“Charmer,” Mitzi said. She was a scrawny bird of a woman, with a finch’s glitter in her eye. Mitzi said, “You’re not selling that UltraLife stuff, too, are you?”
“What’s that?” Dad asked. He wasn’t faking the confusion.
“Frankie started bringing it with him,” Mitzi said. “Damn if it didn’t straighten me out.”
Irene shot her father a hard look. Was this visit about Frankie, and not Graciella? But no, Teddy didn’t know what Mitzi was talking about.
“So Frankie’s been stopping by?” Teddy said.
“Oh yeah,” Mitzi said. “On a weekly basis. Mostly weekly. He’s missed a few.”
Dad seemed shaken. “I apologize if the boy’s been pushing the stuff on you. Frankie’s been so excited about it.”
Mitzi said, “You want to come back in my office and talk about it?”
Dad hesitated, then said, “We can talk in front of Irene. She knows all about Frankie’s business.”
An outright lie. Irene had no clue what was going on. She wasn’t reassured that Teddy seemed to have no idea, either.
“All right then,” Mitzi said skeptically. She took the stool next to Teddy’s. They were all sitting now, facing away from the bar. Barney had disappeared into the back room.
“So. Frankie’s visits,” Dad said. “How much are we talking?”
“You know I usually keep those numbers confidential.”
“How much, Mitzi?”
“As of yesterday, forty-nine thousand, seventy-four dollars and twenty-four cents.”
Irene suddenly realized what those numbers meant. Dad was shocked, too, to judge by his frozen expression.
Mitzi said, “I asked him not to bring you into this. He’s going to talk to Nick next week. They’ll work it out.”
Fuck, Irene thought. Bad pictures flickered in her head from a dozen violent movies. She pictured her brother trying to talk his way out of trouble, the way he tried to talk his way out of everything. He’d never learned that when he was drowning he should keep his mouth shut.
“No,” Dad said. “I’ll talk to Nick.” Irene watched her father. A moment ago, he didn’t know about Frankie owing money, but now he was putting on to Mitzi that he not only knew about the situation, but had already put a plan in motion. Teddy Telemachus, world-class bluff. That poker face made him the only person in the family who could keep secrets from her. That, and the way he dealt his words as carefully as his cards.
“You want to talk to Nick?” Mitzi asked. “That might not be such a great idea.”
“Your brother stands a lot better chance of getting the money from me than from Frankie,” Teddy said.
“It’s not that, and you know it.”
“This is my son, Mitzi. Please. Make it happen.”
Irene did not speak until they were back in the car. He let her get behind the wheel, for appearances.
“What the hell was that about?” she asked.
“I’m as surprised as you are.”
That was the truth. He’d dropped the bluff now that he was out of the tavern.
“I wanted an appointment with Nick so I could talk to him about Graciella. But this?”
Still, she wanted to make sure they were on the same page. “Frankie’s in debt to the mob for fifty K,” she said.
“It seems so.”
“That explains how he was able to keep Bellerophonics going so long with no customers.”
“He kept coming to me for money,” Dad said. “Third time, I told him I was tapped out and he should close up shop—work for somebody else and actually get paid. I didn’t think he was stupid enough to go to God damn Nick Pusateri. The whole point of raising kids is to make sure they don’t make the same mistakes as you did.”
There was an entire story there that she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know. Instead, she asked, “You’re not going to pay it, are you?”
“Just drive me home, Irene. No. Wait. Drive me to Wal-Mart.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“I need to buy a cane and a baseball bat,” he said.
“I understand the cane.”
“The bat is to whack your brother with.”
“Let’s buy two,” Irene said.
14 Frankie
He could hear Loretta calling for him from the house. Eventually she thought of the garage.
The black hunk of metal nestled into the hood of her car like an egg on a pillow. The impact had also cracked the windshield. The safe door, however, was closed. Still fucking closed.
She walked toward him. He was sitting on a folding chair next to the front bumper of the car. The floor was littered by a garden of crushed Budweiser cans—and locks. Padlocks of every kind were scattered around the cement floor, none of them open.
“Can I help you, Loretta?”
She took in the sweatpants, the undershirt, the empty Doritos bag. She looked again at the Corolla and the black safe, then back at him.
“Are you going to work today?” Her voice was surprisingly soft.
“Sure,” he said. “What time is it?”
“After nine.”
“Huh.” He rubbed his jaw. Normally he would have left a couple of hours ago. He probably should have gone. Work would have occupied him. Kept his mind off of what was waiting for him this afternoon. Who was waiting for him.
“I was going to go to the grocery store,” Loretta said.
“Okay.”
She stared at him.
“I think we’re out of milk,” he said.
“I was wondering about the car,” she said.
He nodded slowly, as if this was a good point.
“So will it run?” she asked.
He pursed his lips. Thought for a moment. “Hard to say.”
“I’ll call one of the neighbors and see if I can borrow a car.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s probably a good idea.”
“Oh, and your father called. He wants you to call him back. Says it’s important.”
Like hell he was going to call back. It was Teddy’s fault he was in this mess. He’d gone to his father for help when Bellerophonics was tanking, and after the bare minimum amount of financial assistance, his father had cut him off. No, the great Teddy Telemachus only bet on cards, never his own children.
“Did Matty call?” he asked. That was the Telemachus he needed right now. But Loretta was gone. What time did she say it was? He should have paid attention. There were only so many hours to fill until his appointment with Nick Pusateri Senior.
The first time Frankie thought he was going to die was in 1991, in a small room on the bottom deck of the Alton Belle, right after getting his nose broke. The guy whose fist did the damage was a wiry white guy with rabbit teeth and sun-cracked skin like a vinyl chair left in the yard. He was dressed like a janitor, but it wasn’t clear if he was the official enforcer for the casino or just an employee whose job description included the line “Other duties as assigned.” He certainly seemed to enjoy the hitting-people duty.
The two other men in the room—a floor boss and a slick-headed man whom Frankie took to be the casino manager—evaluated the janitor’s work and found it good. “One more time,” said the manager. He was a nervous white guy whose oil-black widow’s peak made him look like a middle-aged Eddie Munster.
The floor boss, a black man in a shiny suit that looked more expensive than the manager’s, said, “Tell us what you did to my table.” Everyone seemed quite concerned about this. For the first half hour that Frankie had been held in the room, the men went over the video of the event using an ordinary VCR and small TV. They had declined to show the images to Frankie, but he picked up from their discussion of it that the tape showed from several angles that Frankie’s hands were inches away from the roulette table when the ball, turntable, and chips flew into the air.