Chaingang

She had lots of wrinkles. A bad dye job. White blouse and string tie. Long, Mandarinesque fingernails. But she was his secret ace, and he hoped she was every bit as good as the Feds had promised him.

He got two-dollar chips and bucked heads with the house for half an hour. Making it look good. Getting half-tanked; the Darvon and the tequila and the brewskis all floating around now in the Feelreal Goodzone while he got his balls up.

“Double down.” He had twenty against a bust. Let it ride, and was suddenly sitting with 180 bucks, without help, and feeling the power.

He pushed two hundred out. Caught a pair of face cards and edged Tia by a point. Four hundred and change.

Got chicken and slowed down for about an hour. Eased back on the booze, letting Vandella kick a free Oly over now and again. Nursing six bills.

He lost eight hands in a row. Bet a ten and stood on fourteen and she took it.

Bet ninety and was down one eighty and change. Bet the one eighty. Changed his mind and swept it all back but a dime. Lost.

Pushed it all out again and caught eighteen. She hit seventeen and caught a ten. He won. Ended up with eight hundred bucks.

Bet it all and about crapped when Tia turned over a bright red king. He was sitting there with a nine and a seven, and he put his stack of chips on it and stood. She flipped the hole card, and it was a six. She tapped it and broke her back, and Royce had to go wee-wee real bad. He pocketed his sixteen hundred-dollar chips, toked Tia half his change, and excused himself.

When he came out of the room with “Trouser Snakes” on the door, there was Happy and his bonebreaker, Luis. Luis was a big, dumb goon. He'd been a pro fighter, and the word was he liked to spar with kids and hurt them. He had a face that resembled the bad side of a heavily cratered planet, and fists like cast-iron doorstops.

“Que pasa, amigo?” Happy called to him jovially.

“Nada."

“My man,” he told Vandella, who carefully poured tequilas, “whatever my amigo wants."

“Less sit,” Happy said, smiling only with his mouth. “So.” He drank. Licked his lips. Nodded. Said “So” again.

“So.” Royce smiled.

“I think a cold one would go down real slick,” Happy said, pulling the fourth chair out and putting his cowboy boots up on it, getting mud on the chair seat.

“Yeah."

“Cervezas, por favor,” he told Vandella without raising his voice, as if he knew the bartender would hear it. Then, in the same tone, as if he didn't care who heard what, he asked Royce, “You gonna take the weight or what, amigo?"

“Sure!” It caught him off guard. “What you think, Happy?"

“Hmm?"

“Don't I always?” Big smiles all around. Big buds having a pleasant drink together.

“Hub?” Happy suddenly had appeared to have lost his hearing altogether. Very hard to talk to. Luis looming at his side.

“Don't I always?"

“Yeah, bro, but you an ounce-pouncer, senor. No offense. I wanna know you gonna take the weight for true now.” Still the fake smile through Columbian tan and expensive teeth.

“No problemo."

“Okey dokey.” He laughed his loud bray. Looking at Luis. “I like that: no prob-lem-o.” The ferocious-looking dummy beside him tried to look like he was smiling too.

“This is King of Peru now, right?” Royce was going to play it out straight to the end. He even sounded concerned.

“Zorro-d'Oro. El Primo-dreamo. You wanna leetle taste up front?"

“Oh—” he spread hands “—not nec-essary.” Getting into it. “Satisfaction gay-ron-fucking-teed, amigo.” A hand reached into inner recesses, came out, slid across, and laid something in Hawthorne's palm. “Horn some of this li'l girl up your snout."

“Excuse me for a minute?” Royce pushed the chair back and started for the “Trouser Snakes” sign.

“Be my guest,” Happy Ruiz called to him in a loud voice as he headed for the john. Jack Eigen from the beautiful Chez Paree—"Be my guest."

Royce turned with a pinched grin on his face. “Be right back."

“Muy bien."

He went into the men's room again and did some of the blow. It knifed through him, getting his head right for the first time since he'd opened his blinkers. He rubbed his nose, came out, and walked over to the table where Tia was about to deal a customer. He threw his pocketful of chips down on the felt twenty-one layout.

“Let's ride that. You want to?” he asked, those being the magic words. For whatever reason, she wasn't with it. The woman began counting, stacking fifteen chips with 100 stamped on each one in green and yellow. Her eyebrows, painted an inch above where they had originally grown, arched another half an inch as she dealt him in automatically, flipping pasteboards to the three of them.

“You got it, sir,” she said. Half a beat late. The encoded response, all right, but clearly she was just registering what had happened. The end of her first shift, probably. The woman was tired. She was human. What the hell.