The Smack

by RICHARD LANGE

  “No deal,” the dude said and ended the call.

  Petty kicked himself for not accepting the first offer. What did it matter if he took the guy for nine hundred or eleven hundred? Every haggle didn’t have to be life or death.

  Tinafey came in and said the Frenchies were going to a jazz club in Little Tokyo and had invited them along.

  “You go ahead,” Petty said. “I’m gonna stay here until the calls die down, then run over and see Sam.”

  “You’re a good daddy, stepping up like you are,” Tinafey said.

  “No, I’m not,” Petty said. “I’m an asshole. I’m showing off to impress you.”

  “That was my other idea,” Tinafey said.

  Petty was back on the phone when she got into the shower and still on when she got out. The bathroom was so small she had to step into the room to dry off. Petty lost track of what he was saying to the mark he was trying to reel in as he watched her put on her panties and choose a bra. She noticed he was watching and started teasing him. She arched her back and swayed her ass as she applied her mascara and turned to him and smiled as she slowly buttoned her blouse. The room heated up, the air turned swampy. Petty finally tossed the phone aside and charged her.

  “No, no, no,” she said, batting him away. “Uh-uh.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Uh-uh’?” Petty said.

  “You’re gonna mess me all up.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “I got them people waiting for me.”

  “I’ll be quick, too.”

  “Get back,” Tinafey said.

  She sashayed out the door after letting him kiss her on the cheek. Some trick getting him all worked up like that and leaving him wanting more. She was as good at her hustle as he was at his.

  He took a few more calls. The news came on the TV. Russia and China. Israel and North Korea. He couldn’t have found China on a map if you’d held a gun to his head, much less Korea. He put on ESPN and dozed off watching college basketball.

  The nap didn’t last long. He fell right into another bad dream about the cowboy, bullets and blood and dirt, and came awake again feeling like he was going to be sick. He knew a guy who’d never gotten over the shit he saw in the army in Iraq, would start crying out of nowhere, punch brick walls. He hoped he didn’t end up like that. He found a music channel on the TV and played it loud while he got ready to go out, singing along to the Rolling Stones, trying to clear his head.

  The MoneyGram outlet was in a mini-mall on 6th Street. It shared a parking lot with a Laundromat, a pupuseria, and a water store. All the poor neighborhoods had stores that sold “filtered” water. The immigrants who crowded into the creaking boardinghouses and roachy apartments couldn’t trust the tap water back in Honduras or wherever, and they didn’t trust it here, either. This particular store also sold scratch-off lottery tickets, running two scams at once.

  The pupuseria and Laundromat were hopping, everybody smiling, happy to be throwing around a little money on a Saturday night. Petty walked into the MoneyGram place and stood in line behind a kid in paint-spattered boots who was sending money to Guatemala and a skeevy white couple clearly strung out on something. They fidgeted repetitively, cycling through a sequence of tics: arm scratch, nose wipe, eye bulge, cough—two scarecrows in dumpster-dived jeans and T-shirts.

  “You got the number?” the guy asked the girl.

  “Shut the fuck up,” the girl said.

  “This even the right place?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  The guy turned to Petty. “Bro, sir,” he said. “Do you have five bucks to help us get to Oxnard?” His mouth moved twice as much as it needed to in order to form the words. He looked like someone in an old kung fu movie. Petty blamed him for the girl’s being messed up. He couldn’t help it; he had a daughter.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Leave him alone,” the girl said, grabbing the dude’s sleeve and yanking him back to her side.

  When it was their turn at the window, the girl didn’t have the number. Luckily for Petty, they were too messed up to argue much. The clerk explained the problem, the girl said, “But we need the money,” the clerk explained the problem again, and the girl said, “Fuck you,” and she and the guy staggered out.

  Petty stepped to the window and gave the clerk the confirmation numbers from Toronto and Seattle. The clerk gave him seventeen hundred dollars. He peeled off two hundreds and rolled the rest up and stuck it in his sock before leaving the office.

  The woman at the pupuseria didn’t understand when he asked if they had enchiladas—or pretended not to, anyway. There was a Mexican joint across the street, ENCHILADAS painted right on the sign. He ordered two cheese to go and sat down to wait. Three old men in cowboy hats were eating tacos and drinking beer at a table in front of the window. The music coming from the jukebox was so loud that the glass rattled whenever the tuba honked.

  Petty reached down to check the money in his sock. His phone rang. The Miami number. Enough, he decided. A punch meant for you wasn’t gonna miss because you closed your eyes. He walked outside to answer.

  “Who’s this?” he said.

  It was a recording.

  “The FBI estimates that there are three break-ins every minute and urges you to take steps to prevent this from happening to you. If you allow us to put a small sign in front of your house, we’ll install an advanced security system at no cost to you.”

  Petty smiled, relieved. Steve Roberts used to run this scam out of Dallas. And Corey Brown, out of Atlanta. Both did pretty well with it. And now someone else was giving it a go. That’s the way things went: a good con never died.

  19

  PETTY HEARD VOICES COMING FROM SAM’S ROOM. SURELY MRS. Kong’s family wasn’t still there. Maybe the doctor was with Sam, or a nurse, taking her temperature and blood pressure. He approached slowly and peeked in.

  “Hey, Dad,” Sam said with exaggerated enthusiasm. “Join the party.”

  Carrie—Petty’s ex-wife, Sam’s mother—smiled from a chair beside Sam’s bed. It was a vague smile, a slippery smile, a smile that might have meant anything or nothing. Petty hadn’t seen or spoken to Carrie in thirteen years. He’d made a couple of pathetic phone calls right after she walked out on him, but once he realized she was gone for good, she might as well have died. What little communication they’d had since then had been through his mom.

  She looked about the same. She was a woman who kept herself up. That was one of the things Petty had liked about her. The only sign of aging Petty noticed was a few lines on her brow that might eventually deepen into creases. She was still blond, still thin, still pretty but not quite beautiful. It was her eyes that had always prevented her from being a complete knockout. They were a nice shade of blue, but there was something hard about them, and about her mouth, too, something tough.

  “Hello, Rowan,” she said.

  “Carrie,” Petty said. “Hug.”

  Hug McCarthy, standing against the wall, arms crossed over his massive chest, nodded slightly. The man Carrie had taken off with still looked the same, too, like the biggest beach bum you’d ever seen. Six five, 250 pounds, all muscle. Still had the shaggy blond hair, the tan, the slow, stoned blink, still gave the impression he’d be more comfortable in board shorts and flip-flops than in the business-casual drag he wore, Polo shirts, pressed khakis, and loafers.

  Petty had met him in New Jersey, their paths crossed again in Miami, and when he showed up in Vegas, he came on like an old friend. He took Petty and Carrie to dinner at the nicest restaurants on the Strip, helped build a deck on their town house, and played as a shill in Petty’s crooked poker games, acting as muscle when necessary. Petty once saw him knock out a sore loser with a single punch and break another’s finger like it was nothing.

  In this respect he lived up to his reputation. Dark rumors circulated about how he made the money that paid for his Porsche, his courtside seats at Rebels games, and the high-roller luxury suites he lived in. B
odies buried in the desert, bodies sunk in the ocean, bodies chopped up and fed to pigs. You heard stories like those, and you definitely wanted to keep on the right side of old Hug.

  Petty set the bag containing the enchiladas on Sam’s table.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  “Your favorite food,” he said.

  “I’m gonna get fat with you around.”

  “You sitting?” Petty said to Hug, motioning to an empty chair.

  “Go ahead,” Hug said with a drawl. Something-burg, South Carolina. Petty moved the chair next to Carrie’s and sat down. See how cool I am with this? was the message he was sending. See how relaxed?

  “Your mom called and let me know what was going on,” Carrie said to him. “We got here as fast as we could.”

  “You didn’t need to come,” Sam said.

  “Of course we did,” Carrie said.

  “You guys being here is only stressing me out.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It makes me worry there’s something really wrong with me. Why else would you show up?”

  “Because we love you?” Carrie said.

  “That’s sweet,” Sam said. She didn’t mean it.

  “Let’s be nice,” Carrie said. “We’ve been driving for forty-eight hours straight, and I’m feeling fragile.”

  “Sure, Mom,” Sam said. “Whatever you want.”

  Petty enjoyed seeing Sam poke at Carrie. The bitch had it coming. Carrie had brought flowers. An elaborate arrangement of orchids sat on the table next to the enchiladas. The room stunk of them.

  “Tell me about school,” Carrie said. “How’s that going?”

  “School’s fine,” Sam said.

  “I’m glad one of us got some brains. I actually thought about being a nurse, but your dad came along and you came along and things went a different way. Do you need a lot of math to be a nurse? I’m terrible at math.”

  “The job wouldn’t have paid enough,” Sam said. “You’ve got expensive tastes.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Carrie said.

  “What about that ring?” Sam said, pointing at the diamonds on Carrie’s finger.

  “That’s my wedding ring,” Carrie said. “It’s supposed to be flashy.”

  “See, that’s the sort of wisdom I missed out on, not having you around,” Sam said.

  “Nice, now, be nice,” Carrie said.

  “You left me when I was eight years old and visited me once afterward. Was that nice?”

  “You were better off without me,” Carrie said.

  Sam pointed at Petty. “That’s what he said, too, when he left me with Grandma. ‘You’ll be better off without me.’ So what are you two doing here now, then?”

  “Don’t they teach you manners in college?” Carrie said. She kept her voice calm, but Petty knew her well enough to recognize that she was close to losing her temper.

  “If you think I’m gonna thank you for showing up, you’re crazy,” Sam said.

  Carrie sighed long and loud. “Sweetie, I’m sorry you’re not feeling well, but please quit being so shitty,” she said.

  “You’re shitty,” Sam said. “You’ve always been shitty. You’re a shitty fucking person.”

  “Hey!” Hug roared, startling everyone. “Watch your mouth with your mother.”

  “She’s not my mother,” Sam screamed at him. “She’s just the woman who had me. And you, you’re nobody. What are you even doing here?”

  Mrs. Kong was out cold, but the Mexican woman’s finger was on the call button. Petty got up to go. Anything he said would only be fuel for the fire. He’d come back later, after things had calmed down.

  “I’m heading to the cafeteria for coffee,” he said.

  “Hold on,” Carrie said. She stood and grabbed her purse. “I’m going with you.”

  Petty wanted to say no, but no polite way to do it came to him, and he’d decided polite was how to play this.

  Sam waved at all of them as they left the room. “Bye-bye,” she said in a parody of cheerfulness. “Thanks for the flowers.”

  Hug took his coffee outside, in search of somewhere to smoke. Petty and Carrie stayed in the cafeteria. Petty let Carrie choose the table. She picked one next to the Christmas tree. The fake fir listed to one side, struggling under its burden of twinkle lights and ornaments. Each ornament had a name written on it in glitter. Miguel, René, Leilani. The LED star that topped the tree blinked on and off, on and off, like a warning signal at an intersection in the middle of nowhere.

  Carrie stirred a packet of Equal into her coffee with a little red straw. That was something about her that had changed. She used to use three sugars.

  “My mom didn’t say anything to me about calling you,” Petty said.

  “I told her not to,” Carrie said. “I knew you’d have a shit fit. But truthfully, now that I’m here, I don’t even know why I came. I hate hospitals.”

  “Why did you?” Petty said. “Why did you come?”

  “She’s my daughter,” Carrie said. “It sounded serious.”

  Petty sipped his coffee.

  “Is she always like that? So pissed off?” Carrie said.

  “I haven’t seen her since she was fourteen,” Petty said. “But she was pretty pissed then, too.”

  “It’s no way to go through life.”

  “I don’t know,” Petty said. “I’m pissed most of the time, too. Aren’t you?”

  This wasn’t what Carrie wanted to hear. She changed the subject.

  “You just happened to be in town?”

  “Just passing through,” Petty said.

  “That was lucky. It’s nice you could be here for her.”

  “I don’t know that I’m doing anything useful. It’s mostly been sitting with her, keeping her company.”

  Carrie ran her fingers through her hair. She looked like she wished she had a mirror. Petty couldn’t help noticing that the one button on her blouse that separated modest from sexy was undone, so that anyone who wanted could see her cleavage. They used to go toe-to-toe over things like that.

  “She says you’ve got a girlfriend,” Carrie said.

  “I hope you guys had something more interesting to talk about than that,” Petty said.

  “A black girlfriend,” Carrie said, making it sound scandalous.

  Petty ignored her. An ornament had fallen off the tree and lay on top of the fake gifts piled underneath. Petty picked it up and hung it on an empty branch.

  “Where did you come from that it took two days?” he said.

  “Houston,” Carrie said. “Hug’s a security consultant there.”

  “Is that what they call it now?” Petty said.

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Carrie said.

  Petty sat back and smiled at her.

  “You two do make a cute couple,” he said.

  “It’s been almost thirteen years,” she said. “Don’t tell me you still cry yourself to sleep every night.”

  “You’re not funny,” Petty said.

  He stood and picked up his coffee. Warm air blew out of a vent overhead and started the paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling swinging.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted,” Carrie said.

  “And what was that?” Petty said.

  “The same thing most men want. Something they saw on TV or read about in a book. That wasn’t gonna work for me.”

  “And Sam?” Petty said. “She didn’t work for you, either?”

  “I lasted eight years. That’s good for someone who wasn’t meant to be a mother in the first place.”

  “She deserved better than us,” Petty said. “It’s a miracle she turned out so well.”

  Carrie scoffed at this. “Kids are tough,” she said. “My mom worked twelve-hour shifts at a cannery and waitressed on the weekends. I was lucky if I saw her an hour a day. From the time I was seven years old I had to cook for my brothers and clean the house.”

  “Yeah, but we were supposed to
give Sam a better life than we had,” Petty said.

  “It is better,” Carrie said. “She’s going to college, going to concerts, going to parties. She’s not stuck at home with a kid like I was.”

  Poor Carrie. Still and always poor, poor Carrie, who’d suffered more than anyone else ever. Petty had had enough of her for one night.

  “How long are you going to be around?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Until we find out what’s going on, I guess.”

  “Let’s work it so we visit at different times.”

  “Man, you sure hold a grudge.”

  “It’ll be easier on Sam. I’m going to sit with her now. You take the morning shift.”

  Carrie said something else mean, but Petty was already on his way, waved at her over his shoulder. They fought all the time when they were married, and even after they’d made up he’d lie in bed next to her and worry that she’d snuck a knife out of the kitchen. She was scary like that then. Hell, she was scary like that now.

  Sam was finishing the enchiladas when Petty got back to her room.

  “These were good,” she said.

  Petty sat in one of the chairs. From the hallway came the sound of squeaking wheels and hushed voices. The evening bustle was in full swing. It was dinnertime, and visitors trying to find their relatives’ rooms had to stand aside for food carts and dodge workers delivering trays. Doctors made their late rounds, and nurses distributed meds, asking patients their names and checking their wristbands before handing over the paper cups.

  The Mexican woman in the bed next to Sam’s asked the orderly if she could take a walk. The orderly, a burly Mexican kid with the Dodgers logo tattooed on his forearm, helped her get up, waited until she’d steadied herself, then led her out of the room and down the corridor.

  Sam tried to push the table away from her bed, but it was stuck.

  “You need help?” Petty said, leaning forward in his chair.

  “I’ve got it,” Sam said.