The Odds (7 page)

But just then Mac shouted up the steps. “Tell him to get the fuck out of here! He’s a baby. He’s making me nervous.”

I’ll wash cars, Joel thought. So much for making decent money.

Zero muttered, “I don’t know how much room there is, you know. We have to watch out for our own stake. You understand? Meet you up here tomorrow, okay, maybe then.” Zero’s face showed Mac was coming back up the steps.

Mac said, “Hey, read my lips, punk.
You
aren’t coming back here anymore. Stay away.” Mac unzipped a backpack and looked inside, zipped it back up. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” Joel said.

Suddenly Mac shoved him. Joel went back two steps, looked around to see that he wasn’t going to fall down the steps. Mac laughed, then started pushing Joel down the stairs, saying, “You getting the message? No room on the mountain. And hey, do you know how to shut up?”

Joel went the rest of the way down the rotting stairs and out. It felt good to be outside. He walked slowly for a while, then began to run.

Finally, closer to home, he began tapping on doors and asking the people who answered if they needed a car washed. After lots of knocking, he had only two yeses.

When he got home, Meg called them all into the living room. “I didn’t get a real job yet. The question is, should we keep trying,” she asked, “to make it for a little while?”

They all said yes, including Joel.

Laurie announced that she had three babysitting jobs lined up, but not until next week, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, but she would check with the people again about this weekend. She counted out loud, “Six dollars, ten dollars, and maybe another six dollars.” She looked bright. “Good, isn’t it?”

“It’s great,” Meg said. “Twenty-two dollars for food. And I got two people to say they’d let me clean.”

“Where?” Laurie asked.

“I talked my way into the apartment building on the corner. But nobody needed me until after school next week. Tuesday and Thursday. People cancel and change their minds, so …” She looked at Laurie to prepare her for that eventuality as well. “We can’t completely count on it. But if we’re on, I ought to bring in another twenty.”

“You’re doing it too cheap.”

“I am, but it’s how I got them to say yes.”

Joel blanched. “I got two car washes. I told them I’d be back. I have to get going. Do we have soap?”

Meg mopped her brow. “Not much. Just a little dish soap.”

“Well, I have to get some somewhere. I only charged three bucks for the car washes. I tried five, but nobody said yes to five.”

“That’s the message all right. Low wages. But we’ll have food at least. If we get you soap, we have six dollars we didn’t have. People must be waiting.” She went to the kitchen calling, “On Tuesday and Thursday, you need to stay with Susannah since both of us are going to be busy after school. Okay?”

“I figured that.”

They went silent, calculating what they could buy at the grocery store for six dollars. Whatever it was had to last until Tuesday.

“Maybe the pizza man would give us food again,” Susannah said.

Meg came back with a couple of rags and two buckets, one of clear water, the other with a haze of soap in it. “This is the best we can do. You better go.”

Joel went off to wash cars. One person didn’t answer the door, no matter how many times he knocked. The other paid him three bucks after he worked for an hour on the car. He tried knocking on more doors. Three bucks was not enough. Period.

Meg bought pasta with the three dollars. She said she would not go up to the pizza shop to beg, not without trying other things first.

   HE HAD BOUGHT A COUPLE OF bottles of whiskey and now had one under the counter. About four o’clock, he had a double and he started to feel better. He turned his mind to the woman who had come on to him. She had that interested look in her eye, but what was he going to do? He couldn’t go messing around with police. He couldn’t tell her anything real about himself. He couldn’t actually meet her later. Yet he kept thinking of just that.

When Marko had burst in, he’d asked a lot of questions—where was Carl, had Nick seen him?—and then gone to make rounds for a second time. Marko in his distraction had not paid attention to the detective, Greer. That was good, that was luck.

And Nick sure didn’t ask if the kid who overdosed was one of Marko’s customers. Chances were, yes.

There wasn’t much business in the late afternoon. He was listening to the radio when he heard a car stop. Markovic came into the shop from the front, angry, agitated. Nick busied himself chopping peppers. Unfortunately there were no customers as buffers. Markovic paced. “Want a drink?” Nick asked.

Marko said, “You better hide that shit good. Yeah, I want one. Make it quick. You seen Carl today?”

“No.” Nick poured. He poured himself one.

“Little shit. He didn’t make our meet.” They both downed their drinks and Nick washed the glasses and put the bottle back under the counter.

“You’re gonna get tested tonight,” Marko said. “A job.”

Well, that was that. So much for hoping the moment would never come.

“You fuck me up, I will never forgive you. You have to follow orders.” Marko paced a little. “I vouched for you, you understand?”

Nick felt himself not breathing. He said, “I think so.”

“Do better than thinking. Just follow orders. Plain and simple.”

“Whose orders am I following?”

“A guy we use. Earl. He’ll come get you. He knows how to do these things.”

“When?”

“Tonight. Later. When you close up. You don’t follow directions, you won’t live to talk about it.”

“What, throw me in the river?”

Marko’s head jerked up. “What are you getting at?”

“Things I heard.”

“Just remember, get it straight, the person who told you that is a fucking cunthead worthless shit.”

“We all are.”

“We all are. You got that right.”

Marko left.

Nick took another drink. His lives receded and seemed not to be real. Boyhood, Marko, fishing, marriage, gambling, trouble, prison, fishing, here. There was only here. Only now.

Numb felt good. Not moving felt good. Dead wouldn’t be so bad either.

The bottle of whiskey under the counter wasn’t quite tall enough for what Nick needed—a way to skate past tonight and maybe tomorrow until he could get out of this mess.

   MARINA HAD GONE HOME TO fetch the kids and bring them to the hospital. Eric’s and Julie’s expressions when they entered their father’s room were half bravado, half curiosity, eyes quickly taking in bed, table, IV stand.

“Did they bring you dinner yet?”

“Not yet.”

Marina told them, “If you stay out of the nurses’ way, they’ll let you stay. Go on, you’re allowed to hug him.”

Eric and Julie hesitated, looking at their father for a sign, before they went to him. Julie, who had a surprising, stringy muscularity, went for his neck and clamped. Eric did a quick brush of a hug.

“Let’s go for a little walk,” he said, pointing to the hallway. “Um, I smell food.” He tried to make it sound cheerful, but Marina wasn’t fooled.

When he stood, the blanket he’d been using around his shoulders fell to the floor.

“Were you cold?” Julie asked.

“Just my little security blanket.” He tossed the blanket, with a show of panache, to the visitor’s chair.

They led him toward the hallway. He caught himself giving into shuffling and worked to lift his feet.

Marina told him, “We’re not going to stay too long. They just needed to see you. I’ll take them out for dinner. Something fun.”

A huge cartful of trays came rattling toward them.

“Damn,” he said as nausea hit him again.

“What?” Julie asked.

“The smell. My body doesn’t like the smell of food anymore.”

“Do you think you’ll always hate the smell?”

“Oh, no, no, no, I’ll like it again when I feel better.”

“How long do you think?”

“When they’re done pumping medicine in him,” Eric informed his sister. Whose harsh phrase was that? Their mother’s? Marina flushed with anger.

He shuffled back to his room. An aide had just put the tray with its warming tin on his rolling table. She lifted the lid with the flourish of a French waiter. She was the one who liked him, his fan. “There you are, baby,” she said.

Carrots, beans, chicken, rolls, pudding.

Marina hugged him because she knew he couldn’t look.

   NICK WAITS UNTIL AFTER closing time, but the man hasn’t come for him. He starts to breathe again, locks up, and walks the few blocks home, thinking about a shower and wondering if he is sober enough to go meet the woman detective at the Blues Café. His luck has held. Plenty of liquid courage in him and no need for it. He’s home and just about to pull out the keys to his place when he hears someone behind him. An unfamiliar voice says, “Let’s go.”

This moment, this, feels more like his life. When he hesitates, the man says, “Move it. We got a job tonight.”

Nick pockets his keys and turns. The two men walk in silence toward a Ford the man is pointing to; Nick tries to look at his companion, the bad luck that has come after all. Short man. Long hair and long sideburns, a face that looks as if it has weathered several beatings.

“What’s your name?” Nick asks.

“You don’t need my name.”

“Well, you better be Earl. Where’s Markovic?”

“Who? You don’t learn too good. You aren’t supposed to use his name ever. Huh? Or mine. You don’t need names.”

Nick wants to haul off and hit the guy. The drink has given him that anyway, the loosening of the arm hinges. He wants to keep drinking. It helps. He has a nice bottle in his apartment.

He looks longingly back toward his building. “Where we going?”

“You ask too many questions. Get in.”

Nick gets into a small Ford, an Escort, an old thing that has something you rarely see these days, rust. This guy’s job doesn’t pay much, he thinks.

The guy’s face becomes a little clearer. Profile, if you could call it that, well, the guy hardly has one; it’s a smashed-in face framed by hair that’s brown, long, and greasy. The sideburns aren’t shaped as muttonchops or anything intentional; they’re just long growths that go the length of the face. The guy wears a T-shirt under an open threadbare shirt, jeans, shitkickers.

It is starting to move from warm to chilly. The light has been gone from the sky for almost two hours. He hopes whatever he has to do goes fast. He hopes for luck.

They drive only a couple of streets. The man parks the car. It occurs to Nick that Carl lives somewhere in this direction, but the fact of it doesn’t adhere to any other thought. His brain sends up signals—cut, run, remember—but the signals are weak, and for that he is almost grateful.

“Walk the rest of the way,” says the hairy fellow. His sideburns have the look of something dripping down to his chin, Nick thinks, and he laughs.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just amusing myself.”

“You get to have a lot of fun in a little bit.”

“I don’t have a gun.”

“I know that. I got you covered.”

Will the gun Marko promised him be presented later as part of his test? Or is tonight a matter of fists and threats? Which? He shakes his head to banish resistance. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. Whatever happens will happen.

The other guy is moving fast now, and Nick has the impression he’s been scanning the street. They go to a house, they go around back, the man takes a ring of keys out of his pocket, chooses one with a piece of black tape on it, jiggles the lock for a full minute, and they’re in.

“Shit. Fuck,” the guy explodes. “He was here again. He must have been here minutes ago, because I was … I missed him. Missed the fucker.”

Who? Nick wants to ask. But a part of him knows; it’s coming to him who it is, and he doesn’t know what to do with the knowledge. He looks around. The place is skimmed down, not bare, but spare. It was probably fairly clean to start with, but now it’s a mess.

“We’re going to find him.”

“Just wait here for him, might be better,” Nick offers.

The other man adjusts his T-shirt over the gun he carries as if to let Nick see it. “Just do what I say. Huh? Just do what I tell you. You know where he went?”

Nick doesn’t ask,
Who?
He just says, “No.”

Then they go back to the car and start up the hill. To Nick’s dismay, they see someone up ahead, a tall kid who walks like Carl, and he’s carrying something.

   COLLEEN PAYS THE COVER charge at the door to the Blues Café. She’s been home to change—her best skinny jeans, a little tank, a lacy jacket, heels. She feels kind of good. She’s all ready to say the speech about how her friends couldn’t come after all, and she even has an image of these friends she’s supposed to meet. They’re John and Judy Potocki—in her mind, back together again.

He isn’t here yet. Nick. Banks. He liked her. He’ll show.

She feels hot, alive, interested, interesting.

It could be the jazz. That helps.

She takes a seat at the bar because it seems wrong to tie up one of the tables on a gamble. She watches the bartender working. When he gets to her, she orders a scotch, rocks. She tries not to direct her attention to the door, but can’t help it and looks up just in time to see Potocki come in. He maintains a bland expression, doesn’t flinch or react or even look toward her, but pays his fee and takes up a spot far away.

The tenor saxophonist is blowing a storm and the rest of the band seems to want to follow him, so she listens to the music for a long time as if it’s what she came for.

The menu chalked on a board tells her the bar serves fried provolone, fried onion rings, fries. She decides fries; she didn’t have much dinner. By the time she gets the waitress’s attention, it’s close to eleven thirty. She has to shout over the music what she wants.