Lay the Favorite (4 page)

In the bookmaking business, the term “wiseguy” isn’t used to describe someone involved in the Mafia. It’s used to describe a shrewd, successful sports gambler. And, seemingly overnight, Dink’s office was crawling with them.

They got in through an agent. Just as Dink was offered a kickback if he encouraged his friends to place bets with the gay bookie, professional gamblers offered agents a return if they found bookmakers who were willing to take their action. In terms of marketing strategy, gamblers resemble Mary Kay saleswomen.

“Dinky, want some more customers?” an agent asked.

“Sure,” Dink said. “Give ’em my number.”

Dink continued with his usual routine. He opened his office at five p.m., called a fellow bookmaker, and asked what point spread, or what
line
, he was using. If his colleague dealt the Pistons minus seven, Dink dealt the Pistons minus seven. If he dealt the Packers minus three, Dink dealt the Packers minus three. Each Monday, Dink settled his accounts with his customers. He met them at the track or inside the Queens College cafeteria, and either paid them what they had won, or, more commonly, they paid Dink what they had lost. The only thing that changed in Dink’s workday was the amount of time he spent alone at the kitchen table, hunched over a calculator and yellow legal pad, trying to figure out how the hell
his old customers, his friends, never won, and the new guys, who were so friendly on the phone and bet obscure teams like Western Michigan and Troy State, never lost.

What Dink didn’t know was that at eight a.m., while he was sound asleep, his new customers had already started their workday. Their pencils were sharpened and they were looking over their charts, considering the matchups. At JFK Airport, their associates lingered at the arrival gates of major cities that had sports teams, waiting for planes to empty so they could collect the discarded hometown newspapers and bring them to their boss.

At noon, while Dink ate a bowl of cereal and prepared to watch
Ryan’s Hope
, another set of associates was out gathering information. At the Union Plaza Hotel in downtown Las Vegas, the sports book manager held his stogie while scribbling the day’s odds on a chalkboard. The messengers, known as beards or runners, copied the odds onto their clipboards and sprinted to the nearest pay phone and reported to the boss. The boss compared the Las Vegas line,
the
line, to the lines of all the other bookmakers with whom he did business, searching for the odds that were the weakest.

At four p.m., while Dink moseyed home after the afternoon races at Aquaduct, his wiseguy customers were still working. They had thoroughly read the sports and weather pages of the
Chicago Tribune
, the
Milwaukee Journal
, and the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, among others. Laboring over their own calculators and legal pads, they jotted down the facts they found most useful: injuries, suspensions, precipitation levels, wind directions, team morale, referee schedules, and distinctive home-field advantages. They analyzed the information and determined the games where the point spread gave them a thorough advantage.

And at five p.m., they dialed the number of the new fish. That kid in Queens, Dinky. The one who never adjusted his lines. Who never knew of pitching changes or thunderstorms or injuries.

“What you got on the Cowboys?” one of Dink’s wiseguys asked him one morning. It was early, not even ten o’clock. Dink had yet to call his colleague. He didn’t know what he had on the Cowboys.

“I’m not open yet,” Dink said.

“I gotta get down before I go to my kid’s Bar Mitzvah. Just tell me what you got on the Cowboys.”

“I’m not prepared yet,” Dink said.

“Well, what’d ya have ’em at last night? Just gimme that line.”

Dink turned the pages of his notebook, searching for the odds he’d given out the night before.

“Thirteen,” Dink said.

“All right. Gimme the Cowboys minus thirteen for two dimes.”

Dink hesitated. Dealing a line before checking with fellow bookmakers to see what line they were using was like selling an antique before you had researched the item. He didn’t want to be taken for an amateur, but he also didn’t want to seem rude, didn’t want to lose a customer.

“Okay,” Dink said. “Cowboys minus thirteen for two dimes.”

There was no Bar Mitzvah. The customer had learned that the quarterback for the opposing team was injured. The Cowboys were going to win by a landslide. Bookmakers were no longer taking bets on the game.

… except for that one kid in Queens.

“I don’t feel good,” Dink said.

He sat beside a friend, Ernie, on the steps outside the track. Dink had on his signature outfit of jeans, sneakers, and a red satin Montreal Canadiens jacket two sizes too small. The snaps strained to stay closed. Like Dinky, they looked as though they were in pain.

“I owe out a lot of money,” Dink continued. “And everything I do every day indicates that I’m gonna owe a lot more money.”

Dink’s “a lot of money” was $120,000.

“You know, Dinky,” Ernie said, “you can
not
pay people and they’ll let you live. Just tell ’em you’re broke. If you ever get money you’ll give it to ’em. But for now, say you’re broke. Say you quit.”

“If I quit, what do I do? I’ll owe out money and have no income. I have to pay. I don’t wanna go broke.”

To most gamblers, going broke is a rite of passage. It’s the only real way to foster a disregard for money. Only after a gambler goes broke, and recovers, does he build the fortitude needed to take bigger risks. This is the knowledge the old-timers had passed down to Dink and his friends, most of whom were already broke. But Dink didn’t buy it. Going broke was his greatest fear. If he went broke it would shatter the one belief that sustained all of his self-esteem: that he was a good bookmaker.

“You need a lender?” Ernie asked.

“You know one?”

“I know one. But you gotta make sure you pay him, Dinky. The guy’s not such a good guy. I don’t really want you to borrow from him unless you have to.”

“I have to.”

The transaction took place at a social club in the Bronx. Beneath the low ceilings, in a poorly lit back booth, a Florsheim shoebox slid, slowly, across the vinyl tablecloth. It stopped at the tip of Dink’s fingertips, gripping the table’s edge. His face half shadowed, the loan shark spoke his only words: two percent interest a week.

Dink settled his accounts with the wiseguys—including one customer to whom he owed one hundred grand—and people took notice. At twenty-eight, Dink may have been too young to fully grasp the gambling market, but he wasn’t some schmoe who disappeared when he lost. He was an honest, reliable bookmaker, and with his reputation in mint condition, Dink found it easy to acquire customers. Wiseguy gamblers passed Dink’s phone number to unwiseguy gamblers who passed the number on to their college buddies who passed the number on to their dentists who passed the number on to their accountants who passed the number on to their colleagues who were serving time for embezzlement. Soon, Dink was no longer susceptible to the risk that came with taking bets from dozens of seasoned professionals and only a handful of rubes. He now had the most valuable asset in the bookmaker’s arsenal: volume.

So much so that he rented the second floor of a row house in
neighboring Whitestone and hired his friends Bobby Nebbish and Fat George to man the seven phones that never stopped ringing. His friend Lobster came on board as a partner and the two invested in a wire service that gave them updates on injuries, scores, and line changes from the Las Vegas casinos. They attached tape recorders to each of the phones so that if a customer claimed that he had not made a particular bet or that he bet more or less than what Dink’s clerk had written down, Dink was able to replay the tapes and quickly settle the dispute. As a New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils season ticket holder, Dink began watching the games less like a fan and more like a gambler. A customer of Dink’s noticed that his hockey line was sharper compared to other bookies and the two began to exchange opinions and share handicap secrets. By trial and error, Dinky developed his own systems and was soon betting four, five thousand dollars on hockey games. One of the drawbacks of being a hockey handicapper, however, was that information was harder to obtain. The western Canadian newspapers arrived at newsstands three days late. One of Dink’s employees suggested that they call someone who had a job-needed posting in the want ads of the
Calgary Sun
and the
Edmonton Journal
, and offer them five hundred dollars a week to call the office every morning and read the sports section over the phone. Dink called “light typing needed,” who turned out to be an eighty-seven-year-old widow. She told him he was insane, and said no. “Good with children” also told him he was insane, but said yes, and became Dink’s first official hockey reader.

Within ten months, Dink returned to the Bronx social club where he paid his final installment on the loan shark payment plan.

Over the next five years, the money came in faster than Dink could spend it. He was officially a millionaire. Not yet a multimillionaire. But, still, a millionaire. Some of the money he kept inside a lockbox in his apartment. He hid twenty-five grand inside his Strat-O-Matic baseball board game and another ten thousand inside empty Ajax containers. More of his money was stacked inside several different safe-deposit boxes around town. His closest
friends held on to a few grand. He invested in punk bands, racehorses, and the
schmata
industry. He paid sixteen hundred dollars a month for a two-bedroom inside the Bay Club, a high-rise complex in Bayside, Queens, complete with basketball and tennis courts, steam rooms and saunas, a swimming pool, valet parking, and its own underground mall. And in the center of the lush thirteen-acre estate, beneath a quaint wooden bridge, the Bay Club ducks paddled gracefully around a reflecting pond as sparkling green as the Emerald City.

On the afternoon Freda came to visit, her black orthopedic shoes sank into the cream-colored shag carpet. Her tiny brown eyes scanned the room: the leather couch, the marble table, the view of the Manhattan skyline. She brought her hand to her heart.

Freda grew up in the Madison House settlement on the Lower East Side. Her two brothers were Orthodox rabbis. Most of her friends were widows whom she met at the local Jewish center. No one Freda knew lived in such an opulent home.

She had never realized her son desired such riches. God knows he never bought new clothes or paid to have his hair cut. She spoke with Dink on the phone every day, yet she still didn’t understand how he made money. Despite how impressed Freda was with her son’s apartment, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him so.

“I don’t want to know how you can afford this building,” she said.

“The building’s not mine,” Dink said. “Just the apartment.”

“Whatever it is you’re doing, you need to stop. I can tell you’re not living a clean life.”

“Mom, I told you. I’m gambling. I’m doing good.”

“If you’re doing so good, why don’t we go to the Big and Tall store and buy you some clothes that fit? It annoys me to death the way you dress.”

Dink flipped through the channels until he came upon
The White Shadow
.

“Your father would disapprove of your position in life. He would
want his child to do the right thing in every respect. I think it’s disgraceful, anyone who gambles. You need to apply to medical school.”

“Mom! I’m thirty-three years old.”

“Fine, study law.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Go into teaching. There are plenty of children out there who need to learn math.”

“You go teach math.”

“Accounting.”

“Not a chance.”

After the last race, Dink drove his brand-new ’86 Cadillac Seville along the Bronx River Parkway, alone, at twilight, listening to the scores on the radio. This was the part of the day he looked forward to most.

Ten ten WINS. You give us twenty-two minutes, we’ll give you the world
.

He rolled down the windows and the wind splashed his brown curls across the front of his glasses.

Here we go to the National League …

After the commentator announced each score, Dink snapped his fingers.

Mets lost to the Cubs in extra innings, 3–2
.

Snap.

Pirates topped the Phillies, 7–5

Snap.

Dink was making money on nearly every game. Sports pages, candy-bar wrappers, and loose ten- and twenty-dollar bills flew around the backseat. If Dink had let go of the steering wheel and reached out, a small fortune could have flown right into his hand.

Inside Dink’s 150th Street office, five telephones rang. The 1987 regular football season had come to an end and Super Bowl XXII
was just two days away. The moment the clerks hung a phone on the receiver, it rang again. The handles were hot to the touch.

“Sports,” Fat George answered. “What can I get for ya?”

He handed the phone to Dink, who sat at the head of the table.

“Hello.”

“Dinky, A.J. Listen. There was a bust at Lou’s office in Brooklyn, ’bout twenty minutes ago.”

With the Super Bowl came heat. This, Dink knew. His first arrest happened the day before Super Bowl XV, Oakland versus Philadelphia. He was booking with his friend Doug. Together, they were busted and brought to the holding cell on Northern Boulevard. Dink asked the cop if he and Doug could have connecting cells. “This isn’t the Hilton,” the cop replied, then granted them the connecting cells. The following afternoon, they paid the four-hundred-dollar fine and made it home late in the fourth quarter. They opened shop the following evening.

Dink also knew that the police organized hits simultaneously. If you didn’t get busted within five minutes of a neighboring bookmaker being busted, chances were you were safe.

Dink stood up from his chair and looked out the office window to the garbage cans and leafless shrubs lining the driveway.

“I think I’m good,” Dink said. “Thanks for calling.”

Ten minutes passed. The telephones rang. So did the doorbell.