The Bookmaker: A Memoir of Money, Luck, and Family from the Utopian Outskirts of New York City

by Michael J. Agovino

Overview

Marking the debut of a gifted new writer, The Bookmaker teems with humanity, empathy, humor, and insight.

At the heart of Michael J. Agovino's powerful, layered memoir is his family's struggle for success in 1970s, '80s, and '90s New York City—and his father's gambling, which brought them to exhilarating highs and crushing lows. He vividly brings to life the Bronx, a place of texture and nuance, of resignation but also of triumph.

The son of a buttoned-up union man who moonlighted as a gentleman bookmaker and gambler, Agovino grew up in the Bronx's Co-op City, the largest and most ambitious state-sponsored housing development in U.S. history. When it opened, it landed on the front page of The New York Times and in Time magazine, which described it as "relentlessly ugly."

Agovino's Italian American father was determined not to let his modest income and lack of a college education define him, and was dogged in his pursuit of the finer things in life. When the point spreads were on his side, he brought his family to places he only dreamed about in his favorite books and films: the Uffizi, the Tate, the Rijksmuseum; St. Peter's, Chartres, Teotihuacán. With bad luck came shouting matches, unpaid bills, and eviction notices.

The Bookmaker is both a bold, loving portrait of a family and their metropolis and an intimate look into some of the most turbulent decades of New York City. In elegant and soaring prose, it transcends the personal to illuminate the ways in which class distinctions shaped America in the last half of the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061982804
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/06/2009
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Michael J. Agovino has written for a wide range of publications and online sites, including The New York Times, Esquire, GQ, Salon, Elle, and The New York Observer.

Read an Excerpt

The Bookmaker
A Memoir of Money, Luck, and Family from the Utopian Outskirts of New York City

Chapter One

Washington, D.C., 1960

He said this: "Holy Christ."

Then this: "It can't be, no. What are the chances?"

He looked again at the number, the three simple digits: 231, if memory serves.

It was hidden deep in the sports section, in the agate type of the horse-racing results, but you knew where to find it, everyone did. The last three digits to the left of the decibel point of the handle, the racetrack's total earnings. It was known as the Brooklyn Number, not to be confused with the New York Number, which, on the street, they called "the Old Way" or "the 3-5-7."

This was illegal but everyone played—street guys, old ladies, working stiffs, cops, nuns. The illegal number was an institution, especially here, in East Harlem. The racket guys ran it; the people, Italians, blacks, Puerto Ricans, played it. Not the Irish, for some reason, or the Jews—they were gambling crazy, but not for numbers.

If you won, you were paid, fair and square, $500 to the dollar for a straight bet, $250 for a boxed combination. Each pocket of a neighborhood would have its own number runner. You knew where to find him. If you were a regular, he knew your number by heart. Nice touch.

One more time he looked. It was still there, 231, glaring at him in eight-point type. "Oh, Madon'," he said this time in East Harlem, Neapolitan dialect.

He wasn't a number runner, but when you're from 115th Street—a hun' fifteenth—and Second Avenue, you know someone who knowssomeone who knows a racket guy. That's just how it is. Say the brother-in-law of your second cousin is made. Say you grew up with a kid, a nice kid, a bright kid, pretty good athlete—let's call him Patty or Fish—who made a decision to go a certain way in life, a different way. You don't make moral judgments—that's not your job. They do what they do, you do what you do. Mind your business.

Live in East Harlem, things overlap, and you may be called upon—familiar face that you are, no stool pigeon you—to do someone a favor. And so he was asked, by this one guy—can't even remember his name after all these years, just that goddamn number. "Ay, Hugo, would you do me a favor," the guy said, didn't ask. "Put in this number for me, will ya: 231, twelve dollars straight."

Hugo says, "Yeah, all right," reluctantly. He's an agreeable guy and takes the twelve dollars. He's thirty-three, has a job, single, without commitments, outgoing, always at the Stadium or the Garden, laying a few bucks, more than a few, on Whitey Ford or some college basketball game. So the day gets away from him. Hugo doesn't see the number runner as he normally would; he doesn't play the number. He forgets. An honest mistake.

But this guy—let's call him just that for now "This Guy," as memory is fickle and selective, and fades—he's a little smarter than a high-grade moron, and he knows bad people. Who else plays a number for twelve dollars straight? Who would have such brass ones?

Hugo was in hot water now, six thousand dollars' worth, enough to be made an example of—with one in the back of the head, nice guy, nice family or not, honest mistake maybe. He sought immediate counsel from Tommy, his cump—dialect for compare, friend, comrade, you know it as goomba—who used to work for a number bank himself, one of the bigger ones, and his best friend Bence, irascible, some thought insane, but fiercely loyal. Tommy knew the street and happened to be deft with numbers. He told Hugo—who was also Ugo, Ugolino, Hugh, Hughie, Vincent, from his middle name, Vinny, Vin, or Aggie, from his last name, depending on who was talking, family or friend or foe or something in between, their mood, if they were Italian, Irish, Jewish, black, Puerto Rican, and what the situation was, the provenance being Hugo Vincent—"to invoke." Invoke, meaning mention the name of a made guy. No, better still, physically approach the made guy, explain the situation, say it was an honest mistake, which it was, and This Guy and his people can't touch you. If your life is at risk, now it would be saved.

This shouldn't be a problem. Hugo knows Louie a little bit—let's call him Louie I—and he's a higher-up in Fat Tony's crew. But Louie I is out of town, in Vegas on business. He was good friends with Sinatra, you know.

No problem, not a problem, there's always Patty, a close associate to Louie I, and an even closer connection to Hugo. They grew up together and were friends. He was an ex-Marine, Patty, in World War II, blond curly hair when he was young, six feet tall. How he goes and ends up in this kind of life, I'll never know. You never ask. But Patty is in jail, doing a short stint—railroaded, of course. This leaves only Joey, Patty's kid brother. Hugo and Joey never got along. Hugo would hate to ask him for a favor, but this was life or death, seriously. So he found Joey and explained. Joey put the palm of his left hand on his forehead, like this: Madon'. He had the ribbons at the various number banks checked. No, 231 wasn't played; yes, it was an honest mistake. If he found the number was played, and Hugo was out to keep the money himself, Joey wouldn't have been able to help.

Joey reaches out to This Guy and his people—turns out This Guy's cousin was made—and told them he could vouch for Hugo, that it was a mistake, that the debt would be paid, on the installment plan. If Hugo were dealing with one of the Brooklyn crews, the Sicilians, who knows? They were real primitive, these Brooklyn Sicilians, believe me when I tell you.

The Bookmaker
A Memoir of Money, Luck, and Family from the Utopian Outskirts of New York City. Copyright (c) by Michael Agovino . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Bronx, 1984     1
The 1960s
Washington, D.C., 1960     9
East Harlem, 1961     24
Brooklyn, 1962     40
The Plaza Hotel, 1964     54
Central Park, 1969     63
The 1970s
Freedomland, 1970     79
Westchester, 1972     91
Italy, 1973     100
Shea Stadium, 1974     113
San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1975     121
Portugal, Spain, Morocco, 1976     131
The City, 1977     148
Nantucket, 1978     166
England, the Netherlands, 1979     178
The 1980s
New Orleans, 1980     197
The Dominican Republic, 1981     210
Martinique (or Boston), 1982     226
Worcester, Massachusetts (or Mexico City), 1983     239
France, 1984     256
Confoederatio Helvetica (or Smithtown, Long Island), 1985     267
Madison Square Garden, 1986     280
Playland, Rye, N.Y. (or NYU), 1987     289
Co-op City (Right Downstairs), 1988     307
Atlantic City, 1989     313
The 1990s
New York, N.Y., 1992     323
Pennsylvania Station (or South Toward Home), 1993     335
Epilogue: Rome, 1995     345
Acknowledgments     355
Selected Bibliography     357
Photography Credits     359

Editorial Reviews

In the 1960s, the author's parents seemed poised to join the exodus of Italian-American families from New York to the suburbs. Instead, thanks to the chronic gambling debts of his father, Hugo, a city welfare bureaucrat who ran an illicit sports-betting operation on the side, they wound up in the Bronx—at the vast Coop City housing project that became a watchword for urban anomie. Ignoring overdue bills and eviction notices, his parents insisted the family partake of the finer things—books, museums, opera, European vacations—all financed by bad checks and fast talking. Journalist Agovino, telling long, colorful conversations from decades past (in a disclaimer Agovino says he taped his parents recalling stories and conversations), paints a loving, picaresque portrait of his youth and the tension between his mother's yearning for middle-class stability and his father's faith in the big score. He sets it amid an elegy for a white, ethnic New York—the old-country foods, the lovable wise guys—that expired in Coop City's windswept Le Corbusierian sterility. Unfortunately, the author's family seems more eccentric than iconic, and Agovino's narrative, meandering from Caribbean travelogue to summer food-service jobs, doesn't impart much shape to their sociocultural journey.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

Freelance journalist Agovino's debut investigates how people are shaped by the places they inhabit. When Co-op City opened in the Bronx in 1968, this series of enormous towers was hailed as a worker's paradise, a utopia, the future of urban housing in America. It was also called "eminently depressing," "monumental in size, minimal in planning" and "relentlessly ugly." Agovino moved to this mythical place with his Italian-American family on a wave of hope and apprehension. But their odyssey began years earlier, before the author's birth, when his father Hugo had to flee East Harlem after forgetting to place a bet for a high powered "racket guy" who came looking for the money he would have won. Catastrophes, near-catastrophes and big wins would prove to be the defining themes in Hugo's life. Gambling kept its hold on him after he married Cora from Brooklyn, after they had children, after they moved to Co-Op City and even after Hugo landed a job in the Department of Social Services. The family's fortune rose and fell with each wave of luck in the bookmaking business he ran on the side. Agovino's history is rich with the mythology of immigrant strivers, but with its own series of twists linked to his erudite, proud and reckless father. The book also offers a unique portrait of the mutability of class, as his parents visited the Uffizi in Florence after a good streak and fretted over making payments on their son's tuition after a bad streak. Crafting a joint portrait, Agovino occasionally lets minutiae about his kin-precious when viewed from within, less so from without-overpower the more dramatic chronicle of Co-Op City. For the most part, however, he strikes a nice balance between thehistories of a beloved place and a turbulent family. A generally engrossing narrative of class and mobility in urban America.

Kirkus Reviews

[The Bookmaker] is Mr. Agovino’s debut book. Here’s hoping it won’t be his last. A writer for various publications and Web sites, Mr. Agovino has produced a charming, evocative memoir about growing up a generation ago in Co-op City, the Bronx.” — New York Times

“Mr. Agovino has crafted a sensitive and engrossing memoir. . . . All of the characters in The Bookmaker are extraordinarily vivid, thanks in part to the author’s uncanny ear for the accents and cadences of New Yorkers of every stripe.” — Wall Street Journal

“Michael Agovino brings a gift for capturing urban sounds and symbols and a keen sense of shifting social status to his memoir of growing up in the Bronx.” — Washington Post Book World

“[A] deeply evocative, pitch-perfect memoir of growing up the son of a bookie in Co-op City in the Bronx in the ‘70s and ‘80s.” — Esquire

“A fascinating coming-of-age story, not only of the author and his Italian-American family, but of Co-op City in The Bronx—the title’s utopia—and a compelling story of a dad who had a city job, but also worked as a bookie.” — New York Post

“[A] memoir that’s sensitive, honest, rooted in New York’s least sexy community.” — New York Observer

“The Bookmaker is a family adventure of the highest order. Michael Agovino has the talent to capture the energy and spunk of his Italian American family and the artistry to tell a fast-paced, highly entertaining story. I couldn’t put it down.” — Danielle Trussoni, author of “Falling Through the Earth”

“The book offers a unique portrait of the mutability of class...Agovino strikes a nice balance between the histories of a beloved place and a turbulent family. A generally engrossing narrative of class and mobility in urban America.” — Kirkus Reviews

“For Agovino and his family, life does not build toward a crescendo. It grows exponentially, then subsides, puttering along, waiting for that next spurt. Throughout it all, family is there. A nice story of an individual coping with a unique situation yet always buttressed by family.” — Booklist

“The Bookmaker is both a hilarious, affecting memoir and a loving street-level portrait of a city—the city—during turbulent times. Michael Agovino writes with grace, confidence, originality, and above all, a natural feel for the rhythm of New York and the one-of-kind characters it produces.” — Jonathan Mahler, bestselling author of “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning”

“The Bookmaker is socially panoramic in the vein of John Dos Passos, displaying relish for all walks of life. In telling the debt-defying adventures of his family, Agovino has composed a New York City classic.” — Will Blythe, author of “To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever”

From the Publisher

Michael Agovino brings a gift for capturing urban sounds and symbols and a keen sense of shifting social status to his memoir of growing up in the Bronx.

Washington Post Book World

[A] deeply evocative, pitch-perfect memoir of growing up the son of a bookie in Co-op City in the Bronx in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Esquire

Mr. Agovino has crafted a sensitive and engrossing memoir. . . . All of the characters in The Bookmaker are extraordinarily vivid, thanks in part to the author’s uncanny ear for the accents and cadences of New Yorkers of every stripe.

Wall Street Journal

The Bookmaker is both a hilarious, affecting memoir and a loving street-level portrait of a city—the city—during turbulent times. Michael Agovino writes with grace, confidence, originality, and above all, a natural feel for the rhythm of New York and the one-of-kind characters it produces.

Jonathan Mahler

A fascinating coming-of-age story, not only of the author and his Italian-American family, but of Co-op City in The Bronx—the title’s utopia—and a compelling story of a dad who had a city job, but also worked as a bookie.

New York Post

The Bookmaker is a family adventure of the highest order. Michael Agovino has the talent to capture the energy and spunk of his Italian American family and the artistry to tell a fast-paced, highly entertaining story. I couldn’t put it down.

Danielle Trussoni

For Agovino and his family, life does not build toward a crescendo. It grows exponentially, then subsides, puttering along, waiting for that next spurt. Throughout it all, family is there. A nice story of an individual coping with a unique situation yet always buttressed by family.

Booklist

[A] memoir that’s sensitive, honest, rooted in New York’s least sexy community.

New York Observer

[The Bookmaker] is Mr. Agovino’s debut book. Here’s hoping it won’t be his last. A writer for various publications and Web sites, Mr. Agovino has produced a charming, evocative memoir about growing up a generation ago in Co-op City, the Bronx.

New York Times

The Bookmaker is socially panoramic in the vein of John Dos Passos, displaying relish for all walks of life. In telling the debt-defying adventures of his family, Agovino has composed a New York City classic.

Will Blythe

A fascinating coming-of-age story, not only of the author and his Italian-American family, but of Co-op City in The Bronx—the title’s utopia—and a compelling story of a dad who had a city job, but also worked as a bookie.

New York Post