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coming my
way. “Your boss was in last Wednesday.”
    “Which one?”
    “Berry Frazer.”
    “Oh, Stella's too.”
    “You okay?”
    “Yes.”
    Angelo frowned. “Berry
didn't say anything to me about Galbo being upped.”
    “Why would he?”
    “He's my pal.”
    “He's everybody's
pal.”
    Angelo changed gears:
“Berry had a meeting with Snakebite, upstairs.”
    Upstairs meant
Snakebite's upstairs apartment office (guess who had previously told me that).
Sipping, I said, “What was the meeting about?”
    Angelo's eyes narrowed
into dark pools of Sicilian intrigue. He cupped his mouth and whispered another
closet secret. “The Kid's in trouble.”
    I think I mentioned, ‘the
Kid’ was one of several nicknames for Berry. I said, “Oh?”
    Still closer to my
face (heavy breath), Angelo whispered like he had deciphered the Rosetta Stone:
“The Kid's into Snakebite big time.”
    I conjugated ‘into’
and came up with money, as in debt. I remembered what Joy had told me about
Berry's gambling problems, but I figured that was past tense. Pretending blank,
I said, “You're kidding.”
    He shook his head,
“Shit buckets, know whan I mean?”
    “We talking about
Stella's and my boss, right?”
    “Yeah, the Kid, Berry,
makes dumb bets, chases, loses thirty, fifty large,” he snapped his fingers, “just
like that.”
    My weakness lying in
other areas, not familiar with this gaming lingo, I said. “Large?”
    “Thousand bucks.”
    A hundred bucks being
a lot to me, I raised an eyebrow. “The Kid makes fifty thousand dollar bets?”
    Quick nod: “Five, ten
games some days.”
    “That's a lot of
large.”
    “And the Kid loses
nine times out of ten, dumb, chases his bets.”
    “Don't we all?” I
looked around. “Speaking of Snakebite, he upstairs?”
    “Out of town, Memphis,
opening a new joint, Pink Poodle Two.”
    “Another challenge.”
    “He says it's a
ballbuster, remodeling a warehouse, hundred stool bar, three dance stages,
private booths,” he winked, “all first class … shooting for a July 1 grand
opening.”
    “Doesn't seem nice,
going to miss Ms. Peggy's premiere tonight, she and he being … you know, going
steady.”
    “Whaddaya-gonna-do,
business is business, know whan I mean, price of cheese keeps going up.”
Changing gears again, polishing the parquet in front of me, Angelo said softly,
“I also hear, Snakebite whans his cash P.D.Q.”
    The skip paused me,
“Cash?”
    “Whan the Kid owes.”
    “Oh.”
    Deepening intrigue,
“Snakebite said the Kid offered him some kind of TV trade deal.” Polishing
again, “Hey Jack, how's that trade stuff work in TV land?”
    “Same as in days of
yore, you have something I want, I have something you want, instead of cash, we
trade wants.”
    “Wha’s that mean?”
    “Say you own a car
dealership.”
    “Yeah, okay.”
    “Say I own a TV
station.”
    “Okay.”
    “I come to you and
say, Angelo, I want to lease a car but instead of paying you money I give you
advertising time on my TV station.”
    “No shit. So that's
how that works.”
    “Yep.” I sipped.
      Angelo looked like, finished with the Rosetta
Stone, he had started to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls. “So that's it,
Snakebite gets something and the Kid gets to pay off some large.”
    Intrigued, I thought I'd
fish. “Sounds like the Kid’s bets are getting ahead of him.”
    “Big time shit
buckets, but you din hear nutin from me.”
    “Nutin.” I sipped and
waited.
    Angelo narrowed his
eyes and lowered his voice. “Snakebite told me him and the Kid had worked out
one of 'em trade deals.”
    “For what?”
    “For the Kid's
bailout.”
    “How's that?”
    “Snakebite might write
off some of Berry's debt if Peggy Moore could get on TV, you know, her own
show, regular like, know whan I mean.”
    “She's on TV now,
isn't she … the commercials?”
    “She wonns big time,
her own TV show, you know. Promote her records. Name up in lights, neon, like
'em New York, Las Vegas