“Cassie, Polly. Look at me.” Jesus they were adorable. “You’re going to be careful today, right?”
“You always say this,” Polly said.
“ ’Cause if you’re not careful, Mom’s going to separate you, right? We don’t want what happened last time to happen again, right?”
“Why don’t you take us to work?” Cassie said.
“When you’re older,” he said. Thinking, Holy shit, what a disaster that would be. He kissed them on their cheeks and told them again to be careful. “You ready, Matthias?”
Matty was looking in the other direction, eyes wide. The basement door had opened, and there was Mary Alice, half asleep, wearing nothing but a long black T-shirt and a scowl. Her mother’s daughter, all right.
“Vampirella awakes,” Frankie said.
“Hi, Malice,” Matty said.
She clumped down the hall toward the bathroom without a word.
“Malice?” Frankie said to Matty. “Now she’s got you doing it.” Matty’s mouth was hanging open. “Snap out of it, kid. We gotta carpe the diem.” He kissed Loretta goodbye, and made Matty kiss Irene. “Always kiss your women,” he said. “In case you don’t come back.”
“A little dark,” Irene said.
—
The van was not exactly tidy. Frankie had the kid clear off the passenger seat: a roll of Cat 5 cable; a trio of Toshiba phones, their cords tangled like a rat king; an administration manual; half a dozen boxes of UltraLife Goji Go! powdered goji berry juice. “Just throw that shit behind you.” The back of the van was crowded with UltraLife boxes. Loretta didn’t know how many he had in there. He hoped.
The job site was out in Downers Grove, in the western suburbs. They headed south on Route 83, and Frankie rolled down the window and lit up a cigarette. His stomach was in knots. The wad of cash in his front pocket burned like a radioactive payload. It was going to be a hell of a day, but he’d have to keep up appearances for Matty.
After a while, the kid said, “Uncle Frankie? When did you start—?”
Didn’t finish the question. Frankie glanced over. The kid wore an anxious expression. “When did I start what?” Frankie asked.
Matty swallowed. “Nothing.”
“Look, this is the way this has to work. When you’re riding in my truck, that means you’re more than family, you’re my partner. Partners can tell each other anything. I’m not going to run to your mother about it. It’ll all be between us. Now, out with it. When did I start…start…”
“The phone business?” Matty said finally.
“The phone business,” Frankie repeated. Fine, if the kid wanted to play it that way. Let him warm up. “You know I used to run my own installation company, right? Bellerophonics, Inc. Get it? Bell, phones, and the Greek angle.”
“Uh…”
“Bellerophon? Greatest of the Greek heroes? Rode Pegasus?”
“Sure, sure.”
“I had two guys under me, they didn’t get it. But you and me, Matthias, we’re descended from heroes. Heroes and demigods.”
“So what happened?” Matty asked. “To Bellerophonics?”
“I sank everything I had into that business, and a little more besides. Okay, a lot more. Then, my friend, the business sank me. Had to go to work with these fuckers at Bumblebee. Oh, it’s okay. A steady paycheck. You gotta bring home the bacon, and keep your family safe from the wolves.”
“Because they can smell the bacon,” Matty said.
“You bet they can,” Frankie said. “Especially when you owe the wolves a shit-ton of bacon.” The kid’s eyebrows lifted, and Frankie realized he’d said too much. Change of topic, then. “You know what a PBX is?” Of course he didn’t. Frankie told him about the system they’d be working on today: a hundred and twenty handsets plus a dedicated voice mail system. Tried to get across what a great opportunity this was. “God if I’d been exposed to this stuff when I was thirteen.”
“Fourteen.”
“You pay attention, learn the tech, you’ll be in high demand,” Frankie said. “A stable career waiting for you.” Frankie saw the look on the kid’s face.
Matty let a half smile escape. “It’s not show business.”
Frankie laughed. “Is that what this is about?”
“Grandpa Teddy—”
“Grandpa Teddy never held a straight job in his life.”
“I know!” Matty said. “Isn’t that great?”
“Let me tell you a story about your grandfather. Before he was married, before the arthritis, he conquered every poker table he sat down at. How do you hide your cards from Teddy Fucking Telemachus? You don’t, that’s how. But it’s not always enough, right? Like this one time, this is in Cincinnati, I think, or Cleveland, one of the ‘C’ cities. Grandpa Teddy’s in this deep, weekend-long Texas hold ’em tournament with a bunch of sharks and one whale.”
The kid nodded, but he had no idea.
“Whale,” Frankie said. “That’s a mark with too much money and not enough sense to get out of the water. Anyway, Teddy’s doing the usual, taking their money but not too much of it. Don’t want to scare the fishes. But after like thirty hours of playing, the whale’s cashed out, and the sharks start eyeing each other. You gotta understand, all these guys left, they’re not nice guys, right? Mobbed up. Teddy’s supposed to be just this mook who’s new in town, they don’t know who he is, but still. Your grandpa had balls of steel. Clanked when he walked.
“Now, Teddy knows that all this time two of the guys at the table have been cheating their asses off. They’re working as a team, wiring the cards to each other, practically writing love notes. Teddy was making his money, but still letting these guys think they’re running the show. And up till now it’s all been about the whale, right? But now they think Teddy’s the whale. He’s the fucking tourist, he’s not one of them, so they start gunning for him. And Teddy, being Teddy, can see them using every trick in the book, dealing off the bottom—these guys couldn’t even deal seconds, they weren’t mechanics like Teddy—and they’re taking obvious peeks. Fucking with him. But what can he do? Like I said, these are not nice guys. They’re not going to let him get up and walk away with their money.”
He glanced over at Matty. The kid was eating it up.
“Picture it,” Frankie said. “The tension in the room. Because these three guys that are left with Teddy, they’re not all friends. I mean, they’re all connected in one way or another, but—you know what I mean by connected? Never mind. There’s bad blood. The guy who’s not on the team, the guy working solo, he fucking hates those other two guys. Teddy knows this. But Teddy’s still pretending to be the mark, and the only thing all three of those other guys agree on is sucking Teddy dry first. So he stays in, looking for an opening, but he’s getting poleaxed, like, every hand.”
“But he can read their cards,” Matty said.
“Of course he can. Read their hands like they’re holding up cue cards. But these fuckers, the two guys working the team? They’re dealing themselves unstoppable hands. Not the same guy every time, they don’t want to tip off their third guy, but they’re having their way with the table. Now, Teddy could just give it all back. He could lose the hands, and get out of there with his life. But this is Teddy Telemachus.”
“Never give back the money,” Matty said.
“Damn straight. So Teddy figures, the only way to get out of this alive and with his hard-earned cash, too, is be the last man standing. He’s gotta turn these guys against each other. Let the tag team fuck up so badly, and screw the third guy so obviously, that they go for each other’s throats. Soon as the shit hits the fan, Teddy can grab his cash and go.
“He can’t rig the hands while he’s dealing, that’s too obvious. So he waits, and he waits, and finally he gets his moment. One of the tag-teamers is dealing, and suddenly this guy’s got two aces in his hand. And his partner, across the table? He gets a pair of aces, too. They can’t fucking believe it. They start running up the pot. By the time you get to the flop,
there’s ten grand in the pot. Ten thousand dollars, Matty. And when they turn over their cards, and the tag-teamers show their aces, guess what?”
The kid could not guess what.
Frankie smiled big. “Each of ’em has a fucking ace of spades.”
Matty laughing now, into it.
“Two aces of spades!” Frankie said. “The guy not on the team went batshit! And he can’t blame Teddy, because he wasn’t even dealing! Boom, the other guys go at it, and Teddy hits the streets, the bills practically falling out of his pockets.”
“So how did he do it?” Matty asked. “How did he rig the hand without dealing?”
“He’s Teddy Fucking Telemachus, that’s how.”
“Was it telepathy?” Matty asked.
“What?”
“Like, he made them see an ace of spades, but it was really, I don’t know, the ace of clubs?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Teleportation?”
“Jesus, Matty, no. He did it in the cut. They asked him to cut the cards, and that’s when he—why are you making that face?”
“He does have…powers, right?”
Oh Jesus. The kid looked like he’d just swallowed something with legs.
“Of course he does!” Frankie said. “But he’s a reader. That’s his thing. He can’t just teleport shit, or cloud men’s minds. Everybody’s got their own talent.”
“Like your psychokinesis,” Matty said.
“Right, right.”
“And Mom’s thing. And Uncle Buddy’s—”
“Don’t get me started on Buddy, whatever talent that shithead used to have—never mind. The point of this story…”
What was the point? Somewhere along the way Frankie had lost track of what he was trying to prove to the kid. Something about paychecks. But fuck, what had a steady check done for Frankie, except sap his soul? After Bellerophonics went down and he got in deep with the wolves, he’d had one more shot to make it all back. A brass ring moment. And fucking Buddy had ruined it. Now, with all the interest, he was so far in the hole that the steadiest paycheck in the world wasn’t going to save him.
“Uncle Frankie? You okay?”
“What, me? Of course.” He was sweating again, his stomach burning like a furnace, and the cash in his pocket throwing off its own heat. Two months of mortgage there. “Just thinking about the day, Matty. It’s going to be a busy one.” He glanced over at the kid. That look on his face again. “What is it, partner?”
Matty took a breath. “It’s still real, right? You can move stuff with your mind?”
“I’m insulted you even ask,” Frankie said.
Once, he’d been a pinball wizard. The White Elm Skating Rink on Roosevelt Road, that’s where he rolled and ruled. Camped out for hours in a coatroom turned arcade. There was space for only three games, two pinball machines and a brand-new Asteroids cabinet. Most of the kids wanted to play Asteroids, couldn’t get enough of it. Not Frankie. At sixteen he already considered himself an arcade purist. Video games weren’t real. They were TVs, every game the same no matter where you played it.
Pinball machines, though, were alive. Individuals. The same game could be totally different from arcade to arcade; the paddles hard or spongy, springs tilt-happy or sluggish. A single table could change its mood, cranky one day and sweet the next.
Of the two pinball games at the rink, All-Star Basketball was a bore, with dead bumpers and a theme that left him cold. He had no rapport with it at all. But the Royal Flush, that was his baby. Near the top of the playing field stood a diagonal line of card targets—ace of hearts, a pair of kings, three queens, a pair of jacks, and a ten of hearts—that he could knock down with ease, racking up full houses and three of a kinds and sometimes, when he was in the groove, the high-point combo that gave the game its name.
Lonnie, the manager, liked to hassle him. “I oughta kick you the fuck out of here. You put one quarter in the machine and you hog that thing all day.”
It was true. Some days it was like the Force was with him, and he could keep the ball in play for long stretches, the steel bearing running smooth and warm as a dollop of mercury. The flippers batted the ball wherever he wanted, knocking down the cards for him—ace, king, queen—the numbers on the scoreboard rattling up and up. Even on a bad day he was pretty damn good. After school and all afternoon in the summers, Frankie would work the Flush, while Buddy, his permanent babysitting assignment, perched in the corner, watching him play.
By junior year, school had become a tedious nightmare. So in late October, on one of the last warm days of fall, he granted himself a vacation day. He biked halfway to the high school, circled back to the rink, then smoked the nub of a joint out back while he waited for the rink to open.
Lonnie met him at the door at noon, grimacing to find a pinball rat and not a paying customer. The man was an alcoholic, face like a bad road, with a mood as unpredictable as Chicago weather. He let Frankie in with a grunt.
The machines were plugged in and humming, Asteroids running through its demo. Frankie ran his fingertips across the scuffed glass of the Royal Flush, tested the plunger. Slid a quarter into the slot.
After thirty minutes he was still on the first ball. He reached into his jacket for his cigarettes and Bic, then lit up.
“What the hell?” Lonnie said. The manager was standing behind him, looking at the table.
The left flipper had just knocked the ball to the top of the playing field, up and around to the joker chutes. Both Frankie’s hands, however, had been occupied with cigarette and lighter.
“Did you break it?” Lonnie demanded. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Frankie said. Behind him the ball dropped into the drain with a clunk, ending his magic run.
“You rigged it, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frankie said.
“Get the hell out,” Lonnie said. “You’re banned.”
“What?”
“Out! Now!”
“You can’t do that.”
Lonnie loomed over him. He was skinny, but tall, a foot taller than Frankie.
Frankie refused to run. He walked out, back straight, neck cold, like a man who knows there’s a gun aimed at his head. Got onto his bike and rode away. When he got home, he put his forehead to the wall of the house. He felt nauseated, naked. He’d never let anyone see him move things. Not since Mom died.
The job site was a three-story building just north of Sixty-Third Street, a medical research company. Two other Bumblebee vans in the parking lot. “Wait till I show you the cow,” Frankie said.
“There’s a cow?” Matty said.
“You won’t fucking believe it.”
Frankie picked up his tool bag, gave the kid a stack of Goji Go! boxes to carry. The receptionist buzzed the door behind her to let him into the building proper, but he ignored it.
Embrace life, he told himself. He launched toward her desk with a smile. “Lois, this is my nephew, Matthias. He’s helping me out today. Matty, put the boxes down a sec.” Frankie opened one of the boxes, took out two sixty-four-ounce canisters. “This is the stuff I was telling you about.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Lois said. “You don’t have to—oh.” He pushed the canisters in front of her. She was in her fifties, friendly and round-faced.
“I drink this stuff every morning, Lois. One scoop for every eight ounces of water. The scoop’s right inside the bottle. Some people are addicted to coffee, but goji berries are a super-fruit, loaded with antioxidants. Did I tell you about Li Qing Yuen?”
“The one who lived so long,” Lois said.
“Two hundred and fifty-six, Lois. He holds the record, it’s documented. Lived off of goji berries, ate nothing but. You can’t believe what it does for your skin.”
“I don’t know, I don’t really—”
“Usually these are thirty dollars per canister. That sounds like a lot, but you can make a hundre
d and twenty shakes out of one canister. Did I mention you can mix this with milk, too?”
“I don’t have cash,” she said.
He suppressed a grimace. “Not a problem,” he said. “I trust you. Just make the check out to me. You spell Telemachus like ‘telephone,’ then ‘m-a-c-h-u-s.’ ”
All this work for thirty fucking bucks. Jesus Christ.
Finally he led Matty downstairs to the phone room. Dave, his boss, crouched in front of the patch panel, punching down new cable. The cutover was tomorrow, and they were behind.
“Where you been?” Dave asked him, already cranky.
“Come on, you know you just started,” Frankie said. “Matty, stack those boxes in the corner. Dave, this is my nephew, Matty. He’s my apprentice for the summer.”
“You poor kid,” Dave said, but with a smile. Shook Matty’s hand. He was a decent guy that way. “How old are you, Matty?”
“He’s thirteen,” Frankie said. “But really mature for his age.”
“Fourteen,” Matty said.
“You want me to do the CPU stuff?” Frankie asked.
“I got it,” Dave said. “Hugo and Tim are on the first floor. You can help them.”
Typical. Dave wouldn’t surrender his position in the phone room to wire jacks. On their way upstairs, the kid said, “Could you call me Matt?”
“What?” Geez, he looked so serious. “Okay. Matt it is. But you have to call me Frank. Not Uncle Frankie. Deal?”
Frankie found the guys wiring up a big conference room. “Boys, this is my nephew, Matt. Matt, this ugly fucker here is Tim. The Mexican is Hugo. Don’t lend him any money.”
Matty looked like he was in shock. Hugo held out his hand to the kid. “This son of a bitch is your uncle? I hope to God you’re adopted.”
“Seriously, we need to talk,” Tim said to Matty. “Genes like those…”
“Fuck you,” Frankie said to both of them. They turned away, laughing.
Frankie led the boy to the other side of the room. Matty whispered, “Is everything okay?”
“What, those guys? They’re fine. You’re on the job now. They give you shit, you gotta give it right back. Now take a look at this.” Two cables jutted through the access hole, their open ends sprouting colored wire. “The white cable’s voice, blue’s data.” He picked up the end of the white cable. “See how there’s four pairs of wires inside? Analog used to use three or four pair, but these new digital phones only use two. We run ’em all, though, in case you want to add more jacks, you don’t have to run more cable.”
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