“On what?”
The kid flushed red.
“Jesus, okay,” Frankie said. “You do what you do. I believe in you. You’re my Walter Payton, Matty. I know you can bring this home for us.” He rubbed a hand across his face. He was sweating again. Was he sounding too desperate? “Just let me know if I can help. Or something.”
“I just need one thing,” Matty said.
Yes!
“Name it,” Frankie said.
“I need money,” he said. “Fifty bucks.”
“What? Why?”
“Please. You can take it out of my cut.”
“All right. All right. If my star needs cash, cash he will receive.”
The summer of 1991, he made the garage into his own private Bellagio. He’d gotten ahold of a real roulette wheel that was used by St. Mary’s church for their Vegas Night fund-raiser, as well as a felt cloth layout with all the bet markings on it, and set it up on a table that was the right height. He even borrowed a box of chips from his dad’s stash, just for flavor. Then, for hour after hour, he’d spin the wheel, send the “pill” rolling along the track, and then try to push it, just like he pushed the pinball around on the Royal Flush game at the skating rink.
Grabbing the pill, though, was a lot trickier than moving the pinball. For one, it was lighter, just an ounce or so, and too much of a nudge sent it flying out of the wheel. But worse, it was plastic. Frankie had always had a better feel for metal.
He couldn’t affect the little white ball at all. It would bounce over the frets, fall into a random number…and sit there, ignoring him. “Fuck you,” he said to it. “Fuck you and your little white ass.”
He would have given up immediately if it weren’t for Buddy’s vision. Loretta was pissed about how much time he was spending in the garage. She had two toddlers in the house, getting wilder by the day. There was no way they could afford twins, not on his salary. Bellerophonics was failing, and he was borrowing from the Pusateris to keep it afloat. He’d told no one this.
He needed a win. He needed those stacks and stacks of chips.
If, according to Buddy, Future Frankie could control a roulette table, that meant Current Frankie just had to learn how, right? But nothing was happening. It wasn’t “hard work,” because it wasn’t working at all. The ball wouldn’t even slow down for him in the track. The damn thing wouldn’t so much as tremble in his presence.
“Fuck you!” he screamed at it. “Stupid fucking piece of plastic crap!”
He went to Buddy and told him the deal was off. “Your vision’s bullshit,” he said.
Buddy said nothing. He was on the back patio, doing his newspaper thing, flipping back and forth through the pages, frowning and shaking his head, like an old man who can’t believe what the world’s come to.
“Buddy, look at me. Hey.” Frankie put his hand in front of the page. Buddy swung his big face toward him. “I can’t do it,” Frankie said.
“You’re guaranteed to win,” Buddy said.
“If it’s guaranteed, why bother to learn to push at all? Maybe I just win by luck.”
Buddy shook his head. “No. You drive me to the casino. You play for two hours. You get stacks of chips. The only way that happens is if you control the ball, just like you used to at the rink.”
“It’s not working,” Frankie said. “I can’t do it with that stupid fucking plastic thing.”
“Be the ball,” Buddy said.
“That’s fucking Caddyshack,” Frankie said. Buddy had watched that movie dozens of times.
“Love the ball.” Buddy stood, folded the paper.
“Yeah, but what if I choose not to do it?” Frankie said. “Your vision can’t make me.”
“Shut up,” Buddy said.
“But—”
Buddy wheeled on him, jabbed a finger in his chest. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Three angry jabs. He was near tears.
“Jesus Christ,” Frankie said. “Fine. I’ll try.”
He went back to his garage, listened to the clacking spin of the wheel, the tinkety-tinkety-tink of the pill as it found its home. Nothing he did slowed it down or sped it up or bounced it into the numbers he wanted. “Motherfucker!” he screamed.
His problem in the past had always been confidence. Just having somebody looking at him while he worked was enough to make him nervous and lose his touch. And if those people wanted him to fail, if their negative vibes were coming at him like fucking Astounding Archibald’s on The Mike Douglas Show? Game over.
But maybe this was a different problem.
Love the ball.
Frankie picked up the roulette ball, held it up to his face. Took a breath.
“I would like to apologize for calling you a motherfucker,” he said.
He began to carry the pill around with him. He’d roll it around in his palm until he could feel it warming to his blood. He’d clean it with chamois. He talked to it the way he used to talk to the twins when they were in Loretta’s belly, telling them the story of Castor and Pollux.
Loretta, speaking from somewhere on the other side of her belly, said, “What did you just call them?”
“Castor and Pollux? The greatest twins in Greek myth?”
“Hell no.”
He’d have to win her over. The same with the pill. “Just tell me where you want to go,” he told the ball. “Or just the neighborhood.” Predicting the exact number where it landed paid thirty-five to one, but that level of precision wasn’t required, and wasn’t even the smartest way to go about robbing the bank. He could bet one of the dozens (say, numbers one through twelve) and that would pay off two to one, and no one would suspect him. Once he got confident he could play a street of three adjacent numbers for an eleven-to-one payout, or a two-number split for seventeen to one.
The problem, of course, was that adjacent numbers were never adjacent on the wheel. The one and the two, for example, were across the wheel from each other. There was one bet, though, that could help him out.
“I have a suggestion,” he mentioned to the pill casually, as it contemplated its drop into the wheel. “Why not drop into the basket?” The basket was a special bet that paid off eleven to one on the single-zero, one, or two—and the single-zero and the two were side by side on the wheel.
He watched the pill lose momentum, and then plunk across the frets like a banjo player. Finally it came to rest like an egg on a pillow.
Zero.
After he finished whooping and jumping around, he picked up the pill and kissed it. “Thanks, pal,” he said. “Good job.”
He sat in his van a half block from Mitzi’s Tavern, watching guys walk into the bar sad and exit sadder, like penitents going to confessional and coming out sentenced to a thousand Hail Marys. Fridays were payday—or rather, pay up day. A lot of these guys owed their whole paychecks to the Pusateris and were hoping they’d be allowed to take a slice home.
Frankie was one of those guys. His problem was, he didn’t have the dough. Again.
Nick’s rule was, Don’t make me come looking for you. So even if you couldn’t cover your payment, you had to show up to Mitzi’s, explain yourself, and take your punishment. First time, you got her I’m-Not-Angry-I’m-Disappointed speech. Second time—he didn’t know what happened the second time. But he was about to find out.
He walked across the street like a man with a bomb strapped to his chest.
Inside, it was so dark he could barely make out Barney behind the bar. Frankie took a stool and waited for his eyes to adjust. “Is she free?” he asked. He knew she wasn’t. He could hear Mitzi in her office, yelling at the guy ahead of him.