Spoonbenders

“Our families go way back, right? Teddy and Nick Senior—”

“You don’t know shit about Teddy and Nick.”

“Okay, sure, Dad didn’t tell me everything, mum’s the word, right? I don’t ask for specifics, and Dad’s a pro, he don’t tell. I just thought if you ask your brother to let the son of an old friend—”

“No, Frankie. You’re going to talk to Nick.”

“What?”

“And he’s not in the mood for this shit. It’s a bad time. You read the papers?”

“The trial,” Frankie said.

“They say Junior’s going to testify against his own father,” she said. “Family turning on family. So you really want to appeal to history, you go right ahead and try that. But if I were you, I wouldn’t show up with your hat in your hand—not unless you got at least ten grand in there.”

“Ten?”

“Ten is the minimum to keep Nick from going ballistic. Bring twenty.”

“Where am I going to get twenty grand?”

“You’ll think of something,” Mitzi said.

You bet your ass I’ll think of something, Frankie thought.

Later, whenever people talked about the best times of their life—a topic that often came up in the bars he frequented, among people whose inventory of great times was pretty thin—and it was Frankie’s turn to lie, he’d tell people about the day his twins were born. But the twins’ birth was two minutes of mucus-coated awe after eighteen hours of Loretta thrashing and cursing like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. No, the best time of his life was the first hour he spent at the roulette table in the Alton Belle riverboat casino in September 1991.

His first bet was on the basket, the zero-one-two combination. The croupier scooped up his chips and placed a marker there. Buddy stood behind him as the pill circled the track, and when it dropped onto the zero, his brother grunted in satisfaction. Frankie could hardly contain himself. Fist pumping may have been involved. He’d only bet a hundred in chips, but at eleven to one he’d just made back a third of his stake.

“Take your time,” Buddy said. Advice that was undercut by the fact that Buddy kept checking his watch.

Frankie decided it would be too risky to keep winning on the same numbers, so he put two hundred down on the first dozen. The numbers one through twelve were scattered around the wheel, and in order to win he needed to get the pill to drop at the right time; one number early or late was no payout. The first time he missed by a digit. He’d felt the pill that time, almost like it was rolling in the palm of his hand. The heavier weight, he realized, made it feel a little closer to the pinballs he used to have such rapport with.

“It’s good to lose a few,” Frankie said to Buddy. His brother nodded, not worried at all.

Frankie put two hundred more down on the dozen, same bet as before, and the next spin came up on the black six. Two-to-one payout, four hundred bucks.

The pill loved him. Wanted to please him. It would slow down or speed up as he desired, happily bound over nonpaying slots and rattle home in his favorite numbers. Frankie kept his bets small, trying not to attract attention, but the urge to push all his chips onto, say, double-zero was nearly irresistible.

An hour in, Frankie was holding fifty-three thousand dollars in chips. The waitresses wouldn’t stop bringing him drinks—he was ordering gin and tonics, his dad’s drink—and a crowd of other players had gathered around the table, trying to absorb some of his luck. Everybody was trying to play with him, chips all over the layout. Why the hell hadn’t he done this before? Frankie thought. He should have moved to fucking Reno ages ago!

“This is a great gift, Buddy,” Frankie said. He was tearing up he was so grateful. And maybe a little drunk. “Thank you.”

Buddy seemed embarrassed. “It’s nothing.” He picked up a stack of chips, and started counting them into his hand.

“What are you doing?” Frankie asked.

“I need these,” Buddy said. “Exactly one thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars.”

“What for? Wait—is this another part of the vision?”

“Definitely,” Buddy said.

Far away, the steam whistle blew again; the boat was approaching the dock. The first cruise was over, and the next one would be starting up soon. Frankie didn’t want Buddy to leave him—he’d been counting on his brother to keep everything in line with his visions. But Frankie had to admit, he had the roulette portion under control. And if Buddy had a scheme for another part of the boat, slots or Keno or craps, Frankie shouldn’t stand in his way. Any game in the casino was vulnerable to his brother. Any jackpot was there for the taking.

“You go do it, Buddy,” Frankie said. He handed him another five hundred in chips. “Knock ’em dead.”

Buddy looked at the extra chips, then set them back on the table in front of Frankie. “I’ve got what I need,” he said. “Just keep playing. Don’t stop.”

The croupier sent the ball spinning and called for bets.

“Wait,” Frankie said to Buddy. “I’m supposed to go for one more hour, right? Where do I find you after?”