Ronald R Koegler - Benitos gambit : [a novel]

Benitos Gambit

by Ronald R. Koegler

Published by
Tremonto Press
Santa Barbara, CA
www.chasingthestargazer.com

Copyright 2013 by Ronald R. Koegler

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the publisher.

Publishers Cataloging-In-Publication Data
(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

Koegler, Ronald R..

Benito's gambit : [a novel] / by Ronald R. Koegler.

p. ; cm.

Sequel to the novel, Chasing the stargazer.

ISBN: 978-0-9882549-0-9

1. Psychiatrists--Fiction. 2. Political candidates--United States--Fiction.

3. Mafia--United States--Fiction. 4. Assassination--United States--Fiction. 5.
Man-woman relationships--Fiction. 6. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PS3561.O317 B46 2013

Editor: Gail M. Kearns, www.topressandbeyond.com
Cover and Interior Design: Robert Aulicino, www.aulicinodesign.com

Book production coordinated by To Press & Beyond

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to the memory of my mother, Bessie Koegler
the best hotel lady in Atlantic City.

INTRODUCTION

READERS OF MY 2011 BOOK, Chasing the Stargazer: With Help from Luigi Pirandello, Nucky Johnson, and Thomas Wolfe, asked what had happened to my characters, particularly psychiatrist Don Carterdid his wife Delia divorce him when he accepted Benito's money and was gone to Sicily for months? Did the stargazer continue to harass him?

Pirandello, the Sicilian playwright and author, who plays a recurrent role in my novels, explores a similar lack of resolution in his play, Six Characters in Search of an Author. In my book, as in Pirandellos play, the characters are left without full resolution, waiting for...? But, of course, a persons life is never resolved. It plays on and on.

People do seem to change under the influence of outside events, such as divorce, marriage, money, poverty, illness, and aging. As Pirandello states, Each of us is lots and lots of people.

Delia Carter declares, describing part of her husbands mysterious character change in Benitos Gambit, He wasnt the husband I had married... You know, he has a frightening memory and he used to annoy his friends by his quotations. And he jus stopped-boom-like that! After he returned from Italy, the quotes were gone, as if by magic.

Its time to introduce my characters.

My flawed hero is Donald Carter, M.D., a psychiatrist, who had returned to Atlantic City in June of 1985 searching for the "stargazer," a man he had arrested forty years earlier under the Boardwalk, while working as a lifeguard. A stargazer is a guy who tries to look up womens dresses through the boards overhead while he pleasures himself, as one of my delinquent minors in the psychiatric clinic used as a euphemism for masturbating. Don never intended to arrest him, felt guilty about the arrest, and wanted to make amends, or at least find out what happened to him.

Benito Desimone, the uncle of Donald Carters wife, is a leader in the Philadelphia Mafia. Doctors have given him two years to live before he dies from prostate cancer. Benito is proud that hes never been arrested, and is a multi-millionaire as a result of criminal gain and use of Swiss banks. He has no children and makes Don an offer that he cant refuse," establishing Don as his heir. Benito has settled his problems with the IRS and has moved back to Sicily.

Don gives up his forensic psychiatry practice and flies to Sicily to become acquainted with Benitos family and his finances, and to perfect his Italian language skills.

Delia Carter, Donald Carters wife and Benito Desimones niece, was originally devoted to her uncle, refusing to believe his ties to the Mafia, but she and Benito become estranged when she mistakenly believes that hes involved in her fathers murder. She begins to drift away from her husband when he accepts Benitos financial offer against her wishes. He travels to Benito in Sicily, staying over three months, also against her wishes. She and Don are the parents of Linda, age twenty-four, and Robert age twenty-two.

The stargazer (Jimmy Calver), a.k.a. Pablo Cuevas, is first seen under the Boardwalk doing his thing in my first novel, Chasing the Stargazer. He develops a personal vendetta against Donald Carter, who insults him during his arrest, and this anger becomes more pronounced over time. The stargazer vows revenge and orchestrates an attack on Don near Atlantic City and another attack in the mountains of North Carolina.

Don is captured by the stargazer in North Carolina, escaping at the last minute by killing one man and injuring the stargazer, sending the stargazer on his way back to Venezuela with damaged vocal cords, to resume his previous career as a very successful drug dealer for the Santini crime family. The stargazers voyeurism is tolerated by his uncle, Giuseppe Santini, head of the Cleveland Mafia, because he is the source of a tremendous amount of income through his skill in the cocaine trade. Bill Santini appears as Giuseppes more normal nephew. He respects the manner in which Don dealt with his cousin, the stargazer.

Molly Dorman first appears in 1945 as a fifteen-year-old gofer for the lifeguards, but on her seventeenth birthday, as she is about to leave for Las Vegas, the virginal Molly seduces Don in her mothers apartment, with the connivance of her mothers twin sister, Miriam. Don rationalizes his cooperation in deflowering Molly because she had just turned seventeen. However, because of Miriams lies, Don loses track of Molly.

Earlier, Don had rescued Mollys mother Hannah Dorman from an attack under the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, and is rewarded by Hannahs fianc Sam Kravitz (in Chasing the Stargazer). Sam and Hannah leave in a hurry to get married in Las Vegas. The murdered body of hit man Dan DeSilva, who killed Hannahs husband, is found by lifeguard Don Carter a few days later, floating in the ocean off Michigan Avenue beach. Don suspects that Sam Kravitz murdered him.

Sam Kravitz, at Mollys urging, uses his influence with Giuseppe Santini to protect Don from Santinis psychopathic nephew (the stargazer), but it was only effective west of the Mississippi River. Molly had married Arthur Stoller. He and his father-in-law, Sam Kravitz, run two casinos in Las Vegas.

Tim Reilly was Dons first lifeguard partner on the Atlantic City Beach Patrol and had been responsible for getting the two of them involved with the stargazer. He is two years older than Don, more experienced, and much more adventurous than Don. Tim now works in construction.

Paul Marshall is a young homosexual rescued by Don and his lifeguard partner, who later becomes a close friend to Don. He and his partner later develop AIDS, and his partner dies from the disease. Jack Marshall, Ph.D., a professor at Stanford University, is Pauls father. He promises to help get Don into Stanford.

Laura Agazzi has Dons heart aflutter until Benito brings him to his senses with help from one of Pirandellos plays.