“What are you doing here?” I whispered to him, but of course I knew. It was the same thing that had brought him to Danny and Saul’s funerals, a homicide investigation.
“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” he answered. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be the first one in line to mourn Paulie Gonads.”
“Seeing as I killed him and all.”
He raised one brow at me. Damn, I wish I could pull that look off, it’d be so useful at the poker table.
“I’m here for a friend,” I said and felt him slightly stiffen. His eyes swung from me to the front of the room, to the back of Vince’s head. “How’s the investigation going, anyway?” I asked.
“You know I can’t tell you anything,” he said, still facing forward.
“Because I’m a suspect or because I…” I didn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t know how.
“Finish your sentence,” he said.
“You finish it for me.” There was a near petulance to my voice that made me inwardly cringe.
“Because you’re a suspect or because you’ll tell Vince Santini anything I tell you. That sound about right?”
I shrugged. “Paulie meant a lot to Vince. It’s not unnatural that he’d want to be kept apprised of your investigation. I wanted to know what was going on when Danny was killed.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“Danny was a good man that didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
“Playing judge and jury for Paulie?”
He was wearing his usual work outfit, leather jacket, blue chambray shirt, tie and chinos. He looked fine, totally suitable for a funeral, and a heck of a lot more dressed up than a couple of low-lifes here. But he’d worn a suit to Danny and Saul’s funerals. I don’t know why that little wardrobe tidbit made me feel good, but it did.
“Vince tell you anything? He have any ideas who did this to Paulie?” Jack asked me.
“Nope,” I answered, not willing to tell him that Vince was just as eager to find out who killed Paulie as Jack was. More so.
“Would you tell me if he did?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “Not if he asked me not to.”
“What if he does in the future? And doesn’t ask you to not say anything.”
“I won’t spy on Vince for you,” I told Jack.
“You’d protect a man who wouldn’t hesitate to have you killed if you owed him money?”
“Vince wouldn’t…well, at least he’d hesitate.”
Jack softly snorted at that and sat back in his chair. He stuck out his legs, crossed them at the ankles and his arms across his chest.
We sat in silence while the funeral director droned on. He spoke of generalities about life and sudden death, probably not daring to delve into Paulie the man.
I scanned the men in the rows ahead of us since that’s what I’d come here for after all. I noticed Jack was doing the same.
“Jesus, what a bunch of deadbeats,” he said.
I agreed with him, but got defensive in a twisted kind of way. “Watch it. I play cards with these guys all the time.” Which wasn’t quite true. The real big guns in Vince’s high-stakes, back room games weren’t here. To them, Paulie was only a voice on the phone telling them when and where for a game.
Their pockets were so deep that they never had to play on marker, never owed Vince, never would have taken that car ride with Paulie.
“You are so not in these guy’s league,” Jack said to me. He was right. I wasn’t.
“Yet,” he said adding the word I couldn’t say out loud.
He turned back to me, waited until I faced him – until I could face him.
“Okay, Johanna, I’m Bob Marley now.”
“What?”
“Bob Marley.”
“The Reggae singer?” Jack could be esoteric at times, and I always took pride in sticking right with him, but this was a jump I couldn’t follow.
“What? Oh. No, not Bob Marley. The Marley guy that comes to Scrooge. You know, in A Christmas Carol.”
“Oh. Jacob Marley.”
“Right. The guy who tells Scrooge he’s about to be visited by ghosts.”
My hands tensed. I sat up straighter. I nodded at Jack to continue.
He stood up to leave, but instead leaned over me. He put his fingertip lightly on my horseshoe pendant. Silly to wear a lucky horseshoe to a funeral, but I always wore it. His lips were close to my ear, his breath soft against the wisps of hair that had loosened from my bun. He smelled like leather and Jack…but not bourbon, my twisted mind registered.
He whispered in my ear then left. I spent the rest of the service replaying his words: “Look closely around you, Johanna. You are being visited by the ghost of gambling future.”
Of course I knew what my life could end up like. It surely would have had I not met Ben ten years ago. And it still could, I knew that, I’ve seen it happen to more stable people than I over the years. But this…seeing all these degenerate gamblers in one place – Jack was right. If I wasn’t careful, I could one day be reduced to stealing a dead man’s watch to place my next bet.
The service was over, everybody was filing out, but I sat glued to my chair, too exhausted with dark thoughts to move.
I watched the men leave. Vince and Carla were still at the front of the room speaking with the funeral director.
I counted twenty-seven men walk past me. Of that, there were ten with discernible limps – Paulie’s signature. There were at least seven noses that had been badly broken and repaired even more badly. Too many cheap suits to count.
I sunk back in the chair as the last man walked out the doorway behind me.
Call it an epiphany. Call it my Scrooge moment. But it became crystal clear to me in a way it never had before.
I had to stop gambling.
“Think that detective would tell you anything about Paulie’s case?” Vince asked me on the way home.
Déjà vu all over again.
“No,” I said. “He asked me the same thing about you.”
Vince smiled at that. I admired his profile as he kept his eyes on the road. He was more classically handsome than Jack, whose face was much more rugged and lived in than Vince’s. Which was odd, because they both had seen a lot of bad stuff in their lives. Done a lot of bad stuff, too, probably.
It showed on Jack’s face, but not on Vince’s.
I wasn’t surprised that Vince knew Jack had been at the funeral. “You know, you two should team up. You both want the same thing,” I said to Vince.
“Not exactly.”
No, not exactly.
“So, anybody stand out as someone who would have shot Paulie point blank?” Vince asked me.
I snorted. “Who didn’t?” Right away I wished I could take the words back. “Sorry,” I said quietly.
Vince shrugged. Well, Vince didn’t exactly shrug, it was a much more elegant movement.
“No. I didn’t see anything that stood out. Or anybody.”
He nodded. “Neither did I.”
I didn’t tell him about that guy stealing Paulie’s watch and pinkie ring. I didn’t know how Vince would react to that. And I figured if a guy was desperate enough to steal a dead man’s jewelry, he probably didn’t need Vince Santini showing up on his doorstep.
When we finally reached my house, I reached for the door handle, but Vince put a hand across to stop me then got out of his side and came around to open the door for me. He put out his hand to take mine and I let him.
He kept his hand wrapped loosely around mine as he walked me up the pavement and driveway. It felt smooth and cool, and I liked the feel of it over mine. There was an awkward moment at the front door where I wondered if I should ask Vince in. He didn’t seem disappointed when I didn’t, but he did wait for me to speak first.
“Sorry I wasn’t much help,” I said.
“Thanks for coming with me.”
“No problem.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said.
For a real date, I wondered. Until he said, “After the game.”
“Right.” Right. CIU played tomorrow.
“Did you place a bet on it?”
“No,” I told him.
“Would you like me to lend you money to bet it?”
I shook my head. “No. Thank you. I’m actually pretty flush right now. I’ve had a good run at cash games.”
“That’s good.”
“That’s not why I don’t bet the game. I mean, I still won’t bet it even though I’ve got some extra change.”
“Why is that?”
I shrugged and looked back toward the street, not wanting to meet his eyes. “I don’t bet on games JoJo is involved with.”
He was silent for a moment. At least he didn’t laugh at me like Paulie had when I’d told him my rule. “JoJo was just the middleman on this one. It’s not like you – she – slipped a roofie in his drink and he’s playing like hell and doesn’t know why.”
This time, I thought, and silently thanked Vince for not saying it.
“Still…” I hedged.
“Okay. I get it. Sort of.”
I looked at him, and he really did. Sort of.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. I waited to see…I don’t know what I waited to see. I honestly couldn’t tell you what I wanted to happen right then.
But nothing happened. Vince just left, got in his car and drove away. And I went inside my home to see what Lor and the boys were up to.
“And at the half,” the game announcer droned from the television, “Central Iowa is up by ten. I guess you could say much like we expected.”
Not me. I’d expected it to be closer than ten. I needed six. Well, I didn’t, as I hadn’t bet the game, but Raymond did to get his back end and stay on Vince’s good side. A side I highly recommended.
I got up from my leather chair and was slightly surprised to remember that I was in my own home watching the game and not a book room at a casino.
When Ben’s hip started really getting bad, and I was on a particularly hot streak, I charged Lorelei with making the seldom-used family room into a home theater. No, the instructions had been more implicit than that. I had taken her to the book rooms at the Bellagio and the Venetian and told her to set up something similar so we could watch several games at once.
She’d taken my instructions – and a considerable amount of my money – and delivered. In spades.
Eight flat-screen plasma televisions hung on the wall, circling a huge projection screen. The masterpiece took up an entire wall. Eight luxurious leather seats, some recliners, some deep enough to hold two people, were set for maximum screen access. Along another wall was a concession stand of sorts. A sideboard filled with snacks, a coffee maker, a mini-fridge.
Not to confuse it with the living room, it had become known in our house not as the family room, but the book room, and I don’t mean a library.
But Lor’s masterpiece was better than a book room. No smoke, no crowds. Our own fabulous cocktail waitress in Lor. That we didn’t have to tip.
But no odds board flashing its delicious lights. No counter across the front of the room manned with lovely people just waiting to take your money.
Which is why I didn’t spend much time here.
But from seeing all the little sheets of paper with odds and point spreads scattered here and there and in the wastebasket, I knew that Ben did. His tablets, and thus paper remnants, were different than Lor’s. She used tablets the size of a steno pad where as Ben’s were much smaller, the size that would – and did – fit inside a shirt front pocket.
I didn’t look too closely at what it said about me that I’d surrounded myself with tablet freaks.
Retired for years, Ben still set the odds for every game every day, on little sheets of paper from his numerous little tablets, even though they never ended up on a casino board. They could have, they were more deadly accurate than the incredibly accurate ones set by the current oddsmaker.
Suddenly, I felt like shit that I didn’t watch all the games here with Ben. There was no reason not to. I could place my bets in a book room then come home and watch with him. He’d love it.
But Ben was astute. He would notice the way the Hummer took me over. I could sit passively and watch a game that I had ten thousand dollars on go down the drain – I had, many times in fact – and not even the anonymous guy sitting next to me would have been able to tell.
But Ben would have.
I could hide about as much from Ben as I could from Jack.
Which suddenly made more sense to me.
“You need anything?” I asked Ben now as I rose from my seat.
He checked the level of his coffee cup and shook his head. “No, Hannah, darling, I’m fine.” He smiled at me, his sparkly brown eyes almost disappearing within the multitude of crow’s feet in his weathered face.
A face that now seemed even more familiar to me.
I nodded at him, and started to leave the room. “You’re coming back?” he asked, with just a tiny bit of neediness in his voice.
“Yep. Just hitting the john and my office. I’ll be back by the second half.”
He seemed to relax as I left the room and walked down the hall and across the house to the office Lorelei and I shared, hoping to find it empty. It was, and I shut the door behind me, settled in at my desk and booted up my laptop.
It was state-of-the-art, as was everything in the house, but I didn’t use it much. Much to my family in Wisconsin’s chagrin, I wasn’t a reliable e-mailer. They pretty much had stopped trying, calling me when needed, or sending news to me via Lorelei’s e-mail address.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t figure out the computer. But the more familiar I was with all the online things, the more likely it was that I’d find myself sucked into online poker or sports betting. That was why Lor was keeper of my credit cards, so I couldn’t open an online account. But there were ways around that if I really wanted to, and I supposed that if I were online a lot, I’d find that way.
I’d known a lot of good poker players that had lost their fortunes by playing addictively online. When you had to go out for a game – get dressed, drive to a casino, plop down cold, hard cash, sit at a table, need to get up eventually – it was a lot easier to walk away. When you could play in your pajamas at any hour of the day and the money was just an icon on a screen…well, it wasn’t an experiment I felt I was strong enough to play with.
But I could find out stuff I needed to online. Stuff JoJo needed.
But as I called up Google, I knew that this search was solely for me. In fact, it could – and I hoped would – mean JoJo’s demise.
I typed in “12-Step Programs”.
I knew Lorelei had tons of this sort of information at the ready for me. Hell, I think I saw Monty’s information still sitting on her desk a foot away from me.
But I was still feeling a bit raw from this, like a colt trying to stand up on wobbly legs, and I didn’t want Lor – or anyone else in my immediate circle – watching me stumbling my way into walking.
A fleeting thought went through my mind that Jack would get it. He would understand. I pushed the thought aside.
Jack wasn’t an option.
But maybe he could be, a voice deep in my head said, if this works, if you could stop. It was a voice I didn’t recognize, certainly not JoJo’s twang.
No, this wasn’t for Jack. Nor Ben nor Lorelei. This had to be for me, or it would never work. And still it would be tricky. I couldn’t stop playing poker, it was my livelihood. And I’d become accustomed to fine things, much like Vince had. Mine were just not worn on my body.
But poker, played either in a tournament form or cash games in a casino – where you had to have the cash up front – had never been the problem. Where the problems had arisen – and JoJo had been born – had all come from sports betting. I’d play in one of Vince’s games on credit because I had no cash and wanted – needed – to place a bet on a game.
If I could stop placing bets, there’d be no need to play on credit, no need for JoJo to ever come out again.
Poker was fun, and I was good at it, but I could walk away from a game at anytime. Unless I was playing for a stake to bet on a game.
I knew these types of programs were all about support, not doing it on your own, but I wasn’t ready for that. I was barely ready to admit that I wanted to try this.
I clicked on one of the Google results. The “12 steps” came on the screen, and I scanned through them.
I could totally do this on my own.
Give myself up to a higher power? I did that every time I placed a bet.
Admit that I was powerless against my addiction? Ahhh…that might be a sticky one. I didn’t much like the idea that I was powerless. Wasn’t that the whole idea of my creation of JoJo? Taking back some type of control?
Deciding to skip that step for now, I read down further on the list. Make amends? I could do that. I hadn’t really hurt anybody but myself, anyway, right?
A flood of faces raced in front of me. The many players that JoJo had set in her sights. Ben looking at me with concern every time I went away for more than a day. Lorelei spending her time trying to figure out ways to help me.
But the two faces that seemed to stay front and center were those of Jack Schiller and Raymond Joseph.
Make amends to Jack? He’d broken my heart.
And Raymond Joseph? Wasn’t he doing just fine? And really, if it hadn’t been for me, his poor sister would probably still be strung out on the streets of Chicago’s South Side, not getting the help she needed in rehab.
Okay, that was definitely JoJo’s voice coming through.
There was a soft knock on the door. “Jo, are you in there?” Lorelei asked.
I clicked the browser window closed. “Yeah, come on in.” I grabbed for some sheets of paper on my desk as Lorelei came in. “Just getting some odds sheets,” I said, like I had to justify my presence in my own office, on my own laptop.
She shut the door behind her and sat down on her side of our partners desk that we shared. “Good, I wanted to get you alone.”
Oh, no. If she started in on pleading Monty’s case, should I just go ahead and tell her that I was going to turn over a new leaf? Would the odds sheets I’d just grabbed defeat that purpose?
But I needn’t have worried, Lorelei had other things on her mind. “I found out a bunch of stuff on DNA testing,” she said.
Immersed in my new-found morality, I’d forgotten I’d asked Lorelei for her research help. “What’d you find out?”
“There’s a bunch of labs – all over the world – that will do whatever testing you need done. It’s expensive, and even more expensive if you need it fast….” She looked at me questioningly.
The information I sought was nearly forty years old, but now there did seem to be a sense of urgency to it. “I’m willing to pay for that,” I said.
Lorelei nodded, then took out a file folder from one of her desk drawers. “There’s even a lab here in Vegas that does it.”
“What kind of…sample…do they need?” I asked.
“What exactly are you looking for? Evidence type gathering? Genetic tracking?” She seemed to be going down a list of options.
“I want to know if somebody could be somebody else’s father.” My eye caught on the urn with Saul’s ashes. “Or, if somebody is definitely not their father.”
Lor nodded, and went back to her papers. “Ideally a swab taken from the inside of that person’s mouth works best.”
“What if I can’t get access to that sort of thing?”
“Then a strand of hair would work. Or something that still had saliva on it. There’s a list of things here that we could gather.”
“We?”
She looked almost hurt. “Yes. We.”
I smiled and nodded for her to continue. She looked pointedly at Saul’s urn. “As for cremains…”
“What?”
“Cremains. That’s what they call ashes from a cremation.”
“God, it sounds like some dried fruit you’d put on a salad.”
“Ewwww.”
“Go on,” I waved to her, trying to not think about the mental picture forming.
“The DNA testing industry is a bit divided on cremains. The feeling is that if the cremation was done correctly, there’s no way any testing could be done on just ashes. All the DNA would have been burned out.”
Ah, well, that put a different spin on my little project, but it wasn’t completely dead…no pun intended.
“But, apparently, the information that comes from non-mortuary related places is that most cremations are not done the same way and that many times tiny bone fragments remain. Those are testable and still contain DNA.”
I looked at the urn. “And how do you know if there’s bone fragments.” I looked to Lor with disgust.
“You…uhm…put the ashes through a strainer and see what’s left.”
“Jesus,” I whispered, eyeing the urn warily.
“Jo,” Lorelei said quietly, and I looked up at her. “You know I’d do anything for you…”
I held up a hand. “I won’t ask you to do that, Lor, don’t worry.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I meant that I’ll help you in any way you need me to.”
I was just about to get down on my knees and kiss her feet. I so didn’t want to strain Saul’s ashes by myself.
“But…” she said, halting my movement of gratitude. “If I’m going to paw through Saul’s ashes, and gather saliva from some stranger, I’m going to need a good reason.”
“Not a stranger,” I said.
“No? Who then?”
“Jack.”
“Jack?”
“Yes, and no, you can not gather saliva from him in the preferred method.”
“Why Jack?”
“Well, actually, Jack and Ben. And Saul, of course.”
“Jo, what the hell is going on?”
I sat up straight, cleared my throat, and voiced the secret I’d held for three weeks. Ever since Saul had died in my arms.
“I think Jack may be Ben’s son.”