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Overview
On a floating casino just off the New Jersey coast, two masked gunmen open fire. Their powerful Austrian machine guns shatter mirrors, crack fish tanks, and knock the grand chandelier from the ceiling. By the time the smoke clears, the men are long gone, but two clues remain: a rare weapon recovered from the swirling waters of the Atlantic and the fact that, in an inescapable barrage of bullets, nobody got shot.
Atlantic City taxi driver Ed Behr can’t remember the last time someone took on the casinos. Then again, ever since he got his head slammed into a prison shower faucet, Ed’s memory hasn’t been all that great. He keeps track of his days in a little red notebook, or risks losing them forever. The one person Ed can’t forget, from the time when he was more than just a fat, broke ex-con cabbie, is Honey—and he can’t seem to find her anywhere. But the glimpse of another, less welcome face from the past sets Ed’s wheels spinning, and he soon has a plan to reunite his old crew for a score that will make everything right again, or put them all out of their misery forever.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781480477575 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 03/25/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 437 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Nine Mil
By Robert Ryan
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2000 Rob RyanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4804-7757-5
CHAPTER 1
ATLANTIC CITY, NJ. FRIDAY NOVEMBER 22
Ed Behr pulled his cab up well short of the Boardwalk. In front of him lay a two-inch deep lake, its surface still being ridged and troughed by what was left of the wind. The nor'easter that had hung over the coastline for days and days now had dumped so much rain the city was turning into a mini Venice. Blown out, it was down to its last few feeble gasps.
Luckily, one of the condos had put out duckwalks across the deeper sections, and he reached the ramp up to the Boardwalk with merely a dark line on the bottom of each trouser cuff. He walked up onto the walkway, puffing slightly from the exertion, and looked left and right.
Under the powder-grey sky, the Boardwalk was all but deserted. The T-shirt and salt taffy shops were shuttered, the owners having given up the thought of any business for the week, with just a few hot dog and pizza joints hanging grimly on. Clusters of the wheeled chair operators huddled outside the casinos, hoods up, shuffling to generate some heat, praying for some trade, someone who fancied a bracing push between gaming halls, perhaps, but the gamblers were experiencing their own version of lockdown. Even though the nor'easter had temporarily shut up shop, the Weather Channel promised it had a pal out over that evil-looking ocean, warming up to step into its shoes. The casinos were geared to making sure there was little incentive to leave: Why risk getting wet, or getting that careful coiffure ruined by the wind? Here, have a free drink and a canapé.
Ed took the half a dozen steps across the still-glistening planks and leaned on the rail, looking down at the detritus-strewn beach. The storms had resculptured it as always, making a mockery of all attempts to create a stable frontage, tearing out a long section in front of Caesars, and dumping a mini sand dune around the old steel pier, the one once famous for its rides, its freakshow and its diving horses, but now just another strip of slots. Beach erosion was getting worse than ever right along the shore. He read somewhere that Long Branch was all but beachless, the boardwalk now more like a pier, with its supports dipping into the Atlantic. Even Wildwood, where most of the sand used to end up, was starting to destabilise.
He shivered. Somewhere behind the solid sheet of pewter that was the sky, the sun was going down. He could feel the last of its feeble warmth slinking away, as if embarrassed to be quitting so early in the day. He checked his watch. Time for the Friday afternoon drink at the Pole. He pulled out his little red notebook and wrote in the last fare. He flicked the pages. Today he had done two airport runs, a Margate dropoff, two lots of people over to Brigantine for lunch and a long run down to pretty Cape May. Plus a handful of inter-casino transfers. Same old, same old. He turned back, looking at the repeating patterns, his life shuffling a very limited deck of options, weeks segueing into months of fare after fare, all variations on the same theme as today.
It irritated him that he had to keep this diary. But he still occasionally had memory blanks—just an hour or two he couldn't recall, as if the access lines in his brain had gone down. Well, as the doc had said, having your head banged on a shower spigot twenty or forty or fifty times—he had forgotten to count—would do it every time.
He checked his pockets and found the half-eaten Snickers bar he had pocketed when he picked up the last fare, and began chomping though it. The lights grew brighter at the casinos: The Beach Club, all tropical blues and greens, its giant fake palms twinkling like Christmas trees; Bally's, as usual, spelling out its name in lights; and a new billboard outside the Taj that was flashing the total payout so far that day. Strange, they never flash up how much money has actually been played to get that total. And at the far northern end he saw the first lick of flame—the Palace's dragon was starting its hourly routine of toasting a couple of knights.
He looked at the time again, hitched up his trousers over his stomach, hoping that would prevent them dipping in the flood water this time, screwed up the candy bar wrapper and tossed it towards the sea. He had a weekly appointment to keep.
The North Pole, to give it its full name, was located on Baltic, four blocks from the Boardwalk, well away from where most of the city's customers strayed. They kept to narrow corridors—the Boardwalk and Atlantic, the well-lit strips from there to the new convention centre, and the shuttle buses and secure tunnels that fed the Marina casinos. They thought of the rest of it as the Combat Zone, all empty parking lots and dilapidated frontages and broken chain-link fences, full of dangerous shadows. Well, perhaps they were right. It was getting that way again. The nineties had been pretty good, the Y2K projects and the spending spree by the casino fund had kept the momentum going, but now? Suddenly AC had hit the buffers, it seemed to him.
The Pole didn't look too welcoming, thought Ed as he pulled up. If it had been his first time and he'd seen the spluttering Miller sign and a door with what looked like gunshots in it—which were gunshots, he reminded himself—then he'd probably hightail it back to the Showboat or the Tropicana or the Plaza, no matter how much more the drinks were in the bars there.
The familiar smell hit him as soon as he walked in, the aroma of a carpet marinated in thirty years of spilt drinks, of an overworked french-frier, of stale cigarette smoke overlaid by the heavier slug of the odd cigar, of the sweat of tired, temporally disoriented workers just off shift from the halls of the casinos, their sense of time returning as they sucked back another beer before wending their way home. He stepped over Hoppitty, the three-legged retriever that was the bar's mascot. Like some kind of chameleon, the dog had gradually taken on the hue of the floor covering, so it was hard to know where sticky carpet ended and matted dog began. You just made sure your strides were big enough to clear him.
It was both offensive and comforting, thought Ed, and he started the ritual round of fast handshakes and how-ya-doings, waving to Marty, the greasy-haired guy in the corner, your easy conduit to sports betting. All in all the Pole was just your very basic drinking hole. The bar itself was an elongated oval, with a flip-up section for bartender access in the centre of one side. The circumference was padded with red vinyl, crazed and cracked and split from two generations of elbows. Unique among the bars of Atlantic City, there were no gambling machines, none of the counter-top video poker games, just a mini-bowling machine and a pinball. Even the three TV screens were considered on the spartan side. Harvey, the owner, kept one on the sports, one on the local channel and, latterly, another on the weather reports. It was enough, he said, three channels at once. Most people considered this mildly eccentric.
The other oddity was the Freedom Wall, a green felt square above the booths, perhaps eight feet each side, covered with dozens of casino ID badges or photographs, all defaced in some way and pinned on the growing pile, often with a little message: 'Taj Mahal is Indian for kiss-my-ass', 'Balls to Ballys', 'Goodnight Crapicana.' When someone left the industry, they often ended their farewell rip at Harvey's to add to the badges of dishonour.
Harvey himself wouldn't be in. This time of year he was in Florida and his son—Harvey—was nominally in charge, but he seemed to have little interest in upholding the family tradition, so Sam, a young Irishman, was tending tonight. Harvey Jr would be at the tables in the Hilton, which set him apart from most of his clientele, who saw things from the other side of the deck. Few people in here had any taste left for gambling with their own money.
Ed slapped palms with Leo, the pit boss, who as usual barely cracked a smile. It was a shame he didn't play, the man had the most perfect poker face in the city, and when he did smile you wish he hadn't. He reminded Ed of the actor Roy Thinnes, who had been in that old series The Invaders—he had the same small, hard-to-read eyes. He'd been promoted to pit boss when he caught the notorious Drop Out—a guy who manipulated slot machines using fibre-optics, teasing them into hitting jackpots then boasting about it with notes left around the casino. He'd done it in Vegas, Reno, Biloxi, Connecticut—all the places Ed had worked before these last couple of years—and twice in Atlantic City. He made the mistake of doing the third hit on Leo's shift. Leo had a rather physical version of a citizen's arrest in his repertoire. Still, the dropout claimed to have pulled in five mil over three years, not bad going.
A couple of stools along was Goodrich, his straggly blond hair pulled into a ponytail, the usual cigarette magically glued in the corner of his mouth. Goodrich was another one who proved that Atlantic City was like human fly paper—once you landed, you couldn't get off. He had come down from New York City with a thousand bucks burning a hole in his pocket, and the casinos obliged by relieving him of it in three hours. Now he worked in a twenty-four-seven pawnshop, catering to players who suddenly found themselves short at two a.m., and whose line of credit had derailed. Nikon? Rolex? Tiffany? That'll do nicely, sir.
The other familiar face was Alice, of indeterminate age, who could be twenty, could be forty. She had a face that was so hard you felt you could scratch diamonds on it. Her henna'd hair was curtained across a visage devoid of makeup for once, and she had clearly thought better of trying to use the sunglasses now lying in front of her to cover up the raw blue-black streak under her left eye.
And then there was Bo. Bo was face down on the bar, his cheek and nose distorted so he looked like Charles Laughton doing Quasimodo. Saliva had dribbled out of his mouth onto the counter top, forming a small sticky pool. Bo opened one eye, saw Ed, and closed it again. There was a story to Bo, as there was to most regulars.
Bo used to be the best looking guy in the place, then he stumbled and fell, fell into the crack houses that used to line the blocks around the bar. These days you could hide a small sedan in his sunken cheeks, and his top lip had imploded where his two front teeth had come out—or been knocked out. And the dog had better hair than he had.
Bo's story was this. Two years previously his old man died and left him a three-storey building down on Brighton Avenue where, it was said, the money was hidden from some score years before. Hundred grand, claimed the rumours. Bank, armoured car, Post Office, they all said different things. However much it was and wherever it came from, it was meant to be Bo's, but his old man was so disgusted by his state he wouldn't tell him where in the house the money was stashed. 'Over my dead body,' he was supposed to have said. So that was what he did. Starting as soon as he got the ashes from the crematorium, day after day, Bo ripped another floorboard up, took down another wall, waiting to find the pot of gold. All the time the ashes sat in one corner, gloating mutely. The house was now a skeletal shell, in danger of collapse, and still no money. So now Bo was wondering whether he dreamed the deathbed scene. 'Over my dead body,' you would hear him muttering incessantly. And the frustration had turned him into the slob who was sitting on Ed's stool.
'Bo.' Ed tapped him on the shoulder. 'Bo.'
One yellowed, mad-dog eye opened again. 'Fuck you, Fat Man.'
A little ripple ran round the bar. Someone sniggered.
Ed tapped him on the shoulder, feeling the bones under the paper-thin, fat-free skin. He said, as softly as he could: 'Bo. C'mon, you know the deal.'
The eye flicked open again. 'Fat Boy? Fuck you.'
Ed felt the blood surge behind his eyes. If he sat anywhere else, if he let it lie, then he got marked down as a soft touch, a softer touch than he already was. He knew it from alley-o, he knew it from Boxgrove. There was a slot in the pecking order here, and he was about to lose it.
It happened fast, before he had time to think it through, to consider, and he used the bulk the guy was jibbing him about. He put all his weight behind the punch, driving it deep into Bo's kidneys, feeling the organs part under his first, the internal shockwave bounce off membranes and tissues. Bo tried to jump up but Ed grabbed his hair and banged down once on the bar top, sending up a spray of saliva, surfing on the wave of anger that was bursting inside him. 'You gettin' up to move, or fight?'
'MMff.' Bo even sounded like Charles Laughton now.
'What? What you say Bo?'
'Muv.'
Ed stood back and Bo got to his feet, rearranged his shirt, and limped, holding his back, over to a banquette, where he slumped in muttering dark threats. Everyone else lost interest as quickly as they had started taking it.
Ed eased his bulk onto the stool. He grabbed a Bud bar cloth and wiped up the spittle. The blood red anger was gone, diffused, as quickly as it came. A pure defensive reflex, like a puffer fish blowing up. The territoriality, the instinct of the Box, those short sharp spats you got at chow time, ten seconds of raw aggression then it's over. 'Coors. Turkey,' he said.
'There's other stools, Ed,' said Goodrich.
Ed looked across and wondered about his response. Yes, you're right? Mind your own fucking business? In the end he just flashed him the finger and Goodrich smiled and shook his head in a don't-know-why-I-bother way.
Sam nodded and put the beer and bourbon in front of him. 'So, good day?' He knew enough to put the bowl of chips in front of Ed and keep them coming. Ed liked to graze pretty much continuously.
Ed shrugged: 'Oh, couple of casino shuffles, airport run, Margate.'
'You see Lucy?'
One of the runs had been down to see her, but he hadn't bothered knocking. What was there to say? 'Yeah, Lucy was still there. Been there a hundred years now.'
'They moved her didn't they?'
Ed nodded. 'Twice. Once when they got the money together to save her, once after the arson attack a couple of years back.'
'She's great, though, isn't she? How could anyone think of trying to torch her?'
Sam was still in his late twenties, still had a twinkle in his eye, a spring in his step. Maybe he wouldn't understand that, after she got a starring role in a Bud ad, Lucy's neighbours got fed up with the constant stream of beer-swilling tourists. Word was it was one of the locals who had finally had enough, had poured gasoline over the old girl's feet and struck a match.
Ed tried to imagine the world through the young man's eyes. Well, not that much younger, he reminded himself. Ed was maybe eight years older. But Sam's were less jaded, tired eyes, that was for sure. When he saw his customers come in he must have felt like he was serving cadavers most of the time. People who had forgotten how you buttoned up shirts, how to use dry cleaners, a razor, shampoo and flatware, all mixed up with those guys who worked the casinos, who kept the minimum standards, but had forgotten where their soul was.
Fuck knows what he makes of me, he thought. Some lowlife who has dragged around the bars of America like this for six years now, maybe more, always finding a Goodrich and an Alice and a Sam, and a Bo. Perhaps the barkeep would look at him one day and see a terrible warning: Get out of Town.
Goodrich was watching the hockey, pleased that Joe Thornton looked like having the kind of season promised when he was picked up on the first draft of 1997 for the Bruins. 'See, I told you that kid could give the Russkie a run for his money. Samsonov fuckin' peaked too soon. Too intense if you ask me.'
Leo sniffed in disdain and said, in a voice that brooked no argument. 'And neither of them ever be as good as Andreychuk.'
'Andreychuk? Fuck—what is this? History? We going back to the last century now? Well in which case what about Bourque? Sure, he played defence, but you know he got well over a thousand assists.'
'Another.' It was Alice, ignoring what she thought of as the usual sports shit the regulars spewed like molten rock, a never-ending stream of stats, secondhand opinions and firsthand ignorance. She knew sooner or later someone would mention Wayne Gretsky and they would all start sobbing into their brews. It was worse during the ball season. Some of them were in severe danger of knowing what they were talking about. She chipped into those shit shooting sessions sometimes. Personally, she was a Mike Piazza fan, although when pushed she was more impressed by the fact the wires—the wires, mind—for his stereo cost ten grand than his ball play. Right now though she was too busy drinking beer and shots of something called a Neuflaymer, a kind of Goldschlager with bad attitude, to take much notice.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Nine Mil by Robert Ryan. Copyright © 2000 Rob Ryan. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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