Spoonbenders

“Just drive me home, Irene. No. Wait. Drive me to Wal-Mart.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I need to buy a cane and a baseball bat,” he said.

“I understand the cane.”

“The bat is to whack your brother with.”

“Let’s buy two,” Irene said.

14 Frankie

He could hear Loretta calling for him from the house. Eventually she thought of the garage.

The black hunk of metal nestled into the hood of her car like an egg on a pillow. The impact had also cracked the windshield. The safe door, however, was closed. Still fucking closed.

She walked toward him. He was sitting on a folding chair next to the front bumper of the car. The floor was littered by a garden of crushed Budweiser cans—and locks. Padlocks of every kind were scattered around the cement floor, none of them open.

“Can I help you, Loretta?”

She took in the sweatpants, the undershirt, the empty Doritos bag. She looked again at the Corolla and the black safe, then back at him.

“Are you going to work today?” Her voice was surprisingly soft.

“Sure,” he said. “What time is it?”

“After nine.”

“Huh.” He rubbed his jaw. Normally he would have left a couple of hours ago. He probably should have gone. Work would have occupied him. Kept his mind off of what was waiting for him this afternoon. Who was waiting for him.

“I was going to go to the grocery store,” Loretta said.

“Okay.”

She stared at him.

“I think we’re out of milk,” he said.

“I was wondering about the car,” she said.

He nodded slowly, as if this was a good point.

“So will it run?” she asked.

He pursed his lips. Thought for a moment. “Hard to say.”

“I’ll call one of the neighbors and see if I can borrow a car.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s probably a good idea.”

“Oh, and your father called. He wants you to call him back. Says it’s important.”

Like hell he was going to call back. It was Teddy’s fault he was in this mess. He’d gone to his father for help when Bellerophonics was tanking, and after the bare minimum amount of financial assistance, his father had cut him off. No, the great Teddy Telemachus only bet on cards, never his own children.

“Did Matty call?” he asked. That was the Telemachus he needed right now. But Loretta was gone. What time did she say it was? He should have paid attention. There were only so many hours to fill until his appointment with Nick Pusateri Senior.

The first time Frankie thought he was going to die was in 1991, in a small room on the bottom deck of the Alton Belle, right after getting his nose broke. The guy whose fist did the damage was a wiry white guy with rabbit teeth and sun-cracked skin like a vinyl chair left in the yard. He was dressed like a janitor, but it wasn’t clear if he was the official enforcer for the casino or just an employee whose job description included the line “Other duties as assigned.” He certainly seemed to enjoy the hitting-people duty.

The two other men in the room—a floor boss and a slick-headed man whom Frankie took to be the casino manager—evaluated the janitor’s work and found it good. “One more time,” said the manager. He was a nervous white guy whose oil-black widow’s peak made him look like a middle-aged Eddie Munster.

The floor boss, a black man in a shiny suit that looked more expensive than the manager’s, said, “Tell us what you did to my table.” Everyone seemed quite concerned about this. For the first half hour that Frankie had been held in the room, the men went over the video of the event using an ordinary VCR and small TV. They had declined to show the images to Frankie, but he picked up from their discussion of it that the tape showed from several angles that Frankie’s hands were inches away from the roulette table when the ball, turntable, and chips flew into the air.

“Was it magnets?” the manager asked.

Frankie was too busy gasping in pain to deny it immediately. He lay on his side, watching an alarming amount of blood run across his cheek and pool on the floor. Magnets? he thought. Still with the fucking magnets? It was their first and last theory.

Frankie lifted a hand to his smashed upper lip, afraid to touch his nose. His fingers came away red, as if dipped into a paint can. Jesus. Where the hell was Buddy? Why the fuck didn’t he see this coming in his vision of chips and riches?

A bad thought crossed his mind. What if Buddy had seen this, and didn’t bother to tell him?

“It wasn’t magnets,” Frankie said. “Or if it was, they weren’t mine.” His voice sounded whiny in his own ears, due to nasal blockage. Mostly.

“Who do you work for?”

“I’m—” He spit blood. “Self-employed.”

The janitor bent and gripped Frankie’s shirt. Frankie put his hands on the man’s forearms, smearing blood on one sleeve. He made protesting noises as he was jerked to his feet.

“Get him off the boat,” the head manager said.

Oh thank God, Frankie thought.

The janitor and the floor boss grabbed him under each arm and frog-marched him out of the room and down a hallway carpeted, inexplicably, with Astroturf. The manager scooted ahead and pulled open a heavy door.