Tumblin' Dice

by John McFetridge

  “Was a good hit,” Nugs said, and Danny said, oh yeah, those fucking Nealon brothers know what they’re doing — they’re back on the reserve by now, like they never left.

  Nugs said, “We’re meeting them on Friday up at Huron Woods.”

  Gayle said, “Frank’s coming down tonight, making the pick-up.” She watched Nugs nod, knowing he still didn’t like the idea she was in on everything, this one practically her deal alone. Shit, she’d known Nugs for twenty-five years, but most of that time him and Danny Mac and O.J. and the rest of the Rebels were small-time dope dealers, maybe some truck hijacking, a little B&E and stealing cars, all behind their motorcycle shops, garages, and strip clubs. Gayle was the only wife or girlfriend — old lady made her laugh — that knew the real business, and she’d taken over all of Danny’s legit fronts and made money with them, too.

  She’d watched pretty closely, gotten a little involved, and when the Saints of Hell out of Montreal joined up with the big boys in California and romanced and muscled the rest of the bikers in Canada into giving up their renegade ways and coming on board, she was right there. A few other wives and girlfriends were around as long, and they sure liked the new big money the patch-over brought, but they had nothing to do with business. Gayle liked it, she was doing more now than Danny, and Nugs knew it. She figured maybe that’s what pissed him off.

  But he liked the big money, too, saying, “How much you giving him?”

  Gayle looked at Danny and saw he wasn’t about to say anything so she said, “Half a mil to start. He’s got a nice operation at that casino, can clean it good.”

  “He have any idea what he’s doing?”

  “He’s the one out front,” Gayle said. “If he doesn’t, it’s on him.”

  “Still,” Nugs said, “seems a little late in the game for this guy Frank to be changing teams.”

  Danny was still looking at the TV, so Gayle said, “Well, I bet he doesn’t think it’s that late,” and Nugs said, yeah, that’s true, “Who ever does?”

  Gayle thinking, yeah, right, something I’ll have to keep an eye on, for sure.

  Nugs said, “I notice they don’t say anything about Dickie talking to cops, being an informant.”

  “Not a fucking word,” Danny said. “Not a word.”

  Gayle thought about saying, well, he just started, hasn’t really even given them that much, maybe these homicide cops don’t even know. She was looking at the big-shouldered one, his grey suit silver in the right light and his tie silk, talk to the camera and she thought maybe he was a light-skinned black guy, had what looked like a crewcut, short black hair standing straight up, no curl in it at all. He was saying something about how they’d find the shooters for sure, and Gayle got the feeling the guy meant it. Shit.

  She got up and walked to the little kitchen saying, “You want more coffee?” The condo was brand new, but the building used to be offices. They’d paid more for the two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit than they did for a four-bedroom house and a barn on fifty acres out by Napanee. Gayle liked the new big money, too.

  She poured herself another cup thinking she knew Nugs liked the idea of moving into the casinos in Ontario, this Huron Woods and Niagara Falls and Windsor, they were in his own backyard after all, but she knew better than to sound like she was the one making the move. Maybe these guys don’t ride motorcycles anymore, and maybe they look more like businessmen, but they’re still old-fashioned when it comes to the chicks.

  Back in the living room Danny’d changed the channel and they were watching sports, some guy talking about the Leafs, all they ever talked about. Gayle watched for a minute, wanting to say something about this Frank Kloss looking like a great contact, but she waited. Finally Nugs said, “It’s good to have another source to move the cash,” and Danny said yeah.

  Nugs said, “That fucking Russell Akbarali and the MoneyChangers, I don’t know.”

  “He’s okay,” Danny said. “But you need more sources.”

  This was good, Gayle seeing her men talk business. It seemed like more and more she’d been pushing them. They’d gone along with the guys from Montreal, then gotten rid of the top guy, the French guy Richard, and now Nugs was national president.

  Nugs said, “You think this Frank Kloss can move a lot more?” Looking right at Gayle.

  She saw Danny still staring at the flat screen, glued to the highlights, another season of the Leafs missing the playoffs, and she said, “Yeah, probably.”

  “Well,” Nugs said, “J.T. and his boys are up there now, taking over the dope. When can we move girls into the hotel?”

  “Anytime, I guess,” Gayle said.

  “We can set it up like the Club International out by the airport, get the charge added to the restaurant bill, biz boys can expense it.”

  “Or at least do it through work,” Gayle said, “not their personal credit cards the wife might see.”

  “Okay, sounds good,” Nugs said, not even looking at Danny, doing his business with Gayle.

  She was liking it, seeing how it could really work out.

  Just have to be careful with these guys.

  • • •

  On the way to the bathroom in the back of the club J.T. handed the stripper who said her name was Valerie, her real name she’d said, the pack of smokes with the coke in it. She’d said to him, just wait in the VIP room, she’d be right back.

  J.T. watched her go into the bathroom, the other stripper holding the door for her saying, “How come we always do it off the toilet?” and Valerie saying, because the sink is always wet. Before the door closed she stuck her head out and said, “You want us both?” and J.T. said, no, just you.

  The middle of the afternoon and the Adderly Hotel, a hundred-year-old fleabag that’d gotten even worse when the Huron Woods Casino opened up ten miles down the highway, was almost empty. Bartender, bouncer who looked asleep, three or four guys sitting in the dark, one chick onstage and these two in the can. J.T.’s guys would be there in a half hour.

  Twenty minutes in the VIP — a few booths boarded off by the bathrooms — and J.T. was sitting at a table with his guys, Boner and Gizz, and a couple of hangarounds, glad to see they were early. He told them the shipment was coming in from Montreal in a car, a guy and a girl bringing it, and one of the hangarounds wanted to know if the information was reliable.

  J.T. gave him a look, that’s all, just enough to shut him up and make him think about what he said.

  The music changed, went from hip hop to some country song and Valerie was onstage, looking at J.T. and swinging on the pole.

  It was still tense at the table, the guy who’d said that about the information scared and pissed off at himself, but J.T. figured he was just wound up, that was good, so he said they could have stopped it there, in Montreal, “But we need to make a statement.”

  The guys all nodded, easing up a little and J.T. said, “We need to let these American fucks know that Huron Woods is ours, that what goes on here is ours,” and the guys all said, yeah, sure, fuckin’ right. J.T. looked at Boner, knew he knew all this, but still. He wanted the guys to relax, to know they’re all on the same team. He said, “Montreal’s still as fucked up as always, those Irish assholes running the port and selling to whoever pays. We decided,” pausing to look around the table, letting them know that it really was “we” and that it really was a decision, “that there’s just no talking to stubborn Irish fucks, so we let them have the port. Works out better for us anyway.”

  The guys all nodded, drank their Molsons. J.T. thought about explaining to them how Montreal was divided between the Italians and the Saints, how they had a good working arrangement there just like they did in Toronto, except in Montreal there was also those Irish fucks, called the Point Gang because they crawled out of Goose Village and Point St. Charles dragging their knuckles, been running the port there for a hundred years, taking a piece of
everything that came through and not giving it up, but he figured these guys didn’t care. Hangarounds and prospects, thrilled to be working for the actual Saints of Hell.

  Valerie finished her dance and walked off the stage naked, looking right at J.T. The one she’d gone into the bathroom with went up on the stage and Valerie got dressed, pulling on her sequined bra and cut-off jean shorts slow, looking at J.T. and the guys, but they weren’t interested. Still too pumped. J.T. wanted to tell her to be ready after — what they were about to do was way better than Viagra.

  Boner said, “We’re ready,” and J.T. said, yeah, we are. These hangarounds like all the others, young and tough and don’t give a shit who they’re up against. J.T. was thinking how at home they looked in this shitty club, probably been in dozens of them all over Ontario.

  Like the chicks, the weekday regulars were always white, early twenties, J.T. figured probably from small towns nearby, probably all had kids in daycare. An hour north of Toronto and it was like going back in time. In town the strippers’d be from Russia and Romania, Thailand and India, hair and make-up looking like movie stars, boob jobs and tanning booth tans, knowing every scam there is, but up here they were country chicks, chewing gum, home dye jobs and chipped nails. Sitting at the table, they looked to J.T. just like the cool chicks in high school who’d never talk to him and now he was thinking, look at that, I join the army, go off to Afghanistan, come back and join these Saints of Hell, and the girls’re still sitting around talking about who’s a slut.

  Valerie caught J.T.’s eye and motioned to the door. Turning his head a little he saw them, a guy and a girl coming in, looking around and following the bouncer to a table. The first thing the guy should have seen was the five of them sitting at a table but he didn’t, he just sat down.

  J.T. said, “Okay,” and Boner got up, didn’t say a word, just walked into the bathroom and, J.T. knew, right out the back door.

  Gizz said, “Okay,” and J.T. stood up saying, “Wait here with him,” pointing to one of the hangarounds. The other kid jumped up and J.T. looked at him, trying to get him to calm down.

  Gizz said, yeah, okay.

  In the parking lot J.T. saw a white BMW M3 pull up beside a minivan with Quebec plates. The trunk popped open on the M3 and a guy got out, walked around it to the minivan and slid open the side door.

  Boner got there the same time as J.T. and the hangaround, coming from the other side so the BMW driver was trapped between his car and the minivan, guys coming at him from each end. He said, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing,” and J.T. said, “Yeah, we do.”

  The guy went for his gun, tried to get it out of his belt but Boner hammered him from behind, smacked him across the head with a goalie stick, and the hangaround grabbed the gun, twisting the guy’s arm till they heard it snap. Boner slammed the guy’s head, bringing the stick down two-handed, whack, whack. Rolling on the ground between the cars the guy was saying, “You stupid fucks, you’re dead. You’re so fucking dead,” and the hangaround was putting the boots to him.

  J.T. said, “Ankle holster,” and the hangaround grabbed the guy’s foot, his five hundred dollar leather shoe coming off, and snapped his ankle. No holster.

  Boner already had the two hockey bags out of the minivan and was tossing them in the back of his truck, and J.T. got a bag from the trunk of the BMW.

  The hangaround said, “The fuck you want me to do with him?” and J.T. said, put him in his car, so the hangaround picked the guy up by his shirt and slammed him onto the hood of the BMW and then let go. The guy scrambled around, falling onto the dirt of the parking lot and getting into his car, the whole time saying, “You stupid fucks are so dead. You have no fucking idea what you’re doing, you fucking hick morons,” looking at the hangaround as he was saying it, but when he got behind the wheel he looked over at J.T., who was looking right back at him, and the guy shut up, put the car in gear, and took off.

  The hangaround said, “Fuckin’ A!”

  J.T. said to Boner, “You play goalie?” and Boner, getting into his F350, said, “Every Wednesday, you should come out.”

  J.T. said he’d think about it, and Boner said, “See you at the club,” and pulled out. J.T. dropped the bag, the smaller one he knew had a hundred grand in it, into the trunk of his orange Challenger.

  The hangaround watched, still pumped, looking for something else to hit, and then said, “Shit, this new Challenger, first one of these muscle cars cool as the original.”

  J.T. said, better. “The old one, it was all power. It was great for straight line acceleration but it couldn’t corner for shit, had no suspension. This one, it’s got a Hemi V8 but it’s also got ABS, coil springs, and stabilizers.”

  The hangaround said, “Cool.”

  J.T. said, “Why don’t you go back inside, get laid. That Valerie, she can deep throat like a shop vac.”

  The hangaround laughed, said, cool, then stuck a thumb towards the strip club and said, “What about the asshole?”

  J.T. said, “Fuck him. He doesn’t make his delivery, it’s his problem,” and the hangaround smiled, said, fuckin’ A, and went back inside.

  J.T. put his Challenger in gear and drove slow out of the parking lot. He liked this. Assholes thought they had everything nailed down, then they got lazy, got sloppy. Yeah, he liked the idea of taking back the whole province — made him feel patriotic again, like he did in the army.

  • • •

  Loewen was sitting at the bar with a woman he figured to be in her late thirties, maybe a couple years older than him, listening to her tell what a hero she was in the boardroom, saying how there may be more women in business, but not that many in sales. “And almost none in group sales.” Which was where, she told him, the big money was.

  When Loewen had come into the bar after dinner, the rest of the cops still in their own groups, Anjilvel and the black G.I. Joe long gone, he was surprised this woman was by herself. Now she was saying, “They asked five insurance companies to make bids, one right after the other all day long at their head office on Bay. I think Bay and Adelaide — I don’t know Toronto that well.”

  Loewen said, where you from?, and she said, “Winnipeg.” Before she’d said her name was Miriam and Loewen had thought it sounded like a grandmother name, but he didn’t say anything. “I’m actually from Brandon, just outside Brandon, really. Now it looks like head office is moving to Calgary. Better than Toronto, anyway.”

  “Just as expensive.”

  She said, yeah, “But not as dark, if you know what I mean.”

  Loewen didn’t but he didn’t say anything.

  She said, “So, we’re third on the list, going in right after lunch. I have my whole team with me, five of us.”

  Loewen said, “It takes five guys to sell an insurance policy?”

  “A group plan, thirteen thousand employees. And it’s not just insurance, it’s a drug plan, dental, corrective lenses, all kinds of disability.” Looking around the bar, she said, “Are you one of these Mounties?”

  “City of Toronto cop.”

  She thought about it for a second, screwing up her face, and Loewen saw how if this Miriam ever stopped talking she might be a lot of fun in the sack, probably make a lot of noise, try anything, in a businesslike way. Maybe get her to keep her glasses on.

  “So you’re with Grantham Life. It’s not a bad plan. We could do better. Anyway, they’d given us a list of twenty points they wanted to go over in the meeting, and we put together a presentation. Probably exactly the same as the other four companies in there.”

  Loewen said probably.

  “And each one of us on my team had four points that we’d completely researched and knew inside out, up and down, six ways from Sunday.”

  “Right.” Watching her tell her story, coming to the part where she was smarter than everybody else, Loewen was starting to see how she was an
odd combination of old-fashioned country girl, with her grandmother name and grandmother expressions, and fully modern businesswoman sitting on a barstool in her short skirt, her tight silk blouse unbuttoned enough so he could see her frilly bra holding up her very nice tits, drinking her vodka tonic. He was starting to like her.

  “Then when we get into the meeting, this huge boardroom, it’s on, like, the fiftieth floor — what a view — there’s like twenty people we’re giving the presentation to. I make my opening remarks, but before I can get any further Jim Conacher stops me.”

  She was looking right at him, so Loewen knew Jim Conacher was important. He shrugged.

  “The president of the bank? Of the biggest bank in the country?”

  Loewen said, okay, sure.

  “So he says to me, he asks if maybe I could explain something in point number eight.”

  This Miriam was looking at him and Loewen was looking back, seeing her mascara was dried out a little, some of her lashes stuck together, and he figured she’d had a long day. Still, she seemed like she could just keep going. He said, “Yeah?”

  “Well, I said, sure, we can do that. We had the whole presentation up on the screen, ready to go over point by point, but the guy’s the president, right? So, I say to Dave Mikalchuck — it was his department — could he go over that point, and he says sure and stands up and explains it.”

  Loewen, still no idea what she was talking about, said, “Wow.”

  She stared at him serious and then laughed, turning on her barstool and finishing her drink, then saying, “You don’t get it, do you?” and Loewen said, no, I don’t, but he was smiling, too, and she said, “Conacher did it in every presentation, interrupted and asked to skip around. You know why?”

  Loewen thought because he’s a bank president, he’s a control freak jerk like every high-ranking asshole, but he just said, no, why?