CHAPTER
18
JAMIE PULLED THE truck to the curb outside Jack’s store. He was inside, stooped over a computer, and scratching the scruff on his cheek. When they’d first hooked up she’d expected an older guy to be different from her high school boyfriends. She was wrong about that. Except for the slightly receding hairline and the crinkly lines around his eyes, he was like any other guy. It was almost cute how he was stuck in a time warp when it came to music, playing boxed collections of The Beatles and Pink Floyd. In the beginning, she’d believed his devotion to Bob Dylan meant a thoughtful, reflective mind. He was cool enough, though, the kind of guy who turned off the porn video when she walked into the room. And he always kept it wrapped, not like the jerks in high school that always had money for booze but not for condoms. She was grateful for that because right now a baby would ruin her plans quicker than an STD.
The store was empty and that was good. She felt the weight of her backpack and thought it through one last time. There was at least fifteen grand in there. She could take off right now, catch a train to Florida. There had to be at least five casinos down there that she was old enough to play in. She might hit it big. Or she could crash and burn like at Mimawa. And then what? She’d never be able to come back to Blind River and she’d always be looking over her shoulder because Loyal would certainly hunt her down.
And then there was that man’s body. She was already too easy to frame and if she left now it would be easy to pin the whole thing on her. The timing couldn’t be worse. Her cracked fingertips were beginning to throb from the cold. She was hungry and all she really wanted was to curl up under a blanket, but she stood on the sidewalk wondering if she’d ever have another chance like this one.
Then the door opened and Jack stepped outside. “There you are,” he said. “You okay? You look funny.” He pulled her inside the store and locked the door behind them.
She started to unload her backpack. “It’s been a long day.”
“Hang on. Let’s do this in the back.”
His office was small and cluttered with a metal desk left over from the fifties, four tall filing cabinets from the scratch-and-dent store, a low ceiling, a fluorescent light overhead, and that dumpy futon in the corner.
He spread the envelopes over the desk. “This it?”
“Just the eight stops on the west side.”
“Okay.” He emptied an envelope and started sorting the denominations.
“I marked where each envelope came from, but I didn’t have time to count it all. That big one’s from Crowley’s Pub,” she said, pointing.
Jack totaled the money in that envelope, thirty-five hundred and change, and tagged it with a Post-it note and rubber band. Seeing the cash piled up like that, Jamie judged the total to be way more than fifteen thousand. Closer to twenty.
“I saw my mom.”
“Huh?” He put a rubber band around a stack of bills. “Why?”
The impulse to tell him everything was nearly overwhelming, but she couldn’t answer truthfully. “I stopped in for a bite.”
“Yeah, how was that?” She could tell he wasn’t listening. He got a ledger from the back of a locked drawer and entered the totals.
“It was fine. That cop, Garcia, was there giving her a hard time about some bullshit at Keating’s the other night.” She didn’t mention the girl she’d seen looking for her father or her suspicions that everything was connected in ways she couldn’t see yet.
“The game you missed?” He opened another drawer and swore. “Fuck. Where’s my damn calculator?”
“Yeah. Pissed me off.”
He stopped for a moment and looked up. “Why would you get pissed about that? You say it all the time, you don’t even know her.”
“I don’t know. I was supposed to deal that game. Now it sounds like things got a little crazy.”
“Your mom can take care of herself, Jamie. You know, prison toughens a person.”
“Or breaks them.”
She’d been caught off guard by that cop sitting there quizzing them and then hassling her at the truck. And Phoebe had looked awful, the circles under her eyes dark and puffy, struggling to conceal her nerves. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Well, no. I guess I wouldn’t, would I?”
She couldn’t tell if it was a put-down.
“Relax. Talk about something else.” He locked the cash in a safe and walked out from around the desk and stood face-to-face with her. “Why does counting money make me horny?” He kissed her forehead, then her mouth.
“’Cause you’re cheap like that,” she said.
It was a line from a porn video she’d caught him watching. The line was funny, the video pathetic, and she’d felt bad for the woman in it. She’d never make a sex tape, even though Jack nagged her about it all the time.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and she bent backward under his weight, his lips on her neck, the smell of his skin. It was enough to fill her mind with this, with him. They got to the futon in two awkward steps. He pulled her on top of him, yanking at the zipper on her jeans.
She pulled his shirt over his head. He ripped open a condom. This was the dance they’d perfected over the last month. In a minute they were naked and he was pushing in deep. A few more minutes and he was done.
Jamie wished it had gone longer but it rarely did. One time he’d stayed with her for nearly ten minutes and she’d seen lights exploding behind her eyes. She wanted that again, but he was catching his breath now and soon he’d get up. She kept him inside her for as long as she could, breathed in his scent, knowing that in a minute he’d be on the phone ordering pizza and the ordinary world would return.
“That was nice.” His breath was slowing.
She knew he was thinking about food. “Yummy.” He liked to hear that he was good.
“Pepperoni?”
“Sure.” She found her sweater, wondered why she didn’t feel any different than before, wondered if he felt anything at all.
He grabbed a blanket off the back of the futon, threw it over his body, and texted an order to the pizza joint down the street. “Ten minutes,” he said, and pulled her back on top of him. “Time for another round.”
“Stop bragging,” she said, but relaxed on top of him and buried her nose under his chin. “I’ve been thinking about stuff.”
“Not surprising.” He ran his finger along her spine. “Bright girl like you. Probably always thinking and scheming.”
“Loyal wants me to play in the fund-raiser.”
“The vets’ game?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s weird. They don’t usually invite the ladies. You know those old guys, they don’t like getting shown up by a babe.”
“I thought Margaret Freeland played last year.”
“Yeah, but she’s a vet. Nurse in ’Nam, I think. Loyal still put a bounty on her. Everyone knew it but her. She was out in twenty minutes.”
“Are you kidding? How do you know that?” Jamie sat up and double knotted her hair in a band.
“I’m the one who took her out. He gave me two hundred bucks right after she walked out the door.”
She looked for her boots and found one under the futon.
“It’s different this year. He wants us to make up for the cash we lost. Wants you to play, too. And that jerk, Tuckahoe. Phoebe’s going to be one of the dealers.”
“Us?”
“You know, Mimawa.”
“You told him about that?”
“What else could I do? Lucky he didn’t kill me,” she said, remembering the way Loyal had handled that man’s body. For a moment she thought about telling Jack, but she’d taken money from Keating to keep quiet and talking about it now would only make it more complicated.
“Is he pissed?”
“Not at you. He’s pissed that I blew Keating’s take. Now I got to work for him till I pay him back.”
“Huh. So what does he want us to do at the tournament? Basic shit like rat-holing, chip dumping? We take it down and Keating is paid off?”
“Yep. Exactly.”
He waved his head back and forth like he was weighing his options. “That’s cool, if it settles the score. And Keating gets to win in front of his constituents, which amounts to free publicity for his reelection. Goddamn. Those two work every angle.”
“Yeah, but I don’t care,” she said. “I need this to work. And I need to find a way to get ahead.”
“Ahead? What are you going to do then, pretty girl? Leave Toby, leave Blind River?”
She noticed he didn’t put himself on that list. “I want to try the circuit, make some serious money. After Toby turns eighteen and joins the Army.”
Jack smirked. “You still think your little brother is Army material?”
“Yeah.” She turned her sweater right side out. “I think he could be.”
“You haven’t heard, have you?”
“Heard what?” She pulled the sweater over her head.
“Toby’s been in jail since this morning. He punched out the wrong guy.”