Double Blind

by Heidi Cullinan

  “Wow. I mean—it’s okay. Just, you don’t look it. I mean—” He blushed. “Sorry, but you were seventeen when I was born. It’s bad enough Randy was eight and Mitch was twelve, but—” He reached for his coffee. “I’m going to shut up now.”

  Ethan couldn’t help smiling. Yes, there was something about Sam Keller-Tedsoe. “It’s fine.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m always putting my foot in things.” He stabbed into his cereal with his spoon. “Anyway, I’m supposed to tell you from Randy he’s going to try to get off by three, but there’s some big engine thing, and he has to stay. Mitch went along with him to the distribution center, but he’ll be back in time to take you to Crabtree at noon.”

  Ethan paused as he reached for his yogurt. He’d forgotten Crabtree. Nodding curtly, he picked up the container, peeled off the top, and began to empty the contents into the bowl. It was a lovely, custard-like vanilla, and it was organic—a bit nicer, he admitted, than he’d even normally buy for himself, as was the granola. It was a quiet comfort, and he was grateful for it.

  “Crabtree really is okay,” Sam said.

  Ethan stirred yogurt and granola together. “It’s funny how you all seem to hate him, love him, and fear him all at once.”

  “Yeah, I guess I could see how it looks like that.” Sam leaned back in his chair. “Well, I know this—Randy wouldn’t let you go see him if he thought it was going to be bad.”

  Yes, but Randy was the worst of all of them, kowtowing to the man one minute and standing up to him the next. Maybe that was the secret? Ethan realized it was what he had tried to do too, and had failed miserably. But then, Randy knew Crabtree.

  Biblically. He pursed his lips, stirring his yogurt far longer than necessary. God, Crabtree was going to make him dance a jig on coals, if he didn’t figure out how to bury this by noon.

  He forced himself to stop stirring and to eat.

  Sam abandoned his cereal. “Well, okay. I don’t blame you for being unhappy about it. I guess I’m mad at him too, and Randy, and Mitch. I guess you saw the bit with the card, for the shrink? God, I was so embarrassed. I felt like I was Mitch’s kid.” He pushed the bowl away then sagged in his chair. “But I guess I’ve acted like one.”

  Ethan had no idea what Sam was talking about, but whatever this emotion was on his face struck a chord. He considered his words carefully before speaking. “I don’t know if this hurts or helps, but they don’t help you out in that department. They seem to treat you as if you are their fragile egg they don’t dare let break.” In fact, he realized it was nearly how Randy had described Sam. He could only imagine what Mitch’s analogy for his husband would be.

  “We’re going to go and get a car in a bit. Mitch and I.” Sam sighed. “I wanted him to just teach me how to drive Randy’s truck. I want to drive Randy’s truck. I want to know how to drive a stick. I feel like an idiot, not knowing.” He pursed his lips. “How am I going to not be their stupid egg if they don’t let me grow up? I don’t want to be their little Sunshine and their Peaches, not if it means I’m always the dumbass kid. I can’t figure it out. Is it because I’m always a bottom?” He went beet red. “Sorry, TMI.”

  Ethan reached for a napkin from the basket at the side of the table and wiped his lips. “What time is it right now?”

  Sam glanced at the microwave on the counter. “Nine.”

  An idea buzzed in Ethan’s mind. It was ridiculous, and it probably wouldn’t work, but… He tapped his index finger against the side of his mug. “I suppose they took the truck to the center?”

  “They rode the bikes. They’ll use any excuse to ride the bikes. Which I, of course, don’t know how to drive either. Why?”

  “Would you like to learn to drive a stick shift before your husband comes home?”

  Sam grinned. “Can you? Could you? Randy says he won’t teach me because I’ll kill his transmission.”

  Oh, now they were doing this, absolutely. “You won’t. And if you do, I’ll take the blame. I’ll tell him I insisted.”

  Sam’s chin came up. “No. If I screw up the truck, I’m taking the blame.”

  It was the Parable of Cards itching at Sam’s brain, Ethan realized. He could hardly blame Sam—it itched at his too. He picked up his spoon and scraped at the sides of the bowl. “Let me finish this and grab a quick shower, and then we’ll go. Try to think of somewhere with a big, empty parking lot where we can practice. Somewhere not too far away.”

  “Well, the distribution center would be perfect, except Randy and Mitch would come over and give us hell.”

  Baiting them was tempting, but Ethan nixed the idea because he wanted Sam to do well. In fact, he’d be late to Crabtree if he had to, just to make sure Sam was rock-solid in his initial foray into stick-shift driving.

  There was a raunchy joke in this somewhere, two gay men and a stick-shift lesson, but Sam didn’t seem in the mood for titters. He had a different light about him now, less of a cherubic glow and more of an edgy eagerness. Ethan found he had the same edginess inside himself. “It’ll be a very quick shower.”

  “I’ll have a place for us to go by the time you’re dressed,” Sam promised, already reaching for his iPhone.

  Chapter Ten

  AT QUARTER AFTER twelve, Sam dropped Ethan off at Herod’s. Ethan was already late, but he didn’t care. He was far more concerned about how green Sam looked after driving through heavy traffic. Mitch had gotten caught up at the distribution center and called Sam to tell him to have Ethan take a cab. Of course, they were out driving at that moment, so Sam delivered Ethan to the casino, but now he had to get himself home again. Ethan lingered in the cab of the truck, taking the time to reassure his protégé.

  “Sam, you can do this. You drove on the interstate and down the Strip. You’re actually a natural, and I’m not saying so just to build you up. You don’t need me in the truck with you to keep doing well.” He put his hand on Sam’s hand, which clutched the ball of the stick shift in a death grip. “You’ll be fine.”

  Sam nodded, still pale. “I know. I mean—I know it, but I don’t feel it yet. I don’t want to have a wreck. I don’t want to mess this up when I’ve done so well. I want to drive to the distribution center and show them, not have to call them to say I’ve wrecked the truck.”

  Ethan shook his head. “Don’t go to the center. They think I came here in a cab and you’re at home finishing laundry. If you go there, you will screw up, because you’ll get nervous and lose your confidence. Go home, and you can tell them later. It doesn’t look like you’ll be car shopping today anyway.”

  Sam nodded again. Then something on the sidewalk caught his attention, and he winced. “Oh shit, Crabtree—I’m so sorry, Ethan. I made you so late—”

  Ethan rolled down the window of the truck. The mob man waited at the curb, in a suit again, though this one was light-colored and looked to be a cooler weight than the one he’d worn the night before. He had something cradled to his side, and when the gangster came over to the truck, Ethan startled. Crabtree held a tiny, black-and-white-splotched kitten. The cool, self-possessed explanation he was going to give the man died on his lips, and he simply stared.

  Sam, however, melted. “Oh my God, it’s so cute.” He started to slide over the seat, but Ethan’s arm shot out, and he pointed to the emergency brake. Sam applied it and came over to the window. “Crabtree, where did you get her?”

  It was almost surreal, the way Crabtree altered when he looked down at the animal. It practically fit into his palm, and it blinked brilliant orbs of bright blue-gray eyes at Ethan. Crabtree’s face was transformed into softness and tenderness, and he stroked the kitten lovingly as he spoke.

  “Behind the dumpster. I couldn’t find a sign of the mother.” He glanced up at Ethan. “Do you like cats?”

  Crabtree’s tone was gentle, but this question might as well have been asked by a fire-breathing dragon. A dragon asking Ethan if he liked baby dragons.

  “I had one when I was young. I haven’t
since.” Ethan started to reach out the window, then paused and glanced up at Crabtree. “May I?”

  Crabtree beamed. “Please.”

  The kitten’s fur was dirty, and it looked undernourished. It was not, Ethan realized, as young as he’d thought. It was only small. But it was warm and soft, and it made Ethan melt a little too.

  “I apologize for being late.” Ethan tickled the kitten under the chin, smiling as its eyes went shut and it began to purr. “I was teaching Sam how to drive Randy’s truck.”

  “I drove on the Strip!” Sam tried to temper his enthusiasm. “I mean, I did okay, I think.”

  “He did well for his first time with a manual transmission.”

  “I’m sure he did.” Crabtree scratched the back of the cat’s head. “I’m surprised the other Mr. Keller-Tedsoe didn’t insist on giving that lesson.”

  “He didn’t offer, so I did.”

  “A good reason to be tardy, then. And it allowed me to find this angel, so we will cede this game to Fate, who always knows our needs better than we do.” Crabtree stepped onto the curb. “But now I do have need of your services, Mr. Ellison, and I’m sure Sam has much to do as well.”

  Sam leaned over again. “Crabtree? If—if you see Mitch, or Randy, don’t tell them, please? I want to tell them myself.”

  “Of course.” Crabtree inclined his head in acknowledgment, and then Ethan exited, and they stood together on the curb watching as Sam somewhat lurchingly drove away.

  “That was well done,” Crabtree said, when the truck had disappeared around the corner. He massaged the kitten’s fur but kept his eyes on the place where Sam’s truck had been. “They love him, but they do smother him. They see him as something between saint and angel, the magic boy who reunited them. And this is the trouble. He’s been a man for some time now, but they keep nudging him back to boy, and after a while, he’ll stay there. They think they’re making life easier for him by sheltering him. But they’re not thinking of him, only themselves. They’re sheltering him the way they wish someone had sheltered them.”

  Ethan had to agree this was true. “It’s not wrong to want to give someone what you didn’t have.”

  Crabtree smiled at the kitten. “It’s good to have love and protection, but at some point we need to go out into the cold world and see how we do. You did well by giving him space.”

  Here Ethan thought he’d been giving Sam an overdue driving lesson and rubbing Randy’s nose playfully in the dirt. He didn’t doubt Crabtree was right, but thinking about it like that made everything so heavy. “Are you some sort of wandering casino oracle?”

  Crabtree chuckled. “Former family counselor. And not a good one, I’m afraid. They revoked my license.”

  “Oh?”

  “They do that when you sleep with your clients.” Crabtree gave an only mildly apologetic shrug. “Emotionally vulnerable and hairy men. Every man has his Achilles’ heel, and that one is mine.”

  “And kittens.” Ethan’s insides melted as the kitten lapped at his finger. “She truly is beautiful. When she’s cleaned up, she’ll break hearts. Will you keep her?”

  The look crossing Crabtree’s face was devastating. “No, it isn’t possible. Perhaps one day, if I retire out of the city. But—” He stroked the cat, the very gesture a sign of his regret. “It’s no secret I love cats. It’s one of the jokes they make of me. And you see, when you’re a man who has made as many enemies as I have, you don’t keep vulnerable loved ones around you. Not unless you have a stronger stomach than I do.”

  “Oh.” Ethan looked at the cat and at the gangster, thought about Crabtree’s passion for the animals and the number he must have seen killed to put them off so far from him, and he couldn’t help it. He bled for Crabtree. “I’m sorry.”

  “She needs a name. If I take her to a shelter unnamed, they’ll name her something ridiculous like Patches. Nothing’s coming to my mind, though. Care to take a stab?”

  Ethan didn’t have the first idea about naming cats—his as a child had, in fact, been named Spotty—but when he opened his mouth to say so, he looked down at the cat and said instead, “Salomé.”

  Crabtree laughed, a loud, bowl-full-of-jelly laugh. “Well done. Salomé it is.” He lifted her up and kissed the top of her head. “Darling, let’s go to my office, and when you’re ready, we’ll order up John the Baptist’s head for you on a platter.”

  They didn’t head for the main entrance, but instead entered through a side door. Nodding to security as they passed, Crabtree, cradling Salomé against his chest, led Ethan out into the casino. But they lingered along the side, almost in the shadows. There was an odd, nostalgic expression on the gangster’s face as he surveyed the scene before him. Ethan waited, certain there was another speech coming up.

  He wasn’t disappointed.

  “There was a golden age of Las Vegas. In the fifties and sixties this city was full of movie stars and singers, and people came from all over the country to see them and be seen with them. You could come to Vegas from Scranton and rub elbows with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr.” He smiled, but it was grim. “Of course, Sammy Davis, Jr. couldn’t stay at the hotel where he performed. He hung out at places like the Moulin Rouge because that was where the colored people went back then.”

  Ethan recoiled, then caught himself and shook his head. “You’re making that up.”

  “Sadly, I’m not. This injustice was fixed eventually, but by then the golden age was over. By the seventies, this place was a joke. It was sleazy and cheesy, and it was a place you came to die, not be a king.” He sighed. “That’s when this place was built. Oh, Billy was so sure it would bring everyone back because he would do it right—and I think he could have in another ten years. Herod’s hit the world at the wrong time. Now he’s gone, and there’s just his spoiled-rotten little shit of a son. Billy Junior is never going to turn this place around. In the deck of life, Billy is a ten. He thinks he’s a face card, but he isn’t, and he’s never going to change. Not enough to save this place.”

  Crabtree shifted the kitten to his elbow and reached out to pat the side of the archway they stood beneath. “Billy Senior gave it glitz and glamour, and he gave it all the old elements—a showroom doubling as a restaurant, but there hasn’t been a show in there in ages. He paved the entrance to the door to the old fountain by the elevator in plush red carpet and called it the Grand Path. He added a hotel, but it hasn’t been updated, and it’s nothing but a fleabag now. He even, in his day, put the poker tables up front. Because he loved poker, and he wanted his place to be known as the poker place.”

  Ethan tried to imagine poker tables replacing the slots. It was hard.

  Crabtree grimaced. “Billy died as the corporate cats took over, turning the Strip into a fucking Disneyland. They urged everyone to come here on their credit cards and stay in executive suites and shop and gamble with the money they refinanced from their third home mortgage. We stopped drawing the simple crowd of people with money and made everyone a king. It’s a nice sentiment, but it isn’t realistic. Not everyone can be a king.”

  Ethan would argue that was the whole of the world right now. “What should be here instead? The old days part two?”

  “I don’t know, but this way can’t stand much longer. We need to rediscover simple pleasures. We need to love to play, not love to spend. We need to make our money in the poker rake and in the spillover of people who play the tables after. We need to draw them in with cheap entertainment and free drinks so they have more money to gamble. We need real leadership again, not teams of lawyers and corporate interests. We need to be a town, a community, not a nest of crooks and liars.”

  Ethan didn’t know what to say, so he just looked out over the casino, really looking at it. He saw dark paneling, crystal chandeliers, and a lot of clutter. And, honestly, he saw dust. Dust and damage and decay—peeling paint, worn carpets, faded curtains. Outdated paintings on the wall. Cracked vinyl on the stools in front of the slot machines. Sagging, disintere
sted dealers and waitstaff. Hardly any customers at all.

  Crabtree patted his shoulder. “Let’s go to my office and have a chat.”

  There was already a litter box in Crabtree’s office when they arrived, as well as a dish of food and a bowl of water, and Crabtree introduced Salomé to both stations before letting her loose on the floor. She ran immediately to the food dish and ate enthusiastically.

  “Close the door please.”

  He gestured Ethan toward the uncomfortable-looking chair with its back to the door as he sat at in the sagging olive-green office chair behind a metal monstrosity of a desk taking up most of the room.

  The office was smaller than he had thought it would be, and much shabbier, though some of this was because it was stuck in the seventies. It wasn’t retro-chic. It looked like it actually was seventies decor no one had ever updated. The only nods to the current millennium were the dabbles of technology—a state-of-the-art multiline phone with cordless receiver and Bluetooth headset were visible beneath a cascade of manila folders, and a sleek Dell Touchsmart desktop sat beside that. What was possibly a silver MacBook Pro sat on another pile of papers on top of a filing cabinet beneath a kitten poster Ethan tried not to notice.

  Crabtree picked up a sleek black binder, regarded it with distaste for a moment then passed it over to Ethan. “This is the current financial report for Herod’s. Income, expenditures, assets. There’s also a tab which summarizes the history of those same three figures over the past thirty years.”

  Ethan took the binder and flipped through it reluctantly. Something told him there was nothing good about a gangster handing you a ledger, but he wasn’t sure what else to do. Still, numbers were numbers, and he quickly lost himself in them, running his fingers down the columns, stopping only to reach down and pet Salomé absently when she tried to climb his pant leg. The casino had done fairly well in the seventies, moderately well in the eighties and hung on in the nineties. But right around 1994, a bizarre pattern of high growth, great loss, and sometimes inexplicable asset acquisition and disposal emerged.