Wonderland Page 5

  Z nodded. He went back to reading the Phoenix.

  “Get some rest,” I said. “You’ll watch Henry when he locks up. We’ll switch in the morning.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “A den of iniquity,” I said.

  “Send me a postcard,” Z said. He never looked up from the newspaper.

  Twenty minutes later, I sat in a red vinyl booth in the back corner of the Tennessee Tavern, which was perched at the precipice of the Mass Pike at the corner of Newbury and Mass Ave. The place was appropriately smoky and dark. As usual, the bartender brought me a draft beer and a shot of Wild Turkey that I never ordered.

  Lennie Seltzer grinned. “Cheers,” he said.

  “Salut,” I said, and drank the shot. The whiskey had been finely aged a good six months, which developed qualities of a heady diesel fuel. I quickly cleansed my palate with a cold Budweiser.

  “So what have you heard about Rick Weinberg in Revere?”

  “He’s one of a lot of players,” Lennie said. “But Weinberg’s got a freakin’ hard-on for a Boston casino.”

  “Nicely said.”

  “Thanks,” Lennie said, popping a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and lighting up with a pink Zippo. “Want another round?”

  “I have a pint of cough syrup in the car.”

  “So yeah,” Lennie said. “These guys are fucking serious. All of ’em. The carnival is coming whether we like it or not.”

  “What about the Wonderland dog track?” I said.

  “What’s the property record say?”

  “Corporate names buried a mile deep,” I said. “I can’t make the connection. Officially it’s in bankruptcy.”

  “I miss that place,” Lennie said. “I liked watching the dogs run and chase that rabbit. Lost a lot of business when those fucking PETA weirdos got riled up.”

  “Maybe they had a point.”

  “Dogs were bred to run,” he said.

  “Some are bred to fight,” I said. “That doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.”

  Lennie shrugged. He squinted his eyes at me and smoked some more. “I know Weinberg is here and looking,” he said. “But I hadn’t heard anything about him and Wonderland.”

  I drank some more beer. I didn’t want to be rude.

  “Everything is changing,” Lennie said. He blew a stream of smoke upward and crushed the cigarette. “Don’t matter what we want. Bookies like me are in short supply. First the fucking Internet and now legal gambling in Boston. Christ.”

  “What’s the old guard have to say about it?”

  “You’re talking about Gino Fish?” Lennie said.

  I nodded.

  “Why not ask your friend Vinnie?”

  “I’d rather ask you.”

  Lennie shrugged. “Gino tried to keep it out,” he said. “Greased some palms. They greased more. Hell, we lost.”

  “What about now?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Is Weinberg connected?”

  “He’s a fucking casino mogul from Las Vegas,” Lennie said. “What do you think? He ain’t Walt Disney. I’d really watch my ass if I were you.”

  “I’m proceeding with caution.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Lennie said. He spread his arms on the back of the booth. “You want me to find out who owns Wonderland because you can’t.”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay,” Lennie said. “I just wanted to hear you say it. Remember your old pal sometime when you don’t need nothing.”

  A working girl in a very short black leather miniskirt and black mesh top with a red bra underneath stumbled into the bar. She gave Lennie a sloppy wink. Lennie acted as if he didn’t know her. “You been busy, Spenser,” Lennie said. “Jesus H. You blew away Jumpin’ Jack Flynn.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “Hawk?”

  “Flynn broke the rules.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You don’t mess with kids.”

  “Hoods got rules?” Lennie settled back, amused.

  “You have rules.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The fucking golden rule. Whoever has the most gold makes the fucking rule.”

  “Speaking of.”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Lennie said. He shook his head and scooted out from the booth to find a stool at the end of the bar. I stayed in the booth and finished my beer. The working girl nuzzled Lennie’s ear as he dialed his telephone. He lit another cigarette and pushed the girl away, the bartender bringing him another beer. Ten minutes and three cigarettes later, Lennie returned to the booth.

  “And?”

  Lennie spread his hands wide, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

  “What’s in this for me?”

  “A favor to be named later?”

  “Good enough,” Lennie said. “Yep, Weinberg has the Wonderland track sewn up. He bought it right after it closed. He may have even funded the crazies wanting to protect the puppies to make sure it went tits up.”

  “May I ask where this information was obtained?”

  Lennie tucked another cigarette into the corner of his mouth and stared at me with great pity.

  “Solid?” I said.

  “Ain’t it always?”

  It was dark when I started back to my apartment. A mile down Commonwealth, I spotted a tail. To make sure, I jockeyed down into the South End for a few blocks. As I lifted my phone to call Z, the car took a sharp turn and disappeared.

  That night in the Public Garden, I held Pearl’s leash with my left hand. My right rested on the butt of my .38.

  13

  THE NEXT MORNING in Revere, I spotted Z’s car. But no Z.

  He had parked at a meter across from the Ocean View, a couple spaces from a beach pavilion. I tried calling him, but there was no answer. I left my Explorer on Beach Boulevard and walked up to the front entrance of Henry’s building. I called Henry. There was a lot of wind off the water and it made the cell signal reverberate like a seashell. He buzzed me in and met me in the lobby. Henry looked like he hadn’t slept. His white hair was disheveled. I had never seen Henry disheveled.

  “They came back,” Henry said. “Those rotten bastards.”

  I nodded.

  “They hurt Z,” he said. “Rotten bastards.”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad.”

  I followed Henry to a small sitting area off the lobby. Z sat nearby on a metal folding chair, his head tilted back, a bag of ice on his nose. He had scratches and welts across his forearms and biceps. His blue jeans were torn, boots scuffed. In his other hand, he gripped a bloody towel.

  “What happened?” I said.

  Z removed the ice and looked at me. He had a busted blood vessel in one eye, and his nose looked broken. One of his legs was stretched out, knee locked. The other leg rested comfortably on a boot heel.

  “Two of them,” Z said. As he spoke, I noted a cracked tooth. “I got one of them down and the other pulled a gun. They got my gun and both took turns.”

  “How’s the leg?”

  “I think my knee is screwed,” he said. “Again.”

  “On the plus side, your nose will look more like mine.”

  Z did not answer. He leaned over and spit blood into his cup. He looked up at me. A bloody towel hung loose in Henry’s hand.

  “We’ll find them.”

  “Shouldn’t have waited for the gun.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe you’d be explaining two stiffs to Quirk right now. He may be less lenient on you.”

  “I stopped fighting back.”

  “Didn’t sound like much of a fight.”

  “I quit,” he said. “I didn’t fight back after a while. I think they thought they’d killed me.”

  “Tak
es more than two men.”

  “You never get beat like that.” He leaned forward, head in his hands, not looking me in the eye.

  “I have.”

  “When?”

  “So many times I try and forget.”

  “Being shot isn’t the same as two men coming down on you,” he said. “I want to kill them.”

  “You follow that path, and you’ll work sloppy. Just like in a fight.”

  “How much more sloppy can you get?”

  “Two against one,” I said. “They took turns holding a gun.”

  “Never happened to me,” Z said. “Last man to beat me was you. But you didn’t try to kill me.”

  I shook my head.

  “You need a doc to check you out,” Henry said, pressing the bloody towel to Z’s face. “Then me and Spenser will come back here and talk to the folks who seen it.”

  “I don’t need a doctor,” he said. “This is bullshit.”

  I nodded to Henry. We both helped Z up from the folding chair. Z slipped his arm around my neck and limped along, with Henry opening the door for us. Z spit out blood onto the ground while we walked together. He was silent the whole ride to the hospital.

  14

  “HOW’S IT GOING?” Susan asked.

  “Swimmingly.”

  “As in the freestyle or as in treading water?”

  “The latter,” I said. “How could you tell?”

  “I hear it in your voice.”

  “‘If it was only the dark voice of the sea.’”

  With the phone cradled between my ear and shoulder, I pulled a cold Amstel from the refrigerator. I popped the top. “Z was hurt today in a fight,” I said. “I just left him at Henry’s. He broke his nose, chipped a tooth, and reinjured his bad knee.”

  “My God,” Susan said.

  “He took it as well as could be expected,” I said. “Z is not the type to complain. More than anything, he seemed disappointed with himself.”

  “Did he do anything wrong?”

  “Nope,” I said. “But he hasn’t been doing this as long as I have. Yet he expects to achieve similar results.”

  “And one does not become you in a few months.”

  “It takes a lot more donuts and beer.”

  “And experience.”

  “That, too.”

  Pearl was resting on the couch and gnawing on a rubber bone. I had tuned the television to the Sox against the Devil Rays. After, there was a Lee Marvin festival on TCM. Point Blank was up first. I had asked Z to join me. Z said he wanted to be alone for a while.

  “Does he know he is a work in progress?” Susan said.

  “I thought he did,” I said. “But now I’m not so sure. I think he believed I was the only man who could best him. Maybe Hawk or Vinnie, too. But not just a couple thugs in Revere.”

  “Can he still help you?”

  “He’s pretty badly hurt, Suze,” I said. “More his ego than his body.”

  “You recall he refused therapy with me or anyone I recommended.”

  “Yes.”

  “And AA.”

  “He believed he had the situation licked with a new outlook and new profession.”

  “You need to get him working as soon as possible,” Susan said. “It doesn’t have to be hard work, but he needs to prove that he can be helpful. If not, he may fall into a funk and start thinking of himself as a complete failure. That feeds upon itself.”

  “Maybe a professional shrink is paid to worry?”

  “Z has a troubled history,” she said. “He has not been in recovery long enough to mend all his broken places.”

  “Does anyone ever?”

  “The longer the period from the last fall, the better,” she said. “Self-pity from failure can sometimes be very comfortable.”

  “Henry will check on him.”

  “And who will check on Henry?” she said.

  “I know a sergeant at Revere PD,” I said. “He’s got a guy watching the place. I’ll provide escort to and from the health club.”

  I looked out on Marlborough Street. The window was open and everything smelled and sounded like spring. Only the slightest chill off the harbor shooting through downtown and the Common.

  “Get him working.”

  “And what if he fails again?” I said.

  “It’s not the failure,” she said. “It’s the time it takes to bounce back.”

  “Years of being a shrink?”

  “Years with a professional thug.”

  15

  THE NEXT MORNING I found myself sitting in a semicircle of folding chairs, listening to a bunch of old people gripe. Z joined me at the Ocean View for the group encounter. His massive arms were crossed over his chest, hand-tooled cowboy boots crossed at the ankles. His face looked like bruised fruit and he had walked in with a noticeable limp. Besides the obvious injuries, I did not care for the blurred and unfocused look in his bloodshot eyes.

  “If they come back, I’m gonna blow their schnitzel off,” said an old man. He was tan and wrinkled, with a very prominent nose. His hair was an inky black. “You blame me?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  Z was quiet.

  Schnitzel Shooter was joined by a fat woman in a leopard-print muumuu, a skinny and wrinkled woman with bright red hair, and a man in a blue polo shirt and chinos that hit him mid-stomach. The high-waisted man was introduced to me as Lou Coffone, board president. He looked like a condo board president. In fact, his polo had been monogrammed with the word President in case of confusion.

  Coffone shook my hand and introduced the others, also members of the Ocean View board. I was disappointed to learn Schnitzel Shooter’s name was actually Buddy.

  “They ruined his Cadillac,” said Muumuu. “Slashed the tires. Cut the roof. Keyed the paint job. He loves that car. We’ve had it how long?”

  “Thirty goddamn years,” Buddy said.

  “My friend was hurt, too,” I said. “Perhaps you noticed.”

  “Sorry, Big Chief,” said the red-haired woman. “I saw what happened.”

  Z did not respond.

  “So now these guys decided to mess with the Ocean View bigwigs?” I said to Henry.

  Henry nodded. The board members looked to one another, nodding. Coffone hiked up his pants even higher and stood next to the red-haired woman. Her hair was artfully tamed by a couple of gold pins and what I assumed was a massive amount of Aqua Net. Buddy was apparently with the woman with the leopard muumuu. Lovely couples.

  “Now they’ve screwed themselves,” Henry said. “The board wanted to settle with the holdouts.”

  “Even with the possibility of more money,” I said.

  “I don’t like these people,” Buddy said. “Never would trust them.”

  Z just listened. He recrossed his arms.

  “Our residents are more scared than ever,” Coffone said. “We filed reports with the police in Revere, and they’re going to post some cops here. But some of us are still afraid to go to the corner store. That’s no way to live.”

  “I had that Cadillac forever,” Buddy said. “I was going to give it to my grandson so he could cruise for chicks. Original paint was the color of vanilla ice cream.”

  “Mr. Sixkill here may have to have knee surgery,” I said.

  “We will not be liable for what happens to you,” Coffone said. “That’s between you and Mr. Cimoli.”

  “No one is liable for anything,” Henry said. “But some of you may want to get your heads out of your asses and develop a little appreciation for what’s going on here.”

  “And what’s being done?” Buddy said. “Other than people fighting on our doorstep?”

  “To protect you and your damn car,” Henry said.

  Coffone held up his hand. Stoic and in charge. “What abou
t this casino we’re hearing about,” he said. “Is this just gossip and rumor?”

  “It’s more,” I said. “I’m sorting out the details.”

  “We are open to options,” Coffone said. “But I also must do what’s best for all our residents.”

  “I would expect no less,” I said.

  “So what do we do?” Coffone said.

  “Stay tuned,” I said.

  Buddy snorted. Muumuu rolled her eyes, looking as if she had had years of practice. Coffone walked over to a coffee urn and filled a foam cup. He returned, rocked back on his heels, and stared at the linoleum floor. “Nobody is happy how things are going,” he said. “Nobody likes being harassed or hosing off blood from our sidewalks.”

  “If the buyer is who I believe it is,” I said, “you should be able to name your price.”

  “I can name a pretty freakin’ big price,” Buddy said.

  I never doubted Buddy for a moment. But I kept my mouth shut.

  “We can’t hold off forever while you snoop around and people are getting beaten up,” Coffone said. “Their attorney says if we wait any longer, the offer won’t be good.”

  “Of course they will say that,” I said.

  “They say they have no knowledge of the harassment,” Buddy said.

  “They would say that, too.”

  “I told Spenser we want to be compensated for this aggravation,” Henry said. He walked over to the coffee urn and poured two cups. “If these people came to us like real human beings and told us what they wanted, we’d be done. But you don’t come in with threats and intimidation trying to rush the process. Now I want to bleed them for some more cash.”

  “What if one of us is really hurt?” Buddy said. “That Indian kid can take it. But Jesus, we’re old.”

  Henry handed me a cup of coffee. “Spenser will nail ’em,” Henry said. “What the hell do you people have to lose? He’s a high-end investigator and is doing this for me as a favor. His associate had the shit kicked out of him trying to help. You should be kissing his ass.”

  I smiled modestly to the elders. “Not necessary. My ass is fine.”

  Z did not even crack a smile.

  As the meeting broke up, Henry and Z followed me out to the parking lot. I tried to help Z into the Explorer, but he used his upper body to grip the door frame and hoist himself inside. I closed the door and walked around. I walked Henry to his car.