Sucker bet - James Swain [11]
The sun came out and splashed on Hicks’s shoulders. He looked older than Rico had first thought, his face a chiseled road map of the hard life. He hooked his thumbs into his suspenders and snapped them against his chest.
“You wanna talk money, boy?”
Sweat marched down Rico’s face. Davie being away from the ocean, the sun was hotter than over on Miami Beach, and he felt himself burning up.
“Sure,” he said.
The first thing Rico noticed when he stepped inside Ray Hicks’s trailer was the overwhelming stench of shit. Not just any old shit, but animal shit, like at the zoo. The kind of smell that could burn a hole in your head.
The next thing Rico noticed was the big black metal cage sitting behind Hicks’s desk. And the chimpanzee in human clothes inside the cage. A big sucker, maybe 150 pounds, his thumbless paws strumming a ukulele.
“Have a seat,” Hicks said.
Rico sat in a folding chair directly across from Hicks’s desk. Plastered on the walls were black-and-white posters of the musical chimp and his proud owner. NAME ANY POPULAR TUNE, the posters said. THEN WATCH THE FUN!
“Say hello to Mr. Beauregard,” Hicks said.
“Hey,” Rico said stupidly.
Mr. Beauregard strummed away. The tinny music coming out of his dime-store instrument sounded familiar. Happy Days Are Here Again. The chimp made eye contact, and every hair on Rico’s body went stiff. Behind the chimp’s muddy brown eyes lurked something eerily human. Putting the ukelele down, he took a pack of Lucky Strikes from the floor of his cage and fired one up.
“You let him smoke?”
“Sure.”
“Isn’t it bad for his health?” Rico said.
“He likes it.”
“I get it. He’s already got a purple ass, so what’s a couple of black lungs.”
Hicks’s eyes grew into slits. “You’re not funny.”
Rico disagreed. He happened to think he was fucking hysterical. So had John Gotti, who’d nicknamed him the Mook, which in Italian loosely translated into big mouth. He watched Mr. Beauregard crush out his cigarette, then eat it.
“What kind of scam you got going?” Hicks said.
Rico shifted his gaze to his host. “Huh?”
“You heard me. You fleecing this guy?”
“What guy?”
“The bloated Brit with the hooker.”
“What I’ve got going is none of your fucking business.”
“Please don’t swear in my presence,” the carnival owner said.
Rico didn’t like the direction the conversation was going. He parted his jacket and exposed the .45 Smith & Wesson strapped to his side. It was his favorite piece, a present from the Teflon Don on Rico’s twenty-fifth birthday. Hicks made a face like he’d busted a tooth. Raising his voice, he said, “Mr. Beauregard, he has a gun!”
Mr. Beauregard flew out of his cage. It had never occurred to Rico that the cage wasn’t locked, and he sat helplessly as the chimp pinned him to his chair and pawed through his linen sports jacket. Mr. Beauregard slid the .45 across the desk along with Rico’s wallet.
“Thank you, Mr. Beauregard. You may resume your playing.”
Soon strains of Rocky Mountain High were competing with the noisy air conditioner. Hicks removed a business card from Rico’s wallet and stared at it.
“Club Hedo. That a tittie bar?”
“Yeah,” Rico said.
Hicks unloaded the gun and slid it back along with his wallet. “You are scamming the man with the hooker. Correct?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And by allowing him to win a few harmless games, you will be able to perpetuate your little charade.”
“Right again,” Rico said.
“Four thousand two hundred dollars,” Hicks said.
“Huh?”
“Four thousand two hundred dollars. That is my price.”
Rico screwed up his face. “What kind of number is that?”
Hicks made a clucking sound with his tongue. “Call it a permission fee. Four thousand two hundred dollars is what I pay the town clowns to run my carnival.”
“The what?”
“You’re not familiar with the term?”
“No.”
Hicks turned in his chair. “Town clowns, Mr. Beauregard?