Spoonbenders

He’d have to win her over. The same with the pill. “Just tell me where you want to go,” he told the ball. “Or just the neighborhood.” Predicting the exact number where it landed paid thirty-five to one, but that level of precision wasn’t required, and wasn’t even the smartest way to go about robbing the bank. He could bet one of the dozens (say, numbers one through twelve) and that would pay off two to one, and no one would suspect him. Once he got confident he could play a street of three adjacent numbers for an eleven-to-one payout, or a two-number split for seventeen to one.

The problem, of course, was that adjacent numbers were never adjacent on the wheel. The one and the two, for example, were across the wheel from each other. There was one bet, though, that could help him out.

“I have a suggestion,” he mentioned to the pill casually, as it contemplated its drop into the wheel. “Why not drop into the basket?” The basket was a special bet that paid off eleven to one on the single-zero, one, or two—and the single-zero and the two were side by side on the wheel.

He watched the pill lose momentum, and then plunk across the frets like a banjo player. Finally it came to rest like an egg on a pillow.

Zero.

After he finished whooping and jumping around, he picked up the pill and kissed it. “Thanks, pal,” he said. “Good job.”

He sat in his van a half block from Mitzi’s Tavern, watching guys walk into the bar sad and exit sadder, like penitents going to confessional and coming out sentenced to a thousand Hail Marys. Fridays were payday—or rather, pay up day. A lot of these guys owed their whole paychecks to the Pusateris and were hoping they’d be allowed to take a slice home.

Frankie was one of those guys. His problem was, he didn’t have the dough. Again.

Nick’s rule was, Don’t make me come looking for you. So even if you couldn’t cover your payment, you had to show up to Mitzi’s, explain yourself, and take your punishment. First time, you got her I’m-Not-Angry-I’m-Disappointed speech. Second time—he didn’t know what happened the second time. But he was about to find out.

He walked across the street like a man with a bomb strapped to his chest.

Inside, it was so dark he could barely make out Barney behind the bar. Frankie took a stool and waited for his eyes to adjust. “Is she free?” he asked. He knew she wasn’t. He could hear Mitzi in her office, yelling at the guy ahead of him.

Barney didn’t look up. He was squinting at a Reader’s Digest over the tops of his glasses, which somehow made him look even more like Droopy Dog.

“Bud Light,” Frankie said.

Barney turned a page. “You won’t be here that long,” he said.

Frankie started to object, then figured there was no percentage in pissing the man off. “Good point,” he said.

Here was the difference between Frankie and the poor bastard getting chewed out, and all those other bastards who’d gone in before him: Frankie was practically family. Teddy had worked for Mitzi’s brother back in the day, and Frankie had been coming in this bar since he was a kid. Mitzi liked him. That fondness, he figured, was credit that could earn him a grace period of at least a week. Even if Teddy had no idea this was happening.

The door to her office opened, and a young guy with tight jeans and an even tighter shirt came out. A big Italian goombah, six-foot-something, with too much gel in his hair. Tears were running down his cheeks. He hurried out to the door and vanished in a flash of daylight.

“You’re up,” Barney said.

He eased himself off the stool. The room telescoped, and the path to her door became a great distance. His legs walked it against his will.

The Alton Belle floated in the shallow Mississippi like a star-spangled wedding cake. It was a replica of a nineteenth-century paddle wheel steamer strung with lights and pulsing with disco music, promising some kind of Mark Twain–meets–Vegas grandeur. Frankie was so nervous he felt like throwing up.

Buddy, though, was vibrating with excitement.

“This is how you saw it, right?” Frankie asked. They hadn’t left the car yet. Frankie had driven the four and a half hours, of course, because Buddy had never learned to drive.

“Exactly,” Buddy said. “This is exactly right.”

“Stacks of chips,” Frankie said.

“Stacks,” Buddy confirmed.

They joined the stream of people walking the gangplank. They had a half hour before the boat left the dock for its first cruise of the night; by law the casino had to be on a functional, moving ship. Inside, it was incredibly loud, bells jangling as if every God damn player was a winner, just scooping coins from the slots. Even with all the mirrors, the place seemed much smaller than Frankie had pictured it. Every available space was crammed with slot machines, and every slot machine seemed to have an old person leaning on it as if it were life support.

“Where do we go?” Frankie asked. Buddy didn’t seem to hear him. “Where is the roulette table?” Frankie said, louder.

Buddy shrugged. “I don’t know this part.”