by Linda Sands
I read, “I wonder if Flannigan ever played poker at his bar?”
Tommy rolled his eyes and pointed to the phone near my lips. Oh.
Adele Tibbs, unaware of my faux pas, answered me. “I doubt that. There are plenty of local in-home games Mr. Flannigan could go to, if he wanted.”
I said, “In-home games? Like friends getting together for a friendly game?”
“No. More like a business. High-stakes poker.”
“How does that work?”
“I’m not sure exactly. My nephew tried to explain it to me once, right before he asked for a friendly loan. Would you like to talk to him?”
“That would be great.”
I repeated the contact information for her nephew, Hunter, to Tommy, who quickly pasted it all into the report he was keeping on his computer, then I hung up with Miss Tibbs.
“Still no word on Flannigan?” I asked Tommy.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to get the guy to come back from his Tibetan mountain trek just to confirm that he lost the deed to his bar in a poker game. I mean, really.”
Tommy had a way of settling things definitively. A way of shining the light, so to speak.
I dropped some bills on the table and stood to leave. Francie was fooling around with the sound system in the “Karaoke Korner.” She raised the volume on a Hawaiian song as we walked by. She looked nice there, in the twinkle lights on the palm tree. Her deep voice was perfectly suited for that ukulele version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” I joined in as we walked past, pausing long enough to finish the chorus, harmonize with my old singing partner. She smiled, a real smile for the first time all day.
When the song ended I gave Francie’s upper body a hug. I still couldn’t get used to the manly parts of her.
“That was refreshing,” Tommy said, holding the door for me.
“Glad I could humor you,” I said, still humming as we walked to the Lincoln.
“Do you sing in the shower?” Tommy asked. “Isn’t that the reason they have karaoke? For the shower singer?”
“And the drunk grandma,” I said, buckling up.
“I thought that’s what weddings were for.”
“That too,” I said as I pulled into the street, cutting off a minivan and nosing up to the rear of a shiny, efficient Prius.
“So where are we going?” Tommy asked.
“To play us some poker, son.”
Chapter 15
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW IS BETTER THAN THE DEVIL INSIDE
You could only run so far on anger. Angel pulled off the highway into a rest stop. Tired and hungry, she parked the BMW at the end of the mostly empty lot.
A woman with ratty hair was walking a dachshund. Angel bet she belonged to the heavily bumper-stickered truck hauling motorcycles, or maybe the red minivan with the towels hanging in the windows. She grabbed some money for the vending machine, got out, and stretched.
With the drone of the highway behind her, Angel made her way to the main building. The food selection was shabby to say the least, but the restrooms were clean and the drink machine fully stocked.
Returning to her car, she noticed the truck with the motorcycle trailer was gone. In its place was a long, black Lincoln, its engine still running.
She set the food and drinks in the front, then climbed into the back, locking the doors and setting the alarm on her phone. She tucked the gun she’d borrowed from her daddy under her shirt, then made a nest with her coat and snuggled in.
She thought about the black car across the lot, the Lincoln with the mean-looking grille. It reminded Angel of the limos that pick you up from the airport, like the one Daddy had sent for her that summer she returned from France. It had been early July, warm but not too humid. She had asked the driver to hurry as she called Jimbo to tell him she was back, then agreed to meet him at the bar, as they’d planned.
When Angel replayed the day in her mind, everything moved slower and was much clearer as if over time she'd perfected the memory making it more like a nostalgic film than reality. She arrives before Jimbo and makes her way to their table. The door opens. She turns and watches him walk into the room. He takes off his sunglasses, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. When he sees her in her yellow dress, sitting in the same place where they met a year before, he crosses the room in three long strides, reaches for her and pulls her into his arms, pressing her against his chest. He’s sweaty from the ride over, and she’s sure he can feel her heart thumping through his shirt, that he can read her Morse code message beating dots and dashes: I. Missed. You.
He smells too good, and fits against her as perfectly as she remembered. He trails his hands down her back, making a path to the top of her ass, then lower. The silky fabric of her dress rides up when she raises her arms to encircle his neck. She thinks for a minute that he will spin her around in the center of this bar, that she will pull the clip from her hair and shake it free while kicking up her heels. But the moment passes and they’re still standing there in front of the other customers—she hears them now, scraping back their chairs, resuming their conversations as if to say the show’s over—but still Jimbo holds Angel.
He presses his cheek against hers, then tucks his head into her neck. His breath is warm and cool at the same time, as if he’s just brushed his teeth. He reaches for her chin and tips it up toward his. They are almost the same height, she in her high heels, he in his cowboy boots. She opens her eyes and slowly blinks. A tear runs from the corner of each eye. She doesn’t try to wipe them away.
He smiles then, as if that was what he’d been waiting for, as if that tear told him everything. He looks at her so intensely, his gaze moving from eye to eye. It’s a test, a confirmation, the solution to the puzzle. She rolls her chin in his hand and, when he meets her eyes again, his lips part and the angle is perfect. When his lips touch hers there is nothing else in the world but them.
She doesn’t want to break the kiss. She wants to climb up his body and wrap herself around him like a python, she wants to slither down the front of him then lie at his feet, sucking on his toes. She wants to stick her tongue in his ear and reach her hand down his pants and ride him barebacked through town with hair as her only clothing. She thinks all these things in one foolish moment and then allows herself a small giggle.
He looks at her with a question in his eyes and she pulls back, just a little, so she can focus on his face, on his grin. She sees the man she loves. The man she needs.
Angel awoke remembering all the reasons she fell for Jimbo and all the reasons she wants him back. The parking lot was bustling: people walking dogs, kids running on the grass, a slew of minivans with assorted license plates overloaded with suitcases and bicycles. She glanced around, but there was no sign of the Lincoln.
After double-checking her route to Tammy-the-girlfriend’s place, Angel reentered the highway, telling herself that soon she’d either have her husband back, or, at the very least, she’d have some answers.
Chapter 16
TEDESCO TAKES ON THE HOUSE OF ILL REFUTE
Hunter Tibbs not only took my call, but invited us over. He offered to enlighten me and Tommy on the finer points of in-home poker games, Syracuse style. I figured the fifty bucks I spent for the info and the brief lesson would be worth it, especially when he threw in the blond wig.
“You know where you’re going?” Tommy asked as I pulled out of Hunter’s driveway and headed down the street.
“Sure. No problem,” I said, switching lanes without looking, pissing off someone else’s mother.
Tommy consulted his magic phone. “This time of day, I think we should use back roads. Turn left up here.”
Though “up here” looked like an alley to nowhere, I knew better than to question him. If there was one person I wanted to be stranded with on a desert island, it was Tommy, and not just for his survival instincts or witty banter, but because he’d be the one to tell me which way to paddle the palm-frond, coconut-shell MacGyvered raft he’d whipped
up overnight.
But the kid was too intense. He was in such a hurry to grow up that he didn’t realize it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
I wished I was still his age. I’d be in my dancing prime, touring forty-eight states and Canada, making thousands a night and blowing through it the next day.
It had been easy to live in the moment: none of us thought we’d make it past thirty. We didn’t bother planning for a future. We barely planned the next day’s lunch. What we did plan on was getting our egos stroked while we took off our clothes—in the most artistic way possible, mind you.
Our clientele lived on the best side of whichever town we happened to be in. We had a regular following, a group of ladies who traveled to see us, including one guy who sewed our costumes. Once he made me a stuffed-pantyhose schlong that hung to the floor, for my flasher routine. The girls loved that. I never could figure that guy out. He was straight. Married and everything, but he loved us boys and would do anything for us.
Tommy’s back roads got us to the poker neighborhood right before dark. Syracuse traffic was nothing like real city traffic. We knew how lucky we were. Local commuters who complained about a twenty-minute delay were scoffed at by folks visiting from LA or Atlanta. But to Syracusans, twenty minutes in the cold and snow sucked way worse than two hours in any kind of sunshine.
I turned onto the appointed street and slowed down to a crawl. I made my usual scan for exits as Tommy commented on each homeowner’s landscaping and house color choices.
“That mailbox planting is so seventies. Railroad ties? What were they thinking? Can you believe someone would paint a house peach? And add those turd-brown shutters? Please! Someone needs to report them to the homeowners association. Fine them for bad taste.”
I passed the poker house.
“Three,” I said.
Tommy shook his head. “Four, if you count the motion sensor behind the gutter on the north side.
I grinned. “Nice job.”
“Learned from the best,” he said.
He had counted four security features we could see just from one drive-by. I was sure there would be a lot more.
Adele’s nephew Hunter told us how the basic setup worked. All you had to do was form a meet-up group online, sell memberships to access the local games, then buy a cheap house in a decent neighborhood, preferably one toward the back of a development so the traffic would be less noticeable. Strip it down and hire in some dealers, maybe offer something to draw the talent.
“You want in?” Hunter had said. “I can make that happen.”
After he shoved my fifty in his pocket, he called a guy named Buzz, who ran the game. He wrangled me a spot at one of the lower-end tables. All I had to do was show Hunter’s card and bring cash. Hunter said Buzz included a home-cooked meal for every player. From the BBQ smell, I figured we were having chicken tonight.
I parked at the end of the street, pulled on the blond wig, popped in a set of fake teeth, and said, in the worst Southern accent I had, “Hey y’all. Let’s play some ca-ards.”
Tommy busted out laughing. I popped him in the arm, not too hard. I needed him to be able to drive later.
I got out of the car and adjusted my outfit. “I’ll text you.”
“Good luck,” Tommy said, sliding over to the vacant driver’s seat and immediately adjusting the seat position. I hated when he did that.
I gave my fake name at the door, said Hunter sent me, then walked through the metal detector and tossed a wad of well-worn bills to a lady behind a Plexiglas partition. She popped her gum, passed me a rack of chips, and I went off to find the bar. I bought myself a two-dollar Coke.
The house had been gutted of any extras. There were cheap commercial carpets in all the rooms, rolling task chairs and game tables in two back rooms, recliners and flat-screen TVs across the front rooms, a bar in the middle. All they needed was a few hookers, a pass for upstairs, and I am sure some of these guys would think they had died and gone to heaven.
This was the house that Jack built. Straight poker, five hundred bucks a hand, and nightly payouts. For guys that wanted the real thing without flying to Vegas, this was where they came.
Three hands in, I heard Flannigan’s name.
“You kidding me? That asshole, Flannigan?”
Perked up my ears, that did. I reached down to scratch my ankle, a well-rehearsed eavesdropping technique, one which gave off that certain “Who, me?” feeling and also allowed me to cock my head at such an angle that I could see the speaker. He was a thin, pointy-nosed dude with pale skin who looked like Tin Man without the silver makeup.
Tin Man threw his cards away and shook his head so hard I thought he was going to need a little WD-40 in his neck. “You picked a helluva time to get lucky,” he said to everyone and no one and maybe to the little voice in his head. He rolled back from the table, more eloquence pouring forth. “Goddamn. I need a drink.”
The cards came around to me and although I had a passable hand, I tossed it and made a grimace, then headed to the bar.
I pulled up next to Tin Man, ordered another Coke, and said, “Just not feeling it tonight, you know?”
He grunted.
I pressed Mr. Talkative by saying, “Might need some of what Flannigan had, huh?”
“What? Herpes?”
“Hah!” I laughed, too hard, too loud.
Tin Man slammed his shot glass on the bar and motioned for another.
I pushed the change from my soda back to the bartender. “I got it,” I said. “Pour me one too.”
It was cheap whiskey, the kind you didn’t dare sip—even if I still had been sipping the stuff. I raised my glass. “To Lady Luck.”
Tin Man added his sentiment. “That fuckin’ whore.”
He downed his and I tossed mine over my shoulder. Another round later, he told me how Flannigan had been the kind of guy bookies loved.
In Syracuse you could bet on just about anything. Our demographic was 40 percent Italian, 40 percent Irish, and 20 percent Latino. We were good with numbers, coercion, and praying.
“All those years,” Tin Man said, “The guy would lose his shirt. No matter what he played. Horses, the numbers, sports, everything. Finally, when he loses the last thing he had—that goddamned bar—he tells everyone angels came to him in a dream and he’s going off on some spiritual fuckin’ journey—that he found enlightenment in having nothing. What the fuck is that? Do you have to lose everything to win?”
He raised his face to the ceiling, but when no answer came, he met my eyes. “Would you listen to me? My mother, God rest her soul, would get a kick out of this. Ke-rist, what am I saying?”
“I think what you’re saying is something we all think but are afraid to say, ‘What are we really chasing?’ And ‘Will we know it when we find it?’”
Tim Man stared at me, watery eyes unblinking. He did one of those “aww, shit” neck rolls, so I tried another approach. “Or maybe it’s just time for another drink.”
“Yeah,” he said. This time he didn’t even notice that he was drinking alone.
By the time I left I’d dropped enough hints about our boy Smith that someone should have bit, but I got nothing back. These guys seemed more homebodies than bar hoppers.
Someone did mention The Leopard Lounge. I heard that loud and clear.
Chapter 17
SO THAT’S THE WAY THE OTHER HALF LIVES
Angel pulled to the curb in front of the graffiti-defaced apartment building. She was pretty sure her car was in more danger than she was by the look of the drugged-out kids on the stoop. She reached into the duffel bag Marshall had put together and slipped a blue DEA hat on her head, then tucked the gun in her waistband.
As soon as she stepped out of the car, the kids scattered. She yelled after them, “One scratch on the car, and I’m coming after you!”
There was a row of buzzers for the apartments and a single security camera at the entrance to the building; one buzzer was dangling by a single wi
re, another had so many names written on top of each other there was no way to know who you were going to get on the other end.
Angel pushed through the door and held her breath. Number 206 should be upstairs in the back. “Get in and get out,” she whispered, like a video gamer.
She paused in front of the apartment, took off the ball cap, and tucked it under her arm.
The woman who answered the door might have been fifty, or a hundred and two. She was one of those mixes of Asian, Black, and Mexican, where you’re sure no matter what you say or do, you’re pretty sure you’ll end up offending her. Angel’s solution was simple. Do not engage.
“Is Tammy here?” she asked, trying to get a look around the shriveled old woman.
“No Tammy. She working.” The woman stepped forward, holding the door closed behind her. “You bring money?”
“Did I . . . yes, of course I did.” Angel started to reach into her pocket.
The old woman offered a jack-o’-lantern grin and let Angel in.
It could have been a scene from one of those drug-deal-gone-wrong movies, with the high girlfriend laying half-dressed on the torn couch, piles of pizza boxes and porn mags on the floor, overflowing ashtrays, holes in the walls, and Disney-character sheets for curtains.
The place was just like that, minus the girlfriend, and with the added scents of weed and bleach.
“Jesus,” Angel said. “Erica would love you.”
“What that, lady?” The old woman said, coming up behind Angel.
“Never mind. So, Tammy? She lives here, right?”
The woman nodded.
“You know this guy?” Angel showed her a picture of Jimbo, a decent one taken in the backyard as he was grilling steaks. A picture in which he wasn’t grabbing his crotch or throwing gang signs, and his gut was where it should be, not sucked up in a pose.
The woman reached into her pocket for a pair of Coke-bottle glasses, perched them on her nose, and squinted at the photograph. “I don’t know. You got money?”