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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 inneighboring 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 closestfriends 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