Queenpin (8 page)

I bought a pack of Chesterfields from the newsstand vendor. My hands shaking, he matched me and I smoked one on the spot. As he clipped the string off stacks of dailies, he glanced at me.

“Rough night, honey?”

“Had to make a big decision,” I replied.

“Who’s the lucky fella?” He smiled, hands covered in newsprint “Luck’s for suckers,” I said, letting the cigarette fall to the ground.

Back at his place, his hand on my hip bone, my hip fast on the mattress—fuck me, who knew I was so easy? Who knew I’d pull a Judas the first chance I got?

∞◊∞

If I’d waited it out, if I’d been patient, bided my time, looking for just the right chance, then I could have done it right. I could have used all the lessons she taught me to plan it perfectly, like she would have. But that wasn’t what this was. It wasn’t about outsmarting her or about protecting myself. I had to do it fast because there was no time. I had to do it fast before I lost my nerve.

“You can’t throw any money down on horses, Vic,” I said. “If they find out I got heisted, missed making my bets, and someone scored on the same races, then it’s all over for me,Vic. Do you see? They can connect the dots and it’s over. Tire iron to the head.”

“Sure, I see, baby, sure,” he said, practically rubbing his hands. The wolf. The wolf but not like before. His eyes not yellow flares trained on me. No, in his head, he was standing at that roulette table, letting his chips roll across his fingers, watching the wheel whirring, everything in his body vibrating with its purr, with the clicking of the spinning ball, the other bettors holding their breath, leaning in, pressing on the polished wood at the table’s edge, the wood groaning as they squeezed it with their anxious fingers, nothing moving but the wheel, the ball, and a comet trail of cigarette smoke twisting up to the low, low ceiling.

“There’s this rhythm,” he once told me. “Each dealer has his own, like a signature, no two alike. Every time they pick up the ball from the pocket, they do it the same way. Every time they spin it, it’s the same way, with the same go behind it. If you know the dealer, if you know him well enough, watch him close enough, well, the ball will always spin the same number of times and will land the same number of pockets away from the last spin. It becomes a song you know and you can sing along with it. You see, there’s ways to make it all work for you, babycakes. There are. You play like I do long enough, it’s going to pay off, the big gold dream.”

He was every pit boss’s, every racetrack owner’s, every shark’s deepest dream come to life. He was going to talk himself into losing for the rest of his days. He was a fish, a pigeon. Might as well walk into the carpet joint with his pockets hanging out of his pants.

Funny how it almost made me cry, it was so beautiful. Who could keep on believing like that? I’d never believed anything like that.

“You have to promise me,Vic,” I said, and my hands were shaking. I knew I would be seeing her in an hour, taking her to the train station, and how could she not see it all over me? “You have to promise you’ll only bet on the football game. Nothing else. I hear you place bets at those tracks—”

“Don’t worry, honey,” he said. “I’m playing by your rules. Cross my heart.”

He was so calm, so pleased, so distracted, thinking not of me but of that big gold dream of his. Suddenly I wanted to smack him. I almost did. Instead, I blurted out, “She’ll never buy it. Don’t you see? My boss, she won’t believe it. I wouldn’t.”

He smiled and took my arms in his hands, focused his eyes on me. “She will. She will. You just gotta make it look real for her. You gotta look like you were taken.”

I looked at him and then I said it. I knew it fast and said it. “You’re going to have to put me in the hospital.”

Before I picked her up, I had a vodka neat, then, in the same glass, a slug of Micrin mouthwash, neat. By the time I was driving her to the train station, my hands were still, my voice was steady. I matched her mask for mask. In my head, I’d talked myself into forgetting everything but doing my job. Pleasing her. Seeing her off.

Just as we pulled into the station, she said, “What’s going on?”

I felt something spring in my chest like a kick drum.

“What do you mean?”

“You seem relaxed,” she said, powdering her nose from a small tortoiseshell compact. “Figured you for more jumpy.”

“Why should I be jumpy?” I said, trying not to suddenly sound jumpy.

“Because, Little Miss Marker;” she said, snapping the compact shut, “when I’m heel-and-toeing it for a few days, you usually are.” She looked at me. “Don’t tell me, you’re all grown up now, kid?”

There was a kind of warmth in her voice, not like anyone could notice it but me, but I could. I could hear it and it seeped into my ear like honey. I couldn’t see her eyes, not with those big sunglasses enclosing her face, narrowing her face into a kind of arrow’s head, her sharp chin the point. It was just a mask anyway. That face was just a mask. Listen to the voice, the voice is the thing. Not the usual slither, or jagged edges or grit clenched teeth. There was a warmth. I heard it, felt it.

“Maybe I am grown up,” I said, trying not to smile too much, to make too much of it, to cause her to retreat. “Or getting closer.”

“Off your knees at least,” she said, opening the car door and stepping out. “You’re off your knees at least, aren’t you?” she said as she slammed the door behind her and began walking away.

I sat in the car for five minutes trying to figure that one out. Then I stopped trying.

He didn’t pause a second before his fist came at me, a hard belt to the jaw that snapped my head against the wall with a nasty pop. I saw stars. I remember thinking, I figured this would be harder for him. It wasn’t hard at all. Then, before I knew it, his left came at me, swiveling my head the other way, cheekbone cracking against the metal door frame of the clubhouse. I thought I would be sick. I held my stomach with both hands. Everything was tingling and I was still standing and I felt everything everywhere.

“Give me one more. Give me one more,” I whispered, chin raised, face hot, whole body shuddering. He paused, gave his brow a crinkle of worry, but for less than a second, then let me have it. That was the one that knocked me out.

It had all happened so quickly. An hour before, I’d picked up the money from the accountant over on the east side. I didn’t see anyone watching me as I left, but I wasn’t taking chances. It had to look real enough. The usual routine was to go straight to the track, so that’s what I did.

We’d talked about how Casa Mar would be crowded, jammed with spectators. Most places, we’d have to do too much playacting and there was the risk of someone playing hero, seeing it and saving the day. Then we hit it. More than once, I’d walked behind the paddocks, having a cigarette, listening for any useful back-fence chin-wagging. So we made it so I’d stroll just far enough from the mix, behind the jockeys’ quarters.

Standing there, I lit a cigarette, and two puffs in, it was clear the time was now. He came at me. He came at me hard. No one was watching. We’d both made sure. But from far enough away, it would look real. It would look like an ugly holdup.

When he came at me, there was this: he was the wolf again. The yellow flare in his eyes. His hands on me. And he was all-in. I remember thinking, He’s hitting me like he’d hit a man, and I wanted to take it that way, oh, did I. I also remember thinking how it was like being back at Saint Lucy’s, where your whole body is prone, your whole body is ready to take it. Because that’s why you’re there.

He wasn’t supposed to knock me out, Vic. It would make it harder for me to avoid the cops, a ruckus. I didn’t want a ruckus. Even if I had been mugged, she wouldn’t like that, wouldn’t like all the questions.

A wandering horse trainer found me as I was coming to, helped me to my car. He wanted to take me to the track docs, the track badges, but I told him if my husband found out where I was, he’d do me worse than the mugger ever did. So he let me go.

The whole drive, scared I would pass out again and crash, I gritted my teeth so deep into my lip it bled. But it kept me awake. I went straight to her doctor, just like I would have done if I’d really been clipped. He said I should have gone to the emergency room. He talked about contusions, a crushed cheekbone, and how he hated to see girls in this line of work. He put three stitches above my eyebrow —Vic hadn’t bothered to take his ring off either—and gave me a shoebox full of dope.

When I got home, I didn’t look in the mirror. I knew it would pass with her, it had to. Who would do this to herself on purpose?

The only nagging fear was that she might think whatever fellow had put the bruises on my thigh had now knocked the face out of my face and taken my money. Which was true, after all.

When she called that night, I told her. I told her I’d been jumped at the track by some gee who must’ve been following me, waiting for his shot.

“You went to see Haskins?”

“Yeah, he wrapped me up.”

“Gave you some Mr. Blue?”

“Yeah.”

“Cut the booze then,” she said. I could hear her exhaling. “I told

you about tails,” she went on. “About where you walk and when.” Then, after a pause, she said, “Funny.”

“What?”

“That today of all days it happens. It’s like they knew you were carrying twice the action.”

“Some people might’ve known.”

“My accountant’s clean,” she said, rough. “I’ve known him thirty years.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “My head’s fuzzy.” I let my voice go soft, weak. It wasn’t hard. I was feeling the gluey rush of the morphine I had taken an hour before, in preparation.

“Get some shut-eye,” she said. “I’ll get a cab from the train station and be over first thing in the morning.”

When she saw me, her eyes widened. It was the first time I’d ever seen the whites of her eyes. Her jaw was trembling so slightly, like a violin string. So slight only I would notice. Because I’d never seen it any way but granite still.

I was lying on the sofa, curled up in my bathrobe. I was Camille.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

She walked over. For a second, it looked like she was going to

place one gloved hand on mine. It hovered there. She was letting me see something, but just barely.

“He came out of nowhere,” I murmured. “I should have made him. It was like he came out of nowhere.”

She sat down on the coffee table facing me. Taking off her sunglasses, she peered at my face. I felt like something behind glass, something smeared on a slide under a microscope.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “You have to know. It won’t ever happen again.”

“No,” she said. “It won’t.”

I didn’t like the look in her eye. “Please, Gloria. I’ll make it up.”

“I know,” she said. “I should have taught you this. I should have taught you how to handle yourself for this.”

Through the throb over my eye I looked at her. She was nervous. For her, this was nervous. A little twitch on the side of her mouth, her arms straight at her sides, fingers closed around the edge of the table. For her, this was as bare as it got. It seemed like a good sign. Like she was figuring things, how to work it so we didn’t take the hit for this.

“You can still teach me that,” I said, trying to sit up, my face pulsing like a separate, living thing. “Teach me how to handle myself.”

She nodded at me. “All right,” she said, “but for now, stay put.” And she reached down for the afghan hanging off the edge of the sofa. She lifted it with her gloved fingers, pulled it up my chest.

I could hear her breathing, hear her thinking. How am I going to play this with the big boys? That’s what she was thinking. How’m I going to save my girl?

“I’ll take care of it,” she said as she left.

No word from Vic, but that was probably smart. We knew we had to be careful. Had to bide our time. The next day I went to the drugstore for the football results. The man who sold me the paper tried not to look at my face when he gave me change.

“Who was favored?” I asked, pointing to the score. “State. They were favored by thirteen. Won by six.”

“Okay,” I said. I would have smiled, but it hurt too much.

She came over later in the day with some more dope and some groceries.

She didn’t look so nervous anymore. And she didn’t like my face. She kept staring at it and shaking her head.

“You can’t make any runs until your face heals.You look like a two-dollar whore.”

She wasn’t going to be tucking me under any afghans today, that was clear. I wondered what she’d found out.

“I know I can’t,” I said. “In a few days …”

“Go back to Haskins tomorrow. Have him try to do something. Christ.”

We had some coffee. She told me she would have jobs for me in a week or two. Until then, I’d have to lay low. I asked her about any fallout from the bets I hadn’t been able to place. I was sure her bosses weren’t happy paying off a higher return rate to bookies whose bets they’d covered as place and show.

“Nobody’s happy,” she said. “But I told you: I’m taking care of things.”

As she was leaving, she turned to me, slipping on her leather driving gloves.

“You know,” she said, “the action at the track that day— somebody won big on the fourth race. The way some might see it, the tough who robbed you ended up playing that dough. All on one horse. I have a lot of eyes at the track and they’re looking into it for us.”

“Good,” I said, because there was nothing else I could say.

I think I probably already knew Vic had played at least some of that money at the track, even with his sweet football tip. He couldn’t help himself. He had to take every shot he had. He couldn’t turn away from a sure thing. All his life was about sure things. Oh,Vic.

He finally called the next day.

“I saw your game played out real nice,” I said.

“Yeah, baby.” I could hear his smile. “And there’s plenty more gold

to mine there.”

“So you put the whole haul on the game?”

“Sure did. Just like we said, buttercup.”

“And so now you’re true blue with Mackey?”