Freddy ain’t been the same since he was born.
Freddy Wisnesky glared at the ringing telephone. On the third ring he set his tweezers on the nightstand, picked up the receiver, and held it gingerly to his right ear.
“Hullo?”
He listened.
“Not yet, Mister C.” Freddy winced and pulled the phone away from his ear. Joey Cadillac’s voice screeched from the handset.
“I dunno, Mister C. I ain’t seen 'em since,” Freddy said. “I don’t think they're coming back here, Mister C.”
Freddy listened, his face twitching every time a new epithet exploded from the handset.
“I dunno, Mister C. There was this other guy come by that was with 'em, but he got away.”
Freddy was sitting on the bed in room 22 of the Twin Town Luxury Motor Hotel. The television was on, the sound turned off. Freddy was wearing only a pair of yellowish boxer shorts. Several large areas of his body were raw and oozing. The bed was stained red and pink in several places. His shredded shirt and pants lay in a soiled pile on the carpet.
“I s'pose I could go ask the lady.” He listened for a while, holding the handset a few inches out from his ear. “I s'pose I could ask him too. Only I don’t know who he is.” He listened again. “Okay, Mister C. Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. Okay.”
Freddy hung up the phone and leaned carefully back against the headboard. The bed groaned. He raised his left knee, examined the saucer-size abrasion, and picked up the pair of six-inch tweezers from the nightstand. They looked tiny and thin in his hand. Biting his lip, he removed another small gray flake of stone from his knee and dropped it on the nightstand.
“Ouch,” he said. He had been cleaning his wounds all afternoon and into the night, picking them clean a speck at a time. Freddy looked at the collection of rock flakes, grains of sand, and unidentified deleterious matter, all of which had been embedded in his skin. He put down the tweezers, opened and swallowed another can of beer. Arsenio Hall was delivering a silent monologue on the television, talking and laughing, wearing this shiny plastic leisure suit.
“Shut up,” Freddy said. Arsenio kept on talking. Freddy shrugged, picked up the tweezers, and probed his wounded knee. He wanted to get all the rocks out before he went to sleep. In the morning he would be all scabbed over, and it would be too late.
By eleven o'clock that night, Dickie Wicky was down two thousand dollars. The usual guys were sitting in at Zink’s Club 34. Al Levin was winning modestly, as usual. Ozzie LaRose had a nice stack—playing stupid but getting lucky. Zink was quietly riding the rail, and Frank Knox seemed to be controlling more than his share of the cash. Wicky was financing the game. He looked quickly up at Crow, who had just stepped in through the doorway, then back at his cards, then he bet fifty dollars on a baby straight. Frank Knox hesitated, peered closely at his cards, and raised.
Knox was a tall, loose-jointed lawyer who played a painfully conservative game of poker. He rarely won, never lost, and could be counted on to run a bluff about once in every fifteen thousand hands. When Frank Knox raised, anybody with less than perfect cards was well advised to fold.
On some level Wicky knew this, but he was on tilt, staying in on every hand, going for the long odds, and losing heavily. He called Knox’s bet, and he lost again.
Al Levin picked up the cards and shuffled.
Zink turned to Crow. “Sitting in, Joe?”
“Sure,” said Crow. He took the seat across from Wicky. Levin spread a hand of Hold 'em. Crow peeked at his two cards. Ace, king of diamonds. It looked like this was going to be his night. He bet ten dollars. Al Levin folded. Ozzie LaRose folded. Wicky called. Zink stared at his cards for several seconds, shuffled through his cash, folded.
Levin flopped three cards. Ace of hearts, three of diamonds, five of diamonds. Crow watched Wicky as the cards were turned. Wicky looked back at him, raised his short, pale eyebrows, and bet twenty. Crow raised.
On the turn, Crow caught a fifth diamond, a jack. This was almost too easy. Wicky, probably trying for another baby straight, was drawing dead. Even if he made the hand he was looking for, he had already lost to Crow’s nearly perfect hand.
Unfortunately for Wicky, the four of clubs came on the river, making his baby straight. He re-raised five times before realizing that he might not have the best hand. Crow scooped a large pot, including a hastily scrawled IOU from Wicky.
Three hours later, Wicky got up from the table, mixed himself another vodka tonic, and went to sit on the sofa.
“You gonna play anymore, Dickie?” Zink asked.
Wicky shook his head. He owed Zink five hundred and Crow thirty-eight hundred. Pouring the rest of his drink into his mouth, he stood up. “I'm out of here.”
Ozzie LaRose said, “Give me a call tomorrow, Dickie. Let me know what you’ve got left of that Guardians stuff.”
“Okay,” Wicky said. “I think I got five units for you.”
“I’ll take whatever you got.”
Crow followed Wicky to the door. “Got a minute?” They walked down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk. “You Ozzie’s broker now?” Crow asked.
“He throws me a bone now and then. I'm getting him into this Galactic Guardians deal. Very hot property. He’s taking the last few available units.” He put his hands in the pockets of his sport coat and squinted up at the streetlamp. “So how you doing on our deal? You pay the guy off?”
“I paid him. You owe me nineteen hundred for the extra time I put in.”
“Jesus Christ, Joe, what are you trying to do to me? What about the two K you owed me from before?”
“I told you that was used up four days ago. I put over a week into this.”
“Christ, all I asked you to do was give a guy some money.”
“Dickie, I don’t have time for this shit. I told you what I was charging you. You should have complained about my rates back then. You’re lucky I'm not making you pay for my car.”
“Car?”
“I damn near totaled it. Your guy has some hood after him, some guy about the size of a buffalo. I accidentally got between them.”
“You got in a fight in your car?”
“Something like that.”
“Jesus,” said Wicky, shaking his head. “Maybe we should just get the two of them together, save me ten grand.”
“Too late now. Your guy came by and picked up the check a few hours ago. Said to say thank you.”
Wicky scratched under his Adam’s apple. “How do we know he’s going to live up to his end of it?”
“This was your idea, Dickie. I never said I thought it was worth a damn.”
Wicky shook his head. “I’ll have to get back to you on this, Joe.”
“Dickie, don’t do this to me. It’s not worth it.”
“I'm going to pay you, Joe. If I’d got a few good cards, I’d’ve maybe even paid you tonight. Only thing is, I’ve got my liquid assets all tied up in this Galactic Guardians deal.” Wicky frowned. “I had to tap my IRA to come up with the ten thousand you just gave away, Joe. I'm one hundred percent invested in Galactic. Opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Your lifetime, maybe. But no money for me.”
“No money for you right now.” He fixed his eyes on Crow’s face, blue irises muddy in the yellow light. “But I’ll have something for you tomorrow,” he added.
“What do you mean, ’something'?”
“I mean I’ll pay you. Come by my office tomorrow. What do you say?”
“You shouldn’t play cards when you’re tapped, Dickie. It makes bad poker. You’re into me for a total of fifty-seven hundred so far. I could use the money.”
“Lighten up, Joe. It’s just a little cash-flow thing. We're all in the same boat here.”
Crow thought about being in a boat with Dickie Wicky, out on the ocean someplace. You wouldn’t want to fall asleep.
“Come on by my office tomorrow. I’ll buy you lunch.”
“How about I just stop by and you pay me. Then I can afford to buy my own lunch.”
“Whatever. I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” Wicky smiled, cuffed him on the biceps, and moved off down the sidewalk. Crow watching until Wicky reached his Mercedes and drove off, then walked back up the stairs and rejoined the card game with the forty dollars he had left in cash. It took him nearly an hour to lose it all. He tried to sell some of Wicky’s markers to Frank Knox, who had most of the cash. Knox laughed.
At three-thirty in the morning, Dickie Wicky fumbled his way through the door of his condominium. Catfish was reclined on the sofa in her black velour bathrobe with Katoo, her cat, stretched out beside her. A zombie was hulking its way across the television screen. Catfish watched her husband close the door, shuffle into the kitchen, and mix himself a vodka and Alka-Seltzer on the rocks. The cat kept its eyes and ears trained on the master of the house. When Dickie carried his drink toward the sofa, the cat clawed its way down and wheeled itself toward the bedroom.
Catfish watched Katoo disappear, her lips pressed tight together, the corners of her mouth drawn back and down. Dickie crossed the room to the recliner and fell into it. He sipped his drink, squinted at Catfish, and belched.
“How much did you lose tonight?” she asked.
Dickie belched again. “What makes you think I lost?”
“I can tell,” she said. “You’re drunk.”
“I’d be drunk either way.”
“How much did you lose?”
Dickie pressed the cold glass against his forehead. “Sixteen thousand dollars,” he said.
Catfish sat up. “What?”
“Six thousand I lost to Joe Crow; the other ten I spent on you.”
“You bought me something?”
“I bought me something.”
“I thought you said you spent it on me.” She pouted. “What did you buy?”
“I bought you.”
Catfish narrowed her eyes. “You’re drunk,” she said.
Dickie drained most of his drink. “Not drunk enough,” he said. “I'm celebrating. I sold the last of the Galactic Guardians units last night. Your friends Tom and Ben should be pretty happy about that.”
Catfish was surprised. “You sold them all?” But then she wasn’t. One thing Dickie was good for, he could sell anything to anybody.
“Yeah. I sold them to myself.”
“You what?”
“I figure it’s about time I get to be a millionaire.” He grinned at her. “Don’t you want us to be millionaires?”
“You actually bought Galactic Guardians?”
“Why not? I had to liquidate the Keogh, but it’s going to be worth it. You don’t get rich by squirreling it away. Got to spend it to make it. This is our chance to go ballistic, Cat. Comic books are just going to keep going up and up. And up.”
“You bought it with our money?” She thumped her chest with a fist.
“Yeah. What’s the problem?”
Catfish sank back onto the sofa, shaking her head. “You bought your own story. I don’t believe it. I thought I told you about those guys.”
“You did. You said we could make some easy money.”
“That’s right. You made thirty percent on the units you sold, right? They gave you a hundred twenty units at two thousand each, right? Your commissions would have added up to over seventy thousand dollars. Right?”
“Seventy thousand is nothing. This deal is worth millions.”
Catfish sighed. “Dickie, Dickie, Dickie. It’s a story, don’t you get it? It’s a paper chase. It’s just a little thing Tommy came up with so we could all make some money. You were supposed to sell the story, not buy it. It’s not real.”
Dickie’s eyes seemed to swell. “Sure it is,” he said. “Isn’t it?”
Catfish shook her head.
“How come you didn’t tell me?”
Catfish smiled ruefully. “I didn’t think you’d want to know. You better figure out a way to get rid of those shares, Dickie. And you better do it in a hurry, 'cause if this is like all of Tom and Ben’s other deals, it’s gonna blow up big-time. Do they know you bought the shares?”
“Who?”
“Tom and Ben.”
Dickie shrugged. “Probably. They get records of all the limited partners. So what?”
“So right now Tommy’s got to be laughing his little Italian ass off.” “I don’t get it. Since when is Jefferson an Italian name?” Catfish shook her head. “Never mind,” she said. “Have another vodka Alka-Seltzer. Mix one for me too.”