“The fat pricks with the diamond teeth are going off in fits. I was there awhile and then all of a sudden we went dead. Scared the crap out of me. Nothing. I turned in to a quiet corner and I’m practically screaming into the mike, but the wheel goes its own merry way. I go running for the elevator thinking the receiver’s broke or he’s sick or he’s been playing with matches. A million things. But the little turd is crapped out in his chair with the receiver buzzing in his lap. Asleep. I got him into his jammies and tucked him into bed and he didn’t peep. With the trip and everything he was just burnt out. He’d never done that before.…”
They had done well for a couple of nights.
“I’m percolating with forty thousand in the kick, and Chick’s eating big soft pretzels and floating in the pool every day and learning to paddle a little. Then, by the fourth night, I’m down the strip. This is no shit, Horst, three blocks. Three from the hotel room and the kid’s still got it. No problem. I took him there one time only and he had no problems. Not with the crowds or the distance or anything else.
“So I’m leaning on the table doing a quiet gosh-and-golly hick routine over my roll, when this punk in a red sweat suit, carrying a tennis racket, comes up beside me. He’s been there awhile, just watching, and I swear I was smooth as glass, Horst. Slicker than snot on a rock. Nobody would guess. Well, this punk in the sweats could have been a boxer to look at him. Broad on top, narrow ass. Skinny legs. He lays a hand on my arm and says, ‘You’re doing very well tonight, Mr. Binewski.’ He’s calling me Binewski when I’m traveling as Stephens. A young guy. Clean-looking. Short hair, face like a baby’s butt. Blond. You tell me, Horst, what the fuck should I have done? Am I supposed to say, ‘You must mean some other guy. I’m Stephens’? He’s easing me away from the table, his hand on my arm, out to the lobby saying, ‘Wonderful run you’ve been having, Mr. Binewski.’ And I’m thinking it’s another house-dick roust. The crew from Tahoe must have fingered me to every hotel on the planet. He says, ‘How’s your little boy?’ Cyanide-sweet, leading me along. Out by the door I finally ask him for bona fides. I say, ‘Are you with the casino?’ He says, ‘No. I’m with a larger organization.’ It’s not clear, you see, Lily? When the house dicks jumped me before there was nothing mysterious about it.
“But I don’t want to talk tough or panic because the Chick can maybe hear me and get scared. Then the guy asks where Chick is. Taking a nap, I say. This guy says, ‘Are you sure?’
“I just took off running — out the door, three blocks — left my chips on the table. Had nine heart attacks getting back to the room, but there’s Chick, calm in front of some old movie on the TV, eating a cucumber sandwich on wheat, and the receiver in his lap dead and cold.
“I just about died of relief. Give the kid a pat and sit down to look at my transmitter. Finally figure out the thing is dead. Something’s wrong or been done to it. I’m diddling with it when Chick looks at me and says, ‘Those other guys are coming,’ through his mouthful of sandwich. And I say, like a numbnuts, ‘What other guys?’ And the door opens and three guys come in. Chick ignores them and starts eating the carrot slices off his room-service plate.
“These guys were crazy young. The kind that show up in the spring to hire on and swear they’ll stay forever but they speak good English and their teeth are straight and you know they’ll go back to college in September but you hire them anyhow, even though they make stupid mistakes and wallop their own feet with the mallets, and every other year or so one of them decides to unionize the ride jocks and tries to go out on strike. But they work hard and they’re lively and they keep the redheads sparkling.”
Papa took a deep breath and stopped. Horst grunted encouragingly around his pipe stem, and Mama got up to refill the lemonade glasses. Papa sipped and sighed.
“I was six kinds of jerk-off not to take you with me, Horst. These guys amble through the door looking like college kids and one of them has a handgun that looks like the CO2 pistols we used to use on the neighborhood cats. He levels this thing at me and I’m sitting there like a geeked capon, my mouth flopped open, and Chick crunching carrots beside me. The one with the gun starts some ‘Hey, Mr. B.’ kind of street snot, and one of the others goes into the bathroom and turns the water on in the tub, hard. The third guy takes the transmitter out of my hand and rips the mike cord out of my shirt and walks me over to the wall to splay out so he can feel me down.
“The other guy comes in, the guy in the red sweats from the casino, and Chick turns up the TV volume. I guess he couldn’t hear with all the fuss. And I’m still spread out, hands on the wall, looking over my shoulder. The one little asshole has a hand in the small of my back to keep me there and the punk in red nods and goes to the bathroom door and the water quits and he and the guy from in there come out and he nods at Chick.
“This guy in red has a little popgun and he leans on the wall near me while the other fucker picks up Chick, just like that, and I turn around yelling and the other two grab me and slam me against the wall. That’s when Chick noticed there was something wrong. He yelped and they covered his mouth. This one bastard loops a belt over my elbows behind my back and cranks it tight, and the other cocksucker crams a pair of my own socks in my mouth while he holds the popgun to my head. They shove me over to the bathroom door and the guy in red gives an order, and the guy holding Chick puts him into the full bathtub, clothes and all. There’s a rag tied around Chick’s mouth and …”
Papa stopped to gulp lemonade and then sop the sweat from his nose and forehead and cheeks. Mama is frozen, staring at him.
“So Chick’s up to his neck with his eyes bulging at me over the gag and the guy in red leans close to me and says, ‘Now, Mr. B., this is just to let you know how very sincere this message is,’ and he tells me to keep out of the gambling joints. That I’m treading on staked turf and I should go home and be nice. Then the creeping little reptile says, ‘Now we’re going to show you how it could be if you didn’t understand us.’ And he nods and the guy who’s clamped onto Chick starts pushing him under. Chick is looking at me and kicking and splashing and I jump, and I don’t know what happened. I must have bumped the guy because he fell over the tub and bounced off the wall. Chick went to the bottom and the bastards were clubbing and clawing me.
“Next thing, I’m sitting in the tub yanking Chick out of the water while one fucker leans over me with a wet gun. His two buddies are worried over the guy on the floor, the one who pushed Chick under. He’s out cold and there’s blood running out of his ears and nose. They haul him out through the door and the one with the gun backs out after them. Last thing he says is, ‘Take it to heart, Mr. B. No betting games. Not here. Not anywhere.’
“The bastards got my kick, too. Found it in my socks. Didn’t even bother with my wallet. They knew I wouldn’t call the cops. Chick cried all night.”
Papa closed his eyes and smoothed both big arms around the now sleeping Chick. Mama’s voice was hoarse and puzzled. “Chick wasn’t afraid of them?”
Papa didn’t answer. I watched Arty, who was staring at the ceiling in ferocious concentration. I knew it as though I’d been there. Chick had cried, not because he was afraid, but because he’d moved the guy and hurt him, cracked him against the wall.