All In by Russell Isler

Author:Russell Isler [Isler, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bottled Monster Press

An hour later, we were marching into the clubhouse with the spoils of the day. Well, “clubhouse” might be too generous. We’d taken over a pair of rooms at the Park Lane Motel. I wouldn’t have called it fancy, but it would do until we moved up in the world.

We’d had the motel furniture dragged out and replaced with some halfway decent chairs, a table, and a couch. Little Mickey even had himself a fine desk to run the crew from. Once we’d brought in our first score, he’d bought a state-of-the-art television set. With that massive sixteen-inch screen, it was the biggest TV I’d ever seen.

As we piled into the room, the frosty screen was displaying a familiar face. Moe Sedway, seated behind a cluster of microphones, appeared to be in a courthouse. He shared the room with a gaggle of senators who were grilling him about his stake in the Flamingo.

“Can you believe that Kefauver dragged Mr. Sedway in to rake him over the coals?” Little Mickey pronounced the senator’s name “Cow-Fever.”

On the tube, one senator was trying to pin our former boss down. “You don’t get anything out of the Flamingo?” he was asking.

Moe’s voice was bland. “I get my room. I get my board.”

Beside me, Donnie Grace snorted.

Not satisfied with Moe’s response, the senator went off on a righteous tear. “You say you knew Lucky Luciano? He is a moral pervert and the scum of the earth!”

Little Mickey chuckled as he tilted his hand back and forth. “The senator’s a bit on the money with that one.”

I would’ve watched the rest of Moe’s testimony just for the laughs, but Little Mickey, I think, was looking to make sure no one in the room got called out by name. When the committee called some auto parts guy I’d never heard of to take the stand, Ronnie Grace clicked the set off. “Eddy, make with the goods, will ya?” he said. “Ain’t got all day.”

I wasn’t about to let the mark’s suitcase out of my sight. Since we arrived, I’d kept my hand tight on the handle. I slid the narrow case onto the table, knocking over a couple empties in the process, and popped the latches. With all eyes on me, I rooted among undershirts, trousers, and unmentionables until I turned up our prize. I upended a suspiciously heavy sock and shook it until it coughed a fat roll of bills into my waiting hand. I held that beautiful sight up for all to see before placing it in the center of the table.

Each member of the crew took a turn counting it up under the boss’s watchful eye. He’d insisted that this was the only way to keep everyone honest.

The total take from this job, if you ignored the cheap watch in the suitcase, totaled just over ten large. Once we’d cut out a percentage for Gus—we were operating in his territory—Little Mickey came away with the lion’s share. Being the boss had its privileges. The rest was a four-way split that put twelve hundred bucks and a cheap watch in my hand.

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