The Bookmakers Read Free

the jukebox and dancing in the narrow aisle between the tables. Mack was still good-looking—Otto thought he resembled that actor, Jeff Bridges—but he was starting to thicken around the waist and to take on the deceptively outdoor rosiness of the habitual indoor drinker.
    Still, Otto was nobody’s judge. That morning he greeted Mack the same way he had for twenty years, with a smile and a wink and a friendly, “Hiya, kid, what’ll it be?”
    Mack consulted his watch and ordered a Bloody Mary. “I want to ask you a question,” he said when Otto set the drink in front of him. “What would you do if you had a million dollars and one year to live?”
    Otto wiped a spot off the bar and smiled. “Somebody gives me a million? I buy two Mercedes, one for me and one for Betty—a hundred thousand bucks. A house on the beach in Fort Lauderdale—half a mil. Hundred thousand in the bank for each of the two kids. And I’d blow the other two hundred on a trip around the world. That makes an even million.”
    “You’ve got it all planned.”
    “It’s not exactly a rare question in the bartender business,” said Otto. “You serve booze, you get a lot of what-ifs.”
    “Yeah,” agreed Mack. “I guess. You must get sick of it.”
    “Nah, goes with the job,” said Otto. “At least it’s better than the all-time white team.”
    “What?”
    “You know, who’s the greatest white basketball team in history. That’s the one gets me. I mean, I like basketball and all, but who gives a shit?”
    “Right,” said Mack. He thought for a moment. “I guess you’d have to say Bird, Walton, McHale, Cousy and West.”
    “Stockton. They all say Stockton instead of Cousy. Half the kids come in here these days, they never even heard of Cousy.”
    Mack shook his head. “Cousy was a better outside shooter—” The door opened and Mack saw the squat, impeccably tailored reflection of Tommy Russo in the mirror above the bar. Otto scowled, not trying to hide his disapproval of the agent. “To be continued,” Mack said to the bartender, sliding off his stool. “Right now I’ve got to tell a priest about a miracle.”
    Tommy Russo’s first thought was that the Flying Tiger hadn’t changed. The jukebox still played old-fashioned jigaboo music, the air stank of grease and stale beer and Otto gave him his usual Mick fish-eye from behind the bar. Mack looked the same too, dressed as always in a pair of faded jeans and a flannel shirt. Over the years Tommy often wondered how he lived the way he did, suffered so many disappointments and still looked so young. Protestant genes, he decided.
    Russo himself had changed considerably. He had added forty pounds to his five-foot, seven-inch frame, weight that even his two-thousand-dollar suits couldn’t disguise. His thick black eyebrows had grown together, giving him the look of a well-groomed, roly-poly ape. And 10 percent of anything no longer seemed like a lot of money to him. He had become one of New York’s most successful agents—and, because of his passion for gambling, one of the least solvent.
    Most of the ex-priests Tommy knew had gone sex-crazy after leaving their calling, but he was no more interested in women now than he had been at St. Fred’s. He had never married, and visited expensive prostitutes when the need arose. Luxury and high-rolling excited Tommy Russo—the thing that turned him on about sex was knowing that he was paying five hundred bucks an orgasm.
    On the other hand he was willing to admit that gambling had become a real addiction. Wagering large sums of money gave himthe kind of thrill that no woman ever could. Unfortunately, he had been on a bad run lately. The eighteen grand he owed Herman Reggie was just one of his debts; he was into bookies all over the country for more than a hundred thousand bucks. He had no doubt that he could eventually pay up, and most of his creditors were willing to wait. Herman Reggie was different, though, and Tommy needed to do