Tumblin' Dice

by John McFetridge

  Jones said, “Speaking of secret codes, we did pick up something might be of interest to you.”

  Armstrong said, “To me personally, or to us Canadians?” Thinking if the reason she wanted to see him was official, why’d she check him out, see if he was single?

  “To Toronto Homicide.”

  Armstrong said, oh yeah, leaning back and watching Jones sip her drink, thinking how the last time they met they’d flirted right away, her telling him about her Cherokee great-grandma and them both talking about how their families were mostly military. Now she’d looked him up and was talking about a transfer to a place that would be less than a two-hour drive. Armstrong thought, how often will I meet a woman like this?

  He said, “But this information, that might be of interest to Toronto Homicide, it’s not something might go in an official report?”

  “Not really. But I mean, we’re supposed to be into all this co-operation and everything.”

  Armstrong said, yeah, that’s what he heard, “World’s longest unprotected border,” and Jones smiled at him and he liked the way they were settling into it.

  She said, “You know how we’re working to get past all these jurisdiction problems,” and he said, “Having these conferences,” and she said, “Talking to each other in unofficial ways.”

  “Passing around rumours, nothing we could put in our official notes.”

  “Giving each other information that if we did follow up on, our sources wouldn’t be enough to get warrants or even go on record.”

  Armstrong said, “It’s hard playing by the rules.”

  “It sure is.”

  He sipped his Scotch and waited. Waiting for this Homeland Security Agent who looked like Halle Berry was a lot better than waiting for some low-life informant.

  She said, “We picked up something on a wiretap. Didn’t seem like much, a guy bitching he hasn’t made full patch.”

  Armstrong said, “Saints of Hell. When they took over the country they patched over anybody who called themselves a motorcycle gang, got a lot of crap. They’ve been weeding it out, been a lot more selective about who gets promoted.”

  “Yeah, it didn’t mean anything, the one guy whining, the other telling him it’ll come in time, you know, and then the guy says something about, it’s still because he popped Mr. and Mrs. Blowjob by mistake.”

  Armstrong said, “On the Gardiner Expressway, couple going home to the suburbs. We found out who the real target was, but they got him somewhere else.”

  “Well,” Jones said, “the shooter was somebody named Boner — that mean anything to you?”

  “It will to someone. Who was he talking to?”

  “The other guy shut him down quick. I’d say from his attitude he’s done some time in the military.”

  “Yours or ours?”

  “Come on,” she said, “all military sounds the same.”

  Armstrong said yeah. Then he said, “So, tell me, which side of the border did this conversation take place on?”

  Jones drank her bourbon, looking at him over the rim of her glass, raising her eyebrows.

  Armstrong said, “Shit.”

  “One of the reasons I can’t tell you officially. But I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Yeah,” Armstrong said, “Price worked that, and McKeon. She’s the one who figured out who the real target was.”

  “So she’s probably getting close.”

  “I don’t know,” Armstrong said. “I’m surprised our own taps didn’t pick this up.”

  Jones just looked at him and shrugged a little, not about to tell him any more and he figured, okay, good enough. It was decent of her to tell him this much.

  Then she said, “You’re pretty busy.”

  Armstrong said, “We ran an operation a few years ago, went after one of the gangs. I don’t know how many of us on it, dozens anyway, plus thirty-five civilians on the wires, over a hundred thousand calls recorded, transcribed, highlighted, summarized, looked at.”

  Jones said, “Uh-huh, oh yeah, you know it.”

  “Ran it for six months, then we picked up sixty-five guys.”

  “Not bad.”

  “Yeah, then we hand it to the lawyers so we lose half right away, plea bargains all over the place.”

  “Well,” Jones said, “you go after the big fish.”

  “That’s right, the ones who can afford real lawyers. So their real lawyers do what lawyers always do: they stall, they file a thousand motions, they go after everything. Used to be, out of those hundred and fifty thousand phone calls we only had to transcribe and print up the ones that were relevant, the ones the prosecution was using. Now, the lawyers say, no, come on, there might be something on those other calls — Mom making hair appointments, little sis talking about the cute guy on American Idol — you have to give us everything.”

  Jones said, “I hear you.”

  “Half a million pages get typed up, printed out because they won’t take a fucking Word file, oh no. Tell me that’s not a tactic, not strategy. Then they need time to read them all, another delay. Meanwhile, most of these guys are back out on the street doing what they do.”

  “Or they move south.”

  “Yeah,” Armstrong said, “aren’t you supposed to be stopping them at the border?”

  “We can’t help that your passport’s the easiest to fake in the world.”

  “Now it’s five years later and maybe a half dozen guys will actually go to trial. Maybe. What did we spend on it, a few million bucks?”

  “What did you say? It’s hard playing by the rules?”

  “These guys run operations all over the country, all over North America, South America. They’ve got chapters all over Europe, all the way to Australia. Shit, I don’t know what the guys upstairs in guns and gangs are doing, never mind next door.”

  “Well,” Jones said. “We can do our bit for international co-operation,” and Armstrong said, yes we can.

  And it was time to move it up to the room.

  On the way Armstrong said in the morning they could talk to Loewen, he knew Price, get the information where it needed to be. Then he said, “Might be fun. The nice polite Canadian bigot he’s with, probably never talked to an Indian or black person wasn’t airport security in her life,” and Jones said, “We catch them coming out of her room, and she’s trying to look businesslike?”

  Armstrong said, yeah, something like that. Seeing all kinds of potential for international co-operation with Agent Jones of Homeland Security.

  • • •

  Ritchie didn’t think Angie walked around like a big boss lady — she didn’t have any attitude. He got the feeling most people working at Huron Woods knew who she was and liked her. She told the girl at the door of the Longhouse Restaurant, the nicest one in the place, that they’d find their own table and then led the way to a nice corner booth.

  Sitting down she said, “Felix’ll be late — you know, make us wait.”

  Ritchie said, sure, of course, looking at Angie, liking what he saw, thinking it was just like old times, the two of them jumping in the sack the minute Frank’s back was turned, then thinking, no, Angie is all grown up, she isn’t with Frank anymore. She liked being in charge, he could tell, but that wasn’t all. He liked the way she joked around with the waitress, confident, ordering club soda, relaxed, waiting for him, saying he could have whatever he wanted so he ordered a Glenfiddich, no ice.

  Then Angie was looking at him and Ritchie was nervous. She said, “I’ve been clean now five years.”

  “And how many days?”

  “You think I don’t know the exact number? Hours and minutes?”

  “I know what it’s like.”

  “You do?”

  She got him there. He said, “Well, no, Ange, not personally, but I’ve known a lot of people.”


  “I guess.”

  “Come on, I’ve been in the rock’n’roll business, shit, thirty years. Not everybody makes it.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Yeah, well, you know.” He was looking at her, seeing the old Angie now, the kid who flipped moods in a second, went from that couldn’t-wait-to-get-you-alone chick, ripping clothes off in the elevator, to walking out the door and then looking at you like she didn’t even know you an hour later in the bar.

  She said, “Yeah, I know.”

  Now Ritchie could see it going either way here, he could be Mr. Nice Guy, try and get her to open up and talk to him because he knew there was something she wanted to talk about, or he could blow her off, have a little dinner, and walk out of her life. Again. Then he was thinking maybe that’s what she wanted, maybe she just hopped into bed with him to get rid of him, and then he was thinking, yeah, like Emma did when my guitar was stolen, and then he was thinking, shit, stop it, you’re thinking like a chick, worried they’re just using you. What are you gonna do next, write a sappy song about it? Fuck.

  He said, “You want to talk about it, Ange?”

  “What’s to talk about?”

  “There’s something on your mind.”

  The waitress brought them their drinks and Angie told her Felix was joining them, could she show him to the table when he gets here?

  Then Ritchie was thinking maybe that’s all it was, just business, living in the grown-up world, and he said, “So, who’s this guy?”

  “Felix Alfano. Officially he’s the casino director. The casino has a management contract with a company called the Pennsylvania Accommodation and Gaming Company.”

  Ritchie said yeah.

  “So,” Angie said, “he’s the real thing, a real gangster.”

  Ritchie drank his Scotch, a small sip, and put the glass back on the table saying, “And Frank wants to be just like him when he grows up.”

  Angie said, yeah, well, no, well, “I’m not sure.”

  Ritchie watched her look at him, think about it, decide to tell him, then decide not to. He could tell he was coming in the middle of something, so he said, “Ange, it’s okay. I don’t need to know.”

  She said, “Shit, you know, you make me feel like I can tell you.”

  He shrugged, said, you can if you want, “I don’t mind. You need someone to talk to, that’s okay.” He didn’t mind. Years ago he might have said he didn’t care, got into a big fight about it, but that wasn’t it anymore. Back when he was a tortured young artist and she wouldn’t leave Frank and he screwed every chick he could for revenge, everything got to him, but not now. Now he was looking at Angie in her business suit, sitting in the restaurant, and she wasn’t torn up inside exactly — it wasn’t like all that kid stuff drama they’d had. He wasn’t sure what it was.

  She said, “Frank used to at least pretend to care about the Showroom. He’d go after the big acts — Diana Ross, Santana, hell,we had Dylan a few years ago.”

  Ritchie said, “I remember.”

  “Then he started thinking he should be running more than just the Showroom. He started trying to run the casino and he stopped going after the good acts, started booking in the Chinese acts, circuses.”

  “I’ve seen the people here,” Ritchie said. “You’ve got to give them what they want.”

  “Novelty acts. Last month we had a thirteen-year-old girl in here singing the blues.”

  “She have a good voice?”

  “She’s singing Billie Holliday, singing about her best friend screwing her man.”

  “Well,” Ritchie said, “she’ll be better when she has her heart broken.”

  “Or when she gets her period.”

  Ritchie said, yeah, that, too.

  “You know what Frank’s got me doing now? He wants to do a tribute show.”

  Ritchie said, oh yeah?

  “That Australian Pink Floyd show sold out fast and now Frank wants to do a whole British invasion thing, get tribute bands doing the Stones, the Who, the Yardbirds, the Animals.”

  “They were all ‘The’ bands weren’t they? We were on the right track with the High, just a little too late. What about the Kinks?”

  “You don’t think it’s a dumb idea?”

  “Anything that gets a musician a paying gig’s a good idea. You see what’s going on now, all this idol bullshit, taking them on tour, glorified karaoke. It’s hard to get a gig these days.”

  “Yeah, but tribute bands? They don’t even play their own music.”

  Ritchie said, so? “They play music, don’t they? I mean, people don’t complain when they go to the symphony and Beethoven’s not there.”

  “I guess.”

  Ritchie said, “You still care about the music, don’t you?” and she said, “Does it sound stupid when I say yes?” and he said, “You might not want to spread it around.”

  At least she smiled. This was a new Angie, though, this was someone Ritchie wasn’t sure about. The past, the old Angie, the kid, there was a whole if-I-knew-then-what-I-know-now thing about it. He would have handled that a lot different, not got strung along while she couldn’t make up her mind. He would’ve just walked away.

  No, that was bullshit and he knew it — he never would have just walked away.

  She drank her club soda and said, “I told Frank if he wants to do a tribute show it should be all ’80s — Cyndi Lauper, Madonna.”

  “Get a Springsteen band doing Born in the USA, maybe a Prince.”

  “Something like that. Have you seen this Classics Albums Live?”

  Ritchie said, “Cut for cut, note for note,” and Angie said, yeah, and Ritchie said, “When we finish this tour I’m going to be doing one with them, Zappa’s We’re Only in It for the Money.”

  Angie nodded a little and said, “Yeah, they’re doing really well. Couple of guys started in Toronto, now they have permanent shows in Vegas and Orlando.”

  Ritchie said yeah, and Angie said, “So I was thinking, it’s cool to play a whole album live, takes everybody back to when they were teenagers in the basement getting stoned and listening to Dark Side of the Moon over and over,” and Ritchie smiled and said yeah, wanting to know where she was going with this, and she said, “But sometimes, you know, when you hear a song it takes you right back to where you were when it first came out,” and Ritchie said, yeah, “You should hear Cliff intro ‘Red Light Street,’ asking where people were when they first heard it,” and Angie said, “Yeah, like that, and then we remember the next song that came on the radio,” and Ritchie said, “Probably ‘Money for Nothing,’” and Angie said, or, “‘I Want to Know What Love Is,’ or ‘All She Wants to Do Is Dance,’” and Ritchie said, “If you want Don Henley it’d be ‘The Boys of Summer.’”

  Angie said, yeah, “That was the summer of ’85 wasn’t it? So what else happened that year, what do you think of?” and Ritchie was thinking how that was around the time the High couldn’t be in the same room with each other and Angie was starting to be really strung out, but what he said was, “I don’t know, AIDS? Was that the year of Live Aid?” and Angie laughed a little and said, I don’t know, but, “What I’m thinking is, why not put a show together based on the year? Say we do 1985, get a band and they play all the hits from that year, not just from one album, and we get a giant video screen and we show scenes from that year.”

  “You mean like the news,” Ritchie said, and Angie said, “Whatever’s iconic from that year,” and Ritchie said, “Iconic,” and she said, fuck you, Ritchie, but playful, and he was nodding and saying, “Actually, Ange, I think it’s a good idea, but maybe don’t start with ’85, start with ’68 or ’72,” and Angie said, “Sure, the Showroom is wheelchair accessible.”

  Ritchie said, hey, “Homer Simpson said it, rock’n’roll peaked in 1972.”

  “Well, what an authority, but there are lots
of good years.”

  Ritchie said, yeah, “We had some good years,” and looked right at Angie and she looked right back at him, looking like maybe she wanted to ask for something, talk about something real.

  Then the waitress was at the table, followed by a guy whose whole face was smiling, a guy who was confident, sure of everything, and happy to see Angie.

  She said, “Felix.”

  Ritchie stood up, got ready to shake hands and Felix looked at Angie, said, “Wow, I’m always happy when that jerk Frank cancels and sends you.”

  She said, “I’m sure you are,” and Felix said, I am, and touched her shoulder. Angie looked at Ritchie and said, “This is Ritchie Stone,” and Felix said, “Yeah, yeah, sure, the High.”

  They shook hands and Felix sat down. The waitress disappeared and Felix said, “I saw you once back home: you guys opened for Bon Jovi. You had that great song, ‘Out in the Cold.’”

  Ritchie said, yeah, that was us.

  Felix said, “Yeah, that was a great show. I’m looking forward to the show here. You guys gonna rock the place?”

  Ritchie said, yeah, sure, and then he looked at Angie. She was nervous, but not like she was caught between two guys. Ritchie could tell there was nothing going on between her and this Felix but business, though Ritchie was surprised by the guy, he was younger than he expected, mid-thirties, not so rough around the edges.

  Something going on here, all right, and Ritchie couldn’t tell if he wanted to know what it was or not.

  He did want to find out what was going on with Angie, though. Shit, he was hearing a sappy song in his head again.

  Felix said, “So, you two are old friends or something?” and Angie said, “Or something,” and Felix smiled and nodded. Then he looked at Ritchie and said, “And you’ve known Frank for a long time?”

  “I knew him a long time ago,” Ritchie said, “I don’t know that I could say I’ve known him a long time.”

  Felix said, “I don’t think he’s changed much,” and Ritchie said, well, “We can hope,” and Felix laughed.