Lay the Favorite (15 page)

At the hooker bar inside the Del Rey, while waiting for Big Tim to chaperone us to our next excursion, I listed the estimated startup costs. I learned that online sports books required the same licenses as the country’s hot dog vendors. If we wanted one, we should talk to some guy named Enrique, who offered them at a discount.

Mosquitoes swarmed around my ears and ankles. The sweet smell of the cabbie’s cigar clashed with his pine-scented cologne. Or was that a leak in the oil valve? I pressed my cheek against the sticky window and watched a malnourished rooster peck out litter floating in a flooded gutter. I began to see why the gamblers compared Costa Rica to the Wild West.

Still, I kept my enthusiasm alive. Even when we visited bookmakers who admitted they were on the verge of bankruptcy, whose betting floor was as quiet and morose as a living room of mourners sitting shiva, I could only see potential. Their office space was orderly and centrally located. If they went out of business, we could take over their lease. Tactlessly, I asked how much they planned to sell their computer servers for.

Dink, meanwhile, was miserable. It was his first time out of the country and it became obvious that he was more than a homebody—he was Rain Man. Without his daily direct feed of NHL games, chocolate milk, and fried potato knishes, his mood was agitated and at times he became hysterical. Realizing that his ticker didn’t work overseas, he banged it against his head. There wasn’t a satellite in the country that picked up hockey games, and each night Dink sat on the edge of the hotel bed, inches from the TV, repeating the word “brutal” with each click of the remote. He refused to sip Coca-Cola out of a little plastic bag, Central American style. When he ordered a pizza and it came topped with coconut, he refused to eat it, even when I volunteered to pick off the slivers, piece by piece. Losing patience, I threatened to punch him. He growled—actually showed his teeth—and marched out of the restaurant. From that evening on we ate our meals at the Denny’s by the airport and I never felt another twinge of romantic love for
Dink ever again. And, ordering the “Moons Over My Hammy” sandwich for the third night in a row, I realized I had been wrong about Tulip. It wasn’t just money that kept her in the marriage. It couldn’t be. No amount of money could compensate for Dink’s stubbornness and constant self-loathing. She was a patient, loyal wife, and Dink was exceptionally lucky to have her.

Just beyond the polluted, billboarded city of San José, voluptuous green hills peeped through wispy white clouds. If, just for one day, Dink left behind the noisy, air-conditioned sports books and the relentless talk of money won and lost, I was sure that his mood would improve and that he could reflect clearly on the endless possibilities of this new and exciting venture. I arranged for a day trip to the Tabacón resort, where we would soak in hot springs at the foot of an active volcano and have a heart-to-heart.

It was Valentine’s Day weekend and lovers from all over the world shared flirty glances inside steamy thermal pools in the center of a tropical rain forest. Rushing waterfalls clapped against shiny black rock. In the high fog, tent bats slept inside banana leaves. Holding my Lava Flow mixed drink above water, I doggie-paddled to the center of the pool.

“I can’t!” Dink shouted over squabbling parakeets. “I don’t know how to swim.” He cringed as if the act of breathing fresh air caused him great pain.

“It’s four foot deep!” I shouted back.

Hoisting his swimming trunks high over his marshmallow-white belly, he descended unsteadily into 106-degree water. His glasses fogged and he pulled them from his face. Without them, his small eyes darted and he looked confused. He walked toward me, slowly, his outstretched arms cutting through the steam. I thought he was pretending to be a mummy. I laughed and stirred my drink until, suddenly, I realized that Dink was truly scared and I rushed over to guide him to the sitting area. I cleaned his glasses underwater and dried them with a stranger’s towel. He slid them over his ears. They instantly fogged.

“Can we please move here,” I said. “It’s time to take Dink Inc. to
the international level. I’ll take care of all the start-up headache stuff. Just please let’s move here. I want to make a million dollars. I want the best of it!”

He swayed his head and shoulders side to side, a mannerism of his that indicated uncertainty. He always swayed two minutes to post. “I don’t think this is the best of it,” he said. “I thought it would be easier. I thought it would be like working in Queens.”

“This is as close to Queens as you’re gonna get,” I said.

“No it’s not. In Queens there wasn’t anyone at my door with a machine gun.”

“We don’t have to have the guy with the machine gun.”

My naïveté hit a nerve. Potential dangers shot from Dink’s mouth like a string of firecrackers. Kidnappings, bodyguards, unreliable drug-addicted clerks, computer hackers, jail time. Dink was already a felon; if he were arrested again he would serve time in prison. When would I understand that? he asked, turning away from the sunburned couple French-kissing beside him. When would I understand how tough this business was?

No bookmaker or gambler expects to get paid in full by everybody, every year. And that was just one of the job hazards. Personal masseuses will lift a few grand; betonsports.com will go bankrupt, have a fire sale in the middle of the night, and run away with whatever is left in their customers’ accounts. The real problems come when the FBI knocks down your door, freezes your bank accounts, and cleans out your security boxes. When you go before a judge and hear the words “conspiracy” and “racketeering.” Even more demoralizing were the inside jobs. Hand a casino runner one hundred grand to make bets every day and at some point the temptation will be too much. How many afternoons had Dink listened to one of his casino runners invent some phony robbery?
I went to the mailbox, I had your money in a fanny pack, and I was held up at gunpoint
. Nineteen grand, gone.
Look, Dinky! See? I got punched in the face
. Eighty grand, gone. Some of the employees didn’t even bother to concoct a lie. Bernie confessed to stealing ten grand to pay his mortgage. Fishman, while working as a
runner, robbed Dink of twenty thousand. He claimed the money fell from his pocket, and then admitted that he lost it betting baseball. “Like an idiot he bet the biggest underdog in the series!” Dink said, growing more agitated with each recollection. “I told him, ‘If you’re gonna rob somebody, lay the favorite. You have a better chance of winning. Why would you take the underdog? You’re robbing! Bet the most likely winner so at least you can say “I won!”’”

Dink rushed through the sinister side of the business as though it were the part of a graveyard where the sun doesn’t shine. There was a casino runner who once claimed to have accidentally flushed three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of poker chips (the ones he was supposed to bet sports with) down a toilet inside Caesars Palace. Dink looked at me: could I even fathom how all that felt? And then to have all those fingers shaking in your face, saying they told you so. Your wife calling you stupid for trusting the scumbags with that much money. And then she goes shopping. She has nothing to do so she spends. A fight about money ensues. Why doesn’t she do something to help with the monthly nut? Why doesn’t she go to real-estate school? Because she’s a woman of leisure. Those are her exact words.
She’s gonna end up like her women of leisure friends
, you say to yourself.
Fifty-three, divorced, and working behind a makeup counter for nine dollars an hour
. The door slams and you’re alone. Finally you can shake the computer monitor and throw it against the wall. You can pace the floor and punch the air and get lost in your daydream of revenge. Calming down, you watch TV. The pageant’s on. You have five hundred dollars on Miss Israel and she doesn’t even make the top ten. And how can it be that Miss Sweden is black? What’s the world coming to? The three hours you sleep that night are marked by hysterical nightmares of losing money. The day’s first thought is of revenge. Everyone cheats. Everyone else is a liar. You’re only as good as you were yesterday. You’ll overcome this. It’s a high-risk, high-reward business. You’ll be rewarded. One day. One day. One day. It becomes your mantra.

Dink looked at me through a long pause. Clear-winged butterflies fluttered around our heads. “I’m telling you this because you’re gonna get old, you’re gonna get sick, and you’re gonna die. So you gotta have fun while you can.

“Actually,” he said, reconsidering, “you have more fun than anybody I know. I guess I was telling that to myself.”

The trip to Costa Rica wasn’t a fact-finding mission. It was a spiritual mission for Dink to come to terms with how he felt about the business. Why would he invest offshore and run the risk of having even more employees rip him off? It was a shitty business no matter what the geography was, and now that he realized that, we could go home.

Not three weeks later, I was in the office when Tony, our casino runner, called.

“No, you didn’t,” Dink said, pressing his palm to his forehead, feeling for a fever. “You didn’t get robbed. Come back to the office.”

“I’m not coming to the office,” Tony said. “I’m gonna kill myself. Tell my wife I love her.”

“Don’t do that,” Dink said. “Don’t do that. Let’s just try to work it out. Come back to the office. We can work out a payment plan.”

Tony hung up.

“He threatened to kill himself?” I asked. I couldn’t believe what had transpired. Just two minutes before, we were playing gin rummy, waiting for Tony to call and tell us what basketball bets he had made. Robbie J avoided eye contact. He gave in to every itch and fidget.

“I can’t have that,” Dink said. “I can’t have that over my head. He’s my …”

And here his breathing became hard and he couldn’t say the word “friend” that would have completed his sentence.

“Get out, NOW!” he yelled. “Everyone OUT!”

Standing outside the office door, I heard a computer hit the wall. “I can’t FUCKING do this,” Dink yelled. I could tell he was crying. The real-estate agents and accountants passing by as they left work for the day rolled their eyes, wondering what the guy in Suite A was raving about now.

Tony didn’t kill himself. He bought a Mercedes-Benz and took off to Reno. Robbie J quit to become a full-time gambler. Otis was fired for barking. Lonely, depressed Bruce was recommended by the Den of Equity host. Dink offered him a job and bought him a brand-new moped for transportation. Bruce lost Dink’s bankroll shooting craps, then called from a pay phone and threatened to kill himself.

Exasperated, Dink closed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. “Is it green?” he asked.

Tulip leaned over the table and for a long moment examined its bumps and ridges. Aside from the few bleach spots dotting her jaw line, her face had fully recovered from its lift. Her skin was smooth and golden. Clear gloss accentuated her plumped-up pout. She looked like a thirty-five-year-old babe, vivacious and nubile. Thrilled with her looks, she admired her reflection in every window and stainless-steel appliance she came upon. Even the gloom of the office and her husband’s wretchedness could not sink her high spirits.

Dink retracted his tongue and swallowed hard, wiping the spit from his chin.

“My body’s rejecting me,” he said. “The parasites have disrupted things and now I’m turning green.”

“Baseball makes you crazy,” Tulip said. “Why don’t you quit for a little bit?”

“No one believes me!” Dink snapped. “You think I want to be this miserable?” His voice changed, as though he was going to cry. “I want to have fun like everyone else! All I do is foot the bill! But no more!”

Dink whipped a remote at the TV. “We are officially operating on damage-prevention mode. Tulip, YOU NEED TO GET A JOB!”

Tulip tossed on a floppy, wide-brimmed hat and round sunglasses with pink pearl lenses. Exuding newfound self-confidence and sex appeal, she coyly tilted her head to the side. “Honey,” she purred, “if you don’t respect money, why should I?”

Tulip had a point. For thirty years Dink had made his living gambling and yet he couldn’t even begin to estimate how much he’d won or lost in any given year. For someone so savvy in assessing the value of odds, of home-court advantages and changes to pitching rotations, Dink failed to respect the value of hard cash. I can’t tell you how many times Dink arrived at the office, wondering aloud what he’d done with the forty grand he’d picked up the day before or complaining that he had “misplaced” sixty thousand. He said this in front of his employees, who were busting their asses to help him make that money—for a salary of six hundred dollars a week. I often wondered if his blasé attitude toward huge amounts of money had anything to do with how often people ripped him off. If he blew off the money, he could pretend that he hadn’t been openly defied and utterly disrespected. His self-esteem, it seemed, was worth more to him than his weekly take-home. Or maybe it was just the gambler’s mentality. Just as my father used to say on family casino vacations: money is no object.

Whatever it was, somewhere along the way, I adopted it too. Instead of a bank account, I kept my money rolled in an empty coffee canister inside the fridge. I loaned money to friends, grossly overtipped waiters and valets, and bought fancy gifts for my family.
And come those excruciatingly hot midsummer days, when air-conditioning added extra appeal to high-end department stores, I’d treat myself to money-blowing extravaganzas. I’d buy four-hundred-dollar bikinis and thirty CDs in one pop. Then I’d grab my road atlas and Otis and I would go on trips to Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and California. We’d stay at luxurious spas with hot springs and private mineral pools, and then return to Vegas, funds depleted, but enthusiasm for the job restored.

But whether cause or symptom, the tongue fungus killed fun in the office. Everything changed. The ugliness and wildness of the business had gotten ahold of Dink and wasn’t letting go. Fun was now the ultimate sin. If you made the mistake of smiling or expressing joy in Dink’s company, he asked you to leave or he fired you. Dink demanded loyalty, and there was no better sign of solidarity with the guy than sitting in front of your computer and looking as miserable as he did.