Martin caidin, p.16
Martin Caidin, page 16
history he'll use on the outside. Like I said, he has contacts everywhere. Between Maddox and Cogswell we can get to almost anybody, anywhere. In the world," Jake finished with a flourish.
Jube rose slowly from his lounge chair. He cracked his | knuckles one by one with sharp reports. He looked about their gathering room, really unseeing of what lay about him. He saw far beyond, a swirling mixture of people and places and events, kaleidoscopic in nature, turbulent in human emotions, unpredictable as to outcome. Fuck the future, he mused. It's never clear and the weather's always for shit. But, he smiled, you can always try to tilt the odds in your own favor.
He turned back to his closest friend. "Jake, old boy, we got me, we got you, we got the junkman.and now we got the senator. Luther Cogswell's a coyote and the senator can be the smoothie we'll need. But we need more than that. We need a rat and we need a pit bull."
Jake laughed. "I got one pit bull and two rats."
"Even money," Jube smiled, "I know your pit bull."
"No bet," Jake told him.
Alfredo Guccioni was never offered a bet he wouldn't take. Someone, somewhere, was always available to lay on or to take the low end of the odds. Always. Life was a gamble, the whole fucking world was a gamble, and without a gamble, even with his own life at stake, Alfredo Guccioni was fucking bored, man.
No risk, no joy. No danger, no life. Got to gamble, got to take the long shot. It was everything to him.
He loved it. It was religion and family and lust and all of life.
Alfredo was what people called all good and all bad. Nothing in between. The good or the bad depended upon on what side of Alfredo you found yourself to be. No matter where you were, though, you never wanted to be under his three hundred and fifty pounds of massive bulk and muscle. He wasn't fat. A lot of people who judged him fat and took on Momma Guccioni's boy lost their gamble. It was a good way to wake up very dead. All bloody and silent.
Alfredo Guccioni spent his youth, what little there was of it, working the alleys and side streets of downtown Las Vegas where he unloaded garbage cans and dumpsters until he knew every nook and cranny of every filthy passageway. He made his entry into the world of casino gambling through this darkwater approach. Garbage tells you almost everything a smart operator needs to know about a business, and Alfredo's break came when he collected old decks of cards until he found what he was looking for. Marked decks, shaved cards, stuff that showed up only in ultraviolet light or with infrared when wearing glasses with tiny cylindrical batteries in them. He waited until the top man of the Lodestone in downtown Vegas was on the scene, and he showed up in the casino in work clothes and stinking so badly he wrinkled suits as well as noses. They moved to throw him out but he held up a hand.
"Tell D'Amoto I want to see him," he growled to the pit boss.
"Get the fuck outta' here before you need a garbage truck to haul your fat ass away," was the answer.
"See this sweater?" Alfredo smiled. "There's seven sticks of dynamite under it with a battery and an igniter. Go ahead* prick. Push. We all go to heaven together. Or maybe hell. Who gives a shit. Tell Big D to come here now."
It wasn't worth making that kind of test. Big D came down from his penthouse. He stared at Guccioni and he held a perfumed handkerchief to his face. "What in the name of fuck is this?" he asked his pit boss. Lew Weinberg shrugged. "He says a couple of things, Mr. D. He says he wants to talk to you. He says he has seven sticks of dynamite under his sweater. He says we don't bring you down to talk he sets it off and we all go to heaven or hell. He says-"
"Shut up," Mr. D'Amoto said to Weinberg. He looked again at the huge bulk of the evil-smelling man.
"Name?"
"Alfredo Guccioni."
"All right, Alfredo, what do you want? You know you're crazy to put the arm on us like this. Win or lose you're dead."
"It's no arm, Mr. D."
A perfect eyebrow raised. "I'm listening."
"Tell your shithead to set up four decks on the table for blackjack."
"He's crazy!" Weinberg burst out.
"Shut up," Mr. D'Amoto said to Weinberg. He snapped his fingers. Four dealers stood on the opposite side of the craps table, each with a single deck. "Deal," said Mr. D'Amoto.
"Five players each deck," Alfredo added.
The cards went down. Alfredo smiled and reached beneath his sweater. Men moved back instinctively.
Not D'Amoto. Nothing bothered the old pro. He watched Alfredo Guccioni remove a pair of horn-rimmed glasses from the sweater and shove them on his face.
"First deck on the left," he said to D'Amoto.
"I'm listening," D'Amoto said.
Alfredo called off every card in rapid succession. Every card that was face down. D'Amoto gestured with a single finger movement. The cards went face up.
"Next deck, if you don't mind," D'Amoto said to Alfredo. "Wait," he amended. He turned to two very large, very wide men with stone faces and unblinking eyes. "Nothing happens to him, understand?
Nothing."
"Yes, sir."
"Yes, sir."
"Go ahead. Second deck."
Alfredo called them all off for all the decks.
"May I try those glasses, please?" D'Amoto asked.
"Yes, sir," Alfredo said, knowing he had scored very big. D'Amoto looked from one deck to another. He removed the glasses and picked up a card and studied it closely and then replaced the glasses. He removed them again and tapped his teeth gently with the glasses.
"I am indebted to you, Alfredo."
Guccioni wasn't that dumb to even comment. He kept his silence. "I would appreciate talking to you in my office upstairs."
"Yes, sir."
D'Amoto turned and made a strange signal with one hand. No one needed a guide book to understand that the hotel's full security force was already in place. "Everyone here goes to the private dining room,"
D'Amoto said quietly. He gestured to Alfredo. "You come with me, please," he told the foul-smelling man. The two hulks fell in behind them.
A brief ride up a private elevator and they stepped out into D'Amoto's private retreat in the penthouse. A man moved forward to pat down Guccioni. D'Amoto waggled a finaer.
"Don't touch him," he said. The security man stepped back impassively.
They ended up in D'Amoto's office. Alfredo stood like a huge slab of beef before his desk.
"Tell me about it," he heard.
"I found the cards in a dumpster outside. They was shredded up real bad. I had a hunch about this casino. Assholes talk too much. I listen to assholes who also got big mouths. I saved the cards. Put all the pieces together, you know, like a jigsaw. Then I began to try all different kinds of lights. Couldn't find anything. So I made experiments. I tried different kinds of lights. I found you needed both infrared and ultraviolet on a flickering wavelength to see anything. That's why all your normal detectors ain't worth shit.
You got to know, well, it's like a frequency combination, y'know? When you put it all together you can read every card you got in this joint."
"Yes, I saw that," D'Amoto said amiably. "Where do they make the glasses?"
"That was the tough part. I checked every source. Nothing. It took me a year of going through garbage.
Airport, casinos, restaurants, train station, bus depots; wherever it stinks that's where I was. These glasses? Silicon Valley in California."
"Yes," D'Amoto agreed. "Palo Alto and the stink."
"You can't fake the stink," Alfredo said. "It's like a piece of the truth. It got me attention when I came in."
"Very wise," D'Amoto agreed. "Do you have any idea who is involved?"
"No, sir. That's way over my head. I've told you what I know."
"How much money do you want for what you gave me tonight? You may have saved me millions."
"I don't want no money, Mr. D."
For the second time the perfect eyebrow raised. "That is interesting. That is unusual. What do you want?
What would you like?"
"I want to work for you. I want to get out of the stinking garbage business. I want to learn the business from the best. You're the best. Tonight, Mr. D., I prove to you what I can do. I show you I ain smart, I am like a bloodhound, I work very, very hard, and I am loyal." "You are my employee."
"Thank you, sir."
"Stay here tonight. You'll have a room. A shower with all the soap and hot water-never mind. I will have some young women scrub away that horrible smell. You will have all new clothes by morning."
"Yes, sir."
"You will be paid very well. I will also teach you this business. I have only one more-no; two more questions."
"Yes, sir."
"Do you trust me, Alfredo?"
"Yes, sir. I must."
"Very wise. The last question."
Alfredo smiled and lifted up the front of his sweater. D'Amoto stared long and silently at the seven sticks of dynamite, the wiring and the straps, and the blinking light that showed him the batteries were very much alive. A trip wire ran from the igniter to Alfredo's pocket.
"Thank you, Alfredo."
"Yes, sir."
It was a hell of a start. It also began an all-new legend in a business that was legendary for the reach it had throughout the entire world. Alfredo gave D'Amoto total loyalty and in turn became a "favored son"
for the elderly power. He went to schools to handle every gaming table that might be found in any casino; his street cunning and swift wit moved him rapidly to a position of meaningful knowledge and casino wisdom that pleased his superiors.
Not too many people had seen the dark side of Alfredo Guccioni. He issued from a small, mean, dirty, and harsh town on the Mexican border where life was spelled survival. At thirteen years of age he weighed two hundred pounds and knew the alleys and streets as well as any hoodlum twice his age. He grew up with a knife in one hand and a club in another, At seventeen he was an experienced nightclub bouncer and a strongarm mugger. He weighed three hundred pounds and he was incredibly strong and he started getting smart just about that time. Why carry a weapon for which the law could put you away when you have the physical strength of a gorilla? If he was going to rip someone off it was easier to deliver a punch to a man or a woman's chest that caved in bone and tissue and brought a heart to a bubbling, frothy stop. One blow from Alfredo could break a man's neck. From that moment of understanding he never carried a gun or a knife.
He understood a man must above all else count on himself. Street smarts weren't enough. Physical bulk and strength weren't enough. He needed the ability to expertly handle a half-dozen thugs doing their best to take him out. There's no better rough-and-tumble school than professional wrestling to teach you how to absorb punishment as well as to dish it out. He trained and he wrestled for a year and he went to private schools for martial arts skills and when he wrapped it up he was meaner than a water buffalo in a tight closet.
He managed casinos in Vegas and in Reno and Atlantic City; he did the run through the Bahamas and other favorite gaming spots of the world. He got to know his business inside out and he made the right contacts and when the wrong people pressured him, Alfredo Guccioni became his self-appointed executioner. He could kill with a single blow to the throat or the heart or the neck. He could kick a man to death with one mighty swipe of a booted foot. He could stand behind a man, grasp his head and chin and twist mightily and it was like breaking the neck of a helpless chicken.
He was one mean son of a bitch, and when he figured his rep was bad enough he went to D'Amoto, retired and frail but still with the power of the organization. D'Amoto looked fondly upon this giant of a man and arranged for whatever loans Alfredo required to open his own casino. He had never crossed
swords with the law in the United States; a clean record on the police blotters and some friends in the right places gave him his licenses and he opened business under the glittering name of the Last Frontier Casino and Saloon.
Alfredo Guecioni had realized his boyhood dreams. He sent for his sister who still lived and worked in their little shit town on the Mexican border where she labored as an accountant for a local irrigation company; Maria was important to him for the trust she guaranteed with his ledgers. The Guccionis prospered and some of the smart boys figured him for a big
asshole guinea who would never have climbed out of the garbage dumpsters without the protective halo of D'Amoto, and they went after the cream pouring through the gaming ladles of the Last Frontier.
Alfredo caught his lead pit boss dipping into the till and dipping his wick into his sister as well, who hated Alfredo and who had enthusiastically gone along with all the dipping, fiscally and physically. There were bad words and his pit boss, backed up by a bunch of nasties, threatened Alfredo. His sister joined in and called him lots of names that covered everything from a faggot cocksucker to a greasy pig. Alfredo didn't much care about the names. He .didn't care much about the long green, either.
What mattered was where he, Alfredo Guccioni, stood against the shit rabble pulling off this heavy pickpocket crap. Alfredo saw spaghetti red in the encounter they had at four o'clock in the morning in one of the motel suites behind the casino. First he killed his sister. Even though she was a pig and treacherous to her own blood she was still his sister, so he disposed of her quickly. His crashing blow with stiffened fingers to her rib cage broke in her ribs and punctured her lung and sliced a bone against her heart and she died gurgling and strangling, her feet drumming like a toy too tightly wound up before the last blood spurted and her eyes rolled into the back of her head.
Alfredo made a terrible mistake with Tony Matthews. Alfredo decided he wanted this one very special.
When he advanced on Tony the latter smiled and emptied a Ruger P85 into Alfredo's chest and stomach.
Fifteen rounds went into the double-thickness bulletproof vest and Alfredo kept smiling and advancing on the stunned and then horrified Tony. First he broke both his arms. Snap, crack. Then one leg. Then he crushed his testicles. No mistake yet. For the first time, Alfredo went emotional. He decided to do a special cutting job on Tony. The thought of Tony's people receiving their top man in neatly sliced pieces was too much to resist. Alfredo went all the way, packaging hands, feet, penis, eye balls, skull, and other assorted parts and pieces in dry ice and delivered by Federal Express.
The next morning, barely minutes after completing the shipment to the Express office, a black limo pulled up before his casino office. A man came in quickly, handed Alfredo a note.
"four motel suite bugged. Law has everything on tape. On way now by car. four only out is rooftop.
Chopper on way." It was signed with a scrawled "D."
No one ever said Big Al was slow. He didn't bother playing games with his safe. Fucking with the combination was totally asshole. He yanked open the bottom right drawer to his desk, snatched up fifty grand in cash and a slim stack of negotiable documents worth a million and he was in his private elevator twenty seconds later. Twenty minutes after that he was in a leased jet he had a crew keep fueled, powered up, and always ready to move out. The drug people didn't spend much time looking for jets hurtling south into Mexico and Guccioni went deep south at nearly six hundred miles an hour, climbing to fifty thousand feet. His pilots set up entry into Caracas hi Venezuela. That night the negotiable documents went to work and the next day Alfredo Guccioni was skipper of a hunter-killer boat that moved up and down rivers in Colombia on the lookout for drug freebooters hot after the coke processing plants of the big pros in the business.
They liked Alfredo and they figured he was more valuable to them off the boat and hi dark streets of various cities and ports of Central and South America. Alfredo soothed his still-rankled ego from being forced out of Vegas and he took his spittle out on anybody within reach. He also became very slick. The locals taught him well and he learned swiftly and he enjoyed his personal scorecard by killing in every different manner he could visualize.
"It's a game," he told the cronies who feared him as much as they did the eternally-present cutthroats trying to slice into the action. "I knock off people with my fists, my fingers, my feet. That's good. I kill one broad by banging my head against hers so hard so many times I bust open
her skull. Real neat. Another one I kill when I drop my pants and sit on her face and I take a shit and she chokes to death. Bitch bit me on the ass, too, but what the hell, that's the price you pay for variety. Lots of other ways. Automatics and pistols, right? Rifles and machine guns. Even used bazookas and small rockets. Then I burn a lot of them shits. I like to see them run. We made a lot of side bets how far they'd go before they fall down. Won a lot of money. I used crossbows and spears and blowguns and stakes and even drowned them, sometimes in a big bucket, sometimes with a hose down their throat until they bust like a watermelon. All sorts of ways. I am very serious about my business."
He progressed from drug-runners to revolutionaries and that was dumb, because even his best friends in the revolutionary business meant what they were doing and Alfredo Guccioni was pure scumrat from the beginning. An awful lot of people wanted his big fat ass and when they couldn't get him with hired guns they looked for and found his Achilles' heel. A man with a crewcut and huge muscles and a bad rep met with Alfredo in the jungle.
"They sent me here to talk with you, Big Al."
"Who the fuck is they?"
"Special committee in the senate. They got full power to pardon every fuckin' thing you ever done or never did, if you'll appear before the committee and give them the low-down on the commie cocksuckers you been fightin' here in this garbage dump."
"Bullshit."
"What they want is bigger than anything you ever done. They need what you got, Al. With what you can tell those boys on the hill they got a lock on getting elected again. That's worth millions to 'em. You're their ticket, man. You get full protection as special witness for the United States Senate. You're absolved of every fuckin' thing you can dream
up.
