The Bookmakers Read Online Free PDF Page B

always a gentleman.”
    “He was always a prick,” Artie muttered under his breath so his mother wouldn’t hear. He never used profanity in front of women, especially not her.
    “I hope you’ll come with me to the funeral,” said Mrs. Wolfowitz. “We’ve known him for so long—”
    “I need to take a walk,” said Artie. He bounded out of the house, ran all the way to the park and collapsed on a bench near the baseball diamond. He knew he ought to feel remorse, but he didn’t; in truth he was elated. Mike Stanislaw had humiliated and cheated him, and he, Artie Wolfowitz, had exacted justice. The fact that the war had started over an ice-cream cone meant nothing. Artie sat on the wooden bench feeling the cool Septemberbreeze on his face and experienced the exquisite satisfaction of total revenge.
    After high school, Artie attended the local branch of the state university, near Buffalo, where he got an accounting degree. He was the first Wolfowitz to go to college, the first professional man in the family, and after graduating he took a job with a local firm, lived at home and supported his mother. It was a boring life but he didn’t expect more.
    Then, in the summer of 1972, Gert Wolfowitz discovered a lump under her left arm and eight weeks later she was dead. With nothing to hold him, Artie Wolfowitz moved to New York City, where he found a job monitoring sales figures in the marketing department of Gothic Books. He wasn’t a reader, but the idea of working for a glamorous New York publisher appealed to him. He was especially drawn to the junior editors—graceful young men with carelessly elegant clothes and easy Ivy League manners, quick, good-looking women who dressed stylishly and joked about sex—but they made it clear with a cool politeness that they had no interest in socializing with a plain, unsophisticated bookkeeper from upstate nowhere.
    One warm June evening after work, Artie wandered into the Flying Tiger, ordered a scotch-and-soda and sat self-consciously sipping his drink as he wistfully surveyed the scene. From his place at the bar, the Tiger seemed more like a clubhouse than a cocktail lounge. Everyone appeared to know one another, friendly insults were called from table to table and new arrivals got noisy, demonstrative greetings. From time to time Artie glanced at his watch to give the impression that he was waiting for someone, but nobody seemed to notice.
    For something to do, Artie walked over to the jukebox and peered at the selections. His musical taste ran to Neil Diamond and Bobbie Gentry, and the songs, mostly by artists with names like Gatemouth and T-Bone, were unfamiliar. Randomly he hit some buttons and returned to the bar as a falsetto wail filled the room.
    “All right! ‘Mind Over Matter’ by Nolan Strong and the Diablos!”he heard someone call with the exaggerated enunciation of a radio disc jockey. Artie turned and saw a tall, athletic young man with longish sandy hair and even, handsome features leap from his chair, pull the young woman next to him to her feet and begin dancing in the aisle. He was graceful and completely self-assured, singing along with the record so infectiously that several other couples rose to join him. He seemed different from the young sophisticates at Gothic, less Ivy League, more energetic and aggressive, like a high school homecoming king or the president of the student body.
    When the song ended, the sandy-haired guy sauntered over to the bar, called out for a double bourbon on the rocks, climbed onto the stool next to Wolfowitz and slapped him lightly on the back. “Man, I love that song,” he said in an easy, conversational way. “You must be from Detroit, right?”
    “Upstate New York,” said Wolfowitz. “A hick town you never heard of. What makes you say Detroit?”
    “It’s a Detroit song,” he said. “An oldie. Most people around here don’t know it, so I figured you might be from out there. I’m from a little hick town, too.