Private

Fred and Tommy hadn’t spoken in a dozen years. I’d never known what their fight was about, but Tommy held grudges and he had a big one against Uncle Fred. I guessed that Fred had tried to stop Tom from getting into a jam like the one he was in now, and of course my brother had resented it.

I was enraged at Tommy and I was disgusted with him. And I didn’t know what to do next.

Through Tommy, I’d become familiar with the cycle of the sickness. Gamblers gamble for the rush. It goes from compulsion to addiction. They win and place another bet. They lose, which is far more likely, and the elation turns to deflation, and they bet again to cover the loss. Either way, they keep betting.

Small losses go onto their tab with their bookie. If the debt isn’t paid, the Mob’s loan sharks sometimes move in. The interest on the loan, the vigorish, is obscenely high and it’s due weekly. Too often, the bettor can’t gather enough money to pay back the principal, and when he falls behind on the vig, the threats start, and then the beatings. The next thing he knows, a Mob guy owns his business.

Tommy had a business. He was doing okay. But a weekly interest charge of 20 percent on a $600,000 loan? That was $12,000 a week before he ever put a dent in the principal.

Had Tommy borrowed against his house? His business? Was he hanging over the abyss by his fingertips, or was he already falling into a bottomless hole? Sapok had said the outcome could be fatal.

I ran up the winding stairway to my office and told Colleen that I couldn’t be interrupted.

I spent a couple of hours making calls. And then I phoned Tommy at his office.

I told his assistant, “Don’t give me any bull, Katherine. Put him on.”

Tommy’s voice came over the line. He sounded reluctant and irritated, but he agreed to have lunch with me at one o’clock.

Chapter 33

TOMMY, WHO HAD always been a control freak, picked the restaurant where we would meet. Crustacean is a popular Euro-Vietnamese place on Santa Monica, a few doors down from his office.

I told him I’d be there in twenty minutes, and twenty minutes later on the nose, I walked through the front door.

I gave my name to the hostess, who walked me across the glass-covered stream of live koi and settled me with a menu in “Mr. Tommy’s booth” near the fountain.

I studied the menu, and when I looked up again, my brother was zigzagging across the floor, shaking hands along the way as if he were campaigning for office.

If anything was important in Beverly Hills, it was appearances, and Tommy was doing a fine job of keeping up his.

“Bro,” he said, arriving at the table. I stood. We hugged warily. He clapped me on the back.

“How’s it going?” I said.

“Fantastic,” Tommy said, sliding into the booth. “I can’t stay long. I’ll order.”

The waitress came over, cocked her hip, noted that we were identical twins, and flirted with Tommy. She took our lunch order from the “secret kitchen.” Throughout it all, I was pacing in my mind, trying to figure out how best to approach Tommy with what I knew.

He said, “I hear your friend Cushman is looking good for killing his wife.”

“He didn’t do it.”

“How much you want to bet?” he said.

Tommy’s business, Private Security, was an agency that placed bodyguards with celebrities and businesspeople who were looking for protection or status or both. Tommy had benefited from Dad’s contacts a lot more than I had. Tommy looked around the room, said, “As big a shit as Dad was, it would have taken us much longer to make it without him.”

“So, you’re really doing okay, Tommy? That’s good to hear.”

“Sure. Half the people in here are on my books, for Christ’s sake.”

Tommy leaned back from the table and glared at me suspiciously as the waitress set down dishes of cracked crab and garlic noodles, and asked if we needed anything else.

“We’re good, sugar,” he said to the waitress. To me, he said, “So what’s this about?”

“I hear you’re still wagering,” I said to my brother.

“Who told you that? Annie, that little-”

“I didn’t talk to her.”

“-bitch,” he said of his too patient, too forgiving wife and the mother of his son. “Why’d you call her, Jack?”

“I haven’t spoken to Annie since Christmas.”

“She should be grateful for the life I’ve given her,” Tommy said, breaking a crab in half with his hands. “Clothes. Cars. Everywhere she goes, people treat her like royalty. I’m going to have to explain to her again about flapping her mouth.”

“Does she know you’re into the Mob for six hundred thousand bucks, Tommy? Because I’ll bet you didn’t tell her that part.”

“It’s none of her business, big shot. And it’s none of yours either. Whatever I’m into, I can get out of. Trust me on that.”

“I wish I could.”

“Go to hell. Don’t call me anymore, okay? A Christmas card will do fine. No Christmas card would be even better.”

Tommy threw his napkin on the table and bolted for the front door.

Chapter 34