Chapter 1: Ante
“Hello, David. You have one new message.”
The message reflected off a young man’s green eyes in the darkness. He contemplated listening to it after a good night’s sleep in his bed, but he checked it before he left his black Toyota Camry.
The message was spoken by a man with a raspy voice and a New Jersey accent. “Hey, you – ‘SnowflakeGambler91’ guy. Yeah, you. You betta’ get down to Felt on Washington Street. The boss isn’t too happy with you exploiting our online gambling den. Oh, yeah, and if you don’t come and play a game of poker, we’ll get hackers to track you and make you pay for your crimes…” Fear showed on David’s face as he listened to his voice mail. He knew exactly what the message was talking about, and he was devastated about online gamblers finding his phone number.
After a few deep breaths, David got out of his car, took his belongings, and shut the door behind him. He walked down the sidewalk in front of his dingy apartment complex and opened the heavy steel door to the apartment building. He ascended the rickety staircase to the floor he lived on and went down the dimly lit hallway until he was in front of his apartment door. His thoughts began to swirl in his head. He recalled that he was left with almost nothing after paying his tuition for law school. He then assumed that these mobsters might not be particularly intelligent. He walked along the pathways of the third floor, and when he stopped at his apartment door, he had a revelation. He could disguise himself in real life and still con the mobsters.
He opened the door and stepped into his own living room. He suddenly had an epiphany regarding his half-baked plan. He realized that he might not be able to legally defend himself, as he no way to eliminate potential evidence that could sacrifice his reputation and incarcerate him. He mulled over his plans on the way to his bedroom and hoped that he could think of a way out of the mess he got himself into. As soon as David opened his bedroom door and stepped in, he immediately went to his bed and sat down. He thought about how he would present himself, but he was hesitant about his plan. Even so, he couldn’t turn back. He would have to use all the guile he had in order to survive and prosper from gambling.
David stood up and opened the nearby closet. Inside, he mostly had business casual and smart casual clothes, with two pairs of sneakers at best. However, he had a box with old costume clothes in it. He started to pull out various clothing articles. He settled on an absurdly flamboyant selection of clothing for the occasion, complete with gloves, pale blue eye contacts, and a black wig to conceal his identity. He would be calling himself the “Snowflake Gambler” that night.
David went to the bathroom from his bedroom and began to put on his disguise. Even though it had been a while since he wore something so foppish, he thought that he could pull off pretending to be someone else. He would have to pretend that he was a character pulled from nowhere in the short amount of time he had been home, but he could still do it. He then realized that his facial features would give him away. He thought about it for a second and concluded that he would have to wear makeup and contour his face, to his dismay. He ruminated, as he hadn’t purchased any in years. He then remembered that his roommate, Amy, did. He paused for a minute and wondered if he should rummage through her things. He quickly got over that, and plucked out some black eyeliner and pale foundation, and started to put that on. Despite his intense hatred of wearing feminine things, his woe was diminished by the fact that the handiwork on his face wasn’t shabby. He entertained a short-lived idea of being an actor in Hollywood, but then realized that, as a law student, he still acted…to an extent. He sighed and decided that a hat might disguise his height a little, so he went back to his bedroom to grab a black top-hat and matching black overcoat to go with his ludicrous ensemble.
He paused to go over his plans, but then the doorbell rang through the apartment. David grimaced in fear at the echoing bell. He hoped that the mobsters weren’t outside, waiting. His craven heart raced, and he feared that he was about to get killed. Regardless, he walked to the front door to look out of eyehole. His fears vanished when he saw who rang the bell; it was an undergraduate student from the Economics and Law course he was lecturing as a teaching assistant. He barely remembered the student’s name off of the top of his head, but he didn’t care. He grabbed the doorknob and opened it.
“Hi, is—is Amy here?” asked the undergraduate. David looked up at the tall student who he knew. As usual, he wore the same red hoodie with a large white slab serif “H” and dark blue jeans. The young undergraduate stammered a bit. David wondered what this guy had to do with his roommate. “Oh, Mr. Canton! Am I at the wrong place? I’m sorry, I’ll leave…” The student started turning around before David pointed at the generic gray IKEA couch in his living room.
“No, Zachary. You’re going to sit down and wait for her.” David felt flustered with all the things happening in his life that night, but he also the need to be hospitable. He walked to his kitchen, and opened his fridge, grabbing a bottle of cheap vodka that was next to a few pill bottles. He then grabbed a shot glass from the rack on the counter, and poured the drink for the young student, hoping he would guzzle that, and then drink to oblivion. He waltzed over to his couch, and the student, thankfully, didn’t leave.
“Are you offering me alcohol?” asked the young student.
“Yes; Vodka. Intoxicating, invigorating, and as manly as Grigori Rasputin. Quite the drink, no?” The undergraduate and David silently stared at each other, thanks to David’s previous sentence. “I’m assuming you can legally drink. If I’m wrong, let me know.”
“I think I’ll pass,” stated the undergraduate.
“Not if your first cluster of quizzes are anything to go off of. Anyway, I guess Amy can have it later. So, would you prefer chips or a stale Twinkie instead?” asked David sardonically. He rolled his eyes and accidentally muttered “Twink…” under his breath.
“Hey, my name’s Zachary, not ‘twink’!” retorted the undergraduate. “And no, I don’t want any snacks.” It was obvious that he heard David’s remark. “Also, wait. What is a twink, anyway?” asked Zachary, seemingly unaware of what the word even meant.
“You have a smartphone that you constantly look at in class while ignoring lectures, Zachary. Google it,” replied David. “Although I really shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.” He promptly stopped his teasing and went back to the kitchen to grab a bag of potato chips for Zachary. David came back to the gray couch in his living room, sat down, and passed Zachary the bag of chips. “At least take the chips. Not giving you something while you’re a guest in my apartment makes me uncomfortable.”
The two remained seated in a few moments of awkward silence. Zachary popped opened the bag of potato chips and started munching on them. David gazed at Zachary, as he wasn’t quite sure what to think. He was irked by Zachary’s dull personality and intrigued by his physique, but he figured that he probably shouldn’t mention his opinion on that. He knew it would be problematic for a teaching assistant to even imply such a thing.
“So, what’s with the emo penguin getup, Mr. Canton?” asked Zachary. “Is it for Halloween tonight? Honestly, I wouldn’t have expected you, of all people, to care about it.” David was disappointed that he was recognizable underneath his disguise, but he figured that his voice gave him away.
“You can call me David in my home, you know. Also, no, it’s not for that,” responded David nervously.
“Is it for a political protest?” asked Zachary.
“No!” exclaimed David. He paused for a moment before deciding to stretch the truth. “’It’s for a club downtown…” Once he remembered the gambling deal, he declared “I have to leave.”
Zachary became curious and asked, “Well—can Amy and I tag along?”
David blinked once before he uttered a vehement “Absolutely not!” Neither David nor Zachary said a word after that. He knew that if Amy and Zachary came with him — and if anything went wrong — any impunity he had was gone.
David turned around and went back to his room to grab a couple of things he figured that he would need. He rummaged in his closet, and the first thing he grabbed was pair of black and white wingtip shoes to wear.
The second thing he grabbed was a luger pistol.
David stowed it away in his overcoat and shivered with hesitation. He then walked out through his living room again, glanced at Zachary for a split second, and went out the door, down the stairs, and back to his small black car. David then opened his car door and sat in the driver’s seat, grabbed the wheel, and paused for a few minutes. He then muttered to himself “Wait, why am I getting in my car for this?” He thought about his mental map of Cambridge and Boston, started tracing through it with his gloved fingers, and ran through the situation in his head. “Well, I could take the Red Line…wait, no, I can’t.” He let out an exasperated sigh when he remembered that he had loaded gun on his person. He recalled from his own Criminal Law course that he would not be able to carry it with him on a subway unless he wanted to risk getting charged with criminal possession of a firearm. He would have to drive if he wanted to follow the law as closely while he was being blackmailed. “This is drastically unfair,” sighed David to himself. He took a few deep breaths, collected himself, and finally turned on his smart phone to get directions to where he was going. David gulped, and shut his car door before crying to himself.
“Oh no…it’s in Downtown Crossing. Great, I’m going to sit in my car for hours for the chance I can get into a parking spot and hope that I don’t get murdered. Fantastic! Maybe I’ll want to be murdered by the time I get there!” sobbed David, He felt like he was headed towards his own grave, but he took one more deep breath and backed out of his parking spot. Once he was out of his parking spot and driving, he started bemoaning his circumstances once again.
“Oh no, no, no—I forgot about Halloween traffic tonight!” cried David. He noticed that the roads were even more congested than normal with the sheer amount of people out to party in the Greater Boston area. He then began to follow the instructions given to him on the small screen of his phone. He knew he wasn’t familiar with the heart of Boston as much as he was familiar with Cambridge, so he tried to pay as much attention to the streets as possible once he crossed the bridge for Charles River Dam and on to I-93. He was mostly lucid whilst driving, being frustrated with the sheer number of cars on the road and lack of parking spots due to the holiday. However, there were a few moments he kept zoning out during the hour he spent in traffic before he finally reached his destination: Felt.
The building, with its deteriorating front, was the most noticeable building on the block. David could only stare at it in awe, wondering why he would be directed to the one dilapidated building that had a “For Lease” sign while all the other buildings in Downtown Crossing were so well maintained. He then realized that he didn’t want to park near the building at all, so he drove around several blocks for another half hour to find a parking spot. After spending a lot of time, he parked his car in a nearby parking garage that charged $20 for parking. David took note of the ambient atmosphere where he was: that section of downtown Boston was clearly a decent area, but the building for Felt was clearly out-of-place for where it was. It was clear that mobsters were rampant in the place at that time of day. The building looked like it belonged in one of the sleaziest, dangerous parts of Boston, not where it truly was. He stood in front of the door, perplexed at why he would even be directed to an abandoned building like this. It wasn’t until David decided to pull the door open when he realized that he could enter at all.
“Ah, I see.” Inside Felt, David noticed that there was a minimal bar with one man bartending there who acknowledged the young man’s presence with a head nod. David paused before he sat down at the bar to look at what was available. Felt’s menu appeared to have vodka, gin, whiskey, and a plethora of other hard liquors. David kept reading the menu for a few minutes until he was grabbed from behind and dragged from the stool by two burly men.
“Youse the nefarious ‘Snowflake’, right?” asked one of the gruff mobsters.
“Well, yes, but…” started David. He was thinking about what he was going to say, and he was starting to wish he could take back what he said. The two burly gangsters dragged David to the basement floor and pushed him towards the closest poker table. There were two chairs. One that was turned away, with a guy in a fedora and a nice-looking pinstripe coat sitting on it, and the other one empty. David stared at the man’s back for a while before he understood the unspoken command. He was supposed to sit down, and he did.
“Welcome, Snowflake Gambler. We’re going to play a round.”
“You mean poker, right?” asked David with a winsome smile and laced hands. He glanced at the main mobster’s stern expression. The mobster only nodded, confirming David’s guess. The head honcho gave another gesture with his hands. The two burly mobsters whom dragged David down to the basement of the establishment sat down at the table between the two main gamblers. The leader grabbed a deck of cards, and started to hand them out, one by one.
“You sound kind of funny. Are ya from Yugoslavia or something?” asked one of the mobsters. The other one nodded to his partner’s comment and added “Or maybe the dumbass is from Poland!”
David decided to counter that. “Yugoslavia’s not a country anymore. Also, I’m from Georgia.”
The two mobsters then howled with laughter, and one of them proclaimed “Oh, so you’re a country hick! That’s hilarious!” David really wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he shook his head and remained silent.
The mobsters’ laughter didn’t stop until the main mobster at the end of the table slammed his fist on the poker table. The main mobster finished handing out all of hands, and everyone got to see what they had. David looked at the fidgeting of the mobster to his left and went through permutations in his head as he thought about the one pair he had in his hand. He decided to pass on this one because he decided that he couldn’t get away with bluffing on the first turn. David kept slogging through turns and managed to make a small profit after what felt like eternity, progressively making the gangsters outraged. Poker was losing its appeal to all concerned.
“Let’s spice things up a little,” declared the head honcho as he snapped his fingers. A few scantily dressed women walked around. “Go distract him—her—him—whatever!”
David paused for a second, raised his eyebrow in confusion, and then recalled that he was wearing makeup. “Ah…right…I am wearing make-up at the moment, aren’t I?” He glared at the mobster for a moment for the gaudy distraction, then turned his attention to the women behind him. He asked, “May I please have a shoulder massage?” in the gentlest voice he could muster. The showgirls indulged him and kneaded his shoulders without question. He didn’t find it sexually enticing but assumed that the gang’s boss hoped for that effect. The only thing it really did was ease the tension in his shoulders. The boss dealt the next set of hands, and it yielded a decent hand for David; he had a set.
“I’m going to bet all of my money,” declared the gang boss. He shoved all his money into the pot. “None of you can beat my hand.” David wanted to laugh, but he did his best to keep a poker face on.
“My hand…well, it might,” muttered David. The mobster and David began to stare at each other, trying to see if the other was bluffing.
“You’re bluffing,” stated the leader.
“I suppose you could say I’m a terrible liar, but it takes one to know one,” stated David. He would never admit it to his opponent’s face, but he was counting cards the entire game. He knew that it was highly unlikely that the mafioso had a notable hand. They both showed their hands, and David clearly had a better hand than a meager pair, with his set on the table. The mob leader cringed, paused for a few moments, then placed one of his hands into his coat pockets.
A few clicking noises echoed in the room, and David was immediately terrified — he knew that it was the sound of a gun hammer on cue. He also noticed that the hands of the showgirls that were behind him were now absent from his shoulders. His eyes darted around the room and noticed that the two showgirls were fleeing from the room. David instinctually ducked under the wooden table without thinking and heard a missed gunshot ring out overhead, followed by the two showgirls screaming in the distance.
“Oh shit…” muttered David under his breath. He felt flushed with blood and adrenaline in the heat of the moment. Before thinking, he immediately pushed up onto the table and flipped it over. All three of the mobsters jumped from the table, startled by the effete card counter’s sudden hysterical strength. David saw the main mobster swiftly gather his bearings and prepare to fire another shot, but quickly pulled out his own pistol and fired one lone shot without hesitation at the mobster.
“You…bastard…” groaned the crime king, clutching at his now bleeding chest before he slumped down and fell to the floor face first. Blood started to pool underneath the mobster’s torso, and the two lower ranking mobsters immediately rushed to the side of their comrade in arms.
“Hmm. Well, perhaps he shouldn’t have tried to kill me first if he didn’t want to die,” mocked David as he stared at the mob boss’s lifeless corpse. He then glared at the two lowly lackeys. “What? Are you two unable to do anything now that your boss is unconscious? You’re not going to try to kill me now? Ha!” He knew he was boasting on the outside, but he was only doing this to hide his true feelings. He was extremely uncomfortable with taking someone else’s life, and his heart felt like it was going to burst out of his chest at any minute from the guilt of what he had just done. Even if David knew that it was legal to kill an aggressor as an absolute last defense, it didn’t offer him enough comfort to stop the goosebumps that were crawling on his skin.
“That wasn’t the capo, kid,” declared an unknown man from the darkness. David looked around to find out where the voice was coming from and noticed the speakers on the wall. It was obviously faint Russian accent, but the person that voice belonged to wasn’t currently in the room. “Leave Aldolfo’s body. Get him, soldiers!” The two lackeys stood up from the dead body, turned around, and charged forward. David tried to take another shot at them but both henchmen overwhelmed David before he had a chance. They grabbed his arms and knocked the gun from his hands. David was left to flail about helplessly in the arms of the stout mobsters. The man who spoke over the intercom walked into the small basement room behind the table. “Bravo, Snowflake. You only took out a lowly pawn.”
“Who are you, and what do you want from me?” asked David. He bit his lower lip in pure fear.
“I’m Dmitry; the ’boss’ of these three—well, two now,” answered the man. He came out from behind a door and walked closer to David. Under the light, he seemed much taller than anyone else in the room. He was also skinnier than David. He also looked like he was decade or two older than David himself, although he was no worse for the wear with his icy blue eyes and platinum blonde hair. “Now, tell me; why are you messing up our gambling racket?”
“Oh, you know, no real reason…” mocked David. He rolled his eyes, and then commented “…yeah, it’s not like I have bills, debt, and a mediocre income that barely pays the bills or anything.” David started to chuckle a bit at what he was describing.
“Shut up.” Dmitry swiftly kicked David in the groin with his steel toed boots. David screamed in pain and tried to curl up, but the low-level henchmen continued to hold him back as he struggled and cried. “Do you think that you’re the only one who’s being fucked by the economy right now?” Dmitry kicked David again. The low-level soldiers tightened their grip until they heard a new command. “Let the kid go.” David fell to the floor and rolled up in pure agony. He felt the urge to vomit and felt like he didn’t want to get up for several hours. Dmitry looked at the floor, and then to David’s gun there. Even though the lanky Russian mobster had a gun on himself, he kneeled next to David and his gun. Dmitry then curled his lips in the most twisted grin that David had ever seen. Just as David looked at the scene around him, he started to feel his own stomach acid creep up his esophagus. He choked it back and began to plead and beg.
“Please, spare me,” sobbed David, now wanting to flee with his life at the very least. “There has to be something I can do. Please. I’m begging you.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” remarked Dmitry. “It looks like the economy is very bad now, and we can’t afford little children like you pick-pocketing the syndicate.” Dmitry grabbed David’s revolver and picked it up. “Oh, you have a luger. Interesting!” He toyed with the hammer on the back of the gun and tapped his finger on the trigger in contemplation.
“I’ll do anything!” pleaded David, even more desperate to stay alive.
“Oh, really now?” asked Dmitry. The higher-ranking mobster was now curious and wondered what David’s proposition was. “What can a miserable little boy like you possibly offer me?” Dmitry took his finger off the trigger on David’s gun, and waited for David’s response.
“I can work for what I just earned!” whimpered David. His eyes were opened wide at the barrel of his own handgun, but then he looked around the room to give a few hints at what he could possibly offer. He started glancing at Dmitry’s legs for a bit and bit his lower lip. “Please, I’ll do anything!”
“If you’re offering what I think you’re trying to offer, my answer is no,” stated Dmitry. He took his steel toe boots to David’s crotch again, pressing down hard enough to give David pure agony. “However, you seem to have quite a sharp mind at the gambling table. Perhaps you would be useful…whoever you are,” Dmitry decided to point David’s gun at the floor. One by one, he fired all the bullets next to David’s face as an intimidation tactic. “Very well. You’ll take Aldolfo’s old position…but you work for free until you pay off what you’ve scalped up to this point, starting tomorrow. Understood?”
“Oh, thank you,” whispered David gratefully. Dmitry took his foot off David to show mercy and left the same way he came. “Oy…” David curled up as tightly as he could. His eyes were wet with tears that began gushing out at that moment. The two lackeys stared at their new colleague and shrugged.
“Um, you want any details or anything?” asked one of the henchmen.
“Four Ibuprofen,” was all David could think of. The henchman who asked David immediately walked back up to the first floor to fetch him pain pills.
“Anything else?” asked the other one with annoyance. The second henchman stared at the bleeding body of their old comrade, wondering if he was truly dead. The other henchman felt around the jugular vein of the body and confirmed that Aldolfo was, indeed, dead.
“Perhaps that martini that I never got to order,” sighed David.
“Kid, you’re going to have to get rid of da god damn mess you made,” noted the second henchman.
“You go do it,” ordered David. “Can’t you see that I don’t have the energy to haul a dead body?” He started to feel nauseous again. He pulled out his phone and decided to play a classic rock song on it whilst he layed on the floor. The second henchman only sighed at David’s remark, unsure of how to respond to that.
The first henchman came back with the requested lozenges and some gin. “Da new guy has the musical taste of an old man!”
“And you of a teeny bopper, probably,” teased David. “Now, what are your names? I’m your boss now, right?” He sat back up despite his nausea.
The first henchmen scowled at David’s question. “You’re going to be a soldato like us. Just because you have specialized gambling skills doesn’t mean you get to be a capo yet, bub.”
The second henchmen added “I’m Bernardo, and that ugly mug with the scar on his face over there is Armando.” Armando handed David the Ibuprofen and liquor and scowled at Bernardo’s remark. David couldn’t care less about the rivalry of the two musclemen. He swallowed four of the pills with a martini.
“Charming,” muttered David. He took off one of his white gloves and massaged his temples. “Well, I think that we’re going to be busy hauling – that guy’s Aldolfo, I think – well, anyway, you’ll be hauling him off tonight,” mumbled David. “Well, do y’all have a car of some sort?”
“Duh. What kind of mobsters would we be without one?” remarked Bernardo.
“Alright, fair. Get me close to Cambridge Street and go do – whatever it is you’re going to do – with the body,” commanded David. He wondered if the body was going to be dumped into the Boston Harbor, or disposed of in some other terrible way. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and he got away with killing someone with few immediate consequences, but it still gnawed at his conscious.
“Ya gonna do some work tomorrow?” asked Armando, reminding David of his new position.
“Yeah, sure,” remarked David. He then layed back down on the floor, as he couldn’t handle sitting up with his nausea anymore. “Just pick me up and drop me off where I told you to.” As ordered, Bernardo scooped David off the floor. Armando walked over to the back door, and the three went inside the small, unspectacular back hallway. Both Bernardo and Armando knew that the right end of the hallway was the exit to the back alley of Felt. There were some surprisingly well maintained, classic, black luxury cars parked behind the bar, which didn’t surprise David too much. The two burly men opened the backseat of one of the cars, and shoved the limp gambler onto the white leather back seats before driving off in the direction that they were ordered to go in.