“What else? Know anything else about them?”
Eddie looked at Al with a puzzled expression on his face and with a hint of annoyance.
“How come you’re not an Apostle?” Al pressed.
“What the hell do you care? What’s on your mind? Sounds like you got a thing for those losers.”
“Never mind. Let’s get back to your coins. So, 1888 and 1904. Do you have them?” Al asked.
Eddie opened a scrapbook on the table filled with coins, neatly mounted in plastic cases on the pages in ascending order, by year, beginning with an 1864 half dollar.
“You don’t care about the face value, only the dates?” Eddie asked as he flipped through the pages.
“Yeah. It doesn’t matter.”
“No can do on the 1888, and no can do on the 1904.”
“Phsssst, that’s great. What’s next?” Al said in frustration because his day was now unfolding like a poorly designed origami box.
“What about some other dates? You said you’re into history.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Do you have a 1903?” Al asked.
“What’s that for?”
“The Wright brothers’ first flight,” Al told him with a smile.
“What? Why do you care about somebody’s first plane trip? Were they afraid to fly or something?”
“Are you serious? The Wright brothers! The guys who built and flew the first airplane in 1903,” Al said with raised eyebrows.
“Oh, those guys. I am just messin’ with you.”
“Yeah, think about it. We’re going to fly to the moon in a couple years, and it all started with them less than one hundred years ago. Makes you wonder where we’ll be flying to fifty or one hundred years from now.”
“Not me. If God wanted us to fly, he would have given us wings. And besides, I don’t want to meet any aliens. They’ll vaporize you without thinking twice,” Eddie said while holding an invisible ray gun in his hand.
“Killer aliens? I’d bet against that,” Al smiled. “So do you have a 1903?”
“Let’s see … 1903?” Eddie mumbled as he turned the pages of his collection. “Bingo! Got a real nice dime. And I’ll let you have it for just sixty dollars.”
“What? Sixty dollars for a dime?”
“Hey, I don’t set the market rates. That’s what other collectors will pay for it. Check this out,” Eddie said as he showed Al a coin collector’s magazine that had a photo of the same 1903 coin with a price of sixty-five dollars next to it.
“Wow! Man, that’s a lot of money. And I was hoping to get more than one coin for the fifty dollars I have. Don’t you have any old coins that aren’t for collectors?”
“OK, OK. If you really don’t care, I’ve got some old beat-up coins that collectors don’t want,” Eddie said as he pulled out a cigar box full of dull, stained, well-worn coins of all denominations. “These would be worth a lot if they didn’t have so many imperfections.”
“Now you’re talking. This is more like it,” Al said as Eddie dumped the coins in a pile on the table.
CHAPTER 36
Betting Against Yourself
“I don’t know what dates I have, so go ahead and look through them. Just don’t get sticky fingers,” Eddie cautioned as he waved a finger at Al.
Al flattened out the pile of old coins with both his hands and flipped over those with dates not showing before picking up each, one at a time, to read their dates.
After a few minutes, Al held up a nickel and announced, “Hey, hey! Got one! A 1903 nickel.”
“Got your buddies, the Wright brothers, covered. Let me see that,” he said with an outstretched hand. After looking it over for a few seconds, Eddie said, “It’s yours for five dollars five cents.”
“Well, that’s better than sixty dollars. But, why that much?”
“Because I know it’s worth at least that much to you and I like the numbers. It’s one hundred times the face value and it’s balanced with a five on each end and a zero in the middle. It feels right. Numbers talk to me.”
“I guess so. OK. I’ll take it for five oh five,” Al said as he took a five dollar bill from his wallet and a nickel from his pocket.
“What are the dates again of the two other coins you’re looking for?”
“They’re 1888 and 1904,” Al replied.
“Tell you what. I’ll make you a bet that even if you lose, you’ll win.”
“What bet?” asked a cautious Al.
“Bet you the rest of your fifty dollars that there’s at least one coin for each of those two dates on the table. If I win, I’ll just give you those two coins after you pay the bet. If I don’t have those two dates, I’ll pay you forty-five dollars and you’ll double your money. So see, you can’t lose,” Eddie explained.
“What’s in it for you?”
“The chances are good that I’ve got those two coins in that pile, but they’re not worth forty-five dollars. If I win, I pocket the difference.”
“If I don’t bet and I find the two coins, then what?” Al asked.
“You’d pay me twenty dollars for both of them,” Eddie told Al.
“So I’d pay you twenty-five dollars more for them if you win the bet, but I’d get forty-five dollars if I win it, but no coins,” Al restated to confirm.
“You got it. Think about it. You win either way. So what if you pay more for the coins? They mean more to you than they do to anybody else. Just because they’re not in mint condition shouldn’t bother you. The more worn they are, the better the odds that one of your grandparents used them to buy something. Wouldn’t that be a trip?” Eddie chuckled.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to bet that you don’t have the two dates because I really want you to have them.”
“Look, just because you really want it doesn’t mean the odds are any better in your favor, or if you bet against it that the odds are any worse. It doesn’t work that way,” an impatient Eddie replied.
“Betting against me is hard. It’s like I don’t believe, don’t have faith I’ll get what I want.”
“One more time. It doesn’t matter what you think or feel. And I’m offering you a bet that lets you win either way,” Eddie told Al.
“You don’t understand. Even if I win the bet, the forty-five dollars, I’ll still feel like I lost because I won’t have the coins that I really want. The forty-five dollars doesn’t mean anything to me,” Al told an exasperated Eddie.
“OK. You’re right. I don’t understand. And the bet’s off now that you just set the market value of the two coins. If I have them, they’ll cost you forty-five dollars.”
Al shook his head slowly in disbelief as he examined the rest of the coins. After five minutes, he found two coins, silver dollars, with the dates he wanted.
“What do you know?” Eddie exclaimed. “I would have won the bet and you would have paid me the forty-five dollars anyway. So it turned out the same.”
“Yeah. That’s right. I didn’t really know what I was willing to pay for them before. Your bet helped me decide. These coins have been through a lot and have lots of stories to tell about all the hands they’ve been in and all the things they bought. I’ll imagine they each played a special part in the lives of my grandparents. They connect me and my family to them,” Al said while paying Eddie.
“There you go, a real bargain at forty-five dollars,” Eddie said with all the sincerity he could manufacture.
As Al got up to leave, Eddie asked curiously, “Why are you so interested in the Apostles?”
Al hesitated before Eddie said, “Don’t worry. They’re not piasans. You can talk. I won’t tell them anything.”
“I’m going to join the Disciples, a rival gang. But I’ve got to prove myself first. So I want to learn something about them that will help me do that,” Al confided.
“Aahhh, so that’s it! Makes sense. I could be one of them, but I’m not a joiner ... too independent. But they dig me. They’re
the ones who gave me my nicknames, Bookie and the Bookman.”
“Can you tell me anything about them that could help me prove myself to the Disciples?”
“Hmmm, let me think,” Bookie said as he paced back and forth across the room. “Something you could use to prove yourself,” he repeated to himself. “What do you want to prove?”
“That I’m a man,” Al said in a strong, deliberate, deep voice.
“OK. That covers a lot. Got a girl?”
“No.”
“You smoke, drink?”
“No and no.”
“Man, you got a lot to prove. Beat up anybody?” Bookie continued.
“No. Uh, maybe, if you count the fight I just had,” Al said pointing to his blood-stained shirt.
“You won?”
“It wasn’t much of a fight. I punched him in the nose. Then he went crazy, some kind of seizure, the cop said. And I held onto him so he wouldn’t kill himself.”
“Crazy,” Bookie surmised.
“Yeah. He just started shaking wildly. His eyes ... well, you could tell from his eyes that he wasn’t all there.”
“No, no. I mean you’re crazy, because you helped him,” Bookie clarified.
“His two Apostle buddies ran when they heard the cops’ siren. I was the only one there to help him.”
“Apostles? You didn’t say that before, that you beat up an Apostle! That’s something. And there were three of them. Score one, maybe two manhood points for you.”
“I didn’t think of that. I guess I did score some points.”
“Hey, you want to be a man, you got to think like one. That gives me an idea. You got something to prove, and I want to buy a new car. I’ll help you if you help me,” Bookie said with a twinkle in his eyes.
“How? What do you mean?”
“I just made the biggest bet of my life, but I need some help to pull it off. And to be straight with you, there’s some risk. I need somebody who isn’t afraid to put himself on the line, somebody who can stay calm and think on his feet in spite of the risk, somebody like you, with something to prove.”
“I just want to prove myself to the Disciples.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. If we pull this off, you’ll be the man. The Disciples will love you, and the Apostles will hate you. Can’t get any better than that.”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you’re not a man. I’m giving you the chance to prove it, and that’s all you got to say. Don’t you even want to know what I’m talking about?”
“What? What is it?” Al asked as he shook his head.
“Are you into basketball? You know about the game next week between Long Island City High and Bryant High?”
“Sure. It’s for the district championship. Everybody at the school is talking about it. It’s the first time they’ve played each other in a championship game since Bryant won in 1950, the year I was born.”
“So I’m guessing you’d like to see Bryant win again now?”
“Do Eskimos live in igloos?” Al replied, stealing Eddie’s line.
“Yeah, you and all your Disciple buddies. Who do you think the Apostles want to win?” Eddie asked with a wink of his eye. “That’s right, LIC, their school.”
“OK, so you bet big that Bryant wins. What does that have to do with me, with proving I’m a man?”
“I need you to kill LIC’s star player,” Eddie said deadpan.
“What!” Al screamed.
“How else can I guarantee that I win the bet? But you gotta do it just before the game.”
“You’re crazy. I’m not killing anybody.”
“Ha ha ha! Got you! You don’t need to kill nobody. I just need you to help me fix the game,” Bookie chuckled as he flicked Al’s shoulder with the back of his hand.
“How?” Al asked as his lip twitched.
“For one thing, I need you to help mess with the minds of the LIC players. I’ve already got the refs for the game in my pocket. A few favorable calls made at critical times in the game could be the difference. But I can’t count on just that, and that’s where you come in. LIC has a well-oiled machine. Everybody on the team is doing his part to make it go. We need to put some sugar in its gas tank to gunk things up.”
“How?” Al repeated.
“Are you part Indian or something? Is that all you can say, ‘How? How?’”
“Hey, man, you’re saying all this stuff and leaving out my part. What the hell do you want me to do and what’s in it for me?” Al pressed.
“I’m getting to that. First you got to see where I’m coming from before you can see where we’re headed. If I told you to start some rumors, make a phone call to a local sportswriter and plant things in players’ lockers, you’d probably think I’m nuts. But now you know it’s part of a plan for Bryant to beat LIC so I can win a lot of money and you can become a Disciple. Capisce?”
“Yeah, I understand you’re a piece of work.”
“At least you didn’t say, ‘How?’ again.”
As this scene with Bookie dissolved, a series of other scenes quickly faded in and out.
CHAPTER 37
Betting on the Big Game
One minute Al was running away from an empty locker room in LIC High School after closing one of the lockers, the next he was in a soda shop talking on a pay phone. “I’ve got information you’ll be interested in about the LIC basketball team,” Al told the person on the phone with him.
“Is that right? What information? Talk to me. Maybe I can use it in my column,” replied a man with a raspy, smoker’s voice.
“OK. A couple of them are smoking pot. One of them is failing his classes and should be kicked off the team, and another one bets on their games,” Al informed him.
“Who are you? How do you know all this? What proof do you have?” the sports reporter probed.
That scene was replaced by one at night in front of Sal’s Place. Bookie was talking to Al on the sidewalk under a street lamp.
“I saw today’s paper. You did good. I love stirring things up. Even if all of LIC’s players get to play in the game, their minds will be so messed up, they won’t be able to shoot straight,” Bookie said as he handed Al a coin.
“What’s this?” Al asked before holding it up to the light. It was a silver dollar.
“A thank you … down payment. There will be more after I win the bet, and to help you celebrate becoming a Disciple,” Bookie explained.
“That’s OK. You don’t need to pay me anything. Proving myself is all I want.”
“It’s a gift, not a payment,” Bookie corrected.
“Hmmm, 1935. That date doesn’t mean anything to me, but thanks,” Al said as he put the coin in his pocket.
“You’re welcome. Maybe it will mean something one day,” Bookie said as that scene faded to black while chants of “Bryant! Bryant!” and “LIC! LIC!” grew louder and the championship game faded into view.
“We’re going to kick LIC’s butts,” said Steve, the Disciples’ leader, as he sat with his gang member brothers in the stands on one side of the gym, facing the LIC fans, which included a large group of their rival Apostles.
“I’d bet on that,” Al whispered in Tommy’s ear.
Just then, the LIC fans erupted as their team jogged onto the floor. School officials had investigated the allegations that appeared in the newspaper and declared them to be false. And while they couldn’t fully explain how the marijuana got into the two players’ lockers, they determined it didn’t belong to them. It was apparently planted by someone. But in the minds of some, especially the Bryant fans, and even some concerned LIC parents, the newspaper was a reliable source. They had believed the high school was trying to hide what had happened to protect the players and the school’s potential championship.
This was evident from the homemade signs scattered throughout the stands, like the one that read, “F= Passing, Dribbling, and Shooting.” Ano
ther read, “Books, Yes ... Bookies, No!” Then, there were others about marijuana. “Weed rather you didn’t play” and “LIC High ... Really High!” and “Up for the game?”
“Bryant rules!” Tommy trumpeted as the thunderous, rhythmic Bryant drum line led their team into the gym, which prompted a wild, standing ovation. They were followed by the rest of the school’s marching band playing “Hail to the Victors,” the University of Michigan fight song, which the band director borrowed from his alma mater for this special game.
The electricity generated in the stands and on the floor could have powered a small city. A visitor would have thought someone’s life was on the line or that everybody had a lot of money riding on the game. As it turned out, someone’s life was on the line but only a fraction of those attending had bets on the game.
“Oh God, no ... too painful ... not again,” Al whispered to himself as this scene from his life continued just for him.
The game remained close through the first quarter, with the lead exchanging several times. LIC took a two-point lead into the second quarter despite heckling from the crowd and the trash-talking taunts of the Bryant players, who did their best to unnerve the LIC players with incendiary comments about their character. Al’s victims weren’t playing very well, but their teammates picked up their games.
“Look at those jerks,” Tommy said as he elbowed Al in his side and stared at the Apostles as they stood up on their seats and gave each other high-fives. “They make me sick.”
“Let them celebrate now. We’ll be the ones celebrating at the end of the game,” Al told Tommy.
“You sound pretty sure,” Tommy replied.
“Tommy, my man, you just gotta have faith,” Al said, tapping his heart with his fist while grinning broadly. “And it helps to fix the game, too.”
“Fix? What are you talking about?”
“For now, let’s just say that the deck is stacked against LIC and those poor Apostles, who had bet a ton of money on this game,” Al whispered.
“You? You fixed the game? I don’t believe it.”
“Shush. Keep it down,” Al told Tommy, as he put a finger across his lips. “We can talk about it after the game.”
The second quarter started with a 6–0 scoring run by Bryant before one of the LIC players got tangled up with a Bryant player who was about to score on a layup.