papers on his desk and nodded. “Everything. If Rummel fires us, he fires us. We are not talking about just a gambling ring, or some rigged games; we’re talking about murder.”

“You really think Rummel had that guy killed?” Gunther asked. “The article in the paper said they just found his body in an abandoned parking lot. There was no mention of any foul play.”

Parker rubbed his forehead. “Let’s put it like this. I wouldn’t put it past the bastard.”

“What exactly did the detective say to you?” Gunther asked.

“Apparently the guy’s wife claimed Dusza had been beaten up a few days before he was found dead. She said that it was done by guys hired by the fronton — us —who demanded that the money they’d won be repaid.”

Gunther’s face became visibly pale. “That has Rummel’s name written all over it. He wouldn’t be satisfied to just crush the gambling ring, he would want the money back.”

“I wish I could disagree. But why kill Dusza? Rummel is vicious but he’s not stupid.”

“Maybe Dusza refused to give the money back?”

“So break his arm or knock out a few teeth. Why kill him?”

The intercom on Parker’s desk buzzed. “Yes, Gail.”

“A Detective Appollon is here to see you.”

“Send him in,” Parker said.

Both men rose as the door opened. Appollon smiled generously upon entering, shaking the hands of both men before sitting. His disarming demeanor did not quell Parker’s apprehension as manifested by the slight tremor in his hands as he poured all three men coffee.

Appollon set the coffee down on the inlaid table after taking a sip. “I appreciate you gentleman taking the time to discuss this with me.” Both men nodded as Appollon continued. “As you both know, the body of a Mr. Robert Dusza was found recently in town. We have reason to believe that he was part of a gambling ring that was working out of the fronton here. I was hoping that you could shed some light on the situation.”

Parker and Gunther both looked at each other, then Parker spoke. “Mr. Dusza was a patron here. We believe he was involved in a scheme with three other individuals, all of whom won money here.”

“How do you know they won?” Appollon asked.

Gunther and Parker looked at each other again. This time Gunther spoke. “Our profit margins are slim so even a small decline in market share can adversely affect the bottom line. Every day, I analyze the betting patterns to determine if there are any irregularities.”

“How can you tell if there are irregularities?” Appollon asked.

Gunther walked over to Parker’s desk and lifted a paper from it. He then pulled his chair beside Appollon’s. Pointing to the paper he said, “Here are the betting patterns of the fourth match from last night. In this column are the names of the players and across here are the wagers placed on them and the percent total.”

Appollon was fascinated. He ran his finger over the top of the paper. “These are the various bets: win, place, show, exacta, trifecta and so on?” he asked.

“That’s correct,” Gunther responded.

“How can you tell abnormal bets?”

“We have a sense of who the public perceives as being the better players and we account for that in our statistical formulas. If a large number of bets are placed on inferior players, the computer puts an asterisk on the bet.” Gunther began to feel at ease as he went into his professorial tone.

“What confidence interval do you use, 95%, 99% or even higher?” Appollon asked.

At that point The Look was frozen firmly on the faces of both Gunther and Parker. Appollon was not upset since he had mentally anticipated their reaction. He continued. “I mean there are at least 500 numbers here, you would expect some abnormal bets from random chance.”

Gunther recovered quickly. “You must have been a student of statistics, Detective?”

“Limited. Very limited,” Appollon replied. In actuality, he had aced his stats course in college.

“Well, you’re correct,” Gunther said guardedly. “We don’t worry unless large amounts of money are being wagered on these abnormal bets and then the players actually start winning.”

“I see,” Appollon said shifting his feet. “As long as the players who have unusually high amounts of wagers placed on them don’t win an unusual number of times, there’s no problem.”

“In general, yes,” Gunther replied.

“Why would you be so concerned about this? Jai alai is a parimutuel, meaning that you take a percentage of every pot no matter who wins.”

“That’s right, Detective,” Gunther replied. “It’s sort of like a poker game where the house takes 15% of the pot just before the players show their cards. The guy with the best hand wins more than he wagered, but the house is assured of a profit no matter what happens.”

“Pari-mutuel. That is a French expression?”

“Yes,” Gunther replied. “This wagering system was devised in Paris in 1865 by the friend of a distraught bookie who couldn’t figure out horse-racing odds.”

“I still don’t understand. If you’re assured of a profit no matter what happens, why do you spend so much time trying to see if there are betting irregularities?”

“Our public image is very important to us,” Parker replied. “If even a whiff of scandal gets out to the public, the wagering decreases rapidly and we can’t stay in business. Between the Lotto, the dog track, Foxwoods, the Mohegan Sun, Las Vegas, and Atlantic City, the fight for market share of the gambling money is quite competitive to say the least.”

“Okay. So you use your statistical analysis to determine that there are some abnormal betting patterns. How do you know Dusza was involved? Do the gamblers give their names every time they place a bet?”

Parker gave Appollon an uneasy look. He never met anyone who was so smart. “For years we never had a problem, but several months ago, Jack noted that large wagers were being placed on two mediocre players and that those players started winning.”

“Who were those players?” Appollon asked.

“Carmen Buxeda and Ricardo Ariz.” For the first time, Appollon wrote something on his notepad.

“But that still doesn’t explain how you spotted Dusza. Did these two players admit to fixing the games and giving information to Dusza?”

Parker again replied. “I don’t know if you noticed, but we have small cameras at every betting station. Through the use of face-recognition software, we’re able to track every individual’s wagers. But we have never been able to make any connection to Dusza and any of the players.”

“But you did find out that others were winning besides Dusza.”

“That’s correct,” Parker said. “We believe three other guys were also involved.”

“What are their names?” Appollon commanded.

Parker rustled through some papers and then picked one up. Reading from it he said, “Frank Spano, Richard Holtz and Bill Evans.”

Appollon did not respond, but internally digested the information. It was the same three names given to him by the widow Dusza; the same three individuals who lied through their teeth when he interviewed them.

“Could I have a copy of that list?”

“It’s all yours.” Appollon rose from his chair and took the paper from Parker’s hand.

Once seated he asked, “How much money do you think these four guys won?”

“We estimate between $250,000 and $300,000.”

“But this did not come out of the fronton’s pocket, if I understand you correctly.”

“That’s correct.” Gunther said.

“How did they win so much?”

“They wagered the maximum, sometimes on long shots,” Gunther said. “That’s what really made me suspicious.”

“What’s the maximum wager?”

“100 dollars.”

“My understanding is that when you bet to win place or show, you get odds like 10 to 1, maybe 20 to 1. That’s how these guys won?”

“Most of the time. If you do that consistently, you can make a hefty profit.” Gunther said.

“But you said they wagered on long shots, like the exacta and quiniella, where the odds can be around 100 to 1.”

“On several occasions, yes.”

For the first time, Appollon appeared perplexed, his eyes narrowing as he pondered the case. “What did you do with this information?”

Both men nervously looked at each other. Parker then spoke. “We gave it to our boss.”

“That would be Malcolm Rummel.”

“That’s correct.”

“Was Mr. Rummel upset by this information?”

“Extremely,” Parker said as his face reddened.

“Did he give you any indication that he was going to arrange for Dusza to be harmed in any way?”

“No. Not at all,” Parker said hesitantly. The redness did not dissipate from his face.

“Did anyone else know about this gambling ring?”

“Valerie Pierson, our computer programmer; Bob Coles, Rummel’s political consultant and Frank Antonucci, the head of security.”

“What about these two jai alai players...” Appollon looked down at his notes. “Buxeda and Ariz?”

“We have no evidence that they knew Dusza or any of the other three involved,” Parker said.

Appollon looked directly at Gunther. “What do you think is going on here?”

“I don’t know,” Gunther replied curtly.

“It seems possible that you have two corrupt players who are in collusion with these four guys. Perhaps Dusza was supposed to pay them a percentage and he reneged,” Appollon said.

“We do not believe that’s the case,” Parker said confidently. “We tapped the phones of both these men. We checked their bank accounts. We found nothing. Besides, there’s no way two guys could have pulled this off.”

“Really? Why’s that?” Appollon said.

“First of all, they’re not smart enough,” Parker said. “And secondly, these guys were always mediocre players. Now they are playing like superstars and we’ve done drug screening on them several times and found nothing.”

“And here’s the real puzzler,” Gunther said. He walked over to Parker’s desk, finding a sheet of paper that listed the results from the previous evening. Handing it to Appollon, he said, “Look, Detective. Buxeda played last night in two games. He placed first both times. Yet there were no abnormal wagers placed on him.”

“So perhaps he doesn’t want to recruit any more gamblers because he knows you guys are suspicious,” Appollon responded.

“Perhaps. But he’s been here for five years. He was always an average player. But a few months ago, he started having occasional games when he is invincible. Not all the time, just on some days. The same thing happened to Ariz.” Gunther said.

Parker leaned forward on his desk. “Mr. Appollon, let me level with you. We have been wrestling with this problem for the past month. We cannot figure it out. We would not put it past Rummel to harass Dusza when he found out about the gambling ring. We do not think he would have him killed. The best explanation we have is that one of Dusza’s friends or family ripped him off or hired someone to do so. This isn’t always the most reputable business, but we are not killers.”

Appollon rose from his chair. “Gentlemen, thank you for the coffee.” He gave each man his card, then exited, giving a friendly smile that neither man found comforting.

Appollon returned to his desk. He wanted to defer listening to his voice mail until he at least made a dent in the interminable paperwork obscuring his frayed blotter, but first he had to make sure Paula Dusza hadn’t called. She had been calling all week, threatening to call The Bridgeport Post if there was no headway on her husband’s case. Frustrated families frequently resorted to this threat and then were further outraged, when The Post

em> ignored them. But if the widow Dusza mentioned the name Malcolm Rummel and jai alai scandal in the same breath, a media circus — invariably followed by political pressure — would invade his pleasant life.

To his consternation, there were not one, not two, but three calls from the widow Dusza, the last one ending with her reciting the phone number of The Bridgeport Post.

“Mrs. Dusza, this is Lieutenant Appollon,” he intoned after she picked up the phone on the first ring.

“I was hoping you would get back to me.” It sounded to him like she was chewing on some food.

“I was personally at the coroner’s office yesterday. We are working very hard on your husband’s case.”

“What killed him?”

“We still don’t know.”

“Mr. Appollon. My husband did not just die. There has to be a reason.” She did not increase the volume of her voice, but the anger was there.

“You told me several days ago that he didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke but you said you were confident that some special tests would show the cause.”

“I’m sorry if I misled you, Mrs. Dusza; all the further tests were negative. I assure you, we are still looking for leads in your husband’s case but for now, we have to assume that he died of natural causes.”

“Natural causes! My husband is found dead in a parking lot while making a payoff to some goons and you tell me natural causes?” Her voice was now loud and angry.

“Please, any continued patience on your part would be greatly appreciated by our department.”

“I’ve been patient long enough. My daughter hasn’t stopped crying and my doctor put me on Prozac. I’ll show you natural causes. I know when I’m getting the runaround. You people never act unless you are forced to.” The click of a disconnecting phone line followed. Pierre Appollon knew it was senseless to call back.

Paula Dusza had never called a newspaper reporter before, and in spite of her threats to Appollon, she did not expect anyone to care about her plight. In her mind, people like herself — without money or political influence — were always jerked around by those in power. But to her surprise, after dialing The Post’s phone number, she immediately got a live human voice. There was no menu of numbers to push, no interminable holds listening to Barry Manilow, not even an automated perky feminine voice asking her to push 1 for Spanish or 2 for English.

After half a ring, a throaty voice said “Becker.”

“Are you a reporter?”

“That’s the prevailing theory,” Patti Becker replied. The high turnover rate of operators meant calls were always sneaking through. What did the management expect for $7.50 an hour? She was putting the finishing touches on her feature article on money and politics — slamming her favorite pig, Malcolm Rummel, and the latest object of his political affections, the troglodyte Richard Campana. Now because some underpaid illiterate had pushed the wrong button, she was rudely interrupted and forced to deal with the hoi polloi.

Paula Duzsa spoke hesitantly even though she had practiced what she planned to say. “My...my husband was murdered by some goons and the police department is covering it up.”

Becker was tempted to just hang up the phone. She had work to do and she didn’t want to waste her time dealing with paranoid fantasies. The deadline on her article was today. But she was well-bred and well-bred people do not just hang up the phone.

“Ma’am, I’m not sure I’m the person you want to talk to. I’ll... ”

“Don’t transfer me. Please.”

The pleading in her voice startled Becker. “Ma’am, I don’t cover police investigations. Let me put you in contact with that department.”

“They’re just going to give me the runaround. You’re a reporter. You can help.”

Becker tried to interrupt but Paula Dusza just continued. “My husband, Bob Dusza, and his friends won thousands of dollars at the jai alai fronton so the fronton hired goons and had him killed. His body was found in the old parking lot of Yankee Electronics and the police say he died of natural causes.”

Patti Becker sat up straight in her chair and reached for her yellow notepad. Any story relating to the fronton had the potential to impact Rummel. Maybe this lady wasn’t crazy and even if she was, why let it interfere with a good story?

But by what chance of fate had this lady called her? As a hard core Unitarian, Patti Becker was suspicious of fate. Since she was one of the state’s premier political reporters, her impending article on money and politics was causing fear and loathing in both gubernatorial camps.

Did Kerri O’Brien tell this lady to call her? Was the twisted Machiavellian mind of the Bortz somehow involved? He had been trying to get her to delay the article until after the election. The various possibilities traversing her synapses resulted in several seconds of dead time. The anxious Paula Dusza finally spoke again. “Please help me.”

“Are you home now, Mrs. Dusza?”

“Yes, but I have...”

“I’ll be right there, just tell me how to get there.”

She scribbled a few directions, saved her article on a floppy disc and barreled out of her office. By the time she arrived at her car, she was literally salivating.

As she turned onto Paula Dusza’s forlorn street, Patti Becker thanked God her husband was an internist. In social situations — the annual soiree of the Fairfield County Symphony, the Greenwich Junior League Holiday Party — many women looked at her with envy: the super woman who was at the top of her field. But it wasn’t without a price. Her youngest son, Devon, was a sensitive child who was mercilessly bullied by his more aggressive schoolmates. She blamed herself. Perhaps she coddled him too much to compensate for the fact that she was always working. But in the last several months, he was doing better. Moving him to Greenwich Country Day had been a smart move.

She quickly identified the house; the rusted aluminum awning — as described by Paula Dusza — was diagnostic. After parking, she mounted the crumbling brick stairs and was about to ring the doorbell when the front door opened.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Dusza said.

The house was small but tidy. Paula Dusza offered her some coffee, an invitation she accepted, while ushering her into the family room. As she sat on the checkered couch, she was reminded of her first reporting job, when she had to interview the immediate families of deceased crime victims. The room was a shrine to her husband, with a collage of pictures starting from his infancy to a recent picture of the once happy couple at an Elk’s Club Party. A dozen sympathy cards stood on the coffee table and several others were atop the large screen television.

Paula Dusza returned with the coffee, complete with a saucer. She then left the room again and returned with a metal box. “I just want to show you I’m not making this up.” She opened the box. Patti Becker stared in disbelief at the pile of fifty and hundred dollar bills. “The police think that my husband was into drugs, but he wasn’t. He won this at the fronton.”

Patti Becker shifted her body forward. “Let’s start at the beginning.”

For the next twenty minutes, she scribbled furiously as Paula Dusza recounted her husband’s beating, his death and the runaround she was getting from Detective Appollon. Becker had forgotten how ugly her business could be, especially when Paula Dusza described identifying her husband’s body. There were several holes in her story. She could not explain how her husband’s plan worked, but she did give her the names of his partners. And then there was the cash, as plain as day.

She had no intention of letting the trail get cold. She could finish her article tonight. It wouldn’t be the first time she missed a deadline. So upon bidding Paula Dusza adieu, she drove directly to the police department. She did not plan to call Detective Appollon first. She wanted the element of surprise to be in her favor.