Tumblin' Dice

by John McFetridge

Price and McKeon brought Boner into Fifty-Five Division, McKeon telling him it must look familiar from back when the Saints had the clubhouse on Eastern Avenue and he was getting busted all the time.

  Boner said, “Fuck you.”

  In the interrogation room McKeon sat down across from him and said, “You must miss that clubhouse, good times. Now all the bigshot full patches are off in their big houses in the country and you’re where?” She looked at the file in her hand and said, “Shit, you’re still in Scarberia. You living at your mom’s?”

  “Fuck you. I’m not saying shit.”

  “Too bad,” McKeon said, “it would help you a lot if you did.”

  He scowled, looking like a tough guy, and stared at the scratches carved into the table.

  McKeon said that was fine, they didn’t need him to say anything anyway. “We’ve already got it in your own voice.”

  Price was still standing beside her, staring at Boner, watching him try to be cool, look bored, like every other time he was in interrogation.

  McKeon took a piece of paper from the file. “‘These fucking assholes just giving me shit all the time.’” She looked at Boner. “Nugs doesn’t mind you calling him a fucking asshole?”

  Now Boner was looking at her, not so cool, and she looked back at the paper. “‘Think they’re such fuckin’ hotshit ’cause they’ve got patches. I should have a fuckin’ patch, all the fuckin’ work I do.’”

  McKeon looked at Boner and said, “You really do that much work?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I like this,” McKeon said, “even your buds not helping you out, the other guy, what do you call him, Grizz? He says, ‘Maybe if you shot the right fucking guy.’” She put the paper down and looked at Boner and said, “He has a point, you shooting the wrong person, two people.”

  “You’re crazy — there was only one guy at that fucking casino.”

  McKeon looked up at Price and he shrugged. This was something else. McKeon figured they’d get to that but right now she had to stay on script, so she said, “He’s talking about Big Pete Zichello. You were supposed to kill him last year, when he came out of the condo at the bottom of Yonge, after seeing the hooker, Rebecca Almeida. You followed him from the parking lot but you lost him and pulled up beside the wrong car, shot some couple going home to Oakville, guy and his wife.”

  Boner looked up at McKeon, she could see him trying to remember more than a year ago, and then he said, “You want to charge me for that, go ahead. You don’t have shit and I don’t have to answer any fucking questions.”

  Price said, “Yeah, but you know what? The Supreme Court threw us a bone, said we can ask as many as we want. We can ask all night? We can take shifts.”

  Boner said, so, I don’t give a shit, and McKeon said, “Or, yeah, we can just charge you with a double homicide and toss you in the cells, let you rot for a couple years before your trial.”

  “I want my fucking lawyer.”

  McKeon said, oh yeah? They’d worked this out, exactly how they were going to take Boner through it, but now this new thing with the casino was throwing it all off. McKeon said, “You going to pay for a lawyer, or do you really want Mitchell Fucking Morrison to come in here, sit right there and listen to this? We get to the part where you say Danny Mac’s wife is sucking off hangarounds and Spaz is making twice as much as he’s telling anybody, you think Morrison will keep that to himself?” She looked at Boner again, watched him shake his head like he can’t believe she’s saying this.

  Price said, “Shit, I love digital recording. Maybe we should make a podcast.”

  Boner said, “Do whatever the fuck you want with that.”

  McKeon was thinking then that this was such old news for Boner, he’d forgotten about it. They’d pulled out the case file on the murders, got the wiretap from Jones at Homeland Security and got right back into it, but Boner and the Saints had all moved on since then, worked out whatever they had to with Zichello — finally killed him at the hooker’s condo a week later — and moved on to new business. Something at the casino. McKeon wondered if it was Huron Woods or Niagara Falls or Windsor. Shit. But they had to stay with this. She said, “At least Grizz is on your side, telling you how everybody’s pissed off this J.T. just shows up and he’s moving up the ranks so fast, gets his patch in no time.”

  Boner crossed his arms and went back to staring at the floor.

  McKeon said, “Okay, so you do twenty-five to life for the two murders, all on your own, no boys inside watching your back. Where you think they’ll send you? Millhaven? Your mom come visit once a month, ask you what happened to your teeth, you tell her they got knocked out so you give better blowjobs?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Dorchester, out in New Brunswick? Better, you don’t have to face your mom, but shit, that place is medieval.”

  Boner shrugged, past caring about this old shit.

  Price said, come on. “You know these assholes don’t give a shit about some hangaround. All you’ll ever be. They’re never going to promote you. They don’t give a shit if we lock you up for life.”

  Boner didn’t budge and McKeon realized they didn’t even know if he was still a hangaround — that might be old news, too.

  She looked up at Price, expecting him to really pour it on, get Boner thinking he was all on his own, nobody looking out for him. She expected Boner to put up more of a fight, start in with the “You don’t understand what it’s like to have guys watching your back,” like the bangers did, and then Price’d give him his “I’m in the biggest fucking gang in the city, the fucking blue wall, do whatever we fucking like to punks like you, somebody always watching my back,” and then she’d step in, say, no, they follow rules, they have to make him an offer, and he’d take it.

  But Price was just looking at Boner, so McKeon said, “That what you want? Spend the rest of your life in a cell?”

  Price said, “Yeah, fucking right. And don’t give us that shit about these assholes backing you up. They thought you were any good, they’d’ve given you that patch by now.”

  But they could see Boner wasn’t buying any of it. Whatever’d happened since the wiretap had been picked up, he didn’t care that Mitchell Fucking Morrison would hear it in disclosure and run right out and tell Nugs.

  McKeon looked at Price, motioned to the door, and they stepped out into the hall.

  Price said, “What the fuck was that?”

  “It’s like he thinks the murders were last year so they don’t count anymore.”

  “Well, it was a longshot he’d fall for the bluff anyway, but now we have this thing at the casino.”

  “Which one?”

  “Be easy enough to find out. Throw him back in the cells, we’ll keep him as long as we can and see what we get.”

  McKeon said, “I knew this would be a clusterfuck,” and Price said, “Yeah, well, some things never change.”

  • • •

  Danny said, “Shit, look at this, look how fucking skinny Nugs was,” and Gayle, coming out of the bedroom and looking over his shoulder at the TV said, what are you watching?

  “History Channel. This is Underground Cities — it’s about the patch-over. Look, look,” excited like a kid, “there you are. Shit, you haven’t changed.”

  Gayle, looking at herself on the TV, her younger self staring right at the camera, the news camera, she remembered the asshole holding it, taking it away from his face and yelling at her, come on, honey, smile, you’re getting rich.

  Not knowing the half of it.

  On the TV she was standing on the back balcony of the club, on the second floor. The place was an old four-storey hotel in La Prairie, been run by the Saints out of Montreal for years, since the ’70s, strip club in the bar and hookers in the rooms. On the TV Gayle was still staring at the camera, looking so pissed off, and now she was thinking she was pi
ssed off, all these people getting in their business. They were all going inside — well, the guys were. Gayle remembered how she and Sherry and the rest of the chicks waited upstairs while they had the ceremony in the bar and then they came down for the party. And that was a fucking party.

  Kid stuff, shit, seemed like a million years ago.

  Then Danny said, “How come all us guys got old and you chicks haven’t changed? Look at Patti, fuck, that could be yesterday.”

  Gayle said, “Maybe if you dyed your hair, wore all that make-up, and didn’t eat anything you’d look the same, too,” and Danny said yeah.

  Then Gayle said, “I’ve got to go up to Huron Woods,” and Danny said, why?

  “Because J.T. shot some guy in the head.”

  Danny, staring at the TV again said, yeah, so? “Why are you going all the way up there?”

  All the way, it was a couple hours tops and then Gayle was thinking maybe she’d swing by West End Exotics and pick up a Porsche or the Ferrari, and she said, “Somebody’s got to keep a lid on it, keep things in line.”

  “Shit, they’re showing you a lot,” Danny said, “and Sherry, look at her, she loves it, smiling at the camera.”

  “She even smiled at the cameras the cops were pointing at her.”

  Danny was laughing then, saying, look at Boner with the sewing machine, “The look on his face — I asked him he knew how to use it, fucking guy.”

  Gayle was thinking maybe she should change: she was wearing tight jeans and a white blouse and her new boots finally came in from Holt Renfrew, the skinny chick with the pinched face brought them over in a cab, looked for a second like she thought she’d be getting a tip and Gayle felt good closing the door in her face. Now she was thinking maybe she should dress up more but then wondering why, looking at her younger self on the TV giving the finger to the camera, digitized out, and Sherry’s tits when she pulled up her top, shit, and the narrator talking about how in the next six months nine of the guys at the ceremony would be dead, the narrator loving the sound of that, and Gayle seeing herself wearing tight jeans and a white tank top and thinking, had she changed at all?

  Then thinking, shit, honey, the jeans you’re wearing now cost seven hundred bucks, fit snug to every curve, feel great. Those ones on TV you got in a fucking mall in Etobicoke, rode up on you all the time, pinched and then came apart at the seams.

  Yeah, you’ve changed all right.

  Danny said, “Holy fuck, look at Mon Oncle,” the French guy who ran the Saints in Montreal before Danny Mac and Nugs and the boys joined up. “You’re fucking right he’s defiant,” talking to the TV now, seeing Mon Oncle in cuffs, the perp walk from the bar where they picked him up with the cop car. Danny found out later that it had all been arranged, worked out between the cops and lawyers — the cops needed the press they could get from it and they made a deal. Danny never got the details, but Mon Oncle was out later that day, didn’t spend the night in jail.

  Gayle said, “Okay, I’m going,” and Danny, still looking at the TV said, where?

  Gayle walked around the big recliner and looked down at Danny and said, “Up to Huron Woods.”

  Danny said, what for?, and Gayle said, “For fuck’s sake, Danny, do you not listen at all? Because J.T. shot some shylock in the head,” and Danny said, so?

  Gayle looked at him, slumped in the big leather chair, drinking beer at ten o’clock in the morning, watching himself on TV, the old days, and she was thinking pretty soon they’d have to take him out with a forklift, bury him in a piano box.

  She said, “We can’t have guys running around shooting people all over the place.”

  Danny said, no, sure, that’s right, “But once in a while it’s good.”

  Gayle said, “What?”

  “Look, we’re moving in on somebody else’s turf. These Italians, they’re not going to just give it up — we have to show them we’re serious.” He was still looking past Gayle at the TV and he smiled and said, “Look, shit, my fucking hard-tail,” and Gayle glanced back at the TV and saw them on a ride, a hundred bikers, two hundred, the narrator saying how they’d soon control drug distribution throughout southern Ontario and then something about how their appetites were as big as their Harleys, and she was thinking, who writes this shit? Then Danny said, “We got to get out on the road,” and Gayle said, what?

  “Yeah, you and me, we should just take off, get on the bike and go,” and Gayle thought, shit, this again.

  She was staring at Danny staring at the TV, the music some rip-off of “Born to be Wild,” Gayle thinking, this cheesy cable documentary, too cheap to get the rights and too dumb to come up with something original, and then Danny said, “That’s what it’s really about, man — freedom, the open road, just taking off,” and Gayle said, are you fucking serious?

  Danny looked at her and Gayle said, “Danny, it’s not about the open fucking road — it’s about the money. You heard the guy, it’s about selling drugs. It’s what we do.”

  She couldn’t believe it, Danny looking up at her like a kid just found out there’s no Santa, and she said, “Danny, it’s what you’ve been doing since you were a kid, since you were selling Thai stick and that shitty black hash in high school,” and she looked around their half-million-dollar condo and said, “and you’re still doing it. You’re good at it.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s enough.”

  Danny nodded, looked back at the TV, the funeral for Richard Tremblay, the guy took over from Mon Oncle and came to Toronto and finally got everybody on board, got them all working together, and he said, yeah, and Gayle was thinking, shit, come on, you just have to keep running this for a little longer, just till they take over this casino.

  And then she was thinking, would it always be like that, would there always be one more thing to do?

  She put that out of her head and said, okay, I’m going, and Danny said, why?

  “Fuck, I told you he shot some guy in the head,” and Danny said, oh right, but that’s good.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, it’s good. You take somebody out, start the negotiations.”

  “In the parking lot? It’s all over the news.”

  “Some dope dealer at a casino on a fucking Indian reservation? It was on the news for five seconds.”

  “You think that’s it?”

  “On TV, yeah. They don’t even know what it means. Fuck, look at this — they don’t know what half the shit going down means until years later they put it together, way too fucking late by then. No, honey, this is good. J.T.’s good, he knows what he’s doing.”

  Gayle said, okay, and got out of the way of the TV thinking it made sense, they were moving on someone else’s territory, of course they wouldn’t just give it up. She said, “I had lunch with the Mafia wives. You know, they don’t have a clue what their husbands are doing.”

  Still looking at the TV Danny said, “Don’t be so sure about that,” and Gayle said, “Well, one of them maybe,” and Danny said, no, “Probably more of them, they just know enough not to talk about it.” He turned in his big leather chair and looked at Gayle, saying, “These Eye-talians, it goes so far back with them, you know. They all know what’s going on, but they have all these traditions — it’s part of the culture.”

  Gayle said, “But these are Italians from Toronto and we’re moving on Italians from Philadelphia.”

  “I know, look, they don’t always get along. There’s differences between them, different parts of Italy, Calabria, and Sicily, and shit, I can’t keep it straight, ’Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra or some shit. They fight with each other all the time but they know how to make a deal and keep doing business.”

  Gayle said yeah, and Danny said, “Yeah, but they all need to know we’re serious motherfuckers.”

  She said, “Yeah, okay, good.” Then, walking to the door she was thinkin
g maybe Danny knew more than she realized, maybe he was more on the ball. She stopped at the door and said, “I’ll be back tonight, maybe we can go out to dinner.”

  Danny said, yeah okay, sounds good, and then he said, “Honey,” and Gayle looked back.

  “It’s J.T. We’re lucky he hasn’t popped half a dozen of them by now,” and he winked.

  Gayle walked back to the recliner and kissed him.

  • • •

  Cliff was looking past Frank’s desk at the wall of glass, the fantastic view, all those trees and the lake, and Frank said, “Boring as shit, isn’t it?”

  “I was thinking how you could put up a development there, cottages right on the lake, condos.”

  Frank said, condo cottages? and Cliff said, yeah, “Call it fractured ownership now so it doesn’t sound like time share, but same idea. Putting them up all over Muskoka — would look great right there.”

  “Can’t build anything here,” Frank said. “It’s a fucking Indian reservation. We tried to bring in a private medical clinic, MRIs and X-rays, shit people are lining up months for, but no way.”

  “So, just a casino?”

  “Yeah, just a casino.” Frank in his big office, always liked being the boss and Cliff was thinking, this is more like it for Frank, old-fashioned. He never really did live the rock’n’roll life; this being a mobster was more his style.

  “Look at you,” Frank said, “all businesslike. I don’t get into town much these days but when I do I usually see your billboards: Getting You the Highest Listing. You still working the High, Cliff?”

  And Barry said, “Have to make some money from the High somehow.”

  Cliff watched Frank and Barry looking at each other, like they were sizing each other up. Shit, like when they were kids.

  Frank said, “You’re doing all right on this tour,” and Barry said, yeah, we are.

  This is what Cliff was worried about, how this was going to go. They had no plan, no idea at all. Barry said, let’s go talk to Frank, and Cliff said, what are we going to say? Barry said he’d think of something, but Cliff knew he wouldn’t, knew it wouldn’t be clever, thought shit, might as well try the direct approach, get it over with.