But, he realized, these women are perfectly capable of beating the piss out of me.
“I’ll tell you once,” Rascowitz yelled above the roar of the bikes, “stay away from her.”
The sound of engines lingered long after the women vanished around a corner. Duncan returned to the fence where he had left his Schwinn. Only a cut chain remained.
I’ve had problems with women before, he thought as he walked back to his studio, but never like this.
Six
Benjamin was sitting alone at a black jack table when he spied Howard Lomo and Leroy Kern. He had arrived at the casino two hours before, and the four red chips he began with had spawned a multitudinous pile in an assortment of colors. The dealer was a Hispanic looking man several years older than Benjamin, with a gut under his vest and piercing black eyes beneath wire rimmed glasses. Benjamin considered relinquishing his seat before they spotted him, but he would forfeit his fifty-dollar bet, and he was more curious about how Kern and Lomo had regained his trail than he was alarmed by the fact that they had.
“In-surance,” said the dealer.
The dealer showed an ace. Benjamin held two tens. He put a twenty-five dollar chip out. The dealer took it and flipped his hole card. A queen.
“Blackjack,” said the dealer.
Leroy Kern poked Howard Lomo and pointed to Benjamin. Lomo wore dark glasses which roughly concealed the shiner around his right eye. Leroy Kern wore a dirty bandage over his nose and a brace around his neck. They settled on stools to his left and to his right.
“I feel a run of bad lack coming,” Benjamin said, but he left his bet on the table.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” said the dealer, “will you be playing?”
“We just want a word with our friend,” Lomo said. “Ain’t that right?”
“That’s right,” said Leroy Kern.
“I’m amazed you boys found me. Considering your general lack of competence and all.”
“Shut up and play.”
Lomo surveyed the casino. Benjamin was dealt a ten and a deuce. The dealer gave himself an ace up.
“In-sur-ance.”
Benjamin nodded no. The dealer looked at his hole card and put it back face down. Benjamin waved off another card.
“He’s alone,” Lomo said.
“Are you nuts?” Kern asked. “Standing on a twelve against an ace?”
The dealer turned up his card. A six. He busted with a jack and a nine.
“You play your way,” Benjamin said. “I’ll play mine.”
“We’re not here to play, boy.”
Something poked Benjamin. He looked down. Lomo held a blue steel thirty-eight special against Benjamin’s ribs. This was his old throw down gun, with a hair trigger and the serial number filed off. He had left his forty caliber duty weapon back in his hotel room, as it was too large to conceal.
“Tell you what,” Benjamin said, “why don’t you and your moron buddy take fifty dollars each and play awhile. On me.”
“You must think we’re pretty stupid,” Lomo said.
“Well, him at least.”
“Come on.” Leroy Kern said, ignoring the insult, “it ain’t like it’s our money.”
“Well, all right.” Howard Lomo put the gun in his waistband and closed his jacket. He appropriated a pile of chips. “But when the money’s gone, so are we.”
“I said fifty each,” Benjamin said.
“I heard what you said. But I chose to ignore it.”
After ten hands Kern and Lomo were broke. Benjamin won eight of the ten and was now up seven hundred and eighty-five dollars.
“Jesus,” Leroy Kern said, “how do you do that?”
“I got a system.”
“Well, so do I.” Howard Lomo snatched another pile of chips.
“Sir, management frowns upon players taking other player’s chips.”
Lomo read the dealer’s name tag. “Stay out of this Keith Gomez.” Something about the man plagued him. Lomo flashed a badge. “This is police business. I’m taking this boy out and don’t want any interference.”
Lomo had ordered the badge from a catalog after his was ripped from his shirt by his former employer. It was a Soviet Intelligence officer’s badge. Lomo had selected it because he liked the dagger dripping blood above the fractured heart. He had flashed and pocketed it so quickly that Gomez could not be faulted if he believed it legitimate.
Gomez said, “I’ll notify security.”
The glory of Lomo’s old occupation reasserted itself in his chest. Nothing as tasty as a good ass kissing, he reflected. Gomez whispered to a pit boss. The boss looked to the table and picked up a phone.
“I could still press charges against you, Leroy,” Benjamin said.
“Not if you’re dead, you can’t.”
Benjamin turned to Lomo. “Fiona won’t be happy if I vanish.”
“I no longer work for Fiona,” Lomo said, “and I believe she would be absolutely ecstatic if you disappeared.”
Gomez returned. “Notifications have been made.”
Lomo put a hundred dollars of Benjamin’s money out. “Now deal.”
Gomez stepped back from the table.
“I said deal.”
Four sturdy men in plain clothes tackled Lomo. Three more grabbed Kern and threw him to the floor. Lomo kicked over the blackjack table as he fell. Benjamin sat untouched on his stool. An enormous man cranked Lomo’s arm high behind his back with a loud pop reminiscent of a champagne bottle blowing its cork.
“Jesus God!” Lomo screamed.
He had first dislocated his shoulder playing football in college and ever since, Lomo would impress his drinking buddies by downing several shots of tequila and snapping it in and out with surprisingly little discomfort. But he was not drunk now, and through a painful haze he realized what bothered him about the dealer. It was the name tag. Not the name itself, but what was written beneath it.
“You goddamn filthy red-skin!” Lomo shrieked as the security men hauled him through the gathering crowd, “you set me up again!”
A slot machine paid a noisy jackpot aisles away and the crowd turned back to more serious pursuits. When a few gamblers thought to look back, Lomo and Kern were gone.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the pit boss said to Benjamin, “I’ve seen dealers robbed, I’ve seen security guards robbed, I’ve seen the cashier held up, but I’ve never seen a player robbed at gunpoint.” He spoke as if he just saw the Pope-mobile car-jacked by a baggy-panted, bald-headed Los Angeles gangster. “What the hell is this world coming to?”
“Outrageous,” Benjamin agreed.
“How much in chips did you have before this, ahem, incident?”
“Two or three thousand.”
The pit boss gave him a voucher for four thousand dollars and a free suite.
“I hope this won’t affect your choice of casino,” he said.
“Could have happened anywhere.”
Well, Benjamin reflected after he had cashed the voucher, not quite anywhere.
He went to his suite and threw his bag on the couch. He opened the champagne waiting in an ice bucket and took the bottle into the bathroom. He turned on the Jacuzzi, stripped, and settled in for a long soak. An hour later he reluctantly got out of the water to answer a knock at his door. He dropped the bottle in the trash and put on the robe he found hanging on a hook. He opened the door. Keith Gomez stepped inside. Benjamin closed the door and hugged him. Then he gave Gomez one thousand dollars.
Gomez took off and threw his name tag on the bed. The words under the name said Cheyenne Wyoming.
“How’s your mom?” Benjamin asked.
“Just fine. We got her a house in Henderson. You should go see her. She’s always asking about you.”
“Maybe I will,” Benjamin said. “She’s a hell of a lady.”
Keith Gomez took a beer from the mini-bar. He sat on the bed and turned on the television. His father, a fifth generation Texan from El Paso, had met Benjamin’s
aunt while prospecting in Wyoming. They married a year later and settled in Cheyenne.
“Don’t know why, but you always were her favorite nephew.”
“Your sister still dealing at Circus Circus?”
“Nope.” Gomez counted the money. “She’s at the Mirage now.”
“Maybe I’ll stick around a few days and go visit.”
“Sure.” Gomez put the bills in his pocket. “She’d love to see you.”
“Evening, Mr. Getty. Spare one of them beers?”
Duncan tore a can from the six-pack and tossed it to the bum under the stairs. He had since figured out whom Getty was, and he was not amused. At the top of the stairs he heard music. He ducked under the pipe and opened the door. Only Women Bleed played on his stereo. Pris lay on his couch, immaculate legs crossed, jacket off and shoulders smooth and bare. She held Cat on her stomach and stroked him in time to the music. Duncan’s Stetson adorned her head. The hair spilling beneath the brim lit his heart like a two-hundred watt halogen floodlight.
“What took you so long?” she asked.
“Someone stole my bicycle. I had to walk.”
She laughed, then stopped when she saw he was serious. “I was going to the Hollywood for a drink, but then I saw your cat in the window.” She sat up. “Sorry about Sheila. I should have known she would do something stupid.”
He sat beside her. “No one got hurt.” He thought of Sven. “Much.”
The music ceased. Pris rose and bent over his stereo. He remembered to breathe. Only Women Bleed started again.
“This is my theme song. Has been since I was fifteen.”
“Why’s that?”
Her smile evaporated and her eyes assumed a distant aspect reminiscent of Fiona standing over Sean Delaney’s grave, looking through miles of misty memories at what her life might have been. Pris was as dismal a sight as the time he witnessed a calf’s neck broken at the rodeo when he was ten. Cowboys put the dead animal on a sled, and as they dragged it away, someone behind Duncan said, hamburger for dinner tonight, I guess. Duncan had burst into tears to the crowd’s general amusement.
“Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime.”
She closed her eyes, leaned back, and stretched. Duncan bit his tongue. He felt like a voyeur watching her. Cat crawled back into her lap.
Duncan stood. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Juice if you have it.”
He put the beer in the refrigerator and picked up a carton of orange juice. It was frozen solid. He turned the temperature down. Two sodas sat on a shelf near a cup of cherry yogurt. Pris stood in the doorway.
“How about a soda?” he asked.
“That’s fine.”
He pulled the tab on a can. It exploded and drenched his shirt and jeans with icy foam. Pris laughed and Duncan grinned stupidly.
“Had a little accident?” she asked.
“I better change.”
“You better.”
Duncan stripped in the bathroom. He glimpsed his naked body in the mirror and cringed at his skin’s luminosity. He realized he had brought no clothes in with him. He wrapped a towel around his waist and stuck his head out the door.
“Don’t look,” he said.
Pris closed her eyes. Duncan trotted to the box where he kept his clothes and pulled out boxers, a t-shirt, and jeans. When he turned to run back to the bathroom, Pris was regarding him.
“You’ve got a nice body, Duncan,” she said.
“Thanks. You should see the rest of me.”
She tossed his hat to the floor and retrieved her tape. She picked up her purse and jacket and headed for the door. Her eyes were cold and her smile was replaced by a frosty scowl.
“I’ll pass,” she said as she went by.
“What did I say?”
She tarried at the door. “I’m not interested in the size of your dick.”
“That’s not what I meant!”
“No? What did you mean?”
She had him. He could not say he meant he wanted to get naked with her, though that was he had in mind when he said it. She watched him with sapphire eyes, twice as cold and just as blue. He felt like he was back in sixth grade with Sister Mary Elizabeth questioning him regarding Mary’s virtue. Duncan was raised on a ranch and personally doubted the concept of a virgin birth. But young as he was, he was old enough to know the truth would not in that instance set him free. That was the year Fiona had decided a parochial education might wean Duncan from Benjamin’s opprobrious influence. His Catholic schooling lasted one week until Mother Margaret Mary (all the nuns’ names contained a permutation of Mary), an imposingly fat nun with short black hair and a thin black mustache which she refused to dye or pluck, charged Duncan with throwing jelly beans during the Thursday hot dog sale. She held him after school until Fiona arrived to protest that Duncan did not even like jelly beans, as they stuck to his bridgework. Mother Margaret Mary was adamant. The rainbow projectiles she had witnessed emanated from the vicinity of Duncan’s table, and the other children were known by her to be from reputable families, not the son of an idiot who essentially committed suicide with his reckless and irresponsible heroics. Mother Margaret Mary was unaware that Benjamin, playing hooky from Duncan’s old school and stationed beneath the window with a slingshot and a bag of Jelly Bellys, was trying to bag himself a penguin. Unwisely, the good Mother voiced her opinion of Sean Delaney’s final moments to Fiona. Father Fay, inquiring into the commotion in the principal’s office, again was required to pull Fiona away from the object of her wrath just as Fiona landed a knee to Mother Margaret Mary’s solar plexus. After regaining her breath, the nun slowly stood, and as Fiona struggled in Father Fay’s clutches, planted a cheap right cross to Fiona’s jaw. Duncan sent the nun profanely shrieking to the floor with a hard kick in the shin. He forthwith returned to education at the public expense.
But now Pris’s question, like Sister Mary Elizabeth’s concerning the Virgin Mary, awaited an answer. The recess bell had saved him then. He foresaw no like deliverance now. He ventured a variation of the truth.
“I was just flirting. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
But she left anyway. Duncan went to his window. Pris crossed the street and climbed into her Cadillac.
“Wait!” he called.
She extended a finger to him in a universal gesture of contempt and drove away. Duncan threw the t-shirt and pants back into the box. He pulled his Stetson down to his ears.
“I am a moron,” he said.
Actually, Duncan’s penis was on the large side of average. This he knew because Tiffy had once broken out a tape measure and compared his numbers with a dog-eared chart cut out of Cosmopolitan Magazine. The results had pleased her. Duncan now suspected (based on the notations and general wear on the chart) that her elation was derived from a wealth of previous comparisons. The results had merely relieved Duncan. Even if he was bigger than his fellow man, he did not believe he merited additional points for style or endurance. He had experienced sex with one female his entire life and though she had tutored him well, his knowledge was provincial. But as the Cadillac faded around a corner, the size of his manhood was Duncan’s most distant concern.
He set a canvas on his easel. He pictured her when he walked in, the angle of his Stetson on her head and the shadow the brim cast across her eyes. He thought of the canary dress, of her legs and her shoulders and of her hand on Cat in her lap. He remembered her smile. When it was all projected from his mind onto the canvas, he painted.
Later that night, Sheila Rascowitz burst into Duncan’s studio, her jaw tight as a sprung trap and her eyes as wild as the rat caught within. The towel lay on the floor by his feet where it had dropped unnoticed hours before. Duncan was naked from the hat down.
“Where is she?”
Duncan picked up and wrapped the towel around his waist. Sheila’s lips stretched back to reveal fine sharp incisors.
“Where is who?”
“Don’t who me! I ca
n smell she’s been here!”
Sheila lunged. Duncan darted aside. She came away with his towel, leaving him dangling.
“I know why you want her!” Sheila growled. She pursued him around the couch. “I see it between your legs!”
Duncan dove for his baseball bat. Sheila arrived first. She hefted the bat above her head and swung a home run at Duncan’s skull. He ducked. The bat whistled through the air above his Stetson. Cat vaulted onto Sheila’s shoulders and buried his teeth in her neck. She shrieked, dropped the bat, and threw Cat on the couch. The hand she touched to her neck came back wet and red. Duncan snatched Cat and fled to the bathroom.
“Arrggghhhh!” Sheila howled in deranged fury.
Duncan bolted himself in the bathroom. Sheila flung the bat aside and slammed her shoulder repeatedly against the door. Duncan set his back against the creaking wood, his kidneys perceiving each thundering blow. The assault stopped. He heard wood snap, glass shatter, and fabric rip. He heard her stomp a mad flamenco dance in army boots. A door slammed. He listened to silence a long while before he emerged from his tile and porcelain sanctuary. His easel lay in fractured pieces. Splintered brushes and crushed paint tubes littered the studio. A rainbow kaleidoscope of storm trooper boot prints danced across the floor. Duncan stepped carefully around the paint. He liked the way it looked. His canvas lay slashed on the floor, useless as old chamois at an automated car wash. He looked out the window. Duncan picked Cat up and held him to his cheek.
“Thanks, buddy,” he said. “We’re even now.”
He set Cat down and wedged a chair against the door. He capped the tubes of paint he could save and trashed the ones he could not. He threw his broken brushes in the garbage and placed the remains of his easel beside the door. He shut off the light and went to bed.
When he was eight, Duncan’s father had taken him to a river shrouded by pines and mountains, where trout jumped rainbow arcs across icy cascades and smooth green rocks. The dream took Duncan there. He held a fishing pole, the line loose across the water. A trout hit and his line went tight.
Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom Page 7
