Nick the Greek was Italian but because he worked out of the Valley Diner on Summit Avenue that was owned by Greeks, he became Nick, the bookie who worked out of the Greek place. Then, with time, the title was merged to Nick the Greek.
He took numbers and covered the odds out of
the Diner five days a week, usually in the very early morning hours when the
place was filled with tradesmen, his primary clients. He operated from
his favorite table in the rear of the Diner, where he was comfortable and
isolated and could conduct his business in private and the solitude gave him a
sort of dignity.
He paid passing attention to the
song on the juke box Time of the Season. He liked the song.
It was a hit when he was leaving high school.
“Do you know how this
works?” Nick asked with his hands pointing at the plumber’s apprentice,
who was just a kid.
“Yeah sure,” the kid
answered, causing Nick to put up his open palm in a stop motion.
“No, you don’t,” he said sharply.
“So listen to me.”
He paused to let the words sink
in and when he was sure he had the kid’s attention he continued. “I don’t want
any misunderstanding between us son, you understand?”
The kid looked to the right and
nodded causing Nick to knock on the Formica tabletop with his index
finger. “Look at me when you answer me and when you answer me use words,
got it? That’s how misunderstandings start.”
The kid was getting nervous and
shifted in his seat to face Nick the Greek.
“I understand,” he said
respectfully.
“Okay,” Nick continued. “I give
you a loan. You pay me back a set amount every week.”
“How much?” he asked quickly.
“See?” Nick said pointing
at him. “You said you knew how this worked...so listen, and I’m here to help
you, because an informed customer is a happy customer. How much? A
hundred a week on the principle and interest.”
“The vig,” the kid interrupted.
“The what?” Nick asked
sarcastically.
“The vig,” the kid replied a
little too smugly. “The vigorish on the note.”
“I know what vig is. I
watch the cop’s shows on TV too,” Nick replied with a tired sigh. “In real life
nobody not ever says “vig” or vigorish or whatever. It’s interest on the
principle of the loan. This isn’t a movie kid. This is real life.”
He stopped talking and allowed
the kid time to nod in agreement before he continued.
“Anyway, the interest...” he stopped and said, “Notice
I used the word interest...the interest is 15% on the whole. If you’re
late with a payment, the interest goes up, first to 17 percent and then 18 and
19 and so on. If you’re late all the time, I’ll either call in the loan,
which means you have to pay me all at once, or I can call the loan off which
means you don’t have to pay me but you got no credit anywhere with anybody over
anything. If that happens, if you stiff me, I won’t sell your note to one
of the Gumba’s down in New Haven. I know what people say about me, and
that’s just crap. I never sold a note in my life. But you stiff me,
nobody you know now, and nobody you will know in the future, gets to lay a bet
with me. When they ask me why, I’ll tell them, You’re friends with a man
who stiffs people and you can’t be trusted because you know him, and you don’t
want that. I don’t want that.”
No one had ever stiffed Nick the
Greek. Most people pay. They pay late, they rarely pay in full, but
eventually they pay.
“So you want the cash or not,
kid?”
The young man’s face had
gone flush. He was in over his head and wanted out. “Can I think
about it?” he asked softly.
Nick sat back quickly, pressed
himself into the bright red plastic seat covering, and stared at the boy for
several seconds. “What kind of stupid question is that?” he asked but as
soon as the words came out, he regretted using them. He knew he
intimidated people and he didn’t like it.
“Of course you can think about
it,” he said gently. “Nobody got a gun to your head kid.”
The young man assumed he had been
dismissed and slid silently to his feet and walked away. Nick called
after him, “Hey!”
The kid spun around quickly, his mouth formed
into an O shape.
Sounding slightly wounded, Nick
asked, “You don’t say goodbye or anything? You just walk away?”
“No sir.”
“Well you just did,” Nick sighed.
“Um,” the boy stammered as
he searched his tiny vocabulary for the correct salutation. Nick waved
him off with a spoon and stared blankly into his coffee.
He wasn’t a
mobster. People just assumed that about him. The fact was, in his
years of bookmaking, he had never met a real gangster. He took bets on
sports and occasionally loaned out money but he was no gangster.
The police left him alone largely
because he kept a low profile and because his business was instrumental to the
city’s economy. If Nick the Greek didn’t make the loans someone else
would, perhaps someone not as reasonable as Nick the Greek, perhaps someone
with a higher profile who would cause problems for everyone, and nobody wanted
a problem.
The sixty-two years that
made up his life had been good. He had never really known any sort of
adversity. His parents, both immigrants from the old country, had made a
comfortable life for their only son. Although modestly educated, he had a
number of intellectual pursuits from a consuming interest in Roman history to
astronomy.
He made as much money as any doctor
or lawyer in the Valley. More, probably, since taxes weren’t a primary
concern in his line of work. He lived modestly in a nondescript ranch
house on the hilltop, the same neighborhood where he had grown up. His
biggest extravagance was cable TV and a yearly vacation to Vegas and Miami.
He had his wife, but no extended
family. He stirred his coffee and stared blankly at the table. He
regretted never having had any children although he guessed that he would have
made a fine father. A daughter would have been nice although he was
certain there were distant cousins in Italy and he planned to go there some day
and find them.
He knew clothes. His father
worked as a tailor for sixty years and he taught Nick the trade and every now
and then they talked about opening a men’s clothing store, Angelo Cunina and
Son, Men’s Fine Clothing.” But that never came to be. Running a
handbook brought him more money in a day than his father made in a week and
then time slipped by and all those things, all those fine things, those oldest
and best dreams, got put aside. He still knew clothes. Once, on a
trip to Vegas, he overheard a waitress refer to him as “that elegant gentleman”
and he basked in the compliment for weeks. He enjoyed that image of
himself, an elegant gentleman.
He looked around the vast dining
room and noticed for the first time that it was empty and he felt lonely,
hollow. He had felt that way often these days and he found himself
questioning the resolution in his life. More than once during the course
of the week, he found himself recalling his oldest best dreams and wondered why
he had never done those things like travel, and open that men’s store. He
felt a deep and a vast emptiness inside him. It was a void that followed
him everywhere like an unrelenting, nagging ghost reminding him of the
self-imposed stillness of his life, surrounded by the deafening silence the
emptiness brought with it.
He wondered if he was depressed.
He had no friends, not really. Bookies don’t have friends. They
have people who need them. Once, a few weeks back, in the middle of the
day, he had gone over to the church. He sat there on the gleaming
mahogany bench and waited but he didn’t know what he was waiting for. He
didn’t know why he was there, except that he felt lonely and vulnerable.
He hadn’t come to pray and he had nothing for God to consider, so after a
while, he left not feeling any more fulfilled than when he arrived.
That night, when he went
home he told Angerona, his adoring wife, what he had done at the church, and
how he felt these days. He asked her, “Is this it? Is this all
there is? Didn’t you think that at the end there would be more?” and she
had no answer except to gently touch his arm.
He sensed someone looking at him
and there, at the edge of the dining room was the new waitress, tall and thin
with dark hair. He didn’t know her name, or maybe he did but he had
forgotten it.
He watched as she approached him
with great trepidation, her delicate white lips closed tightly. He judged
her to be no more than twenty-five years old but he knew he could no longer
rely on his judgment where age was concerned because these days, virtually
everyone he saw seemed young or at least younger than him.
She stopped several tables away
and stood there, looking around the empty room.
“Did you need to speak to me,
dear?” he asked as kindly as he could.
“Yes,” she said and then clearing
her throat repeated herself. “Yes.”
“You can come closer, honey” he
said with a friendly smile. “I don’t know what you heard, but I don’t bite.”
She put her head down and staring
at the grey carpet walked to his table.
“Sit down dear,” he said softly
and waved her towards the empty chair across from him.
She sat down.
“You want some coffee?” he asked
and looked around the room for the waitress.
“No thank you,” she replied.
“How about something to eat?” he
asked. “My treat, go ahead.”
“No,” she smiled, “but thank
you.”
“The pie here is very good,” he
offered.
“I’m alright,” she replied.
They sat in silence for a
moment. He waited and when she looked at him, he purposefully tried to
look encouraging and understanding. She smiled at him.
Finally he said, “What can I do for you dear?”
and showed her his open palms.
“Well,” she said slowly in a
voice that was just above a whisper, “I would like to borrow some money and I
understand that you lend people money, like a bank.”
He sat back in his chair.
Watching her from afar these past few weeks, he expected her to be more
assertive. He would not lend her any money but he was curious.
“And how much money do you need
dear?” he asked as he stared into his coffee cup.
“A couple of thousand,” she
answered while looking at the table. They all looked at the table when
they asked.
“A couple of thousand?” he
repeated.
“Like,” she said “like three
thousand.”
“You know,” he said trying to
turn her off the idea. “You have to pay all that money back.”
“And then there’s the vig right?”
she said with great interest and then added, “the vigorish...vig means
vigorish.” She was suddenly aware of the sound of her own voice but kept
talking anyway because she was so nervous. “Vigorish means the interest on the
money you borrow.”
“Yes,” he smiled and nodded. “There’s
the vigorish. We, people in my profession, prefer the word interest.”
“Then who calls it vig?” she
asked absent-mindedly.
“Actors on TV,” he answered.
“That was a dumb question,” she
laughed nervously.
“No, it’s not dumb, you’re just nervous
and you’re young that’s all,” he said. “This is new to you.” She
smiled at his patience and kindness. He wasn’t a mean man, she thought,
but he was a shy man.
“I can’t make you the loan,” he
said directly and dryly.
He was a cold-hearted bastard,
she thought. She was positive he would give her the money. After
all, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living. Day in and
day out, she had seen one hapless bricklayer, carpenter, or plumber drag their
feet out of the Diner, happily counting the loan he had just made
them.
“I’ll pay you back,” she said,
trying not to sound indignant. “I don’t cheat people.”
“I know you will,” he answered
with a smile.
“You can ask Mister Khronos.
He’ll tell you I’m good for the money. I haven’t missed a single
day here, not one.”
He nodded his head in agreement.
“I don’t have to ask him. You seem like a fine person.”
Nick the Greek may have
intimidated others but he didn’t move her in the least.
“Then why won’t you make the loan?”
she said, allowing her disappointment and anger to come through in her
words.
“I won’t make you the loan and
for two reasons,” he said and continued by counting off the reasons on his
fingers. “Number one, I operate out of this joint. This place is like my
office, and excuse my French honey, but you don’t crap where you eat.
Again, excuse my French. Number two, you work for Alexandros
Khronos. I loan you money, one of his employees, in his place of
business, he loses face, and I got a new problem I don’t need.”
She stood up from her
chair. She was angry and humiliated and it showed in her face. He
watched her and shook his head in dismay. He didn’t need anyone who
worked at the Diner angry at him. It could lead to difficulties.
She clenched her fists and then her eyes welled up.
“Oh Jees,” Nick sighed and looked
around the room for an escape route.
“All right, all right,” he said
using his hand to signal her to sit down. “Let’s talk. Sit down.”
She kept standing and folded her
arms across her chest. He waited and after several seconds, she sat down
but looked across the room, away from him.
“What’s your name?” he
asked. “My name is Nick, Nick Cunina.”
“Dolores,” she answered.
“Kearney.”
“All right Dolores Kearney, what
do you need the money for?” he asked.
“My daughter’s tuition at Eternal
Lady of the Assumption.”
“What does your husband
do?” Nick asked. “Does he work?”
She was still looking away
from him. “Don’t have a husband, it’s just me and her.”
“Well,” he said shifting in
his chair, “it’s none of my affair, but a single mother, small income, maybe
you should consider public schools.”
“Next year,” she answered. “I
have to send her to a special school for children like her next year, but I still
got to pay off this year.”
“What do you mean special
school?” Nick asked.
She turned and looked at
him and answered, “She’s slow, like retarded, but not retarded, but almost.”
He thought about saying, “I’m
sorry” but there was nothing to be sorry for. A child, he thought, no
matter what, is God’s gift in life.
“It must be difficult,” he said
and then added “for both of yous.”
A smile, a good smile, came
across her pretty face and she said, “But she’s a happy kid. She’s kind
and gentle and she says the damnedest things.” She laughed and it brought a
smile to his face.
“I suppose I could take her out
of there now,” she said, “but it would confuse her.”
She lowered her head and added, “It would hurt
her,” and looking at Nick she said, “and I will never allow that to happen.”
A comfortable silence fell
between them.
“I went to the Eternal
Assumption,” he said with a fondness.
“Did you?” she asked.
“How much do you owe them?” he
asked.
“Fifteen hundred,” she
answered.
“You asked me for three grand,”
he said, pointing his spoon at her to make the point.
“I gotta get some other things,”
she answered.
“Like what?” he asked.
“I want to get my own place,” she
said. “I need the first and last month’s rent up front.”
“What’s your girl’s name?” he
asked.
“Phoebe,” she said with a smile.
“I like the name Phoebe.”
He leaned back in his chair and
said, “I can’t give you the money.”
She stood and silently nodded her
head and returned to her station, resigned to defeat.
It was raining and although it
was still noon, it was overcast and dark when Nick left the Diner and drove his
Saturn across the Division Street Bridge to the Eternal Assumption School.
He rang the bell to the convent
door and waited. He looked up at the silver metal cross above the doors
and then over to the faded and chipped putty around the window casing.
The building was starting to show its years, although he remembered when it was
built, and he remembered the dilapidated Victorian that stood there before the
convent was there.
A Nun opened the door and
stared up at him. He looked down at her face. It was a good face,
pale and ruddy and Irish that revealed her every emotion.
“Sister,” he said with a slight
nod of respect and slipped a fat white envelope into her small hands. “This is
some tuition for the Kearney girl...you know her?”
“Kearney?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “This should
cover her school for a while, okay?”
The Nun opened the
envelope. It was bursting with cash, tens, and twenties.” How much
is in here?” she asked, her eyes not leaving the money.
“Three thousand,” he answered.
“How much is the tuition?”
“Two thousand a year.”
“Well that should cover what they
owe you and then some, huh?” he asked.
“Easily,” the Nun said.
“Take the rest as a donation,” he
said. “Do what you can to go easy on the kid.”
Nick turned and started to stroll
away and then turned and asked her, “How is Father Flynn these days, Sister?”
“Still dead,” she answered.
“Too bad,” Nick said. “He
was sort of a mentor to me.”
“Don’t you want a receipt?” she
called after him, causing Nick to stop and turn and look at her. “No, not in my
business, unless you plan on stiffing me Sister. You gonna stiff me
Sister?” he asked with a grin.
The Nun stuck out her lower lip
and pretended to consider the notion and then said, “Naw, I
guess not.”
“When that runs out Sister, come
and see me. You know who I am?”
“Yes,” she nodded knowingly. “You
work over at the Valley Diner don’t you?”
“Yeah. Just let me know
what you need.” He waved and walked back to his car with a bounce in his
step.
Parking in his long, black neatly
tarred driveway, he took a second to look over the large house. Most of
it was dark. There was a light on in the kitchen and in the foyer.
He thought again that maybe it was time to sell the place for something
smaller. As if feeling the hard rain for the first time, he ran into the
house.
He was smiling when he entered
the living room, which surprised his wife, who was there to greet him. He
was a serious man who didn’t smile often, although she knew he was trying to
soften his approach to life these days.
“I want to tell you what I did
today,” he said, which surprised her. He never discussed his day with
her. Not because he didn’t want to or because she wasn’t interested, but
because the nature of his work didn’t lend itself to general
conversation.
They sat in the living room and
he told her what happened. How Dolores had approached him so wearily, and
what he said to her and what she said to him and how he turned her down and how
he drove to the convent and paid the Nun.
When he was finished with his tale he
asked, “You’re not angry or anything are you?”
“You mean jealous?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“No,” she said. “What you did was kind
and decent.”
He put his arm over her shoulder
and said, “And I feel good, I feel pretty good.”
The next morning Dolores poured
Nick’s coffee and said, “That was a nice thing you did,” and then looking up at
him she said, “I thought you said you wouldn’t give me the money.”
“I didn’t give you the money,” he
answered without looking at her. “I gave it to some Nun.”
“Well thank you anyway,” Dolores
said. “I’ll start paying you back first paycheck I get.”
He waved it off and stared down
at his coffee. “Don’t worry about it, forget about it,” he said. “Apparently I
can write school tuition off my taxes.”
It worried her that he didn’t
want her money. “Thank you,” she said and started to leave but she turned
and said, “Look, Nick, I appreciate it and all, but I’d rather pay you back all
the same.”
“Why?” he asked looking up at
her. “Buy your girl…what’s her name?”
“Phoebe.”
“Buy Phoebe something nice with
the cash you save and,” he said but she cut him off.
“Look, let’s just keep it
business,” she whispered. “I got a man, and I don’t even want him in my
life. So if that’s what you’re after…”
“Hold up,” he said in a voice
that was louder than he had ever used with her. “I got a wife of thirty years
that I love. She’s a good woman. I don’t do that kind of thing, you
understand?”
She could see that he was angry
but he was sincere. His jaw was clenched tightly.
“You want to take this
outside old man,” she snarled and smiled, “cause I’ll slap the hell out
you.”
A broad smile came over his face.
“Yeah,” he said with a grin. “You probably could too.”
A few days later, Dolores brought
her daughter Phoebe to work because the school was closed for All Saints Day, a
Holy Day of Obligation. She had no one to mind her and couldn’t leave her
home by herself.
Nick spied the girl staring at
her from the far end of the Diner. She was round and chubby from too many
starches and too much cheap food. She was close to cross-eyed and kept
her mouth open. Her clothes were old, unkempt, and inexpensive. He
fell in love with her immediately in that way that only Italians can do.
“I know who you are,” Nick told
her in a calm and lyrical voice. “You’re Phoebe.”
“Yes I am,” Phoebe replied
factually.
There was a brief silence.
“Don’t you want to know how I
know your name?” Nick asked.
“No,” Phoebe said.
“Well my name is Nick. You
can call me Nick.”
“No I can’t,” Phoebe replied.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because Nick,” Phoebe said in a
way that was ever so slightly condescending, “I’m a child and children are not
supposed to call adults by their first name…..Nick.”
“Well I’m sorry,” he replied.
“Well there is no need to be
sorry Nick,” she said. “It doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you didn’t
know….Nick.”
He made a conscious effort
to smile at her. “Why don’t you come closer?” he asked. “So I don’t have
to shout across the room.”
She walked across the room
to him, arms swinging in step. When she stood before him he said, “You’re
very pretty.”
“I know,” she replied.
“You know?” he asked masking a
grin. “And how do you know?”
“People tell me that all the
time…..Nick,” she said rather dismissively.
She looked Nick over from top to
bottom and approving of what she saw said, “You are very handsome.”
“Well thank you,” he replied.
“We would make a fine couple,”
she declared offhandedly.
“I agree,” he added.
“Are you married Nick?” she
asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Well forget it then,” she said
with a flip of her hand, dismissing any marital notion Nick may have held for
her.
“That’s a shame,” he said
gravely.
“Yes Nick,” she answered. “Yes it
is.”
“But it’s the right thing to do,”
he added solemnly.
When Nick saw Dolores again
a few days later, her right eye was closed and there was a large black and blue
mark across the right side of her face.
“My God, what happened to you?”
he asked leaning back quickly in his seat.
“Boyfriend,” she said looking
down at the worn grey carpet.
“Holy mother of God,” Nick said,
his face contorted in disbelief.
“I need to get out of there,” she
said more to herself then to him. “He’s going to hurt us both.”
“What?” Nick asked. “You
think he’ll hurt your kid, the little girl?”
“He’s rough with her,” she said.
“He yells at her, and calls her names.” She pointed to her swollen face.
“That’s what started this. It’s the dope too, he gets doped up, he gets
high, and then it starts.”
“He does drugs in the house where
there’s a kid inside?” Nick asked incredulously.
His stomach turned from the instant guilt he
felt over not lending her the money she needed for the apartment.
“Is he the father?” Nick
asked.
“No,” she answered and looked
across the room at something only she could see. He waited for more of an
answer that he sensed was coming, maybe not then, but someday. “I was raped by
a person.”
He looked out the window
into the parking lot and then back at her and in words that surprised him said,
“We got a whole basement in my house, kitchen, everything, that’s not being
used. We don’t even go down there anymore.”
“I” she stammered, “I don’t
know…”
“It’s got a fireplace,” he
said.
“What about your wife?” she
asked.
“Two bathrooms,” he added.
“It’s a big place. We got a yard too. I never go out there.”
“What about your wife?” she asked
again.
“She never goes out there
either,” he replied.
“No,” she said. “What I’m saying
is, shouldn’t you talk to her about this first?”
“Yeah,” he said. “When we get
there, we’ll talk to her about it.”
In the months that followed, a
reign of happiness came over the home of Nick and Angerona Cunina.
Angerona, they called
her Angie, gave up her daytime television programs and spent her days shopping
for food and clothes and preparing meals and minding Phoebe while Dolores
worked. Nick bought Dolores a used, but reliable car and with Phoebe’s
assistance, he became something of an expert in the Saturday cartoon genre.
There was a weeklong vacation to the Rhode Island beaches. In September,
when they enrolled Phoebe into the Special Education program in the public
school system there was a parent-teacher conference that they attended with all
the weightiness of a Presidential Summit.
Dolores continued to see her
boyfriend, his last name was Galanthis, and he continued to get drunk and high
and to punch her. She would break it off and he would get sober and it
would start over again.
Nick didn’t interfere although
Angerona pushed him to say something.
“Best to stay out of it,” he told her.
“He’s gonna kill her one of these days,”
she said.
“Over my dead body,” he replied. “Look
Angie, Phoebe’s safe, that’s the important thing. Sooner or later,
Dolores will wise up; they always do, watch and see.”
One day the boyfriend came to the
house, drove his car up on the impeccable lawn and kicked open the front door,
screaming for Dolores. Angerona phoned the police who arrested him
as he sped away. He was released the next morning, a wet, cold, and
overcast November morning that forced Nick to pull his raincoat collar up
around his neck while he waited for the young man to answer his front door.
He shoved his right
hand into the overcoat’s pocket and ran his thumb across the tops of the dozens
of hundred dollar bills stuffed into the white envelope. He would give it
to the kid if he promised to leave the area. It was the best way to
handle it. Pay him off.
He could hear someone walking
away from the door and rang the bell again. He waited another five
minutes and rang it again. When it opened, he reached into the raincoat
to retrieve the cash envelope.
The kid’s unshaven face
poked near the door. His eyes were bloodshot. Nick could smell the
beer. It wasn’t even noon yet and he was drunk or on his way to becoming
drunk.
“Hi, I’m Nick Cunina,” he said.
“I know who you are,” the kid
answered.
“You got a minute?” Nick
asked overlooking the young man’s aggressive
answer.
“Minute for what?” the kid answered
in a mocking tone.
“I got somethin for you,” Nick
said and reached deeper into his pocket.
The knife pierced Nick’s stomach
and caused a sudden and violent loss of blood. He lost consciousness
before he hit the ground. A neighbor had watched the stabbing from her
window and called the ambulance that managed to save Nick the Greek’s
life. The cops never caught the kid. He stepped over Nick’s dying
body, climbed into his car, and drove away, never to be seen again.
It took Nick almost two years to
recuperate from the stabbing. But he did recuperate and during those many
months while he mended, he changed and he changed for the better. He stopped
booking numbers, a job he had grown to hate, and that had a lot to do with that
change. When he was well again, in the summer of that year, his 65th year, Nick
the Greek opened a store downtown on Main Street, Angelo Coppola and Son,
Men’s Fine Clothing.