Sucker bet - James Swain [62]
She reached out and took his hand. “Not as much as you’re my friend.”
Nigel smiled. “I’ve been hanging out with crooks my whole life. They’re called record producers and concert promoters. And look where it’s gotten me.”
“Rico is different.”
The table they were eating at was covered with dead soldiers and pizza crusts. Nigel killed the last Shiner Bock, and Candy found herself wishing she had waited until he was sober to have this conversation. Sensing her displeasure, he took her hand and kissed it.
“No one’s going to get hurt except a bookie,” Nigel said.
“Will you show me?”
He said yes, went into the bedroom, and returned with his laptop computer. It was a paper-thin job with a carbon battery and a screen with better resolution than most TVs. Sitting beside her, he clicked on an icon, and Candy found herself staring at an Excel spreadsheet. In the left-hand columns were the names of hundreds of different colleges. In the right-hand columns, projected point spreads.
“You’re betting on basketball games,” she said.
“That’s right,” he said.
“You could lose.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. There’s no sure thing, unless Rico’s fixing the games.”
“Au contraire,” he said. “There is a system, and it has nothing to do with fixing the games. And it always wins. Want to see how it works?”
Candy felt her skin tingle. The stupidest damn things turned her on, like the smell of buttered popcorn and truck drivers with sweaty chests. Guys speaking in French was at the top of the list. Her hand dropped on Nigel’s crotch.
“You speak French.”
“Yes. I mean, oui.”
Candy squeezed the little dipper, and his drunken eyes lit up. “More,” she purred.
“Of course,” he replied. “But first, let me get out of these clothes.”
28
“Never heard of him,” Bobby Jewel said.
“You sure?” Rico said.
Bobby Jewel was the biggest bookie in south Florida. He worked out of a newspaper store on the Arthur Godfrey Road, which connected Miami Beach to the rest of the world. His operation was as big as two closets sitting side by side. In the back room, two Cuban guys worked the phones, taking bets. Bobby was the face to the operation and sat at the cash register, his four-hundred-pound body pouring out of a helpless chair. Acting perturbed, he yelled into the back room, “Hey, Jesus!”
A window slid back, and Jesus stuck his head out, his mop of black hair partially obscuring his face. Bobby loved Cubans, and used them in his operation whenever he could. He called them the Jews of the Caribbean.
“Yes, Mr. Jewel.”
“You ever hear of some ginzo named Tony Valentine?”
“Ginzo?” Jesus asked.
“A wop. A guinea. You know, an Italian.”
Jesus shook his head. From where Rico was sitting, he could have been a shaggy dog. “Ask Pepe,” Bobby said. “Will you?”
Jesus quizzed the man sitting next to him. “Pepe doesn’t know him, either.” Then his phone rang, and he shut the sliding window.
Bobby slurped the Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino Rico had brought him. He wasn’t very old, maybe thirty-two, but the weight made him look closer to fifty. “Satisfied?”
Rico stared into space. An alarm was going off inside his head. Tony Valentine wasn’t connected; if he was, one of the men in this little store would know it. So how had he known about the murder at the Micanopy casino and that Rico was planning to scam Bobby? Valentine hadn’t heard it over a wiretap because Rico spoke in code whenever he talked business over the phone. Rico took a long, deep breath. Someone had fucking told him.
“Earth to Rico,” Bobby said.
Rico blinked awake. “Sorry.”
“Something the matter?”
Coming out of Bobby’s mouth, the line sounded comical. Rico straightened up in his chair and dropped his voice. “I got this deal I can’t stop thinking about.”
Bobby crushed the empty plastic cup in his massive hand, the sound like a bridge collapsing. “Yeah?”
Rico said, “Nigel Moon, the rock star, came into my club a week ago. We played golf, guy thinks he’s my friend. He’s a real pig, but he’s got money coming out of his ass, so you gotta love him, you know?”
“I’m with you so far.