Tumblin' Dice

by John McFetridge

  “It was a test. I bet every other person giving a presentation told him they’d like to go over it the way they prepped it and they’d get to that point in order. He was trying to see what we were like to deal with, if we really knew our stuff, if we were flexible, if we really thought he was the customer and we were there to serve him.” She waved her empty glass at the bartender and then looked back at Loewen. “So many of these guys, the big insurance companies, they think you work for them. They don’t treat you like customers; they treat you like an inconvenience.”

  Loewen said, “No shit, you got that right.”

  The bartender brought Miriam another vodka tonic, and Loewen said he’d have another Bud Light.

  She said, “So, needless to say, we waltzed right into Bay Street and took away the biggest account.”

  Loewen said, “You did,” and she looked at him serious and he knew he was in.

  A deep voice said, “Loewen,” and he turned around to see a tall Native guy, short black hair standing straight up, wearing an expensive blue suit custom tailored to fit his wide shoulders.

  “Hey,” Loewen said, “you made it.”

  “Yeah, I haven’t been out here since I worked that one — Eddie Nollo went crazy, killed that Colombian guy, remember? Cut him into pieces: they were finding them for days. Found his hands in the ice machine like a week later.”

  Loewen said, “Shit,” looking sideways at Miriam, and the big Native guy said, “You’re not with the cop thing here, are you?” and she said, no, “I’m with the insurance thing.”

  He said, “Sorry. I’m Detective Armstrong,” and he held out a hand.

  Loewen watched her shake, her tiny white hand in Armstrong’s big brown one, not too happy about it, thinking that wasn’t her big-time successful businesswoman grip, and he was glad about that. Usually a woman in a bar would be way more interested in Armstrong than in him, so this was good.

  Then Armstrong said, “What room are you in?”

  “What?”

  “Just wondering, you know. The Colombian was killed on the top floor, east side, I think. You could see the runways.”

  “Oh well,” Miriam said, “I’m on six, not even halfway up.”

  Armstrong said that was good. “Didn’t find any pieces of the guy on six, that’s for sure.”

  Loewen saw the look on Miriam’s face, pissed off, grossed out by the cop talk, so he said, “Now you’re a big TV star,” and Armstrong said, what bullshit.

  “That came from way up the chain of command, up in the stratosphere somewhere.”

  Loewen said, “Armstrong’s working a homicide, looks like a gang hit.”

  Miriam said, “Like a drive-by?” Not grossed out about this cop talk, it didn’t seem to Loewen. He was having some trouble figuring this Miriam.

  “Sort of,” Armstrong said, “except they walked along the sidewalk.”

  She said, like they own the place, and Loewen said yeah.

  “That’s why the big boys wanted it all on TV,” Armstrong said. “Show the city what’s really happening here. Makes me feel like an asshole, you know.”

  Loewen could see Miriam agreed with that too much and he could feel he was losing her. He wanted to move this along, so he said to Armstrong, “So, there’s Jones over there.” He watched Armstrong look across the room and recognize Homeland Security Special Agent Jones sitting at a table with a few other American cops up for the conference and say, “Oh, yeah, Jones. You know what, Loewen, you’re busy here, I’ll just go over, see what this is about,” and he walked away.

  Miriam drank her vodka and Loewen could feel it, the way she let out a sigh of relief, a little overdone, kind of dramatic, when Armstrong walked away. Figured it was the gross crime talk, which was too bad because it didn’t leave him much to talk about, meant he’d be listening to more insurance bullshit. He watched Armstrong shaking hands with the cops, sitting down next to Jones, comfortable, confident, easing his way into their conversation.

  Miriam made a sound like a harumph, another grandmother sound, and said, “Affirmative action, eh? That’s Toronto.”

  Loewen looked at her and said, yeah, well, “What’re you gonna do?”

  She looked at him sideways, sympathetically, nodded her head, and smiled.

  He figured what was he gonna do? Call her a bigot and walk out? Now she thought they were bonding and she’d told him what a mover and shaker she was in the boardroom, she was ready to show him how fantastic she was in the bedroom. He said, “So your room is on six?”

  She said, “Yes, it is. But it’s on the south side — you can’t see the planes taking off.”

  Loewen said, “I’m not interested in the planes taking off.”

  Miriam smiled at him as she drank her vodka, actually winking at him over the glass.

  Loewen figured, what the hell, he was putting up with this boring conference, might as well get something out of it.

  • • •

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, arms behind her back hooking her bra, Angie said it’d been a long time since she’d had a nooner, and Ritchie said, it’s like, six o’clock.

  She said, “Shit, is it that late? I’ve got to get going,” and Ritchie said, why, you’re the big boss lady.

  Turning to look at him, still stretched out on the bed, naked and as skinny as he was when he was a twenty-five-year-old rock star-to-be, she tilted her head, hair parted on the side and falling over one eye, and she said, well, you know, “I still have a job to do — I can’t spend all day in bed,” thinking about Felix Alfano, telling him Frank couldn’t be bothered to show up, he had something better to do, and imagining Felix saying, oh yeah?

  Ritchie was lighting a cigarette, dropping the match in the ashtray on the bedside table, and she watched him take a drag and let the smoke out and then put his head back on the pile of pillows. He was smiling at her like a kid who got away with something, and she liked that, it made her feel like he thought she was something.

  She reached out and took the smoke from his hand, a strong guitar player hand that could still stroke her in just the right way, and she said, “I’ll tell you though, you’re better than ever.” She inhaled, blew smoke at the ceiling, and Ritchie smiled and said, it’s not me, Ange, it’s you, “You finally caught up,” and she said, what?

  “When we were screwing before, you were what, twenty-one?”

  She said, yeah, sure, not about to tell him it was closer to seventeen.

  “Hell, chicks don’t really get interested in sex until they’re well into their thirties.” He held out his hand for the smoke, but she pulled it away, saying, “We’re interested, we just don’t hit our peaks till thirty-five.” She took another drag watching him smile that got-away-with-something smile through rising smoke.

  “You start peaking at thirty-five,” he said, “or forty. I’ve known women didn’t really get going till forty-five, but once they start, they can just keep peaking. You want to smoke? Here.” He tossed the pack on the bed, but she handed the lit one back to him, saying, “I quit three years ago.”

  “Everything?”

  She looked up and down his naked body, slowed over his dick, and then looked him in the face and said, “Almost everything.”

  “Right. Anyway, at twenty-one you fuck because that’s what the boys want. You don’t know what you want.”

  She said, “Oh yeah?” wondering if she knew any better what she wanted now.

  “Yeah.”

  She stood up and found her blouse hanging over the armchair by the little table with the phone on it and looked around for her skirt saying, “Don’t you guys peak at nineteen?” She buttoned up her blouse, pulled on her short skirt and the matching jacket, and she was Angela Maas, big boss lady, again.

  Ritchie said, “Honey, I’m still nineteen.”

  “That something to be proud of?
”

  “You sure liked it ten minutes ago.”

  She said, yeah, that’s true, and he said, “And twenty minutes ago and a half hour ago you thought it was great.”

  “It was okay.”

  He laughed and said, “Shit, you bullshit like a manager. Frank taught you good.”

  “Frank never taught me a thing.”

  “I believe that.”

  She walked around the room, the Junior Suite, every room in the hotel a suite of some kind, needing to get ready to see Felix but in no hurry to leave Ritchie. She really had planned to just run into him, just say, hi, how’ve you been, good to see you, but as soon as she saw him . . . “Way back when, maybe, back in Niagara Falls when Frank was still interested, but since he’s been here, he doesn’t give a shit anymore.”

  Ritchie said, what, “Are you going to tell me with Frank it’s all about the money?” and Angie smiled, almost laughed, and said, “He used to want to make money from music, at least.”

  “What’s he make money from now?”

  She was looking right at him then, thinking, is he still a kid, playing his guitar in a rock’n’roll band, or is he a fifty-six-year-old man, a grown-up? She really couldn’t tell. She wanted to tell somebody about Frank, about how she was worried about him, and then that sounded stupid in her own head. Why should she be worried about Frank? Why should she give a shit?

  She said, “Well, you know, he’s a gangster.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Well, he’s not really. I mean, he’s mostly the front.”

  Ritchie said yeah, not making a move to get up, looking right at her, listening.

  She said, “You know, when he hired me here, he’d already been running the Showroom in Niagara Falls — not the big place, the new casino downtown, the old one up the hill.”

  Ritchie said, “The one that used to be a bingo hall?”

  “It’s bigger now — they added onto it a lot,” and Ritchie said, “Yeah, I know. I played there a couple of times with LeAnne Barclay.”

  “Isn’t she a little country for you?”

  “She’s all right.”

  Angie said, yeah, sure, still in no hurry, looking at Ritchie waiting for her to tell her story. She couldn’t think of any guy she’d ever been with so patient after she slept with him. She said, “I don’t really know anything about it, the business — the real business.”

  Ritchie said, “I bet you do, Ange. I bet you know all about it, but hey, you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. It’s none of my business. Anyway, you want to get something to eat? I’ve got a fifty buck per diem burning a hole in my pocket.”

  “I’ve got to meet someone.”

  She was pretty sure he looked disappointed for a second, his rock star cool slipping a little, and she said, “Sorry. Maybe another time?”

  She walked into the bathroom thinking she had a lot more bottled up inside than she realized. If she didn’t watch out, she’d tell Ritchie everything, and then it felt good to think that, the idea of talking to somebody. No, talking to Ritchie. There wasn’t any reason to be in the bathroom — she didn’t need to go, she’d just wanted to get away from him for a minute, but she didn’t want him to leave. Shit, it was like back in the day, the first time she quit using and she’d had that sponsor, that guy looked like her dad, was so proud of himself for not trying to fuck her the first time they met, telling her to open up, saying it would be better if she talked about it. Then all they did was talk, hours and hours of talk, drove her nuts.

  She’d seen an article online somewhere about dieting, said that when men talk about a craving they have to have it and when women talk about a craving it helps them get rid of it. Maybe it was true — her sponsor was back using before he got the nerve to try and bang her.

  Looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, she wondered who the old lady was looking back. An afternoon in the sack with Ritchie and she felt like the rock chick again.

  Felt pretty good, too, and that was dangerous, that was when she started making dumb decisions, doing dumb things. Started thinking maybe she could be happy.

  She flushed the toilet, ran the tap for a few seconds, and walked back out into the junior suite. Then she said, hey, “You want to come, too?”

  Ritchie said, what, “On your date?”

  “It’s not a date; it’s business.”

  She could feel Ritchie looking right through her, knowing something was going on, but he just said, “Okay, sure, why not.”

  Angie felt good when he said it, glad she wasn’t going to see Felix alone and glad to be hanging out with Ritchie.

  Then thinking, shit, this could be bad.

  FIVE

  Armstrong noticed Loewen and the biz lady had left, so that was good — it still worked out. Later he’d have to tell Loewen it was shitty she was a bigot, see the look on his face. Armstrong was almost surprised Loewen didn’t see it, she was giving off the vibe so strong, but of course Loewen was blinded by wanting to get laid.

  But now Agent Jones from Homeland Security was giving off an entirely different vibe, saying how it’d been a couple of years since she’d last been to Canada, met Armstrong when he was looking into some Arab guy thrown off the roof of an apartment building and Armstrong said, “He jumped.”

  Jones said, “No kidding,” and Armstrong knew she believed him. They were sitting at the table with a few other cops, Americans. Armstrong always having trouble keeping them straight, FBI, DEA, state, city, ATF, marshals, Homeland Security. He wondered how they weren’t tripping over each other all the time.

  “Yeah, he wasn’t really a criminal, just some guy trying to make a living. His wife left him — you know the deal.”

  Jones said, “Oh yeah, see it every day.”

  The other cops at the table were mostly black guys, one of them saying he’d like to see a hockey game close up, not getting much interest. One of them said the food here in Canada was pretty bland and another cop, looked more Mexican to Armstrong, said well, a hotel, what do you expect?

  Jones said to Armstrong, “After that thing with the Arab guy I got transferred to NYC, supposed to be a promotion.”

  Armstrong said yeah, and she said, “Yeah, I’ve never seen so much paperwork in my life.”

  “Gotta be organized, keeping the world safe.”

  “We’re keeping it safe in triplicate,” she said, “for democracy or for bankers, I can’t tell. It’s all about the money.”

  Armstrong said, “Yeah, this whole task force, it all money laundering?”

  “So far.”

  The Mexican-looking cop said to Armstrong, “There any good Italian in this town?” and Armstrong said, yeah, two neighbourhoods, downtown — College Street, and a little north — Woodbridge.

  One of the black guys said, “What about Middle Eastern, like Lebanese, shawarma, shish taouk, that kind of thing?”

  “We’ve got pretty much any kind of food you want,” Armstrong said. He looked at Jones. “That’s really what we mean by multicultural in Toronto. Restaurants and folk dancing, otherwise we want your ethnicities to be just like the nice, white Canadians,” and the other cops all said stuff like I hear that, the way it is, you know it.

  Jones said, “So now it looks like I’ll be moving to Buffalo or Niagara Falls.”

  Armstrong said, “I heard a comedian once say you’re going to dig a big ditch along the Mexican border but along the Canadian border you’re going to put in a huge penalty box.”

  “Give everybody two minutes for terrorism.”

  Armstrong said, “That’s pretty good,” and she said, “I had to look it up.”

  She was looking at him, flirting, no doubt, but she had more on her mind, he could tell, so he waited, see if she’d get there on her own. She said, “You played pro hockey in Germany for a couple years?”

  He s
aid, “Yeah, and a year in Switzerland.”

  “And,” she said, “don’t forget Michigan State.”

  “Go Spartans. This what you use the vast resources of the most powerful government in the world for?”

  She said, “I Googled you,” and he said, oh, right.

  Then she said, “I had to use the spy satellites and the deep cover agents to find out you were single, why is that?”

  “Makes you suspicious, doesn’t it? I mean, you like the idea, but you don’t like it at the same time.”

  “You avoiding the question?”

  “I don’t have an answer for it. Never met the right person, that kind of thing. What about you?”

  “How do you know I’m single?”

  “Oh, so is this just business?”

  “Just business? We’re not selling staplers here — this is the security of the free world we’re talking about.”

  “So, you haven’t met the right person, either?”

  “I think the stats say I have a better chance of getting killed by a terrorist.”

  “I think that statistic means more,” Armstrong said, “when your job is like grade school teacher or stockbroker, you know, when you’re not actually out looking for terrorists.”

  “Well, if we go by how many we find . . .”

  The other cops at the table were getting up then, talking about going to a sports bar, maybe seeing a show, and Jones said to Armstrong, “They’re looking for a strip club. Which one would you recommend?” Armstrong said they could just walk across the street to the Club International.

  One of the black guys said to Jones, “Least we didn’t call it the Canadian Ballet,” winked, and they left her alone with Armstrong.

  He said, “That’s really a Detroit thing, calling the clubs across the river in Windsor the ballet.”

  She said, “Like it’s a secret code we’ll never break.”

  “All you cops and spies.”

  Armstrong was thinking he’d like to ask if she wanted to move this up to her room, but then he was thinking maybe it was too soon. He waved the waitress over and they ordered another round, Jones drinking bourbon over crushed ice and Armstrong going for a Scotch, no ice.