“Yeah, well, the market got tight, and jobs dried up. This isn’t simply good money, it’s a connection to some long-term jobs that can lead to other ones, and it will help me be able to be more flexible with what contracts I take later. We talked it over, and we decided we’d get Sam out here early, maybe make a little vacation of it before I went down to L.A. and made the run. It’d be only a week I’d miss once he actually got started, and we figured with you here it’d be easier.”
“Sounds about right. So what went wrong?”
Mitch’s hand tightened on the wheel. “We came on a wreck in the middle of Nebraska. Bad one. Tractor-trailer all mangled, driver shredded. It turned even my stomach, to tell you the truth. And Sam—” Mitch cut himself off.
Oh Jesus. “Sam went batshit, didn’t he?”
“Like nothing I’ve ever seen. He was fine at first. Then all of a sudden we’re in the mountains, heading for Vail, and he breaks down. I thought it was the mountains again, because you know how he gets with heights. But then he’s crying so hard he throws up. Blood, Skeet. He threw up blood. I took him to the hospital, it scared me so bad.”
Randy’s fingers curled into the armrest. “What the fuck.”
Mitch ran a hand through his hair. “It’s some sort of repressed trauma, according to the doctors. Something to do with his mom. Makes no damned sense to me, because his mom fucking died of cancer, not a car wreck, but he’s convinced now I’m going to die on the way to Kentucky, and he’ll never see me again. Which is horseshit. I’m more likely to die driving around Vegas. But there’s no talking to him, and the fuck if I know what to do with this, Randy. They gave him these pills to take for anxiety, and they’re even worse—he stones out, and then he looks at me and cries.”
“Can you get out of the run, or get somebody to cover it?”
“No.” Mitch ground out the word in a terse bite. “I’ve tried, but no. And the long and the short of it is, it’s clear he’s going to be like this if I so much as drive up to Reno. He’s tearing me up, and I don’t know what to do to help him.”
Randy wished he had an answer, but he didn’t. “Shit, Old Man.”
Mitch snorted. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance Prince Charming there in your kitchen is a psychiatrist?”
“Fuck, he might be. I never got around to asking.”
“Yet I notice he was about to get quite a fancy brunch.”
Randy shrugged and nodded at the corner. “Turn here. My bike’s at Herod’s.”
Mitch grunted. “You still working for that fuckwad?”
“He keeps me entertained.”
“He’s an asshole.”
Randy raised his eyebrows. “So am I.”
Mitch pulled into the parking lot. “Not like Billy. And I don’t care for the gangster he keeps in the attic, either.”
Randy undid his seat belt and turned to Mitch. “Listen, we’ll figure out what to do for Sam. At any rate, yes, I’ll be here for him. You don’t have to worry.”
Mitch frowned. “Don’t want to get in the way of whatever it is you have going with Mr. Handsome.”
“I don’t know what I have going with Mr. Handsome, but whatever it is, it’s not coming before Sam, or you.” He opened the door to the truck and started to slide out.
Mitch leaned over the seat to continue the conversation. “Where’d you meet him?”
Randy grinned. “Roulette table at Herod’s.”
Mitch’s eyes went wide. “You played roulette?”
“I did, and I won. But a word of warning—don’t bet against Slick. He’s got one hell of a poker face.”
“He plays?”
“A little. I started teaching him last night, but he’s got a real feel for it.”
A smile played around the corners of Mitch’s lips. “Match made in heaven.”
Randy rolled his eyes. “You heading home, or running out to the distribution center?”
“Home, by way of the Tobacco Outlet.”
“Oh good. Keep nursing your cancer, Old Man, and you can die like his mom after all.”
Mitch flipped him off, and Randy shut the door. He watched Mitch pull away, thinking of everything he’d told him about Sam, letting it roll around in his head as he headed for his bike.
Halfway there he turned around, pocketing his keys as he wove his way through the cars and toward the side entrance to the casino, to the stairs leading to Crabtree’s office.
Randy didn’t know Crabtree’s real name, and he didn’t ask because he’d heard a rumor if you found out, you’d end up bones in the desert by the morning. He doubted this was actually the case, but he did know there was a strong association between Crabtree and violence as a general rule.
Crabtree was not a bad man. He’d been in the mob, a ghost all his life, never appearing in photos, never really joining society. Crabtree hung out in his office pushing paper around, doing what he could to keep the casino from going completely belly-up. Crabtree hated what Billy had done to the place, but even if he would have dared to usurp his godson, he could never own the casino outright with his history. So he stayed on the sidelines, milling around, nudging Billy into the lines when he wandered out too far.
Crabtree’s office was a tiny corner of the sixth floor, a little hovel full of a desk and Crabtree and three zillion posters of cats—most of them kittens. He pointed proudly to the new one behind him on the wall as Randy walked in, a fluffy ball of orange fuzz blinking up from a bed of impossibly green leaves on a poster reminding Randy of Scholastic book orders.
Randy found the posters distasteful and borderline disturbing, but he smiled at Crabtree and nodded in approval. “Very nice.”
“I found it at a flea market on the way in this morning. Isn’t it precious?” He beamed at the poster for another moment before turning to Randy. “What can I do for you, Jansen?”
Randy glanced at the chair across from Crabtree’s paper-strewn desk, then looked at Crabtree for permission to sit, which the older man granted with a nod. Randy inclined his head in acknowledgment, though he didn’t fully relax in his seat. One was wise to keep on his toes with Crabtree.
“You told me one of your covers for working in the Outfit was a practicing psychiatrist.”
Crabtree laughed, a belly rumble that shook his whole body. “Therapist, son. But yes. I was actually licensed for that one.” He arched an eyebrow. “You taking your defeat at Roulette Man’s hands this badly, Skeet?”
Randy set his teeth. The bet was a bitter pill that just kept coming back to be swallowed. Or maybe it was more like one really long, rancid dick. He shifted uncomfortably on his seat. “It’s Sam. He and Mitch showed up this morning. Something’s wrong with Sam, and it’s got Mitch all torn up. Me too.” He rubbed the side of his face. “They were told he should see somebody, but I don’t know anything about this shit. How do you find a good therapist? One that won’t fuck him up more or lock him up?”
Crabtree looked amused. “First you try to throw a bet, then you lie about it, and now you’re in here worrying about Sam Keller like a mother hen. Who are you, and what have you done with I-don’t-give-a-shit Randy Jansen?”
Randy tried not to react, but it was like knowing somebody had just thrown a spider at you. Hard to stop thinking about so many wiggling legs. “You had us followed?” Randy gave up trying to poker face Crabtree and aimed an angry finger at him. “You have no fucking right to tail me. Yes, we’ve had some fun, but I am not your bitch, and you do not fucking put shadows on me.”
“I didn’t have anyone follow you. I just took a guess, and it’s interesting to see I was right.”
Randy remembered it wasn’t generally wise to shout at a gangster and forced himself to calm the fuck down. “Okay. Yes, I tried to throw the bet. Yes, he figured it out and threw it himself before I could.” Randy frowned. “No, this is too much detail for you to have guessed. Goddamn it, Crabtree, you did follow me.”
“Not you, no. I’m looking forward to seeing your luscious
little bum in a pair of hot pink twink shorts in a few weeks. If Billy gives up on his Gay Nite, I’ll tell him I’ll collect on the bet for him in a private performance.”
“The color was not part of the bet.” Randy’s mind kept turning over Crabtree’s confession. Not you. That meant he was following Slick. The knowledge threw Randy even more, and he opened his mouth a few times, trying to protest, but he couldn’t seem to find his footing.
Crabtree threaded his fingers over his ample belly. “You working this evening?”
“Yes. I’m going to call in vacation to the distribution center, but Billy’s got me on prop for tonight, though. Why?”
“I’ll see to it you aren’t working. Go home and clean your house and make something fancy for dinner, Jansen. I’ll be over at seven.”
Randy felt the blood drain out of his face. “Crabtree—”
“Pick up a few sealed decks downstairs on your way out. I hear your new boy is quite the up and comer at Hold ’Em.”
Fuck, but this had been a big mistake. Randy held up his hand. “Crabtree, I appreciate—”
Crabtree held up a hand too, and Randy instantly fell silent.
“This is for my own curiosity. I want to meet the man you couldn’t read. Besides, I’ll be better able to give you a referral for Sam if I know what I’m looking at.”
Randy kept quiet, but he reeled inside, kicking himself for following the instinct to come up here.
Crabtree tilted his head and gave Randy a grandfatherly look which was both reassuring and absolutely horrifying at the same time. “I’m not going to hurt him. Either one of them. If you thought I might, you wouldn’t have come to me at all.”
“Sam is from Iowa. Despite what he can do with his mouth, he’s pretty innocent.”
Crabtree nodded, still smiling. “I understand.”
Randy watched Crabtree’s face intently, searching for even the barest hint of licentiousness, but he really did just look like a grandfather now. Anyway, Crabtree was all about bears and otters, drifting between the two depending on his mood. Both Ethan and Sam were safe.
As safe as they could be, having dinner with the mob.
Randy’s palms, suddenly sweaty, curled against his jeans.
Crabtree, of course, did not miss this. “This is purely a friendly visit. I won’t be asking anyone for payment of any kind.”
Randy snorted. “You’re the one who told me there’s no such thing as a friendly visit.”
“Family is different.”
Randy snorted.
Crabtree laughed. “I like you, Randy. You have the same code as I do. Yes, I regard you as family.”
What code? This question was crowded out, however, by thoughts of the many twisted ways he had paid for Crabtree’s services in the past.
Crabtree’s laugh darkened. “Very well, incestuous family.”
“Thank you?” Randy paused as another wrinkle appeared on the horizon. “Okay, normally I don’t mind—”
“I’m not going to get in the middle of your blooming love life, so settle down. Unless I decide he’s not worthy of putting his sausage in your cute little buns, but from what I hear he’s more than adequate to the task, metaphorically and otherwise.” Crabtree waved a hand at Randy in dismissal and began to sift through his papers again. “Go home and get to work. I’ll see you at seven.”
Randy rose, slightly dizzy. The sensation didn’t abate as he headed down the stairs, and he outright ignored Billy when he hollered Randy’s name as he passed. He managed to make it all the way to his bike and rode it several blocks before he had to pull over by the side of the road.
He threw up once, waited, then did it again.
At home he parked the bike in the garage and went inside, where Ethan and Sam sat in awkward silence, both not watching a home-and-garden show on television. They looked up at him as he entered, and when Randy saw their beautiful faces and thought about what he’d so foolishly done, he nearly had to run to the bathroom and have another round of dry heaves.
Swallowing them, he nodded at Sam. “Peaches, I need you to clean the house for me. Clean. Enough for the fucking Queen of England. When Mitch comes home, lock him in your room and do not let him make a mess. In fact, if you could fuck him into a coma, that’d be good, because he is going to try to slit my throat when he finds out what I just did, and I’d rather he didn’t have the energy.”
Sam’s eyes went wide. “What—?”
Randy cut him off. “Slick, we’re going shopping. And remind me to pick up some cards on the way home, because I forgot once already.”
Ethan rose, frowning elegantly. “Randy, what’s going on? You look green.”
Randy glanced at his watch. “Fuck, there isn’t any time. How the hell am I going to cook something good enough for Crabtree and get to the mall all at the same time?”
“Crabtree?” Sam, who had risen too, sank down once more. His face was white. “The gangster?”
Randy nodded. “He’s coming for dinner. Do not tell your husband. But don’t let him get drunk if he finds out, either.”
Ethan raised an eyebrow. “What the hell is going on?”
“What’s going on is you’re going to the mall, because you aren’t meeting Crabtree in clothes you’re wearing for the second day in a row.”
“Who is Crabtree?” Ethan asked as Randy led him toward the door.
“Santa Claus.” Trembling slightly, Sam picked up the newspaper Mitch had strewn over the carpet. “With a big, bloody knife.”
Chapter Seven
“IS THIS CRABTREE man actually a gangster?” Ethan asked as they pulled onto a busy street. “Or are you just being colorful?”
Randy rubbed his hand against the back of his neck. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “He’s a gangster of sorts. I don’t know the full extent of it, and I don’t want to. All I know is he’s Billy Herod’s godfather, and while he’s not a big cog in the wheels keeping Las Vegas turning, he knows how and when to grease them. I also know he has killed people, both by order and by his own hands.”
It was all so ridiculous Ethan thought it had to be a joke, but nothing about Randy’s demeanor hinted this was anything but the real deal. “But why is a gangster coming to your house for dinner? And why does this mean I have to get dressed up?”
“We all have to get dressed up. I don’t know what the fuck we’re going to do with Mitch, but Peaches will think of something. As to why he’s coming…” Randy flattened his lips into a line. “That’s because I’m a big, fat idiot and drew his attention. Of course, from the sound of things, you already had his eye anyway, so I suppose I just put the inevitable in motion earlier.”
This comment surprised Ethan. “Me?”
“You. I didn’t read you right and lost a bet to Billy. Word has already gotten around, and Crabtree wants to meet you.”
Suddenly none of this was amusing anymore. “Is he going to kill me?”
“No. But here’s some advice: he loves cats. I mean, he loves cats. If you don’t love them too, learn to fake it quick. Beyond this point, he’s perfectly rational. A little perverted, but he’ll leave you alone. Though you should probably get ready to watch him flirt with me.”
So the Santa Claus mobster who loved cats was gay. Ethan wondered briefly how he had gone from being the only gay man he knew unless Nick was in town to being steeped in them. He stared out the windshield as he tried to process. “And where are we going right now?”
“Miracle Mile. You need some H&M. We’ll swing by Whole Foods on the way home and pray the culinary gods strike me with divine inspiration.”
“So this Crabtree invited himself to your house for dinner on short notice and expects you to have your house and guests scrubbed clean with a gourmet spread waiting for him?”
Randy tapped the steering wheel with his thumb for a minute before answering. When he did, his voice had the same instructive tone it had taken when he’d spoken so passionately about the law of averages.
; “Here’s a poker lesson for you, Slick. Crabtree works for Billy Herod, which is to say he works for a child of the mob watching him, and you’ll remember I said Billy runs casino theater, a kind of operation his father would cringe to see. Crabtree is a big, out bear in a hyper-masculine underworld. When you meet him, get a good look at his teeth and note the number of gold caps he flashes. He’s never once had a cavity in his life, and he didn’t cap healthy teeth for fun. He’s smart as a whip, but he’s weird and quirky, and it’s a good thing you’re not a furry man with a bit of belly and a pretty mouth.”
The peek beneath Crabtree’s veneer jarred Ethan. He nodded.
Randy glanced at him across the seat. “Crabtree is a powerful man who has spent a lot of time with men more powerful than he is, men who do not give him much respect. He’s chosen to take on Billy of his own free will because he loved Billy Senior, and there is no question if you need something, Crabtree can get it done. Anything.”
Ethan began to understand. “But the one thing fragile about him is the amount of respect he gets—honest respect.”
“That, and his bizarre weakness for kittens.” Randy shrugged. “I don’t have to have Sam scrub the house and try to truss Mitch into something presentable. I don’t have to kill myself pulling a Martha Stewart. But I’m trying to because if I pull it off, I will be making one hell of a genuflection to somebody who has saved my ass many times in the past and will do so in the future, even if I serve him frozen pizza wearing stained jeans.” He paused. “Probably.”
Ethan digested this, the lengths Randy was willing to go to give a nod to an emotionally vulnerable gangster just because he felt he owed him, and he knew an unexpected tug at the edge of his heart.
Then Randy said, “There is no compromising on your wardrobe, though.”
“But why?”
“He’s coming to scope out you, Slick. Unless you go courting somebody higher up on the food chain, Crabtree can either make or break you in Vegas. And you don’t want to go any higher on the food chain than Crabtree.”
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