Hours of Gladness Read Free Page A

volunteers when he saw Sergeant O’Day was in command. Was that why Minus One was rooting in garbage cans? Did he have him on his conscience too? Mick wondered.
    At the boardwalk and Delaware Avenue, Mick parked the car and took off his badge, slung a shoulder holster under his arm, and shoved his .38 in it. Without his hat and with his dark blue jacket zipped, he might have been a bus driver. Sometimes in the summer, ferrying drunks to Paradise Beach police headquarters, he felt like one.
    In the casino, the freezing wind and rain that had lashed him on the boardwalk ceased to matter. He was in the warm, glowing world of the Arabian nights. On the ceiling were a million tiny, twinkling stars; in a dim corner a swing band blared and a fat black singer in a white sequined gown wailed about her lack of love. She was singing to mute rows of blank-eyed slot machines, like a humanoid performing on a Star Wars asteroid. The slots sluggers had long since boarded their buses and rolled home to Allentown and Paramus. Only the big bettors were still on duty, watching the cards slither from the draw poker machine, the roulette wheel spin, the craps dice dance.
    Not a few of these insomniacs were women. It was amazing how many women came here alone. In front of the first baccarat table, with a pile of chips high enough to ski down, stood a shapely blonde about forty in another all-white outfit, down to her shoes. What was her name? Mick reached into his cop’s memory and produced it: Jacqueline Chasen, granddaughter of old Marcus Teitlebaum, who had once owned all of Leeds Point. His heirs had subdivided it into sleek, modern houses on tiny lots and made a bundle.
    Jacqueline Chasen looked at him and some sort of recognition seemed to flicker in her mascaraed eyes. She had been a brunette the last two times Mick saw her. Remember me, baby, from your beach-blanket-bingo days? Mick was tempted to ask the question but he
decided against it. She was class. Everyone in Paradise Beach had talked about making a pass at her, but no local had ever got close. She was still looking classy, if a bit long in the tooth. The white outfit, the pearls, probably meant a heavy escort was around somewhere.
    â€œHey, Mick, how you doin’?”
    The voice forced Mick to turn his head to the left. He did not want to do it. He did not want to see the owner of the voice. He was the main reason why Mick hated to come to Atlantic City. At another baccarat table, beside a pile of chips even bigger than the one Jacqueline Chasen was handling, sat Mick’s father, Harry Alexander O’Day, known to everyone as Buster. Every time Mick came to Atlantic City, Buster was at the baccarat or the craps table, dropping another twenty or thirty thousand as if it were Monopoly money, sneering drunkenly that there was lot more where it came from.
    There was too. Back in Jersey City, the northern factory town where Mick had been born, Buster ran the biggest numbers operation in the state. He had inherited it from his father and built it even bigger with help from the Mob. But Mick was never going to see any of the money. Neither was his mother. About a year after he was born, Barbara and Buster had gone their separate ways, and neither had ever explained why to him.
    Not that he had ever asked. He had been taught to despise this small, balding man with the mouth that twisted into a sneer even when he tried to smile. It had been easy because as far as Mick could see, there was nothing about Buster O’Day that anyone could like. All he had was money, piles of it that he waved in Mick’s face every time he saw him.
    â€œHey, you wanna try your luck?” his father said, clutching a wad of $100 bills.
    â€œNah. No thanks,” Mick said. “I’m here on business.”
    Buster sneered. Not even a try at a smile this time. “Yeah. I know. He’s playin’ craps.”
    Mick’s cousin Rose Gargan grabbed his arm. Her
crotch-tight,