How did Margie know about this plot? She overheard them talking on the cell phone. And our Margie thought it was pretty funny, because she said that people think that being dumb also means you’re deaf. It turns out that Marge was a bit smarter than most of us. I don’t have a problem with her decision at all. Okay, folks, read my lips here. That’s at all. No problemo.
I mean, let’s face it. This is a Darwinian tale at its finest and simplest. The strongest will survive.
So, Marge and I are still best buddies, and occasionally, we take a stroll where the view down each avenue includes the steel-gray silhouette of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. And, when there isn’t a murder on the side street, Korean women carry umbrellas to guard against the sun, and the Middle Eastern women sweat under their headscarves and burqas.
OUT OF LUCK
Cathi Stoler
IN the end, it’s desperation that screws you every time. Johnny shook his head, taking in the scene on the crowded sidewalk across the street. Pedestrians streamed by— fat-assed tourists in New York T- shirts and shorts, theatergoers pushing through the crowds to make a curtain, strolling shoppers blocking the way with too many bags— the usual Times Square mob out for some action in The Big Apple on a warm summer night.
Except for the guy. The one he’d passed in the dingy hoodie and filthy jeans, skulking along the side of the building, trying to hold it together.
Johnny had eyeballed him right away. Early twenties, stringy hair, sallow complexion, twitchy mouth. He looked wired enough to light up the block, hands clenching into tight balls, head bopping up and down, bouncing hard on the balls of his hi-tops. But it was the eyes that were the real tell. They never stopped moving. Back and forth. Up and down Forty-first Street. Man, his eyes were jumping.
If I were a betting man, Johnny told himself, fingering the lucky silver dollar in his pocket, I’d lay odds Rhineman is gonna bust him in the next ten seconds.
Slipping the coin out of his pocket, he tossed it high in the air. Heads, the guy gets busted. Tails, the Uniform had developed tunnel vision, and the guy walks. Johnny snatched the piece as it spiraled on its downward arc and slapped it on the back of his hand. He waited a beat before he called it. Heads. He smiled. Rhineman had got it right. He’d already cornered the guy and was asking for ID. The guy was fumbling around, patting his pockets, talking up a streak, digging himself in deeper and deeper with every word. The cop waited, face neutral, his right hand resting lightly on the butt of his gun, ready for anything.
Don’t worry, bro, Johnny nearly called out, the guy isn’t running. Nowhere to run to in the new Times Square. Uniforms and Mounteds were everywhere, undercover D’s, too, not to mention the security cameras on every street. A “presence,” as the Police Commissioner would say, to deter would-be terrorists and make the tourists feel safe. No more porn shops, pimps, or pros. But there was still plenty to watch out for— it was in his face every day. No amount of Disneyfication could get rid of all the crime, or drugs, or the con artists and grifters that had the run of these blocks for more than fifty years.
Johnny had seen enough. Silver dollar safely back in his pocket, he walked west toward Eighth Avenue, checking his watch. He had forty minutes until his meeting with Joey “Bones” Biscottini. Not nearly enough time to catch a break and come up with what he owed. He was fucked. Big time.
JOHNNY was pacing the length of the coffee shop that fronted onto Fortieth Street and sweating enough to make the polo shirt he was wearing stick to the small roll of fat that was slowly building around his middle. At five-ten and just over one-ninety, he knew he’d have to watch it, especially now that he’d turned forty. Six-pack abs were a fond memory. He pulled the shirt away from his skin and cursed the heat, but the knot in his stomach told him the sweat was coming from somewhere else.
Johnny reached the end of his path, swiveled back, and noticed the couple arguing quietly in the mouth of an alleyway a few buildings down. Her head was moving back and forth, shaking a definite No, her shoulder-length blonde hair whipping from side to side, emphasizing her actions. The guy was holding her by the arms, murmuring softly, his mouth close to her ear, trying to convince her . . . of what?
Not your business, he reminded himself, an image of Joey Bones filling his mind and supplanting the one of the couple. Bones, his bookie, was a vertically-challenged bruiser who imagined himself to be a modern-day entrepreneur. Hey, he had a Blackberry that never left his hand and sported a diamond stud to match his pinky ring and sweat suit, didn’t he? A guy who had come up from the neighborhood in Little Italy, he had a standard reply when people asked what the Bones meant. “I could tell you, then I’d have to kill you,” he’d say with a huge, throaty laugh and a slap on the back at the old line he’d appropriated as his own. Only somehow, Johnny noticed that the person who’d asked the question never laughed along.
He fingered the roll of bills in his pocket, tucked up close to his lucky silver dollar. He’d toted it up three times at the apartment, spreading the cash out on the old wooden kitchen table, smoothing each crumpled bill flat with his hand. But no amount of counting could parlay it into more. Eight hundred even. It might as well be Monopoly money. He was short twelve C-notes. Bones was expecting two grand tonight, and it was a sure bet that, after he heard Johnny’s news, he wouldn’t go for anything less.
The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Johnny. He was a good customer— horses, baseball, football, Vegas fights. The two grand was just the tip of the iceberg: this week’s vig, plus what he was shy from last week. Bones had been letting him slide, every now and then, and Johnny had been making good in other ways: protecting his runners on the street and slipping the desk sergeant, Gonzales, some bookie-cash to look the other way when one of them got picked up. Gonzales was starting to get twitchy and wanted out. Johnny was going to lose his leverage. He needed to make other arrangements and make them quick. Man, he didn’t want to have to tell Bones the deal had gone south. Who knew what the crazy bastard would ask him to do instead.
Johnny swallowed hard and thought about the two muscle heads who bracketed Bones’ every move like misplaced parentheses. They’d make sure he delivered, one way or another. His gut clenched tight and the taste of acid filled his mouth. Without the cash, no way was this was going to turn out right.
The voices from the alleyway had risen in pitch and pulled him back. What the fuck’s with those two? He cut his eyes to the couple. Kansas. He imagined miles and miles of cornfields and long, flat roads as he checked them out. Clean-cut, farm-fed, maybe eighteen or younger. Maybe runaways and a little the worse for wear after landing in the big, bad city. He looked closer. No luggage that he could see. Probably just off the bus at Port Authority with only the clothes on their backs.
The girl was beautiful. The kind of beauty that reached him, even from where he stood. It looked natural, too, with clear blue eyes and a fresh-scrubbed face that didn’t seem to need makeup. She was in jeans and a short-sleeve print blouse, rumpled like she’d slept in them. The guy was okay. Not a stud, but tall and slim, with short, brown hair and wide-set, brown eyes that skewed a little, confused, a little out of his comfort zone. He was in jeans, too. Not that home-boy, crotch-around-the-knees look with Calvins hanging out that made Johnny want to puke. Just regular Levi’s with a long-sleeve, button-down, striped shirt. Kansas, for sure. Or, could be Indiana, Ohio— one of those places.
The girl caught him staring and tugged on the boyfriend’s sleeve. She jutted her chin toward Johnny and looked up at the boy. He shook his head No, but she was already moving in Johnny’s direction. The boy reached out to pull her back, but she shook him off like rain from an umbrella and walked out of the shelter of the alleyway.
“Shit,” Johnny muttered under his breath. “What the fuck!” He started to turn away, but it was too late. The girl had reached him and planted herself in his path. She glanced over her shoulder to see if the boy had followed. He had, and he sidled up beside her.
�
��Excuse me, sir.” She clutched the handbag she was carrying to her side. “I, um, I’m sorry to bother you but I saw you . . . looking at us.” There was no accusation in her words, just a statement of fact. “I, um, hope you can help.” Her voice was soft and sweet, younger than he’d thought, and matched the sad look in her eyes.
Johnny couldn’t break their hold. Deep blue pools, they drew him in and made him want to swim all the way down, like a sailor lured by a mermaid. A little voice in his head started whispering to him to leave it alone; forget those eyes and think about Bones. No luck with that idea. He couldn’t get away from their pleading.
“Yeah, I noticed you over there,” he replied a little gruffly, finally rousing himself enough to speak, embarrassed that he’d been caught. “And . . .” his voice trailed off, not really knowing how to explain why he’d been watching them, “. . . I figured maybe something was wrong.” It sounded lame even to him.
She lowered her head and spoke with a shyness Johnny hadn’t heard in a long while. She paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts and concentrating on what to say next. “We, um, have a problem.” She lifted her face then, searching his and looking for something Johnny knew she’d never find there.
“Em, we shouldn’t do this.” The boy squeezed her shoulder and tried to turn her away. “This man’s a stranger,” he added, his voice wary. Then, more apologetically, to Johnny, “No offense.”
“Stop it, Tyler.” She pulled away, not letting her gaze break contact with Johnny’s. “I think we can trust him. He was ready to help me when he thought you and I were fighting.” She saw the flicker of surprise cross Johnny’s face. “Your eyes gave you away,” she said with conviction. She turned to look back at the boy and nodded.
“Guess we’ll have to.” The boy’s tone was sullen, a note of warning weaving its way under the simple words.
“Sir . . .” Johnny winced at the title he’d always reserved for older men. “. . . My name is Emma and this is my . . . this is Tyler.” She began to tell her story, her voice losing some of its tentativeness as she spoke. “We just arrived in New York from Columbus and . . . we don’t know what to do.”
Johnny listened intently, now unconsciously looking for the tell that would show the girl was spinning him a tale. The words were spoken in a way that felt real and didn’t make him wary. She sounded honest and sincere, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t trying to play him.
“We found this on the bus.” She removed a small piece of paper from her bag and held it out to him gingerly with her fingertips, like a priest offering the host at communion. The boy’s hand was back on her shoulder, squeezing harder this time, trying to stop what it was already too late to undo.
Johnny didn’t take the paper. He looked down at it fluttering from her long, slim fingers. He could read the printing at the top: it was a New York Lotto ticket. He waited silently for her to continue.
“Shit, Em. Let’s go!” The boy’s tone had gone from sulky to belligerent. “We’ll find someone else. He’s not going to help us.”
“Tyler!” The girl spat at him angrily. “Watch your mouth.” She shook her head and turned back to Johnny. “I’m sorry, Sir. He didn’t—”
Johnny cut her off. “The name’s Johnny, not Sir.”
“Nice to meet you, Johnny,” she replied, then seemed at a loss for what to say next.
Johnny jutted his chin toward the ticket now clutched in her fingers. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on . . . you know, about your problem.” He’d spoken without thinking, involving himself in their shit, the words out of his mouth before he could stop them.
A specter of hope turned the corners of her mouth into a tentative smile. She looked at him eagerly and cleared her throat. “Well, like I said, we just got here from Columbus. This ticket was on one of the seats up front when we were leaving. We tried to find the person who was sitting there. I thought it was an older woman I’d noticed when she went to the restroom. But we were way in the back, and by the time we got outside, she was gone.” She nodded at the boy, as if to make sure she was remembering things exactly as they happened.
“Inside the station, we passed one of those stores selling newspapers and sodas and stuff. They had a sign out front with the winning numbers and the prize amounts. Well, since we had the ticket we thought we’d check and—” she stopped for a moment, choosing her words carefully and spoke more softly, “—it’s a winner.”
She moved the ticket closer to Johnny, unconsciously inviting him to see for himself. That’s luck for you. Right off the bus and they scored. “Okay,” he shrugged, “so what’s the big deal? You guys won a few bucks. Just bring it to any place that sells lottery tickets and turn it in. You can probably get your cash right there.” He pointed to a bodega across the street where he’d met Bones a few times. He knew they sold lottery tickets to all those suckers who believed that ‘dollar and a dream’ bull. At least that wasn’t one of his vices.
“You got it wrong,” said the boy. “It’s more than a few bucks. It’s worth twenty-thousand, five hundred and thirty dollars. I don’t think they’re gonna give us that over there.” The boy cut his eyes toward the bodega.
Yeah, right. Johnny would lay five-to-one that they were the ones who’d got it wrong. “You sure about that? Over twenty grand?” he asked, unable to hide the skepticism in his voice.
The girl nodded yes. “It’s got five out of the six numbers. See.” She stuck the ticket up under his nose as if the numbers would speak out for themselves. This time Johnny took it from her.
Jeez, could this be happening? A hot flash streaked through him, setting his body on fire at the thought of what he could do with that much money. Pay off Bones and get him off his back until he could replace that piece of shit, Gonzales. Slow down, he told himself. It’s not your ticket.
It had gotten dark while they’d been talking, and the streetlights had come on. Johnny held the ticket up toward one of them to see it better, his hand trembling slightly. It looked legit, like every other lotto ticket he’d ever seen. He ran his thumb over the printing and it didn’t smudge as if it had been altered. “Well, good for you,” he said with bravado, his voice sounding false, even to himself. He hoped they couldn’t hear the longing in it. “That’s a lot of money, but I don’t see the problem.” He held the ticket out to the boy. “Just bring it down to one of the lottery offices and turn it in. They’ll give you a check and you can cash it at the bank.”
“We can’t,” the boy spoke hesitantly, taking the ticket from Johnny and tucking it into his shirt pocket. “We asked the guy at the bus station about getting the money, and he said the same thing that you just told us. Plus, he was sure that you have to be eighteen and have ID and all to claim a big prize.”
“So, neither of you can, right?” His first instinct was right: they were underage and probably runaways.
“It’s not like we’re doing anything wrong,” the girl jumped in before Johnny could utter another word, seeming to catch the drift of his thoughts. “We just want to be together and—”
“And this is a whole lot of money to us,” the boy finished for her. “We could sure use it to make a start.”
Johnny lifted up his hands in a questioning gesture. “Guys, what exactly do you want from me?”
“Maybe, you could turn in the ticket for us,” the girl said softly, those baby blues tugging at him again. “We’d pay you. Really. Even split it with you, if you think that’s fair,” she added quickly. “We’d just need some money to get us through the next few weeks, or so. We’d trust you to do the right thing.”
Are these people for real? Is everyone from out of town so naive? Still, ten thousand had a nice ring to it. Like a long shot at Belmont paying off big time. “I don’t know,” Johnny shook his head and the girl’s face fell. “I’m just some guy you met ten minutes ago. You don’t know anything about me. I mean, I could just get the money and you’d never see me again.”
“Tyler,” her voic
e rang with an authority that startled Johnny, “I think he’s lying. He’s the one who doesn’t trust us. Go with him to that store.” She lifted a slim hand and gestured to the bodega across the street. “Let him check it for himself. I’ll wait here.” Her eyes blazed at Johnny. “Then you can decide what to do.”
They were back three minutes later, astonishment flooding Johnny’s face. The ticket was legit. He’d checked it against a printout of the winning numbers and it was good for the second prize, over twenty thousand, just like they had said. Luis, the bodega’s owner had eye-balled it too, and cursed in Spanish lamenting the fact that he hadn’t sold it and scored a commission, or at least a tip.
Johnny’s heart was galloping as fast as a pony flying down the home stretch. Maybe, my troubles could be over. He’d take the ticket and show it to Bones, explain what had happened. Promise to pay what he owed as soon as he visited the lottery office, got the check, and cashed it at his bank. Hell, Bones could even come with him. It would all work out. No way it couldn’t.
The girl was standing exactly where they’d left her, the anxious look on her face flipping into a smile as soon as she saw Johnny’s grin. “Okay, okay, you were right. It is a winner. I’ll do it. You got yourselves a deal.”
The girl reached up and hugged him. The boy fished the ticket out of his pocket and handed it over. “How do you want to work this?” Johnny asked, tucking it away.
The girl took the lead as she had before. “Well, if it’s okay, once you get the check, maybe we could meet you at a bank. Or after, at your house, and split up the money there. Whatever you think is best.”
Fresh Slices Page 13
