by James Swain
“Then why is he so thin?”
“That’s his gimmick. People feel sorry for him and the cats. He makes a bundle.”
As daylight faded, the crowd dispersed, leaving Valentine and his son standing at the end of the pier, eating chocolate ice cream cones they’d bought from a vendor. Gerry bit off the end of his cone and sucked the ice cream out of the bottom.
“How would you like to come back and work for me?” Valentine asked.
His son’s head snapped, and melted ice cream ran down his chin. “You serious?”
“No, I just killed a day traveling here to pull your leg.”
Gerry wiped his face with a napkin. “You fix it with the guys out in Las Vegas?”
Valentine nodded. Bill Higgins had offered him a simple deal. Take the Ricky Smith job, and the casino owners would wipe the slate clean with his son, while paying him the biggest fee he’d ever earned. He had a lot of pride, but not enough to turn down a deal like the one Bill had offered him. Gerry tossed his cone into the ocean and threw his arms around him.
“Oh, man, Pop, you’re a lifesaver.”
The dying sun had turned the horizon pink, and long ragged strips of orange clouds were torn across the sky like a poster ripped in half. They left the pier and walked back to the Coral House. Key West had informally seceded from the Union years ago, and colorful Conch Republic banners hung from every tree and storefront.
Streetlights flickered a block from the guesthouse. Valentine stopped at the corner to watch a bicycle rickshaw with two drunk tourists. When it was gone, he said, “Here’s the deal. I need you to go to Gulfport, Mississippi, and talk to a poker player named Tex Snyder.”
“Tex ‘All In’ Snyder?”
“That’s right. You know him?”
“Just from the TV. Won the World Series of Poker twice, considered one of the best Texas Hold ’Em players alive. How’s he involved in this?”
Valentine took a pack of nicotine gum from his pocket and popped a piece into his mouth. Forty-five days without a cigarette and he still hadn’t killed anyone. As the nicotine entered his bloodstream, he felt himself relax. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the guy who won a million bucks at the Mint last week.”
“Ricky Smith, the guy they’re calling Mr. Lucky?”
“That’s him. Bill Higgins of the Nevada Gaming Control Board thinks he might have cheated.”
“You’re kidding. How?”
“I don’t know.”
“So you don’t think he’s cheating.”
Valentine shrugged. “I’ve watched the tape of him playing at the Mint a dozen times. I’m not seeing any cheating. Granted, his play is irregular—he makes some wild bets and seems oblivious to the odds against him—but he jumped out of a burning building, so you can’t expect his play to be normal.”
“How’s Tex Snyder involved in this?”
“Ricky Smith beat Snyder silly. Snyder’s had plenty of time to think about it. I want you to feel him out and see if he thinks he was swindled.”
“What’s Snyder doing in Gulfport? Playing in a poker tournament?”
“You’re psychic.”
“How am I going to get him to talk to me?”
“Charm him.”
A mosquito as big as a bird flew by. Gerry said, “Excuse me for sounding rude, but what are you going to be doing while I’m in Gulfport?”
Valentine popped another piece of the foul-tasting gum into his mouth. Excuse me for sounding rude. That was definitely a new addition to Gerry’s lexicon. Was Yolanda putting him through finishing school and getting him to clean up his manners? Valentine looked his son over. Gerry had lost the annoying earring, and his shirt was recently pressed. Yeah, she sure was.
“I’ll be in a little burg called Slippery Rock, North Carolina,” Valentine said. “It’s Ricky’s hometown. I’m going to do a little digging, see what I turn up.”
“I hope you don’t find anything.”
“No?”
“I’d hate to find out Ricky Smith was a cheater.”
Valentine chewed his gum vigorously. He knew exactly what Gerry meant. Ricky Smith had cheated death, and then he’d gone and cheated the odds. It was the kind of story that people never got tired of hearing, and Valentine hoped he didn’t go to Slippery Rock and discover that Ricky’s halo was really a pair of horns.
6
As small towns went, Slippery Rock was a pretty nice one. The downtown dated back to the early 1800s and still boasted brick-lined streets and streetlamps, and plenty of businesses owned by people instead of faceless corporations. On Main Street there was an old-fashioned ice cream shop, a farmers’ market on weekends, and a movie theater with a Mighty Wurlitzer theater organ. Nine thousand hardworking souls lived here, and everyone knew everyone else’s business.
Now that Ricky Smith was a celebrity, he could not run out and buy a newspaper or loaf of bread without getting stopped on the street. It was strange being recognized after so many years of not, and in his neighbors’ eyes he saw a rainbow of feelings: happiness, envy, downright jealousy, and, in several guys he’d known in high school, quiet desperation. And everyone had peppered him with the same goddamned questions.
“You going to sue the Mint for your money?”
“Probably,” he replied.
“Think you’ll win?”
“Sure,” he said.
“What are you going to do with the money when you get it?”
“Rule the world,” Ricky said.
The truth be known, it was nobody’s business what he did with the money, not that he could convince his neighbors of that. Because he was from Slippery Rock, it was their money, too, and they would spend it vicariously through him whenever they got the chance.
Not having the million dollars he’d won at the Mint did not prevent Ricky from going on a shopping spree. His credit was good everywhere. At Moody’s car lot, the sales manager had welcomed him with open arms.
Moody’s was the only Lexus dealership in the county and did good business. Ricky scoured the lot and quickly settled on a silver Lexus LS430 four-door sedan. It was exactly the statement he wanted to make. The car screamed that he had arrived.
Driving the car off Moody’s lot, Ricky gassed it, and the fuel-injected V8 monster beneath the hood emitted a muffled roar. He headed for the open road. Soon, Slippery Rock’s hilly farmland and wooded fields were racing by his windshield like an accelerated movie.
He’d paid extra for a carousel CD player, and he jumped back and forth between tracks of a bootleg Stevie Ray Vaughan CD recorded at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Vaughan’s screaming Fender guitar ripping a hole in Ricky every time he heard it. Ricky hadn’t appreciated the blues until after his divorce; now he listened every day. A lone, pathetic figure caught his eye, and he pulled the car onto the highway’s shoulder.
It was Roland Pew, the heartthrob of every girl in town ten years ago, pushing a rusty old bicycle with a flat. Ricky had babysat Roland as a teenager and always liked him. He pressed a button, and the window on the passenger’s side automatically lowered.
“Hey, Rolls,” he yelled, “what happened to your car?”
Roland shook his head wearily, indicating another sad chapter in his sorry life.
“You don’t want to know,” he replied.
“Don’t tell me you totaled it.”
“Worse.”
“Can’t be anything worse.”
“I can’t find it.”
“Come on. I’ll give you a lift.”
Roland had changed considerably since Ricky had seen him a month ago. Gone were his ponytail and thick yellow mustache and pirate earrings. Along Slippery Rock’s grapevine Roland’s tale had been a topic of discussion for days. As the story went, Roland had knocked up a local Piggly Wiggly checkout girl named Wanell Bacon, and Wanell had opted to have the kid, inspiring Roland to drink enough Jack Daniel’s to render himself comatose. Awakening a few days later in his uncle’s house, he had discovered himself shorn
and shaven.
The aluminum bike folded easily into the trunk. Roland settled in the passenger seat and immediately began touching the upholstery. When they were a few miles down the road he said, “Mind my asking how much you forked over for this little beauty?”
“Seventy big ones. It’s fully loaded.”
“Jesus. What did you do, win the lottery?”
Ricky nearly said Where you been, stupid? Only, he knew exactly where Roland had been—sleeping it off at his uncle’s house. Roland’s family was basically illiterate, and news traveled to their part of the world slow, if at all. So Ricky told him what had happened out in Las Vegas. Roland whistled through his teeth.
“It’s about time somebody from here hit the big time,” Roland said. “I guess you heard my news.”
He said it with a trace of irony, and Ricky nodded. Roland’s father had dropped dead back in senior year, and Roland’s luck had been on a downward spiral ever since. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Roland said, “You know what’s got me worried?”
“No.”
“Not being able to provide for my kid. I haven’t had a job in two years.”
Ricky stared at the road. He nearly said I’ll help you, but people had been saying that to Roland for years, and nothing anyone had done had helped change Roland’s situation. Besides, Roland didn’t want help; he wanted a break, something that would restore his faith in humanity. True to form, Roland began to hum his favorite song, Warren Zevon’s “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” the baneful melody drowning out a signature Stevie Ray six-string rift over a churning rhythm accompaniment. Had it been anyone else, Ricky would have told him to shut up.
A convenience store loomed in the distance, the lot filled with boisterous high school kids. Ricky parked near the front door, letting the engine idle. Inside the store, another high school classmate, Barry Clarkson, stared through the windshield at the car, then at him. Ricky smiled, and Barry turned away to take care of a customer.
The kids in the lot were spraying each other with pop. Watching them, Ricky saw himself and his high school friends twenty years ago, the world yet to drop its thunderous weight upon his shoulders.
He glanced sideways at Roland. His friend was still pawing the upholstery. Everything had gone wrong since Roland’s old man had kicked the bucket. He didn’t deserve the hand he’d been dealt. Ricky touched his sleeve. Roland lifted his forlorn gaze.
“Last night I had this crazy dream,” Ricky said. “In my dream, I’m driving and I pick up a hitchhiker, guy about your age, nice guy, and as we get near town he says he needs a smoke. I pull into a convenience store, and as he’s getting out he says, ‘Want anything?’ So I think about it and say, ‘I’ve got ten bucks burning a hole in my pocket. Get me ten lottery tickets. If we hit the big one, we’ll split the money.’”
“Like you was partners,” Roland said.
“Exactly.” Taking out his wallet, Ricky removed a stiff ten-dollar bill and snapped it before Roland’s world-weary eyes. “Guess what happened then?”
“You…won?”
“Yeah.”
“How much?”
“Fifty big ones.”
A look that almost resembled happiness crossed Roland’s face. Ricky stuffed the money into his friend’s hand, then watched him slip out of the car and shuffle nonchalantly into the store. Roland had written the book on being cool, his one great talent.
A car pulled into the spot beside Ricky’s Lexus, the blue-hair at the wheel flashing him a brutal stare. Miss Axe, his high school math teacher two years running, the woman who’d given him D’s and ruined his young life and was still ruining young lives, got out of her car. Seeing him, she came over and rapped on his window. Whatever she had to say wasn’t going to be pleasant, and he hit the volume control on his steering wheel, the car’s eight speakers blasting Stevie Ray’s apocalyptic rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).”
“Mr. Lucky, my left foot,” she said through the glass.
Ricky stuck his tongue out at her.
Shaking her fist, she stalked away and entered the store, his recent good fortune obviously not to her liking. A few moments later, Roland came out and got into the car, the ten Quick Pick Six tickets fanned out in his hand.
“Split the money,” he said by way of reassurance.
“Absolutely,” Ricky said. He saw a slight hesitation in Roland’s eyes. “Want to shake hands on it?”
“No. I just wanted to be sure.”
Ricky smelled beer on his breath, and saw an open can peeking out of his denim jacket. He pointed, and Roland pulled out a Bud tall boy.
“Have some,” Roland said.
Ricky took a long pull and felt the ice-cold suds tickle his throat and expand in his empty belly. He hadn’t had any beer in a week, one of his first resolutions after coming home from Vegas. He took another pull. It was an easy one to break.
“In your dream, which one of us had the winning ticket?”
Ricky shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“I’ve never won nothing in my life.”
“You want me to pick it?”
“It was your dream.”
Ricky pulled one of the lottery tickets out of Roland’s fist. It had already stopped being a game for Roland, and Ricky found himself wishing he had written Roland a check and told him to go rent an apartment and have his baby and get out of the rut he was in. Roland pulled a quarter out of his pocket, and dropped it in Ricky’s hand.
“You do the scratching,” he said.
Every Quick Pick Six ticket had twelve covered boxes on it; the player scratched off the latex, and if six boxes matched, the player won that amount. Ricky took his time, and on his first five scratches, he hit $50,000 circles. He passed the card to Roland and got the tall boy in return. Ricky pointed at the box in the left corner of the ticket.
“That one,” Ricky said.
“You think so?”
“Damn straight.”
Ricky killed the tall boy, seeing Miss Axe come out of the convenience store and shoot him a dagger. He rolled down his window.
“Miss Axe?”
She was fitting her key into her door and turned. “What, Ricky?”
“I love you. I really do, Miss Axe. I always loved you. It’s why I did so poorly in your class. It was you.”
Scowling, she climbed into her car and drove away. Ricky slapped the wheel of his new car, the beer lifting his spirits to impossible heights. Roland frowned, no longer being cool, his anxiety paralyzing him. The coin was frozen in his hand.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s just…I don’t know.”
“You want me to do it?” Ricky asked him.
“Yeah,” Roland whispered.
Taking the ticket and the coin from him, Ricky scratched out the box in the corner. It was for $50,000. He showed it to Roland and watched his friend melt into his seat, and close his eyes.
“That was intense,” Roland said.
7
Mabel Struck had seen some strange things during her life, especially during the past two years, running Tony’s business and watching him catch hundreds of casino cheaters. But she’d never seen anything as strange as the item she was now holding, a candy bar worth a hundred thousand dollars.
She was going through the mail while sitting at Tony’s desk. Her boss had left a few hours ago for Slippery Rock, and she’d gone onto his computer and dealt with a dozen e-mails, then started sorting through his mail. It was heavy, and she put the priority letters in one pile, the it-can-wait items in another. The very last letter was a padded envelope. When she ripped it open, a giant 3 Musketeers candy bar fell out. With it was a letter from Ron Shepherd, the head of gaming enforcement for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Hey Tony,
Here’s the $100,000 candy bar for your collection. The store owner copped a plea and will end up doing a year, plus pay back the government for all the taxes he didn’t pay on his ill-go
tten gains. I thought I’d seen them all, but this scam takes the cake. Thanks for your help in cracking this one.
Ron
Mabel held the candy bar in her hand. There was a price sticker on it. It cost a dollar thirty, Canadian. Their money was worth about 70 percent U.S., which made the candy bar worth about a dollar. So what made it worth a hundred thousand times that?
She put the candy bar on the desk and stared at it. There was an expression Tony liked to use. In the know. It was what differentiated the smart from the dumb. And she wasn’t in the know about this stupid candy bar. It frustrated her no end, and she picked up the phone and called Yolanda, who was across the street cleaning her house. Ten minutes later, Yolanda was standing in the study, holding little Lois against her chest while reading Ron Shepherd’s note.
“I thought you were kidding,” Yolanda said, putting the note down. “What do you think the scam is?”
“I have no idea. You know what frustrates me the most?” Mabel said. “Tony never told me he was doing a job for this man.”
“He probably did it as a favor. Gerry says he does that a lot.”
Mabel heard herself grinding her teeth. Tony had asked her to run his business, and she’d gone about it with the idea that people should be charged for her boss’s services. Yet it didn’t stop him from dispensing free advice and help whenever it suited him.
“At least he could have told me,” she said.
“Maybe he didn’t want to bother you. He thinks you work too hard.”
“Well, sometimes I do. But this is so…interesting.”
“So call him. He’ll be happy to explain it.”
Mabel examined the candy bar again. Ron Shepherd’s note said a convenience store manager was going to serve time. Had the manager covered the candy bar with a towel and pretended it was a gun? No, she decided, it was something infinitely clever; that was why Ron Shepherd had asked for Tony’s help. She glanced up and saw Yolanda holding the phone.
“You want me to call him?” she asked.
Mabel shook her head. “No, I’ll do it.”
Tony’s cell phone was turned off. Mabel left a message and asked him to call back. Her boss picked up his messages sporadically, which meant it might be a few hours, or even a day, before she got an explanation out of him.
