Chances

  She felt dismay flood her face. “Er, Mr. Bonnatti… I don’t think so….”

  “You don’t?” He studied her intently. “I do.” The way he said “I do” was deceptively mild.

  “I’d… sooner not,” she stammered, losing control.

  “And I’d sooner you did. I’ll send one of the boys around with some stuff. Just watch who you offer it to. And stash it away somewhere safe.”

  She was upset. “If the place was raided I could go to jail for having drugs on the premises.”

  Enzio stood up. “An’ I thought you was smart. If you have a raid you’ll know about it before. Plenty of time to dump the goods.”

  She nodded blankly. The time had come to get out of the business.

  “Nice kid you got,” Enzio remarked, as if reading her thoughts. “I got boys myself. You wanna take good care of him. The city can be a tough place.”

  When had he ever seen Steven? She was filled with a hopeless fury.

  Enzio was at the bedroom door now. “Don’t think of skipping on me, chickie. I like the way you run things. Keep up the good work, an’ the kid’ll stay healthy. So will you.”

  Bastard! Bastard! She was caught in another trap.

  “I wouldn’t think of it, Mr. Bonnatti,” she said dully.

  “Of course you wouldn’t. Didn’t I say right off you was smart?”

  It was her. No mistaking the purposeful walk and the long jet hair. She was pushing a stroller. Bernard nearly careened into the back of another car with excitement.

  He maneuvered his car into a parking space and proceeded to follow her on foot.

  She walked briskly, pausing occasionally to gaze in a shop window. He shortened the gap between them until he was almost upon her. Talk to her, a voice screamed in his head. Say something—anything. He tapped her on the shoulder and she spun around like a nervous colt. “Carrie!” he exclaimed. “I thought it was you.”

  Her smile was sickly. “Mr. Dimes….”

  “Fancy bumping into you just like that!” He wondered if he was overdoing it.

  Her eyes flickered this way and that, as if looking for an escape.

  “How are you? And who is this little fellow?” He was bending over the stroller.

  She was stunned. Bernard Dimes. After all this time. “My son,” she said quickly, “Er… that’s why I took off like I did. I got married.”

  He looked quickly at her wedding finger. It was bare. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  An awkward silence enveloped them. How could he say, I want to be with you. She was looking at him as though he was the last person in the world she wanted to see. “Perhaps we could have dinner one night,” he said at last, in a strained voice. “I’d like that very much.”

  She shook her head. “I told you. I’m married. But thank you all the same.”

  “Then perhaps you and your husband would care to see a preview of my new show. We’re out of town for the next six weeks, but after that there will be a week of previews and—”

  She was hardly listening to him. She was so ashamed and embarrassed. Oh, God! If he ever found out what she was…. “I must go,” she said, interrupting him.

  “Of course.” He held her eyes with a very intent look. “If you should ever need me… I’m still at the same address.”

  “Goodbye.” She rushed off down the street, pushing the stroller at a furious pace.

  “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Too fast!” Steven chanted.

  She slowed down and thought about the encounter. Bernard Dimes wanted her. There was no mistaking the look in his eyes. Bernard Dimes was like all the others. But different. He was a very rich man.

  “Candy!” demanded Steven. “Pease, mommy. Peeease.”

  She stopped at a candy store and purchased some chocolate. “Bad for your teeth,” she grumbled, handing it to her son.

  “Bad! Bad! Bad!” Steven chanted.

  She sighed. Bernard Dimes wanted her body, that was all. He couldn’t be of any help to her. Bonnatti had sent a delivery of narcotics to be sold, and that’s what she had to worry about. Now not only a whore and a madam but a pusher too.

  She looked at Steven, dribbling chocolate down his chin, and felt a cold tightness around her heart. She had to do something. But what?

  Gino

  1948-1949

  Gino had kept his promise. He bought Bee the biggest diamond engagement ring he could find, and then he sat back and waited for her to get pregnant. And waited… and waited… and waited….

  “The doctor said it could take a few months,” she explained. “It doesn’t always happen just like that. We have to do it at certain times, keep trying.”

  Making love at arranged times did not thrill Gino one little bit. In fact, the more Bee marched cheerily into bed saying, “Now’s the right time,” the less he wanted to perform. “I’m not a fuckin’ monkey!” he snorted. “I can only do it when I want to.”

  She sulked. “The doctor says—”

  He wanted to kill the fucking doctor.

  Bee was in the kitchen one morning fixing breakfast. She didn’t look too good in the mornings with her shiny face and mussed hair.

  Marco sat at the table reading a well-thumbed copy of Mickey Spillane’s I, the Jury.

  Gino knocked it out of his hand. “I ain’t spendin’ a fortune on your education for you to sit around readin’ crap like that.”

  Marco flushed. “It’s real good stuff, Gino.”

  “Read Fitzgerald, Hemingway, somethin’ decent.”

  “How many eggs?” Bee asked matter of factly, just like a wife.

  He gazed around the large comfortable kitchen and decided he hated the Village apartment. It was a dump. What was he doing here anyway?

  Bee turned to ask him how many eggs again, and the sun coming through the window hit her across the face. She looked old and tired. Christ! If she looked like this now—

  “No eggs. Nothin’. I got a lotta work to do.”

  He walked out of the apartment and out of her life just like that. He never saw her again, although he continued to pay all her bills and allowed her to keep the diamond ring. He heard, a couple of years later, that she had married an accountant and gone to live in New Mexico. Marco kept in touch.

  Out of jail over a year. Out of his relationship with Bee. All his business interests booming, and hot pussy whichever way he turned.

  Gino concentrated on having a good time.

  The situation in Las Vegas was appealing to him. Las Vegas—once a barren desert pisshole—discovered by Bugsy Siegel, who opened up the infamous Flamingo Hotel in December 1946 and got assassinated for his trouble in June 1947. He had been caught skimming the mob’s money, and there was only one punishment for that.

  A year after Siegel’s demise, Meyer Lansky financed the building of another luxury hotel and casino, the Thunderbird. Soon, several more big hotels were planned.

  Gino liked the idea of getting in on the ground floor. And he had a syndicate of investors anxious to get involved. He had a feeling that Las Vegas was going to get hotter and hotter. Where else could you get sun, sand, and legal gambling? And only a few hours’ drive from Los Angeles, too.

  Jake the Boy was quite a force out on the Coast. He had taken over where Bugsy Siegel left off. He was good-looking, a swaggerer, and friend of the stars.

  Hollywood. A glamorous name to most people. Home for The Boy. A Beverly Hills mansion with palm trees in the garden and a movie starlet named Pippa Sanchez in his bed.

  Gino arrived on a balmy morning.

  The Boy met him in a white Lagonda drophead coupe and drove him straight to his house. He had a special guest wing for Gino to stay in. Very Hollywood. Marble floors. White furnishings. Gold taps in the bathroom.

  Gino had arrived to discuss his syndicate’s financing the hotel Jake wanted to build in Vegas. Jake was flush, but not flush enough to finance the building of a multimillion-dollar hotel by himself. He needed Gino—needed him badly. ?
??It’ll be the biggest an’ the best!” Jake enthused. “I want to call it the Mirage. Every star in Hollywood’ll come to the opening. It’ll be the best hotel in the whole friggin’ world!”

  Gino liked the sound of it. He liked The Boy’s enthusiasm and style. Over the years they had become friends. The Boy had even visited him a few times in jail on lightning trips east. “I owe everything I got to you, Gino,” Jake was fond of saying. “You gave me my first hundred bucks.”

  Pippa Sanchez had arranged a group of girl friends around the pool for his arrival.

  “Y’can take your pick,” Jake said airily. “Blonde, brunette, redhead, I didn’t know which you’d prefer.”

  Gino eyed the selection of nubile flesh lounging in varied swimsuited poses, their young bodies carefully oiled. “It all looks good to me,” he said.

  Jake laughed and smacked his lips. “Take my advice, try a California blonde, they’re like no other broad. When they come I swear it’s suntan oil oozes out!”

  “It’s a long way from the mean streets, huh?”

  “It sure is!” Jake agreed.

  Gino felt himself beginning to sweat in his heavy three-piece suit. “I want to shower and rest up.”

  Jake remembered his manners. “Sure, sure, I’ll send one of the girls in with drinks. And then maybe we can sit around the pool. You want to get a tan while you’re here, don’t you?”

  “I want to get our business done,” Gino replied shortly. “What have you arranged about Vegas? I’d like to see the place as soon as possible.”

  “It’s all arranged. Tiny Martino is lendin’ me his private plane. We fly up in the mornin’. Spend the night at the Flamingo, fly back the next morning.”

  “Tiny Martino, huh?” Gino was impressed. He had watched Tiny Martino dozens of times on the screen. Bee always said he was funnier than Chaplin. “He coming with us?”

  “Maybe, maybe. He’s a good friend. In fact, he’s made me a promise to open the season for us at the Mirage.”

  The way Jake spoke, the hotel was already built and finished. Gino hadn’t even seen the plans yet.

  Pippa Sanchez swayed across the terrace toward them. She was short, with a dynamic body and a sweep of dark curls. She wore a white swimsuit and white high-heeled sandals; her body was naturally tanned. In her native Mexico she was a star. In Hollywood she was just another contract starlet. Jake the Boy was mad about her.

  “So,” she said dramatically, extending her hand, “you are the Gino Santangelo I’ve heard so much about.”

  He took her outstretched hand and squeezed. “That’s me.”

  She studied him through thickly lashed dark eyes. “Nice to meet you at last.” Her voice was husky.

  “Likewise.” He wondered if the choice of flesh included this one. If it did he wanted her.

  Jake must have read his thoughts. Quickly he said, “Pippa’s my girl. We bin together—how long, honey?”

  “A year or two,” she replied casually.

  “One of these days we’ll make it legal!” He laughed.

  “Sure. And one of these days pigs will play leapfrog on your ass!” Pippa responded.

  “Actresses!” Jake exclaimed. “Stay away from ’em, Gino.”

  “Yes,” agreed Pippa, in her low-down throaty voice. “Stay away from them. We bite, you know!”

  Gino smiled. He liked a broad who could join two words together.

  It was Costa’s sixth trip home since the funeral. After Franklin’s death he had found himself in a quandary. What to do? Stay in New York and look after Gino’s interests? Or return to San Francisco and take care of his mother, Leonora, and the family law firm?

  Jennifer was no help when it came to making a decision. “You must do what you feel is right,” she insisted. “If you go back to Frisco you’ll always be Franklin Zennocotti’s little boy. And if we live with your mother she’ll become too dependent on you. And Leonora is certainly not going to stand any interference in her life. She’s thirty-eight years old. If she wants to drink and… er, have… men, how can you stop her? Especially if her own husband can’t.”

  Costa had to admit that Jennifer was probably right, but it didn’t make him feel any the less guilty when he made his monthly visit home. That was one of the reasons he approved of Gino’s getting involved in Las Vegas. With business there they could spend extra time on the Coast.

  Jennifer had not accompanied him on his latest trip. This suited him fine, because after two days he planned to travel on to Los Angeles and meet up with Gino. He thought about all this while driving his mother to a family dinner.

  Leonora and her husband, Edward, lived in a sprawling ranch-type house. A black-uniformed maid opened the door and led them into an oak-paneled living room. Leonora lounged on a barstool. She had added quite a lot of weight to her once-svelte body. She wore slacks and a blouse and held a martini glass. Costa noticed it never left her hand.

  Edward stood behind the bar, moodily cracking ice. He too had put on a lot of weight, and his handsome face was florid and puffed.

  One could see that they had once been a magnificent-looking couple—but only just.

  “Ah, the visiting New Yorker,” Leonora remarked sharply. “I don’t know how you manage to drag yourself away from your criminal friend so often. Does he allow it?”

  Costa ignored her. She did nothing but make cracks about Gino. It seemed to give her some kind of perverse pleasure.

  Edward came out from behind the bar, and they shook hands.

  “How’s business?” Costa asked.

  “Banking is a constant source of boredom. I’d like to give it up and spend all of my days on the golf course.”

  “Oh,” remarked Leonora sarcastically, “I thought that’s what you did do.”

  Maria came into the room at that point, a delicate-looking girl of twenty. She reminded Costa of Leonora at the same age, only Maria’s temperament was entirely different from her mother’s. She was shy and withdrawn, almost old-fashioned in a nice way.

  “Good evening, uncle, grandma.” She kissed them both warmly on the cheek.

  “Oh, God!” exclaimed Leonora. “You’re not home for dinner again, are you? Don’t you ever go out on dates? When I was your age I had them lining up at the door.”

  “When you were her age you were married,” Costa pointed out quietly.

  “Didn’t stop me!” Leonora waggled a finger at her daughter. “It’s not natural, never going out. What’s the matter with you?”

  Maria’s face flushed. “There’s nothing the matter with me, mother.”

  “Don’t you start with me, young lady,” Leonora screamed. “Did you hear her, Eddie? Did you hear her?”

  “Oh, shut up,” Edward snapped.

  Leonora mimicked his voice. “‘Oh, shut up!’ She could sit in her room for the rest of her life, just coming out to insult me, for all you care.”

  “Leonora, please….”

  Maria glanced quickly at Costa and her grandmother. She was painfully embarrassed by her parents’ behavior, and it showed.

  He took a deep breath and interrupted the bickering couple. “Jennifer has a great suggestion,” he said. “How about, for Maria’s twenty-first birthday present—if she comes to spend a month with us in New York?”

  Maria’s face lit up.

  “New York,” snorted Leonora. “Mixing with all your gangster friends. I should think not.”

  “Oh, mother!” pleaded Maria. “Please!”

  “She won’t be mixing with any gangsters,” Costa explained patiently. “Jennifer has a lot of delightful friends. Plenty of respectable families with nice eligible sons.”

  Leonora pursed her lips. “I’ve never even been to New York myself.”

  “You’ve never wanted to,” Edward snapped.

  “Perhaps if we went too—”

  “I can’t take a month off. My father would have a stroke.”

  “We’ll have to see,” Leonora decided reluctantly.

  Costa
winked at Maria and mouthed, It’ll be O.K.

  She smiled at him gratefully.

  “When the hell’s dinner?” snarled Leonora. “I swear I’m going to have to get rid of that dumb girl who crawls around this house pretending to be a maid.”

  Costa sighed. Another wonderful evening at Leonora’s.

  The desert sun was boiling hot as they walked around and inspected the site Jake had picked out for the Mirage.

  “Once the money is in we can start to build. I got an option on the land. Architect’s plans. Builder standin’ by. All I need is the word from you. It’s a can’t-miss operation. It’ll be like erecting a bank!” Jake enthused.

  Gino had already made up his mind. He was in. But let The Boy sweat a little. “You got the plans here?”

  “Sure, sure.” Jake snapped his fingers at a hovering minion. “Get me my case outa the car.”

  He took Gino by the arm, and they strolled across the dusty barren stretch of land. “Over here an olympic-size pool—maybe a couple of ’em so’s the kiddies can come too. Mom and the kids can play in the sun, while the old man loses the family fortune.”

  “I like it.”

  Jake’s man came running up with his case. The Boy took it, snapped it open, and produced the plans. He bent down on the ground and started to open them up.

  “Forget it,” Gino said. “I’ll look at them later.”

  Jake, on his knees, began to say, “I thought you wanted to see—” then he changed his mind and stood up, leaving his bodyguard to fold the plans and put them back in the case.

  Gino had strolled off. Jake ran anxiously after him. “Over here a whole lot of tennis courts.”

  “Tennis courts? I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Give ’em too much to do an’ they’ll never get to the tables. Gamble and sunbathe—nothin’ else.”

  “You’re right. Nothin’ else.”

  “Except the supper show. A star name. It’ll lure ’em here in the first place.”

  “And beautiful girls.”

  “Whores?”

  “Naw. Waitresses to serve ’em drinks while they’re losin’ it. Showgirls. A few whores, but high-class ones that the bell captain’ll have on tap.”