Tumblin' Dice

by John McFetridge

  “It’s good to see you guys buried the hatchet,” Frank said. Then he laughed and said, “There’s an Indian joke in there somewhere — all this Indian shit around here.”

  Barry said, “We were never pissed at each other,” and Cliff was thinking, what the fuck, that’s bullshit — we were always pissed at each other, just not as much as we were pissed at Frank, and Frank said, well whatever, “Just good you’re back on the road.”

  Barry said, “We want our money.”

  Cliff watched Frank take a moment, knowing exactly what Barry was talking about, but saying, “You get paid by Head Office, not by me — you know how it works,” and Cliff thinking, okay, here we go.

  “The money you made off us.”

  Frank said, “You mean after I found you, cleaned you up, busted my butt to get you gigs and a fucking record contract, U.S. fucking distribution, not just the fucking beaver pile in Canada, and now you want my cut, too?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Cliff thought, yeah, good Barry, don’t get into it too much. It’s like negotiating a house sale, biggest mistake people make is to talk too much, go on and on about how much they love the place, then they say it’s fifty grand too much thinking they can make a deal and Cliff tells them, well, if you really love it you’re going to be here twenty-five, thirty years, raise your kids here, all those family memories, an extra fifty grand is less than a hundred bucks a month.

  But Cliff knew you could never pull that kind of bullshit on Frank. It was just now that he was thinking about it, he didn’t know Barry all that well, didn’t know what he’d do in a negotiation.

  Frank said, “Fuck you. You’re lucky I let you play my casino.”

  Barry said, “Your casino,” and Frank said, yeah, “My fucking casino. I run the place.”

  “You want to run the place,” Barry said, “but you don’t. Mobsters from Philly run the place, except you’re hooking up with the bikers out of Toronto to get rid of them.”

  Cliff looked at Barry, thinking, what the fuck? Are they getting in the middle of a fucking Mob war? And how the fuck would Barry know anything about it? Shit, Cliff wanted to take a minute, step outside, get his head together, but he heard Frank saying, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” and he knew it was true, he knew what Barry was saying was true.

  “You’re lucky,” Barry said. “We don’t want it all, just what you owe me and Cliff: we figure a million each. Ritchie and Dale, it’s up to them if they ever want to try and collect.”

  “So just two million then?”

  Barry said, yeah, just two million. “Cash. You must go through twice that here every day.”

  “Every fucking hour, but I’m not giving you a dime.”

  “Yeah, you are.”

  Frank laughed and said, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” and Cliff was thinking that, too. Guy goes from being a so-so bass player to staring down an honest-to-God mobster, had balls of fucking steel.

  So now Cliff’s looking at Barry, thinking, who the fuck are you?, and Barry says to Frank, “Get it together — we’ll pick it up after we play our set,” and turns and walks out.

  Cliff and Frank stood there looking at each for a minute. Cliff almost made a joke, almost said something like, holy shit, eh?

  But he just turned and walked out, too.

  • • •

  Frank watched them go, the singer who was never as good as he thought he was and the bass player who never gave a shit he wasn’t good enough, and thought, what the fuck?

  Bad enough they came in here asking for money, but how did Barry know about the Philly Mob and the bikers?

  He looked at the hockey bag beside his desk, a half million from Gayle, the biker’s wife.

  Shit, if Barry had known it was in the office, sitting right there, that would have been funny.

  Now Frank had to decide who’d take care of Barry and Cliff, the bikers or Alfano and the Philly boys.

  Then he wondered if it should be before the gig and figured it didn’t make any difference; he couldn’t imagine anybody wanting their money back because they didn’t get to see the High.

  • • •

  Outside Frank’s office Cliff caught up to Barry saying, what the fuck? “What are we going to do now?”

  Barry walking fast, Cliff practically jogging to keep up, and Barry said, “We’re going to show him how serious we are.”

  Cliff said, yeah, “And how are we going to do that?”

  Barry stopped at the elevator, pushed the button and said, “How did you think we were going to do it?”

  “I thought you had a plan.”

  The elevator came and Barry stepped on saying, “I do have a plan.”

  “So what is it?”

  Barry looked up at the top of the elevator, the tile ceiling, and smiled but didn’t say anything, and Cliff was getting more pissed off until he looked up, too, and saw there was a security camera pointed at them, so he shut up until they got off the elevator and walked through the lobby to the outside. But the second they cleared the door he said, “What’s your plan?”

  Barry lit a cigarette and said, “We’re going to wait here and when Frank comes out we’re going to shoot him in the head,” and Cliff said, “Holy fuck,” and Barry shook his head and said, “Then who do you think would give us the money?”

  Cliff had no fucking idea what he was talking about and he was about to start screaming at him when Barry said, “Come on,” and walked around the side of the building, Cliff following like a fucking puppy.

  They walked all the way around to the east parking lot where all the buses were lined up, hundreds of Chinese getting on and off, shuttling back to Markham and Scarborough and Toronto, and way to the back of the lot where the tour bus was parked.

  Cliff said, “You’re going to break into the bus,” and Barry said, no, “Raoul gave me a key,” and opened the door saying, “Wait here.”

  A couple minutes later Barry was back, carrying a red gym bag, and Cliff said, “Now you’re going to go work out, what the fuck?” and Barry said, no, and then he said, “Guess what kind of car Frank drives,” and Cliff said, “Who gives a shit?”

  Barry locked up the bus and walked back to the casino, around the side to where a few cars were parked by a door that had a sign saying, do not enter.

  Barry said, “Which one?” and Cliff said, fucking Frank.

  Barry said, “That’s right, I would have thought the Ferrari or maybe the X7.”

  “The fucking Barracuda.”

  “He’s living in the past — still thinks he’s in fucking Yorkville hanging out with Joni Mitchell and Neil Young.”

  Cliff said, “Shit, we’re lucky it isn’t a hearse, Frank dreaming he’s driving to L.A. with Neil.”

  Barry opened up the gym bag and said, “I guess those were his glory days, young and carefree, still had his hair.”

  “And,” Cliff said, “he could get a hard-on without a pill,” and then he said, “What the fuck are you doing?” and Barry said, “Just keep a lookout, okay?”

  Cliff said, “Holy fucking shit, is that a bomb?”

  Barry was under the Barracuda then, on his back pulling on wires and saying, “No, it’s my dirty underwear.”

  A couple minutes later he rolled out from under the car with a wire in his hand and ran it along the bottom of the driver’s door. Then he got a roll of duct tape out of the gym bag and tore off a piece, taping the wire to the bottom of the door.

  Cliff said, “So what happens, he opens the door and the car blows up?”

  Barry stood up and looked at Cliff and said, “How will he pay us if he’s splattered all over the parking lot?”

  Now Cliff was really pissed off and said, “That’s what I’m asking.”

  Barry had the bus key out and was scratching a
line down the car door from the handle to where he’d taped the wire saying, “We’ll be nice guys — we’ll let him know it’s here.”

  “Hey, that’s pretty good.”

  Barry said, yeah, it is, and walked back towards the front of the casino.

  Cliff watched him for a minute and wondered how much of this plan Barry had before the tour’d even started, because sometimes it seemed like he was making it up as he went along, but he always seemed ready for whatever happened, and Cliff didn’t think Barry was ever a fucking Boy Scout, and then he remembered and said, “You got this in Montreal,” and Barry stopped and turned around and said, “What?”

  “The guy you were meeting in Montreal, when I was in that . . . car. That’s where you got the bomb.”

  “Just call it a pipe, okay.”

  Cliff stepped up to Barry and said, “You had this whole thing planned — you knew from the start of the tour we’d be coming here, seeing Frank.”

  Barry said, so?

  “Fuck, Barry, you never let on. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “Holy fuck.”

  Barry said, calm down, okay? “And think about the money.”

  “Is it even about the money?”

  Barry said, “What the fuck else is there?” and he walked away.

  Cliff watched him go thinking he didn’t know this new Barry at all, this cold-as-ice, shylock-killing, bomb-planting master-fucking-criminal he’d become.

  Then he wondered if he’d ever really known Barry at all. Maybe the guy hadn’t turned into this, maybe he was always this and Cliff just never noticed.

  Then he shook his head, tried to shake all this out and thought, fuck, just get me out alive.

  And with his share of Frank’s money.

  Barry was right — it was just about the money.

  NINE

  J.T. was sitting in his car in the parking lot by the end of the hotel, a few hundred feet from the casino’s front doors, and the Chinese kid, Yin, opened the passenger door and got in saying, “Wow, an American car,” and J.T. said, yeah, so?

  Yin put his iPhone on his thigh and got out a roll of bills, folding them in half and saying, “I thought you guys all drove European,” and J.T. said, well, we don’t all.

  Yin held the edge of the bills between his thumb and forefinger on the screen of the phone and a light passed. He said, “Fifty-five.”

  J.T. said, “Or thereabouts,” and Yin said, “If I’m not squeezing them tight enough, it’s my own fault.”

  J.T. said, “I figured since that’s a Chinese app, it’d be more accurate.”

  “How do you know it’s Chinese?”

  “I got one,” J.T. said. “Saw the demo on YouTube, used the Chinese money, the mechanical English voice.”

  Yin held another folded roll over the phone, got a reading of forty-nine and said, “One oh four, so that’s two grand,” and J.T. said, “And eighty bucks.”

  Yin, smiling out from under a ball cap said, yeah, “Two thousand eighty,” and counted out twenty bills and handed them to J.T., saying, “Yeah, it’s a Chinese app, we need to count our money quick, keep moving. Four hundred bucks, this rate going to last?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Yin shrugged, said, “Thought maybe it was an introductory rate — you know, once you guys take over completely and don’t have to be so nice, you raise the rates.”

  “Hey,” J.T. said, “we’re always nice.”

  Yin laughed. “Cool, baby.”

  He got out of the car and J.T. took out his own iPhone, added the four hundred bucks to his own roll and used his own currency-counting app to scan it and see the reading of 42, all twenties. The counting app could tell him how many bills there were but not what denomination. Didn’t really matter, J.T. only dealt in twenties, and like Yin said, it was for quick counting, J.T. thinking — the Chinese always in a hurry.

  Then he drove up to the front of the casino, slowed down by the front doors under the overhanging roof all done up to look like some kind of tent but made out of concrete, and saw Gayle standing by herself having a smoke.

  She saw him, took a last drag, and got into the car saying, “You believe this,” motioning to the crime scene still taped off on the other side of the parking lot, a police van with Forensic Identification Services written on the side parked nearby.

  J.T. said, I don’t see anybody working, and Gayle said, no kidding, “Probably inside at the slots.”

  J.T. said yeah, “Or upstairs with Felice or one of the other girls.”

  He drove away from the front door of the casino and parked, giving them a good view of the crime scene.

  Gayle said the other girls weren’t getting there till tonight. She kept staring at the crime scene and said, “How long will they stay?”

  J.T. said, “I don’t know.”

  “You see that guy with the crossbow at the library in Toronto? They closed that place for days.”

  J.T. said, yeah, “Cops can make any job last a week if it’s close to hookers or doughnuts.”

  Gayle said, “It was his son,” and J.T. said, what?

  “The guy at the library with the crossbow, he killed his father.”

  J.T. shrugged, said, “The world is fucked up,” and Gayle said, you think?

  Then she said, “A guy in the paper said he saw him walk up to a guy sitting on the bench, pepper spray him, and then shoot him in the back with the arrow when he tried to run into the library.”

  “It’s called a bolt.”

  Gayle said, what?, and J.T. said, “What the crossbow shoots, it’s not called an arrow, it’s a bolt.”

  Gayle said, whatever, and then, “The guy, the witness, he said then the guy walked away all calm, like he was going to get a sub.”

  J.T. said yeah, and Gayle said, “Like he was going to get a sub, like after you kill your father with a crossbow you go get a sub, not a cheeseburger or some wings, a sub.”

  J.T. shrugged, said, so?

  Gayle said, okay, fine. “Will they find anything here?”

  “No, it went good. Boner was good, calm.”

  “Good.”

  “Like he was going for a sub.”

  Gayle said, “Good.”

  “You were pissed off on the phone.”

  “When I first heard. I didn’t think you’d do him in the parking lot.”

  J.T. said, “I thought that was the point,” and Gayle looked at him and said, “Yeah.”

  J.T. was seeing now how Gayle was getting it, seeing how she was more in charge of this than Danny Mac. Everybody knew Gayle was handling the money, she was taking care of cleaning it up, making sure everybody was getting paid — and she was doing a good job of that so everybody was happy — but now J.T. was seeing how she was starting to be in charge of even more, like she was going to decide if Boner got his patch.

  He said, “Yeah, and this time at least Boner killed the right guy.”

  “You drove him right up to the guy, didn’t you?”

  “No, I let him and another hangaround handle it, guy named Gizz.”

  Gayle said, okay, “They back in Toronto now?”

  “Yeah, drove right out of this lot and onto the 400, probably back before these cops even got here.”

  Gayle said, good, “But you stay in touch,” and J.T. said, yeah, of course. He watched her, seeing how she was thinking how she was going to play this, and he was thinking, okay she’ll be good at this.

  She said, “Okay, well, there’s going to be some push back. They can’t just roll over and take it. I’m going to talk to this Felix Alfano from Philadelphia, see what he has to say.”

  “Now that we’ve started the negotiations.”

  Gayle said, yeah, “Now that we let him know we’re serious.”

 
J.T. said, yeah, good, and he was thinking, shit, it’d freak out some of the older guys if a chick was actually in charge, but the younger guys’d probably be okay with it.

  They had an expression in the army, “Fuck up, move up,” but Gayle was moving up by doing a good job.

  It’d help if J.T. went with it, and he was thinking, why not? Business is business, would anything really change with Gayle in charge? Does anything ever change?

  • • •

  Getting off the elevator Angie could hear Ritchie’s guitar and she was surprised none of the guests had complained, but who spent any time in their room at a casino? Besides, he was good.

  She knocked and he opened the door, still strumming his acoustic guitar.

  Angie said, “You working on a new song?” and Ritchie smiled, looked like he could be stoned, and said, naw, it’s the Stones. “‘Tumblin’ Dice.’ I hear it every time we’re at a casino.”

  “The High going to play it?”

  Ritchie said, no, they don’t have a sense of humour, and he kept strumming out the chords, the F#–B–F#–B in the open tuning Keith fell in love in the late ’60s, walking around the bed, looking out the window at the lake and the trees, and he said, “They wrote it first as ‘Good Time Women,’ but didn’t like it.”

  Angie sat on the edge of the bed and said, “Why not?

  “I don’t know. I read somewhere that Jagger said he always wrote the story first, then just cut out a lot of the words and made it into a song,” and Angie said, oh yeah?

  Ritchie said, yeah, “You have the wrong word it can take people right out of the moment.”

  Angie said, how do you know it’s the wrong word?, and Ritchie said, “If it’s a word people don’t usually say out loud. There’s a song has a line in it, ‘I’m looking for the right words to convey the message we bring,’ and ‘convey’ always sounded wrong to me.”

  “April Wine. They played here last year — they were good.”

  Ritchie said, “Yeah, I toured with them for a while, maybe that’s why convey got to me. That song, ‘Drop Your Guns,’ also has the word ‘amiss.’ No one says amiss out loud, but the guitar on that song is good. And the story is good — there’s always a story, you know? It was on Exile on Main Street, the album the Stones recorded in France, so it’s probably about Monaco. There’s fever in the funkhouse now.”