Raymond gave me directions to a different bar this time, but it was still out of the way and nearly empty. Another dive, barely populated save for a couple of grizzled old men on stools and the bartender. I didn’t bother buying any CIU clothing this time, but I did dress as nondescript as possible in jeans, sweatshirt, tennis shoes and a warm winter jacket I’d found in the back of my closet from when I’d visit my family in Wisconsin.
I got there first and ordered a pitcher of beer and two glasses. I paid for it, thanked the bartender and took the pitcher and glasses to a booth near the back.
Raymond came in half the pitcher later. He made a beeline for me after a small nod to the bartender who looked closely at Raymond and then me. Here’s hoping he wasn’t a Hogs fan.
I didn’t rag on Raymond for his choice of meeting place, just poured him a glass of beer and placed it in front of him, like we met for beers all time. He took a long drink from the glass, set it down. He pulled off his parka, settling it next to him in the booth. Then he finally looked at me.
“Fuck,” he said.
“Yeah, I know.” And I did. I knew how he felt, what drove him, the disgust he was feeling right now, even though he was probably mentally allocating the money he’d win. Earn. He earned his money, I won mine.
“Was it the voice or the feeling,” I asked him, wanting to know which demon he was trying to drown in his now empty glass of beer.
“What?” he said, refilling his glass.
“The voice or the feeling. Which was it that made you call me?”
“It was my sister. Helping my sister, that’s it, that’s all it’s about.”
“No. That’s how it started, but that’s not where you’re at now.” I knew that even though I’d thrown his sister up to Vince myself as a reason that Raymond might call me. “You’ve earned enough. You can stop.”
“But I want to get her to a better place if she needs to. To make sure there’s enough in case she relapses or something. To be able to get her and my momma out of that neighborhood. And maybe even enough so that my momma won’t have to work two jobs. So that she can watch over my sister when she gets out.”
I leaned back against the back of the booth. “Right. That’s the voice talking.”
“What the hell is the voice?” His tone never raised, but I could hear the anger, the frustration.
“It’s what answers you when you say to yourself, ‘I’m through, no more.’”
He leaned forward, his arms on the table. “Shit. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It usually starts with ‘yeah, but.’”
That got him. He slowly placed his glass on the table, his head lowered, hung as if in defeat. I barely heard him when he said, “Go on.”
“You tell yourself you’re done. That was the last time. There’s no need to risk anything else.”
He didn’t say a word, but his head nodded. I admired the precision of his braids, the exactness of the scalp that shown between the rows.
“And then the voice says, ‘Yeah, but.’” I took a sip of beer. Raymond didn’t move. “And the voice knows its shit. It knows what you need to hear. What’s going to make it easy, what’s going to make it all alright. Hell, it makes you feel like a fool if you don’t do it.”
“But it makes sense,” he said, his head still hung low, and his hands going under the table. I took the opportunity to slip the envelope I’d carried across several state lines under the table and tapped it in the general vicinity of his knee and hand. He took it from me without looking up.
“Of course it makes sense. The voice always makes sense. I’m not even saying the voice is wrong.”
He sighed loudly. I saw the movement where he put the envelope in the back pocket of his jeans. “The voice. Christ, I hear the voice.”
I made a wave of dismissal. “Everybody does. Every day. It’s what gets us through. It’s just sometimes….sometimes it gets us through something we wouldn’t ordinarily do.”
That analysis didn’t seem to make him feel better. I took another drink of my beer. “How about the feeling. Do you get the feeling?”
“That’s different than the voice?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, but he didn’t seem to hold out much hope.
I leaned forward, trying to get him to look up at me, but his head still looked down at his legs. “Do you remember your first kiss, Raymond? I mean your first real kiss?” He still didn’t look up, but I saw a small smile tug at the corners of his mouth. His head nodded slightly, but I caught it.
“Part of you is terrified. You’re thinking you don’t know what you’re doing. What if she laughs? What if I do it wrong?” I waited, then went on. “But the other part of you…ah, that other part of you…elation, joy, you’re thinking this is the best thing that’s ever going to happen to you. A feeling of total shock and awe. You know…you know… you’ll never feel this good again in your life.”
He was nodding, his face in a real smile now, but his head still looked down.
“That’s the feeling I get when I place a bet, Raymond. I call it a Hummer.” He opened his mouth, but I cut him off. “Not that kind.” He shut his mouth. “Do you know the feeling I’m talking about?” He nodded. “Do you feel that when you’re about to…work…a game?”
He thought for a minute. Longer maybe, but I didn’t speak. “No,” he said. “I get that feeling right before a game – a regular game. But not any of the games I…worked,” he said, staying with my euphemism.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “That’s good. That’s good. The voice you can learn to recognize, to deal with, to talk back to. But if you had the voice and the feeling, you’d be…”
“Screwed.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Then why do I feel so fucked now?”
“Conscience.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
After a moment he said, “You call the feeling a Hummer, you got something you call the voice?”
I shrugged. “I’ve heard lots of people call it different things – the devil on their shoulder, their demon, their inner child. I had a gambler friend once who even named his Stan.” I chuckled, remembering Lonnie and wondering what had happened to him. Best not to guess.
Raymond looked up at me for the first time since we’d started talking. “What do you call your voice?” he asked.
I pulled my jacket on, slid out of the booth and leaned down to whisper in his ear as I walked passed him.
“JoJo.”
“Wow, you look great,” Lor said to me Friday afternoon as I came into the living room. “Where are you off to so dressed up?”
I had on my black suit, the one I wore when I made a final table. My hair was pulled back in a tight bun. The look had earned me the title “Black Widow” on the poker circuit after that first final table. Well, the look and the fact that I’d annihilated the men at that table.
“A funeral,” I said quietly hoping only Lorelei would hear me, but Ben and Gus both looked up from the newspapers that they’d been reading.
“Whose?” Ben asked with suspicion in his voice.
“Paulie’s.”
Gus didn’t try to hide his look of surprise. Lorelei looked from me to Gus and Ben. She didn’t know about my particular history with Paulie, and I preferred to keep it that way.
“Why?” Ben asked.
I cleared my throat. “I’m going as a favor to a friend.”
That seemed to satisfy Lorelei and Gus, but Ben kept on. “What friend?”
I sighed. Vince was picking me up here, so it wasn’t like I could hide it. Besides, it wasn’t any of Ben’s business. “Vince Santini.”
I ignored his bluster and turned to Lorelei. “Where do I keep my purses?” I used them so little, and usually left them lying on the side table in the foyer when I was done with them, I had no idea where they ended up.
God, what a mess my life would be without Lorelei.
Ha. What a mess it was anyway.
She pointed to the guest closet door. “In there. On the shelf.”
I took out a small, black leather one and went back to my bedroom to grab my necessities, pulling most of them out of my cargo pants’ pockets. I took the fake ID that I flew to Iowa under and put it in the bottom of the cigar box on my desk that kept all my receipts.
Lipstick. Brush, in case the bun bit it. Real ID. Cash. iPhone. I started to leave, then turned back and grabbed a tin of breath mints and tossed them into the purse as well.
When I got back into the living room, Lorelei was just opening the door to Vince. He always looked sharp, but he seemed to exude extra debonair today. “Hello, Anna,” he said.
“Hi, Vince. Vince Santini, Lorelei Saumels.”
The two shook hands, and Lorelei, who had definitely seen her share of good-looking men, stood transfixed at Vince. I pointed him into the archway leading to the living room. “You know Ben and Gus, right?”
“Yes, of course. Gentlemen,” Vince said as he went to first Gus then Ben and shook their hands while he urged them not to get up, which they didn’t.
“Wow,” Lor whispered in my ear. I only nodded.
“Ready?” Vince said to me.
“Yes,” I said as I went to the closet and got a shawl for a wrap. It was mid-February and though it was Vegas, it was still chilly.
Not Iowa cold, but not sun-tanning weather, either. Vince took the soft wrap from me and held it open. I turned my back to him and let him drape the sides over my shoulders.
With the old folk looking on from the living room, it kind of felt like we were headed to the prom, not to the funeral of a man I didn’t particularly care for, to see if I could sniff out something about whoever killed him.
How had my life gotten to this point?
I almost told Ben not to wait up, but decided not to push it. He knew what Vince was, and I knew he wasn’t thrilled with me leaving with him. The irony was, Vince was completely up front about what he was. I was the one with all the secrets from Ben.
And I had a big one.
Vince opened the door for me when we reached his black Infiniti. When he’d gotten in on his side, started the car and buckled his seat belt, he looked over at me and said. “It’s probably not appropriate to say given the circumstances, but you look very beautiful today.”
I looked down at myself. Totally put together. Totally Vince. Totally not me.
“This really is more your speed, isn’t it? More than my usual attire anyway.”
He pulled away from the curve, and we headed out of my subdivision. “You look good to me in whatever you wear,” he said smoothly.
“But maybe a little bit more your taste like this.”
He smiled, his perfectly white, straight teeth gleaming. He had the tact not to answer that one.
“Truth is, Vince, I’d find it exhausting dressing like this all the time. Like you do.”
He shrugged. “I like nice things. For a long time in my life I had nothing. Now that I can afford it…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. It was probably his version of The Hummer…having what he never could.
I’d led a perfectly normal, upper middle-class life. I never really wanted for much, especially not the basics. I certainly didn’t begrudge Vince his appreciation of finer things. I just wondered how he thought I might fit into that world. If, in fact he even did. I could be reading way too much into a casual comment about a possible first date.
We rode in silence to the funeral home, but it was a comfortable silence. I was relieved to see that it was a different place than we’d used for Saul. Danny’s funeral had been at his Catholic Church.
“Seems like I’ve been doing this a lot lately,” I said as we parked.
“Yes, it does,” Vince answered. He’d come to both Danny and Saul’s funerals. He’d told me it was to pay respect to the forerunners of Vegas. Vince was a history buff in his reading, and as such, appreciated those who came before.
It was something I admired about Vince. Most guys trying to make their mark in this town acted like they discovered Vegas. Not Vince.
We entered the funeral home, and Vince was greeted right away by the funeral director. “Mr. Santini,” he said as he shook Vince’s hand. “There are just a few more minor details I need to discuss with you.”
“Of course.” He turned to me. “Will you excuse me?”
“Sure. I’ll just go pay my…respects.” The last part was a little hard to get out and Vince lifted a corner of his mouth.
“I won’t be long,” he said and headed off into an office with the funeral director.
I realized that Vince was probably paying for all of Paulie’s funeral expenses. The way Paulie used to hit on me, I assumed he wasn’t married – though I don’t know that that would have stopped Paulie.
Looking around the room confirmed that thought. There was nobody that looked like a mourning family, and other than Carla, Vince’s bookkeeper and the person who ran the poker games with Paulie, who sat in the front row, I was the only woman.
I looked around the room. God, it was like an open casting call for The Sopranos. Goombas everywhere you looked. I avoided eye contact and headed to the front of the room, to the open casket. To pay my respects.
As if I’d ever respected Paulie.
But I did respect Vince, so I reluctantly stepped up to the casket.
Even in repose Paulie looked a little slimy. They had tried to make him look respectable. He wore an understated suit and tie. It looked like something Vince would wear. In fact, I didn’t recall ever seeing Paulie in a suit that nice, and I wondered if Vince had gone out and bought him one for the afterlife.
They’d taken most of the product out of his hair. It didn’t shine as much as it normally did.
Paulie didn’t really fit Vince’s current image, the man he’d built himself into, but from what I understood, the three of them had come up together and Vince kept Paulie and Carla on even when he’d outgrown him.
Loyalty I understood. And revenge.
No wonder Vince wanted to find Paulie’s killer himself. I could understand that, I’d wanted it desperately myself just a few weeks ago when somebody was targeting The Corporation.
Be careful what you wish for.
I bowed my head to say a prayer for Paulie’s soul, but all that came out was, “Please, God, don’t let me end up like him.”
I turned around and looked at the milling group of shifty-looking men and mentally thought, “Or him. Or him. Or him.”
Carla waved me over to her, and I sat down beside her in a straight, but soft, upholstered chair. The first two rows were made up of these chairs, and then folding chairs took up the rest of the room. I figured the nice chairs were for family and closest friends and wondered if maybe I should sit back a few rows. But then I realized that Vince would be sitting in this row, so I stayed where I was.
“It’s nice that you came,” she said to me.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said softly to her.
It was quiet, but I swear she snorted. “The only loss is that it didn’t happen sooner,” she nearly seethed through her teeth.
“Wow,” I whispered.
She shrugged. “He got what was coming to him. He couldn’t have expected his life to turn out any differently.”
“Geez, Carla, I thought you guys were friends.”
“Hardly.”
“But you seemed to get along well enough at the games you ran.” But as I said it, an image of Carla sitting at a table, reading a magazine, ordering food and taking care of drinks came into my mind. After the initial start of the game where they “arranged” loans of money and handed out chips, Paulie and Carla went their very separate ways during a game. Even in a relatively small hotel suite.
She sat up a little straighter, pulled at her blazer. “That’s ‘cause I’m a professional.”
“Well, I guess you don’t have to pretend anymore.”
“Oh, I’ll keep it together for the funeral. There’ll probably be plenty of people who spit on his casket, so I won’t have to.”
I chuckled then stopped myself as a man with a definite limp who had come up to the casket looked over his shoulder at me. I hung my head and tried to pretend I was muffling a sob.
“Besides, I would never do anything to embarrass Vince,” Carla added.
I nodded at that. I guess I’d have to keep my saliva to myself, too.
“He should have been here by now,” Carla said, looking behind her scanning the room.
“He is. The funeral director needed to speak to him.”
“Oh. I thought I’d handled all the details.”
I shrugged. “Probably something that just came up.”
Carla looked closely at me. “Did you and Vince come together?”
I nodded, still looking straight ahead, pretending deep thoughts about the dearly departed.
“Hmm,” was all she said. After a moment, it was killing me, so I turned to her.
“Hmm?”
“Interesting, that’s all,” she clarified. Clear as mud, really.
“In what way?” I was looking closely at her now, trying to read her.
But Carla had been around good poker players for a very long time and didn’t give anything up. “I think it’s nice, that’s all.”
“It’s not like it’s a date,” I said, with not quite as much certainty in my voice as I’d hoped.
“No?”
“No.”
“Hmm,” she said again. Gaining nothing from each other’s faces, we both turned forward again.
A line had formed now of men passing by the casket and Paulie’s body. They each stopped, some for just a second, some for a minute or two. Some heads bowed in prayer, some words were said quietly, but with a sneer on the mourner’s face. I swore one man pinched Paulie’s arm and I was reminded of hearing about some Eastern European dictator whose mourners pushed pins in him to make sure he was dead.
I suppose there were a great many people who didn’t want Paulie coming back from the dead. Although they’d be fools to think that just because Paulie was gone their debt to Vince was washed out.
It might take Vince a bit to find some new muscle, but he never forgot a dime anybody owed him. It was all right there in Carla’s blue ledgers. I knew, I’d signed a line in that ledger myself too many times to remember.
The line had dwindled and Vince still hadn’t come in. The last man lumbered through. He was a large man, wearing a very ill-fitting and out-of-date suit. He seemed very upset and I thought in some sad way that it was nice that at least one person was honestly mourning Paulie.
He had his back to the room, but at the angle I sat, I could see him a little bit from the side. He leaned over Paulie’s body, visibly upset, a small moan coming from him. He ran his hands along Paulie’s arms, bending deeper over Paulie, and I wondered if he was going to kiss the corpse.
It looked like that’s how it was headed and I was about to turn my head, not wanting to witness that sight, but just then my poker player’s sixth sense of people’s behavior kicked in. Instead of watching the man bend down to kiss Paulie as I’m sure everyone in the room was, my eyes went instead to the man’s right hand which was on Paulie’s left wrist. The mourner’s positioning was such that his hand was blocked by his body, except for the small angle that I had.
And damned if he didn’t lift Paulie’s watch and diamond pinkie ring (yeah, Paulie was a pinkie ring guy – ‘nuff said) just as he gave Paulie’s waxen cheek a loud kiss. It was a thing of beauty, the smooth sleight of hand that left Paulie’s corpse jewelry free. The man gave Paulie one last semi-hug – as much as you can hug a stiff corpse. He was probably making sure Paulie wasn’t to be buried with his wallet. He turned and walked down the aisle, nobody but me noticing his full fist easing into his suit jacket and releasing the ill-gotten gains.
Ill being the key word, as I tried to swallow down the gag of disgust rising up from inside me. “Jesus,” I whispered to myself, but Carla heard me.
“I know, I can’t believe it either,” Carla said. At first I thought she’d seen what I had, but then I realized she meant the amazing fact that someone was actually visibly upset about Paulie being dead.
The disgust turned to loathing. Of that fake mourner. Of Paulie. Of all these men, many with limps that mirrored the one I’d sweated through six weeks of physical therapy to lose.
Of myself for even being here. Of living a life that would call for me to be here.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” I said to Carla and left my chair before she could even respond. I walked quickly down the aisle. When I was almost to freedom, Vince and the funeral director entered the room and came down the aisle. Vince stopped when he met me, but the funeral director kept walking to the front of the room.
“Where are you going?” Vince asked. “We’re just about to start.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Why?” Vince asked. And it was a valid question. I couldn’t possibly be too upset to sit through a funeral of a man I detested.
“I just…I just…” I stammered, trying to find a way to explain to Vince my loathing of all these people. But I couldn’t. He was one of them.
So was I, and that’s why I couldn’t stay.
Vince’s deep brown eyes bore into me, looking for something. A kindred spirit, I suppose.
And because I did respect Vince, and yes liked him, as much as I did, I said, “I was in the front row, but then figured if you really wanted me to try and pick up anything, that I’d be better off watching from the back.”
He nodded, while he judged how close I was to the door and how I had nearly passed the back of the room for the exit. “That’s a good idea,” he said, “I’ll see you after. It’s not going to be a long service, for obvious reasons.”
Because Paulie had been murdered? Because Vince would be hard pressed to find someone to speak well of Paulie? I didn’t ask, I just nodded and stepped to the side, still inside the room, but near the back wall. There were two upholstered side chairs with an end table between them along the wall a few feet away from the last empty row of folding chairs and I sunk into one.
Vince watched me until I’d settled in, then turned and walked to the front of the room, sitting down next to Carla in the seat I’d just vacated.
Determined to just get through the next half hour, and then away from these people, I tried to drown everything out. I should have been watching people for Vince, but knew it would be a waste of time. Everybody at this moment looked like a killer to me.
“Another funeral. Another back row.” Jack Schiller’s soft whisper drifted over me as he sat in the chair next to me. I turned to him and saw his gaze sweep over my body, slowing as he visually slid over my crossed legs and down to my suede pumps.
“But same incredibly hot black suit.”