Sucker bet - James Swain [69]
The crowd hooted and hollered. Someone started to chant “Nigel, Nigel” until it became a chorus. Nigel got out of his chair and wrapped his arm around Candy’s waist.
Candy could feel his heart beating wildly.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course,” he said.
They walked over to where Trip stood, and Nigel took the mike. “Monster, Monster,” the crowd chanted, that being the name of the band’s most famous song. Nigel tried to speak. The crowd would not stop.
“Would you?” Trip asked, holding up a pair of sticks.
Nigel stared at them, then him.
“Where’s your bathroom?”
Trip pointed across the room. Nigel handed him the mike, then bowed to the crowd. Still chanting, they parted and let him through.
He was moving quickly, like he really had to go, and Candy saw him pick up speed as he reached the front of the store. Instead of veering to his left—in the bathroom’s direction—he went straight instead.
His body hit the front doors hard.
31
“You look like a bag of wet doughnuts,” Victor Marks said.
“It’s been a long week,” Rico admitted.
“Appearances are important,” Victor said, his tone scolding. “In this racket, they’re the most important thing you’ve got.”
They were sitting at the Seafood Bar in Victor’s favorite hangout, the Breakers in Palm Beach. The bar was an aquarium, and Victor identified the fish as they swam past. “The orange and white one is a clown fish. That one’s a purple damsel. And that big guy is a spotted eel. Every day, the eel eats one of the other fish. It costs the hotel a lot of money to keep replacing them. Know why they leave the eel in the aquarium?”
“No,” Rico said.
“Appearances.” Victor motioned for the bartender. “Two more,” he said, pointing at their glasses. When the bartender was gone, he said, “How’s the basketball scam going?”
“It’s going to be tough to pull off.”
“Of course it’s going to be tough to pull off. If pulling cons was easy, every blowhard from here to Cincinnati would be in the racket. You’ve got to play the part.”
“I’m trying.”
Victor touched Rico’s sleeve. “Look at me.”
“Okay.”
“What do you see?”
What Rico saw was the best-dressed guy in the hotel, an eighty-year-old with a perfect haircut and capped teeth and tailored clothes. He saw a guy he’d like to be one day.
“A guy on top of the world,” Rico said.
“That’s right. And I’m working a job, right now.”
“Here?”
“Yup. Surprised?”
“Yeah . . .”
“It’s called the confidence game, kid. You’ve got to exude confidence, otherwise you won’t fool a blind man.”
“What you got going?”
Victor dropped his voice. “I come here three or four times a year, and I always leave with a bag of money. Twenty grand, sometimes more. Pays for my vacation and the broad on my arm.”
Rico felt his spirits pick up. Victor did that to him. Victor was the epitome of what a criminal was supposed to be, the master of a universe of his own creating. Every pearl he passed along, Rico knew would bring him closer to his own dream.
“Come on. Tell me.”
“It’s the Titanic Thompson/Arnold Rothstein con.”
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t read the book I gave you?”
Rico lowered his head in shame. He hadn’t read a book in twenty years.
“No.”
Victor looked out the window as two well-kept women walked by. He spoke in a normal voice, no longer caring who heard. “I give you a book, you’re supposed to read it. Titanic Thompson was the greatest con man of the twentieth century. Arnold Rothstein was one of the greatest gamblers of the twentieth century. He fixed the 1919 World Series.”
“The Black Sox scandal,” Rico said.
“Go to the head of the class. One night in New York, Rothstein got into a poker game at the Roosevelt Hotel with a bunch of heavy hitters, one of whom was Thompson. Rothstein ends