by Dennis Kelly
“What are you accusing me of?” Joanne shot back, lifting her arms in a gesture that invited all the customers to witness this craziness.
Alita braced for a skirmish. The woman’s outburst had caught the attention of a few customers and the patrolman.
The waitress interrupted, dropped the coffee on the table, and tapped a pencil to her order pad. Alita flattened her hands over the bundle of lottery tickets and swept them into her purse. “Nothing for me,” she said. Joanne likewise waved away the waitress and kneaded her temples.
A silence sat between the women while they took a measure of each other. Joanne’s face was tan and crinkled like a walnut, but it seemed to Alita there was a fragileness about her that belied the tough weathered look.
“Your cousins. One of ’em a skinny wisecracker, the other tall, serious?” Joanne asked, her defenses softening.
“Rafie and Eduardo.” Alita’s eyes moistened. “Killed in a car accident.”
“Oh, my god,” Joanne blurted, bringing a hand to her mouth. She closed her eyes and held them shut for a long while. When her eyes finally opened it was as though she had returned from another place. “You know, the desert is quite remarkable in its beauty,” Joanne said in a low even voice, as if guiding a meditation. “The stars are so bright you can practically reach out and pluck ’em like ripe apples. If you look deep enough into the flowers you can see the whole of creation.”
Joanne paused and looked at Alita through eyes wary and narrow that seemed to hold too much disappointment. “I spent the last month wandering around just such a place with an Indian charlatan. I wanted a mystical experience that would allow me to access a portal of healing and wellness beyond the consciousness and capabilities of our ‘doc-in-a-box’ system. I wanted to save myself. Ultimately I became discouraged, and on my way home I got into a jam and landed on Eduardo and Rafie for help. Couple of days ago. God knows what could have happened to me with two roughnecks on the road in the middle of nowhere. Not that Rafie didn’t want to party.”
A crooked smile broke across Alita’s face. “That would be Rafie.”
“They listened to my whiny story about an inoperable brain tumor. Took me to a bus station. The bus got me this far, and I’m waiting for a friend to pick me up.”
“Where were they headed?
“Didn’t say. Tell you the truth, I don’t think they knew. But before we parted they gave me a handful of lottery tickets.” Joanne dug into her backpack and extracted the remaining ticket along with a wad of cash and clutched them in her fist.
“Maybe it was dumb luck, twisted fate or mercy. Or maybe I was in the right place at the right time, or the whim of a couple of highwaymen that resulted in this gift.” Joanne pushed the ticket and cash toward Alita. “But I’m going to consider it an act of love, plain and simple. And girl, that’s something been few and far between for me.”
Alita started to push Joanne’s hand back, rejecting the offer, but instead of a tug-of-war, their hands softly folded upon one another. “They’ve helped me too,” Alita said, tears running down her cheeks.
Bowling
Kirchner steered his Crown Vic into the parking lot of the strip mall on Robert Street, heading for the West Side Bowl and Liquor. After the lottery siege press conference, he had considered going back to the office to file a report. But he was too wound up, and needed to hit something. Squeeze out the venom. In the past he’d drink, kick down a door, or both. Now, he would go bowling.
He dug his double ball bag out of the trunk and entered the one-story bowling alley. Built in the 1950s, the place had undergone little in the way of physical remodeling. He was met with the smell of stale beer and moldy shoe leather. The entry was flanked by a lane and shoe rental counter on the right and a dark cocktail lounge on the left. Deep inside the bar, lounge lizards nursed Manhattans and rarely ventured into the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights illuminating the eighteen lanes. The familiar air and rumbling of balls and pins almost relaxed Kirchner. Almost. He was eager to throw the first ball. At three in the afternoon, the lanes were empty; league play was not until five. He had bowled on a police team but, over time, found it more to his liking to bowl alone. From his bowling bag he lifted a pair of Lind bowling shoes with adjustable glide pads on the bottom, laced them up, and set his two bowling balls in the ball return tray.
The blue-black marbled reactive resin strike ball weighed sixteen pounds and looked like the earth spiraling out into orbit when Kirchner launched it. The spare ball, of the same weight, was blood red. Although the equipment was first-rate, Kirchner refused to wear a fancy bowling shirt, gloves, wrist braces, or any other nonessential accessories.
“Turn off the overhead electronic score board, will ya, Cheryl?” Kirchner shouted from the lane up to the counter. The computerized scoring system was the West Side Bowl’s one nod to modernization, and Kirchner hated it. He wanted to be left alone without a window into his world.
He launched the first ball with such force it bounced down the alley like a rock skimming on water. Kirchner could barely hear the crash of the pins. His head was still filled with the ringing noise of the blast and thoughts of Bonnie’s horrific death. “Goddammit.” He held tight to the cusswords and kicked his empty ball bag. “I fucked up, let that woman down,” he scolded himself. “Why did she come in so damn early?” He knew there was no direct linkage between the meeting he had scheduled with the lottery database security manager and the hostage taking, but he felt responsible just the same.
The next ball hit the head pin dead on and left a hopeless sev-en-ten field goal split. Questions spilled in as he waited for the pins to reset. How in the world did Bonnie get caught up in the cross fire between a disgruntled lottery player and a lottery winner attempting to redeem a ticket? Did Bonnie have accomplices in the manipulation of the Lottery database? Maybe Morty, as Tyler theorized? Or was Bonnie just an out-of-tilt pet lover trying to generate a run-up to boost the Lottery’s revenue for animal care?
Kirchner had never taken to the social side of bowling and resented those who discounted the physical and mental aspects of the sport. As a left-handed bowler, he had an advantage over righties. The floor path of the left-handed bowler received less traffic, resulting in better floor conditions and a truer ball roll. Winter bowling was also to his advantage. The low humidity made the pins lighter and more active. He wished he had an equally informed strategy for the investigation.
Still over-amped from the day, he let the ball fly halfway down the sixty-two-foot, ten-and-three-quarters-inch lane. It bounced once and leaped into the three-pound seven pin, ricocheting it like a penny in a clothes dryer. Kirchner finished his third game and exchanged his sweat-soaked polo shirt for a clean one in his bag.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the bat-cave darkness of the cocktail lounge. He laid a twenty on the bar and ordered a Schweppes bitter lemon soda and two five-dollar pull tabs. He hadn’t eaten all day. The citrus scorched his stomach lining. His cell phone rang—it was Tyler, the boy wonder BCA analyst.
“Game on,” Tyler blurted.
“What are you talking about?”
“We discovered an abandoned rental car in the Lottery headquarters parking lot,” Tyler said. “Inside we found plastic bags filled with counterfeit lottery tickets.”
“Counterfeits?” Kirchner said loudly. The word hung in the dark thick air of the bowling lounge, but no one reacted.
“Stuffed in one of the bags was a computer printout. The winning ticket was listed. Wild, huh?”
“Call in the lab.” Kirchner attempted to take control of his loose-cannon analyst.
“Done,” Tyler said, skipping ahead of Kirchner’s grasp of the situation. “The lab’s dusted the car, plastic bags, and tickets for prints. We’re also trying to run down the paper and ink on the counterfeits.”
“Have you ID’d the car renter?” Kirchner asked, and held his empty glass up to the barkeep, hoping to drown the relentless bomb-blast-induced heada
che.
“A Roddy Pitsan from Vancouver,” Tyler said. “Presume this is the same guy that got shredded in the explosion, ouch! Won’t know for sure until we get a forensic report.”
“Vancouver,” Kirchner said, snapping open a pull tab, “no doubt from the same outfit running tickets through the Cash and Dash. But why counterfeits?”
“Maybe this Roddy dude thought he could take advantage of the New Year’s holiday and blow the jackpot ticket by the Lottery officials,” Tyler offered. “But my guess is that he didn’t know the tickets in his possession were counterfeits, thought he had the real deal. I think somebody set him up. Somebody really good— the entire batch is visually perfect.”
“Then the winning ticket is still in play,” Kirchner said in an attempt to add some investigative thinking.
“Sure is, have you checked your mailbox lately?”
“What?”
“It’s all over the news,” Tyler said. “People have been receiving winning lottery tickets in the mail from an anonymous sender. And from the reports we’re getting, most of these people have a hardship story. The media is all over it, playing up the Robin Hood-Good Samaritan angle.” Tyler read him some of the headlines. “Young mother with cancer receives $50,000 in lottery tickets. Widow in Fergus Falls surprised with $10,000. Homeless shelter showered with hundreds of winning lottery tickets.”
The media had also caught wind that the winning lottery tickets being sent out had been issued at the Cash and Dash. This fueled the speculation that the yet-unclaimed $750 million ticket could land on someone’s door step, à la Ed McMahon.
“How many tickets did you estimate were associated with the winning ticket ‘wheel,’ as you called it?”
“Over fifty thousand,” Tyler said. “Most of them seven, four, and three-dollar winners, but hundreds of those tickets are worth ten thousand each.”
Kirchner stared blankly into a neon beer sign behind the bar. Still unsettled from the bomb blast, the pieces of the investigation rattled around in his brain like loose shrapnel. He took a stab at ordering the information, more for his own sense of grounding than anything else. “Whoever’s behind this scheme knows we’re watching for those redemptions. This act of charity is a hoax. They’re willing to give up the short money, probably to mask the big winner. Some little old lady’s going to show up with the winning $750 million ticket, claim she received it in the mail, and walk out with the money. When the dust settles, she’ll get a nice payday and the masterminds of this caper will be down the road with millions, leaving a pile of bodies in their wake.”
“Nice police work there,” Tyler said smugly, knowing he had another card to play. “But I think your little old lady and mastermind may be a Mexican woman in her twenties.”
Kirchner strained to keep his temper in check toward the smart-ass analyst. “Whattya got?”
“Turned up a positive ID from the car hit by the pig truck in Luverne. An Alita Torres. She co-signed as a relative on the car’s purchase.”
“The bank teller.” Kirchner felt a flash of recognition.
“My guess,” Tyler ventured, “is she probably observed large amounts of cash being transacted through the bank from the Cash and Dash and tipped off her relatives to an easy score. In the robbery attempt on the convenience store, her amigos stumbled into the lottery tickets and a resistant clerk, who they killed. In the process they also pissed off the Canadian lottery ticket resellers, as their winning jackpot ticket was likely included in the theft.”
“What’s this Alita’s address?” Kirchner pulled out a small note pad. “Time to pay her a visit. In the meantime, dig up everything you can find on Alita Torres.”
He clicked off with Tyler and snapped open a losing pull tab. Although he felt overwhelmed by an undefined criminal enterprise spreading like an unchecked virus, he was certain of two things: this case would have legs as long as the winning jackpot ticket remained unclaimed, and this Alita was in a world of trouble.
Laundromat
Abe Weisman, the attorney hired to assist in the lottery ticket claim, called Gisele at the hotel where Roddy had dropped her off. He told her about the bomb blast and the reported counterfeit scheme. The police were on their way to visit him. He suggested she leave the country, pronto, as her client privilege had vaporized.
Startled by Abe’s account of the lottery hostage siege, she hastily checked out of the hotel, fearing Abe had already given her up. She walked directionless down West Seventh Street, shouldering her overnight bag, past antique stores, sex shops, and beer joints. She walked in order to do something other than think—walked until her wet, frozen feet rebelled and steered her into the warmth of a Laundromat.
Perspiring from the sauna heat of the Laundromat, she loosened her coat. Her eyes stung from the sudsy air. She called Claude in Vancouver. “I got big fucking trouble,” Gisele said into the phone.
“What’s the thumping noise?” Claude asked.
“My shoes.” Gisele glanced at her shoes pitching against the glass porthole of a front-loading dryer.
“Don’t know what kinda trouble you churned up in the states, but the guillotine’s about to drop here.” The U.S. Customs was pressuring the normally toothless Canadian provincial government to shutter Lotto2Win’s operation. “Figure we got less than twenty-four hours.” Gisele could hear Claude’s raspy inhale of a cigarette. “The bank accounts have already been seized.”
“What did I do to deserve this bullshit?” Gisele shouted into the phone, trying to compete with a mother yelling at her unruly toddler to quit crawling in the washing machines.
“The police are looking for you on this end. More questions about the Professor’s death,” Claude said. “I’ve pulled the hard copy of all the phone logs and destroyed them, along with just about every other document in the place, but they’ll eventually get to the electronic records. C’est la vie, ma cherie.”
“Claude, I’m losing it.” Gisele slumped into a molded plastic chair bolted to the floor, with the open phone held against her chest. She had dropped her daughter off with her ex-husband, the former banker now a fry cook, with the understanding that she would be back from Minnesota in three days. There was no doubt her ex would use the slightest deviation from the scheduled exchange time, not to mention an inquiry from police regarding foul play, as proof she was an unfit mother.
The toddler who had been crawling in the washing machines waddled up to her knees, looked at her bare feet, and curiously watched the tears leak from Gisele’s face. Gisele brought the phone back to her ear. “Please help me. I’ve got to get home.”
“I’ll check in with your ex,” Claude offered. “See if I can cover for you. But no way will you get past airport and border security.”
“Who are these robbers and counterfeiters?” Gisele’s fear swung to rage. “They’ve got our tickets, my money, my out. I’ll kill ’em.”
Claude reluctantly gave Gisele the phone number and apartment address Roddy had used to locate the convenience store ticket thieves. Gisele pulled her hot, curled-up shoes out of the dryer and called a cab.
Visitor
Alita contacted Brian after her chance encounter with the woman who received the gift of lottery tickets from Eduardo and Rafie. He insisted she return to the farm in Albert Lea. She agreed but only after a visit to St. Paul to gather up her belongings. The real reason for visiting the apartment was evident in the things her cousins left behind: three bottles of beer in the refrigerator, a socket set, the circled employment ads, and a strip of pictures of the three of them taken in a photo booth at the mall. These were the only touchstones to the memories she had of her cousins. Rafie and Eduardo were her armor. With their loss she felt abandoned and terrified. She put on a jacket left behind by Eduardo, her heart aching, the jacket, his shroud.
A firm knock drew Alita’s attention to her apartment door just as an envelope slid across the threshold. It was a utility bill with her name on it. Another insistent knock.
; “Sorry to bother you.” A woman’s muffled voice from the hallway could be heard through the closed door. “I got your mail by mistake, along with a package. I’ll leave it outside the door.”
Alita looked through the door’s wide-angle peephole into the hallway but saw no one. She cautiously cracked opened the door to retrieve the promised package. A blast of hair spray stung her face. A woman charged into the apartment wildly swinging a sock loaded with rolls of quarters. Alita stepped back in an attempt to avoid the attack, but caught a blow to the ribs. The strike knocked her into the kitchen table and onto the floor, spilling the wastebasket on the way down. The woman scrambled on top of Alita and clutched her throat, digging Alita’s gold cross into her windpipe.
“Where are the goddamn lottery tickets?” Gisele shouted, “Where?”
Blood ran out of Alita’s nose down into her eyes and mixed with tears. Flailing on the trash-strewn floor, Alita’s hand found a beer bottle. The crack of glass against Gisele’s head froze both women. Gisele moaned. Her eyes rolled and disappeared into the folds of her eyelids. Her head thumped to the floor as blood seeped through her matted hair.
Alita scrambled to her feet with the broken beer bottle in hand and waited guardedly for movement from the motionless crazy woman. “Please don’t die here. Not another dead person, please God.” Alita cautiously folded the intruder into a seated position and propped her up against the wall. She then dashed to the sink, ran a rag under cold water, formed a compress, and held it against Gisele’s gushing head wound.